Episode # 13 Business Plans for Authors with Denise Grover Swank

Transcription

1 Episode # 13 Business Plans for Authors with Denise Grover Swank An interview with NYT and USA TODAY bestselling author Denise Grover Swank Simon Whistler: Hello and welcome to the interview section of the show where I have a great guest with me today. New York Times bestselling and USA Today bestselling author, Denise Grover Swank. Now, Denise first published in She currently has 11 books on the market and she would say she is most known for her urban fantasy series Chosen which has sold an incredible 190,000 copies. Denise, welcome to the Rocking Self-Publishing podcast it s great to have you. Denise: Thanks for having me. Simon: So Denise, you give back a lot to the indie community. You re part of something known as the Indie Voice and as part of that you ve co-written a book called The Naked Truth About Self-Publishing which as a podcast that goes out to indie authors that s something I love and we will be touching on that later in the show. But what we re really going to be focusing on today, what the meat of the show is going to be about is business plans. Now, you got in touch with me a couple of weeks ago we ve been awhile setting this up and you pointed me in the direction of a three post series about writing a business plan as an author and I thought that was fascinating and I think it s a great idea to have you on the show to talk about that. Now, just before we get into that kind of main section of the show as I like to do in these interviews, could you introduce yourself to us perhaps by telling us a bit about your urban fantasy series Chosen. Denise: My urban fantasy series Chosen. Chosen s actually the second book I wrote, the first book I completed, I wrote for NaNoWriMo in My first completed book I d tried many books before and never finished them so I finished that book and it was utter garbage but that s okay because I learned a lot. I know right? I thought about yeah we ll just move on! And so, I came up with the idea for Chosen. I was trying to come up with an idea for a new book and my friend s girlfriend was there and she told me that my three year old son could count to five if he touched her fingers. If he didn t touch her fingers then he couldn t count. So I was like, or maybe he has you know when he touches you he can read your mind then he knows what the numbers are and that was the spark of an idea for the whole series. That s the birth of that entire series. It was about a little boy who was five, aged him up a little bit. He didn t read people s minds, not at the beginning but he could see the future. And so then it became a whole game of what if. What if there s a little boy who could see the future. People would want him, who would want him, why would they want him. And so as a whole story evolved and birthed into a germ of what I decided to do within about week and then I started it. So yeah, when I wrote that

2 book I was like I don t think I can do this. I think it s just too big for me. And I wrote the first half of the book in a panic attack literally like I can t do this. I m so out of my comfort zone, I don t know anything about guns or car chases because it s kind of a thriller too. But my friends were just like, just keep writing, just keep writing. And so it s about a mother who s trying to protect her five year old son from a group of people that he just calls the bad men. He can always see when they re coming and they always have to run. They ve been running for three years hiding from these people. And then a guy shows up who offers to help and the little boy tells his mother Emma that they can trust him and that they need him. And so that s all within like the first two chapters of the first book. Simon: That was just the first two chapters? Denise: Yeah. Simon: Wow. Denise: It s a pretty fast paced book. Simon: So this was the first book in the this is a series right? This is the one that sold over 190,000 copies. Denise: Yah. Simon: How many books are in the series? Denise: There s four books in the series. Simon: Okay and that series is wrapped up now. Denise: Yes.

3 Simon: I ve got to say it s great to have another author on the show who s been part of NaNoWriMo and you were in it in So many people have come on the show and have been in that stage of oh, you know I m writing a book, no I m not, I m writing a book, no I m not and nothing ever happens really. And then they do NaNoWriMo and boom they have a book even if it s not very good! Denise: Exactly! I m a firm believer in it. It teaches you to write every day. You get in the habit of having to write all the time and when I wasn t, when I was waiting I was like I felt like something was missing. And that s why I started Chosen I was like I have to start something right away because I felt like I was missing something. It s perfect for getting you in the habit of writing all the time. Thinking about your book all the time and making it priority. In fact I m such a firm believer with some writing groups I ve like encouraged online groups. Right now I ve set up a Facebook group for anybody who wants to join and we re all going to like give writing for instance November hits and I m probably going to have until then that then I m just going to like offer prizes to the people. Like I d raffle Amazon gift cards to people who meet their goals for the week and that kind of thing. Simon: Amazing that sounds Denise: Encouragement because I got it through Twitter when I was doing it and now most people are a lot of people are on Facebook. I figured it s just a way to help support people so I m a firm believer in NaNoWriMo. The whole point is that you have it in writing. Even if it s crap you have it in writing. Simon: I d love to fill in the timeline gaps because you ve got NaNoWriMo in You ve got your first publishing in 2011 but you said you didn t publish the book from NaNoWriMo because it wasn t brilliant. Denise: Right. Simon: So when did you start writing the first book of the Chosen series? Denise: I started writing the first book of the Chosen series the week before Christmas so December of Simon: Oh so right after NaNoWriMo?

