‘Going wide’ is a mindset few authors fully understand. Often seen merely as a ‘strategy’ that can benefit some authors, going wide is not only about reaching people in hundreds of markets. It’s about diversifying, not settling for what is easy, and maximizing your income streams.

Join us today as we interview Erin Wright, founder of the Wide for the Win Facebook group who will walk us through the many reasons why you are missing out on something big if you have never considered publishing your books in all storefronts.

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Complete Episode Transcripts

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Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 052: Tips on Publishing Wide for the Win with Erin Wright

Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. Welcome to episode 52 of the Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast. I’m Crystal Hunt.

Michele Amitrani: And I’m Michele Amitrani and we are here as always to help you save time, money, and energy as you level up your writing career.

If you find this show helpful, you can help us keep the episodes coming by clicking to the buy us a coffee button on the website and the show notes.

Crystal Hunt: Today we’re speaking with special guest Erin Wright, Western Romance author, and founder of Wide for the Win Facebook group. Before we dive into that, we’re going to give you a quick update of what we’ve been up to this past week. Michele what news in your world?

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele Amitrani: So Crystal, you know that I’ve been battling slash wrestling with my mythological fantasy novella. I am very happy to report that the battle is over. And I won. It was difficult, but finally I was able to manage that. Tomorrow by this time the novella will be in the lovely hands of my first beta.

So I’m very looking forward to see what he is going to think about that. And as you guys know, it’s the end of a journey, even though it’s not the end, it’s the sixth test that I’m doing with this new genre. I am not sure exactly if it’s going to go well. I was very happy that I was able to at least make it fly, so write six of these stories, three are already out. And since I mentioned that Muse of Avalon is being edited, the Italian version, as we’re speaking. Again, it’s going to go on my second beta in this case tomorrow. And I am very looking forward to see what the Italian front is going to think about that.

That’s one of the things, when you are basically writing and publishing in two languages, you’re going to have so many feedbacks and they take a lot of time to process. And of course I bought a certain book, Wide for the Win, and I’m starting diving into it. And I’m very excited that today we’re going to talk about that actually, right Crystal?

Crystal Hunt: We are indeed because I started reading it, came out what the 23rd, maybe it went live? I downloaded it and dove into reading it and found I had to make approximately a million pages of notes. So I’ve now filled a quarter of a notebook with things that I need to do or investigate, or, tweak for each platform and was really comprehensive in my to-do list for myself.

So it didn’t go a long way to shortening the to-do list, but it was really informative and I have a lot of homework to do to make sure that books are optimized on all of the wide platforms. And I also have been filling out the section, my business plan to do with which channels I’m using and which avenues of things will be delivered to readers for my fiction stuff.

So our nonfiction has been wide for a while now, but the fiction is a shiny new adventure to go that direction. And because we don’t like to just talk about the talk we like to walk the walk as well, I have purchased a new Kobo. My original one was from the week that the first Kobo came out. I’ve had one for forever and ever, but it’s way toast.

So I figured a new one was an order and I bought a Kobo Libra H2O, which means I can read in the bathtub and I am very excited about that. That is the big news from this week. And of course, to go with the Kobo reader, I canceled my Kindle Unlimited subscription and transferred it over to a Kobo Plus subscription.

What? And I may have been talked into the Plum Plus, which means I can get free shipping from Indigo as well, so that I am not so tempted to order through the other nameless large retailer. So that means I’ve put in place all the environmental things I can to be really rocking the wide mindset. So thank you for all of those reminders, both through the Wide for the Win Facebook group and through the book.

And I’m excited to dive back into that. Cause that’s where I started. My roots were with Kobo. It was one of the first places I uploaded my book a bazillion approximately years ago. I think 2014 was, yeah, it was back in the day. So we’re extra excited to have Erin here today. And Erin, what have you been up to in your author world this past week besides, rocking the Facebook group and stuff?

Erin Wright interview

Erin Wright: Oh, sure. You will quickly learn this about me, but I am a very slow author. And 2020 kind of hit me hard. And so I did not release in the whole year. I, my last release was October 1st of 2019, and my next release will be April 1st of 2021. So it’s exactly 18 months between my releases. So this past week I actually finished a book and uploaded it to storefronts.

So that was my literally year and a half long excitement finally came to culmination on Saturday night when I uploaded the damn book and then I went to sleep. It was like one o’clock in the morning. By the time I finished all the storefronts, but I had to just get it up and get it done so I could just go to sleep and not think, not worry it’s done.

Anyway, it was marvelous. 

Crystal Hunt: We’ll just take a moment to be really excited about that for you, because yeah. It’s been a long haul. Definitely. Well done. So can you tell us a little bit more just about what are you writing? I did a little investigating, so I’ve peaked behind the curtain, but I think our listeners would be interested to hear a bit about your books and how did that bring you in, into the wide world and the Wide for the Win  Facebook stuff?

What does Erin write?

Erin Wright: Yeah. So I write sexy cowboys. Contemporary, not historical and—let’s see, I live in Idaho, which is if you know anything about the United States, it’s a very rural part of the United States. I live in a town with a population of 300 people. Rural is—does not begin to describe where I live at right now.

I’m house-sitting while my parents are gone until April of 2022. They’re gone to California. And so my husband and I are taking care of the family farm while they’re gone. And let’s see, why, how did I get into wide? I, so when I first started writing, it was in the fall of 2016 when I published my first book and all my friends, everybody who I knew, literally everybody was in KU.

So I went into KU because only stupid people went wide, of course, like the smart way to make a whole bunch of money is to go into KU. And so I went into KU and I just I guess I’m enough of a rebel or something, but I really hated being dependent on one storefront. And this was right about the time I actually started, I learned about the author world and started investigating, like becoming an author the day or the day after KU 2.0 came out. And so all the author groups were like freaking out about there’s this huge change. And I was so new that I didn’t understand what KU 2.0 meant versus K 1.0, I didn’t understand any of these words.

And it took me a bit to get caught up. Anyway. So then I’m all into KU and everything’s great and then Amazon started page stripping people and shutting down accounts and just like went bananas on people. And I was like, okay, screw this I’m out. And so I went wide and I just, hung around the internet and did my thing.

And I’m really, nobody special. It’s not like when I release a book, I hit like the New York times bestseller list or something like, I am just your average—I’m full-time I guess that makes me a little bit different maybe. But I’m not like I live in a castle with servants running around or something. I’m just a normal person who writes and has fun and pays my bills doing it.

Anyway, and but I had a lot of friends who were like I’m helping them, they have questions about like how to go wide. So I’m walking them through different things. And I started getting this feedback of, I should start a Facebook group and help a lot of people at the same time.

And I’m not a big fan of social media or specifically not a big fan of Facebook. And so I really struggled with that for awhile, but I finally was like: fine! I will start a group. And so I approached my closest right hand buddy Susie O’Connell and I was like, Hey, Susie, got this brilliant idea. You and I should start a Facebook group together because I am not going to do this by herself.

And so we started up the Facebook group in March of 2019. Yeah. March of 2019. So it was actually‚—we just passed our two year mark and we just thought it was going to be like us and maybe like a couple of other romance authors, like we really didn’t know all that many wide authors, because when you go into Facebook groups, everything is about KU.

So you don’t really realize that there are authors who are wide. And so I thought legit, I thought we were going to have about a hundred people total in this group. And we are about six and a half thousand at this point. And I just find that mind blowing because there can not possibly be that many wide authors in the world, but somehow there is, which is so cool.

Crystal Hunt: And growing by the day, I think. It’s been really interesting over this past six months or so. I’ve just noticed, all the authors that I follow their newsletters and I’m on mailing lists and stuff coming out from the different author groups that I follow. There’s been a huge shifting of attitude to people towards going wide.

And that has been nice to see. I think it’s great to, to boost those numbers a little bit and to think, you know, we talk about diversity all the time in terms of culture and in terms of all these inputs, but also your output needs to be diverse and your books should be available in all the markets you can get them into.

And I think especially this past year, the ability for people to access libraries when we’re all stuck at home. And if you are in KDP select and you are in a part of the Kindle Unlimited Program, you can’t be in the library and for me, that was the deal breaker was. I started wide in 2014 and then shifted in 2017, same time as you, when everything changed, I shifted into KDP select. And then the last … same thing almost 18 months, I haven’t released anything. So I’ve just been regrouping and just thinking about, okay, if we’re going to do this and jump back in, do it right. Do it in line with our values and make sure that everything is really putting out in the world what I would like to see and supporting people to make sure that everyone has stories to read and that things are available as much as possible. So for a minute, maybe we talk a little bit about what is the mindset of a wide author? What do you think are the main differences when we talk about these different camps of people chatting over social media and online and wherever else what jumps out at you as the primary differences? 

Mindset of a wide author

Erin Wright: Yeah. Great question, and I just wanted to circle back really fast because I didn’t mention this before. I was actually in the library world for seven years and I was a library director for 18 months and I’m obviously not a librarian any longer, but when I found out that because my books were in KU, I couldn’t be in a library that absolutely broke my heart. I was so unhappy. It was really not that hard for me to go wide. Let’s just put it that way. Like it just fits who I am as a person.  

 So there is a lot more to being wide than just publishing wide. And I think that is where a lot of people fall down on their face is that they think, okay I’ll put my books out wide and but then I’m going to spend a bunch of money on AMS ads. And when I do Facebook ads, I’m going to target Amazon. And I’m going to do, BookBub’s, but I guess, I don’t know maybe we’ll see if I can get them that’d be great. But when I give away, e-readers, they’re going to be Kindles. When I gave away gift cards, they’re going to be Amazon only, but I’m totally a wide offer. No, you’re really not. 

And the thing that kills me, I think, more than anything else is that authors put their books wide and then spend all of their money and time and attention on building their Amazon readership, and then they blame the wide storefronts for not just magically getting them sales. Nobody ever thinks when they publish on Amazon, all of these sales are just going to show up. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to advertise. They’re just going to magically appear. I think we all wish that’s how it happened, but nobody, realistically, who is becoming an author or wants to become an author as a full-time job, they do not go and publish on Amazon with that expectation. But for some reason that I cannot wrap my mind around people do that all the time with wide storefronts, they should just sell like magic. 

And guess what? You guys, it’s not magic. You have to put the time and energy and focus into selling on wide storefronts. Just as much as you put it into selling on Amazon. So when I cross promote with other authors, they’re all wide authors. I don’t cross promote with KU authors because the KU authors are going to send me KU readers.

KU readers are going to be upset that they have to buy my books. They’re going to download my free books. Sure. But they’re not going to buy anything. And it turns out that book sales is how I eat. KU readers do me almost no good at all. Meanwhile, I’m sending my wide readers to a KU author.

