Episode 212: How to Market Women's Fiction
In this episode, specially timed for Women's Fiction month in June, we dive into all things book marketing for women's fiction with author, Pamela Kelley.
Pamela is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of women’s fiction, family sagas, and suspense.
She has published both traditionally and indie, and will join us to share insights about how to succeed when marketing Women's Fiction.
About Pamela Kelley
Pamela Kelley is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of women’s fiction, family sagas, and suspense. Readers often describe her books as feel-good reads with people you’d want as friends.
Connect with Pamela:
She lives in a historic seaside town near Cape Cod and just south of Boston. She has always been an avid reader of women’s fiction, romance, mysteries, thrillers and cook books. There’s also a good chance you might get hungry when you read her books as she is a foodie, and occasionally shares a recipe or two.
Resources
Women’s Fiction Writers Association (Pamela, Paulette & Lainey are all members)
Books Mentioned
Pamela Kelley novels on Amazon
Full Disclosure: We are part of the Amazon affiliate program, which means Lainey earns a tiny commission (maybe enough for a coffee) if you buy something after clicking through from a link on this website.
Note: next sections are mostly created by AI for your convenience - so please forgive any typos or inaccuracies!
Transcript
Paulette Stout
Hey everyone, welcome to the Best of Book Marketing Podcast. You can't see us this time, but Lainey and I are sitting together in the same room.
Lainey Cameron
This is huge. So, Paulette and I normally, she's in the Boston area, I'm down in Mexico. Very rare that we get to actually be together, but I'm here for the World Cup, so I'm going to the Scotland game on Friday here in the Boston area. So, super excited, me and like 30,000 other Scots - we're called the Tartan Army, the fans. We have invaded Boston. If anyone hasn't noticed, go watch the videos online - it's super cute. There's 1000s of Scots and kilts dancing around Boston,
Paulette Stout
Yes, and there were news reports yesterday that Boston had run out of beer.
Lainey Cameron
Yes, and at the stadium in Foxborough we beat the volume record for any World Cup match in history, selling singing Flower of Scotland during the kickoff,
Paulette Stout
So we're all there's all these really fun memes around with like us and Scotland, and we're besties now. So, do I feel like so validated that, like, Lainey and I together we were ahead of our time for things. But welcome to the podcast. We have a great guest today. We had Pamela Kelly introduce her when we bring her on camera, but we can start with personal updates. Lainey has just a small bit of news.
Lainey Cameron
I have a huge bit of news. So, here's the thing I shared last month, like less than four weeks ago, that I just started querying. Now, my first book did not find an agent. I was very happy with how it went. I queried 150 odd agents. I had 30 manuscripts, full manuscripts that they read, but nobody picked up that book. In part, it was because it had no comps, and it wasn't about the book or the writing. It went on to win 15 awards. I'm very proud of that book, but it came out with a small publisher. Then I shared that I got my rights back and self-published it last year. So I just started querying again, and I'm happy to take questions if anyone's interested in why I decided to go that path. It was a very thoughtful decision. I'll give you the short version. I took me five years to write this book, and if I'm not going to write a book a year, which would be ideal if I was indie, I feel like I'm going to try and get that advanced for this particular book. If I can, we'll see where it goes in the future. I may go back to indie if it doesn't do well in submission. I may go back to indie, so that it's not nothing is forever, but I started querying agents three weeks ago, and I got an offer six days into querying, which is highly, highly unusual.
Paulette Stout
I'm still getting chills on my back, so I'm such a geek here.
Lainey Cameron
So, just to say that nothing is forever in publishing, you know, this, you know, six years ago I queried, and I got, you know, the regular crickets, followed by a whole lot of no, and this time I got an offer so ridiculously fast, and I gave all the other agents, I only queried 10 agents, I gave them like 10 days, and I think I had six people read my six agents read my full manuscript in 10 days, and I went with the original agent, because I really felt good about how collaborative she is, talked to a number of her writers. It's very important if you're ever going down this path to talk to other authors, and so I guess that's my big, big piece of news.
Paulette Stout
So exciting, I feel like a proud parent. I have nothing to do with Lainey's work, it is all her, but just knowing her and okay, nothing to do it, but I'm so proud. I feel like this is one of those moments we always talk about community, and where you know it, it's so amazing to feel so much joy for something someone else did. So I just, I feel so much joyfully. I feel like I did it myself, and I'm just so excited for her. No wonder you're just so giving, you're in the community, you're just giving, giving, giving, and for you to get is just such a validating that sometimes the world works in the right ways. So,
Lainey Cameron
and it's beginning, and who knows what happens on submission, and nothing is ever guaranteed, etc. But I'm a big believer in celebrate the milestones as they
Paulette Stout
celebrate it, celebrate it. Okay, what's been on you, Paulette? So, life's been alone, lifey for me lately. I had a death in the family of my stepdad, so I was, you know, funeral planning mode, and had a lot of work demands, work travel, and work commitments. So, it's been, it's been a little bit hard to kind of focus on the books up, but now that it's like a few weeks later, and I feel I was having some flu this morning, so I'm going to embrace it. And Lainey's news is very inspiring for all of us who are toiling away at our keyboards to keep going, and good things can happen. So super excited for that, but we don't want to keep our amazing.. Can
Lainey Cameron
we get to our guests, because I'm so excited about Pamela coming on here.
