How to Market a Fiction Book Before It’s Finished (What Most Authors Get Wrong) - BM524

Are you writing a novel… or quietly hoping people will magically find it later?

This week’s guest, Olivia Zugay, isn’t here for that fantasy.

As a marketing and sales strategist for self-published fiction authors and founder of Story Flow Solutions, Olivia helps writers stop treating marketing like an afterthought and start building real reader demand before the book even exists.

If you want loyal readers rather than one-time buyers, this conversation will challenge the way you think about publishing from day one.

Key Takeaways:

Stop waiting to be “ready.”
Your audience-building window opens the moment you decide to write. Miss it, and your launch gets a lot harder.

Your readers will tell you what to write… if you ask.
Surveys, conversations, and feedback loops aren’t extras. They’re your unfair advantage.

One book is a gamble. A series is a strategy.
Thinking beyond a single title changes everything about sales, visibility, and momentum.

Confused authors don’t sell books.
Understanding the publishing landscape upfront saves time, money, and a whole lot of frustration later.

Social media doesn’t own your audience. You do… or you should.
An email list isn’t optional. It’s your most reliable path to consistent sales and long-term growth.

If you’ve been treating marketing like something you’ll “figure out later,” this episode might be the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed. So, tune in now!

Here's how to connect with Olivia:

Website: storyflowsolutions.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-zugay/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/storyflowsolutions/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/storyflowsolutions

Free Gift: The Profitable Author Roadmap

*************************************************************************
When Visibility Feels Hard, Podcast Guesting Changes the Game

If you know your book deserves more reach but visibility feels like a struggle, podcast guesting can open the right doors.

Podcast Connections gets you in front of the audiences who need your message and your expertise.

Contact them at PodcastConnections.co

*************************************************************************

Transcript

Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas and tips from the Masters. Every week I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today my special guest is Olivia Zugay. Olivia is a marketing and sales strategist for self published fiction authors and the founder of Story Flow Solutions. She helps writers publish confidently, market strategically and build sustainable author careers through her membership, the Story Flow Collective and her high level Author storyflow Studio. With years of experience supporting bestselling authors, Olivia's mission is simple. Help authors sell more books and create the thriving writing careers they've dreamed of. How wonderful.

Susan Friedmann [00:00:56]:
And Olivia, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Olivia Zugay [00:01:05]:
Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here and to share my knowledge with your audience

Susan Friedmann [00:01:10]:
today and I'm excited to have you do that because I don't often talk about fiction because most of our listeners are nonfiction authors. However, I know that many authors, once they've written the nonfiction book, which is maybe something they thought they really needed to do, but often there's this passion project for a storybook of some kind, be it children, teenage romance, history, I don't know all sorts of genres within fiction. And so yeah, I thought that would be really nice to talk about that. Yeah, I know that talking about fiction marketing a fiction book is totally different from marketing a nonfiction book. So I thought that that was sort of maybe the angle that we'll take with that. Why do authors put so much energy into selling a book instead of building a relationship with the people who are reading it? Because I know, for instance, that many nonfiction authors do the same. Let's see what you say about it. With regard to fiction authors, that is

Olivia Zugay [00:02:29]:
a fantastic question and one the answer that I try and educate my authors on frequently. What I have seen, especially for those debut fiction authors, is that they get so wrapped up in the process of writing and publishing that marketing really takes a backseat and especially actually building a relationship with their readers. They might remember at some point, oh yeah, I need to post about my book or I need to tell people about it, but they often don't see that truly the crucial part of marketing is building that relationship with their readers, which I think is very interesting for the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Because a lot of nonfiction nonfiction writers that I've seen or I've interacted with over the years, they often already have an audience. So they are like an expert within their industry. And they're trying to put all of their knowledge on their expertise, whatever it is, into one place for the audience that they've already built and have engaged with for several years. Whereas typically a fiction authority, especially that debut, they don't have an audience. They've not built any relationships outside of maybe their personal or professional network.

