In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Member Q&A podcast, hosts Michael La Ronn and Sacha Black discuss whether a pricey Kirkus review is worth it for an author trying to get into bookstores, or whether that money is better spent on ads, a stronger cover, or a small print run for influencers.
Other questions include:
- What should authors know about selling foreign translation rights, and which sub-rights should they try to keep?
- How long a term should you license, and why are translation contracts stretching from five years to seven or ten?
- Can you send out ARCs before you have a cover design?
- What do you do when KDP blocks your account without explanation?
- How do you find an ALLi partner who is good at marketing, and which marketing services are actually worth paying for?
- Should authors learn to market themselves before outsourcing it, and could AI make keywords and categories obsolete?
And more!
Listen to the Podcast: Are Kirkus Reviews Worth the Money?
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About the Hosts
Michael La Ronn is ALLi’s Outreach Manager. He is the author of over 80 science fiction & fantasy books and self-help books for writers. He writes from the great plains of Iowa and has managed to write while raising a family, working a full-time job, and even attending law school classes in the evenings (now graduated!). You can find his fiction at www.michaellaronn.com and his videos and books for writers at www.authorlevelup.com.
Sacha Black is a bestselling and competition winning author, rebel podcaster, speaker and casual rule breaker. She writes fiction under a secret pen name and other books about the art of writing. She lives in England, with her wife and genius, giant of a son. You can find her on her website, her podcast, and on Instagram.
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Read the Transcript
Michael La Ronn: Hello, and welcome to Self-Publishing with ALLi. This is the member Q&A podcast where we answer all of your questions around self-publishing, and publishing, and writing, and everything in between. My name is Michael La Ronn, and I'm joined by Sacha Black. How are you, Sacha?
Sacha Black: Hello, hello. Yeah, I'm good. I am about to start writing my next book. I've got some deals going on in the background, so things are exciting right now.
Michael La Ronn: That is awesome. It's always good to have those deals going on in the background, especially when they cash out.
Sacha Black: This one's quite a juicy one, I'm not going to lie, so I'm looking forward to getting that contract signed. Can't say too much until the contract's signed.
Michael La Ronn: Well, we look forward to hearing the details when the ink dries. I'm writing, and chilling, and traveling, and getting ready for—
Sacha Black: I just realized if I said that, I'd probably date us, so I'm not going to.
Michael La Ronn: Oh, getting ready for a certain establishment that has a lot of rooms. That has a lot of children in it. That is visited by a school bus. Yes, my child is getting ready for school. But we'll let the listeners imagine which semester it is, whether it's in the fall or the spring. Because I think you guys have that too in England, right? Fall and spring? Or do you do different?
Sacha Black: We call it autumn and spring, but yeah. I love the way you say that.
Michael La Ronn: Autumn and spring. Although it's funny, because I usually say autumn too, and then people look at me funny.
Sacha Black: Oh, really?
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, it's just, you know. So autumn and spring. But I'm doing that. But also I'm going to totally date us, because I thought it would be good for people to know, I did find out that I'm going to AuthorNation this year. So if you are at AuthorNation, I will be at the ALLi table, and I'll also be giving a presentation on scams and how to avoid those. So I would love to say hello, so please stop by and let me know. And I believe ALLi, we're going to be doing a gathering of some kind as well. So be sure to follow our social media channels to learn more about that, and we'll announce that when it comes live.
So sorry, Howard, we usually don't date ourselves on these shows because we record sometimes in advance, but I just had to let everybody know that I was going. So I look forward to seeing you there if you are there. Should be a fun conference this year.
Sacha Black: It is always fun at AuthorNation. I think you'll have a laugh.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, and I just love Vegas. Vegas is fun.
Sacha Black: We don't love the price of Starbucks in Vegas, though. I'm going to be honest about that.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, everything. It's an expensive city. It's a very expensive city, especially on the Strip, but once you get off the Strip, it's not too bad.
