Consider Your ROI

There are other ways to promote your book besides, you know. advertising. There's an author I follow on Substack ~ I don't know why I started following her, but I suspect I read an article she'd written somewhere and found it interesting. She included a Substack subscribe blurb at the end, so I did. 

This woman is a go-getter. I keep finding her everywhere. It makes me tired just thinking about it. She writes guest articles, she does live video feeds; she really works at selling her books. I, on the other hand, could try doing that, but I don't want to. A book reviewer who reviewed Shadow Song asked me if I'd like to write something for her site. (No, I wasn't the only person she asked. It's a boilerplate question she asks every author.) I said yes, but then I didn't do it. I would have done it, but I couldn't think of a single topic to write about. I'm not an expert on anything! Sure, I have opinions, but I wasn't asked to write an op-ed. Would an article have convinced one person to buy my book? Maybe, but I'm skeptical.

Which brings me to the topic of return on investment. I've done a lot of things I was embarrassed to do to try to sell books. Social media was uncomfortable at first. Posting my first Instagram story made me cringe. I think part of my discomfort was that I didn't know if anyone would like my novel, so did I really want to promote it? Just because I like it, well, I'm not like most people. What I failed to consider, though, is that most people simply scroll past posts that don't interest them. Once I realized that, I vowed to post something every day. I'm no longer embarrassed, and my follower count has continued to grow. Did I sell any books? My sales report says probably no, but someone on Instagram must have grabbed a copy when I had a free day, because she posted that she was reading it. That's a lot of posting for very little ROI, but it's a relatively low effort task. When I create something on Canva, I post it to Instagram, X, and Facebook. Easy enough.

As I've discussed ad nauseum, my most mortifying promotion effort was my newsletter. So mortifying that I stopped sending it. But when Running From Herself was published, I forced myself to give it one more try. Newsletters presented the same problem as writing a guest article. I had nothing to write about. And my lack of engagement proved it. 

I do have a Substack account, but my last post was likely two months ago. I don't have anything to say, except "buy my book", and I'm savvy enough to know not to post that. 

That woman I mentioned above would say, "Well, just think harder!" But as her most recent Substack post indicated, she's only sold something like 111 copies of her book. Granted, that's about a hundred more than I've sold, but it seems like an awful lot of work for very little ROI.

Today I read an article by a guy who tried writing for Medium. After two months of submitting "many articles", his total earnings were $1.95. 

I'm fine with putting forth the effort if I can anticipate a reward. But maybe I'm just not ambitious. If I'm going to write, it'll be a new novella or novel, and even that prospect is extremely doubtful. At least with a published work, there's a possibility of some tangible success. And writing a story would at least be enjoyable. 

If an author contemplates spreading herself thin, she should only do it if she really wants to and gets a measure of satisfaction from the "doing". Otherwise, it sounds to me like torture.