I have a new essay up at Mark Danowsky’s newsletter, OMM, about the paradox of self-promotion among small press authors. In it I make the claim that publishers should help writers shoulder the burden of promoting their books instead of outsourcing it to them entirely. Here is a teaser.

There is only so much time in a person’s life, and we are forced to make decisions as to how and what we spend it on. Given the choice between writing and revising new work and promoting my books on the Internet (those people grow tiresome quickly), I will always choose the former. There will never be an upside to shilling one’s book on Instagram for a pittance in royalties, and every time I’ve made a half-hearted attempt at it I’ve felt the bite of shame. Even if I were to sell twenty copies in a calendar year, it would amount to around $40—hardly worth the time investment on my part, or the corrosive effect on one’s pysche of spending all that time on social media.

-from “The Paradox of Self-Promotion”

If you want to read more, please check out the original article on OMM!