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Jan 01, 2013 21:35

I realized today that one reason I don't practice "mindfulness" more is that with it comes the realization that I am physically uncomfortable a lot of the time ( Read more... )

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wickedgillie January 2 2013, 02:50:12 UTC
Interesting observation. As someone with fibromyalgia, I can definitely attest to the dissociation. Only problem is, when you tune out the hurt, you also tune out the pleasure, which wracks havoc with my libido, much to the unhappiness of my dear husband /TMI

Unrelated: my dear friend (that I ended up not editing for after all) has published both an e-book and hard copy version of her pr0n. For your amusement:

https://www.createspace.com/4109104?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026

I have no idea if it's any good. I am afraid to read it, although really, it can't be any worse than 50 Shades. Can it?

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np_complete January 2 2013, 12:10:49 UTC
Yeah, I think it might. After all, 50 Shades was published because it was compelling to read.

I notice her blurb doesn't indicate that it's about vampires or sex, thus depriving her of two big draws.

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wickedgillie January 2 2013, 13:49:09 UTC
This is a different one (that I thought she had already published, but apparently not). She published the vampire thing at the same time, which is silly because she has no clue how to market herself. She just made a FB page for her pen name, made her friends sign up, and just keeps saying "buy my book" and "share this everywhere" because she thinks that's how social media marketing works. I've tried to explain to her that she isn't supposed to sit back and wait for us to sell it for her. She has to actively work at this. Post and pray doesn't work. Not for artists, not for musicians, not for writers. She really should have talked to the supposed publisher that showed supposed interest because this is going to bomb like whoa, and she's already counted her chickens.

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np_complete January 3 2013, 00:28:48 UTC
Sigh. As Elvis Costello put it, "Some people can't be told, you know; they have to learn the hard way."

It would be interesting to talk sometime about publicizing one's fanfiction and whether social media marketing is simply in bad taste for that. I admit I don't know how social media marketing works (despite working for a company that does a Twitstream about it) but I do know that any obvious (or even detectable) effort at self-marketing other than posting a notice about your work is much frowned on.

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wickedgillie January 3 2013, 00:32:47 UTC
Fanfic, yes. But times are changing. I wouldn't be in business if artists weren't out there attempting to promote their own work. Bands are certainly doing it. Some authors are, too. But there are right and wrong ways to do it.

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wickedgillie January 2 2013, 13:57:07 UTC
np_complete January 3 2013, 00:29:42 UTC
I don't do Facebook, unfortunately. But it looks nice, as these things go.

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wickedgillie January 3 2013, 00:33:26 UTC
Ah, I'd forgotten. Which is silly, because otherwise, we'd hang out more than we do!

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np_complete January 3 2013, 01:42:34 UTC
My current client doesn't allow people to go to "social media" sites from their network, which is why I only tweet in the evening. They're within their rights, and I understand why (they deal with lots of confidential information). But it makes things a little more lonely.

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platypus January 4 2013, 01:24:29 UTC
(Hi! I don't know you, but I'll just jump right in...) I'm extremely wary of self-published works, but the premise sounds like something I MIGHT read (although the description gets off to a slow start). I'm not likely to sink money into something sight unseen, though. I went to the Facebook page, hoping for more information, but there's really nothing there. ("We have made the book more male friendly by adding a index of the flash drive at the back of the book"? Really? I don't even know where to begin with that.)

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wickedgillie January 4 2013, 01:34:42 UTC
Do you have a Kindle/reading device and Amazon Prime? If so, it's eligible for the lender's library for free, so that's something at least.

I'm trying to work with her to improve the FB page and how she's promoting the work.

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np_complete January 4 2013, 03:08:11 UTC
It occurs to me, after having looked at her FB page: you can't put a work out there and then pretend you're an established author whose name speaks for itself. It seems to me that you'd have to work twice as hard as a professionally published author to sell yourself.

Consider Paul Cornell, who is a successful writer by just about any standard. He works very hard to promote his work: he tweets all the time about places he's going to be doing readings and panels he's going to be on. And (no offense meant to Mr. Cornell) he appears to re-tweet every nice thing anybody says about him and post a link to any good review.

So it seems to me that she'd have to work even harder than that, because she has no reputation at all and is operating without the implicit guarantee of professional publication that someone thought her stuff worth reading.

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wickedgillie January 4 2013, 03:12:25 UTC
Exactly. I even pointed her toward a best practices page for facebook fan pages that say if you're just starting out, you really shouldn't have a fan page. and releasing two unrelated books at once is also not a great idea, especially since they're radically different in tone, in content, and even the whole heinous second-person thing.

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