Can social media sell books?

What role should social play in a book launch plan?

An octogenarian friend is publishing an illustrated children’s book through a self-publishing company next year. Her publishing package includes a social media expert’s advice on chasing likes and followers on social media platforms with assurances that this will help her sell books. When she’s closer to publication date, the expert will help her craft posts for her social media channels.

Social media was a big help in promoting my first two books in 2012 and 2017. I based both of them on my motorcycle travels, and the audience for my first helped sell the second. Facebook groups and ads were in their infancy then, so the algorithms didn’t stand between me and my prospective customers. In both launches, I connected with other riders online, and organized speaking and signing events at dealerships, clubs, and rallies. A lot has changed.

I had a terrific time signing books at events across the country. These are from 2017 at Motohio European Motorcycles in Columbus, Ohio.

Social Media is for Marketing, not Selling

Social media can play a role in an overall launch plan but the buying happens elsewhere. Retailers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble process and fill orders.¹ Keep this in mind when planning your book launch.

One way to use social media to raise awareness for your books is by talking/posting about your characters, the research behind the book, your choice of cover and illustrations, and everything else that fascinates people about the story or your author journey. Most sales that come from this kind of marketing will be to friends and family who are predisposed to support you anyway.

Another way to use social media platforms is to buy ads or to pay to boost your social posts. What? Pay?

Yes, you worked hard to gain those followers and to grow your groups. You participated on the platforms with likes, comments, and shares like a good citizen should. But this is capitalism and good citizenry doesn’t pay Meta’s² bills. Your followers are not yours; they belong to the social media platforms. You will still have to engage in commerce with the platforms to get their users to engage in commerce with you.

If you're interested in learning more about the challenges of using social media platforms to market books, read this article on publishing expert Jane Friedman's blog.

…social media channels are not tools to move product. Instead, they train you to produce content that keeps eyeballs on the screen, and to change that content every time “the algorithm” changes or a new product—Reels, anyone?—is rolled out…Meta’s profit model forces their best workers to regularly guess and adapt to new rules, while constantly creating new work, under threats to their livelihoods and their self-esteem. It’s a Hunger Games where the Gamekeepers randomly disable all the weapons you’re carrying and reissue new ones without instructions…

Top Three Things that Help Sell Books

There are lots of things you can do to help sell your books. Book launch pros offer everything from consulting to online courses and boot camps to help authors move merch. I am not a book launch professional, but I’ve worked on launches that have been guided by them and taken notes.

Publishing experts will tell you there are three top things that sell books.

1. An Author’s Platform.³ My first book is out of print and was never an ebook, but Amazon sends me monthly royalties for the second one in print and digital formats. This is not because I’m doing any marketing. I have what’s known in the publishing business as an author’s platform, which means I can reach the people who are most likely to buy my books. (I’m a columnist and contributing editor to a motorcycle magazine, and personally know lots of people in the industry—that’s my author’s platform). My friend who wrote the children’s book doesn’t have an existing platform for her intended audience so other tactics will have to do more of the heavy lifting.

2. Time and Money. For authors who don’t plan to set up a book tour, dive into the podcast circuit, or other real-world outreach tactics, digital marketing will have do the lion’s share of the marketing. This approach shares a lot in common with parenting because it requires constant vigilance and course corrections. And money. Here’s a primer on how professional digital marketers would approach my friend's children's book.

   1. First, they would identify the key audiences for ads, maybe elementary school teachers, grandparents, and homeschooling moms.

   2. They would devise a few variations of customized ads for each of these audiences for each of the sites where they’ll be placed (social media, Amazon, Book Bub, etc.). Some ads will do better than others, and some audiences will buy less than others.

   3. Professional marketers monitor which audiences are responding to which ads.

   4. Over time, the marketer will retire some ads and audiences, and move money to others. 

   5. As audience prospects and marketing trends emerge over time the marketer may give them a spin.

3. A series. Climbing the digital marketing learning curve could pay off for my friend if she wrote a series of books. Think of series like The Berenstain Bears, or Thomas the Tank Engine. Berenstain’s franchise is as old as I am—quite a run. Genre writers of romance and thrillers can make a good living with online sales alone—never printing a single book. Here’s why this works. Let’s say an author writes a novel about an Irish family immigrating to New York in 1850, followed by a thriller about Martian gangsters. These are two wildly different audiences. But if the Irish-American novel is part of a series, each new book will bring readers into the fold who will want to read them all. When the author exhausts the Irish-American series, they can start a spin-off and keep the gravy train rolling. This is just like Breaking Bad spinning off Better Call Saul. I know, I know, this is easier said than done. I’m just laying out the facts.

What about Amazon Ads?

Back to my octogenarian friend and her children’s book. Since Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al must send your click to Amazon (or another retailer) to make the sale, I told her she should shift her publishing budget to Amazon ads. Meet the buyers where they’re already shopping for books.

“Oh, that’s covered too,” she smiled.

I read my friend’s contract for Amazon ads, which guarantees a couple hundred thousand impressions of her banner ad. GUARANTEED! Doesn’t that sound monumental? Sadly, it isn’t. It’s an easy guarantee to fulfill because Amazon has tens of millions of American users. Her banner ad will be shown to the guaranteed number of viewers, but showing it to the wrong audience(s) could result in low sales and give my friend a false impression of her book's quality. Amazon ads sell books. It takes time and money, preferably, both.

The way I see it, instead of taking a luxury vacation, my friend produced a lovely illustrated book that her family will cherish for generations. Sales beyond her friends and family will be a miracle.

Then again, anyone can beat the odds. I hope my friend does.

My Life without Facebook

Thanks to a hacker, I lost my personal Facebook account a year ago. For about 60 seconds, I felt violated; a sense of dread clutched my windpipe as I thought about rebuilding 13 years of work there. Starting at 61 seconds, a feeling of relief started welling up, surprising me with the promise of a better life. Thanks to a bandaid fix a friend rigged up, I can see Facebook and I can manage my official author page, which I do once a quarter.

Twitter is now X, but I am more interested in its competitor, Threads, although I’m mostly a lurker there. It’s a pleasant space for the time being, but we’ve already seen where it will lead—after all, it’s a Meta property just like Instagram and Facebook. It won’t take long before we’ll need to buy ads to reach the people who follow us—that’s the business model.

Therefore, I’m focused on connecting to readers on my two newsletters. This one delivers writing and publishing advice, book reviews, and reflections on memento mori. When you subscribe, you get everything I write with no algorithm getting in the way. Thank you for being here and for telling others about my work.

Here’s my other newsletter, The 981 Project.

1. You can sell books from your own website, but that’s outside the bounds of today’s discussion.

2. Meta is the parent company to a slew of social platforms, notably Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.

3. Jane Friedman defines an author’s platform as “an ability to sell books because of who you are or who you can reach.”