The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 38 – Is visibility the worst enemy of self-publishing authors (with Jim Kukral)?

Discoverability is a true challenge for authors in today's publishing landscape. The Internet is a crowded place and it’s getting increasingly difficult for authors to get their work seen.

Jim Kukral is an Internet Marketing veteran who has helped companies like Fedex and Ernst & Young to understand how to use the Internet to grow their businesses.

He is also a bestselling author of non-fiction books and an international professional speaker. On top of that, he is the co-host of the Sell More Book Show podcast.

In this episode, he visits the Am Writing Fantasy podcast to discuss how to conquer the “visibility issue”. 

Jim's most recent book, “Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable" can be found here: www.beunskippable.com 

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Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (31s): Hello, I am Jesper and this is episode 38 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and we are going to talk about how to conquer the visibility issue in today's world. And the internet is a crowded place nowadays and it's getting increasingly difficult for authors to get their work seen. So today I actually brought on a guest who will help me understand how to navigate the issue of visibility. And that guest is Jim Kukral, who is also an internet marketing veteran who has helped companies like FedEx and Ernst and young to understand how to use the internet to grow their business.

He's also a bestselling author of nonfiction books and an international professional speaker. On top of that. He also hosts the sell more books show podcast. So that was quite a bio there. Jay, welcome to the amwritingfantasy podcast.

Jim (1m 24s): I am happy to be here. You have a wonderful podcast here and I've heard lots of great things about it and I know that's people who listened to it, so congratulations.

Jesper (1m 32s): Oh, thank you very much. We actually only recently shifted onto a 100% podcast focus because beforehand we had the Brown, I primary source was actually YouTube videos and then we just sort of uploaded a podcast version of it, but recently we shifted it around. So it is now a podcast where we only just uploading a YouTube podcast so to speak. So, so that's great. I'm, I'm glad you liked it.

Jim (2m 0s): I do.

Jesper (2m 2s): Anything else? Uh, you could tell us about yourself other than what I just mentioned in the intro? Jim

Jim (2m 8s): um, I'm uh, from Cleveland, Ohio and I have a family and I have been publishing content online for over 20 years before even blogs started. I started my first blog, uh, two months before nine 11. I am have written books before. They were called, you know, eBooks and just give you apps online. You know, so I've been doing this a long time. I am definitely not Seth Goden or Malcolm Gladwell, but I would like to be, uh, so, uh, I, I love, uh, producing content that helps people.

Jesper (2m 47s): Yeah. And, uh, I'm also a regular listener of the sell more books show myself and I really liked that. So, uh, since this is also a podcast, I might be listeners who are not familiar with your other shoulder. So perhaps before we dive into today's topic, maybe you could just share a bit about what you and Brian are doing over on the sell more books. Show

Jim (3m 6s): yeah, about five years ago, if you can believe it. I think it's five years. I'm bad at math. If you listen to the show, you'll see that we're bad at it.

Jesper (3m 13s): Yeah, I know.

Jim (3m 15s): We started a podcast called the sell more books show me and Brian Cohen and we did recorded the 282nd or 83rd episode yesterday. So we've done it once a week for all of these years. We're approaching our 300 episode and it's all about the news of what's happening in the world of publishing and self-publishing. It's really for indie authors of any genre who want to learn about the latest tools, tips, tactics, strategies involved in self publishing.

It's a fast paced format, 35, 45 minutes show of news and tips where we offer a little bit of commentary.

Jesper (3m 57s): Yeah, no, I, I re I really enjoyed also because you know, between you and the creative Penn podcast, you sort of get most of all the news you'd need. So you don't have to sit there and read tons of articles yourself. You can just sort of, you know, tune in once a week and listening to your podcast and then, uh, at least you sort of get the main picture of what's moving into publishing world. So that's, that's really good.

Jim (4m 19s): Yeah, that's the point. The point is to quickly give the indie author the information they may not have found on their own and then just offer a little commentary as well on how to help them sell more books. That's the whole why of the show.

Jesper (4m 36s): Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the 300 or five years that, that's a ton of episodes that you have released. I was almost about to say $300. I don't know why that, that number popped up in my mind, but, uh, it's a lot of episodes you have guys have released every week. Uh, that must have been quite a journey.

Jim (4m 56s): Yeah. You know, it's the longest podcast I've ever done. I've been doing podcasts before Heath Dube and you know, all kinds of stuff and this is the longest one I've ever participated in. The key to having a long podcast and doing it is just doing it consistently and having a consistent format. Um, if you're starting a podcast, definitely just have it be consistent every single week, release it at the same time and also have a very consistent format so that your listeners can get accustomed to it and used to listening to it.

Jesper (5m 31s): Yeah, yeah, exactly. That, that's also something we've tried to be mindful of now that we shifted to a a hundred percent a podcast instead of YouTube videos too, to try to build in some consistency. And you know, regular sections so that indeed, as you say, people can get used to the format. So that's good. But, uh, we wanted to talk a bit because you just released a book, a Jim called your journey to become, and, uh, we wanted to, I guess, use status as a bit of a springboard into a conversation about visibility and perhaps how, I guess that's self published authors, worst enemy now nowadays.

So, uh, I hope we can yeah. Get, get a bit around and look at this from different angles and so forth during our conversation here.

Jim (6m 20s): Well, yeah, I mean it's, the book just came out this summer and I'm very proud of it. It's the best book I've ever written. And you know, I make the argument in the book that the world has become skippable. Um, VR is allow us to fast forward through the commercials. When you're watching a show on Netflix, the very first thing that pops up when the show is over is the little button in the bottom right corner. It says, skip to the next show. Uh, people can't wait five seconds to watch the next show, right?

Uh, we become a skippable society. We, we have the technology to fast forward through the content that we want to consume and the content that we don't want to consume. And that comes all the way down to your brand as well. Um, it's not that attention spans are decreasing. We can still pay attention that the thing is we've just become really good at focusing and deciding what content we want to pay attention to.

So in your brain, there's a thing called the reticular activating system and it's the little thing in your brain that decides what information you're going to pay attention to and what information you're going to skip. It's a a great example of if you were in a very crowded room with 300 people and your a brother or your spouse is at the other side of the room and they a yell your name, there's a reason you hear it, number one, you hear it because it's your name, your condition.

Your brain is conditioned to be open to that sound. And it's coming from a familiar tone of voice of person that you are used to hearing and that's what your reticular activating system does. So I guess my point is that in this very skippable world that we're living in as authors, we have to find ways beyond just creating great content to get people to want to pay attention to us.

Jesper (8m 26s): Yeah, and that's definitely the hotline. I also noticed, uh, I think the, you know, Netflix apps, uh, I think they are a bit different in different places of the world, but at least here in my part of the world, I noticed it, it's probably only like maybe two months ago. But, uh, whenever you start a show, normally they run this sort of, uh, what happened last time on blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, that sort of thing. And then, uh, about two months ago, this option appear every time on the screen. Now we can just click like a skip intro. So, so I think that goes very hand in hand with what you were just saying.

You know, that we are very much skipping over everything nowadays and just want to get to the, to the main gist of things

Jim (9m 6s): we do. And we, we, we want to skip things. We've become a society of people who literally are just so busy. Uh, and we just don't have, we have so many things being thrown at us more than ever. More adds more content, marketing, more books. Um, and our brains are looking for reasons to skip things. And as an author you have to find ways to become unskippable. Um, and that's what the book's about.

Jesper (9m 38s): Yeah. And, and I, I think since you've written this book, I think I'm not going out on a limb in saying that, um, you probably share my view that, you know, discoverability in today's busy world is one of the most difficult things for us authors to deal with. But I'm curious what your view is on, on this topic, or maybe I should put a different, you know, since there was so much content on the internet, as you just said, and I guess in that way, consumer behavior has also changed quite significantly.

Maybe over the last, I don't know, decade or so. But what is it that we need, we authors need to understand about the modern reader because I guess it's the readers that we are, we're sort of after here.

Jim (10m 21s): The first thing you need to understand is that, uh, everyone's using their phone, right? So all you have to do is get on a bus or go to a waiting room or a doctor's waiting line or, or anywhere. And I want you to be very conscious of what people are doing when they are not distracted by anything. There was a report I wrote about my book that Microsoft did that said, when people said, when they're not distracted by anything, 77% of them picked up their phone as their first reaction.

And they looked at, we spend an average of three hours a day looking at our phones, not talking on them, okay? They beans spend an average of nine hours a day looking at our phones. All right? So the first thing that an author needs to realize is that we are living in a mobile world and people are staring at their phones, uh, hours and hours and hours per day. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about how somebody might come across your book, they probably found it on a recommendation on Twitter or Facebook or they were browsing the Amazon app or Kobo app on their phone.

And that kind of leads into the line of thinking then, well, does your cover pop? Does your title, uh, make sense? Does, um, does your cover look like the other covers in the science fiction or fantasy categories? Right. Cause people buy what they're used to. You know, if, if I'm a big, I'm a big science fiction, I'm a reader, you know, I'm looking for, I made that consciously be doing it, but I'm subconsciously looking for books that look like the other books that I liked.

Does that make sense?

Jesper (12m 22s): Yup. Yup. Absolutely.

Jim (12m 23s): This is why the romance industry has what I call the shirtless Cowboys on it. Um, there's a reason there's a, you know, really six pack abs, a shirtless man on the front of 90% of all romance novels because that's what people are used to and that's what people want to buy. And that's what makes the books on skippable. So I cover to market strategy as long as uh, as well as a right to market strategy definitely helps make you unskippable.

Jesper (12m 59s): Yeah, and I think, I mean that there's 100% true in, in what you're saying around the, you really need to hit young our expectations and that's both entitling covers because otherwise you'd just in a came, especially today. And, and maybe just to use the Netflix example again here for a second, because I also noticed, you know, sometimes my wife and I have your we might be watching the same series but on on at different times. So she might have it in her watch list and I have it in my watch list. But it's quite interesting when you then go into your watch list.

The image that is displayed is different. So, so the same series, but the image that they show in the thumbnail for me is different than the one that show for her. It probably, because you know, they know why male and she's female. So they are showing us different things that they believe or they probably know through a statistical whatever that tha that that's something we like. More right. So, so, and I, I know I've heard you and a pen speak about this in the past as well, how she would love to be able to do different covers for different territories in the market.

So, so there's something about that too, you know, that, that our culture also dictates some of what we like and don't like.

Jim (14m 7s): Uh, yeah. I mean the companies like Netflix and Amazon especially are doing all kinds of, uh, testing. You know, Joanna is right. The AI part of this is becoming a big part of how it works behind the scenes. There are programs that are starting to be developed that will, uh, automatically right, uh, advertisements for you headlines. Interesting, right? So there's one coming out that I saw that will automatically do Facebook split ad testing for you and um, and it will write headlines.

It will write copy right and it will run a massive amounts of ads and determine which one is highest click. I mean we're eventually going to reach the point where a program like that you could just hit a button and it will put in a budget and it will run ads and create them all for you and just return the results later and say, well this one performed at the highest level, um, all written by AI. Um, now we're not completely there yet, but it's definitely coming.

Jesper (15m 18s): Hmm, that's interesting. And I wonder what they will charge for such a service, but that is certainly interesting.

Jim (15m 25s): Well, they will charge for it for sure. Um, but the beautiful part about it is, is that it is run by an, you know, a computer. It's an AI. So you know, the, there is no human labor involved so hopefully the service will be cheaper. Here's the problem though, when if you make it cheap enough, you've got a lot of authors using it and then all of a sudden the AI is, you know, producing all of these ads for all these different, you know, if you get, you know, 10,000 science fiction authors using it, you know, then I'll, the marketplace gets flooded.

You know, one of the reasons that, uh, if you find the time to learn how to do ads and learn how to market your book and put the time and effort and you could stand out, um, because you know, when you push that Boulder up over the Hill, you, you, you learn how to do it. You spent the time and effort and you spent the money and you could definitely a stand out above other authors. When the technology gets to the point where everyone can do it, uh, and the cost is low enough, then the playing field gets leveled a little bit.

Jesper (16m 37s): Yeah. And that's both good and bad. I mean, it's good that everybody can, can get to play, so to speak. But on the other hand, I mean we, we've seen it at least also with Facebook ads or especially with a Amazon ads that, you know, the, if you really want to hit those top keywords, you have to pay a lot per click nowadays. So it's, it's just been almost become impossible unless you're like selling box sets and whatnot, so you can afford to spend more. But, uh, on a single book it's almost impossible to at least for the good clicks, you know, the high profile words.

Very true. So that's, that's sort of the world we live in. Uh, and, and that all plays into why visibility is such a problem for us. But I think also, I quite liked how I picked up in the beginning of a your unskippable book where you are, you are sharing sort of your epiphany and you're, you're talking about how many defined success as being money. And basically we just talked about that too. You know, we, we, we just had the angle of how do we sell more books and, uh, I have also set before that, you know, getting rich might not be the best of success criteria is it's great if it happens, but it might not be the best to strive for.

But, but that's sort of what I picked up in the beginning of your book a bit capita. But perhaps you can elaborate on your line of thinking.

Jim (17m 57s): Yeah, I mean, uh, my book is a business inspirational book and I tell some personal stories in the book and one of the themes as you mentioned is, you know, why are we always shooting for as a human race, you know, how rich we can get and how successful we can get. Um, I personally personally believe that, you know, money being filthy rich and having a ton of money and losing my life because I spent so much time working to reach that goal is not the most appropriate thing for me.

There are some people who that's what they're into. They want to have a lot of money and that's fine. That's totally fine. If that's what you want to do. Um, I will say this, you know, it's a short life and the dream of, you know, being the next, you know, Andy Weir and the Martian is is a great dream to have, but you know, are you going to, uh, spend so much time and so much effort going after that dream that you miss everything else happening in your life? Um, and so there's a lot in the book about, you know, just mindset and trying to be in the moment.

You know, I think it comes from the fact that I'm in my late forties now, you know, I felt when I was younger and that's natural, but everybody goes through their own journey, especially authors, you know. However, I will say this, that you do need to have a business mindset when you are writing books. Uh, we talk about this on the summer book show all the time. Uh, the authors that are successful are the ones that, number one, right? A lot of books, a number to treat it as a business.

You know, the romantic dream of writing your first novel and the publisher comes and sends a limousine with champagne and writes you a huge check and you know, then you're on, you know, the tonight show after like that doesn't exist. Uh, it's, it's a, it's a dream and the reality is, uh, the people who are having success are writing a lot of books and who are, who are doing all the cover to market and cover two and write to market strategies and who are, you know, learning how to do ads and who are learning how to turn it into a business.

And that is the reality of the, uh, of the, uh, writing business today.

Jesper (20m 25s): Yeah, 100%. Uh, I mean the days where you could just write something and put it up on Amazon and then, you know, here we go. Those days are long gone. So yeah, I fully agree. You have to be really professional in, in getting good cover design and of course not forgetting professional editing of the books and, and those things that any like professional publishing company would do anyway. Even though you're just one author with your one-man company, you still need to do all those things, otherwise it's certainly not going to be successful and, and well, that's especially where you become skippable instead of unskippable.

Right. Because then it's just, ah, this was another pile of rubbish and people would just move on.

Jim (21m 4s): Well, you know, I'm, I write nonfiction books. However, I just started a project with a fiction author. We're going to co-write a science fiction adventure book together, which should, yeah. And I announced it on the show this week. So, you know, this is going to be my first attempt at writing a fiction book and I'm not a very good fiction writer, so that's why I teamed up with somebody else. Am right. One of the things I'm very cognizant about is right to market strategy.

Um, I read scifi books and I know what I like about scifi books and my, and I know what scifi book covers look like that sell well, I've done the research. Um, so one of the things I'm really worried about when writing the book is writing it to market writing putting the cover to market. So, um, I am, while writing it is going to be a fun thing to do. Uh, the reason I'm writing it is cause I want it to be successful. So I'm using it all of the knowledge and information I've learned over the years from fiction authors and doing the summer book show podcast to uh, make a really good attempt to try and write it like a business.

And does that take some of the fun out of it? Yeah, it does. Right. Um, I'll give you an example. Uh, my coauthor and I were doing some character development and some of our first meetings the other day and the antagonist. Uh, you know, we needed like a, a good name for the antagonist and you know, I wanted to pivot and kind of give the antagonist kind of like a funny, uh, you know, light light name, you know, something, you know, really kind of, you know, against the grain.

And my coauthor said our readers would hate us for that. Why that? Because they don't want, you know, you do a play on the name for the antagonist, they want it to sound evil. And so in my brain, I wanted, I wanted to do something that I thought would be fun, but then the marketplace would reject that. So I said, fine, let's keep it, you know, the trope that it currently is. And that's kind of a, that's kind of like a decision that I needed help to be made and I want the book to be successful more than I want to use some counter intuitive name.

Does that make sense?

Jesper (23m 33s): Yeah, completely. And, and, and I think it ties, we'll back to what we just talked about. You know, what, what the goal is. Because of course if, if one wants a book to be successful in terms monetary value, then obviously you need to play into to some degree at least to to the, to the market tropes and what we does I expecting and then you know, tweak it and twisted a bit so that it's not exactly what they've seen before. But at the same time they do recognize it. And I think when we're talking about, you know, a goal of monetary value then then I think a lot of this is also something that is something that we are just, uh, I don't want to use the word society, but we sort of brought up by thinking that you're only successful if you are a financial successful.

And I like to think that, you know, we need to take a bit deeper. And actually I, I also find a quote here, I could just drop them from your own book here where it says being unskippable, it's about mindset and the specific actions you take to achieve your goals and dreams. So there's a lot of accountability in that quote and, and it's talking about your goals, meaning that you need to decide for yourself what you find successful. And that could of course be, I want to earn a lot of money from this book, but I still think that if you have something underneath the need to sell more books, it could be, for example, I want to sell a lot of books because I want to be free of my day job.

I want to have more freedom or whatever. However you wanna phrase that, that is probably a better driver or what do you think?

Jim (25m 6s): Yeah, I agree. Um, there's, you know, I think, you know, in America there are definitely, uh, different ways that people think about these things. You know, one of the things I wrote about in the book was, you know, these America Americans consider the sign of a stagnant career if you're only working 40 hours a week. Yeah.

Jesper (25m 29s): Oh, Jesus.

Jim (25m 32s): Which is kind of really where the state of mind, you know, we have people here working, you know, and then there was another thing I just read about how um, you know, 30% of Americans are working a job but then also trying to figure out some kind of side hustle job like driving an Uber am. So we are very work focused here and that's a rental thing. And I, and frankly I don't think it's healthy, um, but it is where we are the rest of the world, you know, does it seem to have that mindset?

But nevertheless, that's where we are and everybody needs to make a decision of how they want to move forward with their life. Um, financial circumstances are a big driver of that. You know, people having to work multiple jobs to get by. I will say this, it's very important for you to set a goal and the goal should be, you can make it a financial goal because that's usually what sets people free from doing the things they want to do.

So write down how much money that you need to make per year to replace your current financial situation and then break it down into months. So if it's $100,000 a year divided by 12 months, that's how much you need to bring in every single month. So you can finally break free and quit your job if that's what you want to do and replace it with writing income. But know this, the way you're going to get there is going to be a ton of hard work.

It's going to be, instead of watching, uh, eight hours of a new show on Netflix, it's going to be, I'm going to write for eight hours instead. Uh, it's going to be, I'm not going to, uh, spend time on Facebook. I'm going to shut my phone off and I'm going to write for three hours instead. Um, it's, it's all about how high your pain level is and what you really want and uh, how bad you want it.

And that's what's going to make the difference of you having success. Cause again, go look at the top authors in your genre right now. There are V I guarantee you there's very few of them that have just written one or two books. Of course they're going to outliers. The people who are making big time money and who are being very successful are writing lots and lots and lots of books, you know, and look, use publisher rocket and look to see who these people are and see how they're doing it and how they're doing cover to market and how, you know, find ways to write more books.

If that means you have to come and find ways to collaborate with other authors, then you need to find a collaboration partner and start writing books. But that is the key right now.

Jesper (28m 26s): Yeah, I agree. And, and of course there is a, there was a challenge embedded here as well because I asked you just said, uh, some people work several jobs in the U S just to get by on a, on a daily day, day to day basis. Right. So, so there is, for them at least the question also becomes, well, how can I write if I also need some, some money to live? So, so yeah, I guess that, well, the point about how bad do you want it still applies, but, but, uh, it, I, I just want to acknowledge that it, it's probably difficult for some people even though they would really want it.

Jim (29m 1s): Is it really that difficult though? You know, I'll be the, I'll be the bad guy here. You know, I want you to examine how much time you spent on social media today. I want you to think about how much time you watched Netflix or Amazon prime or some show, right? So like, you gotta make a decision. How bad do you want to do this? How bad do you want this to happen? And examine the choices you're making in your life and decide and, and again, if you don't want it that bad, then that's fine.

That's totally fine. Some people don't want it that bad. I have a friend who is probably one of the most talented writers I've ever met, and he could be writing sitcoms and comedy specials. He's the one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life. But he had zero interest in moving to Hollywood. And having a career in it. He just likes to do it for fun. And that's frustrating as all you know what for me, because to see that kind of talent not apply itself, but guess what?

That's his decision. He has zero interest in, in using that to build a career and do that. And I had to learn how to deal with that. Uh, I have another friend who's one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life. He's Jim Carrey times 10. Am. Every time I meet him he makes me laugh so hard. I wanna pee my pants, but he is, he is so funny, but he has zero interest in starting a YouTube channel. He has zero interest in becoming a comedian. Um, it's just how some people are.

You have to decide what you want to do and if, if that's what you truly want, if you truly want to be the next Mark Dawson or Joanna Penn, um, then you're going to have to go ahead and put the effort in to get there. And that's the sad truth of it. There is work involved.

Jesper (30m 52s): Yeah. I mean, there is no shortcuts to success, no matter how you twist and turn it. You know, you'll have to put in the hours.

Jim (30m 57s): Nobody wants to hear that.

Jesper (31m 0s): No, no, maybe not. But at the end of the day, that's how it is. I mean, nobody got to the place where they are if they are successful by watching Netflix shows and the in the couch. Right. I mean, that's not how it works.

Jim (31m 11s): Yeah. I know. And I hate to bring that stuff up because like I said, nobody wants to hear that. But it is the truth.

Jesper (31m 19s): Yeah. Yeah, indeed. But I'm also wondering sort of if we're looking ahead Jim because, okay. Looking backwards for a second first maybe, you know, we came, I don't know what, maybe 10 years ago, you know more than this than I do because you were very much involved in the internet business like 10 15 years ago, but, but at least we came from a place where there wasn't as much content on the internet. Uh, of course you didn't have as many tools as you have today to, to help you to easily do things.

But it at least you didn't have the crowded space on the internet back then. And then nowadays we S we are in a place where it is pretty crowded. If you're smart about it, you can still become visible. And we talked about some of those things that you could do already here in this episode, but if you're looking ahead Jim like, like I dunno, 10 years ahead of something, where do you think that the future of marketing is going on the internet?

Jim (32m 16s): Well, I've seen all the shifts. I've been doing this for over 20 years. Um, technology plays a big part in it. Uh, you know, how, how people react. It always comes back down to one thing, which is authenticity, uh, and great content. Um, so, you know, there was a tie, we went through this shift where everything became automated. You know, everybody talking about chat bots and you know, automated sales funnels and those things are, those are good tactics and they still do work.

But I think the biggest thing I want to point as this, you know, there's never been a greater time in the history of the world to build a brand and to get your name known and to sell a product or a book right. In that then right now there never has been and just because there's more competition doesn't mean that it's harder. It's actually easier than ever if you and I wanted to, right now it's like we wanted to meet in a room for the next seven days and write a book together.

We could have a cover designs, we could write a book together, we can edit it, we can put it up on Amazon and you and I could then go on Facebook and Twitter and tick tock or wherever else, Instagram, and we put it out in front of millions of people with a click of a button and have the opportunity to sell that right away. Right. That is a game changer. Before the internet, before all these social media channels, it didn't have that you, you couldn't just instantly create a brand and a business overnight.

You can do that now. Um, and that is a huge opportunity. That's still a lot of people. I just don't think, I think everyone takes it for granted how simple it is. I could develop a course. I could get off this podcast with you and go, you know what? They gave me a great idea for a course on how to help authors. I could sit in my office for the next 24 hours, create the course, put a website up for it, and start selling it a day later and making money. That's an opportunity.

Um, it's just, again, how bad do you want to do it? But it all comes down to the core basic principles, which I write a lot. You know, there are two reasons people use the internet. Number one is to have a problem solved. And number two is to be entertained. Now, when you put that into the book conversation, uh, to be entertained as fiction and to have a problem solve this nonfiction. So when you start thinking about things in that term, all your, if you're writing fiction, you need to entertain people.

If you're writing nonfiction, you need to solve problems for people. And that's just the basic core of business and how you approach writing as a business, solve problems for people or entertain them at the highest level and then just go out and start putting it out there. You don't have to be salesy, but you do have to go out there and be authentic. You know, um, authors that are really working on social media to share parts of their, their lives are authors that are telling stories and bringing in people.

Uh, I would highly recommend that everybody do a Google search for something called 1000 true fans. Um, it is an amazing piece that was written years and years ago, probably 10 years ago now. And it basically makes the argument that any artist, whether it's a musician, a writer, uh, anyone who creates content or any type of business can survive and build a successful business off of 1000 true fans. Because if you have a thousand people who are true fans of you, you will sustain a career.

Um, because a true fan is somebody who, uh, will drive four hours in a snow storm to come to your next book signing because they love you so much. On top of that, they will advocate for you and evangelize about you and create bog blog posts and do videos about you without you asking. Um, that's a person who will buy the, you know, six box set of your book, even though they've already bought all of your six individual books are ready because they just needed to have the box set.

So if you can cultivate a true fan in today's world, then you can build an entire career off a thousand those thousand people. And that's the only way you're going to do that is build trust and be authentic with who you really are to your audience. And they will reward you for that. Um, if you are, uh, the days of being stand offish and known not answering your emails, I still get frustrated at this. Like there's some very big time authors who have come onto the scene in the last year and one of them I've been trying to reach for six months and I've tried Facebook, Twitter, email, uh, tried to go through networks to find phone numbers.

This author is a complete ghost. They, they, they cannot be contacted. And you know what? I'm annoyed. I'm completely annoyed by it. You can't, you can't respond to me on Facebook. You can't, you can't send me an email back. You can't, you know, just say hello, right? I, I'm not asking you for anything. I wanted you to be on my podcast, but at least tell me know, you know, that annoys the heck out of me. I'm not gonna say who it is and their content of their book is great, but you know what? I have a bad taste in my mouth from that author and I, it's not somebody that I respect because they just can't even talk.

I respond to every single email. I give people out. My cell phone numbers say texts me in my book, in the book I gave, here's my cell phone number, text me, tell me if you're enjoying the book. That's just how I operate.

Jesper (38m 4s): Yeah. And, and the, and I think that is important. I think it's important to be approachable. And I also just want to acknowledge that a 1000 true fan, uh, input you gave there. If, uh, if the listener is looking for it, you can also go onto YouTube and actually just search for 1000 true fans. And there isn't, there's an interview with the, with the guy who wrote that article and I think indeed it is like 10 years ago, but it still holds so much true today and it's, it's really good. And it's funny because it was just sort of a thought that he had and he, he didn't know if it was true or not, but at the point when he says in the interview, when he wrote that article, it was more like, I think that it might be like this.

And then he published that article and it just resonated so much with especially people in the creative community like authors and, and stuff like that. So, uh, so I, I really think that that is, uh, if you haven't seen that one yet, deal isn't it? And go and check that one out because it's really good. The other thing I was just thinking based on what you said Jim was, uh, I also think that we need to be careful not to always focus on the negative, right? I mean, probably like 10 years ago, people were complaining that, well, well there was also those people who thought that the internet would go away tomorrow affect them.

But, but I guess there was also complaints about how, you know, you needed to know a lot of coding and it was not easy to make content on the internet and so forth. And as time went by, now it is actually pretty easy to, uh, produce content. But now people are now complaining that, well, what we're talking about here today, that discoverability is an issue. And I got, I don't know, in five years from now it'll be something else people are complaining about, but I think sometimes we, we also need to take a step back and just acknowledge what you said before Jim in the sense that it is a, it's a very good time to actually be selling books now and because we have all these tools, yes, maybe there is a discoverability issue, but it's also a matter of trying to find the opportunities and how to, how to stand out of the crowd, which is definitely not easy, but I mean it's still better than what it used to be in today's market.