Paulette Stout
Yes, Pamela Kelly is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of women's fiction Family Sagas and Suspense. She has published both traditionally in Indy, and will, and she is here to talk about all things. Is women's fiction? We have a lot of women's fiction fans, obviously being from WWA. Both of us also, it's, you know, women's
Lainey Cameron
women's fiction month, women's
Paulette Stout
fiction month.
Lainey Cameron
So it used to be a day, june 8, and now it's a whole month. And so we thought it was a brilliant time to talk women's fiction during Women's Fiction Month. And if you're not familiar with Women's Fiction Writers Association, we'll put it in the show notes. It's the genre association around the genre that is women's fiction. Both Paulette and I came from that association, know each other originally through that. I believe Pamela is still a member and is one of the most helpful people when people have questions. I love how Pamela is always jumping in to help people. So, and I, for what it's worth, when I teach my marketing class, I use Pamela as an example in my branding part all the freaking time. I think we'll talk more about this, but Pamela is one of those people who has done a brilliant job, like Colette said, of going back and forth between publishing models, but building her own brand that is like above those models, right? Like, we don't let someone else choose what our brand is for us.
Paulette Stout
Yes, and it's a quick aside before we let Pamela speak, I'm sorry. Is that I personally appreciate all the help that Pamela's gift. She has, like, messaged me on Facebook, like, five years ago, and was like, "Your books are too expensive, you really should be like pulling. You know, it was just.. it was so adorable because giving me coaching in the comments, and I always appreciate all your wisdom, so thank you so much. Pamela Kelly, welcome.
Pamela Kelley
Nice to be here. Thanks, guys.
Paulette Stout
Thanks. So, we'll just dive in a little bit with the first question. Um, so writing it, how do you define women's fiction, and why do you like telling these stories?
Pamela Kelley
So, I think I think of women's fiction, that's a huge genre, but I think the general focus of it is just a story where the woman's journey is the focus, sometimes that might include romance, but it's not the main focus, it's going to be a subplot, but even within, I think there was an editor, I forget who, but there was an editor from St. Martin's that had sent my agent, which was so interesting. What she thought was like the nine sub genres of women's fiction, and they were all like, because it's just so vast, you may have get some that have mystery, some that are more literary, some that are almost more like romantic comedies really kind of stretches the gamut,
Lainey Cameron
and do you use the term because it's really interesting, right? Women's fiction is a technically the genre in the publishing world, but there's a bit of a conversation around, like, do readers know what it is? Do you use the term when you're marketing your own work?
Pamela Kelley
I do, because my readers, they know it, like, you know, sometimes I'll call it romantic women's fiction, because there usually is a little bit of romance in my books, but yeah, I call it women's fiction. I think it, I think it's a marketing term that helps readers understand that it's not straight romance, that it's more like, you know, like my books have a lot of family drama, different multi-generational ages, so yeah, I use that all the time.
Paulette Stout
So you've written a lot of different genres, you've obviously written women's fiction, you've written romance, you've written some mysteries. How does marketing women's fiction a little bit different than some of the other genres that you've written?
Pamela Kelley
Sorry, I'm a little bit distracted. There's somebody that keeps knocking on my floor, and I don't really understand why. You mind if I just quick open it?
Paulette Stout
Go for
Lainey Cameron
it. Go for it. This
Paulette Stout
is what live. This is what happens on live media. We're good.
Lainey Cameron
Can we talk about Scotland? No, let's talk about, so what's going on with your writing now? So, what do you.. yeah,
Paulette Stout
I'm excited to be working. I'm running on a Sophic romance, and I'm setting it in my.. where I live now, and I've been living where I live for 20 years. And when I started my first series, it was in New York City, because that's where I was living at the time, and now it'll be nice to be able to take advantage of some of those marketing opportunities that comes from like writing a book that's set in a specific place, obviously that's something you've done a lot, Pam, you know, writing a lot of your Nantucket and Massachusetts-based things, so let's go that back to that question, but I would love to talk to you about setting, it's not one of our prepared questions, right? It might be something that's..
Lainey Cameron
do you.. well, you've done something very smart, that you've got a number of series, right? And I always say to people that series are a great investment for lots of different reasons, but, like, I think that was very deliberate, right? But you've got series, and also that you've got like location-based series, right?
