Sometimes I Wonder If My Books Even Exist

I've read posts, even by fourteen-year-old boys, who've sold more copies of their books than I have. I don't get it.

Don't get me wrong; I don't care about making money, but just a hint of readership would be nice. Objectively, my writing is good. My stories are cohesive, I certainly don't write as if I'm illiterate ~ I have good sentence structure, every word is spelled correctly (you'd be surprised by the number of awful spellers residing within the "writing class"), the basic story elements are there ~ a main character, her problem, and a solution. Isn't that what all books are about?

Of course, no one would know that about my writing because no one reads my books. At this point I can search Amazon for one of my books by title and it might show up on the thirty-sixth screen (not that anyone searches for books by title). There's something mysterious about Amazon's algorithm that causes my books to be downgraded, which equates to them not even existing. Yet, there are times when I flat-out beg people to grab one of my books for free, and still they don't. Is it me? Is there something wrong with me?

The only reviews I've ever gotten, except for one weird outlier, were garnered from free advance reader copies, which also resulted from begging. And those reviews number in the single digits. 

My website visits have dwindled almost to the point of nothingness.

One would advise me to advertise more, to resume my newsletter, to promote myself on social media; but if any of those things worked for me, don't you think I'd still be doing them? 

I suppose the only factors I can logically point to are unexciting blurbs and bad covers. I don't know how to fix the cover issue ~ I've tried various iterations of my covers and it's made no difference in sales. I have reworked some of my blurbs, but I'm not about to write a disingenuous one that makes the book sound like something it isn't. Maybe my blurbs don't sound intriguing because my stories are dull? I don't know how to write a "jazzy" blurb for women's fiction. There are no monsters or natural disasters or paranormal lovers. Damn, if I wrote fancier or composed excruciatingly long sentences, I could label my work literary fiction. Nothing ever happens in those stories, either. 

Supposedly, there is a market for women's fiction, but I keep coming back to, what do people consider women's fiction? I suspect most readers think it means romance. It doesn't! Or "chick lit", which grates on my nerves. If anyone dared call me a chick, I'd be forced to punch them. 

I think what it is, is that I'm hopelessly out of touch. The novels I read in the past and still recall were stories that immersed me in the main character's world, with enough entanglements to keep me reading to find out how it all turns out in the end. They weren't afraid to show human emotion, rather than womanish machinations used to "get the guy". The characters didn't visit their therapists once a week to have long, narcissistic monologues about themselves. They were real, not pop culture stereotypes.

Being out of touch isn't fixable. I'm aware of the world today, but I hate most of the people I see posting on social media. They're shallow, and worse, dumb. Those are not characters I would ever write. Real women are neither stupid nor are they feminized versions of men. I don't believe that successful women's fiction writers regard women that way, so all I can surmise is that they've sold their souls for $$$. 

I guess it's better that I just stay poor. And unread.