Jim (40m 12s): You like to go back? Let's go back in time. Okay. Let's go back in time to before Amazon, before the internet to be discovered, you had to go through a gatekeeper as a publisher or an agent and they had to determine if your content was worthy enough to be given to the masses. Okay. The select few who were chosen to have good content enough where then a distributed out to bookstores and popped about and New York times bestseller list and things like that.

So a couple people in the entire world, we're controlling all of the content distributed to the rest of the world. Would you like to go back to that? Cause I wouldn't, there was an absolutely terrible time to be a content creator, to be an artist, to be somebody you had to spend 20, 30 years building a brand, creating content or would you rather have it now where everybody has an equal opportunity and I don't buy the argument that discoverability is harder than ever.

You are just not using all of your best effort to get there. Um, there are, uh, there is the very easy ability to go out and learn how to use Amazon ads and create ads and start getting your book out and start selling immediately. There is a very ability to start using Facebook ads. There is a very easy ability to start your own podcast or create a video or create some type of content that will help people find your book.

You just maybe just don't want to do it and that's because you are still in that romantic dream of that. I'm just going to write a book and everybody's just going to come and read it. But the world has changed. You have to treat this like a business, right? A lot of books, right? Covered a Mark, right? Right, right to market, covered a market, have amazing book descriptions. Make sure you price it the right way and for and here's really what you're asking me here. There is a lot of people who still are in the artist's mentality.

Um, and the art mentality is I am doing this for the art of it and I just loved to do it and I'm upset that I have to treat this like a business. And unfortunately that's exactly what we're where we're at. If you do not want to treat writing books like a business, the odds that you are going to have success diminish by you know, 99% and again, people are like dang it Jim why are you telling me this? Well, it's just the truth and I think everyone listening to this knows that but sometimes they need to hear it again.

Jesper (42m 55s): Yeah. We were back to the fact that you have to put in the work right at the end of the day that that's what it is.

Jim (43m 1s): Very preachy thing by me. I wasn't my intention to do this at all.

Jesper (43m 9s): No, but, but uh, at the end of the day it is true. Right? I mean, and I, I certainly think that there is an, I'm also speaking to myself here. I mean making like visibility, your worst enemy is also something that you choose to do. I mean we can focus differently. We could try to focus on, okay, maybe my covers are actually not sugar specific enough. Maybe my titles is not selling what this younger is to do. Rita, maybe I didn't do enough editing or I skipped something along the process there.

And then, yeah, of course you do suffer discoverability consequences of those choices. But on the other hand, things are so easy today with, with, with online stuff. Did you, you can still go back and change it and it doesn't, it doesn't require too much. Like you don't have to go to your major publishing company and say, can you please take change my cover? And then they tell you no, and you can just do it first. So maybe we need to focus on the post attention

Jim (44m 5s): that came out almost 10 years ago was published through Wiley as my only traditionally published book. And, uh, I didn't like the cover that they did for me. Of course they wouldn't let me do my own cover. Um, I didn't like the title of the book. Um, that ultimately they decided, um, I didn't like any of it and I would like to go back now if I had the rights to it and redo the book with the cover and the title, but I can't do it because they own it. Right. So, you know, that's, you know, that's a problem for me and which is why I self published now because, uh, I just want to have that control.

I want to be able to change. Like if I, you know, book cover designs change, you know, there's two years from now we might be seeing a totally different trend of covers might be more illustrated covers in a specific genre. We don't know. You need to be.

Jesper (44m 56s): Hmm. Yup. Exactly. And uh, I can also see that we're coming up on time here. Am GM. So I want to make sure to thank you very much for that. You took the time out to come and talk to me here today and uh, maybe you can share, where do you prefer people to pick up your book from if they interested? Is that just Amazon or how do I do about that?

Jim (45m 19s): You get a copy of, I will say this, the um, people who were the arc readers of the book, we're all authors and I have gotten since 84 positive reviews of the book in about less than two months. So if you are an author and you're thinking, this book is not for you, you would be wrong because all of my arc readers were authors in fiction, authors and nonfiction authors and they really enjoyed the book. So if you go to be unskippable.com that just takes you to my website, it's much easier to spell than my name.

So be unskippable.com you can find my book there and check it out. I think you'll really enjoy it. I think it'll will inspire you.

Jesper (46m 3s): Excellent. I'll put the link in the show notes as well. So, uh, for you listeners out there, if you're interested, just check out the show notes and click through debt and you don't even have to make a note if you're out on the move at as you listening to this. So, uh, thanks you. Thank you very much. Jim for for talking to me today. And um, and thank you for your focus on motivating people on a daily basis. I know you guys do that over on the sell more books show as well. So I think we need more people like you.

Jim (46m 31s): Well, I think we need more people like you who will consistently produce content in a great format and continue to do shows like this. So thank you so much for doing the show and thank you so much for having me on.

Jesper (46m 44s): All right. Thank you very much. And uh, thank you for tuning in again this weekend, your listener, and uh, yeah, just come back next weekend. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't done so already.

Narrator (46m 58s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 37 – How to choose a title for your novel

You've got the story, but what do you title it? Is choosing a title for your novel pivotal? Are there any steps to pick the right title?

Autumn and Jesper hash out why choosing a title is actually very important and how to go about doing it in episode 37 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast.

Check out the links we mention in the podcast:

https://www.adazing.com/book-title-generator/

https://www.pickfu.com/books

http://www.lulu.com/titlescorer/

https://publisherrocket.com/

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (1s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper. This is episode 37 of the amwritingfantasy and we're going to talk about how to choose a title for your novel.

Autumn (43s): It should be an interesting one because I know you and I have very different techniques. Yes. For on how we choose our titles, which would make it really fun for our code books, but we'll get to that in a minute. For now it's a kind of a fun week, so for me, I've just actually gotten off the road, you know, I live like in a camper and we travel all over North America and we are finally landed back in Pennsylvania. I'm visiting my parents, which is always fun and I'm adjusting to waking up in a real bed and are better having family around and not just birds and squirrels.

So that's my life right now that it's so far so good. It's always nice. I'm catching up on sleep for some reason even though we slept really well and I love sleeping in the camper. Am just been tired the last couple of days. So yeah. You said you fell asleep on the couch or something like that? Yeah, yeah. Which is not like me. I'm not a nap person. But yesterday I couldn't, especially just seeing my parents for the first time in months and months and months and, and you know, I'm supposed to be like talking and socializing and I just passed out on their couch.

Jesper (1m 54s): How do you wear, when you're traveling around, how do you actually do laundry and stuff like that? Do you find like laundry, laundry mats? Is that Colton? Is that what you do or do you have any sort of, uh, laundry or possibility in the car? How do we actually do both?

Autumn (2m 14s): So sometimes we'll actually, there's like three choices. Sometimes we go to a town with a laundromat and go there. We used to sometimes stay at a hotel and often they will have at least a washer and dryer and some campgrounds. Especially you're a Canadian, uh, campgrounds. So Canadian national parks, you guys, Canada, you guys are awesome. I don't, there can be, not say that, but uh, often the Canadian national parks, we'll actually have a washer and dryer, which American national parks often don't even have a shower. So I can't even tell you how awesome Canadian national parks are compared to the U S ones.

Sorry guys. It's true. Why is that? Do you know what, why is that different? I don't know. I don't know if we just have more of them and they're very much, the U S ones are very much under funded. They cannot even keep up with the road upkeep where the Canadian, I've been to some of our national parks and they literally have these granite countertop wash stations with under counter lighting is where you just can go and do your dishes and they have hot showers.

I mean there are nicer than someplace, some luxury resorts I've stayed in and this is just a little pavilion to do your dishes and hang out and talk. And they often have open fireplaces. I mean, they're just amazing, amazing places. And then the U S ones, they're often, you know, struggling to stay open, struggling to take care of their finances, don't even have enough interpreters and park Rangers. So mostly budget, uh, Canada seems to take their national parks really seriously. And they just had their anniversary.

I can't remember if it was the Centennial or 150 years on their national parks. And they put a ton of money and made all the national parks in Canada free in 2018 and that was, I just can't imagine that U S doing that. There's one day a year that they am they last weekend, I think it was, or maybe it was Sunday, they actually opened up all national parks in the U S for free one day versus an entire year. So it's just a lot different approach. And I think there are maybe not as big visited.

Um, the U S ones, there's a few that are really, I've never been to Yosemite. I'd love to see Yosemite. I don't know if I'll ever make it to Yosemite because there's a wait list to get in, but Oh yeah. So the last option I mentioned, I can do laundry in camp. We have something called a scrub, a bag, which I think might be out of Australia. I can't remember where the companies from, but it's this cute little plastic bag that looks like, um, you know, an airtight, watertight one and it has these little things in it. You put in, you know, a couple of shirts, waters and laundry detergent.

You scrub, scrub it for like need it like as a loaf of DOE, uh, for like three minutes. And I cannot believe how well this thing works. When I went out and first got it, I'm like, you want me to do what? Are you kidding, kidding. And now it's just like, it's completely reversed. I'm like, you want me to go to town and sit there and, and nasty, you know, laundromat for flowers when I could just be here in camp.

And go, you know, I'm done in 15 minutes and you hang up your laundry to dry and I'm still talking to the squirrels. So I actually really like it, but it doesn't help when United up with some really like a lot of laundry. It just doesn't work. You've gotta be on top of it pretty much weekly. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, you don't want it to build up to a big pile of laundry to do. So, uh, we don't have much clothing with us. I mean, we are in our current camper. The area under the queen size bed is all closed storage and plus, you know, we have a few other notes and crannies where you can toss your jackets and things.

But yeah. You we don't have a ton of clothes, so, well, you know, when you're getting down to your skivvies you've probably waited too.

Jesper (6m 5s): Yeah, I can imagine. Um, and I also, um, well maybe it was while you were driving around. I don't know. But, uh, but at some point it was sort of leading up to summer, so it's a bit a while back, so to speak. But, um, so you told me to read a book, which I read over the summer holidays called StoryBrand, and it just, I just wanted to bring this up because it was quite funny in the, in the way when you, when you had read it then you S you said to me that, uh, I think actually maybe we should add like a attack line for the amwritingfantasy website, but we should probably also redesign it.

And I was like, uh, attack line. Why I don't see any point in that. And then over the summer I read the book and I was like, Oh, I'm so with you now. I fully, you're coming from. But it's funny. So I just wanted to, to bring it up because actually I think am for those listening, it is actually a worthwhile book to read. Also just in the sense that narrowing down, you know, as an author, why is it that you're writing and what are you trying to achieve and how could you, you know, communicated to, I don't know, maybe your family or it could also be to readers why it is really that you are, um, writing I, I think in that regard that that StoryBrand book actually works pretty well too.

So, um, yeah, so I just wanted to give that recommendation to listeners here.

Autumn (7m 38s): Yeah. And a big shout out to Gail Scrivener who, uh, was the Scribner cut podcast the guest for your podcast. She, um, she turned me on to, I think it's Don Miller sent Daniel, so I'm pretty sure it's a Dawn Miller, his book StoryBrand and yes, to have read that from, you know, as a graphic artists but also to, I've read that as an author as well as the, what we teach with the amwritingfantasy and are YouTube and everything we do, you suddenly realize how to break down your targeting and your audience and how to say what you're doing and how to kind of figure out what you're trying to do with this, what you're currently marketing, um, even your books.

And that was like, Oh, wow, yeah, I need to read. Is. I, and I ended up redesigning my personal website and now once I get some space and time on my hand and I recover more from the road, I want to, we went to tackle the amwritingfantasy website because yeah, it really, you suddenly realize how cluttered things are and how much more interesting it can be just to focus on some things. Sort of like, you know, no longer have to worry about all these crazy B-roll and stuff that you need to be to be doing the podcast.

Jesper (8m 48s): Yeah, yeah, me too. Me too. Absolutely. And, and I think yeah, as if I don't have enough things to record already, but uh, I actually thinking about maybe making sort of a, a free, not a freeze, what am I talking about? A free, a free, that's what I'm trying to say. Free a free video course that people could get once they sign up via amwritingfantasy to just make things a lot more simple. Uh, we do have a, some freebies on amwritingfantasy today.

Like for example, we have that am book price analysis. Um, but at the same time there are the resources out there that goes even into more depth. So, and I have some things on my list of things that I'm thinking that doesn't really fit into the other courses that we are going to create. They are still valuable. So I was actually thinking maybe once I'm done recording all the, all the stuff for the world building cost that I also have to do.

But once I'm done with all that, may, maybe I could do some recording of a, a shorter free cause that people could get their hands on

Autumn (9m 60s): you adding something else to your bottom of your never ending.

Jesper (10m 6s): I can't help myself. That's the problem with the amwritingfantasy. Podcast yeah. So actually we, we've sort of been batch recording a bit here because, um, yeah, we've, we just started this new format of the podcast and just in case any of us ever get sick or something should prevent us, we don't want to miss a Monday release. So we've been best recording a bit. And why I'm bringing this up is because in the one of the previous episodes here, we actually asked you guys out there listening if am if it's possible to leave comments on the Google podcast app or in the native Apple podcast app.

And of course, because we're batch recording, we don't know the answers yet. So I just wanted to reiterate that the, if you can please try to drop a comment and see if it's possible. And, uh, of course, and we have on our end, no idea if we actually gonna get notified if you do those comments. So if we don't respond to it, which I promise if I see a comment, I respond to it and then, you know as well that I saw it. But if we don't respond then I dunno, hit us up on Twitter or something and say that you left a comment because then at least we know that it's possible, but then we will also know that we can't see it or hear it.

But uh, yeah, you actually, the link to both our Twitter profiles, I in the show notes, so check that out. But I'm still curious to know if it's possible to comment on podcasts episodes.

Autumn (11m 36s): Absolutely. It, it'll be interesting and I, if we can't see the comments, if they don't come through automatically, I, there's gotta be a way that we can log in, you know, respond. It would just make a little note on our task list. Hey, you know, at least twice a week go over and see you comments.

Jesper (11m 52s): Yeah, yeah. Something, yeah, yeah, that would be good. But, but I, yeah, as I said, I don't even know if it's possible for people to leave a comment. So I guess that's hurdle number one, but probably somebody out there could, uh, could be so kind to test it out for us and then shoot us a message on Twitter or something to say either I have left a comment or saying I have tried, but it's impossible.

Autumn (12m 12s): And you said we know where we are with it and you definitely on Twitter, uh, me, I'm more on Instagram, but you know, I, I've been trying to be good now that I'm off the road that I've actually checking in on Twitter again. I used to be my main platform and was the last one I go to. I admit it, but ah, Instagram, if you're on Instagram you'll find me there. Yeah, absolutely. What, speaking of comments, so we actually had a really great one that just came through today that I thought was, it's so universally true because even with 16 books out actually happens to me too.

And that's what I responded to. But, uh, Sam went in on our starter kit, which speaking of freebies, that is our current free mini course that could teach you some really good tips, especially if you're a newbie, is just starting out writing to make sure that you make it into and through your first novel. And he said on the second one that this helps so much. I have a tendency to get bored towards the middle of my manuscript. With that boredom comes a bright new shiny idea that and latch onto and the process repeats without me going back to a previous story, too many Chinese in migraine.

So when I get bored again, I'm going to try to outline the next few chapters, interview or write a short story with some of my characters to get the boredom gap out. I really liked those ideas. Thanks. So that's cool. That is really cool. So want to thank you, Sam. I love the comment, but as I replied to him, it happens. I mean I'm currently in am. I was on a holding pattern. We talked about that before. I took a couple of weeks off from writing and now I'm getting back into it and I've just not what I want to go write something else because I got stuck in it.

I got stuck in my life. I get stuck, I took a break from writing and I'm like, Oh, I don't like the current setup. I want to do something else. And yeah, you know, this is going to be my 17th or 18th book depending on which one I release first. Cause I've got two things going at once and it still hits me. You still have to be, you know, sometimes I told him you sometimes you just have to be the stubborn person in the room and be like, no, I am not going to, you know, get out of this. I'm not going to turn around and not do this. So I make sure that I stick to what I'm working on because I've made a promise to my readers, but, and it's my business.

I'm, you know, professional. So I can't just go chasing rainbows and unicorns no matter how awesome and pretty and bright and shiny they are,

Jesper (14m 35s): right. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. And I also liked how, um, how you asked in the, uh, in, in the amwritingfantasy Facebook group, if anyone had am put some, some time aside for him, like a mid summer update of updating any of their back catalog of books with the links to their new books. Um, because that's, that's really something that is often overlooked isn't it, you know, to go back and update those, uh, those back matters of, of our previous books.

Autumn (15m 4s): Absolutely. And I really, uh, some of my first Epic fantasy series, I haven't, I need to go back and add mine to new releases from the summer. And I guess I'm just kind of putting it off because I've reformatted things a little bit and added a few new stuff, new pieces of back matter to my current novellas and I want to go back and put it in all the other ones. So it's not as simple as just adding a link. It's all gonna take a half an hour, then the upload time and yeah. Okay. This is my first day off the road.

Jesper (15m 33s): Yeah. So with that. And I also wanted to be loved.

Autumn (15m 38s): I know it's going to be so interesting. We have a interesting topic coming up, so let's

Jesper (15m 44s): go ahead.

Autumn (15m 47s): Okay. So how do you choose a title for your novel? That's always a tricky one for me. I, I've kind of go with a gut instinct feel, but I know there's other techniques and I know you do something completely different. Yes. For yes.

Jesper (16m 3s): Yeah. Well it's not because I originally was very scientific about it either. I think, you know, of course for I start, one could ask, you know, how, how, how much does the title and the subtitle really matter? And at least I think it matters a great deal because it conveys the sugar to the reader and above anything else it has to convey the Shaundra. Uh, and I think it's what you just mentioned there is more common than, than you think, you know, that authors tried to come up with something clever or unique or something like that and think, ah, that, that, that'll be good.

Right. But actually I would say no, it's, it's the opposite.

Autumn (16m 46s): I don't disagree with you. I think what I'm going with, my gut instinct is to fit the genre and the book and you know, Oh, it was like, you know, if something's going to have dragons in it, that's great for fantasy. But I also, I do know that there's people even I've seen on websites, that's my favorite thing when you're looking through the website menu and there's something so clever there and you have no idea what it means. So I do think there's a tendency for folks to have really unique, interesting names and words.

And sometimes that doesn't tell you anything about them.

Jesper (17m 19s): No, exactly. I mean, I, and I'm guilty of this too, so I'm, I'm sort of, uh, uh, you know, acknowledging that fact completely. Um, when I, when I had to name the three books in my Keystone boom, true religion, for example, I thought that I was really smart and, uh, I, I wanted all the, all eats of the book titles to start with the letter D because then I thought that'll be cool. Right? So I named them desolation degradation and damnation, those three books. And I thought that was awesome.

But if you weren't listening to the podcast and you knew that we are talking about fantasy from those titles, you will have no idea that it's a fantasy novel. And so yeah, it's, it's not a good, it's not good titles to be honest. And I think I actually, I should go back and change them and now should alter change the covers because I know a ton more today than I did back then. But yeah, you know, time, time is also an issue.

Autumn (18m 15s): I say if we always keep retweaking what we did but not, you know, at the same time there are some, um, some reasons too, but I know with my first trilogy, it was born of water, rule of fire and spirit of life. And of course it was elemental magic. So I made sure I had that in there. But I remember telling somebody a couple times, like born of water and they actually asked if it was religious. And I was like, um, maybe I'm just really out of tune with some religions cause I didn't even Dawn on me and it still doesn't quite.

Um, but again, that's just, it. That's the huge world. You're not going to be familiar with everything and you're not going to be able to control how other people will always interpret it. But I was thinking of the elemental magic, but again, I could have probably thrown something else in there. And I remember I was trying to be clever too, and also thinking, Oh gosh, I don't want to do this, is that there's five elements, uh, in my world and I should have five books and with a few other ones, like bones of earth and something else for the other are was missing as well.

And I'm like, uh, no, it's a trilogy. So I'm skipping those two. What I did, the next trilogy, I, you know, I had a few things on there. I have Gates of fire and earth. I have spark of defiance and a new goddess. So only one of them actually mentioned elements and the taglines, uh, w was pretty straightforward. Tag, realize am Epic fantasy adventure and elemental magic. Something like,

Jesper (19m 49s): yeah, that's good that that conveys this younger pretty clearly so people know what it is, right? When I think titles are more aligned with fantasy as well compared to mine. Um, but I, I think, you know, I, I went on to the top 100 bestseller lists in the fantasy category on Amazon, just to sort of check what people are saying there because that's always a a neat trick that you can apply is to go and say, look at the books that actually sells and what are they titling the books. And so I just pick three at random here just to give you and the listeners here in an example, you know of how you can use the book title to really show what that it is a fantasy book.

And of course in the bestseller lists lists, there are a hugely popular ones, like the Handmaid's tale, which is cutting the number one. Then of course followed by Harry Potter. So I left, left those out because that's, I say it felt like it. Well we all know those books anyway, so, and then I picked some of the other ones from the top one and you get tired. This like magic fury that King and then chosen you. See you see what I mean? Yes. If I just told you those titles and you have no idea where, you know, what's younger we are talking about, and I mean that you didn't know that this is offensive.

She podcast you would probably put it quickly guests that this is fantasy books. Right, right.

Autumn (21m 11s): And I used to say, I know some of the ones I've read like arcane you, you know, that's the magic and fantasy easily.

Jesper (21m 18s): Right, exactly. And that's exactly my point, right? I mean the title needs to clearly tell the reader that this is a book for you. And uh, if you being smart about it, like, like I was, then you're not telling them that. I mean, a book called desolation. What's that? It could be anything.

Autumn (21m 35s): Yeah, it sounds posted. Co park elliptic to me.

Jesper (21m 37s): Yeah. And then maybe a bit scifi could also be right. That's true. But yeah, so, so don't do that. The weird thing is I always end up repeating myself and do what I say don't do what I do because I, along the way, I always learn things too, to do them smarter. And then that's what I'm talking about. And of course I never did that myself. So, uh, yeah, learn from,

Autumn (22m 3s): well I think that's am that's part of the reason though, at least it's part of the reason I started with amwritingfantasy and doing it and my first blogs to other authors was because I am such a tendency to do things the hard way and learn by mistakes and I'm trying to keep other people from necessarily following in my footsteps and maybe just, you know, taking the easy path.

Jesper (22m 26s): Yeah. Hopefully that's at least the idea also also from, uh, from this podcast that we can, we can share our experience and then hopefully people can make a shortcut to not go through all the hurdles and hoops that we've gone through. Um, but I have quite a few tools that I wanted to share with people here as well that that can help with with all the titling. But I don't know if I should just jump into all that stuff. Autumn or, well, what do you think?

Autumn (22m 51s): I think so. I mean, I, like I said, the only thing I've done other than, um, going and randomly, you know, choosing something that feels like it fits my book and it sounds a little fantasy or running it by other authors obviously can also help. But, you know, I do know some people who go into, there's a few websites that will give you some good suggestions for like blog post titles, things that are clickable and that people will like. And I do know some people who do run titles through that, kind of like a title generator to see what comes up. And if something sounds even better and more exciting.

But those are the only three techniques I've thought of. So what do you have?

Jesper (23m 27s): Okay, so hang on because I have a long star, a long list of stuff of what of things you can do. So, uh, uh, of course we were going to put links to these different things in, in the show notes. So you know, you don't have to make notes of this stuff if anything piques your interest. Um, so just check out the show notes here. But first of all, I would say route, write down at least five different titles for your book. And of course each one have to clearly communicate that this is fantasy. And you can also use your subtitle to get specific.

For example, like if you want am autumn set gave an example before, but you could also just say like a tale of Epic fantasy or something like that, you know, just so that it's very clear. And if you are writing, for example a trilogy or a series, then the same logic applies to the series name. That's also needs to clearly communicate what this young race. So if you write down some different ideas, um, then that's a good start. But there was also some online tools that can actually help you out if you find it difficult to come up with something.

And there is, for example, one called adazing.com/book title generator. And again there will be a link in the show notes, but this one will actually suggest you some possible title names. And the cool thing about this tool is that you pick your stronger as well. So we will try to give you titles that are based on the genre. So that's pretty cool. And uh, as far as I know it's free, but I, I think you do have to create an account with your email address, but, uh, but I think it's, you don't have to pay for it other than that.

Oh, good. Um, and then there was also the possibility to use lulu.com/titlescorer which is pretty cool as well because it actually uses statistical research to give you a score for your title. So for example, as I said before, if you have five titles you came up with, you can type them into lulu.com uh, and then it will give you a score on how good it believes that the title is from a best seller perspective.

And that's pretty damn cool. And it because of you, because it's useless statistical research to back it up. So that, that's, that's, that's good. It's a good indication at least.

Autumn (25m 43s): Yeah. The scientist in me is like, Oh, I want to go try that.

Jesper (25m 46s): Yeah, exactly. So I think that that is cool. Uh, and of course one should never back away from anything called split testing. Split testing is always good. So again, if you have your, uh, your different titles, you can, for example, use pickfu.com/books. Uh, and that w that website will actually put your dif, different titles. You can put in like your two different titles and you could pitch them against each other and then PickFu we'll put it in front of an audience and let people vote on which one they liked the most.

So this one will cost you a bit of money to run that survey, but I think it will be well worth it. And um, and then basically you will get real people voting on which one they liked the most. And uh, yeah, that's always good.

Autumn (26m 33s): I kinda like that. That sounds like a lot of fun, which does also make me realize that Hey, I could always just ask the readers in my newsletters to do something very similar and not have to spend them.

Jesper (26m 44s): Yeah, exactly. That was where I was going next in that, that is absolutely right. So, of course, if you have an email list, you can just ask people or your email subscribers to vote. Uh, you know, you can even put it into like a, like a Google form or something and just ask them to vote and it will cost you nothing. Right. But, uh, I would say though that the, you need to have a certain amount of people voting down. I mean if you don't have at least a thousand responses, then it's not really statistically relevant. So you might end up, if you, for example, get let's say a hundred responses, you do run the risk that you might just have hit a very small subset of the market and they liked the particular title.

But actually the broader audience wouldn't. So be mindful of that, that you need enough people on your email list if you actually kind of go by their boats, I would say. Uh, but of course if you are losing you or using your email list, it has the nice added benefit of it that the, you know, you're getting people invested in your upcoming release because they are allowed to start voting on the title and imagine that you then pick one of the ones that the people like, right. I mean then they already pretty invested in the book before you even release it.

So, so that's an awesome benefit.

Autumn (27m 56s): Yes. I mean I just asked my newsletters, uh, my readers, which series, cause I started too serious with tune at different novellas and a mailer Lite has this really cool survey form that gives you a lot of results and it's just part of their, you know, newsletter building. And so yeah, I, I did something very similar and said, which one do I write next? And Oh my gosh, it was like 40% to 60. It was a 10% difference between which one I should write next. So it's kind of exciting.

The results come in and let readers know when the next email, which one they chose.

Jesper (28m 32s): Yeah. And sometimes you actually am I would almost say more often than not, you get surprised about the results that you see because the one you think is the best is not the one people vote for.

Autumn (28m 41s): That's true. But at least I like both of the ESL win-win.

Jesper (28m 45s): Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And of course you also have an a yet another option a and I mean please don't get overwhelmed by all the different uh, tools that I'm mentioning here. And that's my purpose is not to overwhelm you, it's just to give you different possibilities and you don't, you don't have to use all of them. You can sort of pick and choose what you feel most for. But you could also use publisherrocket, which is formerly known as KDP rocket because there is possibilities inside that software to give you an idea on how well your title title will be performing on our YouTube channel, there is a, one of the older videos that actually giving a review of KDP rocket as it was called back then.

So you can go and check that out if you're interested. But I think for the most part, I would say that this trick probably works the best for nonfiction titles more than fiction ones, but for nonfiction at least, if that's what you're writing and trying to make a title for then I would definitely say that you should try out publisherrocket because it's, it's really excellent at that. And actually we tweak it. We tweet one of our titles are on the future plotting book that we're going to release at some point later this year maybe.

Um, we actually changed the title of that based on what KDP rocket told us or publisherrocket as it's called now. So. So it's definitely useful.

Autumn (30m 8s): Definitely. And of course that one is a, you do have to buy it, but there's so many things you can do with it. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think it'll end up making your publishing life on a little bit better if you go for publisherrocket. Yeah.

Jesper (30m 23s): Well, a bit off topic here, but there are so many other benefits of publisherrocket, like a collecting all your, uh, Amazon add keywords and stuff like that. It makes it a million times easier. And I think the nice, what I like with the KPD KDP rocket or publisherrocket is basically that it's a one time fee. It's not one of these monthly things that you have to pay for. So you pay for it once and then it's yours. And I really liked that.

Autumn (30m 48s): Yes.

Jesper (30m 50s): And I, and it's not that expensive on top of my head. I think it's $99. But I could be mistaken. But it's not that expensive.

Autumn (30m 57s): No. I think, uh, if you're gonna publish multiple books, there's a few things out there and I love you publisherrocket I love it for the keyword feature, just helping me find which ones I want to use and which ones are going to really help. And undaunted,

Jesper (31m 14s): that feature alone is worth the money. You know, you can spend ages collecting Amazon keywords, uh, but publisherrocket doesn't, does it in half a second.

Autumn (31m 26s): Yeah. So it becomes more of a logic puzzle to me instead of a mind numbing tasks.

Jesper (31m 33s): Do you remember when we were first collecting the keywords and we were sitting there copying and pasting out of Amazon? Jesus Christ. That was painful.

Autumn (31m 41s): That was it. It was like, okay, I'm going to put side eight hours to spend on Amazon while I go through every single letter in the dictionary with are like 16 different keywords. Oh, it was horrible. It was so bad. It's incredible. We're totally off topic now.

Jesper (31m 55s): Yeah, completely off topic. But I guess it's also because, uh, that was sort of a, my inputs on how you can pick your titles for your books and I think at bottom line here is basically you need to really make sure that you are conveying the genre without eh, straight of a doubt to the reader answer. So don't get clever and a then split test, split test, split test and let the data speak instead of your own biased opinion. Because honestly we, we usually wrong.

We think that we know best I authors.

Autumn (32m 29s): That's true. But it was interesting. It's like we say where it's like that I'm always wanting to question everything. I think I get it from my dad. So when you say conveying the genre, we have to, we should say is that because I know in some people are like the Chronicles of Valdor on and to them that is the, you know, conveying there's genre conveying their world. But I like the word Chronicles, but is that really, you know, nitty gritty, getting it down to what is in the genre. So what words do you think are going to come up with a really good intro?

You know, things that really sound like they're going to be a good fantasy word. Like I would say dragons Chronicles magic. What other terms can you think of really quick that might help convey a good fantasy genre? And if you can think of anything, you know, let us know as you go through the listing to this, you know, we asked you for some comments. So if you happen to come up with some comments, that would be fantastic. Let us know what keywords you can go fantasy and women's view promo.

Narrator (33m 44s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 36 – How to handle bad reviews

Not everyone will like your book, but they aren't supposed to either. You aim is to find the reader who likes the kind of fiction you write.

What happens when you do come across someone who doesn't appreciate your work and leave a bad review on Amazon? How do you tackle it?

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 35 – Should you write every day?

If you spend any time on the Internet, you'll find advise stating that writers should write every day. Is that true?

What happens when things get in the way? Are you then a failure? 

In episode 35 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper shares their thoughts on a topic that troubles many.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (3s): 

You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts. Autumn Bert and Jasper Schmidt.

Jesper (32s): 

Hello? I am, Jesper.

Autumn (34s): 

And I'm autumn,

Jesper (39s): 

this is episode 35 of the amwritingfantasy podcast. And, uh, today we're gonna talk a bit about how difficult it is to write every day. And sometimes things are just getting in the way and it can be difficult to continue to write every single day. And we're probably also gonna touch on what you can do to overcome it. I, I'm not sure we have all the answers, but I think we can probably give you some ideas on it. But, uh, yeah, I guess I guess we need to start to say sort of welcome to the new amwritingfantasy.

Uh, we're not supposed to say that. Maybe

Autumn (1m 18s): 

I feel like it's new. This is our first real like dedicated podcast. So yay. Am we've got some learning to do about how we're doing this. It's a whole new set up, a whole new recording system. Um, I'm currently on the road, so I'm sitting outside next to a library in Canada, in Poult port Colborne. So if anyone is from the area listening, Hey, I love your town, it's really awesome. I love that your library. But I'm sitting outside because there's no, I don't want to disturb the other library listeners.

So if you hear a little bit of traffic and cicadas on this beautiful August day, that's because am Hey, we're just kind of winging this and learning. And they always say, never wait until the, the situation is optimal. They see this about writing all the time too. You can't wait for everything to be perfect because nothing will ever be perfect and then you'll just keep waiting. So we're doing this and I'm really excited about it actually.

Jesper (2m 16s): 

Yeah. Eh, you know, we, we sort of have a, a game plan how we want to structure these podcast episode, but I sort of feel like, uh, until we get the hang of it, we run the risk of getting lost in our own new forms. We'll see how it goes today.

Autumn (2m 33s): 

So everyone bear with us. This will only get better, but I hopefully you're as excited as we are to be really launching our podcast and moving away from YouTube is now our secondary channel, but we're still going to have something up there for the pupil or dedicated fans who are still on YouTube.

Jesper (2m 50s): 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean everybody can listen to the amwritingfantasy stuff anywhere. It's almost a little, yeah, if you prefer podcast or if you prefer YouTube. That's all good. The only difference is that you can't see us anymore. So we can sort of sit in our pajamas here like we talked about last week and uh, yeah, you will have no idea.

Autumn (3m 18s): 

No, but I says I'm sitting outside. I am not in pajamas today. Maybe next time.

Jesper (3m 24s): 

Oh, thank God. I was just thinking if we hear like a police car, something that we know why,

Autumn (3m 29s): 

yeah. If I disappear for Siri, suddenly am just don't ask, but post bail. No,

Jesper (3m 38s): 

no, exactly. Yeah. And we, uh, we also talked in some, a, a bit of music. They in the beginning as you can hear. And, uh, throughout the podcast we have a few other sorts of music pieces that we're going to use. And by the end of the episode there's also some music. So I will be curious to know what the, what the listeners thinks of the branding music. Uh, I mean, we, you and I autumn have been debating a bit about the, the branding music when we got it recorded. Uh, we, as you can here, we paid somebody other than ourselves to, to do the, uh, the recording of that music.

And of course he's a, a ton better than we are at, at that stuff. But yeah, I mean, we sort of tried to find a way, what do, what did we want him to say and, and what music should they be in the background and whatnot. But I don't know. I mean, maybe we have just have to ask people.

Autumn (4m 30s): 

Yeah. Let us know. That'd be really great. We love feedback. So that's, that's important to us. And, you know, we're all adapting, so, you know, take that with a grain of salt. But what do you think about our new intro and our new music? We'd love to hear.

Jesper (4m 46s): 

Yeah. I mean, maybe at some point we could, uh, get something else recorded if we want it, but, uh, but at least for now, we'll stick with this stuff. Uh, but, but that doesn't mean that we don't want to hear what you think of it. And, uh, and maybe we'll change it at least. Uh, it's funny because when we were doing a YouTube, we were always told also by the YouTube consultant at, yeah. But you don't not take music more than 15 seconds because people hate it. But I think, uh, on a podcast, I think it's, it's different.

So here, hopefully we can, uh, we can have a bit more music. I like,

Autumn (5m 21s): 

like I said, well we're a, you know, and I were debating switching from YouTube to podcast. I think podcast is going to fit us better. Um, I'm not very good at, you know, jumping up there and showing everything and being on video where I like to get in depth. And I think readers like to get in depth. We're, we're a little bit of a slower crowd and I think listening is something we're much more attuned to. Just like, that's why audio books are so popular. You know, it's, this is like the audio version instead of the movie adaptation.

And I don't want to do the movie adaptation. I've never wanted to be an actor or an actress. So this, I think this will fit us very well. And I hope if it's our re our listeners and I said, let us know what you think if this is something that's working for you.

Jesper (6m 12s): 

yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and basically what we also wanted to do is, uh, start this podcast by sharing a bit of a, you know, a personal story. What's just happened, what is happening in our life. And so forth, rather than just, uh, you know, getting into the topic. And then that's it because I think, at least when I listened to podcast, I like to hear sort of what's going on in, in the personal life and, and whatnot. So, so we're gonna, we're going to do it out a bit in the beginning of each episode here. And then of course, if some of you listeners, if you, if you don't like to listen to, to that, then you just start off, skip 10 minutes into each episode and then you'll get into the topic or something like that.

Maybe 50 minutes. I don't know. We'll see how it goes. I've lost it. Yeah,

Autumn (6m 60s): 

I think we're doing great. But yeah, so I think we still have a little bit of time and I'll share something I've already mentioned. I'm on the road to, my husband and I are set out on a little two month adventure through the United States. It's coming to an end and we've been actually traveling for four years on the road. We've done almost a hundred thousand miles across the U S and Canada. I know. And I've loved it. Oh my gosh. The things we've seen, it's been so inspiring. And I could tell stories for years and years and years, uh, about what we've done and seen and I'm hardly done.

But I also think we're coming to a new transition period and I'm excited because believe it or not, traveling every day was actually getting in some ways frustrating. So we are secretly looking at a small community in the summer. I'd never thought I'd want to move, but I'm super excited. So I'm hoping I'll have big news to share in maybe a few weeks, maybe a couple of months about a new location and some new things I'll be digging into and stable internet Oh my gosh.

I'd be so excited for this. I'm trying to imagine having a door I can close because you get the listeners can't see what my camper looks like. The what we traveled in, but it's, I'm not a solid vehicle. It's not a solid camper. It has a canvas top to it as well. So it's not soundproof either. But it is my home and you and I have recorded videos that we've done so much stuff and put up with some poor sound quality. But can you imagine both of us with having like doors that we can close and telling our significant others and spouses be quiet.

This is my toy, so we'll see how it goes.

Jesper (8m 49s): 

Indeed. Yeah. And, and I have to say you, you've been really good at posting pictures. Autumn a I like when I see you, your traveling pictures are on Facebook. There's some truly amazing nature. I mean, of course, bear in mind that I'm, I'm from Denmark. You know, this country is just flat, nothing except fields and flatness here. So when you're posting all your mountain pictures or whatever, you know, that's just awesome for me.

Autumn (9m 14s): 

I'll make sure I go back and share some more Iowa. I have enough pictures to last for years and uh, where we're thinking of going to doesn't have many mountain pictures, but the area is gorgeous and I can't wait to take those pictures too.

Jesper (9m 28s): 

Alright, cool. And you know what, because I'm not traveling, so I'm usually at home and I have stable internet and uh, I then am able to watch stuff like Netflix and whatnot. Have you ever watched, uh, the Danish series called the rain? Yeah.

Autumn (9m 44s): 

Yes. Actually I have, I've watched is what, two or three seasons now? I've watched all of them.

Jesper (9m 50s): 

I think there's two seasons. Yeah, they read the second season recently. But that's pretty cool because at that you actually watched it because I wanted to, to talk a bit about that because I'm really, really like I cannot make up my mind what I'm thinking because the first season was okay. And then recently the upload of the second season and then I've been watching the second season as well. And it's like, so you have these moments in the story where actually it's, it's pretty good, you know, that they build tension really nicely and you don't know what's going to happen.

And it's like, okay, this, this is cool. And then they, they put the most amateurs, insane, bad dialogue in the middle of everything. All of it. All of a sudden, you know, the coaters are just saying stupid stuff and I get completely pulled out a story and it's like, what the hell? I mean, how can you simultaneously build a very, very good and interesting story and then have characters that are just saying the stupidest stuff. I mean, I don't know.

Autumn (10m 49s): 

I agree. I especially, there was a few parts like the rain, obviously the name, it's very important and especially the first series. It's an amazingly frightening event when it rains. The second series, watch how many times it rains and no one freaks out. And I'm wondering just something changed, miss something huge. But there are times too that characters disappear and no one's looking for them. And these were supposed to be like a tough band of friends. And there were definitely times when I'm like, this is great.

And so many other times I'm like, Oh, can we just fast forward through this? Please

Jesper (11m 28s): 

yeah, indeed. Yeah. I mean, the only thing I would say though, when it comes to, uh, to this am a second season here, the, the way that they build over, if you look at the story, if you'd see the season as a character arc for for for us machine or the guy who has this, uh, cursing him or this virus in him. If you look at the character arc, I really think that the one thing that do incredibly well with the second season is to build a Superbowl.

You know, if you're looking at it. Yeah. I mean you by the end of the season, the last episode, I know I'm not going to spoil anything, but basically giving that guy every single reason why he is going to take out prevents on everything and there is a solid reason for it. And I think that is extremely

Autumn (12m 17s): 

yes. And I think the developing relationship of his sister and now I can't remember her sort of boyfriends sorta not boyfriend's name is also very good. And some other quirks with hospice too, with, uh, he gets a love interest and how that pans out is just, yeah, I definitely, when I write, I like to throw in a little bit of romance. I think it's important. It kind of gets everyone warm and fuzzy and talk about building tension. You just yanked the romance strings out from under somebody.

She collapses worlds over that. So I really do enjoy, uh, there are some, uh, major parts of it that they do a fantastic job developing and it's worth watching. I don't regret watching it. It's not the best one out there. I might share with you. Am there's one I'm watching. I can't wait to ask if you've seen, because it's one of those shows where I've given up trying to figure out what's going to happen and I'm just trusting the writers. They will do what I don't expect them to do and it'll be fantastic.

And it's amazing when you find a show or a book or anything that you just finally give up trying to figure out and say, yes, entertain me.

Jesper (13m 30s): 

Indeed. Oh, week on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast all right. Uh, you know, one thing we talked about as well autumn and I am not sure if we ever sort of concluded on it, but maybe we can, uh, maybe we can outsource this to the audience or listeners. He actually, that's probably a good idea, but I, I'm not sure if we ever figured out if it was possible to leave comments on the Google podcast app or the native Apple podcast app. I know we figured out that if you go to the pot bean site, uh, on amwritingfantasy then people can leave comments.

But I'm assuming if we forgot the others

Autumn (14m 7s): 

I have not managed to as of yet, so I'm not sure. So if any listeners know how we can get the comment section live on Apple and Google, how we can get access to those other than logging in, I guess, and checking them ourselves, that'd be great. We'd love some pointers. If some people are really like good at commenting and love giving feedback and just know how the whole thing works.

Jesper (14m 31s): 

Yeah. The, the, the easiest thing is actually just to see if you're able to leave a comment on the, on the Google podcast app order audit or your Apple podcast app and, and, and see what happens. I have no idea if are going to receive an email notification that there was a comment, but, but try it out and uh, we'll see what happens actually because it would be cool for us to just hear, uh, what you think of a this first, um, this first episode in the new phone. Well, always, but I also wanted to mention that am it was really funny because we posted on Patrion about these changes that we were going to make a, obviously we, for the, for the Patrion members, we am we post or they have early access to, to the episode.

So we posted it a couple of days in advance and then, uh, on Patrion moose spirit went in and he actually wrote a whole story around how the, uh, amwritingfantasy podcasts that changed from YouTube to a, to a podcast. And he was sort of making a story around the, you know, the parenting from Lord of the rings, you know, that, that sort of severe that they look through and uh, and they can see far off lands and all that stuff. And he was lying. Oh no. You know, we kind of see into Palin team anymore and whatnot. It was really, it was really funny.

So I would just wanted to thank most be at for for that. Uh, that story he posted. That was so fun. Yeah,

Autumn (15m 57s): 

it's always good to get a check while I love, I love, that's why I've always enjoyed, um, working with writers, even Twitter when it was 140 characters, the snippets, the snarky cleverness of writers just always makes me smile and it's fantastic. So, but I was going to mention that, you know, it's, we're still figuring out, we'd love comments. Uh, we get them from Petrie on, we're hoping to figure out how to get them through the podcast. We have had a few thank you Irish for going in and showing us that, Hey, comments do work on the pod bean site.

At the very least. But we do also have the amwritingfantasy group. And I was looking through the comments in there and I thought it was really interesting that what someone had recently posted, the character names should never start with the same letter. I don't know if you saw that one in the are private Facebook group. Yes, but, but I thought that was interesting because I've heard that, you know, try not to have the same name but the same first letter like, Oh yeah, I have broken that quite a lot. It was interesting seeing the, the followup comments of what other people thoughts on that one.

And I don't know about you. I mean, have you tried to avoid even this first letter, the same first letter or do you just try to make sure that they sound or look incredibly different?

Jesper (17m 15s): 

It's so funny because at some point I was, uh, I was, I was talking, I think, I think it was in a YouTube video to be honest, but I cannot remember where it was. But at some point I w I was basically giving the same advice saying, you know, you shouldn't, or maybe it's in the flooding book. Actually I can't remember any more. But anyway, there was some place where I was giving the advice that am that you should really avoid that. And then the funny thing is that in my own Keystone bone trilogy, the two main characters have to say the first letter for their names. So it's so stupid.

So it's one of those things, you know, do as I say, don't, don't do as I,

Autumn (17m 49s): 

yeah, I guess so. I guess I, like I said, I've always heard, you know, try to keep it away, tried to keep them looking different. I have read a book that was historical fiction and I think three characters had very, almost identical if you said them, they were identical names, but again, it was historical and that's true to the history at the time. And they tried to separate them by doing different spellings while I'm writing fantasy I think the worst I can say though, is that I didn't realize this a tool. I was doing the audio book that I had a character durag and I also had one to hall and I realized, Oh my gosh, that is like two letters different and I make sure I don't do that again.

But no one's ever commented on it. No one's ever gotten them confused. So I don't know. And I still, they will start with the, yeah, I mean look at George RR Martin. Can you imagine if he had no characters with the same first, he had 150 named characters, I believe in the first set of books. Yeah. So how could you, there's how many letters of the alphabet, so you've got to have to start repeating yourself at some point.

Jesper (18m 55s): 

Yeah, indeed. Yeah. I guess so, uh, I think the other thing I should just mention here before we transition into the actual content of, of today's am episode was just that if you're listening to this episode, when it releases on the 26th of August, then actually the next live Q and a session is on the 2nd of September, which means that if you head on over to patron, uh, just, you can find the link in the episode show notes here, but if you have a head over or to Patrion and if you join on the adult pregnancy or that's the $5 one, we have actually just change the reward system so that you will be able to join us on the 2nd of September four live Q and a session.

So if you, interesting headache, head over to patron checkout, uh, how we set up all the rewards there. There's a ton of rewards for that. You're going to get your hands on for basically as, as little as a dollar a month. But if you want to access to the Q and a session, then that's the $5 year. But a head over over and uh, and checks.

Autumn (20m 7s): 

So writing every day. I, I swear by that, I teach it and I've sort of changed my mind. Oh mine. Well I do think it's incredibly important, but I also think doing something every single day. Yes it's important to have the hub habit, but it's also important to build in time off. Why do we have vacations from work?

Why do we, you know, even do different things like date nights with our off spouses to kind of shake things up. And I think every once in a while we even have to give ourselves a break cause you know, usually you tell someone right everyday and if you don't, you know, you should feel bad. You're a bad writer. You did not write today. And I actually, you know this, I just reached a stress point earlier this month that really came out of nowhere, I think had been building for a while.

But it really hit me hard surprisingly. And I don't break. I'm, I'm the rock in my relationship in my life. I know nothing usually shakes me, but I had an earthquake. So it does happen. And I needed some time off and I stopped feeling guilty and said, I'm taking, I think it's been two weeks now. I've written maybe two days and if it comes, I'm like, that's fantastic, but I'm not pushing myself because I needed a break. I felt like the wellhead normally run dry, like the gas tank had run dry.

I was sucking up the sludge in the bottom and it was crap. And I knew it was crap and I wasn't loving any second of it. And that's not why I write. Yeah. I think I'm a writer. It is important to keep writing. Um, I, it is a business to me as much as a job. And you do show up every day, but that's not true. You get vacations at work, you get sick days, you do get time off and haven't, haven't taken a break. I'm excited about things. Again, I'm excited about the story again.

I think I really, I didn't realize how low I'd gone, but I needed it. And now I'm thinking, you know what, why don't we, you get weekends off from your job. Why do we tell writers to write every single day without even saying, take a break once a month. Give yourself a day off.

Jesper (22m 30s): 

Yeah, yeah. I follow your line of thinking here, but, but I'm also, I'm going to challenge you a bit as well, the way I, I mean, okay, this is difficult because it's like a walking a very way we find balance because I fully agree that it's very easy for writing and Andy orthos business side of your life to basically take over. And that is certainly not healthy. So I am fully in agreement with you that, you know, you shouldn't like let everything take over and, and basically, you know, grind yourself too to the ground by stress and having to write.

And you probably, if you follow a bit, uh, along on the, on the internet, uh, the listener here, then you've probably seen all the Facebook groups and whatnot where it's sort of become well popular to say that you should be publishing books every month. And if you don't publish book every month, then the Amazon gods don't like you and it's going to be shit, you know? And I don't prescribe to that. I don't think that's true and I think that's only going to drive you to stress basically.

Right, so they should have some certainly not. And then set out saying all that. Then at the same time we are writers so we do need to write, but then if I'm looking at myself like example then because we also running this amwritingfantasy business and we are basically running like you know, courses and we are currently recording a course for wealth building as well as, I mean if I'm looking at myself, I have not written anything since I finished the first draft of our plotting book, which is probably like, I don't know, maybe four or five weeks ago, maybe more, I'm not sure, but it's a long time ago and I've not written any fiction words ever since or a nonfiction words in that case.

But I've not written anything other than I've been writing scripts for the course and recording costs, modules and whatnot. But if I had to do both, I would probably get pretty stressed out. So I just sort of said, okay, I'm going to be done with the courses first and then afterwards I'm going, you know, then autumn is reviewing or editing are plotting book and then at some point that's done and we'll get into our fiction writing again. But why am why I'm struggling with this basically autumn is because I cannot either advocate that you sort of come up with excuses for yourself to not right.

Meaning that, Oh okay I need to do the cost so now I can't do anything else or I need to do Facebook apps so now I can't do anything else. And you know, because that's, it also happens that people come up with excuses for themselves not to. Right. All right, so I don't know. I'm really struggling with,

Autumn (25m 21s): 

I have to admit cause I was going to say that it kind of also depends on what you define as writing. Are we just going to talk about fiction? Because I have been writing, I've been writing on the Patreon posts, I've got other things that I've been working on. But I've, I think I've definitely talking about more like the book a story and you know, cause sometimes switch. Yeah, exactly. So that's, but again, I do think we often don't credit authors to consider that writing is writing. Sometimes that's journaling, sometimes you're writing sales copy, book blurbs, all those things do also count too.

Writing but there's something different. So another pressure with working on a story development and getting it going and developing and creating that. And so I have to admit, I, there isn't that part of me that says, is it, you know, are you making an excuse? Have you not written for a very long time? Or in general, are you writing every single day? You're usually really, really good at it. And some days you just need a day to go, maybe read a book or take a walk to the beach, just go do something else that doesn't involve, you know, picking up your, your story and developing it.

Or maybe just, you know, taking a day off and maybe just thinking about it and seeing what comes out of that instead of working in it. I mean, it's really tough. It is. I mean,

Jesper (26m 45s): 

because it's also like, you know, if you're going to make a living from writing, you have to write. It's not like, you know, if I go into a J to a day job, it's not like I can go to the boss and say, you know, today I'm just not feeling it. I think I'm like, I have what coast block today so maybe I'm not going to do, I'm going to go to the beach. You know? It doesn't work like that. And if you're a writer, you know, I'm not saying that it can never happen that you take a day off and that is not what I'm saying.

That's, that's fine. But, but I think there's also a bit of a, not for everybody, but for some people there's a bit of too much coming up with excuses for why I don't feel, I don't feel the story today or, well, I'm a bit tired today. I will write tomorrow. But you know, if you want to make a living from writing, you'll have to do, you have to, right, right. I mean, am I wrong?

Autumn (27m 41s): 

Very true. I do not disagree with you. And I mean, by slowing down, taking a break, I've had to readjust my timelines and tell my readers that, Hey, I know I said I wanted to finish the strap at the end of August and I just needed for some personal issues. I needed to push that back to the end of September because I just needed a break. But at the same time, I do think that, you know, it does come down to keeping things realistic, knowing if you do need a break. But again, I think, uh, you and I definitely will.

We're writing, we have a tendency to make sure we were writing every single day, literally seven days a week. I have, I always keep a minimum word count, which is easy. I mean, it's 500 words. Even when I'm stressed, busy, I tried to get up in the morning and write 500 words. So it's just like half an hour. If I can't put a half an hour aside to write to at least keep things going. That's really kind of sad. But you know, I do know a few authors who write 5,000 words a day. Um, she turns out a book literally I think every month or you know, a month and a half, two months max between the editing and everything else.

And I had went to admire her and also think 5,000 words. That's all. There's so much more I want to do in a day other than just write that story. I have, you know, a husband, I have a dog, I am a graphic artists. I like talking to other authors. I don't think I want to spend eight hours in a cafe writing 500 words, but I know

Jesper (29m 11s): 

no that, that, that's why I love the dictation because I think I can turn out like three, probably three, 4,000 words and two 20 hours writing and then I'm done. But of course it's w first draft material, right? You still need to do all the editing and whatnot after when it's not, it's not pretty pros. But the story is it are and that's the main thing. You know the story and get that recorded, then you can make it sound nice.

Autumn (29m 35s): 

That's true. Of course. I tried to do a fairly clean first draft, but I still, I everyone's got to do editing and it's gotta be decent. But I do think there's, like I said, I've seen a benefit for having taken a little bit of time off cause I really hit the bottom of the barrel. But is every author going to hit that? I mean I've been publishing since 2012 and this is my first break and I can send a true break because it's am. I have been doing other types of writing I just haven't, I've only plucked, like I said, I've plucked away at my story.

I think I've done a thousand words and two weeks out is so abysmal, but it feels, I feel ready to look at it again and I know I'm ready to look at it again. So I know myself, I know my habits. And so maybe, yeah, I'm going to say, if you've been writing for seven years and you want to take a two week break break, I'm going to say it's really took off. It's probably okay. But if you've only been writing seven days a, this is your first attempt ever in writing uh, maybe you should, you know, work at that a little bit more.

If you haven't ever finished a book, if you never finished, you know, if you're been working on a chapter for a month, it's time to finish that chapter and move on. So those are the important things you do need to keep going. I, you know, I've always said even just a sentence, at least keep it going, make the story feel alive. At least give yourself a little bonus saying, I sat down today, all that came out was one decent sentence, but you did it. That's important.

Jesper (31m 12s): 

Yeah. And of course there was also a diff, I mean, well we were just talking, talking about thousands of words there, but, but I mean if you just, you know, write 250 words a day, uh, you know, a year from now you'll have an all,

Autumn (31m 23s): 

you'll get there. And again, think about as why I teach, what, you know, how we teach what we do and having an outline, if you just have your end goal in sight, like I'm writing a novella, I know how many chapters that's going to be, I know what chapter I'm on, I know what's going to happen next. So I know exactly where I am. And I think that really helps to knowing where your finish line is. The author I know who writes that 5,000 words a day, they literally, they already have it all figured out, the exact word count. And they're basically checking boxes off every single day saying, I did this, I did this, I did this.

And it is, it is truly a business and a work schedule and a milestones and everything else that they've basically got a business plan with every single book they write. I'm impressed and terrified that at the same time, but it shows you how much you know you can put out and she's making a living from her writing and that's one reason it's so serious for her.

Jesper (32m 24s): 

Yeah, and of course, I mean there, there is a few different things that you can do to make sure that at least it becomes easier to stick to, to the writing part. I mean we, human beings are creatures of, so if we, if you can link your writing and into a habit, make it become a habit. And what I mean by that is that, for example, I like to say either write first thing in the morning before there was any distractions that can derail you or write late in the evening when for example, everybody else in the house has gone to bed and you know that, that you can no longer be distracted by something because then at least you will, you will protect your writing time.

And I think it's important to protect that writing time and um, maybe it, it's also good to, well I don't know it probably that this is not so important for me, but maybe it'll help some other people and maybe, I don't know what you think about it autumn but if you could train your body to sort of recognize some signals, that would probably be good. You know, like if I put on some certain music than my body is trained to know, okay, this is because I'm going to write or maybe I make myself especially a cup of tea every evening before and then I know, okay, now it's time to ride.

I think, I don't know. Maybe that'll be helpful for someone.

Autumn (33m 48s): 

I think it does. Those little writing rituals I think are actually really key. I think it can be, sometimes it could be a disadvantage because if you have, I had myself trained when I was working full time, I would come home, see my husband, I make a cup of tea, I'd sit down with my laptop and do not talk to me for like an hour and 45 minutes. This is my time. I'm writing a book and that it would be like social time, make dinner. But then if sometimes I'd have a Saturday and I suddenly had three hours and it wasn't the right time, my body and my mind, we're not like, Oh, you want it right now.

