Urban Fiction Advertising & Promotion

For most urban fiction authors, this is the sixty-four-dollar question: Where can I advertise and promote urban fiction? 

Unfortunately, the answer isn't quite as expansive as it is with other genres. Indeed, it's rather narrow, if you want the truth.

Frankly speaking, there really aren't a lot of places to advertise, promote and market urban fiction. Needless to say, that's surprising when you consider how popular the genre is.  

The only reason I can think of for this lack of options is the fact that most book promotion platforms have seemingly bought into the stereotype that Black people don't read. (Or they believe the corollary to that: Black books don't sell.)

That said, they are some places where authors can advertise their urban fiction (which generally includes African-American Romance, African-American Women's Fiction, and Urban Fiction/Street Lit). So, without further ado, here they are:

BookBub - Universally considered the #1 book promotion platform. However, getting a featured deal with them is tough - not winning-the-lotto tough, but damn close.

Urban Book Boost - A new but effective platform for promoting and advertising not just urban fiction, but pretty much all categories of African-American fiction.

Fussy Librarian - You can market "African-American/Multicultural" titles with them.

Price Dropped Books - They have "African American Interest" as a genre for marketing/promotion purposes.

Ebook Hounds - There's an "African-American Interest" category.

Bargain Booksy - They have "Black Literature" as an advertising genre.

Book Doggy - You can promote titles in their "African American" genre.

This is clearly not an exhaustive list of everything out there, but to be honest, it's slim pickin's at best so you may not find many others. More to the point, any book promotion strategy probably needs to utilize multiple platforms - not just a single one.  Think about it: do Coke, Apple, Microsoft and all those corporate behemoths only advertise on one channel/network?  No!  They advertise on lots of them.  Likewise, when advertising your book, you will benefit most from the cumulative effect of advertising in more than one place.  (The only exception to this is probably BookBub, which can garner you lots of sales all on its own. Even then, though, the smart money says you should magnify the BookBub effect with other promotions.)

In short, there aren't many places for urban fiction advertising and promotion, but the list above is probably a good start.