The online Urban Dictionary defines the slang term "sausage fest" in the following manner:
"When the number of males in an environment/party/social gathering overwhelmingly exceeds the amount of females present."
Now this might be a desirable environment for gay men, but most straight men prefer environments/parties/social gatherings where the male-female ratio is at least fifty-fifty and would vastly prefer the number of females to exceed the number of males present. I don't think I have to go into the obvious reasons why . . .
So . . . what do sausage fests and many book marketing strategies - blog tours, Goodreads, Twitter, guest posts, Library Thing, etc. - have in common? Well, take the analogy of the sausage fest and rework the definition in the following way:
Indie Book Marketing - "When the number of independent authors trying to market their books overwhelmingly exceeds the amount of readers present."
Over 10,000 independent books are tossed onto the market every day. That's over 365,000 books in any given year. There are literally hundreds of thousands of independent writers out there all simultaneously vying to get their work recognized by the reading public. Most of these authors, yours truly among them, are following the same advice concerning viable marketing strategies for self-published books: we start blogs, open Twitter accounts, create Facebook pages, go on blog tours, etc., in the hope that we will build a "social media platform" which will garner a "following" and build "critical mass" which will in turn . . . aw, whatever.
More often than not, the only people you will encounter while you are trying to promote your work - on blog tours, websites, book sites, Twitter and all the rest it - are other independent authors who are also desperately trying to promote their work through the same means and venues. Like a classic sausage fest, the literary/book marketing sausage fest becomes a sad spectacle of a bunch of unknown authors crowded into some small, insignificant space all distractedly awaiting the arrival of a few treasured readers who, for reasons best left alone, never manage to make it to the party.
In other words it becomes a giant game of:
Author 1: "Hey! Are you a reader? Wanna buy my book?"
Author 2: "Uh . . . no. I'm an author. Wanna read my book?"
Thankfully, I have enough of a sense of humor and enough pessimism to survive even the most lopsided sausage fests. But it does make one
wonder . . . how do you get the word out to readers?
Time will tell. Until then, I take mine with mustard.
"When the number of males in an environment/party/social gathering overwhelmingly exceeds the amount of females present."
Now this might be a desirable environment for gay men, but most straight men prefer environments/parties/social gatherings where the male-female ratio is at least fifty-fifty and would vastly prefer the number of females to exceed the number of males present. I don't think I have to go into the obvious reasons why . . .
So . . . what do sausage fests and many book marketing strategies - blog tours, Goodreads, Twitter, guest posts, Library Thing, etc. - have in common? Well, take the analogy of the sausage fest and rework the definition in the following way:
Indie Book Marketing - "When the number of independent authors trying to market their books overwhelmingly exceeds the amount of readers present."
Over 10,000 independent books are tossed onto the market every day. That's over 365,000 books in any given year. There are literally hundreds of thousands of independent writers out there all simultaneously vying to get their work recognized by the reading public. Most of these authors, yours truly among them, are following the same advice concerning viable marketing strategies for self-published books: we start blogs, open Twitter accounts, create Facebook pages, go on blog tours, etc., in the hope that we will build a "social media platform" which will garner a "following" and build "critical mass" which will in turn . . . aw, whatever.
More often than not, the only people you will encounter while you are trying to promote your work - on blog tours, websites, book sites, Twitter and all the rest it - are other independent authors who are also desperately trying to promote their work through the same means and venues. Like a classic sausage fest, the literary/book marketing sausage fest becomes a sad spectacle of a bunch of unknown authors crowded into some small, insignificant space all distractedly awaiting the arrival of a few treasured readers who, for reasons best left alone, never manage to make it to the party.
In other words it becomes a giant game of:
Author 1: "Hey! Are you a reader? Wanna buy my book?"
Author 2: "Uh . . . no. I'm an author. Wanna read my book?"
Thankfully, I have enough of a sense of humor and enough pessimism to survive even the most lopsided sausage fests. But it does make one
wonder . . . how do you get the word out to readers?
Time will tell. Until then, I take mine with mustard.
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