Dan Wood, Mark Lefebvre, and Kevin Tumlinson answer questions about everything from libraries to book bundles to marketing in this previously recorded live event in the D2D Home Court. Transcript below.
TRANSCRIPT
| Mark: | 00:00:05 | Welcome to Ask Us Anything Draft2digital. This is Mark Leslie Lefebvre, Dan Wood and Kevin Tumlinson and we’re in the offices at Draft2digital in Oklahoma City. This is the first time we’re actually, uh very rarely that we’re actually together in a room and we’re not at a conference or at a bar somewhere. |
| Kevin: | 00:00:23 | And this is the place! This is where we take your digital words and make them into books for you. |
| Mark: | 00:00:30 | Yeah, Exactly. |
| Kevin: | 00:00:31 | Right here we have a factory in the background. |
| Mark: | 00:00:33 | The magic happens. So we have a couple of topics we wanted to talk about first and thank you guys for submitting some of the questions that Elyssa’s punting over to us on the screen. Uh, Kevin wanted to talk a little bit more about libraries, right? As a, as a focus. |
| Kevin: | 00:00:45 | I thought that might be a good topic. People have asked a lot about libraries and we have, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk about this more towards the end, but we have some library related news that we can, uh, that we can bring out. So questions about libraries are—. |
| Dan: | 00:00:59 | Library news. Yeah. |
| Mark: | 00:01:01 | Okay. So one of the questions that came in about libraries earlier was: “Do I need an ISBN to sell my books and to get my books into the libraries?” And they were talking about ebooks specifically. |
| Kevin: | 00:01:13 | Actually that’s probably a question you’re going to be able to answer better than I can. |
| Dan: | 00:01:17 | So, um, we do. Uh you don’t need to buy your own, but if you want to buy your own, you can provide your own. Um, if you’re in the US you would need to buy it. Several other comp-uh countries, you buy it. Uh, in Canada I understand they are free, so you just request one. Um. We do send ISBNs on to the library vendors. Uh, however, if you don’t have your own ISBN you can use our free ISBNs that we provide. Um, with the free ISBN you still retain all of your rights, all that good stuff. Um, it’s just using ours because we get to buy them in bulk instead of it costing us, you know, if you buy them individually it my costs $100 per ISBN, uh, we buy 100,000 at a time, so we’re paying less than a dollar. And so, uh, there’s not really a lot of reason to get your own ISBN, uh, when it comes to digital books. Um, however, with print I would highly recommend, um, because ISBNs are such an integral part of the, uh, print process. Having your own ISBN is handy, |
| Mark: | 00:02:22 | And I’m gonna throw this in for Canadians. If there’s any, fellow Canadians out there listening to this: you can register for free ISBNs through the Canadian government. Just actually you just have to Google Canada ISBNs and you register for an account, you log on, and you can get your ISBN. You are obligated to send two print copies to the national library uh for your books. But Hey, it never hurts to know that your books in a library somewhere, even if a library never bought it. Yeah, but that’s something that as well. So what else about libraries or do we want to jump into some of the other questions? |
| Dan: | 00:02:55 | I’d just go into, like, some of the questions and we’ll kind of keep looking around to libraries as we have to. |
| Kevin: | 00:03:01 | That’s just a general theme. If you have a library related question, feel free to ask. |
| Mark: | 00:03:05 | All right, cool. |
| Kevin: | 00:03:06 | Or any question. You can ask any questions. |
| Mark: | 00:03:08 | So I’m going to pronounce the name of Bob Boca Rat? Boca rat? |
| Kevin: | 00:03:13 | Boca rat? |
| Dan: | 00:03:13 | I think boca. Yeah. |
| Kevin: | 00:03:13 | Said on an earlier webinar, you said it was easier to sell a series than a standalone book. What are the steps to marketing a series successfully and how does that differ from marketing a standalone title? Also, wouldn’t sales decrease with each successive novel just as TV ratings go down each season of a series as viewers peel off? |
| Kevin: | 00:03:35 | So I mean in general it’s not, there’s no real difference in marketing a series over marketing an individual book. It’s just that there are more books that you can market and you can actually change which book you focus on. If you can only afford to market one book. |
| Kevin: | 00:03:50 | Um, it’s mostly the reason it’s easier to sell series than a standalone is because readers like to have something to go to next. So if you’ve got a series of three or four books and you advertise the first one to get people started, uh, when they come in, you can kind of capture them and continue them on to the next book. And there- you want to try to build up read-through, basically. Um, as far as what the other part of the question was, would sales decrease? I mean, possibly. |
| Mark: | 00:04:22 | Yeah drop off can happen. |
| Dan: | 00:04:24 | It certainly does happen. It’s a big topic of conversation amongst marketing authors is um, knowing exactly what your sell-through rate is. Um, cause it’s not gonna be 100%, but you know, as you get, as you keep going, it’s going to go down a little bit, but hopefully it’s gonna be a high number. Um- |
| Kevin: | 00:04:45 | But with more books, it increases the chances of your discoverability. |
| Dan: | 00:04:49 | More visibility, yeah. |
| Kevin: | 00:04:50 | And you have more people hopping on. Which is a good reason to try to write books that can stand alone even if they are part of an overall series so that people can come on board anywhere along that line. Um, one of the methods that I use, cause it was like I’ve got a series right now that is uh nine books with two sort-of prequel novella things. Um, I advertise like book one and book three right now. Right? And that’s, that’s helped with kind of getting people on board. I’m probably gonna add books six or you know, whatever and just kind of stagger them. And that way I don’t have to advertise every single book. And in fact I probably only advertised two to three books at a time in this series. |
| Dan: | 00:05:34 | Frequently we will see that um, with a series you can do some interesting things with the first book. Some authors will do like a free first in series or take part in some of the promotions that retailers run that are around free first in series. You might have a tiered pricing structure where the first and the second and third book are a little bit cheaper. And then the price just goes up a little bit as people continue with the series. Um, just gives you a lot of options with books in a series. You can do box sets, right. Um, which there are a lot of, uh, people that like to buy bundles or boxed sets. And so just having that product available, uh, can be handy. And it also gives you, um, a little leeway with, you can have a higher price on a box set. And so if you advertise a box set, sometimes your return on investment or the immediate, uh, return, you’re getting as much higher. And so just kind of different economics. |
| Kevin: | 00:06:28 | I should, I should say that when it comes to box sets and collections, there are people out there who only read those. You can pick up an entirely new audience with a little box set. |
| Mark: | 00:06:40 | So I want to clarify the term boxed set because a lot of people use it and have no idea what they’re talking about. Uh, it comes from traditional publishing where they would actually take three books in a trilogy, for example, and actually put them in a box, uh, with the spines out. And it would be a special gift edition. You’d often see that at Christmas time. And so when we’re talking about sets, we’re not talking print books, we’re talking ebooks and we’re talking digital bundles or digital box sets. And, and that Kinda leads to a question. So John Pratt Bingam asked, he’s completing book three in the Hangtown trilogy. Congratulations John. He says, how do I arrange a box set? So, how do you do a digital box set? |
