Dumb Adventures in Pseudo-Publishing

I keep falling for bots.

I’m kind of a big deal. I’m closing in on having 40 TikTok followers, which means my videos that usually get 3 clicks now get upwards of 14. And yet again, I’ve found myself in the stupid paradox where the longer I take to make a video, the less views it gets.

I’ve tried a few different strategies, but I prefer to remain stubborn, slamming my hard head into a wall like a proud bull. As such, I seek TikTok advice on promoting books, growing an audience, and going viral.

A trick I’ve learned is that if I don’t agree with a particular strategy, I can just keep scrolling, and the opposite approach will reveal itself.

For example, I follow a writer/marketer who swears the best approach to get your book attention is to make loooong slide shows featuring pages of your book. It’s an interesting strategy for an author with no followers, given that most people only devote 0.058 seconds to a given post.

But please don't worry. A few seconds later, I found another TikTok suggesting the opposite. The claim made there is that you have two seconds to hook your audience, promote your book, and describe your unique journey to becoming a pretend writer.

The latter strategy seems to make more sense, given that our attention spans are shrinking by the millisecond and in twenty years, we won’t be able to focus long enough to blink one eye.

By then, our AI overlords and implanted internet brain chips will ultimately decide which approach is best. My guess is that most TikTok’s in 2045 will be brilliant bursts of spasming neuron impulses infused with viral microdoses of synthetic dopamine.

Whatever.

If the result is that I don’t have to watch another pseudo-marketer clickbait bullshit post, then I fully embrace the coming AI apocalypse.

Which means I need to get ready.

The first task is a tough one: How to recognize a BOT.

Some are easy.

Others are more convincing, especially to the no-follower-having brand I’m trying to grow to 40 followers. There’s a bit of Nigerian Prince choosing you for a unique investment opportunity, but then again….what if they’re not?

I fell for this one.

Finally! The break I’ve been waiting for.

Turns out Kevin Henkes has over 30,000 followers. Pretty impressive. I did a little digging and discovered he’s a children’s book illustrator/author from Racine, Wisconsin.

Okay. That’s a different audience than I’m aiming for. But just maybe…..

I should probably ask a clarifying question before proceeding.

He makes a good point. I mean—parents read too, right?

So, I “kindly DM’ed” Illustrator KH when it hit me. This was the same “guy” who had asked me “how is your day going?” months ago. Figuring I was talking with a bot, I replied with a standard, throw-you-off kind of response.

I told him, “Not great. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Why not? Do you have medicine you can take?”

“I do. But it didn’t seem to work.”

“What is on your medication list?”

This is where I realized it would take a while to list all my meds, with the even more rational thought arriving later that this was a scam.

But this time…just maybe.

Oh, right.

Speaking of Scams, CLICK HERE to order my debut novel, Spectral Vengeance.