Thanks for giving us so much to think about here. Promoting a book on social media is especially soul sucking indeed. I've been struggling with it too <3
I was trying to describe it to one of my non-writer friends. It's like the kind of personality required to be a promoter and marketer of your book is the exact opposite of the type of personality it takes to write a book. So you have to do a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde type thing. And pretending to be someone you're not is very, very exhausting.
Great piece, Robyn. So much of your angst about this mirrors my own.
I'm on the cusp of deciding to self-publish (always) but I fear the insurmountable job of promoting my own work once the book is a reality. I'm actually a delightfully entertaining person with a theater background that could probably crush BookTok if I had ANY desire to shake my butt online for a book sale. But I really and truly don't want to. And if I did, it would feel like torture to me. We shouldn't have to torture ourselves, or put on makeup, or buy expensive lights and microphones and spend hours editing 2-minute promo videos to be a writer. The number of times I've heard "you gotta get on BookTok" from people, including industry professionals, makes me so very sad to be a writer in "these times." There's a lot of great connection happening in writing communities online, and I'm thankful for that part of the equation (math talk), but I sometimes wish it could just be ENOUGH to work hard, create an excellent book, get that book into the hands of the people whose actual JOB it is to sell that book, and then get to work writing the next excellent book! That in itself is a TON OF WORK!!!
There's far too much EXTRA required of writers now. It's exhausting. 😩
Just amen to all of this, Meg. I think about this A LOT. I keep asking myself, "Why didn't Hemingway have to do book tours?" And then imagining Hemingway on book tour, which is great fun and subject of a piece I have coming out in an anthology (plug to Old Iron Press), but that's a whole other thing. And then I wonder, is it coincidental that at about the time many women started publishing books, the book tour became a thing? It's emotional labor, after all, and women are good at that. All I ever wanted was just to have the opportunity to keep writing books. And, yes, TikTok. The horror. I cannot.
Also, if you do decide to self-publish or have any questions as you're thinking about it, hit me up. I can certainly tell you many mistakes I made along the way and what I would do differently.
I was part of the "Blogsphere" which was what "Social Media" replaced. I miss being part of the "blogshere", which had very different parameters for participation. Social media? Not bring much because it was focused on at the very different kind of person then I happen to be. So I went back to computers and earned money keeping my personal projects to myself.
Thanks! Good to know. Yes, I had a blog back in the early 2000s, also called You Think Too Much. It was fun to write and I had no idea what I was doing and there was less of this idea of people "going viral" (or if there was, I didn't know about it), so it felt much more peaceful and idyllic. Just me doing my thing. It seems harder to feel that way on Substack when there's this pressure to grow, grow, grow!
This slaps :) Thanks for writing about the grey space of social media questioning that all us smaller accounts are doing right now. I am on the lookout for new channels for gaining visibility
Thanks, Marisol! I do think there's less discussion of what it means to leave social media for us smaller-fry folks. Let me know if you find any of those new, better channels. I am constantly susceptible to the shiny new social media platform that's going to correct for all the horrors of the old social media platform.
Just quit. Social media doesn't move the needle for your book sales, it's soul-crushing, distracting, and depressing, and worst of all, having a small following can actually be a hindrance to getting attention on your work. Think game theory: if you've got a shitty standardized test score, it's better to not mention it all, rather than display it on your resume and have people pre-judge you.
I was lucky. I had no social media (saved LinkedIn) from 2009-2022. I got on Twitter last spring and by November SkyCuck had acquired the company and made it truly brain-damage inducing. I deleted my account this past March and haven't looked back.
More importantly, while I'm known to be critical of Substack, all my most important writerly connections started on this platform, not Twitter or LinkedIn. I've met insanely cool and talented people, including three published authors who beta read my novel and wrote blurbs for my query letter. The only other place I've met real people is IRL -- at writing conferences, at the playground with my kids, at actual social events with actual humans.
I didn't think of game theory, as I know even less about that. It's absolutely true that we judge each other by our follower count, though. I'm envious of your largely social media-free life.
That's great that you've found such an amazing writing community here on Substack. I think it's very much a space that's still in the process of becoming and I'm still feeling my way through it.
And I appreciate your willingness to be critical of the platform, too. It's how I found your newsletter. Substack can be both a great place to connect and also sometimes, a little, I don't know, cultish?
I'm not a Game Theory expert by any means, but I think in the case of "signaling" it's apt.
I came onto Substack in May 2022 and was pretty aggressive in connecting with other writers, figuring out which people and what kind of work I wanted to follow, and self-promoting to a meaningful, yet tasteful, degree.
Substack's been an awesome platform, but I frankly think it's already peaked in terms of user friendliness and "cool" factor. It will continue to get bigger by attracting more celebrities and more bad faith actors, but the joy of being early to a new place and getting to hang out with the cool kids is fading fast.
There's so many creators now -- many of which are amazing -- but there's just not enough time, attention, or dollars to support everyone. You're already seeing rampant complaints about the platform (I'm guilty, too) and factions forming. Also, there's clear reader fatigue. My last post still has a sub-40% open rate (worst ever). This all reminds me of Medium, which destroyed itself with algorithms, clickbait, factionalism, and a poorly constructed monetization model.
It's hard not to get swept up in the negativity. But the only thing we can do is keep focusing on the work. And back to the original point of your post, social media detracts from that, which is why I say move on.
BTW, cue the self-promo apology, but you may find my Substack launch post interesting. It still holds some good insights about algorithms, monetization, and platform-building.
My open rate has seen a steady decline, too. I got on Substack in November 2022, migrating from Mail Chimp of all places. I brought most of my readers to Substack and for a long time, most of my readers were on Substack for my newsletter. I think quite a few of them still are, because I live in a cozy little town where people (mostly) like me and subscribe to my newsletter so they can stop me on the street and talk about it (which is lovely).
But most of my growth since then is other Substackers and since the beginning, I've had reservations about how that works as a closed system, especially with the whole monetization fiasco. Your launch post sums it all up, so you know this. A yearly subscription to one person's newsletter isn't feasible. Not even for George Saunders.
Also, I never feel like I have a big enough view of Substack or any other platform or really much of anything in the world to know what the trends are. Small town syndrome, which works out fine, sometimes. I hope Substack does not crash and burn, though.
I think Substack has some runway before they go bankrupt, but I also think their business model is flawed. My guess is they need to take a larger percentage of the cut (e.g., 20% vs. 10%) and convince more famous people to get on the platform. I've written some great stuff, and I've been endorsed by super talented people, and of my 750 subscribers, only 20 have taken a paid sub -- 15 of whom I've known for DECADES. It's just not a viable model for most creators.
I recently switched to a lifetime subscription model, where one payment gets you access forever. I promise you'll see more people -- especially small-timers like me -- adopt this model. It's just a lot more feasible to ask people for $50 once, rather than $50 per year, forever.
Unfortunately, we've hit that inflection where everyone is trying to monetize simultaneously, and the average reader is going to pay nobody rather than pick winners.
Substack's worked for me, and I've really appreciated the opportunity to network with other writers and grow my readership. That said, I'm planning to branch out into other channels.
Love this. I feel the same. I’m doing a Stolen Focus Fall challenge over on my Instagram and offered some baby step options in the challenge for people wanting to improve their relationship with social. But I feel you, every time I think about totally deleting Instagram, I’m like, but my next book launch...
Yes, same. Though I am trying to absorb the fact that maybe IG doesn't actually help me sell books. I had an actual book marketer say that in the comments on a past post.
I have tried baby steps to reduce my social media intake. IG is deleted from my home screen. I've set my phone to grayscale. Obviously, the screen time thing tracks how long I'm on my phone. None of it works. I think I'm just a cold turkey sort of person. It's all or nothing.
Anyway, I'm taking this month off and seeing how it goes. I have to say, when I posted my "taking a break" message, it felt so freeing. Like an incredible lightness. I'm leaning into that feeling.
