I'm so sorry to hear this. Because I teach social, I have to keep a presence there, and I'm always so careful of what I say. I turned down a NYT interview about my dissatisfaction about Twitter because I was fairly sure that would get me banned in a hot minute. I don't use it as much anymore, because I feel so sad when I'm there...it's so full of hate and trolls now. It's actually why I turned to SubStack...figured I needed to find new ways to connect. Twitter absolutely was a fantastic billboard...a way for people to discover new things, new people, new ideas. I really miss what it was. I am hopeful for Jack Dorsey's BlueSky, but who knows--he's the one who pushed Elon to buy Twitter after all, so not sure how his common sense is holding up these days.
I'm really hopeful that some kind of phoenix will emerge from all these ashes -- maybe Notes, maybe something else. It feels like the internet has really calcified over the last 10-12 years, and I'd love to see some new players and new paradigms challenge what's become the norm. I worry that the increased corporatization of the internet is too huge an impediment to that.... but I still hope for it!
Ok, talk about serendipity. Just got my BlueSky invite. Looks a lot like Twitter but with Mastodon-like addies for people. I'll let you know how it goes!
Whenever I see people talk about how Twitter presence doesn't translate into sales, I wonder how they're measuring it and accounting for all the variables. I'm just one data point, but I ABSOLUTELY have discovered a ton of new authors via Twitter, even if indirectly... including you (I started following Alexandra Rowland when they were retweeted by another writer I follow, which led me to Worldbuilding for Masochists, which led me to you and your co-hosts). It sucks that you were banned and I'm so sorry, I hope you can get reinstated soon. Love your books, I have the new one purchased and in my TBR queue, can't wait to find out how that cliffhanger resolves :)
I think what we usually mean is that there's very little *direct* translation -- if I post a link, that link is only rarely going to result in someone clicking on it *and* immediately buying something. But the real value is, as you say, that ... well, people discover people! Someone might not click the link and buy the first time they see it, but they might on the seventh, or eleventh, or whatever, after they've been following me a while. Or they see it, add it to a wishlist, and get it later on. And that's great! It builds real community -- and it's why my books have been fortunate enough to have a very long tail. Even with the relaunch and nearly five years after the initial release, FROM UNSEEN FIRE still sells at a steady pace. It's a small steady, but it's consistent, and I love that.
You have just described my own book purchasing habits to a T :) And I think you're absolutely right that it's the engagement between authors as members of a community that sells the books much better than sheer self-promotion... which is precisely why Twitter is (was?) a good platform for that, as it facilitates that kind of engagement.
incredible. And I completely understand about other platforms. IG isn't good for exchange/conversation (even beyond having to pay for traction). Mastodon 's vibe doesn't work for me. I have an account on Post, which looks good, but, like IG, it doesn't foster casual exchange and also weights heavily in favor of a few big names, although at least it doesn't have the bots and spamming of IG, from what little I've seen.
I tried Post but found it so dull that I gave up quickly. May have to give it another shot, though! And today, at least, I'm spending more time on Mastodon and trying to convince myself to like it better. Do I have to go back to Tumblr? Or Dreamwidth? 😅
I really do believe there will be a tide shift eventually. Twitter will die, as all platforms die, and something else will take its place. I just need that new thing to... exist! And have enough overlap with Twitter's demise that the communities migrate successfully. It's happened before, but for some reason it feels much harder now. Corporate control has caused the internet to calcify over the last decade.
I'm exactly the same. I have abandoned dying platforms before (GEnie, sff.net, livejournal) and not looked back while others held on to the bitter end, so it's interesting (to me) that Twitter has made me a bitter-ender.
I have not in fact been to Post more than, like, 4 times, so I'm not active there. I just liked its look. The vibe on Mastodon just doesn't seem to rub well with me and I'm not sure why. I have a Tumblr account but . . . yeah, iow, I'm mad that the big toddler man has to wreck something that, with all its faults, works well for so many.
I held on to LJ until, like, 2015. 😅 I was only posting once a month or so at that point, mostly for myself, but still... I held on far longer than was probably sensible. But it stopped being my primary platform long before that. I joined Twitter in '08 and Tumblr in... gosh... 2011, probably? I feel like I was slightly late there. But it meant LJ wasn't my mainstay by the time its death spiral became truly unrecoverable.
Yeah I think, for me, and to agree with you, what is bothersome in this moment is that I just don't have anything I feel can remotely take over (however fragmentedly) what Twitter offers me. Nothing waiting in the wings (except Mastodon, of which . . . bleh)
That's so damn frustrating, I'm sorry. Fwiw, I find your Instagram presence to be very 'marketable' though I know discoverability there is not great. 💜
Ahahaha, thanks. Yeah, it's so hard to get traction there without paying for it, and the bots and spammers there are worse than on Twitter, which is why I don't post there as often as I used to. But that may change now! 🙃
I'm so sorry to hear this. Because I teach social, I have to keep a presence there, and I'm always so careful of what I say. I turned down a NYT interview about my dissatisfaction about Twitter because I was fairly sure that would get me banned in a hot minute. I don't use it as much anymore, because I feel so sad when I'm there...it's so full of hate and trolls now. It's actually why I turned to SubStack...figured I needed to find new ways to connect. Twitter absolutely was a fantastic billboard...a way for people to discover new things, new people, new ideas. I really miss what it was. I am hopeful for Jack Dorsey's BlueSky, but who knows--he's the one who pushed Elon to buy Twitter after all, so not sure how his common sense is holding up these days.
