productivity – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 130: Better Marketing, More Productivity, and Turning Your Writing Hobby into a Career with Monica Leonelle

May 2, 2017 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Today, we interviewed young adult urban fantasy and paranormal romance author Monica Leonelle. In addition to writing fiction, she also blogs at Prose on Fire and writes the non-fiction “Growth Hacking for Storytellers” series. We talked about improving productivity for writers and some of the basics of marketing that get overlooked in the urgency to just make more sales.

Here are a few more details of what we discussed:

Going from writing 1,000 to 3,500 words an hour.
How doing some extensive pre-planning (world-building and creating characters) before getting started can make the writing process smoother.
Using “thematic” world building as a way to help discover motivations for characters and also various factions in your worlds.
Outlining stories and scene beats before sitting down to write for the day.
Breaking up your goals into manageable chunks (i.e. I’m going to write 15 or even 8 minutes today rather than starting out saying you’re going to write for 2 hours).
Setting yourself up to meet your goals by having a good mindset.
How important is a regular schedule for productivity?
Monica’s Spanish translation of one of her books and whether it’s been worthwhile.
When it comes to marketing, giving out samples to get new readers to try you rather than simply trying to go straight to the sale.
Moving a person from being a reader to a fan to a true fan or evangelist.
Doing things to “activate your fans” to get them to take actions to help you get the word out.
Whether you should focus your efforts on your most recent release or if the back list should always get attention.
Whether permafree is still working as a way to get “samples” out there.
Taking your writing efforts from hobby to career.

You can find Monica online on her website or at Prose on Fire. If you’ve found her advice useful, you can check out her books such as 8-Minute Writing Habit: Create a Consistent Writing Habit That Works With Your Busy Lifestyle and Prosperous Creation: Make Art and Make Money at the Same Time.

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full-time author, marketing, Monica Leonelle, productivity

SFFMP 106: Writing a Novel in Five Days with Scott King

November 8, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Since it’s NaNoWriMo month, we invited Scott King to talk about how he wrote a novel in five days (and then wrote a book about how he did it, also in five days). In addition to holding down a day job as a board game photographer, Scott is the author of several middle grade fantasy novels, a thriller, and a couple of non-fiction titles, including this newest one. We asked him what his process was for writing the novel in five days and tried to milk some tips out of him too.

Some details of what we covered:

What’s the state of the middle grade fiction market when it comes to self-publishing and ebooks?
Why Scott shifted to adult epic fantasy and thrillers.
Whether outlining is important when writing a novel quickly.
Staying excited when you’re struggling to get past the middle point of the novel.
Getting in the habit of finishing projects.
How you optimize your workflow to be more efficient.
Whether mindset matters when it comes to writing and finishing novels.
How much of Scott’s five days go to prep and revision.
How long it takes to refill the creative tank after writing a novel so quickly.
How to keep novels shorter and simpler to make them easier to finish (and why you might want to, even you epic fantasy folks).
Dealing with distractions and writers’ block.
Some of the challenges of genre hopping.

You can visit Scott King on his website and grab The 5 Day Novel on Amazon. You can also check out the novel he wrote in five days, Ameriguns.

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NaNoWriMo, productivity, scott king, write a novel fast, writer's block, writing a novel

SFFMP 49: Productivity and First Book Success with Zach Bohannon

September 29, 2015 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Today we interviewed fresh new horror/dystopian fiction author, Zach Bohannon. Despite a full time job and a family, he’s managed to write and publish five novels (and some short stories) already this year. He also got off to a great start with excellent sales and reviews of the books in his Empty Bodies series. We asked him how he got those early sales, whether being in Kindle Unlimited helped, and why his dog is named after a beer company.

Here are some of the highlights:

Managing a full time job and a family while writing and publishing multiple novels a year
Calls to action (CTAs) in the back matter of the book to ask for reviews and mailing list sign-ups
Calls to action in the front matter of a book, yea or nay?
Can you have too many CTAs? Should you just stick to one?
Challenges of marketing dystopian/post apocalyptic fiction versus horror
Having a great first book launch based largely on a good cover and low price in a popular genre (Zach also started in Kindle Unlimited and had lots of good things to say about his experiences in KDP Select thus far)
Appearing on podcasts as part of a promotions strategy
What Zach does for social media, and does he think it’s important for book sales?
Connecting with readers on Instagram (check out Zach’s page) versus Twitter — people pause and you can more easily grab their attention with images on Instagram (he goes and comments on other people’s photos, rather than worrying too much about putting up photos of his own)
Using auto-responders for your mailing list to connect with readers.
How Zach feels about advertising and sponsored posts on blogs/newsletters.

Visit Zach at The Horror Writers’ Podcast and on his website. You can check out his first book, Empty Bodies, on Amazon.

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back matter, calls to action, ebooks, marketing, motivation, productivity

SFFMP 39: Creating Successful Series, Permafree Boxed Sets, and Epic vs. Urban Fantasy with Robert J. Crane

July 14, 2015 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

On today’s episode, we chatted with successful epic and urban fantasy author, Robert J. Crane. He’s sold more than a million books and was able to turn writing into his day job early on. Now, he has four successful series going, including his well-known Girl in the Box books.

Here’s a little of what we covered:

Productivity — how Robert has written and published 26 novels in the last four years
Writing books as a business and to make money versus treating this as an art and doing it just for the love
Cliffhangers and planning out a series
How series have been the key to Robert’s success and thoughts on writing/publishing multiple series at once
Audience size for epic fantasy versus urban fantasy (stuff set in our world)
Is it easier marketing contemporary sci-fi/fantasy versus secondary world stuff?
Having a social media presence, since not everyone will sign up for your newsletter (or filters might keep messages from getting through)
Doing not only a perma-free Book 1 for marketing but a perma-free boxed set (books 1-3) in a longer series
The “Big Name” approach for cover art — is there a point at which the author name should be larger than the title?
Getting fantasy maps done at The Cartographers’ Guild.

If you would like to check out Robert’s books, you can jump into his world for free with The Sanctuary Series (Books 1-3) or Alone (The Girl in the Box, Book 1). Find out more about all of his books on his site.

Robert also has some great and solid advice for indie authors on his blog, well worth the read.

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cliffhangers, contemporary fantasy, epic fantasy, marketing series, productivity, robert j crane, series, urban fantasy

SFFMP 38: Writing 5,000 Words an Hour and Selling Zombies and Werewolves with Chris Fox

July 7, 2015 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

On today’s show, we chatted with Chris Fox about marketing zombies, werewolves, and vampires, and also about how he writes incredibly quickly. He holds down a 60-hour-a-week day job as an app developer and doesn’t have a lot of time to devote to fiction, so he’s learned to be productive, logging 5,000 words in an hour. He’s even written about it in a book designed to help other authors: 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter.

Here are some of the highlights from the interview:

Using the start-up mentality for indie publishing
Investing in your product (including scouring DeviantArt for hours to find just the right artists!)
How audiobook sales (from Audible) can help Kindle sales on Amazon
Is it helpful to use popular tropes, such as werewolves, zombies, and vampires? Or do readers have expectations that can be hard to meet if you’re doing something slightly different?
What advertising Chris has done and what’s been effective
Why it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend much time and money on marketing when you only have one or two books out
Utilizing a mailing list to make promoting future books easier
How Chris is writing so darned many words in an hour
Addressing the argument that writing faster means writing poorly
Using voice recognition software effectively as a fiction writer

If you’re looking for more information on marketing, you might want to visit Chris’s site and check out some of the articles he’s written for writers:

If Chris’s fiction sounded interesting to you, give his first book, No Such Thing as Werewolves, a try.