How visible is too visible??

Two days ago, I spent an hour and a half with a friend who’s a whiz at social media. I’m not. I’m not even sure I want to be. But suddenly I am faced with the daunting task of promoting my book—as you probably know, since almost everyone I’m friends with on Facebook has shared the news of the imminent release of my memoir with everyone they’re friends with. Isn’t that enough, already? I’d like to think so. Apparently not.

When I stopped in at the public library in Sault Ste. Marie a few weeks ago, thinking I might rent a room for a smallish book launch, the librarian at the information desk said, “We do that!”, proceeded to book a date and a time, and offered to design a poster and issue a news release. The poster is now a reality and the news release went out a few days ago. Someone from the local paper interviewed me, so I’m pretty well committed to the date and time. I’m also committed to ordering a pile of books and living with whatever minutiae still cry out for one more, tiny edit. Just one more!

Thankfully, my social-media-savvy friend doesn’t think Twitter would do much for me unless I’m prepared to tweet regularly—say at 3:00 am?? Which I’m not. A few years ago, I signed up for Twitter. I never tweeted, not once, and I’ve long since forgotten my name and password, although they’re probably the same ones I use for almost everything, given my propensity to forget and my assumption that the details of my online life are of minimal interest to anyone. I do still receive regular emails telling me all the great tweets I’m missing from people I’ve never heard of.

My friend did suggest I blog more often. I often compose brilliant little essays in my head as I take my daily walk. But like early-morning dreams, they usually evaporate the moment I try to give them an actual shape. I promised her I’d try harder.

To help affirm my status as a writer, she also suggested I start an author page on Facebook. I’ve gone so far as to assign my name to one. Facebook, she explained, is a lot more than chit-chat. She showed me how to target my message, how to increase the odds of being seen, how to use and time posts as a marketing tool.

Her final advice: Don’t worry about being too visible. Well, that’s a hard one. I do worry about being too visible. How many times do people want to see that damned poster, really? Or my name, for that matter? At what point will they decide that I’m a self-serving, egotistical maniac? I am not a self-serving, egotistical maniac. But I’d like people to read my book. Sigh.

Now, I must head off to hang a poster in the Echo Bay Lending Library. That feels safe. Hardly anyone goes there…

And here it is, yet again, though I can’t seem to convert the pdf to a photo file of decent quality so you’ll need to get out your magnifying glass. Or check me—or Embajadoras Press—out on Facebook 😃.

(Now here’s the kind of question that can really engage me: Does punctuation go before or after an emoticon?)