Actual Facebook post from this morning. Name withheld for my sake, not theirs.
Well this is just dandy! I went to sleep yesterday with 2,012 likes on my author page and now I wake up to find I only have 1,960, on the reason that the likes from inactive accounts have been deleted. This is so unfair! If someone liked my author page, that means they liked me and/or my writing. If they died, changed their names or have simply deleted their accounts, that doesn't mean they've stopped liking me or my books. I've contacted Facebook about it and am anxious for a reply. I don't know if any of you have had this unpleasant surprise, but I strongly encourage you to protest against this policy. It's rude and unfair for everyone.
Well. Let me tell you right now, I am so inundated with thousands of "likes" that I didn't even NOTICE a couple of them had been dropped from my author page for some crass reason that is beyond my control (such as dying: what a feeble excuse for no longer liking my work!). As a matter of fact, today's posts on Facebook all seem to be along these lines. They're either hot-air-style self-promotion or humble "admissions" of receiving a major literary award (which they don't deserve, of course, but here's the name of the book anyway). People told me FB would be a great way to promote my book, but so far it's pretty much of a bust.
I'm at the point of surrender. Not willingly, not gladly, though there is a certain amount of relief involved. Trying to make a go of being published, even trying to break even and not end up (humiliatingly) in the hole is, for reasons that forever elude me, beyond my grasp.
I got to the party late, you see. Everyone already knows each other, so when a blank space walks into the room, no one sees it. Or so it has always seemed.
I have no regret whatsoever about writing the novel. It was exhilarating, and proved I COULD write again, book-length, after what amounted to wholesale spiritual and physical collapse. Then there was the thrill of getting it published, which I honestly thought would never happen. But oh the frustrations. A new FB friend recently asked me if the Lloyd family liked my book. LIKED my book? I don't know how many copies I sent them, and the silence was deafening. Such people receive stacks of books from would-be would be's, and they never get to them. I'm not saying they're not busy. They are. But the total lack of acknowledgement, the sense that another $20 or $30 (depending on postage) has been thrown into the Grand Canyon is beyond disheartening. This is a published-copy form of the infamous slush pile, a phenomenon which never goes away and which makes writers want to open a vein.
There have been heartbreaking moments of hope, as when Rich Correll phoned me from Los Angeles out of the blue, to tell me he loved my samples and wanted to see more. But suddenly, for no reason I can fathom, he stopped answering my phone calls and emails, and would not even tell me if he received his copy. I was left hanging, which to me is far worse than being told to go take a flying leap at the moon. The only answer I received from the 25 or 30 I sent out (some to absurd places I'm too embarrassed to mention) was from Stephen Fry - his assistant, who thanked me and assured me he'd never get around to reading it. But it was acknowledgement. I exist. Whoopee!
So if you can't stand this particular form of heat, just get out of the kitchen. But it does make me wonder what awful deficiency in me (for others DO succeed, like the Likes Lady above) leads to this sort of failure over and over and over again, when I am so often told by readers how much they enjoy my work.
But I've never made it to 2,012 likes. Maybe that's the problem. I don't often get more than 12 likes. People just don't like me.
But maybe it's because they're dead.
(p. s. This is a vastly rewritten version of a post that was so angry and bitter and devastated, I finally decided - even though nobody is going to read it anyway - that I just can't put out that kind of energy.)
I'm at the point of surrender. Not willingly, not gladly, though there is a certain amount of relief involved. Trying to make a go of being published, even trying to break even and not end up (humiliatingly) in the hole is, for reasons that forever elude me, beyond my grasp.
I got to the party late, you see. Everyone already knows each other, so when a blank space walks into the room, no one sees it. Or so it has always seemed.
I have no regret whatsoever about writing the novel. It was exhilarating, and proved I COULD write again, book-length, after what amounted to wholesale spiritual and physical collapse. Then there was the thrill of getting it published, which I honestly thought would never happen. But oh the frustrations. A new FB friend recently asked me if the Lloyd family liked my book. LIKED my book? I don't know how many copies I sent them, and the silence was deafening. Such people receive stacks of books from would-be would be's, and they never get to them. I'm not saying they're not busy. They are. But the total lack of acknowledgement, the sense that another $20 or $30 (depending on postage) has been thrown into the Grand Canyon is beyond disheartening. This is a published-copy form of the infamous slush pile, a phenomenon which never goes away and which makes writers want to open a vein.
There have been heartbreaking moments of hope, as when Rich Correll phoned me from Los Angeles out of the blue, to tell me he loved my samples and wanted to see more. But suddenly, for no reason I can fathom, he stopped answering my phone calls and emails, and would not even tell me if he received his copy. I was left hanging, which to me is far worse than being told to go take a flying leap at the moon. The only answer I received from the 25 or 30 I sent out (some to absurd places I'm too embarrassed to mention) was from Stephen Fry - his assistant, who thanked me and assured me he'd never get around to reading it. But it was acknowledgement. I exist. Whoopee!
So if you can't stand this particular form of heat, just get out of the kitchen. But it does make me wonder what awful deficiency in me (for others DO succeed, like the Likes Lady above) leads to this sort of failure over and over and over again, when I am so often told by readers how much they enjoy my work.
But I've never made it to 2,012 likes. Maybe that's the problem. I don't often get more than 12 likes. People just don't like me.
But maybe it's because they're dead.
(p. s. This is a vastly rewritten version of a post that was so angry and bitter and devastated, I finally decided - even though nobody is going to read it anyway - that I just can't put out that kind of energy.)
"You had me at hello"
Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
