Promo Days Begin

 

I have a few promos running today, which ones I'd have to refer to my cheat sheet to find out. As you know, I went all out on promoting Inn Dreams, and for some reason I've latched onto the belief that promos work better on weekends. I have absolutely no idea whether that's true. I just think back to my working days and how I was simply too tired after work to scroll the net for anything. I'm apparently forgetting how much time wasting I did while at work. Yes, now it can be said without repercussions. In my defense, my job had its busy seasons and its non-busy seasons, and during the lulls there was only so much "organizing" I could do. And it's not as if I was the only slacker. Even my boss wasted a lot of time (think I didn't notice?) So, yes, no doubt people shop for books at work, but I'm sticking to my weekend opinion because this isn't something worth agonizing over.

I'm not necessarily disappointed that the book still has no reviews. "Resigned" is a more accurate description. And, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. I'm now convinced that the almost eighty ARC readers I've landed through Voracious Readers Only haven't read my book. Maybe they're all saving it for one of those power outage days when there's nothing else to do. Personally, the fact that I have a thousand books on my Kindle doesn't exactly fill me with delight, but everyone is different. Plus, if they have a thousand or so free books on their device to choose from, they can easily abandon one and move on to the next. That's why I always strive for a good opening line, but I guess that hasn't worked.

I'm not above guilting people into leaving a review, which is why I added a note to my upcoming newsletter, stating, "If you have a free minute..."  

I've come to the realization that I don't like marketing. At first it felt ripe with possibilities. With my very first ad, I just knew magic would happen. When it didn't, I decided I wasn't doing it right. I'd been assured, after all, that marketing works. But the biggest determinant of advertising success in the publishing industry is genre. One could write the most putrid, amateurish book and still boast on Reddit that it sold a hundred copies its first day. I chose a few dud sites this time around in my quest to hit up every semi-plausible promo site, and I need to learn to temper my enthusiasm. I don't like that some of them have about five affiliated sites; it just seems "scammy" to me. I almost signed up with another one yesterday until I saw that it listed a bunch of others within its network, and that rubbed me the wrong way. Plus, as I've mentioned before, I like to have numbers in front of me that show a site's readership. An absence of that is concerning. Anyone can set up a site and charge money for a listing. I could do it. (I wouldn't).

It's possible that I could net a sale or two from my eleven promos. That's about how many I got from promoting Lies and Love. I'll just call it a little diversion ~ something that causes me to check my KDP sales report. I'm easily entertained.