Marginalized Author Trauma Confessional Junket
publishing mantras that make me insane, sudden death round
Welcome back haters and haterettes, to the third and final installment in my essay series on overused publishing industry catchphrases, what they really mean, what they imply and demand, and why they drive me insane.
I’m going on book tour to the West Coast in four days, but I simply had to wrap up this series before hitting the skies. If you’re a West Coast-based lover of gay gothic things, check out the tour dates below and snag your ticket to join me.
Read on for some unpleasant truths about author branding, the way marginalization is exploited by the publicity machine, and why “you’re so good at social media” is not the compliment you think it is.
1. “You’re so good at social media!”
Just like the acquisitions classic of “we don’t know who the audience is for this book”, this mantra falls along a benign-to-insidious spectrum.
“You’re so good at social media” is something a publicity and marketing team may tell a certain kind of author, an author who is, well, good at social media! Maybe they’re known for talking-to-the-camera TikToks that routinely go viral, aesthetic instagram grids featuring costumes that match their books, marketing copy that leads to one-click impulse buys, or beautiful graphic design. Regardless of age, genre, or gender, two things are always true about this archetypal author.
They seem to have a magic touch when it comes to using social media to connect with established and potential readers
They spend a lot of time and effort creating the illusion of that effortlessness.
Those algorithm whisperers are batching content weekly or impulse-filming daily, paying for multiple editing subscriptions, snapping B-roll pics between meet and greets at their own events, color-grading and photoshopping, managing autoresponders, doing crowd work in comments and DMs, scrolling and saving sounds, managing PR meltdowns before they happen, fixing captions in CapCut, scheduling posts to hit prime engagement windows, and/or lipsynching their asses off.
Being this good at social media is a second job alongside the primary job of writing the book. It is a job many people are paid salaries with benefits to do, and often — don’t fight me, I know how you girls like to tussle — it is a better job than anything a spread-thin marketing department is capable of.
Here’s where the numbers can get nasty.
