Indie Authors Do As They're Told

If you're like me, you do marketing things that have no real perceived benefit, but that experts deem necessary. 

I think indie authors, especially failing ones like me, yearn to grasp onto any hope, no matter how small. Plus, we want to feel like we're "doing things". 

For a time, all I read about was A+ content. Adding it to your book's Amazon page will boost sales, build your brand, turn casual browsers into buyers, blah blah blah.

Does it? I never spend enough time on a book page to even scroll down. I (subconsciously) judge the cover and then I read the blurb. Either the blurb captures my interest or it doesn't and I move on. Yet I still added it to my page--because, well, "it could work."

There are folks on social media who constantly troll authors to try to sell them character art. This is one element I don't understand. What in the world would I do with it? My genre doesn't lend itself to cartoon drawings, though maybe it works for fantasy or sci-fi. Using it for women's fiction would kind of cheapen the story, telegraphing that the novel shouldn't be taken too seriously. There's one account on Threads that keeps DM'ing me about buying some, and lemme tell ya, that kind of unsolicited nagging really turns me off to social media. 

I did use (free) AI to create some character art for my author website. If I'd had to pay to do it, I wouldn't have. But those were depictions of actual people, not caricatures. I took Thomas Umstattd's advice to heart about building a separate book page on my site, and he really crammed a lot of content in. That advice included character art (well, he referenced "fan art", but I have no fans), and I'm mostly satisfied with the look of my page. To kill two birds with one stone, I also used some of that art for my A+ content.

But does it help sell my book? Of course not. Still, I was doing something.

Book trailers are another common recommendation. For over a year, I've considered making one, but I haven't done it because it's not a simple one-two-three process. First I would need to find or somehow create video clips, then some appropriate music, then go through the painstaking process of editing it; and for what? How is a book trailer from an unknown author even discovered on YouTube? Yes, it would add content to my author site, which no one visits, so the only plus I can see is aesthetics. In other words, I would like it, but I'd be the only one seeing it.

Since I have a Spotify subscription, it was fun creating a Running From Herself playlist, which I embedded on my site. This page shows me that--surprise! No one has streamed it. But at least I had fun. 🙄

There are other non-visual, non-auditory tasks we're supposed to undertake, such as contacting book bloggers (did that), pursue ARC and/or review copy reviews (did the latter, not the former), beg libraries to include the book (did that), newsletters (ugh), social media (ugh x 2), giveaways--either KDP or paid giveaways (yep, did both), get booked on a podcast (okay...)

I've come to the conclusion that:

1. Experts don't know anything

2. We authors spin our wheels doing things we know won't help

Face it, in order to sell you either have to pay for ads or find an advocate. Both of those combined would be ideal. You don't need a website that no one visits or A+ content that nobody views. You don't need an impossible-to-find book trailer. 

If I was able to do either of the above, I'd have done them by now. I tried my luck at both Facebook and Amazon ads, but with a very small dollar outlay, so who knows whether more money would have produced results? And I can't just conjure up an advocate, not for free anyway. 

I guess this is why I'm done with marketing advice. I'm done falling for the latest surefire scheme. 

At least until next time...