Is your book marketing strategy helping you grow—or wasting your budget? In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, Dale L. Roberts talks with Emma Boyer, VP of Digital Operations at Written Word Media, about what truly drives successful book promotions. They explore why branding matters, how genre impacts performance, and why waiting to market your book might be the biggest mistake you make. Emma shares actionable strategies around email list building, pricing expectations, and leveraging promotions to boost visibility and connect with readers—whether you have one book or a full backlist.
Listen to the Podcast: The Truth About Book Promotions
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About the Host
Dale L. Roberts is a self-publishing advocate, award-winning author, and video content creator. Dale’s inherent passion for life fuels his self-publishing advocacy both in print and online. After publishing over 50 titles and becoming an international bestselling author on Amazon, Dale started his YouTube channel, Self-Publishing with Dale. Selected by Feedspot and LA Weekly as one of the best sources in self-publishing of 2022, Dale cemented his position as the indie-author community's go-to authority. You can find Dale on his website or YouTube.
About the Guest
Emma Boyer is the Vice President of Digital Operations at Written Word Media, where she is responsible for overseeing the company's digital initiatives and operations. Prior to her current role, she served as the Director of Digital Operations at the same organization. Boyer holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the State University of New York College at Geneseo.
Read the Transcripts
Dale L. Roberts: What if the difference between a successful book promotion and a wasted marketing budget came down to a few simple choices. Welcome to the branding, marketing and promotion segment of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, and I'm your host, Dale L. Roberts. Today, we're looking at how authors can get the most out of one of the most widely used book marketing platforms in the business.
My guest is Emma Boyer, Vice President of Digital Operations at Written Word Media, a company behind powerful promotional sites like Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, Red Feather Romance, and there's so many more here. I could probably spend an entire show listing all the things that's underneath Written Word Media.
Everyday Emma and her team help authors connect with readers through targeted high impact campaigns. She's seen firsthand what successful authors do to build strong brands and leverage promotional opportunities, and what separates the winners from those who fall flat.
Without any further ado, welcoming here to the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, Emma Boyer. How you doing, Emma?
Emma Boyer: I'm good, thanks, Dale. Thanks so much for having me.
Dale L. Roberts: I am geeked up to have you here as well, this has been a long time in the making. But without any further ado, because I've got a bevy of questions for you now, let's just start it out with the best first place, because I'm not sure if everybody's familiar with Written Word Media.
Who are Written Word Media?
Dale L. Roberts: So, for those that are new to Written Word Media, what exactly do you offer to indie authors looking to build visibility and boost sales?
Emma Boyer: Written Word Media is primarily a book marketing platform and people mostly know us, as you said, for our email promotions and the longest tenure promotional sites that we have are Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy.
We also have some genre specific websites, like Red Feather Romance. We have a launch package called New in Books. We have an audiobook website called Audio Thicket.
So, primarily, I would say our bread and butter is email promos.
So, price promotions, whether books are free or 99 cents, less than $5 traditionally is our sweet spot.
What people tend to know a little bit less is that we do also offer list building for authors, that's relatively new. We have a product called Subscriber Search Giveaways where authors can build their own email lists, if that's something they're interested in doing.
We run Facebook and Amazon ads for authors, in really easy, as easy as buying a t-shirt, one-click way, that authors don't have to worry about learning those platforms or doing creative or targeting or anything like that. We do have a number of promotional tools, but I do think people tend to know us most for our eBook promos.
Dale L. Roberts: Got you. I know I got the chance to meet Farrell Vernon, one of the founders, a few years ago at 20 Books Vegas, and it was so great chatting them up, and I've since been able to use Written Word Media on a couple of occasions and found positive results.
Now, you have seen countless campaigns come through Written Word Media.
Key Branding Elements for Successful Promotions
Dale L. Roberts: What are the key branding elements that top performing authors have and place before the even launch a promo?
Emma Boyer: That's such a good question and it's so important. Some of the key branding elements are, obviously, a cover that's genre resonant. We get a lot of questions about this, and it doesn't have to be the most innovative or groundbreaking or different looking cover. It doesn't have to be even the highest quality, although I think high quality is better. It just has to look like the genre that it is. So, if it's a fantasy, it needs to look like a fantasy. If it's a thriller, it needs to look like a thriller. So, that really helps find audience. That is one piece.
The other piece is to just have all your ducks in a row as far as your metadata, as far as your book description on retailers, and really having some basic strategy that you're working with.
That might sound really overwhelming. It doesn't have to be, but you have to know what your goals are.
Is my goal to get my book out there into the hands of readers who might not know me? That is a very valid strategy.
