Summer Catch-up and Slow Release Strategies for Writers

325 / Can a slow writer find success in the current market? We dive into that listener question today and also share a summer catch-up after our June break. 

Hear about Jami’s book launch and what she wishes she’d known about launching wide and in a new genre. We also answer listener questions about slow release strategies, writing without burnout, and content ideas to share in your newsletters.  

✨ This week’s sponsor is Bookfunnel: https://bookfunnel.com

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⚡Links:

• Bookfunnel: https://bookfunnel.com
• How to Write a Series by Sara Rosett

Transcript

Sara 0:01

Welcome to the Wish I Know Men podcast. I'm Sarah Rodette and I'm Jamie Albright. And this week on the show, we are doing us. We're doing a catch-up on what we've been doing. And we're gonna do some listener QA.

Jami 0:16

Yeah. And I'm gonna talk about my launch a little bit. Yeah.

Sara 0:20

Yes. So what have you had going on lately?

Jami 0:24

Uh I one thing I didn't talk about on last week's podcast, but I had a book signing in my hometown on I guess by the time this comes out two weeks ago at the library. And also I set it up, but then I got real worried nobody was gonna come. I was just it really, I had dreams about it. It was a whole thing. I was so worried nobody was gonna come. And it turns out about 80 people showed up. And which was good. That's a practically a riot. And then and it was so good. It was so good. We did a QA. My daughter asked me some questions, and then we had put my granddaughter in the audience as a plant to ask the question to get other people to open it up to audience questions because a lot of people won't ask the first question. So when we opened it up, she said, Does anyone anyone have any questions? And three hands shot up. We didn't even need her, but it was fine. Yeah, good. It was sweet that she asked a question. And then, and so the QA went on for about 20 minutes. Their part, the the audience QA. Yeah, it was really great. And people just love my family, they love my mom and my dad and my sisters, and so and so a lot of my sisters that Joni, my sister who passed away, her friends were there, and then my other sister's friends were there. Interestingly enough, one of my actually two of my classmates were there, but one was she one came because her sister came. It wasn't like we were close friends or anything, but the other was my best friend in when I was growing up, and she and her mom came, so that was nice, but I was the one that had the least amount of people there.

Sara 2:15

Family support. That's good though. That is an excellent turnout.

Jami 2:20

It was, and I had lunch with three of my readers who I put it in my newsletter if anybody's interested. And it turns out they were all three from Kaufman. I thought they would be from maybe Dallas because it's only 30 miles from Dallas or what or some of the surrounding areas, but no, they were all from Kaufman, which was great, and yeah, it was really fun, and yeah, it was just great. It really could not have gone any better. I sold a lot of books and not just my new book, but I sold a lot of my bride's books too.

Sara 2:54

Yeah, I that's excellent. That's a great turnout for a signing. And and you were able to sell books at the library, they didn't mind.

Jami 3:02

No, no, it was in the auxiliary room, but no, they didn't mind at all. They because of that, because of the good turnout, the librarian asked me if to do this, they do this thing every year, which is they bring in two authors. It's like a community-wide thing, they do it at the civic center. You talk, you do a talk, and then you can sell books and everything. So that was great. Yeah, I know. But it was funny, interesting. My so while I was having lunch, my husband and my daughter went to the library to start setting up, and the librarian asked my daughter, So do you travel with Miss Albright and set up for her? I think I might have said, I don't know if I said this before.

Sara 3:46

My daughter was like, No, I do not have other things I do.

Jami 3:53

Oh my gosh, it was so funny, she was so funny, but it really was great. So I was very happy about that. And and the only real advertising I did was Facebook, and so I made several posts about it, and then I would tag my mom and my sisters, and then they would share it. So that I think that really helped, even though Facebook is not always reliable for us as often. I think I still think some people they can still contact their get in touch with their friends and stuff. But yeah, and then I we're recording this on what the seventh this weekend. I'm doing another signing at a dress shop in Kaufman. They called and asked me, and my mom really wanted me to do it, and so I was like, okay, I'm not sure how that's gonna go at all. But it will probably go. They're having a big it's a kind of an expensive place for Kaufman, and so they're having a big sale, like a ten dollar sale. So there will be a lot of people in the store. So we'll see, we'll see how that goes.

