Today's Whine

(Note: If you are a writer, publisher, or any person otherwise connected with the publishing industry, you may prefer to skip this post and go directly to…wherever you were originally headed. You’ve already heard this crap a hundred times from a hundred other whiny authors, and probably won’t find it amusing, educational or elevating. On the other hand, if you are one of my fans—I have some? Yes?—or even more astounding, a family member, feel free to keep reading. You like to hear me whine. You know you do.)

Having achieved phase one of every writer’s dream (signing a few for-real contracts) I recently embarked on phase two of said dream: I sally forth to sell my book(s).

Hold up, there. Didn’t I already sell them? To a publisher?

Yes, but…in the internet age of indie press, marketing is the writer’s responsibility. You know how every job description has a core of rigidly intrinsic responsibilities which directly determine whether you’re promoted or fired? And every job also has at least a few much more relaxed, creative—and thus enjoyable—elements?

Guess which is marketing and which is writing, in this scenario?

At least for me. Others may feel differently about it, but I enjoy writing far more than selling, partly because I feel at least competent when writing. There’s nothing like the combination of social marketing and computer tech ignorance to make me wanna hide my head in an old manual typewriter for a while.

So let’s see. Thus far, I have built a web page from scratch, joined twitter, myspace and facebook, started a blog, figured out how to link posts from twitter to myspace and facebook and vice versa, figured out enough about RSS feeds to post linked blog updates at least three different places, listed the blog in a following-type app through facebook, found author’s pages at Amazon and figured out I can post bio, pic and yes, blog updates there, found message boards at Amazon and announced myself on the new author’s thread, joined a Yahoo romance authors publicity self-help learning type group, chased down book reviews at sites my publisher didn’t already solicit, joined a professional organization, made plans to attend their yearly convention and entered their writing contest…

I’m sure there’s more. I’m just tired, looking at the list. And I already know that tomorrow I will start working on a newsletter.

Did I mention that I’m basically an ultra shy technophobe? That I live in mortal fear of interacting with people I don’t know and have serious self confidence issues? No?

Good. I’d hate for anybody to think I’m struggling with this.

Random question for the day:

Your bow is not broken but you've run out of arrows. How can you fake being a bard?

Um...sing?