I Just Sold My 500th Book. If I Was Allowed to Advertise It I'd Be Rich | Hacker News Reader

I Just Sold My 500th Book. If I Was Allowed to Advertise It I'd Be Rich

jjpryor.substack.com

22 points4monthsaway13 comments

You lost me on the title of this post "If X I'd be rich", without reading a single word immediately my reaction is "that's an incredibly naive or just plain stupid viewpoint". After reading the blog post my initial reaction was correct.

Heck, I'd probably be a billionaire if only someone had invested in my first startup /s

See how silly that sounds? Also as others have pointed out Amazon is not the only advertiser on the planet, you just aren't able to advertise on Amazon. I'm not saying being able to run ads on Amazon wouldn't be profitable but without comparing or even trying other methods I find the whole "but only if..." tone of the post even more ridiculous.

The author was clearly not serious if you read the post. He writes satire and this whole thing was a dressed up complaint about Amazon’s advertising algorithms not allowing him to advertise due to the content of his book.

> You lost me on the title of this post "If X I'd be rich", without reading a single word immediately my reaction is "that's an incredibly naive or just plain stupid viewpoint".

It's possible that he was being facetious.

The political satire for adults framed as children's books is the most boring genre of books that's become strangely prominent in the last decade or so.

Aaaand?

I think they've been around for a while—parody versions of the books parents were read to as children. I think "Go the Fuck to Sleep" was a a breakout hit, and that probably fueled a lot of this.

You actually tagged it as a children’s book, and not adult satire, didn’t you?

Would be funny if this was your fault the whole time…

This is just plain laziness. There are millions of ways to advertise besides Amazon - Google, Facebook, relevant podcasts, direct outreach to relevant wwbsites for ads etc.

On the other hand, this was not a “children’s book” by any means

I've self-published a number of novels that got organic 4-5 stars and positive reviews on Amazon, and unfortunately in my tries Amazon ads for books had negative ROI. On the other hand, Facebook ads had a very positive affect on sales, until some bizarre incorrect algorithmic decisions by Facebook made it too much of a pain in the ass to deal with their ad manager and I gave up on it.

In any case, if you're really interested in advertising you should give Facebook a try. As long as they work, their algorithms somehow magically find people who will actually buy your book.