My New Site!!! And going to market.

Hi, peeps–

COME VISIT ME IN MY SUMMER VIRTUAL HOME! WOOOOO!

What do you think? Is it a cool temporary pad? Will it suffice? Gads, I hope so.

I’m doing some construction over at my www.andimarquette.com site. Not entirely sure what I’m going to come up with (hopefully, it’ll be groovy), but in the meantime, I’ve moved into this other home while renovation gets under way. Here’s the address to the new crib, written out so you can see:

http://andimarquette.wordpress.com/

I’ll hopefully soon have things redirected from my other site so you will be inexorably trapped in the Andiweb and funneled to the new site. That’s the plan, anyway. And there are way worse things. Like, say, getting sucked into a Borg situation. Andi’s Land is totally not Borg-like. Instead, you get to go over there and read whatever, check whatever stories you want, read excerpts from my novels, find out where you can purchase them (print/ebook) and go on your merry way. No assimilation necessary. But it IS much easier to become one of us….

MUAH HA HA! So anyway, my summer home has to do with marketing, in a roundabout way.

Read on…

And yes, I’ve been obsessing over marketing again. Not the kind where you go shopping and purchase veggies and food supplies for the week. If only. No, I’ve been obsessing over the kind that every writer these days has to do: Promo. It’s frustrating, for those of us who have decided to take our writing professional, and it’s excruciatingly time consuming. And it’s pretty much a one-woman dog-and-pony show across the interwebs and in real time.

I’ve been thinking about writer-dude Chuck Wendig’s recent blog at TroubledMinds in which he flat-out said that writers don’t just write. They’re marketing and editing fiends, they learn how to use technology and social media, and they’re constantly thinking about new ways to do things, and different things to try.

And I always wonder — what is it that readers want from authors with regard to promo? Do they like it if an author blogs? Do they care? Do they want a slick, happening, doo-dah-ridden website that blasts music or video when they visit? Do they want excerpts? Stories? Book signings?

Which then inevitably leads to: Why don’t people come to my site? Do they hate it? Do they hate me? Do they hate my books? Do I matter? Did I pay that bill? Do these pants make my butt look big? Does this blog make my butt look big?

You can see how these questions about marketing can spin off into frightening displays of self-doubt and writerly freakishness, which only drives us either to drink or Virginia Woolf. One of the two. Maybe both. But that’s okay, because it is IMPORTANT for authors to think about things like promo, and how to get traffic to their sites and how to get better as writers. These things go hand-in-hand, and as I tell all new writers out there:

“That is the awesome-est. You wrote a book!” Because it is, indeed, awesome-sauce that you wrote a book. That’s a feat that few accomplish. And then I tell them “now begins the work.”

Yeah. Debbie Downer, huh? But the thing is, if you want to be published, then you need to research the industry and find out what makes it tick. And then you need to start thinking of yourself as a product, and how you’re going to sell and advertise it to the public. Writing is work. So, too, is the business of it.

Okay. Which then, of course, spins me off into:

The big question I generally have — how do readers find out about authors? That is, what draws them to find out more about a particular author and his or her work? Do people still use word-of-mouth?

So readers, I’m curious. What kinds of promo are you drawn to with regard to authors? And do these pants or blog make my butt look big?

Happy Friday and run on down to Andi’s Land and see if it sucks or not. Here’s hoping it doesn’t. I have to live there for a summer, you know. At least tell me the view is nice.

And have no fear! We’ll be giving away another copy of Lavender Ink soon. I’ll keep you posted on that.