Nicholas Erik With Top Tips for Indie Author Marketing

June 5, 2023 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Nicholas Erik, who offers all kinds of different marketing guides, resources, coaching, and consulting for self-published authors. Today we're going to focus a lot on marketing in particular because that is something that a lot of self-published authors and indie authors really struggle with. So, thank you so much for being here today.

Nicholas: Thank you for having me, Mindy. It's great to be here.

Mindy: When we're talking about self-publishing/indie publishing... Because you do offer general advice. For authors in general, you talk about marketing and blurbs, but all kinds of different arenas. I want to focus on marketing because I do think that that is something that a lot of writers struggle with. Most of us have wandered into this arena because of our creative capabilities and our creative interests, and a lot of the time those aren't necessarily translating into any sort of skill or knowledge of marketing. And also, marketing doesn't just mean social media. What do you think are the top things that self-published or indie authors absolutely must have in order to achieve any degree of success?

Nicholas: I think you need a good book, a marketable book. Something that's in an established genre really helps. Writing in a series helps quite a bit because then you can sell people more than one book. It's a lot easier to sell people book two in the series than a completely new book. And then I'd say, really, the only thing that you absolutely have to have to have is a mailing list. You want a direct communication conduit with your fan base and readership. While you can contact them via other means, like social media, the ground there is constantly changing and you don't own it. So five years from now, ten years from now, the rules could be completely different since you're playing on someone else's turf, and the newsletter is something that you own and is going to be around in 5 to 10 years.

Mindy: I am someone that initially at the beginning of social media was really sold on it. I thought it was wonderful, but social media has changed so much. You were talking about how it isn't necessarily stable ground because you don't own those subscribers. You don't own those likes. If Facebook disappears, you're not going to recover those 10,000 followers for your page because that's not information that you had. It was all linked into that particular platform. And when you have an email list, you have a direct line, as you were saying, of communication with people that have voluntarily said, "Yes. I would like to hear from you." So that is not only something that you will be able to use in perpetuity, but it is also something where it wasn't just a random... "Oh, that's... That's mildly amusing. I'll like that. I'll follow that." These people invited you in. They said, "Here's my email. I want you to email me." Which is a pretty big step and very much more, much more personal, I think, with the email marketing.

Now, you were talking about social media also, as we said, not being terribly stable. This is the truth. Obviously, we've watched Twitter completely fall apart. TikTok may or may not end up banned in the United States. We just... You don't know. And that is why the mailing list is so important. So when we're talking then about marketing in general, one of the things that you offer are a bunch of crash courses for authors generally talking about marketing. And one of the things that you talk about is getting legitimate Amazon reviews for your book. So if you could talk a little bit about the importance of those, particularly on Amazon. Love it or hate it, Amazon is the major retailer that you have to be able to function well with as an author, whether you're trad or self-pub. And something that I had always heard, and I've heard it refuted, and then I've heard it repeated again, is that if you want Amazon to pick you up in their algorithm of books that are recommended - "customers also bought books like this"... If you want your book to show up there, you have to have at least 50 reviews on Amazon. I've heard that stated. I've heard it refuted. But if you could talk, in general, about the importance of those Amazon reviews, that would be fantastic.

Nicholas: The 50 review thing is definitely a myth. There's no set point where Amazon starts recommending your book. I would say that the reviews don't factor directly into the algorithm very much, if at all. It's hard to say because Amazon doesn't publish the entire workings of the algorithm for obvious reasons since it's a trade secret. But I don't think that the reviews have a direct impact in that if you have 3,000 reviews or ratings, it's going to result in your book being recommended. It's just more that if someone hits the page when a book has 3,000 reviews and the star rating is 4.4, 4.5, or there are some really positive reviews that persuade them to pick up the book, then it might help your conversion rate, which is the percentage of people who hit the Amazon page who end up buying.

So I think it's more of an indirect effect there on the algorithms where if you're selling more books from the traffic that you're directing to the page, whether that's from your newsletter, or TikTok, or Facebook ads, or wherever it's coming from, then you have a better shot at getting the algorithms in your corner. I wouldn't worry too much about reviews at this point because Amazon has introduced ratings and that means that people can rate the book without leaving a review. And that's going to be counted toward your overall rating score there at the top of the page that people will see when they hit the Amazon page. That means that the emphasis on reviews, even compared to 3 or 4 years ago, just it's not as important. If anybody is trying to get reviews, then probably the best way is just to ask in the back of the book right after the end. You can ask people to rate or review the book, and that's going to increase the number of people doing so. I think that there are more valuable uses of that back matter real estate where I usually try to sell the next book in the series and also get people to sign up for the newsletter right after the end. But you can certainly put a review request there if that is a primary focus. But they're not super important at this point because people can leave the rating without the review now.

Mindy: And you brought up the algorithm, of course, that is the major factor that everyone is always trying to... Used different little pieces of data to try to figure out how to manipulate the algorithm. In general, I find that to be a very fruitless prospect. As you said, Amazon is not about to share their information with the rest of us. As a person that is just not as interested, this is why I am not a great indie or self-pub author. I'm a trad author. I do not want to crunch numbers. I do not want to sit down with data. I do not want to put that practical and, I guess really honestly applicable, side of my brain to work when it comes to the industry. I really would prefer just to write. And, of course, we all would. We all want that. But if you want to be a successful indie or self-published author, you really do have to apply yourself in that direction. So, what are some tips that you have for good jumping in points? Or maybe some easier elements that self-pub authors can gather some data or things to watch? What are some really first steps the authors can take to help sell their book? Whether it's ads or promotion, marketing, and publicity.

Nicholas: I think the easiest way to probably jump into paid advertising is to use promo sites which are newsletters where you can book a spot in your genre for whatever it costs, and then they give you an ad slot in their email newsletter on the specified day. The most famous of these is BookBub. And of course BookBub is very competitive and difficult to get. It's worth submitting your book for because it can sell a lot of books if you get one. But there are a number of other options there, like Free and Bargain Booksy. Robin Reads. A number of additional options. All that you have to do is fill out a form and if you're accepted, pay the invoice and then you're ready to go. So that's a good stepping stone to more advanced marketing or more involved marketing there. And it can still be an important element overall of your marketing mix even as you become more advanced. Another thing that you can do when you're starting out is join email cross promotions on platforms like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin.

Getting those initial subscribers can be a real grind, and you can be sitting there with one subscriber, two subscribers... You know, you and your friend or whoever else has signed up for a long time. If you're just waiting for people to join from the back of your book or maybe it's before you're even releasing the book, those services are a way that you can jump in and start building your email newsletter, and then start sending out email newsletters to a bigger list and start practicing you're writing there. What resonates with readers in your genre? So I think that those two things, if you're just starting out, are inexpensive ways to get started with the marketing. Otherwise, I would invest money into a professional cover. That's going to make a big difference in how well your book sells. And also spend some time with the blurb, which is the book description. Those are the two main elements that are going to convince people to buy the book when they hit the page. And if those aren't hitting the mark, then people aren't going to buy the book. So study the best selling books in your subgenre there. All that you have to do is Google "Kindle Top 100" and your subgenre. If you write thrillers, then "Kindle top 100 thrillers" and take a look at some of the blurbs, the covers, and try to reverse engineer what's going on and why those books are successful so you can take those principles for your own book in the genre.

Mindy: Yeah, cover in particular is the absolute must do correctly. That is how you're presenting your book to the world. And we all, of course, know that you shouldn't judge a book by the cover, but that's exactly what we do. And that is how we make decisions. Even in a traditional bookstore, like Barnes and Noble, when you're browsing the bookshelf, the thing that you're looking for the most is the cover. I know that cover designers put so much work into not only what the cover looks like, but also what the spine will look like because so few covers get to be front facing, which means that the actual cover is out on the bookshelf at a bookstore. The spine actually is incredibly important when we're talking about print books, because more likely than not, you're not going to be front facing on that bookshelf.

When it comes to eBooks and Kindle books, I have heard, and definitely correct me if I'm wrong, that you need to think particularly about how that cover is going to present itself as a thumbnail, not just as your single cover standing alone on its own home page or its own item listing on Amazon. Because you've got to get them to click over there first and you've got to get them to look at your cover among 40 or 50 or however many returns that you get in a list of covers. And so that's something that I've been told in the indie and self-pub world is that it's very important that the thumbnail of your cover be eye catching as well.

Nicholas: Yeah, you definitely need it to be legible and something that stands out at a small size because that's usually all the real estate you're going to get on Amazon. If it's on a bestseller list or if it's recommended in an email or if you're running Amazon ads, then your cover is going to be appearing at basically postage stamp size. So it has to clearly convey the genre to an interested reader and catch their attention probably in under a second, and that's if we're being generous. Probably more like half a second. It really has to be able to illustrate those key elements and stand out as a book that they would be interested in reading as a reader of that genre. So having an on genre cover is really key. Sometimes people make the mistake of going too far into left field and being clever or depicting a scene from their book or something abstract that doesn't really hit the genre elements. This is something where you want to be very clear about what the book is and what the book is not. Because if you're using the wrong cover, it's like packaging a bunch of starbursts in a Snickers wrapper. It doesn't serve any sort of purpose for either you as the author, you're going to sell fewer books, but also the reader who thought that they were getting something else is going to be unsatisfied with their purchase. So you want to be very clear with the packaging. It's not a piece of art. That's a common mistake that people when they're publishing their first book or second book, they tend to make that error, and it's just strictly a packaging and marketing aspect. You have to convey the genre immediately. Otherwise people are going to scroll by and click on something else that catches their attention.

Mindy: You mentioned too people making the mistake of wanting to illustrate possibly a specific scene in their book, or sometimes they've got an idea in their head of what they want their cover to look like that is perhaps like emotionally tied to something in the book. And that, as you said, isn't necessarily the best thing. Even though you, as the author, may have an attachment to wanting a certain thing, you have to think of your cover as the first marketing tool that you have. And it has to do work not just, as you said, be a piece of art that resonates with you as the writer.

Nicholas: Yeah, exactly. And to be clear, there are many cover artists that are extraordinarily talented and their work is amazing. So it can be artistically appealing while hitting the correct marketing checkboxes. But people reverse the order. It has to first be hitting those marketing check boxes. And then it can be a piece of appealing art. If you reverse those and don't hit the marketing aspects, then you're going to get a very expensive piece of art that does not sell any books, which most people don't want.

Mindy: Talking about sites, promo sites, that you can use. You mentioned BookBub, which is the holy grail of promo sites that you as an author would absolutely love to get a spot on. I know the self-pub side of my world under my pen name... We have been lucky enough to get a BookBub twice for different series, and it really does make an amazing difference. That is the most effective thing that we have ever used, and the tail on it is very long. If you're promoting a series and you're using the first, generally those Bookbub readers are very, very dedicated readers, and if you can hook them with your first in a series, you mentioned before the importance of a series. If you can hook them with the first in your series, a lot of them are going to read through. I mean, obviously not everyone, but those are serious readers. So that BookBub slot is definitely a high market real estate. So do you have any tips for people that are... Because of course, you have to apply. Do you have any tips for how to land those BookBub slots?

Nicholas: The main one is going to be self-evident, but it probably still needs to be said. You have to submit. And the reason that needs to be said is because people give up and get discouraged really quickly. Probably less than 5% of the submissions in the US for BookBub get submitted. It's just extraordinarily competitive, and they have a lot of submissions. It's not a referendum on the quality of your book if you don't get accepted the first time around or the sixth time around. So just whenever you get rejected, make a note on the calendar and then resubmit once you're eligible, and it's really just a volume game. And resubmit the books that are eligible in a rotation. So you could do book one in this series and then book one in your other series. And then if book two can be read alone, then go over to book two and so forth. So the goal ultimately is just to have something in the submission fire at all times. If you don't have a deep backlist, then that's not going to be possible. But the principal there is just submit as often as you can.

