Hi, everyone. We're glad you're here. This is the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. Get ready to have your world rocked. As we dive into the wild and sometimes wacky world of self publishing. We are three fabulous bestselling authors. I'm your host, Kimberly Todd with my best friends.

K. C. Luck

and Jamey Moody. 

Join us as we discuss the joys of writing, challenges of self publishing, and anything else that tickles our fancy. 

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 46 of the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. I'm Kimberly Todd, and I'm here with my fabulous friends, KC Luck and Jamey Moody. Today we're talking about Book Promotions, but before we start, how was your week, KC?

I went to the beach. I know I've done a lot of that over the last three months, but my girlfriend and I went and stayed with a friend couple of ours. They let us come and stay at their beautiful house in the woods near Walport, and that was a fun two nights we went and walked on the beach.

We went to a crystal and gem show and then to another metaphysical shop. So I'm really getting into all that stuff and it's really fun to go look at all the different options. I bought some more rocks. It's actually on my Patreon account. There's a picture of me with a crystal, a rose, quartz crystal that's actually as tall as I am, so yeah.

So that was pretty cool. That was a really cool shop. But yeah, so another relaxing couple of days and recharging my batteries, which is good because I'm a little behind on writing Darkness right now, so I'm gonna be doing, uh, two a days. So to get that done, yeah, I gotta get that done. So it's out by my birthday.

Get to it.

Yeah, it's exactly. So I gotta stop screwing around. But the weather here is turning cooler and it's supposed to rain this week, so that'll help me get motivated.

Yeah, I know. It's finally gotten cool here in Texas. In the mornings, it's like 60 today. It's like, what? But then it'll be 90. Well, I had a big weekend, well, a big Saturday I should say. Listeners, if you will remember, a year ago, I was talking about my newest nephew and talking about his name. Giuseppe. Remember Giuseppe well, Saturday Giuseppe turned one!

Yay.

I'm telling you, they had the biggest party. I know that all his others won't be like this, but They had the biggest party for him and it was fun. Lots of people there and he's a cute little fella. I haven't seen him a whole lot, but thank goodness was like, Hey, I like you, okay. And so he didn't scream or anything when I was holding him. He doesn't quite yet walk, but he was really cute because, they were playing a bunch of music and I was holding him. His feet were bouncing on my lap and he was holding his hands in the air and just singing. So that was fun. So that was my big weekend. I also, wanna remind listeners if you haven't read book three, If I had a Wish, get on that. It's out because, I just got the edits back for book four, which is gonna, be the finale of the series. So I've worked through those edits and everything, so I'm getting that ready for you. So get to reading. I think, that's my big news. Kimberly?

My wife and I are loving this almost fall season, so we've been trying to do as much as we can outside. And this weekend we went to an art show and also an antique car show, which was really fun. And then in between that we watched the Nebraska Women's College Volleyball, which we love. We printed out their schedule and we've been watching that. And of course the US Open. Sadly no Americans won, but that's okay. It was still really fun to watch. 

Yeah. 

Then on the writing front, I'm excited because I sent out my newsletter and we are talking about promotions today and actually am in a promotion that's gonna be still going on when this podcast, airs. So check my newsletter or socials and I'll talk more about the promotion when we get to the podcast. And then one thing I wanted to bring up that was exciting, if you have your book in KDP Select. Amazon has just recently announced that they're gonna allow your Kindle Unlimited and Select book to be in libraries, which it hasn't done in the past. Now there's all these rules and regulations, so you have to go to KDP and read about it. But it's definitely exciting 'cause now you can put your book into this library system, which is cool.

Mm-hmm.

So that I thought was something people should know about, but I started reading about it and all the caveats were too many to note on the podcast, but just go there and read it.

Just go read it.

So that's it for me. Did we get any texts?

We did not necessarily texts, but I received on my Patreon account a new listener. Zena loves our podcast, binged all the podcasts episodes.

