Drama

 I am in three groups on Facebook that are about independent publishing.

1. The first group is full of people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about, though a certain percentage of them (*cough cough* who tend to be white men *cough cough*) are willing to dispense wisdom as hard and fast rules, as if they were bestselling authors who have the only known path to success.
   
   My favorite post was one in which someone asked about Twitter, and one man responded with The One True Way To Make Twitter Sell BooksⓇ, which involved following hundreds of thousands of people, unfollowing anyone who didn't follow back, and posting every two hours in order to remain relevant. I would be shocked -- truly shocked -- if that sold even one extra book.
   
   Basically I only stay in this group because it is occasionally hilarious.
   
   
   
2. The second group is quite famous and does have a lot of people who have sold a lot of books. There is good advice given, but it's fairly... cultish. If you are at all susceptible to that sort of pressure, it would be very easy to believe that you should release a book every month. People refer to the founding members in hushed tones.
   
   Also, people tend to put up posts about how much money they made using various strategies, but neglect to include the amount spent in advertising, which may be as much or more than they make in sales. That seems like an important piece. Plus, the group makes a big deal about not having "drama", and that means that there really is a lot of drama, but most of it is people complaining about how there's drama, and users are fairly arbitrarily booted from the group.
   
   So it's useful but you have to take everything with a grain of salt, and not get caught up in any of the drama (which is often about not having any drama).
   
   
   
3. The third group is also large, though not as big as the second one. It's devoted to distributing on sites other than Amazon, and how to market for those other sites. Lots of good information, though it tends to be fairly scattered, since one distributor may have one requirement, and another may be completely different.
   
   One of the funniest posts in group three was the one in which people were talking about what had happened (if they even knew) to get them booted from group two. A lot of people were in that post.

I meant to write a post about goals, but I guess I'll do that tomorrow. (Even my goals about goals don't stay on track -- I'm hopeless.)

Gratuitous Bird Picture

Mackie, like most parrots, is quite good at destroying things. Boxes make the best toys for her.

Seed used to bribe her to hold still enough to get a picture