Experimenting With New Promo Sites

Everyone online seems to agree that there are three to four good book promotion sites. I've tried three of them and they haven't been good for me. Sure, maybe it's me, not them, but I'm the one I'm looking out for.

Yesterday I found a list from Reedsy of 67 promo services. Some are only labeled, "worth a try", while others are highly recommended. I checked out the ones that haven't priced me out of the market, and yes, some of the links are dead, which is weird because the article is titled, "Free and Paid Book Promotion Services in 2024".

It was hit or miss. Some require a book to have a certain number of reviews, some have a page or word count requirement, some that are labeled "free" turned out not to be. A few are blogs with a limited number of followers. 

But here I sit with nothing to show for my writing efforts, with one review from an ARC reader, and what am I supposed to do? Why not give these other sites a whirl?

So I signed up with Best Book Monkey and BookDoggy (why do they all have animal-associated names?), as well as Awesome Gang, among others I can't even remember (!) They could well be crap, but I will say their customer service is great ~ and personalized. I did submit to a middling blog of some sort that asked for the moon on its submission form ~ Why did you write this book? What made you choose your characters? How did you choose your setting? List seven keywords. KDP doesn't even require all that stuff.

Best Book Monkey was $8.00. BookDoggy cost $24.00.

There's also a UK site that is completely free to list with. It's like a breath of fresh air. 

Off list, I also went with Voracious Readers Only. Some people on Reddit sing its praises and it's certainly well known. It claims to find an author 20 new readers ~ and for free. And I don't need to mess with sending reader copies myself. I emailed the site a PDF and an epub and they'll take care of the distribution. One thing they asked for on their submission form was comps, which could be TV shows or movies, in lieu of books. The form actually stated, "If you don't have any, don't bother submitting." Yikes! Everyone here knows I don't read fiction, so I searched out TV shows about small towns and settled on Gilmore Girls, which I never once watched, but its description sounded "similar". Then I thought of the movie, The Holdovers. Its plot is nothing like mine, but the feel is the same. When I streamed the film, I was enchanted by every aspect of it and even remarked (in my head) that this is the kind of story I wished I could write. My promo doesn't run until March 15, which by that time I will have forgotten about it, knowing me, but the submission process was seamless, which is not to be discounted. 

Of note, my LibraryThing giveaway ends on Monday, and last time I checked my book had 22 entrants. 

Yes, this could all be for naught, but at least I feel like I'm doing something.