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Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

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Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#11

Post by troad »

goles wrote: post #2

Surprised at the lack of discussion in the article around Patreon. Some of the points around the need to self-promote for artist are valid. But the popularity of funding individual(s) to produce niche content is now surprisingly mainstream. The quote . . ." a loose collection of YouTubers and influencers who feed slop to their younger audiences." particularly sneering. There are many successful Youtube channels that…

> Surprised at the lack of discussion in the article around Patreon.

Traditional journalism very much has a chip on its shoulder about the success of “new media”, for obvious reasons. (How many writers at traditional outlets are pumping out copy at or below minimum wage? How do they feel looking at a successful Patreon for an independent journalist?)

Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#12

Post by boznz »

So glad I have an income stream not dependent on this or I would surely starve and I really feel for those currently reluctantly going through the self-promotion grinder. But I cannot do self-promotion and so no sales and no reviews for my latest masterpiece.

However I am content enough that I am currently writing another, and happy to stay a failure rather than go through the crap-fest that is social media.

I am sure one day in a far-flung future someone or something will read my books and appreciate them.

Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#13

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

This is definitely on my mind as I consider whether (approaching my half-century) I can switch careers at all, without going back into a full-time role.

Freelance word-of-mouth has a habit of drying up in difficult times (like the times we've been through), and at any rate it is rarely useful when you want to significantly switch direction; those mouths likely have far less interest in the new words.

There is, to some extent, a way forward, which is that you do a chunk of your primary promotion mutually. That is, find someone else you are working with a lot, or multiple someones if you are organised, whose work you respect, and agree a simple, mutual cross-promotional scheme that you can both monitor.

Or agree to swap writing biographies, marketing blurbs, all the things you find difficult about writing about yourself.

Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#14

Post by robertlagrant »

w10-1 wrote: post #7

This misses the real problem of waste in winner-take-all markets. For each football player or musician or influencer or artist who makes it big, there are thousands of people spending millions of hours who fail. The same is probably true for developers and entrepreneurs. That time and those lessons really can't be re-purposed, and have no economic value. I don't think failure is only a lack of merit. probably many of…

> Otherwise, it's a bit of a waste from the perspective of society

No it's not. Society isn't only an economic system.

Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#15

Post by handoflixue »

derbOac wrote: post #4

I was a bit confused about how authors are supposed to bootstrap themselves into a following according to this article. Putting aside the long tail of book outcomes, do publishers really expect an author to already have a readership somehow? I'm genuinely curious. I have no experience with this area outside of academics, which is a bit different. I guess a blog makes sense, and I've always been aware of marketing eff…

No clue if this is actually what publishers mean by that, but there's plenty of people self publishing their work online - fan fiction probably makes up the majority of it, but there's plenty of original work out there as well.

I'm not sure writing a web serial necessarily translates to ideal novel authorship, but it does at least suggest someone who can attract readers and meet deadlines

Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#16

Post by spacebanana7 »

w10-1 wrote: post #7

This misses the real problem of waste in winner-take-all markets. For each football player or musician or influencer or artist who makes it big, there are thousands of people spending millions of hours who fail. The same is probably true for developers and entrepreneurs. That time and those lessons really can't be re-purposed, and have no economic value. I don't think failure is only a lack of merit. probably many of…

Prestigious graduate jobs have a similar dynamic.

At university I remember my friends applying for places at Goldman & McKinsey at ratios of hundreds of applications per job.

These applications took time to make. Cumulatively the thousands of hours spend on interview prep per job may well have exceeded the total hours of work performed each successful job winner in their first year.

It seemed so wasteful to see smart young people wasting their time on regurgitating corporate values & case studies for jobs they never got.

Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#17

Post by joseda-hg »

derbOac wrote: post #4

I was a bit confused about how authors are supposed to bootstrap themselves into a following according to this article. Putting aside the long tail of book outcomes, do publishers really expect an author to already have a readership somehow? I'm genuinely curious. I have no experience with this area outside of academics, which is a bit different. I guess a blog makes sense, and I've always been aware of marketing eff…

I've been made aware of fiction authors that publish in free platforms (Say Wattpad) that use their existing following to publish either new stories (less common) or physical (Maybe improved) versions of already online books

Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#18

Post by anonzzzies »

This in itself is a reason for us to raise while we wanted to stick with bootstrap. We are profitable since the start, but none of us has time to do or wants to do this stupid promotion stuff. Why do I need to become 'a rockstar' to promote a SaaS products? Can't people who like it not just use it without needing some kind of 'persona' behind it? I don't know and couldn't care less who are behind the saas products we use; as long as they are useful we pay, when they are not anymore, we stop paying.

Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#19

Post by jollofricepeas »

“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise”

-Ted Turner (1990?)

“A truly great business must have an enduring “moat” that protects excellent returns on invested capital [..] Therefore a formidable barrier such as a company [..] possessing a powerful worldwide brand (Coca-Cola, Gillette, American Express) is essential for sustained success.“

- Warren Buffett (2007?)

Re: Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

#20

Post by proc0 »

w10-1 wrote: post #7

This misses the real problem of waste in winner-take-all markets. For each football player or musician or influencer or artist who makes it big, there are thousands of people spending millions of hours who fail. The same is probably true for developers and entrepreneurs. That time and those lessons really can't be re-purposed, and have no economic value. I don't think failure is only a lack of merit. probably many of…

> That time and those lessons really can't be re-purposed, and have no economic value.

Arguably the winners need the competition to get better so in a sense the losers are there to help select a winner. In other words, knowing who is the best also includes knowing who is not, at least implicitly.

This may also be inevitable. We can imagine a world where someone declares "I'm the best at X", and there is no way to know unless it is tested, which means a competition of some kind, which means losers.

The positive side of meritocracy is that people are free to compete in whatever competition they feel they have a good chance of winning. Additionally, it serves as a learning experience to build your game and eventually become the winner. Equity (or whatever we call equalizing the playing field) is throwing the baby out with the bathwater on this one... no one loses but also no one really wins.

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