Author Renee Savage

The answer is “no.” But I’ll tell you how I came to that conclusion.

When I began researching how to promote myself as an author, I started running up against some inconvenient truths; social media and email and blogs have been considered essential tools of the trade for a long time. Blogs of course had their heyday twenty years ago. Instagram is absolutely saturated with influencers for every possible niche (and experts predict the bubble will burst soon). Email is becoming the bane of everyone’s existence.

So looking at the available frontiers, TikTok quickly became an option. It is still new, it has endless possibilities, and virality is much easier to achieve than most other mediums.

However, once you hear something is popular and booming, for most of us, the train has already left the station.

Early adopters of TikTok have enjoyed a lot of success with publishing. Many TikTok personalities have received book deals, BookTok influencers have supported the growth in sales for trad and self published works. It seems ripe with opportunity.

However, if it doesn’t play to your strengths, it won’t work.

I’ve never enjoyed filming myself. I don’t like editing or making frivolous content all that much. I tried to make one video and found it very overwhelming. It’s nothing I couldn’t figure out with some time, but that’s the other thing holding me back.

I don’t have the time.

Alongside all my other responsibilities and hobbies, there just isn’t time to make the content required to grow on TikTok. I’ve heard many creators talk about making 4-5 videos a day to grow their accounts and thats a time commitment I don’t have. Can people still create success on the platform? Absolutely? Are publishers rewarding that work? Some would say yes.

But if you don’t have the time to do it well, better not to do it at all.

I think my other hang-up is that I find it embarrassing, but that’s a me problem.

Right now is for writing and establishing discipline. Creating social media content is definitely a discipline, but it isn’t the most important one to me right now. I have a book to edit, a book to write, and endless exercises to do to continue improving my work. Until I’m closer to actually publishing, everything else has to take a back seat.

I do consider blogging to be a discipline, by the way. I don’t always feel like I know what to do in my story, but the act of writing something is better than writing nothing.

My reasons are entirely my own. Another author may find TikTok a great place to do their thing, and I will always wish them the best. But for now, I’ve got to take the back seat for this one.