Getting Into Bookstores: IngramSpark, KDP, and Kirkus Reviews
Michael La Ronn: All right, so let's jump into our questions. The first question is from Dennis, and it's around marketing and distribution. Dennis recently self-published his novel on Amazon in three formats, so assuming print, e-book, and maybe hardcover. It's with KDP Select currently, but he does want to hit bookstores, libraries, and eventually do some rights licensing if that makes sense for him. Is taking print copies off wide distribution with Amazon and going to IngramSpark, and then potentially Kirkus Reviews, the way to go?
Sacha Black: I would definitely take off expanded distribution on KDP and log in to Ingram and set yourself up on Ingram. I would definitely do that. A lot of my bookstore distribution goes through IngramSpark, so I would strongly recommend that you do that. Most bookstores will not order from KDP expanded distribution because they're seen as a direct competitor. So that's kind of my opinion on that.
As for Kirkus Reviews, look, I personally have found that I am able to get into bookstores without things like that. I don't know if you have an opinion on them. I feel like they're quite expensive, and I'm not sure really of their effectiveness with very specific things. I think if you have a lot of reader reviews, sometimes that can hold as much weight. If you manage to get a good number of reader reviews, I feel like sometimes those statistics—number of sales or number of reader reviews or languages or whatever—that kind of information can play just as well for a bookstore as things like Kirkus Reviews. I've certainly never used them to get into bookstores, and I do know they are very costly. So I don't know what you think about that.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah. I mean, I think that if it works for you, then it works for you. Here's my thought on it. I think that if I could have a positive Kirkus review, I would take that all day long, but you have to pay to get that, and it is kind of a gamble, because you don't know how they're going to review your book, right? So you have to be careful what you wish for. You can get a Kirkus review, but it might not be a good one.
Sacha Black: Yep.
Michael La Ronn: Right? So if you could fast-forward and say, “All right, I'm going to have a positive Kirkus review,” in addition to all the other things that you're doing to market, of course, I think it's great. But you have to weigh the potential cost and the potential risk with the downsides. And the reality, I think, for most authors is that the money you can spend on a Kirkus review, you could easily put that into ads of some kind, and that would probably be a more effective use of your money.
But it depends, though, because I think Kirkus makes sense for some authors. If you're writing a book that is dead on the money of your genre and it's something that is similar to what they have reviewed in the past, and other people in your genre have Kirkus reviews and it's a very common thing, I think there are certain types of books that can do well there. But it's not for everybody. So I don't know. I mean, they're really expensive, and especially if you're just getting started, I just think that there are more effective ways you could probably go. But to each their own, right?
Sacha Black: Yeah, I agree. Even if you put that money into a VA to go and post in Facebook groups or things like that. They're usually quite expensive. Sorry, I appreciate I'm going off at tangents, but you could even put that money into a mini print run. You could do, say, 100 physical books and send them out to influencers or things like that. And then you would cover shipping and the cost of the book. That probably would have a more trackable—
Michael La Ronn: Measurable.
Sacha Black: Measurable impact, thank you, measurable result. Brain fog.
Michael La Ronn: No, I agree. Like I said, we've just in the last two minutes come up with alternative ways you can spend the money. Right? So that's not to cast any doubt on Kirkus. They have good reviews, and if you can get one, it's awesome, assuming it's positive. But there are other things you can do that I think are more fundamental. Like invest in a better cover. So if you're going with a mid-level cover designer, what if you went with a top-level cover designer? You pay for somebody who's a little more expensive. There are other ways I think that you can get a bang for your buck, or what is the equivalent term, bang for your pound?
Sacha Black: Yeah, but we say bang for your buck as well. So I don't know why.
Michael La Ronn: Oh, do you? Okay.
Sacha Black: Yeah, we do. Because when you said that, I was like, “Yeah, great phrase.”
Michael La Ronn: Bang for your buck. Bang for your pound. That doesn't sound right. Although that could be in a smut novel or something like that. That would be kind of fun. All right, we're going down a tangent. Gotta stay appropriate, Michael.
Sacha Black: Yeah, let's move on.
Selling Foreign Translation Rights
Michael La Ronn: All right. Next question is from Adebola. Oh, okay, we'll get to her question next. This next question is from Kathleen. “What can you tell me about selling subsidiary rights for foreign language translations?”
Sacha Black: And this is for fiction?
Michael La Ronn: Yes. Fiction or nonfiction. Answer it for both.
Sacha Black: Okay. So I've sold Korean rights for nonfiction and Arabic translations. I've had queries on other languages, but those are the only two that I have sold. And then I have sold German rights for fiction. What I will say is that your first offer is usually pretty low. It's a nominal amount of money. And it will be a nominal amount of money that then you are still losing the equivalent percentage of your IP as you would to a normal publisher. So you're still going to get, you know, 6 to 8% for a paperback, et cetera, et cetera. Higher, obviously, for e-book and audio.
The other thing that I would say is to try and retain as many of the sub-rights as possible. So I sold German, and then they have organized the sale of the audio, and so I got two lots of advances, if that makes sense. So that's something to think about, about how you can restrict your rights. You can't always do it. It depends what sort of negotiating position you're in. But if you can, that would be my best advice.
The other thing that I would say is that unless you are in a really tight niche, you have to have sold quite a lot of books before they'll pay attention. If you were in a mainstream genre, you would need to be doing really quite well for them to want to take the rights, because obviously they are businesses, and they need to have some kind of evidence that they are going to be able to make their money back on your rights. So once you have sold those first couple of translations, it does get easier to command higher advances. But don't expect huge amounts of money to start with. It's not going to pay the mortgage until you're in a different kind of evidence-based position.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, that's great. I see it as a diversification play, right? It's a way to reach more readers. Just continue to make sure that you're following fundamentals as much as possible when you're doing that. So I have a follow-up question to that. When you sold Korean rights, how did you and the translator find a way to capture readers? So, say they buy the book, they read it, they get to the very end. What are you doing at the end of your books?
Sacha Black: Not up to me. I'm never going to be able to market in Korean. So I'm not doing anything. I kind of handed those rights over. If it were a language that I may be able to work with, I would probably keep the rights and do the translation myself. So things like Spanish and then French, I'd be much more likely to do those translations myself, because I can understand enough Spanish to have a basic conversation. Therefore, whilst I wouldn't be able to proof a translation, I might be able to proof back cover, end-of-book copy to make sure that they're signing up to my mailing list, kind of thing. So I have just let it go to the publishers if it's a language that I just don't feel like I would ever market in. That's just free money, essentially.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, it's an interesting question, because the marketing is always where things get complicated. You can sign a contract, but how do you do the marketing?
Sacha Black: Yeah. And you have to think about whether or not, if you're saying, “Oh, where do I get them to sign up?” Do you have the capacity to keep sending emails to that mailing list? Those are the questions you've really got to be asking yourself. If you have the capacity, then why are you giving up the rights anyway? For me, it's very much a question of if I don't have the capacity, I'm happy to sell the rights. If I have the capacity, I'm not giving the rights away.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah. And now with AI translation, I almost wonder if there are opportunities that didn't exist before. It's accurate enough that maybe there's something you could do there to send out an email to folks if it was in another language, but I don't know.
Sacha Black: It almost feels like having that split between fiction and nonfiction, they are two separate businesses. Do you want to run two businesses? I don't. So for me, I don't want to be writing multiple sets of emails, you know?
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, that's hard. So you'd have to find a way to automate it if you were going to do it.
Sacha Black: I think so.
Michael La Ronn: I think so. It'd be nice if you could write an email, click a button, and translate it into multiple languages, and then send it off to your different distribution lists. But yeah, that's what you have to sign up for when you do translations, and I think that's really helpful and illustrative.
Protecting Yourself in Rights Contracts
Michael La Ronn: And I'll just jump in with the legal perspective. I think you have to be really, really careful with your contracts. So make sure you understand the markets, and always make sure that you're only licensing the formats that are needed, and you want to make sure that you limit that to the formats, territories, and terms. Right? So if you're going to license a series, make sure you're only licensing—I know this sounds very basic and fundamental, but sometimes you have to really be careful—you would only license that series for a certain amount of time, maybe five years, or whatever you choose to license it for, and in that specific region that it's going to be translated in.
Sacha Black: 100%. And double-check which formats as well. What I will say is that I'm noticing lots and lots of contracts, like translation sub-right sale queries, have gone from five years to seven to 10. So I am noticing a real distinctive increase in the requirement for how long you give up those rights.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah. And best practice is the longer the term, the more money. So if they're paying you what they paid somebody five years ago and the term is more, that should be a flag for you to ask for more money too. It's a very lucrative business model. It can be, and like I said, just make sure you're following fundamentals with contracts, because sometimes things can go pretty south pretty quickly.
Listing Your Books in the ALLi Bookstore
Michael La Ronn: Okay, next question is from Mark. Mark says, “I have four novels published on Amazon, and I would like to list them all in your ALLi bookstore. I seem to be having some trouble in getting this done.” So Mark, I would encourage you to reach out to us at [email protected]. We can help you with any sort of technical issues that you might be having. But yeah, we would encourage all members, with our indie bookstore launch, our team did a great job getting that off the ground. That's just an additional avenue of distribution if you've got the time. We would encourage all members to upload your books to the platform.
Filling Out Nielsen's Title Editor
Michael La Ronn: Okay. Next question is from Sarah. Sacha, this one might be for you. When you register your book on Nielsen's Title Editor, what do you write in the box? Is it a short description of the book or a toned-down version of the book? Any hints are welcome. I'm assuming this is for ISBNs, when you purchase an ISBN through Nielsen.
Sacha Black: It depends which box. There are many, many boxes, so I might need more specific information. Yeah, I'm not sure is the answer without knowing which box you're talking about. One box that I can give you some advice on recently is that I had seen a drop in Waterstones stores orders, and I don't know what had happened, but somehow my distributor had switched to KDP. And obviously, if that happens, then it appears as out of stock for Waterstones. So just make sure that your distributor says IngramSpark, and then even if they're going through Gardners, you should still be okay.
Michael La Ronn: Okay. Yeah. I wonder, because there's a lot of free ISBN lookup places, right? You can go to a free website, type in an ISBN, and it'll tell you what pops up. I wonder if you could do that for a few titles and see if that particular field shows up on the search results. That might be another way for you just to see what people are using. But you could also check our ALLi member forum as well. Take a screenshot, and then put it in our member forum, and then just ask other people what they're using. We don't have Nielsen in the States, so I'm of no help to you there.
Sacha Black: I mean, I can log into my account whilst we're live if you would like.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, if you want to. Maybe while you do that, I'll answer the next question.
Sacha Black: Yeah, I was just going to say, why don't we do another question, and then.
Preparing ARCs Without a Cover
Michael La Ronn: Okay. So next question is from Idell. Have other members prepared their advance review copies, or ARCs for short? I don't have a cover design yet, but I want to start sending out ARCs months in advance. The short answer to that, Idell, is yes, absolutely. The earlier you send out your ARC, the better. And you don't have to have a book cover in order to do it. You can create it using a tool like Vellum or Atticus, and you would just simply format your book as if you had a cover. So format the book, assuming your book is done and completely final, and then export it to EPUB. What a lot of authors do is they upload it to a site like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin, and that allows you to send a link to readers, and it lets them download the books to their devices relatively easily, and then they can read it, and then all you have to do is just keep following up with them.
So that's what I would recommend in terms of ARCs. It shouldn't be a very difficult process. Like I said, just format the book using the tool you're already going to use to format, and just find a way to get it to them. And it doesn't hurt at the end of the ARC to have links to where people can actually review the book if it's out there. If it's not, you'll have to communicate with them once the book is published where they can publish the reviews.
Sacha Black: Yeah. Okay, so we can swing back to that question about Nielsen. I am not seeing a description box. So I've logged in and I've checked one of mine. There's a lot of metadata boxes. I've got publisher, which is my company. I've got imprint, series, title information, publication dates, pricing information. I've got book data, Thema, subject qualifiers, BookScan information, BISAC subjects. And of course you can just Google all of these things to find out the types of categories you should be putting your book in. But I don't have a description of it anywhere. So not sure exactly what that is.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, I would encourage Sarah to use our member forum. I would just create a post and, like I said, include a screenshot with what you're looking at, and you'll find plenty of ALLi members that can help. All right. Thanks for doing that. Appreciate it.
Sacha Black: Yeah, sorry I wasn't a bit more help.
Sharing NetGalley Links with Readers
Michael La Ronn: No worries. All right, so next question is from Patrick, and Patrick says, “I'm registered with NetGalley. Can I submit the NetGalley link for my book to readers?”
Sacha Black: Yeah. Well, if you want them to advance read it, then that's exactly what I'd be doing.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah. I mean, we can't read it here at ALLi, so don't send it to us. But certainly you can send it to readers, and yeah, that's the point.
Handling a Blocked KDP Account
Michael La Ronn: Okay. Now, next question is a question we get all the time, Sacha. “KDP has blocked my account without explaining a reason, and I'm not quite sure what to do. What do I do?”
Sacha Black: Well, you keep fighting, you keep emailing, and then you gather up all the information that you possibly can, and you email in, as we have a help desk that may be able to provide some support. We can't ever guarantee that we can get the account reinstated, but we can certainly provide help and support, and potentially try and work towards getting your account reinstated.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah. And it's just a gentle reminder to everybody to make sure that you're following all of the KDP terms of service as much as possible. Sometimes, unfortunately, some folks do get caught in the crosshairs, and that does happen when they didn't do anything wrong. But just make sure you're not doing anything that could be skirting the line or potentially in violation of the services. We're not saying that this particular person did or did not; it's just a reminder to everybody that this is one of those emails that nobody wants, right? You don't want to wake up at 8:00 in the morning and find out your KDP account has been terminated. So if you believe that it's been terminated in error, then yeah, you've got to start finding documentation and gathering a case and a defense, and maybe we can help. But just stay careful out there, for sure.
Finding a Marketing Partner
Michael La Ronn: Okay, next question is, “I need an ALLi partner who is brilliant at marketing. Any way I can find one?”
Sacha Black: Well, I don't know if we have specific marketers, and it would depend on, I guess, the type. Obviously there's people that can run ads, there's PR companies. I'm guessing they more mean a general, help-me-create-a-launch-campaign or something like that. But I don't actually know. I've never seen somebody like that in the directory, but that doesn't mean there isn't somebody in there. I've just not looked for it personally. So you're going to want to go to the member website and log in and look at the directory, our partner directory, to see all of the vetted, verified people in there. I mean, obviously you talk to a lot of the partners more than I, so I don't know if you already know some off the top of your head.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, I mean, the answer to this question is entirely dependent on when you are looking at our website. So what I would do is I would start by logging in and checking out our services directory, our self-publishing directory. See if there's anything in there that might be a fit. You can also go to our free service ratings directory at selfpublishingadvice.org/ratings, and you can search for a marketing provider. I'm sure we've got some that are in there, but I don't know any off the top of my head. But if they're listed as a partner member, then you can rest assured that they meet all of our code of standards, and the negotiation of prices and stuff is between you and the partner.
But yeah, you can definitely find someone. What we always say about marketing is that it goes back to the old adage that 50% of marketing works, but nobody knows which 50%, right? So you really have to do a cost-benefit analysis and really look at the provider's track record and see if it makes sense, to make sure that it's a wise investment of your money. It goes back to the conversation we were having about Kirkus, right? I know some authors that have spent money on marketers, and they found it to be successful. I know far more authors who wish they hadn't spent that money. So you really just have to do your due diligence.
And it depends on what services they're providing, right? I mean, are they helping you with pay-per-click ads? Are they actually going off and trying to book you on podcast interviews, which I find really annoying. I don't know if you get this, Sacha, but I just get a ton of emails from promotional people: “Hey, I would love for you to have my client on your podcast.”
Sacha Black: I used to get so many of them. I still get them for the podcast that's gone.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, it's really annoying, because clearly this author just paid a bunch of money to this person who can't even be bothered to go look on my website for two seconds to find out if I'm even still publishing a podcast. So every time I get those emails, I always think to myself, “Man, that author just wasted a ton of money.” Right? So what are they helping you with? Is it promotional stuff? Is it pay-per-click advertising? Is it looking at your entire platform and making recommendations on how you can fix it? There's all sorts of things that somebody can do to help you with marketing, but some of it's going to be more advantageous than others. I mean, are there any marketing services that you think would be beneficial, Sacha? Are there any that you would say, “Okay, yeah, that makes sense to pay for”?
Deciding Which Marketing Services Are Worth Paying For
Sacha Black: There are some very expensive, very large book box influencer kind of PR companies. So here's the difficult thing, right? I know people that have used them and have gone into the top 100 on Amazon. But part of me doesn't know if they were going to do that anyway, or it's very hard to actually track. 50% of marketing works, we just don't know which 50%, right? That's what we said. So it's difficult. There are some very large influencers. Even influencers that don't necessarily work with book box companies, but you could pay influencers, and I know some people that have spent five figures worth of money and gone into the top 10 on Amazon. So does it work? Yeah. Does it work for everybody? No. Am I necessarily recommending that you do this? Also very much no.
I personally am finding it difficult because I'm in a niche. I'm writing queer romance. Not everybody's going to want to promote that. It's not going to have the same take-up. So it's like, is it proportionately the same cost to me as it is to somebody who's in a more palatable genre, like straight romantasy, for example? You have so much to weigh up. I do think we are in the age of influencers at the moment, and yes, some people are getting ads to work, lots of people aren't. I just feel like you should lean into whichever skill set you have and do that, because there are readers everywhere in the world, right? They are literally everywhere. There are so many platforms where you can access them. You just have to do the form of marketing that you feel is most suited to your skill set.
If that's making relationships on social media, maybe pay a marketing company to help you film better quality content. Or if it's in-person events, maybe pay a VA to help organize reader con events. Or if you want to do more PR and you're good at talking to media, work with a PR company. Wherever your skill set is, that's where you should be spending money, I feel like, because you don't burn out that way. If you're doing things that are suited to your skill set, you won't burn out. Whereas if you're forcing yourself to do things you think are going to help you be successful, and actually they're not really good for your personality, it's a recipe for disaster. So I know I kind of talked around marketing spend, but that's sort of what I feel.
Learning Marketing Before Outsourcing It
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, I agree with everything you said. Lean into your skill set. I think that's critical. I think where people get off the rails is they want to outsource something that they don't want to do. So they outsource something that they don't know how to do to somebody, and then they have no way of checking the work to make sure it's actually legitimate. For example, if you have no idea how to run Facebook ads and you pay somebody to do Facebook ads, how do you know if they're doing a good job? Yeah, you can monitor your sales and your return, but how do you know that you just didn't get taken for a ride? That's my thing. For everything that you do, I think that you have to learn how to do it yourself first, generally speaking, and then you can learn how to outsource it at that point, and then you can learn how to manage whoever happens to be working for you.
I think that's just such a critical thing, because a lot of authors, I should say, just don't want anything to do with the marketing. They just throw their hands up in the air and say, “I just want somebody else to handle it.” But that's actually asking a lot of somebody. And you're potentially inviting embezzlement into your own author platform. At least that's my personal opinion.
But another thing I was thinking about with this is, I think everyone is so focused on having somebody else do the marketing for them. I think there's a real lane, and hear me out on this. I think that there's a lane for somebody who is a really good marketer and who doesn't actually do any marketing for the author, but sits in the co-pilot seat. So for example, let's say that you're an author, you've been doing this for two or three years. Let's say you're going to write a newsletter. You send your newsletter to this marketing consultant to get feedback, right? To say, “Hey, maybe you should do this. Maybe you shouldn't do that.” Maybe they look at the back of your book. Maybe they sit down with you to help with pay-per-click advertising. But at the end of the day, all the decisions are yours. You're just getting a second set of eyes on what you're doing to make sure that you're not missing out on anything or having major blind spots.
Sacha Black: But not a coach.
Michael La Ronn: Not even a coach. The word “coach” just triggers me a little bit sometimes. It's really more like a—
Sacha Black: Like a mentor.
Michael La Ronn: Mentor. Just somebody that looks at your marketing as you do it in real time and makes suggestions on what you can do potentially to improve it. And I feel like that would actually be a cheaper consultancy, because you're not going to spend as much time with the person potentially, right? But then also you can measure the impact of what they're telling you. So if somebody says, “Hey, I would recommend that you do this and this and this and that to your newsletter,” and then you send out your newsletter and your open rates and your click-through rates are actually worse than when you did it yourself, then you can actually measure that. But again, that's just an idea I had while you were talking. I don't know if that's anything anyone does, but it feels like that's a lane of something that I would be willing to pay for if I was going to pay for a marketing service.
