Emerging from the Mist

After @gioclairval posted this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-henry-sterry/mark-coker_b_2594203.html
on FB, it got me thinking again about all this book marketing nonsense. Which is why the photo is more appropriate than I first realized. Mark Coker is the founder of SmashWords and basically that post tells why he began the service. Because it is a service no matter how you look at it. But because of that service and Amazon's Kindle, the whole book world seems to have gone crazy.

Originally I was going to title this 'what the heck?' Because I felt like that after I'd trolled through some of Twitter and FB, overwhelmed by the number of people pushing their books. It wasn't just that, however, because you have to advertise to get noticed. Going back to the original article and some of the responses to it on FB, it seems the only conclusion people came to is that to sell books you have to put out money. On advertising, on giveaways, on jewellery, for goodness sake. Yes, not only do folk lure others onto their sites with all this, but shinies as well.
Good Lord.
At conventions I have often seen people give away bookmarks, and that is a lovely idea. But socks and jewellery and...
So now, not only do I have to compete against a million other books, I have to start knitting and etsy?
How lovely, you might think as a reader. As a writer I am thinking, if I add up all the man hours it took me to write the book, add in a marketing professional and an editor, travel expenses and jewellery...the time I spend on twitter etc...
No. Just. No.
When do these people have time to write?
Look. Book giveaways I can see. Dropping the price of a book to encourage purchasers while you are finding your feet? Yes. Writers don't expect to make money on the first few books. Blog tours and talking, both locally and at conventions. It *is* a case of getting your name out there, getting noticed, hopefully because people enjoyed the BOOK, not because it came with shinies.
The shiny, surely, are the words you have written for others to enjoy. Is that no longer enough?
Has everybody gone mad? Or am I incredibly innocent?

Today's photo: Tank in a dust storm - Afghanistan - Richard Curnow