Twitter was good for books
Can other sites do some of the same useful work?
The large-scale retreat from Twitter / X by authors, publishing workers, and others in the book-ish ecosystem (try finding an independent bookstore that still posts regularly to Twitter) is often depicted as a political response to the ascent of Elon Musk. Fair enough. But I think there’s another cultural element in the mix that’s worth trying to disentangle.
Discomfort with what gets called self-promotion has always been present in responses to social media among book people, and I think it’s been a (generally under-acknowledged) component of the exodus from Twitter. In other words: The tumult of the past two or three years lent a particular valence to decisions about quitting Twitter, which is seen as increasingly right wing. But in my experience the sense that these departures are good or virtuous may sometimes extend not just to critiques of social media’s most problematic owner, but to a sort of nostalgia for the modesty of older ways—including a belief that books should succeed or fail on the basis of something not quite so unseemly as self-promotion by authors and publishing workers. (“I do not use social media,” some authors proclaim these days on their marketing questionnaires, in a tone that I don’t think would’ve been deployed the same way a few years ago.)
Moving from social media’s high-impact platform to quieter, less interactive sites fits with the trend. The sort of conflation I detect—where the departure from Twitter responds in part to what’s perceived as the site’s immodesty—may be part of the reason newer platforms have proved less lively, and less effective for creating engagement around books. Those sites are supposed to be different, and so they are, in ways that (from where I sit) undercut their usefulness.
I’m on record as being a defender of social media. When it works, I think it helps connect books with readers—not just directly, but by raising awareness among booksellers and book reviewers. And I think social media can level the playing field since it’s essentially free, giving smaller, independent players more of a chance compared with the big houses and their investments in traditional (and costly) top-down promotional efforts. From my perspective, going back to a books ecosystem from before 2020 amounts to a reassertion of traditional hierarchies. And I say that not just as a publishing worker but as a reader. The ways that I find out about new books feel impoverished since the decline of social media.
That said, all of my positive associations with social media are predicated on book people engaging the platforms well, and that’s the irony of the past couple of years. As users flee Twitter—in part, again, out of what strikes me as a distaste for self-promotion—those still engaging it really have become more self-promotional in ways that are beyond their control. Effective use of social media requires active communities that are willing to read and respond and engage in mutual support on an ongoing basis. It requires some sense, on the part of users, that there’s a network poised to hear them. Once a community of users is thinned out, posts to a platform are less likely to offer behind-the-scenes glimpses of the social life of books, or unexpected exchanges, or genuine interaction of any kind. They risk becoming perfunctory and inert. Look, they say, at my book.
Whatever the tangle of reasons behind the exodus from social media’s buzziest site, this state of affairs feels like where things have too often landed.
I’ll now take questions.
You’re saying I have to use social media?
Of course not! Nobody owes a platform anything. But if you’re involved with books, it’s helpful to think through the implications around quitting—not just motivations, but effects. And if leaving an online community means losing some opportunities to connect with readers, then it’s good to think about ways to build new ones. Almost nobody is going to become a Thomas Pynchon-style successful enigma.
Why the focus on Twitter?
For me the promise of social media has been easy shareability and interactiveness. The independent bookstores seem to have migrated to Instagram, which is fine but strikes me as driven by content creators rather than posters. Try establishing an ongoing exchange with a bigger account on that platform, or sharing someone else’s news in a way that gains momentum. Even now, in its deeply compromised state, Twitter probably does that better than IG (to say nothing of TikTok). It’s the place where things have traditionally pinged around.
What about Bluesky?
Obviously experiences differ, but at the publisher account I run, we have a large Bluesky following coupled with very limited engagement. And while I’d love to see that change, I think it would probably require more assertive algorithms and a sense of frisson that most Bluesky users don’t want. They left Twitter for a reason. (Also the bookstores and review outlets mostly aren’t there, or at least I don’t see them.)
My colleague Rebecca Colesworthy—a senior editor at SUNY Press and columnist for the Chronicle of Higher Ed—summed up her experience with the platform: “Booksky has its moments but in general social media is now totally decentralized and it’s just harder.”
What would help?
Cultivate new communities where you can. I work on one series where authors are effectively communicating on LinkedIn—a pleasant surprise. Try to do the face-to-face stuff, of course, even though it’s harder to discover in the absence of robust online networks, and may end up less well attended. Recover or resurrect some of the lively, supportive traditions that characterized peak Twitter, wherever you now spend time online. And if circumstances change (gulp), consider going back to Twitter.
I’d love to hear other ideas in comments.
Thanks for writing this. As a BlueSky long-hauler I'd say that if many more people used hashtags, their stuff would be seen by people who would want to hear about it. They would be followed or added to lists so that other users could regularly check in on their posts - and then be more likely to engage since they actually saw the things in the first place.
Really insightful. In the past Twitter served as a discoverability engine for me; I’ve purchased at least 100 bucks off recommendations and tweets over the years. As an author, I’ve never had very good success with it, however. I joined back in 2008, and my feed was always far more engaged in the early years. I mostly feel like I’m talking to a ghost town at this point. Thankfully, my experience on Substack has been radically different. I share book reviews here that readers seem to value, and I find the notes feature every bit as enjoyable as the old Twitter. I’m not sure how this works exactly, but I suspect the non-aggressive algorithm works better here than at Bluesky because Bluesky grew primarily for political reasons, whereas Substack seems to have grown more organically and with a large percentage of literary readers in the fold. There are simply far more literary people on this platform here for non-political reasons—at least, that would be my guess based on my experience.