Hi friends!
(First, some housekeeping. The other day I found two of my own newsletters in my spam folder, so it may well be that some of them are going to yours, too. Do check, and add substack to your list of safe senders if necessary. One of the mailouts in question was alerting you to the current sale I’m running, so if you’re tempted to upgrade to a paid subscription, do so now as there’s 20% off until Friday 5th May).
In This Issue:
The Dark Art of Self-Promotion
And a personal story
The Dark Art of Self-Promotion
Look, I’ll be honest. I sort of dreaded talking about this. It’s not something I find natural, or easy. But I think I have that in common with most authors out there. Or most of the ones I meet, anyway.
Writing is a solitary business. Even if it isn't your main job, and you have a day job, almost be definition you have to be fairly introverted to do it (or perhaps ambivert, or maybe someone able to switch between intro- and extro-version). My point is that writing is very inward looking and requires us to spend long amounts of time by ourselves, talking to imaginary people.
But, if we want to get our work known, and into the hands of other people (which as I’ve said before isn’t necessarily the case, and shouldn’t be the only reason you want to write) then at some point we’re going to have to at least try to put ourselves, and our work, out there. We’re going to have to promote both ourselves, and our books.
But as naturally shy, and most probably fairly self-deprecating, people, how on earth do we do that?
Before we get into it, allow me to tell you a personal story.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to S J Watson : Compendia to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.