Why People Get Tired of Being Sold

Some authors swear by social media. Most, however, find it useless. Stick me in the latter group. Yes, I read up on what to do and not do when pushing your novel on social media. It's a combination of vibey reels and glimpses into one's personal life, which ideally includes showing the author's writing process. (How do you show that, exactly? A pic of yourself staring blankly at the computer screen?)

When I decided to use Instagram to promote my book, I knew that showing myself was a no-go---why do you think I write under a pen name? So, I tried some Canva-created reels and a mood board, or "tropes" board, more accurately. I also experimented with posting a pretty image with some quote about writing. I did that a few times until I realized how boring it was to waste time doing. Finally, exasperated, I just basically posted my book cover with a link in the comment section. Sure, sometimes I included a quote from one of my reviews or a brief elevator pitch: "She found a career, but lost herself" (made up, but you get the drift). 

I did all that so many times I even got sick of myself. And nothing ever came of it, other than a bunch of DM's from scammers offering to review my book for a price or sell me a book trailer or other useless things. I doubt I ever sold one copy of my novel via social media.  

I thought about this after I received the latest email from a Substacker I subscribed to on a whim. She, too, is an author, only more successful. She does a thing where she transcribes the conversations she has with scammers, which was sort of fun to read at first, but now they're just repetitive. We all get those, lady! You're only unique in the fact that you think your experiences are unique. I'm not trying to be hard on her; publicizing yourself is damn hard, and if you discover a niche, you naturally go with it. 

One of her twice-weekly posts consists of these conversations; the other is bragging herself up. Not her books---herself. It's kind of interesting in a hate-read sort of way, which is why I haven't unsubscribed. But I get so tired of seeing the same book titles in her posts constantly. I must have all her titles memorized by now. And I would never read any of them, not because they're bad (I'm assuming); just because they're not my area of interest.

What all this means is, I get it. Stop boring people! This is why I finally abandoned social media all together. Rather than acquiring readers, I was turning them off by the repetitive pushing. 

We've all read the success stories. Whether we actually believe them or not depends on our gullibility. "Rhonda Romance" has the formula down pat. One day she posts a video of her cat; next, a highly curated reel that includes the usual tropes, then a video of her hands lovingly turning the pages of her book, then....

Look, romance sells itself, especially on TikTok. So, it's not what the author does or doesn't do; it's the audience. I could try the same things with my novel and it would be a complete dud. Plus, I'm told that the days of a novel "blowing up" on TikTok are over. 

Nothing is going to sell your book on social media, especially nagging. Users will swipe right past the 1,000th image of your book cover. 

I'm a heavy user of X, and I constantly see the same ads over and over. "This again?" I sigh as I breeze past it. Ignoring an ad is bad enough for the sponsor; getting pissed off by it is worse. Then there are the ads that are disguised as not ads, and you start reading them and get mad because you just wasted your time. (Kind of like Rhonda Romance's reels.)

Advertising works---somewhere. I don't know where, but people keep doing it. As a would-be marketer for my own books, I'm a lousy representative. I cut the cable TV cord because I could no longer tolerate commercials. I pay for YouTube Premium just so I don't have to contend with an ad for Tide Detergent interrupting my favorite podcast.  

What works for me? What tempts me to buy something? A recommendation from a real person. I've made impulse purchases simply because an account I admire on X praised it, and often that thing is not an item I would even think of buying otherwise. (I previously wrote about the solar fairy lights, which won't even work in my living space.) 

As I've said in the past, what a self-published author needs, more than anything, is an advocate. Advocates are hard to come by! I don't know any famous/influential people. There was a hoity-toity person on X who, out of the blue, stated that she was going to buy my novel. I thought, great! Maybe she'll post about it and some of her followers will be persuaded to buy it, too. Nothing ever came of it. She probably didn't even buy it, and I never heard from her again. (Yes, she was a real person. I checked.) Of course, my novel isn't hoity-toity, so there's that.

I'll never go back to using social media to push books, not even one time. 

I prefer to not hate myself.