The numbers game is still a shell game…

So I read this blog post by Jami Gold that says a lot of what I've often ranted about with social media and the illusion of numbers. Today, I'd like to briefly illustrate that point in a way that I hope will be humorous and not inflammatory.

First, right now I have 923 followers. Note, these are not 923 buyers of books, or 923 diehard Zoe E. Whitten fans. In fact, some of these followers aren't even human. They're bots who I haven't blocked or who haven't been removed by Twitter yet. Some are porn bots. What? You think someone who writes sex scenes all the time doesn't occasionally need inspiration for new positions? But even if some of those bots are useful, but they still won't RT my stuff or buy a book. Cause bots don't read much.

So, eliminating bots from my numbers, let's say I have 850 real live human beings. They all live in different time zones from me, and not all of them are in the US. When I post a link, it would be awesome to think that all 850 human beings are live right then and there, and they all go, "Oh my God, it is a new important link from the most wonderful person I know, Zoe E. Whitten! I must read this link, and then share it with the world, and then read it again, and then write a long glowing review!"

That's what I'd like to happen. But it's more likely that of those 850 followers, only four were looking at the screen when I tweeted. Of those four, three were already committed to their next fart joke and can't stop in the middle of their thought streams to RT my link.

You ask, "Well where were the other followers?" I'm SO glad you asked. I made a list:

357 were asleep in bed

20 were asleep at their desk

1 was asleep on his wife, much to the wife's chagrin

120 were making a sammich

5 were men turning around to tell their women to make them a sammich

3 have never recovered from their injuries

1 now answers to Sally

6 were having, like, real life drama while watching reality TV

105 were having sex

23 were wishing it wasn't a solo act

10 wished they'd stop thinking about their grandmother while doing it

59 were taking a poop

21 were taking a pee

13 were praying to the porcelain god

1 was servicing a senator in a bathroom

300 were engaged in SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAA!

So, these number scientifically show how just because I have a lot of followers, it does not lead to RTs, to sales, or to any kind of play with young women with loose morals. In fact, I haven't even gotten my first groupie email offering free sex, and I've been on Twitter a long, long time. Like almost two and a half years now. So yeah, really long.

And, I don't mind that I have 850 live human followers and a hundred or so bots. I don't mind that they aren't all dedicated fans. I don't mind that they don't RT book links. They're away when I tweet, and Twitter happens fast, like a rushing stream. When I scroll back to check in on other conversations, there's a limit to haw far back I go. I'm sure other people do this too, so there's very good odds that fully two-thirds of my followers will never see the tweet I really want them to see.

According to Klout, I'm highly influential, with a score of 59 for now. But this doesn't really equal any useful benchmark. A higher or lower score doesn't result in better book sales, or in more RTs for my book links. It just means people are likely to engage me in conversation on Twitter. Which would make sense, because that's what I use it for. For gabbing.

I had great numbers on most every social network I was on, but having good numbers and a good networking score didn't mean I made money. And I'm not saying it should have. I'm agreeing with Jami that there's a trap publishers are getting themselves into that thinking social media numbers will relate to more useful numbers like sales figures.

Publishers, I'm telling you, don't think because you have 10,000 friends on Facebook that you have 10,000 buyers. And readers, don't think adding a writer to your friends list alone is doing them any favors. If you really like a writer, point them out to your friends. Or point out links to their writing samples. There's a part of the post I want to quote (Bolding is my edit):

Word of mouth is what sells books. Not direct selling.

And authors cannot do their own word of mouth. So the numbers of the author don't matter as much as the numbers of those who spread the word for them.

Hmmm…you know, what? I think some other writer said that too. Who? Oh right, me. And at every turn that I've brought up this inescapable maxim, I've been called entitled. For pointing out the obvious, that writers cannot survive without word of mouth promotions. Publishers have relied on shotgun marketing to promote only certain titles while leaving the work for their "lesser" titles up to the authors. Who, by the way, usually aren't qualified to sell their own books and are thus doomed to fail.

And readers don't help. Readers feel that the authors should do all the work of writing the story, all the work editing and submitting, all the work of building every single reader relationship as a one-to-on interaction, all the work of promoting their reviews, all the work of promoting their guest posts and podcast appearances. Readers should just be able to show up and get the latest book. So what if the writers are starving? Readers don't owe writers anything. After all, it's not like you're getting anything by reading fiction, is there? We don't strive to educate or challenge you. We're just wasting time that you could have spent doing something else. Like pooping. Or masturbating.

I've heard readers say, "I only comment on what really moves me." Which is why so many published, paid writers fail to sell even 10% of their first print runs. Because so few of their readers feel moved to help. Writing is one of the few professions where making slave wages is still seen as romantic. That this attitude persists is because readers refuse to acknowledge their part in our poor welfare. Authors NEED more than just a few hundred friends on Twitter to guarantee success. They need more than just friends numbers from the latest hot social site. They need fans who are willing to help spread the word.

If I went to a publisher with a book that had 5,000 readers, that's a different set of numbers. 5,000 people pay me to buy a story, and those are numbers that a publisher should want to know about. But having 5K in followers does not mean I sold 5K in books. I know it doesn't, and shouldn't, but I worry that some publishers may be falling into the trap of thinking that followers are fans. And nothing could be further from the truth.

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