Is my strategy to make money?
Those are very valid strategies, but they're very different.
The authors I've seen really succeed have good covers, have good metadata, and when I say good, I really just mean that align with their genre, and have a sense of what their strategy is.
I think some authors tend to run free promos re relatively frequently, I would say every 90 days, and those authors are usually doing it to either get that book out there widely, because our free promos obviously have thousands and thousands of downloads, or they're doing it to increase sell through on a series.
So, they have that first in series free, and then they tend to see that people have sell through books two through five or whatever that might be.
I think, not to make it complicated, but just having a very basic marketing strategy, or at least an idea of what you want to have happen, tends to be where we see the best results. It's when those things don't necessarily align, it's when somebody doesn't necessarily know what they're after, and then they're like, I don't know if those results are good.
The reason you don't know if the results are good is because you don't really know what you wanted to begin with. So, I think those are the few elements. I would really say that authors should have their ducks in a row before they promote.
How to Audit Your Book for Effective Promotion?
Dale L. Roberts: So, what is a good way for me to audit my book? Because I know that, us authors we're a little romantic about our projects. We love what we're doing, and sometimes maybe the cover is bowling shoe ugly, or maybe the description is like a wall of text.
What is a good safeguard that I can put in place, that I can audit all this stuff before I start running promos?
Because again, if I've got a trash cover that's not genre relevant, if I've got a really bad description or title for that matter, what's a good way for me to audit things so I can remove myself from the situation, because we know that I'm going to be biased about my work?
Emma Boyer: I think there are a couple of really easy ways. There are some more complicated ways, more sophisticated ways, that some people would recommend. I think there are tools out there that people can leverage. But I think there are some really easy ways to do this.
One is compare. So, find some other books in your genre that you know are successful or that are written by people who you admire and just compare them to your content.
Does my cover look like it could be on a bookshelf with this other one, and if the answer is no, then you're probably way out in left field. You just have to imagine that they at least resemble each other.
If you know this book is successful, what does their description look like on retailers? Does yours look that way?
The other thing is just to have someone else read it. Whether it's someone else in your home, whether it's a friend, whether it's another author. I know tons of authors who tend to do a really good job of crowdsourcing this stuff, and you're right, I think some authors can be really precious about the covers that they love, and I really get that. But at the end of the day, you have to let other people tell you if they think an audience is going to respond to that, and the easiest way to do that is to go directly to an audience. I think you're going to know pretty quickly
I think a key thing here is that, whether or not people like it is important, but it's actually not the most important. The most important is, does it look like what it is?
That sounds very basic, but it is the thing that is so often missed.
Occasionally, we'll see submissions where we've got a couple in some sort of embrace, and very far in the background in a tiny little speck is a spaceship, and people want to promote it as a sci-fi.
Sure, there is space, and I understand the content is space, but the cover doesn't look that way. So, to a reader who's just going to very briefly scan that cover, it doesn't immediately say, oh yes, I like this. I'm a sci-fi reader; this is a book for me.
Yeah, I think some of the quickest ways are to compare against other books in your genre and also just to check with other people, get it outside of your own brain.
Dale L. Roberts: Nice.
Common Mistakes in Book Promotion
Dale L. Roberts: We've covered a couple of mistakes some authors make.
What are some of the other biggest mistakes authors make when they're trying to promote their books through your platforms?
Emma Boyer: That's a good question. I think, for the most part, it's not so much mistakes as a mismatch of expectations or strategy, and the output that they get. I think that's probably the most common thing.
For example, if people haven't necessarily thought through their pricing and they're running a bargain book promotion on our Bargain Booksy website.
I have a wonderful team of real humans who're always talking to our customers, and if anyone has questions, is happy to answer them ahead of the promotion.
But they'll look at a promotion and an author maybe expected to make lots and lots of money on a promotion where they priced their book really high. So, that's not really a mistake so much as, again, a mismatch of expectations versus the actual strategy involved.
What I mean by that is, if you are running a thriller book promotion and your book is priced at $5 or $4.99, and it's in our newsletter with a bunch of other thrillers that are similar quality, similar length, look similar, that are 99 cents, our readers are obviously going to take a chance on that 99 cents book.
Though sometimes it's a little tough to get your head around the math of, pricing my book lower is going to make it actually sell more copies?
Sometimes that expectation and that reality don't necessarily match.
For the most part, I would say, the vast majority of our authors tend to listen to us about it and learn that lesson quickly.
I think it goes back to having a strategy before you start, like knowing what your goal is. If it's to make money, talk to us about how to do that first, and make sure everything you do is in service of that goal. I think that's really the biggest mistake.
