In June, 2024, I made a post vowing to track how well an increased social media presence/strategy impacted my book sales. It’s here: https://www.marievibbert.com/the-dreaded-self-promotion/
Well, I let that slip by, didn’t I? Okay, let’s look at the numbers and see what impact a more cohesive social media strategy has had.
I have more followers now
In the previous post I reported:
4.4K Twitter followers
210 Mastodon followers
421 Bluesky followers
63 TikTok followers
529 Instagram followers
Now I have:
No twitter! 😛
239 Mastodon followers
5K Bluesky followers (Surpassed old twitter numbers!)
198 TikTok followers (Over double!)
1004 Instagram followers (Nearly double!)
Across the board, more followers.
But… how do the book sales compare?
They don’t.
I looked at my royalty reports for the past few quarters and all I can tell you is that they are confusing and inconsistent. I made little charts, but the units didn’t add up, as a publisher who had given me sales figures in the past didn’t, only giving what they owed me in dollars, and then one that only gave dollars suddenly included other figures.
The small press struggle is REAL.
After creating a table and deleting it, just trust me: There has been no appreciable change in how many books I’m selling. Numbers went up, they went down, they stayed consistent as to order of magnitude, and there was no discernible trend.
Since the audiobook of Galactic Hellcats is self-published, for that, at least, I have detailed sales information:
The bumps line up pretty neatly with ConCoction in March, Andrei’s launch in April, Big Ohio Book Con in June, and Author’s Alley and Confluence in July, a small bump from September last year might be because of DragonCon, though I went to DragonCon again this September, and no bump. If anything, my audiobook sales have gone down, overall. (I realize the freebies I gave at this Dragon Con had QR codes for Andrei and the Hellcats. LAST year I gave out QRs for the audiobook!)
Though this is only two year’s data since I switched to Author’s Republic as my distribution platform, I wonder if people buy fewer audiobooks in the winter because that’s when you want to cuddle down indoors with a book, rather than listen to one on the way to the beach?
Still, the dates of these bumps line up pretty regularly with in-person events. When I look at social posts with buy links for the books… those do not line up with the bumps.
Conclusion: In-person events are better for book sales than social media
Kinda a lot.
More social media followers does NOT equal more book sales. I think I knew that, honestly.
On Social Media, you are not an advertiser, you are an entertainer. People click because they like seeing the thing, not because they intend to buy it. More followers means just that: more followers.
That said, I was at a book club meeting and mentioned my book, and a person quickly looked me up online, and then reserved the book from their library app. My online presence helped them find the book since they already knew to look for me.
So, in a way, that’s all Social Media can do for you. It’s like having a phone book listing. Mind you, this can also be taken care of by having a website, or being listed on IMDB or Wikipedia, etc.
So why do it?
Maybe you don’t have to?
I was recently on a panel for managing social media for writers, and one of my fellow-panelists who had multiple big-five deals confessed he did not do social media at all before selling his first book, and persists in just doing one social platform, and that only when he feels like it.
Yes, another person on the panel sold her big book because she had a huge online following, but she wasn’t consciously gathering that following in order to sell a book. She had a topic she was passionate about and wanted to share her research with the world, and the world responded.
We all know there’s “no right way” to have a writing career. I think it’s time to acknowledge that includes the dreaded “platform.” There’s no right way of getting your name out there.
The only reason to do social media is if you want to.
I enjoy tossing bon mots into the ether. I suppose I will continue to do so. But I will relax on the whole “Thou Must Post Once a Week” thing. I shall post when I have something to post, and not when I don’t.
Conclusion: Do What You Want!
