After losing a job opportunity to inconsistency on my Facebook page, I thought it was high time that I buckle down and try to create an actual brand for my nostalgic books.
Thus, I present to you... a classic emo chibi furry.
This mascot version of me replaces the dog that I've been using for the last half a year. The short version of the story is that it seems like people were passing by my TikTok puppet videos (where I used a hilarious dog puppet to represent myself) because they thought I was a kid on PlushTok, not an adult author making tongue in cheek videos.
I'm not completely retiring the puppets because I think they're funny as hell, but I've also started making videos where I wear a pink wig and pig mask to better fit with the BookTok algorithm, which favors showing your face. So far it looks like the videos with me in them are going over better than the puppet vids. I'm going to stick with it for a while and change my mascot to match.
I'm also going to lean into the 00s internet/emo aesthetic for a while because I think it will be nostalgic and fun for my target audience. I know it's nostalgic and fun for me!
(Also, I just miss the old form of content creation where you could upload whenever and still get tons of fans because we weren't swamped with weird intrusive algorithms.)