I Made An Instagram Account For My Book Stuff And It's Terrible
I don't want to become the next best selling author, and I don't want to make money from my writing. I've tried to avoid Amazon, but as a first time author, uploading an ebook to the Kindle library was the only real way I could find to make it widely accessible. Yes, there are probably other options, but I have a full time life outside of writing. I thought I'd manage paperback copies myself, but I have no idea where to sell them, how to set up an online shop, etc. etc.. Basically, I'm in the trenches trying to navigate this whole process. I may upload a paperback edition to Amazon, I haven't decided yet. Submitting to agents and such also felt like a nightmare, especially with transgressive and explicit literature. By the time I considered that, I'd already bought my own ISBN and self published on KDP. Anyway, the point is, it's a lot.
But I thought I'd make an Instagram account to share my stories, my reviews, upcoming releases and the likes. Not to make waves in the world, but to carve out a little corner that like-minded people might discover and enjoy.
Enter a nightmare.
I wasn't expecting to gain followers, I wasn't expecting to make friends. I was still under the impression that hashtags were useful for grappling with the algorithm, but apparently that's pointless too. I will never expect great things to come out of my Instagram account. I also did not expect it to send me into a mental spiral within the first twenty four hours.
My feed said it doesn't give a shit about who I'm following or what I want to see. But hey, have you considered that your writing is terrible? Have you ever thought that your sentence structure reads like a twelve year old on Reddit, and your plot doesn't have a hook? What if I told you nobody is ever going to want to pick up your book? If you don't post on a rigid schedule, every day, with visuals you spent five hours making on Canva, you're wasting your time even being here. Here's how to get rejected by every agent on the planet. Did I mention your writing is terrible? Here's twenty mistakes every first time author makes, and here's how I got so lucky I make six figures from my writing now. If you pay me hundreds of pounds, I'll coach you into becoming the next best-seller!
I made a post. It's had two likes, one from my partner. It's not about the numbers, I'll keep telling myself that. Maybe now I've followed a few people, my feed will be less unbearable? Incorrect. Here is every single open submission call from across the world that's been posted in the last 6 months. You should do something and submit it to us! We're so open to new authors and voices! Follow these extremely rigid rules to submit, also the deadline was 2 weeks ago. Don't forget that post you saw earlier where a billion agents and publishers will reject you when you submit stuff anyway. But you have to keep going. Keep grinding. Ruin the fun of writing while you make your Canva edits.
While you're here, let me show you what writing a book should look like. It's twenty printed and annotated drafts, weeks of sleepless nights, the most expensive highlighters on the market, more Canva edits so you can keep posting. Your first ten drafts are GARBAGE. You may as well delete the entire document and start again. Are you commenting on every single engagement post your feed suggests to you? If you're not sat in your beige kitchen with a cup of iced coffee and an expensive laptop, you're not doing it right.
What the fuck is going on?
I'm proud of my story, really. It's had 6 ratings, split between 4 and 5 stars, and four reviews. Three, really, because one is from my partner. Is that cheating? I think my book is good, especially for a first try. Certainly not to everyone's tastes, but maybe it will find the right audiences. Or that's what I thought, until I was faced with the onslaught of Bookstagram.
If I'm feeling so overwhelmed by the idea and growing need to promote, am I still writing for the right reasons? What even are the right reasons? Like most people, I've had a ton of social media accounts over the years for various things. Not once have I felt so overwhelmed and awful about them.
I always said I wanted to publish a book before I die, and on Nov 28th 2025 that goal will be reached. I expected to feel pride and accomplishment, because I did it. I wrote a book, I finished it, I published it. I should be proud of that, and I am. But within a few hours of starting a new Instagram account, the imposter syndrome, and the feeling of not being good enough has wormed its way into my soul. I feel like I need to do more. I feel like I need to subscribe to Canva premium, and beg accounts with 100k followers to read and review my book. I feel like if I don't have a 'break', none of this has been worth it.
When I write, it's me and a Google Doc against the world. I write on my way to work on my phone. I did the majority of the 20k words in my first book on the bus, or while I sat on the stairs at work with my Tesco meal deal. I received 18 responses to my ARC form and I was so proud of that. Instagram won't let me forget those authors that get 1500 requests in the first twenty four hours, though.
I can't treat writing like a business, and I won't. I'm disappointed in myself that I couldn't fully avoid Amazon. That's probably not quite true, but I want to make my book accessible to queer readers, and where do most people get their eBooks? I have an IngramSpark account, where there's a looming confirmation message for my proof to be approved. Then they will distribute it for me. But how do I price everything? How does it all work? Apparently, it's really simple. Thousands of authors self publish every day, and somehow they figure it out, and they make it. I guess I have no idea what I'm doing.
If being an author means selling my soul to the social media devil, I don't think I want to do it. If any one shop wanted to stock physical copies of my book, I think I'd be thrilled. But I think that's just the goal post moving. I'm not ashamed to admit that I think it'd be really cool to make a book that does well. I've daydreamed about talking to other authors, and seeing everyone's thoughts about my writing. It probably won't happen though, because my writing isn't a business plan.
I think I need to stop looking at book stuff on social media, otherwise I'm going to get lost in the flood. I don't want to beg people to read my writing, and I'm not going to do thirty million drafts of the same book. Maybe that's good enough, maybe it isn't. At the end of the day, I want to enjoy what I do with my free time. That happens to be writing weird, queer shit that doesn't quite fit into any of the genres people are talking about. My friends like it, I'm proud of myself, and I think I need to remind myself that it's okay for it to end there.