Miscellany

[sholio]

You know, I think tomorrow I'll be ready to start working again, but the extent of my brain just Going Down this week has been really something. In retrospect it's kind of amazing how blitzed I was mentally by the end of last week; I remember one day where it took me something like half the day to write a mailing list email. Note to my future self: take breaks before it gets that bad! Your brain is not a machine, and even machines need to cool down sometimes! Anyway, I am very fortunate to have a job where I can take a week off when I really need it, and I really needed it.

By way of muccamukk, a post at selenak's on why MCU's Secret Invasion miniseries was so bad: Secret Invasion, or: How Not To Do a Spy Or Any Other Miniseries. I watched the first couple episodes of this back in June, because I love spy stuff and I love Nick Fury, but it was just awful - draggy, slow-paced, and egregiously stupid on nearly every level. The MCU doesn't do politics very well most of the time anyway, and espionage really needs to lean into politics, so that was probably never going to work out well, but even apart from that it was terrible! Nothing made sense, they squandered every opportunity for cool spy stuff and for shapeshifter identity porn, it was just bad. (Also, every spoiler I have picked up since I stopped watching makes it sound like things did not improve even slightly.)

And I found this link at Tor.com really interesting: What Do We Want From the Bookish Internet?, talking about the demise of Twitter and where to go from here. It was an interesting read in part because it doesn't jibe with my experience of being an author at all (but clearly everyone has a different experience). In particular, the article bemoans the loss of blogs, as I sit here typing about it on a blog, and talks about how authors need to find something new to market their books without Twitter, when I have never marketed my books on Twitter and I'm doing just fine; the phenomenon of authors-on-Twitter as this big thing pretty much passed me by entirely, as Booktok is continuing to do now. Maybe I'll jump on whatever the next big thing is, maybe I won't, but I'm entirely confident there'll be a next big thing. I think it always feels terrible to lose whatever your Big Thing was, though, as a lot of authors are losing Twitter now.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I just skimmed that essay, but it seems really out of touch with what the kids these days have been doing for some time! When Trans Rights Readathon happened this spring, the vast majority of the posting was happening on Instagram and TikTok, with twitter a distant third. Booktwitter has been a shit show for years, and everyone knows it.

(As I've said elsewhere, I did think about getting a book-centred insta so I could talk to the canlit people, but I just can't be bothered with the start up effort, and all that photography, ugh.)

[sholio]

Yeeeeeeeep, that was my thought as well. Like I was saying below to helen_keeble, I bet that author Twitter at this point is mostly tradpub authors who got into it when it was the big marketing place and stayed because they like it and/or because their publishers are encouraging them to "market" on there, while reader discussion spaces are mostly elsewhere at this point, because shockingly readers like to discuss books in a place where they don't have authors hanging over their shoulder trying to market things at them constantly.

[muccamukk]

And readers like to discuss things using more than 240 characters!

[sholio]

You'd THINK so! I'm still amazed that Twitter somehow became a platform for long-form discussion. I appreciate the ingenuity of people doing so there and the reasons why - because everyone has it and because people talk about the things they're into on the platform they're on - but it's so dreadfully ill-suited to it.

[sholio]

Oh yeah, and the reader-space vs author-space thing is exactly why I give my books away for free here, because at the very beginning of this selfpub thing, I realized that I very much did not want to turn my DW into a book marketing platform and hope never to do so. But I also didn't want to completely never mention this kinda huge thing in my life, so that's the compromise I came up with that lets me talk about it while keeping this space the kind of space I want it to be.

[muccamukk]

It's interesting, in the bookstagram places I know, there's a feeling that negativity about books is Bad, and I always assumed that it was because they didn't want the authors to see it, but maybe they just don't want to harsh anyone's vibes. I follow a couple podcasts, and they rarely seem to not like books, but maybe they're just better at picking than I am.

[muccamukk]

And maybe I just got there too late, but the crowd hanging around GRRM's blog always had a very Senpei Notice Me vibe. Though I was in comments on Jim Hines' blog from time to time, and it was fine.

[yhlee]

Yeahhhh I was not a Twitter author either (98% of my Tweets were catten pics, my publicists hated me because they could barely get me to even Tweet about my own releases), it was fine for me, although I know this was not the case for others.

[sholio]

I suspect at this point there are a lot of people marketing on Twitter just because they've been told they're supposed to, whether or not it actually works. I think it probably does work if you love the site, love talking about your books and other things there, and stick around long enough to build up a large following. For everyone else ... yeah.

[helen_keeble]

I kinda feel book Twitter was entirely a few prolific SF/F authors, which may be why Tor readership mourns it more than most.

[helen_keeble]

(Though I’ve just realised that of course there was Courtney Milan and a fair section of romancelandia on there as well a few years ago - I remember much discussion of cockygate happening via tweet - though I have no idea if they were still there more recently)

[yhlee]

YA Twitter was big for a while IIRC, and thank God my YA books are coming out AFTER Twitter's turned into a zombie, I so do not want to deal.

[sholio]

Yeah, and the absolute lack of mention of Tiktok is also really telling!

My guess is that book Twitter at this point is mostly tradpub authors who got in on it when it *was* the hot place to market books and pivot very slowly, if at all, so they don't realize it's moved elsewhere and neither do their agents, publishers, and immediate circle of author friends, all of whom are also encouraging them to tweet about their books as their main form of promotion ...

And I mean, honestly, if you're a tradpub author who's had a decade to build up a following there, it probably *is* a decent marketing tool, better than switching to a new social media where no one knows you and you aren't comfortable with the interface.

I also think the author of the Tor article is conflating "marketing" with "chatting with readers and other authors about my books in a place I'm comfortable." Which is a very valid thing to want! But one thing I noticed was their dismissal of Goodreads combined with the person in the comments who mentions that, as a reader, they really like Goodreads for a place to talk about books and don't want authors on there.

I would think any circle where a lot of authors hang out isn't going to be a popular reader space and vice versa. You and I both saw that there was pushback from Booktok when a lot of authors started moving into it because the early adopter readers and influencers didn't really want to be crowded with authors trying to market books at them. Nobody does! In fact Booktok already seems to be crashing as a way of organically marketing books, at least as per discussion on 20books. I bet a lot of social media follows the pattern of [lots of readers congregate there -> authors and other marketers move in to sell them things --> readers go elsewhere.]

[snowynight]

I agree. I want my reader space to separate from the authors.

[epeeblade]

Courtney Milan and a few others are still posting regularly, but a lot have moved on.

[ellenmillion]

Brains need breaks! A write-in next week, maybe?

[sholio]

Yes!! Let's talk about it at gaming. (Does she have a morning or afternoon camp next week?)

[ellenmillion]

Mornings, 9-12! We'll make plans at gaming.

[sheron]

Reading the Skrulls post I ran across (SPOILER BELOW)


the idea that Rhodey has been a Skrull since Civil War?! As in, none of the stuff between him and Tony since then was real? How about hell to the no. I'm not even in MCU right now but this pisses me off.

[cornerofmadness]

I was just talking this with someone. There are too many twitter clones and almost all of them are decentralized so they won't work the same. Mostly I'm just going with whatever my publisher de jour wants

[thawrecka]

Book twitter always looked like such a nightmare I didn't want to go near it, honestly. What with the horrific pile ons when people tried to turn author grudges into someone being problematic, so they could ruin their career.

[leesa_perrie]

Brains need breaks, it's a good thing to know! Glad you took the time out.

Haven't seen Secret Invasion, waiting until Sept when Jayne and I get together. I skipped most of the paragraph about it, but picked up that it's a bit draggy. Oh well, I won't go into it with high expectations, and if it's too draggy, well, we have plenty of others things to catch up on!!

The whole Twitter thing passed me by. I tried it, gave up, tried again, gave up etc and so on over the years. Finally decided it's just not the place for me.

[lunabee34]

For me, identifying when I'm starting to go downhill is hard. And then when I realize it, I'm often in a place where I can't take a break because I've got meetings or finals are due or whatever. I need to get better at realizing the very beginning of things starting to go bad so I can take a break then instead of realizing when it's Too Late.

Sorry to write a diary entry in your journal, but this post made me think of that. LOL

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Thanks for saving me time on Secret Invasion! I felt like I ought to watch, but I didn't feel as if I wanted to watch, so I kept putting off making a decision. Now I can choose to spend my time better (I didn't realize Good Omens s2 was already out until yesterday!).

I feel very old when people talk about the death of blogs and LJ. Of course, I can comment on other people's DW, but I can't seem to write entries myself any more! I keep meaning to work on that. . . .