You’re a writer. It’s who you are, and while your friends may have a hard time imagining the long hours you spend slaving away over a single paragraph in your creative corner, you’ve come to not only accept, but really enjoy that private silence that cloaks you while you work.
Solitude. Who knew, right?
But now your book is due to be published (congrats!) and you’ve begun to realize you aren’t going to make the bestseller list if the only people in the world who know about your book are you and your publisher.
Which begs the question: what can you do from your secluded writing space to help your masterpiece land into the arms of the thousands of prospective readers out there? Why, get the word out on social media, of course!
Take a look at our top five reasons for authors just like you to love social media and boast about your writing on a platform or two. Trust us, your book will thank you later!
1. You’ll Most Likely Sell More Books
Really, you will. And not just because you’re subtly (shamelessly) promoting your book with every post, tweet, and video that you send out, but because all of that activity will eventually reach new readers who are looking for just the book you’re writing.
Pro Tip: Always include a link for a potential reader to purchase your book(s) somewhere on your platform of choice.
2. It Keeps You (And Your Book!) Relevant
J.K. Rowling’s Battle of Hogwarts plot point in her Harry Potter series happened nineteen years ago, and people are still tweeting/posting/hashtagging about it whenever the anniversary comes up! This is because Rowling knows the magic of social media, and started implementing a single character death ‘apology’ on Twitter every year on the day of. Follow her example and reference dates in your book to keep an old reader’s interest, and gather some new attention.
Pro Tip: Don’t just copy and paste the same content to every platform. For example, give your twitter followers a tweet that is different from your latest Facebook post.
3. You’ll Make New Friends
John Green was probably the first author to really take advantage of social media for all it was worth. The man infiltrated Tumblr and YouTube, and quickly jumped onto other platforms like Facebook and Twitter in 2007 when he started building up an audience after his first novel, Looking for Alaska. But don’t wait too long to attract an audience; Media Shift says it could take as long as nine months to a year to build a good following, so start yours ASAP!
Pro Tip: New friends can also mean new enemies. Just do your best to ignore the haters, and never post something that you’ll regret later. Remember, screenshots trump the delete button!
4. It’ll Force You to Try New Things
There’s a reason the phrase, “Pics or it didn’t happen,” came about. As Socially Sorted said, “We have reached a point where we are, literally, saying 1,000 words with just one Picture, Image, Photo or Video.” But to post a great anything, you need a story behind it that’ll catch someone else’s interest. Instead of taking a selfie in your bathroom, go rock-climbing and snap a picture of the chalk under your fingernails. Do something that’ll encourage readers to follow you not just because you’re an author, but because you’re also a pretty cool person, too.
Pro Tip: Keep your followers up to date with where you’ll be, and invite them to come join you on your adventures! This will not only encourage fan loyalty, but make them more invested in your writing as a whole.
5. Everyone Else Is Doing It
So maybe that’s exactly the type of thinking that your mama warned you about, and sure, you never were the type to follow a crowd anyway, but today social media is used by more than two-thirds of the country. That’s a lot of readers clicking through post after post, endlessly scrolling to find a new fandom to fan over. So put your book out there! You never know – maybe their new OTP (One True Pairing) will be your protagonist and love interest.
Pro Tip: Pick a specific day of the week to post something new. This will help you cut out the excuses that would otherwise lead to a stagnant account, while also giving your fans some reliable expectations.