Category: Group Discussion

SFFMP 184: Marketing Wastes of Time, Covers for Newsletter Magnets, and Selling Quirky Stories

Group Discussion, Podcast

This week, Jo, Jeff, and Lindsay answered listener questions–a lot of them! We went for an hour and a half so brace yourselves!

Here’s the list of questions we addressed:

Benjamin: I’d love to hear opinions on where the stuffing stuff (see anything from @DavidGaughran lately) meets back-of-book sequel previews, ML magnet previews, and promises of free stories in return for ML signups. Seems murky to me, not sure if I should be worried.

Roland: What do authors worry about that are really a big ol’ waste of time when it comes to sales and marketing? Getting into stores? What else?

Jim: I often hear that the first book takes the longest. My first epic fantasy has taken me years. I’m doing revisions now, and I’ve been working on the book since 2015, making it firmly a loss leader. What did you learn that made you faster?

Kirsten: Pros and cons of a pen name? Especially if you plan to write sci fi and non-fiction (as a psychologist).

Finn:

I have a query/topic for discussion. As self-pub authors, should we be moving our websites over to https?

I saw this headline and started getting a bit concerned: Effective July 2018, Google’s Chrome browser will mark non-HTTPS sites as ‘not secure’

K Vale Nagle:

How crucial is a cover for the newsletter reader magnet? Fantasy covers cost a good chunk, I can’t really afford to get another novel quality cover for a freebie, but I worry that I need to.

I’m considering combining the first three novel covers in a graphic design stylistically pleasing way and having it be a three short story reader magnet. I’m probably over thinking this.

Holly:

Any advice for being successful while writing something a bit quirky and not quite to market would be interesting.

How to find your readers and keep them, rather than targeting more broadly would also be great.

Dale: For each of you, how much do you commit to a particular series before beginning it? In other words, do you plan for so many books in advance, or do you wait and see how the first few do first before writing more?

Devyn: Also, I think one of you said (pretty sure it was you) that it’s best not to name your series after the first book in the series. Can you shed more light on why it’s not a good idea? I feel like I’m missing something.

Devyn: Is it better to launch 2 books in a series on the same day or wait a week/10 days in between publication? I’m going to launch a new series in June & not sure which is best approach.

S Usher: Do you think email newsletters are hitting their saturation point?

Jon: What kind of content have you seen in author newsletters that was unique/interesting/worth implementing in your own newsletters?

Lon: Do you think that even a trilogy, as a starting point for a series launch, isn’t enough?

Stephan:

Are you purchasing your own ISBNs for ebooks? While obviously not required for Amazon, it’s needed for Overdrive and other platforms. If you get free ISBNs (from Smashwords, etc), did it happen that you got 2 ISBNs for the same ebook?

Amazon has suspended lots of accounts recently for fraudulent activity, like they seem to do every year. Were any of you affected by the substantial loss in page reads, reported on kboards and fb?

Joanne: Not sure if it was Jeff or Jo who pulled out of KU, but could we get an update on how it’s going?

Stephan: Have any of you thought about publishing “self publishing help books” like Joanna Penn or Mark Dawson?

Sky Gate Tale: Currently writing sci-fi, and my chapters are coming out longer than usual. At around 4K to 6k each. Longer or shorter chapters which is better?

Ayan: What’s in the bottles behind Jeff? Could be beer but on phone portrait mode they look like sauces or potions.

Felicity: I would love to hear each of your writing inspiration stories. When did you know that writing was the career for you?

Benjamin: My question is: what word will each of you now be trademarking?

William: What’s your perfect Sunday?

Cookie Brain: Tell the story of how you three got together and started the podcast, please.

 

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SFFMP 180: Discoverability, Flagship Series, Product Funnels, and Newsletter Concerns

Group Discussion, Podcast

Hey, folks! I (Lindsay) got back from the Sell More Books Show Conference this weekend, where I was one of several speakers. I took notes on some of the presentations that resonated most with me, and I shared them with Jo and Jeff on the show tonight. We proceeded to discuss them a bit. Hopefully, you’ll find it useful to listen!

I’m going to share the books of the speakers we were talking about, so if you want more information on a particular topic, you might want to check them out. After that, I’m going to paste in my notes from the convention, in case you find it more useful than just getting some bullet points here. They aren’t organized, and I’m sure they are full of typos. Read at your own risk!

Books from the speakers:

Also, as mentioned during the episode, the Andrea Perason show where she schooled on us setting up email auto-responders for your new newsletter subscribers: http://www.marketingsff.com/advanced-newsletter-tactics/

Notes! (Scroll to the bottom for the YouTube video and download link for the show.)

