I've done a 180 on Social Media
and I just kicked an addiction I didn’t know I could kick
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If you’re neither a writer/creative nor someone who uses social media, this post may not be for you. But for those of us who’ve been selling our data, our time, and in some cases, our dreams, this stuff matters. I hope you’ll read and comment!
What if you found out that the main reason most people are on social media is not that they like it, but only because they feel they have no choice?
That’s the surprising finding of a 2023 study (summarized in The Conversation; full paper available) in which 1,000 US college students were asked how much they’d be willing to pay to use Twitter and Instagram. The answer: $59 and $47 monthly.
But hold up. When asked what those college students would pay if two-thirds of their fellow students deactivated accounts, they said they’d pay nothing.
Actually, it’s more surprising than that. The students said they’d pay less than nothing.
As in: the students would pay money not to use social media.
I had to read that finding twice before it sank in.
Half of Instagram users said they wish they lived in a world without Instagram.
You know how we keep hearing that younger generations love TikTok? Not in this study.
The TikTokkers would pay even more to be off TikTok than the Instagrammers would pay to be off Instagram.
As the University of Chicago study’s authors reported, these findings make no sense to an economist. A rational human wouldn’t pay monthly not to have a refrigerator, for example. We don’t usually buy things and hate them and offer to keep paying for them—if not with actual dollars, then with our time and our data and our eyeballs and our souls and our democracy.
Megabestselling author Colleen Hoover, who became famous on TikTok, recently changed her account to private and told a reporter she can’t get the haters out of her head anymore. She may have stopped writing. TikTok helped make her. Now it’s unmaking her.
“Before, release days were kind of fun because I felt like I was writing for the people that love my books, but now it’s almost like I’m writing for the people who are just waiting to put out that negative video of my books, because it gets views. It’s just the popular thing, to hate, right now, and I wish I didn’t let that get in my head, but I do. Because at this point I’m like: It doesn’t sound fun anymore. Release days don’t sound fun. So I’ve been dragging my feet. It used to be so exciting, and now it’s not. And that’s the saddest part.”
Can you imagine any product so crappy that even the people who became famous because of it have begun to hate it?
If you say you enjoy social media, I get it, because I used to love Instagram. I made real and lasting friends there, and I got most of my latest book’s blurbs due to IG connections, and I delighted in the kindness shown to me by readers and booksellers on that platform. But now, like the college kids, I realize that the bad far outweighs the good.
Even so, we are led to believe that we should continue accepting the bad with the rapidly dwindling good. If you are a writer, you may feel like you’d better use social media to promote your career because if you haven’t used every tool at your disposal, failure will be your fault.
Except…
Except we all keep saying that author- and publisher-driven (as versus fan-driven) social media doesn’t sell books.
I recently subscribed to a newsletter by an author and platform coach—probably a lovely, lovely person—and she ran a post about how her “first” (not actually first) Instagram reel went viral with a million views, and how her royalty statement for that period shows that…
…she sold 397 books in six months.
She asked readers not to share a screenshot of her royalty statement, which is for premium subscribers only. (I will honor that request by not sharing the screenshot. No problem!1 )
397 copies of a backlist title isn’t nothing—I’d be thrilled if my older books kept selling at that rate.
But I’d argue that 397 books isn’t enough to justify dedicating oneself to TikTok and IG Reels to the tune of many hours per week into infinity.
Also, let’s not forget two things. Not all of her book sales for that period were attributable to her Reels; she also coaches, teaches, and writes a popular Substack. And second, the success of that one Reel can’t be expected to repeat itself. She scrubbed her account of past reels to trick the algorithm into thinking this was her “first” Reel, a trick you probably can’t do over and over.
The algorithm gave her a peppy little boost in the hope she’d keep coming back for more, because the algorithm is smart. Even smarter than the people who figure out a few ways to trick it.
Do you want to spend years making videos, desperately hoping one will go viral—it isn’t easy, folks!—in order to sell enough books to earn less than 1% of an already modest advance? (That’s a literal figure.) I am not poking fun of an unnamed author for doing so. I am poking at the whole system—of which I have been a part—of authors telling other desperate authors how to survive in this mad-mad-mad world of publishing. We are the blind leading the blind, folks.
I want to clarify that I admire this author for writing about her experiment candidly and transparently. I am honestly grateful for her data because it has given me the kick in the pants I needed—not to do more social media, but to do less.
Let it be known further that I have received money to coach other authors on social media strategies. I have told my own clients that Instagram and Twitter can be worth their time, especially for reasons that don’t equate directly with book sales.
But that was before:
1. The platforms themselves changed. Twitter used to be a fun place to meet and talk with writers. Instagram used to show me more of my actual friends’ posts, and now I barely see a fraction—less than 10%—of the people I follow, though I sure as heck do see lots of new ads for low-quality bedding, from both legit and scam companies!
