Podcasts about freebooksy

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

Lee and Russell welcome Michael Hourigan from Written Word Media to discuss paid newsletter promotions such as Freebooksy and Bargainbooksy. * The most important marketing tool an author (or anyone) can have* Easy and proven ways to grow a newsletter * How Lee earns a full time income on autopilot * WTF is “Promo stacking” and WTF do we care?* A quick and easy way to get a launch plan (hint: make Michael do it) * How to get free help fixing your blurb Resources: * Free Book Launch Checklist* Your 1 Page Book Marketing Quick Start Guide by Lee Savino * A Guide to Welcome Emails For Authors* Reader Reach Ads: What to Expect* Top Book Marketing Strategy for Authors: Promo Stacking* Limelight Book Promo Emails* What genre should I promote my book in?* Contacting Written Word Media for assistance with your book blurb or building your marketing plan* Writing and Release Rapidly by Elana Johnson This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com

So, I have a confession to make. Actually, I've been struggling to sell paid books. Sure, I can give them away for free, but paid is a different problem altogether. I've been struggling to sell Duplicity, the second book in my James Lalonde Amateur Sleuth Mystery Series. A few days before my forty-second birthday, I realised that FreeBooksy had a spot open on my birthday, the 29th of May. In this episode, I'm going to share with you the results of that experiment and my attempts to re-create the results with a Fussy Librarian Promotion, which I scheduled for the 8th of June.Without further ado, let's get into the show.Course, Podcasts, Books, and Tools MentionedCheck Out the Show Notes ⇢ https://authorpreneurpodcast.com/bts055/May Behind-The-Scenes Author Diary ⇢ https://authorpreneurpodcast.com/bts054/FreeBooksy ⇢ https://secure.writtenwordmedia.com/featuresThe Fussy Librarian ⇢ https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/advertising/Support the show by buying me a coffee ⇢ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/authoradhayGot a burning question that you would love me to answer on the podcast ⇢ https://authorpreneurpodcast.com/question/Answers to Questions on Writing from Previous Shows ⇢ https://authorpreneurpodcast.com/question/faq/Products I RecommendScrivener ⇢ https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener-affiliate.html?fpr=authorpreneurpod *Grammarly Premium ⇢ https://www.grammarly.com/Pro Writing Aid ⇢ https://prowritingaid.com/?afid=22911 *AutoCrit ⇢ https://www.autocrit.com/Marlow/Authors.ai ⇢ https://authors.ai/marlowe/?awref=rt2q4bq7zq *Fiverr ⇢ https://www.fiverr.com/DIVI Theme ⇢ https://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=66529 *Other Useful LinksLooking for an affordable premade book cover? | https://levillainbookcovers.com/shop/ **Be on the Podcast | https://authorpreneurpodcast.com/podcast/interview/Host Your Author Website with SiteGround ⇢ https://www.siteground.com/go/authorpreneur *My BooksMy Short Story, the Lawn | https://dl.bookfunnel.com/wi5nh80cx4The Candidate | https://books2read.com/the-candidateSuspicion | https://books2read.com/suspicionDuplicity | https://books2read.com/duplicity-adhay/The Locked Room | https://books2read.com/locked-roomRead Entitled to Murder on my blog | https://authoradhay.com/entitled-to-murder-001/Read Entitled to Murder on Wattpad | https://www.wattpad.com/story/245779659-entitled-to-murder-a-murder-mystery-book-clubConnect with me on Social MediaTwitter: https://twitter.com/writeradhayFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorpreneurpodcastFacebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/indieauthorpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorpreneurpodcast/YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/authorpreneurpodcast/videosGoodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/authoradhay/RedBubble: https://www.redbubble.com/people/WriterADHay/shop* Affiliate Links** This is a service or product offered by me*** My bookish merchandise store

Few promo sites offer as much value and innovation in the indie author space as Written Word Media. In the past year, they've added tons of new value to authors looking to expand their reach. In today's podcast episode, I'm speaking with Clayton Noblit from Written Word Media about 2023 author trends and the new offerings they have for indie authors. You won't want to miss this one! Check it out! Be sure to check out the show notes by going to https://authorrevolution.org/190.

To kick off the new year, Mark shares a Jan 3, 2023 article from the Written Word Media blog on the Top 10 Publishing Trends for 2023. Prior to the interview, Mark share a personal update and a word about this episode's sponsor. You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway. Links of Interest:   Written Word Media: Top 10 Publishing Trends for 2023 Join Written Word Media as an Author Be a guest on the Stark Reflections Podcast Superstars Writing Seminars (Save $100 with code: STARKSSWS2023 Findaway Voices Buy Mark a Coffee Patreon for Stark Reflections Best Book Ever Podcast Lovers Moon Podcast 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 The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles   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 

If you are in or have interest in the world of tech, writing, and/ or music, this is the show for you! This week's spotlight story will feature Garfield Cartoonist, Jim Davis.Today, we welcome the Co-Founder and COO of Written Word Media, Ferol Vernon.Written Word Media is a media company focused on connecting readers with their next great read and providing the premier ad platform for authors and publishers, serving over 35,000 authors. It's basically like an online “matching” service for authors and readers and is nearing 10 years in business. It operates multiple websites including Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, Red Feather Romance and NewInBooks.Ferol loves tech and has spent his career building it. Everything from medical simulators (fake bodies for practicing surgery) to web and mobile based products for musicians, he does it all!  We will also discuss his experience and areas such as photoshop, written code, managed Agile teams, tackled gnarly UX/UI issues, handled HR issues, crafted strategic vision, and everything in between. He built his career working for small technology companies that focus on democratizing writing/music, and will share it all today.Some  other areas of discussion include:The highs and lows of entrepreneurshipEntrepreneurship lessons and experiences working with familyHow to evolve your product or serviceHow to scale your product or service, and much more. Enjoy the show.This week's spotlight story will feature Jim Davis. Follow along here: https://business.time.com/2012/02/16/top-9-celebrity-bankruptcies/slide/larry-king/Personal WebsiteIf you enjoy this interview, be sure to check out Host Vincent A. Lanci's YouTube Series, Writing with Authors, here.Episode #216 of That Entrepreneur Show- Top performing entrepreneurs around the world stop by each week to provide you with the tools you need. Get the most of your 20 minutes. With weekly episodes with founders of companies since 2019, you learn the skills and advice you need to become more successful, confident, and ready to thrive. You never know which part of their journey will resonate with you most.The podcast where founders of companies and brands share their entrepreneurial journeys, lessons learned, tips for success, and more each Friday since 2019.Email: PodcastsByLanci@Gmail.comListen to all episodes here: https://ThatEntrepreneurShow.Buzzsprout.comListen to A Mental Health Break here: https://AMentalHealthBreak.Buzzsprout.comWebsite:  https://www.VincentALanci.com/YouTubeShow InstagramHost InstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInFor Digital Editing Inquiries and Potential Podcast Guests: Email: PodcastsByLanci@Gmail.comAdventure by MusicbyAden | https://soundcloud.com/musicbyadenHappy | https://soundcloud.com/morning-kulishow/happyDiscussion points credit: Jon at Podcast Squad

 Hello Writers and Crafters! I'm Valerie Ihsan, And I'm Erick Mertz, and this is Episode 76 of the podcast and it's July 14, 2022 as we record this. Main Topic: Marketing You Can Do While Drafting Your Book    This podcast is sponsored by our patrons at Patreon.com/valerieihsan. For as low as a $1/mo, you can get a shout out on the podcast and we can make announcements for you on the podcast. At other tiers, the benefits increase--free books, accountability Zoom calls, scene analysis, mastermind calls, and even free Writer Craft retreat tickets. Become a patron of the arts at Patreon.com/valerieihsan.      All marketing plans will be different based on your plans for the book, your career, and your personality, and--to some degree--your budget.   1) First, you'll need to decide what your plan is for this book and for any future books you plan to write. And you'll need to define TO YOU what success would look like for this particular book and also for your writing career. Do you want to write any more books? Do you want to be award-winning? Do you want to make a living with your writing? Et cetera. The answers to these types of questions will determine the answers to your other questions. Namely, how to market and promote your book(s).   It's also important to note that if your goal is to make a living with your writing, you cannot do that with book sales from one book. Think, 10 or 20, or more. UNLESS, you are also providing author services, like editing or retreats or teaching.   2) Paid Advertising. It's the way to go these days. It is a Pay to Play Market now. There are 8 million titles on Amazon alone.    The three top paid ads sites are BookBub, Facebook, and Amazon Ads. Additionally, there are FreeBooksy and BargainBooksy. As well as others. (For instance, if your e-book is published on the Kobo platform, there is a Promotions tab on your dashboard that enables you to partake in their promo days.)   Each of the ads platforms have different rules and suggested methods of operation. There are loads of books and other resources on all of them. (Help! My Facebook Ads Suck by Mal Cooper; Mastering Amazon Ads by Brian Meeks; Bookbub Ads by David Gaughrin; Bryan Cohen has an Amazon Ads School on his Instagram site @bryancohenblurbs--just to name a few.)   That said, up until very recently--and is still considered truth by many--the industry "standard" advice for advertising for authors with less than three to five books in one series is to NOT advertise. The return on your investment won't pan out very well with nowhere for the reader to go after reading your one book. (I don't know how many books you've published.) If an author has several books, then paying for an ad on one book can often lead a reader to reading the other books in an author's backlist, thereby making the cost of the ad click go much farther.   3) I believe the best thing an author can do to build excitement about their books is to write the next book. Seriously. If you look at it like any other business, a business owner (read: bookseller) needs to create more than one product for their store. They need to create free content marketing for their audience and to build a(n) [author] brand through engagement with their [readers] customers.   The most important first step in getting people to buy your product is to get readers to know it exists. That comes with getting on podcast interviews, going to networking events, doing book readings, teaching workshops at libraries, etc. That's Attract Marketing. Letting people know you are out there.   Then, you Engage with them. Write a blog, or do a podcast, or create some other way of engaging with the people that now know you exist, but still have not become a customer of yours (like get them on your mailing list).   Then, you Nurture them. That's where they begin to Know, Like, and Trust you. Still before they buy! This is the time when you'd be posting regular content for them in a newsletter or FB Live posts, or pictures of your life on Instagram.   Only then can you Invite them to buy.    And, in order to keep them as an ongoing client [reader], you must Delight them. Create the best book(s) possible and they'll come back for the next one and tell their friends.   This process isn't something you do in a week or even a month. It's a long-term strategy. It's part of the author life and part of our job. Have fun with it.    *** I hope some of that was useful and has given you some ideas for your marketing/promotional plans.   Another resource I would recommend is How to Market Your Book by Joanna Penn.   I'M READING: The Sixth Wicked Child Erick's Reading: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir Next episode: Erick's Coaching Session, Part 2   Resources:  Productivity for Creative People: How to Get Creative Work Done in an "Always on" World by Mark McGuiness Essentialism by Greg McKeown Lore podcast (and Prime series)   Announcements:   I wanted to announce that my friend, colleague, and mentor, J Thorn, just launched his new book, Writing Scenes.  I'm especially excited about this because I contributed to the making of this book in several ways, and I feel quite proud of all I did. One of the example scenes in the book is one I submitted from my current work in progress (my memoir). I narrated that scene (in the Before and After example) in the audiobook. And I edited the book for J. It would tickle me if you picked up the book for yourself. Here's the link: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/three-story-method-writing-scenes    Valerie's Services: https://valerieihsan.com Valerie's Author Site: https://valerieihsanauthor.com Valerie's Facebook Page and Instagram account   Erick's Services: https://erickmertzwriting.com Erick's free book on Ghostwriting: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cexki4kp5n Erick's Author Site: https://erickmertzauthor.com Erick's Facebook Page and Instagram account   Writer Craft Facebook Group The Author Life Community   Patreon: https://patreon.com/valerieihsan Passion Planner: https://bit.ly/3AUiJUx (affiliate link) ProWriting Aid: https://prowritingaid.com/?afid=9378 (affiliate link)

Indie authors are notorious for hating marketing. We'd all much rather be writing our books than pimping them out. For those of you who aren't huge fans of learning Facebook ads, you have new reason to rejoice. In today's episode, I'm chatting with Clayton Noblit and Grant Shepherd from Written Word Media. We're talking indie author marketing, and in specific, how their new service Reader Reach is helping indie authors implement Facebook Ads into their marketing strategy. Of course, we also touch on Clayton's 2021 Indie Author Survey, too. Have a listen! Be sure to check out the show notes by going to authorrevolution.org/113.

It's no secret that we use Written Word Media for ads and while we don't have affiliate links, we can't think of a reason not to try Freebooksy and Bargainbooksy. But what would you say to them running Facebook ads for you? Today we talk to Clayton Noblit, Senior Marketing Manager, along with Grant Shepherd, Ad Fulfilment Manager at Written Word Media about their new advertising offering, Reader Reach. Reader Reach is a data-driven all-in-one ad solution that allows authors to reach thousands of readers on Facebook as efficiently as possible. Learning how to build ad images, audience research, or writing ad copy, the setting up and running ads can be time-consuming, costly, and stressful. Reader Reach does all the heavy lifting for you. The Reader Reach team handles everything, from ad creative and copy to audience targeting and bidding. Their goal is to help you find the right audience for your book, and let you focus on what matters most: writing your next book!

It's no secret that we use Written Word Media for ads and while we don't have affiliate links or say you should use them, we can't think of a reason not to try Freebooksy and Bargain booksy. But,what would you say to them running Facebook ads for you? Today we have Clayton Noblit, senior marketing manager, along with Grant Shepherd, Ad Fulfillment Manager at Written Word Media and they're here to talk about Reader Reach Reader Reach is a data-driven all-in-one ad solution that allows authors to reach thousands of readers on Facebook as efficiently as possible. Learning how to build ad images, audience research, or writing ad copy, the setting up and running ads can be time-consuming, costly, and stressful. Reader Reach does all the heavy lifting for you. The Reader Reach team handles everything, from ad creative and copy to audience targeting and bidding. Their goal is to help you find the right audience for your book, and let you focus on what matters most: writing your next book! You'll find all the show notes at: www.spagirlspodcast.com

Authors are always looking for the best way to feature their books so they can gain attention, attract readers, and ultimately, get them sales. We've been discussing promo stacking, but last week I put FreeBooksy's Series Promo to the test to see if it's worth all the hype. In today's podcast episode, I'm going over the results from the past week's stacked promos for the Windhaven Witches. And in specific, the Freebooksy Series Promo and how it compares to last year's BookBub Featured Deal. The results might surprise you. Be sure to check out the show notes by going to authorrevolution.org/74.

All of us indie authors wonder what the magic bullet is for making our books and career more successful. What it is may (or maybe not) surprise you. One thing's for sure, it means getting your mindset in the right place so you can make it happen. In today's podcast episode, I'm interviewing Clayton Noblit, Written Word Media's Digital Marketing Manager. Not only do they run successful promo sites like Freebooksy and Bargainbooksy - but they've also done some invaluable surveys on the indie author community. Trust me, you need to know what they're all about. Have a listen! Be sure to check out the show notes by going to authorrevolution.org/70.

