Are you considering adjusting your use of social media? My guest on this episode of The Modern Editor Podcast, Amelia Hruby, logged off social media for good in 2021 and hasn’t looked back. Now she teaches other business owners how they can still succeed without social media. Listen in as she shares her journey from Instagram content creator to podcaster and self-published author. Amelia shares her aha moment when she realized that her relationship with social media wasn’t healthy anymore, and how she avoids FOMO when it comes to keeping up with her friends. Disclaimer: We’re not saying you need to get off social media. Instead, we’re encouraging you to take a look at your relationship with social media and make a conscious choice about how you want to use it.
Are you considering adjusting your use of social media? My guest on this episode of The Modern Editor Podcast, Amelia Hruby, logged off social media for good in 2021 and hasn’t looked back. Now she teaches other business owners how they can still succeed without social media.
Listen in as she shares her journey from Instagram content creator to podcaster and self-published author. Amelia shares her aha moment when she realized that her relationship with social media wasn’t healthy anymore, and how she avoids FOMO when it comes to keeping up with her friends.
Disclaimer: We’re not saying you need to get off social media. Instead, we’re encouraging you to take a look at your relationship with social media and make a conscious choice about how you want to use it.
Tara: We have an amazing guest on the show today. Amelia Hruby is a feminist, writer, podcaster, and producer with a PhD in philosophy. She's the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio and the host of Off the Grid, which is a podcast about leaving social media. Her new book, Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media, just released in October 2025.
Now I told Amelia when I reached out to her about being on the podcast that the universe just tends to serve up exactly what we need sometimes, and she was one of those people for me because I am currently going through my own personal challenges with social media, and I was so thrilled to find someone who doesn't use social media at all anymore and still runs a business and has launched a new book.
So just to be super clear, this episode is not a pitch to leave social media. Amelia's not telling you to leave. I'm not telling you to leave. That is 100% up to you to decide if and how you wanna use social media, which we will talk about in the episode. But at the time of this recording, for full transparency, I still have all my social media accounts.
I'm posting things about the Freelance Editors Club and the podcast, but my posting and consuming rate, in a very, we'll call it unscientific manner, I would say I've reduced it about 95%. Like for all intents and purposes, I'm off social media, but this is an opportunity for us to hear from someone who runs an online business, who writes books, launches books, and is rocking it all out without social media showing us that it is a possibility if we decide to go that route. So without further ado, let's dive right in.
Welcome to The Modern Editor Podcast, where we talk about all things editing and what it's like to run an editorial business in today's world. I'm your host, Tara Whitaker. Let's get to it.
Tara: All right. Welcome to the podcast, Amelia. I'm so excited to have you.
Amelia: I'm so thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I can't wait for our conversation.
Tara: Yes. For those of you listening, I've already fangirled in an email, Amelia's been in my newsletter this week. She's all over the place in a good way. So I am just very thrilled to be able to have a conversation with her today, all about social media. And we're gonna talk about your journey with social media, Amelia, and then we're gonna talk about your brand-new book about social media, but we're also gonna talk about it from an editor's perspective so that the editors listening can hear all the details about how publishing a book—spoiler, and not putting it on Amazon—has been going for you.
Amelia: Yeah, yeah. Happy to divulge all of the behind-the-scenes details.
Tara: Yes. Okay. So you are the host of the Off the Grid podcast, all about getting off social media or running a business off social media, so listeners can go and get the full scoop about you over there. But for here, for the quick-and-dirty version, I would love to know where this whole journey started for you. What were you doing? Were you running a business? Did you used to use social media a lot? Like, just give us that quick detail of how this even all came about for you.
Amelia: Yeah, absolutely. So like many millennials, I got onto social media in high school and college. I think I got a Facebook account toward the end of high school.
I joined Instagram toward the end of college, and I just used these platforms as like, personal profiles for a really long time. Eventually that started to shift and I started sharing more content on Instagram specifically, and I was trying to grow a following there. I did a few different series. I had one around feminist affirmations.
I had one around selfies for radical self-love, and I started to just develop these different projects on Instagram and I started to build a platform or a following there, and one of those projects became my first self-published book, which was called 50 Feminist Mantras. That came out in 2018, I believe.
And then that book was bought by a traditional publisher and became my first traditionally published book. My first and only at this point. It was an illustrated journal that came out with Andrews McMeel in fall of 2020. So in the process of bringing that traditionally published version to life, I went all in on Instagram.
I spent so much time, money, energy. I hired social media strategists. I hired book marketers. I hired brand designers. I hired photographers. Like, when I got the book deal, they told me that my social media following needed to be bigger. So I was like, all right, I can do this. I'm a good student. I achieve things.
Let me just like, follow the playbook and go for it. And so I did. And at its peak, my account only had around, I think just under 3,000 followers. So I always had a small audience or relatively small audience. I was a micro influencer. I did some brand deals. I definitely was selling things through my account, and all of that got wrapped into my book launch process.
After the book came out and I paused to reflect on how much time, money, and energy I'd put in what I got from all of that, it kind of led to this breaking point where I realized for many reasons that I needed to leave social media. And now, it's been almost five years since I've been active on the platforms and five years almost exactly since my last book came out. And that's the CliffNotes version, but there's a whole lot of other details I'm happy to unpack too.
Tara: Sure. And going back to when your book traditionally published September of 2020, which was the height of the pandemic, that had to have been a very interesting time to be launching.
