Episode 213: What You've Missed - Season Two Recap!
We've covered so many amazing marketing topics for authors in second season of The Best of Book Marketing Podcast, from Facebook and Amazon ads, to book covers, author branding, and what to do to boost slow book sales.
In this episode, we recap each episode to help you catch-up on topics you might have missed and highlight all the amazing expert guests who joined us live. Use it as your listening menu, then go dive in!
Life Gets Lifey Merch!
If you enjoy our show and appreciate the amazing author advice, please consider supporting us by enjoying our merch!
You know our catch phrase is Life Gets Lifey, and we all know it does! Proceeds help us keep the show free for everyone to enjoy! High-quality stuff with international shipping! 💓
Books Mentioned
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.
Resources
Transcript
Paulette Stout 00:03
Hey everyone! Welcome to the Best of Book Marketing Podcast. We are back. I am Paulette Stout, and Lainey Cameron is up, and we are so excited to talk to you about a recap of season one.
Lainey Cameron 00:19
Yeah, because it's really easy life to miss some of the episodes that might have been the most valuable, and sometimes it's not obvious when you see the title and you think, "Oh, that's not really that relevant to me. So I think probably the one that I think of in that category we're going to talk about all the episodes is the republishing one. The number of people I've come across that have said like, "I'm trying to work this out, and I'm like, you should go watch that episode about republishing when you get your rights back. And they're like, really? And I'm like, trust me, it's it's going to cover what you're talking about. And so I think that one especially close to my heart. Gene did a great job. But we're going to talk about like what have we done in the last year before we kind of charge into our third season here. And I was just saying before we started that I want to give a moment of kudos to us that most podcasts do not make it this far. Most podcasts go under what was the stat we were just looking at? I think it was three episodes. Yeah, three episodes. Like 99% of podcasts don't make it to episode 20. So I mean, goodness! You know, half of them don't make it past episode three or five, and I think Riverside says like 80% of podcasts don't make it past the 10th episode. So go us, go us!
Paulette Stout 01:30
We're fabulous. That's why I say hi to Wendy, who is watching live on YouTube. Thank you for watching, Wendy. Always lovely to see you around.
Lainey Cameron 01:42
Thanks, Wendy. Nice to see you. Okay, so we're gonna kind of dig down, dig back, and go through the episodes and tell you what you might have missed. But before, let's do our standard. What's going on in your life, Paulette?
Paulette Stout 01:57
So I'm deep into drafting the first book in my new Sopic Romance series. I think it'll end up being like two or three books. I'm probably feeling connected. I was struggling with the story. It was my first time writing a completely new universe in like 20 years because my first four books were all in the same book, same settings. A lot of that character world building already established or starting from scratch was like a little bit fits and starts, but definitely flowing. Everything is out. The audiobook is out. New narrator. Everything is great. The reviews of the second edition went up like a whole star from before. So they're like mid fours now versus you know a little bit lower. So I feel like it was the right decision to do that. And then in my free time, I'm spending way too much time on TikTok. Sorry, y'all. I'm one of those girl.
Lainey Cameron 02:46
Okay, we're gonna have to put TikTok in the show notes. Take it a note. Put put that TikTok in the show notes.
Paulette Stout 02:52
TikTok, yes. And I did some audience boosting advertising there, which I thought was kind of interesting, and that did so much better than when I was just trying to boost a post and go online, building my audience, and then having that filter through to the book pieces. I think is like a nice way to go. So I made past some milestones for me in my following, and I'm I'm kind of happy with what's happening there, and hopefully getting more like organic reach. What is going on in your world, Lainey? Nothing exciting, I don't think.
Lainey Cameron 03:25
Well, you're making me think we should think about getting a TikTok expert on. I mean, like you've done so much recently, but like someone who lives and breathes that world who could talk about different things you could do would be a really good topic. Yeah, I know someone we can ask.
Paulette Stout 03:36
I met her at a conference in April, so I could ask. Perfect. I had a yeah I had a TikTok account like an audit done by someone and that person did a really great job for me. That's another person potentially we can ask. Look, look, Beth, Beth in the house, another live listener.
