Can self-promotion go to far?

[Patricia Ryan]

Originally Posted by J. Strnad

There was a bit on the original Bob Newhart Show where Bob, a psychiatrist, was treating a shy door-to-door salesman who would go up to people's doors and, too shy to knock, would just wait for them to come out.

Writing a book and not letting people know it's out there is like being that shy salesman. You gotta knock on those doors.

Non-fiction writers have it easier. They can talk about the subject of their book and not seem to be pushing their book every time they open their mouth. They can do interviews about the subject, give lectures, the whole works.

First, awesome analogy! I'll definitely be quoting you on that.

Non-fiction writers do, indeed, have it much easier. In another lifetime, I was in charge of marketing for Scientific & Academic Editions, a division of the now-defunct publisher Van Nostrand Reinhold. My job was to sell books with titles like Neogene Planktonic Formanifera, and to be honest, it wasn't all that hard even in the pre-Internet stone age. You did direct mail campaigns to members of certain professional organizations, attended certain academic conferences... It was easy to figure out who your audience was and how to reach them.

With fiction, even professional publishers blunder around doing ineffective things a lot of the time, so it's no wonder many authors end up making mistakes that alienate the very readers they're trying to court. The problem is, if authors don't promote their books somehow--especially self-published ebooks that don't appear in publishers' catalogs or in bookstores--readers simply won't know they exist. If "ALL PROMOTION GOES TOO FAR," how are these books supposed to show up on their prospective audience's radar?

As I've said before, I'm not convinced that social networking venues are where authors should be concentrating their promotional efforts, for several reasons. I agree absolutely that promotional posts don't belong anywhere other than the promo threads, and that inappropriate promotion should be policed. But I value the self-promo threads as a reader, because they help me to see what's being self-published out there. As for sig lines, I love them. I click on them all the time, and have bought books as a result. And they're pretty easy to ignore if you want to.

[Vintage Season]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

It is an idea with merit .... drop this post into Feedback so the decision makers can react upon it

All right, a new thread has been created for that purpose.

- M.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Does anyone else find themselves turned off of a potentially interesting book because of an over-bearing author?

I haven't read recent books by Cory Doctorow, because I got fed up the way he promotes them on BoingBoing.net.
I know, I know, BoingBoing *is* his blog, and he can write anything he wants there. I also know that I do not have to go there every morning to see what interesting and weird things he and his staff came up with. But still, I do not plan reading his heavily promoted books in a foreseeable future.

As for the "author self promotion" forum. There is nothing wrong with authors trying to entice me to read their work. I even like the ... intimacy ... of such thing. Stephen King would never answer my well meant remarks about his book ;-). Not now, when he is famous, anyway. But, there IS such thing as too much of a good thing. There is big difference between constructive discussion with your readers and incessant bumping of your own thread.
(No, dear authors, I do not have in mind any particular thread ... ;-) ). I really do enjoy communicating directly with an author about what I like or dislike about a book. I even used to write critiques for site called Critters, but I was put off by many hops you have to jump through to actually get the book for reading (and writing meaningful critique for). But if you need a really critical eye, dear authors, Critters is a good place to hang around.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

But no, that's not enough, now we have flashing books as avatars, signatures with horribly designed covers in them and more text than War and Peace.

Agree 100% I HATE those flashy avatars. And how is it that almost every indie author out there has stumbled upon the same Piers-Anthony-style awful cover with horrible fonts?

[kacir]

Originally Posted by queentess

I HATE those flashy avatars.

I do not hate them. I simply block them using adblock. It requires about 5 seconds, so there is not much opportunity to start hating them ;-)

[kcmay]

I agree with the OP that over-promoting is annoying, and I agree with others who've said authors need to do some promotion. It's a delicate balance, and not all of us have a feel for it yet -- especially those of us with only one book out (so far).

Whenever a writer whose work I love responds to me via twitter, blog, email or forum, I'm thrilled. I enjoy interacting with authors, and as an author, I enjoy interacting with readers. If someone posts to my book's announcement thread that they've bought my book, I'm going to say thank you, because it's the polite thing to do. Hopefully that's not considered over-promotion.

[Vintage Season]

Originally Posted by kcmay

Whenever a writer whose work I love responds to me via twitter, blog, email or forum, I'm thrilled.... If someone posts to my book's announcement thread that they've bought my book, I'm going to say thank you, because it's the polite thing to do. Hopefully that's not considered over-promotion.

I don't think anyone is going complain about authors answering those readers who choose to interact. If I buy your book, and tell you that I liked it, then I am also likely to appreciate your willingness to respond! Your taking time to do so is also generally perceived as polite behavior.

As with any situation, the potential for abuse exists. (If someone signs up a whole bunch of fake user-names, and has them post artificially glowing reviews, that is a very bad thing.)

- M.

[MartinParish]

I always feel reluctant to self-promote; it seems in such bad taste to talk about your own writing, like praising yourself in third person or something. I try to find hole-and-corner ways to do it, like using my cover for an avatar. I guess some people find that annoying too, though... so there it is, what can you do.

[MartinParish]

And I think also -- to add one more point I ought to have made in the last post -- that the important point is, as always, to treat others the way you'd rather they treat you. I think many of the same authors who over-self-promote (like whichever unnamed author we're discussing) would cease to do so if they thought about the end effect. If you don't like being spammed by someone with a product to sell, don't spam others just because you want to sell your book. Elementary politeness...that's what it's all about. Good books take time to sell and catch on, and hassling people about your book is the best way to alienate them, IMHO, anyway

[queentess]

Originally Posted by MartinParish

I always feel reluctant to self-promote; it seems in such bad taste to talk about your own writing, like praising yourself in third person or something. I try to find hole-and-corner ways to do it, like using my cover for an avatar. I guess some people find that annoying too, though... so there it is, what can you do.

