The Gold Rush Has Ended.

I know that several people have been wondering why I have not been blogging as much as I had been in the past. This is due to some recent events in how things have been going with my writing, and a failure on my focus to keep writing and moving forward first and foremost in my goals. I became infatuated on focusing on marketing and advertising to drive Book Sales. This is been a big mistake in many ways.

What I have come to discover, is that marketing is an attractive danger. What I mean by that, is that it has a tendency to seduce you, as a writer, to focus on things other then doing the one essential item all writers need to be doing, write the next book.

I got sucked up into the whirlwind of marketing. And I have realized that it is like a Boom Town in a collapsing Gold Rush. Right now online and independent publishing is saturated in many ways. Too many people believe that it is a get-rich-quick paradise.  They think that writing a book is simple. Something they can do in a few days, and come up with a world-class best seller. This is far from truth.

the easy profits have gone, competition is fierce, and only the established authors, like mercantile owners with radically inflated prices who sell junk easily had for free are profiting the most. Those who got in early, are cannibalizing what remains by marketing to all the greenhorns who showed up late to the boom.

I have watched several free seminars and marketing classes comma and discovered very quickly that they are the exact same thing that I experienced when people tried to sell me other network marketing systems. Although they are not having to go out and make a network per se, they are teaching you how to act like a common telemarketer or email marketer rather than a writer.

I just want to learn how to be a better writer. The area that I need assistance with comma is promoting my work so it can get in front of eyes and they know it exists. I know in many respects this is nothing more than the basics of marketing comma it differs significantly from what I keep seeing as ways these classes teach to Market your book.

In many regards this has offended me to the quick. Why would I want to use practices that I myself are offended by? What is worse, is learning that although a single author may use their email list as a great way to keep in contact with their fans, when you have several authors that you follow, that one person is now lumped in with what is now a shapeless blob of mass marketing that overwhelms your emails inbox. In my case, this has caused me to become quickly offended with all the authors that I have pitching me products to separate me from my money, that have no value to me. It’s the equivalent of getting aluminum siding or Lawn Service telemarketers when you live in an apartment. I have discovered I do not want to do this to anyone who reads my work or is interested in what I have to say.

Therefore, I am rethinking what it will take to promote my work. I am seriously reconsidering whether to even start an email list, a Facebook group, or any of the advertising efforts that I actually have tried so far. It is a lot of times or a lot of  effort stolen from that which is best spent  on completing the next story everyone wants to read.

I realized I had to make a decision. Whether to become a marketer, a job I find loathsome at the most kind or to become a writer. I know there are people out there who find the activity of marketing exciting wonderful and a benefit to mankind. I am their antithesis. If I wanted to do that kind of work, I could have easily become a telemarketer in any one of several businesses in my local area. What I do love, is telling you good stories. That is my drive and my passion. I love talking to you either through voice when I am gaming on Guild Wars 2 or through any other methods and which that I have had great conversations about my first novel. I might have to share some of the insights that I have received so far from some of these conversations. It is humbling and gratifying to talk with people around the world about my work and what they have learned or what they can teach me through the conversation. That is the real gold rush. It is personal and it feels my spirit, and hopefully the spirit of those who wish to talk with me on it.

One announcement I do want to make is that I might be getting involved in another social media project that isn’t designed to Market like these programs i juat commented on, and other services are. I am entertaining an idea out there that hopefully in the near future will come to light. We shall see but watch this space. All is not dark period all is not bad. And there is hope of a brighter future to come for me and hopefully for the future of my writing. Don’t worry, I’m not stopping anytime soon.