Marketing a New Series with Elise Kova Six Figure Authors Podcast 2015-12-16 | Today we'll discuss the marketing strategies of Elise Kova, who is off to a great start with her YA Fantasy series Air Awakens which debuted earlier this year.
SFA-132 - Getting Books Done: Productivity and Revision (plus news) Six Figure Authors Podcast 2023-10-07 | Episode 132Released on 10/6/2023Show notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/sfa-132-being-productive-when-youre-time-crunched-plus-newsLindsay, Jo, and Andrea pop in early in October to record a new show. They talk about some of their latest self-publishing and marketing news (Kindle Unlimited page read rates staying down, shrinking margins, delays in ranking updates on Amazon, promos that are working on Google, Barnes & Noble, and other wide sites, and planning for the future versus only working toward immediate results).After their news, they share some of their productivity tips, especially for those who are crunched for time (most of us, right?). With NaNoWriMo coming up, you may find this dicussion useful.Thanks to everyone for staying subscribed and listening when the occasional new episode pops up. 🙂
SFA-131 - Marketing Strategies from Top Authors Six Figure Authors Podcast 2023-06-20 | Episode 131Released on June 19th, 2023Show notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/sfa-131-tips-for-success-and-updates-from-the-hostsIt’s been about a quarter since our last episode, and we wanted to talk a bit about what’s been going on with updates on Amazon and in our publishing careers, so that’s in the news part of the show.Andrea also gathered a number of quotes on marketing and success from six- and seven-figure authors who’ve been in the business for a while and seen a lot. We shared those as well as our thoughts on their words.She’s also part of a bundle of self-publishing marketing ebooks and materials that are on sale this week at Infostack.io. If you’re interested in purchasing the set, please use her link: http://infostack.io/andreapearson
SFA-130 - AI and ChatGPT for Authors, plus goals for this year and recap of 2022 Six Figure Authors Podcast 2023-03-17 | Episode 130Released on: 3/16/2023Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/sfa-130-2022-lessons-2023-marketing-and-publishing-plans-and-thoughts-on-ai-for-authorsIt’s been a while since we released an episode, but we wanted to recap how last year went for us when it comes to our author careers, including talking about some of our mistakes (or things that didn’t go well) and let-downs. We’ll also discuss goals and marketing plans for 2023, then finish by briefly discussing AI and what we’re thinking about when it comes to it and writing and authors.Links to things referenced in this episode: 1,000 True Fans: kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans What Does AI Mean for Writers “Interview”: foxprinteditorial.com/2023/01/12/what-does-ai-mean-for-writers-i-asked-it Jo’s Comics StoryBundle: storybundle.com/comics Lindsay on The Creative Penn in March: thecreativepenn.com/2023/03/06/writing-and-investing-for-a-long-term-indie-author-career-with-lindsay-burokerThanks for listening. We hope to do a couple more update shows this year!
SFA-129 - Why Book Sales Might be Down This Year and What to Do About It Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-10-20 | Episode 129Released on: 10/19/2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/why-book-sales-are-downJo, Lindsay, and Andrea have returned to record a one-off episode discussing the current global situation and how it’s affecting book sales. We also talk about some things authors can do during tougher economic times to keep the income up. Lastly, we give an update on our own publishing endeavors over the last six months.Things that could be affecting book sales right now: War/global tensions Looming recession Inflation Strong dollar / weak everything else Labor shortages Mental illness / Collective fatigue Housing crisis General global upheaval Demand saturation, tapering-off growth Declining old-guard ad platform effectivenessFuture concerns / long-term trends that could affect book sales / author income going forward over the next decade: Possible further global instability Inflation might not be that transitory 70% royalty might not be forever Demographics (population decline) Competition from AI-produced content Broadening entertainment alternatives Growing belief from consumers that content should be free or creators shouldn’t get paid much for creating itWhat to do about it all: For inflation, we can raise prices where possible. For possible changes in the stores (i.e. royalties), it’s not a bad idea to sell direct and/or have a Patreon/Kickstarter plan in case you need to lean more on places where you keep most of the sales price. Somewhat in contrast to the last, if consumers are spending less, it might not be the time to ditch Kindle Unlimited if you’re established there and it’s been good to you, as people will cancel their subscriptions last. In as much as your muse might allow, try to stay relevant and consider writing some stuff with the larger and bigger-reading generations in mind (i.e. Millennials) and be aware of what they dig. For war, not much we can do beyond hoping for de-escalation rather than escalation. If it helps to know this has all happened before, and we made it through, Neil Howard’s Fourth Turning is a good read. If things are bad, consider taking on a regular job for stability and sanity. Check in with your readers, and write more of what’s sold well for you in the past. Reach out to others through service – help a new author, pay it forward, create a multi-author promotion, etc. and build relationships. Use this time to stack books for a future launch or work on efforts that will pay off in the future when times get better. Avoid going all-in with any single technique/retailer. Explore new formats that are less saturated (i.e. graphic novels, audiobooks).News updates from the gangThanks for listening, and check out the back list episodes for more tips and help figuring out why your books in particular might be struggling.
SFA 128 – Final Advice for Authors and Our Plans Going Forward Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-04-14 | Episode 128Released on: April 14th, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/our-final-advice-for-authors-and-our-plans-going-forwardIt’s our final show (at least for now) of Six Figure Authors. We hope you’ve gotten something out of the podcast over the years, and also that you like this last episode.In it, we, your hosts (Andrea, Jo, and Lindsay), are discussing what the last 10+ years have meant for us as authors and whether we think it’s still possible for people who are starting today to have a good career as authors (spoiler: we all do).We admitted that it’s not necessarily easy, that it often takes time, more than one series, and consistent releases, but as we discussed in the 1000 True Fans episode, you don’t have to be a bestseller or hit any charts to make a good living as an author, especially if you’re self-publishing.After that, we shared our publishing plans for the next few years, and we wrapped up with some final advice for authors.Going forward, we’ll still be around, and you can find us on our various sites and social media pages:Jo:bookofdeacon.comtwitter.com/jrlallopatreon.com/jrlalloyoutube.com/channel/UCZvzW8I5y6aq75KJMNCAMZwAndrea:ap@andreapearsonbooks.comselfpublishstrongcourses.comLindsay: lindsayburoker.comyoutube.com/c/LindsayBurokerWritesThanks for listening, and have a wonderful rest of the year!
SFA 127 – How to Be a Successful Author Without Networking Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-04-07 | Episode 127Released on: April 7th, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/be-a-successful-author-without-networkingThere’s nothing wrong with networking, and it can provide opportunities for those willing to get out there, but lots of authors are introverts or just don’t have the time for conferences and Facebook groups. Can you still succeed?Of course. Today, we’re going to talk about some of the pros and cons of networking and also ways to get readers to your books even if you’re not working with other authors and don’t get mentioned by a big name in your genre.Here’s what we cover in the show: News from Jo, Andrea, and Lindsay, including how their latest releases have gone. Things that can be gained through networking. Pros of networking. Cons of networking. How to be successful without networking.
SFA 126 – More Tips for Selling Direct with Katie Cross Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-03-31 | Episode 126Released: March 31st, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/more-tips-for-selling-direct-with-katie-crossWe had fantasy and romance author Katie Cross on the show back in January and asked her all about selling direct from her website, since she’s been making six figures doing so.This week, we brought her back for an update and also to answer listener questions.Here are the questions: Angie: I’d love to know how Katie gets the writing done, especially when managing a business with and without a large team. Jonathan: How do you convince readers in your ads to buy direct and eschew Amazon? I find my conversion rate for my direct ads very very low (granted I have one book and can’t offer a great deal as a hook). I offer a $2 off coupon and have been experimenting with various ad copy (using different coupon codes in each so I can track). Bianca: Do you have any plans to sell translations direct? Brent: I write in a couple of once popular niche genres that were often associated with illustrations and had a specific art style connected to it. What does Katie think of a model whereby your books on the platforms have good covers and are unillustrated, but on your site, you direct sell “special editions” that are illustrated and have covers that are higher quality with the stylized art of the past, sold at a higher price point? Brent: In connection to audiobooks, with the growth in quality of AI narration and lower production costs does she see potential with direct selling AI narrated books with lower overheads, and higher profit margins in the future? Denise: How does she handle taxes (VAT, sales tax, etc.) and duties (customs fees, etc.)? Lettie: In the first episode it wasn’t clear how she handles preorders. Does she charge people when they order or when they get the book? And how if it’s the latter? A couple of people: Any interest in blockchain technology or plans to sell NFTs? John: What’s her take on Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter? DL: With the serious influence of fantasy inside the “metaverse,” are you considering VR to be an upcoming potential market or additional avenue for marketing? Laura: I know Katie mentioned wanting a Patreon-like subscription service on her own website (great idea, btw), but I’m wondering if she’s ever used or considered using Kickstarter to grow her impressively large audience even more. Charley: I love how Katie is working to educate readers to buy direct from her. Has she considered bundling ebooks with print as something readers can only get from her direct, and any ideas on how to fulfill that? Ara: Is there a range of royalties from the different website providers or payments providers?Thanks for listening!To learn more about Katie or buy her books, head over to her website.
SFA 125 – How to Launch a Successful Book Series Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-03-24 | Episode 125Released on: March 24th, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/how-to-launch-a-successful-book-seriesFor this week’s show, we’re going back to the basics to talk about how to launch a successful book series. We’re assuming you didn’t read Write to Market and try to design your series for success, and we’re also going to assume that you’re not a super fast writer who’s going to rapid-release the first five books. If you did and you are, great, as that makes everything easier, but you shouldn’t feel you have to do those things, especially if you’re on your first series. If you’re like most authors, you wrote the books of your heart and didn’t worry until you’d finished the first one (or more) about marketing and whether there was an audience for them.We broke down launching into several topics to discuss: Helpful things to consider when planning a successful series. Writing blurbs and choosing cover art that will sell books. Preparing bonus material to entice newsletter sign-ups and get new readers to buy your books. Some thoughts on pricing. Having a consistent publishing schedule for the series. Continuing to promote your books and checking in with readers between installments.Previous episodes that you might find useful: How We Would Start from Scratch Writing/Publishing Books Today Writing Series That Sell with Sara RosettFor those listening in the near future, Andrea is putting her self-publishing courses on sale for 50% off with coupon code ENDING.Thanks for listening, everyone!
