self-promotionOn Lit Reactor, Richard Thomas has a primer discussing the tools that exist for self-promotion, that writers can use to get the word out about their books and projects. The article covers Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Amazon, blogs and websites, forums, promoting others, printed matter, readings, and publishing widely.

Thomas has decent advice for how to play to each platform’s strengths: use Facebook for fan pages and getting in touch with other people in the writing community. Twitter is best for short posts and links. Goodreads will let you hold book giveaways, which is another good way for getting attention. Amazon is a place where people can go to find out about you, and where you can sell your work. And so on.

This seems to echo some of what I’ve heard from other self-publishing writers such as Michael Stackpole, whose seminar on self-publishing I caught at GenCon last year. If you want to sell more books, people need to find out who you are—and you need to put forth the effort to be an interesting person so they’ll think your books will be interesting too.

Some people look down on those who self-promote, but here’s an interesting piece I ran across in the course of looking for art for this post on why it’s important to do so and why it’s all right to self-promote.

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