Use Tropes to Your Advantage
By: Ginger | Posted on October 28, 2022
What’s a James Bond movie without 007 using his high-tech gadgets? What’s the point of a western unless there’s a quick-draw showdown beneath the noonday sun? One highly overlooked attribute of successful books, shows, and movies is a reliance on tried-and-tested tropes that audiences like to eat up time after time. As Ginger points out below, learning and using the tropes of your genre can work in your favor by scoring an instant connection to your ideal readers. The word ‘trope’ is used a lot when people dissect popular culture, and its generally not in a flattering way. The dictionary defines a trope as “a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression” but fans of science fiction movies, horror films, or any other popular genre will more generally think of them as repeated scenarios that have become part of the furniture for their favorite books and TV shows…. Read More >
Lee Child on the Flexibility of Point-of-View
By: Ginger | Posted on October 21, 2022
One of the first decisions you have to make before starting to write a novel is which perspective, or point-of-view (POV), will be most effective in telling your story. The most common ones are first person and third person, and while I think most authors prefer one perspective over another, there are occasions where you at least want to consider the alternative. Most readers have a preference as well, and traditionally authors tend to respect this when writing series by keeping the whole series in the same perspective. But that doesn’t mean switching it up can’t be done. Lee Child is one example of an author that not only switches POV between books in his Jack Reacher series, but has even gone as far as to switch from first to third person within the same book! This week, Ginger delves into POVs to try and explain not only which one… Read More >
Is Your Freebie Lead Magnet Costing You Money?
By: Ginger | Posted on October 14, 2022
Generally when you advertise your book, you’re paying to show your ad to people in the hopes that they’ll be interested enough to click and buy it. That’s why you have to be very careful to show it to the right people, otherwise you’re simply throwing your ad dollars away. Ad platforms like Facebook let you build your audience from an existing list you provide, and many authors instinctively turn to their own mailing list of fans as the source for that. In some cases, that may very well be the best list to use, but depending on how you drew people to sign up in the first place, it may actually be just the opposite… Advertising your books on Amazon is a complex process. It might not seem like it, but there’s a veritable Rube Goldberg Machine going on behind the scenes that you can only hope will convert… Read More >
What can Stephen King teach us about writing?
By: Ginger | Posted on October 7, 2022
Many authors have probably already read Stephen King’s own words about writing from his book on the subject, but that doesn’t mean you’re done learning from him. King is a very prolific writer, and although he’s known for his horror, he’s actually written in a number of genres over the years. You can never know too much about any of the writing greats, and as Ginger points out, there are still things we can learn from King outside of what he put into his book on writing. There are common elements in his stories that draw readers in and make his novels so engaging, and those are the things that really deserve our attention. Recently, somebody mentioned to me that they enjoyed our blog series on what famous writers can teach us about the craft of storytelling. We’ve covered Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lee Child, Taika Waititi, and Ian… Read More >
Amazon Updates Return Policy Amid Pressure
By: Craig | Posted on September 30, 2022
Everyone loves a good David and Goliath story, which is why it was welcome news this week when Amazon confirmed their plans to alter their eBook return policy to make it less likely to be abused. Sure, it took them close to six months to finally relent and the change isn’t implemented yet, but at least it’s coming. Here is what we know about the upcoming changes, and what we think about them. As some of you will remember, we first reported on this story back in April amid growing reports of larger than normal return rates seen by some Amazon authors. Despite the fact that Amazon’s eBook return policy hadn’t changed in years, the increase in returns was traced back to a growing number of social media posts (mainly on Tiktok) highlighting the lack of restrictions and ease of which readers could return eBooks on Amazon, and then even… Read More >
What happens when an author gets divorced?
By: Ginger | Posted on September 23, 2022
If you’re married, divorce is hopefully not something you’ll ever have to worry about, but it doesn’t hurt to know what might happen just in case. Most people are aware of how assets generally get split up, but for authors it can be more than just a matter of who gets the house and who gets the savings bonds. At stake are not just the past and future royalties of your books, but even the intellectual rights to elements of any ongoing series. Ginger goes over some of the things you might end up facing if you’re ever in this situation, as well as what some of your options might be, but obviously it is not to be taken as any sort of official legal advise. Hope you’ll never need to worry about any of this, though! Ernest Hemingway was married four times. JK Rowling and Jackie Collins were married twice…. Read More >
What can Agatha Christie teach us about writing?
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on September 16, 2022
As he’s done in previous blogs, Ginger is breaking down the lessons we authors can take away from some of the greatest and most prolific writers in history. And there isn’t anyone more prolific or successful than Agatha Christie, having sold more copies of her books than any other modern author has ever done by a longshot. So what was the secret to her success, and how can you emulate it in your own way? Read on for Ginger’s breakdown to find out. When it comes to best-selling authors of the modern age, there’s one clear winner: Agatha Christie. Over the course of her storied life, Christie wrote and published 85 books which have sold over 4 billion copies (and that’s not a typo – that’s billion spelt with a b.) She’s sold two billion more books than any author of the modern age – and they’re books that have… Read More >
Your First 100 Clicks lead to your magic Conversion number
By: Ginger | Posted on September 9, 2022
Last week Ginger discussed spending your first $1000 on digital ads, with the goal of getting both sales and information from that spend. This week, he’s focusing more on how to interpret some of the info you gather, specifically around what those clicks tell you about your “magic” conversion number. That conversion number isn’t really magic of course, but it may seem that way in how valuable it is in terms of giving you a very clear idea as to whether or not your ads are profitable or not. Figuring out your conversion number isn’t always straightforward, though, with some ad platforms making it more transparent than others. But if you know the best place and way to figure it out, you can then use that information elsewhere. Last week, we discussed how you should spend your first $1,000 in advertising budget, and we mostly concentrated on Facebook as an… Read More >
Spending your first $1,000 on digital advertising
By: Ginger | Posted on September 2, 2022
There’s an old adage: “You’ve got to spend money to make money.” Nowhere does this wisdom apply more than in the digital advertising industry – especially when it comes to the business of selling books online. However, it’s important to make sure that any money you spend provides some kind of value – even if it isn’t initially in direct book sales. Here are some of Ginger’s guidelines regarding what authors should focus on when spending their first $1,000 on advertising their books. In 2020, advertisers spent $378 billion on digital advertising, and that looks set to double by 2024 – equivalent to the GDP of the nation of Somoa. Much of what’s driving this is access to self-service advertising platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Self-service ads generated $28.5 billion in revenue for Facebook last year, for example. Authors comprise a significant number of those advertisers. In fact, the… Read More >
What can F. Scott Fitzgerald teach us about writing?
By: Ginger | Posted on August 26, 2022
Many people consider F. Scott Fitzgerald one of the greatest authors of all time, and his work is used as required reading in many U.S. schools. But even if you read The Great Gatsby as a child, the writing lessons you could have taken from it may have been lost on you then, or simply forgotten over the years. But with the staying power and impact that Fitzgerald’s books have had, authors would be smart to study what it was that he did right as a way to improve their own writing. That’s why Ginger is here with another breakdown on the lessons we can learn from a writing icon such as F. Scott Fitzgerald. The United States has produced some of the greatest authors of the modern age, but few are as well known or highly regarded as Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, who wrote under the name F. Scott… Read More >
