I don't care whether you read my books.

First, an apology is in order. You may have noticed that this is Monday night. And as y'all know, I always post on Sunday nights. I have no good excuse for not posting last night -- I stayed out too late, hanging out with friends, and didn't adequately plan ahead of time. I'll try not to do it again. Too often, anyway.

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I might be losing it. I was cruising Twitter a few days ago, as one does, and I could swear I saw somebody mention something about some authors -- or maybe it was just one author -- who had complained about people who buy their books but never read them. 

Twitter isn't organized -- hashtags were literally invented by users so they could find and aggregate tweets on specific topics -- and while I have a vague idea of whose tweet it was that I saw in response to the original tweet, I can't find any evidence of it. Nor can I think of a hashtag that would cover it. And my Google-fu is failing me, too.

Anyway, let's just pretend this actually happened -- that some clueless author actually complained on Twitter that people were buying their book(s) but not reading it/them. And let me state further that I don't care whether you read my books.

Tigs says you should buy and read the hooman lady's books.
Lynne Cantwell | 2021

I might feel differently if I wrote nonfiction books full of original ideas and earth-shattering truths that would be a huge benefit to society, and published them because I needed the world to understand them so we could all live together in peace and harmony forever, and then...crickets.

But I don't write nonfiction (very often). I write fiction. Specifically, fantasy. More specifically, urban fantasy, and sometimes magic realism. Now, there are fiction writers who use their work to sell a particular philosophy or point of view (Ayn Rand comes to mind). But I'm not one of them. I write stories I would like to read myself. Moreover, even when I've stuck in an intriguing idea or several, I'm not so egotistical as to think everyone must read my priceless pearls of prose. 

The bottom line is I'm here to entertain myself, and by extension, my readers. If you want to buy my books and let them sit on your Kindle unread, I'm okay with that. I get paid either way.

And you can't judge people's motivations for not immediately reading every book they buy. One reader told me the other day that she's probably going to wait to read The Atherton Vampire until the other two books come out, so she can get the whole story at once. I respect that.

Oh, hey, I need to put in a plug for The Atherton Vampire, which is just 99 cents at Amazon through at least the end of this month. Here's the cover again: 

Okay, back on topic. 

I get that some writers have sweated bricks over their books, possibly for years, and it feels like a slap in the face when folks don't or won't read them. But then I think back on my twenty-year career in broadcast journalism and all the priceless pearls of prose I wrote for myself and others -- all of which have no doubt been bulk-erased long since -- and I just have to shrug. 

I write books now. Once you, Dear Reader, have bought them, it's out of my hands. Read them or not, as you choose. As long as you buy them, I'm good.

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These moments of bloggy clarification have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

Tweet test: the results.

Last week, you may remember, I rambled on for a while about how my Twitter feed was filling up with "buy my book" tweets and retweets, and suggested maybe we should all quit doing it, inasmuch as it alienates followers and doesn't sell books.

After reading some of the comments to that post, I decided to try a little test. Last Wednesday, I released the second of three Land, Sea, Sky short stories, Change of Plans. So on Thursday, I programmed HootSuite to promote the book by sending out one tweet an hour, from midnight to midnight -- 24 tweets in all.

Here's a screen shot of what my Twitter profile looked like that day. I'll spare you the repetition of all 24 tweets. (This isn't the most egregious use of Twitter I've ever heard of; I read about one self-pubbed author who programmed tweets to go out every 15 minutes.)

Granted that it's not the most cogently-written tweet ever, and #PipeWomanChronicles and #LandSeaSky aren't exactly trending hashtags (although not for lack on trying on my part, at least in the case of the Pipe Woman Chronicles). And it's a short story, which tends not to sell as well. And I offered it for 99 cents, not for free. But if Twitter were a viable advertising platform, you'd think I'd get some action out of my tweet blitz, wouldn't you?

Do you want to know how many copies of Change of Plans I sold on Thursday? Exactly one. And that sale may be attributable to my posting the link on the Thrifty Thursday feature at Indies Unlimited the same day, forgetting momentarily that I was doing the Twitter test. (In my defense, I hadn't had any coffee yet.)

I also should have checked whether I lost any followers because of my wall-to-wall Twitnoise. Alas, I forgot to note my pre- and post-test follower numbers -- and anyway, that, too, might have been skewed by a Twitter follow-fest we did at IU last week. (No, I'm not doing another tweet barrage to find out for sure.) I do have one anecdotal report, however: one of my daughter Kat's friends, who also follows me, asked Kat what was going on. Upon learning that it was a test, she told Kat that if it hadn't been, she would have unfollowed me.

If you need more evidence, this rant came to my attention today.  In it, a gentleman opines about how self-published authors are "destroying literature" (the maroon's words, not mine) by publishing unvetted dreck and -- wait for it -- clogging up social media with "buy my book" posts and tweets. (Apparently there's a #buymybook hashtag. I don't know why that surprised me.)

