hosted by: AskPat 198 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 198 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you're doing awesome because I'm feeling awesome. Before we get to today's question from Roger, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is Music Radio Creative.
One of my favorite companies as of late because I've been doing a lot of audio stuff. I've mentioned them before. They actually help with creating podcast intros. Probably the most professional company when it comes to creating podcast intros and outros and music for your shows. That's not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about another service that they're offering, which is podcast production. If you at all, if you have a podcast and you find the process of podcast production completely time-intensive and you know that you could be using your time more effectively, let Music Radio Creative take care of everything for you. Just all you have to do is click record, send it to them, and they'll do all the stuff for you. Including all the metadata. Check it out. Head on over to MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat.
You can get that at half the price by simply entering “Ask Pat” at checkout. It's only valid through November 30th so go ahead and check that out. Awesome. Now let's get to today's question from Roger.
Roger: Hi. My name is Roger Weston and I'm a thrill writer. I listen to your podcast introduction on passive income. I was wondering if you have any advice for a writer of eBooks. I've sold around 30,000 copies of my action thrillers. Including over 15,000 of my novel The Recruiter. But lately the sales have slowed down. I'm not really sure how to boost the passive income. I continue to promote through Twitter, on my blog, and on other social media. Do you have any suggestions?
Pat Flynn: Roger, thank you so much for the question. I am just thrilled to answer it. Sorry I had to that. You're a thriller author and it's probably … anyway. I've been doing a lot of dad jokes recently. I'm a dad and they've just been coming out more and more. I think it's just something that naturally happens when you become a dad. You tell dumb jokes like that.
But anyway, awesome. You're a thriller writer. This is great because we don't have a lot of information online in helping people in the fiction arena. There are a lot of people. I'm going to give you some resources but most of the stuff that we all hear about are the non-fiction resources and how to get to the New York Times Bestseller or ranking high on Amazon if you're writing non-fiction. Even structures for how to create non-fiction books.
How do you promote, or excuse me, re-promote a fiction book that has already been published? First of all, congratulations on the sales and all the copies you've sold so far. 30,000 is not something to ignore. That's amazing. A lot of people, especially in the fiction world, would be completely happy with that. All that to say, you have a great product. How are we going to get it out there for everybody? There's a number of different things you could do but the first thing I want to do is mention a resource for you. If you go to, gosh. What is the website? It is the Self-Publishing Podcast. If you go to SelfPublishingPodcast.com a bunch of my good friends are there helping people with fiction because they publish a lot of fiction books. They're doing a lot of amazing things and sharing a lot of information about how that all happens and how it's being marketed and things like that. Johnny B. Truant and Shawn and also Dave are over there at the Self-Publishing Podcast. Again, that's SelfPublishingPodcast.com.
I'm sure they'll be happy to know I gave them a shout out because I've been meaning to do that for a while. But also beyond that there's a couple episodes of the Smart Passive Income Podcast that could help you as well. In particular, Episode 79. If you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session79, it's not necessarily about fiction or non-fiction specifically. It's just about books and promoting it in general. I think it's really smart what Jeff Goins, our guest on that episode, talked about. That's actually a really cool episode. Again, that's SmartPassiveIncome.com/session79. I love that episode because it deals with time travel, in a way that we actually recorded the first half of that episode before I ran the promotions for my book. After my book was sold, Jeff taught me a bunch of different strategies that I could put into place. Then the second half of the episode is how it all went after implementing Jeff's strategies. What happened? What did I do right? What did I do wrong? What were the results and things like that? Again, it's Episode 79 in the Smart Passive Income Podcast.
Let me give you a few ideas. I think it's great that you're promoting on Twitter and social media. But perhaps you're at a point now where you're tapped out on those resources. What else can you do? Of course, you can create partnerships with other people in the same genre. I think that's something that if you give to them, they'll give back to you. You can share each other's audiences and things like that, if perhaps they have a Twitter account that has a large following. You could perhaps get them to mention you if you mention them and those sorts of things. Everybody does this in every industry. I think especially in fiction writing maybe this isn't utilized quite as often because everybody is so into their own books and into their own marketing and things like that.
You think of people who are doing YouTube channels. They're really good with it. A lot of them cross-collaborate with other YouTube stars and YouTube people. That's how they grow. They grow together. That's how you always have to do it. That's how I've done it on Smart Passive Income by connecting with people like Glenn Allsopp from Viperchill.com. When I was just getting started and also Derek Halpern and things like that. We help and cross-promote each other. We're both growing together. We're all growing together. You can do the same thing. Partner with other people in the same industry. Maybe not the A-listers. Obviously there's a bunch of A-listers and people who are way up there in the fiction thriller category. Find the people who are just like you, who are looking to grow their audience as well. You can probably determine that based off of Amazon reviews and things like that or Amazon rankings perhaps even.
Connect with them. Talk about how you're in this together and share ideas. Maybe create mastermind groups together. You can promote each other. That's the cool thing about this. You don't want to do it alone because there's a lot of opportunity to cross-promote and not only get help but help others too. Another thing you could do is, I don't know if you thought about this or perhaps you even do this already, is you can sell your physical version of your ebook. That will help you get a little bit more income. Perhaps capture some of that low hanging fruit where not everybody wants an ebook or some people who want the ebook also want the physical book. You can connect through a company like CreateSpace to help you create those on demand print books when people buy the digital versions. Perhaps you can have the option of buying the physical version instead. Again, on demand so you don't have to have a warehouse fool of them.
Also, are you utilizing an email list? If you have an email list, that's definitely something that you should start to begin to collect so you can start to promote to those people when you, and my next tip is, write more. One of the best things you can do, especially in a fiction writer, is create the series of books using and bringing back the same characters, new plot twist, similar genre, similar scenarios but different story. When you start to build that email list as you start to add more and more books to your particular series, you could help people get involved, which is going to be really cool. Help build those raving fans who are actually going to help you influence the decisions that you make with how you write your book. They're obviously going to be excited to read that book and see what the outcomes are. See if their suggestions were actually put in there. It allows you to create buzz and build hype as you're writing the next book and getting people excited to know what's coming next.
Also, it's another platform for you to help cross-promote with other people as well. If you have an email list of dedicated thriller writers, that's something another thriller writer or author would be very, very interested in of course.
Another thing you could do is start a podcast. How many fiction writers are actually starting a podcast? Especially if you have a series and you can create a podcast specifically about your series. Maybe you could even have some of your audience come on and they interview you. I know a few people in the internet marketing space who are doing that. I think that's really clever. How about an author creating a podcast and they have either people call in through Speakpipe like we did for this episode here. Or get on a chat with you and actually have them interview you instead. That would be really cool for me as an audience member to hear somebody else who read the book ask the same questions or ask a question that I didn't think about and get and answer from you. Perhaps even get a chance to talk to you on the podcast as well.
You can start your own. People can listen to it. People will find you on New and Noteworthy and on iTunes. You might get more books that way too. Again, I keep going back to the series thing. I think one of the things in internet marketing, one of your best customers is your existing customer. If you have an existing customer who they've given you permission to give them information about this particular topic, this particular series, they've said yes I've read it and I want more. Just give them more. That's one of the best things you could do. Those are the things beyond the traditional, you've sold x number of books, you want to give it a little boost, do a little Amazon KDP or KP Select. Kindle marketing where you offer it for free for a little bit. You run a little promotion. Maybe a little contest around it as well, which will help boost your rankings. Then when it switches back over to the paid methods or to having actual payment and not free anymore, you'll be higher up in the rankings.
You'll have that many more downloads. Of course, if you do that … say you have a series of books. Say you have a series of five and you give away the first one for free for three days in a little contest. If they love that book, they're going to get the rest of them. Roger, I hope that answers your question. Thank you so much. I'd love to hear what you think. If any of you out there are fiction writers or perhaps you have an idea for Roger, again, a fiction writer, leave a hashtag on Twitter and leave a quick message for Roger and I. You can use the #AskPat198. We'll follow along and hopefully we can even give more advice to Roger. Let me know what you think. Roger, an AskPat t-shirt is headed your way. Again, for everybody out there, if you get your question featured here on the show, I will send you a t-shirt for free. Shipping included. It's awesome.
I've been getting a lot of people actually sending in images of themselves with the t-shirt on it. I love that. So cool. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com and just ask right there on that page. It's free to ask. A lot of questions coming in so you might not get your questions featured. But if you do, like I said, you get a t-shirt. How awesome is that?
I also want to thank today's sponsor Music Radio Creative. An amazing company. Isabella and Mike over there are doing amazing things. They're going to help you with your podcast production. You can get it at half price if you go to MusicRadioCreative.com/askpat and then use “Ask Pat” at checkout. Again, the offer is only valid until the 30th of November. Check it out. Musicradiocreative.com/askpat. Again, always love to end with a quote. That quote today is from Louisa May Alcott. She's an author.
She says, “I want to do something splendid. Something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I think I shall write books.” Cheers and I'll see you guys in the next episode of AskPat. Peace.
