I'm with you on this one, Rey. I'm so frustrated with everything happening right now. Over on SmallStack we're prepping an open letter for the community about this topic, so it's good to know I'm not the only one struggling with how to address it.
Thank you so much, Robin, for your work! It is incredibly frustrating that marginalized small content creators are taking on the burden of dealing with these corporations’ decisions.
The Facebook announcement seems like a canary in the coalmine about the creeping fascism we're in for. Social media is a gateway to powerful inner drugs (like dopamine, adrenalin, cortisol). But it's also become such a way of life (and, as you said, a platform for doing business) that it joins the ranks of other forms of addiction to things we need to do to sustain life, like food addiction or workaholism. Working with it while not being worked over *by* it takes a lot of intentionality and consciousness (which is what it sounds you're doing...thanks for modeling that).
I've been on FB for several years. Initially it was to augment the marketing my traditional (novel) publisher was doing. Then, when my work no longer fit into their pre-fab marketing channels, we parted ways. FB became the primary marketing machine left open to me. The number of review sites out there that will even look at books for free gets smaller every year. What's left is paid advertising, and my budget is already stretched with the costs of my website host, my Klayvio account, cover design, and formatting. If FB changes to the point that I can't tolerate it or it doesn't keep me in touch with my readers, I might have to give up selling my books. I don't find email as a channel to be nearly as personal. I'll still write, because... well, I'm a writer. And I'll be here on Substack.
I'm with you on this one, Rey. I'm so frustrated with everything happening right now. Over on SmallStack we're prepping an open letter for the community about this topic, so it's good to know I'm not the only one struggling with how to address it.
Thank you so much, Robin, for your work! It is incredibly frustrating that marginalized small content creators are taking on the burden of dealing with these corporations’ decisions.
This synthesized so many of my thoughts on the matter.
Thank you for writing this.
Thank you so much, Wake!
The Facebook announcement seems like a canary in the coalmine about the creeping fascism we're in for. Social media is a gateway to powerful inner drugs (like dopamine, adrenalin, cortisol). But it's also become such a way of life (and, as you said, a platform for doing business) that it joins the ranks of other forms of addiction to things we need to do to sustain life, like food addiction or workaholism. Working with it while not being worked over *by* it takes a lot of intentionality and consciousness (which is what it sounds you're doing...thanks for modeling that).
I've been on FB for several years. Initially it was to augment the marketing my traditional (novel) publisher was doing. Then, when my work no longer fit into their pre-fab marketing channels, we parted ways. FB became the primary marketing machine left open to me. The number of review sites out there that will even look at books for free gets smaller every year. What's left is paid advertising, and my budget is already stretched with the costs of my website host, my Klayvio account, cover design, and formatting. If FB changes to the point that I can't tolerate it or it doesn't keep me in touch with my readers, I might have to give up selling my books. I don't find email as a channel to be nearly as personal. I'll still write, because... well, I'm a writer. And I'll be here on Substack.