How to Promote Your Book on Any Budget (and Other Questions You’re Probably Asking)

Ferol Vernon: [00:00:00] You know, from the author perspective, be open to experimentation. You know, so, so our team is great. We’ve seen like, literally tens of thousands of promotions, right? So, so like we have ton of experience about what works and what doesn’t. But you know, what matters for your unique piece of art that you’ve created is how it resonates.

Welcome to the written word podcast. The podcast for authors who want to build a successful writing career. I am Ferol Vernon and I’m here with Ricci Wolman and this. It’s the written word, media pod. Hello everybody. Welcome to the written Word Media podcast. Today’s show, we’re doing something a little different, so instead of picking a topic and breaking it down, we have a grab bag of author questions that we are gonna go through.

And I’d like to introduce Emma Boyer, who’s our VP of Digital Ops and author relations. Hey Emma, how’s it going? 

Emma Boyer: Hey, good. I’m so glad to be here today. 

Ferol Vernon: Yeah. So Emma works on the front lines with our team answering direct author [00:01:00] questions. And so today we have 10 or 12 questions. We’ll see how many we get to, but we are gonna go through some of the most common questions from the past week or two that authors have written in.

And I’m pretty excited about this because this is actually what everybody wants to know because they’re asking it. So Emma, why don’t you go ahead. You can start us off and pick a question and Ricci and I will do our best to field the answers or we’ll just pitch it back to you and you can answer your own question.

Emma Boyer: Sounds good. I’ll preface this by saying these are all like very real questions that we got from authors and. Well, we hope they’re representative of things we get all the time. They are specific to things that our team really did field, so hopefully they’re helpful to other people. And the one we’ll start off with today is a question that we’re getting more and more, I think as things get more expensive in the world, and that is, what products do you offer at written word media that are under a hundred dollars?

Ferol Vernon: Yeah, this is great. This is, you [00:02:00] know, very topical and while you know, we just passed Mother’s Day, we didn’t have any specific Mother’s Day questions from authors. The general economic uncertainty definitely drives questions. Ricci, do you want to field this one about what products that we offer that are under a hundred bucks?

Ricci Wolman: Sure I can take a stab. I think I’d start by saying is that, you know, the whole ethos be Hundred Word Media is providing really effective, affordable promotions and marketing tools for authors. So I think probably more than half of the products that we offer fall under the a hundred dollars or under a bucket and something to know is that we actually price our products.

Based on the effectiveness and the audience reach. So more niche genres will have lower prices. Audience genres that have really large audiences are gonna have higher prices. So I think the vast majority of our bargain, Booksy promos fall under a hundred dollars. A good portion of our free BOOKSY promotions fall under a hundred dollars.

We have a Reader’s list promotion that is a thematic list that we put out every month, [00:03:00] and most of those are under a hundred dollars, really in the like 75, $200 range. Another product that we have that’s outside of promos that is a really good deal are our giveaway product. The giveaway product is a list builder, so if you’re an author who’s trying to build your email list, which we highly recommend ’cause you get to own your audience and it’s an asset you get to keep investing in and recouping dividends from that is only.

$75 and with that product, you land up getting hundreds of new readers to your email list. So those are just a few off the top of my head. What did I leave out, Emma? 

Emma Boyer: I think you covered most of it. Yeah. I think that it would be, for most authors in any given genre, like you can absolutely find something that will work for you that is under a hundred dollars.

And I think, you know, this will definitely be a theme today, but what we’re always happy to do is help you if you are like, if you wanna write into us and say like, [00:04:00] Hey, I. My budget is X and I’d really like to run a promotion or hear what my goals are. Our wonderful team who answer author questions all day every day is happy to kind of help pair you with a promotion that would be a good fit.

Ferol Vernon: Yeah, I think that’s really important is like, you know, there’s a lot of things that are under a hundred dollars, depends on genre. The other thing I would add is that, you know, if you have an audio book, all of our audio promotions essentially right now are under a hundred dollars, which is really exciting, especially with all the new audio that’s coming.

