Facebook Groups Appear to be Another Dead End

I'm a firm believer in trying things. How in the world would I know what works and what doesn't otherwise? I'm sure not taking anyone's, much less a stranger's, word for it. No offense to strangers, but there are a lot of crackpot "experts" out there in the metaverse. If I find a consensus of opinion, that's one thing, but I've found only one opinion so far of Facebook groups, so I gave them a whirl.

This could be premature, but I don't think it is: They don't work. 

Aside from all the hassle joining these groups entails, none of them appear to be heavily utilized by readers. Maybe some groups' large membership numbers are legit; maybe the subscribers are mostly bots---who knows? I do know that it's the simplest thing in the world to click a "join" button on impulse. I've gotten emails from unfamiliar companies that make me want to give them a piece of my mind...until I open the email and it says, "You're receiving this message because you subscribed to our newsletter." Oh. Sorry.

What I do know is, after three days, no one has begun reading my novel via Kindle Unlimited, and KU groups are the main ones I targeted.

So, I think it's inherent upon me to offer a counterargument to the one soul online who claimed these things work. Do authors want to waste time, and it's a lot of time, on a scheme with no payback? Granted, I have a lot of free time, but not a lot of patience, and thus I don't want to do it anymore.

Not to belabor the point, since I alluded to it in an earlier post, but this is basically how it goes:

1. Click "join". Answer the admin's stock questions, of which one of the group's were so detailed, I had to Google the answers. Then wait to be approved.

2. If you click "join" and are immediately informed that you are now a member (yay!), you create a post, then are told your post is awaiting approval or it appears your post was published, but it really wasn't (because you receive a notification the next day that you are now approved to post). So you have to go back and post again.

3. One large group's administrator informed me that I needed to add my books to some website before I'd be approved. Well, if the process was free, fine, but it wasn't. It costs something like $79.00 (!) for an author to list their books. No, sorry. 

4. A few of Facebook's suggested groups look really cheesy---blurry graphics, only a couple of books in the timeline, yet the groups claim a large number of members.  

5. I only came across one group that was actually sweet. It's small, only about 800 members or so, but the admin's notes state that she really didn't want to set up rules, but Facebook required her to, so she came up with a couple of mild ones. I was immediately approved and could post. No endless circle of waiting or answering stupid questions. 

 

I don't discount the possibility that these groups might work, just not for my book. My novel has never been in what you'd label "big demand", but damn, it at least looks professional; not like a kindergartner scribbled a cover and stuck it online (and trust me; I saw my share of those).

After three days, I joined about 30 groups, I think---the jury is still out on whether I actually joined all of them---and this is where I'm stopping. Maybe there's a delayed reaction, but timelines slide by pretty quickly, so my posts will soon be buried. I could possibly go back and repost after a few days, but that not only looks spammy, but again, there's the time wasting factor.

All this being said, drop me a comment and let me know if you've tried Facebook groups and if they worked for you. Right now the score is 1 to 1, so I need a tiebreaker.