SFA 124 – Scheduling vs Winging It: Which Is More Sane for Your Author Career? Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-03-17 | Episode 124Released on: March 17th, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/scheduling-vs-winging-itOn this week’s show, we cover the scintillating topic of scheduling. What are the pros and cons of planning everything well in advance? What if you prefer to wing it and not set deadlines you might not be able to meet? The three of us discuss what we do and what works best for sanity in our author careers.Here are some of the questions we asked each other: When it comes to book publishing, what types of things need to be planned ahead? What sort of scheduling can be done? How do each of us schedule? What are the pros and cons of strict scheduling, “just in time” scheduling, and a hybrid of the two? How do pre-orders factor in to your choice to schedule edits, cover art, etc. well ahead of time (or not to)? How do you know when it’s time to find a new professional to work with (based on their schedule)?That’s it for this week’s show. If you want to hear Andrea talk at Bryan Cohen’s Self-Publishing Live virtual conference this summer, you can find out more here: bryancohen.lpages.co/spl-summer-22-early-bird
SFA 123 – Dealing with Criticism as an Author Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-03-10 | Episode 123Released on: March 10th, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/dealing-with-criticism-as-an-authorOur topic for today’s show is criticism. From feedback early on from beta readers and workshops and editors, to reviews and blogs and social media posts once your book is published, it’s a big part of an author’s career. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to deal with.How do you deal with criticism, how do you get out of a funk if it’s harsh, when can it be helpful, and when should it be ignored as much as possible? We discuss that and more on the show.Here are the specific points we touched on: How do you deal with solicited criticism, such as from an instructor/beta reader/peer at a workshop? How do you deal with unsolicited criticism (usually after the book is published) such as reviews on stores or book blogs? Does anything change for you when it’s private (i.e. emailed) or public (i.e. on a social media site that may or may not be addressed to you)? Sometimes, criticism is good and should be sought out so that you can make your work better, but sometimes, it’s not helpful and you should probably do your best to ignore it or at least minimize the effect it has on you. Do you guys agree, and do you have any examples? How can you know when the criticism is right and you should make changes versus when the critiquer was off and isn’t right? How do you get out of a funk when the criticism seems to be outweighing the good things, and it’s making you doubt yourself and whether writing is for you? (Jo suggests having a “proof of awesome” folder, and Lindsay suggests listening to Teddy Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena speech, as well as Brené Brown’s talk on Why Your Critics Aren’t The Ones Who Count.) How do each of us give criticism when asked? First, to experienced authors, but also to newer authors? How has this changed over the years? How do you tell genuine criticism from trolling?Thanks for listening to the show!
SFA 122 – When Pen Names Make Sense and How to Rock Them Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-03-03 | Episode 122Released on: March 3rd, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/all-things-pen-namesOn this week’s show, we discussed all things pen names. When does it make sense to start a pen name? When is it better to keep everything under one author name? Are there any pitfalls that you need to watch out for?We’ve all experimented with pen names over the course of our author careers, so we had quite a bit to say on the subject. We hope you’ll find some of it interesting!Here’s a breakdown on the topics that came up: Pros and cons of starting a pen name How many pen names do each of us have? What are the stories behind them? Do we currently put marketing efforts behind those pen names? Why or why not? What advice do you have for authors who want to write different genres under the same name? How should an author market different genres under the same pen name? Lindsay’s old blog post on launching her pen name: Pen Name Update: 10 Weeks In (Earnings: $12,824) What are things that should contribute toward an author’s decision to start (or not start) a pen name? Have we ever decided to stop supporting a pen name before? What have we done to pull away from it? What do you recommend authors do? How would someone effectively juggle multiple pen names? How do pen names affect Amazon sales vs sales on other retailers?That’s it for this week. Thanks for listening!
SFA 121 – Tips for Selling Books Outside of Amazon + Draft2Digital/Smashwords Updates Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-02-24 | Episode 121Released: February 24, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/tips-for-selling-books-outside-of-amazon-draft2digital-smashwords-updatesWe were joined this week by thriller author and Draft2Digital marketing director Kevin Tumlinson. He updated us on the merger between the ebook distributors Draft2Digital and Smashwords and what it’ll mean for authors and readers going forward. In the second half of the show, we also pumped Kevin for some tips on succeeding in the book stores beyond Amazon (i.e. Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, etc.)Here are some of the specific questions we asked: What was your author journey like, and how did you get involved with Draft2Digital? Can you talk a bit about what changes authors currently working with D2D or Smashwords can expect going forward? For those who have merchandisers with Smashwords, how will the acquisition affect them? Will Smashwords users and Draft2Digital users end up interacting with an identical backend, or will our experiences differ somewhat depending upon which service we started on? Some authors have books in both Smashwords and D2D, with judicious checking on and off of distribution partners to avoid overlap. How will that be handled in the merge? We often hear about how dominant Amazon is when it comes to ebooks (and everything). Could you tell us how the other book stores are doing? Are there any in particular that it might behoove self-published authors to focus on, or at least put more marketing dollars into promoting in? A lot of people talk about a thirty-day cliff on Amazon, plus lots of other cliffs. How much does frequency of release affect wide sales? Is there a sweet spot where you’re not releasing too quickly or slowly? Would you recommend doing dedicated promotional pushes to specific storefronts? Are more generalized promotional things better instead? What are some common mistakes that authors are making when they upload through D2D? How do you recommend authors approach book launches when releasing wide? What about authors moving their entire backlist wide after only being on Amazon? If going from Amazon exclusivity to wide and releasing an entire series, should you put the books out all at once or stagger the releases? Do pre-orders make sense in this context?Thanks for listening, everyone! You can find out more about Kevin’s thrillers on his website and visit the Draft2Digital blog for more updates and information on succeeding with self-publishing.
SFA 120 – How to Rock Your Sample Pages (and get more sales) + Advertising Rules Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-02-17 | Episode 120Released on: February 17, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/rock-your-sample-pages-and-advertisingFor this week’s show, we divided it into two topics.In the first half, we talked about the importance of the sample pages (the first 10% of your book) in these e-reading digital times, and how many readers download these samples before deciding to buy. This means you really need to make sure your opening chapter or two draws in the reader (and doesn’t turn them off).We drew upon Anne R. Allen’s blog post “10 Things Your Opening Chapter Should Do” for our discussion. Make sure to check it out to get the list and see her thoughts and explanations for each item. She’s also got a lot of great other posts for writers.In the second half of the show, we picked some of David Gaughran’s “15 Rules for Advertising Books” to highlight and discuss. David is also a great resource for authors, especially when it comes to the marketing side of the house. If you haven’t taken it yet, he has a free course on the subject: Starting from Zero.Thanks for listening!
SFA 119 – Myths About Success in Self-Publishing Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-02-10 | Episode 119Released on: February 10, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/myths-about-success-in-self-publishingThis week, we discussed some of the myths that continue to go around about what it takes to have success in self-publishing. Some of these may be of interest to traditionally published authors too.After that, we answered a couple of questions on burnout that were submitted via the Six Figure Authors Facebook group. If you missed the show where we originally discussed dealing with writer’s block and burnout, that’s here.Myths discussed: You need to get in with the “in” crowd by hustling or networking, or you need someone with a big following to blast your book out to their newsletter, and that’s going to be the key to your success. You need to rapid release/write a book a month to have success, especially in certain genres. You need to be Amazon exclusive to make a living in self-publishing these days. You need to invest in expensive software and hardware to publish effectively. If your first several books don’t do well, it will mess up the trajectory of your career. If you could just get the perfect schedule, the perfect setup, the perfect most supportive partner/spouse/family, the perfect location, you’d be the most productive you’ve ever been and would be ragingly successful.Listener questions on burnout: How do you pick the “right genre” for you to avoid burnout before you experience success? Some genres have release schedules that might burn an author out even when it is the genre they love. What are some of the ways burnout hides (i.e. going from loving your story to hating it overnight, etc.)?Thanks for listening!
SFA 118 – Leaning on Your Strengths for Greater Productivity in Writing and Marketing Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-02-03 | Episode 118Released on: February 3, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/leaning-on-your-strengths-for-greater-productivity-becca-symeWe’ve got a great interview for you this week! Our guest is Becca Syme, a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach with a master’s degree in Transformational Leadership and fourteen years of experience in success coaching with writers, organizations, and individuals. She teaches the popular Write Better-Faster course and does Strengths for Writers coaching.We asked her all about figuring out your strengths and learning to better use them to be more productive as writers and also to tackle the marketing side of the business.Here are some of our specific questions: Tell us about your journey when it comes to writing and publishing. At what point did you decide to start coaching authors? As someone who works with a lot of authors, you’ve presumably had the opportunity to see a lot of personalities and try to help a lot of different types of people. What are some common challenges that authors struggle with? And does that change as they go from finishing their first book to having written many? You teach a course called Write Better-Faster. Would you explain why and how you approach the topic for a diverse set of authors? How can people find out what their strengths are? How much time and effort is worth spending on shoring up our weaknesses? Or should we spend the majority of our time leaning on our strengths and maybe outsourcing some of the other stuff when it’s possible? Naturally there are loads of different strengths a person can have. Some are more applicable to being an author than others. Do you find that every strength can in some way be applied to improving your writing and literary productivity, or are some of them simply not strengths a writer can utilize? What are the differences between someone who is externally motivated when it comes to writing and publishing and someone who is internally motivated? And how can a writer know which one they are? What are some strengths that help authors with book marketing? When talking about marketing, do you suggest that authors figure out what is most appealing (or least unappealing) to them and focus on that, or are there just some things people need to suck up and do? Do you feel any strength that helps us become better writers can also be applied to marketing, or are there top notch marketing strengths? One of my favorite podcast episodes of yours has you talking about the difference between being blocked vs being burned out. Would you give a quick rundown on what that difference is? Obviously writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. An awful lot can happen in a person’s life that can contribute to burnout. Do you have any advice on how one might track down the root cause of burnout? In the blurb for Dear Writer, You’re Doing It Wrong, you’ve got this bit: “It’s not happening the way you thought. And you’re not quite sure why. You’re pretty sure there’s something wrong with you, or you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing. You might have tried some of the things “everyone” says to try and it’s just not happening the way they promised it would.” Could you talk to that? You’ve got a book, Dear Writer, You’re Doing It Right. Aside from that being precisely the sort of thing a lot of us would love to hear, but fear we shouldn’t be hearing, it put me in mind of a famous Jean Luc Picard quote. “It’s possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.” Is there a way to know when the things that are going wrong are out of your control? And how do you deal with that situation?To learn more, you can find Becca at the QuitCast YouTube channel and check out her courses for authors at the Better-Faster Academy. She also has several helpful non-fiction books for writers and writes cozy mysteries under RL Syme.
SFA 117 – Launches, Advertising, and Making Money on One Book a Year Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-01-27 | Episode 117Released on: January 27th, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/launches-advertising-and-making-money-on-one-book-a-yearTwo out of our three hosts have been sick this past week, so we’ve got a shorter than usual episode for you, but we hope you’ll still get some value out of it. We decided to ask three marketing/publishing questions and each share our answers for them, based on our ten-plus years of author experience.The three questions are… What is your next project, and what will you do for the launch? When do you think it’s worth spending money on advertising your books? What would you do if you could only write a book a year but still hoped to make good money as an author?That’s it. A short show!Thanks for listening, and we hope to get back into the normal flow next week.
SFA 116 – Dealing with Burnout and Writer’s Block as an Author Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-01-20 | Episode 116Released on: January 20th, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/dealing-with-burnout-and-writers-blockWe’re talking about writer’s block and burnout this week on the show. What are the differences, and, if you’re suffering from lower productivity or being stuck, how do you know which you have?As authors who’ve been publishing for more than ten years, Andrea, Jo, and Lindsay have all dealt with these feelings. They talk about their own experiences and how they’ve overcome them (or how they’re dealing with them, even if they haven’t!).Overview of the topics: Definitions of writer’s block and burnout, Whether they’ve experienced burnout and under what circumstances. How long their burnout lasted and if it effected book sales/royalties/fans. What they did to overcome it (if they’ve overcome it). Being stuck on the plot or something about a particular story. Tips for getting un-stuck. How we know if we’re experiencing burnout or writer’s block.Thanks for listening!
SFA 115 – Making More Money Selling Your Books Direct Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-01-13 | Episode 115Released on: January 13, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/making-more-money-selling-your-books-direct-katie-crossIf you’re self-publishing, and you have the rights to sell your books/ebooks/audiobooks directly from your site, and you’re not doing so, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.For this week’s show, six-figure fantasy and romance author Katie Cross joins us to answer our questions on the logistics of selling books from your site and why you’d want to go through the hassle. She actually earns more from her direct sales than from book sales on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.Here are some of the questions we asked her: What was your road to publishing like, and why did you decide to start selling direct? I wanted to take a moment to point out the very strong and clear cover design you have. Do you have a cover designer, or is that your handiwork? What is your website setup like, and how do you handle payment and delivery? (Katie uses Shopify for the back end, Active Campaign for email integration, and LuLuExpress for print-on-demand paperback delivery.) Do you stick with ebooks/ebooks/audiobooks or do you do merch or any higher ticket items? Naturally you still have books on Amazon; also naturally, you’re not exclusive. Do you sell wide, or is your non-Amazon sales focus primarily your site? Have you ever considered using Kindle Unlimited as part of a selling strategy? If so, how would you approach it? If not, do you think it’s possible to sell direct and have KU work for an author? (Following all of Amazon’s rules, of course.) We know from your interview with Joe Solari that you do Facebook advertising. Are you sending them straight to a sales page for a $5 book or giving away a free starter novel or some combination of both? Do you have any books/bundles that are exclusive to your site? Do you ever do price promos on the direct sales? Is price matching on Amazon a concern? Do you have books you haven’t ever and won’t ever put on retailer sites? What is the deciding factor for that? (How do you decide which books to keep only direct, etc.) When it comes to selling direct, what are some mistakes you’ve made along the way? Lots of authors have an existing website dedicated to collecting email addresses for a newsletter and/or providing updates. Should a website for selling direct be built from the ground up for that purpose? How do you handle site outages? Has it happened to you? What advice do you have on this aspect for someone who hopes to have direct sales make up most of their income?If you want to learn more about Katie’s books, please check out her two websites Katie Cross Books and Katie Cross Romance.To see how her funnel works and get some ideas for how you might want to sell direct, you can see things in action here: welcome.kcrosswriting.com/welcomeThanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week!
SFA 114 – Self-Publishing, Traditional Publishing, or Hybrid – Which Is Right for You? Six Figure Authors Podcast 2022-01-06 | Episode 114Released on: January 6, 2022Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/self-publishing-traditional-publishing-or-hybridHappy New Year, everyone! This week, we’re discussing the pros and cons of self-publishing and traditional publishing and who might want to consider which, as well as when it makes sense to look at a hybrid model, if the possibility opens up. We also talk about how your choices might change over the course of your author career. Sometimes, authors start down one track, then switch to the other, or choose to take advantage of the best of both worlds.For new listeners, we (your three hosts, Jo, Andrea, and Lindsay) are all predominantly self-published, but we’ve each been in the business for more than a decade and try to do a fair assessment based on what we’ve experienced and heard from others. As always, these are just our opinions, so please do your own research before making any decisions.The topics we hit on in the show: Our backgrounds. What self-publishing involves. Pros of self-publishing. Cons of self-publishing. What traditional publishing involves. Pros of trad publishing. Cons of trad publishing. Who should consider self-publishing? Who should consider trad publishing? When does it make sense to switch or go hybrid? If you choose self-publishing, do you need to have an exit strategy for down the road when you’re ready to retire or cut back?Thanks for listening to the show, and best wishes for 2022!
SFA 113 – The 1,000 True Fans Concept Through 2022 Eyes Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-12-30 | Episode 113Released on: December 30, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/1000-true-fans-concept-through-2022-eyesFor this week’s show, the hosts discuss the 1,000 True Fans concept that Kevin Kelly first wrote about in 2008. You can find his original essay here, as well as a more recent update that he did.The gist is that if you’re a creative in this day and age, you don’t need to be a blockbuster bestseller to make a good living (he says that if you have 1,000 true fans who buy everything you put out, you can make $100,000 a year based on that alone). He talks about creating higher end products and selling direct to these true fans.News:R. A. Nargi, who writes the Star Rim Empire Adventures, shared a couple of software tools that writers might find useful:Obsidian – this is free “connected notes” software that makes it really easy to create your own mini Wikipedia for your series. You write plain text (Markdown) notes and you can easily add links to other notes and tags. It makes it easy to keep track of characters and locations.Online Glossary Maker – an author who is also a coder (James Murdo) made this free tool to extract a list of all the proper nouns from your manuscript… You upload a Word doc and the software then generates a list of all unique names. The glossary is great because it also catches if you spelled a name inconsistently.Main discussion points: Kevin Kelly’s theory explained (we shamelessly read direct from his essay). Does 1,000 true fans still apply today? Does 1,000 true fans work for authors, given how inexpensive our products such as ebooks are? Or would we be better served searching for 10,000 true fans? Amanda Palmer’s video The Art of Asking. How do we personally gain true fans? What are things we’ve done in the past that lost us fans? What are things we’ve seen other authors do to gain or lose fans? How does 1,000 true fans apply when you write in different genres? (What have you done or not done to get readers to follow you to other genres?) How do we encourage casual fans to become true fans? How do you find these people to start with? People don’t just show up on Patreon, right?Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show.
SFA 112 – How to Smartly Invest back into Your Book Business Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-12-23 | Episode 112Released on: December 23, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/how-to-smartly-invest-back-into-your-book-businessOn this week’s show, Andrea, Jo, and Lindsay talk about how much they spent and on what when they launched their self-publishing careers, and they talk about what they invest money into today as well. They go over some of the things that are worth spending money on and some that they don’t believe are. They also share some mistakes, things they regret, and things they don’t regret when it comes to money they’ve spent on books and marketing.In reference to a previous episode, Lindsay shared a comment from Joanna Penn on using Payhip to sell direct (and cut out the bookstores). If that’s something you’re interested in, Joanna has a course here: thecreativepenn.com/selldirecttutorialSubjects discussed in our “investing back into your book business” talk:What are things you may consider investing in as an author/publisher (and how do we feel about them)? Editing Covers Advertising Book trailers/videos Assistant Additional artwork/media for marketing/giveaways/merch Classes/workshops Conferences/conventions Website/newsletterHow do each of us handle debt? What are our views where it’s concerned, and would we ever go into it? What about excess? How do we personally know when we can pay ourselves and not invest back into the business?What advice do you have for new authors when it comes to choosing where to invest or not invest money?What are a couple of things you think fall under the good, better, and best topics?How can an author know what the good, better, and best things are for themselves?What mistakes have you made where finances are concerned?What are things you’ve done that you don’t regret?How do you handle money now? (What do you choose to invest into? What percentages? How do you prioritize things?)Thanks for listening, and thanks to Joshua Pearson for producing the show!
SFA 111 – What Book Marketing We’re Going to Focus on in 2022 Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-12-16 | Episode 111Released on: December 16, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/book-marketing-were-going-to-focus-on-in-2022For the week’s show, Jo, Andrea, and Lindsay talked about some of their challenges when it comes to book marketing and where they’re going to focus their efforts in 2022. After more than ten years publishing, they’ve had a chance to see what works and what just isn’t worth the time and effort. Hopefully, you’ll find it useful to hear about what they thing is worth focusing on in the coming year.News: Jo is tidying up some old paperback issues and making sure everything is available on IngramSpark. Lindsay is thinking about how to streamline her book publishing schedule in 2022 and the merits of getting a couple of books ahead when it comes to pre-orders and releases. Andrea is taking the CliftonStrengths test and has signed up for Becca Syme’s Write Better-Faster course in JanuaryMain Topic:These are highlights of what marketing we plan to focus on in 2022. Make sure to listen to the episode to get the details! Jo: Putting more effort into selling the back list by issuing new “complete series” bundles. Lindsay: Broadening marketing efforts and focus from Amazon exclusive series to running more promos of wide series and maybe releasing something new wide (instead of doing a typical Amazon-first exclusive launch). Andrea: Writing more books under the new pen name so she has more to market. Jo: Revitalizing his newsletter and putting more effort into his blog and social media pages. Lindsay: Possibly launching a web serial to bring in more readers outside of the Amazon eco-system. Andrea: Getting 10,000 subscribers on her romance newsletter. Jo: Working on getting better (and getting more return) from daily ads and maybe doing more around book launches. Lindsay: Reviving the YouTube channel, which helped her get a big boost on audiobook sales when she was sharing updates and audiobooks there. Andrea: Focusing more on doing larger book launches to try to get things off to a good start for residual sales in the following months.Thanks for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show.