Dear Robyn, I have never felt social media did much for my self-publishing career, except give me a place to tell my already existing fans on Facebook (which if lucky FB shows about 100 of them my posts!) when a new book came out. How I got those fans was to keep writing, producing shorter pieces that I could offer as ebooks for free or 99 cents to get people to try me out, and eventually since I write series, getting 3 books in a series so I could do promotions of the first book, and get sell through. And slowly, build up an audience. It really is true that for most of us, we need 3-5 fiction books (hopefully in similar genre) to expect to be able to start building that fan base. Hard to be patient, but it really is a long game, and in self-publishing you don't need to worry that if that first book doesn't sell enough quickly enough you will be judged as a failure by some agent or publisher. All that matters is the people who do read you work and like it. And while 10 reviews (your current Amazon rating) might seem puny, it took me a year to get that many reviews for my first book--which now unbelievably has over 15,000 ratings--13 years later (smile). Meanwhile you are also building a fan base here on substack, and that is marvelous!
That's very good insight and I like the idea of thinking long-term. Certainly in traditional publishing today, you're sunk if that first book doesn't sell. I have so many friends who are amazing writers and they're getting dumped by agents and editors. It's carnage out there.
Also, all 10 of those reviews are from people I know who were kind enough to do me the favor or reviewing the book. Grateful to every one of them.
I think it has *some* effect. The latest report from Substack with September Stats says that 12% of new subscriptions were "direct," and I interpret that to mean that they either came from Tap Bio (where I put a link to the most recent Substack content that I'm promoting in our Instagram bio) or from our website, where I also link to Substack content. But the overwhelming majority of subscriptions are coming from referrals within Substack.
Just go. I did 2 years ago.
The real workplace of the intelligence of the mind is innerspace not facebook.
Totally agree with you. Just curious--do you ever miss any part of being on social media?
Thanks for giving us so much to think about here. Promoting a book on social media is especially soul sucking indeed. I've been struggling with it too <3
I was trying to describe it to one of my non-writer friends. It's like the kind of personality required to be a promoter and marketer of your book is the exact opposite of the type of personality it takes to write a book. So you have to do a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde type thing. And pretending to be someone you're not is very, very exhausting.
Great piece, Robyn. So much of your angst about this mirrors my own.
I'm on the cusp of deciding to self-publish (always) but I fear the insurmountable job of promoting my own work once the book is a reality. I'm actually a delightfully entertaining person with a theater background that could probably crush BookTok if I had ANY desire to shake my butt online for a book sale. But I really and truly don't want to. And if I did, it would feel like torture to me. We shouldn't have to torture ourselves, or put on makeup, or buy expensive lights and microphones and spend hours editing 2-minute promo videos to be a writer. The number of times I've heard "you gotta get on BookTok" from people, including industry professionals, makes me so very sad to be a writer in "these times." There's a lot of great connection happening in writing communities online, and I'm thankful for that part of the equation (math talk), but I sometimes wish it could just be ENOUGH to work hard, create an excellent book, get that book into the hands of the people whose actual JOB it is to sell that book, and then get to work writing the next excellent book! That in itself is a TON OF WORK!!!
There's far too much EXTRA required of writers now. It's exhausting. 😩
Just amen to all of this, Meg. I think about this A LOT. I keep asking myself, "Why didn't Hemingway have to do book tours?" And then imagining Hemingway on book tour, which is great fun and subject of a piece I have coming out in an anthology (plug to Old Iron Press), but that's a whole other thing. And then I wonder, is it coincidental that at about the time many women started publishing books, the book tour became a thing? It's emotional labor, after all, and women are good at that. All I ever wanted was just to have the opportunity to keep writing books. And, yes, TikTok. The horror. I cannot.
Also, if you do decide to self-publish or have any questions as you're thinking about it, hit me up. I can certainly tell you many mistakes I made along the way and what I would do differently.
Thank you, Robyn. I will absolutely reach out about self-publishing in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, color me subscribed!
I was part of the "Blogsphere" which was what "Social Media" replaced. I miss being part of the "blogshere", which had very different parameters for participation. Social media? Not bring much because it was focused on at the very different kind of person then I happen to be. So I went back to computers and earned money keeping my personal projects to myself.
