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Introduction

James L Rubart: And in this episode, we’re going to talk about how to use content to promote your book.

Thomas Umstattd Jr.: Joanna Penn is an award-nominated, New York Times bestselling author of thrillers under J.F.Penn. She has sold over half a million books all over the world. Her site, TheCreativePenn.com is regularly voted one of the top 10 sites for writers and self-publishers.

Joanna and I got started blogging about marketing for authors at about the same time in 2007. Joanna smartly focused on independent authors while we at Author Tech Tips and Author Media focused too much on traditional authors. She got on the ship that was rising and I got on the ship that was sinking. So I have since drunk the indie author Kool-Aid, but Joanna, welcome to the show.

Joanna Penn: Oh thanks for having me guys. And it’s so funny you say that, because someone was asking me the other day “why does your blog always come up when people Google stuff” and I’m like it’s because I started in 2008 blogging about self-publishing when seriously nobody wanted to know about self-publishing. So if you get early on something that’s not popular, then when it finally becomes popular, you know you’ll be out in front. But yeah it’s great. We’re talking about this today.

James Rubart: Well and it’s not only the fact that you got in early, but you have excellent content. Thomas and I are both fans of your show. So congratulations on doing it for a long time, but also doing it so well.

Joanna Penn: Thank you so much. I was also saying to someone “check out the Wayback Machine. You guys know the Wayback Machine, when you can look at websites what they looked like. My site in 2009 was a lot different. So again, we will get better over time, right?

What is content?

Thomas Umstattd:  I want to talk about content, and Joanna, it’s really easy for those of us in the industry to just assume we know what content means.

I was working at a radio station, I had a radio show. And they were struggling, and I was like “you need to be focusing on creating content.” And one of the staff people at the radio station, looked at me and said “What do you mean by content?” And I was like…”what do you mean, ‘what do you mean by content?’?”

So what is content?

Joanna Penn: So, for me, content as it relates to marketing, so let’s call it Content Marketing, is basically creating and sharing online material, like articles, video, audio, images, that don’t explicitly market your products. Not “buy my book” type stuff, but instead, attract attention to your Web site or your profile with the aim that some of the people who check out your content is a bit of a full-on approach.

So lots of people might look at a blog post and then some of them may end up joining your email list, following you on social media and may eventually buy your books. So I find it very attractive as an introvert, which is why I’ve always done it because it’s an attraction form of marketing. So in nonfiction it’s putting out useful stuff and fiction we’ll be talking about more in detail. But you know it’s attracting your ideal readers when it comes to being an author.

How does content marketing work for introverted authors?

James Rubart: Joanna, talk to us for a second, because you just said a keyword that I relate to and a lot of our listeners relate to, and that is introvert. A lot of people just do not want to do the marketing. But you’re saying this is a way for introverted authors to actually do marketing.

Joanna Penn: This is something I care a lot about as well. So you know introverts get energy from being alone, which is why so many authors are actually introverts. Some authors are actually extroverts and of course, we all go to events and things. But generally, we’re happier alone in a room than we are meeting people. So, even back in the day when there were big book tours, all the authors would say in the background how much they didn’t enjoy it, right? I’ve never heard an author say they love book tours.

So, why content marketing is so good for introverts is because you can be on your own behind your computer screen doing this type of thing. So, even Youtube– I have a YouTube channel, YouTube.com/thecreativepenn, and I do videos, but most of the time I’m either on my own or I create videos of my podcast interviews. And you guys know, like, we’re not even looking at each other– we’re across the world! We’re not even seeing each other’s faces.

Content can be:

  • a short story for fiction,
  • making a Pinterest board for your novel
  • writing an article.

I just wrote an article on 25 Christmas and Thanksgiving Gifts for the Writer In Your Life. I wrote the article on my own, it will help some people, it will make me some affiliate income. That’s content that serves a purpose.

So I think—and I did that on my own in my room— so this is the thing. It enables us to do attraction marketing without being overly salesy. And we can be useful, we can be entertaining, we can be inspirational, which I know you guys care about, and we can do these things and slowly attract people who might buy and that is a really important point. This is a slow form of marketing but to be honest it’s how I’ve built a business. And it’s also a form I feel very happy with.

Thomas Umstattd: In many ways, it’s a lot like farming. So advertising is like hunting. You go out and you get this woolly mammoth and your whole village eats for a month. But then you have no food at all. Whereas farming, you do this work for months and months and you get no food, but then you get reliable food moving forward. So you have to be willing to do that work with no return and then you get a more reliable turn long term.

