Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

On this week’s show, we chat with dark/epic fantasy author and podcaster Andy Peloquin. Andy got the rights back to his first series and did a big and very successful relaunch, revamping it to appeal to assassin-loving epic fantasy fans instead of the dark fantasy fans it previously targeted.

Here are some of the specifics that we covered:

• Andy’s background as a freelance writer.
• His first forays into publishing, including signing with a small publisher.
• Why he decided to ask for the rights back to his first series and relaunch it himself.
• How he redid his blurbs and covers to target a larger audience than previously.
• Researching not just in his genre but in his specific niche (assassins, mercenaries, sellswords, etc.) and seeing what kinds of covers were selling.
• Creating an effective epic fantasy cover with stock photos instead of paying a fortune for custom illustrations.
• Changing the titles to hit on popular epic fantasy tropes.
• How he contacted other authors in his niche and asked for them to plug his book when he was ready to release the new Book 1.
• How he’s designed effective Facebook ads that don’t cost him much per click.
• Whether his Fantasy Fiends podcast has been useful for networking with authors and making book sales to listeners.
• How to know if it’s worth doing a relaunch for a flagging series.

You can visit Andy on his site or check out his books on Amazon, including the newly relaunched Hero of Darkness series.

You can also check out Andy’s podcast, Fantasy Fiends, on YouTube, iTunes, etc.

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Hey, folks! I (Lindsay) got back from the Sell More Books Show Conference this weekend, where I was one of several speakers. I took notes on some of the presentations that resonated most with me, and I shared them with Jo and Jeff on the show tonight. We proceeded to discuss them a bit. Hopefully, you’ll find it useful to listen!

I’m going to share the books of the speakers we were talking about, so if you want more information on a particular topic, you might want to check them out. After that, I’m going to paste in my notes from the convention, in case you find it more useful than just getting some bullet points here. They aren’t organized, and I’m sure they are full of typos. Read at your own risk!

Books from the speakers:

• Chris Fox: Plot Gardening
• Bryan Cohen: How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis: A Step-by-Step System for Enticing New Readers, Selling More Fiction, and Making Your Books Sound Good (this wasn’t what his talk was about but the book would tie in well with Brian Meeks’s information on Amazon ads)
• Brian Meeks: Mastering Amazon Ads: An Author’s Guide
• Monica Leonelle: Get Your Book Selling: Jumpstart Your Sales With a Simple Plan That Just Works

Also, as mentioned during the episode, the Andrea Perason show where she schooled on us setting up email auto-responders for your new newsletter subscribers: http://www.marketingsff.com/advanced-newsletter-tactics/

Notes! (Scroll to the bottom for the YouTube video and download link for the show.)

Chris Fox on creating a flagship series

• Many well-known authors have done this, over 1 million words total
• Become known for the series if it’s popular enough and might not have to work again

Create by having:

• Opening loops – lots of questions to be answered over the course of the series
• Narrative drive – lots of stuff going on and carrying the series: simple plots don’t draw in the reader for the long haul
• Character drive – lots of characters with goals and motivations they’re working toward. Make sure to flesh out all the side characters and not just the main character. Some books may even focus more on these other characters

Marketing your flagship series:

You’ll keep advertising your book 1 as you release more books so you have to be smart or you’re saturate your target audience and your ads will become less effective.

He likes a “crop rotation” method: With his Tech Mage series, he has three target audiences: military SF fans, epic fantasy fans, and litRPG fans. He started out targeting one demographic with ads and even the cover of the book, then the next when he released Book 2, and he’ll do the other audience later.

Mailing Lists Bryan Cohen

Creating your lists, writing a giveaway, and creating an autoresponder sequence (Andrea Pearson episode, there’s a lot about this) before you go hunting for any signups.

Remember to be personable in your emails, tell little stories about yourself, and don’t always make the hard sell.

But do remember to plug the old stuff and maybe you want to point to a list of all your books or include them.

GDPR – Damon from Bookfunnel chimed in and said most of us are probably okay if we haven’t been doing anything shady, if they have to double opt in, and the unsubscribe is clear in the footer. If readers are signing up on our site for bonus material or just to follow you and you’re making it clear that they’re going to get monthly updates or new release updates – whatever you do.

• Be careful if you got subscribers from Instafreebie or joint promos or anywhere you were just handed a batch of email addresses and put them into your database, or if you’ve just been adding people who email you to a homemade list. This isn’t cool even with CAN-SPAM stuff, so fix that.

Thoughts on culling lists?

You may have to do it if you’ve been growing your list fast with a lot of promos to get subscribers, and you’re getting pushed into more and more expensive tiers. Do check before kicking people off.

As Damon said, not all the data is accurate. If people’s email clients don’t automatically load images, your mailing list provider won’t get a ping back that says the pixel they insert was loaded, so they won’t see the message as “read.” You can help with accuracy by including images in your emails that people want to see, so they’ll click load images.

Amazon Ads Brian Meeks