4 Denise: Oh yeah right off, I just started right away. I then I spent the next six months writing and revising, and revising, and revising and started querying to agents in May and June. Simon: Ah. This is something I did want to ask about. The choice of so you did query agents initially, why did you choose to do that rather than initially self-publish? Denise: Self-publishing back in 2010 was still a little taboo. It was for people who couldn t quite cut it, that they weren t quite good enough and so it never even fell on my radar. I was like, no, I won t do that. Simon: It s really amazing to think that s just three years ago. Denise: I know it s crazy how much things have changed. Yeah so I queried it and I got a lot of positive response from agents who liked it. I got a lot of requests. I kept hearing though that they loved it, but they didn t think they could sell it because paranormal was kind of on the decline at that time and so, I was really devastated by that. So, I got my last major rejection on a Saturday in June and the agent had even tweeted, had to reject a project I loved. She hashtagged it agentfail and then she was certainly very nice to telling me that she loved it but she just didn t think she could sell it. And so, two days later I started another book. I was doing a little of writing to see the second book of the Chosen series while I was querying and then I stopped and then I wrote another book. I wrote Twenty-Eight and a half Wishes which is kind of a romantic mystery humorous. It s set in Southern Arkansas so it s got a lot of small town charm in it s funny but it s kind of a mix mash of genres. Simon: I m assuming you changed genre there because you the feedback of the agents was Denise: Choose paranormal. Simon: Yeah, exactly, okay. Denise: But it did have a tiny sense of paranormal because I kept with the whole vision and she could the main character could see visions of the future but I pushed it. So, it was like ominous in Chosen but I turned it on a ten and made it kind of funny in this book series. So people thought that she was just because she could always see things for other people not herself and so whatever she saw she

5 said it out loud. But there was hardly any response to that with agents. Mysteries were just kind of on the decline as well. Simon: Aw. Denise: Yah, my beta readers loved that book. I mean like so head over heels in love with it. I put that book aside and then I had a thirteen year old contact me who loves to read and she was like when are you going to write something I can read. So this was in the fall of 2010 and I said okay I ll write a YA. And I heard science fiction was kind of on the rise in YA. So I thought and I loved the things like Lost and Fringe and those kinds things that touched on not hardcore sci-fi, just a touch. So I wrote Hear which is a YA sci-fi kind of paranormal romance and I queried it and I got a lot of positive response on it but then again it was a lot of well, I have a project similar to this. So this was, by this time this is the spring of 2011 and I was getting discouraged like okay. You know it wasn t the writing, I knew it wasn t the writing or the plot. Everybody loved them they were just like it s not for me or I don t think I can sell it. So that s when I started seriously considering I had an agent very interest in my YA and the urban fantasy and they re kind of darker and the mystery s lighter and I knew she wouldn t want that. But that s when I thought okay, I m going to self-publish this mystery and just kind of try it, see what happens. You know it may flop it may not but I m at the time even in 2011 I was like am I killing my career by doing this. It was starting to be a little more accepted but I was like I was really nervous what are agents going to think if they find out I self-published. And I just decided I don t care and when that fell through and she didn t buy it or she didn t sign me. And so, I was not as upset as I thought I would be because I was in the process of self-publishing Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes. So I released it in July of Simon: Interesting. And the positive response you got from the agents on the previous books must have given you some indication even if the market s not there according to their understanding that you d written a good book. Denise: Right. And that s part of the reason why I went ahead and did it because I had got that agent confirmation that it was a good book and it wasn t necessarily the book, it was the market. Simon: Exactly. That makes perfect sense. So, the first book you self-published, that wasn t Chosen or was it Chosen? Denise: No, it was not Chosen it was Twenty-Eight and a half Wishes.

6 Simon: Okay, but you wrote that after Chosen and after the Denise: Yah, I wrote that. That was my third book, yah. That was my third completed book and I published it first. And then I was already kind of heavy into social media. I was on Twitter, I had gotten bigger on the Twitter when I did NaNoWriMo because I connected with a lot of writers then and then I had written a blog before called There s always room for one more and I had written stories about my family and they were just kind of little snapshots of things that went on. It would be like crazy things that happened and I would make them funny and humorous and put my own spin on it. And so I kind of learned the art of storytelling before I started writing books with that blog. And I stopped writing the blog when I started writing books because when I would write a blog post I would spend hours on it. It was like a short story and I would make sure it was like edited and plotted well. That s why I learned pacing and learning to, you know, to kill your darlings because there d be something that would be really funny but they d like cut the flow of the story so I d cut it out. But I learned a lot about that. So now those readers so I had probably seven, eight hundred people who were friends of mine on Facebook. A big 500 of them had probably followed me on my blog. And so, when they heard that I was publishing my first book they were really curious as to what I d been doing for the last couple of years. So I expected to sell, I totally expected to sell 20 to 50 my first month. And the first month I published I sold 220! Simon: Wow. Denise: So, I was like really happy, yeah. But I attribute a good half of those or more to what I call pity buys because they were kind of like oh, that s cute Denise wrote a book. Kind of like she wrote a book we ll buy it from her. And then they read it and they liked it and so I can see like in my reviews the first round of reviews were people that I knew who had read it and reviewed it and liked it. Then the next round of reviews were their friends that had read it and liked it. And then I started getting into reviews from people who I didn t even know where they came from and they were liking it. So, and then I did a blog tour too so blog tours worked. So my goal for the year was to sell published in July was to sell a thousand copies of that book. That was my pie in the sky, incredibly high goal, by the end of the year. Simon: Okay. Denise: So I had about six months to sell. I sold a thousand books the second week of September. Simon: Okay.

