Authoring Onward

Today, I’m doing a deep analysis of my recent KU free days promotion, what I did, and how it went. So, though it is October and therefore Spooky Season, our theme of the spooky side of publishing is going to start next week, because I have a feeling this postmortem may go a little long.

So last week, I mentioned what I’d set up to promote the free days for my first-in-series historical cozy mystery. Here’s how it went.

Over the course of five days I had 5,301 free downloads of The Poison in All of Us. I hit the top of the free charts in U.S. Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, and LGBTQ+ Mystery. Probably in Cozy Mystery as well, though I was traveling with only mobile devices which made it hard to check. I know I got pretty far up that one, but I can’t be sure. I was in the top 100 free overall several times during the course of the promotion. I didn’t rank in Amateur Sleuth, but I could have. And here’s your first lesson from my experience. If you think you’re in a category and you are getting ready for a promotion like this, make sure you’re in that category for the Kindle store, not just for Books. I though I was in Amateur Sleuths, but it was only for paperback.

I probably was better served in terms of visibility by the Cozy Mystery, Historical Mystery, and U.S. Historical fiction categories than LGBTQ+ Mystery, even though it is personally important to me to be in that category. Unfortunately, like many queer categories, it has a lot of books listed that aren’t mysteries at all. They’re clearly romance. Category stuffing is a problem in many categories, but it seems to happen more to queer categories and plays into a number of stereotypes that I could go on about. Suffice it to say, queer people have interests outside of romance. Surprise. Surprise. And while I applaud what queer romance writers have done in being pioneers of representation for our community, it is frustrating when some folks category stuff without paying any heed to what that does to other’s visibility or public perception of books labeled as queer. But I am getting off topic now.

But, still, I feel quite positive about the number of downloads and the rankings. No promotion can go perfectly. Next, let’s analyze each advertising platform one at a time.

The first day of the promotion, I sent a newsletter to my email list and promoted on social media. I had a pretty good result from that, with some of the downloads being due to Amazon algorithms. I was pleased to see downloads start piling up before I’d sat down to compose my email. 335 for day one.

Day two had trickle over effect from the newsletter the previous day, as more folks opened their emails, but I also had my Hello Books promotion going out. Now, they specified clearly that I needed to have the discount in place by Thursday for the promotion to run, because they have both U.K. and U.S. audiences, and free days that start on Friday U.S. time would not be running Friday morning for the U.K. But I noticed the email went out at 4pm Eastern. I’m guessing that U.K. readers get these emails earlier than U.S. readers. That would be pretty late for the U.K. But I could get a clear answer on that. The reason I wanted to know was that I didn’t see a big spike in downloads until the Hello Books email went out. So I’m guessing I just don’t have as much appeal to U.K. readers, which makes sense as the series is heavily focused on U.S. History topics. U.S. readers just have a closer connection to those issues. Total for day two: 523 free downloads.

Day three blew every other day out of the water. Since I don’t know for sure that Hello Books didn’t send at 4pm Eastern to the U.K., I can’t be sure that a chunk of this isn’t from U.K. readers opening the next morning—though all of the days have trickle over effects to the next days. On day three, I had 2,

October, my favorite month is almost here, and with it I have a free ebook promotion scheduled. So today’s episode is about the freshening up I like to do to get ready for a promotion. It’s a mild stretch out of my comfort zone, more of a getting things done I’ve been putting off, but there is a bonus stretch out of my comfort zone I’m going to mention at the end.

I decided to try out the new Hello Books promotion service from Mark Dawson and James Blatch—I’ll let y’all know how it turns out after it runs. For those who aren’t familiar, this is a newsletter ad. Basically, like similar services of Bookbub or Fussy Librarian, they have an email newsletter that readers subscribe to and choose the genres that interest them, and they sell spots to authors and publishers to feature a book in a particular category.

I didn’t get to choose my date, but I got approved for my first historical cozy mystery on October 1st. So I set up my five free days from KU to run Sept 30.-Oct 4 (you can choose 5 days to make your ebook free per 90-day period or 7 days of a discount period). I made my second historical cozy 99 cents using a Kindle countdown deal for 7 days to encourage readthrough.

