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Goodreads, Twitter, book forums… They’re everywhere.
I’m talking about the thousands of indie authors attempting to promote their books. And not the ones that send the occasional tweet advertising their books or the ones who have a book cover in their forum signature.
I’m talking about those that try to force their book down your throat at any given moment and have absolutely no interest in anything besides getting you to buy their work.
I’m absolutely sick of them.
It’s no wonder independent writers have such a bad reputation, because many of them are just damn annoying and downright shameless.
Understand me right, I’m an indie author myself and of course I promote my books. I have to, or no one would ever know about them. But I consider myself above practically begging for others to read my books.
I’m sure everyone who uses book discussion forums have seen the indie authors who pretends to have something to say in a thread, but it turns out they just want to advertise their book.
Yeah, I totally agree!
By the way, I written a book on “almost” the same thing: *Insert link*
And that would be one of the less shameless examples…
Everyday I encounter more and more writers who seem to have nothing else in mind. I can’t count the times I have had someone say that my book seems “really interesting, and by the way, could I read theirs?”. Really, it’s actually more pathetic than it is annoying most of the time.
Many people also uses my Twitter feed, because they see I’m a writer and I have a pretty big following. They merely write @mlouring before their tweets to show up on my Twitter stream. If they’re going to violate my personal space, they should at least buy me a cup of coffee first…
Another example is one time I started a thread on a book forum asking for fantasy book suggestions. The thing about that forum is that it forbids self-promotion in there. What did this desperate author do? Go to my website to throw their book in my face, of course! Because I wanted to read some fantasy recommended by others, so of course I would want to read their book, right? Forum rules shouldn’t hinder me in discovering this wonderful new book they had written, should it?
I realize I’m ranting… It just makes me wince every time I see another author demean themselves to this desperate behavior. It’s also clear that many readers are getting annoyed by this. For example, despite not using Goodreads to promote my work, many will keep their distance from me when they see I’m a writer. Many refuse to ‘friend’ authors on there, because they know they might be force-fed self-promotion from them. And I completely understand them.
Aggressitivity hurts not only the author in question, but all indie writers. Then so many will do everything to promote their book, the indie community as a whole appears desperate to sell their books and no one have respect for that.
So to all of you who succumbs to this behavior, I can only say: Have some respect for yourself. If your books seem interesting, when you don’t have to force them upon others! And for the love of God, stop trying to promote to other authors. They are trying to sell books as well, they don’t have time to ‘help you out’, if you don’t have time to even say “hi” before you start telling them to read your book.
And if I see anyone start promoting their books in the comments on this post, God have mercy, I will hurt you. I will hunt you down, find out where you live and hurt you.
