Forum Wars; An Exercise in Idiocy

Good morning/early afternoon everyone. Essa is up with laryngitis from chain smoking and a deep feeling of shame over what I did last night.

Nope, there isn’t a hot dude passed out in my bed. If that were the case, I think we all know I would just take a picture and post it online, no shame involved.

Nope, what I did was so much worse than sex with a random stranger. I got involved in a forum war. It was in the kindle direct forum, where a lot of self published authors go to get advice, share sales numbers, ect. I went to get some advice on increasing British market sales for my book, which are almost non existent. I got a lot of great tips and a couple of people in the forum even bought my book.

As I was wandering out the forum door, glowing from the unexpectedly pleasant experience, I saw a thread that was clearly designed to be, for lack of a better word, ‘flame bait’. The only purpose of this thread was to start an argument. I clicked on it with only the intention of reading the post and enjoying the drama.

But suddenly, 4 beers in, responding seemed like a great idea. For anyone who has ever been in a flame war, you know that, like the Mafia, once your in, its very difficult to get out. Long story short, I was up until 3 am trading drunken barbs with a stranger. Really bad drunken barbs. I might have called his mother a prostitute several times. He might have accused me of giving myself an abortion with a coat hanger (or suggested I do…but that wouldn’t really make sense because I’m not pregnant) From there, the conversation deteriorated pretty quickly.

Here’s the thing. They guy I was arguing with is known for his flame wars. He generally has 2 or 3 going on at the same time and he always does it with the intention of starting a fight. Which makes we wonder why? Is he just attention seeking? Or is there a method to his madness?

To explain, let me bring up the case study of one “Honey Boo Boo”. As many might know, Honey Boo Boo is currently famous for being famous. She’s a pageant baby with an overweight mom, pregnant teen sister and some serious redneck routes. Right now, she has one of the most popular shows on (snort) the Learning Channel. Why? It’s not because people like her and her family and want them to succeed. It’s because people like making fun of them.

But who’s really laughing? Everyone who wants to point and laugh at the yokels? Or the yokels themselves who are easily making 6 figures just to be the subject of some ridicule?

Is any publicity good publicity? I will tell you, when I was participating in the flame war shenanigans, I did see a moderate bump in my book sales. Was is a coincidence or was my bad behavior being rewarded by increased name recognition? Despite the fact that this ‘flame king’ is an indie author whose book is priced on par with those of trade publications, he still manages to stay in the top 100k. It might not sound like an impressive number, but he’s selling at least one or two books every other day. That ain’t bad for a high priced book.

But is it really worth it? Is he getting sales because he’s a great writer, or is he getting sales because he’s infamous? In the time I spent sucked into this guy’s vortex of crazy, I could have been working on my sequel. If I keep going at this rate, I’ll have no choice but the spam the boards with my own flame bait posts and hope that psychotic sells.

But psychotic is generally short lived. Honey Boo Boo isn’t going to be around in 10 years. She probably won’t even be around in 2. People will be tired of her shenanigans because she’s not building something that will last. She’s a joke and eventually, any joke, no matter how funny, won’t be funny anymore.

So I’ve decided not to go the trashy route. I’m not going to lurk in forums and participate in flame wars and I’m a bit annoyed at myself for getting sucked in at all. I have little enough free time as it is and I don’t need to spend it insulting someone I don’t even know, playing along and bumping his numbers for his own crazy ends. Instead, I’m going back to working on my book and reminding myself that just because I’m an indie author doesn’t mean I shouldn’t still be a professional.

Also, I would like everyone to note that I managed to get the word ‘shenanigans’ into this post three times. It’s going to be a good day.