The Ins and Outs of Kobo Writing Life with Tara Cremin

Ever wondered how your favorite indie authors make their mark in the vast expanse of international publishing? 

In this episode, we're talking with Tara Cremin of Kobo Writing Life. She's giving us the inside look at international publishing as well as the secrets to success on Kobo.

Tara Cremin is the Director of Kobo Writing Life (KWL), Kobo’s independent publishing platform. She leads a team of book lovers who are actively involved in the indie publishing community and always looking for ways to help authors reach a new audience of readers. Tara hosts monthly live events for Kobo Writing Life with author and industry experts and you can sometimes hear her as a guest host on the Kobo Writing Life Podcast.

If you're interested in reaching international readers, publishing on multiple ebook platforms (aka "going wide") or just curious about resources outside of Amazon, this episode is for you.

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Tara Cremin
Kobo Writing Life: https://kobowritinglife.com/
Podcast: https://kobowritinglife.com/category/kwl-podcast/

The Author Wheel:
Website: www.AuthorWheel.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorWheel

Greta Boris:
Website: www.GretaBoris.com
Facebook: @GretaBorisAuthor
Instagram: @GretaBoris

Megan Haskell:
Website: www.MeganHaskell.com
Facebook & Instagram: @MeganHaskellAuthor
TikTok: @AuthorMeganHaskell

Clarify | Simplify | Implement Newsletter
https://meganhaskellauthor.substack.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Welcome back to the AuthorWeal podcast. I'm Megan Haskell. Unfortunately, greta is sick this week, so I'm running today's intro solo. This is the first time we've actually had to do it this way, which is probably a good sign. I guess it means we're pretty healthy. Neither of us has been so sick we couldn't record up until now, but today is the unlucky day where I just have to do it by myself, so you'll only get to hear my lovely voice.

Speaker 1: 1:04

But this week's interview is with Tara Kremen from Kobo Writing Life, and she is giving us the inside scoop on one of my favorite e-book stores. So if you're wide or wide curious, you'll definitely want to listen in on this one. Greta did ask me to share a couple of bits of news for her, though. The first is that the next book in her Mortician Murders series is releasing this week. Splitting Hares is the sixth book in the series, and if you haven't yet checked it out, you totally should. Imaging is a rockabilly hairstylist in a retirement community who discovers she can feel the final sensations of the deceased when she touches their hair. Of course this leads to all kinds of paranormal mystery shenanigans, and eventually she decides to go to mortuary school. It's a really fun mystery kind of cozy mystery, paranormal mystery, light read. I really enjoyed the first book in the series. So Splitting Hares, like I said, is the sixth book in the series and it's available for pre-order now. But it will be available for purchase or Kindle Unlimited Borrow's on February 29th, so make sure you check that out if you haven't already. She's also going to be appearing on the Crime and Wine show with Pamela Fagan Hutchins on Wednesday, the 28th. So if you want to see her live and in-person and talking about, I guess, crime and wine, you can watch that live on Pamela's Facebook page at 7 pm Eastern. But I think the replay will also be made available after the fact. So don't quote me on that, but I don't think you have to watch it live. I think you can catch it later if you'd like. But we'll make sure to put the links in the show notes so you can attend if you are interested.

Speaker 1: 2:52

On my side of things, I've been picking up the pace a little bit on the Aether Burned on the Rise of Lilith series. So this is the third book in the series and surprisingly, my morning productivity has actually increased quite a bit recently. I'm typically getting more than 500 words in that 30 to 45 minute writing session and occasionally also finding more time later. So it's actually working out to speed me up a little bit, which is great, because my goal is going to be to finish the first draft of that book and have it off to my editor by the end of May. So I'm stating that for the record right now. I also guess that means that my body is adjusting and I'm becoming more of a morning person, which is, I guess, okay. I mean, if you are a morning person, but there you go, I don't know, it is what it is. I'm making it work.

Speaker 1: 3:47

We've also been working really hard to finish up the new courses for our Kickstarter backers. So TROPE, stacking and other genre magic is going to be available first, and that should be ready next week, and we're going to just import the backer students directly from our Kickstarter account. So if you get notification about that, then you were a backer, congratulations, you can join the course. And then the second course is layering your story world, which is all about planning your fiction and creativity, brainstorming, world building, all of that stuff, and that should be ready a week or two later. So if you've been waiting for those courses. First off, thank you so much for your support of the author wheel and being one of our Kickstarter backers, and also for your patients, as it took us right up to the deadline to actually get these finished. That being said, we're really excited to have these courses ready for you, so I hope, if you are a backer, I hope you love it, and if you're not, we'll let you know when those become available to the wider audience.

