Before I share this post, I want to just put it out there. We know I’m not really that versed in social media and I’ve blogged about it sooooooooooo many times I should have had it on repeat. I try, I get frustrated, I get no interaction even when I put a prompt out there for open discussion. Waxing and Waning it seems. I also feel very terrible if I’m always throwing things in people’s face. As much as I would love to sell my book, I also don’t want to be the author that get’s on people’s nerves by virtually jumping up in the air waving my hands screaming “pick me! pick me!” It may work for other’s but apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that it’s just not for everyone and I totally feel the pain.
I’m leaving snippets but feel free to link over to the article…..one that I have no cross promotion involved in AT ALL (not even a WordPress)
Please shut up: Why self-promotion as an author doesn’t work.
Let’s talk about marketing, shall we?
It’s 2012. I’m sitting at a table in the front of the room, a microphone poised to capture my every word. At this local writing conference, I am considered a rock star. Everyone in the audience wants what I have–a three-book contract with a traditional publishing company. Their eyes are hungry, their pens poised over notebooks. We take a question from the crowd.
“How do I build a platform and make money with my blog?” a woman asks.
“Build a time machine and go back to 2005 and start your blog then,” I say.
Because it’s the truth. In this oversaturated market, the only ways to build a following and profit from it are to have been around for 5-10 years already or to already be famous. The woman sits down, unhappy with my answer. But no one else on the panel has a better one. Because there is no easy answer, no secret to building a following.
Scary, right?
It scares me, too.
From the very beginning of my writing career, I’ve been told that publishers want a writer to have a brand, a platform, a blog, a built-in army of fans. But that was 2009, and now it’s 2015, and that doesn’t work anymore. Book blogs become paid services, giveaways become chum pits, conference-goers dump purses full of business cards out in the trash to make room for more free books that they won’t read. It is virtually impossible to get your blog seen or your book discovered. We are glutted with information, and yet our answer to “How do I get people to buy my book?” is social media marketing, which is basically throwing more information out into the void.
Why?
1. Because Twitter doesn’t sell books.
2. Because Facebook hides posts for blackmail purposes.
3. Because people aren’t on Instagram to find new books.
4. Because tumblr is not a spectator sport.
5. Because book reviews are not a place for the author.
6. Because I hate newsletters and hashtag parties too much to inflict them on anyone else.
……………………..Would fishing be fun if the fish jumped out of the ocean and smacked you in the face?
Nope.
And that’s what a lot of social media by authors is starting to look like, to feel like: being smacked in the face, repeatedly, by hundreds of fish. Being pushed. Being assaulted and yelled at and chased. Being manipulated and prodded and possibly tricked. ………
J.S. Riddle 