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 a a guest.
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Mindy: We’re here today with Dave Chesson, who has created Kindlepreneur, and just to jump right in. Why don't you go ahead and talk about Kindlepreneur and all the different things that it offers?
Dave: Well, the idea of creating Kindlepreneur came from the fact that when I first started to self-publish, I wasn't exactly the greatest writer out there. And so instead I wanted to take some time to understand the Amazon market. Why does Amazon choose to show one book over another? And if I could understand that, maybe I could better position some of my writing as well as improve my writing. And so as I was doing this, I realized that there was nothing out there that really covered these kind of subject matters, and so I developed Kindlepreneur as a website to help teach self-published authors all the steps to help in getting their book in front of more shoppers on Amazon as well as other markets that are out there as well. But we have a whole bunch of free online tools to help you with writing your book, book description or kind of understanding how many sales other authors are doing and things like that.
Mindy: When people ask me about what avenue they should go after when they want to get published, a lot of people wanna aim for that traditional publishing, but then they get discouraged pretty quickly, the querying process is painful, there's a lot of barriers to entry, and self-publishing can be very, very attractive. But at the same time, I don't know if people quite understand the amount of work that you are launching yourself into.
Dave: Yeah, absolutely. And even still, let's say you do land that publishing contract and you're working with a publisher, a mass majority of them will immediately kinda turn to you and be like, Great, okay, we're gonna help get your book published and now we expect you to do book marketing and here's our expectations. We have a certain amount of books that you need to sell, here's some ideas, go forth and do it. And so even if you're self-published or published, learning marketing is gonna be critical to both sides
Mindy: Absolutely, and I think just looking at the Kindlepreneur website, you have so many different things that you offer that really can help somebody just from the ground up. Writing obviously, but then beyond that formatting, cover design, the actual process of publishing and of course, marketing, each of those can be its own master class.
Dave: When it comes to marketing, there's so many things that one can do, and so I tell authors really just kind of break it off piece by piece. There's that old saying of how do you eat an elephant? Well, one bite at a time.
Mindy: Somebody that wants to start off in self-publishing in particular, what would you say beyond actually writing a book, what is the most key element?
Dave: Well, I hate to say this, but get your book cover really well done. You could write an amazing book and you could be an amazing marketer, but if that book cover looks like something that somebody threw together just doesn't look professional or doesn't fit your genre, everything else is gonna collapse. And so I know we're supposed to say, Well, nobody judges a book by its cover. But in the book marketing world, it's kind of a thing. So be sure to really get that done. Don't skip or cut any corners for that, because it will make all of your other efforts that much better and easier.
Mindy: Yes, literally, everyone does judge a book by its cover. There is no doubt.
Dave: Now, after that, let's say you've got a really good book cover, I could go on and on about some of the strategies and things you keep in mind. But I will say one thing and then we can move on to the next part. When it comes to book covers, and I know authors and artists are gonna hate this, but let me back it up with real facts on this.
Okay, being creative isn't exactly a good idea. Okay, hear me out. When people are shopping for books, they're looking at book covers, not for how cool it looks or how awesome. What they're looking for is, they're trying to find books that represent the kind of book that they want. They associate things. If you take this piece of information, you start searching on Amazon, you'll start to get it, but they're looking for things that represent the kind of book they're looking for. And in the genres, especially in fiction, there is just a certain look for like - a dystopian female lead. There’s just a look to that cover. We all know exactly what that's gonna look like, especially if you read, if you are a SciFi military fan, there’s absolutely a look to those covers as well, and it's not because we're not being creative. What it is, is that it helps the market to be able to see that cover and say, Yep, that there is a sci-fi military book, and then they'll know to engage with it.
When I was working with Orson Scott Card back in the day, he told me this great story, and for those who don't know Orson Scott Card, he wrote the book Enders Game, which got turned into a movie. It’s a Hugo and Nebula award winning book. And he said that when he first signed on to do it, now the Publishing Company came up and showed him a picture of the book cover, and he looked at it and was like... That's terrible. No, that's not even in the book. There's no scene. And they're like, Here's the key - we want people to look at the book cover, and know immediately that this is SciFi military, and then from there, they know what to expect. We get the right people. And I started laughing when he was telling the story, 'cause I was like, You know, that's how I found your book, I was in middle school, I got in trouble with a librarian, she literally said, Dave, I want you to go find a book and you're gonna read it by next week. So I go and I'm literally looking at the spines of books. I saw this really cool spine that showed a tiny spaceship coming out of a big spaceship and going into outer space. I was like, Huh, that looks like Star Wars. So I was like, Sweet. So I took it, I read it, I absolutely loved it. He just starts laughing. He's like, Yeah, I hear that all the time. Apparently, the publisher was right.