Speaker 1: 4:57

I think that's it for this week, so let's jump right into our conversation with Tara Kremn. I am incredibly excited for today's guest, tara Kremn, because Kobo is one of my absolute favorite eBook platforms as an author. But before we dive into the interview, let me first read her bio. Tara Kremn is the director of Kobo Writing Life, kobo's independent publishing platform. She leads a team of book lovers who are actively involved in the indie publishing community and always looking for ways to help others reach a new audience of readers. Tara hosts monthly live events for Kobo Writing Life with author and industry experts, and you can sometimes hear her as a guest host on the Kobo Writing Life podcast. So welcome, tara. We're really excited to talk to you today. I'm just all interested in all things Kobo all the time.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Oh, thanks for having me Always love talking about Kobo, so Well, perfect.

Speaker 1: 5:55

So why don't you start by just giving us a little bit more of your background and how you came to be part of the KWL team?

Speaker 2: 6:03

Sure, so I'm originally from Ireland, lived in England for a while and I've lived now in Canada for almost 12 years, which is why my accent is sometimes hard to place. But so when I moved to Canada I started working for Kobo, but as a customer care representative on this brand new platform that had just launched called Kobo Writing Life. So my background is in kind of literature and like a little bit of bookselling. So I got kind of the job through that, being like a relevant background for like books and tech, and really, really enjoyed working with authors as that sort of like first base and then, as I kind of continued to do that, I wanted to actually be able to solve some of the problems rather than just be the communicator or liaison between them. So then I moved into the publisher operation side. So sort of was like opening EPUB files and making sure they were working and learning all things about metadata, and it was a wonderful way to really learn about the publishing industry on the job within like the content team at Kobo, who I mean? Kobo in general is a company of book lovers and the content team are like the book nerds among the book lovers, so I learned a lot about Canadian publishing in general and like just the industry. So it was really really great to be able to see that, but then also to be part of this growing trend of Indies from, I mean, that was back in 2012.

Speaker 2: 7:33

So then from that side I sort of moved more onto the business side as kind of like a front facing piece and coming and talking to lovely podcasts like this and, yeah, just kind of continuing to work with authors the entire time, which I think is kind of good because it gives me a little bit of a unique perspective of understanding how to communicate with authors, as these are business relationships it's very different to a customer relationship understanding some of the technical maybe like not requirements, but some of the technical obstacles that happened on the back end of books. And that all really goes into what I can do now, which is like building the platform and continuing to grow it, all the while keeping authors kind of just very first, first in mind whenever we're building anything. So I kind of feel very lucky that I was able to join a company like Kobo and be able to grow my career in different avenues within the Indie publishing industry. So, yeah, it's been fun.

Speaker 3: 8:35

For listeners who don't know. Why don't you give us a little overview of all the things that Kobo does for authors?

Speaker 2: 8:45

Sure, so maybe I'll start as like for what Kobo does for readers, as that kind of then leads into what Kobo does for authors. So Kobo is basically all about books. It is, in fact, an anagram of the word book. That's where the name comes from. Yeah, I never knew that. I didn't know that either. I know. I think it was several years that I was working there before I knew either, and so we're headquartered here in Toronto in Canada. But we're owned by Rakuten, which is a huge e-commerce Japanese company. You might be familiar with them because of some of their sports sponsorships. They are the sponsor of the Golden State Warriors at the moment and also have a lot of I think they've been have a heavy US presence right now. So Kobo is available in 200 countries, basically everywhere in the world, and we're a digital first company that's just devoted to digital reading. So I think the main difference between when you're thinking about Kobo or other similar platforms is that all we do is try and make the digital reading experience better. We're not trying to get customers into the ecosystem to like upsell them a different product. That's totally unrelated to a book. It is all about the book experience.

Speaker 2: 9:59

One of the strategies that we took when Kobo was created. That we continued to do is a global strategy of the book market. So with that we have a lot of strategic partnerships all around the world. So some of these are like brick and mortar bookstores where we will power their e-books and audio books, and some of them would be just like online e-commerce companies. It really varies. We like to take what we call a globally local view of bookselling, where we're selling books all over the world, but we do understand that there's perhaps a little bit of nuance between selling a book in France versus Australia. So it lets us we have people on the ground in key areas and kind of take that in. We've always kind of have that mindset in mind when we're looking at the global picture. And then we do make some of like, in my opinion, out of the best e-readers in the world, and some of the latest ones have e-book and audio book capability all built into one. They also have overdrive integration within the e-readers, which people might not realize, so you can actually access the library very easily through a Kobo device. And then some of the newer ones even have stylists where you can write and make notebooks.

