Episode 227 - Six Keys to Author Success - Part 1 with Nick Thacker
February 27, 2024
"Anything we do after is a force multiplier for what we're putting out as craft. So if I have a bad book and then I advertise that bad book, then I'm just throwing money to advertise something that's not very good. And so it's so important to make sure that we are doing the best we can do in terms of artistry, craft, structure, pacing, outlining. Not easy, I'm not saying it's easy, but we cannot forget that that's what we do, ultimately." —Nick Thacker
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Nick Thacker discusses SIX KEYS TO AUTHOR SUCCESS PART 1, including This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I have Part 1 of a wide-ranging conversation with Nick Thacker about SIX KEYS TO AUTHOR SUCCESS. In this episode we talk about QUALITY WRITING, including how marketing serves as a force multiplier for our craft; the opportunities and the responsibility of being your own gatekeeper; balancing quality control with over-engineering; and how writing the first draft is assembling the raw material for your creation ... or maybe like building sandcastles. We talk about PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION, and the importance of setting the right expectations with your packaging, understanding the cover design tropes of your genre, accepting that cover design isn't one-and-done, and ways indy authors can provide better quality than trad pub. And we talk about the three buckets of STRATEGIC MARKETING: email, social media marketing, and advertising.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
Listen to the full episode ...
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Nick Thacker is a USA Today Bestselling Author of over 40 thrillers. He owns and operates Conundrum Publishing and Book Career in A Year and runs the write/repeat workshops and writing intensives. He is also the founder of Author.Email, the only email marketing platform for specifically for authors, and RadioWrite.com, the 24/7 writing inspiration radio platform, and he is the VP of Author Success with Draft2Digital. His passion is to help authors figure out what their plan is — not just the “what,” but the “how” and the “why.”
Links
Nick's Links:
nickthacker.com
https://www.bookcareerinayear.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorNickThacker
YouTube
https://twitter.com/NickThacker
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
nickthacker.com
https://www.bookcareerinayear.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorNickThacker
YouTube
https://twitter.com/NickThacker
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Nick! What did you think about our metaphors of writing a first draft being like digging clay out of sand or like building sandcastles—or, for that matter, about any other part of our conversation?
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!
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AI-generated Summary
This episode features a conversation between Matty Dalrymple, the host of The Indy Author Podcast, and Nick Thacker, a USA Today bestselling author of over 40 thrillers, owner of Conundrum Publishing, and VP of Author Success at Draft2Digital. Nick shares his insights on six keys to author success, emphasizing the importance of quality writing, professional presentation, and strategic marketing.
Nick argues that quality writing is foundational for an author's success, highlighting the necessity of continuous improvement, focusing on craft, structure, pacing, and outlining. He stresses that marketing efforts can only amplify the inherent quality of a book, advising authors to focus on their weakest areas for improvement.
Professional presentation extends beyond the manuscript to include book packaging, cover design, and overall aesthetics, which significantly influence reader and publisher perceptions. Nick advises authors to stay abreast of genre-specific trends in cover design and presentation to ensure their books meet and exceed market expectations.
Strategic marketing, according to Nick, involves a well-considered approach to advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing. He emphasizes the importance of building an email list from the outset and engaging with readers through social media. Nick also discusses the nuances of advertising, advising a gradual increase in ad spending to avoid overwhelming potential audiences and to allow for iterative improvement based on performance data.
Nick's overarching message is the importance of balancing artistry with market savvy, suggesting that authors should continuously refine their craft while also being strategic about how they present and market their books to readers. He encourages authors to view their writing career as a long-term endeavor, focusing on building a body of work that resonates with readers over time.
Nick argues that quality writing is foundational for an author's success, highlighting the necessity of continuous improvement, focusing on craft, structure, pacing, and outlining. He stresses that marketing efforts can only amplify the inherent quality of a book, advising authors to focus on their weakest areas for improvement.
Professional presentation extends beyond the manuscript to include book packaging, cover design, and overall aesthetics, which significantly influence reader and publisher perceptions. Nick advises authors to stay abreast of genre-specific trends in cover design and presentation to ensure their books meet and exceed market expectations.
Strategic marketing, according to Nick, involves a well-considered approach to advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing. He emphasizes the importance of building an email list from the outset and engaging with readers through social media. Nick also discusses the nuances of advertising, advising a gradual increase in ad spending to avoid overwhelming potential audiences and to allow for iterative improvement based on performance data.
Nick's overarching message is the importance of balancing artistry with market savvy, suggesting that authors should continuously refine their craft while also being strategic about how they present and market their books to readers. He encourages authors to view their writing career as a long-term endeavor, focusing on building a body of work that resonates with readers over time.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to the Indie Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Nick Thacker. Hey, Nick, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Nick: I'm doing well.
Meet Nick Thacker
[00:00:08] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Nick Thacker is the USA Today bestselling author of over 40 thrillers. He owns and operates Conundrum Publishing and "Book Career in a Year," and runs the Write Repeat Workshops and Writing Intensives. He is also the founder of Author Email, the only email marketing platform specifically for authors, and RadioWrite.com, the 24/7 writing inspiration radio platform. He is the VP of author success with Draft2Digital, one of my favorite indie author platforms. His passion is to help authors figure out what their plan is, not just the what, but the how and the why.
[00:00:39] Nick: Hearing my bio from you, Matty, reminds me of all the things I have to catch up on. There are a lot of things that you said that make me think, "Oh, I forgot that I did that. I'm supposed to do that. I owe somebody for that."
[00:00:50] Matty: Is there anything that isn't included yet in your bio that we should know of?
[00:00:55] Nick: No, nothing you should know about, but there are other things. I'm setting up a web hosting service for authors and a printing company that authors can use for conference materials. But I just thought it was funny, hearing all that from you. I'm like, "Oh, okay, I owe somebody for that thing, and that thing, and oh, I forgot I did that."
[00:01:15] Matty: We should have some little automated thing that reads us our bio like once a week, so we can go, "Oh yeah, yeah."
[00:01:21] Nick: That would be really helpful. I should have ChatGPT do that every morning, just to remind myself what I'm supposed to be doing.
[00:01:25] Matty: Well, our topic today is six keys to author success. And Nick and I talked about discussing this topic, and I had asked Nick to provide me with six bullet points that he would like to cover. So, I'm just going to feed you the bullet points, Nick, and we will see where it takes us from there.
QUALITY WRITING
[00:01:41] Matty: Not surprisingly, the first item you put on your list is quality writing, which I think is sometimes overlooked as an aspect of a successful author career. So, what do you have to say about quality writing?
[00:01:54] Nick: You're exactly right. I believe this strongly. I actually just did a three-hour craft intensive on how to write and how to outline in genre fiction, specifically thrillers, because that's my area of expertise. I did this last week, and it was just a reminder of how important this is for us as authors. At the end of the day, nothing else matters if we don't have something good to show the world.
