I’ve been exploring ways to market my books, an endeavor that makes writing them look like child’s play. The only good news I could come up with is that apparently every other self-published author feels exactly the same way: the time and effort spent to create something one is proud of become dwarfed by the time and effort needed to let people know one has something out there in the marketplace.
Back when I wrote An Accidental Cowboy (on a typewriter, if anyone remembers what those were), marketing meant my publisher lined up a few readings-cum-book-signings and some interviews. Each of those represented a day out of my life with very little to show for it in terms of sales, so the amount of time and effort (not to mention money spent on travel) would have been overwhelming if my publisher had decided to spend big bucks promoting the book. With that in mind, I have to admit using the internet for self-promotion for self-published books is an improvement, but…
But that presupposes the happy author has some basic familiarity with the computer (She Who Must Be Obeyed) and with She Who Must Be Obeyed’s evil handmaiden, the Internet. I do not. I tremble in fear before my computer, and the internet appears to have a speech impediment that only allows it to use acronyms. The Evil Handmaiden also delights in leading me into intricate mazes where I get hopelessly lost.
I decided to take advantage of some of Amazon’s tools for their authors. They have something they call “Author Central” which is supposedly designed to help authors market their work. But the Evil Handmaiden’s speech impediment makes it almost impossible to use. There is a way to link my blog to my Author Page. Okie dokie, that certainly seems like a sensible thing to do. How hard can it be, I thought to myself?
She Who Must Be Obeyed and the Evil Handmaiden laughed so hard they had to support each other. Then SWMBO wiped the tears from her eyes and cracked her whip and EH informed me I had to have an RSS feed. Huh? I emailed my computer guru, a superhero born of a cross between Einstein and Merlin, and he informed me that RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Oh, yeah? Really simple for whom? And why couldn’t EH simply have said that without an acronym designed to make me feel even more computer illiterate than I already do?
Think of all the damned acronyms you have to deal with every time you crawl, cowering, up to the keyboard. From ACL (which I thought was something in my knee that doesn’t work anymore, but turns out to mean access control list) to BLOB (binary large object, whatever the hell that is) to FLOPS (floating point operations per second) to GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) to MIPS (million instructions per second, which is just about how overwhelmed I feel) to PROM (not a dance you’ll enjoy going to, it means programmable read only memory) to SMART (oh, shut up; it means self-monitoring and analysis reporting technology) to TWAIN (Mark is turning in his grave, but it means toolkit without an informative name) to XML (not one of the classic Jaguars, but rather extensible markup language.)
I’ve decided to fight back against SWMBO and EH with my own acronym: FU.
Il ne faut surtout pas perdre courage pour l’écriture de vos livres même s’il s’agit d’un combat dont l’issue ne peut être que bonne……… Si vous pouvez faire venir votre gourou pour les faire traduire en français, ça serait encore mieux.
Nous sommes de la même génération et j’ai bien connu la machine à écrire. La seule différence, c’est que si un jour je décidais d’écrire un livre, il ne ferait que 2 pages
Maintenant, il y a l’informatique et on est bien obligé de s’y faire si on veut avancer un peu dans le monde du travail et dans la vie de tous les jours ; c’est absolument nécessaire…….
Tous les nouveaux appareils que l’on a, nécessitent une installation sur son PC……et si je ne veux pas toujours ennuyer les gens autour de moi, j’essaye de comprendre même si je dois mettre beaucoup plus de temps que d’autres……..Mais au moins je suis fière d’y être arrivé (parfois) Et lorsque l’on me dit : c’est pas toi qui a fait ça, je dis : sssssssssssi
De plus, la plupart du temps, les messages d’installation arrivent en anglais………. Il faut en plus que j’aille chercher mon dictionnaire d’anglais……
Là, vous allez me dire : il faut faire un effort pour apprendre l’anglais !!!!!! j’essaye depuis quelques temps, mais je reste bloquée à la leçon 10… et lorsque je reviens à la leçon 7, j’ai déjà tout oublié……..ce n’est pas de cette façon que je vais pouvoir avoir une discussion avec un anglais ou un américain……. Et là, je dis : merci Google !!!!!
