Social Media for Authors in 2024
By Liz Shipton
Last October, my indie author account went viral on TikTok and Instagram. Since then, I've signed with a literary agent, gotten my first book deal in the trad publishing industry, and learned a lot about the quirks of each social media platform.
There are a lot of articles out there about how to use social media as an author, but as far as I can tell, none are written by an author who is actually doing well on social media. So I thought it might be useful to share my experience with my fellow writers and the publishing community at large, in the hope that I can
1. connect with other writers about the realities of what social media has and has not done for me
2. help some people, and
3. rant a bit about the state of publishing, the internet, and the world in general.
CONTENT WARNING: This article leans slightly cynical and embittered. I can't help that. As smiley as I am in my videos, I am, at heart, a cynical and embittered person. I also think there's a somewhat toxic culture of forced positivity surrounding social media and indie publishing, and TBH it drives me up the wall.
First of All: The Truth
Before we dive in, I want to be super up front about what success on social media has meant for me. I know that many other indies follow my accounts, and my guess is those other indies probably have a bit of a warped idea about how much I'm actually making as an author. So let's clear that up.
TLDR: go viral with your books. Not your face.
I have 50K followers on Instagram, 30K on TikTok, 5.7K on Facebook, and around 5K on Threads. And most months I make less than $1000 as an author. At the height of my virality, in October and November of 2023, I made about $4000 in sales across 2 months, and that was with the added help of a Christmas sale.
To give you some idea of "how viral" I went: I had 3 videos go over 2 million views on Instagram, and one go over 4 million. Others were between 20K and 500K views. On TikTok, I've had 1 video get to ~2 million views, 3 videos get around 1 million views, and others in the 20K - 500K range.
So why am I making so little, when other indies who have gone viral on TikTok are making 6 figures?
1. My Books Did Not Go Viral
My videos have almost nothing to do with my books. While they do drive sales, and the majority of people who buy my books have found me through social media, many people who follow me are only there for the videos. They don't care about my books.
2. I Do Not Make Money From My Videos
Despite the fact that I have way over 10K followers on TikTok and have posted several videos that have 1 - 2 million views and many that are in the high hundreds of thousands, I do not qualify to make money on those videos because I don't live in the US, or in the handful of European countries that are eligible for payout. (Yes, I use a VPN. No, it doesn't work. The Creator Fund looks at where you started the account, and since I was in Mexico without a VPN when I did that...no dice.)
If you also live outside the US and are curious about VPNs: they do work for getting your content in front of a US audience. Use a VPN and a US SIM card, post via a WiFi connection, and turn off location settings for TikTok on your phone.
Instagram doesn't pay anything to their creators. So out of the ~15million+ views that I have generated for these platforms in the last 6 months, the income I have received is.....
zero dollars.
3. My Advance Was Not High
So now you might be thinking, "Okay, Liz, but you said you got a book deal out of all this. Surely that's been of some help."
Yes, of course, and I am incredibly grateful and massively excited for my trad publishing debut.
But if you're sitting there seething with jealousy, thinking I got some fat 6-figure advance, I'm afraid you need to adjust your expectations of the publishing industry. Those kinds of deals don't happen unless you are well-established, or a publisher is buying an existing indie book that is already selling really, really well.
The reality of a book advance for a first-time speculative fiction author, even one with a substantial social media platform and pre-existing audience like mine, is nowhere, nowhere near 6 figures. I can't tell you exactly what it is, but it is not enough for me to live on and I live on a boat in Central America.
4. My Books Are Weird
So at this point, you're thinking, "Alright, Liz, so your advance wasn't high and you don't make money from your videos, but you have two series out with a combined total of nearly 20 books. Surely that's doing something for you?"
I'll probably say this a few more times throughout this article, but this, at the root of it, is the main reason I don't make more as an author: I write weird, cross-genre, slightly off-the-wall books that are difficult to market. And my covers are probably wrong.
Had I written a predictable, enemies-to-lovers fae fantasy, or a fairy-tale retelling with a boring cover and a fill-in-the-blank title like A ______ of ________ and _______, it's entirely possible that my books would be selling better. But I refuse to fill the internet with more predictable books, and I think my covers are gorgeous, so...there it is.
If you'd like to check out the books, click here.
So Why Should You Listen to Me?
Honestly? Don't, probably. There are plenty of other people to listen to. Go join Bobby Kim's Facebook group and learn how to make slideshows that actually sell your books on TikTok (I've done it, and it works.)
The advice I’m going to give in this article is mainly aimed at people like me: stubborn assholes who write weird, cross-genre, not-quite-to-market books and are convinced they’re somehow going to be able to sell those weird books to other people.
While I have not achieved runaway profitability as an author, I have figured out how to get me and my weird books seen. I have clawed my way close enough to the top of the garbage pile that is the internet to get my work in front of some people.
So if you also write weird books, and you're still with me after that rather embittered, cynical rant, here are my tips for authors using social media platforms for book marketing in 2024.
(Did you like that extremely SEO-friendly sentence?)
#1. Be Yourself
Ugh, seriously?
