You’ve self-published a book. Congrats! Now how do you find your readers? On this episode, Emily sat down with prolific romance authors Elaina Jadin and Marie Robinson to discuss just that, along with the best marketing tools you can use to to find--and keep--an enthusiastic army of fans. They also chat about how having a co-author ultimately benefits a book, how you can still love a story that you’re writing to market, and why writing a book with an end in mind but not so much the rest of the journey can stretch your writing and make you better at it. And if you’ve ever wondered if you should self-publish your book on platforms that aren’t Amazon, Marie is here to tell you: Yes. Yes, you should.

Quick announcement before we get

started, we've put together something special for you called

the hybrid pub Scout guide to picking your publishing path,

and that's what it's about. You'll get checklists for what

you can expect if you choose to work with a publishing company

versus if you decide to go it alone. We've linked it in the

show notes and on our social media, and it's free, so go get

it.

You welcome

to the hybrid club Scout podcast with me,

Emily einlander, we're mapping the frontier between traditional

and indie publishing, and today's guest is Elena Jaden.

Elena spends most of her free time dreaming up her next story.

She found her love of writing at a young age. Her favorite

rebellion was staying up past bedtime to read books and

scribble stories under the covers. Elena has been writing

ever since, and still stays up late to sneak in words when

everyone else is asleep. After living in various parts of the

country, Elena settled in the Eastern US with her family and

their many pets. She loves dark coffee, big slices of pie,

family game night, city skylines at night, watching it snow and

laughing at her husband's antics. She co writes as Bethany

Jaden and Bella Blake. Her romance books have sizzling

chemistry, relatable heroines, sexy leading men and sweet

happily ever afters. Thanks for coming on, Elena,

thanks for having me. Hello, and

we also have our illustrious guest host who

comes on sometimes, Marie Robinson, Thanks, Marie.

Hi everybody. All right,

so first I'd like to kind of, it's, it's

been, you know, it's, it's Sunday morning. We're a little

bleary eyed because we've all been staying up late, scribbling

words, right? Oh, yeah. So let's talk about things that make us

happy. So Elena, what's your what's your guilty pleasure?

Right?

Now, I have been catching up on all the new

seasons of my favorite shows, a lot of binge watching. I love

when I can just sit down and immerse myself in a good show.

And I've been eating a lot of lemon cream cake, too much.

Probably, lemon is the king of flavors.

I just did not a kick. Like, I go and I, you know, I

have, like, times where I'm like, oh, chocolate cake, or

pecan pie, or whatever. Like, my sweet tooth will kind of switch

around. But right now, it's definitely the lemon cake.

Bree is like, shaking your head like

she doesn't like lemon cake.

I already called her Bree. Okay, Marie,

what is your guilty pleasure? At the moment,

I'm going to be sanctimonious here and be like,

I don't believe there's anything called or really a guilty

pleasure, because you should just embrace that you love

things

That's right. I'm talking to Romance Writers

right now.

Yeah, okay,

now you know what I mean.

I'm pretty similar, actually, just watching my

favorite shows, like I'm catching up slowly on shits

Creek the last season, and it's already made me cry so many

times, but I love it, and then I binge watched a father brown

season seven on Brit box, and it was worth it every minute. I

love it. And now I have to wait for season eight, and I'm sad.

I think that Moira rose can probably help us

with her vocal exercises next time we podcast.

Absolutely I

love her character.

She's great. Have you guys seen the

Christopher Guest movies with her in it? Best in Show, waiting

for Guffman.

Oh, Best in Show. I don't know about the other one.

I That's your homework.

I'm bad at movies. You'll love

it actually, like it's, I would venture to

say you can watch Best in Show with your kid. Like, is that

one has Greg Kinnear in it? Right? Best in Show?

No, no, I'm thinking of a different one

then, but Eugene Levy is still her husband in it.

Oh, okay. I thinking, okay, yes, I think I have seen

that one, yes, but they're a great pairing, those two,

they're great pairing.

They really are. It was a very nice choice,

yeah, yeah, to make a TV show. Okay, so Elena, I'm going to ask

you how long you have been self publishing and how many books

you've written.

