my publisher: Good morning! Huh did you advertise for the pre-sale yesterday? Because we launched twelve hours ago and we already made sales!
me: yeah, i posted on tumblr
publisher: .........tumblr?
me: that's where the gays are.
(link to Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel, a sapphic western)
update
publisher: And what is your marketing strategy on... tumblr?
me: idk, i shitpost at 2am?
publisher: .....and it works?
me: depends on what the gays find funny at that point in time.
publisher: Could I have a link to your tumblr?
me: .......absolutely not.
(link to Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel, a sapphic western where 50 year old women kiss and murder)
update!
publisher: I've been looking into tumblr, have you thought of using Blaze to promote your book?
me: NO
publisher: But it seems like an efficient way to get this in front of more eyes-
me: people on tumblr hate Blaze.
publisher: There is no algorithm and you can't pay to promote a post? I don't understand how anyone advertises anything on tumblr.
me: That's the best part. They don't. They can't.
(trying to make him understand that we do not control the attention. We just have to show something shiny and gay enough and if people are interested, they'll reblog.)
(Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel, a deconstruction of the colonialist cowboy mythos dressed up as a sapphic romance.)
Yeah, that's the key: You can tell people about your book. You cannot *advertise* your book to them. You can politely ask people to signal boost to support an author writing queer books, or to recommend it to their friends. You *CANNOT* advertise to them.
It's kind of like the difference between a company with dozens of locations versus a farmer's market. Tumblr is the farmer's market. People here *do* want to buy things, but they often want to buy things in a way that directly supports the people who made them, and they want those products to align with their values and ethics, and they want the person behind the folding table to be a familiar face who is actually a genuine part of the community, not some slick outsider who doesn't give a shit about them.





















