You might remember that in my July Newsletter, I was super excited to share that my new picture book, Moo-La-La-Ti-Da! would be released August 31st, and I had weeks of fun and giveaways and great stuff planned for my Facebook followers.
Then...crickets.
You didn't hear anything. What happened to the fun? What happened to the pre-release party? Did Donna just disappear?
Yeah, actually. I kind of did, though it certainly not my intention. With a new book I have been waiting to see published for years, I couldn't wait to share it with the world and I had something fun planned for every week leading up to the book launch.
But, Facebook had other plans for me. Their two-step authentication suddenly refused to allow me into my personal account, which also means I could no longer access my author page where I had planned my pre-release party.
For more than a month, I've been running in circles trying to access my account and being rejected over and over and over again. I've provided literally every single form of ID that I own to Facebook's bots trying to prove I am me. But even though my driver's license, passport, voter ID card and two utility bills state I am indeed Donna Boock, their Artificial Intelligence and accompanying form-letter email continue to believe otherwise, and I remain locked out of 15 years of memories (I will miss those!), connections AND the author page I built to interact with readers. Not to mention the helpful birthday nudges it provided.
So, what could I do now?
Well, this conundrum has made me realize that putting all, or at least most, of my eggs in Facebook's basket is probably a mistake. So, I've thought about how I can can better serve my readers and their supporters (parents, teachers and librarians). As a result, I'm going to diversify my outreach and commit to creating free resources to help you in your quest to raise readers.
Here's what you can expect:
I've added an "Updates" page to my website as a way to be able to directly interact and do giveaways. My goal will be to update this about once a week.
I am going to commit to sending Newsletters at least once per month, occasionally more if there's something I'm too excited not to share with you. In each Newsletter, I will feature a resource you can use with your young readers.
Yes, even though I am still annoyed with Facebook for their lack of actual human help, I've created a new page there. Why? My ultimate goal every single day is to reach the people who can help me get books into the hands of the children for whom I wrote them. And if Facebook and all of it's bots can help me do that, I have to be there.
Please note, this is a new Facebook account, so even if you followed there before, please, please, please follow my new page instead.
