Ep 115: The Tortoise Strategy-How Slow and Steady Wins the Publishing Race

Publishing a book requires long-term strategy, patience, and flexibility, not magic bullets or gimmicky shortcuts. The long game is the shortcut when it comes to building a sustainable author career.

In this episode, I answer some of the questions that have come my way recently via email and Instagram DMs, including: 

✅ Why does one's writing perspective often evolves from third-person past to first-person present as authors become more emotionally connected to their material

✅ How to "suss out" unsolicited offers to review your book for payment 

✅ How many reviews you should accumulate on Amazon before you begin investing in Amazon advertising

✅ The best way to accumulate reviews (everything, everywhere, all at once is NOT a good strategy!)

✅ How to best use the Universal Book Link to direct readers to the appropriate Amazon store based on their location 

✅ When and how to use Advanced Review Copies (ARCs) as an indie author

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Upcoming Interview
• 5:54 Writing Perspective: Third vs. First Person
• 9:07 Handling Book Review Solicitations
• 15:05 When to Start Amazon Ads
• 19:39 Universal Book Links and Distribution
• 25:49 Understanding Advanced Review Copies
• 28:19 Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:30

Elizabeth Lyons than absolutely necessary Because, let's face it, some overthinking, second-guessing and overwhelm is going to come with the territory, if you're anything like me. In short, I love books and I believe that story and shared perspective are two of the most impactful ways we connect with one another. A few things I don't believe in Gimmicks, magic bullets and swoon-worthy results without context, as in be sure to reveal that a result took eight years. Gimmicks, magic bullets and swoon-worthy results without context as in be sure to reveal that a result took eight years or required a $30,000 investment in ads, because those details are just as important. What I believe in most as an author the long game is the shortcut For more book writing and publishing tips and solutions. Visit publishaprofitablebookcom or visit me over on Instagram at ElizabethLionsAuthor.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Hi everybody, all right. This week we are going to do a solo episode. I put a question today up on Instagram in my stories to see what questions people have about book writing, publishing, marketing, and I got several of them, so I thought I would go ahead and address them here. They're great questions and they're common questions, so here we go. First, though, I want to mention that this morning, I recorded an interview with Nicola Krauss, who is the author of the forthcoming the Best we Could Hope For. It's a novel coming out with little a, which is an Amazon imprint, at the beginning of May and I am holding the interview per her request, or per her publicist's request, katie Kurtzman, who I adore. So I'll pretty much do anything Katie wants me to do until April 30th, which is the day before the book is coming out. Regardless, I want to mention it because it was a great conversation, nicola, if you are around my age and if you don't know what my age is, well, stay in the dark, people I am.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Back in 2002, nicola and her dear friend Emma McLaughlin released a book titled the Nanny Diaries. And I don't know about you, I was a huge fan, so much so that I had a truly visceral reaction when I received the email from Katie Kurtzman asking if I would like to have Nicola on the podcast, because it noted her as the author of the Nanny, you know, the co-author of the Nanny Diaries. And then there were nine more books in that sort of series that came after, written by Nicola and Emma, and I just I mean, my reaction to it was crazy because I remember the book so fondly, and I talk about why that is in the interview which will air in April, but her forthcoming book, the Best we Could Hope For, is available now on pre-order, so I will put a link in the episode notes, and I encourage everyone if you're somebody who likes to pre-order books, not only to support the author, but also because then a book, just randomly, you forget you've ordered it and it just arrives in your mailbox or on your doorstep and it's just delightful then go ahead and place your pre-order for it today. The cover is fantastic. It takes me all the way back to the 70s, and I may or may not have been alive in that time. One of the things that I asked her about, though, and we chatted about and I was chatting with someone else about the other day is the idea of what perspective from what perspective is best see my air quotes to write right. So we've got third person past, third person present, first person present, I guess. First person past, third person omniscient. There are all these different perspectives from which we can write, and they're all fine, they're all great.

Speaker 1: 5:18

One of the things I've noticed is oftentimes, when writers are writing memoir or they're writing memoir adjacent, so maybe it's creative nonfiction or it's fiction that's loosely based on or inspired by true events. There's often when they're not yet comfortable with the material. They start almost without. It's like a self-conscious thing or a subconscious thing. They start in third person past and then they slowly move their way from third person past to first person past, to first person present and when they get to the first person present, all of a sudden something like a switch flips and their emotional connection to the story starts to really really really come through, because it's almost a defense mechanism in some cases. Sometimes it's an intentional choice. I mean, let's be clear to write third person past or first person past or whatever and again, any of these perspectives can work. Sometimes it's a defense mechanism though that's the pattern I've noticed to write in third person past because it's just not that comfortable yet and it feels like a healthy way to distance yourself from the material. And as you kind of wade deeper into the deep end of the pool, you get more and more comfortable bringing it into first person and present tense, which oftentimes feels like it's happening right now. And sometimes we just aren't quite capable of handling feeling like it's happening right now when we're reliving it for the first time.

