as usual, you write what I'm thinking. So tired of what "authenticity" culture has done to women. Our lives are so precious and the internet is so irreverent. It'll be a sad day when everyone is required to be an influencer
Thank you for writing this! I see a lot of authors on Instagram who share personal details of their lives alongside promotional content for their books. It seems as if the more personal you are, the more followers you gain which means more pre-orders/sales which rarely happens, since X followers doesn't mean Y sales. I've felt pressured to join TikTok before and during my courses in university, I've had professors push my classmates and I to create an author brand on social media and start posting early on about ourselves and our WIP (because apparently if you refuse to be personal then it would feel like you're selling). One professor told me that my bio on my website read dryly and lacked personality and wanted me to inject more personal details of my life.
Then there's indie authors who hide behind pseudonyms and hide their faces who are being harassed for refusing to divulge their ethnicity or sexuality (or refusing to share any personal information after fabricated stories were made about them), and it's created this rotten environment online where we're EXPECTED to give out personal details just to appease the mob and be like "look this is all lies! See, here's proof!" It really feels as if with social media, we are no longer privy to our own life.
Thank you for writing this. I found this super helpful to read and such an important and relevant topic. As a new writer this is a tension I’m grappling with and at times part of the fear around sharing work out in the world.
It’s so refreshing to hear about writers who have been able to hold boundaries around personal lives. Focusing on and connecting through the work, sharing in more conscious consenting ways, rather than being encouraged to spill all.
I wish I had read this before my book came out last year. I would have made different choices. Thank you for this!
as usual, you write what I'm thinking. So tired of what "authenticity" culture has done to women. Our lives are so precious and the internet is so irreverent. It'll be a sad day when everyone is required to be an influencer
Thank you for writing this! I see a lot of authors on Instagram who share personal details of their lives alongside promotional content for their books. It seems as if the more personal you are, the more followers you gain which means more pre-orders/sales which rarely happens, since X followers doesn't mean Y sales. I've felt pressured to join TikTok before and during my courses in university, I've had professors push my classmates and I to create an author brand on social media and start posting early on about ourselves and our WIP (because apparently if you refuse to be personal then it would feel like you're selling). One professor told me that my bio on my website read dryly and lacked personality and wanted me to inject more personal details of my life.
Then there's indie authors who hide behind pseudonyms and hide their faces who are being harassed for refusing to divulge their ethnicity or sexuality (or refusing to share any personal information after fabricated stories were made about them), and it's created this rotten environment online where we're EXPECTED to give out personal details just to appease the mob and be like "look this is all lies! See, here's proof!" It really feels as if with social media, we are no longer privy to our own life.
Thank you for writing this. I found this super helpful to read and such an important and relevant topic. As a new writer this is a tension I’m grappling with and at times part of the fear around sharing work out in the world.
It’s so refreshing to hear about writers who have been able to hold boundaries around personal lives. Focusing on and connecting through the work, sharing in more conscious consenting ways, rather than being encouraged to spill all.