| Kevin: | 00:07:14 | Take all the digital books, slide them in one at a time. |
| Mark: | 00:07:18 | Okay, perfect. Yeah. And what kind of box do you use? Cardboard? Haha. |
| Dan: | 00:07:21 | A digital box. |
| Kevin: | 00:07:24 | So it’s a, there are a lot of different ways to do this. Uh, basically the primary thing you’re going to be doing is collecting all of these into essentially one big book. And you can call this a box set or you can call it an omnibus or you can call it like there’s a couple of different things you can call it a bundle um, but it is essentially one book that contains each of the other books. |
| Mark: | 00:07:46 | All the contents. |
| Kevin: | 00:07:47 | Yeah. One ebook I should say. Um, and you can carry that over into print. By the way, I did that with my, I have a trilogy, a Scifi trilogy that I’ve bundled together as an omnibus, which is just really another word in this case. It’s really another word for box. |
| Mark: | 00:08:03 | Or a big book. |
| Kevin: | 00:08:04 | A big, thick book. I should just change that to box set. However, because, um, it, it has a little more traction. I wanted it at the time to just bulk up my library. So it was an additional book, uh, if you were looking at my titles, so that’s why I called it an omnibus at the front. But now I would, I would probably just call it a box set. |
| Mark: | 00:08:28 | So just logistically, cause I figured, uh, authors are probably listening to this and saying, okay. So do I put a, I probably need a new cover, some sort of representation. And I know that for example, places like Kobo and Apple want uh, they don’t want that, you know, that 3D version, right? Because that actually looks like a physical box set, which shows the value. But Apple and Kobo specifically- |
| Dan: | 00:08:50 | Apple does forbid, uh, 3d covers. So yeah, it was very popular early on these bundles to, uh, make it a 3D cover. What kind of made it look like a box set. |
| Kevin: | 00:09:00 | Which you can still do on Amazon. Yeah. |
| Dan: | 00:09:03 | You can yeah. Uh, you can still do it on Barnes & Noble, right? Apple will reject it. They want a flat image. Ah- It- The flat image just looks better in the advertisements that they do on both their website or within their apps, um, and so their merchandisers prefer it. Uhm, with Kobo, you’re probably not going to get a promotion if you’ve got the 3D image. Uh, and like I said, Apple is just going to reject it. |
| Mark: | 00:09:27 | Yeah. So I think one of the ones that Apple’s featuring right now from one of our authors, the Frostborn series is that? |
| Dan: | 00:09:33 | Yes! Jonathan Moeller I believe, yeah. |
| Mark: | 00:09:35 | So Jonathan Moeller! I don’t know if you’re, if you’re on Apple, you can go and take a look at ah, I forget what that promo he is in- |
| Dan: | 00:09:40 | Uh Unputdownable Reads? |
| Mark: | 00:09:43 | Yeah Unputdownable Reads and you can see that he has the four books, uh, as a flat, but just the four book covers there. So you can actually see the value that this is a, a really good deal. Yeah. Um, as opposed to, um, a unique cover. |
| Mark: | 00:09:56 | So that, um, Doug Solter said, what are some of the things that a D2D author can do to increase their chances of books being promoted by Apple or other D2D book sellers? |
| Dan: | 00:10:07 | So one of the major things is just make sure that you have links to all the retailers on your author website. That on your social media, you’re sharing the link to the other retailers. When we nominate books to the merchandisers, um, if you’re only showing Amazon links and they see you ONLY sending readers to Amazon, they’re not going to choose your book. Um, we have a handy thing called Books2Read. Maybe Kevin, would you like to explain it how that might help you in this regard? |
| Kevin: | 00:10:39 | I phased out. What was the question? |
| Mark: | 00:10:41 | Books2Read? |
| Kevin: | 00:10:41 | So the, the question yes- |
| Kevin: | 00:10:43 | I can tell you what books2read is. Yeah. |
| Dan: | 00:10:44 | The question was about how to improve your chances of being promoted by Apple or other D2D retailers. So as you know, we saw that a lot of people would just share the Amazon link or they might just share their Amazon, uh, author central page. |
| Kevin: | 00:10:57 | Right. |
| Dan: | 00:10:58 | Um, so just how would you go about using Books2read and some of the things we built there? |
| Kevin: | 00:11:02 | So one of the- the primary tool on Books2Read is our Universal Book Link, which is, um, in simplest terms, it’s a single link that will send readers to practically everywhere a book appears online. And you would copy a URL from an existing book page, say Barnes & Noble or Amazon and drop it in and it’ll scan and find that book in as many places as possible. Uh, and then you, all you have to do is give out this one link and you can customize it, customize the URL. So that maybe you use the title of your book. So it’d be like, I have books2read.com/30-day is one of mine that goes to 30-Day Author. Um, that makes it a lot easier to share, a lot easier to remember if you need to rattle it off to somebody and it’s an evergreen link so you can put it on print materials as well as on a digital, you know, use it in digital materials. So you can share that everywhere and that makes you easier to discover and makes it easier for readers to, uh, to get to their- their favorite store. |
| Mark: | 00:12:10 | Can I add something that I know works really, really well from my previous experience at Kobo as well as working with the great people at Apple is, um, pre-orders. Uh, actually planning your preorders early. |
| Dan: | 00:12:23 | That’s huge. |
| Mark: | 00:12:23 | I know, you know, once the book is edited, once you’ve got everything ready to go, it’s, it’s really exciting to, to just press publish. And that is, that is phenomenal. But, uh, the authors who have long lead times on the preorders, there are, there are specific promos, uh, at Apple, especially lately that we’ve been able to get authors into. And Apple even as uh sneak peaks where if the full book is actually ready to go, uh, an editor at Apple will actually read the book and look for quality stuff. They’re looking for those, uh, I guess the diamonds in the rough or they’re looking for that next great read. |
| Mark: | 00:12:58 | Uh, and they want to be able to have some time to look at it and feature it and say, we’ve actually not just judged it by its cover, but we actually believe this is a good book that you should read. And so because ah, the power that indie authors house for rapid release in all of those things, not a lot of indie authors are doing those release times. So when you’re doing a long release time, you’re doing it very similar to the big publishers with one caveat, you’re probably making your price a lot more reasonable. And so it makes it that much more attractive with a long lead time. So ah, that’s something, I think that that can actually, uh, help as well. |
| Dan: | 00:13:36 | With everything, the more reviews you have, the better. And so make sure you’re asking people to leave a review at all the retailers, not just Amazon. It’s gonna help you get BookBub ads. It’s gonna help you get chosen for those spots at the, the retailer. Um, yeah, they will take, you know, proof that you’re selling on other websites as a little bit of proof, but they each have like a little bit different demographic they reach. Um, and so they really want to see your book already starting to move on their website. And so the having reviews just gives that evidence of that. |
| Mark: | 00:14:12 | Yeah, that is cool. Thank you. Um, uh, I guess, uh, library question, the sort of second half we can move down a little bit. Yeah. Um, can you suggest any other way apart from this to submit my ebook to libraries? We didn’t really- |
| Kevin: | 00:14:28 | Any, oh, there’s a first part. We, we, I mean- |
| Mark: | 00:14:30 | We answered that one. Yeah. So, uh, any other way apart from this? I’m not sure. I mean with, without purchasing ISBNs? I think we kind of covered that because you get a free ISBN with us. |
