Why my Guinea Pigs have more followers than Fly on the Wall on YouTube
...and other hard facts about using social media for book marketing!
Hello Scribblers,
Hope you have some cozy weekend plans. I’ve just finished ‘Cursed Bread’ by Sophie Mackintosh, which was a wild gothic novella of desire and envy, highly recommend! On the subject of gothic, before we dive into a social media marketing newsletter, I wanted to tell you about three short fiction 2024 pre-orders that we’ve just opened!
Maps of Imaginary Towns by SJ Bradley (September 2024)
Short fiction which takes us on a journey from a futuristic colony planet where a woman named Anna dreams of building a rocket, to a drab council estate where a little girl finds magic in hardship.
Modern Gothic (October 2024. Curated anthology featuring Lerah Mae Barcenilla, Lauren Archer, Rose Biggin, Michael Bird, Pete Hartley and Edward Karshner.)
Encounter landlords with sinister requests, ethereal housemates, and a glass-encased jungle built by an eccentric father.
Ingrown by Katie Oliver (December 2024)
A teenage swimmer tries to remove an ingrown hair that takes on a life of its own. A town grapples with an uncontrollable growth of moss. A horror soundtrack haunts its composer.
As always, a big thank you for buying direct - super valuable to a small press owner and our fabulous authors.
P.s. This newsletter would usually be paid, but I wanted to tell you all about our first ever online course. I have the pleasure of chatting to authors and publishers about book PR and marketing for the last six years, and had lots of fun running a social media course last year. This year, I’m launching a series of online courses to give authors and aspiring authors the tools to grow an audience for their work.
The first is how to utilise Facebook as an author - recently 70% of FOTW website visitors have come from Facebook! Facebook provides a powerful platform for book marketing, offering targeting capabilities, engagement opportunities, and data analytics that align closely with the demographic profile of book readers. By leveraging these features effectively, authors can effectively promote their books to a highly receptive audience and drive sales and engagement within the vibrant community of book lovers. Plus, it is a free platform to use! (A fan page is not your personal Facebook page. So if you don’t have a ‘fan page’ check out this course here.)
Now let’s chat cute animals and books, shall we?!
As the owner of two adorable guinea pigs named Treacle and Truffle, I was amused to see that my lacklustre videos of their antics (eating, screaming, more eating) were gaining traction on YouTube, whilst the Fly on the Wall Press YouTube channel was struggling to grow an audience.
We know that the most popular pet influencers have followings in the millions, and some owners even quit their jobs to be the ‘manager’ of their pet’s partnership deals and social media. Rarely do I hear a story of start-up publishers quitting their jobs after their books ‘take off’ on social media… The hard truth is that cute critters capture attention much more easily than book commentary in the world of social media! I’ve even been in social media seminars whereby the speaker recommends to a room of publishing experts that they should ‘get their pets’ in book promotional imagery as a guaranteed way of gaining more engagement!
(For reference - 38k views for a badly recorded video of Treacle and Truffle jumping in happiness whilst chasing each other…)
Why Pets Beat Books on Social Media
Here's why my fuzzy little guinea pigs are winning the popularity contest:
Cuteness is a sweeping phenomenon. People are drawn to the aww-factor. Photos and videos of animal antics get engagement through the roof.
Pets are relaxing. Watching guinea pigs munch on veggies or curled up sleeping does not require brain power. Books, on the other hand, ask more of viewers. Especially politically-engaged reads!
Guinea pigs have understandable appeal. They eat, sleep, and play. Explaining a book's nuances is far more complicated.
My guinea pigs aren't trying to sell anything. Viewers don't have to invest money or effort into anything. But a book channel asks for commitment.
Social media algorithms favour mass appeal, which pets have in spades over book commentary content.
What This Means for Authors
The guinea pigs’ popularity gives me paws on what is needed to stand out on social (sorry not sorry for the pun).
No social media is ‘easy’ for publishers or authors to be visible on... Our books took years to write, and so it makes sense that we should also spend years promoting them. That brilliant final product deserves it.
So, we need to get savvy. Social media is free, and so we are the product. Tech leaders build algorithms which keep us on their platforms. That’s why a hard sell ‘buy my book’ never works – one, because people hate being sold to/told what to do, and two, because external links take consumers of social media away from that platform. Tech giants hate this, and so they deprioritise links in their algorithms.
So, what we should we do instead?
This is something I can talk for weeks on end about, indeed at one point I could track 50% of our sales as coming directly from Twitter clicks, (I love a marketing stat, don’t you?) But let’s do a whistle-stop tour.
Think about your audience
Social media is a minefield, and we all have limited time. Think about where your audience might be. For example, I know that I need a more curated social media approach if I am asking people to concentrate on a political novel. And as viewers now favour short videos – think 3 second video reels – so for FOTW, YouTube as a platform has never seemed an obvious way to capture interest. (I’m happy to let the pigs win on this one!)
Instagram is weighted towards female users, and the highest percentage of users are under 35. Perhaps that could be perfect for your readership, perhaps it just won’t work for your book at all. As a platform, it can seem a bit vapid. In the book community, it can seem as though there is a contest for who can take the most captivating image of their book. This can be dispiriting; however, readers can be fickle. We DO judge books by their cover. And I’ll be honest, if I’ve seen a book cover beautifully arranged on Instagram five times in the last month? I’ll probably pick it up next time I’m in a bookshop… just to have a look at that blurb and see if it matches up!
Tiktok: Publishers and trade newspapers talk about the ‘Tiktok’ effect. Waterstones and other retailers have started curating ‘Tiktok made me buy it’ inspired shelves – perhaps in a bid to appeal to younger readers. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I do know that I avoided recording my face on Tiktok for a very long time. I HATE watching myself back – from my voice to my expressions, I’d much rather talk about a book without being the face behind it. However, it is a necessary evil – something for me to get over, because as soon as I put myself behind the camera and started talking about who I was, and what Fly on the Wall Press published, our followers went up massively. Why? People want a connection. We connect with other people’s faces and expressions. We decide what kind of person they are from this. We decide whether we trust them.
This is why I always tell my authors and clients to have a social media account set up for themselves as author and not for a specific book. Readers can’t connect with an inanimate object. But they CAN connect with your story and your journey. I’ll hazard a guess that it is why you open this newsletter: I’m Isabelle, and not a stuffy corporation.
So perhaps give Tiktok a try. And be kind to your face. Other people like seeing and hearing you, I promise.
If you do fancy getting behind a camera, here are some tips for authors to succeed on YouTube, or Tiktok (and maybe even beat the guinea pigs’ ratings!):
1. Create a consistent content schedule. Post videos regularly, such as once a week, so fans know when to expect new content. Consistency is key for building a loyal audience.
2. Show some personality. Don't just talk about your books - give behind the scenes peeks at your life as an author. Let your viewers get to know the person behind the words.
3. Interact with readers. Ask for video topic suggestions, questions for Q&As, critiques on early drafts, etc. Engage your audience.
4. Use attention-grabbing thumbnails and titles. Make each video appealing to click on. Tease the content or convey excitement.
5. Vary your video style. Do book hauls, reading vlogs, writing process videos, bookish challenges, author interviews, etc. Provide variety to attract different subgroups.
6. Collaborate with other bookish YouTubers. Cross-promote each other to tap into combined fanbases.
7. Optimize video metadata with keywords. Help YouTube know your target audience for improved discoverability.
8. Promote your channel elsewhere. Talk about your YouTube content on your blog, social media, newsletter etc. Make it easy for readers to find.
Ok lovely Scribblers, have a great week, chat to you next Friday.
Isabelle x