Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.
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Mindy: We're here with Nicholas Erik, who offers all kinds of different marketing guides, resources, coaching, and consulting for self-published authors. Today we're going to focus a lot on marketing in particular because that is something that a lot of self-published authors and indie authors really struggle with. So, thank you so much for being here today.
Nicholas: Thank you for having me, Mindy. It's great to be here.
Mindy: When we're talking about self-publishing/indie publishing... Because you do offer general advice. For authors in general, you talk about marketing and blurbs, but all kinds of different arenas. I want to focus on marketing because I do think that that is something that a lot of writers struggle with. Most of us have wandered into this arena because of our creative capabilities and our creative interests, and a lot of the time those aren't necessarily translating into any sort of skill or knowledge of marketing. And also, marketing doesn't just mean social media. What do you think are the top things that self-published or indie authors absolutely must have in order to achieve any degree of success?
Nicholas: I think you need a good book, a marketable book. Something that's in an established genre really helps. Writing in a series helps quite a bit because then you can sell people more than one book. It's a lot easier to sell people book two in the series than a completely new book. And then I'd say, really, the only thing that you absolutely have to have to have is a mailing list. You want a direct communication conduit with your fan base and readership. While you can contact them via other means, like social media, the ground there is constantly changing and you don't own it. So five years from now, ten years from now, the rules could be completely different since you're playing on someone else's turf, and the newsletter is something that you own and is going to be around in 5 to 10 years.
Mindy: I am someone that initially at the beginning of social media was really sold on it. I thought it was wonderful, but social media has changed so much. You were talking about how it isn't necessarily stable ground because you don't own those subscribers. You don't own those likes. If Facebook disappears, you're not going to recover those 10,000 followers for your page because that's not information that you had. It was all linked into that particular platform. And when you have an email list, you have a direct line, as you were saying, of communication with people that have voluntarily said, "Yes. I would like to hear from you." So that is not only something that you will be able to use in perpetuity, but it is also something where it wasn't just a random... "Oh, that's... That's mildly amusing. I'll like that. I'll follow that." These people invited you in. They said, "Here's my email. I want you to email me." Which is a pretty big step and very much more, much more personal, I think, with the email marketing.
Now, you were talking about social media also, as we said, not being terribly stable. This is the truth. Obviously, we've watched Twitter completely fall apart. TikTok may or may not end up banned in the United States. We just... You don't know. And that is why the mailing list is so important. So when we're talking then about marketing in general, one of the things that you offer are a bunch of crash courses for authors generally talking about marketing. And one of the things that you talk about is getting legitimate Amazon reviews for your book. So if you could talk a little bit about the importance of those, particularly on Amazon. Love it or hate it, Amazon is the major retailer that you have to be able to function well with as an author, whether you're trad or self-pub. And something that I had always heard, and I've heard it refuted, and then I've heard it repeated again, is that if you want Amazon to pick you up in their algorithm of books that are recommended - "customers also bought books like this"... If you want your book to show up there, you have to have at least 50 reviews on Amazon. I've heard that stated. I've heard it refuted. But if you could talk, in general, about the importance of those Amazon reviews, that would be fantastic.
Nicholas: The 50 review thing is definitely a myth. There's no set point where Amazon starts recommending your book. I would say that the reviews don't factor directly into the algorithm very much, if at all. It's hard to say because Amazon doesn't publish the entire workings of the algorithm for obvious reasons since it's a trade secret. But I don't think that the reviews have a direct impact in that if you have 3,000 reviews or ratings, it's going to result in your book being recommended. It's just more that if someone hits the page when a book has 3,000 reviews and the star rating is 4.4, 4.5, or there are some really positive reviews that persuade them to pick up the book, then it might help your conversion rate, which is the percentage of people who hit the Amazon page who end up buying.
