SFFMP 208: Improving Visibility, Launching New Pen Names, and the “Trifecta of Indie Success”
This week, we’re joined by fantasy and science fiction author Nicholas Erik, who also writes and experiments under the pen name D.N. Erikson. He’s an analytical guy who’s always observing what’s working and what’s not, both for his own work and for others. Before we jump into the details of the show, here are links to his site where he’s got some great foundational material up:
http://nicholaserik.com/start/
And here’s the guest post on advertising that he did on David Gaughran’s blog:
How to Advertise and Sell More Books
Now, here are some of the details we discussed in the show:
- Reasons for launching a pen name and whether it should be secret or not.
- Trying a new series and new genre when you’re not getting the results you hoped for from your first effort.
- Nick’s “trifecta of indie success” — marketing, craft, and productivity.
- Tips for increasing productivity and getting more novels written.
- Linking writing with a certain time of day (i.e. when you get home from work or when you first get up in the morning), so it’s easier to turn it into a daily habit. Here’s a guest post Nick wrote with more details on the habit linking: https://thewritepractice.com/daily-routines
- Timed writing sprints to help get the words down.
- Why so many people’s marketing efforts end up failing, because the craft wasn’t there and readers didn’t continue past Book 1.
- Whether you should wait to start marketing until you’ve finished your first novel or start “building a platform” while you’re still working on it.
- Some of the basics of setting up a mailing list and where to find cross-promotional opportunities to start gaining subscribers.
- Using Prolific Works (formerly InstaFreebie) to find promo opportunities and give away free stories for sign-ups.
- Another give-away site he’s found useful is Ryan Zee’s Book Sweeps (this was down at the time of recording, but we’re including the link in the hope that it’s up again soon).
- If there’s a number to aim for when it comes to acquiring email subscribers.
- Whether you should have multiple lists if you write in different genres and/or under different pen names.
- Nick likes Convert Kit for managing his lists.
- Whether there’s truth to Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 true fans” essay — is that all you need to become a full time author, and what’s a true fan, anyway?
- If promo sites are still worth it in this age of Facebook/Amazon/Bookbub PPC ads.
- Nick’s big list of promo sites and his rankings for how effective they are (updated a couple of months ago): http://nicholaserik.com/promo-sites/
- Some of the fundamentals of advertising and at what point it has the potential to become profitable (it’s tough these days to even break even on a stand-alone book), assuming you do enough things right.
- Debating the ideal length of a series.
- The advertising advantage people in Kindle Unlimited have, from KU reads even on free books to making things appealing through Countdown Deals. (Nick mentions that there’s a lot more information on using the Kindle Countdown Deals effectively in David Guaghran’s free book, Amazon Decoded, which is a bonus when you sign up for his newsletter (sign up over at his site: https://davidgaughran.com/).
- Some of Nick’s tips when it comes to Facebook ads.
It was a jam-packed show, so hopefully you got something out of it. Make sure to check out Nick’s site, and you can also take a peek at some of his books under his name and others under his pen name on Amazon.
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