Ines Johnson on Backlist Sales and Effective Product Pages For Direct Sales

Episode 245 / Ines Johnson joins us and shares strategies for book marketing in the age of direct sales. We discuss:

• Testing and tweaking to increase backlist sales
• Importance of thinking of your customer in marketing to create a personal connection 
• Effective ad strategies using purchase ads 
• Special editions and direct sales, including incorporating elements like foiling and character art in special edition books to attract high-value readers
• Leveraging direct sales platforms and tools like Payhip and Shopify to boost book sales

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⚡Links:

• https://www.authoradsintensive.com/a/2147845324/RXrpFFEh (Affiliate link)
• Ineswrites.com
• Page Turner Pacing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm of two minds here. I'm a learner. I am a lifelong learner. So I was like, I need to understand this. I I I jumped into direct sales, like both feet, arms flailing. So I think it's great for newbies to see the possibilities to understand, to kind of begin where you plan to end. I think so much, so many times we're thinking about the muse, we're thinking about the story. And that is important. That is absolutely important. Some of us are born storytellers, and that's where we're going to put our focus. But then I do think that there's a business side, and some of us don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_04 0:37

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

But for those of us that want to build like a business empire, you need to, you need to be thinking about the the customer. If not first, then a very close second. Welcome to the Wish I Known Men podcast.

Sara 0:53

I'm Sarah Rosette. And I'm Jamie Albright. And this week on the show, we have Inez Johnson. Yes. Yet again.

Jami 1:01

Yes.

Sara 1:02

She's like our record holder, I think, of the most returned visits. Yeah. She always has great information.

Jami 1:08

Yeah, she is super fun to have on the show. You know, always learn something when I if you spend five minutes with Inez, you learn something. Um, that's how she intends it. But she also gives you information in such a great way that it's just it's like you're not learning, you're just like absorbing. It's like like she's like the fun teacher at school.

Sara 1:30

Talk to her about sales pages for direct sales and like and also about backlist sales and just special editions. We go into a lot of different things in this episode.

Jami 1:42

Yeah. And she and she and Sky Warren are doing an ads class. It's Sky's Facebook ads class, but I think they are they are focusing on direct sales because things are different when you run ads for direct sales. You run conversion ads and not traffic ads, which is what we all normally run when we're sending them to Amazon or Barnes Noble or Apple or wherever. So we have a cut we have a an affiliate link. If you're interested, you can check it out.

Sara 2:13

Yep, it's in the show notes. Yep. So that is coming up. We don't have a whole lot of news. We're recording some episodes early. So no new supporters, no text messages, just cut and dried. What have you been doing?

Jami 2:29

I just got back from my mom's today. She, my dad went to Vegas. He goes every year for a golf tournament. I think this might be his last year, though. It's kind of sad. Yeah, he's just having a hard time getting around, and he was a little worried that he wouldn't be able to keep up, but he went. And so I went up to stay with her. But it turns out she ended up in the ER with her sciatic. She thought she had a blood clot, but it turns out it was her sciatic. Her legs swell up. I mean, like just below her knee. It was crazy. But by the time I left, I got there on Thursday. She wasn't very good on Thursday. But then by the time I left on at today, which is Monday, she she was a lot better. Of course, she's on a steroid high, so that's why she's also scratching her head and you know, oh my goodness, still now. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:25

Yeah.

Sara 3:26

Oh they they work well, but if you're a family member of somebody on steroids, standing bar of the door.

Jami 3:34

Like the first two or three days, they are so fun. They're just happy and so fun to be around. And then about that time that crash starts to happen and they are not fun. But yeah, that's that Leanne Morgan, the comedian, she talks about how hurt she and her mom and sister they decided that it was a good idea to take Dexatrum when they were, you know, young. You could just get it anywhere. It's speed. You know, they took speed as a family, she says. We were scratching our heads and fighting in the front yard. Oh, but we were spinning. So that's kind of the same way with steroids that make you wreck it. I saw her just kind of scratching her head. She it hypes you up, yeah. Yeah, she would sit in her one chair, and then she'd walk across the room and lay down on the stuff, and then she'd get up. And if she did that probably six times last night, it was so funny.

Sara 4:30

But oh my goodness. Well, hopefully that will take care of everything and she'll be better.

Jami 4:34

Yeah. So yeah, I've done that. I've worked, I've worked on my little project, and yes, that's that's about it. Just kind of been keeping busy with some things. I'm gonna look at some email stuff later. Well, we're leaving tomorrow to go to the beach for just a few days with Chris's mom. And so while I'm there, uh I'm gonna work while I'm there, but I gonna look at some email stuff while I'm there because I think I need to redo some stuff. So yeah. Oh, like autoresponder stuff. Yeah, I don't know that mine are set up right since I switched to mail or light. And I may be switching to flow desk now that since I went to mail or light. Because I just realized today you can have unlimited with flow desk for what is it, $39 or something.

