How I am Marketing Fantasy Novels

[@AntKneeLeafEllipse]

"They wanna lose themselves in a massive universe, one that is enticing in its possibilities." You got me figured out, for sure!

[@Carepedoit]

I don’t know why, but I have seriously missed your writing videos like this one. Thanks for doing this. These are great and give me hope I can do this.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

You absolutely can. People break out every year!

[@tappkalina]

I don't really care about maps, but that artwork made me interested in the series instantly.

[@JefferyHHaskell_Author]

Ahh the days of the 21 novel challenge. I remember them fondly.

[@ericmalikyte885]

Man, this makes so much sense! I've been racking my damn brains on how to market Suleniar's Enigma (Lovecraftian dark fantasy). I've been putting my all into this series but wondered why it was like pulling teeth to get people to try it out. I've had a lot more luck this month through Twitter and my Facebook. I've just been making more of an effort to engage. I basically stopped writing and marketing halfway through 2020, due to depression. But I'm slowly digging myself out of the hole now. When I add paid ads back into the mix (I need to update the book 2 cover and finish/edit Book 3 first), I'll be using mini-comics to drum up interest. This video gives me some ideas for lore-building stuff too. Maybe I could do a bestiary for creatures found in this world? Or, a Necronomicon-style grimoire that provides details on some of the Lovecraftian entities readers will find in the series.

[@kjnelson2913]

This is a great strategy, Chris. I feel like so many authors get bogged down trying to make their ads profitable instead of looking at the influence you can buy using ad dollars. I'm spending money on ads to raise awareness for my book, not get a sale from a single click. I've never been profitable on ads, but there's no way I would have sold as many books as I have if I let that be the metric I use to determine their value. Great video as usual!

[@PrintThatThing]

Amazing! Thanks so much for sharing this. Super helpful

[@Katlyn_Duncan]

Chris! How dare you change the intro music!! 😭😭😭🤣

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I always intended to mess with it more often lol. Someday I might go back to the original just for fun =D

[@haydenhall7760]

@@ChrisFoxWrites how I miss the guitar intro 😭

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

@@haydenhall7760 might be time to sub that one back in and see how people react.

[@rosell.writes]

Love the comprehensive strategy and am looking forward to trying it! Thanks as always.

[@tearstoneactual9773]

Interested!

[@machinedhearts]

This is great stuff. The business end of things gets me fired up even more than the writing sometimes. 😅 Something of an enigma has always been converting word count into KDP page counts like at 12:40 -- is there a rule of thumb for that?

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I estimate low at 40 cents per 1,000 pages read. Just my rule of thumb. Some people go higher, and if it is higher on that month it's definitely a higher payout!

[@ruk3764]

Really interesting insights. Thanks Chris.

[@argentgrove]

Thank you, Chris

[@magi6704]

Hello, so a little bit of interesting information for you. I typed 'Amazon KDP for fantasy writers' and you were at top of the search result with zero other videos popping up on the topic. So a recommendation from a nobody is maybe you should make a follow up video. It was very useful video for me. Thank you. Now on to my question. I am just about to wrap my up my first fantasy novel. It is sitting at around 150,000 words. It is book one in a trilogy that will then propel the story into another three book trilogy. I am going to hire a a copy Editor and give it a whirl. I have done nothing but write the novel at this point. What do you recommend to do now to better help my book succeed in a marketing aspect? Also what do you wish you had known when you first released your book? I am also wondering are you a full time writer at this point or do you need to supplement you writing career with another career? My goal is to become a full time fantasy writer. I understand there is a lot variation in this topic, is my book any good, etc etc. Any advice you can give is greatly appreciated. Thanks for you time.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I've been a full time fantasy and SF author for almost 9 years now. Good lord it feels like forever. I have over 50 books in print, and average 4-6 a year. Most of those are under 100k, but a couple are in the 300k range. Shorter makes much better money, but epic fantasy fans do appreciate big doorstoppers. What do I wish I'd known? Don't be in a hurry. Take your time. Building the kind of skill necessary to succeed at the top level takes time and discipline, and writing is only a very small part of what you need to know. This channel has a couple hundred videos you may find helpful. Look for the ones on passive marketing, finding your tribe, etc. If you have an amazing cover and a great fantasy story you'll sell all day long. I also write humorous fantasy, and that does extraordinarily well too.

[@magi6704]

Thank you for your reply Chris. I am going to check out your other videos. I guess I should checked before messaged you. Awesome to hear you are able to do this full time! It gives me hope! @@ChrisFoxWrites

[@danielpaulrowell]

This was super helpful. I’ve watched your videos for a while and have always found them super helpful. As a fantasy author, I’m especially excited that you’re doing videos on fantasy as well now! :)

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Expect a lot of them! I can only share what I'm personally working on, and it's almost exclusively fantasy through 2024.

