SPA Girls Podcast – EP143 – Interview with Carlyn Robertson from BookBub
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This week we were lucky enough to talk to the delightful Carlyn Robertson from BookBub, all about how the email advertising platform works, and how it can help you as an author.
For some authors, BookBub has literally been a game changer, and it’s well known in the Indie community as a way you can get a massive boost in sales. The downside is that every man and his dog wants to get a BookBub ad, and they get hundreds of applications every day, making it really freaking difficult to get a BookBub ad. Happily for all of us in the SPA, Carlyn takes us through exactly how it works, how to apply, what to expect when you apply, and some of the ways to make sure your application is more likely to succeed.
She was also able to give us insights into the way they write their amazing blurbs, and how they decide what content to provide to their millions of readers. (Hint: it’s all about data and testing). Plus we also cover pre-order announcements, new release emails, and Bookbub Ads available for everyone. It’s an information packed episode, so make sure you have your notebooks out!
Quick links:
Bookbub Partners: Where to claim your author profile on Bookbub
Tips on Optimizing Your Bookbub Submissions
How To Increase The Click-Through Rate Of A Bookbub Ads Campaign
Bookbub Insights: Self-Publishing Tips For Authors
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 – EP338 – Psychology Tools For Authors
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Struggling to write compelling characters and compelling but realistic conflict in your stories? Well, have we got a show for you!
Darian Smith is a prize winning fiction writer with a degree in psychology, and is a member of the New Zealand Association of Counsellors. He combines these two sides of his background to provide simple, easy to follow tools that make use of established psychological theory to help writers develop fully rounded, interesting, realistic characters and inject conflict into their stories.
We cover plot development AND character development and you’ll come away (hopefully!) with some awesome tips to improve your story telling and create compelling characters that your readers will love – or love to hate!
Along with his fiction, Darian has written The Psychology Workbook for Writers: Tools for Creating Realistic Characters and Conflict in Fiction https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0143K2MNU/
You can find him at http://www.darian-smith.com/
About Darian Smith
I’m a writer and reader of fiction and live in Auckland, New Zealand. While I have dabbled in non-fiction, my true love is crafting exciting stories that interest and move me – and hopefully my readers! I mainly write fantasy. I’m a member of SpecFicNZ, an organisation for writers of speculative fiction here in New Zealand, and also of RWNZ. I’ve won the Koru award and the Sir Julius Vogel award. My literary agent is Word|Link. In my day job, I’m a Fieldworker for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I’m also a counsellor/family therapist. I live with my beautiful partner, who is also a writer, and two naughty black cats named Apollo and Athena. The cats don’t write.
💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sponsored by everyone who supports us Patreon.
Your support allows us to create the weekly show for self-publishers, as well as for us to take time away from our own writing to produce it. Thank you so much! If you’d like to join our supporters community, click here to be a patron of SPA Girls.
All SPA Girls Podcast Episodes, Resource Links and free Self-Publishing Info at www.SelfPublishingAuthorsPodcast.com
SPA Girls Podcast – EP326 – How To Find Your Why
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What’s the real reason you’re a writer? We’ve talked about finding your why before on the podcast, and today we’re delving deeper. Inspired by Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why, and Find Your Why, Trudi has us “on the couch” again, which Wendy, in particular, absolutely loves (not)!
Sinek’s book is based on the idea that we’re a sum total of the experiences we’ve had growing up, the lessons we’ve learned and the teachers we’ve had and the things we’ve done.
The process is all about looking for stories from your childhood that resonate with you, or seem important (good or bad) and then looking for themes in your stories, and then using those themes to come up with a why that resonates with you and helps you understand exactly why you’re a writer (or whatever you are).
This process is great for us as writers for two reasons –
1. It’s about mining our past for stories, and I kind of think that’s something we do automatically when we’re writing anyway.
2. And 2. Once you’ve figured out your why, you can then use it to filter through all your decisions about your business. It takes away some of the indecision, because once you know and understand what’s driving you, you can use it to make decisions faster, and to keep you on track when you waver. Knowing why you’re in business, or why you chose writing as a career is a powerful way to keep you motivated and stay on track.
Why statement is written like this:
To ___________ so that ___________.
First part is your contribution, and the second part is the impact your contribution has.
Simon Sinek’s why: To inspire people to do the things that inspire them, so that, together, we can change our world.
We uncover our Whys – have you analysed yours?
