Tag: ya fantasy

SFFMP 195: Kindle Unlimited, All-star Bonuses, YA Fantasy, and Reverse Harem Fantasy

Author Interview, Podcast

Fantasy author Alex Lidell joined us on the show this week. She started her publishing journey with YA fantasy when her first novel, The Cadet of Tildor, was picked up by Penguin after being a finalist in Amazon’s Breakout Novel contest. After that, she turned to self-publishing with her YA fantasy TIDES series, and she recently jumped into reverse harem fantasy with her Power of Five series, where she’s had a lot of success on Amazon.

Here are some of the specifics we discussed and links to books and resources mentioned in the show:

  • Alex’s experience with the now-defunct Amazon Breakout Novel contest.
  • How she got picked up by Penguin for her first book and what the editing process was like.
  • Why she decided to switch to self-publishing and how you have to be willing to learn to think and act like a small-business owner when you do.
  • The states of YA fantasy and reverse harem and if there’s room for newcomers hoping to sell well.
  • Whether there are expected tropes in YA fantasy and what the ones are for reverse harem.
  • A recommendation for Orson Scott Card’s Characters and Viewpoints for authors looking to hone their craft for YA (or any genre/audience).
  • 3D-character rendering as an alternative to illustrations for cover art.
  • Marketing in the traditional publishing world (and being an “ambassador for your brand”) versus marketing as an indie author.
  • Why Alex is in Kindle Unlimited and her brief flirtation with wide for a Bookbub ad.
  • What time of the month she launches her books to have a better shot at earning an All-Star Bonus in KU.
  • Getting the paperback version of a book up before the ebook so people can post reviews ahead of launch day.
  • Using ACX for audiobooks and her experiences with paying up front per finished hour versus doing a royalty split with a narrator.
  • Getting more exposure and reviews for audiobooks through Audiobook Boom.

You can find Alex on her website and on Facebook, and her novels are available on Amazon, including Air and Ash (Book 1 of her TIDES series for YA fantasy lovers) and The Power of Five (Book 1 of her reverse harem series).

 

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SFFMP 178: Making Good Money with Serial Novellas and YA Fantasy with Sarah K.L. Wilson

Author Interview, Podcast

On this week’s show, YA fantasy author Sarah K.L. Wilson joined us to talk about the successful Dragon School serial she’s publishing on Amazon (and in Kindle Unlimited). She’s put out nine installments since the beginning of the year, publishing a new one every 18 days, and she’s kept them selling with Amazon ads and sheer momentum.

Here’s a little more of what we covered:

  • Going from writing novels to publishing a (planned) 20-installment fantasy serial.
  • How complete each story is and whether Sarah employs cliffhangers.
  • Whether she’s got it all outlined or she’s pantsing it.
  • The challenges of finding your readership on Amazon (or any online store) when you’re targeting a teen audience.
  • Handling cover art for serial installments that you’re publishing frequently.
  • Sarah’s pricing strategy of 99 cents for the first installment and 2.99 for the others and whether there’s been any pushback from readers.
  •  Finding success with Amazon ads by monitoring them daily and tweaking whenever necessary, including adding new ads to the rotation regularly.
  • Sarah’s less than stellar results with Facebook ads.
  • How her income breaks down, sales versus KU.
  • What a typical launch looks like for her now that she’s almost 10 installments into her serial.
  • The link to Michael Cooper’s read-through calculator, which Sarah is using to calculator her ROI: https://www.facebook.com/groups/781495321956934/1111894655583664/

You can visit Sarah on her website and also check out her books on Amazon. The first installment in her serial is Dragon School: First Flight and is currently 99 cents or free to read with a KU subscription.

 

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SFFMP 172: Making It as a Newer Author, Marketing YA Fantasy, and are Vampires Still “In”?

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Like many new authors, Caroline Peckham‘s first series, a YA fantasy adventure, The Rise of Isaac, didn’t sell as well as she’d hoped. For her second series, she did a lot of market research and switched to a more popular type of YA fantasy, vampires in a contemporary paranormal setting. She also adopted some more effective marketing tactics and had a successful launch last fall. She’s since released a second “V Games” novel and is editing a third, and the series continues to do well, months after the initial launch.