Sara 5:25

Yeah, it's not very much.

Jami 5:25

Yeah, not very much. And that people, you know, now BookFunnel and Flow Desk are integrated and people are not having trouble with deliverability. Yeah, the concern was because you had they had so many like the unlimited thing, there would be a problem with develop deliverability, they're not having it. So I'm gonna love it.

Sara 5:48

I stood up with them years ago when they were like still in the beta, and so I have I use that for I have a historical mystery day new release that comes, you know, I send out a couple of times a month. Yeah, and it's always done great. And it's their stuff is really easy, it looks really pretty. Yeah, I just haven't moved everything else over there because I just didn't want to deal with the hate. So but yeah, but it might be a good one.

Jami 6:17

And you can only, I think with Lotus, you only get one. Oh no, sorry, they do have automations, it's Substack too. I was gonna look at Substack as well because with Substack though, you only get one, like when they sign up, you get an automated email. But people are having really good luck with Substack and building new reader community with new different new and different readers over there. I don't I that seems like a lot. It's a lot, it'd be more to keep up with. But I'm gonna look at it and look into it. So yeah, well that's what I'm doing. And I'm leaving Sunday, next Sunday to go to alternation. Alternation, yeah. Yeah.

Sara 7:00

Cool. Nice. Well, I when we did this last time, I completely forgot to talk about I did a event at Murder by the Book, and that went really well. Met some readers and had a great time with another historical mystery author. And then I did a podcast about the new release. It's not out yet, but you know, I've just been doing some stuff along like that. Yeah, getting ready to go out of town. We're going on our cruise. And it's been a while since I've traveled internationally, and I'm like, oh yeah, I have to go find my adapters, I've got to go do all this stuff. So that's kind of taking up all my brain space. Yeah, you're only on it a couple of days, so yeah, like pretty quick. So getting everything set up, like autoresponders for my email and stuff like that. Yeah. So yeah, so hopefully we'll both have exciting things to talk about when we get back.

Jami 7:47

Yeah, exactly. And if you're needing consultation help with anything from what our sales pages, sales pages to launch to how do I even get started, let me know. I can help. And you can find me at my on my Jamie Albright website backslash author services.

Sara 8:12

And there's a little thing there that yeah, and there's a link for that in the show notes. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right, we should get on with here's it's awesome. Yes, here's Inez. Today we are really excited to welcome back Inez Johnson. Hi, Inez, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Hi, ladies. I'm so excited. My favorite thing about going to conferences is like, okay, which part of the country am I gonna be in? Is Jamie and Sarah gonna be there?

Sara 8:36

Okay, I'm you've been on the podcast several times. So if people don't know you, I will read your bio just in case. But I'm sure everybody knows you, but we will go over this again anyway. Aside from being a writer and professional reader, Inez Johnson is a seasoned educator. For over 15 years, she taught college-level courses in screenwriting, story development, and media history. A lifelong learner, read academic addict. She holds a master's in instructional design and a doctorate in educational technology. She is constantly taking courses on the latest digital marketing tech marketing techniques, reading how-to books, and keeping her skills at the cutting edge so you don't have to. And we appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah. It's funny because I love to talk craft. Like, people usually want to be like, hey, can I ask you a marketing question? I'm like, okay. Because I will talk your ear off. If you ask me a marketing question, I'm gonna give you a very logical answer. Like, here, go and test it. Okay, talk about craft. I will talk hours. Yes, yes.

Sara 9:39

Well that about media history, and I was like, oh, that could be fun to dump into it.

Jami 9:43

I know, I know. And I don't think I knew you had a PhD, so there you go. It's technically an EDD.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

I do not use it. Yeah, I really think having learned, having been in education really helped me to be a better storyteller. I went into education because I had this grand idea 20 years ago that I wanted to be the next Sesame workshop. The people who make Sesame Street. Yeah. I wanted to do that because I was so influenced by the cartoons of the 80s and the after specials. I that like shaped who I am. And I was like, did they do that? So I started studying. I started television and I studied education.

Jami 10:24

Good combo. Yeah, it is. It is. Well, give us an update and tell us what you have been up to since you were on last in March of 2023. I think.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Well, it's been it's been a while. I have been experimenting. Yes, it is. Number one, discipline, but number two, achiever. So I like a routine, but then I need I need something else to strive after. So I'm surrounded by planners.