In this episode, Mark shares the details of a recent book launch, including the series re-branding, the promotion efforts taken in the metadata, the third party promotion sites used, and also shares the good, the bad, and the ugly of the results. Prior to his personal update and the main content, Mark shares comments from recent episodes and a word from this episode's sponsor, Findaway Voices. You can learn more about how you can get your work distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway. In his personal update, Mark shares details about the Kickstarter that he launched on August 25, 2020 called Feed the Obsession, as well as the advice he took from Russell Nohelty (Episode 149's guest), and what advice he didn't employ. Mark's Kickstarter funded in less than 48 hours, and he is now working on the stretch goals. In his anatomy of a book launch, AKA anatomy of a series re-launch, Mark shares information in the following areas: A Brief history of the stories/books in the "Canadian Werewolf" series Why he went with the re-branding and new covers The actual launch - and multi-product approach he took to release all titles in eBook, Trade Paperback, Hardcover, and Audiobook The Launch related promotions he purchased (including sites like Freebooksy, Fussy Librarian, and others) Goals and disclaimers about his expectations for the promo and short-term VS long-term Results so far (1 week and 2 days in) Other promotional activities such as a virtual book launch, sending out press releases, and one-sheets to libraries   Links of Interest: Episode 149 - Killing it on Kickstarter with Russell Nohelty Mark's Feed The Obsession Kickstarter Space 1975 Kickstarter (Robert Jeschonek) Mark's Virtual Book Launch for Stowe Away (YouTube) Video Trailer for Stowe Away (YouTube) This Time Around: A Canadian Werewolf Story - Teaser (YouTube) Mark's Canadian Werewolf Series This Time Around (Book 0) A Canadian Werewolf in New York (Book 1) Stowe Away (Book 1.5) Fear and Longing in Los Angeles (Book 2) 927 Rock Sudbury - This Werewolf is a Super Hero Sudbury Star: Author reflects on how Sudbury shaped his latest book Findaway Voices Wide for the Win Submission Form Patreon for Stark Reflections     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 episode 44 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Jesper and Autumn shared the results of a survey which asked readers about permafree books. They are now back with an update on the survey results as many more responses has come on since episode 44, and in addition, Autumn have taken her book 1, Born of Water, off permafree.  What has happened to Autumn's book sales now that Born of Water is no longer available for free? Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to the Am Writing fantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt, and Jesper Schmidt. Hello, I'm Jesper. Narrator (32s): And I'm, Autumn. This is episode 86. Jesper (36s): of the Am writing fantasy podcast. And as promised this episode will cover the results after taking a book off Permafree like Autumn have done with her book. Born of water. Yes. I love running my life as an experiment to help other people as I seem to be doing constantly. Yeah. Yeah. But it's been actually quite a long while since we recorded, even though, of course, for, for the listener. Well, we released an episode last week and we are releasing one this week, but, but we have, we have prerecorded some episodes because of summer holidays. Jesper (1m 13s): So we actually haven't done this for a while, or I know it's been three weeks, so yeah. To everyone else it's been seamless, but for us it's been three weeks. So I'm so glad to have you back as I've hinted in the student Q and a that we just had before this that, you know, even though you did all your homework before you left and we prerecorded everything, I was still alone in charge of this ship. And there's always more in charge of a ship than you realize when you're like, Oh, I tried, I tried so hard not to bug you too much, even though I know you were on a staycation instead of a real vacation, but yeah, no, no, nobody is great being back. Jesper (1m 55s): It feels nice to get into it again. And even, even discovering out of our conversations before the recording, that there was a few things that I was supposed to do that I couldn't quite remember the context of anymore. It was a good vacation. So, I mean, how was it in Denmark? I mean, I know the couple of times that we emailed that you said it wasn't exactly summer weather over there. No, it feels the whole thing feels a bit odd, to be honest. Jesper (2m 25s): I mean, I guess I could say it's been fairly a fairly good vacation, but we didn't do any traveling of course, due to COVID-19 like the rest of the world. So we visited some friends, we had some family over and we did some day trips here and there with the kids to just go and do some stuff, that sort of thing, you know, but yeah, as you said, unfortunately, the weather has not been the best. So yeah, my wife said the other day that it doesn't feel like a vacation. It more feels like a very, very long weekend and that's actually a bit how I feel about it too. Jesper (2m 59s): And I'm actually sure that, you know, because we were also working from home home in this pandemic isolation and in the months leading up to the vacation, I think that hasn't helped on this feeling because it's all just sort of blurred together in one big mess there. So I don't know all in all it was okay. But I've had better vacations to be honest. Autumn (3m 21s): Well then I'm sure you didn't get to go any word too interesting, but at least, you know, the family's safe and you did get some time off and got to spend some time with your kids. So I, and the wife always nice. Yeah. Jesper (3m 32s): Yeah. That's good. I dunno. The last couple of days it's starting to get warmer like that. I said this yesterday to my wife as well. I'll bet you, once we get into the end of August, once we are fully back to work, then it will start getting really nice and really warm and wonderful. Right. In the last couple of days, it has actually started heating up a pit just as we return to work. And I don't know if that's, yeah, I don't know if that's why, but both the day before yesterday and yesterday I had really troubling sleeping. Jesper (4m 6s): What can a dozen of times it also last night? So I don't know if it's because it's getting warmer or something, but it's just really annoying. I fall right back to sleep. So that's, that's fine, but it's still interrupts the sleep rhythm. So I, yeah, I feel a bit tired because of it. And then I guess two days, 14 hours of work hasn't helped. I guess Autumn (4m 33s): You just put it this like marathon day, it's like welcome back by the way. You're an hour 14 of being awake and getting work done. So thanks for holding in there. And now you're recording a podcast. So talk about needing a vacation now. Jesper (4m 50s): And when we returned from vacation, that the first thing you need is a vacation. Absolutely. I think that's typical though. So, but how has things been on your end over the last three weeks or Autumn (5m 2s): It's working myself to the bone on him writing fantasy. It's been good. I mean, we had our own, well I'll share my two big successes. And one is that I mentioned my Adam, my husband, Adam has been working on 105 year old wood and canvas coup. And we, he finally got it to the point where we put it in the water and it floated. So Jesper (5m 27s): Yeah, I saw, I saw you posted a picture of a, you say Autumn (5m 31s): Yes. Yeah. So I even got to take it out myself. So again, I think that was just so you could see pictures of it from, from the shore, but it was a very successful venture and it's wonderful to see this thing that came to us in really horrible condition. I mean, the canvas was rotted and falling off and, and it didn't even, he's not a huge woodworker. He's become a massively good woodworker in the last couple of months, learning how to shape Cedar into a canoe. And it is beautiful and it was paddles really well. Autumn (6m 4s): So that was a wonderful success. And then the other thing is, it was funny, cause we've just been talking about this with some of the students I've started. I usually wrote in the evening and I'd try to give him like 500 words while I recently said, screw checking the news and checking email. I'm going to sit down first, as soon as I get my cup of tea and I'm going to try to write for like 45 minutes. And I have top some days if I get a chance already to get in the evening, you know, for maybe a half an hour. And so I've been hitting like 2000 words a day by doing this. Autumn (6m 35s): So a story that in March was over a year old and completely stalled. If I got a hundred words in, I was felt like I was pulling teeth and really lucky. I'm five chapters away from finishing book one. So I feel I'm in the middle of the climax and it's very exciting. And I have lots of scenes already developed in the plot, pretty much developed for books, twos, and threes. The rate I'm going, I should finish before December, which means an early, late winter, early spring release for a trilogy next year. Autumn (7m 6s): Plus the books we're going to be writing plus some nonfiction. I'm thinking if everything pans out the way it's supposed to, I'm going to hit 30 books in 2021. I'm feeling pretty good about that. I'm just feeling really good to feel, to be writing again and be hitting my word count. So then for us, the summer weather is beautiful. The tomatoes are ripening and we're eating zucchini. Like it is the only available food source on the planets. It's become a bit of a joke whenever my husband goes out and comes back with zucchini, but Oh, you know, you can turn them into scones. Autumn (7m 41s): So I've been experimenting with zucchini quite a lot. It's been a good summer. I'll take it. I'm hoping August is also equally enjoyable and it was a little bit less stressed because I'm not the only one in charge of M writing fantasy. Narrator (7m 56s): Oh, a week on the internet with the am writing fantasy podcast. Jesper (8m 1s): So first things first, we want to give a huge shout out and warm, welcome to Janine and Eric who joined us on patron. Yes, I, it was a while you were away and we weren't recording. So it's one of those is at least a little belated, but thank you. And welcome. We're so happy for your supports. Yeah. So thank you so much to both of you without Patrion. And those of you who chime in with just a dollar a month, you know, I can't say for sure that we would keep these recordings going, but because of you, then we will, for sure. Jesper (8m 39s): So thank you a lot for that. And I said, I guess I should also say if, if you dear listener, haven't considered supporting the writing fences, you podcast on Petron yet we would love it. If you could click the link in the show notes and check out the awesome rewards that you Can get your hands on by joining us over there. Autumn (8m 60s): Yes. Please come join us. There's lots of great posts and tips and some really good perks, like the Q and a sessions we have. So come home, come over and see what we have. Jesper (9m 11s): Yeah. And I also wanted to mention something else a ahead of you might having something to add autumn. I don't know, but I wanted to mention that we received an email from our podcast host and they told us that we have now passed 10,000 downloads at the end writing fantasy. Autumn (9m 29s): So that's amazing. That's another big celebration. We have so much to just celebrate today. I mean, we're, we're recording this. We're actually on release day for three books. So this is just, just been a fantastic summer, 10,000 downloads. We're got books coming out new courses. This is just no wonder. We're both like what's what is this task that we're supposed to be doing about which, which of our many projects? Yes. Jesper (9m 56s): Yes. So for sure, a huge thank you to everyone who listens to the new episodes that we release every single Monday here without you. There wouldn't be much point in sitting here in front of the microphone in the first place. So thank you a lot. And thank you for getting us to 10,000 downloads. And of course we hope that there will be much more to come. Autumn (10m 19s): Absolutely. I mean, we were already in deep discussion about our secret, what we're going to do on our hundredth episode. So that is coming up this fall. So that'll be really exciting to announce. Jesper (10m 34s): Yeah. Yeah. Anything else we need to cover? Autumn (10m 37s): Oh, nothing. I just, I know I've been giving a big shout out to our type of slayers for you guys. You know, this is the only one we're releasing this on a week or two. So this is not too far in the past, but as I said, it's release day for our books and just the feedback from the type of slayers, normally their help, but some of those early reviews and also just the personal notes that they put in when they sent in some of the little typos that they did spot for us, we're really touching and encouraging. Autumn (11m 8s): And we're exactly the reasons why we're releasing these books to know that, you know, these people signed up just to help us fix up the books right before publication. And they came out of it saying that, you know, words like that helped them tremendously help them find their passion again, for a story they were working on and solve all these problems. And it was just like, just, just, wow. It blew me on the way to know how much we are helping writers. And I'm just, thank you. Autumn (11m 38s): Thank you for sending in those notes as well as for your help for hitting today and being actually able to release the books. Jesper (11m 46s): Absolutely. Yeah. And of course, if the listener here has not checked out those books, then just go to wherever you normally book, if that's Amazon or Kobo or wherever and searched for one of our names and you will find the plotting books and the workbooks and the story idea book, all three of them just released today as we're recording this on the 3rd of August. So go and check that out. Okay. Jesper (12m 16s): So as we set up top, we're going to talk a bit about how it has gone since you took one off Permafree autumn. And, but I guess maybe we should just start out by defining Permafree. What does that mean? Autumn (12m 32s): Sure. Well, and I can also give you a time as long as a week, cause it's a good discussion of when a book is PERMA free, which means permanently free. So on Amazon, or actually to do this, you have to be wide, you have to be on Kobo and Barnes and Nobles. You have to be on all those platforms. And the book has got to be free, no signing up for an email list or anything. This is literally you just go to Amazon and it is listed as a free book permanently, not on a five day Kindle countdown, just free all the time, every day, 24 hours seven. Autumn (13m 5s): And my book board of water, I don't know how many readers actually or listeners actually know this, but for a while I was actually with a publisher. And it was when I got my books back in may of 2015 that I put a born of water, which had been initially published in February, 2012. I finally put it on permanently free on, in May, 2015, and it's been free ever since widely distributed any platform. Autumn (13m 36s): And so this was a big change to say something that has been free for five years, I'm going to put a price tag on it. And that's what I did this end of may. I made it 99 cents. Huge deal. Jesper (13m 53s): Yeah. And maybe also for context, we talked about whether or not Permafree books is like a viable sales strategy. We talked about that back in episode 44. So which was released on the 28th of October, 2019. So if, if you need some more context than I would say, go back and listen to episode 44 and then come back here and, and continue listening to this because there we explain a lot about the behind line thinking and strategy about why we don't think that Permafree books is a good strategy anymore, but we're not going to dive into all of those details here once again. Jesper (14m 38s): So if you want that, didn't go back to episode 44, but otherwise we're just going to focus on what was the results then from pulling a book away from Permafree and all of a sudden asking people to pay for it. But that is a great, Autumn (14m 54s): You know, groundwork for why. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why I would choose to do this. One is, you know, at five years into Permafree, the downloads were dwindling. It was harder to give away even a free book because it's been free for so long. There's no excitement about picking up a book. That's going to be free next month, when it's already been free last year, how many new readers was I really reaching? And we also had the survey and that was a pretty big eyeopener. And you have the results, some updated results from the survey. Autumn (15m 25s): And that kind of also got me thinking of really, should this book still be free? I mean, should a permit free be permanently free or should it be something maybe every couple years you rotate through as you open up a new series? Jesper (15m 40s): Yeah. So maybe we could start that and then you can get into the results of it. Maybe we can start with the survey because as a preparation for episode 44, back then in October, 2019, we, we had a thinking that, you know, the Permafree strategy is a, it's a, well, I was about to say old strategy, but in publishing terms, oldest just means a couple of years, a lot of things happened a couple of years, but it's a couple of years old strategy. And our thinking was that I think that the Permafree strategies losing some of its allure and some of its effectiveness. Jesper (16m 18s): So we created a survey where we basically, instead of us being author speculating about it, we decided, well, why not ask the readers? So we did. And back then in episode 44, we shared the results of all the responses we got for that survey. And of course now we are in August, 2020. So we have gotten some more responses since then. And I can just go through them one by one here, just to bring everybody up to speed. Jesper (16m 48s): And then you can talk about your experiences and results afterwards. Yeah. So I w I would say first off before we get into the actual questions and answers that none of what we set in episode 44 has really changed. It's still the same. We've just got more volume on the responses, but the conclusions are still the same as I also expected when we recorded episode 44, I also said that I doubted that it would change, even though we got more responses, but we do now we have 575 responses. Jesper (17m 25s): So that's quite quite a good, let's say mock for, including upon. I would prefer, as I also said back in episode 44 to get a thousand, but well, we have 575, so yeah. Do with what you want, but I can just go over it one by one here, tell you the questions and then the answers, I think there was five. So the first question, yeah, the first question was, are you more likely to take a chance on a new author? Jesper (17m 55s): If the book is free and here 32.5% says, yes, I prefer to only pay for books written by authors. I already know while 67.5% says, I don't mind purchasing a book from an author I'm not familiar with if the book otherwise sounds and looks interesting. So that was already a bit, a bit interesting to see. Okay. So people actually don't mind giving a new author chance, even if they have to pay for the book. So at least for people selling their books, then that's, that's a good indicator to start with. Jesper (18m 31s): Absolutely. So we then funneled all of those who said that they prefer to only pay for books written by authors, that they already know. We didn't ask only that top of the respondees, a separate question, and we didn't ask them what if the same book from that same author you've never heard of had great reviews. Could that make you want to purchase the book, even though you normally only pay for books written by authors, you know, and then 66.3%. Jesper (19m 5s): Yes. That would make me change my mind, providing the book otherwise sounds and looks interesting to me while only 33.7% said, no, I simply don't want to pay for a novel, unless I already know that the author already know the author and question writes the kind of stories that I like to read. So yeah. Great reviews really matters as we can see from that questions. And of course we can come back to that, but born on water has a ton of reviews. Jesper (19m 35s): So that's, Autumn (19m 36s): Yeah, I'll be mentioning that it helps, but it also actually caused a small problem, but we'll come back to that. I'll leave the tension right there. Now I'm curious as well. So then we asked Jesper (19m 51s): If you bought a book, is it the next book you'll start reading and here 40.3% says, yes. I usually start reading it as soon as I'm able, while 59.7% says, no, I often add it to my, to be read list and we'll come back to it as some later date. And then we asked the exact same question, but now we asked what if it's a free book? So we asked if you were downloaded a free book. Is it the next book you will start reading. And now we have 29.9% saying, yes. Jesper (20m 25s): I usually start reading it as soon as I'm able, while all of a sudden the 59.7% who before said that they added to the, to be read list. Now John jumps from 59.7% to 70.1% who says, no, I, I just add it to my, to be read list. So you're basically losing like a bit more than 10% of people there because it's a free book. They are much more, 10% modern, 10% more inclined. I know you can't say that, but 10% are more inclined to add it to a TUPE read list rather than starting reading it while as while they, and it makes sense. Jesper (21m 4s): Right? So if they pay for the book, they are more inclined to start reading it right away. Autumn (21m 9s): Absolutely. It makes sense. Definitely. Jesper (21m 12s): Yeah. So if we then assuming that people are adding stuff to dare to be reckless, we wouldn't curious how long is this to be readily then? So we ask people how many unread books do you have on your E reader? That being the Kindle, the phone, the nook, or whatever it is that they read books on. And we have 8.2% saying that they don't have any, they always finish their current read before they buy or add a new book. So that was only 8.2%. Jesper (21m 43s): I believe that 19 and 17.7% says that they have between five and 10, 19% says that they have less than five, but then the whopping 56% of all the people says that they have more than 10 books in there to be read list. Wow. And this was exactly what we were concerned about when it comes to Permafree that people just download free books, stuff, them on their Kindle. And usually they just forget about it. They never get back to more than 10 books. Jesper (22m 13s): That's a lot just sitting there. You can't even remember that you had them after a while Autumn (22m 18s): Right now. Yeah. You open it up and you're like, Oh yeah, I don't even remember what that's about. Yeah. Because when you see the cover on your e-reader, you don't see the blurb, you don't, you don't know why you got it. You literally are just going off of a cover and a memory of whether or not it's the next book you read. Yeah. Jesper (22m 38s): And the question is just more than 10. So it could mean that they have even 20 or 30 books sitting around Kendall. Right. And they never kind of get to it. So that was the whole problem with the, and, and again, going back, maybe three, four, five years, the Permafree strategy worked really, really well because it was brand new. It was difficult to find Permafree books. So people just loved it and they wrapped the free books. They read them and they moved on to buy the rest of the series, which is the whole point of the Permafree strategy. Right. But the problem is nowadays a lot of people off of free books, I do it myself. Jesper (23m 12s): I have not pulled my book off Permafree, but that's more because of all the tasks related to do it. So I have too much else to do, but I really should be doing it. I'm preaching here on the podcast and also in episode 44 that you should be doing it, but I haven't done it myself. So shame on me. But yeah, I think this is the object of the property or the core of the problem, right? There's just too many free books out there. And then to wrap the survey up, we asked in your view, free books, more likely to be of poor quality than the you pay for. Jesper (23m 46s): And the reason we asked that was basically because at least within author circles, there's been different conversations, you know, on Facebook groups for authors and stuff like that, where authors have been speculating that, well, usually readers will equate the free books with poor quality. So we said, okay, fine. Let's just ask the readers if that's the case or not, and get it out of the way for once and fall. And actually 80.3% said, no free books can be just as good as those you, I pay for that leaves only 19.7% who says yes, in my experience, free books often suffer from issues with editing plot, characterization and so on. Jesper (24m 30s): So I think that sort of put that point to rest rate in general readers do not believe that free books should be of poor quality or is of poor quality, Autumn (24m 40s): Which I think is definitely a big wind for indie authors that we've come from that initial stigma when independent publishing was first out, that, you know, it just wasn't as good as the others, you know, the traditional publishers. I think we've overcome that. And we are indie publishers and authors are shining examples of how good writing can be. I agree. So, yep. Jesper (25m 5s): What's that update, as I said, the conclusions are exactly the same as what I shared in episode 44, we just have a bit of more bit more volume on the responses, but yeah, Autumn (25m 16s): Well, it's just awesome. So we had the survey that said, you know, permit we've from what we are seeing ourselves, we knew Permafree, weren't working as well. We knew readers were willing to pay for a book. I mean, it helps to maybe have the first book as a reduced price as kind of an intro offer. But you know, there's also this huge discussion out there of if you're only giving away free books, are you just teaching the people who are reading your books, that they should always be free? I mean, I know, I think every author who offers a free book has gotten at least a few people asking questions and saying, can I have the next book for free? Autumn (25m 49s): You're already giving one away. Why not give away the rest? And most of us hopefully stick to our guns saying, you know, that took two years of my life. And I was like, at least 9 cents. Jesper (26m 0s): Yeah. The only reason I can keep writing books is because some people pay for them. Right. Autumn (26m 6s): Oh. And so there was all these ideas going on in my head. We had this survey that was hard facts. I also happened to have joined. I want to give a huge shout out to Brian Cohen. He runs these amazing AMS as author challenges, which run for five days. And so just on a whim, I joined one because I used to run a lot of AMS ads, but when you're running a Permafree, it's really hard to offer that on Amazon. And I'm like, I hadn't been doing it recently. So I thought I joined it to actually work on AMS ads for my bundles and ended up talking to him quite lot about how do you run this for a Permafree? Autumn (26m 45s): And he gave me some tips. So I started running born of water as a Permafree and, and just a really, it's an incredibly low bid. Right. And so you're just kind of showing up at the tail end when everyone else is running out of money, you might show up at the end and you start getting noticed a little bit more and get some organic growth. And it was good. So it was something in addition to my normal normal marketing that I'd send out to advertisers like Freebooksy and all those places where you could, you know, send out your free book. And, but even those, I mean, those were really, I remember when you could get like 10,000 downloads by getting a Freebooksy offer. Autumn (27m 20s): And now it's like, if you get 1200, you're doing really well, giving away a free book is really hard, especially a book that has been free for five years. And then on top of all of that, I picked up a book, read through calculator. So I have a series born of water as the first of a trilogy, but then there's a second trilogy that starts six months after the last book in the first trilogy. So it's really six books. Plus I even have a companion and a compilation of short stories. So I'm talking about, I usually don't count those when I look at things like read through, right? Autumn (27m 54s): But technically I have an eight book series going on and jokingly with a few readers recently who found out, I had been thinking of a, another trilogy they're kind of prodding me along. So it might be even more. And I took all of my stats from 2019. So whole year's worth of stats of downloads and read through rates. And that's what I use that to calculate my readthrough rates. And I found that I was so happy. I had this book one and the read-through rate. Autumn (28m 26s): I could give away thousands and thousands and thousands of books, but my readthrough rate to book two, because it was a freebie is incredibly low. But after that, once I read book two, it was over a hundred percent, which made me laugh, who had read book three and then to go to the next trilogy, go ahead. Jesper (28m 47s): Now I was just to add, because that, that actually links up very nicely with what we were just looking at with the survey results, right? Because a lot of those book ones just ended up on to be read list. And that's why you have a poor read-through rate. Not because the book is poor, but because they never read it. So they never go on to book two. Autumn (29m 6s): Yeah. 4% was my readthrough. Larry, I think it was, it was incredibly small, but then book two, two book three, you know, it was a hundred percent. And then I would lose 60% to go to the second trilogy, which could be me. And it wrapped up very well. So maybe they they're done. They want to go to the other books. Quite normal. 60% is actually not bad. But then again, it jumped back to a hundred percent to finish off that trilogy. So we're talking about a really strong read through rate. When you add that up, considering how many times I had to give away born of water, giving away book earned me 41 cents for every giveaway. Autumn (29m 46s): And I had to give away thousands of books. So, I mean, we're talking about 41 cents for each giveaway, but if my readthrough wait between book one, born of water and it's book two, if that happened to be close to the second series where it was like 60%, I could actually earn $7 and 21 cents after off of every sale of book one, which also means I would have to sell a lot less of them to earn a lot more money, to be earning $7 and 21 cents off of every reader instead of only 41 cents off of every reader. Autumn (30m 22s): So there's a lot of stuff that I'm like, okay, wait, I'm playing with AMS ads. They're actually working. I'm selling more books. I have this book that has at, at this time, it was just under 300 reviews. It's now over 300 reviews. It's got a solid track record. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and try this. And I did. I let readers know that may was the last ditch effort. Last time you're going to be able to see this for free, unless you sign up to get it through like my newsletter. Autumn (30m 53s): I do have it still as a signup or that's one way to get it for free, but otherwise on all the platforms, it's a whole whopping 99 cents. But it's edited was may, was fantastic for book sales and for giving it away. It was like going back to the old days where people were picking it up left and right, because I was really shaking the tree and letting people know this is it. This is, this is it. This is the end of the run. It is time. This book is no longer free. So yeah, may was really fun. Autumn (31m 24s): And I was running just so people know all the steps for this. I was not just sitting there letting people know it was coming off a Permafree. I was running my AMS ads at this low amount to get those targets. I was starting to already gather those keywords, getting those books, getting everything ready. So that on June 1st, when I had, Oh, you know, you know how Amazon goes, I actually did it a few days before. So June one comes up and I can switch all those AMS ads over to a higher bid rate. I had everything set up and going, you know, over a hundred, I think ads already made. Autumn (31m 55s): And boom, I hit the ground running June 1st with a book that was 99 cents. And how do you think that, how do you think all of June went and for me, which, you know, it was probably a big hint that I asked that we record this in August instead of July. Jesper (32m 10s): Yeah. Well I can of course guests there, but it did not go as planned. No, no, but, but the, the thing is also with those AMS ads that you need time to build up the momentum do and, and, and just switching the apps on often doesn't do much short term. And also it also takes time before you have the apps running for a while so that you can add that. Or you can collect the data and conclude based on the data where to focus your next set of ads. Jesper (32m 43s): So, so it's more like I see AMS as very much like a continual optimization kind of effort, where, where you start out with a starting point with what you think might work as keywords and such. And then you run those. Once you get enough impressions on them, you will start seeing, okay, decent, these steps works. So then you can start building towards that direction. And over time you get there and you get some really, really well performing ads, but it takes time. And I think that that might be a bit of a misconception in general that some people believe, yeah, you just Chuck in a set of keywords and then you bid something and then you'll get sales, but that's not how it works. Autumn (33m 24s): No, and I, what I was expecting was something that was going to happen, like my bundle, the rise of horror there. So where you can get all, you get four books for in the bundle. And for that one, you know, it's a typical, you struggle basically to get Amazon, to spend your $5, your trying to get readers. It's a slow burn process. And I would definitely say anyone who wants to try this, you are in this for the long haul and expect the first months to be painful. You're learning, it's a huge steep mountain that you're learning and you're climbing up. Autumn (33m 55s): And if I have to admit having a free book and just like once a month slapping to free Booksy or these other places say, Hey, you know, promote my book. That is so easy. If you like easy street, stay with easy. This is hard. This requires time that you've got to make every single week and you've got to not be intimidated. And you've got to be able to either ask questions of other people or kind of be good at marketing and not easy to give up and solve the problems. So, yeah, for June, I, I had the opposite problem that anyone told me was going to happen. Autumn (34m 31s): I actually had to slow down the ads because they were spending like, like I was a millionaire and I could spend money like crazy, but they weren't all ending up in sales. Oh my gosh, Jesper (34m 43s): Where you're getting very high IO. Autumn (34m 45s): I was bidding at what Brian Cohen and his AMS ads challenge was telling me is a good bidding rate for a book in a series. So we're talking in the 30 cent range, not really high. This is pretty much standard first in a series. This is about what you should start at. And it was crazy cause people were clicking on it left and right, because it had 300 reviews. It has a very solid cover, but not, not that many people were buying. So you and I worked together and I tweaked the blurb a little bit, which helped, but it was still outpacing. Autumn (35m 19s): I mean, my happily, my total amount of book sales covered what I paid for Amazon ads for June. But there was a moment of Holy crap. I don't like seeing negative ROI is on a series that was my money maker up to this point. And my biggest conclusion is, yeah, pupils see a book for 99 cents. 300 reviews. Cover is decent. They click on it. You don't read much else. It doesn't matter what else, what my hook could say, they're just going to click on it. Jesper (35m 52s): Indeed. And that's of course the difference between the click through rate versus the conversion rate, right? So the click through rate is basically being determined by the number of reviews and the cover because that's the people, that's what people see when they see the ad. So they might see if you want to you, of course, it's possible to put in a bit of custom text in the app if people want to do that on the AMS app, but in general, it's the cover. And it's the number of reviews that will make people click. So that's the clicks. So you can have a very high click through rate, which will then indicate that your cover is good and your number of reviews is working in your favor. Jesper (36m 31s): But then once they arrive on the sales page, if we can call it that or a product page, when meaning the actual page on Amazon that shows the book and you have the book description and you have the biolink and all that, then there is two things affecting the conversion rate on that page. And that of course is the book description that factors in a lot to whether or not people. So they might've clicked on, Oh, that cover looks interesting. So they click on the ad, they come to the book page and then they read the blurb and it's like, what? No, this is not me. And then gone. Jesper (37m 1s): They are right. So that really needs to hook them, or it can also be the look inside. So if people check the sample writing and they scroll through the first couple of pages on the login side, on Amazon, and then they, if it doesn't engage them enough there, then that might stop the conversion as well. So they don't buy it. They don't click the buy button. Right. But yeah, it was just to give a bit of context for Lou in terms of things to look for. Autumn (37m 27s): And these are the things you have to be aware of. And there's also the fact that I am trying this on at, you know, targeted ads with targeted keywords that I've only been trying for two months and to get keywords that are really gonna fit in my book and reach the correct audience. It's going to take a lot longer than two months to really gather that data. So I'm basically spending a whole bunch of money to get keywords, and it's just getting confusing. I'm basically, you know, going to Facebook and say, Hey, you like books. Autumn (37m 57s): Here's my book. And it's too much. It was, I needed to slow it down. And that was basically what I learned is I needed to basically just keep reducing my bid point every week until I got to the point where I got a positive ROI, which I did. Yay. I'm so excited. So I finally had my first month where, or my first week where I had a positive ROI. And of course this is difficult because I'm talking about readthrough rates. So I'm not looking at just the ROI on book one, I'm looking at how things are going for the entire series. Autumn (38m 30s): Are people reading through? Cause I am, that is going to determine my overall amount I can bid I've finally achieved what I was looking for, where I feel comfortable now trying to look for new keywords. So I'm still really at the beginning stages, but that was my biggest to me. It was my biggest hurdle is I just don't have the financial wherewithal to keep spending every ounce of money I'm getting from my books just to cover AMS ads. I kinda, you know, like eat and, you know, I'm a full time author. This is really kind of, you know, bread and butter for me. Autumn (39m 1s): So there were definitely those first month cringing pain of why the heck did I do this? This was so easy before, but now that I'm finally seeing income, again, I can start generating more ads looking for more keywords, starting to pull out the ones that are gonna work in the longterm. And I think that initial shock of being able to actually spend everything that Amazon, you know, that I want to throw at Amazon is going to be a good thing. Autumn (39m 33s): When I finally hit the right target. I mean, I might still work on the blurb a little bit. It's going to be a matter of checking out keywords, but once I have all the pieces in place, this could be really, really good. I just know it's going to be six months to longer, eight months, nine months a year from now, where will I be with this? I think it'll be in a really good place. And I'm, as I mentioned earlier, in this episode, I'm going to be having another series. I'm going to be trying all this again with fresh, with a series that has never been Permafree as well, but it's definitely been a learning curve. Autumn (40m 10s): And I think the biggest thing is just not having those moments of panic when, especially when you see income going out faster than, you know, you really had planned, I was expecting, you know, few sales, slow burn, trying to accumulate keywords like I was doing with the bundle. And instead I had, you know, the acetylene torch set on high. I was not prepared for that. You know, if I had hit all the right keywords the first time out and it had just zoomed off the rocket, that would have been fantastic, but that's not really realistic. Autumn (40m 46s): It wouldn't be a good learning session to be able to share with all of our listings. So what happens when you take your book off a permit for you? There has to be some pain involved, not just like there's one seller. Oh yeah. I had to do it this way, but I think, you know, I will definitely have to maybe put in our schedule or if listeners would like a check in, you know, let us know in the comments and we can check in again in six months or so and see how the process is going. Cause at this point now I am just trying to get, I had some ads that were not doing anything. Autumn (41m 19s): So I'm trying to wake those ads up and I'm just trying to keep that positive ROI going. But again, it's a series, it's a readthrough. So I have book I'm selling and there's going to be this lag before people get all the way through the series and I'll see the income it. So this is going to be a very slow stepping stone process. I mean, unless I win the sweepstakes or something and I have a million dollars, I can throw it a run, everything, you know, once to see it all get figured out. Autumn (41m 50s): And just a couple of months, I don't see that happening. I think this is going to take me a lot of time because I don't, I just simply physically can't dump a thousand dollars a month or more onto just AMS ads just to see what happens. Be really, if anyone is a multimillion out there and they don't know what to do with it, and they would like to help me run this experiment, I will have to spend your money when it's my money and my family, you know, I'm trying to take it a little bit slower. Autumn (42m 22s): That's fair enough. Yes. But I will say the conversion rate is up Jesper (42m 28s): Excellent. Next week we will look at the well known trips and fantasy and also evaluate if they are quote unquote, good or bad. Narrator (42m 37s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the am writing fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going, stay safe out there and see you next Monday.  

