January 2016 – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 65: Optimizing Your Amazon Sales Page + Listener Questions Answered

January 26, 2016 SFFpodcast Group Discussion, Podcast

Today Jeff, Jo, and Lindsay discussed how to improve your Amazon sales page so that people are less likely to click away, especially now that there are sponsored results and other distractions everywhere. They also answered some listener questions and shared some of their recent news and helpful tips.

Here are some of the highlights and the links mentioned during the show:

Selling to male readers or getting more readers overall as a female author of science fiction
How many words do you have to write for your work to be considered a novel, and at what length is it OK to charge novel prices for your ebook?
How can you gauge if a series is selling well enough to continue or if it’s better to move on to something else?
Using Bookfunnel to make it easier to give out free ebooks (they handle helping your readers with side-loading)
The Kevin Kelly 1000 True Fans idea that you don’t need to be a best seller to make a living as an author, just to gradually accumulate enough true fans
Whether entering keywords in your KDP dashboard can actually help
Using keywords to get into bonus categories on Amazon (here’s the Amazon help page that tells you the words to use for the various categories)
Making sure not to get in trouble with the titles and subtitles you use if adding keywords
Using Author Central to claim your book, link editions (ebooks, paperbacks, audiobooks), and fill out the extras such as the “critical reviews” and “about the author” fields
The need for book reviews to provide social proof and also help you compete against the ads for other books that appear on your own sales page
Using taglines and hooks to catch people’s interest before they have to “click more” with the new Amazon page layouts

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amazon, book titles, fantasy, keywords, sales pages, sales ranking, science fiction

SFFMP 64: Rachel Caine Talks Urban Fantasy, YA, Traditional Publishing, and Rocking a Kickstarter Campaign

January 19, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Today’s guest, Rachel Caine, has been publishing urban fantasy and YA fantasy since 1991. She’s been traditionally published throughout her career, but she recently decided to self-publish a new book in her long-standing Weather Warden series. She launched a Kickstarter to help finance the project, asked for $5,000 and ended up earning $18,000+. We asked her about the Kickstarter and also what she’s seen as far as changes in the industry, along with the differences in self-publishing and traditional publishing when it comes to marketing and more.

Some of the things we talked about were:

The state of urban fantasy today and how trends wax and wane
Creating a successful Kickstarter campaign (and some tips for how to save more of the money that people pledge to you).
Building a mailing list as a traditionally published author (she uses Mailchimp and has done giveaways with Rafflecopter).
Creating items for physical giveaways at signings and conventions (Rachel mentioned MakePlayingCards.com for doing character cards and ClubFlyers.com and Vista Print for bookmarks, postcards, and the like).
Visiting schools and marketing to librarians to help sell YA fiction
What kind of help you can expect from traditional publishers when it comes to marketing and what’s most likely going to be up to you.
The challenges of participating in such common self-pub marketing tactics as multi-author bundles and price-related promotions when your books are traditionally published
Whether social media and “having a platform” are important when it comes to getting a traditional deal
Being careful about signing a contract and watching out for rights grabs

You can find Rachel at her website, on Twitter, and you can visit her author page on Facebook.

She has lots of new books coming out for you to check out. She has a story coming out in the new X-files anthology, she has a collection of short stories from her Morganville Vampires series, and the next book in her Great Library series will be out this summer. Check out the first here (visit her site for more news and links to other stores).

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kickstarter, mailing lists, rachel caine, traditional publishing, urban fantasy, ya fantasy

SFFMP 63: Improving Sales as Your Series Progresses with Space Opera Author Terry Mixon

January 12, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Today’s guest is a former NASA employee and U.S. Army soldier who recently made the switch to writing science fiction full time. Terry Mixon is the author of two space opera series, The Empire of Bones Saga and The Humanity Unlimited Saga, and he’s also dabbled in erotica (as he informed us during the interview, he’s now making more from his sci-fi than he did from erotica, so there’s no reason not to write what you love). In addition to being an author, Terry is one of the co-hosts of the Dead Robots’ Society Podcast.

Here’s some of what we covered in the show:

Keeping the story interesting as the series progresses
The state of space opera currently when it comes to marketing and selling books
The pros of starting out in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited
Running Kindle Countdown Deals on older books at the same time as you release a new book in the series
Nailing your genre with your covers (making your book look like it could be on the shelf next to traditionally published novels)
Building your mailing list — do you need to offer incentives?
Amazon’s 30- and 90-day cliffs
Building a fan base by publishing regularly in a series

Check out Terry’s books on Amazon, including the first book in his Empire of Bones Saga.

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marketing, podcasts, series, space opera, terry mixon

SFFMP 62: Anthologies, New Covers, and Creating Boxed Sets to Increase Sales with C. Gockel

January 5, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

We had our first repeat guest on the show today, urban fantasy author Carolynn Gockel (writing as C. Gockel) from Episode 19, where we chatted about permafree books, getting started on fan fiction sites, using Tumblr to promote, and where to buy sponsorships. Carolynn has been busy with a lot of marketing stuff in the last year, and she’s also jumped into science fiction, so we talked about some of what she’s done and learned recently.

We discussed:

The promotional (and monetary) perks of putting a short story into an anthology with other authors in your genre, all of whom throw their marketing weight behind the release.
Starting your own multi-author boxed sets and whether it’s better to do permafree sets or 99-centers.
How to snag a Bookbub ad on a multi-author anthology.
The challenges of launching a new series in a different genre from your flagship series.
Having one series in Kindle Unlimited (KDP Select) and one wide (she recommends that new authors start out in KDP Select right now).
Getting approached by audiobook producers and if it’s better to sell your audio rights versus spending the money producing your own audiobooks.
Whether investing in new covers resulted in an uptick in sales and was worth it for Carolynn.
Her adventures in Facebook advertising — is it worth using Facebook to promote permafree Book 1s? Boxed sets? Multi-author boxed sets?
Lastly, she let us know that she writes because, “If I wasn’t an author, I’d probably be a nasty internet troll.” We all have our motivations!

Grab her first book in the I Bring the Fire series for free from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, or Apple. You can also check out the first ebook in her science fiction series, Archangel Down.

Visit her online at C. Gockel Writes.