King Charles. Seriously.
Every now and then we post something on social media that blows up. It’s never about our books, of course.
Seriously, if you’re on social media hoping that a “Buy my book” post of yours will go viral, STOP IT.
No one wants your book spam.
I’ll put it a bit more clearly:
NO ONE WANTS TO SEE YOUR FUCKING BOOK SPAM
Should you stop posting about your books? No one says that. But you should stop expecting it to lead immediately to great sales.
Sales on social media are like this:
Funny or engaging posts about random things > more followers > tell them you’re an author & occasionally drop details about new books > people will try your books when they’re ready
If you want to see this done masterly have a read through George Penney’s posts, especially the ones he does about people watching at markets.
OK, so I’m not on social media to sell my books. I’m there to goof off and talk about politics. I had some posts do quite well recently. They were posts about the orange man and our perspective in Australia. I’ve also had posts about Australian wildlife do well. But I’m not trying to game this.
So when I made a mildly appreciative comment about King Charles’ trolling of the orange man the other day, I didn’t expect it to be popular. And then I made a post about how I was surprised that people quietly appreciated Charles and that was even more popular.
So there it is: people appreciate King Charles for his quiet trolling, for his utter… staid boring-ness and lack of drama. For the fact that they don’t have to go out and vote for him and contemplate the consequences, and that he isn’t allowed to be overtly political anyway.
Basically, King Charles is a choice that was made for us and we didn’t have to make. As long as he does his job adequately, no one really wants to bicker over who holds the position. It’s one conflict we are glad not to have to fight.
So there is the ultimate non-reason for Australia not to become a republic: because we don’t want to have shitfights over who has that job. When that person falls off the perch, we know someone will supply a suitably staid replacement with a friendly smile, with or without dogs, and, their personal failings notwithstanding, the wing-clipping or opinion-muzzling they suffer will be adequately compensated with wealth (too much, many say, but not enough to cause a mass uprising). So basically not enough people can be bothered to get angry enough about the situation.
And yes, the popularity of these posts doesn’t lie: people clearly appreciate King Charles for being–well–King Charles, warts–or tampons–and all because *shudder* think of some of the alternatives.
That was my surprise of the week.
