A few weeks
ago I took a class at the local library with RWA’s 2012 Librarian of the Year,
Mary Moore. The class was Research Tools
for Writers. It was a kind of brown bag lunch class and the room was packed with
writers of all kinds.
I admit,
Mary and I have worked together for a few years and my biggest reason for
attending was to support her. She is (in
my humble opinion) the best research librarian ever! But wowy-zowy did I ever learn a whole bunch
of things. Not new things really, but
new applications of things I’ve used for years now. Like Facebook, Evernote, Google and such.
But the one
thing I brought home with me and took advantage of right away was how to use LinkedIn
to my advantage as a writer. Yea, yea,
yea. I’ve been on LinkedIn in for a few
years and never really thought much of it.
Well, I didn’t really have a need for it. There was Facebook, afterall. Right?
And Twitter… Flickr… DeviantART... Blogster… Goodreads… Stumbleupon…and
of course Pinterest. And the latest at
my house is Polyvor. And while Polyvor
may help me look my best for that all important editor’s pitch, it’s not going
to keep me in touch with my local librarians or booksellers nor will it tell me
when there’s a new editor at Harlequin like LinkedIn can do. And I like that about LinkedIn. It’s professional and it cuts through the
banter and tells me in simple straightforward terms who’s who and what’s hot
today in the company world I follow.
For
instance, in the announcements I’ve had over the past 2 weeks I can see that
....Simon And Schuster has a new Assistant Editor, Nicholas JD Greene....Penguin has
a new Publicist, Meghan Fallon.... and Harper Collins Publishers has a new
Director of Digital Business Development, Adam Silverman. Who knew?
Now perhaps you can get all of that on Twitter, I don’t
know. I haven’t tackled that venue yet. Maybe it’s redundant social networking, but
it is a part of the whole in the world of business.
Anyway, the
greatest thing about LinkedIn is this: I’m
connected with 35 people who are connected with 2900+ people who are connected
with 309,900+ people making my potential pool of connections 312,900
people! And guess who might just be in
that pool of people? You’ve got it! That one special editor or agent I’ve been
looking for! And for the record, you can trust the math because yours truly did not calculate those numbers...some saavy mathemetician at LinkIn did! :D
So…..I’m
curious. Why are writers not plugged
into this incredible network? I found
tons of children's authors and illustrators tapped into LinkedIn. But why did I only find a very small
smattering of romance writers on there?
Do they not know? Have they not
seen the beauty of being linked together with other writers, editors, agents,
publicists, etc? Are you on there? And if not.....please, oh please.....tell me, why?
