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

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

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

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.

 

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SFFMP 61: Using Short Fiction for “Gatekeeper Cred” and Editing Tips with Mike Reeves-McMillian

Author Interview, Podcast

Today we chatted with Mike Reeves-McMillian, former copy editor with a publishing house and current writer of short and novel-length speculative fiction. He shared some tips for self-editing and talked about how short story sales can still be useful and what it means to be a “light hybrid author.”

Here are a few more notes from our discussion:

  • Using short story sales to gain “gatekeeper cred.”
  • Why Mike likes magazines and anthologies rather than attempting to sell novels to houses (they’re “less rightsy-grabby,” have a quicker turn-around, and you end up making more per word than is typical with novel advances).
  • Sites for finding short story markets: Duotrope (fee) and The Submission Grinder (free)
  • Tips for catching errors in your own work (such as changing fonts and reading upside down — yes, really).
  • Some of the common editing errors he sees, both in self-published work and in traditionally published books.
  • Clippings, a tool that will will take the output of your Kindle notes and highlights and transform it into a spreadsheet or several other formats.

Check out Mike’s novels and short stories, and of course his helpful The Well-Presented Manuscript: Just What You Need to Know to Make Your Fiction Look Professional. (You can find quite a bit of free information on the page for his book.)

To see his reviews for speculative fiction, visit The Review Curmudgeon. He’s also active on Google+.

 

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SFFMP 60: Rocking the Charts in YA Fantasy with New Author Elise Kova

Author Interview, Podcast

We interviewed new YA fantasy author, Elise Kova, on the show today, and I think you guys will enjoy the listen. At the end of the summer, she launched her first book, Air Awakens, and it’s done great in sales and earned a lot of positives reviews. She managed all of those sales with a full priced offering (3.99) and also without jumping into KDP Select. She’s done so well with it and the follow-up books in the series that she’ll be switching to writing full time soon.

We asked her about writing and marketing YA fantasy, launching a successful first book, accumulating a street team, getting bloggers to reveal your cover, and having paperbacks and hardbacks as well as ebooks made. (She uses Gatekeeper Press to handle the formatting and get physical copies made.)

Elise talked about getting custom cover illustrations done for her books, which have doubtless helped sales. Her artist is Merilliza Chan, whom she found on Deviant Art.

She also spoke about getting her start on FictionPress and whether that can be useful for building an author platform. Listen to the show because there’s a lot of great information in it!

Once you’re done, you can find Elise at her website, on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook.

 

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SFFMP 59: Pricing Ebooks for Success (and sales!)

Group Discussion, Podcast

On today’s show, we discussed just about everything we could think of related to ebook pricing. What should the standard price for a novel be? Is it ever worth doing a 99-cent ebook launch? Should you ever price an ebook above $5? What’s the point where you can maximize income? How long after launch should you wait to run a sale? Are we past the era where pricing at 99 cents can help a book to “stick” on Amazon? Should you do anything different with your pricing when it comes to international markets?

All of these topics and many more are in the show, so take a listen!

Also, for those interested in Patty’s group SF/F/H promos, you can sign up on her site.

 

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SFFMP 58: Marketing Stand Alone Novels and Different Types of Series

Group Discussion, Podcast

Today, we answered some reader questions/comments about bank accounts for your self-publishing business and making your author site mobile friendly, and then we jumped into discussing marketing strategies for stand alone novels, as well as several different types of series.

The main types of series we discussed are:

  • Series with continuing characters where each novel is a complete story
  • Series where there is an overarching storyline with multiple plot threads that only get wrapped up in the final book
  • Series with major romance elements that have different characters and happily ever afters in each novel.

Naturally, we spoke of everything in a science fiction and fantasy context. Even though some of these series types are more popular in other genres, there are definitely plenty of examples in SF & F. We talked about the pros and cons when it comes to marketing each.

Here are the links that listener Will Norman gave us for checking to see if your website is mobile-friendly (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/) and also for getting pop-up newsletter forms to add to your website: https://sumome.com/

Don’t forget to check out Jo’s first book… in German!

 

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SFFMP 57: Cover Design That Sells Books with Sylvia Frost

Author Interview, Podcast

Today we chatted with our first cover designer, Sylvia Frost. Not only does she have some tips for authors in regard to getting the cover of their dreams, but she’s done some analysis of the Top 100s in paranormal romance/urban fantasy, science fiction romance, epic fantasy, and science fiction.