Aww.

Really loved the spicy one of course. And just is really a big fan now, so it's very exciting. Uh, does subscribe to some newsletters. She answered the newsletter question she learned about Jamey through I Heart SapphFic and, yep. And she learned about mine through Jae, one of her categories it sounds like. So something along those lines. So yeah, big fan. Also, we have another fan who messaged me directly on Messenger named Shauna. And also a big fan of the Spice episode really drew people in, apparently. So yeah, just a big fan and really likes what we're doing, so that's exciting.

Maybe I need to point out here, listeners, I was talking to my pod pals before we started recording that I've kind of worked on a new mission statement that goes right along with that little spicy episode we did, because if you've listened, we talked about the word sweet in romance. 

So going along with that spicy episode, I've come up with a new little mission statement for Jamey Moody. Let me read it to y'all and see what you think. 

Okay. 

Hi, I'm Jamey Moody. Heartwarming is my brand where sweet is so spicy.

Woo. Yeah.

See, I'm working on that sweet, because people have said that I'm the queen of sweet and the sweet always kind of gave me the shivers because there's sex going on in my books. So sweet is, oh, so spicy. So there you go. So I even learned something from the spicy episode folks.

From, Insta, we got a few photos and a new, person that's following us, L.A. Wiliolo Crafts , and they said "Hi". And they sent us a bunch of fun pics of them laying out what looks like some stone brick path and like falling over and laughing with each other. And it just looks really fun. So thank you L.A. For sending those in. 

Yeah.

And then Jules said, she loved the sex episode. It made her laugh. She's even more confused now about the peppers though. And then the other thing she said, which really made me laugh, she says, regarding the pool, she says, it sounds like you're all doing something wrong.

Okay. 

I was like, Oh, really? Okay then. 

Okay... I love it.

Maybe she's a snorkeler or something.

Uh, yeah, I know.

That's great.

Oh my gosh. There is something going through my head right now for a scene. Now.

Oh, that's great.

Anyone going on a trip to Hawaii?

Yeah. There you go. Jules. You do that.

Hey, I got a shout out Jules. She's doing her first, in-person author event. She did it this weekend in Tennessee. So a way to go Jules. Her setup looked really good, so, I'll have to check with her this week and see how it went. 

Congrats Jules.

Yeah. Way to go. 

We're proud of 

And then Minishca emailed me and she said, happy one year birthday to us after she listened to our one-year anniversary, which was really nice. And this is pretty funny, she said, the OWL thing, you know, we've been talking about the OWL. She said that it reminded her of a YouTube video called Old Lesbians Try New Slang. So I went and looked at that it very funny and they about Owl in that too.

Well, I can add to that. My, niece and nephew were here, over the summer and I don't even know how we got started on this, but they said, Hey, we're gonna give you a list of words and we want you to say 'em. And I'm like, okay. Because it's slang that they use and I can't remember what all the different words were except this one I certainly do. And they would just roll in the floor laughing at me saying this. Well, one of 'em was skibidi and skibidi means cool. And you know.

Okay.

Well just last week, they came out with some new words in the dictionary and skibidi made it. And I couldn't wait because that nephew happened to have a birthday last week too. And in his card I told, well, and I also called him and I said, dude, skibidi's a real word now. And I just, I thought that was so funny. Yeah. So I'm saying all of these slang words and skibidi, and they love to laugh at me and you know me. I'm the fun aunt, so I'm gonna give them a shot. But yeah. Yeah. It sounds like that YouTube channel, Old Lesbian Saying cool words.

You need to use skibidi in one of your books. 

Yeah. 

I know. I thought about it. I'm going to, I'm gonna put skibidi in the one I'm writing, I think.

And then, we had one more from Sue and she's been listening to the podcast for a while and she just wanted to let us know how much she loves it, loves the themes and the chitchat, cracks her up. And she wanted to thank us for doing the pod and keeping them entertained.

