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Two big things in the news lately: internationally, the Ebola breakout, and almost-nationally, an incident here in St. Louis yesterday.

There are many, many articles on the web about how to protect yourself from Ebola, so I’m not going to cover that specifically—the best advice is to isolate yourself if the disease makes it way to your area. And that, of course, requires being prepared.

In north St. Louis County, yesterday afternoon, a young man was shot and killed by a police officer. Those are the bare facts. There are all kinds of comments, statements, speculation, and so forth flying around the Internet, but it boils down to this: no one knows the whole story. Yet.

The aftermath, however, was pretty cut and dried—a large group of people, some news accounts say 100 or more, gathered in the immediate area after the shooting. Shots rang out in the crowd, but no one else was hurt or killed. Police from several jurisdictions arrived, some with riot gear and heavy-duty weapons, and people shouted, “Kill the police!” Things eventually calmed down, with no further incidents.

Google it if you’d like more information—the details aren’t relevant to my topic today.

What would you do in a situation like this, if you lived nearby?

I’d stay inside, doors locked and secured however I could do so, and be prepared for home defense. I’m sure many or most of you would also choose this option over joining the mob—and I use that in the sense of a dictionary definition of “large group of angry people.”

How long could you last?

These folks eventually left and went to their homes, presumably, after many hours; at least midnight or so is my understanding. Surely, if you prep at all, you could have lasted six or eight or ten hours, barricaded in your home.

But what if they hadn’t all left? What if the crowd grew? What if the crowd became violent towards others, or began destroying property? How long could you stay inside? If the police acted to quell the situation, would you be safe or become collateral damage?

In many neighborhoods, this is a valid question; in others, not so much. In other words, in some places an incident such is this is highly unlikely, but that doesn’t mean impossible.

Picture it: a nice, suburban area; many neighbors are at least passingly familiar with faces and who lives in which home. An occasional speeder on the main drag, maybe a few mailboxes smashed here and there, but mostly quiet and safe.

And then. Perhaps a police chase through the area, perhaps an escaped mental patient; maybe a crime wave, with weapons and murder or—just about anything. It can happen. Has happened.

Chances are, in a suburban area, your utility systems would remain in place. Unless they didn’t. Then what? Could you manage? Enough water, ways to stay cool or warm, enough food? What if it was unsafe to leave your house for several days?

What does this have to do with Ebola? Same principle, different reason. With a pandemic, an outbreak, the common wisdom is to isolate yourself. You’re protecting your family from illness and probably death, instead of guns and crazies and the possibility of death. Either way, hunkering down and waiting it out are your best options.

People who prep aren’t nutjobs, necessarily; they’re just ready, prepared, for anything that could happen. You should be, too.

There’s a lot of debate and discussion about how best to promote one’s books, and it mostly centers around cash. If you have a product, aka a book, that you’re trying to sell, you’re in business.

As the old adage says, “You have to spend money to make money.”

There are two basic ways to promote and market your book:

Pay someone to do it.

Do it yourself.

I know quite a few authors who opt for the first, and I don’t quite understand why. You could pay someone to market your book if you had a lot of spare cash sitting around, or if you have better things to do with your time.

For myself, I definitely qualify in the second way, but certainly not in the first.

Plus, I like to be hands-on. No one is going to do for my book what *I* am going to do. They just won’t care “enough.”

The biggest problem with paying someone is knowing what or if they actually accomplish. Now, if you pay someone to promote and market and your sales suddenly zoom up, that’s wonderful! But what if they don’t? Either the company/person you paid didn’t do anything, or enough, or your book stinks.

But maybe your book doesn’t stink. Maybe they just took your money.

No, I don’t know which companies are good and which are bad. Consult Preditors and Editors. I know authors who claim to have had good experiences with bad companies, too. But I have to wonder if their idea of “good” is the same as mine . . .

What bothers me is the amount of money these companies, good and bad, often charge to do the same things YOU could do, for free.

The first thing you need to understand is the difference between “promotion” and “marketing.” Promotion is where you put out reminders about your book, so no one forgets about it. Marketing means you are actively pursuing sales channels.

No one should pay for promotion, not with the availability of social media. But you have to be visible—and that means opening up those privacy settings. Your friends are going to get mighty tired of hearing about your book, plus you can’t take advantage of all that “six degrees of separation:” if no one can easily share your promo posts, no one will see them.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to 2,999 “friends.” Quality is often overlooked in favor of quantity. All those “like me and I’ll like you” invites may garner a couple sales, but it’s really just a trade-off of people trying to up their numbers. I’ll let anyone follow me on Twitter, for example, because all kinds of people read books—but that doesn’t mean I’ll follow them back. This isn’t grade school, after all.

Another thing that authors often do is join groups. Writing groups, author groups, etc. Again, be choosy. How many groups can you realistically keep up with? How much of your time is spent being “social?” Which ones have the most value for you?

The trap you may fall into is promoting and marketing ONLY or MOST OFTEN to other authors. This is like going to a conference and trading books or buying the book of everyone who buys yours. You might get home and say, “Wow, I sold 20 books!” Yes, but you also BOUGHT 20 books, most of which you probably won’t read and therefore won’t tell anyone about either. Exactly what the others are saying/doing.

Sure, writers and authors read books. But it’s a big world out there. Don’t make the mistake of thinking TOO local . . . social media or in real life.

Read my marketing book when you have a chance. It’s there, in plain English: find your target reader.