Facebook used to be a very effective vehicle for finding new readers. For the most part, it no longer is.

I was inspired by writeway's post (attached) in Jan's "5 magic words to sell more books" post. (Now there's a hook for writers!)

I'm in the middle of a 99 cents promo stack for the sequel to my first legal thriller. Soon it will be over, and I suppose (hope) there will be a little bit of a tail after it's done. For the first book, after its 99 cent promo stack, I ran a free promo for it and that led to really decent regular sales that the 99 cent promos were not producing. And yet, I've also heard that it's usually best to promote the following book(s) in a series by promoting the first book. So now at the end of my 99 cent promo stack for the sequel, I should run a free promo for Book 1, right? But I hesitate because of: 1. I feel there will be saturation from the first few free promos of Book 1 I ran. (in Freebooksy, ENT, Fussy). 2. I had the success with running the free promo I ran of Book 1 following Book 1's 99 cent promo stack.

In general, thinking about 99 cent vs free promos, I look at the data for book 1's 99 cent promo stack and there were some nice sales in the 20-60 range, but the Freebooksy free promo downloaded 3500. And while a bit more expensive because it was FreeBooksy, in general the price of free promos is the same as 99 cent promos. It seems to me, that while I think a 99 cent promo stack is a good idea to get initial ranking, a lot more will, eventually, come (in terms of sales, reviews, whatever) from 3500 free downloads than 20-60 sales at 99 cents.

Back to my current dilemma. When sales lag after the sequel's 99 cent promo stack, should I run a free promo for Book 1 or the sequel? And down the road a bit, more free promos for Book 1 or the sequel? Thanks.

I've never had a Facebook account.

Lucky you.

I can get that about holding your book in your hands being a thrill. The thing is, most people focus on getting all the things, and they can't even get an ebook right. They redo a print version over and over, and complain about how Amazon won't let them change anything. New editions all over. Blocked books everywhere.

Most people out there, they aren't like us, who learned this stuff, who understood that print was a different thing. They want "AI" audio books, and someone else to just let them fix stuff without having to use up ISBNs, and they think everyone wants their hardcopy blank journal.

There's basically two different groups "self publishing". One learns how to write, they study how self publishing works. They have basic knowledge about what would sell.

The other is the get rich quick schemer group, who thinks uploading whatever fell out of their head is going to make them rich by tomorrow, who doesn't want to learn anything, or spend any time or effort or money, and expects others to tell them "do this, that, and then this other thing", and the money is going to just drown them.

The first group, we can understand, the second is just the growing flood of people who are out for only the money with no grasp of reality. Nothing you say will help them.

I'm not sure that I would give up on the second type of self published author. Some people may become less set in their ways if they get beaten down enough in the marketplace. Whatever we think of AI, I think we all agree that spewing unedited AI out into the marketplace is not a workable strategy at this point. Some people will just give up, but other people will start to wonder what they're doing wrong.

In any case, yeah, people trying to use AI as a cure-all are numerous, but there are probably just as many people like us as there always were. If you really want to be a writer, you might use AI as a tool, but you're not going to be satisfied with using AI to do the writing for you. And some people do have trouble with paperback formatting, but the persistent will figure it out--or get Vellum or the PC equivalent to automate just that part of the process. It used to take me a week to do an ebook interior. Now it takes thirty seconds.

You "interact with the county sheriff's office with some frequency?" Pardon but I couldn't resist the

He doesn't mean any harm.  He's just making his way the only way he knows how and fighting the system like a true modern-day Robin Hood.