Speaker 2: 11:11

We do the convert to text speech and or not to speech. My apologies, convert to text from the script and it's just kind of a way that we're kind of continuing to innovate them. We made the world's first waterproof e-reader back in the day, andie. Yeah, a lot of our devices now are made out of up to 90% ocean bound recycled plastics. So we're trying to be a bit more thoughtful with the devices that we're putting out into the world. But we have customers that also can read for free on the apps that are available on iOS and Android. So it doesn't you don't have to have a Kobo device. We just happen to think they're the best way to read the books on, but some people live and breathe on reading books on a phone. I don't understand that. No, me, neither. I'm with you. It's all preference.

Speaker 2: 11:57

But so then, kobo Writing Life is the self-publishing platform that allows authors to gain access to this audience of readers that are all over the world. So it was kind of created back in the day by authors for authors, and we really tried to keep that essence throughout with everything that we do. We don't have exclusivity. We really encourage authors to publish wherever readers are, so you can make your books available, you know wherever a reader in the world is, however, they want to read. So you can publish e-books and audio books with us. We have a non-exclusive subscription program called Kobo Plus, which I'm sure maybe we'll talk about in a little bit, and lots of promotional opportunities, because we know that it is a sea of books out there and we want to help Indies get spotlighted in certain areas Because we know that these are the books that readers are really looking for. So we want to be able to help out that core market.

Speaker 1: 12:52

Yeah, so, as a wide author, when I took my books wide, kobo was the one. I mean Amazon, of course, I went direct to Amazon, but Kobo was the one too that I was very insistent that I wanted to go direct with, because your platform, your system, your back end, where authors upload your books and everything is very easy to use. Number one and then number two you, like you said, you actively promote that international audience. And one of my favorite little features and it's kind of silly in a lot of ways but is the map. So you can actually see like they give you little little red dots and depending on how many books you sell in each country, the dot is bigger or smaller. And so you can see like I'm selling books in Germany and I'm selling books in Asia, you know, in Japan, or you know just all over the world. I sold one in Argentina, I think not too long ago, or something Like. So you see these little dots and it's.

Speaker 1: 13:53

I love that aspect of thinking beyond, because we here, greta and I are obviously are US authors. We're both in California and I think US authors tend to have a very US centric sales model, but with ebooks especially, you can really be anywhere. So I love that Kobo has taken that stance and really tried to promote that global nature and make it so simple to get those ebooks out to readers all around the world. So yeah, so I think you know, I guess I don't know. I don't really have a question around that, I guess Just thank you.

Speaker 2: 14:35

No, no, thank you. Those are lovely comments. I'll be sure to bring them back to the team, and the math is something that is people really enjoy. We ask people to share, sometimes on Twitter or X or whatever. We're calling it the hashtag KWLMap. I think Joanna Penn shared hers recently, where she had sold English books in 178 countries, which is wild. Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 3: 14:59

Yeah, that's really exciting to see that. So, when you're working with authors, what do you think is the greatest roadblock you see most of them running into and how does Kobo, or how do you particularly, or Kobo in general, help them overcome those roadblocks?

Speaker 2: 15:20

I think what Megan was saying about maybe not considering the global landscape can be something that can be a roadblock to authors, that they are very US-centric or aren't considering their pricing. So something I wish that we did it automated a little bit better. But something that we do offer is that you can enter your pricing in up to 16 currencies, and that's the same for audiobooks that you're publishing through Kobo Writing Life, so you can completely control that experience. So what we would recommend authors to do is to not let just not set the USD price and let it auto-convert. You should really be thinking about how your books look in every market. So if you were setting your book for $4.99 in the US, for example, that might be $5.73 in Canada and you're probably going to sell more books in Canada than the US because that's where our audience base is the biggest. So sometimes I think it's a bit of a it can be a roadblock to do yourself a disservice by not considering what your books would look like in these different areas. And that's the same with Kobo Plus not maybe not opting your books into Kobo Plus because you're not too sure about it or not really considering the global market. I think that's really important to be successful on Kobo, for sure.

Speaker 2: 16:40

And then I think if an author isn't as familiar with the platform and maybe isn't used to like having access to a team that is really dedicated to Indies and want to see you succeed, they can maybe not think to reach out to us or ask us questions or things like that.

Speaker 2: 16:58

But we're here to help. We definitely want to build these relationships with authors. So if you have created a Kobo Writing Life account, for instance, you don't see our promotions tab right away. We have to enable that for you. But if you send us an email, we're happy to do that along with other tips and tricks, and we're always happy to look through an account if there's any different recommendations that we can give or just to encourage authors to use the promotions tool to really gain a footing for the Kobo audience. So I think maybe as a whole, a roadblock would be that we're a whole other platform People have to learn to use. But the way that we've been building it is that the publication process should be absolutely easy and you should just be focusing on promoting. So I hope that answers your question.

