How to Make Sure Nobody Buys Your Book, Ever

I know what you’re thinking: I’ve spent over a year nitpicking this 90,000-word manuscript, and what I want more than anything is for nary a soul to read it. Sounds familiar, right? I’m sure thousands of editors have heard this before, and it makes total sense. If you’ve spent all that time, money, and effort on something, why would you ever want it to see the light of day? People rarely realize this, but it takes just as much effort not to be seen as it does to be seen, so for those of you who never want your books to see the light of day, keep reading because I’m about to drop four amazing secrets to authorial obscurity.

Secret #1: Don’t create a website.

It’s well known that a professional-looking website can make a huge difference in visibility. You can create a bio page to highlight your skills, a blog to show people what an amazing writer you are, and convenient book pages where people can find and purchase your novels. Take the website of romance novelist E.L. James for example. Her website displays her social media accounts, and it doesn’t take much digging to reach purchase links. Additionally, she sells book merch on her website to the delight of her biggest fans. 

Take note of all this because none of it is what we’re here for. If you want to wallow in anonymity, a personal website will be the death of you. Continue to shovel all your social media and purchase links into a Linktree page, where your web traffic will go to die.

Secret #2: If you already have a website, sabotage its user-friendliness.

The more user-friendly your website or blog is, the greater the chance readers will click through to a purchase page, especially after two or more visits. If you want to draw people onto your website more than once, they need a reason to visit. If you look at how major social media platforms like WeChat do it (called Weixin in China), you’ll find they employ tons of features users like interacting with, bringing them back time and again. WeChat began very similarly to WhatsApp but grew to include most Facebook features as well, giving people the option of having personal profiles, shops, phone and video chats, and news consumption within the platform itself, as noted by Mahoney & Tang. The result is a platform that users don’t have to leave, reducing the effort required to socialize and transact online. It’s one of the world’s most popular platforms.

On the flip side, creating a website that’s frustrating to deal with is a great way to get everyone to leave you the heck alone. It’s almost as good as not having a website at all. Does your blog helpfully suggest other posts to readers at the end of your articles? Trash that. Are your social media profiles visible at the tops and bottoms of each page? Rip that out and make sure your site has zero outbound links. Then, hang a banner letting stray visitors know they’ve reached the end of the internet and they should turn back immediately.

Secret #3: Mobile-friendly? Not today, Satan.

In the previous example, I said that WeChat is one of the world’s most popular social media outlets. They’ve achieved this despite the fact that it’s only available on smartphones. That says a lot about how important phone usage is to social media consumption. People want to be able to read blog posts and interact on social media while they’re riding the bus to work or waiting for appointments to begin. Because your blog is a form of social media, it’s vital for your site to be rendered well on mobile devices if you want people to return and interact with your content.

The keyword here is if. But if not, then make sure your website isn’t responsive or tailored for mobile devices. If the letters are too tiny for people to read, your content will be dead to them faster than an unpopular tweet.

Secret #4: Make everything all about your book.

Social media was built to connect people with one another and allow them to share bits of their lives. You might see a popular author uploading photos of their afternoon hike on Instagram. You can read about what inspires a local artist on Facebook (and what their thousands of followers think about it). Don’t be like them. Getting to know people is seriously overrated, and showing people who you really are…well, that’s just too much fluff, too much distraction. Instead, spam it up with nonstop Amazon links to your book, preferably without context or hashtags. There’s nothing like an impenetrable wall of self-promotion to drive people toward that mute button.

Writing a book is hard, and promoting it is even harder — especially with all those pesky readers following you around. You’ve spent serious time and effort on this novelist thing so you can soak up all the anonymity. By following these four steps, you can make sure nobody finds your work until long after you’re dead.