I’m excited to report the publication of Mastodon for Dummies, my new collaboration with Chris Minnick. This book will help you escape from Elon Musk’s Twitter — or any other corporate social media platform. You’ll get started with the open-source Mastodon alternative.

Check out the Books page for the story of how this book came to be. After an extended hiatus from book authoring, I couldn’t ask for a more worthwhile topic.

What’s different about Mastodon?

Mastodon differs from corporate social media platforms in these important ways: Book cover for "Mastodon for Dummies" by Chris Minnick and Michael McCallister.

  • No one owns Mastodon, and anyone can set up a community.
  • You are a valued member of the community, not an advertising target.
  • There’s no algorithm that decides what you see. Your feed depends solely on who you follow.
  • Community and conversation come first, not virality.

What else is in the book?

Chris and I quickly (the book is just 150 pages) walk you through the process of choosing a homebase on Mastodon. You’ll learn how to connect with other users, including your Tweeps who’ve joined the platform. Not sure how to be conversational on social media? We can help you post effectively too.

We tell you how to build a business on Mastodon too. You’ll find that it’s a very different vibe than Twitter, but if you really put your customers first, you’ll do well.

Besides all the good information we provide, you’ll find all the features — and fun — you expect from a For Dummies book. (Confession: With apologies to the publishers I’ve worked with over the years, I’ve always wanted to write one of these. Another bucket list item checked off!)

Working on Mastodon for Dummies

I’m honored to partner with Chris Minnick on this project, and I can tell you he’s a great guy and a writing dynamo! He has called Mastodon for Dummies his “most important” book, and I have to agree with him.

Anyway, if you’re on Mastodon, do give me a follow: @workingwriter. You can also follow MichaelMcCallister.com directly at https://www.michaelmccallister.com/author/mike/.

Let me know if you have questions about the book, Mastodon, or anything else.

Dirty secret: It wasn’t that long ago that I didn’t know what an “indie writer” was. That’s changed in the last year or so, in part thanks to IndieReCon, a free online conference that I first “attended” last year.

This three-day conference is back for a third year, and it’s just as great as I remember last year’s was. It’s a shame I didn’t blog about last year’s event, but I’ll try to make up for it.

What is IndieReCon?

IndieReCon is organized by and mostly for writers interested in, or actively involved with independent self-publishing. That said, there’s a ton of information and inspiration available to traditionally-published and as-yet-unpublished writers.

The conference delivers a variety of speakers in a variety of methods to accommodate the variety of writers (and Internet connection speeds). Consider what I watched on today’s schedule:

Self-Promotion Discouraged

Most sessions last an hour, and several have giveaways associated with the speaker.  Now some of you might think that each session is more about marketing the speaker and accompanying products and services. I’ve been through a few of those types of webinar series, and really appreciate that the organizers (this year led by the British-based Alliance for Independent Authors) put an emphasis on the value for the audience. The de-emphasis of self-promotion is so strong, you have to hunt for the sponsor’s website (down at the bottom of the About page, if you want to know)!

Coming Attractions, and Reviewing the Archives

Thursday offers a bunch of practical sessions on self-publishing and reviews of the state of the international self-publishing scene. Here are some of the sessions that I’ll be checking into:

Friday features more “state of the scene” sessions, using Pinterest and live coverage of the London Book Fair Fringe Fest.

Miss an event? It’s all recorded and available to you. You can even access past years’ content under All Events > Archive.

I’ll say it again: If you are considering self-publishing, you’ve got to check this out. If you expect to make a living as a writer, you’ll learn a lot of great stuff. See you over there!

Excited to tell you that I’ll be speaking to the Independent Writers of Chicago (IWOC) on Tuesday, March 10th on “Building Your Author Platform.”

Freelancers Building a Platform

Build Your Author PlatformWhat am I going to talk about? Still working on it, but I intend to focus on:

  • The value of building a platform for freelance journalists
  • The value of writing books for freelancers of all kinds
  • An overview of the 14 steps to building a platform that Carole Jelen and I detail in our book
  • Reminding you why social media is critical in building that audience.

Of course, I’ll take questions, and give away a copy of Build Your Author Platform: The New Rules.

Networking and refreshments start at 5PM at the Gratz Center (Room 4A), 126 E. Chestnut Street, Chicago (just behind the Fourth Presbyterian church pictured below). My part of the program starts at 6PM.

English: Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago...
Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, taken from across Michigan Ave. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More information and advance registration for the event at the IWOC website.

Look forward to meeting more readers, and writers.

Related: Surprise from SlideShare

This morning I got an email from SlideShare telling me that my presentations were in the top 25% most-viewed on the site in 2014. The top two slide decks were:

Yep, you read that last one  right. My five-year-old talk did nearly as well in page views as my most recent outing. For that, I thank (again) my Aussie conference buddy Sarah Maddox. She was in my audience that day in 2009. Last February she was gracious enough to include the deck in her “Super Useful List” of technical writing tools. One of these days, I need to update that deck…

Let me also point out that the LinkedIn presentation also received a terrific boost from the Washington, DC chapter of STC.

All that to say that my IWOC slides will also be available at SlideShare after the talk. Feel free to share the deck with your readers too.