Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast

Update: The correct file is now posted. Thanks for your patience! This week we are joined with Glynn Stewart, author of fantastic and successful novels that mix science fiction and fantasy. Here’s a taste of what we discussed: Mixing genres and tropes. How to make fantasy and science fiction blend together to make a strong story. How to create a

Our guest this week is Chris Fox, author of Writing to Market, the Deathless Series, Hero Born, and more. You might remember him from our show in July of 2015. Now he isn’t just encouraging you to write 5k an hour—He has a new nonfiction book out that will help redefine the way you look at writing to make a

Debut military science fiction author Amy J. Murphy joins us to talk about how she had a great run with her first novel (and she’s still having it more than five months later). Here’s a little of what we discussed: Funding a Kickstarter campaign as a new author Getting a start with fan-fiction Whether she had any challenges publishing military science

Fantasy author K.M. Shea talks about how she’s found a lot of success publishing retold fairy tales and is now a full-time author. We covered… The perks of publishing in a category that is underserved by traditional publishing and that isn’t hugely competitive. Why K.M. has everything in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited now (yes, she’s tried going wide too). Monitoring page

Steampunk (and Harlequin and Amish romance) author Shelley Adina joins us today to talk about managing multiple pen names and genres, keeping a long-running series fresh (and selling), paying for foreign translations of indie books, and working the cons to get in touch with more readers (and take trips you can write off on your taxes!). Here are some more

Tonight’s discussion was with the anonymous Data Guy, curator for the famous (or perhaps infamous!) Author Earnings Report. If you haven’t been by the site, make sure to visit and check out some of the reports (you can also grab the raw data if you’re a data person!). Here are some of the questions we asked Data Guy: What exactly

Today, we’re talking to YA science fiction author, Beth Revis, about being a hybrid author, the differences in traditional publishing and self-publishing, and marketing from both sides of the fence. In addition to her fiction, she has published three books for writers: Some Writing Advice, Some Publishing Advice, and Some Marketing Advice. Here’s some of what we talked about: Traditionally publishing

We chatted with up-and-coming indie author Elle Thorne today about writing and selling paranormal romance. She’s been publishing for less than two years, but she’s been very prolific, has numerous series going, and has contributed to several boxed sets. She’s doing quite well for herself. Here’s some of what we discussed: Rocking it with novella length fiction The difference between urban

Today Jeff, Jo, and Lindsay discussed how to improve your Amazon sales page so that people are less likely to click away, especially now that there are sponsored results and other distractions everywhere. They also answered some listener questions and shared some of their recent news and helpful tips. Here are some of the highlights and the links mentioned during

Today’s guest, Rachel Caine, has been publishing urban fantasy and YA fantasy since 1991. She’s been traditionally published throughout her career, but she recently decided to self-publish a new book in her long-standing Weather Warden series. She launched a Kickstarter to help finance the project, asked for $5,000 and ended up earning $18,000+. We asked her about the Kickstarter and also what she’s

Today’s guest is a former NASA employee and U.S. Army soldier who recently made the switch to writing science fiction full time. Terry Mixon is the author of two space opera series, The Empire of Bones Saga and The Humanity Unlimited Saga, and he’s also dabbled in erotica (as he informed us during the interview, he’s now making more from

We had our first repeat guest on the show today, urban fantasy author Carolynn Gockel (writing as C. Gockel) from Episode 19, where we chatted about permafree books, getting started on fan fiction sites, using Tumblr to promote, and where to buy sponsorships. Carolynn has been busy with a lot of marketing stuff in the last year, and she’s also

Today we chatted with Mike Reeves-McMillian, former copy editor with a publishing house and current writer of short and novel-length speculative fiction. He shared some tips for self-editing and talked about how short story sales can still be useful and what it means to be a “light hybrid author.” Here are a few more notes from our discussion: Using short story

We interviewed new YA fantasy author, Elise Kova, on the show today, and I think you guys will enjoy the listen. At the end of the summer, she launched her first book, Air Awakens, and it’s done great in sales and earned a lot of positives reviews. She managed all of those sales with a full priced offering (3.99) and also

On today’s show, we discussed just about everything we could think of related to ebook pricing. What should the standard price for a novel be? Is it ever worth doing a 99-cent ebook launch? Should you ever price an ebook above $5? What’s the point where you can maximize income? How long after launch should you wait to run a