Episode 135 - The Importance of Specificity with Kathy Meis
May 24, 2022
Kathy Meis talks about THE IMPORTANCE OF SPECIFICITY. She discusses the importance of having a goal for your content; how specificity narrows down your audience (and how specific keywords find specific audiences); how readers look for a familiar experience; the importance of acknowledging that your book is not for everyone; and how to connect with your target audience by building a relationship and by allowing them to sample your content.
Do any of those topics pique your interest? Check out 2 MINUTES OF INDY https://bit.ly/2MinutesOfIndy, where over the week following the airing of the episode, you'll find brief video clips from the interview on each of those topics. You can also catch up on some highlights of previous episodes there.
Do any of those topics pique your interest? Check out 2 MINUTES OF INDY https://bit.ly/2MinutesOfIndy, where over the week following the airing of the episode, you'll find brief video clips from the interview on each of those topics. You can also catch up on some highlights of previous episodes there.
Kathy Meis is the founder and CEO of Bublish, a complete one-stop publishing solution for today’s independent author. With more than 30 years of experience in the media and publishing industries, Kathy has served in a wide variety of editorial and management positions at some of the industry’s leading companies. She has worked as a television reporter for CBS, was a founding editor of Forbes MediaCritic, and was a founding partner of PubSmart, an author-centric publishing conference held in Charleston, South Carolina. Kathy speaks and blogs regularly about book promotion, author branding, social marketing, and discoverability. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
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"It always starts with the goals. That's something I don't think a lot of authors start their journey with. You start your journey with what you have to provide, your expertise or your story or your dream, and so it's a mindset shift to start thinking about releasing content with goals." —Kathy Meis
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Episode 119 - Metadata Is Your Brand with Kathy Meis
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Episode 119 - Metadata Is Your Brand with Kathy Meis
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Kathy Meis! Hey, Kathy, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Kathy: I'm fine, how are you?
[00:00:06] I am doing great, thank you. I will just say to our listeners, if they hear noise in the background, it's because we have a new black lab puppy, Charlotte, who is downstairs and she would like to be upstairs, so she's expressing her disapproval of not being able to be upstairs with me. She's a podcaster.
[00:00:23] Matty: Yes, exactly! She wants to be behind a microphone or chew the microphone, maybe.
[00:00:28] So just to give our listeners and our viewers a little bit of background on you, Kathy Meis is the founder and CEO of Bublish, a complete one-stop publishing solution for today's independent author. With more than 30 years of experience in the media and publishing industries, Kathy has served in a wide variety of editorial and management positions at some of the industry's leading companies. She's worked as a television reporter for CBS, was a founding editor of Forbes Media Critic, and was a founding partner of PubSmart, an author-centric publishing conference held in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina.
[00:00:56] And Kathy speaks and blogs regularly about book promotion, author branding, social marketing, and discoverability. And she lives in Charleston, I'm very jealous of her.
[00:01:05] And she is a returning guest having appeared in episode 119, which was "Metadata is Your Brand." And so today we're going to be talking about the importance of specificity. And this is a topic that I had asked Kathy to come back to talk about, because she gave a related presentation at the Women in Publishing Summit that took place a month or so ago, and I was just very interested in this topic and how it would play out for authors.
Why do authors need to emphasize specificity?
[00:01:31] Matty: And so, Kathy I think that a good way to start these kinds of conversations is to ask what were you seeing in the author community that led you to adopt this approach about the importance of specificity?
[00:01:43] Kathy: Well, working with independent authors, who have no name recognition in a very crowded book marketplace, and knowing how brands work, the idea of starting narrow and really delighting a particular audience and building from there is a great foundation for a strong author brand, which then can evolve into a micro brand that breaks through the noise. So as soon as someone can say your name and understand what that reading experience means, then they will buy based on your name. They will buy the book based on your name.
[00:02:20] And the big budget authors, who have been in the business forever, they have this advantage, because especially in an online environment where you have three to five seconds to kind of capture someone's attention, if you have no brand recognition and someone doesn't know the type of reading experience that your name represents, you know, you say James Patterson, everybody knows what that means in an instant. So that takes me a second. So if I'm shopping and I'm going around looking for books, I know what that's going to deliver.
[00:02:53] And so that has a huge advantage in an online market where you don't have that hand selling of a bookseller saying, I know you don't know this person, but you've come into my shop and you've always read these different authors, you're going to love this author. That's a beautiful thing for a new author to have, that type word of mouth sale. But in an online environment where so many books are purchased now, the majority, the vast majority of books and in some genres, it's like 70% and 80% of purchases are online, COVID exacerbated that trend. That nanosecond, how do you get that across?
[00:03:30] Like, my brand means, my name means this type of reading experience. And specificity is one way to start to narrow it down so you can speak to a particular audience, describe your work in a specific way to them that they understand, and do it quickly, and then bring them into a reading experience that, at least they'll look at the Look Inside feature in an online setting so they can see if the work is something they're interested in.
Content vs Positioning
[00:03:59] Matty: We're going to want to move to a discussion of books, but I wanted to start out selfishly with a discussion about podcasting, using The Indy Author Podcast as a topic. And so I think this is an interesting illustration of content versus positioning.
[00:04:13] So when I started the podcast out, because of my love of the nautical metaphor, I wanted to talk about the writing craft and the publishing voyage, which pretty much covers every topic you could possibly want to talk about related to, I'll say, writing and business.
[00:04:28] And I wanted to cast my net wide because I didn't want to burn through topics. I wanted to set this up so it could go on year after year and I at least would still be interested in it. And I have done topics that address the interest of traditional as well as indy published authors. So I did an interview about how to write a query letter to get an agent.
[00:04:48] So I'm happy with the fact that I cast my net wide there, as opposed to let's say really niching down on content could be, it's going to be a podcast all about book formatting or something like that.
[00:05:00] Matty: But I sort of made the decision that although many of the topics are applicable to both indy and traditional authors, I'm not really plugging it to traditional authors because I want to niche down a little bit on indy authors.
[00:05:13] So using that as an example of content versus positioning, how does that play out in the book world if somebody wants to cast their net wide content-wise, but they understand the necessity of niching down for positioning?
[00:05:24] Kathy: That is a great question. I think it does come down to a couple of things. First of all, it comes down to your goals. If you really start with what you hope to achieve, it doesn't matter what type of content you're creating. And thinking about who you need to speak to in order to achieve those goals, and then how do you provide content that delights that audience? And again, the essence of the definition of brand is that it is built for a particular audience. So in your case with the podcast, broad topics but what you over time have realized is you can speak more to the independent author.
[00:06:05] Now to me, that's where everything aligns, because the content was gravitating toward that as well, it sounds like, even though you were covering a broad spectrum of craft and commerce, you started to speak to the independent author with your topics more.