And then they go hold on, I can’t read these books. They’re not on the storefront. I want to read. So when you cross promote with a KU author, as a wide author, nobody wins. The readers don’t win, the authors don’t win. Everybody ends up unhappy. And so that is one of the things that I really want to drill into people’s heads because it’s so just a part of what you think.

Well, it’s another author. They write in the same genre as I do. All publicity is good publicity, except for, it’s not true. You do not want KU readers on your newsletter list. You do not want KU readers. They will leave nasty reviews on your books saying I would read this book if it was KU, but it’s not, so I’m giving it one star. That’s legit a review that is left all the time. And Amazon won’t take it down. Does it have anything to do with the book? No, the reader openly admits they never read it because it’s not in KU they give it a one star anyway. You do not want KU readers. So I cross-promote with wide authors only. When I link whether on social media, on my website, wherever it is always to all storefronts.

So I can use a company like genius links books to read as another company, my website. But whenever I link to storefronts, I never link to just Amazon. That is telling other readers who read on other platforms that they don’t matter. So I linked to all platforms all the time. My ad spending, I never book with a paid newsletter that only sends out Amazon links, period.

I don’t care. I don’t care how big you are. I can name several paid newsletters off the top of my head that only send out Amazon links in their newsletters. They will never get a dime from me. They never have. They never will. Prizes: I give away Nooks and I give away Kobos. So if in US you probably will get the nook, and if you’re out of the US you probably get the Kobo, but I give my winners the choice. They can choose whichever one they want. When I gave away gift cards, I gave away gift cards to the five major storefronts. When I do asked for ARC readers, they have to review on at least two storefronts, not two sites, but two storefronts.

And the reason I say that is, is because a lot of people will then say, Oh, okay I’ll review for you on Amazon and Goodreads. And it’s like Amazon actually owns Goodreads. I don’t know if you know that, but yeah, that doesn’t count. So it has to be two storefronts and you know what? Other than Amazon, there are no requirements for purchases like Amazon, you have to spend 50 bucks a year in order to review on their site. Every other storefront, you can set up an account for free. Now with Apple, you do need to own an Apple device, but there’s no charge for the review itself or to have a review account. And the reader never has to download the book off that storefront.

They just have to set up a free account, set that up, review, and then send me the links. Show me that you reviewed on Barnes and Noble and Amazon or Google Play and Nook or … I don’t care, but it just has to be two. So all of these things are part of having the wide mindset. And just thinking about the world outside of Amazon and you guys get this, I’m sure it’s for us Americans, sometimes it’s hard to think outside of America.

And I think the KU authors have a hard time thinking outside of Amazon and it’s that same thing. What do you mean there’s a world outside of Amazon? That can’t be true. There is no country outside of America. It just doesn’t exist. Like I refuse to believe it. And so it really is just part of that.

It’s just opening up your mind and taking more things into consideration than just your ranking on Amazon. 

Michele Amitrani: Yeah, I think you’ve touched on a lot Interesting things here. I was—I’m just finishing, reading the introduction that you were writing for Mark’s book and it seems your way of discovering, like the wide world was something that was taken as in a battle: day after day after day.

Because at that time there wasn’t that much information about being wide and successfully. I wanted to ask you a question about the timeline. Now, when I speak with other indie authors about going wide, one of the main resistance, if you will, that I encounter is that they will say I tried this for two or three months and then nothing happens, so they moved back everything on Amazon. 

And I would like to know, based on your experience, what do you think is a timeframe that people should try at least the best that they can on those stores wide? And if you have some tips again, timeline based, that might help the authors when they make the jump from one major store to all the other stores.

Timeframe or timeline to give yourself when going wide

Erin Wright: Yeah. So the timeline or the rule of thumb that I hear a lot is one year. A lot of people throw that out as like a general guide of expect to make the same amount that you were making in KU a year after you gone wide. I’ve seen a lot of exceptions to that rule. A lot.

And so it, so much of it depends on how wide-minded you actually become out of the gate. Because like I said, if you just put your books up on the wide storefront and after three months you pull them back down again, because well, nothing sold. Yeah, you’re going to be a failure. You could leave them up for a year. You could leave them up for 10 years. And if you never do a darn thing, if you pretend like those books don’t exist on the other storefronts, you’re most likely, never going to have it take off. So you need to not only put your books wide, but have the work in place. And that will make all the difference in the world.

There’s actually a lot of people who sell very little on wide storefronts, but that’s going to sound terrible to a lot of people, but there are some people who do not sell a lot on widespread storefronts, but still choose to be wide because they make more from a sale than they do from page reads.

Especially if you write a little bit shorter, you’d make so little in page reads that you are much better off if somebody just buys the book from you. So if you go wide, you can get sales and stop getting all these like measly little, little bits here and there from KU page reads. And so then the sales on the other storefronts are like bonanza, right?

They’re just extra above and beyond. But I have talked to a lot of authors who have said that just going wide, their Amazon income has gone up because they no longer are getting page reads. People are buying their books instead. Does that always happen? No. But that is something that has happened multiple times because they tell me about it.

So I can tell you it’s happening. Either that, or I’m just surrounded by a bunch of liars. I dunno. Anyway, so I would say to have the mindset or the expectation, that it will take a year and then work your ass off and see if you can get that down. But don’t go wide out of a sense of desperation or because you’re really pissed off. Because if you’re really truly desperate, anything else pretty much is going to be a better plan than publishing wide and making money off that.

Because if you’re desperate in terms of finances, when you go wide, you have to set up all the accounts, have to publish all of the books, then you have to build up all of those the store, the storefronts, and your sales on them. You’re talking about six months from now at a minimum before you get your first paycheck from these wide storefronts, right?

Not at a minimum, but it’s realistic. If you were just to start today, I’m going to go off and I’m going to set up accounts at Barnes and Noble and Apple and whatever. Probably your first paycheck isn’t going to show up for six months. So if you’re truly financially desperate going wide is not a good solution.

Going down to the employment center, much better solution! If you actually need this in order to feed your belly. Don’t do it if you are desperate. Don’t do it if you are angry at Amazon for treating you wrongly, because that will dissipate. I know you’re really mad right now, but that will go away.

And then you’ll start to question. Maybe I shouldn’t go wide after all, and then you’re just going to ping-pong right back into KU and all the work that you did, any of the few readers that you found it’s gone and the wide retailers, if you decide in the future to go wide again and give it a real shot at that time, they’re going to look at you a little bit askance because how long are you going to last this time before you pull out and go back into KU?

And if you don’t think they’re paying attention to that, you don’t know wide retailers. Barnes and Noble, Apple and Kobo have human merchandisers. There are real people sitting there looking at your account, seeing how many times you’ve pulled your books on and off and on and off how many times you have ditched them in the middle of a promotion, because oops, I guess I need to go back into KU with this book.

They pay attention to that. So the more you screw around with it, the worse it’s going to be, you’re never really going to gain an attraction. So make a decision stick with it and that goes for KU too. Don’t just talk into KU for a, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and pull back out because you’re building up a KU audience, and then you’re saying, screw you and you go wide.

That’s not very nice to the KU readers either. Make a decision and stick with it. There’s that Ninja karate kit, this is important. Karate kid, where the guy says, don’t walk down the middle of the road, people who walked down the middle of the road, get squashed flat, right?

Yeah. People who try to have their cake and eat it too, who try to be wide and in KU, and they’re just everywhere. It just makes a big mess of things. Just make a decision.

Crystal Hunt: I think that’s a really great piece of advice. And so there’s a lot of people that we work with in our Creative Academy, who find it very overwhelming when they first come to the indie publishing world and the idea of learning, not just how to publish a book, but how to publish and promote a book for each of these different places, basically just has them paralyzed and frozen.

And so we, we talk about, okay what if you start with one place and then build out from there? And I know the temptation is often, we’ll all start with Amazon because if I’m, in KDP select and on Amazon, I can learn how it all works. And that’s where most people say they make most of the money anyway, and then I can add other storefronts from there.

But one of the suggestions that Mark had in his book was if you’re going to do that, why not start with Kobo or one of the other ones? Even if you think that might be on Amazon is your best shot at income would you usually start with your best bet or would you learn on a test run scenario on one of the other platforms?

And if you are planning to be wide, eventually starting with one of the other platforms, won’t train your brain to be Amazon centric in the same way? So I’m curious, like if somebody is picking a platform to start with, do you have any guidance about where to start or do you think that’s a good approach? How do you feel about that?

Approaching going wide

Erin Wright: So you have caught me. I have not read all of Mark’s books, so I have not gotten to that part yet. Sorry, Mark. I’ve been busy finishing a book. I have always said to start with a storefront, I guess I just assumed, look at me, assuming the Amazon would be the one that you would start with.

Crystal Hunt: I did the same thing when I read that I was like, wait, what? 

Erin Wright: I can’t get away from it. My suggestion is that even if you do you decided to be Amazon first that, it’s all good. The idea that you have to either publish on all storefronts or publish on just Amazon and be in KU is not accurate.

You can publish Amazon and choose not to enroll your book in KDP Select. And then a couple of weeks later after you’ve taken, a couple shots of tequila or something, whatever ever get your nerves down, it’s going to be fine. You can then choose to publish on another storefront.

And then a couple of weeks after that, pick another storefront. So whichever when you start with is fine just don’t start with KDP Select, because first off you’re agreeing that your book will be in there for 90 days. Yes, you can ask if you can get your book out early. Legally, Amazon is not required to let you out early.

And there are multiple people in Wide for the Win who have their book in KU and have been told by Amazon that they are not going to let their book out. Okay. So I get that you think you can just get your book out by asking. The chances are good that is true, but it is not a hundred percent.

So please stop assuming that will just happen for you because you will just be that lucky that you will be the one person that it does not happen for. And legally you have agreed. You have signed a contract stating 90 days. If they decide to be kind and let you out early, that’s completely up to them.

But is by no means guaranteed. And if you are placing all of your author career on the kindness of Amazon, you are a braver person than I am. 

Crystal Hunt: Kindness is not the primary operating principle. Dollar bills. It seems to be the primary operating principle. 

Erin Wright: Exactly. So let’s not make that part of your strategy, so yeah, just pick a storefront, any storefront, and then a couple of weeks later, when you feel comfortable doing another one I do suggest going through, and it doesn’t take that long to apply for an account on each storefront.

And then that way, if you, if there are any problems that they happen, because you didn’t fill out this correctly or that correctly gives you some time to go back in and get those things corrected. So don’t set up your account tonight and think that you’re going to be uploading to it tomorrow morning.

That’s probably not going to be how it works. Give yourself some buffer time. So go through and apply for all the different accounts. Let those accounts actually become active and good to go and then start uploading to them and just pick one and work your way through it. 