Oh, okay. And it will take longer to get into the story. But I, and I would almost do the exact, I could have three hours instead of like 45 minutes and I'd only get probably the same amount of work done. And it's like, well darn. So you have to, yeah, it helps when you maybe don't make it time dependent, but maybe routine dependent music. You know, put on music, put on, sit down at your writing desk to make sure you turn off all your apps that could possibly ping you and tell you that someone just left the new comment on Instagram and you have to go see it.

Don't just throw all that stuff off and start writing. And I do think that is very important, but it shouldn't be the only thing if you're spontaneous, don't just go for it.

Jesper (35m 7s): 

Right? Yeah. The, I can't remember if I ever asked you before, but do you believe in writer's block? Autumn I

Autumn (35m 12s): 

don't. I, for me, the only time I, I do believe in writer's block in some ways, I've never had it where the story was completely dead to me. But I've had, I've hit walls that I've learned to realize are usually my subconscious saying something is missing. And every time when I stepped back and looked everything, looked at the plot, try to figure out what was going on, I would be like, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe I just missed this thread, this, everything would have gone off the rails if I hadn't stopped here.

And that's usually what it is for me. It's usually assigned. My subconscious is seeing something that I consciously did not see, but I've never had a complete like, Oh my gosh, I can't, I'm sitting here staring at a blank page. I can't write a word. I don't know. You could give me a piece of lint and I'll put a character on it and I could probably write 5,000 words. It's not difficult. It's not that I can't write, but maybe I don't want to write what I'm supposed to be writing, but I can always, right.

Jesper (36m 20s): 

Yeah. I don't believe in writer's block in the sense that you can sort of run out of creativity, which I think is also what you were mentioning there. I mean, I, I, for me, writer's blog is just a, it's a symptom that you don't know what's gonna happen next us. The problem, right? You, you've sort of gotten to a stage that the story where I'm a bit stuck here, I don't know what the characters are going to do next or what's going to happen next. And at least for me, I find that the outlining just to hit helps tremendously. It to keep the writing going because I always know what's going to happen next.

I, I never get stuck. I agree. Then of course some people can start saying, well, if you're outlaying of, and this is something I talked a bit about it or we talk a bit about in the, in the plotting book, which of course we have not released yet, but just trust us, it's there on a file. But, um, we talk, they're a bit about how some people feel like, well, if you know what's going to happen, then there was no excitement in writing it because you, but yeah, I mean I guess I in one way or another, I, I can sort of follow the logic on that, but on the other hand, the fact that I know what's going to happen and I know exactly where it's going just means that it saves me so much time in editing, plot holes and all that stuff, or rewriting whole sections afterwards because there is no potholes.

Autumn (37m 42s): 

No, I agree. I, that's a, I mean, I still find

Jesper (37m 45s): 

so, yeah, I don't know if that's how I view writer's block. I don't really an insane

Autumn (37m 52s): 

and outline as you do, but I definitely, and I still find, Oh no, sorry. Hopefully you can hear me now. Okay. Yeah. Are you, yeah, there we go. God, I love technology. It's, or a staffing things around the world. So, but yeah, I think am was plotting. I plot Navy not as as thoroughly as you do, but I always know what's happening in the chapter and I've got to set up the scenes maybe a little bit and sometimes new threads develop.

And like I said, no matter how much you plot, sometimes something new can come up and you realize you missed it. And that's usually when I realized that the story is not clicking for some reason. And I pause and I figure it out. And usually, uh, sometimes adding chapters, figuring out what's missing to really develop it. But I would think even with outlining, I'm always excited to write what's coming next because I can't wait to take what's a brief idea, you know, outline in a couple of sentences and turn it into a full fledge scene with emotion and dialogue and characters like moving.

And there are always those lulls that you're like, okay, I want to get to the mix. Really big tension filled moment. So it takes, you know, sometimes there's some spots where you're like, okay, I just want to push through this. But usually I'm just excited if I'm not excited to write as a reader going to be excited to read it.

Jesper (39m 15s): 

No does too. But, but, but you want to, I think there was an important point in what you just said there because this thing about getting excited, I think there's a flip side to this that we need to be mindful of and be careful with because I, I fully agree that of course you should be excited about what's happening in your own story and that stuff. But at the same time it's so easy to get blinded by a new idea. Or you know, this happens so often and this is probably why there's a million manuscripts in desk drawers around the world here.

But you know, people get the third way through their manuscript on a novel and then they feel like, well, I don't know, I don't quite feel the story anymore and I have this other idea that is excellent. So let me pause this, a novel and then I'll start writing that one instead. And then they get a third way through that one. And then the same thing happens again. And I think you have to stick to it. You know, if you're, if you're going to make any sort of a Monday from riding, you have to finish the novels. So you can't just jump every time you get excited by something newer because it happens to all of it.

It happens to me as well. Often, you know, when I'm halfway through or a third way through or whatever, uh, through a novel, then I start getting exciting by it, the next book and what's going to happen there. But I can't just jump around all the time. Right. I mean, it's never going to get done then.

Autumn (40m 38s): 

No, it's very true. I mean, we both tend to write series. You can't even in the one thing with a book, but you know, you're on book one or two of a series. You can't just say, Oh no, I'm gonna go do this other one. Instead, you really, you make a choice of pro business choice, professional choice, a promise to your readers that you're going to finish what you start. So you're going to have to finish what you start, even when you maybe want to go check out something new. And I have to admit, that's one reason to wrap back to where we started. One reason I've taken a writer's break the last two weeks is that, you know, there's a few other ideas and crazy scenes that I'm kind of tempted to just go, just, just do something fun and get myself going on those.

And I'm kind of resisting that pool.

Jesper (41m 28s): 

The wonderful thing happened here with technology that a, all of this water lost her connection there. But I can see she's coming back now slowly here when you want to move and get into to a stable place with staple into, in the near future. But, uh, yeah, it just dropped the connection, but it happens. So I don't know what good points she was about to make, but I guess what I could tell you is at least a, another little trick that some people talk about is that, uh, whether or not you should enter the chapters or you should stop in the middle of a chapter.

Um, and because I'm sort of a checklist kind of guy, I really liked to end chapters completely because then I feel good about myself that I know that that chapter's done it. Then I can move on to the next 10 day tomorrow. But they are also authors whereby actually doing stopping middle of a sentence in the middle of a chapter because then basically you, you jumped straight into the flow the day after. So, so that's another little trick that you can apply if you find that helpful.

So I guess the conclusion is that don't get derailed. And next Monday we'll cover how to handle bad reviews.

Narrator (42m 54s): 

If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 34 – Announcement: Major Change Coming

Sometimes you just have to face the facts and accept reality for what it is. Even when it hurts.

We've decided to make a major change to the Am Writing Fantasy YouTube channel and Podcast. The reasons and what this change encompasses are shared in this announcement.

Thank you so much for watching over the past three years. We sincerely hope that you'll continue supporting and find what we do helpful.

New episodes EVERY single Monday.

PATREON!

Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!

Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 

Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 

Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper

Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion)

Jesper (1s): 

Hey there. Jesper just dropping in here, uh, up at the front of the episode. I have an excellent guest host on today, but I just wanted to drop in here quickly to let you know that we had a bit of audio quality issues, the internet on my guests and is not entirely stable and at one point about 18 and a half minute in it actually drops, which means that I cannot hear him and he keeps talking for a bit while I'm also talking on top of him to hoping, hoping that he's coming back online.

So you're going to get about one and a half minute where we accidentally talk over one another. So my apologies for that. And also when it comes to his internet connection, there is a bit static on his end and uh, unfortunately I've done everything I can to try to clean it out, but, but it's not possible to get it any better than it is now, but you can hear everything he says. So I've decided to release this episode anyway, so I hope you will get a lot out of it. And the much, much apologies for the audio quality here.

Thank you.

Narrator (1m 7s): 

You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, autumn Bert and Jasper Schmidt.

Jesper (1m 35s): 

Hello, I am Yesper and this is episode 43 of the amwritingfantasy podcast. And we are going to talk about reviving dead books. Meaning, how do you get books that doesn't sell to start selling again? And as you've noticed that autumn is not with me today, but instead I actually have a guest host and that's Stuart Peyman, whose books have reached international international bestseller status in the U S Australia and Canada. So we'll come to the amwritingfantasy podcast do it.

Stuart (2m 7s): 

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Jesper (2m 10s): 

And I, I actually understood, uh, from a bit of our email conversations that they just spent a bit of time in. I was about to say my part of the world, well I think it was in Germany and I'm in Denmark, but it's close.

Stuart (2m 21s): 

Pretty close. Yeah. I was in central Germany, went to college and verts Berg, so been a decent amount of time in Europe. Oh, okay. What's bird? Where's when Germany is, that is basically dead in the center of Germany. So it's a sort of a little bit to the East of Frankfurt. Probably the nearest a landmark, but not too far from you hick and yeah, honestly you can get anywhere from the center of the country, so it got to travel around a good amount as well. Oh, nice. Nice. Nice. So you were there for several years then. Yeah, for a good bit of time and really, really enjoyed it.

I love the food. I love the climate. Uh, it's just a wonderful place to live.

Jesper (2m 59s): 

Oh, cool. Very cool. But uh, but I think you're back in the U S now, right? Yup.

Stuart (3m 4s): 

So living in Kentucky, which is a in the Midwest of the United States. Yeah.

Jesper (3m 9s): 

Right. Okay. And actually before we get into the whole conversation about reviving dead books, which, ah, which I guess you've made a bit of a specialty out of. But before we get into that, I also noticed that you writing some lit RPG books and uh, I know that that's a, a Shaundra that has been a bit there. I don't know if we can call it hot, but, uh, I, I haven't understood that it's, it's something that, um, that is selling quite well in general, but, but it's also I think a bit of a special show to write.

So I was just wondering if you could, you know, just yeah, a bit of insights about what is lit RPG and how do you go about writing it because I think it's a bit different isn't it?

Stuart (3m 50s): 

Yeah, it's a very niche, sort of a sub genre of fantasy and PSI Phi and, and really have any other genre you can sort of turn things into lit RPG. But, uh, it's been around for a while since ready. Player one came out quite some time ago, but really got big when the ready player one movie debuted a couple of years ago. And when that came out a lot of people started to get turned on the little RPG and a lot of people will call a game lit as well. And um, now the hardcore readers will, we'll put some designations between game lit and lit RPG, but typically, uh, the whole concept behind the sub genres, you have a fantasy, scifi horror world, whatever it might be, B.

But in that world there exists the sort of mechanics of an actual video games. So, um, and I've got three different lid RPG series now that have done pretty well. Uh, it's uh, definitely a hot selling Shondra at the moment. Am it's really, uh, a lot of fun to write. And being a lifelong gamer, it's sort of like writing the video game that I wish I could play. And that adds a whole new dimension to the entire writing process, which is a ton of fun, but really starting to get popular am in the past year or so, just sort of a genre that's blown up.

Jesper (5m 8s): 

Right? But am I right in understanding that you are actually writing out, that's for characters and stuff like that as well. Or

Stuart (5m 15s): 

so there'll be a stats for the characters. They'll have like strength, agility, uh, this sort of traditional stats that you would expect from a video game. They go on quests, they go on dungeon runs, they get magic gear every time they level up and you know, gain experience points they need to pick new talents and they're sort of building their, their build more or less than kind of gives you that feeling of reading someone playing a really fun video game.

Jesper (5m 41s): 

Right. So you're describing in the book itself what they're picking when delivering up and all that stuff. Yeah,

Stuart (5m 47s): 

exactly. And, and why they're making that decision and, and uh, what they anticipate that decision might mean in the future. Like if I get this talent now, it should unlock these future talents. And, uh, you can really mentally envision the video game aspect of it quite well.

Jesper (6m 3s): 

Wow. That does different, yeah. And uh, and quite, it must also am I've never read a book like that, but it must be quite a different reading experience as well because I assume, I assume that's still a story in there, but, but a lot of it will then be broken up by these sort of well known story elements where you're just learning what skills they're picking for leveling up and stuff like that.

Stuart (6m 27s): 

Yeah, it's very interesting because this story in some other PGS can honestly be secondary to the progression of the game and the progression of the character through the game. Uh, just depends on which kind of lit RPG you're reading. But I got turned on to it just on a recommendation from someone they told me I should read dungeon Lord by a Hugo who ESKA and the read that and just really, really, really liked it and just thought like, this is the kind of fantasy like I could write this, this is a lot of fun. And, uh, wrote my first one and took a while to really get it good and, and to really perfect it.

But, uh, it's done really well. It's sold quite well and I'm really happy about that. So definitely a lot of fun to write. And, uh, my, my first one only took me 20 days cover to cover, to write it. So, um, very, very fast writing it because it was simply so much fun to do.

Jesper (7m 18s): 

But how, how long are, uh, is a lit IPG novel in general? How many words is,

Stuart (7m 23s): 

yeah, I mean typically the longer the better. So my very first one was right around 80,000 words. My, I've got two more that are coming out in November that are both over a hundred thousand words. So, um, the longer you can get them, the better. I'm just like normal, Epic fantasy people like to stay in that world as long as possible.

Jesper (7m 40s): 

All right. Okay. Very cool. I was just curious about that. I know it's a complete detour versus what we're going to talk about. What I was just curious. Yeah, very new

Stuart (7m 49s): 

stuff.

Jesper (7m 50s): 

Yeah. Okay. But maybe we should get on topic, uh, for the sake of the listener here as well. Um, so yeah, I previously in the past I talked to Dave Chesson who, who was, uh, who was also on this podcast a while back. Uh, he's the guy who does the publisher rocket software and uh, he mentioned Stuart that I should contact you because you have made a bit of a specialty to revive that books. Uh, and you're also doing it for traditional publishing companies as far as I understood.

But yeah, but where do we start this whole conversation about how to revive it? That book, if the listener is in the situation where they have a book they published but it's just not selling.

Stuart (8m 32s): 

Yeah. Thank the first thing to do is just identify the quality of the product itself, which could be pretty difficult and it kind of requires you to step back with an unbiased eye and try not to look at the book as, Oh, this is, you know, my baby that I've worked on for so long and my projects that I've had, you know, sort of putting in my heart for so long that I really want to succeed. And the first step is just to look at the product as just a product that you're selling to consumers. Like anything else, if you ran a pizza shop or whatever, you would look at the quality of the product that you're selling and see where you can improve that.

So not every book is really, you know, ready to be revived or anything like that. I'm definitely not, there are a lot of books out there where the quality, you know, maybe it's something you wrote 10 years ago and it's just not that great. You know, if you can recognize that it'll save you a lot of time and money and frustration. I've got books that I now call dead books where I've buried those books because the quality just wasn't that good and I'm not going to waste money trying to revive it myself. But then I've got other books that I wrote a long time ago released that did not do as well as I wanted that I have gone back and revive and then um, know working for different publishing companies.

I've done exactly that. But the first step is really, especially if you have a big catalog, identify a good candidate. So you need something with good writing, unless you really want to drop another, a couple of hundred dollars or $1,000 into the editing costs as well. But you want to make sure you have something that's got a good enough backbone essentially to where you can improve it enough and revive it and it'll actually be worth it. Um, but figuring out which book that is in your catalog, it should really be step one.

So really the thing that the strongest writing that didn't sell that, that the non-selling factor was a surprise. That's, that's probably step one for sure.

Jesper (10m 28s): 

Right? Yeah. And that of course makes sense. But, but the thing or the question that popped up into my mind here, when you set that is like, but it's not, I don't think necessarily that every author can recognize that themselves. So, so, you know, of course, if you're doing it for a traditional author publisher and they give you some debt books that they could, you know, Stuart, can you please revive these for us? Then you can approach this SD outside opinion that that takes a look at the book and say, okay, this is not up for that, you know, this is not good enough or whatever.

Maybe that sounds a bit harsh but, but you know what I mean. Uh, but if it's the author who, who's supposed to do it on his or her own books, um, do you think that's possible to do or do you need somebody from outside to take a look?

Stuart (11m 14s): 

It's definitely difficult and I, I think is, I have worked a little bit as a professional editor and proofreader as well and, uh, worked in acquisitions for a publisher for quite some time, reading through manuscripts in the slush pile and that kind of thing. So I think that gives me a little advantage and a little better perspective where no, I'm not attached to even my own writing as much as someone else might be. Yeah. I, I think that's a skill that people can develop if you look at something, especially if it's been awhile since you've actually sat down to write it, uh, you'll find oftentimes, at least in my experience, that even if I love the book and the moment I was writing it and I was really, really into it, thought it going to be fantastic.

Going back and rereading it, I can look and say like, Oh, this just, you know, it's just not my best work. I've advanced as an author. I'm better than this now and this just doesn't really do it for me. Um, and I think that's a skill that people can develop. Okay. Honestly, I think there's a lot of editors out there that should be able to take a manuscript from someone if you send it and you know, maybe they charge you a hundred bucks or whatever, but just ask the editor, you know, for their outright opinions. Yeah. Do you think this is good enough for me to publish?

You know, from the stuff you've seen that you've edited, um, you know, editors, a lot of times we'll follow how well their books do that they added, you know, look at it and say, Hey, if I were to try to revive this, do you think it's worthwhile? And, and just trying to get an honest answer that way.

Jesper (12m 42s): 

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Uh, and, and I think what I've often said before is that, uh, you need to be careful because what happens a lot of the time is that of course with every single book that we write, the better we become. So you see you, you need to be careful also that you, you don't step into this never ending spiral of, you know, because you can always go back and we write some older books and make them better, but you need to really ask yourself, is it worth it? Because the amount of time that you're spending rewriting is, is quite, uh, you know, it's, it's quite an investment of time to do that versus if it's just a cover that is off, you know, that's a much easier fix to, to see.

So I was just wondering, because I was thinking that if I was going to approach it, rewriting was, unless I for sure knew, of course that this is just not good enough. Then it's, it's a given obviously that you need to do that. But I was just thinking from a time investment perspective, I think that we're rewriting part would probably be the last thing I would do. I would probably try out all the other elements first or, or what,

Stuart (13m 48s): 

yeah. If, if it's a book where you can simply pick flyer, like this is a book that needs rewritten, my recommendation would be just shelf it. And if you have that time later in the future, go for it from 90% of us. We're not gonna have that much time. So Jesper you know, pick a different book to try to revive. Or oftentimes I've found it's, it's even easier just to write the next one and just sort of forget about it and know leave that book as dead. But, um, really the, the best, you know, reviving the dead books is if you can go through that back catalog, maybe you've got four or five or six books that really aren't selling and just pick out, you know, find the one that has the strongest writing, the one that is the best that, you know, maybe it needs a proofread, something like that.

But it doesn't need a whole lot of work to the actual manuscript in order to get it ready to go.

Jesper (14m 39s): 

Right. And of course, well maybe they won't be many reviews on a day fee if it, if it is really a debt book and has always been a debt book, but, but if you do have some reviews, I think that's also a place where you could go to, to get some hints if, if it really needs another editing pass and you know, if there's complaints about too many typos and whatnot.

Stuart (14m 58s): 

Yeah, exactly. I definitely agree with that. Yeah. Um, but I, I was also thinking in terms of

Jesper (15m 9s): 

the look inside part, you know, from the Amazon, but how much attention are you, are you placing on making sure that those first, uh, I think, if I'm remember correctly, I might be a bit off on this, but I think it's 10% of the book,

Stuart (15m 23s): 

somewhere around there at least. Yeah. So

Jesper (15m 27s): 

present, I think you, you can see from the look inside or the free sample on Amazon, but how much attention are you putting on making sure that those 10% are really engaging?

Stuart (15m 36s): 

Yeah, it's definitely a part you need to hook the reader. So not every reader of course, is even going to look in on that feature or even know that feature exists. It's definitely a part, um, and that, that some people do pay attention to. And I think a lot of other authors, we'll start there if, you know, if you've written before and you're looking for new materials to read yourself, then it's an area where we're going to look, it's gotta be, of course, you know, professional formatting. And a lot of times, like when I worked for different presses, I'll go into their material.

I'll see, okay, these books were made and you know, 2010 or 2014 and the formatting just back then wasn't as good. And they've gotten a professional format or now or whoever, there's, whoever is doing their formatting is simply gotten better. And so we just need to update this, run the manuscript through the formatting again as though it were brand new and get it updated, get it out there in the professional quality that the other more modern books are used to receiving. And, and that can be definitely a big thing, but I think just from a, okay, really from a story perspective, if you don't hook somebody in the first, you know, 10, 15 pages, if you don't get them absolutely invested, then there's so much other competition out there that readers will leave.

And especially if you're trying to sell and Kindle unlimited, you have to be even more am sort of action heavy and really, uh, punching it up well upfront or you don't really have a chance cause somebody's pinhole unlimited. I mean, they didn't pay to download your book at all. If you don't get them committed and invested in the first 10 pages, they're just going to move on to the next book on their Kindle and you've lost them. So, uh, definitely very important from a story perspective to have a really, really strong active opening that introduces, you know, one or two characters, keeps the cast small, sets up the overarching conflict well and really attaches the reader to those characters right out of the gate.

Yeah, fully agree. Um,

Jesper (17m 36s): 

let, let's assume for now that that people sort of, they, they have the, they have the product itself, meaning meaning the book or the writing itself is, is up to par. So, so that, that stuff is good. They have a good to hook in the beginning. Uh, if, if

Stuart (17m 50s): 

we assume that that is okay, then what about covers then? Yeah, so the cover of course is a huge aspect of writing and you know, we all know the old phrases of not judging books by their covers. And yet we all do it every single time we buy a book. It's the first step of marketing. It's the first thing you see when you approach a book, whether it be online on a bookshelf, and it doesn't matter. The first thing we see are first impression is always that book cover.

And a lot of times what I've seen in some of the books that I have revived is that the cover just doesn't match the genre expectation. And if you're trying to sell a, a a really, you know, intense suspense thriller and your cover just doesn't speak to me as a thriller, it could be a beautiful gorgeous cover. But if it just doesn't meat the jhana expectations of a thriller, then it's not going to sell well no matter how good the cover is.

So a lot of it is just looking at the top 100 covers in your genre or pick, you know, 10 or so competing authors that your book is most similar to. And you know, you write thrillers, look up Stephen King and Dean Koontz and look up those coppers and see what they look like. Because even if you don't like that style, that's what the reader expect. And that's what the reader wants to see because the reader is going to be coming from Dean Coons or Stephen King and they're going to be looking for more thrillers to read.

And if they see, you know, a thriller that matches what they like, they're going to buy it versus seeing a thriller that could have a gorgeous professional, extremely good cover. But if the cover to them says, Oh, this is historical or horror or fantasy, this isn't a thriller like I like, then they're never going even to reach or blurb and they're not going to get any farther than glancing at your cover and ignoring it and you lose that reader forever. And that's an area where I see a lot of authors don't make sense.

They spot on is that cover just doesn't really, really important and you have to have a cover that really explains what the show is about action and shows that it's not really about, uh, at the point in time when it comes to covers, it is not good many being original, which a lot of us authors can easily try to become a try to, to achieve. We tried to be so original and we try to, to make it so unique that nobody has seen this before and we believe it's, it's to be excellent, but in fact, that is not the case.

Uh, and that's not what we're looking for because readers are looking for something similar to what they used to. And by giving them a cover that that shows them that this is the younger you are getting and it's on par with or similar to two other

Jesper (20m 48s): 

best selling books in that younger, then that is how you are going to am to be successful from a, from a coverage perspective. Okay. So, so if that was all about covers then am I'm wondering the other element that also goes into whether another book will sell is the am book descriptions. So, so how do you or how do one yeah, consider or evaluate if once book description is good enough.

Stuart (21m 20s): 

Yeah, I think in book descriptions and blurbs or a synopsis, it's a lot more difficult than with covers cause converse you can compare to some of the top selling covers in your genre and get a good idea. But blurbs are so unique to the book that it makes it a lot more difficult. But with blurbs that very easy to change, especially on the electronic format, it's extremely easy to change. You can try out a different blurb every week until you get something that you really liked. But a big mistake at least that I see with lots and lots of blurbs is authors try to just sort of tell you the plot.

Here's what my book is about. That seems logical, but it very, very rarely works. And really the goal of any sort of book blurb or synopsis is not to tell the reader what the book is going to be about, but it is to tell the reader instead why they should look at the book and what they're going to be excited about. And really what that comes down to is Shondra expectations, which is similar to the cover. And you want to just give them atmosphere and you want them to think like, Oh, this is going to be a really cool, you know, intense mystery thriller, not, Oh, this is a book about a guy who was framed for a crime and goes on the run and moves to Argentina.

It should be a book, a description that gives them just the atmosphere and sort of builds up that expectation in their head and then leaves them wanting more. Because if they, if they get the plot from the, the book description, they don't need to read the book anymore. If they just get the atmosphere and the genre expectation, then they need to read the book in order to figure out what it's about. And I think that can be a, a, a really powerful selling tool. But again, since it's so easy to just change the blurb, essentially whenever you need to pick five or six that you like and you know, test them on a, a writing group and you know, on a sub Reddit or something like that, um, test them out in a Facebook group for authors.

See what people like, pick the two or three that get the most votes. Try one for a week with your marketing plan. If it works, great. If not, switch to a different one. And you can really am guess and check with them blurbs pretty easy.

Jesper (23m 41s): 

Yeah, absolutely. And, and, uh, it's, it's sort of like thinking about the movie trailer. I mean, of course not all movies trailers does a good job at being a trail either. But yeah, it needs to just tease to stuff. You don't have to. Yeah, exactly. You don't have to tell bots. You just, you just tease it. Uh, and, and then, yeah, as you say, I mean, fortunately enough, eh, changing the blurb is quite easy. So, uh, you can just upload a new one and see how it performs. And of course, for you, dear listener, if you're struggling with that, don't forget that, uh, I actually have a guide book called how to write a fences.

You put description so you can pick that one up and uh, follow a step by step guide if you need some assistance on, on blurps. But, uh, but I do think blurbs are incredibly important because if people find, if, if you sort of have the writing on the control and you have the cover under control, meaning that it's sugar specific, like you talked about before, stupid, then people will then click, but then when they click and get to the book page on, for example, Amazon, then the blurb is the one that needs to close the deal, right? Yup.

Definitely. Yeah. And if you don't have that sort of them, well, you're still gonna lose out at the problem. He, I guess in, in revising these books, reviving these books as a, that was what I was trying to say is that you have, so you have quite a lot of moving parts here, right? I mean, yeah, there's a lot of different elements that could be wrong that you need to evaluate. Yeah, there are a ton of variables and it can sometimes, especially when you're looking at your own work, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly what's wrong, but Amy and I think, uh, if people really take a diligent look, it's not as hard as it seems to figure out exactly where there's room to improve.

Right? Yeah. And then, and sometimes it's probably also about of, uh, if, if you are really stuck, you know, maybe get some author friends to take a look for you or something like that. There's tons of groups out there full of authors that don't mind giving advice to everybody else. So there's, the resources exist. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But, but I was just thinking when I said that, I also thought of a caveat right away. I guess that's, that's the problem if you're trying to give advice and been thinking about caveats right away.

But, but the, the problem is also that sometimes the authors themselves are not the right people to justice stuff because we think as authors and, and it's difficult sometimes to put yourself in the mind of the reader because just like you said with the covers, uh, the readers are looking for, uh, something that signals to them that this is, I know what I'm getting and this is what I'm used to. They're not looking for, this is the most amazing original fats as you cover I've ever, ever seen. You know, that's not what they're looking for.

And we can get, well, I think sometimes by asking other authors, you can get into the same trap that they will tell you their author opinion. Um, and, but of course, sometimes you're going to get good advice from people who know what they're talking about. It's just a word of caution, I guess.

Stuart (26m 50s): 

I would agree. A lot of authors will make the same mistake as an author trying to revive their own work and then they look through it from the wrong perspective.

Jesper (26m 59s): 

Right. But okay, so if we have the writing we have to cover, we have the book description than, than what, what else?

Stuart (27m 7s): 

It really, once you've got all that, you're, you're pretty much ready to go. So, uh, you've, you've got everything more or less. All right. Seated correctly. Sometimes. I've actually, we've, we've changed titles on books as well, so we've had titles on that comes to mind that as probably the most successful book revival I've ever done. Um, and it, it was a really cool portal fantasy about a Japanese fighter pilot going back in time during world war II and going back to feudal Japan times and sort of becoming a sword and sorcery.

Fantasy and that book had a cover that said historical fiction to me. It had a title that was in Japanese and I didn't even understand it even though the book was in English and the writing, we just needed a proofread. But, uh, we changed that title to one that was very in keeping with am with sort of expectations and whatnot. The book's called samurai wind by Nigel sellers, but we we revive that and got the new title on it, got a new cover on it and everything.

