Free Promotions and Backlash and Target Audience

A couple points I’d like to write about as a means of thinking them through…

1) Using free promotions on Amazon, as I’m able to do as a member of KDP Select, is a double-edged sword. Yes, it gets the book into the hands of more people, but it also gets the book into the hands of more people who would otherwise never be interested in your work. As a result, you get more readers who give up on the book and then write negative reviews. See here and here.

2) I’m beginning to wonder if I’m entering the backlash stage of the public’s perception of the novel. The reviews on Goodreads are particularly vicious, but that’s not uncommon for the site. 

3) The more I think about the book and read some of the reviews, especially by older people (30s, 40s, 50s), I start to realize that this is and always has been a novel for young people, teenagers and those in their early to mid 20s. When it comes to hitting my target audience then, citing Murakami and House of Leaves probably does not do me any favors. Is anyone aware of a more appropriate comparison?