Jane Yolen on why she writes: “… I don’t write to educate or teach morals to or shape my readers. I write to satisfy the story or poem or piece of fascinating research that speaks to me. To rub a sore, to resonate with joy, to answer a question no one else has satisfactorily answered for me.”
Via pretty much my entire online reading list: The truth about dating a writer: “Writers are really passionate. About writing. Not necessarily about you. Are you writing?”
Finally, sarah_prineas‘ I Will Be Your Friend, But I Will Not Be Your Fan: A Rant About How Authors Use Social Media For Self-Promotion, which I just kept nodding and nodding along with:
“I know what you’re thinking. What about when a book isn’t getting a big push from the publisher? Shouldn’t the author pick up the slack and market herself? Won’t that be kind of like word-of-mouth? No. Because … author shilling does not sell books.”And, talking about how the Internet helped sell Megan Whelan Turner’s A Conspiracy of Kings:
“MWT didn’t have to push people to do this. They did it because the books are great and well loved. That is how social media should sell books. Not via authorial top-down selling, but via true fandoms.”And most of all:
“Anyway, the sad thing is, anybody who is using their blog or twitter to market their book is wasting their time and energy. Who are their books’ readers? Do they read the author’s blog? Maybe a few of them do. Is selling to those very few people worth annoying the many more people who are reading the author’s blog for social reasons? … Authors who self-market are not reaching new readers via social media. They are reaching the same very relatively small group of friend-people over and over and over again.”It’s worth heading over and reading the whole thing. And then maybe keep the link handy for the next time someone talks about how to “use” social networks, or tosses that word “platform” around with regard to same.