Here are a few of the details that we discussed on the show:

  • Some of the challenges of marketing young adult fiction as a self-published author.
  • What made Caroline decide to switch from one type of YA fantasy to another.
  • Concerns about finding readers when one’s target audience doesn’t have credit cards and doesn’t shop on Amazon.
  • Why Caroline has had more success targeting adult audiences who happen to enjoy young adult fiction.
  • Whether vampires are too crowded a niche to get into or there are still opportunities.
  • How Caroline first found reviewers by seeking out readers in her genre who had reviewed books similar to hers.
  • Finding reviewers on Goodreads and then moving them over to an easily manageable Facebook group.
  • Why Caroline makes her ARC reviewer Facebook group public rather than private and lets people who find her through the platform in to get free review copies.
  • Using the Werble App to create animations that can be used on Facebook to help with promotions.
  • Pricing a Book 1 at 99 cents or 99p in KU to keep it higher in the rankings and bring in readers for the rest of the full-priced series.
  • Which social media platforms Caroline uses and why she didn’t do much with Wattpad, despite it being a popular destination for younger readers.
  • Caroline’s experiments with Facebook advertising and how she found out that the clicks she got weren’t converting that well.
  • Whether vampire stories seem to do better in the US or the UK.

You can visit Caroline on her website or Facebook, and check out her books on Amazon.

 

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SFFMP 155: What It Takes to Shift from Hobby Writer to Full-Time Author with Ben Hale

Author Interview, Podcast

This week, we chatted with non-fiction and YA fantasy author Ben Hale. A former business owner, he did a lot of research before jumping into self-publishing his first fantasy novels in 2012. After six months, he was able to go full-time. His recent non-fiction release, co-written with Honorée Corder, talks about the business side of writing and publishing, with tips for taking your career to the next level.

Here are a few of the specifics we talked about:

  • Researching the market and what’s working for successful authors before jumping in to publishing.
  • Why being fluent in a language may not be enough when it comes to translating your own books.
  • The changes to the market that Ben has seen since he first started publishing in 2012.
  • Creating multiple series that interlink and are set in the same world so that readers will naturally want to go from one to the other.
  • Some of the challenges of marketing to young adult readers and why some YA books appeal to adults more than others do.
  • The importance of releasing regularly — Ben tries to put out a new novel every 3 to 4 months.
  • Developing a business mindset as an author.
  • What to look at if you have a number of books out, but they aren’t selling as well as you expected.
  • How far ahead goals or visions should extend.
  • Starting out with the business mindset so that you’re ready for success farther down the road.

Learn more about Ben Hale and grab his starter library at his website, Lumineia. You can also follow him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out the helpful book that he and Honorée Corder wrote, Write Like a Boss.

 

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SFFMP 136: Successfully Indie Publishing and Marketing While Running a Family

Author Interview, Podcast

YA fantasy author Katie Cross joins us this week to discuss how she’s published eleven books while working and raising a family, and how she’s sold a lot of those books too!

Here’s a closer look at some of the topics we covered:

  • Finding time to write when you have a job and a family.
  • Whether YA ebooks do well and some of the challenges of self-publishing for that audience.
  • Some of the defining features of young adult fiction.
  • Keeping books selling when you’re not able to publish super frequently.
  • Selling well in the YA market.
  • Using Wattpad as a platform to gain readers and potentially get recognition.
  • Getting invited to the Wattpad advertising program and how much authors can make.
  • Getting more interaction and reads on Wattpad by asking questions at the end of installments and posting regularly (Katie was posting M/W/F for one of her books).
  • Tips for getting a Bookbub ad.
  • Facebook marketing and Facebook groups.
  • Determining which marketing is worth your time when your time is limited.
  • What Katie’s typical launch strategy looks like.

Visit Katie on her website or on Facebook and check out her YA fantasy books. You can also join her “indie author life” Facebook group for advice on self-publishing and marketing.

Note: Katie realized she had her numbers a little off in our chat about her Bookbub ad, so she sent me this correction to post here:

“In the podcast I share my BookBub numbers several times and mention selling 3,500 books on Amazon with my recent ad, but I checked back on those numbers and it was close to 3,000 books WIDE on all distributors including paperback and audiobooks (which are also affected by BookBubs) and includes all sales overall (including spillover into the other books in my series). <— This encompasses just the first week. 

So it was not just my BookBub ad book that reached those numbers. I wish! Historically, however, by the end of the month, it’s likely I will reach 4,000—or beyond it—in sales from the BookBub tail. I have in the past seen upwards of those numbers from BookBub ads.

