SPA Girls Podcast – EP115 – Interview with Nicola Davidson
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This week Wendy and Cheryl talk dirty with Kiwi historical romance/erotica author Nicola Davidson, who gives them the real story of the sex lives of the aristocracy in Recency London.
Nicola has delved deep into the research, and she tells a captivated Wendy and Cher (who, I imagine, blushed their way through the entire interview…) exactly what it was like in the sex clubs and private parties of the regency: from orgies and threesomes to dildos and birching, they cover it all…. 🙂
It’s a fascinating interview, full of details that you didn’t know you needed to know, and provides another great resource that you can can use, especially if you’re considering writing about the Regency era. (Or even if you’re just curious about sex in those times…)
A quick warning – don’t listen to this one in the car with the kids! The topic is a little more graphic than usual…
Episodes 100 – 200 List
200 What we’ve learned so far…
199 Interview with Adam Croft – Mindset and Marketing
198 Find Your Sparkle – with Julie Schooler
197 Hack Your Muse – with Kelly McClymer
196 Public Speaking For Authors – with Alena Van Arendonk
195 The Magic Pill – with Laura Van Arendonk-Baugh
194 A Day In The Life Of A Writer
193 Keep It Simple
192 Interview with Skye Warren: Money Mindset and Facebook Ads
For Authors (Part Two)
191 Interview with Skye Warren: Time Management & Advertising
For Authors (Part One)
190 Dragon Wrangling with Scott Baker: secrets for
Successful dictation
189 Interview with Patricia McLinn: Writing by the seat of
Your pants
188 Interview with Morgana Best: Writing & Marketing
Cozy Mysteries
187 Interview with Geoff Symon: Wounds & Crime Scenes
186 Interview with Natasha Bajema, WMD for Authors
185 The Writer’s Detective with Adam Richardson
183 Facebook Advertising with Maria Luis ~ Part Two
182 Facebook Advertising with Maria Luis ~ Part One
181 Learn dictation with Kilby Blades
180 Interview with Brian Meeks, Mastering Book Descriptions
179 Interview with Tara Cremin, Kobo Writing Life
178 Interview with Larissa Reynolds – Newsletters Part Two
177 Interview with Larissa Reynolds – Newsletters Part One
175 Wrangling Facebook: How To Make It Work For You
174 How To Write A Regency Romance
173 How Do You Identify Your Writing Weaknesses?
172 Interview With Dan Wood, D2D
171 Interview With Serenity Woods
169 5 Goals You Need To Make In 2019
168 Jumpstart Your 2019 Marketing with 31 Quick To Dos for Jan.
167 Scheduling For Writing Success
166 Our 2018 Roundup
165 He Said, She Said: Creating Dazzling Dialogue
164 Interview with Steffanie Holmes: Reverse Harem
163 Interview with YA author Kelly St Clare
160 Amazon Excl v Wide – things to consider and how to market
159 Interview With Kathryn LeVeque
158 Some Like It Hot – Or Not. Heat Levels In Romance
157 Interview With Louisa George
156 The Kindness Factor: Helping You Achieve More and Stress Less
155 Editing
153 Characters: From Cookie Cutter to Kapow
152 Interview with Tina Dietz: Audiobooks
151 Interview with Grace Burrowes
150 Should You Prune Your Mailing List?
149 RWNZ18 Interview with Damon Suede & Geoff Symon
148 Interview with indie superstar, Bella Andre
147 Top Ten Traits for Success
146 Write Better Faster with Becca Syme
145 Newsletter Ninja Tammi LaBrecque
144 Looking After Your Creative Health
143 Interview with Carlyn Robertson from Bookbub
142 Personal Branding For Authors with Lauren Clemett
141 Ten Free Online Tools For Authors
140 Tempting Taglines & Heartstopping Hooks
139 Findaway Voices with Kelly Lytle
138 Get Your Writing Mojo Back
137 Interview with Toni Kenyon: facebook live & serials
136 Dealing with misinformation and change in Sp-ing
134 Interview with Kevin Tumlinson, Draft2Digital
133 Interview with Sara Rosett
132 Organization For Authors – how to keep track of your
research and book details without losing your mind
131 Interview with Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy
130 Critical Care: Leveraging feedback for success
129 Brand You
128 SAS Special: Interview with Johnny B. Truant & Sean Platt
127 Industry Insiders with Damon J. Courtney of Bookfunnel
& Christine Monroe of Kobo
126 SAS Debrief with Jami Albright
125 SAS Special: Interview with Michelle Spiva
124 SAS Special : Interview With Michael Anderle
123 Sports Psychology for Authors – Interview With Nate Vella
122 Using Sub Plots To Amp Up Your Writing
121 Interview with Scott King: Outlining Your Novel
120 Pen-names Pros, Cons and Possibilities
119 Reader Engagement with Nalini Singh
118 Writing the Small Town Setting
117 Handling Negativity and Naysayers
116 Tough Mindset Questions For 2018
115 Interview With Nicola Davidson: Sex and Sensibility
114 Tropealicious
112 Interview With Honoree Corder & Ben Hale: Write Like A Boss
111 Ten Health Hacks For Writers
110 Interview with Kathryn Burnett: Your Writing Audit For Future Success
109 Interview with Melissa Storm: What Readers Want
108 Interview With Zoe Dawson: Writing Across Genres
107 Interview With Dave Chesson, The Keyword King
106 Pros and Cons of Kindle Unlimited
105 Why YOU should do Nanowrimo
104 Ten Truths For New Self Publishers
103 Find 30 Minutes A Day EXTRA!
102 Your Christmas Presence: Maximizing the Holiday Season for Authors
101 The Writing Life: Interview with Katie Cross
100 100 Episodes! Retrospective with funny moments; changing AO title
SPA Girls Podcast – EP110 – Interview With Screenwriter Kathryn Burnett
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This week we were lucky enough to have a fantastic repeat guest – Kathryn Burnett, the well-known New Zealand playwright and screenwriter. With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Kathryn is chocka full of useful knowledge on the craft of writing as well as the mental game of staying focused and being productive. Today she talked us through doing an end-of-year Writing Audit, as a prequel to setting our goals in the new year. We found it hugely helpful to answer the questions she posed, and to look back on our year in order to critically assess what went right, and what went wrong, and why. If you’re wondering why on earth you’d want to look back in this way, just listen in… Kathryn also tells us how to use this kind of analysis to set us up for an awesome 2018!
“Celebrate the small wins – they give you resilience and remind you that you can do it!” ~ Kathryn Burnett
To help you stick to your goals, Kathryn offers a free Creative Writing Plan at www.CreativeWritingPlan.com
Her Writing Room Club is an in-person and online group for writers who want to write more often, stay inspired and achieve their writing goals with the company of other writers. Learn more here
About Kathryn
Kathryn has significant film and television writing credits and has developed numerous television series for New Zealand’s major production companies.
She was the Executive Director of the New Zealand Writers Guild between 1997-2000 and the screenwriting tutor at South Seas Film and TV School between 2003 and 2007. She is also an in demand Script Consultant/Assessor who has worked with numerous writers and production companies.
Learn more about Kathryn’s workshops and writing advice here: www.Kathryn-Burnett.com
SPA Girls Podcast – EP24 – All About Amazon
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It’s the episode you’ve all been waiting for… This week, in lucky episode 24 (I love that number, it’s my date of birth), we talk all about the retail site Amazon. It’s the first of two episodes on Amazon, and this week we start by giving a bit of an overview of Amazon’s history, what they do, and how they came to be such a powerhouse retail site. Then we talk about Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) where indie authors load up their books, the pros and cons of KDP Select, talk about Kindle Unlimited (KU), and how to use Author Central. This is a long episode, and potentially involves me rambling on for too long about Amazon’s history (the others certainly think so… 🙂 ), but I think it’s another great episode. If you’ve ever wanted to know more about Amazon and how it works, listen in!
What Do These Terms Mean?
KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing
KDP Select (exclusive)
KU stands for Kindle unlimited
KOLL stands for Kindle Owners Lending Library
Kindle Unlimited is a subscription program for readers that allows them to read as many books as they want. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a collection of books that Amazon Prime members who own a Kindle can choose one book from each month with no due dates. When you enroll in KDP Select, your books are automatically included in both programs. Your books will still be available for anyone to buy in the Kindle Store, and you’ll continue to earn royalties from those sales like you do today.
What does it mean to publish exclusively on Kindle?
When you choose to enroll your book in KDP Select, (for a 90 day period) you’re committing to make the digital format of that book available exclusively through KDP. During the period of exclusivity, you cannot distribute your book digitally anywhere else, including on your website, blogs, etc. However, you can continue to distribute your book in physical format, or in any format other than digital.
Payment is paid per page read and depends on how much is in the KDP Select Global fund. For example, it was $12 mill in Feb so that means that money must be paid out to those authors enrolled in KDP
Kindle Unlimited is now available through Amazon U.S, U.K., Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and India and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) in the U.S, U.K., Germany, France, and Japan.
Kindle MatchBook – gives customers who buy a print book from Amazon.com the option to purchase the Kindle version of the same title for $2.99 or less.
Pros & Cons for exclusively loading to Amazon
Pros
Convenient
Limited term – 90 days experiment
Largest bookseller in the world
Exposure
All Star bonuses – for pen names, individual titles
Visibility
Cons
Exclusivity
Unknown per page rate until 15th of the month following
Philosophy – putting all your eggs into one basket
Lack of control – once you’re in you’re stuck for 90 days and the rules can change
Final decision – depends on author, what they’re writing and their own experiences. There’s no one right answer. Can do some books in and some books out and try.
Information
Amazon makes up a higher percentage of the total US ebook market than the oft-cited 65% figure: when indie books without ISBNs are included in the statistics, Amazon accounts for 74%of all US ebook purchases and 71%of all US consumer dollars spent on ebooks.
Outside of Amazon.com, 4 other major online retailers comprise nearly the entirety of the remaining26% of the US ebook market: the Apple iBookstore, the Barnes & Noble Nook store, the Kobo US bookstore, and GooglePlay Books.
At those 4 other stores, self-published indie ebooksmake up 22% of all ebooks purchases and take in 32% of all author income generated by ebook sales.
Between 14%and 25% of all ebooks sold at Apple, Nook, and Kobo store lack Bowker-issued International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs).
In total, more than 33%of all ebooks sold in the US each year have no ISBN.
Across the entire US ebook market, ebooks without ISBNsnow command a greater share of consumer ebook purchases, reading time, and author earnings than all of the AAP’s 1,200 publishers put together, including the Big Five.
The true US ebook market, which includes non-ISBN sales, isat least 50% larger than ISBN-limited market statistics from Nielsen and Bowker are estimating.
Still, Amazon is not the entirety of the US ebook market.
We know that 35% of traditionally published ebook sales occur outside Amazon: at competing retailers like the Apple iBooks store, the Barnes & Noble Nook store, the Kobo Book store, and Google Play.
But what about indie ebook sales?
Some traditional industry spokespersons have speculated that more than 85% of indie ebook sales are wholly dependent upon Amazon. They presume that indies sell very poorly outside the Kindle store and make up an insignificant percentage of ebook sales elsewhere.
Among indie authors themselves, there is little consensus. Anecdotes about sales at other retailers run the gamut. Some indies are now going all-in with Kindle Unlimited, choosing to make their books Amazon-exclusive because the sales they saw at other ebook stores were so anemic in comparison.
Author Central
This is like your book shelf, the place you go to personalize what your readers will see about you on your Amazon Author page, i.e, you author bio, bibliographies, biographies, author photos, and even feeds to blog posts.
Each Amazon site i.e., UK, Canada, USA etc., has author central, so you should take the time to set up a different page on each one.
Here’s how to start:
- Set up your Author Central account if you haven’t already done so.
- In Author Central, click the Profile tab. You’ll see sections for adding or changing your biography, photos, videos, speaking or other events, and blog feeds.
- Click the add or edit link next to a section. Instructions appear, along with space to add information.
If you don’t add information to a section, that section does not appear on the Author Page. Sections are always available in Author Central so you can add or change the information later.
You can also check book, sales, and author rankings here.
Links
KDP Select
Pros & Cons
Hugh Howey http://www.hughhowey.com/kindle-unlimited-knockout/
HM Ward http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,231153.75.html
… Author Earnings Report, October 2015 (http://authorearnings.com/report/october-2015-apple-bn-kobo-and-google-a-look-at-the-rest-of-the-ebook-market/)
Book recommendation
The Everything Store, Brad Stone
http://www.amazon.com/The-Everything-Store-Bezos-Amazon-ebook/dp/B00BWQW73E
Author central