I also set up other ads around this one, a process authors often call ad-stacking. I set up a Freebooksy ad and a Fussy Librarian ad. I intentionally left Sept. 30 for only my own reach, my newsletter, any newsletter swaps I’d set up with other authors, posts to my social media and in appropriate groups, plus whatever visibility Amazon gives me. Basically, I’m testing my nonpaid reach.

I also wasn’t able to set up a newsletter ad for Sunday Oct. 3rd, so I’ll be running a Facebook ad to keep bumping things up. Basically, the idea is to get lots of visibility for the series by giving away lots of the first book. Hopefully I’ll get folks reviewing and reading through to other books in the series and perhaps my other series and/or my mailing list as well.

Naturally with this big push, there was some cleaning up I wanted to do. I had a few minor errors to fix in book 3, along with a historical note I wanted to add. I needed to clean up the backmatter for all three books, to make sure it had accurate information and listed the other books in the series. I needed to reevaluate the seven keywords Amazon gives you to help readers find your book. Some keywords are more useful than others, so I did some research using a tool called Publisher rocket to find keywords that described the book well and were something folks were searching for…and that had books ranking that actually sold decently.  I also needed to email Amazon and ask them to put my books in additional categories. Amazon only lets you list two categories when you upload a book, but you can be in up to ten per book. You just have to ask. You may need to do this more than once. I’d emailed about this in the past and still not been added. I tried to choose a mix of larger and smaller categories. Larger categories have more readers, but it’s harder to rank. Smaller categories are easier to rank in, but they have fewer readers. Finally it was past time book 3’s paperback copy got launched.

Now, because I didn’t pick my date for Hello Books, of course most of this fell during a time I’ll be out of town, but luckily I can set up most things in advance, and while I’m traveling, I’ll only need to check in from time to time, see where my rankings are, take screenshots, and post when I get high in the charts, fingers crossed.

Now for the bonus real stretch. I’d been wanting to experiment with video for a while, and I’d decided on a project a while back as a treat for my email list if nothing else. Once a month, at least for the fall, I’ll be reading a classic mystery and trying an activity from that novel. This month, I baked seed cakes from Agatha Christie’s Bertram...

I am so glad to be writing and illustrating much more this week (working on a Halloween story!)  along with celebrating. My son just turned six, and now our living room is littered with large model trains, including one that is too big to run indoors! We’ll be setting up an outdoor railroad this weekend in the backyard.

It’s also finally autumn today as this comes out and at long last it is rainy and chilly. I’m recording this in a new comfy sweater with a pumpkin coffee. Really getting in the mood for my witchy Halloween mystery.

But let’s move on to your challenge for this week to stretch your author self out of your comfort zone: If you don’t find what you want, make it.

There are many ways that authors can promote their books and/or coordinate with other authors, and probably there’s something that’s caught your eye, something you’d like to participate in…but you’re not finding opportunities. Maybe that’s an anthology with a bunch or other authors in your genre. Maybe it’s a roundtable discussion on a particular topic or theme. For me, last year it was a multi-author online holiday party.

I’d seen a few of these. They are often called author takeovers where one author “takes over” a page or group belonging to someone else for usually an hour or two, and they spend that time posting about their books, characters, settings, etc. There are often pictures, questions, games, and prizes, something to get group members engaged and excited. It’s a chance for authors to meet readers and readers to meet authors in a very Covid-safe and location-independent way. Sometimes it’s just one author, but sometimes there are many authors in a big event.

I’d wanted to participate in a Christmas or holiday-themed event, because I have a book set at Christmastime, but I wasn’t finding much opportunity. So I organized one myself. It made it free for any author who had a winter holiday cozy mystery to join, and we relied on the power of our combined audiences to make the day a success. Not everything went perfectly, but we had a great time. I’m probably going to do it again this holiday season, taking the lessons learned from last year.

So whatever the thing is you want to do but aren’t seeing, ask yourself if you could get the ball rolling. Not only will you create the thing you want to see in the world, but you’ll make connections with others along the way.

