Marketing Strategies for Authors w/ Penn Cole
Marketing tips, advice, & avoidable mistakes for indie and trad authors!
Growing up, most of my friends were found between the crisp pages of a new book.
I moved. A lot. But my friends always got to go with me.
Now, as an adult, I still find myself pulled into different worlds. Building connections with characters who feel like family.
Which is why I squealed with joy when Penn Cole said she’d join me for this podcast conversation! And yet—we kept it 99% about book marketing for authors.
You may or may not know that my boyfriend is a nonfiction book editor. So when I tell you I hear lots of tips, strategies, advice, & avoidable mistakes—I mean it!
This is a conversation I’m delighted to bring you because there simply aren’t enough conversations being had about book marketing for authors.
Join Penn & I as we discuss marketing strategies for indie authors, how marketing has changed since she became traditionally published, tips to build lasting connections with readers, & so much more!
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
How Penn went from a self-published to traditionally published author
Controversial marketing strategies for authors
Marketing activities that worked well for Penn as an indie author
How influencers are impacting book marketing
What to know about ROI from different book marketing strategies
The #1 most important thing an author can do to get more book sales
The 4 things a book cover needs to do
How to make the most of Amazon as a self-published author
Tools & resources Penn leaned on for different parts of her book marketing plan
How much influence Penn had on the audiobook creation
Marketing mistakes indie and trad authors could easily avoid
How marketing has changed since becoming a traditionally published author
The benefits of digital vs in-person marketing strategies
Something readers can do to support indie authors
How effective giveaways are for authors
What metrics authors might want to track
Tips authors can use to build lasting connections with readers
A lightning round of questions for Penn ⚡
Meet: Penn Cole
Penn Cole is the New York Times & USA Today bestselling romantasy author of Spark of the Everflame. Her debut series, The Kindred's Curse Saga, has sold over one million copies and is being translated into more than a dozen languages. Before pursuing her lifelong dream of becoming an author, Penn had prior careers as an attorney and a small business owner. While she is a Texas girl born and bred, she currently lives in France with her husband and their cat, Cardboard, where she can usually be found eating too many pastries and trolling her readers on Discord.
Mentioned Resources:
For Readers:
For Authors:
Connect w/ Penn:
Connect w/ Brittany:
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The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Welcome back to The Basic B Podcast. I am thrilled to have you here and today I'm joined by Penn Cole. We're going to be talking all about marketing strategies for authors and that even includes some of her controversial opinions. Stay tuned for those. So in case you don't know this, I'm a pretty avid reader. As a kid, you wouldn't catch me without a book. And to this day, you still won't. Even right now, I think I'm reading like two or three at a time these days. I'm reading lots of what's called Romantasy books and my favorite author is Penn for a number of reasons. Her writing is captivating, the characters burrow their way into your heart and they're relatable to boot. And if when you interact with Penn online, she's just such a kind human and you'll see what I mean. Before I bring her on, let me introduce you to her. Penn Cole is the New York Times and USA Today best selling Romantasy author of Spark of the Everflame. Her debut series, the Kindred's Curse Saga, has sold over 1 million copies and is being translated into more than a dozen languages. Before pursuing her lifelong dream of becoming an author, Penn had prior careers as an attorney and a small business owner. While she's a Texas girl born and bred, she currently lives in France with her husband and their cat, Cardboard, where she usually can be found eating too many pastries and trolling her readers on discord. Hi. Hi Finn. I'm so excited to get to chat with you today. Mostly about book marketing, which I don't think is something you get to talk a whole lot about these days.
Penn Cole: No, it's not. And it's one of my favorite topics. So I'm super excited to be here.
Brittany Herzberg: I love hearing that. So I'm going to start us off with a question that I didn't prep before and I asked everyone, so this is great because we get your genuine reaction, but there's no wrong answers. Just whatever answer you have is perfect. So the question is, which do you believe is the most important for sales? Social proof, SEO or storytelling?
Penn Cole: Social proof.
Brittany Herzberg: Say a little more.
Penn Cole: So I have probably some controversial opinions on marketing, which I'm sure we'll get into, but I think there's no marketing like reader word of mouth. I think it all begins with the book. And if you can write a book that makes people, when they turn the last page and they close it and they need to talk to people about it, they need to tell their friends to get, you know, all the people in their life to read it so they have somebody to discuss it with. They want to get online and search information about it or seek out the author, join reader groups. You know, if you can write a book that inspires people to be that invested in the book and having other people like it, you can't buy that kind of marketing. Return on investment. It's the most powerful thing in the world. I think in most cases, any book that becomes mega successful, that's what drives it. So the other stuff can be helpful for sure. But I just think that's at the core of a true success.
Brittany Herzberg: I could not agree more. And I'm even as you're saying that, I'm like, yep, I've done that. I've done that. I've told everyone in my life about five times that they need to read the Kindred's Curse saga. So yeah, can relate. That's how I even heard about the series was there's a book influencer who was sharing, you know, top recommendations about different things and she's going to be on the podcast too. Jamie Johnson and oh wonderful. Yeah, so that's just proof that that works, right? All right, so for those of us my hand is raised who don't know your joeurney from indie author to traditionally publish, would you share what that looked like?
