Hello my Freaky Darlings,

“Crowdsourcing is the process of getting work or funding, usually online, from a crowd of people. The word is a combination of the words ‘crowd‘ and ‘outsourcing’.”

Warning! What follows is a bit of a rant.

I have reached my limit. I am sick of this bullshit where authors who haven’t even published their book yet are expecting others to already cough up to pay for them to publish. What happened to the good old days where you wrote the best book you could write, got some people to proof read it, sent it off to agents and publishers, worked your arse off, maybe got rejected and then started the whole process all over again or decided to go the self publishing way.

But if you went the self-publishing way you put up the money yourself and worked your arse off to get people to buy the book after you’d put the work and the money in. Not before!

It seems to be happening more and more. These days every time I open my email there’s another author sticking his or her hand out and saying ‘Hey, I want to publish my book but I don’t want to put my own money up, so how about you pay for it.’ And what makes it even worse is that it’s people who have never bothered to actually have a conversation with me before. They sure as shit haven’t had the decency to buy my books but they have the audacity to message me in the middle of the fucking night and ask me for my hard earned cash for something that doesn’t even exist yet.

Am I the only one who’s sick of this shit?

It used to be just the annoying wanna-be self-published authors who pmed you demanding that you buy their books, but now you have the bloody crowdsourcing bandwagon to contend with as well. I’ve never received one of those from someone who has a publisher. My apologies to all the other self-published authors who have never conducted themselves like that, I know not all of you do this.

Please, I beg you from the bottom of my black little heart, stop sending me messages in the middle of the night asking me to put up my hard earned cash so that you can publish your book. Please stop sending me messages in the middle of the night asking me to buy your book. Please stop sending me invites to like your author page.

If I know and like you and your work I will do this without you messaging me in the middle of the fucking night.

If you want me to not buy your book then by all means keep sending me those messages in the middle of the night.

If you do want me to buy your book, engage me on a personal level. Try having an actual conversation with me. But most importantly, write a good book!

But please stop with the personal messages on Facebook demanding my money or that I buy your fucking book, because you’re just pissing me off.