Cliff Jones Jr.

I've avoided TikTok so far and completely left Xitter, but that doesn't go far enough. Meta is terrible, nearly as bad as these others, so I'd love to abandon Facebook, Instagram, and Threads as well. How do I do this as an indie author scrambling for readers?

This is not a rhetorical question; I really want to know. How do you balance "maintaining an online prescence" with not supporting fascism? Both of those seem like hard requirements for indie authors, and they are in clear conflict.

#writingCommunity #indieAuthor #indieAuthorChat #indieAuthors #indieAuthorsOfMastodon

Jun 10, 2024 at 5:49pmWeb
Show threadAlan Langford ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿงค๐ŸงŠๆ‘Jun 10, 2024
@cliffjones As far as I can tell, we're screwed in that regard. Sacrifice awareness or deal with the fascists. Difficult choices.
Show threadA ByrdJun 10, 2024
@cliffjones
Tl;dr: accepting short-term obscurity for long-term audience quality, while accepting the least worst options for some small level of visibility.
I pick and choose the ones I'm willing to engage with. I hate Amazon...yet I'm on Twitch. I hate Google...yet I'm considering being on YouTube with book reading videos. Their stances on genocide and human harm are at odds with my sense of them, but they are some of the least bad mainstream.
I think, partially, it's accepting the obscurity in the short-term. Right now, we're in a learning curve with how promotion on the Fediverse will work. It's not really geared towards that right now. Hashtags are only so useful for discoverability. That will change in time, I believe, as more and more people start leaving these larger platforms.
The other part is balancing the audience. Sure, on TT and FB and Insta you might have more reach...but what about the quality of that audience? Is that really the audience you want? Reach might be more limited here, but the audience quality might be more what you want. Maybe it doesn't go far via a post...but it might go far via word of mouth.
Show threadCliff Jones Jr.Jun 10, 2024
@Byrdbrnz Excellent points. I have fewer followers on Mastodon, for example, but I get the most engagement here. Who cares if 100 strangers scroll past message and nobody stops to read?
Show threadA ByrdJun 10, 2024
@cliffjones It's just the way we talk about success on social media these days. It's really easy to assume all those thousands of followers translates directly to dollars in pockets. But at this point I've watched enough influencers burn themselves out or run their brands into the ground because they chased that idea.