Is Blue Sky A Haven For Creators? Or Just Another Social Media Mirage?

Social media has been in something of a spiral for creators the past several years. I talked about this a while back in The Reason Social Media Sucks For Everyone (Not Just Creators), but to catch you up on it we're caught in the middle of serious platform decay. If you've never heard the term, that's when social media platforms have sucked up a huge audience, and then the people in charge start tightening the screws in order to suck more money out of advertisers, as well as users on the platform. It's why Facebook has edged out more and more of your actual friends to show you ads, it's why Reddit has ever-more vigilant bots that attempt to stop you from sharing things instead of buying ad space, and so on, and so forth.

One of the worst, of course, was what happened to Twitter. The bird site was where a lot of independent creators spoke directly to their audiences, and where they made a lot of their online sales. And Musk, like any spoiled kid with an expensive toy, has been breaking it ever since he acquired it so that it's nearly useless for the purpose it was made for.

Enter our supposed savior... Blue Sky! A website that (supposedly) functions like social media was supposed to back in the glory days. A clean interface, a suite of perfectly normal features, and your feed is full of things from people you actually follow and subscribe to. It sounds like a perfect solution, but as we've learned well over the years anything that sounds too good to be true probably isn't.

So, what can I say about Blue Sky?

Well, I've been flying pretty high since I joined!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

What Has My Experience Been Like So Far?

I want to start with something of a disclaimer. I was never a heavy user on Twitter. I'm still technically there with just over 1,800 followers under @nlitherl, but I never really got much in the way of traction on that site. Even with participation in online follow trains, and being part of regular events like Self Promotion Days, I'm lucky to get any interaction at all on my posts over there. Usually 1 or 2 people will give something I share a heart, and maybe retweet it, but that's about it.

For comparison, I've been actually active on Blue Sky on @literarymercenary for a little over a week and change. I've had the account longer, but it was mostly dormant until recently when I started purposefully trying to expand it. At time of writing I've got only 72 people who are following me on there, but perhaps some folks reading this right now will be kind enough to push me toward triple digits. However, even with such a dramatically smaller audience, I'm finding that my posts are regularly getting a minimum of 4 interactions from people actually following me, and often it goes pretty well above that number.

So, absolute base numbers, Blue Sky is definitely showing promise, since it's outperforming the site it most resembles pretty much straight out of the gate in terms of people actually seeing and interacting with your posts.

Of course, those numbers are just one aspect of things.

Raw numbers and interactions do not a social media website make, though. With that said, Blue Sky does have some other features going for it that I feel are worth mentioning.

One of the things I find most valuable is that it has no trouble generating previews of images from your posts. A picture is worth a thousand words, and if a post you make has a black box or no preview at all, then no one is going to stop their scrolling long enough to register what it is you're talking about. When I shared my recent blog entry World's Oldest Profession... Is The Third Time The Charm? on both Blue Sky and Twitter. On the former, folks got a lovely preview of the shiny cover of the supplement, while on Twitter folks just got a bunch of text, and no image at all.

Seriously, check this thing out if you're a tabletop gamer!

In addition to this feature (which is pretty damn important if you're looking to expand your audience, make sales, etc.), Blue Sky has made statements that it won't allow content generated on the site to be used for AI scraping... which is something Twitter is apparently going to do. Blue Sky has an entire culture of blocking people who harass or abuse you without arguments and drama, unlike Twitter where not only is this kind of toxicity the day-to-day business, but there have been talks about modifying or outright removing the block feature.

Does this make Blue Sky perfect? No, don't be ridiculous. It's still a social media website, which means there are conflicts between users, there's technical issues due to the massive numbers of people they're onboarding, and there are going to be some features you want that aren't there, and there will be decisions they make you won't like. It's operating as an alternative to other websites out there, which means it is still a business.

With that said, if you're someone who has been dismayed at the state of websites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. with regards to your promotional efforts, I would recommend at least reserving your place on Blue Sky. Whether you want to build up your following and use it seriously to try to reach a bigger audience, or you just want to keep it in your back pocket, it's certainly worth taking a little bit to set up your profile, and to reconnect with some folks.

