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Google Thyself

I used to work with someone who was disgusted at those who Google themselves.  She felt it was unseemly and a waste of time.  I disagree.

As a writer trying to build a platform, you’ve got to know if you’re making an impact.  In the days before, say, the 1980s, you sent your material to a print publisher and they did the work.  They advertised, distributed, and tried to make sure it would sell.  It is no longer so.

Today a writer must promote their own material, even with big publishers.  You must make yourself known.  And so I Google myself.  And there is a kind of logic to it.

I’ve published with six different journals.  To my limited imagination, that means six places have, on occasion, liked what I produce.  When I want to submit something for publication, I wonder which of the six might like it.  I also wonder which of the six will get viewed.

Google tends to put the pages with the most hits at the top.  By Googling “K. Marvin Bruce” I found that my story, “The First Time,” published by Dali’s LoveChild, came at the top.  Dali’s LoveChild is a fairly new journal, but people are obviously looking at it.  So I sent my story there.

Hearing that they’d accepted my newest submission, “Pearls before Swine,” made my week.  It will appear in June.  This makes, for my efforts since 2009, fourteen stories accepted in some form or other.

I was reading about publication.  The author, who is published, was very discouraging.  It is getting harder and harder to gain any recognition.  Even Fifty Shades of Grey—the best selling adult novel in history—began as a relatively unknown with an Australian publisher.  Only when dollar signs flashed before Random House’s eyes did it become a phenomenon.

I have no delusions.  Those who read my work are few in number and disinclined to contact me.  My platform is not huge.  Still, I have something to say, and occasionally a quote of mine will show up where I didn’t put it, on the internet.


That I know because I commit the sin that dare not type its name.  I Google myself.


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