Sara 4:56

We'll get you out there doing events in person.

Jami 5:01

Being human, but I don't think it will be different, and I'm telling you, that whole the whole atmosphere of that signing was so great because people were just involved, and I was afterwards, I was like, Oh, I think I want to do more of these. I should go to the libraries and blah blah blah. But then I was like, I don't know if it'll be the same because people won't know my sister, they won't know my family, they won't have read the book, a lot of them. So I don't know if it'll be the same, but yeah, in case you're worried that you can't go home, you can. So you might try it.

Sara 5:34

Yeah, you can, yeah. The best signing turnaround I ever had was in the town that near my husband's family, they all came out. So I think if you have that family connection, yeah. And I actually I don't think they had ordered 10 or 20 books and they sold out, and the bookseller apologized. She was like, I'm so sorry, I should have known you were local. I should have ordered more, which I mean that's like best case scenario.

Jami 5:59

Absolutely, absolutely where you sell out, yeah.

Sara 6:01

And I would say if you haven't tried that and you are interested in doing in-person sales, start local. Definitely start local, yeah, and see how it goes.

Jami 6:12

But yeah, it was just it was good. It was good. I'm glad it made me smile. I'm like, I smiled, I had a smile on my face for a couple of days, and my mom kept getting phone calls and seeing people at the grocery store saying how much fun other people at the signing had, which I love that too. They had fun, but I was thinking with my family, at least at least if my family shows up, there will be a group will at least be full. I won't it won't be embarrassing, but honestly, not as many family members as I thought we'd come, just various reasons, you know, they have things going on. Some of them are coming this weekend, but so yeah, I was just pleasantly surprised. Yeah, that's good. That is good. That's that really is what's been going on with me this week. Just trying to get ready for this signing, which will just be a straight signing, it won't be like a QA or anything like that.

Sara 7:06

Yeah. I have done nothing that exciting, but I'm deep in the book. I'm so close to being near the end. And I was thinking today I'd make so much progress on it. And before we got on the call, I actually lost track of time because my Dropbox synced and put some folders and files in different places. But when I opened things up, they were totally blank. The scrivener had blank pages and it wouldn't let me save anything either. So I'm a little frazzled. I don't know what else I've been doing in writing. But yeah, so I think I've got that sorted out. I think I've figured out what I need to do to fix it. Yeah. And yeah, so we're gonna do, we're gonna talk about some QA and we're gonna do a summer catch up. But first we should mention BookFunnel is our sponsor for this week.

Jami 7:52

I love BookFunnel, gosh.

Sara 7:54

Yes, Sarah. Yes. So last time we talked a little bit about how we use BookFunnel, and I was thinking that I use it a lot, mostly for reader magnets, is my main thing I do. But they also have so many cool features. I think we'll talk about those as the month goes on. But one of them is you can do signed ebooks for your readers now. Like if you're having a signing like you are, and you wanted to sell ebooks, you could sign the cover or the interior, whatever you want to do. They're always so innovative and coming up with unusual and different things.

Jami 8:27

They really are. And what I love, they're just so responsive. If you have an idea, or like I haven't had an idea, but other authors I know have had really good ideas, and they're like really responsive. It's if it's something they can do, they'll they'll jump on it and do it. And I love that.

Sara 8:42

They're at bookfunnel.com, and if you want to find out more, you can go there. And they also have a really good podcast where they talk about a lot of the new features that they have. So check out their podcast too. And then we also have two new supporters this week. We have James Fink, and he picked the fire emoji.

Jami 9:00

Yep.

