Blog Has Moved - and Been Renamed - Go There!

Hello. My new online home including the blog (now renamed "Sanity Bubble") is BookEval.com. You can leave comments on the entries as usual. I will eventually move all 300 blog entries onto that site. Come see my amazing new space! Thank you so much.

What's Your Name?

You don't need a website. But you do need to register your name before someone builds a website for you -- that isn't about you. If your name is common, someone probably already has your name-dot-com, but you may have the option of registering your name dot-net or dot-tv or dot-biz or something else.

Through Namesecure.com I registered catherinerankovic.com for 10 years at a cost of $90. You can use Godaddy or some other service to register. But register.

Why? If people want to find writers on the Net, they tend to type in writer's-name-dot-com. Ntozakeshange.com was registered and is owned by someone who is not Ms. Shange. Ms. Shange would have to buy her own name from those people if she wanted, for example, to build an informational author website. She would have to pay them whatever they asked. And in the meantime whoever owns your name can build any sort of crazy insane possibly pornographic website using your name. A popular exercise-show host didn't buy her name-dot-com and when you type in that URL you get a crazy insane anti-abortion website.

How I Changed My Luck Some More

So, last year I put some sample poems online at poemhunter.com, and recently a photographer, a stranger, found the poem called "Blue Chicory," and requested permission to reprint it on her blog, alongside her artistic photo of a blue chicory blossom. And I said yes of course yes.

Without the Net, Ms. Dyer would never have read the poem. Without poemhunter.com it wouldn't have been posted. With poemhunter.com the author was easily traceable so that permission could be requested and granted.

Put a few of your own favorite poems on poemhunter.com, preferably if they've already been published and rights have reverted to you. If unpublished, they count as published when you post them, so think twice. It's a good place to post poems YOU love that no editor seems to like. Yes, a lot of stuff on poemhunter.com is dross, but certainly not yours, and you open up a chance for good things to happen. Even a small good thing. Every little bit builds confidence.

The Marketer Says, and I Quote

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[What's this about? See below.]

I'm Rich and Devoid of Common Sense

• If sending out a mass e-mail to 5 million perfect strangers, at a cost to you of $2,359, sounds to you like an effective way to market your self-published book. . .

• If you think establishing an author website or a book website* will make your book sales soar. . .

• If it sounds like a good idea to spend $1,387 to submit the link from your website to 3,000 websites with no guarantees that any of them will post your link. . .

Marketing.YenchenSupport.com is for you. I'm in some sort of database of self-published authors. Yenchen phoned me this morning. When I expressed interest in their company, of which I had never heard, they passed my call up to a guy who spoke better English and told me all about their services for self-published authors. If I signed up today I'd get 30 percent off.

I wish at this time to let everyone know that "self-published" does not mean "rich" or "naive" or "devoid of common sense."

*All authors should have such a site, but such sites aren't sales tools. They are contact tools. When was the last time you bought a book through an author's website?