With fundamental shifts to social media, authors and presses face mounting challenges

Scan just about any social media platform these days and you’ll catch a glimpse or two of wide-eyed, sweaty-palmed anxiety. Social media is floundering. As a consequence, publishing, which relies (perhaps too) heavily on the ephemeral social media landscape, may be about to experience one hell of an existential crisis.

Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg

How did we get here? Here’s a summary of what has happened in just the past few months. Upset about policies that will see a complete end to the policing of reality on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, people are shutting down their accounts in droves. This is happening at a moment of mass exodus from X, the former home of Twitter, ever since Elon Musk decided to make that social media behemoth his personal playground. 

But the biggest hit might come in just days, if the U.S. goes ahead and enacts a nation-wide ban on TikTok on January 19th. According to a recent CBC article, over 170 million Americans interact on TikTok each month. An important proportion of those are Booktokers, as well as authors, editors, presses, and—it goes without saying—people looking for their next read. 

My goal here is not to hash out the national security reasons for this ban; it has been long been known that platforms such as What’sApp and TikTok are not safe platforms in terms of our data, which, once we join these platforms, belongs to the Chinese (Communist) government, which can and will be used against nations and citizens. (It’s worth noting that, last year, the Canadian government banned its employees from using the platform for these very reasons; many other governments around the world, including Brazil, have been following suit.) 

Seismic Shifts

Regardless of the whys, changes to the social media landscape have a staggering impact on publishing. The world of books is, at this point, so intricately enmeshed with social media that it’s difficult to comprehend the depths of this symbiotic relationship.

Traditional presses, from micro right up to the Big Five, rely on (social media-driven) influencer strategies and social media campaigns as the bedrocks of their marketing strategies. It takes years for presses—and authors—to build up effective social media presence on platforms, and dedicated staff to make it happen. In the meantime, BookTokers and Bookstagrammers make their livings recommending books. What does book marketing look like if these platforms no longer have an audience—if publishing no longer has its vocal champions, making books cool again, one author and title at a time?

At the same time, it has become an expectation across traditional publishing that authors develop their own brand and hew out an online platform to co-market their work. If social media fails, will that expectation simply disappear? (Maybe that would be a relief for many authors). Can the majority of authors out there afford the time and effort (and money) it takes to reestablish themselves quickly on new platforms, to build new followings—in effect, to start again?

Yet, I want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that it’s Indie authors who have the most to lose from these winds of change. At the current moment, approximately 30% of books on Amazon are self-published, and those books don’t sell themselves. Independent authors spend a lot of time and effort creating sales funnels via social media. 

For many readers, social platforms are primary points of exposure to the works of Indie authors. Complicating matters, more often than not, bookstores and libraries won’t buy Indie-authored books (due to it being impossible to send returns back to Amazon). Without their titles in physical stores, and with vastly diminishing influence in social media, Indie authors and their works are set to disappear into vast Kindle catalogues without ever landing their audiences.

And while traditional presses may be able to afford that banner Google ad, it seems unlikely that Indie authors will have the resources to keep up. (And in fact, due to changes in privacy laws, Google ads have undergone their own revolution; many fear they are no longer effective at targeting their audiences.)  

Towards a Post-Social Era 

To survive, we in the book world—Indie and traditionally-published—urgently need to reimagine publishing in a Post-Social era. Perhaps the answer is a return to the bookstores, to live events, to talking about books person to person. Strategies like these are vital, even at a time when mortar-and-bricks bookstores are disappearing. 

Publishing needs to evolve, and quickly. Our books—and generations of their readers—are depending on us. 

What’s your take on this? Drop me a comment!