I’ve resisted for months.

It was in December 2012 that I officially stepped out into my second career of being an indie author. I didn’t know much then. I’ve learned a little.

What have I learned?

Being an indie author is a business. (whether I like it or not)

Being an indie author is time-consuming.

Businesses must be promoted.

Readers don’t magically discover new writers. They must be earned.

So in January I decided to start blogging about writing, history, life, culture, etc… all the things that interested me. I’ve posted something or other nearly everyday for 10 months and I learned I kind of like blogging. It’s a fun, low-key writing outlet to write about whatever I like and to talk about my books. It’s been definitely beneficial.

Then came the Facebook Author Page. It took me a long time to get to the point where I admitted to myself that it might be beneficial to have one. I think the real reason I did it was because I didn’t want my personal account to turn into a whine fest about all my books, etc… I couldn’t bore my friends that way or I may not have any. I remember a friend saying that he couldn’t understand why authors and others have Facebook Pages. I agreed. I didn’t know what the point was. But I’ve learned a few things.

Facebook author pages have a lot of potential for promotion. The sharing feature is great.

Facebook advertising has its definite benefits. (more on this topic later) I’ve seen some tangible results.

Facebook is a fun place to interact with readers and be a little less formal than on my blog. (Not that I’m writing this in a tux and cumberbun.)

I’ve concluded that Facebook is definitely a place where indie authors need to be.

Then there’s twitter.

Honestly, I dislike the idea of twitter on many levels. Short little blurbs which just continually role down the screen. It’s unnerving. I couldn’t imagine why I would ever want to write a tweet.

But, I kept getting requests from websites and reviewers about my twitter handle. I wanted to say that I didn’t have a handle on twitter.

Then recently, one reviewer went out of her way to explain how beneficial twitter is to authors and how much talk about one’s book goes on there. I remained skeptical, simply because I couldn’t imagine ever liking it myself.

And so, with great reluctance, and much skepticism, I joined twitter: sassevn

I don’t know about this.

But perhaps, in a couple months, I’ll post again how I’ve learned something else about indie author promotion, and I’ll wonder how I ever lived without Twitter.

But I doubt it.