This weeks, bound proofs of my forthcoming book dropped through my letterbox, signalling the start of the pre-publication marketing and publicity campaign. Years ago, authors wouldn’t have had much to do with his. Now, like many others freelancers and gig workers, we have had to become our own publicists, all year round.
The culture of self-promotion has turned many who in other times would have been modest and self-effacing into boasters and braggers. Many are sucked into this because they see so many other people doing it, modesty looks like a self-sabotaging indulgence. So they take things about themselves which are technically true and make them sound more impressive than they are. Here are four of the tropes I find most grating.
“Award winning”
Some people I know and like, whose work I respect, announced a few years ago that two of their books had won awards. This was true. But would people have been impressed if they knew that the awards in question had about a hundred categories, with multiple awards in each one, and required “nominees” to pay to enter their books? In other words, it was a cynical marketing exercise, rather like many food award schemes that allow businesses to put stickers saying something like “Great Food Guide – Five Stars” in their windows.
There are lots of awards out there. When authors boast they had received one, they are probably telling the truth, just not as impressive a one as it might seem.
“Best selling”
Think of a best-selling author and you probably imagine someone who has sold books by the truckload over a sustained period. At the right time of the year, however, a book can become a bestseller with three-figure sales for the week.
To make matters more confusing, many publishers and authors now think it is acceptable to claim bestseller status for having got into the Amazon top ten, or even hundred. Because their charts are dynamic, this could be for just an hour, caused by a random spike in sales or a response to a few minutes of national media coverage.
That’s not the only way to talk-up sales. Someone else I know and like said that s/he was at one point outselling Harry Potter. On one bookseller’s chart, yes, at a time when none of Harry Potter books were recently published.
“Official TEDx speaker”
The TED brand is so powerful that anyone who can associate themselves with it is tempted to do so. The problem is that the club of TED speakers remains fairly exclusive. TEDx, however, is something else. Anyone can organise a licensed TEDx conference by following the strict protocols set out by TED HQ. As a result there have been more than 100,000 TEDx talks worldwide since 2009. Many of these have been viewed online by fewer than 1,000 people.
What’s worse is that many people drop the “x” altogether, referring simply to their “TED talk”. This is misleading at best, a lie at worst. As for addition of “official” to the description (which I have actually seen) this is entirely superfluous: what would an unofficial speaker be? Someone who heckled from the audience?
“Fellow of the RSA”
When I first saw people describing themselves as Fellows of the RSA I was pretty impressed. I only later found out that it is not difficult to become a fellow. There are 29,000 of them and as long as one will nominate you and you’re willing to pay the annual subscription, chances are you’d qualify. Still, I see people put FRSA after their names or announce that they have been elected as a fellow as though this were a great achievement.
Am I, however, so high-minded as to be immune to the temptation to talk-up my own importance? Not entirely. Although it’s not in my standard bio, I do make mention at relevant points of my website that The Virtues of the Table is award-winning. The Transmission Prize is very nice and genuine, but the shortlist for the prize was an already quite small pool of speakers in that year at Salon’s wonderful events. I also point to my André Simon Food Book Award of the same year, although anyone paying attention would realise “Special Commendation” effectively means second place.
I can’t remember describing myself as best-selling but I don’t object when publishers use that adjective in their blurbs. I am granted that right ad infinitum because for three weeks, fifteen years ago, my The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten got into the official UK hardback non-fiction chart at a quiet time of year for books.
I certainly don’t claim to be a TED speaker even though I’ve actually done three TEDx talks. One, now 6 years old, has been seen 1,700 times, or around 300 times per year. But I won’t refrain from pointing out that my TEDx talk on the self has received over a million views because it was one of the small minority of TEDx talks to be selected for the main TED website (where it says I’m a “TED Speaker!). The only one of my four bugbears that I am completely innocent of is making my fellowship of the RSA something to shout about.
In other words, my disgust for the most egregious forms of self-promotion is at least in part driven by a need to make myself feel better by distancing my own bigging-up from the even worse antics of others. I know my hands are dirty but reassure myself they’re probably just about clean enough to eat with. I fear the closer publication date comes, the less tenable that belief will be.
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