SFFMP 162: Finding Success in a Niche, When 99-cent Novels Make Sense, and Bucking Cover Trends with Amanda Milo
Our guest this week launched her first novel in April of 2017 to great success. Amanda Milo’s science fiction romance, Stolen by an Alien, stuck in the Top 250 overall in the Amazon store for months and remained near the top of the scifi romance Top 100 too. She’s since published two more novels in the series for the rabid fanbase that she’s already established.
We brought her on to ask about how she launched to such success, why she’s continued to launch her books at 99 cents, and how she used some atypical (for the genre) cover art to find her target audience.
Here’s some of what we covered in more detail:
- How Amanda launched her novel without professional editing or a cover that she loved but made it work anyway.
- Combining 99 cents, Kindle Unlimited, and a story written for a niche audience to find success.
- What level of sex readers are looking for in the science fiction romance category.
- Some popular story types in the genre.
- What readers expect from the alien abduction trope.
- The challenges of writing strong female characters and balancing them with some of the romance tropes of rescues or abductions.
- Using the cover, especially in romance genres, to signal to the reader what to expect as far as heat level, in particular.
- Why Amanda has stuck with 99 cents so long for her books.
- Whether novellas and shorter stories can work in scifi romance.
- Using a Facebook page and Facebook groups to connect with readers.
- Pre-orders or no pre-orders?
You can visit Amanda Milo on Facebook or check out her Amazon page to try out her novels. Her Facebook group, Amanda Milo’s Minions, is also accepting new minions.
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