Marketing is much on my mind right now. In my opinion the most important marketing tool is a domain name. If someone reads one book and they want more how do they find out what else has been written? Use the author name and do a search on the web. Bingo, there is a list of books written and even advance notice of soon to be published.

I, in the first flush of writing, bought a domain name for myself. Set up a web side, a blog, Facebook and twitter account. Yes! I thought, I’m on top of the marketing thing.

Except — I finally, a year later, did a search on the internet using my web name and found that there was horror! another author with my name. Well, can’t have that! If someone looks me up, I want to be the only author with that author name. By author name I mean the name that appears on the book.  Janice Graham is already taken. So, the next think I do is use my initials – J. I. Graham. I did a domain name search and there is no one with that name in the .com verse. Excellent! I quickly grab the domain name – then starts the fun and games.

I have to change Beastmaster’s cover so my ‘new’ author names appears. Then I have to point my old web presence to the new web presence. Then I have to figure out how to get the blog to go to the new web presence without loosing the blog entries. Poke, poke, poking about and finally I have, I think, done the shift. Next up is the twitter and Facebook thing.

If you’re reading this, then I was successful with the blog. Of course if you’re not then how would I know?

Now, let’s not do this again!