Tag: kindle unlimited

SFFMP 92: How to Use KDP Select to Sell More Books with Susan Kaye Quinn

Author Interview, Podcast

We got a lot of great information from today’s return guest, science-fiction and paranormal romance author, Susan Kaye Quinn. In addition to writing genre fiction, she’s penned For Love or Money, a book that talks about the ongoing debate on whether to write to the market, to write your passion, or to try and find the spot where the two areas mesh.

Since Susan has been doing a number of experiments with Amazon’s KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited promotions lately, we focused on that during the show, trying to find the information that would help authors work KU to their advantage and do better with the promotions available to those in the program.

Here are a few specifics we covered:

  • Being wide (in all the stores) and having a permafree title versus being in KDP Select with a 99-cent title
  • How to have a successful free run while in KDP Select and why “getting the attention of borrowers” matters more than anything else
  • How borrowers are almost like an entirely different store with their own eco-system
  • What to do if you’ve been wide and are bringing older titles into KDP Select
  • What some of the problems might be if your books just aren’t selling as well as you wish
  • Figuring out if a book or genre is a good match for KDP Select
  • Whether pre-orders are a good idea when you’re in KDP Select and you’re relying on borrows (which can’t roll in until the book is live)
  • Dealing with readers who might be upset if you switch from being in all the stores to being exclusive with Amazon
  • Figuring out whether you should give KDP Select a try based on how well you’re doing in other stores
  • Whether you should save up books and launch them in a cluster or try to stagger them to release over time
  • Places to advertise KDP Select titles

Stop by Susan’s site, check out her books on Amazon, and sign up for her popular For Love or Money group on Facebook. Lindsay is there as are many other indie authors.

Also check out Susan’s previous appearance on the show if you haven’t already: Episode 36.

 

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SFFMP 90: From Struggling to Find an Audience to the Top 1000 on Amazon with John L. Monk

Author Interview, Podcast

This week’s guest, John L. Monk, is the author of The Jenkins Cycle and Thief’s Odyssey, cross-genre books that never sold as well as he wished, despite marketing efforts. About six weeks ago, he published Hell’s Children, a book firmly entrenched in the post-apocalyptic genre. He took some ideas from Chris Fox’s Launch to Market book and managed to release into the Top 1000 on Amazon for the first time, and his book has stuck and continued to sell well even after the dreaded “30 Day Cliff.”

Here are a few things we touched on:

  • The challenges of marketing cross-genre fiction
  • Making life (and marketing) easier by writing in specific genres with commercial appeal
  • Why John chose post-apocalyptic fiction for his new book
  • Staggering your book launch so that you’re selling some copies every day instead of firing everything off at once
  • Making acquaintances with other authors and networking so that they might mention your book to their Facebook followers or mailing lists
  • Launching into KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited and at 99 cents for the first week
  • Why putting fancy new covers on books that weren’t well targeted in a specific genre might not make much of a difference
  • Keeping readers interested in older titles
  • John’s experience with being wide and having an Apple rep and why he ultimately enrolled in KDP Select
  • Working with other authors on an anthology or joint project to spread the word about your work to new readerships

You can find John at his website, on Facebook, or check out his books on Amazon. You can also look into his new joint project, American Demon Hunters. Thanks for listening!

 

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SFFMP 89: Launching Books to Stick, Amazon Algorithms, and When Advertising Is Worth it with Chris Fox

Author Interview, Podcast

Today, we talked about launching books, writing to market, taking advantage of Amazon algorithms, and when advertising is (and isn’t) worth it with return guest Chris Fox.

Here are some of the specifics that we covered:

  • How Amazon works to push new releases (that show potential) with its algorithms, newsletters, and also-boughts system
  • How important being in KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited is right now to stick on Amazon with a new book
  • Whether to list a book for pre-order
  • Whether it makes sense to use Facebook and Amazon ads (available for those in KDP Select) during a book launch or afterward, to keep the momentum going
  • Relaunching a series that had a lackluster original launch
  • How much pricing figures into a book launch and whether starting at 99 cents is a good idea to gain momentum
  • Using a prequel to grow a mailing list

Check out Chris’s first military science fiction novel, Destroyer, on Amazon, or pick up his latest non-fiction title, Launch to Market.

