"Buy My Book" - the Mistake

[Peg Herring]

I've seen it many times, usually from authors new to the business but sometimes even from those more seasoned. We're set up next to each other at an author event and the person immediately launches into his/her spiel, at some point throwing in the fatal phrase, "You would love this book."
Or I set up a blog for authors to publicize their ebooks (Hmmm. Could that really happen?) Instructions say to submit certain information in a particular way, and I'll post it for the world to see. Instead I get an email telling me how much I would like the book if I buy it from the person's website.
The list goes on: Facebook, MySpace, and other social media messages, supposedly author-to-author, but really just sales pitches for books. I'm tempted to reply to each one of them with an ad for my own book.
But then, I'm not that rude.
Professionals don't hawk their goods to other professionals. Part of being a professional is recognizing that even though we're all in this for sales, we give each other respect. Of course I read books by other authors, but as a member of the gang, I should not have to listen to your sales pitch for twenty minutes just because my name comes near yours in the alphabet. And be aware that I will delete, ignore, and eventually un-friend you if you send me constant reminders of how great your book is.
Guess what? So are mine, but I'm not going to friend you just so I can say it.

[Peg Herring]

The funniest one was a woman next to me at a signing event who insisted that I would love the book, I should buy the book, I needed to read the book, and then over the course of two hours told me every single thing that was in the book, ad nauseum.

[I. J. Parker]

Yup!

[Pepper Smith]

Yes yes yes! I can't tell you how much it annoys me when other authors constantly shove their books in my face. I know of one who spammed an entire list of a publisher's authors on a daily basis, sometimes several times a day, until another author finally let her have it about expecting us to buy her book. It also annoys me when authors' blog posts are nothing more than carefully crafted advertisements, never anything else. That's a really quick way to make me lose interest.

[Jon Loomis]

+1, Peg.