It’s the first Wednesday of the very first month of 2024 (2024, HOW?!). So it must be time for us Insecure Writers to shine! More specifically, it’s time for the support of our fellow IWSG members to lend us a temporary sheen of confidence. It’s like an all-purpose glitter bath for the soul, and you can sign up for it yourself here.
As always, members have volunteered to keep us all on track with our posts and comments. This month, we owe our thanks to Joylene Nowell Butler, Olga Godim, Diedre Knight, and Natalie Aguirre! (Hi, Natalie!)
And the optional question to start us off in 2024 is: Do you follow back your readers on BookBub or do you only follow back other authors?
Ha. Bahahaha! Oh, I love how this question pre-supposes I have readers who follow me on BookBub. Your confidence in me gives me confidence, IWSG, and I love you for it.
I do have a BookBub profile, and one more than 10 followers. Which came as a genuine surprise to me, because I don’t . . . um . . . spend a lot of time on BookBub. To be brutally honest, I spend more time on Goodreads updating what I have and haven’t read and making trope lists, and YET MORE time on Bookstagram. BookBub has some very neat features, though, and I should take better advantage of them!
I did notice that every single person I follow on BookBub is an author, and everyone who follows me in return is also an author. So unintentionally and entirely by default, the answer to this month’s questions is only other authors. Are there any actual readers on BookBub, or are they mythical? A hope and a dream offered by BookBub to lure us writers into using it? Is it just a promotion platform for authors, by authors? These are the life questions I now ponder. This gave me a fun mental image of identical ground squirrels popping their heads out of their dens to screech identical noises at one another, so thank you for the laugh today.
I hope the new year treats you gently, with care and consideration, health and hot drinks which are always the perfect temperature. May your ideas flow freely and the words to write them with come easily for you, author friends.
6 comments
Marketing is the devil ? Sell myself ? Once wrote a public exam essay, set title ‘ I believe in..’
My essay ? I believe in myself.
School ( convent) appalled, tore me in pieces, at assembly, utter wickedness.
( school not supposed to read or otherwise tamper with exam entries.)
Think of my books as pebbles on the global beach ?
In our downstairs bathroom, the one favoured by spiders and various invertebrates, a heart-shaped pebble. came from the causeway to St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, a family holiday for the 1999 total eclipse. Spotted on the way over, so I left it there, Still there on our way back – so it’s mine. Nobody argued.
I am somewhat grateful I didn’t go to your school! Yikes. And yes, I love the image of our books being pebbles on a global beach, left for readers to find. Something shiny about them will attract their eyes, and it will be theirs. Nobody will argue 🙂
Happy new year. I’m the same and don’t really think much about Bookbub. For a while I was concerned with getting more followers there, but lost interest. There are readers there, otherwise their highly priced promotions wouldn’t have the appeal they do with some authors. I just don’t think it’s a place that fosters interaction like other social sites (can it even be called a social media? another question to ponder).
I feel the same. There’s just no interaction, and I lose interest quickly. It’s a good way to find out about new releases from my favorite authors, which I immediately go buy. So in that way, it’s a successful site.
I know there are benefits to BookBub and readers on there, I’m just not on the site enough to benefit.
Same!