social networking sites

What a cool interview with Penny Sansevieri about promoting books!

She reminds us that social networking can be taken too far. (Can you imagine having a presence on 350 sites? I don’t think I could manage all those if I did it all day and never slept.)

So where do you choose to have a presence, and why? She might not answer all of those questions for us, but each writer has different needs. No matter how much you promote, remember that next book is also important to keep working on. She has a presence on only 3 of those social media sites. I like that she reminds us that an abandoned site is worse than not having it at all.

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Perhaps the difference is they were never on social networking sites.

Might want to think again about those social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter… read article here.

It amazes me just how much we can do on those. I must admit I’m only on Facebook because I can only keep up with so many sites, but I do hear about a lot of the other ones and wonder.

The article talks about how the younger generation has an ‘innate radar’ to know that there may be inaccuracies with immediate coverage of news, but also that they’re out to share it right away. There is only so much space to post little blurbs, but anyone can say a lot with few words when necessary.

I do plan to use the Facebook page for promoting my book when it comes out, but I’m not regular enough to be uploading news. Also, the guy in question uploaded to Twitter via his phone, and mine’s just not that cool – yet.

So next time you hear someone make comments about the uselessness of social networking sites (or you actually hear them spewing from your mouth), you might want to reconsider.

Ransom Noble

Science Fiction Writer