So, um, I think I'm coming up on four or five years.

I've lost track at this point, and my I had to look up how many

books I've written because I wasn't actually Sure. And my

dashboard tells me I've written 46 but some of those are

multiple. Editions or print versions. So if I take those

out, I think I'm hovering somewhere around 27

different books. That's a lot of books.

Yeah, some are shorter than others. You know, they're

not all epic novels. So that 4647

works,

I would say, well, 27 different ones.

Oh, 27 I said, Yeah, seven, yeah. Well, I'm

impressed. How many of those are series? And how many different

series have you done?

Okay, so I kind of think of series in different

ways. So I have three continuous series where the story stretches

across all the books in the series, and you have to read

them in order for them to make sense. And then I have a series

where the books are standalone, but they're set in the same

world, and they have interconnected elements. And

then I also have two collections, and again, the

stories are standalone in those but and they're not actually

related. There's not interconnecting pieces, but

they're written in the same style, and they have a common

theme, so they feel like a, kind of like a tight collection,

okay? And those are, those are all

romance. They're all romance, yes, yeah, in different in

different style.

Little different. Yeah, different. You know, some are

contemporary, some are reverse harem. They're just, they're

kind of, but they're all romance. That's the connecting,

that's the thing that ties them all together.

Okay, so why is that? Why did you choose

romance?

So I've been writing since, well, for as long as I

can remember, really, and when I learned about self publishing

and the idea that I could actually publish these books

myself, because I just always wrote for me, and I never really

had any interest or intention of publishing them and doing that,

and my Family and friends had always encouraged me, and I'm

just like, No, I'm happy writing my little stories for myself.

I'm fine. But then there was a kind of a life change event that

happened about five years ago, and I started thinking like it

was a deep reevaluation of, what am I doing with my life? What do

I really love? What do I want to spend my time doing? And I

really wanted to pick something that that spoke to me, that felt

I felt energized about to get up and do every day. And so I

started looking at self publishing, and I I had some

friends who were already doing it. And when I was thinking

about the types of stories that I wrote, I went back and looked

at a lot of my stories, they all had elements of romance. I mean,

some were thrillers and suspenseful, but they still had,

like, a very heavy romance plot line. So that just felt

naturally, like I love telling those relationship stories like

I gravitate towards that the dynamics of two people falling

in love and the obstacles they have to overcome, like it really

resonates with me.

So you two, Marie and Elena are writing a

series together right now. How did that come about?

We wrote a standalone last year, and that went really

well, and we had been talking we've been friends for a while,

and we've been talking about doing something together. And

you know, you never quite know when you're starting on a new

project, or especially with someone you haven't written with

before, how that's going to go. But our standalone was really

fun to write, and I really enjoyed it. And we started

talking about, what did we want to do next? Like we were just

kind of vaguely musing about future books. And sometimes an

idea just grab you, you know, and it just demands to be told.

And I feel like that happens simultaneously for both of us

with with this new series, we were just lightly brainstorming,

and we knew the general direction we wanted to go, that

we wanted to write dark romance. But it seems to me, at least

that this story just captivated both of us very quickly, and it

grew into this vivid, rich world, and it kind of took on a

life of his own and swept us along with it. And we've both

talked about how we're a little bit obsessed with this story, so

we just, I kind of set other projects aside, because this one

is just like, it will not let me go.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. As Elena was

responding, we're definitely obsessed with this series, like

it just has dug its teeth into us, which is a slight pun.

Why is that funny? Oh,

because it's about wolf shifters. So you know, they have

fangs and

Oh, and you all know what? That is now

because of the New York Times,

but there's no impreg Anyways,

damn,

I just, I thought it was so funny that there was this

whole Omega verse in New York Times. Anyways, yeah, I've kind

of been the same that I've set aside other projects because

this story is just so it's demanding to be told. It's one

of those that you'll hear authors talk about them how they

like, they struggle sometimes with some and then also this

other one will just be like, No, you have to write me. I was

telling Elena. I was like, Okay, I need to take a day off and,

like, just do something else. And then I started working on

it. And she was like, Are you supposed to be taking this day

off? And I was like, right?