Lainey Cameron 03:56
Okay, so what's going on with my life? Well, I went to the World Cup. Last time you saw us, I was in Boston about to go to the World Cup, which was absolutely fabulous. Just the whole reception for Scotland was just amazing. Loved it. Kilts and bagpipes and traffic cones everywhere, and it actually gave me an idea, which is going to be my third book, which is going to be all around the World Cup in Boston, and the Scots coming to the U.S. for the World Cup, and it's going to have the character going back to Scotland. It's going to be awesome. I'm very excited about it. So once I get through this next phase here, I will be starting to write my first draft of my third book, which was inspired by that experience. And most importantly, I have been totally hibernating while I get my revisions done for my agent on my second book, so I shared that I signed with an agent back in June. Was that June? I think back in May May June timeframe, and got a bunch of edits. Nothing too huge, but small things, some extra scenes, and so I've been working on those edits since I got back from my beautiful World Cup trip, and. I just sent them all off. I feel so relieved. It's done. It's in my agent's hands, and we have our query letter to go out in submission. I have revised comps, so very excited. It's going to be my first time through the submission process, so I'm just going to look at it as a learning, interesting process. I hear it's kind of stressful, but I'm sure it's going to be fine. And let's see. I'm about to travel in another week. I'm off to Scotland for a family wedding, which will be lovely. Maybe my cousins can coach me on how to write a Scottish accent correctly, which is very hard because you can't actually write it in Scots, or nobody would understand anything in the book. And then after that, I'll be getting going on my third book, which I talked about. But also, I'm very excited that they just announced the roster for the San Miguel Writers Conference, which is this 1,500-plus-person conference here in San Miguel de Allende in February each year. It's gorgeous; it's the best time of year to visit. And I'm teaching. I'm teaching a three-hour workshop on building your successful book launch plan on the Saturday. So, if you're working on building your book launch, it's actually a great way to get my expertise for a very reasonable cost because it's part of the conference, and so it's not like getting me one-on-one for three hours, except you are getting me for three hours. So, it's going to be really fun. We're going to actually build a plan for those who are in the workshop. Like, we're going to build book launch plans, and so super, super excited. And I'm also going to be volunteering at the conference. So if you've ever thought about this conference, message me, ask me about it. I can probably answer your questions. I'm also a volunteer who you'll see all over. I'm leading a team of volunteers in charge of the English language workshops. So you'll see me in the tents running around. Hopefully, grace under pressure, keeping it all going. So, and I've got a whole team debating,
Paulette Stout 06:40
debating coming for a few days. We'll see.
Lainey Cameron 06:44
I got a guest room. Put your dibs on my guest room. You got to do it. Okay, so that's what's going on with me. But the most exciting is getting those revisions done, sending it off. I just feel a huge weight off, and I'm just going to enjoy the next stage in the process.
Paulette Stout 07:00
Well, well deserved. It's very exciting. We get to be flies on the wall for Lainey's world, and it's so nice of you to be so open and sharing all the the things. So thanks for that, Lainey. But let's let's pop into the episode reviews because I know everyone's busy, and there might be some episode topics that you want to go back and listen to. So we're going to briefly go through each one, just highlight some of the conversations from those, and you can go back and listen to them wherever you enjoy podcasts on YouTube, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you like to join it. You can go. Yes, I am on vacation. I am in a rental house with two of my best college friends here doing nothing but girl things. So yes, different location. You've got good eyes there, Wendy. So so episodes where
Lainey Cameron 07:52
What state is?
Paulette Stout 07:53
I'm in Connecticut. I'm in the U.S. state of Connecticut near the beach, and we have a pool, and it's super, super awesome. It was funny because last year when I was here, I was working on the second edition of my book. I just gave both of that to my girlfriends because this is the book I was writing only here last year, and here it is. You can hold it, you can read it and stuff. So, yes. So episode 201, going way back to the beginning of season two, we did an episode on Facebook ads, and we had a guest, Heidi McIntyre, on, and she went through and talked through everything about Facebook ads. This is one of the most viewed episodes of our podcast so far. So if you haven't, if you're interested in Facebook ads, this is a good foundation. A lot has changed since last year. You know, I'm not gonna lie, the algorithms. I forget what the new algorithms called, but a lot of it has changed. We're looking into getting a guest in and doing an update. But this is a great foundation episode if you want to go back and kind of get just the foundations of Facebook.
Lainey Cameron 08:50
I think what was really interesting to me. I'll try and add some color. What stuck with me from each episode in that one was like I had learned more. It's all about the targeting. You have to target really precisely and get this right and that right, and it was kind of eye-opening for me in that episode to realize that now because of the AI stuff and that Facebook actually optimizing by itself, you don't have to know all the answers. You can actually let Facebook work a lot of that out for you with your ads, and that was kind of news to me compared to what I had previously understood.
Paulette Stout 09:19
Yeah, and there's a lot of targeting that's going on that's really image-based. So in in the old days, it would be like, what did you set it up? What are your audiences? What are your all the different pieces of advertising on Facebook? And but it really a lot of it now is image driven. So the images and your descriptions and your subheads and all the pieces like all working together, harmony. There's different testing strategies. There's all kinds of different things going on. It's you know I'm I'm good. I've done this before, and it's a little a lot for me. So I've got a might work on that this weekend a little bit to get back into the world of Facebook ads.