One thing you can do is that if you submit at $0.99 and get rejected, you can actually resubmit that same book immediately at free. You don't have to wait the four weeks between submissions and that effectively doubles your submissions there. The free BookBubs, in my experience, are actually more powerful than the paid ones. That's going to vary based on the book and how long your series is. If you have a very short series, then it might not be worth giving away the book for free. If you have, say, two books in the series, there aren't a ton of things for people to buy after they grab the first one for free. So you might want to wait on that a bit. If you have a short series or if you have a standalone, probably doesn't make sense to give it away for free unless you're just trying to build up your readership. But that's a way to again effectively double your overall submissions. BookBub really likes box sets. If you have three books in the series, then you can box up the first three and submit that. Or you could do books one through five. Or the complete series. And if you offer that to BookBub for $0.99, then that can be a good way to get accepted for a series where the individual books may have been rejected in the past.

Finally, they like wide books. Meaning books that are available on all retailers, not just Amazon. So you have Amazon, and then Apple Books, and Google Play, et cetera. If you have a book that's wide, then that is going to increase your chances of acceptance. So if you've had a Kindle Unlimited exclusive book get rejected a number of times then trying it again when that book is wide can result in it being accepted. That being said, there are plenty of Kindle Unlimited books that get BookBubs, and I have gotten a number of BookBubs, both for myself and for clients that I've worked with, for Kindle Unlimited exclusive books. So it's not mandatory by any means, but it does help. The main thing is just submitting. I see people disqualify themselves by just not submitting and giving up. It only takes a couple minutes a month, and the upside is tremendous. It's one of the highest leverage things you can put on your marketing calendar and do. So there's really no reason not to throw some submissions into the BookBub ring every month, and by actually submitting the books, then you're going to massively increase your chances of actually getting one.

Mindy: Very true. You cannot be selected if you don't throw your hat in the ring. One of the many things that you offer from your website, which is Nicholas Erik dot com, and that is Erik - E-R-I-K... You offer a lot of different courses for authors. If you could just give a brief overview of some of the courses that you offer and how they can benefit writers.

Nicholas: Yeah, I offer courses on a wide variety of subjects. I would say for someone just starting out or as a good general resource, I would check out the book, The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing. It's very comprehensive, and it's going to lay the foundation for probably 80-90% of the marketing stuff that you need to know. It doesn't dive into ad platforms specifically, but the evergreen skills that are still going to be useful and applicable five, ten years from now. That's what that book really focuses on. I have a course that I run with a six figure or seven figure romance author named Lee Savino. People seem to really like that one. It's called Six-Figure Author Strategy, and it's where you distill your entire marketing plan for the year into one page. And that forces you to think through what exactly you want to do and cut down on all the things that you can do into what's going to move the needle, and also organizes everything there for quick reference. Just because in the middle of a book launch or the middle of the year, it's easy for things to go off track or just feel overwhelming, and having that North Star is helpful. So those are probably the two places that I would start if you're just checking out my stuff. But there are a number of other courses as well.

Mindy: The Six-Figure Author course I know multiple people that have taken that and found it to be extremely helpful. Even if you're just a beginner and the idea of setting up your marketing for an entire year sounds really daunting, I know that the course does a great job of breaking it down. And like you said, having that North Star, as you put it, is a wonderful way to keep yourself on track when you get overwhelmed. Because I know as someone that has downtime in certain times of the year and then is working frenetically at other times of the year, it can be really hard to make sure that you're consistently putting something towards the marketing aspect. So having that all set up for yourself ahead of time is absolutely invaluable. Last thing, we mentioned your website, which is Nicholas Erik dot com. I will spell it again so that everybody can get that right. It's N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S E-R-I-K dot com. Is there anywhere else that people can find you online and be exposed to your stuff?

Nicholas: That's pretty much it. If you want to check out the book marketing newsletter that's free, you can join that on the website, and I don't have a set cadence. Sometimes it's weekly, most of the time it is not, and just gets sent out as inspiration strikes. But you can join that on the website. Otherwise, no social media or anything like that for the non-fiction stuff at this point. Just focused on the newsletter and building that since it'll be around in 5 to 10 years.

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Natasha Preston on The Island: Writing A Large Cast, and the Time Suck of Social Media

March 6, 2023 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: We're here with Natasha Preston who has had a really interesting and amazing career. We're gonna be talking about The Island, which is her newest release coming on February 28th. But first, I wanna talk to you specifically about the beginning of your career because you have a very interesting career path in that you got started on Wattpad. And Wattpad was really something that launched you in a pretty big way. I think your name is probably the one that comes up the most whenever people talk about Wattpad and success in that arena. So, if you could talk a little bit about that and how that was so integral to your beginnings.

Natasha: Completely. I didn't even start writing before I found Wattpad. So I wouldn't be here at all today if it wasn't for that. It was about 2010, and I was just scrolling through the app store and I came across Wattpad. So I downloaded it and started just as a reader for quite some time before I decided that actually I have some ideas inside of me as well, and then I started to upload chapters.

Mindy: And Wattpad is one of those things where it really is driven by word of mouth. It's driven by readers really liking and engaging with that content and then telling other readers about it. For me, I really think it is just one of the best examples of true word-of mouth grassroots fan-based readership.

Natasha: Yeah, definitely, and I met a lot of people through Wattpad. Some of them I'm still in contact with now. So you build a lot of friendships as well, and these people recommend you and you recommend them.

Mindy: I know that you had such great success there on that platform. Did you then decide to move out of that realm and look more into the realm of traditional publishing? Or were you doing so well, the agents and editors approached you?

Natasha: My friend, who was also on Wattpad, Kirsty Moseley, she self-published her first book, and she encouraged me to do the same. So I actually self-published first, and then my publisher, Sourcebooks, in the US, they picked up The Cellar. So then they traditionally published that one.

Mindy: Yes, and The Cellar was your first book that came out in the US. Ridiculously popular. So, I was a YA librarian. I worked in a public high school for 14 years. So, The Cellar came out in 2014, and I just remember all of my students were so in love with it. I couldn't keep it on the shelves. Colleen Hoover before TikTok. That's kind of what The Cellar was like, and then your subsequent titles as well. Something else that I wanted to talk to you about was your cover art. In the US, they're very stark, and they're very striking. Very much look like thriller covers almost even for adults. Your covers are amazing, and I think that that has been part of the appeal. Of course, just getting the eye drawn to get people to pick it up. Are your covers the same in the UK?

Natasha: Yeah, they are the same. I love them.

Mindy: Yeah. They are really beautiful. Did that come about through your publishers? Or you had something in mind already? Did they just happen to strike gold the first time?

Natasha: Pretty much gold, yeah. So when it was on Wattpad, I had a flower image on the cover of that one. The characters are renamed after flowers, so it was kind of pretty organic to have a flower theme.

Mindy: It really is. It's perfect. And then your subsequent titles, they match. Your publishers do a great job of branding you. It's kind of like Stephen King or Jodi Picoult's... When you see the cover, I don't even have to see your name to know that it's your book because the covers are so distinctive.

Natasha: Yeah, yeah. They’ve done a phenomenal job of carrying that through.

Mindy: So your next release, your newest release, is The Island. It revolves around 6 teen influencers who have accepted invitations to an all expenses paid trip to a luxury resort and amusement park. And then of course, when they get there things suddenly go quite wrong. I would love to hear more about where you got the idea for this book. I love that you're operating with kind of that closed room mystery in the sense that the room is an entire island and there are rollercoasters on it.

Natasha: Yes, it's pretty much... I think I was flicking through Instagram, and I was seeing like all these influencers. And they are rich! The idea came from that. Putting them all together and seeing what would happen if they are in a place where they can't escape. And I feel like quite a lot of influencers would go to an island if they were invited.

Mindy: Yeah, definitely. It's kind of like the Fyre Festival. Do you remember that?

Natasha: I don't.

Mindy: Fyre Festival... It was a US thing, so it is possible it didn't hit the news so much there in the UK. But Fyre Festival was this really hyped, big party. They had these promo videos made and it was like, "you were going to be hanging out with very rich, very beautiful people. Buy your tickets now. It's gonna be amazing." And then people got there and it was like hot dogs on sticks. Drift wood for your pillow. There was nowhere to pee. It was really bad.

Natasha: Oh no.

Mindy: It was really, really bad. Tell us a little bit more about The Island. What are your characters like? Because influencers in particular... I go back and forth. I'm a difficult person. I'll just say that. I'm a difficult person. Traditional marketing just doesn't work on me. I'm always a little bit cynical, and I'm always suspicious. So whenever someone is trying to sell something to me, I immediately shut down, and I'm just like, "No. I don't like you, and I don't want what you're selling."

Natasha: I don't believe you.

Mindy: Exactly. It also makes it difficult for me whenever I'm trying to think about marketing my stuff, because the traditional stuff that does work, I never wanna do that because it doesn't feel genuine to me. So talk to me a little bit about your characters and where you got the ideas for each of them as individuals because you are writing 6 different characters.

Natasha: Yeah, so the gamer, two beauty bloggers, Paisley, who is like a main character, she reports crime - love her - and then we have Harper who is book reviewer. So they all have very different personalities. Some of them are pretty cocky entitled. And then some of them are a little bit more reserved, and they grow throughout the book. Obviously, when somebody is out there trying to kill you, you have to try and mesh all these personalities together so they can defeat the bad guy together and get through it. And also one of them could be the killer.

Mindy: I think that would be very challenging. I tend to keep my casts pretty small - two or three like maybe four, and then some peripherals. But I think writing six and trying to build them and, of course, give all of them their own layers as well, and still creating a little bit of suspicion so you're keeping that mystery going for each one of them... I'm sure that was challenging.

Natasha: I did kill one of them pretty early so... It took it down a little bit.

Mindy: Did you do much research into influencer culture and what it's like to be an influencer?

Natasha: I did a little bit. It is pretty hard because I think all of them have quite different experiences and how they're perceived and how people react to them. So I didn't want to do too much research. I wanted to be sort of quite organically just writing and then building how I see them. Do you do that? I should really research it, then I get stuck in this "I've researched too much" and it stops being my character. I try to make them something that they never were, if that makes any sense at all.

Mindy: Yes, it does. It makes perfect sense. Absolutely possible to over-research. You could almost get stuck in it, I think, cause you worry so much about getting it right. I write YA as well. But I have an adult book that I would love to get out one day, we'll see. I still have to work on it. But it is set in 1916 during the Spanish influenza. And I was writing a scene... It's set in the US, like in a rural area in a one-room school house. And I was writing a scene where the teacher... 'cause the Spanish flu could drop you very quickly. Your symptoms could just come on and you could become very violently sick and die within hours. The teacher very suddenly - she feels herself getting sick. She knows something's wrong, and so she doesn't want her students to get sick. She runs out of the building as fast as she can, and she's disoriented. She's ill. She also trips and falls, and she rolls down the steps and the kids come out and they're like, "Oh my gosh. What do we do? Should we even touch her?" And in my mind, her shoe had come off, and her shoe was sitting on one of the steps. But would her shoe have come off? What would her shoe have been in 1916.

So I go and I start researching women's footwear in 1916, but it couldn't be like high fashion. It had to be what a middle class rural woman would have been wearing in 1916. So I'm trying to figure all of that out. Eventually I decide no, her shoe probably would not have come off because it would have been a boot, And it would have been the kind that you literally use a crochet hook to finish tying, and it's like "no her boot is not coming off." I mean, I probably did two to three hours of research to figure out if her boot came off. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if her boot came off or not, number one. And number two, a reader probably isn't gonna notice or care, and I literally dropped everything and did not write for three hours 'cause I needed to know if her boot came off. And that is an example of caring a little too much.

