Marketing and E-Publishing Predictions for 2015 — what we believe will still work and what won’t

We have guests scheduled for January, so this should be the last show with just the three of us for a while. We discussed whether marketing and selling books got harder for indie authors in 2014 and, since there are only a couple of days left in the year, we gave some publishing predictions and some marketing trends that we believe could come to pass in 2015. At the end, we also shared a few of our own writing/publishing resolutions for next year.

Here’s a look at some of the topics we covered:

  • How has Kindle Unlimited effected us and will authors continue to have to deal with subscription services (possibly more of them from Amazon competitors) as time goes on?
  • Are things getting tougher, and was it indeed the year of the quitter, as discussed in Kris Rusch’s Things Indie Writers Learned in 2014?
  • How networking and collaboration on projects and marketing may become even more important to authors in the future
  • Will multi-author bundles still be popular, or will they be replaced by something else?
  • We might see more co-authoring, shared worlds, and pen names where multiple authors write under the name to increase the number of annual releases
  • Pre-orders, are they useful now and how might one take advantage of the benefits in the future?
  • How Lindsay started a new pen name in October of 2014 and did well with it, even as a completely “new” (anonymous) author: Pen Name Launch 1 (results after 1 month) & Pen Name Launch 2 (results after 10 weeks)

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8 comments

  • Thanks for sharing this Podcast!

  • Finally had a chance to listen in, and just wanted to say thanks for this! This is the first year I’ll have books out with my name on the cover, rather than short stories in anthologies, so this podcast was a great resource on things I might want to look into.

    Luckily, our local group is already at work on a shared world project, but I do echo Jeffrey’s main goal: I want to go pro. It may not be this year, or even next year, but I really want to push for that.

    Thanks again!

  • Steve

    I’ve been enjoying listening to your podcasts. I’m not sure what I will do here at my 9 to 5 job when I run out of back episodes. I always enjoy listening to authors talk about writing, and how to market their writing. Lindsay mentioned she enjoys listening to other writers’ podcasts. Which podcasts do you all listen to on a regular basis?

    • SFFpodcast

      Hey, Steve! Thanks for following along with the show. I’ve been on vacation so haven’t been checking in here, but if you’re still looking for podcasts, here are a few others I listen to:

      The Rocking Self Publishing Podcast with Simon Whistler
      The Creative Penn with Joanna Penn
      The Self Publishing Podcast with Johnny, Sean, and Dave
      The Sell More Books Show with Bryan Cohen and Jim Kukral
      And a new one, The Romance Writers’ Rodeo with Ivy Sinclair

      Happy listening!

  • I was listening to the podcast and was wondering about Kindle Select. I think what they have done is taken the money from the Kindle Library which is set in some kind of trust to be paid out monthly and added the money from KU to get to whatever the pay out is for the month. So I would not be surprised if they keep a chunk of Kindle Unlimited for themselves maybe as much as half and rely on the already established trust to cover most of the payout. That is why payouts have gone from 3-4 a borrow to 1.25.

    Any of you know if this is the case?

    • SFFpodcast

      I’ve only recently played with KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited (with the pen name), but my understanding is that it hasn’t been $3 a borrow since before Kindle Unlimited came around. Back then, the only borrows came from Amazon Prime members who got 1 free borrow a month as part of their membership. When KU popped into existence, you suddenly had people with unlimited borrows with those memberships. So way, way more borrows overall. Amazon added money to the pot, but it seems unlikely borrows will ever be worth more than $1.50 again. I know a lot of people are just hoping they don’t drop below $1!

      I don’t know about money being kept. 😀 I actually suspect that Kindle Unlimited isn’t profitable for them, since heavy readers might borrow 20-30 books a month for their $9.99, and that’s who would be tempted by the program (my suspicions, anyway). So they could very well be funding it from somewhere else.