Awe.

Well good. 

Nice.

I thought that was sweet. Yeah.

It is sweet. 

We're getting a following. Getting a following. Yeah.

Thank you everyone for listening. We love you too.

We do. We do.

Okay. Well let's get into the episode today. Again, we're talking about book promotions and who wants to start us off, KC?

I actually subscribe to some personally because I like to see what they're posting and what other books are in there and things like that. So I get, I Heart SapphFic, of course. I get Jae's newsletter and about her blog post and everything else. I get the BookBub one, I get The Lesbian Review. So those are the main ones I get. 

The problem is, is, that's a hell of a lot of emails to be getting every day pretty much. 'Cause most of 'em write, if not every day, then at least once a week. And so I admit that I do not read them all. So, yeah, I know I don't read them all the way through because if you think about it, we're getting the, for example, I Heart SapphFic sends out one every day, but they also send out ones directly to authors.

So I get some directly from them about author stuff they have going on. So it's possible to get an I Heart SapphFic newsletter, one or two a day. And that is just, that's a lot. I mean, I really appreciate they're doing that for all of us. I really love that they're pushing so many of our authors, but, you know, I can't read 'em all. So that's the one risk I think that they have when they're creating newsletters for us.

Well, I'll chime in on that, that I'm also, a subscriber and I also advertise with them and I read them all. I tell you one thing that they do have is on their daily email to readers and authors, to everyone. They have a little, biography of somebody, you know, important in history.

Yeah.

To our community. And those are kind of interesting. I might not read through the whole thing, but one thing I wanna say about that, one reason they do those, every day is because they'll have a different kind of feature on 'em. They have all kinds of free things that an author can do to get their book out there.

Like they have a thing called All About the Books. You can write, how you came up with the idea and things like that. And so that'll be maybe one day. And then what are some of the other ones they do? Kimberly, you know, some of them. 

Yeah, I like the newest one they have is the author quiz where they give, the author gives seven to ten questions about your book, and each question has four answers where one of them has to be the right answer. And that's kind of fun for people especially readers that know the author and love them, and they might get stumped on one or two. And that's one of the newest ones that I thought was cool.

Yeah, and they have a pre-order page. When you submit your book into the book finder and you know what the release date's gonna be, they've got a pre-order page, and once a week they'll talk about that too. And you can get on there.

Mm-hmm. They have a lot of opportunities for authors, and don't get me wrong, I think what they're doing is amazing. There is one on Tuesdays that comes out that lists... 

That's the new release.

The new release one that's depressing as hell because there's like, they're averaging over 20 new releases a week, which is like, holy shit, that's a lot of books. And you look through the list, there's a lot of new ones on there, so I just, and sometimes maybe questionable ones, but we won't get into that. But it's just like, wow, there's so much competition now that it makes it very, scary almost to be a full-time author.

I wanna comment on what Jamey said. I do like their advertising, which you actually pay for. They have yearly options. Some are more expensive than others, and then there's shorter ones. Like they have premium ads, standard ads, and premium plus ads, which are like a certain amount of money for four weeks. And I have had a lot of success. I like doing their yearly ads , 

I do that too. 

and I find it really helpful. So I just wanna put that in there so people know how much it costs.

Hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Well, I started doing the yearly ads, twofold. One for me, because I want them to advertise my book, but also this was before they kind of blew up and they were just kind of trying to...so I thought, well, let me support them too. And I think it's turned into a really good thing.

Because they put in so much work.

Yeah. And you can't get those annual, they only have so many of them, I think. So once you see an email saying, hey, the annuals are open, you know, you might wanna jump on it. But yeah, we've got a lot of new authors in our community, which is great. It's just we need new sapphic readers, so there's enough to go around.

Yeah.

We are a niche community. I mean, I understand that. 

