Moving Older Books in Your Catalog

My website features every one of my books. Why wouldn't it? They're mine and I get to do what I want with them. The problem is, no one else does anything with most of them. My writing doesn't follow the typical pattern of most authors, in that each subsequent book doesn't automatically get better. Granted, my three novels were basically throwaways, but even then Book One was better than Book Two. I don't know if it's an intuitive thing, but I'm usually better the first time I do something than I am the next. I try hard to improve on a process, but I could be sabotaging myself by over-thinking. My first recording take tends to be the one my producer goes with, no matter how many more times I sing the song. I'll listen to the first take and find an off note, then the second time I concentrate so hard on fixing that, that I lose all the emotion in my voice. 

Those novels aside, because they really don't count, my first stab at writing a novella (New Kaitlyn) turned out well. Then I had possibly too big of an idea for the next and didn't execute it the way I'd hoped. After that, though, my writing went along quite swimmingly. Bad Blood is pretty good, Second Chance is nice, Shadow Song has an original plot. Then The Diner Girl and Lies and Love, and now my new one.

I can count on one hand, sometimes on one finger, the number of copies most of those books sold. Sometimes no fingers. Yep, a few of my books have never sold a single copy. 

I'd like to sell some of my back catalog, but promoting them feels like backtracking when there's always a new book requiring my marketing attention. I tried a tiny bit of marketing with Shadow Song and The Diner Girl, which mostly resulted in free downloads. Free downloads rarely, if ever, generate reviews. Most people don't even read them. And they didn't lure people to peruse my other works, which is ostensibly the entire rationale for giving books away for free. (Why else would one do it?)

There should be a place to shout, "Hey! Try this one!", but alas, that place is a mystery. 

I can't promote Second Chance in its current state, although I like it a lot. If I thought it was worth it, I would go back into the manuscript and change a few things to become compliant. I know I'm being a bit opaque, but suffice it to say that as a songwriter, there are certain lines I could easily change. It could be worth it. 

The ultimate dilemma is, am I confident enough in some of my older titles to bother advertising them? Certain of my books are without question, good. I don't even have to ponder that. But I would have to re-read a couple others in order to assuage my nagging discomfort. While I'm sitting around with not much to do, I will perhaps delve into those.

I would like to see some action with these (so far) duds. I don't know why else I even bothered publishing them.