Chris Fox on creating a flagship series

  • Many well-known authors have done this, over 1 million words total
  • Become known for the series if it’s popular enough and might not have to work again

Create by having:

  • Opening loops – lots of questions to be answered over the course of the series
  • Narrative drive – lots of stuff going on and carrying the series: simple plots don’t draw in the reader for the long haul
  • Character drive – lots of characters with goals and motivations they’re working toward. Make sure to flesh out all the side characters and not just the main character. Some books may even focus more on these other characters

Marketing your flagship series:

You’ll keep advertising your book 1 as you release more books so you have to be smart or you’re saturate your target audience and your ads will become less effective.

He likes a “crop rotation” method: With his Tech Mage series, he has three target audiences: military SF fans, epic fantasy fans, and litRPG fans. He started out targeting one demographic with ads and even the cover of the book, then the next when he released Book 2, and he’ll do the other audience later.

 

Mailing Lists Bryan Cohen

 

Creating your lists, writing a giveaway, and creating an autoresponder sequence (Andrea Pearson episode, there’s a lot about this) before you go hunting for any signups.

Remember to be personable in your emails, tell little stories about yourself, and don’t always make the hard sell.

But do remember to plug the old stuff and maybe you want to point to a list of all your books or include them.

GDPR – Damon from Bookfunnel chimed in and said most of us are probably okay if we haven’t been doing anything shady, if they have to double opt in, and the unsubscribe is clear in the footer. If readers are signing up on our site for bonus material or just to follow you and you’re making it clear that they’re going to get monthly updates or new release updates – whatever you do.

  • Be careful if you got subscribers from Instafreebie or joint promos or anywhere you were just handed a batch of email addresses and put them into your database, or if you’ve just been adding people who email you to a homemade list. This isn’t cool even with CAN-SPAM stuff, so fix that.

Thoughts on culling lists?

You may have to do it if you’ve been growing your list fast with a lot of promos to get subscribers, and you’re getting pushed into more and more expensive tiers. Do check before kicking people off.

As Damon said, not all the data is accurate. If people’s email clients don’t automatically load images, your mailing list provider won’t get a ping back that says the pixel they insert was loaded, so they won’t see the message as “read.” You can help with accuracy by including images in your emails that people want to see, so they’ll click load images.

 

Amazon Ads Brian Meeks

 

You should have lots of ads that you try for the same book. Tinker with copy and keywords (authors) you target.

After about 5 days, things will start to fall off (may drop as much as 80%) with how many impressions you’re getting. Sometimes a good ad will work longer, but he’s putting in new ads every week to keep the clicks coming on his books. He’ll kill the old ones instead of letting them run.

Good copy on the ad and targeting the right audience will get you more clicks on your ads which brings down the cost of each click and will get you more impressions. Amazon wants to show the effective ads to its shoppers.

Good cover and blurb will help you more than anything. When you send clicks to your book page, you need them to convert into sales or borrows, otherwise you’re spending way more than you need to be on these ads. The better the conversion, the more you’ll make in the long run.

  • Short blurbs with lots of white space and hooks questions above the “read more” link. He says not to worry about cramming a bunch into that space. Just make them want to click and read more. No walls of text.
  • You don’t have to say what’s going on in the story. You just have to hook them, make them buy. This is not a synopsis. If you wrote query letters to agents, it’s like that middle paragraph.

 

Never look at ACoS since it’s slow to report, not always accurate, and doesn’t include page reads.

Important to figure out what your read through is for your series and how much you make when someone reads the series. Then you know how much you can afford to spend on ads to get a new reader.

He tried a test with a SF author with an 8-book series who wanted to advertise a free Book 1 that was 99 cents, so he was only making 35 cents for sale. They had to wait a couple of months to get the full picture, since it might take people that long to read through the series if they were going to. They judged that it took until Book 4 to turn a profit, for the money spent on ads to be worth it.

More competition now, so you have to big higher, so it is getting tougher especially in romance (he mentioned SF as getting there too). It may start to only make sense to run ads on a first in a long series.

He still sees people getting 13-15 cent clicks on niche things for specific keywords, but that’s getting rare.

*Note Amazon will tend to give a boost to ads for books that haven’t been advertised before, so if you’re finding your Book 1 just isn’t working anymore, you might try advertising a later book in a series.

 

Monica Leonell on Business/Product Funnels

 

You need a product funnel… free or low cost product that can get people in the door. Then, after they know they like your work, they are willing to buy higher priced items.

