Working authors rely on the world of the internet. We must not only have our own website, but we must also have a Facebook page, a LinkedIn page, and a Goodreads page.

In this electronic world, an icon or avatar is the pictorial representation of our alter ego or character. This is the image that appears beside our user-name on every comment we post in any forum on the internet, and is our internet face.

We carefully select what we put up to represent us because we want people to see us as who we think we are.

The common courtesy that we would extend in a face-to-face conversation should extend into our online conversations. These conversations are places where we are represented in two ways:  by the picture we have selected as our ‘icon’ or ‘avatar’ and by what we write in the comments sections of public forums.

How we interact with other…