by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I’m lucky to have a very good relationship with my readers. We frequently exchange emails.
I recently received an email from a reader of mine that I’ve corresponded with for years. She asked me if I could figure out a way to get in contact with another of her favorite authors. This reader was on email, but not on social media.
As a favor to her, I looked up the author’s books on Amazon to see if I could find her website through Amazon Author Central. She was not on Amazon Author Central.
I googled the writer and found a rudimentary website. There was no contact page or contact information on the website.
I looked up the writer on Twitter and found that she had an account. I sent her a tweet, letting her know that a reader of hers had a question for her. Two months later, I’ve received no reply.
I looked her up on Facebook and found she had a page there. I left the writer a direct message about her reader. Again, I haven’t heard back. I finally wrote back to my reader with the bad news that the author appeared to be unreachable.
Literary agent Janet Reid recently posted about her difficulties tracking down an author online. The author’s social media icons weren’t actually linked to the networks.
I’ve run into this before. There have been times when I’ve wanted to credit authors when sharing posts on Twitter and couldn’t find the author’s Twitter handle (although the author stated he or she was on the platform).
At the bare minimum, set up your Amazon Author Central account. You can provide an email address or website and other social media locations on that page.
If you’re on social media platforms, set up notifications for messages. Or check in once a week or so.
Every author website should include a contact page (or contact info in the sidebar, if you have a one-page website). At a minimum, this page/info should include an email address, name of the writer/pen name (you’d be surprised how many have a first name only: “Angela’s Musings”), and where to find you on the web.
If you’re not yet on social media, industry expert Jane Friedman has tips for getting started: choosing a network and what to post.
Do you have to be on social media? No. You just need to be available to readers with questions. You could skip social media altogether as long as you list ways of contacting you (email, P.O. Box, via your agent, etc.) and as long as you’re responsive when readers do try to reach out.
Have you made it easy for readers to reach you?
Make it easy for readers to contact you: Share on XPhoto via Visual Hunt
Hi Elizabeth – it does seem logical that readers should be able to contact you. I remember early on another blogger wanted to contact me – she actually wrote a blog post to me … I was staggered. I had not put my email up … now my email is there … no social media really … but we never know who might want to get in contact or what for. Making it easy makes sense … cheers Hilary
The email address is the most important, I think. And yours is now attached to your blogging profile too, so that’s helpful!
Well said! Yes, I have a heck of time just trying to contact another blogger sometimes when I can’t find an email. Or I want to Tweet one of their posts and credit them with their Twitter handle, but I can’t even find a link to Twitter in their sidebar.
The funny thing is that so often I’m able to find them on Twitter (after a good deal of searching). So they’re on the platform…but they don’t give their handle on their blog. Did they just overlook it?
Okay, I thought I had it all down. Emailing me shouldn’t be a problem. But I haven’t linked to my Twitter at all on my blogs and links to my FB stuff are spotty. Thanks for the nudge!
It’s one of those things that, once you get it set up, you can pretty much just forget about it. At least there’s *something* online like that, ha!
I go in phases where I contact authors who have followed me on Twitter in regards to my editing services. My preference is to reach out via a contact form on their website, but a good number of authors do indeed fail to make a contact page or even provide an email address on their bio page. I will send a Twitter DM as a last resort, but those are sometimes not even checked. I have never contacted an author via their FB page. I guess we all have to draw the line somewhere in how much time it’s worth investing to make contact.
It sounds as if your experience has been much like mine. It’s so frustrating to try to find a writer’s contact info and not be able to locate it. And these are *public* people trying to sell books!
Yes! I don’t know why some authors make it impossible to get a hold of them. What’s funny is some book bloggers are the same way. Good luck finding a way to contact them.
I can’t imagine a book blogger being incommunicado! How hard are publishers supposed to work?
What a great reminder, Elizabeth. Readers do want to be able to contact authors whose work they like, and it doesn’t have to be intrusive. It’s really easy to set up a gmail or other account that’s specifically for reader contact (as opposed to giving readers one’s personal email account). I know some authors use contact forms on their blogs or websites, too, and that’s another way readers can easily get in touch. Either way, I think it’s important.
Contact forms work well, too! Hope you have a great weekend, Margot. :)
It’s such an obvious thing, and yet…sigh. Sure, social media can be a bit overwhelming, but we WANT readers, right? At least give us an email address.
My pet peeve: a blog that doesn’t have the author’s name ANYWHERE, just some cutesy moniker, like “Daggers and Pixie Dust.” It’s so odd, as if they are conflicted about having a site in the first place.
It was very nice of you to go to so much trouble for that reader, Elizabeth! Hope you have a great weekend. :D
Oh my gosh, me too!!! And there are so many of them. Many of them, if they list a name at all, only list a first name.
Hope you have a happy weekend, too!
I come up against this problem often when trying to contact authors for features on my website, Elizabeth. It’s so frustrating to have to hunt around for a simple email address. Most of the time I abandon the effort and find someone else. Authors can lose opportunities this way! Thanks for bringing this up. :O)
Sometimes it’s the simple things that make the biggest impact! Hope you’re having a great weekend, Colleen!