SFFMP 44: How Many Books Does It Take to Make a Living as an Author with Amelia Smith

Author Interview, Podcast

On this week’s show, we chatted with fantasy author Amelia Smith about a bunch of data that she crunched based on the Author Earnings Survey over at Hugh Howey’s Author Earnings Report website. The survey and the raw data have been online for a while, but nobody seemed to have tackled putting it together into useful information until Amelia came along. We asked her a bunch of questions about what she found in regard to author income, books on sale, and whether indie or trad publishing is more likely to get a person to a living wage (which she defined as the U.S. average of $32,000 a year).

Here’s some of what we covered:

  • What is the Author Earnings site and where does this survey come in?
  • Who responded (indie, trad published, hybrid, small press, etc.) and how many authors were interviewed?
  • How many books do people have out on average before they reach that living wage?
  • As Amelia says in her analysis, “The majority of authors will never make a living at this, but chances increase both with number of books written and with years in the game. They get as good as 50/50.”
  • Were authors of certain genres more likely to make a living than others (not surprisingly, lots of romance authors of all kinds are doing well, and very few short story, poetry, memoir, etc. folks are making significant money)?
  • What was the common theme with the failure stories (authors with a lot of books out but a low income)?
  • Did it matter what year people started publishing in, or could they put out a lot of books in their first year and get to that living wage quickly?
  • Were slower writers penalized because of the 30/90-cliff and the way the Amazon algorithms work?
  • Were small presses helpful or were most indie authors better off on their own?
  • Amelia’s own experience with Netgalley (she mentioned the Patchwork Press Co-Op as a way to buy into Netgalley, a big company that assists with getting book reviews, for less than an individual membership)

Check out Amelia’s first epic fantasy book for free through the end of September, and visit her website for updates on other projects.

Read the results of the survey and see her graphs over at An Analysis of the Author Earnings Survey Data.

 

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SFFMP 43: Bestseller Joshua Dalzelle Talks Space Opera and Selling Books Without a Website

Author Interview, Podcast

Tonight we interviewed hugely popular space opera author, Joshua Dalzelle. The guy doesn’t have a website, an Amazon bio, and he’s only recently started a mailing list, but he sure sells books. Here’s some of what we discussed tonight:

  • How Joshua got this far without a website, and are websites/social media/mailing lists really needed, or are they overrated?
  • The state of space opera right now (is it more popular than ever?)
  • What makes space opera space opera? Versus some other type of science fiction?
  • Light-hearted sci-fi adventures versus darker, techier sci-fi–is there room for both?
  • Cover art that portrays the tone of the book as well as branding the series
  • AskDavid.com for getting reviews
  • Advertising sites that Joshua hasn’t gotten much mileage out of
  • Are multi-author bundles still useful for getting the word out?
  • How having multiple series going can help feed the sales of both
  • Pricing for novels — is $2.99/$3.99 a good bet or are you leaving money on the table?
  • Incentives for readers to get them onto a mailing list–especially if you get started with one late!

You can find Joshua on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his Omega Force books and the Black Fleet trilogy on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

 

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SFFMP 42: Selling More on iBooks, Boxed Set Strategies, and Using Pre-Orders to Hit Bestseller Lists

Group Discussion, Podcast

Hey, everyone! We shared a lot of information today. We answered a few reader questions and then jumped into Lindsay’s notes from some of the panels at the RWA Con. The topics included selling more books on Apple’s iBooks, setting up multi-author boxed sets, using pre-orders to hit bestseller lists (such as USA Today and the NY Times), and a handful of mistakes to avoid as an author (these were different than some of the mistakes we’ve already shared in the past).

Here’s a closer look at the notes and the links we mentioned on the podcast:

  • Making the USA Today bestseller list with a multi-author boxed set
  • Getting bookmarks and other author swag made
  • John L. Monk‘s report on his experiences with Vellum for ebook formatting.
  • Getting started using a pen name and potential selling/legal complications
  • Starting up your own podcast as promo for your work (or just for schmoozing authors)
  • Short stories, selling them individually versus bundling them into a collection (an article on getting inexpensive covers for short stories/serials done on Fiverr)
  • Selling foreign rights as an indie (using an agent who specializes in foreign rights or finding a contract consultant that specializes in publishing for a one-time deal)
  • Paying for your own translations and the costs (upwards of $10,000 for a 80,000-word novel)
  • Where to consider looking for deals/rights sales — for example, Germany is popular with science fiction and fantasy authors.
  • Babelcube and other sites that connect authors with translators for royalty splits might not be quite there yet (tough to find experienced high-quality translators).
  • Respecting the tropes and giving people what they want/expect to sell more
  • Be “the author” on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter — readers will follow, expecting to be entertained, so keep personal stuff to a minimum
  • Interested in Facebooks ads? Maybe check out Amy Porterfield’s site and podcast.
  • More on Lindsay’s experience with a boxed set and hitting the USA Today list.
  • Using different pen names for different series in different genres
  • How to appear in more popular authors’ also-boughts on Amazon
  • Apple affiliate program and adding specific iBooks links to the backs of your Apple ebooks
  • Requesting your 250 free promo codes on Apple to giveaway your iBooks to early reviewers/bloggers/etc.
  • The best day to release a book if you hope to make a best seller’s list (and how many sales it takes for the USA Today list versus the NYT list)
  • Using Thunderclap or Headtalker to help with a release
  • Setting up “asset-less” pre-orders up to a year in advance on Apple