Anita (France)
JP that is unfortunate of your computer woes! However I too at one point and from time to time use the old FU acronym myself. Or the one finger salute! Anyway you get the idea. The main thing is not to get too peed off with yourself. Have a nice calming drink, favorite relaxation music. I’m not sure if I told you but I landed my dream job as a wifeless tech supporting people over the phone. The company is well known in Canada. I’m glad you have someone to help you out. My best piece of advice as a tech junkie is not to get wrapped up in all those things. Because I have ADHD I like to use the KISS method – Keep it simple stupid
*note i’m not calling you stupid. We all start off the same way putting our pants on one leg at a time. Same idea is applied to computers. Have fun with it 
Tena French Halifax, NS ps I snorted loudly at the FU
Have you thought about Facebook? It’s very user friendly and would be a great way to promote your books. You could set up a fan page. I have friends who use it for their small businesses and they’ve had really good results from it. I would even be your first “friend”
Shannon
Auburn, Ga
Give your Computer Guru a big “thank you” from me! (At least I know what the acronyms stand for, even if I have no idea what the hell any of that stuff is (except the GIGO)). I can handle WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), but beyond that, I’m lost.
Just give me the chat/IM/text speak… the LOLs (Laughing Out Loud), WTFs (What The F***), OMGs (Oh My God), and others too numerous to mention. Those I understand. Thankfully, for most of the stuff I do, I don’t have to be a friggin’ computer programmer… (I often feel like telling SWMBO and EH to do something anatomically impossible with themselves… only for them, it really is impossible.)
Hopefully you’ll learn enough to be able to self-promote your writing.
oh! FU??? Freedom united
it ain’t that complicated if you – indeed – know how to. I somehow grew up with computers and I speak XML – HTML – and c++ etc but I don’t think RSS would bring the success with the book promotion. Get a page on Facebook – everybody is using it and a lot of authors with success 
…. oh and even computer illiterates can handle Facebook 
Tanja (tropicalpapaya.com)
Welcome to the club.I am myself always at war with our computer.My husband always calls me computer-“lusche“,sorry I can not find the English translation for the word „lusche“,but it’s not a nice compliment.I make my homepages, read other websites and edit my photos,that is enough.
The idea of Shannon and Tanya about Facebook is good,think about doing that.You still have a lot of fans in many countries use this to your advantage.I think that some would like to read your books but they do not know that you write books.On Facebook, you can also reach people who do not know the actor Jameson Parker.Maybe they find the titles of the books interesting,because they themselves have dogs or horses or dreaming of a life on a ranch as a cowboy.These people would perhaps be fans of the author Jameson Parker.Unfortunately, Facebook has some drawbacks,it is important to protect the own privacy.
Manuela
So far, I’ve kept these gol-darned contraptions from infesting MY house–I highly prefer “they-who-must-be-fed” to “she-who-must-be-obeyed”–so my pittance of a wage goes for dogfood, mostly, not gigabites(which I have zero idea what a gigabite is anyway….) I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the world of computers by work requirements–but still, VERY minimally. The result is I have learned to waste as much time on computers as any other modern employee, however. And I DO really enjoy looking up stuff I’m interested in, participating in fun blogs like this, and ORDERING BOOKS off’n AMAZON! I got my first credit card ever a coupla-three years ago for that purpose specifically, and of course is how I ordered(read and enjoyed very much)YOUR books, JP! So, the computer can be fun and useful, if you do not allow yourself to become enslaved by them–maintain yer ability to hunt yer own food, and make a fire to cook it, and build a hut to live in, and there should be no worries. I do sometimes feel like my old granny who never learned to drive an automobile, but had no problems hitching up a mule! And I do get irked at that dang computer insulting me–calling me an “invalid” and such like……L.B.
Sounds like our JP is something of a technophobe, lol. (Not an insult, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with begrudgingly using technology because you sort of “have” to. There’s also nothing wrong with fantasizing about beating your computer to death with a baseball bat/hammer/sledgehammer or shooting it or tossing the damn thing out the window when it freezes/crashes. Just sayin’. lmao)
Making a Facebook page sounds like a wonderful idea to me, too! I know a lot of people on Facebook that would join your page. I would. If you need to know how to set one up, just ask us!
