TikTok left me broken

Okay.  Looking at what seems to work and what doesn’t, I have to conclude that I’ll probably never be any good at TikTok.  It’s like the moment you realise that even though you really want to learn Japanese, you’ll never actually manage it. 

The analogy is not accidentally drawn because the whole language, grammar and rhetoric of TikTok is, to me at least, pretty impenetrable.  I think I understand bits of it but I’m probably too old to ever get it right because it’s not a resource that I would naturally use every day.  However hard I try, my creative endeavours will never reach the dizzy heights of a digitised cat singing ‘Monday left me broken’ (this currently-trending meme may well be long-gone by the time you read this). 

So unless a really good idea hits me, which is unlikely, I’ll probably have to stick to more old-school methods of promotion.  And what are they?  In what my daughters would call ‘the olden days’, the sales and marketing department of a publishing house would send proof copies to reviewers and to their own authors, who would come up with those little nuggets that would appear on the finished covers: ‘J J Rich has written the most brilliant book I’ve ever read’ James Joyce (author of Ulysses) etc.  You know the kind of thing.  I guess the contemporary equivalent for a self-published author would be to try and get their book to people who might give it a decent plug on their YouTube channel or on BookTok (yes, back to the ubiquitous TikTok).  Do I know anyone suitable?  That will need some thought.  But unless anything radical happens, you will be relieved to know that I won’t be blogging about social media again in a hurry.  I’m graciously admitting defeat. 

Happy writing!