if you’ll give an old man his space to rant, is what drives me nuts about book marketing in the age of social media. Everything is an announcement—and nothing more. The Publisher’s Marketplace announcement when the book is acquired. The announcement of the pub date. The cover reveal. The post reminding you to preorder. A post announcing a link to a tweet about your book. Prize announcements. Announcement after announcement, frequently Canva-created and entirely forgettable, all designed to get a little bit of your engagement, to boost the metrics, the likes, the retweets, the comments. It becomes a numbers game—“if X% of people who engage with our posts buy the book, we’ll sell Y copies”—which is only encouraged by the digital landscape we live in, in which you can theoretically reach everyone, everywhere, all at once.