Stepping in it, OR Further adventures in Facebook

I was so optimistic after posting about My Big Fat Platform Mistake a few days ago. I was all set to change “Dance of Souls” to “Audrey Kalman-Author” on Facebook and fix my mistake. Look, it says right here I can do that:

I forgot one very important thing. I also have a Facebook URL for the page. And that cannot be changed:

“We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” Facebook says.

Me too. As a result of attempting to make sound decisions about marketing my book and myself as an author, I now feel:

1) Stupid. I made assumptions (and statements about what I would do) based on incomplete information. Worse, I did it on my blog for the whole world to see. Thankfully I have forgiving blog followers, but who enjoys feeling stupid?

2) Paralyzed. Given the latest information, I resigned myself to the fact that my Dance of Souls Facebook page will remain Dance of Souls. I will continue to feed my blog posts to it and gather Likes. I decided that when my work-in-progress is ready for public consumption in some form—but before it’s formally published, in order to begin the all-important platform building—I’ll start using an author page.

Then I thought: perhaps I should at least create my author page now, just to have it. Easy enough: a few clicks and I’ll be there.

I got as far as this:

and there I stopped. Look what it says: “Once this is set, it can’t be changed.”

Hence my paralysis.

What if I make a mistake again? What if I am missing some big marketing/branding/platform “aha,” which I discover only six months from now?

Split-second decisions with life-altering consequences!

It sounds so irrevocable. Really, in this age of casual typing and twittering, you’re telling me that I am about to do something that can’t be undone? How is this in keeping with the free creative spirit of the Internet? Worse, it’s presented with none of the gravity of the decisions of old. This is as monumental as setting type and starting the offset presses rolling. But at least in those days, we deliberated. We had cadres of proofreaders, designers to do press checks, and vice presidents to sign off on things. If someone did manage to make an irrevocable mistake it was an unlikely result of multiple checkpoint failures—or willful ignorance of the checkpoints. There was redundancy and accountability.

Now a single individual can make irrevocable, career-altering mistakes in mere seconds!

With all this running through my head, is it any wonder I backed out of the whole thing by clicking BACK on my browser.

Then I discovered that even though I hadn’t clicked on anything that said “confirm” or “Are you sure?” I had ALREADY created my Audrey Kalman author page. Or had I? I’m really not sure where it stands. It appears on my personal page… but who knows if anyone else can see it? In any event, I haven’t yet picked a URL (I don’t think…)

Before going further, I plan to get together a committee and have everyone sign off in triplicate.

Don’t step here

One of my loyal blog followers praised my last post as helpful for those following in my footsteps along the publishing journey. In response, I promised I would try not to step in anything along the way. Well, I have. But at least now you’ll now know where NOT to step.

To recap, if you are going to create a Facebook presence for yourself, think very, very carefully about

whether you want an Author page, a Book page, or both;
what you want the name of the page(s) to be;
what you want to use as a URL.

It bears repeating: think long and hard because these decisions are harder to undo than saying “I do.”

You can consult Novel Publicity’s post on building a Facebook author page for more helpful tips. Wish I had found it sooner.

Nathan Bransford’s blog also has helpful Facebook information for authors, which I DID read before creating my book page those many months ago. Somehow, I didn’t grasp the intricacies of the process.

ROW80 Wednesday Check-In

This week’s marketing experience is making me wish I could just stick to the fiction writing. I have written every day since Sunday. More importantly, I have a map in my mind of the final sections I need to write.