by: Rachel Jewell Porto, Managing Editor

As the Managing Editor here at Many Kind Regards, I get to see behind the scenes of running a publication. . My job includes content editing, communicating with writers, uploading and publishing final pieces, and many other odds and ends. While I have been a writer for quite some time and for a number of publications, this is my first official time in an editor’s chair and as such, it has been a non-stop learning experience.

by: Katie Foley, Editor-in-Chief

Recently, I sat down with a group of bloggers and posed this question: Do you have a fan page and why?

One of the comments I see most often in regards to writers making fan pages is “Who really wants to visit my fan page?” Founder of Many Kind Regards Erin Whitehead answers this question with a simple, “Branding yourself as a writer is just as important as branding your blog.” She goes on to say, “If you want a decent social media following (which is becoming more and more of an absolute need for online writers) you have to be willing to self-promote. It has nothing to do with ego and everything to do with showing the world who you are. If you won’t promote yourself, you can’t expect anyone else to do it, either.”

Erin makes a valid point. Ask yourself “Why am I a writer? What am I trying to accomplish by writing?” Chances are pretty good that you have a goal, a reason for writing. No one writes in the online world for the sheer purpose of keeping their words private and unread. The people who intend their words to be private and hidden are called diarists. The rest of us write fully intending for others to read our work. So what sense does it make to work so hard at writing and then let all of that work fall to the wayside? Self-promotion is, indeed, important.

But what do other bloggers have to say about “self-promotion” in the form of a fan page?

By: Katie Foley, Editor in Chief

We’ve all read controversial things, and then scrolled down to the comments only to find ourselves amazed at the lack of requirements for commenters. We’ve all jokingly wondered if there should be a law regulating the use of the internet by “trolls” who’ve nothing better to do with their time than sit around and pick apart writers and their work. It would be great if trolls were required to have “internet licenses” to operate. But alas, they are not.

Recently, one of our writers found herself on the business end of an “internet troll” who went so far out of the way to contact the writer that the writer ended up being the recipient of a flood of emotional messages blasting her for being the sole cause of discourse between the commenter and the commenter’s adult child. (It should be noted that the writer didn’t actually write anything that pertained to the child or to the commenter, but she was guilty by association- she personally knew an in-law of the commenter through her professional work). After being repeatedly asked not to contact the writer again, the commenter persisted with personal messages, crossing the line between internet troll and stalker.

This situation is not unique, and as writers, we will all face a similar situation sooner or later. Some of us, sadly, may even have been on the troll side of this scenario. So how do we as writers, who are also readers, deal with it?

We practice “constructive commenting.”