I received this bath caddy as a gift and have been using it almost every night. Reading in the tub has been a great way to unwind and squeeze a bit more literature into my life.
A few months before that, I was quoted on Twitter about my bathtub rituals, so it was quite an appropriate gift.
It’s awards season in Hollywood, and Greek-American actor John Stamos just won Favorite Actor in a New Series for Grandfathered at the 42nd People’s Choice Awards! At the January 6, 2016, event, he hammed it up for the crowd, stopping to take selfies with adorable young fans. He looked quite suave in a black velvet suit accented with a red pocket square.
He seems to be a fan of the red pocket square.
He wore the red pocket square again recently, still with an all black suit, though this time it wasn’t velvet and there was a tie involved. (William Shatner was also involved.)
He wore it better with a tux a few weeks prior to the People’s Choice Awards when he attended The 67th Emmys Governors Ball. He told People:
“All dolled up and sporting Frank Sinatra’s pocket square. Given to me by his manager, the great Tony O.”
Okay, if I had a pocket square that once belonged to Frank Sinatra, I might wear it out as often as possible too!
But the pocket square might be getting a bit too ubiquitous. I mean, it’s kind of like how fellow Greek-American Jeffrey Eugenides became so known for his vest that someone started a Twitter account for Eugenides’ vest. Is someone going to start @StamosPocketSquare?
Even The Washington Post commented on it, though that time he wasn’t wearing Sinatra’s red pocket square but a different one.
I think it’s time for John Stamos to find a new accessory! If you follow him on Instagram, you know the man looks good in a pair of glasses. I’d like to see Stamos rock a pair of glasses at his next awards show. I’d recommend these Greek Handmade Frames:
It would be great to see more Greek-American stars using their influence to help Greek and Greek-American companies, particularly during the Greek economic crisis.
John Stamos strikes me as a man who can pull off a piece of jewelry. I say, ditch the red pocket square and wear a piece of striking jewelry. After seeing Konstantino’s exquisite jewelry at the welcome reception for the GABBY Awards, I would pick a piece from his Byzantium collection for Stamos to wear:
And you know how his Full House (and now Fuller House!) character Uncle Jesse was obsessed with his hair? I would obviously have Christo, the Greek-American hairstylist behind Curlisto, do Stamos’ hair. Curlisto did hair for the runways for the Greek American Fashion Week, and he has an entire line of men’s haircare products:
On to the fashion! For clothing, John Varvatos is a Greek-American clothing designer who creates stylish looks. For an awards show, Stamos could wear a grey John Varvatos Cotton Shirt.
Over the shirt, I would add some sophistication with this black Cotton Vest with Piping Detail:
And over that, I’d layer Varvatos’ black Cotton Jacquard Jacket:
For pants, a simple black pair of pants like Varvatos’ Wool Blend Pant would do nicely:
When Tommy John approached me about dressing a Greek star for the red carpet this awards season, I thought to myself:
Really? But can’t I just leave him … undressed?
I mean, he did just recently share a picture of himself on Instagram in his undies!
And then there was that time in 2014 when the Oikos spokesman showed off his underwear with the Greek yogurt logo on it.
Why not just leave him in Tommy John’s underwear Second Skin Square Cut:
And Tommy John’s Second Skin Crew Neck Undershirt:
Have mercy!
This is me reading at Ronnie Norpel‘s fantastic reading series Tract 187 Culture Clatch at The West End —/ photo by author Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Over the years, I’ve blogged about everything from twitter to pinterest, in the effort to help fellow writers think about their social media presence. Why? Because every conference and expo I’ve attended has drilled the need for social media into my head. Swirling around my brain, I hear platform, platform, platform.
But platform is about so much more than social media.
According to Rob Eagar’s article “Stop Grading an Author’s Social Media Presence” on Digital Book World, publishers are “misguided” in how they look at an author’s social media presence. He suggests what authors and publishers should focus on is:
I’d highly, highly suggest reading the full article. What he says makes a lot of sense.
Does this mean we abandon social media?
By no means! It means social media is simply one tool in our toolbox. Okay, toolbox metaphors aren’t quite my lingo—nor my “brand”—but the point is that publishers, agents, librarians, and readers value the fact that an author uses social media, so we should maintain our online presence, but we should also look to diversify. Give a reading. Engage with people who leave comments. Send out a newsletter. Host a webinar. Maintain your backlist. Participate in a panel.
