SPA Girls Podcast – EP376 – Top Tips from 2022
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This is an awesome episode just for you! We went through all of our episodes from 2022, and picked out the best pieces of advice, the most actionable tips, and the things we definitely think you should be doing for your writing career in 2023 and gave them to you here in one easy episode. You’re welcome. 🙂
SPA Girls Podcast – EP360 – How To Find What Works For You
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One size doesn’t fit all – we’ve all heard that saying, but how do you know what DOES work for you? In this episode, we discuss how to identify what best works for you in three areas:
Your Writing Process
Your Publishing Strategy
Your Marketing Strategy
…and share tips and resources that we’ve learned along the way.
Resources mentioned:
Book Decoding Greatness by Rod Friedman
https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Greatness-Reverse-Engineer-Success/dp/1982135794
Becca Syme episode with the SPA Girls #146
https://www.selfpublishingauthorspodcast.com/spa-girls-podcast-ep146-interview-with-becca-syme-on-writing-better-faster/
Elana Johnson episode with the SPA Girls #228
https://www.selfpublishingauthorspodcast.com/spa-girls-podcast-ep228-interview-with-elana-johnson-part-two/
💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sponsored by everyone who supports us on Patreon. Thank you so much, we love our listeners and our patrons!
⭐ Join us at the $10 tier, and you’ll be invited to our private Self-Publishing Mastermind group for authors, where we discuss all things self-publishing, marketing and writing PLUS answer all your questions. Come on in and join us, we’d love to see you there!
www.patreon.com/spagirlspodcast
✍️ Don’t forget, all our FREE self-publishing resources, podcast episodes and info are at: at www.SelfPublishingAuthorsPodcast.com
SPA Girls Podcast – EP352 – Interview with Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur
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Dave Chesson joins us in the SPA to chat about some of the awesome apps that he’s designed for authors on the Kindleprenuer website.
Dave is a smart guy, and he knows his stuff when it comes to self publishing, so the apps are all super useful and on-point. This includes the free apps, such as the Book Description Generator and the Hashtag Generator (if you’ve ever struggled with finding good hashtags on any of the socials, that’s the app for you!) and his two powerful paid apps, Publisher Rocket and newbie Atticus. Join us for Dave’s insider tips and tricks on how to get the best use out of the apps, and hear some of his best insights into marketing for indies.
Publisher Rocket has been around for years, and we all use it regularly in the SPA. Atticus is the new kid on the block – a program that Dave describes by saying – “If Scrivener, Google Docs, and Vellum got together and had a baby, its name would be Atticus.”
Another information packed episode from the SPA!
SHOW NOTES:
About Dave Chesson
He started out as a commissioned officer in the US Navy, became a nuclear engineer, served on submarines, and was even a military diplomat. But these days, when he’s not sipping tea with princesses or light saber dueling with little Jedi, Dave Chesson is a book marketing nut.
He’s worked with New York Times bestselling authors on their marketing, and has been a paid consultant to major publishing companies, helping with digital sales, advertisement methods and sales page optimizations. His work in both publishing and book marketing has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, ALLi, Huffington Post, and even Market Watch. Even Amazon has recognized his book marketing strategies by officially saying that authors “…should gain insight from Kindlepreneur on how you can optimize marketing your books…”
Find Dave on Kindlepreneur here.
All about Kindlepreneur’s apps
Free Apps
Book sales generator
Where you input a books best seller rank (BSR) and discover how much that book is making. With this BSR to sales calculator, you can have a pretty good idea of what your competitors are bringing in each day.
Book Description Generator
HTML text generator for Amazon
QR Code generator
Generates custom QR Codes.
Bar code generator
Custom bar codes for your ISBN.
Hashtag generator
Helps you create a list of hashtags for Instagram, TikTok, Twitter etc.
Formatting template generator
Formatting template for MS Word.
Paid Apps
Publisher Rocket
Helps you research the Amazon book market. Can check out your competitors, generate keywords, etc etc.
Atticus
All-in-one writing and formatting tool for ebooks and print books.
Previous episodes that Dave has been on the show:
EP266 – Nail your keywords
Ep107 – Dave Chesson – King of keywords
💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sponsored by everyone who supports us Patreon.
If you join us as a $10 Patreon patron, you’ll have access to us in our private Self-Publishing Mastermind group for authors, where we discuss all things marketing, mindset and publishing and answer your questions.
www.patreon.com/spagirlspodcast
All SPA Girls Podcast Episodes, Resource Links and free Self-Publishing Info at www.SelfPublishingAuthorsPodcast.com
SPA Girls Podcast – EP286 – Writers’ Fears
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Resistance. Fear. Procrastination. Avoidance. Most of us writers struggle with these challenges at some point in their career (or day!). This episode we cover everything from the struggle to finish a manuscript through to fear of publishing, and everything in between.
