Being an author in 2020

 Since the inception of social media apps such as Instagram, facebook and Youtube. It's no secret that people have become overnight successes in niches from fashion, to makeup and everything in between. Bloggers have been able to set themselves up and create self branded companies which rival many well established brands. 

And with the new viable career of 'influencer' or 'blogger' or 'youtuber', it is now more important than ever to sell yourself over the internet. This is exactly what modern day author, debut authors or just self published authors are facing. Publishers and agents alike look for people with a high amount of instagram followers, a thriving youtube channel or podcast. For those authors are in their eyes more likely to 'succeed'.  Being talented at is no longer seen as important. 

So we are now a generation of -you need to market yourself or else you wont get any opportunities. So much for todays world being all about open doors, and as long as you have a high school diploma you can go places. WRONG. If you want to want to succeed in life you need to gain a following, a liking of society before modelling agencies will look at your profile, agents will read your work, TV shows will cast you.

My question to all these giant organisations is this... why hire people with fancy marketing degrees when you make me do the work of gaining a following, and audience a name before you even look at me? i have to be my own marketing team in order for you to reap the rewards by 'finding me'. Because 10 people have been lucky enough to be able to do this - become internet sensations, for some reason the new mode of thinking is everyone has to become an internet sensation in order to gain any sort of traction. Quite frankly it is depressing, the world preaches about mental health, creating a healthy mind space. Yet everywhere i look i see so many signs that make me feel like no one will ever achieve anything unless you are super lucky. Mental health goes out the door the moment it becomes about popularity.  Take instagram sensation Zoe sugg, she is an influencer extraordinaire , who boast more than 9 million instagram followers. She has just landed an amazing book deal, is she an aspiring author? no. Does she want writing to become her living? no. But you know what, she has 9 million people who think she is kinda cool and that has publishers chomping at the bit to offer her a publishing contract. THAT IS WHAT SOCIETY IS TURNING INTO. It no longer matters how hard you eat, sleep, and pray in your given profession, hobby, or love, no - what matters is having society's approval of popularity. Then you are deemed good enough. 

Being an author in 2020, means i need to create and build my own following, i need to incentivise others to buy my books. To me it looks like giant corporations are just using those who work hard enough to build themselves up to then profit of them. If this is what 2020 is looking like, i would hate to see how this ever changing landscape is going to be.