As I've been preparing to launch my debut novel (a middle grade book pumped full of as much craziness as I can fit in it), I've gone through my paces to learn the book marketing world. In so doing, I've realized something striking: Marketers have a vested interest in building healthy online communities.
It's not just a moral good. Online gathering places where real humans talk about things they're genuinely interested in is the bedrock of what makes advertising in those communities worthwhile. Let me explain. Let's say I'm a new author advertising a soon-to-be-published novel (just for academic reasons, of course). My goal is to connect readers to the book I'm offering. I don't want to be annoying about it; that won't accomplish anything besides frustration on all sides. Therefore, ideally, I'm trying to find readers who want to find fresh books to read.
Where do I find readers like that? Well online communities of readers such as Bookstagram, BookTube, BookTok, and Booksky is an excellent place to start. Here's the problem: I'm not the only one who realizes that these are the places to be. In order to sell my books, I have to sort through endless concourses of people who are also trying to sell their books to find the people who are actually buying. What good is 50k followers if 45k of those are only there to find customers?
Some communities, like Twitter, are so chalk full of advertisers and bots that it feels next to useless to engage there because such a small percentage of people there are actually trying to engage in meaningful dialogue. Others, like Instagram, are so terrified of bots and other scams that they end up inadvertently shutting down a good portion of their genuine user base.
One of the best communities for advertising that I'm aware of is Reddit. This is because you can almost instantly find a group of people who is intensely passionate about whatever you're selling, and the number of bots there is relatively low. There is a price, however. If you aren't meticulous about only posting on subs that allow self-promotion and limiting such posts to 10% of your activity overall, you'll be kicked off before you can say "Hey, look at my new book."
This can be frustrating to some people, but I've come to appreciate it because these rules are what keeps Reddit communities full of potential customers instead of endless advertisers. This has made me realize how important it is to contribute in good faith to whatever online communities I become a part of. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but also because doing so helps bring together the very people who will hopefully enjoy my book in the near future.
Let's all do our part to make the Internet less of an awful place.
TL;DR: Build the communities you're a part of instead of seeing them as walking dollar signs.