[00:06:23] And again, hard to speak to both of those audiences. I think, the interesting thing is that there are so many authors doing hybrid projects. One is traditional and one is independently published, and we've even seen that with authors, and we serve independent authors, by format. So a book's doing well in ebook and print, and now an audio book, traditional author buys the rights.
[00:06:48] Kathy: So it's an interesting dilemma that you're in, and I have always felt, this is the future. The authors are in charge, which is wonderful, they're in the driver's seat. So it opens up all types of opportunities for them. But if you were niching down, as you are, you would speak that angle, the content would be driven for, what does that look like for an independent author, meaning they probably start their journey independently and then choices become available to them, or they start independently, and they've considered what would it be like to be traditionally published.
Release Content with Goals
[00:07:22] Kathy: So I think there needs to be alignment because if you're speaking to an audience, you need to give them what's of value to them. But I think it always starts with the goals. That's something I don't think a lot of authors start their journey with. They start, and maybe even podcasters, I'm not sure, but you start your journey with what you have to provide, your expertise or your story or your dream, but most people start with that kind of content mindset. And so it's sometimes not a business mindset as much. It's content first, and so without thinking, what are my goals for this content? What do I personally want to achieve? I'm bringing this to the public, so it's a professional act. If you start a business, you typically know what your goals are in starting that business.
[00:08:16] And so it's kind of a mindset shift to start thinking about releasing content with goals. And I would say, some amazing podcasts and amazing books start without saying, I'm speaking specifically to this audience, all the time, but is it a much harder road? Yes. Have you set yourself up to have to explain things that are difficult to explain and you have three to five seconds of attention? Yes.
[00:08:47] So competing in a podcast marketplace or a book marketplace, it's not different. They're both very crowded, they're both exploding, the quality is also very mix and match. So the more specific you can be to a particular audience and making sure there's alignment and that it can be easily explained in a simple, direct way to that audience, and if that audience is aligned with your goals and the content is delighting them or surprising them or whatever the intention might be, the experience is supposed to be, then you're going to start to get momentum. The good reviews, the word of mouth. It's easy for them to explain what the podcast or the book is about, so they're able to advocate for something that they like. And things become easier. So when you're talking about your goals again, how hard do you want to make the journey and what is the journey all about? So those should be specific, too.
[00:09:45] Matty: Yeah, I have to say that I didn't bring a particularly business-related mindset to the launch of the podcast, because it was basically an opportunity for me to network with other people who are on the publishing voyage and working on the writing craft and to build community and learn myself.
[00:10:01] Kathy: That's a great goal. Building community through content. Yeah.
[00:10:05] Matty: I don't think that I look forward to when I might have books to offer, for example. So maybe this is a good transition to talking more specifically about books, that I think that in some cases, the author of a book, doesn't have an explicit name brand like The Indy Author or The Creative Penn or The Rebel Author, or some other podcasts that have those recognizable names. So, because I picked The Indy Author, it kind of by definition meant that somebody skimming the list of books was going to gravitate to that, if they were indy authors themselves rather than traditionally published authors.
[00:10:41] But I suppose that if you generalize this to nonfiction content, and then in a little bit, I want to talk about how this applies to fiction authors as well, that if you have content that you're creating under one guise, like my podcast content under the guise of The Indy Author, then there's nothing that would stop me from niching down in other areas. Let's say I take all my craft-related podcasts, I pull the content, I make a book, and I put that out as The Beginner's Guide to the Writing Craft or something like that. And now I've niched down on a different area, not my Indy Author brand, but a different kind of slice of the niching pie. Does that make sense?
[00:11:22] And then you can title it in a way that makes that clear.
Metadata Drives Discoverability
[00:11:27] And I think the thing that people don't realize is the narrower your decision around the audience you want to speak to, the more specific you can be in everything, like the title, the subtitle, the series, title, the podcast name title. And you can almost say, this is for you, in one of those fields. This is back to the last time we spoke around metadata and how much that drives discoverability, because people are searching and those words that say, whatever that may be, the craft of writing versus the business of publishing, those are two different phrases. And if you decided to gear yourself towards one, when you'd be attracting the audience that's interested in that, as an example.
[00:12:17] Kathy: And with books, you know, there are, in genre fiction especially, and in non-fiction. but let's start with genre fiction. So you have people looking for very specific types of reading experience. They just love, you know, there's got to be a vampire in a book, or the cozy mystery was the one that I did at the Women in Publishing as an example. And interestingly, we were just repositioning these two sisters who are writing cozy mysteries together under a pen name. They're international, they're Southern, they travel, and finding a way to describe that at the top.
[00:12:53] It’s a reading experience and some people love, you know, that cozy. I mean, it's so fascinating that there's culinary cozy, there's animal cozy, you know. So if you just love a type of reading experience as a reader, you can find that if the author has described it literally in these fields that you enter. It's just like a massive neural network. How does that neuron reader meet with your product page? And it's through these specific phrases that describe the reading experience. They're looking for it, you have it, but if you don't have a way to connect with their signal in this massive neural network, you miss that opportunity to show them your work.
[00:13:40] And they may very well, if you have a product page that's clearly speaking to them with the title and the cover looks right, and the synopsis reads right, and maybe you've got that perfect review from a blog that they read, because they're really deep into this type of reading. And maybe an introduction.
Your Book is Not for Everyone
[00:13:58] Kathy: That was one of the things with these two authors that we suggested as a result of some of the work we were helping them reposition for maximum discoverability was, could you talk about these two sisters, it's a couple of sisters, they're amateur sleuths, but they're sisters.
[00:14:15] Sister fiction is a thing. So they're Southern, they're savvy, and they're traveling the globe. And it was funny because I was trying to pull out brand statements and she's well, it's just, they're great characters, they're having a lot of fun, and they just find dead bodies everywhere they go. And I'm like, yeah, that's funny that they just go to these places and the bodies are only part of what the reader's looking for. This is a very particular kind of reading experience.
[00:14:43] So that's the challenge, right? And that's why being specific in your goals, being specific in the audience that you're speaking to, no matter what type of content you're doing, because there's just so much content, and knowing that your book or podcast is not for everyone, never will be, shouldn't be. And that's the big mistake people have, well, I think everyone's going to love this book. And that's one of those I'm like, oh no, let's not go there, moments for me. Because it's not going to help them find an audience that's going to love their work. And it's just magic when it actually happens, but it's one of those things that's hard to describe when someone has created something, and you never want to stifle that creativity.
[00:15:31] But if you think, you know, let's think about how this book opens for the audience that's probably going to read in this genre. Let's think about the reading experience they're expecting, and they don't know your name. It comes back to, you can't just say your name and people are like, oh, I know what that means. But you want to get there. And that also is a reason to start with something smaller and build a kind of small, very dedicated community of people and it gets the momentum going and it's crazy, but it's the opposite of what people think they should do.