And I think what Emma Said’s really important, like, we’ll help you. You don’t have to be, you know, on your own here, you can write into written word media and somebody there will literally walk you through all of our options depending on your budget. And while we do have a lot of promotions that are more expensive and more impactful as well, everybody’s gotta start somewhere.

And so I think this is a great question and like, you know what people are asking behind the actual question is like, I don’t have very much money. What can I do? Right? And I think, you know, we’ve got a lot of things to help those folks out. Let’s move on. Question number [00:05:00] two. Emma, what do we got from the grab bag?

Emma Boyer: Okay. Question two, we’re zooming out a little bit. So for maybe people who are less familiar with us or less familiar with email promos, what exactly is your promotion? What is a promotion at written word media and how can I tell if it worked? 

Ferol Vernon: Okay, so I’m gonna split this into the two questions that is for us.

So what are you like, what exactly is the written word? Media promotion. Emma, I think it’d be great to hear from you, you know, like what, this is obviously an author who’s getting started doing their homework like they should. What do we wanna say to somebody who says like, Hey, what is this? What does it do?

Emma Boyer: Yeah, that’s a great question and I think probably what this person is referring to is an email promotion, so I always like to be clear about that because at Written Word Media, we, I think are maybe best known for our email promotions. But we do have other products, obviously, so I think. I’m gonna talk specifically about email promotions and what an email [00:06:00] promotion is like.

At its very most basic level is you as an author, pay for a spot in one of our newsletters that goes out to a. Hundreds of thousands of readers, and we use a really specific targeting system to make sure that those readers are readers who are interested in your book. So if I am a fantasy author, and I, my book is free on a Tuesday.

I decide I’m going to run an email promo and I’m gonna buy a spot in free booksy. My book will only be in front of readers who are interested in fantasy titles and who are interested in reading them for free. So it’s a very high intent map. So that’s the way it works. That’s what an email promo is. And there are different shades of gray for different price points, different genres, you know, kind of specific things about.

Specials or series, but at its most basic level, it’s sort of an ad unit [00:07:00] in a newsletter that’s going out to readers. 

Ferol Vernon: I love it. That’s perfect. And so Ricci, then I’ll flip the second part of the question to you, which is really like a gold mine of information is like, how do I tell if it worked? Right? And this is, authors are always looking for results as they should be, right?

We want to see authors sell books. We want readers to read those books. How can they tell if a promo they run with us? So really a promo they run anywhere for their books actually worked. 

Ricci Wolman: Yeah, so there are quite a few things that happen when you run a promo. The first thing, and the most obvious thing that’ll happen is you’ll get sales or downloads of your, of your book predominantly.

This is ebook or audiobook. And so one quick and easy way to check if your promo worked is to look at your dashboards, your sales dashboards, whether that’s logging directly into the retailer, Amazon or Google Play. Or if you have a distributor, you can log in there. And so what you should see on the day of a promotion is that you see a spike in sales or a spike in downloads if you [00:08:00] are downloads, if your book is free, and sales, if your book is priced.

The other thing that a promo does is it actually kickstarts a lot of the retail algorithms for you. This is particularly true with Amazon, and it’s part of the reason that, as Emma alluded to, we have these hyper-targeted audiences because what the retailers are trying to figure out is who is this book for?

Who would like this book? Who is most likely to actually purchase this book in the future? And so by sending a ton of readers. Who are very specifically the target audience for your book, the algorithm can now see, okay, we had X number of readers come through, they purchased this book, and they know a ton of other information about these readers.

So if you’re a science fiction author and you run a sci-fi promo and then all of these sci-fi readers purchase your book on Amazon or Google Play, now the retailer knows. Okay. This is a book that sci-fi readers really love and they will start to recommend your book to those readers in email or in, you know, you may [00:09:00] also like different places on the retail algorithm.