Pamela Kelley
Yeah, so it's kind of interesting. So the nan took it in. I did have hopes that, that I mean, my only hope with that book was that it was going to do well enough that I could write a second book, and that, you know, my intention that it would be part of a series, because I came out of romance where everything is series, so that was kind of my natural evolution there. But it's interesting, as I've written other books that I fully intended to just be standalone books, I've had to turn those into series too, because they're like, we want to know what happens next, so that could be a good thing and a bad thing, because at least with, like, the Nantucket In, when I wrote that book, you know, it was kind of set up that if it did decently it could easily be moved into like a book too, but with the restaurant, which was only meant to be a standalone, you know, when they were like, 'We want something else, I'm like, 'Okay, I don't have anything else. I came up with a sequel idea for it to be set around the Christmas stroll, but that was like a shorter book, and I might eventually do a third book, but I'm like, I, it's harder because I need to come up with an idea that isn't just okay, so now these people are doing this, you know, so it's different with romance, I think, because usually the way the romance series go is each book introduces a new romantic couple, so in women's fiction, you know, like, like my friend Cindy Nichols and Rachel Hannah do this really well with some of their series, because they have, they have like kind of these running threads that go through the whole series, and I think that almost makes it a little bit, you know, kind of almost like a serial, you know. So it makes genuine story. So, yeah, it's a challenge.
Lainey Cameron
Why is it like I always tell my class, actually, series are great, right? Because you pay once to, you know, this sounds kind of commercial, but you pay once to acquire the customer. You invest in getting a reader, right? Whether you do advertising or whatever you're doing to find your readers, it's the same energy to find a reader for one book as to find a reader that reads one book and then gets excited and reads their way through the whole series, right? You spent the same amount of energy, and so that's why series can be really interesting. But do you find that it's easier to market series, or is it different than writing start standalones?
Pamela Kelley
I think it's easier to market series sometimes. It's easier to write them too, because in the sense you do have that built-in world, so you know that's what the readers want. They want to go see their friends again, so it's just coming up, but then something that's a natural evolution. So, what I do with the Nantucket Inn is I usually have a new person come to the inn, and then they have a story that goes along with all the people. So,
Lainey Cameron
and marketing, marketing for women.
Paulette Stout
So, what tactics have you found effective when marketing women's fiction? I know you, you've, you've got some particular things that work for you and some that don't. If you can just run us through a few of those, that'd be great.
Pamela Kelley
Yeah, so I pretty much do the same thing for all the books, starting with the Nantucket In, because what I did for that book worked really well. So I do Amazon ads, starting with that first book, and that was critical to that book taking off the way that it did, because I had the one thing that I think is helpful, you know, talking about comps, I read really widely in this area of women's fiction, so I knew who my comps were, and I did. I kind of had this idea. Well, two things: there weren't any indies in women's fiction, really. When I wrote that book, they weren't in Kindle Unlimited, because a bunch of my friends were like, "Well, how come you're not going in Kindle Unlimited? I'm like, "Well, because that's not where my research tells me that people are buying the books, and it's showing that they were buying them wide, so I'm like, I'm going to do that, so I targeted like Ellen Hildebrand and Nancy Thayer, who wrote similar kinds of books in a similar setting, and then I then I looked at tone and the kind of book, so for me that was like Debbie Maycomer, a similar, because you have to look at even those women's fiction, you still kind of have to look a little bit at like the heat level, and my books are no spice, so Debbie Maycomber made sense, so I had a list of like 10 to 15 very, very relevant authors, and so I did one keyword ad with their names and then two of their books and I did whatever their newest book was, if it was just released or if it was on pre order and about to come out, and then another book of theirs, and so what happened was, and this is where I got lucky, there was definitely a lot of luck with that, because I originally, and this was as good as I am at marketing, this was dumb of me, because originally I planned on releasing that book in December. I think I just hope that I'd be done, that would be ready then, not thinking that wait a minute, it's a beach book, December is not a good time. Fortunately, it wasn't ready, and I waited until that book is 100% ready until I put a preorder up, and I did a really short pre-order. Or, and I think I released it april 19, so I had, like, a two-week reorder, and it just worked really well, because it helped to target the right readers, get the visibility with those readers. So, a lot of times, a ad that you're going to do during a pre-order period won't necessarily generate a ton of sales, but it gets you that visibility, and if you have, you know, it's a marketing, you know, rule that a lot of times people need to see something like seven times before they actually take action, so if they're seeing it, then you know, I always see this with my pre-order ads, the minute that book goes live, the ad improves tremendously, because a lot of people, they just wait for it to go live instead of reordering it. So I do that, and then what I also do is, once it goes live, I add more ads, like so one thing I did, I have a book that just released just about a week ago to last Tuesday, so I went and I checked those ads this morning, and this is what happened to me with the Nantucket In, which was interesting. I start with really small budgets. If you've targeted really well and the book is selling, you're going to, you're going to get a little notification that it's out of budget. So I got that notification, and with the Nantucket in, it totally freaked me out, because I think I had - I was doing $15 a day, and it notified me that it wanted me to jump to fifth to like $50 a day, and I'm like, "My God, no, that's ridiculous, I didn't have the budget for that, so I went up a little bit, and then I just kept inching it up, and it was always profitable, so that's the thing I look at.
