Having Profiles All Over

So it seems that we’re expected to have profiles all over the place, for this and that. I seriously think I could spend all my time updating here and there, if I tried to do them all, and I’d never actually get to writing. No, thank you.

But for a writer, it’s apparently important to be out there — to be findable, to have a presence. Mind you, I’m not really at that stage yet, since I’ve only recently had my first acceptance for a print anthology, and the only story I’d previously had published was in an online magazine which has sadly since gone dark (the excellent 10Flash, which was edited by K.C. Ball). Still, presence. How do you do that and stay sane? It’s about all I can manage to blog occasionally and post the odd remark on Twitter or Facebook, maybe go +1 a few things on G+ if I’m feeling energetic.

So today I stumbled across something called about.me — here’s my brand-new profile — and decided to give it a go. Why? Because it’s essentially static. See, it struck me that the answer might be found in many static points of contact leading to a few active places. So about.me wants a teeny chunk of setup effort, and then it’s done. I don’t even have to go back there and log in.

I don’t have any published books to promote yet, but I’m betting author profiles on social reading sites can work the same way. Not user profiles, because that’s just as much work as having another Facebook or Twitter account to update, but the author profile thing. From what I can tell, it only makes sense to smarten up your author profiles wherever they can be found (like Shelfari and LibraryThing and Goodreads) because they look so blank and unappealing when they haven’t been done. Someday when I have books for sale, I am totally going to make sure my author profiles on those sites look sparkly and cared-for, and they’ll point readers right here to where I already am.