The third thing that promos will drive are reviews and fan building. So these take a little longer to see, right? So somebody has to read your book, then come in and review your book. So getting reviews could take potentially months. You should see over the next few months that you start seeing your review numbers pop up.

And then if you do have a call to action in the back of your book that says, Hey, please sign up for my email list, or Please go grab my lead magnet, you should start seeing that traffic coming in and people adding to your list as well. So those are probably the three major areas to look at when you’re trying to figure out how did a promotion perform.

The one caveat I’ll put in here, we’re not caveat, it’s really in addition. Is if you are exclusive to Amazon and you are in their KU program, when you run a promotion, which you should also see is a KickUp in your KENP reads in the weeks and months following up a promotion, and then you get paid out for those as [00:10:00] well.

So those can be a little slower coming in, but you get those plus you get any sales that are happening on the same day. So it’s kind of a bonus, a double bonus when you’re running a promo. What did I leave out there guys? 

Ferol Vernon: I think that’s good. Just so to summarize, it’s sales in your KDP dashboard teaching the algorithm reviews, and those are like the big three, so, so if I see a bump in sales.

If I see a few reviews come in, if the algorithm starts to, to learn about my book, that’s a successful promotion essentially, is what we’re saying. 

Ricci Wolman: Yeah. I think the only other thing that I would add is, you know, more and more authors are starting to sell direct and potentially are maybe not on Amazon or if they’re.

When they’re running a promo, they’re putting their Amazon link, but they’re also putting their own website link in as well. And so if you have a website, you can actually look at your Google Analytics and see the traffic that’s being generated. So that’s another metric that you can now see directly as well.

Ferol Vernon: Got it. Okay. I think that’s great. Yeah. And you know, every author should be making sure that their promotions work [00:11:00] either through us or wherever they’re running. Like, you know, at the end of the day what they’re looking for and what they should be looking for is results. Right. And we all as a community wanna see that.

Okay. Amazing. Emma, what else is in the bag? 

Emma Boyer: Sure. This is one of my favorites and we get this question a lot, I think as authors. Either get the rights back to backlist titles that, you know, maybe traditional publishers had, or you know, start to just start to think about marketing in a different way. This author asks, I have quite a large backlist.

I’m wondering which of your products would be best to help revive it. 

Ferol Vernon: Yeah, so this is a great question. I think one of the things, sort of the undertones of the question is, does this mean you have a lot of books that have never done well or you’ve never promoted, or do you have a lot of books that were once promoted but have since gone dormant?

And we, you know, we get both and there’s no right or wrong answer here, but I think there is potentially a different formula for my whole entire catalog I’ve never [00:12:00] promoted because I’d rather write than do marketing or. I used to spend a lot of time and effort on marketing, but I haven’t recently. What do I do to kind of get back in the game?

Ricci, I don’t know if you have a specific answer here, but how would somebody who ha, let’s start with a backlist that used to be promoted. So these are books that have a little bit of traction at one point in the past, have a handful of reviews, but now this author wants to kind of get back on the horse, so to speak.

Ricci Wolman: Yeah, I think the first thing to do is to like look at the backlist and make sure that everything is grouped appropriately. So if the backlist consists of books in a series, then on the retailers, they should be set up as such. Because one really powerful promotion that you can run is a series promotion.

Where you promote book one in the series, and then what that lands up doing is driving sales of other books in the series. Once the reader has got through book one, ’cause now they’re invested, they wanna know what happens next. And so if you have a backlist that hasn’t [00:13:00] been, you know, given a lot of TLC in the last few years, it’s highly possible that each book is set up as a standalone instead of.

Being set up with Amazon or Google’s or Apple’s, you know, series set up. ’cause that wasn’t available I think five or six years ago. So make sure that everything is set up. Anything that’s in a series is set up in a series, and then running a series promotion on the first book down pricing the first book in a series to free or 99 cents, can really help to then kickstart the rest of the backlist.

I think in terms of promotional strategy, I’ll probably let Emett take this one, but if you are not in a series and you have, you know, just a bunch of different back lists, running promos on those different titles should create a halo effect on your backlist as well. It’s something we probably should have talked about in the previous question, but there are specific strategies and ways to do this.

Emma, I don’t know if you wanna delve into the details there. 

Emma Boyer: Sure. Yeah. So I mean, my honest answer when I talk to authors about this [00:14:00] is, you know, do something. Yeah. So, so I think the fact that you’re asking here is it’s a great start. And as, as Ricci alluded to, you know, the marketing flywheel, especially for backless titles, is a lot harder to get going than it is to keep going.

So what that means is once you do something, it’s a lot easier to kind of keep that momentum up. And so I think, you know. Ricci mentioned the, especially if it’s in a series running a series promo, that is something that I think a lot of authors see success with. If you wanna kind of throw a lot of firepower at it, so to speak.

We have promo stacks, which is kind of a ready made set of promotions that runs for one day, three days, or five days. That really boosts the audience, so it’s. Maybe a free Booksy promotion and some of our, one of our partners sites and maybe a reader reach ad. And so over the course of that time, that really gets that flywheel turning because you’re gonna see a big [00:15:00] audience reach.

And once you have done that a time or two, I think the really the key and what. See a lot of our really successful authors do is kind of keeping that going. And we have some tools that, that hopefully make that a little bit easier for you, which hopefully Farrell can talk about in a second. But what I see a lot of authors with big back lists doing is they sort of have a cadence, right?

So maybe this. Series is being promoted in May and then again in September. And then series number two is being promoted again in June and then in October, whatever rhythm works for you. But I think, you know, kind of once you’ve started here, keeping it going is really important and feral. I think, you know, recurring promos is a tool that I think could be super powerful here for a lot of our authors.

Maybe you could talk about that for a second. 

Ferol Vernon: Yeah, I think something that, that Emma said is so important and just it really bears repeating again, which is, you know, inertia is powerful, right? [00:16:00] Once you get it going, keeping it going costs way less money, takes way less effort than letting something just fall off and having to kickstarted again.

So, you know, for an author that has a bunch of books that have been, you know, quote unquote sitting on those digital shelves without being marketed in a while, buying a promo stack and jump starting that back catalog. Is a great idea, but it could be expensive and you’re reteaching a whole bunch of people about these books.

Right. And it’s absolutely a great idea. And then I think what we would encourage all authors to do, and we say this every time they write in, and you know, so you know, those listeners will get sick of us hearing it, but like the best strategy is to promote every 90 days. Flat out, like don’t let a corridor go by without doing some kind of promotion for one title.

Right? And if you sort of live and die by that 90 day mark, obviously there’s nuance there. But if you just want an easy way to remember what to do to keep inertia going once every 90 days, four times a year, it’s not a lot. But make sure each book gets a little love. [00:17:00] And Emma was referring to a feature that we have called Recurring Promotions where, and this is common, like authors are like, well, I’m busy, right?

Like, you know, my, my dog is sick, my kid has afterschool activities. I have a full-time job. Like, I got all this stuff going on in my life. Like, how can I remember to like promote? These books all the time and recurring promotion kind of takes care of that. So you can go to any promotion that we ever run, whatever your favorite one is, and you can go into your written word media dashboard and then use that promotion to set up a recurring promotion, and that’ll run it every 45, 60, or 90 days.

Whatever it is that you want and that will automatically book every time we open new inventory, it’ll run that promotion for you. So this can be a really nice sort of set it and forget it way. It’s not for everybody. Some people like to, you know, think about their promotions and change them and run different ones and experiment.

That’s awesome. You should totally do that. But for those folks that want like a real set it and forget it, approach recurring promotions is something I think that could really help you keep that flywheel spinning without having to think about it so much. [00:18:00] Okay. Where are we next? We’ve talked about promos, back lists, what else is inbound this week?