| Dan: | 00:14:40 | Yeah. We can- You can submit your book for free through, uh, all- TO all of our digital library partners. Um, like we said, you can buy an ISBN but you don’t have to. |
| Mark: | 00:14:50 | Yeah. Cool. And speaking of Books2Read, Rebecca Carter asked ah, are there any plans to have the ability to add our print books listed on our D2D author page on Books2Read? |
| Dan: | 00:15:02 | I think we’re at a point where we’ll be where we’ll be able to add audio before print. There’s some complications with print because of Amazon. It’s one of the biggest, uh, retailers, uh, print books online. Um, it’s hard to get the, the right link because Amazon also sells you used books and they all show up on that same page. Um, and so sometimes some of the used book vendors will spend money to put their book above the actual print on demand version. And so, um, it’s something we want to do. Uh, we want to make it really easy to reach, uh, your book and every format available. |
| Dan: | 00:15:45 | Uh, you know, digital of course is like our specialty. Uh, we’re really moving in towards that print stuff. And then we work with Findaway on audiobooks. And so we really want to make it easier for readers to find all those. Um, there’s some things that are just more challenging than others. Um, but it’s something we are aware of. We’re looking into it don’t really have an estimated time on when we might add it. |
| Mark: | 00:16:05 | But it is something we intend on doing. We just want to do it right. We don’t want, we want to do it in a way that benefits you getting a sales, not a used bookstore, cause you’re not going to get for that for the used bookstore. Right? |
| Kevin: | 00:16:16 | Right, right. |
| Mark: | 00:16:18 | Um, if that’s the case, okay. |
| Kevin: | 00:16:20 | You don’t want to compete with yourself and lose. |
| Mark: | 00:16:22 | No. Yeah. Um, so Dana Alexander asked with the upcoming print option going through Ingram, which is how, uhm, how D2D Print books are distributed through Ingram. And set at 55% discount, if I already have an Ingram account for a series, does listing print with you cause conflict in ordering/reviews, etc. i.e., discount of 55% with D2D and another discount w/Ingram at 52% – Best to only list with either D2D or Ingram? I wouldn’t do both. |
| Dan: | 00:16:54 | I wouldn’t do both either. |
| Mark: | 00:16:56 | Because you’re, it’s, it’s especially, you know, if you’re using your own ISBN uh, it’ll cause conflict. You’ll be competing with yourself to different ISBNs listed. Dual listed. |
| Kevin: | 00:17:06 | Really. I’m going to say it this way. You can’t do both. Not that you physically can’t do it because you can, but you shouldn’t. You definitely should not do both because you’re not supposed to. Um, you can’t use the same ISBN through two different services. Right. And there is no limit- There’s no limitations on distributing your print book for various POD services or whatever. You can use KDP print and D2D Print at the same time if you want. Um, and I, I know there are people who are planning to do just that, mostly to kind of test and see their results. One of the things that we’ve kind of kind of kicked around as a sort of concern when it comes to that is that Amazon will tend to go with the, uh, the distributor that’s going to give them the most money, which may not necessarily mean you make the most money. So, um, you may find yourself once again competing with yourself. |
| Mark: | 00:18:02 | Okay. That’s a good point. And so along those lines, uh, Mark Pratt, uh, uh, wants us to explain, uh, the D2D, the Draft2Digital Print Beta and, and revenue share for all authors is revenue- revenue share is separate topic. |
| Kevin: | 00:18:18 | Um, I’m assuming, I’m guessing he may be talking about how, what will they make from D2D print or share. |
| Mark: | 00:18:27 | Oh. I though he might be talking about royalty splitting. |
| Kevin: | 00:18:29 | Let’s not open the royalty splitting can of worms just yet. |
| Dan: | 00:18:33 | So w- with our Draft2Print Beta, uh, we wanted to solve some of the problems that we saw that were keeping people from having a print version available. Uh, so oftentimes, uh, we used to distribute to CreateSpace. Um, oftentimes we’d see people stop at the point where we asked them for a print cover, um, because that meant they had to go spend more money, uh, with a cover artist to get the print cover made. Um, unfortunately like if you change that, like the size of the book or if you add something to the book, then you have to reach out to the artist again and get the sizing adjusted. Um, if you’ve ever set up a print on demand book with Ingram or with, uh, KD- KD Print now? Is that what they call it? |
| Mark: | 00:19:20 | KDP Print. |
| Dan: | 00:19:20 | KDP print. Um, it can be a kind of difficult task. Um, so we built a cover creator that takes your digital cover, uh, and will create and size the cover appropriately, uh, for your book. And that also it may, it’ll change as you change the size and then you change things about your book. |
| Mark: | 00:19:42 | And I’m just holding up a self-promotional example of one of my 64 page short story collections, right? Uh, where I only had the front cover design, threw it in, and it automatically does everything for you and you can adjust, upload a different author picture. So without having to pay a designer– um, Alex Carver, this is one of his, uh, that he did. And again, he used the automatic generator. So you obviously had this professionally done. |
| Kevin: | 00:20:09 | It’s a very cool tool and one of the things that it does is take an average of the color of the front cover and then wrap that around. So these two examples are both dark colored, but if you had, um, I think we’ve got another one? |
| Mark: | 00:20:26 | Oh this is a white one. White? It’s very white colored. |
| Kevin: | 00:20:29 | Yeah, so that was an easy one. But, but if you had one. |
| Mark: | 00:20:32 | Like, blue, right? He picked blue here. |
| Kevin: | 00:20:34 | Uh, right. So similar to that, it will pick up that tone and wrap it around it so it doesn’t wrap around your image. Um, but we’ve kind of kicked around the idea of allowing people to upload a separate image for that. You can also upload, if you have a fully designed print cover such as this one by a certain dashing thriller author. |
| Mark: | 00:20:56 | Dashing Tumlinson. |
| Kevin: | 00:20:56 | It will carry- it will allow you to upload your own print design cover. If you bought one or did one yourself. |
| Mark: | 00:21:05 | So same thing with the interior. You can use one of our templates, uh, which is great. The drop caps and all the headers and all that sexy stuff. Or if you’ve done your own internal pdf, you can just upload that. I’ve done a combination of both. Yeah. |
| Dan: | 00:21:16 | A lot of people bring us Vellum PDFs every once in a while. |
| Kevin: | 00:21:19 | Right. |
| Dan: | 00:21:20 | Um, so yeah, uh, we just wanted to make it much easier to get the formatting right and get everything in. Um, and then it has the distribution network behind it so they can reach, you know, most of the online stores that show print. Uh, and you can order stuff there. Um, in addition to that, we’re working on the component of it that lets you order author copies at a significant discount. Um, and so for book signings or for you to get a couple of copies to keep around your house or to give to your friends, um, that will be available. Um, you know, that’s been one of the parts has been like the most challenging to get right. And, and you know, our print beta has gone a little bit longer than we originally thought it would, but we just want to get all of that right. |
| Dan: | 00:22:05 | Um, cause you know, print is like, you know, it’s a format that’s not going to go away. We think there’s a lot of reasons for that. Um, there’s some people that just prefer reading in print. Uh, there’s the, the aspect of people use books to show, uh, what authors they love to decorate their homes. And so, uh, we just want to make sure that’s there. And we like the fact that when you have the print book available, it shows the print book price and it shows you what a good deal that the ebook price is on a lot of the different websites. |
