Authors as Content Creators

In which I attempt to organize my thoughts about Netflix and attempt to figure out the plural form of "ethos."

With a debut on the way (ALL WE HUNGER FOR in Spring 2026), I’ve ruminating on how my position as a creative will shift in the later months of this year and for the rest of my career as an author. As a caveat, I have no idea what my marketing support will look like for AWHF. I have a fabulous, supportive editor who believes in this book and my abilities as a writer. Cover-shaped things are beginning to happen, which makes me realize how many people it requires to raise a book baby, and I am eternally grateful.

This essay isn’t about bashing the publishing industry. Rather, I want to understand how we’ve gotten into this mess so I can better prepare myself for whatever roles I need to fill in order to have a happy, healthy, and successful debut year.

Fair warning, I do chat about some pretty heavy topics, but it’s in the hopes I can provide helpful bits that reframe this debacle.

Before we dive in, maybe we take a peaceful moment to observe these beautiful blossoms I saw during my last round of disc golf.

Nature is healing.

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Since the creation of social media, and likely long before, authors have felt increasing pressure to be writers, marketers, and now content creators. Of course, this differs based on your publishing house and where you land within your team’s focus for the season (lead title, etc.), but the majority of authors land in a sphere where they have to spend as much time writing as they do planning social media posts, newsletters, and various other marketing strategies.

As someone who loves focusing on the craft of writing, I hate this.

As someone who knows this likely won’t change, I’ll learn how to do this.

In a post by Leigh Stein, I learned that even actors such as Maya Hawke suffer from the same pressures. What really stuck out to me was Maya’s distaste for this new method of representing yourself as well as her willingness to play the game.

And what I always wanted to be was an actor where the work is what the draw is, not the personhood. But the industry keeps changing and you have to change with it and understand that all of these things are getting blurred.

For the last ten years, I’ve sat hunched over my laptop in stained sweatshirts with my hair in a bun that would make beauty TikTok scream, and not once did I ever think about putting my face on the internet as a way of selling myself. I’m just a small-town girl living in a lonely—wait, sorry. Scratch that. For real, though. I’m boring. I live a minimalish life, I take my dog on walks, I enjoy donuts and sitting on my front porch, and my house is organized chaos. At this moment, I’m staring at a cat tower I intend to sell that’s just sitting in the middle of my living room, a vase of fake flowers, and plastic bags for puzzle pieces abandoned in the coffee table. My life is and has never been ⭐AESTHETIC⭐, and I do not want to change my life to fit whatever ⭐AESTHETIC⭐ is trending.

BUT that doesn’t mean I’m excused from content creation. BACK TO CLASS!

How the world got here is a complicated mashup of capitalism, influencer culture, the rise of social media as a marketing tool, and the commodification of attention. I’m just one girl with a single brain cell, so I’ll focus on a single aspect that, I think, directly correlates to the publishing industry.

Netflix and the Cancelation Loop

For a while now, I’ve been on a kick of comparing the publishing industry’s current shit-uationship with content creation to the Netflix model of producing TV shows, and I went on a deep dive to try and prove I’m not just the old man yelling at the clouds meme. I probably still am, but whatever.

While this might be part of another post I’ll make later, I’ve come to believe something with my entire heart: products (books, movies, TV shows, etc.) fail when the people deeply involved don’t share similar ethos (ehtoses? ethosi? ethea?). A writer wants to make the best damn book possible. The editor wants that too, but they also want to earn accreditation and money for their company, thus creating job security. Valid! Publishing marketers love books too, but they also are in a position with limited budget and time where they have to hedge bets on which books will do well. Valid! Some/most CEOs and stakeholders love books too (or used to), but they want money.

The higher up the chain, the more an author becomes a figure in a spreadsheet. Not valid. Understandable from a corporate standpoint, but not valid.

Swinging back to Netflix, we’ve seen some of the most innovative shows from the mega streaming platform. Unique perspectives, mind-bending premises, and high-quality production. We all know what happens next… They’re canceled after one season. Why?

According to a Forbes article, Netflix is stuck in a “self-fulfilling cancelation loop.” How the hell have they done that? Different ethos (ethi? ethesies? ethe?) at various steps of the show’s creation. The writers and directors want to make a great story; the CEOs and shareholders care about that bottom dollar. In an attempt to pinch pennies, marketing is slashed for these shows and they suffer. The only reason I heard about FIRST KILL is because I’m a V.E. Schwab fangirl, but I saw no mention of the show beyond their Instagram posts. SENSE 8 came into my life because someone else recommended it. Both canceled with horrendous outcry from passionate fans.

Don’t even get me started on Disney+ and their horrendous (lack of a) marketing plan for shows with female or BIPOC leads. Where was the build up for Ms. Marvel, Mr. Mouse?!

