July 2010

Mundane Networking: Reaching Outside of Fandom

By Trisha J. Wooldridge

Trisha J. Wooldridge is a freelance writer, editor and educator from Auburn, MA and a member of the Broad Universe Motherboard. Her experience ranges from Dungeons & Dragons Online to animal rescue public relations. She writes about food, wine, horses, haunted locations, education, and she interviews bands like Voltaire, Within Temptation and Nightwish. Her novella, Mirror of Hearts, is available at Fantasy Gazetteer (www.fantasygazetteer.com), and short story, Party Crashers, co-authored with Christy Tohara, in the EPPIE Award winning Bad-Ass Faeries: Just Plain Bad, with a second co-authored short story in the upcoming Bad-Ass Faeries: In All Their Glory. Her web site is here: http://www.anovelfriend.com/

Readers turn to science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other forms of speculative fiction to often escape every day life and explore the weird, strange, and scary. On the other hand, writers of these genres often feel out of place leaving our weird, strange, and scary little worlds. The genre community can become quite insular and protective; many of its members have suffered abuse from people in school and may still suffer with colleagues at our regular desk jobs. Why should we leave our happy nest in online fandom or convention fandom and interact with an outside community?

• Because the outside community members want to buy our books.
• Because they help our business savvy.
• Because they offer services we need.

Fiction writers — especially genre ones — directly feel the influence of fans on our sales: they ask us for autographs, they send us emails, they blog about us, they correct our description of a military rifle…. The number of people who buy our books far outnumbers those who identify as fans, though. If you’ve got an invoice of your sales, compare the number to how many people you’ve met at conventions and received communication from to how many books you’ve sold. If you haven’t got sales of your own yet, look up just the Amazon stats of your favorite author and compare that number to the number of experiences you’ve had with fellow fans. See the difference? Regular people read speculative fiction. Let them know you’re accessible — and your next book will be available [fill in the when/where blank]. In fact, even if the person doesn’t normally read your genre, but is a reader, she might want to pick up your book because she met you in person and you made a good impression. (I, myself, have purchased many a book for this very reason.)

The insular community of genre writers also limits what we learn. I’m not saying that our colleagues don’t offer some of the most excellent podcasts, lectures, and advice on writing and marketing; that would be entirely untrue. I am saying that everyone learns, performs, and interacts differently, so expanding your learning experience is essential to creating your personal — and most effective — marketing strategy. For example, I met Rick Roberge at a meeting for the Society of Professional Communicators. He was giving a workshop on speed networking, and it was just the way he phrased one question to me that made things click: What do you want me to do? I had made a great introduction, but left off the all important request for something. It could be anything: asking for a business card, asking an agent if she’d be interested in my manuscript, asking a visitor to a Broad Universe book table if she would like to find out more about the organization/new books/other vampire books (if they’re wearing a ubiquitous Twilight or anti-Twilight T-shirt). I’m sure I heard the advice before, but this one instance made it click.

Writers — especially those of us who are at least partly self-employed — need services to help us run our writing business. Here’s hoping we all have trustworthy banks to store our earnings, as well as a place to live and/or work. But if you’re looking to change, many banks and real estate agencies send associates to networking groups to find clients. An awful lot of writers need someone to aid us in financial organization, if not office or life organization. In networking meetings, I have met radio personalities who worked out advertising deals for me, the printer for my poetry chapbook, social media advisors who helped me write better blogs, fellow food writers who connected me with clients, life coaches, closet shoppers, chiropractors, nutritionists, jewelry makers, photographers, cemetery researchers, graphic artists... all of whom I look forward to keeping up with at regular meetings — if not also via email or electronic communications between events. Writers aren’t islands; we need services besides the Internet and things besides our computers, laptops, pens, and paper. Local networking groups introduce you to these resources — and because they are local, they usually are happy to work out special deals for you, or even barter.

On top of all that, it’s also a lot of fun. Many of these networking groups meet at happy hours and have free or cheap food and drink. While you will meet the people who are on the hard-sell prowl for new clients, most are equally interested in the social aspect and prefer to meet others without a hard sell — perhaps via discussing one’s favorite beer or wine. In fact, just watching how others interact and introduce themselves is a learning experience… just one that involves delicious food and drink — and at most events I’ve attended, a lot of friendly laughter.

So, how do you start networking with your local businesses?

It’s pretty easy, actually, and you’ve got a lot of options. You start right in a community you are already at least somewhat comfortable navigating: the Internet. Here are a few places (and their websites) with which I’ve had experience:

The Chamber of Commerce is a U.S. organization, but it has international branches. If you visit their website, you can look for a chamber near you and see if they have networking events. Many local Chambers offer networking events at local restaurants for businesses — even those who are not members — in order to get to know each other.

Meetup.com is another great international resource. The search engine even has a category for business networking. Just input your zip code, or city and state, or country and city, or similar, and it will find things near you. (Yes, it might be tempting to also find a writer’s group or a book lovers’ group, but while those are great, they aren’t great substitutions for business-specific networking.)

Business Network International (or BNI) is a formal networking organization that holds weekly meetings where members introduce each other and provide each other with referrals. Not only is the mission for members to support and promote each other, but the organization also offers a lot of global resources on networking and marketing.

For women, since this is the Broadsheet, a group I recently found is the Downtown Women’s Club. It’s a grassroots organization dedicated to helping connect women in business, and they sponsor monthly, women-only networking events and woman-oriented seminars. They are entirely U.S. at this time, and not everywhere, but it’s absolutely worth checking out to see if there is a group near you. It’s also just good karma to help out and work with fellow independent women.

Besides those larger groups, there are many local networking groups that you might not know about yet. For example, the Society of Professional Communicators, which I mentioned earlier, is based in Worcester, MA and has members mainly from Central Massachusetts. It’s a fabulous group, but I wouldn’t have known it existed had an exercise buddy not mentioned it (and it would be hard for someone from Utah to attend the monthly meetings). Also, from the Downtown Women’s Club, I learned of several other local, woman-centered, networking, and leadership groups. There are far too many for me to personally follow up on, but they all have websites. Do an Internet search for “networking groups” or even “women’s networking groups” with your local information, and see what you can find.

Now, the organizations I’m referencing in this article are specifically networking organizations. There are plenty of other non-genre, non-networking focused places where you can network, but that is a whole other topic. In networking organizations, you go for the purpose of networking and learning to network. What does that mean? It means that you go to meet people, find out who they are, and what services they offer. It means you are going to talk about yourself because people are there to find out who you are and what you have to offer them. If you are nervous about this, don’t worry; most of them are used to “newbies,” and will help you out. Some of the networking groups, like BNI, for example, have very structured meetings where they introduce new people and show you the ropes. In less formal affairs, there is usually a greeter or a facilitator with whom you check in. If you let her know you are new — and it’s okay to admit you’re nervous — she will likely find someone to introduce you that will help you out. Even though these people might be strangers and outside of your comfortable community, they WANT you to be there, they WANT you to have fun, and they WANT you to succeed as a person and as a business entity.

If you’re looking to increase your ability to sell your writing, break away from the writing and fandom flock and meet up with other people who are selling things. Create more opportunities to promote yourself, learn new skills in marketing, and make local connections with mutually supportive people who can help you outside of writing. Have fun with it, and you’ll hardly think of it as working or selling. You’ll be going out for drinks, a luncheon, or a breakfast with colleagues... and even friends.

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