Episode 339 - Smart Marketing Over Hot Genres with Dale L. Roberts
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Dale L. Roberts discusses SMART MARKETING OVER HOT GENRES, including why consistent promotion matters more than genre selection, how going wide on platforms like Kobo and direct sales tools like Curios and Payhip can boost profitability, what your Amazon product page must get right to convert readers, and how author community and tools like Booksprout can give your book a sustainable edge.
Dale L. Roberts is an award-winning author, YouTuber, and leading voice in self-publishing with over 50 titles and 40 book awards. As a trusted advisor to indie authors, he helps writers build their brands, grow their readership, and publish bestselling books.
Episode Links
The serialization of Ann Kinnear Book 7 on Substack
https://selfpublishingwithdale.com
Summary & Transcript
Smart Marketing Over Hot Genres: What Actually Drives Book Profits on Amazon
When listener Brian wrote in to ask whether Amazon KDP is really only profitable for authors writing in hot genres, Matty Dalrymple knew it was time to bring in reinforcements. She called on Dale L. Roberts—publishing strategist, YouTuber, and seven-time guest on The Indy Author Podcast—to dig into the question honestly. What they found is that the genre you write in matters far less than most indie authors think.
Marketing Beats Genre—Every Time
Dale's position is clear: the authors who profit on Amazon are not necessarily the ones writing in trending niches. They're the ones who market consistently and strategically. With millions of books flooding the platform every day, he argues, what differentiates you isn't your genre—it's how reliably you put your book in front of the right readers.
That means moving past the idea that a single social media post or one email newsletter blast constitutes a marketing strategy. Promotion is not a one-and-done activity. Dale points to his own career as evidence: his early fitness books now earn almost nothing, not because they're bad books, but because he no longer promotes them. His self-publishing titles, by contrast, continue to sell—because he continues to show up for them.
The Problem with Chasing Hot Genres
Matty adds an important counterpoint to the "write to market" instinct: hot genres are crowded. When everyone chases the same trending category, readers only dig so far down the list. Unless you can break into the top tier of a massive genre, the visibility advantage disappears. More importantly, she notes, chasing trends often means sacrificing the creative satisfaction of writing what you're genuinely passionate about—and for many indie authors, that trade-off isn't worth it.
That said, neither Matty nor Dale dismisses writing to market as a strategy. Dale references Chris Fox's well-known book on the subject and acknowledges that targeting a large audience has real upside. The catch: a bigger audience means even more competition, which means you have to work even harder on marketing to be heard above the noise.
Going Wide: The Amazon Alternative
One of the most actionable threads in the conversation is the case for going wide—distributing your books across multiple platforms rather than concentrating everything on Amazon. Matty shares that Kobo has recently outpaced Amazon in her own sales, driven in part by participating in Kobo promotions available to authors who distribute directly through Kobo Writing Life. She also notes that Kobo readers have a strong appetite for box sets, a format that converts exceptionally well on that platform.
Beyond Kobo, both Matty and Dale are enthusiastic about direct sales platforms like Curios and Payhip, where authors can capture a much larger share of revenue per sale. When Amazon's algorithm increasingly rewards off-site traffic anyway—as Dale notes, citing analysis from publishing consultant Joe Solari—it raises the obvious question: if you're already driving traffic yourself, why hand Amazon the cut?
The Four Amazon Page Essentials
For authors who do want to maximize their performance on Amazon, Dale lays out four non-negotiables. First, your cover must immediately signal your genre—a browser should be able to identify your niche at a glance. Second, your book description needs to sell, not summarize. The goal is to move the reader frictionlessly from the first line to the buy button. Third, reviews matter: not thousands of them, but a consistent, ongoing trickle that provides social proof and builds credibility with new readers. Fourth, pricing needs to be realistic for your genre and audience expectations.
Matty adds a practical note on the mechanical side of Amazon profitability: keep an eye on your royalty rate settings, especially when running sales. Dropping a book to 99 cents on Amazon automatically reduces the royalty from 70% to 35% and forgetting to reset the rate when the sale ends is an easy, costly mistake.