It won’t necessarily be hiccup-free. I certainly had a few missteps, folks who were confused about the time they went on. Authors who signed up enthusiastically… only not to give me all the information I needed or disappear. And a big gap in the event posting schedule. I should have made the event shorter, giving fewer choices so that that there wouldn’t be big gaps between authors where nothing was happening. But if you find the process worthwhile, you can roll with the punches as they come and be ready for them next time. I’ll be prepared this year with more communication, clearer instructions, and some in-between content ready to post so I can fill any dead time.

This week ask yourself what you’d like to do that you aren’t seeing. If you make it happen, you might just find a number of grateful folks who were waiting for someone to take the initiative.

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Since September’s theme is stretching out of our comfort zones, today’s episode is about the advice you’d give to another writer that you aren’t doing yourself.

Think about it for a bit. I bet there’s something. It’s probably something you know would help you but looks like a bit of work. Something you’ve meant to do, but you’ve been putting it off.

In my case, it’s library and bookstore distribution.

I know, I know. I used to be a library employee. Not a good look.

But there’s a number of ways that library and bookstore distribution pulls me out of my comfort zone. Not only do I have to make room for admin tasks I just haven’t penciled in, like getting some of my books up in Ingram Spark when they’ve up to now been Amazon only, but also making decisions I don’t’ like to make–those KU pages read, it stinks to lose that income, but I have to go wide with a book in order to get the ebook into libraries.

Finally, it pushes me to ask for my books to be in bookstores and libraries and to ask my readers to request them at their local stores and libraries. And I know that no matter how professionally and carefully I go about the asking process, no matter how much time I put into it, sometimes the answer will be no. Sometimes it might be a form letter type no. Sometimes it might be a rather rude no.

And, even though I’ve been at this for a while, that rejection coming from a bookstore or a library, places very close to my heart. That is going to hurt.

But I know it needs to be done. It’s not the right choice for every book or every author. Many authors make a wonderful income with no bookstore or library placement at all, and there’s no guarantee this amount of effort is going to pay off monetarily—at least directly.

For me it has the benefit of looking very professional. I’ll be able to list physical places that carry one or more of my books. But it has an emotional component as well, and, frankly, one of my series is about a library bookmobile driver. It feels right that those books make it onto library shelves someday.

It’s also extra important to me because I’m currently working on publishing a picture book with my sister. Placement in physical stores, in libraries, in schools, is much more effective and important for children’s books.

And for the first time, it’s not just about me. It’s someone else’s book too.

That’s the crucial factor in stretching myself to take my own advice, to do that thing I’ve been putting off even though it is important to me.

And that’s the first thing I’d tell any other writer with that kind of put-off task, the thing they know they should do, but it scares them. If you can’t actually do it for someone else, pretend like you are doing it for someone else. We authors who are authoring onward, we often want to reach back and help others…and we tend to take more care of them than we do of ourselves.

The next step: set a date to begin. It’s easy to put these things off until someday. And then someday never happens. It’s what we’ve been doing thus far. I’m setting my date to start the process on Monday October 4th. That gives me enough time to do the next step…

Research. Learn about the process of doing whatever the scary thing is for you. For me, knowledge makes me far less scared. If I’m worried about something, my first instinct is to read and listen to and watch everything I can about it. It’s been a while since I interviewed Darcy Pattison about how she set up her children’s self publishing business for success in reaching the school and library market specifically,

Reader reviews. Asking for them and looking at them… that certainly stretches a lot of authors out of their comfort zone, myself included. But reviews are an important part of getting your book in front of a wider audience and demonstrating that people are actually reading and enjoying it.

So, today’s episode is about how to get more reviews from readers and what to do when you get them. Here’s a tutorial on how to get a direct link for readers to review on Amazon.

This Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021, I’ll be speaking at the WriteNow! online conference on getting out of your own way as a writer. It’s only $25 for a whole day of learning.

And if you’re looking for editorial services, I’m currently having a Labor Day sale, good if you book by Sept. 17, 2021.

September’s theme is learning new things and stretching gently out of your comfort zone. This episode is the interview for September with Clare Marshall about selling books at craft shows and comic conventions, a topic that does push a lot of introverted authors out of their comfort zones, but it’s an experience you can learn a lot from.

