Why Your Book Marketing Will Fail and How to Fix It

In this email article, I am going to explain to you why your book marketing will fail, why you’ve been lied to, and what you can do to sell more books.

It’s a long one, but please stick with me, I promise I’ll explain how to market your books more effectively in the future.

The Social Media Problem

When it comes to book marketing, you’ve been told a huge lie.

If you look at most book marketing guidance, you will unquestionably see the advice that you should be using social media to promote your book.

This is bad advice.

In fact, it is worse than bad; it’s downright catastrophic advice that will doom your book to failure.

Here’s why…

When you scroll through social media, you see viral post after viral post. It’s pretty much all you see. If a post is showing up in your stream, it’s there for a reason. You don’t get to see the millions of posts that never go viral.

Social media marketing promises that if you can create a viral post, then you will sell more books than you can handle. It’s an enticing promise.

The problem is the word ‘viral’.

The big social media platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, all use algorithms. These are rules that are applied to determine what content you, the user, sees. The goal of these platforms is simple, it’s to keep you engaged and scrolling. It is NOT to show you content you want to see, it is to show you content you will keep consuming.

And why?

To sell adverts. The longer you are engaged, the more money they make.

The algorithms are made for them, not you. Remember this, it’s critical. Social media is not there to connect with readers; it’s an engine to engage users so that the owners can sell ads. The big social media platforms have become the most effective advert delivery systems in history.

Think of it like this.

You can be on a platform, such as TikTok, you can follow a creator, that creator can post content, and if it’s not hitting the algorithm, you don’t see it. Consider that carefully… you have told the platform you want to see a creator’s content, yet if it’s not in the best interest of the platform, you don’t get to see it.

Let’s flip this to the creator’s viewpoint, or you, if you are trying to market your book. Getting content in front of users is not about creating stuff you want them to see; it’s about creating stuff that the algorithm feels will engage them the most. The real issue for you, a writer, is that I am certain you have no idea how to consistently create content that will be grabbed by the algorithm.

Since no one knows the algorithm’s rule set, it all becomes one huge game with creators trying to second-guess what the algorithm wants, seeing what hits, and matching that content style. This has become an industry in its own right. Just take a look at https://www.1billionsummit.com/

We even have a name for creators who are good at tricking the algorithms - influencers.

Its easy to dismiss influencers, but the best earn their money by understanding how to go viral. How to demand attention. That’s their job.

If this wasn’t all bad enough, there’s another issue for writer looking to market their book.

The Bestseller Problem

Writers have been conditioned by publishers to believe that the goal of a book is to be a bestseller.

There’s a good reason for this. Traditional publishers know that about 80% of the books they publish will not make any money. Of the remaining 20%, which will make a profit, a small fraction will make so much money that they will pay for all the other books and then some. Publishers NEED bestsellers to survive.

This approach works for publishers, but it’s a lottery for writers. Trying to chase bestseller status will doom you to failure.

Here’s the way I want you to think about bestsellers so that it will put things into perspective.

For a book to be a bestseller, it must sell far more copies than other books of the genre. To do this, it must break out of the genre and gain cross-market sales.

A bestseller, by definition, is a book that sells the best.

Look at the recent success of Sarah J. Maas, selling over 75 million copies of her books worldwide.

She writes fantasy romance.

Fantasy romance!

There’s no way that there are enough hardcore fantasy romance readers to buy that many books. This means that she broke out and managed to cross genres. The reality is that for most new readers of Sarah J. Maas, it will be the first (and probably last) fantasy romance author they ever read.

Same for Game of Thrones. How many people reading a Game of Thrones book went on to read the excellent Joe Abercrombie?

You get the point.

But there’s one last thing you need to understand: publishers don’t know what makes a bestseller. NO ONE, Sarah J. Maas included, saw this success coming. It’s all just a guessing game.

The whole of the traditional publishing machine is designed to increase the odds of a publisher finding a bestseller. Unfortunately, this is not in the writer’s favor, as most will be doomed to mid-list obscurity, at very best. (By the way, ‘mid-list’ is the term publishers use to describe the 20% of books that make a profit without becoming a breakout bestseller.)

If you are judging success by the bestseller standard, you are setting yourself up to fail.

1000 True Fans

So… if you are not looking to become a viral sensation or a bestseller, how do you even begin to market your book?

