Eh, toc toc toc

My kids, if they think something is ridiculous, tap their fingers to their heads and cry, “eh, toc toc toc.” When I told them that there is in fact a video site called Tik-Tok, they took a second to assess the news, then danced round the room shouting “eh, toc toc toc. Eh, toc toc toc.”

But Tik-tok doesn’t just exist; it’s huge. In the first quarter of this year, Tik-tok saw more app downloads than anything in Facebook’s stable. It’s true that Tik-Tok still skews heavily towards youth – but kids read books too and every major publisher now includes “BookTok” in their marketing plans.

For most authors, these facts are basically terrifying. It’s rare that an ordinary writer has a significant Twitter following. They’re still more unlikely to have a meaningful base on Tik-Tok or Instagram or anything else. Many authors are somewhat introvert and loathe the idea of having to go out on social media to promote themselves.

At the same time – and everyone says it, so it must be true, right? – authors these days have to do more of their own marketing than ever before. That presumably means that authors have to be on Twitter and Tik-Tok and everything else if they ever want to get a book deal. It can easily sound as if the doors of the industry are closed to most authors.

Now, I’ve never ever believed that – mostly because it’s simply not true. But I’ve lacked hard data to prove my point. Today, thanks to the redoubtable Jane Friedman, that’s no longer the case.

In her latest Hot Sheet newsletter (subscription needed), Jane presents an interesting piece of analysis.

First, she looked at the market for memoir. If any part of the books market should be eaten up by celebrities and social media influencers and all that, then it should be the memoir market, because that’s directly about the author themselves.

In practice, Jane found 159 memoirs published in the first part of 2022.

Those memoirs divided up as follows:

• 22% – Books by outright celebrities
• 5% – Current events angle (for example, people with Ukrainian expertise writing about Ukraine)
• 20% – Media angle (either the author is a broadcaster/journalist or have first hand experience of a highly newsworthy topic, eg: memoir by someone involved in the LA crystal meth trade)
• 21% – Established authors
• 9% – People with a social media platform, or similar
• 23% – People like you. No platform No media angle. Just a good story.

There are a couple of points to be made here.

First, the single largest category in memoir is simply people who have a great story to tell. These books have no media angle, no platform, no celebrity. Just a story worth telling and publishers who want to tell it.

Many of the authors involved either weren’t on social media at all, or their profiles were so modest that no publisher would have been remotely swayed. (You really need SM followings in the 100s of 1000s to impress a publisher. Plenty of the authors concerned brought social media followings of 1000 or less.) Put bluntly, these people weren’t picked up for their ability to market books, but for their ability to write them.

Secondly, this is memoir. Of course, this is where the celebs go to play. Of course, this is an area where media connections are going to help shift some books.

When it comes to fiction – or plenty of non-fiction too, for that matter – celebrities don’t really get a look in. Nor do Tik-Tokkers or Instagrammers or anything much else. If you performed the same analysis for debut fiction, you’d find – give or take the odd celebrity exception – essentially no impact from social-media profile.

The simple facts are these:

• If you do happen to bring a massive social media profile – and, as I say, you need to measure this in the 100s of 1000s – then terrific. That’s an advantage. Very few authors deliver this.
• If you have a social media in the thousands or the tens of thousands, then fine. Publishers will certainly make use of that profile when it comes to marketing your work, but they would never make an acquisition decision based on that profile.
• If you have effectively no social media profile at all, no one will care. It just doesn’t matter. There are other ways to market books. For most authors, most of the time, social media isn’t especially effective anyway.

So why does the myth persist? Why do people keep saying that social media matters more than it really does?

Well, Jane Friedman has an interesting view here. She says: 

“Platform has become a frequently cited reason for rejection. I see it as an easy-way-out response, because it is nearly impossible, in the short term, to build a platform big enough to merit a book deal, and agents and publishers know this. (My guess is they would rather not state they don’t believe in the work.) Fiction writers and memoirists especially should spend less time worrying about social media numbers and more time addressing questions like ‘Why should anyone care about this story?’ or ‘How can I write a better story?’

I think Jane’s right.

I think it’s genuinely exceptional for social media profile to affect a book acquisition decision.

I think agents and publishers would do much better to be simply honest: “this book isn’t good enough.”

I think writers should focus 95% or more of their efforts on improving their work, 5% or less on finding an agent, and about 0% on social media … unless they happen to enjoy social media, in which case they can spend as much time as they fancy.

Simple, right? And if you want to know whether I walk my talk, then please know that I’ve reasonably often brought out a book without mentioning it on social media at all. Not even once. Did it injure my sales? Not even a weeny bit.

That’s it from me.

I’m going to lie in a peach and eat some sunshine.