Summary: This week, we continued our discussion of using funnels to sell your fiction. This was nicely summed up by Sean right up front when he said that using funnels forces you to think like a publisher… and remember that it's usually publishers, not writers, who actually make money doing this stuff. But first, voice mails! Leaving reviews in light of Amazon's sock puppets crackdown Stefanovich (sorry if I spelled that wrong; it's not as easy as "Frank") called in to say that with Amazon cracking down on bogus reviews, the spillover has caused Amazon to react and pull ANY review they feel might be overly biased or written by an author about a peer's or competitor's work. She said she's terrified to criticize other books in reviews because it might get her reviews pulled. Our advice was to not worry about it. The worst that can happen is that the reviews will be removed, but that doesn't hurt the review-maker. And they do let a lot of stuff slide through. Turning TV series scripts into Amazon serials This was a really cool idea… to take scripts and put them on Amazon in order to drum up attention that could then be used as cache when Garrett pitches the series to producers. Garrett says that he doesn't want to make money on the serials and just wants maximum exposure and asks our advice. We all thought it was a great idea, but urged him to think of money anyway. The total dollar value sold will impress producers more than "X number of free downloads." Plot vs. character is a false dichotomy Scott called in for clarification about concept vs. plot vs. setting, which we discussed in an earlier episode. He said that he felt that you need both -- character and plot -- and felt that we were arguing for one or the other. We must have poorly expressed ourselves because we don't feel that way at all. It takes both. More Garrett We then took a call from one of our favorite callers, Garrett from the UK. There wasn't precisely a question in here, but we always enjoy his updates. There was then some debate when I implied that Garrett was becoming part of our own "Wack Pack," but Dave took issue with this because he's in lust with Garrett. Marketing funnels for writers We continued our discussion of marketing funnels, and somehow this became sexual. We must all be pent up. The podcast is so sexy. But in general, Sean spelled out his massive marketing funnel for a children's project he's masterminding (and that I, Johnny, am also working on). We also talked about using a list to drive your popularity in conjunction with KDP free promos. This is a big deal, and we'll probably talk specifically about lists soon. But in general, this is the key point: Repeat after me: Build a list, then tell those people about free promotions so that they can get it for free… which will cause your work to rise in the rankings and hence get paid attention from new people. In other words, use the attention you already have to get more attention. And funnels, etc. But I'll let you listen to get the whole scoop.