Yep, it's dumb, but it truly is my number one rule. Not just on social media platforms, but for everything I do as an author. I write what I want to write, and I make the videos I want to make.
I decided early on that I was going to do this thing my way because, let’s be honest: there are no guarantees in this industry. I've only been in it a year and I can see that. Lots of advice online will tell you (sell you) that to be successful, you should do a certain type of thing in a certain way—but at the end of the day, you still might fail.
Going into this, I said to myself, “Look, there’s no guarantee that if I make a certain thing, it is going to do well. I could spend months writing a "to-market" book that I didn’t truly love, and it could still go nowhere. So I’m going to do whatever the hell I want because at least that way, I’ll be enjoying the ride.”
How Is This Relevant?
This "be yourself" philosophy totally influences how I approach my social media content, and it works. My videos have done well—I think—because they're just me being me. As crass and silly and borderline-unhinged as I truly am. And also venting a little bit of my very real frustration that tropes, covers, and titles are what sells books these days. Like, those videos do come from a place of joy, but they also come a little bit from a very real place of “Really guys? Are we all seeing what’s happening here?”
So be you. Sell you. My videos sell books (not as many as they could, but some) because people like me. They see my videos and think, "She seems cool", and then some of them go and pick up my books. You could do the same. If you're good on camera leverage that. If you're not good on camera, there are other ways to connect with your audience. I still recommend you try being on camera, because I recommend you try literally everything, and I really do think readers like to connect with a real human. But if you try it a few times and hate it, move on. Be you. Do what makes you happy.
Or boy. Or non-binary person.
#2. Make Good Content
This should be obvious, but I see so many authors pushing out low-effort, low-quality content and then wondering why their stuff isn't doing well. People think going viral is up to "The Algorithm Gods" (more on those assholes later) but I truly believe it is not.
Good content goes viral. End of story. The thing that people forget is that these days, "good" is a somewhat meaningless, subjective term. "Good" is different for different people, so there is some unpredictability as to what "good content" is. However, at its core, I think good content is like porn: you know it when you see it. There is something about it that is quality; whether it's humor, pathos, a catchy hook, an interesting story, or simply a recognizable thing that a lot of people can identify with.
The stuff I put up went viral because it was funny and well-produced. I've since learned how to get a sense for what will do well and what won't. Spoiler alert: the funnier my videos are, the better they do. That's a quality metric. People like things that are good.
So What Is Good Content?
Beyond advising that you use a Ring Light (seriously, just buy the damn thing, it costs $30 and you can write it off on your taxes) I can't tell you. You're just going to have to figure it out. And the best way to do that is to...
#3. Post A Lot
“Post 3-5 times a day” is advice I see everywhere, and I actually do stick by it, at least when you’re starting out. These days, I actually only post 2-3 times a week to each social network, but for a long time last year I was posting 3-5 times a day on my main TikTok account, and I was also running 8 slideshow accounts where I was posting upwards of 30 times a day across all those accounts. Yes, you read that correctly. Like, it was insane. But it worked.
(Again, check out Bobby Kim's Facebook group for more information on how to spend the majority of your life posting slideshows to TikTok, which I don't do anymore because 0/10 do not recommend for your mental health, but honestly, it works. If I had the time and patience, I would still be doing it.)
So, posting a lot works, but not for the reason you might think. It isn’t because of some magic to do with The Algorithm Gods or anything like that. Posting 3 times a day doesn’t make TikTok any more likely to show your content to people. All it does is increase your chances of putting up a video that takes off.
Literally all you’re doing is improving your odds of making something that sticks. And you really want something to stick. Call me cynical (I am), but I kind of think the only way to be successful on social media platforms these days is to go viral. You need to increase your chances of going viral.
When you post 3-5 times a day, you’re increasing your chances of going viral. Not just from a pure numbers standpoint: you're practicing social media. You’re getting better at it. You're getting to know the social media platforms. Try all kinds of different things. Try slideshows. Try being on camera. Try funny videos. Try trending sounds. Blatantly copy other people. You literally have to try everything and keep trying until you find that thing that hooks people in.
And by the way: once you find that thing that works for you, make a boat-load of it and do not make anything else.
#4. Know Your Target Audience
The main reason my videos do well is because I know exactly who I'm making them for, and I know that the audience I'm making them for is big on TikTok and Instagram. Fantasy romance readers. That is my audience. They are mostly women, about my age, who are into books like ACOTAR and Fourth Wing. They recognize romance tropes - particularly fantasy romance tropes - and they have a sense of humor. Not coincidentally, these are exactly the same readers I want reading my books.
If you want to reach new readers on these social media platforms, you first need to know exactly who those readers are, and, more importantly that they actually have accounts on those platforms. Fantasy romance has a large social media presence. Other genres do not. That's just the way it is. Sorry, space opera guys (something tells me you're not so bothered about TikTok anyway.)
#5. Don't Make a Social Media Platform Your Whole Author Platform
If I hadn’t done so well on social media, my books would barely be selling at all, so there’s that.
But you can’t rely on it to be the only thing that sells your books.
