Shouting Into the Void

A person can become used to anything and she eventually never thinks about it. That's me with trying to publicize my writing "career". The little things I do are ones I know won't get attention from anyone, but I still do them, maybe because I should or maybe just to occupy my time. 

I'm constantly tweaking my author website, deleting things that don't look right or changing a font or occasionally adding content to my blog. I read an article the other day about author sites and the elements that should be included in one. Apparently, it's very important to add social media buttons, so I did, but with Blogger (no offense, Google), when I tried to line up four buttons horizontally, they ended up scattershot, with a big space between some of them and a tiny space between others. It looked amateurish. And then I thought, why do I need social media buttons anyway? Just to have them? I rarely post anything; maybe once every six months. So I went back and took them off. 

But it doesn't actually matter. I've had exactly one visitor to my site who ever engaged with me, and that was a scammer. I was so excited to receive that email notification, until I read its contents.

I'm paying for a domain simply to "establish a presence". Maybe one day I'll be so famous, my site will be swamped with visitors. 🙄

This is how it goes with anything I do online. I've made an effort to use my Substack account more, writing posts every so often, but they've certainly never gotten any reaction. I do have a few followers, but they're apparently silent ones. I once offered a giveaway in my newsletter that yielded one entry. I'm inexplicably thrilled by the little things ~ one giveaway entry, one new Substack follower, someone responding to my LinkedIn post. I count my success by ones. By that measure, in ten years, I'll have ten followers!

No, this isn't whining, which I vowed to stop doing; it's just reality. I'm not sad about it ~ more perplexed than anything. I've either not found the winning formula or there isn't one. Self-published authors tout their success with various methods and I've tried almost all of them. I created Instagram stories, On Facebook I offered to purchase other authors' books (granted, in the hope of reciprocation), I've purchased ads on the sites that were affordable, I gave away ARCs. My newsletter was a total bust, and thus mortifying to continue sending.

As a creative person, I should be able to suss out a way to promote my work, but I think there just aren't any new tricks. 

I'm actually okay with remaining an unknown. There are about a zillion other self-published authors out there, and 99% of them are failures, too. We only ever hear from the 1% who manage to grab onto a middling degree of success.

In the meantime, I'll keep playing with my website so I can have something to admire.