Before I get into my questions...I'm speaking purely from a "target audience/marketing" perspective. I'm well aware all different people like all sorts of fiction.

What I've been doing lately is following indie authors, whether its from Instagram, FB, amazon, etc. I'll sign up to their newsletters, visit their page, view their social media accounts. I do this all in the name of research. I want to see how writers with a decent amount of back catalog handle their marketing.

What I'm finding more often than not is the romance, fantasy romance, paranormal romance, (fill in the blank) romance writers have this stuff down to a science. Their newsletters are personal and effective. They talk about their kids, pets, their day, in addition to the behind the scenes giveways like side stories, chapters not published, notes, outlines, etc. And I can see this working on the target audience. It's brilliant.

When i look at the authors who write in my genres (i have a bunch of 1st and 2nd drafts complete in different genres) such as epic fantasy, espionage, political thrillers, near future scifi, world war 2 fiction and crossovers of every kind, these authors are kind of a mess. Lol.

Crappy websites, not much social media to work with to see what they are doing, newsletters are few and far between. Now I sort of get that. Most folks reading these niches I just mentioned, except for maybe epic fantasy, don't care about the personal stuff romance writers get away with.

So how are these writers growing an audience, because certainly some of them must be? Am I just not finding the "good at marketing" self published authors who write in male dominated niches? Are those niches not as evergreen as romance and it's sub genres?

Anyone have an example of writers (not necessarily in the fantasy niche) who write what I write that do these things well?

I want to connect with my reader but am I wasting my time if there is no demand for let's say a weekly ww2 newsletter or political thriller? Not saying there isn't a demand for the stories, but it's seems both would go hand in hand.