 

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SFFMP 41: From Indie to Small Press (why and how) with Claire Frank

Author Interview, Podcast

Tonight, after dealing with a few technical difficulties, we interviewed up-and-coming epic fantasy author Claire Frank. She got started in December, 2014, and did well enough to attract a publisher (Realm Walker Publishing), and we asked her about what it’s like for new authors getting started today. When our guest went AWOL briefly, Lindsay started talking about pre-orders and some of her notes from panels at the big RWA Con; we’ll continue discussing pre-orders, iBooks, Facebook advertising, and some of those other interesting topics in next week’s show.

Here are some of the highlights from Claire’s interview:

  • Finding time to write when you’re homeschooling three kids and working a part time job
  • Some of the perks of bouncing ideas off your Lego-loving significant other
  • What made Claire decide to sign on with a small press versus sticking with indie publishing
  • What can a small press offer, and are they more flexible with contracts than the Big 5 publishers?
  • Getting invited to cons and onto panels with a publisher’s help
  • Getting reviews as a first-time author
  • Finding cover art designers and how a good cover can help with everything from reviews to sales
  • Participating in anthologies to increase awareness of all authors under a publisher
  • Who should consider a small press publisher, and how do you get in touch with one if you’re interested?

Make sure to check out Claire’s books and the lego art on her website too!

Update Feb 2016: Claire sent me an email, letting me know she decided to part ways with her publisher and is going it on her own now. Best of luck to her in the future!

 

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SFFMP 40: Going Wide and Selling More on Platforms Besides Amazon

Group Discussion, Podcast

On this hot summer day, we chatted amongst ourselves about going wide and improving sales on the sites other than Amazon, specifically Kobo, Apple, and Barnes & Noble. We even brought up the subscription sites (Scribd and Oyster) and Google Play. We also answered a couple of listener questions.

Here’s a closer look at what we covered:

  • Does it matter what time of year you launch a new series? I.e. are summer sales slow, and should you wait until fall?
  • When is it acceptable to call yourself an Amazon bestseller?
  • What are the pros and cons of publishing on all of the stores versus going exclusive with Amazon?
  • How the heck do you sell books on those other sites anyway? We talked about using the free book or the 99-cent intro boxed set, trying to talk with the distributors to get promotions, linking to all of your books on all of the sites, and including sneak previews to entice the people who read the freebies to pick up the rest of the series.
  • Should you adjust prices at all on the other sites?
  • Is it better to go through a distributor such as Smashwords or Draft2Digital or upload directly everywhere that you can?
  • The link to the “first in series free” thread Lindsay mentioned (though it looks like it isn’t being monitored by Kobo any more). Someone suggested you can fill out this form on Kobo to be considered.

 

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SFFMP 39: Creating Successful Series, Permafree Boxed Sets, and Epic vs. Urban Fantasy with Robert J. Crane

Author Interview, Podcast

On today’s episode, we chatted with successful epic and urban fantasy author, Robert J. Crane. He’s sold more than a million books and was able to turn writing into his day job early on. Now, he has four successful series going, including his well-known Girl in the Box books.

Here’s a little of what we covered:

  • Productivity — how Robert has written and published 26 novels in the last four years
  • Writing books as a business and to make money versus treating this as an art and doing it just for the love
  • Cliffhangers and planning out a series
  • How series have been the key to Robert’s success and thoughts on writing/publishing multiple series at once
  • Audience size for epic fantasy versus urban fantasy (stuff set in our world)
  • Is it easier marketing contemporary sci-fi/fantasy versus secondary world stuff?
  • Having a social media presence, since not everyone will sign up for your newsletter (or filters might keep messages from getting through)
  • Doing not only a perma-free Book 1 for marketing but a perma-free boxed set (books 1-3) in a longer series
  • The “Big Name” approach for cover art — is there a point at which the author name should be larger than the title?
  • Getting fantasy maps done at The Cartographers’ Guild.

