zombies – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

SFFMP 219: Launching a New Pen Name and Getting an Audiobook Deal with Audible

February 5, 2019 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

For this week’s show, sci-fi/fantasy/horror author Chris Philbrook joined us to talk about the success he’s had with ebooks and audiobooks (he’s had several deals with Audible for production), as well as a new YA-writing pen name that he’s starting up.

Here are some of the specifics that we discussed:

Publishing fiction to your website and building a readership before starting to publish.
Some of the challenges with publishing series in several different sub-genres.
How Chris was originally picked up by Audible and how audiobooks have become a substantial part of his income.
His experiences with an audiobook publisher and also DIY-ing it through ACX.
What marketing he’s done to help his audiobooks sell.
Chris’s experience with paying for Kirkus reviews and if it’s worth it.
His experience with Amazon exclusivity and Kindle Unlimited versus taking some of his books wide.
Why he decided to start a pen name for his YA fiction even though he’s already written in numerous genres under his regular name.
Some of the challenges of starting again from scratch and creating a second internet presence.
Experimenting with Instagram to attract younger readers.
The advantage of a simultaneous release for the ebook, paperback, and audiobook.
When it makes sense for a newer author to invest in audiobook production.

You can find Chris on his website or check out his books on Amazon. You can also follow what he’s doing with his pen name by looking up W. J. Orion. The first book, The Phone, comes out in March.

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audible, chris philbrook, marketing audiobooks, pen names, zombies

SFFMP 128: Kindle Unlimited, Perma 99-Cents, and ACX vs. Traditional Audiobook Publishers with Anthony J. Melchiorri

April 18, 2017 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

It’s not every week that we get authors with PhDs in science on the show (though we’ve had a few!), but today Anthony J Melchiorri joined us. By day, he uses his PhD in bioengineering to develop cellular therapies and 3D-printable artificial organs, and by night, he writes medical thrillers, post-apocalyptic fiction, and space opera. So far, he’s best-known for his Tide series.

Here’s some of what we chatted about:

How Anthony’s background led him to start writing medical thrillers with a science fiction twist.
How those books didn’t sell as well as he’d hoped and he ended up writing post-apocalyptic fiction.
PA fiction having a really rabid reader base that wants more books than are out there.
How you might be able to find a good subgenre on Amazon to exploit by looking for ones where books with poor covers are selling well.
Whether his Kindle Worlds project was worth it as far as time and money invested in it went.
If authors with tons of in-depth scientific knowledge can still expect to get “corrected” by well-meaning readers.
Concerns about possibly including too much science in the stories when you have that in-depth knowledge.
Marketing in the various different genres (space opera, post apocalyptic, and medial thrillers) and why some do well in Kindle Unlimited and others don’t.
Trying a perma- or long-term 99 cent price on a Book 1.
The differences in producing your own audiobooks through ACX and going with a publisher — Blackstone Audio is doing Anthony’s Eternal Frontier series.
Challenges in marketing audiobooks and what works.

You can find Anthony on his website, on Facebook, or check out his books on Amazon. If you want to try his fiction, Book 1 in the Tide series or Book 1 in the Eternal Frontier series would be good starts.

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anthony melchiorri, kindle unlimited, medical thrillers, post apocalyptic, space opera, zombies

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.