Paul Teague is a successful non-fiction author and host of the Self-Publishing Journeys Podcast. He is now attempting to move solely into writing in fiction, which is where his passion lies.
Marketing
Using Google for Business with Martin Shervington
In this show I talk to Martin Shervington, who is an author, speaker and marketing consultant at PlusYourBusiness.com. He coaches on marketing, specialising in things to do with Google.
How Much Does Self-Publishing Cost with Emmanuel Nataf
In this show I talk again to Emmanuel Nataf from Reedsy about a blog post he wrote about how much self-publishing costs, in terms of editing, cover design and interior layout.
Using Instagram to Market Books with Jenn Herman
In this episode I talk to Jenn Herman. She is the forefront blogger on Instagram marketing and her blog, Jenn’s Trends, has won the title of a Top 10 Social Media Blog in 2014, 2015, and 2016. She is the author of “The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Instagram” and “Stop Guessing: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Social Media Strategy”.
Self-Publishing for Profit
One distinct trend is that there seem to be distinct themes in terms of self-publishing books, self-publishing for profit and self-publishing for quality.
While these two aims aren’t mutually exclusive, there are definitely two schools of thought regarding self-publishing, those people who want to self-publish books to make money and those who want to self-publish to create a really fantastic product. This is subtly different from the distinction between business and a hobby. To achieve complete success on either path then you will need to run your self-publishing exercise like a business, but to begin with the hobbyist path provides an opportunity to try things out and achieve initial success.
In this episode I consider what I’ve learned in terms of self-publishing for profit, that is the objective of making money from self-publishing books.
As any half-decent business person knows, you make a profit by earning more money than you pay in costs (in strictly accounting terms this is actually cashflow, but in layman terms this is correct). So to self-publish for profit we need to ensure we pay as low costs as possible and make as much money as possible.
Was I Wrong about Fiction Book Content Marketing?
I’ve recently started to wonder if my view that content marketing doesn’t work for marketing fiction books is actually wrong. I never tried it; I thought about it but decided against it.
What is content marketing?
For those of you who are wondering what content marketing is : it is basically creating some form of regular content, usually a blog, video channel or a podcast with the aim of attracting an audience of people who will ultimately buy your books.
So rather than paying for services where you make use of someone else’s audience (basically advertising) you build up your own audience by attracting them to your regular content. That’s the idea.
For non-fiction books it is usually very easy to do this, most have a specific set of questions that they answer and so you can create content that answers those question, the idea of “they ask, you answer.” For fiction you can’t use this approach, but I’ve started to think that there is still benefit from blogging or podcasting.