I love Facebook. It has helped me launch a business, find old friends, document family memories, and engage with communities that otherwise I wouldn’t have connected with.
But a few days ago, Facebook decided to suspend my account without warning, without real appeal – permanently. I was on Facebook for 17 years without any infractions in those years. Being suspended on Facebook also gets you banned on Instagram (because Facebook owns Insta).
I have, in the past, taught writers how to use Facebook correctly to avoid Facebook jail or getting suspended. I’m typically a rule-follower. I’ve always warned people that Facebook is a game of roulette, and I guess I finally lost that game.
What Did I Do To Get Banned
I commented on a post shared by a writer friend. I didn’t post the photo. Many people commented on that near-viral post, or made a very similar comment. Here’s the photo in question:
I checked with Snopes – this is a legit label for One Night Cough Syrup from the 1800s. I made the joke that all they were really missing was cocaine – then they’d have had something really fantastic.
Now, keep in mind that Coca (the plant cocaine is made from) was a key ingredient in Coca-Cola in the 1800s and became popular because of its euphoric effects and boosted energy (source here). Sigmund Freud wrote the “Cocaine Papers” and prescribed it as a miracle drug.
I was joking, but the regular accepted legal use at the time this cough syrup was being marketed of Coca and cocaine is very well documented.
I was not promoting drug use. I was not trying to sell or make drugs, and (in my opinion) the sarcasm about the helpfulness of cocaine in this recipe was blatant. It wasn’t a positive endorsement of the drug. What I did was use a banned word: “cocaine.” That was the real infraction. Yes, technically I was allowed to appeal, but the appeal was denied within one minute.
There were no human eyes involved in that appeal. And what adds to the sting is when speaking with a friend who’s a cop and sharing this experience, they laughed. They personally know of several cocaine dealers who use Facebook to move their product and have multiple Facebook accounts. *sigh*
May the odds be ever in your favor!
The Problem With AI Censors
Censorship is a problem, generally IMHO, but Facebook’s punitive use of banned words has been a recognized reality for a long time. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook), announced just this week that the platform would no longer censor users and instead promote free speech and is backing away from the banned words filtering.
The problem in tasking a computer to simply catch words that are banned means false positives (as in my case), and that any personal bias on the part of the developer, “fact-checkers”, or high-level execs filters down and silences voices that hold differing opinions. The Zuck openly admits this in his announcement this week (Here’s the announcement the Zuck made on the very same day I lost my account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSHpYHncNxw )
You Could Lose Your Facebook And Instagram Accounts Too
Here’s the stark reality (and this hasn’t changed in the 17yrs I’ve used Facebook): you don’t own any real estate on Facebook, or Instagram, or Tiktok or any other platform. That means you can be restricted, censored, and removed without any meaningful way to appeal or get human eyes or ears on your plight. There’s not really even any point in trying in my opinion.
Facebook has known for many years that their filters are punishing and suspending accounts wrongfully, and there was never any real mechanism put in place to deal with it. They don’t care:
how long you’ve been on Facebook.
that you’re losing access to a genuine community you’ve spent ten years building.
that you’ve lost precious photos and family memories.
how much money you spend on ads.
Tough luck.
Fooling The Filters
If you are using Facebook to promote your books or create a community, you’ve probably already been warned about the banned words filters. Many writers avoid the filters by asking for advice on how to “unalive” a character in a particular setting or historical time. Some replace characters with symbols to try and escape the AI: de@d for instance.
Posting book covers that reveal any amount of skin is problematic. I’m hearing of people having accounts restricted or suspended for posting a pic of a baby’s face for crying out loud. A friend got thrown in Facebook jail for using the word “fairy” in the context of talking about the Nutcracker Ballet’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Posting book covers or book titles that show any kind of weapons can get you in trouble. I heard of another who landed in Facebook jail for mentioning they were “hanging” a photo.
Filter Sensitivity
The filters are so sensitive it’s ridiculous. (I’ve heard many many similar complaints about Amazon filters on book covers, titles, and descriptions as well.)
