Can you be a romance author without being on social media?

Honestly, does anyone want to be on social media anymore?

If I didn’t have to be, I probably wouldn’t be. (I would probably have an account so I could lurk, but my real life is way too boring for anyone to be interested in what I take pictures of.) And I think most authors don’t want to be on social media either, or at least don’t want to be spending their time promoting themselves there.

So, what if you could just… get rid of it entirely? Do you NEED to be on social media as a romance author, especially an indie one?

Well…no.

Wait, wait, wait—I don’t want to get your hopes too high.

I mean, if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. There are lots of other avenues open to you. Unfortunately, they will probably cost you a lot more money than free social media (but then, how free is it when it’s costing you time and energy that you could spend on other things?). Here are some of those other avenues:

• Amazon ads, which if you can figure them out can be fruitful—but the learning curve is steep, from what I’ve heard. And you can pour a ton of money into them before you can figure out how to most effectively use them

• Book promo sites, like BookBub and many, many others (David Gaughran is my go-to guy for everything book promotion, and he has a big list of them and how to use them here)

• Hiring a company to distribute your book to book influencers to create posts for virtual book tours (e.g. cover reveals, release date blitzes, reviews, etc.)

• Giveaways of print or ebook copies

• Accessing NetGalley or other paid sites to reach ARC readers to review your book

• Book influencer friends or fellow authors shouting out your book (this one is free, but you have to cultivate these relationships—which might be hard to do without social media, especially for the introverts)

• Word of mouth (also free, but this one is mostly just luck of the draw and can take a long time—one of my clients’ books was mentioned on a busy romance subreddit, and she saw a huge spike in sales just from that)

• In-person events: romance conventions (which may include travel, hotel, and con costs); talks at local libraries, bookstores, book clubs, etc.; an in-person book tour (if you’ve really got money to travel)

• Your own newsletter, Substack, Patreon, etc. (links to all of those should be in the back matter of every book you write)—and yes, a newsletter is a non-negotiable for every author, whether you use social media or not

This guy seems to think that authors don’t need social media in 2025, but he doesn’t really give a lot of alternatives. Apparently all you need to do is just be successful as an author and then you don’t need to use social media at all!

But realistically, what do you as an indie author really have to do to sell your book?

As much as I’d love to say that all you need to do is write a great book, that’s just not the case for even the greatest author out there. Trust me, I’ve seen so many books from my own clients that I think are stellar and are beautifully written and deserve all the hype and sales—and they don’t have them.

So: you absolutely do have to promote. If you’re indie—and even if you’re trad, and especially a trad BIPOC author—you will probably be doing that legwork all on your own, unless you can afford to throw money at the problem. And you will have to throw some money at it in order to look professional. (Your cover counts as promo, and please do not skimp on that—we can all tell when a cover has been made by someone who doesn’t have experience designing romance covers specifically.)

You need a promotional strategy that includes some paid methods (like a virtual book tour, for example) and some free ones. So I really don’t think it’s a good idea to abandon social media entirely, unless you are indeed SO big that you don’t need it. There’s so much noise on social media, but if you can carve out your own little niche, it’s a great way to talk to your readers and to find more. Also, I am someone who lovesa deal—and social media is free, and I love free.

That said, social media is hard work. I’ve said this a million times here, you have to promote way more than you’re doing right now, whether that is on social media or elsewhere. With the way algorithms work, people aren’t seeing your posts enough, so you have to just go hard with quantity and put out a ton of posts to get visibility.

And yes, promo as an indie author SUCKS. It’s probably not something you’ve been trained to do so it’s hard and exhausting, and it takes time and energy away from doing the thing you’re here to do, which is write the books. I get it—all I want to do is edit and book coach, and making silly Reels is not something I super love. But I do it because it supports the things I actually want to do by getting me in front of potential clients who will hopefully follow and then hire me.

Listen, I am rooting for you to get so big that you don’t have to have social media. In the meantime, though, use it to your best advantage as a tool in your promo arsenal!

This was originally published in my newsletter. If you want more on what’s new and important in romance writing, marketing, and the romance industry at large, join my newsletter and get my Romance Resource Roundup, a collection of the BEST romance books/websites/podcasts you should be consuming as a romance writer.

What I Learned from Doing 30 Days of Reels

I’ve been doing Instagram Reels for…three years now? And every year, I write up a “state of Reels right now” to tell you what’s happening there and if you should be doing them. 

This year, I decided to give myself a challenge: 30 days of Reels to see what kind of patterns came up and if I can figure out this damn algorithm and what it wants.

Spoiler: I did not crack the algorithm.

I did do the 30 Reels, though, and I’ve got some insights to share with you!

Here's what I discovered doing 30 days of Reels

The Reels I did that were about writing or reading in general had the biggest views. (Examples: 1, 2, 3.) BUT this isn’t what I actually want. These attract writers of all genres; I want only the romance writers because they’re the ones who are ultimately going to buy from me. The lesson: Don’t go too broad. What do your ideal readers want to see?

You gotta be SUPER specific for your ideal audience. The ones that did well that were specifically targeted to romance writers hit on something that they want. E.g. Keeping readers buying through the series, what they need to be doing now, mistakes they’re making on Reels—these all had text in the video that got them to stop because it spoke to them, and then kept them reading through to the caption. The ones that were just mid and didn’t have enough of a hook ended up being the majority, getting around 400-600 views per Reel, instead of the 1000+ views.

