Month: December 2018

SFFMP 213: Marketing Plans for 2019, Meta Data and SEO Explained, and Which Advertising Platforms are Best for Authors?

Group Discussion, Podcast

We recorded early this week, since Christmas is on a Tuesday, so we hope you enjoy the show while you’re traveling or after you’ve had fun with the holidays. The three of us answered listener questions that covered the range from what the heck is meta data and SEO to what kind of marketing we plan to try in 2019 and which advertising platforms we’ve found best for their books.

Here’s a list of the questions as well as some Bookbub-related links that Lindsay promised:

  • How do you market cross-over fiction such as a mix between urban fantasy and near-future-SF?
  • Is urban fantasy with a lighter humorous note a trend now?
  • What is meta data and SEO, and does it matter for authors?
  • How much value is there to in-house promos on the various retailers, such as prime reading on Amazon, the promo tab on Kobo, and Apple and B&N features?
  • What new will Jo, Jeff, and Lindsay be trying in 2019 in regard to marketing?
  • Are book blog tours worth your time as an author?
  • What should you do to build buzz and sell books if you don’t have money to spend on advertising?
  • Who are the guys’ favorite authors and how did they influence them?
  • How do you go about improving as a novelist and keeping new books from being too much like what you’ve written before?
  • Have you tried to publish your audiobooks on Spotify?
  • Do you need an ISBN for an Amazon paperback and a different one for an IngramSpark paperback?
  • What’s the biggest thing you learned/realized in 2018, and how will that change your approach to publishing in 2019?
  • How would you go about calculating ROI for advertising a series that doesn’t have a set reading order? Whenever people talk about this calculation, it always hinges on figuring out your readthrough, but if the series has multiple entry points and you can skip books, what then?
  • What do you find is the most effective platform for authors for ads?
  • What marketing avenues would you recommend for authors who aren’t big fans of marketing?
  • How have your audiobook sales done for your different series? Does releasing a new audiobook for a backlist book help boost sales?
  • What’s going on if you’re struggling to get impressions and clicks are expensive for Bookbub ads? (Links: All About Bookbub CPM Ads and Becoming a #1 Bestseller on Amazon with Adam Croft, Bookbub Insights Blog for Authors, The Best Bookbub Ads of 2018)
  • Can you change your author name on Amazon after you’ve published a book?

 

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SFFMP 212: How to Find Success in Urban Fantasy with Ramy Vance

Author Interview, Podcast

Lindsay got to meet lots of cool authors at the 20Books conference in Las Vegas this fall, and today’s guest was one of those people. Urban fantasy author Ramy Vance was involved in the traditional publishing world for years, but when it came time to publish his fiction, he decided to go indie. He’s written a number of novels and started a new series this past summer, Mortality Bites, where he’s had some of his best success yet. We asked him about it and what he did right and wrong to start selling a significant number of books in the urban fantasy genre.

Here are a few of the specifics that we talked about:

  • How Ramy was first involved in the traditional publishing world and what it taught him about the business.
  • The logistics of getting into libraries and how subsidiary rights trading works.
  • Tools you can use to do your own public relations if you’re hoping for attention from the traditional world (he mentioned SimilarWeb as a resource for analyzing those business’s websites but also said it’s expensive and that our time, as indie authors, may be better invested in writing the next book).
  • Whether it’s worth jumping into urban fantasy as a newer author or if it’s tough to gain traction since it’s so competitive.
  • Making use of some of the popular tropes to attract regular genre readers but then doing fun and creative stuff on the side.
  • Ramy’s experience with going exclusive with Amazon for this series and how advertising and tactics can be different whether one is only selling books or whether selling is secondary to getting borrows and page reads in Kindle Unlimited.
  • How he experimented with adding a sample chapter at the end of his books and found that sales/borrows of the subsequent books were better when he took that out.
  • How different advertising platforms sent different types of traffic (i.e. he got more sales from Facebook and more Kindle Unlimited borrows from AMS ads).
  • His mailing list versus his Facebook group and what he’s prioritizing right now.
  • Experimenting with Instagram.
  • How writing six books before releasing the first one helped him to rapid release and get a leg up.
  • How he approached more than a dozen big-name authors in the genre and found many willing to support him at launch time.
  • Plans for audiobooks through Podium Publishing.
  • Whether to invest in advertising to direct people to your back-list books or to focus on selling the new stuff.

If you’re an urban fantasy fan, make sure to check out the first book in Ramy’s Mortality Bites series on Amazon. You can also see what he’s up to on his website and check out his reader Facebook group: Ramy Vance’s House of the GoneGod Dead.

 

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SFFMP 211: How to Use Your Newsletter to Build Engagement and Fan Loyalty

Author Interview, Podcast

Not only was this week’s episode jam-packed with newsletter tips for authors but it turned out to be our longest show ever! You may want to turn it into a two-parter or at least get a beverage so you stay hydrated while you listen.

Our guest was Tammi Labrecque, author of Newsletter Ninja, along with numerous books under various secret pen names. She’s published in romance, fantasy, urban fantasy, mystery, LitRPG, and horror, so she’s got a wide range of experience as an author, but she’s also super excited to talk newsletters.

