I’ve been fiddling with Amazon’s ads for the last month, committing to spend at least some money on the process. So far, the results have been… well, horrible. The ratio of clicks to impressions is awful, and the ratio of clicks to sales has been abyssmal. It’s been so bad, I’m wondering whether I’m doing something wrong – except that I went through their tutorials this time, and my impression rate did go up as compared to the last time I tried this. I dunno, though. It seems like pouring money out onto the ground.
Thoughts, suggestions? – Aside from (obviously) putting up links in this post. That seems thematically appropriate, somehow.
#commissionearned
Ace of Spades’ weekly book thread.
Sarah Hoyt’s weekly promotion.
Both have the benefit of also being free.
I have found marketing more difficult than writing the book. Goodreads is (theoretically) a place where authors can connect directly with readers. That hasn’t been my experience, but perhaps with your gregarious nature, you would have better results. They have advertising packages and giveaway programs which might interest you.
Another possibility to raise your profile is novel contests. There are a bunch of them, some expensive to enter, others fairly cheap. Here’s a list:
https://blog.reedsy.com/writing-contests/novel/
I entered the Pencraft contest:
https://www.pencraftaward.com/authors-support/contest-entry-form/
If you win one, you can call it an “award-winning novel”. If you don’t, it does give you the opportunity to find new readers.
I’m probably the wrong person to be giving anyone advice on book marketing, but I thought I’d share the few ideas I had.