So sorry for that mess up! Transparency is really important to me so I wanted to add that caveat here. 🙂“

 

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SFFMP 105: A Successful Stand Alone YA Fantasy Novel Launch and Building a Big Mailing List

Author Interview, Podcast

This week, we chatted with Megan Crewe, a YA author who shifted from traditional publishing to self-publishing for her latest release, a contemporary YA fantasy with Asian flare, A Mortal Song. She was launching this as a stand alone, with no future series planned, so we asked her how she went about having a good launch with a single title.

** Note, we had a tech problem with Google Hangouts cutting the show out early. Sorry about that. It’s just the last few minutes that are missing.

Here are a few more details on what we covered:

  • Whether Asian-inspired fantasy is challenging to market since it’s a smaller niche.
  • The challenges of launching a stand alone novel versus a Book 1 in a new series.
  • Pricing strategies for launch.
  • Building up a big mailing list quickly with giveaways.
  • Doing mailing list swaps with other authors in your genre.
  • Megan’s KBoards thread about her launch and the sponsorship sites she booked.
  • Marketing for traditionally published books versus indie books.
  • Genre hopping under the science fiction and fantasy umbrella.
  • Pre-orders when launching a book that’s exclusive with Amazon (KDP Select), yay or nay?
  • Publishing a paperback ahead of time to enable early reviews on your Kindle book page.
  • Strategies for getting early reviews.

Interested in learning more about Megan or checking out her books? Visit her on her website or check her out on Amazon. You can also find A Mortal Song on Amazon.

 

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SFFMP 64: Rachel Caine Talks Urban Fantasy, YA, Traditional Publishing, and Rocking a Kickstarter Campaign

Author Interview, Podcast

Today’s guest, Rachel Caine, has been publishing urban fantasy and YA fantasy since 1991. She’s been traditionally published throughout her career, but she recently decided to self-publish a new book in her long-standing Weather Warden series. She launched a Kickstarter to help finance the project, asked for $5,000 and ended up earning $18,000+. We asked her about the Kickstarter and also what she’s seen as far as changes in the industry, along with the differences in self-publishing and traditional publishing when it comes to marketing and more.

Some of the things we talked about were:

  • The state of urban fantasy today and how trends wax and wane
  • Creating a successful Kickstarter campaign (and some tips for how to save more of the money that people pledge to you).
  • Building a mailing list as a traditionally published author (she uses Mailchimp and has done giveaways with Rafflecopter).
  • Creating items for physical giveaways at signings and conventions (Rachel mentioned MakePlayingCards.com for doing character cards and ClubFlyers.com and Vista Print for bookmarks, postcards, and the like).
  • Visiting schools and marketing to librarians to help sell YA fiction
  • What kind of help you can expect from traditional publishers when it comes to marketing and what’s most likely going to be up to you.
  • The challenges of participating in such common self-pub marketing tactics as multi-author bundles and price-related promotions when your books are traditionally published
  • Whether social media and “having a platform” are important when it comes to getting a traditional deal
  • Being careful about signing a contract and watching out for rights grabs

You can find Rachel at her website, on Twitter, and you can visit her author page on Facebook.

She has lots of new books coming out for you to check out. She has a story coming out in the new X-files anthology, she has a collection of short stories from her Morganville Vampires series, and the next book in her Great Library series will be out this summer. Check out the first here (visit her site for more news and links to other stores).

 

 

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SFFMP 60: Rocking the Charts in YA Fantasy with New Author Elise Kova

Author Interview, Podcast

We interviewed new YA fantasy author, Elise Kova, on the show today, and I think you guys will enjoy the listen. At the end of the summer, she launched her first book, Air Awakens, and it’s done great in sales and earned a lot of positives reviews. She managed all of those sales with a full priced offering (3.99) and also without jumping into KDP Select. She’s done so well with it and the follow-up books in the series that she’ll be switching to writing full time soon.

We asked her about writing and marketing YA fantasy, launching a successful first book, accumulating a street team, getting bloggers to reveal your cover, and having paperbacks and hardbacks as well as ebooks made. (She uses Gatekeeper Press to handle the formatting and get physical copies made.)

Elise talked about getting custom cover illustrations done for her books, which have doubtless helped sales. Her artist is Merilliza Chan, whom she found on Deviant Art.

She also spoke about getting her start on FictionPress and whether that can be useful for building an author platform. Listen to the show because there’s a lot of great information in it!

Once you’re done, you can find Elise at her website, on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook.

 

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