And then really from there, the bulk of your work is finished and all you need to do is just find that audience and figure out where those people live. And with a samurai themed portal fantasy with a little historical bend to it, honestly, that appeals to most fantasy readers already. That's something that a lot of fantasy readers are going to really enjoy. So all you need to do is, is, uh, then dive into your sort of traditional marketing approach. And for me that would be Facebook and Amazon ads testing key words, figuring out which keywords are getting your sales, and then am pumping really as much of your budget as you can afford into those valuable keywords until they stop working.

And then re-evaluating once those keywords fall off a little bit. But, um, once you get to the point where you've got, you know, the title, the cover, the blurb and the writing that is pretty much everything. You're, you're more or less they're ready to market it again and really rebrand the novel and get people interested in it.

Jesper (29m 12s): 

Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. Uh, and of course then once you are at that stage, then you have the same problem that everybody else has and that is to drive enough traffic there and, and when those bits and all that. But do you have any, any good advice when it comes to, to running some ads and getting, getting the traffic to that book that you now know it's good and you know what you sell, but you just need to get eyeballs, eyeballs on it. Do you have any advice on, on how to best go about that? Uh, the advertising part of this equation?

Stuart (29m 41s): 

Yeah, it's definitely, marketing books is tricky and sort of the, uh, pitfall I guess of almost every author out there that I talked to am on my website on Stewart Feynman books.com. I've got a whole series of free articles about marketing that go into in a lot more detail than a, just a quick podcast. But essentially the biggest advice is if you're using pay to click or right, yeah. Pay per click ads. That's it. So if you're using those paper click ads, which I recommend you just want to sort of start with the shotgun blast and hit as much as you possibly can right out of the gate.

And it's going to be expensive to test and it's going to be a pretty steep learning curve. You'll need to know what you're doing. Yeah. If you set up, you know, maybe three or 4,000 different keywords on Amazon, which am I use the publisher rocket as well, but, um, set up 4,000 keywords and run those for fast and keywords, which will be four different ads, but run them on, you know, three different ad copies and adjust your ad copy, you know, three different times. Figure out which keywords are hitting.

And the combination might be something that's surprising. It might be something that you don't expect and he might have, uh, you know, a key word with an ad copy that doesn't strike you as something that you would, you know, would work for you. But again, the author's not the customer. So it's hard to think like a customer and we don't always understand the customers. Um, but really just sort of testing as much as physically possible for as long as you can to get enough data to be meaningful. Then figuring out from that data, okay, what about this makes sense and where am I actually going to make money?

Um, you know, kill those keywords that are just sucking down budget with no returns. Kill those off real quick. Figure it out the ones that, the keywords that are giving you the best bang for your buck and then put more and more into those keywords. Or maybe try five or six different ad copies with each key word to see what works the best. And eventually, you know, might take you a month, but you'll pair it down to where you've got ads running that are going to be very profitable on either Facebook or Amazon, whatever it might be. B, you'll get ads that are, are churning out a high rate of return.

 

Jesper (31m 57s): 

Yeah. Do you uh, tend to be it high to, to, to get those, uh, basically to revive the books so to speak, in order to get to get the Amazon algorithm to pay attention to you? Do, do you tend to bid high to make sure you're winning those bits or, or do you just bit sorta Jewish sure. That you're going to get a return on investment if you win the bid. So how do you, how do, how do you go about that?

Stuart (32m 20s): 

It's setting is definitely difficult. I'm not gonna say I'm a master of that just yet. Honestly, in the beginning I like to set the bids higher just cause I'm, I'm kind of impatient when it comes to getting that data and figuring it out. So I'll last a lot of ads in the beginning that are going to cost a good bit of money and have pretty high bids just so I can get all that data and you know, run through my budget every single day to make sure I'm hitting it. And uh, once I get all that data, all tone it down.

And most of the time, once I have an ad that's fairly refined, I'll just send it to the Amazon recommended bid and they do like the dynamic bidding where they'll adjust it for you up to like 50% of what you put in. So I'll put maybe 50 cents in and so that'll let it adjust up to 75 cents if it needs to. And that seems to work pretty well. So you're not getting, you know, prime time bids, you're not winning those, but you're still at least, you know, winning enough bids to get a decent amount of impressions, a few thousand impressions or whatever it might be on each ad and, and that's really what you need.

But once you pare it down, I think that the bid matters many less and less. And it might be the case I've had a few times where reviving an old book, I found that it wasn't any keyword that was even expensive that ends up being the winner and it'll be something, you know, 4 cent keyword that nobody else is bidding on that I would've never thought in a thousand years of irrelevant. But it was something that publisher rocket pulled up in their list and I kept it in there and there it went.

And so it'll be a really cheap, a keyword, which is fantastic.

Jesper (34m 4s): 

Yeah, I know, I know Dave Chesson likes to share the example of, uh, of, uh, what was it? Book book book. I think that was the key word, who was using just three times the workbook in a row, which makes absolutely no sense at all

Stuart (34m 18s): 

who types that in on am. I don't know what they're hoping to find when they search book book book, but people do apparently, and that you weren't as typically cheap so you can grab it.

Jesper (34m 30s): 

Yeah, yeah, indeed. Indeed. Okay. Well, I think that that is good in terms of revitalizing the book. So, so you certainly need to drive the traffic there and, and all the usual stuff that we usually talk about is, is of course also relevant in the sense that, uh, if you make sure to write in series, then of course you can afford to spend a bit more on, on this, uh, book one in the series that is debt, uh, because hopefully people will now start reading through that and, and like it because you just made sure that the product itself is good and then they'll buy the other books and, and that will bring you back some revenue, meaning that you will cover some of your ads.

Exactly.

Stuart (35m 10s): 

Yeah.

Jesper (35m 12s): 

Okay. Uh, Stewart, uh, is there anything else that is important to know about reviving that books, uh,

Stuart (35m 19s): 

that we haven't talked about? Covered just about everything? Um, I guess as a last bit of advice, I would say, uh, one of the biggest mistakes I see authors making is, is always with the cover. And just the concept is actually a line that I read I think like two or three days ago, just came up. Another author mentioned that you're, when you look at a cover, you should not be looking for some flawless work of art. You should consider your cover to just be your first marketing tool. And even if it's a cover that you personally don't like, if it fits in your genre, the offense, what readers want, use it.

It doesn't matter if you like it or not because the paycheck is what, what the authors in it for. So, uh, it doesn't have to be some, you know, flawless work of art. You can always make a special edition later that's going to be your flawless work of art, but you need to sell books first before we can afford that special edition.

Jesper (36m 13s): 

Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned early on that, that you had some articles or blog posts or whatever that, uh, goes into some of this. So if you send me the links to that, the Stewart, then I'll add those links into the show notes. Can go and read it.

Stuart (36m 29s): 

Yup. Yeah. Just Stuart Feynman books is where you can find it all and we'll get those links up there.

Jesper (36m 34s): 

All right, perfect. Okay. Thanks so much for, for joining steward. Yeah, thank you. So next Monday, autumn is back and we are going to talk about whether or not free books are worth it as a marketing strategy.

Narrator (36m 53s): 

If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 33 – Author Self Doubt

You're not the first author struggling with a lack of confidence in your writing or imposter syndrome. Author self doubt is a very common theme.

The good news is that we have a solution for you. Check it out here: https://ultimatefantasywritersguide.com/main 

New episodes EVERY single Monday.

To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC 

PATREON!

Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!

Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 

Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 

Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper 

Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (1s):
Do you struggle with many of the same things that many other authors do. And that is, uh, how to feel more confident with writing.

Autumn (15s):
If you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is Autumn Birt and gather with Jesper Schmidt. We've published more than 20 novels. Our aim is to help use our experience to help you with writing marketing and selling books to fans all over the world.

Jesper (31s):
So we wanted to try to get in a bit of a quicker widow for you guys today. And the S you can probably see in here, autumn is on the move traveling around. So, so there, there was a bit of wind in the microphone and the audio quality is not the best, but uh, but we hope you can live with that. And we just wanted to, to talk a bit about how to feel more confident with your writing. But before we get into that, we also wanted to shout out a huge thank you to some both existing support us on Patrion who upped their pledge, but also to quite a few new patron supporters.

Jesper (1m 9s):
Uh, so I think you have the names for us. A autumn.

Autumn (1m 13s):
Yes. I want to give a shout out and a huge thank you for your support. It really means so much to us. But bill, moose, beard, Mark Jones, Perry Tomers, Irish, Carrie, Karen Jones, Amelia hay, and Angela Gibson. Uh, thank you so much for joining us. Those who just did recently and for those who author pledge and just for those who have been with us and supporting us on Patreon, we just went through our big first birthday anniversary blowout and it was a lot of fun.

Autumn (1m 44s):
We got some new patrons and met some great people and I really thrilled with the interaction and everyone is really helping us out and lets us know that what we're doing is important to them and helping them to finish and follow their dreams and become better authors and writers and publish. And I love being a part of that.

Jesper (2m 6s):
Yeah, absolutely. It is. We really, really appreciate it. And, uh, it makes a huge difference too to know that you, that you value what we try to put out in terms of advice for you. Uh, every week. So, uh, so thanks a lot. And I also hope you're going to get a bit out of the today's video, although we are going to pitch something for you, but they stay tuned for a second and then it'll make sense. But I think first of all, before we get into that, then we need to talk for a second around what are sort of the main problems that that writers, uh, even if you're a new rider or an experienced one, doesn't matter too much, but, um, what are the main problems that we face in, in terms of, of feeling confident about our writing and, uh, I dunno, I, I made a few notes here autumn but, uh, I don't know if you, if you have some place where you, where you would like to start with, what are of these problems are, how, how should we do this?

Autumn (3m 2s):
Well, I think, um, I would say to me, the top one that always comes to mind, the one that I hear the most of is doubt just what your writing is good enough that anyone's gonna read it. And I think that is, to me, the number one problem next to impossibly consecutive with finding the time to actually write. Those are huge issues for I think every author out there.

Jesper (3m 26s):
Yeah, indeed. Yeah. Yeah. And I had a, I had a few things on my notepad here, so I mean things like, it's sort of a dock tails on what you just said, but, but you know, struggling with how to, how do I know that what I'm writing is good enough, you know, that, that, that it duck tails on the whole feeling, not confident, whatnot. But, but, but I'm more thinking about the actual mechanics of writing here, you know, uh, how, how do I actually write so that I know that I'm doing it well correctly and I'm saying sort of, you know, correctly, it's, it's, it's that can be debated, but, but at least how am I doing it in a way that, uh, that, that works.

Jesper (4m 7s):
Maybe we could put it like that as well. Um, and how do I make it interesting? How do I, how do I turn my story idea into things that I, I mean we've talked about before on how to structure chapters, but, but just in general, how do I turn a story idea into a complete exciting novel where it's actually gripping and it's filled with tension on all those things? Yeah. And then I think also one of the cute issues with, with being writer, being a writer and an author is also the fact that you're doing it on your own.

Jesper (4m 43s):
So it goes on one hand with the fact around worrying on worrying about being confident enough. Because if you win a ordinary workplace, you have colleagues around you and you, you'll probably know whether or not you're doing a good job and your boss will tell you or not tell you, you know, that sort of thing that goes along with the nine to five job. But, but being an a writer, you're writing an entire novel and basically you have no clue if it's good or not.

Jesper (5m 13s):
At some point you would release it and then the readers will tell you, uh, but that's a bit, uh, that's a bit, well, it's shame and a waste of time and whatnot to, to go through all that hassle to write a full novel. It might take you several years, uh, only to learn that people don't appreciate it, that, that's horrible to be honest. So, uh, so I think the accountability partner part is important as well. Meaning that if you had somebody who you could go to with your questions, uh, who you could maybe share in, in a more private forum, you could share some of your writing, you could get some feedback on it if this good or bad, that sort of thing.

Jesper (5m 52s):
And also somebody who could help you along the way to to your finished novel. I think that's, that is a huge problem, that many phase because you're doing it by yourself and you don't have that sort of partner on the site, even if it's like a virtual partner.

Autumn (6m 10s):
Absolutely. I mean, I think, um, having a person, a community, just someone you can go that you trust the you and say, Oh, you know, is this a good idea? Is this a good character? Or how do I develop this? Or I feel lost here. They, like they say the mushy middle. I so many authors just lose track. They want to skip to a new idea, right. Was about, they hit the halfway point and it's such a commonplace to back up and let go of. But to have someone to say, no, you know, you're, you just need to push through this as you hit the climax to have that partner, like you said, an accountability partner that will keep you going, not let you drop another novel that you give up and say, look, you know, that you're writing correctly, that you are doing all the necessary steps.

Autumn (6m 56s):
That's really a huge part of making sure that you're going to get to the end and what you're doing. You're doing it right.

Jesper (7m 2s):
Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. And then this is where the, the pitch part then comes in because it actually just happened. So by complete coincidence here that we actually have something that will solve these problems for you.

Autumn (7m 19s):
We do. We have something that we've put together, I put together originally and then Yesper you've come in and help me work on it. That uh, I went through all this and I saw so many other authors struggling that we created the ultimatefantasywritersguide to really help someone learn how to write, write properly, not get sidetracked, nugget loss of ideas, make sure they're writing some riveting and interesting. Um, and then to know how to market it, how to find fans, how to edit it.

Autumn (7m 51s):
So it's actually interesting I editing, I know the first time I looked at it was like, Oh, this is not, you know, just spellchecking there's so much more to editing and developing a novel after that first draft is done. And then you know, how to the step to actually publish. It's intimidating the first time you upload to Amazon. It's exciting. It's so exciting. But it's also the questions on there when you're like looking at Amazon and people are asking about ISB numbers and all of these questions, knowing what you need to DOH know the file types you need. It's all needs to be put together.

Autumn (8m 22s):
And so we did, we put it all in one spot. We're insane. No, we did this all is one course, but we did. And because of that, um, it's a one stop shop chorus that'll teach you how to write and how to, you know, develop everything into a fantastic novel.

Jesper (8m 44s):
Yeah. So basically when I, what I, what I've just explained was, uh, the details around what the ultimatefantasywritersguide costs has to offer. So on the back end of going through the, uh, obviously, uh, the aim is that you will feel less worried, um, and you will, you can sort of park the feelings about not feeling good enough and you have somebody who will be able to help you. Because as part of the course as well, you are going to get access to both a closed mastermind Facebook group that we run.

Jesper (9m 15s):
Uh, but you're also going to get access to monthly Q and a sessions that we run for only for, for students and, and, and support us on Patreon. So that means that you can push your questions and we will cover them in, in a monthly Q and a or you can show up yourself to the month Q and a and we will have a conversation autumn and I with you to try to answer any questions you might have. If you cannot show up, you can just post them to us, to them in a video for you, which you can watch, watch on your own time.

Jesper (9m 45s):
Um, and basically like that we're trying to help you so that you are not alone and you don't have to be alone in the writing process.

Autumn (9m 54s):
So this course will make sure that you, not only you will have an accountability partner, you'll know what you need to know. So you're not going to have another unfinished manuscript. You're going to know your writing well, you're going to make sure we are going to make sure through the question and answers. We're going to be there to help you to talk to you. Plus the the, the private mastermind group. You're going to have access to other authors who either are going along with you on this journey or Ooh, or who are ahead of you. And like, yes, for an I who have done this, we've seen it.

Autumn (10m 25s):
We know how to help you and make sure that you finish this, Oh no, leave it behind and you'll be successful this time. And that's what this course is all about. And even once you finished how to go on the next step of your career, the Arthur branding, marketing, all those questions, we're still gonna be here. You're going to have lifetime access to us, to those questions to make sure that as your books grow and your platform grows, that you will know what the next step is and you're not lost somewhere along the way and that you can be successful as well.

Jesper (10m 60s):
Excellent. So if this is something you're a bit interested in, at least hearing a bit more about, uh, we have a page for you set up that, I'll put the link to the page in the, in the video description below, or if you're listening on the podcast and it'll be in the show notes. So click through there and have a look at the page. We've, we, there was a video there that goes into more detail about what the cost is about and, and I promise you it's not recorded on the outside and, and, and like this video. So it's good. It's a good quality video where you can probably hear what big things happen.

Jesper (11m 32s):
So go and check it out if you interested. Uh, you should know that the am the costs for this time around, we'll open on the 30th of August, but we only opened the course twice a year. So if you listen to this or what's this before the 30th of August, you can go to that page, you can sign up for the wait list there and then it'll only be like a few weeks and then you will get an email that the courses open and you can sign up. Or if you're watching this way, way later, then that's linked is still applicable.

Jesper (12m 2s):
Still go through to that link that the, that I'm mentioning there that we have a below in the show notes or in the video description because there again there will be a wait list. But of course then you'll have to wait until the next time, uh, that the course opens, which is only as I said, twice a year. So that's how it works. Uh, go and check it out. If you have any questions to any of what you read on that site, uh, that then just ping us, let us know and we will help you out. There's also a Q and a on the page itself that you can read, and you will also notice that there is a ton of very, very cool bonuses linked to the cost that, uh, but there is all listed on that page.

Jesper (12m 42s):
So go have a look and, uh, and see what you think and hopefully, hopefully you heard everything we said here. Okay. Uh, and uh, it comes through. Okay. We do have some, uh, we do have some plans for the future here, but we'll share more about that the next week. But for now, go and check out the course and, uh, we hope that you will find it useful. Well, we hope to see you. Thanks for tuning in and watching us see you next Monday. All right. Stay safe out there and see your next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 32 – Publisher Rocket Ninja Tricks (with Dave Chesson)

Now that KDP Rocket changed it's name to Publisher Rocket, we brought its founder and creator, Dave Chesson, on to Am Writing Fantasy.

We discuss the recent change to Publisher Rocket, but more importantly, how authors can get the most out of Publisher Rocket. The conversation covers everything from how to rank on Amazon, insights on the Amazon A9 algorithm, KDP keyword selection and onto Amazon ads.

There's a lot to take away. Enjoy.

https://publisherrocket.com/ 
https://kindlepreneur.com/ 

New episodes EVERY single Monday.

To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC 

PATREON!

Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!

Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 

Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 

Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper 

Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (0s):
So the awesome tool for authors called KDP rocket recently changed its name to publisherrocket and I could think of nothing better than to bring its founder and creator Dave Chesson on peer two amwritingfantasy to talk about why he changed it to publisherrocket and what is it that we people can learn from it. And maybe we can get some Ninja tips out of him. We'll see if you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place.

Jesper (32s):
My name is Jesper and together with autumn I've popped this modern 20 books and it is our aim to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors. So Dave maybe you would like to just say a few words about yourself and thank you for coming onto amwritingfantasy.

Dave (50s):
Well, it's really awesome to be here. Um, as, as you said, I'm Dave and a. I run a website called kindlepreneur.com a that teaches authors how to sell their books and get their books discovered on Amazon as well as the creator of publisherrocket. I started off as an author, but I actually have a bit of dyslexia. And so I've never thought of myself as a great writer. And that's why it was very important for me that if I was going to spend all that time, you know, uh, I'm a father, I'm a husband, and I was, I used to be military. If I was going to spend all that time writing on wanting to make sure that I had the right market.

Dave (1m 23s):
And so it's from all that research and understand that helped me to get my books out there and to make enough money for my books to be able to quit my job and be here full time with my children. So

Jesper (1m 33s):
yeah. Excellent. And uh, we use a tend to be rocket, uh, ourselves as well. Autumn and myself and the, actually I talked about it in a, in a previous video, so if any of you watching wants to sort of get a inside KDP rocket look, I did some screen-sharing stuff and whatnot. I'll put a link right here on the screen for you so you can just click that one and then it'll take you through that video. Would you want to see what the KDP rocket looks like inside? Because we're not going to do three SEO in here today. And for those of you listening on the podcast, you need to cycle through to episode 11 and that's when I talked about canopy rocket but maybe to start us off Dave maybe we can sort of why, why did you want to change the KDP rocket into publisherrocket?

Dave (2m 15s):
Well, the first thing was, is that Katie P rocket uh, we used to have version 1.0 and it's solely focused on Kindle and that's why we chose the name KTP because the Kindle aspect, this is back in the day when create space existed and then there's KTP for ebook. So now that a publisherrocket is a version 2.0 it covers both books and eBooks. So we needed to make sure that nobody got confused about thinking it was just a Kindle tool anymore. But another crazy thing too though is that we've been in talks with Barnes and noble, Kobo and iTunes about including their markets data in rocket in the future.

Dave (2m 53s):
It's kinda hard to have a conversation with those guys when your name is very Amazon centric. He has to say it stalls the the discussions. But now that we're publisherrocket though am most of the representative we've been working for a very pleased about that and had been really forthcoming in looking into how we can access the data that we do to be able to provide authors with the information that we give. So that was a really major factor about, you know, taking and changing the name. And at the same time, like I talked about, we did the name change, right as we transitioned to version 2.0 and version 2.0 is not only faster.

Dave (3m 30s):
And I would, I would say sleeker, definitely a better look, but also the internal programmings allowing myself and my programmers to add even more. We have a whole bunch of new features and capabilities coming out. We'll be adding every international market here very soon. And this isn't just pulling information from those markets. We've actually been collecting years worth of data on all of the, from the German, that UK, the Japanese, you name it, to be able to give the right analysis that fits those markets perfectly.

Dave (4m 2s):
So now that we have a more robust program, we can do things like that. We also have added every one of the 16,000 Amazon categories inside the program itself. So for the first time authors can go in there and be able to see every possible category, especially from their genre or their string. And then they can even see how many books that day they need to sell in order to be number one. And that that is updated daily. And as a matter of fact, we're actually adding new systems to make it update even more so.

Dave (4m 32s):
So you can get real time data and find out which categories are best. And in the future we're going to be adding even more to that to include the average am abs, LR of the number one books. And here's the cool part. We're going to be adding something that lets you know how many shoppers actually go to that category to purchase books. So now authors can finally select categories that help them to be a bestselling author even more so and on top of that categories that will help you to sell more books.

Jesper (5m 2s):
It's a, it's an amazing tool. I mean, I, I can't imagine the amount of data scraping you must be doing. I mean, actually last time when I recorded the previous video I was talking about every time, can it be rocket started pulling data. I did the screen sharing system recording sessions just like, Ooh, powered down or the most I could see it. You know what a but I'm glad that the a that you mentioned that the publisherrocket is, is, is let's say faster because also sometimes it didn't happen often, but a few times it didn't happen on me.

Jesper (5m 34s):
That KDP rocket crest and I had to restart it. It was not a big deal. You know, we just do the research again, but, but of course, I guess publisherrocket tests that fixed mountain, is that right?

Dave (5m 44s):
Seven times faster and it's able to hold more information. The thing about it was when I created KDP rocket 1.0 back about three years ago, I had no idea how popular it was going to be, nor did I understand how many extra things I wanted to add to it. So our original foundation of the program was, was meant for just keyword research and competition analysis, you know, helping you to choose the right keywords that get discovered and help you to see what your competitors are doing. And that's it. But over those three years we added the category feature.

Dave (6m 16s):
Then we added Amazon book ads feature and you know, we have even more that we want to do a. And it was evident that our original programming wasn't able to support that. And so as we added more, it started to slow down just a bit. Or like you said, there was the crashes. So we completely overhauled the entire system with the plans in the future of adding even more. And we put that in the infrastructure. So, and we timed it seven times faster, which believe me, it's, if you're doing a lot of research or you're pulling, you want to pull hundreds if not thousands of keywords for your ads, every second counts.

Jesper (6m 51s):
Yeah. You have some new cabinet. And it is, I mean, it is amazing how, how much computer power that needs to be to actually pull all that data out, uh, from, from what is, you know, from, from the use of perspective on my end, it just looks like a very sort of, that's a simple piece of software, but there's a lot to it underneath the hood if one were to look at it. Right?

Dave (7m 14s):
Yeah. When I first designed the a the software, I did what I call the Mazy test. And, and Muzzy is actually the name I give my grandmother and she's super awesome. Um, she knows about that much about book marketing. But the key was, is that I, I wanted to see if she could figure out how to use it, you know, kind of on our own. And, um, that was kind of a test that we did to figure out, okay, how good is this? How is it going to work? But then on top of that, we continue to revise it and change things and move things around so that no matter what age you are, whether or not you're young or you're in retirement age, it's very intuitive and we'll help you to get through it.

Dave (7m 51s):
And one thing that I want to add too is, is that, you know, we talk about all these additions and new features and even the upgrade to version 2.0 a I'm a strong believer of software companies never charging people again, you know, you make your software better. Don't, don't make me pay more money for it. Uh, so every one of those things we've talked about has been a free upgrade for every user on that. That's our policy. That's the way we're going to keep it.

Jesper (8m 13s):
Yeah, that's excellent. But I w I was thinking maybe for, for those who doesn't jump on to that, the other video that I recorded them, but who just sort of want a very quick overview. Maybe you could just start off, talk us through that for different features that are inside the publisherrocket and I think it's four, if I remember correctly, four different areas that you, what you can do and maybe maybe your thoughts on what is, which one of these are, if any, are most useful in your view for, for authors if any of them better than the others or, or, or what, I'm just curious to have your thoughts on that.

Dave (8m 49s):
Well, let me answer the first question and then we'll get to that last one. What I'd like to tell people is, is that that publisher rockets entire design is to help authors get their books discovered. Okay. To get found on Amazon and hopefully in the future the other markets as well. Uh, so that they can get their books in front of the right shoppers slash. Readers. Now, every one of those features was designed with this in purpose. Okay. But with different ways of doing it. The first feature is keyword feature and that is helping you to choose your seven Kindle keywords, okay?

Dave (9m 20s):
Those are the words that people type into Amazon and then Amazon chooses to show books of for it. There are three very important questions when choosing your keywords that authors should definitely consider. The first is they want words that shoppers actually type into Amazon. The second is they want to make sure that that shoppers actually buy those books when they see them. Okay. A great example is you're in fantasy, right? What are the chances that I type in the word fantasy and Amazon shows me the perfect book, right?

Dave (9m 51s):
Like the type, I mean, you know all the different types of genre out there. Right? On top of that though, what if I type in something like Velossa Raptor, Epic war? Okay. Maybe there's a book out there, I don't know, but you know, you can quickly see that no, there are no sales coming in for those books. Therefore, this is not actually the end game. This is not where shoppers end up and then purchase. So knowing how much those books are making that show up is a very important thing. And the third and final part is understanding the competition.

Dave (10m 23s):
It's great to choose those words, but if your book doesn't show up on the first page of Amazon, your book will not benefit from that keyword. So we've designed it for authors to quickly answer those three things inside the keyword feature. They can see all the words that people are typing into Amazon that pertained to what they're thinking about. They know the average amount of money that books are making that show up for that keyword and they know how hard it would be to rank for it. And we give it a great score from one to a hundred. And our programming, uh, takes into account when it creates that competition score.

Dave (10m 57s):
It takes into account the popularity, the author, the popularity of the book, the sales, how new is it, uh, the re review grades, uh, and more importantly recent review grades cause that has a major effect. I would say reviews that came in two years ago, I have little to no effect where as a review that came in yesterday as more of an effect. Um, we also take into account, um, some other factors as well, and we compile it into a number that makes you easy for you to say, Oh wow, that keyword would be a lot harder to rank for then that one.

Dave (11m 31s):
So right there you have everything you need to select your seven Kindle keywords. But I'd also say too, that that feature's really important for new authors just about to start their book. Say for example, your thinking of writing a book on, we'll say, um, some type of magician fantasy I'm going to stick inside of your genre. Here is I give an answer, right? Okay. Now knowing what it is that people are typing into Amazon and whether or not there's a hungry market for it can be really important to helping you sort of not only choose the niche genre that you go into, but more importantly, it can help you in figuring out what should be the focal point of your book cover or your book description and help you to know that your book idea before you even start, whether it has a market on Amazon that's willing to pay or if it doesn't.

Dave (12m 25s):
Okay. So you can collect all this information and validate your book idea before you start, as well as have important information on how you design and layout your book going forward. Because remember, keywords are the words that your market is using when they are shopping and looking for the next book. So if somebody, if there's a lot of people say typing in necromancer, uh, you know, Epic fantasy right, okay. You know, you were thinking about having a wizard that, you know, maybe, maybe it does raise the dead or are deals in the dark arts a bit, you know, um, and you know that that has a hungry market.

Dave (13m 3s):
You may want to focus or ensure that your cover represents that more so that it truly needs the desire of those of those readers. You may find out that, well, there are other characters, you know, in, in my, in my group that are trekking through the woods, you know, but maybe that one should be front and center. Um, you may do research and start to find more and more about what people are typing. And so that information can really help you get your foot, you know, get you started on the right foot. The second feature is our competition analyzer.

