audible – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 219: Launching a New Pen Name and Getting an Audiobook Deal with Audible

February 5, 2019 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

For this week’s show, sci-fi/fantasy/horror author Chris Philbrook joined us to talk about the success he’s had with ebooks and audiobooks (he’s had several deals with Audible for production), as well as a new YA-writing pen name that he’s starting up.

Here are some of the specifics that we discussed:

Publishing fiction to your website and building a readership before starting to publish.
Some of the challenges with publishing series in several different sub-genres.
How Chris was originally picked up by Audible and how audiobooks have become a substantial part of his income.
His experiences with an audiobook publisher and also DIY-ing it through ACX.
What marketing he’s done to help his audiobooks sell.
Chris’s experience with paying for Kirkus reviews and if it’s worth it.
His experience with Amazon exclusivity and Kindle Unlimited versus taking some of his books wide.
Why he decided to start a pen name for his YA fiction even though he’s already written in numerous genres under his regular name.
Some of the challenges of starting again from scratch and creating a second internet presence.
Experimenting with Instagram to attract younger readers.
The advantage of a simultaneous release for the ebook, paperback, and audiobook.
When it makes sense for a newer author to invest in audiobook production.

You can find Chris on his website or check out his books on Amazon. You can also follow what he’s doing with his pen name by looking up W. J. Orion. The first book, The Phone, comes out in March.

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audible, chris philbrook, marketing audiobooks, pen names, zombies

SFFMP 200: Marketing and Selling Audiobooks, Plus Producing and Distributing them through Findaway Voices

September 25, 2018 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

This week, Will Dages from Findaway Voices joined us to talk about producing, marketing, and selling audiobooks and some of the new options out there for indie authors. Findaway handles both production of audiobooks (by connecting you with narrators and producers) and distribution to many stores where you wouldn’t be able to upload direct.

Here are some of the specifics that we discussed:

Where Findaway distributes audiobooks.
Some large players such as Kobo, Google Play, and Walmart that are getting into audiobooks.
Selling to libraries.
How you can distribute audiobooks both through them and with ACX/Audible (by choosing the non-exclusive option on Audible).
Taking advantage of their option to set your own price — 99 cents and free are allowed for short stories, series starters, etc.
How launching everything together (ebook, audiobook, and paperback) tends to help you sell a lot more audiobooks.
Setting up a launch even if you published your ebook and print edition long ago.
The drop-and-drip method for putting out a series of older books that you’re turning into audiobooks.
How Findaway helps set you up with potential narrators if you want to produce your audiobooks through them.
Uploading audiobooks that you produced elsewhere.
How often authors get paid and the $100 minimum threshold before payout.
Some of the challenges of promoting your audiobooks and what works to move the dial.
Subscription and credit-based purchase systems.
Creating audiobook bundles of your series to entice people with more hours.
Audiobook Boom as a promo site where you can basically trade audiobooks for reviews.
Findaway’s new Authors Direct platform where authors will be able to sell their audiobooks for a 70% royalty and direct listeners who want to redeem free books with codes.

If you’re interested, you can find out more at the Findaway Voices website or check them out on Twitter.

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audible, audiobooks, findaway voices, google play, marketing audiobooks

SFFMP 173: From Indie to Hybrid, Six Figure Audiobook Advances, and an $80,000 Kickstarter for a Novel

March 20, 2018 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

On today’s show, we had the honor of chatting with Michael J. Sullivan and his wife and business partner Robin Sullivan. These folks were self-publishing right at the beginning of the movement (before the kindle even became a thing), and have seen and tried a lot over the years. After finding indie author success, they accepted a deal with Orbit, and Michael is now a hybrid author, taking the best from both worlds.

Here are some of the specifics that we discussed:

- Finding success as a self-published author in the early days of the Kindle.
- Whether it was a hard decision to switch to a traditional publisher and if giving up some money up front was worth it in terms of reaching a larger audience and growing the fan base.
- What indie authors signing traditional contracts should watch out for, especially if they want to keep self-publishing on the side.
- Understanding non-compete, indemnification, and limbo clauses.
- Why it’s hard (but not impossible) to get a Big 5 publishing deal that doesn’t give up ebook, print, and audiobook rights right now.
- Why they’ve done three Kickstarters and how they’ve had such tremendous success with them.
- How Kickstarter can be a form of advertising and potentially bringing in new readers who weren’t already in the fan base.
- Whether there are any drawbacks to having a super successful Kickstarter.
- What Michael and Robin do for marketing and how that’s changed over the years.
- Why Michael is a big fan of Goodreads.
- Doing AMAs on Reddit.
- Why they say you shouldn’t feel you’re going to relinquish all your marketing to your publisher if you take a trad deal.
- How audiobooks have become a big source of income for them and what kinds of advances are potentially achievable out there right now.
- Why they believe audiobooks are becoming what ebooks were in 2010 and that there’s lots of room for growth.

You can visit Michael on his website, and if you’re interested in his books, you can buy the latest, The Disappearance of Winter’s Daughter, (as well as the rest) directly from his site.

He’s also releasing books in his Legends of the First Empire series, with Age of War coming this summer.

