I feel badly for authors who, it seems, are forced to perform in social media for their brands because they are in the vulnerable position of having to deal with a barrage of negativity.
Interestingly, I've seen a number of authors step back from social media — specifically Twitter — in the past year or so, for precisely this reason. They've still kept Twitter accounts, but they're basically just newsletters blasting out information (such as publication dates, tour dates, etc). I suppose it is something of a backlash to the culture which has turned authors into their own marketing team, and forced them to perform their identities and traumatic experiences at top speed, in real time, with a character limit, in public.
That being said, most of the authors I've seen stepping back are already established, many of them are NYT bestsellers, and their future careers seem assured. If you're an aspiring author, voluntarily opting out of the Twitter circus is virtually impossible, because publishers want to see evidence of a following that can be translated into sales.
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Interestingly, I've seen a number of authors step back from social media — specifically Twitter — in the past year or so, for precisely this reason. They've still kept Twitter accounts, but they're basically just newsletters blasting out information (such as publication dates, tour dates, etc). I suppose it is something of a backlash to the culture which has turned authors into their own marketing team, and forced them to perform their identities and traumatic experiences at top speed, in real time, with a character limit, in public.
That being said, most of the authors I've seen stepping back are already established, many of them are NYT bestsellers, and their future careers seem assured. If you're an aspiring author, voluntarily opting out of the Twitter circus is virtually impossible, because publishers want to see evidence of a following that can be translated into sales.