Michele Amitrani: Yeah, I think that’s a very good suggestion.

Crystal before mentioned that there are a lot of people in out community the Creative Academy that sometimes they are overwhelmed. I think that suggestion will help them out to single out one store and then maybe you go concentrate your resources on another, so you don’t go crazy in the process.

One thing that I’m curious about is exactly because we want to help people making the choice of diversifying their possibility of success. There is something that I’m really interested as a person that has started his journey wide recently. I will say this January was my the starting with my mythological fantasy collection. Let’s talk about tools. If you were to suggest to a newbie like me, maybe a toolkit or a collection of resources for a person that really wants to make it wide. And this can be anything digital, or physical books, it can be other kinds of resources.

Of course Wide for the Win and the Wide for the Win Facebook groups, these are already in the mix, but do you have anything else that you would suggest to this kind of authors? 

Tools to use

Erin Wright: Yeah. Obviously the Wide for the Win group and the Wide for the Win book, of course. Vellum is a program that’s only available for Macs, but the brilliant thing about Vellum is that it allows you to do the back matter for your books, meaning when you get to the end of the book itself, then there’s a spot that is read more, read the next book here, blah, except for it’s much better than this.

But it’s like this great enticing thing to read the next book, and then it has a link. If you were uploading to all the storefronts directly, if you have—okay—let’s say you’re uploading to Kobo and you put together your little EPUB in the link in the back of your book is to say, Apple then Kobo first off is going to be angry with you because you’re sending your readers to Apple.

And second of all, your Kobo readers are not going to be happy with you because they don’t want to read on Apple. They’re on Kobo for a reason, right? So your back matter needs to direct people to the right storefront. Vellum makes that so easy in comparison to doing all of it manually and creating a back matter that works for every single storefront and then when you make it, you find that missing period on page 32, and you have to go back and you have to edit every single file for every single store. Oh my gosh. Then you just cry. You cry. So Vellum is cool. If you can’t use vellum, cause it costs a fair amount of money, or you don’t own a Mac, Draft2Digital has a way that will make free iPads for you. There’s a couple of everything’s. Vellum just makes life easier. That’s all. I personally use BookSprout for my ARCs. And the reason that I love BookSprout is that they have a place for readers to insert or paste in their links for the reviews on all of the different storefronts.

So rather than just saying, yep. I read your review or send me an email, sit there and send me an email and say, I wrote a review on this storefront, this for front, this storefront. And then I have to go in and manually check every one of those storefronts and track down to make sure that they did what they said they were going to do BookSprout makes it so easy.

They just paste in the URL for their review. Done. So you can click on that URL, go look at the review. They did what they were supposed to do. Brilliant. And it does it for not only the five major storefronts, but also Smashwords BookBub and Goodreads. So they actually had eight places, which is really cool.

I use BookFunnel for my newsletter magnet. So if somebody signs up for my newsletter, they get a free book from me that is delivered to them through BookFunnel. Love BookFunnel, absolutely worth the money for them. I use a company called ScribeCount for my reporting. So they are brand new and they haven’t even started charging yet.

I dunno, it depends on when this podcast goes live. But they will start charging at the beginning of April, but they give everybody a free trial anyway. But they do wide reporting in, so it isn’t just, how are my sales on Amazon? Which is what you get out of BookReport in some of the other companies, right?

This gives you your sales on the major storefronts plus Draft2Digital and they are working on adding Smashwords and a bunch of other sites. So I emphasize reporting because a lot of people don’t realize quite how much they’re making on the wide storefronts until they see it all in one place, because even for me, Amazon is a larger single chunk of my income than any other storefront. Meaning they’re my number one, retailer.

They’re not over 50%. The last I checked, they make, I make 40% of my income from Amazon, 60% from wide storefronts. But that 60% is split across all these different storefronts. So when you go to this storefront over here and you’re like, ah, they’re like $25. There that’s hardly anything, so you’re thinking you’re not making very much. ScribeCount brings it all together into one dashboard and you go, Oh my gosh. Yeah. Okay. So Amazon may be my biggest retailer, but it’s only 40% of my income. So that just allows you to have a more global view of yourself. 

The last thing that I would suggest is to absolutely invest if you are not Canadian, some of us are lucky enough to be Canadian is to invest in ISBNs and publish your print books on Ingram Spark.

I used to publish my print books on Amazon and use the expanded distribution button because why not? And it was all free and blah, blah, blah. And I hardly ever made any money on paperbacks. It was pathetic. I may sell, I may have sold like two paperbacks a month.

It was awful. And so I finally saved up some money, bought $600 worth of ISBNs and publish on IngramSpark. And I made back my $600 investment in that first couple of months from paperback sales. So to go from somebody who sold like two books a month to selling hundreds of dollars in a month, I was ecstatic.

Anyway, so be wide in ebook and print and audio. You can be Wide all of these different arenas, not just eBooks. There’s a whole world out there you guys. 

Ingram Spark coupons

Crystal Hunt: We are big fans of Findaway Voices for the audio distribution around these parts. And that gets you into all kinds of great places and also well familiar with Ingram Spark.

Now, if you’re not yet on our mailing list, go get there immediately because with this week’s episode, I’m going to send out a coupon code for free set up on Ingram Spark. It’s been working for me for 12 years, and it’s basically, since the platform started, it may one day end, but for now it’s still working.

So get to strategicauthorpreneur.com and get on our weekly mailing list. If you were not already getting our emails and we’ll make sure to send it out there. 