Amelia: It definitely was. Like there was no book tour. There was no party. There was just me at my house. A good friend of mine ordered like, a dozen donuts to get delivered that morning and I hung out with my partner and we just sort of like, toasted donuts to my book launch and that was kind of the day.
Tara: And now fast-forward to now with just launching a book, it's probably looking a little bit different.
Amelia: It is. Although funnily all still similar. You know, I spent my book launch day primarily with my partner at home. I was packaging and shipping orders this time because I'm self-publishing and I'm distributing it myself. And then I spent the evening actually at an acquaintance’s, or an internet friend's, book event in the city where I live.
So I went to somebody else's book event to celebrate my book launch. But it was very sweet and we traded books and signed each other's copies. That person was River Selby, who just published a book called Hotshot that I highly recommend if you're interested in wildfires and firefighting. And it was honestly just such a nice way to both like, celebrate and be celebrated.
Tara: Yeah. Is it fiction? Nonfiction?
Amelia: It's a memoir. And it has a lot of history and sort of information about like, the climate and about how fire suppression strategies in the US were developed. So yeah, it's like a memoir that blends nonfiction research.
Tara: I love that you celebrated another author on your launch day. That's just great.
Amelia: Yeah, it felt right.
Tara: Yeah, absolutely. So going back to when you went all in on Instagram and you were promoting your book and then realized this maybe not be it, was there something in particular that was like, the light bulb or the straw that broke the camel's back? Or was there something that was just like, nope, we've gotta make a change?
Amelia: Yeah, I think that there was definitely an aha light bulb moment for me, and that happened in early 2021 when I sat down to write this list of rules for my Instagram in 2021, and I had this whole list that will sound familiar to people navigating their own social media presence around which days I would be on the apps, when I would delete it from my phone, how I would engage there, whether I would reply to DMs or not reply in these instances, all sorts of things that were meant to be like, my boundaries around social media.
And I wrote that list and when I finished it, I reread it and had this like, clear light bulb moment of realizing that the only other times in my life that I had needed that many boundaries was in toxic relationships or codependent relationships.
And I had gone to therapy to work through those patterns, and there was something about just seeing them so clearly that helped me realize that like, I didn't wanna stay on Instagram if it was gonna feel that way. And I didn't wanna go back to therapy to work on my relationship with social media, you know. I was like, I was willing to do that work for some, you know, beloved family relationships I was struggling with, but like, not for Instagram.
Tara: No.
Amelia: So having that realization just crystallized something for me, and instead of sharing the rules on Instagram, I wrote a post about how I would be leaving the platform before my thirtieth birthday, which was April of that year, and I proceeded to spend the next two months communicating why I was leaving, ways I would be sharing my work elsewhere, and then I shut my profile down on, I believe, April 9, 2021.
Tara: Wow. And you haven't touched it since?
Amelia: Not in any meaningful way, no. I've not posted, I've not responded to a DM. You know, I always wanna be truthful. I'm sure at some point I logged in. No like, gotcha moments. But yes, I have not used Instagram in any real way since then. I'm not posting, I'm not just in Stories. I'm not just in DMs. Like I'm truly not there.
Tara: Yeah. Have you missed it at all?
Amelia: Honestly, no. But I think that has to do with the fact that I spent a lot of time trying to leave Instagram before I left social media. So I went through those periods of wanting to be on it, feeling drawn to it, feeling addicted to it, feeling stuck on it, feeling like I need a break, now I gotta go back.
Like I definitely experienced those cycles, but by the time I actually left and had publicly announced I was leaving and then worked through this whole process online, like on the platform, I shared the process of leaving, by the time there was like, actually my logoff date, I didn't have any sort of ambivalence or mixed feelings around leaving. I was just truly, deeply ready.
Tara: It sounds like it. Yeah. I feel like this is actually a good pivot point because I wanted to ask, with the editors listening, especially new editors, one of the first questions they ask me about running a business is, do I have to be on social media?
And I'm pretty sure I've said yes in the past. Full like, disclosure there. It's 2025. You know, if I look to hire someone, I look on their social media. I look for if our values align. I look for anything, you know, that looks out of place or just to see that they have a presence and that they're doing things.
So I'm at fault there. But now going through this journey myself and discovering you and listening to all of your episodes and stuff, I'm thinking, okay, but now what? Maybe that's not the case. And I do say you don't have to use social media if you don't want to.
But then what else? What else am I supposed to do? Because a lot of people who don't use social media now built their businesses on social media, me included, and now are thinking about leaving. So how do you tell someone who has never built a business first not to use it when it's how we started?
Amelia: Yeah. Yeah, let me unpack this in a few different ways.
So one thing that I often say on the show, and we'll repeat here, is that you do not have to be on social media if you don't want to be. But that doesn't mean you just get to magically do no marketing and have the business of your dreams.
Tara: Oh, come on!
Amelia: I know, that's a real bummer. I'm not like, waving a magic wand for everyone who listens to Off the Grid. Like, if I had that skill I would, but I do not, unfortunately, for all of us, I suppose. So, you know, I am very much a practical, realistic person as much as I am also like, a spiritual magical creature. But I look at this marketing world and I make these suggestions like, with real like, clarity, I think. And so the clarity for me is you do not have to be there if you don't want to, but you do have to do other forms of marketing. And it is a trade-off in some ways.
And so when I work with people who are deciding if they want to leave social media or who have already left or never were there and want to get started, like you're saying, we're always looking. We're starting with like, two basic questions. How does social media make you feel, and is it working for you and your business?