The other thing at play here is what we often see on BookTok: not starting a series until readers know it’s finished. Because of this, publishing has leaned into the new hotness of “standalone with series potential” as a way of compensating for the chaotic readership they’ve created. ALL WE HUNGER FOR is a standalone because I wanted it to be, but the idea of trying to write a series feels a bit futile right now. Sure, duologies have become the middle ground, but they don’t solve a major problem publishing faces: a reduction of fandom. Again, this is another post for another day, but I would bet my cute-ass capybara light* that publishing (Hollywood, Netflix, etc.) have seen a measurable loss of revenue from a lack of long-standing fandoms.

“It’s now created a system where creators should be afraid to make a series that dares to end on a cliffhanger or save anything for future seasons, lest their story forever be left unfinished.”

BAM! Change every word in that quote to fit the publishing industry, and my point is made. Case closed. Except… very much still open because there’s a ton of nuance to this topic.

Have I gone down a rabbit trail? Yes! Am I old man yelling at the sky? Yes! Am I looping back to content creation? Also yes. Because I’m learning how to keep reader retention as part of my progress toward learning how to be a content creator. Insert eye-twitch.

Creative industries have gotten themselves into a spaghetti situation: throw content at the wall and see what sticks. They rely on word of mouth and creators to hype their own shows (see the Stein’s post to learn how Britt Lower uses her personal Instagram to hype Severance), and publishing wants mid-list authors to release their own book covers and run their own marketing campaigns.

“The streaming service typically only does short-term advertising for its major releases, making it difficult to build anticipation for upcoming seasons.”

As a teen, I would watch a move in theaters as many times as my meager K-Mart minimum wage would allow because I’d devoured every TV ad with new, tantalizing scenes to feed the hype monster.

With this wild west of advertising, companies know anticipation can’t be built if no one knows about the product. And yet… Many authors (with maybe 900 followers) are told to release their own covers because it “doesn’t move the needle.” Maybe that’s true. Maybe in terms of thousands of sales, it doesn’t shift it dramatically, but it sure wouldn’t hurt to have that cover seen and hyped up on an official Instagram or TikTok.

Time for a collective deep breath where I offer you this cute dog in rainboots as an apology for venting my own existential crisis about the upcoming debut year.

Play the Game by Your Rules

You know me. I’m a realist at heart, and I’m all about learning how to adapt rather than complain with no action. At this point, Pandora’s box cannot be closed. Chaos is out. With TikTok and streaming, the world runs on instant gratification. It runs on bottom dollars and going viral.

But it also relies on people being genuine. Sure, you can pump out content and try your hardest to go viral, but it’s not going to happen unless you make something people genuinely love, and that can be anything. That dog up there? I bet the creator wanted me to love that video because of all the matching yellow. I didn’t. I loved it for his little back feetsies sticking out of his little raincoat.

In a recent episode of Matt D’Avella’s THREE RULES PODCAST, guest Anaita Sarkar (CEO and founder of Hero Packaging) talks about how she addresses content creation and advertisement in the volatile setting of social media: create marketing strategies broadly. If you listen the episode, she has a lot of strategies I don’t think apply to authors (be on every platform, use AI to write blog posts, etc.), but I do like this:

“… you may have put 10 hours into making that post thinking it’s amazing, and it flops and then you’ve done one post that week. So I would rather you do ten and have a bigger chance of going viral and being seen by the right people, even if nine of those pieces of content are absolute rubbish.”

As an author, I took this as advice and permission to do the following:

1. Do not waste time making a “perfect post.” No one is going to pass up my book because a squiggle on my Instagram stories should’ve been a little to the left.

2. It’s about finding the right people, so make your content for the audience you want to attract.

Learn basic graphic design to represent yourself however you like, but don’t take it so seriously because social media isn’t that serious. We are authors, not influencers. We revel in creation, connection, and art—not rage-bait or consumer culture. Social media is just one of many ways to sell books.

The only thing we’re in control of is what we put into the world. We can’t control how our posts will be received, so why waste time fretting over it for hours when the amount of traction you get is just as mysterious as where my socks go when they enter the dryer. Or where I put my water bottle. Or where my keys went…

Bottom line for authors? Enjoy whatever it is you choose to do! I’m teaching myself to be grateful for this journey that could end at any minute. I’ll soak up every beautiful moment and learn from the frustrating ones. I’m not going to change who I am or remodel my house. I admire the Instagram folks who have cute clothes and beautiful little book nooks! They’re using that remarkable aspect of their personalities to share their creations with the world.

I’m going to use what I love to share too! Expect quotes, my dork face making silly videos, and several videos that look like they were made with Windows Movie Maker because I want to relive my fan music video days. If that works for me, awesome. If it doesn’t, awesome. I had fun trying to figure out my strategy.

*The cute-ass capybara light on the line.