The short answer is: no.
The longer one is: it depends.
January 2024 marks three years since I started my social media accounts as an author. I have 21K followers on Twitter and 2.4K followers on Instagram. I have author accounts on Facebook and also Linkedin, but I purely physically can’t be active there as well.
I don’t claim to be a guru, and I don’t share my thoughts as advice. I want to share the experience I’ve accumulated so far, hoping that someone might find it useful.
You can sell some books if you are active on social media. People with whom you make connections sometimes become interested in what you have written. It works just like with anything else. If you play a musical instrument, your friends might come to your performance or watch a video of you playing on YouTube. If you love painting, people most probably would ask you to show them your paintings. They might even appreciate to receive one of your paintings as a gift. And chances are high that they’ll share a picture of your art on their social media.
Books are no different. If someone gets interested in you as a person, they might display an interest in how you express yourself.
The thing to understand about social media is that people don’t come there to shop. Their primary goal is communication, something many of us have a deficiency of in real life. Nowadays, the pace of life is hectic, so it leaves us too exhausted in the evenings and on weekends to plan get-togethers with friends. Moreover, the world has become a more flexible place in the last century, which led to massive relocations.
When a person logs in to Amazon (or any other reseller’s website), they don’t expect to chat with those who offer their goods there. They don’t care about finding out how their spouses are doing and if their dog is feeling better after an incident with a squirrel. They visit those websites to buy what they need. Including books.
It isn’t so when a person opens a social media app. Here, people expect to discuss, share, sometimes complain and lament. They expect interaction. What’s more, they expect to at least have a feeling that they are interacting with real people; someone who also can make an input to a conversation, share something about their own lives, understand their pain and worries, and give them a virtual hug. So, it is only logical that if a writer comes to social media and posts only about their books, they get no reactions to their posts and no sales. I sometimes see posts where authors complain that ‘social media don’t work’, meaning that posting their book ads doesn’t result in sales. In that sense, I totally agree. Free advertising you have a full right to do on social media platforms by posting the content of your choosing doesn’t work. At all. Whereas, if you add some human interactions to those ads, you might get a sale or two, even a small boost during free- or discount book sales, as well as getting a number of pre-orders. Sales numbers during such promotional events can reach dozens. But if you aim at selling hundreds – or thousands – of books, then free social media self-advertising won’t work.
A tiny disclaimer: every respectable author of ‘how-to’ books for indie authors will make a note that there are exceptions to any rule. Some make a profit from their first published book, opposing the general advice to publish in series or at least several similar-genre books before you can expect any profit. Some multi-genre authors are more profitable than single-genre ones. But exceptions mainly confirm the rule. By being exceptions. Rare situations when something went differently. What I’m trying to say is that some authors sell hundreds of books by advertising solely on social media. Yet, my humble opinion is that it’s potentially harmful for an indie author to put all eggs in the basket of the belief that they’ll be able to do it too. We creative people are often sensitive, and we don’t need any additional blows to shatter our fragile confidence.
Even though social media seldom is a single massive sales outlet for an indie author, I still see these platforms as an extremely valuable part of my writing and publishing journey. Immaterial gain makes up for the time you have to spend there to actually unlock these advantages.
First, there are people who understand why I write. For them, it isn’t a whim or a useless endeavour that steals time from ‘really important things’. With them, I can discuss the writing process, ask questions that interest me – such as ‘Do you ever get annoyed with your MC?’ or ‘Does killing the cutest character’s love of her life mean that I am a monster?’ – and get answers that steer my thoughts in the most exciting directions. In the social media writing communities, I feel seen, accepted, and understood.
Second, people in the social media writing communities understand the true value of book reviews. So, if they happen to squeeze your work into their usually awe-inspiringly lengthy TBR list, you can be sure that they will review it. And a growing number of reviews will definitely help if you decide to promote your books more widely.
Third, social media writing communities are a bottomless storage of useful ideas. Writing a book is a multi-step process, which includes much more apart from putting the story down on paper (Word file). And who else can give you better practical advice than people who have gone through the same motions and experienced the same hardships and mistakes? It is like being a gardener in the countryside. I remember all our neighbours coming to my aunt for advice on how to make the earth as generous as it always was on her land plot. And similarly to gardeners, what works for one writer might not work for another. Still, it is better to have options to test rather than be stuck and feel disappointed about the whole thing. Which, after all, is the centre of our lives and the light of our souls.
The main drawback of social media is the enormous amount of time you have to dedicate to it so you can enjoy all the above-mentioned advantages. Algorithms are set up in a way that makes it even harder to get followers, engagement, interactions – everything that unlocks the door to communication with like-minded people.
Another drawback is the realization that you can sell a lot of books without bothering with an active social media presence. Paid advertising is what can potentially bring big book sales. I’ll allow myself to repeat: can potentially bring. Paid advertising has its own drawbacks, the most important probably being its unpredictability. Your success depends on many factors. Such as the budget you can afford to allocate for a potentially unprofitable venture, your willingness to learn how it works on different platforms, your resilience to failure. Also, the luck to stumble upon real advice and not some charlatans promising to make a New York Times bestselling author out of you.
I can’t tell you yet anything useful about paid advertising. As I mentioned in one of my previous ‘indie author’s challenges’ posts, the platforms to try are Amazon, Facebook, and BookBub. I have only a limited experience with the first two. Amazon ads worked for ‘The Accidental Cop’ and didn’t work for the Neglected Merge trilogy. While with Facebook, it’s the other way round. Please keep in mind that by ‘worked’ I don’t mean hundreds of sales and profit. For me, at the stage I am now, ‘worked’ is equivalent to ‘some sales’ and ‘monthly royalties above zero’.
Being an independently published author isn’t easy. You have to fight outer ‘demons’ along with your inner ones all the time. I’ve come to realise that in order not to get utterly disappointed and quit, it is crucial to understand your goals. To admit what you really want, at least to yourself. Anything is possible. Even to earn a living from selling your independently published books. But there are rules to be followed to make it work. And it is up to every author to individually decide if they are ready to follow these rules and pay the price. The market isn’t art. The market imposes certain requirements and limitations on you if you want to take advantage of the only thing that for the market is limitless: a profit level.
I have found my path, but I am still at a loss how to trudge it. I guess the only way is to keep walking and not lose hope that answers come to those who don’t stop looking for them.
Eve's Book Diary 
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