Saturday, November 27, 2010

Promotion for dummies

There is yet another outbreak on the Amazon romance board wherein the regulars are railing against newbie authors coming in and promoting. The romance board is perhaps the most strongly anti-promo Amazon board (at least in my limited experience), so this happens fairly frequently. Advice for newbie authors:

1. Always hang out on a forum and lurk for a week or so before you post. You really need to get the feel of a forum before you start posting. See how other authors promote, and what the response is.

2. Don't argue with the regulars and tell them they're wrong to be opposed to promotion. It's their forum, and they were there first, so when you come in and start telling them how they should do things, you are not going to make friends. In particular, do not whine about how hard it is to sell books, and how they just don't understand how hard authors have it. Here's the hard truth: They really don't give a flying leap about how hard it is for you to sell books. Why should they? It's not their problem. Whining about it just makes you look... you know... whiny.

3. Don't be insulting, to either a specific poster or the entire forum. If you don't like their attitude, you can go away and find another forum. You're not going to sell books by telling readers you don't like them.

In short, look before you leap, and then tread very, very carefully.

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