SFA 111 – Tips to Get Your Backlist Selling Again Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-12-09 | Episode 111Released on: December 9th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/tips-to-get-your-backlist-selling-againAs the year comes to an end, we’re doing a few episodes focused on helping you get your author business off to a good (and profitable) start in the new year. On this week’s show, we discuss a number of ways to reboot your backlist and get your older books and series selling again. Or, if they never sold that well before, these ideas could help give them new life.News:Before we jumped into the main topic, Andrea mentioned that she’d been getting a lot out of podcasts and posts from Becca Syme, author of several books and owner of the Better-Faster Academy for writers.Tips for getting your backlist selling again (discussed in much greater detail in the show!): Put together a bundle/boxed set of the earlier books in your series (or, for a smaller series, do a complete series bundle) and launch it as a new book. Revisit an older series by writing a new installment. Run a big promotion and offer incentives to get readers of your newer works to go back and try the older series. If you have a number of thematically similar series (i.e. all high fantasy or space opera), put together a bundle of Book 1s to sell inexpensively and/or to give away as an extra newsletter sign-up bonus to readers coming to you via your newer books. Join in with other authors to put all of your Book 1s into a boxed set, and then collectively market it to your lists and the various promo sites. Run sales of your earlier Book 1s (or make them free) and share them via social media and your newsletter (i.e. remind newer readers that you have older series!). Keep inexpensive ads running to Book 1s in older series. Get new covers to give an old book a facelift, and maybe redo your blurbs. If any of your older series happen to match up with new trends, do some promos and try to capitalize on the trend. If you do a newsletter automation sequence, throw in links to older books as well as your newer releases.Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show.
SFA 109 – 10 Ways to Make Sure Your Novel Bombs Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-11-25 | Episode 109Released on: November 25, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/10-ways-to-make-sure-your-novel-bombsIt’s Thanksgiving week here in the US, so Lindsay, Andrea, and Jo just did a short “for fun” show this week. We give some tongue-in-cheek advice on how to make sure your novel bombs (that’s code for some mistakes we’ve made and seen others make that you should avoid!). Hopefully, you’ll find it vaguely helpful or at least entertaining!Reminder: you’ve got a few more days to pick up the NaNoWriMo StoryBundle with lots of books on writing, publishing, and marketing including Killer Content by our own Andrea Pearson.Thanks for listening, and thanks to Joshua Pearson for producing the show. Happy Thanksgiving!
SFA 108 – Are Your Craft Choices Hurting Your Book Sales? Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-11-18 | Episode 108Released on: November 18, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/are-your-craft-choices-hurting-your-book-sales
SFA 107 – Learning from the Past and Strategizing for Future Success Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-11-11 | Episode 107Released November 11, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/learning-from-the-past-and-strategizing-for-success-into-the-futureFor this week’s show, Lindsay and Jo talked about the successes and failures they’ve had over the last ten-plus years of indie publishing. After that, they discussed some of the challenges they’re facing in the present. They ended the show by talking about where things are heading and what they’re going to start doing or continue doing to ensure they’re able to adapt and succeed for the next ten years.Before jumping into the main topic, Jo discussed his experience beta testing Dave Chesson’s Atticus writing and formatting software.Lindsay added up her numbers for the year and talked about what accounted for a boost in income for 2021.Here are the questions they answered in the meat of show: What has been your most financially successful series? Looking back, do you have any takeaways from that series? Thoughts on why it outperformed others? What has been artistically your favorite book or series? Is it different from the one that was your best seller? Any thoughts on that? We’ve both been publishing more than ten years, and we’ve seen ebooks and self-publishing, in particular, blow up and become more competitive. How are things going in the present, and what are your current challenges? What are some of your concerns about the next ten years? Is there anything you’re doing or planning to do going forward to adapt to the changes in the world of publishing? Jo, I know you’ve done lots of stuffed critters and extra artwork and such related to your worlds. Do you think about trying to make that more of an income stream? Is it even viable for authors to do so? (Jo mentioned TeeSpring.com as a site that does plushies as well as T-shirts and other memorabilia.) Lindsay, you’ve seen some pretty consistent growth, and some pretty impressive amounts of success. How much of that do you feel was a direct result of various tactics you’ve tried? Do you feel like experiments with other genres/release strategies/ad campaigns have been key to your success? Or is consistent high quality output the main thing?Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show.
SFA 106 – Is It Time to Raise Prices, KU All-Star Bonuses, and Advertising Q&A Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-11-04 | Episode 106Released on: November 4, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/is-it-time-to-raise-prices-ku-all-star-bonuses-and-advertisingOn this week’s show, Jo, Andrea, and Lindsay talk about book and ebook pricing and whether it might be time for prices to go up. Before that, Lindsay shares what it takes to get one of the Kindle Unlimited All-Star bonuses these days for those enrolled in Amazon KDP Select. And in the second half of the show, they finish answering listener questions related to book advertising (especially on Amazon ads and Facebook ads).The first part of the show on that topic is here: Answering Your Book Advertising Questions.Our discussion points for the book pricing conversation: Despite the inflation we’ve seen in the 10+ years since e-readers took off and self-publishing became more viable (origins of the KDP Dashboard on Amazon, followed by other store dashboards), the basement 99-cent price point hasn’t been raised, and $9.99 is still the most you can charge for an ebook on Amazon if you want the 70% royalty (with $2.99 the minimum to receive the 70%). Should these ranges change? Will stores raise the 99-cent minimum price? Have you raised the prices on any of your ebooks or paperbacks lately? Will you? Do you feel that as advertising costs climb, books will have to become more expensive so that authors aren’t all in the red? (To some extent, this has already occurred — Amazon’s charts now seem to be dominated by $3.99-4.99 indie titles, whereas there used to be a lot more 99-cent and $2.99 books.)Listener questions on book advertising: D.L. Young: How do you scale (a successful) Amazon ad? I’ve never heard a good answer on this. Aster: Optimizing auto ads. I’m also curious about Robert Ryan’s method (of bidding high on super relevant ASINs to stimulate the Amazon recommendation engine). Ryan: A key thing for me is ad graphics for fantasy books. I’ve seen plenty of examples for romance and thriller but literally none for fantasy. It would be great to get an idea of successful ad graphics! Rick: Not a question so much as a sharing of my experience. If you don’t know how to do ads, don’t double down on what’s been losing you money. Find another way. I was doing okay until 2018-2019 and then my return on my ad investment started going way down. Things had changed and I hadn’t changed with them. So I stopped all my ads, stepped back and tried something different. Follow-up: Eileen: that happened to me too. In April 2019 when default bids went from 25c to 85c it changed the game. I didn’t change with it and lost traction. Luckily, I changed and relearned in Oct 2019 and have tried to keep up with changes since then. So I’d ask, how do you find time to continually keep up with all the changes, new features and types of ads out there? Or do you feel that with such a large following, your ads aren’t as essential as for a new author? Kristen: How to spread your advertising budget across all the many platforms & ad types: AMS, Social media, PPC, Paid Newsletters, etc. Steven: If you have similar series within the same subgenre, do you put them in 1 ad or separate them? What about books within the same series? Do you advertise all books, or just book 1 and the new release? If you do separate them, are you using the same keywords or different keywords across ad sets? Christy: Best strategies for advertising wide. Do you use Goodreads? How worth it is it to be a part of Facebook reader groups?Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show.
SFA 105 – How We Would Start from Scratch Writing/Publishing Books Today Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-10-28 | Episode 105Released on: October 28, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/how-we-would-start-from-scratch-writing-publishing-booksOn this week’s show, Andrea, Jo, and Lindsay shared what each of them would do if they were new authors starting from scratch today with the knowledge and experience they’ve gained over their ten-plus-year publishing careers.Lindsay did this back in late 2014 with a then-anonymous pen name, and Andrea just launched a new pen name without telling most people about it, so it’s less hypothetical for her. If Jo has ever tried a secret pen name, he wouldn’t admit it to his co-hosts…To make things realistic, they gave themselves a $2500 budget for their hypothetical book launches, money they could have saved from a day job or perhaps finagled out of a supportive partner. Since they were all planning to launch a series rather than just one book, this budget had to cover several titles and a little bit of an advertising investment.Listen to the show to find out which genres they would choose for the experiment, how long of books they would write, how they would price them, and how they would structure their series!Also, if you want to pick up a bunch of great books on writing and marketing, Andrea has a book in this year’s NaNoWriMo-themed Storybundle, so make sure to check that out.