You need to be utilizing all the other marketing streams available to you: promo sites (David Gaughran has a fantastic blog post breaking down the best ones to use), newsletter swaps, and FB/Amazon ads (if you can afford to lose a lot of money figuring out how to make them profitable. I haven’t yet. Ads don’t really work for me because, like I said, my books are weird.)
The best months I see are months where I run a big sale and promote that sale through social media, and also promote it through free promo sites like Freebooksy or The Fussy Librarian. A sale is a powerful tool to entice people into your series when they've found you on social media but haven’t checked out your books yet.
When I run a sale, I do it like this:
Book 1 - free
Book 2 - $0.99
Book 3 - $1.99
and leave the rest of the series as-is. Sometimes I'll make book 4 free too, to encourage people to pick that up, because I tend to see substantial drop-off between books 3 & 4 in my series. There's a POV shift and book 4 is kind of the start of a new trilogy, so lots of people feel satisfied stopping at book 3 (which they shouldn't, because books 4 & 5 are actually the best books in the series, but I digress...)
#6. Use Your Time Wisely
Know which are the best social media platforms for authors, and spend your time on the right ones. TikTok is definitely the best platform for authors who want to sell more books. However, Instagram sells books too. So does Facebook. Twitter, as far as I know, does not. Threads is fun if you want to connect with other writers, but as far as sales go, don't count on it.
Twitter is where most of the trad publishing industry people hang out, but you don't need to have a big presence there to get noticed. I landed an agent and I have zero presence on Twitter. I just don't have the time for it, and people on Threads already think I'm hilarious, so why bother?
#6. Leverage Your Followers
Successful authors know that social media platforms aren't only good for attracting readers. They're also a great way to maintain that precious relationship with your current audience in between releases. They're also a great way to get sweet, sweet data about your readers.
I use my Instagram stories to poll my existing readers (stories only serve to followers) about everything from what tropes they like, to what rockstars they find most attractive (are people not into Kurt Cobain anymore? Was there a meeting I wasn't invited to?) to whether they listen to podcasts. I then use this information in my books and marketing. It's a fun way to engage readers, and it helps me learn more about them.
When it comes to keeping people interested, you'll have to keep throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. Polling readers is a great way to do it, but it might also be answering fan questions, or it might be updates about your writing process, personal life, or the publishing process. Or it might be silly videos about men who smell like cinnamon.
I fear this may be my legacy
#7. Don’t Pay for Views
It’s such a waste of money when there are so many other ways to waste your money as an indie author. Those views aren’t going to be enough to help you, and you are much better off spending that money on a Freebooksy series promo.
Also (I have only heard this, have not confirmed, so don’t quote me) there is a rumor that once you start paying for views, TikTok and Instagram will limit your organic reach to force you to pay for more. I don’t know for sure that this is true, but it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that those companies would do that.
#8. Take Breaks
I am in a love/hate relationship with social media—especially TikTok—and let's be honest, it's mostly hate. I get really frustrated when videos don’t do well and this can easily send me into a dark spiral. I am predisposed to depression, so I have to take breaks or I will literally lose time writing.
Breaks are also good for hard-resetting your account (on TikTok at least.) I do not believe in The Algorithm Gods, but I do believe you get a boost from taking time away from TikTok and then coming back after a week or so and putting up a new video. Here’s how I do that:
- Stop posting. Altogether. Don’t even open the app.
- Leave it for 7-10 days.
- When you come back, spend anywhere from 5-30 minutes scrolling without posting. Do this a couple of times that day. Engage with content. Leave comments. Be a real human. Enjoy the app. There is actually good stuff on there.
- Post the next day at your usual time. Spend 5-30 minutes afterward scrolling and engaging again.
After I did this in April, I had one of my biggest videos go viral (it’s at almost 2 million views currently.) It was a strong video, so you need to have that too (remember: good content), but I do think taking a break before I posted it helped boost its performance.
To give you some idea of how this video translated to numbers, it went up right before I ran a big sale for my birthday at the beginning of May. The combination of that video to get in front of new eyes, plus the sale to entice those new eyes into the series, meant I made in 5 days what I'd made the whole previous month, and KENP reads have been consistently higher ever since.
Sidenote: When it comes to The Algorithm Gods - don’t believe the hype. There is no such thing. Just use the app. You don’t have to follow only Bookish accounts, or spend a certain amount of time each day on the app or anything like that. I literally never scroll Instagram and only very occasionally scroll TikTok. What’s important is your content. And your mental health. That’s it.
Social Media for Authors Should Be Fun
At the end of the day, there is no point in being on any social media platform if you absolutely hate it. Deep down, under all my frustration with TikTok, I really do love making the silly videos I make, and that's why I keep making them. Those videos helped me discover a comedic voice that I didn't know I had, which is now infiltrating everything I write and making my books better. So if you take away nothing else from this article, perhaps take away that: writing for social media helped me find my voice.
Not just a marketing voice: it literally helped me hone my craft as a writer. I learned how to tell compelling stories in 1 minute or less. I learned how to hook people within a few seconds. I learned what's funny. I learned what people want from me.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. If you're interested in following, supporting, or just getting to know me, please consider joining my newsletter. 😊