Month: March 2018

SFFMP 174: Outlining Your Novel for More Efficient Writing and Starting New in Epic Fantasy

Author Interview, Podcast

Today, we were joined by return guest Scott King, the author of Outline Your Novel: The How To Guide for Structuring and Outlining Your Novel and The Five Day Novel, as well as numerous fantasy and young adult adventures. He recently jumped into epic fantasy with the first book in his Elderrealm series, Wrath of Dragons. We grilled him on outlining and also how he found starting out in epic fantasy this year after publishing in other genres previously.

Here are some of the specifics that we talked about:

  • How an outline can help an author become more efficient.
  • Whether pantsers can get anything out of outlining.
  • Outlining a single novel versus doing a series.
  • Starting with a pitch and then developing an outline.
  • Mistakes authors make with outlining.
  • What to do if the story diverges from the outline as you write it.
  • How tough it is to break into epic fantasy today as an author new to the genre.
  • Whether Kindle Unlimited/KDP Select is a good idea for epic fantasy.
  • The pros and cons of mailing list swaps.
  • The challenges of genre jumping.

You can find Scott on his website or Twitter, and grab his first epic fantasy novel Wrath of Dragons or his outlining book, Outline Your Novel.

Also, check out his Creators Cast podcast.

 

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

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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SFFMP 172: Making It as a Newer Author, Marketing YA Fantasy, and are Vampires Still “In”?

Uncategorized

Like many new authors, Caroline Peckham‘s first series, a YA fantasy adventure, The Rise of Isaac, didn’t sell as well as she’d hoped. For her second series, she did a lot of market research and switched to a more popular type of YA fantasy, vampires in a contemporary paranormal setting. She also adopted some more effective marketing tactics and had a successful launch last fall. She’s since released a second “V Games” novel and is editing a third, and the series continues to do well, months after the initial launch.

Here are a few of the details that we discussed on the show:

  • Some of the challenges of marketing young adult fiction as a self-published author.
  • What made Caroline decide to switch from one type of YA fantasy to another.
  • Concerns about finding readers when one’s target audience doesn’t have credit cards and doesn’t shop on Amazon.
  • Why Caroline has had more success targeting adult audiences who happen to enjoy young adult fiction.
  • Whether vampires are too crowded a niche to get into or there are still opportunities.
  • How Caroline first found reviewers by seeking out readers in her genre who had reviewed books similar to hers.
  • Finding reviewers on Goodreads and then moving them over to an easily manageable Facebook group.
  • Why Caroline makes her ARC reviewer Facebook group public rather than private and lets people who find her through the platform in to get free review copies.
  • Using the Werble App to create animations that can be used on Facebook to help with promotions.
  • Pricing a Book 1 at 99 cents or 99p in KU to keep it higher in the rankings and bring in readers for the rest of the full-priced series.
  • Which social media platforms Caroline uses and why she didn’t do much with Wattpad, despite it being a popular destination for younger readers.
  • Caroline’s experiments with Facebook advertising and how she found out that the clicks she got weren’t converting that well.
  • Whether vampire stories seem to do better in the US or the UK.

You can visit Caroline on her website or Facebook, and check out her books on Amazon.

 

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