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.
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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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