We’re thrilled to have Ines back in the SPA to teach us about Direct Selling for Authors AND Special Editions in a very special episode packed with great advice for writers at all stages. Ines is a former television producer and college professor, and alongside her fiction writing, is producing some amazing resources for author including her podcast and courses for authors. Links mentioned in the podcast: Katie Cross – SPA Girls EP433 Joanna Penn and Payhip https://www.ingramspark.com Ines and S...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 2 min
A Replay Classic : Samantha Price is a USA Today bestselling author of Amish romance and cozy mysteries. Focused and organized, Samantha’s results speak for themselves, but it will amaze you to hear how prolific she is and how she built her career in a smaller niche than usual. About Samantha: Samantha grew up in the Brethren community and has a deep affinity for the Amish way of life, which she has studied in detail during over a decade of dedicated research. Her stories radiate authenticity an...
Dec 11, 2024•44 min
Universe World Building / Direct Sales / Earning Six Figures Kaci Rose is a steamy romance author who published her first book in March 2020 and has since catapulted into six figure income thanks to intentionally connecting her books within a universe. We’re rapt she’s in the SPA to share how she connects her books, intentionally putting characters into “guest” appearances, selling bundles via her direct store and many more pearls of wisdom you won’t want to miss!. 💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sp...
Dec 04, 2024•1 hr 4 min
*A SPA Girls Classic Episode* … Stop dreading writing another author newsletter aSPA Girls Podcast – EP476 – nd get ready to sell more books with email! Holly Darling (Mortimer) is the “newsletter queen” and has fantastic, actionable tips. Holly talked with us a few years ago and her advice is still as relevant today as it was then. Get ready to ramp up your author newsletter in 2025! Find Holly at: https://pages.hollydarlinghq.com/ 💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sponsored by everyone who supports ...
Nov 27, 2024•1 hr 4 min
A short but impactful (hopefully!) run down of great tips for growing your author career and staying (relatively) sane and focussed. Topics include: Consistency, no matter the speed Diversification / be nimble AI Personal Connection You Do You 💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sponsored by everyone who supports us on Patreon. Thank you so much, we love our listeners and our patrons! ⭐ Join us at the $10 tier, and you’ll be invited to our private Self-Publishing Mastermind group for authors, where we d...
Nov 20, 2024•24 min
Kel Carpenter is a publishing powerhouse who has been a successful fulltime author since she was just 22 years old. With the goal of publishing 30 books by 30 years, she’s achieved that and more! Kel has incredible business-savvy and a “learning” mindset that has helped her achieve multi-six figure pa success, manage burnout, and diversify her income streams. As well as her fiction, Kel is the creator of the Rule Your Author Empire course (and book) at https://www.ruleyourauthorempire.com/ Resou...
Nov 13, 2024•58 min
Cathy Yardley is an award-winning author of romance, chick lit, and urban fantasy, who has sold over 1.2 million copies of books for publishers like St. Martin’s, Avon, and Harlequin. We met Cathy at the 2024 Romance Writers of New Zealand conference, and immediately knew we had to get her on the show! This is a fantastic episode for writers at all stages of their careers. Cathy covers writing in your unique voice, writing your truth and how to ROCK YOUR PLOT. Books mentioned in the episode: Deb...
Nov 06, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Comparison is the thief of joy -Theodore Roosevelt Today we talk about comparisonitis in the SPA. A topic we’re sure is dear to many hearts. We live in a world where we can see what everyone else is doing online. Successes and failures. We are the ‘instant gratification’ generation, and have a need for success, so we compare ours with others! So sit back with your favorite beverage and let’s dive in, and see if we can work through a few things that may help. 💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sponsored...
Oct 30, 2024•22 min
Get ready to be inspired this week by our guest interviewee, romance author Juliette N. Banks. “In 2020 I wrote a book, pitched it to a few agents, got rejected three times, and waited another 35 seconds before deciding to self-publish. One of the best decisions of my life.” ~ Juliette N. Banks Juliette is a bestselling romance author who has taken the genre by storm with her popular series The Moretti Blood Brothers, The Dark Kings of NYC, and The Dufort Dynasty. She has written more than 50 co...
Oct 22, 2024•1 hr 5 min
This episode we discuss Book Signings and Book Fairs – in person events where authors get out of the writing cave and actually (gasp!) interact with readers and fellow authors. These can be great fun – and a little intimidating. Wendy’s just returned from RARE Edinburgh so we grilled her on how she prepped, her table “set up”, how preorders worked, what merchandise she took and how she handled the signing. Cheryl’s done a number of book fairs in New Zealand and there is a definite benefit to sta...