[00:16:07] Matty: Yeah, I want to point listeners to episode 122, which was "Using Data to Guide Your Craft with Nat Conners", and that was about how you could, I think both of us kind of steered away from the term "write to market," but understand where a reader's interest was, so that if you were writing with a goal of making some money at it, that you would have this extra data that you could base that decision on.
Am I Limiting Myself Too Much?
[00:16:30] Matty: So I think that we may loop back to that, but if someone is just writing the book of their heart and now, they've written it, and they have to decide who to market it to, I think that the fear that keeps people from being more specific is, am I limiting my audience too much?
[00:16:47] So if I'm writing Southern sister travel culinary cozies, then am I shooting myself in the foot, because that group is so much smaller than just cozies or mysteries or, hey, it's fiction. You know, exactly what you're saying about, you don't want to cast your net too wide.
[00:17:06] So how do you reassure people, if in fact reassurance is the appropriate response there, that they're not shooting themselves in the foot by niching down?
[00:17:14] Kathy: Yeah, and so in this case, they just wrote what they love. These are the kinds of books they like to write and went out there and now trying to position them. So almost every book does have more than one audience. Even if it's not from a clear genre perspective, it's from a theme perspective, in this case, it's travel and sisters, and also a cozy mystery kind of structure.
Associate Yourself with Familiar Reading Experiences
[00:17:41] Kathy: So you don't want to go too narrow, but you also have to realize that algorithms are part of what is bringing you up. And also these algorithms, there's no gray area, so there needs to be at least an understanding of that, and how readers can find your work. So it doesn't mean that you're going to make one of your characters a baker so that you can be in the culinary cozy, but if you've written a story, and you are well-read in your genre and at least understand the reading experience, it may shape where you place it. What other books you say are your comparable titles?
[00:18:25] And it shows up in reviews. For example, for these authors, their reviews from different places like Kirkland's and Book Life, Publisher Weekly, suggested, if you like these authors or these books, this is a great read for you.
[00:18:42] So those kinds of things are fabulous when someone doesn't recognize your name, but they come to your page, and they can see it's a reading experience like this. If you like this and they're like, oh, I know that name, so this author is like that. Again, there's a connection that happens quickly in the reader's mind, and that's, what's important.
[00:19:02] So it doesn't always have to be about niching down to something so narrow that you can't have several audiences, but it's really understanding the landscape of your book and dissecting it and looking for comparable titles and comparable authors and comparable tone or reading experience. It comes down to the kind of emotional experience people want to have when they read something. Do they want to be scared? Do they want to cry? Do they want, you know, literary fiction? Make it hard. If I go to a movie, I want fluff. It's a totally different experience for me.
[00:19:41] So thinking of the type of experience is bigger than genre. It's bigger than keywords. It's bigger than your title. It's thematically tone and pace and how much is about plot versus characters. and different genres tend to have a different balance of that.
[00:19:59] Kathy: And being well-read and being able to then specifically say, if you like this, you might like my work. That's huge to be able to say that, or to have a reviewer say that, and you can put that at the top of your synopsis, because in a matter of seconds, someone goes, oh, that makes sense to me. And that stops them. And then they look, they read the opening, and then if the opening respects that kind of reading experience and gives it to them, they may take a chance on you because they don't know your name yet. Your book isn’t something that they recognize the title or the series title yet.
[00:20:36] So that's where it really matters. It's not just about recrafting the story. It's about understanding that little world that you should live in to really start to create real momentum for readership and a fan base.
Positioning a Cross Genre Book
[00:21:25] Matty: I'm wondering if someone has a book that is, let's say, paranormal romance set in the 1700s. Do you have guidance about their positioning of it? How specifically they have to try to find readers of paranormal romance set in 17th century, or whatever era I said, as opposed to saying, well, it has a paranormal aspect, so I'm going to promote it to paranormal readers. There's a romance aspect. So I'm guessing that romance readers aren't necessarily going to be interested in paranormal 17th century, but that 17th century fans might be willing to read paranormal romance. I don't know.
[00:22:10] When it's kind of a mixture like that, how do you make the decision about how you position that and to whom?
[00:22:14] Kathy: Right, and it happens more and more too, and people are more open to that. And that's, I think, around themes. For example, my son one time when he was home from college, and he goes, Mom, I just found this great show. We got to watch it together. And I said, what? And he said, "Friends."
[00:22:34] And I was like, well, that's from when I was growing up. Awesome! And he'll introduce me to things. There's so much interaction with content and social and ways to discover it. And we try new things, if we like them thematically and we like how we feel. If we like how we feel.
[00:22:58] So "Yellowstone," someone in my family introduced me to it, and I really loved the characters. I thought it was really well written. Too violent for me. Other people, it's great, but that's something about how content makes me feel.
[00:23:12] And so, I think the challenge is to be very specific about, it's not just about genre, is it paranormal, is it romance? Is it this? It's about the reading experience and how a work makes you feel and being able to say very specifically what that journey looks like honestly. There has to be truth in advertising.
Blended Genres vs Emotional Experience
[00:23:37] Kathy: And cross-genre is happening all the time. Almost all the authors who come to us now have blended genres and it's always about, well, what's the primary genre and how do you fit for this reading experience so you describe it correctly, but you give an emotional sense of what the reading journey feels like, so that you can attract people?
[00:24:03] Think of Spotify, it's those circles, like where do they overlap? So if you like a certain kind of music, they're going to take you just over here to this other kind, because it bumps up, right? That kind of change is happening.
[00:24:17] Kathy: And algorithms are also driving some of that, like on a place like Spotify. And the same thing can happen in books. There are more and more sub-genres, all of that comes from a world where we have physical bookshelves, so it's still an imperfect system. But the key is, if you can get someone there and you can emotionally tell them what the reading experience is like and just get them to sample the book and see if it's a fit, that's a win. In a world where they have so many choices, you have to stop someone with something that speaks to them.
[00:24:56] And it is really a kind of an emotional, I want to be happy, I want escapism, or I'm really into the plot twist. I want to be shocked. I want to be. Those are important things to understand specifically about the journey you're providing and be able to articulate that to someone.
[00:25:16] Kathy: And that also comes back to who else provides a similar type of reading experience like this, someone with a more recognizable name, so you can say, if you like this author, you might like this, or you like this title, you might like this.
[00:25:31] But genre-bending is here to stay. It's what keeps things interesting. But if your real goal is to make a lot of money and build a brand for yourself really quickly, it is simpler to write narrower, build that brand and then do the Spotify. Now move that audience over because they trust you, and they're going to go with you. And that's a business and creative decision. It's a business decision in a creative field. Understand what you want to do, go back to goals.
[00:26:04] The idea of what bookshelf it would be on is interesting because I never really thought about this way, but the availability of eBooks and online retailers in indy publishing, I think it's opened up a whole new perspective, because I don't care how big a book story you have, if someone read a book about 17th century paranormal romance, and they really wanted more of that, that shelf is probably going to be pretty small in the physical bookstore. Whereas you go online, and you can find like an almost endless supply of it. So I don't know that's a question that was just, I had never really thought about it that way. The enabler of the additional content enables more and more specific niching.