People don’t jump from not knowing anything about you to buying a 9.99 ebook.

Novelists Delimma:

In most industries (artists, musicians, non-fiction authors), there are higher priced items ($100 to thousands), but not so much in the fiction world. There are lots of multi six figures authors now, but not many multi seven figure authors, as there are in other businesses, and she thinks it’s because we haven’t yet figured out how to make these higher priced kinds of things for our super fans.

Why not doing it:

  1. Codependent on retailers – if Amazon changed anything, most of us would be hugely effected
  2. Lack of a real model – for most, having movies/series made by Hollywood is the only way to break into the superstardom necessary
  3. Fear the answer to this question: why would my readers spend $100, $200, $500 on us?

Maybe survey your newsletter subscribers and see what cool things they want?

She had a quote by Taylor Swift about how you can be accidentally successful for three or four years, but a career takes work.

 

 

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SFFMP 175: The Rapid Release Strategy, Getting Reviews as a New Author, and Where to Spend your Advertising Money

Group Discussion, Podcast

This week, Jo, Jeff, and Lindsay answered listener questions on a variety of topics such as how to spend $1,000 on advertising to get the most out of your launch, how to get reviews as a new author, whether we use review or street teams, and how often to release books if you’re banking them to do a rapid release. We also answer the question Jeff always asks our guests… if you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently?

Here are a few of the more specific topics we covered:

  • Writing and publishing in multiple sub-genres at once, yay or nay?
  • Advertising strategies for a book launch.
  • Street teams and whether we use them.
  • Amazon closing its submissions to Kindle Scout.
  • Selling boxed sets at more than $9.99 and still getting a 70% royalty at Kobo.
  • Doing hard cover omnibuses and large print editions of your books.
  • Going wide with audiobooks or staying exclusive with Audible.
  • Jo’s experience with Kindle Worlds since they started including KW stories in Kindle Unlimited.
  • Whether it’s worth maintaining an author presence on Facebook even if you’re not planning to spend money on ads.
  • When you’re doing a rapid release strategy for a series, how often you should get those first few books out there.
  • Where to invest $1,000 on advertising for the launch of a new series.
  • How long to let Amazon AMS ads run.
  • Our previous podcast on Amazon AMS ads with Tom Corson-Knowles.
  • Will people do newsletter swaps with you if your list is small?
  • Finding fantasy and science fiction authors to swap with via the SF/F Cross Promo Bulletin Board Facebook group.
  • Whether single-author boxed sets are still useful to put together.

If you have better answers to any of the questions than our venerable but not infallible hosts had, feel free to chime in below!

 

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SFFMP 171: Lindsay’s Launch Numbers (Earned vs Spent), Targeting International Sales, and Increasing Mailing List Open Rates

Group Discussion, Podcast

Our three hosts were by themselves today and answered some listener questions that had been stacking up. They ran the gamut and included selling more audiobooks, selling more paperbacks, selling more in international markets, increasing newsletter open rates, and what you should do to start gathering a mailing list of interested readers before you launch your first novel. Lindsay also shared her numbers from her recent fantasy launch.

Here are a few more of the specifics that we covered:

  • What it takes to get a KDP All Star bonus these days.
  • Whether Lindsay found Bookbub CPM, Facebook PPC, or Amazon CPC ads more useful for her epic fantasy/sword and sorcery launch, and how much she spent overall on advertising, cover art, and editing.
  • Jeff’s foray into audiobooks — can you have a narrator that speaks too slowly?
  • Jo’s experiments with reworking some of his old newsletter bonus material and publishing a short story a month (are ebooks published at 99 cents worth it?).
  • Tips for increasing open rates with mailing lists and what’s considered a good rate.
  • What kinds of subject lines work best with newsletters.
  • How ACX users can promote their audiobooks (we forgot to mention getting codes from ACX for giveaways, but you can email for those and use them selectively with new releases).
  • Tips for getting more sales in the UK, Australia, Canada, and other English-speaking (and reading) markets.
  • Tips for selling more paperbacks.
  • Whether Wattpad is worth it for a marketing platform.
  • Whether a pen name needs its own Facebook author page.
  • If an author in the UK needs to make a special edition for American English readers.
  • If it’s okay to publish shorter novels so you can get stuff out more frequently.
  • What’s the best way to start your writing/publishing career if your number one interest is gaining a steady readership?
  • Your hosts share which of their characters are most like them and what the hardest things for them to edit out were.

Want to see what the hosts are up to?

