Marketing Methods That Are Unsustainable

I'm so sick of reading about author newsletters, I want to scream. What do these authors write about? Are newsletters only successful for certain genres? I joined MailerLite because it has a free option, but any time I've sat and stared at the blank template, which is the only template available to free users, I have not had a clue what to put in it. 

 

Worse, no one wants to receive it. I'm honestly intrigued by the claims that newsletters are the most successful means of advertising, bar none. I've tried, but I've never been able to find an example of one published by an indie author. I once thought, well, maybe if I can just see what other authors include, I could get on the right track. I can picture a lot of things, but I can't picture a good indie author newsletter. 

I've read all the suggestions for what to include, and I tried a few that only made me embarrassed, but for my genre, many of the common ideas simply won't work. A unique aspect of my mailing list is that no one who subscribed is a fan of my work. Yep, that's right. A long time ago I participated in one of those "win 20 free books and a Kindle" promotions. The catch for entrants was that they needed to subscribe to the participating authors' newsletters in order to increase their chances of winning. Well, I had to choose the literary fiction category in order to participate, because the place (whichever one it was; can't remember) didn't offer my genre. "Surprisingly", fans of literary fiction aren't fans of women's fiction or mainstream fiction or whatever it is that I write. While I gained a lot of subscribers, they all either detested or dismissed my genre.

 

Then I grew my list by doing a Voracious Readers Only promotion. Anyone who wanted a free ARC copy had to sign up for my newsletter. I collected over 150 new subscribers, except all they wanted was the free book. 

 

Overall, I've had way more unsubscribes than new subscribers. Seeing a new "unsubscribe" doesn't even bother me anymore. I'm surprised there aren't more.

 

I'd sworn off sending my newsletter until Running From Herself was published, at which point I figured it was worth a shot. I wanted to give the novel every chance to succeed. All I wanted to do was push the book, but I had to include something else, anything else, to disguise the fact that I was simply marketing. Instead of just trying to sell, I offered a giveaway, along with a snippet from its pro review. Not one person entered. Then I included a graphic from the "new releases for less" promotion I was participating in. (The promotional rules were that an author had to advertise it.)

 

That was it. I guess my heart wasn't in it, rightfully so.

 

If I ever send another newsletter (doubtful), it will be one that shows all my books marked down to the low, low price of FREE. Take 'em or leave 'em; don't care.

 

 

But newsletters aren't the only unsustainable marketing tactic. Take social media ~ please. Know how much effort is required to post something every single day? But if I don't, I quickly become irrelevant. (Wait ~ I was already irrelevant.) I'm bored trying to come up with new Instagram stories. The only people who engage with me anyway are those who want me to buy their services, so what's the point? My original intent was to get bookstagrammers interested, but that's not happening. I wonder if I created a post that read, "Hey! Bookstagrammers! I'm talkin' to you! Read my f**king book already!", would that work? As things stand right now, I'm still getting a couple of new followers every day, but that'll soon dwindle. Same with X, and don't even get me started on Facebook, which is a total loser. I'm apparently invisible on Facebook.

 

 

Then, of course, are the paid promos. I obviously can't sustain those, because I'm poor. And they're not worth it anyway. As I stated before, the only one that worked was FreeBooksy, and all that did for me was make my KDP report look pretty. 

Book bloggers? That's a losing proposition and eats up a bunch of research time, with almost zero reward. Writing competitions? My most embarrassing venture, even worse than my newsletter, because I'm pretty sure my newsletters didn't contain any errors, unlike the version of my book I entered into contests.

 

 

I think I've covered all the marketing methods, correct? This means that nothing is sustainable except for social media, but that requires a will of steel and an understanding that it doesn't work...at all.

 

Is it any wonder why I'm searching for new ways to spend my time? I might have to go back to crafting.