I'm on dozens of social network sites and spent my whole summer getting the word out; I do have a fanbase, but probably not large enough to justify the time and effort I spent finding them. In fact, a lot of my writers were people I met on the web *before* I got published!

But I didn't have to convert my manuscript for kindle or nook, or get it up on Amazon; and there are several other areas in which my publisher helped out a lot, including some good line editing and cover work.