The reason it's often overlooked, I believe, is for two reasons. First, we might think, "This is who I am, I'm an artist, and this is my art." You might believe you can't get better or worse, which is a strange way to think about it. So we ignore it. Or secondly, improving our quality is not easy. If we acknowledge that we need to get better, the question becomes how do you do that? Growth requires practice and sometimes writing with the intent of never publishing, which is hard.
It's challenging because while we all want to improve, there isn't always a clear, easy path to betterment. So, quality is very important; it's the foundation on which we build everything else.
[00:03:08] Nick: You'll hear me say this in the marketing part too, but anything we do after writing is a force multiplier for what we're putting out as craft. If I have a bad book and then advertise that bad book, I'm just throwing money away to advertise something that's not very good.
So it's crucial to ensure we are doing the best we can in terms of artistry, craft, structure, pacing, outlining. It's not easy, but we cannot forget that's our ultimate goal. That's why most of us got into this — because we like to write, we like to be artists. It's important to constantly focus on whether this is the best we've got, if we can get better, or identify any obvious weaknesses.
As an example, I've focused on character development in my own writing over the last few years, as I felt that was a weak point for me. I study books on craft and character development and work on building better arcs. This is practice for maintaining and improving the quality of my writing. We'll see if it pans out, but the idea is to identify our weaker areas and improve them.
And just like when you build or improve a house, once you paint the walls, you might notice the trim looks bad. Once you fix the trim, the fixtures might stand out. So, you find the worst thing and improve that.
Balancing quality control with over-engineering
[00:04:50] Matty: I think there are a couple of seemingly contradictory pieces of advice, especially in the indie publishing world. In the early days, it was about having no gatekeepers, publishing anything one wanted, even if it was subpar. But as the industry matured, we realized the professional need to have others assess our work. Now, it's more standard for indie authors to realize they need an editor, beta readers, critique groups, and so on. It's not that there are no gatekeepers; it's that you become your own gatekeeper and usually need to hire professional help to maintain that role.
[00:05:45] Matty: Then there's the challenge of balancing quality control with over-engineering, like futzing with a book for another year to perfect the first sentence versus the advice to eventually just get it out there and move on to the next project. Do you have any advice for how to balance those two?
[00:06:10] Nick: Yes, there's a dichotomy. A career is never built by someone who constantly churns and improves their book but never releases it. You don't become a writer if you never release anything. However, you can still define yourself as a writer if writing is just for you and you're not looking to sell or make a career out of it. If you want a career, which implies making money and all that comes with it, you can't achieve that without releasing your book.
The goal should be to reach a point where you're comfortable releasing your book. Often, the hesitation isn't about the book's quality but fear—fear of putting ourselves out there and letting the world critique our work. If you're hesitating because you think it's not good enough, it's probably fear rather than a true lack of quality. Now, on the flip side, rushing through work to publish as quickly as possible for financial gain, like writing a book every two weeks and publishing the first draft, is equally problematic.
[00:08:03] Matty: Yeah, and I think that if you've taken all the recommended steps, like engaging a professional editor, or if that's not financially possible, at least sharing it with readers in your genre or people in your writing group, and you've done everything you can and you put it out there, then you can use reader reaction to decide whether your assessment of its quality was correct.
[00:08:25] Nick: That's true, and I highly recommend what you first said. Even if it's not feasible financially, do your best to find a professional editor, enlist their help, and yes, you'll probably have to pay them. If a full edit isn't an option, consider a proofreader or someone to give general feedback about whether your book is ready to publish. This isn't a new industry anymore, and it's not a secret what makes a book successful. There are still variables and luck involved, sure, but quality isn't a secret. We know that fixing typos can make your book better. We're also in the era of AI, with tools like Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and ChatGPT that can help improve the line editing of your book. I'm not saying these are alternatives to a human editor, but they can be that last push to ensure your quality is acceptable.
Usually, a writer who isn't brand new, maybe someone who's written a book or two, knows whether their book is truly good enough. If it's not, take the time to make it better, find an editor, and use the tools available to improve it. We're doing this because we want a career, which isn't just about making money. It's about building a long-term reputation and trust with our readers, who we hope will read us for the next 50 years or longer. Write for that person, for the reader decades from now, because that's where quality matters.
But on the other hand, don't spend 50 years trying to make your book perfect because perfection doesn't exist. I've read manuscripts from authors who worked on their books for five years and ended up making them worse. At some point, the book was good enough to release, and that's as good as that author could do at that time. They just ended up making it more watered down and less enjoyable to read. So there are definitely two sides to that coin.
Writing the first draft is assembling the raw material for your creation
[00:10:45] Matty: Yeah, there's a metaphor I'm working on. It's not quite polished yet, but to combat the idea of publishing your first draft, it reminds me of a beach my mother used to take me and my sister to. There was a spot where you could dig up clay under the sand. We kids would make little things out of the clay. This is a great analogy for a first draft. You dig through the sand, gather the clay, which is the raw material, and then you create something. But nobody would claim that the heap of clay thrown over their shoulder is a finished statue. It's just raw material for whatever you want to make.
But as I think about what you said, regarding manuscripts that get worse with every revision, it's clear that if you keep picking at your creation, eventually it becomes a formless blob. The trick is to find the perfect balance between polished and over-polished, engaging and bland.
Writing is like building sandcastles
[00:12:01] Nick: I love that analogy. It reminds me of something I heard on a podcast where an actor said he enjoys making movies because it's like building sandcastles, knowing the tide will eventually come in. He doesn't aim for the perfect sandcastle; he just likes building them. Apply that to writing: don't spend years trying to make the perfect book because there's no such thing. Write the book, make it good enough, release it. That's your sandcastle. It might be gone tomorrow, but you'll be working on a new one. You need to fall in love with making sandcastles. Over time, they'll get bigger, better, more polished, more intricate. That's how you improve your writing.
It won't work to perfect just one book, hoping everyone will love it. Especially if it's your first book, most people might not love it. It's more fun and rewarding to build multiple sandcastles, to keep writing books, and to get better with each one. This is the iterative process seen in startups. Get your unique selling proposition, your book to a minimum viable product, and then move on to the next one, improving each time.
[00:13:39] Matty: Of course, it all depends on your goal. If you're aiming to make writing a career, it's different from writing a passion project that you simply want to share. You're not likely to retire on the latter.
PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION
[00:13:54] Matty: This leads us to the second bullet you mentioned about the six keys to author success, which is professional presentation. We've talked about the need for professional presentation in writing, but I believe this extends beyond the words on the page. Can you elaborate on that?
Setting the right expectations with your packaging
[00:14:12] Nick: Yes, this is about book packaging. You've written the book, you've got the content and the interior file. But when you release a book, it comes with certain expectations from readers, stores, and you as the writer about what your creation should look and feel like. All of this feeds into professional presentation. You're aiming to be a professional if you're serious about making this a career. It's not just about the manuscript but also the cover, the layout, what it looks like on the page, the editing.
Professionally presented books significantly impact the appeal to readers and publishers, especially if you're pursuing traditional publishing. Even if they may not use those materials, putting together a professional package demonstrates your competence. That will stand out in a query letter more than just another submission in the slush pile.
Understanding the market and the marketing levers we can pull is crucial. It's not just an extra if you have time; it's essential. The market is saturated enough that readers looking for something specific on Amazon, like "fast-paced action thrillers," will be presented with hundreds of options. They'll first see the cover and maybe the title, which must meet their expectations and fit within their interests.
If your book shows up in the wrong category, it won't attract the right clicks, even if it gets more visibility. A good book cover isn't just the icing; it's the cake itself. It's vital to ensure your cover positions your book correctly in the market. I believe a book cover's sole job is to prevent losing a sale.
[00:17:57] Matty: A recommendation I've made a couple of times before, which I like so much I use any opportunity to recommend it to people, is that everyone should be subscribing to some kind of email promotional service like BookBub for their genre. There's really no better market research than to open an email every day that has books in your genre that a bunch of professional book selectors have chosen as ones they think are going to be very popular. Look at the covers and read the descriptions.
I'm a huge cover design nerd, and I'm struck by how often there will be clear visual consistency across the covers, like a dark teal and gray background with large sans serif yellow letters. That's the thriller thing. You see one of those or, for a while, it was the woman in the yellow coat running away. I don't know why they all had to have a yellow coat, but they did. And now, for certain genres, it's the letters intertwined with a vine over it or something like that.
Even if you're not doing your own covers, this is another area where I recommend people get professional help. Even if you're going to a cover designer, it will help you interact more productively with your cover designer if you're familiar with what those tropes are.
And then I think also, from the point of view of cover design, getting a cover design done once, even if it's lovely and brand-right and genre-right and all those things at first, it should probably be revisited periodically because all those tropes that I just described, the BookBub emails would have looked quite different two or three or four years ago.
[00:19:35] Matty: Do you have a sense, like, do you have a schedule where you look at your covers to see if they're still current?
[00:19:42] Nick: I don't have a regular schedule, but I was a cover designer. I did all my own covers early on, and I was a graphic designer professionally. So, dare I say it, I have a good eye for design, and I typically will wait until I get that inkling of a feeling that, hey, maybe these covers are getting out of date. And it's for the same reasons you just mentioned. I go to the airport and look at the very limited selection of books in that Hudson bookstore or whatever it is, and those books are there not because they're not selling well; they're there because the purchasing department decided these are the ones that are going to sell best. You can see those trends, and you can see exactly what other people in my genre are doing, up to the minute.
And so, if I get to the point where I'm like, "Oh, this is becoming really popular in the genre I write in," then I'm going to go back to my cover designer, who now does all this for me. He's observing the same trends, by the way, so sometimes he'll say, "Hey, you don't have to pay me for this yet, but I'm just saying this is kind of a trend and these covers no longer work in that genre."
But between the two of us, we'll decide, "Alright, this series needs an overhaul." And that may happen once every year. If we're lucky, it's not that often. I think for my main Harvey Bennett series, I've redesigned some of the earlier books maybe five times in total, and I'm hoping the iteration we're on now is one that I can keep for the next four years. But I don't know; I'm not in charge of setting those trends. I wish I were. But you're exactly right. There definitely is a time period where you say, "Hey, it's been a while. Let's do a deep dive into what's working in this genre in terms of cover design and do mine fit?" Be honest with yourself because it could mean more sales if you get it right.
All this to say, I don't think we should just chase trends blindly. Like you said, the intertwined text with the typography that's really big in psych thrillers and women's fiction right now. That's not what I write. So chasing that trend would be detrimental to the books' success because there's an expectation that's lost. The readers are going to open it up and be like, "This is not what I wanted. This is about bombs and Jack Reacher-type stuff. This isn't Colleen Hoover." So it is important to understand what these trends are, but specifically the trends within our genre when it comes to cover design. What we're trying to do isn't just gain more sales; we're trying to prevent people from thinking, "Ew, that cover's old and out of date. I'm not even going to bother reading what it's about."
[00:22:09] Matty: Yeah. You do yourself more harm by getting your book in the hands of someone it's not right for than you do good. You pay the price for that sale in unhappy reviews and so on. And I think that for both quality writing and professional presentation, we've talked about the importance of genre-specific knowledge and direction. It's important to have beta readers, an editor, and a book cover designer who specialize in your genre, not just someone who designed a beautiful cover but it was for a poetry collection, and you're writing horror. Although that actually might be a pretty good combination now that I think about it.
[00:22:46] Nick: That could work. I'd absolutely accept some horror Lovecraft style. But you're absolutely right. It is so important to understand that we're writing in a genre. Usually, I don't have to hammer this point home because if someone's writing in that genre, they're a reader and a consumer of that genre. They see the book covers, the descriptions, the keywords, the major trends, like sparkling vampires, because it's their favorite genre. It's not always the case, though. There are definitely situations where someone is writing in a genre that's not their usual, like myself currently working on a sweet hockey romance, which is not my genre. But I am doing the research. I need to make this my genre and understand the tropes, which are particularly crucial in romance.
It's important to know these things just by being a consumer and a lover of that genre. You'll pick up on these trends because Amazon will show them to you. They know what you like to read. They'll suggest, "What do you think of this category?" and you'll see all the covers. So paying attention to these things isn't as hard as we make it seem. It's really just a matter of reading in that genre, studying it, just being present there, and you'll get marketed to by other authors. It'll be pretty easy to find some of those trends.
[00:23:56] Matty: Yeah. I also think there's this kind of reverse engineering aspect. If you think you're writing hard-boiled thrillers and you subscribe to the hard-boiled thriller email newsletter, and none of it appeals to you, guess what? You may not be writing in the correct genre. Maybe it's actually a cozy. Sometimes you need a little reality check, and that kind of research can be a good way to do that.
[00:24:19] Nick: Absolutely.
[00:24:21] Matty: And the other thing I'll add is that I used to say early in my indie author career that indie authors can provide a product that's just as good as what traditional publishers can. But now, I really think that, in many cases, especially with ebooks, indie authors can provide a much better product. I'm surprised at how still print-centric traditional publishers are and how bad their ebooks can be—badly formatted, just a bad experience. So, there's no harm in setting the bar higher than what the big five, or the big four, however many there are these days, are putting out.
[00:24:56] Nick: You're absolutely right. Watching traditional publishing can be so frustrating because they make decisions that seem incompetent, but they're not. They're just in a whole different world. The way their economies work is entirely different from what you and I live and breathe every day.
[00:26:00] Matty: And it's exactly true with that. I mean, they're almost obligated not to reinvent the wheel when it comes to things like layout and formatting because it's somebody's job to do that. It's job security to make sure that they continue to do that work. They're on their own with Microsoft Word or InDesign, heaven forbid.
They're not going to use something like Vellum because that would make their job too easy, and then they wouldn't have a job anymore. So, you know, it's one of those things where you're right, you get a traditionally published book, and I just had this happen a couple of nights ago. I downloaded a new book from a big publisher, one of the big four, and I thought, "This is atrocious."
I just wanted to reach out and say, "Can I do this for you? Just give me the Word file." This isn't supposed to be hard. It's 2024; we're well past this being difficult. So it makes me mad, but hey, I'm a software guy too, so I understand some of the reasons why, but it does look like incompetence on their part when it comes down to what the consumer sees.
[00:26:08] Matty: It was interesting, a number of episodes ago, I interviewed Leslye Penelope, who has extensive experience in both the traditional and indie worlds. And we were talking, and she said, "Well, the one difference is that indie publishers' customers are the readers and traditional publishers' customers are bookstores." And that took me by surprise so much that I think I just had to take a beat because I had never thought of it that way. It was such a bizarre way to think about it, but obviously, she knows; she has experience on both sides.
And I think it's also true that it depends on the publisher. It's not just indie versus traditional; there's a huge spectrum. Early on, indie authors picked up many great practices from traditional publishers. Now, I think traditional publishers are picking up practices from indie authors, so there's a spectrum of--
[00:26:59] Nick: To the other. Yeah, absolutely. One informs the other for sure. And you're so right that a traditional publishing house is positioning books to be sold to the one purchaser for the company purchaser. If it's Barnes & Noble, there's one person sitting behind a desk looking at a catalog once a quarter going, "Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no," and deciding how many we want per store. They have 250 stores in the United States alone, whatever it is. And those are the books that will be stocked. So that's the person, absolutely. And it's mind-boggling that that's true, but it's absolutely true. That person doesn't necessarily know anything about the readership of the genre. They probably only read in one or two, maybe three genres, so they don't know what's happening in anime or memoir because they don't read those. They just look at what the publisher gave me, and this looks intriguing to me. So it's mind-boggling, but it's true.
[00:27:51] Matty: Yeah, it is mind-boggling.
STRATEGIC MARKETING
[00:27:52] Matty: So the next of the six keys to author success is strategic marketing. Now that we have quality writing and professional presentation, what would you say about strategic marketing?
[00:28:05] Nick: Make it strategic. There's no shortage of marketing activities, tactics, tips that you can try as an author. There used to be a shortage, but not anymore. There's somebody out there willing to take your money and say, "Let's try this; let's do that." And so if you don't approach this category with a strategy, you're going to spend more money than is necessary.
[00:28:50] Nick: And I'm saying that while also knowing that if you do something like advertising, which I think every author should do, you're also going to be spending more money than is necessary. That's how advertising works. You spend more money than is ultimately required to keep an ad campaign running because you want to test and gather data. You try and fail many times and iterate. So, you don't have that much money to throw at this marketing game in general if you're doing advertising while already spending a lot of money, right?
The three buckets of strategic marketing: email, social media marketing, and advertising
So the point is to be strategic about this. I break marketing for authors down into three buckets that I think every author should be involved in. Not necessarily start these at the same time, but they should be doing them if they're serious about this career. The three things are email marketing, social media marketing, and advertising, probably in that order. If you're brand new to this game and you only have one book out, it's probably not a good use of your time, money, and energy to be advertising that book.
There are many reasons we can dig into, but the point is, wait until you have 6 books out before you start investing advertising dollars because it's a force multiplier. If you have 6 points of entry to a series and you advertise the first one, you also have 6 products that you can sell to that person when they click through. That means you have more income; your ROI is higher than if you just had one book, right?
Going in order, email marketing is essentially free, not entirely because you need an email service provider, which costs money. Some offer free services if you have fewer than 2000 subscribers, but let's just say it will cost a little bit of money. However, it's a small amount. I run all my email marketing through [brand name], so shameless sales promotion here. It's $10.99 a month for up to 9,999 subscribers, and you can send as many times as you want. There are no restrictions. We allow autoresponders, segmentation, templates, and there are no feature gates in that way. Email marketing, in general, is very affordable, but the point is, you should be building a mailing list from day one, maybe even before day one. Say, "Hey, I'm going to write a book and launch it, sign up for my mailing list to find out more." This is something we should absolutely be doing from day one as an author.
Then, once we start building a small readership and developing relationships with individuals on that list, it might be worth our time and energy to start using social media because that's also free. You can get on TikTok, Facebook, or wherever your readers congregate, wherever that genre typically spends time online. Have some presence there. Be willing to say, "Hey, I'm going to spend an hour a week, no more, especially if you don't hate social media." Spend that time scheduling some posts, making funny memes or jokes about your content, or giving a behind-the-scenes view of what it looks like in your writing cave.
[00:32:39] Matty: Whatever it is, do something, because even though it will not be a quick path to success, it is so valuable over 5 or 10 years of doing this kind of thing at least weekly, if not daily. Like I said, I could talk a lot longer about that. That's probably the next big thing to do as an author. And then, finally, once you have the first two—writing good books, the craft is there, and you're presenting it really well—then you can start using advertising to multiply that force. Because it's now a force for the good of your career.
You can use advertising through Facebook ads, BookBub ads, and Amazon ads. Those are the top three, and they are pretty much the only three that I pay attention to these days, at least in terms of where most of my budget goes. Those are the ways to get people into the top of your funnel, into your world. At least they've heard of you now. Maybe they've clicked over to your website and seen your stuff. So there's that little cookie pixel on their computer now, so you can remarket or retarget them. Very simply, it's also a way to get people to go and see your books and say, "Hey, this is something I'd like to read, let me buy it."
So, advertising is a very powerful way to find new eyeballs who have never heard of you before, and a way to find people who have maybe heard of you but aren't quite sure, and then convert both of those people into a subscriber or somebody who's a fan of your books, someone who actually buys and reads them. Those are the big three. That's what I would say strategic marketing comes down to: email marketing, social media marketing, and advertising.
I just had an interesting experience on the advertising front that I kind of always believed, but this was such a stark example. I was at 20 Books Vegas, and one of the presenters was giving a presentation on Facebook ads. I was already working with someone in this person's organization on Facebook consulting. During the Q&A portion, somebody asked a question, and what came out was this guy was spending over a hundred dollars a day on Facebook advertising. She said, "Well, just stop doing that right away." And his feeling was, "Well, if I spend $100, I'm making this much. If I spend $200, I'm going to make twice as much." Or, you know, hopefully some multiple. And she was explaining that that really wasn't the case, necessarily.
At the same time, I was working with this consultant from this woman's group on my Facebook ads. I understand the theory behind it, but I hated doing it. So I get together with this person for one hour a month, for 50 bucks. It's $50 for an hour. And we go over my Facebook ads and she tells me what to tweak. Then I just do kind of like checking in for the next month and then we meet again. And it's working out really well for me, but the thing that really struck me about it is that I'd always spent like five, ten dollars a day on Facebook ads. She said, "Well, let's start at five and see how it goes." So we had an ad that was doing pretty well. So I said, "Well, should I put it up to 10?" Because for some reason, I always defaulted to going in increments of five. And she said, "Oh no, no, let's go to six." And I thought, I appreciate so much that someone's willing to say to me, "Don't go to 10. Go to 6." Like, don't, not only don't spend $100, but don't even spend $10 until we know that $6 is going to work as well.
[00:34:47] Nick: Absolutely. And I agree with that advice. A lot of times, the understood or often recited way to do it is by increasing a budget daily by 10 to 20 percent. So going from 5 to 6 makes perfect sense. That's 20 percent. And that's a good way to do it because it won't shock the system, whether it's Facebook ads or Amazon; they all work similarly. If you put too much budget into it too fast, it can freak out the system.
With Facebook ads specifically, there is so much data that has nothing to do with books but can be used to make decisions as to what people might like to click on. That's Facebook's job. When you have a $5 a day ad and it's working really well—your click-through rate is good, your purchase rate is up, your ROAS is good—you might think you're ready to scale. Let's say you decide to start spending $100 a day. It's not that Facebook is mad at you and wants to steal your money; it's that the ad will suddenly stop or stall or not work as well because it's doing its job. It's saying, "Okay, this worked, but now you're forcing me to find exponentially more people every single day." And I don't have any more who liked this particular thing that my algorithm found that led to them clicking when it was $5 a day. I've already hit those people. So it has to find new people that might click on your ad within 24 hours, and it's not going to get that right every single time.
The reason you scale slowly is because you want to make sure Facebook finds a little bit more people every day. And then, if that didn't work, tomorrow Facebook will try a different lever behind the scenes. Maybe people who like James Rollins didn't click the ad, but people who like Clive Cussler did. Or maybe people who watch Indiana Jones clicked it, but when it advertised to fans of Dan Brown movies, nobody clicked. Whatever it is, it all happens in the black box, and all we see is that our click-through rate went down today. We don't know why, but that's what happens behind the scenes. So if you scale really big, really quickly, you end up with no more information than before. You just know that you spent $95 more than the day before, and you don't have anything better to show for it.
So why not spend $6 for a week, then $7.50 for a week, and then $9, scaling up very slowly by 10 percent to 20 percent. And it's really hard to do because as authors, we think, "Hey, this works. I've got the images designed. I'm not a marketer. I don't want to do this all day. So I'm just going to jack it up to $100 and hope for the best. I'll check it two weeks from now." And then you've spent $2,000 and it didn't work at all. So, it is important to scale slowly when it comes to advertising, but it does work. It's definitely a game we should all be playing, iterating, testing, and doing all the things that are required within that.
[00:00:06] Nick: I'm doing well.
Meet Nick Thacker
[00:00:08] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Nick Thacker is the USA Today bestselling author of over 40 thrillers. He owns and operates Conundrum Publishing and "Book Career in a Year," and runs the Write Repeat Workshops and Writing Intensives. He is also the founder of Author Email, the only email marketing platform specifically for authors, and RadioWrite.com, the 24/7 writing inspiration radio platform. He is the VP of author success with Draft2Digital, one of my favorite indie author platforms. His passion is to help authors figure out what their plan is, not just the what, but the how and the why.
[00:00:39] Nick: Hearing my bio from you, Matty, reminds me of all the things I have to catch up on. There are a lot of things that you said that make me think, "Oh, I forgot that I did that. I'm supposed to do that. I owe somebody for that."
[00:00:50] Matty: Is there anything that isn't included yet in your bio that we should know of?
[00:00:55] Nick: No, nothing you should know about, but there are other things. I'm setting up a web hosting service for authors and a printing company that authors can use for conference materials. But I just thought it was funny, hearing all that from you. I'm like, "Oh, okay, I owe somebody for that thing, and that thing, and oh, I forgot I did that."
[00:01:15] Matty: We should have some little automated thing that reads us our bio like once a week, so we can go, "Oh yeah, yeah."
[00:01:21] Nick: That would be really helpful. I should have ChatGPT do that every morning, just to remind myself what I'm supposed to be doing.
[00:01:25] Matty: Well, our topic today is six keys to author success. And Nick and I talked about discussing this topic, and I had asked Nick to provide me with six bullet points that he would like to cover. So, I'm just going to feed you the bullet points, Nick, and we will see where it takes us from there.
QUALITY WRITING
[00:01:41] Matty: Not surprisingly, the first item you put on your list is quality writing, which I think is sometimes overlooked as an aspect of a successful author career. So, what do you have to say about quality writing?
[00:01:54] Nick: You're exactly right. I believe this strongly. I actually just did a three-hour craft intensive on how to write and how to outline in genre fiction, specifically thrillers, because that's my area of expertise. I did this last week, and it was just a reminder of how important this is for us as authors. At the end of the day, nothing else matters if we don't have something good to show the world.
The reason it's often overlooked, I believe, is for two reasons. First, we might think, "This is who I am, I'm an artist, and this is my art." You might believe you can't get better or worse, which is a strange way to think about it. So we ignore it. Or secondly, improving our quality is not easy. If we acknowledge that we need to get better, the question becomes how do you do that? Growth requires practice and sometimes writing with the intent of never publishing, which is hard.
It's challenging because while we all want to improve, there isn't always a clear, easy path to betterment. So, quality is very important; it's the foundation on which we build everything else.
[00:03:08] Nick: You'll hear me say this in the marketing part too, but anything we do after writing is a force multiplier for what we're putting out as craft. If I have a bad book and then advertise that bad book, I'm just throwing money away to advertise something that's not very good.
So it's crucial to ensure we are doing the best we can in terms of artistry, craft, structure, pacing, outlining. It's not easy, but we cannot forget that's our ultimate goal. That's why most of us got into this — because we like to write, we like to be artists. It's important to constantly focus on whether this is the best we've got, if we can get better, or identify any obvious weaknesses.
As an example, I've focused on character development in my own writing over the last few years, as I felt that was a weak point for me. I study books on craft and character development and work on building better arcs. This is practice for maintaining and improving the quality of my writing. We'll see if it pans out, but the idea is to identify our weaker areas and improve them.
And just like when you build or improve a house, once you paint the walls, you might notice the trim looks bad. Once you fix the trim, the fixtures might stand out. So, you find the worst thing and improve that.
Balancing quality control with over-engineering
[00:04:50] Matty: I think there are a couple of seemingly contradictory pieces of advice, especially in the indie publishing world. In the early days, it was about having no gatekeepers, publishing anything one wanted, even if it was subpar. But as the industry matured, we realized the professional need to have others assess our work. Now, it's more standard for indie authors to realize they need an editor, beta readers, critique groups, and so on. It's not that there are no gatekeepers; it's that you become your own gatekeeper and usually need to hire professional help to maintain that role.
[00:05:45] Matty: Then there's the challenge of balancing quality control with over-engineering, like futzing with a book for another year to perfect the first sentence versus the advice to eventually just get it out there and move on to the next project. Do you have any advice for how to balance those two?
[00:06:10] Nick: Yes, there's a dichotomy. A career is never built by someone who constantly churns and improves their book but never releases it. You don't become a writer if you never release anything. However, you can still define yourself as a writer if writing is just for you and you're not looking to sell or make a career out of it. If you want a career, which implies making money and all that comes with it, you can't achieve that without releasing your book.
The goal should be to reach a point where you're comfortable releasing your book. Often, the hesitation isn't about the book's quality but fear—fear of putting ourselves out there and letting the world critique our work. If you're hesitating because you think it's not good enough, it's probably fear rather than a true lack of quality. Now, on the flip side, rushing through work to publish as quickly as possible for financial gain, like writing a book every two weeks and publishing the first draft, is equally problematic.
[00:08:03] Matty: Yeah, and I think that if you've taken all the recommended steps, like engaging a professional editor, or if that's not financially possible, at least sharing it with readers in your genre or people in your writing group, and you've done everything you can and you put it out there, then you can use reader reaction to decide whether your assessment of its quality was correct.
[00:08:25] Nick: That's true, and I highly recommend what you first said. Even if it's not feasible financially, do your best to find a professional editor, enlist their help, and yes, you'll probably have to pay them. If a full edit isn't an option, consider a proofreader or someone to give general feedback about whether your book is ready to publish. This isn't a new industry anymore, and it's not a secret what makes a book successful. There are still variables and luck involved, sure, but quality isn't a secret. We know that fixing typos can make your book better. We're also in the era of AI, with tools like Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and ChatGPT that can help improve the line editing of your book. I'm not saying these are alternatives to a human editor, but they can be that last push to ensure your quality is acceptable.
Usually, a writer who isn't brand new, maybe someone who's written a book or two, knows whether their book is truly good enough. If it's not, take the time to make it better, find an editor, and use the tools available to improve it. We're doing this because we want a career, which isn't just about making money. It's about building a long-term reputation and trust with our readers, who we hope will read us for the next 50 years or longer. Write for that person, for the reader decades from now, because that's where quality matters.
But on the other hand, don't spend 50 years trying to make your book perfect because perfection doesn't exist. I've read manuscripts from authors who worked on their books for five years and ended up making them worse. At some point, the book was good enough to release, and that's as good as that author could do at that time. They just ended up making it more watered down and less enjoyable to read. So there are definitely two sides to that coin.
Writing the first draft is assembling the raw material for your creation
[00:10:45] Matty: Yeah, there's a metaphor I'm working on. It's not quite polished yet, but to combat the idea of publishing your first draft, it reminds me of a beach my mother used to take me and my sister to. There was a spot where you could dig up clay under the sand. We kids would make little things out of the clay. This is a great analogy for a first draft. You dig through the sand, gather the clay, which is the raw material, and then you create something. But nobody would claim that the heap of clay thrown over their shoulder is a finished statue. It's just raw material for whatever you want to make.
But as I think about what you said, regarding manuscripts that get worse with every revision, it's clear that if you keep picking at your creation, eventually it becomes a formless blob. The trick is to find the perfect balance between polished and over-polished, engaging and bland.
Writing is like building sandcastles
[00:12:01] Nick: I love that analogy. It reminds me of something I heard on a podcast where an actor said he enjoys making movies because it's like building sandcastles, knowing the tide will eventually come in. He doesn't aim for the perfect sandcastle; he just likes building them. Apply that to writing: don't spend years trying to make the perfect book because there's no such thing. Write the book, make it good enough, release it. That's your sandcastle. It might be gone tomorrow, but you'll be working on a new one. You need to fall in love with making sandcastles. Over time, they'll get bigger, better, more polished, more intricate. That's how you improve your writing.
It won't work to perfect just one book, hoping everyone will love it. Especially if it's your first book, most people might not love it. It's more fun and rewarding to build multiple sandcastles, to keep writing books, and to get better with each one. This is the iterative process seen in startups. Get your unique selling proposition, your book to a minimum viable product, and then move on to the next one, improving each time.
[00:13:39] Matty: Of course, it all depends on your goal. If you're aiming to make writing a career, it's different from writing a passion project that you simply want to share. You're not likely to retire on the latter.
PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION
[00:13:54] Matty: This leads us to the second bullet you mentioned about the six keys to author success, which is professional presentation. We've talked about the need for professional presentation in writing, but I believe this extends beyond the words on the page. Can you elaborate on that?
Setting the right expectations with your packaging
[00:14:12] Nick: Yes, this is about book packaging. You've written the book, you've got the content and the interior file. But when you release a book, it comes with certain expectations from readers, stores, and you as the writer about what your creation should look and feel like. All of this feeds into professional presentation. You're aiming to be a professional if you're serious about making this a career. It's not just about the manuscript but also the cover, the layout, what it looks like on the page, the editing.
Professionally presented books significantly impact the appeal to readers and publishers, especially if you're pursuing traditional publishing. Even if they may not use those materials, putting together a professional package demonstrates your competence. That will stand out in a query letter more than just another submission in the slush pile.
Understanding the market and the marketing levers we can pull is crucial. It's not just an extra if you have time; it's essential. The market is saturated enough that readers looking for something specific on Amazon, like "fast-paced action thrillers," will be presented with hundreds of options. They'll first see the cover and maybe the title, which must meet their expectations and fit within their interests.
If your book shows up in the wrong category, it won't attract the right clicks, even if it gets more visibility. A good book cover isn't just the icing; it's the cake itself. It's vital to ensure your cover positions your book correctly in the market. I believe a book cover's sole job is to prevent losing a sale.
[00:17:57] Matty: A recommendation I've made a couple of times before, which I like so much I use any opportunity to recommend it to people, is that everyone should be subscribing to some kind of email promotional service like BookBub for their genre. There's really no better market research than to open an email every day that has books in your genre that a bunch of professional book selectors have chosen as ones they think are going to be very popular. Look at the covers and read the descriptions.
I'm a huge cover design nerd, and I'm struck by how often there will be clear visual consistency across the covers, like a dark teal and gray background with large sans serif yellow letters. That's the thriller thing. You see one of those or, for a while, it was the woman in the yellow coat running away. I don't know why they all had to have a yellow coat, but they did. And now, for certain genres, it's the letters intertwined with a vine over it or something like that.
Even if you're not doing your own covers, this is another area where I recommend people get professional help. Even if you're going to a cover designer, it will help you interact more productively with your cover designer if you're familiar with what those tropes are.
And then I think also, from the point of view of cover design, getting a cover design done once, even if it's lovely and brand-right and genre-right and all those things at first, it should probably be revisited periodically because all those tropes that I just described, the BookBub emails would have looked quite different two or three or four years ago.
[00:19:35] Matty: Do you have a sense, like, do you have a schedule where you look at your covers to see if they're still current?
[00:19:42] Nick: I don't have a regular schedule, but I was a cover designer. I did all my own covers early on, and I was a graphic designer professionally. So, dare I say it, I have a good eye for design, and I typically will wait until I get that inkling of a feeling that, hey, maybe these covers are getting out of date. And it's for the same reasons you just mentioned. I go to the airport and look at the very limited selection of books in that Hudson bookstore or whatever it is, and those books are there not because they're not selling well; they're there because the purchasing department decided these are the ones that are going to sell best. You can see those trends, and you can see exactly what other people in my genre are doing, up to the minute.
