writing to market – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 90: From Struggling to Find an Audience to the Top 1000 on Amazon with John L. Monk

July 19, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

This week’s guest, John L. Monk, is the author of The Jenkins Cycle and Thief’s Odyssey, cross-genre books that never sold as well as he wished, despite marketing efforts. About six weeks ago, he published Hell’s Children, a book firmly entrenched in the post-apocalyptic genre. He took some ideas from Chris Fox’s Launch to Market book and managed to release into the Top 1000 on Amazon for the first time, and his book has stuck and continued to sell well even after the dreaded “30 Day Cliff.”

Here are a few things we touched on:

The challenges of marketing cross-genre fiction
Making life (and marketing) easier by writing in specific genres with commercial appeal
Why John chose post-apocalyptic fiction for his new book
Staggering your book launch so that you’re selling some copies every day instead of firing everything off at once
Making acquaintances with other authors and networking so that they might mention your book to their Facebook followers or mailing lists
Launching into KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited and at 99 cents for the first week
Why putting fancy new covers on books that weren’t well targeted in a specific genre might not make much of a difference
Keeping readers interested in older titles
John’s experience with being wide and having an Apple rep and why he ultimately enrolled in KDP Select
Working with other authors on an anthology or joint project to spread the word about your work to new readerships

You can find John at his website, on Facebook, or check out his books on Amazon. You can also look into his new joint project, American Demon Hunters. Thanks for listening!

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cover art, dystopian, john l monk, kdp select, kindle unlimited, post apocalyptic, writing to market

SFFMP 72: Selling More by Writing to Market + A Novel in 21 Days with Chris Fox

March 17, 2016 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

Our guest this week is Chris Fox, author of Writing to Market, the Deathless Series, Hero Born, and more. You might remember him from our show in July of 2015. Now he isn’t just encouraging you to write 5k an hour—He has a new nonfiction book out that will help redefine the way you look at writing to make a big splash in the market with potentially less work. Writing to Market shows you how to examine marketing trends and write books that give readers the experiences they want.

Here’s a taste of what we discussed:

The troubles of writing a book that doesn’t quite fit into market—With elements that might be like ‘mixing peanut butter with pickles.’
How it can be easier to establish a presence in the market if you write something a little more mainstream. It should be something that you enjoy writing, but something that offers a more ready market.
That going into publishing with eyes wide open about the market and genres can have a tremendous effect on your career.
The importance of writing to the market and taking care to pay attention to details like word counts for specific genres.
How a writer can succeed even if their original works aren’t very good.
How to ensure your backlist doesn’t go stale.
Ways to figure out if combining specific genres can be a good or bad ideas.
Learning methods to use keywords to help you learn both how successful different genres are and how to find an underserved market.
Tips and tricks for switching genres as an already established author.
Taking on an intense challenge—A 21 Day Novel Challenge. Possible? Tune in—You won’t want to miss it or what he would say to someone wanting to undertake it.

If you enjoyed the show, please visit Chris on his site and check out his Deathless series and books on writing there and on his Amazon page.