Quote:
Originally Posted by ChaoZ
Maybe this is just me, but when I see an author I'm not familiar with aggressively promote his or her own material through forums and social media, a part of me automatically casts a negative view on the book. It's as if subconsciously, I feel that if a writer's product is good, there would be no need for self promotion of that kind - it would be done through word of mouth, through the publisher etc.
I realize this may be impractical these days as publishers expect a writer to provide their own audience to a degree. (A few of the writers I follow are very active in their online promotion activities). And it's certainly not to say that self-published books are always garbage. Perhaps I am stuck with an outdated publishing model in my head, where publishing houses and editors act as a filter of the slush pile; where, to appear in print, significant amount of time and money (outside of the writer) has been devoted into pushing worthwhile products.
With the increasing popularity of ebooks, more and more previously unpublishable material will (and has) hit the marketplace. And of course, all those authors will aggressively push their own works.
Is the mindset of automatically dismissing authors and books which are self-published (or even works from small publishers) and aggressively marketed at a grass-roots level, a valid way of cutting through the noise? I feel guilty for doing it, but one has to be able to filter somehow.
|
Can you explain what you mean by "aggressively promoting"? I've learned of new authors right here at MR that I never would have found cruising the isles at Chapters
