SFFMP 171: Lindsay’s Launch Numbers (Earned vs Spent), Targeting International Sales, and Increasing Mailing List Open Rates

Our three hosts were by themselves today and answered some listener questions that had been stacking up. They ran the gamut and included selling more audiobooks, selling more paperbacks, selling more in international markets, increasing newsletter open rates, and what you should do to start gathering a mailing list of interested readers before you launch your first novel. Lindsay also shared her numbers from her recent fantasy launch.

Here are a few more of the specifics that we covered:

  • What it takes to get a KDP All Star bonus these days.
  • Whether Lindsay found Bookbub CPM, Facebook PPC, or Amazon CPC ads more useful for her epic fantasy/sword and sorcery launch, and how much she spent overall on advertising, cover art, and editing.
  • Jeff’s foray into audiobooks — can you have a narrator that speaks too slowly?
  • Jo’s experiments with reworking some of his old newsletter bonus material and publishing a short story a month (are ebooks published at 99 cents worth it?).
  • Tips for increasing open rates with mailing lists and what’s considered a good rate.
  • What kinds of subject lines work best with newsletters.
  • How ACX users can promote their audiobooks (we forgot to mention getting codes from ACX for giveaways, but you can email for those and use them selectively with new releases).
  • Tips for getting more sales in the UK, Australia, Canada, and other English-speaking (and reading) markets.
  • Tips for selling more paperbacks.
  • Whether Wattpad is worth it for a marketing platform.
  • Whether a pen name needs its own Facebook author page.
  • If an author in the UK needs to make a special edition for American English readers.
  • If it’s okay to publish shorter novels so you can get stuff out more frequently.
  • What’s the best way to start your writing/publishing career if your number one interest is gaining a steady readership?
  • Your hosts share which of their characters are most like them and what the hardest things for them to edit out were.

Want to see what the hosts are up to?

You can check out Jo’s new 99-cent prequel novella, Beta Testers or preorder the Book of Deacon short story collection he mentioned in the show.

Jeff’s latest release is one of his mystery novels, Case of the Pilfered Pooches (Corgi Case Files Book 4).

Lindsay’s short sci-fi story “Bearadise Lodge” is up for free on her blog.

 

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Holiday Marketing — What We Do (and don’t do) and Why

Since it’s a few days before Christmas and we’re not scheduling any guests until the new year, we decided to chat amongst ourselves again, this time with a holiday marketing topic. As it turns out, none of us do a ton, but we chimed in on things we’ve tried and things that we believe aren’t worth the time, effort, expensive, etc.

Here’s a little of what we covered:

  • Giving away ebooks with Smashwords coupons
  • Giving away paperbacks and shipping costs
  • Can Christmas and other holidays actually help with ebook sales
  • Writing holiday-themed stories to take advantage of a holiday-loving market (possibly tougher with fantasy and science fiction)
  • Is it worth trying to book ads for Christmas
  • Are there any pitfalls that may come with releasing a book right before the holidays

 

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