The answer to that is, fogettaboutit, as they say in Brooklyn. I have no idea how to do it, and all the books that tout their strategies are lying. Nothing works on a grand scale for a sustained period of time. Of course, there are the outliers that Amazon writes about in their monthly newsletters but that just makes me angry. Certain genres do better than others. But I write what I write, my own raison d’etre. It’s who I am. Most of us are undiscovered, ignored, and alone in our assessment of our great work. Twitter is now trying to get me to sign up for Twitter for business. To me, Twitter is worthless as a marketing tool. There is a company called Readers Gazette that will tweet your title for a year for free. Every few days there’s a tweet about one of my books. Let me repeat that. Every few days there’s a tweet about one of my books. Several tweets a day. I have sold one ebook so far and the tweets have been going on for several months. I can’t even be sure it wasn’t just a random buy.
Facebook is always pushing me to advertise but all I got from ads were page likes that never turned into sales. And the page likes aren’t stable. You can buy thousands of page likes from dubious companies, but what will that do? Then there’s the BS that if you give your work away, you will build a platform of followers of your work. Ah, no. These readers just want free stuff and there are loads of sites that offer free books.
I got desperate and decided to bite the bullet and pay $400 for an ad on BookBub, who claims that in my genre there are on average 1200 downloads. Have to price my book at $0.99 or give it away to keep ad fees low. That’s right spend hundreds to give it away. Well, BookBub rejected my book. So now what?
So, I’m doing everything suggested by those supposedly in the know. I’m using social media, I’m getting stellar reviews, I have more than one book to offer. Yes, I can make some sales with certain email sites when I reduce to $0.99, but there are diminishing returns. The first time is the best. Or the first time has miserable sales so I don’t go back. And I hate pricing at $0.99.
What to do? Well, for starters, it would be great if my subscribers to this blog and readers of this blog considered a buy. It perplexes me why those that read my blog are not interested in reading my work. Read some of the reviews. My books have been vetted for good writing, won awards. A read will be worth your while, and won’t cost much at $2.99.
Anyway, my next novel will just blow you away and maybe get me a traditional publisher. Indie publishing is fun but not a way to make real money. Not a way to feel like an author because when someone asks me what I do, I don’t feel legitimate saying I’m an author. But I write for all the right reasons, and long for legitimacy for all the wrong ones.