If you’re writing content that others may find objectionable (language, nudity, sexuality, violence), you’re playing Facebook roulette. If the AI filters don’t nab you, all it can take is one complaint. And don’t be naïve and think that complaint system isn’t used punitively by others because it absolutely is.
Don’t neglect building community on space you do own – like a website, or an email list. For years, writers have been told not to rely on social media and make sure they build an email list. And that’s really hard as a fiction author because:
What do you blog about?
Should you go to the time and expense of a website if you haven’t got a book out yet, but realize you need to build community if you’re going to sell the book once it’s out?
If you’re not publishing a new book every month, what do you include in a newsletter?
I get it. It’s a catch 22. Keep writing more books. It’s still true that the best way to sell the last book you wrote, is to publish another.
An email list may be the only way you have to communicate with people should the worst happen. Include links to an email list inside book matter for new releases and such. Try giving away free content in exchange for an email: extra chapters, prequel short stories, maps and other resources, etc.
Why Losing Facebook And Instagram Isn’t A Huge Problem
As someone who’s a news junkie, Facebook forced me over to X simply to stay on top of world events and to engage with local news. This move drastically reduced my Facebook usage. Perhaps for the better, given the events of this week. (As a Canadian, I’ve been barred from seeing any news links from anywhere around the world for a year and a half - see that announcement from Meta here.)
I have guest-posted here and in other places for many years, always leaving the same link to the same Facebook group. I’ve got a very good, organically-grown, audience there. And the reality is that the majority of those won’t sign up for my email list. And that sucks.
I have always relied on organic reach for my blog. I took a really fantastic course on organic growth a few years ago, and it has paid me back three times over. It doesn’t run anymore, but if you connect with Rachel Miller (www.rachelmiller.com) on her blog or other socials, she gives away a lot of free content.
Diversify!
All my eggs aren't invested in one social basket. I invested a moderate amount of time into Pinterest. I get very little traffic on blog post links from Facebook (the algorithm changes from time to time, but blog links have had seasons of very dismal reach). A great majority of the social traffic to my blog comes from Pinterest. Now, my blog’s audience is mostly writers, but even if your blog audience are genre fiction readers there is a lot of opportunity on Pinterest to engage and drive traffic.
If there’s one type of content I’ve been asked for more than another other from readers, it’s video content. So, I’ll be launching my YouTube channel very very soon.
Does YouTube have similar maddening censorship? Absolutely. I’m exchanging one roulette gun for another – I’m aware of that. So, I’ll be building in whenever possible links to the blog which encourages people to sign up for the emails. Creating unique content on each channel helps people see the need to get email even if they follow on Pinterest or subscribe on YouTube.
I’m waiting to see what happens with TikTok in the United States. That may be a platform I dive into learning if there’s a positive outcome there.
Backup Everything
I’ll be doing videos of my blog posts, and posting the short tutorial videos I had been posting infrequently on my Facebook group. I have a lot of those short tutorial videos saved offline (you can download even the live-streamed videos). That’s another key. Save everything offline (or at least the popular content), so if you have to start over, you have the content your audience resonated with to get you started.
Make a point of saving your email list offline at regular intervals.
Don’t rely on website platforms to buy your URLs. Make sure you own them, and can take them with you should something happen to your website platform (I use WordPress, but there’s a learning curve with that).
Invest In Learning SEO
Search Engine Optimization is always a great investment of your time, in my opinion. If you’re not hiring out your social media posting or blogging, then learning SEO is going to deliver really great bang for your buck. There are a variety of free and paid resources out there to help you do this, but understanding SEO means you’ve got a better understanding of keywords as they’re used as hashtags, or search features on social media or Amazon.
Learn Google Analytics for your blog or book data on retailer platforms. Know where your traffic is coming from, and focus on those platforms.
Don’t try and do it all. Learning these features means you’re better positioned to take advantage of organic discovery and algorithm recommendations (which cost you nothing).
I may try and create a new profile in a bit. Afterall, Facebook was the primary way I kept in touch with family. My first attempt got shut down almost immediately. I had a new email, used a device I’ve never used for Facebook, but it didn’t matter. You need a new email and phone number (unless you’ve somehow been able to avoid giving your phone number to Facebook), and restrict posting any photos of yourself because those were all mapped and catalogued and will be flagged on future profiles.
How do you feel about using Facebook to build community or drive traffic?
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About Lisa
Lisa Hall-Wilson is a writing teacher and award-winning writer and author. She’s the author of Method Acting For Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layers. Her blog, Beyond Basics For Writers, explores all facets of the popular writing style deep point of view and offers practical tips for writers.
Every time I speak to a fellow author, we end up talking about how frustrating and time consuming—not to mention money consuming—promotion on social media is.
Let’s be honest, when you are a writer all you want to do is write. Not edit, not think about blurbs or promotion. We just want to write and everything else just feels like a huge imposition, an obstacle standing in our way.
That’s exactly how I felt in the beginning and I bet this has happened to you as well.
The journey begins.
Years ago, when I started the publishing journey, I met this wonderful lady online in a book club group on Facebook. She messaged me in private and said, “My dear, you’re doing it all wrong. That’s not how you promote your work.” I literally fell off my chair. I had no idea what I was doing.
I’d simply wrote my first romance book and felt pretty happy with myself—that I’d managed to complete it without tearing it apart, for one thing.
Was I suppose to do more besides clicking ‘publish’ on KDP?
That’s how I was introduced to things like
‘group takeovers’
marketing concepts such as logos
branding
sharing social media handles and amazon links
having a readers group and a street team.
It was just after writers like Colleen Hoover became known and successful, when bloggers influenced what people clicked and read.
I’m sure I’m not alone when I say this. I was just a girl who wanted to write and was trying to catch on fast on how be noticed and hopefully read. That’s all I wanted, isn’t that what we all want? To be considered and our work read. Hopefully appreciated.
But it was hard, incredibly demanding and time consuming,
with a fulltime job
a family
little time to write
spending time on social media to share my work
living in Europe and trying to be active online when people in the US were online…
At some point I even hired a personal assistant to help me out. I had friends sharing daily in groups. I got little sleep and some writing done. Eventually I collapsed. Slowly, steadily I started to dislike what I was seeing, this world I was getting sucked into. In the end I called myself out.
Here’s what I discovered.
1) Most of the things you see on social media are construed. Unhealthy, toxic. People attack you for the silliest reasons. If you have an opinion, you’re trouble. If you don’t have an opinion, nobody even notices you. So many use social media strategically to fit their needs. They make up situations, post drama or salty messages deliberately to gain likes or sympathy. Drama becomes their fortune. Plotting at its finest.
2) It can make you question your talent. I faced authors who wrote one book a month, yes you read that right. One book a month, when I was struggling to write one a year. How in the hell were they doing this? And why?
People kept telling me I needed to work fast, get a new story out constantly to stay in the spotlight but I just couldn’t. The more I learned about promotion, about the book community, the more I felt different, not part of the trend.
Fast stories to keep swimming, construed drama to get attention. I saw people, writers jumping on the safe side of the drama bandwagon just to get a few likes, earn popularity. Naming and shaming others, getting people to write bad reviews on books by said authors… toxic doesn’t even begin to describe this scenario.
What the hell had I gotten myself into? I wasn’t like that. I could never be like that. This is not writing, this writing community is nothing like they said it would be—it’s neither kind or supportive, it’s mostly harsh, fake, and could possibly end with a ‘friendly’ backstabbing.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I called myself out.
I took not a step back, but a whole mile back, and it just happened to coincide with the downfall of takeovers and self-promotion.
There was a shift on which posts were seen and those that weren’t. The algorithm became the enemy and soon we were all trying to understand how to get around it.
All of a sudden, it’s either you pay social media to promote your work through ads or you’re invisible, you’re doomed.
Money to stay afloat, money to stay visible.
Don’t get me wrong, ads work, to some extent. If you gamble with them for a bit, you can get them working. They actually help you sell, help you climb those amazon charts. But to be able to make money, make a profit, it takes more than pretty words lined up in an ad. Or the right picture to go with your snippet from the book. You need time and money.