SFA 104 – Appealing to “Universal Fantasy” and Succeeding Across Genres Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-10-21 | Episode 104Released on: October 21, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/appealing-to-universal-fantasy-and-succeeding-across-genres-theodora-taylorFor this week’s show, Jo and Andrea took the reins while Lindsay scowled at her broken internet. They interviewed six-figure romance novelist Theodora Taylor and talked about finding success through appealing to “universal fantasy,” Facebook ads that work, and selling books even when genre hopping and not writing to market.In addition to being the author of more than forty novels, Theodora has written the popular book for writers: 7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Books to Anyone.Here are the questions Jo and Andrea asked Theodora: Can you tell us how you got started with writing and indie publishing? Your (current) most popular book is one that was released back in 2013. How have you managed that? Basically, what keeps it selling so well? You write interracial romance and advertise on Facebook. Can you talk about about your ad experiments and what you learned about targeting a hard to find niche? When you’re preparing to write your next book, how much thought do you put into marketing? Is marketing something you don’t start working on until you’re finished writing? Do you tweak your ideas with the aim of being more marketable? How do you run your newsletter? How frequently do you message your list and how personal are you in your emails? Could you talk about some of the challenges and struggles that come with genre hopping and how you’ve dealt with and overcome them? One of the major differences between genres that new authors (or single-genre authors) might not think about is the comparative cost of marketing. On the subject of being a cross-genre author, do you find that your marketing budget and tactics are different for different genres? Would you give a quick explanation behind why you wanted to write 7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Books to Anyone and how you managed to drum up so much interest in something that hadn’t yet been published, especially with it being your first book for authors? Would you explain exactly what universal fantasy is for those who have never heard this term before? And why should authors use it? Building a story with all of the elements to satisfy an audience is, naturally, a crucial part to having enduring success. But having a perfectly constructed, wish-fulfilling story won’t mean much if no one discovers it. Word of mouth can keep a book selling, but do you have any insight in how to make it clear to prospective readers what sort of great story they’re in for, and how to find those readers? Do you plan the universal-fantasy element out in advance as part of the plotting process? If you’d like to learn more about Theodora’s strategies, check out 7 Figure Fiction. You can also visit the Romance Author Mastermind on Facebook.
SFA 103 – Struggles We Deal with as Full-time Authors Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-10-14 | Episode 103Released on: October 14, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/struggles-we-deal-with-as-full-time-authorsFor today’s show, Jo, Lindsay, and Andrea shared some of the struggles they’re dealing with ten+ years into their author careers. They also answered struggles you’re dealing with (as submitted by listeners in the Six Figure Authors Facebook group). Hopefully it wasn’t too much of a rant-fest, and you’ll find it useful. Or you’ll at least know that you’re not alone with some of your struggles as an author.News Jo updated us on his epic fantasy series and mulled over NaNoWriMo and what he’s working on next. Lindsay shared how the launch of her witches and werewolves series (AKA the fun summer project) went. Andrea updated us on her recovery from her surgery and mentioned that she’s been using the Google Primer app to brush up on business and marketing in bite-sized chunks.Here are the listener-submitted struggles: Brent: Writing something that you love that’s also commercially viable. Richard: Crushing self-doubt with every new title. DeAnna: Self-sabotage. Kaci: Ads to a first-in-series 99-cent book getting clicks and readers but not making money yet. Christine: Writing while dealing with nonstop emotional crises. Juliana: Self-doubt and perfectionism. Phoenix: Getting reviews and struggling with motivation.Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show!
SFA 102 – How to Keep from Stressing out as an Author While Still Achieving Your Goals Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-10-07 | Episode 102Released on: October 7th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/how-to-keep-from-stressing-out-as-an-author-while-still-achieving-your-goalsFor this week’s show, we were joined by Mark Leslie Lefebvre, author, podcaster, and Director of Business Development at Draft2Digital. He and Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn recently published The Relaxed Author, a book aimed at helping authors to chill out a bit and not be so stressed. It covers relaxed writing, relaxed publishing, relaxed marketing, and relaxed business, and we asked Mark a couple of questions related to each category.Here they are: Most of our listeners probably know you, but how about telling us a bit about yourself and what prompted you and Joanna to collaborate on this project? When I’m writing a first draft, I love having daily word count goals. It’s something I did long before I published my first book and quit the day job, because I found it was really easy to just not get anything done when writing wasn’t a daily habit, but maybe that doesn’t work for everyone. What do you think? I love that you mention to write in a series. Writing in a series (in the same series–not just multiple series) has been a huge key to my success, especially with a chaotic life. The advice frequently given is to write in a series because you’ll make more money. But I know several authors who hate revisiting the same characters and places over and over again–doing so is painful and boring to them, and thinking about writing series instead of stand-alones causes them a great deal of stress. First, what’s the general advice you give (from the book), and second, what would you tell authors who just can’t do it and are stressing over it a lot? You talk a bit about scheduling time to refill the creative well and relax. This is something I struggle with. Particularly when sales are down, any time I’m not at least poking at the current writing project I’m freaking out about not poking at the current writing project. If you have enough success as an author, chances are you’ll start getting approached by people interested in acquiring rights for things like audio books and translations. In the book, you talk about valuing your work and being cautious with what rights you sign away. Can you talk a bit about that? Both of you are huge supporters of publishing wide. But in your book, you mention to publish wide OR publish just in KU. With the goal of being a relaxed author in mind, what sort of approach do you recommend authors from all walks of life and at all levels of stress take when it comes to picking retailers? We recently had Dave Chesson on and talked about the Amazon honeymoon period, where he experimented and found that Amazon does treat new releases favorably. Because I’ve experienced that organic boost myself, I like to focus a good chunk of marketing efforts on the weeks around launching a new series, but I know this can be stressful for authors as they worry about lining everything up. What do you guys advise when it comes to marketing and book launches? What advice do you have when it comes to simplifying your author brand and website? What do you think are the bare minimum things authors need to do when it comes to marketing so that they can still have success? It’s easy to get tunnel vision on the moment-to-moment challenges of being an author. Between meeting deadlines and stressing over sales, I know I’ve been hyper focused on the next few weeks and haven’t really been thinking about the next few years or decades. You talk in the book about focusing on the long-term. What sort of stuff should we be keeping in mind for the long haul? I’d love to hear more about what you hit on when it comes to continuing working a day job and writing. I love that you mentioned the fact that so many people are focusing on quitting their day jobs and that that doesn’t have to be the goal. Would you elaborate on that? How does removing the goal of quitting a day job help an author be more relaxed? For authors who are at the point where they’re thinking of quitting their day job, what are some things they should have lined up before taking that step? What do you think the future holds for authors, and what can we do to be ready for it–without stressing out too much?If you want to pick up a copy of The Relaxed Author, you can find a link to your favorite retailer here.Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show!
SFA 101 – Answering Your Book Advertising Questions Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-09-30 | Episode 101Released on: September 30, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/answering-your-book-advertising-questions
SFA 100 – Improving Organic Book Sales, Book Launch Tips, and How to Use A-Plus Content on Amazon Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-09-23 | Episode 100Released on: September 23, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/improving-organic-book-sales-book-launch-tips-and-how-to-use-a-plus-content-on-amazon-dave-chessonFor this week’s show, Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur joined us to discuss the new A-plus Amazon content now available to authors publishing through the KDP dashboard, as well as keywords and categories and how they can affect organic book discovery. We also talked about Amazon search, how best to market a book around the launch, and whether or not there’s a “honeymoon” period during which Amazon is more likely to suggest your book to readers.Yes, this is a very Amazon-centric episode, but hopefully you’ll find it useful, whether you’re wide or exclusive. As the creator of the popular Publisher Rocket (software for finding keywords on Amazon for search and advertising), Dave spends a lot of time analyzing this stuff, so he was a great and informative guest.Here are the questions we asked him:What’s your background, and how did you get into helping authors figure out the inner workings of Amazon? You recently posted an article on A-Plus Content on your site that explains what it is and how to do use it. Could you give our listeners the gist?What are the common bits of information that readers might be looking for that we should be addressing in A+ content?Since the time this was released, have you heard any reports of whether or not it’s helping? Have you noticed a lot of authors taking advantage of it? And what sort of a priority would you give it for our busier listeners?Is there anything authors shouldn’t put in their A+ content section?You’ve got another article that we quoted and talked about on an earlier show (The HoneyMoon Effect: Does Amazon Give Preferential Treatment to New Books?) Could you talk about your experiment, findings, and what it means for authors planning book launches? Did you get any indication of the length of the honeymoon period? We reference things like the 30-day cliff. Does the actual period vary?How much do also-boughts and other algorithm-type things currently affect book launches? What do you recommend authors do to boost the algorithms?What can authors do with their book launch to give their books the best possible shot to get organic sales, not only in those first few weeks but as time passes as well? Writing in series is very common and highly recommended, but promoting mid or late series books is kind of a tricky thing, since you typically want to funnel new customers to the beginning of the series. But that means you’re promoting something instead of the book that Amazon might be giving a free boost to. How does one best take advantage of the honeymoon period when we’re talking about book 4 or 5 in a series?How do you recommend authors who aren’t obsessed with data (or who are even intimidated by it) smartly approach their book launches?Just to get basic, what are keywords on Amazon, and how can they affect how your book ranks (or doesn’t) in search results? How important are search results when it comes to fiction? Amazon adds categories (both explicit ones and categories that seem to be derived from your keywords) periodically. If one comes along that’s more specific to your book, should you change your category?In what ways has Amazon’s approach toward categories and keywords changed over the years, how has that affected you (and Publisher Rocket), and how has it affected authors? What should authors keep a lookout for in the future?I know in my case, frequently filling in the keywords section is a challenge because it isn’t always clear what aspects of your book are worth calling out in keywords. How does one find a likely set of keywords for a given genre?You can find more articles on book marketing, choosing the correct keywords, and more on Kindlepreneur. You can also visit Atticus to learn more about the new writing and formatting tool Dave mentioned in the show.
