Personal Testimony
Today I give you feedback on some book promotion sights I’ve used. There are so many to choose from and I want to let you know what has worked for me, what I’ll choose to do again and possibly the reaosn behind them. I also link the promotions to your author newsletter, tell you how they’re related and what to watch out for in curating that coveted author list.
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Transcript starts here:
Kat (00:14)
Welcome to the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast, a weekly podcast for writers. Grab a cup of coffee, perhaps some paper and pen, and enjoy an interview with an author, a chat it with a writing tool creator, perhaps a conversation with an editor or other publishing experts, as well as Cat’s thoughts on writing and her own creative journey. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Well, hopefully not actually cry, but you will probably learn something. And I hope you’ll be inspired to write because as I always say, you have a story, you should write it down. This is Pencils and Lipstick. Hello, creative writers. This is Kate Caldwell, and this is the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast. Today I want to talk to you about several different things, especially some things that I have tried out and have been pleased with, some things that I’m not sure you know about. But I want to make sure you know about, especially if you are an indie author and especially if you are wide. Today, I’m recording on June 9. And before we get into the show, I would love it if you would subscribe whatever app you are listening to, share the show with other people.
Kat (01:35)
I know that We’re Not Alive show, but sharing it if you like the information, if you like the guest really helps for other people to find the show. You know, I’ve been doing it for almost three years. I’m coming up on the third anniversary in September, and the show has grown a lot. I’m still having a ton of fun doing it. And I love seeing where people are listening from. And it’s all across the world. It’s really cool. And if you are listening in another country, I know that a lot of the guests on the show tend to be from America or from the UK. But I would love to get some writers from across the seas. So let me know who your favorite writers are. They can be Indy. They can be traditionally published. I would love to see what you’re reading, what stories have stuck with you, and you can tweet those at me at Pencilslipstick. You can also find me on my website, Catcalledll.com or Pencilsandlipstick.com. And I’m most active on Instagram, at Pencils and Lipstick, all spelled out on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. I would love to get other people’s point of view on story and storytelling and how they get their books out to market.
Kat (02:58)
I have a feeling that we all kind of do about the same thing in this day and age of digital and internet, but you never know. We have a couple wonderful guests coming up in the summer. And again, I will let you know that July, the first part of the show, where I usually talk about myself or the things that I’m doing or my writing that will be pre recorded because I will be in Spain. I take my kids to Spain every year to see their grandmother and their cousins, and we usually spend about a month there in the very middle of Spain. It’s wonderful. It’s my second home, as I call it, and I miss it. I can’t wait to go. Hopefully there will be no flight cancellations. I’m getting very nervous about the flight cancellations. Yes, hopefully there will be no flight cancellations. We definitely put a pretty Penny into buying those tickets. I hope that all is smooth and well and we get to see our family. The good thing is that we do go for a month. So if there are a few hours delay or a day delay, it’s okay.
Kat (04:07)
It’s not like the honeymoon that some people have missed or those quick chips that people are just trying to get away. The world is strange right now, isn’t it? So I will be in Spain if you want sort of live updates about what Spain looks like, what we do in Spain, just my little notes. I tend to get a little bit more free time and I can go and sip espresso and write. And it’s really lovely because my mother in law loves to Cook and take care of the kids and I love to let her Cook and take care of the kids. If you want to follow me and my trip there and what I see and what I’m thinking in writing, the best way to do that is to follow me on Instagram at Catcallsall Author I’ll try to remember to put some stories up as well on the at pencils and lipstick on Instagram, but I usually do it on my personal business page there at Catcallbal author that’s Kat with a K, if anybody doesn’t know that. But Spain is really lovely. It has a lot of history. I’m excited this year because I’ll be talking to a friend of mine who’s a history teacher all about Spain in the 18 hundreds, because the sequel to Stepping Across the Desert will be following Philip Douser as he goes to Spain and encounters a woman who he decides to marry.
Kat (05:36)
And because of that, I want to know about the life in Spain at the time, what rights women had at the time, marriage rights and all that. It is going to be a bit of a struggle between the Protestant and the Catholic, because in 1835 in England, they didn’t recognize marriages from any other religion other than Protestant or the Anglican Church there. And that included Catholic marriages. And that actually changed in 1836, which works really well with my novel and the date that I had just chosen because I wanted it to be about three years after Rowena and Christopher, about two and a half years after they get married and they settle down. So I didn’t want it immediately afterwards. And as it turns out, I was talking to my friend yesterday. Spain actually changed their laws around the same time as well. So that will be interesting how I can include that into the story, but I do want to know how inheritance was in Spain. In England at the time. They could actually write a will and leave everything to their cat if they wanted to, which as you research, you find these really funny things, these things we’ve done as humans.
Kat (06:57)
So I just thought if I could just change my whole story and have the dad die and leave everything to a cat and see the scramble that the kids would make, I think that would be really funny. So maybe that will be a short story or a novella that would be interesting. So history is full of these little facts that if you go back and you sort of check them out, you can come up with quite a few different storylines just with these little things. So that’s fine. I’m going to be doing a little bit more research. I hope to get back to Samoa where I want cotton and to be from. That is my idea right now. Of course, it all depends on how history works and my idea that she is a minor noblewoman. Her father is a landowner and he owns a vineyard. So we’ll see if that works sort of with what history was like in Spain at the time. There was a minor civil war during those years. Most of the skirmishes were in the north, and so I probably won’t be talking a whole lot about them. I’ll give a bit of a nod to them.
Kat (08:09)
But because there were no skirmishes where Carmen is going to be from in Samora, which is in the middle of Spain, I probably won’t probably just choose to ignore it. That’s the greatest thing about writing fiction. So I’m going to be having fun. And if you want to see pictures of Tamora, hopefully I’ll get there. It’s only like an hour drive or so. I shouldn’t have too much trouble getting there. It all depends on how many family activities we have. But if you want to see BA Delith, which is where my husband is from, and Madrid and just the landscape and the architecture, be sure to follow me at Catcallwell author on Instagram. And I’m sure in August I will come back with lots of tidbits and thoughts about my trip then. So at the moment, I am not going anywhere else this year, which I’m actually very sad about. I’ve been away from international travel. It’s interesting because I don’t consider Spain very much international travel. It’s going to see family. It’s my second home. I know for most Americans, it’s like, oh, you’re going to Spain. It is beautiful and I love it.
Kat (09:20)
But for like my bucket list of places to travel this year, I was hoping to take my mom to Paris. That might not happen. So we shall see. I’ll keep you updated. So what I did want to talk to you guys about is just a couple of different things that I have done. I recently had a book sweeps promotion. I guess it would be called Booksweeps.com. And of course, that link will be in the show notes. It’s interesting because there’s all these different little promotion sites that we can do. We can share our books through Book funnel or through Story Origin or prolific works. And Book Sweeps is kind of the same thing, except that they put together the promotions and they don’t really rely on the indie authors themselves to put together a promotion, a theme for the promotion and then gather people to be on it not that that’s difficult because we’re on Story Origin and we’re on Book Funnel to work together and collaborate with other authors. And we’re on there because we want to either book swap, which is when you promote a specific book and a specific author in your newsletter, and then they promote your book and you in their newsletter.
Kat (10:42)
So that’s a specific swap with one specific author, or you do a book promotion in which there’s usually quite a few authors together and they’re either offering a chunk of their book for free so that you can sort of read it and see if you want to buy it. They’re offering their book on sale or they’re offering an entire book for free. So it kind of depends if you don’t know much about those sites. I did have an interview back in January with Evans from Story Origin. You can check that out. And he talks about how Story Origin works, what they’re adding to it, how the community works and all that. They’re actually adding tons of things to Story Origin. But I did a Book Suite and Book Suites is a little bit different in which first there’s a free option, so you can be part of it with a free option. You can promote one book with that free option. But in order to participate in a promotion, you do have to pay for the promotion. And I believe it’s about twenty dollars to twenty five dollars. And so there’s a lot of people always vying for those promotions.
Kat (11:49)
You have to really be on top of it. But they have BookBub promotions in which readers are encouraged to follow you. They have good promotions in which readers are encouraged to follow you on good reason. And they have Build Your Newsletter promotions. Now, the difference between Book Sweeps and Book Funnel or Story Origin is that Book Suites is like a contest, right? So one or two people will win the book. This is a bit like Lit Ring as well. I know there’s a lot of things out there, but this is so the difference is that not everyone gets the book. So with Story Origin, they click on the book that they want. They sign up for that person’s newsletter and they get the book for free. Or if it’s a sale promotion, they click on the book they want, they buy the book. They don’t have to sign up for the newsletter. They can if they want, and they go on their Merry way. So book suits is interesting because only two people win the book. And once the promotion is done, you send the book to those two people, be sure to send the book.
