006: Sometimes The Right Call Is Stepping Back

I’ve ended up taking a short, unscheduled break from writing newsletters over the last fourteen days. Regular GenrePunk Ninja transmissions will resume in October, and some of the ideas in this week’s entry might be expanded out.

Mainly, though, if you’re hungry for great advice about writing and publishing, however, I’m going to direct your attention to Cory Doctorow’s recent speech about Disenshittifying Online Spaces (watch it on youtube | read it online). 

Doctorow is speaking to a room full of tech folk and coders, but what he’s saying is incredibly important to anyone involved in the creative industries.

It’s important he’s pointing out the problems with online spaces and we, as writers, use online spaces to promote our work and build community. They are a boon in many ways, but their usefulness can be short lived.

Tech and social media companies thrive by capturing attention and communities, then locking you into those spaces and turning your attention into profit. 

Usually, they do this by making things shittier. Amazon started as a bookstore that offered incredible organic reach to independent publishers, with a recommendation engine that was scarily predicted.

Now that they’re the place to read ebooks, for most folks, they have turned their attention to selling advertising tools instead. Authors hoping readers will stumble over their work now pay for the previliege.

The same cycle has played out again and again. Facebook used to be great for keeping in touch with readers (and, hell, your friends), but now it’s an algorithmic nightmare where you see more ads than friends. 

Tiktok used to put videos in front of a huge number of eyeballs, but now you’ll be lucky to break 200 views as you feed more content into the mill and quietly hope something goes viral.

One of the reasons I recommend Doctorow’s most recent speech is the way he breaks down the way virality can work on these platforms. Notably, he talks about the TikTok “heating tool”, which the use to manipulate engagement.

For those who haven’t clicked over to see Doctorow in person, here’s the important part:

Emily Baker-White from Forbes revealed the existence of a back-end feature that Tiktok’s management can access they call the “heating tool.”

When a manager applies the heating tool to a performer’s account, that performer’s videos are thrust into the feeds of millions of users, without regard to whether the recommendation algorithm predicts they will enjoy that video.

…

Tiktok’s heating tool is a way to give away tactical giant teddy bears. When someone in the TikTok brain trust decides they need more sports bros on the platform, they pick one bro out at random and make him king for the day, heating the shit out of his account.

That guy gets a bazillion views and he starts running around on all the sports bro forums trumpeting his success: I am the Louis Pasteur of sports bro influencers!“

The other sports bros pile in and start retooling to make content that conforms to the idiosyncratic Tiktok format. When they fail to get giant teddy bears of their own, they assume that it’s because they’re doing Tiktok wrong, because they don’t know about the heating tool.

Tiktok has a heating tool, and the’re not the only one. As Doctorow notes, we’re live in a world where your food delivery app can track when you get paid and therefore bump up the price you pay for food delivery.

I suspect every platform has something similar.

Which brings me to why this is imporant for writers to know: as we hit the fourth quarter of the year, there’s going to be an uptik in the number of ads and marketing campaigns trying to convince writers you’re writing and publishing wrong. 

No writer is ever satisfied with the number of books we’re selling, so there’s money to be made in promising folks you have a solution. In the hour before I wrote this my Facebook feed was full of potential solutions: facebook adveritising, tiktok courses, making better use of reels, writing better newsletters.

These will be supplemented by ads about launching high-paid courses and coaching, writing low-content books using AI, learning to write more “saleable” novels, and countless other approaches.

But selling a solution means you need to convince people they have a real problem. That their career is out of control, but you’re promising a way of regaining control.

That promise is seductive for writers, who often feel like there’s no control in this career at all.

It’s more seductive than usual in 2024, because we’re entering into the high-stress period leading into the US election. Everyone’s on edge, regardless of which side of politics they’re on, because political ideology is closely aligned with our sense of self.

We live in fear that the other side is going to take over, and fuck everything up. The discourse on our social feeds slowly drifts to more contentious topics. Algorithmic patterns show us entries designed to get our dander up, because angry people engage and engagement drives use.

Which is one of the reasons I’m taking a break from writing long entries at the moment: I don’t want to be online.

Going on threads leads me down spiraling rabbit holes of anger. Being on Youtube subjects me to advertising from local political parties here in Brisbane ahead of our state election. 

Facebook is determined to make me feel bad about my writing and publishing systems, with promises I can turn everything around by spending hundreds (or thousands) on a course that teaches me how to do things better.

I have nothing against courses, but I know that this is the point of the year where it’s easier to get suckered into spending on them as a reactive choice.

The final quarter of the year is a hard time to sell books at the best of times, and its worse than usual during an election year.

Even if advertising or spitting content into a social media machine is your strategy of choice, the added costs and distractions 2024 brings make everything harder and more expensive. 

So instead of reacting, I’m asking myself what would actually be a useful and productive use of my time. I’m dailing back my social media use so I’m not suckered into the discourse. I’m focusing on building up new titles I can launch in early 2025.

The launches I’ve got in mind for the end of the year are very targeted and specialised, and are more focused on information gathering and testing systems than hitting huge sales targets. 

Outside of that, I’m writing books and hanging with my spouse and patting my cats. Trying to calm my nervous system in a world that wants my to spend a huge chunk of my day in fight or flight.

Ironically, all of this taps into what today’s newsletter should have been about: asking what someone who offers you writing advice wants you to do with that advice.

Often, in the writing and publishing space, the answer is “buy my widget that helps.”

I certainly have widgets for sale. Books on writing and mentorship sessions and a bunch of other stuff.

Mostly, though, I don’t want to put a huge amount of effort into selling them and I can’t promise they’ll do anything other than give you important stuff to think about with regards to your writing and publishing. 

The thing that makes me happiest is when people buy coffee mugs and ebooks because it means I can put these ideas into the world and go back to writing fiction. 🙂

I run this newsletter because, primarily, I want writers to think about their business differently. To make smarter decisions that support their long-term goals, rather than short-term reactions that involve blowing a lot of cash and burning out.

It’s one of the reasons why, after four years of tinkering away and putting things behind a paywall, I stopped wriitng about writing on Patreon and started holding forth on blogs and newsletters where the ideas are easily shared.

ADDITIONAL READING

This isn’t new territory for Docotrow. He’s written about the enshittification on TikTok in recent memory, and he has a whole book about Chokepoint Capitalism. I reguard both as recommended reading if you’re serious about making a living from writing, and they’re very worth your time.

Looking to level up your writing and publishing? When you’re ready, here are some ways I can help:

1. Books I’ve Written: I’ve got a few books on writing and the writing business, including the collection of some of my best writing advice: You Don’t Want To Be Published and Other Things Nobody Tells You When You First Start Writing.
2. Books I Publish: When I’m not working on my GenrePunk Ninja Projects I’m the editor and publisher behind Brain Jar Press. We’ve published several books and chapbooks about writing, drawing on advice and presentations given by some of the best speculative fiction writers in Australia and beyond.
3. One On One Mentoring: I offer a limited amount of one-on-one mentoring and coaching for writers and publishers, built off two decades of teaching writing and publishing for universities, writers festivals, and non-profit organisations.