The wallpapers are in!

You can view them right here.

Now, I disqualified two out of the gate — I didn’t want to, because disqualifying things makes panda bears sad, and making panda bears sad makes me sad. But one of them had only a Ray Bradbury quote on it (and while I love Ray Bradbury, he is not the keeper of this site in ghostly form). The other one had a flowchart somewhat paraphrasingly terribleminds-related, but the material was original and my fear is that if the wallpaper ever went around, it would be attributed to me when really, it was someone else’s IP.

So, that’s that.

Now, your job is to go to the set of wallpapers and choose your favorite. The way you choose your favorite is easy — drop into the comments and identity by number which one you like the most. Do not vote for two. Just one. (And make it clear which one you’re voting for — sometimes people comment and go back and forth on which one they want, and that makes it difficult to see which one they actually like the most.)

You will notice that one of those wallpapers is one that has no number.

Because I have already chosen it as my winner, so it’s out of the pool.

That one is this reimagining of ARE YOU A REAL WRITER, my flowchart.

It’s by Rebekeh Turner, and it’s right here:

 

(View the original size version here.)

Rebekeh, you should totally contact me at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

And congrats! That rules.

Anyway, get to voting.

Use the comments.

Vote for one early.

You’ve got 24 hours (voting ends at 9AM tomorrow).

EDIT! WE HAVE ANOTHER TWO WINNERS.

First up: the winner, quite handily, of the voting, was:

#5! By CAL!

And I’ve also chosen a random winner:

#4! The bediapered penmonkey by LISA H!

Both CAL and LISA H — bounce me an email at terribleminds at gmail.

Congrats!

 

It’s so common a refrain at this point the whole Internet should just get it tattooed on its forehead backward so it can read the message in the mirror every time it brushes its teeth:

DON’T READ THE COMMENTS.

“Hey, here’s a great article about female empowerment BUT DON’T READ THE COMMENTS.”

“Read this news story about the Middle East peace process BUT DON’T READ THE COMMENTS.”

“I found this really great blog post on raising children / using blenders / making cat videos / choosing the right soup crackers BUT FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THE GODS IN ALL THE HEAVENS DON’T READ THE COMMENTS OH GOD DON’T DO IT DO NOT GAZE INTO WHAT IS EFFECTIVELY NOT SAURON’S EYE BUT RATHER, SAURON’S WINKING, LAVA-DISGORGING BUTTHOLE.”

It has become the way of the Internet. We have come to understand that the comments section is not unlike the Internet’s own septic system: it sits below every post and video and article, collecting all the trash and shit and evil clowns that have been cast down from above. It’s positively dystopian. Up above are the elites, zipping about on their information superhighway, while below, the underpass has some kind of violent hobo fight club playing out again and again.

Internet comment sections are routinely rife with abuse. People go there not to have salient discussions, but to have those salient discussions highjacked by psychopathic bandits. Or they go there to be the bandits themselves: derailers, abusers, sexist shit-hats, racist fuckwits. That’s not to say comments sections are without positive discussion. That’s hardly ever the reality. Truth is, you can go to most comments sections and find enlightening, illuminating commentary. You just have to wade through a toxic slurry to get to it. That slurry represents the worst the Internet has to offer, and there you are, crawling through it on your belly like someone trying to find his watch in a gymnasium full of medical waste.

And it’s our own fault.

It’s our own damn fault.

We have failed to tend the field and now that shit’s all thick with weeds.

We own this problem. Collectively.

But we can also fix this problem, collectively.

If you own any online entity that offers up a comments section, you need to do one of two things:

a) Moderate the holy hell out of that comments section.

…or, if you cannot manage that task:

b) Shut down the comments section.

