Julie's Web Journal: More Musings on Self-Promotion

Fresh when it gets here from Julie Barrett
Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Laura Miller has an interesting article on author self-promotion over at Salon. This one quote stood out for me:

What usually gets lost in the perpetual refrain about authors becoming their own marketers is that there's no particular connection between writing talent and a gift for self-promotion.

Holy cow, yes. And it cuts both ways. I've seen aggressive self-promoters who can't write and amazing writers who aren't comfortable with promoting themselves. Some are adept at both.

Self-promotion clearly isn't my thing. I've tried, and it seems to come across as jumping up and down and yelling, "hey! Look at me!" I enjoy sitting on panels at SF conventions, but I HATE having my picture taken. What can I say? I have a face for radio. To be honest, I am somewhat bothered by the aggressive self-promoters who have gained a following simply because they're good at talking about themselves. Perhaps it's because I was raised in a culture (or perhaps it was the era) in which "tooting your own horn" was considered vulgar. Or perhaps it's just that I was never very good at speaking up for myself.

Or you know, perhaps I'm just deluding myself and I'm a talentless hack. I'll leave that particular musing for later, when I'm not running a low-grade fever.

Tags: Writing

Filed under: Wri

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Julie's Web Journal

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