An email question came in: "I just published my first book. How do I promote it?" All marketing plans will be different based on your plans for the book, your career, and your personality, and--to some degree--your budget. 1) First, you'll need to decide what your plan is for this book and for any future books you plan to write. And you'll need to define TO YOU what success would look like for this particular book and also for your writing career. Do you want to write any more books? Do you want to be award-winning? Do you want to make a living with your writing? Et cetera. The answers to these types of questions will determine the answers to your other questions. Namely, how to market and promote your book(s). It's also important to note that if your goal is to make a living with your writing, you cannot do that with book sales from one book. Think, 10 or 20, or more. UNLESS, you are also providing author services, like editing or retreats or teaching. 2) Paid Advertising. It's the way to go these days. It is a Pay to Play Market now. There are 8 million titles on Amazon alone. The three top paid ads sites are BookBub, Facebook, and Amazon Ads. Additionally, there are FreeBooksy and BargainBooksy. As well as others. (For instance, if your e-book is published on the Kobo platform, there is a Promotions tab on your dashboard that enables you to partake in their promo days.) Each of the ad platforms have different rules and suggested methods of operation. There are loads of books and other resources on all of them. (Help! My Facebook Ads Suck by Mal Cooper; Mastering Amazon Ads by Brian Meeks; Bookbub Ads by David Gaughrin; Bryan Cohen has an Amazon Ads School on his Instagram site @bryancohenblurbs--just to name a few.) That said, up until very recently--and is still considered truth by many--the industry "standard" advice for advertising for authors with less than three to five books in one series is to NOT advertise. The return on your investment won't pan out very well with nowhere for the reader to go after reading your one book. (I don't know how many books you've published.) If an author has several books, then paying for an ad on one book can often lead a reader to reading the other books in an author's backlist, thereby making the cost of the ad click go much farther. 3) I believe the best thing an author can do to build excitement about their books is to write the next book. Seriously. If you look at it like any other business, a business owner (read: bookseller) needs to create more than one product for their store. They need to create free content marketing for their audience and to build a(n) [author] brand through engagement with their [readers] customers. The most important first step in getting people to buy your product is to get readers to know it exists. That comes with getting on podcast interviews, going to networking events, doing book readings, teaching workshops at libraries, etc. That's Attract Marketing. Letting people know you are out there. Then, you Engage with them. Write a blog, or do a podcast, or create some other way of engaging with the people that now know you exist, but still have not become a customer of yours (like get them on your mailing list). Then, you Nurture them. That's where they begin to Know, Like, and Trust you. Still before they buy! This is the time when you'd be posting regular content for them in a newsletter or FB Live posts, or pictures of your life on Instagram. Only then can you Invite them to buy. And, in order to keep them as an ongoing client [reader], you must Delight them. Create the best book(s) possible and they'll come back for the next one and tell their friends. This process isn't something you do in a week or even a month. It's a long-term strategy. It's part of the author life and part of our job. Have fun with it. *** I hope some of that was useful and has given you some ideas for your marketing/promotional plans. Another resource I would highly recommend is How to Market a Book by Joanna Penn. Good luck!

