As I just wrote to the author of this piece (who also happens to send out one of the best weekly roundups of weird and wonderful articles I get), her experience captures what so many authors I’ve worked with over the years in publishing have struggled with. When i can, i try to disabuse them of the idea that social media is somehow a reliable or necessary tool for promoting a book. As Caroline writes, if you already have a platform and it comes naturally to you, great, but I’ve personally never seen an author join social media in order to promote a book and actually succeed. And that’s before you even get to the exploitative dynamics she lays out so clearly here (aptly described as a pyramid scheme). Anyway, it’s all articulated beautifully, and I wish every author, especially those just starting to consider it, could read this and know there’s another way.
I'm starting to sloooowly build up an audience as I work on my game project, and I can already tell I do not at all have the necessary drive to build that audience as large as it needs to be for the game to "go viral" based on that alone, no matter how good it is. No, I think the necessary evil will be actual marketing, possibly by reaching out to other streamers and whatnot that DO have those followings and seeing if I can spark their interest in the project. I know I don't have the mental energy to keep it up myself, especially not solo. I'll focus on what I'm good at: making the best game that I can, the sort of thing I'd love to play. The rest will have to be up to the experts in their field, which I am not.