Sara 9:00

And then we have Meredith Hinley, who she was on subscribed on Substack. So you can find us over there. And we just are so thankful to have you guys along with us. And we appreciate all our supporters. And when you become a supporter, you get a shout out on the podcast and access to the backlist where we have 20 plus supporter episodes that you can go back and listen to. More rambling from us.

Jami 9:25

Yeah. I think it was James that sent us an email saying he was going back through some of the old our backlist and he how much value he was finding in it. And I was like, Oh, that's so good. Thank goodness. We want that to be the case. That's why we do this. It was really nice. Good to hear. Yeah.

Sara 9:40

All right. So let's see. Do we need to do anything else before we get into the QA? Do you want to talk about? We've kind of glossed over last week about what we've been doing for the summer. I've been mostly doing writing on my book, doing dictation, deep into that. And I've done a whole bunch of website updates. Any updates for you other than swimming lessons and stuff?

Jami 10:04

And you're no swim lessons is over, I'm done. Yay. Yep. And my birthday's this week. It's on Thursday. Have a birthday. Yeah, I used to have birthday weeks. Now I'm I like to keep it to a few minutes. Okay, now we move on. We don't talk about it. Yeah. But no, not really. I can uh if you want, we can talk about my launch and yeah, let's what I wish I'd known now in what it's almost two months. It was on the May 18th. So let's see. Yeah, seven weeks up. So yeah, we can talk about that if you want. And yeah.

Sara 10:51

So give a summary of how you feel it went and what you've learned.

Jami 10:56

So I think what I wish I'd known, a summary of how I think it went fine. For what I did, I think it went really well. Was there more I could do? Yeah. Looking back, yes, I think there was. One of the big issues, I think, was I priced it too high. I did it on purpose because I wanted it to sit with some other books that were priced higher. But I think for a new author, even though I'm not a new author, but a new author in that genre, right? Maybe it was a little high. My especially, first of all, y'all know that I sold copies on Curios for less than what I was releasing it at.

Sara 11:42

Because I was like, that was an early release copy.

Jami 11:45

Early release, it was a week, and I feel like not as not as many people took advantage of that as I thought would. They didn't what'd I say, about a hundred? I think there was close to a hundred people that took it, but my my newsletter list is a thousand. So it and I have really good opening click rate. And compared to how many people have bought it since it released, I don't know that I would do that again. The curiosity, just because I don't really know that it would, I don't I made some money on the front end, but those hundred sales would have really helped with rank, I think, in the beginning on the day of release. Also, I was releasing wide, as I've said before. So I would probably do that different. I would probably release it at a little lower price. Maybe I don't know. I don't know. But was it priced at reason? It was priced at $7.99. Yeah. And I did after a couple of weeks lower it to $4.99. I have since raised it back to $5.99 because it is selling pretty well, and I haven't noticed a drop-off after going to $5.99 in sales. I definitely would have done an art team. I did NetGalley. So I think I I talked about NetGally, and my assumption was, and probably wrongly, I shouldn't assume anything, was that the those reviews would go on to Amazon, that those reviewers would review on Amazon, and not all did. But my NetGally reviews are incredible. In fact, all my reviews are incredible. I have nothing below a three-star, and I think I only have five three stars. The rest are four and five stars. But it took a long time. I am just now at I think I'm at 75 reviews. And that's not normal for you. No, because you normally have you normally launch with at least that many or more. Yeah. Yeah. I have 79 reviews. So seven weeks out, I have 79 reviews. And I don't know. I feel like I if I had done the art thing, art team, that could have been better. And I think seeing reviews earlier would have produced more sales. I just think that's reader mentality. I can't know that for sure, but based on data we all gather, I think that's pretty reasonable. And I just I don't know why I didn't. I guess I was thinking I didn't know if my arc readers would, but I could have scrounged together some arc readers that read women's fiction. And I didn't. So I would definitely do that again. And if I'm honest, so someone told me, and someone I respect, she was like, I think you're being a little self self-sabotaging in some ways with this launch. And I was very offended. And then I was like, maybe, maybe in that change genres, changed went wide, and used my pen name. And I'm and my thinking was when this takes off, when this is a hit, it this is gonna be so great because I've overcome all these odds. So that's a little self-sabotaging. And I'm just gonna be honest with you, I had that was my thought. So it it isn't like a hit, but it's not a miss either. It's a very in the middle. The rank has it's when you're wide, you don't really look at rank as much, but you do because you that does tell you if you're selling books or not. My money is good. Am I gonna retire on that money? No, I'm not. But the I can't say that it's a miss. I can't say it's a huge hit, but it's not a miss either.

