giveaways – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 105: A Successful Stand Alone YA Fantasy Novel Launch and Building a Big Mailing List

November 1, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

This week, we chatted with Megan Crewe, a YA author who shifted from traditional publishing to self-publishing for her latest release, a contemporary YA fantasy with Asian flare, A Mortal Song. She was launching this as a stand alone, with no future series planned, so we asked her how she went about having a good launch with a single title.

** Note, we had a tech problem with Google Hangouts cutting the show out early. Sorry about that. It’s just the last few minutes that are missing.

Here are a few more details on what we covered:

Whether Asian-inspired fantasy is challenging to market since it’s a smaller niche.
The challenges of launching a stand alone novel versus a Book 1 in a new series.
Pricing strategies for launch.
Building up a big mailing list quickly with giveaways.
Doing mailing list swaps with other authors in your genre.
Megan’s KBoards thread about her launch and the sponsorship sites she booked.
Marketing for traditionally published books versus indie books.
Genre hopping under the science fiction and fantasy umbrella.
Pre-orders when launching a book that’s exclusive with Amazon (KDP Select), yay or nay?
Publishing a paperback ahead of time to enable early reviews on your Kindle book page.
Strategies for getting early reviews.

Interested in learning more about Megan or checking out her books? Visit her on her website or check her out on Amazon. You can also find A Mortal Song on Amazon.

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asian fantasy, giveaways, mailing list, mailing list swap, megan crewe, novel launch, stand alone novels, ya fantasy

SFFMP 88: Using Free Ebooks to Grow Your Mailing List and Increase Readership with Bookfunnel’s Damon Courtney

July 5, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

We’re joined today by Damon J. Courtney, heroic fantasy author and the founder of Bookfunnel.com, a service that Jo and Lindsay use to distribute eARCs to readers and bonus goodies for newsletter subscribers. Since Damon sees a lot of free ebooks and how people are using them, we decided to ask him about trends and strategies for using our freebies to increase our readerships and grow mailing list subscribers.

Here are a few more details of what we covered:

The challenges of getting ebooks onto readers’ devices without going through Amazon or the various retailers.
A popular tactic for getting newsletter sign-ups as an author with at least three books out: making the first book permafree everywhere and making Book 2 free available to those who sign up for your list
Using exclusive content (such as prequels or unpublished epilogues) to entice people to sign up who otherwise might just pay for the books that are available elsewhere (also an alternative to giving away an entire novel)
Occasionally doing between-the-novels short stories or bonus scenes to keep newsletter subscribers on your list (so they don’t just grab their free book and unsubscribe)
Doing a round-robin multi-book giveaway with other authors in your genre so your book is exposed to other authors’ lists of subscribers
Thoughts on periodic price drops to free versus having a permafree title out there
Is there a danger in over-distributing a free ebook?

You can check out Damon’s first book, Baptism of Blood and Fire, Dragon Bond 1 on Amazon, and sign up for Bookfunnel at their site.