Ask/Show HN: Low margin B2C product in a crowded market. What to do?

I've created an AI children's storybook creator. I believe that I have the best product in the space, and by a wide margin. However, I'm concerned that product quality doesn't matter, and I'm looking for advice on what to do with the product.

There are many issues with this as a business: 1. Zero barriers to entry. 2. Low margins. 3. Repeat/subscription revenue is low or non-existent.

The margins on the business are too low to make ads make sense. New entrants constantly coming into the space and buying up keywords. You have to compete with them for SEO ranking even if their product is worse. By the time the customer has realized that the first ad/link they clicked on results in a sub-par book, they already made the purchase or gave up on the impulse. I've tried Facebook/Youtube/TikTok. My ads (according to FB) had above average performance, but even so CAC was WAY bigger than per-sale margin.

My current plan is an affiliate marketing system where I recruit influencers to link to books that they create and give them all of the profit in exchange for, effectively, 0 CAC traffic that I convert into an upsell. However, this has various difficulties as well. The influencers I've contacted all want upfront payment, often thousands of dollars, to create a single reel that will get a few thousand views.

Deeper issue is I don't understand how B2C products/marketing is supposed to break even. Somehow people are able to make money/businesses selling single-sale products via advertising, but all my experiments in doing this have negative ROI.

Thoughts? Am I missing something? What should I do?