The Importance of Owning The Hub for Your Content

Joanna Penn: That’s an excellent metaphor. And I totally agree with that. And what I found is that pretty much my income continues to grow every year as my traffic grows every year. And we’ll be talking about owning your own website, but for me, I own the medium I own the message. I don’t own WordPress, but I pay for hosting and I can reach people through my networks.

So even if Amazon goes under, if Kobo goes under, if all these things that we rely on as authors [fail], whether you’re traditionally published or indie — because most traditional publishers sell through the same sites these days— you can still make a living and that’s super important.

Thomas Umstattd Jr.: Yeah it’s really critical because if you own that relationship you’re far less reliant on somebody else basically controlling your income. I was talking with somebody, and she had some trouble with Amazon. All of her books got taken down for a short period of time. She didn’t know if they were going to get put back up.

There was a misunderstanding and she was panicked, trying to get Amazon support and talk to somebody. Whereas if you have that relationship directly it’s easier to go around. Amazon’s still a big player, so you want to be there, but you have a lot more freedom in that way.

What types of content should novelists produce?

Thomas Umstattd Jr.: What kind of content do you recommend for novelists specifically? What should novelists be creating online?

Joanna Penn: I think for nonfiction it’s pretty obvious, right? You want to help your target market. So for fiction, you kind of have to think in the same way. So what promise are you giving to the reader with your books? You know, so I look at Jim’s books for example and it’s inspirational Christian fiction. So that’s what people are looking for. So that might give him some ideas around what he’s sharing.

So for me, I share all my books. I have a number of different series, one of which, the Arkane series, has a lot of Christian history, and archaeology and stuff. And I have a master’s degree in theology, so a lot of religion comes into my books. So I do various different things on my fiction site. J. F. Penn.com.

Firstly I do articles about my research so I’ve posted articles and videos and pictures.

For example, I went to Israel last November, a year ago now, and we made a video in Jerusalem. I was doing book research for End of Days which is my most recent Arkane thriller. And so we took a camera and we made a video in Jerusalem which we posted. So my readers of my fiction are interested in that. Possibly yours are too! You know, Jerusalem’s old city is somewhere that many people would love to go and many don’t.

I do interviews with other authors in the same genre. So that’s also useful.

I do content posts.

For example, “14 Weird and Wonderful Places to See in Spain” because another ask promised to my readers is [going] into interesting places around the world, unusual places to explore, and that’s a bit like the site Atlas Obscura which is a site I use a lot for my own research.

I will post pictures, and then anything that’s in my books.

For example, the world’s best anatomical museums. And then within those pieces of content, I’m either talking naturally about the book that it relates to or there’ll be a link somewhere. It will all relate to my books but it won’t be “buy my book,” it will be “this is what I learned in Budapest.” You know, “here are some pictures from Budapest and then at the end, it’s like “and here’s a book, One Day in Budapest.”

Thomas: I really want to underline that because I think that’s a really powerful point.

I’ve seen this work many times with authors— travel blogging in the place that your book takes place is very popular. And your book may not take place in the Holy Land, your book may take place in your hometown, but you know what? For most people in the world, your hometown is an exotic place. They are not familiar with the locations in your town, and even if you just go around taking photos of things that are happening in your town as if you’re a visitor, that could be interesting to the readers who don’t also live in your town.

Joanna Penn: I was going to say the other thing that’s really important is you don’t have to do any of that but you could use your own story. I know several authors who post short stories on their blogs for free. Kristine Kathryn Rusch does this. She has Free Fiction Monday every Monday. She’s written a lot of short stories over like 40 years, so she has a lot of backlog.

But another author, M.L. Buchman, a romance author, does it every month. And he does it on the same day every month. And I think this is really important and something I’m going to try and do more of with my fiction— is ticking the reader clock is what Mack calls, M.L. Buchman, when I’ve interviewed him on my podcast.

So you know, on the 14th of every month you put out something that your readers will love. Maybe it is a short story this month, and then maybe next month you share a little behind-the-scenes video or some pictures, maybe you do a deleted scene. You can use your own writing as the content. Or maybe it’s a chapter or something like that. And then if you’re then going to publish that.

For example, if you wanted to do KDP, not to get into technical detail, but you can then delete it from your site or unpublish it. But the reader’s got it. Or leave it up there with a link to buy the book. So I just wanted to be clear that you can use your own writing as content.

