As you probably know if you’ve been following Super Mario, in September I uploaded my novel Tiger Hugs on Harper Collins’s web site for aspiring authors, authonomy. A few title changes and a radical rewrite later, it’s gaining support, probably because other authors are away at November’s National Novel Writing Month website NaNoWriMo.

It’s a novel about something, so it’s not difficult for me to run a viral marketing campaign. That idea coincided with the week of Occupy St Paul’s, so threads in the Shameless Plug forum entitled, Occupy the Future, Flash Mobs, Space to Think etc. with a link to the novel in the body were successful. Lots of hits, but no one wanted to engage in conversation about my odd work. Hardly surprising.

To get people discussing it, I started a thread about the destructive criticism I’d received from some guy who didn’t like it. Wow! The response was instant and they all agreed with the guy. Talk about kick a man when he’s down. I deleted the thread to prevent a feeding frenzy, or the dreaded one star monster, the one with a hundred vengeful sock puppets (oh yes!). The gist was that people would say it’s good because they want you to back their book. I’m sure that’s the case, but when I pressed people to give constructive criticism they melted away, except for one person who’s become my anti-muse. That person went down the old road of belittling me by rubbishing what I do using dogma: “readers aren’t interested in adopting a writer’s belief system”. Oh really? Well slap me with a kipper.

Each one of these negative responses inspires a whole new viral marketing campaign that promotes the anti-thesis. For example, belief systems themselves. I didn’t know it was about a different belief system. Blimey. That a new one on me.  Anyway, it’s fun. I don’t suppose I’m going to make my fortune, but I might attract the eye of a passing indie publisher who’s grown tired of reading about vampires, wizards and gals in high heels called Charlene.