A booklet for authors, bloggers and anyone else who's interested in what goes down in the virtual book world.
* Dear readers,
This is a tale of my reality as a book blogger. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing about my personal...
If a blog or authors don't have a Facebook page, Twitter account, a Goodreads profile and even Instagram then why continue to go any further in the book world? You cannot avoid social media, no matter how hard you try. It's mandatory to have accounts across the net because that's where people are, these days. That's what the world wants us to believe.
Personally- I hardly post anything book related on social media. For years I've witnessed the sinking numbers, views and likes on my own and other blog pages. It's a struggle not worth it anymore. (All I do there is chat with friends and maintain my personal account.)
I'm sad to tell you some ugly details. Facebook is slowly dying.Statistics show that less younger people use Facebook. Don't believe me? Then ask yourself why Facebook is advertising. The boat is sinking for them. I saw a TV commercial the other night on how user friendly Facebook is and that all users have the power to set up their own security settings, yada yada yada.
Now, brace yourselves- It's not the place to be for an author. Or for a blogger.
Instagram is more of a picture competition than anything else. Did you know there are handbooks out there for how to use Instagram correctly? I kid you not.
I'm kind of boring myself * head against table * Back to my bloggers tale.
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About 6 months after we created our page we got sucked into the Indie-Author world without even fully wanting to. Authors were coming from all angles, asking for our help with reviews, promotional posts, etc. If you're a blogger you try to get as much work done as possible, but you always fail to make everyone happy. I couldn't do it. I knew I was spending way to much time on social media as it was, yet I couldn't stay away from the action. All the messages, posts, and what-not happened through the social media and less on our blog. After a short time our FB page had more likes than our blog had followers. Sounds exciting, right? It wasn't. It was great that people liked us and wanted us to promote them....but we started to neglect our read/review plan. NOT COOL!
The social media was the place where everything took place. Games, giveaways, spotlight events and blog tours were THE THING and if you didn't attend or participated in them all you were left out of the loop. Simple as that. ( Blogging isn't that easy, people)
My blood pressure rises at the mention of all the stuff I listed above. Especially when I mention virtual blog tours. Those can be a wondeful, helpful thing for any author but for a blog they're a living hell. I'll tell you why:
As a blogger, you have to keep a schedule to publish posts when you join a tour. Not so bad, right? Well, it is terrible if you try to have a social life.
As a blogger, if you sign up for a review, you are not allowed to give less than a 3 star rating ( to protect the author and not harm them by preventing sales ) . So, either you lie and give the book a better rating, or you'll be given a different assignment ( to not hurt the author).