Olivia Zugay [00:03:58]:
That often has nothing to do with their writing. A lot of authors on the fiction side, I find, are closeted about their writing, which is very interesting. That is really kind of the differences that I see with fiction and nonfiction. But the crucial part is to build that relationship with your readers. And I think that in and of itself could be an entire discussion on what does that actually mean and how do you go about it.

Susan Friedmann [00:04:27]:
Funny, you're right into my brain, because the first thing that came to mind was, well, how do you start doing that, and when do you start doing it?

Olivia Zugay [00:04:38]:
I would say as soon as possible. I've come across different marketing specialists or people within our industry that say, oh, you know, after the first draft or whatever you feel comfortable. And I honestly say, as soon as you possibly think that you want to write a book, start marketing it. And it's not even to get down to specifics, like, how do you do that? The overarching goal is to just tell people about what you're doing. You don't have to have specifics on, like, it's going to be this book, and these are my characters. Like, when you just start, you just want to tell somebody, hey, I'm writing a book, and that's all you start with. And then as you get more comfortable sharing that. And I do say start on social media or, you know, on your own profile.

Olivia Zugay [00:05:30]:
You don't necessarily have to create a full, like, author profile to begin with, although I think it's great to get started. I don't like relying on social media. But when you're starting out, it's a very good place to get very comfortable and figure out how you like to talk about your book, how you like to talk about your writing process, how you like to talk about the story that you're trying to tell, which might be a little bit similar to how nonfiction markets their book, because nonfiction, you still have a story to tell. You may be trying to solve a specific problem by putting out your book for your reader, but you're still telling your story throughout that book, and fiction writers are doing the same. So I always tell them to start with, what do you want to tell people about? Like, what is Your goal of putting this book out, what kind of story are you trying to communicate? What message, what impact do you want to have with this book? Even if it is just fiction, you're still trying to tell your story through it. That's the best place to start with. How do you have a conversation with your readers? And how do you start to build that relationship? Because that gives you the springboard for which you can start building those relationships. Because your readers will have something to grip onto that makes you more relatable to them, to where they're like, oh, I like this person.

Olivia Zugay [00:06:57]:
I feel seen by this person and I want to know more about their story. Even if it's a fiction book, I still want to read it and know what they have to say about xyz.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:08]:
Yeah, starting that conversation. I know that you often talk to nonfiction authors about the idea of behind the scenes. So many people are curious about, well, what do you do? How do you do it? Because you don't just sit down and write a book. That's a myth that often people think, oh my goodness, I've got to sit there and write the whole book. No, you write chunks of it at a time. And also with fiction, you've got the opportunity to introduce your characters and even asking your audience for ideas for these characters if maybe you haven't come up with all of them yourself. What are your thoughts on that?

Olivia Zugay [00:07:56]:
I always suggest, and that's maybe was going to be my little nugget of knowledge for the end, but I have another one that I can share too.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:05]:
Thunder. Sorry, didn't mean to do that.

Olivia Zugay [00:08:10]:
I always say this to so many of my clients and authors that I interact with. I say, don't be afraid to talk to your readers. Have that conversation with them. So many authors, I feel like no matter where they're at in their career, they at some point have this mindset that almost like they are above the readers, like that they can't talk to them, they can't interact with them. Unless a reader has like a complaint or something, then they immediately want to talk to that person and go, oh no, how could I fix this for you? What did I do wrong? I'm going to change everything. Which is also another conversation of if only one person's complaining, do you really need to fix it? But don't hesitate to talk to your readers. One of the best things that I did for one of my higher level clients that I work one on one with is I started a monthly survey for her giveaway every month that we do And I ask marketing questions and they are so helpful to give us feedback on anything and everything. From what price do you like to purchase audiobooks? For what platforms do you read your books on? What other authors do you read in this same genre? It's been incredible to get that feedback, that knowledge, and also to understand how they like to read, their behavior, what they want to see from this client of mine, what characters they fell in love with.

