Today’s musings aren’t anything new. You see, this weekend past I was approached by a fellow author trying to get his book put together. He needs funding and has taken to the popular crowd-funding approach to do so. He wanted me to take a look at his book and then, if I liked it, to help him signal boost and help him out.
Now, if any of you ever look at my Twitter feed, you know that I’m not a fan of the mass retweeters out there, who fling constant advertisements about their books and retweeting other ads. There’s advertisement and promotion … then there’s that continual yelling in your ear. If I don’t like that, how is this sort of thing involving Kickstarter any different?
It’s the simple difference between a simple request done privately and massive unwanting annoyance. It’s also the difference between being given the choice, fully informed, to do what I want instead of constantly being tagged to ‘RT PLZ’ or the like. Helping to signal boost indie authors is one of the primary reasons I started my book reviews to begin with, after all, so backing this kind of approach is my bag of tea.
What this comes down to is that there are right and wrong ways to support your favorite authors. Should you tell your friends about them? Sure! Should you review and rate their books? Of course! But you don’t do them any favors by constantly signal-blasting about them. It’s like any other kind of nagging; it gets old fast. Instead of making your friends read this favorite author of yours, you will likely make them avoid it like the plague out of sheer annoyance!
Until next time, good reading, good writing, and good luck!
J. B. Garner - Musings of a Starving Author 