SFFMP 96: Switching to Epic Fantasy and Rocking It with Phil Tucker

We chatted with Phil Tucker about his time working at Penguin, his first couple of series (including paranormal romance novels published under a pen name), and his new Chronicles of the Black Gate epic fantasy series, which has been selling great since its release back in May. Even though his previous experience was in paranormal and vampires, he had a solid launch, and we grilled him on what he did in designing and marketing the new series.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the topics we hit on:

• Phil’s experience working in the content marketing department at Penguin publishing
• Why he chose self-publishing instead of traditional publishing
• Learning the ropes with his first vampire series
• Starting a paranormal romance pen name, finding some success, but then switching away from it
• Going back to his first love with epic fantasy
• Going into debt to invest in great cover art
• Studying the blurbs of top-selling books in the epic fantasy genre and making sure he had the best package possible when he launched
• Participating in Mark Lawrence’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off and gaining some attention and reviews from that
• Using a free prequel to encourage mailing list sign-ups
• Keeping to a two-month release schedule even while writing long epic fantasy novels and working full time at the day job

Check out Phil’s books on Amazon or visit his website for more information. Oh, and make sure to check out the beautiful covers on his epic fantasy series. Here’s a link to the first book.

| Open Player in New Window

Click to download the mp3.

Subscribe to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast on iTunes.

Subscribe to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast on YouTube.

Subscribe to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast via RSS.

Like us on Facebook.