The sickness of self promotion

Yeah, it's a picture of one of my stories. Wanna fight about it?

 

Well, I decided to release two bits of work: Sark (the second novella in my Cuts of Flesh series, a risky decision as the pacing is a little off but I want to keep people engaged, if anyone reads them), and Just One Day (no feedback yet, self proofed, so there will be errors).

The reason for this knee jerk (or just jerk) reaction was that I hadn't had a sale on any of my books for a few days, and I got the fear, I got it bad.

I've written about it before but getting sales on my books are addictive, which is unfortunate because I have to get over a huge hurdle to get any of them... and that hurdle is self promotion.

I loathe having to pimp myself out, reminding the same people time and time again of the stuff that I've written in my little study. The recommended frequency of tweeting about your free books is every hour... every hour! I don't do things I actually enjoy with such frequency! (Oh snap!)

I was talking to a friend of mine recently who shall remain nameless as I don't wish to undermine their success (he's a real, bonafide published author and narrative genius) and he was saying how much he hated it as well, and I was wondering if the emotion behind the words ever comes across during promotion. When I tell people that my book is free is it with an obvious air of desperation, or does it smack of self belief? If the latter, is this sickening? If feels sickening. Is it the same with all self published and self promoting jabronis?

I stumbled across an author's website after he started following me on Twitter and checked it out (as I sometimes do to gauge the competition... well, I say competition but most are doing a hell of a lot better than me, so it's really to see if I can nab any ideas) and I almost laughed out loud (the kids say lol? Someone actually said that in a shop once, as if it were a word... I wanted to smack the text out of their lips, but you get arrested for that.). He came across as such an arrogant, self masturbatory pin head that I almost couldn't believe the site was real. This got me thinking... do I come across in such a way on my little freebie site (still too stingy and clueless to buy a domain) whenever I talk about 'what my readers are saying' or any of the other little bits of news I dole out? Is it a necessary evil? Or is he just touching himself in public, and everyone knows it?

I have no answer to this, I'm genuinely puzzled.

Either way, I still hate self promotion, and always will.

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EDIT: The irony that this blog post itself is self promotion is not lost on me...