Networking…

So, over the past year I’ve been busting my little Aussie buns with this whole social media game. I’m as far from proficient at understanding the inner workings and nuisances as one could be, yet I can now ‘tag’ on Instagram! Yay for me.

It felt like a lot of one sided conversations for a long time. There I was sending out my little comments and book promotions to the vacuum of twitter, FB and Instagram. There were times I honestly thought ,”hello, is anyone out there?”

Well, what I’ve learned is patience, a skill that often eludes me! Patience and persistence and joining in the journeys of other people, be they readers or authors. That patience is staring to pay off and in more than just getting Awaken noticed. I’m making some wonderful online friends who make me laugh from across the globe, all the way to just down the road.

Instagram by far is my favourite online play ground. What a beautiful community of like-minded individuals. The love for books and reading on this medium restores my faith for the brains and imaginations of the future, that they will be full to brimming with stimulation and inspiration to keep the written word a sacred and powerful medium.

The support I’ve received recently on these forum is nothing short of humbling and I delight in offering that back to others. Supporting other indie authors as well as traditionally published authors has given me two things:

1: people who get it, who understand the pathway of an indie author and an incredible amount of positive support that goes mutually both ways.

2: the discovery of books, great books, amazing books I may not have ever come across otherwise simply because they are self published. I’ve read, and I am currently reading some fantastic stories that just prove you don’t need to be picked up the mega machine publishing houses to tell a good story.

So, networking…its an important part of the self-publishing process. Patience and persistence are an essential part of networking. None of these will work independently of the other. The writing of the story,that’s fun, sometimes mind-numbing, but mainly fun. The networking is where you really put your nose to the grindstone as an indie author and only just now am I really understanding the importance of it.

To everyone I’ve met so far, thankyou, thankyou and thankyou. Its been fun so far.