The State of Social Media for Authors in 2025: The Good, The Bad, and The WTF

Feeling lost? Let's discuss!

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Social media for authors is still a wild, unpredictable beast in 2025. Just in the last few months, we’ve seen platforms rise, fall, glitch, and shut down just to come right back hello TikTok, leaving us all wondering if we should just return to carrier pigeons at this point.

Despite the chaos, authors still have plenty of opportunities to build their brand, connect with readers, and—yes—sell books.

The Good: Social Media Still Sells Books (Kinda Sorta)

📚 Readers Are Still There (If You Know Where to Look)
Despite the doom and gloom, readers are still hanging out on social media—maybe not in the same places they were last year. Or even just a month ago.

TikTok’s #BookTok remains strong, Instagram’s bookish community is thriving, #BookTwitter is still as popular as ever (despite now being called X, #BookX hasn’t caught on, thank goodness), and even LinkedIn has become an unexpected haven for non-fiction authors.

💰 Paid Ads Can Be Expensive But Effective
Organic reach is still on life support, but well-targeted ads on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok can work—if you know what you’re doing.

The trick? Stop boosting posts and start running actual campaigns with clear objectives (like lead generation for your email list).

The Bad: The Algorithm Hates You and Your Book

📉 Engagement Is a Dumpster Fire
Engagement is more challenging than ever, even if you're dancing on TikTok while holding your book (please don’t). Posts that used to get hundreds of likes now barely get seen.

Social platforms want you to pay to play, and even then, the results can be excellent or not so great. 

🛑 Is Twitter (X) Basically Unusable? We Shall See…
Elon’s grand experiment continues, but many readers and authors have checked out. Bots, spam, and an algorithm that favors rage over readers (not to mention allllll the political stuff)? No thanks.

And, now, you have to pay to be seen higher in the algorithm, and you can’t access analytics unless you upgrade to XPremium.*

*Tip: Here’s a workaround - run reports using your social media management tool, which can access X analytics. Shhhh. I use Hootsuite, but you can get analytics from all tools.

Some authors have migrated to Bluesky or Mastodon, but the communities there are still relatively small and, most importantly, are not indexed by Google (yet).

I developed huge communities on Twitter and Facebook (when they were still the Twitter and Facebook we knew), so for me, as a businessperson and author, staying on those platforms still makes sense from a purely business/SEO/visibility perspective.

🔄 Trends Change Faster Than You Can Say “Book Launch”
Yesterday’s viral format is today’s cringe. Keeping up with trends is exhausting, and nobody has time to learn yet another new platform (looking at you, Threads).

The Ugly: The Chaos Continues

💀 Are Facebook Groups a Graveyard?
Once a goldmine for connecting with readers, many Facebook groups are now ghost towns—or worse, overrun with spammy book promos no one reads because the moderators have left. It takes work to keep a group involved!

Depending on your genre, Facebook may or may not be the best place to grow anymore unless:

• you have an engaged community,

• are working hard to build one or

• if your reader demographic is over age 25.

Younger-leaning genres like YA, NA (New Adult), Romance, Romantasy, and Contemporary Romance all do exceptionally well on TikTok and Instagram. Memoirs and nonfiction? Facebook and LinkedIn are your best bets.

X can work for most genres, but remember that the audience is mainly young men. The gender breakdown is as follows: 61.2% of X users are male, and 38.8% are female. (Source: Khoros)

🕵️ Scammers and Fake Reviews Are Everywhere
Buying reviews? Stealing books? Impersonating authors? The scams are getting worse, and it’s more complicated than ever to tell who’s legit.

Read more about some of the scams I see all the time here ⬇️

Amazon continues cracking down, but the bad actors keep finding loopholes, especially concerning AI-written books. Also, take a look at the WriterBeware site.

😵 Mental Health Burnout Is Real
Keeping up with social media as an author is a full-time job, and most of us already have, you know, actual writing to do, or hey, just life in general.

The pressure to be constantly online can be overwhelming. If you’re not careful, social media can drain your creativity faster than a shitty first draft.

I recommend scheduling content with a service like Buffer or Vista Social. Then, you can interact when you’re ready or have time.

So, What Should Authors Do in 2025?

✅ Prioritize Email Marketing – As we watch socials doing acrobatics trying to fit into some new world order, we realize this: social media is unstable. Important for SEO, but still, crazy.

Your email list is yours. Focus on growing it. I’ve grown from about 1200 subscribers to over 5K here on Substack in about 18 months. Want to know how? Read this ⬇️

✅ Choose a FEW Main Platforms (Max) – You don’t need to be everywhere. Pick the platforms where your readers hang out. That said, open accounts in your name for intellectual property purposes and check in occasionally when you feel like it.

Video may be super popular in the millennial demo, but not so much in the boomer gen. Where is your readership?

✅ Create Authentic Content – Readers can spot a sales pitch a mile away. Share your journey, your struggles, and your wins.

✅ Set Boundaries – Protect your mental health. Social media should serve your author career, not consume it.

✅ Experiment, But Don’t Chase Every Trend – Not every platform or trend will be worth your time. Test what works and ditch what doesn’t.

Again, video is great IF you love doing that. If you hate it, or don’t spend the time (and money) to make it good, you’re wasting your time. Books To Read

Final Verdict: Should Authors Still Use Social Media in 2025?

Yes—but smarter. The game has changed, but the goal remains: connect with readers, build a brand, and sell some books.

Use social media wisely, but don’t let it control you. And if all else fails, just write a book so fantastic that readers can’t help but find you—algorithm be damned.

🚀 What’s been working for you on social media this year? Let’s discuss!

Books To Read

If you love short stories and poetry, pick up Land of the Story Tellers by Stephen Deck here. Deck worked on these stories for twenty-five years. More on his site here. He’s also an extremely talented photographer.

I’m enjoying this excellent crime/suspense/thriller series from Vince Defilippo, Mayhem on Mulberry (Books One and Two are available now…more to come!) Learn more about Vince here.

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Happy writing!