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I've covered a lot recently on author platform this year, but I almost never talk about craft. It's time! If I wanted to rename this post, instead of How to Write a Bestseller it could be called Write Good Books to Sell More Books or Sell More Books with Your Craft. At least, a little. I literally have a master's degree in fiction, but craft isn't my favorite thing to teach. Mostly because it's subjective. I do sometimes work with authors one on one regarding craft, but I find the focus on selling easier for ME. WHY? Because authors are emotionally invested in their craft. So, discussing this is hard. We either think our books are amazing or terrible, and we have a lot of feelings on the subject. People don't always respond well when they ask why their books aren't selling and the answer is: your writing. OUCH! I know it hurts. I've sat silently through critiques in grad school while people shredded my work. Just ... destroyed. I got over it. Having a beer at the bar with everyone after helped. For today and this post though, we're going to try to look a bit more objectively at our own craft. Read the full show notes at http://createifwriting.com/204

I've talked recently on social media for authors, but wanted to highlight a specific platform that I've been using more and seeing results from and discuss Instagram for authors. I think that most social media platforms have potential to work for you if you understand how they work and make it your goal to connect with the correct audience. (As opposed to authors who accidentally gather an audience of other authors, rather than fiction readers, by posting author-y stuff.) This year, I dove into Instagram, a platform I've been on since 2014 and not really used well since that time. For the full show notes, head to http://createifwriting.com/203

The first month I published a book in 2018, I made $115. Which totally excited me! People were reading my book! I wrote and published a book! But the goal was always a CAREER. I joked (but not really) about building an Emma Empire. Three years later, I made $26k in February 2021 and am slated to make over $20k this March. Want some takeaways? I've got 'em! For the full show notes, head to http://createifwriting.com/202 

As a part of my series on what authors need to sell books, I've covered the overall author platform, email, social media, and blogging/content strategy. Which leads me into another piece of the puzzle: ads for authors. Let's first rewind a bit to talk about author platform. I defined it in my post as the way that authors connect with readers. And while ads aren't NORMALLY what someone might think of when it comes to platform, it absolutely is a way to connect with readers. It's simply ... not organic. Let's dive into what you need to know about ads for authors, when you should consider running ads, and how you can learn them without breaking the bank. For the full show notes, head to http://createifwriting.com/201

As a part of my author platform series, we've talked about overall platform, newsletters for authors, social media for authors, and now I want to talk about what authors should blot (and video and podcast) about: aka, content strategy for authors. Authors often aren't so familiar with that term... and I think it's because often we create content without the strategy. Let's start using the term more because we should be intentional with the content we create. Let's talk about what authors should blog (and podcast and video) about: content strategy for authors! For the full show notes, head to http://createifwriting.com/200

Social media is often a dreaded piece of the author platform. There are so many different places to be and to post ... not to mention WHAT to post. Then there's the matter of how to handle social media while also writing books. Never fear! Authors can handle social media. You don't have to be everywhere or post a million times a day. Megan Ericson, a social media strategist, joins me for a conversation on social media for authors. Get the full show notes here: http://createifwriting.com/199

I have long been a fan of email lists. I think I started mine in ... 2010? Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. That's how it feels, anyway. Mostly because I was growing a newsletter as a blogger.  Now? I'm growing one (or several, actually) as an AUTHOR.  Some principles are the same. Some are different. Let's dive in and take out some of the intimidating factor of what I still believe should be the cornerstone of your author platform.  CREATING AN AUTHOR NEWSLETTER  Why am I still harping on email all these years after starting Create If Writing? (Because, if you've been around the whole time, email has always been my recommendation.)  After growing email lists for nonfiction and for fiction, it is STILL king. It's still more effective to sell books than social media platforms. It also is the only real DIRECT connection with your readers. Any time, Instagram could yank you, or your Facebook account could get hacked and shut down. And then... you're done.  With email, you have that list of emails. You can hit up their inbox because they've given you permission, inviting you in. Sure, inboxes are crowded. But readers still get excited hearing from their favorite authors personally. And if they hit reply to an email you send out to everyone, it then becomes a one on one conversation.  Email is YOURS. It's a direct line. It's personal, and there's no algorithm to an inbox.  Get the full shownotes here: http://createifwriting.com/198

Let's get real-- what do you need for an author platform in 2021? After a few years of selling fiction, I can tell you that it's less than you might think. Let's dive in!  Author platform. Did you shudder when you read that? For some authors and creatives, the idea of building a platform to connect with an audience is daunting. Others might like it, but almost all would agree that it's easy to lose focus worrying about follower counts and other stats. FOR THE FULL EPISODE, HEAD TO HTTP://CREATEIFWRITING.COM/197 Join the free community! http://createifwriting.com/community 

