selling audiobooks – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 171: Lindsay’s Launch Numbers (Earned vs Spent), Targeting International Sales, and Increasing Mailing List Open Rates

February 27, 2018 SFFpodcast Group Discussion, Podcast

Our three hosts were by themselves today and answered some listener questions that had been stacking up. They ran the gamut and included selling more audiobooks, selling more paperbacks, selling more in international markets, increasing newsletter open rates, and what you should do to start gathering a mailing list of interested readers before you launch your first novel. Lindsay also shared her numbers from her recent fantasy launch.

Here are a few more of the specifics that we covered:

What it takes to get a KDP All Star bonus these days.
Whether Lindsay found Bookbub CPM, Facebook PPC, or Amazon CPC ads more useful for her epic fantasy/sword and sorcery launch, and how much she spent overall on advertising, cover art, and editing.
Jeff’s foray into audiobooks — can you have a narrator that speaks too slowly?
Jo’s experiments with reworking some of his old newsletter bonus material and publishing a short story a month (are ebooks published at 99 cents worth it?).
Tips for increasing open rates with mailing lists and what’s considered a good rate.
What kinds of subject lines work best with newsletters.
How ACX users can promote their audiobooks (we forgot to mention getting codes from ACX for giveaways, but you can email for those and use them selectively with new releases).
Tips for getting more sales in the UK, Australia, Canada, and other English-speaking (and reading) markets.
Tips for selling more paperbacks.
Whether Wattpad is worth it for a marketing platform.
Whether a pen name needs its own Facebook author page.
If an author in the UK needs to make a special edition for American English readers.
If it’s okay to publish shorter novels so you can get stuff out more frequently.
What’s the best way to start your writing/publishing career if your number one interest is gaining a steady readership?
Your hosts share which of their characters are most like them and what the hardest things for them to edit out were.

Want to see what the hosts are up to?

You can check out Jo’s new 99-cent prequel novella, Beta Testers or preorder the Book of Deacon short story collection he mentioned in the show.

Jeff’s latest release is one of his mystery novels, Case of the Pilfered Pooches (Corgi Case Files Book 4).

Lindsay’s short sci-fi story “Bearadise Lodge” is up for free on her blog.

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SFFMP 31: Producing and Marketing Audiobooks with Simon Whistler

May 19, 2015 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

We got up early to chat with Simon Whistler (who’s currently living in Prague) today. He’s the host of The Rocking Self Publishing Podcast and also the author of Bootstrapping for Indies (Self Publishing on a Budget) and Audiobooks for Indies (The One-Stop Guide for Authors Looking to Make More Money Selling Audiobooks). It’s because of that last book and because of his experience with narrating audiobooks that we wanted to have him on the show. We hadn’t covered marketing (or producing) audiobooks yet, and Simon knows a ton!

The first half of the show is all about finding a narrator and getting your audiobook produced using Amazon’s ACX platform (we also covered equipment and potential pitfalls you should be aware of if you want to do it yourself). In the second half of the show, we got into the marketing side of things.

Here’s some of what we covered related to production:

What is ACX and how does it work to connect authors to narrators/producers?
The royalty-splitting option, for those doing it on a budget, versus the flat-fee-per-finished-hour option
How to get a $100/hour stipend from ACX to make your royalty split option more appealing to narrators
What equipment and software authors need if they’re going to produce their own audiobook (Simon uses a Rode Podcaster USB Dynamic Microphone and has also heard good things about the less expensive Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone. For software, he uses the free Audacity).
Hours verses finished hours and just how much work really goes into producing an audiobook (not to mention doing all those different character voices!)

Here’s what we talked about related to marketing:

Which genres seem to do best in audiobook form (hint: longer books are often more appealing, because most Audible customers pay for credits that get them a book a month, so the longer, higher priced books seem to be better deals).
Making use of the 25 review copies that Audible gives you (and how to make sure the people you give those codes to buy your book instead of someone else’s!). Make sure to check out Simon’s video on Making Better Use of Audible’s Promotional Codes. You can also pick up his Audiobooks for Indies ebook for even more information.
How ACX allows you to share a fifteen minute sample on YouTube, your site, social media, etc. Simon recommends grabbing a scintillating few minutes from the middle rather than the title, acknowledgements, etc.
AudaVoxx, a site where you can list audiobook giveaways.
Taking advantage of Audible’s free-first-book-with-a-subscription policy to entice your mailing list subscribers to grab your book, even if they’ve never been Audible members before and don’t usually buy audiobooks.
The importance of reviews (yes, the ones that are specifically for the audiobook are what you need here)
If there are any sites out there like Bookbub that can help authors sell their audiobooks (alas, the answer is not yet, largely because authors can’t control pricing on their audiobooks and put them on sale)