SPA Girls Podcast – EP126 – Smarter Artist Summit 2018 Debrief
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
This week we have extra-special guest Jami Albright on to talk about the 2018 Smarter Artist Summit, which she attended along with SPA Girl host Trudi Jaye.
Trudi and Jami talk about their highlights of the summit including listening to presentations from Michael Anderle, Michelle Spiva, Honoree Corder, as well as getting to meet the huge array of smart and savvy self publishing people who all gather every year to network, connect and learn.
They also talk about the presentation by BookBub representatives Carlyn and Julianne, getting to interview Michael Anderle, chatting to other self publishers, and basically just getting to immerse themselves in self publishing for a couple of days.
Join us as Jami Albright and Trudi Jaye break down their experiences at the 2018 Smarter Artist Summit and find out the big epiphany moments they had from the many presentations over the two days of the summit.
Smarter Artist Debrief
Conferences and Summits are a great place for making connections, gaining inspiration, and helping to validate what you do. It’s also a great to meet your heros in person.
The Smarter Artist Summit is a two-day conference run by the Sterling and Stone guys, (Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant, and Dave W. Wright), for people to network with savvy speakers and industry professionals as well as other authors who are doing well.
A Summit is different to a conference in that there is more opportunity to network and is more indie publishing focused.
This one caters to most levels but is geared to the more experienced self-publisher. It is definitely not cheap but worth it.
Trudi’s takeaways aside from interviewing so many of the people she met who were generous and fun:
- 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.
Jami believes any success she has had is due to this particular summit. Not so much from this one but it began with the relationships from her first one 3 years ago.
Takeaway: Accepting support and foster relationships in a growing and learning environment with the people you meet.
Julia Kent sent Jami’s first book out to her newsletter which was invaluable.
What was on offer:
- How to grow your full-time author income(Honorée Corder)
Honoree also talked about mindset and being more professional.
- Do’s and don’ts for a meteoric careerin fiction (Michael Anderle)
Michael Anderle was smart generous and kind.
- How to leverage data-driven best practices for marketing that converts
(Carlyn Robertson and Julianne LaBrecque from BookBub)
Carlyn and Julianne had many tips to leverage great ads but they don’t actually organize the bookbub spots.
Tips: 200-300 submissions are received every day and only 10-20% accept.
Blurb is very important. Personality of your characters using adjectives is key.
Check out the featured deals of other authors in your genre.
AB testing is so important. Keep testing.
The comment section should be filled out with as much as you can think of about your work or your achievements
- Ways to futureproof your author marketing(Michelle Spiva)
Michelle was very charismatic and had many gems including –
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Everything you want is on the other side of your fear.
Don’t try to trick your readers into buying your books. Get them to love you instead. Connect with them and make sure your book is unputdownable.
Push and Pull
Push – A cold Audience
Not expecting a huge return – putting your name out there.
Versus
Pull – A warm audience
Advertising to people you know therefore they’re happy to buy your product.
AMS ads are push and pull advertisements because they start out cool but can lead to warm.
- Designing your book to sell from Day 1(Julie Hopkins)
Everything you do is about the reader. Know who they are and what they want from your book.
- The inside scoop on collaboration(Johnny, Sean, and Dave)
