Who knew that one needed to be so thoroughly tech-savvy to be a novelist?

I’m not just talking about knowing how to create chapter headers in Word (I don’t but I fake it well enough). Nowadays, you have to know how to blog-vlog-flickr-twitter-facebook-wordpress-upload-youtube-blip.tv in order to be a novelist, that is, if you have any hopes of being a successful novelist. It helps if you have nice friends who know how to do all this stuff (I have a Jeff, a Mary and an Anthony) but there are only so many times you can sweetly plead for their help and certainly a limit on the number the exclamation points you can put after “Thank you!!!!!!” (Six seems reasonable; seven is just desperate.)

I’ve been uploading my book-related videos all afternoon to the various viral distribution sites (if you’re on sherririfkin.com you can just tab over to the Videos page to see the same clips) and boy is my laptop tired! Believe me, as a former TV marketing person, I am very grateful to be publishing my novel at a time when all of these free marketing tools are available–especially since I don’t have the same (read: any) budgets to spend on paid marketing placements like I did when I was employed by someone else. Short of walking around Union Square with a LoveHampton sandwich board strapped over my shoulders, sitting in front of my laptop waiting patiently for my uploads to be complete seems like a far lesser evil. But I am fairly certain that once I’ve mastered the twitter-blip and the blog-vlog, there will be yet another technology for me to beg a nice, tech-savvy friend to teach me how to do. (Note: In addition to multiple exclamation points, treating your helpers to a nice meal or two goes a long way to show them your appreciation.)

Now that I’m pretty much all uploaded, at least for now, I just hope the other kids on YouTube play nicely with LoveHampton21. I certainly don’t want to be forced to send my 181 Facebook friends after them.