You can also visit his YouTube channel for some inspiring and helpful videos.

 

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SFFMP 87: Writing and Selling Short Fiction That Actually Sells with T.S. Paul

Author Interview, Podcast

Science fiction author T.S. Paul joins us to discuss how he’s sold thousands of copies of his short fiction since getting started just over four months ago. Not only that, but he sells those ebooks at 2.99 instead of employing the typical bargain basement pricing. He’s publishing in the space opera field and gaining momentum by putting out new ebooks every two weeks. He’s currently in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited, so he’s also getting a lot of borrows on those books too.

Here’s a little more on what we covered:

  • Using an on-going series to make shorter fiction work and keep people coming back for more
  • Selling short fiction ebooks at 2.99 (and collections at 7.99)
  • Whether more people buy or borrow (for those in Kindle Unlimited) at the higher price points
  • If short fiction is still doing well now that KU pays based on page reads instead of straight-up borrows
  • Publishing character interviews and short fiction on your blog to keep up reader interest between releases
  • Using Canva to create images for Facebook ads
  • Making Facebook ads work for science fiction
  • Do bad reviews actually affect sales?
  • Getting troll reviews taken down on Amazon
  • Finding original artwork on Deviant Art and licensing it to use for your ebook covers (T.S. finds this much more affordable than commissioning custom artwork, and it gets you something far more original than grabbing images from stock photo sites)

Check out T.S. Paul’s books on Amazon and visit his blog to see what he’s up to.

 

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SFFMP 83: Using the Slow Burn Launch Strategy to Stick on Amazon and the Pitfalls of Genre Hopping

Group Discussion, Podcast

The guys chatted about their recent experiences with book launches and also how their genre hopping adventures are going. In addition, they discussed the slow-burn launch strategy that a lot of indie authors have been using to great success.

Here are a few more details of what they covered:

  • How does their launch strategy differ now than from when they were first starting out?
  • Using three books to launch into a new genre or a new pen name, or at least committing to writing and publishing three before giving up.
  • The challenges of genre hopping (even within the umbrella of science fiction and fantasy) and whether or not it’s going to be a career killer.
  • How they’ve gone about finding beta readers to use before sending a manuscript off to an editor for a final pass.
  • Critique groups Lindsay has used for science fiction/fantasy: The SFF Online Writing Workshop and Critters.org.
  • How KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited are playing into most successful book launches now.
  • When pre-orders make sense and if one should consider selling at a lower price during the pre-order.
  • How just launching your book and sending out an announcement to your newsletter subscribers probably won’t be enough to make your book “stick” on Amazon.
  • Segmenting and staggering your newsletter so it goes out to different groups of subscribers over multiple days to fight against the “Bookbub Effect.”
  • Booking “new release” ad slots on sponsorship sites and how many of them are offering that now.
  • Kboards thread referenced in the show: Slow burn launch for stickiness by Aimee Easterling [includes links to many of the siates that will book new releases]
  • Another one: A mini-guide to launch promo services by Nicholas Erik

 

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SFFMP 81: Kindle Unlimited Scams, Writing in Kindle Worlds, and Dystopian Fiction with Ann Christy

Author Interview, Podcast

Today we talked with science fiction author Ann Christy, who has been tracking Kindle Unlimited and reporting on what scammers are up to in the program and why that’s important to us as authors. We also discussed how she came to be writing in Hugh Howey’s WOOL world and the pros and cons of publishing in Kindle Worlds.

