Wow. I feel this deeply and can’t wait for part two. Question: did the artist expand on her words? Say why or how it made her feel? Just wondering, but like you, this resonates.
I like that she said it was not built for her, not the reverse. I often wonder how many social media followers actually buy books. I do know writers who have sacrificed writing time to build followers, but success can't be measured that way. Pushing promotion on the author started before 1993 when I was told midlist authors had to do their own. That's when the PR people at Harlequin were making the buying decisions, the editors were busy writing bibles for series and the authors who supplied the creative works were expected to flog them. The PR people chose the easier task for themselves.
I recall bung ads that would never return a profit, trading articles for reduced ad space in magazines, entering contests and scouring for reviews, none of which I liked better than writing. Now I pay a social mediarist who promotes my books one a week on 4 social media sites and actually carries them to book events with her own. Amazon has pulled my books together on one page now that I use my full name, and of course I have substack where i place adds on Saturday, only my own books. None of that may pay off any better than my previous efforts but at least it isn't killing me.
I can honestly say I've never joined Facebook. I guess I missed the buzz about its "rating" when it first started. I just remember suddenly hearing my friends shout Facebook when they were taking photos and I was like what is this?! After hearing about it I was like why would I want to post my business to the world? I was "reassured" it would just be seen by friends I "approved" and my answer was, why can't I just email it to you (because texting photos was still a massive charge or not even a thing yet! Lol Instagram sure wasn't a thing either!)? And their response was "it's not the same." Needless to say I never joined because I just didn't "get it" enough. LOL. Even with Instagram I'm just posting pictures of books and every 100 posts or so you might see my face, but it's rare! I use twitter or threads mostly just to vent or pose questions to the open universe. Don't always get answers, but it's a good way to get things off my chest.
Wow. I feel this deeply and can’t wait for part two. Question: did the artist expand on her words? Say why or how it made her feel? Just wondering, but like you, this resonates.
I like that she said it was not built for her, not the reverse. I often wonder how many social media followers actually buy books. I do know writers who have sacrificed writing time to build followers, but success can't be measured that way. Pushing promotion on the author started before 1993 when I was told midlist authors had to do their own. That's when the PR people at Harlequin were making the buying decisions, the editors were busy writing bibles for series and the authors who supplied the creative works were expected to flog them. The PR people chose the easier task for themselves.
I recall bung ads that would never return a profit, trading articles for reduced ad space in magazines, entering contests and scouring for reviews, none of which I liked better than writing. Now I pay a social mediarist who promotes my books one a week on 4 social media sites and actually carries them to book events with her own. Amazon has pulled my books together on one page now that I use my full name, and of course I have substack where i place adds on Saturday, only my own books. None of that may pay off any better than my previous efforts but at least it isn't killing me.
I can honestly say I've never joined Facebook. I guess I missed the buzz about its "rating" when it first started. I just remember suddenly hearing my friends shout Facebook when they were taking photos and I was like what is this?! After hearing about it I was like why would I want to post my business to the world? I was "reassured" it would just be seen by friends I "approved" and my answer was, why can't I just email it to you (because texting photos was still a massive charge or not even a thing yet! Lol Instagram sure wasn't a thing either!)? And their response was "it's not the same." Needless to say I never joined because I just didn't "get it" enough. LOL. Even with Instagram I'm just posting pictures of books and every 100 posts or so you might see my face, but it's rare! I use twitter or threads mostly just to vent or pose questions to the open universe. Don't always get answers, but it's a good way to get things off my chest.