Lainey Cameron 09:58
Well, talking of AI. The next episode was our AI episode, AI for authors, and we kind of dove into all of all of how we use AI, how we don't use AI prompting, and how you can use it for blurbs and social posts and marketing plans and book trailers and more. And I realized because I was in a session somewhere else this morning where a lot of authors were saying, "Marley, I don't touch any AI for any reason for any purpose, and that was kind of like the consensus in the room, except for me, who was like the one person saying, "Oh, that's not how I see it. And so, I think this is a really interesting episode because one of the things I'm realizing is authors are afraid to talk about AI because they are afraid of being accused of using generative AI to write their books, especially with all the books recently, that it's been super controversial, and you know the publishers have taken back publishing contracts, etc. It's like four of those in the last year, which terrify me. But I think it's really helpful that episode because we talk very honestly about what we do use AI for, including on the podcast. And I have no shame over where I use AI. I'm happy to share it. I don't use generative AI to write my books. Neither of us do, but I think it is a very interesting thing. And I have been reached out to a ton of times since that episode, asked to go speak at different AI conferences, and I've said no to all of them, except that I'll be doing a panel at the San Miguel conference where I'll be talking about how I do and don't use AI. That's the one I've said yes to. But the reason I said no to a lot of those is I don't want to be known as the AI author.
Paulette Stout 11:23
Yes.
Lainey Cameron 11:23
like I don't want to specialize as being the AI author. I'm happy to share my expertise, but also it's not what I want to be known for. If that makes any sense, and so I've said no to a lot of opportunities after that episode. But that tells you it must have been a good episode because a ton of conferences have reached out to me.
Paulette Stout 11:39
Yeah, and I think it's I think it was a really important episode for authors to listen to because of everything you just said. There are a lot of great, legitimate, ethical ways to use AI. Publishing is notoriously slow when it comes to innovation, and AI is something that we can all be using with confidence, and we don't have to have shame about it. I think there's a little bit of a mob mentality right now, frankly, in the author community of like no AI ever. And to me, that's kind of like I don't want to put a candle on. I'm gonna I'm gonna use candles in my house instead of flipping the light switch. So there are legitimate reasons I want to use a typewriter because computers are the devil. You know, there's. You know, I read an article back, and it was talking about when cars first came out, and it said that people would throw vegetables at the cars, go get a horse. You know, so we, you know, there's are people very uncomfortable around change. But if you are kind of curious about AI and maybe how it can work for you, please go back and listen to episode 202.
Lainey Cameron 12:42
And there was some interesting stuff this week on AI around like well maybe it didn't happen this week. I read it this week around Substack now making pangram. Is it Pangram? It's called Pan Pan Pangram. Yeah, Pangram available on Substack posts where now you can actually click a button and ask Substack or ask Pengram is this post AI authored, which is very interesting, especially because historically AI checks haven't been that reliable. Especially if you write a certain genre, like romance novels were used so much to train the algorithm that often it'll say the romance novels were written by AI because they look like today's AI writing, which was based on trained being trained on romance novels, so I just think it's a very interesting moment right now. There's some interesting stuff happening in AI, and if you want to catch up a little bit with what you can do in the state of the art, that's a good episode.
Paulette Stout 13:31
Yes, and if and be, I would be really hesitant to mob on people that little whispers were coming out because I saw a in a I saw an interview like a little review of some AI chats, and it was like Great Expectations was written by AI. Someone's put their thesis in, and it came out that it was written by AI. Things that were written in the 1800s were coming up that because that's those that's what was trained on. So that's so it's like you can't. Please don't be so quick to judge. That's all I want to say. I honestly
Lainey Cameron 14:08
don't know these publishers who have dropped and it's now like four authors who had big advances. How the heck they think they know that it was written by AI? Like I honestly don't know how they could actually know that with confidence because the New York Times did this really interesting piece like six months ago, where they had six pieces of fiction, and for each one, it was different genres. One was AI, and one wasn't. I got half of them wrong. Like half of them, I thought were AI that weren't, and vice versa. So I just this mob mentality it scares the hell out of me because I think a lot of the time it's wrong. So
Paulette Stout 14:39
it's wrong, and I bet you that some of those people who have the contracts canceled will have their day in court and will be their names will be cleared because this is just so it's so wrong. I have I write content on a daily basis for a corporation and I know what it can do, what it can't do. I'm building agents. I'm in it all the time. It it isn't as foolproof as people try to. Something that can also not be foolproof is Amazon ads. Episode 203, we had a expert of experts on Janet Margot, who used to work at Amazon. So she was a great, great guest to talk about like the ins and outs of Amazon advertising. I can't remember. Have you done advertising? Did you have done? Yeah, no, I haven't. I
Lainey Cameron 15:21
haven't. I haven't been able to make it. It's funny. Sometimes I tell my students something and then I go test it myself just for the sheer heck of it. And I tell my students that with one book it's going to be really hard to economically make Amazon ads work. Yeah. And then I went and tried it just for myself to prove myself correct. And it turned out yes, it's very hard with one book to make it make sense economically. But I learned a ton in the process. I learned a ton from this episode. I learned a ton from testing about what didn't didn't work for me. So I feel like I've gotten a good base of understanding, but I don't have enough in my kit bag as an author for it to make sense for me to seriously invest it.
