A funny thing happened this weekend at Indiana Comic Con. Two of the people who came to my booth– both of them younger, neither of them readers of mine before this– mentioned having seen and heard of my books before. Not at previous conventions, or at libraries, or bookstores, or in someone else’s hands, but online. Either on Facebook (an ad? or a reel?) or on TikTok, it wasn’t super clear in either of their minds.
Which is kinda odd. Because I don’t have a TikTok (a written blog is more than enough for me, please) and it’s been a very long time since I’ve bought ads on Facebook, and I’ve never paid to promote my page.
So where did these people see my books?
A few theories present themselves:
- Someone read one of my books and posted about it. Which would (hopefully) be awesome, and if that’s the case I’d love to get a link so I could share the video.
- Facebook decided to recommend my Facebook page to people unpaid. This would be appreciated, but kinda weird– famously, page owners have to pay big bucks to have Facebook show their post to a greater percentage of their own followers. Spreading the word of my books gratis seems uncharacteristically generous.
- It wasn’t my book they saw, but an unrelated one with a similar cover. This seems the most likely to me. Most covers available to authors in my income bracket are made by digital artists creating a composite image out of a number of licensed stock images. That isn’t an exclusive license, and so the same image and can wind up being used by multiple artists for multiple projects– especially if it’s a particularly distinctive one that leaves an impression.
It doesn’t stretch the imagination that the image of a young woman surrounded by burning pages might work thematically for other books. Which is why I’m guessing that some other author might have promoted their own book, and unwittingly gave me a leg up as well.
Whatever the cause, it’s a neat little mystery, and one I’d love to see solved.
JWTroemner.com 
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