The pitfalls of having only writers as your followers / Happenings In The Outhouse 18-June-2021

There is an interesting trend I've noticed in social media, and it's not a new trend either.  It doesn't matter what business you seem to be in, those who seem to follow you are in the same business as you and seem to demand that you follow them back.  Business leaders follow other business leaders, actors follow actors, musicians follow other musicians, and so on.

I'm going to bring this to writing, since that's a business I know a bit about.  So, therefore, writers following other writers.

There is a local writer I know who self-published her debut novel last year--which is an amazing accomplishment!.  This writer is VERY active on Twitter, and I'm amazed at the over 18,000 followers.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of these followers are, much like myself, other writers.  Now, on the surface, you may wonder what the big deal is.  Here's the deal: who's buying your books?  Readers.  Readers of that particular genre.  Not necessarily writers.  Now, this is no fault of this author, because I follow a fair amount of writers myself, but you can't believe the ton of follows that I get and they demand that I follow them back.

But I don't.  Then they disappear.  Good riddance.

On a side note: I used to follow them back, until I noticed that they weren't the ones buying my books.  So I stop that in its tracks.

One of the pitfalls to this trend occurred just last week with this author.  She posted on Twitter that she was having a book signing.  Cool!  I read the Twitter thread and other authors gave her advice.  Good advice?  I'll zip my lip on that one.  Then, the day before the signing, she posted a picture of her "author" signing shirt.  It was pretty cool, and there was more advice in the thread.

But all this time I was wondering the key questions: where and when?

Of that, nothing.

Did any of the other writers ask this?

Nope.

You're right, I didn't either.  Maybe I should've, but I wanted to see if any readers would ask her.

In fact, this author didn't even say, "Hey if you're near (fill in the blank), I'll be signing my book at (date/time)."

Again, nothing.

Now, I'm a complete shit when it comes to marketing my own works too, but I at least posted a link when two of my stories was on a recent podcast and when I have a new book out I post links to it.  If I had a book signing, you better believe it that I'd be posting about it.

Be careful who you're attracting as far as followers.  For the business of writing, readers are your audience.  Go after them.  Don't follow others back if they demand it.  Readers only buy books.  Writers, not so much.

To put this in perspective, I checked out mega-bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson's Twitter numbers.  He has a little over 12,000.  Less than the local author.  And how many does he follow?  A few hundred.  Neil Gaiman?  Over 2 million followers.  How many does he follow?  Less than a thousand.  That's quite the ratio.

On a final note: she did post a picture during the author signing, but again there was no where and when.

Lesson learned?  I pray it does, and the reason for this post isn't to shame the writer.  I'm happy she was given an opportunity to have a book signing, in a real bookstore.

We all make mistakes.  We just need to learn from them.