| Kevin: | 00:22:35 | It’s surprising how much of a psychological impact that has on the readers in terms of marketing. It’s like a little, it’s like a little extra marketing magic to have multiple versions of the book, with different prices, because people will gravitate towards when the, if they’re on the fence, they may see that lower priced ebook and go ahead and buy. Because it looks like next to the print version and the audiobook version, it looks like it’s maybe on a discount and that will actually sometimes overcome someone’s reluctance to buy. |
| Mark: | 00:23:07 | Right. That’s true. It shows value in it. Uh, I just, I should say in terms of Author Copies because I’m the Canadian in the room, uh, we are exploring the opportunity to partner with somebody for Author Copies in, in the Great White North. So, uh, ’cause one of the challenges I’ve had using both Ingram and, and Amazon Print is, uh, you know, the prices is good, but the minute you cross the border, there’s brokerage fees and there’s, the shipping is just ridiculous. So looking at the possibility of how can authors outside the US even benefit from this. So, yeah. Yeah. |
| Mark: | 00:23:41 | I’m always thinking in Canadian. |
| Dan: | 00:23:43 | In Canada and abroad, we’re looking for partners that, uh, can get past some of those shipping costs. |
| Kevin: | 00:23:49 | I could consider just shipping a suitcase full of them next time I fly every author just talk to me next time I go. |
| Mark: | 00:23:59 | So, uh, Amy Shojai, uh, is asking, uh, do you find that there’s a sweet spot on numbers in the series? Does the interest fall off say after six or eight or…? |
| Kevin: | 00:24:08 | So, it really kind of depends on the series honestly. But I mean if you look around some of the most successful ongoing series, I have a huge number of volumes. Look Lee Child and yeah, the Jack Reacher books. I mean, they’re going to go on- |
| Dan: | 00:24:22 | and the Kevin Butcher stuff. |
| Kevin: | 00:24:23 | Exactly. |
| Dan: | 00:24:26 | No that’s not right. Jim! Jim Butcher. |
| Kevin: | 00:24:29 | Kevin, Kevin Butcher. That’s my- |
| Mark: | 00:24:31 | It’s you and you and Jim writing together. |
| Kevin: | 00:24:33 | And that’s, that’s us shipping. Um, but the, I think there is a sort of minimum, like I think three books is pretty much the lowest number. |
| Dan: | 00:24:47 | There seems to be a sweet spot where people start buying more after you get to like three or so. And then some authors I’ve seen that three really take off at six or more. So that’s just like getting it going. Um, I would say it’s as long as you’re still writing compelling stories about those liked characters. Um, there are so many indie authors that are just having huge success writing about the same characters, who’ve written 15-20 novels in the series. Um, you know, I, I think we can easily see with the Marvel Universe that people are willing to stick with things. Like sometimes you want new characters. Um, I’ve always been impressed by, you know many people have done this, but I remember hearing her talk about for the first time, Bella Andre, um, her romance series, how she keeps it going is, you know, she’ll stick with one couple for a couple of books. She’ll start introducing other characters though within the family or um, people around that and getting people already interested in them and loving them as side characters and then going on and telling their story later. All within the same series. They’re all connected in a way. |
| Kevin: | 00:25:56 | I’ve been doing that with, with my books as, as I get further along, I’m introducing new storylines. So sort of that ABC story set up and I have side characters who are now, uh, having sort of entire chapters that are nothing but their POV. They had their own sort of, you know, secondary adventure going through the whole book. And that’s a way for me to keep it fresh for me. But my, I’m discovering my readers love that. They love that they still get Dan Kotler the main protag- the Indiana Jones character, but they also love that they’re getting this sort of richer, uh, deeper landscape that they can explore. It makes the world feel more real to them. It’s still within the same series kind of a James Rowans does with this like sigma force stuff. |
| Mark: | 00:26:46 | Okay. And, and I think so one of the side effects of, of writing those secondary characters and telling those stories is it can be a, another book in your series, but it can also be a lead magnet that you would use for your author newsletter. |
| Mark: | 00:26:58 | So the people who are really like, they love, uh, Dan Kotler and they want more of, uh, some, some sidekick or, or some character who he encountered, but you never see again. Right. And well, maybe Kevin cut a scene with, uh, you know, uh, with a side story that got cut from the final novel or, or maybe he’s got fan letters that talk about it. You can have that as an asset saying, well, if you sign up for my newsletter it’s the only way you can get the story, right. And that way, you know they’re real fans as opposed to people just signing up for a free book. There. A little newsletter, ah marketing tip. |
| Kevin: | 00:27:29 | Um, bonus! |
| Mark: | 00:27:32 | So, uh, Creston Mapes, uh, asks with the popularity of Page Reads on Amazon Kindle Unlimited page reads, why should an indie author go wide using Draft2Digital? Um, I really like your platform. We really like you to Creston! Um, but the page reads are appealing and, and page reads and, and kindle unlimited is very appealing to a lot of authors. So- |
| Dan: | 00:27:51 | There’s a lot of money there. |
| Kevin: | 00:27:52 | And we can talk about that for days. But what’s the, you know- |
| Kevin: | 00:27:55 | It is the sorta quintessential short game versus long game strategy, right? In terms of marketing, it is very smart to go ahead and focus on, um, the whole Amazon KDP Select landscape when you’re starting out, you don’t have a lot of books, you don’t have an audience. It’s a great way to build momentum while earning money. Um, but the idea is you don’t want to be limited on one platform because things change. And we’ve seen Amazon disrupt and get rid of entire, uh, services and tools. Now, I don’t know if there’s a real, any real danger of KDP select going away anytime soon, but it could happen. |
| Mark: | 00:28:41 | Well, Amazon’s very customer centric and if their customers don’t like it, they’re not going to do it. Right. So, so if something changes and the customers aren’t valuing it, then they may get rid of it. Right? So that’s a possibility. |
| Kevin: | 00:28:52 | I do understand the challenges of this though because there is a, it’s very difficult to balance using both. Right? Um, and my advice is, you know, if you are writing a series, get that series built up nice and big, and then once your earlier books start to kind of taper off and interest on that platform, those are the books I would start taking wide. |
| Mark: | 00:29:14 | Yeah. |
| Kevin: | 00:29:15 | And you can even do, if you do play your cards right you can even do a sort of a preorder. You could do preorders through us on other platforms. There’s a sort of trick to it. I’m happy to talk about it. |
| Kevin: | 00:29:27 | Uh, but it basically comes down to creating a second listing, right. Um, the second version of the book basically. Okay. But, uh, you definitely cannot have them exclusive on Amazon while you do that should should be out before you even start the preorder. Right? Um, but yeah, there’s, there’s ways to do this. You want to try to go wide mostly so that it is, it’s a bit of security, right? It’s a bit, it’s a way to sort of future-proof your work. Um, because I don’t think anybody ever started this business saying to themselves, I can’t wait to be exclusive to Amazon for my entire career. |
| Mark: | 00:30:03 | No, I don’t think so. |
| Dan: | 00:30:04 | Going back to our earlier topic of libraries and with Amazon, if you’re exclusive with them, you can’t sell your book to libraries, correct? Yeah. Your ebook. Why is that? It’s a good question. We don’t, we don’t know why they choose to target libraries and not allow the books to go into them, but… |
