Podcasts about book barbarian

Mark has a chat with Clayton Noblit, a senior marketing manager at Written Word Media. Prior to the interview, Mark thanks Patrons, welcomes a few new Buy Me A Coffee buddies, shares a personal update, and shares a word from this episode's sponsor. episode's sponsor. Learn more about this self-publishing/WIDE-publishing focused cruise. In the interview Mark and Clayton talk about: What Written Media is (a book marketing/promotions company) Clayton's personal background as a marketer, and a big reader, but not an author The purposeful design of the Written Word Media dashboard to help authors schedule a marketing promotion in about 20 minutes then get back on to the other parts of their day The various Written Word Media reader-facing brands: FreeBooksy, BargainBooksy, Red Feather Romance, New in Books, and Audiothicket Their partnerships with other reader promo sites like eReader News Today, Book Barbarian, Hello Books, and others The strategy of promo stacking by spreading marketing promotions out over a series of 3 to 5 days How the Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads support at Written Word Media works The Written Word Media membership levels (Gold and Platinum) which offer a 10% discount on booking promos as well as additional exclusive promotion options and savings on other third party services The Limelight feature promotion option available for members The content that appears on the Written Word Media blog, including regular surveys of authors and industry trends A few of the responses from a survey conducted in late 2023 A discussion of author's perceptions of AI and social media The importance of diversifying instead of being reliant on a single platform Advice Clayton offers to authors working on promoting and marketing their books   After the interview Mark reflects on just how much Written Word Media has grown over the years, by listening to authors, and adding tools and options to allow for greater efficiency in marketing. He also notes how authors are becoming more professional in their approach of planning ahead, and admits to not being as good at making those plans as he'd hoped.   Links of Interest: Written Word Media EP 008 - Author Promotions with Ricci Wolman from Written Word Media EP 185 - Promotion Results and Analysis EP 285 - Written Word Media's Top 10 Publishing Trends for 2023 EP 342 - Publishing Trend Reflections for 2024 DropCap Marketplace  Use coupon STARK20 to get 20% off Cruising Writers Buy Mark a Coffee Patreon for Stark Reflections How to Access Patreon RSS Feeds An Author's Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries The Relaxed Author Buy eBook Direct Buy Audiobook Direct Publishing Pitfalls for Authors An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores Wide for the Win Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books This Time Around (Short Story) A Canadian Werewolf in New York Stowe Away (Novella) Fear and Longing in Los Angeles Fright Nights, Big City Lover's Moon Hex and the City Only Monsters in the Building The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard   Clayton Noblit is a senior marketing manager at Written Word Media. He is passionate about helping authors find their readers and finding ways to sell more books. When he's not working, he enjoys spending time with his family, playing sports, and making beverages. The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

In this week's episode, I take a look at different pricing tiers for selling ebooks, and discuss the pros and cons of each. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 206 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 21st, 2024 and today we are discussing ebook pricing and the pros and cons of different ebook price points. Before we get into that, we will have an update on my current writing projects and some discussion about Question of the Week. First up, my current writing projects. I am pleased to report that I have finished the rough draft of Shield of Darkness. It came in at 111,000 words, which I wrote in 31 days. It's amusing to look back. The book before that in the series, Shield of Storms, was 6,000 words shorter, but I actually wrote it in 35 days, but that was over December and January and I had taken an entire day off for the Christmas holidays back at the end of 2023. Next up, I will be writing a short story called Disciples that ties into the Shield War series and my newsletter subscribers will get that for free when Shield of Darkness comes out in ebook form, so it's a good time to sign up for my newsletter. After Shield of Darkness is out and published, my main focus will then be Half-Orc Paladin, and I think I'm 25 or 26,000 words into it (I'm not entirely sure off the top of my head). That's where I'm at with my current projects. Good news: the rough draft of Shield of Darkness is finally done. 00:01:20 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. This week's topic: what is your favorite food to eat while traveling? The inspiration for this question was the fact that I traveled somewhere around 1,200 miles in the last week before recording this episode. As you might expect, we had a range of answers. Justin