Mark interviews Juliette N. Banks, a bestselling, wide author who writes steamy contemporary and paranormal page-turning romances.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares recent comments, welcomes new patron Dharma Kelleher, and shares a personal update and a word about this episode's sponsor.
You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.
In their conversation, Mark and Juliette talk about:
- Juliette always believing that some day she would be a published author, but it was something she never chased
- Juliette's marketing background at a book she wrote in 2012 that was published by Random House in 2013
- The significant and tight Covid related lock-downs in New Zealand
- Juliette's adaptation to reading a lot of eBooks during the pandemic
- The incredibly expensive cost of print books in New Zealand
- Writing an archangel series and a vampire series
- Launching her books and reader magnet in Jan and March of 2021
- Working a full time job squeezed into 4 work days per week while writing all these novels
- The roughly 200 people Juliette was sharing her works with for free before she even published her first book (and how they've maintained their loyalty as readers to this day)
- Launching a new contemporary billionaire romance series at the beginning of 2022
- The parallel between the vampire characters and the billionaire characters
- Training herself to think very American in terms of her largest readership base
- Calculating the value of going to book signings, particular in the cost of flying from New Zealand to somewhere in the US
- The process Juliette works on with editing and publishing
- Having had five BookBubs in 2022
- The steady stream of releases and the stress that comes from that, particularly when illness like Covid occurs to throw a monkey wrench into it
- Where Juliette has been focusing in her initial goal to get to the 5 figures she needed in order to quit her corporate job
- Spending time on learning what she has to do to make her books "BookBub Worthy"
- Why she doesn't separate "indie" and "traditional" - you're competing in a store with suppliers of all sizes
- The pricing strategy that Juliette uses
- How only 10 of her books are creating income right now. The other 10 are things like reader magnets
- The way Juliette plans and maps out her writing business
- The importance of knowing what your skills and abilities and weaknesses are
- The value of professional coaches and taking some action upon those meetings/sessions
- And more...
After the interview, Mark reflects on the investment Juliette made by engaging for a long period and in detail with a group of 200 readers.
Links of Interest:
Juliette N. Banks is a bestselling, wide author who writes steamy contemporary and paranormal page-turning romances with alpha heroes who fall for sassy heroines and a healthy dose of action and suspense.
Juliette has a vast background in consumer marketing and previously published with Random House. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand with Tilly, her Maine Coon kitty, and is now a full-time author.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast ("Laser Groove") was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
