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I wrote a book. What are the site rules on self promotion?
Not posting the link here, but I'm curious what the site rules are on stuff like that. I came from Reddit, and some of the subs there are ok with promotion, some aren't.
I'm surprised that noone has linked to the literal rules about self-promotion:
Based on your very limited posting history so far on Tildes... promoting your book appears to be the primary reason that you post on the site. All you've done so far is talk about your book, and ask how to promote your book - plus one other comment about soft drink.
You might want to change that appearance, by participating more in general discussions on Tildes, before starting your self-promotion crusade. (And I'd strongly recommend that your participation be about things not related to your books. Step outside the ~books group, for example.)
Alternatively, they could stay in the book group. But maybe discuss things about writing in general, or talk about books that inspire them.
Just about anything more than this coy tease of their book they do/n’t want to tell us about.
If @Grimmcartel stays in ~books, then it makes it obvious that their primary focus on Tildes is books - specifically promoting their own.
I don't see it as a coy tease (unlike you and @coolmos). I see it as them checking the situation before they barge in and break the rules.
Fair enough. At this point it’s probably best we all just move on from this post. Op’s question was answered and they won’t say anything else at this time.
Thank you for this. This is exactly what I was looking for with the post. There are a few communities here I'd like to get involved in, but it just happens that the book has been my main focus for the last few months, so it got the first post. I'll hold off a bit and see what other trouble I can get into here before I go posting ads :)
It would honestly be nice if the docs had a search function, or at least a single page version. I knew it was there and admittedly I didn't search for long, but I eventually gave up and wrote something myself 🤷🏿♂️
Like this? https://docs.tildes.net/
Or something else?
(I'm asking sincerely. I wrote many of the pages in the Docs, and I helped Deimos organise them all, and I'm planning to revisit and revise them in the next few months.)
This is an index. The docs are split into several links, each link goes to a different page. So, if I can't remember where something is, I have to click on each link until I find what I need. If all the docs were on a single page, preferably with a table of contents and anchor links for each section, I could do a Ctrl+f to quickly find what I need.
Edit: If you wanna make it as single-page version, I can help with the markdown.
That's a lot of content for a single page... and it's only going to increase as the feature-set of the Tildes website grows. It would also require anyone editing that content to edit one single master page just to make a small update.
It probably won't be practical to manage the documentation that way.
But maybe Deimos can add a search function. We'll discuss it.
I don't think this is as complicated as you think. Pages can be as long as you want. I've seen single pages much longer than the Tildes docs. You can have an entire book like that. Tildes can already do that, it's just Markdown. Really not a big deal.
Here's the entire Emacs manual (that would print to more than 1000 sheets of paper) on a single page that loads in less than a second: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/emacs.html
The downside of that approach is that the Table of Contents becomes incredibly long.
I'll discuss it with Deimos. He's the one who has to support the page.
However...
Even if we took a single-page approach, I strongly suspect that he'll keep the Terms of Use document separate from the Instructions page. He doesn't want anyone else having access to edit the legal material. Instructions are fine for other people to edit, but not the legal terms & conditions. So the Terms of Use and Code of Conduct will still be on a separate page to the other material.
To clarify, @lou isn't suggesting to replace the current documentation format. The GNU manuals all have a paginated version like our current docs, in addition to the aforementioned single-page version. Both have the same content and the user simply chooses whichever best suits their needs.
In fact, the single-page Tildes docs can be made read-only to prevent editing problems.
That's okay. You can have both.
In any case, let me know if you need any help ;)
P.S. In keeping with Tildes' mobile-friendly philosophy, where every page should be compatible with full-sized computers and mobile devices, a single long page like that might be unusable on small screens.
A "single page" as I refer to it here is just a regular page with all the docs within it, as opposed to splitting it in multiple pages. It would follow exactly the same design of any other Tildes page, so it would have exactly the same layout that you already see both on mobile and desktop. The only difference would be its length. And, possibly, a table of contents (but that's more about content than layout itself).
So yeah, not a new thing. Just a big page.
You can post about your book on Tildes, but promoting your book must not be the main thing you do here.
Tildes is a community, and meaningful, substantial participation is required to let the community know that you are not here just for promotion.
Let us get to know you, and Welcome to Tildes :)
Awesome, and thanks for the welcome!
I think it depends on how it's presented. If the link is just: "I have a book for sale!" then we don't really have much to go on. If you have something interesting to say about the topic that the book is about, or about the process of writing it, that's definitely fruitful grounds for a discussion.
That's fair. Thing is, it's my first, and I have -no- clue how to go about getting it out there. I'm hoping I can at least find someone else out there that's gone through the same process. I've already got the cover, editing and everything else finished with it, and it's on Amazon, but that's where I run out of skill lol
Congratulations on your first book! I see no issue with one promotional post. If anything, you deserve to have a celebratory "I just published my first book!" post at the very least. I don't think anyone would have an issue with that.
I'd be interested in learning more about self publishing. I've been writing down little poems about fatherhood for my boys and wife, and I would love to have something more official than my notes app.
Thanks for that!
I think I'll hold off for a bit until I have a good read of the community before I go waving it around lol.
I mean, you ARE being quite vague. Can we at least discuss genre, or the sorts of things you enjoy writing about?
After the discussion here, I feel it's probably a better idea to discuss that stuff in a different post, once I've had a bit more time to get settled in here. The vagueness was on purpose, as I didn't want to overshadow the reason for this post - figuring out the rules :)
Fair enough, I’m just curious is all.
Don't encourage them to break the rules
and possibly get banned.Fair enough. Your wording could definitely use some work if that’s the case though. Replying with “don’t encourage OP to break the rules and get banned” to someone simply asking them a question about their project certainly didn’t help either. :P
That's the central point I was trying to make.
Asking them a question isn’t necessarily encouraging them to break the rules though, since OP answering those questions would not be against the rules. Which is my point. ;)
Are you part of any author groups? I tend to read mostly LitRPG and progfantasy these days, and as new-ish genres (as well as the commonality of them first appearing as web serials on sites like royalroad), there are established groups and communities which make it easy to get shoutouts from other authors, announcements in groups, etc. I'm sure similar groups exist for other genres
Depending on the genre/type of your book, you might want to get some ads up? royalroad (again) has a user ad program where it'll be shown to X amount of people... but that won't make much of a difference if your book is non-fiction or something that won't attract the usual RR reader
I'd like to get involved with some groups, and I'll definitely look into the ones you've posted. I tried starting up a local group here in my town, but the folks that responded and showed up were a bit flakey and it fell apart after a few weeks. This place isn't really great for free thought lol. Thanks for all the great info!
Maybe post a topic in ~books asking people about self-publishing. [ Among the many other non-book-related topics and comments you're going to post, so it doesn't look like promoting your book is the only reason you're here! ;) ]
Don't encourage them. All that @Grimmcartel has done on Tildes so far is talk about their book, and ask how to promote their book.
If @Grimmcartel is going to promote their book, the appropriate group would be ~books, not here in ~tildes.
If you encourage them to promote their book, that would cause them to break the rules
might lead to them getting banned. Maybe you could let them feel their way around, rather than push them off a cliff.Appreciate it. Falling off a cliff isn't what I had in mind. The reason I posted here was because I figured it was the correct place to ask about sitewide rules.
You did the right thing. You asked about the rules, before possibly making a mistake.
It's those other people, encouraging you to possibly break the rules
and get yourself banned, who I have a problem with.I'm not trying to leave anyone hanging, just trying to make sure I don't ruffle any feathers. I'll post details in another more appropriate thread down the road once I've settled in a bit more here :)