7 Denise: So I was happy. Simon: I was going to say it sounds like you might have exceeded your goals. Denise: Yeah, I did. So I could see that 28 was doing well and I was like this is great so I decided okay I m going ahead and publish Chosen. So I published Chosen in September, the end of September and I was like oh, all those readers of Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes are going to buy Chosen no. Because they re two totally different genres so I had to build a whole different reader base with that and I did two blog tours back to back. And back in 2011, blog tours actually were somewhat effective in getting people to buy your book. Now, not so much, they re better now for SEO, traffic and kind of just name branding and getting it out there in front of people but they don t actually necessarily help with the book sale. Simon: Okay, let s not if I can just jump in there. Let s not talk about it too much if it s less effective but a blog tour how what is that exactly? Denise: That helps me, that helped me with that book. That is where blogs review your book and talk about it and tell their readers. And so, I had sold I was selling like three copies a day in the first part of October. And by the end of November I was in the top 100 in contemporary fantasy and then in December of 2011 Chosen hit number one in contemporary fantasy and got into the top 100 of the Kindle list. Simon: Wow, overall. Denise: Yes, I think the highest it got was like 81, 80. Simon: Wow. Denise: It was in the top 100 for about ten days. Simon: And then once you got that initial traction it obviously goes from there and so I imagine after that your sales even more improved.

8 Denise: Yes, yes. And then the second book came out in the end of November and since the first book was doing so well then it just pulled the second one right along with it and had a lot of fails. But I was kind of following the principle back then. I was like Amanda Hocking and John Locke were selling their first two books. 28 and Chosen were both 99 cents. And I saw you know I saw well, by the end of 2011 I d sold 26,000 because I d also released my young adults. And so I was looking at these numbers going wow you know I can actually as stupid as this sounds I was like wow, I can actually make money with this. Isn t that stupid? Simon: Right, you ve got to see those numbers first but I imagine by the time you got to those numbers. Denise: Yeah, and so it s when I decided I needed to come up with a plan. I needed I realized at that moment I was a business. I wasn t just an author I was also a business. And so my brother had just opened up that summer, the summer before Simon: Denise can I just interrupt there for a second because I d love to move on to business plans and that s going to be like the main subject. But I just wanted to wrap up social media a little bit if we could before I move on. Denise: Oh yes. Simon: Because I did have a question. Now, earlier on you kind of mentioned you had this big following on Facebook before and a lot of authors we ve had on the show kind of use Facebook, use Twitter, use list but once they ve established themselves and it seems like you were doing this before you even began. So just before moved on I wanted to ask, were those just your friends that you d built up on from using Facebook as kind of an everyday user? Denise: That and my blog. The readers from my blog had followed me over and I m not necessarily too picky. I know a lot of people are very picky about who they accept as friends but as long as you go check them out, as long as they don t look like they re like scammers or whatever I ll accept it. But yeah, so I will accept friend requests from just about anyone and so like I would you know you can see who s talking to who on your little scroller thing, the ticker on the side. And so I would get a lot of people who would see that their friends were talking to me and they would friend me because I was on a book signing on Sunday and I had three people come up and say oh, you re so funny on Facebook.

9 Simon: Yeah it sounds like a really good way to build that audience before you even had the book out. And in terms of the blog, how did you Denise: But the key is with social media is not to just be get all buy my book, here s my book it s to actually talk to people. It s social media so yeah, that s Simon: Not selling media! Denise: To building your audience, yeah exactly. Simon: And in terms of the blog you mentioned that a lot of people followed you on Facebook being referred from your blog and I remember you talking about that. Just in terms of building an audience for your blog, how did you do that originally? Denise: Oh, Lordy that was hard! Because that s when blogs were big and so I started it and then it was like I have three adopted children from China, two from China and one from Vietnam. So it kind of started with moms in the adoption community and then their friends. We all had blogs for adoption and so then we d all follow each other and then you d like do these like giveaways and blog hops and you d get more followers then. And then there were a couple of bigger groups that would like spotlight blogs. And so I was teaching on that a couple of times and I got quite a few followers from each of those because you would like give them your most popular post and they would post those up. Simon: It s interesting that you were blogging in so you were entirely outside of the indie author world when you were blogging and then Denise: Completely, I was mommy blogging, I m a mommy blogger! Simon: And those people followed you through? Denise: My Twitter name now is DeniseMSwank but my Twitter name used to be MommaDenise. I have six kids, oh yeah.