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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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Amazon Expects Readers To Pay If They Want To Leave Book Reviews

Online customer reviews are a way of life. Whether you're going out to eat, buying a car, getting your gutters cleaned, or buying a book, you always check to see what previous users have had to say before you put your hard-earned money on the line. In fact, as Invesp points out, as many as 90 percent of people will do a quick check on a local business's online reviews before trying them out. Of those folks, roughly 88 percent said they trusted online reviews just as much as they would a personal recommendation from someone they know.

This one looks good... let's give it a try!

If you're an author, then you already know how important good reviews for your book can be. Especially when it comes to the Internet's biggest marketplace, as I mentioned back in How Many Book Reviews Do You Need Before Amazon Promotes You? However, if you're hoping to get your readers to leave you a whole bunch of 5-star reviews on Amazon, prepare to run face-first into an unexpected hurdle.

You Want To Leave Feedback, Make Sure You're Paid Up!

Ideally, the book review process is a simple one. If someone reads your book and likes it, they can sign onto their Amazon account, call up your title, click how many stars they think you deserve, and maybe leave a little blurb about what they liked. Or hated, if that's the case. The more reviews you have, the more likely your book is to be seen, and the more sales you're likely to make. After all, if more than 50 people thought this book was great, then this is clearly something you need to check out for yourself!

In case you were looking for your next recommendation, you should check this one out!

It's already hard enough to get readers to go and leave reviews on your book, but as I've found with my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, Amazon recently enacted a policy change that makes it even harder.

These days it isn't enough to have an Amazon account if you want to leave reviews. It's not even enough to buy your book through Amazon. In order to leave a review on it, the account holder needs to have spent at least $50 through that website in the past year. Otherwise they're not allowed to leave reviews. Even if they discovered your book through Amazon in the first place, and that's where they bought your book to read it. Unless they've spent that money (gift cards don't count according to the Amazon policy), then they can't share their thoughts with the community at large.

That's a kick in the teeth no matter who you are. Because whether your fans came across your book during a free giveaway, or they simply don't have a lot of spare dosh to throw around, leaving a review is one of the best ways to help the authors that you love without spending any money in the process. Unless, that is, you're trying to leave that review on Amazon.

So Go To Goodreads Instead!

If this is a problem you've ever run into (I've had three readers message me personally to inform me they ran into this wall, so I can only guess the number who had this problem and didn't tell me about it), then I have a workaround for you! You can still help the authors whose work you want to promote, share your opinion, and do it all for free.

Head over to Goodreads, and leave your review there.

Seriously, everyone is welcome over there!

While Amazon's algorithm is seriously powerful, Goodreads is no slouch at getting the word out about your work either. It even has buy links right on the page (as you can see on the page for Crier's Knife), in case someone sees it, thinks it looks good, and wants to pick up a copy. It also shows how many people are currently reading your book, and how many people have marked it to-read, which can be helpful.

This is not an either-or proposition, of course. If you're a reader who really wants to help an author you like reach a bigger audience, then leave reviews in as many locations as you can! But if you find yourself standing on the other side of Amazon's velvet rope because you don't order enough stuff from them to share your opinion, well, you're more than welcome on my Goodreads page!

We Can't Do It Without You!

Authors might be the ones writing the books, but it's the vocal readers who boost our signal that really drive our careers. Remember that, without you, there's no way we could afford to do this sort of thing for a living! Also, if you want to know some more ways you can help the authors you love without spending green to do it, check out 10 Concrete Ways You Can Help Authors You Like!

That's all for this Business of Writing installment. If you're an author, make sure you have a place all your thrifty fans can go so that Amazon doesn't silence their voices (and cost you money).

For more work by yours truly, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by My Amazon Author Page! To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest where I'm building boards to keep track of both my books and RPG supplements. Lastly, to help support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi or going to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron today!