Enough about me. Why do YOU adore me?

by Sandra Parshall

Bear with me. This isn’t just another blog about social media, although it may start out sounding that way.

Recently I “unliked” someone’s author page on Facebook. This person hasn’t done anything to me personally, but I’d had enough of the “look at how many people love my book and look at all the wonderful things that are happening to me and just look at all the praise that’s being heaped on me” posts emanating from that page. It’s a fan page, and I assume the author’s non-writer fans eat up that stuff. I will happily leave it to them. I haven’t checked the number of “likes” the page has, but I’m sure it’s staggering.

My own author page on Facebook (Sandra Parshall Books) had a grand total of 222 “likes” the last time I checked. I accumulated that many by, basically, begging, but that got old fast and I quit doing it. Although my personal page has 4,803 “friends” (and I keep the number below the 5,000 cutoff mark by frequently culling people I don’t want to have any further contact with), I assume the 222 are the only people on Facebook who are interested in my books.

I should probably post more often for those 222 fans. Maybe I should push myself to boast nonstop, although I’d probably have to do some real digging to find all that much to boast about. I’ve quoted from reviews and promoted interviews and blogs. But the truth is, I don’t care for the one thing above all that writers are supposed to do, the one thing that seems even more important than writing good books: relentless self-promotion. Which often amounts to boasting. Bragging. I hate having to do it, and I am turned off when others do it.

Oddly, the least offensive boasters, to me, are the ones who just put it out there: I worked damned hard on this book, and I’m glad to say it’s getting the praise it deserves. That's annoying enough, but it's so much less obnoxious than fluttery, breathless, gushy false modesty. I try to observe the latter and regard it as material for characterization in my books. And I try to stop listening/reading before I’m tempted to say something I’ll regret or do something, like brandishing a gag, that could get me arrested for assault.

I have stopped reading certain authors' books after enduring too much of their boasting, whether it’s the outright bragging type or the “oh my goodness, I am so humbly honored that the whole wide world adores little old me” type. Sometimes a book is easier to enjoy if I don’t know too much about the writer.

Authors aren’t the only ones, of course, who are so impressed with themselves that they can’t keep quiet about their wonderfulness for a second. However, in the internet age we do seem to be the only ones who are loudly public about it, day after day. Singers promote themselves by singing, not talking or posting about singing. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but I don’t think many lawyers and doctors are on Facebook daily gushing over  the latest praise their work has drawn. Actors, who tend to be an obvious and rather endearing mixture of ego and self-doubt, have to be careful because every piece of work they do is an ensemble project, and their careers depend on being widely liked and/or respected as professionals. They learn to be team players or they learn, as Charlie Sheen did, that they can be replaced.

Writers work alone. We don’t have daily contact with our editors, who are our partners in the publishing enterprise. When we break out of our solitude long enough to promote our work, I guess it’s not surprising that some of us don’t know where to draw the line between effective and obnoxious. Some go way overboard, and other authors begin describing them, sneeringly, as relentless self-promoters. Some writers, like myself, loathe the whole self-promotion thing to the point that we cringe when we do it at all.

How do you feel about this? How much boasting turns you off? Has an author's intense self-promotion ever made you decide against reading that person's work?

Selling Books in a Changing World

By Ellen Crosby (Guest blogger)

New year, new book. For the fourth year in a row, the first Tuesday in August is mine--the day Scribner, my publisher, officially releases The Riesling Retribution, latest book in my mystery series set in Virginia wine country.

I’m not the only writer in the country with an August 4 pub date, though it’s nice to feel unique for a day, especially that little heart-flip the first time I see my book actually on bookstore shelves. Truth be told, I’m in first-rate company for the entire month, joining fellow mystery writers like Charles Todd, Marcus Sakey, Dan Fesperman, Marcia Talley, and Jeff Deaver (among others) who will be hitting the road visiting a bookstore near you. But how will you hear about us?

Last year my local events would have been billboarded in the calendar of The Washington Post Book World. First thing I turned to every Sunday morning over a cup of coffee: Who’s in town? Now it’s gone. I freelanced for the Post for a couple of years so that loss really hurt. More Post hemorrhaging followed, with buyouts accepted by some of the paper’s most famous names, by-lines gone for good. My former editor left two years ago for a research foundation. (Why did he do it when he didn’t want to leave? “Next time they might not offer me money.”) I met Marie Arana, former Book World editor, at the Annapolis Book Festival—she’s now at the Library of Congress. Their gain; our loss.

How many newspapers have folded their tents or jettisoned their book review sections? A story on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” discussed the slow death of book reviews—back in 2007. As for newspapers, there’s a list on a cheery website called Newspaper Death Watch. In the past year we’ve lost the print editions of the Detroit News/Detroit Free Press, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and—one I truly lament—The Christian Science Monitor. Gone for good: Rocky Mountain News and the Baltimore Examiner. The Boston Globe is on the skids. I’ve only named the big guys, but trust me, it’s a much longer list.

On to bookstores, but first please put away any sharp objects. Just in the mid-Atlantic region, we lost Mystery Loves Company in Baltimore, as well as Olsson’s and Trover’s, two beloved Washington, D.C. landmarks. One stop on my book tour is a “favorite authors” final farewell signing at Creatures ’n Crooks in Richmond, which closes its doors on September 30. I promised to go if there weren’t too many tears. (She wouldn’t promise; I’m stocking up on tissues). As I write this yet another bookstore, Kate’s Mystery Books in Boston, will close on August 1.

