Here’s an interesting quote I happened upon in yesterday’s newspaper in an article about how Marianas Trench is doing a concert in St. John’s tonight and I’m not going. Okay, so the article says nothing about me not going, I’m just bitter (come on, I was just there!). It does, however, feature guitarist Matt Webb saying something that sounds exactly what you hear from authors all over the place these days:

“Everyone thinks that once you have that elusive record deal that you just coast,” he said, “but in today’s world, it’s when the real hard work begins. There’s no huge budgets anymore, so you really have to do a lot of the work yourself, whether that’s online through social media, promoting your work or whatever.”

Take out the word “record” and replace it with “publishing,” and how many times have we heard that? Seriously, tell me. I’ve lost count. Once a day, at least, on various blogs or news articles.

Sucks for many of us, who would be happy to just write and hand off the marketing stuff to someone else. This seems to be our reality, though.

So, what thinkest youse guys? How do you find out about new music or books? Do you ever try to connect with favourite artists via facebook or twitter, or have fans connected with you that way? How much promotion of this sort do you think is necessary? How much does it suck that I’m stuck in the armpit of the province right now and not in St. John’s, waiting for a concert and a possible holiday on Wednesday?*

Feel free to post any links to helpful promotional sites/tools/whatever, anything you’re using and having success with. Or if you think that self-promotion is a crock and completely useless, feel free to tell me that, too.

(I’m a fan of Kristen Lamb’s blog, myself. I’m waiting for her revised books to come out so I can read ’em up)

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Bonus thingy:  CreateSpace posted this on faebook yesterday, and it was too perfect not to share. I’m totally doing the guitar hero thing. *ahem*

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*Regatta Day is a floating holiday, entirely dependent on the weather. It’s a bit weird, to be honest, but I like it.