Give enchantment this holiday season: give a book

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I've recently joined a FaceBook group of 48 authors of distinguished, award-winning, and best-selling fiction. (Yes, I'm proud to be included.)

Because of the crisis in book publishing, we've banded together to urge readers to give a book to someone this holiday season.

Our motto: You can't give more enchantment for less.

Indeed! Consider these:

Dracula in Love by Karen Essex. "...the writing is so vivid, lusciously sexy and chillingly outrageous by turns..." - The Star Ledger http://tinyurl.com/2eyohd4

The Last Will of Moira Leahy by Therese Walsh. "This tender tale of sisterhood, self-discovery, and forgiveness will captivate fans of contemporary women’s fiction.”- Library Journal http://theresewalsh.com/books.html

The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers. "A powerful portrait of sisters growing up in the shadow of violence . . . A thought-provoking, heart-tugging debut." Boston Magazine http://tinyurl.com/264efbn

Every day we'll be posting three book suggestions. I'll sometimes be posting them here, sometimes in other forums.

Usually Santa gives each of our children a hardcover book for Christmas (nice guy, eh?), but this year our son has converted to Kindle. What to do? I've discovered Santa can give him a Kindle book as a gift (and it will be good on his iPad, too, through the free Kindle app).

Buy a book! Now!

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Website: http://www.sandragulland.com/
Blog: http://sandragulland.blogspot.com/
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Net Marketing for Ludites: Part 4 (Friends & Followers)

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You've got your sites set up and you're sending out pithy thoughts. You're cooking! But who is reading them? Your "followers" (on Tumblr), your "friends" on Facebook and MySpace. With luck, maybe some of your followers and friends will re-blog your posts, in which case they go out to all their friends and followers, etc. etc. etc.


But basically, you need to have some friends and followers of your own ... and there's nothing more humiliating or infantile than having to send out "Will you be my friend?" messages hither and yon.


What you can do: follow and befriend others, and then maybe they'll follow you back. Troll the friends and followers of the hip and famous (or simply like-minded) for possibilities. Some sites allow you to upload your email contacts to see who might be on the sites: this is a good way to create a base. MySpace allows you to find people on-site by age, sex, marital status (creeps!)...but also by interests. You might be able to hone in on people who might be interested in your subject.


One word of caution: only go looking for friends and followers after you've posted some interesting posts and all your sites look inviting.


Also: limit it to 20 minutes at a time. It's too demeaning!

Related posts:

Net marketing for Ludites: Part 1

Net Marketing for Luddites: Part 2 (Cracking the Social Net)

Net Marketing for Luddites: Part 3 (Blog? Website? Both?)

How to promote your book without giving up writing

A wonderful article by Margaret Atwood on discovering the Twitterverse and other foreign realms: How I learned to Love Twitter.

Next up: Net Marketing for Luddites: Part 5 (The Book Trailer) 


*****
Website: http://www.sandragulland.com/
Blog: http://sandragulland.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://bit.ly/sgullandFacebook
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Sandra_Gulland
Tumblr:  http://sandragulland.tumblr.com/