Is it just me, or is the drumbeat growing louder for doing away with quaint twentieth century customs like reading newspapers, buying books in bookstores, and turning actual pages instead of pressing a button? What’s going to replace the institutions we’re dismantling at the giddy pace of kids leveling a sand castle? The front page of the business section of the July 22 New York Times (yes, the print edition!) featured a story called “Musician, Market Yourself.” It spoke about doing away with “the old model of doing things” as musicians create their own direct links to audiences over the Internet.

Ditto the book world. Like it or not, we’re all becoming cottage industry promoters, each of us tooting his or her own horn on individual websites, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. Is it better, worse, or just new and different? I dunno. Right now, I’m resisting—though sure, you can find me on Facebook and I think I’ve tweeted about six times. But I mourn what we’re losing because once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

A few weeks ago I attended a bookstore event in Middleburg, Virginia videoed by a young reporter for washingtonpost.com. Naively I asked how long the link would be available, remembering how in the past some of my news stories would drift into that hole in cyberspace where broken links went to die. He blinked and stared at me. “Forever,” he said. “It’ll be there forever.”

Later an author friend explained how to post that video to Facebook. “Go to the article online,” she wrote, “and click on ‘Tools.’ It asks where you want to send the link. Click on Facebook and, voila, it’s there on your page. Doesn’t even ask your name because it knows who you are. Scary, huh?” Yeah, real scary.

As part of this individualized promotion gig—and because there are so many of us out there—we’re reaching for what’s new and different, opening doors to our lives, places we once considered off-limits, in an effort to get you readers to pay attention . . . or just to find us. Last spring I filmed a (very) brief video for Simon & Schuster answering questions about my favorite movie, favorite place, and wished-for talent. Fun stuff, a bit of fluff, all part of S&S’s new “Author Revealed” website. But I’ve decided to draw a line beyond which I won’t go in this whole promotion thing; parts of my life are private and there’s such a thing as Too Much Me.

As August 4 rolls around, I’m excited about getting out there and spending time with folks, after a year of living in my head alone in my office. Nothing virtual: real meetings, real people. In the meantime, I’m still wrestling with Facebook and Twitter. Guess I’d better get used to it; next year could be a whole new world . . . again.

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Ellen Crosby is the author of The Merlot Murders, The Chardonnay Charade, The Bordeaux Betrayal, and The Riesling Retribution. Visit her web site for more information, and if you're on Facebook, please be her friend.

That Thing Called BSP

Sandra Parshall

If you spend any time at all on mystery listservs (or any listserv where writers hang out), you're well-acquainted with the concept of BSP -- blatant self-promotion. If you're a writer, you've probably done your share of it. I know I have. Like the weather, it draws plenty of complaints but no suggestions for practical remedies.

We're supposed to promote ourselves, right? We're supposed to talk about our books, make people want to buy them and read them. Get online and promote, promote, promote! Trouble is, the more we talk, the less people want to listen. It's entirely possible for writers on the internet to talk readers out of buying their books.

I've seen it happen again and again. I've felt this reaction to some writers myself. They're the people who show up on the listservs only when they have something to sell -- or, even worse, when they want conference registrants to give them an award. They don't contribute to discussions, they don't offer helpful advice on any subject, they don't talk about anything except themselves and their products. "I want you to buy my books and give me awards, and that's the only reason I'm here" -- this is their underlying message. It's not surprising when such an approach produces exactly the opposite of the desired result. The offending authors would probably be amazed if they knew what people were saying about them privately.

So what's a writer to do? How do we promote our work online without making enemies or boring people to tears?

I can't tell adult professionals how to behave, but I can tell you what I, as a reader and book-buyer, respond to favorably and unfavorably. If a writer contributes to a discussion with intelligent comments and shows that she's interested in something other than herself and her own career, my heart will warm toward her. If an author has complimentary things to say about someone else's writing, I'm going to like him. Through discussions and recommendations, I'll form an idea of what a writer's work will be like, and if it seems appealing, I'll go looking for it. If I get hit over the head every few days with BSP ("Guess what wonderful thing has happened to me NOW!"), I'm going to develop resistance to both the writer and the work.

Sure, I like hearing that a new book has been released. But I don't want to hear about every single review and every single interview and every new print run. I think all writers should stop before we post such information on a listserv and ask ourselves, "Who besides me really gives a darn about this? How many people will I be annoying if I post this?" Some information belongs on a writer's personal web site or blog and nowhere else.

I am on one list, the e-mail discussion list of the Sisters in Crime Guppies Chapter, where BSP is freely allowed because the entire purpose of the group is to help people get published. Each achievement is a validation of the group's worth. Even there, though, some members complain about being inundated with BSP. It's not surprising that they would hate it even more on a list with a broader purpose.

I know that many people share my distaste for excessive BSP online. I know because I've discussed it with them. Yet it continues unabated, like junk mail, everywhere we look. That makes me think that either (1) a majority of people just love reading BSP, or (2) a lot of people would rather quietly unsubscribe from a list than complain loudly enough about its content to provoke a change.

Which category are you in? How do you really feel about BSP from writers? Have you ever sworn off a writer because he or she did too much blatant self-promotion? Do you ever wish listservs would ban BSP? Or do you enjoy it -- or simply not care? You can post a comment anonymously if you're afraid of offending anyone. Or write to me privately at sparshall@verizon.net. I want to know what all of you have to say about this ever-present feature of our online lives.