D%@#$-Shut the Front Door! Indie's stay Away From the Forum

Whew! I was just over in the Kindle forums and had a huge awakening. It was like BAM! A brain shattering slap in the face before I even got my head through the door. I rarely (never) go into the site, but decided I would check it out. I recently heard this was the place to go if you wanted to promote your books. OMG, I think I will continue doing as I have been. I will stay away from that forum.

The first door I put my nose through was titled-
Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: Yeah!! Amazon is cracking down on self promoters!!Part of the new rules-"....With the advent of the new community, we will no longer allow self-promotional posts in other communities. Starting on Saturday, May 14th, all "shameless self promotion" activity will be limited to the `Meet Our Authors' community. Promotional threads outside of these forums will be removed."  We have officially been put in our place.

I tipped the he$# on outta there after I read a few of the lambasting posts. Thank God they weren't talking about me by name. Just the fact my profession, and our ability were being torn to shreds was enough for me. It made me run to my Indie buddies to get their opinions. I think we are pretty much in agreement.

1.Going into forums and slapping the readers on the head and across the face with your books will not endear you to the money welding world. It will only cause you to be cast out and your pearls of wisdom shredded and tossed to the wind.

2. Amazon has thrown us under the bus. True it offers a cheap and easy way to publish, but self promotion is a no no. No links in your signature or anything. I tend to think this will be a subtle way to get Indie's to either publish through their Createspace site or their new publishing company. Either way I think I'm beginning to see the end of the free upload.

After swallowing this bit of knowledge I strolled (scrolled) on down to this door-
Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: No authors = no books for you to readThe conversation here was a little calmer...at least I didn't see the macabre corpse of any of my fellow Indie authors being cast about like road kill and stomped upon as in the other room. Some names were thrown about and I pity those authors.

So, the moral to this story is...if you aren't invited in shut the f'in door.