Whoops, we were actually supposed to take what we had

talked about, maybe a month or a couple weeks off between books

at and that didn't happen that lasted for maybe a day or two,

and then we were right back into it, like we can't let it, we

just can't set it down. It talks to us even when we're not we're

trying actively to not focus on it. And it's like, it's like,

you must write

as a life of its own. Yeah, now, Marie, we

have talked a lot. You've been on hybrid pub Scout panel

interviews a couple times, and you're very, like, adamant about

writing to market in a lot of cases. So how does that come to

come to play into the in this collaboration? Because it sounds

like you really, really love it at the same time and and I'm I

was in the understanding that that's not always necessarily

the case.

Yeah, no, it's not always the case. But just like I

said, with the knowing your audiences, there is no reason

why you can't love a story that's also to market in the

sense of, we knew that dark was pretty popular with our

audiences, and we know that paranormal wolf shifters is

popular, and we just, we really wanted to do something with

both. And so we were like, you know, we've loved this dark idea

of this broken woman who's essentially sold by a scumbag ex

boyfriend to mafia wolf shifters because they're bad asses and

not they're not this typical Prince Charming. And we like

that. That's something we both like, is we like the bad boys

with golden hearts, basically, and readers like those, too. And

so we were like, okay, readers like these, and we know that

they like the feels. So we're venturing slightly off market

technically, because people haven't been putting this dark

mafia shifter together, really. And so we're like, okay, we

really think this is going to be fine, though, and do really well

because we're resonating with it so much, and it's really our

favorite. Reviews are the ones that are like, I did not expect

to love this as much as I did.

Marie, you said that you your audience

would love this sort of thing. Was this something that you kind

of directed toward the people who were already reading your

books, or what you were seeing in the general area you've been

writing in,

kind of both. We both have pretty die hard fans that

are like, I will read whatever you write. And a lot of them, a

lot of mine, cross over with Elena's. Elena is definitely a

more established author, and she's been around for longer.

And so, well, you're shaking your head, but you're, you're

more established compared to me, in this genre and and so really,

we saw what was going on in the big Facebook groups, what they

were requesting, what they were wanting, wrecks of and what

books they were talking about, and really, so we made like, a

three circle Venn Diagram of her readers, my readers, and the

people we haven't reached. And yeah, and we found what we

wanted and found a story that is, you know, took over our

brain and is still taking over our brain and keeps growing.

So it's kind of that whole preparation meets

opportunity equals luck thing, yes, yep, you found the perfect

like combination of things you like and things that other

people like.

I yeah, I agree with that. You know, we do have

discussions like we will have when we're brainstorming ideas,

because we, when we write, we have a loose idea of where we're

going, and there's certain ideas we have that we know we're going

to include, because. We're both really excited about those. But

then, you know, we let the story kind of meander as as it needs

to along the way, which is exciting for us, because we get

a sense of discovery as we're writing, and we get to keep that

excitement of what's going to happen for ourselves as well.

But we have had discussions where we have wild ideas, we'll

just throw stuff out there. And sometimes we're like, yeah, in a

different genre or different book or a different series, that

might work, but I think that's not going to work for this

market so but we have so many ideas to pick from. It's never

like we're compromising the story to choose to write to

market. It's always just we could go this direction, this

direction, this direction. What makes most the most sense for

this story. And I like that. I like it. So there's some

fluidity there. But then we're also, we're both business

minded, so we're keeping an eye on that too.

So do you have a general outline of how the

series is going to go, because it sounds like you've given

yourself a lot of freedom to just kind of what you get, what

we call the pantser thing, where you fly by the seat of your

pants as you're right, but I know that that's you're very

organized At the same time

we are organized. I I feel like sometimes, but

sometimes we have to backtrack, like we'll get really organized

and we'll have an outline, and then we'll have to redo it,

which is what we're currently in the middle of doing right now

with one of the books. But we both have a vision of how the

book ends. It's the the road and the journey to getting there,

that's that still has a lot of freedom on it, but we know we

kind of already have the concept. We have a vision of

like that, that gorgeous final scene in our heads. So it's just

it's a lot of fun getting there. And we do, we do get organized.