Jami 10:53

You should see y'all should see her walls. Yeah, like literally on three sides combo boards and everything. How do you explain it? Five is planned, you see as you can see.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah, yes, and even a little bit of 2026. Oh my gosh. Yes, I'm I'm a planner, and I like to experiment because I want to gather new data and put it in a nice I don't do spreadsheets, I like to draw the spreadsheets. I will use an old style calculator, which is crazy. But the things that I've been experimenting on, I love to, I like, I like experimenting. Like, let me see how I can strip this down, strip this down. So I love InstaLove stories, I love short novellas. So I'm always trying to see like how can I pair a story down to its bare bones and still make it work as a romance. So I've been doing things like that. I've been playing around in genres, always romance, but I'm always trying to figure out like I see people writing bully, and I'm not I'm not that girl. Like, if he's me, I'm out. But I'm like, but it's still technically enemies to lovers, and I love that character arc. So let me play in there and see what I can do. I've been playing with different formats, like the special editions German right now is killing it. I know that a lot of authors, especially indie authors, are talking about stopping their ads right now because of this particular time of the year, you know, it's an election season, there is uh economic turmoil up and down. There are conflicts going on around the world. So people are like, I think I'm gonna turn my ads off. No, I never turn my ass off. I adjust, you know, stuff isn't the types of election things that aren't happening in Germany. So, you know, Germans are reading, so I'm adding more ads then to like German ads. So I'm doing different things like that. I'm playing around with release schedules. But the funny thing is, I always go back and I look at the data. I'm like, what worked? What did it? Yeah, what has consistently worked is my backlist just continues to make me money always, forever and always. Amen. Because I'm constantly trying to figure out how do I find new readers? Because they haven't read any book in the hundred plus that I have. So, how do I get someone in there? That is a very uh lucrative get for me is getting a new person into my clutches. So backless is what hit after all that experimenting and continued experimentation, backlist. Very good.

Sara 13:18

So I think this is something that every author wants their backlist to really work for them. So are there one or two bits of advice that you could give people if they're because we we're we're all on the new release and how to different options and things you can do to promote, but what about backlist?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

So I I think I'm gonna take your question a different way. Please reroute me. I thought you were gonna ask me like what what how to test and like what is and what isn't working. So I've been I've been publishing since 2014 and the romance market has shifted. You know, reverse harem is it remains big, like there's still voracious readers reading that. But when I first started, I remember that more polyamory, not necessarily reverse harem, or was a different, it was it was the in the same on the same highway, but in a different lane. Like like sharing, couple sharing was really, if you can't remember the name of the Selena, can't remember her name, but she was a really popular erotic romance author. And she did this kind of Meet the Joneses thing, but it was very sexy. And like people were like constantly, like, she was just it, she was making tons and tons of money. But that style of romance with the couple going off and having adventures, that's that's just not what people are wanting today. And then I remember Minaj romance was doing really well. So I have books like this that are just sitting there and I'm I'm still like, hey, you want some? Okay, no, okay, I'll wait. Well, what about some? Okay, I don't want, but it's reverse harem right now, that that is what people want. I because I'm such an academic addict, I'm constantly getting uh papers of romance educators who are studying and researching not only what's going on in the book world, but what's going on in our world, and I'm reading this article that polyamory is is is the thing in this current generation. They they date in groups, they don't necessarily have monogamy, is not always a thing, and I'm generalizing people, but it's a big thing, and I'm like, hey, I have this book, right? Right, right.

Jami 15:28

But it may be time to serve it up.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah, I'm still not seeing the interest. They want the it's some of it's like can still consider cheating when you if anyone, if the guy looks at anyone else, and I'm I'm it's just it's just interesting to me, and this is what I was thinking about before I got home with you guys. But I took your question the way that I wanted to go and talk about what I wanted to talk about. But I think when people are when they're writing their backlist, I think that they just have to recognize it's that whole do you want to write to Trend? Do you want to write to Evergreen? No matter what I do, I try to make sure that there's something evergreen going on in my books. Now I didn't figure this out for for a number of years, right? But I always want to make sure that there's something that I can sell. I can always sell small town, I can always sell holiday, I can always sell a werewolf, like werewolves and vampires think that they die, they don't. So I always try to make sure, like found family. People love that that's at the core of what we do. Right. So I you want to make sure that there's something that you can sell.

Sara 16:35

Right. That makes sense. And you can lean into whatever is popular if you have that element in your books. But then if you aren't matching up with what's hot, then you could go back to those core things, like down family or whatever. Yes. Yeah, it makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, tell us about the author ads intensive, how that came to be, who it's for, what it covers. Because this is one of the new things you've been working on, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:00