Speaker 3: 17:44

It does. No, no, no, that's good, and I do think it's true. I know I'm guilty of focusing on the US, and I do have readers in other countries, and that was one of my goals for next year is to start, you know, pick a country and focus on another country too, because even if you're, even if you're selling most of your books in the US, why leave money on the table when there are, exactly, you know, english speaking readers all over the world? So I think that I think that's really really helpful.

Speaker 1: 18:19

So, other than price, I'm actually more curious for myself, quite honestly. But other than price, are there any other country, specific considerations that authors should be making when they're, you know, uploading their books to Kobo and looking at those international markets?

Speaker 2: 18:39

Nothing really country specific, other in metadata, like you wouldn't have, you know, a French version of your book per se. So I would make sure that your one book is global and like that your blurb is really optimized to appeal to readers. I think, with Kobo, maybe keeping an eye on who your similarly sold authors are, because those can be different on different vendors, so you can use that to maybe look at, like what categories people are choosing and things like that. But I think price is the most important when considering the global market and then also considering if you have translations to put those wide on Kobo as well, because we do have quite a large audience in some different countries. For example, like France, because we have a partnership with FNAF there that we have been one of our big partners for a long time.

Speaker 2: 19:34

In Netherlands, we're partnered with ballcom, and in Italy as well, we have a number of three or four partnerships I think in Italy, like Feltronelli, montadori, other different areas. So if you're you know, if your translations are not doing what you thought they would on Amazon, you could maybe consider moving them out to Kobo, because we also have Kobo Plus in those areas too and we have KWL teams in Europe that can help you with this, and we're starting to build out our promotional opportunities there so we can connect you with our wonderful European colleagues to see what we can do to spot like those books as well, because that's a good opportunity. I think there's a bit of a gap in the native language market for the content that Indies are publishing. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:20

Yeah, I think translations are interesting to me. I'm not there yet, but I feel like it's a very, a very interesting market for Indies to start to explore because there is so much opportunity and it's right now it's being underutilized. So if you could be the you know urban fantasy author with translations in into German, for example, you might be one of very few verses, you know, just staying within the English language. I think that there's potentially a good competitive advantage there.

Speaker 2: 20:56

Totally, we have. We have a couple of like American authors that sell more in France than they do in Canada because of their translations, which is always really interesting. Whenever we're getting together for like a business review or anything, it's always fun to see those like little stats of where things are selling.

Speaker 3: 21:12

Yeah, I do wonder if a lot more Indies aren't going to start exploring translations. I went to several workshops at 20 bucks about translations and, with AI getting better and better at this, some of the advice from some of these authors was go ahead and have the book translated on AI but then find a good translator, human translator, to do the proof. To do the proof and to fix the you know, because there's going to be gaffes and ridiculous things, because AI doesn't realize that. You know, don't look up gift horse in the mouth should not be translated directly in Spanish because they're like what? Why would someone give you a horse and you're looking at smell? I mean, it wouldn't make sense. You know all the cloak, wheel isms and things. So, and it makes the job for the translator a lot quicker and easier, so potentially less expensive.

Speaker 1: 22:11

And fun fact of the day, I actually spoke with a translator who highly encouraged that. So this is not like taking away opportunities for translators, if that's your concern with AI. At least anecdotally, this one translator was saying that, no, she much prefers it because she can do more books faster if all she's having to do is double check things rather than do the direct translation herself. So she was really excited about that change in the market.

Speaker 2: 22:38

So I really thought. I thought your fun fact was going to be about horses. No no, I thought other way.

Speaker 1: 22:46

I did find out today Fun fact about horses. I did find out today that there is a left and a right spur. I did not know that. So you as a cow, per cow, cowgirl, cowboy, putting on spurs, there's a left one and a right one.

Speaker 2: 23:03

I didn't know that either, fun fact today.

Speaker 1: 23:05

There you go.

Speaker 3: 23:06

As an English saddle rider, I never put on spurs because I always felt they were kind of mean, but I definitely am taking a rabbit trail, or?

Speaker 3: 23:15

horsey trail here I don't know what to say. I do think that it was a good point that you made your first fun fact about the the narrators, because I don't want to get any hate mail from people going oh you AI stealing jobs. No, because I've heard that from several translators, that even they can charge less because they do it more quickly, but ultimately they make more money for their career because they can do much more but many more books.

Speaker 1: 23:44

I think it could be in this particular case that I help for many people, so yes, Well, so now I want to dig into one of my favorite, relatively new and expanding features, which is you mentioned, cobo Plus. So for listeners who don't know, why don't you explain what Cobo Plus is, where it's available and how it's so special compared to the other options on the market?