Building Your Community
Both Matty and Dale circle back repeatedly to the value of community—with peers and with readers. Dale recommends newsletter swaps as one of the most effective author-to-author collaboration tools available and encourages anyone without a peer network to start building one immediately through communities like the Alliance of Independent Authors or author Discord servers.
For building reader relationships and review profiles, Matty is a strong advocate for Booksprout, a platform that connects authors with readers willing to receive a free copy in exchange for an honest review. She appreciates that Booksprout's community tends to be supportive, that readers who aren't connecting with a book can withdraw from a campaign rather than leave a negative review, and that the platform makes it easy to direct review requests to specific retailers.
The Bottom Line
The throughline of this conversation is that profitability in indie publishing is not a mystery—but it does require consistent effort, realistic expectations, and a willingness to look beyond Amazon as the only path. Whether your book is in a massive genre or a narrow niche, the authors who win are the ones who keep showing up: marketing steadily, building community, optimizing their pages, and diversifying their distribution. As Dale puts it simply: just start.
This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don't review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.
Secret Music Hobby
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Dale L. Roberts. Hey, Dale, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Dale: Hey, Matty. Fantastic. We've already warmed up for about 20 minutes, so.
[00:00:10] Matty: We've already had a nice chat. And because this is, I think, your seventh appearance on the podcast, you know that I no longer read your bio. I ask you to share a fact about yourself that my listeners and I may not know. Oh, man — I didn't even give you a warning about this. I normally warn people, but I thought, no, let's just see what Dale comes up with.
[00:00:30] Dale: Oh, man. I'm not sure what I've shared with you yet, but not many people realize that I've played guitar since I was 13 years old and I continue to compose music to this day on the side, just for fun. That's one of the areas I will not monetize. I like doing music and I just want it to continue to be a hobby of mine that I can have outside of writing and publishing videos and books.
[00:00:54] Matty: And do you share that anywhere where people can hear your songs?
[00:00:57] Dale: Rarely. With it being heavier music, I know it's not everybody's taste. And on top of that, I'm currently in the midst of producing a full-length album with a friend of mine, and we're probably about halfway through it. I imagine it's probably going to take another year because we do it very, very, very slowly.
[00:01:16] Matty: Well, it's nice that you're not monetizing it because it gives you that flexibility to just continue treating it that way — as quickly or as intentionally, as slowly as you want to.
[00:01:27] Dale: Yeah, I look at it kind of like some people would consider going bowling, like joining a bowling league. To me, there's not too much money invested in the time that I spend on it. I've already got the instruments. I've already got the recording software, so I just sit down and play to my heart's content.
[00:01:42] Matty: That's very cool. I love that fact about you.
Listener Question on KDP
[00:01:45] Matty: Well, this episode is going to be a little different than others, because a long time ago — and neither one of us could even remember why we set this up — we set up a recording for the podcast and said, "Oh, let's get together and talk about something related to indie publishing." And so we were coming up to the recording date and we hadn't really landed on anything very specific. So I sent a note out to the people on my email newsletter list. This is a reason to be on my email newsletter list, because sometimes I ask questions like this, asking if anyone had any topics that they would like us to discuss. And one of the listeners, Brian, sent the note: "Amazon KDP makes it very difficult for indie authors to profit unless they're writing in hot genres." And so I thought that would be a really fun topic to delve into. What are we seeing? What has our experience been? I think just to begin with: does that feel true based on your own experience or what you see among other indie authors? Is it hard for people to profit on Amazon KDP unless they're writing in a hot genre?