Cataloging Sub-genres is Not Easy
[00:26:46] The genre benders create new sub-genres all the time. But the interesting thing is that it's still from a mindset perspective than there's just a new shelf built. So wouldn't it be fascinating if someone flipped that whole construct on its head?
[00:27:04] Kathy: And I think that's coming because, to me, it is a challenging endeavor. You even see it in all of the different coding systems. I remember at one point, I don't know if they've changed this, but BISAC codes, which are behind the scenes driving placement of books in places that make sense from a traditional kind of approach to the book business. And they didn't even have a majority of sub-genres in women's fiction available at some point. And I remember speaking to some highly successful authors in that world who were self-publishers and how frustrating they found that. Because anytime they wanted to go into a traditional channel where that little code was required, they didn't have that little code. So maybe someone will shake this up. But it is a challenge for authors.
Promotion and Targeting the Positioning
[00:27:58] Matty: I was also thinking that there's not only the content versus positioning division, but there's the content of the positioning versus the targeting of the positioning. And by that, I mean that if we're just talking ads now let's say. I could put together, if I'm writing 17th century paranormal romance and I'm putting together the ads or working with someone to put together ads, the visuals could be very specific. Like I'm going to make a very obviously 17th century dressed couple. And now I'm going to target people who like historical books of that era. Now I'm going to do one that plays on the paranormal. Now I'm going to do one that plays on the romance and target each of those.
[00:28:41] Or I can kind of do the Spotify thing by implying one of those three, the trifecta of paranormal romance 17th century, but I'm going to put it out to a wider audience.
[00:28:53] Do you have any recommendations about how you align or "adjacentize" the content of your ads with the targeting of your ads, the target audience of your ads?
[00:29:04] Kathy: Content of your ads or the content of your book?
[00:29:06] Matty: The content of your ads, I'm thinking now. Like what image do you put on the ad or what image do you put up on social media and then who do you send it to? I tend to target Stephen King in my Facebook ads, because in Facebook, there's not a downside to casting your net wide because Facebook sorts it out, unlike Amazon ads where the more specific you are the better. So on Facebook, I target Stephen King and Charlaine Harris. In my Charlaine Harris ads, I usually have something that looks kind of ghostly, whereas in my Stephen King ads, I usually have something that's a little more like thrilleresque. So I'm sort of trying to align the content of my ad with the target audience of my ad, but maybe I'm missing opportunities by adhering to that alignment.
Let Prospective Audiences Sample Your Content First
[00:29:51] Kathy: Well, no, I think that's smart. What I would say, because it's always about, you can try two audiences, and both can work. You can try two audiences and one works better than the other, just like the book more, is to add a layer. I think what you're doing is right, but to add a sampling layer.
[00:30:12] So to bring both ads into a sample experience, maybe on your website before they buy, before you take them to the purchase. Because the big thing that happens, and it comes back to again, how the reader sees it and also to the sense of truth in advertising, right?
[00:30:34] So if you're going strong on the thriller side and that's going to delight that Stephen King, he has a particular kind of thriller, and they come into your book and they don't like the sample, they're not going to purchase and leave a review of disappointment. And you can follow that pathway to see which audience really ends up loving the sample and buying the book. And then hopefully, because you gave them the opportunity to test and try things on and see if it was a fit for them, you get the right subgroups in those audiences to actually purchase the book.
[00:31:11] And again, you can get bad reviews for great work because it's in front of the wrong reader. And people might say, well, that's not a great journey because you didn't take them from A to B and close the deal.
[00:31:24] But if you're really trying to learn about your audiences, that's a different type of advertising campaign than when you really clearly have an audience. And on Facebook, you are advertising to interests and audiences versus very specific comp titles. But testing would be very, very important because those are different.
[00:31:45] And I would say probably in both groups, you're going to find subgroups and then that's how you build the audience. But you take them through that one extra step, let them get to know you, let them sample your work, in a non-purchase environment and then take them into an actual purchasing environment.
[00:32:05] Matty: Yeah, Stephen King's an interesting case because he has written so many different kinds of books. And however many years ago, 20 years, 30 years, when it was more horror, I wouldn't have chosen him because my books are not horror, but as he's expanded into other things, I'm just kind of picking him because readers of Stephen King are willing to have weird things happen in their books.
[00:32:27] Kathy: And there's the Spotify effect, like they loved this, and he kept bringing them and he evolved, and his brand evolved. And I think once you have gained a reader's trust and they understand, they don't care so much about genre. Some people do, they care about a reading experience and a kind of feeling they get when they read your work, and they know that with Stephen King. And so when he starts to go somewhere, the people follow. And that's, I think, one check in the side for going narrower. But also testing and seeing what's that group within the group that finds this mix of genres that's not fitting neatly into a particular sub-genre, but they love it because the reading experience resonates with them, you know.
Don't Lose the Relationship
[00:33:19] Matty: I wanted to loop back on something you had referenced before, that I think I understood you were saying that in certain kinds of ads, and I'm guessing this is for ads where you're looking for your audience, you don't have an established large audience to market to, that you're sending people to a web page as opposed to a purchase page. Did I understand that correctly?
[00:33:36] Kathy: Yeah. I mean, it's something to think about. The other thing with Facebook ads is that, if you send them directly to Amazon, first of all, you never capture their email. You also don't teach Facebook anything because they can't see what happened, if the goal was reached, because they lose that connection on Amazon.
[00:33:56] But you can add the tagging to your website that then, if the goal is to get them to download a sample, if the goal is reached, then Facebook will do more of that. If the goal, whatever it's set, whatever action they're supposed to take, wasn't reached, Facebook can't make those connections with Amazon. So there are other advantages.
[00:34:16] Kathy: But I think, if you are someone who really is blending genres, and it's just a little tougher to find your audience, bring them to the site and let them sample the work there, and then in that sample, drive them to the product page. Instead of, if you're doing something like at 99 cents, you might just get an automatic buy because of the pricing, but first, you would lose the connection with the fan that was willing to actually click through and maybe sample your work. And you lose the ability to ask them something to learn, like what is it about this book that you liked or didn't like? You lose the relationship. That's I think why the email list is still the most important thing for an independent author to grow.
[00:35:03] But audience testing, and it takes skill, and it takes commitment, and it takes money, but you could throw a lot of money towards the wrong audience or towards the right audience but have the wrong description or the wrong opening for your book, or there's just lots of little places where things have to go right. And if one thing goes wrong, you lose people.
[00:35:25] So better to test and make sure everything is working together. And that comes down to, I think, specificity and description specificity in the ad and the audience you're talking to with that ad, the experience they get when they come to your website and sample. And it's just harder when you blend genres. It takes more testing, but it's worth it. It's definitely worth it.
[00:35:49] Matty: Great. Well, Kathy, thank you so much, this was so helpful. Please let the listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and all you do online.
