BookTalk.org

Ever since I’ve backed away from mainstream social media sites, friends, most of them writers, have reached out to ask me how I’m doing. Even though I appreciate the kindness in their asking, I can’t help but feel some kind of motive to try and coax me back into the world of mainstream social media.

For a writer, artist, musician, or creator of any kind, social media is a lot of work. It can be draining to realize you're waking each day to carve out a chunk of time for preparing promotional posts to upload to social media.

I spent so much time trying to promote myself, I began to feel disconnected from what I promoted, my writing. For this reason, I stopped selling my fiction online and decided to post my work on the Internet Archive where it’s free to read and download.

So now, I’m back to the old school message boards where it might take two weeks or two years for a post to gain a comment, but surprisingly they do get viewed. I notice on BookTalk my story links do get views, and at the end of the day, that’s all I really want as a person who enjoys writing. Knowing their viewed is more like placing a poster in a bookstore window or dropping off samples of my writing at coffee shops and bookstores, and it’s a lot less work.

Count this as an insta-response!
Send a link / I'll read it and might even post a rave review!

Thanks, LanDroid. Sent you a message.

UPDATE on my original post "Social Media is Work!"

I have returned to main stream social media but am going to spend more time working on my writing and less time on social media.

I came to this conclusion after a week away from main stream social media I made considerable progress on a story I'm writing. If I use main stream social media sparingly, mainly for updates and link shares to my writing, I might be able to manage having it without it interfering with my time.

If you're reading this and don't use social media for updates on your writing life or content creation, it probably seems silly, yet for me, a person who got his first story published by sending a query letter by snail mail, it's been an endurance test. lol

Thanks for reading.

Hey there! It's great to hear about your update on managing your social media usage and focusing more on your writing.

Social media will suck you down into a vortex that you may never escape from. Better to avoid it, in my opinion. Or at least keep it at a safe enough distance so it doesn't become consuming.

As someone who's active on multiple social platforms, I can definitely see how it's become a significant part of our lives, both personally and professionally. One issue that strikes me is the blurring boundary between our work and personal lives. While using social media for professional purposes is essential, it can lead to potential burnout and loss of privacy if we don't set clear boundaries.

I hear you, and I feel exactly the same. Social media pay lip-service to creators, but what they do is turning artists and writers into entrepreneurs with everyone competing for the spotlight and buying into the promises of marketing tools. I am nowhere to be found except on tumblr. As an obscure author, I know I will not get the type of exposure I could have on X, Instagram, or Facebook, but I refuse to work round the clock for self-promotion and get sucked into the system. What brings me here in the first place is precisely the more traditional approach to online engagement—what it was meant to be in the beginning and what it should have remained.