Here’s a little more of what we covered:

  • Kindle World is restricted to US accounts and limits non-US readers.
    Kindle World can be positive for many writers because Amazon deals with many details. For example, they set the prices. There are a lot of things writers don’t have to deal with.
  • The split is 65/35% for the creators of the world and the authors of the books.
  • Ann said that when she started, she didn’t understand everything involving self publishing and didn’t even know what was a ‘good’ tally of sales day to day. She was concerned that she only had 100!
  • Ann wrote four books in Hugh Howey’s WOOL world before writing fiction set in her own worlds.
  • Ann made sure that she kept her own worlds open for people who wanted to write within her world. After her positive experience with Hugh Howey, she wanted to give opportunities to other writers.
  • There will always be scammers in Kindle Unlimited because they can move faster than Amazon.
  • One method that scammers do is to put together a large number (sometimes 3,000) pages of unreadable material. They hire people to ‘click farm’ and the hired clickers open the book and skip from the first page to the last page. The authors get paid as though someone had read 3,000 pages.
  • It’s so refined and organized that the collectives of scammers sometimes ‘take turns’ for who gets their bogus books “read” by the collective that week.
  • The books don’t stick around for long. The scammers will remove the copies that were up after they have been click farmed and then they will re-release them under another title.
  • To ensure that their ‘books’ were not well reviewed by Amazon, the scammers were careful about what days and times they submitted their projects that reduced the chances of being caught by Amazon reviewers. As long as they take down the book before Amazon notices it, then they can collect the money made through click farming.
  • It seems that Amazon has begun cracking down on the scammers. There are fewer scamming books then there were before.
  • There are other forms of scamming for Kindle Unlimited that will be more difficult to catch with an algorithm, so Amazon has a lot of work ahead of them.
  • To reduce the chances of Amazon thinking you’re a scammer, be careful about the number of times you include specific stories into box sets. It can appear that you are trying to scam by spreading out the story that many times. But things like bonus chapters of the next book are completely fine—It’s more of the over saturation that can get you watched.
  • Ann says that if she were in charge of the situation at Amazon, she would put a system together where new authors would have their books looked at by a human, and perhaps the next three books and/or any books within a 90 day period. She thinks that they should still allow authors who are in the system to publish to keep new content coming in.
  • Can you report scammer books? Yes. You can scroll down to the bottom of the book page and report books as scam books. Unfortunately it hasn’t proved to be as effective as we could wish it was.
  • Honest authors should leave links to mailing lists, etc. and limit your clicks within the book. This will reduce the potential red flags. Anything that is in the legitimate table of contents can stay.
  • Ann says her major marketing tool is to ‘beg BookBub.’ Besides that she admits that she doesn’t really know how to market and needs more tutelage.
  • We also discussed whether being anthologies help and how hot of a genre dystopian fiction is right now.

 

Learn more about Ann Christy and her books at her Amazon author profile. You can also connect with her on her Facebook page. Strikers Eastland, the sequel to her Strikers novel, is coming out at the end of May. She also has a story coming out in Dark Discoveries magazine.

 

 

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SFFMP 75: Genre Hopping, How to be Prolific, and Marketing Across Genres with Elle Casey

Author Interview, Podcast

Elle Casey is not just a NYT and USA Today bestselling author–She’s also an extremely prolific writer. She averages a release rate of one book, about 85,00 words, a month. You’ll want to check out this podcast to learn how she is able to manage such a rate of releases. But it’s not just her speed that is impressive. Elle Casey has worked in many different genres under the same name. She has advice on how to use the same name and publish in a variety of genres without confusing readers.

“The more books you have the more work that goes into the promotion, the organizing of the front and back matter, responding to fan mail…” — Elle Casey

Here are some notes!

  • Elle Casey is a former attorney and teacher. Now she’s a New York Times bestseller and USA Today Bestseller.

  • She’s a prolific writer—averaging one full length a month while writing in multiple genres. Her novels are about 85,000 words each, except her science fiction series.

