Social Media for Self-Published Authors

You should have left us to our worldbuilding.

Social media is amazing. You can get your daily dose of outrage, updates on your friend’s mocha latte and hedgehogs camping — all in one place.

However, when you’re a self-published author, it becomes part of the work. Social media might be good for reaching your target audience but it’s even better at enabling procrastination.

As a writer, I understand that you might want to run away to a deserted island (people may not be islands, but this woman is at least a peninsula with a drawbridge) but it’s impossible in this day and age.

So if you already know your As, Bs (and probably some Cs), what can you do to make space for writing and still create buzz about your work in a time where there is a lot of buzz already?

Starting from general and working down to details, here are the ways to make the best of the craft and the business.

I hope you’ve had good breakfast, you’re gonna need it.

What’s Your Book Really About?

For every book, there are at least 30 marketing spins that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual story.

This happens with traditional publishing, too. I can’t count all the times I’ve read a book that was marketed as a thriller and turned out to have less thrill than a rollercoaster ride suitable for seven-year-olds.

Don’t do that to yourself. Catchy marketing slogans are all well and good but no one wants to look at the blurb and feel cheated because the plot had nothing to do with the advertisement.

Be genuine. Why do the themes you explore in your book matter to you? There are so many novels about grief and romance already. Why is yours different?

And finally, if you could tell your readers just one thing about your book, what would it be?

Learning from the Fandom

Characters are fictional but they have their quirks. I don’t care if your main flies on the back of a dragon for the most part of the book. That’s the just main hook.

The next hook is that they have a knitting hobby. Or another quirk that makes them feel real. It might be easier taking the traditional publishing route but when you’re self-published, you really get the benefit of interaction and trivia. You can work that to your advantage, especially if you are the kind of writer who keeps their characters alive even after the story is done.

A good example of that are Young Adult authors. Not only do they often post prequels, sequels and/or cut scenes from their stories, but they give an additional sense of reality to their characters with playlists, favorite quotes and tidbits.

Essentially, you should come up with headcanons for your own characters, even if they never make it into the story.

If you are unfamiliar with the term headcanon, it is “an idea, belief, or aspect of a story that is not mentioned in the media itself, but is accepted by either the media consumer themselves or the fandom in general.” (Urban Dictionary)

Let’s say your characters are set in a fantasy universe (forgive me, Fridays are dragon days for me) and the entirety of your story sees them in that light. So what would happen if they were in a modern universe or in space?

Alternate universes aren’t just for fan fiction. They are also great for character studies.

If a character’s bravery is shown through their dragon-riding adventures in the original fantasy scenario, how would it show if they were a college student?

Readers don’t relate to characters because we live in a world where Hogwarts exists. They relate to them because just like real people do, characters struggle, grieve, love and win.

Filtering the Feedback

Social media exposes you to all sorts of feedback — a lot of it as far as possible from being constructive. Not to mention that the first thing you are is a writer, not an automated response machine. At some point you are going to have to become more selective about what you read and reply to.

Hashtags are a good way to stop yourself from falling into the rabbit hole of monitoring replies and comments.

You can tell your readers that you will be taking questions but only if they use a specialized hashtag (e.g. the name of the book).

I’m all here for talking to your readers but it’s impossible to reply to every single message, tweet and comment. The way that social media works is pretty stream-of-thought and impulsive.

This way you can filter out random messages and make sure that the readers who sent in questions really thought them through.

Side note: Two Types of People

Back when I used Twitter, I remember being followed by writers whenever I posted something with the word ‘write’ in it.

Now, there are two types of writers on Twitter:

1. Twitter Writers™

These dudes and dudettes are essentially on Twitter to post as many ads as possible. Their profile is full of all-caps variations of “GET MY BOOK” and they have at least five hashtags in their bio. Their header is their book, their profile picture is their face with their book, and all their tweets are — you guessed it — about their book.

And I don’t mean about sharing trivia, talking about characters, their inspirations and interests. No, I mean literally about buying the product.

They engage in the follow/unfollow “marketing strategy” we have all grown to hate. Their main points of interest are vanity metrics like follower count, even if that results in no sales.

They aren’t there to talk about their book and, consequently, promote it. They are there to be a part of the attention rat race.

2. Writers on Twitter

Writers who happen to use Twitter.

The problem with vanity metrics is that it is marketing gone wrong. In a nutshell, Twitter Writers™ just spin in circles, following each other and annoying everyone else in the process. They are providing no value to (potential) readers.

That strategy might as well be called “shout at people to buy your book and hope that someone likes being shouted at.”

Main Takeaways

1. Your story is alive. Your characters are alive. Treat them like it.
2. Readers follow writers on social media because they want more. ‘More’ may come in the form of trying to understand what made the writer write, wanting to read more details about the story and the characters, or interaction and idea-sharing.
3. You are not a robot; you can’t and you shouldn’t go through every message. Work out a system that suits you.
4. Don’t pay much attention to vanity metrics.
5. The best thing you can be on social media is genuinely enthusiastic about your book. Do what writers do: show it.

There is a lot to be said about the idea of craft vs. business. However, just because you are self-publishing and organizing your own marketing doesn’t mean that you suddenly have to become an aggressive door-to-door salesman.

What you are is a writer. You know how stories work and you know what it is like to create something incredible out of nothing at all. That’s what you should keep doing.

Even in marketing, we could always use more dragons.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 277,050+ people.

Subscribe to receive our top stories here.