Pub Rants

Why I Can’t Link In

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STATUS: Happy Jig. Rules of Attraction on NYT for third week in a row.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? DELICATE by Damien Rice

It goes in spats but invariably once a month, I get a lovely invitation from a writer to Link In or join as a Facebook friend.

This is the nature of useful social networks but because of the nature of this job, I can’t really accept.

If I accepted one invitation, I’d have to accept all invitations. That would only be fair, and I don’t really want to open that can of worms!

My rule is that I only say yes to close friends and family, my clients, editors, and/or other industry people I know personally. Keeping it simple.

All others, I will decline with a polite note but thanks for thinking of me.


9 Responses

  1. Kristi Faith said:

    Hmmm, that seems awfully wise of you considering you have 2414 followers on your blog. I think separating the work/personal life in social networking is a good thing. Not all authors want to know I had a mini meltdown over freshly baked pretzels. :0)

  2. Sharon K. Mayhew said:

    I try to keep fb for people I know too, other than a few blog friends. I’ve had some requests from people I don’t know at all. I ignore them. Don’t want to be mean, but I don’t want to keep up with their birthdays.

  3. Liz said:

    I get a lot of Facebook traffic from people I don’t know who just want to play games. Which is fine, but not what I use Facebook for. So I totally understand your logic behind not friending everyone.

    One thing you could do, though, is create either a Kristin Nelson page or a PubRants page that people could fan all willy nilly. That way your feed could remain uncluttered, Facebook users could keep up with you and the blog, and you wouldn’t have to approve/decline anyone, so fewer email/facebook messages to go through every day.

    Just tossing out suggestions. 🙂

    word verification: middleg – the wrong way to play piano

  4. Anonymous said:

    Exactly the same problem I face each day when I receive requests to join a social network. All I can do is delete the request. It’s the only way to be fair to everyone.

    Dave Kuzminski, Editor
    Preditors & Editors ™
    http://pred-ed.com/

  5. Kathy Holmes said:

    Absolutely! We each have to decide how to use each social network that suits us best. Some collect thousands of “friends” on FB as a networking tool – others reserve that for people they know – and so on for each tool.

  6. Eridani said:

    I get some flack for this, myself. I have friends with like 1000 ‘friends’ on Facebook. If I even know 1000 people, I am pretty sure they aren’t my friends! I have about 40 people on my list and they are all people I call friends or family for real. It’s cool to find another person who feels that same way.