10 Simon: Very mommy blogging of you. Denise: So, I was like that s not very professional we re going to change that so yeah. Simon: That s interesting, that s what I wanted to know. I wanted to know how you got that original traffic. So it was from your original blogging about something entirely different and then those people followed you through and ultimately started buying your books originally which then led to that the series of reviews as mentioned. Then getting ranked and then getting sales. That s an excellent progression. I just wanted to get that all in line before we moved on to business plans. Denise: Okay. Simon: Your brother had something or your brother-in-law? Denise: No, my brother opened a floral hotel shop in Louisville, Kentucky the summer before when I started that. My sister-in-law came up with a business plan and I was intrigued by that and I thought well they had to do that to figure out their business. I figure I m very creative, I m not math oriented I was like I don t know anything about business. So I started researching business plans online I found a couple. There really at that time there weren t any geared really towards the writers especially indie authors. And so I just kind of had to take what I found and tweak it into mine and I came up with I think it was 23 pages. A 23 page business plan, which sounds kind of impressive but each section had its own page. And so like one page might have like a paragraph. Simon: Okay, 23 pages sounds intimidating even for like an author. Denise: Exactly. Simon: When it comes to a business plan it s like whoa. Denise: Which is why I did that. When the writer s guide to e-publishing asked me to do a post I m like there s no way I can fit it into one. Can I make it three?

11 Simon: Yeah. We will link over to it. I think this post that you did, the three part post is fantastic and we ll be linking over to that in the show notes so I m just amazing detail there. Just before we get started, for people listening for who haven t done business who haven t done a business plan for their writing. Can you tell me is it easy to describe what a business plan is in a general context? Denise: A business plan pretty much just describes your business. It talks about what your business does. What its product is, its marketing plan, its plan for production and like I often have like web plan and then it also has long term goals. So it s kind of like and when I started writing I realized I actually knew a lot about stuff it just seemed intimidating. I just actually put it on paper and then to words. Simon: It is interesting to see those sections that are designed for, I don t know, what a bricks and mortar business or any sort of business and see yeah, if you replace product or say your product is books that totally applies to authors. Denise: When you become self-published whether you realize it or not you are now a business. Because you re in charge of marketing your books. You re in charge of producing your books. You are a business and so you have to learn to separate yourself into two parts. There s the creative writing side and then there s the business side and you have to sometimes you have to look very objectively from the business side at your creative self and make some hard choices. Like I had my YA series I was going to write in three books and it just didn t sell as well as my other series and so I made the decision to not write the third book to combine the second and third book so that I can write other books that were actually going to sell better. And I could easily do that with that series I didn t lose any of the story by doing that. But that was I had started understanding how big publishers make some of their hard decision because I was making them myself. Simon: Yeah, it s fascinating to see how the world of writers has collided or joined with the world of business and how now indie authors have to think so completely about well, from the business plan to product, marketing, production, goals. Denise: Yes. And the great thing about being creative though is sometimes like we as writers since we are creative and we re not like very left brained. We can think outside the box for marketing and stuff too so that s a benefit for us. Like right now I m releasing a novella between two books as my mystery series and my newsletter subscribers get to read it for free. So I m serializing it and letting them read it for free to increase my newsletter subscribers because that s the best way to sell to an existing reader is through my newsletter.

12 Simon: That s an newsletter. Denise: Yes, so they re already my audience and I want to make sure they know about my book and so best way is to sign up for my newsletter. Sometimes need encouragement or enticement or bribes or whatever you want to sign up. And so, yeah because it s funny because after I announced that I was going to do this I probably had a hundred people sign up in the last week. And some of these people were people I already thought were subscribers. They know me really well. I guess they thought they didn t need to sign up because they knew me really well. So it s newsletters, in a series newsletter is really key to sales and so like I had to think outside the box to try to get people to sign up for that newsletter. Simon: Yeah, and we ve heard before how when you are going to release a new book and having that initial drive of purchases from say any more newsletter is super valuable in getting you up in the Amazon rankings and once you re there as I just mentioned at the top of the show you get that traction and from there it s very good. So, back to the business plan, I m curious about the timing of this. Did you write it before you even did your first book or was it some point after? Denise: No, I wrote it in January of Simon: Oh, so this is six months after you did the first one, roughly. Denise: Yeah, it was after I realized by the end of the summer and I realized I sold 26,000 copies of my book I was like that s when I was like had that moment of oh, I can make money with this and then realized that was a business and I thought I need to think like a business. I need to come up with a plan. Simon: Because I was going to say I had that question because I m imagining if I m yet to write my first book and I m putting together a business plan before I ve even done the first book I m like isn t this a bit of a waste of time if no one buys my book? What are your thoughts on that? Denise: Right not necessarily because you could like I have 11 parts. I describe my business and then I talk about who owns my business and the location of my business. I talk about my product, I talk about my pricing strategy, I talk about my financial plan, my production schedule and writing plans. My targeted audiences, my marketing promoting plan, my web plan, my long term goals and then a summary of all of it. So some of this you could actually do, not in the detail I did, but if you re planning to put out a book I mean it s really good to look at what kind of pricing you re going to do. What the

