Tag: how to market

This was published on Tumblr on September 29, 2024.

Yes, I have redacted the username because I don’t want you to go harass said writer. Don’t do that.

Now, let’s look at how we can learn how NOT to market ourselves using this tweet.

Stop trying to justify yourself.

Don’t bother telling me that it is a “purposeful stylistic decision” because frankly, I do not care about your stylistic decisions, same as no one cares about my stylistic decisions when reading my books. I care about how I engage with the work. Your feelings as an author do not matter to me, and I know they don’t matter to my own readers, either.

If you are constantly getting criticism for your prose being too dense, then that is a YOU problem. The market is telling you that your writing is unpopular because you’re making it too difficult for the average person. Instead of doubling down and insisting that you are right and special and perfect, listen to the criticisms you’re receiving.

Do not talk down to readers.

If you condescendingly tell me that “it’s okay to look up words when you’re reading,” I am not going to read your books, even if I am perfectly capable of doing so. You have just told me that you think I’m an idiot. The last thing I need in my life is to be sneered at by an author whose product I have purchased.

I have a BA in British Literature and an MA in International Relations. To say that I am familiar with dense prose would be an understatement. Read some Robert O. Keohane and you, too, can hear your brain cells liquifying in real time.

And that’s fine, because not only is Robert O. Keohane a celebrated scholar of international relations, he is explaining complicated concepts that involve a lot of moving parts. Your fantasy book should not be so complicated that I need to take notes so I know what the hell is going on. (I have ranted about this before.)

I will suffer through this kind of prose if I am paying significant amounts of money to do so. I will not struggle through such prose if I am under no compulsion.

Unless your book is required reading in a class (highly unlikely), people are reading for enjoyment during their limited free time. It’s one thing to have a few funky words here and there that are clear through context cues, quite another to litter your books with so many weird words that I have to spend half my time hunting through a dictionary.

Don’t try to tell people how to read.

You, as an author, do not get to tell readers how to read your books. That’s not your job. You don’t have the right to patronizingly tell people to “take it slow.” You provide a product, and then the readers take it from there and get to engage with it however they so choose.

Yes, I roll my eyes at TikTok girlies who say they skip long paragraphs or only read dialogue. I have the right to say I think this is stupid, but ultimately, I don’t get to tell them how to read.

If that’s how they want to engage with the product they have purchased, that is their right, same as I’m entitled to make bread in my rice cooker or turn my iron into a doorstop if I want to.

Your readers don’t care about you, but you need to care about them.

You know those directors who have a clearly obvious fetish because they include that same thing in every single movie? Yeah, we laugh at them. We don’t think it’s cute and quirky, we think it’s weird and gross. If you’re forcing your reader to think about you constantly by interjecting your own opinions and needs into your work, it’s off-putting.

A good book does not force you to think about the author at all. You are absorbed in the story and forget that someone even created this because it feels real. It feels genuine.

Yes, it’s your handiwork, and your essence will be in it, but that should not be the primary focus.

Stop letting your ego get in the way.

Your readers are not sitting there going “waow, so cool” when you churn out a 500-page screed of PhD dissertation prose to talk about two elves fucking. They’re probably thinking, “wow, this author is really far up their own ass.”

Then they have a few options:

1. Continue reading because they think it will make them cool and intellectual to finish a self-important screed about elves fucking
2. Put the book down because it’s annoying and they don’t care
3. Grit their teeth and keep going even though they hate it because they are a completionist

None of those bode well for your reputation as an author. Except maybe the first one, if you are attempting to appeal to an extremely limited audience of pretentious nerds.

If you are trying to sell a book for profit, then you need to know what people want from a book they purchase. Clearly, the author has faced complaints about the dense prose, and instead of realizing they have a market mismatch, they make it everyone else’s problem because their ego won’t let them change.

The instant you feel the need to defend yourself against justified criticism, you have failed.

Of course, if someone misinterprets your work or uses it as their own soapbox – or attacks you as a person – then you are more than welcome to defend yourself.

But if you get worked up over someone complaining about your prose and condescendingly tell them that they need to just get good, you have failed as a writer. You’ve failed to tell a story people want to read because you just had to ensure everyone knew you’re super special and smart.

I’ve seen a lot of queer writers do this, sadly: get sucked into stupid drama because of their ego and then turn a bunch of people off.

This person writes books that are within my genre and interests, but they’ve just told me that if I want to read a book for idle pleasure and not devote all my brainpower to it, I’m not reading it correctly. So why should I give them money to spit in my face and tell me I’m an idiot? No thanks, not my kink.

I will tell you right now that you’re more than welcome to dislike my books. You can think the Eirenic Verses is the stupidest thing you’ve ever read if you want. You can say that on the internet for everyone to see.

In fact, I encourage you to. Leave a brutally honest review. All reviews are good reviews, as I have discussed before.

DNF it, tell your friends you didn’t like it. Whatever. I can’t control your thoughts and I can’t tell you how to read it.

That’s your right as a consumer. If I failed to tell a story you enjoy, that’s my fault.

Will it hurt my feelings? Sure. No one likes to be told they didn’t do a good job. I want you to like my work because I wrote it for people to enjoy. I made up these little guys and put them in a situation, hoping you’d experience a fraction of the happiness I feel when writing.

But ultimately, I know you don’t care about my feelings as the author. You care about your enjoyment of the work and your experience, as you should.

Don’t listen to authors who talk down to you and imply that you’re stupid if they write a book whose prose style you don’t like. They’re speaking from a place of ego, and that’s their problem, not yours.