We are Writers, Not Sideshow Monkeys

The Fine Line Between Literary Promotion and Digital Ridicule

The other day I stumbled across a video on TikTok that left me with a mix of tenderness and absolute dread. In it, a debut author—who couldn't have been more than twenty years old—was hopping on one leg in her room. Overlaid on the image, a text summarized the drama of our era: 'I thought I was going to get famous by writing a book. And now it turns out that to achieve it I have to act like a fool'.

The scene is laughable, but the undertone is tragic. It perfectly describes the syndrome of the writer turned ringmaster; the collapse of a craft that has traded hours of editing and the polishing of words for the tyranny of whatever algorithm is currently in vogue.

There is nothing wrong with staying on top of social media trends. To deny that platforms are an essential showcase for an author today would be an exercise in absurd cynicism. Gaining followers is positive, of course. The problem is not promotion; the problem is the price you are willing to pay for it. Because what is at stake is not this month's sales: it is your future and your public image as a writer.

The Vanity Metrics Trap

We live in the era of instant gratification. It is tempting to publish a video shaving your head to celebrate reaching a thousand followers, or to join the latest viral dance with your novel in hand. The network might reward following trends. You might get thousands of views and your follower count might skyrocket.

But let us do a cold analysis of the situation: who are these people?

When you degrade your brand to the level of empty gimmicks, the algorithm indexes you into the quick-entertainment drawer. Those thousands of new users are not your readers; they are not your target audience. It is a crowd of young—and not so young—people who consume your stunt in three seconds, swipe to the next video, and will never read a single line of your book. You have traded prestige for noise. You have gained numbers, but you have lost potential readers.

The Price of Erasing Your History

There is a factor that debut authors often ignore due to the urgency of their launch: the network's memory. A bad novel can be pulled from the market, rewritten, or remade under a pseudonym. A video of you making a fool of yourself online remains embedded in the collective imagination and on network servers for life. It is a digital stain that is tremendously difficult to remove.

Building a solid, serious, and respectable literary reputation—the kind of reputation that makes an international library open its doors to you for a bilingual presentation or a mature reader buy your work on Amazon—takes years of work and rigor. Destroying it takes the duration of a fifteen-second trend.

If you treat your own work as a joke, do not expect critics, independent publishers, or demanding readers to treat it as literature.

Where Promotion Begins and Where Your Future Ends

Literature and brand communication do not require us to become inaccessible hermits. Attractive content can (and should) be made: talking about the research process, debating translation, breaking down the psychology of a character, or showing the behind-the-scenes of an editing session. That is providing value. That is attracting people who respect the written word and who will end up buying your books because they are interested in your mind, not your dancing skills.

Promoting your work means opening a window into your literary universe. Playing the sideshow monkey means begging for an attention that, besides being fleeting, is sterile. Ultimately, being a writer consists of understanding that the algorithm is a tool that must work for us, and not the other way around. Our creative dignity is not traded on the stock market of likes.

And you, where do you draw the line when it comes to promoting your work in the digital environment? Do you believe that social networks are devaluing the figure of the writer, or are there simply new rules of the game that we must accept?

Let me know in the comments.