So I think it's more of an indirect effect there on the algorithms where if you're selling more books from the traffic that you're directing to the page, whether that's from your newsletter, or TikTok, or Facebook ads, or wherever it's coming from, then you have a better shot at getting the algorithms in your corner. I wouldn't worry too much about reviews at this point because Amazon has introduced ratings and that means that people can rate the book without leaving a review. And that's going to be counted toward your overall rating score there at the top of the page that people will see when they hit the Amazon page. That means that the emphasis on reviews, even compared to 3 or 4 years ago, just it's not as important. If anybody is trying to get reviews, then probably the best way is just to ask in the back of the book right after the end. You can ask people to rate or review the book, and that's going to increase the number of people doing so. I think that there are more valuable uses of that back matter real estate where I usually try to sell the next book in the series and also get people to sign up for the newsletter right after the end. But you can certainly put a review request there if that is a primary focus. But they're not super important at this point because people can leave the rating without the review now.
Mindy: And you brought up the algorithm, of course, that is the major factor that everyone is always trying to... Used different little pieces of data to try to figure out how to manipulate the algorithm. In general, I find that to be a very fruitless prospect. As you said, Amazon is not about to share their information with the rest of us. As a person that is just not as interested, this is why I am not a great indie or self-pub author. I'm a trad author. I do not want to crunch numbers. I do not want to sit down with data. I do not want to put that practical and, I guess really honestly applicable, side of my brain to work when it comes to the industry. I really would prefer just to write. And, of course, we all would. We all want that. But if you want to be a successful indie or self-published author, you really do have to apply yourself in that direction. So, what are some tips that you have for good jumping in points? Or maybe some easier elements that self-pub authors can gather some data or things to watch? What are some really first steps the authors can take to help sell their book? Whether it's ads or promotion, marketing, and publicity.
Nicholas: I think the easiest way to probably jump into paid advertising is to use promo sites which are newsletters where you can book a spot in your genre for whatever it costs, and then they give you an ad slot in their email newsletter on the specified day. The most famous of these is BookBub. And of course BookBub is very competitive and difficult to get. It's worth submitting your book for because it can sell a lot of books if you get one. But there are a number of other options there, like Free and Bargain Booksy. Robin Reads. A number of additional options. All that you have to do is fill out a form and if you're accepted, pay the invoice and then you're ready to go. So that's a good stepping stone to more advanced marketing or more involved marketing there. And it can still be an important element overall of your marketing mix even as you become more advanced. Another thing that you can do when you're starting out is join email cross promotions on platforms like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin.
Getting those initial subscribers can be a real grind, and you can be sitting there with one subscriber, two subscribers... You know, you and your friend or whoever else has signed up for a long time. If you're just waiting for people to join from the back of your book or maybe it's before you're even releasing the book, those services are a way that you can jump in and start building your email newsletter, and then start sending out email newsletters to a bigger list and start practicing you're writing there. What resonates with readers in your genre? So I think that those two things, if you're just starting out, are inexpensive ways to get started with the marketing. Otherwise, I would invest money into a professional cover. That's going to make a big difference in how well your book sells. And also spend some time with the blurb, which is the book description. Those are the two main elements that are going to convince people to buy the book when they hit the page. And if those aren't hitting the mark, then people aren't going to buy the book. So study the best selling books in your subgenre there. All that you have to do is Google "Kindle Top 100" and your subgenre. If you write thrillers, then "Kindle top 100 thrillers" and take a look at some of the blurbs, the covers, and try to reverse engineer what's going on and why those books are successful so you can take those principles for your own book in the genre.
Mindy: Yeah, cover in particular is the absolute must do correctly. That is how you're presenting your book to the world. And we all, of course, know that you shouldn't judge a book by the cover, but that's exactly what we do. And that is how we make decisions. Even in a traditional bookstore, like Barnes and Noble, when you're browsing the bookshelf, the thing that you're looking for the most is the cover. I know that cover designers put so much work into not only what the cover looks like, but also what the spine will look like because so few covers get to be front facing, which means that the actual cover is out on the bookshelf at a bookstore. The spine actually is incredibly important when we're talking about print books, because more likely than not, you're not going to be front facing on that bookshelf.
