Angstiness about self-promotion on the internet (meta, not actual self promo in this post)

[dancingsinging]

It has recently become clear to me that, at some point (when I decide to stop sitting on my short stories and instead start subbing them), I will want to come here (and on FB and twitter) and in some way try to induce you all to read/buy/review/link to my work. The idea of which makes me fret and feel awkward and nauseated.

In my head, I get into all these layers of inauthenticity. Like, hey, I should have more internet presence *before* I sub anything, so that it looks like I am on the internet posting things for non-self-promotion reasons! Which kind of horrifies me when I catch myself thinking it.

This whole thing would be a lot easier if I had a lifestyle which included being on the internet for fun a lot. I mean, I love surfing around, reading DW and Shakesville and Tiger Beatdown and the Fat Nutritionist. And every time I spend even a little time poking about on the internet, there are fifty million things more I want to watch/read/listen to. But I've mostly triaged internet time out of my life, to make room for parenting and householding and writing. So, really, any more posting that I do beyond the occasional DW/LJ entry like this one would truly be for self-promotion, not because I love FB or Twitter or whatever so much that I'd be there anyway.

The self-promotion thing seems important, and I've seen people (frex, Jay Lake) do it in a way that is totally not annoying. And I think I could pull it off OK by making it a regularly scheduled thing (say, every Tuesday at 11:00 or something) with a timer to remind me to stop. But I worry about alienating my internet friends--I care about you all and your good opinion of me. I hate the idea that I might write something that makes people feel like I don't care about them or that I'm trying to use them.

What do you all think? I'd love to hear opinions and anecdotes from y'all, either from the perspective of trying to promote something or from the perspective of the promoted-to.

Comments

[vito_excalibur]

I've never done this sort of promotion, but as a pair of eyeballs, I have been promoted to a lot. My opinion: faking it does not work very well. If you are not on the internets very much, and you come to them only to tell people to buy your stuff, it does not tend to work very well. Probably better to put the time into some other form of promotion. Will be interested to see what promoters have to say. Have you done any looking into what people like John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, Catherynne Valente, Cory Doctorow - the online writers - have to say about it?

[dancingsinging]

I haven't read about it yet. I get kind of hyperventilatey whenever I hear or read about promoting one's writing. I think I have this weird magical thinking idea that I will curse my writing career if I think too much about it before I have something I consider salable. Like the gods will smite me for hubris or something. (I feel the same way about keeping writing-related receipts just in case I sell a story in the same year.)

[dancingsinging]

Also, I wasn't planning to show up at new internet venues and say, "Hi! You should read my story!" :)

For me, the dilemma is more like whether I should start scheduling ten minutes a day to look at FB and say things I really mean ("Your kid is so cute on his first day of school! I can't believe how big he is.") when I wouldn't otherwise spend those ten minutes. It is so not my style to say something inauthentic or go chasing down perfect strangers.

[vito_excalibur]

I think it's probably more important to schedule 10 minutes a day (although, that is not very much; I suspect two hours every 5 days, or something like) to post something that other people want to read. Promotional stuff is stuff that you want other people to read; for it to be a good use of people's time to read your feed/blog/stream/whatever, the majority of it needs to be stuff that the people want to read (because it's informative, interesting, amusing, creates a conversation, or whatever.) If you have four updates that people want to read on their own merits for every one update that you want people to read because it advertises you, maybe that's a workable ratio. And then yes, some time also talking to other people in their online spaces to remind them that you're alive; but I'm not sure how much time.

[dancingsinging]

I hope people want to read the things I post about (that aren't the "read my stuff, y'all!" ones), but I don't know. I've always just posted things that are interesting to me and not worried about it, figuring that people who find the same stuff interesting will read it. I have no idea how to set about being purposely interesting/amusing. You have thoughts?

[jinian]

My experience of online self-promotion by writers is largely limited to Cat Valente. She has written about how to do it right. However, her self-promotion bugs the shit out of me. I would be willing to put up with seeing it from you because I like you and want to know where your writing can be found, but I'd be disappointed if that were all I saw of you.

[dancingsinging]

Thanks for wanting to know where my writing could be found. :) I certainly wouldn't spend /less/ time writing my random about-my-life blog posts!

[jesse_the_k]

I would read excerpts for the first while, and then I'd skip over them.

[dancingsinging]

Oh! It totally hadn't occurred to me to post excerpts. I think because I never read the ones other people post. :)

[jesse_the_k]

In an ideal world, you'd ever so slowing infiltrate PR at a low level so If I had a hankering for new reading I could find it, but if I only wish to continue our social-political interaction, that would be possible too. Also, circles are our friends. It's possible to subscribe to a tag, although I don't know if we'll ever be able to eliminate a tag.

[dancingsinging]

So it sounds like you're saying is that you wouldn't mind me making an occasional post along the lines of "yay! I published a story!" as long as I keep saying other stuff too?

Also, that is a great idea to use a tag. Then I don't have to worry that I'm getting on people's nerves, and people can filter out stuff they find boring. Or do I need to set up the filter? I'll do some research before I put anything self-promotey up.

[jinian]

If you're excited about a new story coming out, that makes it about your emotional response to your own life to me rather than about self-promotion. rachelmanija and rushthatspeaks both make those posts, and I didn't even think of them when I thought of self-promotion. I support tag use, though, just in case not everyone is as gullible as I am!

[dancingsinging]

I would hope it's not about gullibility! I certainly wouldn't want to trick you into anything, and I doubt rachelmanija and rushthatspeaks would want to either.

[jinian]

Is joke!

[dancingsinging]

Oh! I've heard of such things, I think.