13 costs you think you re going to incur to put out this book. You re going to pay for editing, you re going to have to pay for cover, you re probably going to have to pay someone to do e-formatting unless you can do it yourself. So there are costs involved in that and you can look at that and you can then look at your pricing and you can see how many books you have to sell before you actually turn a profit on that book. And I was very as strange as that sounds that was very eye opening for me because I was just like paying these things that I wasn t even thinking about it. And so, yeah, so that s kind of what helped me make that decision about the third book of my YA because I m selling it $3.99 and I only sold about 5,000 copies of the second book. To spend two or three months on a book that I m only going to turn a profit of a few thousand dollars on was not the most effective use of my time. And so, it d be better to do something else. And so, you can start looking at those decisions that way but even like when you re first starting it s a good idea to go into it with your eyes wide open. You know, what are the costs going to be because you really can t do this and put out a quality product without spending some money on it. My first book cost me $700 for editing, I had somebody donate the cover and then I paid for ebook, no I formatted to ebook myself but I paid for a blog tour. Simon: Okay. Denise: Yeah but my costs have increased because now I pay more for book covers. Some books I actually use a developmental editor now. I pay for proofreaders. So my costs have increased you know I can spend up to $2,000 to put out a book but you can do it for far, far less if you want. Simon: But now you can see how much that book is going to make and you can better say I can afford to spend this much and I believe this will be better for that much, this will be better for that much and it ends up being worthwhile doing. That leads me to a question about kind of predicting the revenue from each book. You mentioned how you decided to pursue the other series over another one because you felt it was going to make more money, so financially a sensible decision. So, in terms of if you put out a new book in a new series how do you predict how it s going to do or is the first book always an experiment and then you can easily or more easily predict the numbers for follow up for the sequels? Denise: Yeah, the first book is always an experiment which is actually I put one out last March. I have urban fantasy, YA and then this mystery and I have been reading a lot of new adult contemporary romance so I thought okay, well I m going to try to write one. I d finished the book early on my schedule because I actually have schedules. I have dates and schedules and I finished the book early okay, I m going to try this until I wrote the book and released it and it was an experiment. I had no idea how well it was going to do and it was actually my first book that made USA Today list. But then I wrote the second book expecting similar results and it didn t do nearly as well but I released it in the summer. I released it when there was a glut of other new adult books and the new adult market also has learned

14 to expect that most authors will at some point drop their books to 99 cents so then they wait until that book goes to 99 cents and then you have a flood of sales. Simon: Ah. Denise: Yeah, so part of it is just you know living and learning and watching the market and see what happens. Simon: Good for readers they re not so great for writers in that genre being forced down by the market to 99 cents. Denise: Yes, exactly. They ve been trained by the authors but the books will most likely go to 99 cents at some point. But if they re patient and wait then they can get it then. Because there s a list that they can sign up for that will notify them when a book goes to 99 cents. Simon: Ah, okay. I didn t know about that. Denise: So I will see a huge spike in sales when I drop a price for the first time to 99 cents. Simon: All those people are just going to wait in there. Denise: I will see a huge spike sales before I even announce it anymore because this service is already letting them know. Simon: Wow, that s interesting So your business plan. From the sections you said in the beginning describe is fairly obvious, it s I am writing books that is my business. I m sure it s more complex than that with all the business structures and stuff but essentially that s fairly simple. Products are the books. In terms of Denise: Right, well not just the books though.

15 Simon: Oh, go on. Denise: Because like I have audiobooks. Simon: Ah, okay. Denise: I have actually a little bit of merchandise that I sell on my website. Simon: Oh yeah? Denise: Yeah, jewelry designer that has made a few pieces for some of my books so I have those. I have a store on Zazzle with different T-Shirts and stuff so it s more than just books. Once you start to expand you can actually offer more to readers especially when a series is popular. Simon: Was this something this expansion sounds very in a way businesslike if you would. Is this after drawing up the business plan and realizing products doesn t just encompass books but it in a way it seems this business plan opened your eyes to the potential of your business. That s not very well worded but if you get what I mean. Denise: Yes, no exactly. It made me look at things completely different into what I can offer readers. And that s when I decided ah, I can actually write short stories. Like I wrote an addition to 11 books I have I have three short stories for the Chosen series. Which was also a ploy to get newsletter subscribers and I offered it free to my newsletter subscribers but also put it up for sale. And so I got sales from I still get sales from those short stories. And you know I increased my newsletter subscribers by like 500 that summer. Simon: Whoa, okay that s pretty impressive. Denise: So it was a win-win. But yeah so, it was always thinking of different things that you can offer the readers because often times they want them. It s not just a way for you to make money it s a way for you to blot in a series for a reader who finished it or is in the middle of it and wants to experience more of it. Because, I get a lot of people, when they finish a book that they re still you know what I mean

