A new strategy for a new year

If you read my newsletter you’ll already know that I’m changing things up this year.

As a self-published author who wants readers to discover her books… Well, I need to be where the readers are. Unfortunately, despite building a (not huge) audience across social platforms, many of these platforms have changed to a Pay To Play setup. In other words, asking me to pay to be seen by people who have chosen to see me.

Cory Doctorow calls this “Enshittification” (read the article here) when platforms entice creatives by giving them massive reach, then in turn, other users join to see if they can achieve the same, then they start charging once they have a large number of users- effectively Pay To Play.

So how am I changing what I do?

I’m thinking about a Way Out. A way out of this loop of social media use. Everyone I talk to about this is tired of trying to get natural engagement, and yet everyone (including me) stays. Just in case. Whole businesses have had their genesis on places like Instagram, they are deeply intertwined with the platform. How can you get off a train about to crash when your livelihood is on it? Or your friends?

I like to share, that’s where I first started and that is the point of view that I still have. It’s also why I’ve held the same number of followers for years. I’ve not ridden the social-media-horse to death and burned myself out trying to grow.

This article, “Who wants ‘followers’ anymore?” pitches a similar idea. This piece is on Substack which at the moment is huge but I wonder if it will succumb to Doctorow’s theory at some point. I’d love your thoughts.

I don’t have the answers but I’m not going to carry on as before. I am willing to experiment.

For me I’ll be thinking about how much TIME I’m spending on platforms and if it’s worth that time investment. Time is money after all.

What it boils down to is that for most of my time, I want to be creating more books and stories.

Not creating content to feed a social media platform. And yet I need to sell books too, hence the experimentation. In order for me to have some accountability, here’s my plan;

Places I’m going to spend more time.

• StoryGraph
• Readerly
• Discord communities
• Bookbub
• My newsletter
• In real life co-working in my neighbourhood
• Virtual co-working (body doubling) with Calliope Writers a community of mothers who write
• In my garden
• This blog!

Places I’m going to spend less time.

• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Goodreads
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• TikTok

I’m not yet brave enough to go cold turkey on social media. It’s been a huge part of my life and work since starting my online journey in 2010. I have met people who have become real-life friends this way, I’m not yet at the stage where I’m going to delete all my profiles. Yet.

My words of the year will support me through this time. And who knows what I’ll be saying about all this next year?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Recently I was reminded of this quote by Neil Gaiman, coincidently from a friend who I met through social media and my blog some years ago. It might be old school, but being creative is all peaks and troughs. Working on the thing behind the scenes, then bringing it out. It is all about planting the seeds, and nurturing them until they are ready for the world.

Here’s the quote (alt text at the bottom)

ALT TEXT for screen readers- Kate Bush makes a record, and you don’t hear from her. And you play the stuff she has made, and one day you are surprised, and she brings out something else, and she’s been quietly working away on it, for however long she wanted to work on it, and I love that. I love the willingness to be quiet, until its time to speak — which is something that she does over and over.