(self-)promotion

Here's the thing - I'm divided.

On the one hand, I have zero advertising budget, and I'm not convinced that advertising really works when it comes to ebooks. I am far more convinced to buy a book via personal recommendation or testimony. If someone whose opinion I trust recommends a book, I become interested in it. I feel like there's something inherently disingenuous in asking bloggers to read my work just looking for a recommendation or review.

On the other hand, I'm more accustomed to fanfic, and it's easier to find stories in that format. Want a Chuck/Sarah story? Look in the Chuck fandom section, find something tagged with the Chuck/Sarah relationship, read the description and see if you're interested. The important thing is finding a large archive with plenty of stories. Then you're good. What about original fiction? There's so much of it out there. How do I reach my audience? I just want to announce to the world: "Hey, I've written a book. If you're interested, check it out. If not, that's cool too." I think awareness is really the important thing, maybe even above recommendations. Recommendations don't matter if the possible audience never sees them.

The tips I'm reading say that I need to picture the ideal audience for my work, but I don't have an ideal audience in mind. Just "a person mature enough to read adult material who understands English." I don't think I'm writing genre fiction, but then maybe I am. Maybe the story I've published is definitely just romance-genre, even though it feels like more than that to me.

It feels very hard to step away from what I'm writing and evaluate it with any objectivity whatsoever. I'm reminded, again, of the Ed Wood parallel. I love writing, maybe with the same zeal Ed Wood did. I've never been convinced that that passion is related whatsoever to actual ability.

I suppose this is why authors generally need agents and publishers. I'm interested in the writing side of things. I'm fine with putting it out there into the world and making it available for other people to read. Connecting the audience to the work, however, seems to be beyond me. I've let the people who know me as ndnickerson know I'm publishing. The rest of it - why would I want to waste time updating a Twitter feed or Facebook page when I could be writing instead?

Maybe I'm being naive. That's okay. I think I'm allowed to be naive, at first anyway.