And often what happens is we discover it's not really working. And actually it's probably been a subpar bandage over your marketing ecosystem for a while. And if nothing else, exploring what you're actually doing on social media and what results it's getting for you will help clarify what role it's playing in your marketing ecosystem.
So what I mean by that is like, are new clients finding you on social media? Most often what I hear from people is, no, they're not. Like, new clients come through referrals or through networks and relationships. Often people who are using social media, it's really kind of nurturing relationships. It's helping them stay top of mind for folks who have come in through some other way.
So maybe you did a collaboration and you taught a class to somebody else's audience, and then those people followed you on Instagram or on TikTok, so that now you're kind of like the editor that's on their radar, right? So often people tell me social media is bringing them new clients, but it's actually just nurturing people and it's rarely then actually converting the sale.
So at a certain point, then you have to actually make the sale. And normally that moves to a sort of, you know, sales call or email proposal, like we're going off of social to actually have that final conversion, transaction sale that's happening. And so I like to help people get a lot of clarity around that.
And then once we know that, we can also substitute in things that aren't social media to do whatever social media is doing for you. So if it is bringing you a lot of clients, well, maybe you start teaching classes and memberships. Maybe you start doing more coffee chats or connection calls. Maybe you join some communities and start sharing your expertise there.
You know, there are ways you can meet people that aren't social media. If it's doing that nurturing work, maybe you start an email newsletter instead. Maybe you start a podcast. There are a lot of ways to nurture clients. And then if you are someone who's making a lot of sales in DMs, how do we move that to email? How do we help you get sales calls set up?
So I think that having that awareness around what role social media is actually playing if it is getting you any results, and that helps us shift and like, sort of bring in other marketing ideas and sharing opportunities. And maybe the last thing I'll say there is going back to my point about being like, a realistic person.
You know, when I left social media, I shut down the micro business that I had there, so I was a micro influencer as I said. I did brand work. I sold stickers and postcards and zines, and sometimes I sold small courses. I was making a few thousand dollars a year, definitely less than $10,000 a year through my Instagram account and the assorted things that I sold there.
I shut that business down because I knew that without Instagram, I didn't have an audience of a big enough size to keep doing those activities. And then three months after I left social media, I launched my podcast Softer Sounds Studio, which within the first 18 months became a business that fully supported me, brought in more income I was at. I had a higher income than I've ever had doing my own thing or previous part-time work and grad school jobs I had done.
And so I made this trade-off for myself and that's why I feel so confident sort of stepping into the space and being like, we can do this. You know, I didn't get to keep my sticker business running I had on social media, but I started a service-based business that's been very successful and supportive, and I'm so much happier not being off social that I'm really glad I made that choice, even though it was a hard one to make.
Tara: That was all so good, and I love that you started out with a question that I think a lot of us forget to ask ourselves is, how is this actually making you feel? Do you get on Instagram, TikTok, whatever? And does it make you feel good? Because I'm gonna guess most people are gonna say no, especially right now in the year of 2025.
Like, we're not getting on there to feel good about ourselves. And that's one of the things that has really been kind of that light bulb moment for me about, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but talking about our attention and the attention quote economy and paying for it. And it just, there's so many things.
And then at the same time, I keep going back to I've met so many cool people on Instagram and thinking, well, why can't I meet cool people elsewhere? Instagram's not the only place where cool people hang out. Yes, a lot of them do (shout-out to my Instagram buds), but they do exist elsewhere and I think it's trying to figure out where that is.
And that can be a little scary because social media is so ingrained in us right now, personally and for a business, that thinking about where else I can go and where else I need to put my effort can be a little intimidating.
Amelia: Yeah, absolutely. And I made lots of very good friends on Instagram.
I'm not saying like, this is all also a piece of it. I have so many friends that I met through the internet, through Instagram specifically, and many of those relationships I have maintained over time. But I think that what I'm hearing from my folks who are still active on social media is that that feels less and less possible because the spaces feel less and less connected and more and more algorithmically driven, and it's so hard to keep up with what any one person is sharing.
Even if you want to be their friend and you are following them and you are watching their Stories, it can still be challenging to catch all of that and feel connected in the sea of how much you're being shown and how much is being kind of forced on you in these spaces. And I think that that means that often, even if we meet someone on social media, we need to shift that relationship off platform in order to maintain it.
It's really hard. Yes. Maybe you can start relationships there, but maintaining them I think is pretty challenging. And like you said, there are so many ways and places to meet people. I think that one of the most sort of slippery things that social media platforms has done is become this sort of like, default place that we go for everything, or default app that we go to for everything.
Right? And I'm not saying that we have to go back to like, the boring, cringey networking events that nobody wanted to ever go to, but there are so many amazing online communities where you can meet people now. I mean, I run one, full disclosure, I believe you do as well. Online communities, book clubs, just like, emailing somebody whose podcast you like and asking if you can chat.
Like, there are so many ways to meet people and this is what I do all the time. I have more friends and biz friends, my like, professional colleagues now than I ever did when I was on Instagram. And I feel more supported by them and I feel like I can actually ask things of them and offer things to them in a way that just never played out on Instagram when most of my relationships were like, heart reacting to Stories or something.
Tara: Oh my gosh, yes. The shallow part of the social aspect of it. Yeah. Liking something, that's not deep, that's not connecting. And going off of what you were saying too, with, we think of social media as a place to connect, but that's not what social media is anymore. It's a platform to make money.