Speaker 2: 24:12

Yeah, so Cobo Plus is. I guess the special feature really is that it's our non exclusive subscription program. So from a reader perspective, you can sign up to have either an all you can read and all you can listen account or a combined all you can read and listen. So in America it's 799 for the all you can read or listen, or for the combined it's 999, which is a really good deal really, and it's basically you pay a monthly fee and it's all of the books that you can consume within that month. So then, from an author perspective, you can easily opt your books in through Cobo Writing Lies, and we really wanted to build this out, giving authors as much power as possible. So the non exclusive piece has always been key because I think from what's happening with it, we know that it doesn't need to be exclusive for this to be a success. And then we don't have any required opt in period, so you're not locked into any subscription service for any length of time. You can try your books and remove them any time you like. Obviously, we would encourage you to keep your books in to sort of gain traction with readers. The longer they're in, you know, the better that is. But again, you have the power to remove them if you want, and we've even built it out that you can select this specific country. So if you didn't want to have it in all of the markets or if you didn't want to put a new release in Canada, for instance, you have the option to deselect that. But then if you do select all of the countries, it includes any future countries. So when we do launch in new areas you don't have to do anything, which is kind of a winning piece as well, because we've launched in six countries this year, so it's at the moment in 14 countries.

Speaker 2: 25:51

I'll try my best. I think I haven't nailed. So I, in my mind, sort of separate them as like English speaking first and then non English. But that's not to say that English books are not read in the other territories. They absolutely are. But just how I divide them. So we're in all of our core English markets, which is Canada, the US, the UK, australia and New Zealand, and then we're in Europe. We're in Belgium, the Netherlands, portugal, france, italy, and then the latest ones that we just launched were in the Nordics, where we launched in Finland, sweden, denmark and Norway, just maybe last month or I don't know when this is going in 2023. So we hope to.

Speaker 2: 26:34

We will be launching in more countries, so you can kind of expect to see more places I can't quite say where or anything but it's something that we think really works as a subscription platform and I think maybe one of the big difference that, then as well, is that it's not paid reads that we're doing. We're actually doing it. We're calculating payments based on the minutes that a book has been read. So the payment structure for authors is a revenue share model which is very similar to the structure of, like the other kind of competitive subscription services, whereas, you know, so in a certain place we'll have all of the revenue from the subscribers in one pool and we'll describe, we'll divide that by all of the minutes that a book has been read and that or the book seven, and it gives us the value per minute. So that can fluctuate every month and, depending on the territory, it doesn't historically doesn't really change anything too dramatically. And then we multiply that by the number of minutes that your book has been read, and then 60% of that is your kind of take home earnings there, and minutes read might seem like a bit of a conceptual thing to track. But when you think about it, I mean, pages don't actually exist in ebooks, right, you can increase your font, decrease your font. The number of pages is subjective also, so, with the minutes being read, it's allowed us to treat ebooks and audio books in the same way.

Speaker 2: 27:58

So that was kind of one of the reasons why we moved to that, and then also what's been kind of good to notice that it's really reduced any gamification Like you're not having we're not having the bad apples kind of really ruining this for everyone that we found with the minutes being read, because we are calculating, like, how much time somebody is spending on a book, so it's a bit harder to game that system.

Speaker 2: 28:22

And what we've just heard from authors with opting their books in is that it's just really increased their revenue overall, which has been really encouraging.

Speaker 2: 28:30

I think it's a really great avenue for like backlist content, like sometimes when I'll go look and through see what is being read and be like, oh, all of these books are from 2017. I think they're at the top of the list here, which is really really interesting, because it's either to me that says that it's kind of brand new readers that are finding these authors for the first time, or perhaps they're rereading because that's something with the minutes read Model. Any rereads, you're also getting paid for that because, again, it is the whole time that somebody is spending on your book. And one common thing that we used to get from authors very kindly emailing us saying you know, you guys have overpaid me. They're like no, no, we haven't, it's your subscription earnings. So, to to remedy that, the cobalt plus reading data, or your yeah, your minutes data it's now available on the cobalt writing life dashboard as well, which is something that we added in 2023.

Speaker 1: 29:22

So I actually is kind of now we're now getting into the nitty-gritty a little bit, but for the minutes read like so are. Because I have to imagine, you know, me being me the, I'm reading along and, oh, I've got to go change the laundry, or, you know, do something, right. So I set the book down, how do you differentiate? Or do you know, like, how does that calculation work? Like, if somebody just sets the book down, do you know that it's not being read, so they're not spending 20 minutes on that single Page or frame or however you want to point Reference point location within the book, or or does that count? I mean, because that would be a potential gamification, right, like?

Speaker 2: 30:02

yeah, there's lots of checks and balances on the back end that I can't go into like too much detail around, but for but no, we would be aware of like how long it has been stalled in a certain point or anything like that.

Speaker 1: 30:15

Okay, okay um, I had another question too, and then I I lost my, lost my train of thought. Now already.

Speaker 2: 30:23

I'm talking about horses again. I'm talking about like our dogs.

Speaker 3: 30:28

We started before we had recording on dogs, so does cobo have an animal section in their books?

Speaker 2: 30:37

No, we're a very dog friendly office. Um, actually we have a slack channel called cobo pooch patrol.

Speaker 3: 30:46

Now we're getting into the nitty gritty. I always think. I always think that Okay, don't hate me, listeners, but I'm always one of those people that if I, if I'm friendly with somebody who doesn't like dogs, hmm, I wonder about them. I always wonder if maybe they're really a serial killer in disguise.

Speaker 1: 31:09

And now we know something more about Greta.

Speaker 3: 31:13

I just don't understand not liking dogs. I can understand not having a dog, but okay, back to cobo writing life writing life.

Speaker 3: 31:23

So the big elephant in the room is obviously kindle unlimited, which I do have one series in and it is exclusive. And I hate that about kindle unlimited. I do, I truly do. But you know I'm holding my nose and doing it anyway at this point, but not forever. So what would you say to an author like me who is making? Maybe 75 percent of my income at this point Is coming from kindle unlimited. So it's very scary I mean 70 with that series it's very scary to take that series out and jump into Some other, you know. So what? How would you encourage me?

Speaker 2: 32:10

Yeah, I think that's a great question and I think sometimes it can be. It can feel like an emotional decision, but we totally understand and respect that these are business decisions and this is your business. All we can try and do from the cobo side is Try and gain as many readers and traction and maintain that competition so it is appealing for you when you do want to take the leap and not have your books in ku Um.

Speaker 2: 32:37

I mean, I think competition is good and really healthy and we'll be here whenever you're ready. Um, I do think that it it depends on what your business will be doing, um, sometimes it does take a little bit to make to meet what you are making on kindle unlimited. So I think that that can be something that's a bit scary. You know you're you're losing this, this income, right away, um, and you're probably not going to make it up in the first month on the wide platforms. It'll take you a little while to get traction, but you will get traction with these books because if they're Having successful readers in amazon, those readers exist in other avenues and they're looking for for other avenues as well.

Speaker 2: 33:15

So I think it all comes down to your business and your planning, um, but then if you do take the leap, I would just say just be patient, be persistent with, kind of how you're marketing your books widely, reach out to us and ask Um, it's always really helpful for us when we know that authors are coming from Amazon exclusivity to Kobo, because, um, from our perspective, sometimes they just look like new accounts and we're like we don't know who this person is, but it's great. So like, oh, if you have an audience here, that's awesome for us to know, because we want you to find your audience on Kobo now. Um, so I would yeah, I would just think long and hard and plan around what you would do then. You know, if you took that series outright, how would your marketing change? Like, what would you do on Kobo?

Speaker 3: 33:59

So, just basically, what you're saying is have a game plan exactly, be prepared to tighten your belt for a few months Three to six months or something like that until you figure out the new market. Also, my other question too is that if, uh, because I will be having another series go out um this year, 2024, um, that will be wide on all the platforms, have you noticed that authors who are say on Kobo, uh, if they already, if they bring in a new series that say was an amazon exclusively or something like that, but they bring in a new series now like a completed series and bring it to Kobo because they already have some readers who are familiar with them, did they maybe make that leap a little bit easier and a little bit quicker than people who are coming From amazon, who don't have any books on Kobo? Do you understand my did that question?

Speaker 2: 34:58

make sense. I do. I do, um, I think, because Kobo plus is so new to the us we launched in april of 2023. So I think it is a great way for authors to have an alternative for those readers when you're saying like, hey, I'm leaving this, but hey, actually you can get it cheaper over here for a similar subscription.

Speaker 3: 35:19

Oh, I love that. That's actually a really good point because sometimes people feel like you know, they're married to the library side, sort of a you know a program, because of these readers who read a book a day, or a book every three days, or it's very expensive for them If there isn't some kind of subscription, so that's a great. I didn't even think about that to offer them. By the way, there is a Kobo reading subscription program. So anyway, I'm sorry I interrupted you.

Speaker 2: 35:46

I'm sorry I interrupted you, yeah no, no, no, I don't know if we um, I don't know if we have a lot of data yet about how that is working with, like, readers moving over, but, um, I think your question is like is it better to have some books already wide versus being brand new? I think being familiar with the platforms is really important when you are moving wide because you're probably going to be publishing on like there's the five main ones right so to be Apple, google, barnes, noble, amazon and Kobo. So it's a lot of time to set things up. So my recommendation is always, even before because you know you have a certain deadline be familiar with the platforms so when you do leave KU, that it's not all of a sudden a panic on day one to publish the books or anything.

