Things are Tough All Over

I'm not bothered by a book marketer/reviewer/promoter trying to squeeze extra money out of me. It's not as if they're holding a gun to my head. Usually I just ignore them.

It is interesting to note, though, that things are apparently tough all over. Word on the street is that many, if not most of the small promo sites are floundering. I've gotten offers from some of them to purchase promos for as little as $5.00. I think the promo market is recalibrating, leaving only a handful of dominant sites. I'd like to say a five-dollar deal is a boon to authors, but it's not; not in actuality. Money wasted is money wasted, whether it's five dollars or a hundred. There's a reason those small sites are small sites---they have a tiny subscriber base.

To those companies not doing well, I would say the same thing that's said to me: You've gotta spend money to make money. Well, what if I don't have any money? Tough luck, I guess. Take out a loan. (I've actually been told I should take out a loan in order to acquire advertising money.)

It's not just the cheap promos that signal a downward spiral in book marketing. My book blogger, who I've had some struggles with and who finally figured out that I'd paid her to run my article in her magazine, has now come back with a new offer: an interview. Cool, I guess, but I've already paid her $25.00 for a review and $50.00 to be featured in her magazine. And neither of those things resulted in any book sales. It's almost insulting in a way. The exact same missive was sent to both my personal email account and my author email. So, it's a mass mailing, hoping to hook at least one naive fish. But I suppose it's akin to me sending out a newsletter to my hundred-plus subscribers, except my blogger's success rate surely exceeds 0%. I'm tempted to respond to her with, "How much?" Because that's the bottom line. She's not being altruistic; she wants money. Naturally.

Of course, the few profitable promotion sites that'll ultimately remain will raise their prices, and I don't consider them to be economical even now. Between BookBub, the Written Word Media companies (Bargain Booksy and Free Booksy), and The Fussy Librarian, oddly BookBub is probably the cheapest to advertise with, but only because an author can decide how much he or she wants to spend.

The Fussy Librarian ~ doesn't even offer my genre for a free book promo, neither women's fiction nor contemporary fiction. The closest match would be literary fiction 🙄 and for that I would pay $55.00 for one day. It does offer bargain book promos for women's fiction, again for one day, but they advise an author to price her book between 99 cents and $2.99. Let's say I chose $1.99 as my pricing. That would put me at a 35% royalty rate, so I would need to get 79 sales just to earn my $55.00 back. My novel has sold 47 (paid) copies lifetime.

Bargain Booksy ~  only charges $30.00 for a one-day promo, and it does offer women's fiction, but the optimal selling price for a book is ninety-nine cents. Oh, okay. Quick calculation: here I would only need to sell 86 copies to break even.

FreeBooksy ~ (the only place that actually moves books) FreeBooksy charges $60.00 for one day. Obviously, I could move a zillion copies and still earn $0.00. 

BookBub ~ an ad costs however much or little one wants to spend. I've never spent more than $40.00 and usually between $25-$30. Years ago, an author could actually sell at least a few copies; that's no longer the case (for me). The last time I ran a BookBub ad, not one person made a purchase. I've advised authors to first take a look at the company's newsletter. They'll readily see why indie books get short shrift: the ads are awful and amateurish (not due to anything the author did wrong).

One could say that a drop-off in the number of mini-sites makes an author's life easier---fewer marketing decisions that make our heads whirl---but someone's going to pick up that slack, which means higher advertising costs for us. 

I remain firm in my decision to no longer pay for marketing. I will offer a Kindle free promotion from time to time, just to maybe acquire a few Kindle Unlimited readers. I could have declared last year's advertising expenses on my tax return; I certainly accumulated enough to make it worthwhile, but in the end it was a moot point, since I took the standard deduction. Then again, I didn't want to have to add those expenses up anyway, because I know it was more than a thousand dollars (!) Not all at once, obviously. Subtracting my royalties from those 47 sales, I only lost about $900.00. (I'm such a fool.)

Thank goodness my marketing career is done. 

 

Unrelated Note

I just unsubscribed from a Substack, because the writer inserted politics into her latest post. Don't do that---not everyone agrees with your politics. This was a writing-related account. Political posturing is an immediate unsubscribe from me. Don't be an idiot.