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30% Off My Courses 

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In this course, I’ll share everything I’ve learned about creating sensory-rich writing. I’ll show you the psychology behind the senses as well as how to connect sensory detail with memory to deepen both your characterization and imagery.
If you want to hook a reader then emotion and the emotional journey your hero goes on is the foundation of a good story. And what creates and enhances emotion? Sense rich writing.
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You’ll get the 2.5 hour long replay video, audio, 5000+ words of notes, slides and a summary sheet.

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We talk about a new book we’ve cowritten that focuses on the good stuff: money. I go deep and get personal in this book with my experiences of debt and money and the lessons I’ve learned that took me from aspiring writer to full-time business woman.

Read the Book: 9 Things Career Authors Don’t Do: Personal Finance

Read the rest of the series: http://getbook.at/9thingsseries

The post 051 – Personal Finance for Writers with J Thorn and Sacha Black appeared first on Sacha Black.

Hello Rebels, welcome to The Rebel Author Podcast episode 49. We are rocking closer and closer to the 1 year mark. I’ll be doing a few things to celebrate but first to today’s episode…I’m talking to Jennie Nash all about how to create an author side hustle and author coaching. I adored talking to Jennie she’s so personable, engaging and fascinating to talk to. So I hope you enjoy this episode.

This week’s questions is:

If you could do anything as a side hustle, what would it be?

***

Find out more about our guest Jennie Nash:

If you want to be a book coach, you can find out more about Jennie’s courses and free information here: bookcoaches.com/abc

If you’re a writer and would like to be matched with a coach, then visit here: authoraccelerator.com

***

Book recommendation of the week is: How to Write a Series by Sara Rosett

• Kobo
• Apple
• Amazon UK
• Amazon USA

Don’t forget The Anatomy of Prose is now live, you can get it in ebook, paperback or hardback now.

Click the link here. Order the Workbook here. 

Listener Rebel of the Week is Jasmine Arch

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

***

Two new patrons this week, welcome and thank you to Denise Berndt and Rae Tauranga. A huge thank you also to all my current patrons for the ongoing support. 

If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

Sponsor of the show this week is ProWritingAid

Find out more about ProWritingAid software using my link here.

Use my discount code: REBEL25

Connect with ProWritingAid on social media:

Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

Please note I do use affiliate links, I earn a small commission when you purchase something using these links at no additional cost to you.

The post 049 How to Create an Author Side Hustle with Jennie Nash appeared first on Sacha Black.

This week’s questions is:

How do you use data in your writing business?

Book recommendation of the week is: Intuitive Editing by Tiffany Yates Martin

Kobo

Amazon UK  

Amazon USA

Please note these are affiliate links

Sign up for the The Anatomy of Prose: How to Breathe Life into Your Story, Characters and Sentences Webinar

Listener Rebel of the Week is Jay Renee Lawrence

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

***

No new patrons this week, a huge thank you to all my current patrons, you help not only to keep the podcast running, you make me feel like what I do is worthwhile. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack 

The post 048 How to Use Data to Sell More Books with Alex Newton appeared first on Sacha Black.

This week’s questions is:

What three words describe your author branding?

Find out more about our guest Steve Brown on:

His website

Linkedin

Read his book here.

Don’t forget The Anatomy of Prose is now live, you can get it in ebook, paperback or hardback now.

Click the link here.

Order the Workbook here. 

Book recommendation: Goal Setting for Writers: A Step-By-Step Roadmap to Success by Holly Lyne

Amazon UK:  https://amzn.to/30fHt82 

Amazon USA:  https://amzn.to/2WpLWUw

Listener Rebel of the Week is Cari Buziak

 If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

Thank you to new patrons Jessica Samuels, and Jackie Reuter. Thank you to all my current patrons for the ongoing support. If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

The post 041 What You’re Getting Wrong with Your Author Website with Steve Brown appeared first on Sacha Black.

Episode Show Notes

This week’s questions is:

What language would you most like your book translated into?

Find out more about our guest Joseph Alexander on:

Website: www.translatebooks.com

Music website www.fundamental-changes.com for over 350 free HD video lessons or to get signed as an author.

The link Joseph mentioned for the book to read 12 Ways to Market Your Book in German is here.

Don’t forget The Anatomy of Prose is now live, you can get it in ebook, paperback or hardback now.

Click the link here.

Order the Workbook here. 

