SFFMP 112: Producing and Marketing Anthologies for Fun and Profit with Patrice Fitzgerald

On previous shows, we’ve talked about the various ways to put short stories to use, including putting them into anthologies. But we haven’t talked much about producing multi-author anthologies of short stories–and actually making money doing it. (A lot of people edit and publish anthologies for the love of it, but turning a profit can be difficult, especially if you’re paying the authors decently for the rights to use their work.) Today we chatted with Patrice Fitzgerald, who, in addition to being an author in her own right, has published numerous science fiction anthologies–and done well with them.

Here are some of the details of what we covered:

  • The transition from attorney to author to anthology producer.
  • How Patrice is putting together mystery and science fiction anthologies that sell and make money.
  • How she approaches some of the bigger sellers in the indie community (and sometimes out of it) so she’ll have some stories from popular authors to go along with the stories from up-and-comers.
  • How she goes about recruiting those bigger names, and also how she sets up a way to receive submissions without getting too inundated by entries.
  • Whether it’s better to pay authors a flat fee or do a royalty split.
  • Whether it’s best to include stories that are completely stand alone or if they can tie into an author’s existing worlds.
  • Whether there’s an ideal length for the overall anthology and for individual stories.
  • How she gets past the bias (if there is one) against shorter fiction and sells a lot of anthologies.
  • Using Kindle Unlimited and 99 cents to launch her anthologies (and then going up to $4 or $5 the second week).
  • Gathering email addresses and starting a mailing list as a publisher and also leveraging the large lists that some of the authors have.
  • Doing a series of anthologies in a similar style as opposed to jumping all over the place.

Make sure to visit Patrice Fitzgerald on her website and check out her latest anthologies: Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy’s Edge and Mostly Murder: Till Death.

 

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SFFMP 87: Writing and Selling Short Fiction That Actually Sells with T.S. Paul

Science fiction author T.S. Paul joins us to discuss how he’s sold thousands of copies of his short fiction since getting started just over four months ago. Not only that, but he sells those ebooks at 2.99 instead of employing the typical bargain basement pricing. He’s publishing in the space opera field and gaining momentum by putting out new ebooks every two weeks. He’s currently in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited, so he’s also getting a lot of borrows on those books too.

Here’s a little more on what we covered:

  • Using an on-going series to make shorter fiction work and keep people coming back for more
  • Selling short fiction ebooks at 2.99 (and collections at 7.99)
  • Whether more people buy or borrow (for those in Kindle Unlimited) at the higher price points
  • If short fiction is still doing well now that KU pays based on page reads instead of straight-up borrows
  • Publishing character interviews and short fiction on your blog to keep up reader interest between releases
  • Using Canva to create images for Facebook ads
  • Making Facebook ads work for science fiction
  • Do bad reviews actually affect sales?
  • Getting troll reviews taken down on Amazon
  • Finding original artwork on Deviant Art and licensing it to use for your ebook covers (T.S. finds this much more affordable than commissioning custom artwork, and it gets you something far more original than grabbing images from stock photo sites)

Check out T.S. Paul’s books on Amazon and visit his blog to see what he’s up to.

 

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SFFMP 55: Launch Strategies, Pitfalls of Being Prolific, and How to Know When a Book Is Ready

Tonight we were joined by a fan of the show and fellow podcaster, Edward Giordano. For a change, he interviewed us, asking questions he had as a new author. We hope our answers will be useful to some of you, as well!

Here’s some of what we went over:

  • How to get books and ebooks into libraries (Here’s the interview with the librarian that Lindsay mentioned.)
  • Keeping characters/settings/themes fresh when you’re prolific and you’re publishing a lot of books
  • How to launch your first book or books as a new author
  • Whether KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited is the way to go as a new author
  • Whether Facebook or in-person launch parties are worth doing
  • If it’s your first book, how do you know if it’s ready to be published?
  • Making short stories or novelettes profitable
  • How to know if a story idea is worth pursuing
  • Are paperbacks and audiobooks worth the time and cost of producing them?
  • Are in-person events worth it for selling books?

Edward hasn’t published his first book yet, but you can visit his SciFan Podcast, where he and his host chat about science fiction and fantasy books and television shows.

Edward also mentioned a helpful book that you might like to check out: Nail Your Story: Add Tension, Build Emotion, and Keep Your Readers Addicted (Growth Hacking For Storytellers #2)

 

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Ebook Pricing: How Much to Charge, How to Work Sales, and How the Right Price Can Increase Visibility

Tonight, we talked all about how we price our novels, novellas, and short stories. Here are a few of the subjects we covered:

  • What each of us charges for our ebooks and why
  • When bundling makes sense (i.e. an omnibus for short stories or for series books) and why you would want to do it
  • What to do with short stories, especially ones under 10,000 words
  • Can you get away with higher prices with science fiction and fantasy than with some other genres
  • Do we tinker with prices (increasing or decreasing them) as a book ages
  • The trade-off between making less on lower priced books but possibly increasing visibility due to more sales
  • Is there a time and a place for the 99-cent novel?
  • Do we lower prices on earlier books in a series when we release a new novel

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