If you own a site where abuse is first allowed and then tolerated once its in the door — that’s not all the fault of the commenters. That’s on you. You’ve created the horrible space and let the monsters frolic there while you turn away. This is especially true with big sites that gets tons of comment traffic. (And here, quite likely, the insidious reality is that turbulent comments sections help those sites — because some people click more just to watch the endlessly replaying car crash going on in that “discussion,” and clicks mean revenue.) It’s not just about programmatic filters, but also about actual humans looking at comments and making editorial decisions about what can go there. Humans will moderate other humans. It has been our way before and must be again.

And here you might say, “Buh-buh-wuh!” And you’ll stammer out something about democracy and freedom of speech and censorship. But I’d ask you shift your POV a little bit. Look at a comments section like it’s the letter section of a newspaper. (For those who don’t know what that is, once upon a time young intrepid children rode their bikes down the neighborhood streets of America, flinging these rolled-up wads of murdered tree, and on the murdered trees someone had printed old, vetted, edited news stories.) The letter section was not a free-for-all. They did not print the rantings of every froth-mouthed cuckootrousers who wanted to air his conspiratorial, hate-fueled grievances with the world. They moderated those letter sections.

Consider, too, shifting your POV and trying to remember that the comments section is a public section. And, as such, it should abide by the relative rules of public discourse. Not entirely, of course, and I recognize this metaphor has its limits, but just the same, you can’t go into Target and take a dump on the barcode scanner. You can’t wander around in public space just yelling hateful shit. (Well, okay, you can in some areas, but it’s not actually encouraged and can have consequences.) Every square inch of floor is not a soapbox. Every gulp of oxygen is not fuel for someone’s belligerence. Every open space is not a concert hall for hatefuckers.

You do not own all the comments sections in all the world.

If you host a blog or any other site, then you own one: your own.

Moderate your comments section, folks.

And have a comments policy in place — I just clarified mine, for the record. And have a way to report abuse, too. (You can always report abuse here to me at terribleminds at gmail dot com.)

This isn’t a perfect solution. Any moderation runs the risk of shutting out voices that have dissenting opinions. It potentially creates an echo chamber if taken too far. (Though even here I’d argue that a safe space echo chamber is preferable to a free-for all prison knife-fight — it’s nice to have voices be heard, but the questions you gotta ask are: heard by whom, and to what effect?) If we are to hope that comments sections can actually be a place for discussion or even argument and not, say, the equivalent of an orgy of Cookie Monsters on a permanent meth binge, then we need to start doing something. Tolerating dissenting opinions does not mean tolerating abuse. It does not mean violating safe spaces online. It does not mean letting the Internet look like something out of Mad Max. This is on us to fix. Some sites do it. Some do it well, others do it poorly, but doing it at all is better than looking the other way. It’s not about creating some singular standard — but those of us with gardens are responsible for tending them to whatever extent we can.

It’s funny — I worked in pen and paper roleplaying games for a long time, and one of the hallmarks of that industry is people coming up to you and telling you about their characters. “I HAVE A LEVEL 14 SPACE JANITOR WITH THE SPECIAL FEAT: DEADLY JAZZ HANDS.” And you nod and smile and say, yes, that’s nice, but you learn to fear those not uncommon moments where someone wants to fix you to a spot and unload their entire character sheet into your brain.

But in fiction, people don’t do that. (Whew.) We’re trained to give a log line, a short elevator pitch (IT’S ALIENS MEETS GOOD WILL HUNTING AS A SPACE JANITOR PLAYS HOST TO A PARASITE NAMED ‘CUPID’ AND HE FINDS LOVE AND…). But really, we still need to be thinking about — and talking about — characters. Character is our entry point into a story. Characters are why we stick around. They’re how we relate. They’re why we give a shit.

So.

Whatever you’re writing right now? Tell us about the protagonist.

Don’t go on too long about it — a paragraph or two, no more — but tell us who they are. What they want. What drives them. What opposes them. Open that character up for discussion and critique. Think about whether or not the character works, or if there’s more you could do — and if there is, ask us. Let’s crowdsource it. COMMAND THE HIVEMIND TO WORK IN YOUR FAVOR.

Or something like that.

