Don’t Hack Algorithms; Befriend Readers
Here’s what nobody tells you about book marketing: the algorithm doesn’t buy books. Readers do.
I know, revolutionary concept. But somehow we’ve all collectively lost our minds, obsessing over posting schedules and engagement metrics and whatever the hell “optimizing for discoverability” means. We’re out here treating book marketing like it’s a heist—trying to crack the code, game the system, find the secret backdoor into readers’ wallets.
Meanwhile, the actual solution is sitting right there, almost offensively simple: just be a person talking to other people.
Marketing Is Just More Writing
You know what marketing actually is? It’s writing. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
You write social media posts. You write newsletters. You write blog posts. You write responses to reader emails. It’s all just... writing. The thing you already do. The thing you’re supposedly good at.
But somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that “marketing writing” is this separate, scary skill set that requires courses and coaches and complex strategies. It doesn’t. It requires you to write stuff and share it with people. Congratulations, you already know how to do that.
The Power of Voice
Think about how you recommend books to friends. You don’t say, “This book has strong SEO and excellent Amazon category placement.” You say, “This author gets me,” or “This voice is incredible,” or “This writer makes me feel less alone.”
That’s what readers want from you, too. They want your actual voice, not your carefully optimized, algorithm-friendly, hashtag-stuffed performance of what you think marketing should sound like.
Here’s the thing about voice: it’s instantly recognizable and completely unfakeable. When I tell you I’m going to a Quentin Tarantino movie, you know what I mean—excessive violence, sharp dialogue, killer soundtrack, probably some feet. If I told you Tarantino wrote a book of poetry, you’d have expectations about what that poetry might feel like, even though he’s never written a poem in his life. That’s the power of voice.
Build that kind of relationship with readers, and the algorithm becomes irrelevant.
Social Media Sucks (But You Still Need to Show Up)
Look, I’m not going to lie to you—social media is exhausting. It’s noisy and performative, and half the time it feels like screaming into a void while the void occasionally screams back about your grammar.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: it’s also where readers are. Not because they love algorithms, but because they love people. They’re looking for writers who feel real. Who share weird research rabbit holes. Who admit when writing is hard. Who have personalities beyond “buy my book.”
You don’t need to post seventeen times a day. You don’t need to dance on TikTok (unless you want to, which honestly would be amazing). You just need to show up like yourself, consistently, and let people get to know you.
The Actual Strategy
Stop trying to hack anything. Start befriending people. Share what you’re learning. Talk about what fascinates you. Be honest about your process. Respond to comments like you’re talking to humans, because you are.
Marketing isn’t a separate job. It’s just more writing. And you’re already a writer.
So write.
And now a fiction break
Pillows in the Bathtub
by Liz Dubelman
The idea came to me on a Tuesday, between clients. Not a bath—a nest. Pillows in the tub, the paperback I’d been trying to finish since October, maybe that Joni Mitchell playlist. No water. Just stillness.
I mentioned it to my sister that night, expecting her to laugh. Instead, she got quiet. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard all week,” she said. “And I teach middle school.”
But she didn’t understand. It wasn’t sad. It was practical. You work with what you have. Four hundred square feet in Santa Monica doesn’t leave room for a reading nook, and my bedroom feels like an extension of my office—laptop on the nightstand, client files I tell myself I won’t look at but always do. The bathroom was the only space without ghosts of other people’s grief.
That night, I dragged two throw pillows into the tub, arranged them, and sat down. Stood up. Rearranged them. Gave up. The porcelain was too hard, the angle wrong. I ended up sitting on the closed toilet lid, scrolling through vacation rentals I couldn’t afford, pressing my thumb against pictures of Mexican beaches until the pixels blurred.
The cold started the following Monday. Nothing dramatic—scratchy throat, that underwater feeling in my ears. I took Emergen-C, doubled up on tea, and told myself it would pass.
By Wednesday, I sounded like I’d been gargling gravel. Mrs. Chen kept asking me to repeat myself. I considered canceling Thursday’s appointments, but Jake was scheduled for ten a.m., and he’d already rescheduled twice. Three months in, we were just starting to get somewhere. His mother’s suicide had been in May—pills, no note—and he’d spent the summer oscillating between rage and numbness. Last week, he’d finally cried. You don’t interrupt that kind of momentum.
Thursday morning, I woke up with no voice at all. Not raspy. Not hoarse. Gone.
I tried everything—hot water with honey, steam from the shower, those ridiculous vocal exercises I’d learned in a workshop twenty years ago. Nothing. I stood in my kitchen and opened my mouth, and nothing came out but air.
I should have canceled. Obviously, I should have canceled.
Instead, I texted Jake: Laryngitis. Can still meet if you’re okay with me mostly listening. Your call.
He replied immediately: lol yeah that’s fine
He showed up in a Dodgers hoodie and the same Vans he’d worn to every session, holding an iced coffee the size of a small child. Twenty-one years old, unemployed, living in his dead mother’s apartment in Mar Vista because he couldn’t afford to move and couldn’t bear to stay.
“You sound like shit,” he said, dropping into the chair.
I smiled, nodded, gestured at my throat apologetically.
“This is kind of perfect, actually,” he said. “You can’t interrupt me.”
I raised an eyebrow—my attempt at I never interrupt you—but he just grinned.
“You do, though. Not in a bad way. But like, you’re always trying to... I don’t know, guide the conversation? Ask the right questions? Today you just have to sit there.”
I pulled out my phone, typed: Fair enough. I’m listening.