Sacha Black: It's a bit like the old—I don't know if it's a proverb or an old adage—but if there's a fisherman, you can give a fisherman a fish and he'll feed his family for a day. If you teach a fisherman how to fish, he'll feed his family for a lifetime. It's like teaching authors how to market themselves, and they can forevermore market their future books if they learn how to do it the first time.
Michael La Ronn: I think so. And I just am a big fan of the author staying in the pilot seat. It's a good thing for the author to be doing, as a lot of this.
Sacha Black: I think if you are a career author, I agree. I think if you are an occasional author or a business owner who's writing a nonfiction book to have authority, I'm not sure it's the same. I think if you're a career author, you should learn everything first. I think there are examples where maybe it's not your primary. Do you know what I mean? You're not necessarily super-learned.
Michael La Ronn: Oh, yeah, totally. The author's only got one or two books in them.
Sacha Black: Yes. Exactly.
Michael La Ronn: And they just want to get those books out there. Yes, but again, as with all things, there are trade-offs. I think that the authors that you just listed are actually more susceptible to scams and red flags, and I think you have to be more careful if you're one of those authors.
Sacha Black: Yeah.
Looking Ahead: How AI Could Change Book Marketing
Michael La Ronn: But yeah, marketing's tough. It's one of those things. Maybe at some point we'll be able to look back on marketing and we will say, “Hey, in the bad old days, authors had to do their own marketing. Now you can just click a button.” But I really do think, though, this is really not a comment about AI. I think it's more of a comment on how things are changing. Joanna Penn has said for a long time, and something I just 1000% agree with, authors, we write, we spend how many weeks or months writing a book, and then in order to market that book, you've got to upload it to Amazon, and you've got to pick seven keywords and three categories. Why can't the book be the metadata? And it seems like that's where we're headed now with AI, where it can understand and read and be able to summarize things very well. I can envision a future not that far away where pay-per-click advertising is kind of dead, where the marketing is basically done by platforms based on the content that's inherent to your book. I don't know. That seems to be where this is going, but it's hard to know for sure.
Sacha Black: Yeah. No, I agree. I definitely think the book is becoming more and more… The intelligence in these machines is so much higher, they can read the whole book in seconds, you know?
Michael La Ronn: Exactly. And I think that opens up real opportunities for authors who have historically written books that are at the end of the long tail. Hey, did you ever read the book by, I think it was by Chris Anderson, The Long Tail?
Sacha Black: No.
Michael La Ronn: It talks about how most of the sales and popularity is on books, or content, that's at the very beginning of the tail. And then as the tail starts to curve down on a graph, there's a lot of books and a lot of authors and people out there that are in the long tail. And I think that in the future, the long tail could be where it's at. But it's hard to know right now. It just feels like everything in the market is just so frenetic that it's just hard to know where we're going. I think in a few years maybe the dust will settle, but I think that marketing as we know it is not going to continue for that much longer.
Sacha Black: It's about to get disrupted.
Michael La Ronn: I think it's already been disrupted; I just don't think we know the full extent. I think that the technology is not quite there yet. But I think that in the next five years, almost all the things we're talking about as authors, as indie authors, will be obsolete or we'll have to pivot.
Sacha Black: Business as usual, then.
Michael La Ronn: Yeah, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think as authors we can be resistant to change. And certainly there are things with AI that I think a lot of us don't like. But I think from a marketing perspective, it's going to create some interesting opportunities.
Sacha Black: Yeah.
Wrapping Up
Michael La Ronn: All right. Well, that is our final question, Sacha. So we are at the bottom of another episode. Thank you all for listening to Self-Publishing with ALLi. This has been the member Q&A podcast, and if you have a question that you want us to answer on the air, feel free to log in. If you're an ALLi member, please log in, and there is a link on the ALLi dashboard where you can submit your question, and if you do it, you just might hear it on the air. So thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
Sacha Black: Bye.