Emma Boyer: Yeah, so this one’s a little bit more specific and this author wants to know, can I use my own Amazon attribution links in your ads? 

Ferol Vernon: Got it. Okay. So Ricci, I’m gonna let you, you handle this one as the queen of marketing attribution, both in and outside of written word media. I’m gonna let you take the first crack at this one.

Ricci Wolman: Yeah. So the very short answer to this is no, we do not allow this, but it’s for what we think is a really good reason. The most of our promotions, as Emma said, are email promotions. So they go out in our. In our daily newsletters, which is via email, and if you are part of Amazon’s affiliate program, it is actually directly against their terms and conditions to put affiliate links in an email.[00:19:00] 

And we have been doing this for 10 years, and they, and we know that Amazon takes this very seriously. We’ve had many a, an issue with this in the past, and so we, because we’re, we are emailing such a large audience every time these emails go out and your book is being put in front of such a large audience, even if.

Perhaps you’re not getting flagged. When you send an email to your audience. There’s a pretty high probability that when we send it out with your affiliate link, something will get pinged in the backend of Amazon and they’ll get your affiliate account flagged and potentially suspended. And we really don’t want that because we know affiliate accounts can be an additional source of revenue for authors.

It’s a really good way to be able to track results. So it is unfortunate we’d love to do it. This is, we do not have any philosophical, personal reason why we wouldn’t wanna put your affiliate links in and let you know earn some additional income. But unfortunately, due to the way that Amazon deems these links and the [00:20:00] risk that it opens up to authors, we do not currently allow that.

Now, if Amazon changed its terms or loosened this restriction to some degree, it’s definitely something we’d be open to revisiting. 

Ferol Vernon: Got it. I think, you know, no notes. That’s great. I think that’s, you know exactly why we do it. And everything that we do at ROR Media is designed around the author, right? Like, we want authors first to support the author.

So, you know, we generally do what’s good for the author community and you know, Amazon, we all have a mixed relationship with the largest book retailer on the face of the planet. But their terms and conditions are sort of the law of the land. Okay. I wanna hop to maybe one of the other questions in the bag around genre.

’cause here, written word media, a lot of our promotions are based on genre, right? Because we, genre is one of the most important predictors of why a reader is gonna like the book and we get genre questions all the time. So, Emma, what’s, what are some genre questions that we’ve gotten in the past week? [00:21:00] 

Emma Boyer: Yeah, we get a lot of genre questions fairly.

You’re absolutely right about that. I think this is one of the most common things, especially because most, I think it. Although it would be nice and neat and clean, if every book was only one genre very specifically, that is very rarely the case. So yeah, here’s an example. This is just a fun one from this week, but this is a kind of larger question that we get pretty, pretty frequently.

So this off the wrote in and said, hi there. I’m not sure what category to put my books on, witchcraft in religion and spirituality or general nonfiction. They’re beginning books on witchcraft. Please advise and thank you. 

Ferol Vernon: Yeah. So to be clear, these are actual books on how to conduct witchcraft, right? So we think from this one.

Yeah. And this part of the reason why I wanna do this question and why I love doing what we do is like, authors are awesome. There’s these books for everybody in the modern world. Like there’s an [00:22:00] audience for every single book. And so, you know, some people would be like, oh, like witchcraft, like that’s a little crazy, but like.

It’s awesome. Crazy, right? And there’s a group of people that wanna read this book and like, I think part of our job is to help these kinds of authors figure out how to get that book. And so I really was excited when I saw this question on the docket because, you know, it’s a little bit of an out there topic, but I think it’s really cool.

And so, Emma, I’m really curious as someone who’s, you know, worked in publishing before you worked with us, like how do you answer? You know, what I would imagine is a thorny genre question like this. 

Emma Boyer: Yeah, so the truth is, the way we usually answer this is we say, Hey, send us your link and we’ll take a look at your book.

