marketing for self published book

[queen silvia]

Here. This thread details my marketing misadventures. Read the last few pages:

https://mythicscribes.com/community/threads/where-to-go-from-here.24204/

Thank you for sharing that I appreciate you pointing me to it.

I’ll take a look through the later pages when I have the chance. From everything you’ve already described, though, it sounds less like “misadventures” and more like someone genuinely trying to test ideas in good faith, then being honest about what didn’t return the energy it demanded.


What stands out to me isn’t that you tried the wrong things it’s that many of those efforts asked for more stamina than they gave back, especially at a time when stamina itself was in short supply. That’s not a failure of strategy so much as a mismatch between effort and capacity.


Marketing advice often ignores that reality. It assumes unlimited energy, emotional bandwidth, and patience which just isn’t how real life works, especially after everything you’ve been through. In that light, stepping back wasn’t avoidance; it was discernment.


When you do look back over those attempts now, do any of them still feel interesting to you even faintly or does your instinct mostly say, that took too much out of me for what it gave?

 

[ThinkerX]

Thank you for sharing that I appreciate you pointing me to it.

I’ll take a look through the later pages when I have the chance. From everything you’ve already described, though, it sounds less like “misadventures” and more like someone genuinely trying to test ideas in good faith, then being honest about what didn’t return the energy it demanded.


What stands out to me isn’t that you tried the wrong things it’s that many of those efforts asked for more stamina than they gave back, especially at a time when stamina itself was in short supply. That’s not a failure of strategy so much as a mismatch between effort and capacity.


Marketing advice often ignores that reality. It assumes unlimited energy, emotional bandwidth, and patience which just isn’t how real life works, especially after everything you’ve been through. In that light, stepping back wasn’t avoidance; it was discernment.


When you do look back over those attempts now, do any of them still feel interesting to you even faintly or does your instinct mostly say, that took too much out of me for what it gave?

I regard Amazon and FB ads as overpriced. Before the scammers took over, I had modest marketing success with ordinary posts to FB book sites.

I see most book promoters as scam artists, though I did get minor benefits from a few. (I get 5-8 s cam emails a day.)

I see a lot of chatter about author newsletters (and receive a few), but that route requires at least modest success before being implemented if it is to work.

I have tried a LOT of email newsletter sites, ranging from 'cheap and obscure' to 'well known and expensive.' I found that some of the cheaper ones ($10, give or take) often outdid ones costing five times that much. I used that for the 'Cheap Lunch Strategy.'

 

[queen silvia]

I regard Amazon and FB ads as overpriced. Before the scammers took over, I had modest marketing success with ordinary posts to FB book sites.

I see most book promoters as scam artists, though I did get minor benefits from a few. (I get 5-8 s cam emails a day.)

I see a lot of chatter about author newsletters (and receive a few), but that route requires at least modest success before being implemented if it is to work.

I have tried a LOT of email newsletter sites, ranging from 'cheap and obscure' to 'well known and expensive.' I found that some of the cheaper ones ($10, give or take) often outdid ones costing five times that much. I used that for the 'Cheap Lunch Strategy.'

That all sounds very measured, honestly not cynical, just experienced.


What you’re describing is something a lot of authors reach only after years of trial: realizing that cost does not equal effectiveness. Your “cheap lunch strategy” actually makes a lot of sense, because it’s grounded in testing rather than belief. If a $10 option brings comparable or even better visibility than something five times the price, that’s not luck that’s information.


You’re also right about newsletters. They’re often talked about as a magic solution, when in reality they work best once there’s already some degree of reader flow. Without that, they can feel like building infrastructure for traffic that hasn’t arrived yet. That doesn’t make them useless just poorly timed for where many authors actually are.

And the scam fatigue is very real. Getting flooded daily with “promoters” promising visibility can wear anyone down, especially when you’ve already seen how thin the returns often are. It makes sense that you’ve become selective rather than hopeful.