Two book launches, one month apart. Both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene. Oh, enough Shakespeare. Let's dive into the nitty gritty of two different launches I had this fall.  Book launches don't just come in one size. That's something I've found in my own experience. AND in listening to other authors and watching launches. I'm always testing, always trying, and never think launches should go JUST one way. The takeaway from this post should NOT be: follow my launch plan that worked better. But I DO want to lay out the differences between these two launches a month apart and break down some things for you to consider when making your launch plan.  Links Mentioned in the Show: Ads Extravaganza (my new course on ads strategy)  The Free Facebook Group The Quick Fix-- My Weekly Email Find the full show notes at: http://createifwriting.com/196 

Facebook Facebook SEEMS to have emerged from its crazy banning ad accounts time period. But maybe not. If your ads or account got banned, you weren't alone! Try to get through to their chat or on the phone with someone to get this fixed.  They are finally shoving all people into the new Facebook look, which I hate, along with most other people. We'll forget old Facebook by next year. For now, we mourn.  Amazon's KDP Publishing Series pages can now be managed right from your KDP dashboard. This is great! You can reorder them, create a blurb that talks about the series as a whole, or add related content (which isn't showing up on the page yet).  You can now nominate your books for Kindle Deal or Prime Reading (I can't speak to whether those work well, but the monthly deals I got didn't do a thing for my sales). The place to do this is under the marketing tab. (It's in beta so you might not have it.)  You can no longer change the titles of your ebooks without republishing them. This stinks, because if you change the title and republish, someone might actually RE-BUY the book and get mad. (I've had this happen.) I'm hoping this change goes back. Author Center is now connected right in the marketing tab, and they've done some updating of their own. I almost never go into Author Central, but it's very shiny and new. You can also more easily handle the other countries with Author Central, right from the KDP dashboard.  Amazon Advertising Recently, Amazon advertising added a few metrics you can now track in your dashboard. First, the pages read (KENP read) and more importantly, the royalties for those pages read (KENP royalties). That's the difference between these two outcomes:  You can also now try Sponsored Brand posts if you're approved. These were formerly just for Amazon Ad Advantage members, which is hard for authors to get. It will show as an ad with up to three books. I haven't heard much about how these are working... yet.  A Few Others Draft2Digital is now ​allowing for authors to split royalties for co-authored works. Read more HERE.  I've talked before about the issues with Audible Returns and I think that some big things (aka: lawsuits) will be lining up soon. Read more on the whole thing HERE.   

This is a question I hear and get a lot: Why isn't my book selling? In this post, we'll dive into a simple checklist to help you look at why your book isn't selling and how you can get those sales moving. Maybe you've been there.  You put in the hard work and wrote a book. You carefully picked a cover and wrote a blurb and did all the things to push your baby book into the world.  And... crickets. Or, at least, not the sales you hoped for.  Let's look at some very simple reasons your book might not be selling by way of a checklist. Ready?  Get the full show notes here: http://createifwriting.com/194

When you're publishing your books, you have a big choice to make: Should you publish your book exclusively with Amazon or put your book up on all the retailers? We'll break down the options in this post to help you make the right choice for yourself.  Are you wide? Or exclusive?  Uh, I'm ... unsure?  These terms (wide and exclusive) are often thrown about in author groups, and I get asked about them a lot. Since I have books published that are exclusive to Amazon and ones that are available on wide retailers, I thought I could give an inside look at what these two choices mean, and why you might choose one over the other.  READ THE FULL POST AT http://createifwriting.com/193

I've talked before about book launches and share a simple book launch framework. But I wanted to focus here on the tale of two launches: the big, splashy book launch and the low-key, chill book launch. But wait, isn't there just one way to launch a book? Go big or go home? No. I'm not really into one-size-fits-all for most things, and book launching is one of them. I'm going to go over some reasons why you might choose one over the other and end with some encouragement no matter which launch plan you choose. Read more at http://createifwriting.com/192

We all have different ways of writing and planning. Learn to embrace what works for you! Pick up a free guide to help you plan: http://createifwriting.com/novelplanning

In a recent post, Nate Hoffelder shared four mistakes you might be making with your book covers. Because book covers are so important, I wanted to create a companion post on how to choose the right cover and give some recommendations.  Why do we need to are about book covers? We're writers! Right. But if you want people to READ your words, you need to get them in the door. The book is the MAIN way to get them in the door. The blurb, cover, ads, and other things factor in, BUT the cover is the very first thing.  Did you know that humans process visual information in thirteen milliseconds? That's less than a blink of an eye.  So, as we dive deeper into book covers, I want you to be thinking of your book cover in a blink.  Read the full episode: http://createifwriting.com/190

This post is going to dive into how to get the most out of free book promotions or 99-cent sales (which will include KDP countdown deals). You'll walk away with a better idea of the strategy behind these kinds of promotions. Two of the tools used frequently by authors are free book promotions or 99-cent sales. If you're exclusive to Kindle by being in their Kindle Select program, you'll have a free book promotion or a Kindle Countdown deal per each enrollment period. (The enrollment period is 90 days.) If you're NOT inside KDP Select, you can manually change prices or use a promotion tool from within your dashboard.  But just making a book free or running a sale is NOT ENOUGH. There are so many free books and books on sale in the various retailers that you really need to have a strategy behind making this choice and a promotional plan in place.  For the full episode's show notes, go to: http://createifwriting.com/189