Sara 15:42

So that sounds very typical now. That is like the typical release now, where years ago we might have said that was not a good release. Like now with the changes in the algorithm and the way Amazon is pushing books, they're not they're pushing down any spike you have, and they're rewarding these really long-term steady growth. So in the long run, it'll probably work out even better that it's just yeah, going along at this pace that's not stratospheric. You'll be glad later on, but right now it's hard, right?

Jami 16:14

I've sold, I've averaged a little over 10 books a day since the book came out, which is good. It's good. There are some considering all these factors, yeah, exactly.

Sara 16:25

Change to genre and it's not your typical type launch and all that, yeah.

Jami 16:29

Exactly. It may be a little more, actually, now that I haven't looked at it in a few a week or so, but it was and last week was a really good week. I don't know. I would have been a little more organized, I think, maybe on some things, but but maybe not. I don't know. I spent a lot of time trying to find influencers to read and review the book and reaching out and doing all that. I don't know that I would do spend that time that much time on that again. I don't know that it's helped. There have been three, four, four influencers who've read the book and loved it and talked about it. I don't know that it's moved the needle at all, and that was a lot of work. And it honestly, I ended up sending at first I sent them marks and then I sent them physical copies. I don't really know about if I would do that again. The Goodreads giveaway, I had 6,000 entries, which was that's 6,000 people that shelved the book to be read. Did those 6,000 people go back and buy the book afterwards? No, they did not. Some may have, but I would probably still do that again, though. I've really thought about it a lot. At first I was like, I don't think that's worth it, but I think it is worth it for exposure. I think a lot of these things you can't quantify.

Sara 17:57

A lot of these things that you're doing, they're requiring a lot of work up front. Like the NetGalley, that's a lot of work to vet all the people and then the influencers. And so it's you may that may pay off later in that you've got those contacts, and that book will always show up on NetGalle. The reviews will always be on there. And I've noticed when I'm on NetGalle and I see a book, sometimes I'll click back and see if they have any other books come out on NetGalle. And then so it's it those contacts and those things that you did, you'll have those in the future. And if you wanted to contact those influencers again, you could, but it is a lot of upfront work.

Jami 18:35

It is, it is, and also I have seen readers go from this book to my bride's to the first brides book. Like that's interesting. Yeah, there has been an uptick in page reads and brides books from the brides books, which is great. I really appreciate it.

Sara 18:58

Because you that's surprising. You didn't think that would happen.

Jami 19:01

No, I didn't. I didn't. Now, have I got a ton of subscribers onto my web, my newsletter from the end of the book? Not not really, uh 60, 70, 70, I think. So that's not very many. But I'm not offering, I don't have a great offer. If it's our personal story, and my family, all everybody wrote something, but some people aren't interested in that. And that's okay. So what I might what I'm probably gonna do this week is take that and put it in the back of the book and just have it in the back of the book. And that way people can read it and they don't, and then I won't worry about newsletter signups right now.

Sara 19:45

Yeah.