Speaker 1: 6:58

So that was something that Nicola and I talked about, and I think well, I know you're going to be really intrigued and fascinated by her thoughts on past versus present, and I'm not even going to give it away, I'm just going to say you're going to have to wait about eight weeks for it, but it's good stuff. So I'm curious, though what do you prefer when you're as a reader and as a writer? Do you prefer one as a reader and one as a writer, or is it the same? Do you prefer present tense or past tense? Do you feel like you're able to get better into the story if it's written in the present tense, or does it not matter for you, as long as the storytelling is great and keeps you feeling like you're in the scene? I'd love to hear from you and hear kind of what your just, what your personal preference is, because it truly is subjective. There is no right or wrong, and I love hearing what different people enjoy, so feel free to reach out and let me know.

Speaker 1: 7:54

All right, let's jump into some of these questions. The first one is from a new author. She's got a debut novel out and she's receiving a lot of requests via DM and, I'm imagining email, although, if not yet, just brace yourself. It's probably coming from folks or companies that say that they review books and wondering if she would be interested in having them review her book. And her question was is this normal? Is this something I should pursue, like what do I do here? So, in short, it's normal, but it's not OK. That is my perspective.

Speaker 1: 8:33

Any time in this industry specifically, but in many others as well, anytime a company or a service provider reaches out to an author unsolicited, to me it's a pretty big red flag and I have years and years of evidence of that. So are there great services out there that can help authors get reviews? Possibly, I don't utilize any of them, but do they exist? It's possible, but they would build, in my opinion, they would build their credibility on the way that they serve their clients and then wait for people to reach out. Or maybe they'd run ads, or maybe I don't know what. But to direct reach out to an author and say, hey, would you like me to review your book? And then you say, sure, I'd love it. And they say, okay, that'll be $10 or $100 or $500. It doesn't even matter To me. That is just bad business. Without going into the weeds of it.

Speaker 1: 9:35

There are so many different rules when it comes to specifically Amazon reviews. It's hard enough to get Amazon reviews to stick as it is. The last thing you want to introduce is pay. First of all, you're technically not allowed to pay anyone for a review. Now, the way that some of these companies get around it is they say we don't pay our reviewers. You're paying us to bring in the reviewers, but Amazon is honestly pretty savvy about knowing what the logins are of people who aren't actually buying the books, but they're not buying them from Amazon. They're just constantly leaving reviews and that's a red flag to Amazon's system. So a lot of those reviews don't get counted anyway. They're generic, they're robots at this point in many instances, so they don't even sound good when it comes to reviews.

Speaker 1: 11:27

I know everybody wants a million reviews in 24 hours and I'm not an exception. I get it. It's best to just be the tortoise on this. One Slow, steady and consistent wins the race when it comes to Amazon reviews and many other things in this space, I might add. But specifically reviews, yes, we just want to be slow and steady and intentional and consistent.

Speaker 1: 11:56

So the intentional piece is where we start talking about asking, and asking and asking again. Yes, people will tell you they're going to leave a review and they won't do it. It's not personal. They are as busy as you are. I promise I can almost 100% guarantee that it's not intentional. They just forget and we just have to ask and beg for forgiveness over and over and over again. It's what every author is doing, no matter how big the author has gotten, no matter how many reviews they've already got, no matter how many books they've already written. We are all constantly asking for that, because it's that social proof that helps an author who's new to us, or to whom we're new, feel confident purchasing a book. So say no to the direct solicitors for reviews. It's the short answer to that. That question leads really well into the next question, which is when is the best time to start running Amazon ads? I have two answers to this question and you probably know if you've listened to any other episodes.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Amazon ads are very dear and near both to my heart at this point, I've been running them on and off since 2018 for my books. To my heart at this point, I've been running them on and off since 2018 for my books. I'm full scale running them. Now I'm putting together a course on it to help people really understand. You know, people who have never used Amazon ads for books or haven't done it in a very long time and are kind of just like don't, I don't need the nitty gritty how to scale from 100,000 to 25 million in ads. I just want to know how to set this thing up properly and know that I'm not wasting my time and my dollars. And that is what I am putting together as I am continually figuring out how to get Amazon ads to work well for me, which I've, you know, been doing for quite some time.

Speaker 1: 13:58

So my perspective on when to start running Amazon ads is when you hit 20 reviews, and it doesn't have to be the day you hit 20 reviews. But one of the checkboxes I guess that I would have you check before you start running your ads is do I have 20 reviews on Amazon? And if the answer is no, then let's focus on getting you those 20 reviews before we start running the ads. And the reason for that is because you're going to be running ads to a pretty cold audience. You're not going to be running them on the meta platform, where maybe your followers are going to see it. You're going to be running it on Amazon, where it's going to be shown based on keywords, not people who already know you. So we're talking about a cold audience and if a cold audience needs to pick between two books, they are arguably going to pick the one that has more reviews and better reviews because it automatically positions it as a see the air quotes better book. Yes, they might buy both books, but if they have to choose, they're going to go with the one that already people are saying I loved this, go buy it, which is essentially what a four or five star review is saying.

