Of course you can get a book deal without a huge social media following; or without any following at all for that matter. What matters the most is the story you’ve written and whether the publisher can market it.

If you have a following on social media already, then yes, that will definitely help to increase book sales as you already have an audience to market to.

However…

What if the audience you already have isn’t actually the right one?

What if the people who are already following you on social media aren’t the kind of people who would buy your book? It’s about quality, not quantity, what it comes to social media following.

So while it’s great to have a following already, you can still build one after the book is published. (Which is likely to happen anyway as people start to buy your book, love it, and then want to find out more about you!)

When it comes to marketing your book, we do ask what kind of online presence you already have in our author questionnaire. This is so that we can factor that in to the bespoke marketing plan we create for you and your book. Your social media following is NOT the be all, end all of how we’ll work together to promote your book!

3 reasons why it’s helpful to have a following online already:

1. You’ve already got somewhere you can share content about your book, the launch, any PR you and your book are getting etc. There’s also more of a chance your audience will share your content to their followers, even if they’re not likely to buy your book themselves.

2. Larger audience figures can help to secure some marketing and PR opportunities, as you’re showing them that you come with a ready made audience. (Which some companies like as it’ll hopefully help to build their audience too!)

3. If you already have an audience, it acts as social proof that you’re worth following to people discovering you for the first time. Essentially, followers attract followers! Which is helpful for getting more followers if they share your content to their audience too (see no.1 above!)

3 reasons why it doesn’t matter if you have a following or not:

1. You can start after you get a book deal and then grow your following from scratch. There’s no time limit for when you should start on social media. Some authors aren’t even on social media! (Shock horror!)

2. No matter how many followers you’ve got online, if your book isn’t worth the paper it’s written on (or more likely these days, the computer it’s written on) you won’t get a book deal anyway. It’s, ultimately, the content of your book and whether it’s marketable, that the editor makes a decision about.

3. They used to sell books before the internet was invented (just saying!) Social media isn’t everything.

So, I don’t need to even be on social media to submit my book to you?

Nope! You can still submit your book to us, even if you don’t use social media. Find our submission guidelines and how to submit to us here: