I think it is utter bullshit that publishers only want writers that have established platforms and followers. If you're going trad publishing than marketing is SUPPOSED to be their job, not yours. At this point they are not doing a single thing that you cannot do yourself so why do they deserve a cut of your sales?

I went self pubbed for a lot of reasons and one of them was I saw more and more that publishing houses weren't doing anything to actually help authors get noticed anymore, so why bother? They just want to capiltilize on your follower count and reap the rewards. Screw that. I don't even bother trying to make a "Community" for my followers on twitter or insta or where ever. I don't have the time or really the desire to try to make connections like that. I have books, I promote them, I buy ads, people either buy them or not. Life's too damn short to worry about your follower count. Half the time I get swarmed by bots anyway who I have to go back and remove from my follower list at some point.

It's simply another way they can make us work harder so they can take more money. Screw that.