That’s what I’m doing at least. Or at least trying to do.
You can find the facebook page Paul Maher Jr. and I run for Burning Furiously Beautiful here.
My Twitter handle is @stephanieniko.
I pin about Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation and lit life and 1950s fashion and nighttime road trips and the Greek beauty and deer on Pinterest.
I write articles for other publications.
I am reading at Word Bookstore in Jersey City.
I am teaching a writing class at the Festival of Women Writers.
I am participating on a panel at BinderCon.
I am co-organizing the faith and writing conference called The Redeemed Writer: The Call and the Practice.
There’s so much more to writing than, well, writing. I enjoy it, though. It’s stretching me as a writer, as an entrepreneur, and as a person.
One of my former interns made this for me on her last day of the internship at the publishing house. Isn’t it so cute? I was really touched. I don’t know that I taught her everything about a career in book publishing, but hopefully I gave her a good foundation.
I thought I’d share a few tips on careers in book publishing and being a businessperson in a creative field:
What’s your favorite piece of advice?
One of the best decisions I ever made was attending Scripps College. I accepted their offer of enrollment sight unseen. I had never even been in California before arriving a few days before orientation!
I made so many great friends — and I’m STILL making new friends because of Scripps.
A few years after graduating, I began attending the New York chapter of the Scripps alumnae book club. At the time, I didn’t know a single person who attended the book club. None of them were from my graduating year. In fact, it was only after I’d been attending for over a year that someone I’d actually known when I was attending Scripps as an undergrad began attending book club and we reconnected. What’s great about the alumnae book club is that I’ve met so many new smart women, some around my age, some much older, and some much younger.
These women from my book club have been so supportive of me. As I posted a while back, they selected the book I coauthored with Paul Maher Jr., Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” for their January 2014 read and invited me to speak about the book.
The college even posted a photo on the Scripps College facebook page of a group of alumnae from the book club holding Burning Furiously Beautiful!
Even before the book club reading, the Scripps College Alumnae Association posted about the book’s publication on facebook.
I haven’t been supported just online, though. In the Winter 2014 issue, Scripps Magazine featured me (see page 40) in their regular column “ManuScripps” about Scripps authors.
It’s not just Scripps, though. The New School, where I received my MFA, has also supported me. Every week during the academic year, the Creative Writing program emails a newsletter of students’ and alumni’s publications. It’s sent through email to those who attend or have attended the graduate program so I don’t have links to share with you (though the New School Writing is on Twitter!), but they have generously announced my publications.
Does it sound like I’m bragging? Well, I am. I went to a GREAT undergraduate college and a GREAT MFA. I feel so supported by the community I had while I was attending and also by the new community I’ve made back here on the East Coast.
But I’m not any more special than you. YOUR college would love to hear from you. Colleges love to brag about the success of their former students because it makes them look great too.
They’re also always looking for stories to fill the pages of their newsletters. Don’t expect them to keep tabs on you and know about your every publication, though. Many people who work on these publications are interns, work-study students, or volunteers who don’t have time to track you down and see what you’ve been up to. You have to tell them! They want to brag about you, but they have to know how first.
What to send to your alumni network:
Do the hard work for them by sending your alumni publication full details of your latest story any time you get something new published. That means: your full name (perhaps maiden name if you got married), your graduating year, the title of the piece, what type of piece it was, who published it, when it was published, and a link to the story (if applicable).
It’s not just about you
Be sure to give back, though. Class participation counts when it comes to fundraising campaigns, so even if you can’t give a lot, just by giving you’re contributing to the college’s efforts. If you’re a starving artist, there are other ways to give back too, such as submitting free articles for the alumni magazine, meeting with prospective students in your town, fostering a sense of community amongst alumni by congratulating individuals on their achievements, participating in regional alumni events, informing your alma mater about internships and job openings at your place of business, and mentoring recent grads. Cheesy as it may sound, it’s actually a real ego boost to be able to help others. Real success is being good enough at what you do to help others become better at what they want to do.
