SFFMP 210: Selling More at Kobo, Relying Less on Amazon, and What’s Coming for Authors in 2019
We talked to return guest Mark Leslie Lefebvre this week. You may remember him as the director of author relations at Kobo, but he’s moved over to the distributor Draft2Digital. We talked about some of the new features coming online there. Mark has recently published a couple of non-fiction books, Killing It on Kobo and The 7 P’s of Publishing Success, so we asked him some Kobo-specific questions as well as his thoughts on succeeding at the non-Amazon retailers and where the self-publishing industry is going in 2019.
If you want to check out the other episodes Mark was on, try Kobo’s New Subscription Service and the State of the Industry (125) and International Sales Trends/Tips and Selling More Ebooks at Kobo with Mark Lefebvre (78).
Here are some of the specifics that we went over this week:
- Author consulting and what some of the common problems are for newer authors.
- How the industry is doing as of December 2018 and whether the ebook market is truly saturated.
- Whether authors need to be smarter these days to succeed.
- Why the digital ebook world can present some challenges for branding and keeping fans once people find one of your books or series and enjoy it.
- How social media, if you’re comfortable learning one or more of the platforms, can help you connect more fully to readers and become an author they remember.
- Some of the basic things you can do to sell more books at Kobo.
- Using the Books2Read site to create links that will redirect readers to their preferred retailer.
- Remembering that Kobo is bigger in other countries than in the US and paying attention to global pricing.
- Kobo’s distribution deal with Walmart in the US.
- Whether you can “make it” wide (in the non-Amazon stores) without getting Bookbub sponsorships or spending a lot on advertising.
- Tips for making readers aware of subsequent books in a series.
- Tips for succeeding in the non-Amazon bookstores.
- Thoughts on Google Play and whether any authors are doing well there.
- Some new features coming up at Draft2Digital including print formatting and D2D Universes (something of a replacement for the now defunct Kindle Worlds).
Make sure to visit Mark on his website (you can contact him there if you have any Draft2Digital-specific questions) and check out Killing It on Kobo for tips on selling more books there. You can also subscribe to Mark’s publishing-related podcast, Stark Reflections. And finally, if you’re a horror/ghost fan, Mark published some new stuff this year! Macabre Montreal: Ghostly Tales, Ghastly Events, and Gruesome True Stories (with Shayna Krishnasamy) and Nocturnal Screams.
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