So it's really about just being familiar with the genre itself. Don't try to go off on your own, you may confuse people. I've seen people in fantasy decide to use a cartoonist to draw a cartoon image and they’re writing adult fantasy, and that just doesn't work. It immediately makes people think it's a young adult or children's fantasy, and it causes a disconnect. So just use that as a major rule of thumb. The cover isn't supposed to be scene from your book. It definitely should not be out of the ordinary. It needs to fit your genre so that your readers, your type of readers when they come across it, they know it's their type of book.
Mindy: Absolutely. When you were talking about broadcasting exactly what the genre is, I'm thinking about maybe the past two to five years, there's been a real surge in the indie publishing world anyway, for magical Academy books. And you can pick out a magical Academy book from five miles away, because it's like there's a building behind a girl with sparkles on it. The title doesn't even have to be like Shifters Academy or anything like that. It can be anything. This remains true in the triad world as well, and trends After Twilight, we had three years of black covers, and then there was pink in green covers for about a year, and then there was the season of The Big Face, Big face was a big thing for a couple of years, and then it was big dresses. I don't think that is any different. I think that those trends follow, you identify something that's popular and the people are responding to, and then you just... You try to recreate it as far as the packaging goes.
Dave: Trad probably perfected that art years ago, and it's just one of the things where us self-published authors really need to understand. Trad doesn't just sit down with some artists and be like, Okay, great, whatever you want Eh, that looks good. It looks like great art, let's put it... No, no, I mean, it is almost formulaic, and there's a rhyme and a reason to that formula - like you said, the magical school in the back and the girl front and center. She’s probably looking at the viewer. It will even get down to whether they look at the viewer or don't look at the viewer. I've seen certain genres that are like, No, she can't be looking and... Oh yeah, she definitely should be. Oh nope, she should be looking off to the horizon. And it really does get down to that, and you're absolutely right, just like when Twilight came out, dark covers. Another one I'll throw out there too, is the Young Adult dystopian started to do a symbol... Not the character, not anything. Just a symbol.
Mindy: That started with Hunger Games.
Dave: Bingo, exactly. And then all of a sudden... And when you think about that, it's funny for the listeners is - you hear us saying symbols, now you're gonna look at all these books that are very popular in the young adult dystopian, and they're all symbols. They just rode off of that. That's just something that's really important, I would say, is to understand that. Book covers, don't try to be super creative and outside the norm, really understand what your genre is and create that. Because you wanna be associated with the right genre. And just to have one more case study, what we talked about with Enders Game. The publisher learned that the target market - so he wrote as an adult book - they all of a sudden realized that it was super popular with 12 to 14-year-old kids. And because it is such a big book and it's been around for years, they decided to redo the cover, and this time they chose a cartoon drawing of Ender and they put that on there because they said, You know, if most of our readers are actually a young adult, why not create one that fits that to market? And it did extremely well.
20 years later, after the book came out, it then took off again because they had redesigned a cover that fit the actual right target market, and then fast forward again is when the movie came out, they then decided to put a cover image of the movie showing the kids still. So I think it still fits with the young adult, but it also, now is a major motion picture. That's a great justification for the book, and so they utilize that. So just a couple of things to think about with your book covers.
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Dave: I think the next thing that you start building your email list from day one. I think that is the number one step for a career author, because even if you write that first book and it fails, you're still gonna get readers. There will be people who will read and there will be people who will sign up for your mailing list. That person who signs up could be a fan for all of your future books, and you can start to build your platform. I've sat in on publishing companies, the quarterly review, where they will sit and choose which books they're not only going to sign, but which books they're actually gonna put their backing behind. And one of the biggest numbers I've seen that actually influenced people at the table to make a different decision was how large an author's email list was. To publishing companies, they see that as currency. If you have 10000 people on your email list, each one is kind of different, but they equate that to a certain number of automatic sales. Like all you have to do is send a couple of emails and they can expect a certain percentage will absolutely buy your book, which to them means a certain percentage they automatically get in terms of revenue.
