collaborating – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 141: Succeeding in Urban Fantasy, Collaborating, and Quitting the Day Job with CN Crawford

July 18, 2017 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

This week, we chatted with urban fantasy authors Christine and Nick Crawford who write under the name CN Crawford. Christine has recently been able to quit the day job and go full time with the writing. After starting out publishing one book in 2014 and one in 2015, they got rolling in 2016, and now have several series going and selling well. We talked about urban fantasy and what it’s taking to succeed right now.

Here are some of the specific details from our conversation:

Collaborating as a husband and wife team.
Dealing with differences of opinion when your writing partner is your spouse.
Whether it takes anything special to break into the popular urban fantasy niche.
Thoughts on upcoming trends for urban fantasy.
Whether the genre expects male or female protagonists.
Giving away a free extra that ties into your main series in order to entice newsletter signups.
Using Bookfunnel to facilitate ebook giveaways.
Predominantly using Amazon and Facebook ads and not doing much with the typical promo sites.

Find them on their website or join their CN Crawford Facebook group. If you’re on Amazon, you can check out the first books in the Dark Fae FBI series or Demons of Fire and Night.

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cn crawford, collaborating, urban fantasy

SFFMP 126: Breaking Out, Five Figure Months, and Writing in Someone Else’s World

April 4, 2017 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Fantasy author Justin Sloan joins us this week to talk about why the traditional “just write the next book” advice may not always be the right tactic for every author in every stage of his career. He also discusses how he broke out and went from small successes to big ones when he started reaching out to other authors for collaborations. He ended up working with Michael Anderle and co-writing a series with him in his popular Kurtherian Gambit world. Since then, he’s started selling a lot more books, and he just quit his day job to write full time.

Here are a few more details of what we covered:

Why Justin thinks some of his series have done significantly better than others.
The challenges of writing series in lots of different subgenres of fantasy instead of sticking with one.
How he reached out to other authors and was very proactive in finding people to collaborate with.
How he got into co-writing a series with Michael Anderle in Michael’s world, and what it’s meant for his career.
Whether face-to-face or phone meetings are necessary for co-writing or it can all be done through email and Google Docs or some such.
Managing the finances and accounting when writing with several different authors on different projects.
Why Facebook can be such a powerful marketing tool and what to post on your page.
Posting snippets of up-coming books to get readers excited before the release.

Please visit Justin’s website to learn more about his work and grab some free books, or like his author page on Facebook to see what he’s doing there.

Justin is also the co-author of the Creative Writing Career Podcast. Check it out if you’re looking for another show to listen to.

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collaborating, fantasy, genre hopping, Justin sloan, michael anderle, urban fantasy, vampires

SFFMP 124: Collaborating and Networking with Other Authors to Reach Larger Audiences

March 21, 2017 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

We had a full house tonight with Jo, Jeff, and Lindsay talking to J Thorn, J.F. Penn, and Zach Bohannon, three authors Lindsay is currently collaborating with for a dark fantasy project. Not unexpectedly, our show topic is collaboration, something we’ve talked about before but not for a while. We also discussed networking with other authors and even store merchandizers and how you can get more eyeballs on your work by doing some of these group projects or participating in group promotions.

Here are a few of the details of what we discussed:

Some of the benefits of collaboration, both from a writing perspective and from a marketing perspective.
Growing your audience through exposure to other authors’ audiences.
Leaning more about your craft through working closely with other authors.
Approaching people you might be interested in working with.
How accounting works when you’re splitting the earnings and expenses among two or more authors.
Handling differences that might come up during the project.
Marketing the finished project and what to do when some of the authors usually write in different genres and have different kinds of lists.
Networking with other authors for marketing opportunities that don’t involve actual writing collaboration.
Going to conventions, book expos, etc. to meet other authors and also store merchandizers to get on their radar.

You can check out more on the collaborative project (American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice) right here.

Interested in more interviews? J Thorn was also on the show back with Episode 52: Collaborating and Organizing Multi-Author Boxed Sets. Zach Bohannon talked with us on Episode 49: Productivity and First Book Success.

J.F. Penn (AKA Joanna Penn) also runs the informative Creative Penn podcast for author-prenuers.

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collaborating, j thorn, joanna penn, marketing, networking, Zach Bohannon

SFFMP 21: Marketing and Publishing Comedic Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Co-Writing, and Rocking It with Twitter

March 11, 2015 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

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.