Jami 19:46

But I still have the sign up. I'm just I don't think that the offer is making a difference. And I had heard with women's fiction that that is the case, that they don't really care that much about an offer, but I thought I would try ads. I have I've run Facebook ads and Amazon ads. Facebook ads have worked better, and they have moved the needle. I've been able to see some see sales from those Facebook ads. So that's really good because I know a lot of people are not seeing that. I think that it's not they don't work as well as they used to, or you have to spend more to make them work. But I've been able to really I target women's fiction readers, book club readers, and engaged shoppers. The engaged shoppers thing seems to have really changed the game on those Facebook ads. So if anybody wants to try that, you can try it. My son-in-law, who this is what he does, he suggested I do that, and it really has made a difference. Amazon ads, I can't say that they made any difference at all. I still I can't make them, I can't get them to work. People that can, I just admire them so much. You're not the only one, right? Yeah, yeah. But anyway, that's really the rundown. I will say that I I this has tested my like how much do I trust myself? How much do I trust myself? And what I've found is I really do trust myself. I don't think I've uh the pricing, okay. I could have done that differently, but I don't consider any of these things a fail. I think it's data gathering. I think it I've looked at it that way. I haven't gone, oh, I've screwed this up. Because in my gut, I really do think, and I still believe this book is gonna do amazing things because mostly because of the response that it gets from people. It just has to get in the right hands. It just has to be the right people. I do need a champion for the book. If anybody's looking for a job, an unpaid job, follow. Volunteer position to really champion this book, but we all need that. That's that's not anything new or anything like that. I probably am putting it into KU in a few weeks when the audiobook comes out, just to give it a try. But I still I don't even see that as a fail because I think I made the right decision with going wide, mostly for the paperback sales. My paperback rank and my ebook rank are pretty, they stay pretty even. So I sell a lot of paperbags and or a lot. I sell as many paperbacks as I do ebooks. But yeah, that's it. I'm okay. I'm not if you want to ask questions about it, you can ask questions about it without feeling like you're gonna embarrass me because I'm not embarrassed. I've gotten myself together. I've had bad days, I'm not gonna lie. Because one does when the launch is like high and low. Exactly. The victory was in writing this book, and what it does is what it does, and it just its life is not over. And yeah, so I'm gonna start writing something new here in the next probably week. I put a lot of pressure on this book. I backed off that a little bit, but I think that's healthy. I and I think we all do that. I think we all put a lot of pressure on our books. Has it been a little embarrassing to look at the rank and go, whoo? But the fact is, nobody else, very few people are looking. There are some people I think that are just to see what I did, but I don't answer to them. I don't, and most of most people are not doing it to go, oh, look, Jamie, she's really screwed up. They're doing it because they love me and they want the book to do well. So I'm okay. I just want everyone to know I am okay, and the book is okay, and I am making money, my ads are making money, and so I'm happy. Yeah.

Sara 24:01

And it's the even if it didn't do what you thought it might, you still you have done this, you have gone wide, you have tested all these things, like you said, and so now you know that was how that launch went. And it's a very unusual book because it's so personal to you and to your family. So it probably you couldn't replicate this later on. And but it is information that you have that you can use next time. Yeah, yeah. So I think you've done great.

Jami 24:31

When I went wide, I thought I would feel like I don't know, like a real writer. We're always reaching for that, right? I don't, y'all. I don't. You feel exactly the same. I feel exactly the same. So if you want to put your books in KU, put your books in KU. Yeah. Want to go wide? We're all just trying to get eyes on our books. Do it the best way you know how. That's my advice. Yeah. So that's it. But if anybody has questions, send them in, we'll try to answer them. But yeah, as of now, that is the story of my launch.

Sara 25:09

All right. That works out well because we have two QA things we can do today. Yeah. That the first question is from Meredith, and it blends in with launching and slow versus rapid release. So she says, she's learning so much. And her question is, can you be an indie author if you're a slow writer? She says, Jamie, I know you say you're slow, but it wasn't sure if that was just in recent years or even when you were starting out. She says, I'm almost done with my first book and wondering if I want to wait to publish it until I have several ready to go so I can rapid release without rapid writing. Um so let's take it, let's talk about can you be a slow writer? And then were we always slow, basically? And yes, I feel like I was always on the slow side.