~ Ciana
Lane knows some things…
I as you well know have a blog, and even a Twitter account, but not FaceBook.
I have books that sell slowly at best. I tried FB. It didn’t sell me a single book. It did bring every crazy that I had ever known from the sixties and seventies out of the woodwork, AND the ones my brother had known (he was a … pharmaceutical exec)– and their wives, girlfriends and cousins, at least one of whom insisted I went to High School with her in New Orleans (I spent three weeks there in 1970 I think) and wanted of course MONEY.
Also as you know I have three blog partners, two male, one female, in Louisiana and Colorado and Wyoming. FB posted all my blog as by me. Bad enough I had to keep explaining no hurricane, not an archaeologist; I had to keep saying no RANCH, no HUSBAND (including to Ms I WANT MONEY in N ‘Orleans, who apparently thought I was trying to escape her by changing my sex.
Meanwhile endless high school acquaintances incapable of finding my blog even when I told them how (did I say it got a lot of traffic?) kept wanting to meet me…
I am, sadly for sales, minimally famous. You “are” AJ Simon…
Be very afraid.
OTOH if you do find a sure way to make money without feeling like moving to Ulan Bataar and posting armed guards you know how to reach me.
It got a lot of traffic.
About the only way I can manage things is by finding a tutorial which explains everything step by step, with lots of helpful pictures. And when I say ‘step by step’ I mean something like ‘go to ‘Tools’ and find this word there, click it, and then find…’
Something that explains every single step, including all the ‘everybody knows’ ones.
And fortunately one of the things I have sort of figured out is using Google. Try ‘tutorial’ combined with what you want to do as search words.
And check the date of the tutorials you find. Everything keeps changing fast enough that something put up yesterday can be out of date in some essential part today. Fun.
I love the internet, and using computers for something like writing, so much easier than using a typewriter. Except when it eats everything you just spend six hours writing, of course – has happened. But trying to keep up with the constant changes can be a real pain. Learn something and the next time you try to do it it doesn’t work anymore.
Kiti
FU? Really? If my interpretation of these two letters is correct, it should be FY, not FU.
Acronyms are a string of word initials that form a word, e.g., MADD, NATO, whereas initialism is a string of initials that you pronounce individually (FBI, CIA, for instance).
In your case, it’s an abbreviation if my assumption is correct.
GOP (Grammatically Obsessed Person–or, Prxxk depending on how pissed off you may be–not to be confused with a certain political party)
I’ve never heard the term “initialism,” nor could I find it in my dictionary, but it may well be a recently accepted derivation. (The dictionary on my desk is about thirty years old; all the others are older.) As for FU as opposed to FY: not only is FU considered to be a standard spoken (pick one) initialism or acronym, but I was also giving an admittedly obscure and oblique tip of the hat to Neil Simon. “Another thing that drives me nuts, you leave these little notes all over the place signed FU, FU, FU! It took me ten minutes to figure out FU stands for Felix Unger.” But your interpretation was, most assuredly, correct.
JP (stands for “just playing”)
Mr. JP,
Of course I know what FU stands for—I was just teasing you, sir. I went to college in NY (okay, Long Island), so I’ve been exposed to all sorts of vernacular, expletives, what have you.
However, as I mentioned before, FU, though widely used, is not an acronym in a strict sense according to the definition. As for initialism, here’s a link that shows the definition: http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/initialismterm.htm
Yes, I know, you cannot believe everything you read on the Internet, but I often use ‘the free dictionary’ online and find it handy and accurate, so far anyway. As someone dear to me often says, if you’re not careful, you learn something new everyday. This guy has a wicked sense of humor and says things like, “I’m an atheist, swear to God!”
