This week, scifi and fantasy author CW Lamb joined us to talk about how he got his start in 2014, how KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited helped him launch his first book to great success, and why he’s sought out an agent and is also looking for a traditional deal.
Here are some of the specifics we discussed:
What it was like to start in 2014 and launch into KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited.
Having early success in the space adventure/military SF category.
Keeping books selling on a relatively modest release schedule.
Leveraging a solid sales history into getting an agent.
How controversial reviews might help sell books.
Why Charles feels pursuing a traditional route might help him reach a wider audience.
The price points he’s experimented with.
What he’s learned since his first launch and what a book launch looks like for him now.
Keeping multiple series going and selling in different genres.
His thoughts on doing pre-orders on Amazon.
Why he would launch into KDP Select again now if he was a new author starting out.
If you’ve been wanting to sell direct from your site, figure out how to turn your current readers into rabid fans, and learn about this new GDPR thing everyone is talking about in regard to mailing lists, you’ll want to listen to today’s show. We had return guest Damon Courtney from Bookfunnel on, and he talked about concerns of authors and also what his author customers are doing that’s most effective in building a fan base and selling books.
Here are some of the specifics we covered:
New features at Bookfunnel including integration with Patreon and payment processors so authors can sell direct from their sites.
Selling advanced reader copies of books before you enroll them in Kindle Unlimited, so non-Amazon readers can buy them.
Which payment processors are simplest to work with and which make it so you don’t have to worry about handling sales tax and VAT on your own (Payhip was mentioned as a good option, and then the WooCommerce WordPress plug-in for those who don’t mind DIY.)
How some authors are getting readers to buy direct, so they have more control and take a bigger cut of the sales price.
Bookfunnel’s gifting option.
How they make it so you can restrict ebook downloads to certain reward levels on Patreon.
Some mistakes authors make with their mailing lists and give aways.
How often do you need to give away things to keep fans happy?
What kind of bonus content excites readers and makes them want to sign up for and stay on your mailing list.
Putting out regular chapters or serial episodes.
What GDPR is and how to know if your mailing list practices may get you in trouble.
This week, epic fantasy/fantasy romance author Miranda Honfleur joined us on the show. She launched her first series last November and has kept book 1 selling well and sticking in the Amazon fantasy charts while releasing more books in the series. She has three out now with a fourth to follow later this summer. We asked her how she did so well as a new author and how she’s maintaining sales.
Here are some more specifics on what we covered:
Miranda’s road to publishing.
How she’s balanced writing epic fantasy that’s heavy on romance, something epic fantasy readers aren’t always looking for.
What she took away from the Sell More Books Show conference as a new author.
How she used Instafreebie to building a mailing list months before she launched her first book.
Tips for getting the most out of Bookbub PPC ads, Amazon ads, and Facebook ads.
Whether she’s needed to cull her mailing list, something we just talked about on last week’s show!
How she tries to be everywhere with advertising.
How much time she’s putting into Amazon ads and other marketing methods to keep her Book 1 selling week in and week out.
Whether Instagram may be the next place fantasy authors should have a presence.
Marketing to “series-adjacent” genres as part of a larger strategy.
You can find Miranda on her website or on Amazon where her books are currently in Kindle Unlimited. If you’re a fantasy fan, check out her first book, Blade & Rose. If you enjoyed fairy tales, she’s a part of the Of Beasts and Beauties boxed set.
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!
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:
Codependent on retailers – if Amazon changed anything, most of us would be hugely effected
Lack of a real model – for most, having movies/series made by Hollywood is the only way to break into the superstardom necessary
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.
We had a great chat with David Gaughran this week. He’s a historical fiction author who dabbles in science fiction now and then, and when he’s not writing fiction, he’s keeping an eye on the publishing scene and analyzing what’s working for authors who are going wide and selling well on Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc. and also what’s working for those who are sticking with Amazon exclusivity and Kindle Unlimited.
We chatted about all that and also about the tactics he outlines in his new book, Strangers To Superfans and some of the mistakes authors are making.
Here are a few specifics of what we discussed:
Using “Audience Insights” on Facebook to figure out who your Ideal Reader is.
Realizing that you can choose to sell your books all over the world or to be exclusive with Amazon but that whether you’re in Kindle Unlimited or not, you’re affected by it.
Why David prefers a lower spend over time rather than blowing a bunch of money on Facebook advertising in a couple of days.
He’s open to doing boosted posts to get more followers but says you shouldn’t advertise for likes.
Making sure to mention your Facebook page at the end of your books, so you can get your readers to like and follow (and you’re later able to get more complete demographic information on your fans).
Understanding that “most digital advertising platforms actively reward good targeting through delivering cheaper clicks or free exposure for well targeted ads.”
Realizing that if you’re not in KU, you’re competing with people who are earning more (70% on 99 cent books during Countdown Deals) and can afford to spend more on advertising.
How Kindle Unlimited has a separate recommendation engine for subscribers.
Taking advantage of places where fewer people are being advertised to, such as countries and platforms where Amazon KU isn’t a thing.
Advertising something written for mass appeal versus something written for a smaller niche audience.
