Sandy Nathan, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Sandy Nathan
On-line addiction or book marketing? You decide. 4/17/2009 8:01:08 PM
Are you hard at work marketing your book, or developing an on-line addiction? This article tells you.
PLEASE GO TO MY BLOG WHERE I HAVE LINKS AND KILLER PICTURES: http://www.yourshelflife.com/?p=315 The topic of on-line addiction has come up in my life a few times. Friends who participate on twitter.com find it an incredible marketing tool. Everyone in the book trade says authors MUST cover the ‘net to sell. MySpace, Facebook, gather, blogs, forums, all the above. Authors MUST keep their postings current to stay in the swim. People spend hours every day, blogging, posting, cut and pasting, all to promote their books.
Or is that what it is? How much is on-line addiction? How do you tell the difference?
Pain is the hallmark of addiction. When you wake up from whatever high the experience gives you, are you in a worse fix than you reckoned on? Or are you running to keep ahead of what will happen if you stop?
If you’re concerned that your participation on-line may be more than a strong marketing instinct, please visit Kimberly Young PhD’s site. Dr. Young is a clinical psychologist, one of the pioneers treating on-line addictions. She’s got tests on the site to determine how many tweets is too many. Dave Greenfield is another clinical psychologist and pioneer in the area. The link takes you to his site, which also contains tests and tools. Both have written books on virtual addiction.
Not a very nice subject, actually.
Some people think that we will naturally merge with machines in the future. While a catchy sci-fi premise, I don’t know whether merging tech stuff with human beings is so natural. We do seem to love to make better and better tools. And, some kind of locking does occur between computers and the human nervous system. Who knows what the future will bring?
I knew nothing about on-line addiction until I found myself a full fledged eBay addict. Ah, yes. I can’t go on the site at all. It took me about two years of hard work, a bunch of relapses, and a very forgiving husband to get clear. I’m lucky. We also have locks on our computers so I can’t get on eBay.
The only “cure” for addiction is abstinence. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If you’re a true addict, you can’t dabble with your addiction thinking you can manage it. An addiction is unmanageable by definition.
Here’s a series I wrote about eBay: The Ebay Series. Some of the buttons on the menu don’t work–I stopped writing when I discovered I was in trouble. My book on spiritual practice, Stepping Off the Edge, contains a couple of chapters on my addiction, the more colorful and painful parts. (And, please, don’t think spiritual practice is just for those with no problems. Spiritual practice is how you get out of the problems you’ve got.)
So I worry about on-line addiction. I know how one can get lost. I had no clue when I logged on that first time.
How to tell if your marketing your book or on-line addicted?
Stop whatever on-line activity you’re doing.
If you can’t stop, you’re addicted. (Excuses don’t count. “The dog made me log on,” does not fly.)
The other sign is symptoms of withdrawal if you do manage to stop. Usually with online addiction, signs of withdrawal include irritability, anxiety, depression. Occasional rage. Yes, rage.
Not a beast to provoke.
Not a beast to provoke.
When I had The eBay series really going on my website, I had people write to me saying, “I’m leaving my husband. Our credit cards are maxed out. He doesn’t talk to me. All the does is check his auctions.” I had one person tell me that they were buying the fixer house up the street, not to fix it up and and resell it, but because they couldn’t walk through their house any more. Her husband’s auction winnings filled their home.
On-line addiction is not a beast to provoke. I’m very careful about what I do on-line. I let myself go on-line once a day for less than an hour. It’s entrancing. That’s the problem.
Sandy Nathan is the award winning author of Numenon & Stepping Off the Edge.