It isn't, it isn't, it isn't. Because I started to do direct sales in 2022 is when I started to do direct sales, and I came in and I talked to you guys when I had when I was getting started. Yeah. And I told you about the rocky road of trying to figure this out because it wasn't a lot of authors in the space, but now there are there, we're figuring it out. Like, oh, this is an avenue for so when I was learning how to do this, one of the things that I kept going back to with direct sales, with advertising is I kept going back to Sky Warren's Facebook ads, which was the author ads intensive. And at some point she closed that down and you couldn't get access to it anymore. But when people would ask me, Well, how are you making your direct sales work? And I was, I would spew off some stuff, and then I'd say, Oh, and Sky Warren's author ads intensive. And they were like, Well, how do I get that? I'm like, sorry, if you didn't get it when it was open, you can't get it now. Yeah, so I kept doing that, and I'm sneaky. I I will be the first to admit that I'm a sneaky person. I smile really big, but I'm always scheming underneath. I kept sending people Sky's way because I wanted her to reopen the course, right? And I guess it worked because enough people bugged her about and that's talks about this other and it's intense a Facebook course. And so one day Skye and I are talking, and she's like, I really want to do something with direct sales. I was like, Yeah, sure, that sounds great. She's like, Well, I probably should do something with Facebook ads. I was like, Really? Hmm, should you try to figure out because if you need the two together? Like the thing about direct sales right now with absolutely being on a retailer, people are coming to that retailer to shop. But when you have your own store, how do you get that foot traffic when nobody knows that you are there? And if you already don't know how to market to get people to see your sign, to entice them into your door, to get them to go into their pocket and pull out their wallet, you're at a disadvantage. So we can talk, I can tell you all day long about some things to attract people, but if there's nobody coming down your street, I yeah, because we all write so many different things. Like I you have to know your customer and you have to know where they are. You have to build your store where you know you're gonna get that foot traffic. And that's what knowing Facebook ads, that's what author ads intensive helps you to do. Yeah, yeah.

Sara 19:28

So this would be for somebody who's maybe already set up for direct sales, or would it be for somebody who's fairly new?

SPEAKER_01 19:36

I'm of two minds here. I I'm a learner, I am a lifelong learner. So I was like, I need to understand this. I I I jumped into direct sales, like both feet, arms flailing. So I think it's great for newbies to see the possibilities to understand to kind of begin where you plan to end. I think that's really important. And I think when you have to figure out, well, why when you have to think of the the customer, I think I think so much so many times we're thinking about the muse, we're thinking about the story, and that is important. That is absolutely important. Some of us are born storytellers, and that's where we're gonna put our focus, but then I do think that there's a business side, and some of us don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_04 20:22

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

But for those of us that want to build a like a business empire, you need to, you need to be thinking about the the customer. If not first, then a very close second. Right. So if you are a newbie who is like, you know, I don't necessarily want to go with a traditional publisher, I'm interested in going to on the retailers, but I really want to have more control. You want to do this. So that person aside, if you're a midless author and you know where to find your audience, you know how to find your audience, you have products to sell that your audience wants, this is the course for you because you can my direct store attracts far more new clients than it does the ones that have already been with me. I'm like I said, I'm con I was constantly changing formats. So I might have a different paperback, I might have a different hardback. I am a devout follower right now of Willow Winters because when I was, I was, I was put next to this woman at a signing, and I was just fangirling, not because necessarily of her books, because of her business acumen. Yeah. I'm looking at these books that are on her table and I'm watching as she's saying, This is this, this is the single of this story. This is the story in an omnibus. This is that same story, but with a different cover, a different cover. Yeah. I'm watching these readers buy all three. All three. All three of the same story. Yeah. And what I'm starting to understand is like. I I I know I'm getting older and I'm constantly trying to pare stuff down and and minimalize and get stuff out of my way because I have moved too many times and books are always the heaviest thing.

Jami 22:12

Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

I'm trying to get books out of my house, but these readers today they want shelf trophies. I love this rate. Shelf trophies. They want beautiful books on their shelves, like collector's editions. Right. And they get these are the readers that are ready to pay out of their pocket. Not $3 for an ebook, not six dollars or something. No, they're sixty dollars. Okay. You how do when is the next one coming out? Right.

Sara 22:42

Yeah. Yeah, it's something that we don't think about that much. I think we're we're getting there, like with the Kickstarters and how that's becoming a thing. But I think for a long time we'd forgotten there were readers that will pay $50 without without blinking for special. Yeah, or early edition. They're like, sure. So we can't forget that.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

No, before ebooks, books were hardback, the hardback came out first, remember? Right. And we would pay 20 bucks for that hardback if we wanted to read that story.

Jami 23:13

Right. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So when you think about the customer and you think about direct sales, because I I had I am doing both or thinking about both, there is a lot. There is just a lot. And I would think one of the most important things when you're trying to attract a new customer is that product page. Like, okay, so you've run the ads, you've attracted them to your site. Now here's the product page. What should our product page look like? What should is there's it? What do you wish you'd known about doing that when you started? All of that. Copy Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Copy Amazon. Perfected the they have not just books are on their product pages. Right, yeah. Right? Yeah. Everything that we're trying to buy, they figured out a while ago. This is this is the best format. They were they were using the heat maps, they were tracking the clicks before we knew we could. Right, right. Because we can do that on our own direct store. We can follow, we can, we can spy on our readers because it's our real estate. But as we've been sending Amazon traffic over the years, they have been doing that and they have been perfecting it. So any any any kind of page, if you're on Shopify, if you're on your own side, if you're on WooCommerce, wherever you are, they're going to start with the product. And they usually start with the product on the left-hand side of the page, and then on the right, like a picture of the product. And then on the right hand side, they'll have the title of the product, the cost of the product, any variance, meaning is an ebook, is this paperback, yeah. Right. And then underneath that, there's the blurb or more about the the product. Remember when A plus content first came out, we were all like, we don't know if this is giving us more. But Amazon figured it out. They knew. And now now that I now that I have the spy where I get it, it works. So top left, your you have your your product image. Beautiful. We already know that the cover is the first thing that sells your book. Tell us about the genre. If it's romance, it might tell about the heat level. We are more readers, we see more and more readers, the high-spending readers are very attracted to more object covers than people covers. I hate that because I had to go into borders and I had to buy, you know, the the kids' books, the little chapter books, and then like a Cresley Cole with the shirt off. And I had to stand there and be like, What?