Paulette Stout 15:53
Yep, yep. And I think that one of the big things that came out of that episode was that Amazon Ads is a companion tactic to something else. You shouldn't just do it by itself, expecting it to sell books. You need to be using it in conjunction with something that you're using to drive traffic to your sales page. So whether that's Facebook ads, you know, BookBub, something, you know, some place, some other ads, someplace else that's driving traffic because that factors into whether Amazon will promote your book or not. So you need to have some external push traffic to get the algorithm to kind of work a little bit more. And I think that's something that isn't as clear for folks, and definitely wasn't as clear for me before that episode.
Lainey Cameron 16:35
Yeah, I also like the phrase that I think it was in that episode that we talked about about Amazon ads being an accelerant, right? Like, like if you've already got your base right and it's working, then they can accelerate your progress. But if your base isn't right, you're accelerating nothing. So I thought that was an interesting.
Paulette Stout 16:51
Zero times zero is zero.
Lainey Cameron 16:53
Talking of which, we actually get into that in one of our episodes that we'll talk about how what to do when your books aren't selling, which is exactly that. So okay, let's go to the next one. Book cover design. This was so popular. This might be our most popular episode yet in terms of the number of people who watched it and downloaded it, etc. Demanza, who we've both used for our book cover design, and I loved how Damon kind of went through the basics, and it was a very simple kind of step by step, how he thinks about it. One tip I'll give you in general across these episodes is if you're not on our Substack, the best way to get a sense of whether an episode is going to be worth your time to listen to, go to the Substack, read the Substack article, and if you go, oh, I didn't know some of that, then you should definitely listen to the hour-long episode. And I think this was the case with this one, that we did a really good Substack post that kind of gave you a short synthesis. But there's so much more in the episode if you listen to the full episode.
Paulette Stout 17:46
There's so much more, and I think that there's I think there's a lot of good tips in there because a lot of people are working. You know, whether you're you know self-published or small press or traditionally published, you know, you're going to be having some interface with cover designers, and I think there's just some really good information in that episode about, you know, what to put. What's the purpose of a book cover? Like, what are you trying to achieve? Is it supposed to show every single thing that happened in the book? And it's like the answer is no. So I think there's things to know about color, genre fit, you know, typography, all kinds of things. So definitely go back and listen to that. You know, even if you're not in the market for a book cover right now, it's good things to keep in mind as you're you know preparing your marketing strategy for future books.
Lainey Cameron 18:30
And I don't know if it's because we put them on our podcast, but Demanza blew up and like we're backlogged and we're like barely accepting clients a few months later. So oh, for real?
Lainey Cameron 18:40
Yeah, they are taking new clients, but I know they got really backlogged and were actually like had a huge influx of new people interested in their business.
Paulette Stout 18:46
Yeah, it's so interesting, and thank you to everyone who listens to the show because we've heard that from many of our guests. I know Heidi got get. I know Heidi did. I know you know lots of people. I know Jesse for sure. Jesse, I'm from Bookbourg Magic. People buy our audience buys. So if you are interested and be a guest, let us know.
Lainey Cameron 19:09
Yeah, and it makes perfect sense because we would never bring someone on the show that we don't trust, that we wouldn't use ourselves, that we know is not a scam. There's so many scammy things out there right now, and so I think it is nice because it's hard to to know when you're trying to work out what to do in marketing. Like, is this person legit? Is this organization legit? Is this service legit? Is this a scam? Yes. And so, if we promoted it, as in we had a guest in our episode, you know it's not a scam, right? You know it's something you could trust.
Paulette Stout 19:35
And a lot of times after we have the guests on, then I will go buy the service because I learn more about them, talking with them, hearing about who they are and their services. Then I want to use it myself, so that has happened definitely.
Lainey Cameron 19:47
You went with Jessie for your book blurb and Damonz too. Yes, Heidi, I already knew from before. So, but yeah, so that was that genre episode.
Lainey Cameron 19:59
We did our. In our season two, we did our first two genre episodes, and the first of these was around thrillers. And we brought on some of my favorite authors. We brought on Kimberly Bell and Salima Ish, and they talked about how to market thrillers. And they're both really great thriller authors. Very different. Salima is kind of indie, using TikTok, etc. Kimberly is traditionally published, kind of more on the Instagram, Bookstagram side. But it was so interesting to hear their take on what hasn't hasn't worked for them, and they were very honest about things that they're like, "Yeah, I tried this and it didn't really work for me. Versus like what they find has really worked, and I I love that community always comes up in every single one of these episodes when we get authors on. But they talked a lot about community and the power of community, but also that specific tactics that have worked for them and thriller marketing, which I I thought that one was fascinating. Not being a thriller author myself, I don't know if you had any takeaways from that episode.
