Author, Google Thyself!
I have Google Alerts set to email me when mentions of my name or those of my books go live on teh Interwebz, and routinely Google phrases like “Lincoln Crisler Review.” I’ll bet this makes me sound like an arrogant sonofabitch to the layman.
However, for the second time in my career as a writer (such as it is), Google has advised me that my work has been published. By ‘advised’ I mean ‘advised me before the publisher has told me.’ I won’t name names here, but there could be money involved and my last contact with the publisher was a year and a half ago.
I cannot advocate this practice strongly enough. If you’re a writer, set up some Google Alerts. If you already do this, write a blog post or Facebook note telling your friends to do it. Seriously. It’s already saved my ass twice in three years.