unknown 25:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

But women nowadays are romance readers nowadays are like, no, I want please take the the guy, the man chest off the cover. Yeah. Okay, sweet summer child. If I want your money, I realize I'm gonna have to do what you what you need. But then we have the the title, the cost, and then the blurb. And then I say, because again, readers have been trained by Amazon, but also romance readers, they they're they want the story. So that middle of the page, you want to tell them the story because this is their first time meeting you, and you have so much control. You don't have anybody else's also bots on the page to distract them anymore. This is all you. What character art do you have, or did readers make character art for you? What what excerpts can you pull from your book? What reviews can you put there? Think about what you need as a reader to get them to click. Like I the the the beautiful thing about TikTok is that it is it is showing us how to sell our books in like 15 seconds. Sure. So what we're putting that you can put you can put your TikTok videos on your page too. So whatever we know will sell our books, that's what's going in what to sell our books and to tell the story of our books to entice them, that's what goes in the middle of that page.

Jami 26:55

Okay. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

That's great. And then reviews, do you put reviews on there too? I'm a tester. I'm a tester through and through. When I first started this and I saw the all the power, all the power that I had, I was watching readers like a hawk. And I was like tallying, like, okay, because literally you you you can there's software where you can you won't know who they are. They're just on your space and it just records them. It can record their actual movement, record their clicks. So I was watching what they were doing. And I every time I got a purchase, I went back and I was like, What how did they move down the page? Where do they linger the longest? And I just kept changing one thing at a time to increase my conversion rate higher and higher. This is where it takes the time because some people just want, and that's just give me the template. Like, I don't need all this long division, right? Give me, don't give me the new math, give me the old math. And I get that because I I enjoy like trying to eke out another half a percent. So I just talked about the template, but I'm constantly looking like, how can I perfect it? How can I get a little bit more out of it? And I sat there and would go one item at a time fonts, colors, images, this blurp. What if I changed up this word in the blurp? And I just kept looking for the higher conversion until I got the highest I can get. Well, that makes sense.

Sara 28:15

That makes sense because different types of readers might be more interested in different things, right? So maybe mystery readers want certain things and sci-fi readers don't care about that thing. So it makes sense to test it. So how long?

SPEAKER_01 28:28

It's hard for me to give people like to give you that template, but you have to then plug in your genre stuff.

Sara 28:37

Right. Well, we were just talking about special books, like you know, the amazing all the bells and whistle type books, special editions. So let's talk about those and how to make those profitable. Because if you're not careful, it can be hard to come out on top with those. So what tips do you have for that?

SPEAKER_01 29:00

First, understand we need to learn a new language. So we need to start to understand all this these different kinds of artworks. We need to start to understand, you know, what can be foiled, what colors can be foiled, what colors can be embossed, what can be embossed? Do you want to do it in hardback? Because you can also do this in paperback. If you're gonna do it in hardback, are you gonna have a dust, a dust jacket? These books are going to the prom, okay?

Sara 29:28

They are.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

People have end page designed, but then you want to think like it. This is really popular in fantasy. So first understand that really popular in fantasy. So maybe you have in page design, maybe you have character art. I think that that is something that's really smart, giving a visual of what a particular scene, especially happily ever after, like another day because you know, back in the day when borders was still a thing, and we would go and buy these $20 single books. Right, it was it was one story. Now we can do omnibuses. So, say you have a four book series, you can put four books into one series, and readers. That's what I originally started to do, and that's what I recommend people start with. Start with an omnibus. People love that because that's like a deal for a big I can have all of this right now, give it to me. I'm taking it to the beach, right? So start with like a paperback omnibus and see how first it's really for you. Right, figure it out because this is something that you can do with any printer, paperback omnibus, you just have to reformat it in Vellum. There are some things you want to be thinking about, and you really want to talk to the printer about like how many pages is too many pages, line starts to crack, pages start to fall out. So that's something that you have to you'll talk to your to the printer about. But but start there, start to educate yourself. Then if you want to put black and white pictures in there, that's not gonna be an extra cost. It starts to cost when there's gonna be color, it starts to cost when there's gonna be a hardcover or a dust drive. That's when it starts to cost more money. Then I'm sure we're all seeing what are called the end page, the edge page design.