Note: if you post about your character, you should endeavor to talk to someone else about their character, too. Quid pro quo, Clarice.

(Extra credit reading: The Zero-Fuckery Quick-Create Guide to Kick-Ass Characters.)

Last week, over 400 (!) of you wrote opening sentences for the challenge.

This week, your job is to pick one and write a story with that as your opening.

Let’s say you’ve got up to 2,000 words for this one. Write the story and post it at your online space. Link back here (with a shout-out to the author of the original sentence, please!) so we can read it. Story should be done by noon EST next Friday (the 24th).

Pick your sentence and get to writing.

Gunslinging, chain smoking, Stetson-wearing Taoist psychopomp, Elouise “Lou” Merriwether might not be a normal 19-year-old, but she’s too busy keeping San Francisco safe from ghosts, shades, and geung si to care much about that. It’s an important job, though most folks consider it downright spooky. Some have even accused Lou of being more comfortable with the dead than the living, and, well… they’re not wrong.

When Lou hears that a bunch of Chinatown boys have gone missing somewhere deep in the Colorado Rockies she decides to saddle up and head into the wilderness to investigate. Lou fears her particular talents make her better suited to help placate their spirits than ensure they get home alive, but it’s the right thing to do, and she’s the only one willing to do it.

On the road to a mysterious sanatorium known as Fountain of Youth, Lou will encounter bears, desperate men, a very undead villain, and even stranger challenges. Lou will need every one of her talents and a whole lot of luck to make it home alive…

* * *

Thinking Carefully about Representation—and Choosing to Write Inclusively—Doesn’t Make Books Less Fun

This is kind of a cheat. I knew this before drafting Vermilion. Most of my favorite novelists do this, after all. But, at the same time, I learned some valuable lessons related to the topic writing my own novel. And, in the wake of the consummately ridiculous Sad/Rabid Puppies claiming a “victory” re: this year’s eyebrow-raising Hugo slate, I feel inspired to discuss this issue.

One of the talking points beloved of the Sad Puppies is that their campaign was intended to put “fun” back in the spotlight. These Puppies claim that the Hugo is no longer the Academy Awards of good old-fashioned fun SFF, but rather a politically-motivated exercise in championing dreary, literary, “politically correct” works of speculative fiction. Where, they wail, has all the entertainment gone in SFF? Where’s the praise for novels about thewsy barbarians conflating rescue and consent? What’s up with how in all these award-nominated books about spaceships, said spaceships are full of career girls instead of cosmic bimbos? Why, they ask, must speculative fiction concern itself with homophobia, racism, transphobia, misogyny? The Sad Puppies have declared that it’s fine to have a little of that stuff, maybe sometimes, but spec fic at is core should be: worldbuilding, exposition, pew pew pew/chop chop chop, oh thank you for saving me, giggity giggity, the end—or is it?!

This argument is as disingenuous as it is fraught, and it is, to me, perhaps the saddest part about Sad Puppies. Thoughtful, inclusive writing just isn’t ever going to be “fun” to certain people. And that’s regrettable.

To bring this around to what I learned from writing Vermilion—eventually—I am a feminist who enjoys reading, watching, and experiencing art produced by and about women. And I’m pretty easy-going, in general. I certainly notice when a book or film or whatever passes the Bechdel test, but it doesn’t determine my enjoyment or approval.

But, in spite my love of and commitment to representation of women in fiction, at some point during the drafting of Vermilion, I realized that Lou, my protagonist — a woman — did not have or develop any truly meaningful, life-changing relationships with other women. This gave me pause. The novel passed the Bechdel test, multiple times over… but even so, it didn’t feel inclusive — didn’t feel complete, didn’t feel like it really represented the wealth of experiences a young woman might have on her first adventure. I did some serious soul-searching about this, including analyzing whether my impulse to rectify what I perceived as a lack was motivated by feminist impulses or writerly ones.

In the end, I realized it was both, and remedied the situation by extensively rewriting the last third of the novel to include and privilege a friendship Lou develops with a young woman named Coriander.

