I keep trying to get back into the part of being a writer which is the most difficult for me - marketing/promoting. All I achieved so far is feeling more and more lost. When I started my adventure with writing in late 2014 I remember being so very excited. I did all the recommended promoting: signing up to mailing groups, posting on various social media etc. Back then it seemed easy and I could see the results in sales. It felt great when so many copies of my books got sold. Then life intervened and between changing my job, my living situation and everything in between I let that part of things slide. Finding time for writing was difficult enough, keeping up with social media and promoting felt impossible. Unfortunately the number of sales reflected that.
Now I'm trying to venture into self-publishing and I need my books to sell enough so that I can afford to pay for editing and cover design and god knows what else. I do not expect to earn any money of it, but the simple truth is that without sales I won't be able to afford to self publish. Obviously the solution to the lack of sales must be good marketing. So I'm trying but the more I try the more lost I feel. Should I do Patreon? How do I do that? Should I pay for Facebook marketing campaign? Why doesn't Amazon allow me to promote my book? Is Goodreads a good place to self-promote? The more I look into it, the less I know. I hope I can get to the bottom of it because the self-published series is really speaking to me. I hope for it to have many many books.
In the meantime I'm working on another short story in my young adult short story collection. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do with it once it's finished. It focuses on the only human boy living in a town full of paranormals. The word count is currently over 25K and I keep adding to it at weird intervals, whenever a new story strikes me.