Lindsay - December 5, 2019Today, we interview Evan Gow, the founder of StoryOrigin, an author service that facilitates delivering ebooks, organizing group promotions and newsletter swaps, and managing ARC teams. StoryOrigin is growing quickly, and during the show, we ask Evan for some best promo practices based on what he sees authors doing. In particular, we wanted to talk about list-building and getting more people checking out your books without spending a fortune on advertising.
Here are some of the topics we covered:
- How free is still working for a lot of authors as a way to start to build an audience and reach new readers.
- What a reader magnet is and how to use a bonus prequel short story or novella to entice people into the rest of your (non-free) series.
- Using multi-author or “group” promotions to tap into the readers of other authors in your genre (when you work together and all promote to your existing newsletter subscribers, you can all reach new readers).
- Ways to find group promotions to participate in (StoryOrigin offers this service, but you can also join genre-specific author Facebook groups).
- How to potentially build an audience before your first book comes out.
- How to get into group promotions when you’re new or your mailing list is small.
- Being mindful of GDPR when trying to acquire new subscribers.
- Putting together themed promotions within your genre (i.e. everyone promotes a holiday short story).
- Whether a reader magnet needs to be exclusive or if you can use a story that’s already for sale for these group promos.
- How frequently you should send newsletters when participating in newsletter swaps (i.e. someone promotes your book to their list and you promote theirs to yours) and what additional content should you have in there.
- Using the promo codes that ACX and Findaway give you to get reviews of your audiobooks.
As of December, 2019, it’s free to sign up to StoryOrigin. Evan will make it a paid service at some point but says it will remain affordable for authors.
If you want to join the Six Figure Authors Facebook group, you can find us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/504063143655523/
I guess I am an odd duck because I will unsubscribe from an author’s email list if they email me more than once a month on a regular basis (occasional extra emails to tell me about a sale or the initial email chain when you first subscribe are exceptions).
I subscribe to numerous authors’ email lists as I read a lot. When I’ve liked a book by the author I usually seek out their website and subscribe to their list if one is available.
Another thing is, I only want to keep reading an author’s newsletter when there is value in the content. Short stories and info about the author’s life, writing process, and what they’re currently working on can be a lot of fun. I don’t want to hear from the author ONLY when they have a new book to sell. But there’s a happy medium and weekly is so NOT it for me.
It’s important to test what works for your readers/subscribers rather than making assumptions based on your tastes. I don’t sign up for ANY authors’ newsletters, because the last thing I want is more email in my box. But that doesn’t mean that other people are the same way.
I know from my own experience that some of my readers love hearing from me. They’ll send back pictures of their pets and kids and tell me what’s going on in their life. I don’t have time to send out weekly emails, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it could work well. 😀
Interesting, I’ve got to see if I can write a short story and see if it helps. This is coming from an Author that did everything wrong but still made the top 100 for all four in my category in the second month after I published them. There is so much push out there to spend your money, that you become pretty skeptical. I spent under $200 on ads, most of it on one campaign via GoodReads and got the shock of my life when the sales went crazy.