Just read Edie Melson’s post on The Write Conversation, “Social Media Monday—How Facebook Changes for 2015 Could Affect Authors,” and I have to admit not being happy with my favorite playground. If you haven’t heard yet, Facebook plans to charge businesses a monthly fee to advertise on its site. According to Edie, this practice will begin with organizations that have a physical site, like stores or offices, but it could extend to authors, since FB is the one who determines what an ad is. Authors definitely advertise on social media, Facebook included. It’s how someone like me, a Texas housewife, can make a sale as far away as Washington state, or even overseas.
If you’re an author and haven’t read Edie’s article, I suggest you do, then figure out how important FB is to you. Like I said, it’s my favorite playground, and I’m reluctant to give it up. Not that I would–we can still use the site just to have fun with our readers and fellow authors. I’d just have to be more careful about what I posted pertaining to my books.
Still, I can’t help wondering whether it would be worth the fee, whether I may as well just go ahead and figure it into my marketing expenses.
Most people swear by Twitter, as well they should, but I feel at home on FB. One of the complaints about FB is that we don’t reach everyone we’re supposed to, but there are ways around that. Every time someone shares one of my posts, they reach someone I may not have. And if the shares continue, there’s no telling how many people are reached.
Which leads to the question one of my fellow PBG authors asked: Will it be considered advertisement if we promote other authors?
If so, then we’d be in a mess. There’s no point in advertising when we can’t reach the numbers on our own, and there’s definitely no point in advertising when the post can’t be shared without costing our readers money or getting them zonked by the Facebook Police for advertising on their sites.
Edie said she’ll be making a follow-up post pertaining to all this Monday, so I’m anxious to see what she says. Meanwhile, I’ll continue on Facebook the way I always have until I’m told otherwise.
Several years into it, and this blog still refuses to be categorized. It's eclectic and includes everything from writing posts to snippets from my ordinary life. 
Linda W. Yezak 
Oh dear. Somedays it does seem like the rich just get richer and we poor just get poorer. On one hand I can see their point, on the other, we small timers need a break somewhere. Sigh. Thanks for bringing this to my attention and sharing the link.
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Yeah, especially since most of us don’t have a major publisher to help with promo expenses. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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I read the same article, too. It’s frustrating. Once things calm down a smidge, I need to go re-read the article and maybe look into the new terms to understand them myself. As a newbie author, sometimes you can’t afford to spend money initially, so having free social media is a true benefit!
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Yeah, free sites are valuable. When I talk about my marketing budget, I’m not talking about mega-bucks. It’ll definitely hurt if FB is outside my budget, but I can still stay on it to keep up with friends and fans.
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Right now Facebook only shows 15% of your friends or page followers what you post. You have to “Boost” (pay) to show it to more. When I have boosted, I haven’t found it worthwhile. I’ll still use FB, but I’ve crossed it off my list as a way to reach readers.
Instead, I’m encouraging them to sign up for email notification of new releases on my website.
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As long as I keep it active, the stats on my author page say I reach a higher percentage than what I apparently do on my regular page. My regular page doesn’t have statistics for me to analyze. Of the 709 followers I have on my author page (got a new one this morning!), I reached 593 of them, as of the time I wrote this comment. Granted, since I don’t have many followers on that page, that isn’t a great reach, but it’s a start. And when I’m more active, the number of folks reached goes up.
But I encourage folks to sign up for my newsletter, too, and to get my blog posts sent to their email addresses. Facebook isn’t the only tool out there, but combined with the others I have at my disposal, it helps. Most of the readers of this blog come to me through Facebook and through the WordPress Reader.
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We’ve been saying it for years: Facebook just keeps shooting itself in the foot. And yet it somehow keeps limping on as the most popular social platform. I, for one, will be glad when something more user-friendly topples it.
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I dread breaking in a new social site and having to gain followers all over again. Sigh.
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Many of my Facebook author friends are trying out a newer service called Tsu (dot co, not com). It’s Facebook-like, but it’s all individual pages; they don’t have group or organizational pages at this time. I don’t know if they plan to implement those at a later date or not. The problem I have, as I’m sure many of us do, is that so many of our friends and followers are still on Facebook, so migrating to a new platform probably needs to be done in stages with the hopes you can bring others along. Plus, I admin three Facebook groups, so I still need to be there. I haven’t paid for any Facebook promotions yet, but maybe I need to build some promotional funds into my 2015 budget. I’m just not sure it’s worth it.
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I was invited to join one of those newer sites, but I haven’t. Like I said, I dread breaking in another site.
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Personally, I hope this is much ado about nothing.
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I hope so too.
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