Success Without Self-Promotion
By Greer Macallister | October 4, 2021 |
image by SEWphisticate
Self-promotion isn’t the most famous naughty s-word, but it can still feel like a bad word to today’s authors. I hate self-promotion, you might say. I’m so sick of talking about myself on social media.With more and more options to reach readers directly comes an expectation that authors will do more and more to reach those readers themselves, often without publisher assistance.
So! How do you sell books without a single self-promotional tweet, post, or video?
Simple. In most cases, you actually shouldn’t be promoting yourself. If the goal is to sell books — or at least make people you don’t know personally curious enough about your book(s) to take action — you are not the product. “Buy my book!” doesn’t work if the reader doesn’t know you or know anything about the book in question.
Instead of self-promotion, think of the path to getting your book in front of readers on social media as a railroad track, with two parallel rails: be yourself, and take yourself out of the equation.
Be yourself. There are lots of names for this, and most of them sound like awful corporate-speak: curation! Branding! But let go of the labels. Being yourself on social media doesn’t mean sharing every last little thing. You’re not going to see Instagram posts from me about taking my car to the mechanic last Tuesday or the ancient celery I just found in the back of my produce drawer. But it means posting or talking about the things that interest you, especially where those things overlap with the books you write. If you’re spending some of your time on social media connecting with people who enjoy reading the books you like to read, chances are that when you have a book of your own to talk about, they’ll enjoy hearing about that too. Which leads to…
Take yourself out of the equation. Have a book coming out? Want to promote it on your social media? Do it! Just do it as if it were someone else’s book. Many people find it way easier to say nice things about our friends and their books than it is to talk about ourselves. And I don’t mean to literally pretend you didn’t write the book. I mean to talk (post, tweet, whatever) primarily about what the book is, not the fact that it’s yours. Is the book a steamy, spicy romance for people whose favorite trope is Only One Bed? Is it searing historical fiction based on a heartbreaking true event? Did another author describe it as “the best book I read this year”? Talk about those things! Present the things about the book that excite you to potential readers who might also find those things exciting. The fact that you wrote the book can’t possibly be the most interesting thing about it.
Last thing: I recognize the limits of this strategy. If you hate social media completely and don’t want to do it at all, this is going to feel painful, and you don’t have to do it. The truth is that no one really knows how many books social media moves, and it may not be worth it for you to spend time on any particular social media strategy, including this one.
But, if you’re looking for a different way to approach this task, just think about the railroad track. It might be the right way to get your engine chugging forward and picking up speed.
Q: How do you promote your books on social media without feeling like you’re just shouting about yourself?
Raised in the Midwest, Greer Macallister earned her MFA in creative writing from American University. Her historical novels have been named Book of the Month, Indie Next, LibraryReads, Target Book Club, and Amazon Best Book of the Month picks and optioned for film and television. Her latest novel, The Thirteenth Husband, is inspired by Aimee Crocker, the Paris Hilton of the Gilded Age. Macallister also writes the ongoing Five Queendoms epic fantasy series as G.R. Macallister. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Boston, MA. www.greermacallister.com
This was super useful for me! Thank you so much. (Also, glad to know I’m not alone in discovering limp celery in my fridge . . . ha ha)
Well said. It’s the words in the novel, this book you have labored over. It’s not the words you are tossing around, trying to engage readers with everything else. Pure and simple. You’re a writer. Act like one. Thanks, Greer.
Glad it connected with you!
Thank you – many times over!
There’s this one author who has written one book and – no hyperbole – at least once a week I see a bunch of his posts up on bookish Facebook pages promoting his book. I’ve gotten so bored of seeing them, I just mark them as read! If I ever publish a book I’ve promised myself I won’t do that.
On social media I get a lot of friend/follow/whatever requests from authors I don’t know, and before I follow back, I take a look at what they post. If it’s just “buy my book!” over and over, I don’t follow back. I don’t mind if lots and lots of it is about their book(s) — reviews, giveaways, blurbs, events, whatever — as long as they’re behaving like people and not book-promoting bots.
Actually, we do know how many books that social media moves. It has been studied.
(What, you didn’t think that a multi-billion dollar industry dominated by five big players doesn’t study its consumers? Come now.)
Answer: very few. The largest factor in fiction sales is author brand which in plain language means existing fans. The second largest factor? Word of mouth. All other means of ad and promo clock in at low percentages, with publisher e-mail blasts and book bloggers having it over author-run social media.
But hey, at least social media outranks the worst means of pre-purchase awareness: poster ads in bus and train stations. There’s that.
So what is the purpose of social media for authors? Think about it. It is the modern, low cost replacement for reading and signing tours which, contrary to belief, did not make new readers but rather served to connect authors in a somewhat personal way to existing fans.
Most people at those signings were already fans. Remember the lonely debut authors at a table with stacks of books and no customers except the one asking where the bathroom is? Yeah. You see. So, what is the point off social media?
If you have fans already, talk to them. Not, as Greer says, about your broken washing machine but in your unique voice about things that matter to you. (Politics maybe being an exception, though social issues if some are your passion may say who you are.)
As always, Don, you give us a good reality check. Thank you!
I am hoping (praying!) that my latest book comes out this month. Romance/mystery, my main character is a psychic and a quilter. Recently my husband and I took a mini-vacation and I hit quilt shops along the way. I was able to talk about my quilts and writing and was able to leave my bookmarks in their shops. Yes, slow going as opposed to social media but I connected with some fun people. Reading your article here I realized I could also incorporate the psychic aspect as I’ve had a few odd things happen in my life time. Thank you for this article, it certainly caught my eye.
Love that quilting connection!
I would say that for me, doing interviews that potential readers can view on their own time schedule on social media is effective. In the last few months, I’ve bought several books solely because I listened to the author in a 30-minute interview talk about the book (the inspiration behind it, the journey of writing it, the theme and why it was important to them) and wound up buying the book. These were authors new to me so it’s probably an illustration of what Greer said – I got to know them as a person during that half-hour, liked them, liked the description of the book, and purchased. Different than a single post or ad.
Ooh, I like that idea. Thanks for sharing!
I belong to some Facebook reader groups that support cozy mystery writers in general, and they are avid readers and are constantly recommending books to read and buy. These reader groups are good, though sales are still one book at a time and that’s very fine by me. I’m reaching readers who enjoy what I write and share the “Like” with others. I recommend the serious, active Facebook reader groups.
Can you say what those groups are? I belong to a couple of them, but self-promotion is only allowed once a month, on publishing day, so there’s not a lot of recommending going on
Many of my writer friends criticize me for not participating in various social media platforms. I did try for a couple of years but it wasn’t my cup of tea. I like the community here on WU and my kidlit community through SCBWI and I’m building my local writing group. It’s what I enjoy best; call me old-fashioned.
Well said, Greer. I know this refers to novels, but it applies to non-fiction writers such as myself as well. We all need to be reminded that there is a happy, effective medium between self-effacing “I know this is awful, but maybe you’ll read it anyway” and “look at me! look at me! Aren’t I amazing!” sort of promotion.
I’m not exactly in the first category, but I do no obvious promotion at all. I have a blog, which contains enough useful content that some readers want to learn more by reading my books, or are encouraged to come to me for consulting. However, I’ve recently discovered that when you Google “how to import wine” my SEO is so poor that, despite my website being named howtoimportwine.com, it cannot be found. That is something I need to remedy!
Love that idea of a happy medium between arrogance and those “I’m so sorry to interrupt your day by talking about my silly book!” apology posts.
Your post put me in a bit of a quandary. I have a strong dislike for social media, especially for FB and anything that MZ touches, mostly for the negative effects they have had on society and their invasion of privacy. The quandary comes about because my novella “The Implant” deals with the digital invasion of privacy through a medical implant device and the blind acceptance of the device by the public. I tried to do some promotion on Twitter but not having a following the effort proved fruitless. Thanks anyway for the post.
I like this! I’ve always been one to talk excitedly about what I’m excited about, be it saving an organic farm on campus, winning another short story award, or committing to stop flying because of the carbon emissions… A little voice tries to convince me I’m ‘showing off’. Truth says I’m just being the excited little kid I still am!
Allow me to return to the question that forms the premise of the article: “So! How do you sell books without a single self-promotional tweet, post, or video?”
The answer really is simple: Write the next book.
You’re a writer, so write.
The more you write, the more your name gets out there, and the more readers discover you and your books.
Yes! Best advice ever.
We keep getting told that. I’ve got 11 books published, but haven’t found a significant increase in sales.
Tried to post thsi once, and it didn’t take, so I thought I’d try one more time.
The question that posed the premise of the post: “How do you sell books without a single self-promotional tweet, post, or video?”
Simple. Write the next book.
The more you write, the more your name gets out there, and the more readers discover you and your books.
Thank you, Greer, for writing well on this. What I have yet to learn is whether there’s any good way for an obscure writer wholly unsuited to self-promotion but with some money to spend (who could it be?) to do his next book some good.
This was great! Now I know how I’ll approach selling my next book, which will be way easier than selling myself as the author :)