Managing My Online Presences

Well, it finally arrived. The first day of school. They might say it arrived too soon, but not me. G was excited because he doesn’t have to wear a uniform anymore. N and D piled into Richard’s car and G and I settled in to wait for the bus. When it didn’t get here by 8, I drove him to school. The bus did show up, finally, so I feel good about him being able to catch it tomorrow.

After basking in the quietness, having a glass of iced roobios tea, and reading a 5,000-word article online without interruptions, I started in on some work. Marketing work. In addition to maintaining a website (and maybe a blog), authors need to manage their online presence in other ways, too. For example, about a week ago, I was checking around on Amazon.com and found that Amazon had set up an author’s page for me. There was no content on the page — just an anonymous silhouette in the place of a photo and no biographical material. In order to add content, I had to create a user name and password. I was able to upload my photo and my bio, but before it went live, Amazon had to check with my publisher to make sure I was who I said I was. I was notified today that I could proceed with updating the page.

I linked my blog to my Amazon author page and I was able to correct a problem Amazon has had with the Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator page since the book was published. They listed Richard’s name wrong (I won’t repeat the error here) and they had him listed as the illustrator. I fixed both problems. Besides having an Amazon author page, I have a page on Jacketflap, Facebook (this one is a personal page, but I am considering developing a professional page on FB), Authors Round the South, SCBWI/Southern Breeze, and I have content on teachingbooks.net.

Wolfsnail had been listed on Amazon.com for at least a year before I realized that I could create tags for my book. Tags are essentially search words that people might use when looking for a book. I added all the ones I thought were relevant to my book. I’m not web savvy enough to know how much of a difference this type of online refining makes, but I operate on the theory that every little bit helps. Does anyone else know some similar things authors can do online to make themselves easier for readers to find?