Hi friends!
(First, some housekeeping. The other day I found two of my own newsletters in my spam folder, so it may well be that some of them are going to yours, too. Do check, and add substack to your list of safe senders if necessary).
In This Issue:
Should You Be on Social Media?
How many followers do you need before publishers will consider your book?
How to Promote Yourself and Your Work
How to boost your profile
In the last issue of The Writers’ Lodge we looked at self-promotion and considered the fact that, as naturally shy people, many writers and authors find it incredibly difficult. I shared a personal story and asked you all to consider whether you also suffer with the same anxieties about putting yourself ‘out there’, and if so whether there’s anything you might be able to do about it.
In this issue, however, I’d like to consider the more practical aspects. How can you promote yourself, and build a following/audience?
Before that, though… let’s get into the ‘why?’ Do you actually need to do any of this? Is it true that publishers won’t consider your work unless you have a following on social media? And if so, how big does that following need to be?
Just How Important Is It?
I’ve been asked a few times, usually by people who have little or no presence on social media, whether it’s important to have a following before they submit their manuscript. Some people have come to believe publishers will not even look at a book unless the author has a certain number of followers. But there’s a great deal of uncertainty. Sometimes people say thousands — or even tens of thousands — of followers are necessary. Sometimes fewer. And the platform varies too. Instagram? Twitter? Discord? TikTok? FaceBook? All of them, or a mixture? And if it’s a mixture, what’s the balance? Is 100k on TikTok better or worse than 100k on Instagram, or is it better to have 50k on Twitter and 75k on FaceBook?
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