An Unanswerable Question

I don't care about book sales, at least not anymore. Still, I'm curious. I read so many posts on Reddit by people who have just published their first book, and each of those people raves that they've already had sales. Some are even still at the pre-order stage and have sold copies. How does that work? That's never happened to me. These folks say nothing about advertising, so I'm assuming they haven't done any.

I've done research on why self-published books don't sell, and I have to say, I haven't made any of the mistakes listed in the articles. I don't miscategorize, my covers are fine, my blurbs are good, I've set them at the lowest price KDP allows. I've tried both paid and free (social media) promotion. The "look inside" feature reveals no typos.

I don't get it. There has to be a reason, doesn't there? Apparently that reason is opaque. My best (and only) guess is that my books don't sound exciting enough. Of course, I have no way of proving that hypothesis right or wrong; Amazon doesn't show an author how many clicks their book image has produced. The truth is, my books aren't "exciting", not in the way thrillers are exciting. But those in my catalog that feature a crime or an element of suspense have blurbs that highlight that feature. I'm not an imbecile. Those books have rarely sold, either. To me, the worst thing an author can do is mislead a potential reader, so I'm honest in describing the story. True women's fiction is about the journey, and journeys aren't inherently exciting. 

Could I take another stab at my blurbs? Maybe. Maybe they're too succinct; not detailed enough. I'm torn on this. I once before questioned whether my blurbs were holding me back, and I took a look at some trade published novels' descriptions to see if I could model mine after those successful ones. Those blurbs went on and on, sometimes for half a page, rather upending the definition of "blurb". I tried doing that for a while, but I eventually reverted to my original blurbs. Personally, long book descriptions are annoying. Online shopping is meant to be quicker than browsing a physical store. Sure, if I'm looking to make a large purchase, I'll take my time researching and comparing products, but for a ninety-nine-cent book? Just give me enough info to make a snap decision. Does the book sound interesting? Okay. Done.

It's too late for my current catalog anyway. I did replace my covers, really because I had nothing else to do, but do I really want to waste my time composing long blurbs for those books? To what end? 

And really, I'm just guessing. I'm using the process of elimination. But it won't take long to eliminate everything, and here I'll be, still wondering. All my published books are lost causes at this point. It's as if they were never written. That makes me sad. Not sad because they didn't make any money; just sad that no one has read them.

I'm as good a writer as anyone. But I'm the only one who knows it.