Marketing Beats Hot Genres
[00:02:51] Dale: Well, I don't want to invalidate how Brian's feeling right now, because there are a ton of authors out there that are experiencing that. That's the lens that they're seeing it through. From my standpoint, I can tell you that you don't just have to be in a hot genre. You just need to be good at marketing and promoting. That's going to be the thing, because there are millions of books — there's just a deluge of books coming in every single day. And the thing that differentiates you from your competition is your marketing and promotional strategy. That's going to be the thing that makes the difference. It's not about hot genres. Sure, if you're in some random, small niche, you're probably not going to make very much money — underwater basket weaving for dolphins, or any other thing that's so random like that. But if there is a readership for your book, it's going to be on Amazon, and it doesn't always have to be a hot genre. You don't always have to be in romantasy, or for that matter, just romance. You can make a decent living over on Amazon. You just have to be a smart marketer. But what's your take on it? Matty, I'm always curious as to how you think about that.
[00:04:09] Matty: Well, I think that one of the downsides of looking to hot genres is that there is a contingent of indie authors who are doing that — and a contingent of traditionally published authors who are doing that, with their publishers doing it for them and saying, "Oh, romantasy, this is really hot, so let's all write romantasy because we're chasing the market." And so there's a downside of trying to get into the hot genres. Let's say for the moment, for the sake of argument, that this is true — that it is difficult for authors to make a profit unless they're writing in hot genres. I think the problem is you're competing for those hot genres with a whole bunch of other people. And even if there's a huge readership out there, that readership is mainly only digging down through the first dozen, the first hundred, even the first thousand of the titles in that selection. Unless you're breaking in at that level, it's not really going to help you. But I think the cost is more related to satisfaction with one's creative life and giving up the satisfaction of looking for the people who are really interested in what you're interested in, even if it's a very niche topic.
[00:05:20] Dale: For sure. I just wanted to know what you thought, because you always bring a different approach to things, and I always love hearing what you have to say. I just hope that Brian never loses heart, because that's one of the things — a lot of people rely so much on Amazon to deliver, but there are oftentimes when I ask what they have done to make their book more visible, to put it in front of more people, and it's usually just, "Well, I posted on social media," or, "Oh, I sent out an email newsletter about it." Okay, that's great, but marketing and promotion is not a one-and-done situation. If you want to continue to see sales and growth on any retailer or library or system, you absolutely need to continually and consistently promote and market your books. So for example, Matty, I think you're aware that I broke into the business as a fitness author originally. Those fitness books draw barely any money now. Why? I don't promote them anymore. I could sit here and say, "Well, why aren't my books selling? They're really good. I've chosen the right keywords. I've chosen the right categories. Why aren't they selling?" Well, because I'm not actively putting those books in front of people. Oddly enough, the books I have about self-publishing — guess what? They are selling. Why? Because I'm actively marketing and promoting those things. So it's super important, and you have to get past social media as the only avenue. I see a lot of people that just cling to social media believing that that's going to be the answer to all their problems, and it truly isn't. It's one small aspect that you can incorporate into your strategy, not the only thing.
Beyond Amazon: Going Wide
[00:06:59] Matty: And I think that the other thing that's important to tease out here is that not only is social media not the only way to promote, but Amazon isn't the only platform to sell on. I look across — you know, I published my first book in 2013 and Amazon was where everybody wanted to be at the time, because I think it sort of conferred some kind of legitimacy. If people could say, "Oh, is your book on Amazon?" and you could say yes, then that was somehow a check mark in your favor. But I think that over time, with the rise of the belief about the importance of going wide — which I definitely agree with; I never want to put all my eggs in any one basket — there might be other platforms that will make it less difficult to turn a profit. The example that I always think of is that Kobo readers love box sets. I make way more money from my box sets on Kobo than I do from Amazon, and I'm not necessarily doing any particular special promotion sending people specifically to Kobo — that's just what those readers are looking for. So I think that understanding what the readers who are going elsewhere than Amazon are looking for is another way of maybe boosting your profitability.
[00:08:12] Dale: Well, first off, thanks for that tip on the box sets on Kobo. As soon as we're done here, I'm jumping over there and starting to load up with box sets. But do you think that since a lot of the indie author community is so focused on Amazon, and sometimes more importantly KDP, that they miss the bigger opportunities on platforms like Kobo Writing Life or even Kobo in general?
