Writing Blog

20230123 Weird Rejection

January 23, 2023, 11:15am

Weird rejection today.

Your story is a perfect fit for our anthology. Well edited. Real horror. Good characters. Readers will enjoy this.
         We are going to have to pass though.
         Your lack of social media means you cannot help with the marketing of the anthology. If you even had a Twitter we would reconsider.
         We know this story will find a home somewhere. Sorry to give you this news. It is a good story.

Cut & pasted.

So, rejected because I think social media is toxic. What is really strange is that the metrics indicate that social media - especially Facebook, Twitter and Instagram - do not affect book sales in a measurable sense. YouTube does have a positive affect, and in 2022 TikTok seemed to also work a little. Personal blogs seem to be very hit or miss. The way my books have sold has been through publishers going to conventions, and getting reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. Those reviews, according to metrics, are the best way for a book to gain traction and sell. But social media? In general - waste of time.

Now, I know someone is going to come on here and tell me they put their self-published magnum opus on Facebook and sold heaps of copies. Congratulations, You are an outlier. In general, social media does not work. Then again, I don't (won't) self-publish, so maybe it does help those people.

And so I am a little annoyed at the rejection reason, but I submitted it somewhere else straight away. Somewhere that does not care about social media. All they demand is an Amazon and/or Goodreads author page. Well, I have a Goodreads one.

So, weird rejection.