It's not a place to connect. It's a place for you to get sucked in to stay there. Because the longer you stay there, the more money the company makes. It is finding and facilitating and cultivating these communities off of social media and just knowing that they do exist. I'm gonna guess your motivation for it was the same as my motivation; I couldn't find a community that I wanted to plug into, so I made my own.
That's always an option too. Not to say that everyone has to create their own community, but just finding more authentic relationships off of social media I think is where it's gonna be.
Amelia: Yeah, and I think intentional is another word I would use there. I mean, okay, I'm gonna get really honest, and I say this with all of the love in the world. Like, I think for many people it feels easier to just sort of like, broadcast their life on social media and hope some other people find them than to actually like, put in the work of outreach or joining communities or of talking to people.
And I think that there's value in all of these activities. Like, I love helping people create a sharing practice. I think it's beautiful to like, build a website that all of your work is on, or even to show up on Instagram Stories and be present there, but to understand like, when are you broadcasting and when are you connecting?
And the fact that those are different activities and they have different impacts. And I spend a lot of time in my work thinking about the difference between parasocial relationships and social relationships. And I notice that a lot of people tend to mistake one for the other, or they're just like, on Instagram Stories thinking they're being social, but you're really being parasocial.
You're inviting people to watch you and project onto you, and this is an interesting idea, I think for editors and writers specifically because this is also at play when people are reading a book, like, they are kind of projecting themselves into the text and you wanna be aware of like, what am I inviting in?
What am I making clear? What am I leaving ambiguous? Like, I think there's probably a way to use those editorial skills in your own relationship development for your business.
Tara: I love this connection so much. And I actually, I have it right here. I wrote down, “Are we just involved in too many parasocial relationships” for me to send you.
And I was like, well, I don't know, but you're right. And tell me if you had this happen to you too. Or maybe it's just because I've had such an addiction lately, where I would do something, like I just got my hair cut and I was gonna post a picture of it. And I'm like, well, hold on, I'm not on social media right now, why am I sharing this? So everybody can like my new haircut and I can feel good about it?
Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But then I would find myself doing something and reaching for my phone to put it on Instagram Stories 'cause that's where I hang out the most and catching myself going, “Is this just noise? Is this really connecting with people? Is it broadcasting my life, like you said, for people to like it or comment on it?” Is it authentic?”
Like, I got so many questions going in my head now whenever I post and I don't. Did that happen to you at all? Were you that sucked into social media as I am or was?
Amelia: Oh yeah. 100%. Even more so, I would imagine. I was on Instagram sometimes upward of like, six hours a day.
I mean, I was incredibly sucked in. And I think, what you're sharing, these examples definitely resonate with my past experience. And I love that you're sharing that you've just sort of started to pause and be like, why am I sharing this? What do I want from sharing this? And I think just, it begins with that awareness, that noticing of like, what am I hoping for here?
And like you said, there's nothing wrong with wanting affirmation or desiring a compliment. I think that's really human. And I want everyone to have relationships where they feel affirmed and complimented. And I remember when I left social media, something I did a lot with my partner is I would just ask if we could have compliment time where they would gimme some compliments.
Tara: I love that so much
Amelia: I don't do it as much anymore. And I think it's because social media had really trained me to seek out, and I started to need that constant affirmation and validation. And so I needed to kind of fill in that place in another way when I left, and now I don't desire it in the same way.
I'm not seeking it out. I think that was an important pattern for me to interrupt. Like, I've learned how to sort of sit with myself and feel affirmed just in being and not having to sort of like, perform anything or put it online to get affirmed so that I feel affirmed.
I think the other thing, like with the haircut example, is like, it can become a slippery slope of like, okay, I got my hair cut and I want like, that boost of confidence that comes from the validation, which is great, but then like, maybe you start getting your hair cut more often because you want that again, and then maybe you're spending more money than you perhaps want to be or really have on getting your hair cut. And then maybe you start to make different hair cut choices based on which version got more likes than the other, and then all of a sudden maybe you have like a hot-pink mullet because you're like, this is what was going on online.
My partner has a mullet. I love mullets. I love hot pink. None of it's a critique of that, but I think that type of behavioral shift is very common when we start acting in a way that seeks out that social media validation. And it's really hard to notice when you're deep in it. That's what I learned, like when I actually got off the platforms, I was like, oh, I'm not buying any of that stuff anymore.
I'm not getting that expensive haircut I thought I needed. So much of my, particularly purchasing patterns, but also like, style choices changed when I truly unplugged from Instagram, way more than I expected. I thought I was a super conscious, smart, critical consumer of social media, but I just learned that it gets all of us.
Tara: It totally does. That dopamine hit. You don't realize how far you're in it until you do step away and take a pause when you go to post or you look at something and specifically think, well, I gotta post something to Instagram and look around to see what you can post. It's like you are just looking for the dopamine.
And then it's, okay, where else am I gonna either find the dopamine, like you said, for a little bit with the compliments, and then kind of weaning yourself off of it. And we're all susceptible to it. It doesn't matter how conscious you are, how intelligent you are, or how cognizant of it you are, it's manipulation at a core psychological level.
Amelia: It is, yeah. It impacts your relationships. Like it really impacts your relationships too, because I noticed that, you know, it starts to shift your sense of scale and like, the one person you really love telling you you look great may not feel as good as the hundred people online liking your post or replying to your story.
