Passive Book Marketing

It's funny the things we reach for once the money runs out. My post yesterday about how terrible I am at marketing led me to the notion of passive book marketing. What is it? Would it work?

After extensive research (two minutes worth) I learned that passive marketing consists of 

• SEO optimization
• The "Look Inside" and blurb
• An automated welcome email sequence
• An optimized author website
• Evergreen blog content

As you can see, most of this is worthless claptrap.

My SEO is as optimized as it can be, and the "Look Inside" is what it is. I'm not changing the book. Having an automated welcome email sequence is putting the cart before the horse. I'm looking to sell this book, and getting newsletter signups doesn't happen without someone reading it. Plus, why would I even need a newsletter if I'm not writing future books?

As for my author website, it's really the only thing I've done right.

That leaves evergreen blog content. On the plus side, that's an easy and creative exercise, so it would be somewhat enjoyable, as opposed to the torture of aggressive marketing. The catch is, no one visits my site, so again I would just be talking to myself (not that there's anything wrong with that, except that it doesn't sell books).

Google suggests that I post a quiz, a la: "What kind of _____ are you?" People love quizzes. I'm a sucker for them myself. Quizzes are the poor woman's/man's psychoanalysis, as accurate as a horoscope, but still fun to take. That project, however, would require me to undertake technical things like embedding and plugins, which, lemme tell ya, never work as claimed. Why do you think I use Blogger? It just lets me write. That I can do. 

Then, to go even further, I should somehow post the quiz to Pinterest. I actually forgot I even had a Pinterest account. Pinterest is as "useful" as LinkedIn, except at least it doesn't spam you. (By the way, hibernating my LinkedIn account has done wonders for my email inbox and my psyche.) Just like with that demon app, another author online extolled the virtues of her Pinterest page for selling books. Do these people possess magic fairy dust? Did they win the spin on the lottery wheel? Because I'm estimating that selling books via either of those apps is one in a million. Don't people just go to Pinterest to admire pretty pictures? Or to grab things for their mood boards?

As with most marketing-related questions, Google has managed to sidetrack me. Now I'm focused on quizzes, of all things.

My idea of passive marketing is to sit back and do nothing. Isn't that the meaning of passive? Granted, that hasn't worked so far, but I'm no worse off than I ever was.