So, this is where I started asking myself the inevitable question, the one I think most writers in our era, having so much material and so many authors out there, ask ourselves.
What happened to talent?
Writing not because you want to make a profit, but because it’s who you are, what you do? It’s what you were born to do. What happened to picking up a book not because an ad tells you to, but by word of mouth, because it inspires you, as you flipped through the pages and enjoyed the first snippet?
Independent publishing has been a fantastic tool for wannabe writers out there and I’m so grateful I’ve had the chance to use it myself, but I do wonder if all this material available online has made us all dramatically invisible. To be seen you have to climb, step over others, be creative in how to emerge. It’s not a question of talent, but rather about creating the perfect stunt, or knowing your stuff when it comes to algorithm. Or paying.
I called myself out.
I got myself an agent and I try to focus on writing more than anything else. Which doesn’t mean I won’t be promoting my work in the future, but I’m one hundred percent out of this rat race where everyone pretends to be friends, pretends to be supportive of other women, when in reality it’s just a matter of time before it backfires, hard.
Ask yourself these questions, does:
Stephen King promotes himself on social media?
write a book a month?
take part in any sort of drama?
Does JK Rowling spend time online sharing her work? Sure, I’ve just mentioned two very famous writers, who surely don’t need introductions or paid ads. But that’s the kind of writer you should aspire to be, someone so well-known because of their talent that they don’t need all the fluff, all that nonsense to get around.
Social media is just a blur, it hides the truth. It’s a detour to what is really important.
Final thoughts.
Write your stories, make sure they’re the best you can do, and look for someone—a professional, like a literary agent—who can make the difference, who believes in you, who falls in love with your words and supports you.
Don’t get tangled in the jungle. It will make you want to quit and keep you from writing the book that needs to be read.
What are your thoughts on using social media for promotion? What has worked for you? Have you felt the need to call yourself out?
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About Laura
Laura Rossi is an Italian multi-genre writer. Raised in the US and in the UK, where she graduated in Psychology and Criminology, she now resides in Italy with her family.
Devotedly interested in the human mind, Laura likes to scare people saying she goes ‘from sweet to psycho in a matter of seconds’ with her characters. One day she’s writing something sweet and funny, the other she’s crafting dark, flawed characters for edgy, twisted stories.
When she’s not busy working in her family business or being a mom, she loves to travel and attend rock shows. If you see her wandering around town with a wicked smile on her lips, she’s probably thinking of putting you in one of her novels, plotting a new thriller in her head or figuring out which character needs to get the bullet.
For any rights or sub-rights query, Laura is represented by agent Nikki Groom at SBR Media.
My first book, The Art of Pickleball, is an instructional guide to a sport few people had heard of when I wrote it in 2005. As a pickleball player, I knew the book would appeal to a growing niche market.
In 2005, the self-publishing industry didn’t include Amazon, KDP, or ebooks. My dream was to conduct book signings in Barnes & Noble and have the best-selling book about the sport. I signed with a hybrid publisher who helped me with tasks I didn’t understand or couldn’t do easily. Because of my belief in the sport’s future and the quality of my book, we offset-printed 1,200 copies and began marketing.
From that publisher, I learned enough to work on my own. After I began writing fiction, I created a company to self-publish my own books and those of other local authors. I helped dozens of other people get their books to print, under my imprint and Amazon’s. Since then, I’ve self-published five novels for children and two for teens, delivered presentations about self-publishing at writing conferences, and taught classes at local institutions.
Much has changed since 2005, but the steps an author must take to publish a book today are largely the same. One of the toughest questions is still whether to seek a traditional publisher or self-publish. The path isn’t clear-cut because it can change with each book and from year to year.
Some Facts
In the mid-1990s, the publishing world considered self-published works as inferior and unworthy of attention, and today traditional publishing still holds an allure of prestige in the minds of many authors. Yet many self-published authors now criticize traditionally published writers for clinging to an outdated and unfair system.
The largest difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing is control: traditional publishing takes control from the author in exchange for their knowledge and resources, while self-publishing leaves the author with complete control—but also complete responsibility.