You don’t have to create extra content if you know what I mean.

Do some authors publish mediocre content that hurts them more than helps?

James Rubart: Yeah that’s really good. That’s really good Joanna. You mentioned the fact that this one author is posting once a month, did you say? OK, so that brings me to a question.

I see a lot of authors who are anxious to use content marketing and they end up producing a lot of content, but it’s all kind of B-minus content. Instead of posting once-a-month great content, they post three times a month and it’s mediocre content. You find that happening a lot.

Joanna Penn: Well I think what we have to say… in general. I mean, you could take the 4.5 million books now on the Kindle store and say the same thing. You could say that with podcasting, you could say that with blogging, you could say that with Twitter streams.

Joanna Penn: Yes you could say that. The other thing is, I think it’s very difficult to judge other things. So again, this is something that the indie world teaches us, is one person’s mediocre or terrible is another person’s treasure. And I always use the example of Fifty Shades of Gray because that is not great literature but something like 150 million readers loved it.

So your Christian inspirational fiction is not necessarily— obviously not the same market as 50 Shades of Gray and perhaps some of those people would think your books are not that type of thing.

So I think it’s very dangerous to say what is mediocre content but I’ll tell you what my definition would be, and that is not thinking of the reader. So this is very important whether you’re writing books or sales copy for your book description or content for your website that is aimed at marketing. So the biggest mistake I see fiction authors in particular doing is they’ll have some very bad blog set up. I know you guys have lots of tools for that on Author Media. To make them good I mean. [laughs] Just to be clear, you make good websites.

Joanna Penn: So they’ll have some kind of blog site or whatever, and then they will put “my day out” or something like that and they’ll have a terrible headline and then they’ll write a piece of thought, you know, they’re just sort of thinking out loud, and then they’ll post that and then wonder why nobody is interested.

So the main thing is to think about your blog or what I say now in my fiction blog: I just have a link called “Articles” — the word “blog” is kind of going away. So my articles are aimed at actually entertaining people or educating them or inspiring them. It has pictures that are aimed at what they would want. It is written in a way that they would find interesting, it’s more like a magazine than a stream of consciousness.

Now of course younger people are now doing YouTube channels and things where they are doing “stream of consciousness” and that’s very popular.

But most authors in our market are not going to be necessarily doing stuff like that.

Focus on Your Readers in Your Content Marketing

Joanna Penn: So mainly think about what your readers would like, and then make it professional enough. And if you can do that regularly, then awesome!

Thomas: So you’re saying it’s not about you as the author? You heard it from Joanna Penn, folks. It’s not just Jim and Thomas that are saying this! Joanna Penn agrees. It’s not about you, it’s about your readers.

Joanna Penn: This is really hard for fiction authors in particular. I think it’s much easier for nonfiction, and I know, Thomas, you have a nonfiction book. Because with nonfiction you’re like “yeah I’m going to help this person solve this problem.” With fiction…I’ve just got a book that’s coming out. Map Of Shadows. I got an idea about a story, I wrote this story, and then I was like, what the heck is this story? And I had to work out what genre it was and all that.

I absolutely think that as novelists we have to write the book we want to write. The book that the muse or God or the universe or whatever gives us. And we write that book, and then we have to think, “what will the reader look for to find this? Where where will they find this?” And you have to take your brain out of the creative room and put it in the marketing business room.

And in that room, you have to think about “what does the reader want.” I’m definitely not someone who writes fiction to market but I am someone who, after I’ve written a novel, I will then think about how am I going to market that with content.

For example Map of Shadows opens in Bath, in England where I live, and I have a blog post that will go up, which is “The Most Unusual Things to See In Bath” which is the second most visited tourist location in the U.K.. So it’s something that many people might find online if they’re searching about Bath in the Roman stuff and then they might find that and they might find my book.

So, you have to split your brain in two, basically.

Is blogging a waste of time for novelists?

James: Well, what I love about what you’re doing, and Thomas and I use this analogy all the time when we describe marketing or content marketing for our audience, is that is it’s like a movie DVD with the extras. And some of the extras that you’ve come up with are stellar, Joanna. I love it.

I guess the point is none of those things are telling the story. They’re all behind the scenes and about the story and the history and all these interesting things that I would probably want to read even if I’m not going to read your book and then I’m drawn into your book because of that. So congratulations to you for doing that so powerfully.

