Author rambling about social media

So here I am, living the dream and dreaming about making a living from it...

I've done the rounds of craft fairs, where all too often there isn't much craft going on so much as buying things in and selling them on. So where have all the craft people gone? Maybe they're all too busy making things to stand about and sell them at fairs... certainly a craft fair seems to be an opportunity to have a sit down, and I have even done a bit of writing at a fair, once or twice when the event was really quiet. But the trouble with writing is that it's a solitary occupation and if I start writing at  a fair I'm quite likely to just zone out and not notice if anyone stops to talk to me or take an interest in my books.

So surely the internet is the answer - making use of social media seems to be the thing to do, but it does seem full of people after their own ends or following to get followed, until we all seem to be following each other around in endless herds asking for likes - how can you ask someone to like something anyway...? You put it in front of people and they either like it or they don't... or am i missing something?

Views anyone...?

Self publish - the new name for multitasking

I think self publish is the new name for multitasking - trying to split my time between writing and illustrating the next book, and the business of marketing. But marketing can be as creative as writing the book - or at least that's what I'm trying to tell myself, to wake up the creative part of my brain when I'm trying to think of ever more inventive ways to get my books noticed, but my brain just wants to daydream about the next book - characters jostling about trying to leap onto the the keyboard.

Book signings are always popular, but why do book signings always have to mean standing in a bookshop or in a  hall at some craft fair...? Isn't the internet the new craft fair, where we can meander about and find just what we wanted without all those wasted trips to town when we found nothing, but  ended up rushing back to the car before the parking ticket ran out...

So all I have to do is move my online bookshop out of the back alley it seems to be residing in, and drag it out into the main stream of internet traffic, but not in so much traffic that my books get knocked off their shelves, I don't want them getting dogeared...

Off to break open the next box of books now, to fill an order - so something must be working.

Living the dream, and dreaming of making a living from it, one book sale at a time...