SFFMP 199: Rapid Release, Marketing Serials, and Going Non-Exclusive with Audiobooks

Today, the guys took on a batch of listener questions that ran the gamut from what’s the best schedule for a rapid release of a trilogy to what kind of markets we’ve targeted with Facebook advertising to what to do (and not to do) when choosing a book title.

And in case you missed it last week, we have a 30% off coupon code for Brian Meek’s Amazon Ads course. For those interested in signing up, you can use the code of SFFMP30Mastering Amazon Ads: An Author’s Course

Here’s a look at the questions the guys answered:

What’s the best lag time between books in a trilogy rapid release? Is it best to dump all at once? 1/week, 1/2-weeks, or longer in between.

In your ideal rapid release schedule, how many days/weeks/months apart would you release each new novel in a science fiction series?

Any tips for marketing epic fantasy novellas/novella serials?

How do you decide when a series and it’s spin-offs should end?

How does (Lindsay) keep romance from overtaking an adventure story?

For Facebook marketing, do you find one demographic marker more useful than it’s counter-parts? Ie: is it effective to target age, income, etc, or are your best results from targeting by interest? Do you still boost posts?

Are you planning your calendar for 2019? will you be at any conferences this year? I missed you at the Sell More Books Show summit this year, but I can go next year. 🙂 Do Jo and Jeff attend anything?

Promos: is there a deeper marketing reason to choose to run them only on selected markets, or does a world-wide one mean a world-wide bucket of headaches? (See: yours and Jo’s Bookbub books being at the same time discounted on .com and full price on .it)

Lindsay, I’d love to hear about how the blog-novel went. Did it impact the launch much? How about blog traffic? Was there a bump in your other books via affiliate blog links?

Which writing craft books help/have helped you?

What does your outlining process look like?

What’s your best advice for picking a novel’s title?

How do you decide what genre to list as if it’s a bit of everything?

How do you guys get a universal link for one of your Amazon books (Amazon only), or did you not bother? Specifically a link that will send UK readers to the UK store, US readers to the US store, etc. Or did you provide links for all the separate countries?

I would love to hear an updated list of which promo sites you use.

A lot of Book Funnel/Instafreebie group promos I see all have the same group of books, even if there is a “theme” to the promo. Have you seen anyone having success doing a more targeted and small group promo?

I’d like to hear how Patreon is going. Any tips or anything you’d do differently? (I’ve just set up Patreon with early release books + other rewards like personalized copies via Ingram.)

If you need something to read this week, check out Jo Lallo’s The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy.

 

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SFFMP 48: Facebook Advertising That Works with Mark Dawson

We chatted with indie thriller author Mark Dawson today, someone who found success before he started tinkering with Facebook advertising, but who then really ratcheted up his sales and earnings by figuring out what’s working over there. He now runs a course to help other authors and has several free instructional videos up at Self Publishing Formula. If you like what you hear in the interview, you may want to check them out.

Here’s some of what we covered:

  • Setting up advertising campaigns versus running boosted posts (Mark doesn’t bother with boosted posts)
  • Sending people directly to Amazon to buy books or, even better, sending them to a mailing list sign-up page and giving them free books (i.e. your starter library or series starter) in exchange for an email address (never advertise just for likes to your Facebook page)
  • Setting a bid price for ads versus letting Facebook choose in order to optimize clicks
  • Choosing a target audience (i.e. as a thriller author, Mark targets fans of Lee Child) based on interests that are likely to make them fans of your work
  • Does it matter if you’re in KDP Select and your books aren’t available everywhere? Will fewer of your clicks convert?
  • Do certain genres perform better than others with Facebook advertising?
  • How much can a new author just jumping in expect to spend?
  • Using Chrome and the Facebook Power Editor for greater control over your ads
  • Taking your existing mailing list, importing it into Facebook, and creating an all new custom audience to target based on the interests of your current subscribers
  • Advertising consistently, day-to-day, versus just advertising when you’re doing a book launch or a sale
  • Tips for making it work even if you’re in a small niche without any big-name authors to target

 

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