It’s almost September which means that my book has been available for public consumption for eleven whole months. I can’t believe how time has flown! And since it’ll be both my book’s first anniversary and my birthday I have decided to do a free book promotion during that week (September 25-30 2019.) And I really want it to accomplish something, really anything… because if I’m honest my book has done nothing but bomb since I put it up and not because it’s bad. I just did not have the right tools at the right time. In a sense this first book was practice and little more. Here’s some of the issues I have come across..
- No one wants to touch a “memoir” with a ten foot pole and if you’re a woman writer and it’s about your life experiences it’s a memoir no matter what you do just because of industry sexism. I consider mine more of a road book but try marketing that as an owner of a uterus. It’s fucking impossible. Not only do strangers avoid reading it so do family and friends who don’t want to know too much about your life and if that’s not bad enough I just figured out today a great many advertisers won’t even consider keeping them on the roster. Even paid advertisers. Even paid advertisers who only advertise FREE books!
- Books rely on reviews to sell. Unless you happen to know a lot of people getting reviews is worse than pulling teeth. Maybe it’s because it’s about my life and people are squeamish about reviewing something so personal, I don’t know, but so far I have accrued exactly zero reviews. This could explain why in eleven months my book has made all of $28 if I don’t include the price of editing. Three of those sales were to strangers on Twitter and you have no idea how proud I am of those three sales! I have no idea if any of them actually read it but you know – it’s best to take each win in baby steps.
- Self-promoting a memoir as an introvert is like swimming in a vat of glass shards. It’s true. I don’t have nearly enough ego to go running around blurting out, “Buy my book! It’s about meee!” I HATE THIS.
So having learned these things I still want to do a free book promotion to get my name out there. I admit at the time of my initial release it wasn’t exactly 100% yet. I had paid an editor and gone through all the usual routes but what I didn’t figure was that I’d have so many problems with formatting! I wanted my eBook to be filled to the brim with photos but every time I uploaded it something funky would happen and instead of my photos being where I put them they were floating off in space separating all the text. It was obnoxious. I saved and resubmitted my manuscript in literally every file format my computer could muster on numerous occasions throughout the year. I also went through trouble shooting which gave a few suggestions like, “You have to manually inset photos, not copy and paste” so I tried that. Nothing worked and with no one buying it anyway I sort of just let it go but now that I want to put a genuine effort into this free book promotion something needed to be done. I wanted it to look professional.
Around this time some random person on Twitter mentioned Kindle Create, Kindle’s own software. Theoretically if I formatted my book within that program it should upload without any issues. AND IT FUCKING WORKED. I had to delete, reinsert, and give descriptions to all the photos (two days work) but in the end it finally uploaded correctly!! I am now waiting for the changes to go through which could take up to 72 hours. Having finally succeeded in this task I was on the moon again. Just so happy! This re-release was going to be spectacular! I had high hopes it would give my book the boost it needed the first time around because I had learned, fixed things, evolved, and now I was willing to give it the most legitimate try ever.
That’s when I decided to do some research on how to make this the most effective free book promotion it could be. What I found was…. not inspiring. It’s common for people to pour money into advertising, either through Amazon itself or through third parties such as reading lists and book websites. I do not have the money to do this… but I still entertained the idea for the cheaper options. I found an article listing a number of resources that only added up to $160. And then I visited these potential advertisers and found out that many did not do memoirs, some only did new releases, and all of them either discouraged or flat out denied books without reviews. I can’t win for losing!
So most of these sites also confer that a book without reviews won’t get any new ones with a free book sale. All I will manage to accomplish is giving away my hard work for no cost…. but fuck that because I’m already doing that anyway and I have nothing to lose. No one’s buying it so what difference does it make if I just start randomly lobbing it into large crowds? As far as I can see – none. Not like I’m taking a loss.
So here I am. One year out. It’s been an emotional roller coaster from the high of the achievement of publishing my first book to the dismal disappointment of it flopping harder than a ill-fitted pair of Crocs. I’m exhausted and apparently insanely masochistic because all I want to be doing right now is writing and publishing something else…. in a completely different genre against all advice… Maybe it’s just my need to get this bad taste out of my mouth, maybe it’s the hopeful part of me that still thinks my talents are somehow worth something, maybe it’s just a sign of flagrant mental illness. It’s hard to say at this point but what I can say is that after this free book promotion I likely won’t ever mention Honoring Echo ever again. I’ll just let it fade out of memory as I move on with my life.
**All photos in this article were taken by myself (and also used in the Kindle edition of Honoring Echo! Get a copy now if you want more luscious travel photos and painfully adorable chicken images!)
