When I was looking for an agent, I was surprised to see one agent’s requirements: “If you don’t have a facebook and a Twitter account, don’t even bother querying me.”
Five years later, everyone requires that you have a facebook and a Twitter account. And a blog. They want authors who are willing to promote themselves and their books. They want proof that you’re set up and ready to go if you get the nod from a publisher.
They expect you to do interviews and go to conventions and conferences. They expect you to have contests where your book is the prize, and to offer freebies on GoodReads, for example.
They expect you to have a great blog–funny, or informative, or homey, or friendly–that gets lots of hits and followers. They expect you do guest blogs, reaching out to readers you wouldn’t normally have access to through other writers.
They expect you to find creative ways to connect with your target audience. For example, I know one smart author who writes books that are set in the horse racing/breeding world (Cheryl Rhodes, author of Ringer, a Musa Publishing book). She thought women who love horses might like to read books about them, so she was considering running an ad in her favorite horse magazine. She could also get involved in message boards pertaining to horse owners. Even if she never talks about her book, she could put her book info in her identification or signature line. If people like her–if she’s funny and insightful and helpful–they might decide to give her book a try.
They expect you to review other books published by the same publisher, and do guest blogs or host guest blogs from those authors.
They expect you to come up with creative give-aways. Heather Brewer, author of the Vladamir Todd YA vampire series, had adorable (and cheap) lapel pins made up featuring the smiley-face-with-fangs symbol of her books. She’d give them away to visitors to her blog as well as at school visits. A friend of mine, Carole Lanham, author of The Whisper Jar, made little whisper jar necklaces to give away at an author event when people bought her book of horror short stories.
They expect you to do readings or run writer workshops at local colleges, high schools, and libraries. (If you have an ebook, libraries are a great resource; they are offering ebooks on Overdrive, but the big publishers aren’t participating, so the libraries are lending lots of ebooks from small presses, epublishers, and even indies.) You can even donate your book to the library. If it does well, they buy the next copy. Or another one of your books. (A great promo idea — make one free so people get hooked on your writing and buy the rest of your books. Obviously only works if you have a lot of books.)
They expect you to let your local newspaper–especially the small neighborhood papers, which are often easier to get into–know about your book or any promotion events you’re arranging at your library, for example. Get a lot of friends/acquaintances to attend, and your local bookstore might be willing to host another event.
They expect you to market yourself. Because most of the time, they aren’t going to do it for you. Unless you’re a big author, you’re not getting the marketing dollars. You have to generate interest in your own books. Marketing your book is almost a full-time job, and it’s not for the squeamish. You have to be willing to put yourself and your book out there, spending hours of your time that you might prefer to spend writing.
You have to show an agent or publisher that you’re ready and willing to promote yourself, that you have the basics–facebook, Twitter, blog, social media–in place already. Otherwise, even if they like your book, they’ll give it a pass. Because there are hundreds of other authors with books about as good as yours who are willing. And ready. So get ready.
alisaacarter
Alisa A. Carter 
I started my blog for that very reason Alisa. A lot of small publishers anyways want you to have a web presence…which I am fine with but I be damned if I am going to sacrifice all my time on it at the expense of my wriiting…and I challenge that there is a HIGH majority of “just as good” as authors or writers as you or me out there who are already set up perfectly up on the web and are willing to walk over fire for publishers. Off topic a little bit but I think the epublished world is watered down by subpar writing ..there is ALOT of crap out their… Amazon and Smashword’s only standards are your formatting and not your content..they could care less really. If it sells it sells…if not…oh well.. Population is ever increasing and submissions are increasing to publishers so I understand if they want more out of you for commitment…but I have to believe and maybe I’m naive. But if they saw a GREAT book they would see their way to making concessions on a few of the requirements when publishing your book…just saying….great post..cya
All true — I’ll be honest, I’ve lost a bit of the fire in my gut because I don’t have time for all the marketing. People I know who have been successful make time for it, and there are some who just write and eventually build up a readership. I’m hoping eventually publishers will cough up some marketing again, but times are tough. Everyone needs to do the best they can, so I say, do as much marketing as you can, write the best book you can write, and hopefully one of your books will take off and they’ll all catch fire. If you need to write, it’s all moot — you’ll write, whether you get published or not! You have a good attitude, so hopefully you’ll be the one to catch fire!
Good luck to you Alisa..catch fire yourself and run down the street with it..:)
With my luck, it would just be my hair…