If you would like to check out Robert’s books, you can jump into his world for free with The Sanctuary Series (Books 1-3) or Alone (The Girl in the Box, Book 1). Find out more about all of his books on his site.

Robert also has some great and solid advice for indie authors on his blog, well worth the read.

 

 

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SFFMP 38: Writing 5,000 Words an Hour and Selling Zombies and Werewolves with Chris Fox

Author Interview, Podcast

On today’s show, we chatted with Chris Fox about marketing zombies, werewolves, and vampires, and also about how he writes incredibly quickly. He holds down a 60-hour-a-week day job as an app developer and doesn’t have a lot of time to devote to fiction, so he’s learned to be productive, logging 5,000 words in an hour. He’s even written about it in a book designed to help other authors: 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter.

Here are some of the highlights from the interview:

  • Using the start-up mentality for indie publishing
  • Investing in your product (including scouring DeviantArt for hours to find just the right artists!)
  • How audiobook sales (from Audible) can help Kindle sales on Amazon
  • Is it helpful to use popular tropes, such as werewolves, zombies, and vampires? Or do readers have expectations that can be hard to meet if you’re doing something slightly different?
  • What advertising Chris has done and what’s been effective
  • Why it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend much time and money on marketing when you only have one or two books out
  • Utilizing a mailing list to make promoting future books easier
  • How Chris is writing so darned many words in an hour
  • Addressing the argument that writing faster means writing poorly
  • Using voice recognition software effectively as a fiction writer

If you’re looking for more information on marketing, you might want to visit Chris’s site and check out some of the articles he’s written for writers:

If Chris’s fiction sounded interesting to you, give his first book, No Such Thing as Werewolves, a try.

 

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SFFMP 37: Amazon Algorithms and Making a Book Stick

Group Discussion, Podcast

Today, Jeff, Jo, and Lindsay shared what they know about how the Amazon algorithms work, about categories and keywords and sales rankings, and about what’s working now to make a book stick and start selling on its own. They also discussed KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited and how borrows from that program are currently affecting visibility and sales rankings.

Here are links to some of the sites and books we mentioned:

 

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SFFMP 36: Susan Kaye Quinn on Tips for Going Pro, Genre Hopping, and Selling Lots of Science Fiction

Author Interview, Podcast

Today we chatted with best-selling science fiction author Susan Kaye Quinn, and she had a lot of amazing advice. Here’s a look at some of what we covered:

  • How important the science is in science fiction (Susan has a PhD in engineering, so she knows her stuff, but says she puts emotion before tech)
  • Trying to develop new worlds and plots versus using popular tropes
  • Blurbing: do you use your own words or fall back on taglines like (this is Jo’s contribution) “Indiana Jones meets Firefly in a submarine” (FYI, Lindsay would totally read that.)
  • Some of Susan’s favorite marketing tactics that have worked over the years and that continue to work (she talked about big levers versus small levers, choosing to do things that get a big response)
  • Genre hopping — avoid or do it if you like it?
  • Kindle Unlimited and thoughts on serials now that the KU rules have changed
  • Overrated and underrated types of marketing (Susan isn’t a big fan of Facebook advertising and doesn’t think social media matters much when it comes to selling books)
  • Strategies for getting readers to pick up other series you’ve written
  • Getting more people onto a mailing list and how often to email them once they’re there
  • Tips for keeping everything in perspective once writing is your full-time job

For more great advice from Susan, check out her books for authors:

Also check out the video Susan mentioned, Facing Your Fears in Indie Publishing.

 

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SFFMP 35: The Challenges of Selling Cross-Genre Fiction with Derek Siddoway

Author Interview, Podcast

Tonight we chatted with “medieval western” fantasy author Derek Siddoway. We discussed the challenges of marketing cross-genre fiction and also grilled him for tips he could share based on his experience in his day job at a PR agency. Before we got into the interview, we talked a bit about the recent changes to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program and what we think about them. You can get a summary of the changes on Kboards (and hear a lot of other opinions too).

Here’s some of what we went over during the interview:

  • Writing in a tiny cross-genre niche versus trying to break into a bigger genre, such as epic fantasy
  • Choosing cover art when you’re straddling genres
  • Choosing an Amazon category for your book when nothing really fits?
  • Are there some genres that just shouldn’t be crossed?
  • Getting started with social media (and how not to do it)
  • Being aware of your reputation and being a positive part of the online community
  • Does hiring a PR agency ever make sense for an indie author?
  • Should indies try some of the marketing that traditionally published authors (with publishers paying their way) do? Such as book signings and book tours?
  • Blogging as a form of marketing
  • Using “subscriber perks” as part of newsletter marketing

You can find out more about Derek on his site and check out his first book online. Also, get self-publishing tips for authors who can’t quite quit their day jobs yet on his Everyday Author blog.

 

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