Talking Sig Lines...

Sig lines (signatures at the end of your email posts) can be a wonderful promotion tool or drive some people into a foaming frenzy. The frenzy comes from expectations--mostly the unmet kind. Everyone has opinions on what is the perfect sig line.

Here's mine:

Some sig lines are block-long parades and others barely cast a shadow.

What a sig lines should do for the author is tell people a little about you without you having to come out and say it. Look at this way, you don't go into a party wearing a sandwich board or carrying a blow horn. You should approach your internet contacts with the same courtesy and restraint.

A good sig line will contain:

1. Your name (believe it or not, a lot of people forget this basic necessity. If you're name isn't there, then your name recognition isn't being built.)

2. Your website URL: This tells people where to find our more about you if they want to.

3. Email contact: While most email programs let you find an email address, you want to make it easy for people to contact you. (And no, if someone creepy uses this info, you don't have to answer them. Use the delete key.)

4. Your book title. It can contain book titles, but probably no more than two. Too much information and your sig line because a novel, not a sig line.

5. In SOME situations, you can add review or book snippets to your sig line, but be sparing and respect the list rules. Put this information at the bottom, so you can delete it easily where necessary.

Note the word snippet in the above line. That means SHORT. To the point. Yes, there will be a longing to shoe horn all the wonderful things a reviewer said about your book, but you want to pick ONE sentence. Later you can use the other wonderful things, because a sig line should also evolve.

And while you're waiting for review quotes or once you've used all you have, consider the benefit of adding short snippets from your book. Linnea Sinclair creates a special file of these snippets while she's writing her book, then sprinkles them through her email correspondence. It does a wonderful job of creating buzz and anticipation for novels. I tried this and actually had a reader email me for more information.

The good thing about sig lines, because they are a work in process, you have time to hone and refine yours. :-)
Perilously yours,
Pauline