Dave (13m 34s):
And the purpose of this one is to understand what your potential competitors are doing, how well they're doing and what they're doing, right? So you start by typing in say a keyword phrase or whatever it is you might want to target for your keyword. And rocket will list out the books that Amazon would list out and it gives you important information about, you know, the book cover, the title, the, the age, how much money it's made. It made that day about how much money it's making on average in the month. Um, and so you can start to kind of see what's working.

Dave (14m 4s):
You can even flip between book and ebook and see how, how well their ebook is doing compared to their book and understand which ones actually making more money for them. And so that can kind of help you with some of your marketing decisions moving forward, your price selection, um, you know, whether or not you want to target this an advertisement later on and so forth. The third feature is our category feature. And like we talked about earlier, you know, Amazon has 16,000 plus categories and we have the data to help you find the right category. Okay.

Dave (14m 33s):
It's interesting, there's actually a lot of authors, especially for fantasy might think that a that the main category of science fiction and fantasy would be the only category that holds fantasy related categories. That's actually not true. There are four different main categories that have a whole subsection on just fantasy and especially in literature and fiction, um, young adult. And there's a couple of more that are just really weird and out of place. And our software actually helps people to find those very quickly. And I assure you, if you look at the science fiction and fantasy and then you find your fantasy selected category there, it's probably going to be a lot harder to rank for that than say a the fiction or literature and fiction version of that same exact category because nobody thinks to look there.

Dave (15m 18s):
So the software helps you to find those opportunities so that you have a much better chance of actually being a bestseller. Why does bestseller help? Well, there's a couple of things that come from this. Number one is that you get the orange tag that says bestseller. And that's cool. I mean from a humorous perspective, but what's really good from a marketing perspective is that when Amazon shows your book and others, it shows the orange tag or yeah, it's the orange tag that says bestseller. So your book sticks out, which means my eyes are going to direct to yours, even if somebody else's is above you.

Dave (15m 50s):
And on top of that to that tag is a bit of social proof. It tells me that other people like this book because they're buying it and I feel more comfortable purchasing it. Now that I know that others have bought it as well. What's funny is is that you might not be selling as much as the others, but you selected the right category. And so you have that advantage. Another thing that's coming from category sales to is that Amazon sends out emails to people who've bought inside that category. And if you're the new bestseller, you're actually gonna get promoted more often from their email campaigns.

Dave (16m 23s):
And so that's a major help. And a third thing that's really coming from, from categories as well is that we're seeing an increase in shoppers' purchasing from categories themselves. And you can see this cause Amazon is now adding filters inside of the categories on amazon.com. So say for example, you go to your favorite category, you can now look on the left and it'll give you phrases that people have used to describe different types of fantasy. You'll see a top authors listed. So you can click those series names, um, genres to choose from.

Dave (16m 57s):
And if there are fantasy specific awards, they even have little click boxes there for you to select. So you can see the award winners. So Amazon's really focusing on improving shopper experience through categories themselves. And that all starts with authors selecting the right one. And finally we have the Amazon ads. We call it the AMS keyword feature. Because say for example, you've got a great book and you just can't seem to either break into your, uh, your area. There were too many powerful, awesome, you know, books make more money and you just can't get up to the top.

Dave (17m 29s):
Or maybe you know that you're creating something absolutely new, like some crazy new genre a or what have you. Then Amazon ads is probably a phenomenal way for you to take it to the next level. And I would also say to those who have written a book and it failed, maybe try given a little breathing it, you know, new life into it through ads and you may see it finally get that opportunity with Amazon ads, you can now say, Hey, look Amazon, I want to put this book at the top of the search result. Somebody types that in, I want to show up for that.

Dave (17m 60s):
Or you could also say, Hey, Amazon, anytime somebody sees this book, I want to be next to them. Okay, I want to be right there so that you know, they've got to see my book first. This gives you ability to 100% now. You're getting eyes on your book and that can be incredible. But the problem that author's run into is you can't just select 10 or 15 terms, sit back and say, sweet. You know, and even raise up the cost per click to make it. Yeah, no obvious that you're going to make those. The you're going to get seen. Actually, it's taking hundreds if not thousands of keywords that you want to focus on for your ads before you can really start to see some progress.

Dave (18m 36s):
And so we created a system that helps you to auto-generate those pertinent keywords and help you to make your ads more effective and efficient. So from those four features, we're helping you to get discovered naturally. We're helping you to understand what your competitors are doing as well as what you'd be facing. We're helping you just like those categories who you're seeing and found and connected to other books. And finally we're helping you with your ads, if that's what you choose, all of that to help get you discovered.

Jesper (19m 3s):
It's amazing. I really liked that. The piece of software, it's very well developed. Um, and I think especially now in, in the, if we're, if we're looking at Amazon for a second year in the Amazon marketplace, if you are to let's say, get any sort of traction with your Amazon ass, we are getting to a stage now where short the top keywords, they are so expensive that when you're selling an ebook for $5, it's, it's, it's forget about bidding on it.

Jesper (19m 33s):
It's way too expensive. And then the only other option then is to have tons of apps running on a little bit, but then you're going to pick up the fuse that nobody else saw bidding on or maybe a few people are bidding on. So and there I have found now publisher Rob, I was just about to say KDP rocket, but probably so rocket to am to be incredibly helpful because I think on, I, especially one of my books I have, I think I have my 20,000 plus keywords ads running on those a but, and then just out of KDP rocket, I mean it's so easy to just go in, generate lists, pump them into Amazon and other list into Amazon.

Jesper (20m 9s):
I mean, it doesn't matter if some of the keywords are replicates of of one, you already have it there because who cares? I mean, you were going to win one of them and as long as you are bidding the same, it doesn't really matter. So you can just, you know, beef up your Amazon ads by pulling data out of K.D.P. Oh, sorry. Now I did it again. Publisherrocket I mean, uh, so I, I think it's, it's an amazing tool that saves, she was so incredibly much time.

Dave (20m 34s):
Yeah. You know, a lot of people are afraid about, like you were talking about 20,000 keywords are, so what happens if I'm showing up for keywords ed, you know, nobody's ever going to buy. That's okay. Because the thing is you don't pay Amazon until somebody clicks on your ad and nobody will click on your ad unless after seeing your book cover in your title and your ad blurb, if you choose to have one that still interests them, then they click. So, you know, I found some interesting keywords that I still can't figure out exactly why that directed, but it somehow caught the attention of a larger number of people.

Dave (21m 9s):
Those people clicked and those people bought. And again, I think the reason why I made those sales was because nobody was thinking to target that. And yet it was a good fit in some way. And again, I only pay if people's, after seeing my ad like it and choose to learn more.

Jesper (21m 26s):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's exactly my mentality with it as well. I mean, it doesn't matter what your load in there, because as you just said, you know, you only pay for the click. So who cares if you're 500 keywords for that you got from publisherrocket that nobody cares about, that doesn't really relate to fantasy, but for whatever reason, that's what you've got in your list. It doesn't matter. You know, you gotta kinda pay for them anyway. So yeah, it's just a base, you know, you can just go crazy and lots of lots of keywords and look them into Amazon with lope it and some of it will get clicked.

Dave (22m 0s):
Yep, absolutely. And you know, and that's, that's an interesting thing. I just kind of break away for a bit on this is what I love most about Amazon ads is I can use the numbers to finally figure out where the problem is with my book. You see, when am here's an example. I, have you ever heard of the book a battlefield earth? It's a science fiction book. There's actually a really bad movie made about it, but it doesn't ring any bells red, but okay. Well anyways, uh, this book was written and uh, awhile ago the publishing company reached out to me and said, Hey, we'd like your help about figuring out how to improve our Amazon ads.

Dave (22m 39s):
I said, okay. You know, I actually read the book as a child and it was probably the second ever science fiction book I read and I credit it for kind of turning me into a scifi fan. Uh, the first being Ender's game. Love that one. So I said, cool honor to, to kind of work on a book that I read as a kid. Sure. So we looked at it and we looked at their Amazon ads and it was crazy because I saw him now they had a large number impression, so great. They were, they were choosing the right keywords, you know, Amazon was choosing to show their book and they had a lot of great clicks and awesome.

Dave (23m 12s):
The cover fit, it was perfect. Got it. And they've just done a new cover when they were doing this new launch. However though the percentage of people choosing to buy that clicked on it was pretty low. It was like 0.5% maybe it was 0.4% but it was like somewhere that low that we're actually going from clicks to buy. And while they were making money and they were helping to get their book out there more in, the problem was was that there was a significant number of people who were coming to their sales page and choosing not to buy. So they were like, well, maybe we need better keywords.

Dave (23m 43s):
I was like, no, no, no. I know what your problem is. Your book description is horrible. So I told him that the problem was was that the book description was more like a book report. They were giving way too many details. They were listing out, you know, characters that didn't need to be in there. They were giving, you know, the specifics of the entire story and it dragged on. Now I said, so really we shouldn't be focusing on our keywords because obviously those are driving in the right people because they're clicking and they're interested, but they're not paying. So I said, look, I'm going to rewrite your book description, I'm going to use what I know about Amazon and everything and we're going to go ahead and construct something that makes shoppers now.

Dave (24m 21s):
This is truly an a post-apocalyptic Saifai book that you know of, you know, Epic proportion and why they need to read this book. So I wrote one, they said, yeah, that sounds really cool, but we really think that our original one fits most with fans. I said, all right, hold on, let me, let me show you something. So I went to a website called petfood.com and it's where you can pay to like submit two different versions, whether it's like two different versions of a cover or two different versions of a book description. And they go out and they find people to survey and to choose which one they liked best.

Dave (24m 54s):
But more importantly, those people have to give a reason for why they chose one of the other one. What's really cool is is that we had about 75% of the people choose mine over the other. One. More importantly, when reading the comments, most of the people that chose the other one said, I've read this book before and this one gives more detail. So obviously it wasn't the best one to choose a new person to purchase it. It was only the one that they felt most comfortable with because they knew the story and that was the thing about the publisher was they were so close to the story that they thought they needed more information.

Dave (25m 26s):
So when I showed that to the publishing company, they mirror like, Whoa, okay, cool. So they changed out the book description and immediately they tripled their conversion rate of their ads. And even more so from tweaking it beyond then to get even more sales. Now that not only helps with their Amazon ads but also helps with every other effort they're making in marketing, whether it's Facebook ads, email campaigns or whatever, because now when people land on that book, more people are converting to purchase because the book description is that good.

Dave (25m 57s):
So I love Amazon ads, not just from the ability to proactively and absolutely get my book in front of people, but also I can learn through the numbers where my bra, my book is having a problem and then I can fix it and give it the best success rate.

Jesper (26m 14s):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean a I also wrote a whole guide, step by step guide book on how to read, write fantasy book descriptions because it doesn't matter. Your book description is part of the equation that makes people buy. So it's not only about finding good keywords and finding out what to be and so forth and of course have a good cover. But the book description is absolutely a part of the equation.

Dave (26m 38s):
Yeah. I never realized how important a book description was until finally Amazon provided those AMS numbers mean I kind of used to think, eh, you know, it's, I mean the coverage is really important, but really that book description is what makes somebody who's interested turn into a buyer. So 100% and yeah, use that kind of resource and material, make sure that your book description is stellar arrests, all of your marketing efforts could be dying prematurely because you couldn't land that sale.

Jesper (27m 6s):
So I wanted to cycle back to the seven keywords again, um, that you mentioned before, and I'm sort of spraying this question on you a bit. So if you don't know, that's fully fair. Uh, but I was just wondering, when you're looking at the data from, you know, under the hood, if you have any reflections or insights on how much those seven keywords actually matter. Because when I use publisherrocket, of course, I also figured out which with seven keywords performance better than the others and, and, and all that. And I could see the data from publisherrocket that there is a difference.

Jesper (27m 38s):
So of course I researched out the seven best ones and I used those. But in terms of moving actual book sales, at least on my end, I did not really see that those setting the keywords mattered much. So I'm just wondering, based on your data perspective, if you know, if it's because there was seven keywords, actually it doesn't matter as much as we think they do. Or is it because maybe it's too saturated with those keywords and that's why you're not seeing the needle move? Or I don't know if you have any insights on this.

Dave (28m 10s):
Well, there are three important parts to keywords to help push book sales. And the first one is identifying your target keywords, right? So knowing which keywords really will work to help move the needle. And that's exactly what publisherrocket does, is it finally gives you the ability to see what those keywords are. The second important part is making sure you get indexed for that keyword. Okay? And indexing is where Amazon acknowledges that your book should show up for that keyword. K, uh, ways to influence indexing are, you know, you've chosen that phrase is when you're seven Kindle keywords.

Dave (28m 43s):
Another thing is, you know, the words are either in your title or subtitle and yes, Amazon does index the book description. I know a lot of people say that it doesn't cause they'll take like a full sentence from a book description or some made up word, put it into Amazon. It doesn't show anything but Amazon's own a nine a algorithm. That's actually the name of their search engine. If you go to a nine.com which has its own website a they flat out say we index book descriptions and descriptions of products. So the way that they do it though is they know what words should be appropriate to that genre and therefore those are very important to them.

Dave (29m 17s):
Um, to go a step further on that, if you scroll down on the Amazon book sales page and you'll get down to where the reviews are and notice that there's a word cloud density above the reviews now. And these are like words that Amazon has figured out that people are using when reviewing the book. Guess what? A majority of those are genre or category specific words that it has identified. I believe it does the same thing like that with book descriptions. Um, that's why you don't see a lot of buzz. He is, you know, because it's, but you'll see like war made, you know, you'll see a necromancer, you'll see those words popping up.

Dave (29m 54s):
So I'm going to throw in book description, um, for that purpose. So again, those things all help to show Amazon that. Okay. Yeah. And same thing with reviews. What people put in reviews. I definitely think his index, but I don't see a nine. Talk about that. The work high density makes me think so. So those things help to say to Amazon you should show up and yeah, to a certain extent that will help you to show up, um, higher in the rankings. Okay. But it depends on the competition. Maybe just choosing those words is enough to get you on the first page.

Dave (30m 25s):
So long as the competition is low, that you know that competition score we talked about, right? You get an 80 competition and I'm sorry, but you choose the best seven Kindle keywords, you're not going to show up on that first page. Um, but you choose like a 20 and yeah, you can get there just by choosing one of them. So that brings us to the third one, which is ranking for that keyword. Now statistically speaking, if you ranked number one for a keyword, okay on Amazon, you can expect 27% of the people that typed in that phrase. We'll click on your book. You ranked number two though, and it quickly quickly drops to 13, then 11 then nine, eight, seven, six, six, six, six and then it bumps up to seven at the bottom because apparently people scroll down and then they see that last book the most.

Dave (31m 6s):
Um, but that's a huge difference. You ranked five or you rank seven for that book, that title, excuse me, that keyword. And that's 6% compared to 27%. And if you rake on the second or third or fourth page for that keyword, it's, it's, it's like 2%, 1% less than 1% of the people will actually find you from that keyword. So making sure that you're in the top of that keyword is very important. Now, one of the best ways to increase your rankings for that keyword is by the sheer act of a shopper typing in your keyword, finding your book, selecting it, and purchasing it or downloading it, okay.

Dave (31m 46s):
Because that is a pure signal to Amazon that somebody went, when they typed in this phrase, this product was the one that connected with them. And this is the product that actually made us money as well, right? So they'll want the best selling for that keyword to be at the top so that they make, um, you know, they make the sale. And I've actually got a quote from Jeff Bezos about this, the CEO of Amazon and he said, we don't make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions.

Dave (32m 20s):
So they want to show the one that makes that, that sale. So how do we as authors influences were, remember when I talked about, uh, you know, validating your book idea and choosing covers that fit that term better. That's huge. Um, I was working with a romance author and she was writing a romance. We did our keyword research. Long story short, her perfect keyword phrase was am second or Victorian second chance romance family or with baby or these other words at the end that helped people to know more about the book.

Dave (32m 54s):
Let's just those words, we understand what the story is. K Victorian error. So we're looking at the Victorian period of time. Second chance romance is a type of romance where somebody finds love again and then the whole family or with baby is that at the last moment people were adding in there some kind of phrase or term to help them know that no, this isn't hotter steamy or no, this isn't, I want this to be about family. She needs to have a kid and she's looking for love again. So she's looking for somebody who would be cool enough to, you know, to date her while she has somebody else's child.

Dave (33m 30s):
And even more so if you put that on in the context of the Victorian error, right. I mean that sh that wife, no matter how it happened, she must be a charlatan or an end, a social pariah because she's without husband. So he's, you can see, we just know from those words exactly what it is the market is looking for. And the interesting part was that the, the cover originally was of like a castle that was kind of Victorian period. So cool. She nailed the, the time setting. However though there was nothing about it that helped to personify the other parts. So instead that cover was designed where it showed the, you know, like a ball basically happening and the mom holding the child with kind of the group of people looking down on her like, Oh, you know, she without a husband and the Charlotte and, but there's one guy standing in the back kind of looking very interested.

Dave (34m 16s):
Notice that that cover symbolizes everything the shopper's typing in. So what do you think's going to actually get the click? Write the book that shows exactly what they're looking for. But another tactic for people who are like, look, I already got a cover and I'm cool with it. Another tactic that I recommend to people is that if you know that somebody is going to be buying your book, okay? Uh, so you have some people out there that yes, they are fans, they love what you do. I would recommend to tell some of them to go to Amazon, type in your keyword, phrase your target, and then find it that way.

Dave (34m 51s):
Might want to give him a warning. They may have to go through a couple of pages, but it means the world to you. If you did that, what that will do is that we'll send the signal to Amazon that this book should definitely be ranking. You'd be surprised how little amount of sales, what happened, you'll shoot up to the top. Now I'm not, this is not a hack and I'm not ruining Amazon and I'm not going to help a bad books when, okay? Because what ultimately happens is this tactic will give you that ability to be at the top and to be found. However, though, if your book continuously is passed up from books under it in case so shoppers are normal, shoppers are typing it in and not choosing your book, but choosing this book or this book or this book, you will start to come back down in the rankings and you'll finally sit at where you belong.

Dave (35m 35s):
So us doing researches, authors is not about hacking Amazon it's not about bad books. Winning Amazon smarter than that and its algorithm is great. What we've talked about here is helping authors know their market better, make better decisions as they develop their book, make better decisions on how they want to position it, and know that all of those efforts are actually going to existing markets where they will find the right readers.

Jesper (35m 58s):
I couldn't have said it better myself then, but a that's the thing. Am you know the thing about all this machine learning, because I fully agree. I'm an Amazon the the algorithm behind or I guess there's actually many probably, but the algorithms then a behind the drives Amazon are very intelligent. The only thing that seems very old school to be still it, you know, in 2019 that we even have to write in those 70 words manually. It seems crazy to me. I mean Amazon should be able to learn by a machine learning, which are the works that associates to this book and you know, I don't know, maybe that'll stop at some point.

Dave (36m 37s):
Well, and to an extent that really is what we were talking about in the indexing, right? It's taking the input you, the author gave, it's taking the input of the categories you choose. It's taking in the input of the title and the words you use in the book description and it's taking in the input of what your customers are writing and then it is figuring out where it should put you. Now what's really cool about keywords is that you may say you may choose seven particular phrases, right? You're going to show up for more than that. Okay. You don't just show up for those seven, you're actually going to be indexed on a whole bunch more like hundreds.

Dave (37m 12s):
Okay. But the key is is that if you show that your book is making more sales, okay, it's succeeding Amazon then starts to spread you out even more. Okay? That's why like if you type in Harry Potter, you know, or any type of wizard kid, wizard, wizard school, whatever, you're going to find Harry Potter in that list. Harry Potter didn't have 50,000 keywords they can enter and they just had seven. But Amazon is going to test and show books more and more often because the whole point of the 89 algorithm, again that's there they have lots of algorithms.

Dave (37m 45s):
Um, but the 89 is the search bar that shows up and it's the only one that's got its own name. The a nine algorithm is going to test and push and show products because the ultimate goal of the a nine algorithm is to make Amazon more many. And like we heard from Bezos, it's not about the sale, it's about providing the right product and that's when they get the sale. So

Jesper (38m 8s):
we've, we've sort of talked them out a lot around the publisherrocket and how Amazon works and all that. So I think there was a lot of good stuff here for, for people to take home and consider the Dave. But is there anything you want to share who are at the end around a? Maybe what your future plans are with publisherrocket or anything like that?

Dave (38m 29s):
Yeah, like I said earlier, we're going to be adding the international markets so that people in Germany can focus on the German or Indian or Japanese. And we've been collecting information for years now for that. We're also going to be adding more information about each individual category so that people can choose less volatile ones are more popular ones, you know, for purchasing power. Um, and help people see seasonal changes as well in categories. And again, you know, as an author myself, I'm always testing and Amazon's always changing so we're always staying on top of that as well.

Jesper (39m 3s):
And if people would like to sort of get more insight into publisherrocket a where can they, where can they find publisherrocket and maybe you can share how much does it cost?

Dave (39m 15s):
Sure. So publisher rocket you can find it@publisherrocket.com and it's a onetime payment of $97. So, and you get that for life a that includes all updates, upgrades, you name it. As we add more as we change, uh, you'll benefit from those as well. And I would also say too, if anybody out there wants to learn more about Amazon ads, I've got a full free course on Amazon ads. You can find that@amscourses.com and it's one of those that I give every detail for you to do Amazon ads without software or without paying for any other aspect.

Dave (39m 48s):
It'll take you all the way through the process.

Jesper (39m 51s):
That's excellent. And if you email me the link to those things, then I will put it into the description field below. If you're watching on YouTube, so just go below this video, or if you're listening on the podcast, you just go to the show notes and then you'll find the links there from, from Dave that he mentioned. So thank you so much for coming on amwritingfantasy Dave and at least from my end, I can say that the, I think the dose $97 I will spend, it's definitely worth it. So, uh, but I'll leave that up to you guys. Thank you so much for joining Dave.

Dave (40m 22s):
Absolutely. And it's really good being here.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 31 – The importance of writing in series (with six-figure author, Lindsay Buroker)

The general advise is that it's better to write in series instead of standalone novels if we want to earn a full-time income. What does a six figure author has to say on that topic?

Lindsay Buroker, a highly successful fantasy authors, join Am Writing Fantasy to share advice on how to earn a living as an author.

You can find out more about Lindsay here: http://lindsayburoker.com/ 

New episodes EVERY single Monday.

To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC

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Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!

Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 

Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 

Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper 

Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (1s):
You might have heard the advice that one should be writing in a series if one want to earn a living as an author. And there is actually something to that. And today I am joined by Lindsay Buroker who is a very successful fantasy author who earns a six figure income a year from writing. If you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is Jesper and between Autumn and myself we've published more than 20 books.

Jesper (34s):
And it is our aim to use our experience to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors. So first of all, thank you for joining me here on a amwritingfantasy. Lindsay

Lindsay (47s):
thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk about books and marketing and in series of course.

Jesper (52s):
Yeah, it's, it's always a good topic to talk about and uh, but maybe, maybe you can say a bit about yourself, uh, your writing. And I also know that you're, well, I transitioning out of an old podcast and starting a new and so forth. So maybe we could just sort of give a bit of context for stuff.

Lindsay (1m 8s):
Sure. I am mostly self-publish. I have an audio book publisher, but I started self-publishing at the end of 2010. Uh, when my first series was the emperor's edge, and I had only two books written at that time and they weren't in the same series. So I can talk to what it is to start out without, you know, there's a lot more you can do with marketing when you have more. Um, I was, uh, pretty excited about it from the beginning. I saw the potential, even though I didn't make a lot of money to start with. You know, I think I was really excited when I made more than a hundred dollars a month.

Lindsay (1m 40s):
Uh, but as I got more books out in this series, I had people do fan art and, um, they started, you know, doing some fan fiction and things like that. So I saw that people enjoyed my writing, uh, at least certain numbers of people, the ones that you're, you're hoping to target. And so that was really reassuring and I felt confident that eventually I could get to the point where I could make it my day job. And by the time I'd finished that series, I ended up doing about eight books. Uh, I was, you know, making I think over 10,000 a month. And I thought to myself, well, if I could just keep doing that, that'd be awesome.

Lindsay (2m 13s):
And, uh, I could, you know, you have expenses to edit paying editors and cover art and such. But, uh, that was before anybody was spending much money on advertising. So that was mostly take-home money. And, um, I've, since fruit and numerous more fantasy series, I've also done some science fiction. Uh, if you take a peek at me when this podcast comes out, you'll see that I'm doing my star kingdom scifi series, but, uh, I'm, I'm kind of alternating next year would probably be back to dragons. So, um, and you asked about the podcast. We, uh, myself, Joe Lolo and Jeff Poole did the science fiction and fantasy marketing podcast for over four years.

Lindsay (2m 49s):
We are kind of been winding it down this year. I was starting to feel that we had a message that could be for more than just scifi and fantasy authors. So, uh, Joe and I are going to start a new one this summer called six-figure where we kind of help people that want to get to that level. And even beyond that, it is possible as a solo author, if you're a prolific and marketing and in a genre where it works that you know, you can make $1 million or more a year. So there's right now it's a great time to be self publishing or you know, just kind of managing your own future.

Lindsay (3m 20s):
If, uh, if you have any entrepreneurial spirit at all and uh, uh, as I'll be the first to admit I liked the writing more, I kind of do as much, you know, I learned as much in marketing stuff is you have to, but uh, I think I'm kind of can demonstrate that you don't have to be a super pro at a Facebook ads or AMS have or anything like that. I'm still feeling my way. A lot of it, some of that stuff. Yeah.

Jesper (3m 45s):
Yeah. And I'm, I'm glad that you said about the, that this is a good time to, to get into or to publish in general or to write books in general because I, I sometimes come across the line of thinking that, that people think like, well isn't it a bit too late now? And of course if we are comparing two, and I guess you'll have this from personal experience, but if we compare it to like 2010 2012 something like that, then for sure it is a different marketplace nowadays. But in the global view of things here with, with all the countries who doesn't even have eBooks or you eat, there's an old doing all of that yet.

Jesper (4m 21s):
And we're still sort of in the, in the earliest stages of this stuff. Wouldn't you agree?

Lindsay (4m 27s):
I do. And I often tell people, when I started, it was December, 2010 I thought I was too late as it cause Amanda Hawking had already made her like million dollars from a, you know, her paranormal romance books. And there were a few other people that got in really early and we're killing it. And, and keyboards was around back then, the writer's cafe forum. And people were saying like, Oh, it's getting a lot harder. So I was like, well, we'll, we'll, we'll try to figure it out. Um, in the early days you kind of had to go hunting on deviant art.com or somewhere, or no, an artist.

Lindsay (4m 59s):
There wasn't really this whole industry to support indie authors yet. You kinda had to find an editor that maybe could do fiction. Uh, my F my editors started out in the technical editing field and so I was referred, I was her first person doing like SciFinder fantasy and to this day I think I'm one of her main people. She's still, it's like, what is this term you're talking about? But, um, so now at least it's, it's, there's a lot of great advice out there. There's a lot of sites for am promoting your book. If you've got a little money to spend at the social media stuffs a little more established.

Lindsay (5m 32s):
So I do think, you know, you still see people that are just, and maybe they started a couple of years ago, but they kind of figured it out with a new series or something and that's taken off for them. So it's very possible still here and not 2019 to to make a splash. And, uh, I feel you do have to pay attention and learn some of the marketing stuff. It's, it's, you're probably not going to just throw a book up and get lucky by having it in the right category. Am you saw more of that early on, especially, you know, if a new category of popped up on Amazon that hadn't been served by traditional publishing, if you just threw something up there with a horrible cover, it didn't matter if people would give it a try and those days are probably gone.

Jesper (6m 11s):
Yeah, true. Yeah. And in that way, it is a different marketplace now, but, but uh, but okay. But I guess at the end of the day, one should also say that, you know, if you want to get into writing because you want to earn money, then I think there is, there's a lot of different professions that will get your many way quicker than writing books. So that way it's, it's not the right motivation. There's not because you want it. And many I did the right word of business because you love writing and you love telling stories and that that should be the main driver.

Jesper (6m 44s):
But then of course you need to couple it with, with some advertising. But I guess then, uh, coming back to sort of the main topic here, because now that we are talking about advertising and one of the often made arguments about it's better to write in a series rather than writing stand along books is because of course you can sort of put a bit more marketing budget against a, the first book in the series because then people would go on to read the other ones. But I know you've written quite a lot of series, so I'm curious too, to have your inputs or views on, on, well I guess on one hand, how do you decide when, when is it time to stop a series, but also what have you seen from when you're comparing your series to your standalones?

