ARCs – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 94: Putting Together an ARC Team, Getting Lots of Reviews, and Publishing More Often with Anna Hackett

August 16, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Science fiction romance and adventure romance author, Anna Hackett, regularly has 80-100 reviews on her books within a few days of release. We asked her about how she created a great team of reviewers who get early copies and leave prompt reviews. She’s also increased her productivity substantially in the last couple of years and often publishes a short novel each month now, so we asked her about that too.

Here are a few more specifics on what we covered:

Mining your existing readers/newsletter subscribers to find people for a review team (and how to get started building that mailing list if yours doesn’t have many subscribers yet)
The logistics of contacting reviewers with advanced review copies and making sure they can download the ebooks to their readers of choice.
How many reviews you should be shooting for with a new release
Increasing productivity by giving yourself deadlines (even if you don’t have to publish on a certain day)
Writing shorter novels, if it makes sense for your style and your genre
Keeping all the balls in the air when juggling multiple series
Tips for newer authors trying to get those early reviews
Focusing on writing and publishing books as the most effective form of marketing
Whether there’s a downside to giving away review copies to readers who likely would have purchased the books
Do book giveaways and contests help garner more reviews?

If Anna’s books sound interesting to you, she has several permafree adventures that you can check out:

Among Galactic Ruins (Phoenix Adventures — space romance)

Marcus (Hell Squad, Book 1 — dystopian romance)

Time Thief (Anomaly Series, Book 1)

Anna also has a boxed set available for free if you visit her site and sign up for her newsletter.

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advanced review copies, ARCs, book reviews, getting book reviews, mailing lists, newsletters, science fiction romance

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

December 15, 2015 SFFpodcast 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.