We do have a plot outline. We we tweak it as we need to sometimes

Brio, sit down to write a chapter and it just doesn't feel

right like the words, you know, and we've both learned over time

not to fight when the words aren't flowing and something

stuck, it means probably something needs to be changed,

and not to force it. And usually, once we percolate on

it, we come up with something even better that's amazing. So

when she comes to me and says, This isn't working, I think I

need to do something different than I am, like, I try to stay

open to that, because I'm like, Yeah, it'll probably make for a

better story. Yeah.

And every time Elena's come back, because Elena uses Alpha

readers, and our alpha readers are great.

So what's that Elena?

So, you know, everybody's heard of beta

readers, which get our chapters after we've both worked on them,

and we send them to the beta readers, and they give us

feedback. I have a few Alpha readers, and I don't use all of

them for every story. Sometimes there's, you know, I don't, I

don't need all that feedback, but I usually have at least one,

and it's kind of like I'll send them and I'll say, give me, you

know, your high level feedback, like, not nitpicking or anything

like that, but just, does this flow? Does it feel right to the

characters be authentic to you? Because they're they're really

invested in the stories, and so they get to know these

characters almost as deeply as we do. And so, you know,

sometimes they'll say, you know, I don't think so. And so would

say this, and I'm like, Yeah, you know, it usually she points

out things that I was questioning, that I was maybe

struggled with, or that Bri felt like maybe this little part is

off, but I'm not sure what to do with it. And so we kind of pass

it by an alpha reader to see if they pick up those same things.

And if they do, then we know it's stuff that needs to be

fixed. But basically it's before the beta readers,

yes. So anytime we get the feedback from the Alpha readers

and they're like, This doesn't feel right. And we've had a

couple chapters that the entire chapter basically was like, Uh,

we're not sure if this is right for it yet. And so we don't

delete the words. We cut them and put them into another

document so we can use them later, because that's what you

should always do if you're an author or a writer or a blogger

anyways, never completely delete your words. Keep them. No Never,

always keep them. But every time I've rewritten a chapter and

then Elaine has gotten her hands on it, it's always been better.

And both chap or two chapters that we've done that with have

like the favorite, most powerful scenes of our readers. So I've

never regretted having to rewrite a chapter with this

series.

I love it. That's very good. So how do your

readers find your books? I know that you have some sources of

existing readers. But then you also have to go get new ones.

What do you do to do that?

That's a good question. I feel like that's the eternal

question.

Yes, that's why I asked.

I think there's a lot of different avenues. You just

have to find what works for you, and that changes over time.

Sometimes, I mean, you know, you want to try to get that organic

visibility on Amazon, which is really hard. That's you're

constantly, you know, swimming upstream on that one. So I think

a lot of people like I ask one of my questions when joining my

Facebook group, my reader group is, where did you hear about

where did you hear about me? And I love reading the answers to

those questions, because it lets me know where you know where

things are coming from. There's a lot of traction for the

specific niche that we write in Facebook groups, so a lot of

readers will find us from there. The just general browsing on

Amazon, getting into similar books that are appealing to

readers, getting into their also bots and ads on their page and

things like that. Yeah, it's just, it's, it's kind of

all over the place. And did you say an also

bought,

also bought. So Amazon's currently experimenting

with the also bots. But if you look at a book page, there's

always books that are, you know, customers who read this book

also bought these other books. And if you have a book, if

there's book out there that's similar to yours, with maybe the

same tropes or the same theme or the same type of fields, and

your your book is listed in their also bots. Then readers

will see those as a suggestion and possibly click on that and

read your book. So you you want those reciprocal also bots to

appear, but Amazon's experimenting with those.

Sometimes the also bots don't show up. Instead, it's a it's a

row of books that say you may like these books, or readers who

read this book also like it's there. So it's it's not as

reliable of a method to get visibility as it used to be.

It's kind of up and down right now, because I guess they're

trying to figure out what makes the most sense to their

customers, as far as like showing them products that

they're interested in.