Paulette Stout 20:50
Yeah, I think for me, I because some of them, I believe at least one of them had written multiple genres, so it was interesting to see some of the different things they thought about and that worked for thriller specifically versus other genres that they wrote. So definitely a good episode to look back on because, like we said, even if you're not a thriller author, we're talking about book marketing in every episode. We're talking about book marketing, so you're going to learn something in every episode, whether that topic you think you need to know or not. Episode 207.
Lainey Cameron 21:21
Often that's where we don't have the expertise. No, but I see this like often someone's traditionally published, so they don't go to the indie seminar. But the best marketing tactics are in the indie world. Honestly, the indie authors are way ahead of traditional publishing when it comes to almost everything in book marketing. And so, like, don't put yourself in your box where you say, "I'm traditionally published, so this indie stuff isn't relevant to me, or I'm writing women's fiction, so this thriller stuff isn't relevant to me. I find often the most interesting things for me, where I learn something new, is when I get out of my box and go listen to someone who's in a different world.
Paulette Stout 21:53
Yes, for sure, for sure, for sure. One episode that we did, I think back in December, episode 206, was about scams. Now we, in our author group, just today, we have this little WhatsApp group that we do another Lainey innovation, talking about our latest scams that we're getting, phone calls and emails. And so this episode was so timely and important. So if you're getting things, you're not sure what's real, what's not real. That's a great episode to listen to to kind of help you identify what might be a scam and what might be legit. You know, no, you're not going to get movie producers emailing you about we loved your book. You know, with a Gmail address. Strangeness. If they can't tell you the title of the book, it's pretty clear that this is they don't do this for you.
Lainey Cameron 22:41
I had coffee with someone yesterday who, when they realized that I help people with marketing, was like, "Okay, I've been talking to this guy, and I can't quite tell if I should invest. And I'm like, "Tell me more about this conversation. And within three minutes, I'm like, "I'm so sorry to tell you this is a scam. Like, close it down, close it down. You're not getting any. The big advice I gave to her, we we talk about this in this episode was you need to get references from other authors, not the person that they sent you to because they reached out to you. So not the scammers' reference, not them saying go talk to this person who's probably a made up person or pretending to be someone else. You need to go find someone you actually know and talk to them before you're going to feel comfortable using any kind of service. And this is just like again and again and again. These these cameras are really freaking good, and they're really good and urgency. Y
Paulette Stout 23:29
Yeah, and they're using real people names, and that's another thing that makes people feel like, oh, I got an. I keep getting emailed by someone, and I go to the the company's website. They are in fact a literary agent, but you know this person is not going to be emailing me from some strange Gmail address, and their agents are so inundated; they're not going to be doing cold emails in mass that sound like they're AI written. So, great episode. If you feel like you're a little squeamish about what to trust, what not to trust, go back and listen to episode 206.
Lainey Cameron 23:59
Yes, yes, and then I think we wanted to take a moment to say thank you to our sponsors. We didn't do a lot in terms of pursuing sponsors this year. I just didn't have time for it. But we had one outside sponsor, which was Lynda Lodner, who runs retreats. She runs writing classes. She has a monthly writing get together, and she also runs retreats, and she ran a beautiful retreat here in San Miguel de Allende, which I was very happy to be associated with. I actually got to go talk to them. It was really fun. Everybody was really inspired, and they were coming off this retreat just feeling fabulous. So, if you've been thinking about taking a writing retreat or a class, I would encourage you to go check out Lynn Glodner. Again, I'll put the link in the show notes so you can find that easily. But she does really interesting things, and we were going to say a minute word about what we use the sponsorship money for. And in case anyone's thinking like it's big money, it's not. If you like to sponsor the podcast, reach out to us. It is the best deal in the history of the universe. What do we use the very very tiny amount of money that comes in for? Well, we have a website on Squarespace that we have to pay for. The price of that just went up. Actually, all the Squarespace prices just spiked badly. We use it for transcription services. We pay for a piece of software that transcribes the episode, so you get that nice AI-generated transcription on the episode page, which means you can just read that if you don't want to listen to the whole episode. We use it for video creation software for videos that show up on our on our social media. So these are all very tactical things that we have a cost for. We use it for Streamyard, which is actually quite expensive. Which is our streaming software that is what you're watching us on if you're live or if you're watching the recording. That's how we record these on a piece of software called Streamyard that does our streaming. So and it's very expensive. Every year, I think about whether we should get off it and find something else, but I've not found it yet. So, so that's an idea, and those together cost us probably closer to $1,000 per year, and we get a few 100 bucks from sponsorship. So the other sponsor is me. I pay for the rest. We pay for the rest. So I also, you know, I get a benefit that I have my program for. Excuse me, I have my program for authors where I help them build their book marketing plan. And people come to me because they've met me through the podcast, and they feel like they can reach out to me. And I've had several people join because of the podcast.