Pamela Kelley
So this morning I looked at the ads I have on Nantucket Second Chances, and I had that notification on some of them, but the ads are all profitable, so I went ahead and I said, okay, I just agreed to, you know, whatever it wanted to bump it to, so I do that, and then I usually will add some Facebook ads. I actually haven't done that yet, only because the publisher has some going, but now I'm going to add a Facebook ad. So the whole goal with me, when I have a release, is I want sales to go like that, have a steady increase, so today another thing I do that I do with all my releases, and this has been super effective, is I do a giveaway with my group, and I do a giveaway with my newsletter, and this time all I did was just a hard, the books in hardcover, so I just did a hardcover signed copy, but the way I do it is I stagger it, so I have to email, like when we finish up, I'm probably going to go send this email out to my newsletter list and say okay, and I just randomly will pick somebody, so they know they have to open today's email, and they'll, you know, they'll find out who won, but what I did was, when I sent that email out a couple days ago, I think it was Monday, I said, "Okay, this is my giveaway, and as you guys know, the reason I do one for the newsletter list is because back when I first started doing these, some of these people were complaining, and that they're sad, they're like, "You're doing this giveaway, but we're not on social media, we're not on Facebook, they're not. I'm like, oh, okay. So I do one for them, and I do one for my.. I have a reader Facebook group, and so I told them on Monday, I said, come back one day, you'll find out who won, but also, if you want another chance to win, join my Facebook group, and some of them do. So I have a flurry of people joining my Facebook group, and then the next day, Tuesday morning, I made a post in my Facebook group saying, you guys, I'm doing this giveaway, you know, you'll have another chance if you're on my mailing list, so I'm kind of sending people both places, and the goal with that is I just want to maximize and make sure I'm getting those seven touches. So, what I do, though, in the Facebook group, that is so awesome, is I make my little spiel. I'm like, this is what you're going to win, but I say, you know, it would really help me out. I'd be so grateful if you would click this link. So, I put a post on my Facebook page, not the group, because my group is private. I put a note on my Facebook page, and it has all the links to all the different places where they can buy the book, and I said, if you could click this link and then click share, I said that will help me spread the word, and so a bunch of them have, so that's a really effective thing that I do, so those are the main things. Oh, one thing I've been starting to do, and I've never been super comfortable with video, as I've seen you guys earlier. I don't even tell you.
you, but I'm getting more comfortable, especially with Instagram, so I've been doing little short videos. Um, I am not the most technical person, I could never figure out, like, how to do cap cut and edit videos, but now there's this thing called edits, and for some reason that app I can figure out, and that's easy for me. So, like, yesterday, example, I went down to a signing on the Cape that Mary Kay Andrews was doing, and it's about her book, Road Trip, which is like set on Ireland, which I'm dying to visit, and I wanted to meet her, so I went down there. I met her.
We took a little picture, and then I went, and I had lunch on the way home at Fisherman's View, which is this awesome waterfront restaurant on the Cape Cod Canal, but it's also something that I've mentioned in my books, so then I made this little, you know, I videoed a little shot of the sushi of the crab of the boats going by, and I put it all together in a quick little, maybe like a 15 second reel, and so that's getting a lot of attention. I put that on Instagram, it's just helping get the word out, so it's things like that, but it doesn't take a lot of time, like people are like, oh, marketing takes so long, I set the ads up, and then I didn't even really look at the ads until this morning, and I made those adjustments, so once a week, or every couple of days, I might check, and I'll check keywords, and if there's a keyword that's just not converting, I'll turn that keyword off. So, those are the main things that I do pretty much for every book.
Lainey Cameron
I have a question here for you. You mentioned your Facebook group, so this is a great moment to bring it up and talk a little bit about it. So, this is a reader group. Can you tell us a little bit more about what it is, how it works, how you participate?
Pamela Kelley
Yes,
Paulette Stout
got it started,
Lainey Cameron
yeah, yeah. So it
Pamela Kelley
is one of the best things that I've done, and I was scared to do it. So I've done multi-author groups before. I've been in, like, a big one. I did a little one with two other authors, and we did all the things you're not supposed to do with a Facebook group, meaning we completely neglected it until one of us had a release.
Paulette Stout
I was really curious about how you started your reader group on Facebook, and you know, what have you done to grow it, and how is it playing into your marketing plans?
Pamela Kelley
Okay, so I was terrified. I was so afraid I was gonna start this marketing group, and nobody is going to come, so what I did to kind of work out my courage to do it was I started posting, plus I think I mentioned I had started another one with a few other friends, and we just neglected it. We were doing all the things you're not supposed to do, which is we were never there. We only posted when we had a release, not good. So engagement was horrible, so I started over. What I did was I started posting on my Facebook page every day. I would just post something little, and usually it was just, oh, I just read this book, it's really good, or you know, I just went to this restaurant, or here's a picture of Nantucket, or whatever. It was always something, but it wasn't salesy. I would do a ratio of maybe 90 to 10. I would do like nine posts, and then I might be like, oh, have you picked up my new book yet? Or I'm having a sale, or whatever. So, but I did that just.. I would almost always ask a question, because that helps with engagement. So, I'd be like, I would do at least once a week, I'd be like, so what's everybody reading this week? I'm reading blah blah blah, and then people love to talk about what they're reading, they like to talk about what they're having for lunch, whatever it might be. So I did that for about six months, and I started noticing that I started having more followers on my Facebook page, because I was getting more engagement. Facebook was encouraging, I guess, whatever they do behind the scenes to have people you know join and follow. So then I decided to start the group. So I set up the group, and then I posted on my Facebook page, and I emailed my newsletter list, and I said, you guys, I've started a private Facebook group where we can chat about all things relating to my books, what we're reading, you'll see covers ahead of time, I'll do special giveaways just for the group, you know, I wanted to try to sell the benefit of joining the group, so they were going to get stuff that everybody else wasn't going to see, and it's a private group, so by putting that on my page and my newsletter, I had a lot of people, or like a small amount of people, more than five join beginning, and that's all I cared about, and then what I started doing was I started posting daily in that group, and the way I've always approached my reader group is I just post short things as I think of them. Nothing's ever scheduled ahead. It's I think of them the way I think of what would I share with my friends, you know, things that I find interesting that my friends might find interesting. So, like one thing I will probably go post in my group, because I think it's so cool. I think I mentioned you guys earlier, they're actually filming for a movie here in my hometown right now, so that's the kind of fun thing I would just put a link that shows some pictures. Hey, look what's going on in my hometown. How cool is this? Do any of you guys watch that show, so that gets a little bit of engagement going. So, when I started the group, I was, I made it a point to post every single day, and I would usually do it like first thing in the morning, and it seriously takes like less than five minutes, because I'll just post something quickly, and then I'm on my way, and then I'll check back. Well, I get notifications too on Facebook, so I'd get notification if I get a notification that somebody has commented. I might go take a look, but I usually look like maybe once or twice a day when I'm just in between other things and have a few minutes to kill.
Pamela Kelley
So this Facebook group does not take much time at all. I have no helpers for it. I do have one tip, though. I made my, and this is because I had a friend whose group suddenly got shut down. You know, weird Facebook things happen. I have my sister as an admin, so if something happens and I get booted off Facebook or whatever, I can maybe get in that way. So that's
Lainey Cameron
a really smart tip. Thank you. Yeah, because these things do get closed down.
Pamela Kelley
You just never know. Another tip that I do that's kind of fun, and this is a surprising thing, is I have three questions that I asked when people join the group, and I always ask, just because I'm nosy, and I want to know, how did you hear about the group? And that's how I found out, and this is crazy. Couple years ago, by mistake, when I was making an audio, I left in the back matter on the bottom that said. Hey, join my Facebook group, and that's what I put in all my books. I put a link to the Facebook group, and that helps drive people to the group, so I get a lot of people that way. I didn't think in audio that anybody would pay any attention to back matter, so I never put anything in. I started getting us when I had a new audio release, and I started getting like an unusually high amount of people joining the group, and in my question, they're like, 'audio, just listen to the audio. I'm like, 'Are you kidding me?
Lainey Cameron
So that's interesting. Yeah, people listen to the back matter in your audience. So
Paulette Stout
funny, you just said that, because I just finished reading my audio book this week, and I was having to edit one of the files, because it was a little too long for retail sample. I could probably, even though it's not me, I could probably go record it. Hi, everybody's full at come, you know, whatever. Join me, wherever.
Lainey Cameron
That's a great tip.
Paulette Stout
Add a little file,
Pamela Kelley
so I think I just put one or two things. So I'll say join my Facebook group, or you know, go to my website and give the website address, because you don't want to overwhelm people, but they listen at all. So that was nice. We have a question I'll ask is, you know, what's your favorite book of mine? Because it's just that's always interesting to know, but then the last question I ask is super, I get a lot of good information, and I get mailing list signups, so I say, what other authors do you love to read besides me? Guess what, I use that information for
Paulette Stout
marketing,
Pamela Kelley
I'm on some nosy, but also it helps me know, like, oh, I should maybe be targeting these people with my ads, but then I also say, if you would like to be notified about my next releases, get on my mailing list, just drop your email and I'll add you, so I get people daily that are, you know, saying, 'Sure, add me, and then I just pop them on my, I pop their email on my ad on my mailing list. So that's a great way to get people to join your list. It's really effective.
Lainey Cameron
Sorry, as I said, you've been talking about, you really spend a lot of time on Amazon, not a lot of time. I love that you said earlier that it doesn't take a lot of time, but do Amazon ads, Facebook ads, you've got your group. Is there anything you used to do that you've like tried and realized wasn't worth your time and energy?