Book recommendation: Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

Listener Rebel of the Week is Matt Goodall

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

Thank you to new patron Bair Klos

Thank you to all my current patrons for the ongoing support. If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

The post 040 How to Deliver Value to Your Readers with Joseph Alexander appeared first on Sacha Black.

But what to do? What to do? What if you have a series? What if you have a single book? What if you write non-fiction?

I recently *praise the literary gods* managed to land the holy grail of marketing – a Bookbub. I’ve learned a few things about pricing along the way and wanted to share my experience.

Before anyone gets their book-knickers in a twist, I’m not suggesting THIS strategy is THE glorious sales panacea that will work every time, hell it might not even work for you – I do write in a specific genre and anyone with an ounce of marketing sense will appreciate that genres vary as much as my mood during the final week of editing!

Here’s what I’ve learned about book pricing

I wrote a post not so long ago on The State of The Industry which reviewed the findings of the recent author earnings report. It has an examination of what we’re earning and price point sensitivity. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth a look. But the biggest takeaways for me were:

1. Books no longer NEED to be bargain basement, there’s a gradual rise in pricing again (although cheaper books are still easier to shift by the metric crap ton).
2. $1.99 seems to be a bit of a dead price point – while it is still used and selling, you as the author are on 35% royalty on Amazon, which means you get bugger all, and if you’re going to get bugger all, you might as well get it at 99c/p and sell a ton more books.

Series Pricing

With series, you can get out your winner pompoms and do a happy dance because, with more books, you have more pricing flexibility. Oh, I recently wrote a resident writing coach post over on Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s so read that for tips on How NOT to Mess Up Your Series.

Now, try not to twitch buuuut, if you’re a relative unknown, then money shouldn’t be at the forefront of your mind. What should be in the gooey bits of your grey matter is gaining AS MANY READERS (and subscribers – but that’s a blog for a different day) as possible.

If you’re anything like me, then book one in your series was slaved over for an unacceptable amount of time, so parting with it at a bargain basement price is like having acid dropped on your tongue. But go back and read that previous paragraph. The point is, you want readers. Readers you can turn into lifelong fans who will continue to buy your books.

If you have a six book series, then losing money or earning a minimal royalty on book one doesn’t matter so much because you have five other books to earn your groceries from. So price book one low, as low as you can stand in order to gain as many readers as possible. At the end of the day, no one’s going to read book four if they haven’t read book one, two and three first.

The Prequel Novella 

If you absolutely can’t stand to drop the price of book one then a strategy I’m seeing more and more frequently would be to write a prequel or a short story of some variety or another that you can use purposefully at a low price point to hook readers.

Word of warning – if you do use the prequel/novella strategy, don’t rush out a mediocre brain vomit of a story. This is going to be a reader’s first impression of you, you need it to be supercallerfragalistically awesome or you can kiss goodbye to later book sales.

I’m currently in the process of writing a prequel novella for mailing list building purposes rather than using it as my series entry point because I want book one to be the book that people read first. So I‘ll put my novella on sale BUT I’ll give it away for free to subscribers – if I get extra sales from non-subscribers then bonus for me.

What will I price it? I don’t know yet, it sort of depends on how long it turns out, but either 99c/p, 1.99c/p or if it’s closer to novel length then maybe 2.99c/p – super specific I know. Sozbuckles.

The Real Cost of Marketing 

If you’re going to advertise your books, then I hope, you’ll be assessing their performance and ROI (return on investment). You’ll probably find when pricing a book one at super low prices, for example, 99c/p, that you don’t appear (at face value) to be getting a return on investment. BUT you need to take into consideration whether you’re getting an increase in sales on later books – called ‘sale through’ (or read through). If you are – then losing a bit on book one is fine because you’re making the profit back on later books.

There’s some nifty math you can do to work this out, but my math is about as good as my ability to follow rules. So I’ll recommend a book instead – check out Brian D. Meek’s Mastering Amazon Ads for a bunch of wicked sick knowhow on AMS ads and the nifty read through sums.

BookBub

The BookBub was for Keepers (which is currently still 99c/p by the way). Usually priced at 2.99 (it’s the first book in the series). I dropped it to 99c/p for the sale.

I also immediately put Victor on pre-order. I’ve heard that while BookBubs make their money back, typically, you earn the bucks on the sale through – there’s that word again. So I took the plunge and put Victor on pre-order. Oh, you can pre-order it here.

And yes, I did get some pre-orders so I’m convinced that little nugget of sales goodness is worth listening to.