  • Elle was working as a teacher of legal English in France. She wasn’t sure if writing was for her—at that time. She’d thought about picking it up when she retired because of the difficulties and possible rejections of a traditional path. But after learning about self publishing she decided to get started.

  • She sold 50 books in the first month—a lot of them were bought by her mother but some strangers did buy them and leave reviews, which is what encouraged her to go on.

  • Genres that Elle has written in include: Action/adventure, urban fantasy, fantasy, sci-fi, romance.

  • Soon after beginning she was able to write full length novels quickly. The added bonus of a writing community helped steer her in the right directions as she built her business to increase her success. She was soon writing so prolifically that she was able to quit her job as a teacher and write full time.

  • With these particular struggles, Elle found it useful to hire a full time assistant last summer which has really helped her with her career. Things that her assistant does include keeping track of non-writing things and talking to fans. It helps that they live nearby so they can work together in person.

  • She admits that she can be a “lazy” person (and often would rather ride a horse!). Elle says that she can leave things off to the last minute. She works better under pressure. Her writing pressure has changed a little now that she has contractual obligations with Montlake Romance. She has found it difficult to work from series to series once she has to break away from one to work on another.

  • Elle says that the biggest difficulty in ‘genre hopping’ is that it can be difficult to brand herself. However, she also says that going from genre to genre can help her keep her writing fresh. Her covers help designate the genres of her books.

  • Despite science fiction/fantasy having a smaller number of readers compared to romance, she feels that she can only reach a small number of romance readers while she can be seen by a much higher percentage by science fiction/fantasy readers. She also sees science fiction as the “next frontier.”

  • Elle’s opinion is that KU is good for new writers who are trying to get their name out, but bad for a long term career. She feels like KU can devalue books. She hopes that one day writers could stand up against KU.

  • The only way that she can write a novel a month is by setting a goal of 85,000 words. She has been using Dragon Dictation to help her write 20,000 words in a day with Dragon. Writing this many words on a keyboard results in ice on her wrists. She had tried Dragon twice before, but after joining a Facebook group that had lots of tips she decided to give it a try. It’s been a great way for her to revolutionize her writing.

  • She finds outlining to not work very well for her, although she will try writing an outline in one-line outline. Elle has a game plan with her writing — but says it is very fluid!

  • When asked what she thinks is a common mistake with writing in various genres is that people pick up too many pen names. It’s not just the books, but dealing with all the social media, the marketing, the branding. Instead, by making things as clear as possible through the covers and the description, she hopes that it will clarify things for the readers.

  • She tries to do a BookBub advertisement once a month because of how large her catalogue is. switching genres you can be in BookBub more often. Although she used to do Facebook advertisements but they are no longer as easy.

  • Elle warned people that giving away too many books can lead to certain expectations by readers. Some readers can get demanding that they get free books or else they will go to other authors. Give away first—Then have them buy the rest.

  • She sends on email a month to her mailing list. If she does not have a new release then she sometimes promotes a friend’s book. She is careful to give appropriate headers in her mailing list regarding her genres.

  • Check out Aesta’s Book Blog and how she gets engagement on Facebook. She is a great example of how to maximize your Facebook influence.

  • Elle has found some crossover readers throughout her series. She didn’t have a lot of expectations, but she’s finding that more and more readers are trying something else for the same sort of writing (laugh-out-loud).

  • Her opinion is that finishing a series before moving on to another project can be advantageous because readers—including herself—sometimes wait till an entire series is released before picking it up.

  • Different groups of people are attracted to different types of genres. On her street team Facebook page she sees people of all ages discussing what they love about her book and it’s not just about the specific genre but also about the unique style of her writing.

  • Elle wishes that she had been more sophisticated in her branding from the beginning.

Find more about her and her books at ellecasey.com. She has links to purchase her books on a wide variety of retailers… And information on free leaders.

