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Mark shares a rant about a particular thing he noticed continues to happen related to authors looking for promotional opportunities.
Prior to the main content, Mark talks about how this episode was born from content originally sent to patrons of the podcast who responded to his slightly rawer rant on the same topic. For that special episode, he merely turned on the microphone and just let it out.
But a number of patrons commented about that rant, suggesting that it would be beneficial to the larger author community to be aware of an author action that can really set off retailers, distributors, and other industry people.
Mark reads off the names of the current patrons, thanking them for their support, and for bringing this episode to all listeners.
This episode is sponsored by the patrons of the Stark Reflections podcast.
Patrons can support this podcast at http://patreon.com/starkreflections for $1, $3, or $5 a month, and gain access to additional content, text, video, and special audio episodes. A common theme to those episodes is “Stark Reflections on Other Podcasts.” As of July 29, 2021, there are 75 exclusive backlist patron posts available.
Within the main content, or rant, for this episode, Mark talks about all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into finding promotional space for indie authors on the majority of the larger retail platforms outside of Amazon, and the thoughtless way that some authors treat all this hard work.
Links of Interest:
- A Rant on Unprofessional Author Behavior (Patron link)
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- The Relaxed Author
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- Wide for the Win
- Mark’s Canadian Werewolf Books
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
A great episode and I respect your honesty.
I agree it is rude and unprofessional to bail on a promotion. I can imagine how frustrating it must be. However, my sympathy ends there.
The threatening vibe of being put on a naughty list just reinforces the view that success with publishing wide favours those who kiss ass: usually those who can afford to galivant around the world to attend functions and schmooze in person. I’m not a big fan of exclusivity but it does feel like a more even playing field in comparison in regards to nonsense like ego rubs.
And for those hardworking professionals who have the time to gossip over who is good and bad… I do hope they remember that not everyone is so lucky to work in a job where they can blacklist people who annoy them.
Thanks for your thoughts and comments, Kent.
It’s not about gossiping or even maintaining any such lists. Who has time for that? What’s talked about is the behavior and how much time it wastes.
But it IS about being burned repeatedly by the people who don’t have the basic common courtesy to follow through on basic professional behavior. And it’s not meant to be a threat. It’s a reality. A reality of the way an author is perceived when they do these things.
I feel your pain. I’ve been an admin of various groups aimed at helping authors promote themselves. I’ve spent hours and days setting up FREE author pages that other groups charge a significant fee to do. Some authors are extremely grateful, while others drop out without a word.
I am grateful for D2D selecting some of our books for various promotions, even though my friend and I write in a niche market. We’ll likely never have the hundreds of sales a day that those who write in popular genres do, but we are thankful for the opportunity to have our books in the free promos to get more exposure in other markets. Little by little we’ll build up our presence there, but the boost we get from your promos is so helpful.
Thank you and all those who support these efforts.
–Rebecca Carter (writing as Ronesa Aveela, along with Nelly Toncheva)
I couldn’t agree more, Mark! As an editor & publisher, I see equally bad behavior from authors who ignore submission guidelines – sending manuscripts significantly over/under requested word-count, stories that utterly and completely miss the requested theme/topic for the project, whose submissions have to be fished out of junk mail folders because they couldn’t be bothered to address them as requested, and more. I’ve gone on more than a few rants about them, myself. And while I don’t have a photographic memory, I often remember those troublemakers (and not kindly) when they submit to another project. It’s not that difficult to be a professional – especially if you want to be treated like a professional in a global industry like ours.