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Industry in 'unhappy marriage' with Twitter/X as Pan Mac says it is 'pausing all activity'
Authors, publicists, editors and booksellers have described their relationship with X (formerly Twitter) as an "unhappy marriage". The "hostile and deeply unpleasant" discourse and the shrinking levels of engagement have been blamed for many leaving the platform in recent months, with one publisher already announcing it would be "pausing all activity" on X.
A spokesperson for Pan Macmillan told The Bookseller: "As a result of concerns around the future direction of X and following our decision to suspend advertising at the beginning of the year, we are pausing all activity on the platform. Disinformation, misinformation and hate speech continue to spread on X with little or no interruption and we expect the recently confirmed changes to the platform’s block feature will further undermine the well-being and safety of users."
Although Pan Mac has announced its departure, publisher Bloomsbury told The Bookseller it would be staying. Jack Birch, Bloomsbury’s senior digital marketing manager, said: "There is much press about dwindling user numbers for X/Twitter, but it remains the platform where influential media figures (journalists, celebrities) continue to post, and where important news breaks first. We therefore still view the platform as the primary text-based social network."
He said that alternatives such as Mastodon and Bluesky were "too complicated" at the moment for the general user, so they were putting more energy into Instagram and TikTok, where he said they were "seeing excellent returns on engagements and impressions".
He added: "Though we are not as active with our Threads account, we still see this as a potential big player in social media marketing in the future. As it is a platform by Meta, we are aware of its capacity for future investment and growth. Its link to Instagram and Facebook will make audiences grow much quicker, and it will be easier to target users with ads if/when it is monetised.
"The social media landscape has always changed very quickly, but, since [Elon] Musk’s takeover of X, it is even more unstable than it ever has been before."
Birch said the publisher was seeing a "dramatic increase in unpleasant posts", adding: "At Bloomsbury, we are always on the lookout for new ways to promote our books, but decisions about the platforms that we prioritise will always be driven by results. Building new audiences from scratch is always the most difficult part of social media marketing. We have a large, and engaged, social media following on Meta, TikTok and X; it is still there where we see our key audience."
Many in the industry are following Bloomsbury’s lead and say they still find it a "useful platform". The networks that users have fostered over years remain “essential” for the industry, but many said they would consider leaving if other social media platforms provided the same functionality.
Juliet Mabey of Oneworld Publications said: “Though some people are talking about leaving X, we still see it as a useful platform—not so much for reaching consumers directly or building a campaign around a book/author, but rather as a way to connect with other people in the industry, using it like a shopfront to showcase key publicity and marketing highlights and connect with particular titles/authors and influencers.” This was echoed by Kevin Duffy, the co-founder of Bluemoose Books, who said that the team had kept the account going to “continue to have a conversation with our 24,000 followers, chatting about books and publishing”.
Duffy noticed that the publisher had recently lost 300 followers, but the numbers quickly started to increase again as new readers discovered Bluemoose Books’ account. “We have limited resources and using social media is one way of telling our story and the books and authors we publish,” he said. “For Bluemoose, the two platforms that work remarkably well are Facebook and X, and of course we continue to monitor these sites as we wouldn’t be a part of anything that damaged our relationship with our followers and readers.”
Jendia Gammon, author and editor-in-chief of Stars and Sabers Publishing, said X had “become fractured, and engagement levels have plummeted unless you pay for a blue check”. However, like many others, Gammon is “constantly assessing the need for it long-term” as newer social media platforms such as Threads and Bluesky gain more traction and improve their functionality.
Limited marketing and publicity budgets have also made X a "vital resource" for authors left to spread the word about their own books. “X was essential for me as a children’s author without a big marketing spend, as I could reach teachers, librarians and other publishing professionals,” said Maisie Chan, winner of the Jhalak Children’s and YA Prize and the Branford Boase Award in 2022, for her debut novel Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths (Piccadilly Press).
Chan found a supportive community of children’s book authors on X, but she is now engaging less with the platform and said her follower count had been dropping. “I think it must be very hard for début authors now, especially those who have to do a lot of their own PR,” she said, “as X used to be a way to reach out to book bloggers, indie bookstores, teachers, librarians and other authors”.
Author and editor Jenny Knight got her first book deal through the platform, which also enabled her to land editorial work, and she fears what is to come. “I honestly worry about what will happen to the industry if too many people move – it’s already harder for so many writers and editors to attract the traffic we once did,” she said. “Watching writers try to publicise books now is heartbreaking when I consider how it was – I’ve my own announcement to make in a couple of weeks and it won’t have anywhere near the impact it would once have had.”
Although many are not ready to delete their X accounts despite their disappointment and frustrations, other social media platforms, including Threads, Bluesky, Instagram and Substack, are gaining popularity. Threads is particularly popular but there are concerns that it poses similar issues to X, including “arguing and sniping”.
Novelist Elle McNicoll uses Instagram and TikTok but explained that these platforms were “entirely visual” and did not compare to the “conversational” nature of X. When it comes to Threads, she said she had witnessed ableism and “a lot of anger and rage-bait, specifically targeting readers and people who work in books”. Meanwhile, on X, Nicoll has “nurtured” the algorithm “to shut out a lot of that hate” and said she did not “want to go through the rigmarole of training a new algorithm to show kinder content”.
Gammon added that Threads was “offering the best mix of industry folks, alongside writers, and a really good reading population”. Stars and Sabers Publishing will also be investing in Instagram and TikTok to reach readers, for which the editor-in-chief said Bluesky was less useful.
Mabey said Instagram “seems to drive more engagement, especially for fiction and YA”. The publisher has also “started to experiment” with Threads. “At the moment, at least while we work out the specifics of Threads and what our voice and strategy will be there, we’re not considering leaving X, but to cut down our management of social platforms we will have to choose X or Threads to avoid spreading ourselves too thinly."
Others have also considered making the move once enough people from the industry have moved over. A spokesperson from Ireland’s online second-hand bookshop, The Bookshop.ie, said that its account was still going because publishers, authors, bloggers and agents hadn’t all transitioned to Threads. They said that they would transition when others from the industry also made the move.
Despite Threads’ growing popularity, some do not yet feel confident to leave X. Helen Fields, crime writer and board member at The Society of Authors, said: “Threads seems to be the main alternative but that’s turning out to be just as toxic. I can block who I want [on X], ignore the haters, build my feed the way I want, and follow the people I’m interested in."
Bluesky, also known as Bsky, has appeared as another replacement candidate for X, with some authors preferring the platform.
The Bookseller has also been speaking to LSE Press and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), who indicated that academic publishers, researchers and librarians have also been among those making the move, while often maintaining a presence on X too.
For others, the issues they had been noticing with X were enough to drive them entirely off the platform. Kiran Millwood Hargrave, the author of The Girl of Ink and Stars (Chicken House), has not found a social media platform that matches what Twitter once was, but this has not stopped her from leaving X and reaching her readers through Instagram instead. “I loved Twitter, and have no doubt it helped me find readers and connect with librarians, teachers and other authors in ways I never could have without it," she said. "X is a mess […] I am sad to leave, but my sadness is for something that no longer exists.”
The general consensus across the industry is that the trade would ideally "converge on one platform" and the industry is "yet to find a substitute for Twitter when it worked".
The Bookseller also contacted Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Atlantic, Bonnier and Simon & Schuster for comment.
