How Much Can You Trust Bookstagrammers' Numbers?

When you think about it, anyone can call themselves an influencer. Who's to prove them wrong? Who knows; maybe I'm an influencer! Just get in touch with me and I can "promote" your book. It'll cost you, though. And once I do my Instagram post consisting of your book cover nesting on a cozy blanket next to a sprig of eucalyptus in a vase, I'll hit you up for an interview, book giveaway, or more likely, both. Plus whatever else I can come up with to get you to fork over more money.

For a brief period, I tried to catch the attention of bookstagrammers, because I was reliably told that they could really help to move sales. But--a big but--don't, under any circumstances DM them and ask them to review your book. That's a no-no. So, I did an Instagram search, which produced very few results. Then I just scrolled through posts, and when I found one that featured a book review, I inspected the poster's profile. If my prospect looked promising, I followed them. As far as I know, none of them followed back.

But don't worry! Many will come to you! Except they're not really bookstagrammers, They're simply social media users who latched onto a money-making scheme and hit the ground running. Most of the big (so-called real) bookstagrammers have, over time, become paid shills for publishers, so they don't need the little tiny indie authors, and therefore, what would be in it for them to review our books? See? It's lose-lose. Either pay someone with zero reach to review your book or waste your time trying to catch a true influencer's attention, which you never will.

Or, better still, just abandon that route completely.

When I still believed that a bookstagrammer was the golden ticket (sort of), and when I couldn't catch any real influencer's attention, I succumbed to three DM pitches. I didn't go into those interactions blindly. I looked at their follower numbers and their other posted reviews. (Admittedly, I didn't check out the number of views their posts received, nor the number of comments attached to them. Dumb; naive.) And each of them charged a pretty small fee, so I wasn't taking much of a risk.

Let's just say their output was underwhelming. I've already noted that none of the three read my book, but instead essentially reworded the Amazon blurb into a "review". I wouldn't even mind that so much (although I kind of do--I also had to pay for them to purchase the book), had their posts gotten any traction at all. It wasn't until later that I took a look and found one and sometimes no comments or likes. As for views, I haven't quite figured out why some posts show total views and some don't, but I suspect there's something fishy going on with that.

This brings me to follower numbers. Yes, social media users can buy followers. Per Google:

"Buying fake engagement: There is a thriving black market where individuals and businesses can buy fake views, likes, and followers. These services use automated "bot" accounts or operate "click farms" to rapidly inflate engagement metrics. Some services even provide "aged" bot accounts that are designed to look like genuine users." 

While I did look at each person's number of followers before I agreed to their pitch, there's quite a dichotomy between followers and post views. If you've got, for example, 29,000 followers, but your posts only get a couple of views, hmmm.

The worst part of this experiment is that I've now got three people who won't leave me alone. Each of them wants to sell me more options--book giveaways, interviews. They've pegged me as a mark, not undeserved. But while I'm a slow learner, I do catch on eventually.

My problem is that I want to believe people are honest. I've slowly been disabused of that myth. 

So, tempting as an offer might sound, just delete it. It's akin to those scam emails we all receive. Anybody who's anybody doesn't need to solicit customers. If you want to promote your book on social media, compose your own cozy blanket photo. It's free.