Pamela Kelley
Yeah, I used to do newsletter swaps, you know, where you'd mention anywhere from one to three other books that are coming out. I stopped doing that probably five or six years ago because my readers, I wasn't getting good feedback from them, they weren't excited about that, and unless you're doing one person, what I found is, especially if you have varying price points, if you have, say, if you have three people you're mentioning in a newsletter, one is a full price new release, one is a 99 cent sale book, and one is a free book. By mentioning all three of those together, you're basically cannibalizing, and that full price person is getting nothing, because they get the 99 cent or the free. So, I, if I, what I, what I switched was when I was doing them, I would either do all free, all 99 cent, or just new releases, because if that way it's more fair to the people, but what I also found is huge difference when you just have one. If you just mention one, it makes way more of an impact than if you have a couple. So I don't do any swaps anymore, but I do do recommendations now and then, and it's only if it's a book that I really think my readers will love that I've read, or an author whose books I've read and love, and so that I'll mention them that way.
Lainey Cameron
That's really smart.
Paulette Stout
Yeah, I love that. Go ahead.
Lainey Cameron
So I want to ask you about branding, because I think I mentioned earlier that when I teach my class, I give examples of people who do a great job with branding, and I always use you as an example. I think everything from the colors, the fonts, the consistency across all of your different places, whether it's your Facebook or your newsletter or your website, super super consistent. We did an episode on branding, just last month, where we talked about this. Yeah, talk to me about how you got there, because you do it so well. Does it just come easy to you? It
Pamela Kelley
came accidentally. Yeah, so this is kind of interesting. So, with the Nantucket In, I mean, that was like book 30, so it took me a long time to figure this out, but it's just that book is when it clicked for me. What readers liked about my books and what they wanted from me as an author took a long time for me to figure that out, and I figured that out by reading my reviews and just getting feedback from them and the group, and otherwise they basically wanted me to do more I. That same feeling in the next books, so once I really leaned into that and tried to ensure that not that the stories are going to be the same, but that the experience they get from an Nantucket Inn is what they're going to get from me in my next book, and once I did that, so I think I released three books in a row in that series, over, like, you know, a couple months apart, three to four months apart for each one, and then I did a standalone that I did still kind of loosely connect, that's kind of when things just kept going in the right direction, and then I kind of think about that with everything I do, so the feeling that they get from the books is the feeling that I give them in the Facebook group, you know, it's warm, it's chatty and friendly, and that's kind of what I try to do with my social media, so I think I think of branding not so much about the fonts and the colors, although you do want to have consistency there, but I think about it more about the feeling that you're going to get from the books
Lainey Cameron
completely. It's that you said it, the promised experience, right? Like you've got these beautiful.. for anyone who hasn't checked out Pamela's presence, go check it out. You've got these beautiful blues, it's set by the ocean, it feels soft, it feels like you say friendly, chatty, and it comes across in everything, right? When, when you see you online, you are your brand, right? And you are friendly and helpful to everybody in the same way that that same tone, it comes across, and I just, I used you as an example, because brands, to your point, is not a set of colors and fonts, it's an experience, and the colors and fonts just represent,
Pamela Kelley
yeah, and it took me a while to figure that out, like when I was beginning, and I think a lot of authors do this too. You might not really be sure what you want to write, so I was the person that, you know, they say, "Stay in your lane. I'm like, "But I don't want to. I want to write this, I want to write that, and I did. I wrote this and that, and I really noticed that when I jumped around, I noticed my income would do the ups and downs too. It was when I stayed in one lane that I'd see more momentum and I'd see my income grow. So, but I don't think it's a bad thing to jump around when you're trying to figure out what lane you want to be in. But then once you figure that out, it's good to hang out there for a while.
Paulette Stout
I love that. Can we go back to one thing we said earlier in the conversation, because you're talking about the Facebook ads, and I'm just a little curious, because I believe the book you were talking about was traditionally published. Is that right when you were running Facebook ads? Can you talk a little bit about what that experience is for you? Are you doing that on your own on the side, or is that like through the dashboard, or how does that work for you?
Pamela Kelley
Well, it's a little different now. So, my first, I did three books with St. Martin's, and those were full traditional deals. They owned all the rights. I still supplemented that gave me some nice advances, and I took a little bit of that, and I did some Amazon ads still to give those books a good boost and a good runway, and I maybe did like a little tiny bit of Facebook with this situation that I have now with source books. I retained my ebook rights, so I'm indie with ebooks, and they have the print, so I have a lot of ads going, because I just always do with an ebook, and I haven't really yet with the Facebook. I'm probably going to do a little bit there too, but they do a really good job with Facebook, so Amazon is kind of where I feel the most comfortable, so I just want to, this is the timeframe where the book has just come out, where I want to try to see if it can catch some of that lightning and keep colliding up a little bit. Hopefully, it's basically the goal is for it to stick around a bit.