What does success even look like?

Well, I’d argue that for most writers, they’d be happy selling a few hundred books a month, not millions.

If you are thinking like this, if you redefine success to ‘small’ but consistent sales, then there’s another way. A way that actually works. A way that will allow you to build a long-term career as a writer.

The answer is to find 1000 fans.

Ricky Gervais, creator of The Office, once said…

“Make the thing you would love and be proud of. There are enough people in the world that, if you do that and do it well as a single vision, they’ll go: ‘That’s my favorite thing ever!’”

Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine agrees. He wrote an article in 2008 called 1000 True Fans. You can read it here - https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

In the article, he says…

“To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.”

I would argue that today, in 2026, it is easier than ever to find 1000 true fans; you just need to see the world a little differently.

But how?

Let’s start with this idea of being viral. By its very definition, this means that it’s something that a huge number of people see. Something that breaks out. But what makes something viral on social media? No one really knows, but a 2015 research paper found that ‘content that evokes either high-arousal positive emotions (awe) or negative emotions (anger or anxiety) tends to be more viral.’

Viral content is about emotions, often negative. It’s about a brief dopamine hit that will keep you scrolling.

But ask yourself, when was the last time you saw something ‘viral’ that was also ‘valuable?’ When was the last time a piece of viral content changed your life?

The opposite of viral is value.

Creating value is the currency for creating a readership. Instead of looking to create a dopamine hit, you are looking to add value to your potential readers’ lives. You are looking to help, teach and build connections.

The opposite of fighting the algorithm is building authentic communication.

The way to fight Ai slop is with authenticity.

THIS is how you get 1000 true fans. One at a time with high-quality content that changes lives.

The Other Way

It’s very easy to believe that the Internet has become a collection of mega sites that syphon in users and feed them via the algorithms.

This wasn’t always this way.

Twitter, before it went mad, showed us a very different world. It was a collection of users, seeing only the content of people they followed. Communities grew, people connected and engaged, and books were sold.

In fact, this is exactly how I grew BubbleCow. Back in the early days of Twitter, I spent hours creating great content and helping writers. One person at a time. Some of them even became fans.

Yet, the idea that the Internet is a collection of several big sites is a myth and an illusion.

Have you heard of Mastodon?

No? Well, it is a micro-blogging service (think old Twitter), which has no algorithm. You see only who you follow. Old school. In 2024, Mastodon had over 15 million registered accounts.

15 Million!

What about BlueSky? This is the same thing, a micro-blogging service created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Again, no algorithm, you just see the content you choose. As of April 2026, Bluesky had over 43.5 million registered users.

So if you created Mastodon and BlueSky accounts today, that would give you access to over 50 million people.

Think you can find 1000 true fans amongst that lot?

The Hard Part

Here’s the kicker.

What I am suggesting here is not easy. Creating high-value content takes time and effort, but so does any marketing. Nothing about building a readership is easy.

And what option do you have?

Trying to go viral isn’t working. Do you want to spend your time trying and failing to make spammy content in the hope that it will go viral, or spend the same effort creating high-value content that makes your fans happy? Content that builds over time, producing something you can look back on with pride?

So how do you do this?

The honest answer is I don’t know. Well… I do, that’s why you are reading this article, but this is what works for me. I like to write, and readers like to read. But for you, for your future readers and fans, I don’t know.

The good news is that you do. You know your readership and what they want. You know what you like to produce and how you can create the most value. It might be writing, but it might be YouTube videos, or free online courses, or a newsletter, or webinars, or free books, or engaging micro-blogs, or book reviews, or one of the many other ways to engage with potential fans.

The key is to find what works for you and your potential readers and drill down.

This all said, there is a ‘shape’ to all this, solid steps. Here are a few broad steps I think make sense for anyone.

1. Find a non-algorithmic drive platform to engage with your readers. It might be Mastodon or BlueSky, but it might also be a newsletter via something like Ghost or SubStack. Something that works for you.
2. Create high-quality, engaging content that your potential readers want to read. This is the critical part. You want to become a small part of your readers’ lives, so that they would miss you if you were no longer there.
3. Be consistent. You build trust by showing up when you say you will and delivering each time.

I hope this has hit home with you and has given you some ideas on how you can look to build a engaged readership.

Next month, I’ll examine in more depth what creating high-value, engaging content really looks like.