So it sounds like so when you were saying

that you get the answers from your Facebook users, that's when

they click to join your group. The little survey comes up,

yeah, the little questions to join, you know,

everybody has something a little different. Some will say, we

discuss things that are, you know, adult content in here. Are

you okay with that, you know, and you write, you know? Yes, I

think I just asked two really simple questions right now. One

is, where did you hear about Elena Jaden books? And the other

one is, what's your favorite color? Because I just, I don't

know I like that one, and it's a really simple one. So people

will put you know that they a lot of people say that they got

it. They heard about me from a friend. So I feel like that is

very, very powerful. The readers suggesting books to each other.

You know, word of mouth that's still huge, even in you know,

with all the promo and advertising you can do, still,

word of mouth is still really powerful.

So aside from the organic and just existing

platforms that you have, what are the tools that you use for

your marketing and outreach to, you know, the practical ones.

So each book is a little different. I kind of

approach how I do advertising a little differently. I had one

series get a lot of traction in Facebook groups, and I didn't

have to do a lot of advertising outside of Facebook groups for

that, for that series to really grab hold. But then I had

another series that just never got traction that way at all,

and but I but it did really, really well with AMS ads, with

Amazon ads. And whereas the other series didn't, I couldn't,

I could never get a good ROI, you know, a return on that other

series. So I just had to kind of split the way that I was

approaching each of those series and do them differently, even

though they're in the same genre, and they have similar,

you know, storylines, like they should appeal to the same

readers, but they didn't, for some reason. And I know part of

it was the covers, but that's okay, because I'm reaching

almost two different audiences with those series, and then they

eventually, you know, go back and look at the other series. So

that's kind of. Interesting. So I've learned I have to approach

each book a little bit like it's its own. It's its own little

baby. I have to treat it differently. So I do use paid

promotion, like newsletters services. I use AMS ads, I and I

do use Facebook ads sometimes, as well as my own newsletter and

my own reader group and interacting in other reader

groups, because I'm a reader myself, and I enjoy being part

of those groups. And so, yeah, it's just and I'm still trying

to figure that out, like marketing is still a thing that

I feel like I could learn about forever and never, you know,

never be a master at

Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that way.

Yeah, Marie, how do you two split it up your marketing

duties, and do you have a strategy going in on how you'll

do that? Or do you just kind of do your best?

We kind of just do our best, especially because Elena

is so much better at marketing than me, shaking her head. And

the reason why I say she's so much better is because she's put

more effort into learning it, whereas I'm just like, stomping

my feet over here and being like, why can't I write 3000

words a day? And that's just it like, why can't I just publish

books every month and not have to deal with anything? But I am

now starting to get better at marketing, like Facebook ads and

AMS ads. I'm doing challenges and courses for that, and I,

yeah, I'm one thing Elena's better at, and I'm not sure if

it's better, but she's put in the time for it is, I have no

idea, other than like services, like rams promo book Stacker, I

think is what It's called, that I don't know what newsletters

are effective. I haven't I don't sign up for newsletters myself,

like for books. I have BookBub, but that's really it, and book

barbarian, but I don't have I don't sign up to anything else,

because I always get my books from word of mouth, and so I

don't know which ones are good to send my

books out of Elena. Tell us more about these

newsletters. Then, is it just a author's personal newsletter

that you cross promote, or is it different, whole different

service?

It's usually there's, you know, you can do cross promo

with other authors, as long as your book is going to appeal to

their readers and vice versa. Because I feel like that's a

important thing. When I first started out, I would, I would

cross promo with anyone, because I was just, you know, I was so

excited to get my book out there, but then you but then you

end up with an issue where you've got, like, you know,

going back to talk to the also about the also bots. It's you'd

end up with just such a huge range of books in your also bots

that were not like they were not similar to your books, and they

were not going to appeal to the same readers. So you're kind of

shooting yourself in the foot. So like, short term, you might

have, you know, found some new readers, but long term, you've

messed up your, you know, your long term game. So these are

mostly, when I talk about newsletter services. They're,

they're actually services. This is, this is what they do.