And you know what? The novel is way, way more fun now. Lou’s friendship with a Coriander ended up being an absolute gas to write, and then to read. I don’t usually laugh at my own writing, even when humor was my intent, but during edits I found myself snickering at their interactions. They play off one another in ways that made me excited about rewriting; they bring out one another’s characters that felt naturalistic and comfortable and vibrant. The adventure felt more adventurous, the thrills, more thrilling. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but to me at least, the end of the novel feels livelier and more satisfying for rewriting due to specifically considering issues of representation. If I hadn’t pushed myself to go further, do better, be more inclusive, I don’t think Vermilion would be as strong, as entertaining, and even—yes—as fun.

It Might Be Done, but It’ll Never Be Finished

Vermilion is now a real, actual book that people can hold in their hands, and choose or choose not to read. That’s an amazing feeling! But while I hope you read and enjoy Vermilion, the chance that I’ll sit down and read it cover to cover is slimmer than a shadow’s toot.

I find it impossible to read my writing without editing it. Heck, even after edits, copy edits, and page proofs, I really wanted to read Vermilion another time before returning the final version of the novel to my editor. Probably I would have refined it even further if I had. But I also knew I needed to be done.

There were several times during the drafting process that I knew I needed to be done, for whatever reason. It was difficult for me, acknowledging at those various points in the process that the book would never be perfect. But, in the end, the only reason it’s a real, actual book is because I forced myself to be done, even if I knew in my heart I’d never feel the novel was finished.

Cultivate Curiosity

I’m a huge fan of directed research, but today I’d like to talk about curiosity.

A few years ago I had an opportunity to tour the death facilities at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The what, you may ask? In short, DMNS has an agreement with several wildlife organizations, and whenever a creature dies, they get the corpse to play with. I mean, preserve. They strip the meat using carnivorous beetles, bleach the bones, preserve the skins or furs or feathers. It’s really cool. Cool… and pungent.

I went on this tour because when I was just starting to draft Vermilion, and in Vermilion, my main character deals quite a bit with death. She’s a psychopomp, a soul-guide, who helps unquiet ghosts and vampires and other undead find eternal rest. I figured the tour would be good research.

Well… I learned a lot on that tour, but not a single fact was relevant to my novel.

But! Afterwards, we were at our leisure to tour the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. So, I did. And what I found there actually make it into the novel.

Talking bears were always part of my vision for the weird western landscape of Vermilion. When I toured the DMNS, I learned that sea lions are related to bears, evolutionarily speaking. Well, Vermilion starts in San Francisco… and just like that, talking sea lions seemed like a really neat addition to the landscape of Lou’s hometown. They run the ferries, compete with human fisherfolk, and snooze in piles on beaches and piers when they’re not working.

I really can’t say enough good things about directed research, but in this case, stepping back and taking a little extra time to be merely curious helped me create a richer setting for my novel.

Listen, But Also Don’t Listen

I wrote the first draft of Vermilion in 2010. Over the past five years I received a substantial amount of criticism and did quite a few revisions. I showed the first draft to a ton of people, and I listened to them all, even a beta reader who told me the novel would never be published in the form it was in. (To be fair, he was right!) Two agents gave me feedback. I had a huge notebook filled with ideas, suggestions, notes, rewrite ideas…

And at some point, I stopped listening, and just followed my own heart when it came to making Vermilion the book I wanted it to be. Only I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I had to trust I knew how to tell it. While the often extensive, and always thoughtful critiques people gave me were helpful in getting the novel to a certain place, I had to go alone into the final draft. At times, I had to go against the advice of people I respected to keep Vermilion the book I wanted it to be. And in the end, I’m glad I did.

Be Proud of What You Do (And Act Like It)

Talking about one’s own writing can be weird. There are times when it is more and less appropriate, and that can sometimes be difficult for an early-career writer to navigate. But, one of the times when it’s absolutely appropriate is when an editor asks you directly about what you’re working on. Then, go for it. Be excited, be proud. Speak confidently (and succinctly!), even if it feels completely terrifying.

