Trying to be a Graceful Sell-Out

[defying3reason]

Hey howdy internet.

I'm winding down on my second submission for MLR, and it got me thinking that I really need to get on this whole self-promotion thing. With that in mind, I'm revamping the facebook page I made for my pen name (which was actually created to send myself gifts on farmville and chefville), and I'm going to try to make myself write

Comments

[madripoor_rose]

Hm. I don't know, I like Jim Hines' and Wil Wheaton's approach to blogging, but you might not want to put any personal RL stuff up under your real name/pro blog. Some writerblogs that are just about pushing the next project feel like they're passing self-promotion into relentless salesmanship, tho.

[defying3reason]

yeah, I definitely want to do more than just "BUY MY E-BOOKS!". Maybe a touch of vague RL stuff related to the process of writing...

lol you've also led me to the really obvious conclusion of looking up other writers' blogs and seeing what THEY do. Dur. And to think, this time last years all I did was competently research things.

[madripoor_rose]

It can be a real crapshoot. (not naming names, because one of them is a self-googler) but like I said, there's one pro author out there who never posts anything about anything except the latest book, and it's like the blog equivalent of a telemarketer. And there's another who writes waaay too forced 'whacky adventures' on her book tours and with her writing group that seriously put me off buying anything of hers again.

http://jo-graham.livejournal.com/

Jo Graham seems to hit a nice balance, it is mostly about her work, between two original series and Stargate tie-in novels, but she doesn't post every day, which helps.

[defying3reason]

As always, you are incredibly helpful. Thanks for the advice and the link :D

[chaos_wolf07]

As most of the authors I read have been dead for decades, I'm not sure what the current trend is about self-promotion other than "get on Oprah". Or, whatever the equivalent is now that she's promoting her network...The internet looks to be a great tool, though, but you've gotta network. Having a blog is all good, but it's useless if the general public doesn't know about it. Are there any sites or blogs about up and coming authors that you can ask to do a feature on you? I know that's how I manage to keep getting into the newspaper :)

Oh god, I feel so old fashioned. At least when the zombie apocalypse hits, I'll be ready when we loose technology ;)