Penn Cole: Yeah, I had a really unconventional path to where I am now. I would say I started as a self published author. I self published my first book, Spark of the Everflame, June 1st of 2023. I rapid released my series. So I had pre written the first three books, my series before I ever published. And I published book one on June 1st. I published book two about six weeks later and then I published book three about two months after that. So all three books were out in just the span of a few months. And at the time that I published, when I say I had no resources, I mean I had no resources. I had like maybe 200 followers at most on Instagram and a lot of them came from engagement groups, which I know is very controversial and I don't necessarily recommend them, but that's literally the only place I could get followers. Cause I was brand new, I had no money for marketing, I could not afford to do ads. I was just begging people one at a time to read my book. Truly getting like readers one by one by one. And it just kind of, you know, no pun intended, caught fire a little bit and it started to grow and grow and grow. And then mid last year, Atria, which is an imprint of Simon and Schuster, reached out to me and they were interested in acquiring the print rights to the series and republishing them in a new kind of upgraded, traditionally published format. So that was a dream come true for sure. I was so excited about that. And the books are now in the process of re releasing. So Spark just re released in October, Glow re released in December, and Heat re releases in March. I consider myself still indie because my ebooks are indie, but my print books are trad. So I have a little bit of a foot in both worlds.
Brittany Herzberg: I love that. So that's really going to give some interesting context for the conversation today. Okay, so let's start with indie and stick with that for a little bit. So what were some of the marketing activities that worked best when you were first a self published author?
Penn Cole: Oh gosh, there was so much. I was very privileged that, well, I guess it's up to each person to decide whether this is a privilege or not. But I was unemployed at the time. Not by choice, but I had just moved. I'm American, I'm from Texas. And my husband and I had just moved to France in the middle of the pandemic. And I was trying to get a job here in France and I just was not finding anything. Nobody was hiring. And so I had no money. I had all this time to myself. I've always wanted to write books. That's what my undergraduate degree was in is creative writing. So it was always something I wanted to do, but I had put off for a long time. And so I said, okay, I'm gonna give this a real shot. Cause I literally have nothing else to do right now. And so I'm gonna throw myself into this at 150% and do everything I possibly can. When I tell you I spent every hour of every day either writing or preparing a marketing plan or putting that marketing plan into effect. I just did everything I could possibly think of that didn't cost a lot of money. So I got on social media. I was posting videos on TikTok. I was posting stuff on Instagram, posting on Twitter. I was posting in reader groups, on Facebook, in arc groups, trying to get people to sign up to arc read my book. I signed up for a lot of the arc platforms like Book Sirens, booksprout. I got an other author's discourse with their permission, and asked if I could mention my book to their readers. And so I was saying, hey, if you like this book, I think you might like mine. I mean, everything I could possibly think of. The only Thing I didn't really do is advertising because I couldn't afford it. I also did some book tours with a few companies which are not the tour that most people would think of where you're literally traveling from city to city. It's a social media book tour. So these groups have a pool of influencers that are hosts and they will email their host and say, hey, we have this book. If it sounds interesting, let us know, we'll send you a copy. And then during your quote unquote book tour, which is usually about a week, all the hosts in that pool who read your book will post about it. So it's kind of a group push to mention your book all at the same time to hopefully get some kind of like virality moment going. So I did a few of those. I mean, just everything I could think of really, it was a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, there's something to be said about being scrappy. And that's one reason I really love organic marketing, is because the word of mouth, clearly it works. Like you just released those in 2023. We're at the beginning of 2025 talking about this.
Penn Cole: Yeah, absolutely.
Brittany Herzberg: Like it's worked quickly.
Penn Cole: It did work and you know, it's hard to say which of them worked the best. I think they each different purposes. And also when it comes to return on investment with marketing, sometimes it is a long game because a lot of it, especially at the beginning, if you write in series, when you're releasing a first book, a lot of people don't want to give a chance to a first book. They want to wait until more of the series is out or until the series is completed so that they can binge it. So a lot of what you're doing in those early days as a series writer is just cover recognition. It's just trying to get your cover out there as many times as possible so that people see it over and over and over and over again and eventually they have to stop ignoring it because they've seen it so much and they have to either buy the first book or, you know, at least like put it in their library or something. So I think a lot of what I did back then, maybe I didn't see an immediate jump in sales for it, but it really laid the foundation for when my second book came out and especially when my third book came out. And then I could start marketing it as binge this series. There's three books out that is really when stuff started to happen because they had Been hearing about my book for months, and now I was telling them, okay, it's time to binge it. And they were like, okay, let's do this.