I hear you: "So if I can't use social media for advertising my book, what's it good for?" My friends, you can find the answer in the word "social". Don't just shout at people; aim to start a conversation. It's not hard! Here's what you do:

1. Set up your Twitter profile properly. K.S. Brooks posted a tutorial last year at IU about how to get both your website's or blog's URL and your Amazon Author Page URL into your profile. Read her post here. Then go to your Twitter profile and fix it. Do it now, while you're thinking about it. Go ahead -- I'll wait.
2. Back already? See, that didn't take long. Now make a quick list of things in your book that you could tweet about. The Pipe Woman Chronicles were rife with stuff I could work into tweets: the locales (Denver, the Pine Ridge Reservation), the people (Native Americans), the events, and the gods. A secondary theme of Fissured is hydraulic fracturing, so I sometimes post about that. Last week, I shared a link to a re-imagining of many of the Yoruba gods and goddesses, because Oya sends a human representative to the Big Mediation in Annealed. Your book is a standard romance? Then tweet about romance. Your book's a thriller? Tweet about real-life events that inspired you or that remind you of your plot.
3. In addition to that, I'll tweet links to writing-related blog posts that I've found interesting. And occasionally, I'll post* random stuff that made me laugh.

So how does this sell books? If a follower thinks you're sufficiently interesting and/or entertaining, they will check out your profile to learn more about you. And I don't know about you, but I almost always click through to a person's profile before I follow them on Twitter. And -- hey presto! -- now your profile sports a link to your Amazon Author Page, so people can go there and look at your work. And precisely because you haven't been hitting them over the head with "buy my book" links, they're more likely to buy one of your books -- and tell their friends and followers what a great writer you are, on top of being entertaining, and maybe then those people will buy one of your books. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You don't think it works that way? Tell it to Hugh Howey. Wool got to be a bestseller by word of mouth. You've got nothing to lose by giving it a try.

*Dirty little secret: I have my Facebook fan page linked to my Twitter feed, so anything I post on my fan page goes automatically to Twitter.

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In other news: The first draft of Crosswind should be done tomorrow -- huzzah! That means the book is on track for a late November release.

Thanks very much to those who've purchased Change of Plans! And please watch your spam filter e-mail inbox (I have no illusions here!) this week for an extremely belated newsletter.

Happy Mabon, everyone.

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This is a test of the hearth/myth blog by Lynne Cantwell. This is ONLY a test. Do not adjust your set.

Reducing Twitnoise: A modest proposal.

StartBloggingOnline.com | Creative Commons

I hope I don't get myself drummed out of the indie author corps for this post.

I dislike Twitter. There, I said it. And yet, it ought to be a natural for me, because broadcast news requires short sentences of 10 or 20 words, in subject-verb-object order. I'm used to conveying ideas in quick bites that are easily understood by a distracted listener.

Moreover, a reasonably-sized slice of my broadcasting career was devoted to writing "bumpers" -- one-line promos about the next story or stories that are designed to pique your interest so that you stick around through the commercials.

So I should be gravitating to Twitter. But I hate it. Why? Because I feel like every time I'm there, somewhere around 87% of my tweet stream consists of people trying to sell me something. Oh, it's not all blatant "buy my book" tweets; often it's people retweeting other people's "buy my book" tweets.  To make matters worse (for me), there are a number of apps that will not only filter out the dreck from your own feed, but will allow you to schedule your "buy my book" tweets, as well as "buy this other guy's book" tweets, as often as you want, all day long, for weeks into the future.

If you, too, are an indie author, you probably already know this. And you've probably been petitioned, cajoled, and/or coerced into either sending your own advertising tweets or retweeting somebody else's. Right?

Here's what bothers me. See, I'm not a public relations professional: I'm not paid specifically to sell other people's stuff for them. Mind you, P.R. is an honorable profession -- it's just not what I get paid to do. I'm an author. And as an author, I believe (maybe wrongly!) that I have a reputation to uphold. I want readers and other indies to associate my name with a certain level of quality. And so if I'm recommending that someone click on a link I've posted on Facebook or tweeted on Twitter, I want them to know that I've vetted the material at the link, and I think it will be worth my followers' time to check out.

So when somebody hands me a list of tweets from people I met five minutes ago and says, "Here, tweet these, and then we'll all tweet one for you," I resist. I haven't read any books by any of these people; I don't know whether I can recommend them or not.

I had someone tell me this week, "It's just a retweet. People will know you haven't read the book."  Really? I'm sending out a tweet under my name, with my picture on it, and people won't think it's a personal recommendation?

Do we have any figures on whether "buy my/his/her book" tweets actually sell books? Any proof that this tactic does anything other than annoy people with Twitnoise (a word I just coined -- do you like it?)? If so, please let me know and I will reconsider my prejudice against the practice.

But if it annoys people *and* it doesn't sell any books, why do we keep doing it?

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Speaking of self-promotion (and yes, I get the irony): Coming out this week will be the second of the "Land, Sea, Sky" prologue stories. In "Where Were You When?" last month, I introduced you to Tess Showalter, who's on the verge of becoming a journalist ("Gee, Murgatroyd, I wonder where Lynne got that idea from?"); this month, in "Change of Plans," our main character is Darrell Warren, a nice guy whose life is about to do a 180-degree turn courtesy of a certain rabbit-eared god. I hope you'll check out both of them on Amazon.

Also, I'm making good progress on Crosswind, the first LSS novel. The first draft passed 40,000 words early this morning -- whoo hoo! I'm hoping to finish it by this time next weekend, but that's probably too optimistic. We'll see, though.

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This moment of cranky Twitter blogginess is brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.