You may also like:::
“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk- real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.” ~Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Happy Valentine’s Day! I just want to take a moment on this sappy holiday to say how thankful I am for each and every one of you who reads my blog, leaves comments, and forwards it to friends. The life of a writer can be quite solitary at times, as we hole ourselves up in a room with our notebook or computer, and I’m so thankful for the community I’ve made through writing, researching, giving readings, and social media. Maybe I’m a big old nerd for spending so much time in front of a computer, but through blogging, I met my coauthor and made friends along the way so that has to count for something! Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to read and support my writing!!
If you’re looking for a Valentine’s Day read this weekend, here are two great love stories inspired by On the Road.
Will you be my Valentine?
I wrote recently about how Jack Kerouac kept a dream journal and have been blogging a lot about social media. In a recent Salon article, Michele Filgate wonders “Will social media kill writers’ diaries?: Now Facebook and Twitter are business necessities, they may be losing writers’ journals. Is something lost?”
Filgate writes that authors’ personal diaries offer a key into their literary development and intentions. She says authors’ social media posts can do the same thing, but that it’s not as authentic:
Even if there is a level of acting involved in authors who use social media, it isn’t anything new. Brian Morton (author of “Starting Out in the Evening” points out: “I’ve read that Tolstoy used to keep two diaries, one that he left lying around for other people to read, the other a more intimate record for himself alone. I think self-exposure on social media is probably like the diary we leave out for others. There’s probably always an element of performance in it, even when it seems most naked.”
The pressure to build a platform and use social media is real for authors. Finding time to write isn’t always easy to begin with, but not it’s a constant juggle between writing (and researching, editing, and pitching) and social media (blogging, tweeting, facebook-ing, and pinterest-ing). In addition to big writing projects, many writers are also taking on small projects, like writing articles for various lit mags.
Diary keeping is last on my literary to-do list, and I miss it! Not only do I miss it for personal reasons, but I miss having a record of what I was going through and what I was feeling at various points in my life. Especially as a memoirist, I think it’s essential to keep a diary.
Here are
How do you juggle journal-keeping with your other writing and social media? How has keeping a diary helped your writing?
I have a nifty little free newsletter that you can sign up for over there on the right-hand column of this blog à. All you have to do is type in your email address, and you’ll automatically receive notification whenever I post a new blog entry. Those who are signed up for my free newsletter find out about my blog articles first. The second an article gets posted, subscribers get notification.
A lot of you come to my website through Facebook and Twitter, though. I generally post on Facebook that I have a new entry up about three hours after the entry posts. I should probably sync my Facebook and Twitter accounts through HootSuite so it posts to Twitter at the same, but I haven’t done that yet. I don’t have any particular reason why. I just tend to use my Twitter account a little differently and less frequently. My Facebook account tends to be more personal. On Twitter, I post more publishing and Beat news.
Since a lot of people prefer not to sign up for the newsletters, social media is a great way for me to keep people up to date on what I’m writing about. But it does more than just drive traffic to individual articles I post.
According to AllTwitter, social media is “strongly correlated to Google search engine rankings.” Check out this incredible fact:
Facebook is the highest correlated factor when it comes to search engine rankings – even higher than on-page optimization like domain name keywords and traditional off-page optimization like backlinks.
Before returning to book publishing, I used to do SEO (search engine optimization) for a company. It’s incredible to think that social media may have even more influence on page rank than SEO.
It also says that sharing posts is one of the biggest ranking improvers. So feel free to share my blog entries with your friends on Facebook and Twitter!
That’s my story, but it should be yours too. I’ve spoken to many of you one-on-one about the importance of blogging and social media. If you’re an aspiring writer, you need to build a platform, an audience of readers. Being a good storyteller just isn’t enough these days, unfortunately. Publishers want to know you have a built-in readership. If you have a blog, it’s super easy to post it on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ whenever it gets updated. And sites like Hootsuite, make it even easier to do it quickly and efficiently. Why aren’t you using social media to build your writing career?