And one of the other things that they have that's, nice is if you have a free book, like maybe you're giving away a free book for another promotion you're doing with some other company, if you have it free, you can let them know and they'll put that in their email as well. Or their community board is sometimes people host their own giveaways and you can contact them. That's nice. 'cause it gets a big graphic plus, whatever the giveaway is or the promotion that you're doing, but they have to approve it and see what it is. 

Mm-hmm. Which, you know, it kind of leads to the fact that all of these lead to discoverability. If you're listed in any of these different newsletters, whether you're in the Advent calendar or you're in IHS or if you've got a new review out in the TLR newsletter, that is part of the reason why you wanna get in these. Is because of the discoverability. 'cause like Jamey said, we have a small niche. I even heard one time, actually it was Jae was talking about it and also The Lesbian Review mentioned something along those lines, that we're looking at about between 30 and 40,000 readers. And that's it. 

Really? 

So, yeah, that was a number that was thrown out, and so it's just like maybe we need to figure out a way to grow that. Hopefully new readers are coming every day. I think there are, but it's still a little scary that that's, the cap.

Yeah, and I just wanted to say a shout out again to IHS because when I first started, it was four years ago, and with a new book and not knowing anything about publishing at all, I was so grateful. I can't... just how excited I was to see my book in their email. It was amazing. So I think between that and Jae, 'cause Jae always prioritizes, new writers, especially I think if you've only had a book out one or two years, she does a special thing for those people as well. And that is so helpful to our community.

One other thing about I Heart though, they do the, reading challenge every year and that kind of gets you free advertising too, because you obviously fill out a form, for your books and they stick it in different categories and everything. But they'll let you know the week that you're book is gonna be in that category when it comes out, and they give you all kinds of promo opportunities then. You can do different things. I always enter the giveaway because each week they give away whatever the reading challenge, category is, give away those books. But then you have other opportunities you can post in their Facebook group then, but they're trying to help us promote our books. They really are. 

Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. 

They're just invaluable.

As a matter of fact, I just sent out my newsletter this morning, and I'm also in a promotion, one of the reading challenges. It's week 36, age gap, and my book is in that promotion, my V.A.M.P. Book. So you can see an example of that in my email. 

Mm-hmm. 

Or on socials.

Yeah. And watch for next week. One of mine's gonna be in there.

Yep. There ya go. 

I always love the age gap ones for vampires. That always cracks me up and they're like hundred year difference. 

Yep. 

That's a big age gap!

Hey, I go with it, exactly. 

That's great.

Another thing that's nice about these is like we're talking about is the sales spike. So you get in these and you know, whether you're putting your book out for free. Like I know Written Word Media does, and I know Jamey's worked on those before. You see a spike in the free category a lot usually. ' cause those are usually, quickly picked up. But also if you do like a 99 cent special or something else that IHS does a lot, or Jae does a lot, then you know, you can see a big spike in sales, especially your backlist, it seems like, you know, I've done some with the Advent calendar where I gave away a book for free and had just thousands of books downloaded.

But then it turns out that that book has a tail. It carries on even after it goes back to regular price. People are still talking about it and it's getting posted and you're getting more reviews. So yeah, it really works with sales.

Well, you mentioned Written Word Media. I recently started working with them and I'm trying, for my first time, I've done a few of their, reader subscriber surge giveaways to get more emails. But I'm now in a, Red Feather Romance, for paranormal romance and it seems to be doing well.

It just started September 1st, and this is the one I said will be going on when this podcast comes out. You'll be able to, check my newsletter or my socials to enter. But you get to win 15 eBooks plus a Kindle for free. So that's exciting. That's like really good. 

I've been in those.

Yeah, and the promotion lasts for 60 days, so it started September 1st and it won't end until the end of October, which is perfect. So you have all that time to enter. I just think it's fabulous. And it wasn't that expensive. I think it was like $115 or something like that. You can check their website, but it wasn't too much.

Right. And that's kind of a difference there is you do pay for those as opposed IHS and Jae and TLR and stuff is, those are free to be in, their newsletters.

