Are smart phones of use to authors?
Some readers of this blog might say, “What a stupid question? Of course, smart phones are useful.” And they might wonder if I need to be in a mental institution? But I’m talking about authors’ marketing of their books!
Here’s what motivates the question: I hate smart phones because they’re such a poor excuse for a laptop! (The recent foldout models basically admit that.) Those tiny phones in your pocket don’t have standard keyboards per se is one clear negative: I’m a touch-typist with big hands, so that little QWERTY box that pops up at the bottom of an already tiny screen I can’t see well in bright sunlight is about as useful as an ice-cream truck in a blizzard, especially if the auto-correct is turned on! What I type is generally what I mean, damn it!
Yes, I have a cell phone. It’s an old flip-style Nokia (yeah, I had to upgrade it to 5G!). I keep it in my car or on my person for emergency use only. (Those emergencies often include the times when my wife needs to be able to contact me, of course!)
Yet, as an author, I take advantage of other people’s smart phones. Assuming they’re smart enough (the phones, that is), those little computers allow their owners to access the internet. In particular, they can access my author’s website here, https://stevenmmoore.com.
That’s great for marketing my books! I can tell a person, even flat on my back during a medical procedure, when they invariably ask what do I do with my time, now that I’m officially retired, that I’m an author of many mystery, thriller, and sci-fi novels, and they can see all the titles on said website. I recommend that they peruse the list of my published books as well as the list all the free PDF downloads I offer, and this blog, of course. (Actually, I doubt all smart phones allow them to download PDFs, but I’m no expert on that subject, but you can try it. It works on my Kindle. Try it and let me know. Of course, if you’re an author, you can’t use this marketing technique on me!)
This marketing gimmick is a lot better than trying to adapt some memorized elevator pitch each time someone asks what I do or what I write when I first say I’m an author. I’ve used it a lot, impressing a lot of people, discounting those who think I should be playing golf. I don’t know how much it affects my sales figures or augments my fan base, but it often interests people, even if they’re only casual readers.
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A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. I write in a few genres or combinations of them. This book is my only rom-com sci-fi novel! A brilliant physicist and her clever techie visit other times (always in their future with respect to their current multiverse to avoid the paradoxes rampant in many time-travel stories). It’s an unusual road-trip tale full of adventure and tongue-in-cheek comments about the human condition. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