And so, if I get to the point where I'm like, "Oh, this is becoming really popular in the genre I write in," then I'm going to go back to my cover designer, who now does all this for me. He's observing the same trends, by the way, so sometimes he'll say, "Hey, you don't have to pay me for this yet, but I'm just saying this is kind of a trend and these covers no longer work in that genre."
But between the two of us, we'll decide, "Alright, this series needs an overhaul." And that may happen once every year. If we're lucky, it's not that often. I think for my main Harvey Bennett series, I've redesigned some of the earlier books maybe five times in total, and I'm hoping the iteration we're on now is one that I can keep for the next four years. But I don't know; I'm not in charge of setting those trends. I wish I were. But you're exactly right. There definitely is a time period where you say, "Hey, it's been a while. Let's do a deep dive into what's working in this genre in terms of cover design and do mine fit?" Be honest with yourself because it could mean more sales if you get it right.
All this to say, I don't think we should just chase trends blindly. Like you said, the intertwined text with the typography that's really big in psych thrillers and women's fiction right now. That's not what I write. So chasing that trend would be detrimental to the books' success because there's an expectation that's lost. The readers are going to open it up and be like, "This is not what I wanted. This is about bombs and Jack Reacher-type stuff. This isn't Colleen Hoover." So it is important to understand what these trends are, but specifically the trends within our genre when it comes to cover design. What we're trying to do isn't just gain more sales; we're trying to prevent people from thinking, "Ew, that cover's old and out of date. I'm not even going to bother reading what it's about."
[00:22:09] Matty: Yeah. You do yourself more harm by getting your book in the hands of someone it's not right for than you do good. You pay the price for that sale in unhappy reviews and so on. And I think that for both quality writing and professional presentation, we've talked about the importance of genre-specific knowledge and direction. It's important to have beta readers, an editor, and a book cover designer who specialize in your genre, not just someone who designed a beautiful cover but it was for a poetry collection, and you're writing horror. Although that actually might be a pretty good combination now that I think about it.
[00:22:46] Nick: That could work. I'd absolutely accept some horror Lovecraft style. But you're absolutely right. It is so important to understand that we're writing in a genre. Usually, I don't have to hammer this point home because if someone's writing in that genre, they're a reader and a consumer of that genre. They see the book covers, the descriptions, the keywords, the major trends, like sparkling vampires, because it's their favorite genre. It's not always the case, though. There are definitely situations where someone is writing in a genre that's not their usual, like myself currently working on a sweet hockey romance, which is not my genre. But I am doing the research. I need to make this my genre and understand the tropes, which are particularly crucial in romance.
It's important to know these things just by being a consumer and a lover of that genre. You'll pick up on these trends because Amazon will show them to you. They know what you like to read. They'll suggest, "What do you think of this category?" and you'll see all the covers. So paying attention to these things isn't as hard as we make it seem. It's really just a matter of reading in that genre, studying it, just being present there, and you'll get marketed to by other authors. It'll be pretty easy to find some of those trends.
[00:23:56] Matty: Yeah. I also think there's this kind of reverse engineering aspect. If you think you're writing hard-boiled thrillers and you subscribe to the hard-boiled thriller email newsletter, and none of it appeals to you, guess what? You may not be writing in the correct genre. Maybe it's actually a cozy. Sometimes you need a little reality check, and that kind of research can be a good way to do that.
[00:24:19] Nick: Absolutely.
[00:24:21] Matty: And the other thing I'll add is that I used to say early in my indie author career that indie authors can provide a product that's just as good as what traditional publishers can. But now, I really think that, in many cases, especially with ebooks, indie authors can provide a much better product. I'm surprised at how still print-centric traditional publishers are and how bad their ebooks can be—badly formatted, just a bad experience. So, there's no harm in setting the bar higher than what the big five, or the big four, however many there are these days, are putting out.
[00:24:56] Nick: You're absolutely right. Watching traditional publishing can be so frustrating because they make decisions that seem incompetent, but they're not. They're just in a whole different world. The way their economies work is entirely different from what you and I live and breathe every day.
[00:26:00] Matty: And it's exactly true with that. I mean, they're almost obligated not to reinvent the wheel when it comes to things like layout and formatting because it's somebody's job to do that. It's job security to make sure that they continue to do that work. They're on their own with Microsoft Word or InDesign, heaven forbid.
They're not going to use something like Vellum because that would make their job too easy, and then they wouldn't have a job anymore. So, you know, it's one of those things where you're right, you get a traditionally published book, and I just had this happen a couple of nights ago. I downloaded a new book from a big publisher, one of the big four, and I thought, "This is atrocious."
I just wanted to reach out and say, "Can I do this for you? Just give me the Word file." This isn't supposed to be hard. It's 2024; we're well past this being difficult. So it makes me mad, but hey, I'm a software guy too, so I understand some of the reasons why, but it does look like incompetence on their part when it comes down to what the consumer sees.
[00:26:08] Matty: It was interesting, a number of episodes ago, I interviewed Leslye Penelope, who has extensive experience in both the traditional and indie worlds. And we were talking, and she said, "Well, the one difference is that indie publishers' customers are the readers and traditional publishers' customers are bookstores." And that took me by surprise so much that I think I just had to take a beat because I had never thought of it that way. It was such a bizarre way to think about it, but obviously, she knows; she has experience on both sides.
And I think it's also true that it depends on the publisher. It's not just indie versus traditional; there's a huge spectrum. Early on, indie authors picked up many great practices from traditional publishers. Now, I think traditional publishers are picking up practices from indie authors, so there's a spectrum of--
[00:26:59] Nick: To the other. Yeah, absolutely. One informs the other for sure. And you're so right that a traditional publishing house is positioning books to be sold to the one purchaser for the company purchaser. If it's Barnes & Noble, there's one person sitting behind a desk looking at a catalog once a quarter going, "Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no," and deciding how many we want per store. They have 250 stores in the United States alone, whatever it is. And those are the books that will be stocked. So that's the person, absolutely. And it's mind-boggling that that's true, but it's absolutely true. That person doesn't necessarily know anything about the readership of the genre. They probably only read in one or two, maybe three genres, so they don't know what's happening in anime or memoir because they don't read those. They just look at what the publisher gave me, and this looks intriguing to me. So it's mind-boggling, but it's true.
[00:27:51] Matty: Yeah, it is mind-boggling.
STRATEGIC MARKETING
[00:27:52] Matty: So the next of the six keys to author success is strategic marketing. Now that we have quality writing and professional presentation, what would you say about strategic marketing?
[00:28:05] Nick: Make it strategic. There's no shortage of marketing activities, tactics, tips that you can try as an author. There used to be a shortage, but not anymore. There's somebody out there willing to take your money and say, "Let's try this; let's do that." And so if you don't approach this category with a strategy, you're going to spend more money than is necessary.