Here are some of the topics we touched on during the show:

  • What mistakes do authors sometimes make in their communications with designers?
  • Is it important to look at the Top 100s for your subgenre and to emulate what popular books are doing? What about what traditional publishing is putting out?
  • What’s trending insofar as science fiction and fantasy covers go?
  • How much should you expect to pay for cover art (stock photos, versus custom illustrations, versus a photo shoot with models)?
  • Should the author name be larger than the title?
  • What are some tricks for thinking ahead and branding a series with common elements?
  • If you’re a new author, when should you contact a cover designer, and how long can you expect the process to take for various types of covers?
  • How faithful to the story/characters should a cover be?
  • Nods to other designers: Tom Edwards for spaceships/sci-fi and Gene Mollica for high-end custom illustrations with models + photo shoots.

Sylvia has a couple of blog posts you may want to check out too:

Also take a look at the files Sylvia and her brother put together about some of the common cover elements for best sellers in several categories on Amazon:

She’s still accepting new clients, and as a reminder, she offered our listeners 10% off, so say you heard about her here first when getting in touch! Here’s a look at her portfolio on her site.

Sylvia Frost also writes paranormal romance, so check out her books if you’re looking for a read. The first book in her Moonfate series is free right now, and you can see what she’s doing for covers!

 

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SFFMP 56: Self-Pub vs. Small Press vs. Trad + Effective World Building with Liana Brooks and Amy Laurens

Author Interview, Podcast

Today we chatted with Liana Brooks and Amy Laurens, sci-fi and fantasy authors who both got their start with short stories and have branched out into novellas, novels, and creating their own press: Inkprint Press.

Here’s some of what we covered today:

  • The differences in marketing when you’re indie published, small press published, and traditionally published, including how much work you can expect to do on your own.
  • The importance of networking with other authors, especially as an indie author.
  • Participating in anthologies (bonus points if you can get into an anthology with a bigger name author)
  • Getting the rights back to previously published short stories and self-publishing them
  • The challenges of marketing novella-length fiction
  • Getting custom business cards for each of your series, so you can tailor what you’re trying to sell to the individual you meet (they use Moo.com NFC-chip cards to allow people to hold the card up to a smart phone and automatically get a free download delivered right to the phone)
  • Aspects of social media that they’ve found useful
  • Are blog tours still worth it? And organizing one as an indie
  • Do you run into problems when cross-promoting between indie and trad pubbed books?
  • World building tips from a science stud (Amy) who has a book on world building coming out in 2016 — you can sign up to hear when it’ll be out on her site: From the Ground Up, notification list.

Both authors have work in the free Tales from the SFR Brigade that you can check out. Their books are, of course, available from Inkprint Press as well as the usual spots. Liana recommends trying her Even Villians Fall in Love series (superhero romance) or The Day Before Time (sci-fi).

 

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SFFMP 55: Launch Strategies, Pitfalls of Being Prolific, and How to Know When a Book Is Ready

Group Discussion, Podcast

Tonight we were joined by a fan of the show and fellow podcaster, Edward Giordano. For a change, he interviewed us, asking questions he had as a new author. We hope our answers will be useful to some of you, as well!

Here’s some of what we went over:

  • How to get books and ebooks into libraries (Here’s the interview with the librarian that Lindsay mentioned.)
  • Keeping characters/settings/themes fresh when you’re prolific and you’re publishing a lot of books
  • How to launch your first book or books as a new author
  • Whether KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited is the way to go as a new author
  • Whether Facebook or in-person launch parties are worth doing
  • If it’s your first book, how do you know if it’s ready to be published?
  • Making short stories or novelettes profitable
  • How to know if a story idea is worth pursuing
  • Are paperbacks and audiobooks worth the time and cost of producing them?
  • Are in-person events worth it for selling books?

Edward hasn’t published his first book yet, but you can visit his SciFan Podcast, where he and his host chat about science fiction and fantasy books and television shows.

Edward also mentioned a helpful book that you might like to check out: Nail Your Story: Add Tension, Build Emotion, and Keep Your Readers Addicted (Growth Hacking For Storytellers #2)

 

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