Getting Down With The Facts
In the play "Lover's Vows," which appears in Mansfield Park (the book I just redid as Bellevere), the character Count Cassel has a ridiculous speech about all the bad habits he's picked up everywhere he's been around the world. "In my travels I have learnt . . . delicacy in Italy, hauteur in Spain, in England sincerity, Scotland frugality, etc." Similarly, in my travels as author, with over ten years under my belt, I have well learnt the meaning of the word SPAM. There are people out there who are so spammy in all their behaviors they seem to be the incarnation of Spam with no other identity. Relationships, projects, conversations, reviews, friendships, romances--sadly, everything on earth--can become flooded with spammers. These are not real people in your life or in your professional interests. (In fact, it's a question of some concern whether they're still real people at all, to anyone, because they never do anything useful.)
So if you're reading this and just starting out as an author--or as anything else, like a human being--here's a list of things I've learnt in my travels around the internet. Avoid these things and anyone who does them. They are SPAM and attention to them is hours spent wasting your life; years you'll never get back; dead-end friendships; no financial return; and focus away from something much more deserving. There are people out there who deserve your time and there are other people who are trying to take your time away. So here's a list of things I've learned to tune out:
The review culture. Reviews, period, except for independent editorial reviews. I'm far more likely to read or watch something with fewer reviews. What I think of the product is more important than what someone else thinks and I never ask for reviews and rarely read them.
Vague negative feedback. Phrases like "confusing," "didn't connect to the characters," "insufficient story arcs," "sloppy writing/editing," and "not in the target audience" are just Spam trying to drown the product. I truly just tune this out, whether it's said about me or about someone else.
"Signed copies." Books certainly aren't more valuable to me because someone's handwriting is scribbled rather badly in one corner. I'm suspicious of the whole wish to set up a kind of relationship based on these exchanges, since my experience is the person is much more interested in some unspecified friendship than in my writing--so wasted marketing there.
Efforts to assign marketing brackets not appropriate for your book. You must have a glamorous woman posing full-length on your cover; you must include more or less romance; you must do something historical, especially in the Christian market I was at during a phase of my career. This is nonsense. Those books are not more read, and they flood book resales en masse in such piles no one could ever hope to buy or reuse them. These things are flatly a waste of time trying to supersede stories with content.
"Social networking." After 10 years, I've found this just doesn't work. People's insincerity is rampant and rife. They do nothing but Spam me with snotty questions about my work (I couldn't possibly be real, I couldn't possibly be serious, I couldn't possibly be making money.) People assume I'm there for relationships, especially mildly disrespectful ones, or to listen to THEM for hours instead of promoting my work. Time is money and time spent on social media is money lost.
To be continued in a later post. There will be more updates.
So if you're reading this and just starting out as an author--or as anything else, like a human being--here's a list of things I've learnt in my travels around the internet. Avoid these things and anyone who does them. They are SPAM and attention to them is hours spent wasting your life; years you'll never get back; dead-end friendships; no financial return; and focus away from something much more deserving. There are people out there who deserve your time and there are other people who are trying to take your time away. So here's a list of things I've learned to tune out:
The review culture. Reviews, period, except for independent editorial reviews. I'm far more likely to read or watch something with fewer reviews. What I think of the product is more important than what someone else thinks and I never ask for reviews and rarely read them.
Vague negative feedback. Phrases like "confusing," "didn't connect to the characters," "insufficient story arcs," "sloppy writing/editing," and "not in the target audience" are just Spam trying to drown the product. I truly just tune this out, whether it's said about me or about someone else.
"Signed copies." Books certainly aren't more valuable to me because someone's handwriting is scribbled rather badly in one corner. I'm suspicious of the whole wish to set up a kind of relationship based on these exchanges, since my experience is the person is much more interested in some unspecified friendship than in my writing--so wasted marketing there.
Efforts to assign marketing brackets not appropriate for your book. You must have a glamorous woman posing full-length on your cover; you must include more or less romance; you must do something historical, especially in the Christian market I was at during a phase of my career. This is nonsense. Those books are not more read, and they flood book resales en masse in such piles no one could ever hope to buy or reuse them. These things are flatly a waste of time trying to supersede stories with content.
"Social networking." After 10 years, I've found this just doesn't work. People's insincerity is rampant and rife. They do nothing but Spam me with snotty questions about my work (I couldn't possibly be real, I couldn't possibly be serious, I couldn't possibly be making money.) People assume I'm there for relationships, especially mildly disrespectful ones, or to listen to THEM for hours instead of promoting my work. Time is money and time spent on social media is money lost.
To be continued in a later post. There will be more updates.
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