How Social Media Can — And Can’t — Help You Sell Your Book

“You have to be on social media.”

If you’ve written a book — or plan to do one — you’ve probably heard this more than once.

Editors, agents, and publicists hail social media as the potential savior of authors ignored by mainstream reviewers and news outlets. As evidence, they point to pop-fiction superstars like Colleen Hoover, whose Himalayan number of TikTok followers recently helped her land an astonishing 15 books on the USA Today bestseller lists at once.

The standard publishing advice boils down to: Books by big names like James Patterson may sell themselves, but if you’re a small-name or no-name author, you must promote yourself relentlessly on social media in order to succeed.

There’s a problem with this advice, as commonsensical as it sounds: No solid research supports it.

As a journalist who writes about books and publishing, I’ve looked for years for hard data that proves that plugging your work on social media sells books. All the evidence I’ve seen is so anecdotal and sketchy, I’ve wondered: Are authors being gaslit by all the “promote, promote, promote” messages they hear?

Two recent, gold-plated articles suggest that social media is, to put it mildly, oversold to writers as a tool for selling books. Here’s more on the best research on the issue and, if you’re an author or would like to be, how it can help you:

https://medium.com/illumination/how-social-media-can-and-cant-help-you-sell-books-d660317438c5