This week, we chatted with RITA award-winning fantasy romance author Jeffe Kennedy. She started her career writing non-fiction, shifted to romance and fantasy romance with traditional publishing, and now does some self-publishing as well. We asked her about whether awards are worth trying for, her thoughts on the professional organizations SFWA and RWA, and what she’s tried and liked for marketing over the years.
Here are some of the specific topics we touched on:
Getting started in fantasy romance before it became a thing (we debated if it’s yet come into its own).
Whether fantasy romance (secondary world/epic fantasy rather than Earth-centric paranormal romance) is a growing market now.
Tropes romance readers will expect, even if a story is SF/F.
How much “romance” has to be in a story for it to be considered sci-fi or fantasy romance?
Jeffe’s thoughts on whether authors should get involved in RWA or SFWA, the professional organizations for the romance and SF/F genres.
Awards you can enter versus awards you have to be nominated for.
Jeffe’s experience entering the RITA awards each year and having a winner in 2017.
Whether awards are worth pursuing and if they can increase readership.
Jeffe’s thoughts on blogging and social media, and her preferred platforms.
Getting reviews from book bloggers.
Joining with other authors in your genre to put out anthologies of novellas.
This week, the guys talked about the various tools and services they use as professional authors. Everything is listed below with links to the sites. The guys also gave some tips for increasing engagement on Facebook and Twitter and really using those social media platforms to help turn casual readers into fans–and maybe even attract new fans!
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.
Today, Jo, Jeff, and Lindsay talked about a few things they’ve been meaning to cover for a long time, building an author platform (and selling books) through Facebook, Twitter, and an author blog.
Here are some of the highlights of what they touched upon:
Is it better to have a Facebook page or use Facebook groups for appealing to fans?
What do you post about on Facebook anyway?
How can you naturally get more likes and interaction on Facebook?
Can a Facebook page actually help you sell books?
When does it make sense to pay for a boosted post?
Have the guys had any success with Facebook ads?
Twitter — What’s the point of Twitter?
Is it possible to sell books on Twitter, and, if so, how?
Being a content provider on Twitter versus just doing a lot of RTing.
What are the best practices for starting an author blog?
Should you host a blog on your own site or use a free site?
What should you blog about as an author?
How to get more traffic from the search engines (and how long it takes to build up a site and start seeing that traffic).
Is blogging really worth the time?
If you’re interested in writing for Kindle Worlds, in Lindsay Buroker’s Fallen Empire space adventure universe, shoot Lindsay a note for more details. You can reach her through the contact form on her site (http://www.lindsayburoker.com) or poke her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/GoblinWriter). She’s happy to provide the books for free to any authors who might be interested!
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
We talked among ourselves tonight, discussing a lot of the news and tips Jo brought back from Book Expo America. He went to panels on Facebook marketing/reader engagement and talked to the Bookbub people about what it takes to get listed and about some of the best practices. He also picked up some links to cool resources that you may want to check out.
Here’s a run-down of his notes:
Using Facebook to the best effect:
·Facebook will always do its best to decrease the impact of non-paid advertising.
·If you want to get the most bang for your buck, use whatever Facebook’s pet toy is. They will reward you with greater reach for free. Until they don’t.
·Currently their toy is video. A 15-30 second video will get a much bigger push than post with any other media, or no media at all. (Don’t try to link to a video on another platform; you need to upload the video directly to Facebook to get their loving.)
· A site you can use to create videos without a lot of tech savviness is Animoto
·You can put a link at the end of the video, to actually get some use out of it.
·Also, ask questions, because engagement amplifies reach.
·And if you’re going to pursue something pursue shares. They expand your reach by the most.
Book Bub:
·I talked to BookBub and asked for advice on how to make your book more likely to be chosen.
·As expected, there’s a strong emphasis on a good cover and strong reviews.
· The role that price point (and how much of a discount you offer) plays
· Whether being in KDP Select puts you at a disadvantage to books available on a wide variety of platforms.
·The reviews are by are the most important. A book with a great cover and a dozen decent reviews will probably lose to a book with a mediocre cover and fifty great reviews.
·However, even if your book is flawless, with a perfect cover and hundreds of reviews, you might not get picked.
·This is either because they were fully booked for the available period, or because your book is in a genre that has historically gotten poor click through.
·In neither case are you doomed, they CAN still promo your book, but you’ll have to be persistent. New openings occur every day, and there’s always the chance your non-favored genre book will have no suitable competition for a given period.
·They also gave advice on how best to promote your books depending on your goals.
Shooting for a Best Seller:
*Discount the most popular book (if you’ve got one with over 100 reviews, use that).
* Discount to lowest price possible. (99 cents, since free won’t count)
Marketing a Series
* Discount first book.
* Free if possible.
* Discount for three or more days.
*Link to series in back matter.
Products that caught Jo’s interest:
·Note: We aren’t being paid to mention these folks; Jo just thought they were interesting and potentially useful.
Slicebooks is a service that lets you chop your book into chapters for distribution purposes. More useful for nonfiction, because users can create mix and match derivative books by taking an assortment of chapters from different books and share the result.
YaBeam is a service that uses the iBeacon feature of iOS to advertise to people by causing a notification when they walk by a YaBeam beacon. IE stick one at the door of a book store where you are doing a signing to offer passers by a heads-up that you’re in there and a free chapter to entice them.
Think of this as choose your own adventure, or DVD extras for books. It uses the epub 3 enhancements to allow you to link to alternate scenes, fan art, etc that tie in to the current portion of a text. And of course, you can SELL this additional content.
This is an ebook formatting software for Mac that creates BEAUTIFUL template based ebooks in epub 2, epub 3, and mobi. Super user friendly, built in previews, etc. Like Scrivener if it was focused on publishing a book rather than writing it. (Though you can write in it too.)
Today’s show is dedicated to Facebook marketing. How do you use the popular social media platform to sell more books and keep current readers engaged? We took turns answering questions, based on our experiences. We may not be gurus, but we’ve all been on Facebook as authors for 2-4 years, and we had quite a bit to say!
Here’s a little of what we covered:
Separate author page or personal page, what’s best?
One page or one for every series?
How do you get readers to find you and like your page?
How important is interaction, and how do you get people to engage with you?
Facebook advertising, pay-per-click and boosted posts, are they ever worth it?
Groups, can they help with anything?
What about events?
Has there been a decline in the effectiveness of Facebook over the years?
What’s the future going to bring, and how will it impact authors?