I really do love how my poll of "Does this form of book marketing appeal to you?" having a 92%-94% "no" result was taken by someone who presumably advertised as trope-first *not* as an informative cue to change their marketing, but instead, *to guilt-trip people for being turned off by this form of advertisement*.
like.... I'm sorry? What are you doing?
I'm fairly certain that any indie author (myself included) who wants to be able to market my (eventual, future) book.... I'm going to look at what people actually *want* to see, not just what I can *shove down the throats of as many people as possible* no matter how *bad it makes my book look* and actively turns readers away!
If you see a poll of almost 300 people, and 92% of them say they don't want lists of tropes and want an actual blurb, it should not be your instinct to guilt trip people over "indie authors who can't afford to advertise properly"
.... if you "can't afford to advertise" but you're *still advertising*, you should be putting your info-graphics skills into a single-image ad that is *actually going to get people to read your book*, instead of making 276 out of 300 people who see your ad be completely uninterested and *actively turned off* from your book.
If your ad consists solely of a cover and a list of tropes, no one is obligated to click on the link to get to a completely different website to find the actual summary.
Not to mention, the complete and utter lack of regulation when it comes to ads, and how many scam and phishing ads you see these days?
[ID: a screenshot of comedian John Mulaney, saying "Nah, sister. You're not getting me to no secondary location." End ID]
Most people have adblockers, and on platforms they can't use adblockers, most people aren't clicking on links in ads, let alone to actually get to information that *might* make them interested in the book being advertised to them simply as a list of generic tropes.
Whenever I eventually get around to publishing my book, you will not catch me dead using trope lists-- it will be the summary, it will be art, it will be costumes, it'll be short stories set in the same world, and more!
Tropes are absolutely meaningless without the context of the setting, world, themes, and characters of a work and how these work together to make this world.
Friends to lovers
Secret Royalty
Shifters
"Who did this to you?"
Those four tropes above, strung together, mean absolutely nothing and tell me nothing about the setting, the characters, the plot, and how these things are woven together to create the main themes of the book to give these skeletal framework of a story arc *actual meaning to the reader*.
If I want to be advertized to as a list of tropes, I'm not going to spend my hard-earned money on a book of questionable quality, I'm going to find a fanfiction in a fandom I enjoy and read for free, where I'm already attached to these characters and the concept of the world.
What works in fanfiction for a series and media people are already emotionally attached to *does not work in original published fiction*, nor should anyone be *guilt-tripped* into "giving these things a chance for the poor indie authors!"
If you are selling something, no one is obligated to buy it
pity marketing does not change the above, and makes people less likely to think your work is quality if you have to guilt-trip to sell your product
If you want to get readers, don't advertise in ways readers *actively* hate when the evidence of that hate is right in front of you
Readers deserve better
Indie Authors should not be browbeat into advertising in the worst way possible 'because its good clickbait' (except of course for when it's not)