| Mark: | 00:30:23 | Well, and that that’s a benefit. So when you’re in Kindle Unlimited, when your books are there, you’re training readers to read your stuff for free and never have to buy it. And so I’ve had authors complain and say, ever since I’ve published wide, I have people come yelling at me and complaining that they can’t read my books for free anymore on Amazon. And that’s when I suggest to them like, there’s a library,. Then you can go get your book for free so they can still read your book for free. You’re not taking anything away from those customers. |
| Dan: | 00:30:47 | And they can generally request your, your book from the library and Librarians have a budget to buy books that are requested by their customers. |
| Mark: | 00:30:56 | Their consumers, cause they’re very, very patron driven. |
| Kevin: | 00:30:59 | And we have as part of our library distribution, a lot of our libraries use our CPC model, right? It’s called Cost Per Checkout. |
| Dan: | 00:31:08 | It’s catching on. Yeah. |
| Kevin: | 00:31:09 | So, and the idea there is in a way somewhat similar to the page reads. Things sort of! Sorta! Give me some leeway here, but the idea is, um, you get, you make less per book checked out, but more books can be checked out at once. So instead of, you know, the library gets a license to have one copy of your book and only that one, only one patron at a time can check it out for the two weeks that they’re allowed to have it or whatever. Uh, that’s the only book that can go out and the only book you’re being paid for. Uh, with the CPC model, you make a percentage of your cover price or yourself price, your library price. And, um, the book can be checked out to as many people as the library can find that are interested in it. |
| Kevin: | 00:31:58 | So if you do have to do like, say you’re speaking at a library or doing an event and everyone’s interested in your book all of a sudden, uh, with the original like one, one copy, one user model, uh, the library would have to pay per each, um, version of the book that they get, which is expensive for libraries. But with the CPC model, they’re able to actually give every patron a copy of that book and they pay a percentage of the price, you end up making more money overall. So this is- |
| Mark: | 00:32:29 | As opposed to earning once now and then never again. |
| Kevin: | 00:32:31 | Right. So this is one of those things. It’s like, you know, libraries are such an amazing opportunity for indie authors, especially now with McMillan pulling shenanigans and putting this embargo on books and not allowing libraries to have popular books for 90 days or more. Right? Um, this is a gap that indie authors should be shoving their books into right now. |
| Mark: | 00:32:56 | Yeah, for sure. |
| Dan: | 00:32:57 | A lot of the traditional publishers are A) the terms that they are charging libraries for digital books are very high. Um, libraries are paying $60 sometimes or more, uh, for a single copy each like digital copy. So if I’ve checked that out, then you can’t check it out until I check it back in. Um, they frequently are limited to the number of times they can check that out before the library has to rebuy it. Um, so there’s a lot of opportunity, especially now that some of the traditional publishers are even holding their brand new books out of the libraries for a certain period of time. Um, you know, just not very library friendly. |
| Dan: | 00:33:36 | Um, I guess we should probably get back to the original question a little bit towards the, uh, the argument for going wide. Um, with going wide, you’re more likely to be selected for a BookBub, right? I, you have the opportunity to hit some of the lists like USA Today bestseller lists. Um, there is a big market out there, uh, of readers that don’t buy on Amazon, especially the international markets are very powerful. |
| Mark: | 00:34:03 | There are countries where you can’t actually buy it from Amazon. |
| Dan: | 00:34:05 | Quite a few. Amazon has 13 or 14, I believe, ah country stores. Um, so that leaves a whole lot of the world open. And the people that can’t buy from Amazon, um- |
| Mark: | 00:34:18 | I- I- I’m from Canada, so, and that’s where Kobos were born. And so I own a Kobo. So if, if a book is in Kindle Unlimited and I hear, oh, this looks like a good book or I’m not going to buy it, I’m not going to go buy a kindle or just use the kindle app on my phone just cause that’s the only place available. I’m going to buy it where I buy books and I, and I get my books from my ebooks anyways from Kobo. Uh, so I’m not gonna be able to read your book. Right. This won’t be available there. So, you know, there were other people who only read on the Nook or only read on Apple or only read on, uh, other platforms. Right. |
| Dan: | 00:34:52 | And I think to a certain extent, the way to figure out what’s right for you and something as a company, we very much try to make it very easy. Ah KU and a Kindle Select is a 90 day term, so it’s not forever. It’s not a choice that you have to really, uh, worry about quite a bit? Um, you can try Kindle Unlimited. Um, I would talk to your peers who are writing in the same genre as you. There are some genres that worked very well. While there are some genres and subgenres that are really- most of the audience is in KU. Um, and so just talking with your peers, uh, I think for many people as you get a larger catalog and you have more books, you’re going to end up having books are in KU. You’ll have books that are wide. So you’re building your readership in both, uh, both different areas and you can kind of rotate series in or books in through to those programs as they become stale. Um, so just a couple ideas. Uh, you know, we don’t tell anyone there’s one right way to do all this. Uh, obviously we love it when you go wide and we think it’s a much healthier, uh, community if we have more retailers than just Amazon. |
| Mark: | 00:36:04 | That’s true. But the up there, but again, it’s your own, it’s your own path for each of your books, your own decision. And the beautiful thing is you have the choice. |
| Kevin: | 00:36:12 | And you can, you can sort of hybridize this. I mean, I have all of my, uh, earlier series and everything are all wide. And then I have a series that is in KU and the thing is I’ve watched that earlier series slowly start to climb up. So it is a long game. Um, so I’m leveraging the KU money and momentum, but I’m pushing those books to that same audience. So it sort of crosstalks and it sort of helps out. One helps up the other. Yeah. Um, I’ll probably always have, as long as Amazon is willing to give me that money, I’m probably always going to have a book or tw. o in that, in that environment. But I’m always gonna try to push it wide as soon as I, as soon as I feel like it’s going to be sustainable. |
| Mark: | 00:36:56 | Cool. I’m going to jump to another question now. Uh, Eve Paludan wants to know, is there a maximum file size for certain retailers? Uh, I guess each thinking about big box set. |
| Kevin: | 00:37:09 | Oh, his or ours? |
| Dan: | 00:37:10 | Or, like, the file size can also be if they have graphics in there. |
| Mark: | 00:37:13 | Right, right. Oh, that’s true. Yeah. |
| Kevin: | 00:37:15 | We do have a limit on our side. |
| Dan: | 00:37:16 | There is, I don’t remember what it is off the top of my head. |
| Mark: | 00:37:18 | We need Steed to walk by and say Steed what’s the limit? |
| Kevin: | 00:37:18 | I believe it’s 100 megabytes. |
| Mark: | 00:37:22 | Is that..? |
| Dan: | 00:37:22 | I want to say a hundred megabytes too. Okay. Um, it varies by retailer. Well, we’ve kind of chosen- |
| Kevin: | 00:37:28 | Elyssa’s gonna tell us. |
| Dan: | 00:37:28 | Since we often will send out- |
| Mark: | 00:37:31 | A hundred megabytes, right. Thanks Elyssa. |