SPEAKER_04 31:06

Yeah, yeah.

Jami 31:07

I just saw the fourth wing at Target. It's gorgeous. I mean, it's so cool. It's not super special, it's black and white, but it's still so, I mean, it's so eye-catching. You just see it immediately.

Sara 31:22

Yeah, it's a step above, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Yeah, and you can be doing this in limited editions. You can just order like 50 of them and number if you can number them and like Sarah, this Sarah does that, yeah. Right, right. So, and that's another thing. Go into Target, go into Barnes and Noble, Book Civilian, and look at what people are doing. That's where you can get your inspiration, right? So, so start to look at this stuff. You there's so there's there's the end page design where so the book is printed, and then the book is taken out of a printer, uh taken out of one printer, put in a second printer, and then those edges are printed again. Some people call the sprayed edges because let's see, a little little bit of education, yeah, yeah.

Jami 32:05

You gotta do the lingo, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

No, you can you can have someone actually like hand spray your book's edges, but that's another cost. You got it printed, you package them up, you ship it to somebody else. They do this, the sprayed ed edges, they package it up, but they send it back to you. That's a lot going on. Yeah, so some people, not a lot of not a lot of printers in the US, but some printers in the US, they have a secondary printer or secondary printing process where they can spray really their printing the edge design on the books. So that's doing it printing, but you can also, there are some people who understand how. Do you remember when we were younger and we did the little flip books and you would draw a character at the very edge? Yeah. Wheel, think of that as a four-edge. I kept saying, Do you mean forced? No, it's four F-O-R-E-E, whatever. But someone can take take your the PDF of your print book and put those little tick marks at the very edge of the pages in black and white in color, and any printer can print that. You can send that to Ingram, you can send it to Amazon. They'll they will pop, they will caution you that it could mess up because not every printer prints the same, not every book comes out exactly the same. So they with a grain of salt. So there's different ways to do all of these things. I would start again with a paperback omnibus. Okay, very good.

Sara 33:29

And then sell it direct. Is that what you're saying? Or would you do like a special Kickstarter type thing? What would you recommend?

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Both that means the same thing to me. So if you did Kickstarter, you're pretty much getting the money up front. And you're you're you're also getting Kickstarter's audience because a lot of times Kickstarter is sending, they're showing it to their audience, people who are who understand the business, right? Sometimes our readers are like, say, what? What are you doing? Yeah. So we you probably have to convince the Kickstarter audience less. So that is something to think about. But you can also set this up on your you can also set this up on your store. If you're if you're not doing something that's gonna cost a lot of money, a lot of production money, you can set it up on your store and you could be doing print on demand. There are also apps where you can basically do a pre-order of it, so you can be collecting the money first and then telling them, okay, it's gonna take this long for the production of the book to happen. So you're not gonna get your book immediately. You have to be so clear about this. You're not gonna get your book immediately, you're gonna get it a month, two months, three months, but it'll be shipped out to you then.

Jami 34:35

Very good, very good. I I, you know, if you only had 50, not that many, you could do what Sarah did, which is stamp hers the self, but to have a printer do it just seems so much easier. But it's still so much easier.

Sara 34:55

Yeah. Yeah. I was a I was terrified when I was doing the stamping. Yeah, I had several. I had I ordered extra just in case because you know you're gonna mess them up, some of them. But it it was it was a fun thing to do.

Jami 35:08

So what about ads, and as because like how are ads different? You know, to a direct store than they are, let's let's say to Amazon or Barn, you know, wherever you're gonna send people. And then what do you wish you'd known about running those ads?

SPEAKER_01 35:29

So I just look down at traffic ads right now. I'm like, you stinking liars.

Jami 35:36

Yeah. Because you don't run traffic ads to your direct store. You shouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Here's why you can again think about why you're doing it.

Jami 35:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

So traffic ad, the whole purpose of a traffic ad is to get someone to click on a link to take them to a website. Right. Once they get to that website, the traffic ad is like, my job, my work here is done. Yes, and it's like a door slams in your face, and there's a conversation going on between that website that you sent that traffic to and that person who you traffic to that website, they're having a whole other conversation. That whole conversation could be, oh, here's my phone number, here's my ads, here's my wallet. And you're like, wait a minute, I I introduced you.

Jami 36:18

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

So if you're sending that same traffic to your website, you can continue the conversation. You can continue the conversation of, hey, what's your email address, boo? Give me your phone number and your address and your all your digits. Right. You can have that whole conversation. The traffic ad, it stops. But if you do a purchase or sales ad and you bring all that information to your direct store, you can get all the other information. Technically, you could get it with a traffic ad, but but Facebook is like, oh, traffic. So you want the the the cheap clicks, gotcha. Yeah. Purchase ads, those are people that they because Facebook was allowed to follow those people to the websites, Facebook knows more information about them. So those are people who are more likely to purchase. Okay. Not what you're getting. The people who are more likely to buy.

