Unless you think a magical marketing fairy is going to sprinkle pages of your book in everyone’s homes, you’re going to have to do the hustling yourself.

Doesn’t everyone know that?

Apparently not, according to this week’s Twitter drama.

Now, let me confess, I’ve been vocal about criticizing self-promoters, but only the ones who are downright annoying. Like the perpetrators of those kill-me-now direct messages from someone you followed three seconds ago. You know the ones:

Hey! LOL. I noticed you followed me and wanted to give you a free gift! It’s a copy of my book! at a discount! And I’d appreciate if you’d pass along a five-star review since we’re friends now.

(They will always start with the word “hey,” which may or may not be capitalized.)

And don’t forget those odd accounts that are nothing but retweets of boring, boilerplate book ads. They’re obviously bot accounts posing as members of the wonderful writing community, and I’ll complain about that kind of spam any day.

But actual marketing and self-promotion? I’ve never had a problem with that.

However, one guy on Twitter does have a problem with self-promoters, and this week he kicked up a big fuss by referring to self-promoting authors as “hucksters.” Don’t bother looking for the original tweet, because he’s hidden it and run off. (I could point a big finger at his account, but instead I’ll be nice let him continue retreating.)

Mind you, he didn’t simply tweet his opinion, he made it personal. This guy tagged specific accounts and called on people to unfollow them, all for the terrible crime of…talking about their books.

But it backfired spectacularly.

Point of order: A “huckster” is a criminal con artist. This is no small insult. Thankfully, those he called out were inundated with waves of new followers, and the collective sympathy even generated some book sales.

The #writingcommunity has a lot of power when they act together, and someone who comes in trolling is going to be quickly rushed out the door.

So don’t mess with writers, because we look out for each other.

And if you’ve got a book to sell, I’d love to hear about it.

(BTW–I’m releasing a fantasy anthology with stories from some of the best authors in the #writingcommunity. It’s called THE LOST LEGENDS and it’ll be out soon! Take that!)