There are so many ways to market your book from paid advertising to join promos and newsletter swaps. But does joining a free group promo really help you with sales or new readers? Join Autumn and Jesper as they discuss the pros, cons, and possibilities out there with group promos in Episode 39 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Check out some of the links mentioned in today's show at: https://storyoriginapp.com/ https://bookfunnel.com/ Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday. SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (3s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt Jesper (31s): and hello there. I'm Jesper Autumn (34s): and I'm autumn. This is episode number 39 amwritingfantasy podcast. Hey, we're going to talk about group promos and if they are worth it., but you know before we get there it's been a, even though we're batch recording things, we always have things going on. It's been always, Jesper (55s): yeah, certainly. Certainly a lot of things. I mean this here in Denmark we just been hit by a complete like late Shama heat. It's a normally here by the end of August it's, well it's not cool but you know it's the summer sort of starting to come to an end, but now it's just like last couple of days. It's been 30 degrees here and a Celsius of course. Autumn (1m 22s): Possibly 30 gosh, she's a sure there are no, Oh you mean, Jesper (1m 29s): yeah, exactly. I mean it's really warm and it's am. It's incredible. I dunno what happened, but it's very wrong all of a sudden. Autumn (1m 37s): That's funny cause that we've been in am, Adam and I, my husband and I don't like heat and that's half the reason we travel as we get to go up to the North, we like to be like for us to be 70 Fahrenheit. So you know that's pretty moderate. It's like a jacket might be necessary in the morning and usually when we're down in Pennsylvania and usually when we get here it's less stirring hot. But for end of August is actually perfect. Like 70s am. Beautiful, beautiful. It feels like fall, which I can't say it's really felt like fallen August in Pennsylvania since I was a little girl, so I'm not complaining. Jesper (2m 14s): No. Wow, that's nice. I mean I actually don't mind it being hot outside, but I must admit right now in, you know, sitting inside in my little office here and recording this podcast, I'm like, it's feels like I'm sitting in a sauna or something. It's really, really well. Autumn (2m 33s): I know the other on the other side of the Atlantic, I've got the window is open and I'm actually a little cool and capris. Jesper (2m 40s): Yeah. Then that's the thing, right? Because if for me it's, it's late evening time now. So my problem is that if I opened the window or the insects comes in here, eh, if it was daytime it would be no problem. Right. But uh, during nighttime and you have the, you know, the lights turned on inside, then all the insects likes to come and I don't want that. So I have to sit in the sauna here and record. Oh, I will, I will. We're going to hold a few weeks. If you disappear, we know you possibly passed out. Oh shit. Yeah. I mean, I was out the other day with my youngest son. He was playing in a, in a soccer tournament the other day and he was just as hard as this. It was 30 degrees and luckily none of the kids passed out, but it was, it was really, really, really warm. And they were playing this tournament so they will playing like eight matches or something. And it was, yeah, steaming from above and, but it was really cool. It was, uh, just as kids tournament, you know, and um, and uh, they didn't play very well for the first couple of matches. They, they sort of draw off you and, and lost a few and maybe one one. So when once the group play was sort of done, then I was thinking, okay, we'll probably go home then because that was it. But then for some re reckless reason, they actually went to the semifinals as the last team that just made it above the cut. So, so then, okay, fine. Then there was one moment. So he played one more match and then they won the semifinal and all of a sudden they have to play the final playing really shitty for all the first like five matches was really shitty. And then all of a sudden they were in the final. And, uh, it was actually really, really exciting because, you know, this, this tournament that they create, created here was, um, they, it, it's in the local club, so, so it's only the local club players who are there, but they're, they're from all kinds of different age groups. So what they do in this tournament is they mix and match the age groups. So did you have some of the young ones and some of the older ones and so they, they make like teams of five kids, but different ages in each team. So, so they played together the young and the older ones, which is quite cool. And am my kid was one of the youngest there altogether. So they were playing this, a final match, the final against another team who had actually won every single match. So I thought, okay, they're going to get, you know, beaten really bad now. But they didn't, they really fought for it. And, uh, uh, the, the, the end of the game came and there was still no winners, so they had to play golden gold, you know? So that means that the first one who scores will win the game and then went into that over time and they were playing and am and it was really, it was crazy. I mean at one point my, my young son here, so again, he's the youngest one on the pitch. So he came with the ball dribbling down, uh, towards the opponent's goal. And there was this defendant in front of him is like four years, four years older. And I was like, I was thinking like, Oh, pass the ball, pass the ball, pass the ball. You know, you're not going to get past that. But he didn't, he actually dribbled past the guy. He was four years older than him and then all of a sudden he was alone in of the goalkeeper and the goalkeeper was like three years older than him as well. And he shot at the goal and it actually went past the goalkeeper, but it hit the post. It's just like, Whoa. And there was this like a, because it was the final, it was probably like a hundred people watching. So they went this like, Whoa, through the entire crowd, you know, this little boy pass pass through pass two kids who were just mud three and four years older than him. And uh, but unfortunately they didn't win there. So they kept playing for a bit. And then a bit later on in the match, uh, my, my youngest Sunday, he got the ball again and this time he didn't pass it. But actually the guy he passed it to was the one who then, because of that past shut the winning goal and they actually want the final Autumn (6m 42s): underdogs in the winters. Jesper (6m 44s): Yeah. It was so amazing. And uh, I was really proud of him. He played so amazingly well and uh, he was almost in tears himself and am when they then, uh, handed over the trophies afterwards though there was only, there was only like one trophy for, for the team. So the team had to pick themselves and all the, all the young, all the boys than said, uh, where you played so amazingly, so what? We're going to give you the trophy. And uh, that was really, really awesome. And then there was the, they had to announce the best player of the tournament. So the, in the, in the loudspeakers there, they called him up and said that he had played so well. So they, they made him the best, uh, play up the tournament. And I must admit, I tee it up a bit. That was really so proud. It was amazing. Autumn (7m 29s): I teared up a little bit. I, I live, my kids are, um, this was my vicarious moment cause I don't have any children other than a small dog. So with that is just so, yeah, Jesper (7m 39s): so awesome man. It was so well the surf and I think there was at least 20 people after afterwards who came over just to tell him how awesome he played and stuff. I mean, people, he doesn't normally talk to people who is not normally on his own team. So it was just amazing. And many parents also came over and said, Whoa, that was amazing. And you know, and he was, he's just a young kid, you know, he's really small compared to the other guys on the pitch. So, and it just, yeah, it was amazing. So that was my little story this week. Autumn (8m 9s): What is a fantastic story? I don't think I have anything else to top that one. Jesper (8m 16s): No, it was cool. I liked it. Oh, we on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast. So actually, um, I, I'm PO, I noticed something that made me laugh a bit in our Facebook group. Yeah. Because, uh, Dwayne poop out of the poll in the Facebook group and he asked for what a cliche or from a mine, and I don't know if it was just for fun that he made that poll or if he needed her for something but but I couldn't help laughing when my load and add an option called something mere models were never meant to witness that. So it made me smile, but then it made it even better when I saw that the, you know, of course the top spot or the one with the most world are gold, but just below them there is this something Mia moderns were never meant to witness as a, as a cliche thing. I just thought that was so funny. Oh, I, that would be a cliche to mind, but it's just so cool. Autumn (9m 19s): That is great. I didn't notice that. I've got to get back into the Facebook group. I was been offline a little bit too long, so I have to go check that one out. Jesper (9m 30s): Yeah, it was, it was quite funny. And am and of course I should also say, by the way, that any of you listening, if you want to join the Facebook group, do you know just search for amwritingfantasy among the groups on Facebook and just apply to getting and we will approve you or, yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'll also moderate a loop will actually, because often look, he is must faster than both you and me are in approving people, but uh, but we'll let you infrastructure. So, uh, yeah, if that's something you would like to join them, just do that. Autumn (9m 59s): Yeah. I've got to go in after we're done recording and maybe relieve loop a little bit. We had a whole slurry of people joining today, which is awesome. But, uh, we've been recording podcasts and I've been getting all these notifications of people who want to join. I'm thinking, Oh, poor Luke, we've left him hanging there because we're recording. Should probably go help out after this. Jesper (10m 19s): Yeah, maybe we should, but, uh, he's doing a good job though. Autumn (10m 24s): You're doing an awesome job. So yeah, shout out to Luke. Thank you. Are awesome. Amwritingfantasy Facebook group. Moderator, so I thought it was funny cause I saw a comment that Irish had left on our recent YouTube video slash podcast where she could, on the one we were talking about whether or not you should take a break from your writing. And she said she could see both sides. And I totally agree. I was thinking about this because one thing we didn't mention to that episode is I think you, yes. For when you go on your family vacation, you try not to. Right. So that's like a week or two off as well. So need to take writing breaks that during the year. Jesper (11m 1s): Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, and that's, I think I also, I hopefully I made it clear in the last episode as well. Um, you know, that I haven't written anything for probably a month now or something because I'm so busy and in recording costs us, uh, for for amwritingfantasy so, so yeah, I mean, absolutely I do. I do take breaks and as you said, especially when I go on the case, but you know, you always catch me anyway. Autumn because I tried to make those, like I make these announcements before I go on vacation that I'm not going to work, I'm not going to do anything. I will check the email and just reply if autumn sends me something, but otherwise I'm not gonna do anything. And then of course I'm going to send you something and then I always, you, you, you call me out on it and then you say, well, I thought you was supposed to be on vacations, but I don't write anything. No, but I, I am really and not doing anything, you know, I always end up doing something. Autumn (11m 57s): Your brain definitely does not turn off because we're a certain vacation. You came back and I think you had like three or four pages a world-building. Um, I just had to do it. So it's true though. Sometimes when you take a break, you didn't go and you're like, I'm not going to be writing. That's when everything, Oh, you wouldn't like I always joke the minute I stepped into the shower and there's no possibility of writing paper or the minute I start cooking a really involved dinner, those are when the idea finally goes click and you're like, Oh shoot. Jesper (12m 34s): Yeah. But that's exactly it, right? I mean as soon as you wind down from your day to day, being busy and running are about and whatever else we're doing on a day to day basis. So one, once you start with Lexington, all those creative things pops up in your mind and then I accidentally end up writing it down and sending emails to you. Autumn so yeah. Autumn (12m 57s): Well I respond and we get work done even when we're both supposed to be taking a break, but that's okay. Jesper (13m 3s): Okay. That's a good point that I was made though. You know that it is important especially, and I think she was also pointing out about, uh, the, you know, the print outs situation and, and there especially, it is really important to sort of give yourself a break. So I fully agree with that. Autumn (13m 19s): I've certainly enjoyed mine, but I've got to get back to it. Jesper (13m 23s): Right. So group promos, could you hear the sigh? I don't even know where to start with this because knowing almost no experience with, I mean, the funny thing I guess is that in the future we're going to release fiction together, but at least up until this point we've done so separately. So it means that you have some experience with group promos where I have very little, so I'll have to give you the reins on this one. Autumn Autumn (13m 51s): that's fair enough. But yes, I think I've probably joined with mailing lists. Uh, they'd call him newsletter swaps even though you're not actually swapping your a mailing list with another author, you're just promoting another author in your newsletter. And I think I've been doing that since maybe my first year as an author or they started up pretty quick and there's been, I've seen the rise and fall of so many different platforms where you can organize them, share them. I've seen everything from, and I've actually hosted some group promos on amwritingfantasy or not amwritingfantasy but on autumn writing my personal website and Yesper I know you joined that one and you could probably mention what you thought of it, but that was back in the days when you had to build it yourself. Now book funnel and story origin and some of the other ones, it's a freebie. They allow you to basically they create a website for you and you just send people there and so they have your own website. So there's a lot of ways of using them and the are often that you have to send that out to your newsletter and so that's sort of why you don't do that. Is that correct? Jesper (15m 0s): Yes, that is correct. I mean am my problem, I have done it at some point some years back. But my problem with it is that I treat and, OK, let, let me back up a bit because otherwise this is gonna sound like I'm saying that in everybody else's, not treating their subscribers with respect. Uh, and that's really not what I'm, what I'm trying to say. So I don't, I don't want to put my foot in the middle of the heinousness to you, but what I'm, what I'm getting at is that I find it really important to always treat subscribers with respect. Maybe I should put it like that because, and, and by that I'm not saying that running, you know, newsletter swaps are not treating them with respect. But what I mean on the other hand is that I feel personally and miles may vary here, so make up your own mind as what, what do you listen to think and, and maybe you see this differently as well of them. So I'm looking forward to hear your, your sort of thoughts on it. But at least in my own personal view, I think that if I'm going to push, you know, push a book or, or recommend a book or whatever you wanna call it to my email list, I should have read it because otherwise I don't, I don't want to do like, okay, uh, can you put my book on your email list and then I'll put your book in my email list if I've never read it. Because I feel, at least to me it doesn't feel fair to my subscribers and that's why I stopped doing it a long while ago because I just feel like I have no idea if this book is good or not. And uh, yeah, I don't know that that's just my sort of philosophy. Autumn (16m 34s): I can understand that because I think when it comes to doing individual swaps with authors, which is more what you're talking about, it is so hard to tell the quality. I mean, it helps to look at the cover and see if it looks professional. Maybe read the first couple of sample paragraphs pages that are on Amazon to double check. Because I definitely learned that one very early on is that, you know, it's don't just accept something out of the blue without looking at it first. Because yeah, you don't want to send something that you're kinda cringing and you're hoping your readers will never read it or they'll not think crazy for recommending it. Then it comes to the group promos, which are a little different because then you're just selling a reader, Hey, here's a whole suite of books that are either they're usually on sale or the freebies or to sign up to get the freebie. So you know, they know they're subscribing to a whole lot of other authors, which again, do you want your readers to be overwhelmed by signing up for another 50 books? But at the same time, there are also great opportunities for spreading the word. I know with my first book, my debut novel, Boardman of water, you know, that's been Permafree now for a few years and I've, I'm actually still toy with the idea is some point. Does that Permafree status and does it need to end thinking about that? Because I think that'll be a question maybe for a another podcast coming up is, you know, should Permafree be permanent, but we'll come back to that later. But I know when I was my only book or you know, the first book, I only had one trilogy and I felt like I was pushing that out to way too many promos and I wasn't seeing much gain because it was like every promo I could join I was putting that in and I thought, okay, you know, you have to start limiting who where you're putting in. And I think that's my advice even today. It doesn't hurt to try a sale's promo. I've done, I'm doing both now. Sales promos and group promos where you're doing a free book that people are signing up for. And sometimes I do a free promo where literally the book is free, just go get to soccer. It's fine. I'm giving it away. And I think, uh, by doing those, you do get to run into other authors. Everyone joins in to send it to their newsletter and you usually get a pretty slick graphic. And so you're just sending them saying, Hey, you know, it's not like necessarily this is the book you should go look at but go see if there's anything here that suits your fancy. But again, it's easy. This summer I have never seen so many group promos and I don't know if it's because people are just getting their act together. They're realizing that these, for authors where they're usually free to join, there's a few that have maybe, you know, chip in to get an Amazon gift card. Do you know something that'll make more people come and look at that page? So there are a few that costs, but in general, these things are free. Uh, what you're doing is actually supporting other authors. So that's awesome because seriously, that's one thing I love about authors is where we're so good. We're not competitive, we don't look at each other as competitors. We looked at each other as, Hey, I can only feed a reader, you know, one or two books a year that leaves, what, 364 days or you know, 300 something other days that they need to read books. And I can send them yours. That's not a problem. I want to make sure that they stay a reader and don't give up on books cause I can't find anything to read. So these group promos, you know, they give readers a chance to go look at them, check them out. But again, I know this summer I have seen so many, I usually use book funnel and story origin. I used to use instaFreebie, but I've been off that for a little while now. And it's just, I literally, I, this morning I got a notice of for new promos I think every day. It's a weird day that goes by when I don't get a notice that I have at least one new group promo that is open to be joined. That's a lot of promos. And I know when I first saw it I was like, Oh this is great. And I happen to have like for first in series books. I have four series out now. So Hey, I've got lots of books. I didn't, you know, go push out. I got two new releases that I can put a new release promos. And you get really excited until you go and sit down to do your newsletter and you realize that you know, you signed up for like six promos and you're supposed to be telling your readers about six different promos. You need to start, you need to come down and definitely take a look at, you know, what are you getting out at the start? You know, tracking the link, seeing if people are using them. I know when I do a book funnel one, I don't just send them a generic one. I use a specifically create a special link for each promo so I can go back in and see how many people downloaded the book. I can get those, that feedback. So I know if it was really worth my while. A book funnel is really cool because it also tells you how many people look at the page versus downloaded. So if you're seeing age discrepancy there, you can be like, ah, I got to work on something because people are looking at it, the cover is off asleep good enough for people to go look at it. But for some reason they get to and something on there is not, you know, they're not clicking through. So there's some great nuances, things you can kind of tweak, tease out by doing these promos. But only if you take the time to do the stats. And one of the important things is you have to join the right promo. Uh, there's a lot of multi-genre like new release promos, so that could be a multi-genre one. There are some 99 cent books, which is again a multi-genre one. You know, am I going to do good, do well there or should I just stick to the ones that are Epic fantasy or dark fantasy or the ones that are specific like magic worlds. Uh, there's one that was recently heroines, that was great. And then there was another one I went to join that they made it sound like female magic users. And when the promo came out, the graphics, it was all about witches. I was like, okay, no, I'm pulling my phone out when I'm not writing. Which craft? I love witchcraft. I would love to write a book on it, but these are not in, this is about elemental magic on a fantasy world that's not going to fit anything else in is probably a waste of my time and maybe my readers won't like it, but I have no proof of that. So I'm probably gonna to waste their time by sending it to them. Jesper (22m 48s): Yeah. Yeah. And uh, of course, I'm glad that you pointed out the difference between the newsletter swap and a group promo. Uh, I was also the one you ran, I can't remember a long while back. Uh, actually maybe it was, Autumn (23m 3s): yeah, there's probably, I think at least it wasn't this year, so it might've been 2018 Jesper (23m 8s): probably then. Yeah. Uh, but I was part of that and, and uh, I think I got like, I don't know, three, 400 subscribers or something from that one, uh, onto the email list, which is, which was pretty good. Um, so I mean there is of course, well, okay, again, let me back up a bit here because there's so many nuances in this conversation because one thing you're saying, okay, a group promo, you get 400 suffers from it. And that's wonderful. Yeah. Okay, that's good. But you can also look at it from the angle of saying, but okay, so these 400 subscribers just loaded Kindle with 50 different books and they're not gonna read any of them anyways. So what's the point? Right. And then on, and then of course I could then switch it back the other way around and then start arguing, well, okay. But then if you have them on your email list, it's stand up to you as the author to, to write even beta emails than the other ones so that they get invested in intrigued in U S North or, right. And of course that's, that's within your power to, to try to do something there. But but there is some sort of argument hidden somewhere in here around the quality of the subscribers, you know, uh, I've heard many, many times for like Freebooksy and stuff like that. You know, that you can get a ton of subscribers but they are worthless. So, and since we are paying for subscribers on the email list, at some point we also have to start asking ourselves, you know, what kind of readers do we want on that list? Right, exactly. Yes. So it's just, it's, it's, it's a bit complicated. Autumn (24m 47s): That's where, I mean, cause I was going, you took the words out of my mouth. You get subscriber as it is up to you to make them believe that your book is worth reading. And of course you only get like maybe one or two emails to get them excited and maybe off of you, it's in your power, but you're not going to get every single one of them sticking with you. And of course, hopefully that's why there's the unsubscribe button. And hopefully if you're doing list cleaning, um, that might be when you start cleaning out some people who've never seem to be opening your emails or responding to you. And there are, I think the group promos where people have to go down individually and pick a book that they think looks interesting, are far better than the group promos where they are basically signing up to win a prize. Like there's a few out there where everyone who goes into, it's going to get a free ebook to the winner or free paperback. Okay. Jesper (25m 38s): Or the way you, even the worst, the ones where they give away like a am Amazon gift card or something. I think that's some of the worst thing that you can ever offer because those people are there because they want the gift card, not the books. Autumn (25m 50s): Yes, exactly. And often a gift card, you're not even sure they're gonna use it for books. It'd be at least that's they're giving away a Kindle or something. You have an idea that they like books, but again, they can turn around and sell it. So. Exactly. So those are, those are the ones, I mean I joined those when I was first started and you can get, originally, I think the most I've ever gotten from one of those was almost 5,000 subscribers. That was early on, very early on. So it was one shot. You suddenly get 5,000 subscribers, you know, but again, as soon as you get that, you're probably