Which website(s) would you use for launching info about an upcoming work?

I have avoided networking sites, simply because on the scale of private / public person I'm much closer to private than public, and they just don't appeal. But I do want to announce the coming of my novel.

FB seems very scary to me. Too much in-your-face.
Twitter is for just that? (i.e twittering, and not much practical use.)
LinkedIn seems more business-oriented.
Goodreads Author program, which I have read about, seems promising.
Others?

I'd use Twitter plus another. The real virtue of Twitter (apart from research, for which it's incredibly fast) is that it links to others. It's miles the best way to catch attention, and steer people towards wherever the real info is.

So, then you need somewhere for the real info. Can't see LinkedIn being useful.

Don't know much about GoodReads - have avoided is sedulously so far, though I really shouldn't - but it would seem the natural place.

Author page on FB would be the other obvious thing.

And don't forget that Amazon have an Author Program, so that might be worth investigating.

Don't be down on Twitter.
It is much the best social networking site available. The brevity part makes it so but it's also very fluid.

In other words people will follow you and take an interest in you even though they don't personally know you. Facebook is too detailed for that sort of fast networking.

I was alone watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics last summer, in France, guests coming, but I had a fantastic time on Twitter with everyone chiming in. I was able to have an amazing communal experience on there both with people I knew and people I didn't.

Everyone was reacting in real time to the same thing. A communal synchronicity.
I also without trying have picked up loads of followers and while I don't use it yet to promote something I've written I will.

The trick to it though is to have fun and be chatty and informative. If you're cynically doing nothing but saying hey read my book, people will spot you right away.

You also, as Sally Bercow and others have discovered, need to be careful about what you say.

I love Twitter. Much more fun than Facebook.

You also, as Sally Bercow and others have discovered, need to be careful about what you say.

I should check to see who Sally Bercow is.

About Twitter: I did join a few months ago, but I closed the account after about six weeks. I wasn't getting anything from it, and someone hacked into my account - okay, my fault for not having a secure-enough password.

It's great you had that experience, Jaytee, but I still remain to be converted. And dissuaded from the view that Twitter is - as the name implies - better suited for people who love small talk. And I'm not really like that. I'm a serious person and like serious conversations. Further, my brain doesn't always engage when I'm posting stuff, and I could easily write the wrong thing and offend someone.

The trick to it though is to have fun and be chatty and informative.

I'm sure you're right.

This whole self-promoting thing is alien to me. I really don't want to do it, and I may decide not to. I'll be the elusive, hermit-type. And who's to say that spending countless hours in self-publicity IS necessarily beneficial? I could do this and then realise my time had been better spent improving my writing skills.
Success can be accidental, as I read recently in the article about Wool.

So, I'm hoping to hear of something that might be a good fit and worthwhile, even if not one of the blockbuster sites. Hence this thread.

Thanks, too, Emma.

This whole self-promoting thing is alien to me. I really don't want to do it

I know exactly what you mean, Alan. I'm just the same: the idea of it makes my blood run cold. I'm really, really sorry now that I don't write under a pen-name. I'm even wondering if it's too late to change over to one. Are you going to publish under your real name?

I don't do small-talk either, but to me Twitter is only really a quicker-fire version of what goes on here on WW.

It's self-promoting only in the way that when you hitch up with friends and acquaintances and talk about things you're all interested in, opportunities have a way of growing from those situations.

I think you have to think of it as not broadcasting, but engaging with other people. You're not advertising yourself (at least, not if you've got any sense) you're joining in with a conversation full of people who might want to buy your work.

If you like hanging around on WW, then it's entirely possible to make Twitter work for you. I reckon you can establish a very worthwhile Twitter presence on three twenty-minute sesssions per day: eighteen minutes of which is responding to others, two minutes is tweeting yourself.

FWIW, these were my thoughts about this whole issue a couple of years ago:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/05/several-rabbits-at-once.html

I think Emma puts it very well.

If you go on Twitter with the idea of promoting yourself in a hard core way it's not going to work anyway. It's also not about small talk there's a lot of stuff on there that is useful and interesting.

It's a fun bit of socialising and it doesn't take long before you find like minded people interested in the things you are interested in.

If you think of Twitter as a lonely stage where you have to perform you've got the wrong idea, it's more like an enjoyable party packed full of interesting people.

140 characters makes you hone your ideas down and stops you from being too much of a windbag and if you want to be more discursive there are other places.