This blogpost inspired today’s episode : http://positivewriter.com/scared-writer/ Blog post by Harrison Demchick
excerpt: Two Kinds of Scared Writers
During my weekly writing group, I’ve been working on a screenplay that begins, oddly enough, with a weekly writing group. My main characters are a pair of best friends named Mindy and Lane, and what I’ve realized during the development of this story is that Mindy and Lane represent two particular kinds of scared writers. They’re the kinds we all see in our writing groups and workshops.
There’s a very good chance we’re one of them.
1) Mindy is the writer who doesn’t finish.
She has ideas, but she never really pursues them, because she sees every obstacle as a sign that she isn’t good enough. And if she did push on and did finish a draft of something, it would be bad, and then she’d know she could never be good enough. So she comes up with ideas, abandons them, and struggles with the next one.
2) Lane is the writer who doesn’t fight.
He has a finished manuscript, but he doesn’t want to do anything with it. It’s the creative accomplishment that matters. But really, he fears what comes next—agents and publishers and rejection. Or he fears the marketing battle any author, traditionally published or self-published, must face. Maybe, at heart, he too doesn’t think he’s good enough, so he hides behind the pretense of contentment and never works for his real dreams.”
++ SPA Girls’ additions
Along with Mindy and Lane, we’ve added:
Mandy – Mindy’s sister, Shane – Lane’s twin brother, and Xanthe
Listen up for their fears and how we can so relate (let’s not even get into Shar’s weighted hula hoop disaster) and tools for overcoming fears we’ve found that work.
Recommend reading and resources:
Steven Pressfield’s book War on Art and his blog
SPA Girls Podcast with Amira Alvarez on Imposter Syndrome
Brene Brown https://brenebrown.com/
Developing A Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck
Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck
SPA Girls Podcast – EP281 – Kindletrends with Nat Connors
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This episode we’re thrilled to welcome Nat Connors, founder of Kindletrends (and fellow New Zealander #gokiwis) to the SPA!
Nat has been a self-published fiction author since 2016, and is also a research academic and data scientist. Kindletrends is a weekly data newsletter that tells you all about what’s happening across 12 different genres in the Kindle Store.
Nat started using the information in Kindletrends to help outline, write and launch books, and then started sharing it with friends. Now just recently (launched November 2020), Kindletrends is available to the self-publishing community as a whole.
We’ll go over contact info at the end of the podcast, but if you can’t wait, check out kindletrends.com. Subscribe for USD15/month (the first month is free) and every week you’ll get a data-rich newsletter on major categories in the Kindle Store, helping you plan every aspect of your publishing with confidence.
*** BONUS FOR SPA GIRLS PODCAST LISTENERS – listen up for a fantastic discount code that’ll save you $5/month on your subscription – ends April 2021, so don’t delay!
Nat goes into fascinating detail about:
- The inspiration behind Kindletrends
- How it works for beginners and authors with a large catalogue
- Benefits to your book planning process
- Marketing tips and tricks
- How to research your genre
- Trend spotting
- Bestselling blurb advice
- and more!
We’re really excited about Kindletrends (and not just because it’s another case of Kiwi ingenuity 😉 This is going to be super helpful to all of us in different ways.
As promised, here are some helpful visuals and video explanations that will help you use Kindletrends to help you write and market your books better!
Here’s an example of a Kindletrends newsletter.
Here’s an introductory video (2 minutes) which explains how to read a newsletter, and what you can do with it.
Here’s how to do research on covers, titles and blurbs.
A Data Visualization of Romance Trends in 2020
How To Start Researching A Genre
SPA Girls Links:
✔️ Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter with tips and resources for self-publishing authors https://www.selfpublishingauthorspodcast.com/join/
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✔️ Watch episode recordings on YouTube @ http://www.youtube.com/c/SPAGirlsPodcast
✔️ Join us on Facebook and Twitter @SPAGirlsPodcast
SPA Girls Podcast – EP228 – Interview with Elana Johnson – PART TWO
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In this second episode with bestselling author Elana Johnson, she gives us all the juicy details of how she has created her bestselling career…
From the new release strategies that she uses, to the kind of advertising she does, and even the right mindset for being successful – Elana talks about it all.
She talks openly about her career, tells us about the mistakes as well as the successes, and gives us all the details on how she managed to have her first 100K month in January 2020.
This is another amazing episode with a talented and hardworking indie author!
Elana can be found at: http://elanajohnson.com/