 

 

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SFFMP 74: Does Permafree Still Work, Planning a Series, and How to Write Backmatter

Group Discussion, Podcast

Welcome to a new installment of Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast–The three hosts share a lot of their experiences as authors as well as answering questions from listeners. Have a question? Check out the Facebook group and ask!

“If there’s a typo and no one notices, does it really exist?” — Joseph Lallo

  • Jeff shared his experiences in working on a new genre. Lindsay had good advice–Give it three books! Writing three books in a different genre allows you to gain more traction and offer the first book as permafree for ninety-nine cents. Along those same lines, Jeff admits that he’s learned that he needs to work on one project at a time–especially when it’s in two different genres. Focus on one, complete it–It works better for him.
  • Both Jeff and Lindsay (using her real name this time) have been considering breaking into KU (Kindle Unlimited). They’d both be starting it with a new series if they start KU. It might upset those who purchase their books in places other than Amazon, but they are still interested in seeing what comes of this new venture.
  • Joseph has just released the 4th book in his sci-fi series (the ‘sexy girl cover’ was shown–watch the youtube for the shot… Look up the book and see what, accidentally, made boobs show up for his preview).
  • He also was able to talk about his recent experiences with pre-ordering. Joseph does a lot of pre-ordering in general–Which results with high first-day sales, but not necessarily a lot of sales afterward. He offered three month pre-orders which he says helps give people plenty of time to pre-order. He’s planning on doing some experimenting with the pre-ordering in regards to the length of time offering the pre-order.
  • He’s focused on more than the pre-ordering, of course, and is working on commissioning more audiobooks. He admits that the audiobooks don’t always sell as quickly… But Lindsay is pretty sure that he’ll earn out in a year–especially with how long his book is.
  • When it comes to cover designers and editors, all three agree that it might be wise to have some ‘backups’ or at the very least, be like Lindsay and secure someone for a week a month for a particular amount of time to ensure that you don’t wind up with an awful backlog of work that needs to be done.
  • Paperbacks might be slow to come by, but working out the dynamics of paperback formatting is more difficult than e-book. It doesn’t hurt that authors might be notified of a few typos before the work is set as a paperback.
  • Kindle Unlimited seems to work best for books that have just been released. It offers you the opportunity to cultivate sales at the same time as people are borrowing them. But author beware — make sure that you have taken your books from EVERY distributor or Amazon might pull your books off.
  • Lindsay had a few tips to share when it comes to putting a book out for YA on Amazon. You have to be really picky with your categories to ensure that your books don’t wind up in the hands of eight-year-olds (unless that’s where they belong). Try “young adult” and “teen” to have it place properly.
  • Another bit of advice–It could be advantageous to try advertising in a different category on BookBub to increase visibility from other people.
  • Like Jeff, Lindsay is planning on releasing a sci-fi series under her ‘real’ name for the first time. She’s decided to write three before releasing the first one so that she can launch them quickly, maybe even all at the same time.
  • Again, really focusing on your categories/genres can be extremely helpful. ‘Hunt’ for categories that are underserved but your work would fit into.
  • Promoting a small number of your books at a time can help increase sales of all your other books as well.
  • All three have had experience with permafree. They’ve noticed that offering the first book free can be very helpful in getting readers to pick up a whole series.

 

