New Subscribers

Well, my CTA (new acronym I just learned) worked great!

Okay, it worked just as I imagined it would.

I offered a free digital book to the first ten people who subscribed to my newsletter. Posted my call to action on Goodreads, Substack, and Instagram. Know how many takers I got?

Zero.

I was hoping for one. I don't think that's unreasonable, but I couldn't even hit that target.

I don't get it. Either the whole CTA thing is made up and never actually works, or every other author in the world possesses magical powers that I don't have.

It was just a spur-of-the-moment experiment anyway, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that promotion advice is worthless. Within reason, I've managed to do everything "experts" suggest and nothing worked. I included stupid stuff in my newsletters, like writing about a topic I'm an expert in, offering giveaways; no quizzes, per se, but articles like, "What your favorite genre says about you". I even, out of desperation, posted a recipe. I'm running out of ideas. I've had no engagement whatsoever. 

Perhaps if one new person subscribed I would feel compelled to continue the newsletter exercise. But I'm skeptical that a newsletter is something anyone wants. Before I attempted my first one, I subscribed to a couple of well-known authors. One of them has never, in the past eight months, sent out a newsletter. The other sends one once a month, and her latest was even more useless than mine. It was hardly worth her bother. 

Here is what I would want in an author newsletter: Does he or she have a new book out? Does the author give me a chance to win it? (I'm kinda cheap poor, after all.) 

That's it.

All that other stuff is just filler. I don't care that she's going on a cruise. I'm not going on a cruise, so is she simply bragging? Get away from me!

If I ever send out another newsletter, I should just slap an image of my latest book on it with a buy button and be done with it. 

The whole concept is stupid.

It's obvious I can't even give these things away.