says: nuts. Almonds, peanuts, or mixed nuts, roasted and salted. High in sodium, but non-perishable and high in protein. Like nuggets and fries, you can drive while eating them. Another advantage is the ability to easily put away uneaten nuts for later. And finally, no whining from vegans about the evils of consuming meat while in airport lounges. I have to admit I haven't had that personal experience yet, but I can see how that would be a plus. Our next comment is from Surabhi, who says I'm South Asian, so my award goes to samosa and Pani Puri. I'm pretty sure I pronounced that wrong. Our next comment is from Jesse, who says: hot dogs with pepperjack, jalapeños, and mustard. Weirdly cures most of what ails you. Scott says: sunflower seeds pass time for a for a time consuming or passing the time snack. Beef jerky is a choice for me also. The hardier and saltier, the better. John says: tacos as long as I'm west of the Mississippi and South of Dallas. Burger and fries otherwise. If I'm rolling cheap, I'll pack an ice chest to make sandwiches and chips. Juana says: I like to eat different regional foods, like a candy called cherry mash with chocolate and nuts covering cherry nougat. It used to be available in Kansas only. They don't serve a BLT above Tennessee or sweet cold tea in Maine. Michael says: well, I too am a fan of McDonald's. I usually go for the cheeseburger meal with fries and a Diet Coke. Usually consistent and my innards tolerate them well. Also driving friendly. The Diet Coke does tend to clear out the slight grease from the fries and the burgers- cleanses the palate, so to speak…fine dining at McDonald's. But if I'm near Philly, I always defer to a cheesesteak with fried onions. Alton says: don't eat a whole bag of baby carrots. You won't eat them for years afterwards. Good advice for us all! Juan says: be a foodie. I enjoy finding your remote mom and pop places in towns I drive through and enjoying the atmosphere. Sometimes the food is amazing, sometimes food is bleh, but I get to sit in a quaint spot in some obscure town and read a book, scroll Facebook, or just people watch. You could say that I'm more a “experience the travel” than a foodie person, I guess. I rarely eat in the car. I look for excuses to get out of the car. Typically for me is a 5 hour drive to a particular military installation a few times a year and stopping at different rural towns on the way. Todd says: Jack-in-the-Box breakfast sandwiches, especially when it's not breakfast hours. So if they serve them all day, I know my order is made fresh and it's reasonably healthy. Then I ruin any concept of healthiness with a big old Dr. Pepper. Roger says: bacon, brie, and cranberry mini baguette with rocket/arugula. Gary says: I like tacos from food trucks, pop-ups, or little family-owned shops. Hotel desk clerks know a surprising amount of places to get such things. Michael says: chocolate. John says: burritos. Around the West Coast, In and Out. And Bonnie says: I haven't traveled any real distance in years, occasional work trips under 150 miles. It's usually a large Dunkin' coffee and sausage, egg, and cheese wrap. For myself, I think my favorite food to eat while traveling is the McDonald's Chicken McNuggets and fries. I know objectively that McDonald's Chicken McNuggets and fries are not super healthy and I try to avoid fast food in general in my day-to-day life, with varying degrees of success. For that matter, there are far superior fries and nuggets over those obtained at McDonald's. However, McDonald's fries and nuggets offer several advantages to the weary traveler. I can eat them in the car without taking my eyes off the road or getting my hands messy. I don't need them with the dipping sauce. In the airport, I can eat them in the waiting lounge without making a huge mess. So for me that lands in the sweet spot of convenience, flavor, and not making a huge mess in the car while eating it. 00:05:09 Main Topic of the Week: Ebook Pricing Now on to our main topic this week: the topic of ebook pricing, which is often a very sensitive topic, especially among newer indie authors. Newer indie authors will sometimes have spent years or a year or a considerable amount of time writing their book, and they feel they should charge accordingly. Like, this was a year of work. Why should I not charge you $9.99 for it or $14.99? A new Stephen King book is $14.99, so why shouldn't I have that price? If I put a year of work on this or more, then why shouldn't I charge for it accordingly? After all, you can go to, you know, Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts or wherever get a coffee for $5. Why shouldn't the book cost more than a coffee since it's more work to produce the book than the coffee? I think that is thinking about ebook pricing the wrong way. You want to think of price as a marketing tool, not a statement on the worth or quality of your book. Some people will have checked their absolute favorite book out of the library and paid nothing for it and that doesn't mean the book is without value. I think you will want to price your books to move. Look for various options for promotional prices as part of your overall marketing strategy. Having a permanently free