You can check out Jo’s new 99-cent prequel novella, Beta Testers or preorder the Book of Deacon short story collection he mentioned in the show.

Jeff’s latest release is one of his mystery novels, Case of the Pilfered Pooches (Corgi Case Files Book 4).

Lindsay’s short sci-fi story “Bearadise Lodge” is up for free on her blog.

 

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

Group Discussion, Podcast

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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SFFMP 161: Handling Foreign Rights Yourself, When to Incorporate, and New Audiobook Options

Group Discussion, Podcast

On today’s show, Jo, Jeff, and Lindsay answered some listener questions and shared their notes from the workshop that Jo and Lindsay attended in October, Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch’s Business Masterclass. It was a week long workshop that covered dealing with Hollywood offers, handling foreign rights offers without an agent, increasing writing productivity, estate planning and tax stuff for authors (including when it makes sense to incorporate and which type of corporation in the US), and updates from Kobo on their plans to add audiobooks to their catalogue, among many other topics.

Here are some of the specifics of what the gang covered today:

  • Jo and Lindsay jumping into Patreon (right as Patreon changed their pricing structure and left folks in an uproar, of course!)
  • New podcasts that Lindsay is checking out: Kevin J Anderson’s Creative Futurism and Mark Coker’s Smart Author podcast out of Smashwords.
  • Whether NetGalley is useful for indie authors or primarily aimed at small presses.
  • If it’s okay to sell print and audiobooks in other stores if your ebooks are in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited at Amazon.
  • Whether a pen name needs a separate social medial platform, website, and Goodreads account.
  • Whether an author with a new series ready to go should consider self-publishing or traditional publishing right now.
  • Saving money on taxes as a writer by incorporating.
  • The importance of getting an accountant that specializes in finances for creative people, such as authors, artists, musicians.
  • Keeping in mind that all the books you write are pieces of intellectual property and as such have some value.
  • Tips for hiring a virtual assistant (or nine).
  • Pricing for libraries if you’re trying to get your ebooks picked up by them.
  • Kobo to add audiobooks to its store.
  • Going non-exclusive with ACX or producing an audiobook through Findaway Voices in order to take advantage of some of the other up-and-coming markets besides iTunes/Amazon/Audible. Also being able to choose your price in these other marketplaces.
  • Why you may want to set up your books at IngramSpark as well as CreateSpace.
  • Why you don’t need an agent to negotiate on foreign rights deals.
  • Waiting for publishers in other countries to approach you versus methods of gaining their attention.
  • What to expect from foreign rights sales in terms of money and reception of your books in other countries.

That’s it for this week. Keep writing!

 

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SFFMP 153: What to Do When Your Book Isn’t Selling + Selling Direct from Your Site

Group Discussion, Podcast

Today, Jo and Lindsay talked about their experiences selling ebooks and paperbacks directly from their sites, along with some of the pros and cons of doing so and tax considerations. They also ran through a checklist of things to look at if your book isn’t getting the sales you were hoping for.

Here are some of the highlights of the show:

  • Jo talked about why he took one of his recent titles out of Kindle Unlimited after a quarter.
  • Lindsay talked about buckling down and knocking out ten thousand words a day to meet some goals.
  • Selling signed paperbacks direct from your site and also doing special editions or early releases of ebooks from your site when you have a fanbase eagerly waiting for new material in a series they love.
  • Some of the pros of selling direct (keeping a higher percentage on each sale, getting the email addresses of known buyers, and not relying completely on any one store).
  • Some of the cons of selling direct (few people make it work for fiction ebooks, it’s not as easy of a process for the readers, dealing with customer service, and the extra work of installing and maintaining an e-store).
  • Tax considerations (keeping receipts and when Paypal will send you a 1099 if you use them for your direct sales).
  • Checking your cover and blurb if your book sales are anemic. Links to Libbie Hawker’s ebook on blurbs (Gotta Read It) and her two-part video instructions on the same topic (Write an Awesome Blurb or Query Pt. 1 and Write an Awesome Blurb or Query Pt. 2).
  • Avoiding slow pacing, editing errors, and infodumps in the sample pages (and ideally everywhere!).
  • Creating stories and characters that people fall in love with.
  • Not having too high of expectations!

