Lindsay from 6figureauthors.comOn this week’s show, Andrea, Jo, and Lindsay shared what each of them would do if they were new authors starting from scratch today with the knowledge and experience they’ve gained over their ten-plus-year publishing.
If you write across genres / with different pen names, be careful about telling the other genre readers to not ruin your “also boughts” and ARC early reviews
Try to write a reader magnet that will relate to all the books in the series
Write first three books before releasing — especially useful in sci-fi with extensive worldbuilding
Series of three 65-75k books (maybe on shorter side) — rapid release, 3+ weeks apart (or 1 week then 3 weeks) — then release another set of series with a slightly different look / angle to see what works better
Be sure to pick genre that length works
Research keywords to see what people are looking for
Research tropes of the genre and what people like (focus on what readers like rather than what you like)
Don’t do cliffhanger, but have a throughline mystery / story — maybe plan for six book series
Consider single POV for faster writing
At end of book, ask for review, promote newsletter with freebie
Prequel novella — free via newsletter — book funnel
Six-email automation series: freebie, followup to make sure they got it, invite to Facebook group, let them know about next book, ask for a review, invite to ARC team, could have preview chapter for next book
Website – page for each book with a sample chapter
Worth hiring editors — early books maybe do light editing to save money — spend a lot of time getting the story and writing in a good place
Website and newsletter most important marketing pieces when first starting out, could focus on those before social media
Advertising really important now, Amazon really competitive
Pricing strategies: Permafree tie-in story after three books? Permafree first book and two at full price ($3.99 probably for 80k book)? 99c first book, full price next books? 99c current release, full price other books in the series?
Just because you do rapid release doesn’t mean you’ll instantly have success