One of the most exciting things that has happened in my little business lately is going viral on Instagram. Well, viral by children's book author standards. I had a reel with 45K views (63K views now), which showcased a special piece of art rather than any of my books. In one month, I've gone from 518 followers to nearly 3,500, which has meant 4-5 windfall sales and a LOT of excitement. I created a similar reel the following week and had excellent numbers with that as well. The problem is, my successful reels are "follow for follows." While I had many gratuitous followers, I now am following 1,175 people - which means my feed is packed with people I barely know, and I'm missing posts from accounts I value. Do you filter who you follow on Instagram, and how? Would you recommend against "follow for follow," even when it's a successful strategy? What happens when an account pops up that I don't like (they are AI-generated, occult, creepy, crude, or just really negative)? Do I follow them out of fairness, but scroll past their content? I really want to get to 10K, but keeping my word to others AND discerning what content to consume is challenging.

Hey friends! I was so excited to rip open my test copy of the paper back from Amazon. I was not prepared for how disappointed I would be about how flimsy it feels! I guess I don’t have a lot of experience with paperback children’s books. Everything in my home is a hardcover. But I worry that customers will be disappointed, and I don’t really know what to do about it.

Hi everyone! I’m so excited to be here

Any suggestions?

I feel like a little kid showing off, but I couldn't sleep last night. After several hours of tossing and turning, I decided to get on the computer for awhile. I decided to get on Canva. Big mistake! I ran into something called Magic Media on there. Magic Media is still in beta mode, but it will make videos for you. You just type in exactly what you want and what style you want, and it does it. This is free as far as I know. Will this be good for making book trailers, reels, and other kinds of writerly things? Anyway, here's what I did. It's a video and I hope it works.