I can’t even blame self-publishing for this – even when I traditionally published my first book, the publisher didn’t do all that much promotion. So all the stuff I’m doing now, I should probably have done. (For comparison, the current book, after a month, has roughly 4 times as many Amazon ratings as that first one does 11 yers after publication.)
What I’ve been working on is two things: a “Paula Berman author” FaceBook page and an author webpage. Both are more complicated because all the AI “help” and templates are geared for people who want to be more commercial and use them as ways to sell, whereas I just want to provide connection and let Amazon and IngramSpark handle the actual selling.
Why do I need a new FB page? Because I use FaceBook quite a lot, to stay in touch with people I know from infancy upward. I’m not going to stop talking about my personal life or politics there., but there’s a limit with how much I want to share with people who are more interested in Macrina’s life than mine. (Side note: she does have a last name, though I think it’s actually mentioned only once. Macrina Magid: it’s an actual Jewish name as well as being perfect for a magic user.)
Why do I need a new blog instead of just linking to this one? Similar reasons – this blog has a considerable history, from the ten years when I blogged every weekday and the increasingly sporadic entries since. Do readers really want to be able to go back and read my whinging about my rowing coach in 2001? Probably not.
I’m not hiding anything; it’s ridiculously easy to get from the author FB page to the personal one and it’s not that hard to find this blog (the guy I sat next to in second grade popped up to say hello once. Hi, Andy!) So it’s more about…I guess, curating information.
If only I could get the new blog to work!