SPEAKER_04 37:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

They cost more. So we're not looking anymore at like 10 cent, 20 cent clicks. We're looking at dollars now, which means that if we are selling products that are worth dollars, we're gonna we're gonna hurt. Yeah. Which means that I don't think it's wise to sell a single ebook. That that is this is this is why if you are new, this is why this can hurt you. Because a traffic ad could excuse me, a purchase ad could easily cost you ten dollars to pick before you get a click, easily. So if you if you have a an ad that costs ten dollars before somebody purchased and your product is four dollars, we have a problem.

SPEAKER_04 37:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

That's why we want to be thinking about how can I increase the value of what I'm selling? Because when you do when you're using purchase or sales ads, it's the same thing. On some people's dashboard is called purchase ads, on other people's it's called sales. Thank you, Facebook. When you're when you're when you're when you're when you make that choice to use that type of objective in in your as a Facebook ad, you're now competing with car dealerships, with people selling courses for a couple thousand dollars, with people selling purses, you're competing with those people because that's who who is getting who is purchasing the purchasers.

SPEAKER_04 38:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

They have a different strategy for traffic. They just like we also see brand awareness, it's a different strategy. So that with the purchasers, you're trying to get them to your perfectly your that product page where everything is talking about the story and designed to get them to click. But you get all that information, but you also get the ability to contact them again. And that's what's important to do. That's great information.

Jami 38:48

So you can put them on your mail on a mailing list, you can and then you can send them information. I mean, what do you what do you do with that? I guess is what I'm asking.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Let me take best practice. So best so let me let me take it back just a step. So if you are just starting out with this, I would recommend that you use something like PayHip, which is free. You're just paying there, it's a service fee for sale, right? But Shopify is gonna cost you about $30 a month. If you're gonna use Shopify, and like what if you're selling a five-dollar product and you're paying this $30 fee, it's and you're paying ads, it can get it can get pricey, right? Right. So if you if you're at the the state where you have a lot of product, you know where to find some audience so that you can find figure out how to get more to your store, I would recommend that you use Shopify because there's a lot of bells and whistles that can help you to increase what you the amount, the volume that you sell.

Jami 39:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

And then I would recommend that you add on Shopify's primary or boutique newsletter service provider, which is called Clavio, because when when those two have a when those two are talking to each other, they're making magic. So Clavio can have a conversation with whoever came to your Shopify store and say, Oh, they really liked the that Jamie's new release. So if they really like Jamie's new release, then I'm gonna sell them books. Let me let me start a flow and talk to them about book two. Or what if they bought the omnibus? Oh, they bought the omnibus? Oh, then they let's let's go and have a flow and ask them about this character in that book. And then a week later, let's ask about this character, and then let's sell them this particular product. Oh, they they like that particular product. Awesome. Let's take them on a flow over here and now try to sell them that so you can make all these nice little webs, all these streams flowing to get you some more money into your pocket.

SPEAKER_04 40:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Other service newsletter service providers can do this, but they cannot do it the way that Clavio and Shopify throw down.

Jami 40:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

So that can make you more money. Right.

Sara 40:50

Yeah, that's great. We've talked about preconceived notions that people have about ads or the way things should be set up, and maybe that's you know, correct or not correct. But what about are there other things that you see people doing with ads that authors feel like they have to do, but that really aren't producing results? Any kind of mistakes, turn them ads off, forgetting that the rest of the world is not caught up in election drama.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

I mean, even when it's not election drama, I I hear people turning their their ads off this time of year because they're like, I'm not gonna compete with this person and that person and Black Friday and Christmas. And I'm like, why not? This is when people are looking for stuff to buy. You have you have people with their wallets open, their credit card in front of them shout at them. Um, so I don't turn my ads off. I think that it gets hard if you're trying to do new ads right now because what if it the the data can be skewed because you're not really sure if it's working or if it's not. So I also I and this is this is from Sky. This is from our author ads class. Like, I will keep adding new ad copy. I will keep adding new images into the same. I'm not gonna turn the campaign off. That was the hardest thing for me to learn about Sky's method because I want to keep starting over. That's not working. Yeah, let me start over. You want to keep all that information in the same place. So I keep adding, I'll have an ad running for a particular series, and I might be running as on book three in the series in that same place. So you want to keep adding and keep testing. Like I never stop testing, always be testing. That's what I think. I I think if something isn't working, cool. Take say you were spending $20 a day, right? And and and on on two ads, two different ads, and one ad is working better than the other and the other isn't. Cool. Take $10 from that non-performing ad, put it over to so that the other ad has $30 to work on, and then tweak that $10 ad until you get it working again. Because hopefully by then, that $30 a day ad is making you $60 or $70. And then you can put that extra, that extra profit into the $10 ad to bump it back up to 20. That's that's how I'm thinking about these things. Like you can have your ad budget and then, but don't, don't like if your ad budget is like $100, don't start to detract from that. Figure out what what's working and then double down on that, and then go and look at what's not working and fix it. Try to fix it. Okay. I just I just think that I think the things can work. One of one of my one of the things that I always say is is keep keep doing it until it works. Yeah. The only way for it to not work is to give up on it.

