Everyone on the Internet is a freaking
expert. That is why I absolutely hate giving people advice on
anything. Not a day goes by where someone with thousands of followers
less than me on Twitter wants to give me advice on how to gain more
followers. Because clearly, they are so much better at it than I am.
You can't make this crap up.
I am not sure it is an epidemic—yet,
but I have noticed a disturbing trend as I sit back and wait for some
social media website or another to do tricks. It is the number of
self published authors who have decided to write books on self
publishing. For laughs I decided to go check some of them out. An
outrageous number of them are second books. That's right, these
idiots think they are qualified to tell you how to make a life
changing move after doing it exactly one time.
You want to get driving lessons from
some punk with a learners permit?
You wouldn't even pay to get your
haircut from someone who had only done it once, but someone has to be
buying this garbage. Here is a hint, you can get it all for free. And
starting today, you can even get it from me.
As a general rule, I don't really like
blogging how to things for writers. There are a lot of personal
reasons for this. The first is, I am not an expert. I publish my
novels, I have been published by an indie press, and I have founded a
publishing co-op. That isn't the same thing as having all the
answers. That's never going to happen. The second reason is, most
readers don't care. So many people forget that writers are not your
target market. Despite what their sheer numbers on Twitter would lead
you to believe, there are more non-writing readers than the other way
around. Lastly, there are a ton of other resources out there already
for free—which I am sure is where most of these How to Self Publish
Your Novel people got their information from to begin with.
I am pretty sure it has been over a
year since I had broke my how to rule. I might have slipped up—if
someone was absolutely wrong on the Internet! But suddenly
people care what I think. I have no idea when it happened. It just
did. Randomly, I'd have some new follower ask me for some kind advice
or something book related every week or so. Now I am up to like three
a day. Many times they ask me the same kinds of questions. Since
someone took the time to ask me, I like to take the time to give them
the answer without just sending them to some other website. Thus, it
was starting to take up more and more time. So I have decided to
devote a day a week to helping other writers. I will even take
questions. You can @ me on Twitter or leave them in the comments. I
will do my best to get to all of them, but please try and be
specific. I get asked how to publish, or even how to write a novel
almost every day. That's like asking someone directions to a
destination across the world. Every time I read a direct message like
that I think about it for three seconds, wondering if maybe there is
some easy, Twitter sized answer I hadn't considered. Then when I
realize again that there isn't my brain melts down.
Don't make me do that.
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