There's some out there, raising bookshelf full hearts. They're

all romance oriented. They they have a lot of readers that are

looking for good deals. Most of them require you to have your

book on a sale price. You can't. It's really hard to find places

that you can advertise your book full price, and even in on the

services that you can do that you're not going to have as much

reach because these a lot of people have signed up for the

deals. It's kind of like book bub. They're not going to

advertise a full price book. You're always getting a deal

when you know in your book club newsletter. So these are kind of

like the book Bub idea, but on a smaller scale. Whereas book Bub

has potential to reach millions of readers, these would reach

1000s of readers. So when you do a lot of those, you know, you

kind of stack them together, maybe you spread them out over a

couple days. Or if you want to have a really big release, maybe

put them all together on one day or in a short span of time. And

so I'm sure there's overlap between these different

services. Like, there's probably readers who are signed up to

more than one of them, so your your returns kind of diminish

over time because of that. Like, eventually you've reached pretty

much every buddy who's going to sign up for one of these, but

they still can really help. To get the word out there that you

have a new book out, or that you have a really killer sale going

on, and maybe you reach some new people that way. So these are

services that you'd sign up for there. A lot of them are run by

authors, but they're not the author's personal newsletter.

They're they're separate from that.

Okay, so switching gears a little bit.

Can you tell us a little bit? You both go wide, right? Like

you're not just on Amazon.

I do, I don't think Elena, do you?

Are you white? I was, I was wide for about a hot 30 seconds. But

I'm all

in on Amazon right as of right now. Well,

this is great then, so we can contrast compare. Yes, a little

bit. Marie, do you want to start talking about your experience

being on more platforms selling on on platforms that are not

Amazon?

Yeah. So it I found out. So basically, when I went

wide, it was because the first series I wrote really kind of

flopped, like I was on with Amazon, because the genres was

really Kindle Unlimited, heavy readers, and it just it was

doing nothing. Well, it wasn't doing nothing, but it wasn't

doing what I wanted it to, and it was to the point where I was

like, Look, if I'm only making this much money making myself

exclusive to Amazon, there's really no reason why I shouldn't

reach out or pull back the exclusive agreement and go to

the other vendors like Barnes and Nobles or Scribd or etc, in

the libraries and such. And so I did that with this series. I

went all the way out, and it is now. The series is over a year

old now, and it's consecutively my best seller now, because

people buy the book. It's at a higher price than it was on

Amazon. And I mean by higher price, I'm just mean it's like

399 instead of 299 but people are actually buying it. And I

found that I put the first book for what's called a permafree

Basically, it's always free, so you don't have to buy the first

book. And I remember my husband being like, but aren't you gonna

lose money? And I was like, I mean, I might technically, but

if that, I know I have good sell through and read through from

Book One to book two. And so if I get them to sell through, they

start buying the books. And I have found that that is, I've

made way more money with this series now going wide and

offering book one for free and so, and that's specifically with

my romantic fantasy. And so I was talking with Elena earlier,

or, I think, just a couple days ago, about how I'm going to

start taking all of my romantic fantasy wide, because these

readers are willing to pay for it, and there's readers on the

other vendors that want these style of books, and so that's

what I'm going to do with it.

So are you not allowed to do a free book as the

first in your series on Amazon? Do you think that's like the

main deciding factor. Do you think just people who read that

genre read on different platforms?

So Amazon is really, really they're persnickety. They

they tell you that when they So, the way you get a free book on

Amazon is you have to ask them to price match, you literally

can't publish a book for free on Amazon. The closest you can do

it is Kindle Unlimited, and that's only you know the free to

read if you had the subscription, whereas, and

that's exclusive, correct? And that's when you're exclusive to

Amazon. And so, but when you go through the other distributors,

you can set the book for free. And so then you have to ask

Amazon to be like, Hey, can you price match this? And they'll

tell you, sometimes it's like, we don't have to, but we're

going to.

And this is my idea, exactly.

And so, yeah, I'm sorry. I just noticed there's

like, a drop of water on my wall, and I'm like, Oh, that's

not good. Anyways,

that's why it's you. You can't that's why you have to be wide

if you want to do a permafree Unless you have some special

arrangement with Amazon, which, you know, takes like big, big,

big names. You You have to be wise if you want to perma free

for your first in series, which is a really good marketing tool.