Kat (12:56)
That’s part of your agreement. And what’s interesting, especially for the build your newsletter. They then send you a whole list of people who showed interest in your book. I do believe it’s about 2020, $5. We did this whole promotion and I shared it out on social media on my newsletter. And if you’re not part of that, you definitely should be because you’ll be able to see these things and be part of it. And those links are in the show notes. But what’s interesting is that I received about 460 new newsletter subscribers, and they knew perfectly well it was part of the contest that they were going to be subscribed to the newsletter. And even so, once they’re uploaded, they have to sort of double opt in. There’s all these Hoops they have to have to go through. And most of them did opt in all the way. So let’s say I don’t have the numbers right in front of me, but probably let’s go conservative, 350 people added to it. Now, what’s interesting about that is if you don’t know about author newsletters, that is the pretty much number one way that people use what people use to market their book.
Kat (14:14)
Those tend to be the readers who want to know more about you as an author. They want to hear about the new books that are coming out. They want to be sort of the first. Those are the people that you can reach immediately in their inbox. And it’s interesting because while we all sort of dislike our email, I guess people still check their email multiple times a day and they can unsubscribe if they want. But a lot of times people want to be part of that. They want to know what’s going on in the author’s life or when their next book is coming out, if they enjoyed their book. And so most indie authors have an author newsletter. If you don’t have an author newsletter and you are an indie author, you should have one. And I have a couple of different episodes in my backlog about that. And quite a few podcasts writing podcasts talk about author newsletters. You can also go back to the one with story origin and he talks about why you would want an author newsletter. So let’s say 350 people double opted in, triple, quadruple opted into my author newsletter.
Kat (15:26)
And once they get on my list, they almost immediately get a free book. They get my novella for free just for being on my newsletter. So that’s already they didn’t win the contest, but they get a free book anyway. And I assume whatever other lists that they were on, they also got something for free, something to read, because we are writers and we write stuff and we want people to read it. So what’s interesting about that is it’s not necessarily people who just came to get a free book. Now, of course, the people who don’t opt to be on my newsletter, if they don’t open the email, their name doesn’t get subscribed to the list, some of them open it and then immediately unsubscribe. And that’s fine. And that’s why I say out of the 460, maybe 350 opted in to stay on the newsletter. But you’re talking about 350 people who, at least for the moment, are curious about what I have to say as an author. And that’s interesting to me because a they came without knowing that they were going to get a free book. They wanted to be part of it because the first email that they get is just this, hello and welcome to my author newsletter.
Kat (16:41)
And then they get a free book. And so what I like about this Book Suites promotion is that it’s people who, at least in the moment, are curious about just staying on my reader newsletter without having gotten anything for free as far as they knew was going to happen. Right. So with story origin, if I do a book promotion in which I put up my free novella there and people click on it and they download it and they know that they’re part of my newsletter. They sort of paid me for the book by getting on my newsletter. Right. And that’s fine. That’s absolutely wonderful. That’s how they find me. That’s how I have found several authors. It’s a fabulous way to get people on your newsletter. But a lot of times they don’t actually want to be on my newsletter. They just want to book. And so then you can expect to get a good 10% to 20% of the people immediately unsubscribing. Again, totally fine. But what we’re doing as authors is trying to build a list of sort of fans or super fans, people who are genuinely interested in what you’re writing, and they like how you write it.
Kat (17:52)
And so what’s interesting about getting people who are curious about your newsletter without knowing they’re going to receive something for free is that they want to know more about you and they’re ready to sort of walk alongside you for a moment, and then you get to surprise them with a free book. And it’s like, oh, it’s a bonus. But for the moment, they’re already interested in your book. They’ve seen it, they’ve clicked on it, they didn’t win it, but they’re like, that actually interested me. I want to know more about this author. And so while it costs a bit of money because everything costs money. And to be fair, we cannot be authors expecting people to buy our books if we are not willing to pay for certain services. Right. So I want to tell you about Book Sleep because yes, it’s paid, but so is book funnel and so story origin. So you have to pay for the service. They are putting it all together with all the other authors. They’re putting together the material for you to share out the links and all that. So there is work behind that. So understand what you’re paying for there.
Kat (19:02)
It’s super easy to just share it out. But you’re also getting exposed to people who don’t actually expect much from you. Right. But they’re willing to come into your inner circle and at least stay for a while and get to know you and see if they want to continue to walk with you. And any author out there who has done a book promotion with other authors will understand the benefit of that, because there is just a difference in humans, in our humanness and our humanity of getting something for free and being like, okay, I’ll take this for free. Like, how many times do you go to these craft fairs or car fairs or whatever, whatever your spouse or you are into? And people are giving away swag, right. And I once did a book fair. I think it was more like a craft fair. It was a music fair. That’s what I was doing. But I had my books there and there were other vendors there and my kids, to keep themselves entertained, ran around and grabbed all the free swag that they could. Right. That’s what we do. And for months afterwards, I was throwing away squeezy balls and there was hand sanitizer things all over the place.