And if you value your online presence more than that person you're in a relationship with or whatnot, that can be okay for you. I'm not trying to make a value judgment on like, that itself, but for many of us, we would say that we like, care way more about this person in our life than our followers.
But I just noticed for me like, it didn't feel as like, I craved again is that dopamine hit. Like I didn't get the same degree of dopamine hit from my partner telling me I looked nice and that they liked my haircut as I did from all of the people on the internet saying it. And for me it was important to question that and to sort of realize like, oh, what I think is true about myself is not actually what like, my sense of this anymore.
And social media is just changing things in my experience of the world more than I—definitely more than I wanted to admit at the time.
Tara: Ah, and we're full -grown adults. Think of this in the an eleven,-, twelve-, thirteen-year-old girl's hands or any child's hands. Like, I have two small ones and I'm just like, you're gonna get social media when you're thirty.
Amelia: I know. I think about how much I struggled with body image and self-consciousness and confidence, and how much self-loathing I had as a teenager as a result of just general media, and if I also had social media…no, it just feels harrowing. I don't want to go there for myself or others. Nope.
Tara: That's a whole 'nother podcast episode. But this does tie into a question I had for you that I mentioned before. We got on the call with not expecting you to have an answer, but more of your thoughts on this because social media can have its, you know, its negative, its ick.
It also has brought so many people together and given an opportunity to people to have community and have friendships that might not necessarily have been able to before. I think of my rural people who don't have a local community to plug into, or for neurodivergent folks who are able to have these friendships online that are not able to have them offline, again in a local community, and so many other things where social media is their safe space and their haven for friendships and community.
What advice would you give, I guess, to kind of balance that? Because they probably, I mean, everyone's different, but they might not be like, I'm not gonna get off social media, that's where I thrive. But at the same time, how can I make sure that I'm using it in a way that's good for me and my mental health?
Amelia: Yeah. So something I say in my book is that at the end of the day, I think it's up to each of us to essentially make a pros and cons list of, here are the benefits that I get from social media. Here are the harms that I'm experiencing as well as the harms I see it doing on a broader scale in my community and in the world.
And to reckon with those lists and sort of weigh them against each other and make decisions about our social media use going forward based on a real honest accounting of the benefits and the harms. And I try to insist on that because I know that the role of social media is quite different for each of us, and I feel acutely aware that social media makes so much possible for so many people.
And you know, I think especially of like, my queer community and you know, I grew up in a relatively small town in the south, and the internet was everything, like it was my way out. It was the way I could envision a world that wasn't limited to the options I saw around me. I mean, also as like, a young woman then who, you know, I didn't even encounter feminism till grad school, but like I needed visions of what life might look like other than, you know, graduating high school and getting married and having children right away. And that wasn't my path. But I respect that as a path for many people, but it wasn't the one I wanted and I didn't see a lot of options otherwise for myself.
And so I think that social media has played that role for so many people. I'm like, the first to acknowledge that and support that. And also I see the ways that social media is banning shadowbanning, stealing from, harassing, supporting like, the total copying of and duping of accounts of like, all of my favorite people from those same communities, queer communities, all the witches that I love, sex workers on the internet.
We need social media to find community. We're also like, actively being persecuted by social media companies, and so I think we really have to reckon with that. I know so many people who've lost access to their accounts for kind of no reason anyone could figure out, and as a result, lost their entire community there.
So I love to support those folks in finding Discord servers or Slack workspaces or just online membership communities where you can also hang out. Around these like, affinity groups or interests? You know, I really think of my spouse, JJ here, who was also the editor of my book, which will come up later.
But you know, JJ is neurodivergent and is a chess player and is very good at chess. And where we live in Nebraska, there's not like, there are plenty of neurodivergent people, but there's not necessarily like a gathered community. And the chess community is just like, there aren't many players that are as highly rated as JJ, and so JJ has a very active life on X around chess, and most of that community has moved to Discord and started a Discord server over the past few years because X has become so toxic and such a place people don't wanna spend time.
So that's the sort of model I like to help people think through is like, okay, maybe you're on social media sometimes, or you're there because you do find connection, but what are the alternate spaces that you're setting up so that if social media shifts or if a core member of your community gets banned, you actually like, can still contact them and connect with them and be a part of each other's lives.
And also like, remember, anything you're doing on social media can be read by these companies that are now like, actively sharing data with the US government. Anything that you're doing on social media, anything you're posting on social media for most of the companies, their terms of service say that they could copy it and use it anywhere they want to. So, you know, also know the conditions that you've agreed to and I encourage everyone to just like, protect yourselves and your copyright and your art in the process and your relationships in the process.
Tara: No, I love that insight, and that's something obviously as editors and authors listening in, so many indie authors had their IP stolen to build ChatGPT and all these other icky, generative AI. Social media isn't that different.
Amelia: They're not.
Tara: You don't have to be an author, you just have to be someone on social media for that to happen. And you do, you hear, especially right now, there's tons of accounts being shadowbanned or blocked or whatever they're calling it now, that are speaking out against things and that's why they're getting shut down.
Amelia: And also accounts that aren't. I was just reading a post by Jacqueline Fisch, who's an editor and intuitive writer that I follow, and her account just got banned.
I can link to the Substack post about it. Seemingly for no reason. And I think her sort of assessment has been like, as more and more companies use AI to screen accounts for terms of service violations, and they use it in the ban process, it becomes likely that you can get banned for not even saying anything political.
I mean, I wanna protect political freedom of speech in its own ways on social media, but I really feel like we're entering a point where it could happen to any of us.
