What’s in a name? Adjusting one’s eplatform.

For the last ten or twelve years, I’ve worked on building an e-platform that will hold me in good stead when I begin marketing my books in earnest. You know my books right? Well maybe not yet, but you will. Currently they are “works in progress,” or “making the rounds,” or “on submission.” Nevertheless, I have great faith that they will be published and when they are, they will need to be marketed and publicized.

I have spent much of my time (probably too much) keeping up with the newest social media marketing trends all under the name Anna J. Boll. However, recent unexpected life events have brought me to a new path, and I have decided to take back my birth name for my professional and personal life.

Cyberspace, meet Anna Eleanor Jordan.

I am not unique in this. People get divorced and married and divorced (1 divorce every 36 seconds according to this). What is newish and more difficult is changing the e-platform that is so much a part of modern daily existence.

Luckily my Twitter handle was @annawritedraw (no need to change)…

…but my email, and Facebook had to change. My name-based gmail has been relatively simple (although it ends up being crazy long because shorter versions were taken), and I can easily have the old gmail forward to the new. Facebook gives you a spot for a parenthetical name which is nice.

Pinterest even allows you to choose your own URL suffix. (I went with annawritedraw to make it the same as Twitter.)

I’ve yet to deal with LinkedIn (which I use only for people I can recommend or for those who can recommend me) and this very webpage has to change.

Creative Chaos will eventually be found at annaejordan.com as soon as I figure out how to forward it properly.

But then there are other less public things. All the sites that I subscribe to, usernames, and passwords need to be changed and updated and on and on. In fact, it is a veritable web – intricate and extensive – of minutiae alterations. Just when I think I’m done, there are another thousand bits to change.

What’s not going to change is my commitment to the kidlit community, or my writing, or my passion for championing diversity in children’s literature, or my love of books, poetry, art and illustration, education, family, and matching children with wonderful new literature. Thanks to all for the support that I’ve received thus far and thanks for your patience with my spotty posting.

See! I still have to change my bio below, ugh, and Goodreads, and…

Three Links to Great Web Content: August 4-10, 2013

When I was about eight years old, I used to sit on the landing and listen to the adult conversations that went on at dinner parties my parents would hold. I’m sure my parents thought I was asleep, and sometimes I would indeed fall asleep on the landing and they’d have to carry me to bed. The point is, that I didn’t want to miss anything. Sometimes Twitter and social media reminds me of this. With the incessant stream of tweets and updates I’m bound to miss out on something crucial.

The fact is, there is so much information out on the web that you can’t, and shouldn’t, try to keep up with it. I thought I’d post a few great links from my week and would love to see your favorite links, and a few sentences about them, in the comments.

First off, Ingrid Sundberg. Ingrid Sundberg is a fellow VCFA alum. She recently posted a fabulous series taken from her thesis on story architecture. If you only saw bits, or missed the whole thing, bookmark this page which includes the links for the entire series. Organic Architecture: Links to the Whole Series

If you are a parent or an educator, and haven’t found PragmaticMom.com, you should take a look. In addition to crafts, education, and parenting tips, she is an avid children’s lit reader with wonderful book lists. Her Multicultural Books for Children: 40+ Book Lists are an amazing collection of books broken into various helpful categories.

Lee Wind and the amazing SCBWI blog team were super busy last weekend at the LA Conference. Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend this year (I’m planning to go in 2014), but I was able to get the juicy tidbits on the Official SCBWI Conference Blog. If you are searching for an agent, you may want to read the many agent profiles. Illustrators will want to check out the winning portfolio images, and writers will be inspired by the encapsulated keynote speeches.

Again, I’d love to see your favorite links of the week– interesting industry news, and craft discussions that you retweeted, reblogged, tumbled or pinned that my readers might have missed. I’ll be watching the comments.

Member Monday: Getting the most from Social Media

This weekend I had lunch with some wonderful, experienced NESCBWI writers and illustrators who are, like many in the industry, a little overwhelmed and perplexed by social media. They wonder if they have to do everything– Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Goodreads… They want to know how they are supposed to have time to still do their work if they are busy posting status updates and being cyber-social with everyone on their list. They want to know what their ROI (Return on Investment) will be once they take the time to learn and then use social media platforms.

I’m not a social media expert but here’s what I’ve gleaned from listening to editors, agents, and other writers/illustrators about the subject:

If you don’t like it, don’t do it.
Social media is at its cyber-heart– social. Whatever platform you adopt should be one that you enjoy and that you will do regularly. If you don’t want to put the time into blogging– don’t blog. If you don’t enjoy perusing Facebook updates or following others on Twitter, your friends and followers will know. Take some time to be familiar with the various sites out there and make an informed decision. This is one of my favorite explanations:

Social Media Explained From Geek.com
Once you decide on a social media site, take the time to learn about it. Watch a few tutorial videos, read a few blogs so that you can maximize the time you ~~waste~~ put into it in the future. Most of these sites have ways to make groups so that you can view your close friends, your writer/illustrator friends, and industry professionals separately. Learn how to search for keywords that are important to what you do. There are a bunch of “Third-Party Applications” that you can use to follow more than one social media site at a time. I’m currently using one called Tweetdeck but I hear that Hootsuite is good too. I’ve included a few links here to other blogs that review/discuss these and more. This one has an interesting graph that shows the variety of apps out there: THIRD-PARTY TWITTER APPS STILL THRIVING This one is a review post: 8 of the Best Third-Party Twitter Apps for iOS [App List]
What goes around, comes around. Even if you are doing this to expand your marketing platform, no one will follow/friend you if all you do is toot your own horn. Pass on industry info, help launch other people– in general, be a good neighbor in the kidlitosphere. No one really knows what the ROI is. Does social media really sell books? Maybe not. One thing marketing professionals agree on is that word of mouth is very powerful. I can tell you that if I follow a link to your book and I’m interested, it goes on my Goodreads list which I pull up on my phone every time I go to the library or bookstore. That’s social media in action.
Set some limits for yourself. You can set time limits. (ex: I will look at Twitter for 15 minutes three times a day.) Or day limits. (ex: I will make Monday and Friday mornings my marketing time.) Or carrot limits. (ex: If I write 1500 words today/ finish the color study on this spread, I will go online.) If you don’t have this kind of self-control, there are productivity programs that you can set to block your own internet. Freedom. Or you can literally unplug your router. Remember, if you don’t DO THE WORK: write, read, draw, paint, focus on craft– there will be nothing to market.
The party goes on without you. I distinctly remember when my parents would have parties (I was about five years old) and I wouldn’t really want to go to bed. I’d sit on the stairs and watch them talk until I got so tired I’d fall asleep on the landing. At some point, Dad would take me up to my bed, but the party went on. In the social media party, you will always miss something. Make your peace with it. Look at whatever is on your screen at the time, set your limits and then move on with your life. Cyber space is vast. Don’t fall into a black hole.