Patty Jansen Talks Selling on Kobo, Google Play, and Networking with Other Authors
For the second time in the history of the podcast, we had a guest on tonight (we’ll be having guests on a lot more often, so if there’s someone you would like to see — who might actually deign to talk to us — let us know). Australian science fiction and fantasy author Patty Jansen came on to talk to us about self-publishing, marketing fads, and how she has ended up selling well on the non-Amazon platforms, especially Kobo.
Here are a few of the topics we covered:
- Patty’s publication history (including a Writers of the Future win) and why she opted for self publishing
- The benefits of belonging to an online workshop
- If there are any specific challenges to selling science fiction and fantasy, as opposed to other genres
- What’s helping her to sell on Kobo and some of the other platforms where many authors struggle to gain traction
- Some tips for selling books on Google Play
- Is it worth following the trends and trying to write what’s popular?
- Organizing multi-author promotions and why you would want to
- Is it still a good time to be an indie author, even if things may be getting tougher, and it’s not as easy to break in?
You can visit Patty on Twitter or on her website. She sometimes blogs about self publishing on her site (check out her recent post,”Kindle Unlimited: a few observations“). The first book in her Icefire Trilogy is currently free on Amazon.