I had a nice little idea. Contact some local authors. Put together a little promotional package. Everyone wins.
I never realized how hard it would be to simply drop an author an e-mail. It’s darn near impossible.
When you have a book, you need to make it easy for people to learn about it and you need to promote it. This should include a web site with your contact info. In my mind, if your book doesn’t have some kind of web site and if people can’t contact you, you and your book may as well not exist. If someone wants to ask me to share something from my book at an event or if they want to learn more about it, a web site is so crucial. While I don’t want to encourage stalking, it seems that setting up an e-mail address that is easy to find would be the first thing an author should do.
While authors need to be responsible for promoting their books, it strikes me as equally important to make it as easy as possible for interested readers to contact the authors. This could bring all kinds of trouble and annoying messages, but the pay off strikes me as worth while.
Ed Cyzewski: Author // Contemplative 
I TOTALLY agree. Not that I’m promoting a book like you are but as a freelancer I’m amazed, amazed I say, by how hard it is to find contact info for people in the publishing world. Should that not be the most obvious first step??? Sigh. Hang in there. -Esther
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Hi Ed –
You may already know this but
if you go to writersnet.com you can
search by location (state). The site lists authors (published and unpublished, I believe) and also there is usually info under each author as to how many books they have published and also the genre.
Sue Leonard
Cornerstone Fulfillment Service, LLC
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Thanks Sue for the link. Esther, I’m glad someone seconded me on that one. With blogging platforms such as WordPress available, not to mention the other simple web authoring tools available, I’m surprised more people aren’t taking advantage of an opportunity to promote themselves online.
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