Just today, I received this email reaction to my novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones - amazing at three months and counting:
"I found this book by reading Class Notes in the Californian [UC Berkeley Alumni magazine]...[and] I am dancing 'round the house reading it to my husband and mother-in-law. I am a Class of '70 who has spent my whole exile away defending the flagship campus of the University of California... I have always wanted to write a rebuttal to the myths of the sixties at Berkeley. I hate the Eastern critics take on this decade and our campus... Thanks for publishing."

Just a decade ago, after the third month, my book would be off the shelves and unavailable. So bravo POD (print on demand), online sources, and reader/author/publisher-friendly technology!

The wonderful thing about publishing today is that we, the authors, can choose to keep working to spread the word about our work - or not. A month after publication, I fulfilled commitments to family and friends by taking 5 weeks off for vacations and visits. August - prime time for readers - and I was hiking around lakes and up mountains at Glacier National Park in Montana; babysitting for my two perfect (honestly!) granddaughters in Seattle; chatting it up with my friends and relatives in Southern California. Totally irresponsible. Yet, homecoming in September brought me back to social media, arrangements with bookstores and groups to speak, and my blog (take a look at www.elisefrancesmiller.wordpress.com). I wrote articles for my publisher to disperse to media outlets. And the best of all, I spoke to several groups this month, including very astute readers from Rotary, Hadassah, and a Palo Alto book club - arranged by Megan Sweezy Fogarty (thanks, Megan!), a former colleague from Stanford. We also did a successful Giveaway through Goodreads - another on the way. In other words, my novel is still out there, and thanks to technology, still finding an audience.