How Sarah Damoff Sold 50,000 Books Without a Social Media Platform
This post was adapted from Writing Off Social: The Podcast, Episode 82. You can listen in here!
When Sarah Damoff pitched Simon & Schuster her debut novel The Bright Years (affiliate link) in 2023, she had a beautifully crafted manuscript. But what she didn’t have was Industry connections, a writing background, or a social media following worth mentioning.
Her Instagram follower count at the time of signing? Just 300.
Six months after publication, The Bright Years had sold 50,000 copies, become a national bestseller, secured translation rights in eight languages, and garnered over 35,000 ratings on Goodreads. And Sarah’s approach to social media remained refreshingly unconventional.
The Long Road to Instagram
Sarah’s relationship with social media has been complicated from the start. As a true millennial who joined Facebook when “there were not even photos on it yet,” she watched platforms evolve from simple connection tools into something far more consuming.
Her first major reckoning came in 2017 during a professional training on child privacy online. Working in child welfare with foster families, Sarah had always protected foster children’s identities. But that training made her realize: “I have three kids. They are currently 10, 12, and 14. At the time of this, my youngest was like a toddler and there were photos of them online. And that was the first time I was like, I don’t think I like this.”
She took down all photos of her children and made another decision: social media would only be for people whose phone numbers were in her phone. “I just did this big overhaul and unfriended anyone I didn’t know personally.”
Then in 2019, she “accidentally” joined Instagram when trying to view something a friend had tagged her in. “I kept clicking to try to see it, and it connected to my Facebook without me realizing it. I came back to it later, and I had 30 comments from friends who were commenting things like, “Sarah’s finally on Instagram!” So at that point, I thought, ‘Well, I guess I’ll stay here.'”
From Social Worker to Novelist
Sarah’s path to publication began with her work in child welfare. After reading Lost Children Archive, she thought, “I’m going to try this”—on the very day she finished the book.
Her first manuscript taught her she could write a book, but also that she had “too much agenda.” She tried again in late 2021 with The Bright Years, drawing on years of witnessing family dynamics: “I’ve never written a fictional character who’s based on one person; it’s a combination of my own experience personally and professionally, what I’ve seen.”
When it came time to pursue publication, Sarah researched every option. Self-publishing was ruled out early: “I didn’t think I could gather an audience or build a platform. I knew that would be a whole job that I didn’t think I would be good at.”
The Strategic Approach That Changed Everything
After receiving encouraging rejections from agents—”personal responses that were very encouraging” but no offers—Sarah discovered Publishers Marketplace. This changed her entire strategy.
“I started working backwards,” she explains. She identified editors at Big Five publishers who were acquiring books like hers. Then she researched which agents were making deals with those specific editors. “When I started reaching out to those agents, I started getting offers.”
The targeting worked. Sarah received multiple offers, though she said no to the first ones despite having “nothing else on the table.” When she signed with her current agent, the manuscript went out to publishers, and “within two weeks, several of the big five publishers were competing over the manuscript.”
What Publishers Actually Cared About
Here’s what might surprise aspiring authors most: social media never came up in the acquisition process.
“They did not care about my following. They did not ask. They did not bring up social media at all,” Sarah shares. In fact, she didn’t even follow her agent and editor on social media until her book was about to come out.
What did they care about instead? The manuscript itself and Sarah’s vision for her writing career. Her editor asked straightforward questions: “Some people just want to write one book. Are you someone who wants to write one book or multiple books?”
When marketing conversations finally happened, Sarah’s publisher presented a seven-page document outlining their multi-pronged strategy:
- Strategic podcast placements
- In-person events
- Trade reviews and press coverage
- Outreach to social media influencers (not Sarah’s own accounts)
- Distribution to bookstores and libraries
The Power of Early Review Copies
What surprised Sarah most about traditional publishing was “the number of early copies that go out. I was shocked. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of copies to trade reviewers, to booksellers, to librarians, to podcast hosts, to Goodreads reviewers. That was huge for me.”
This happened eight months before publication, completely without Sarah’s involvement. She discovered her first Goodreads review by accident during a walk: “I didn’t even know anyone had the book yet.”
Understanding Bookstagram (Without Being Bookstagram)
For years, Sarah posted simple photos of books she loved on Instagram—no ring light, no editing, just “a boring photo, and posted a few sentences about what I loved.” She thought this was Bookstagram. It wasn’t.
Real Bookstagram is a thriving ecosystem of dedicated accounts with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, high engagement, and curated aesthetics. These influencers focus primarily on new releases and have become crucial to publishers’ marketing strategies.
But here’s the key: “I never wanted to have any part in content creation. But I knew there were influencers out there who had a following and were sharing about my book- it was like an amplified word of mouth!”
Sarah’s approach? “I do get online, and I repost anything someone has shared about my book, which they’re so grateful for. But it doesn’t take much of me… I’ve never made a reel. I’m not thinking about content, and I’ve never spent time thinking, ‘how can I gain followers?'”
Leveraging Other People’s Platforms
When it came time to announce her second novel, Sarah’s publisher suggested using a major Bookstagram account for the cover reveal. But Sarah had learned to think strategically: “I said, ‘I know my account is still small, but I would love to do the initial post.'”
She then emailed five or six major influencers who had loved The Bright Years, offering each a unique graphic for the announcement. “All five of them would have done that whether I had been there or not. And it was nice to be able to say thank you and have people, you know, have an account for people to look at. But that was really what we talked about earlier with leveraging those other accounts.”
What Actually Matters More Than Follower Count
Sarah’s success came down to a few key factors:
Craft first. “I had worked really hard on multiple drafts of the manuscript. It was rewritten and rewritten.” She asked herself repeatedly: “What’s the most common experience? I was not trying to surprise the reader. I did not want to be sensational. I just wanted to write something that felt relatable.”
Strategic networking. Not through social media, but through targeted agent queries and thoughtful outreach to potential early readers.
Saying yes (and no). Sarah made it her “default to say yes” to book clubs and events after publication, while also protecting her writing time from constant publicity demands.
Trust in calling over numbers. On the morning Sarah received a crushing rejection from an agent who said her manuscript was “some of the most technically beautiful writing I’ve ever read, but all it is is beautiful,” she went to church questioning whether to continue. Her pastor, unprompted, shared that God had put it on his heart that “someone is working professionally on something like beautiful… and God wants you to keep doing that.”
“It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. No numbers, no influence, no nothing besides I’m walking in obedience,” Sarah reflects.
The Takeaway
Sarah’s story offers hope for writers who feel disqualified by their lack of platform: A beautifully crafted story that resonates with readers will find its audience, especially when paired with a publisher’s multi-pronged marketing approach.
Social media can play a supporting role—for expressing gratitude to readers, for leveraging influencers’ platforms, for staying connected. But it doesn’t have to be the foundation.
As Sarah notes about her website analytics: “Social media is always far down on the list. It’s mostly just direct searches. People are looking for it on Google, or they’re just typing in my name.”
The work—the beautiful, important work of telling stories—remains paramount. Everything else is secondary.
This post was reformatted from our original transcript by Claude and edited for accuracy by Mary K.
