Create If Writing

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**Create If Writing**

Create If Writing is a weekly podcast for writers and bloggers dealing with authentic platform building online. You will hear from experts on list-building, connecting through Twitter, and how to utilize Facebook. But tools for building an audience would feel empty without a little inspiration, so these training episodes are balanced with inspirational interviews with writers who share their creative process, ups and downs, and how they have dealt with success or failure.

Kirsten Oliphant is a self-published author with an MFA in Fiction who has been blogging for 11 years and is in the top 20 of Houston’s Social Media Power Influencers. She has spoken at Blog Elevated, Houston Social Media Breakfast, Adventure Con, Houston Business Advancement Conference, and Social Media Day Houston. She created the Free Email Course and loves to get nerdy about all things email list.

Latest Episodes:

195 - 2020 Updates Authors Need to Know Nov 20, 2020

Show notes

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.

194 - Why Isn't My Book Selling? Nov 06, 2020

Show notes

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

193- Should You Publish Wide or Exclusive? Oct 23, 2020

Show notes

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

192- Big Book Launches or Low-Key Book Launches Oct 09, 2020

Show notes

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

191 - How to Plan Your Novel Sep 25, 2020

Show notes

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

190- How to Choose a Book Cover Sep 04, 2020

Show notes

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

189- How to Get the Most Out of Free and Paid Book Promos Aug 21, 2020

Show notes

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

188 - How to Keep Consistent Book Sales Jul 31, 2020

Show notes

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

187 - Behind the Scenes of a BookBub Featured Deal Jul 17, 2020

Show notes

I recently secured my first BookBub Featured Deal! There are a few options with BookBub--ads, new release featured deals, preorder alerts, and featured deals. Featured deals must be applied for and are the most expensive and most effective--or at least, they have been in the past. Are they still effective? Let's take a look!

Applying for a BookBub Featured Deal can feel sometimes like an exercise in futility. And frustration. Especially when you see some of the books that DO get chosen. Books that might have fewer reviews, weird or bad covers, or stinky blurbs.

After feeling the frustration and mostly forgetting to apply, I applied for book 1 and book 2 of my beach series. I got one rejection (for book 1) and one acceptance (book 2)! I'm going to break down the expenses, what else I did, and how the numbers played out.

For the full show notes, go to http://CreateIfWriting.com/187!

186- How to Format Your Book (without losing your mind) Jun 26, 2020

Show notes

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

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