SPA Girls Podcast – EP53 – How to Do a Successful Book Launch
Oct25

SPA Girls Podcast – EP53 – How to Do a Successful Book Launch

towelThis week we’re all back! The SPA Girls are reunited again, and we’re on fire with more useful and relevant information for you as a self-published author. We talk about launching your latest book into the marketplace, and the do’s and don’ts, plus tips and tricks that you might want to try out when you’re publishing your novel to get some of those golden sales…

From when to put the books up, what to price them at, what kind of advertising to do, and when to use your social media and your mailing list, we cover it all in this episode for you. Just listen and take loads of notes! 🙂

Your launch strategy will depend on if this is your first book or say your tenth.

Things to consider

-What are your goals and plan for launching your book?

If it’s your first book, chances are you want to concentrate on discoverability more so than money made at this stage.

-If you are looking at discoverability you may want to price the book cheaper as opposed to if you wanted to make money, you would price it higher.

-Start focusing on your email newsletter from day one and building your platform for launching books. This can be done through your blog (if you have one), twitter, YouTube, FB, or whatever social media platform you work with.

-Blog tours are also an option, but you would need book, cover etc, ready well before hand. Again do your due diligence and find out the good sights to use.

-Where are you selling it too? If you are exclusive to Amazon, then you can choose to put your book in Kindle Unlimited (page reads). Or are you going wide on all platforms.

People launch in different ways, you need to work out what is best for you.

-Watch your landscape, things change on platforms like Amazon, and KU. Do your due diligence before you publish.

-Make sure you set up a detailed spreadsheet for your launch, so you can see what works for your book, or doesn’t, for next time.

-Remember that Amazon and the other platforms will not publish your book immediately. Put the book up several days before so it is available on your launch day.

Be realistic about your expectations when you are just starting out! 

Spa Girls launch tips x 1

-Cover out early on social media platforms

-Excerpts and dates for release

-Pre-order up

-Email newsletter subscribers to tell them it’s coming

-Post FB graphics

-Get people talking about the title and the book

-Advanced reader copies out early

-Email newsletter on the day

-Start advertising approx. 3-4 weeks after release date

Spa Girls launch tips x 2

-Before hand email lists with covers and excerpts etc to say the book is coming.

-Email out to secret list of VIP readers, offer them the book for a review before release.

-Publish book on Friday and email VIP’s asking them to load a review.

-Monday is official launch day- send out an email to email newsletter subscribers stating the book is available at a lower price.

-Reduce book price on launch day

-Thursday, send email again with details of books, and that they don’t want to miss out on the special priced deal.

-Book advertising as soon as you have ASIN from Amazon, and start book stacking. (booking ads one after the other on consecutive days of release and after).

-Approach other authors in your genre about email newsletter swaps. They promote you book, and you promote theirs.

-Email Amazon to put your book into different categories that you couldn’t chose from when the book was originally loaded.

 

The bestseller lists are counted from Sunday to Sunday or Monday to Monday.

Enjoy your launch day! Take time out to acknowledge what you have done!

 

Links

 

 

Better Book Tools- http://www.betterbooktools.com/join/om

Tim Grahl – https://www.creativelive.com/courses/sell-your-first-1000-books-timegrahl

 

 

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SPA Girls Podcast – EP52 – Interview with Kelly McClymer
Oct18

SPA Girls Podcast – EP52 – Interview with Kelly McClymer

SPA GirlsThis week we’re joined by the lovely Kelly McClymer, an indie author who writes in multiple genres, including historical romance, fantasy and cosy mystery. She tells us the story of how she got into self publishing, the kind of marketing and promotion she does for her books, and talks about what she’s been doing in the last week or so in an attempt to get her book onto the USA Today Bestseller list, for her historical romance book, The Next Best Bride. This is a fantastic interview with another smart, savvy indie author!

Kelly has been writing for a very long time. In the beginning, she was writing short science fiction, but couldn’t sell them and feels that she didn’t understand marketing at the time. So, she moved on to Romance with Kensington and when this finished Kelly asked for her rights back. Eventually this happened for 7 books and in 2010 she self-published.

There’s a lot of fun to have control over your own books, but she only had paper copies (digital wasn’t around then) so she had to scan paper copies and clean them up before she could publish. It was an adventure which took some time. She did not rebrand at that time.

It took a year to get them out and Kelly still hadn’t figured on a strategy. She loved that so many others had decided on theirs and followed some of it. She feels like there is no good answer on how or when you publish because it depends on how impatient you are.

Kelly worked casually, when she needed money, in interesting jobs but didn’t choose things that paid well so she didn’t get lured into not writing.

Now Kelly writes Historical, Cozy Mysteries and Fantasy and likes to read and write different things. She also needs more than one project on the go.

For her cozy mysteries she takes note of place and people in towns but never uses people in the town or specific places rather a whole lot of these things put together.

Fantasy series – a series of serializations based on fairy tales, myths and pre-history. Finding it difficult to Doesn’t build a tribe but is talking to people to do this for her.

After 10 years, has Kelly has found a co-writer for her 8th historical romance as she’s not good at love scenes.

Uses her own name in all genres – easier to market and keep up to date on social media and good for branding. Keeps lists separate for different genres. Loves technology and automation.

Loves Vellum – worth the cost and prettier than word.

Would prefer to do no marketing but understands that she must do it. Kelly stumbled looking for readers, doesn’t like twitter as she only shares and read things that are cool and interesting.

Facebook is hard for her too, but is starting a Facebook group so that she can make it easy to talk to people. They can also talk to each other and have a sense of community.

Formed an LLC to do their own marketing, via newsletter, website, put out anthologies together to see what works and doesn’t work.

Kelly reads marketing strategies to keep up. Smart people tell her what to do, and she knows she should use their advice, and plans to with her next book promotion.

She’s had a couple of booboo ads already, but they were for free books and she doesn’t recommend doing bookbub for box sets because you can’t do more promotions on those books for 6 months.

Kelly McClymer to do list to get to the best seller list:

Get as many sales on that reporting week.

Advertise – put price down the week before

Try to get a couple of reviews.

Get the biggest ads you can get.

Be specific in asking people for help. Comment on Facebook, buy my book, send to friends who may like my work.

Run a contest for your list.

Try to get I-books, Barnes and Noble to help.

Create a template letter.

To try to achieve a Best Seller list Kelly has just hired an assistant.

Kelly’s advice to newbies:

Don’t give up on your older work. Give your readers a chance to find your older books. Give them a new life with a new cover and freshen up.

Be patient. It may take time to hit a list or have a large fan base, but it can happen.

Recognize that it’s a business and if you do the marketing the right way it can be fun but readers will not stumble over it. Be proud of your own books and put money into it.

Don’t be surprised when something you have been doing suddenly stops working.

The Next Best Bride is Kelly’s latest book, and the one she hopes to hit the USA Today Bestseller list.

http://kellymcclymerbooks.com/

If you want to help Kelly with her attempt to get her book into the bestseller list, please follow this link and buy her book! Thanks in advance for your help. 🙂

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SPA Girls Podcast – EP51 – Characters Your Readers Will Love
Oct10

SPA Girls Podcast – EP51 – Characters Your Readers Will Love

facemaskThis week we crawled out from our sick beds to provide you with this delayed episode of the SPA Girls Podcast. We managed to talk semi-coherently about creating amazing characters that your readers will love. As far as we’re concerned, it’s all about creating characters with flaws, who your readers can relate to and fall in love with through the course of the story. We gave away all our secrets, so that you can learn to write the best characters you possibly can.

Writing characters your readers will love!

The plot carries the story, but the characters are important in a romance novel.

You want your readers to relate to your characters instantly, or this day and age, they won’t keep turning the page.

Perfection is boring!!

 Nobody wants a character that has it all going on. That’s not reality, we need flaws and challenges, otherwise, why would we spend our time reading about him.

A poll was conducted by RWA some years ago; readers were asked to rank what they like in their characters. Intelligence and humor were one and two, and physical attractive often ranked last.

Interviewing your characters can be a great way to get to know them. For example, what is his background, and family history? What are his hobbies, what makes him who he is today? Put his name at the top of the page and then list the things below. Is he angry because of a betrayal of trust in his past? Has he got a dark secret? Was his family life hard or loving? There are so many reasons your character could be the person they are now, and you need to work them out before you can get a full picture of them.

If they’re cold and unemotional then show us why, and give us a glimpse of the person they could be…would be.

What is your character’s motivation?

Michael Hague speaks about Identity to Essence.

Identity-who they are portraying themselves to be now. What are they like now?

Essence- who do they want to be? Who they need to be?

Often the character’s flaws and problems that come out in the story, are the clash between the Identity, which is who they are portraying themselves to be, and their Essence, which is who they want to be. Hitch from the movie is a perfect example of this.

Don’t stereotype your characters. If you have a villain, give him something that makes him different. (Does he collect soft toys?) Is your perfect woman, only perfect on the outside? On the inside she’s an emotional mess.

Often with romance, you want your hero and heroine to oppose each other in their views and beliefs. If he fights for one cause, she could oppose it? She’s a councillor, and he’s got an addiction of some kind?

Alpha hero’s may be hard and tough, but they can have a side that we glimpse that shows us there’s more to them. Usually they have a protective instinct which makes them honourable, and this forces them to do what they do.

Emotions are vitally important to see as a reader. We need to empathise with a character.

Dialogue is a great way to show your characters.

Pictures of characters can also give you inspiration, if you’re a visual person. Seeing a character can help you describe them.

Appearance to some of us is not everything. Sure, you give the reader an over view of the physical traits of a character, but you let the reader develop their own picture of them too.

The connections your characters have with other characters can also mould them into who they are, and show the reader how they relate socially with others. Even lone wolf’s need someone in their lives.

They need a strength to be good at something, and a weakness to be bad.

Names are also important. There are plenty of options on the internet to pick the one that suit your characters.

Don’t get bogged down knowing every single thing about your character before you start writing your book. Some of it will come to you as the character and story develop.

Links

Chuck Wendig- http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/01/13/25-things-a-great-character-needs/

https://www.amazon.com/45-Master-Characters-Creating-Original/dp/1599635348

http://www.lindsayburoker.com/

http://www.storymastery.com/
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