I ended up seated next to Vermilion’s publisher, Ross Lockhart, at a big breakfast event at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival back in 2012. We were already friendly; he’d been excited to republish my necromancer picaresque “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins” in his The Book of Cthulhu. During the breakfast he asked the dreaded question… What I was working on?

After years of conditioning to never babble about one’s in-process novels, even though he’d done the asking I struggled to confess that yes, I had a novel, and yes, it was about some stuff. It turned out that Ross is a fan of the subgenre of Hong Kong films that first inspired Vermilion, and he got super excited about the project right then and there. Lesson: learned. If I hadn’t pushed myself to speak proudly about my novel to an editor whom I knew I liked to work with, well… it might not be coming out this week, and through a publisher who really “gets” what I’m doing.

* * *

MOLLY TANZER is the Sydney J. Bounds and Wonderland Book Award-nominated author of A Pretty Mouth (Lazy Fascist, 2012), Rumbullion and Other Liminal Libations (Egaeus, 2013), Vermilion (Word Horde), and The Pleasure Merchant, forthcoming from Lazy Fascist in the fall of 2015. She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and a very bad cat. When not writing, she enjoys mixing cocktails, hiking in the Rocky Mountains, experimenting with Korean cooking, and (as of recently) training for triathlons.

Molly Tanzer: Website | Twitter

Vermilion: Amazon | B&N | Word Horde

*wheezes while stumbling down a mountain carrying ten stone tablets*

*dumps stone tablets on the ground and most of them break*

*coughs for like, 40 minutes*

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE. WHY DO PEOPLE WRITE COMMANDMENTS ON STONE TABLETS. IF GOD’S SUPPOSED TO BE ALL POWERFUL WHY DIDN’T HE JUST HAND ME AN IPAD. DOES HE HAVE A THING AGAINST APPLE? GOD’S ONE OF THOSE STRIDENT ANTI-MAC PEOPLE ISN’T HE. SO HEAVY. IT HURTS. IT HURTS SO BAD.

Ahem. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Hi!

It is time to speak about the sticky subject of self-promotion. You’re a writer. You’ve written a book and somebody — you, a big publisher, a small publisher, some spider-eating alley hobo — has published it. And now you want to know how you promote the book so that the world can fling money at your face in order to greedily consume your unrefined genius. But it’s not easy. You don’t know what works. What makes sense. You don’t want to just stand on a street corner barking at passersby and hitting children with your book. But you also recognize that you’re just one little person, not some massive beast of marketing and advertising, hissing gouts of pixelated steam and vacuuming up potential buyers into the hypno-chamber that is your belly.

What do you do? How far can you go? What should you say?

Thus, I bring you these ten tablets.

Ten commandments about self-promotion for authors. In a later post I’ll get into the larger practicalities of self-promotion — what seems to work for me, what seems to do poop-squat for me — but for now, we’re going to cover the overall basics.

Let us begin.

Thou Shalt Throw Pebbles

The self-promotional reach of a single author is not very far.

Big publishers and companies have giant cannons.

You, however, have a satchel of pebbles.

A publisher will ideally dp outreach that puts your book in front of various folks within the distribution process — book buyers, librarians, the secret tastemaker cabal that operates out of a warehouse in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. You, as lone author, do not have that effect.

The best you can do is pick up one of your pebbles and throw it.

And here you say, “But I really don’t want to throw rocks at my readers or potential readers,” and I agree (unless your readers are going through your trash cans again, at which point, let ’em fly). Instead, though, I’d ask you imagine throwing pebbles into a pond rather than at other people.

You throw your pebble into the water — with a tweet, a blog post, a conversation or interaction, a cover reveal, something, anything — and it does not make a huge splash but what it does make are ripples. The pebble’s point of impact is small, but ripples go farther. They reach unexpected parts of the pond. They reach that lilypad, that patch of cattails thrust up, that dead body over there, you know, the one the neighborhood kids are poking with a broom-handle?

