is-bigger-better

A writing buddy and I were discussing a comment made on a forum by an author not too long ago. This author was trying to make a point about sales of a certain genre in a certain locale, and the point was pretty well made. Our discussion, however, centered around the fact that, near the end of the post, said author felt the need to mention that they were the best-selling author of this genre in (insert planet/continent/country/time zone here).

Er…um…well, that may be. We couldn’t say for sure whether that fact was true—couldn’t be arsed to look it up. But the argument had been pretty well made BEFORE the bit of promo which, in all honesty, had me imagining the author very carefully preening her feathers, one by one.

Is self-promo wrong? Of course not. It’s a necessity in the business. Is there a time and place and venue to be considered, especially when addressing other authors?

Hmmm.

There’s no such thing as trying to be a successful writer without some degree of ego being involved. You not only need to believe you’re CAPABLE of writing something worthwhile, but that there’s someone out there who’ll actually think it’s WORTH reading.

And we’ve all seen the degrees of ego in action. From the lowest end of the scale, the poor put-upon author covertly begging for a pat on the head to one who’s suffering because the reading public is too thick to ‘get’ what they’re doing. We’ve seen authors who reportedly insinuated that reviewers lived to get authors to kiss their asses, and those who said they were above it all and laughing all the way to the bank.

If I go to an author’s website, I expect to see if they won this award, received that honor, got good reviews, etc. They’ve probably worked hard and earned the accolades, and that’ll pique my interest—but probably not as much as reading how they feel about their work or writing in general, or what they’re trying to accomplish. ego

Is it possible to strike a healthy balance?

Is it acceptable to have a huge ego if you’ve got the goods to back it up?

On a scale of one to ten, how big is yours?

(Don’t worry, it’ll be our little secret…) :wink: