Information, inspiration and interviews on writing, self-publishing, book marketing and making a living with your writing. If you need help with writing your book, or you want to learn how to navigate the new world of publishing and book marketing, then join Joanna Penn and her guests every Monday. Also covers the business of being a writer and how to make money with your books.
https://www.thecreativepenn.com/blog/
Q&A Show On Self-Publishing And Book Marketing With Joanna Penn
In today's show, I tackle more of your questions from The Creative Penn survey about self-publishing and marketing. The last Q&A show was one of the most popular of the podcast, so I hope you enjoy this one too.
In the intro, I mention that I visited Highgate Cemetery yesterday and if you're a fellow taphophile, you can see my pics on Pinterest here. I also mention the ups and downs of Amazon this week, with Joe Konrath and Hugh Howey both singing the praises of KDP Select, while a report on working conditions in the New York Times has been getting a lot of negative press.
I also talk about my progress on the course website for the new Creative Freedom course and how I'll be unveiling the roadmap video this week. It's my attempt to demonstrate what most authors are missing in their author business and why most authors don't make a living with their writing. You can get all the free videos at TheCreativePenn.com/freedom
This podcast episode is sponsored by 99 Designs, where you can get all kinds of designs for your author business including book covers, merchandising, branding and business cards, illustrations and artwork and much more. You can get a Powerpack upgrade which gives your project more chance of getting noticed by going to: 99Designs.com/joanna
In the Q&A section, I go through:
* Book translations, foreign rights sales and audio books. Here's my roundup of translation posts.
* Getting into libraries and the advantages / disadvantages of KDP select. Here's the Alliance of Independent Authors' guide to libraries.
* Draft2Digital and Smashwords and the different sites they distribute your book to.
* Paid advertising, hiring help for all that indie publishing entails, and the motivation behind being an indie author.
* The different lengths of novels and novellas and the distinction between book series and serials and Wattpad's model for serialized book releases.
* The different audiences for print and eBooks.
* Blogging and ISBNs and whether they're necessary for a writing career.
* On the advisability of crowdfunding for authors and the motivations for marketing your books.
* Getting traffic to a website without a platform and the reasons for that traffic.
* The hard work of being an indie author and the choices we make about what we want to do with our time.
If you enjoyed the Q&A, then you can get more videos and audios on making a living with your writing and managing your time at TheCreativePenn.com/freedom.
Q&A Transcription
Joanna: Today we are doing a Q&A session and I have again picked a whole load of questions, mainly on self publishing and marketing from the survey I did a few months back. I still have 2,