Publishing Paths, Responsibility, and Control
The table below is derived from one created by Jane Friedman, a publishing guru, whose website provides a wealth of information about all types of publishing.
Traditional
Assisted/Full-Service
Hybrid
DIY / Indie
Publisher contracts with author for rights to manuscript
Author pays a service company; virtually no one is turned away
Author pays publisher up front but is selected and vetted in some way
Author directly hires any help needed
Not always easy to sever relationship
Typically, easy to sever relationship
May be harder to sever relationship
Usually easy to sever relationship
Possible royalty paid up front and with book sales; author may need to pay for extras
Many budget categories and packages available
Potential for greater marketing and promotion support (with added expense)
Greater chance of profit
Offset printing for large runs; also make books available through online channels
Beware of predatory companies that take large amounts of your money and provide little in return
Check contract for services rendered and percentages/payment terms
Traditional Publishing Today
The “Big Five” major publishing groups handle most traditional publishing, earning approximately 25% of their income from ebooks. You must secure an agent to present your work to these (or most other) houses. Getting an agent can be a daunting task, and crafting an agent’s query letter is an art in itself, but it’s necessary to avoid your request landing in their proverbial slush pile.
Once a publisher accepts your manuscript, they own its rights, and your contract specifies what they can do with it. You receive royalties, while they manage editing, cover design, marketing, and distribution. You have minimal input or control over these processes, but they cover all associated costs.
A traditionally published book can take up to two years to reach bookstore shelves. Royalties from traditional publishers are smaller than those received from self-publishing, but an expected larger number of sales offsets this.
Self-Publishing
Once your manuscript is ready for publication, you can make it available through self-publishing online in just hours. Most companies that assist you in uploading books do not charge for their services. However, you must pay the upfront costs of editing and cover design and, later, distribution and marketing. You receive no advance, but you will get larger royalties.
Self-published authors earn most of their income from ebooks sold or borrowed through Amazon. Larger bookstores and libraries rarely take self-published books because their purchasing channels do not carry them.
Good candidates for self-publishing are romance, erotica, branded series, prolific genre fiction, and informative nonfiction with online support (a website, blog, etc.).
Hybrid Publishing
Combining elements of traditional and self-publishing, hybrid publishing can be a good option for authors who want the support of traditional publishing but still want creative control.
Reputable hybrid publishers are quite different from vanity presses or “predatory publishers” that lure you into expensive packages and offer little to no support or deliverables. (You can find lists of these predatory publishers online.)
You pay a hybrid publisher to produce and distribute your book in return for a high percentage of the royalties. The publisher handles the editing, design, production, distribution, and sales. However, you retain the rights to your book and have creative control.
Hybrid publishing can be expensive, as you may have to pay all the production costs. Publication quality also varies, and the publisher may have less prestige than traditional publishers and, therefore, less reach in the marketplace.
Feature
Traditional Publishing
Self-Publishing
Publisher’s Role
Active
Minimal or none
Author’s Role
Passive
Active
Costs
Publisher
Author
Time to Publication
Longer
Shorter
Royalties
Lower
Higher
Distribution
Wider
Limited
Marketing
Publisher
Author
Note: More than half of all books sold in the United States sell through Amazon (regardless of format).
To Help You Decide
First, determine your book’s purpose and target market. Then, gauge your writing methods, goals, or aspirations for the project, as well as your budget, assets, and how much uncertainty you’re willing to accept.
Purpose
Knowing your book’s purpose will keep you on track while writing, help you find an agent or prospective customers. In general, a book’s purpose is to educate, entertain, and/or persuade—to share a story, idea, or message with readers. You should be able to state your book’s purpose in one sentence.
Some examples might be that your book shows people how to promote their businesses or encourage innovation. Your romance novel will provide an escape from everyday life. My first book teaches people how to play pickleball.
Target Market
Understanding your book’s purpose helps you define your target market. Start by identifying three large groups of people who might benefit from reading your book. These could be professional organizations, hobbyists, age or other demographic groups, social media groups, etc. Going beyond that, Eldred Bird wrote a fine blog for Writers in the Storm that details how you can uncover more audience for your book. I don’t have time or space to cover this topic in detail, so I’ll leave the reading to you and share only the main points he covers in his blog:
Know your genre.