Thanks! Good to know. Yes, I had a blog back in the early 2000s, also called You Think Too Much. It was fun to write and I had no idea what I was doing and there was less of this idea of people "going viral" (or if there was, I didn't know about it), so it felt much more peaceful and idyllic. Just me doing my thing. It seems harder to feel that way on Substack when there's this pressure to grow, grow, grow!
This slaps :) Thanks for writing about the grey space of social media questioning that all us smaller accounts are doing right now. I am on the lookout for new channels for gaining visibility
Thanks, Marisol! I do think there's less discussion of what it means to leave social media for us smaller-fry folks. Let me know if you find any of those new, better channels. I am constantly susceptible to the shiny new social media platform that's going to correct for all the horrors of the old social media platform.
Just quit. Social media doesn't move the needle for your book sales, it's soul-crushing, distracting, and depressing, and worst of all, having a small following can actually be a hindrance to getting attention on your work. Think game theory: if you've got a shitty standardized test score, it's better to not mention it all, rather than display it on your resume and have people pre-judge you.
I was lucky. I had no social media (saved LinkedIn) from 2009-2022. I got on Twitter last spring and by November SkyCuck had acquired the company and made it truly brain-damage inducing. I deleted my account this past March and haven't looked back.
More importantly, while I'm known to be critical of Substack, all my most important writerly connections started on this platform, not Twitter or LinkedIn. I've met insanely cool and talented people, including three published authors who beta read my novel and wrote blurbs for my query letter. The only other place I've met real people is IRL -- at writing conferences, at the playground with my kids, at actual social events with actual humans.
You've got nothing to lose! Be free.
I didn't think of game theory, as I know even less about that. It's absolutely true that we judge each other by our follower count, though. I'm envious of your largely social media-free life.
That's great that you've found such an amazing writing community here on Substack. I think it's very much a space that's still in the process of becoming and I'm still feeling my way through it.
And I appreciate your willingness to be critical of the platform, too. It's how I found your newsletter. Substack can be both a great place to connect and also sometimes, a little, I don't know, cultish?
I'm not a Game Theory expert by any means, but I think in the case of "signaling" it's apt.
I came onto Substack in May 2022 and was pretty aggressive in connecting with other writers, figuring out which people and what kind of work I wanted to follow, and self-promoting to a meaningful, yet tasteful, degree.
Substack's been an awesome platform, but I frankly think it's already peaked in terms of user friendliness and "cool" factor. It will continue to get bigger by attracting more celebrities and more bad faith actors, but the joy of being early to a new place and getting to hang out with the cool kids is fading fast.
There's so many creators now -- many of which are amazing -- but there's just not enough time, attention, or dollars to support everyone. You're already seeing rampant complaints about the platform (I'm guilty, too) and factions forming. Also, there's clear reader fatigue. My last post still has a sub-40% open rate (worst ever). This all reminds me of Medium, which destroyed itself with algorithms, clickbait, factionalism, and a poorly constructed monetization model.
It's hard not to get swept up in the negativity. But the only thing we can do is keep focusing on the work. And back to the original point of your post, social media detracts from that, which is why I say move on.
BTW, cue the self-promo apology, but you may find my Substack launch post interesting. It still holds some good insights about algorithms, monetization, and platform-building.
https://agowani.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-party-pal
My open rate has seen a steady decline, too. I got on Substack in November 2022, migrating from Mail Chimp of all places. I brought most of my readers to Substack and for a long time, most of my readers were on Substack for my newsletter. I think quite a few of them still are, because I live in a cozy little town where people (mostly) like me and subscribe to my newsletter so they can stop me on the street and talk about it (which is lovely).
But most of my growth since then is other Substackers and since the beginning, I've had reservations about how that works as a closed system, especially with the whole monetization fiasco. Your launch post sums it all up, so you know this. A yearly subscription to one person's newsletter isn't feasible. Not even for George Saunders.
Also, I never feel like I have a big enough view of Substack or any other platform or really much of anything in the world to know what the trends are. Small town syndrome, which works out fine, sometimes. I hope Substack does not crash and burn, though.