When it comes to eBooks and Kindle books, I have heard, and definitely correct me if I'm wrong, that you need to think particularly about how that cover is going to present itself as a thumbnail, not just as your single cover standing alone on its own home page or its own item listing on Amazon. Because you've got to get them to click over there first and you've got to get them to look at your cover among 40 or 50 or however many returns that you get in a list of covers. And so that's something that I've been told in the indie and self-pub world is that it's very important that the thumbnail of your cover be eye catching as well.
Nicholas: Yeah, you definitely need it to be legible and something that stands out at a small size because that's usually all the real estate you're going to get on Amazon. If it's on a bestseller list or if it's recommended in an email or if you're running Amazon ads, then your cover is going to be appearing at basically postage stamp size. So it has to clearly convey the genre to an interested reader and catch their attention probably in under a second, and that's if we're being generous. Probably more like half a second. It really has to be able to illustrate those key elements and stand out as a book that they would be interested in reading as a reader of that genre. So having an on genre cover is really key. Sometimes people make the mistake of going too far into left field and being clever or depicting a scene from their book or something abstract that doesn't really hit the genre elements. This is something where you want to be very clear about what the book is and what the book is not. Because if you're using the wrong cover, it's like packaging a bunch of starbursts in a Snickers wrapper. It doesn't serve any sort of purpose for either you as the author, you're going to sell fewer books, but also the reader who thought that they were getting something else is going to be unsatisfied with their purchase. So you want to be very clear with the packaging. It's not a piece of art. That's a common mistake that people when they're publishing their first book or second book, they tend to make that error, and it's just strictly a packaging and marketing aspect. You have to convey the genre immediately. Otherwise people are going to scroll by and click on something else that catches their attention.
Mindy: You mentioned too people making the mistake of wanting to illustrate possibly a specific scene in their book, or sometimes they've got an idea in their head of what they want their cover to look like that is perhaps like emotionally tied to something in the book. And that, as you said, isn't necessarily the best thing. Even though you, as the author, may have an attachment to wanting a certain thing, you have to think of your cover as the first marketing tool that you have. And it has to do work not just, as you said, be a piece of art that resonates with you as the writer.
Nicholas: Yeah, exactly. And to be clear, there are many cover artists that are extraordinarily talented and their work is amazing. So it can be artistically appealing while hitting the correct marketing checkboxes. But people reverse the order. It has to first be hitting those marketing check boxes. And then it can be a piece of appealing art. If you reverse those and don't hit the marketing aspects, then you're going to get a very expensive piece of art that does not sell any books, which most people don't want.
Mindy: Talking about sites, promo sites, that you can use. You mentioned BookBub, which is the holy grail of promo sites that you as an author would absolutely love to get a spot on. I know the self-pub side of my world under my pen name... We have been lucky enough to get a BookBub twice for different series, and it really does make an amazing difference. That is the most effective thing that we have ever used, and the tail on it is very long. If you're promoting a series and you're using the first, generally those Bookbub readers are very, very dedicated readers, and if you can hook them with your first in a series, you mentioned before the importance of a series. If you can hook them with the first in your series, a lot of them are going to read through. I mean, obviously not everyone, but those are serious readers. So that BookBub slot is definitely a high market real estate. So do you have any tips for people that are... Because of course, you have to apply. Do you have any tips for how to land those BookBub slots?
Nicholas: The main one is going to be self-evident, but it probably still needs to be said. You have to submit. And the reason that needs to be said is because people give up and get discouraged really quickly. Probably less than 5% of the submissions in the US for BookBub get submitted. It's just extraordinarily competitive, and they have a lot of submissions. It's not a referendum on the quality of your book if you don't get accepted the first time around or the sixth time around. So just whenever you get rejected, make a note on the calendar and then resubmit once you're eligible, and it's really just a volume game. And resubmit the books that are eligible in a rotation. So you could do book one in this series and then book one in your other series. And then if book two can be read alone, then go over to book two and so forth. So the goal ultimately is just to have something in the submission fire at all times. If you don't have a deep backlist, then that's not going to be possible. But the principal there is just submit as often as you can.