[00:35:57] Kathy: Oh sure, well, come visit us at Bublish.Com. So that's spelled like publish, but with a B. So we're turning publishing upside down. And Bublish.Com. You can also find us on all the major social media sites as BublishMe. And we do a ton of author education, so come and check it out. And thanks for the opportunity again, Matty, always an interesting discussion. You like to talk about things that fascinate me, but I don't think enough people are talking about these kinds of topics and how much they influence the outcomes that authors experience.
[00:36:37] Matty: Yeah, I think that authors can be leery of the testing data concept, and so I have a number of episodes, I'll try to remember to put links in the show notes to them, about how authors can use data to improve their results. So another great addition to that library of resources, thank you, Kathy.
[00:36:54] Kathy: Yeah. Thank you.
[00:00:05] Kathy: I'm fine, how are you?
[00:00:06] I am doing great, thank you. I will just say to our listeners, if they hear noise in the background, it's because we have a new black lab puppy, Charlotte, who is downstairs and she would like to be upstairs, so she's expressing her disapproval of not being able to be upstairs with me. She's a podcaster.
[00:00:23] Matty: Yes, exactly! She wants to be behind a microphone or chew the microphone, maybe.
[00:00:28] So just to give our listeners and our viewers a little bit of background on you, Kathy Meis is the founder and CEO of Bublish, a complete one-stop publishing solution for today's independent author. With more than 30 years of experience in the media and publishing industries, Kathy has served in a wide variety of editorial and management positions at some of the industry's leading companies. She's worked as a television reporter for CBS, was a founding editor of Forbes Media Critic, and was a founding partner of PubSmart, an author-centric publishing conference held in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina.
[00:00:56] And Kathy speaks and blogs regularly about book promotion, author branding, social marketing, and discoverability. And she lives in Charleston, I'm very jealous of her.
[00:01:05] And she is a returning guest having appeared in episode 119, which was "Metadata is Your Brand." And so today we're going to be talking about the importance of specificity. And this is a topic that I had asked Kathy to come back to talk about, because she gave a related presentation at the Women in Publishing Summit that took place a month or so ago, and I was just very interested in this topic and how it would play out for authors.
Why do authors need to emphasize specificity?
[00:01:31] Matty: And so, Kathy I think that a good way to start these kinds of conversations is to ask what were you seeing in the author community that led you to adopt this approach about the importance of specificity?
[00:01:43] Kathy: Well, working with independent authors, who have no name recognition in a very crowded book marketplace, and knowing how brands work, the idea of starting narrow and really delighting a particular audience and building from there is a great foundation for a strong author brand, which then can evolve into a micro brand that breaks through the noise. So as soon as someone can say your name and understand what that reading experience means, then they will buy based on your name. They will buy the book based on your name.
[00:02:20] And the big budget authors, who have been in the business forever, they have this advantage, because especially in an online environment where you have three to five seconds to kind of capture someone's attention, if you have no brand recognition and someone doesn't know the type of reading experience that your name represents, you know, you say James Patterson, everybody knows what that means in an instant. So that takes me a second. So if I'm shopping and I'm going around looking for books, I know what that's going to deliver.
[00:02:53] And so that has a huge advantage in an online market where you don't have that hand selling of a bookseller saying, I know you don't know this person, but you've come into my shop and you've always read these different authors, you're going to love this author. That's a beautiful thing for a new author to have, that type word of mouth sale. But in an online environment where so many books are purchased now, the majority, the vast majority of books and in some genres, it's like 70% and 80% of purchases are online, COVID exacerbated that trend. That nanosecond, how do you get that across?
[00:03:30] Like, my brand means, my name means this type of reading experience. And specificity is one way to start to narrow it down so you can speak to a particular audience, describe your work in a specific way to them that they understand, and do it quickly, and then bring them into a reading experience that, at least they'll look at the Look Inside feature in an online setting so they can see if the work is something they're interested in.
Content vs Positioning
[00:03:59] Matty: We're going to want to move to a discussion of books, but I wanted to start out selfishly with a discussion about podcasting, using The Indy Author Podcast as a topic. And so I think this is an interesting illustration of content versus positioning.
[00:04:13] So when I started the podcast out, because of my love of the nautical metaphor, I wanted to talk about the writing craft and the publishing voyage, which pretty much covers every topic you could possibly want to talk about related to, I'll say, writing and business.
[00:04:28] And I wanted to cast my net wide because I didn't want to burn through topics. I wanted to set this up so it could go on year after year and I at least would still be interested in it. And I have done topics that address the interest of traditional as well as indy published authors. So I did an interview about how to write a query letter to get an agent.
[00:04:48] So I'm happy with the fact that I cast my net wide there, as opposed to let's say really niching down on content could be, it's going to be a podcast all about book formatting or something like that.
[00:05:00] Matty: But I sort of made the decision that although many of the topics are applicable to both indy and traditional authors, I'm not really plugging it to traditional authors because I want to niche down a little bit on indy authors.
[00:05:13] So using that as an example of content versus positioning, how does that play out in the book world if somebody wants to cast their net wide content-wise, but they understand the necessity of niching down for positioning?
[00:05:24] Kathy: That is a great question. I think it does come down to a couple of things. First of all, it comes down to your goals. If you really start with what you hope to achieve, it doesn't matter what type of content you're creating. And thinking about who you need to speak to in order to achieve those goals, and then how do you provide content that delights that audience? And again, the essence of the definition of brand is that it is built for a particular audience. So in your case with the podcast, broad topics but what you over time have realized is you can speak more to the independent author.
[00:06:05] Now to me, that's where everything aligns, because the content was gravitating toward that as well, it sounds like, even though you were covering a broad spectrum of craft and commerce, you started to speak to the independent author with your topics more.
[00:06:23] And again, hard to speak to both of those audiences. I think, the interesting thing is that there are so many authors doing hybrid projects. One is traditional and one is independently published, and we've even seen that with authors, and we serve independent authors, by format. So a book's doing well in ebook and print, and now an audio book, traditional author buys the rights.
[00:06:48] Kathy: So it's an interesting dilemma that you're in, and I have always felt, this is the future. The authors are in charge, which is wonderful, they're in the driver's seat. So it opens up all types of opportunities for them. But if you were niching down, as you are, you would speak that angle, the content would be driven for, what does that look like for an independent author, meaning they probably start their journey independently and then choices become available to them, or they start independently, and they've considered what would it be like to be traditionally published.
Release Content with Goals
[00:07:22] Kathy: So I think there needs to be alignment because if you're speaking to an audience, you need to give them what's of value to them. But I think it always starts with the goals. That's something I don't think a lot of authors start their journey with. They start, and maybe even podcasters, I'm not sure, but you start your journey with what you have to provide, your expertise or your story or your dream, but most people start with that kind of content mindset. And so it's sometimes not a business mindset as much. It's content first, and so without thinking, what are my goals for this content? What do I personally want to achieve? I'm bringing this to the public, so it's a professional act. If you start a business, you typically know what your goals are in starting that business.
[00:08:16] And so it's kind of a mindset shift to start thinking about releasing content with goals. And I would say, some amazing podcasts and amazing books start without saying, I'm speaking specifically to this audience, all the time, but is it a much harder road? Yes. Have you set yourself up to have to explain things that are difficult to explain and you have three to five seconds of attention? Yes.
[00:08:47] So competing in a podcast marketplace or a book marketplace, it's not different. They're both very crowded, they're both exploding, the quality is also very mix and match. So the more specific you can be to a particular audience and making sure there's alignment and that it can be easily explained in a simple, direct way to that audience, and if that audience is aligned with your goals and the content is delighting them or surprising them or whatever the intention might be, the experience is supposed to be, then you're going to start to get momentum. The good reviews, the word of mouth. It's easy for them to explain what the podcast or the book is about, so they're able to advocate for something that they like. And things become easier. So when you're talking about your goals again, how hard do you want to make the journey and what is the journey all about? So those should be specific, too.
[00:09:45] Matty: Yeah, I have to say that I didn't bring a particularly business-related mindset to the launch of the podcast, because it was basically an opportunity for me to network with other people who are on the publishing voyage and working on the writing craft and to build community and learn myself.
[00:10:01] Kathy: That's a great goal. Building community through content. Yeah.
[00:10:05] Matty: I don't think that I look forward to when I might have books to offer, for example. So maybe this is a good transition to talking more specifically about books, that I think that in some cases, the author of a book, doesn't have an explicit name brand like The Indy Author or The Creative Penn or The Rebel Author, or some other podcasts that have those recognizable names. So, because I picked The Indy Author, it kind of by definition meant that somebody skimming the list of books was going to gravitate to that, if they were indy authors themselves rather than traditionally published authors.
[00:10:41] But I suppose that if you generalize this to nonfiction content, and then in a little bit, I want to talk about how this applies to fiction authors as well, that if you have content that you're creating under one guise, like my podcast content under the guise of The Indy Author, then there's nothing that would stop me from niching down in other areas. Let's say I take all my craft-related podcasts, I pull the content, I make a book, and I put that out as The Beginner's Guide to the Writing Craft or something like that. And now I've niched down on a different area, not my Indy Author brand, but a different kind of slice of the niching pie. Does that make sense?
[00:11:22] And then you can title it in a way that makes that clear.
Metadata Drives Discoverability
[00:11:27] And I think the thing that people don't realize is the narrower your decision around the audience you want to speak to, the more specific you can be in everything, like the title, the subtitle, the series, title, the podcast name title. And you can almost say, this is for you, in one of those fields. This is back to the last time we spoke around metadata and how much that drives discoverability, because people are searching and those words that say, whatever that may be, the craft of writing versus the business of publishing, those are two different phrases. And if you decided to gear yourself towards one, when you'd be attracting the audience that's interested in that, as an example.
[00:12:17] Kathy: And with books, you know, there are, in genre fiction especially, and in non-fiction. but let's start with genre fiction. So you have people looking for very specific types of reading experience. They just love, you know, there's got to be a vampire in a book, or the cozy mystery was the one that I did at the Women in Publishing as an example. And interestingly, we were just repositioning these two sisters who are writing cozy mysteries together under a pen name. They're international, they're Southern, they travel, and finding a way to describe that at the top.
[00:12:53] It’s a reading experience and some people love, you know, that cozy. I mean, it's so fascinating that there's culinary cozy, there's animal cozy, you know. So if you just love a type of reading experience as a reader, you can find that if the author has described it literally in these fields that you enter. It's just like a massive neural network. How does that neuron reader meet with your product page? And it's through these specific phrases that describe the reading experience. They're looking for it, you have it, but if you don't have a way to connect with their signal in this massive neural network, you miss that opportunity to show them your work.
[00:13:40] And they may very well, if you have a product page that's clearly speaking to them with the title and the cover looks right, and the synopsis reads right, and maybe you've got that perfect review from a blog that they read, because they're really deep into this type of reading. And maybe an introduction.
Your Book is Not for Everyone
[00:13:58] Kathy: That was one of the things with these two authors that we suggested as a result of some of the work we were helping them reposition for maximum discoverability was, could you talk about these two sisters, it's a couple of sisters, they're amateur sleuths, but they're sisters.
[00:14:15] Sister fiction is a thing. So they're Southern, they're savvy, and they're traveling the globe. And it was funny because I was trying to pull out brand statements and she's well, it's just, they're great characters, they're having a lot of fun, and they just find dead bodies everywhere they go. And I'm like, yeah, that's funny that they just go to these places and the bodies are only part of what the reader's looking for. This is a very particular kind of reading experience.
[00:14:43] So that's the challenge, right? And that's why being specific in your goals, being specific in the audience that you're speaking to, no matter what type of content you're doing, because there's just so much content, and knowing that your book or podcast is not for everyone, never will be, shouldn't be. And that's the big mistake people have, well, I think everyone's going to love this book. And that's one of those I'm like, oh no, let's not go there, moments for me. Because it's not going to help them find an audience that's going to love their work. And it's just magic when it actually happens, but it's one of those things that's hard to describe when someone has created something, and you never want to stifle that creativity.
[00:15:31] But if you think, you know, let's think about how this book opens for the audience that's probably going to read in this genre. Let's think about the reading experience they're expecting, and they don't know your name. It comes back to, you can't just say your name and people are like, oh, I know what that means. But you want to get there. And that also is a reason to start with something smaller and build a kind of small, very dedicated community of people and it gets the momentum going and it's crazy, but it's the opposite of what people think they should do.
[00:16:07] Matty: Yeah, I want to point listeners to episode 122, which was "Using Data to Guide Your Craft with Nat Conners", and that was about how you could, I think both of us kind of steered away from the term "write to market," but understand where a reader's interest was, so that if you were writing with a goal of making some money at it, that you would have this extra data that you could base that decision on.
Am I Limiting Myself Too Much?
[00:16:30] Matty: So I think that we may loop back to that, but if someone is just writing the book of their heart and now, they've written it, and they have to decide who to market it to, I think that the fear that keeps people from being more specific is, am I limiting my audience too much?
[00:16:47] So if I'm writing Southern sister travel culinary cozies, then am I shooting myself in the foot, because that group is so much smaller than just cozies or mysteries or, hey, it's fiction. You know, exactly what you're saying about, you don't want to cast your net too wide.
[00:17:06] So how do you reassure people, if in fact reassurance is the appropriate response there, that they're not shooting themselves in the foot by niching down?
[00:17:14] Kathy: Yeah, and so in this case, they just wrote what they love. These are the kinds of books they like to write and went out there and now trying to position them. So almost every book does have more than one audience. Even if it's not from a clear genre perspective, it's from a theme perspective, in this case, it's travel and sisters, and also a cozy mystery kind of structure.
Associate Yourself with Familiar Reading Experiences
[00:17:41] Kathy: So you don't want to go too narrow, but you also have to realize that algorithms are part of what is bringing you up. And also these algorithms, there's no gray area, so there needs to be at least an understanding of that, and how readers can find your work. So it doesn't mean that you're going to make one of your characters a baker so that you can be in the culinary cozy, but if you've written a story, and you are well-read in your genre and at least understand the reading experience, it may shape where you place it. What other books you say are your comparable titles?
[00:18:25] And it shows up in reviews. For example, for these authors, their reviews from different places like Kirkland's and Book Life, Publisher Weekly, suggested, if you like these authors or these books, this is a great read for you.
[00:18:42] So those kinds of things are fabulous when someone doesn't recognize your name, but they come to your page, and they can see it's a reading experience like this. If you like this and they're like, oh, I know that name, so this author is like that. Again, there's a connection that happens quickly in the reader's mind, and that's, what's important.
[00:19:02] So it doesn't always have to be about niching down to something so narrow that you can't have several audiences, but it's really understanding the landscape of your book and dissecting it and looking for comparable titles and comparable authors and comparable tone or reading experience. It comes down to the kind of emotional experience people want to have when they read something. Do they want to be scared? Do they want to cry? Do they want, you know, literary fiction? Make it hard. If I go to a movie, I want fluff. It's a totally different experience for me.
[00:19:41] So thinking of the type of experience is bigger than genre. It's bigger than keywords. It's bigger than your title. It's thematically tone and pace and how much is about plot versus characters. and different genres tend to have a different balance of that.
[00:19:59] Kathy: And being well-read and being able to then specifically say, if you like this, you might like my work. That's huge to be able to say that, or to have a reviewer say that, and you can put that at the top of your synopsis, because in a matter of seconds, someone goes, oh, that makes sense to me. And that stops them. And then they look, they read the opening, and then if the opening respects that kind of reading experience and gives it to them, they may take a chance on you because they don't know your name yet. Your book isn’t something that they recognize the title or the series title yet.
[00:20:36] So that's where it really matters. It's not just about recrafting the story. It's about understanding that little world that you should live in to really start to create real momentum for readership and a fan base.
Positioning a Cross Genre Book
[00:21:25] Matty: I'm wondering if someone has a book that is, let's say, paranormal romance set in the 1700s. Do you have guidance about their positioning of it? How specifically they have to try to find readers of paranormal romance set in 17th century, or whatever era I said, as opposed to saying, well, it has a paranormal aspect, so I'm going to promote it to paranormal readers. There's a romance aspect. So I'm guessing that romance readers aren't necessarily going to be interested in paranormal 17th century, but that 17th century fans might be willing to read paranormal romance. I don't know.
[00:22:10] When it's kind of a mixture like that, how do you make the decision about how you position that and to whom?
[00:22:14] Kathy: Right, and it happens more and more too, and people are more open to that. And that's, I think, around themes. For example, my son one time when he was home from college, and he goes, Mom, I just found this great show. We got to watch it together. And I said, what? And he said, "Friends."
[00:22:34] And I was like, well, that's from when I was growing up. Awesome! And he'll introduce me to things. There's so much interaction with content and social and ways to discover it. And we try new things, if we like them thematically and we like how we feel. If we like how we feel.
[00:22:58] So "Yellowstone," someone in my family introduced me to it, and I really loved the characters. I thought it was really well written. Too violent for me. Other people, it's great, but that's something about how content makes me feel.
[00:23:12] And so, I think the challenge is to be very specific about, it's not just about genre, is it paranormal, is it romance? Is it this? It's about the reading experience and how a work makes you feel and being able to say very specifically what that journey looks like honestly. There has to be truth in advertising.
Blended Genres vs Emotional Experience
[00:23:37] Kathy: And cross-genre is happening all the time. Almost all the authors who come to us now have blended genres and it's always about, well, what's the primary genre and how do you fit for this reading experience so you describe it correctly, but you give an emotional sense of what the reading journey feels like, so that you can attract people?
[00:24:03] Think of Spotify, it's those circles, like where do they overlap? So if you like a certain kind of music, they're going to take you just over here to this other kind, because it bumps up, right? That kind of change is happening.
[00:24:17] Kathy: And algorithms are also driving some of that, like on a place like Spotify. And the same thing can happen in books. There are more and more sub-genres, all of that comes from a world where we have physical bookshelves, so it's still an imperfect system. But the key is, if you can get someone there and you can emotionally tell them what the reading experience is like and just get them to sample the book and see if it's a fit, that's a win. In a world where they have so many choices, you have to stop someone with something that speaks to them.
[00:24:56] And it is really a kind of an emotional, I want to be happy, I want escapism, or I'm really into the plot twist. I want to be shocked. I want to be. Those are important things to understand specifically about the journey you're providing and be able to articulate that to someone.
[00:25:16] Kathy: And that also comes back to who else provides a similar type of reading experience like this, someone with a more recognizable name, so you can say, if you like this author, you might like this, or you like this title, you might like this.
[00:25:31] But genre-bending is here to stay. It's what keeps things interesting. But if your real goal is to make a lot of money and build a brand for yourself really quickly, it is simpler to write narrower, build that brand and then do the Spotify. Now move that audience over because they trust you, and they're going to go with you. And that's a business and creative decision. It's a business decision in a creative field. Understand what you want to do, go back to goals.
[00:26:04] The idea of what bookshelf it would be on is interesting because I never really thought about this way, but the availability of eBooks and online retailers in indy publishing, I think it's opened up a whole new perspective, because I don't care how big a book story you have, if someone read a book about 17th century paranormal romance, and they really wanted more of that, that shelf is probably going to be pretty small in the physical bookstore. Whereas you go online, and you can find like an almost endless supply of it. So I don't know that's a question that was just, I had never really thought about it that way. The enabler of the additional content enables more and more specific niching.
Cataloging Sub-genres is Not Easy
[00:26:46] The genre benders create new sub-genres all the time. But the interesting thing is that it's still from a mindset perspective than there's just a new shelf built. So wouldn't it be fascinating if someone flipped that whole construct on its head?
[00:27:04] Kathy: And I think that's coming because, to me, it is a challenging endeavor. You even see it in all of the different coding systems. I remember at one point, I don't know if they've changed this, but BISAC codes, which are behind the scenes driving placement of books in places that make sense from a traditional kind of approach to the book business. And they didn't even have a majority of sub-genres in women's fiction available at some point. And I remember speaking to some highly successful authors in that world who were self-publishers and how frustrating they found that. Because anytime they wanted to go into a traditional channel where that little code was required, they didn't have that little code. So maybe someone will shake this up. But it is a challenge for authors.
