My Space, Your Space, Our Space

Gone are the days when a housewife sells her romance novel to the only game in town, then waits for the money truck to drive up to her house. Today there are hundreds of choices for the romance-buying dollar. Werewolves, Time-Travel, Inspirational, Paranormal, Suspense - just to name a few - have increased the offerings to the traditional, contemporary and historical of two or three decades ago. These are not your mother's romance novels!

This is a good news/bad news thing. For the reader, it's great. So many choices. Every heat level, every sub-genre. It's a wonderland for those who love a good romantic escape. For the writer, not so good. Readers are still devouring all kinds of novels, but the author has to fight harder for his or her sales.

It's no longer enough to be a good storyteller. Now you have to also be a good promoter. It used to be that meant holding a signing at your local bookstore when your book debuted. Now it's much more than that. You have to be on your game all day long, every day. And one of the key places to play this game is My Space.

This is a free site where each user gets his or her own page. They provide you with the basic framework. You spruce it up according to your own taste and/or skill. It's not too difficult. Even someone as computer illiterate as I am can create a pretty good offering. I even figured out how to do a slide show with my four available covers.

The "friends" are the big thing there. You ask people to be your friend; they ask you to be their friend, then you link these pages to each other. Then their friends can find you. And their friends. And so on. It's the kind of thing that builds on itself.

The friends are kind of cool. I know a woman who has Brad Pitt as a friend. And another who has Paul McCartney. Thing is, you don't have to actually BE that person to use the name. I seriously doubt that Brad is busy on My Space. It's hard to get a connection when you're following your love interest to some third world country to pick up yet another child. Sir Paul, on the other hand, probably doesn't have that much to do these days. And we know he's not busy watching Dancing with the Stars. Well, not after Heather was voted off this week, anyway.

My son has a Space. His girlfriend made him accept me as a friend. But when I left a comment there, he deleted it faster than he can make the leftovers disappear from the refrigerator. And I won't even mention the picture of him on the girlfriend's Space. I haven't seen that much of him since he stopped wearing diapers!

Well, that's it for now. Between the blog, the website, the Space and the Yahoo loops, I have to find some time to actually write!

Have a wonderful day!
Delia