Paulette Stout 26:17
That's great, and I think so. If you're interested in supporting the podcast in another way, we do have swag. We don't talk about it a lot. We try not to be come on here and be super salesy. But if you do want to help offset some of the costs that Lainey just talked about in running the podcast, you know, get a t-shirt, get a mug, get a tote bag, buy a pad, get some fun socks. Life gets lifey. So I know Wendy was on the thing. I know she ordered something once, so be like Wendy and go order something from our swag shop. There she goes. I love
Lainey Cameron 26:48
Wendy loves her life is lifey shirt. I have mine now. I've been wearing it to write while I was devising. I've been alternating between that one and my Scotland shirt, my sassy lassy Scotland shirt, and my life is lifey shirt. Yeah, go back and forth
Paulette Stout 27:00
each shirt. Really quickly, just to round off, I am doing author coaching again. So if you're interested in working with me, it's pretty much wherever you want help with, whether it's book marketing, crafts, platform building, social, anything. It's your time. You can use it as you want. So if you're interested in that, you can check that out on my website.
Lainey Cameron 27:20
So awesome! That's awesome. Yeah, I spend sponsors. There's a lot of people do pullette, especially like if you're self-publishing and you haven't done it before, it can feel scary. Like you're afraid you're just going to get something wrong. I'm going to click the wrong button. I'm going to put it on the up in the wrong order on the wrong platform. And just having someone who can be there with you, who can actually like walk you through it and say, "No, you're not making a mistake. Here's how we do it step by step, and Paulette does this beautifully.
Paulette Stout 27:44
Thank you. Cool. Episode 207.
Lainey Cameron 27:50
Slow book sales. I think this is one of our all time best episodes, and I credit you, Paulette, because you were the one who had the idea and who scoped this one out, and now you actually teach a class around it, which I think is phenomenal. Talk, touch a little, talk to us a little bit more. You, you take this one.
Paulette Stout 28:06
Yeah, I think it was important. I just kept thinking about all the things that you like. You just frustrated. Your book sales aren't what you want, but there's lots of different reasons that your book sales might be slow. So in this episode, we kind of start off with the big things that you should be looking at, and then we go into minutia that go all the way down to is it the book? You know, because that was one of the things that I let me to rewrite my first book was I felt like maybe the book wasn't good enough, you know, and that's hard to feel like that. You know, you write your book, you feel like it's great, but you know, you have to listen to the feedback. So anything from you know your ad, your packaging, your cover. You know we don't talk about. I don't know if we talk about book titles too in here, but you know there's lots of different, very specific tactical things that you can go and do on your own, following the steps from this episode and tick through them all. Okay, that was working. Did that one. Did one maybe something else? And it's almost like a little bit of a checklist of what to do when your book's not selling. So definitely highly recommend go back and listen to that. I did design a course or I did design a lecture around that because I felt like there was a lot of good information in there that needed to be beyond the podcast.
Lainey Cameron 29:17
So if you have a conference that you're part of, like a favorite conference that you go to suggest that Paulette give this session because it's going to be such a great session on whatever like everything to do, and it's really good for published authors, right? A lot of conferences a lot have sessions for unpublished authors. This is a great session for published authors. So if you have a favorite conference that this might be a fit at, let Paulette know, and she can submit to the conference. And I'll just give you the tip I said earlier that sometimes the Substack articles are the best place to start. We did a great Substack article for this episode. That's like a checklist that you can go through, and then you can go listen to the episode as well. But it's a really helpful checklist that's laid out really simply for you. So check out the Substack article on this as well.
Paulette Stout 29:57
Yep, yep. So we had episode two eight. Was we had two guests on to look back at what they would tell their debut selves. I know this was your invention, so why don't you take this one, Lainey?
Lainey Cameron 30:07
Sure. And both of these guests were people who had been through my program, my marketing program, and that's how I knew them. But I also knew that they had learned a ton as they went out into the world, and now they were on their second or third book, and so I wanted to invite them back because I worked with them on their first books, and so it was really interesting to see what they'd learned along the way. So we had Christine Gunderson, who became a best-selling author through Amazon. Her first book just went gangbusters. Her second book came out a few months ago, and Gabby Coatesworth, who has written both fiction, kind of ghostly fun fiction, as well as memoir, and so she's done the crossing genres thing in addition to having multiple books. And I just wanted to hear what they had learned and what they would do differently, looking backwards from book two or three, from where they were as a debut. And they had some really fun insights. I thought that was a really interesting, fun episode. And as with all our guests, they were super blunt and honest about what they would or wouldn't do again, which I love. Nobody comes on this show and gatekeeps. It's one of my favorite things.