Oct 15, 2024•30 min
Rebecca Hefner is a USA Today bestselling author who is a passionate advocate for authors to reach more readers through publishing their books across a wide number of retailers, as well as on their own store. This episode she shares how she juggles her writing over three pen names, creating a monthly schedule for easy marketing and social media wrangling, and lots more marketing advice for connecting with readers. Rebecca’s has also created an amazing tools for authors: The website is BuyDirectF...
Oct 09, 2024•1 hr 20 min
Join us as we talk to Lana Love, the USA Today bestselling author of short romances featuring curvy heroines and the powerful men who can’t live without them. Lana talks to us about how she has achieved success in short romance in less than two years using a mix of mindset, research and plain old stubbornness (her words, not ours…). We talk about what she did to level up, including the research she did and the tough decisions she made. It’s a fascinating interview we know you’ll love! Find Lana ...
Oct 01, 2024•1 hr 6 min
Anne-Marie Meyer is an Amazon and Apple Top 100 best seller and a 3x USA Today Bestselling author. Sweet Romance Author, Anne-Marie Meyer is an Amazon and Apple Top 100 best seller and a 3x USA Today Bestselling author. With absolute intention Anee-Marie challenges herself to improve on how she sells. From Tik Tok to Direct sales she has hit heady heights, particularly in the last 12 months. After her Amazon account was shut down for 48 hrs in 2022 for false reasons, she’s decided that it would ...
Sep 25, 2024•1 hr 21 min
Your book cover is the “shop window” of your hard work, and it has to do the heavy lifting to attract potential readers to go on and read your blurb. So how do you figure out which cover is the best for you? This episode we give tips and tricks for choosing your cover and the elements that will connect with YOUR right readers. Resources mentioned (just put the episode number in your podcast app, or our website search bar) SPA Girls Podcast #457 Kindletrends SPA Girls Podcast #464 Alexa Rivers SP...
Sep 17, 2024•55 min
Theodora Taylor is back! And she’s here to tell us how to craft our blurbs that hook readers and skyrocket sales. Theodora Taylor is the bestselling author of the 50 Loving States Series. Despite writing within a niche genre (interracial romance), she has earned six KDP All-Star bonuses and grown a fanbase of rabid readers through the power of Universal Fantasy. Her book, 7 FIGURE FICTION: How to Use Universal Fantasy to SELL Your Books to ANYONE was an instant #1 non-fiction bestseller in the W...
Sep 11, 2024•1 hr 5 min
When she decided to write a palate cleanser novel in a completely different genre – with a brand new pen name – Alexa Rivers had no idea she would have a hit on her hands. In this interview she talks about why she wrote the book, how she picked the new pen name, the marketing she did, and how a book she wasn’t expecting to do much at all… kinda did awesome. 🙂 She also talks about the ups and downs of her journey with TikTok, and gives some great pieces of advice for everyone to use! SHOW NOTES:...
Sep 03, 2024•52 min
Attending conferences helps us network with professionals in the author world and gain insights and ideas to make our jobs easier or to upskill. What can you hope to get out of conference? > Conference helps us find our tribe. The SPAGirls wouldn’t be here without RWNZ and their conferences. > Conferences show us we’re not alone. > Conferences are inspirational in so many ways. eg. Make us write more regularly, show us that we’re doing okay. > Conferences help us see where we can imp...
Aug 27, 2024•43 min
Welcome back to another SPA Girls minisode. This one is a bit of a controversial take on mistakes writers make that make their work B O R I N G. How do we know these? Because we’ve all made them! So learn from us in ten minutes or less with a quick SPA Girls minisode. Enjoy! 💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sponsored by everyone who supports us on Patreon. Thank you so much, we love our listeners and our patrons! ⭐ Join us at the $10 tier, and you’ll be invited to our private Self-Publishing Mastermi...
Aug 20, 2024•9 min
The best places to publish your books are the one/s that best suit you the best given your audience, energy, time and publishing philosophy. So how do you decide what platform is right for you? Should you “be Amazon exclusive, “go direct”, “publish wide” and/or use an aggregator? And what do those terms even mean? Firstly the definitions: Amazon Exclusive – means publishing your ebooks exclusively on Amazon and in the Kindle Unlimited subscription reading program for at least the initial 90 day ...
Aug 13, 2024•38 min
If you’ve been scratching your head over how to get some more reviews on your newly published book, this is the episode for you! We break down how we have each built up and managed our ARC teams, and how we’ve gone from no reviews to hundreds of reviews. Loads of practical tips in this episode! Good resource: How to Get Free Book Reviews with No Blog, No List, and No Begging Reedsy’s blog on book review blogs: The Best Book Review Blogs in 2024 • How to Get Your Book Reviewed SPA Girls Interview...