Jesper (7m 32s):
Can, can you still make a standalone work well or is it sort of doing the interface? It's, if you do that,

Lindsay (7m 39s):
it's a little tougher if you have a fan base built up and they'll just, you're lucky enough that they'll try anything new you put out. And I have a, a standalone I did last year PSI Phi, um, that did pretty well. Um, you know, it certainly more than covered its costs and the time I put into it. Uh, but knowing me, I always end up like wanting to write two or three more and the, the readers always want more to. So I have very few actual stand-alones that are still standalone am my dragon blood series, which has eight books, a spinoff book, uh, and a spinoff series of five books that started as a standalone.

Lindsay (8m 12s):
I hadn't known intention of writing, I'm just like, I'm just getting this sweet little fantasy romance with magic and it'll just be a nice side thing. And uh, I really enjoyed the characters, which is what happens. I tend to fall in love with the characters and hopefully the readers do too. And I always end up doing more. And you're right on the advertising. If you're gonna spend money on a book one, you know, especially if you're thinking maybe I'll make it free or 99 cents as a way to kind of lower the barrier of entry then am it helps if you have seven more books at four 99 that people will hopefully get sucked into the series and continue on to purchase.

Lindsay (8m 51s):
I'm not super calculating as far as like, Oh, well last year I actually had a of did quite well. That was a heritage of power. It was that spinoff series in that world where I already had a lot of readers and I wrote five of them and they were still selling really well. And I remember thinking, you know, I should just keep writing more of these, but I kind of planned a five book story arc. Actually I planned a three book story arc and it turned into five. So, and I'm not really someone that can just go, well let's just take these characters and keep writing more of them even though I've sort of solved that overarching story plot so I was already moving onto something else.

Lindsay (9m 28s):
And um, then that's something people can decide for themselves. I do try to write, I like the am to do like three before I launch anything because it lets me really get into the story and I'm committed before, you know, cause sometimes if it doesn't sell well you can get discouraged or even if it sounds okay but not nearly as well as something else you've done. Uh, that can also be like you always comparing either against other authors or your own past successes. So it can be a challenge to stay in food if something doesn't do as well.

Lindsay (9m 58s):
So I like kinda committing beforehand and like, you know, I think this is going to be at least five books and uh, w you know, we'll see how it goes from there. I feel lucky enough to have readers that I know I'm not going to lose money on a series or cause it, they'll try anything new. So that's a nice place to get to. I know that's not everybody yet, but I do think it's worth doing maybe committing to three books there. You know, especially if you're newer and don't, you're still kind of figuring out the marketing stuff. Maybe you can afford super cool.

Lindsay (10m 30s):
You know, like custom illustrated cover art, which is always great in like Epic fantasy if you can have a illustration, but that can be $800 or more. So not everybody can start out with that. And so if you don't have a real cop killer covers to start with, that can be a little tough. If you're not really great at writing blurbs yet, you're still learning how to do that. Uh, you can kind of unknowingly sabotage or a series. So you want to give it a bit of a chance. And then I always say like, before you abandon it, you know, try to try getting new covers, ask for opinions, you know, cause a lot of people really struggle with blurbs.

Lindsay (11m 5s):
Uh, I can't tell you how many I've looked at as just as a reader looking for something to read and like it's just kind of, it'll be a little choppy or it doesn't quite make sense and it's probably cause they edit it so much that it became less natural. So there are definitely challenges when you're starting out and uh, sometimes it's the second or third series that does well for you and takes off.

Jesper (11m 27s):
It's often actually a bit difficult to figure it out.

Lindsay (11m 30s):
What will

Jesper (11m 31s):
sort of resonate with the readers are bare and

Lindsay (11m 36s):
am.

Jesper (11m 37s):
I, I don't, I mean I talked to Dave Chesson quite recently. Of course he has his publisher record a software that sort of can help you figure out if there's a market for certain book ideas. But I, I've always been more of the line of thinking that,

Lindsay (11m 53s):
right. The story

Jesper (11m 54s):
that I'm excited about writing and then maybe it'll take off, maybe it won't, but maybe then the next one will. But I don't know. But that's sort of my, my line of thinking on it. And I guess one could be smarter and the research, the market burst specifically figure out what people want and then write that. But I, I dunno, I've never really been a prescriber to that mythology.

Lindsay (12m 15s):
I'm not any good at it. So I don't either. Like I, you know, I think if you see, I think you can write to market if you happen to be the market yourself. Like you love those vampire romance novels that sell like crazy. I, I'm kinda one that wants to subvert the tropes rather than doing what's super popular. So I've just found that even if sometimes I think before I write a series, you know, this one, I think it's got a few, you know, enough things that are popular and like Epic fantasy that maybe it'll take off. And then inevitably that one, it's just, you know, it does okay.

Lindsay (12m 47s):
But, and then it will be a series where I wasn't expecting that much from it and that will end up doing better. And I'm kind of reassured because I think traditional publishing has the same experience there. There also seemed to not be very good at predicting which things will end up. They end up calling him a sleeper hit because they didn't expect that one to do well. You know? And then sometimes you push something really hard and it's just, it doesn't click with people. And you know, I think you can get better at predicting what will you know, what's going to do well. But usually I can tell in hindsight why something did well, but not necessarily as far as sitting down and planning like, Oh, I'm trying to write the next big hit.

Lindsay (13m 25s):
Uh, I'm just happy to, I like you. I think it's important to write what you're really excited about and then you can figure out how to try to market it in the best way that, yeah. Has the best chance to do well. Like, you know, you can put a dragon on the front cover if there was a dragon in chapter eight, you know? But yeah, that seems to be the traditional fantasy symbol that, uh, people see and get excited about and they're like, Oh, that's my kind of book.

Jesper (13m 52s):
Yeah, indeed. But if we're, if we're saying that committing to at least a trilogy, then is is sort of the advice, um, have you had any success in, for example, having, okay, you show your written a trilogy but it's not really taking off and then you're rebranding it with newcomers and new blurbs and stuff. Have you had success in actually making such a story sale whereas before it actually didn't? And what I'm hinting at here is that the actual story is actually okay, but it was just a wrapping around it meaning the covers and the blurbs and stuff that really didn't work.

Lindsay (14m 31s):
I've seen it happen a lot for other people. Um, my first year is actually did not have very good covers that were, you know, I remember the emperor's edge was my first series and kind of a high fantasy steam era kind of thing. So not only did it not quite fit Epic fantasy or steam punk kids kind of in the middle, I had these covers that uh, I don't know, said is this historical Indian fiction because there are these yellow covers and apparently that's what it puts them in mind. And I agree looking back that they weren't super, you know, they didn't scream Epic fantasy.

Lindsay (15m 5s):
Um, but I was always willing to make the first book free and run sales and I feel that the story pulled people in well enough that if they would just give it a try, they would, you know, enjoy it. And I didn't have like super hot success. Right. Like I said right from the start, but I was always willing to like run those, you know, make this free run a promo, just give away the first book to try to get people to try it. And I was lucky enough that you know enough people like the story and I think the word of mouth helped a little bit too.

Lindsay (15m 35s):
Uh, that's still seems to be a fan favorite that are that first series. So if you're not super to market and you don't have the exact, you know, perfect cover, it's more of a challenge and I think you might have to be willing to do the free book one or you know, to try to lure people in and then hope this story is strong enough to, uh, to get them in there. But if you know better and can you just make it all awesome from the start? Your odds are of course better. And uh, I have seen other people where they recovered it in kind of relaunched the series a that suddenly they gained some traction and am with mine, I put new covers on it eventually.

Lindsay (16m 12s):
Uh, it wasn't really a game changer, but it's, it made it easier to get BookBub ads on the box set. So that's always a plus if you can get some one of those a year. But they're getting, they're getting tougher to get. So even for established others,

Jesper (16m 27s):
and I was thinking, because I know I've noticed that you have quite some some series starter. The first book in a series are free. Uh, and I've also noticed actually I think you have some thought trilogies that are free as well, but do you have a, like a conscious strategy about what you're making free and why and so forth or how do you, how do you decide what to charge for and what to make free?

Lindsay (16m 52s):
I usually don't start out with book one free, but I'll often launch at 99 cents since. So it's uh, you know, people will check it out. And then am it's usually after the series is complete. Like most of the ones where I have a free book, one that's always free, it's like an eight book series. And so there's seven more. And usually you sit and spin off stuff. So if I suck them in with the first one, then they'll go give it a try. And then I will often box up the first three books in this series. I find that, um, if people read the first three books, they're even more committed to going on and finishing the series.

Lindsay (17m 25s):
And if they just try the first one and I don't usually leave those free to sort of like if I got a BookBub a few months ago, I made it free for the BookBub and then I just kind of a pain to go back in. And I have one right now that I think is free on Amazon even though I put the price up on the other sites and it's like, Oh, okay. Um, and so I will usually do those for sales. Do you like the three books? And again, in a series where there's like eight, so there's still a lot of stuff for them to go on and pay for if they wish to.

Jesper (17m 56s):
I'm also sort of tried to use the, uh, book one free or I have my first book in the service for free as well, just because as S I think you've said earlier, it just lowers the resistance and the barrier for new readers too, to actually give it a chance. Um, and in that way, it works. I still believe in here in 2019 that the freestyle is still works,

Lindsay (18m 20s):
I think especially on the non-Amazon sites for those who are not exclusive and want to sell on Barnes and noble and Kobo and Apple, that am, those people don't have a subscription service yet. Like K you can own limited on Amazon. So there, there's still, I feel like a lot of people surfing looking for the free books on those sites. I even had somebody the other day say they grabbed my free book, went on Smashwords, which has like, wow, I didn't know if people are still shopping there, but I think the international crowd that maybe doesn't have a local Amazon, you know, in their country, uh, you might be able to, they might still use Smashwords.

Lindsay (18m 56s):
And you know, some people just like that there's no DRM and all that stuff to deal with on the sites. But I forgot what I was talking about. Oh, free working. Yeah. So I feel like on Amazon, Kindle unlimited maybe replaced it a little bit, uh, because those people will kind of have their $10 a month subscription and they don't think about it. That just automatically comes out of their account and everything in Kindle unlimited at that point is essentially free for them so they can just shop from that store. But I still find that when I do a free run on Amazon that I can get some, some new readers checking them out.

Lindsay (19m 31s):
Uh, I'm surprised at how many people have come in from the free promo sites. They'll say like, Oh I found your book first on Freebooksy or BookBub cause I feel like authors are saying others don't work anymore or they don't work as well as they used to. But I think there's still a lot of readers subscribe to it that you know, they, they read a lot. They want bargain books. And as indie authors, even if we price it for 99 we're still a bargain compared to nine 99 or 1499 from traditional publishing. So I am still a fan of free.

Lindsay (20m 1s):
Like, I'm happy if I can get my stuff into libraries and you know, people can read them that way because people that buy, you know, even if they download your stuff for free, they may still tell a friend and share the story with somebody who's going to go pay for it. And so that's why I've never been bothered by, you know, at least sharing. Most of my book ones ended up being a complete a story. So it's not like they have to read on, but I do try to set up a bigger story arc to kind of draw them in and there's questions that aren't answered about the characters.

Lindsay (20m 32s):
Is that, cause I think if you give him just a complete book that ends, then there's like more friction. They're not necessarily going to automatically just continue on with the next one. Hopefully if they love the characters they will.

Jesper (20m 46s):
Yeah. Then then the cliffhanger, of course you can, you can use those as well just to S people into the next book in the series as well.

Lindsay (20m 54s):
Yeah. I often, I sh I don't like to do those, but somehow it ends up being kind of a cliffhanger. Like I tried to do a complete story and the novel, but then it's obvious there's more things that the characters have to go and deal with. I, especially in fantasy, I think that we just tell these massive sprawling stories that at the end it's a whole different like government system, you know, that had to be put in place. It's not like this, it's not just a little romance. Usually it's this Epic spanning scope.

Lindsay (21m 25s):
We'll pretend that made sense.

Jesper (21m 28s):
Yeah. Um, but I was thinking as well, because we talked about the freestyler, but on the opposite end of the scale is, is uh, the, let's say more expensive pricing element. And I talked to Joseph Melik recently as well because he, uh, actually increased the prices of all these supposed to nine 99. And it was quite interesting conversation because he was telling me that in terms of actual unit sales, there was no difference from when he had the lower price point.

Jesper (22m 2s):
Um, and so you basically use, just increased all his revenues. But he's not selling any less amount of books. And it also went, of course, enables him to, to spend a bit more money on the advertising because he can afford it. But uh, have you played around with the price ranges on your books to see if it makes a difference in that way?

Lindsay (22m 21s):
I, at one point, I went up from doing a lot of them three 99 up to four 99. I am conscious that, uh, I published pretty often. So if somebody's gonna come in and read everything I published that year, it might be like 10 novels. So I would feel that it might be harder for them to buy everything if I made it something $10. And I've certainly heard from a lot of people, they're like, well, I'm kind of on a budget, you know, I'm retired, I have a set income. So I really appreciate that your books are affordable. And in my case, I make plenty. Uh, so I'm not like, you know, I am feel like I need to make more.

Lindsay (22m 55s):
It just cause I have so many books out now that a and I managed to keep the back list selling reasonably well and I almost always have a new series, uh, each year. So, um, you know, if you want to try it and it works, there's nothing wrong with that. I think I, we had Joseph on the show. I think he kinda does like one book a year or something in that I think you might have diminishing returns if you've published really often at that price point. We're am it depends on how prolific you are too. I know he's a big fantasy. You can be doing these 200,000 word novels and you're not going to be publishing is often.

Lindsay (23m 28s):
So, um, I am a big fan of looking at the overall income rather than worrying too much about what one book costs. That's why I'm happy to do 99 cents or free for a book line if it means I make more overall. And um, you know, I, I like I have less than traditional publishing. I feel like that's a real advantage for us. And when I still make 70% yeah, that's, that seems like a really, you know, making $3 three 50 per per ebook seems good if you're, as long as you're selling, you know, lots of copies.

Lindsay (23m 59s):
If you're selling three copies a month, then a little more frustrating and you know, you might want to play around with all kinds of price points.

Jesper (24m 9s):
Yeah. But maybe, I mean if you're selling three copies than three 99 or nine 99 doesn't really make much of difference except that one more cup of coffee you can buy that month. But otherwise it doesn't make much of a difference. I guess

Lindsay (24m 21s):
it depends also if you're in Kindle unlimited and people can borrow them, I've noticed that the higher price points can actually be more appealing then because they feel like, Oh, I'm getting a really good deal because I can just borrow this six 99 book instead of having to pay for it. Whereas if it's 99 cents, they might just go, well I'll either buy that or maybe I won't get that one because it's not as a good of a deal for one of my 10 borrows that I can have at a time. So that's something to consider too.

Jesper (24m 51s):
Okay. So I guess at least am what I get from, from all of this is that for sure it is still advisable that that people should be writing in series. I think we settled on that. Uh, give it a nice commitment to write three books before you were sort of abandoned it and find something else. And I guess also based on what you're doing here that sometimes I, I, it's almost sounds like sometimes you're just writing a book and then you, you just make sure that the ending is at least open enough that if, if people like it, you can write on, but it almost sounds like many of your series of sort of spat out of just one book then then happen to get extended into a full series.

Jesper (25m 32s):
Is that, is that right?

Lindsay (25m 34s):
I think the dragon blood series is the only one where I didn't at all, wasn't planning to do a series. And then I've got a little box set that's two books where am the first one was encrypted and I totally meant that to be a standalone. And then people liked it and I was curious what happened next with the character. So I turned that into a to book things. So it got a sequel and a short story. Generally now you know with experience on my side I will plan out something that can go to five or eight books and I will plan from the start for it to have like there's questions about the hero or maybe the villain that you're not going to get the answers to right away.

Lindsay (26m 11s):
So that will make the reader curious and want to read on. And there's, there's some something going on that needs to be resolved. Like I did one scifi series where the heroin was trying to search for her daughter that was missing and that took it through all eight books. Poor kid. So like, even though there are individual stories, and you'll see that a lot on TV series too, where this sort of like there's one thing where they're trying to accomplish in the end, solve some crime or something. You know? And I think that if you design it that way from the beginning with a few little things like that, that people want to see resolved, it keeps them reading.

Lindsay (26m 47s):
I know I'm reading something right now where I think I'm only reading cause I want to see the character become the thing. You know, she's trying to become a Knight. It's like these are okay. But you know, I'm not sure if I would keep reading if it had been a complete story in one book. So sometimes just that stuff can keep people going on, even if maybe there's some other stuff that wouldn't have made them a super fan and then by the end maybe there'd become more bigger fans of the series. So we also have a very, uh, been sort of watching reading, what's it called, mentality.

Lindsay (27m 23s):
But the culture nowadays and being in Kindle unlimited, I guess that helps. But, uh, do you have all your books in most of your books you can limit or how do you do the split between widen and Kindle unlimited? All of my older stuff or older series are wide because I started publishing before Kindle unlimited and KDP select existed. So I really resisted for a long time. I didn't want to go into the Amazon exclusivity with anything and I finally saw that it was an advantage to be in there and kind of a disadvantage not to be in there since the borrow is also count as sales as far as calculating your sales rank and whether you're going to be in the top 100 of your John rhe thing.

Lindsay (28m 5s):
So cause I know if you pop into like Epic fantasy, you'll kind of look through and unless it's a big traditionally published author, chances are the books are in Kindle unlimited. There very few people who are able to make it and kind of stay in that top 100 for a while if they're not in canola limited. So I started launching new series in there. And so they might stay there for a year or so. And then when I have something new, I'm going to start a move that series wide and kind of do a, like a second launch, I guess. Yeah. On free or 99 cents and run some promos.

Lindsay (28m 37s):
Again, it's sort of an opportunity to say, Oh, Hey, I'm launching now on Kobo and Apple and all the other bookstores. So it's not the ideal thing, you know, I think right now people are making more money by being exclusive with Amazon, which is seems counterintuitive and we'll find it tough to jump. Um, I've heard from, uh, you know, like Kobo and stuff, like the worst thing you can do is kind of jump back and forth. Yeah. I, so I just, I started in NKU and then move it out and then it's going to stay out. I'm not gonna try like yank it and try to put something back in.

Lindsay (29m 10s):
Kau so I'm, it's usually the most recent series is in there. And then, um, yeah, just put the other chef wide and I also do a Patrion for the sole purpose of putting my books out early before I enroll them in KDP select. So the fans that are not Amazon people can, if they're willing to download it from book funnel. Uh, and you know, I announced it on Patrion they can get the books early. I usually put him a week or two up, uh, before the, before they launch.

Lindsay (29m 40s):
So that's sort of how working around right now because the problem was starting out wide as you have fans on the other site and say get grumpy when understandably so when they find out your new book is only on Amazon. So it's, there's a little bit, a bit of a challenge. I uh, I'm would certainly love it if Amazon removed the exclusivity requirement cause I, I don't have any problem with people getting it as a subscription thing. That doesn't bother me. I still make money on that. But they do make it tough by not allowing you to have it anywhere else or even sell it on your own site.

Jesper (30m 13s):
I, I'm not, I have not unwilling to put any of my books are in Kindle unlimited, but uh, but, uh, yeah, that's a whole other story that I've talked about pre previously. So, uh, we'll leave that a little for now. Um, but I was wondering now that, um, now that I have you here and we've talked around the, the, the series and the importance of writing in series, but because, because you also were six-figure author, I'm wondering if sort of you have any advice for sort of the different stages that people go through to get to that level or, you know, is there any good advice for beginners versus a, once you maybe pass that 10 K Mark and, and so forth, is there any, any sort of, uh, the best of the best advice for, for, for those stages of writing?

Lindsay (30m 59s):
I think if you kinda keep your expectations low and just, you know, cause I feel like people get so disappointed if they're, they're new and they see how much you can possibly make, but they're booked, doesn't do, or their book maybe even does. Okay. You know, they're like, Oh, I made $500 this month. That's, that's horrible because this other person's making $5,000 in my genre. So I always had the kind of low expectations. Like I thought maybe if I got enough books out, I could eventually do this for my day job. So, um, it's, I think it's kind of tough actually when you have success right out of the Gates because then you think it's always going to be that easy.

Lindsay (31m 33s):
And I've seen now I've had the opportunity to see a lot of authors disappear. Like they had one series it took off and then their next two series flopped and then they're just gone now. So I think it's, uh, probably not bad if you just kind of gradually, you know, put more books out every time you put a new book out, it gives you an opportunity to, you know, have a sale on book one. And I just think of it in terms of, I'm trying to get a few, few more readers with each new book I launch and, uh, hopefully they'll become lifetime readers. I, I've, I dunno, I think I have maybe 60 novels now between my name and I did like 15 under a pen name.

Lindsay (32m 9s):
And I have readers tell me regularly that they've read every single one. And I'm, uh, I'm just amazed. I'm like, I don't, I haven't even gone back and like read a lot of them as just as a reader. Um, so that's great. And then, you know, of course if you do start making some money, make sure, you know, I was going to be different in every country, how much you need to put aside for taxes. But, uh, the government will want their portion and it can be pretty high when you get up into six figures. They, they, you know, at least in the U S they do your tax bracket based on, you know, what your income was.

Lindsay (32m 42s):
So make sure to put money aside for that. And um, you have to hear, you have to be able to pay for health care on your own. I know in some countries that's what you get as a citizen that pays taxes. So that's something to consider in the U S and some other countries where you need it by your own health insurance. So usually you need to make more as a self employed person than you did maybe as a salaried person in order to cover all your expenses. So it's ideal if you can probably do both for a while and just pay off any day you have before making the jump to full time.

Lindsay (33m 18s):
And then you'll probably find that there will be jumps. Like I thought, you know, income would just kind of steadily rise. Uh, but you tend to like something takes off, you know, a little bit and then you get a big jump and then you're at that level hopefully, and you stay there and then maybe the next year is there'll be a bigger jump. I w even inevitably it won't continue to just always trend upward. So it's, it's good to put money in the bank and then not assume that you're just always gonna make the same level every year. I tend to pay for things with cash just so I don't am and have to worry about it.

Lindsay (33m 49s):
You know, they don't, I don't want a big mortgage on a house or anything like that. So I, I feel like if you have gradually success, you're probably going to handle it better than if you just suddenly start making 100,000 from your, you know, some trilogy that took off like crazy. So, but you know who, who wouldn't hope for that to happen?

Jesper (34m 7s):
Yeah, I guess I can't blame anybody from hoping that. Okay. So thanks a lot for all your advice here. Lindsay am where can people find out more about you if they want to, to learn about your writing or your podcast or whatever.

Lindsay (34m 28s):
I'm on lindsayburoker.com if you come anywhere close, just filling my name, you'll probably find it. It's Google can help. This is not too common of our El. So, uh, that's my website. I'm on Twitter as goblin writer, which is a kind of handle you get if you have had it for 10 years before you started publishing in New York and thinking like, Oh, I need a professional author thing. And then under lindsayburoker on Facebook and also on Instagram. And uh, the, the new podcast is going to be a six figure author's dot com with the number six because that is the domain that was available.

Lindsay (35m 3s):
So hopefully we'll, we're going to do kind of a higher level, you know, just sort of skip the basics cause there's a lot of podcasts that, you know, do some of the basic stuff and we'll try to get on some really successful guests and just drill down and ask them the good questions. So if you're a podcast listener or on YouTube, hope you check us out.

Jesper (35m 23s):
That's great. And thank you so much for coming on to amwritingfantasy Lindsay and have a chat to you today.

Lindsay (35m 29s):
Thank you for having me.

Jesper (35m 31s):
And so you out there, thank you for watching and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 30 – How to Plot a Fantasy Book Series

First, don't forget that we are celebrating our 1 year anniversary on Patreon with some special rewards if you join us before July 31, 2019. Wahoo!! Check them out at https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy!

Do you love tightly plotted novels where little clues become huge problems in the next book? I do! But how do you plot them as an author – without spending months outlining or writing everything first?

Well, I'm so glad you asked! Because I know a simple trick that will lay the foundation so you can write a series with confidence!

Check out the Am Writing Fantasy website, especially the article on writing a story synopsis HERE.

Pick up a download of a Traditional Story Arc HERE or a Series Arc HERE. Watch the video on Youtube HERE.

New videos EVERY single Monday. Make sure to subscribe: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patron of the channel. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/
Podcast: http://podcast.amwritingfantasy.com/
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Autumn (0s):
Don't you love a tight series that is tied so well together that in a tiny problem in book one because the tension fuel plot a book three is what I crave as a reader, but as a writer, how the heck do you create that without writing all the books first and possibly driving yourself mad on the edits and rewrites? What did we need? If there is a simple trick so you could get writing and publishing with confidence, well there is an employee to share it with you.

Autumn (33s):
If you're a fantasy author then you've come to the right place. My name is Autumn and together with Jesper we've published more than 20 novels. Our aim is to use our experience to help you with writing marketing and selling books to fans all over the world. A quick note to those listening in on the podcast. There are a couple of graphics that I'll link to in the show notes at the end of the podcast, but for the full effect I recommend watching the video. There are a couple of things. I look forward books as a reader and a big one is a tightly woven series where the tension keeps building and it's all tied together with not only an overall huge goal, one that you don't usually realize it's all at least book too, but that one where minor problems pushed aside for immediate threats bubble up to be huge plot changing moments.

Autumn (1m 25s):
Those books will keep me up all night and make me forget to eat, but as an author, especially a new one, creating that can seem like a nightmare in plotting. Creating a single book is difficult enough, but a series that flows like it was planned that way far before a single word was written. It's tough, especially if you don't want to write all three, four, seven books before publishing even one or the novella or short story.

Autumn (1m 55s):
Having this sort of big picture info is so important and to do it, we are talking a hundred pages of intricate back checking, right? Gosh, no, you should know me better than that. I like efficiency. Getting the biggest reward for the least amount of work is sort of my thing. I want to spend all of my effort on the actual writing, not the before I ever get to writing part. We are going to do this super easy, simple and build off a few of the previous things we've covered on these videos.

Autumn (2m 31s):
Okay. First, let's take a look at the plot of a traditional story arc. Again, we first looked at this in the video creating a novel outline. Remember, this is where a fairly flat intro rises during the inciting incident to escalate through some hurdles and laws to the high point of the climax before dropping to a less tense resolution and the episode on creating a quick novel outline. I talked about using the seven of story structure and using it to match the graph was an inciting incident, hurdles and laws when the reaction phase, the dark Knight of the soul and planning phase in the middle and then the climax on wrap up knowing that you might think the plot of a trilogy, it looks something like this.

Autumn (3m 18s):
This graph shows three books, one after the other with the exact same tension shape as a single book from a flood intro to a final wrap up and all of them equal if peak tension in the background of this trilogy, some sort of series arc ties everything together. It makes sense, right? But it is wrong.

Old McGrumpy (3m 40s):
Why? It looks like three books with some overarching theme to tie them together. It is very orderly.

Autumn (3m 47s):
You would think so old and grumpy as an AI. You probably like a very clean and organized graph that resembles one input after the other exact same inputs. But that doesn't make an exciting series

Old McGrumpy (4m 0s):
but you just don't like logic. If this isn't an image of a series, what is it?

Autumn (4m 6s):
Well, it represents a poorly planned series or one that is more like a TV show where something that happened in the previous episode doesn't really impact today's show but somehow plays into the overall season. It works, but in some tight plotting, I like type plotting. We are here to talk about tight plotting.

Old McGrumpy (4m 27s):
Fine. What is a trilogy supposed to look like to a worthless human?

Autumn (4m 32s):
Ha glad you asked what a trilogy you really should look like. Is this

Old McGrumpy (4m 39s):
ag?

Autumn (4m 39s):
Oh wait, it isn't that bad. Oh, well, good to know that a really tactical plotting can make AI runaway. To make sense of this, we just need to look at the parts here. Book one contains the beginning of a subplot that becomes the plot of book to which contains a subplot that becomes the plot of book three and behind it all as a series plot that weaves everything together. Plus book one is exciting, but the tension really increases with book to well.

Autumn (5m 10s):
Book three is even bigger and a complete page Turner, not to mention the inciting incidents for the serious plot happens at the climax of book one. In fact, you might say the climax of book one kicks off that realization. There's a bigger problem. The climax of book two is actually a hurdle in the series plot and the climax of book three is also the climax of the series plot. It all makes so much sense when you craft it, but I promise you as soon as you sit down to plot out your series, it will all fall apart.