Speaker 1: 15:14

If you did not listen to the episode two weeks ago, I think it's episode 114. It's either 113 or 114 with Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur. I highly encourage you to give it a listen. I will put a link to it in the episode notes. Dave and I talked about many things, including Amazon ads and keywords and categories, and one of his strategies when it comes to running Amazon ads that I thought was super sound is he exhausts his audience first. So he has been writing books and in the Amazon space for over a decade.

Speaker 1: 15:51

He has a large audience primarily via email. He's really not active on social media, admittedly and unapologetically, and he will utilize his email list first Once he has exhausted, I guess, what we could call the low-hanging fruit, so the people who are already close to him who are going to be excited that he has a new book out and ready to buy it. That is when he turns to Amazon ads to expand his reach into an audience who doesn't know about him or who doesn't know about his newest book, or both. And what's fun about that is that that allows his audience his current audience to leave the reviews so that by the time that he's ready to start running those Amazon ads, he already has those 20 reviews. So he gets it's kind of like a twofer thing right. He starts with his immediate audience and then gets those reviews and then goes outward.

Speaker 1: 16:48

Now, if you're a debut author and you don't have a platform to speak of, then your focus is simply doing what needs to be done to get those 20 Amazon reviews, and there are all kinds of ways you can go about that. The most simple is to ask so anytime somebody says oh my gosh, I loved your book. Thank you so much. That means everything. If you have a second, would you mind writing a quick Amazon review or just leaving a quick start. They don't have to write a review, they can just leave a star like ranking, preferably five, but whatever it is. So if you're communicating with them via text, via email or via DM, make sure to send them the link so that they don't have to go out to Amazon and search for it. They can just click on the link right from your message, go out, click the stars, leave a written review if they'd like and move on with their life, but let them know how helpful it is for authors for them to do that. Just keep asking, okay.

Speaker 1: 17:50

Next question how to include books published by IngramSpark in your universal book link. If you're not familiar with the universal book link, if you go, if you just do a Google search on universal book link and I'll put it in the episode notes as well what it does, it's actually quite smart. When you're in the US, I'm in the US, so if I go to Amazon, I go to. I shop at amazoncom. So when I go to Amazoncom and I go and pull up the link to my book, if I send that link out to somewhere, like in my emails, or if I have it in my profile on social media or if I text it to somebody, it links them to Amazoncom Well, that's great. Unless they're in Australia to amazoncom Well that's great. Unless they're in Australia, then it's not great, because what they want to do is they want to be able to log into amazonau and order it from the Australian site so that they can use Australian currency, it can print in Australia, all these sorts of things. As an author, obviously you are not going to send out an email that says if you're in the US, purchase here. If you're in Denmark, go to Amazon here. If you're in Australia, go here. So what the universal book link does is it gives you one link that, no matter where the user is, when they click that link, it automatically takes them to the Amazon store associated with the country that they are in. Now it provides the link to the Amazon store, the Apple bookstore and Barnes Noble.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Many people don't realize that Amazon's expanded distribution program which I don't personally recommend, but it exists nonetheless. It is fulfilled Orders that come in through that are fulfilled by IngramSpark. I recommend that people upload to Amazon for Amazon and upload to IngramSpark for every print seller outside of Amazon if you are an indie author. So either way, your book will be available through BarnesandNoblecom, either if you did expand a distribution already through Amazon or if you do it through IngramSpark, and the universal book link can look at Amazon, apple Books and Barnes Noble and provide the link to all three of those establishments. What it isn't able to do, at least now, is see whether or not your book is available at bookshoporg or targetcom or Waterstones or any other bookstore that's outside of the US beyond the Amazon link, which isn't an actual bookstore, right, it's the digital bookstore, it's not a physical bookstore or Barnes Noble.

Speaker 1: 20:35

I don't know. You know scientifically, like technologically, how it gets the link to the Barnes Noble, because that is outside the Amazon ecosystem, but I mean somehow some way. But for all the other thousands of bookstores or retailers I should say who might choose to carry your book through distribution by IngramSpark, carry your book through distribution by IngramSpark. The Universal Book Link service doesn't know how to identify those as of yet. I'm not sure how they would ever, unless they're able to and this is the extent of my technological knowledge but unless they can build the API with IngramSpark and see exactly where IngramSpark is distributing, like that I don't. I guess anything's possible for God's sake, but I don't know how or when that'll ever happen. So the thing to keep in mind with IngramSpark is you are loaded.

