For a while now I’ve been losing interest in Social Media. I closed down all my facebook accounts over five years ago, and while I have a Tumblr, a Mastodon and a Bluesky, I don’t really use them. Twitter was, until recently, my sole outlet for random mutterings, book news and videos of coos. It’s all got a bit shit recently though, and we all know why.
A lot of people I know, particularly in writing and publishing, are out there searching for the next big way to promote themselves and their books. I don’t really blame them, although I’m not sure it’s a good use of finite time. If you’re not on Threads, Instagram, TikTok and everything else, then how will your readers find you? How will you let them know about your work?
And yet, if you are on all of those platforms, how will you find time between scheduling updates to do any actual writing?
Having a social media presence for me as a published author was a way my readers could easily get in touch and ask me questions. The most important thing about it was that it was fun though. Somewhere along the line it stopped being much fun, but I stuck with it because there were always readers out there wanting to know about my work. My publishers expected a certain online presence too, which they could use for marketing.
It’s got to the point now, where the good stuff is so overwhelmingly outweighed by the bad that I just can’t be bothered with it any more. I have this website and blog – which I intend to update a lot more regularly – and I have a monthly newsletter. You can subscribe to both, if you really want to. The site also has a contact form, which people use and to which I even respond. And if it’s really just the coos you’re after, then I’ve set up a youtube channel for your addiction.
So for an experiment I have deleted the social media apps from my phone and the website bookmarks from my desktop browser. My accounts still exist – I’m not surrendering that much – but I won’t be checking them for at least the whole of January. We’ll see how things go after that
Substack seems to be where the writers hang out these days. I’m like you, I don’t know if I can be bothered though. Looking forward to more blog posts!
Alas, Substack has a bit of a Nazi problem and would be just another channel to maintain at the end of the day!
I understand not wanting to use social media now. I was on twitter until it became X. That is when i deleted my account 🙂
Interesting, James. It’s a fair point you make about time spent on social media as opposed to writing stories and other important stuff. But good luck with “Dry January” – in a manner of speaking. Oh, and happy new year, while I’m on. All the best – Harry (and Alan)
Completely agree about too much social media. I love your book updates in your newsletters and the coo updates. I have deleted X, too many think their opinion is the only one. All the negative news and remarks are too much to take and make daily thoughts even worse if you are not in a good place mentally.
I now only check emails, some news updates and try to avoid negative information.
Keep up your good updates 🙂 every coo picture cheers so many of us up x.
I find social media absorbs waay too much time. As you pointed out above, how do you find time for actual writing? (In my case, I don’t). Looking forward to updates and the Highland coos!