So I've seen them look at two books and they actually liked one better than the other, but the other came with an author who had a following, exemplified by their larger email list, and they not only signed the other author over the first one, but they also put more backing behind them in their marketing efforts because they knew that there was more to go with. So whether or not you're trying to build your platform as a self-published author or you're trying to gain more leverage in the negotiations with a publishing company, the email list can be incredible. But again, if you're only doing one book and there's nothing else you're doing beyond that, you just want it done, and don't waste your time with email.
Mindy: So what are some of the best ways to build your email list?
Dave: I really love using a tactic that I call the Kobayashi Maru for all my Trekkie fans, the Kobayashi Maru, just a quick side step on this, is that in Star Trek, we always knew that there was this test that Captain Kirk had to go through. And the test was called Kobayashi Maru. Now, up until recently, we never got to see the Kobayashi Maru. We just knew it existed, but what we really knew was how much it affected Kerk and explained the way he handled things. So there's a little bit of a tricky history for you, but here's why I call it this. Imagine if you were a Star Trek fan and you were watching Star Trek and they said, Hey, would you like to sign up for this email list to actually see the Kobayashi Maru test? Let me tell you what, I would throw an email in there so I could just see the clip of him taking the Kobayashi Maru.
And so I tell fiction authors that the best way to not only get an email subscriber, but to get them to engage with you better and be a much better fan is by creating a short story that fits to the story they just ran. A lot of authors will make this mistake where they'll write some random short story. Personally, it takes me about four or five books before I become a fan of an author, it's about four or five books where I'll just be like, You know what, I like this author so much, I'll just read whatever they write. So I tell people that for that book, you should write a short story that is either a prelude, a post-credit scene or a side story to the book they just read. Because if I just read that book, I'm more likely to want to continue engaging with that story. And it also really builds up post-credit scenes that are super popular now. People will get really jazzed when they can get the post-credit scene.
I also love fiction, writing with a side story in mind. Say for example, you're writing a romance and maybe the other characters keep talking about Mr. X and the date from heck, the horrible date that almost caused her to swear off from men. Now throughout the book, since that's not the important part of the story, it's just a side story that they keep mentioning, it's an inside story, if you will. The characters know all about it, but you don't need to actually say what happened in the most terrible date ever. And then at the end of the book, you offer the short story of the date, and that way everybody who just read through your book kept hearing about it and then when you offer that book, not only are they going to sign up for your email list, they're going to open that first email you send them, which is great for engagement. They're gonna click and then they're actually going to read the thing you sent them. And now that's another engagement that they're closer and closer to actually being a fan of you. So I really love this tactic. I've seen authors immediately quadruple their conversion rate on email sign-ups. I just think it gives you more opportunity to show your capability of writing good stories, so that's one tactic I highly recommend.
Another thing too is author swaps, so as you start to build up your email list, you're probably not writing a book a month. So when you start to build this email list, it's sort of like you get into the situation of like, Well, okay, I don't really have anything to tell them, so do I just not send an email? And if you go six months without ever emailing them, they'll forget about you. The email list goes cold, as they say. So one of the things you can do is go find other authors that write in your genre that are good writers, and email your list about their books, and we call it a swap because you let the author know that you're doing it. And so the idea is when their book comes out, you'll email about it, letting your readers know, and then when your book comes out, that author will email about it, and so this gives kind of an ability for you to provide value to your email subscribers while also building the reach you will have when your next book comes out, because you'll have a couple of authors hopefully emailing about your latest book.
And so this is one way where those people can then read your book and sign up for your emails and you just start building and building and building as well as building more of a network of other authors, and that can really help, especially with your initial launch. You can go from hoping Amazon shows your book to people to having 10, 15 authors blasting out about your book and just building up your initial sales drive, which is excellent for your launch period.
Mindy: A mailing list is something that you do, you have to put some time into and learn how to do them correctly. I was not doing them correctly for the longest time, and I bought Newsletter Ninja by Tammi Labrecque. That book, it just transformed everything about how I did. My open rate went up, grew my subscription rate, my click rate grew, like everything. I am always recommending Newsletter Ninja, I think that is worth its weight in gold.
Dave: Yep, I would 100% recommend anybody who's thinking I should do that, you should get that book, it will teach you a lot, and that way you don't have to learn from a mistake.
Mindy: One other thing that I think is really important and that especially self-published authors or Indie, you have to think about right from the beginning, or at least consider, is whether they want to be strictly with Amazon or if they want to go wide, which means that their books will be available on Google Play, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, all of those different platforms. So how do you recommend people make that decision?