I researched (*cough*scrolled Reels A LOT*cough*) and did EVERYTHING the social media “experts” tell you to do: use trending sounds, make your Reel dynamic with movement/transitions, have a hook in your video and in your caption, have a call to action in the caption. These were all hit-or-miss for me. To break it down:

• Trending sounds don’t seem to make much of a difference. IG may reward you with a slight boost in the algorithm for using it, but I don’t think it’s boosting your discoverability. I’m not going into a sound to find new people to follow; I’m just going in to see what kinds of Reels people are making with that sound.

• Movement is definitely important as a way to create anticipation and keep the viewer anticipating the next move. Movement combined with sound (a beat drop, usually) create great anticipation (example).

• Hooks, as above, have to be specific and scroll-stopping—if it’s not speaking directly to them, it’s not going to work. For romance authors, it might be a matter of grabbing the viewer’s attention with the first line of a quote from the book and keeping them watching by revealing the next line, then the next, etc. (For those of you writing spicy, this is where you bring out the sexiest moments in your book.)

• Call to actions are necessary to tell them what you want them to do: buy from you? follow you? leave a comment?

That said, even when doing all the things right, there were some that just did not pop off in the way I expected them to. And then there were ones that did really well even without all the things done right. Sometimes I genuinely think this whole thing is a crapshoot. So leave room for a margin of error for reasons no one knows.

Did doing Reels for 30 days help?

Kinda? It definitely boosted engagement and reach, though that did not translate to a ton of new followers or more comments than normal on individual Reels.

But the followers I got were good followers, i.e. romance writers and/or enthusiasts (I block anyone who doesn’t look like they’ll actually engage with my account—bye-bye, creepy dudes!), and that’s what I want. I don’t want to go viral and get a ton of followers that way because most of those followers likely aren’t romance people and will never engage again.

Was 30 days of Reels worth it?

Ehhhhh…I don’t know about that.

Coming up with 30 days of content on my own is a LOT of work. I had a lot of ideas and sounds and transitions banked in my Saved folders on IG and planned in advance (there was an epic spreadsheet), and filming part doesn’t actually take that long—I batched my content every Thursday, so I had the Reels with my face done for the week (I used stock photos/video from Canva for other days). But consistently creating hooks and captions that will hit right is HARD, and that’s where most of the time and work was every day. I was burnt out by the end of the month and so sick of my own damn face, and I definitely lost some momentum after that. (I’m still burnt out, honestly, so take this with a grain of salt, but I am continuing to post Reels two to three times a week instead of the one I was doing before the 30 days.)

However, these 30 days of Reels gave me a ton of data to pull from, and gave me a much better understanding of what I need to do to draw more of my ideal audience in. In that way, it was a good experiment.

Do I think YOU should do 30 days of Reels?

After doing it myself, I would say only if you have the bandwidth to do it. This is one of the reasons why I’ve been so resistant to TikTok—because it’s a platform that really seems to prioritize posting frequency and rewards users for posting multiple times a day. If you have the ability to post short-form video a couple time a day, amazing! If not, do what you can as consistently as possible.

(And by the way, don’t be afraid to reuse previous posts that did well, as a way to cut back on some of the work you have to do.)

Do I think you should be doing Reels in general?

Yes, if your primary platform (i.e. where the majority of your audience is) is Instagram. Reels reach is down in general, and carousel posts actually tend to be the highest-performing content on IG right now, but Reels are still a good way to reach new audiences, if that’s what your goal is. Also, I don’t think video content is going away any time soon, so you’ll need to know how to use this format to continue to grow and not fall behind.

Real talk

This marketing stuff, like Reels, is not the fun part of being an author, at least for most people. (It’s not the fun part for me, either—I would much rather be spending my time editing and coaching, but I feel that I need to do it in order to find people to edit and coach.) It is a necessary evil, though, and sadly most authors aren’t doing enough of it. You need to do more marketing than you think—not just Reels, but really be pushing your book often in every way you can, with social media posts, newsletters, podcasts, IG lives, blog tours, events, etc. (Yes, even if you are trad published. You’re still going to be the main marketing engine for your book, long after your publisher has moved on to marketing their next book.)

Take a look at Nikki Payne as a wonderful example of someone who does all the things for her book that came out in 2022 and for her latest that’s coming out in 2024. She’s a marketing machine and so good at applying trends to her books. I’m also watching Sarah Estep go hard promoting her upcoming book with clever memes and Reels and lives while also tying this marketing back to the previous book in the series. (Go give both of these brilliant authors a follow and check out their books!)

Please do not let the book you worked so hard on not find its audience because marketing feels scary and uncomfortable. Writing a book is scary and uncomfortable too, and you did that! This is just a new thing you’ll have to learn. It breaks my heart to see people make a couple of posts to promote their book around release day, and then nothing more. It’s gotta be way more than that.

Don’t worry about annoying people by posting about your book so often on social media—the algorithm is only showing it to a low, low percentage of your followers so they aren’t seeing your post all the time, and if they are, most won’t be bothered to unfollow you because of it. They follow you because they’re interested in your work and they care about you!

If you have any questions about Reels, I’m happy to answer them!

BONUS TIME!

If you’re ready to either get started on Reels or revive your Reels strategy, I have a brand-new resource for you: A Romance Author’s Guide to IG Reels!

Inside, I break down all the important parts of the Reel and how to use them to your best advantage, give you the dos and don’ts of Reels, tell you how often you should be posting, and present a bunch of prompts (including faceless ones!) to use when you’re trying to come up with ideas for your Reels.

Download it here!