SFA 016 – Advertising During the Holidays, Reader Magnets, When to Do Audiobooks, and More Listener Questions Answered

Andrea, Lindsay, and Jo answer listener questions on this week’s show. We discuss everything from advertising during the holidays, whether group promos and giving away reader magnets still works, when it makes sense to invest in audiobooks, what we do for investments, and what our editing process looks like.

Here is a specific list of the questions/comments we answered:

• “I had the audio version done of my first in series, and while I was happy with the narrator at the time (because this was my first audiobook), the reviews have not been kind to him. I’m coming up on a year since release, and decided I wanted to finish out the series, but I’ve only sold about 25 audiobooks in that time. Another narrator said it was best to either have the original finish the series, or buy him out and start over with a new narrator. However, I chose the royalty share option as I don’t have the budget to pay a narrator up front, and stuck with a 7 year contract. What are my options? Walk away? Buy out? I don’t really have a working relationship with the original narrator.”
• “Have we reached the end of the effectiveness of growing your list via reader magnet group promotions? I’ve seen diminishing returns in terms of getting people to actually read the reader magnet and go on to buy the book. I have people who are signing up for my list again and again as they see the reader magnet in subsequent group promotions. Or is it merely a numbers game and that for every 1000-2000 inorganic (as Patty Jansen calls them) subscribers, you can only expect maybe a small percentage to actually go on to read your books?”
• “I’d be interested in hearing about how your editing process has changed as you’ve become more experienced.”
• “I started dictating when wrist, arm, shoulder pain was too much. I took to dictation in about 2 hours so I think I’m a rare duck. The problem now is that I started dictating doing contemporary romance and knocked out 5k words an hour but now that I’m dictating historical Regency romance I’m doing 3k words an hour at best. How can I get those big word counts that Andrea gets? What tips or tricks does she have?”
• “I’d like to know more about how you look after your earnings once you become a six-figure author… What tips do you have for future authors, or things you wish you’d known earlier. Pensions? Savings? Emergencies?”
• “I’d like to hear a little about mastermind groups. Most of the big authors are already in secret masterminds, but small authors with only 2-8 books are starting to form their own to help each other out working off the basis that sometimes you learn best from what your peers are trying rather than someone much further up the author career path. What sorts of things have you all found useful from masterminds? How do they work best? What would you watch out for?”
• “My question is about advertising during the holidays. Particularly on Amazon and Facebook ads. Do you three double down or just realize that everyone is advertising more in November and December and allow your ads to take more of backseat (less impressions and ROI, but still keep them running)? Or somewhere in between?”
• “What do you consider a good CTR on Amazon ads?”
• “How can an author stand out in the middle of the sea of other authors?”
• “Do you have any predictions for 2020 — anything indie related, from genres to marketing?”
• “In your interview with Andrea, she mentioned download bonuses. How are they different from reader magnets? Can your reader magnet also be your download bonus (especially if you’re distributing the magnet through Bookfunnel)? Can you mention your download bonus in your book’s Amazon description?”
• Our last question asked about publishing in foreign languages and foreign Kindle stores, and we suggested the listener check out Joanna Penn’s recent podcast on this topic: Tips for Self-Publishing in Translation: Adventures with AI and German.
• Lastly, we mentioned an old show we did with Patty Jansen that discussed getting quality readers out of a mailing list built off giving away freebies. Here’s the link to that episode: Mailing List Tips and The Three-year, No-bestseller Plan for Making a Sustainable Living from Your Fiction.

Six Figure Authors

SFA 016 - Advertising During the Holidays, Reader Magnets, When to Do Audiobooks, and More Listener Questions Answered

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