Nah, that doesn't bother me - it's just another icon. It's the ones that flash and/or go through a slideshow of covers. The motion on the screen is distracting. I've blocked a few people over it (Yeah, I know I can block avatars on mobileread, but I'd rather use my ax than a scalpel. And I use Chrome, not Firefox.)

And the fonts on the avatar covers are usually so teeny, I'd even recommend you put a small (and non-flashy) link in your signature line to a place where people can buy your book.

Originally Posted by kcmay

Whenever a writer whose work I love responds to me via twitter, blog, email or forum, I'm thrilled. I enjoy interacting with authors, and as an author, I enjoy interacting with readers. If someone posts to my book's announcement thread that they've bought my book, I'm going to say thank you, because it's the polite thing to do. Hopefully that's not considered over-promotion.

I read a short story a while back in an Asimov's that I absolutely loved, and it said it was part of a longer story that was going to be published. I looked up the author online and wrote to her, asking when she anticipated it was going to be published. She wrote back very politely and thanked me for the feedback, but was sorry to say that the potential publisher had bailed on her and she was still shopping around. Every once in a while I hit her up to ask about it, b/c I'm still very interested in reading the whole story. I love being able to do that and having the author respond.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Does anyone else find themselves turned off of a potentially interesting book because of an over-bearing author? I found myself downloading a promoted book the other day and putting it aside to read later, only to find that the author's endless bump of their thread (often with pleading as to why we haven't read it yet and rushed back to comment) turned me off completely.

I realize it is possible I may be missing a good book by letting this affect my reading choice, but honestly, nothing says 'amateur hour' to me more than an author who begs. It takes me back to the days I was more active in the fanfic world, where people would post these cliffhangers and then threaten not to finish unless they got X many comments. I also think that authors who beg and/or expect immediate feedback and reviews show a lack of understanding as to how to be professional. They seem to me to want instant gratification of fame and fortune, and it doesn't work that way. Most of the really famous authors these days took years to build their fanbase---Nora Roberts wrote six novels before she even submitted to a publisher, Stephen King taught English classes and submitted to lad magazines on the side, Grisham was a practicing lawyer and had his first novel rejected by several publishers etc. etc. etc.

As for readers, most people here will grab the freebie if it looks remotely interesting because (at least in the case I am thinking of) it was a limited time offer. But they might not get to it right away. They might have other things they are reading (I know I try and read my purchases content first, to get my money's worth!) or they might have families and lives and jobs. Or they read like me and go through phases---I was reading nothing but non-fiction awhile back, then I was reading historical fiction and now I am into suspense novels and Star Trek (I want to get through my Fictionwise backlog!) and will probably go back to the historical stuff next. That does not mean I downloaded these books intending to never read them and leave the author hanging. It just means I downloaded them intending to get to them one of these days, and the day of me getting to them is not today.

Maybe I am being too hard-core about this. But to me, an author who endlessly bumps their thread to either beg people to try it, or to complain that they have this many downloads but no reviews or to wonder why it's been three days since the dale ended and nobody has replied etc. is instantly going into my delete pile. It says total 'amateur hour' to me and I am not going to waste my time on a book by an author who has not seemed to grasp the basics of how to conduct themselves professionally.

I'd say you've summed it pretty well for me. Being a writer, I used to try and cut other writers more slack than I might normally, but I tell you what, some of them don't try very hard to be personable. From the looks of some posts, they are doing everything humanly possible to annoy and alienate.

[khalleron]

Thanks for starting this thread, ficbot. It's an issue I've been contemplating as I launch my first self-pubbed novel.

So far, I've limited myself to posting in forums where I'm already known. I figure it's my job to tell people it's there, then if it's any good, it should spread by word of mouth. If it's not, well <shrug>, there's always the next book to work on.

It's even a bit more problematic here because I received so much help from MR members during the writing/design process, that I want to share with all of you how the book is doing, but I don't want to appear like a spammer. So how much sharing is too much sharing?

I can't believe someone would whine about a 4-star review. I just got my first reader review on Smashwords, a 4-star, and I was very pleased. I thought the review was thoughtful and fair, and it was from someone I don't know in any form, so it was even more appreciated.

I hope I would view a 1-star review with the same respect, if someone put as much thought into the criticism. But I'm glad my first one was nice, because, hey, I'm human.

[kcmay]

Oh man! I love four-star reviews! I rate *most* books I like with 4 stars. The 5-star reviews are for books that truly stand apart as exceptional -- like Mistborn and Elantris, which elevated Brandon Sanderson to near the top of my Favorite Writers list. To me, 5 stars means I loved it so much, I'd read it again. Four stars is a book I really enjoyed and would recommend to others, so it's a great rating!

[GraceKrispy]

I agree- If I give a book a 4 star rating, I loved it. Thatʻs why I was really taken aback.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by kcmay

Oh man! I love four-star reviews! I rate *most* books I like with 4 stars. The 5-star reviews are for books that truly stand apart as exceptional -- like Mistborn and Elantris, which elevated Brandon Sanderson to near the top of my Favorite Writers list. To me, 5 stars means I loved it so much, I'd read it again. Four stars is a book I really enjoyed and would recommend to others, so it's a great rating!

Exactly - if you give good books 5 stars, what do you give great ones?

I'd rather have an honest assessment than an over-inflated rating. The stars are there for the *readers*, not to give the writers an ego-boo.