Guest Post: Self Publishing Authors Are ‘Suspect’ and ‘Cheats’

Please help me welcome today's guest blogger, indie novelist Derek Haines:

Is paying for advertising, promotion or even reviews cheating? I read this press release and wondered what point it was trying to make. Yes, it of course refers to John Locke buying reviews, which I must admit is becoming very old news now, but it goes on with carefully chosen vocabulary referring to self-published authors being labeled as unethical, suspect, spamming, inferior and cheats if they pay for promotion.

Then Sean Platt, the author of the press release, admits to having bought thousands of Twitter followers. Talk about hypocritical in the extreme.

So it’s OK to buy Twitter followers, but it’s not OK to buy promotion, advertising or book reviews?

But it did start me thinking about this whole issue of paid promotion, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is not a carefully managed attack on self publishing as a whole. It’s no secret that self-published titles are doing very well, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this success has ruffled a few ‘established ‘ feathers.

In my mind the whole issue is boiling down to one basic point. That is, that it’s OK to spend a bucket-load of money on book promotion if you are a major publisher to ‘buy’ an audience, but if you’re an ‘Indie’, you’re expected to do everything on the cheap and free and wait around for your family and friends to buy your book. Then if you admit to spending money on book promotion, you get labeled as a cheat.

What’s wrong with the idea that self publishing is a business like any other and as such there are marketing expenses and without this investment, books struggle to sell? I think it’s up to every individual self-published author to decide how they operate their business, and from my own particular viewpoint, no one is going to tell me how I should run my own business.

And if you’re wondering. No, I have never bought Twitter followers. Yes, I have paid for advertising. Yes, I have paid for book promotion. There are always expenses in any business. Even self publishing.

Derek Haines lives in Switzerland, and is the author of Eyes That Could Kill and several other books.

Ethics for Writers

Every once in a while, one of my Facebook friends complains about offensive 'political' posts. I figure they don't mean posts like, 'Be sure to tell your Congressman how the new farm bill will affect your family,' so I asked a few of them what they meant by 'political.'

One cousin turned out to be referring to below-the-belt personal attacks on public figures. My reaction: Go, Jennifer! I don't have much toleration for petty personal attacks, either.

But other friends objected to links or discussions about serious matters. "I go to Facebook to escape reality," some of them said. "I don't want to have it thrown in my face here." That one makes me worry.

I certainly can understand the need to take time out from a stressful life to recharge; I think we all need that. What bothers me is that with few exceptions, the people who complain the loudest don't choose to face reality outside of Facebook, either. If workers are kept in slavery, unemployed people are being jailed indefinitely without access to lawyers, or prison inmates are being tortured, many of my friends simply don't want to know about it.

I think there's a strong perception in our culture that if we don't know something, then it doesn't exist.  Judging from how much effort they devote to shutting out reality, it would seem that many Westerners have never grown up past the peek-a-boo stage. When faced with messages like, 'People are suffering; let's figure out how we can help them,' they call the messengers rude and ask them to change the subject.

So where does that leave us as writers? Should we write only about 'safe' topics and leave the slavery and torture alone? Sure, we'd be accomplices to the atrocities, but at least we wouldn't be making our readers uncomfortable. Making people uncomfortable is not nice.

Okay, let's say we choose to be part of the solution. We decide to spread the word about suffering people, and encourage brainstorming sessions on how to help. Then how do we get people to listen? How do we get past the game of peek-a-boo?