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audible, audiobooks, goodreads, hybrid author, michael j sullivan, non-compete clauses, orbit, publishing contracts, Reddit, self publishing, trad publishing

SFFMP 93: Straddling Genres and Succeeding with Multiple Different Series with Rachel Aaron

August 9, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Popular fantasy author Rachel Aaron joined us today to talk about succeeding with books that straddle genres, launching later books in a series, and turning your writing into a business, among other topics.

Here are a few more subjects that we touched on:

The challenges of writing across genres and marketing books that don’t fit tidily into a category
Rachel’s experiments with advertising and what has worked best
Using a pre-order to increase sales of an entire series and how to build launch buzz over several weeks
Some of the perks of being in Kindle Unlimited (Rachel explains why she believes KU readers are less likely to leave bad reviews)
How audiobooks have become a significant source of income for Rachel
The challenges of maintaining a high degree of productivity after this becomes a full-fledged business

Visit Rachel on her site, check out the fan art she mentioned, or take a peek at her first Heartstrikers book on Amazon.

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audible, audiobooks, cross-genre fiction, ebook covers, indie publishing, kdp select, kindle unlimited, marketing, rachel aaron, trad publishing

SFFMP 50: Patreon, Audiobooks, and Diversifying Your Income with Abigail Hilton

October 6, 2015 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Tonight we chatted with fantasy author Abigail Hilton about making money from Patreon, audiobooks, and web comics as well as full-length novels. She doesn’t write in the most popular subgenre of fantasy, and she creates anthropomorphized characters for her adventures, but she’s diversifying her income and making notable money from her work.

Here’s a bit of what we covered:

Supplementing your monthly income with Patreon
What Patreon is exactly and how it works
Patreon versus Kickstarter
Getting people to sign up for your Patreon page and asking for tips versus monthly payments
Choosing rewards that don’t require extra work on your part, because they’re things you would do anyway
Using Podiobooks to find an audience versus publishing audiobooks straight to Audible
The expense of doing full cast recordings for audiobooks and is it worth it?
Finding artists to illustrate your world (and to create extras for Patreon rewards)
Creating web comics as an add-on for your regular fiction series
Hiring reliable artists and whether the expense can be worth it
Facebook ads when you’re an author in a small, less popular niche
Split testing Facebook ads for covers (figuring out which is your most popular cover option before even publishing the book)

Thanks to Abigail for all of the great information. You can visit her website, where she has free ebooks and audios available, and check out her books on Amazon.

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artists, audible, audiobooks, comics, illustrating novels, income as an author, patreon, podiobooks, web comics

SFFMP 31: Producing and Marketing Audiobooks with Simon Whistler

May 19, 2015 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

We got up early to chat with Simon Whistler (who’s currently living in Prague) today. He’s the host of The Rocking Self Publishing Podcast and also the author of Bootstrapping for Indies (Self Publishing on a Budget) and Audiobooks for Indies (The One-Stop Guide for Authors Looking to Make More Money Selling Audiobooks). It’s because of that last book and because of his experience with narrating audiobooks that we wanted to have him on the show. We hadn’t covered marketing (or producing) audiobooks yet, and Simon knows a ton!

The first half of the show is all about finding a narrator and getting your audiobook produced using Amazon’s ACX platform (we also covered equipment and potential pitfalls you should be aware of if you want to do it yourself). In the second half of the show, we got into the marketing side of things.

Here’s some of what we covered related to production:

What is ACX and how does it work to connect authors to narrators/producers?
The royalty-splitting option, for those doing it on a budget, versus the flat-fee-per-finished-hour option
How to get a $100/hour stipend from ACX to make your royalty split option more appealing to narrators
What equipment and software authors need if they’re going to produce their own audiobook (Simon uses a Rode Podcaster USB Dynamic Microphone and has also heard good things about the less expensive Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone. For software, he uses the free Audacity).
Hours verses finished hours and just how much work really goes into producing an audiobook (not to mention doing all those different character voices!)

Here’s what we talked about related to marketing:

Which genres seem to do best in audiobook form (hint: longer books are often more appealing, because most Audible customers pay for credits that get them a book a month, so the longer, higher priced books seem to be better deals).
Making use of the 25 review copies that Audible gives you (and how to make sure the people you give those codes to buy your book instead of someone else’s!). Make sure to check out Simon’s video on Making Better Use of Audible’s Promotional Codes. You can also pick up his Audiobooks for Indies ebook for even more information.
How ACX allows you to share a fifteen minute sample on YouTube, your site, social media, etc. Simon recommends grabbing a scintillating few minutes from the middle rather than the title, acknowledgements, etc.
AudaVoxx, a site where you can list audiobook giveaways.
Taking advantage of Audible’s free-first-book-with-a-subscription policy to entice your mailing list subscribers to grab your book, even if they’ve never been Audible members before and don’t usually buy audiobooks.
The importance of reviews (yes, the ones that are specifically for the audiobook are what you need here)
If there are any sites out there like Bookbub that can help authors sell their audiobooks (alas, the answer is not yet, largely because authors can’t control pricing on their audiobooks and put them on sale)