Olivia Zugay [00:09:46]:
From there, we can deepen those conversations and share more information on what they actually want to see or hear about from my clients. So don't hesitate to ask questions to have a conversation with your readers. They are people too. They may not necessarily have a face to a name or you may not even know their name, but they're still able to share information and their likes and dislikes with you to where you can better market to them. Build the types of books that they want to see, the types of characters that they're interested in that you also like writing. 100%. Don't be afraid to ask questions and talk to your readers.

Susan Friedmann [00:10:31]:
It's interesting. I love the idea of doing these marketing surveys and getting the kind of information that really is extraordinarily valuable to know how they like to read, where they like to read, when they like to read, the type of genre they're interested in. The other thing with fiction is that if people fall in love with the characters, they want more from those characters. Already starting to think about the fact that maybe there's a second and a third book. You know, the adventures continue of these characters. People love that, especially children's books. Do you encourage your writers to start thinking in that way right from the get go?

Olivia Zugay [00:11:20]:
Oh, 100% in my freebie that's on my website, it's my self publishing starter kit. I tell them, first off, you need to plan out at least the first two years of this business venture that you're starting. We need to figure out how many books you're publishing a year, what those books look like. Are they all in one series? Are you starting multiple series at a time? Because we need to be able to anticipate what readers are going to want, which ultimately is just going to be more and more books from you. And if you can't keep up with that demand or you don't anticipate that demand when you first start, it's very overwhelming. I see clients go through it who say, oh, it's fine, I'll definitely be able to write two books a year. But then life happens and they can't do that and they're stressed out and they feel awful. And again, that's another just tell your readers what's happening.

Olivia Zugay [00:12:17]:
You don't have to give them all your personal details, but communicate with them and tell them, hey, can't keep up with that schedule for this year. Sorry. But yes, I absolutely tell especially my fiction authors to think about how you can turn this story into a series, because that is what is going to benefit you the most, especially if you want to go full time as a writer. The more that you can have series, especially interconnected series, and build up that back catalog to where you can really do promos and discounts and leverage all of those books for different releases and different time frames or seasonality of reading. That's really going to help you in the long run. So the more that you can think about that from day one, the better.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:10]:
Yeah, because once you've got a reader who loves your writing, loves your characters, how you paint your pictures within the book, they're gonna want the next book and the next book. So it's having that once you find an author, and I know this for myself because I love listening, for instance, to murder mystery and I find an author and I'm like, oh my goodness, what else did this person write? Because I really love their style. And then go on this binge of all the different books that this one author has written. So, you know, knowing that going into it from the get go, as you said, thinking about the career is so important right from the beginning. Let's talk about mistakes. I mean, I can imagine that there are multiple mistakes that fiction authors make, both in the writing and then primarily, of course, in the marketing, because that's very much our focus. Talk to us about those.

Olivia Zugay [00:14:13]:
I almost hate to call them mistakes, even though I and you may think of them as such, especially for those beginners. It's really the lessons that you just haven't learned yet, unfortunately. And that's why I do have my membership, the Storyflow Collective, because I try and really teach them everything they need to know from day one before they even put their book out there. That way they're up to date on what scams to be aware of. How to actually put your book on different publication platforms. What regulations are there with email marketing or putting your book in Kindle Unlimited? I wouldn't even call this a mistake. But the worst thing that they can do is just fail to educate themselves. Truly the best thing that you can do if you want to put a book out there, whether it's just for funsies to put a fiction project out there or you want to go full time.

Olivia Zugay [00:15:13]:
The biggest mistake that you can make is to not educate yourself before you do that, before you actually start the process. I highly suggest doing as much as you possibly can to be informed of what's happening in the publishing industry, what platforms work best. Also, how do you actually know where your readers like to shop? What genres do they like to binge read versus buy paperback or listen an audiobook? The more that you can educate yourself about the publishing industry, your genre, and the readers that read that genre, the more success you will have. I don't want to say quicker, but like I would say this, you will not have as much anxiety or stress is if you weren't to educate yourself. A lot of debut fiction authors jump in head first and then they have a lot of those oh moments. It's just because they didn't know or they didn't realize something before they did it or while they were doing it. So the more that they can educate themselves, the better. That's my probably another huge nugget of knowledge is just do what you can.