In this post I'm going to talk about how to keep consistent book sales over time. You might also want to look at my post, Sustaining Your Book Sales... and Yourself, as well as my latest episode about getting a Bookbub ad, which will tie into this information.  So ... you've written a book. Congratulations! For real. It's a big undertaking, and you should be proud of yourself.  Then you launch the book--time for more celebration! (And if you need a simple launch plan, check out my post on a Simple Launch Framework.) Launching really is hard work. Definitely something to feel good about.  And then comes the sales slump.  Or maybe your launch didn't go BOOM. It just quietly happened ... with a handful of sales to show for it.  How in the world do you sell books and then keep sustaining those book sales over time? Because the reality is this: if you don't promote, your books will continue to fall in the rankings until they're just lost in the Amazon (or whatever retailer) store. Let's talk about how to combat that.  For the full episode show notes, visit: http://createifwriting.com/188 Join the free community! http://createifwriting.com/community

Formatting your book -- sounds boring, right? Turns out there are a lot of things to know when it comes to formatting your ebook and print book. This post will break down what you need to know! Formatting doesn't have to be scary, complicated, or expensive! So, let's find out what you need to know.  Formatting might sound boring. But it's super important and can be very simple. Let's dive into the whys and hows.  First of all, formatting is usually the last thing you're doing, after your book has been edited or proofread. If you're sending ARC copies to a team of reviewers, you might need to format before this stage in order to send to them in a format they can read on an ereader. (Read more on beta and ARC readers.) Formatting stresses us out, but it doesn't have to. So... what really matters? Ultimately, reader experience is king. Your main goal with formatting is to keep your readers centered in the story. The end. Readers want simple. Not distracting. Not fancy. Don't think it has to be more than simple. Our goal should be to keep our readers in the story. Weird formatting or mistakes can pull the readers out and distract them from being lost in the fictional dream. Or, in the case of nonfiction, it might pull them out and undermine your authority. Wherever you write your book (Word, Scrivener, Google Docs), you need to be able to export it into a mobi file for amazon and an epub file for the other retailers. There are lots of ways to get a finished product.  If you WANT to get fancy (for some genres, like epic fantasy, this might be more fitting), I'd recommend Bookly Style for custom images for chapter headings and more.  Read the whole show notes at http://createifwriting.com/186 

I wanted to do a quick post talking about the two big ads platforms most authors use: Facebook and Amazon ads. There are some major differences between them, and it takes some work to figure them out. This is by no means a big overview, but a few key differences as well as some things they have in common.  A lot of people will debate the merits between one and the other. Usually people don't champion both, but find one that works for them and then use that. For me, that's mostly Facebook ads, though I'm starting to see some traction with both. Key Differences Between Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads Facebook will spend your money. Amazon MIGHT.  If you give Facebook a budget of $100 a day, Facebook will spend that. If you give Amazon a budget of $100 a day, your ad may or may not get served at all.  On Facebook, when you say you want them to spend an amount per day, they believe you. Amazon ads are really different in how they're set up and what that budget means. If you're setting a higher cost per click on Amazon ads, you might spend that. I know people who set up ads and accidentally put a decimal in the wrong place, spending a LOT of money very quickly.  Be really careful when you're setting up BOTH kinds of ads, knowing that you could be really losing a lot of money if you're treating those daily budgets the same on both platforms.  Read the rest of the show notes here- http://createifwriting.com/185

Author collaborations can be fantastic ... except when they aren't. In this post, we'll look at how to avoid bad author collaborations and the questions you should answer before you dive in! It's no secret that I'm into collaborations. I wrote a whole book on working with others called Creative Collaborations. And yet ... I've had some bad ones. I still recommend working with others, but I've learned a lot and am way better at choosing good projects and good partners. I hope this helps you avoid those bad author collaborations! KINDS OF COLLABORATIONS First of all, if you haven't worked with other authors, you might be wondering about the kinds of collaborations you can have. Really, the sky is the limit as far as ways you could partner up and support other authors or work together. But here are some of the common ways authors work together all the time. newsletter swaps (sharing other authors' books in exchange for sharing yours) joint author box sets or anthologies series or shared, connected worlds co-writing a book group promotions through Bookfunnel, Story Origin, etc running a giveaway together joint Facebook groups co-hosting a podcast interviews (on blogs, Youtube, etc) and so many more! Authors work together in all kinds of ways and it can really benefit everyone involved to work together and expand reach or share readers. But ... you can also end up getting burned. You might lose time, money, or relationships. Or, you might just derail your forward trajectory and momentum when you make a group project your focus. Read the full post HERE!