Erin Wright: Also I just have to say people, no! I can’t afford to publish on IngramSpark, cause I have to pay the $49 upload fee and then the $29 edit fee. And I’m like. No, bad! Don’t! You should never, ever pay money to upload to IngramSpark or to do edits on IngramSpark. Anyway, sorry. Continue.

Crystal Hunt: The other sneaky way to not do that as if you’re a member of the Alliance of independent Authors, there are often coupon codes for IngramSpark in there.

Now, do you have any other sneaky access to coupon codes or places we could send people? Like how do you avoid paying setup fees on IngramSpark? Tell us all the information. 

Erin Wright: In the Wide for the Win group, we have the, what we call the tree of knowledge or excuse me, tree of wisdom.

Knowledge was too long to fit on the tile. So we call it. That’s literally why we went with that shorter. So we have the tree of wisdom up at the top. And if you’ve ever been to the group, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Cause this is big green leafy, beautiful graphic that Susie, bless her heart made.

It’s absolutely gorgeous. She’s so talented. I am not. And so one of the reason why I bring that up is because it helps us so that we can organize links so that it isn’t just one big, long list of here’s all this information. Cause there’s so much up there. So in the tree of wisdom, there is a specific post with IngramSpark codes listed in it.

You can get people to sign up for your newsletter, then do that. 

Crystal Hunt: No, we just want people to get not paying. It doesn’t doesn’t matter how they get the info coming both places you should be in both places, you should be on our mailing list. You should also be in Wide for the Win.

I love your tree of knowledge or wisdom I’ve been in there, poking around and discovered all kinds of things. But I haven’t got to my print books republication yet. So I have not yet found that, so that I’m super excited. I live in fear of my code stopping working one day when they realized they forgot to deactivate it, like it’s really, it’s been working for decades, which makes me really nervous.

So that is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Erin, anybody out there we just removed any excuse you might’ve had why that wasn’t a good idea. And that’s why the community piece is so valuable, because if you have a bunch of people doing something, you can start to notice patterns, but only if people are sharing what they’re doing and what’s going on.

And the other way you can get yourself out of hot water is by having a coach or somebody to help you or walk you through the process. And is that a service that you are providing?

Consulting with Erin Wright and Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Erin Wright: A great question! I’m just kidding. No that, that is terrific. Maybe six months ago I started having a widelings, that’s what we call ourselves in the Wide for the Win Facebook group. We started—I started having widelings sending me messages and saying: Erin I’d really love it if you would sit down with me and answer questions. And I really didn’t have a good way of making that happen. I talked to Mark Leslie Lefebvre about that and… because he does do consulting.

And so he walked me through how to set up my own little consulting thing. And then we announced together on Wide for the Win that we were both offering consulting to wide clients. We charge the same amount. It’s a hundred dollars for the first appointment. We take payment the same way through PayPal. We conducted the same way through zoom. So there isn’t any difference in those fundamental things. We both focus on wide. He actually will talk to KU authors. I love you guys, but I have nothing to share with you. If you want to stay in KU, right? If you want to go wide, I’ll talk to you all day, but I know so little about being a successful KU author. I would be worthless. Please don’t ask me for KU advice. So he will give you KU advice, which I think is amazing anyway. 

If you go to ErinWright.net/consulting, that will get you my consulting section and I walk through: here, all the things that I’m really good at, and here are the things that I’m sh*t at. And I am not above telling you that I am. I do not run Facebook ads.

I’ve never run a Facebook ad in my life. I have no idea where to even go on the Facebook dashboard to start Facebook ads. So if you set up a consultation with me and was like, Hey Erin, I want to learn Facebook ads. I’d be like, why are you here? I cannot help you. So there are lots of things that I don’t know anything about.

And I am very open about that and I have turned clients down because they wanted help in an arena that I could not give them help in. And I’m never going to waste somebody’s money. If you read through the consulting page and you go, Oh yeah, this sounds like something that she could help me with.

I would love to help you, but if I’m not going to be a good fit for you, I’m not a good fit for you. And that’s okay. Especially if you’re in a very print, heavy genre. Like I can tell you, go on to IngramSpark, publish your books there. Don’t pay an upload fee. Buy an ISBN. I can tell you that. But the majority of my income… last I checked 97% of my income came from e-books.

Okay? So to say that print is not a major income driver for me is putting it mildly. So if you are in a very paper print, heavy genre, like middle grade, that sort of thing, or even younger Mark Leslie is going to be a much better fit for you because he’s actually been in the print world for a lot longer.

And has traditionally published some of his books and things like that. I’ve never traditionally published anything I’ve never even applied to be traditionally published. I’ve never gone out, looking for an agent. I don’t have any desire to be traditionally published because I like to maximize things and do things the way that makes sense for my brand and turning that over to somebody else is not who I am.

So if you want to go down the traditional published route again, not your girl. So like I said, I’m very open. And I just, I love to help people. I said before I was a librarian for seven years. I was a teacher after that, before I actually became an author. So I had a lot of jobs in my old age.

I just turned 40 last month. So I’m really feel like I’m very old at this point. I was a teacher for years. I love to teach. I love, genuinely loved help people, and that’s why I started Wide for the Win . So if I can help you. Please let me, it would be great. 

Crystal Hunt: Awesome. We will put all of the links to Erin’s various websites, and maybe that you’re most interested in the Western romance.

It may be that you are just dying to dive into the Wide for the Win stuff and get in that Facebook group. All of that stuff we will link to from our show notes as per usual.  

