Our class in Online Marketing

My first blog. I feel like such a newbie.

But, seriously, I am feeling good about having signed up for this course. Even on the first day, looking at the list of items on the board that we'd be covering-- I just felt so uninformed. Some things on the list were things I had just never heard of before, and I am looking forward to becoming more knowledgeable about what resources exist on the internet and how they can be used for the benefit of marketing books. The internet really feels boundless to me, yet it's so huge that it seems like anything we put out there can be so easily drowned by all that's already out there. Even thinking about this blog makes me feel as though, once it is posted, it's nothing more than a drop of water in the vast ocean. Outside of this class, who's ever going to read it or care about it? For that matter, what is the point of a blog at all? I can imagine an author using it as a sort of message board for his/her readership, but beyond that and personal use, I can't imagine why people use it. I suppose I will soon learn the answer to that.

A re-occurring in my head is that if I can learn to cultivate an instinct for how online marketing can be used, then it could make ME more marketable as a potential intern/employee at a publishing house. Over the summer at a writing conference, I met an editor who is starting a new imprint in San Diego, and I had approached her with the question of whether or not she might need an intern. Since the imprint was so new at the time I asked, she had to tell me that she didn't know yet if she could use an intern. So I thought about how I could approach her in the future-- what strengths and knowledge could I bring to her to help promote books published by her new imprint? Well, certainly marketing knowledge would be helpful, but more specifically, how to market online could be even more valuable to her. So I am bearing that in mind as I go through this class and next term's classes, to work on aquiring knowledge and skills that I can use with a specific angle to apply to the needs of a publishing house.

Thanks for reading!