And I've seen, for me at least, the ones that I do pay for, like, The Lesbian Review, (TLR), and Written Word Media. I do see positive results from it, so I don't mind paying for it.

Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

I've done, Written Word Media, several different things with them. I just started using them this year, so I've been trying out different things with them. 

Mm-hmm.

It's hard to tell sometimes what's working, you know, it may take you a little while to see if it works or not.

Mm-hmm. But the thing you can do, especially I noticed with BookBub, is you can stack them. You could stack being in these different newsletters to kind of keep a rise, which what you did, right? Isn't that what you did, Jamey?

That's what Written Word Media does. They have promo stacks and so you just buy the one stack and they take care of the rest for you and put it in these, different services. They have different email lists is what it amounts to. BookBub is the same way. They've got email lists that they do too.

Right. Which can be very expensive though. The BookBub one is the most expensive one, but apparently their subscriber list is in the hundred thousands. 

I've never done a BookBub, so tell me about the process to get your book in one of those BookBub deals. And how much it costs. 

I've got one coming out tomorrow, matter of fact. New Release for Less is what they call this one. And I was, pleasantly surprised that I got in it because. L-G-B-T-Q section, they're a little bit cheaper than some of the others, but your book usually has to be $6.99 or below to be in it for a new release or less.

Mine are $7.99 right now, but they took it and I'm hoping to get a bump from it tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow will be long gone, by the time people are listening to this, but they'll email it to, I guess their subscribers and, hopefully the L-G-B-T-Q ones will be going, Hey, let me try this book and we'll see how it does. I should be able to tell if there's a spike within a day or two on it.

Mm-hmm. How much did it cost you?

I think it was $57.

Oh, okay. I thought it was really expensive.

Well sometimes they are. That one wasn't. So I was just lucky to get in it. And then they have ads. I've done a couple ads. I think KC has done more of the BookBub ads than I have, but I've got two running ads right now for this new book. If I Had a Wish that's going on right now. And the thing that I like though about BookBub is they email you occasionally. And give you tools and tips on, hey, this ad worked for this author. And that's kind of how I learned to do ads with them. And I don't run 'em all the time with them, but I'm trying this one.

And also people can follow you on BookBub and when you have a new release, they will email all those people and say, Hey, this author you're following has a new book out. So the more you can get on that, I don't have a bunch of followers yet, but I mean that's another thing BookBub does. 

The big BookBub deals, not the new release for less ones, but the big ones can be in the hundreds. They can cost like over a hundred, like two, $200 to do international and US and everything. They can be quite large.

What's their other one? Because I've gotten one of 'em before. But they go through and, I mean, you have to make it or not, they have people that decide if you get on that list or not. It's not a new release. BookBub Deal of the Day. 

Deal of the day. Yeah, it only goes one for day. 

And they can be expensive, but it's going out to a lot of people.

Is it a flat fee that you pay for those expensive ones, or does it vary?

Varies by category. 

Yeah, by category and L-G-B-T-Q, like, that's why I was surprised this new release for less was only $57. I'm sure if it was a contemporary romance, it would probably been, you know, a hundred, $200, because that's the way that, deal of the day is. Yeah, it can be expensive, but I mean, if you're getting, all about visibility, right? 

One thing I want to mention, and you guys might already do it, but I had never seen this before, but it seems that, Written Word Media also does stuff for audio books, including audiobooks that are KDP exclusive. So those range from $50 to $75. So if you have an audiobook that you wanna get more eyes on, you could check that out. 

I think they're just starting with audio books maybe.

I just read it today, so I don't know much about it.

I've gotta look that up because audiobooks are hard to advertise. About the only place you can that I know of is through BookBub 'cause they use Chirp. And I have done audiobook ads there because you can't, do audiobook ads on Amazon or anywhere else. That I know of. So I'll have to check that out with Written Word Media. 