Michele Amitrani: Something that I actually wanted to bug you with, if possible.

This is a question projected to the future. I also write science fiction so I would like your taking on two things. The Erin’s take on this: What do you think might be the future of Wide publishing, especially we’re talking for people and authors who are very serious about this, if there are things that might grow, things that we can see maybe the audiobooks front, things that are different that might change and might grow.

And also if you, for example, in romance, if there are tendencies that you see and that you want to share with the listeners. 

What do you think the future of being wide looks like?

Erin Wright: Yeah. So actually I’ll start with something that answers both questions because I am an overachiever. There is something that is hitting, especially romance right now, but they are starting to open up to the other genres, called serial apps.

Not cereal, like you eat for breakfast, one book after another being in a series. Serial apps charge the reader with coins and readers can buy those coins. Readers can win those coins. Readers can get those coins by logging in every day, you get coins by, leaving a review.

You get coins for this and get coins for that. But they get you by not giving you a whole lot of coins. So you—then you have to buy them in order to finish this book. Okay? From the author’s point of view, you upload your book and the reader will read it one chapter at a time, and then they have to use a coin or three coins or whatever it is to unlock the next chapter.

And so you don’t just upload the whole book and you have it all drop on the same day. You upload chapter one and it goes live on Monday. And then chapter two goes, live on Tuesday and chapter three, it goes live on Wednesday. And so then the reader has to wait for the next episode. And so it’s exciting Ooh, what is going to happen next?

And each episode is just a tactic, right? So if you write books, especially books that end on a cliffhanger at the end of the chapters, Serial apps are the place for you because the readers will get to the end of the chapter and go, Oh, I have to know what happens next. So there’s some really big serial apps out there.

Radish. Yes. Like the vegetable. I don’t know where that name came from, but that is their name ‘Radish’. There’s a romance one called Kiss. Now that one makes a lot more sense to me. There are a lot of them there’s chapters. There’s a bunch of them out there. So serial apps is a big thing that I see.

The other big thing that I see is actually where they take your book, and they make it into a game. And this is also big in the romance world, but it’s also getting big in other genres. So the game is basically they put you into the book. So you go into the app and you like create a character where you pick your hair colour and your hair, skin, and your outfit for your avatar.

And if you buy it extra coins, then you get to have cuter outfit on your avatar because that’s how this works. And then you get to choose when you get to I’m like, Oh my gosh, there was one. I was reading through it. I was trying to play the game so that I could see how it worked.

And it was like, do you want to knock on the front door or do you just want to stand there and wait for somebody to come by or something like that? They weren’t like. It sound like you’re beating people up in this game or something like they’re very AB questions. Are you going to stay, there was one that it starts out with this grave.

Are you gonna stay at the grave or are you going to go back into the car? It’s very basic a do this, do that. And so you choose one. And usually what ends up happening is that the storyline forks a little bit, and then it comes right back. So whether you choose to stay at the graveyard or you choose to go back to the car, eventually you end up back in the same thing.

So what happens is that authors give well, there’s two different kinds of apps out there, but either way, the game is made from your book. And that’s where that comes into play as being an author is that they will, game-ify your book. Some of them pay you per like person who goes through the game.

Some of the companies pay you a flat fee to turn your book into a game. Eh there’s several different variations on the theme, but that’s been a really big major source of growth in such a short time that just started appearing within the last six months. And it just blew up everybody’s, are you getting your book on to chapters?

So there’s so much out there. You can’t do any of these things. If you’re in KDP Select. It just shuts off everything around you. So I really feel like serial apps are going to be a big thing. The game aspect is going to be a big thing. Audio books. So I was lucky enough to have a company approach me and say, I will pay for all of your books to be narrated.

I will publish them all for you. I will do all of the advertising for you. And in return you just, you get 50% of the royalties and I’m like, Okay. Sign me up. Because I’ve got so much on my plate, having somebody else who’s willing to do all the publishing and willing to do all the advertising and pay for the audio books. Wow. What a great deal. So I jumped on that with both feet and I’m so thankful that came across in my life. Audio books as much as people who love audio books focus on them, and I’m one of them, I read a lot more books by listening to them than I do by reading. They’re still a tiny portion of the income that is made from eBooks.

So I feel like it’s still very much a growth sector of the industry. I’m also a little bit like how long have we been saying that audiobooks are going to be the next big thing? And they do grow every year, but it isn’t what happened with eBooks, where you went from print to ebook in just a couple of years and it just exploded.

Audiobooks is just growing, but it’s not exploding. And so I’m interested to see how much bigger it ends up getting before it plateaus. And it just sits there and you’re going to end up having three strata, where are you going to have print book, ebook, audio, and people who read print, always read print, people who read ebook, always read ebook, that sort of thing. 

There aren’t a lot of people who switch between them because it’s their preferred method. And so I think you’re going to end up having it settle out. I don’t think you’re going to have every person on the planet go from reading print or ebook to all of a sudden loving audio books, just not going to happen.

But I do feel like there’s a lot more growth in that industry than there’s. Then it’s it has not reached its potential yet. How’s that?

Crystal Hunt: For folks who are going from KU to wide who have a whole bunch of books in their catalogue, do you think they should just go for it and put everything all at once, or is it better to streamline over time?

Going from KU to wide

Erin Wright: Oh, such a good question.

