Name two things

[Carole]

How about we all contribute one really successful marketing thing we've tried and one that tanks. Let's see if there are trends.
For me, Bargain Booksy is what is keeping us going on the adult books. Ads with the homeschool people- while expensive pay off for only my culture books.

[Dennis]

I sent queries to university libraries that have courses on science fiction to see if they wanted our books for their collections. Had great response and sent out 48 books; only downside, one of the University collections was in England, so it was expensive to ship.

Had some good luck with author page Facebook ads.

Got lots of reviews from early Goodreads Giveaways.

My husband is the author, I do the marketing. I find if I work extremely hard and try everything I can think of and work on it every day, we have good response. But, I took some time off from marketing while relocating across the country and lost all the headway. Marketing is a full time job! Because I knew I would not be doing the marketing myself, I paid for some passive advertising with several groups that promote using social media and it was not worth it, but I knew it was probably not going to do much, I just wanted to keep our brand out there until I could get back to work again.

Our original self publishing plan was to have six or seven books published before we try using a professional service for promotion. Our seventh will be out in November and that is when we will spend some money for promotion. I will let you know how that works out.

[Carole]

Looking forward to hearing how that works. I did it opposite. I paid big bucks for promotion in the beginning and it worked out very well. Now I do most of the work on my own- but I will admit, I slowed down a bit this year.
Sometimes it feels like a tsunami- you do a million things and then Amazon comes along and waves a wand and all your hard work disappears.

[Simi]

I think what helped a bit was doing some book sales and getting involved in my sister's Youtube channel. :) Eventually, I might get my own Youtube channel when I get the chance. I'm just very camera shy when it comes to appearing on videos. I sound like a little kid lol

[Maggie]

"Sometimes it feels like a tsunami- you do a million things and then Amazon comes along and waves a wand and all your hard work disappears. "

I agree with this 100%. Amazon can be a pain. :(