Know your book’s age group.
Define your media format (book, ebook, etc.)
Distribution
Bird’s closing remarks sum up the process: “Knowledge of your reader base will inform not only your writing process, but how and where you market your work. Do your research. Find out who your potential readers are, what they value in a story, and how they prefer to consume it.”
[While I was writing this, a new post popped up in my inbox from Writers in the Storm: “AI: The Secret Weapon in Finding a Book’s True Audience” by Brittany Pinney. It’s a new twist on how we can manage book discovery and definitely worth a read.
How does knowing your target market help you choose between traditional and self-publishing?
Self-publishing is well-suited for the genres of romance, fantasy, science fiction, thrillers, and non-fiction (especially self-help) due to their large self-publishing audience and potential for strong reader bases. Genres like literary fiction, children's books, and highly academic works are generally better suited for traditional publishing due to the importance of established credibility in those markets.
Do you plan to write only one book?
Are your books (or planned books) in genres that are well represented by self-publishing?
Do you dislike deadlines and pressure?
Do you want to control all of your editing, cover design, and more?
If the answer to one or more of the above questions is yes, look to self-publishing. Agents don’t want to represent someone who has only one book to offer and none to come. Also, publishing is driven by current sales, so be aware that your greatest book ever might not be something an agent can represent in the current market.
Do you hope to find your book in bookstores across the nation?
Want to make the NYT bestseller list?
Do you want the support and validation a traditional publisher will provide?
Are you patient, willing to wait up to two years before your book is available in stores?
If you answered yes to any of the above, seek an agent who will deliver your manuscript to a traditional publisher. Jane Friedman says, “If you have any interest whatsoever in traditional publishing, exhaust all your agent/publisher options first. Get thoroughly rejected (as much as that may hurt), and then self-publish. It’s very, very hard to go in the other direction successfully.”
By the way, she also says if you think you’ll self-publish and be picked up by a major publisher later, stop and rethink. This is especially important for series. It is highly unlikely that a publisher will consider your self-published book unless you can show extraordinary sales in a short time.
A side note about writing for children
You don’t market to children; you market to their parents or to the persons procuring for the schools or libraries.
Marketing
I can’t begin to do justice to this topic here, but hopefully I can in a future post. The success rate for self-publishing is comparable to that of traditional publishing. A few authors, through talent and hard work, rise to become bestselling superstars. A few others achieve significant literary recognition and substantial sales. The majority do not make a living from it.
The reality of marketing and promotion can hit self-published authors hard; they often face a steeper climb than anticipated, battling limited resources and the struggle to gain wide readership. It typically takes self-published authors years and the release of four or five books to achieve noticeable success and earn a substantial income, a process marked by countless hours of writing, editing, marketing, and promotion. Before embarking on this path, make sure you are dedicated to the consistent creation and promotion of your work, a cycle that continues year after year, building momentum and expanding your reach.
Charting a course that works for you
In a nutshell, these are your options:
1. Find an agent who will deliver your book to a publisher.
2. Hire a full-service company to act as your publisher.
3. Work with a “hybrid” publisher.
4. Self-publish on your own, hiring any freelance assistance you need, and work directly with retailers and distributors to sell your book.
I’m working on the strictly “Self-Publishing” article that follows this one and hope to have it ready for publication soon.
Good luck on your journey!
Do you aspire to be traditionally published? Self-published? If you are already published what has your journey been like?
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About Gale
Writing The Art of Pickleball in 2005 launched Gale Leach’s career as an award-winning author. From 2011 to 2020, she also created her own company, Two Cats Press, which published the works of six Arizona authors, including seven of her own fantasy adventure novels for children and teens. Currently, she’s at work on a fantasy series that involves technology and magic, multiple worlds, and creatures you only thought were mythological.
Gale and her husband recently relocated to Texas, accompanied by a rescue dog, two rescue kittens, and a bearded dragon. Her interests outside of writing include singing, playing music, genealogy, reading, crafting, and many types of puzzles and games.