Joanna Penn: But it’s funny you say that because basically a couple of years ago there were probably interviews with me out there that say “don’t bother blogging if you’re a fiction author” because a few years ago it was easy enough. Well, not easy enough. You still have to do a lot. But you could put your books on Kindle and Kobo and whatever and you could do a decent job without going for paid advertising and all of that type of stuff.

But things have really changed in the last couple of years and paid advertising has kind of gone completely nuts. and for me I then looked at “OK so how did I build a business for The Creative Penn” which every year has stepped up, has stepped up, has stepped up. And I pretty much have very, very few times paid for traffic to The Creative Penn.

It’s all based on SEO and search, which is free, basically. Free– I don’t pay Google for that. It comes because people search for things and I provide the answer. So I was thinking, “how do I get to a point where I’m not dependent on paid advertising for my fiction?” And then I was like, “well why on earth don’t I do content for my fiction.”

I’m even thinking of starting a podcast for my fiction site so I’m really now getting serious about content for the fiction site because I’m coming up to nine years on The Creative Penn. I get half a million uniques a month on The Creative Penn. What if I have that on my fiction site? So I’m kind of recommitting to content for fiction because it puts it back in my control.

When an author is just getting started, how do they get the word out about their content?

TLDR:

Thomas Umstattd: So I want to ask, because what you’re talking about is really great if somebody is more advanced or able to put their content out there and there’s already an audience coming to their website. What about the author who’s just getting started?

They launched their blog two weeks ago and they’ve had five visitors and they’re pretty sure they’re all themselves checking on their own website, and when they send it to their wife or mom. So what do you recommend for somebody who’s just getting started creating content?

Joanna Penn: It’s so difficult because there are lots of things that are important.

So one really important thing is making sure your website is SEO friendly, mobile friendly– because now 51 percent of Internet search is now mobile. So you need to have a WordPress theme that is good for that.

I do have a full tutorial at the TheCreativePenn.com/authorwebsite. There’s quite a lot of steps but basically, you need to have the technical stuff sorted because people won’t find a site that is not set up technically well. And then, use a good theme. But it can be cheap. The themes I buy at Studio Press are like 70 bucks, premium themes but still not expensive. You don’t need to spend lots of money but you do need a good looking theme.

Because someone like me–so just talking about someone who shares stuff— so, I share a lot at The Creative Penn, and on Twitter. If I land on a Web site and it is not something I want to show anyone, even if the content is good, I won’t share it.

It’s like when we see a book and the cover is terrible we back away.

You know, we’re like “oh I’ve heard that author is great but that cover is terrible” and I’m backing away quietly. It’s the same. So then a couple of other things. You have to learn that writing content is different from writing fiction. I learned through copyblogger.com which is a great site. Headlines—so important. Most authors don’t understand the power of a good headline.

I actually end up rewriting a lot of headlines for sharing stuff on Twitter, so, you know, that’s annoying. Then, use images. This is really important because now the social web is very image focused and I use a plugin called Social Warfare, which again is a premium plugin and you have to be serious about this if you’re following what I’m talking about. I mean, you have to want to do this.

But the Social Warfare plugin I think is around $70. And basically, you can set up shareable images and clickable things with the right sizing because otherwise you’ll see people share a link on Facebook and it will pull in some completely random picture that you don’t want. So Social Warfare plugin is very useful for that. And then you have to start connecting. So, that the truth is that I was that person back in 2008 when I started publishing on The Creative Penn.

It’s like howling into the wind and I started podcasting in 2009 and again, like those, nobody listened for about a year. So basically you have to then get off your website and go tell people it’s there. I pretty much do that in the same introvert manner, which is following other people on Twitter and sharing their information, which often gets their attention. And then in helping other people.

So one of the reasons I started the podcast was to start getting traffic back to my website. It’s brilliant. I mean, you guys are linked to this interview because you interviewed me and it should be useful, so I’ll link to it so you get an incoming link.

You get some social media, you get these types of things. So helping other people and connecting with other people and your nation is a really good way to get them to notice you and hopefully share your stuff and develop a relationship over time. Or, another good example, if you go to a conference you’re writing up your notes after the conference using the hashtag.

If you’re on social media on Instagram or Twitter or something, other people will find it, may follow you, may check out your site, may sign up to your email list. All of those things. And actually, that’s a really good point. That’s very necessary if you’re going to start doing publishing content for attracting people, please make sure you have an e-mail list signup on your site so that you can actually capture that e-mail and talk to them. So you’re thinking long-term and trying to do that.