Kat (20:19)
This was even before the pandemic, you know, just all these free pencils and who knows? There was all these random things. But that’s what they wanted. They just grabbed everything for free. It’s not that we ever used that vendor or bought anything from them. It was just free swag. Right. That’s what we want. We want the free swag. How many pens from hotels do you have? Lots. Hype lots. Because my husband travels. So we pick up things for free. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that we really want to interact with that vendor, but we’re willing to take the free stuff. Right. And that’s fine. If somebody picks up your book for free and they do really like it and they want to read the next one, they will find you more likely than not. Right. But the chances of getting somebody who is getting something for free and then who lets it sit there for forever because they just got 30 books for free and they might not read it and they might move on and they see your newsletter pop up and they think, who is this person? I don’t even know who this person is.
Kat (21:24)
When did I sign up for this? And they unsubscribe because they aren’t invested at all in it. So this is what I find interesting is people who have chosen to be invested in my newsletter without having received anything for free, even though eventually they did receive my novella for free because I like to give it for free from my newsletter. If you want it, you can get on my newsletter, my Reader’s newsletter, and the links are in the Show notes. So I want to let you guys know about book sweeps. It’s an interesting experiment. I have done the book club one as well to sort of get up my BookBub followers and that worked actually really well. I believe I got about 150 followers from that. And what’s interesting is that you still get people following you even days afterwards because they’ll open up an email late and they’ll still go and find you and follow you. So whatever you’re trying to build up, you can use Book suite for that. And so far, for the two that I’ve been part of, I believe that it’s money well spent and I have to say I’ve done other promotions in which absolutely nothing happened and I did also pay for those.
Kat (22:37)
So doing these little experiments, I am spending my money so that I can tell you what works or not works so far. I do also think that story origin is completely worth it. But if you are on a tight budget and don’t really want to pay for a full year of story origin, you might try book Suites. Now just FYI, if you’re doing the free being part of Book Suites for free, you really have to be on it checking when those promotions go live and get in right away because they fill up and what you pay for as I think it’s like $49 a year. If you want to be like their premium customer, you get access to those promotions before they go live. I think just a few days before they go live, know what you want to sign up for and do it in the moment. Don’t hesitate. They fill up completely and they only do this once a quarter. So you have to be on the lookout for those. If you are on a tight budget, it’s just going to take a little bit more time to constantly be looking for when those go live and then you have to do it right away.
Kat (23:48)
So that’s just a little FYI there. So book Sleep.com. You can check that out in the show notes or go there now if you’re in front of a computer or phone. The other thing I wanted to talk to you guys about is drafted. Digital has a UBL. If you don’t know what a UBL is, it is a universal book link. So they used bookstored.com and you can put in your book. It will search all the stores that it is part of and it will create this one link that you can share with people. So if you are an indie author and you are wide. Wide meaning that your book is in bookstores other than Amazon online bookstores. So you are on Co Bow or you are on Barnes and Noble or there’s like a million different places that you could be if you’re on Drafted Digital. If you are white, there’s Amazon people, only Amazon and then there are wide. So if you’re wide, a lot of times you feel like you have to give your readers all these links because you don’t know where they want to buy from. If they want to buy from Bookshop or from Barnes and Noble or from Cobot, you can end up putting all these links into your social media posts or your newsletter.
Kat (25:10)
But you don’t have to. You can go to draft two. The number two Digital.com. You can sign up for their books to read it’s right up at the top. And you can make a UBL, a universal book link. And then you can share that book link with your readers, with your social media followers. And when they click on it, they will see all the stores that they can buy your book from. And then they can choose the store that they want to buy from. It’s way easier than finding all these links. It’s cleaner, so it looks cleaner. There’s just one link. They don’t have to go around clicking things. And I do believe that their UBL has the Amazon link will open in the store of their country. So that’s another thing you have to watch out for. And Story Origin does this as well. If you are part of Story origin, you can find their UBL in which because Amazon has so many stores across the world, around the world, you can’t just put in Amazon.com and assume that it will open in Amazonau for Australia, co. Uk for the UK, it will open in Amazon.com and then they will have to go and find it for their country’s, Amazon.