16 they re like they re still thinking about the book and so they still it s the way for them to still be part of that world in some way shape or form. Simon: Yeah, it often seems marketing Denise: --win-win for Simon: It s just reminding people to buy. Denise: Yeah, exactly. Simon: So that was another element to the business plan, marketing. Now we talked about your social stuff earlier and we ve just talked about lists. Did you do any paid for marketing? Denise: At this point I still do like, I still pay for blog tours mostly to just kind of get the name of my book out there and me out there in front of readers that may not have heard me. I don t really expect sales from those at that moment. Simon: Okay. Denise: But the biggest source of sales, to generate sales at this point is a site called BookBub. Simon: Ah, yes. Denise: You probably heard of them. They list sales, books yeah. And so that s the biggest way for me to generate sales at this point is to get them to post one of my books. And then, that book, that when that book, I ll get huge amounts of sales for 99 cents and then it trickles evenly after the sale long enough that my sales are trickling in. And so, I ll get sales from that and then I ll get subsequent sales to the series from that so that s my biggest push right now to get a book seen.

17 Simon: Of course, that s something that will change right? It tends to be these things, their effectiveness goes and fazes. How long have you been seeing success with Bookbub? Denise: Since I I put my YA on there in February and it wasn t as successful as it could ve well, it was a YA, it had a much smaller audience so it did as well as it could with the number of subscribers they had. The first really successful one I had was in May with my new adult Aftermath and I had sold, I think I sold about 6,700 copies that week of that book. Simon: Wow, okay. Denise: Yeah, I barely missed USA Today list with that I think. And then, redesigned I sold quite a few copies of it. And then my book Twenty-nine and a Half Reasons the second book of my mystery series was in Bookbub the first week of September and I made the USA Today list with it. I sold about 7,000 copies. Simon: Wow, that s pretty impressive. To see that success that s a big compliment to Bookbub. Denise: I think that Bookbub has become, already becoming less effective. It s really effective with mystery, it s becoming less so with romance and with other genres even less so. And I on my own what I m noticing I m seeing less carry over sales to subsequent books of the series. I think people now are conditioned. They look for the sale, big one-click buy and then they don t read it. It s just sitting on their Kindle. So I mean, that is great, at some point they ll probably read it and I ve had some people tell me they read a book of mine that they got for free because I did the free back when it worked. When it worked really effectively, when they got it and they read it a year later and they read the rest series but I don t see that initial push in sales for the second book or the next book of the series like I did when I first started here. Simon: We ve heard this from authors before. It does seem that it s not as effective as a method as it used to be. So, if I can ask, you ve obviously got your finger on the pulse of this kind of marketing. What do you think is the next Bookbub? Or you don t want to share?! Denise: No, I truly don t know I wish I knew. You know, obviously kind of like keep your ear to the ground and hear what s working for other people. It helps when you re on other lists, lists with other self-published authors who are like generous to share their information like Marie Force. Author Marie Force has a really great Yahoo list where a lot of people share their information. And so you

18 can kind of see what s coming up next. Sometimes honestly some of my like when I made the USA Today list with my new adult book Aftermath and I kind of tribute that success to that Amazon sent out for whatever reason, I don t know. An to a bunch of readers, like a whole bunch of people saying if you like such and such book I don t even know what book I was, then you might like Aftermath and then it had a couple of other authors. Simon: Okay. Denise: I truly believe that was what drove my sales because when that thing came out I saw a huge increase in sales. It didn t do it for the next book. I had two releases since then, they haven t done that for that so it s kind of like hit and miss. Simon: Luck of the draw. Denise: Yeah. And so, that actually like those were good sales that were kind of organic and they actually then my book stayed up higher longer because when you have like a sale and you shoot up high you tend to fall faster because it s not organic, it s an artificially driven thing. So like when Chosen hit the first time in the top 100 that was organic so it helped stay up there longer. I had the same thing happen last year in December. I ran a sale for my young adult, it got up whatever reason it didn t climb that time in Amazon but it did on Barnes and Noble and it climbed into the top 100 and got up to number 9 on the Nook list. And it was there for like three weeks and then those readers then started reading Chosen which I also had at 99 cents at that time. And so it climbed up in the top 100. It was in the top 100 on Barnes and Noble for two months and it got to number 9 and then it pulled the rest of the books of the series with it. They were almost I think all four were in the top 100 at one point and that was organic. And so, when you have an organic drive like that they just tend to stay longer. Simon: That Amazon I think would ve been very good. Because I get that and Amazon s so rarely, I mean other than on Amazon.com when I m browsing books but when they re sending an to my inbox they re so rarely recommending books that I open it and I pay attention to those books. Denise: Exactly. Simon: But that s not something you can buy into, that s something that they have their people select so they re like oh, you would like this. So very good for authors but something you could actively choose to market through that channel although that would be nice!

