Market Stress

     Market yourself. Create an author platform. Tweet, tweet, tweet. Facebook! It can be stressful, especially if you just want to write. You get on your computer to do a little social networking, maybe work on your blog/website, some market research and before you realize you’ve been online for hours. Maybe you really wanted to use those hours to write.

       In today’s technical atmosphere it seems you can’t have one without the other. If you want to be a writer (sorry, a selling writer, whether you are self-published or have a publisher), you have to get online and market yourself. People have to know about you to read your work. And to be fair, several writers have benefited from online marketing. They swear by Twitter and Facebook. I’ve read a ton of online articles and blogs focusing on how to use the internet to market yourself and your work. It’s hard work. It’s time consuming. But it seems to be a necessity. I say ‘seems’ because I can’t speak for every writer.
     
     I was reading a couple of articles about Nora Roberts and her process. She writes and then hands her work over to her agent and editor and they work their magic. Of course Nora Roberts already stands on a gigantic platform she built over 20 years ago, when the internet didn’t exist.

     I’ve came across other information on how a writer should brand herself. Writing isn’t just this beautiful creative process, its business, and as writers we must embrace both. I can’t help but to wonder where we draw the line between writer and marketer, if there even is a line to be drawn. Maybe it’s more like playing hop-scotch, some square representing writing and some marketing. We keep jumping from one to the other.