Want More Eyes on Your Book? Try Guest Posting!

If you're a regular reader here on The Literary Mercenary, then I'd like to inform you you're a member of a rather exclusive club. Which is my way of saying that I don't get anywhere near as much traffic on this blog as I'd like. Even so, just last week I got an email from the folks over at NFReads. They'd come across my blog, saw me talk about my novel Crier's Knife, and they invited me to write a guest post on their platform promoting it.

Which I did, and you can check out the article Pulp Fantasy: The Land We All Forgot if you're interested.

And that's our segue into today's topic...

For folks not in the know, writing an article like that for someone else's platform is called guest posting, and it is often the cornerstone of making sure you get a lot of eyes on your book, blog, or other writing project.

How Does Guest Posting Work?

Guest posting is, at its core, pretty simple. You find a website (or in a truly fortunate case, a website finds you), and you write a post for them. The post needs to fit with the site's themes and subject matter, but that post should also mention who you are, provide a link back to your site, and ensure that folks who read said post find out about you, and what you do.

But why would you post on someone ELSE'S page instead of your own?

There are a lot of reasons you should invest in guest posting, but the biggest ones are that they give you bonuses in the numbers game that is selling books. For example, when a search engine indexes your blog, or even your book's sales page, it examines how many reputable websites have links back to it. These off-page links are important in boosting your visibility, and the bigger or more important the site your guest blog appears on, the more heavily weighted the links on that page are going to be.

It's the same reason I mentioned my book as well as My Amazon Author Page when I wrote the post 3 Reasons "Bloat" is a Made-Up Problem for the RPG website High Level Games. Because the more reputable websites I have pointing back to my books and my blogs, the more likely I am to turn up on the first page of related search results.

In addition to jacking up your numbers, though, guest posts also allow you to tap into that other website's audience. For example, John Hartness is a writer and publisher who gets way more traffic than I do, even on my best days. So when he asked me to write a guest post to help boost the signal for the anthology The Big Bad II (a super fun collection where the bad guys are the protagonists), I wrote up the post Evolution of Evil to talk about the themes I was getting at with my modern fantasy story Little Gods.

While my post wasn't a viral sensation, it put my name and my story in front of a lot of people. Far more than the number of folks who would have found out about it if I'd put that same post here on my own blog. And while a lot of folks probably skimmed right past my information, even if they read the post itself, some folks may have clicked on my information. That would have brought them straight to my site, and given me a chance to suck them more permanently into my orbit.

Is that all it does?

Those are the two, major benefits of guest posting. However, providing guest posts can also endear you to the person(s) who run the website you're providing the content for, it can establish you as an expert in your field, and just generally make your name a lot more visible. If you're the sort of reader who prefers itemized lists, then 8 Reasons Why Guest Posting is an Advantage by Branding Personality lays it all out by the numbers.

Keep Your ROI in Mind

When I started this blog, one of my first posts was Professional Rule Number One: Never Work For Free. And I stand by the points I made in that post; if you are taking the time and effort to create something, then you need to be sure you're getting a return on the effort you're putting into that project.

Where my dividends at?

The thing I cautioned about then, and which I'd like to remind folks about now, is that returns can take a number of different forms. In their most basic form, it's you getting paid in some fashion. Maybe the individual agrees to pay you a fee, or to do a profit-share model with all the traffic your post produces. On the other hand, the site you're posting on might be so prestigious that the sheer amount of run-off traffic your post generates is worthwhile in and of itself. Alternatively, you might be writing your guest post as a kind of quid-pro-quo to improve (or even establish) your professional relationship with the site owner.

All of these are potential returns. Some of them might be in your hand as soon as the article goes up, others will take time to start paying dividends. But it's important to remember that just because something doesn't have a dollar sign attached to it, that doesn't mean you're working for nothing. Just take a minute to evaluate, and to see what benefits you get from this endeavor to make sure it's worth your while.

That's all for this Business of Writing installment. Hopefully it gives folks out there something to chew over! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and make sure to stop by My Amazon Author Page.

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I Believe in Love (But Not True Love)

I've been running The Literary Mercenary for several years now, and today is a bit of a special occasion. This is my first ever guest post, brought to you by the talented Vincent Cross. If you like what he has to say, follow him on Facebook, or check out his Amazon author page.

And now, without further ado...

I Believe in Love (But Not True Love)

I don't know about anyone else, but when it came time to talk about relationships, my parents didn't sit down to give me the straight dope. I got little hints, here and there, but mostly it was what not to do. Don't mumble, stand up straight, brush my hair, and just be myself. Platitudes, one and all. None of it had any substance, and it was about as useful as tying a boat anchor around my waist while trying to tread water in the dating pool.

And society frowns on slaying your crush's suitors as a display of strength, these days.

So who taught me what a relationship was supposed to look like? The movies I watched, the books I read, and the games I played. And do you know what they told me, every, single time? That love, real love, was easy. That it would always float to the top like good cream, and that no matter what challenges it faced, or how unlikely it seemed, it would always work out in the end.

What a crock of shit.

And of course we know that. We're adults. We know that you don't fall in love with someone because you shared a lingering glance across a crowded ballroom, and danced till midnight. That might lead to a whirlwind, backseat romance, but that isn't the sort of thing that makes a relationship work. Real relationships need things like mutual interest, connection, respect, and most of all, they take a lot of goddamn work.

And most stories don't have time for all that.

They're Just Books

But are they? Are they really?

Yeah, I wouldn't give this to my kids, either.

On the one hand, of course they're just books. They're just movies. They're just comics. But they're more than that. Stories are what we use to shape ourselves. They're the myths we bow our heads to, and that we study. They tell us how heroes, and villains, act. They tell us, in their own ways, what's real.

Maybe we don't really believe that love at first sight exists. As grown-ups, we know that if we see someone, and it makes our hearts flutter, that we're dealing with a bad case of lust. The sort of primal, primitive blood surge that can make you say and do some truly stupid things before you get yourself under control. But there is still that part of us that's eight years old being told that this is what love is supposed to feel like. That if we lose that spark, then we simply haven't found the one. That when we do find that special someone, it will be easy. No arguments, no loneliness, and we'll never wonder about our choice.

That's not a problem with us, as readers. Because stories are how we're hard-wired to see the world, and relate to ideas. It's a problem with our storytellers, who have been feeding us garbage. Giving us the childish simplicity of fairy tales, but then never stepping up the game as we get older, and could use more complex, more instructive stories.

They say if people aren't writing the kinds of books you want to read, then you're going to have to write them. So that's what I'm doing. Along the way, though, I'd like to ask that other storytellers think about the messages they're encoding in their books. There's no such thing as pure escapism. So make it fun, by all means. Make it sassy, dark, or demure, as you wish. But ask yourself what will happen if readers start using your stories as their mythology? What lessons will your gods and saints teach them about love, death, and getting on with your life?

Because, if I had my way, I'd like to make a generation that's less entitled, more respectful, and that understands there's no such thing as true love. That you need to tend that fire if you're serious about not letting it burn out.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing post. A big thanks again to Vincent for his contribution! For those of you who would like to help support me and my blog, why not stop by The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to leave a small donation? As little as $1 a month is a big help, and it comes with a free book! Lastly, if you haven't followed me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter yet, well, what's stopping you?