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Passionate: right or wrong. Writes love stories with a passion. Raw Romantic Redemptive

The “Me” Syndrome

 Love-me

You can dress it in a business suit, you can say the familiar phrase, "It's just business", and you can insist it's "not really", but the truth is in today's publishing world it's all about "me". And rarely is it pretty to watch no matter how you spin it. Publicizing your work makes it all about you.

You must promote, publicize, glorify, and celebrate it. Your face needs to be present on a Facebook Author Page, a Twitter account, Pinterest, Google +, Goodreads, and many other places where readers might be present and active. If you have a webpage for your author status, you must keep it updated to be effective. If you operate a blog, you must post regularly with attractive, clever, intellectual, or thoughtful posts to obtain consistent viewers.

You must be center-stage for most of what you choose to do, only taking a backseat to others when commenting on their various sites.

So. What it boils down to when all the extraneous additives or unnecessary "fat" is extracted is "the 'me' syndrome". Somehow you have to make it all about you. The question remains for each writer: How can I do this without alienating others and instead attracting them?

My answer? I have no idea.

 

Father, you know about all of this. You know what each one of us is assigned to do, and it's not about us: it's about You. You know how to help us. You know. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

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4 responses to “The “Me” Syndrome”

  1. BK Jackson (@BKJacksonAZ) Avatar
    BK Jackson (@BKJacksonAZ)

    I have no idea either. I used to despite FB just on general principle, but have become accustomed to it, & it is a good tool for sales, though whether you could say successful sales or not, I don’t know.
    I regularly receive FB posts from the Arizona History Society, and through my comments on one of their posted photos, an author found ME and contacted me. Now that COULD be annoying if it was some general nonsense, but this was about a book on Arizona’s history and his work of screening Arizona Historical Society’s FB commenters earned him a sale. That’s a slow way to sell books, but it sells nevertheless.
    But I’m thankful I’m not writing right now so I don’t have to worry about this headache. LOL!

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  2. Nicole Avatar
    Nicole

    Headache indeed. There’s no singular answer anyway. Different people can do different things. No one particularly wants to admit they’re great at self-promotion, and if they are, they usually twist the notion to deflect from the basic truth of it. I certainly think it’s a talent, but so many versions of self-advertising/promotion are offensive. At least to me.

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  3. Brenda Anderson Avatar
    Brenda Anderson

    When you figure out the answer, Nicole, I hope you post it. 😉 Being all about “me” is something the younger generation has the advantage on. I hear so much talk about the Millenials and all the wisdom ascribed to them (why?), but what I see is a lot of selfishness.
    Two of my kids work in an area filled with 20-30 somethings, and my kids have noticed how me-centric the people of the area are. They might excel in social media, but what about actual human interaction?
    Maybe that’s still where we need to focus, on actual person-to-person relationships.

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  4. Nicole Avatar
    Nicole

    The me syndrome is wearying, annoying, and somehow must be restructured in book promotion.

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