SFA 099 – Succeeding in a Competitive Genre with Cami Checketts Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-09-17 | Episode 099Released Sept. 16th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/succeeding-in-a-competitive-genre-with-cami-checkettsFor this week’s show, successful romantic suspense author Cami Checketts joins the guys. A USA Today bestseller and award winner, Cami has published over one hundred books. She was not an overnight success but wrote a lot and persevered and has grown to become a very steady seller in a competitive genre.Here are some of the questions Jo, Andrea, and Lindsay asked her: Can you tell us about your writing and publishing journey? Have you ever considered splitting your romance subgenres and writing under a pen name? As someone with a fairly substantial backlist, I’m always curious what other authors do to keep older titles selling. Do you run ads/sales? Send out newsletters promoting them in addition to the new releases? Anything else? (Cami mentioned that the ad agency she uses is Disruptive Advertising.) Folks who don’t have a large backlist, or a backlist that goes back a number of years, tend not to be aware of some of the complications it can introduce to a career. Applying corrections to wipe out lingering typos, or going back and updating back matter to link to newer titles, can eat up a lot of time. Do you keep your back list up to date, or at some point do you let them stabilize? How do you prevent burnout? A lot goes into publishing a book besides writing it. Even if you’re a prolific writer, you can hit stumbling blocks when it comes to juggling the aspects of publishing that aren’t directly in your control. How do you handle the scheduling of cover art and editing slots? What other things do you do to make sure titles don’t get held up in the pipeline? What does a launch look like for you? What do you do to gain traction in these very competitive romance subgenres? What sorts of things do you do to help you remember which tropes you’ve written? Do you plan your series out far in advance? If so, what do you keep track of and figure out ahead of time? We’ve had other folks on the podcast underscore that romance readers in particular have some pretty strict expectations for a book’s content. (Happily Ever After/Happily For Now, etc). How do you balance checking all of the boxes with keeping the stories fresh and interesting? How much slack is there in the romance formula for innovation? Have you had any breakaway successes or has it been more of a gradual upswing? What do you recommend new authors do to have success in clean romance and romantic suspense? What qualifies a book as clean romance? Does a clean romance book have to be structured differently to produce a satisfying result, or can you edit down a more steamy romance to produce a clean one? What role does marketing play in your success? It looks like you’ve got a mix of wide and Amazon exclusive titles. What’s your reasoning there, and how do your marketing tactics change for each? What do you do to entice readers onto your newsletter? Do you have much insight into the comparative cost of advertising for different genres? I know the bids can get very high for popular genres/keywords. Do you spend much time picking targets to try to keep the price down? Different advertising platforms tend to have different results and different learning curves. Is there a platform you would recommend for someone who was just starting, or someone who hoped to focus on a single platform?Please visit Cami’s website to learn more about her books, or look her up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and other bookstores.Thanks for listening, and thanks to Joshua Pearson for producing the show. If you haven’t joined, you can interact with us and other authors at Facebook group (Six Figure Authors).
SFA 098 – Do Authors Need to Advertise and Where and How Much Should They Spend? Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-09-10 | Episode 098Released on: September 9, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/do-authors-need-to-advertise-and-where-and-how-much-should-they-spendOn this week’s show, Andrea, Jo, and Lindsay talk a bit about whether authors need to pay to advertise in 2021, how much they spend on ads, where they advertise, and what to do if you don’t have the money to pay for ads right now.They also start out discussing a recent article from Dave Chesson’s site: The HoneyMoon Effect: Does Amazon Give Preferential Treatment to New Books?Listener questions they answered at the end:“What do you do about advertising later books in a series? Aside from my newsletter and social media followers, is there any way to alert readers who haven’t followed me but who have bought the first in series that a new one is out? I find the longer it is between books, the more difficult it is.”“Should you advertise book one if you have nothing else out there? Some say wait until you have three books out, some say you should advertise even if you don’t make a profit just to build a reader base. Do you lose something if you just ‘put it out there’ and wait to have other books until you start to advertise?”“What do you do when the ads/audiences you were using suddenly seem to tank out of nowhere?”During the show, the guys mention David Gaughran’s big list of promo sites, where he ranks them by effectiveness.If you’re looking for a book to help you get started with Amazon ads, Lindsay recommends Robert J Ryan’s Amazon Ads Unleashed.If you want an extensive and thorough course, Mark Dawson’s Ads for Authors opens up a couple of times a year.Thanks for listening, and thanks to Joshua Pearson for producing the show!
SFA 097 – How to Take Your Writing from Hobby Money to Earning a Full-time Income Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-09-04 | Episode 097Released: September 02, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/how-to-take-your-writing-from-hobby-income-to-full-time-moneyJo, Lindsay, and Andrea are back from their summer hiatus! On this week’s show, they discuss what to do if you’re an author with a few (or more) books or series out, but you’re not earning the kind of income you expected. They discuss several things to consider if you’re trying to hit five or six figures a year in earnings from your books.News:Everyone released new books over the summer and spoke about how things are going.Main topic: How to go from hobby money to earning a full-time income Focus on one specific niche in one specific genre. Redo covers and blurbs (check out Libbie Hawker’s Gotta Read It!: Five Simple Steps to a Fiction Pitch that Sells and/or her YouTube videos on the subject). Analyze the data from your existing books and double down on your winners. Write novels, and don’t look for short-cuts just to get more work out there (if you’re struggling with productivity, check out Rachel Aaron’s 2K to 10K). You don’t have to “write to market,” but make sure you’re publishing commercially viable books — things that fit soundly into a store category and are in the same vein as books that are selling well. Release new books consistently. Be generous, and give things away for free to turn readers into super fans. Realize that you have to put in the hours each week if you want to take writing from a hobby to a full-time income. Try to bring in multiple sources of income, and be mindful of getting a return on your investment.Thanks for listening, and thanks to Joshua Pearson for producing the show. If you want to join the Facebook group, we’re there under Six Figure Authors.
Six Figure Authors Answer Questions on Publishing and Book Marketing Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-08-13 | A live question and answer session in which we answer questions about publishing, marketing, and more
SFA 095 – Can You Really Make “Passive Income” as an Author? Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-06-17 | Episode 095Released on: June 17th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/sfa-095-can-you-really-make-passive-income-as-an-authorOn this week’s show, we tackle the question of what passive income is and how it can relate to authors.Specifically, as authors with more than ten years of publishing experience each, we talk about whether it’s realistic to hope to earn passive or royalty income on works published years earlier. We also discuss what we do to continue to keep backlist books selling and if there’s ever a point where you can work less hard (publish fewer books a year) and still maintain a solid level of income.Lastly, we go over how it’s better to think of your author career as a business that you’re going to have to nurture and grow and continue to work on over the years rather than a lottery ticket that you’re hoping will win big. Every now and then, someone does break out and get a movie deal that helps sell their books for years to come, but for most of us, we have to keep putting out stories that our fans enjoy and treat this like the ongoing career that it is.The good news is that making up stories for people is a pretty awesome job.Break!We are going on hiatus for the summer, though we’re planning on doing at least one YouTube livestream Q&A show. Stop by the Facebook group to check for a date announcement (likely in July).If you’d like to take advantage of Andrea’s promotion for her self-publishing courses, stop by selfpublishstrongcourses.com and use the coupon code SUMMER21 to get 50% off. Andrea is also available for $50 consultations if you want someone to look at your book (cover, blurb, etc.) with a critical eye.
SFA 094 – Breaking Six Figures Without Advertising and Reducing Revision and Publishing Time Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-06-10 | Episode 094Released: June 10th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/breaking-six-figures-without-advertising-shawn-inmonOn this week’s show, Andrea, Jo, and Lindsay are joined by full-time author and regular poster in the Six Figure Authors Facebook group, Shawn Inmon.Writer of time travel and portal fantasy, Shawn first broke six figures last year before jumping into advertising, and he’s since given his income even more of a boost by advertising on Facebook. Our hosts asked him for some details on how he’s grown his success over the years.Shawn also writes “into the dark,” without much time spent on editing and revisions, so they asked him all about that too.Here’s a list of the questions they gave Shawn: How did you become an indie author? What was your first book about, and how did it do? What made you switch to time-travel fiction? Do you think focusing on one big series is what helped you break out? In the intro, we talked about how you hit six figures in income last year without running any ads. What were you doing for promotion then? What tips do you have for an author who is selling decently but wants to do better? Now that you’re using ads, do you favor Amazon or Facebook? You’re having great results with Facebook ads — are you dropping the price of Book 1 or advertising a full-price book? Do you have any tips for authors who are struggling with Facebook ads? We’ve had Dean Wesley Smith on in the past, and one thing he’s very passionate about is not revising books. Would you explain to our audience what he means by “writing into the dark” and how you apply it to your own writing? What is the average length of the books you write? Do you think this technique is applicable to books of all lengths? How have you learned to let go of your inner editor? Are there things you fix as you’re writing? What do you do when you get an idea that doesn’t jive with what you’ve already written? How does writing to market apply with what you’re doing? Or does it? Something that plotters can sometimes do, particularly with a long series, is plant hints and clues for events in future books. Do you have a firm enough idea of the trajectory of a series to do this? How do you think outliners can apply this method? Something that stuck out to me in your bio was “fourteen book time travel series.” As someone who has written time travel, I’m impressed that you’ve achieved that, particularly without outlining. (My time travel plots aren’t even outlines, they’re flow charts.) How do you keep a series like that fresh and interesting? And how complex do you allow the plots to get, because recursion is a heck of a complicator?You can find Shawn on his website, his Facebook author page, or check out his books on Amazon.Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show. If you’re not yet a member of the Six Figure Authors Facebook group, here’s the link to join: facebook.com/groups/504063143655523
SFA 093 – Mistakes That Newer Authors Make Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-06-03 | Episode 093Released on: June 3rd, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/mistakes-newer-authors-makeOn this week’s show, Andrea, Jo, and Lindsay went over some common mistakes that newer authors often make. And plenty of experienced authors get wrapped up in some of these too. If you’re struggling to gain traction, or getting discouraged, some of these may help. At the least, you’ll know you’re not alone!Common mistakes that newer authors make: Worrying too much about marketing, launch plans, building a platform, or advanced release techniques (i.e. rapid release) before your first book is written. Not focusing on getting reviews and building a newsletter list while writing the next books in a series. Feeling compelled to respond to reviews. Starting your first book off (the entry point into your entire series) without a strong hook. Comparing yourself to authors who’ve been either writing that genre for a long time or have been publishing for a long time (here’s the link to Parnell Hall’s Signing in the Waldenbooks song that Lindsay mentioned). Producing a series with a non-obvious or non-linear reading order Committing to doing a long series before you know how well it’ll sell (or continuing to write in a series that nobody is buying). Not keeping track of results and throwing money at things that just don’t work. Associating your author brand too closely with a single book or series.Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show.