But if it's not on the other vendors, you can't ask Amazon to

price match. So you it won't be free the the cheapest you. Price

it at is 99 cents, which still does okay as a lead into a

series, but it's not as effective as a permafree. But

yeah, I really, I really support free and taking her romantic

fantasy wide. I feel like you were asking, are the readers on

those other vendors? I think a lot of a lot of stuff on Amazon,

is it? There's a lot of flux in the bestseller list and stuff

like that, and a lot of it on the on Amazon, things move at a

really fast pace, and sometimes the really great books that you

can sink your teeth into, like, the romantic fantasy genre has a

lot of books like that. They they don't get as much attention

as other is they would on other vendors.

Oh, because there's more of a, like,

intellectual commitment to it. Some that's not, probably the,

not the best way to say that it takes more brain power to read

them if they're high fantasy.

Yes, I think that is it because, and that's not a bad

thing. Like so much of the fiction that you read through

Kindle Unlimited and through Amazon, it's for escapism and

wish fulfillment. You're not You're wanting the feelings

you're wanting the story you're not wanting to like, have to

think about like, the politics and diving deep down and trying

to pick up hints of foreshadowing and trying to

figure out the complexities you just you want these two people

to fall in love and be happy, and then he wants a little bit

of angst so that you can root for them, and That way that the

Happily Ever Happily Ever After is satisfying at the end.

Whereas when you go with romantic fantasy you want, you

don't want just the happily ever after. You want the world. You

want the fantasy story as well. And they don't read as fast as

the romances and the other fast paced like thrillers, they're

they're ones you have to go slower with, and those are the

readers, or the readers who like that. Really like that, but they

aren't the majority of romance readers, and that's fine, but

you have to target them better.

You have to find your Yeah. You have to find the audience that

loves those books. Yeah, yeah, wow.

Take note, folks who like reading fantasy.

If you go on to different platforms other than Amazon, as

an ebook lover, you can get free things still, yes, even without

Kindle Unlimited. So if you're if you're having moral dilemmas

about Amazon, but you love fantasy and romance. There are

options. You have options.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So what book is your most recent promotion

and why should people read it?

So my most recent book is fawn, which is the first book

in the black Fang barons series that Marie and I are writing

together, people should read it because it is deep and intense.

It has steam and feels all the feels I feel like we have. We've

dug really deep into these characters and what makes them

tick, and I love how the story came together and the way that

it's told. It's, it's a twit. There's, you know, it's a

reverse harem series. So there are three guys, but they're all

very different, and they're hard, very dominant men, but

they each bring something to the table that the heroine really

needs. And I love how that comes about. It's different, and

readers are really resonating with it. So I feel like that's

the one I would suggest.

Well, that's going to be linked in on our

social media and in the show notes. Do you have any social

media platforms that you use?

I'm on Facebook, and I have a readers group, jadens

maidens, and I love interacting with my readers in that group. I

have a Facebook page. I don't interact as much on that one,

and I'm on Instagram as well, but I need to, I really need to

work on my Instagram like it's one of those platforms I'm still

a little intimidated about, you know, I love browsing Instagram,

and I look at what other people are doing, and I'm just wowed by

it. But I need to get my, you know, my Instagram, Instagram

game going other than social media, I'm also all my books are

on Amazon. Elena Jaden on Amazon, so you can find me there

as well. All right.

Bri, where can people find you right now? Wow,

you can

find me on Facebook as well. I have my own Facebook

group. It's Marie Robinson's fan club. I couldn't think of

anything witty, like jaden's maidens. And I'm a bit more

active on Instagram, thanks to my PA, she is helping me figure

it out, and then book Bub is great place to follow me as

well. Just Murray Robinson,

perfect. And you can find us on Facebook, at

hybrid pub Scout, on Twitter, at hybrid pub Scout, Instagram,

hybrid pub Scout pod. Please visit our website, hybrid pub

scout.com and while you're there, click join our troop to

get our new guide, the HPS guide to picking your publishing path.

Please leave us a five star rating and review on your

favorite podcast platform. Thank you, Marie and Elena, thank you

for having me.

I enjoyed talking to you.

It was a lot of fun,

and thanks for giving a rip about books. You

you.