SFFMP 21: Marketing and Publishing Comedic Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Co-Writing, and Rocking It with Twitter
In today’s episode, we talked to John P. Logdson and Chris Young, a comedic fantasy and science fiction writing duo. We covered a lot of ground. Here are some of the highlights:
- Any special challenges with writing humor/comedy?
- Dealing with one-star reviews from people who don’t “get” the humor
- Collaboration — who does what and how do you manage to put out cohesive novels?
- Does collaboration offer any advantages over titles written by a single author?
- Can any writers collaborate well, or does it take a special personality and/or a certain skill set?
- Writing to target less competitive categories on Amazon
- Tricks for producing books more quickly
- Should you mention that the books are humorous or comedic in the blurb or on the cover? So people looking for serious fiction won’t accidentally grab them?
- Are there any marketing advantages to writing fantasy/science fiction comedy?
- How to set up your tweets to market successfully on Twitter (effective hashtag use and Hashtagify for seeing what’s popular or trending + BookLinker to send readers from different countries to the right store)
- Twitter groups and networking with other authors in a smart way
- Marketing/advertising on Facebook, Goodreads, and using giveaways
- The types of marketing John and Chris have tried and that hasn’t done well + what has worked
- What they do to encourage newsletter signups
- A new site for crowdfunding/getting pre-orders specifically for authors: Publishizer.
Tools they use for collaboration: Scrivener, Trelby (screenwriting program), and Dropbox.
Want to check out their work?
For more character-driven stories, try Starliner or the Land of Ononokin books. For more humor, check out Platoon-F. They’ve got a new project coming soon as well, a book called Queen Aurthur, a different (very different) take on the King Aurthur story. You can get in touch with them or find out more at their site, Crimson Myth.
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Great interview and I loved the bit about the reviews on Amazon from people who either don’t get the humor or didn’t know it was humor. I write humor myself and last year wrote a short story called 33AD. This is the first paragraph of a one star review I received recently: “I am a free-thinking atheist, and enjoy humorous pokes at the ridiculousness of religion, and I wish this book (and the author) could burn in Hell.” I’m still living off it lol
That’s a pretty good one. 🙂 Thanks for listening to the show, Darrin!
I really enjoyed this podcast! I liked talking about how writing works with multiple authors on one book. They had some great ideas, like having one person write to keep it in once voice. I’ve heard authors talk about working together, and I’ve heard some say one writes, others say they swap chapters. It was nice to hear “why” they write the way they do.
Thanks for listening, Steve!