More than 1000 people entered a competition to win copies of The Blue Handbag over at Goodreads.
After the competition ended, I started sending these people friend requests, letting them know about my quarterly newsletter (which always has free articles and a competition to win free books) and this blog.
Yesterday this is the reply I got from one of these Goodreads members:
“So did you choose me to be a friend so you could market more books or because you really are choosing friends?”
Urk.
I do worry about becoming annoying, like that fine specimen of a salesman in the photo. Sometimes I think that if my novels were ‘good enough’, they’d sell themselves – I’d just have to sit back and watch the money rolling in and become a wealthy woman of mystery. Sometimes I feel like stopping all my blogs and expanding my vegetable patch instead, or never mentioning in conversation again that I’m a writer.
However.
Books do not sell themselves. My publishers Snowbooks do a fine job of getting them into the shops, but there they compete with thousands of better known authors, and as I’ve said before it feels like every book I sell is something of a miracle.
So I’ll keep blogging, and letting-people-know-about-my-books. Yes, because I would like to eventually make a living from my writing, but more importantly because I want to find people who will ENJOY my books, and equally importantly, I love to write. Books, blogs – it’s all good. It’s what I do. And if every so often I cross the line and become bloody annoying, well I’ll just have to be annoying.
PS This particular Goodreads member, once I’d written an honest answer, apologised if she’d sounded harsh and said she was still interested in reading my books. All’s well that ends well.
PPS BUY MY BOOKS! BUY MY BOOKS! Or I won’t invite you to my birthday party! ; )