Selling Fantasy, the Importance of Book Covers, and Commissioning Plush Toy Characters with Joseph R. Lallo
Today, we interviewed Joseph R. Lallo, author of the epic fantasy Book of Deacon series, as well as steampunk, science fiction, and super hero novels. He’s been self-publishing since 2010, and he’s really rocked it with his Book of Deacon series (over 1,000 reviews on the first title at Amazon). He recently quit his day job to write full time.
Among other things, we discussed:
- How Jo has used permafree to sell his series (and how he’s kept it selling well for over four years)
- The importance of cover art and some of the difficulties of finding killer covers in science fiction and fantasy (i.e. is it better to go with custom illustrations, photo manipulation, or symbol-based designs)
- How helpful writing and publishing in a series can be for getting to that point where you earn a steady income
- What’s working in marketing right now
- Making plush toys (and other merchandise) out of book characters (or dragons/familiars/pets) from your stories and whether there’s any money to be made merchandising these things.