So it has been brought to my attention that I need to learn to blog and use social media. Apparently, these days blogging and social media are a big deal. Or so my daughter keeps telling me.
When I published my first book around twenty years ago blogging wasn’t all that popular and the height of social media was MySpace. The internet was still a baby then, and internet promotion was almost unheard of unless it was a mailing list.
Back then, you couldn’t just type up your manuscript and submit it Online. It was a process of printing up the pages and physically mailing them out to publishers. It cost a fortune in postage and computer paper and you were lucky to even receive a rejection letter. Most of the time you were just left hanging.
And finding publishers? I used to buy books and writing magazines, just to search for someone or somewhere to submit my book. It was a very different writing world back then.
The biggest help in the road to publishing was getting involved with writing organizations. The Romance Writers of Australia (RWA) was a huge help back in the early days for networking among authors and publishers. Also, I was grateful for our small writing group in Wangaratta Vic. where I live. Thankfully it still survives, although that too is now online.
And promotion, as I mentioned earlier. Online promotion especially wasn’t so huge. Yahoo Groups were very popular, along with MySpace, but Twitter was a sound a bird made and Pinterest sounded like a sewing term. Nowadays there are so many different avenues to pursue. Facebook, Tik-Tok, and Instagram to name just a few.
So many to keep up with for someone like me. I’m a little behind on the times, but I’ve twisted my daughters arm and she has agreed to try and teach me.
Hopefully, this will be the beginning of many tweets… ah, I mean blogs.
Author Julie A. D'Arcy 