[00:08:34] Matty: Yeah. I think I am always trying to make the percentage of my sales that's coming from Amazon as low as possible. Just coincidentally, over the last couple of months, I think because I do run Kobo promos — I distribute direct on Kobo and it makes me eligible for the promotions that they run — and unusually, while Amazon is usually the bigger chunk of my book sales, the last month or so it has been Kobo. So I'm not relying on Amazon for that. And I think there are other platforms — my listeners might be getting bored of this, but I'm going to mention Curios, because Curios is a platform where you can maximize your profits because you get 100% of the list price. That is really good for people who are super fans and who are willing to pay the list price, plus a little bit, to make sure that you as the creator get the most money. The same can be said for any kind of direct sales platform. The more we let Amazon control the direction of our career, the less we can adjust our plans in order to avoid the pitfalls of being in that situation.
[00:09:44] Dale: It's so true. You often hear some people talking about how the algorithms have changed. Well, the algorithms continue to evolve and improve and get better. And then think about all the competition that's constantly coming into that platform — there's so much to work against. It's no surprise that a lot of indie authors are looking for alternatives. And I think it was over the last year that Joe Solari — a good friend of yours and mine, a mutual friend at least —
[00:10:13] Matty: Yes, yes.
[00:10:14] Dale: Joe put out a great piece about Amazon's algorithm, and how right now, more than ever, they're looking at customer behavior and, more importantly, customer satisfaction. Are they buying the book? Are they reading the book? How long is it taking them to read that book? Are they posting a review? Are they sharing it? Are there certain excerpts within that ebook that they're highlighting? There are small engagement metrics that really make a huge difference. And there are some people that are just like, "I just want to put my book over there. I don't want to bother with all this stuff." But the bottom line — something that Joe had shared — was that the platform is now responding more positively to off-site traffic than on-site. In other words, those days of organic sales are going to start to dry up. And I think the smart authors are going to know, "Okay, I have to market and promote this book if I want to see any traction on there." But there are also other authors taking that one step further: "Well, if I've got to put all this work into sending traffic over to Amazon, why are they taking a cut? I might as well just drive that traffic over to another retailer" — or in the instance of something like Curios, or one platform I like to use, Payhip, send it over in that direction, because then we keep all of the money and all the credit. Although Payhip, I think, takes about 5% on their free plan.
[00:11:30] Matty: Yeah. I think that it really speaks to the idea of thinking not only about marketing and promotion, but also community building, because some of these other opportunities outside Amazon do require you to get over a little hump of resistance or unfamiliarity or something like that. I mean, you can't beat Amazon for convenience. So if I order a print book and it shows up the next day, that's fun. But what I think is more meaningful — one of the hardest reasons to pull people away from Amazon — is that I love the fact that if I hear about a book that sounds good, I go on Amazon, and it says, "You purchased this book in July of 2019." I've saved myself so much money by not repurchasing a book that I already have on my Kindle somewhere, and that is an undeniable benefit. You have to convince the people that you're trying to reach that it's worth it for them to maybe leave behind those kinds of benefits if they've been a longtime Kindle reader, and create the relationship that makes them willing to make that little bit of extra effort or pay that little bit of extra money to buy your book elsewhere.
[00:12:42] Dale: Yeah, for sure.
Hot Genre Strategy and Collaborations
[00:12:43] Dale: Going back to the hot genre thing — something that jumps to the top of my head: if we were to consider going hot genre, what would be the best approach for something like that? In other words, let's say Brian says, "Screw you guys. I want to go all in on a hot genre. How do I make this work?"
[00:13:03] Matty: Well, I think that regardless of the genre, you're going to benefit by teaming up with other people in your genre. The idea that comp authors means comparable, not competition — whether you're driving people to Amazon or somewhere else, hot genre or not, you can capitalize on the value of the genre you're in by teaming up with other people in that same genre. What do you think about that?
[00:13:31] Dale: To me, the thing that jumps to the top of my head right away is newsletter swaps. That's probably one of the best ways to work with other authors in your niche. And I think there's still a misconception rolling around here, so let me just address this right away. When you do newsletter swaps, you're not giving your newsletter over to another author. You are simply giving a spotlight to that author and whatever they have to offer, in exchange for the same. They're going to share your book and you share theirs, or they're going to share your post and you share theirs, and so on and so forth. The rising tide raises all boats — how perfect that I bring that up on this podcast. I think it's probably the 50th time I've brought that phrase up. It just happens to be nautical, so I happen to be on the right podcast.
[00:14:15] Matty: Yes, that's exactly right.
Profitability: Costs and Pitfalls
[00:14:18] Matty: And I don't want to stray too far from the question Brian asked, which was specific to profitability. There's also the question of what profitability means to certain people. Does it mean being able to pay back the expenses you put into the editing and the cover design so you're not in the red? Or does it mean paying the bills with it? Your strategy is going to be very different in those circumstances.
[00:14:44] Dale: Yeah, absolutely. I hear profitability being thrown around quite a bit. What's profitable? I mean, if I make a nickel, isn't that profitable? So yeah, it's understanding what you need to do to get your author business functioning out of the red, to where you're getting compensated for that hard work that you've put into that publication.
[00:15:09] Matty: And I think also the idea that you hear people say that they're six-figure authors, and that probably means before they factor in their expenses. This whole idea that if they sold $100,000 worth of books, but it cost them $110,000 in ads and marketing to do that — well, that's not the model you want to be following. And how can you balance the investment you make in Amazon ads or Facebook ads pointing people to Amazon, or whatever that combination of expenses is? How can you always keep in mind that you need to be factoring that in when you talk about the profitability of any platform?
[00:15:46] Dale: Yeah, you can't ignore those additional expenses. And I think a lot of people get very romantic about this business because they've watched a YouTube video of somebody who's just like, "Hey, I made $60,000 by barely trying." Come on — you see those types of videos, and you need to go into them with a degree of skepticism. And the other thing is: just remember that everybody's journey is going to be different. You do need to get very clear with what you want to do with this business. You have to be very realistic about it. You can't just say, "I'm going to make $100,000 this year," when you just published your first book. Let's walk that back. Let's think about some of those systems and processes that we have to put in place to get to that point — to getting to six figures per year. That could mean breaking into Amazon ads, or even BookBub ads, or any number of paid promotional tools. There's going to be some investment of time. I don't think there's any author out there — there may be a few outliers — who is able to just write something and all of a sudden they're making money hand over fist. That's a rare, rare, rare occasion. And a lot of times, indie authors are going to find out the hard way: this is not an easy business, and it's going to take a lot of grit and determination, as well as a little bit of self-awareness to be able to step back and say, "Okay, what am I doing right and how can I double down on that? And what am I doing wrong, and how can I remove that from my workflow and process?"
Amazon Page Essentials and Wrap-Up
[00:17:19] Matty: Can you think of things specific to Amazon? Let's pursue a little bit the idea that if somebody's goal is really to be profitable on Amazon, but maybe with a book that isn't in one of these hot genres, are there common pitfalls that you see people falling into that you can give advice on how to avoid?
[00:17:37] Dale: The biggest one — and I've been tooting this horn for a long time — is that there are certain fundamental elements, the foundation you have to put in place, regardless of whatever the niche or genre is that you're in. You need to have a solid cover design that is indicative of the niche that you're in. In other words, if someone looks at that cover, they should be able to say right away, "That's the exact specific niche that you're in," and it needs to resonate with them. The next one: okay, you've got this great cover design, but now you have to provide context through a description. That description needs to sell them, and it needs to get them from the top of that description down to the bottom as fluidly as possible and with as little friction as possible, so that all they have to do right after that is click that buy button. And the other thing is reviews. Reviews need to be an active part of every author's business strategy. You don't need to get thousands of reviews, but having a consistent trickle of reviews coming in is going to make all the difference in the world, because that social proof is credibility that's going to help other browsing customers make that decision: is this book right for me? Having a review profile or a rating profile of some sort is going to give you a little bit of that advantage. So have at least those three elements in place. One could probably make the argument that the pricing also needs to be realistic for the genre and the expectations of those readers. But if you get all those dialed in, that's going to give you a better advantage. If you're in a very small, very niche, very tight audience, you've got very few opportunities to make a good first impression. You need to make sure that those elements are all dialed in, so that when your ideal reader is landing on your product page, it's an easy decision for them. So this means you have to be very focused on those four elements. Have a good, professional cover design — not just one that has been whipped together from a Canva template, and definitely not Microsoft Paint, although believe it or not, there are some people who have used it. Get that description dialed in. You're not trying to tell somebody the story; you're trying to sell the story. Stop spending so much time trying to break down what you've already broken down inside the book. We need to have compelling reasons to buy your book, and that description is where you've got to deliver. And then the reviews — stay consistent with getting out there and asking more readers. Send something in your email newsletter. Anyone who has gotten any of your books at all, you should be approaching them about posting a review. Get those reviews up, and of course make sure that your pricing isn't unrealistic. Is there anything that you would say for or against that?
[00:20:33] Matty: Yeah. I thought of a couple of things, and I'm harking back to a conversation we had back in episode 302, "AI as Business Consultant and Coach." Some of the things I'm thinking of are that there are some very mechanical things that you need to do to improve your profitability on Amazon. For example, making sure that the royalty rate selected is correct. Every month I put one of my novels on sale to 99 cents, and as a result on Amazon, I have to drop from the 70% royalty rate to the 35% royalty rate. And every once in a while, when I put it back to its normal price of $6.99, I forget to change the royalty back — and Amazon doesn't remind you.
[00:21:15] Dale: They're like, "I'll take that."
[00:21:16] Matty: Exactly. You forget to click one thing and suddenly you're eating into your profit. So you might be able to feed data from your KDP account into a tool like ChatGPT and say, "Are you seeing anything weird here?" The other thing it made me think of — something you might be able to use AI for — is that I know that on different platforms, the expectations for book descriptions vary. I have used AI to draft sales descriptions for me, and then I tweak them as needed, but what I'm realizing might be valuable is asking AI to write different sales descriptions for different platforms. I don't have specific information about how you would optimize it for Amazon versus Google Play, but I do know that on one of the platforms — I think it's Google Play, but it might be another one — they actually encourage the inclusion of keywords in the description, like "Second Chance Romance, Western," or whatever. They expect you to put that in, whereas on other platforms, that would be discouraged. So making sure you're complying with the expectations that readers on each platform have, to make your book as appealing as possible on that specific platform.
[00:22:29] Dale: For sure. For sure.
[00:22:32] Matty: So do you think there are any pros to writing to the hot genre? Because I feel like writing to a hot genre would be soul-sucking for me personally — I wouldn't want to do it for myself — but it is certainly a legitimate business decision for some people. Do you have any thoughts about the extent to which you can maximize profitability on Amazon just by consciously writing to those hot genres? What are the pros and cons?
[00:22:59] Dale: I mean, sure. If you're going to go after those hot genres, you can write to market. Chris Fox has a great book about writing to market — he published it several years ago, and I believe it probably still holds up to this day. But I'm with you in that if something doesn't resonate with me, I'm not just going to go chase after it. That said, I don't want to make it seem like I'm trying to dissuade or tell people that they're less than if they choose to write to market. The pros are definitely that you're putting yourself in a position to have a larger audience. But with that larger audience comes more responsibility — coming back again to the marketing and promotional aspect of things. So there are your cons: you're going to have to work even harder in a very hot niche to be heard above the noise, to even break any kind of profit. You need to make yourself as visible as possible, probably more so than someone in a smaller niche where there's easier discoverability, less competition, but still a hungry reading base.
