Saw the post you reblogged where the person was like "here's my books that're available for award nominations." How is that kind of self- promotion *not* prohibited? Or do I have too much of a conditioned reaction against self- promotion, and he's just doing a thing that Normal People™ can do?
...(bemusement) Prohibited by whom? Tumblr? Not as far as I can tell. Because I've sure as hell been doing it for years, and no one seems to have reported me to @staff or anything. My Tumblr tagging honestly hasn't always been what it should be, but I know I've done it here, as regards award eligibility, at least once. And on my main blog at "Out of Ambit," repeatedly—here, for example, and here, and here, and here...! You get the picture. And I'm pretty sure I linked to those off-Tumblr blog posts here—just as @jscalzi did from his Tumblr account—though I can't find the links. As I say, my tagging still needs work.
Seriously, though: the last I heard, it was perfectly all right for Normal People to self-promote if they weren't being abusive about it. (Or making an active nuisance of themselves by doing it in, like, every other post... which after a while, and some examination of their situation, would probably cause me to consider muting them. Accounts that do nothing but self promote get quite short shrift from me on this count. Honestly, surely they have something else to contribute...?)
And this is more than usually true these days, when publishers increasingly can't be bothered to promote any but their newest or biggest names! In the arts world (in its broad sense) and publishing world (in the narrower one) we now inhabit—and certainly have for a decade or two, at least—if you don't self-promote, then probably no one will have much of a chance to find out what you can do! So one uses social media to do this... it being, well, right here. 😊
Also, as a side issue: Self-promo isn't necessarily easy to do, even for published professionals. Way too many of us have at one point or another in our lives had other people—usually the conflicted or insecure or envious or malicious ones, often (infuriatingly) even family members—attempt to condition us to believe that We Should Not Put Ourselves Forward. (And by this I mean in any way, not just by pointing toward our work: but by doing things like insisting that other people treat us with basic everyday respect for our career choices in general.)
In any case, if one suspects oneself of having a conditioned reaction, then a logical next move is to attempt to work out where it came from, who did the conditioning, and why—meaning, what their agenda was. My experience over four-pushing-five decades suggests that ninety times out of a hundred it would NOT be one that was genuinely meant to benefit you, or the person of whose actions they disapprove. Usually it's meant to make whoever's doing the attempted conditioning more comfortable by getting you to shut up about your (or someone else's) abilities... and about what creative gifts you or they have the potential to share with the rest of us, and the would-be conditioners (probably) don't.
Give it some thought. And never forget: with time and work, conditioning can be broken. 🙂 But thanks for inquiring!
(Also, disclosure here, because some people will suspect something like this lies in the background: I have the pleasure to be a friend of @jscalzi's. I know him to be a solid, committed, and [as a happy side issue] extremely funny writer: enough so that some years back I asked him if he'd do me the honor to conduct my guest-of-honour interview at the 2019 Worldcon in Dublin.* Therefore if John's up for awards this year, it's my pleasure to point people toward the fact! But as It's Awards Season now, you'll also see me reblogging other people's notes about their own works that are eligible for one thing or another. So do by all means mute me if you feel the need.)
*I think we may between us have broken the Worldcon record for how many times participants in a somewhat-major program item said "fuck". It was, uh, kinda liberating. 😏