19 Denise: I know and I have an Amazon rep now. After Chosen hit the top 100 the second time in February of 2012 I had a rep contact me, offered to help me like with issues or whatever. And so I was like he quit and I have another one and I was like hey, how do I get those s? And they re like we have nothing to do with those s. Simon: Yeah, sure, sure. Denise: Obviously not, they haven t got me in some more! Like who do I need to talk to make that happen!? Simon: So Denise: But interestingly enough I was able to get pre-orders in those two books. I will say this, I was able to get two pre-orders of those books, second two books and so I had sales up to two to three weeks before the book came out and so I had a ranking. Simon: That came through your rep? Denise: Yeah, through my rep. They re kind of in beta testing and I think it s going to be rolled out. However, I will tell you I will not do it again. Simon: No? Denise: No, I will not because my books that just came out I had sold, I already sold about 800 copies before it came out but that ranking was like hovering around two and three thousand and four thousand for several weeks. And so then when I released it and a lot of my readers, my existing readers some of them had already bought it so they don t want to buy it the day it released. Simon: Yeah which ah, yeah of course.

20 Denise: And so my ranking only climbed up to like 900 instead of climbing up to like 300 or 400 naturally the first day. And so, because I didn t get higher on the list I didn t get the attention that I probably would ve gotten otherwise. Simon: So all of those pre-buys obviously don t count as day one sales, they count as sales before that. Denise: They will like on a USA Today or New York Times list but they do not on your sales ranking list. Simon: Which is what most people are going after Denise: I think it actually hurt me. Simon: Yeah, I can see that. Denise: And so I plan not to do pre-orders in the future and just tell them this is when I plan to release it and then just be at the mercy of you know the whatever the behind the scene gizmos that decide when they re going to put your book out. Because you know it can run anywhere from four to 12 hours before it s available. Simon: Very interesting. I imagine a lot of people when they heard about that and talking to your rep and getting those pre-sales they were like oh, that would be nice, but now maybe not. Denise: Yeah, no and I thought so too. I was like oh, this is going to be great and now I won t be doing it again. Simon: Okay, this is great. Marketing is obviously a serious part of your business plan but I would like to talk about production and this sounds like, I love this term in the business plan for writer production, it sounds like I m going to make something in a factory like windows or whatever. But I can imagine you re saying to your family I m going to go and produce my product and you sit down at your laptop and start typing! So, tell me about production. Denise: Production. I actually have like this giant whiteboard on my office wall.

21 Simon: Okay. Denise: And I have like it broke up into squares and then I have a calendar also and I will go through and I have each week marked out which is I m writing the first draft on this book due on this date. I already have my editor schedules like for I have two books that I m writing the rest of this year and I already have my editors and my copy editors and my proofreaders all scheduled out. And so, I m very deadline oriented, I need a deadline to make me finish. Which is why NaNoWriMo was perfect for me. And so, I know these deadlines are coming and so I have them week by week. I m okay, this is when I need to have this done and often times I get behind well, you know, I m going to be honest, I m always behind. But I always get it done by the deadline. By when the first draft has to be done and so I m maybe up till like 5:30 in the morning working on it by I get it done! Simon: It s like that deadline is non-movable but all the work up until that deadline can be pushed right into that night before. Denise: Yeah. And the thing about self-publishing is if you re going to be successful long term at it you re going to have to produce product. You re going to have to release product often. So, my goal, my original goal was to release four books a year. Simon: Four books a year, okay. Denise: And that was pretty ambitious. But I then last fall I got approached by Amazon s imprint 47 North because they wanted to buy a new series I was going to write, a new urban fantasy series. And so I had to work that into my production but I can t release it. So I m writing books that aren t even I turned in a book to them in March they re not publishing until November. And so I had to like, that s kind of why I put that new adult in because like I have a short gap here to write a shorter book. It s a less intense plot, it s something I can try. And then I had something else available for sale and I don t have such a huge gap between products. Simon: Are you writing multiple books at the same time? Denise: Not writing them but sometimes I ll stop a book to revise it, yes.