Paulette Stout 31:04
Yeah, very conversational. It's a great, great episode. So, episode 209, we talked about how to build an author website. I know that's a very overwhelming prospect for many people who are starting out. You know, when should you build it? What should you build it? What platforms? And I thought one of the nice things that we did on this episode that I actually haven't heard anywhere else is we kind of went through page by page what pages should you have on your website what should you put on those pages where should you be linking these pages so we went through a lot of really helpful details so especially if you're working with someone or building your own website and just wanting to have a little bit more of a roadmap for how to go about it, episode 209, I think, would be a great listen.
Lainey Cameron 31:45
Yeah, absolutely. I've had a lot of people start out with that as they're trying to work out what to do with their website. We kind of take you through A to Z everything you need to know.
Paulette Stout 31:54
Yes.
Lainey Cameron 31:54
Okay. Okay. I gotta say, I think this next one might be my favorite episode all year. So, and the reason is this is a topic that nobody talks about. So this next one is episode 210. What to do when you get your publishing rights back? So basically, when you get your rights back and you republish the book as a self-published book, what the heck do you have to do in what order? And I think a lot of people don't even know this term republishing until the moment they get their rights back, and then they're kind of juggling this, going oh what do I do now? Oh shit! Now I'm self publishing, and so like this is very often someone's first foray into self publishing, like it was for me. I got my rights back, and then I self published the book, and so you you kind of are dealing with all of this angst around. Do I know what I'm doing? Self publishing a book, but am I doing the right thing? Will I lose my reviews? So much angst. It's a very angsty topic, and I swear I have personally sent at least 10 people to this episode who had come to me for advice, and I'm like, go listen to this episode, and then I'll answer any more questions you have. But like this, and so I got to credit Gene Grant who did just an amazing job of documenting all of this in this like is it like a 30 page document, like a
Lainey Cameron 33:00
spreadsheet thing, yeah,
Paulette Stout 33:00
like it's amazing.
Lainey Cameron 33:02
It's a Google Doc, and she made it available to anyone. If you go to the website, you can get to it from there. And she just like documented every single little step she took, and it makes it so much easier when you've got someone else's blueprint, and you can just go, okay, step by step. Here's how I do this. So I keep sending people to this episode. I'm very proud of it because I think this is not a topic that's out there very broadly. It's hard to find content on this, so I'm I'm super proud of this one because I think it's kind of unique and very needed.
Paulette Stout 33:28
And she was a great guest because she's had so many books that she's got she's had to do this multiple times. So you don't only get it from someone who's done it once. You've gotten from someone who's successfully done it multiple times. So great great episode 210. Getting your publishing right back. Episode 211, we hear this building your author platform. What's a platform? What is it? What do you mean build a platform? You know something to stand on. You know, like you know, it's it's kind of one of those jargony terms that you hear around the community, and I think we did a really good job of like dissecting what exactly do we mean by author platform. What is a brand? What do you need to consider when you're building one from yourself? So it's it's a really good primer on this is the foundations of brand and how that can help you as an author.
Lainey Cameron 34:18
And this is what Paulette does in her day job. Paulette is a brand specialist. Like she is specialized in doing branding. So I think we got the best of both worlds there because we got my kind of practical side of having taught it to people and your deep, deep expertise of being the brand expert. So I thought that was good episode.
Paulette Stout 34:35
Yeah, it's a it's a little squishy place in my heart for brands. Yes.
Lainey Cameron 34:40
And then the last one that we did before this was all around women's fiction. So I said that we did two genre-specific ones: we did a thriller one, and we did a women's fiction one. And we invited Pamela Kelly, who is the nicest, most generous author. And Pamela has been both indie and traditionally published, and she shared exactly what she does to launch her book. In women's fiction, like step by step, here are the things I do every time I have a book launch, and here's all the stuff I decided I cannot be bothered to do because it doesn't work anyway. It was eye opening for me. In fact, I've had several big time, traditionally published women's fiction authors come to me after this episode and say that they did not know this and that they learned a ton from that episode with Pamela.
Paulette Stout 35:21
Yeah, Pamela is just one of those people. She is on Facebook. She's in the group. She's in the community. She's answering questions. She is just such a beautiful giver, you know. And I remember early in my author career, she popped into my DMs on Facebook and said, "Your book prices are too high. And I was like, "What do you mean? My book price is too high, you know. She was really so. She's she's a great resource. So anything, and she's just you know she's published romance, she's published women's fiction. She kind of has her niche. She knows what she's doing. You know, she's in that you know Ellen Hill the Rand. Like you know, their books are all you know very beachy, and she she knows what she's doing. So she's a great great.
Lainey Cameron 35:59
And she was using Amazon ads very, very cleverly. The way she talks about how she does Amazon ads, it's worth listening to. Like just the Amazon ads piece. If you're doing Amazon ads, if you thought this episode wasn't relevant because you're writing something else, literary fiction, thrillers, whatever, go listen to her talk about Amazon ads because it was probably other than our Amazon ads episode, the most insightful view of how you can make them work for you.
