The Meaning(less) of Like
Before I get started, I need to provide a little background information. I own a publishing company that I founded back in 1997, Active Synapse, and we publish three graphic novels ("Clan Apis", "The Sandwalk Adventures", "Optical Allusions", all by the talented Jay Hosler) and five books ("Prey Until Dawn" which is a combined version of its four components, "Prey Until Dawn: Tales of the Yellow Book: One", "Prey Until Dawn: Tales of the Yellow Book: Two", Prey Until Dawn: Tales of the Yellow Book: Three", "Prey Until Dawn: Tales of the Yellow Book: Four", all by yours truly). Active Synapse has an informational website at www.ActiveSynapse.com that details all pertinent information.
Like most people with a public email address, I get lots of email for lots of reasons. Ignoring the tremendous volume of fake PayPal notices, porn, and male enhancement spam, the emails break down into two basic types: "I like your books" and "I want to give you advice".
As you can imagine, I enjoy receiving and reading the "I like your books" emails. It makes everyone happy, author and publisher alike. Keep sending them, I love to read them.
My beef is with the second type of email, the "I want to give you advice" type. After being a publisher for the last sixteen years, getting advice from someone with absolutely no experience as an author, publisher, or business person is like being handed a mason jar filled with warm spit. It's not good for anything, nobody wants it, and I don't know what to do with it. Directly biting the head off someone trying to offer advice isn't overly gracious, but neither is offering unsolicited advice. I figure that I'll handle it indirectly and passive-aggressively with this blog. If you sent me advice, I'm sure it was really, really helpful and I'm obviously talking about someone else.
Lately, the advice emails have been harping on adding a Facebook "Like" button to my website. You know, if you find my website, that's great. If you read through it, that's even better. If you go buy my books because of it, bingo, that's the whole point! But what good is a Facebook "Like" button? To me, it's saying "if you enjoyed this website, you will enjoy looking at another website that contains the exact same information". I simply don't see the value in maintaining two websites with identical information. You found my real website, so going off to find my Facebook website changes nothing and I would prefer you go off to find my books on Amazon instead. Facebook “likes” cannot be deposited in the bank and do not drive sales, so they are worth just a little bit less than real page hits. The information displayed and customization allowed on a Facebook page is highly limited in both form and format, not to mention subject to the scrutiny of a nameless Facebook administrator of dubious skill and training. I didn't start my own business to get a new boss or to limit my creativity or expression thereof. Anyone can find and see my real website with a Google search, but only Facebook users can find my Facebook site. This means, at best, Facebook "likes" are merely a subset of people who already found my real website. Facebook people are not meaningless and good on you if you use that “Like Me On Facebook” option on your website. But for me, the extra work required to essentially duplicate my real website doesn't hold any value or make any sense.
And please don't ask to be my friend on Facebook! I'm sure you are pleasant and nice and not a foil-hat wearing, racist, homophobic, religious and political zealot, but I use Facebook to keep in touch with my actual friends and family. Family is blood, so you can't really join that crew with the click of a mouse button. Friends are trusted people willing to help me hide a body at 3am after my van gets stuck in the snow (or already have done so). Between the two groups, I have enough foil-hat wearing, racist, homophobic, religious and political zealots to last a lifetime, so thanks, but no thanks. I do appreciate you being a fan, I really do, but entry to my inner circle requires a bit more than bad advice and a “Like”.
"Like" this blog one billion times to make sunshine shoot out of my unicorn's butt.
Like most people with a public email address, I get lots of email for lots of reasons. Ignoring the tremendous volume of fake PayPal notices, porn, and male enhancement spam, the emails break down into two basic types: "I like your books" and "I want to give you advice".
As you can imagine, I enjoy receiving and reading the "I like your books" emails. It makes everyone happy, author and publisher alike. Keep sending them, I love to read them.
My beef is with the second type of email, the "I want to give you advice" type. After being a publisher for the last sixteen years, getting advice from someone with absolutely no experience as an author, publisher, or business person is like being handed a mason jar filled with warm spit. It's not good for anything, nobody wants it, and I don't know what to do with it. Directly biting the head off someone trying to offer advice isn't overly gracious, but neither is offering unsolicited advice. I figure that I'll handle it indirectly and passive-aggressively with this blog. If you sent me advice, I'm sure it was really, really helpful and I'm obviously talking about someone else.
Lately, the advice emails have been harping on adding a Facebook "Like" button to my website. You know, if you find my website, that's great. If you read through it, that's even better. If you go buy my books because of it, bingo, that's the whole point! But what good is a Facebook "Like" button? To me, it's saying "if you enjoyed this website, you will enjoy looking at another website that contains the exact same information". I simply don't see the value in maintaining two websites with identical information. You found my real website, so going off to find my Facebook website changes nothing and I would prefer you go off to find my books on Amazon instead. Facebook “likes” cannot be deposited in the bank and do not drive sales, so they are worth just a little bit less than real page hits. The information displayed and customization allowed on a Facebook page is highly limited in both form and format, not to mention subject to the scrutiny of a nameless Facebook administrator of dubious skill and training. I didn't start my own business to get a new boss or to limit my creativity or expression thereof. Anyone can find and see my real website with a Google search, but only Facebook users can find my Facebook site. This means, at best, Facebook "likes" are merely a subset of people who already found my real website. Facebook people are not meaningless and good on you if you use that “Like Me On Facebook” option on your website. But for me, the extra work required to essentially duplicate my real website doesn't hold any value or make any sense.
And please don't ask to be my friend on Facebook! I'm sure you are pleasant and nice and not a foil-hat wearing, racist, homophobic, religious and political zealot, but I use Facebook to keep in touch with my actual friends and family. Family is blood, so you can't really join that crew with the click of a mouse button. Friends are trusted people willing to help me hide a body at 3am after my van gets stuck in the snow (or already have done so). Between the two groups, I have enough foil-hat wearing, racist, homophobic, religious and political zealots to last a lifetime, so thanks, but no thanks. I do appreciate you being a fan, I really do, but entry to my inner circle requires a bit more than bad advice and a “Like”.
"Like" this blog one billion times to make sunshine shoot out of my unicorn's butt.
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