Adventurous Sci-Fi and Fantasy for Teens & Adults
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| Natalie Wright, Author |
Natalie is the author of H.A.L.F., an award-winning science fiction series, and The Akasha Chronicles, a young adult fantasy trilogy. She lives in the high desert of Tucson, Arizona with her husband, teen daughter, and two cat overlords.
Natalie frequently appears on podcasts, radio shows, and blogs and has most recently appeared on Judy Hoberman's show on iHeart Radio, the Speculative Fiction Cantina, Front Row Geeks and Nerd of Paradise.
Natalie spends her time writing, reading, gaming, geeking out over nerd culture and cool science, hanging out on social media, and meeting readers and fans at festivals and comic cons throughout the western United States. She likes to walk in the desert, snorkel in warm waters, travel and share excellent food and conversation with awesome people. She was raised an Ohio farm girl, lives in the desert Southwest, and dreams of living near the ocean.
Natalie personally responds to all reader mail. You may contact her at:
NatalieWrightAuthor (at) gmail (dot) com
PRIVACY POLICY: Natalie Wright, Author never sells your information to any third party.
Thanks for your great giveaway donation over at bookshelf confessions
ReplyDeleteYou are very welcome, Jessie :-)
DeleteThanks for your generous donation to Bookshelf Confessions! :D
ReplyDeleteHi Natalie, I was wondering if you could inform me about some of your marketing strategies for YA books. My novel is fantasy/sci-fi/YA, so I am willing to meet anyone who has had any experience with attracting a strong teen readership. It seems a little more difficult to raise awareness of your book to teens and adolescents, so what have you done to attract teens and/or other YA readers to follow you and your books?
ReplyDeleteHello Michelle,
DeleteThank you for stopping by my blog :-)
I agree it can be difficult to attract teen readers. I have a strong following on Wattpad (close to 2 million reads of Emily's House & 17,000+ followers), yet many teens are on Wattpad to read for free, not to buy books! ;-) I have excerpts of the other two books there and I frequently am asked if I will post the whole book b/c they do not have the $$ to buy them. And that's a big issue with teen readers - they don't necessarily have unfettered ability to buy.
My impression is that Tumblr & YouTube are good places to be in order to interact with a teen audience. I do not have a strong presence either place (I used to do more with YouTube but got out of the habit). But I suggest you build those two sites into your platform.
I have found that getting out into the real world doing book events is a great way to connect to teens. I go to book festivals, comic cons, etc. - anywhere where I can have a booth/table and meet people and sell books. Biggest bonus about this is gathering e-mail addresses to use for e-mail marketing. Downside - cost. It's expensive and time consuming. But in-person meetings make such a huge difference.
Lastly I recommend reading Tim Grahl's book, Selling the First 1000 Copies. I recently picked it up and I wish I'd had this information in 2011 when I first started out! Invaluable.
Of course, first you need a strong book. Write the best book you can then send it to a content editor and be prepared to weep as you read the comments ;-) At least that's what happens to me! I recommend you plan a series and if you can, write at least two books before you publish the first one (better yet, write the whole series). Why? Because if you can get the books out 6-9 months apart, it will really ratchet up the interest and keep people excited about your work. I did not do this and in hindsight wish that I had.
One more thing that I will say is that things keep changing - dramatically. It was exponentially easier to get attention to a new release back in 2011 when I released Emily's House than it is now. The market is highly saturated. So even more reason to really plan out a marketing strategy AND finely tune your work before you launch the first book. If you have a well-written, well EDITED book with a solid marketing strategy, you'll have a leg up on some who kind of throw their (first draft?) work out w/o solid strategy (and without the strength of craft) required to get noticed.
Hope this helps. If you haven't already, please feel free to browse my archives for Writing Tips (usually posted on Wednesdays under Writer Wednesday heading). And, you can subscribe to my newsletter (upper right corner of the blog) and you'll see how I'm implementing Tim Grahl's advice. Best Wishes, Natalie
Hi Natalie,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for all your valuable information. I am, just like you, currently researching all the marketing strategies before I plunged into the deep waters of publishing :) Thank you for recommending Tim's book, I can't wait to read it!
I would like to ask you, how many books did you take ( ball park ) to the book event and what was the pricing? I understand the dilemma of wattpad, it is a great expoure, but ultimately ppl are there to read free books.
Thank you again for all the amazing info and for your reply.
Keep on writing, you are great :)
Stanislava
Stanislava,
DeleteThank you for stopping by my blog! I generally take 50-100 books to each book event. Small events (2000 or less people), I generally sell around 20-30. Larger events (10,000+) I will sell anywhere from 50-150 depending on the crowd, booth/table placement, etc. I tend to do fairly well at in-person events and I think it's mainly b/c I am outgoing and will talk to anybody about anything :-)
Yay for you getting Tim's book. It's a little gem!
And yes, plan, plan, plan before you publish.
Thanks for following and I hope you find my ramblings useful ;-) Best Wishes!