Lainey Cameron
I love it. That makes sense now. So, you've got the ebook, so you're able to get in on the KDP dashboard and do your own ads for the Amazon that we were kind of wondering how you do that if the publisher has the has the books, so
Pamela Kelley
even though you can, as long as it's your name, it doesn't really matter with Amazon ads, because you can still advertise them, so I still had ads going on my St. Martin's books,
Lainey Cameron
I did not know that. Yeah, thanks for teaching us
Pamela Kelley
that. Yeah,
Paulette Stout
so quick question, I'm trying to jump around this, like my thoughts are a little bit scattered today, but going back to your Facebook group, I know that you know there's been some fluctuation in terms of the affection for Facebook over the last many years, especially within, you know, college-educated women that are likely within your target audience, have you seen a fluctuation in terms of your groups, you know, participation or engagement, as, like, people are like, "I'm leaving Facebook" or "I'm leaving, you know, whatever platforms, or
Pamela Kelley
"I really haven't, because my audience tends to skew a. Little bit older, so I don't think they're leaving Facebook to go to TikTok, or I tried, I tried TikTok with them, and they were like, "No, yeah, we're not, we're not going there.
Lainey Cameron
And you talked, you mentioned earlier, white and wanting to go white, and where is your head now on the whole, kind of Kindle Unlimited versus White. Are you still white? Do you do Kindle Unlimited at all?
Pamela Kelley
I'm still wide. I did an experiment, maybe like six months ago, where I took the Nantucket series and I popped it into Kindle Unlimited, and it pretty much did what I expected it to do. So, I calculated, because I'm a geek, but I calculated a while back, you know that the first couple of books in that series are on the shorter side, they're like around 60,000 between 50 and 60,000 words. So I had calculated, given the price points, that I would need to do three times the volume in Kindle Unlimited to equal what I would make just in sales, and I didn't think that was likely, but I'm like, well, I'm going to try it, maybe I'm missing out on all kinds of things. So I put it in, and the first month I saw a little bit of an increase, but then the second and third month it kind of did what I expected, which is that I think, and I'm one of these people too, I buy books, I also have a Kindle Unlimited membership, and I'm always going to look, and if a book is even if a book that I have an offer that I would normally buy the book, if they put something in KU, if it's available in KU, I'm going to grab in KU instead of buying it. I mean, why wouldn't I? And so I saw that shift happening, and I'm like, so the income was the same, but the percentage of sales was getting smaller, and the percentage of KU was getting bigger, and I'm like, at the end of the 90 days, I'm like, I don't think this is benefiting me, so I put them back wide, however, I still experiment. I put, I have a thick.. I have a couple of standalone books in Kindle Unlimited, because they don't.. they're either a different genre, like I have a historical and I have a mystery, and they don't have other books to kind of give them lead through, so they think it from being in Kindle Unlimited.
Lainey Cameron
So it's kind of good as a discovery mechanism if someone is not as familiar and they're finding your work, maybe Kindle Unlimited is a good way for them to find it for the first time, but if they already know who you are and they're coming looking for your work, you're better not being in KU, is that how to read that, or how do you read
Pamela Kelley
it? Not necessarily, I'm not necessarily looking well, maybe I guess, maybe if it's people like me that buy and use Kindle Unlimited, but there's some people that they're only going to read you if you're in Kindle Limited, so I don't necessarily want to be discovered by those people, because they're going to be disappointed because not many of my books are in Kindle,
Paulette Stout
right?
Pamela Kelley
You know,
Paulette Stout
it's all about me in that meter effect, right?
Lainey Cameron
Right, interesting audiobooks.
Paulette Stout
Yeah, so I remember back in the day in our groups, we, you know, I remember I felt like at that point in time you thought it wasn't worth going into audio until like you were kind of earning out on your print and ebooks with the, you know, explosion of audiobook popularity. Is that still your thinking, or or what's your thoughts on, you know, when's the right time to pursue audio for women's fiction authors?
Pamela Kelley
So I'm actually really conservative when it comes to audio. I love audio, it's awesome. I make a lot of money with audio, but it's expensive to get started with audio, and so I caution people that unless you can easily pay for it, if you've got like money to burn, or you're able to generate it from sales of your book, the demand is there, then then it's time to do it. Otherwise, you might well, as an example, so my first venture into audio didn't really know what I was doing, and I would advise, whenever you do go into audio, don't do it on an older book first, do it on your newest release, because that's what's going to have the most demand. You can always add the older books later, but start with whatever's nukes, whatever's new is going to be most likely what they're going to, you're going to do the best with. I didn't do that. I did it on my very first book, which was also permafree at the time. I was thinking my strategy there was that it would be whisper synced, and back then they whisper synced for $1.99 So I was thinking, oh, I'll run a book bub, because back then people would do book bubs, and what would happen was, if you do a free book bub, you'd sell a gazillion whisper sync audios, because people will get the free book and then add the whisper sync,
Paulette Stout
right?
