There’s a drama unfolding that you probably missed if you don’t write or read romance novels.  The story so far:

  • Authors who work for a smaller but very well known publisher began to have problems getting their checks.
  • The publisher went through public troubles with money, laying off staff.
  • A romance blog wrote about it, linking to the authors’ blog posts.
  • The publisher filed a defamation suit again the romance blog demanding the names of those who commented on the blog as well as those that were quoted.

What will happen to the folks who commented? Is it dangerous for authors to talk about their publishers? No one knows, stay tuned for details.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the publisher’s name. I had a contract offer from them once. My agent advised against it, and got me another deal. When that deal fell through I kicked myself for not taking the first offer. That publisher was the first professional contact I had in the writing world. The encounter was short, 5 minutes in the chaos of DragonCon, and took place well before I had a finished novel. Still those 5 minutes fueled me for a long time. But it isn’t out of gratitude that I don’t name them…

As an aspiring author I walk a fine line with social media. I’m encouraged by agents and editors to ‘build a social media platform’ and told that I need to ‘promote my brand’.  My brand should reflect who I am, but never be offensive. For example, I should have a GoodReads account, but not give negative reviews. Apparently, the publishing world is filled with people who will remember and seek vengeance.

Basically I have to sell myself to sell my writing. I’ve never been very comfortable with that idea. When I have to sell a sanitized version of myself, Iget very uncomfortable. I am (among other things) a feminist fan girl, who works in IT, owns a rabbit, and hates whiny female characters. All of those things are going to offend someone.

Thus I have a mix of social media. There’s a secret Tumblr account where I talk about growing up on food stamps and congratulate transwomen on their amazing hair. I link to pretty corset pictures and document every single book I read. Some of those books are amazing, but around 30% of them are ‘did not finish’. I’m honest about when I  couldn’t stand the characters, got bored, or felt the author was misogynistic.  That’s the sort of thing I could never put on my author Facebook account, which holds my nightly word count and a few innocuous comments. My Author Facebook account is populated almost exclusively with posts from my Twitter account, with several of them deleted. I try to keep it on target – something that helps build my platform. I also have a day job Facebook account – which is linked to people from my day job and includes bits about my personal life. Both things I’ve been told to avoid posting on the web, as they’ll ‘water down’ my brand.

Frankly, it’s all exhausting and takes away far too much time from writing. I’ve been considering deleting my Facebook accounts for a few months now. Unfortunately, there are people that I only interact with on Facebook. They stop me from clicking the delete button. But if I had to pick a social media site to maintain, it would be this blog (where it might not be a smart idea to say everything I feel, but at least I maintain control over everything), Twitter (I love chatting with folks over 140 character), and Tumblr (I need my fandom fix).

Meanwhile, I worry that there’s too much of me shared with the world. I like my privacy. And there are more than a few nights where the only people I want to talk to are the ones that live in my head. Those are the nights when I get my best writing done.  Strangely enough, they happen to be the nights when I’m not posting on social media.