Do any kind of search online for writing and marketing tips, and you will find about fourteen gazillion articles on blogs touting advice on how to be successful as an author.
Most of them say essentially the same things:
Learn and hone thy craft.
Get critique.
Edit-edit-edit.
Start thyself a blog.
Join Facebook, Twitter, and/or other social media. Promote thyself there, but don't be obnoxious about it.
Get thee an Amazon author page and establish thyself on Goodreads.
Drives. Me. Nuts.
No, it's not bad advice. It's all very good advice. But it's EVERYONE'S advice. Why does every new author feel they have to write one of these posts?
I'm not going to get into that, though.
What I do want to point out is this:
You don't see checklists like this on the blogs of NY Times bestselling authors.
Just sayin'.
7 comments:
What would you recommend? Different strategies?
I don't know--my point isn't really what authors ought to be putting out there as recommendations, but every one of these posts I see presents itself as though it's "the big secret revealed!" Um, no.
What's worse is, the majority of the people saying that are authors themselves in the exact same boat (and likely making the same amount of progress).
For a world full of creative and inventive minds, you'd think a few of these self-proclaimed experts would be able to say something new and innovative.
Well said, Brad!
Dang! Now I have to delete that blog post I scheduled for next week on the seven secret steps to publishing success. Really hate to waste that alliterative title. Oh, well. : )
It's a bit late to the party but I actually wrote my own blog post... about your blog post. It's more a rant of my own than anything, but I actually *do* reply to the "points" that everyone says helps makes an author successful.
http://unda-vosari.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-to-be-successful-as-author-and-why.html
Cool, Brad Checkin' it out...
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