Tara: Great. I mean, I'm not surprised.
Amelia: Yeah, I know. I'm not surprised. Not to be a downer.
Tara: No, no, this is the downer part of the conversation, but it's— Well then, why don't we switch gears? Let's go to happy things. Let's talk about your book, Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media. So how did the book come about? Which I think we kind of know, but give us a little insight as to why this book and why now?
Amelia: Yeah, so I launched Off the Grid podcast about a year after leaving social media. So I left the apps, I started my business Softer Sounds, and often people think that like, when I left, I had this total, full, complete strategy for like, leaving and launching a podcast about leaving and making that a business. That was not my intention. I was not trying to like, coaches coaching coaches rule the world.
I didn't have like, some total domination around like, people leaving social media, teaching people to leave social media strategy at all. I was launching a podcast studio, but people kept asking me how I had left and if my business was doing okay without it. Like, everyone was a little bit like, are you making any money? Have you found any clients?
So I launched the podcast to just start answering those people's questions, and I made over a hundred episodes of the show with no book in mind. I like, did not think I was gonna write a book at all. And at some point about a year ago now, I noticed that I was doing interviews with guests and sometimes they would say something about attention or about the algorithm and I would sort of sit there and be like, I really think that's wrong. I don't really, I think, I don't think that's the case. I don't think their take on this is that nuanced or like, and I would have this feeling and as an interviewer I don't find that helpful. Like I don't have people on my show to tell them they're wrong, but it became this sort of clue to me that I actually had a really strong point of view about attention and about algorithms and about social media.
And after I had that realization, it was pretty quickly apparent to me that I needed to write a book about it. Like, I wanted to write another book. And the book arrived pretty quickly, and it didn't take long for me to know it was gonna be three chapters. It was gonna be relatively short and I needed to write it soon.
Those were all just kind of creative downloads in the process, and so the book, in January of 2025, I took myself to a local hotel and checked in. I had my partner drop me off, so I had no car. I could not leave. There was like, a coffee shop and a restaurant there. I stayed there for five days and I wrote the whole first draft of the manuscript.
Tara: Oh my gosh. I love that, though. You gave yourself a deadline and a goal, and you did it.
Amelia: Yeah, it was very intense. I don't say that as like, my recommended writing strategy. I have no recommended writing strategies. I'm not a writing coach at all. It's just what worked for me to write this book. And I think that's because I had spent three years talking about these things. Like, the ideas were very present. My sense of how each chapter was going to sort of work was very present. And so I really just had to like, get it out at that point.
But that's kind of how the book came to be, and I think when I finished writing it, that was like my happiest moment in the process. I was like, elated to have written this book. I was like, walking around this hotel, like on cloud nine, calling friends, talking fast, being excited. Those were like, my favorite moments was really like I could feel that creative energy just so much like, at the surface, like on my skin. Like it was really just like, coming out of me and I felt so excited to have like, written this and put it together and now, nine months later roughly, it's out in the world.
Tara: I love the thing where you said I was calling all of my friends and telling them because as a millennial, I was like, oh, you're calling people.
Amelia: I should have meant I was voice messaging them.
Tara: Oh, that's that. That still counts. Yes. But what you didn't say was I got on my Instagram and I posted about it.
Amelia: Yes, exactly.
Tara: Because I'm sure that voice messaging your friends is a lot different than looking for likes posting it on Instagram. But that would've been my go-to. That's easy, right?
Amelia: Yeah, absolutely. Well, because with friends, like with voice messages, I have to send it to a specific friend. Like I'm not broadcasting, I'm actually reaching out. You know, I had to choose specific people that I wanted to tell about this and what I wanted to share with them.
And I did along the way build in more public sharing. I did some episodes of my private podcast on the Clubhouse about it. I, you know, put some pieces of it in like a PS of an email. Like, I'm a big believer in bringing your audience along with you or bringing your community along with you. So I was trying to share it in public, but in those immediate moments, like my joy and excitement, I didn't give that to everyone.
I gave it to my friends and I picked the friends I wanted to share it with. I also didn't like, share it with the friends who didn't care about the book. I shared it with my friends who really wanted to talk about the book.
Tara: Right. There's nuance there too, with sharing it specifically. Yeah. So you busted this draft out in five days, which is amazing. Then what? Now it's the editing process. How did that go for you?
Amelia: Yeah, so I reread it maybe a week or so later and made some minor like, adjustments. I wouldn't even say edits, like I just did some proofing, I did some cleaning up, and then I passed it to two people in my life.
My longtime friend, Kening Zhu, who's also a writer, I shared it with her to read, and then I shared it with my partner or my spouse, JJ, who is an editor in a very different context. So JJ works as the digital editor for US Chess, which is the United States Chess Federation. They do all of the major tournaments and the ranking, and JJ runs their online newsroom.
So JJ was gonna edit the manuscript for me. Kening was sort of like, reading it to give me some high-level feedback and thoughts because she's more so a member of my community, like would be a potential reader, and JJ's job was to help me work through the argument. JJ also has a background in philosophy. So I have a PhD in philosophy, JJ did most of a PhD in philosophy, and so I wanted their help really thinking through the big ideas and Kening's help sort of making sure this would land with the people I wanted to read it. And they both read it and gave me a lot of really helpful feedback and it was great. And then I proceeded to like, fully spiral about the book for about four months.
Tara: Oh no, but also yep, that sounds about right.
