Why I don’t want to tell you to pre-order my book

My book releases in less than 5 months. It seems like just yesterday that it was a year off. The other day, my friend said, “You should start telling people to pre-order it” (because pre-orders are very important, which deserves a post in itself. Stay tuned). I said, “Um, I can’t tell people that.”

I am really, really, really uncomfortable with self-promotion. Overall, I’m a pretty private person. Twitter is like pulling teeth for me. I’ve deactivated my Facebook account many times. I always come back for the pet pictures, but I don’t share much myself. I’ll post about books I like or share links to funny things, but that’s about it. If I express a personal opinion, I’m probably drunk. Fact: My husband and I have never communicated with each other via Facebook. Ever.

Thankfully, St. Martin’s Press will have an in-house publicist working on my behalf, and I’ve also hired an outside publicist to beef up efforts. But, still, I should probably get better at, like, telling people I meet that I’m an author with a book coming out on May 24. On New Year’s Eve, my husband and I went to this local winery and struck up conversation with the lady serving the flights (it’s always good to strike up conversation with people serving you wine). It took me several tasters before I divulged that I was a writer. When she asked of what, I muttered the title of my book while staring at my feet. Sometimes I think I have problems.

In the latest issue of Poets & Writers magazine, there is a great essay titled “Brand You” by Frank Bures. He mentions that many writers have been great self-promoters, dating back to 440 BCE when Herodotus sold his Histories to wealthy patrons at the Olympics, or 1887 when Guy de Maupassant flew a hot-air balloon featuring the name of his latest short story. Even Walt Whitman got in the game: He wrote anonymous reviews of his own work, declaring things like, “An American bard at last!”

What’s different today–and Bures touches on this in his essay–is that EVERYONE is promoting something. Bures states:

“Today, it’s accepted that anyone with a pulse and a keyboard can and should promote anything that comes to mind. As a result, most of us are drowning in a promotional tsunami. It can feel like a crushing weight, like social media has become a giant pyramid scheme in which we are all selling some idea of ourselves, even as we struggle to believe our own marketing.”

Yes! This is the issue for me–the tsunami. I find it very overwhelming. I don’t like to be overcome by it, so I find it difficult to contribute to it.

Bures goes on:

“There are plenty of writers for whom self-promotion comes as naturally as breathing. For them, it doesn’t seem to pose any dilemma. But for the rest of us it does. Speaking only for myself, one of the great gifts of writing is that it lets me escape the tyranny of myself, the smothering of self-consciousness.”

And social media is all about self-consciousness. It’s all very “look at me.” In a way, that fights creativity, which is very “don’t look at me, I’m trying to hide in this cave and figure out what I want to write without worrying what you think.” As Bures says, marketing and writing are two endeavors at opposite ends of a spectrum.

self promotion

I guess this blog is self-promotion, but it doesn’t feel that way. It’s mostly a place for me to collect thoughts on writing. It’s a selfish pursuit, really. I enjoy writing blog posts. I don’t enjoy sharing them on Facebook and Twitter, but I do. I bite that bullet. But I’m still probably going to stare at my feet if you ask me too much about my book coming out. It’s not that I don’t think the book is good. It’s a good book. I just want it to exist separate from me, as a person, if that makes sense. It will have a life of its own. People may love it. People may hate it. Ultimately, that has nothing to do with me (or my extremely sporadic tweets).

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