sending out an email and those 5,000 people are getting emails from what, 25 30 different authors. So later group promos have gotten more organized where the like, okay, I've seen one where it's like if your last name starts between a and D, you can send on this day just that readers don't get overwhelmed. But again, that's what those inboxes are gonna look like for that entire week. It's going to be from all these authors and all these introductions. And I know I'd be like, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. Jesper (26m 57s): Yeah. Or people just use like a fake a on another fake. But you know that you just use the Hotmail account that they just created for this stuff. And then as soon as they get the books onto the Kindle that, you know, they never log into that Hotmail account. They never read the emails, they just grabbed the book and then that's it. Right. So what's the again, what's the value there then? Autumn (27m 16s): And exactly. And plus I know those group promos just like everything. I think this is even true with book sales, just everything it's, or even advertising, it's harder to get those numbers. I mean, my first promo that I ever did, I think I got 10,000 downloads now I don't even get 10,000 downloads. If I do a book funnel, it's just there are so many more books. So now you know, you're talking about a couple hundred a baby, a thousand subscribers are fantastic. But honestly that one month long promo that I organized, I was thrilled with the outcome because you know, most people are, we're seeing between two to 500 subscribers. That is fantastic. In a month. Some of the ones I joined now, you know, I think I just had a group promo where I think I had 322 downloads and I'm like, Hey, that was pretty good actually. It is. I was actually really surprised. So there are still some ones, but again, it's coming. It's drilling down and telling yourself one, you can't join every single one there is because then you are going to get your book out there to maybe too many people. And again, if they're choosing it, that's great. But again, you're sending it to your readers too and you should do your part. And so you don't want to drive your readers crazy with like four or five, six promos of every single email. It's kind of, you know, that's really taking advantage of them. Or are you doing a newsletter where you're just sending out emails about other books or are you doing a newsletter that's about your writing and you've got to make that choice and find that balance. Jesper (28m 44s): Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I would say, you know, if it's sort of like a group promo for example, like the one you hosted the last year where there was a ton of free books and then you know each, each person within that promo code then email their own list and say, okay, here's a link from where you could download a ton of books and needs of the authors in there gave a book away for free. And I think something like that is fine because you're doing a service to your reader by, you know, here's a lot of fantasy books that you can get for free. So most readers will like that. But that said, you have to be really mindful because if you do that all the time, if I was on my favorite authors email list and he was, he or she was emailing me, eh, let's say every second week with another 50 books that I could die, I would go and seem pretty quickly. It's like, what the, I mean, I cannot not read all these books anyway. And I mean once in a while doing it like once every six or something like that. To me, and again, this is personal preference, so take that with a grain of salt. But in my personal preference, that would be okay. Uh, the, the newsletter swaps I hate, but I don't know. I mean, I, I do know that, uh, this might be a bit of a different sort of topic, but it's been something that I've really been turning over and over in my mind because I've been thinking that for like, I think it was two podcast episodes back, I was mentioning how I was thinking about creating like a free course for four authors, uh, to give away to, to our new led newsletter subscribers on, on amwritingfantasy. And one of the things, our sessions or whatever you wanna call it for for that free costs has been around. I want to talk something about this Permafree stuff, which is linked into the newsletters or sorry, LinkedIn to promotions. And, um, and, and this topic that we're talking about here today, because obviously the value in group promos is because you're giving away a free book. But I still haven't really made up my mind and that's what I want. I want to make up my mind so that I can give sort of a here's my, here's my why as to why I'm thinking the way I am. Because right now I'm not sure because on one hand, I mean I have my own and you also have your own, your one for free Permafree and I do see every day probably like, I dunno, maybe 10 downloads on Amazon without me doing anything. It's just because it's free. And that's certainly 10 downloads. I wouldn't have been there otherwise. And then of course, if, if some people liked the book, then they will go and buy book number two in the book number three and so forth. So there's a logic there at play. But this is then the flip side. And this is where I haven't really made up my mind which camp I'm in and I need to figure that out. But I also understand the argument of saying yes, but since Rita's I able to just download so many free books as as it is possible today, there's a ton of free books out there. Basically the, the, that that was, I don't know who coined this term, but somebody, somebody called it Kindle stuffing, you know, that you're just filling your Kindle up with a ton of books just because there's also this collector's item, eh, sort of need that kicks in. Like, Oh, it's awesome. Like I have 2000 books or whatever, you know, at the end, they're not gonna read any of it anyway. And they're not, if they are downloading this many books and signing up for this many promos, they're not going to read the emails either. So, so what I, when I was saying early on that it's the new job as an author to make sure that you write emails that that hooked them. But if they don't read any of them, it doesn't really matter. And you know, you're just playing into a game of, yeah, let's feel everybody's people, you know, every, every one's Kindles up with free books. And then I don't know what the point is anymore because the goal is gone in this terminology he or, or this point of view, but, but as again, as I said, I don't know which camp I sort of believe in, if I believe that it is a good viable option to do the Permafree because years back it was a very viable strategy and it worked really well. But nowadays with so many free books and so many people downloading them, uh, I'm not sure if we've sort of moved past the point in the market where the free book is not that good anymore to have. But yeah, I, I really don't know and I, I need to do more thinking because I cannot make up my mind. So I know that's not very helpful. That's my thinking. Autumn (33m 18s): But I, I don't disagree and I do think that, um, I know even like I said, we both have PERMA freeze. But my two, my newest series, the one I've got two in the works that I'm, that I'm going to finish one first and then finish the other one. But I have put out two novellas and I did not make them free. And people, I'm sorry, leaders who are listening to this, I have no plans of making them free right now. If you happen to hunt around, you may find them in a free promo somewhere, but it will be exclusive. It's usually only for a couple of weeks. It's only by my choice. Otherwise they're on Amazon and they are 99 cents and I'm not planning on making them Permafree I'm planning on doing that and maybe every once in awhile opening them up briefly on my website or through these group promos and that'll be the only way to get them for free. And it is a, it's a different technique and more people are using that where you know, your book is for sale online, a for sale on Amazon. But occasionally you can get it as something exclusive and that adds that little extra shine that hopefully people will read it. And I also think that novellas are becoming more of the, the way of giving away a free book. You and I both have full length Epic fantasy novels. I know mine is 105,000 words and I do have people downloading it every day without even being advertising it. Uh, they do go on and read the incomplete six books series, which is fantastic. And I loved that. But so I don't know, maybe born of water will stay free because I don't have a novella at the beginning. But you know, if I ever came up with one, I may switch it over and create a novella and put that at the beginning and offer that as free. I'm not sure. And that's the tough thing. Readers, if you're listening to this, writers are not trying to milk you for money. We're trying to make a living. I am a full time author and graphic artists. This is literally how I put food on my plate. So I don't think there's anything wrong with making a living where you can afford to eat and be creative and get paid to be a creative individual. I think it's fantastic. I hope. But it is important and it's not always, it's not easy every day cause trumps me. But book sales fluctuate. Yeah. Yeah it does. But you start getting smart with this as a business and you have to start asking questions. I'm happily, I'm a prolific writer enough. I except for my two week recent break when I've got to get myself back in gear and get this book done. Uh, you know, I'm usually a prolific enough where I can release a couple books a year. I can hoping to do an entire series plus what we're writing next year. 2020 is going to be big and that is fantastic. And that's a good way of doing it. And because I have 16 books out, I can play with different techniques and that's amazing. That's so much fun. Jesper (36m 13s): Once you have, the easier it becomes, obviously Autumn (36m 15s): it does, it's try different tactics with different books and not sweat it because when you only have one series to play with, it's a big change. Does decide to put something in Kindle unlimited to do, you know, make something free versus not free. Those are big changes and they have a very big impact when it's your only series. Jesper (36m 34s): Yeah, indeed. And if I, if I can just share one more of, uh, my, uh, look it from this side and then look it from that side arguments here because you triggered something else in me and what you just said because yeah, I mean when you were talking about am that we also have to make a living from selling books and, and you know, that we shouldn't feel, I guess you didn't say this, but I guess it's, it's sort of embedded in there somewhere. We shouldn't feel ashamed about charting for our work. And I'm sort of of the opinion here. So, so he, okay, so he comes to a side and afterwards I'll give you the B side, but, but the AA side is saying, I mean Kindle books or eBooks, it doesn't matter if it's Kindle or on COBOL, wherever you're selling books. But a book for five, six, seven, eight, I'll even say nine 99 it's damn cheap. I mean, come on, you're, you're getting like 100,000 word novel that is probably taking sometimes years, but at at least quite a while. And uh, if it's a very experienced writer than it'll be fast obviously. But then you're also getting quality, but you're getting a quality novel for let's say, just go with a high price you and say 10 bucks, 10 bucks is not a lot for a book. And I feel like we have sort of put ourselves in a situation a bit as authors of where now there is an expectation that you can get it for, you know, almost nothing. And, and that's sort of the, the B side of this whole argument is, but what are, what are we, what is our goal here? I mean, what are we trying to do? Because if, if on one hand you were saying, okay, a side here I'm charging nine 99 side is saying I'm going to go Permafree obviously the besides argument here is that well if I'm going after and Rita who has never heard me before and I'm going to say to him, okay, Hey read my book and you just have to give me $10 and then I'm saying, and by the way, that's not expensive at all. And then the reader, if I put the reading glasses on and he looks at the beside and the byside, well well you don't know me so you have never read any of my work. So I think it's free ad and I'm going to give you this book for free. And then you can make up your mind yourself. And if you like it, you can read more and then of course you have to pay for it. But at least there was no barrier of entrance here that you need to pass it. You know, it's the barriers soloed at that. You can just give it a try. It's like a free sample thing, which is, which is sort of like they do in the supermarket as well. When they want you to buy some new chips or something, right? They give you a few future taste and then they want you to buy but so a and B side here, I mean they don't, but they both have valid points in my view. And again, this is where I cannot make up my mind because if we have really taught the readers of in today's day and age that you should just expect authors to write books for free. I mean then we just shot ourselves in the foot and, and what is the point then? Right? But on the other hand, since everybody else in the market or not everybody else, no, I'm exaggerating now but right but but since there is a lot of people in the market who are giving their books away for free and the barrier of entrance is so low, as I said before, how are you going to compete at that? Against that if you're saying, but I'm going to chow chow to nine nine to nine, right. I mean, if you're having a huge email list and you and the people love what you're doing, then well that's not a problem. You can just sell it for nine 99 and people will buy it. But I'm coming at this from the angle of what is the advice for a new author? She should you, should you make your poop Permafree and then say, and then I'm going to run some group promos and whatnot to, to get my name out there. Or are you just Kindle stuffing? You know, are you just playing into the, to the Kindle stuff in game and actually it's not gonna make any difference for your author career at all. And I don't know. So again, I need to make up my mind so I can make it cost module on this stuff because I really, I don't know right now. Autumn (40m 40s): Well, I think that that's gonna be a question that's, Hey, that's when we can ask our listeners as well. Jesper (40m 45s): Oh yeah, that would be good. Yeah. I would love some perspectives on this. Autumn (40m 49s): Yeah. Let us know if you think you know, free books are Kindle stuffing or if you think that's a really valid way, especially as a new author, if it's something that we should be looking at and doing so that you know, you get to be known as you were, you know, learning and growing as an author. And you know, once you get your email list to like something reasonable and 5,000 you can start charging like at least 99 cents for your new novella. And you know, let us know what you think because next week we talk about character arcs. Narrator (41m 30s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The general advise is that it's better to write in series instead of standalone novels if we want to earn a full-time income. What does a six figure author has to say on that topic? Lindsay Buroker, a highly successful fantasy authors, join Am Writing Fantasy to share advice on how to earn a living as an author. You can find out more about Lindsay here: http://lindsayburoker.com/  New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC PATREON! Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy  LET'S CONNECT! Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/  Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/  Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper  Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer  Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Jesper (1s): You might have heard the advice that one should be writing in a series if one want to earn a living as an author. And there is actually something to that. And today I am joined by Lindsay Buroker who is a very successful fantasy author who earns a six figure income a year from writing. If you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is Jesper and between Autumn and myself we've published more than 20 books. Jesper (34s): And it is our aim to use our experience to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors. So first of all, thank you for joining me here on a amwritingfantasy. Lindsay Lindsay (47s): thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk about books and marketing and in series of course. Jesper (52s): Yeah, it's, it's always a good topic to talk about and uh, but maybe, maybe you can say a bit about yourself, uh, your writing. And I also know that you're, well, I transitioning out of an old podcast and starting a new and so forth. So maybe we could just sort of give a bit of context for stuff. Lindsay (1m 8s): Sure. I am mostly self-publish. I have an audio book publisher, but I started self-publishing at the end of 2010. Uh, when my first series was the emperor's edge, and I had only two books written at that time and they weren't in the same series. So I can talk to what it is to start out without, you know, there's a lot more you can do with marketing when you have more. Um, I was, uh, pretty excited about it from the beginning. I saw the potential, even though I didn't make a lot of money to start with. You know, I think I was really excited when I made more than a hundred dollars a month. Lindsay (1m 40s): Uh, but as I got more books out in this series, I had people do fan art and, um, they started, you know, doing some fan fiction and things like that. So I saw that people enjoyed my writing, uh, at least certain numbers of people, the ones that you're, you're hoping to target. And so that was really reassuring and I felt confident that eventually I could get to the point where I could make it my day job. And by the time I'd finished that series, I ended up doing about eight books. Uh, I was, you know, making I think over 10,000 a month. And I thought to myself, well, if I could just keep doing that, that'd be awesome. Lindsay (2m 13s): And, uh, I could, you know, you have expenses to edit paying editors and cover art and such. But, uh, that was before anybody was spending much money on advertising. So that was mostly take-home money. And, um, I've, since fruit and numerous more fantasy series, I've also done some science fiction. Uh, if you take a peek at me when this podcast comes out, you'll see that I'm doing my star kingdom scifi series, but, uh, I'm, I'm kind of alternating next year would probably be back to dragons. So, um, and you asked about the podcast. We, uh, myself, Joe Lolo and Jeff Poole did the science fiction and fantasy marketing podcast for over four years. Lindsay (2m 49s): We are kind of been winding it down this year. I was starting to feel that we had a message that could be for more than just scifi and fantasy authors. So, uh, Joe and I are going to start a new one this summer called six-figure where we kind of help people that want to get to that level. And even beyond that, it is possible as a solo author, if you're a prolific and marketing and in a genre where it works that you know, you can make $1 million or more a year. So there's right now it's a great time to be self publishing or you know, just kind of managing your own future. Lindsay (3m 20s): If, uh, if you have any entrepreneurial spirit at all and uh, uh, as I'll be the first to admit I liked the writing more, I kind of do as much, you know, I learned as much in marketing stuff is you have to, but uh, I think I'm kind of can demonstrate that you don't have to be a super pro at a Facebook ads or AMS have or anything like that. I'm still feeling my way. A lot of it, some of that stuff. Yeah. Jesper (3m 45s): Yeah. And I'm, I'm glad that you said about the, that this is a good time to, to get into or to publish in general or to write books in general because I, I sometimes come across the line of thinking that, that people think like, well isn't it a bit too late now? And of course if we are comparing two, and I guess you'll have this from personal experience, but if we compare it to like 2010 2012 something like that, then for sure it is a different marketplace nowadays. But in the global view of things here with, with all the countries who doesn't even have eBooks or you eat, there's an old doing all of that yet. Jesper (4m 21s): And we're still sort of in the, in the earliest stages of this stuff. Wouldn't you agree? Lindsay (4m 27s): I do. And I often tell people, when I started, it was December, 2010 I thought I was too late as it cause Amanda Hawking had already made her like million dollars from a, you know, her paranormal romance books. And there were a few other people that got in really early and we're killing it. And, and keyboards was around back then, the writer's cafe forum. And people were saying like, Oh, it's getting a lot harder. So I was like, well, we'll, we'll, we'll try to figure it out. Um, in the early days you kind of had to go hunting on deviant art.com or somewhere, or no, an artist. Lindsay (4m 59s): There wasn't really this whole industry to support indie authors yet. You kinda had to find an editor that maybe could do fiction. Uh, my F my editors started out in the technical editing field and so I was referred, I was her first person doing like SciFinder fantasy and to this day I think I'm one of her main people. She's still, it's like, what is this term you're talking about? But, um, so now at least it's, it's, there's a lot of great advice out there. There's a lot of sites for am promoting your book. If you've got a little money to spend at the social media stuffs a little more established. Lindsay (5m 32s): So I do think, you know, you still see people that are just, and maybe they started a couple of years ago, but they kind of figured it out with a new series or something and that's taken off for them. So it's very possible still here and not 2019 to to make a splash. And, uh, I feel you do have to pay attention and learn some of the marketing stuff. It's, it's, you're probably not going to just throw a book up and get lucky by having it in the right category. Am you saw more of that early on, especially, you know, if a new category of popped up on Amazon that hadn't been served by traditional publishing, if you just threw something up there with a horrible cover, it didn't matter if people would give it a try and those days are probably gone. Jesper (6m 11s): Yeah, true. Yeah. And in that way, it is a different marketplace now, but, but uh, but okay. But I guess at the end of the day, one should also say that, you know, if you want to get into writing because you want to earn money, then I think there is, there's a lot of different professions that will get your many way quicker than writing books. So that way it's, it's not the right motivation. There's not because you want it. And many I did the right word of business because you love writing and you love telling stories and that that should be the main driver. Jesper (6m 44s): But then of course you need to couple it with, with some advertising. But I guess then, uh, coming back to sort of the main topic here, because now that we are talking about advertising and one of the often made arguments about it's better to write in a series rather than writing stand along books is because of course you can sort of put a bit more marketing budget against a, the first book in the series because then people would go on to read the other ones. But I know you've written quite a lot of series, so I'm curious too, to have your inputs or views on, on, well I guess on one hand, how do you decide when, when is it time to stop a series, but also what have you seen from when you're comparing your series to your standalones? Jesper (7m 32s): Can, can you still make a standalone work well or is it sort of doing the interface? It's, if you do that, Lindsay (7m 39s): it's a little tougher if you have a fan base built up and they'll just, you're lucky enough that they'll try anything new you put out. And I have a, a standalone I did last year PSI Phi, um, that did pretty well. Um, you know, it certainly more than covered its costs and the time I put into it. Uh, but knowing me, I always end up like wanting to write two or three more and the, the readers always want more to. So I have very few actual stand-alones that are still standalone am my dragon blood series, which has eight books, a spinoff book, uh, and a spinoff series of five books that started as a standalone. Lindsay (8m 12s): I hadn't known intention of writing, I'm just like, I'm just getting this sweet little fantasy romance with magic and it'll just be a nice side thing. And uh, I really enjoyed the characters, which is what happens. I tend to fall in love with the characters and hopefully the readers do too. And I always end up doing more. And you're right on the advertising. If you're gonna spend money on a book one, you know, especially if you're thinking maybe I'll make it free or 99 cents as a way to kind of lower the barrier of entry then am it helps if you have seven more books at four 99 that people will hopefully get sucked into the series and continue on to purchase. Lindsay (8m 51s): I'm not super calculating as far as like, Oh, well last year I actually had a of did quite well. That was a heritage of power. It was that spinoff series in that world where I already had a lot of readers and I wrote five of them and they were still selling really well. And I remember thinking, you know, I should just keep writing more of these, but I kind of planned a five book story arc. Actually I planned a three book story arc and it turned into five. So, and I'm not really someone that can just go, well let's just take these characters and keep writing more of them even though I've sort of solved that overarching story plot so I was already moving onto something else. Lindsay (9m 28s): And um, then that's something people can decide for themselves. I do try to write, I like the am to do like three before I launch anything because it lets me really get into the story and I'm committed before, you know, cause sometimes if it doesn't sell well you can get discouraged or even if it sounds okay but not nearly as well as something else you've done. Uh, that can also be like you always comparing either against other authors or your own past successes. So it can be a challenge to stay in food if something doesn't do as well. Lindsay (9m 58s): So I like kinda committing beforehand and like, you know, I think this is going to be at least five books and uh, w you know, we'll see how it goes from there. I feel lucky enough to have readers that I know I'm not going to lose money on a series or cause it, they'll try anything new. So that's