Further resources:
We interview LISA CRON
Start with Why by Simon Sinek
https://www.amazon.com/Start-Why-Leaders-Inspire-Everyone/dp/1591846447
Find Your Why by Simon Sinek https://www.amazon.com/Find-Your-Why-Practical-Discovering/dp/0143111728/
TEDxMaastricht – Simon Sinek – “First why and then trust”
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Trudi’s 10 Lessons from the 2018 Smarter Artist Summit
Adventures in self publishing with Trudi Jaye.
I’ve been jealously watching from New Zealand each year as authors and publishers I know online gather in Austin for the Smarter Artist Summit. It always sounds so amazing – a group of like-minded self publishers together in one place, talking shop and getting to know each other.
This year, I couldn’t handle it any more, and decided to do something about it. (FOMO is a real thing, people.)
So I travelled to Houston, where I met fellow author and SPA Girls podcast guest, Jami Albright, for the first time in person. She then drove us to Austin, for my very first Smarter Artist Summit.
Right from the very start, I loved it: I got a hug from conference co-creator Sean Platt within half an hour of arriving at the hotel. I interviewed the amazingly generous Michael Anderle within a couple of hours, and laughed out loud to a live episode of the Worst Show Ever (the other show that Johnny B. Truant, Sean Platt and David Wright record) by the end of the first evening.
I listened attentively to speakers like Michelle Spiva (marketing and data guru), Honoree Corder (previous SPA Girls Podcast guest, and super-inspiring business woman), Michael Anderle (super-duper author and self publishing rockstar), got advice from industry experts like Carlyn from BookBub, Damon from BookFunnel, Dan and Kevin from Draft to Digital and Chrissy from Kobo, and hung out with other authors, both those I already knew, and some I was meeting for the first time.
I have to admit to being pretty exhausted after my 17 hour trip from New Zealand, but I was determined not to miss a thing. I pretty much ran on adrenaline for the six days I was in the US, meeting and greeting so many people, some of them have already blurred into another. But the one thing they all had in common was a love of self publishing and writing – my two favourite subjects in the whole world.
I’ve been to conferences both in New Zealand and the USA before, but never one so completely in my wheel house. Everyone wanted to talk about the same stuff that I did. Everyone spoke the same jargon: KDP, AMS, KU, BookBub, ENT, you name it, they knew it.
It’s such an intimate setting, you can be listening to one of the experts giving a presentation in the main room, and then later that day, chatting with them in the hotel bar. Everyone was open and approachable, and as a wide-eyed Kiwi chick (We’re not in Kansas now, Toto), I really appreciated it.
I was also hugely lucky to have friends in the audience, even if I was meeting all of them for the first time in person. Jami took me under her wing – aside from being a fantastic writer, she’s been twice before, and introduced me to a whole bunch of people throughout our time in Austin. I also met up with Arianna Golden, another podcast guest and a longtime friend, for the first time in person. Anyone Jami didn’t know, Arianna did. Previous podcast guests were in the audience and presenters, and a talented editor I had worked with were also there to catch up with.
Meeting all these people who I’ve been reading about, interacting with and watching from afar via the internet for the last few years was beyond amazing. It made me realise that, while interacting with people online is great, and we’re lucky to be able to connect even that much from here in New Zealand, there’s nothing like meeting people in person to forge connections and make lifelong friends.
I learned so much in my time there, there were hundreds of takeaways that I could have listed. But I’ve managed to compile my top ten below:
My Top Ten Lessons from Smarter Artist Summit 2018
- Take yourself seriously. Be professional. Treat your writing business like a business.
- It’s all about your readers. From the very first moment you start plotting and writing your book, to connecting with your readers as an author, and then marketing your book to them once it’s done. You should be doing everything with them in mind. If you don’t know who your readers are, you’re in trouble.
- Readers like a little humour in their books. (And Michael Anderle would know.)
- Readers also want to connect to the characters in your books. If nothing else, you need to have a likeable, relatable main character who your readers will love.
- Sub plots with open loops between books in a series are one way to get readers to go from one book to the next.
- Data is good. Always get data, it helps you make the right decisions. BookBub uses data to their best advantage, and they’re very successful because of it.
- Tactics are not marketing. You need a long term strategy.
- You can’t beat meeting people in person. No matter how many Skype calls you have it’s just not the same.
- Collaboration is a difficult but worthwhile beast.
- Everything you want is on the other side of your fear. It should feel a little bit scary – if it doesn’t, you’ve waited too long to do it.