What stands out to me is that you’ve approached all of this analytically, not emotionally you tested, compared, adjusted, and walked away when the math stopped working. That’s not someone who failed at marketing; that’s someone who learned its limits.

Given everything you’ve tried, it seems like your instincts lean toward low-cost, low-friction discovery rather than anything that requires constant maintenance or faith-based spending.

At this point, does your interest lie more in finding one or two quiet channels that can just exist in the background, or are you mostly content to let marketing rest until the writing side feels fully steady again?

 

[ThinkerX]

That all sounds very measured, honestly not cynical, just experienced.


What you’re describing is something a lot of authors reach only after years of trial: realizing that cost does not equal effectiveness. Your “cheap lunch strategy” actually makes a lot of sense, because it’s grounded in testing rather than belief. If a $10 option brings comparable or even better visibility than something five times the price, that’s not luck that’s information.


You’re also right about newsletters. They’re often talked about as a magic solution, when in reality they work best once there’s already some degree of reader flow. Without that, they can feel like building infrastructure for traffic that hasn’t arrived yet. That doesn’t make them useless just poorly timed for where many authors actually are.

And the scam fatigue is very real. Getting flooded daily with “promoters” promising visibility can wear anyone down, especially when you’ve already seen how thin the returns often are. It makes sense that you’ve become selective rather than hopeful.


What stands out to me is that you’ve approached all of this analytically, not emotionally you tested, compared, adjusted, and walked away when the math stopped working. That’s not someone who failed at marketing; that’s someone who learned its limits.

Given everything you’ve tried, it seems like your instincts lean toward low-cost, low-friction discovery rather than anything that requires constant maintenance or faith-based spending.

At this point, does your interest lie more in finding one or two quiet channels that can just exist in the background, or are you mostly content to let marketing rest until the writing side feels fully steady again?

That gets into the other part.

1 - Reviews matter. Getting reviews - especially for an indie author - is a pain. I tried all sorts of approaches towards getting reviews. Readers look for reviews, and so do the better email promo sites, which want at least five, and sometimes ten.

2 - The first big success was the 'Goodreads Reading Rounds,' where ten authors do a structured 'Round-Robin' approach to reviewing each other's books. You get four reviews, and you receive four. I got 4-8 reviews for each of the books I had out back then, over about seven or eight rounds. The problem is that the same few authors use these rounds over and over again, creating review conflicts - I got bounced from five or six rounds because of this. That led to...

3 - That led me to point-based review pools like Authentic and Bookroar. Between them, I picked up another 65 reviews. None of my books has more than 15 reviews, and the average is around 6-8. I get a LOT of scam emails from people claiming to have thousands of secret readers working for them. There are voracious readers out there who do reviews, but most have huge TBR piles.) Still...

4 - I noticed that with more reviews - even my low numbers - came more 'out-of-the-blue' sales, jumping from maybe one a month up to six or eight. Not a huge amount, but I do seem to be getting noticed. Hence...

5 - 'The Cheap Lunch Strategy.' Between the reviews to attract attention and the low-cost but still effective email promo sites, sales went from an average of 11 a month two years ago to one a day now. This year, that approach might get me up to two a day. I am continually looking for new such sites or seeing if a different book will fare better. The rule is if it generates 4 sales, the site is...' ok.' Less than that, it *might* get one more chance. Eight or more - jackpot. However...

6 - There are limitations. I learned the hard way not to use the same site to promote the sme book more than once per 50-60 days, or the same site more than once a month. (Market saturation. Law of diminishing returns.) The better sites have rules about this. Seqiels, apart from new releases or ones only semi-related, also don't do well. Then...

7 - There are the Freebies, which with me, means the thrice-yearly or so 'Smashwords Spectaculars' (my term) as I publish via D2D, and D2D is semi-merged with Smashwords. I have tried discounted books during these events, but freebies are way more popular. 200+ people snatched up my books during the last one, which ran for most of December. And that was with no marketing. I don't make anything from the freebies and pretty much pocket change from the rest, but they do increase exposure.