a nice place to get to. I know that's not everybody yet, but I do think it's worth doing maybe committing to three books there. You know, especially if you're newer and don't, you're still kind of figuring out the marketing stuff. Maybe you can afford super cool. Lindsay (10m 30s): You know, like custom illustrated cover art, which is always great in like Epic fantasy if you can have a illustration, but that can be $800 or more. So not everybody can start out with that. And so if you don't have a real cop killer covers to start with, that can be a little tough. If you're not really great at writing blurbs yet, you're still learning how to do that. Uh, you can kind of unknowingly sabotage or a series. So you want to give it a bit of a chance. And then I always say like, before you abandon it, you know, try to try getting new covers, ask for opinions, you know, cause a lot of people really struggle with blurbs. Lindsay (11m 5s): Uh, I can't tell you how many I've looked at as just as a reader looking for something to read and like it's just kind of, it'll be a little choppy or it doesn't quite make sense and it's probably cause they edit it so much that it became less natural. So there are definitely challenges when you're starting out and uh, sometimes it's the second or third series that does well for you and takes off. Jesper (11m 27s): It's often actually a bit difficult to figure it out. Lindsay (11m 30s): What will Jesper (11m 31s): sort of resonate with the readers are bare and Lindsay (11m 36s): am. Jesper (11m 37s): I, I don't, I mean I talked to Dave Chesson quite recently. Of course he has his publisher record a software that sort of can help you figure out if there's a market for certain book ideas. But I, I've always been more of the line of thinking that, Lindsay (11m 53s): right. The story Jesper (11m 54s): that I'm excited about writing and then maybe it'll take off, maybe it won't, but maybe then the next one will. But I don't know. But that's sort of my, my line of thinking on it. And I guess one could be smarter and the research, the market burst specifically figure out what people want and then write that. But I, I dunno, I've never really been a prescriber to that mythology. Lindsay (12m 15s): I'm not any good at it. So I don't either. Like I, you know, I think if you see, I think you can write to market if you happen to be the market yourself. Like you love those vampire romance novels that sell like crazy. I, I'm kinda one that wants to subvert the tropes rather than doing what's super popular. So I've just found that even if sometimes I think before I write a series, you know, this one, I think it's got a few, you know, enough things that are popular and like Epic fantasy that maybe it'll take off. And then inevitably that one, it's just, you know, it does okay. Lindsay (12m 47s): But, and then it will be a series where I wasn't expecting that much from it and that will end up doing better. And I'm kind of reassured because I think traditional publishing has the same experience there. There also seemed to not be very good at predicting which things will end up. They end up calling him a sleeper hit because they didn't expect that one to do well. You know? And then sometimes you push something really hard and it's just, it doesn't click with people. And you know, I think you can get better at predicting what will you know, what's going to do well. But usually I can tell in hindsight why something did well, but not necessarily as far as sitting down and planning like, Oh, I'm trying to write the next big hit. Lindsay (13m 25s): Uh, I'm just happy to, I like you. I think it's important to write what you're really excited about and then you can figure out how to try to market it in the best way that, yeah. Has the best chance to do well. Like, you know, you can put a dragon on the front cover if there was a dragon in chapter eight, you know? But yeah, that seems to be the traditional fantasy symbol that, uh, people see and get excited about and they're like, Oh, that's my kind of book. Jesper (13m 52s): Yeah, indeed. But if we're, if we're saying that committing to at least a trilogy, then is is sort of the advice, um, have you had any success in, for example, having, okay, you show your written a trilogy but it's not really taking off and then you're rebranding it with newcomers and new blurbs and stuff. Have you had success in actually making such a story sale whereas before it actually didn't? And what I'm hinting at here is that the actual story is actually okay, but it was just a wrapping around it meaning the covers and the blurbs and stuff that really didn't work. Lindsay (14m 31s): I've seen it happen a lot for other people. Um, my first year is actually did not have very good covers that were, you know, I remember the emperor's edge was my first series and kind of a high fantasy steam era kind of thing. So not only did it not quite fit Epic fantasy or steam punk kids kind of in the middle, I had these covers that uh, I don't know, said is this historical Indian fiction because there are these yellow covers and apparently that's what it puts them in mind. And I agree looking back that they weren't super, you know, they didn't scream Epic fantasy. Lindsay (15m 5s): Um, but I was always willing to make the first book free and run sales and I feel that the story pulled people in well enough that if they would just give it a try, they would, you know, enjoy it. And I didn't have like super hot success. Right. Like I said right from the start, but I was always willing to like run those, you know, make this free run a promo, just give away the first book to try to get people to try it. And I was lucky enough that you know enough people like the story and I think the word of mouth helped a little bit too. Lindsay (15m 35s): Uh, that's still seems to be a fan favorite that are that first series. So if you're not super to market and you don't have the exact, you know, perfect cover, it's more of a challenge and I think you might have to be willing to do the free book one or you know, to try to lure people in and then hope this story is strong enough to, uh, to get them in there. But if you know better and can you just make it all awesome from the start? Your odds are of course better. And uh, I have seen other people where they recovered it in kind of relaunched the series a that suddenly they gained some traction and am with mine, I put new covers on it eventually. Lindsay (16m 12s): Uh, it wasn't really a game changer, but it's, it made it easier to get BookBub ads on the box set. So that's always a plus if you can get some one of those a year. But they're getting, they're getting tougher to get. So even for established others, Jesper (16m 27s): and I was thinking, because I know I've noticed that you have quite some some series starter. The first book in a series are free. Uh, and I've also noticed actually I think you have some thought trilogies that are free as well, but do you have a, like a conscious strategy about what you're making free and why and so forth or how do you, how do you decide what to charge for and what to make free? Lindsay (16m 52s): I usually don't start out with book one free, but I'll often launch at 99 cents since. So it's uh, you know, people will check it out. And then am it's usually after the series is complete. Like most of the ones where I have a free book, one that's always free, it's like an eight book series. And so there's seven more. And usually you sit and spin off stuff. So if I suck them in with the first one, then they'll go give it a try. And then I will often box up the first three books in this series. I find that, um, if people read the first three books, they're even more committed to going on and finishing the series. Lindsay (17m 25s): And if they just try the first one and I don't usually leave those free to sort of like if I got a BookBub a few months ago, I made it free for the BookBub and then I just kind of a pain to go back in. And I have one right now that I think is free on Amazon even though I put the price up on the other sites and it's like, Oh, okay. Um, and so I will usually do those for sales. Do you like the three books? And again, in a series where there's like eight, so there's still a lot of stuff for them to go on and pay for if they wish to. Jesper (17m 56s): I'm also sort of tried to use the, uh, book one free or I have my first book in the service for free as well, just because as S I think you've said earlier, it just lowers the resistance and the barrier for new readers too, to actually give it a chance. Um, and in that way, it works. I still believe in here in 2019 that the freestyle is still works, Lindsay (18m 20s): I think especially on the non-Amazon sites for those who are not exclusive and want to sell on Barnes and noble and Kobo and Apple, that am, those people don't have a subscription service yet. Like K you can own limited on Amazon. So there, there's still, I feel like a lot of people surfing looking for the free books on those sites. I even had somebody the other day say they grabbed my free book, went on Smashwords, which has like, wow, I didn't know if people are still shopping there, but I think the international crowd that maybe doesn't have a local Amazon, you know, in their country, uh, you might be able to, they might still use Smashwords. Lindsay (18m 56s): And you know, some people just like that there's no DRM and all that stuff to deal with on the sites. But I forgot what I was talking about. Oh, free working. Yeah. So I feel like on Amazon, Kindle unlimited maybe replaced it a little bit, uh, because those people will kind of have their $10 a month subscription and they don't think about it. That just automatically comes out of their account and everything in Kindle unlimited at that point is essentially free for them so they can just shop from that store. But I still find that when I do a free run on Amazon that I can get some, some new readers checking them out. Lindsay (19m 31s): Uh, I'm surprised at how many people have come in from the free promo sites. They'll say like, Oh I found your book first on Freebooksy or BookBub cause I feel like authors are saying others don't work anymore or they don't work as well as they used to. But I think there's still a lot of readers subscribe to it that you know, they, they read a lot. They want bargain books. And as indie authors, even if we price it for 99 we're still a bargain compared to nine 99 or 1499 from traditional publishing. So I am still a fan of free. Lindsay (20m 1s): Like, I'm happy if I can get my stuff into libraries and you know, people can read them that way because people that buy, you know, even if they download your stuff for free, they may still tell a friend and share the story with somebody who's going to go pay for it. And so that's why I've never been bothered by, you know, at least sharing. Most of my book ones ended up being a complete a story. So it's not like they have to read on, but I do try to set up a bigger story arc to kind of draw them in and there's questions that aren't answered about the characters. Lindsay (20m 32s): Is that, cause I think if you give him just a complete book that ends, then there's like more friction. They're not necessarily going to automatically just continue on with the next one. Hopefully if they love the characters they will. Jesper (20m 46s): Yeah. Then then the cliffhanger, of course you can, you can use those as well just to S people into the next book in the series as well. Lindsay (20m 54s): Yeah. I often, I sh I don't like to do those, but somehow it ends up being kind of a cliffhanger. Like I tried to do a complete story and the novel, but then it's obvious there's more things that the characters have to go and deal with. I, especially in fantasy, I think that we just tell these massive sprawling stories that at the end it's a whole different like government system, you know, that had to be put in place. It's not like this, it's not just a little romance. Usually it's this Epic spanning scope. Lindsay (21m 25s): We'll pretend that made sense. Jesper (21m 28s): Yeah. Um, but I was thinking as well, because we talked about the freestyler, but on the opposite end of the scale is, is uh, the, let's say more expensive pricing element. And I talked to Joseph Melik recently as well because he, uh, actually increased the prices of all these supposed to nine 99. And it was quite interesting conversation because he was telling me that in terms of actual unit sales, there was no difference from when he had the lower price point. Jesper (22m 2s): Um, and so you basically use, just increased all his revenues. But he's not selling any less amount of books. And it also went, of course, enables him to, to spend a bit more money on the advertising because he can afford it. But uh, have you played around with the price ranges on your books to see if it makes a difference in that way? Lindsay (22m 21s): I, at one point, I went up from doing a lot of them three 99 up to four 99. I am conscious that, uh, I published pretty often. So if somebody's gonna come in and read everything I published that year, it might be like 10 novels. So I would feel that it might be harder for them to buy everything if I made it something $10. And I've certainly heard from a lot of people, they're like, well, I'm kind of on a budget, you know, I'm retired, I have a set income. So I really appreciate that your books are affordable. And in my case, I make plenty. Uh, so I'm not like, you know, I am feel like I need to make more. Lindsay (22m 55s): It just cause I have so many books out now that a and I managed to keep the back list selling reasonably well and I almost always have a new series, uh, each year. So, um, you know, if you want to try it and it works, there's nothing wrong with that. I think I, we had Joseph on the show. I think he kinda does like one book a year or something in that I think you might have diminishing returns if you've published really often at that price point. We're am it depends on how prolific you are too. I know he's a big fantasy. You can be doing these 200,000 word novels and you're not going to be publishing is often. Lindsay (23m 28s): So, um, I am a big fan of looking at the overall income rather than worrying too much about what one book costs. That's why I'm happy to do 99 cents or free for a book line if it means I make more overall. And um, you know, I, I like I have less than traditional publishing. I feel like that's a real advantage for us. And when I still make 70% yeah, that's, that seems like a really, you know, making $3 three 50 per per ebook seems good if you're, as long as you're selling, you know, lots of copies. Lindsay (23m 59s): If you're selling three copies a month, then a little more frustrating and you know, you might want to play around with all kinds of price points. Jesper (24m 9s): Yeah. But maybe, I mean if you're selling three copies than three 99 or nine 99 doesn't really make much of difference except that one more cup of coffee you can buy that month. But otherwise it doesn't make much of a difference. I guess Lindsay (24m 21s): it depends also if you're in Kindle unlimited and people can borrow them, I've noticed that the higher price points can actually be more appealing then because they feel like, Oh, I'm getting a really good deal because I can just borrow this six 99 book instead of having to pay for it. Whereas if it's 99 cents, they might just go, well I'll either buy that or maybe I won't get that one because it's not as a good of a deal for one of my 10 borrows that I can have at a time. So that's something to consider too. Jesper (24m 51s): Okay. So I guess at least am what I get from, from all of this is that for sure it is still advisable that that people should be writing in series. I think we settled on that. Uh, give it a nice commitment to write three books before you were sort of abandoned it and find something else. And I guess also based on what you're doing here that sometimes I, I, it's almost sounds like sometimes you're just writing a book and then you, you just make sure that the ending is at least open enough that if, if people like it, you can write on, but it almost sounds like many of your series of sort of spat out of just one book then then happen to get extended into a full series. Jesper (25m 32s): Is that, is that right? Lindsay (25m 34s): I think the dragon blood series is the only one where I didn't at all, wasn't planning to do a series. And then I've got a little box set that's two books where am the first one was encrypted and I totally meant that to be a standalone. And then people liked it and I was curious what happened next with the character. So I turned that into a to book things. So it got a sequel and a short story. Generally now you know with experience on my side I will plan out something that can go to five or eight books and I will plan from the start for it to have like there's questions about the hero or maybe the villain that you're not going to get the answers to right away. Lindsay (26m 11s): So that will make the reader curious and want to read on. And there's, there's some something going on that needs to be resolved. Like I did one scifi series where the heroin was trying to search for her daughter that was missing and that took it through all eight books. Poor kid. So like, even though there are individual stories, and you'll see that a lot on TV series too, where this sort of like there's one thing where they're trying to accomplish in the end, solve some crime or something. You know? And I think that if you design it that way from the beginning with a few little things like that, that people want to see resolved, it keeps them reading. Lindsay (26m 47s): I know I'm reading something right now where I think I'm only reading cause I want to see the character become the thing. You know, she's trying to become a Knight. It's like these are okay. But you know, I'm not sure if I would keep reading if it had been a complete story in one book. So sometimes just that stuff can keep people going on, even if maybe there's some other stuff that wouldn't have made them a super fan and then by the end maybe there'd become more bigger fans of the series. So we also have a very, uh, been sort of watching reading, what's it called, mentality. Lindsay (27m 23s): But the culture nowadays and being in Kindle unlimited, I guess that helps. But, uh, do you have all your books in most of your books you can limit or how do you do the split between widen and Kindle unlimited? All of my older stuff or older series are wide because I started publishing before Kindle unlimited and KDP select existed. So I really resisted for a long time. I didn't want to go into the Amazon exclusivity with anything and I finally saw that it was an advantage to be in there and kind of a disadvantage not to be in there since the borrow is also count as sales as far as calculating your sales rank and whether you're going to be in the top 100 of your John rhe thing. Lindsay (28m 5s): So cause I know if you pop into like Epic fantasy, you'll kind of look through and unless it's a big traditionally published author, chances are the books are in Kindle unlimited. There very few people who are able to make it and kind of stay in that top 100 for a while if they're not in canola limited. So I started launching new series in there. And so they might stay there for a year or so. And then when I have something new, I'm going to start a move that series wide and kind of do a, like a second launch, I guess. Yeah. On free or 99 cents and run some promos. Lindsay (28m 37s): Again, it's sort of an opportunity to say, Oh, Hey, I'm launching now on Kobo and Apple and all the other bookstores. So it's not the ideal thing, you know, I think right now people are making more money by being exclusive with Amazon, which is seems counterintuitive and we'll find it tough to jump. Um, I've heard from, uh, you know, like Kobo and stuff, like the worst thing you can do is kind of jump back and forth. Yeah. I, so I just, I started in NKU and then move it out and then it's going to stay out. I'm not gonna try like yank it and try to put something back in. Lindsay (29m 10s): Kau so I'm, it's usually the most recent series is in there. And then, um, yeah, just put the other chef wide and I also do a Patrion for the sole purpose of putting my books out early before I enroll them in KDP select. So the fans that are not Amazon people can, if they're willing to download it from book funnel. Uh, and you know, I announced it on Patrion they can get the books early. I usually put him a week or two up, uh, before the, before they launch. Lindsay (29m 40s): So that's sort of how working around right now because the problem was starting out wide as you have fans on the other site and say get grumpy when understandably so when they find out your new book is only on Amazon. So it's, there's a little bit, a bit of a challenge. I uh, I'm would certainly love it if Amazon removed the exclusivity requirement cause I, I don't have any problem with people getting it as a subscription thing. That doesn't bother me. I still make money on that. But they do make it tough by not allowing you to have it anywhere else or even sell it on your own site. Jesper (30m 13s): I, I'm not, I have not unwilling to put any of my books are in Kindle unlimited, but uh, but, uh, yeah, that's a whole other story that I've talked about pre previously. So, uh, we'll leave that a little for now. Um, but I was wondering now that, um, now that I have you here and we've talked around the, the, the series and the importance of writing in series, but because, because you also were six-figure author, I'm wondering if sort of you have any advice for sort of the different stages that people go through to get to that level or, you know, is there any good advice for beginners versus a, once you maybe pass that 10 K Mark and, and so forth, is there any, any sort of, uh, the best of the best advice for, for, for those stages of writing? Lindsay (30m 59s): I think if you kinda keep your expectations low and just, you know, cause I feel like people get so disappointed if they're, they're new and they see how much you can possibly make, but they're booked, doesn't do, or their book maybe even does. Okay. You know, they're like, Oh, I made $500 this month. That's, that's horrible because this other person's making $5,000 in my genre. So I always had the kind of low expectations. Like I thought maybe if I got enough books out, I could eventually do this for my day job. So, um, it's, I think it's kind of tough actually when you have success right out of the Gates because then you think it's always going to be that easy. Lindsay (31m 33s): And I've seen now I've had the opportunity to see a lot of authors disappear. Like they had one series it took off and then their next two series flopped and then they're just gone now. So I think it's, uh, probably not bad if you just kind of gradually, you know, put more books out every time you put a new book out, it gives you an opportunity to, you know, have a sale on book one. And I just think of it in terms of, I'm trying to get a few, few more readers with each new book I launch and, uh, hopefully they'll become lifetime readers. I, I've, I dunno, I think I have maybe 60 novels now between my name and I did like 15 under a pen name. Lindsay (32m 9s): And I have readers tell me regularly that they've read every single one. And I'm, uh, I'm just amazed. I'm like, I don't, I haven't even gone back and like read a lot of them as just as a reader. Um, so that's great. And then, you know, of course if you do start making some money, make sure, you know, I was going to be different in every country, how much you need to put aside for taxes. But, uh, the government will want their portion and it can be pretty high when you get up into six figures. They, they, you know, at least in the U S they do your tax bracket based on, you know, what your income was. Lindsay (32m 42s): So make sure to put money aside for that. And um, you have to hear, you have to be able to pay for health care on your own. I know in some countries that's what you get as a citizen that pays taxes. So that's something to consider in the U S and some other countries where you need it by your own health insurance. So usually you need to make more as a self employed person than you did maybe as a salaried person in order to cover all your expenses. So it's ideal if you can probably do both for a while and just pay off any day you have before making the jump to full time. Lindsay (33m 18s): And then you'll probably find that there will be jumps. Like I thought, you know, income would just kind of steadily rise. Uh, but you tend to like something takes off, you know, a little bit and then you get a big jump and then you're at that level hopefully, and you stay there and then maybe the next year is there'll be a bigger jump. I w even inevitably it won't continue to just always trend upward. So it's, it's good to put money in the bank and then not assume that you're just always gonna make the same level every year. I tend to pay for things with cash just so I don't am and have to worry about it. Lindsay (33m 49s): You know, they don't, I don't want a big mortgage on a house or anything like that. So I, I feel like if you have gradually success, you're probably going to handle it better than if you just suddenly start making 100,000 from your, you know, some trilogy that took off like crazy. So, but you know who, who wouldn't hope for that to happen? Jesper (34m 7s): Yeah, I guess I can't blame anybody from hoping that. Okay. So thanks a lot for all your advice here. Lindsay am where can people find out more about you if they want to, to learn about your writing or your podcast or whatever. Lindsay (34m 28s): I'm on lindsayburoker.com if you come anywhere close, just filling my name, you'll probably find it. It's Google can help. This is not too common of our El. So, uh, that's my website. I'm on Twitter as goblin writer, which is a kind of handle you get if you have had it for 10 years before you started publishing in New York and thinking like, Oh, I need a professional author thing. And then under lindsayburoker on Facebook and also on Instagram. And uh, the, the new podcast is going to be a six figure author's dot com with the number six because that is the domain that was available. Lindsay (35m 3s): So hopefully we'll, we're going to do kind of a higher level, you know, just sort of skip the basics cause there's a lot of podcasts that, you know, do some of the basic stuff and we'll try to get on some really successful guests and just drill down and ask them the good questions. So if you're a podcast listener or on YouTube, hope you check us out. Jesper (35m 23s): That's great. And thank you so much for coming on to amwritingfantasy Lindsay and have a chat to you today. Lindsay (35m 29s): Thank you for having me. Jesper (35m 31s): And so you out there, thank you for watching and see you next Monday.