Crystal Hunt: Cause the rapid release approach is very Amazon centric in terms of the algorithm and everything else. But I feel with the human and the other side and the other platforms might or might not be abetter thing. 

Erin Wright: Yeah, so. Rapid release absolutely is an Amazon centric strategy. Just so we are clear on that. You can do it if you want on the other storefronts but it doesn’t give you nearly the … Amazon reward newness. Other storefronts actually reward history. So, the longer a book has been up, there are more people who have downloaded it, there are more people who have reviewed it, those are things that actually count of wide storefronts.

This is one of the reasons why if you pull your books on and off the wide storefronts, every time you pull your book off, when you republish it, it’s as if nothing never happened to that book before. All of that history, all of that love, all of that algorithm juice is just gone and you are starting from scratch, from zero, and you have to work at it again and that is exhausting.

That aside, wide storefronts will not do … we didn’t even talk about in-house promos, so that’s something to focus on later, but … wide storefront will not do in-house promos on a new book through them, and treats it like a new release, thought them, if it has already been released on Amazon. Because B&N, Kobo and Apple have new release or preorders promos.

And so you could be like: Hey, I’m releasing this book wide now so let me get a promotion from it. They don’t. They consider it like … It’s like when somebody breaks up with their boyfriend and then they end up dating you just because you happen to be there. Like, that is not flattering. You’re like, the second choice drags. I had nothing better to do with my Friday so I guess I’m going on a date with you. The wide storefronts don’t like to be treated like that, shockingly enough. 

So they will not do in-house promos for books that has already been published. So it really depends for you, what you prefer to do. You could just drop them all at once, you could spread them out. People … this is actually something that has been talked about in the group. There are people on both side of the coin who advocate fro both things. My personal choice, if that was to happen to me. Tomorrow I was going wide with forty books. First, gook Lord I’ve been busy writing! Second, I would put up the first book as a life release and put up all the rest of the books as pre-orders. And then have them going live two weeks from each other. But by putting the preorder up, when people finish reading book one, there’s book two as a preorder. They can go ahead and click it and pre-order it right then. So that they don’t forget about it.

So that can go, ok, and they can get pre-order book two. And then at the back of book two there is a pre-order link for book three, amazing how this works, and you’re just gonna work your way through that. 

That would be my personal recommendation so you spread things out a little bit and don’t hit … they do have new release list on storefronts that are not put together by human beings, it’s just done by algorithms, and if you dump all of your books at the same time then your books show up on that list all at the same time, and then they all disappear at the same time. 

So maybe spread out the love a little bit. Plus, readers who are wide can be like … we use to have to wait for TV episodes, right? And you’d get home and be like: Ok my gosh! I can’t be out somewhere at seven o’clock on Wednesday because that show is going live that I really want to watch. Every week you were glue to your TV because it’s only then, at that time, that you can watch it. Well, we kind of gotten away from that, but that little bit of anticipation is still a human thing. 

So having to wait another two weeks, and waiting finds out what happen next, that sort of thing. So that is just my personal take. But there isn’t really a right or wrong way in that respect.

Crystal Hunt: Okay. Thank you so much, Erin, for sharing a wealth of information with us. I feel like we could keep talking about this for several more days and that we would barely still be scratching the surface.

There’s so much stuff. So we’ll just tell you get to the Wide for the Win Facebook group, because there is the tree of wisdom and thousands of members who have all of these diverse experiences with their publishing adventures in all formats, in all the places, from all the countries to share everything that they have learned with you.

Thank you so much for that and for starting the group and spending what we understand is an inordinate amount of your own time, energy, and resources to keep that community running and supportive and all of those things, it is not an easy task and it comes at a price definitely which we understand as community builders and maintainers ourselves, it is definitely not without costs as a writer, as a human, all of the things. 

So thank you on behalf of all of us for doing that, so that we may benefit from it, in sharing all of this wisdom.

Erin Wright: I am one of those people who if I get into the group, first thing, then I get sucked into the group.

And I start answering all these questions and this breaks out and this person said this and blah, blah, blah. And so I actually have to do my writing first, or I would never publish a book again. Already it’s 18 months between book publishing, but yeah, that’s been my, like my thing that I finally figured out.

It took me awhile, but I got there. I have to get into my writing first and then I can go get sidetracked. 

Michele Amitrani: And I also think like one of the things that we see is that most of the authors see or are at the point they are at now because other authors at that time, in another part of their journey, we’re helping them.

So I’m reading books of other people that say,  I’m here just because of other people. And so I just wanted to add myself to Crystal in saying thank you for being transparent. And thank you for letting us know, how is it the journey to wide, but also what’s difficult, what is easier in some regards, but always sharing your thoughts and doing it genuinely.

And just saying your 5 cents that I’m sure is going to be very helpful to our listeners. So thank you very much. 

Erin Wright: Yeah, absolutely. And I do feel like, this sort of thing where we, where you guys invite me on and I’m able to share it’s so useful because I know that when I first started out, I knew nothing.

And I follow the people around who did know something and, learn from them. And so it’s just one of those, of course you want to give back to the community. So I think that’s something that the three of us definitely share.

Crystal Hunt: All right, everybody. We hope you enjoy today’s show. Remember to hit the subscribe button, wherever you’re listening to the podcast and to visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com for show notes, a ton of links from today to all the resources and tools that we were talking about, and do feel free to hit that, buy us a coffee button, if you find the show helpful, we use that money to keep us in books and to keep our production ads free and going with episodes. 

So thank you so much, everyone and happy writing.