Olivia Zugay [00:16:31]:
And you don't even have to pay for it necessarily either. There are free podcasts, there's free YouTube tutorials, there's free guides. There's so much information that you can gather. It's just figuring out who you like to learn from and who you trust most. And even with my clients in my membership and one on one clients, I say I'm giving you my advice based on the best strategy that I can come up with with the information that I have gathered and my expansive knowledge that I've gathered over all of these years. But it's also your business and your right to make that decision on whether or not you want to follow my advice or try something out for yourself based on your own knowledge and your own background and what feels comfortable for you. Be discerning within the information that you gather and think critically to make sure it's the best choice for you.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:30]:
Yes, and I always like to think about it too, in that marketing is a long game. It's not something that the book comes out. You're going to do this sprint of marketing and and expect miracles. It's a continuous it's constantly talking about different aspects of the book. And have you come across authors who are reluctant to share any part of the book prior to publication?

Olivia Zugay [00:18:00]:
I would say not necessarily the entire book. I've never had anybody who said, oh, I don't want to share anything about this book before it comes out. It's more so finding that balance of what is giving too much away about the little nuggets of like oh my gosh, I didn't expect that or wow, that was a twist. It's more so finding the balance of how much do you give away for elements like that or even the romance if you're a romance author. I was very interested to learn in the marketing surveys that I did for my client. They didn't want any romance teasers, anything in this past release that we did. And I was very shocked about that. Despite her steamy teaser email being the most opened one that we typically send before release, a lot of people do not want any teasers.

Olivia Zugay [00:19:02]:
They want to go in absolutely blind. I think that's another conversation that you can have with your readers because you as the author or even if you're working with a PR agency or a social media manager, they may have an idea of what would work, but really it's best to have that conversation with your readers of what do you want to know, what information do you want to be teased with? And then you can have a better marketing plan from that. And I also will say this, don't go off of just a couple of answers. You want to make sure that you go with the majority. And I always tell my clients audience that if we say we're going to do something or I'm gathering information on xyz, I say just so you know, whatever the majority says we're going to go with. So unfortunately for those, just be aware, we're going to make sure we label things very appropriately. But you can make that decision for yourself moving forward if you want to know whatever we're going to share. But no, I haven't had any clients who are really hesitant to share much about the book.

Olivia Zugay [00:20:14]:
I think it's more just what is too much or what is too little. That's always the question and when to share it.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:23]:
And that's obviously part of what you offer your clients, which is, by the way, this is a great segue for you to start talking about. You've mentioned a few things already, but let's go over what you offer your clients and how our listeners can take advantage of that.

Olivia Zugay [00:20:40]:
Of course, I'd be more than happy to. Another key lesson for authors, whenever somebody gives you an opportunity to talk about your books or your offers, make sure to take them up on it because this is your moment to shine. And don't be shy. Just go forth and share. So I will share that I obviously I've talked about it. I have free guides and information on my website. You're more than welcome to grab any of those. Of course, being a marketing specialist, I do ask for your email and that's something that you can also learn within my guides is why I do that and how you can utilize your funnel to get more readers interested and keep them coming back for book after book.

Olivia Zugay [00:21:27]:
Outside of free things, I offer a membership. It is basically your hotline to the publishing world. You can ask me anything and everything that you want to know about publishing a fiction book, marketing it, how to strategize, how to put it on different platforms, whether you should publish wide or be KU exclusive or what does that even mean? We go over all of that information and I'm able to support you without the one on one ticket price, which I love because I find that there's a lot of opportunities in which authors want to really get that support. But it's always at such a high level price when you just want to ask somebody a question. It does not have to be thousands of dollars. And so my membership is only $67/month and you can cancel anytime. But you have the ability to talk with me, learn from me, and also interact with other authors in that space. And then if you're looking for a strategic partner in your author business, I do offer one on one support where I can be anything from your shoulder to cry on, to your virtual assistant to your social media manager and beyond.

