Social Media - I want to be better at it but damn is it hard.

Being a child of the 90s, I watched with wide-eyed confusion as this new thing was given life, and for the majority of my life I have existed in a world where it has always been there. I have seen platforms come and go, and I have watched some remain relevant long after their supposed lifespan. But despite all of that, I never really understood the appeal of social media. I never understood the point of constantly sharing what was going on in my life.

If someone were to look at my actual Facebook profile under my real name, there would be very little there that I actually posted. Under my pen name, J.P. Graves, there is more content, but almost all of it is related to my books. I am introverted by nature, and with a job that completely drains my social battery every single day, I just don't feel much of a need to post and share when I get home. Although, admittedly, my doom scrolling in the evenings gets a little out of control some days but I view that as my “me time” I guess.

This isn't because I have nothing going on. My life is just as busy as everyone else's. I have things I am excited about, things that frustrate me, things that worry me, and things I am proud of, but I have never felt a need to broadcast those things to the world. For most of my life, that has been perfectly fine. As an author trying to build an audience, though, I am beginning to realize that this is probably one of the places where I have

There is an expectation now that authors maintain some kind of social media presence. One thing that I did not know before starting this adventure was that writing the books is only part of the job. Once the book exists, there is this additional pressure to constantly create something called "content." If you're like me and have never been interested in documenting your life online, that can be intimidating. I honestly cannot stand making TikToks, Reels, or even basic social media posts most of the time. I like my privacy, and I have never been particularly comfortable putting myself in front of a camera and talking to strangers on the internet.

There is another part of it that bothers me even more. At a certain point, promoting my books starts to feel like begging. Every video or post about one of them can start to sound, at least in my head, like I am saying, "Please buy my book. I have invested so much time and effort into this thing. Why won't anyone give it a shot?" That is simply not who I am. I hate asking people for help, I hate asking for assistance, and I certainly don't enjoy asking someone to spend their money on something I created.

The problem with that mentality is fairly obvious: how is anyone supposed to read something if they don't know it exists?

I can spend a year writing a book and months rewriting, editing, formatting, and preparing it. I can make sure the finished product is something I am genuinely proud to put my name on, upload it, hit publish, and make it technically available to millions of people. None of that means those millions of people know the book exists. Making something available and making people aware of it are two completely different things, and the second part is where I have struggled.

There is a strange contradiction in being an author. Writing is an incredibly private process. Most of the time it is just you, a computer, and whatever strange collection of ideas has been rattling around inside your head. Then you finish the book, and suddenly the job changes. Now you're supposed to walk outside and tell everyone what you made. You need posts, videos, trailers, cover reveals, release announcements, behind-the-scenes content, and whatever else the algorithm has decided it likes this week. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, you're supposed to convince strangers that both you and your work are interesting enough to stop scrolling for thirty seconds.

Frankly, I would rather write another book. And to be honest the pressure of creating content has actually stalled me a few times because of how much creative energy it takes to make a simple sixty second video.

I would much rather someone give me a goal of eighty thousand words, complicated characters, some horrifying existential problem, and an ending I haven't completely figured out yet. That sounds significantly less intimidating than staring into a camera and saying, "Hey, I wrote a book."

What I am beginning to realize, though, is that I may have been looking at social media the wrong way. Talking about my books is not necessarily begging someone to buy them, and telling people about something I spent years creating is not asking them for a favor. There is a difference between constantly screaming "BUY MY BOOK" into the void and simply giving people an opportunity to discover something they might actually enjoy.

I genuinely believe in the books I have written. I am proud of Crimes of an Empire. I am proud of In Darkest Dreams. I am incredibly excited to finally release Writer's Block. I would never try to convince someone to spend their money on one of those books if I thought what was inside was terrible. If I believe they are worth reading, then perhaps being willing to talk about them publicly shouldn't feel quite as uncomfortable as it does.

I think I also made the mistake of assuming that building an audience meant turning my entire life into content. It doesn't. There are parts of my life that belong to me, my family, and my friends, and I have no interest in putting those things online. I can maintain that boundary and still give people a reason to follow J.P. Graves.

There are plenty of things I actually enjoy talking about. I can talk about horror and science fiction. I can talk about books, artificial intelligence, monsters, terrible fictional governments, morally questionable characters, worldbuilding, writing mistakes, abandoned ideas, and the bizarre places inspiration sometimes comes from. I can explain why I completely rebuilt Crimes of an Empire instead of simply cleaning up the first edition. I can talk about how Writer's Block became the story it is, what I have learned over the last several years, and all the things I still have no idea how to do.

That is content too, and it feels significantly more natural to me than pretending anyone needs to know what I ate for breakfast.

So that is what I am going to try. Over the next several months, I am going to make a legitimate effort to become more active online. There will be videos, posts, discussions about books, probably several awkward attempts at talking into a camera, and almost certainly moments where I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. Some of it will probably be terrible, especially in the beginning, but I have written terrible first drafts before. The only difference is that nobody normally gets to watch me write those.

More importantly, I am going to try to stop judging the success of every post by whether somebody immediately buys a book. Maybe a person watches a video and decides to follow me. Maybe they recommend a horror novel I have never read. Maybe we have an interesting conversation about artificial intelligence or writing. Maybe they simply remember the name J.P. Graves, and six months from now they come across one of my books and recognize it. All of those things have value.

I don't expect to suddenly become good at social media, and I certainly don't have any ambition to become an influencer. I want to be an author. Apparently, though, part of being an author in 2026 means occasionally putting down the manuscript, turning on a camera, and reminding people that your stories exist.

So I am going to give it a genuine shot. I will probably be awkward. I will probably complain about it. I will almost certainly overthink every video before I post it.

Maybe eventually I will even start enjoying social media. But to be honest I'm not entirely sure that day will ever come.