Jami 43:41

Yeah. So the ads course that you're you're doing with Sky how is it different from her normal Facebook ads? I mean, can you tell our listeners, you know, what kind of what they're gonna get, what they're not gonna get, you know, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Yeah, ideally, ideally, you come in here knowing Facebook. I mean, if you don't, there is there's a total walkthrough. But because we are we're not really talking to you about traffic ads, we're really trying to talk to you about sales ads and talk to you about because the data that you get, you're sending them to your site with your link that Facebook can then follow. Not only follow, they can say, okay, it was this ad, this particular image. They went to your site. You can see exactly what they did and they purchased this. So if I spent $10, or if I spent $20 and I sold them a bundle of books that was $30, that $10 or $20 uh that $10 just made me more money. So you can, and that's all said right there in Facebook dashboard. We don't see that because we've we've been looking at traffic ads for so long and we can we have to go outside and do that ad, do that, do that that math. But now that math is right there in the dashboard showing you you spent this much, this is how much it made you.

Jami 44:59

But you shouldn't beat that. That's amazing. That's amazing. And so, and I've been hearing this for a while, you know. I think two years ago at Anchor's, Joe was Joe Solari was talking about it, and saying you really need to do it, but you know, it's scary. I was just coming off of my year from hell, and so I wasn't in a place to do it. I hear you. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:28

But remember what I said first. I'm selling backlist, I'm selling books I wrote five years ago. Yeah. There are people who have not read your bride series. Yeah. And you can start to find that will pay for all of them at once. And I just think that this is a way that you can you can you can it's it's like they just you're brand new to them. They're gonna look and like, oh my gosh, all these books.

Jami 45:51

Yes. Yes, yeah. No, I'm doing it, I'm doing it. So it'll be probably towards the end of the year, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:01

Yeah, that's why I came on today. I came on to convince Jamie my work here is done.

Jami 46:07

Sorry, you guys got in on our personal conversation. Yeah.

Sara 46:13

Oh, well, I think we've covered a lot. Anything else about just direct sales or ads that you want to share that people need to know?

Jami 46:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Think about think about tailoring the messaging from your Facebook ads to your product pages. Tailor it to that reader who who you know would love your book. You know, they talk we do with your avatar a lot. Yes. Again, I can provide you with a template, but you have to really, really make this personal to your reader. You like I have two pen names. My advanced readers get a completely different experience than my Chine readers do because those are two different readers. So I always want people to understand like I'm not withholding information from you when I'm telling you, you really have to look at who your readers are and really try to tailor to them. Because right now, we all kind of look the same on Amazon, we all look the same on Barnes and Noble. But when they come to your site and they see the clues laid out in the middle of that page for that mystery that you're telling, or they can see like the footprints of the bride running away or something. I can't tell you that. I can tell you that I know your books, but I but a person can't tell you that. Like that's what I mean. You really want to tailor that messaging to your particular reader.

Jami 47:37

I love it. Love it, love it, love it. Where can people find out more about the course and also your books?

SPEAKER_01 47:44

So I gave you guys your very own special code, your very own special affiliate link. So we want to make sure to be using that. But if you want to just take a glance, you the course is at direct sales for romance authors.

Sara 47:58

Also tell everybody where they can find your books as well. If someone's interested in your books, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

Let's go look at your store. Yeah, look at my store. I only want you on my store if you want to talk because I'm gonna stalk you if you just come and try to stalk me. You want to go to the and that's another thing. Yes, I have a different my I have an author website and then I have my shop, and they're different because two separate things, right? Yeah, so if you want to come take a look at my books on my author website, is my writer's Aness Johnson who writes contemporary fantasy and fantasy romance, they're there, Steamy. You can come look at an SRights.com. I write clean wholesome romance under my middle name, sineejohnson.com. So you can take a look at that. If you are interested in courses where I talk about craft, because that's what I love to talk about. You can come to an SRights.com forward slash PTP for page turn and pacing, and that's where you can find all of my courses. Like, seriously, I spent last summer like breaking down tropes. Like, I started writing 20-page diatribes about why the hidden identity trope works, why opposites attract work. And it was just fun. It was like what I was doing sitting on a cruise.

Sara 49:09

It's just writing you're just the learn the course guru.

SPEAKER_01 49:16

It's the lifelong learner in me. I can't tell. It is, it is.

Sara 49:20

Well, it's wonderful. It is helpful to all of us. We appreciate it. But we'll have all those links in the show notes. So thank you for being here today and just sharing all this with us. We really appreciate it. We do. All right. Well, if you want to support the podcast, you can go to wish I known for writers.com slash support, and we will see everybody next week.