km shea – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 134: When to Hire a Personal Assistant, Facebook Live Events, and King Arthur Fantasy with K.M. Shea

May 30, 2017 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

On today’s show, we talked to return guest, fantasy author K.M. Shea. She specializes in retold fairy tales and King Arthur fantasy, and she’s definitely exploited the fact that these are fairly small and underserved sub-genres. If you have any interest in fairy tales, check out her last interview with us: Retold Fairy Tales, Kindle Unlimited, and Finding Less Competitive Categories.

We talked more about her King Arthur series today and also about some of the business/marketing things she’s been working on in the last year. Here are some of the details we covered:

Whether it makes sense to go back and deeply edit one of your early books or series.
Whether the fairy tale niche is still fairly underserved and if it’s easier (compared to popular categories like urban and epic fantasy) to break into the Top 100.
Finding a personal assistant to help with your author business, when it’s time and where to look.
What the going rate is for an author PA or VA (virtual assistant).
How much work do you need to have to outsource before someone might be interested in hiring on?
Do you need to worry about non-disclosure agreements? Sharing passwords?
Kitty’s experiences experimenting with Amazon ads, Facebook ads, and free Bookbub runs for a couple of her fairy tale novels.
Doing Facebook Live Events alone and with other authors, and whether these things actually sell books.
Kitty mentioned Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans site and how she works to cultivate a good relationship with her readers.
Whether joint author promos can be effective for selling your own books.

You can visit KM Shea at her website or on Facebook, and check out her books at Amazon, including her retelling of Beauty and the Beast and Enthroned, her first King Arthur story.

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amazon ads, facebook ads, facebook live events, fairy tales, hiring a PA, joint author promos, king arthur, km shea, PAs, personal assistants

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

March 1, 2016 SFFpodcast 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.