I wanted to see what the BookBub did in isolation, so I made a point of not promoting it anywhere else. Previously my BookBub tail lasted about three days. Which was a similar experience this time. So after three days, I was surprised to find I was still selling copies. I can only put this down to the fact I had a sales rank boost and the book was still at 99c/p. So I’m now using other slower burn ads to keep the sales ticking over and praise be the bookish gods, it’s working, and the pre-orders are still trickling in too.

What I’d Do Next Time 

Well for one, I wasn’t expecting to get accepted – so I’d already done a weeks ad stacking not that long ago which meant I couldn’t apply for ads like Robin Reads or eReader News Today. So I might reconsider when I apply next time!

• But book ads on other platforms on the days around the BookBub
• Now I’ve experimented with a pure BookBub, I’d do more by way of promoting the sale to subscribers and on social media as I’m less worried about the effectiveness and more concerned with sales.
• Wait until I had at LEAST three books out in my series. 

Tips On Getting A BookBub

I don’t claim to be an expert on BookBub Featured Deals, but having managed to get more of them than not, I thought I’d share a couple of things I’ve done to secure them

1. Make sure your cover is shit hot shiny (for the literal ones of you out there, I don’t actually mean shiny, I just mean good quality) and something that fits in with the other covers in your genre
2. Have an enticing blurb
3. As many reviews as you possibly can – I went on a review drive after being rejected the first time. I secured a ton more reviews, applied again, and boom boom shake the sales, I got one.
4. Use the comments box – actual humans read your application so talk to them… like humans! Say whatever you can, all your successes, mention the number of reviews on all the Amazon’s and GoodReads. Editorial reviews and previous success.
5. Being wide is generally preferred from what I can tell
6. Be flexible with dates
7. Be willing to accept an international one (which excludes the U.S.A)

Non-fiction Pricing

With my non-fiction, I spent a long time with 13 Steps To Evil priced at 2.99c/p for the ebook. But having gone out and looked at comparative authors and books in my genre, I discovered that for the length of the book, I was actually underpricing. After crippling self-doubt and a bout of fear induced hyperventilation, I convinced myself to up the price to 3.99c/p.

What difference did it make to sales? Absolutely none. I continued seeing the same amount of sales month on month, only now I was earning more on each sale. WINNER POM POMS! Am I going to stick at 3.99? No not forever. I’d like to rise it to 4.99 but I need an injection of confidence first and probably some more books out!

So yeah – market research, don’t be afraid to experiment… Did I mention experimenting? DO IT. Do it like it’s pancakes smothered in bacon and syrup and you haven’t eaten in seven weeks.

N.B. as a vegetarian with a severe hatred of bacon I find the previous metaphor utterly repulsive. So for the veggies out there, take your pick of wine, chocolate or tofu.

Let me summarise:

1. Experimentation is sales oxygen – just because some marketing demigod has said they priced their book on the fictional life of potato peel at 20.99 does not mean that it will a) work for your more mainstream book about a superhero and b)that you should take it on face value and not experiment for yourself. EXPERIMENT PEOPLE. Do the work. Find out you’re own stinking lessons.
2. Stick at a winning price forever – let’s say you hit on a cushy price that ramps up the sales volume. That doesn’t mean you need to stick with it forever. Unless you experiment you won’t know if you can up your price without affecting sales or not. Did I mention experimenting? No? Well, you should. Just saying.
3. Don’t undervalue your work – This is especially true of non-fiction you’d be surprised at what you can price and still make sales. But the only way to find out is to… yeah, you feel me, EXPERIMENT.
4. Covers and blurbs – even if your books free, if you have a second-rate cover and a boring blurb, no reader is going to pick up your book.
5. Non-fiction can be priced higher than fiction 
6. Sale through – remember that you might lose money when advertising book one in your series, but if you have many other books in your series, then check your sale through profit before ditching an advert.
7. Market research – go look in your genre and check comparative authors – what are they pricing – that’s your benchmark.

***

How do you guys price your books, whether fiction, non-fiction or series books? Let me know in the comments.

Read Keepers, the first book in my Young Adult fantasy series for just 99c now. Or to hear more about the release of the sequels as well as get regular CogMail updates you can do so here.

You can get more awesome writing tips in my book 13 Steps To Evil – How to Craft Superbad Villains. Click this link and just tap the logo of your device or regular bookshop and it will take you to the right page. You can also get a FREE villains cheatsheet by joining my mailing list just click here.

You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads

The post Book Pricing Strategies #MondayBlogs #amwriting appeared first on Sacha Black.