Jami 25:58

Yeah, I was always slow, always slow. One book a year. The first two books, because I had the second one pretty much written, they came out nine months apart. No, less than that, six months apart. But after that, it was about nine months to a year with every other book. And you know, so you can do it. It's hard, and I can't tell you right now if that would work now or not. It worked for me then. It didn't, it wasn't supposed to, but it did. I don't know about now. I don't know because I didn't know releasing.

Sara 26:31

Market's different now. Now you and I have both held back books because you held back your first book until your second was done, right?

Jami 26:37

Until it was pretty much done, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It still needed to be edited and stuff, but yeah, and you're very glad you did that, right? Yeah, I am. I'm glad I did that. Yeah. And so I would, I do think banking books isn't is not, I don't think that's ever necessarily a bad idea. The only problem with that is you spend what three years writing three books or whatever, however long it is, and then you start putting them out and the books don't take off. You've spent all that time, and now you've got books that didn't hit, or it's a concept nobody wants. And so that's that is a drawback. I think if I was a slow writer, I would wait until I had a second book written. I don't know about necessarily edited and ready to go, but I think I would wait if I was writing in a series. Maybe.

Sara 27:33

I did that with the High Society series. I wrote book one and then I made sure I had finished book two, and I was working on book three when I launched book one. I think you're right that you do run that risk that maybe you don't hit things just right. Yeah. I liked it though, because when I was writing book two, I went back and made some changes to book one. So I had the ability to do that. And you can update books, but this were this was like story structured changes for the series. So you can do that if you hold books back. But the drawback is that you don't you have you do spend a lot of time. So I wouldn't write like six or seven book series. I would, you know, maybe do two books and then have the third one a solid idea of where it's gonna go.

Jami 28:16

Yeah. Yeah.

Sara 28:17

Because it does launching, like you just said, takes up a ton of time with the all the preliminary stuff you have to do. So if you could have a window of you don't have to write, you can just focus on the launch, but you already know what you're going back to. And then there's the thing that if it does great, you're set up and you're ready to go. If it doesn't launch as well as you wanted it, then it's dispiriting to go back and maybe have it set up where you can do just two books or three books and then you're done. Right. And or you can extend it on if you want to extend your series. Have a book about that, how to write a series.

Jami 28:54

So you do. And the thing is, like rapid release, I don't know that it's working the way it used to work, but hitting the algorithm more frequently is always gonna work.

Sara 29:07

That's just it's always good to have something new, right?

Jami 29:10

It is, but is it working the way it used to? I don't know. I don't I haven't heard that it is. In fact, I've heard some people saying it's not, but I can't really speak to that because I don't do that.

Sara 29:23

Yeah. Yeah. So I thought we'd go through a couple of things for slow riders, yeah, because you and I were experts in this. We do this a lot. I think the main thing is you're playing the long game when the rapid release, rapid release is showy in its and it gets a lot of buzz. Yeah. Slow, hardly anyone is, oh, I'm the slow rider. I love it. Let me explain it to you. Let me explain how to do it. Yeah. But you have to keep in mind that you're doing that for the long term and you're just gonna have a slower build. And then the second book you release the next year also does the same thing. Yeah. But generally the patterns don't follow the same thing that a rapid release would. But so then if you're doing slow release, you have to be careful and not compare yourself to who's people who are doing rapid or quick releases, because that way you're it's not the same thing. And it just is depressing. If you're I find that that if I try if I try and compare myself to someone who's releasing a book every quarter, yeah, it's just not the same thing. And I can't I can't match that pace. So why would I compare myself to that person? Although I have done that in the past.

Jami 30:38

Yeah, we all have. We have all done it. Yeah, I agree. Uh it is a mind game. If you are a slow rider, you really just have to. There are some things you can do to write a little faster, but trying to go from being a very slow rider to a fast rider, especially if you have a day job and little kids, there's only so much you can do. There's just only so much you can do, and you will make yourself nuts trying to be something that right now you can't be, and maybe never can be, and just accepting that there's some freedom in that. And I I don't know that people talk about that that much. There just seems to be this right now, there's just this franticness that things aren't the same. What can we do? How can we do it? Where people are losing their livelihood or the livelihood they're being used to, they're still making money, but there's lost their livelihood. So there's all this panic. And I think if you just accept some things, then that helps a little bit.