Promotion and Targeting the Positioning
[00:27:58] Matty: I was also thinking that there's not only the content versus positioning division, but there's the content of the positioning versus the targeting of the positioning. And by that, I mean that if we're just talking ads now let's say. I could put together, if I'm writing 17th century paranormal romance and I'm putting together the ads or working with someone to put together ads, the visuals could be very specific. Like I'm going to make a very obviously 17th century dressed couple. And now I'm going to target people who like historical books of that era. Now I'm going to do one that plays on the paranormal. Now I'm going to do one that plays on the romance and target each of those.
[00:28:41] Or I can kind of do the Spotify thing by implying one of those three, the trifecta of paranormal romance 17th century, but I'm going to put it out to a wider audience.
[00:28:53] Do you have any recommendations about how you align or "adjacentize" the content of your ads with the targeting of your ads, the target audience of your ads?
[00:29:04] Kathy: Content of your ads or the content of your book?
[00:29:06] Matty: The content of your ads, I'm thinking now. Like what image do you put on the ad or what image do you put up on social media and then who do you send it to? I tend to target Stephen King in my Facebook ads, because in Facebook, there's not a downside to casting your net wide because Facebook sorts it out, unlike Amazon ads where the more specific you are the better. So on Facebook, I target Stephen King and Charlaine Harris. In my Charlaine Harris ads, I usually have something that looks kind of ghostly, whereas in my Stephen King ads, I usually have something that's a little more like thrilleresque. So I'm sort of trying to align the content of my ad with the target audience of my ad, but maybe I'm missing opportunities by adhering to that alignment.
Let Prospective Audiences Sample Your Content First
[00:29:51] Kathy: Well, no, I think that's smart. What I would say, because it's always about, you can try two audiences, and both can work. You can try two audiences and one works better than the other, just like the book more, is to add a layer. I think what you're doing is right, but to add a sampling layer.
[00:30:12] So to bring both ads into a sample experience, maybe on your website before they buy, before you take them to the purchase. Because the big thing that happens, and it comes back to again, how the reader sees it and also to the sense of truth in advertising, right?
[00:30:34] So if you're going strong on the thriller side and that's going to delight that Stephen King, he has a particular kind of thriller, and they come into your book and they don't like the sample, they're not going to purchase and leave a review of disappointment. And you can follow that pathway to see which audience really ends up loving the sample and buying the book. And then hopefully, because you gave them the opportunity to test and try things on and see if it was a fit for them, you get the right subgroups in those audiences to actually purchase the book.
[00:31:11] And again, you can get bad reviews for great work because it's in front of the wrong reader. And people might say, well, that's not a great journey because you didn't take them from A to B and close the deal.
[00:31:24] But if you're really trying to learn about your audiences, that's a different type of advertising campaign than when you really clearly have an audience. And on Facebook, you are advertising to interests and audiences versus very specific comp titles. But testing would be very, very important because those are different.
[00:31:45] And I would say probably in both groups, you're going to find subgroups and then that's how you build the audience. But you take them through that one extra step, let them get to know you, let them sample your work, in a non-purchase environment and then take them into an actual purchasing environment.
[00:32:05] Matty: Yeah, Stephen King's an interesting case because he has written so many different kinds of books. And however many years ago, 20 years, 30 years, when it was more horror, I wouldn't have chosen him because my books are not horror, but as he's expanded into other things, I'm just kind of picking him because readers of Stephen King are willing to have weird things happen in their books.
[00:32:27] Kathy: And there's the Spotify effect, like they loved this, and he kept bringing them and he evolved, and his brand evolved. And I think once you have gained a reader's trust and they understand, they don't care so much about genre. Some people do, they care about a reading experience and a kind of feeling they get when they read your work, and they know that with Stephen King. And so when he starts to go somewhere, the people follow. And that's, I think, one check in the side for going narrower. But also testing and seeing what's that group within the group that finds this mix of genres that's not fitting neatly into a particular sub-genre, but they love it because the reading experience resonates with them, you know.
Don't Lose the Relationship
[00:33:19] Matty: I wanted to loop back on something you had referenced before, that I think I understood you were saying that in certain kinds of ads, and I'm guessing this is for ads where you're looking for your audience, you don't have an established large audience to market to, that you're sending people to a web page as opposed to a purchase page. Did I understand that correctly?
[00:33:36] Kathy: Yeah. I mean, it's something to think about. The other thing with Facebook ads is that, if you send them directly to Amazon, first of all, you never capture their email. You also don't teach Facebook anything because they can't see what happened, if the goal was reached, because they lose that connection on Amazon.
[00:33:56] But you can add the tagging to your website that then, if the goal is to get them to download a sample, if the goal is reached, then Facebook will do more of that. If the goal, whatever it's set, whatever action they're supposed to take, wasn't reached, Facebook can't make those connections with Amazon. So there are other advantages.
[00:34:16] Kathy: But I think, if you are someone who really is blending genres, and it's just a little tougher to find your audience, bring them to the site and let them sample the work there, and then in that sample, drive them to the product page. Instead of, if you're doing something like at 99 cents, you might just get an automatic buy because of the pricing, but first, you would lose the connection with the fan that was willing to actually click through and maybe sample your work. And you lose the ability to ask them something to learn, like what is it about this book that you liked or didn't like? You lose the relationship. That's I think why the email list is still the most important thing for an independent author to grow.
[00:35:03] But audience testing, and it takes skill, and it takes commitment, and it takes money, but you could throw a lot of money towards the wrong audience or towards the right audience but have the wrong description or the wrong opening for your book, or there's just lots of little places where things have to go right. And if one thing goes wrong, you lose people.
[00:35:25] So better to test and make sure everything is working together. And that comes down to, I think, specificity and description specificity in the ad and the audience you're talking to with that ad, the experience they get when they come to your website and sample. And it's just harder when you blend genres. It takes more testing, but it's worth it. It's definitely worth it.
[00:35:49] Matty: Great. Well, Kathy, thank you so much, this was so helpful. Please let the listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and all you do online.
[00:35:57] Kathy: Oh sure, well, come visit us at Bublish.Com. So that's spelled like publish, but with a B. So we're turning publishing upside down. And Bublish.Com. You can also find us on all the major social media sites as BublishMe. And we do a ton of author education, so come and check it out. And thanks for the opportunity again, Matty, always an interesting discussion. You like to talk about things that fascinate me, but I don't think enough people are talking about these kinds of topics and how much they influence the outcomes that authors experience.
[00:36:37] Matty: Yeah, I think that authors can be leery of the testing data concept, and so I have a number of episodes, I'll try to remember to put links in the show notes to them, about how authors can use data to improve their results. So another great addition to that library of resources, thank you, Kathy.
[00:36:54] Kathy: Yeah. Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kathy! I think her point about no book being for every reader is so important to enable us to identify and target the audience that will love what we have to offer. Understanding what will delight your ideal reader is such an important part of both the writing craft and the publishing voyage. What part of the conversation most resonated with you?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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