There was a time when self-promotion was considered so verboten, especially for authors.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writers say many true things about their own experiences with publicity and promotion.
Sometimes writers say true things about the overall nature of publicity, promotion, and the publishing industry; but alas, not always.
What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now.
Today, writers want to impress other writers.
I had been saying to myself for a good many years that I was really a writer and that I was in advertising temporarily.
Publishers were ever eager for authors to do their own publicity because nobody else was willing to do it for nothing. But then it became clear that if you want somebody to champion the story, there's nobody better than the person who made it all up.
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
Today there are millions of people making stuff and putting it into the world: that's become part of our identity and it shouldn't be limited to people who fancy themselves writers, or who are particularly witty or talented.
There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody.
Self-promotion has never been a point, and I'm incredibly inept at self-promotion.