I'm even wondering if it's too late to change over to one. Are you going to publish under your real name?

I don't think it's too late, especially if you have lots more writing in you. And you do?

I'm going to use Alan Rain. Not my real name. I remember reading somewhere it's advisable for new writers to have short names. Well, my title has 5 letters and my name 8. I can see the point - in a thumbnail fewer characters stand out more.

Imagine 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was an unknown novel put up on Amazon ...

that when you hitch up with friends and acquaintances and talk about things

This is an aspect of Twitter I didn't 'get'.
It seemed to me people were making statements, but not listening.
I probably did it all wrong. I do miss the '50 sheds of grey' though.

I think the best place to start with Twitter is with people you know in other fora - real, and virtual. That way you're a small jump ahead with the the conversation.

It's like walking into a local pub as a stranger. You can hear one sentence each of twenty conversations, and very few of them make sense. Even if they make sense in the factual sense, they don't add up to a sense of a conversation. If you walked in with a couple of existing friends then at least you can talk to each other while you're getting your bearings.

The difference is that you can choose which village this local is in, and who you want to be standing in the bar for you to eavesdrop on. Then, like any local you're new to, you hang around on the edges of the conversations, laughing at the jokes, and chipping in, in a modest manner, when you've got something to add.

You keep an eye out for anyone the locals seem to know who looks nice and interesting (i.e. who they follow and talk to) and when they come into range you put out a tentative feeler towards connecting with them - in Twitter terms, you follow them, or re-tweet them, or reply to a tweet of theirs, or name-check them in one that's relevant. You might join in one of the more amusing hashtag games for a bit... I've found and been found by some interesting people that way.

It's not instant, of course (neither's FB, come to that). I think one reason that people don't get Twitter is that they don't give it enough time. Networks take time to build, at least if they're going to be organic networks with some kind of real human connections made. I started by following about twenty people, mostly those I knew from other places, and it built from there. I'm fairly ruthless about following, though, because I know that the faster my timeline moves - i.e. the more people in it - the less sense I have of the conversation, and the less likely I am to jump in and keep up with it. I'm not actually being very active on Twitter ATM, partly because I need to have a cull. But I shall. Probably at the point where I want up my visibility again...

Oh, and where it's a lot better than your local is for customer service. Tweet that @MegaSupermarket was less than helpful when Whatever, and they'll get back to you smartish.

I think if you instinctively don't like Twitter (and I've tried, but I don't either) then it's unlikely to work for you.

I'm on Facebook, which I resisted for a long time, but can now see the advantages of. For people either with a small, royalties-only press, or those planning to self-publish, putting up an 'author' (as opposed to a personal page) , joining a couple of groups and maybe having a virtual launch party on publication day looks like a relatively pain-free way to spread the word about your work.

You will get deeply annoying suggestions from Facebook about pages you might like and stupid adverts, but you can deal with most of these irritations .

Might be worth a try?

Best of luck anyway, whatever you decide to go with.

Adblock gets rid of all adverts, forever.

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Re Twitter, it made absolutely no sense to me whatever, until I got Tweetdeck (and others like Hootsuite are similar) which meant I could see my timeline and have separate columns alongside for other things - mentions, messges, any hashtags I was following. It suddenly all made sense. I still don't get on with the ordinary Twitter interface, and don't do Twitter at all if that's all I can get at.

Interesting about Tweetdeck.
don't know why I've never got myself au fait with it.

Alan keep meaning to say. If you want to dip a toe in the water on Twitter, I'll chat to you until you get going. almost all agents and publishing houses use twitter to put out info. sometimes some very useful stuff.

Twitter bought Tweetdeck, and have now spoilt it to some degree - imported half the minor annoyances from Twitter itself. But iti's still better than the others, partly because you don't get sponsored Tweets.

I sell second-hand books online, so I put an A5 flier advertising my novel with every book I sell (around 10-12 a week). This seems to work quite well in terms of MAINTAINING steady sales.

Facebook has a number of writing sub-groups, but the constant promotion and 'look at me' stuff that goes on really gets on my wick. The FB 'Authonomy' sub-group, however, doesn't allow self-promotion, although it does still creep in under the radar.

I don't have an Iphone, so the only twitter I enjoy is outside my window. But my daughter, who is self-employed, is a great advocate of it.

Colin

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didn't mean to bellow 'maintaining' at you!

Alan keep meaning to say. If you want to dip a toe in the water on Twitter, I'll chat to you until you get going

I feel honoured. Thanks.