Two posts yesterday really got me thinking:

Jody Hedlund blogged about the effectiveness of free books on sales.

For some indie authors it has made a huge difference, shooting their books up on the charts and creating lots of sales for their other books. Or at the very least getting their book titles on the virtual shelf, on bestseller lists, so readers can see them.

But maybe that’s not as important for traditionally pubbed authors. Maybe readers are less likely to make the jump from free or 2.99 to 10 dollars than they are from free to 2.99. What do you think?

If that’s true, then offering free books could be a wiser strategy for the self published author.

The YA Highway blogged about authors disappearing from social media after they have book deals or are published. The comments show a variety of opinions.

So many different perspectives.

The NY best selling author probably doesn’t need to be online as much, well, because their career is pretty much established. Though fans love it when they do participate.

The midlist author, who is barely selling through, probably should be online, interacting, friending, promoting, being themselves and attracting new readers to their blogs and hopefully their books. Especially when their books aren’t in bookstores anymore or never were. Why wouldn’t they do everything possible to get their names out there?

Even if it’s not their thing or comfort zone.

Even if they don’t feel they have the time.

There are so many posts about how to approach social media so that it doesn’t eat up writing time or family time.

The self published author’s career might possibly die a slow death without the author braving social media, leading the charge, getting out there, not spamming, but interacting.

Of course, there are always exceptions. I can think of several. Because as we know social media doesn’t mean automatic success. The book haz to be good.

At one point in time, it could’ve been said that our only responsibility as authors was to write the next book. Do you still feel that’s true? Again, I’d say it depends on what perspective you’re coming from.

And what would happen if a traditionally published author promoted and marketed like a self-published author? If they truly felt the complete responsibility for the success of their book? Would they still retreat after being published? Would it make any difference? Or do they truly need to market in completely different ways?

Here are Angela Scott’s sure fire suggestions for book promotion for all kinds of publishing, in case you missed it.

What do you all think? (Of course, feel free to use the argument that social media is still so new that we don’t know what actually works besides writing a great book.)