You are not your iPhone, not your Kindle
“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn’t have to experience it.”
—Max Frisch
That an author needs to establish their own marketing platform nowadays has pretty much become a given, but I’ve seen many complaints about how difficult and time-consuming it is, and of course there’s the predictable flood of marketing gurus pushing all kinds of technology-enabled solutions to make things “easier”.
Some are well-intentioned and worthy of consideration, like the next-generation “social publisher”, Cursor, and the new, marketing-centric Writer’s Digest Conference. Others are just quick cash-grabs, like the brazenly opportunistic Twitter Boot Camp and 140 Characters Conference, my favorite description of which came from Loren Feldman: “biggest circle jerk of nothingness“. (NSFW!)
As Twitter’s still feeling the effects of last week’s crash, and Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed have shown, focusing on specific tools is the wrong approach, and limiting your platform development to your online presence is a recipe for disaster.