Tag: Facebook marketing

SFFMP 212: How to Find Success in Urban Fantasy with Ramy Vance

Author Interview, Podcast

Lindsay got to meet lots of cool authors at the 20Books conference in Las Vegas this fall, and today’s guest was one of those people. Urban fantasy author Ramy Vance was involved in the traditional publishing world for years, but when it came time to publish his fiction, he decided to go indie. He’s written a number of novels and started a new series this past summer, Mortality Bites, where he’s had some of his best success yet. We asked him about it and what he did right and wrong to start selling a significant number of books in the urban fantasy genre.

Here are a few of the specifics that we talked about:

  • How Ramy was first involved in the traditional publishing world and what it taught him about the business.
  • The logistics of getting into libraries and how subsidiary rights trading works.
  • Tools you can use to do your own public relations if you’re hoping for attention from the traditional world (he mentioned SimilarWeb as a resource for analyzing those business’s websites but also said it’s expensive and that our time, as indie authors, may be better invested in writing the next book).
  • Whether it’s worth jumping into urban fantasy as a newer author or if it’s tough to gain traction since it’s so competitive.
  • Making use of some of the popular tropes to attract regular genre readers but then doing fun and creative stuff on the side.
  • Ramy’s experience with going exclusive with Amazon for this series and how advertising and tactics can be different whether one is only selling books or whether selling is secondary to getting borrows and page reads in Kindle Unlimited.
  • How he experimented with adding a sample chapter at the end of his books and found that sales/borrows of the subsequent books were better when he took that out.
  • How different advertising platforms sent different types of traffic (i.e. he got more sales from Facebook and more Kindle Unlimited borrows from AMS ads).
  • His mailing list versus his Facebook group and what he’s prioritizing right now.
  • Experimenting with Instagram.
  • How writing six books before releasing the first one helped him to rapid release and get a leg up.
  • How he approached more than a dozen big-name authors in the genre and found many willing to support him at launch time.
  • Plans for audiobooks through Podium Publishing.
  • Whether to invest in advertising to direct people to your back-list books or to focus on selling the new stuff.

If you’re an urban fantasy fan, make sure to check out the first book in Ramy’s Mortality Bites series on Amazon. You can also see what he’s up to on his website and check out his reader Facebook group: Ramy Vance’s House of the GoneGod Dead.

 

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SFFMP 199: Rapid Release, Marketing Serials, and Going Non-Exclusive with Audiobooks

Group Discussion, Podcast

Today, the guys took on a batch of listener questions that ran the gamut from what’s the best schedule for a rapid release of a trilogy to what kind of markets we’ve targeted with Facebook advertising to what to do (and not to do) when choosing a book title.

And in case you missed it last week, we have a 30% off coupon code for Brian Meek’s Amazon Ads course. For those interested in signing up, you can use the code of SFFMP30: Mastering Amazon Ads: An Author’s Course

Here’s a look at the questions the guys answered:

What’s the best lag time between books in a trilogy rapid release? Is it best to dump all at once? 1/week, 1/2-weeks, or longer in between.

In your ideal rapid release schedule, how many days/weeks/months apart would you release each new novel in a science fiction series?

Any tips for marketing epic fantasy novellas/novella serials?

How do you decide when a series and it’s spin-offs should end?

How does (Lindsay) keep romance from overtaking an adventure story?

For Facebook marketing, do you find one demographic marker more useful than it’s counter-parts? Ie: is it effective to target age, income, etc, or are your best results from targeting by interest? Do you still boost posts?

Are you planning your calendar for 2019? will you be at any conferences this year? I missed you at the Sell More Books Show summit this year, but I can go next year. 🙂 Do Jo and Jeff attend anything?

Promos: is there a deeper marketing reason to choose to run them only on selected markets, or does a world-wide one mean a world-wide bucket of headaches? (See: yours and Jo’s Bookbub books being at the same time discounted on .com and full price on .it)

Lindsay, I’d love to hear about how the blog-novel went. Did it impact the launch much? How about blog traffic? Was there a bump in your other books via affiliate blog links?

Which writing craft books help/have helped you?

What does your outlining process look like?

What’s your best advice for picking a novel’s title?