| Dan: | 00:37:33 | So often we’ll send out ah, the same book to multiple retailers and we’re kind of limited at the, at the retailer has a certain file size limit. Right? Um, some of them have a little bit more and support more than that. Uh, you really don’t want to, you want to try to have your book size be small in general. Uh, Amazon is going to charge you like if you’re direct through KDP, um, based on the file size for delivery and so it can end up costing you quite a bit of your potential royalties. If your book is large. There are a couple ways around that. Like, um, Amazon has a different program. If you want to have a large book but you only get paid, you get paid less, but then they don’t charge you delivery fees. Um, |
| Mark: | 00:38:18 | Okay. |
| Dan: | 00:38:19 | Things you can look into. |
| Mark: | 00:38:20 | Okay, so uh, Mary Fong asks, uh, I have people who’ve asked if my ebook can be converted to print book with QR codes. Do you know what the QR codes can be used for print books? I wonder if that’s the question they’re asking is, uh, they’re confused what they’re asking because um … |
| Kevin: | 00:38:38 | I’m gonna work from an assumption. |
| Mark: | 00:38:40 | Okay. |
| Kevin: | 00:38:40 | And my assumption is that she’s asking about using QR codes to deliver the book. |
| Mark: | 00:38:46 | Oh. Like just scan the book, like through book funnel. |
| Dan: | 00:38:49 | So like at the end of that print book to be able to like … |
| Kevin: | 00:38:52 | Scan the QR code to pick up the next book. If I’m wrong, Mary, then you can let us know. |
| Dan: | 00:38:57 | I don’t know if any of any infrastructure out there to do that. |
| Kevin: | 00:39:00 | There is a way to this, and we have a tool that will help. The way you can do, one way that you can do this is you could use our Universal Book Links to create the link to the book and you can go on a site like Bit.ly And which just create a QR code for your QR code through Bit.ly that will lead it to the, um, the UBL. So there is a workaround. |
| Mark: | 00:39:22 | But it’s not going gonna make a print book out of it. |
| Kevin: | 00:39:25 | It won’t create, the book. But we can convert your file to an ebook and then you can create a Universal Book Link for that book. And then you can use a third party service to create the QR Code. |
| Mark: | 00:39:39 | And you can print the QR code in the back of your print book or on printed material, right? That people can scan to get to the ebook. |
| Kevin: | 00:39:46 | And Bit.ly is one of the tools that will do that. |
| Mark: | 00:39:49 | And there are a million QR code generators out there. |
| Kevin: | 00:39:52 | There’s all kinds of things that will do it. I like, I like Bit.ly. I lot of people hate Bit.ly. I like the lead because it gives me some data. I can see when clicks go through, and get a little bit of insight. |
| Mark: | 00:40:03 | And we’re going to provide a Bit.ly link, aren’t we? |
| Dan: | 00:40:05 | QR codes, though, not terribly popular in the US. I know there are places where they are an incredibly popular NYU use for the most part, not used as much in Canada. |
| Mark: | 00:40:22 | We’re a QR country everywhere you go there’s QR Code. I mean they migrated north, just got too hot in the US. |
| Dan: | 00:40:32 | We were like, the rest of the world is using these things. America’s not going to do it. |
| Kevin: | 00:40:38 | QR codes are attracted to maple syrup. |
| Mark: | 00:40:39 | That’s what it is. And poutine. [Indaudible] asks, so who’s the printer you’re using? I forgot to ask when I emailed you while you’re at us now. So cool. |
| Kevin: | 00:40:49 | Uh, IPG is our printer and IPG you may be familiar with if you follow anything about the traditional publishing industry, there ended up being the publisher for Harlequin and … |
| Mark: | 00:41:01 | Yeah, a lot of, a lot of smaller presses as well. Independent Publishers Group. |
| Kevin: | 00:41:04 | But they have a nice long history and a nice worldwide presence. It doesn’t always … |
| Mark: | 00:41:12 | And the distribution happens through IPGs partnerships through Ingram. So I’m pretty much anywhere … |
| Dan: | 00:41:20 | It could be printed by one of their partners. So depending on where the book is ordered and going to be sent to, it’ll go out to a third party printer sometimes. Yeah. So it’s, it’s a pretty solid network. It’s not just one city year in Oklahoma or something like that. |
| Kevin: | 00:41:35 | I was going to answer that with like, well you know, what printer are you using? I was going to say like HP or Lexmark. |
| Dan: | 00:41:41 | The brother printer. |
| Mark: | 00:41:43 | Gemma Mythica new asks how does the Audio Book Work Through D To d? Because I’ve never done it before and I’m concerned it’ll be forking out lots of cash up front. So that’s a great opportunity for us to talk about our partnership with Findaway Voices. |
| Kevin: | 00:41:57 | Uh, find a way, has a very long history in the audio book industry. Uh, they’re the guys who made the PlayAway … was it PlayAway? The PlayAway player that used to be available in uh, libraries and stores … |
| Mark: | 00:42:11 | Still is here in Oklahoma. I saw the [inaudible] [inaudible]. |
| Dan: | 00:42:16 | They’ve even got some new um, like children’s books you read long got like, it’s like a print book with children, but then it’s got audio combined into as well. |
| Kevin: | 00:42:26 | That’s a, it was a really cool thing. So they’ve got a long history in the audio book industry. |
| Kevin: | 00:42:32 | Um, so what we have with them as a partnership that will allow you to, if you come in through us, you can move your book over pretty much with a click at this point. And uh, it also waives the $50 casting fee. So that saves you a little bit of money up top. You do not have to distribute through us to go into Findaway you can just use us to as a gateway to get there and save yourself some Cheddar. But at the time and time when what we do is we’ll transfer all the metadata, everything related to your book, we’ll go with your book with a click. Um, so we’ve made that very streamlined. We like find a way quite a bit. They’re very much like us in the way they do business, the way they care about the authors and the industry itself. Uh, so it’s been a very good partnership for us. |
| Mark: | 00:43:21 | And I think I should let you know, uh, Gemma, uh, Findaway Voices just announced a new program called Voices Share. And so the typically audio books are priced by hour and usually, so it’s like 10 hours for the average. 100,000 word books or 10,000 words would be about an hour. Yeah. And usually can be anywhere from, you know, let’s say 200 to a hundred to 300 in the realm per hour, but with Voices Share, it’s a program where you agree and the narrator agrees that they’ll take half of that. So instead of $400 an hour, it’s $200, or instead of $200 an hour, it’s $100 an hour, which makes it more affordable. But then you share royalties on the book and, and that, that can allow … |
| Dan: | 00:44:07 | It’s for a certain amount of time. So it does end after a while. So you split the, the royalties for a while with the narrator, they have options to where you can buy the narrator out if it’s really successful and you’d rather just keep some of the risk out of it for you as an author, um … |
| Mark: | 00:44:24 | Which, which is very beneficial. Now I’ve, I’ve used, uh, Findaway Voices for several of my projects and one of the things you can try is a, the very first one I did was, uh, active reader, which was about 14,000 words. So it didn’t cost that much to produce. And I made my money back really quickly, particularly through the audio library market on the cost per checkout. That’s how I knew when, when we started, uh, to have that available. I might, oh, that’s how I’m making most of my money through Findaway Voices is these, these quick, uh, library checkouts. And again, so it didn’t cost very much. Uh, the very first study of what I did cost me over 3000 US dollars. Canadian dollars, I was like 15,000. No, it’s, but it’s, it’s a lot more Canadian dollars and I haven’t made my money back on that yet, but I’ve made my money back on all the small ones. So what I’m doing is I’m creating a bunch of small audio books from short stories and short story, uh, digital chapbook collections. And, and as I’m earning money back on those, I’m putting that money into a fund to help fund the larger books that will come. You know, the 80 to a hundred thousand word books. |
