coke | Michelle Proulx

I was browsing the “Once Upon a Time” sub-reddit yesterday, and …

Okay, I should probably explain that, because I know a lot of people have no idea what the heck I’m talking about. Reddit is a website where people post pictures, links, and comments about things they find interesting, funny, disgusting, whatever. There are thousands of “sub-reddits”, which are devoted to specific subjects. In my case, I was on the “Once Upon a Time” sub-reddit, where fans of the ABC network’s “Once Upon a Time” tv show post theories, fan videos, etc.

Right! Anyway, this leads into today’s topic, which is be careful how you advertise your book. Here’s what happened: a self-published author went onto this sub-reddit, thinking it was about fairy tales in general (i.e., she didn’t do her research), and posted a link to her book. This is obviously a silly thing to do, as the sub-reddit is for fans of a television show, and is definitely not a place to post what is essentially an ad for your book.

Most of the sub-reddit commenters ignored the post entirely. One did not, and took the time to explain to the author what she had done wrong. What followed was a very interesting conversation, which I think the author handled very poorly. She comes off as kind of haughty at the start, then gets snippy, and also kind of passive-aggressively implies the person she’s talking to is over-sensitive and a bit of an idiot.

Here’s a screencap of the convo (click to enlarge):

(Note: “/r/trees” refers to a sub-reddit about drugs, not trees)

So what can we take away from this?

1. Don’t advertise on a website if you don’t know the purpose of the website.

2. If you put your advertisement somewhere it doesn’t belong, just take it down. Don’t get into an argument with the person who points out what you did wrong!

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