Book Marketing Show Podcast with Dave Chesson

Back in Episode 61, we talked about what it's like to work with publishers and the differences between legitimate, illegitimate, and vanity presses. But in today's episode, we talk with an author who has gone the traditional publishing route and self-published. She has also set up her own publishing company. Anna David became well-known as a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers. When her first novel was picked up, her publisher, unfortunately, ended up in the midst of a scandal, and the book was published under a fake imprint. Although she received plenty of press, the book did not sell well. This was back in the early 2000s, before everyone, it seems, was on social media. But Anna also realized that unless you are a major celebrity, publishing houses will only do so much for your book. She found even if the publisher is paying you upfront for the book, you still have to know how to market yourself. She also says it's important to focus on owning your audience and making sure it's not an audience you'll lose should you decide to switch to another publisher or self-publish in the future. Anna has now become a publisher for others with her friend Kristen McGuiness. She helps new authors establish a writing presence, and she also helps authors with their writing and marketing. One of the most important lessons to take from this episode is just because you're able to land a contract with a publishing company, it doesn't necessarily mean success. Even with traditional publishers, it's still important you know how to market your book yourself. For more information about Anna, or any of the resources mentioned, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e63

As an author and consultant who has worked with a number of book publishers, it's important for us authors to understand how publishing companies work, what they look for in books, and what authors need to consider before signing anything. The biggest thing to consider is these companies are looking for books that will sell. There are four main things to take into account when it comes to leveraging your book: The subject matter is something the company really cares about. Your own sales as a self-published author. Your social media following and/or email list. How much you stick to the company's core structure. There are so many independent book publishers now, you may find it's easy to find a publisher that is perfect for your genre or book style. You may even find publishing companies that are focused even more on particular niches within that genre. If you've already self-published, having good sales numbers is also appealing to publishing companies. Even if you're not published yet, you may have already been building an email list or your social media following. Publishing companies are able to see those numbers as absolute sales, and they'll see you as a good risk to take. I've even seen one author leverage different publishing companies against one another to get a six-figure deal. If you find a publishing company that seems to fit your genre, you may want to look at other books they have published to see their core style. If you're able to write in that style, you'll look more appealing to that company. Before You Sign You may have found what you think to be the perfect publishing company for your book. But before you sign anything, you should be aware of the different ways deals can be structured. When talking with Jeff Goins, another author, he said when you sign a deal with a publishing company, how much they give you upfront is usually an indication of how much effort they're going to put into your book marketing. If they put money up front, they have more skin in the game to recoup those costs. Find out what kind of support you'll receive from your publishing company. Will there be a marketing team? What kind of marketing are you expected to do? After a Rejection Understand that you may get rejected, as well. J.K. Rowling is known for getting rejected by many publishers until her agent called in a favor and begged a publisher to read the first "Harry Potter" book. But if you get rejected from one of the major publishing companies, you may be passed along to their vanity press, which is like a subsidiary of the bigger company. You may have to pay to get published through these, plus you'll have to do a lot of your own marketing. And on top of that, they still get a cut. Smaller publishers may be able to give you more personalized attention. Be sure to do your research on the ones you find, though. It's easy enough to create a limited liability corporation, throw up a website, and call yourself a publisher, but find out if they actually have the skill-set to get your book in front of the right market. Regardless of your decision to sign with a big or small publisher, it's still important you learn marketing. Gaining a following and an email list is essential, as well. These are tools that will help you sell your own books, as well as pitch your books to publishers. Resources Referred to in this Episode: Jeff Goins Book Marketing Show Setting Up a Book Publishing Company

When you first start out as a writer, you may be looking to supplement your income. One great way of doing this is to become a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter is an author who is paid to write a book for someone else. It may not seem like it carries the same weight as authoring your own book and seeing your name on the cover, but there are a lot of reasons not to discount ghostwriting. For one thing, it could bring in enough income for you to be able to quit your 9-to-5 job to focus on becoming an author, like our guest on today's podcast, Matthew Thrush. Matthew is a six-figure ghostwriter. He went into it with the idea that he liked to write, but quickly realized that he was able to quit his day job to become a ghostwriter for others. For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e59

Writing a children's book is not something to go into lightly. Sure, it may sound like less work because they're typically fewer words, but there are things to think about you may not be prepared for. But if you have ever thought about it, it's a great market to get into. About 40 million children's books are sold online every year. Eevi Jones has written more than a dozen children's books of her own and uses her knowledge to teach others the skills needed to write, publish and market their own children's books. The tips she shares in this episode will help you think about the different factors to consider when writing a children's book, as well as get you started in the right direction. For more information, visit the show notes at http://kindlepreneur.com/e57

If you're using CreateSpace to create and market your book, you won't want to miss this ingenious way you can price your book higher, sell it for a lower price, and still get the royalties that come from the higher price. While you may not necessarily use this tactic, I do encourage authors to test different prices for their books anyway to see what works best for them. Former guest Derek Doepker stumbled upon this hack and talks with me today about how it works and how we can use it ethically. This is within CreateSpace's terms of service, but when you use this hack, you want to make sure you're adjusting the price so it make sense for the size of your book and still gives Amazon and Barnes & Noble a profit. For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e55

