Question for other CoSo writers. I'm an indie/self-published fantasy novelist and do my own advertising. For a variety or reasons, I stopped running book ads during the pandemic, but am starting up again.
Do you have luck with any online advertising platforms you could recommend? I just ran an ad with Fantasy Book Deals which generated zero sales. Feels like I'm starting from scratch. Appreciate any tips. Thanks!
@cmskiera I seem to have terrible luck with them. I've tried FB and Amazon ads.
Granted, I don't have a very large advertising budget. But I'd get views and nothing else.
Thanks, @SeanRFrazier. I've had limited luck with some of them, but, overall, it's more miss than hit.
@cmskiera It definitely is. I've paid attention to other authors who have put decent amounts of money into ads and gotten minimal (if any) returns.
Now maybe they weren't targeting them correctly or some other problem but...I'm skeptical.
The problem I've noticed over the years is without any advertising, I don't really sell any books, @SeanRFrazier It's kind of a Catch-22. I don't want to have to pay people to read my books, but sometimes it kinda feels like I do. 🤔
I hear ya, @SeanRFrazier! I hope to have another book out in a year or two, and I'll plan to hit the marketing hard again then, but for now, ugh, what a pain.
@cmskiera It's constant. It feels hopeless, yet you have to keep at it all the time. You feel like you're on repeat and probably bothering people.
But the #1 reason why people don't read your book is because they don't know it exists.
@cmskiera Oh marketing is...man it's tough. It's a slog and it's terrible. Most of the time all I feel like I'm doing is just yelling at a wall.
If I had a budget for it, I'd go bonkers with some ads.
As it is, I just try to keep the word-of-mouth going and I get some hits every now and then.