[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Many would find it depressing to use Social Media and too much a waste of time. Also Mark Zuckerberg has 70% of Social Media and is exactly the sort of person anyone with a social conscious would love to hate. A parasitic and privacy invasive operation to sell user behavior to convince advertisers that his platforms are best. Apart from the exploitation, there is no proof it actually works. They've lied about video and advert views and selling of data.

The advertisers with large budgets, pretty much ignore what social media outlets tell them about alleged sales data, because they track sales, using data provided by the individuals they targeted.

Rephrasing: Advertisers with large budgets, can tell you the time that you purchased the product that was in a FaceBook add that you saw, even though you paid cash, when you made an in-store purchase of the item from a brick and mortar store.

It's depressing that the Big Publishers now look at Social Media profiles of possible authors and now expect perfectly proofed MSS and that the author, if given an advance and contract, is expected to be active on Social Media.

Amanda Hocking (^1), built her fan base using social media, to the point that St Martin's Press offered her a two million dollar book contract. It is possible for a nobody, to become a somebody, in a social media outlet.
However, for 99.9999% of the population, a 100 followers on Twitter, or YouTube, is the best that they will see.

Basically it's a LIE. Social Media only works if you are famous, or by luck, or you have cute kittens, or too much spare time. Maybe several of them.

Social media works, but it takes time, effort, and dedication. Each outlet has its own quirks, and idiosyncrasies. What works for one outlet, is a guaranteed disaster on a different outlet. Social media is an aspect of marketing, and as such, without knowing both why and who, efforts there are doomed.

For all practical purposes, social media marketing is a full time job. Probably the third or fourth person to hire/contract with, when starting a business. If hiring the sequence would go: Accountant, HR, Social Media person, with a lawyer on retainer. If self-employed the sequence would go: Lawyer, Accountant, Social Media person.)

Most of the money the big publishers spend on promotion is wasted.

19th century: John Wanamaker: «Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.»

21st century: Artem Mariychin: «The fundamental question for a lot of companies … is what is an individual customer worth?»

The issue has become whether one is willing to spend the cash to track the effectiveness of the marketing effort, or throw it into the wind, at a dollar a holler.

A tiny proportion become mass market. The majority don't even make the advance in royalties (though some of those do make a profit).

Andrew Wylie: «If my client’s book earns out, I haven’t done my job.»

The book publishing business has always been a loss-inducing business:
* 9 out of 10 books fail to pay for the cost of printing them;
* 9 out of 100 books pay for their own printing and publishing;
* 9 out of 1,000 books generate enough revenue, to cover the costs of the other books;
* 1 out of 1,000 books generates enough revenue, that the publishing house will show a net profit;

None of that has changed in the last millennia.

What has changed, is that the ease, and cost of entry has dropped,resulting in everybody and their brother publishing the slush pile. Nonetheless, unless the slush pile is the only thing on offer, consumers won't buy it. And even then, discriminating consumers will bypass the slush pile.

Would Bridges of Madison County become a best-seller, if it was released today? In theory, it would not have been necessary for the university press that originally published it, to sell it to one of the Seven Sisters, because POD can contract or expand, depending upon the quantity that is ordered that day. POD reduces the requirement to store umpteen unsold copies in the basement..

So it's really really hard to write and polish a good book. It's many times harder to promote it. And pimp is the right word for SM.

Marketing of books has always been a specialty within the world of marketing. What is new, is that the major media have completed abandoned even the pretense of marketing everything but their most expensive production.
If you are an author, who can't do marketing, your only option is to hire somebody who knows how to market books.

^1: I had forgotten her surname, and her books are so forgettable, I don't even remember what genre they allegedly are. I think I read one or two, but in as much as I don't even remember either her name, or their titles, I can safely assume that it was slush pile quality, with no redeeming features.
edit: (I found her name using a DDG search on her first name, "social media" and "publishing contract".)