So, so the our wonderful team will take a look at your Amazon listing and so. Ricci talked a little bit about sort of our very targeted audiences, and when we’re doing this, when we’re thinking about genre and when we’re looking at an Amazon page, what we’re doing is trying to make the best match possible.

So we wanna make sure [00:23:00] that if we look at your book and determine like, yeah, I think this would do well in religion and spirituality, that the content of your book is more aligned with that audience of ours. Maybe not that audience in the world, but that audience of our email recipients than the other genre that you were considering.

So in this case, it’s gen general nonfiction, and the place we usually start is just those Amazon Kindle categories. So if you. If your book is shelved, you know, electronically in something that’s specifically in this case, witchcraft or you know something, spirituality, then that’s where I would tell you to run this.

And that’s, that’s because you’re gonna see better alignment, like I said, with our audience in that particular category. And general nonfiction, I think in this case, could really encompass so many things, right? It could be a book about. Gardens or dogs or you [00:24:00] know, lot, lots and lots of things. It could be a memoir, it could be all sorts of things.

So I think you’re gonna fi find a higher target match, running a book on witchcraft and religion and spirituality because you already know that audience is interested in that particular thing. That said, if you are the author, you know your book really well. And if this is a case where you know, which we do see this, if this is a case where it fits.

Amazingly in two different categories, or if you feel really strongly that the content is one way or another, like we’re happy to talk to you about that. And we have even had instances where authors felt so strongly that their book, you know, crossed over into two different categories. So much so that we ran them in both, that they decided to cross, cross promote them to two different audiences.

So that’s also a possibility. You know, we’re more than happy to work with you to find the right audience, but it’s not always easy. It’s not always straightforward. So if you’re not sure, like definitely start the [00:25:00] conversation with us. This question is great because it, it starts a conversation and in doing so, you’re gonna have a much more successful promotion.

Ferol Vernon: Yeah. And the other thing I would say is, you know, from the author perspective, be open to experimentation. You know, so, so our team is great. We’ve seen like literally tens of thousands of promotions, right? So, so like we have ton of experience about what works and what doesn’t, but. You know what matters for your unique piece of art that you’ve created is how it resonates, right?

Not what we think generally. It’s going to resonate. And so trying both, and like our team is super, as long as it fits the genre, which I, you know, this one, I think Emma, you’d agree, like could go either way, right? Like, and so try it, try one, and then a month or two later, try the other and then you can kind of see, and that’ll also give you the author.

Information about who like resonates with your book. Like you know, you actually get, be like, okay, well maybe next time I run an ad it should be a little bit more skewed to the nonfiction audience. Or, [00:26:00] hey, this like group of people that likes books around spirituality. Like they kind of dig this whole witchcraft thing, so let’s do that.

So I think having a little bit more of an open mind and be willingness to experiment is really powerful for authors. 

Ricci Wolman: Yeah. I just wanna go back to the one thing you said, which is our team has seen tens of thousands of promos. So if you don’t have a really strong feeling one way or the other, but you’re just a little confused as to which genre to choose.

You know, pick a genre and then write into us and be like, I’m not sure if that was the right one. And when our team reviews every single book that comes through, and they look at the genre matching as well. So if you pick a genre and they feel like that’s not quite the right match, they’ll actually reach out to you and say, Hey, you know, you picked Cozy Mystery, but actually I think you’re better off in the thriller category.

As an example, or if the match is good, you might not hear from them, but you just want somebody to tell you that you made the right choice. Write into us and be like, is this the right choice? We do know our audience. We will look at the book we do, look at every [00:27:00] single book and we’ll let you know, yep, you did great.

That’s the right genre. Or we’ll let you know if maybe we think it will perform better somewhere else. 

Ferol Vernon: Okay, cool. Well, staying on genre, Emma, do we have any other questions that are sort of genre ish where we can kind of pivot and do those now? 

Emma Boyer: Yeah, we do. We have one more, uh, question came in this week, and this is super common.