The Importance of Strategy and Timing for Book Promotions
Emma Boyer: Then, similarly along the lines of strategy is just thinking about things like timing. For example, if you just ran a promotion with us, we don't let you run a promotion more than every 30 days on the same brand.
But I would say, being strategic about, I'm going to promote my backlist titles one after another, or I'm going to promote every 90 days. That's not necessarily, again, a mistake, but if you're just willy-nilly doing it and not necessarily tracking the results, it's not really a concerted effort.
I always tell people, if you don't know where to start with your marketing efforts, if you don't know when to do what, I think personally, and this is definitely an Emma take here, is that it's better to do a number of things at once in a concentrated way.
So, we have a product called Promo Stacks that does this for authors. That was an answer to authors, prior to us rolling out Promo Stacks, were handpicking promotions from a number of different promo sites and running them during Kindle countdown weeks or times when they were trying to make it free or a lower price. So, we have a stack option that kind of does this for you, and I think whether you're going to invest in something like that, or you're going to run a promotion and plan social media outreach and do a newsletter, whatever that might be, do it all at the same time.
As opposed to one thing here and one thing there, if you think, just for simplicity's sake, your strategy, if you don't have one, my advice is once a quarter, do all the things, do it for a week, really promote it, and then do it again the next quarter. Juice the flywheel.
There are, of course, shades of gray, and authors are sophisticated, and you'll all figure out the thing that works for you and your audience the best. But if you don't have a starting point, that's what I recommend.
Dale L. Roberts: Good stuff.
Should I Run Book Promotions with a Limited Backlist
Dale L. Roberts: How important do you think is it having multiple books, a strong backlist, or a series when planning promotions?
Emma Boyer: It is definitely important, but I don't think it's imperative and I think that's a mistake a lot of authors make; I don't have five books in this series, so it's not worth promoting them. I think that's not necessarily true.
Obviously, the potential for earnings is higher, the more books you have and the more books that you're promoting. Just the basic math of it, if there's more books, you have more chances to make more money.
However, promotions do a lot of things. They help you make money, but they also help you get awareness. They help you build an audience. They help you get reviews. There are lots of reasons why authors should be thinking about promoting their titles.
Just because you only have one or two books doesn't mean that those things aren't valuable.
If you start promoting when you have one or two books, and readers have found your book because they've taken a chance on it because they saw it in a free or a bargain newsletter or they saw an ad for it or whatever that might be, they already know you. They already are looking for the next thing that you've written, then I know all of you wonderful, sophisticated authors have something in your back matter that's going to keep them hooked. Maybe they've signed up for your newsletter. There are all of these things that kind of get the ball rolling that I think are really valuable to do, even if you have just one or two, or however many books.
Then when you do have five books and you're ready to really do that big push, it's going to be even more successful because you've done all of the legwork, and you have the audience, and you have the awareness.
I think, of course, there are lots of different ways to think about it, but I think it's a little bit of a missed opportunity sometimes when authors just wait until they have everything published.
Also, who's ever done? I talk to authors all the time who have 50 books, more and more. So, I think, you're never going to hit that critical mass. I think you should just go for it.
Dale L. Roberts: I think I've seen just so many times where there's some authors out there that write at a slower pace. Not everybody's prolific. Sometimes it takes a person five years to write a single novel, and that's still commendable. That's still something to be very proud of. But I think there's that self-limiting belief I think from time to time.
Some people believe there's this magic that happens in having series or a whole giant back list of books. So, I'm so glad that you were able to hopefully inspire a few people and motivate them to understand, you don't need to wait. You've got one book, let's promote it.
Emma Boyer: Yeah, let people read it.
What you said is so true. It's a huge deal, especially if you've given five years of your life to something. It's a huge accomplishment. It's a huge deal.
The vast majority of authors that I talked to, just going back to talking about goals or strategy, what they want is for people to find their work and to love it and to read it.
I think that's the key. So, don't limit yourself by not promoting.
Dale L. Roberts: Speaking of limitations, I feel like this is perfect segue into just thinking about genre.
Choosing the Right Genre for Book Promotions
Dale L. Roberts: What role does genre play in determining which Written Word Media promos are most effective?
Emma Boyer: As far as general advice for anyone, it's the same really as what I was saying about your cover and your blurb, or your description that's on a retailer, is that the category that you choose to promote your books to.
So, the way that Written Word Media works is our readers opt-in to specific genres at specific price points and on specific devices.
So, if they want to read on a Kindle, if they want to read on a Nook, they tell us that. If they want to read thrillers or fantasy romance, they tell us that. So, that's why our promotions are as successful as they are, is because of very high intent. If I'm a reader and I'm a subscribed to a newsletter, I'm not receiving a book that I'm not interested in because I've already told you what I'm interested in.