ebook isn't the instant guaranteed success it used to be, but it still works and we'll talk about that a bit more later in the episode. How you price the first three books in the series is crucial for later books. Don't disappoint the reader with a giant price price hike like $10 between books one and two in a series. Give them a reason to get further into the series. For myself, for my long series, what I'll usually do is set the first book free, set the second book to $0.99, and then after that, the rest of the books in the series will probably be $4.99. The reason I do that is because if you read the first book for free and get the second book for $0.99, then by the end of those two books you have a pretty good idea whether it will be worth your time and money to continue with the series. Charging the same amount as Stephen King or James Patterson for your book is not great marketing for a new, unknown author, or even for a relatively successful indie author. Stephen King and James Patterson can get away with charging that because they are Stephen King and James Patterson. I am not Stephen King or James Patterson and I'm pretty sure you are not, too. It's best to look at what the best-selling indie authors in your genre are charging and price closer to them when possible. People will very rarely pay premium prices (i.e. over $10.00) for fiction that is not from best-selling trad pub authors and even traditionally published authors have seen resistance to pricing over $15.00 for their books. I noticed about a lot of new books from the Bane science fiction and fantasy publishing house tend to be around the $9.99 mark or even the $8.99 mark, which is much more palatable. One thing to note also is that nonfiction readers are less price sensitive, especially in specialized or technical topics. Those readers are looking for a book that meets a need, so they're more concerned about finding a quality book on the exact topic than how much the book costs. Reviews matter more than price in this case. For example, a nonfiction guide about hiking the Grand Canyon full of instruction, maps, and so forth can command a much higher price than memoir about someone who hikes the Grand Canyon because the memoir is less interesting to that particular kind of reader than someone who needs any nonfiction book about the Grand Canyon. So for the next part of this episode, let's look at the pros and cons of the different tiers of pricing and for the sake of this episode, we've organized pricing into 5 tiers. The first tier of pricing is of course free. The purpose for that is obviously much easier to write a free book. It exposes the book to a greater audience than it might have otherwise. Since storage space is abundant, people don't hesitate if something looks interesting if it's free because you don't have to worry about hoarding ebooks the way you have to do about hoarding paper books. That said, free has several substantial cons to it as well. You're obviously not making any money off a free book unless the book is free temporarily for promotional pricing or the book is perma-free to promote a longer series and entice people to read future books. For a recent example from my own experience, Silent Order: Omnibus One was very recently free on BookBub and the only reason I did that is because it's the first three books in a 14 books series and I've seen excellent read through from that to paid books in the rest of the series, so it was a good marketing experiment that paid off. But if the only book I had was Silent Order: Omnibus One and there weren't 11 follow up books in the series, then making Silent Order: Omnibus One free would have just been a waste of my time. The second pricing tier is at $0.99 to $1.99. The pros of this include that $0.99 is a price point where for a lot of people, it would be an impulse buy. They don't think about it very much. It's a good price point for promotions such as BookBub and other book promotion sites like Bargain Booksy, Book Barbarian, and so forth, where if you lower your book to a temporary sale price like $0.99, you can advertise it much more effectively because as we said, $0.99 really is an impulse buy for many people. There are a couple of cons to this, too. The Amazon payouts for this price range are not as favorable. If you set your book to $0.99 on Amazon, you will get only 35%, whereas if you set it between $2.99 and $9.99 you'll get 70%, which we'll talk about a bit more shortly. Some readers feel like books in this price range suggests that the book will be low quality. Again, that's a matter of taste, but if you are temporarily promoting your book, you can get good results for $0.99. One thing to also note as well is that just because Amazon has a 35% rate, some of the other retailers do better. Google Play and Barnes and Noble will give you 70% of the $0.99 price point so you can do literally twice as well in terms of revenue from them and I believe Kobo gives you 45% of a $0.99 book. So you can make more money from them off of the other retailers as opposed to Amazon. One note of caution from my own experience: I wouldn't bother with the $1.99 price point. It seems to be sort of the halfway point between $0.99 and $2.99, where