What David calls the Discoverability Myth and why we shouldn’t get caught up in it.
Being careful not to confuse the Amazon algorithms or mess up your also-boughts when you launch a book, especially if you’re switching genres.
The different types of advertising that work for Kindle Unlimited books versus books on all the platforms, a steady drip versus a big blast.
Some mistakes David sees “wide” authors making (those who are marketing books on Apple, B&N, Kobo, etc.).
Best practices for mailing list building and emailing subscribers.
Visit David’s blog to stay up to date on Amazon, scammers, and nefarious entities taking advantage of authors, as well as other important topics that he feels compelled to write about. If you sign up for his mailing list, you can get his book, Amazon Decoded: A Marketing Guide to the Kindle Store.
On this week’s show, YA fantasy author Sarah K.L. Wilson joined us to talk about the successful Dragon School serial she’s publishing on Amazon (and in Kindle Unlimited). She’s put out nine installments since the beginning of the year, publishing a new one every 18 days, and she’s kept them selling with Amazon ads and sheer momentum.
Here’s a little more of what we covered:
Going from writing novels to publishing a (planned) 20-installment fantasy serial.
How complete each story is and whether Sarah employs cliffhangers.
Whether she’s got it all outlined or she’s pantsing it.
The challenges of finding your readership on Amazon (or any online store) when you’re targeting a teen audience.
Handling cover art for serial installments that you’re publishing frequently.
Sarah’s pricing strategy of 99 cents for the first installment and 2.99 for the others and whether there’s been any pushback from readers.
Finding success with Amazon ads by monitoring them daily and tweaking whenever necessary, including adding new ads to the rotation regularly.
Sarah’s less than stellar results with Facebook ads.
How her income breaks down, sales versus KU.
What a typical launch looks like for her now that she’s almost 10 installments into her serial.
You can visit Sarah on her website and also check out her books on Amazon. The first installment in her serial is Dragon School: First Flight and is currently 99 cents or free to read with a KU subscription.
We’re joined this week by LGBT urban fantasy author Holly Evans. She believes LGBT spec-fic is an up and coming sub-genre with a lot of potential, and even though it’s niche, she’s able to pay the bills writing it. Whether you’re interested in it or not, a lot of today’s interview should apply to any author thinking of writing in a smaller niche. Interestingly, Holly found more of an audience when she went wide with her books than when she was exclusive with Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited.
Here are some of the specifics that we covered:
Getting started in the crowded urban fantasy market.
Tropes for urban fantasy and also for LGBT fiction.
Why LGBT spec-fic may be an up-and-coming market with room for new authors to jump in.
What qualifies something as LGBT (i.e. do the main characters have to fall into that category?)?
If romance is expected and how explicit sex scenes should be if included.
The pros and cons of selecting the LGBT category on Amazon and other stores (easier to rank versus perhaps being overlooked by people who don’t think they’re looking for that).
Avoiding stereotypes.
Why Holly decided to leave KDP Select and publish her books to all the other stores.
How she’s found success in the other stores in only a few months.
Writing shorter series and wrapping individual books up so you can start new ones easily.
Whether there are any downsides to writing short.
You can visit Holly on her site and check out her books in all the major stores. Her newest series, Forged in Blood, is out now.
This week’s interview features NYT best-selling indie fantasy author Jasmine Walt. She talks about how she burst onto the scene a couple of years ago with her popular Baine Chronicles series and breaks down why she think it hit big even though she was a new author at the time. We also ask her about her various collaborations and how she’s kept the momentum going with the numerous new series she’s started.
Here are some of the specifics:
Expectations for urban fantasy, fantasy with romance, and reverse harem fantasy.
Writing stories that combine a lot of elements and aren’t exactly to market.
When taking on a collaboration partner can make sense and mistakes to avoid in co-writing.
Jasmine’s process that helps her publish a novel almost every month.
How much outlining she does before she starts writing.
How her first launch went and what she did to get pre-orders and sales as a brand new author.
What a launch looks like for her these days as a more established author with a fan base.
The challenges of having success with a second, third, etc. series after the first one was a hit.
When it’s time to move some series out of Kindle Unlimited and try to build a readership in other stores.
The factors that go into deciding how long a series should continue.
What Jasmine does for the back matter of her books.
Whether hitting bestseller lists (New York Times, USA Today, etc.) are useful for marketing or just nice accolades to have.
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.
Today, we were joined by return guest Scott King, the author of Outline Your Novel: The How To Guide for Structuring and Outlining Your Novel and The Five Day Novel, as well as numerous fantasy and young adult adventures. He recently jumped into epic fantasy with the first book in his Elderrealm series, Wrath of Dragons. We grilled him on outlining and also how he found starting out in epic fantasy this year after publishing in other genres previously.
Here are some of the specifics that we talked about:
How an outline can help an author become more efficient.
Whether pantsers can get anything out of outlining.
Outlining a single novel versus doing a series.
Starting with a pitch and then developing an outline.
Mistakes authors make with outlining.
What to do if the story diverges from the outline as you write it.
How tough it is to break into epic fantasy today as an author new to the genre.
Whether Kindle Unlimited/KDP Select is a good idea for epic fantasy.