Dave: Let's see how to best answer this...
Mindy: Yeah, it's tough. I know.
Dave: Right now, Amazon is the largest online market significantly. The pros and cons to being on Amazon is, Amazon has programs like Kindle Unlimited. And if you do that, your e-book can only be on Amazon. Amazon tries to do a whole bunch of stuff that sort of makes it so that authors don't go to their competitors. Now that kind of sucks because the truth of the matter is that it is beneficial that we continue to support other markets, so that there's not just one monopoly on it. So from sort of a standard, I try to be wide, just for the sole purpose of not making Amazon be the only one. Also, I would say that the programs like Kindle Unlimited are incredibly important, especially for Fiction, maybe not as much for non-fiction, now I'm generalizing just to make this more simply, I know there's exceptions to the rules, but generally speaking, Kindle Unlimited does way better in fiction books the non-fiction. I would say it's almost insanely way better for romance or things like that, because in the fiction world, you have some avid readers that are voracious in just crushing through books. And so they take advantage of that KU process and they will choose only KU books because, Hey, why pay for this one, when I get this one for free? You make your money based on the number of pages they read, so it doesn't matter if this person does like 10 books a week or whatever, but what just matters is that they read through your book. They actually turn the pages and you get paid off of that.
Amazon likes to show books more often in their store, when they've seen that either sales occur or KU downloads occur. So if your book is not on KU - let's imagine a shopper who is a KU shopper, they type in a keyword phrase in the search box and then they look at the books that you show up. But boy, they're undecided between your book and somebody else's book, except they notice that the other book is on KU and yours is not. They will not only select that book, but Amazon sees that that book converted over yours and they'll start showing it more. So there is a bit of a disadvantage that when you are not KU you're sort of fighting against the ones that chose to and that could hurt. But on the other side of the coin, when you go into other markets that spreads you out There are a lot of people that still use the Nook, they do not want to shop on Amazon. Some people still love Apple books, they wanna read on their iPad, even though they could still put a Kindle book on their iPad, but that’s beside the point. For those that decide that they wanna go wide, I would say 100% do not just throw the book up there wide and then sit back and expect it to do well. You can't do that in Amazon, you can't just take a book put on Amazon to sit back and you succeed.
I would say that if you go wide, there are some things that you should do to help beef up your book’s presence in those other markets. And the people that actually roll up their sleeves just a little bit and put a little effort into the external markets, see a much better return than those that just put it out there .So to recap on it, there are definitely some pros and cons to just sticking with Amazon. There are some pros and cons on going wide. Think about whether or not you’re fiction or non-fiction - that might help you with that decision. But if you do decide to go wide, I highly suggest that you roll up your sleeves a little bit, put some effort into those white markets and you'll see a better ROI for your effort.
Mindy: Absolutely, I can say that we are wide and we started in KU just to understand what was going on, how the program worked, and did well, we made money that way, but it is limiting and that you can't be on other platforms And we would have people say Hey, I only read Nook or I only read on Apple books, and when will this be wide? So we did make that leap into going wide. There's a lot of work, there is a lot of getting down in the weeds and knowing your audience and when to promo and how to promo and do your sales and your price drops. It is a lot of management and a lot of work. Amazon is still by far the retailer that is selling the most of our stuff, even though we are not in KU anymore. But there have been some benefits to going wide and some freedom, and so we were just kind of reaching out and seeing what would happen and just making sure that we weren't missing anything by staying with Amazon completely.
Dave: If you're KU or not KU, that can sometimes affect some of your organic rankings, what you show up, how many times you show up or so, but again, it's like, especially in certain genres or certain subjects, things like that. That's not gonna bust you. I would say if you're in romance, think twice, but I've seen a lot of romance authors really crush it because most romance authors just stay in KU because of that. And then the other romance authors that come off of KU and go wide for their e-books because they're the only ones that did that and they did just minimal effort, they see better results overall in the end. Just as an example, Man, if you get 20 reviews, 25-star reviews, you'll make it on Amazon… Well, that might be just two reviews on Apple books. People are working really hard to get their 20 reviews on Amazon, and it's like Barnes and Noble, you just need two!
Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you and where they can find Kindlepreneur online.
Dave: Yeah, sounds good. Well, you can find me at Kindlepreneur dot com, that's like Kindle, entrepreneur dot com. And there's a contact button on the bottom of that website. So if there's any questions you have from anything we talked about, you can always click that right in your question I'll be sure to answer it.
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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.