And I’m not that grammatically obsessed either. I took Descriptive Linguistics (as opposed to Prescriptive Linguistics, which is grammar oriented) in college, and I am a firm believer that languages evolve just like any living organism. Look what happened to the English language after the Norman Conquest in 1066. I loved Descriptive Linguistics because it examines our language in situ and treats non-mainstream speech categories, be it Black English, or Hawaiian Pidgin, as legitimate sub-languages like subspecies of an organism, so I can accept “I’m good” meaning “I’m fine.” But I must confess, whenever I hear someone say, “Why don’t you lay down?” I feel like screaming, “It’s lie down, not lay down, damn it!”
Funny you mentioned Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple.” I used to watch the reruns of that TV show almost religiously and be able to recite the opening narration: On November 13th, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife. Deep down he knew she was right…. Well, I guess I still remember some of it. Your quote made me laugh out loud. Mr. Simon is indeed a great playwright. I love reading plays—especially the ones that are not so well known—and have read most of George Bernard Shaw’s. He’s one of my favorites. Since I’m a Mozart fan, I read Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” and other plays of his as well though “Equus” was a bit disturbing. One play that really had me in stitches is “Norman, Is That You?”
Well, I managed to stray too far off the posted topic, so I should wrap it up. Hope you have a wonderful weekend and happy holidays.
Signed, ARSE (A rotten, snarky egotist, and, yes, this is an acronym)
Thank-you. Mr. Parker, for the belly laugh. I needed one tonight.
Hilary H.
Edmonton, AB
Hi JP! Have you spoken to Jeannie about this? She has done alot of this kind of stuff for her and Jack. She may be able to help you or steer you in the right direction. Good Luck!
Mr Parker…yes, those acronyms are a bit much…but as a writer, think about all the new computer-related vocabulary you now have at your disposal. There are those familiar words which have completely new meanings – ‘cookies’, ‘clouds’,
‘firewalls’ and ‘spam’. New units of measurement – ”kilobytes’, ‘megabytes’, gigabytes’ and ‘terabytes’. Verbs such as ‘ripping’, ‘defragging’, ‘cybersquatting’ and of course, ‘Googling’. And last but not least, terms such as ‘ActiveX’ and ’404 error’ which sound like good names for a punk band.
Despite what you may think, I am no computer expert and I do not feel that I have to rely on technology for everything however, I do love my Google. Just think, an argument can be settled in seconds. As someone recently posted on Facebook – ‘Do you remember how before Google we used to look it up in our Funk & Wagnell’s?’
To make some sense of it all, I suggest you watch a clip on Youtube called ‘My Blackberry is not Working!’. I think you’ll love it.
Gaby
PS. BTW I’ve had the new Windows 8 installed on my work computer and we no longer call them computer ‘programs’. Whatever the device, they are now universally known as ‘apps’ :S
Marketing suggestion: Twitter. I actually really hate the concept of Twitter. I like to ramble on for more than 160 characters. However, as far as marketing goes, I have seen it work wonders for some friends I have in entertainment. The only problem is the best way to make it work is to baby it and socialize with persons on a regular basis, which I know takes away from time in the so-called real world. But the more people you can suck into following you based on your personality and interactions, the more people you will have to retweet information regarding your books to their own followers.
Dawn
Mr. Parker,
Away from my day job I run a web based shooting target company. I have a meager Facebook page, and surprisingly I get of lot of traffic to my company’s web page from the Facebook link.
As a celebrity who likes his privacy I can certainly understand why you would not want to setup a Facebook page. However, you wouldn’t have to and could still get some of the benefits. I think you would see a lot more traffic to your blog as well as your books if the people who followed your blog were able to ‘share’ links from your blog on their Facebook page.
Now, I am not wise in the ways of computers and web pages, but I do know if you have a guru willing to help you on the side, that they should be able to get your blog setup with being able to handle social media links…meaning your followers can share links on their Twitter and Facebook pages that lead directly back to a particular post you made that they like.
There are more than a few stories you’ve posted that I for one would like to be able to share via Facebook or Twitter, and in turn it would lead more people to your writing.
Tim B
Wisconsin
I took your advice and asked my computer guru to set up “share links” tabs. Thank you for suggesting that; now let’s see what happens.
JP