| Dan: | 00:45:24 | Did we mentioned the distribution network, yet we’ve talked about production. Uh, if you already have an audio book though, or once you get an audiobook done, um, they can help you distribute and they have the option to go wide. And the same way that we make it really easy to go wide with your ebook. And we’ve built out a massive network, uh, digital retailers. Uh, they have worked out a massive network of audio retailers and library systems, you know, and so … |
| Kevin: | 00:45:51 | That distribution includes Audible and Apple Books as well. |
| Mark: | 00:45:54 | And a better deal on Apple Books. Then you get through ACX. |
| Dan: | 00:45:59 | A better down on apple books. Um, you get to control your price everywhere but Audible. And so you can do some exciting things with marketing that when Audible was the only player really any of us could reach a, you had no control over your price. Like everything is a credit. Amazon determines exactly how much that book is worth. Um, you know, they might charge less for things with Whispersync and a couple of other things, but you had no control. You couldn’t really run any promotions. Uh, with Findaway you can run promotions at Apple. You can run promotions with BookBub’s new Chirp, uh, service. Uh, Kobos got their own audio book platform now Barnes and Noble. And then libraries. A whole lot of the money that Findaway is seeing is in library sales and libraries are buying audiobooks cause their patrons are demanding them. So [inaudible] |
| Kevin: | 00:46:49 | The pricing you have other than ACX other than Audible, rather, uh, the pricing is adjustable all the way down to zero, which gives you some promotional advantages. You can also, uh, through this program you can do shorter works, which is something that is not beneficial to you when you’re limited to just Audible because of that credit system. Cause people want the longest book that you get for credit. Um, but now we can break that system and you can actually start publish publishing shorter audio works, which may gain you a, an audience faster because there are a lot of people who like to just have a quick listen to something and they don’t [inaudible] or something, uh, taking a quick walk and they want to listen to it, you know, half an hour or up to an hour of audio rather than trying to get through a 30 hour book. |
| Kevin: | 00:47:38 | So this is a, it’s like opening up a bunch of new markets. |
| Mark: | 00:47:42 | Yeah. So, uh, I am gonna jump over to a quick one. Eve. Uh, how have you asked, will you be implementing an ad platform? |
| Dan: | 00:47:51 | Not really a plan right now. We are building out more things around the Books2Read platform that we have to reach more readers. Um, we have no intention of selling as authors at this point though. |
| Mark: | 00:48:04 | Our model is we make money when the author makes money. And so anytime there’s an opportunity to charge authors for something that’s not, it’s not in our DNA. Right? It’s one of the things that we’re very leery about because there’s so many players in the industry that are just looking to charge authors for things. Uh, and, and, and that’s never been the way that we’ve operated. So the concept of helping authors sell books is great. |
| Mark: | 00:48:28 | So, um, you know, leveraging books to read in that way to help authors somewhere. It’d be great cause when you sell more than we make more. |
| Kevin: | 00:48:34 | That said, we knew, we do recognize the value of advertising. Um, and we know how challenging that can be for authors. So it is something that we do kick around and we are kinda thinking, thinking over, uh, we never stopped thinking about ways to help authors write this, this particular program. Is it something we’re going to implement anytime soon. But it is something that we do discuss, you know, trying to figure it out because if we can figure out a way for authors to, anything we can do that’s going to help authors find a bigger audience and sell more books we want to do up in large part because that’s how we make our money is when you sell books. |
| Kevin: | 00:49:12 | So yeah, something will come. Something we’re considering and something will probably eventually solve just because that’s what we do. |
| Dan: | 00:49:19 | And we continue to work with our retailers, our library partners to nominate and promote books within their merchandising, uh, infrastructure, which is all different everywhere. They all do it all differently. Um, with Books2Read we just want to drive readers to our retailers and so we want to help them some more books and we want to help you sell more books than we make more money. |
| Mark: | 00:49:41 | And everyone really, everyone’s happy and they’re reading more and they’re reading more makes people have that right. |
| Kevin: | 00:49:46 | And we don’t know about you but we like money. |
| Mark: | 00:49:48 | And reading and writing. |
| Dan: | 00:49:53 | I think that next question kinda also is on the same lines. Which one? Uh, Dan Gallagher in there. |
| Mark: | 00:49:58 | So Dan asks and there’s a comment flip to follow that up. So, uh, Dan asked You, uh, Dan Gallagher asks, do you have a way to match up authors who could exchange mass emailings like mutual support. The idea is that similar authors, promoter, buddy offer and the regular emails, the other author does the same. Hence this buys exposure. Can you facilitate this link up between offers are open to that. And then the follow comment is he suggests, create a contact list of authors. I’m willing to mutually promote a a with other opposites, especially for mass mailing lists. We can’t share the list but we can promo fellow author with that author doing the same. This would work best if the list size in other venues can be included in the office. Arrange by sub genre, genre or otherwise commenting on the profile. So I liked the idea of, of using Books2Read for that, right. Uh, given landing pages with … |
| Kevin: | 00:50:45 | And that could be … ultimately be a feature that we can incorporate. Um, right now it’s not really something that’s, that we’re developing and it’s on the radar. |
| Kevin: | 00:50:56 | I can say that there aren’t plenty of, of we’ll call them FOBs—friends of business who are doing this sort of thing already. BookFunnel has a whole Promo. All of that’s right. They do. Yeah. Yeah. And there are plenty of other, uh, groups out. Yeah. |
| Dan: | 00:51:12 | Think we’re often within like their genre on Facebook groups or forums they get to within their genre doing this email swap idea, and it is a great idea. It’s worth it for a lot of people. Um, and something I, we were, we’re open to you. It’s a little bit hard to enforce as a third party. Um, and make sure that everyone, like I’ve agreed to send out my book, your book to my email of our I, my email lists and vice versa. Um, |
| Mark: | 00:51:42 | But policing that would be impossible. |
| Kevin: | 00:51:45 | Yeah. But that said though, I mean there is the possibility that we could create just a forum for authors to be able to connect to do just this. |
| Kevin: | 00:51:54 | It’s a good idea. I mean a, I’m willing to kick that around. |
| Mark: | 00:51:57 | So I’m going to jump over to Julie Strauss says, do you have any tips for marketing a multi-author shared world series? So multi authors, shared world, they’re all writing in the same universe, probably independently publishing the books. Well I think Books2Read and the in the landing pages like the custom, the custom landing pages would be a great way to have a landing page that is all retailer inclusive, right? So it can go to Amazon, go to Apple and go to Kobo and go to Nook. It can go all the retailers. Um, and you can control it. Uh, you know, Julie, you can create the page and you can put the, the carousels and the links and stuff like that. So I think he had that reading list. Yeah. Reading on this would be … |
