SFFMP 56: Self-Pub vs. Small Press vs. Trad + Effective World Building with Liana Brooks and Amy Laurens
Today we chatted with Liana Brooks and Amy Laurens, sci-fi and fantasy authors who both got their start with short stories and have branched out into novellas, novels, and creating their own press: Inkprint Press.
Here’s some of what we covered today:
- The differences in marketing when you’re indie published, small press published, and traditionally published, including how much work you can expect to do on your own.
- The importance of networking with other authors, especially as an indie author.
- Participating in anthologies (bonus points if you can get into an anthology with a bigger name author)
- Getting the rights back to previously published short stories and self-publishing them
- The challenges of marketing novella-length fiction
- Getting custom business cards for each of your series, so you can tailor what you’re trying to sell to the individual you meet (they use Moo.com NFC-chip cards to allow people to hold the card up to a smart phone and automatically get a free download delivered right to the phone)
- Aspects of social media that they’ve found useful
- Are blog tours still worth it? And organizing one as an indie
- Do you run into problems when cross-promoting between indie and trad pubbed books?
- World building tips from a science stud (Amy) who has a book on world building coming out in 2016 — you can sign up to hear when it’ll be out on her site: From the Ground Up, notification list.
Both authors have work in the free Tales from the SFR Brigade that you can check out. Their books are, of course, available from Inkprint Press as well as the usual spots. Liana recommends trying her Even Villians Fall in Love series (superhero romance) or The Day Before Time (sci-fi).
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