Writing in a small niche market

So I’ve got my FB Ads tested and stable, and they’re running, and in fact not doing badly (relatively speaking); yesterday I had my first significant ROI (I would have had one last week, but unfortunately deleted my campaign by accident just when it was starting to climb). We’re not talking large numbers here; 5-6 sales a day (instead of 0-1) for the book I’m advertising, and 2-3 read-through (instead of 0). So, I’ve doubled down on my modest $4/day budget for each of the two campaigns, and I’ve started the Amazon Ads modules.

Unfortunately, this has depressed me more than doing the FB modules, as they go very deep into targeting and comps. I write in a very small niche; I’ve searched and searched and searched, in many categories and using many different relevant keywords, but there are few books similar to the first two in my series, and a good chunk of those are Reverse Harem, and none of them are anywhere even reasonably high in rankings, some are a LOT lower than mine, so … I mean, it doesn’t make sense to use those titles or authors as keywords? Or should I go ahead anyway because you never know?

My first two books in the series have Djinn/genie as one of the main characters (I write paranormal romance). But even with the next 5 books, which are shapeshifter MCs, I’m not doing wolves, or bears, or any apex predators, or packs/pack dynamics, or alphas of any kind. No fae courts or academies. Oh, AND there’s no graphic sex. And all the above make up the huge majority of the PNR shapeshifter books, certainly the top ranking ones. And there’s lots of cross-over now between PNR and urban fantasy, even though UF is not, technically speaking, romance genre, although they may have romance in them, and UF gets all jumbled up with PNR in the Amazon lists. So in searching for comp authors and titles… I just want to bang my head on my desk and cry, because I feel like I’m going to wallow in obscurity because I don’t write what the masses are reading. Which is probably a fair call. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

On the other hand, I’m getting sales from the FB ads (the Amazon ads have only been up about 12 hours, so it’s far too early to even guess what’s going to happen there).

Also… before anyone mentions it… I won’t WANT to write to the market! I love my characters, and my stories, and this is what I want to be writing. So, yes, well, if I have to wallow in obscurity, then you could say it’s my own fault, and I accept that. I can’t help wishing, though, that I could build a readership, even a modest one, of people who think my books are amazing! To do that, though, I have to get my titles in front of them, so … here we are.

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