Questions from Listeners

  • Matthew from kboards wanted to know about the effectiveness of permafree and how it had worked out in the careers of the podcasters.
    • Things have changed–There are more free books out there and you also have Kindle Unlimited to compete with as people are signing on. It doesn’t necessarily give the same amount of success as it used it.
    • You’ll want to make sure that you have several books following the free one in order to make a better impact with our series.
    • Don’t JUST put it out for free. Keep promoting it.
    • A big benefit to free–Everyone is more willing to try something if it’s free. It can feel less obtrusive in promoting it than if you are asking everyone to buy your book.
  • Edward tweeted a question about Lindsay taking her novellas and making them into a book series.
    • She fell in love with the characters and had to create more. Lindsay reminded everyone that while novellas might not sell as well, they’re worth doing if you love doing them. She had to expect that people wouldn’t read the prequel novellas, so a difficulty was introducing everyone organically.
  • Maree wanted to know what calls to action should be for debut authors?
    • Jeff said that reviews can be most important for someone’s career. Make a call to action about reviews to get more people giving their thoughts. It also wouldn’t hurt to get people to link people to your website.
    • Joseph said that why reviews are important, but getting someone to sign up for your newsletter allows for you to ask for reviews later (and have more opportunities to do so).
    • It’s best to do one call of action because once someone clicks out of the book they might not come back to see all that is listed below.
    • Lindsay is planning on offering prequels with a mailing list signup, as well as putting the first chapter from the next book and as links to the other books.
  • Liz wanted to know about how the podcasters plan series (if they plan them ahead of time)
    • Jeff does not. He has an overall storyarc but doesn’t really started a story planning on a series, but he will keep going until interest dies out.
    • Joseph originally planned some series to be shorter (trilogies, stand alones), so he had blanks as he worked, not sure how they were going to get filled.
    • Lindsay knew how her Emperor’s Edge series would end when she began it. She didn’t mean to start one series but it ended up growing. It can depend on the amount of worldbuilding. She thinks that when you are doing something very epic and expansive then it could be good to have milestones planned. But you also might want to make it so that it could be wrapped up in three or eight depending on how well it goes.

 

 

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SFFMP 71: Blurbs That Sell, 99-Cent Price Points, and Military SF with Amy J. Murphy

Author Interview, Podcast

Debut military science fiction author Amy J. Murphy joins us to talk about how she had a great run with her first novel (and she’s still having it more than five months later).

Here’s a little of what we discussed:

  • Funding a Kickstarter campaign as a new author
  • Getting a start with fan-fiction
  • Whether she had any challenges publishing military science fiction as a female author
  • Some of the pitfalls of letting someone else handle your formatting and uploading your books into the various stores
  • Choosing to go exclusive with Amazon KDP Select as a new author
  • Using a 99-cent price point on Book 1 to make it easier for readers to try you out and get them locked into the rest of your series
  • Combatting the infamous 30/90-Day Cliff on Amazon with drip campaigns (periodically doing an advertising promotion)
  • Using TV show names (Farscape meets Firefly with some Indiana Jones thrown in) in the blurb to give people an idea of what they’re getting right away.
  • Whether or not sticking keywords in the blurb makes sense and can be done without detrimental results
  • Using Kindle Samurai to scope out keywords on Amazon

If you enjoyed the show, please visit Amy on her site or check out her first book on Amazon: Allies and Enemies: Fallen. She’s also on Twitter.

If you’re interested, Amy’s editor is Pat Dobie, and her cover artist is Alex Winkler.

 

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SFFMP 70: Retold Fairy Tales, Kindle Unlimited, and Finding Less Competitive Categories with K.M. Shea

Author Interview, Podcast

Fantasy author K.M. Shea talks about how she’s found a lot of success publishing retold fairy tales and is now a full-time author. We covered…

  • The perks of publishing in a category that is underserved by traditional publishing and that isn’t hugely competitive.
  • Why K.M. has everything in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited now (yes, she’s tried going wide too).
  • Monitoring page reads and payouts in Kindle Unlimited to make sure it’s working for you
  • Pitfalls and things to be careful of when retelling fairy tales.
  • Creating a series even when your books are stand-alone — is there a theme that can pull them all together?
  • Encouraging more reviews for books by offering free extras for all when certain numbers of reviews are reached.
  • Connecting with readers and giving them lots of extras to turn them into ravenous fans who want to see you succeed.
  • Choosing a cover style when you’re in a category where this isn’t a Big 5 presence and examples are all over the place.

If you’ve enjoyed the show, be sure to check out K.M. Shea’s books on Amazon. She recommend starting with The Snow Queen, Book 1.

 

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