SFA 092 – Selling More Audiobooks, Audiobook Trends, and Marketing Tips Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-05-28 | Episode 092Released on: May 27th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/selling-more-audiobooks-audiobook-trends-and-marketing-victoria-gerkenFor all of you with audiobooks, or thinking about creating audiobooks, you’ll enjoy hearing from this week’s guest: Victoria Gerken, Publisher and Head of Acquisitions at Podium Audio.We asked her about trends in audiobooks, the differences between the ebook/print market and the audiobook market, whether it’s better to be wide (in many bookstores) or exclusive with Audible/Amazon, and what authors can do to better market their audiobooks and sell more copies.Here are the specific questions we asked: Can you tell us about your background and Podium Audio? What do you do as head of acquisitions? What types of books does Podium take on? How is the audiobook market different than ebooks or print? Do you ever have authors take off in audio who were selling more modestly in ebook? What are your thoughts on AI narrators and where that is going in the future? Did you see any impact on audiobook sales during CoVid? Has the last year changed how you do business? Are you seeing any trends in science fiction, fantasy, and the other genres you cover? Do you see any trends that work well in ebooks or print but don’t work well in audio? Amazon is a fairly dominant force in print and ebooks, just as they are in virtually every other facet of sales. As such, there’s the strong tendency for folks to want to double down and have their books exclusive to ACX/Audible. How large is the audiobook market beyond Audible? Is it worth expanding the distribution of one’s audiobooks as widely as possible? What are some things your most successful authors are doing when it comes to marketing? A great deal of the marketing techniques for ebooks are focused on pricing, either permanently or in the form of promotional discounts. Do you see much in the way of price promos for audio books? Has there been any experimentation with free series starters and the like? For those who want to try free audiobooks, do you recommend taking the permafree approach, or would it be better to keep it as an occasional promotion? I know my best selling series with you guys have been the ones where we did Books 1-3 bundles to start off the series. Is that something all authors should consider doing if their books are short and may not be considered “credit worthy,” by Audible subscribers who like a long listen for their credit? What are basic marketing things authors should consider doing to spread the word about their audiobooks?For more information, please check out the Podium Audio website. You can also find them on Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms.
SFA 091 - Book Marketing for Introverts Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-05-20 | Episode 091Released May 20th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/book-marketing-for-introvertsYour two hardcore introvert authors, Jo Lallo and Lindsay Buroker, discuss ways to market that won’t force you too far from your introvert tendencies but that can also sell books. (Note: this is not a show on how to overcome your introversion and just get out there. Screw that. This is about things you can do that are in your wheelhouse if you’re an introvert.)Here are some of topics covered: The differences between introversion and extroversion. Challenges of being an author and marketing/networking as an introvert. Book marketing that works well for introverts: Free stories/novels put out in numerous formats and in numerous places. Advertising/sponsorship sites. Asking/making it easy for readers to share (encouraging word-of-mouth advertising) freebies or sales. Building a platform over time with a blog/podcast/YouTube Channel/Facebook page/etc. — whatever you wouldn’t mind doing long-term (you don’t have to do everything!). Scheduling things to go out so you can get them just right and be prepared to interact/answer comments on your terms. Being a content provider vs. a me-too who just comments on other people’s content.Listener questions answered at the end: Brandon: Greetings SFA crew! I’m wondering if anyone else has had trouble keeping a book permafree on Amazon? I have submitted the request (both by phone and email) three times and the ebook reverts back to $0.99 after a few weeks. I recently read that a free book on Kobo might not be persuasive enough for Amazon, so I also listed it on Google Play and used that in my next correspondence as Google algorithms are a direct competitor with Amazon’s. Melissa: Hi guys!! I wanted to ask about a possible emerging genre. I saw a book that was being marketed to me that had a subtitle called midlife fantasy or something like that. Is this a new sub-genre? I know Lindsay’s characters are usually older (which I LOVE) and I tend to write characters in their 30s-40s. I guess what I’m asking is “midlife fantasy” a thing and should I market my books that way? Mandy: Hello all! I was wondering if anyone has thoughts about Barnes & Noble Press? I am set to publish my first book this fall and am considering all avenues of self-publishing.If you want more on the introversion subject, we also talked about book marketing in last year’s interview with Sarah Painter: Marketing as an Introvert, and Successful Urban Fantasy Outside of Kindle Unlimited.Thanks for listening, and thanks to Joshua Pearson for producing the show!
SFA 090 – Going Wide with Audiobooks, Reader Magnets, and Improving Boxed Set Sales Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-05-13 | Episode 090Released on: May 13th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/going-wide-with-audiobooks-reader-magnets-and-improving-boxed-set-salesFor this week’s show, Jo and Lindsay talk a bit about Lindsay’s recent epic fantasy launch, Jo’s plans for his upcoming launch, and then jump into a big pile of listener questions from the Six Figure Authors Facebook group.Here are the specific questions that they answer:Andy: I love all your thoughts on reader magnets. If someone plans on writing three books and rapid releasing them, does it make sense to offer up the first entire book for free as a reader magnet to build a newsletter pre launch, to lead people into the second and third books?J. Elizabeth: I would love to hear about any experience with going wide on audio. I’m about to publish book 3 in my fantasy series and have pretty much decided to use Voices Share Plus from Findaway Voices instead of ACX. That way, my narrator gets a nice upfront payment, and I don’t have to worry about exclusivity. It’s weird doing it mid-series, I know, but I figured I have 4 and 6 years to wait out the ACX exclusivity, and I don’t want to add to that for the series by putting another one in that category. I guess I was wondering if Chirp deals are hard to get or worth it if only the third (and later fourth and maybe fifth) audio books are wide.K. Vale: I’d love to hear about boxed sets. I’m getting book 6 of a 9 book series out, and I released the first three books boxed set…. to sort of crickets. When it gets a Kobo promotion, it sells, and it had a little Google Play success, but I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong. Since the series will be about nine books, I thought I’d do three 3-book boxed sets. But since going wide, book 1 is free, book 2 is discounted to $2.99, and book 3 has the normal price of $4.99. So $7.98 if you ‘buy’ all three normally, and I put the boxed set price at $6.99. Here’s what I’m thinking of trying, so you can tell me if I’m wrong =] Mostly, I want to know how you handle wide and KU boxed sets. 1. Reduce the price to $5.99. Sure, that’s just a dollar more than book 3’s price, but things are already wonky with this first boxed set. 2. Change it to a 4 (or 5?) book boxed set and make the price $9.99. That way, it’s now a savings of about $3 over buying the first four books and I make more overall. I could even add in the short story collection to the first boxed set so it feels like two 5-book boxed sets when the series is finished (1-4 + short stories, then 5-9). And if I do this, do I update the old boxed set or do I delist it and make a new entry? 3. Cry What do you think?Rick D: Can you do a perma-free book 1 on Amazon if you’re Amazon exclusive? AND Laxmi: Permafree first in series, for a series in Kindle Unlimited, any chance to delve into the positives/negatives of this in a future episode?Machelle: There was some recent drama among a couple of romance authors showing a case of one author plagiarizing another author. In the time you all have been published have you had some personal experience with or been aware of legitimate plagiarizing and what should new authors be aware of in this regard? [see: Jo’s blog post on his experience with someone plagiarizing his series]Lina: I may have missed an episode on your show on how to gain newsletter subscribers, but I’ve listened to several other people and I’m still not clear on how to garner interest. I have 10 published books and I’ve been really lax on doing this.That’s it for this week. Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show!
SFA 089 – Book Marketing Tips and Shooting for Bestseller Lists Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-05-07 | Episode 089Released on May 6th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/book-marketing-tips-and-shooting-for-bestseller-listsOur guest this week is successful romance author Victorine Lieske. She self-published her first book, Not What She Seems, in April of 2010. In March of 2011, Not What She Seems began its 6 week run on The New York Times best selling eBook list. By May 2011 she had sold over 100,000 copies. Victorine’s first romantic comedy novel hit the USA Today Bestselling books list in January 2015.Victorine also has several non-fiction books for authors available, including How to Write a Swoon-Worthy Sweet Romance and Whole Book Marketing: An Indie Author’s Guide to Selling Books.We asked her a number of questions related to book marketing, what it takes to hit a bestseller list, and her Facebook group and YouTube Channel.Here are some of the specifics:Could you tell us about your writing career and what led you to indie publishing?What kind of changes have you seen in the last ten years of self-publishing?You’ve written in a couple of genres; what decisions have gone into choosing certain genres?You were one of the very first self-published authors who hit the NYT list. What sorts of takeaways do you have from that experience that can be applied today?What are some of the challenges to hitting a bestseller list?The common wisdom is that you aren’t eligible for the newspaper lists if you are Amazon exclusive. Is that true? Is it worth launching wide specifically to aim for the bestseller list?You’ve got two Facebook groups for writers (Writing Gals and the Writing Gals Critique Group) and a YouTube channel. What sorts of behind-the-scenes things do you have to do to keep them running?For the Facebook groups, how often do you find you need to post or interact to keep things lively? How does that compare to how often you need to post on Youtube?What role does marketing play in your success?What are some common mistakes you see from authors when it comes to marketing?If an author has more than one series, or even more than one genre, should marketing be done simultaneously across two or more of the different series? Would an author (particularly one with a tight budget) be better served focusing on a recent series, or perhaps whatever series is selling best at the moment?You’ve co-authored a book on writing to market. What do you think the state of that is in 2021?Many authors are frustrated by the cost of advertising and feel the only way to sell is to spend a ton on ads. Do you think that’s true? Or can someone who comes in with a professional book package and who is writing in a commercial genre still do well today?How does your marketing business plan look for new releases compared to backlist books?It looks like you’re in KU with your books. What are your thoughts today on the wide vs. Amazon exclusive debate?Do you feel there are different appropriate marketing tactics for people who release fairly frequently versus people who only release periodically?You can find Victorine’s books on Amazon, check out her website, and visit her Writing Gals YouTube Channel.Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing our show!
