High five to fellow introverts and asocial people reading this.
The dictionary definition of asocial is – “avoiding social interaction; inconsiderate of or hostile to others”
I just avoid social interactions, but am NOT hostile to others. On the contrary, I believe my company is fun. Or I could be delusional too. Either way, this tendency towards being asocial is becoming a great hindrance towards my ‘writing career’. As an independent author, I am supposed to do as many ads, as many interactions and basically keep engaging with potential readers to keep my book selling. But I prefer sitting in a cozy corner of my house and lamenting that ‘maybe I will be one of those authors that become famous after their death’.
It’s actually making some sense to me now – the fact that so many authors found posthumous fame was probably because they were so horrible at making any human connections, that they couldn’t sell their books. Or worse, they were just obnoxiously unbearable people while alive.
Right now, there are so many independent authors out in the world, confidently self-promoting their books on social media platforms, and it is so amazing. I mean, I published my first book in December last year, and only started actively using Twitter a few days ago. And I see people online who haven’t even published a single book going on an overdrive, wooing potential readers and garnering thousands of followers. And that’s pretty cool, because once their book comes out, they will already have a substantial following to promote their book to. Highly unlikely that I will ever do that, unless I become rich enough to get a manager to handle my social media accounts and pretend to be me.
For example, most articles on Instagram ads suggest that video ads do a lot better than static posts. That a video is ‘more eye-catching’, ‘more engaging’ or ‘more whatever’. I started bugging husband to do a video ad for me to promote my book. My friends were just amused when they heard of my plan.
“Why are you making him do it? It’s your book, you should do it. People want to see the author with the book,” they admonished me.
“Because I don’t want to appear on a public ad,” I tried explaining. Also, husband is way more good-looking than I am, so better visuals. But in the end, the video ad idea was just scrapped. There was no way that the author (me) would come on camera. And the husband doing the ad did seem pretty lame.
I see so many weird ads pop up on my social media feeds, mostly by self-proclaimed models/yoga instructors with terrible audio promoting their pages. The kind of ad one would hit skip within the first three seconds. Poor video quality is a bit off a turn-off to the broadcast journalist in me. And that reminds me, despite having the opportunity to become an on-air TV news anchor, I had no interest in the profile.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I have confidence issues. It’s just that I am usually a very private person. Most people don’t even know I am married. A professor congratulated me over my book last week. And for no reason, she added “you are not married right?”. I laughed to myself and then informed her that I have been married for almost two years now.
“How come you never told us? 🙁 🙁 What’s your husband doing? What’s his name? How did I miss it on Facebook?” she wondered.
She did not miss it on Facebook. Because I never put it on Facebook. Husband was boyfriend for four years and we had a very small wedding with just 10 guests in attendance. Public announcements about private events don’t appeal to me. I sort of said the same thing to the Professor in response to her queries.
Although publishing a book is definitely not a private event. Which is why, I do push myself to do as much promotion as I can manage. This post for instance or the previous one. So, with each day, I do shed a little inhibition about promoting my work. But with each day, I also realize how asocial I am.
Anybody else suffering from the same stumbling blocks?
Also, the most important part of my post – if you like reading general fiction, please get a copy of my second book ‘Love, Loss, Lockdown’. It’s a short story collection loosely set against the Covid19 pandemic in India.
And if you get the book, do leave a rating/review, it means a lot to independent authors like me. Following are some links (and the e-book is absolutely free for a few more hours)–
If I’ve missed your country, look for it on Amazon or on your kindle store.