Natasha: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it's so easy to get pulled into that.

Mindy: It really is. Have you ever had that one thing that you just felt like you had to chase down and then you were like, "Okay. That was not worth it."

Natasha: Oh yeah. So, it was when I was writing The Cellar, and he weights bodies, chucks them in the river, and disposes of them. And I'm googling this for a very long time - getting a little worried that someone was gonna see what I'm doing, and I spent hours, "what weight do you need to make sure that they don't come back up?" And I think, "You know what. I could just write, 'He's weighted the body.' They don't need to know exactly."

Mindy: No, you don't. You're right. But that's exactly the kind of thing that will happen to you. That you just end up going down that rabbit hole of wanting to make sure that you're right, and essentially it doesn't actually matter. You're talking about the things that you Google, and then you have to worry a little bit. As a writer, we do end up looking at some things or wandering into parts of the internet or information that we might not necessarily want to be associated with. I can tell you that my ads that I get or on Amazon, when it's like "based on your recent search history you might be interested in... " and it's like, "No. I don't need that bondage material thing." Have you ever researched something like the weighting of the bodies and just been like, "Oh man. I am a little concerned now about my search history." Or also just... "Gosh, I wouldn't want anyone to stumble across this in my browser."

Natasha: Definitely. So when I was writing You Will Be Mine, the killer cuts out hearts. So, I'm googling "how you get to the heart." You ought to get through the rib cage and how you would cut it out. That was interesting.

Mindy: I have definitely searched some things that have skewed my ads. I actually have a friend who writes tech thrillers, and she needed to know how to get a bomb onto a plane. So she just Googled it and tried to figure out how to get a bomb onto a plane. She lived in California, and her husband was a TV producer. He also lived in California, but because of their work, they were at different parts of the state. One of them would fly to the other one every other week. She went to go see her husband, and she had been put on the no-fly list.

Natasha: No. Oh my gosh.

Mindy: Yeah, she couldn't get on the plane. She had a friend in Homeland Security, and she talked to them eventually. And they were like, "Yeah, dude. I can tell you exactly why you are not allowed to fly on planes anymore."

Natasha: Oh no! Did she get off the list though? Is she okay now?

Mindy: She did. She did, but without her friend inside the system to vouch for her who knows how that would have gone? But you gotta be a little bit careful.

Natasha: You do. Yeah, you have to be careful.

Mindy: So, tell me about what you are doing for The Island and press. Obviously, you're doing interviews and you're doing podcasts like this. Post covid... Are you doing much traveling?

Natasha: I haven't very much at all. I would like next year to come back to America. I've been a couple of times. Barnes & Noble events have been so much fun. So this time around, I'm doing an online with Barnes & Noble. Which will be really fun, but it's nice to go to in person, I think.

Mindy: Definitely. I miss being in-person a lot. I have a release in March, and this will be the first time since 2020 that I have done much in terms of actually doing a string of events or tour. I had a book come out in March of 2020, and we shut down over here... Third week of March in 2020 was when the lockdown started. I was touring with two other writers, and we had, I think, five cities right in the middle of March and at our first event, we had people. It was cool. At our second event, we had about half the crowd. At our third event, I think we had four people, and everyone was wearing masks. And at our last event that we showed up to... The book sellers, they were very kind, but they got a hold of us and they were like, "We're closing. There's not gonna be anybody here. Please come, and sign stock. Wear a mask, and go back home." We were like, "Okay." And then as soon as I got home from that tour was when we went on lock down.

Natasha: A similar thing over here. Everything just stopped didn't it? And it's still not picked back up, I don't think. There's still a lot more happening virtually.

Mindy: Yeah, there has been a lot more virtual events and trying to make things work online and doing zooms and Instagram Live. So, is that something that you have found success with? Do you enjoy doing the online stuff?

Natasha: Yeah, I do. It's still nice to connect with people and booksellers and readers. It's just not quite the same as being able to physically see them and you get to take pictures with people and sign a book for them in front of them.

Mindy: Yeah. I agree. I get energy from other people. That's where my energy comes from... Is from drawing off of others. And when I can get them excited, then they're feeding me back, and we just get a nice little feedback loop. And there is so much about that that is organic, but there's also... There's a real presence that is necessary in order to make that happen. I don't know. I feel like it's hard to get that same feeling and to build that same energy when you're doing it virtually.

Natasha: Yeah, when you're just on your own, it's not the same.

Mindy: Yeah. It's really hard to generate excitement for yourself. Well, and speaking of that, generating excitement for yourself... How was it for you writing over covid? I know a lot of writers struggled with being on shutdown, first of all just emotionally and mentally, but also just being creative and finding ways to write or things to write about. Suddenly we had all the time in the world, but we needed to have the drive.

Natasha: Yeah, no, actually, I was great during lock down. I mean, I had my children at home which I had to home school. So that was a little bit of a battle, but... No, it was great. I would get up at six. I would probably write a couple thousand words, and then the children would get up. I was on it. That hasn't happened since... It ended.

Mindy: So, is that your typical approach? Do you have a word count for the day that you like to hit?

Natasha: Yeah. Typically, I try to... 1500-2000 words, and I'm generally happy with that.

Mindy: I always say minimum 1000. If I can get two, that's amazing. 15 is a nice, nice little bonus. Do you write every day then?

Natasha: Every weekday usually. On the weekends I keep my children at home, so... Yeah, every weekday... Go drop them off and come home and just sit in front of the computer until I'm happy with my word count.

Mindy: Yeah, and that's something that a lot of newer writers or writers that are trying to finish their first book talk to me about. Tips and tricks. They're like, "How do you write a book?" And I'm like, "Well, unfortunately, the only answer is you have to sit down and do it."