[00:28:50] Nick: And I'm saying that while also knowing that if you do something like advertising, which I think every author should do, you're also going to be spending more money than is necessary. That's how advertising works. You spend more money than is ultimately required to keep an ad campaign running because you want to test and gather data. You try and fail many times and iterate. So, you don't have that much money to throw at this marketing game in general if you're doing advertising while already spending a lot of money, right?
The three buckets of strategic marketing: email, social media marketing, and advertising
So the point is to be strategic about this. I break marketing for authors down into three buckets that I think every author should be involved in. Not necessarily start these at the same time, but they should be doing them if they're serious about this career. The three things are email marketing, social media marketing, and advertising, probably in that order. If you're brand new to this game and you only have one book out, it's probably not a good use of your time, money, and energy to be advertising that book.
There are many reasons we can dig into, but the point is, wait until you have 6 books out before you start investing advertising dollars because it's a force multiplier. If you have 6 points of entry to a series and you advertise the first one, you also have 6 products that you can sell to that person when they click through. That means you have more income; your ROI is higher than if you just had one book, right?
Going in order, email marketing is essentially free, not entirely because you need an email service provider, which costs money. Some offer free services if you have fewer than 2000 subscribers, but let's just say it will cost a little bit of money. However, it's a small amount. I run all my email marketing through [brand name], so shameless sales promotion here. It's $10.99 a month for up to 9,999 subscribers, and you can send as many times as you want. There are no restrictions. We allow autoresponders, segmentation, templates, and there are no feature gates in that way. Email marketing, in general, is very affordable, but the point is, you should be building a mailing list from day one, maybe even before day one. Say, "Hey, I'm going to write a book and launch it, sign up for my mailing list to find out more." This is something we should absolutely be doing from day one as an author.
Then, once we start building a small readership and developing relationships with individuals on that list, it might be worth our time and energy to start using social media because that's also free. You can get on TikTok, Facebook, or wherever your readers congregate, wherever that genre typically spends time online. Have some presence there. Be willing to say, "Hey, I'm going to spend an hour a week, no more, especially if you don't hate social media." Spend that time scheduling some posts, making funny memes or jokes about your content, or giving a behind-the-scenes view of what it looks like in your writing cave.
[00:32:39] Matty: Whatever it is, do something, because even though it will not be a quick path to success, it is so valuable over 5 or 10 years of doing this kind of thing at least weekly, if not daily. Like I said, I could talk a lot longer about that. That's probably the next big thing to do as an author. And then, finally, once you have the first two—writing good books, the craft is there, and you're presenting it really well—then you can start using advertising to multiply that force. Because it's now a force for the good of your career.
You can use advertising through Facebook ads, BookBub ads, and Amazon ads. Those are the top three, and they are pretty much the only three that I pay attention to these days, at least in terms of where most of my budget goes. Those are the ways to get people into the top of your funnel, into your world. At least they've heard of you now. Maybe they've clicked over to your website and seen your stuff. So there's that little cookie pixel on their computer now, so you can remarket or retarget them. Very simply, it's also a way to get people to go and see your books and say, "Hey, this is something I'd like to read, let me buy it."
So, advertising is a very powerful way to find new eyeballs who have never heard of you before, and a way to find people who have maybe heard of you but aren't quite sure, and then convert both of those people into a subscriber or somebody who's a fan of your books, someone who actually buys and reads them. Those are the big three. That's what I would say strategic marketing comes down to: email marketing, social media marketing, and advertising.
I just had an interesting experience on the advertising front that I kind of always believed, but this was such a stark example. I was at 20 Books Vegas, and one of the presenters was giving a presentation on Facebook ads. I was already working with someone in this person's organization on Facebook consulting. During the Q&A portion, somebody asked a question, and what came out was this guy was spending over a hundred dollars a day on Facebook advertising. She said, "Well, just stop doing that right away." And his feeling was, "Well, if I spend $100, I'm making this much. If I spend $200, I'm going to make twice as much." Or, you know, hopefully some multiple. And she was explaining that that really wasn't the case, necessarily.
At the same time, I was working with this consultant from this woman's group on my Facebook ads. I understand the theory behind it, but I hated doing it. So I get together with this person for one hour a month, for 50 bucks. It's $50 for an hour. And we go over my Facebook ads and she tells me what to tweak. Then I just do kind of like checking in for the next month and then we meet again. And it's working out really well for me, but the thing that really struck me about it is that I'd always spent like five, ten dollars a day on Facebook ads. She said, "Well, let's start at five and see how it goes." So we had an ad that was doing pretty well. So I said, "Well, should I put it up to 10?" Because for some reason, I always defaulted to going in increments of five. And she said, "Oh no, no, let's go to six." And I thought, I appreciate so much that someone's willing to say to me, "Don't go to 10. Go to 6." Like, don't, not only don't spend $100, but don't even spend $10 until we know that $6 is going to work as well.
[00:34:47] Nick: Absolutely. And I agree with that advice. A lot of times, the understood or often recited way to do it is by increasing a budget daily by 10 to 20 percent. So going from 5 to 6 makes perfect sense. That's 20 percent. And that's a good way to do it because it won't shock the system, whether it's Facebook ads or Amazon; they all work similarly. If you put too much budget into it too fast, it can freak out the system.
With Facebook ads specifically, there is so much data that has nothing to do with books but can be used to make decisions as to what people might like to click on. That's Facebook's job. When you have a $5 a day ad and it's working really well—your click-through rate is good, your purchase rate is up, your ROAS is good—you might think you're ready to scale. Let's say you decide to start spending $100 a day. It's not that Facebook is mad at you and wants to steal your money; it's that the ad will suddenly stop or stall or not work as well because it's doing its job. It's saying, "Okay, this worked, but now you're forcing me to find exponentially more people every single day." And I don't have any more who liked this particular thing that my algorithm found that led to them clicking when it was $5 a day. I've already hit those people. So it has to find new people that might click on your ad within 24 hours, and it's not going to get that right every single time.
The reason you scale slowly is because you want to make sure Facebook finds a little bit more people every day. And then, if that didn't work, tomorrow Facebook will try a different lever behind the scenes. Maybe people who like James Rollins didn't click the ad, but people who like Clive Cussler did. Or maybe people who watch Indiana Jones clicked it, but when it advertised to fans of Dan Brown movies, nobody clicked. Whatever it is, it all happens in the black box, and all we see is that our click-through rate went down today. We don't know why, but that's what happens behind the scenes. So if you scale really big, really quickly, you end up with no more information than before. You just know that you spent $95 more than the day before, and you don't have anything better to show for it.
So why not spend $6 for a week, then $7.50 for a week, and then $9, scaling up very slowly by 10 percent to 20 percent. And it's really hard to do because as authors, we think, "Hey, this works. I've got the images designed. I'm not a marketer. I don't want to do this all day. So I'm just going to jack it up to $100 and hope for the best. I'll check it two weeks from now." And then you've spent $2,000 and it didn't work at all. So, it is important to scale slowly when it comes to advertising, but it does work. It's definitely a game we should all be playing, iterating, testing, and doing all the things that are required within that.
