james_nicoll

That post loses all credibility here: Nor does she strike me as particularly in your face about self-promoting...

OK, I'm probably just missing something but where is this in your face self-promoting going on? And are we talking generally promoting her books or promoting them to get a Hugo nomination? Both she and Scalzi post what's eligible, which I find helpful. But that's hardly in your face, surely?

There is an immense amount of rallying the troops going on, and it involves more than just "Hey, I'm eligible" and "Hey, vote for me", but also involves generally training one's online audience to feel that they have a stake in your success. Scalzi's very good at this—at this point he need only post a link or mention something, and many people will go and vote for him because he already spent years building that audience. (He knows this and has taken steps to equalize this, by starting the Hugo packet thing, for example.)

A post like this one, for example serves both the absolutely legitimate function of decrying sexist attacks from trolls, and works, in a way that makes me roll my eyes, to train some members of the audience to literally apologize for getting a book early and promising to try and buy extra copies. Orbit has the unfortunate tendency to tell its authors all sorts of simply wrong nonsense about the bestseller list, but simply put the stakes are simply not as high as the post suggests they are for books shipping early. I'm not saying that she's lying, mind you, but this is absolutely a rally the troops moment, and it worked, and once the troops are rallied you can get them to vote. That is absolutely in-your-face self-promotion and it works.

Thanks for clarifying. Through no fault of yours I don't seem to be able to put together a coherent reply so I'll have to leave it at that.

I failed to take my pills in a timely manner.

Orbit has the unfortunate tendency to tell its authors all sorts of simply wrong nonsense about the bestseller list, but simply put the stakes are simply not as high as the post suggests they are for books shipping early.

I just want to point out that while she does write for Orbit, the book in the post you linked is a DAW title, and from personal and long experience, DAW doesn't talk about those lists with their authors unless the authors bring them up, and even then, there's not a lot of information handed out.

Yup, but she (and other Orbit authors) seem to have gotten a particular nonsense briefing, related to its odd habit of trying to enforce embargoes across the whole list. I've heard the terror of pre-orders and early shipping from a number of its authors, though only one used it to get people to buy multiple copies.