28 Comments

Devorah deserves the success she is having! Many of us will envy her subscriber base; she's earned that through lots of public speaking on a useful and urgent topic. Well done and thanks for sharing how she pulled all this together. One of the most useful small tips for me is using comp titles and authors to search podcasts. Doh--why didn't I think of that? I have a novel out in May and was just pondering how to lengthen my list of podcasts to approach or have my publisher contact.

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You need to preorder Michelle Glogovac’s book!!! It’s all about this (pitching yourself to podcasts)

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Thank you for mentioning! I just looked it up and will order!

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Thank you! I've been building my email list since 2015, but people do age out of it (their kids grow up) so I do need to keep building, always. For the first year of zoom talks in 2020 I didn't know how to do it on zoom, it took a while to catch on...

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I hadn’t even considered that reason for turnover in your newsletter audience! 🤯

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Thank you for sharing Devorah’s approach. My debut comes out next year, and the pre-launch learning and prepping is A-LOT.

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fiction or nonfiction? (wondering if I should do one of these case studies on a novel...)

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Yes - I was just going to comment that that was so interesting and I'm grateful to Devorah for sharing. Would love to read a similar post about fiction -- especially contemporary fiction as opposed to historical fiction. As a writer of both, I find that I had so much more bonus stuff to share with readers with my histfic books just due to the history the books are based on. Less so with my upcoming contemporary novel. Thanks Leigh!

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That would be very helpful to many of us! 🙂 My book, Not Yours to Keep, is women’s fiction/domestic suspense. Comes out next October with She Writes Press.

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I vote YES!

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I would love to read one on a novel!

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It is absolutely a lot. The part that struck me afterwards is how much of is done a year in advance. Also, much of it is unseen. Our marketing director reached out to 100 libraries on Netgalley. That's all legwork that is invisible to the reader and author.

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100 libraries, wow!

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This was awesome, thank you! Personally, I would LOVE to see one of these for novels, to compare and contrast methods and efficacy!

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This was so helpful and makes clear how much work is involved.

I was especially impressed with Devorahs' 10,000 person mailing list.

If anyone reading this has ever "borrowed" or purchased an outside organization's mailing list and just blasted out a "buy my book" (or "stream my film") newsletter, I'd be very grateful to hear the result.

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I don't know how that would go... On the other hand if you are a guest on someone's podcast and they put a link to the book in the shownotes and send that to their list, that could help. The thing about your own list is they (hopefully) opted in because they are a fan of YOUR work. So a higher percentage of those folks will be interested in what you write/talkabout/do because that's what made them opt-in in the first place.

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Love Devorah! This was so insightful and helpful to read, what a generous breakdown!

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I so appreciate Devorah’s candor (and of course, your excellent questions!). This piece resonated with me as I just finished my own book tour and have learned so damn much from the process. There are things I’d do again and things I’d do way less of or not at all. It sounds like Devorah had an excellent publicist to land those killer bylines, too! Her book sounds fascinating. Thanks again for being you, Queen Leigh!

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you are such a great example of an author who has taken the reins of her career into her own hands!

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brb getting this tattooed 🥹

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Thanks for this, Leigh and Devorah! Super interesting to hear how hard Devorah worked for her success. I'm so happy everything is working out for her! I also love how Devorah passes around a notebook to collect emails. Not *everything* needs to be online.

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notebook works SO much better. Of course my audience is people who are feeling curious and possibly overwhelmed by their kids' tech lives. But...many

of them are quite tech savvy and notebooks still seem to do the best.

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Thanks for sharing Leigh and Deborah! I continue to be SHOCKED by the level of entrepreneurism authors need to achieve to have success (esp in the non-fiction space, but increasingly in fiction, too!). The pre-launch costs Deborah shared are so high: hiring multiple professionals, sending materials, buying CRM tools, etc. Not to mention the unpaid labor costs! I'd love to better understand how authors view their ROI: pre-launch costs of building a platform vs. the income from (multiple) advance payments vs. royalties vs. post-launch revenue generating opps that come from the book publication/bigger platform. There's definitely seems to be a cash flow problem that exists, esp for authors who don't have a steady stream of income or nest egg to invest up front.

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Book is at "break even" or a little worse for me with the investment in PR and marketing and new website. I make money from speaking. But I will also get one more check when the paperback comes out and don't plan to spend more on PR/Marketing, so that's...something. Plus I'm hoping foreign rights sell robustly. We'll see!

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I hadn't thought about podcasts. It also strikes me that Devorah has a "deliverable" for her prospective readers: How to keep adolescents safe online. The deliverable is more elusive if you're trying to sell speculative fiction. My deliverable is getting you to say "WTF!" Guess I'll have to think more about that one!

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It is def. easier to get speaking gigs if your talk solves a problem people already know they have...

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This is full of helpful tips. Thank you Leigh for sharing this!

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Thank you! I found out about you from Jane Friedman (I appear on her newsletters and also write about writing but just on the humor side). But thank you for the advice.

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