First Day Promo Results

 

Since I had so many promos running on the same day, it's impossible to know which of them produced results, but in total I managed nine sales. I do know which site did not result in any sales, and that was BookBub. Yes, the king of all book marketing sites was a dud for me once again. Not only did I not reap any sales, but I couldn't even manage a single click. I still have one day left on my promotion, but obviously this ad can be written off.

The other sites were:

• Best Book Monkey
• BookDoggy
• Book Raid
• Book Reader Magazine (although I never received a date confirmation)
• It's Write Now (a two-day promotion)
• The Fussy Librarian
  

While it's nice to see the needle move, even a tiny bit, I've spent more on advertising than I earned in sales.

It's hard not to compare oneself to other self-published authors who brag about their sales on social media. Realistically, I know that the authors like me whose product isn't moving aren't posting about it, but I still feel like the lone loser of the bunch. And I do wish the OP's would stop framing their brags as "questions". I sold 120 copies of blah blah blah dystopian fantasy the very first day, but I was wondering...

Oh, just shut up and stop "wondering". You're not wondering about anything; you just want the rest of us to feel bad. 

The simple solution for me is to stop reading these posts, but the self-publishing subreddit often contains useful info, and I'm not so delicate that I can't stomach other people's success. I'm happy for them (as happy as one can be about a total stranger); I just wish I wasn't such a total failure.

I could talk about how I possibly sabotaged myself by unintentionally leading a reader to think they were getting something they weren't, but that's not really applicable. They wouldn't know or think they were misled unless they read the book. I will write a separate post about that, though, and about the pitfalls of keywords and descriptions. It's a big umbrella topic, especially for my genre.

In the end, nine sales are better than zero sales, so I guess I'm the one who needs to shut up