What the TikTok Ban and Facebook *uckery Mean for Everyday Authors
Here we are on the eve of Trump 2.0. If you’re not feeling it, you’ve managed to burrow underground. And kudos to you for putting your mental health first. Seriously.
Yesterday, TikTok went offline. There’s been talk of this for months, of course, and now we’re watching unfold a well-orchestrated charade in which Trump is receiving his prerequisite flattery before he saves the day. The only suspense in this predictable B-grade movie is how many days he will string us along. I imagine this won’t last long.
Part of me wants to take this post down the road of how the GOP is running circles around the Dems, but you can read that on your political feeds. Instead, I’m here to talk about books, and the value of social media platforms to book people—both in terms of sales and community. And how our platforms have got us by the ovaries, friends, because not only have we built communities on their properties, we rely on them as a tool to promote and sell our products.
The book industry is just one of countless industries that’s become overdependent on social media. Forever I’ve been insisting that your social media presence isn’t all there is when it comes to author platform, and while that’s true because there are other things that matter, without any social media, you really don’t have an author platform. So, yeah—social media is the cornerstone, and more indispensable than it’s ever been for writers and authors.
TikTok
TikTok is famous in the book world for BookTok. BookTok is responsible for the stratospheric success of authors like Colleen Hoover and Brandon Sanderson. TikTok has taken a lot of flak over the years from writers of color who have posted and written about being deprioritized on the platform, and yet, TikTok as a discoverability tool for any author is undeniable.
TikTok does sell books. She Writes Press authors’ posts have gone viral from time to time, and the sales spikes are measurable. TikTok is Instagram on steroids. Its reach and growth potential seems to know no bounds, and one of the things my authors most like about it is how quickly their followings grow.
TikTok is home to authors and writers; book influencers; industry experts like agents and editors and more. TikTok has made stars out of many authors over the years, especially in genre fiction—romance, romantasy, YA, etc.
But don’t worry, TikTok will be back—probably stronger than ever for having survived this momentary ban. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, I imagine it will attract even more new users and continue to be the most influential platform in the book world.
Facebook
Facebook is an important platform for authors, but it’s always been more about community than sales. In my experience, just posting about your book on Facebook doesn’t drive sales. The only thing that meaningfully moves books is Facebook ads—of course, because Facebook’s entire business model is about milking its users for their ad dollars. And that’s fine, because we’ve known this to be true for years.
What we’ve also known for years is that Mark Zuckerberg has long been trying to figure out how to keep Facebook relevant, resisting and resenting the fact that mostly it’s a platform for older users these days. The move to buy Instagram was about capturing a younger audience. With Trump’s reelection, however, Zuckerberg has decided he wants the world to know who he really is. All that fake apologizing and humility he’s displayed over the years has always been bullshit, him doing what he thought he needed to do to make his users happy, and to protect his company. This time around, he’s aligning himself with Trump—and his left-leaning users are losing their minds.
Thread after thread on Facebook is about whether to stay or go. As far as I can tell, the jury is still out on what writers and authors will do. They’re capable of leaving. We saw the mass exodus from Twitter. But Zuckerberg is (so far) less offensive than Musk. But power tends to grow people into the worst version of themselves, and Zuckerberg is just beginning to stretch his oligarchical legs.
Facebook feels more fraught than TikTok right now because Zuckerberg is dismantling its professed values. When you abandon processes that are meant to protect marginalized communities, abandon fact checking, and start to air your grievances about all the ways you’ve been wronged, you’re taking a decidedly anti-progressive position. I’ve been in the world of books for a long time, and it’s a decidedly progressive space. So if Facebook keeps down this path, they will lose writers and authors. It’s just a matter of how far we will allow ourselves to be pushed before we decide it’s no longer tolerable.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on both platforms. If you’re on TikTok, how do you feel about the ban? If you’re on Facebook, what are your thoughts on staying or going? For my part, I’m tremendously grateful that I’m here on Substack—for now. The lesson in all of this should be about impermanence. Nothing lasts forever, good things come to an end, and new opportunities are always out there.
I’ve never done TikTok out of both sheer laziness & my own lack of tech ability. I do Facebook not necessarily for the books I write - although it’s lovely to see my work shared - but for the community I have grown to love & care deeply about. It ups my empathy bar - takes me out of my own fears & self-doubt for a moment.
Thanks for writing this. As always, touches deep.
OMG, I've been agonizing over whether or not to jump ship from Zuck's metaverse. It was easier to walk away from Twitter, which I did before Musk even changed the branding to X because it never really served me as a writer. It was good for research on my issue -- immigration. But my tweets never really made a dent in the firestorm of blah, blah. My readers live on Facebook, however, I'm on myriad private groups there, and I've spent the last year building a following on Instagram. I've come down on the side of staying there, for now, but solely as a communication tool -- I will not boost posts or do any paid advertising. Not another dime in the traitor's pockets. (He won't miss them.) Most importantly, I will use FB and IG as much as I can to encourage folks to visit me on Substack (https://sarahtowle.substack.com/) because I love it here. And now that my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, is out and is proving to be more timely than ever, I have more time to post and podcast here. Gratefully, my following here is growing faster than it ever did on Zuck or Musk's platforms. So here is where I will stay, all the while praying it, too, doesn't get scooped up by the Broligarchy. This begs another question, Brooke, which I'd love for you to speak to: how can anyone in the writing biz extricate themselves from the global menace that is Bezos? Another post for another time.