If my book is fiction and also children’s, which category should I run it in? 

Ferol Vernon: Yeah, so I think this is similar to what we were talking about before, where there are books that fit more than one category and you know, children’s is really an audience more than a genre, right? Like you could have a, a children’s mystery or you know, a children’s fantasy novel.

But Ricci, what do you think here? You know, when a book is a fiction book, it’s designed for a younger reader, what kind of advice do we give? Do we give those authors. 

Ricci Wolman: Yeah, I think the default here would be if you have a children’s book or a YA book to actually run it in those categories because the audience, our [00:28:00] children’s audience are parents of children who are.

Buying books for their kids. The YA audience is a little different ’cause it’s both, you know, potentially parents buying ya, but it’s also a lot of people who just like ya fiction. But in general, the children’s audience is a really good one. It’s, you know, a really engaged audience. ’cause it’s parents who are really interested in getting their kids to read.

We get some of the most heartwarming inbound communications from. Parents and grandparents who are signed up to children, just saying how thankful they are to get these books to have, be able to download them on eBooks, how they read their, the, to their kids from the eBooks in a really affordable fashion every night.

So we know that’s an audience that, you know, really loves to find and discover new books for their kids. And so I would say children’s. Did I get it right Emma? 

Emma Boyer: Yes, absolutely. The other like very specific thing I about Children’s and YA books is that they’re like actually very regulated on [00:29:00] retailers. So this is the only, this is the only genre that’s true of, but if you have published a book in Children’s and you’ve done, you’ve gone through the whole rigamarole, you know, you have to indicate the age group.

You have to indicate right. Content is appropriate for, so yeah, esp, anytime you’re promoting a children’s book, ya middle grade, I think, you know, that has to come first. That has to trump any other sort of sub-genre. So totally agree. Ricci, you nailed it. 

Ferol Vernon: Yeah. The other thing I would say, which is, you know, unsolicited is as a parent of kids that read middle grade fiction to all the authors listening, like write more of it.

We want more seriously. Yeah. You know, there is such a shortage. Sorry. Yeah. My kids have, have read through like every book in that section and now you know, they’re kind of forced into reading books that are, you know, have some content that’s maybe a little bit too adult for them because they’ve read everything that exists.

So write more middle grade fiction.

Alright, we probably have time for one [00:30:00] more. Emma, I’m gonna let you pick what’s, I know we have an endless supply of questions that we’d love answering, but what’s gonna take us home? 

Emma Boyer: Sure. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna end with a question that I think is a, leads to a little bit of a bigger question. But this author wrote in and said, I had to reformat my book for KDP.

Can you hold my spot while I do that? 

Ferol Vernon: Yeah. Okay. So this is a great question and hold my spot has a very sort of specific meaning in the world of promotions. Ricci, do you wanna field this first? 

Ricci Wolman: I’m gonna let Emma take this one actually, ’cause I know this is, in terms of promo date switches and holding spots is, uh, a lot of the bread and butter of what her team deals with on a daily basis.

Ferol Vernon: Alright, Emma, take it away. 

Emma Boyer: Sure. So yeah, this is a. This is like the Jenga that we’re always doing, right? And so the. First, first answer like easy answer is you can always, like, we will always work with you. We know that stuff happens, [00:31:00] right? You, KDP doesn’t like something, you have trouble changing your price.

You had to reschedule a release. Like we get that. We, and we will always work with you within our capabilities to, to reschedule a date that actually works for you. ’cause we want you to succeed. In an instance like this, we can kind of hold your slot. So if you know. Give us like good faith estimate, like, yes, I, this is gonna be done by this time.

Then we’ll absolutely kind of hold your slot. But what that means is that, you know, we have limited space in every email that we send. So what that means is if we are holding a slot for you, someone else can’t buy it. So what we ask. That you know, is just that, you know, kind of keep a dialogue open with us.

