Author: Amber Willingham

Quick recap, I wrote a book, decided to self-publish it, had 24 followers on Instagram, was told I needed to up my social media game, which brings us here.

“Just post” they said. This is how you create a following, this is how you get your book noticed, just post. They said to post about me, the author, not just the book. They said, “People want to know you as a person, not just about your book”, so “just post”.

The first big issue I have with this is who the heck is “they” and how do “they” know all this stuff? How do “they” know people want to know me. I might be the antithesis of what people want to know. In fact, I know some people for whom this is true. “They” are probably wrong about this but on the off chance that “they” are right, I will do as “they” say and post.

The next hurdle – what the heck do I post? There are only so many pictures I can take of my book and my coffee cup and maintain any sort of interest from anyone much less the social media world. So, in this regard (and only in this regard so far in this experiment) “they” might be right about posting about me.

Once I decided to follow “their” advice and post about me I became keenly aware of the level of excitement in my life. (enter groan here) I am a middle aged (although I am not far from the youngest member of the “Golden Bachelorette” harem) suburban-empty-nester-dog/cat-mom. I mean come on! Talk about the antidote to insomnia! Maybe that will be my following – insomniacs. Maybe I will become medical journal famous for the cure to insomnia. I will follow up with this later . . .

Ok, so I have decided to “Just Post” about just me. (eye roll) So far, I have come up with a few cutesy photos, a couple of videos of me talking to the camera (groan), many many many photos of my pets (after all my house has become a small pets-mart) and I began to post them. Exciting news (drum roll) I now have 41 followers. Saying it out loud makes it seem very anti-climactic. It seems like this much effort should produce more results.

Now here is the aha moment. Apparently, you can’t “just post” any old time you choose. There is an algorithm (which is a word I never thought I would use in a sentence) to posting. There are charts and graphs and pies to look at to determine when your target audience (huh?) is going to be more inclined to see your post. In other words, posting is a science, and I am now back in school.

So, I am off to study these pie charts and graphs and figure out who my “target” audience is and what time they tune in to insta/tik/FB. I will keep you “posted”!

It’s been two weeks now (or has it been three) since I started this social networking campaign. I never really participated much in Facebook or Instagram or any of the other social media platforms before this. There was a reason I didn’t spend much time in social media. I avoid social media because I tend to get lost in it. I don’t think I am alone in this.

I told myself that in promoting Bliss Creek and my other books I would not repeat that pattern. I would avoid the traps and only spend the time I needed to spend to cultivate my author platform. My visits to social media are strictly business, a necessary part of advertising and promoting my books. Nonetheless, each time I sat down to write a post or a blog as a “professional” person, I, once again, found myself looking at countless funny cat videos and planning my next big dream trip based on travel vloggers recommendations. Three hours later I come up for air and realize that half the morning is gone.

I thought to myself, I better figure this out and get ahold of these tendencies to be lead down bunny holes of social media. But how? This is something I will need to research. As any sane person would do, I began this journey of researching how to maintain focus and spend only the time necessary to accomplish my goals on social media. The problem was this information was ON social media. So, much to my chagrin, I found another bunny hole to get lost in. Hopefully this bunny hole will be more productive and not involve cats or bucket list trips. I will keep you posted – if I can find the time.

I started writing in 2008, my first year of being a stay-at-home mom. I had always jotted down the funny things my kids did and said (and there was A LOT of material there) but nothing formal. Complete sentences started when Bliss Creek (my first published novel) started taking shape in my head. I wrote and wrote and wrote, mostly by hand on yellow legal pads in a perfected chicken scratch.

Once finished, which, by the way, was years after I started, I began studying the art of the query. From what I gather, you can no longer submit written works to publishers without an agent. In order to get an agent, you have to “query” them. As with all beginnings, I started a spreadsheet of agents, dates of queries and results. To be frank, there was not a lot of data entries in this spreadsheet.

Within a month I had sent 12 queries, received 3 rejections, and was ghosted by the rest. I did not take this well, I took it personally. While personal to me, it wasn’t personal to them. Later I learned that finding an agent for a fiction novel is extremely hard. While my writing is good, I’m no Shakespeare and these agents receive hundreds if not thousands of queries a week. Mine either just didn’t stand out or did not meet the needs they were currently scouting for.

Despite my present-day rational view of this chain of events, at the time I was offended. I was not willing to risk someone rejecting my book, my baby, again. So, I did the most logical thing I could think of. I boxed Bliss Creek up and put it under a desk where it sat for the next eight years. I mean what else could I do?

Years later I blew off the cobwebs and revitalized Bliss Creek. One more round of edits and some googling of how to self-publish, I became a published author in January 2024. It was a learning experience that I will document for you at a later date, nonetheless, it is done. Now that the book was published, I needed to promote it.

One such avenue of promotion was to have a book launch/signing at a small bookstore. This sounded so simple to me! What could go wrong? I picked the bookstore I wanted to host my launch and worked up the nerve to visit them in person. I naively thought I would hand them my book and pencil myself into their book launch calendar and that would be that (she laughs sardonically).

Apparently, and now that I think about it, quite logically, Amazon (where I self-published) is a competitor of the small bookstores. Needless to say, when I handed them my book and asked to be penciled into their calendar they gently, but quite thoroughly, turned me down. After all of this time and taking a totally different route in order to avoid rejection – I have to face it once again. arghh to be continued . . .

Thank you so much Andy Nam for having me on your show the Chronically Healthy Life! I always learn something when I tune into your show and am humbled by the experience to actually be a PART of your show! Thanks for helping me promote Bliss Creek, A Novel and my life’s journey! Catch the episode here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oh2c5734ZY7dgHDEhWp4m0dymFr-L4SD/view?usp=drive_link https://www.facebook.com/events/503423108811196/?