Natasha: Yeah. You have to be quite disciplined 'cause when you are just at home, there's so many things you could do. You need to make yourself have that time.

Mindy: Yes. And writing is hard. I will do anything other than write.

Natasha: That's exactly what I do. I'll check social media, and I'll do some other things. And I tell myself I'm being productive by doing different posts here and there and answering emails, but it's really just putting off starting writing.

Mindy: That is exactly accurate. Yes. I have been working really hard for three hours, and it's like, No, you haven't... Actually you haven't done anything. So speaking of social media then... What has your experience been like with social media kind of changing? 'Cause you came out right around the same time that I did. The Cellar was published in 2014. My first book came out in 2013, and when we were first out in the world and publishing, social media was very text-based. It was tweets. It was Facebook posts. And then Instagram came along, and it was pictures. But now suddenly, it's videos, and it's music. And it's whatever the trends are. It's just more time consuming than I'm willing to put into now. It's like, I can have a thought, and I can have a one-off. And I could tweet that 10 years ago, and that was good. And people were like, Yes. And they would interact with that. And it's like, now I have to make a video, and I have to be using the right filter, and I have to have whatever song is popular right now. And for me, I've just kind of stepped back from that a little bit because like we were just saying, I can get too sucked into that and put a lot of time into it when I should be writing.

Natasha: I completely agree. My heart is still in 2014 where you could just pop a post up every couple of days, and that was great.

Mindy: Yep.

Natasha: It's a lot of work now. It's more interactive, I think, and I do like that. But you can spend hours where you used to just spend a few minutes, and it does take away from your actual writing time.

Mindy: I agree. I feel too that things are more crowded. I was on TikTok for about five minutes. I have an account there, but I very rarely post because I would put together something, and it took me so long to put it together, and then I would put it out there. And it's like if the algorithm doesn't basically choose you, you're not going to get a lot of reach with that. And it's like, man... And granted... Learning curve. I didn't really know what I was doing, and so it took longer. But I would just be like, "Oh my gosh. I just spent an hour making this 15-second video, and 40 people saw it." I say that as someone that definitely has not figured out how to use TikTok. I will say this though. The nice thing about TikTok and booktok... The readers are the ones that are generating the content. There's not so much responsibility on us to generate it. If they can do it, that's great.

Natasha: I mean, if someone out there just wants to do all that for my books, that would be fantastic.

Mindy: No, I agree. Whenever anybody is like, "Oh my gosh. I read your book, and I loved it." I'm like, "Cool. Are you on TikTok?" Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find The Island when it comes out on February 28th, and where they can find you online.

Natasha: The Island is to be in stores in America. So, it will be in Barnes & Noble for sure. Everywhere else, it's going to be online. So yeah, it's where you can get The Island. And you can find me on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. All of them. Just Author Natasha Preston.

Indie Publishing Success with Alex Lidell

January 2, 2023 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: We're here with Alex Lidell, who was a YA author that also debuted with me in 2013. So we have been at this for almost a decade now. So Alex had a very interesting career in that she first came into publishing after winning an Amazon novel contest. So if you could talk about that for a second, I think that's really interesting.

Alex: So at the time, Amazon had partnered with Penguin for a few years to run a breakout novel contest. Everyone writes a manuscript. Submits it. It goes through levels of judging - starting from their Amazon reviewers going all the way up to celebrity judges. So my manuscript got into the finals there. One of the three celebrity judges was Sarah Dessen. She actually is the reason that my agent contacted me at the time. I ended up being a finalist, but I did not win the entire thing. The winner got a publishing contract with Penguin. However, in the process, like I said, Sarah Desson was one of the judges, and she recommended me to her agent. So I was agented at that point by Leigh Feldman, and about within 48 hours we had pretty much an equivalent contract with Penguin. That was the debut into the traditional world for me with a young adult, and like you said, that's how we met - the lucky 13s in the class of 2013 young adults. A few years after that, I switched tracks. I completely left not only traditional publishing, but I left the young adult world and I switched over to indie romance - which is a complete turnaround for me, but very smart business decision. It was great to work with Penguin, and I learned a ton with them. But from a business perspective, indie romance was just a game changer for me there.

Mindy: That's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on as a guest because I think your story illustrates that there are, first of all, so many avenues to breaking into publishing, but then also you don't have to remain on the course that you're on. You can change tracks and even find more success by moving away from the traditional world. So you have had quite a bit of success in indie publishing and as you said, specifically in romance. I know that marketing and promotion and publicity is all very different when you are an indie, but even the approach that you take to your writing.

Alex: To understand the differences where you're coming from, you have to look at how the books are being sold. In the traditional world, primary ways people are going to buy your books is going to be by the publisher going to their major sellers, let's say Barnes and Nobles, and there's going to be a representative who's going to talk up your book and is going to say, "Hey guys, you know, this is a great book that you should buy." In the romance world and in the indie world, you are going directly to a consumer. The physical books become more of a collectible. The vast majority of my readers are going to be in the ebook format, and they're going to buy the physical book if they really like the ebook just because they want to have something on their shelf. Understanding the other difference is a lot of the romance readers are going to be whale readers. I have people who will read a book a day. So they are consuming things at a much faster pace. What I need to do is I need to look at what kind of journey, especially with romance, what kind of journey are those people looking to be taking on? And I need to be very respectful, especially in romance, where people are in essence inviting me into their fantasies, right? Romance is a fantasy escape. Romance is primarily an emotional journey your readers are trusting you with and it's a vulnerable journey for them. What kind of journey are your readers looking for? And you need to do a lot of research in terms of what is that journey and then how to communicate that - not just how to write that journey but how to communicate that your book is about that journey to the readers.