Olivia Zugay [00:22:47]:
So I am really there to support you in making sure your author business is successful and you just have the time to write and do what you love to do. And that's everything that I offer in my business. Oh, I also do editing as well. If anybody, if anybody needs proofreading or copy editing. I also have a bit of a twist on that where along the process I pull marketing teasers and we talk also about how to leverage the information, the story that you have within your book to where you can truly market it as well as a polished manuscript. You get marketing advice and that is officially everything.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:28]:
Oh, we won't test you on that. But yes, I love the fact that you do the marketing as well. And it's not just publishing the book and it's like it's done because that happens so often. And then the author has got this book and says now what now what do I do to get it out there? So that aspect of it is critical and as I say, it's a long game because it's not just doing it once. Twice a dozen times. And you've just got to keep doing it. So often authors do a couple of podcast interviews and they said, oh, I didn't get anywhere with that. Nothing happened.

Susan Friedmann [00:24:10]:
It's like, no, just keep doing it. Now, do you talk about podcast interviews with your authors? Do you recommend it as a strategy for marketing?

Olivia Zugay [00:24:19]:
I do. I recommend podcasts. You know, of course we talk a lot about top of funnel strategies, so that's really where we have to figure out for my clients or within the membership, what is actually comfortable for you while you're marketing. Some of my membership members are under pen names and they are not comfortable showing their face or anything. So we talk about different opportunities like that where you can kind of be incognito versus those who are 100% out there loud and happy to share information. So I help you navigate all of those elements of top of funnel strategies to best suit your personality. But 100% podcasts are a great opportunity. And I think a lot of authors don't always think about the angles with which you can utilize to get on podcasts.

Olivia Zugay [00:25:14]:
So we talk about that as well. For example, I have one client who in her fiction book, it's a romantic suspense, but it has a bit of a sex trafficking angle. And we've talked about, okay, well how can you utilize that in your marketing? Because it's a message that you really want to spread. So we've talked about how to get on different podcasts that work with female awareness and safety. And there's always things that you can do. And I think that's the beauty and the fun in marketing that a lot of people forget is that it's just being creative and playing and you don't have to have this hardcore information strategy to go into it. It's all testing and playing. And that's where really the long game element comes in, is because it's never the same from day one to day 3,000 or book one to book 25, everything changes.

Olivia Zugay [00:26:15]:
You may have similar systems along the way, but it's always going to change in the ebb and flow. And I think as long as you can be adaptive in your marketing and have fun with it, that's where you're going to find success.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:28]:
Fantastic. Now, as you know, we always have our guests. Leave our listeners with a golden nugget. You've given us so many already. But I know you've got an extra special one for the end.

Olivia Zugay [00:26:41]:
Yes, I would say this. The best thing that you can do for your author career is to start your email list from day one. And that truly is where you have to start marketing. Even if you don't have the book done, start getting people on your email list. And that's where being creative and really starting to maybe throw out that you have a free short story or a free novella that you've written that has come before the actual debut novel. That's where you can start building your email list by sharing that as a freebie. And that's going to get you comfortable with sharing yourself, your writing, and getting people on your email list, while also getting feedback and critique from readers. And I think that's something that a lot of authors also struggle with in the beginning, is that you put so much money, so much thought, so much effort into this debut, yet you don't have an audience.

Olivia Zugay [00:27:41]:
So the sooner that you can build an email list and an audience, the better. That's my best piece of advice. That was a little bit of a ramble, so I apologize.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:51]:
No need to. Because it is so, so important. And remembering that social media isn't building an email list. You need the addresses, the names, the addresses so that you can market to these people, promote to these people directly. That's a beautiful golden nugget to end with. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and listeners. If your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, lets you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. Because you've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for.

Susan Friedmann [00:28:32]:
So go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books, whether they're fiction or nonfiction. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Here's how to connect with Olivia:

Website: storyflowsolutions.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-zugay/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/storyflowsolutions/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/storyflowsolutions

Free Gift: The Profitable Author Roadmap