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I'm not talking about my personal Facebook problem, which is my propensity for jumping in to ultimately useless arguments.  I seem to have solved that by uncoupling my twitter from my Facebook and by not checking Facebook very often.  So far so good!

I'm speaking here in my capacity as a writer.  Like many people in many fields, I've spent some time and energy building up my Facebook page by asking people to "like" it and posting little updates about my writing. 

Initially it worked very well: liking the page was a pretty low bar for people to clear, and this allowed me to remind people in a fairly unobstrusive way about stuff that was happening with my writing career. 

Most of us who depend on our fans to spread the word about our work need some way to push information out to our fans. People with huge followings can always pull people in--so this isn't a problem for, say, John Scalzi. He's got a wildly successful blog that people will go out of their way to check.  But most of us don't have that kind of audience on the internet, and we need a way to remind people that we're here, that we've got something new coming out, that we value their support, and stuff like that.

And now Facebook can no longer serve that purpose. Because on average only about a quarter of the people who have liked my page see anything I post there.  They want me (and everybody) to pay to promote our posts--in other words, to pay to get people who like the page to see what we put there.  They have every right to do this--they've got to make money, and this seems like a pretty shrewd way to bring in some income without annoying the great majority of users. 

Except that the promotion tool, as I've mentioned in other posts, is broken. My test post was promoted largely in Indonesia, and resulted in no traffic increase to this site.  Oh well.

So now I need a way to reach those of you who want to be reached. So I'm kickin' it old school with an email blast. 

I have a bunch of addresses, but I really want to start fresh with this as a totally opt-in thing.  So, if you'd like to receive irregular email updates from me about what's going on with my career, please .  (or just use the handy subscription form on the side of this page!)I promise (I'm swearing on my copy of Peter Guralnick's 2-volume Elvis biography, so you know I'm serious here) never to give away, sell, or otherwise use your email address for any purpose other than sending you stuff about my writing.

And if you sign up, I'll make sure and throw in some cool bonuses.  Not sure what that is--some rare unreleased tracks or behind-the-scenes info, or something.  Tell me what you'd be interested in seeing.  And thanks!