In this solo episode, Mark plays clips from a couple of other podcasts, shares some personal updates related to his own audiobook products, and goes neck deep into his thoughts about audiobooks for authors. The episode is sponsored by Findaway Voices.. . . you can learn more about how you can get your work distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway. Some of the topics Mark covers in this episode include: How much he still loves the 1987 song "Somewhere Down The Crazy River" by Robbie Robertson A FreeBooksy promo he recently ran on an erotic horror title called SOMETHING WICKED (Nocturnal Screams 7) A BookBub promo he ran with his pal Sean Costello for the book HERE AFTER A new computer synth version of his book The 7 P's of Publishing Success that is now available and why he is pricing this version at 99 cents A sample from his new VocoCraft computer synth version of the book, as well as the same sample from the human self-narrated version of the book The recent Public Lending Right Program check he received for the appearance of his books in Canadian libraries and why authors in Canada, the UK, Australia and other countries that have a PLR program should take advantage of that His recent guest appearance on The Sell More Books Show with Jim Kukral (Mark stepped in at the last minute to replace co-host Bryan Cohen who was ill) A short clip from Episode 255 of The Sell More Books Show talking about a new "choose your own audio" project from Amazon A couple of clips from The Creative Penn podcast episode 417, where Joanna interviewed Will Dages from Findaway Voices The reveal of the new Voices Share program from Findaway Voices Mark also welcomes new Patron Sherilyn Decter and thanks all patrons who support the show and have access to additional audio content (Stark Reflections on Other Podcasts) and other material at www.patreon.com/starkreflections. He also thanks those who commented on Episode 62 and draws the name of two winners for the Mythulu creation cards.   Links of Interest: Written Word Media (BargainBooksy, FreeBooksy, etc) BookBub The 7 P's of Publishing Success The VocoCraft Computer Synth Version VocoCraft Public Lending Rights Program (Canada) YouTube Video The Sell More Books Show (Episode 255) The Creative Penn Podcast (Episode 417) Mythulu Superstars Writing Seminars Patreon for Stark Reflections Stark Reflections Survey Something Wicked (Nocturnal Screams 7) Killing It On Kobo The 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 episode, Chrissy chats to Ricci Wolman the founder and CEO of Written Word Media. Ricci talks about why she created Written Word Media, the services she offers authors and she tells listeners about her newest site, Reading Stacks. Ricci discusses the different types of information they are able to gather from their readers and how authors can use this information for promotional opportunities. Ricci also reflects on the marketing changes that have occurred in 2018. 

