Heidi asked Susan Mallery:

You interact with a lot of your fans via social media. How do you think that social media has changed the way authors promote their books? And do you think it has changed for the better?

Susan Mallery Hi, Heidi. Yes, I love interacting with my fans on social media, especially Facebook. (www.facebook.com/susanmallery) I love that I can have actual conversations with my readers now. It's amazing. And sometimes dangerous... my readers are so FUN that sometimes I spend too much time chatting and not enough time writing. LOL Readers who are too shy to ask me a question or make a comment can still enjoy reading my responses to others.

More than ever before, an author needs to market directly to readers, and I think the best way to do that is through personal interaction. Now, I have around 90,000 fans on Facebook, 15,000 followers on Twitter, 18,000 followers on Google Plus, 5,000+ friends and followers on Goodreads, and close to 5,000 followers on Pinterest. Clearly, I'm not going to connect personally with each individual reader, but each individual connection I do make is amplified through the very nature of social media. That's pretty astonishing.

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