When All An Author Had To Do Was Write A Good Book

When I was first published, the Internet didn’t exist. At least not for ordinary citizens. Maybe for geeks in a lab somewhere.

Back then, whatever marketing and publicity was done for a book was created by the publisher. The author’s job was to stay at her typewriter or computer and try to write the next great novel. And when that one was done, she needed to try to write an even greater novel. And so on and so on.

Those days are long gone. Whether an author is published by a traditional publish...