There’s a great article up at Writer Unboxed by author Harper Ross talking about the expectations placed on writers to promote themselves online, have an author platform, and be seen by the masses in order to have an audience for their books.

The article really resonated with me. I struggle with social media all the time and this website serves as the hub for my author platform. But…I don’t get a lot of views or hits. Even when I was coughing up money to Instagram to improve visibility on posts related to The Name and the Key, they only maxed out at around 2000-2500 views. Better than my usual 25 or so.

I’m a member of almost all the social media platforms–not because I want to use them, but because I wanted to secure my name before someone else can snatch it up and pretend to be me. But I’ve sorely neglected BlueSky and X (formerly Twitter) and rarely post there. My top three are Facebook, Threads, and Instagram. I think I enjoy Instagram the most, but I let my Canva Pro subscription lapse to save money, so I’ve fallen behind on posting.

Anyway, what I want to do is pull some key passages from Ross’s article for Writer Unboxed and add some of my own commentary to it. This article really touched me, so I want to share my feelings about it.

You probably became a writer because you loved books, not because you wanted to be a full-time internet personality. Yet the prevailing wisdom in publishing right now is that authors need platforms. It’s not enough to write a good book. These days, you’ve got to build your audience before your book exists […] Even my agent agrees that publishers increasingly want writers who have both a manuscript and built-in visibility, engagement, and a personal brand.

I am all over the web. I have fingerprints everywhere. But, I don’t have the follower count or number of interactions to really count for something. If my publisher or agent reviewed my social media, they’d probably be really disappointed in me. I don’t think it’s really fair for authors to be “personalities” too, but such is the way of the business, and publishers want to make easy money, so they’ll hunt for authors with built-in audiences.

On a weekly basis, I debate whether I should be on camera more, sharing more personal stories, being more strategic, more consistent, more something…anything that might work better than what I’ve already tried. In all honesty, I often feel like a fraud or a poser while doing it. But I keep at it because, while I don’t honestly believe any of it is helping my career, I’m afraid I could be wrong. Worse, what if disappearing online could hurt my career?

I feel the very same way. What if having no online platform is worse than having them? I don’t feel like my internet presence is helping people buy my books, but I feel like I have to juggle all of these things anyway because the alternative would be no audience, versus a tiny few. And no audience is worse.

Visibility is impossible these days. According to PW, 4 million books were published in 2025. Compare that with 2012, when the total number of books published in the U.S. was fewer than 700,000. Then there’s the fact that traditional media coverage has shrunk (and/or is ignored by many readers), and only a select few books are ever chosen by the major book club influencers. Plus, publisher consolidation and focus on margins mean less marketing money for most authors, so of course, publishers prefer authors who can help sell their own work.

The lack of visibility is really discouraging. I’ve talked about this in various blogs on this website, but how can someone find one single book of mine in a sea of four million? How can my social media bring people to find my books?

My website is slowly getting more subscribers, and I try to talk about writing, publishing, but also the geeky things that matter to me (like comics, anime, and manga) because being a “geek author” is part of my author persona.

I was showing my author website to students in my English Composition class and tried to use it as a visual aid to teach them about characteristics of multimodal literature. I asked the class how many of them go to websites. Students informed me that they only go to a website if they query Google and Google links them to one (one student gave the example of having car trouble and being shot to a website that troubleshooted it). Otherwise, none of my students willingly go to websites. Not even for fun. So…since younger people (not necessarily YA anymore, but New Adults, too) are my primary audience, and they’re not coming to websites, who exactly is reading this blog? Are they interested in my books?

[…] while I understand that having others tout your work on socials can make an impact, I’m less convinced that touting your own work makes a measurable difference (although I do think it can cement relationships with existing fans). Time and again, we read articles that say social media followings don’t really equate to sales (an average 1.5% conversion rate, basically). And in addition to questioning the effectiveness of these efforts, I’ve got serious concerns about what all this exposure is doing to me (and “us”) creatively.

I know that if I’m away from social media for too long (especially not posting), I get really antsy. I was supposed to take a social media sabbatical from May 18-June 1 to focus completely on The Step and the Walk. When I finished early I got right back onto my profiles and started posting again. I was worried I would lose followers or my audience by not posting enough. And I’ve seen some of this in action…not with social media, but with my author website.

Back when kristinaelysebutke.com was a part of Blogger, I went on a hiatus for almost two years. Before, I had tens of thousands of viewers come to my website. I posted about geeky things, about writing, about mental health…the same stuff I post about now. But because I took such a long break, all my readers went elsewhere. I have still not been able to make up for the loss. On the WordPress iteration of the site, my best post (about K-POP DEMON HUNTERS) gets me about 698 views a month. No one is clicking on my bio or my books…which is the main purpose of this website: to get to know me and to have you read the books I’ve written.

I love writing on this website, so I’ll always do it, but add into that all my social media profiles, and the cost of maintaining all of this is burnout.

[…] yes, the obligation to show up online does make me unhappy. The problem is that I don’t see a clear exit ramp. Is it even possible to build a sustainable writing career without turning myself into a brand? Would my publisher drop me if I tried? Would readers take my books less seriously if I lacked a social media presence? I genuinely don’t know, which leaves me stuck.

What I do know is that I wish I could focus solely on writing without also considering how I, or the work, should be packaged and promoted online. But that world is gone, and resisting what publishing has become is as pointless as complaining about the troubles with airline travel.

I agree that I’ve built an online life for myself, and I feel compelled to keep up with it, because publishing tells us that we need to…even though my online persona has never been proven to nab me sales. At best it tells you about the kind of person that I am, and that’s it.

I’ll be writing and posting away, but I won’t always be happy about it.

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You can read the article “What It Costs to Be Seen” by Harper Ross over at Writer Unboxed.