That is to say that the genre that you choose should really be true to the genre that your book is, and I know that very often authors have these genre-bending or genre-crossing books. Or they're like, it's a thriller, but it has some romance. I totally get that, and I think that those nuances are obviously really good for the reader.
But before you get to that explanation, you have to get the book in a reader's hands. The way you do that is by finding the genre that they are looking for.
So, instead of wanting to be true to every inch of the content in your book, think about, what is the ideal reader? Sometimes I think it's easier to think about that.
Is the ideal reader for your book somebody that's usually reading thrillers, then put it in the thriller category. As opposed to trying to say, yeah, but it's this and it's this. Sure, but thriller readers are the most likely to pick it up and enjoy it.
As for the genres that tend to be the most successful across Written Word Media, I think it's very much what you would think. It's the kind of headline genres that you would see anywhere, but really commercial. Genre fiction, like thrillers, mysteries, romance does super well for us, and lots of romance sub genres do really well for us.
We've started to see some interesting things. We've got a new partnership with Fangoria, which is a horror website, and we've started to see some {inaudible} for horror authors. It's really cool. I think that we are starting to see some audience sizes grow, like that one, that we hadn't before.
But in general, the things that sell well at retailers are the things that sell well for us.
Dale L. Roberts: Good stuff. By the way, you said Fangoria, I just started fanning out because that's an amazing magazine I remember reading when I was a kid.
So, when I get ready to pivot over to horror, I imagine I'm going to be leaning heavily into you guys.
Emma Boyer: That's right.
Dale L. Roberts: We're starting to get towards the end of things. I want to ask, what's one underrated strategy authors can start using today to strengthen their brand and prove the results of their next promotion?
The Importance of Building Your Own Audience
Emma Boyer: I don't know how underrated it is, I don't think it's earth shattering, but a thing I think that every author, regardless of the point in their career where they are, whether they even have published yet or whether they have 50 books, is thinking about growing your own audience.
What I mean by that is when authors are running an ad on Meta or on Amazon, or anywhere on the internet, what they're doing is running it to someone else's audience. Even when you run a promotion with us or run an ad with us, what you're doing is you're running it to our audience, our Freebooksy audience, Written Word Media's audience.
You're not running it to your audience.
So, a super valuable thing to do is think about ways to build your own audience. For the most part, the vast majority of ways this is actually valuable, that's somebody's email list for authors. I think growing your email list is a thing that you can always be focused on, should always be focused on.
We have a product that I mentioned really quickly at the beginning called Subscriber Search Giveaways, where you can just give us a copy of an eBook and we put it into a giveaway with other books in your genre and a Kindle or an e-reader of some kind. And people have the chance to discover your book and opt-in to your email list. At the end of that campaign, you get people who have said, I want to be on Dale's email list.
We have double opt in. They're genuinely interested in what you're doing.
This is just so important because I think, wherever you are in your career, the next time you run a promotion, you're going to do all those things. You're going to rent all those audiences from all those people. You're going to run an ad, you're going to run an email promo. But now, you can also reach out to the people who have already said that they're interested in you and that they support you, and you start to build that fandom.
I think that community of people who really get behind authors is incredible and is really the thing that's going to carry you through to the next phase. So, I think there just can't be too much emphasis on that. No matter how you do it. If you have a website, always have a place where people can sign up for your email list.
I just met a really cool author who goes to craft shows all the time and sells her books, and she always has a paper signup sheet so people can join her email list.
It's essentially free to do that, most of the time, but it's always something that's worth investing in and having it front of mind.
Dale L. Roberts: Good stuff. How can our listeners get in touch with you and find out more details about Written Word Media?
Emma Boyer: Yeah, that's easy. Easiest thing to do is writtenwordmedia.com. That's the easiest. But if you want to talk to a person, feel free to write into our inbox. It's just [email protected].
I have a wonderful team of seven people, real people, who are happy to answer questions. You don't even have to be running a promotion with us. You don't even have to be considering running a promotion with us. We have people that write in all the time with questions, and I think there's not enough resources out there for authors where they can just ask a question and not have to worry about it and get good advice, and we really try to do that for authors. So, please feel free to do that at any point. I'm happy to jump on the phone, point you in the right direction of resources, or obviously help you with marketing strategy.
Dale L. Roberts: Thank you so much for your time today, Emma, I do appreciate it. Hopefully we can do this sometime again soon.
Emma Boyer: I'd love to. Thanks, Dale. It was great.