Now again, that's very different from traditional publishing where all that is taken care of by some completely different department. They bought your book because the type of journey you're telling is the one they want. They have an editor who's going to make sure you stick to the type of story that they want to be telling. There is a marketing and a cover design department that's going to decide what book is going to sell best to who. To the Barnes and Noble's buyers who are looking at, oftentimes, third party purchasers, right? Whereas in the indie world, you have to look at what is currently signaling to them about a certain type of journey because it is very important to match the right book with the right romance reader and the right romance reader at the time. There's a lot of research into that and that is a very shifting market. It moves a lot faster. In the traditional world, the books had to be ready a year before they ever went out. In the indie world, I don't know that the cover that's good now is going to be a sellable cover in a year. Things are going to change. Algorithms are going to change. The signals are going to change. And what I mean by signal is if I want to signal to the reader that I have a spicy or a steamy book. For that do I need to have a cover with two people who are all over each other and a bodice ripper cover or a symbol cover? Well, both of those have been true throughout. TikToks wanted to put up covers. Suddenly discrete covers became a much more sellable aspect, and the readers learned that their symbol cover oftentimes refers to steamier content. So previously that signal might have been a bodice ripper. Currently, that signal becomes more of a symbol cover - especially with Amazon changing what they allow and what they allow you to advertise. Bodice ripper you're not going to be able to advertise a lot of times in Facebook and Amazon because they're going to consider that sexual content. Previously, you could advertise it. Now you couldn't. You got to switch the cover. How do you signal to the readers what it is? And there is almost an understanding between readers and writers about what symbols are going to imply what type of content.

Mindy: First of all, it sounds like a lot of work obviously. There's so many moving parts. Everything is so fluid, and you have to be nimble. You've got to be on your toes. You've got to be ready to fluctuate with the market. But I also think that it opens up a lot of avenues for you because in the traditional world, as you know, you've kind of got a window to do well with a single title. And that window is typically six weeks of your release, and if you haven't had a major impact at least the first three or four months of your book releasing then you're just going to be coasting on whatever little sales you can pick up from there. Barring of course winning any major awards or ending up on large lists, you have a small amount of time to really maximize your success for an individual title. One of the things I really enjoy about indie is that if you have written something... For whatever reason you were a little bit behind the times and the trend comes back, or you are ahead and something that you wrote a year ago suddenly is hitting again or for the first time, you can recover and you can use those phrases, whatever they are for the moment - whether it's midlife magic or second chance at romance whatever it is that's happening right now - you can repurpose something that you already released. And it might do better if you're just changing categories and like you said signaling to the reader through your cover and through the phrasing that you use to promote it - "this is what you want."

Alex: Absolutely. So for example I have a book where they're both gorgeous vampires and gorgeous fae wolf shifters, right? If vampires are hot, I could re-cover to make this book about "you've got gorgeous vampires." And if there's a different preference on the market, I could take the exact same book and re-cover it more towards wolves and say, "hey gorgeous wolf shifters." And both of those are equally true about the book, but I can recover and rephrase the blurb to emphasize whatever part is currently more on the market. So, in traditional you don't get to relaunch whereas in indie that is absolutely a tool.

Mindy: And I do have a question on that end. If you do re-title/recover things like that, is there a way that you signal to readers that this is a book that has formally been released. So if someone who likes, let's say, both vampires and werewolves and they originally bought your book when it was marketed as a vampire novel and then you're re-releasing kind of pushing the werewolf - is there a way for you to indicate to them that this is a previously released title so they don't end up buying something that they already own and then possibly being frustrated by that?

Alex: Yes. The subtle way of signaling that is called saying it absolutely outright at the bottom of the blurb. This book was previously released as... Also, if on Amazon when we're talking about re-release there are two different ways of doing it. One is you delete all previous existence of the book. Publish it as if it was a brand new book, obviously adding that statement there. That also deletes all the previous reviews and all the social proof. However, the other thing you could do is just re-cover/re-title but keep the same book so you're just updating the book, and on Amazon it will actually tell the customer that they have previously purchased this title.

Mindy: There's that little banner that says you purchased this on and it shows you the date.

Alex: Correct and for ebooks they're not going to let them buy the same ebook twice even though it has a different cover now.

Mindy: So when we're talking about covers, we talk about re-covering and relaunching and all of those things, but the cover is such a key component in either world, whether you're trad or indie. But in the indie world, specifically, the onus is on you. You have to make the decision about who you're going to hire, and you have to be able to distinguish what kind of style you want and know what's in right now. So talk to me a little bit about that process as an indie author - that very key component of your cover and how you go about that process of getting your cover.

Alex: It is very important to first acknowledge that there are different indie writing journeys and there are people who are writing a book of their heart or a book that is really emotionally important to them. And they were going to write this book this way even if somebody told them "hey, this book is never going to be a best seller," and they're going to write that book anyway versus people who are saying "hey, if I had a crystal ball and I knew that this book was not going to be a big hit then I would never write this book." Both of those are very valid and very good journeys, but I need to separate that because when we're talking about covers it can be equally an emotional decision and a business decision. One thing that people run into is... Do I need to like the cover? Does the cover need to truly represent my vision of what's in the book? If this is a book of your heart, then it might be very important to you that the cover is true to your vision of that book. The other is the purely business approach. In which case, I would look at my comp titles and that are selling very well currently, and I would line up all those comp titles and I would say "all right what is the current style of those covers?" Are they simple covers? Are they man chest covers? Are they girl in a poofy dress covers? And how do I create that look and feel? And then you're looking at the designers that are going to be able to create that look and feel for you.

Mindy: And how do you go about finding those designers? Do you have a lot of word of mouth where you're talking to other authors about who they use?

Alex: That's a very very good question. One thing to remember, in the indie world, sometimes somebody being really expensive means they're really good and sometimes it just means they're really expensive. There are a few different approaches. Established known companies or designers that are spread by word of mouth. So you look at a book that's like yours that is selling very well and you look at who that designer was. It's a good idea to contact the author and say, "hey, what was it like working with the designers?" Some people are extremely talented on the artistic side. They may not be quite so responsible on the business side. Give a shout out to Deranged Doctor Designs which is a very professional group that I've worked with for a lot of my covers. You can book with them. You have to keep in mind that a lot of designers will book very far in advance. If you know you have a series of books coming out, while you're writing get that spot with the designer secured way ahead of time because you may need that six months, eight months lead time to get onto their schedule.

