How do you even start promoting your book?
Is it stereotyping to say that most fiction writers are naturally introverts who don't like the art of the sale?
Every bit of advice says to get a mailing list, Facebook, twitter, Website. To promote your upcoming book.
Do they have a point? Otherwise, you'll just write it, release it to the winds, and in a best case scenario someone will stumble upon it.
Any thoughts on this?
The fact is MFA culture promotes "networking" and "self-promoting" to the extent that unless you're willing to go with it you are literally less than scum to these people. The best thing a committed writer can do in 2015 is write something worthwhile and hope his mother discovers it in the basement after his heart explodes.
>>7449409
What is MFA culture?
Also, I think you might be right.
I have artist friends, painters, illustrators, photographers, and it's so much easier for them. Sure some of them try to play the "I"m so shy, self doubt" thing too, but their work gets an immediate feedback. They post a painting on facebook, or draw on Twitch, and instant validation.
Besides the logistical reasons for not sharing writing this way (copyright, sites and magz counting this as already published) I can't get feedback the way they can.
>>7449434
MFA is some sort of program in the US that churns out "writers". Professional, schooled "writers". Results are what you'd expect. It's mostly used as a derogative on this board.
>>7449434
Also nobody gives a shit about writing. It takes 5 seconds to look at a painting. Asking someone to essentially listen to you for five hours (in the form of reading your no-doubt shitty and self-absorbed novel) is way different. Even movies only take an hour or so to watch.
>>7449443
Just find a job I don't hate and go on writing knowing no one will read the works?
>>7449494
That's what Pessoa did pretty much. Worked part-time as a translator, published some poetry etc under pseudonyms and wrote a novel that was discovered after his death. The fact is out of every 100,000 people who have "ambitions" to write and publish a novel, maybe 40 get published by a publishing house and maybe 5 are read by more than 100 people.
>>7449499
I want to punch every painter friend I have who cries about not being good enough, or having fear to create, meanwhile having a thousand likes and comments everytime a painting goes up on instagram
>>7449499
seriously just think of a barnes and noble, out of all the fucking douchebags on the planet who want to be writers those are the only ones who are going to sell at all, and even then a lot of shit just collects dust and sells jack shit, so really it comes down to the 20 or so books on that table they have right when you walk in the door, if your book isn't on that table, you're not going to make any money...i wish these shitty plebs would stop deluding themselves
>>7449506
>social media likes
social media is dangerous for bad artists because they get all these likes from plebs with no aesthetic taste or art education, and suddenly they think they are making great art...
>>7449506
>looking at paintings on instagram
Pleb.
>>7449509
Physical book shops are outdated. The reason the shitty books are on display by the door isn't because the staff are plebs, but because they are desperate to break even so they try and entice plebs into the store. Elliot Rodger is one of the most-read writers of the past 5 years or so (over 2million page views, probably a few hundred thousand readers).
>>7449520
>Physical book shops are outdated. The reason the shitty books are on display by the door isn't because the staff are plebs, but because they are desperate to break even so they try and entice plebs into the store. Elliot Rodger is one of the most-read writers of the past 5 years or so (over 2million page views, probably a few hundred thousand readers).
ok replace "table by the front door" with "on the front page of amazon underneath the banner for whatever shitty ipad knockoff jeff bezos is pushing" and the stuff on the table by the front door isn't exactly "pleb" it's all middle brow shit that wins awards and gets reviewed by the ny times...i'm sure you'll see coates, morrison, some biography/compilation/cash-in about DFW, a non-fiction book about some rich jewish guy from silicon valley, and so on and so forth...it's not that they're "bad" books, there's just 20 of them, and they're not written by you. that is the point.
>>7449506
yeah, but its not like they'd be able to *sell* that painting to a thousand people.
likes are worth shit. every day a new person gets a thousand likes for fanart of batman or political posturing. and likes are worth less and less as time goes on as social media gets clogged with spambots (either actual robots or philosophical zombies who exist only to consume and retweet)
>>7449550
Which is one of the reasons /lit/ frustrates me a little in the way it acts like /mu/ by only clinging to a few "meme" books / albums and basing its identity around the sort of lame in-jokes (memes) produced by those books / albums. I'm very much interested in contemporary literature but no matter how many threads I've posted over the years they barely get replies. The weird thing about /lit/ is that people here seem to think that by associating with this board they are somehow interesting or well-read, when in reality you can find more interesting and in-depth discussions on a number of other forums, where meme-posting and generally acting like a hyperactive faggot isn't tolerated or encouraged so much as it is here.
Think of everyone that would want to read it and put it somewhere they'd notice it.
>>7449580
Nobody is going to buy your adspace Hiroshima-Chan
>>7449558
Marketing again sort of. One of my artist friends is this cute quirky girl who is all over social media. Besides the likes, people do buy her stuff, and she's talented but I wonder if she was Frank Goomba, if people would be messaging her all the time, and being like "I know shit all about art, but hey can I buy that?"
>>7449594
Also, you are so pretty
>>7449594
Artists can have 5 people that buy their work for their entire life and be successful.
Why don't you make your book exclusive and sell it for mega $. See Wutang's latest album - 1 copy sold for 2 million.
