This week, Lindsay shares some of her notes from the annual 20Books conference in Las Vegas. She had a chance to talk with reps from Google Play and Amazon, so she shared what she learned there, and she also attended a few talks and listened for tips and gossip.
Before we started, Andrea, Lindsay, and Jo shared their news:
Andrea teaches marketing as well as writing and publishing her own novels, and she’s running a 30% discount on her courses right now. They run from $5 to $50 and are available at selfpublishstrongcourses.com. Enter in discount code YELLOW at checkout. The courses cover topics like getting reviews, automation sequences, Amazon algorithms, running big promotions, getting subscribers, etc.
Lindsay mentioned that she’ll be speaking at J Thorn’s and Zach Bohannon’s Career Author Summit in Nashville (May 17-17, 2020) and also attending Jasmine Walt’s Fantasy Fest in Anaheim April 17-19, 2020. Give a holler if you’ll be at either spot!
Jo finished his NaNoWriMo novel early, but is working out how to add some meat to the story, since it’s epic fantasy and came in a little short for a novel in his series.
Now, let’s jump into Lindsay’s notes. We’ll paste them here, but there’s quite a bit of extra discussion in the episode.
Discussion Points:
Amazon / Goodreads
Amazon had a lot of reps there, and I had about an hour to chat with three of them. They ask you questions and get your feedback, and give you some contacts that may or may not be helpful. It’s perhaps worth noting that there was an ads person at both NINC and here, and they’re more open now about inviting authors into the AMG advertising program. Or at least getting you in touch with them.
I was actually most interested in hearing from the person they sent from Goodreads. I asked if Amazon is planning some upgrades and updates, and she said yes.
Giveaways and newsletter blasts
She pointed out the ebook and print giveaway programs that you can run (they used to be free). They’re now $599 and $199 for premium or regular and you can give away up to 100 ebooks (Kindle) or physical copies.
I’d given up on Goodreads years ago, but she pointed out that I do have followers there already, so it might be worth trying to be more active, answering questions, and doing giveaways (that $199 used to seem expensive but no longer seems to compared to how much you can spend easily with ads).
In addition to the giveaways, they have newsletter blasts – it’s mostly trad pub using this now, and I’m not sure how good the return is. She wasn’t trying to steer me toward it. She said the placement is $1500 and up, and you need to reach out to them and talk to someone.
ARCS
She mentioned that you could create a fan group on Goodreads as a place to gather some loyal fans who tend to review (since they’re on GR, you can see their reviewer history pretty easily) and use it to run an ARC team. This might be an alternative to Facebook group—you might be more likely to get reviewers there.
Goodreads Readers’ Choice Awards (annual)
Being nominated might bring your book some extra love. If nobody nominates your book that first week, you can ask fans to write in one of your books that was published that year.
Google Play
Google Play is also making upgrades and improving reporting. They’re supposed to make it easier to get an account for direct uploads. It’s not US-only. If you’re in one of the 41 countries they’re in, you can make an account. It should get easier to do this soon.
Promotions/Advertising
The Google Play promotions are also supposed to get easier (right now, you open this link and get a spreadsheet you have to fill out). I’m not sure if this will be more than scheduled price drops. I suggested to both these guys and Amazon that special promos that actually give visibility (like Kobo does) would be cool, even if we have to pay a bit for them.
I asked what the best way is to advertise on Google Play, and they seemed to think Facebook ads were pretty good because you could target Android-specific people (and clicks might be cheaper than for iOS or Kindle at this point).
Organic reach?
I asked how people find you on Google Play, and they said if people buy your books, they’ll tend to see more of your stuff as they surf through the store. Their experience is customized based on what they bought and also on what they finish. They emphasized that finishing is a factor.
Growth at Google Play?
I asked if they were seeing growth with ebooks, and they thought that was pretty flat right now (looking at trad and indie together), but they see a lot of upside with audiobooks. They’re planning to add a way to upload directly, and right now, you can get there with Findaway.
Foreign Rights with Judith Anderle
I came in late to this talk and am sad about that. She’s a great speaker, and I was very interested in hearing about what she’s been doing when she and Michael take their trips to the book fairs and other industry stuff in other countries.
She showed us the sales sheet (flyer) she’s made (she originally found someone through 99 Designs) that shows off the LMBPN Publishing products with a few highlights that will potentially impress foreign rights buyers in other countries. She also later added a big “rights” catalogue of their material. These are things to hand a potential buyer.
You can see their rights catalogue on the LMBPN website.
When talking to potential buyers, she emphasized the importance of emphasizing what’s in it for them. She also said that if you’re someplace like China, they’re not going to be impressed by Amazon reviews. Sales might get ‘em.
Writing to Trend vs Creating Trends
Chris Fox did an update to his writing to marketing talk with some new stuff. One thing he brought up was the difference between writing to trend (kind of easy to identify a trend in your genre if you go out and do the research) and creating a trend. That’s harder. You may be creating a mashup or new genre from scratch and hoping it’ll prove successful.
You either need to hope that what you love is something a lot of people will love or hope to get lucky a bit. If you’re already really big in your genre (lucky you), you may be able to do this much more easily, but it’s still going to need the resonance to draw in others.
Tying in with this, I was talking with Martha Carr, Ramy Vance, and Alex Newton from K-Lytics, and we were asking Alex about any new fantasy trends coming, and he pointed out that either consciously or unconsciously, these authors creating new trends (reverse harem and LitRPG a couple of years ago or witch cozies and academy UF now) are deciding that this is the new thing and throwing a lot of advertising dollars in it, and they end up creating a new trend. So maybe it’s possible to get together with other authors in your niche to try to make something happen and then capitalize on it yourself before lots of competition jumps in.
We didn’t get to our listener questions, but we’ll do a dedicated Q&A show toward the end of December. Thanks for listening!
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