As a writer, how do you get your name "Out There"?

[Poofta]

Do you enter writing contests? Write magazine articles? Upload your creations to websites?

[I_Write_Ivre]

I save up for a marketing package that will advertise my stuff on various websites.

That and I plan to attend cons and work with local bookstores to promote my stuff.

I'm considering buying reviews.

[Sakura_Darkstorm]

Pretty much. Submit wherever you can, go to workshops, meet people, all that.
Don't spend money if you don't have to.

[DakotaApricot]

I think it really depends on how social you are and what kind of friends you have. When I finally publish my first novel later this year several friends have said they'll help me market it. They know how important this is to me and are willing to help me achieve my dream.

I feel like after that it's all word of mouth, make a good product and the sales will come.

If you don't have a lot of reliable friends to help you market, you could always hunt down a bunch of blogs that review books within your genre of choice and send them free copies of your work. Even a small blog without many followers could boost your sales, as you might be the first author to offer that particular blogger a review copy of a book. In turn that could make the blogger in question more biased to help you succeed because you've legitimized their efforts.

[I_Write_Ivre]

Whether you spend money or not (I'm going to cons 'cause I want to, but it doesn't hurt to use them to get my name out), always keep at it.

[SebastiansLittleDoll]

First I'd probably get my friends to get into my stuff (they already are) and just nudge them a bit so that they could tell their other friends and... yeah. ^_^ Friends are awesome, aren't they?

I'm also planning on starting a blog sometime (and make it really pretty *-*), enter writing contests/publish a bunch of short stories, put a link to my book (if I publish it) in my sig and in the profile of every social networking site I have... and probably post some stuff on, I dunno, wattpad to get a bit of extra attention. Buying reviews would be cool, too.

In a nutshell, I'll stop having a life. ^_^

[lullar]

A good starting point is submitting to journals of any kind whether they be for creative writing or even for scholarly reports. It's a good, small starting point. Even so, enter any free contests you can along the way. Anything you publish, no matter how small, is something you can always add to your resume as a publication.
Good luck! God bless.

[Quotesy]

Generally what the others said. sweatdrop

[ProjectLazy]

Poofta

Do you enter writing contests? Write magazine articles? Upload your creations to websites?

There's a thread on How to Promote your work right now. I've been answering questions and I wrote a few mini guides there for new writers.Here's the LINK

One of the best suggestions I have though is to collaborate with other professionals. For example offer to write something like a forward or review for another author or have an artist do some illustrations for your work. You can tap into their audience this way.

Besides that and everything mentioned in the link I'd suggest trying to create something you are really proud of and then send it to a publisher. It's scary I know but it's something a lot of writers put off. Self publishing (even ebooks) takes a lot of work and sometimes they have very little pay off. At some point you need to hand your work over to a professional and let them get it out there.

[I_Write_Ivre]

DakotaApricot

I think it really depends on how social you are and what kind of friends you have. When I finally publish my first novel later this year several friends have said they'll help me market it. They know how important this is to me and are willing to help me achieve my dream.

I feel like after that it's all word of mouth, make a good product and the sales will come.

If you don't have a lot of reliable friends to help you market, you could always hunt down a bunch of blogs that review books within your genre of choice and send them free copies of your work. Even a small blog without many followers could boost your sales, as you might be the first author to offer that particular blogger a review copy of a book. In turn that could make the blogger in question more biased to help you succeed because you've legitimized their efforts.

Reviewers tend to be more inclined or motivated if you can give them a free copy and have a good attitude.

[mindalt]

You create something. Simple as that. But not just anything- create something that inspires controversy, heart ache, or adventure. Scare people, mystify them. Then publish it. But the publishing process is sort of really really difficult, yeah? Yeah. So you can publish it to kindle! People would be able to download your book to their phone, tablet, or kindle device (obviously) by buying it on Amazon. This process is extremely doable- I've already done it twice. smile

Now that you have published work, you advertise it. Create a website for it, use something like freewebs.com. This is an excellent, professional grade website-creator for which you can pay extra to remove their domain. Your site would appear, Mysite.webs.com, paying takes away the ".webs." but that doesn't really matter for now.

Now keep creating spaces of yourself on the internet. Youtube linked to your website, twitter linked to your website, facebook, foursquare, whatever- just keep making accounts and profiles on every possible network under your author name, or even the title of your single published work, though this could complicate being discovered when people know you for many titles in the future.

Now you exist on the internet- but will people find you? Hashtags don't just exist at the end of status updates- they're everywhere in their own varying forms. They exist within pages, and that is how we google things. We are just looking up keywords to things that exist somewhere on the internet. If people look up keywords in your website, the name of your book, or your name, chances are one of the many spaces you inhabit on the internet will surface in their engine search.

Next, become a virus. send e-mails, texts, and messages on social networking sites to every single person on your lists, even if you don't even remember who they are, or it was an accidental ad- send it to EVERYONE. For all you know, someone's interest will spark. Talk to enough people and your bound to get interest. If you tell everyone and encourage everyone you know to tell everyone they know, word will spread very quickly. Tell your parents, and they'll tell their company and those people will tell there families, and those family members will tell their friends who will tell their family and so on. Push it like drugs, man.

Talk about your twitter on your youtube and your youtube on your facebook and just advertise advertise advertise. Visit other twitter pages and facebooks dedicated to similar subjects located in your book or poems or whatever you've published, and advertise THERE. Retweet other famous authors, and when people are looking them up they'll see you. Just circulate. And if people like what they read they'll tell people. That's how everything works. But you have to CREATE something first. The more you create, the more you have to represent yourself, the more justification will lie between your advertisements. you have to love what you've made and you have to believe that it is a valid use of others' time to read your stuff.

People are what will drive you, and if you love it and you want it, you'll get there. smile