I honestly don’t know what to do. I can’t seem to get anyone interested in my writing. It’s not because it’s not good enough; it’s mainly because it’s not famous enough, and it’s never going to be “famous” enough because no one reads it.
I guess what gets on my nerves is that I tend to support all of my friends and colleagues on their social networking sites, but rarely is that ever reciprocated. I’ll give a thumbs up to someone’s ridiculous cat picture or to someone’s latest “look how cute my baby is” photo. But rarely does that get returned.
I have about one friend on my social networking sites who I am very thankful for because she’s always supporting me with my writing. Probably more than she should ever have to. But she’s a rarity. I sometimes wish there was more I could do to support her, but I try.
Recently, I published probably the most important book of my career. To give it the credit it’s due, I need to hype the hell out of it because the publishing world is not the same place it was a decade ago. Publishers don’t support you. Writers are pretty much on their own, and unless they were Stephen King-level of famous a decade ago, they’re pretty much stuck with trying to make an impact in a world that has the attention span of a five year old.
So, I have been trying everything possible to get people interested in this book. For the first time ever, I created a book trailer and put it on Amazon and Youtube. It’s really funny and entertaining. The people who have seen it, all ten of them, love it. If you start to get my drift, I now can’t get people to watch a Youtube of a promo for a book that they aren’t interested in reading either. Basically, a writer trying to get traction today is essentially screwed.
The tragic part of trying to make it has a lot to do with the mechanisms that drive the whole industry now. In order to advertise my book anywhere, you generally have to have at least 4 to 5 reviews that are 4 stars or above (averaged). So, if you don’t have people who already read your book and reviewed it, you can’t get advertising for it so that people can actually read it and review it. And if by some chance you got those first five reviews and then could pay for some advertising, you then have to get dozens of reviews before you can actually start hitting a breaking point of where people will ever even notice that you’ve written a book. If you’re unknown, kind of like I am, then you’d probably get better results standing on the corner and throwing copies of your books at passing cars, hoping to hit one, blinding the driver so that he has to stop after running into a flagpole.
Anyway, here’s a last look at the video I created for this campaign.
OK.
Why didn’t I see the trailer any where?! That shit was FUNNY….and I needed to laugh.
AND I will throw your book at people if you do me the same favor when I finish mine. Or, we could get a booth at a craft fair!!!
You’re great. I wish more people would realize that.
I’m not sure why it wasn’t seen before. I kept posting it everywhere, and it was like it wasn’t being seen by anyone.
It was a lot of fun to make though. 🙂
Yeah, the whole actually getting through on social media to folks with an ask as basic as “hey friendos, click this button and be entertained for 2 minutes” problem is a weird one. The social stuff is simultaneously really powerful and really impotent, the Facebook in particular.
Big part of that is probably the horrifying design totality that it has become as different bits have been bodged onto it as they’ve tried to monetize the beast, and as charities and businesses and interest groups have jostled their way in front of this steady diet of eyeballs. At this point you are routinely punished by sudden trips to sketchy websites and apps by doing anything more than pushing “like” next to a post your friend actually wrote. People “see” you, but they see everybody else too and unless they can cheaply get out of their normal social obligations by liking a major life event, they’re closing that window back up as quickly as they can.
Its perverse, but I think it may be true that it would be easier to get all of your social media-connected friends to donate 20 bucks to you as a gesture of support or charity, than it would be to get a quarter of them to send you 5 bucks for an actual product that they could, you know, buy and use. Maybe that’s the secret of the Kickstarter thing? Dunno.
Also, I suppose people are sometimes self-interested dicks. Probably shouldn’t be overlooked.
And having seen you discussing your effort to restock the virtual shelves with your writing recently, it looks like a similar frustrating dichotomy between increased access and increased noise is in play. It’s historically easy to get a book in a human being’s hand if they want you to put it there, but no there’s suddenly no real sorting, taste-making, or quality control either. And all that to chase a smaller audience, outside the ever growing sex vampire genre anyway.
I plead guilty on the audience problem too: I think I actually have only read one book this year, and before you shame me again in a video, I already actually have the e-reader. My excuses are that I have a small child, am less than a year out of grad school where I may have lost my love for the written word forever, and if I do pick up 10 books, they will probably all be about sex vampires. But everyone has a lousy excuse for their lack of literary appetite, at the moment where quality writing has never been closer to our fingertips. Weird.
Of course, you know all this, you’re mostly the one who told me in the first place. Just wanted to try to supportively/sympathetically reflect some of the frustration back at you to prove at least that you’re aren’t talking to a completely empty void… I suppose that’s all one can do.
…
Oh. Except buy the book and shame myself into actually reading something for once. I’ll do that too.