Hello! I’m the Girl is $2.99 wherever ebooks are sold for the month of June and I would love, very much, if you got it and told all your friends about it.
I like these letters to take a certain form and to have a certain focus, but I spent much of April sick and May dealing with the fallout, so what you get from me in June is something more . . . diffuse. [Edit: what you got from me is a TED Talk about marketing.] It was all just enough feeling bad to get in the way; my writing suffered, so to compensate, I shifted my attention to my two upcoming paperback releases—more specifically, to the shape and facilitation of their future promo.
Yeah, lol.
Self-promotion, marketing—a highly individual thing for authors. There’s no right or wrong way to do it, and I’d never offer anything remotely prescriptive on the subject except this: all questions pertaining to the business of your art are ones you should feel free and respected enough to ask.
For the most part, I deeply like promoting my books. There’s something very exciting and gratifying about interpreting the stories I’ve written into new, and especially visual spaces. Graphics. Posters. Trailers. Short . . . films? I even like creating the more blatantly promotional stuff because I tend to employ humor and get to communicate a more accessible concept of a Courtney Summers reader to people interested in becoming one. It should be no shock that, as an author, I want my books read, otherwise I wouldn’t have published them. The idea of people reading them thrills me. The reality of it? Holy fuck, wow.
I don’t feel pushed outside of my art when I assume the promotional side of my career because I’ve arrived at something that serves what my work is and what I want the perception of it to be. It acts as an extension of the experiences my novels provide. It also feels meaningful and purposeful, which is very important to me; if I have the hubris to ask for something from you, whether that be your time, attention, or money, that intentionality is my way of showing my readers and prospective readers respect.
A general rule of thumb for authors using social media as a self-promotional tool is to do what you like and to forget the rest because it hardly moves the needle anyway—except, you know. When it does.
But the unspoken part of this rule is that your books aren’t guaranteed a presence in spaces you’ve chosen not to make yourself a part of. Instead, that space just becomes a new point of negotiation. And let me tell you: any author absent on any kind of social media still wants to see their books there.
I did TikTok early on in I’m the Girl’s publication cycle until its front-facing nature became an increasingly uncomfortable experience for me. I deleted my account. Still, it wasn’t an easy choice because I enjoyed the readers I had connected with on the platform. Because its potential was obvious. Because its ability to change the trajectory of the careers of the authors it shines its light on was well-established. Because I’d already had conversations expressing my interest in generating interest in I’m the Girl within that community, but it was made clear the book sat outside such angling, as the app was too hard to predict to strategize in that way for it, at least to any great extent.
But readers are there. And on BookTok, which comprises so many bookworms of varying tastes, I knew my readers were there. I hope this is illustrative of how fraught this stuff can be, and why you might see an author agonizing over their socials at any moment. It’s hard to give up or admit you aren’t suited to a platform when, beyond its algorithm, are these very real people you want your book to meet for the chance to become that perfectly timed story in their lives. So at the point I left, I was aware their best chance of that was likely going to be through me and that I was about to forfeit a really beautiful possibility because I couldn’t get on camera and feel good about it or myself.
Do what you like and forget the rest—and the rest will forget you.
Online platforms reward content that serves the platform. It’s about what brings consumers to it and keeps them there. Which is fine. That’s just the world turning. But it’s also what made BookTok’s point of origin so fucking awesome, because—despite being a consumer-targeted platform with an end-goal of generating revenue because yes, TikTok was always about that—a love of reading, of books, and sharing in that love set its rules.
It’s still very much driven by this, but the more viable a community space becomes in terms of profit, the more corporations will come for its members, consumers, with the intention of directing their interest to whatever it is they want to sell the most of. To get your attention, they’re going to generate content that serves the platform because that has the best chance of being pushed out to the broadest audience. So we’re looking at what’s viral, what’s meme-able, or has the highest potential to be.
This is why you might see a proliferation of book features from publishers comparing titles to Taylor Swift songs, especially when she drops a new album. There’s nothing wrong with being a Swiftie or writing the book that was made for them—Sadie said No Body, No Crime!—or seizing a zeitgeist to sell a book. I’m just pulling a pop star who’s earned an incredibly broad audience, and who also happens to be in the middle of A Moment as an example of ways things become marketing shorthand for other industries in hopes of reaching a similar level of audience. (I actually love most Like This, Try That marketing.) On TikTok, it’s more likely to present as the intense amplification of titles that are similar to titles that already Did That.
What interests me is what happens to books and authors that cannot employ that shorthand. (We know what happens.) How does this impact diverse titles? What happens to discoverability when virality supersedes all? What happens when that lack of variation, the sameness, becomes the primary, and then only feature of a major sell? What happens to our language for books, reading, stories, and readers, when the focus gets this narrow? (We know the answers to these questions too.)
Something else I like to consider when I’m being sold to is what is actually being communicated to me about my individual worth, if every time I log on, there’s nothing really for me on the fyp.
I always think about Seth Godin’s ‘smallest viable audience’ which was a game-changer for me in terms of asserting my work and my audience’s value in conversations pertaining to marketing, which okay, maybe is the second thing I’ll get prescriptive about when it comes to the subject: whether or not it always feels like it, authors, your readers are out there, and are always there to push for. There’s no question. The smallest viable audience prizes the language of specificity and offering an experience that might not be for everyone, but is definitely for someone, while also recognizing the individuals those experiences are for comprise a much larger whole. Or, let’s take it back to pop stars—two distinct artists might not fill the same stadiums, but it’s likely they’re both drawing a crowd.
(Side note to mention how at capacity publishing often is. The industry has long been defined—perhaps now more than ever—by grueling workloads and overburdened, under-staffed teams who have very limited resources and are forced to manage very large lists. I have lots of empathy for authors who have to negotiate their livelihoods around that reality, and the people on the other side of the desk who have to negotiate that reality around an author’s livelihood. We’re all out here just fighting for our lives.)
Anyway. I started a TikTok, lol.
I’m just not at peace with the idea of my bibliography’s discoverability hinging on attributes they might not possess; my novels about rape culture are still in want of that perfect trending sound. Despite this, I think it’s cool to speak to individual readers and specific audiences. I think it’s very much okay when a book is not for everyone—and I’ve often said mine aren’t. But I really fucking believe in who they are for, and I wanted my books on an app that hosts a large community of readers that includes those who might have read them and those who might need to read them the most.
Once I decided that, I had to decide how I’d be on there. I really respect and admire authors who are comfortable enough to face-forward on TikTok in service of these same goals, but I’m still not, so this is where I’m at—
@notcourtneysummers is where you can revisit and discover key moments in my devastating novels through comic form alongside the text it draws from. This particular era of girls (2008 - 2022) will be explored on the platform and getting regularly updated until I’m the Girl releases in paperback in April 2024. I’m not sure what role the account will play in my next adventure, but for now, follow along if my books haven’t hurt you enough—and pass it along if you’re the type of person inclined to share pain.
And yes, everything about it is designed to fail by both TikTok and publishing industry metrics.
But it’s already succeeding by my own.
Preorder the paperback edition of The Project.
Purchase I’m the Girl.
courtneysummers.ca
instagram.com/summerscourtney
tiktok.com/@notcourtneysummers
I always appreciate your perspective on marketing! This is a great approach.
Still very proud of my The Project, “No Body No Crime” reel 😁