Hiria Dunning

Riiiiiiight?! It's so tiresome. And I'm one of the more extroverted writers I know

I think that a roadblock for me is that a social media presence is something you really have to work at. You can't just be talking about your work, you have to sell a bit of yourself as well, craft an online persona, and I find that whole process really dispiriting and difficult. #pretendpanel

Yes, that's just the image!

That I only have one thing to sell, lol. Someday I'll have a second! Maybe even a third! But if you aren't interested in historical lesbians/novella length/explicit sex/boats, well... I can't sell you on my other work because I don't have any yet. #PretendPanel

#PretendPanel: I think mine is figuring out how to find and get people's attention first, and then figuring out how to convert that. It seems like what breaks through is very arbitrary and luck based sometimes.

I hope you find your break like he did then!

Honestly, I wanna do this too sometimes 😅

All the wrong people 💯💯💯💯💯💯

There's a great deal of this in NZ too, from a slightly different angle. We call it Tall Poppy Syndrome

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 honestly, love this attitude

#PretendPanel Mar 7: Spite. I quite simply refuse to do many of the things you "need to do" to be a marketing success. I will not devote massive chunks of time to it; I'd rather be writing. I will not develop a niche to please the algorithm; I am a whole person & the internet can like it or lump it.

My biggest roadblock to marketing is finding avenues that will reach my target audience without me shouting into the voice. It's a combination of so much noise, not the right channels, and not the right message. Add overwhelm, and sometimes, I just go "F*** it, what will be will be."
#PretendPanel

OMG what a question. Seriously, I think I could overextend the character limit…

Imposter syndrome.

I don’t want to bother people.

The desire to avoid potential trolls who like to cause trouble by being obtusely contrarian or by twisting things out of context for clicks.

Typos. &—

#PretendPanel

#PretendPanel 3/7:

Money is one, as I've got very limited funds for advertising or conventions. The other is just my unwillingness to engage with certain platforms. I deleted my Twitter and Facebook ages ago, don't want to get on TikTok, and only keep a private Instagram to follow stuff, not post.

Acculturation to believe that drawing attention to myself in any way, and implying that I am worthy of that attention, is the worst social sin I can commit.

For real tho. We have to find a way to not make it a miserable experience

Probably my unwillingness to make myself miserable, if I'm being honest. I have no desire to appear in videos; my face should be irrelevant, and I don't even like *watching* videos, much less making them. Nor do I want to play the algorithm game or spend time on terrible plaforms. Makes things hard.

And it feels to me, I dunno if you feel this too, but like, by the time you learn how to market to that trend, it's already moved on!

(Secretly squeeing over this post because this is the whole point of this tag 🥰)

#PretendPanel
I was going to say personal failure: lack of drive to engage or acquire necessary knowledge.

But reading others’ answers makes me (1) feel better about myself and (2) question whether there are structural issues at play.

Saturation, algorithms, fatigue all resonate with me. (1/2)

I mentioned it yesterday, but the algorithm on other social media sites makes marketing there feel like we can't succeed by our own efforts; instead, we are totally reliant on a random ass computation that's always changing. It's why Bluesky is a breath of fresh air. #pretendpanel

Worry of "oversharing"! I love getting to write and making things, then The Dread takes over because "am I being too excited?/posting too much?" Even though 1) that's how peeps find out about your work and 2) seeing other excited creatives make me go ❣️❣️

#pretendpanel

Authentic presence 💯 In a world of formulaic ads and copy pasta promo graphics, genuine personality and dedication to community connection will always stand out to me and hold my attention. Also, someone being legit hyped about what they're working on is BEAUTIFUL and I'll def come back for that.

I'm not sure I have roadblocks. The way I look at it is that marketing is any time I share any of my writing or talk about it. It's fun. That's how I approached marketing in my previous creative life too. Visibly do the thing and be openly excited about it.

🏷️ #PretendPanel #WriteSky #QueerWriters

#pretendpanel March 7th: biggest roadblock when it comes to marketing writing?

I'm okay with synopsis and the publishing stuff. But I am terrible at finding time, or begging or boasting on social media. As someone else, I have no spoons for it.

#WritingCommunity #Writers #Authors #WritingPrompts

Reach, reach, reach! I have only a few followers and am usually asleep by the time most of them are online anyway, so getting the word out there is a huge problem. I can advertise the same book for weeks and still get followers who have never seen it.

Conversion rate a close second.

#pretendpanel

The biggest roadblock is social media, which has started to cannibalize itself. Money & views are king to the algorithm, so often one must pay to be seen. I, among many others, are sick of ads, & avoid SM because of it. SM has also become a landmine of AI scraping, putting copyright 🧵

#PretendPanel

#pretendpanel
I don't hate marketing - in fact some bits, like going to comic cons and selling books in person, I actually enjoy. I just get slightly depressed when the profit from any marketing thing barely covers the cost of the thing (or sometimes doesn't cover it).
#WriteSky #WritingCommunity

YES. Big this ^^

It's also the time pressure too, really, because it feels like a herculean task to set aside time to learn marketing stuff when I would rather be using my precious little free time on the actual writing.
2/2