SFFMP 122: Finding Success Self-Publishing Science Fiction After Years of Writing Children’s Books for Trad Publishers

This week, we chatted with Barry Hutchison, a full-time author who started out writing children’s books for a traditional publishing house and who is now dabbling in self-publishing with adult science fiction. After a bumpy start with his first self-published project, a serial called The Bug, he learned the ropes and had a successful launch for his Space Team comedic SF series. With the release of the fourth in the series coming, he expects to hit his first five-figure month in June.

Here are a few more details of what we talked about:

  • Why Barry chose to self-publish his adult fiction after working with a traditional publisher for so many years.
  • Not being discouraged by a less-than-stellar launch with his first self-published project.
  • Why he went into the Space Team series bootstrapping it by doing his own cover art and handling his own editing.
  • Launching at 99 cents and into Kindle Unlimited.
  • Differences in marketing between traditional publishing and self-publishing.
  • Writing quickly and launching subsequent books in the Space Team series with only two months between releases.
  • What kinds of covers make sense for comedic science fiction.
  • The importance of a mailing list over social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
  • Whether holiday stories can make sense for writers of space opera.
  • How Barry used a preview of his first Space Team novel on Instafreebie to get people to sign up for his mailing list before the book launched.
  • How promoting other authors on Instafreebie ended up with him being featured by the company.

You can visit Barry on his site or check out his books on Amazon.

 

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