The Literary Enclave discussion

I'm currently developing a marketing strategy tailored for self-published authors and would love your feedback on what your biggest challenges are right now.

I am about to start my first campaign that will be a Goodreads Giveaway of 5 copies of Kitto's Angels, starting 17th March for 90 days. I intend to back it up on Twitter using Buffer.
Because of the cost of buying in the 5 books I doubt I will break even but will let the group know how things are going, throughout the campaign.

That's a good way to start. Is this a launch? Do you have a strategy that involves any paid advertising?

New writer so trying things out one at a time to gauge their effect. I've done an Amazon pay-per-click campaign which has generated 35 clicks so far at a minute cost of $7. It has generated a few sales on Kindle but, to my surprise, has generated read pages (normalised pages) from Kindle Unlimited and/or Kindle Owners lending Library - 778 pages so far so we'll see how that goes.

Every little bit helps, even if it's the Lending Library. I haven't used any paid ads anywhere except facebook yet because facebook seems to be more bang for the buck. Though I have poked around a bit with fiverr gigs and the Bing credits I got for free when I set up my website.

Update on Goodreads giveaway. Effect on book and ebook sales is nil so far. Link on website gives direct link to book on Goodreads giveaways so website traffic has increased by roughly 100 per day. Have increased Twitter followers by around 40.
Hoping winners of 5 books will leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads but others say maybe one in five will.

Thanks for the update! I've started using UpViral to run my contests. They're worth checking out. I like the way it's set up. Basically, people earn points toward winning the prize by sharing the link to the sign-up page. It's doing decently so far.

I have written three books for children with diabetes. I have tried to post information about them on social media, and have sent copies to doctors and children's diabetes centers.

While I've gotten nice responses and a few nice book reviews from doctors and educators I haven't been able to turn this into sales.

Not sure the correct way to do this as these books are for specific pediatric audience (and their parent's and families). I've tried sending information (and copies) to the state school nurse associations but, again, get a nice letter back but no orders.

unsure how to proceed

How Do I Take Care of Me? 2nd edition: A book about type 1 diabetes