Content Marketing is Not Free

Thomas: Yeah, email is so critical. And I want to underscore one more thing you said. You were talking about these tools to buy, like the social warfare plugin. Content marketing is not free. There are some real costs to it, you have to pay for hosting you have to pay for them, but it’s very inexpensive if you see it as a long-term investment.

So the first few months are kind of expensive but then month 10, you’re not having to go out and buy the Social Warfare plugin again. So it ends up being one of the most cost-effective ways of marketing, even though it can seem expensive at first.

Joanna Penn: Yeah, and also I feel like the other thing that I love about it is, yes it’s a bit like self-publishing [in that] you need to learn some specific things, but once you’ve learned these things, you can use that over and over and over again. So when I published my first book, there were a few hurdles, but now it takes me like two hours to publish a book. And with content marketing, it’s like, “I know how to do this now.”

When I look at things like Facebook advertising or Amazon Adwords, or all the new paid advertising tools that appear all the time, I kind of look at them and go “yeah it changes every two months and you have to really learn things and you have to kind of do new images and do all this.” Whereas [with] content marketing, I feel like this actually hasn’t changed through the whole life of marketing, because content marketing for printed magazines, or even things like some TV shows, were created as content marketing for products.

And so this type of marketing has a lot of longevity. So once you learn these principles and invest in understanding it, as you say, it’s very cost-effective over the long term. The other thing is, if you are moving up into, or if you have more money than time, and many authors do, then you can hire people.

I actually have a copywriter who does the first draft of my posts for J.F. Penn and then I do guest posts in The Creative Penn. So you don’t actually even have to write the content. What I would suggest is you get them to do a draft and then you go over it and edit it into your voice so that can actually make things much quicker. But that again is an advanced sort of advice.

Content Marketing Builds a Relationship With Your Readers

James Rubart: One of the things I love that you said Joanna is content marketing is, ultimately it’s about a relationship and you’re saying you build relationship through content marketing because content marketing is giving somebody else something useful that most of the time they don’t have to pay for. And so because of that, a relationship starts developing.

If you have this attitude of “I’m going to help you, either I’m going to entertain you, or I’m going to educate you and promote you,” you start to build a relationship. I have a friend who has a saying that I absolutely love. I believe it’s like one of these life statements. He says, “When people like you, the rules change.” And when people like me, the rules change. They’ll do things for me that they would not do for me before we formed a relationship.

So I love this idea that through content we are building relationships with people.

Joanna Penn: Yeah and I think that is only going to become more important. So, you know, I’m a bit of a futurist. Anyone who listens to my podcasts, you’re like “yeah, yeah.” [laughs]

And basically we are in an age where artificial intelligence is coming. There are AIs who already write nonfiction content and there are AIs who now are writing sort of up to junior school level, and even one in Japan who was in the finals for a literary award. Yeah. And I’m like “OK we do what we have to do to safeguard our future.” And I absolutely believe that AIs will be able to be as —in quotation marks— “creative” as we are, and I will have an AI assistant in the future.

What’s important, like you said, that personal relationship. If people know, like, and trust you as a person, which is why I think video is actually a good idea for authors. If you can cope with it, doing some video is good, because then it’s your face, it’s your smile, or like we’re doing, your voice is another good thing. You can hear the smile in my voice when I when I am smiling.

But these are ways in which people can recognize you and they’re like “yes there’s a real person, I care about them.” And again this is a long-term relationship hopefully; we want people to buy our books for the long term. So yeah, I just I just can’t see content marketing going away and in fact, it may well end up being the only authentic marketing as people get sick of paid ads which is definitely happening.

Thomas Umstattd: You were talking about how TV shows have done this. I think a lot of people don’t realize that the reason why soap operas are called soap operas is that they were created to make people feel icky watching them back in the 1950s. And then Procter & Gamble, which was sponsoring the shows, would then sell soap advertisements. And if you watch a soap opera on television today you know you’re going to see Procter & Gamble advertising soap. It’s still the way they sell their soap! This has been working for them for 70 years!

What tools do you recommend to make content marketing easier?

TLDR:

  • Canva– free creation and resizing
  • Become a student of Headlines
  • Make sure you’re not just posting on sites that you don’t own. Put the image on your website, then the click-through will go to your site.
  • Drive everything back to your website whenever possible
  • Advanced Marketing Institute Headline Analyzer

Thomas Umstattd: So we’re pretty much out of time but real quick, do you have any other tools that you can recommend for making content creation easier?

