Over on O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change for Publishing blog, the question was posed:
What do you think authors should do to promote themselves online? How much should publishers get involved?
Here’s how I answered the question in a comment post:
I’m a full-time self-published author (and proud of it) who has been making good use of the Internet for more than 13 years. So I’m a little biased in my response 
The proactive self-promoting author has the best chance of success. If you go the traditional publishing route, by all means, use the resources that your house has to offer. But don’t count on them to create your career for you.
To make the best use of the Internet, know that you need more than a good web site. You need a Web Presence. So think seriously about setting up profiles on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Squidoo, Blogger and/or WordPress, and more.
And make sure you purposefully funnel people from all these sites back to your home base on the Web: your personal author site.
The Internet has been very good to me. Let it be your publishing friend too.
-Bob
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