How to Push Your Book Without Pushing Your Book?

The tricky part of long form (e.g., Substack) marketing is to disguise the fact that you're marketing. I'm terrible at it. I understand that an author wants to go for the "soft sell"; intrigue the reader; not hit them over the head with a blatant ad, but how? I've got a Substack account that I rarely use; initially I thought it would house my newsletter, but it was far too cumbersome and confusing, so I switched over to MailerLite. (Now I no longer send a newsletter.) Thus, my Substack is mostly forgotten. There's also the blog feature on Goodreads, which again goes neglected unless I'm pushing a new work. I suppose an author newsletter falls into the long form advertising category as well. 

So, I have three avenues available to me and not a clue how to utilize them. I suppose these options scream out for "behind the scenes" content, but what would that be? Specifically, what about the back story would be interesting to potential readers? The makeup of my novel is really only interesting to me ~ how the Paula Barnes character came to life (it was by accident), why Leah suddenly fell for her guitar player (uh, because it just seemed like a natural progression?). Nothing in this novel was planned. Well, I was busy writing along and the words just fell onto the screen. Oh, okay. Thanks for sharing.

I'm a big fan of this book, but it's hard to infect others with that enthusiasm. And that would be the goal, after all. The soft sell.

I love the series Mad Men, mostly for its retro vibe, but frankly, the ads the characters create are pretty lame. Yet we are supposed to believe they're a mark of creative genius. See? Even Don Draper rarely got it right, so how can I?

It's not that I don't enjoy ruminating on writing, but that's because I'm a writer. It would be like listening to a plumber wax poetic about the different diameters of pipe. It's fascinating to him, sure, but I just want my drain unclogged. Even he, though, would be better at talking a customer into the more expensive fixture, whereas I can't even get someone to shell out two bucks for an ebook.

Add to that dilemma the embarrassment factor. It's far easier to write a piece of fiction than it is to put myself and my inner thoughts out there. It's bad enough to over-share, but if I'm going to do it, it had better at least be interesting.

Since paid marketing hasn't worked for me, if I want to keep trying, I'll need to employ those other options. I've spent all I'm going to spend on useless advertising. 

I wonder if there's a book titled, "How To Be Fascinating". I'd even pay two dollars for it.