Social media has always faced an uphill climb in bookish circles, struggling against the perception that it tends toward the slight, the commercial, and the grossly self-promotional. But it was a significant part of the equation for many of the successful authors I worked with while at my last in-house publishing job, and I think social media opportunities helped our small press overall. After a year or so of challenges and controversies for social media (and especially for Twitter, the platform I know best), it seems worth picking through what’s left in search of small lessons.
—“Social media doesn’t sell books” strikes me as a response to the wrong question. The sorts of authors who enjoy (and do well at) social media are often the same ones who are good at building communities around their books through engagement more generally—across digital, print, and face-to-face opportunities. They have an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to interact with readers and supporters. And all of that activity really can yield sales. From my perspective as a publisher, the issue has never been “Does this author have ten thousand followers?” but instead “Is this author invested in the social life of books?” Social media is a comparatively easy, visible way to demonstrate (and perhaps improve at) that end of things.
—A related point: I’ve had authors and others tell me that they’ve never bought a book because of a tweet. And while it’s true that people may not buy books based directly on specific, individual social media posts they see, the audience for those posts also includes book reviewers, booksellers, and other buzz-makers as much as individual consumers. Getting coverage for books is stoked by a sense of online conversation. And again, I think that does all move the needle ultimately.
—Part of posting to social media as an author is telling a story about yourself. If you can connect the good things that happen with your book to a narrative about yourself and your work, that good news will have more impact than if individual accolades are depicted and shared as isolated tidbits. Maybe that seems crass, but I’m struck that it’s entirely reasonable for people who care about books to seek out, and respond to, the ways that authors and their books are embedded in narratives, especially when these storytelling perspectives elevate values like transparency and generosity. (Neema Avashia, with whom I worked closely, does a great job of this.)
—People leave platforms like Twitter, and I get it. There’s a long and growing list of unpalatable stuff connected to social media—but I think that makes social media a lot like most of the rest of the world, unfortunately. While I’d never tell anyone they have to use (for example) Twitter, I think the politically junky stuff on the platform should be measured against the downsides of other elements involved with books and publishing. Flying during covid and climate change? Amazon? There aren’t a lot of pure options out there anymore, if there ever were.