A writer, writes. Simple. Straightforward. Easy.

A writer who wants to make a living writing is a different story. Apart from being a writer, you are also a self promoter, a marketing manager, a businessperson, an entrepreneur, a researcher, a twitterer (is that even a word?), a social media commentator.

A writer who wants to write full time and get paid for it has to be all those things and so much more.

I don’t know about you but I’m terrible at self-promotion. I’m happy to promote other people, vouch for their talents, market them to anyone and everyone I speak to, but doing the same thing for myself? Not a chance.

With the explosion of social media, self promotion should be easy. There are so many avenues from Facebook and Twitter to Linked In and blogging, that self promotion can be done with the click of a button and at no monetary cost.

But self promotion is scary. Social media has made it a scary experience.

You’re putting yourself out there. You’re baring your soul for the world to judge. And oh my goodness, do they judge. They will pick at the tiniest of things. They will destroy you by abusing you for being inadequate because you used ‘effect’ instead of ‘affect’.

They will torment you because you used a semicolon instead of a comma. They will scream at you with capital letters that YOU SHOULDN’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB BECAUSE YOU SUCK! and you won’t because you’ll take it to heart and huddle in a corner with a cheap bottle of wine and a packet of Tim Tams as you swear to yourself you will never, ever, in a million year write another word.

Yes, I might be exaggerating just a little bit but it can and does happen.

The world is full of haters. But the world is full of supporters too. And while it’s easier to focus on the negative, we should really put more emphasis on the positive. I once read somewhere that you’re more likely to dwell on one negative comment even if you’ve received nine positive ones. Ouchie, ouch. That sucks!

We will never please 100% of the crowd. There will always be someone who’s going to put us down. The good news is, there are going to be ten others to lift us up.

Self promotion is an important part of anyone who runs a business, anyone wants to be a well-paid novelist, or is even trying to find a job. If you can’t toot your own horn, reaching a level of success that you deem satisfactory may take a little bit longer than expected or it might not happen at all.

I admire people who have no care in the world and can self-promote endlessly. I wonder if they do it because they love it and it comes easy for them, or they have fine-tuned their techniques and simply do them because they know it’s a necessary evil – fake it till you make it type of thing.

What are your thoughts on self-promotion? Does it come easy for you? Any tips?