Excuse me while I rant.
An author I follow on Twitter, but don’t know personally, tweeted a link to another author’s blog. The title of the post referred to in the tweet was something like, four things every author should know about promotion. Sounded kinda interesting, so I clicked through.
Big mistake. The four supposed tips for authors pretty much amounted to:
1. You should buy my book on self-promotion for authors;
2. You should buy my book on self-promotion for authors;
3. You should buy my book on self-promotion for authors; and
4. You should really buy my book on self-promotion for authors.
All I could think was, WTF? That’s a minute and a half of my life I’ll never get back. I was angry at the blogger, and to a lesser extent, at the tweeter.
The incident reminded me of a time several years ago when a friend invited me to hear her former FBI agent husband give a talk on self defense for women -- and the talk turned out to be a sales pitch for the his new line of personal mace. I was lured to both the talk and the blog post by implied promises of useful information, but instead all I got was a sales pitch. And I was pissed off, and not in the mood to buy either product.
Granted, no one is required to give away their hard-won knowledge for free – though handing out a sample may convince potential customers to buy the whole thing. And granted, there’s nothing wrong with an author promoting her book.
But leading people to people to believe you’re going to do the former, and then doing the later, is obnoxious and tacky.
So writers and readers, are there any forms of promo that particularly annoy and aggravate you? Or on the positive side, are there any you find especially helpful in deciding how you should allocate your limited reading dollars?
5 comments:
I really despise when people pimp their own work they're reviewing someone else's title.
I also hate it when they friend me on facebook and then post a "Nice to meet you, you can buy my book here". If I wanted to know where to buy your book, I'd ask you. If I wanted to pimp your book to my followers, I would invite you to post the link.
Anything that's such a hard sell that makes the author sound pompous. Like "Don't miss my heart-warming"... It's tacky to call your won work heart-warming. And likely to turn my stomach.
I do like excerpts. I like them on blogs, social networking sites and in the backs of other titles.
I like free reads, I like .99 reads. I like contest giveaways and I like authors who give back. If I go to a workshop and like what the author has to say, I'll usually buy their books.
Ah, the authorial spin on bait and switch. Drives me nuts, too.
That is so damn irritating. You know I spend a ton of time thinking about promoting but you have to wonder do some of these people do ANYTHING else but promote?
I also hate it when people "friend" you, then add you to a group without your permission. Or when they post message after message after message promoting their stuff. To the point where you actually "unfriend" them just to make it stop. Ick.
Oh I know, Kaylea! I've unfollowed several people on twitter because their tweets were nothing but "but my book." Yuk!
Saranna, I agree about excerpts. If I get a taste and I like it, I may buy. I also agree about supporting authors who give back.
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