Nurturing + $1 = A Cup of Coffee

( although, it would have to be cheap coffee …)

Let’s talk about nurturing. It sounds nice, doesn’t it? (Actually, it’s starting to sound annoying to me, but some people still think it sounds nice). It sounds like somebody holding your hand:

“A Pair of Hands – Holding Hands” – a Creative Commons image by RichardBH

And holding hands is nice, right?

There’s still this weird myth out there that one of the reasons you really need to resist self-publishing and, instead, repeatedly fling your manuscript (and, possibly, your sanity) up against the firewalls of traditional publishing, is that if you miraculously make it in, you’ll be nurtured.

Your hand will be held.

There are so many stories about this, all the time. I’ll just pick the most recent one I saw, on The Huffington Post, where they say a self-publishing con is that “You have to do all your own promotion,” whereas, if you become traditionally published, the publisher will do some of that for you.

This story is actually better than many, in that they admit the publisher will only do “some” promotion for you. Then again, the story is terrible in that it still says, “Once you sign with a publishing company …” Ha! As if! How about, “If you’re one of the one per cent who signs with a publishing company …” – seriously, folks, I cannot say it often enough – it is not a choice between self-publishing and trad publishing – it’s a choice between self-publishing and pursuing the faint possibility of trad publishing. To say otherwise is wrong and misleading … but that’s a story for another day.

Back to nurturing …

As many of you know, I (a trad-pubbed author who now proudly and happily embraces the self-pub career path) started a collective called Horseback Reads. This includes me and six other authors – some of whom have previously been trad-pubbed, but all of whom are now actively self-pubbing.

The other day a comment was left on our generic web form by a publicist from an imprint of one of the “Big Five” publishers. She was pushing a horse book. At least I think she was. There was no introduction, no “Hi, how-are-ya.” There was no explanation of why she had come to our site. There was just a synopsis of the book dive-bombed into our comments form, followed by her contact information.

On the one hand, I guess you could call this nurturing. Here is an actual real, live publicist (I wasn’t sure they actually existed) “promoting” a book. Cool, right?

Well, here are the reasons I think you don’t want this kind of “help” at all – not even for free – and especially not when you’re taking the massive hit on royalties the author of the “promoted” book is:

1) Effort. Like I said, there was no preamble, no pitch, no introduction. What were we expected to do with this information? There was no hint. Does the publicist want us to review the book? Is she asking if the author can do a guest post? What? I have no idea …

2) Research. If the publicist looked at our site, she’d see we’re seven authors promoting our own books. We do, actually, promote other people’s books from time-to-time – it’s part of what we believe in – but there needs to be a compelling reason to do so (like we LOVED the book). We need to believe the book offers value to our readers. See point #1 – what is the pitch to us, that will make us want to feature this book?

3) Quality. While I’m not revealing the imprint, publicist’s name, author’s name, or title (to protect the somewhat innocent) I will copy the following sentence into this post: “Please reach out if you have not would like a copy of the book.” This is high quality promotional support from a major publishing house …

4) Follow through. Although I initially felt silence was the best reply to this poorly crafted effort, in the end I decided to reply, just for fun. And when I did, guess what I got? An Out-of-Office automated reply. That’s right – the publicist ramped up this “great” campaign for this author’s book and then promptly got out of Dodge. So if I had decided I “have not would like a copy of the book” I guess it wouldn’t be coming anytime soon …

5) Irony. I mean, really, it comes down to how weird it is that the big machine of publishing is asking a bunch of self-published authors to promote their books for them. I can’t fully go into all the reasons why that’s weird … it just so IS.

Bottom line, with promotion like this, you’d be better off with obscurity.

And, please don’t forget, this “promotion” costs authors. Dearly. I keep seventy per cent of my self-pubbed royalties. I earn more on a $2.99 sale of Appaloosa Summer than I do on a $12.95 sale of Objects in Mirror. Much more. It’s all the publicity, and promotion, and nurturing.

I decided a long time ago, I don’t need to pay anybody to hold my hand.

You don’t either. Really, you don’t.