Building an Audience Quotes

I'm on Facebook and Twitter, and occasionally I will tweet something. Somehow my problem is that I don't think I have anything interesting to tweet about.

I love Twitter; I'm on Twitter quite a lot.

And I get so nervous now when it's not my show, like I'm not the headliner, because I know that those fans are there for another artist. Many people might not know an upcoming artist, but I've grown to like those shows because if I can control a crowd that doesn't know me, I'm doing my job as an entertainer. I have to rise to the occasion.

There is a very difficult period in a comedian's career - it's that window of time where you're good enough to draw tickets but nobody knows you yet.

I started my career without fans.

I remember hoping there'd be 10 people at a show in 1998 when there was an incredible write-up in the local weekly. I don't want to go back to that period of being obscure and having nobody know who I am, let alone have to struggle to get people to come to the show.

We didn't really have a fan base to begin with. We kind of had one with 'The Sing-Of,' but it was relatively small.

I will definitely start in small venues, as I want to find my feet as a performer; the first shows that Westlife did was ten dates at Wembley, which was just crazy. We didn't have a clue what we were doing because it was so big.

There's a lot of people out there who have seen us once somewhere in a pub or heard our songs late night on radio. We'd done four years of it before we'd even released a single. It's put us in good stead.

Especially as newcomers, it's really important to have the Internet, where people can talk about you and listen to your music.

An audience is not brought to you or given to you; it's something that you fight for.

I am stunned by how much time and effort I must spend marketing my book and interacting with my readers. With social media, you don't just publish a book and figure you've done your part; your fans want to talk to you, have a conversation.

There are other types of public appearances a writer does in addition to book signings and readings. Each calls for different skills. None of these skills, needless to say, are those that go into writing books.

I never had a single big break - because few do online.

I literally started from zero; I had zero subscribers. I remember my first subscriber - I was so excited, and then I looked, and it was my dad.

Readers really want to come back to an author; they do not want a one-book wonder. That is all very well, but to be career author, you have to be prepared to write one really good book and then write another really good book and keep feeding your readers. You build your audience over a long time.

I started my Twitter account for selfish reasons: I wanted to have a place to post updates on my book signing tour and stuff like that. I never realized that I'd have so much fun tweeting. It's become the deleted scenes for my DVD of columns and podcasts.

The support that we have from the network in terms of watching us at an unusual time in the year and playing our episodes three times in a given week until we built an audience... is exceptional.

I could never just play in a pub in front of four people because I would have had all the press turn up. That way, you don't get to build up naturally. It makes the work feel unnatural, and puts a lot of unnatural pressure on you.