[@danielpaulrowell]

@@ChrisFoxWrites 🎉🎉

[@pavx45]

Hey Chris--it seems Apple's change in policy to start withholding analytics have severely damaged the profitability of digital advertising across the board, to such an extent that Meta and Snap are pivoting hard into VR and AR since advertising profit is no longer generating growing revenue. Given that they lack the same degree of targeted advertising that they had before, do you think that we as writers in self publishing need to also pivot away from relying on Facebook ads to sell our work?

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Before authors had a turn-key solution to find new readers. Now it's more guesswork and trends. It's still very possible to carve out your niche, but it's more work. I am always looking for other avenues to advertise. Tik Tok receives more traffic than Google. If I had the bandwidth I'd be building more of a presence there, but I'd be looking into other things too.

[@elifischer3042]

How much would you say that your KZbin channel helps promote your books? I was thinking of starting a channel myself covering writing/reading topics and using it to eventually promote my writing. Also I just want to say im a massive fan. I really love the motivation and positivity you bring to the writing community.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Very little for fiction. The impact wasn't ever very noticable. However, I would attribute the majority of my non-fiction sales to podcast interviews and the channel itself. If you're writing fiction, do something about your genre, not something for writers =)

[@venwin25]

Chris, how drastic have the changes in book promotion been since you published your six-figure author series? Can you, or the viewers, recommend good resources to help plan a launch? Appreciate the content.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Nothing has changed so far as I can tell. The market is more crowded, and launch windows are smaller, but you're trying to line up swaps and promo over a 5-7 day period with a spike at the beginning and the end. I'll get a marketing video up sometime soon showing what I do for my launch tomorrow.

[@venwin25]

@@ChrisFoxWrites Thanks for the reaponse. I look forward to your next video. I appreciate the transparency and candor.

[@maximendobjv614]

what do you use for email list?

[@jluna9582]

I had never heard of catching and receiving ads. Where can i learn more about this? thank you very much.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I just made it up to describe what I'm doing. I don't love the name. There's probably a proper marketing term, but I've never been trained so I have no idea what it is =)

[@Bobbypinker]

Chris, are you using your sci-fi newsletter lists to talk about these fantasy books, and if so, are you seeing sales from that? Are the genres overlapping?

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I just have a fiction list now, and have for about 3 years. Yep, I sell a ton of fantasy using the list. However, it does skew toward SF and that tends to perform better. Over time I expect they'll even out.

[@monsterclass]

Amazon is like the real Amazon

[@lemond2007]

Do you, or does anyone here know of a writing community to join? Maybe a Discord server?

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Check out 20BooksTo50k. They're massive. Based primarily on Facebook, but you can find all sorts of smaller groups there.

[@captainnolan5062]

I bought your 5k words per hour book, but the link in the book for the spreadsheet doesn't seem to be working. Can you check it and let me know if you get it fixed?

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

I centralized most of the resources you need at chrisfoxwrites.com/resources. If you don't find what you need shoot me an email at [e-mail]

[@bleedingberryjuice]

Hey Chris, I sent you an email asking if you still had any group recommendations for new(ish) authors using the email from Lifelong Writing Habit and wanted to ask if you got it? I've got protonmail so I hope it didn't get flagged as spam Thanks for all the videos and books, it's helping me substantially :)

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

My inbox is a zoo, and I miss a ton these days. It's possible it never arrived. If you ask a question I usually still try to answer. The last group I was directing people too was 20Booksto50k on Facebook. Lots of great people, and tons of genre groups splinter off that.

[@bleedingberryjuice]

@@ChrisFoxWrites Thanks so much! :) look forward to seeing your next videos!

[@captainnolan5062]

Why not do a video on KZbin and offer your audience $9.00 (maybe in Amazon credit?) and the first book in the Shattered Gods series for free if they will read it? This will save you $1.00 (i.e. over your normal $10.00 cost in advertising to get someone into the series).

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

My actual conversion is far, far lower than $10 to acquire a sale. I also try to build my audience from people willing to pay to buy books rather than those seeking to get paid to read.

[@captainnolan5062]

@@ChrisFoxWrites Well, if you could figure out what that dollar amount was (you mentioned $10 in your video), then it might be worth it to give it a try. You will likely get referrals to other fantasy fans from these people (the "islands" of 5-6 friends you mention) and you would be growing your audience at the same time you are acquiring the 'paid' reader.

[@rooseveltchandler114]

p̲r̲o̲m̲o̲s̲m̲ 🙏

[@pdworld3421]

It's Interesting also that all your novels are priced at zero. And the books that are actually making you money are your how to write books books. Now I see why you took offense at what I said.

[@ChrisFoxWrites]

Cute. The vast majority of my income comes from fiction. Take a peak at the income videos. The proof is literally right there. My writing books have done very well for me, but fantasy is currently paying the bills. I get that you want to have some sort of zinger, but the fact is that I am living my dream writing novels, and you're a bitter loser on the internet trying to score points by denigrating accomplishments you will never succeed in personally. I haven't put out a non-fiction book for writers since 2019. All my books have been fiction since then, yet I'm still here, making fun of people like you who can' do what I can do.