22 Simon: Okay, but it s generally you ll write one early manuscript and then move on to the next as one book at a time. Denise: So like in August, July and August, I was writing my mystery and then I turned in the first draft and I started writing my urban fantasy for 47 North and then in the middle of that I got my revision notes back and so I stopped, I worked on that, and then sent that back to her for line edits and then started working on my urban fantasy again and then stopped to do a line edit. Worked on my urban fantasy, stopped to do copy edits... So yeah, it s a lot of stopping and starting of different books. I m not working straight through from beginning to completion on a book. I m usually overlapping books. That s the only way I can do this to get out more product. Simon: This interview s fascinating to see these very clear parallels between the business world and your business plan in the world of writers or indie authors today. I d like to talk a little bit about 47 North. You obviously had a lot of success with self-publishing. When they approached you what made you decide to are they a very traditional publisher in a way? Denise: Yes, they have print books and audiobooks and they offer advances and royalties. Simon: Okay, so yeah! Denise: They have much better royalties than traditional publishers. But it s funny because when they called me David the editor he sent me an saying he read Chosen and he wanted to talk to me about Chosen and my career. And so I thought he was wanting to buy the Chosen series because I knew a lot of the Amazon in print were buying successful self-published series and then putting them under their own imprint. And I was just getting ready to release the fourth book of the series. I was like I don t think that s going to work. So, but I already investigated them and I had seen that they were into sci-fi, epic fantasy, kind of horror and I didn t think I write urban fantasy with romance and so I told him, I said I don t think I m a good fit for you honestly. Simon: I love this option of like what three years ago you would have been when you were querying agent and now it s like I don t know if it s going to work out! The power is suddenly in your court. Denise: Yeah, three years ago they probably would have offered me a dollar and I would have been okay, you know I want to be published.

23 Simon: Just please take me! Denise: Yeah, you know really! And so yeah, after I kind of had that control and so he convinced me that they were wanting to get into urban fantasy with romance and they had a plan already in place for marketing and he just really sold me on the fact that they were going to take my book and get me an audience that I couldn t get on my own and that s why I ultimately signed with them because they re Amazon. Simon: Yah. Denise: They re going to pay me in advance on a book, on a series, it s a three book series that they ve signed for. It s more but I was just signed three books. You know if they re going to pay me a nice advance on three books then obviously they re going push it. And so, if they push it then I can gain readers and get a name brand for it I couldn t get on my own and so that was ultimately the decision why I did it. And I also kept a lot control. I had total control over story, I had control on detail color over covers. So, they re used to working with self-published authors so they know that we re very much control freaks. Simon: It seems like a really great combination between like the benefits of traditional publishing. So you get the advance, you get that security and importantly in this case you ll get that exposure to a new market but you also get the benefits of being self-published. You mentioned there s a better royalty deal, they understand you more because they re Amazon you know, self-publishing is increasingly becoming very much their thing. Denise: It s funny because you know Amazon is like Amazon and they re this huge player but at the same time I used to be Select. I used to be part of their Select program and just be exclusive with them because well, part of the reason I did it was because when they first introduced Select my ranking started to fall because people were borrowing books and borrowing figured into ranking. But in December 2011 I sold 11,000 copies of Chosen on Amazon and I sold 30 copies on Barnes and Noble. Simon: I really thought you were going to say 30,000 it s just 30 copies. Denise: Yeah so, 30, 30, three zero. It was a no brainer. I was like why wouldn t I do this and back then when I saw that Select wasn t as effective as it was and I pulled out and I started putting myself back into Barnes and Noble and itunes and Kobo. I started getting into Kobo outside of SmashWords when it

24 became available. I already name branded myself, people were already talking about me and so then my sales were stronger in these markets than they were before. So now I wouldn t be exclusive because sometimes I ll sell more on itunes than I will on Amazon with my adult series. Simon: It is interesting because these things are constantly changing. What is effective, what isn t effective in terms of sales, marketing, all across the board. Denise: Right and so I want Amazon to have competition. I want them to have competition because if they become the only game in town. I mean they are very, very, very good to their authors, I mean they really are but you know who s to say that they decide all of a sudden that there s nobody else in town that oh, we don t offer 70%. Let s see we re just going to offer you 50% royalty. Simon: Yes. Denise: You have no recourse. Simon: You have nothing you can do. Denise: So I want them to have competition, yeah. Simon: That s interesting. So, production, going back to the business plan a little. It s interesting you know the business way you look at that. The whiteboard I m fascinated about I m also a whiteboard person, I have a lot of whiteboards with to-do lists, goals, all of this stuff. You mentioned that the kind of final part that I picked up on this part of the business plan was long term goals or long term vision I suppose. How long term does that look? How long ahead do you look? Denise: Well, that s difficult for me. I actually look too far ahead. When I do my business plan I usually plan out a year ahead and then try to think another year outside of that. And so then like a five year plan, I m not looking at specific books I m looking at where I want to be. Like in sales, numbers of sales and overall books and where I like my goal for this year was to make the USA Today list. So that was part of my plan is I wanted to make the USA Today list. Simon: Oh and congratulations!