Self-Publishing Roundtable

TS Paul published his first eBook mid-February of this year. It was the first in his Athena Lee Chronicles, a short form sci-fi serial, which he followed up with a second book just two weeks later. Since then he has released one eBook every two weeks. The length of each instalment varies wildly from 34 - 148 pages and he's charging $2.99 a pop! What's even more interesting is that they sell!

So of course we invited him over to the podcast to tell us how he does it, why he does it and what he plans to do next.

Welcome to the Roundtable Roundup, our fortnightly podcast where we invite a guest or two to join us live to discuss the latest news and views from the self-publishing and indie industry.

Author Zoe York returned! She joined Chrishuan Keller Hanna and Erica Conroy to discuss the below topics:

- Ellora's Cave are at it again...

- Trad published authors are afraid we're devaluing their beautiful books!

- Bookbub Ads coming soon

- Another trad pub acquires self-pub company

- Then this from Zoe...

Boyd Craven has penned over 20 books over the last two years, only recently deciding to take the plunge into publishing. His "The World Burns" Series has hit the top 10 in the Dystopian Genre in the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia. He joined us this week to talk about his journey, the post apocalyptic genre as well as breaking into mysteries.

Michael Anderle is the author of the Kurtherian Gambit series. His first book, Death Becomes Her, was released in November 2015 and the series has so far sold a little under 20,000 books and has 9.5 Million KENPC read in the last six months. His first five books earned him 10,000 in just 90 days!

With the help of others, he has formed a group called 20booksto50k to find what story ideas authors have that will sell better and allow writing to become our main occupation. And that is why we invited him on the show.

Author Zoe York returned! She joined Chrishuan Keller Hanna and Erica Conroy to discuss the below topics:

- Amazon Marketing Services for all!

- Computer algorithms picking books for publishing

- Booktrope closes its doors

- Goodreads introduces Kindle giveaway program

Amanda M. Lee recently bought and moved into a four bedroom house, which she paid for with her writing. This prolific Amazon bestselling author currently has five series—with a sixth on the way—30 novels, 7 novellas, 8 bundles, 33 paperbacks, 21 audiobooks and 4 pre-orders out. Her release schedule is insane, alternating between four ongoing series and publishing at least one or two books a month. She's both daunting and an inspiration to many authors and we got to interview her!

There are more places to publish than just at Amazon. Draft2Digital is one of the ways you can get your ebook out into the world. What is Draft2Digital? Well, think Smashwords but with a pretty website and no meatgrinder. They're an ebook distributor which is handy for writers/publishers who can't or choose not to go direct. Want to hear more? Good, that's why we invited Dan Wood, Draft2Digital's Director of Operations and Author Relations to the podcast.

Author Chris Fox returned again, this time to talk about his 21 Day Book Challenge. He decided to write to market in Science Fiction, nutted out the plot, wrote the book, had it edited and published all within 21 days. Not only that but he took it one step further and decided to launch to market as well (marketing book coming soon) with the lofty goal of having the book stay under 10,000 in the paid rankings for 30 days. As of writing this post it is currently sitting at #677! Not only that but he decided to document the whole challenge via vlog, explaining what he did and his reasons for doing so.

Author Cate Morgan joined Chrishuan Keller Hanna and Robert Chazz Chute to discuss the below topics:

- Do Presales work for New Authors?

- The Ripped Bodice

- Amazon recruiting publishing companies for Kindle Unlimited

- Smashword’s Annual Survey

We thought we'd add a little spice to the podcast this week by inviting bestselling and award-winning author of erotica and erotic romance, Selena Kitt. Not only does this lovely lady have a successful career writing about the pleasures of the flesh, she's been very savvy at carving a place for herself in the wider industry. Selena owns and runs a publishing company, an online erotic romance bookstore and two advertising sites. Other notable achievements include: surviving a couple of Amazon pornocalypses and cheekily marketed the affected books elsewhere as being Banned by Amazon, selling the movie rights to a book Babysitting the Baumgartners (it's being made into an adult movie) as well as receiving many awards for her writing (see her site).