Launching

There is no time like now. Inn Dreams is done ~ fini ~ and now is the time to promote.

I've set the book up for pre-order, hoping fruitlessly, no doubt, that I'll garner some advance reviews. Where have I sought them out? Let me count the places ~ my Goodreads blog, two Goodreads groups, my one respondent from my newsletter (I thought it was two, but the same person had emailed me twice), my dormant Substack account, Instagram, X. Not Facebook, but that place makes me shudder. I even created an Amazon ad, though I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. In the light of day, I think I may have messed it up, but hopefully I didn't commit myself to spending more money on it than I intended. Amazon ads are very confusing and my search for tutorials resulted in even more confusion.

I also applied to BookSirens again, if for no other reason than to just annoy them. They've already turned me down twice before, with no explanation. Tomorrow I'll know if they once again declined me. I wasn't going to pursue them another time, but their website popped up in my search for "pre-publication reviews" and I rather enjoy being a thorn in their side.

I signed up for BookSprout despite Reddit posters positing that the site is useless for anything except romance. Let me just say that BookSprout's interface is really confusing. Do I really need to name my team? And why do I need a team? Plus, all its questions were superfluous. Luckily I can terminate my membership at any time, so they get one chance.

I haven't explored Voracious Readers Only's paid plan.With Lies and Love, I only received one review, so I'm dubious. Likewise with LibraryThing's giveaway program. Now that I'm on BookSprout, I could participate (LibraryThing has new rules now requiring authors to use an ARC hosting service), but is it really worth the psychic disappointment? 

Aside from checking the various places where I posted my ARC offer, I'm at a standstill with promotions until the book is actually published. Unlike with Lies and Love, which I promoted to death just to give promotions a spin, I truly believe that Inn Dreams is my best work to date. I read it three times and I'm proud of it.

I know I say this a lot, but if my efforts fail to pan out, I doubt that I'll invest so much in a future book. I'm doing everything I know (and can afford) to do. Rarely do I compare my (lack of) success to other indie authors', but a lot of them seem to reap substantial benefits by doing the exact same things I am. Trust me; my writing is good, the story is interesting. I get that my genre isn't very popular, so maybe that's a cross I'll forever have to bear. 

But tomorrow is another day. Who knows? Maybe some of the things I'm trying will work. It could happen.