One thing you can do is that if you submit at $0.99 and get rejected, you can actually resubmit that same book immediately at free. You don't have to wait the four weeks between submissions and that effectively doubles your submissions there. The free BookBubs, in my experience, are actually more powerful than the paid ones. That's going to vary based on the book and how long your series is. If you have a very short series, then it might not be worth giving away the book for free. If you have, say, two books in the series, there aren't a ton of things for people to buy after they grab the first one for free. So you might want to wait on that a bit. If you have a short series or if you have a standalone, probably doesn't make sense to give it away for free unless you're just trying to build up your readership. But that's a way to again effectively double your overall submissions. BookBub really likes box sets. If you have three books in the series, then you can box up the first three and submit that. Or you could do books one through five. Or the complete series. And if you offer that to BookBub for $0.99, then that can be a good way to get accepted for a series where the individual books may have been rejected in the past.
Finally, they like wide books. Meaning books that are available on all retailers, not just Amazon. So you have Amazon, and then Apple Books, and Google Play, et cetera. If you have a book that's wide, then that is going to increase your chances of acceptance. So if you've had a Kindle Unlimited exclusive book get rejected a number of times then trying it again when that book is wide can result in it being accepted. That being said, there are plenty of Kindle Unlimited books that get BookBubs, and I have gotten a number of BookBubs, both for myself and for clients that I've worked with, for Kindle Unlimited exclusive books. So it's not mandatory by any means, but it does help. The main thing is just submitting. I see people disqualify themselves by just not submitting and giving up. It only takes a couple minutes a month, and the upside is tremendous. It's one of the highest leverage things you can put on your marketing calendar and do. So there's really no reason not to throw some submissions into the BookBub ring every month, and by actually submitting the books, then you're going to massively increase your chances of actually getting one.
Mindy: Very true. You cannot be selected if you don't throw your hat in the ring. One of the many things that you offer from your website, which is Nicholas Erik dot com, and that is Erik - E-R-I-K... You offer a lot of different courses for authors. If you could just give a brief overview of some of the courses that you offer and how they can benefit writers.
Nicholas: Yeah, I offer courses on a wide variety of subjects. I would say for someone just starting out or as a good general resource, I would check out the book, The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing. It's very comprehensive, and it's going to lay the foundation for probably 80-90% of the marketing stuff that you need to know. It doesn't dive into ad platforms specifically, but the evergreen skills that are still going to be useful and applicable five, ten years from now. That's what that book really focuses on. I have a course that I run with a six figure or seven figure romance author named Lee Savino. People seem to really like that one. It's called Six-Figure Author Strategy, and it's where you distill your entire marketing plan for the year into one page. And that forces you to think through what exactly you want to do and cut down on all the things that you can do into what's going to move the needle, and also organizes everything there for quick reference. Just because in the middle of a book launch or the middle of the year, it's easy for things to go off track or just feel overwhelming, and having that North Star is helpful. So those are probably the two places that I would start if you're just checking out my stuff. But there are a number of other courses as well.
Mindy: The Six-Figure Author course I know multiple people that have taken that and found it to be extremely helpful. Even if you're just a beginner and the idea of setting up your marketing for an entire year sounds really daunting, I know that the course does a great job of breaking it down. And like you said, having that North Star, as you put it, is a wonderful way to keep yourself on track when you get overwhelmed. Because I know as someone that has downtime in certain times of the year and then is working frenetically at other times of the year, it can be really hard to make sure that you're consistently putting something towards the marketing aspect. So having that all set up for yourself ahead of time is absolutely invaluable. Last thing, we mentioned your website, which is Nicholas Erik dot com. I will spell it again so that everybody can get that right. It's N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S E-R-I-K dot com. Is there anywhere else that people can find you online and be exposed to your stuff?
Nicholas: That's pretty much it. If you want to check out the book marketing newsletter that's free, you can join that on the website, and I don't have a set cadence. Sometimes it's weekly, most of the time it is not, and just gets sent out as inspiration strikes. But you can join that on the website. Otherwise, no social media or anything like that for the non-fiction stuff at this point. Just focused on the newsletter and building that since it'll be around in 5 to 10 years.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.