Autumn (5m 46s):
Like I was speaking a foreign language that you are momentarily fluent in and now eludes you. Because that has happened to me. Writing is a mess. Nothing is ever as simply as I just outlined, but there are steps to make all this happen. I wouldn't tell you it was possible and then not get you to the end and the way to do this is with that two sentence synopsis, novel theme. These are super simple and follow the lines of just needing five elements like a one, a hero who finds himself stuck in to a situation from what you went to S to free himself by achieving a three goal.

Autumn (6m 25s):
However, there is a four villain who wants to stop him from this and if he is successful will cause the hero to experience a five disaster. To take a deeper look at that and some explanation, I'll link to a blog post at the amwritingfantasy website. If you haven't been over there, you should check it out. There are a lot of great resources from workbooks to one over 150 posts on writing and marketing. For writing a trilogy, you need to create four of these two sentence synopsis.

Autumn (6m 57s):
They would include one the synopsis of book one two the synopsis of book two three this analysis of book three and four the synopsis of the empire series, the plot of book, one will be mostly unrelated to the series. However, the climax of book one will reveal a larger problem which has been slowly building through the book as a subplot. This reveal is the series theme. The end of book one also sets up plot a book too, which is usually overcoming a big hurdle to six need it to succeed in solving the problem with the series plot book three is plot will be closely tied with the series.

Autumn (7m 39s):
At that point, the characters are the thick of trying to solve the series plot what of the climax of book three at the same time by looking at the themes and the fellowshipping upping the seven steps of story structure for each book and the series, you could start to pull out the subplots that needed to grow to become the plot of the following. Book knowing the theme and the plot of the series helps you see how book three you should develop. This will tie everything together so the books feel tightly woven even before you write them.

Autumn (8m 11s):
And that's because well they are. It does take some time and thought, well you have all the tools to do this and once you put it together, you know how all the books we'll weave together. I can start to see a bit of an overall tapestry. It is really exciting. And now you aren't writing in the dark either. You have solid direction for an entire series arc so get writing and let me know in the comments if you're applauding a series and a bit of what it is all about. I love to hear, don't forget to check out the episode on creating a quick outline for your novel.

Autumn (8m 47s):
It will help with solidifying this one. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 29 – Are audiobooks worth it?

Should you create an audiobook version of your novel? Are audiobooks worth it?

If you do go ahead and get an audiobook created, despite the production costs involved, how do you then market the audiobook? And what about how to publish and distribute it?

All your questions will be answered in this episode.

The resources we mentioned were:

ACX (Amazon audio production available for US citizens only): https://www.acx.com/ 
FindAwayVoices (available Internationally): https://findawayvoices.com/ 
Draft2Digital: https://draft2digital.com/ 

New episodes EVERY single Monday.

To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC 

PATREON! Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!

Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 

Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 

Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper 

Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (0s):
Have you ever wondered whether or not you should produce some audio books for your novels and is it even worth it? And how do you market audiobooks?

Intro (13s):
And

Autumn (16s):
if you're a fantasy author that you've come to the right place. My name is Autumn and together with Jesper we've published more than 20 novels. Our aim is to use our experience to help you with your writing marketing and selling books to fans all over the world.

Jesper (30s):
So in about one and a one and a half month time, we are going to open our writing costs for fantasy authors for the first time in six months. And we've sort of been waiting for the right time to give away an awesome price and it just happens so that actually tomorrow we have one year anniversary on Patrion. And because of that we thought we wanted to celebrate that anniversary and give some stuff.

Autumn (1m 5s):
I was so excited because Patrick has been a great place and great opportunities where we can provide even more personal touch and tips. I mean, we love doing these free videos and the podcasts. We love reaching authors and helping authors so they don't have quite the same stumbling blocks and experiences that, um, we ended up having some times that always for the best. So we can give you some of the tips and the things we've learned over time. We love doing that on YouTube and the podcast, but in Patreo and we can do even more, we can reach more people with the personal tips and more in depth focus tips.

Autumn (1m 45s):
And it's been a great experience and I cannot believe it's been a whole year.

Jesper (1m 50s):
It's amazing, isn't it? How time flies when you're having fun? No, we're just really, really busy. Yeah. But basically what we decided to do with, and here's how it's gonna work. So tomorrow, the 16th of July, and that's 2019 if you ever watched and listened to this, uh, but tomorrow the 16th of July until the end of July until the 31st of July, 2019 we have a two week window and during that two week window, we're going to give some stuff away, eh, unique to those who either subscribe as a new subscriber on Petro on.

Jesper (2m 30s):
And you can do that as a little as a dollar a month or two, some existing patron subscribers who upped their pledge to the next year. So either one of the to we'll get some additional prices on top of the normal rewards that you do get anyway once you sign up for on patron. And one of them is uh, my audio book version on how to write offenses. You book description, which every fantasy author needs to write anyway, so you can get a free audio book version of that, uh, as soon as you have signed up or upgraded your tier.

Jesper (3m 10s):
Uh, on top of that, because we are releasing the ultimate fantasy writer's guide, our premium writing costs for fantasy authors in the end of August, we are also going to put the name, your name in the pot for a draw. And we're going to draw one lucky winner between everybody who signs up in this two week window until the 31st of July. And also between all the people who operate the Tia who's already on patron and we're going to draw one name at random and that person will win the premium ultimate fetish of riders guide course for free.

Autumn (3m 45s):
I'm so excited about that. Uh, we'd like to give away or how offer scholarships occasionally. So having a chance to have a new student and to do that for free and as a reward to our pantry Rollins, I think it's a fantastic opportunity. And what a fantastic way to celebrate our one year anniversary on Patreon.

Jesper (4m 5s):
Yes, exactly. I'm also looking very much forward to it and uh, go check it out. There is a link in the, if you're on YouTube and just the description field below this video, you will find the link to patron. But if you are listening on podcast then just go into the show notes and also there you'll find a link to patron. So just go over there and check it out. But remember it's only this two week window and after that we are back to normal. So get on there. So it starts tomorrow

Autumn (4m 34s):
on Tuesday and just goes to the end of the month and 2019 so check it out while you can and shine in.

Jesper (4m 43s):
Great. Okay. That was a bit of anniversary speech there. So we hope to see you there. But uh, let's get into a bit of an audio book conversation autumn because I think all your books is a really, really good topic to discuss because the audio book market is absolutely booming. Uh, it's crazy the growth rates that we see in the audio book market, uh, yet at the same time, out of all the books that you can find online or the eBooks, it's probably like a few percentage of the total who actually has audio progressions available.

Jesper (5m 21s):
It's very, very rare and that is of cost because right now and the time and age we're in both the production costs for an audiobook, but also the time that goes into it is working a bit against us. But we wanted to share our thoughts here today on, well, should you, should you create an audio book for your novels or not? And if you should then how do you market those audiobooks and also what are your distribution possibilities, you know, how do you release it or publish into the world?

Jesper (5m 58s):
So, but maybe we should start about the uh, the part on should we actually create audiobooks.

Autumn (6m 5s):
Sure. That's a good one. I, cause I've been in audio and doing audio books and I can't remember when I started if it was 2014, 2015, but it's been a few years now. So I've done that. I've had a pro file, I have all of my Epic fantasy trilogies, both of them. So six books in audio and I'm working on my dystopian one and I've been giving away advice to a lot of authors thinking of trying out audio books. So I think this is a great and important topic because you're right, as far as percentage wise, you know, I, I would, I started E publishing in 2012.

Autumn (6m 40s):
There were like virtually, there was less than a million eBooks on Amazon. So this is like the reset for doing that again. But now it's audio books where it's a small market where you have a much better chance of having your books noticed, seen and heard. But again, this is more than just, you know, making sure you are editing, um, and controlling those aspects. You still have a whole new realm of things you need to be on top of and take care of so that you're producing a quality audio books so that what your knee known for your name gets known for is a wonderful story in a greatly produced audio book and not something that people are going hearing.

Autumn (7m 21s):
This person's voice is like hearing fingernails on a chalkboard and I can't stand this author. That's not what you want to have happen. So this is a whole new realm and it taught me a very important lesson when creating fantasy and character's name is make sure you know how to pronounce them and that you can tell other people how to do that. It's totally changed my perspective on what I needed my characters now.

Jesper (7m 43s):
Yeah. That, that is absolutely true. Uh, but, and I think probably most people can relate to this, but we live in a world nowadays where everybody is very, very busy and because of that, people are also in general, maybe not everybody, but a lot of people are trying to optimize how they spent their time. Meaning that if you could stop doing multiple things at once, like that's in part also why I personally love listening to podcast. I counted them last week and I'm currently listening to 51 different podcasts shows.

Jesper (8m 17s):
So it's a lot. Um, but the nice thing is about, it doesn't really take up like extra time because I do it when I go grocery shopping or if I'm cooking dinner or something, they're not just having my earplugs in and I'm listening to it while I'm doing something else. And I think where we are today in here in 2019 with people being so vicious, they are, I think in part that's also why we received seeing audiobooks rooming because people can do it, they can basically listen to a book while they're doing something else.

Jesper (8m 48s):
Um, and that is a market that you can tap into by creating audio books.

Autumn (8m 54s):
Definitely. And now we was interesting

Jesper (8m 56s):
as I, there's a few platforms out there, so you and I have actually used totally different ways of doing this. I've been on ACX since I started, but ACX is related to Amazon. It's owned by Amazon also. It's what it produces it you buy the books on audible as well as Amazon. So that's where I've been. But it's not um, open to anyone who doesn't look white. It States which has a huge limiting factor. But you found a place that you have been using that um, you don't have to be a U S citizen, which is kinda nice.

Jesper (9m 29s):
Yeah, exactly. Uh, so I've used find a way voices, um, which is, I've been very happy with it. It's a very good service. You upload your, sort of upload some, some information about what it is, the book that you want them to Janae narrate and then they, and you also say something about what type of narration you would like to know. Should should the person sound professional or funny or serious or calm or whatever. Uh, so you, you, you sort of give them some hints and some guidelines and then they will go out and then are their library of narrator to stay.

Jesper (10m 5s):
We'll find three of them that they think matches what you're looking for. And then those three we'll do a free sample for you, which you can listen to. And if you don't like any of them, you just say to find a way, voices, I don't like them. And then they'll give pre new once and they will continue doing so until you're happy with it. And once you're happy in your selected it, then the duration starts and then you go sort of go through the process and then Nereda uploads them to find a way, voices, platforms where you can communicate whenever he was saying you need to change this and that, and then he will, we recorded or she will rerecord it.

Jesper (10m 37s):
And once you've approved each of the sections, just press approve. And in the end, then you have a final audiobook and then find a way voices takes care of it and they distribute it to all. There's like one in a hundred different distributors that they also audible that they distribute to. Uh, so it's, it's very, very easy and uh, it's, it's, it's a perfect opportunity in my view because also there is no exclusive activity with it. Like if you go to ACX with Amazon, they lock you in, um, as usual Amazon style.

Jesper (11m 11s):
So find a way why system good at and you're free to do whatever you want and you set your own prices for the book as well, which is really nice. You can't do that on ACX as well. If I understand correctly, once you've sort of gone, gone through all that and uh, well you, you, you have your audio book released and uh, it's, it's pretty simple actually. If you go in through the draft to digital, if you use that drafted digital as your distributor and if you have your ebook on there and you us inside the drafted digital dashboard, if you click create audio book in from in there, then drafted digital has a agreement with findawayvoices that any customer who comes them find a way voices, we'll waive the $50 administration fee that they normally chance when you upload a new project.

Jesper (12m 1s):
So you can upload a unit project and you're paid nothing. So it's awesome. So if you're also using breath to digital, just go through that platform rather than creating an account separately on findawayvoices and upload your book there because then they got a chat, your $50 to sort of handle your new project and find the samples and all of that. But you can save that money by just going through draft or did digital to that's, that's so cool.

Autumn (12m 28s):
You pretty much convinced me. I wish I had tried it, but I don't think anyone existed when I started. I mean, ACX is also incredibly user-friendly. And if you're only on Amazon, it's definitely the way to go because you log in and you actually pull your book in from Amazon through your AEs IBN number. So you pull it in, it links automatically. So when the book is done, it's automatically distributed. The sound clip is right there. So unlike findawayvoices, you don't have anyone setting anyone for you.

Autumn (12m 59s):
You post up a sample, you give them a script that you want people to read and you could just sit there and let it be and people will come and find you and read your script. But you can also go and look for narrators and say, Hey, I just have this open for auditions where you come and audition for it. So it's a very active, you have to go hunt for people. People come and find you, and it can be a lot of fun. So you can end up with 1520 I mean, you can keep it open as long as you want. And so you find the narrator you're looking for and then work out a contract. And there's a couple of different levels you can pay someone outright.

Autumn (13m 32s):
If you have a book that is selling incredibly well on Amazon, they will actually pay a percentage of the fee to the narrator. So you can get that kind of a deal if you have a really good bestselling novel. And there's also something where it's royalty share what's 50 50 of all the process proceeds. And obviously the, that's more for newer narrators, but the high end ones, they usually want a fee that's can be upwards of $300 per finished hour, uh, which is not good. It takes 10 about 10 hours to make one per finished hour video.

Autumn (14m 3s):
So you can kind of figure out how much they're actually getting per hour is not that much. So it's up to you to choose what UAA you've got. You want to go. It's awesome. If you have a book in a series and you have the money, you can hire someone for the entire series. That's what I'm having with my dystopian books. But at the same time on my Epic fantasy, I was a new author at the beginning and so I actually have a different narrator for every single one and it works, but it's also jarring. Not everyone pronounces the same names the same way. Some people prefer the one narrator over another.

Autumn (14m 34s):
So there's a lot of discontinuation. Um, honestly the best way to go is to save the money and be able to pay the narrator upfront. Then you own 100% of the royalties and that is fantastic. But you know, it works both ways. If you want to get your feet wet, it's definitely for you to find a fantastic narrator by going with the 50, 50 royalty share deal and giving it a try and seeing how it goes because it is a fantastic market to jump into. However, saying that, um, if people think is it is the way to become the quick rich, you'll get rich quick book selling way.

Autumn (15m 11s):
I can say after three, four years in this game, I'm working with a few other narrators and people who are doing audio books, other authors, you know, it's great. It's great to be finable, but I'm not seeing it as the most major boost in my sales I've ever done. I think it makes much more sense to focus on writing and making sure you have an entire series written than it does to get your first audio book out. So if I had to choose between writing and getting my audio book released, I would write first. But I definitely love it having it on that platform as well.

Jesper (15m 43s):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, of course, as you said a, it makes a lot of sense to make sure that you can get the same narrator to to do a whole series so that it doesn't, it's not a new voice reading next book in the series, so that certainly makes sense. Of course the downside would findawayvoices is that you don't have this ride split opportunity, at least not now. Maybe it comes later. I don't know what their plans are, but right now the only way to do it is that you have to pay, uh, their narrator for the recording. Um, they go for anything.

Jesper (16m 15s):
I think the lowest, I've seen this $150 per hour, but then they go upwards and easily $500 power. I think the one when I got to narrate the, uh, how Taran right offenses, she put descriptive your book, I think I paid $250 an hour for him. Uh, and he does a very good job and so they, the pricing ranges, but at the end of the day, it's not cheap. And of course, if you have a full, 100,000 word long fantasy novel, it's going to cost you quite some money.

Jesper (16m 48s):
Uh, and that, that is really the downside with the audio books is that where we are right now where you have to do it like this manual approps and buy them. I buy that. I mean, I'm pretty sure that in if in a couple of years, if we had to have this conversation in a couple of years, I'm pretty sure we're going to see AI being able to S to narrate books just as well as human beings as Kevin. I'm pretty sure that we'll see that in a couple of years' time. And when we get to that space, yay, I can probably never read that book in no time and the cost will be a lot lower, uh, to do so.

Jesper (17m 23s):
But, but we're not there yet. So that just means that not right now the only way is to go with the human way, meaning that you have to pay a human being to sit there and read everything and record everything and be this extensive and it's not a, as autumn said, it's not a get rich quick dark sort of thing. But, and I will also agree, I think with what you said them that if if it's just your first books, I wouldn't rush into start getting an audio book. But I mean for, for my first trilogy am I don't have audiobooks for those either.

Jesper (17m 57s):
And I have, I don't have any plans to do that either at the, at this point in time. But I would say that sort of, if you, if you have the money to spend on it, I think it is extremely good to get the audio books out there, both because the market is booming and one more people are listening to all your books. That's one thing. And we are far from it as stage where everybody in the world who will get access to audiobooks are there yet. So that will only be a lot more people coming on board in the coming years who will start getting access to all your book, uh, platforms that are not there today.

Jesper (18m 31s):
So there's a lot of new customers out there, so to speak. You don't have a handle on today where the audio book will help you a lot in, in getting there. But that, that's, that's sort of the one side of it. And then the other side of it is that having the bootable different formats of a book. So you have a, um, an ebook, you'll have a paperback. Uh, maybe you have a hard copy if that's something, but, but at least you have an ebook. They have a paperback. Both of those of course you could get through Amazon, but then you also have an audio book that just the fact that you have at least those three formats also shows a certain level of seriousness and professionalism with your book that when somebody goes to your book page on, on Amazon, for example, in the, okay, there's all these different formats there, it kind of gives the impression S and also show that this is a serious author who actually means business when one is being created here and it's not just, uh, created a, a cheap ebook and there you go.

Jesper (19m 32s):
You know, so, so I think that there is some certain level of branding and professionalism in this that you cannot neglect completely either.

Autumn (19m 41s):
No, I agree. I think it definitely works as your plot form. If you're a serious author, you want a very strong platform. Audio books are the way to go. I will definitely say, uh, if you, when you hire a narrator, you're going to want to have a list of pronunciation guides of names, place names, characters. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to have a little bit of a feel. I remember one of my auditions and one of my very sensitive characters, I having to be an action scene. I always say, if you're going to pick a scene for an audition, pick one of the most challenging scenes in your novels.

Autumn (20m 14s):
And that way, you know, if they pull that one off, they're going to pull off the rest of it. And so I had this scene that was very challenging and very, you know, action oriented and they narrated the one very sensitive male character. Like he was a hockey jock. And I like know we talked and he redid it so that I could really get a better feel for him and his voice. So it doesn't hurt to have a few tips like that. You're gonna want to hand that off to your narrator. It's very important to that they get the words right and really treat them like you would, you know, your graphic artists, anyone you work with, your editor.

Autumn (20m 46s):
This is a very professional, I've become really good friends with the narrator for my dystopian series cause we've been together for years and I've watched his am career blossom as an actor. Actually. I'm hoping now at this point my book will be famous just because of who he's going to be. And um, the things you learn, you know, he has to not eat dairy the day he's going to narrate cause it makes mouth sounds. I mean he is, you have to have a soundproof studio. This is when they say the, you know, 300 to $500 per finished hour knowing that every per finished hour is 10 to 12 hours of audio and takes.

Autumn (21m 24s):
And I don't think I could have the patients to do this. I appreciate the professionalism that a truly good narrator has. So you know, if you're going to go get into this, take the time to listen to a few audio books that are really well done and get a feel for it because you want to know, you know, the sound, the static noise, all that white noise, it all adds up and want a quality finished product. So make sure you're getting that, especially if you're going to be paying for it directly and have, you know, the a hundred percent royalties.

Autumn (21m 57s):
But even if you're doing a 50, 50 split, you should have a standard that you expect and make sure you listen to it so that there's anything that's incorrect. They get pronouns wrong or names wrong. Um, I had someone try to change an entire scene by accident. Make sure that doesn't happen so you can get that fixed and corrected. Now the biggest aspects with audio books too is how you end up marketing. So just because you haven't, it not 100%, you know, it shows up on Amazon, which was fantastic.

Autumn (22m 27s):
But you do have to let people know. And there's a few ways. There is a place called audio book. Boom that does do marketing with ACX. You get 25 free codes. But I know, yes were, you seem to be got, have a lot more than 25 and there's a few places out there where you can look for our reviewers. You can do swaps that they get a free code if they're going to guarantee you 100% that they will review your book for you. And those are all great ways of getting noticed and having people, you know, see that you have an audio book, which is fantastic.

Autumn (22m 57s):
Plus it gets you into more abuse on Amazon, all your profiles, your paperback or audio book and your ebook all connects. So that all those reviews, uh, covid reference, which is good. It's also frustrating if someone doesn't like your narrator. It gives you a one star review and totally ripped a new one. And that shows up on your ebook, which has nothing to do with, cause I have had people say I hate this narrator of their voices, like chalk on a, you know, fingernails on a chalkboard. Uh, couldn't stand it, but the store is really good and you're like, Oh, so just warn you.

Autumn (23m 30s):
Yes, your name is going to be forever linked with whoever you choose to narrate it. And if people don't like the voice of the narrator, you're going to hear about it. Yeah. I think when it comes to marketing of the audio book says it's a bit difficult.

Jesper (23m 47s):
I mean you do get these giveaway coats that uh, that you also just mentioned autumn which is across nice. And then you can give away some audio books and hopefully make people interested in, for example, if it's, if you have a series of books and you can give some audio, a free coats away for the first one and then hopefully they will go on and buy the other ones. So that is of course good, but it is a bit more difficult in a way that you don't necessarily have quite the same tools available to you as you do with the eBooks for example, or the paperback back.

Jesper (24m 19s):
Certainly on on the Amazon ads you cannot charge at the audio books specifically with the Amazon app, you could target the ebook and you're contacting people back, but not the audiobook. But of course their line of thinking is then if you run the ads to the eBooks and to the paperbacks and those who actually prefer audio books, they will just pick up the audio. But when they arrive on your book page. So that's sort of the the line of thinking behind but it, but it is a bit different to some extent. At least I view would maybe, maybe some, some has more experienced with this than me and and can correct me and maybe even autumn I don't know, but, but at least in my view, these audio books, sales are more something you're sort of pickup up in the wake of the other book selling.

Jesper (25m 0s):
So you, you just sell some audio books. Because the other, because you're pushing traffic to the other books and this, that's how I view it. Of course. The other alternative is that we find a way washes. You're also distributing to libraries in the U S desists though. So you can try to let your readers know who, why the U S that, Oh by the way, do you know that you can actually get my audio book for free if you go to library and they, eh, they use these special apps that findawayvoices us as well with libraries has access to, but all those details are inside the findawayvoices dashboard.

Jesper (25m 36s):
So you'll get all of that when, when you start working with, we'd find a way voices, but you can't tell Rita. So you know, go to your library, asked them if they use this and then you can basically, you don't even have to leave your home, you know the, the readers can download it via their portal to the library from home and you will get paid as soon as they do. So because the library then pays for a pro listen base. So basically the, the sort of lent the audio book to the, to the customer, in this case, the Rita, and then you get paid for that by uh, findawayvoices.

Jesper (26m 9s):
So, so it works and you get paid. And that's of course nice that that's another way you can try to market the book and actually market the fact that they can listen to it for free, which most people will like. So, um, yeah. But other than that, I, I, I do view it as the marketing side of audiobooks is a bit difficult. So you just started to pick up the sales to cam from marketing the eBooks and the paperback books. But I don't know if you have any other thoughts on that order, but that's sort of how I see it.

Jesper (26m 40s):
I think that's a primary way is definitely if your book is selling well

Autumn (26m 44s):
in other ways that you're, you know, you have an ebook am so you do a, you know, a sale on it or you have a freebie, people will see that it's an audio book and you'll get some sales that way, which is fantastic. It is also, I always look at it, it's another way of doing posts. So if you do post to your social media account, you know, letting people know every once in a while having, Oh yeah. By the way, do you know this is on audio? I know for a while I was taking clips and putting them, sometimes I'd make them to YouTube clips or I would just do the audio clip or I do it as a blog post and so it's fantastic.

Autumn (27m 17s):
Do you have this other medium? So I'm going to, you know, I'll post more on it and share off clips because I can access all of those files that are on my audio book and it clips and do am beams and do all these other posts. And so that has always, you know, kind of more interesting. I use it for videos. I use Adobe spark, which allows you to make some really cool high-end videos. I can put in some sound there. I have this plan in this script to make this trailer and actually paid my one narrator that do a few other quotes and stuff so that I can make a trailer.

Autumn (27m 50s):
So I have all that that I'm pulling in from the audio book that'll really, it's maybe stunning if I ever sit down and sit still in one place long enough to actually pull all the files together that are just in random pieces at the moment. And of course there's giveaways. So you know, if you do paperback giveaway is ebook giveaways. You can do audio book giveaways, whether you're using a viral share platform like King Sumo or Rafflecopter. But it is again, another way that if you have free codes or if you, you know, once you finish your 25 free throws on ACX, you can ask them very politely to see if they'll give you a few more, which usually they'll at least give you five more.

Autumn (28m 26s):
So it's always helpful to keep that in mind and you'll have more codes and you can, uh, give them out in. The nice thing is with those free codes, even with ACX, you actually get paid for them. It's a slightly lower rate and ACX also does distribute to libraries and a few other just, they call it expanded distribution. So all of that is available there. And like I said, there's really no reason to not give it a try. I have right now I have two novellas out that are a new series at the moment. I have no plans on making them into audio books, but I also liked that it's a novella.

Autumn (28m 59s):
You know they're one 35,000 words. One's 45,000 words does is a great, get your feet wet with audio book life. So if you have even a short story, all of those, think outside the box. If you just want to try it out and it's for sale on Amazon, go for it. See what you can figure out and see how you like it and learn the ropes because still better way about learning how to work with audio books and then how to market audio books. Then to actually go get an audio book made and what to say if you're starting out, don't worry about rushing into creating all your books.

Autumn (29m 38s):
It is cool to have on your books. I certainly think so, but, but it is expensive. So

Jesper (29m 42s):
uh, maybe wait a bit and uh, if you could start seeing that you, your series a are sailing, if you start seeing that your eBooks and paperbacks it sailing and then it, it's definitely worth, worth considering. Stop getting some audiobook screener if you can afford it or if you want to spend the money on it. There is a, a lot of things we can spend money on, so maybe it's not at the top of your list. Like it like that. That is actually the case for me with, with my first trilogy that it's sort of not just not the top of the list of things I want to just spend money on.

Jesper (30m 16s):
So I have not done it. Maybe I'll do it one day, I don't know. But, but for now I have a lot of other things I would rather spend time and money on. So, uh, that's up to you. But, uh, yeah, I think the main thing is to take away is that just because you spent the money in creating an audio book, if the book is not selling already, it's not going to stop selling just because you have an audio book. So you can save the money if that's the case and because it's quite expensive trip. So, so there's no need to, to think that this is the magic bullet.

Autumn (30m 47s):
No, I concur. I mean, I know when I first saw the uh, idea that my trilogy at over a hundred thousand words each and you add that into your hours that it was going to be over $10,000 to $12,000 to produce, I can guarantee you am I'm not making that back in audio book sales anytime in the near future. It's fantastic to have them. But again, I agree with Yesware that this is not where you want to put all your coin. I would say start put that money into marketing your current folks and put the audio book cloth once you see them selling.

Autumn (31m 20s):
Cause it's not really the other way around. I haven't seen an audio book becomes so huge that the ebook sales lift, it's usually the ebook sales come first and then the audio book. But it is definitely fun. It gives you a few more things. And you know, worst case scenario, you want to have some clips of someone reading your book. Um, you can read your book. So don't be shy. Get front of the camera and you can always use that for marketing purposes. To

Jesper (31m 47s):
yeah, true. I would say though, a sort of a, a bit of a wanting to finish off with here, but the don't try to narrate your own audio books unless you're a bit good edit, you know, because it really does take skill and there's a reason why they charging several hundred dollars an hour because one is a lot of work, but it also requires skill to do it. So really it sounds properly and it sounds good. Um, and people have it, you, you know, they have them now right out in the box, right inside the or.

Jesper (32m 17s):
So it has to sound, we will. Uh, so I would definitely never tried to,

Autumn (32m 25s):
no, I concur. I only mean that for like a little posts on Instagram, but to do a full length book, get a professional it, once you hear a professional narrate a page of your book, you will fall in love. And you also probably realize how many times you seen Eustace didn't say a word on the same page and kick yourself, but it is. Um, I, I didn't even like audio books honestly until I heard my first book narrated and I thought, Oh my gosh, this is so cool.

Autumn (32m 56s):
So it's definitely fun, but you don't have to race into it. The market will still be there in a few years, so concentrated on getting your ebook selling. Okay, cool. I guess we'll just say thank you for watching and listening. If you want to podcast and see you next Monday. Yes. See you next Monday. But don't forget tomorrow is Tuesday. Go to Patreon and possibly win a spot in the ultimate fantasy writer's guide course and get some other freebies for joining or upgrading. See you there.

Autumn (33m 27s):
Bye. Bye. Bye.