SFA 088 – How to Grow Your Audience as an Author Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-04-29 | Episode 088Released on: April 29thShow Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/how-to-grow-your-audience-as-an-authorWe’re going back to the basics this week and talking about how to grow your audience as an author. Whether you’re new to the biz, or have been publishing for twenty years, chances are you want more readers. We all do!And no, the answer isn’t just to spend more money on ads, though we do talk a little bit about running promos and advertising books. We cover a lot more in this episode though.Here are the tips we came up with (and discuss in more depth in the show):Be generous and give some stories away for free… without requiring an email address or anything. No strings attached. Here’s the video of Neil Gammon that Lindsay mentioned about how he started selling a lot more books in the countries where he was widely pirated.Use your back matter wisely. It can do more than simply beg a reader for a review or link to the next book.Do regular promotions, even if it’s just making a wide Book 1 free for a couple of months or using your KDP Select free days once a quarter and buying an inexpensive ad to promote the book.Be consistent and publish regularly so that readers start to look for new releases from you at certain times of year.Try to build a community (or construct your series/characters in such a way that it encourage fans to create a community of their own).Regularly run ads to your first book or series starter bundle and monitor how they do so you can figure out what works best and do it again in the future.Write in series, since readers tend to remember characters and fall in love with them and their world over time. A series has a better shot at sticking with a reader than a stand-alone, and readers recommend books that stick with them. The best and most effective advertising you’ll ever get is word of mouth recommendations of your books.Make sure your book covers and blurbs are up to snuff, not only professional but that they fit into your primary category.Run your book through a writing workshop or otherwise engage beta readers before you publish. Don’t rush to get your first book(s) out there. You want the craft side of your work to be as strong as possible. People only recommend stories that they love.Thanks for listening, and thanks to Joshua Pearson for producing the show!
SFA 087 – Our Top Tips After Ten Years of Publishing Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-04-22 | Episode 087Released on: April 22nd, 2021Shoe Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/our-top-tips-after-ten-years-of-publishingAndrea, Jo, and Lindsay have all been publishing for more than ten years and have been full-time authors for much of that time. In this week’s show, they start out sharing their paths and how they first became authors and eventually started earning enough money to quit their day jobs.After that, they share some of their top tips, i.e. things they’ve learned over the years, including advice on becoming faster and more efficient, avoiding burnout by not taking on too many projects, and learning from your successes as well as your failures. They also covered the challenges of not writing to market and how you may have to publish a mixture of passion projects and more commercial work (if your goal is to become a full-time author).In the news, Lindsay shared her experience with finding a narrator and producing an audiobook through Findaway Voices. Jo mentioned challenges in finding a cover artist for a special project, and Andrea talked about some of her writing ups and downs these past couple of years as well as a new pen name she’s started.Thanks for listening, and thanks to Joshua Pearson for producing the show. You can find our Facebook group at this link or by searching there for Six Figure Authors.
SFA 086 – How to Use Bonus Material to Sell More Books Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-04-15 | Episode 086Released April 15th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/how-to-use-bonus-material-to-sell-more-booksFor this week’s show, we’re talking all about bonus content, the extra short things you can write that can lead to more book sales — if you do it right.We’ve written a lot of bonuses of different kinds for different series over the years, so we know what’s worked really well to get newsletter sign-ups and draw in new readers (and what hasn’t been as effective).Here’s what we go over in the show:Types of bonus material, such as short side stories/novellas, prequel stories, second epilogues, bonus scenes from different PoV characters, character sheets, character interviews, behind-the-scenes lowdowns and more.Examples of various types of bonuses we’ve done and how well they’ve worked toward their goal.Things you should avoid for bonuses.How best to use bonus scenes, depending on whether your goal is to attract all-new readers or to get people to sign up for your newsletter after they finish one of your books.Where to publish/distribute your bonuses depending on your goals.Mistakes to avoid.Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show. You can ask questions or just say hi in the Six Figure Authors Facebook group.
SFA 085 – Staying Motivated, Productivity, Flow State, and Writing to Market in 2021 Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-04-08 | Episode 085Released: April 8th, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/staying-motivated-productivity-flow-state-and-writing-to-market-in-2021Our guest this week is the prolific science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction author Chris Fox. He’s known in the author community for his Write Faster, Write Smarter series, and has spoken all over the country about writing to market, making your writing a habit, and quitting your day job to become an author.Here are the questions we asked him:For those who are new to you, would you tell us how you got started in writing and indie publishing?You’ve moved and become a father since last we interviewed you. Have you faced any challenges and had to adapt your writing schedule? I’m intrigued by the concept of writing 5k words an hour. Can you talk about that a bit?I remember from previous interviews that you reached your 5K an hour through dictation. Do you have any suggestions on getting into flow state and rocking it for people who aren’t interested in dictation and maybe don’t type that quickly? When we talk about super high creative output, is this something that’s intended to be sustained, or the result of a carefully planned sprint. How does one stay motivated for such high output? And more generally, how does one stay motivated at all? It seems like the last few years have been perfectly concocted to sap motivation and enthusiasm.How does one avoid burnout? It seems like setting too strenuous a pace is a sure recipe to hit a wall.I know you’re working towards hitting a million words this year. How are you keeping track of that, which words are you counting (final revision vs initial rough draft), and do you have any tips for someone who’d like to make (and reach) that sort of a goal?Would you explain for new listeners what writing to market is?There are different kinds of markets. Things like romance, thrillers, and such have evergreen markets, while other markets can emerge due to trends and new niches. If someone is interested in writing to market, is there a type of market that is better to target?How do you know if it’s a good and profitable market?I know from your YouTube Channel that you’re working on a new epic fantasy series. Is this a passion project, or did you apply your write-to-market methodology to choose it?Could you talk about any research you did on the market and how you’re approaching the launch? How can one succeed at writing to market or just launching a new career as a non-fiction author?I think you’ve scrapped it, but at one point I believe you were thinking of writing a Writing to Market 2 book. Have things changed? Are there any new challenges authors should be aware of in 2021? You were doing an anonymous pen name at one point. If you’re open to talking about it, how did that go, and did you learn anything from it? As your backlist continues to grow, how are you handling promoting it and making sure readers are still discovering it?You’re currently all in with Amazon KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited. Would you give your thoughts on the state of KU?Do you think epic fantasy is a natural fit with a tendency toward longer word counts?
SFA 084 - Book Launch Check List Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-04-01 | Episode 084Released on: April 1st, 2021Show Notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/084-book-launch-check-listThis week, the hosts discuss their book launch checklists, such as download bonuses, book covers, editing, newsletter and social media announcements, and other things that help them stay focused and get the ball rolling for new releases. To finish, they answer listener’s questions on Amazon KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited compared to going wide into all of the bookstores. Listener Questions for KU/Wide:Is there a way to straddle both successfully? I love being wide but almost all of my comparable authors are in KU or are trad published. Would it be better to put series in KU a couple of months after publishing wide the last book in the series or book by book?A lot of the commentary on the advantages of going wide seem to involve having a dedicated representative on the different platforms to help set up campaigns, getting spotlighted, merchandising, etc. Is this a key item in being successful wide, or more of a nice to have but not necessary?I once spent a lot of time and several hundred dollars sending traffic to Kobo, thinking I might build some traction there over time. Imagine my delight when I discovered their site was completely down and all the traffic had gone nowhere. I couldn’t believe a major retailer like that would have their whole site down for hours. I couldn’t take them seriously after that. At least when I throw traffic at Amazon I know the site will be there 24/7.What about selling direct or on Kickstarter? Lindsay touched on her Patreon distribution briefly, but part of being wide/non-Amazon exclusive is also being able to sell ebooks on your own website.I’d love to know at what point you decided to start a patreon to allow non-KU readers to get your books before they go exclusive?
SFA 083 – Your Questions Answered on Kindle Unlimited / Amazon KDP Select vs Wide Six Figure Authors Podcast 2021-03-26 | Episode 083Released March 25th, 2021Show notes: 6figureauthors.com/podcast/your-questions-answered-on-kindle-unlimited-amazon-kdp-select-vs-wideIn Episode 80, we went over some of the pros and cons of going exclusive with Amazon for ebook publishing versus opting out of that program and making your ebooks available in all stores.For this week’s episode, we finished up going over who KDP Select / Kindle Unlimited might be best for and who a wide / non-exclusive (or hybrid) approach might be best for. Then we answered listener questions on the subject.Here’s the list of questions:In Part 1 of KU vs. Wide (Episode 80), Lindsay mentioned she often starts a series in KU and then takes it wide. What is your launch process and pricing strategy for taking the series wide? Do you put the whole thing out at once on the other retailers, or release a few and put the rest on pre-order? Do you do permafree or a 99-cent book one? Lastly, do you have any suggestions on trying to get promotions for the other vendors?Regarding marketing wide, which platforms do you market on? Do you just use Facebook, or do you advertise on the individual platforms, or are there other strategies?I’ve seen some authors go into Kindle Unlimited for a period of time, then going wide, then back into KU, rinse and repeat. Have any of you tried this? What are the pros and cons?I would love to see if a book’s primary genre impacts success wide vs KU for new authors.Have you noticed any difference with best price points comparing Wide to Kindle Unlimited? I suspect, if there is any difference, that you have to have a lower sale price in Amazon if the book is in KU… but I have no clue if that is true.I’d be very interested in some numbers around how much of your audience continues to buy your books after you leave exclusive and end up going wide. I know there are differing anecdotes and beliefs, and my gut feeling is that it is really only the diehard, core fans who will, but it would be nice to know that for sure.The “general” wisdom is that KU readers are not loyal and won’t buy your books at full price. Do you find that to be true? Also, are they a dead weight on your newsletter? And do you try to separate them in any way? This is not related to KU, but if it’s not too personal a question could you share the size of your newsletters?Is it recommended that books that are kept in KU be long books (say 100k + words) to make the page read rates worth it? Or can shorter books also make pretty good money in KU?I’d love any firm data on if/when Bookbub deal ads actually accept KU books vs wide. Also data as to how long it takes to establish a series wide and if (might be genre-dependent) it can make more that way.Right now I’m in KU. Is a drop-off in page reads the only indicator to consider going wide? Since so much is talked about the next book/series being the best thing to grow your readership, should a new author wait several series before pulling? (Assuming no major changes in the landscape)We had more great questions that we ran out of time for, but we’re planning to include them in a future episode.In the meantime, you can ask questions or talk to others about publishing and marketing in our Six Figure Authors Facebook group.Thanks for listening, and thanks to Joshua Pearson for producing the show!