Amelia: Yeah, I think part of the process. I think because I had gotten so excited, like, I hit like a really high high in like having written it, then I like, really went low in that sort of cycle. And I have written major projects before, you know. I had published 50 Feminist Mantras. I've also written the whole dissertation and went through the dissertation defense process.
So I was familiar with the fact that I was gonna love it, and as much as I loved it, I was gonna hate it just as equally. And so I cycled through that a few times. I think that like, I had to go all the way through hating my project, and then I sort of worked with their edits and wrote another version or like, reworked some of the chapters and had a new version, and then JJ read it again and we sort of talked through some things. And at that point I felt like I had a lot more confidence of, okay, this is what I think and people can read it.
You know these people can, both of them read it and you can disagree with me, but like, I am still confident in what I said as opposed to the first time I was like, oh no, did I just write all of the wrong things? This is this like, going back in the trash. So through the editing and the revision process, I did gain more confidence. And now that the book is out, I love it again. But there were a few points of hating it in between writing and now.
Tara: I’m not a writer, but having worked with many writers, that seems very brand. Especially with getting an entire draft out in five days. Like, I can imagine the high of that, and then you gotta counterbalance it and then you've gotta really go down the rabbit hole of, you know, not great thinking.
Amelia: Yeah, absolutely. And just for anyone listening who's like, how did you write that much? I mean, I think I wrote 15,000 words in five days, maybe 18. So like, plenty. But also this, you know, my book is a hundred-page manifesto. It's not like a traditional 250-, 300-page nonfiction book. And that was also interesting because I wanted to write a short book because I know people's attention is kind of limited, even though the whole book is about like, reclaiming and expanding your attention, I am still trying to meet readers where they're at. And so a short length felt appropriate both for like, who I wanted to read the book and what I wanted to write.
Tara: Yeah. And it is short, but it's impactful. It doesn't have to be 300 pages as long as you get the message across, which you did. Shout-out, get the book, which we'll talk about in a minute.
Actually, that was a great segue. Where do we get the book? 'Cause that's a little different than what you've done in the past.
Amelia: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So right now when this comes out, the only place you can buy the book is on my website at OffTheGrid.fun/Attention. Or if you go to YourAttentionIsSacred.com, it will redirect you there.
And that was a very intentional choice. So I decided that for the first two months that the book is out in the world, I will be selling it on my website exclusively. I will be shipping out the copies myself. And I made that choice because as other self-published authors will know, you make much more money per book when you do it this way.
So I decided to self-publish this book and I am printing it through IngramSpark. And when I looked at the numbers, it just felt like I wanted to make more than like, the $4 per copy I might make if they handled everything. And when I do it myself, I make much more, like $18 per copy, which is significant.
So when I was making these decisions about the book, it felt important to me to figure out like, what would success mean to me? And the way I felt was that I wanted to make back the money I had spent on the book. I wanted to pay myself a little bit for writing the book, and I wanted to go on a book tour next year.
So I set a sort of goal. My goal is to make roughly $18,000 off of the book in the first three months it's out in the world. And so I really worked to figure out like, what is that gonna mean? Well, it's a lot harder to make $18,000 if I'm making $4 per copy than if I'm making $18 per copy. So that was partially why I decided to do more of the work myself.
And then starting in December, I will make the book available on Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org and other popular retailers. And that way people can buy the book from their retailer of choice before the holidays. Bookstores can start to order it if they want to have it in shops at the top of next year when, you know, digital wellness and things like that are really big in January.
And my thinking was that I don't wanna ship books forever. I'm hopeful that the people who already know my work will buy it from me directly and then I can kind of put it into the marketplace, right? And share it with everyone a little later in the year. And also that will allow more international distribution, which I'm not doing right now 'cause I'm not shipping internationally because of the tariffs and customs issues.
And then maybe the biggest decision that I could have started with is that I'm not putting my book on Amazon at all. So it will not be available to buy—no print copy on Amazon, no Kindle version on Amazon, no Audible version on Amazon. And I'm sure the editors listening in know or would tell me that I'm throttling my sales by not putting it there.
Tara: But it depends on the editor. Some would say yes, some would say no. I would say you do you.
Amelia: Yeah, you do you is essentially like a motto of my career, or me do me. I suppose for me, this book is about rejecting these sort of big tech and social media systems that have become the defaults in society.
And so I felt like putting this book on Amazon just ran counter to the ethos of the book, and I am choosing to make this bet on my own integrity and clarity of vision that the book will be successful anyway. So I might put books on Amazon in the future. I'm not saying I will never sell a book through that platform, and my past book you can buy through that platform because I traditionally published it, so it's always gonna be on Amazon.
But for this one, the most aligned choice felt like no Amazon, although it will be available, like I said, through the other retailers. So people can still buy it. I mean, but you just won't be able to get it from Amazon specifically.
Tara: I think that makes total sense. I mean, we were talking before we started recording about if I was going to post this episode on social media, which feels not right, but I also haven't figured out what I'm doing with social media and I had posted this week too about a previous episode I did.
I'm like, yes, I understand the irony I am posting about why I don't like social media on social media. Let's just be aware of that. It's fine and we'll figure it out together. Nobody's perfect. There's no perfection here.
Amelia: Exactly. And the people in those spaces are the ones who often need this type of messaging or want it the most.
So I've told people like, please do share the book on social media. Tell folks about it there, put it in your Stories, share it wherever. I just won't be there to tag or to participate. And I think that's the sort of clarity of boundary for me. Like, I'm not trying to control what other people do, but I'm also not going to let their activity lure me back onto the apps or something like that.
