It seems as though the TikTok ban, temporary though it is, sent a lot of people to other social media platforms. And of those people, a good portion seemed to be BookTok folks. I say this because the tag BookSky has taken off on social media platform Bluesky (where you can find me at elizanixauthor, so give a follow if you’re over there) in the last day. I’ve perused this tag a few times in the weeks since publishing, but it was fairly sparse in content. Today, however, that all changed.
In the blink of an eye (or in the shuttering of an app?), droves of people looking for fellow Book Enthusiasts took to BlueSky in search of curating their social media experience. While I’m not a self-proclaimed social butterfly by any means (INFJ here), I did manage to interact with a handful of posts and got some positive feedback.
It’s hard growing a brand, as anybody will tell you, and even harder on an app that is still struggling and growing (I left X back in November & FB is a struggle for me to get back to using). I want to get my work out there, I want people to enjoy what I’ve written, I want to sell books! But at the same time, I want to focus on writing, I want to spend time with the new kitten, I want to get this expensive af shower reconstruction over, I want to stare at the weather forecast until all the snowflakes fuck off!! But I have to actually sit down and Do Things if I want people to buy my book. If I want to become the Next Big Thing. Which, sure, that would be nice, but that’s not why I published.
I published a novel because I could. Because I wanted to. Because I’m closer to 40 than a lot of writers I know (if not all of them), and it felt like a milestone to say “Hey! I wrote a book! And published it!” And it was. And if I only ever get a single royalty check from Jeffrey Bezos, so be it. At least I did the thing!
Eliza Nix 