On the Social Side

An actual sculpture by
artist Alicia Martin
mounted at Casa de America,
Madrid

Depending on who you talk to between 600,000 and one million books are published in the US each year. I won't quote a source, you can look it up or take my word for it. In the mean time, US book sales are declining. This makes for a very competitive market as you can imagine. This is one of the reasons that the face of book marketing has changed significantly over the years. No longer can an author write, hand the book over to the publisher and bury his or her nose again, focusing on the second book. Instead, the author has to get out there and engage with the audience, market herself, generate a group of people (outside of family members who are required to buy the book) who care about you and your book.

This was the topic of discussion on a recent radio program in which I participated with fellow novelnaut, Velda Brotherton. As we talked about the need for authors to use Social Media to sell books another irony came to light. I have no statistics on this one but it's not hard to imagine that the people who chose a career that involves spending long periods of time on their own pouring their essence on to a (figurative) piece of paper might not belong to the most social group on the planet. I know I'm not. Promoting myself on social media means putting myself out there without the shield of a fictional character. I hesitate before each post. Does anyone really care about the things that are important to me or the things that happen in my day?


We can have an informal poll here. Are you an introverted or extroverted author? Do you use social media as a means of promoting yourself and books? What challenges do you face in doing so?