2. I became aware of what Corey Doctorow calls “Enshittification,” a 2024 Word of the Year—which is the way by which platforms, apps, and companies start out working well for us, and thereby suck us into using them (Amazon with its fast delivery, Uber before its prices surged, dating apps that would prefer to keep you single), then change and become less beneficial for the user. Oh wait, that’s a variation on #1, I just didn’t realize Corey Doctorow had explained it happens everywhere and it’s on purpose and it will keep happening. Thanks, capitalism. And Zuckerberg, I see you with that new haircut and reshaped bod, you’re not fooling me.
3. I didn’t realize, when it came down to it, that the need to check and keep checking social media—a little to-do I could check off my mental list many times a day, giving me a false sense of accomplishment—would turn into aimless scrolling, especially during times of political crisis, and how despair would come to outweigh the pleasure of seeing my New York friend’s lovely urban photos or my own kid’s videos documenting his professional acrobat routine. Damn you, Instagram, for ruining a once sort-of-okay thing!
Still need one more data point? Billie Eilish has over 100 million Instagram followers. The NYT reported that her memoir sold 64,000 copies in its first six months, which for a celeb memoirist is a huge flop. That means 0.0005 of her IG followers bought a book. (This article cites other celeb—>author numbers and the ratios are stunningly similar.) For most of us with IG followers around 2K, that would be the equivalent of ONE follower buying a book, which seems about right.
So, what to do about it?
I quit. Just after the election, I reduced my news consumption to save my sanity, and then I deactivated my X account—something I’d been threatening to do even before we all realized the full dark power of Elon Musk—and then I took the Instagram app off my phone. My thumb continues to pause above my phone screen, wondering if it needs to click something, but I haven’t posted since.
The weird thing wasn’t how hard it was to stay off.
The really weird thing was how easy it was to stay off.
I was so worried I’d have a crash in dopamine levels that I actually started a new hobby—cold-dipping in the ocean for 2-7 freezing minutes, usually at night because I wait for my husband to get home from the work, about every other day. I accepted this form of torture and post-torture euphoria into my life because I thought my brain would need it. But funny thing, I wasn’t tempted to use social media for personal use even once after Nov. 17.
No one told me that social media would be so easy to quit.
No one told me that my life as an author wouldn’t come to a screeching halt if I quit.
No one told me that for the very first time in my life, I’d approach New Year’s Eve with one resolution already ticked off the list. When has that ever happened?
I’m not telling you to get off social media.
But I am telling you that you can choose to get off social media or use it much, much less than you do—and with fewer delusions. You don’t even have to pay for the right to quit, as those college students were willing to do. You don’t have to explain to your agent, either.
(Everyone thinks agents care about social media but as a novelist, I can tell you that my agent and publisher never talk to me about my social media, even when I wished they would. If you are a nonfiction writer, or work for someone who didn’t get the memo that social media by authors doesn’t sell proven quantities of books, then I don’t know what to tell you except to say that platform and social media are not synonymous.)
I’m not telling you that I won’t go back to social media.
I’m not promising I won’t use social media occasionally and strategically when I feel I must, especially to demonstrate goodwill as a team player, to promote my classes, books, podcasts, etc.
If I were a stronger person, I wouldn’t go back at all. But I’m stuck in the capitalist system, too. Also, as a person who writes about other people, I don’t feel like I can exit contemporary culture entirely, or my characters will be bizarre and unconvincing. If average folks are struggling with social media, AI, and other horsemen of the apocalypse, I need to know those horsemen and their food preferences. (Apples for the horses? Tacos for the men?)
But if I do use social media regularly again, I hope I’ll remember. Posting is not a proven way to sell books. There is no proven way to sell books, except to write many books and hope that one is beloved by readers enough that they keep talking about it and buying extra copies, not because they are your friends, but because they truly love your stories.
And also, if you’ll forgive me one last point: maybe it’s okay not to sell a bajillion books.
You heard it from me, and maybe from Colleen Hoover, too.
You made it to the end. I want to hear from you, via a public comment or private email! Do you hope to cut back on social media, or quit? If you didn’t have to think about promotion in any form, how would your writing life change?
Are you worried about Colleen Hoover?
Are you still stuck at, “Wait, Billie Eilish wrote a book?” Let’s talk!
Limited quoted or paraphrased info used for critical or educational non-commerical purposes from a copyrighted publication, with no intent to displace consumers, easily falls within Fair Use, however—and no, I am not a lawyer, but I have invented lawyer characters (not “round ones”) in my fiction, for the purposes of springing other characters out of jail.
Quitting social media felt like a hard thing to do 5 years ago, because there was a mix of good and bad on the platforms. They could still be useful. The platforms themselves have made it increasingly easy to leave, though, through good ol' enshittification - even while their algorithms focus on keeping us addicted, the actual drug itself has become less and less fun.
I'm on this train atm. I just can't find the motivation to social media anymore. I've lost my desire. I still like drawing silly comics and writing silly songs, and occasionally Instagram in particular is fun for things like that, but I very much have been feeling what the heck am I even doing here on a lot of the others.