 

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SFFMP 152: Pricing, Category Stuffing, Launching with Three Books, and Marketing Cross-Genre Novels

Group Discussion, Podcast

This week, we answered some listener questions that had been piling up. We touched on a variety of topics, such as…

  • Should you try to put your books in as many categories as possible, and what can we do about books that shouldn’t be there knocking us out of our Top 100s on Amazon?
  • Amazon’s page of keywords for getting into unlisted categories: Selecting Browse Categories.
  • How many downloads a day can you expect from permafree titles?
  • Is it worth trying to sell English novels in countries where English isn’t the primary language?
  • How can trad publishers get away with charging 9.99 or more for ebooks, and can indies do this if their books are well edited and professionally done?
  • How do you market cross-genre books that fall into more than one category?
  • How do you guys feel about killing characters, and does it ever get easier?
  • How does your plotting process work?
  • Has anyone tried Kobo Plus yet and gotten results?
  • Where you can advertise as a newer author with less than twenty reviews on your book? Here are the links to the spreadsheets Lindsay mentioned (that C. Gockel maintains). We’re not sure if they’re up to date though, so let us know if you know of a good and recent resource. Where to Advertise Free Ebooks | Where to Advertise 99 Cent Ebooks.
  • How did Lindsay relaunch her pen name successfully after a long gap between releases?
  • If you want to write three books before launching any of them, can you use novellas as part of the plan?

Jeff and Lindsay are working on new projects, but Jo has some links if you want to check out what he’s up to right now. Here’s his serial-in-progress: The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy. Also, he’s recently done a series of “How I Write” blog posts, which cover his plotting process, among other things.

 

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SFFMP 148: 12 Ways to Keep Your Backlist Selling and Maintain a Steady Income

Group Discussion, Podcast

The guys discussed the various tactics they’ve tried and promotions they’ve participated in that have helped keep their older titles selling, especially in finished series that haven’t seen new releases in a while.

Here’s the short list, though they also answered listener questions and expounded on these quite a bit. As usual, it wasn’t a short show!

1. Run a sale on Book 1 (free/99 cents) while booking promos
2. Put together a boxed set of the first 3-4 books and run promos on it.
3. Publish new stories (short stories or novellas, if not novels) that tie into your old, completed series.
4. Publish short stories for your old series in multi-author anthologies that will lead people into your books.
5. Join or put together a multi-author boxed set, using one of your old Book 1s. It’s a chance to basically promo something new for all the authors involved.
6. If you have a number of series, consider putting together a “sampler” boxed set with your own Book 1s (maybe publishing something new to entice regular readers who already have the other stuff to buy).
7. Relaunch with new blurbs, categories, and new covers, especially if your original ones were done on the cheap and/or don’t seem a perfect fit.
8. Facebook/AMS ads for a steady trickle of sales.
9. Sales/freebies combined with joint authors promos or newsletter swaps.
10. Keep your community active and engaged in social media with polls/discussions/artwork. Word of mouth is easier to get when you’ve got people talking.
11. Create print copy giveaways on Goodreads, or on your own blog. Engage the readers. Make them do something different, or fun, to “enroll” in contest.
12. Network with other authors. Offer to write a “guest” blog post. Offer newsletter swaps.

 

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SFFMP 145: Using eBook Giveaways to Grow Your Audience and Sell More Books

Group Discussion, Podcast

On today’s show, we were joined by Ashley and Maura from Instafreebie. If you haven’t heard about the service yet, it’s a spot where you can upload free ebooks (previews, short stories, and novellas are fine), and it makes it easy for potential readers to download them and load them on their e-readers. You also have the option of requiring readers to share their email addresses in order to download the ebooks, so it can be a way to start growing a mailing list. A lot of our previous guests have used the service, and many authors attest to its usefulness, especially in conjunction with multi-author promotions.

Here’s some of what we talked about on the show:

  • How Instafreebie works and how it differs from Bookfunnel, another service that can facilitate giving away ebooks.
  • Giving away books (such as series starters) versus giving away short stories or previews of novels.
  • Making sure to put your call to action (i.e. buy Book 2 in the series here!) in the back of the ebooks you give away.
  • Using Instafreebie (and collecting email addresses) versus making books free on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, etc.
  • Whether cliffhangers, at the ends of free novels or previews, work or if the readers are left irritated.
  • Using a drip campaign (or auto-responder) to reach out to readers after they’ve shared their email addresses.
  • Instafreebie’s recommendation engine and other ways to increase discoverability outside of what you do for promo.
  • Organizing a group giveaway and asking them for a plug (submit requests to production@instafreebie.com)
  • How newer authors can leverage Instafreebie to build a fan base when they don’t have a big social media presence or mailing list for driving traffic.
  • How books are chosen to be shared on the Instafreebie blog for extra promotion.

If you’re interested in signing up for their service, find it at Instafreebie.com.

 

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