Just the Stats, Ma'am.

I finished my media blitz* to promote the release of the Spirit Legends anthology, containing my short story, Shadows Lost.

*Media blitz = I posted a status update on Facebook:

Kevin Quirt: I recently sold a short story (Sci-Fi) to an anthology publisher and the ebook version came out today. I downloaded the book and showed my five-year-old that his dad is a published writer. He scanned the first page, looked at me and asked, "When's the movie coming out?"

I’m not a firm believer in the power of social networking as a promotional vehicle, but my view might be skewed by the fact that I’ve only populated my Facebook friends list with actual friends. I don’t expect them to drive my career to the next level. That’s not what they’re there for. They’re friends and I'm privileged to know them. I want to share this experience with them, but also want to make sure that none of them think I’m expecting them to start paying my salary as a writer.

It’s crazy to assume that most of your friends would even like your work, no matter what you do. Writer. Painter. Artisan. As a writer, I can see this quite easily. Head into any large bookstore and imagine how many books they have that you would like to read. Is it ten? Hundreds? Compare that number to how many different books are in the store?

Any reader will only like a small percentage of any books available in a book store, and the preferred books likely run down genre lines (e.g,. Thriller, SF, Horror, Romance,…). I’m a stats guy, so I know that only some people like SF. Only a small portion of those people are my friends. The odds are pretty good that while my friends will be genuinely happy for me getting published, most of them probably wouldn’t like the story. (Venn diagram added below for dramatic effect)

If I had a friend who was a writer of speculative bagel stories (what if bagels were square?), I would wish that person every joy and success writing could bring. But, I’d never read any of their work.

It’s seems strange to say that I don’t mind whether or not my friends like my work. I really hope they do, especially if they’ve paid money to read it. But, I’m not going to put pressure on them to prop up my ego as a writer. The market will let me know how I’m doing and the market won’t feel pressure to be nice in giving real feedback.

I've received a lot of positive feedback and support over the past few days from those who are most important to me and I am very grateful for that.   It let me know I was sharing this news with the right people.