| Kevin: | 00:52:39 | That’s a new tool if you haven’t checked. If you haven’t seen that yet. Um, we do have a blog post about that. Uh, and maybe Elyssa could be really nice and find the link to the, the announcement about it. Uh, uh, but Reading Lists are a great place for this kind of thing because you can create a themed list with a custom, a header on it, uh, use some, we have some templates you can use, but you can create these custom carousels that can do every do anything you need to do, frankly. Uh, but one thing, like, I have a group of authors, we’re building something called Thriller Cartel, and we’re, we’ve got sort of a hero book up top that rotate out. And then we have a carousel of sort of first in series reads for each author. And then we’ve got themes like there’s an Atlantis theme. And then there’s some Mayan theme and there’s, you know, we’ve got that all broken down. Now if you’re doing a multi author set, I mean, you’re only gonna have the one book, but you might make that like say a hero book and have other books by those offers. And then that’s an incentive for these authors to share this far and wide and for readers to share it far and wide and always ask your readers the share stuff. |
| Dan: | 00:53:50 | Yeah. Like obviously in this case like the email swap that we were talking about on that last question, email swap would be a great way to that. You’re all riding within the same genre. Probably uh, you know, sharing with your different lists and pulling people into the overall world, uh, would be great. Um, some of the retailers, if you ask, will set up a landing page for things that are part of a multi-author a world series. Um, so it doesn’t hurt to ask them about that. |
| Mark: | 00:54:18 | But what I love is you don’t have to be like, well I hope they build it for me. He was like, no, I’m going to build that. |
| Dan: | 00:54:23 | You can definitely build your own with the reading list, it’s super handy. |
| Mark: | 00:54:27 | So, uh, we’re getting kinda close to read available to support traditional publishers for free. No, you can put any book you want in Books2Read. I love the idea of charging traditional publishers, but I have traditionally published books and I use books to read for them. Any book, no matter how it’s published, you can put it up there. It doesn’t have to be your own. So we decided to go to digital. Doesn’t have to be, no, no. We have five minutes. So we need to give a something, right? |
| Kevin: | 00:54:54 | We do. We got a couple of things we need to hit up. Um, well let’s just give the w we want to do, we’re going to do, we, everybody has really enjoyed the consultations. We know, cause we were inundated with people, uh, who signed up but couldn’t get in. Um, so we are offering this again. Uh, and uh, basically we’re offering 30 minutes free with one of us and you don’t get to pick who, uh, so there’s not a popularity contest. Uh, and Dan would win. Um, we would want a one on one consultation. However, um, you get a 30 minute session. Uh, there’s a limited number of these and it’s limited frankly because there’s just a limited number of hours each day. And the limited number of days. And we’re at conferences, we’re all out. We like to sleep every once in awhile. |
| Kevin: | 00:55:46 | If we didn’t have slots. Yeah, we do have slots. So I’m going to ask this time, uh, cause some, some of you get really excited and you sign up for multiple sessions or you, you come back after having had a session previously. Uh, so what we’re going to ask is if you have done one before, please allow someone else to take your spot this time. And uh, if you don’t get a spot, don’t, don’t feel bad, we will figure something out. And eventually if you keep coming back to the webinars, uh, we’re going to keep offering these. So we will, we’d love to talk to everybody. Um, and frankly with three of us, we figured we’d go cover a lot more ground, but these are a lot more popular than we were anticipating. Uh, so the link to do that and um, if, uh, I’m hoping Elyssa will share this in the Facebook group. |
| Kevin: | 00:56:35 | It’s bitly bit dot l y Slash d two d consult. And that is available. It’s open right now. There are slots between today and September 30th. |
| Mark: | 00:56:47 | Although this weekend, uh, we’re at a conference, a lot of us are [inaudible] may not be any spots open. |
| Dan: | 00:56:54 | And we, we, we have a holiday for the US on a Labor Day, do they have Labor Day in Canda? |
| Mark: | 00:56:59 | Yeah, we have Labor Day, we have labor and Labor Day. I hidden Canadians work and they have babies. That’s what Labor is. |
| Kevin: | 00:57:06 | This was about, okay, that’s what labored I will here in. And so please listen, come on and say hi. [inaudible] come on. [inaudible] office. |
| Kevin: | 00:57:18 | We share in the back. You’ll see how, Hey, let’s, uh, you get to the end here. This is all. So that’s our look. We didn’t [inaudible] her up. [inaudible] |
| Mark: | 00:57:30 | Thank you so much for the support. |
| Kevin: | 00:57:32 | Makes so much magic happen behind the scenes. We literally couldn’t run the company without her. It’s a shame we only pay her in like pogs. |
| Mark: | 00:57:42 | And Canadian and Canadian Maple carwash tokens. |
| Kevin: | 00:57:48 | So thank you so much for helping us out with, yeah, and thank you guys. |
| Elyssa: | 00:57:52 | No, I did not have a speech prepared, so I’ll say something you guys, thanks for coming in. |
| Kevin: | 00:58:03 | That’s going to have to wrap this up. Uh, two minutes early. Two minutes. We’re gonna talk about, you’re talking about something, two minutes, two minutes. |
| Mark: | 00:58:10 | Oh, I think we’re gonna tease. We were going to, there’s going to be a new library market. You’re distributing to if everything goes well. |
| Kevin: | 00:58:17 | Okay. We are huge fans of [inaudible]. Everyone in the company discovered a love for reading after a local library and we really dislike what’s going on with Macmillan. But we are introducing another, uh, another distribution channel for libraries in the next week. |
| Kevin: | 00:58:37 | Uh, we’re going to be distributing through Hoopla and you’ve heard of Hoopla. You’re, you know, they are huge. They have a huge distribution network and uh, they offer, they will, they’re going to be there. Their terms are a little different than some of the other libraries, but they’re going to be able to pay you on the, uh, cease [inaudible] complicated [inaudible] but [inaudible] all our offers will, uh, it will be on our blog. We will be announcing as you guys are hearing about at first. Uh, but we will be announcing to the world and within the next week. |
| Mark: | 00:59:09 | So don’t tell anyone, just keep it to yourself. |
| Kevin: | 00:59:13 | And if it gets out, we know who did it. Um, but yeah, so that’s just one more, one more branch of our a library distribution library branch. Um, and, uh, we’re just really excited about we, we, we love the whole library thing. |
| Kevin: | 00:59:30 | We love everything about it. And we kinda hit on this earlier, but right now is the time to start pushing your books into libraries as much as you can because there’s, there’s a vacancy and there are, if you produce books that are like the best sellers in new books that are coming out, patrons can’t get those. So they’re going to go for the closest thing. |
| Dan: | 00:59:51 | Lots opportunity books, lots of opportunity in audio books and libraries. And hopefully print will open up a little bit more to any authors. Um, it’s awesome. Awesome time. |
| Mark: | 01:00:02 | So thank you guys for a wonderful advice and, and thanks for hanging out with us again on this. Ask us anything. We will see some of you one on one face to face, uh, consultations. |
| Kevin: | 01:00:13 | Yes. And also we are, since we’re in Oklahoma City this weekend where some of us are here for the WriterCon, if you’re in Oklahoma City, uh, if you haven’t, if you’re attending right of nearby, right here. |
| Mark: | 01:00:26 | And we’re having an open house here, it’s more like Friday night, 7:00 PM, which is the 30th of August, |
| Kevin: | 01:00:32 | 30th of August 17. [inaudible]. |
| Mark: | 01:00:37 | You get a chance to see us in person, drink with us and sit in the, uh, the, the, the game of a books chair. Rats, right. Writers are coming to book for books. So thanks a lot guys. We appreciate you being here and, uh, we hope you got something out of this. |