Sara 31:40

Right. And there's so many variables we can't control, and we can control writing and releasing a book normally. You can control that. But if you're have the strengths like high intellection learner and these different things that you have to take longer, you may be able to do it for a while. You may be able to force yourself to do it for a while, but you may not be able to do it long term. So it may be a you can buckle down and do it for two or three years, but if you can't keep it up, then that's when you get into burnout because you're trying to do things that you're not built to do.

Jami 32:15

I was gonna that was burnout, was gonna be the thing. It's a real thing, y'all. It's a real thing, and let me tell you what it's not just working a lot or trying to keep up a certain pace. Those are not just the things that will burn you out. Being stressed out because you can't do what other people doing will burn you out. And I know that because that happened to me before my sister died. I was already kind of heading down that burnout path because I kept constantly wanting to do more and be more and write faster. And I just am not capable. That's just not how my brain works. It's not how I tell stories. My stories unfold. I know that now, but at the time, I was trying to be something that, or I wasn't trying to, I knew I couldn't, but I wanted to be. And so it was this stress and this panic, and that will cause burnout too.

Sara 33:14

And two, you have your reader expectations. So if you set your readers up and you give them four books in a year, and then you do it again the next year, and then you go two or three years without a book, they're gonna think, oh, this person may not be writing anymore because you've set this pattern. Yeah, you have to it, I think it helps to figure this out beforehand. Even if you're gonna rapid release, if you save up your books and then rapid release them, maybe you communicate that through your newsletter, hey, I have three books that I'm gonna be releasing really quickly, but then I'm gonna go back into the writing cave and it'll be a while before I have another book, just so people know what's going on. And I think you really have to lean into your newsletter when you're a slow writer, slow releaser, to let people know what's going on and just uh so that they know that there is another book in the works. You don't have to talk about it all the time. No, but that's the most frequent question I get from my readers is where's the next book? Are you still working on this series? And I'm like, yes, it's just going slowly. So yeah. And then another thing you might do, it depends on what you want to do, but you might consider which genres have readers that expect books more quickly and which genres expect books more slowly. Yeah. So I feel like mystery, thriller, maybe fantasy, they do have people who rapid release in them, but I think readers are more okay. They're less they don't expect like romance, I feel like is a high volume game most of the time, right?

Jami 34:44

Sci-fi too, I think is I'm thinking fantasy, maybe not. Maybe not, yeah. Because people know that it just takes a long time to write a fantasy book, but yeah, y'all, we can only do what we can do. We can only do what we can do. And if you I know there are people out there going, no, but I can do more. And maybe you can, only you know that. But it's not just do you have little kids and are you working? Do you have parents you're taking care of? Are you going through a life situation that is making writing yeah, like moving a priority? Yeah, because you something like that, but also if you are a person that handles stress with writing, lean into that, write as much as you can. Learn through those words, yeah. Yeah, but we can only do what we can do, we cannot change who we are. No matter we can change some things, we can become more efficient, we can make our processes easier and faster, but there are things at our core that we just cannot change, and we just have to accept that. And sometimes that is really hard to accept. The fact is, Rebecca Summes builds an entire business on that model.

Sara 35:57

Yes, on telling us we need to quit doing things and change our mindset a lot of times, yeah. And then I would say also if you're a slow releaser, you probably need another form of income because uh having one book a year and making a living off that, if that's what you're hoping for, is really hard. So yeah, so a lot of people do nonfiction writing, speaking, in-person sales, and then you could always take if you launch book one and you're working on book two, you could always come up with either a special version of book one, maybe it has sprayed edges, and you do social selling to bring in some income. Because there's if you're just depending on the launch itself as your only income, that's difficult to make that last for a whole year. Ads, trying out ads, and yeah. So I would say just look at other ways that you can have income coming in besides just depending on a launch. Yep. I agree. I agree. All right, and then our other question was how do I keep my newsletter list engaged while they wait for the next book? What kind of content can I share when I don't have a new book to talk about? So this is a perennial question.

