How to have a good time again? What to do about bungled 1st book?

I've always liked writing, enjoyed essays, and am an English. I've been writing since I was very little, and last year sat down and wrote my first book, a dark romantasy.

It was a ton of fun and something I looked forward to despite very limited free time (full time college + a sport I do as a hobby + a part time job).

I joined some writer groups and really tried to do my research and do it "right." I really struggled with beta reader swaps and ended up with only one. There were others, but once we swapped we realized we thought of romantasy very very differently and just weren't good matches. I paid for another reputable beta service, and this went well. I took the advice of both those readers and did a few rewrites. I absolutely don't have the budget for professional developmental editing but can line edit myself.

I set up social media for my pen name, website, newsletter, magnet, and went onto ARCs. I got a good amount of interest on Booksirens and social media. Unfortunately I made the mistake of sending it out to pretty much everyone who applied. By launch, I had 40 reviews on Goodreads but a 3.88 star rating with a handful of 5 stars, most 4 stars, and 3 star ratings dragging it down. The critical reviews were from people who were fellow authors I wish I'd known not to include (they also went through and "liked" all the other 3 star reviews so they show up first.........), people with brand new Goodreads accounts, and people where all their reviews are 2-3 stars and then literature classics have 4-5 stars. I also got a 0.25 star on StoryGraph, which I was told is a "rite of passage," but doesn't feel like it considering it was one of my first 10 reviews ever. A month later once all the ARC reviews came in, I had a 3.87 and a total of 65 reviews, and 4 months later this is still exactly where I am.

So, lesson learned, and I'm fine with ALL reviews left by people I sent the book to. I appreciate their time and feedback. 3 stars is a totally fine rating, and I won't pretend my work was a masterpiece. However, I'm seeing that most local bookshops won't stock books below 4.2 and that a lot of books are well above 4, including ones similar to mine. But again, maybe I'm biased, maybe mine is incrementally worse, maybe it's just how the pieces fell and get over it.

The book ended up making me a grand total of $90 and no organic reviews generated, which is fine for a debut self publishing author who did her best but probably didn't know what she was doing.

I was also working on the next book and definitely see where some of the pieces just weren't there for the first. I have beta readers who actually like and know my sub genre, and their feedback was amazing and led to a lot of great scene re-writes. I used two pricier paid beta readers as well and felt like their feedback was very thorough and honest, with in-line comments.

Now I'm in the ARC process again, and again I enjoyed writing, I enjoyed editing for the most part, but once again I'm really not having any fun whatsoever with marketing and am terrified the same thing will happen again where the book will just go nowhere.

I used positive ARC reviewers from before and really screened additional people who wanted to be ARC readers. I put up more hype and graphics, which paid off a lot. Initial reviews on Booksirens are already 5 stars and not critical the way the first book's initial even positive reviews were.

But now I'm really struggling with some things:

Social media, newsletters, and all that aren't enjoyable for me and I feel burning me out. I'm very anxious and compulsive so won't let my schoolwork or paid job suffer, so I feel like my hobby, health, and apartment are taking the hit focusing on these. I'm already down to posting once a week across social media and considering moving from monthly to "when I have something to share" newsletters.

How am I ever going to make money on this series if the first book is weak? I planned to run paid ads once I had 3 or 4 books of the series out, but will people nope out at book 1 even if the rest is strong? What can I do with it if I feel it's a weak link and I should have sat on it longer and learned the ropes better? One idea I've had is to take it off KU, rewrite it, and make it my free reader magnet only. Is this even possible if it's already published on KDP? I don't need it to not show up on Amazon and don't mind if it links up with the old reviews, I just don't want to incite KDP bots that there are multiples of the same book. But if this is possible without risking a KDP ban, this way I can significantly change it and distribute it to new readers and hopefully keep them for the rest of the series.

Any thoughts? How should I go forward? I feel like attracting 30ish positive readers is both wonderful and horrible because if I'd attracted 0 at least I could scrap everything and start over.