We covered a ton of great information and answered Twitter questions. Here are some of the highlights (and continue to the end for a huge list of resources that Tammi sent along to share):

  • Whether having two (or more) pen names is twice the work.
  • How Tammi got so interested in newsletters.
  • Why newsletters are so important for authors and why you shouldn’t listen to those people who say they’re dead.
  • Setting up an autoresponder sequence to send a series of welcome emails to new subscribers.
  • How long of a sequence of emails authors should send out and what kinds of things to cover.
  • Adding a tip for readers about how to “white list” your email address to the top of each email.
  • Which mailing list providers Tammi recommends.
  • How to keep subscribers engaged and how to keep your emails from going into spam or promotions folders.
  • How often you should be sending out newsletters.
  • Whether you should send out plain text emails, use images, or mix it up.
  • Why your “email reputation” is important to the various email providers and how to boost it.
  • Three things authors should pay attention to when sending out newsletters: open rates, click rates, and responses.
  • What realistic numbers/percentages are for those.
  • The most effective method for getting subscribers to forward your emails to friends.
  • Whether to share short stories in emails, share snippets, or just provide a link to the story on your website.
  • What sets one newsletter apart from another and makes people look forward to receiving it?
  • Should you have separate newsletters and/or landing pages if you write in different genres?
  • How often should you cull your list?
  • How can you reactivate a list you haven’t used in a long time without getting a bunch of unsubscribes?
  • What are some examples of engaging questions you can ask to encourage readers to respond?

If you’ve found Tammi’s information useful, make sure to check out her book Newsletter Ninja for more tips and advice. You can also visit her online at https://newsletterninja.net/ and (for editing and formatting) http://larksandkatydids.com/.

Resources Tammi suggests:

Articles on avoiding SPAM filters:

https://www.yesware.com/blog/email-spam/

https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/avoid-email-spam-filter/

https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/how-to-avoid-a-spam-filter-5-rules.html

https://econsultancy.com/blog/64878-45-words-to-avoid-in-your-email-marketing-subject-lines (plus all the links in “Further reading” at the end of the article)

Just straight-up lists of SPAM words:

https://emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-ebook/spam-words.aspx

https://www.mannixmarketing.com/blog/spam-trigger-words/

https://www.simplycast.com/blog/100-top-email-spam-trigger-words-and-phrases-to-avoid/

https://prospect.io/blog/455-email-spam-trigger-words-avoid-2018/

http://blog.automational.com/2016/03/08/spam-trigger-words-to-avoid/

https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30684/the-ultimate-list-of-email-spam-trigger-words.aspx

Subject line articles:

https://sumo.com/stories/best-email-subject-lines

https://www.digitalmarketer.com/101-best-email-subject-lines-2014/

https://optinmonster.com/101-email-subject-lines-your-subscribers-cant-resist/

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-email-subject-lines-list

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/31/email-subject-lines

 

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SFFMP 210: Selling More at Kobo, Relying Less on Amazon, and What’s Coming for Authors in 2019

Author Interview, Podcast

We talked to return guest Mark Leslie Lefebvre this week. You may remember him as the director of author relations at Kobo, but he’s moved over to the distributor Draft2Digital. We talked about some of the new features coming online there. Mark has recently published a couple of non-fiction books, Killing It on Kobo and The 7 P’s of Publishing Success, so we asked him some Kobo-specific questions as well as his thoughts on succeeding at the non-Amazon retailers and where the self-publishing industry is going in 2019.

If you want to check out the other episodes Mark was on, try Kobo’s New Subscription Service and the State of the Industry (125) and International Sales Trends/Tips and Selling More Ebooks at Kobo with Mark Lefebvre (78).

Here are some of the specifics that we went over this week:

  • Author consulting and what some of the common problems are for newer authors.
  • How the industry is doing as of December 2018 and whether the ebook market is truly saturated.
  • Whether authors need to be smarter these days to succeed.
  • Why the digital ebook world can present some challenges for branding and keeping fans once people find one of your books or series and enjoy it.
  • How social media, if you’re comfortable learning one or more of the platforms, can help you connect more fully to readers and become an author they remember.
  • Some of the basic things you can do to sell more books at Kobo.
  • Using the Books2Read site to create links that will redirect readers to their preferred retailer.
  • Remembering that Kobo is bigger in other countries than in the US and paying attention to global pricing.
  • Kobo’s distribution deal with Walmart in the US.
  • Whether you can “make it” wide (in the non-Amazon stores) without getting Bookbub sponsorships or spending a lot on advertising.
  • Tips for making readers aware of subsequent books in a series.
  • Tips for succeeding in the non-Amazon bookstores.
  • Thoughts on Google Play and whether any authors are doing well there.
  • Some new features coming up at Draft2Digital including print formatting and D2D Universes (something of a replacement for the now defunct Kindle Worlds).

Make sure to visit Mark on his website (you can contact him there if you have any Draft2Digital-specific questions) and check out Killing It on Kobo for tips on selling more books there. You can also subscribe to Mark’s publishing-related podcast, Stark Reflections. And finally, if you’re a horror/ghost fan, Mark published some new stuff this year! Macabre Montreal: Ghostly Tales, Ghastly Events, and Gruesome True Stories (with Shayna Krishnasamy) and Nocturnal Screams.

 

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