Strategizing Promotions

Don't get me wrong; I'm far from finishing my latest story. And then there's the whole editing process. But my mind can't help but wander to the promotion aspect and whether I'll even attempt it.

With Lies and Love I went all out. Well, as "all out" as I could afford, which was very little. But I did put a lot of effort into promotion. Why? To be honest, it wasn't that I thought this book was the best ever, but I wanted to either prove or disprove the value of marketing. My sales have historically been negligible-to-non-existent and it's not because I'm a bad writer. My genre has limited popularity, but it definitely has some. So I did some experimenting.

First of all, what didn't work:

Social Media ~ Social media was a complete bust. Instagram, X; I even joined a couple of Facebook ARC groups (and you know how much I hate Facebook). I did not get one taker. One can also count my Goodreads blog and my Substack as social media, and those were negligible, to say the least. I did offer ARCs through a Goodreads group and found about five takers. Of those, I believe two people left reviews.

My Newsletter ~ Zero. My newsletter is completely useless.

LibraryThing Giveaway ~ I believe thirteen people won my giveaway and out of those, most of them didn't even respond when I asked them which format they preferred. I got two reviews and one BookBub fan, for which I'm grateful, but those results were pretty paltry.

BookBub Ad ~ Well, this worked out "great". I mean, "terribly". I've run a couple of BookBub promotions before with far better return. Admittedly, one of my books was offered for free, which apparently brings out the hoarders, but offering Lies and Love at ninety-nine cents was just a bridge too far.

Voracious Readers Only ~ This promotion was the most disappointing. Their model is, for one time only they will find twenty readers for your book (meaning, if you want to use their services again, it'll cost you) and reviews will pour in. They don't actually claim that reviews will pour in, but it's suggested. It took almost eight hours just to find twenty takers, and from those, one person wrote a review.

 

What worked (a bit better):

Cheap and/or Free Promotion Sites ~ I had to do a lot of digging to find them, but in the end I found a bunch. Not all are created equal, but my impression is that the smaller outfits try harder. I wrote a blog post that lists the ones I used, but I would discourage utilizing BookAngel, even though it's free. That's where I received a two-star review (with no text explaining why), which brought my overall rating down. Many of the sites also do an author interview, which they include in their newsletters (more than once), and that's rather nice. I moved a few copies from my efforts, which is better than no copies.

Kindle Free Book Promotion ~ I've ragged on Kindle's "ads for the poor" before, because they never resulted in one taker, but recently I did one for Lies and Love, just because, and eleven people jumped on it. Sure, you may think that's a pitiful number, but for me it's gold. I don't know if I'll get any reviews (free books rarely do), but sometimes it's nice just to imagine that someone is actually reading it.

 

Will I promote my new book? I think, a little. It's really hard to resist, especially if it's a book I'm proud of. What author doesn't want readers? Will I bother with social media? No. Will I advertise ARCs? Maybe, but not widely. I create my own ARCs because I can neither afford to, nor is it cost effective to pay a company to do it for me, but the process is not fun. Making my own ARCs also rules out a LibraryThing giveaway, since they've now changed their rules to only allow "professionally (meaning, commercially) generated" ARCs to be given away. Not that I would have done it again anyway. Watching hundreds of people queue up for a couple of other drawings and so few for mine was disheartening, and I do my best to remain "heartened".

Which brings me to the reviews themselves. Of the few I did receive, I never read them. I succumbed once and glanced at the reviews on my Amazon author page, but I have no idea where the one new review I found came from. Really, all that matters are Amazon and Goodreads reviews, so any that were posted to individual promo sites do nothing for me, good or bad.

Putting forth the effort with Lies and Love was a real learning experience and I'm glad I did it. Marketing is not my forte, so I'm content with the small bits of knowledge I gleaned. Other authors will no doubt have wildly different results, but we're not a monolithic group. I take other authors' experiences with a grain of salt. Sometimes I'll try their methods; often I won't. Genre matters. We each have to play to our strengths.