Social Media Trap or Marcella Goes Off the Deep End

"I wanna be where the readers are.
I want to see them reading.
Carrying around those -what do you call them? Oh. Right. - BOOKS.
Out in the sun. Or in the shade.
On the beach or in a cafe.
Read in a bar.
Wish I could be a Tik Tok star."

My apologies to The Little Mermaid.

Social media is hailed as The Way to sell books. You need to know Facebook ads, Amazon ads, Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram, the rotting corpse that was once Twitter. . . It gets overwhelming fast. Publishers push authors to do all the things! Yet experienced indie author Kristine Kathryn Rusch likes to remind authors that the best advertisement for your current book is your next book. Cal Newport argues that your best, most creative work  comes from flow state and that flow is achieved best in deep work - those times and places where the external world goes away and you descend into deep brainwave activity wherein you lose track of time and are absorbed in your material. This state is predicated on not being interrupted, not having your attention fractured by anyone or anything. He argues that readers shouldn't necessarily have access to you. You have a job. Writing.

I suppose if you compartmentalize extremely well, you could make an argument for engaging in deep work for a few hours each day and then indulging in a little social media promotion. Fair enough. I'm having to think a little harder about that because I don't compartmentalize well. Maybe not at all. It doesn't help that earlier this week, I heard someone mention that cell phones are black mirrors. This rocked me. 

If you aren't familiar, black mirrors are scrying mirrors used in ritual and divination. They are powerful tools and most of us familiar with them keep them carefully wrapped and hidden away from casual glances. This is because a part of you travels when you scry. Part of you goes bye-bye. It's one thing to do that intentionally and for a purpose and then to shut down the mirror after and to reclaim every part of you that went traveling. 

Black mirrors drain energy. It's not malicious. It's just part of the work done with them. They don't have intent, but their utility is the emptiness that draws practitioners out of their human shell to journey for answers to a question or for a vision of something. Used consciously and safeguarded appropriately, they're harmless and helpful. 

If cell phones are black mirrors, they are black mirrors that are used utterly unconsciously. They aren't warded or guarded. We stare into them without regard for where we go when we do. Just try to get the attention of someone absorbed in their phone. Where do we go when we stare in that black mirror? Where does our energy go? I'm not saying that cell phone are traps devised by the Fae. I am saying that if the Fae wanted to build irresistible traps for mortals to fall into, they could have done worse than to have invented cell phones.

Social media, cell phones not withstanding, isn't evil. There are plenty of benefits: engaging with people you enjoy but maybe have never met in real life, finding new-to-you info and books and music, in a world still constrained by pathogens, social media can be a glimpse into a larger, more diverse world. We should absolutely enjoy and contribute to those things. But if we're going to social media *just* to sell books rather than build relationships we enjoy, we'll do more harm than good.

So before you stare into that black mirror in your hand, think long and hard about what you want to get out of it so you know exactly what and how much to put into it.

Review for fun! For information! For love.

When Amazon was new and I was unpublished, I used to read a lot of reviews. They were informative and well-thought-out and helped me pick my next readable. I trusted them, and they rarely steered me wrong.

Nowadays, Amazon's algorithms for visibility have made reviews into a commodity, and since I have a couple of books out with my name on the covers, I abstain from reading reviews.

Not reviews of my books because neither my ego nor my self-loathing are developed enough to take that hit directly.

Not reviews of my friends' books because I get all angry and defensive and chupacabra, and it's on someone else's behalf, which makes the fury feel righteous.

Not reviews of books that are doing really well in my genre because all my attempts to replicate the success of those books have ended in manuscripts sacrificed to the dark gods of Why Even.

Not reviews of books that are clearly not selling well because, dude, someone put effort into typing all those words and then made the (foolish?) decision to go ahead and share the resultant opus. With everyone. For money. That's... kind of precious. Definitely brave. I don't want reviews to spoil that for me.

Nope, instead of putting my eyeballs on book reviews, I have a couple of super-kind friends who screen them for me. They cut and paste the reviews of my books that I'm allowed to read, send them to me, and then I print them out and frame them and ... well, they make me happy. Intensely, tearfully, gratefully happy.

Now, this isn't a foolproof system, so if you've reviewed a book of mine favorably and I haven't sent you chocolates or gifs of people hugging, feel free to message me. You really want this gif-storm. If you've reviewed unfavorably, I don't know about it but I will tell you this:

THANK YOU.

Seriously. Regardless of whether you loved my work or hated it or meh'd it, you took the time to read, to leave your thoughts out there for someone else who just wants advice on picking his or her next readable. I've been that person and would be still. You make that person's world better. So, thank you from prepublished-me.

Reviews Are for Readers - Or Are They?

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is on our calendar as "Reviews - I'm rubber, you're glue."

Which gave me pause, I'll admit. The phrase comes from US playground taunts among children (do other countries have this one?) where the teased child will reply "I'm rubber, you're glue. What bounces off me, sticks to you." In other words saying that any insults hurled at us bounce off and stick to the the one flinging them.

So, I imagine whoever phrased this topic was thinking of how authors have to allow less-than-complimentary reviews of our books roll off of us. Which is true. But I disagree with putting it this way for a number of reasons.

1. A review is of a book, not the author. It's different than teasing and taunting in that we are not the target, but rather something we produced. And put into the world for people to take part in. We're not quietly eating our brown-bag lunches (while reading a book) when Billy the Bully comes up and questions our worthiness to use up oxygen. While some reviews do go so far as to insult the author, those are unprofessional and not worth noticing.
2. Even a terrible review isn't the same as an insult. Sure a bad review is painful, but that's on us. It's just not a personal attack. If someone wishes us harm, then it's reasonable to imagine the fair thing is for that harm to ricochet and instead the person inflicting it. That's not the intent of most reviewers. If it is, that's unprofessional, etc.
3. Reviews are for readers, not for authors. We're not even the subject of the playground discussion. No more so than if we brought a fine ball from home (which we maybe painstaking decoupaged with Guardians of the Galaxy images), kicked it out there for everyone to play with while we retire with our bag lunch and book, and then the other kids weigh in on whether it's really good for dodgeball or not. It's really not about us.

EXCEPT

The big EXCEPT here, is that in this Rate-and-Review-Every-Damn-Thing Economy, reviews have become critically important to sales. I really think Amazon (and other, similar, retail sites) have dug a pretty deep hole for us all. They want honestly reviewed products, so their customers get what will satisfy them, but then they want us to not care about reviews. Even though the number of reviews affects all aspects of a book's saleability, from whether customers even SEE it to obtaining highly sought advertising slots like in BookBub. 

So, sure, reviews are for readers. I read reviews all the time to see if I want to buy a book. But they've also become a key marketing tool for authors and publishers. Which moves the game off the playground and into the big leagues. 

Of course, for authors the answer is still to let them slide off. Leaving out the "sticks to you part." I included the cover here of THE SHIFT OF THE TIDE because I thought of different reviews I've gotten of this recent release. This book is a little different than the rest of the series, because the heroine is other - she's a shapeshifter and doesn't think like a person who can't shapeshift. Spending time in animal forms makes her wild in some ways. 

Some readers have loved it, exactly because Zynda is so different. Others rated it their least favorite of the series because she is so other. Some say it's their favorite.

Since I clearly accomplished what I set out to do - capture her otherness - I can't complain. There are other balls waiting for decoupage.