I’m fine with missing out on the conversation there. And at the same time, I welcome people to share it and I've had people sort of be like, well, do you feel like you're putting a burden on your community to like, put it on social media for you since you're not there? But no, 'cause I'm not asking them to.
Tara: No, you did not ask me to do that.
Amelia: No, not at all. And I think that, it was always, it's a question I've gotten multiple times this week and in my launch week and I was kind of like, oh, that's interesting. I think often when folks make a sort of countercultural choice, people who are continuing to make the common cultural choice like, have trouble fathoming like, why you would choose otherwise.
Or they suddenly feel like it's their job to like, make up for the work you used to be doing in that space. And that is not how I see it. It's very much like, yeah, if you wanna post it on Instagram, great. And also if you decide for yourself that you're like, I'm not interested in posting on Instagram anymore, I personally will not be upset that you didn't share our podcast interview there, because I will never notice.
Tara: You just said something about FOMO too, which is such a core part of all of this too. Not to go back on all of it, but it is part of that dopamine and you are gonna miss out and you're missing out on everything that people are talking about and you can't talk about it when they mention it, but also not really 'cause you might miss out something this second and then something else has replaced it the next second and you're already behind.
Amelia: Yeah, I think that having been off of social media for four and a half, almost five years, what I've basically come to is that I will definitely miss some trends there. There are trends that I don't know have happened, but I subscribe to a lot of newsletters. I follow the news. I'm not missing like, national or local events.
Sometimes I'll miss an update in a friend's life, but I just have more friends now that like, we have a three-hour phone call once a year, who in the past I would've just again like, commented on their posts and we would've had no phone calls and now we do have to catch up. It's like my rhythms have changed, but I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything meaningful.
Tara: That is really good to hear. Yeah, and I think probably something a lot of people do need to hear. It's okay if you didn't buy the weighted vest that Instagram fed you or know this dance or this meme. It's okay.
Amelia: Yeah, it's really okay. And if it's actually popular enough, it will break free from the platform and end up in one of my newsletters and I'll figure out what it was.
Tara: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Okay. This has been amazing. I could talk your ear off for another twenty days, but we will wrap it up.
I am curious if you could tell the editors and authors and publishing professionals who are listening to this episode one thing about their consumption or their use of social media, what would be your one piece of advice or one thing to think about?
Amelia: Okay. I have two things.
Tara:Great. Great.
Amelia: Thanks for letting me bend the rules in advance.
Tara: Always.
Amelia: The one thing I'd want to tell them is that you do not have to be on social media if you don't want to. I know I said that at the top, but I wanna repeat it here. You get to decide, and so if you are on social media, I wanna encourage you to make that a conscious choice. Choose to be there intentionally, and that's great.
And if you feel like you cannot intentionally choose to be there, that's probably a pretty big sign that it's time to log off and let's find ways for you to support yourself as a human or your business or your social life or your community, whatever it is. Let's find ways to do that off of social media.
And there's so many resources on my podcast, in my book, in my membership community for doing that. So I welcome you into the Off the Grid universe if you'd like. And then just the final thing I wanted to say before I go is that I did not come here to talk all about publishing a book without social media without any receipts.
And so we are, you know, really like, three days into my book launch. I did a pre sort of wait list launch that my wait list got to buy the book two days before it went on sale to the general public. And at this point, I have fulfilled, I'm looking at my numbers right now. Three days in I've fulfilled 123 orders and I've brought in over $5,000 in revenue.
So it is working, and it has been a lot of work, but it is working. And I just wanna say that because sometimes people listen to me talk and I think they don't want to hear it, and then they're like, oh, well, she probably didn't sell any books, but like, I have sold books. It is working great for me, you know, and I don't have a huge audience.
I have an email list with 2,000 people on it. Like that's plenty, but it's not giant. And so like, I am making it work as a small to midsize creator without social media, and I think it's important that people hear that one, so they believe they can do it, and two, so they believe they can be successful doing it. You don't have to give up on success if you decide to step away from social media.
Tara: Oh, congratulations. That's huge. I love that you brought receipts. I love it. Truly, thank you for sharing that too. You know, you don't see a lot of authors sharing those kinds of numbers with people either, because for many reasons, but I appreciate the transparency.
Amelia: Well, it's really hard.
Tara: Yeah.
Amelia: If you publish traditionally, it's like, impossible to know. But as a self-published author, like, yeah, I can just literally open up my Squarespace shop and tell you. So I'm happy to do so even though I know many authors would not, and that's fine if that's their choice.
Tara: Sure, sure. You're already a quarter—I'm not a math person—quarter of the way to your goal. A little over.
Amelia: Yeah, a little over. Yeah.
Tara: It's been three days. Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me, especially during your book launch week. I know you said it's a little less busy, but still it's a big week and I appreciate you taking the time.
And I will link everything about Off the Grid in the show notes for people to check you out and binge listen and binge read and do all the things like I did when I discovered you. So just thank you so much again for sharing everything.
Amelia: Yeah, thanks for having me. And thanks to everyone for tuning in. I'm so grateful for your attention.
Tara: Take care.
Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. If you enjoy The Modern Editor Podcast, I would be so grateful if you left a review over on Apple Podcasts or wherever you consume podcasts. And don't forget, you can head to TaraWhitaker.com to connect with me and stay in touch. We'll chat again soon.