Speaker 2: 36:33

So I don't think it matters per se if you already have a series or you're bouncing between. I think you just have to be consistent. So I think a mistake that I see authors kind of making sometimes is being a bit too flippant with how you're moving in and out of KU, because I think you're doing a disservice to readers on both sides really, like it's a bit confusing. So, while we don't have that required time period or anything like that. I do think when you're publishing wide, it takes a bit longer, so you should maybe just prepare to really commit to what you're doing, to build an audience on whatever platform you're choosing.

Speaker 3: 37:09

That's good, that's very good advice.

Speaker 1: 37:12

Yeah, I remembered my point from earlier that I was going to make or it wasn't really a question but my consideration was that one of the things that I also love about the Kobo Plus option is that one of the biggest tactics that wide authors use is making their first book in a series free.

Speaker 1: 37:29

And then you can make it free and put it into Kobo Plus and if your whole series is in both for sale and in Kobo Plus now you can be enticing readers in who are buying books with the freebie at the beginning and you're also earning money on that. When readers who are in Kobo Plus in the subscription model so you're not it feels emotionally slightly less painful to be making that first book free when you know at least some portion of your audience who's in that subscription model is going to be through their subscription. You are going to be receiving commissions or royalties off of those listens or time read, yeah, reads, whatever you want to call it which I think is great, because I feel like it's a very forward thinking move really for Kobo, and so I guess my lead in question is are there any other new features or tactics that wide authors might be able to consider in how to incorporate Kobo Plus and other marketing ideas for their wide books and for their series.

Speaker 2: 38:48

Yeah, we have them on our help center. So if you're in your Kobo Writing Life account and click help, it'll take you over to our help center. And we actually have social assets that you can use for Kobo Plus, like put your books in, like hey, read my books in Kobo Plus, and you can include your book cover. So those can be used for the kind of external marketing, and we also have similar ones for audio books as well. And then I think something that seems to be kind of unique to Kobo is that the customers are really big fans of box sets and bundles, and so when I look at what's being read on Kobo Plus, it is quite often box sets, because I mean that makes sense. They're longer, there's more minutes being read in those books.

Speaker 2: 39:26

But that can be a really interesting way to reach readers too, because they tend to see it as it's a convenient way of having all of your books in one place rather than necessarily getting a bit of a bargain between us, because in theory they could put books one to five individually in their library.

Speaker 2: 39:44

So with box sets as well, something to keep in mind is that we don't have the higher price cap that Amazon does, so if you price your book over $9.99, you're going to earn 70% on that box set, which is really kind of enticing. And we see also sometimes do Kobo specific box sets that could be super duper book bundles, and then opting those into Kobo Plus again. So it's kind of like this whole other item that you are your marketing. So I think I would definitely consider that. And on the promotions tab, we do regularly run sales around box sets too. It's usually like a promo code sale like 20%, 30% off, just to really entice those readers. So I would for sure take advantage. If you have a series and you're not bundling it, you should bundle them.

Speaker 1: 40:27

Which I have not really done. Actually I should. There we go. Tip of the day.

Speaker 3: 40:34

Tip of the day At 24 goals, yeah for sure.

Speaker 1: 40:38

And actually the social assets as well. You know, putting that together with what you know, your earlier comment, what Greta was excited about. As far as like promoting Kobo Plus to your readers as an option that's less expensive than Kindle Unlimited but still allows readers to get books quote unquote, for free, I mean, obviously you're paying your subscription, but but as many books as they can read for free. And what percentage of the books in Kobo Plus if you know this data I don't know are actually traditionally published as well, because I know there are some bigger name authors that on Kobo that are usually traditionally published. Are any of the traditional publishers in putting their books in there as well? Because I feel like that would be a whole new market or different, slightly different market, different attraction for different readers.

Speaker 2: 41:29

Yeah, they are. They are for sure. I mean, I can't share any data or anything, but it's something that we're definitely working on. As you know, I was going to say as we indies, as if I was an indie author as well, but as, as us people in the industry well know, publishing is a lot slower to change. Like traditional publishing, they still don't take advantage of free books. That's, you know, something that indies have really cornered the market on. So I think there's a little bit of hesitancy sometimes around subscription, but don't worry, we're chipping away and trying to try to break that down. Okay, okay.

Speaker 1: 42:03

But still still. It's still a really interesting, you know, idea to be able to tell readers out there hey, here's another option, by the way, you know, especially because it's relatively new in the US and we are tend to be US centric, you know it's, it's a, it's a win, win for everybody, I feel like One more quick question on the bundling.

Speaker 3: 42:23

Do people bundle their audio books as well? Are you saying audio book bundles?

Speaker 2: 42:28

Yeah, yeah, there are. We have some limitations over the size of an audio book that you can create. I don't remember off the top of my head what the limitation there is, but yes, we're definitely noticing the bundles because I think that's a great opportunity as well to just again create a whole other item that you can market.

