Does social media sell books, and starting off as a new author - Recent favorites

A lot of people will tell you that you need to create a solid social media following before you can publish a book, even if you’re pursuing traditional publishing. And that if your platform isn’t garnering enough views, it just means you’re not posting enough, not putting in the work.

That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about (and writing about here), as I want to find readers who enjoy what I write, but at the same time don’t want to sell my soul to a private platform with an unpredictable algorithm, which will not respect my privacy and try to sell me a lot of stuff I don’t need.

So when I found those two videos in my YouTube subscriptions this week, I knew they would bring me some great new perspectives on this subject, from people who have more experience than I do. Here is what I learned from them, and some of my thoughts!

Does Posting Everyday Sell Books? A 90 Day Experiment by Liselle Sambury

Liselle, a traditionally published author, undertook the colossal experiment of publishing to TikTok and Instagram every day for 3 months. She gives a very in-depth description of her process: how she created these short videos, the statistical results she could gather in terms of views and book sales, and her reflections about this experiment and social media for writers in general.

After posting every day for 90 days, she didn’t see any incredible growth either in her views and subscribers, or in her book sales. The most noticeable peaks in book sales were linked to a sale that her publisher put in place, not her posting.

This experiment shows how uncontrollable virality is, and how even if you try your best to post a lot, that might not create a noticeable change. It can take some pressure off of your shoulders to know that the results of your posting are unpredictable and that you shouldn’t focus so much on numbers or guilt yourself over not posting enough. Marketing is very different from writing books, and we should not expect all writers to also be marketers.

New Author Q&A | How I got started as a “new” author | Natalia Leigh by Natalia Leigh

I’ve been loosely following Natalia Leigh for quite some time now as she’s built a career in indie publishing. In this video she gives great insight about starting that process all over again under a new pen name. She answers questions from her viewers, explaining how different the process is from posting on social media with her existing author name.

She decided not to mention her pen name on her existing platforms and create brand new social media accounts. Starting from zero is challenging, and it was even more difficult for her as she didn’t want to show her face in any of her posts. She explained feeling frustrated that short form content where authors simply hold their books, showing their faces, performs much better that the posts where she doesn’t show her face and has to think of more original content.

She writes romance under that pen name, which is a genre that gathers a lot of readers. She was able to find a readership through Kindle Unlimited, where readers don’t need to buy your work to see if they like it. Romance readers being very dedicated, she found readers who liked one of her books and decided to read more. Her series were more successful than her standalones as readers only need to like the first book and will keep reading after that.

In the end, she thinks that her social media platforms didn’t actually bring her a noticeable amount of readers.

Some thoughts!

These are some of my thoughts around these videos:

• You never know if a post is going to be successful on social media, it’s all about luck, and even if you post a lot, there is no guarantee for success.
• Starting off on social media is HARD, you have to be prepared to get very little views and followers for months in the beginning.
• Social media is not always the biggest factor in sales: in traditional publishing, publishers are the ones who have the most power to make a book sell. In indie publishing, the Amazon algorithm can do a part of the work for you.
• Whatever we do, we are dependent on external entities: publishers, or Amazon and other platforms, in order to sell our books. We can’t predict how much attention will be given to our books, and there is only so much we can do on our own.

Further reading

My previous article about artists and social media: As an artist, should I be on social media?

Another interesting article on this subject: Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms