Here’s what I’m starting to dread and despise. I hear an interview with an author of fiction, and talk about their fiction etc and what they did to publish and market. And then there’s something along the lines of “Oh, and I put together this free resource, go here to check it out!”

And you do, and every damn one follows the same website format. A long, long, long, long page where you keep getting a bunch of marketing language, usually with big bright arrows and buttons, and all you really want to know is where you can get the material promised at the website/interview, which eventually you do get, along with the requirement that you turn over your email and HEY, HERE’S SOME PAID CONTENT where I tell more more stuff.

And then the content you were promised is really nothing that any reasonably informed author doesn’t already know. And ALL THESE GUYS — because they’re all guys, it turns out, actually got their start in non-fiction of some vague business-y content, and if they write fiction, they often won’t reveal the name their fiction is written under — OR they won’t reveal the name their non-fiction is under.

Because their real business is selling “self-help” which is either completely inappropriate for fiction or is something every dialed in romance author already knows. You have to have a great cover!!! OMG. WHO FUCKING COULD EVER HAVE GUESSED THAT!!!! You have to use the right keywords. Like some how that’s the formula for cold fusion which you can ONLY get from them because they are being so generous. You need a great cover blurb!  Really? Like that isn’t obvious? You need reviews! And on and on and on and just shut up already.

And then it starts to turn out that all these guys know each other from before they started writing fiction/selling self-help to authors.

And I am just really cynical now and it makes me want to cry. That’s all.