SPA Girls Podcast – EP50 – Celebrating a Half-Century of Episodes
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This week we celebrate the 50th episode of the SPA Girls Podcast! We’re pleased as punch that we made it this far, and we hope we’ll make it to another 50! We talked about what’s changed for us in the last year, where we are at in our careers, and the highs and the lows of a year in self publishing. A kind of retrospective on what we’ve learned, what we’ve seen, and what we think about it all. We were again without Cheryl, she’s still swanning around the Mediterranean, so the three of us tried to make sure we covered everything we could think of for the last year without the organised influence of Cher. 🙂 We hope you enjoy it.
SPA Girls Podcast – EP49 – Interview with Tracey Alvarez
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This week we’re still without the lovely Cheryl, so we decided to do another interview, this time with Tracey Alvarez, who lives in Wellington, New Zealand and writes contemporary romance based in New Zealand. I (Trudi Jaye) met Tracey in person at RWA in San Diego this year, and had a great time hanging out with her and Talia Hunter (who did a couple of recordings with me while we were there). As you’ll see from the interview, Tracey is also a very knowledgeable indie author, with heaps of pro tips to share. This is another ‘don’t-miss’ episode!
http://traceyalvarez.com/
SPA Girls Podcast – EP48 – Interview with Steffanie Holmes
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This week we interview paranormal romance author Steff Green, who writes as Steffanie Holmes and fantasy as SC Green. Steff was a speaker at the recent RWNZ conference and we were keen to get her on the podcast to give us the inside information on her self publishing career.
She was a fantastic guest, and talked to us about her journey toward self publishing, and some of the ways that she’s been able to make self publishing work for her, including topics like box sets, writing in series, and cliffhangers.
Don’t miss out!
Steff’s website – http://www.steffanieholmes.com/
SPA Girls Podcast – EP47 – Advertising for Authors
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This week we’re without the delightful Cheryl, the light of our lives. It’s a bit chaotic, but the three remaining SPA Girls managed to talk about the advertising that we’ve done recently and how it worked. We talked about the mailing lists that we’ve advertised with – think Book Bub, Ereader News Today, Freebooksy, Bargainbooksy, and Robin Reads – how we organised it, when we booked them for, and the results that we had.
We also talk briefly about Amazon ads and Facebook ads, and how you might use those kinds of ads in your promotional routine. We hope it helps you get an idea of the kind of advertising promotion that you might choose to do for your next launch or advertising schedule. Enjoy!
Remember if you only have one book out, often your time is better spent writing your next book. However, we totally get that you want your baby to fly! If you do, then here are a few tips for you.
If you are going to advertise your first book, then make sure you have links in the back of that book for the reader to follow. Facebook page, email newsletter sign up etc. Plus, a blurb of the next book or small excerpt. Once you engage a reader you want to keep them!
Wendy and Trudi are doing some advertising at the moment. They are running a spreadsheet, with book name, advertising lists, how many sales before and after and ranking before and after. This is to track what advertising lists work best for them.
They are trying different lists over a select period.
So when we talk about advertising lists we are talking about places that send out newsletters to their subscribers, promoting books. Often they have FB pages and websites also, and will add your book there also.
Advertising lists can also be genre specific and target niches, so it pays to check what works for you and your books.
Mostly they are looking for free or price reduced books to advertise, however, there are some sights that will advertise full price, especially with new releases.
There are some free lists, but most will cost. You can pay anywhere from $25-70 US dollars, understandably the bigger lists are more.
Word of mouth is a wonderful way to learn about advertising lists that could work for you. Get involved in your community. A few of the places you could go to find out more information is K’boards www.kboards.com and the FB groups of Marie Force’s, author network and Mark Dawson’s self-publishing formula.
Advertising Lists
BookBub– www.bookbub.com is the biggest with millions of readers, and costs quite a lot of money. They have a daily email that notifies you about deep discounts on acclaimed ebooks. You choose the types you’d like to get notified about — with categories ranging from mysteries to cookbooks. Bookbub is also quite hard to get for you book.
Robinreads- www.robinreads.com
Ebookbooster- www.ebookbooster.com – you submit you book and if free it goes to 45+ advertising lists and if it’s 0.99 it goes to 25 advertising lists.
Hot Zippy– www.hotzippy.net
Readingdeals.com– www.readingdeals.com
My romance reads- www.myromancereads.com
Ereader news today– www.ereadernewstoday.com
Books butterfly- www.booksbutterfly.com
Bagain ebook hunter– www.bargainebookhunter.com
Fussy Librarian- www.thefussylibrarian.com
Ebook Lister- www.ebooklister.net
Book Gorilla- www.bookgorilla.com
Naughty List- www.naughtylistbooks.com
Kindle Nation Daily– www.kindlenationdaily.com
There is also Amazon advertising which is a minimum $100 US. This can be run over a short time, and over a four-week period. You can advertise your book here for full price. Beware that if you have bare chest, backs, erotic poses etc, you may get turned down.