Calvin Reid makes insightful remarks about the role e-technology and social media are playing in publishing in “SXSW 2012: New Publishing Models and the Rise of the Referral Economy.” If you’re new to publishing and looking to make your mark on the industry and find readers, I’d highly encourage you to read the entire article. To his point on “curating,” here’s some remarks of his that you might find especially helpful:
What I take away from this is the following:
Writers need to start building a platform NOW—as in, even before we’ve written our book, we need to start curating content on our subject matter. This means tweeting, forwarding, and “liking,” other writers’ posts related to our subject and also blogging, tweeting, and writing our own status updates on our subject.
Generate content and don’t be afraid to give it away for free. It’s better to give our writing away for free in the beginning so that we can establish ourselves as authorities on that topic and/or as interesting storytellers. Eventually, people will love you and want to buy your writing—but it might take a lot of giving your work away for free first. Michael Hyatt is a big proponent of giving away free content. Not only does he give away valuable information on his blog, but he also created an ebook that he gives to anyone who subscribes to his blog. Both the blog subscription and the ebook are free.
Don’t be all holier than thou about advertising. Solicit advertising for your blog. I personally would suggest keeping your advertising in line with your brand—and your brand should probably be consistent with how you’d want to be thought of by your friends and parents as well. What I mean is, I personally would rather go hungry than earn money from escort ads. The best ads are going to be ones that relate to your subject matter. So if I’m writing about Greek identity, ads about learning how to play the harmonica aren’t going to be controversial but they won’t be as relevant as ads about learning how to speak Greek.
Humbly consider the rights to your content. Bloggers may quote rather heavily from anything you post—and by heavily, I mean they might use your work entirely and just give you credit via a link. This might be a breach of your copyright, but before you get your knickers in a bunch consider if their promotion of your work might be helping you out with some free advertising. Maybe it’s bringing new readers to your work. …But then again, maybe it’s not. Therefore, always be careful with what sort of content you put on your blog. Sure, someone could pirate your whole book, but it’s more likely someone will repost a blog entry than your entire book. With that in mind, be prepared that what you publish on your blog might end up elsewhere.
Pay attention to your e-rights. Landing a book contract is about more than just the print rights these days. Make sure your contract expressly states an agreement about electronic and print-on-demand editions.
It feels like writers—and artists of any sort—get a raw deal. We have to give a lot of free content away. Professionals in other industries don’t seem to have to do this to the same extent. Lawyers may work an occasional pro bono case, but they’re not expected to work for free before making it big. Doctors may do Doctors Without Borders to give back and help people, but this is a personal choice they make. I suppose in some ways artists giving away their work—and having it stolen from them in the case of extreme curating—is an internship of sorts, but the difference is that artists are expected to intern their entire lives or at least until they hit it big.
Therefore, I’d encourage all artists to be savvy.
Yes, you might feel pressured to build your platform and give away content for free, but make sure you’re getting something in return for your investment.
Don’t let your platform overtake your writing. Your platform is a means to an end—your book project.
Use the system. There’s nothing wrong with giving away content for free. There’s nothing wrong with soliciting ads. There’s nothing wrong with social media. Don’t let anyone or any platform rule over you. Keep your goals in perspective and use the system to your advantage. Find your target audience, make connections, earn money, promote your projects.
You can find me not only here on this blog, but also on Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+.
Image by Dallas Shaw
One of my favorite aspects of working in book publishing is my involvement in social media. I absolutely love crafting Tweets! It’s so much fun coming up with fun and unique ways to promote the books I’ve loved working on and want the world to know about.
Social media is also important to me as a writer. Even before an author publishes a book, she must have a “platform”—she must be cultivating readers interested in her expertise and enthusiasm on a given subject. I’m on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest so I can share with you my latest obsessions and ideas, give you a little sneak peek into my so-called literary life, and hopefully inspire other writers and readers to do the same. The world’s a lot cozier when we know we’re not alone in our endeavors.
That’s why I’m also addicted to following other social media gurus. One of my favorite is DKNY PR GIRL.
I love reading her #PR101 tips and her blog in general. If you’re just starting out in social media, check out the social media tips she gave to Teen Vogue.
Dear readers, what social media platforms do you use? Will you do me a favor and post them in the comments section? I’d love to subscribe/follow/friend you! xoxo
Stephanie Nikolopoulos is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and speaker based in New York City.
She is the coauthor, with Paul Maher Jr., of "Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.'"
You can email her at stephanie_701 {@} yahoo.com
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 