Sans Spam: Introduction

selfpromotionI’ve learned a lot in a couple of years as an professional author.

What’s been strange is how much of it was meant for a completely different audience.

Everything I’ve learned about running a business was aimed at someone different than me. An executive, an “official” business person. That’s one reason I am so thankful for Kris Rusch’s Freelancer Survival Guide and Dean Smith’s Think Like A Publisher. They specifically address the strange intersection of business and art that is publishing and writing.

Self-promotion, however, hasn’t gotten that kind of high-level overview. I’ve cobbled lots of things together in my life – some of them worked, some failed spectacularly. But I’ve been learning and experimenting. I’m a natural introvert – but a lot of the people I know in publishing and writing think the opposite. That’s the result of years of learning, experience, and screwing stuff up.

All too often, self-promotion seems to go along with signing smoking documents in your own blood at a crossroads at midnight.

You don’t have to.

I’m going to share what I’ve learned. Some things you’ll already know. Some things will smack you between the eyes. Some you’ll want to get more information on (and I’ll have a bibliography and resources at the end).

Much like So You Want to Make an eBook?, I’ll be putting it out on the blog, with the search tag “selfpromotion”. One change will be that the first post in this series (besides the introduction) will go up as a guest blog.

I hope you enjoy this series – and more importantly, I hope you find it useful.

This post was part of Sans Spam: Self Promotion For Authors. I’m releasing this book in sections on my blog, but when it’s all finished I will offer the whole thing as a single eBook. Everyone who donates toward its production (use the coffee cups to the right, note that it’s because of this effort) will get a free copy of this eBook. You can find all the posts here.