Insomniac Nightmares

Just a short set of thoughts and lacking my assorted devices to make this look pretty, so forgive the presentation.

A lot of us are writers, and a lot of us have stuff that people can actually buy, and that’s great. I’m sure it’s helpful to sometimes remind people of that, and it probably doesn’t hurt anyone… but when I read my Twitter feed, I have to wonder if I’m doing it wrong.

I don’t like to spam buy links for my books. I think it’s literally been a year or more since I did. I occasionally drop a link for my freebies on Wattpad and there’s links when I update “Riptide” or other serials, but that’s about it.

But when I scroll through my Twitter feed, I see hundreds of writers who, quite literally, never say anything except “buy my book!” Glancing at their Amazon pages shows that this may actually somehow work; good sales rankings, tons of reviews. Meanwhile I sit and scratch my head, wondering why people are following them if they never have anything to say beyond shameless self-promotion. There’s another handful who occasionally break it up with a retweet for cosmetics or paint mixing videos (I’m not sure what the correlation is), and a very small number who actually act like people who occasionally say “Hey, I made something, and you should buy it.”

Am I doing it wrong? Should I become a “buy my stuff” bot, or continue to just post and retweet my boring old random thoughts and video game screenshots, hoping something snares someone enough to follow the links and look at my work? Is there a middle ground? Am I the only one who says “is what I’m going to say interesting, relevant or important?” Then turns around and tells themselves “Nope” every time, thus remaining silent?

Let us know your thoughts down below!