[00:24:08] Matty: Yeah. When you were talking about reviews, you said, "Make sure that all the people who have gotten your book leave a review." I had two thoughts about how people can maximize that opportunity specific to Amazon. One is — putting in another plug for one of my favorite products — Booksprout. Booksprout is a platform that matches readers up with books. This is not paying for reviews; it's paying for a service that offers the book to readers. You can get different levels of plans. One thing that I really like about Booksprout is you upload your book, the person gets the book for free, in exchange for reading it and leaving a review. I like Booksprout because I was getting a fair number of reviews on Amazon, but almost none on Apple Books and Google Play — books had been out for years and had only two or three reviews. So I really liked that I could encourage people to leave reviews on those other platforms. But if you really wanted to double down on Amazon, you could just say, "I'm only looking for people who are going to leave reviews on Amazon," and Booksprout would help you do that. The other thing I really like about Booksprout is that it's a kinder, gentler community than, say, Goodreads. What I've found is that a couple of times people have downloaded the book and then, in Booksprout terminology, withdrawn from the campaign. I think it's because they started the book, thought, "Eh, this isn't really for me," and rather than leaving a bad review, they just returned the book, which was very nice. And you can communicate with the people who are leaving the reviews, so you have that kind of connection with them. The other thing is, if you can — because you're never going to get the customer information for Amazon buyers the way you would with Curios or Payhip buyers — get people to your email list and then encourage them to go to Amazon and leave reviews. Don't rely on the retail platform to be your connection, in the same way we advise not relying on social media to be your connection. Really lean into your email newsletter list. If you want to send them to Amazon, make that as easy for them as possible. If you want to send them to Payhip, make that as easy as possible, and so on.
[00:26:22] Dale: Agreed. Yeah, I'd nothing really add to that. That's brilliant.
[00:26:27] Matty: So as the marketing and promotion guide, Dale, any final thoughts you would have on Brian's overall question about the challenges with regard to Amazon KDP and it seeming to funnel everyone toward hot genres? Any closing thoughts on that?
[00:26:43] Dale: So what I would say to Brian and anybody else looking at this and saying, "Okay, I want to go in on this, but Dale tells me I've got to do the work" — just start. I'm not telling you that you have to get on Good Morning America to promote your book. I'm not even telling you you have to leave your house. But you do have to put some type of consistent effort into it, even if it's small, even if it's just a little bit. And I want to build on something that Matty said earlier: don't do it alone. Work with peers within your network. If you don't have any peers in your network, today is a good day to go over to a Discord community. You can even go to the Alliance of Independent Authors — they've got a great community. There are a number of places. Just get in a space where there are other authors just like you, because you trying to do it on your own, you versus the world — I hate to tell you, you're not going to win if you try to do this on your own. Get other people to come along with you. I can think of my own network: Matty, you're one of my close peers, Michael LaRon's another one, Nick Thacker, Kevin Tumlinson — all these people are within my network. And if you don't have a network right now, my next action step for you is to go meet somebody and make a friend. And oh, also — I love Booksprout. I wanted to add that as well. It is probably one of my favorite services. I've had a bad review on that platform, and I'm okay with that.
[00:28:09] Matty: Yeah. Well, the other tip I will add, just to encourage the community building, is that I always thank the reviewer regardless. Fortunately, I get almost all good reviews, but even if someone gives me a three or a four, I'll still thank them, and you can tell that just that outreach is very meaningful to them and makes it much more likely that they're going to leave another, even better, review next time. So yeah, I think it just loops back to community — community with your peers, community with your readers, keeping that connection alive wherever you can, even if you are selling on the biggest bookstore in the world.
[00:28:45] Dale: For sure.
[00:28:46] Matty: So cool. Well, Dale, always lovely to chat with you. Pretty soon we're going to have to line up visit eight, and then we'll get together and say, "What do you want to talk about today?"
[00:28:55] Dale: Exactly. Just throw something random on my calendar and I'll probably just show up.
[00:28:59] Matty: So fun. Well, please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
[00:29:04] Dale: It's super simple. All you have to do is look up Dale L. Roberts. The middle initial stands for Lewis, so that way everybody doesn't forget. Dale L. Roberts — you'll be able to find me on YouTube, Substack, and everywhere else. DaleRoberts.com is also my author website, which is going to be updated soon.
[00:29:20] Matty: Very cool. Thank you so much.
[00:29:22] Dale: Thank you.