Practically speaking — beyond metaphor — what this means is that your self-promotional effort will reach one, ten, maybe a hundred people, and turn some of them into readers. Mathematically, that’s not enough to sustain your career. But, consider the ripples. If your work is good and you aren’t a total fuckface, it’s a good bet that those ripples go further because the readers who read your work will now say to their readers: “Hey, this author’s book was the cat’s meow.” Then they’ll say that golden phrase: You should read it. Some of them will. And those folks may tell others and it’s like a giant Amway pyramid scheme of viral pop culture transmission.

Then, you go ahead and throw another pebble. And here’s an interesting result — some readers won’t immediately jump on a book based on a single recommendation. This is for a lot of reasons: lack of trust, limited funds, or they’re simply distracted by the bottomless (but oh so shiny) pit that is the Entire Goddamn Internet. Ah, but those same readers may take the jump when they see other mentions of your book. A second pebble creates new ripples that intersect with other ripples, and at those points of intersection you may find readers who say, “I keep hearing about this author and her books, and so I have to see what all the fuss is about.”

Here you might ask, “Well, why don’t I just fling all my pebbles into the water? I’ll load up this shotgun with all the pebbles and start firing wantonly across social media!”

First, assume the number of pebbles you have is limited. How few you have, you do not know — that is concealed from you. But assume your supply is mysteriously finite.

Second, assume that pebbles thrown and ripples made adds new pebbles to your satchel.

Third, recognize that too many ripples in the water becomes just chaos — it’s all noise and no signal. Any reflections you may have seen in the water or any elegance those ripples might have held is gone when you upend all your stones into the pond.

Thou Shalt Not Crush People With Boulders

Just as you shouldn’t explode people’s faces with your Pebble Shotgun, you also should not crush them with boulders. What I’m trying to say is, your goal in self-promotion is not to crush others beneath its weight. BUY MY BOOK BUY MY BOOK HEY YOU BUY MY BOOK DID YOU KNOW BOOK BOOK LOOK BOOK BUY IT REVIEW IT NEED IT I HAVE STOLEN YOUR PETS AND WILL NOT RETURN THEM UNTIL YOU BUUUUUY MYYYYYY BOOOOOOOK.

We’ve all seen those charming mutants who feel that the best way to let the world know about their new book is to fill up their entire Twitter feed with the same advertisement. Or they tweet it at people (likely those they perceive as tastemakers) — HEY STEPHEN KING I WROTE A BOOK HEY NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON I WROTE A BOOK HEY CVS PHARMACIES I WROTE A BOOK. Or they direct message everybody. Or they force you to join Facebook groups about their book release. Or slather you in tons of email spam from which you can never unsubscribe (it’s like herpes — once you catch it, it remains and flares up). Or they badger bookstores to carry their books and yell at them when they don’t. So many boulders. So many crushed heads.

If you do any of these things, I hate you. I hate you so bad. When you do these things, I imagine you being covered in ticks and bees and plague buboes and blinded with Axe body spray and then you’re thrown into the Sarlacc pit for good measure.

Self-promotion is a seduction, not a kick in the crotch.

Thou Shalt Always Demonstrate Your Talent

You are a writer. You tell stories.

If your self-promotion is not well-written, then you’ve really scroobled the poodle. If your self-promotion does not tell a story or use the talents you possess as a storyteller, then once again, you have supremely doinked the donkey.

You’re a writer. Your entire job is to — inside the pages of your book — get people interested so that they read past the first sentence, first paragraph, first page, first chapter. The sum total of your modus operandi is to keep their eyeballs entangled with the story you’re telling. Turn that same talent to self-promotion. Tell a story: your story, the book’s story inside or outside its pages, their story, somebody’s story. Hook them with mystery and interest. Be funny, or create tension, or make that strong and emotive plea that connects with them.

