Great panel moderated by Lee Wind about author published books and how they are faring in 2025.
Lee Reed is a senior editor at Greenleaf Book Group as well as the author of SCBWI Spark Award winning middle grade mystery, CONSTELLATION CLUES: THE CIPHER OF THE SEVEN STARS.
 |
| Lee Reed |
Tonya Duncan Ellis is the author of COOKOUT CHEMISTRY (coming 2027), THEY BUILT ME FOR FREEDOM: THE STORY OF JUNETEENTH AND HOUSTON'S EMANCIPATION PARK, and the SOPHIE WASHINGTON 13-book chapter series, which has sold over 175,000 copies. Tonya is also a member of the Authors Guild, the Brown Bookshelf’s Highlights Foundation-sponsored Amplify Black Stories storyteller cohort, and a We Need Diverse Books and PB Rising Stars mentor.
 |
| Tonya Duncan Ellis |
SERIES TIPS EVERYONE CAN USE!
To self/author publish what you hope will be a multi-book series seems like an impossibly daunting task. But as the publisher of a successful 13-book series, Tonya shares things that worked for her and one of her big shoutouts is to the Creative Penn podcast hosted by author Joanna Penn. Successful series require time and titles, but after the initial first few books in a series are published, Joanna recommends making the first book available in ebook format for free. Tonya did this for her own Sophie Washington series which let teachers read and share it in their classrooms for no cost, providing a zero-risk entree into the rest of the series.
Lee is on her first book in her middle grade series, but just wearing her professional editor hat, she knew she wanted a reader to be able to pick up any book in her series and be able to read it as a self-contained story with enough of a resolution that it's satisfying as a standalone while also being interesting enough that the reader would want to find more titles in the series, so that goal guided her writing and plotting process for each book.
The panel was also asked for marketing tips:
Lee tells attendees to think about their goals for publishing and how much they can invest, in both money and time, and stresses not to blindly follow marketing advice for the general public. You need to think about your skill sets: Lee says she's tried but is not great at social media, but is much more comfortable with classroom visits or teaching writing, and she enjoys speaking to both children and adults about the making of books. Lee knows other authors who focus their marketing based on subject matter fit instead of publishing industry outlets. Lee's colleague with a book about snakes, for example, it made sense for them to try attending any event and everything snake-related, and that is where that author now finds their biggest audiences (and book sales).
Tonya as both the publisher and author of her Sophie Washington series gets to see all of the feedback from her audience, which might normally not be as accessible to an author alone. This insight lets her be aware of what is and isn't resonating for her readers allowing her to adjust forthcoming titles (and marketing) to better serve them. It was also a goal of Tonya's to have her books in libraries. As she researched how to get her series into libraries, many librarians mentioned the importance of Kirkus Reviews and having professional reviews of her books since that is often how librarians justify a purchase in their bookbuying budget. The cost of submitting to Kirkus was something Tonya included in her marketing budget, and once Tonya got positive reviews—which aren't guaranteed and are often hard to come by from Kirkus—she saw her books being included in library systems nationwide. After Scholastic acquired the series in 2021, the publisher now does that outreach to libraries and bookstores.
No comments:
Post a Comment