Marketing

I have been on a few websites…Booksprout, HiddenGems, GoodReads…looking for ARC reviewers. For some reason, I get two. On every site. Two people sign up. Not three or five. Just two.

I don’t think the covers are bad. No, I don’t have half naked men on all of them, like everyone else. Just Blue Moon has my hero without his shirt. But it doesn’t do any better pulling people in. But the reviews are great.

Blue Crescent Black Moon…”vivid, immersive experience”…”Great start to a trilogy”…”World building was excellent…highly recommend”…”one of the better books of this genre.”

Blue Moon…”Absolutely recommend”…”Multi-layered characters”

Dominion…”Intense and captivating”…”strong chemistry”…”plenty of drama.”

These are all five star reviews. Yes, Blue Crescent had a four star and a three star. But both, even the three star was still a wonderful review. It’s just that she likes a slower burn in the romance. But that’s personal preference, not a critique of my writing. She still recommended it.

I’ve done Amazon ads and with my last experiment, I tried for jsut the weekend and spent a little more money. 581 impressions, 1 click. No sales. That tells me Amazon is not showing my books to the right people. I’m done with them.

I did well at the book event. I get excellent reviews. So if the right people saw it, I believe they’d buy it. They’re priced competitively. I have Dominion on Kindle Unlimited for now so people with that subscription can even read it for free. But even KU isn’t a guarantee.

Someone, they don’t tell you who, ordered a book through Ingram. They paid $20.99 for it. Want a laugh? After the steep discount that’s required if you want to sell that way, and the global distribution fee of about 37 cents and the printing fee of $8 or $9 and change…my royalty was 17 cents. Not a typo. 17 cents.

But getting rich isn’t the point of my writing. I want people to see my books. Read them and enjoy them. How do I do that when Amazon’s algorithm doesn’t seem to work for me? I do need to get the YouTube channel going but my voice is still not good. I have to speak in a lower pitch and it’s stressful to my throat so it gives out quickly. Certainly, no audio books in my future at this point since I planned to read them myself.

I’m really looking forward to the next book events. But I’ll need to sell quite a few books to make back the entry fees. I’m not trying to turn this into a whine session. I don’t know what else to do. If my books could just become more visible…

Any ideas? I’d love to hear them.

Take care,

Gillian