people just generally do not like buying things at the $1.99 price point, at least ebooks. I've had better luck with both $2.99 and $0.99 than I have with $1.99. So that is something to bear that to bear in mind, that I've never had much luck with $1.99 price point. That moves us up to our third tier of pricing, $2.99 to $4.99. The pros: over $2.99 is the more favorable Amazon payout range because then you get 70% of the sales price as opposed to 35%. Because of that, $2.99 is still a pretty common price for this reason, especially for the first books in many series. This price is still less than the smallest size Frappuccino at Starbucks, much less than a gallon of gas, so it is a price range that most readers accept. For myself, most of my novels now are at $4.99. For a while, for like 10 years practically, I kept them at $3.99, but when inflation started getting really bad towards the end of 2021 and through 2022, I moved everything up to $4.99 and I really haven't had many problems with that. I think we're at the sweet point between what is a fair price for the book and a price that the readers also accept as fair, which is an important Venn Diagram to master if you are an indie author. The cons of $2.99 to $4.99 are that the price is too high for promotions like BookBub. If you want to do a BookBub feature deal for your book, you are better off applying at $0.99 or free because BookBub is about discount books, not full price books. If your full price is $2.99 or $3.99 or $4.99, it's going to be hard to sell a BookBub, so $2.99 to $4.99 is generally a good regular price for your ebooks and then only go lower if it's part of a special promotion or if you want to make the first book in the series free. Now on to our 4th tier, $5.99 through $9.99. The pro is that you are still getting good payout rate from Amazon at this price point; you're still in the 70% range, which stops at $9.99 and readers are generally comfortable paying this range if they are already fans of the author and series. I haven't tried to go above $4.99 for my individual novels, because I don't want people to feel like I'm trying nickel and dime them. But I do know indie authors who do, and that it basically comes down to a personal decision if you feel comfortable doing that and your readership would support paying the higher price. The con is of course it's difficult to get new readers and do promotions at this price tier. If you want to do a sale where you make like the first book of your series free, you're dropping down to $0.99. As we mentioned earlier in the show, the jump in price from free or $0.99, to for example, $7.99 might be jarring enough that it will turn off readers and discourage them from buying the books later in the series. Now we come to the fifth and final tier of pricing, $10 and up. Pro is that the readers often accept this price tier for specialty nonfiction or technical books, especially if they are long books with a lot of images, maps, and details. I am thinking about things like RPG source books, travel guides like I mentioned earlier, technical nonfiction that involves a lot of diagrams and maybe like, pictures of engine parts. However, there are a lot of cons with pricing your ebook over $10. The biggest one is that you will only get 35% from Amazon. So if, for example, you set your book at $9.99 and sell it, you'll get about $7.00 depending on the sales tax and size of the ebook file and so forth. But if you set the book at $15 instead of $7.00, you will receive only $5.20, give or take, depending upon conversion rates. So it makes much more sense to price your e-book at $9.99 if you want to go that high instead of raising the price into around $14.99 or $19.99 because you will actually be making less money. You're selling fewer copies and getting paid less per copy, which is not a recipe for success. It also sets expectations sky high, because if you're paying that much for something, you want it to be perfect and it will repel all but the most devoted continuing readers, especially for fiction. If you're writing very specialist nonfiction, you might be able to get away with it, but you will sell fewer copies and probably not make as much per copy. So those are the pros and cons of the five different pricing tiers we're talking about. My thoughts on book pricing have evolved a little bit over the years, but not very much. I think overall if you are an indie author writing genre fiction, the best recipe for commercial success remains to write a long series and then make the first book free, the second book like $0.99, and then the rest of the books in the series to whatever the usual price for the series you set is (whether it's $2.99, $3.99, $4.99, or $5.99). Though to be honest, I would not price an ebook novel $5.99 myself. Your circumstances may vary. If I was starting out today, my advice to a new writer would be basically to do that: write a series and make the first book free, make the second book $0.99. and then keep writing books in the series. For myself, I don't think I would write another series with more than nine books in it because you get a little drop in read-through from book to book. I think Cloak Mage with Nadia is the last series I'm going to write with over nine books in it. I think ideally in the future, my length for a series would be 6 to 8 books and then once the series is over, I start over with a new series and then eventually once I get enough books out in the series, make the first one free, the second one $0.99, and the rest full price. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A quick note of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping to pull together through research for this episode. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts (transcripts are available for episodes 140 to the present). If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Is AMMO Write For You?If you're an author with a handful of books published (or you've published nonfiction and have one book with a great program to help clients), AMMO is unlike any other program on the market. You're going to have to work the program to find success, and bestseller status likely won't hit in weeks of joining the program, but for many authors, AMMO is the beginning of a lucrative career that puts books first. Learn more here.THIS IS THE LINK TO MY SUBSTACK if you're listening elsewhere.Haldane B. DoyleBoy, do I have a treat for you today! Please see the in-depth autopsy of my guest's marketing plan, what worked, what failed, what has potential but needs more effort.TRBM Podcast Followup AutopsyIntroductionWrote a series of four sci-fi novellas, set in a future earth built of purely biological technologyFirst time writing long-form fictionTook me ~two years from the start of serious writing to self-publishing.Produced 4 novella series = ~160 k words = ~ 2 novels equivalentLaunched as ebooks in May this year.Four ebooks bundled together in June.The paperback bundle is out now as well.Primary aims of the first book project:1. Learn all the stages of writing (concept, outlines, drafting, editing).2. Learn all stages of production (covers, blurbs, formatting, website, self-publishing).3. Learn the basics of self-promotion (email list, podcasts, social media, no paid advertising).Most important aim- do all these things and still want to write another book afterwards.Advice suggests that paid advertising has higher ROI when you have a decent back catalogue.The Autopsy1. WritingDrafted the story twice as a novel- the original POV character didn't work (passive/unlikeable).Covid fever dream helped me reimagine the story from four minor character POVs.Drafted all four stories first to maintain momentum.Each took a bit over a month writing 2-3k words a day.Followed Heinlein approach to writing (light edit yesterday's draft then continue if >70% right).Redrafted book 2 (too short, lacked interiority) and book 4 (lacked interiority, ending wrong).Drafting took ~1.5 years (most of that spent on discarded original attempts).Editing took ~6 months.Paid professional to proofread book 1 (then applied patterns to other books).Fixed about a dozen minor typos in books 2-4 after ebooks were published.Printed 10 copies of the first novella for a local novel reading group to critique.Too shy for a group discussion with me so made a questionnaire.9/10 hated it, but 1/10 loved it (the group hated Oryx and Crake/mostly read historical/romance).2. ProductionFirst experimented with microphotography for covers- technical hurdles were too much.Made my covers in Adobe Illustrator (weird orphan genre, didn't know what I wanted).Revisited them over 12 months many times (up to 30 versions- substack post on the process).Provided a nice shift in focus between drafting/editing different books.A/B tested covers on social media (people love doing this).Wrote and rewrote blurbs over 12 months.A/B tested again (bit less enthusiastic, but useful feedback).Formatted in Atticus (cheaper option, ugly table of contents but otherwise nice).Website built by web developer friend (generous favour to practice their new skills).Self-published on Amazon in April.Put book 1 in KU for the first few months as lead magnet to series.3. Self PromotionEmail list at a mere 42.Put out monthly updates including illustrated cartoon of weird biologyMailing list swaps? (Weird orphan subgenre?)Appeared on a half dozen podcasts (mostly writing/science/experimental farming-> not ideal audience to market to, but chicken and egg issue with pitching scifi-focused podcasts)Joined twitter (hate it), Facebook (dead), reddit (dying), substack (crickets, but not very active).Weekly experimental farming substack doing well though- sometimes cross-promote.Readers demanded I activate paid subscriptions to support me (made x4 my ebook sales).Created a YouTube channel.Used AI narration to create animated book blurb YouTube shorts.Converted book 1 into an AI audiobook at put it up for free on YouTube (upload to Kobo?).Created a few biology-heavy scifi review videos (some traction, but a lot of work).Reached ten Amazon reviews, got into a Book Barbarian promotion.Minor spike in sales the day after.Flatlined every since (Amazon debut boost expired?).Sold a total of 77 ebooks. Made more money on my farming substack without trying.Novel writing turned out to be a worse way to make money than selling weird seeds.Was busily deciding which book to write next, following