Lindsay - June 25, 2020Our guest for this week’s show is David Gaughran. He writes historical fiction and science fiction under another name, has helped thousands of authors publish their work through his workshops, blog, and writers’ books (Let’s Get Digital, Strangers to Superfans, BookBub Ads Expert, and the forthcoming Amazon Decoded) and has also created giant marketing campaigns for some of the biggest self-publishers on the planet.
David was a guest back on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast, so if you like this show, you may want to check it out too. (A lot of what we discussed was evergreen.) Marketing Wide vs Marketing in Kindle Unlimited + Turning Strangers into Super Fans
Here are some of the questions we asked David for this show:
- Lindsay quotes you often when it comes to the inner workings of Amazon, but people may be wondering “How does David know?” Where does your insight come from?
- What led you to doing what you do now? What are the stories behind writing Let’s Get Digital?
- There’s always misinformation going around on how Amazon sales ranking works and how Kindle Unlimited borrows are factored in. Could you sum things up for us?
- What are mistakes you see authors making that hurt their success when it comes to selling on Amazon? (David mentions the importance of writing and asking to be added to relevant categories and also an ASIN Finder tool to look at your competitors’ categories.)
- I’ve heard you talk about the popularity lists on Amazon and why they matter, but I’m not nearly as good at explaining things to people. How do those lists work, and why are they important?
- How can get you more Kindle Unlimited borrows on Amazon?
- Naturally Amazon is the biggest marketplace, and a popular interpretation is that KU is the second biggest marketplace. Is KU (and thus exclusivity) an essential part of marketing on Amazon? How does being wide change one’s potential marketing tactics on Amazon?
- For several months now, Amazon has been tinkering with showing me “Books you might like” and then the ads carousel and then “also-boughts” way at the bottom of the sales page where no average reader would ever see it. Is this the new norm? Any thoughts on whether we can do anything to impact that besides selling a lot of books?
- A topic that I am selfishly interested in, for obvious reasons, is resurrecting sales of a long running series. Is it possible to take a formerly successful series and drag it back to the point of profitability? And is it even worth doing when a new release or series is an option?
- For book launches, especially on Amazon, we’ve discussed how it’s a good idea to ramp up or stagger how you hit all your resources so that all your sales don’t come on one day, but that can be a challenge. Most people will have their newsletter, their socials, and then things like sponsored ads from blogs and newsletter swaps are probably going to give a much small bump. What do you see successful authors doing? Just spend piles on PPC ads?
- Rapid release is a popular tactic to help a series succeed. Do you feel rapid release is worthwhile? And what sort of release timing would you suggest?
- How should promotions on backlist play into an author’s marketing strategy? How much time should authors devote to backlist vs new releases, and where should they be putting their advertising money?
- When it comes to platform building, where should authors be focusing their time right now, and how much does the demographics of your readers play into where you should be on social media?
You can find David on his website, and make sure to sign up for his newsletter. He’s got a new free ebook (Following) and also a free course that’s just come out (Starting from Zero).