How to get some serious attention at Amazon HQ, Freebooksy promo results, an executive decision on crime events and my Q4 goals. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/self-publishing-journeys/message

How to get some serious attention at Amazon HQ, Freebooksy promo results, an executive decision on crime events and my Q4 goals.

In this episode we visit with the founder of Written Word Media Ricci Wolman and discuss all things book promotions: when to do them, why to do them, how to do them, and more. Show Notes & Links -Meet Ricci Wolman, the founder of Written Word Media.  -How Written Word's two main programs, BargainBooksy and FreeBooksy, are different and when you might want to use each. -What kind of return do authors get from a free book promotion? Is making money the only reason to run a promotion? -What is the difference between running just a one-off promotion for a book and stacking promotions together? -Why a discount promotion is like the hammer in a toolbox and why you need the whole toolbox for a successful book business.  -Why it's important to plan ahead for all your book promotions. Links: Click 'em, they're live! Click here for Written Word Media's main site and blog - lots of information on book marketing here. Learn about Red Feather Romance promotions for steamy contemporary romance books Follow Written Word Media on Facebook There's still time to enroll in Chris' Content Formula Class to take your online content to the next level. See some author testimonials here.  

Featuring an interview with Ricci Wolman, founder and CEO of Written Word Media about the challenge that authors face with the most common questions they often have when first starting out; questions that include the following: How do I get the right people to discover my new book? Where can I find people to review my book on Kindle and the other retail websites? Is there a way for me to increase my visibility and my sales on multiple retail platforms? --------- This episode has been sponsored by Findaway Voices. Findaway Voices provides all the tools that an independent author or small publisher needs in order to get into the digital audiobook market. Check them out at www.starkreflections.ca/findaway. ---------   In the interview, Mark and Ricci talk about: How Written Word Media was born out of Ricci's background as a consultant and her desire to help her mother sell a book that she had published The way that Freebooksy was slowly built, using a small curated list of recommended free books (as a platform where Ricci could occasionally slip her book into the mix and help boost sales) The ongoing experimentation and playing that Ricci performed on the Freebooksy brand that helped it to continue to grow into a site where authors asked if they could pay to have their works featured there What each of the current service brands within Written Word Media are used for: Freebooksy – to feature/promote free books Bargainbooksy – featuring discounted books under $5 USD (But books $2.99 and below perform best) Red Feather Romance – both free and discounted/bargain books in the steamy contemporary romance category New in Books – a general promotional tool for newer release exposure rather than for discounted/bargain priced titles. (More of a FULL SERVICE promotion for authors) The importance of reviews to helping to sell a title and the importance of having some reviews on your retail listing for a book The advent of digital audiobooks and the current work that is happening to test out a “new in audiobook” style of notification How Written Word Media adds between 20,000 to 30,000 new readers to their reader pool every month (meaning writers who come back two or three months later to do an additional promotion ends up going to a larger batch of new readers) The over 12 million promotional emails that Written Word Media sent out in the month of December 2017 The critically important value of “HELP THE AUTHOR” that is at the core of Written Word Media Some of the book industry trends from the past year that Ricci is most interested in A bit about the husband/wife team aspect of managing the business as a couple How savvy authors understand that a marketing expense is made up of both dollars spent as well as time spent; and that a lot of things that look to be free might end up costing more in terms of time than originally expected Authors should ask these questions every time they go to take marketing action: What is this costing me in dollars? What is this costing me in time? What results do I think I'm going to get? (And how confident am I in those results?)   After the interview, Mark shares details from his own recent experience with booking a Freebooksy promotion for a horror title and outlines the cost and the return on his investment for the promotion. Links of Interest: Written Word Media Main Site Freebooksy Bargainbooksy Red Feather Romance New in Books Written Word Media Facebook Page Written Word Media on Twitter Contact Page for Written Word Media (you WILL hear back from a real/live person) Findaway Voices

On today’s interview Kathryn will go through some of the services provided by InstaFreebie and all the steps required to join with Ashley Durrer. Ashley is passionate about art forms of all kinds, and was able to indulge this passion when she worked for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. As a remaining volunteer with the Accessibility Department, she continues to enrich the experiences of visitors. Now an entrepreneur, her focus has been on accelerating great stories and big ideas. She believes there is a fan for every story and every idea. Ashley has been honored to work with such great authors, and considers many of them friends as they continue to work together in innovative ways. Below you can see an outline of the interview with all the steps you need to take to join InstaFreebie:    Visit instafreebie.com/plans and select your plan to create your account. Then upload your book either in epub format and/or pdf format. At that point you can also upload content upgrades/extra content (for fiction you can upload alternate endings and for non-fiction you can upload trivias and other information valuable to the readers as well as parts or the entire book for the giveaway); Instafreebie will create a campaign for you and you will be given a link to share your giveaway with your audience; As an author you will get the chance of being featured on one of the instafreebies newsletters that are sent out every day of the week, every week; Instafreebie values authors that are actually engaging with their readers, this shows us that the 10th person on your email list is as important as the 1000th as both have the same chance of becoming a super fan; Besides having your solo campaign you can create or be part of a group giveaway (instafreebie.com/groupgiveaways) that are a collective of authors promoting a single web page of books which is a genious idea. They also offer alternative groups organized by third party organizers known as verified organizers such as Ebook Discovery, Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy; The best of all of that is that the entire process takes minutes and not hours. RESOURCES www.instafreebie.com @AshArtGallery @Instafreebie https://www.facebook.com/instafreebie/

Steven A. McKay's first book, "Wolf's Head", came out in 2013 and was an Amazon UK top 20 bestseller. It has an incredible 389+ reviews on Amazon.co.uk ... if you've ever tried to get reviews, that's an astonishing number. "Blood of the Wolf" is the fourth and final book in the Forest Lord series which has over 95,000 sales so far. As a historical fiction author, Steven is currently working on a brand new tale - tentatively titled "The Druid" set in post-Roman Britain. Find Out More: 1) Steven's website: https://stevenamckay.com/ 2) Follow Steven on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SA_McKay 3) Follow Steven on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steven.mckay.355 4) Steven's Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7161617.Steven_A_McKay 5) Steven's Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Steven-A.-McKay/e/B00DS0TRH6/ Interview Talking Points: 1) How I sold 90,000* ebooks - blog post: https://stevenamckay.com/2016/07/11/how-i-sold-90000-ebooks-some-tips/ 2) Amazon Academy event write-up: https://stevenamckay.com/2017/05/26/amazon-academy-kdp-event-eicc/ 3) Gordon Doherty: http://www.gordondoherty.co.uk/ 4) Simon Turney: http://www.sjaturney.co.uk/ 5) Ben Kane: http://www.benkane.net/ 6) FreeBooksy: https://www.freebooksy.com/ 7) BookLemur: https://www.booklemur.com/ 8) InstaFreebie: https://self-publishing-journeys.com/IF [My affiliate link] 9) BookBub: https://partners.bookbub.com/ 10) BookTracker: https://book-tracker.com/ 11) Book Report: https://www.getbookreport.com/ 12) Amazon ACX: http://www.acx.com/ 13) AudioBookBoom: https://audiobookboom.com/

Steven A. McKay's first book, "Wolf's Head", came out in 2013 and was an Amazon UK top 20 bestseller. It has an incredible 389+ reviews on Amazon.co.uk ... if you've ever tried to get reviews, that's an astonishing number. "Blood of the Wolf" is the fourth and final book in the Forest Lord series which has over 95,000 sales so far. As a historical fiction author, Steven is currently working on a brand new tale - tentatively titled "The Druid" set in post-Roman Britain. Find Out More: 1) Steven's website: https://stevenamckay.com/ 2) Follow Steven on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SA_McKay 3) Follow Steven on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steven.mckay.355 4) Steven's Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7161617.Steven_A_McKay 5) Steven's Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Steven-A.-McKay/e/B00DS0TRH6/ Interview Talking Points: 1) How I sold 90,000* ebooks - blog post: https://stevenamckay.com/2016/07/11/how-i-sold-90000-ebooks-some-tips/ 2) Amazon Academy event write-up: https://stevenamckay.com/2017/05/26/amazon-academy-kdp-event-eicc/ 3) Gordon Doherty: http://www.gordondoherty.co.uk/ 4) Simon Turney: http://www.sjaturney.co.uk/ 5) Ben Kane: http://www.benkane.net/ 6) FreeBooksy: https://www.freebooksy.com/ 7) BookLemur: https://www.booklemur.com/ 8) InstaFreebie: https://self-publishing-journeys.com/IF [My affiliate link] 9) BookBub: https://partners.bookbub.com/ 10) BookTracker: https://book-tracker.com/ 11) Book Report: https://www.getbookreport.com/ 12) Amazon ACX: http://www.acx.com/ 13) AudioBookBoom: https://audiobookboom.com/ --- 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 --- 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

1) My forthcoming Crime Giveaway: https://freebie-books.com/crime-thrillers-may2017/ My two books will not be accessed via InstaFreebie, Don't Tell Meg will be free, Dead of Night will be 99p - this is an exercise in driving traffic! 2) These are the promo sites that I have listed on: Book Gorilla http://www.bookgorilla.com/ Freebooksy https://www.freebooksy.com/ The Books Machine http://www.thebooksmachine.com/deals/dealspromote.html eBookSoda http://www.ebooksoda.com/ 3) Crime Book Junkie https://crimebookjunkie.co.uk/ 4) Amazon Academy event in Edinburgh http://selfpublishingadvice.org/amazon-academy/ 5) Reminder! The Newcastle Writing Conference on Saturday 20th May http://newwritingnorth.com/projects/newcastle-writing-conference/ This Week's Self-Publishing News The Alliance of Independent Authors news update: http://selfpublishingadvice.org/self-publishing-news-where-are-the-young-british-indies/

1) My forthcoming Crime Giveaway: https://freebie-books.com/crime-thrillers-may2017/ My two books will not be accessed via InstaFreebie, Don't Tell Meg will be free, Dead of Night will be 99p - this is an exercise in driving traffic! 2) These are the promo sites that I have listed on: Book Gorilla http://www.bookgorilla.com/ Freebooksy https://www.freebooksy.com/ The Books Machine http://www.thebooksmachine.com/deals/dealspromote.html eBookSoda http://www.ebooksoda.com/ 3) Crime Book Junkie https://crimebookjunkie.co.uk/ 4) Amazon Academy event in Edinburgh http://selfpublishingadvice.org/amazon-academy/ 5) Reminder! The Newcastle Writing Conference on Saturday 20th May http://newwritingnorth.com/projects/newcastle-writing-conference/ This Week’s Self-Publishing News The Alliance of Independent Authors news update: http://selfpublishingadvice.org/self-publishing-news-where-are-the-young-british-indies/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/self-publishing-journeys/message

1) Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/writinglife 2) Rachel's German translations: 3) Vellum software: https://vellum.pub/ How to use Vellum on a PC: https://paulteague.com/how-to-use-vellum-on-a-pc/ 4) Dragon Dictation software: https://self-publishing-journeys.com/DRAGON [My affiliate link] 5) Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/home/ Freebooksy: https://www.freebooksy.com/ Bargain Booksy: https://www.bargainbooksy.com/ Hot Zippy: http://hotzippy.net/ E-Reader News Today: http://ereadernewstoday.com/ 6) Thunderclap: https://www.thunderclap.it/howitworks 7) Crimefest: http://www.crimefest.com/ Harrogate Crime Festival: http://harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/crime-writing-festival/ 8) Rachel at the Brisbane workshop for writers: 9) Rachel's new book: General Links: Rachel's website: https://www.rachelamphlett.com/ Follow Rachel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rach

1) Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/writinglife 2) Rachel's German translations: 3) Vellum software: https://vellum.pub/ How to use Vellum on a PC: https://paulteague.com/how-to-use-vellum-on-a-pc/ 4) Dragon Dictation software: https://self-publishing-journeys.com/DRAGON [My affiliate link] 5) Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/home/ Freebooksy: https://www.freebooksy.com/ Bargain Booksy: https://www.bargainbooksy.com/ Hot Zippy: http://hotzippy.net/ E-Reader News Today: http://ereadernewstoday.com/ 6) Thunderclap: https://www.thunderclap.it/howitworks 7) Crimefest: http://www.crimefest.com/ Harrogate Crime Festival: http://harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/crime-writing-festival/ 8) Rachel at the Brisbane workshop for writers: 9) Rachel's new book: General Links: Rachel's website: https://www.rachelamphlett.com/ Follow Rachel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rach --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/self-publishing-journeys/message

Welcome to this episode of the Real Fast Results podcast!  If you are an author, or aspire to be one, this is definitely a show that you want to pay very close attention to.  Today’s special guest is Adam Houge.  He’s a book marketer extraordinaire.  Basically, for the last three years, he’s followed a simple strategy to create scalable results as well as sustainable results for his writing and publishing career.  In fact, he’s been able to turn this into a six-figure per year income. Adam has been responsible for the distribution of two million copies of his books on Amazon.  Essentially, in this session you are going to discover how you can use some of the same techniques and methods to market your books.  Thanks for being here Adam… Promise: How to Build Your Audience My big promise is that I’m going to show you how you can get some real fast results, even if you don’t have an audience to market to, yet.  That way, you can just hit that gas pedal right away and accelerate your career, and you can start seeing those sales coming in almost immediately. [bctt tweet="There are lots of book blogs out there that offer exactly the results that you pay for. " username="danielhall"] Download the Complete PDF Show Notes Free for this Episode Learn About book blogs How book blogs can build your audience Bookstore algorithms How to start working with book blogs A list of book blogs What prices work best on book blogs How to build your own audience Putting links in your book  “Look Inside” features Proper launch strategy Download the Complete PDF Show Notes Free for this Episode Connecting with Adam I offer a free training series in which I show you exactly how you can launch your book.  Over these three videos, I teach you personally, step-by-step, my own launch strategy that helped me sell and distribute my two million books, just in a short period of time.  That way, you can take and replicate my exact same strategy.  You can check this out at RealFastResults.com/BKLaunch.  Again, you can take advantage of this for free. Resources Book Blogs: Kindle Nation Daily Book Gorilla BookBub.com BookSends.com FreeBooksy.com The Fussy Librarian Hundred Free Books (OHFB.com) BargainBooksy.com Real Fast Results Community If you are diggin’ on this stuff and really love what we’re doing here at Real Fast Results, would you please do me a favor? Head on over to iTunes, and make sure that you subscribe to this show, download it, and rate & review it. That would be an awesome thing. Of course, we also want to know your results. Please share those results with us at http://www.realfastresults.com/results. As always, go make results happen!

Adam Nicholls is an indie crime writer with a writing tally of 15 books written over and 18 month period. He has created the Evie Black and Mason Black series as well as the Salinger trilogy. He's just in the process of moving over to a new genre, writing under the name A.C. Nicholls. Adam shares many of his writing challenges in the excellent Kindling Facebook group. It is the writing model recommended in the Kindling community that he has followed to get his own career underway. Find Out More: Adam's brand new website! http://adamnicholls.net [I built this for Adam using the free Hemingway WordPress theme at https://en-gb.wordpress.org/themes/hemingway/ and using my favourite hosting service, Siteground, which you can access via my affiliate link at http://paulteague.com/siteground] Adam Nicholls on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8201611.Adam_Nicholls Adam's Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Nicholls/e/B00KHUQOEY Follow Adam on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authoradamnicholls/ Adam's About The Author page: http://www.abouttheauthor.co.uk/adam-nicholls/ Talking points: Kindling: http://self-publishing-academy.com/Kindling [Highly recommended for indie authors, my affiliate link] BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/home/ [The Holy Grail of book promotion sites] Freebooksy: https://www.freebooksy.com/for-the-authors/ [The next best thing to BookBub!] Adam's Book Cover Designer: https://www.fiverr.com/lisabook/design-professional-book-cover-08cef513-b312-4301-a9ca-8875b29ad7b6 WeBook: http://www.webook.com/ Deranged Doctor Design: http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/ BKKnights promos on fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/bknights EReaderNews Today book promo site: http://ereadernewstoday.com/ Stephen King's ‘On Writing' book: http://amzn.to/2hkhcC1 [My affiliate link] Robin Reads book promo site: http://robinreads.com/ Udemy – great training site: https://www.udemy.com/

Adam Nicholls is an indie crime writer with a writing tally of 15 books written over and 18 month period. He has created the Evie Black and Mason Black series as well as the Salinger trilogy. He’s just in the process of moving over to a new genre, writing under the name A.C. Nicholls. Adam shares many of his writing challenges in the excellent Kindling Facebook group. It is the writing model recommended in the Kindling community that he has followed to get his own career underway. Find Out More: Adam’s brand new website! http://adamnicholls.net [I built this for Adam using the free Hemingway WordPress theme at https://en-gb.wordpress.org/themes/hemingway/ and using my favourite hosting service, Siteground, which you can access via my affiliate link at http://paulteague.com/siteground] Adam Nicholls on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8201611.Adam_Nicholls Adam’s Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Nicholls/e/B00KHUQOEY Follow Adam on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authoradamnicholls/ Adam’s About The Author page: http://www.abouttheauthor.co.uk/adam-nicholls/ Talking points: Kindling: http://self-publishing-academy.com/Kindling [Highly recommended for indie authors, my affiliate link] BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/home/ [The Holy Grail of book promotion sites] Freebooksy: https://www.freebooksy.com/for-the-authors/ [The next best thing to BookBub!] Adam’s Book Cover Designer: https://www.fiverr.com/lisabook/design-professional-book-cover-08cef513-b312-4301-a9ca-8875b29ad7b6 WeBook: http://www.webook.com/ Deranged Doctor Design: http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/ BKKnights promos on fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/bknights EReaderNews Today book promo site: http://ereadernewstoday.com/ Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ book: http://amzn.to/2hkhcC1 [My affiliate link] Robin Reads book promo site: http://robinreads.com/ Udemy – great training site: https://www.udemy.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/self-publishing-journeys/message

This week we're without the delightful Cheryl, the light of our lives. It's a bit chaotic, but the three remaining SPA Girls managed to talk about the advertising that we've done recently and how it worked. We talked about the mailing lists that we've advertised with - think Book Bub, Ereader News Today, Freebooksy, Bargainbooksy, and Robin Reads - how we organised it, when we booked them for, and the results that we had. We also talk briefly about Amazon ads, and how you might use those kinds of ads in your promotional routine. We hope it helps you get an idea of the kind of advertising promotion that you might choose to do for your next launch or advertising schedule.

Tons of feedback this week, which makes Tim and David very happy! Also, Freebooksy, Sony Xperia Xa, Motorola Verve Ones, Social Media proposal by the US Customs and Border Protection, Evernote, Disney cancelling Star Wars Rebels: Recon Missions, and The Essential Apple Podcast. This episode is sponsored by Macsales.com

Tons of feedback this week, which makes Tim and David very happy! Also, Freebooksy, Sony Xperia Xa, Motorola Verve Ones, Social Media proposal by the US Customs and Border Protection, Evernote, Disney cancelling Star Wars Rebels: Recon Missions, and The Essential Apple Podcast. This episode is sponsored by Macsales.com