You wrote a book? Congratulations, but nobody gives a hot cup of shit. Everybody writes books now. Twitter is full of people who wrote books just as the shelves of the bookstore or the digital shelves of Amazon are chockablock with those books. You wanna stand out? So, stand out. Be you. You are your self-promo efforts. Bring your talents to bear. You’re a writer, so write.

Thou Shalt Perfect Your Pitch

Have an elevator pitch — a one-sentence fish-hook to catch in somebody’s cheek. You’ll use it online, at conventions, at bookstores, with your friendly neighborhood spider-hobo. (Time to cue up the theme song to that beloved 60s-era superhero cartoon: SPIDER HOBO SPIDER HOBO / GOES WHEREVER A HOBO GOES / EATS SOME BEANS AND SOME FLIES / HE’S A HOBO WHO HAS EIGHT EYES / OH FUCK! HERE COMES THE SPIDER HOBO).

Sorry.

You’ll get people who ask, “What did you write? What’s it about?” And your job is not to sit them down and lecture them about your book for four hours. Your job is to say, “IT’S ABOUT A KILLER ROBOT WHO LEARNS TO LOVE.” And that very short pitch will give off pheromones that crawl up inside the listener and tell them whether or not they might like your book. You’re giving them hints, transmitting signals, sending out feelers. Some will think, I like robots and I like love and so because I like those things, I am intrigued. Some will think, Not for me, and that’s okay, too.

Endeavor to perfect that single sniper bullet sales pitch. You can practice something slightly longer, too — a short paragraph rather than a single sentence — but for the most part, shorter is better. Don’t waste anybody’s time. Don’t waste your own time. If your book doesn’t sound interesting in 30 seconds, it won’t get better with 30 minutes.

Thou Shalt Be Aware Of Your Limits

You are a person with limits. You only have so much time. You have only so many talents. You can only be so comfortable. Stick to those things.

What I mean is: your job is to write books. If you don’t know how to do a book trailer or possess the time to learn or the money to pay someone, don’t do a book trailer. If you don’t have the time for a big-ass blog tour, don’t even try to do a big-ass blog tour. (Real talk: book trailers and blog tours can be effective when they’re done right and with a strategy in mind — but overall, not so much.) Know your limits. Work within them. It’s like social media — nobody wants you to operate inside social media channels you despise. If you hate Twitter, for the sake of sweet Saint Fuck, do not tweet. Don’t wanna blog? Don’t blog.

“To thine own self, be true.”

Someone very important said that. An important writer.

That’s right. Dan Brown said it. Dan Brown. I’m pretty sure.

Thou Shalt Not Treat It As Broadcast (But Rather, As Conversation)

“HOLD STILL WHILE I YELL THIS CANNED SELF-PROMOTIONAL ADVERTISEMENT AT YOU,” is not a very effective way to get new readers. For me, I’ve found readers climb on board the Wendig Train (sounds kinkier than I intend it) when I speak earnestly and honestly about my work. I talk about it and engage on the subject. It’s a conversation, not a broadcast. I share frustrations and triumphs. I get excited (because if I’m not excited, how can I expect you to be?). Social media is about engagement. It’s a conversation in a smoky bar, not a soapbox-and-a-bullhorn. Self-promotion is literally about promoting yourself and your work, but we’re in an age now where we’re no longer staring up at an artist on a stage. The artist is now part of the crowd. We’re all artists, now. It’s not just about talking, but about listening, and answering, and asking.

Thou Shalt Promote The Unholy Fuck Out Of Other Books And Authors

Fact: if I promote my books and I promote someone else’s book, the link to someone else’s book usually gets about three times the clicks. It’s for a lot of reasons, I guess — some of you are already on-board the aforementioned Wendig Train, and so you don’t always need to check out my work. But also, we tend to trust recommendations more than sales pitches. And shit, why wouldn’t we? BUY MY STORY WIDGET is so less endearing and honest than HOLY SHIT I JUST READ THIS AMAZING BOOK. I get that you want to sell your book, because you want to eat and pay rent. But when you sell someone else’s book? I assume you’re taking the time and effort because it really struck you. We have a bigger circle of trust online, and “word of mouth” means something more than just our close friends. You tell your social media network about a book that really got you, that matters. We’re listening. And we’re ready to click.

Promote other authors. And not just in a quid pro quo way — this isn’t about favors for favors. It’s about Book Love, baby. It’s not just about promoting yourself. It’s also about promoting what you love. That creates community. That creates connection. You can make fans for other authors and, in a roundabout way, fans for you and your work, too.

Thou Shalt Spend Money To Make Money

Crass, callous fact: you want to do self-promo beyond just bleating into the starless void, you’re going to have to put up some coin. Buy advertising. Pay a publicist. Rent a llama and spraypaint your book name on its side and let it loose in a shopping mall. Shit, I dunno. Big publishers will spend money, ideally, on promoting their authors and if you do not have that luxury and you wanna do more than just throw pebbles —

Open thine wallet.

Which may not be an option. And that’s okay. Further, not every expenditure of cash is meaningful — I don’t really know how well “promoted social media posts” really do, but I do know that doing them on a site like Facebook can have longer-term negative ramifications. Plus, not every publicist is amazing, and not every advertisement will land the way you want it to.

But real reach costs money. Cold truth.

Thou Shalt Not Feel Bad About It

As a writer, I expect that some of the people who follow me do so because they like my writing. Maybe they like my blog, or my Twitter, but hopefully, some of them also like the books I scribble and punt into the world. I follow writers and I expect — nay, demand — that they tell me about their new books. Because that’s how we find stuff out, now. If an author has news, I wanna know about it. If they have a new book out, damnit, I hope to hell they tell me otherwise that news will slip past me like a sneaky little ninja. Sometimes? I just need a reminder.

That’s why you shouldn’t feel bad. We expect and even require a little promotion from authors. The worst thing in the world (okay, just behind genocide) is when a beloved author has a new book out and it was like, six months ago but you never found out. You ever have that happen? “Holy shit, Dan Brown’s newest, The Macchiato Conundrum, came out in 2013 and I never knew? Why, Dan Brown, why?” *shakes fist at the heavens*

Thou Shalt Write And Finish New Stuff

Self-promotion is part of your work.

It is also not the point of your work.

You’re a writer. Your job is to write.

So: write more stuff.

The best sales pitch for pre-existing work is new work. All your efforts build upon prior efforts. Someone reads one of my books, they sometimes follow that trail back to the books that came before it. (I can’t speak for all of us, but I bet a whole bunch of us here will, upon discovering a new author that we like, read deep into that author’s slate of books.) That’s not to say you should just defecate your words into a bucket until it overflows — I know a certain nasty strategy of some self-published authors is to churn out books of marginally low quality built on the dubious supposition that MORE IS ALWAYS BETTER, but the core of that strategy is not entirely terrible:

Go write! One book isn’t working? Write another book.

Because here’s the real secret: nobody knows what works. There is no single magical self-promo bullet that will make your book a bestseller. There is no social media service that will guarantee sales. There exists no switch to flip or palms to grease or wizard to battle. Some books land, and some don’t. Yes, you probably increase the chances of your book doing well if you actually talk about it (meaning: fling those pebbles!), but talking about it isn’t guaranteed to do shit for you, either. No author really knows what works and what doesn’t and what does work for one won’t necessarily work for another. We’d love for this to be like math, but really, it feels more like alchemy. Sometimes lead becomes gold and we often don’t know why.

So, you do what you do. And you cleave to that one thing you can control: the writing.

(Now? Go read: “PLEASE SHUT UP: WHY SELF-PROMOTION AS AN AUTHOR DOESN’T WORK.” By the inimitable Delilah S. Dawson.)

* * *

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(*cries into crap bucket*)