Invisible Relationships
the strongest connections often leave the fewest footprints
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A few weeks ago, I was scrolling Instagram between meetings when I saw a post from my favorite local shop, featuring some of their new arrivals. Slide 14 stopped me, and later that afternoon, I stopped in to make that Roman ashtray mine (it’s the cover photo for this post).
Abby, the owner, laughed as she rang me up in probably my shortest shopping spree in her store since my first time there. I told her I saw it on Instagram, and her whole face changed. “I love that,” she said. “I feel like I’m posting into the void these days. No one really interacts with my posts anymore.”
I knew exactly what she meant. But the funny thing is, she wasn’t posting into the void at all. I scrolled, I saw something I loved, and I shopped. If she had a checkout form that asked: how did you find us? In this case, the answer would have been on Instagram. Her content worked.
Our brief conversation about posting into the void stayed with me because I’d spent the better part of this year feeling exactly the same way.
I started 2026 determined to own my expertise. I wanted my work to speak for itself, so I leaned into educational content: how-to newsletters, advice-based Instagram carousels, practical marketing tips for authors. If there was a question I kept hearing from clients, I turned it into a post. I eventually started joking that Instagram carousels were going to be the death of me, and then at some point, it stopped being funny.
Not because I stopped believing in what I was teaching, but because somewhere along the way, I stopped sounding like myself. Basically, I went off-brand.
I’ve always loved connecting with people through stories. My client calls rarely stay inside the lines of marketing. We talk about their brands and books, yes, but also vacations, hobbies, what we’re reading, the local coffee shop we both love, a nugget from a podcast episode one of us listened to. The work matters, but so do the people doing it. Online, though, I had convinced myself I had to be one thing that SEO would pick up on: the marketing expert, the publishing authority, the person with the answers.
I reached the point where I found myself thinking: is this actually how I would talk to someone over coffee?—an exercise I repeatedly have my authors do before launching a campaign, mind you—and made the call that it was time to return to myself.
Around the same time I decided that something needed to change, I ran into a bestselling author at an event. She thanked me for my content, told me it was some of the most thoughtful marketing advice she’d come across online, that it never relied on urgency or gimmicks or making authors feel like they were already behind. She said she looked forward to reading it, and it was one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received.
Validation.
Later that night, I did a little recon: she’d never engaged with any one of my posts. Not one.
Suddenly, I was Abby. And she was me. We were both measuring the wrong thing.
We’ve somehow decided that the only relationships that count are the ones we can see: the comments, the shares, the saves, the likes. But the Internet has always been full of quiet observers, now even more than ever. People who read every newsletter and never reply, who watch every Story and never tap the heart.
People who remember your name months later when someone asks them for a recommendation. The relationship was there all along, even though you never knew about it.
I think authors feel this more than anyone. Publishing asks you to measure everything: preorders, followers, open rates, event attendance, reviews, rankings. It’s easy to start believing that every interaction has to prove something, and that if people aren’t visibly engaging, they aren’t paying attention. But readers are people before they’re readers, and people don’t build relationships through transactions. They build them through familiarity, shared interests, stories, and through showing up often enough that when your name comes up in conversation, it’s second nature for them to think of you.
If you had your dream reader’s phone number, what would you text them? Probably not “buy my book.” You’d tell them about something that made you laugh, a bookstore you wandered into, a character you can’t stop thinking about, how the recipe you both liked on Instagram actually turned out. You’d weave your work into the conversation because it’s part of your life, not because it’s the only thing worth talking about.
Personality is what gives people something to connect to long before they’re ready to buy anything from you. And personality is the anchor of your author brand.
Connecting Unexpected Dots
Making connections between seemingly unrelated things has always been my favorite part of this work. A friend and I used to joke that if “Dot Connector” were a real job, we’d both be incredibly qualified. Every opportunity I’ve had in publishing has come from relationships that looked unrelated at first.
Every campaign that says top-of-mind started with understanding people before audiences.
Every book I’ve watched find its readers, did so because someone cared enough to pass it along—online or in person, it doesn’t matter.
That’s the kind of marketing I believe in. And it’s the reason I built the Open Book Community. Not because authors need another place to learn about algorithms or content calendars, but because writing can be lonely, building a career alone can be hard, and the best opportunities rarely come from broadcasting louder. They come from being connected to the right people, and not being afraid to be yourself.
Life Between the Lines: What I’m enjoying this week
Tell me, what connection have you made recently that surprised you? Share in the comments!
xx
Jessica Sorentino is an author brand strategist with over a decade of experience, including time at both Simon & Schuster and Macmillan Publishers. She believes nothing promotes a book better than a passionate reader, and works with authors to position their books as the next recommendation on every reader’s list.
100% this: the quiet people that follow you. I’ve had two people that I met tell me they read everything I write on my blog. So surprising, yet gratifying.
so excited for this!