Derek Murphy continues our discussion on book cover design. We've both tried to make our book covers stand out, but many designers will tell you a cliche book cover may do really well because it's what the audience wants Derek has spent plenty of time reviewing what kinds of covers work better to convey what the book is about. This translates into more clicks on an ad with a cover that is intriguing to them. For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e53

For new authors without much of a following, the idea of a book marketing service may seem appealing, but you should be wary of them. I'll be going over some of the things you should think about when it comes to book marketing services, as well as listing some red flags to be aware of if you do decide to use one. Not all book marketing services are bad, in fact there are some out there that may be able to help with your marketing just fine. Although any good book marketing service will most likely put authors through a submission process to make sure they have the capability to be able to market your book; in fact, many act similarly to a publishing company. However, nobody is going to better than you at marketing and selling your book because nobody has as much skin in the game. For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e51

Fiverr may not be the first place you think of when it comes to where to go to find someone to design a book cover for you, but if you're on a limited budget it's not a bad option to look at. For those who may not know, Fiverr is an online marketplace where people will post jobs they can do that cost as little as $5. There is also a lot listed that is more than $5, but the name comes from the idea that you can find people willing to do the work for little money. Finding someone to design a book cover on Fiverr can be tricky, but in this episode, I'll talk about three ways to approach finding an artist in order to get you the book cover you not only want, but is also good quality. For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e49

When Ethan Jones first published his book, he sold five copies the first month. As the years went on, he improved his marketing skills and improved as a writer. He decided after six years to do a complete rewrite, cutting almost 15,000 words, editing chapters, and added a better ending. He also added a cliffhanger so readers would want to move on to the next book in the series. I did pretty much all that I had learned in order to make a book more captivating for the reader. One thing Ethan did was instead of putting up a new version of the old book and keeping the reviews, he republished the book. Even though the reviews weren't awful, they were at about 3.8 stars, and many of the reviews reflected the old version. When he republished the book, he wanted to start fresh without any of the old reviews. There are two ways of uploading a new book to Amazon: If you decide to make it a new book, you can do what Ethan decided to do and republish it without any of the old reviews. The other option is to publish the new book, but contact Amazon to transfer the reviews over. We've talked in past episodes about authors republishing their books with new covers, but Ethan had already changed the cover a few months prior to the new release. He had also changed the description for the book. Ethan used a three-pronged approach for pre-launch: He worked with his list. He used paid promotions. He contacted author friends for help with promotion. By the time Ethan was ready to launch his book again, he had about 10,000 readers in his email list, which was incredibly important for him. He asked them to either put a review of the new book if they read the older one and he offered to send them the new version so they could read it and consider leaving a review. He also lowered the price to $0.99, which is a lowest a book can launch at. In the years of being an author, he had made friends with other authors and reached out to them to add his book to their email newsletter, which helped market the book. He also used AMS ads and Facebook ads, and book promotion sites to help him with his launch. After all his efforts, the final comparison is his first edition of the book went from 10,000 sales over the course of six years at $2.99 to 1,000 copies during the first two weeks of the new version's release at $0.99. Bio of the Author in the Case Study: Ethan Jones is an Amazon bestselling author of the Justin Hall spy thriller series; The Carrie Chronicles, which features Justin Hall's partner; the Javin Pierce spy thriller series, and the Jennifer Morgan suspense thriller series. Ethan is a lawyer and lives in Canada with his wife and son. Find links to resources in the show notes at http://kindlepreneur.com/e47

Even the most nit-picky of writers needs someone to look over their work from time to time. Having a proofreader means there is an extra set of eyes and, in many cases, a fresh set of eyes that might catch things that, as the writer, you might not. Caitlin Pyle is a proofreader for books and teaches others to become proofreaders. Not only has proofreading become her full-time job, but it has also helped her and her proofreading students make connections to other authors. For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e45

When it comes to picking the right cover, title and description for your book, your opinion as the author may be biased because you already know exactly what your book is about and what's inside. For those coming across your book for the first time, though, it's important to take into consideration what they are attracted to. Finding this out requires testing, which can either be done on Facebook, or as Kim Kohatsu and I will talk more about, a site called PickFu. This site allows users to test out their covers, descriptions or titles for users to judge which one they like best, and the best part is that users leave feedback about what they liked and disliked. For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e43

Audible has made it easy for people to download and listen to audiobooks, especially because they can listen on the go. With Audible's incentive of offering two free books when readers sign up, it's also become increasingly popular. Having and audiobook version of your book can be a great way to gain more readers, as well as add a little bit more credibility to your book. Derek Doepker has been turning his nonfiction books into audiobooks for three years and has seen their growth as a result. I brought him on today for a Marketers & Coffee session to talk a little bit about some options authors have for adding audiobook versions of their books. For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e41