advice to crank out next book asap, when the harsh reality of writing self-published novels made me pause.GPT/AI hype craze happened.Seriously considered the viability of long-form text fiction versus alternative channels for creativity.Paused writing other than farm Substack for a few weeks.Focused on my neglected farm.Tried to stop writing but the next story idea kept buzzing in my head. Started writing it again (a dark 80s nostalgia magic realism story called “Anubis Laughed”).Looks like I achieved my ultimate goal of wanting to keep writing in the end.USE THIS LINK TO BUY MY NOVELCosts (cheapest to most expensive)Book funnel- ARC distribution- 29 (could have done without)Book barbarian promo- 63 (net negative, but not expensive)Print out local reading group reviews- 70 (waste of time without matching reader tastes)Copyright - 124 (optional, but may be useful later)Website domain- 138 (friend built website) (very lucky, could have used drag and drop alternative)ISBNs (x10)- 143 (essential)AI Narration- Elevenlabs 180 (valuable tool to learn for other projects)Proof reading- 216 (worthwhile)Formatting- Atticus 220 (saved some hassle, could have learnt to format in Word for more control)Amazon Keywords- Fiverr- 61 + Pubrocket - 178 (total waste of time- not chasing SEO niches)Cover design- Illustrator - 320 (five covers + promo material)(worthwhile- building skills for future)Total expenses of - 1680~300 under budget.Sales since April 202377 ebook sales on Amazon.1 ebook sale on Kobo.1 paperback sale.2.99 per novella, 7.99 for whole series, 19.99 paperback.1000 pages read on KU (since delisted).Estimated royalties- 180.ReflectionsLove building up for month of dedicated drafting.Drafting and self-promotion are incompatible- separate in time.Editing and self-promotion can happen together.Intend to write more short stories - should get back to submitting to magazines again.Intend to try another genre next (sort of magic realism “Anubis Laughed”).When the world is destroyed in 2013, the Egyptian gods send a struggling teacher back to his first day of school in 1984 to write a novel and save his soul from eternal torment.Side Project: Can GPT Destroy the Online Advertising Model?Wondered if LLMs could be used as a personalised story recommendation engine.Rated all the short story finalists from the Hugo Awards.Few ideas:1. Feed it rated stories to see if it can predict my rating for unrated stories.2. Feed it excerpts from my friend's top novels.Create three sets of three stories: one picked by the LLM based on the excerpts, one based on my understanding of my friend, and another at random.Then let my friends rate the sets of stories from best to worst.Ideal- every reader runs their own personalised AI to filter the flood of content to select personalised recommendations.Why rely on Amazon's algorithm or clunky/manipulated star ratings to pick your next book?Could break the entire online advertising business model if customers no longer rely on third parties to bottleneck access to creators.Open to advice from anyone with experience training LLMs.Not possessive about this idea.Final plugWebsite- www.haldanebdoyle.com (short stories, sign up for monthly email updates)Books- “Our Vitreous Womb” on Amazon and Kobo. A hard science fiction vision of a future where civilisation is rebuilt on pure biotechnology, with a surprising amount of character development according to readers.Early readers compared it to Le Guin, Atwood and Tchaikovsky.Reach out and say hello on twitter too.TRBM is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to TRBM at jodyjsperling.substack.com/subscribe

What I’ve been up to in September and the first half of October, plus author tips. Activities around my new release, A Sleuth & a Charlatan, including: Newsletter swaps. Newsletter promotion services with my results. (My series is historical fantasy adventure with romance.) My first orange bestseller tag on Amazon! Links for the tips and recommendations for this episode - full links and info at claresager.com/confessions: CoverVault. Newsletter promo sites that worked well for me at 0.99: Book Barbarian, Bargain Booksy, Fussy Librarian, BKnights, and BookSends. (Again, remember results can vary by genre.) Zoom – great video/audio conferencing software I used to interview Sylvia Mercedes. Connect with me: Twitter @claresauthor, email clare@claresager.com.   Credits: Intro/Outro Music: “Inspired” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Episode 6: Indie Author Online Vulnerabilities Prologue: Eat That Frog Eat That Frog: https://www.amazon.com/Eat-That-Frog-Great-Procrastinating-ebook/dp/B01MYEM8SZ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546545943&sr=8-1&keywords=eat+the+frog Mark Twain didn’t say it:  https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/03/eat-frog/ Main Story: Indie Author Online Vulnerabilities Derek Murphy’s story: https://www.creativindie.com/how-i-got-kicked-out-of-kindle-unlimited-and-lost-50000-overnight/ Various news sites covering the Patreon controversy: https://podnews.net/update/patreon-controversy https://patreonhq.com/hate-speech-on-patreon-a9026e52c2cf Epilogue: Email Marketing Services Bargain Booksy: https://www.bargainbooksy.com/for-authors/ Book Barbarian: http://bookbarbarian.com/why-advertise/  BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/partners   Book Gorilla: https://www.bookgorilla.com/advertise Book Runes: http://bookrunes.com/submit-book/ Book Sends: https://booksends.com/advertise.php eBookSoda: http://www.ebooksoda.com/authors/ Ereader News: https://ereadernewstoday.com/ Fussy Librarian: https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/advertising/making-book-marketing-easier/                                                                                                                              Pillow Talk Books: https://www.pillowtalkbooks.com/book-promotion-services/ Reading Deals: https://readingdeals.com/submit-ebook   Steamy Romance Books: https://steamyromancebooks.com/author-services/ Music "Never Surrender" by Chasing Noise, off their album, Everything http://chasingnoise.wixsite.com/chasingnoise  

This week, we were joined by Will Turnage, the founder of the discount book promotion site, Book Barbarian (in addition, he runs Red Roses Romance and Book Adrenaline for mysteries and thrillers). He’s also the author of three science fiction and fantasy novels, and is a fan of the genre. We asked him about some best practices for authors using

Justin Sloan is a video game writer, novelist, and screenwriter. He studied writing at the Johns Hopkins University 'MA in Writing' program and at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television's Professional Program in Screenwriting. Additionally, he has published short fiction and poetry. Justin was in the Marines for five years and has lived in Japan, Korea, and Italy. He recently gave up his day-job to go full-time as an author. Find Out More: 1) Justin's website: http://www.justinsloanauthor.com/ 2) Follow Justin on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JustinSloanAuthor 3) Follow Justin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justinmsloan 4) Justin's Goodreads profile: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9772692.Justin_Sloan 5) Justin's Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Justin-Sloan/e/B00OJPAM0K 6) The Creative Writing Career website: http://creativewritingcareer.com/ 7) Justin's YouTube Channel 'The Sloan Zone': https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7-f7OkD-MudUjBLINdRdIw 8) Justin's podcast: http://creativewritingcareer.com/ Talking points: 1) Justin's work with military veterans: https://creativewritingcareer.wordpress.com/category/military-veterans/ 2) Brandon Sanderson is one of Justin's favourite authors https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brandon-Sanderson/e/B001IGFHW6/ 3) Book promo sites: Book Barbarian http://bookbarbarian.com/ FreeBooksy https://www.freebooksy.com/ Booksends http://booksends.com/advertise.php 4) Story beats explained https://timstout.wordpress.com/story-structure/blake-snyders-beat-sheet/ 5) Michael Anderle, one of Justin's writing partners https://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Anderle/e/B017J2WANQ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/self-publishing-journeys/message

Justin Sloan is a video game writer, novelist, and screenwriter. He studied writing at the Johns Hopkins University 'MA in Writing' program and at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television's Professional Program in Screenwriting. Additionally, he has published short fiction and poetry. Justin was in the Marines for five years and has lived in Japan, Korea, and Italy. He recently gave up his day-job to go full-time as an author. Find Out More: 1) Justin's website: http://www.justinsloanauthor.com/ 2) Follow Justin on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JustinSloanAuthor 3) Follow Justin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justinmsloan 4) Justin's Goodreads profile: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9772692.Justin_Sloan 5) Justin's Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Justin-Sloan/e/B00OJPAM0K 6) The Creative Writing Career website: http://creativewritingcareer.com/ 7) Justin's YouTube Channel 'The Sloan Zone': https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7-f7OkD-MudUjBLINdRdIw 8) Justin's podcast: http://creativewritingcareer.com/ Talking points: 1) Justin's work with military veterans: https://creativewritingcareer.wordpress.com/category/military-veterans/ 2) Brandon Sanderson is one of Justin's favourite authors https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brandon-Sanderson/e/B001IGFHW6/ 3) Book promo sites: Book Barbarian http://bookbarbarian.com/ FreeBooksy https://www.freebooksy.com/ Booksends http://booksends.com/advertise.php 4) Story beats explained https://timstout.wordpress.com/story-structure/blake-snyders-beat-sheet/ 5) Michael Anderle, one of Justin's writing partners https://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Anderle/e/B017J2WANQ

This week, William Finnegan talks about “Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life”; Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; Peter Moore discusses “The Weather Experiment”; questions from readers; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.