I have other books that I am working on as well. I do have a blog, a Facebook page, and a twitter feed so far for my self promotion. I do like to talk. But am better with the written word.

I just self-pubbed an ebook on Amazon and, being only 21, have spent many hours arguing with my parents over exactly this! That line about being a pompous ass might have been lifted from my lips by God himself and deposited on your post.

I’ve always felt uncomfortable with self-promotion. I understand its necessity, but you’re right — it always feels cheap. That said… I believe you said it very well in your paragraph about manners, especially when you said “The real secret is to be sincere about this.” I can’t articulate why, but the seeming oxymoronic idea of adopting a manner and also being sincere about it reminds me of the Taoist concept of “wu wei”, or to act without acting, to act effortlessly.

The above, of course, segues well into the self-promotion aspect of this comment, wherein I feel compelled to say that I’m a lover of short stories. Even though my debut (digital) publication, The Electrician’s Gift, is a novella about a lighting-derived superpower, and entrenched somewhat in the Nikola Tesla mythos, my first and truest love is the short story anthology I have in the works. And they are rather heavily inspired by Taoist thought and my subsequent ponderings.

So, in sum, thanks very much for the encouragement and the assurance that, if done tactfully, my attempts at self-promotion can be tasteful and well-mannered. If you’re looking for something to read, feel free to check out The Electrician’s Gift on Amazon… but at the risk of shooting myself in the foot, keep an eye out for my anthology, fittingly called “Tales Along the Way”. I’d name a genre, but it’s all over the place, from a mammoth, planet-side maze to the coast of Venezuela to the hallway between life and death to a land where if you sail far enough out into the Sea, the world ends and you start to hallucinate.

How’d I do?

Right now, I’m working on building my list, with a goal to put out a minimum of two professionally edited novels per year. I’m doing a little bit of promotion on my blog and through guest posts, but that’s about it. My sales aren’t spectacular at this point, but they seem to be fairly steady, and I have good reason to hope that I can make a living at this in a few years, if I keep putting books out and help them grow into their natural audience. That’s probably the most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to promotion: helping your books find their natural audience, not pushing them to people who probably won’t enjoy them.