Paulette Stout 36:24
Yes, so that is a recap of the 12 episodes from season one. We are super blessed to have everybody here in our community listening.
Lainey Cameron 36:37
That was season two. We've done two. Did you say season
Paulette Stout 36:40
one? I'm so sorry. Season two, I'm so sorry. No,
Lainey Cameron 36:44
it feels like we just started it. Yeah, no, it's amazing that we've already been all the way through two seasons, right? And and so many great episodes. And I'm I'm so proud of this thing. I think we're helping. And so we just wanted to wrap up by inviting you. I actually see there's a comment in the chat. I think Wendy was suggesting we do an episode around reader magnets, which is a great idea.
Paulette Stout 37:08
Oh my god, so good!
Lainey Cameron 37:10
Yes,
Paulette Stout 37:11
I'm all about reader magnets, y'all.
Lainey Cameron 37:13
Okay, all about it. I love that. So just to say that many of our episodes come from requests and suggestions. Like if you say like I wish you would talk about such and such a topic we will go find the expert on such and such topic if it's not us and that is where many of our episodes have come from so if you have questions if you have ideas let us know because we take those very seriously and we actually act on almost all the good suggestions we get there's also a place on the website where you can submit ideas. I will tell you that back on this, like who do we put on the show? We get a lot of pitches that our vendors wanting to sell stuff, and that's a hard one. It's rare that we're going to say yes, come on the show if you send us a "I'm great" and you should buy my shit kind of pitch. We really are looking for someone who's an expert in their domain, and yes, if you happen to have something to sell as well, that might be relevant. But don't come at us with like I'm the salesperson for whatever. So please let us know. You can tell us in the comments. You can tell us on email. You can tell us on the website. You can put it on the on our social media. Send us a DM. Any way you can find us, we read them all, and we take your comments and ideas very seriously.
Paulette Stout 38:20
Yes. So we're we definitely are looking also for where where are people struggling and what would be helpful for them. So that's another way we choose our episodes. And one thing that we already have locked down. Should we tell them about November? Sure. Just locked down Alex from Klytics, and he will be joining us in November to talk about all the Amazon book data and how we can potentially use that while we're writing to have better marketing outcomes later. So he was really excited to come on talk about that. That will be live on November 11th at 10 a.m. Eastern. He is in Europe and Lainey is in Mexico, and we're trying to triangulate all the time zones, so that's what it's happening. It's exciting.
Lainey Cameron 39:04
I'm a I'm a huge fan. I've actually been a subscriber to Alex's services, and this analysis of all the Amazon data. And like one of the favorite things I remember from the presentation that he gave at Author Nation a couple of years ago was he had analyzed the review scores of the top sellers, so the best sellers that were indie versus major pub in every category on Amazon, and he showed the hard data that showed that the indie books were actually not rated any lower on quality than the traditional publisher books. And I use that data all the time when people feel bad about indie publishing, and they're like, "Yeah, but you know, it's kind of not the same. And I'm like, did you know that indie books are not rated any lower than traditionally published books in terms of the quality by readers? Readers don't see it that way, so I think don't see it that way fascinating research.
Paulette Stout 39:51
And another little tidbit, if I remember correctly, was that the best book review, the most persuasive book review score. Was around 4.3. So if you're feeling like, oh, I want all my scores to be bucket five, five isn't believable, y'all. Five is like everybody and your grandmother and whatever went and read your book and they just love it and they're not being objective. It's good to get some low scores. It's good to get some medium scores because you want to like balance it out and have like a nice breadth of who the book is for and who it is not for. So if you're in the low fours, you're looking the perfect sweet spot for book review score. So just wanted to mention that a little bit.
Lainey Cameron 40:25
So yeah, so Alex does this great analysis of all the categories and what's happening and which categories are moving and which are. He says analysis is great. So I'm really looking forward to the episode. I have so many questions for him.
Paulette Stout 40:34
I know I do, and I was I was a little bit mean because I just bought the report and I was like emailing with him like a customer service type of an email, and I'm like, "Hey, you want to go on a podcast? I hope it's not appropriate to ask you.
Lainey Cameron 40:48
So yeah, he's fascinating. He's a true data geek. Like he gets into the data and really looks at what it can tell us. So I'm really excited. I don't think he minds being called that. I'm really excited to super excited November, and obviously now we've got to go work at who we're going to have to do one on reader magnets. But if you've got other topics for us, let us know.
Paulette Stout 41:07
Yes, could definitely do that. That could be one we could do both to see that a lot of you are making. Cool. All right, everybody, thank you for listening. Thank you to all of our listeners and watchers, and I know you find it valuable because you tell us, but keep telling us what works, what doesn't work. We take all your feedback so seriously, and I just want to say a huge vote of thanks to everybody who listens and watches. Thank you, and tell your friends, y'all. Send them episode links, get them engaged. Thanks, everybody. Have a great one. See you next time.