For the next forty minutes, Jake talked. Really talked. About his mother’s boyfriend, who kept texting him, wanting to “process” together. About his aunt, who called every Sunday to ask if he was “okay yet,” as if grief had a finish line. About the guilt of feeling relieved some days—relieved not to worry about her anymore, not to screen her calls, not to wonder if this would be the time she actually did it.
I nodded. Handed him tissues. Typed occasional questions.
At the end, he stood, stretched, looked at me with something I couldn’t quite read.
“This was good,” he said. “Like, really good. You should lose your voice more often.”
I must have looked stricken, because he laughed.
“I’m kidding. Kind of. It’s just... I don’t know. It felt more even, I guess? Like I wasn’t performing for you. You weren’t performing for me.”
I typed: Were we performing before?
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I was trying to show you I was making progress so you’d feel good about your job. And maybe you were trying to show me you had all the answers so I’d feel safe.” He paused at the door. “Anyway. Feel better. Take the day off or whatever.”
I didn’t take the day off. I had three more clients scheduled. But I did cancel Friday, and when I sent the emails, I waited for the dread. The certainty that I was letting people down. That they’d spiral without me. That they’d find someone better.
Instead, I felt nothing. Just tired.
Mrs. Chen wrote back immediately: Please rest! I’ll be fine. See you next week.
My two p.m. responded: No problem! Hope you feel better!
My four p.m. didn’t respond at all, which I decided to interpret as mature self-sufficiency rather than abandonment.
Saturday, I slept until noon. Sunday, I made a spreadsheet of my finances—something I’d been avoiding for months—and realized that if I skipped two dinners out per month and stopped buying books I wouldn’t read, I could afford a long weekend somewhere by spring.
Monday, my voice came back, raspy but present.
Tuesday, Jake’s regular slot, I met him with tea and working vocal cords.
“You sound better,” he said.
“I am better. Thank you for last week. For what you said.”
He looked uncomfortable. “I wasn’t trying to be deep or whatever.”
“I know. That’s why it landed.”
We worked for a while in our usual rhythm—me asking questions, him answering, both of us circling the enormous fact of his mother’s absence. Near the end of the session, I did something I’d never done before.
“I’m thinking of taking a few days off next month,” I said. “A real break. I wanted to tell you in advance, so you could prepare, and also because... I realized I’ve been holding on too tight. To you, to all my clients. Like if I let go, even a little, everything will fall apart.”
Jake nodded slowly. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
“Good,” he said. “I mean, not good that it’s exhausting. Good that you’re taking a break. You should.”
“You’ll be okay?”
He gave me a look—patient, slightly amused, way older than twenty-one.
“Regina. My mom killed herself. I’ll never be okay, okay. But yeah. I’ll be fine for a week.”
That night, I didn’t try the bathtub nest again. Instead, I sat on my balcony—barely big enough for a chair, but mine—and looked at the ocean I could almost see between buildings. The Pacific, just out of reach, exactly where it had always been.
I opened my laptop and booked four days in Ojai. Nothing extravagant. A small casita, a hiking trail, a town with no grief counseling practice.
When I closed the computer, I felt something unfamiliar. Not happiness, exactly. Not relief.
Just space. The kind you don’t have to create from pillows and porcelain. The kind that exists when you finally stop filling every silence with your own necessity.
My sister called. I told her about Ojai.
“Good,” she said. “What changed?”
I thought about Jake, about my lost voice, about all the years I’d spent believing my presence was the only thing keeping other people whole.
“I guess I realized that the world doesn’t stop when I do,” I said.
“Took you long enough,” she said, but her voice was warm.
“I’m sixty-three,” I said. “Better late than never.”
“Sixty-three isn’t old.”
“I know. But some days it feels too late to learn new tricks.”
“Regina,” my sister said. “You literally teach people how to rebuild their lives after loss. You’re the queen of starting over.”
“For other people.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? Believing your own advice.”
On my last day before the trip, Jake showed up early, holding two iced coffees.
“One’s for you,” he said. “Since you’re going away and everything. Figured I should be nice.”
I took it, smiled. “Thank you.”
“So where are you going?”
“Ojai. Up in the mountains.”
“Cool. My mom and I went there once. Before everything got bad.” He said it easily, like a fact rather than a wound. “There’s this bookstore. Bart’s Books? It’s all outside. You’d probably like it.”
“I’ll check it out.”
We sat. He fiddled with his cup.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “About what you said. About holding on too tight.”
“Yeah?”
“I think I do that too. With her stuff. Her apartment. Like, if I change anything, I’m erasing her. But that’s not really fair to either of us, right? She’s dead. I’m not. At some point, I have to live like I believe that.”
I felt my throat tighten—the good kind, the therapist kind, the kind that means someone just figured something out for themselves.
“That sounds like wisdom,” I said.
“Or just exhaustion.” He grinned. “Either way. Have fun in Ojai. Don’t feel guilty. We’ll all still be fucked up when you get back.”
“Jake.”
“What? It’s true.” He stood, headed for the door, then turned back. “Oh, and Regina?”
“Yeah?”
“The bathtub thing? If you still want to try it, you’ll need a lot of pillows. All different kinds.
He left before I could ask how he knew about the bathtub.
I sat in my office, in the quiet, and laughed until I cried.
Then I went online and ordered pillows for the bath.
And a plane ticket to Mexico for June.
Learning the hard way.
Great Marketing Clarification. I was moved by your beautifully-written piece. Thank you, Liz