Let us know as soon as possible if you’re not gonna make it, if you’re gonna wanna bump it out. And that’s actually often how situations like this one resolve is we say like, Hey, why don’t we just like try again in a month? You know? And that tends to work better. And we find a date [00:32:00] that. Stresses you out less, stresses us out less, lets somebody else buy it and everything works out beautifully.

The one thing I’ll note is, you know, we will hold a slot for you and you can change up up until 72 hours before your promotion. Once that happens, we’re not, it’s a lot harder for us to change things and we probably can’t fill that slot anymore, so we’re not as. Flexible as far as, you know, we can still change it.

We just may not be able to give you a full refund for that money. So, you know, I think the thing to know here is like, we do this all the time. We move promotions around, we wanna work with authors to, to make promotions successful, and we just ask that you do the same, you know, work with us and keep us posted on what, what is actually happening on your end.

Ferol Vernon: Yeah, and I think something important to note is, you know, if you pay us for a slot, you know, a month from now, that, and you are like, that’s yours. We are [00:33:00] holding that slot for you. You have paid for it. Nobody else is gonna buy it. Like you’re all set. Yeah. And if things happen between the time you buy it and the time that comes up, everything that Emma just said applies, we’ll try to work with you.

A lot of times we can move it if it’s only a few days before, sometimes we can’t. And you know, we do have to enforce fairness and make sure that like all authors get the same access to marketing, which is something that we feel very strongly about. But like when you buy a promotion with us, it is locked.

And if you don’t have your title, you can put in TBD in the title. As long as you get it to us before that 72 hour window, our wonderful team will update it. Right? But I think it’s just really important to know people like, oh, can you hold my spot while I wait? Like if you pay for a slot, like it’s held and it’s locked and carved in stone as far as we’re concerned.

Ricci Wolman: Yeah, and I think the thing here is just communication, right? Communication is key. So if you’re two weeks out and it’s looking really unlikely, that book is gonna be ready, just email the team and say, Hey, it’s unlikely, can I, you know, [00:34:00] move it by two weeks, or can I slot in a different title? That’s always an option as well, just because you have a slot for one title.

If something happens with that title, the price doesn’t drop, the formatting isn’t ready. You can always switch it out for another title in your catalog, and that’s no problem at all. Again, if it’s within the 72 hours now, the 72 hours might sound kind of, you know, arbitrary to you all, but it’s really just a operational.

Issue for us because we do prepare these emails ahead of time because they go out first thing in the morning to give you all as much time as possible during your promotional day for readers to go and grab your book. And you know, if you think about a weekend, if we’re trying to send a Monday email, we’re preparing that on the Friday before we, we like to give our team the weekend off.

And so we. You know, that’s why the, that’s how the 72 hours comes into play so that we can get everything prepared, kind of locked and loaded so that the morning of your promotion, everything’s ready to go. And it goes out on time. And we have a really great track re track record [00:35:00] of getting out daily emails on time every day for.

The Post. 

Ferol Vernon: Yeah, I think, and the other thing I would say is, and we’ve mentioned a lot during this, but people are like, well, how do I, you know, talk to you like the email address is hello@writtenwordmedia.com, and that email address is staffed every day of the week. So even on the weekends, even on holidays, maybe a little slower on the, on some certain holidays, but there’s always somebody there to respond to you, to help you with your promotion, to answer any of these questions.

And so, you know, we really encourage you to do that. It’s part of what we love doing. It’s part of why we do this is to talk to you all. So for any authors out there listening, please feel free to write us in, write in with any question you have, and we’re here to answer it. And with that, I’m gonna wrap us for this week.

A grab bag of author questions. Again, the email address is hello at Written Word Media. Write into our to that email address and ask us questions, and maybe we’ll talk about it on a future show. [00:36:00] 

Ricci Wolman: It’s great to have you here, Emma. Looking forward to doing this again. Yes, 

Emma Boyer: great to be here. 

Ricci Wolman: Thanks for joining.