Nobody Knows Anything

I don't know how my X feed suddenly became populated with writing posts. I try hard to keep my personal and author lives separate. Gotta have boundaries. I think some author showed up by accident in my timeline and I responded to him. And there you go...

Every author I see is asking about marketing. Spoiler Alert: No one has any answers. One indie author compiled a compendium of the "best" promo sites, and I thought, okay, finally! But it turned out to be a rehash of things every writer already knows. Newbies might find it helpful, I suppose, but if you've been in the game for any length of time, you've been there, done that. 

Too, marketing results are so individualized. Some authors have had stupendous luck with Amazon ads, but as I mentioned in my last post, the one time I ran one I got zero clicks. I'm almost tempted to try again, just to confirm that I am, in fact, a total loser. 

But obviously, it isn't just me. None of us know what we're doing; the only difference is the scale of our failures. A few authors bemoan that their promo or ad or whatever they tried only sold 600 books. Are you kidding me? I'd be breaking out the champagne if I sold anywhere close to that number. Maybe those people are just impossible to satisfy.

I've been too hard on marketing experts. Clearly, the only real advice for selling books is luck. I'm not kidding. I'm now on a mission to collect as many talismans as I can. I remember my little sister having one of these:

They used to be called "wishnik" dolls, rather than troll dolls, and I like the "wish" part. I could stroke its hair, squinch my eyes shut and wish really, really hard for success. You can find a used one pretty cheap on eBay. (Wait! Why are these people selling? Didn't it work?) 

This would be far less expensive than promo ads. Yep, I'm getting one. Maybe a bunch of 'em. Can't be too careful. I would also get a lucky penny, but I can't tell the difference between a lucky penny and an unlucky penny. Now that they don't make them anymore, maybe I'd be lucky to find one. (That's a lie; everybody's got them lying around, being their useless selves.)

Not going with a rabbit's foot, and I don't want to know the origin of those. Poor bunnies. Horseshoes? I think they only count if they're real ones, and again, I'm not about to hobble a horse. 

Ethics demand that I share my winning formula with fellow authors, but 600 books to 49 tells me that many authors have already discovered my secret.

Besides: