Facebook and Twitters and Blogs, Oh My

     With the help of two of my many wonderful mentors, Aubrey Wynne and Jill Bisker (look to the right to see links to their blogs), I have slowly been making headway into the world of social media, which appears to be invaluable to this strange new world of authorship. With small, indie publishers whose returns go into the editing, artwork and publishing of the books, it's the author who's expected to do the bulk of the publicity (and rightfully so. I've seen how hard my publisher, editors, and cover artists are working!).

     In this day and age, publicity means social media, websites, blog hops, Facebook parties...my head is still reeling from all the stuff I'm seeing out there. I've created a media kit for reviewers and bloggers, been tweeting and retweeting other authors to build a network and get my name out there, and probably driving my "normal" Facebook friends crazy with updates about my book being released. Aubrey is getting ready to help me with a rafflecopter giveaway on her blog. (No, don't ask me to translate that yet. I'm still fuzzy.)

     With Jill's assistance, I've created an author page on Amazon, and did one for Smashwords in the last week. I assume I'll do one for Barnes and Noble as soon as it becomes live on their website, too. I started a Goodreads account under my pen name.

     And I've been practicing autographing my pen name for book signings. THAT was the fun part!

     I also managed to line up some reviewers - I think I have three that will happen over the next six weeks. That's a nerve-wracking prospect, to be sure. I've gotten some lovely feedback from people who are reading Song Magick at the moment, and it's been really good for my ego, but one reviewer (the one with fifteen books to review in her queue, so it's six weeks away) is a total stranger to me, and it's kind of scary. She doesn't have any sort of professional relationship with me, so she doesn't have to be kind, LOL. One was completely unsolicited- just because she loved the book, she wanted to review it on her blog, which has a very large following. More scary and exciting prospects!

    I'll let you know when I breathe again.