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TBOWT 036 – An Interview with Victorine Lieske, New York Times Best Selling, Self-Published Author of Not What She Seems
February 6, 2014
Today’s episode features an interview with a New York Times bestselling author Victorine Lieske. Her hit book Not What She Seems, was first published as an e-book. She sold over 150,000 copies. Her other books include:
Victorine’s Books
Here are some highlights:
Peggy: You were in the game very early with e-books. A lot has changed with Amazon, iBookstore, Kobo, Smashwords.com and Barnes & Noble. Some sites have gained and some have lost. What are the most noteworthy changes that you see in the e-book market and how do those changes impact e-book authors today?
Victorine feels that advertising has become more important now than it was in the past. In the past, pricing your book at 99 cents was a great marketing ploy. That type of aggressive pricing was instrumental in her bestseller Not What She Seems making the New York Times bestseller list. Now she feels that advertising in https://bookbub.com/home/ and www.pixelofink.com (both fee-based) help authors rise above the crowd. She also talks about pricing your book to match the genre.
Peggy: When Kindle started in 2007 and introduced the first eReader in 2008, there were less than 400,000 e-books on Kindle. Now there are over 1 million e-book titles listed in the Kindle store. How can an e-book author today make his or her book stand out above the crowd?
Victorine thinks networking with other authors to find out what is working for them is one of the most effective things you can do to make sure your e-book is successful.
She also suggests that you sign up with a mailing list provider like http://mailchimp.com to handle emails and to build your list of readers. (http://mailchimp.com, a free service for up to 2,000 subscribers.) Keeping in touch with your readers has become the primary way to promote your new books.
Peggy: It seems to me that reviews are an important part of getting your book noticed online. How do you get reviews for your books? How would you recommend a new author, with their first book go about getting reviews?
Victorine feels that book reviews are not the “drivers” for book sales, but are instead, the garnish of book sales. She doesn’t like paid reviews, even by bigger players like Kirkus Reviews. Victorine likes http://librarything.com giveaways and http://goodreads.com giveaways as great resources to get additional reviews online.
Peggy: You have some great covers. What can you say about book covers: How important are they to a book’s success? How do you know when you have a bad cover? Where can new authors go to get a book cover? How much should I spend on a cover?
Victorine talks about how important effective book covers are in making a book successful. She talks about how book covers give readers that all-important first impression of the book. She sites research that job applicants are judged by their prospective bosses in the first seven seconds of an interview and points out that book covers have only seconds to convey to the reader the essence of the book. She talks about using the same font as the most popular books in your genre use. For example if you are writing a romance similar to Nicholas Sparks, then look at this book covers and use a similar font, photo, and formatting for your book. This influences the readers on a subconscious level.
She feels you can pay a lot for a book cover or a little, but generally, you get what you pay for. On average, she feels that a good cover by a reputable graphic designer will cost on average, $500. Although you can get covers for $5 on www.fiverr.com, she feels that you often get what you pay for.
Peggy: What is your best advice for the new author who is just publishing or self-publishing their first book?
Victorine: Victorine feels that her best advice is to network with other authors, improve your writing skills. When she was writing, she joined an online critique group she felt it improved her writing significantly. The critique group she recommends is www.critiquecircle.com. There are others out there. Peggy suggested that if you can’t find a group to your liking, start your own. All you need are three or four like-minded people who are willing to commit to writing and meeting each week to help one another become better writers.
Peggy: What’s next for Victorine? How do our listeners get in touch with you?
Victorine is working on a new book called Accidently Married. She expects the book to be released sometime in May 2015. To connect with Victorine visit her website at http://victorinelieske.com.
Hear Victorine talk about the 12 Steps to E-Book Success at the
The Business of Writing International Summit
Coming August 1-2, 2014
Self-Publishing POD and Kindle Publishing
Coming July 31, 2014.
The Summit
We would love to have you join us at the 2014 Summit on August 1-2 and for the Self-Publishing (Kindle and CreateSpace publishing) workshop held July 31. Here is the link:
Discounts available if you attend both the Self-Publishing workshop
and the Summit.
TO REGISTER VISIT:
http://businessofwritingsummit.com
Register now and take advantage of the early bird discount
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