Pamela Kelley
So I used, I put it up through ACX, which is an easy experience. I found a narrator who is fairly inexpensive. Could cost me about $1,000 for this book that was like 50k-ish Problem is, it didn't get whisper synced. ACX wouldn't tell us why, so we could fix it. So, usually, if a book doesn't get whisper synced, it's because more than 10% of it has been changed by the narrator, or there's some kind of technical issue, or whatever. I don't know what it was, because they wouldn't tell us, so they're not great to work with. And then it took years, it didn't earn that money back for years. It wasn't until I released the Nantucket, in which sold at a much, much higher level, and I had people asking for the audio that I'm like, all right, I'm going to try it again. I was also given the advice to do two books at once, because they said if you do audio, people like to binge, so they want to see that you have other books available. So my first women's fiction book wasn't actually The Nantucket Inn, that's just the first one that did really well. My first book was Nanceville Dreams, and that didn't take off, and this is another reason why I did wide, so that one I released in Kindle Unlimited. I had been writing Sweet Romance, and what happened was, and I let all those sweet romance readers know, "Hey, I've got this, I've got this woman's fiction, you guys might love it. So they were excited, they grabbed it. The problem is they didn't read women's fiction really, so the Amazon algorithm never showed that book to women's fiction readers, so it never got beyond the small audience of which was much smaller. Come to find out, I didn't realize how much smaller the sweet romance audience was compared to women's fiction. So, what I did was I took, when I released the Nantucket, in I took National Dreams out of KU, and I put it wide, and I linked to it in the back of the Nantucket Inn, so when people finished the Nantucket Inn, I didn't have another book out yet, I didn't have anything on pre-order yet, but I had Nashville dreams that they could go to, so I had a narrator do both books kind of at the same time, and I put them up at the same time, and that turned out to be a good thing,
Lainey Cameron
and we have two more questions for you, because I know we got to be cautious of your time and our time here, but my first question is, we've got a lot of new, like, of our listeners who are kind of their debuts, their first books coming out, especially in the women's fiction space, if you look back and you kind of say, what advice would I give to me back then, when I was much earlier in my career? Like, what do you normally advise people who are starting out, maybe launching their first women's fiction novel, in terms of like either mistakes to avoid or things to make sure they do?
Pamela Kelley
So I would do exactly what I did with the Nantucket Inn, because when I shifted gears, I was, it was like starting over with the Nantucket Inn, because everything before that was sweet romance, and my one women's fiction that got lost in Kids Unlimited. So, I wouldn't necessarily say they have to start wide. I think Kids Unlimited is fine. There's a lot of women's fiction authors there now. I might even say it might be easier to start there, because it's easy to get noticed, and you get that rankings bump, but I would tell anybody I would do exactly what I did, and I would do a short pre-order, and I would do one Amazon ad where they really figure out who the most relevant authors and the most relevant books are, and I would do that. That's going to be super helpful. I would post on social media, Instagram, Facebook, whatever else they're comfortable with, like I have Pinterest. I still haven't, I don't do enough there. I should do more there. Same thing with TikTok. I tried TikTok, and I just kind of like, maybe I should do something else there, but if they're already on TikTok, or if they're already really active on Pinterest, whatever they are really comfortable with, they should do. So, there's an author that on Instagram, just.. I think this is really encouraging for people. So, she has an audience as a lifestyle influencer, maybe like 80,000 followers on Instagram, or whatever, she just released her first women's fiction book, stunning cover, stunning cover, and I think that's another thing I would say to them, make sure they have a cover, like Paulette, yours are gorgeous. Make sure they have a cover that really gets attention and communicates the genre, and do some advertising. Her book has really done well.
Lainey Cameron
And last question, because we're getting kicked out of our room here. Last question is for those who are not familiar. With your work, and who might be hearing about the Nantucket series, or your new book that came out last week for the first time, like, where should they start? If someone is not familiar with your work, where should they start? What should they read first? Tell us a little bit more,
Pamela Kelley
so they could start with a book that just came out last week, which is Nantucket Second Chances. It's a mother-daughter story. It's about a woman whose marriage implode, she finds out she's pregnant on the same day that her husband asked her for divorce, because he's having an affair with a young receptionist who's also pregnant. They could start with that, that's hardcover. If they wanted to start with soft cover paperback, they could do either the Nantucket Inn, which is the first in the series, or the paperback of the Nantucket Restaurant just came out, and that's my overall top-selling book, and that only has one other book behind it. Sometimes people don't want to read a series of a bunch of books, so depending whatever they're in the mood for, standalone or the Nantucket Restaurant or the Nantucket Inn.
Lainey Cameron
Awesome, and we will put in the show notes all the links to get to your Facebook group, if people would like to join your website, your books. I just want to say huge thank you. This is really helpful. Women's Fiction Month, lots of us are still working it out, and I learned a ton. There are a number of things you said there that I did not know, so thank you. Well, I'll
Pamela Kelley
say one final tip: do large print if you're going to do print anyway, do large print. There's a lot of readings for it.
Lainey Cameron
Interesting, right? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. We owe you for joining
Pamela Kelley
us. Thank you. Bye.