Speaker 3: 42:48

Yeah, I do think that binging is something that especially through cove it, with everybody being home and doing all the Netflix and subscription TV services. But like we've just kind of become bingers and a lot of people love that when they can just get that big chunk of hours and hours and hours of entertainment and when world you know, and just keep moving through that world. So that that is a great tip. That's really good. Yeah, any closing thoughts about if you are sitting with an author who was just thinking about going into Kobo, give them your, your three cents, three to five sentence pitch.

Speaker 2: 43:37

Why.

Speaker 3: 43:38

Whoa in Kobo.

Speaker 2: 43:40

I'm Irish. I'm going to need more sentences of that.

Speaker 3: 43:45

Actually your. Your accent is so lovely that you could actually do 10 cents, as I would be perfectly happy with that.

Speaker 2: 43:53

I just think that you want to be able to reach readers however they want to read, and Kobo is an avenue that gives you a huge global audience. So if you want to publish widely, if you want your books to be read by as many people as possible, I don't know why you wouldn't. So that would be maybe my, my pitch.

Speaker 3: 44:13

Do you see how quickly you did that, even as an Irish person?

Speaker 2: 44:17

I'm really impressed, I know. I hope I didn't speak too quickly, though, because I do. I do tend to just talk very fast.

Speaker 1: 44:25

We do too. We actually. When some of our teaching we get told can you just please slow it down? No worries, we got you Great, we do.

Speaker 3: 44:36

Well, this was so great, Tara. I really enjoyed this conversation and you've given me a lot to think about, because I do have future wide goals and actually will have some audiobooks and other things going wide next year or this year by the time when this comes out. So thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. We will have links in the show notes to Kobo Writing Life. Is there anything any place you want to tell people that they should go and check out more about what we talked about?

Speaker 2: 45:11

Well, if you're curious about publishing widely, I would say you could create an account. It's at Kobocom. We have a wonderful blog that is KoboWritingLifecom. You can access them all through the account or you can listen to our podcast, the Kobo Writing Life podcast, where we have a lot of interviews about like craft and writing. But I think our account and our blog and things like that would give you a bit of a sense of who we are and what we're about. And also you can always reach out to us at writinglife at Kobocom. And I guess another fun fact unrelated to horses is if you put Tara and you are in the email that'll come to me. So if you wanted to reach out directly, you can do that. I'm happy to chat, okay that's great.

Speaker 1: 45:53

Quite the offer actually.

Speaker 3: 45:56

That is a heck of an offer.

Speaker 2: 45:57

We'll see if I stand to it, but no, I won't.

Speaker 3: 46:01

I also am thinking what I might very much consider doing for myself and maybe other listeners might want to do if you don't have one, go as a reader and join Kobo Plus and read and get to know the platform from that. And I always feel like getting to know the reader experience on something before you go into the sales experiences is a real plus.

Speaker 2: 46:27

Oh, I think that's super smart. I think that's great advice.

Speaker 1: 46:30

Yeah, actually to go off on a little bit of a tangent there and extend this episode a few more minutes, sorry folks, but I know I think that is very important and in fact, I joined Kobo before Kobo Plus was available in the US. I joined as a reader through their VIP program, which gives you, you know, you pay an annual fee and you get discounts, and so anytime I want to buy a traditionally published book that's not available in Kindle Unlimited because I also have a Kindle Unlimited account, because I do, and so that's what I do, and so I've actually can say as a reader reading, I've read on the Kobo app on my iPad and used their shop interface and everything, and it's a very lovely reader experience. So I do recommend checking that out as an author so that you do understand what the reader is experiencing when they go to their site.

Speaker 3: 47:30

I think it's lovely, I think it's really a really great community all around.

Speaker 3: 47:33

And as an audiobook devotee, I can tell you that is a heck of a deal $9 a month for both the digital and the audio, because the other platform, which will not be named, it's pretty expensive and you only get one book a month and I go through probably three books a week in audio. So that is very tempting. I'm going to be looking into that myself. And speaking of tempting on authorwheelcom, megan and I have it's still there, folks, and you never know how long it's going to be there.

Speaker 3: 48:08

So if you haven't already, go run to authorwheelcom and grab our free seven day course. Seven days to clarity, discover your author purpose, which will lead you through a process of sort of self evaluation, writing your author mission statement and from there coming up with a pithy tagline that you can add to your website or wherever you market yourself as a little plus. This is the author wheel plus, not the Kobo plus. We would love it when you write your tagline, if you send it, email it to us at info at authorwheelcom. Don't tell us your genre, don't tell us what you write. Just send that tagline and see if we can guess and then you'll know if you really hit it. So that's our invitation to you and until next time, keep your stories rolling.