Tenant 572 of Pitching Your Book:
Don’t apologize. You have a book, and you love it to death, but you know it’s not the best book out there–there’s so much good literature in the world already! And you know that vampires are a little cliché–but these are different! And you do know that reviewers are busy people, and you hate to bother them and–
Stop. Just stop.
Be it a friend, bookstore, or a review blog, these are people who enjoy reading (selling, reviewing, what-have-you) books–or are at least spending a lot of their free time doing it. Willingly.
So start with the assumption that they want to find out about your book. Because they do.
Never self-deprecate or talk down about your book. There will be enough people who’ll do it for you without your prompting. More importantly, if you, the author, don’t have the guts to stand by your baby, it probably shouldn’t have been published in the first place, much less read.
Do you have a pitch or synopsis that you’d like to send to the sacrificial altar? Email it our way with the subject “Pitch Article Submission” at canarypost@gmail.com.
The Book Canaries 
It is a hard line to walk at times – be the totally confident (dare I say “up-themself”) author, or the humble I-wrote-this-and-I-like-it-but-I-don’t-know-that-it-is-everyone’s-cup-of-tea-and-I’m-no-English-professor-so-maybe-I-suck-but-I-tried-and-spent-so-much-time-on-it-I-think-I-should-give-publishing-a-go-anyway amateur (guess which camp I fall into). Thanks for this reminder.
Heh, when we were about to read out our work, our lecturers told us to never apologise for it, and to also to “not apologise with your body”, which I thought was neat advice 🙂
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