Now other approach which people are using more and more now - designers will put pre-made covers. So you look through the pre-made covers and you find the look and feel of the cover that you like. In the indie world we'll do a series versus single books. Chances are you're going to need multiple covers for your series. So you look at the pre-made covers, and you find what matches what you're looking for. And then you contact the designer and you say "look, I want this pre-made cover but then I'm going to need three more custom covers that are continuation of this pre-made." Again, the advantage is you get to see the outcome before you are making a purchase. You're not waiting eight months to get your first cover. It's a lot less emotionally taxing than coming up with your own idea. Again, this is a lot more on the business side where I need a cover that's currently matching the trends versus I need something that's really really speaking to exactly what I want. Chances that there will be a pre-made out there that's exactly matching your characters is difficult. So we talked about contracting the designer by finding a book that you like and vetting the designer and then talking to them about making customs. Getting on their list. Looking at pre-made covers, and finding a pre-made cover that speaks to you and matches the market and then talking to the designer about making additional covers like that.

Then you will hear about people who are doing truly custom covers. They may be paying for photo shoots because they want the covers to be specific to them and they don't want to be using stock images. So they don't want the dress, the girl, the head that appears on their cover to be appearing on anybody else's. They're doing totally custom covers. Or they may be doing painted covers, and they're hiring artists to paint a cover for them. They're either doing it for their brand where they want to be truly truly unique, and they're finding that this is what their readers expect. They're maybe doing it for emotional reasons because they really want it to represent exactly what is in the book. So you may be looking at hiring a painter or somebody to do that for you.

Mindy: There's so many routes and so many choices that you have to make, and that's just a single aspect there - the cover. So something else that you have to make a decision about early on when you are going into the indie world is whether you want to go wide or not. To explain what that is for my listeners, Amazon, of course, has the largest chunk of sales across the publishing industry but particularly in ebook and the indie world, especially when we're talking about US sales, it's going to be Amazon. And Amazon has particular programs like Kindle Unlimited that you can enroll your books in. And when you do that, that book is available for free to the reader because they pay for basically like a membership fee to be a part of KU, but then you are paid according to how many pages they read. So they don't necessarily buy the book. They pay for as long as they want to keep reading it. But in order to be in KU, your book can only be available on Amazon. You can't be available through Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, anything like that. And so you have to make that decision about whether or not you are going to go wide and sell outside of Amazon or whether you're just going to stick with that leader and remain in their stable. Can you talk a little bit about how to go about making that decision?

Alex: First, just to clarify, and you said it exactly right, but just to clarify for people who may not be familiar, even if you're in KU, your paperbacks, your physical books can still be available anywhere you want. We're only talking about your eBooks. Generally speaking, you are going to see a faster immediate return in KU. You are going to make more money faster in KU. However, the question becomes risk and longevity. The risk is when you're in KU, you're not established wide. If something happens with Amazon - Amazon decides that they have a policy change and now your romance books have too much sexual content that they don't want them advertised or they don't want to show them on certain types of searches or results. You're stuck. You don't have anything else. Advantage of it being it is a lot simpler because you're juggling a lot fewer websites, and you're juggling a lot fewer sources and rules and advertising venues. So it takes up a lot less cognitive bandwidth to do that, and oftentimes you are making money faster. There is no right and wrong decision on it. People make it based on, a lot of times, how much cognitive bandwidth they have. If you're putting out a lot of books, do you have time to manage them in all those different stores?

Another strategy people may use is they may initially release them into Kindle Unlimited, which is a 90 day term and say, look, I'm going to release it into Kindle for a 90 day term. And after I'm not really seeing as much returns there, then I'm going to go wide. But every platform you work with is going to take a while to establish yourself as a known entity. Readers tend to read in the platform of their choice. So somebody who always goes to buy things on Kobo knows things in that ecosphere and how long is it going to take for them to discover that you exist in that ecosphere? It's not that readers don't have content that they can choose. It's about how do you get your content in front of the reader? And if you're in multiple channels, that means doing so in multiple channels, which is a big investment and takes time away from writing your new book. Those are some pros and cons of both decisions. There's no right and wrong one. One other caveat is there are some genres that have a heavier KU readership. That is a decision you need to make if that is one of your genres that's going to add some weight. For example, when you have whale readers, and whale readers are readers who are reading a huge quantity, they may be reading a book a day or at least several books a week, and they're just not going to be buying that many books. They can't buy that many books. So they're going to be reading in KU. Oftentimes, we see that in romance genres.

Mindy: It is so hard to balance what you want to do and make those decisions that are going to be so impactful on your success. And you're the only one making those decisions. So it is a very challenging thing to wander into.

Alex: Absolutely. The bad thing about traditional publishing is you don't get a say in so many things. The good thing about traditional publishing is you don't get a say in so many things.

Mindy: Right. You don't have to make those decisions. Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find your books and where they can find you online?

Alex: My flagship series is a romance series that I'm best known for, which is Power of Five, which is a fantasy romance. And you can find that it is all in Kindle Unlimited and you can find it on Amazon. If you type in Power of Five by Alex Lidell, L-I-D-E-L-L. I am also started a series that is a romantic suspense series called Trident Rescue. Again, you will find it on Amazon. It is in Kindle Unlimited, if you subscribe. I'm writing under a slightly different pen name there. Instead of Alex Lidell, it is A.L. Lidell, and that is just to help Amazon differentiate who to advertise the books to. Because one is a fantasy romance, the other is contemporary romantic suspense series. All my books feature protective alpha type heroes and feisty heroines.

Mindy: Wonderful.

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