Kat (26:32)
And they’ll just go to the home page and then they have to type in your book. And I know that that’s not a lot like let’s just be honest, we’re so lazy that you know that’s a lot, but it really isn’t a lot. On the other, their hand marketing is all about making things easy for your customers and that isn’t easy. Right? So what you want to have happen is that when they click the Amazon link, it opens in their store, on your book page, not on the Amazon homepage. So if you’re part of Story Origin and you don’t know about this, definitely check out the UBL. It takes a few minutes to put in all the book home pages for your book into that thing and then it creates a UBL for you. I do believe Drafted Digital also does that. So that is just something to watch out for. But if you are an indie author or an author that is traditionally published and you don’t know about UBL’s universal book links. I encourage you to check them out. Draft two, number two, Digital.com. If you’re part of story origin, they do them as well.
Kat (27:41)
Check those out. It is much easier. It’s much cleaner on your newsletter and it saves you some time once you get that UBL put together. So that’s just a little tidbit for you. So that is all that I have for you today. I just wanted to give you a little update, little helpful tips for you. We have some great guests coming up. I am going to be working on the Patreon page. I swear, I swear, I swear. I will be working on that. I’m going to put up some of the interviews with the video. If you want to see people. I’m going to be putting up links to people’s, books, guests who have been on the show. I’m going to be putting up on the Patreon page, just the information, the things that you guys might find interesting, the courses that I have taken and have found to be worth the money, the promotions that I’ve done that I have found to be worth the money. If you want to be part of the Patreon community, if you want to support the show, you can head on over to Patreon.com Forward slash pencils and lipstick and you know it’s Patreon.com pencils, lipstick, just like Twitter.
Kat (29:02)
And you can be part of the show and make sure that it goes forward just for $3 a month. You can also choose a higher tier. And if you want your book to be announced, sort of like a little commercial in the show, you can do that there as well. I am also working on pencils and Lipstick.com for a place for anybody who wants to promote their work, that they can do that there. And I will be promoting your book. Or if you have writing courses or something that will help writers, I will promote that as well. Of course, everything will be vetted. I retain all rights to say, no, that doesn’t work for my show, but you have the right to put in for it and see if you can get it. I don’t want to go with corporate sponsorship as far as some of these ads are putting in there the CVS ads or Walgreens ads. That’s not me, guys. That is Spotify. I know Spotify does that or whatever app you’re listening to. I want advertisements for writers. I want you guys to find things that are relevant to this show. And I want authors to have another way to get out the news about their books.
Kat (30:27)
So next week we have the fabulous guest, Carissa Andrews. I’m so excited for you to hear from her. She has been around for a while, has published quite a few books, and I think you’re really going to enjoy her interview. Also, if you don’t know, we will be doing a book blurb workshop in the creative writing community if you are part of the community, it is free for you. If you don’t want to be part of the community but you want to be listening and online and watching the workshop, you can the links will be below for a very small fee, you can be part of that workshop. If you would like your book blurb to be looked over by me and Madison Michael, you can pay a little bit more and you can get your book blurb read over and suggestions made. You can also choose for your book blurb to be in and part of the workshop and you can choose for it not to be. So that is up to you. But for a small fee, you can get your book blurb looked at to make sure that it is what is going to sell your book and stun your readers so that they just have to buy right away.
Kat (31:42)
Right. Because that is what sells our books, our book blurb. So that will be coming up in the creative writing community. If you want to be part of the community, it is $47 a month. We have 20 hours of sprints a week. We have marketing on Friday. We have workshops with lots and lots of people and those are all part of the community. The book blurb workshop would be free for you if you are part of the community and plus you get to hang out with some really cool writers and we’re just really fun. So that is all for now. I hope to see you guys next week with Carissa Andrews joining me.
Kat (32:34)
Hey, you’re still listening. Since you are, could you do me a favor and head over to the app that you’re listening to this episode on and hit the subscribe button and then rate and review the show. It would really help the pencils Olympic podcast get out into the world. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, well, then there might be more people out there who would enjoy it as well. If you want to find out more about me, you can head over to catcalledwell.com. I have my story over there, my books, my interactive journals, my one on one coaching information and information on my creative writing community membership group. If you’re looking to write a book or you are a writer and you just want to find out more about how to write, how to publish, how to format, how to market and all the things that go into being an author these days, check out the membership group. There is a 14 three day trial that you can try and get into the masterminds find out all the goodies that we are talking about in the group. I would love to see you there.