SFFMP 164: 2018 Marketing Predictions, Our Author Resolutions, and When to Advertise What

Happy New Year! The guys chatted amongst themselves on today’s show, talking about some of their predictions of where book marketing is going in 2018 (what’s making a return and what’s falling by the wayside?) and some of their own author resolutions. They also covered a number of listener questions on topics such as whether to advertise later books in a series, Facebook videos, and whether readers cross over to other genres and pen names.

Here are a few more of the specifics we talked about:

  • Jeff moving to Phoenix and leaving the day job to write full time.
  • Lindsay’s recent fantasy book launch and a few things that didn’t go as well as hoped.
  • Why Lindsay started a Patreon campaign for fans that want to get her books early.
  • When should you switch to advertising the newest in a popular series rather than the first book?
  • Some of the guys’ easiest and hardest sells when it comes to their own books, and what they leaned from the experiences.
  • Making sure not to continue to throw a lot of money at books that just aren’t able to sell on their own.
  • Why Jo and Lindsay are both planning to put out more free fiction (short stories) for their fans.
  • Whether it’s better to write and release more short novels or if longer novels give you an advantage.
  • Predictions that more authors will work to lessen their reliance on Amazon in the coming year.
  • Diversifying your author income.
  • Will we see a return of some popular book marketing tactics from a few years ago?
  • More and more authors writing in the same genre forming groups to help each other with promotions.
  • A possible return to an emphasis on finding your true fans and building a relationship with them rather than just worrying about scoring big with the Amazon algorithms.
  • The pros and cons of cross-over when you’re writing in multiple genres.
  • Whether video on Facebook ads will continue to grow and if there’s any use for authors.

If you want to check out your hosts’ work, you can try Jeffrey Poole’s first Corgi mystery novel for free right now, or get his first Tales of Lentari fantasy novel for 99 cents.

You can try Jo’s first steampunk novel, Free Wrench, for free. You can also check out his new fantasy short story Entwell Origins: Ayna.

Lindsay’s Dragon Storm is out on Amazon, and her Dragon Blood boxed set is free everywhere for another week or two.

 

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7 comments

  • For some reason the audio player doesn’t seem to be working for me on this post. Using Chrome. The YouTube version works fine though.

    • SFFpodcast

      It may have been a temporary glitch, Dianna. I just checked, and it’s working today. Glad you found it on YouTube!

  • Tom

    Good luck, Jeff!

  • As for whether or not readers are looking at the page count before deciding whether or not a book is worth it’s price, I don’t think readers think of it explicitly that way, but I do think it enters into it. I find books in the 80-120k range to be “the right length” for a novel. The story has gone on long enough but not too long. it’s the right size, so that author moves up on my quality scale. The higher up on the quality scale, the more I’m willing to pay. But if the book is too short (80k. Other readers will have different floors for that, but I think I’m hardly alone in that kind of thinking.

    • SFFpodcast

      Thanks for chiming in, Dan! I look at it as a reader. I actually veer away from super long books unless I’ve heard they were awesome, as I tend to get bored with slow pacing and a zillion PoVs (I know, hard to believe from someone who grew up reading epic fantasy!).

  • I think there was a mention on this or a recent episode about authors doing videos on Facebook to promote book or series or brand. I am not doing that however I am about to start uploading 100 videos ( in the 3 genres I write in) to YouTube. I spent the last two years making them. if you want to know how that turns into sales or engages fans let me know and I’ll be happy to share as I get data. it’s definitely an experiment!

    • SFFpodcast

      Let us know how it goes, JL. That’s a lot of videos. Seems like some should get some traction. 🙂