Speaker 1: 21:30

If you've chosen to load through with IngramSpark, the reason you've done that is so that A you can be available at a place like bookshoporg, which a lot of authors want to support, because bookshoporg supports indie bookstores. So, no, they don't have as good of pricing as Amazon. They don't have free shipping like Amazon, but a lot of people are more than happy to pay the difference in order to help support the indie bookstores and not support the monolith that is Amazon. If a big retailer like Waterstone or maybe an indie bookshop that wants to order through a wholesaler, if they want to order, they're going to go through Ingram, because IngramSpark is a division of Ingram, the wholesaler Ingram. So that's who they're going to go through. But from a print on demand perspective, everything is going to go through Ingram, like Ingram is going to be the one doing the printing on the back end of anywhere outside of Amazon.

Speaker 1: 22:30

So there's no real way for your universal book link to link to bookshoporg. Now what a lot of authors will do on their websites is they will have different buttons for different retailers. So you could have a button that says click here to purchase from Amazon, and then you can have a button to purchase from Barnes Noble, and then you can have a button to purchase from bookshoporg, and if you're in Waterstones you can have something there, and if you're at Chap in Waterstones you can have something there, and if you're at Chapters in Canada you can have something to go there. Whatever you choose, some people will only have an Amazon link, either because that's the only place where they're distributing or that's where they want to send people. Some people don't have any retailers. Some people only have bookshoporg, because it's like you either buy direct from me as the author here here's your buy now link and I'll ship it to you from my garage or it's go order from bookshoporg and let's support indie bookstores. That is a personal decision on the part of authors, specifically if they're indie, if they're traditionally published, then that is a decision that is not made by them. So it's a moot point.

Speaker 1: 23:38

And the final question I got this morning was with regard to ARCs, and are ARCs a good idea when it comes to getting reviews? Arc stands for Advanced Review Copy. In the traditional publishing world, most books have an ARC. It is the advanced copy that goes out to the media, to podcast hosts, to booksellers, to start generating buzz and interest before the book is actually released In the indie world. We don't really have arcs. We just we have proofs. So you can order a book off of, for example, amazon if you're doing print on demand, and it'll just say not for resale across the front.

Speaker 1: 24:19

If you really wanted to, you could create what looks like a proof. Well, let's not even go down that path. Bottom line is that's what an ARC is If your book is already out, the time to have an ARC has passed. So if your book has already been released, then when it comes to getting reviews I think this question comes this came from the same person who asked about the different folks who are submitting requests about would you like us to review your book, and in many cases, what they're saying in those requests is all you have to do is send us an ARC or send us the PDF of your book and that's how we'll disseminate it, or that's what we'll read. If it's an individual reviewer who wants you to pay them to review your book which again is just all kinds of wrong then they're saying hey, you can just send us an ARC. That's assuming that you have an ARC. And so for most people who have actual ARCs they are not utilizing these services have actual ARCs, they are not utilizing these services.

Speaker 1: 25:17

And for those who don't have ARCs but only have proofs, you can use a proof for something like that. You can use a proof to give to your launch team. Certainly you can also give them the digital version. You don't even have to give them the PDF. You can give them the digital version or the ebook so that they can review that Either way and be prepared to leave a review in the first couple of weeks after launch.

Speaker 1: 25:38

You don't want all those reviews coming in on the same day. Trust me Again, slow, steady, intentional, consistent. I wish that spelled out some sort of like. I wish that was a good acronym in some way, but it's not. I'll work on it. So all that to say ARCs are really. They're a traditional publishing tool. They're predominantly meant for the media, and when people who don't have strong credentials ie they're just DMing you and it's not the Today Show and they're asking for a PDF or an ARC, it makes me a little uncomfortable personally, on just a lot of levels, so I would not necessarily go that route.

Speaker 1: 26:16

That is it for today, but keep the questions coming. I just keep a running list and then when I do these solo episodes, I'd say every fourth or fifth one will just be a series of common questions that people are sending in. There's no such thing as a crazy question or a dumb question or a too often asked question. So please feel free, I'll keep it anonymous. If you would like, you can DM it to me, email it. Feel free, I'll keep it anonymous. If you would like, you can DM it to me, email it, elizabeth, at elizabethlyonscom.

Speaker 1: 26:42

If there's a whole topic you would like me to cover on the podcast, don't hesitate to reach out and let me know. More than happy to do it, more than happy to find someone to speak to it, the whole shebang. Keep on writing and I'll talk to you again in the next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, this is your friendly reminder to follow or subscribe. Leave a quick review and share it with someone you know has a great story or message but isn't sure what to do next. Also, remember to check out publishaprofitablebookcom for book writing resources and tips and to see all the ways we can work together to get your book out into the world. Again, thanks so much for listening and I'll talk with you again soon.