Does social media sell books?

Plus: my next co-working / office hours session

Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash

I was on a panel last with a group of debut authors, and a question came up that I’ve heard many times before: Does social media sell books?. The simple answer is yes, it can and does sell books. I’ve seen it work for countless authors. Meta would not have made 131,948 MILLION dollars worth of ad revenue last year if no one bought anything off the back of social media.

AND I’ve seen it make zero difference to sales for many authors, too.

I think the key thing to remember is that for most authors, the ‘my book is out now’ message is a reminder to people that your book is available - it’s not what will convince people to buy.

Authors whose social media followers are keen to buy are keen to buy because they know, like and trust that author, and trust that the book will be good. That author has likely been building relationships on social media for literally years. They chat to their audience regularly. That audience is engaged and excited for the author’s book before it even becomes a real thing.

So - how do you get better results from social media?

1/ BE SOCIAL

I cannot stress enough how important this first point is. So many authors I have worked with spend huge amounts of time and resource into creating posts and sharing those online, and they get almost no traction because they haven't invested any time into getting to know other authors and readers within their community online.

Check out what other authors in your genre are doing. Share their stuff and comment on it. Look at what people are saying in the comments. If there's a conversation taking place, join in. Follow hashtags related to your genre. Make sure TikTok knows what kind of books you want to see more of. Follow any instagrammers and booktokkers and bloggers and general influencers that you think would be great for your readers, and interact with them!

Make sure that you are following accounts that you are interested in and that make you feel positive, or inspire you to take action in your life, and then interact with those people!

Social media is not a one-way broadcast. You need to go where your readers are spending time and interact with them there.

2/ Make the most of your strengths

One of the key questions when choosing a social media platform is: ‘Where do you enjoy spending time?'. Another thing to add into this would be: What are your strengths?

If you're great at writing (which I know you are), put your writing into the image or video in some way. Type up a sentence that really resonates with readers, put it into a note on your phone and screengrab it. 

Video can feel overwhelming, but they could literally be a static image, with writing over the top, and your voice reading the words aloud. Or a video background from canva with your words over the top and a trending audio clip.

If you're great on camera (or even if you don't totally hate it), make the most of it - go live on Facebook, share clips of you talking about your writing, share clips of you doing something with words overlaid on top of the video…

3/ Don't overthink it

I know it's hard as a writer who has spent so long editing and editing your book to make sure it is perfect. But on social media, you need to try to put those perfectionist tendencies to one side, and just get stuff out there.

Sometimes there might be typos. Sometimes you might not express yourself in 100% the way you want to. But if you think about what you're sharing too much, you can find yourself clamming up and not sharing anything at all. Maybe there's a new thing you want to try, but you are waiting until you are an expert in whatever the particular thing is (I'm thinking reels / TikTok videos here) before you share anything.

Stop overthinking your posts. Let yourself experiment. Some things you share will connect with loads of people, some things will barely get a few likes. Sometimes the thing you think will be The Thing doesn't get any traction, other times the throwaway comment you share on Twitter gets retweeted thousands of times. 

4/ Put some thought into it

I know this is directly contradicting what I just said, but whilst you shouldn’t be aiming for perfection in your posts, you should be thinking a little bit about the content of them.

What are 4-5 areas you could share that connect to you as a writer, to your book, to you as a person? One area should be the book itself - sharing reviews, events, lovely photographs of it, etc. One area could be your writing life, which I’ll talk more about in the next point, but where else can you connect with your readers?

• Are there aspects of your personal life you would like to be open about? This could range from the messy, intimate detail of your divorce to just sharing some snippets of your back garden.

• Do you have strong personal values that are important for you to share?

• Are there key themes in your latest book, or your writing overall, that you could bring out on social media?

• Do you read a lot in the area you write in?

• Do you have a strong local community you’d like to support?

Having a few key areas in mind helps you focus your attention, stay consistent without feeling like you’re talking about the same thing every day, and build more of a cohesive brand (I know, I’m sorry, but you are one - online, anyway!).

5/ The journey is the destination

This is honestly my motto for all things marketing (and for life in general, since I was a teenager, thanks to this wonderful art book, which I got when I was 16 and still have).

Here, this applies in two ways.

• Getting people invested in the book

• Actually enjoying your marketing!

Getting people invested in the book

If you want people to really actively engage with and support your book, share the process of writing it with them. Get people involved in your journey to publication. Take them along to the meetings. Talk about times you get difficult feedback. Show them your edits…. You don’t need to share exactly what edits you had to make or what you discussed with your editor, but show them that that stuff is happening. The book shouldn’t just materialise from nowhere.

This stuff is all interesting to readers and helps them to build a relationship with you as a real person who they want to help support! It sparks more conversation, and can therefore end up being more fun for authors to create this kind of content.

Actually enjoying your marketing

I also really encourage you to focus on the elements of social media that you find fun and engaging. So - similar to building on your strengths, really lean in to the things you find enjoyable. If there’s an element you hate, try to figure out what it is you don’t like about it. Is that something you could change? Is it something you could learn more about through a course or YouTube series? Could you just stop doing that thing and focus your energy elsewhere?

If it's fun, you will want to do more of it, and I think you’ll see better results from it, too.

6/ Start a mailing list

I know I’m talking about social media here, but popular social media platforms come and go. Building up a huge following can be hugely beneficial AND in ten years time, when TikTok has been replaced by whatever the next Big Thing is, make sure you have been spending those 10 years building a place for people to connect with you that you own.

Regularly remind people to sign up to your newsletter. Give them a compelling reason to leave the app, where they are contentedly scrolling, and give you their email address. What can you offer them that is worth them taking that extra step for?

Because yes, social media DOES sell books, but mailing lists do the job even better…

Want to get feedback on your social media (or anything else marketing related)?

I’m hosting another paid subscribers co-working and office hours session on Friday 28th June, between 1pm and 2:30pm.

Come along for a cup of tea and a chat, followed by an hour of work alongside each other on Google Meet. You can work on anything you like, but sometimes having someone working alongside you helps you to focus.

Plus, I’ll be opening my inbox for office hours at the same time - send me any marketing questions or anything you’d like feedback on (your social media plan or recent posts, for example!), and I’ll get back to you with some thoughts on how you can improve things going forward.

Want to come along? If you’re a paid subscriber, drop me an email and I’ll send you the Google Meet link.

Not a paid subscriber yet? Sign up here!