SFFMP 79: Epic Fantasy, YouTube Marketing, and Finding a Route to Success with Garrett Robinson
This week, we chatted with epic fantasy author Garrett Robinson (http://garrettbrobinson.com/) who got his start with genre hopping and serialized fiction before deciding to settle in and focus on epic fantasy. Several novels later, he’s selling a lot of books and making a great living.
Here’s some of what we talked about:
- Outlining and planning when you’re building a big world with multiple series and storylines
- Juggling multiple series and having publication schedules that satisfy the readers and make marketing doable
- Why it took three books and a boxed set before the ball really started rolling for Garrett
- What kinds of book covers are expected for epic fantasy
- Live vlogging a novel as a way to interact with readers and also as an accountability tool
- Creating a YouTube channel where videos actually convert to book sales
- Why Garrett is sticking with KDP Select for the time being
- The perks of getting a Bookbub ad while in Kindle Unlimited
- Why he’s enjoying Tumblr as a social media platform
- Author Platform Rocket — a resource Garrett uses for generating Facebook leads for his mailing list
- Tips for Facebook advertising (don’t be shy — imagine yourself as a marketing firm that was hired to plug your books)
If you want to get Garrett’s first book for free, stop by his page and sign up for his newsletter.
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Fantastic episode. You guys get the most relevant, helpful guests on here! Keep it up.
For those that have found some success with Facebook ads, what would you say a good minimum outlay would be to launch an ad campaign? And how much time do you spend managing them? I’ve watched the how-to videos from Mark Dawson etc. but I’ve been dragging my heels on actually trying it out.
It seems to be the case that outlay should depend on your audience. My ideal budget/audience ratio is between 500K and 2,000,000 targeted by the ad, and a spend of $10 a day. Then, find a different ideal audience, narrow/expand it to the same size, and put another $10 a day. More campaigns, targeted to chunks of people at those numbers, tend to be more effective than much broader campaigns that spend more, and more effective than much narrower campaigns that spend less. Hope that helps!
I looked at the Author Platform Rocket mentioned in the podcast (http://www.authorplatformrocket.com/) but found the site less than helpful/understatement. I’m really interested in the service and would like to know how much it costs and what they do etc. but all I got was a landing page for a course. I don’t want no freaking course. I want information about their service /grumpy potential customer.
Yeah, when I saw the page for the course, I decided not to put a link in. It seemed like they might have once offered services to authors as a way to gather data to create the course. I didn’t see anything on it now about offering services. I’ll ask Garrett if he knows any more.
I would appreciate that, because I am seriously interested.
I’m also interested but I agree the site looks like Scam 101.
Okay, I will be the first to admit that that annoys the piss out of me. I went to the site after I first heard about it and had the exact same reaction—but Jonny was a friend of a friend, so I emailed my friend and said “I don’t want the damn course, I want his service. Send an intro email, please.”
So he did, and I got signed up with Jonny, and now we’re working together. But he does have his “barrier to entry” being the free webinar, which kind of stinks. 🙁
Your previous guests do too stick around, Lindsay! 😉
That was a great interview–absolutely fascinating to listen to, and quite helpful. (I feel slightly vindicated in my laziness to pass on Facebook ads, they sound time-consuming.)
SO time consuming—until they really start working for you. Now I barely have to touch them, other than to glance at the stats once a day and make sure they’re working well.
Every once in a while I engage in some NEW Facebook campaign, and that takes more work, but…I do think it’s worth it, even for the burgeoning author. Give yourself $100 to play with each month, and spend $3 a day on them, until you find something that really works. It WILL pay off long term.
Problem is I don’t really have the time to spend on it. I’ve already given Facebook for more time than the results justified.
So I started my own author cross-promotion, because I understand how to get results from that, but it also takes time (taking more time away from potential time spent finagling Facebook ads). I *am* interested in Facebook, because a lot of people do have good results with it.
Well, that’s the thing about Jonny—he spends the time so you don’t have to. For the majority of people, he’s going to save time and money, because he’s going to get better results than you are if you’re trying it yourself, because this is what he does all day.
In my case particularly, it’s still worth it to me to run my own ads, because I get good results for them. But I’d recommend any author give Jonny $100 for at least a month, preferably two, and see what he can do for you. (He said, firmly reiterating that Jonny DOES NOT PAY HIM to say these things).
HAHA! I pried a more direct link out of Jonny’s clutching fingers.
Okay, he was actually very free with it, but still.
If you don’t want to do the webinar, and just want to see what the actual service is, here’s the link:
http://www.authorplatformrocket.com/go
(For those who were turned off, as I was, by the webinar page).
Loved the interview….even tho I dislike Fantasy….this guy IS a writer!
Thanks for listening, Jim! Glad you liked the interview. 🙂