Joanna Penn: Well, I’ve mentioned that we see some of the technical tools. I think another good one is Canva, which is a free image resizing and image creation site that is excellent. And I use that almost every day to create because what’s annoying is so many of these sites have different sizes that they want for their images.

What else. I think the main thing is actually upskilling around things like headlines. I do think that a sort of one day approach [is good], of “OK I’m going to go to someone like copyblogger.com which has a lot of free e-books and free articles, and I’m going to learn a bit about headlines,” and then even if you go to your local magazine store or look online and have a look at the headlines or BuzzFeed, look at the headlines that people are clicking on. And when you think about “OK, so how could I spin that for my book?” I mean I try to do that on jfpenn.com. I think self-education is really important. And also what do you consume?

So people listening to this obviously listen to podcasts. So if you listen to podcasts then there might be a chance you would create a podcast. If you watch YouTube, maybe you’re going to create YouTube videos. If you spend a lot of time on Pinterest, then do Pinterest. But I think the important thing is if you go out to these other sites that you don’t own, then make sure you also post that back on your site, because you want to make sure you’re building your own traffic over time.

So I definitely don’t agree with blogging on Facebook or blogging on Medium or only having images straight on Pinterest. What you should [do] on Pinterest, for example, [is] put the image on your website and then pin it from your website to Pinterest, and then the click through from Pinterest will be to your site, if you see what I mean.

So you have to think about making sure everything’s driving back to your website somehow, and then have your offer and so on. Jfpenn.com has a free thriller you can get. And yeah, just kind of take it step by step. As I said, go to the Wayback Machine and look at my site, The Creative Penn.com in 2009. I mean it really was terrible. I didn’t even have jfpenn.com then. So just get started. And over time you can make it better and better, but always think about the reader first.

Thomas: That’s really good. And I agree 100 percent about sending people back to your own web site. And if you don’t believe me, just feel bad a little bit right now for somebody who built their platform on MySpace 10 years ago, because that was where everyone was, and it’s like they had this huge MySpace following, they were getting their books out. But since they invested in that space, now that space is…. no one’s going to that party anymore. And they’re having to start over from scratch.

One more tool I want to throw in here for those of you who are intimidated by headlines, because Joanna is exactly right about how important headlines are. It’s the Advanced Marketing Institute’s headline analyzer. You can paste your headline into the website and it will tell you how emotionally resonant it is. And I found it useful. It’s artificial intelligence, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re wanting a computer to tell you how emotional you’re being, which I realize is a little bit weird. Joanna, you’re a big fan of the centaur approach, where humans and computers are working together to do more than either one of them can do individually.

Joanna Penn: Yeah. And they’re already doing that. I mean, look at us now. We’re using the computers and the Internet to be bigger than we actually are in real life and reach more people. So we kind of are there already but I’m looking forward to doing this in the future.

James Rubart: Yes indeed. Well, Joanna, I think we could talk for another three hours, but we do need to wrap up. And for those listeners who don’t necessarily want to go back to the start where we mentioned your sites, can you give us your sites right now again, where people can find out more about you and get some of that awesome content?

Joanna Penn: Sure. So my site for writers is TheCreativePenn.com. And you can get a free author blueprint and lots of videos and lots of free content that will help you on your author journey. And I have The Creative Penn podcast. I’m on Twitter, @thecreativepenn. My fiction is at JFPenn.com.

Thomas Umstattd: Joanna thank you so much for coming on the show.

James Rubart: You are delightful.

Joanna Penn: Thanks for having me guys.

2017 Novel Marketing Listener Survey

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Thomas: Now we would like to ask a favor of you. We are wanting to make the show better. Moving into 2018. So we have a listener survey and if you would be willing to give us two minutes of your time we promise we will read every single one of your responses and take your feedback to heart as we retune and re-tweak the podcast. So if you want us to be more frequent or less frequent– you know we’ve done this experiment now, we’re a weekly show instead of twice a month.

  • How long should the show should be?
  • Do you want us to do more interviews or less interviews?

If you don’t get on there and vote, other people will. You may not like the direction they send the show, so please go to novelmarketing.com and click on the listener survey. It’ll be in the navigation. We made a big obvious button for it. And we would as a favor just really appreciate it if you give us two minutes to just let us know what you think. You can do it from your phone. It’s very easy and fast.

James: Yeah like Thomas said, you don’t even have to write anything. You can if you want to, but literally you’re just going to be clicking some buttons. So it’ll be short.

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