A Brief Note on Self-Promotion

In case you might not have noticed, I have a new book coming out next week.

It’s a nice thing to say, and to be able to tell people. “I have a new book coming out next week.” And, of course, you have to tell people, because (as it happens) people are the ones who buy books, and you want people to buy books if you are an author. Because, if nobody ever bought books (and we’re getting closer to this than anyone expects) no one would write books. Buying books makes authors happy, but buying books makes authors necessary. 

I want you to buy my book (you know, the one that comes out next week). To do that, I have to let you know that the book exists, and that I wrote it. This requires what is somewhat euphemistically called “promotion” and should be known as “Hold still while I get you your credit card so you can buy my book, they’re soft restraints, they won’t hurt a bit unless you struggle, STOP DOING THAT.”

Promotion is bad. Promotion means commercials and advertising and propaganda and all sorts of bad things. Promotion is capitalism reduced to the level of a five-year-old whining child. “I want an Elsa doll, there’s a Toys R Us, can we go there now, please please, pretty please? Why not? IT’S NOT FAIR.” (Actual quotes, somewhat paraphrased, original in stereo.) Everyone, at some level, hates promotion, largely because we’re exposed to it so often and because it’s so prevalent, and (most of the time) because it’s so poorly done.

But there is, quite literally, no substitute for it. And, worse, when you’re an “author-publisher,” which is a euphemism for “self-published author,” which is basically saying “I wrote a book and no sane and reasonable person with the adequate expertise would agree to publish it, so I did it myself and SUCK IT, GATEKEEPERS,” then you have to do all of it yourself. This is called self-promotion.

This is difficult. The famous Chuck Wendig piece on rejection says that dealing with the reality of rejection is like saying, “Eventually you’re going to have to fistfight a bear,” Dealing with the reality of self-promotion is like saying, “Eventually, you’re going to have to put on a floppy hat and big shoes and stand in the middle of Penn Station doing  a Mexican hat dance while passerby pelt you with fruit.”

I don’t like doing self-promotion. I don’t like it because it’s intrusive and annoying and it primarily reaches out to one’s friends. I don’t like it because it’s usually ineffective. I don’t like doing it because (let’s face it) I am still somewhat, you know, embarrassed about self-publishing and having to do it and not being good enough to be published by traditional means. And I don’t like self-promotion because I am not good at it.

More than anything else, though, I don’t like self-promotion because I don’t want to do it. Not that I don’t think I’m too good to do it, or that I am so awesome that I don’t need to do it. I don’t enjoy it. It is like eating broccoli with cauliflower sauce. And no matter how much you do it–how many tweets you tweet, how many review requests you make–it isn’t enough. It isn’t ever enough.

So I’m not doing it here, not in this post. If you want to find the book, it isn’t hard. If you want to read it, I would appreciate it. If you can review it, or tell others, that’s wonderful. But I’m going to take a moment here to apologize for doing so much self-promotion, to promise not to be a jerk about doing it in the future, and to try to remind myself that my self-worth is not based on how many books I sell.