Like most of you…I have a few pet peeves…some of them resemble pet rocks…
just sitting around…gathering dust…not really amounting to much…others…well…others…get aired for the world to see…this is one of them…
As an author…I spend a fair amount of time perusing Amazon…sometimes it’s checking up on the sales of Bertha-Size Your Life!…others…it’s checking out someone else’s book…usually with the intent to purchase…
You may or may not have noticed…but there is a…like…button under the title of the book…it’s a little light grey button with a thumbs up on it…it has a number on it…indicating how many people have liked this book…if you click it…it adds a number and becomes orange…
So…how can this innocent little button be one of my pet peeves…simple…I can’t tell you how many times I have checked out a book…and found…zero…for the number of likes…
Okay…I can understand having a low number…I mean…you can’t make people click the…like…button…in fact…most folks don’t even pay any attention to it…even if they buy the book and love it…they don’t give it the thumbs up…I don’t have a problem with that…
But…zero…to me that says that the author doesn’t like the book…doesn’t have confidence in it…which really bothers me…Bertha…says it’s like a politician who doesn’t vote for himself…and…honestly…who ever heard of that…
I suppose some people think it is vain…maybe deceptive…to click…like…for their own work…and…there may have been a time when I was inclined to agree with them…but…that was before…Bertha…had a talk with me…explaining that I couldn’t wait for others to believe in me to start believing in myself…I had to show them the way…I had to believe in me first…
She said it makes no difference if it’s the Presidential election…the local yard-of-the-month competition…or…a book on Amazon…if I want others to believe in me…I had to do it first…I had to vote for myself…
At first…that went a bit against my grain…I was raised not to toot my own horn…although…now that I think about it…tooting someone else’s sounds a bit germy and gross…but…I digress…
I spent some time with it…then I realized…believing in myself is not the equivalent of boasting…in fact…confident people rarely need to boast…they just quietly click the…like…button…and let it go at that…
And…that’s what I hope to do in my life…some days…it’s easier than others…
Jane
clicking your “like” button for this one xx
Thanks, Joy…I appreciate that…hope you clicked yours as well…I know I did!
I appreciate this article. I am changing my mind about liking myself because of it! It is hard to change some of our old fashioned ways. But, like the old saying “if we don’t like ourselves, who else will?”
I’m running to the like button, yours and mine!
Thank you Mary I’m glad the post was meaningful for you. Being about the same age…and a good southern girl…I know exactly what you mean…we were raised that is wasn’t modest…glad times are changing…and for the record…I ‘like’ yours alot. Just a suggestion…why don’t you include your link in your profile so folks can find your tasty website?
It would be disheartening to have no one click the like button for a book… Perhaps the author is not on Facebook.. I give your post two thumbs up!
Thank you Christy…I appreciate your two thumbs! It is sad to see a book with no likes listed…of course…I like them when I see them…LOL!