The other thing that we've mentioned, and I always say this because it's only costs 15 bucks. So if you don't have a lot of money, but you wanna do something, you could try the My Queer SapphFic newsletter. I don't know how big their subscriber list is, but it's nice because that email goes out and there's usually only one or two books featured in it. Sometimes only one book, but maybe it's just yours. So that's fantastic. That's extra email blasts that you 15 bucks for. 

It comes out on Fridays.

Mm-hmm. 

I get that one.

Yeah. I wanna go back to Jae for a second. She does so much for our community all year long, but she runs the Sapphic bingo and then she runs the Advent Calendar and did she do a Pride Calendar, I think this year or something? Yeah. And I know those take a lot of work.

But, she is so good to try to spread it out to include as many authors as she can. And like Kimberly said, especially new authors that only have a book or two, she's very, helpful. She wants to help everybody. She wants everybody to be successful. So I just wanna shout her out one more time. You need to get on Jae's, email list, or you need to go to her website and check it out because. She'll have updates on, what's going on and what she's running, what kind of things she's running at the moment.

Yeah. Or her Facebook Group, both her Reader Group, and then she has a Sapphic Author Group, which is very helpful. She sends out stuff to let you know about new promotions that are coming up, or, book funnel, newsletter gathering, things that you might wanna join. 

Mm-hmm. 

So, thanks Jae. 

Thanks Jae.

Yeah. Thank you, Jae. I just didn't think we talked about that too much. So, that's an important one. And We've mentioned The Lesbian Review. You can do ads with them. They do book reviews. You can ask them to do a review, but it's not always easy to get your book reviewed. 

I've done their Premium A ads, which is, up in the right-hand corner of their website. Your ad, you pay for it and it stays there for the whole month. And I've done a couple of those. I like that. And then the, new release, is fabulous. That's just great to be in. And these you can get in to. You pay for both though.

I'm a Patreon of theirs and I did that way back in the beginning because like I was just starting out. They were just starting out type thing and I get a free new release ad for each cycle so I don't have to pay for it. So it's like if I'm on Patreon, I pay through that.

That's one of the perks of being a Patreon. They've got several different levels. I'm not the highest level or whatever, and they send out different content. I used to send them. The first chapter of whatever book I was releasing. And they would send that to their Patreon accounts too.

Oh, Nice. 

Yeah, they'll try to help you out. 

Yeah, they're also very helpful with our niche, and they been around a long time and helped a lot of authors. 

Oh, one thing I wanna say about them is they do, different kind of events, every year. They do a romance event and I've been on panels and that and I just love it 'cause Sheena is so thoughtful in her questions and how she runs the panels with different topics and Tamara helps her in the background. And then they've got one coming up. It's on a paranormal, I believe coming up this month. So you might check out The Lesbian Review. Those panels and it's usually a day or a two day event. They're just wonderful. They're just a lot of fun. I think they're very good at what they do. 

 Okay, well that's it for this week. Next week we're gonna do our Ask Us Anything Part Two. Get excited. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Let's see, KC, what's the week of the week? 

Uh, how about you send us something for, ask us anything and you know us the last episode where we talked about sex and sex and sex and strap ons and tools and toys. Uh, tools and tools and toys and other fun stuff. Yeah. Get the tool belt out. 

Really Why haven't we done one on tools? 

How to fix your door.

How to use that power sander because those things vibrate, you know? 

Oh my God. How to fix your washing machine.

Okay, sorry, back on track, sorry. So yeah, send us and ask us anything and we will probably answer.

So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening. 

Thanks everybody and talk to you next time.

Thanks everyone. Hootie Hoo! 

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to reach out to us, you can contact us by email at contact@threelesbiansandapen.com with the number three spelled out or on Instagram, Facebook and X at three lesbians and a pen using the number three. And finally on our website at threelesbiansandapen.com, we look forward to hearing from you, see you next week.