Aug 07, 2024•43 min
Why is it some books sell well right out of the gate, and others wither on the retailer vine? Do you know why YOUR book isn’t selling? It can be for a number of reasons and this episode we run through the most common (and fixable!) options that’ll put you back on the right track. Resources mentioned: Kindletrends (make sure to listen to our recent episode with Nat Connors, creator of Kindletrends for a discount) Publisher Rocket Bklnk.com Bookbub 💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sponsored by everyone...
Jul 30, 2024•30 min
The decision to self publish her first historical women’s fiction novel – after a career writing romance – turned out to be a lucrative one for today’s guest, Kindle #1 bestselling historical women’s fiction author, Soraya Lane . The same year she self-published the novel – one that her agent told Soraya she couldn’t sell – she picked up a publishing deal (for the same book) with Amazon, and the rest, as they say, is history. Fast forward 10 years and Soraya now writes for two different traditio...
Jul 24, 2024•57 min
Nat Connors of Kindletrends returns to the SPA with a new analysis tool for indie authors – an interactive infographic to help us make sense of the book categories on the Kindle Store. Knowing where your book (or story idea before you’ve written it) fits into the market, and how it stacks up against the packaging (cover, pricing, categories etc), for the current top sellers in your specific genre is really important. It allows you to directly target the right readers and sell more books. Forget...
Jul 16, 2024•1 hr 25 min
Wondering how long it’s gonna be until you’ll make enough to quit the day job? Listen to this SPA Girls Minisode all about how long it will take you to make your first $1,000 dollars in self publishing! Full of great tips, sage advice and some vulnerable moments from our own self publishing careers. If earning money from your writing is your goal, there are certain things you can do to make this happen faster. Work out how much money you’ve spent on editing, covers, formatting (can be done cost ...
Jul 11, 2024•21 min
First published in 2014, romance author Clare Connelly hit success from her very first self-published book. Now with over 120 books published, she talks to us this episode about the pros and cons of hybrid publishing, balancing writing life with a young family, how to be focussed and productive plus the mindset new writers and self publishers MUST have! *** CONTEST CLOSED – THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED *** ABOUT CLARE : Clare Connelly is the bestselling author of more than one hundred angst...
Jul 11, 2024•57 min
Writing great books with emotional impact is key to building your readership. Today we discuss craft tips that will help you attract new readers, build your fanbase and sell more books! Resources mentioned: Lisa Cron on the SPA Girls Podcast EP249 Sacha Black on crafting great characters EP422 Writing For Emotional Impact by Karl Iglesias 💗 The SPA Girls podcast is sponsored by everyone who supports us on Patreon. Thank you so much, we love our listeners and our patrons! ⭐ Join us at the $10 ti...
Jun 26, 2024•23 min
Want to make the leap to full time author? How do you know when it’s the right time to make that leap? Going from hobbiest to full time writer has been a different journey for all of us. Today we discuss: how much money you need to make the leap other considerations do you have the right personality? what support do you have will you automatically double your productivity? is there a middle ground? taking a positive risk self discipline and self care and lots more! Resources mentioned: SPA Girls...
Jun 18, 2024•43 min
Got your final manuscript all ready to go, and wondering how to format it for publication? This is the SPA Girls episode for you! Welcome back to another 20 min SPA Girls mini-tips session, where we break down the basics of self publishing, just for you! SHOW NOTES: What is formatting? It’s creating a file of your book so it’s delivered to readers smoothly, that it looks professional, meets the requirements of the publishing platforms and is accessible for readers with disabilities. What you nee...
Jun 12, 2024
If you’ve ever wondered how to deal with contracts and other business issues, this is the podcast for you! Maggie Marr the founder of Maggie Marr Legal PC and a USA Today Best Selling author of over 20 books. A former ICM motion picture literary and subsidiary rights (books to film/tv) agent, Maggie is the co-founder and legal advisor to the not-for-profit Women’s Fiction Writers Association and a member of Women In Film. The firm has negotiated deals with Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, Universal, ...
Jun 05, 2024
Branding, Marketing Books and Going All In with Small Town Romance USA Today and #1 Amazon bestselling author Melanie Harlow writes sweet, sexy, feel-good romance. She is a powerhouse of publishing, starting in 2013 with historical romance to today where she focuses on small town contemporary romance. In this incredible conversation, Melanie details her approach to: How She Changed Her Approach To Publishing Commercially Marketing & Branding Making Intentional Decisions Writing The Blurb Fir...
May 29, 2024
