How Virtual and Real-World Events Can Nurture Your Writing Career

What’s a writer got to do to get noticed these days?

Feeding your fictional (or non-fictional) passion requires more than simply creating beautiful works of words. Readings, panels, classes, and presentations (whether on- and offline) can be a great boon to your exposure – and your bottom line.

Strengthening Relationships with Fans 

Self-published authors are pretty much on their own when it comes to building a platform of zealous fans (although it is possible to contract out publicity services, as long as you find a reputable person or organization). The strongest relationships are formed when you meet and engage people in conversation – either in the real world, or the virtual one. It can take some work to get comfortable with the idea of showcasing yourself live in front of strangers, but it helps to think of the lives you can potentially touch, teach, and inspire with your words.

If you’re traditionally published, your publisher will probably be able to assist in this arena – after all, it’s in their best interest to improve your visibility. Still, it doesn’t hurt to take as active a part as you can. For example, check out Togather; it’s a great option for getting fans to commit to an event so you don’t show up to an empty room.

Interview with Nedzad Lomigora on Community Days

Welcome to the newly revamped Community Days! Now that I'm interviewing people on Google Hangouts, I realize that trying to fit all of the interviews on Fridays doesn't make as much sense as it once did, so I'm leaving the "day" part of this feature flexible.

Today's guest is Nedzad Lomigora, founder of the author promotion platform Zeeen.com and organizer of the terrific Publishing Innovator Meetups in both Boston and New York. I recently worked with Ned to organize a Kickstarter for Authors panel, and hope to arrange more great events in the future.

Here's the broadcast as recorded from Google Hangouts. If you're interested in reading a partial transcript of the video, you can scroll down the page. But if you have time, watch the whole thing - there's plenty of good info to absorb. Hope you enjoy!

Tell us a little bit about your site, Zeeen.

It's a platform for authors that identifies, attracts, and engages readers. Our predictive analytics engine lets you set your goals, receive real-time alerts on the status of those goals, and access actionable recommendations (what to do to improve on reaching your goals). That all leads to more book sales.

What experiences brought about the idea for Zeeen?

I had a lot of experience in my past with finding industries that were going through a huge change, and publishing was one of those industries... I remember having a conversation with somebody, and asking: "This kind of tool you're using, all of the people in the publishing industry are using, right, because this would make sense. It's so easy, and why wouldn't they?" The answer was no; the publishing industry was so far behind [from a technology standpoint]. I realized the pain that authors were going through, that publishers can't help them with because they don't have the right tools or time. So you have authors left to their own devices... and they can't keep up with all the changes in technology. We decided to set up a company to focus on making the technology much easier to use for authors, and giving them tools that they need to promote and market their books in a way that takes the least amount of time out of their day so they can focus on writing.