Hope Springs...

Well, here it is, a new year. And even though the pandemic is still with us, making life miserable, I still keep hoping that Things Will Be Better This Year.

You know, that all my Loved Ones (including myself) will stay healthy, that Truth and Justice will win in the end, that I will get better at getting our books published On Time, and not have to keep delaying the publication date. Mostly, that we will sell more books. Or cosplay prosthetics. That we will sell more of something.

I seldom write about how we are doing, sales wise, because I'm embarrassed. Strangely, it never seems to matter that we get payments from our distributor regularly. They aren't for 1000s of dollars. And yet, everywhere I look, I see ads proclaiming things like, "Sell thousands of books overnight with no effort!", or "Learn from this fledgling author who hit #1 on the Best Seller Lists!", or something similar.

If it's too good to be true...

But hope springs eternal, right?

I've fallen for a couple of these, trying to learn how to market more effectively. I mean, if people don't know about our books, how can we hope to sell more of them? Alas, these programs all seem to call for skills I don't really have.

I mean, if I had an IT department I could go to and say, "Here are 3 pages I need added to my website. How long do you need to get them functional?" That would be one thing. I'd even give them exactly what the page should look like and what it should say. I can do that much. But it's the behind the scenes type of stuff that often leaves me confused and feeling inadequate. Where does this button link to? How do you set up a link between a file-sharing website and the buttons on this webpage? How do I include detailed instructions for doing something I've never done?

Okay, pity party is over. I am not my only resource. I have friends and family and groups who can help me figure out all those things I need to figure out in order to do what I want to do. No, I don't like marketing, but I can't afford to have somebody else do it for me. And, most of the marketing plans I've listened to are simply more of the same stuff I've already tried. So, time for new stuff. Time to get a little creative. That I can do.