This month I set myself a challenge: do a social media post promoting my books once every day during September.

The reasons for this were many. I’ve written recently on how I’ve been struggling with my creative journey a lot over the last few years. The cumulative effects of the pandemic, menopause and an arts scene increasingly seen as the preserve of the posh have left me too often feeling like I’m chronically unproductive, I don’t belong, I don’t add anything to the world with my writing, and nobody cares even if I do.

Plus, like many artists – like many women! – I feel embarrassed about putting myself out there. I feel like I bang on about my books so much that people must find it boring / self-centred / big-headed / deluded. Also, I worry that doing so only calls attention to the fact that I haven’t published anything in the last few years, in effect highlighting my own significant failings.

But making art of any sort involves pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, and promoting it is a necessary evil. So, I figured, with the fairly low stakes of one social media post a day, how hard can it be? Turns out, actually quite hard!

But I did feel it taught me a lot. And while I am certainly not here to offer you a crash course in successful marketing techniques – hey, you have those, feel free to share – I do feel it boosted my confidence, started some conversations about my books that excited me and, yes, even got me some new readers. So here’s what the process taught me.

1: This shit is HARD, especially if you are a woman and / or you come from a less privileged group where you have been socially trained not to ‘brag’ and you don’t have a group of connected people who can brag about you on your behalf. I really struggled with actually just telling people, hey, my books are good, you should read them, rather than making some self-deprecating joke or playing the pity card (“pwease help a struggling writer, pwease….”)

2: Imposter syndrome is REAL, especially if your art is not your main source of income: I spoke to some incredibly talented / accomplished women who still felt bad / fake promoting their work because they weren’t a full-time creative. But remember: the vast majority of writers don’t make their living from their writing full time, and many of those who seem to actually have family money somewhere in the background. I personally know best-selling novelists and award-winning playwrights who still have to have day jobs, or supplement writing income with teaching or copywriting gigs. It doesn’t make your art less valid, and in fact it might actually make it more interesting and relevant.

3: You fear you are spamming people with promo but in reality, most social media algorithms are so fecked and most people are so busy they likely see 1 in 5 of your posts, if that. Don’t worry about it, just put yourself out there. (Again, from the conversations I had with other creatives: you will be amazed that a project that has consumed your every moment has passed other people by – even people who love you and want to support you. Everyone has a lot on their plate these days, and almost every social media platform is broken and swamped with ads. You think, god, they are sick of seeing this. They think, oh, I thought thingy had left Instagram, nice to see they are still alive.)

4: It’s MUCH easier to share nice things people have said about you than saying nice things about yourself. This is why you should shout about the art you love: it makes it so much easier for the artist! Halfway through the month I just couldn’t think of another thing to post, so asked people for ‘shelfies’ (pictures of my books), I dug through my files for photos readers / friends has sent me, I shared reviews. There’s something very validating about a third party saying ‘you should read / go see / buy this’. Personal recommendations are super effective. Cultivate them where you can, and never feel shy about sharing a nice thing someone has said about you or our work. (In my experience, the only people who tout the ‘oh, it’s vulgar to retweet / reshare compliments’ line are well-connected poshos who have contacts who will do this for them. The rest of us need to blow our own trumpets!)

5: View the achievement not as the results you get from your promo (that isn’t always obvious or immediate) but as the fact you are doing it. You are making a commitment to promote and share your work. Go you!

6: Concrete calls to action are often more effective than general posts. People often want to help, make it easy for them to do so and clear what they can do. (eg, “vote for my show in these awards!”) This can be tough when your only call to action is ‘please buy my book’, I know that. But you can ask for reviews, comments, shares, engagement. Give people something to do and often, they will be happy to do it.

7: Don’t mock bloggers and booktokkers and bookstagrammers / theatregrammers etc. It’s hard to come up with this content regularly! They are a vital part of the eco-system now. It’s very easy to go down the ‘TikTok is destroying literature’ route, but for a start that is often a disguise for gendered criticism (oh, these shallow girls with their silly books with pretty covers) and also, anyone who encourages people to read should be celebrated. Obviously, there are some terrible people out there whose views might make you want to jump out of a window, but that is true in any sphere. There are plenty of authors I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a lift with. My own experience with bloggers is they can be incredibly creative and supportive and I think we’d all be worse off without them.

8: Don’t feel you can only promote new work. Your oldest work might still be new to someone! I really struggled with this, I admit… but then I think, hang on. I love discovering an author who already has a whole series I can enjoy. I don’t only read new books or watch new films. Why shouldn’t I be the author someone discovers and learns to their delight they don’t have to wait before bingeing the series?

9: Be creative in your promotion but be ethical. Start posting AI stuff – ‘oh, I used AI to see what my characters would look like / created this poster with AI / got AI to design a fun quiz’ and you will alienatea huge swathe of other artists. AI is a water-guzzling plagiarism machine (don’t @ me on this, I don’t care if you disagree) and most ethical artists are against it in any artistic context. (I admit I started out using Canva to create images, then had to ditch it when I realised they are planning to roll out AI and bump up their charges to pay for it. Nope!)

10: Final one: Anyone who is creating art in the current climate is fighting an uphill battle. Against funding cuts, AI slop, etc. It can feel like we are constantly competing with other artists for a sliver of money and attention, but the truth is most other artists are your teammates, not your competition. Support other creatives as best you can!

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Buy my books: 

Rom-com with a dash of Northern charm: The Bridesmaid Blues

Paranormal adventure with snark and sexiness: Dark Dates: Cassandra Bick Chronicles: Volume 1

If you want to read something a bit darker, try my earlier novel Doll and my short stories No Love is This. 

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