I'm really hopeful that some kind of phoenix will emerge from all these ashes -- maybe Notes, maybe something else. It feels like the internet has really calcified over the last 10-12 years, and I'd love to see some new players and new paradigms challenge what's become the norm. I worry that the increased corporatization of the internet is too huge an impediment to that.... but I still hope for it!
Ok, talk about serendipity. Just got my BlueSky invite. Looks a lot like Twitter but with Mastodon-like addies for people. I'll let you know how it goes!
Please do! As optimistic as I am about Notes, I'm also definitely hedging my bets until the dust all settles *somewhere*.
Also, just saw this: https://twitter.com/bluesky/status/1644474292099510272?s=20
Whenever I see people talk about how Twitter presence doesn't translate into sales, I wonder how they're measuring it and accounting for all the variables. I'm just one data point, but I ABSOLUTELY have discovered a ton of new authors via Twitter, even if indirectly... including you (I started following Alexandra Rowland when they were retweeted by another writer I follow, which led me to Worldbuilding for Masochists, which led me to you and your co-hosts). It sucks that you were banned and I'm so sorry, I hope you can get reinstated soon. Love your books, I have the new one purchased and in my TBR queue, can't wait to find out how that cliffhanger resolves :)
I think what we usually mean is that there's very little *direct* translation -- if I post a link, that link is only rarely going to result in someone clicking on it *and* immediately buying something. But the real value is, as you say, that ... well, people discover people! Someone might not click the link and buy the first time they see it, but they might on the seventh, or eleventh, or whatever, after they've been following me a while. Or they see it, add it to a wishlist, and get it later on. And that's great! It builds real community -- and it's why my books have been fortunate enough to have a very long tail. Even with the relaunch and nearly five years after the initial release, FROM UNSEEN FIRE still sells at a steady pace. It's a small steady, but it's consistent, and I love that.
You have just described my own book purchasing habits to a T :) And I think you're absolutely right that it's the engagement between authors as members of a community that sells the books much better than sheer self-promotion... which is precisely why Twitter is (was?) a good platform for that, as it facilitates that kind of engagement.
incredible. And I completely understand about other platforms. IG isn't good for exchange/conversation (even beyond having to pay for traction). Mastodon 's vibe doesn't work for me. I have an account on Post, which looks good, but, like IG, it doesn't foster casual exchange and also weights heavily in favor of a few big names, although at least it doesn't have the bots and spamming of IG, from what little I've seen.
I tried Post but found it so dull that I gave up quickly. May have to give it another shot, though! And today, at least, I'm spending more time on Mastodon and trying to convince myself to like it better. Do I have to go back to Tumblr? Or Dreamwidth? 😅
I really do believe there will be a tide shift eventually. Twitter will die, as all platforms die, and something else will take its place. I just need that new thing to... exist! And have enough overlap with Twitter's demise that the communities migrate successfully. It's happened before, but for some reason it feels much harder now. Corporate control has caused the internet to calcify over the last decade.
I'm exactly the same. I have abandoned dying platforms before (GEnie, sff.net, livejournal) and not looked back while others held on to the bitter end, so it's interesting (to me) that Twitter has made me a bitter-ender.
I have not in fact been to Post more than, like, 4 times, so I'm not active there. I just liked its look. The vibe on Mastodon just doesn't seem to rub well with me and I'm not sure why. I have a Tumblr account but . . . yeah, iow, I'm mad that the big toddler man has to wreck something that, with all its faults, works well for so many.
I held on to LJ until, like, 2015. 😅 I was only posting once a month or so at that point, mostly for myself, but still... I held on far longer than was probably sensible. But it stopped being my primary platform long before that. I joined Twitter in '08 and Tumblr in... gosh... 2011, probably? I feel like I was slightly late there. But it meant LJ wasn't my mainstay by the time its death spiral became truly unrecoverable.
Yeah I think, for me, and to agree with you, what is bothersome in this moment is that I just don't have anything I feel can remotely take over (however fragmentedly) what Twitter offers me. Nothing waiting in the wings (except Mastodon, of which . . . bleh)
I've found Counter Social to be a friendly place, though a lot more low key than Twitter.
That's so damn frustrating, I'm sorry. Fwiw, I find your Instagram presence to be very 'marketable' though I know discoverability there is not great. 💜
Ahahaha, thanks. Yeah, it's so hard to get traction there without paying for it, and the bots and spammers there are worse than on Twitter, which is why I don't post there as often as I used to. But that may change now! 🙃