How do you decide what genre to list as if it’s a bit of everything?

How do you guys get a universal link for one of your Amazon books (Amazon only), or did you not bother? Specifically a link that will send UK readers to the UK store, US readers to the US store, etc. Or did you provide links for all the separate countries?

I would love to hear an updated list of which promo sites you use.

A lot of Book Funnel/Instafreebie group promos I see all have the same group of books, even if there is a “theme” to the promo. Have you seen anyone having success doing a more targeted and small group promo?

I’d like to hear how Patreon is going. Any tips or anything you’d do differently? (I’ve just set up Patreon with early release books + other rewards like personalized copies via Ingram.)

If you need something to read this week, check out Jo Lallo’s The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy.

 

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SFFMP 48: Facebook Advertising That Works with Mark Dawson

Author Interview, Podcast

We chatted with indie thriller author Mark Dawson today, someone who found success before he started tinkering with Facebook advertising, but who then really ratcheted up his sales and earnings by figuring out what’s working over there. He now runs a course to help other authors and has several free instructional videos up at Self Publishing Formula. If you like what you hear in the interview, you may want to check them out.

Here’s some of what we covered:

  • Setting up advertising campaigns versus running boosted posts (Mark doesn’t bother with boosted posts)
  • Sending people directly to Amazon to buy books or, even better, sending them to a mailing list sign-up page and giving them free books (i.e. your starter library or series starter) in exchange for an email address (never advertise just for likes to your Facebook page)
  • Setting a bid price for ads versus letting Facebook choose in order to optimize clicks
  • Choosing a target audience (i.e. as a thriller author, Mark targets fans of Lee Child) based on interests that are likely to make them fans of your work
  • Does it matter if you’re in KDP Select and your books aren’t available everywhere? Will fewer of your clicks convert?
  • Do certain genres perform better than others with Facebook advertising?
  • How much can a new author just jumping in expect to spend?
  • Using Chrome and the Facebook Power Editor for greater control over your ads
  • Taking your existing mailing list, importing it into Facebook, and creating an all new custom audience to target based on the interests of your current subscribers
  • Advertising consistently, day-to-day, versus just advertising when you’re doing a book launch or a sale
  • Tips for making it work even if you’re in a small niche without any big-name authors to target

 

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SFFMP 15: YouTube Marketing, Facebook Events, and Increasing Mailing List Sign-Ups with Bryan Cohen

Author Interview, Podcast

Tonight we interviewed Bryan Cohen, the author of the YA science fiction/fantasy series Ted Saves the World and the co-host of the Sell More Books show. Bryan is a relatively new fiction author, but he’s been publishing non-fiction for a while longer, and he’s sold 35,000 books across all of his titles. He’s definitely got the entrepreneurial spirit, and we got some great tips by talking to him.

Here’s a look at some of what we covered in the interview:

  • How to run a successful Facebook Event that actually sells books
  • Starting a YouTube channel to entice more people to check out your work (Bryan’s new video project is the Bryan Cohen Showen)
  • Networking with other authors
  • Tips for getting more people to sign up for your mailing list (Bryan referenced Joanna Penn’s recent post: How To Grow Your Fiction Email List Subscribers. My Own Case Study)
  • Are any of the other social media platforms (Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc.) worth the time investment?
  • Having a photo shoot done to ensure you get some great (and original) cover art for your series

Click to download the mp3.

 

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Facebook Marketing: Selling Books, Building a Community, and Does Advertising Ever Help?

Group Discussion, Podcast

Today’s show is dedicated to Facebook marketing. How do you use the popular social media platform to sell more books and keep current readers engaged? We took turns answering questions, based on our experiences. We may not be gurus, but we’ve all been on Facebook as authors for 2-4 years, and we had quite a bit to say!

Here’s a little of what we covered:

  • Separate author page or personal page, what’s best?
  • One page or one for every series?
  • How do you get readers to find you and like your page?
  • How important is interaction, and how do you get people to engage with you?
  • Facebook advertising, pay-per-click and boosted posts, are they ever worth it?
  • Groups, can they help with anything?
  • What about events?
  • Has there been a decline in the effectiveness of Facebook over the years?
  • What’s the future going to bring, and how will it impact authors?

 

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