Dear Geist,

, it’s up to her to create and maintain a social media presence because she is the publisher. I have a publisher, and yet the marketing manager pretty much ordered me to set up Facebook and Twitter accounts and post a few times a week, as well as doing the usual media and bookstore events. Isn’t marketing the publisher’s lookout?

Dear Just,

Marketing is indeed the publisher’s responsibility. That’s why they got you going on social media. The objective is to launch strong promotion in the book’s first season, to get the ball rolling until word-of-mouth kicks in to support long-term sales momentum. Book fans want to see and hear from writers, so writers are expected to show up for interviews, readings, signings and so on. When we got the World Wide Web, especially social media, we also got a vast network of book readers who now had the technology to handle their own word-of-mouth and author relations, thank you very much. Marketing experts at publishing companies are still the ones who identify audiences and design the overall marketing plan, and that plan still includes author appearances—such as the writer’s consistent online availability to readers. Marketing staff can give pointers on effective social media presence, but only the author can carry it out.