Launching My First Book: Month Two Reflection

Life hits hard

Tentatively titled WAR OF THE WEST (or maybe CHAOS LIVE), my debut novel is about an orphaned teenager who sees the start of the Second Civil War as his opportunity to escape poverty. Through the ChaosLive augmented reality platform, he can generate ad revenue by streaming the violence as it unfolds in real time.

Blurb writing, it turns out, is hard. I planned on having the whole blurb finished already, but February was a tough month on a personal level.

Blast those sinuses.

My wife and I have an almost 1-year-old son who brought home a series of weapons-grade daycare bugs that left all of us in poor health. After countless fussy days and two late-night trips to the emergency room, we are exhausted and eagerly awaiting spring.

In other words, I didn't have as much time this month for the launch.

Still, tough times offer some necessary perspective. (I can get pretty wrapped up in this book-publishing adventure.) I’m grateful to have an otherwise healthy son, plus so many friends and family who love us and support us along the way.

Beware of threadbois

When I got started with this book launch, I looked for examples of people who were generating a lot of attention on social media. I thought I could learn something from them about building an audience, even if they were selling products and services other than books.

Some of the Twitter accounts that stood out were the “threadbois” — a somewhat derogatory term for tech bros emitting an endless stream of advice about business, health, productivity, relationships, audience building, and even life itself.

Cringey, I know.

In my defense, I didn’t want to be a threadboi. I just wanted to adopt their strategies for my own book launch, so I started mining their threads for tips.

For example, threadbois frequently offer insights about the Twitter algorithm. They talk about the importance of writing threads instead of standalone tweets, engaging genuinely with others, delivering helpful content, and repurposing content to maintain a steady stream of tweets.

Okay, great, I thought. Why not do these things? Why should I pay for advertising if I can just learn how the algorithm works?

The threadbois' numbers seemed to back up their bluster. Prominent threadbois have hundreds of thousands of followers, and many claim to have generated these followings in a year or two, or even just months.

Oh, how naive I was.

Using followerwonk.com, a website that lets you analyze anyone’s Twitter followers, I discovered that most of these threadbois seem to have bought their followers from Nigeria and India.

Here’s an example:

Classic threadboi.

From followerwonk.com

I say "seem" to have bought their followers because I can't be sure.

Manually reviewing their followers leads you into threadboi house of mirrors. Either India and Nigeria are full of threadboi wannabes, or these follower accounts were created solely to drive engagement with threadbois in the US.

I would love nothing more than someone like Nicolas Cole to correct me on this.

For now it’s left me disillusioned with building a social media following, and frustrated with people like Cole, who seem to be scamming people out of money with the pitch that they too can achieve the same success through honest effort.

My threadboi experience was not all negative, however, because I also ran into some wise people making a different claim: The size of your following is less important than actual engagement. In other words, it’s better to have 2,000 people who are really excited about your new book than 200,000 people who followed you upon a whim (or because you paid them to do so).

Gotta finish the book, gotta write that magnet

The above experience has also reminded me that what really matters is my book, not messing around on Twitter. Without a book, I have no product to offer anyway. I'm just another threadboi squawking my life away.

If my health continues to improve, I’ll finish my first draft by the end of March. Between that and the revision process, I’m planning on writing a novella to serve as a reader magnet. I hope giving a shorter story away will connect me with readers who want to read my novel when it comes out.

And if that doesn’t work, I’ll just pay some people in India to tell everyone how great it is. 😉

Other near-term activities include blurb writing, commissioning a cover design, and writing more blog posts. I actually enjoy writing these posts as a way of organizing my thoughts, even if I’m the only one who ever reads them.

Book launch spending summary: February

In February I spent $29. That's it. Just $29 for one month of the followerwonk.com subscription.

Quite a difference from the $1266 I spent last month, eh?

Would I pay $29 again to discover the truth about threadbois? Hell yes. Truth is beauty, and beauty truth. Followerwonk has also been fascinating for analyzing authors with real followings, potentially offering insights into who is reading what. That said, I don't think I'm at a stage yet where I can really act on these insights.

Instead, I'll save my money for a cover, and then paid Facebook lead generation advertising when my reader magnet is ready.

Until next month,

Will