Hello! I’ve created this private page for the Women in Publishing Summit to give other authors insight into how to build an income from publishing. At the bottom of this page are links that you can use to connect with me, and there is also a choice of two books that you can download for free by signing up for my newsletter.
GIVEAWAYS:
Let it be said that the only reason I’m making the NL sign-up part of the process is not because I want a bunch of people on my newsletter list who are not interested in Regency, but rather to make sure the download codes are not given away to people outside the Summit. I truly don’t mind if you sign up and collect your free book then unsubscribe from my NL. Oh – and you’ll also get a free Regency novella (really short) by signing up. So you can collect that and unsubscribe if this is not in your reading genre. We all get too many emails as it is, and I would rather have an unsubscribe than have my emails sent to spam.
And it need not be said that of course I invite you to stay if you do like the emails and if you like Regency. I’m happy to have you in my NL circle.
The two giveaway books are outside of my main area of publishing, which is clean Regency romance. The Regency books are all currently in Kindle Unlimited and I am unable to give away free copies. Instead, I have a link to a sweet contemporary romance set in France, A Sweetheart in Paris, and a separate one to my memoir, Stars Upside Down. I hope you enjoy reading them.
Now … down to business.
1st FIND YOUR NICHE – you need to discover what readers want to read (what’s hot) and what you love to write. That’s your niche. Focus on that. Then …
MATCH READER EXPECTATIONS
What is that? Well, paying attention to things like:
Word count (around 65,000 words for contemporary romance, 100,000 for historical romance, around 85,000 for memoir – you can find exact ranges online).
World building – a Regency novelist needs to have a strong understanding of the rules, dialogue, clothing, people, and events of the time – but that is the same for any genre. Your readers will be happy if you create a good story and respect all those elements.
Follow rules – for example, a romance must have a happy ending and it falls apart if you remove the relationship between the hero and the heroine. Otherwise it’s just a story with romantic elements. Clean romance must not contain swearing or sexual elements. Know the rules of your genre and respect them if you want the readers to keep coming back.
Cover must look like other best-selling covers in the genre.
Blurb should be catchy and short to let reader know what they’ll get – seek advice because these are hard to write.
FOR THOSE STARTING OUT IN PUBLISHING
If you don’t have one already, start a FB and Instagram account, and begin a newsletter. (I recommend Mailerlite). If you’re ambitious and extraverted, get on TikTok (I’m told this is an upcoming book-selling platform).
Join FB author groups in your genre and interact there. Find your tribe.
Join a FB group to swap NL shares with other authors. You can share their book on your newsletter before you even publish to satisfy your readers and build relationships with other authors. If you happen to write clean romance, you can find a NL swap group here. If you write historical clean romance, there’s one here.
Write a reader magnet. This is a short story, novella, or novel that you give away for free in exchange for people signing up for your NL. You can participate in this sort of NL-building promotions in BookFunnel and StoryOrigin. As it stands, BookFunnel is a paid account to collect reader email addresses and StoryOrigin is free. They both have different strengths, so check them out! I also sell my reader magnet novella for .99 on both Amazon and on all the other platforms using Draft2Digital so it serves double duty. I earn a few cents on each sale (which is several per day), and it gets my new readers by offering something in exchange for a sign-up.
Build a solid ARC team who are fans of your books and who want to get them in advance in exchange for leaving a review on launch date. I have a group in my Newsletter specifically for ARC copies and a separate group for advance audiobook reviews.
Start a simple website so people can find you. You can get a paid fancy one later on.
And don’t be afraid to:
Put yourself out there, even if it’s not perfect
redo a book or cover that doesn’t work
recognise the need to improve your craft
carry on despite negative reviews
FOR THOSE ALREADY ON A PUBLISHING ROLL
Plan your publishing schedule to increase the amount of books you can put out to satisfy readers who want more.
Don’t let the quality slip. I write faster (3 books a year), but I still have at least 4 critiques partners for each book, in addition to a developmental editor and a line editor. I have about 40 ARC readers who help catch any smaller typo that slipped through.
One idea for successful publishing is to do a rapid release, which means waiting until you have 2 books written and you’re starting on the third in a series before you publish the first. Publish at a rate of 2 months in between those books. Even better – write a novella for your NL. Publish that on Amazon, then publish your first book two months later, your second (already written) book 2 months after that. And during all this time work on your next book. Have long pre-orders and put them in the back of each book so readers can purchase the next book.
A separate, unrelated idea is to do a slow launch. This doesn’t have to do with how fast you publish your books, but rather how to promote the ones that just release. Put your book out, and don’t start actively promoting it until the end of the first week so you don’t have one day with a bunch of sales then nothing. This is also so the first ones to purchase it are the ones that read your genre – not your Aunt Sally on FB who prefers cozy mysteries (when you write historical romance). You want to make sure the “also-boughs” match the genre you’re targeting.
Write a series so your readers are happy and can follow the lives of the characters they’ve come to love.
And just one last FYI. Many authors make the bulk of their income from KU page reads so they are exclusive to Amazon. You’ll need to weigh the value of earning significantly more money right from the start or building more slowly on a wide platform (and not putting all your eggs in one basket). I earn about 80% of my income from KU. One day, I plan to take some of my older books out of KU and put them wide at that point.
THEN WHAT?
Well, you’ve got a book or two out and you want to start building a more successful career. Get on Instagram and be yourself – post about your life in addition to your books. Find bookstagrammers who love the niche in which you write and ask if they would be willing to review your books. Offer some print books in addition to the ebooks since their platform is creating pretty pictures of books. Instagram is really great for this. I think it’s the best platform so far.
Create a FB reader group so you can hang out with your fans.
Create a joint author-reader fan group in your genre so you can help promote each other and find new readers
Start Amazon ads. Bryan Cohen does basic free ad courses from time to time. Also, Publisher’s Rocket is an amazing tool to help you get the keywords you need, but the owner also gives free advice on how to get them without spending any money right here.
You’ll get lots of advice about ads on YouTube, but there are also author groups on FB you should know about that help with this and other things. 20Booksto50k and The Writing Gals. There’s also the Writing Gals Critique Group for advice on blurbs and beta reading. FB ads and Bookbub ads are still good, but more difficult so don’t start with those. Check out David Gaughran for advice on ads and more.
Promote .99 books and free books, especially first in the series. The best sites I know of to promote are:
Bookbub (very hard to get, and expensive – worth it if you are promoting the first in a series)
The Fussy Librarian (this one is hit or miss)
My Book Cave and Faithful Reads and Clean Wholesome Romance are good but better in certain genres (like clean historical romance or clean contemporary romance). This last one does a lot of other things besides book promotion for samples and freebies.
And that’s it! You can do it!
Here’s how to find me :
Audiobooks (also available on all platforms with 3 more audiobooks coming soon)
My blog (not so active anymore but lots of archives and it’s how I started writing)
Collective groups for readers with other authors in my niche of clean historical romance:
Clean Historical Romance Audiobooks
GIVEAWAYS : click on the book cover to get your copy
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