SFA 079 – Marketing Paperbacks, Republishing Books, Driving Traffic to a New Series, and Other Questions Answered

For this week’s show, we answered some of the questions you’ve given us in the Six Figure Authors Facebook group. These ranged from how to handle forced breaks, things we can offer newsletter subscribers other than a free story, rapid releasing vs releasing a number of books in a series all at once, republishing books, marketing paperbacks, and more topics that fall under marketing, publishing, and running an author business.

News:

If you catch this episode in time, we’re having our first ever live-streaming question and answer show on YouTube at 6:30 PM PST/9:30 EST February 25th: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=318omzhXZB4

If things go well (AKA people show up, and we don’t totally mess it up), we’ll do another one!

Questions:

John Boyd: Have any of you republished a work? Why? What are the merits and downsides of republishing? I am turning a previously published standalone into the first book of a quartet and am making some serious changes to the story, so I’m wondering if I should republish.
Blake R. Wolfe: I’m currently at the beginning of a series (one book published and one slated for Feb 2021). I’ve set up amazon ads, FB ads, and even taken out a couple for mailing lists. Is there anything else I can do to drive traffic and entice people to start a new fantasy series?
Christopher Donald: If you plan to publish wide and have 3 books saved up (I might have 4 ready to put on preorder by then too), is there a point to rapid releasing or could you just publish all three at once, stagger their pricing, and start pushing book one? Why wait and not push straight to the more mature marketing strategy?
James Mathis: Paperbacks seem to be the red-headed stepchildren of indie publishing now. This month I’ve actually sold as many paperbacks as e-books. Any special tips about marketing paperbacks?
Alexa Kang: What can we offer or give to new subscribers virtually as a welcome gift for on board sequence other than a free story?
K. Vale Nagle: I’m getting ready to start treatment and the doctors are telling me to expect to lose about 4-6 days a week of productivity for the next 3-6 months. Listening through some past episodes, both Andrea and Jo have had gaps in their release schedule (though not really planned). If you’d known those gaps were coming, what would you have done differently?
Scott Thrower: How do you cope with replies to your mailings? I never expected people would actually reply at all — but properly replying to those replies could easily get time consuming.
Melissa Yuan-Innes: What are useful tropes for each genre? I’d love to hear what worked for you!
William Cali: Is it worth the time/energy/money to release a standalone sci-fi book that is not connected with any of my planned series? I’ve been crushing this book during NaNoWriMo and I’m wondering what to do with it after it’s done.
Finn Ambers: If writing a series, should you put the number of the series on the book cover? Or leave it off the cover and just have it in the subtitle? I’m seeing a few best-selling authors (A.G.Riddle) not even put the series name on the book cover. I’m thinking it looks less busy and that is one benefit. What’re the pros and cons? Does it look more ‘professional’ to leave the book number and series title off the cover?
Alexa Kang: How do I work out a good timing for booking an editor? I keep screwing myself. I worry they’ll be booked out if I don’t get on their schedule in advance. But then even giving myself plenty of time to write, I’d run up against my booking deadlines. I did it again with my WIP and I’m just miserable overworking myself to make the schedule. My problem isn’t procrastination either. I can honestly say that since I began my current WIP (and also the past 3 where I ran into the same problem), I worked nonstop. But no matter how much cushy room I felt I’d given myself, something always interferes.

Thank you for listening to the show, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing it. If you have questions for us, you can join our Six Figure Authors Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/504063143655523