I think Substack has some runway before they go bankrupt, but I also think their business model is flawed. My guess is they need to take a larger percentage of the cut (e.g., 20% vs. 10%) and convince more famous people to get on the platform. I've written some great stuff, and I've been endorsed by super talented people, and of my 750 subscribers, only 20 have taken a paid sub -- 15 of whom I've known for DECADES. It's just not a viable model for most creators.
I recently switched to a lifetime subscription model, where one payment gets you access forever. I promise you'll see more people -- especially small-timers like me -- adopt this model. It's just a lot more feasible to ask people for $50 once, rather than $50 per year, forever.
Unfortunately, we've hit that inflection where everyone is trying to monetize simultaneously, and the average reader is going to pay nobody rather than pick winners.
Substack's worked for me, and I've really appreciated the opportunity to network with other writers and grow my readership. That said, I'm planning to branch out into other channels.
Great discussion. And a timely post!
Oh, I'll be interested in maybe reading about how you're branching out.
My God Robyn, You Think Too Much. Leave the bad, take the canoli.
Lol, Sandy. But there's so much exciting drama on Madison Facebook, or at least that's what I hear. How could I miss that?
Oh, don't miss it; Take it when you want it. Someone will always help catch you up on anything you miss.
Love this. I feel the same. I’m doing a Stolen Focus Fall challenge over on my Instagram and offered some baby step options in the challenge for people wanting to improve their relationship with social. But I feel you, every time I think about totally deleting Instagram, I’m like, but my next book launch...
Yes, same. Though I am trying to absorb the fact that maybe IG doesn't actually help me sell books. I had an actual book marketer say that in the comments on a past post.
I have tried baby steps to reduce my social media intake. IG is deleted from my home screen. I've set my phone to grayscale. Obviously, the screen time thing tracks how long I'm on my phone. None of it works. I think I'm just a cold turkey sort of person. It's all or nothing.
Anyway, I'm taking this month off and seeing how it goes. I have to say, when I posted my "taking a break" message, it felt so freeing. Like an incredible lightness. I'm leaning into that feeling.
That’s awesome!
Dear Robyn, I have never felt social media did much for my self-publishing career, except give me a place to tell my already existing fans on Facebook (which if lucky FB shows about 100 of them my posts!) when a new book came out. How I got those fans was to keep writing, producing shorter pieces that I could offer as ebooks for free or 99 cents to get people to try me out, and eventually since I write series, getting 3 books in a series so I could do promotions of the first book, and get sell through. And slowly, build up an audience. It really is true that for most of us, we need 3-5 fiction books (hopefully in similar genre) to expect to be able to start building that fan base. Hard to be patient, but it really is a long game, and in self-publishing you don't need to worry that if that first book doesn't sell enough quickly enough you will be judged as a failure by some agent or publisher. All that matters is the people who do read you work and like it. And while 10 reviews (your current Amazon rating) might seem puny, it took me a year to get that many reviews for my first book--which now unbelievably has over 15,000 ratings--13 years later (smile). Meanwhile you are also building a fan base here on substack, and that is marvelous!
That's very good insight and I like the idea of thinking long-term. Certainly in traditional publishing today, you're sunk if that first book doesn't sell. I have so many friends who are amazing writers and they're getting dumped by agents and editors. It's carnage out there.
Also, all 10 of those reviews are from people I know who were kind enough to do me the favor or reviewing the book. Grateful to every one of them.
I hear you! I promote our Substack content on social media but otherwise spend very little time there. It would be amazing to ignore it completely.
Do you think promoting the Substack on social media has much effect pulling in new subscribers or even pulling new users onto Subtack?
I think it has *some* effect. The latest report from Substack with September Stats says that 12% of new subscriptions were "direct," and I interpret that to mean that they either came from Tap Bio (where I put a link to the most recent Substack content that I'm promoting in our Instagram bio) or from our website, where I also link to Substack content. But the overwhelming majority of subscriptions are coming from referrals within Substack.
That sounds right.