Now, with rising Covid numbers and the Delta Variant, the show scene for this fall and the holiday season is still very up in the air. I’m crossing my fingers that some of the outdoor shows closer to Christmas will still be going and I’ll get a spot—with one soon to be two books with ties to the holidays, I know that’s my time. But, as we’ve all had to learn the past year and half, we have to roll with the punches.

Eventually, shows will be back in full force and all of the fantastic advice Clare gives will be great to come back to again and again. We had a wonderful and slightly long chat. I admit, I love doing shows even thought it has been a long time, and I did let myself geek out about this topic.

In other announcements, this week (hopefully Friday–I’ve had some tech issues!) is the launch of my podcast for newbie writers: Let’s Start Writing!

About Clare:

Clare C. Marshall grew up in rural Nova Scotia with very little television and dial-up internet, and yet she turned out okay. She is the founder and author-publisher behind Faery Ink Press, where she publishes young adult science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. Her fantasy novel, The Violet Fox was given an honorable mention in the 2016 Whistler Independent Book Awards and its sequel, The Emerald Cloth, was nominated for Best YA Novel in the 2019 Prix Aurora Awards. When she’s not writing or fiddling up a storm, she enjoys computer games and making silly noises at her two cats, Pinecone and Pavlova. She lives in Calgary with her husband.

Find her post-mortems of shows here.

And her blog on publishing.

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Looking for an editor or book coach? I’ve got you covered.

The Book Echoes podcast is now Authoring Onward! Same great content but new name and more descriptive branding.

And lest you think I’m leaving newbie writers out, just wait for my new podcast, Let’s Start Writing, launching hopefully next week!

Have a listen to see what exciting topics are coming up in the next couple of months for Authoring Onward.

And if you’re looking for editing for your book, I’ve got you covered!

We’re getting closer to back-to-school time, so how about picking up a kids’ book?

We’re living in a golden age of children’s books. Even if you don’t have kids or write for kids, there’s a lot everyone (and especially writers can learn from reading children’s and young adult books. Have a listen!

The Guardian article on the value of children’s books for adults

The books I mention in this podcast episode (affiliate links, so purchases help keep the show going):

The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy by Nikki Lofton

Frindle by Andrew Clements

We Don’t Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins

Eva Evergreen: Semi-Magical Witch by Julia Abe

The Light at the Bottom of the World by London Shah

And if you’re looking for an edit for your children’s or adult book, I’d love to help!

Going through summer slump while you wait for fall to start? Me too!

Last night, I simply had to bake some pumpkin muffins to pretend it was autumn for a minute. Yum.

It’s easy to feel like August is just a waiting month, with all the exciting things starting in September, but it’s also a great time to plan for a busy season ahead, so today’s episode is all about planning for multiple projects and events ahead. Have a listen.

And I’d love to know what’s on your autumn writer to-do list.

If you’d like a little extra help planning, try my free Find Your Writing Time mini course.

Got editing your book or getting some coaching help on your autumn list? I’d love to work with you!

I’m back from vacation and so excited to share with you this interview with Sacha Black about her new book 8 Steps to Side Characters. (It has a workbook, too!)

Your protagonist is the star of the show, but side characters bring the world alive. Now that I’m back in town, I can’t wait to dive into this book and make my side characters really shine.

Sacha and I had a great chat. It was a real deep dive. Have a listen!

About Sasha

www.lastmanphotography.com

Sacha Black is an author, rebel podcaster, and professional speaker.

She has five obsessions; words, expensive shoes, conspiracy theories, self-improvement, and breaking the rules.

Sacha writes books about people with magical powers and other books about the art of writing.

When she’s not writing, she can be found laughing inappropriately loud, sniffing musty old books, fangirling film and TV soundtracks, or thinking up new ways to break the rules.

She lives in Cambridgeshire, England, with her wife and genius, giant of a son.

Instagram: @sachablackauthor

And don’t forget to fill out the Book Echoes listener survey! Your answers help me make the podcast even better.

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*Links to books are affiliate links, so I get a small portion of the proceeds at no extra cost to you. This helps support the podcast.