The Divide Between Public and Personal
And now here I am, far removed from that child who lived only for stories and didn’t give a damn about where the author lived, who they voted for, what they looked like. I just knew there were writers whose work I loved, and if I saw their name I knew I was going to be in for a brilliant read. When I was small, it was things like The Animals of Farthing Wood, then later Watership Down, Duncton Chronicles (you may be spotting a theme here…) and everything Diana Wynne-Jones wrote, then still later David Gemmel, Ursula Le Guin, Mary Gentle, Tanith Lee, Clive Barker, Stephen King, Tad Williams, Jeff Noon, Poppy Z Brite….
And for some reason, all were dead. (Eventually, of course, I realised that they were not.)
Now I’m a writer, and I’m very much alive, and unlike many of the writers from my youth, I don’t have the luxury of being allowed personal anonymity. We are bombarded with the idea that writers must be OUT there, ONLINE, have a MEDIA PRESENCE, ENGAGE, ENGAGE, ENGAGE!
And I find it really tiring and occasionally anxiety-inducing. What’s suitable to share, despite being personal, what’s too much? When does “sharing” become monologuing, self-trumpeting nonsense?
It’s a hard question to answer. I’m really not sure what the balance is, and how to reach it and stay there.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you like and/or expect from authors in this time of incessant social media. What you think is too much, what’s not enough?
Perhaps the answer is simply to shut up and go into hermitage, but I don;t think publishers will be thrilled with that suggestion!
(cross-posted from my Patreon)
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But I really, really hate this thing of demanding authors be online and bare all. If someone wants to, that's fine - like I said, I follow blogs and newsletters and whatnot. But I don't expect it of any author. To me it's tied up with the problem the publishing industry has with marketing, i.e., it doesn't, so authors have to spend all their time marketing themselves via social media. In the hopes that when they bring out a book, there'll be enough people interested enough to buy it, I guess. And I understand the logic, but I think marketing books should be a publisher's responsibility, and yet I've seen so little of that over the years. I discover new books through word of mouth, or bloggers who, like me, scour Ringshadow's Forthcoming pages - or stumble across interesting-sounding books on Netgalley. I know sometimes publishers send advanced reading copies to bloggers directly and unasked for, if that book blogger is big enough and the publisher is hoping to create hype for that particular book. But that's it. For years now it's seemed like the responsibility of marketing a book, getting it known and out there, is on the author. Which is mad to me. I'm an international business student, and I know full well that marketing and creative writing are completely different skills and rarely go together! It's bad business practice to make your authors do your marketing, because they're not professionals at it, and that's completely aside from the unfairness of it - since you would think marketing is one of the things a publisher is supposed to contribute to the let's-turn-this-manuscript-into-a-book thing: the author writes the book, and the publisher is supposed to be the one in charge of getting it on shelves and making it sell.
I am also one of those people who despise this culture of not giving celebrities a private life, if you couldn't tell already.
I think a lot of authors worry about tooting their own horn too loudly, and they shouldn't; fans are fans, anyone following you already thinks you're awesome, and we want to hear about your books (which is the only thing that could be considered self-trumpeting, surely?) I get how that can be awkward, though. It's hard to say 'read my thing, it's awesome!' because we're all kind of taught not to say that, that that's bragging and rude, or something. And yet the lack of any real publisher-marketing makes it necessary for authors to do that.
I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I think authors should be allowed to be private if they want to, like everybody else. I like getting a head's up when an author I like is bringing out a new book, but that's really all I'd ever ask for. I'm not a very social person; I filter out all the cooking recipes and pet updates that some authors post about; on the other hand, if they want to post long essay-type things on politics or social justice or other current events, or analyses/reviews of films or other books, I usually read those. But I'm equally content with authors who have no or virtually no social media presence at all - as far as I know Anne Bishop, one of my favourite writers, has no social media profiles at all, just an email address where fans can send fanmail. I guess I do like there to be some way of contacting an author directly - and not through Facebook or Twitter, urgh - if only so I can ask how to arrange for signed copies of their books! But that's really it for me.