Jami 37:11

I can talk about this. Go for it. It depends on how you've set your newsletter up. But my newsletter from the beginning was a slice of life. What's going on? I told a crazy story when I've told this story, but a crazy story when I started my newsletter, the very first newsletter was like, Y'all aren't gonna believe what happened to me, sort of thing. That's like the theme of every newsletter, right? It is in a lot of ways, yeah. And so that is something you can do. You can also say, you can also just pull back and only release it, send a newsletter once a month. That's okay. There's you there's no rule that says you need to send multiple newsletters a month. If you have a lot of books and you have a backlist and stuff, then yeah, you can do that because every time I send out a newsletter, I sell books. And it just is how it is. But if you don't have a lot of books, and I don't even really have that many, but if you only have one or two, then I don't know that sending out a newsletter four times a month is what you need to be doing. You need to be working on the other book, and you can just write about something going on in your day, your day, your week, depending on how much you want to share. You could do a current event thing. If it if you write sci-fi, you can write about what you can talk about what SpaceX is doing or their latest launch or some weird science-y, spacey discovery that you saw. You could do if you do small town stuff, you could do a whole like Lucy Score does something like good news or something like that. So she puts that in her newsletter, but along with kind of things she's doing. If you write thriller, you could talk about some true crime. I don't know.

Sara 38:57

You can there are a lot of yeah, like if you're yeah, if you're a cozy writer, you could share recipes, or you could just say, Hey, I found this recipe that I really enjoyed. You don't have to create the recipe yourself. You could just link to it and say, This was love. Some people do that. They say, What I'm reading, what I'm doing, like they talk about hobbies or whatever, and what I'm enjoying, like what entertainment I'm enjoying. And or like for me, I my next newsletter, I'm going to talk about the sheep detectives because that would be perfect fit for my readers. They would probably really enjoy that. So you can pull from popular entertainment, what's going on, what's going on in in your life. I found questions and polls. Readers love polls. I had a podcast that I did on Mystery Books Podcast about favorite detective pairings, and I listed out Castle and Beckett and Scarecrow and Mrs. King and all these people. I was like, who is your favorite? And people love that. And all it's just, and it is interaction, but it's an interaction. If you do a poll, you don't have to reply to each email that comes in. You know, you can talk about it in the next email. You can say, I can see you guys really enjoyed Sherlock. And that way you're kind of keep creating these loops too. Or you could ask, I'm going to do a survey next time about favorite sci-fi movies. So let me know which ones I should include on the list. Yeah. So stuff like that. And then giveaways. You can do giveaways and prizes, signed copies of your books. Some people give away digital items like screensavers, like a screensaver of your book.

Jami 40:32

It doesn't have to be a hey, y'all, let's talk long thing. My newsletters are not very long sometimes. The one I just sent out is not very long. I talked talked about the fact that our air conditioner had gone out and that about the book signing. And that was pretty much it. That was all that was in there. And then I gave away a deleted scene, or I put a deleted scene, a link to a deleted scene in there for people to go and read. So you can do things like that. It just I think we complicate. We complicate things. First of all, we have to remember our readers are busy. If they open it at all, they don't have a lot of time to read along a newsletter. We just need to keep that in mind.

Sara 41:18

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because think about when I go through my inbox, it's like I'm looking for reasons to delete things because there's so much junk that I get.

Jami 41:27

And doing a book recommendation or a show recommendation, that's always great because people are always looking for new things. And yeah. So that's that.

Sara 41:37

I think that is good. Okay. So if you guys have questions, let us know. You can send us a text. And don't forget about Book Funnel. Go check them out. And I think that's all we have for this week. Yeah, I think it is too.

Jami 41:50

You guys have a great week.

Sara 41:52

All right. See y'all next time. Bye everybody.