The More You Know, Selfish Edition

...About me.

I've recently been considering a slight shift in my blog direction.

I really intended to have this be a space where I add updates to provide secondary material for my book, but no one seems to be reading it. Which is fine, I remind myself.

In my life outside of writing, I do plenty of other things, like reading, gaming, watching Netflix, more reading, playing with my cats and other stuff. Maybe what I need here is a blog that includes more content. A blog that isn't limited to just my one book that no one cares about. Maybe that's the solution. I mean, it can't really hurt to branch out a little, cover some other ground. I'm not just a writer, so why should my blog be so limited?

Plus, everything else I would write about basically reflects the non-steading lifestyle. It's all about doing as little as possible for as cheap as we can get it at the minimum level of effort. Obviously I will still blog about terrible, awful Pinterest things when they happen to me, but maybe I shouldn't limit myself to just that...

Promotional Issues

So, I post my book on Amazon, and I really don't know what I was expecting.

I even created a Twitter account, which was a hurdle for me. I had a Twitter back when it first launched and it was such as hassle and caused so many problems I deleted it back in like 2010. Getting back on that particular horse was not easy and (to anyone who knows me) proves my commitment to the promotional aspects of being an author.

But that's the issue I'm currently struggling with. Do I buy followers, do I pay for advertising, do I try to find a way to direct people to my blog? Why does everything on Google+ just look like it was tossed out by some corporate PR team? I agree that writing should be done for the sake of the writing itself. I'm not a writer because it's easy, I'm a writer because I can't help myself. I finally put the pieces together for a book and now it feels a little... fake? Like I have to artificially drum up interest, engaging in a metaphorical circle jerk of other independent authors and reviewers and companies who are just looking to profit. That feels... just wrong.

I think maybe it was a little naive of me to think that book would speak for itself. Honestly, in the sea of self-published and independent books, it's almost impossible for anyone to notice, even if it was the best thing ever. The market is just flooded and it almost makes me think that even trying to get people to pay attention is a fantasy. I guess I will have to resign myself to never selling any copies and knowing that at least I put it out there and if no one is every interested, then that's just how it goes.

But what purpose is there to publishing when no one will ever read it? Should I continue to write, but simply keep these things to myself? Is that the correct solution that will at least allow me to feel less like a whore? I don't know. I just don't like the concept of publicly shouting at people to buy my stuff. I think that's probably why authors get agents and publishers and managers in the first place. They hire people to do the shouting for them.