Information Overkill

Good lord.

I can remember when the toughest part of writing was, well, writing. Now, it seems I'm doomed to spend my free time at the computer doing everything but. While I keep hoping for an opportunity to dust off one of several manuscripts cluttering my hard drive, I've not been able to do any such thing.

I've spent the last 87 minutes browsing the internet, updating links in my browser, registering at various forums and websites and I still feel I'm no closer to figuring out how to improve my online visibility, sell more books or even where to begin.

Tonight's round of internet explorations consisted of (1) pruning some garbage from the links I've been collecting--more than half of what I'd bookmarked during the interim between my last couple of posts, (2) subscribing to new writers' and writing related message boards--including the writing of the insipid, mandatory, pat and un-necessarily necessary "Hi! I'm New!" message, (3) reading several different blog posts (most of which were less than 500 words!) from blogs purporting to provide me the tips I need to be successful at blogging--if I can manage to filter past their favourite recipes for peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, rants against Wal-Mart and suspiciously corporate-looking self-promotion posts, and (4) rubbing my eyes and shaking my head in astonishment that anyone every actually finds anything useful on the Internet through keyword searching.

The progress I made--or should I said that I felt I made--last week now seems to have mostly been in vain. Though I've found what I hope to be a few useful links, I really don't get the impression I've found anything that will be beneficial overall, including the links that a couple of friends kindly emailed me after reading last weeks cries for help.

I'm really more of a writer than an internet researcher. Hell, I don't even like to have to research stuff for the things I write, which is why I thank the Gods for Wikipedia and Google. I like to write. I don't like anything to do with the "business" of writing, which is probably why I'm so bloody bad at this. I really do recommend that if you are an independant author on the verge of publishing your first novel or with your first novel about to be published that you put as much money aside as you can and hire yourself a publicist to do all this fucking stuff for you. It's tedious and discouraging, at least for me.

Having said that, I'd also like to present this opportunity for any burgeoning publicists out there to have at it with my stuff. Build my brand, get my books sold and I'll gladly pay you a royalty off of my meagre royalties. Land me a book contract for my next publication (I have 2 books about ready to go; one fantasy/horror the other plain fiction marketed at 20 to 40 year olds) and I'll more than happily sign over a nice chunk of whatever I get for the contract to you...truth be told I know far more about writing than I do about self promotion, publicity or any of what is necessary to turn product into revenue. Fuck, you're the expert...you figure it out. Let me get back to what I enjoy, what I do best: writing, and leaving the "business" to somebody else.