Brittany Herzberg: All right, fine, I'll do it. You bring up a really good point, though, with the cover art. Because, I mean, as much as it is a saying to not judge a book by its cover, we all do! And there is something, I think to be said for if you're working with a shoestring budget, put your money toward your cover. And I know that's one thing that my boyfriend talks about with his nonfiction authors is that's gonna be a huge benefit to you. Do you agree with that, or, like. What's your take on
Penn Cole: A thousand percent! As I mentioned, I think everything starts with a book, and if the book isn't good, no matter how much marketing you do, it's not gonna take off. But setting aside the actual book itself, I think the number one most important thing an author does is their cover. First of all, that's 90% of whether a person picks up a book is. Does the cover look interesting? So that's the largest hurdle you have to overcome. And then from there, you know, they'll read your blurb or maybe go look at reviews and other things, and that's what kind of seals the deal or not. But that cover is really what makes such an impact in whether people pick it up and take a look further. So if it's not there, and especially if the cover isn't communicating the things you want it to communicate, like the right genre, the right audience, the general vibes. I've seen books that I know were good books. They were phenomenal. They had good reviews. People loved them. But the covers were awful. And a lot of times, because the covers made them look like something that they weren't, you know, like the wrong genre or whatever. And those authors were just spinning their wheels, you know, trying so hard to get traction, and they couldn't. And then they changed their cover, and it's like instant. It takes off. So, yeah, I think my cover was a huge part of my initial success, for sure.
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, your covers are gorgeous. And the cool thing, even with that, is that there's a through line. You can see how similar they are, too, which I'm sure was all thought out.
Penn Cole: It was. It was very intentional. And I think on your point about spending money on the covers, my covers cost me 200 bucks each. I don't think you have to necessarily spend a ton of money, but what you do have to do is either Your designer or you need to really understand the genre that you're writing in and the market and what covers typically look like in that genre. And you've got to be able to design a cover that, like I said, communicates that genre really clearly and communicates whether it's a kid's book, an adult's book, whatever, and who the intended audience is. So for me, I put a woman on the cover because I wanted to very clearly communicate. This is a woman story. It's, you know, driven by women and that that's my primary audience. And so it has to kind of check all of those boxes. And it also has to stand out and not get lost in a crowd of similar looking covers. And it's really hard to do both of those things well. So I really don't think it's necessarily about having the highest budget because a lot of expensive designers don't necessarily know every genre that well. But it's about either you or your designer have to have that knowledge of the industry so that you can look at a cover and say, yes, this is gonna do what I want it to do, or no, it isn't.
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, I love that you, one, were willing to share that and two, brought that point home because it doesn't have to be a huge budget. And that's not even what I was trying to imply. But that needs to be a focus. And you bring up a good point as well of just being so clear on your audience, on the message on the genre, especially when it's a fiction book. Like.
Penn Cole: Right.
Brittany Herzberg: If you're not communicating that you're right, the right reader is going to go right by that.
Penn Cole: Definitely. And I mean, I agree it's worth investing in. If you find a designer who, you know is going to be able to do that, like put your money there, for sure you'll get a return on investment if they do it right.
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah.
Penn Cole: But if you're sitting at home and you're thinking, I just don't have the money for it, that doesn't shut everything down. There are, you know, alternatives available, for sure.
Brittany Herzberg: Okay, I want to talk about another tool that we have at our disposal, which is, I'm guessing, especially being self published, was Amazon a part of how you released at least some versions of your book?
Penn Cole: Oh, yeah. My entire strategy is so Amazon centric, which I know is very controversial, and a lot of authors think you should not put all of your eggs in the Amazon basket, which I totally understand completely. I have chosen to put all of my eggs in the Amazon basket. And it has paid off for me. But it's certainly a strategic decision that every author has to make for themselves. And there's not like a right answer. It just depends on what your go.
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, for sure. So with talking about SEO, especially on the podcast, and findability and keywords and stuff like that. So I know that there's keywords and categories that you can select on Amazon. Did you do all of that stuff yourself? Did you have a tool? Did you hire anyone for that? Like, what did that look like when you were first releasing the books?
Penn Cole: I did it all myself and I did it after just copious amounts of research in author forums and talking to other really successful authors. There's a tool called Publisher Rocket which you can use to look up what categories your book and other books are in. There are free options. You don't have to pay for Publisher Rocket, but that was the one I used. And I would go to all of the successful books and look and see what categories they were in and see, okay, which of these can I also fit in? I did a lot of research on how Amazon treats their categories because, like, there's ghost categories which you can select but don't show up on the page. There's duplicate categories which if you choose it, you end up actually in two categories for the price of one. You can use kind of the umbrella categories to your benefit. Because, for example, if you're in a small category under fantasy, you will also be placed into fantasy. And if you choose a small one under romance, you will also get nested into romance. And so choosing the lower level categories over the high level categories, you get more bang for your buck. So a lot of strategic stuff went into that. I definitely did my keywords terribly first. I think I broke every rule Amazon has with keywords. Thankfully, it didn't catch up to me and I fixed them later. And when I did fix them, I saw a massive increase in, you know, sales and readers finding my book. So I definitely saw firsthand how keywords can change and really help you. That was a very big part of my strategy.
Brittany Herzberg: I love that. And I love that you just dove down the rabbit hole yourself and went and did all this research. Because back to the scrappy thing, like, you have to do that and you're either gonna pay with time, money, effort, like there's gonna be some component that you're going to expend. So I love that you were like, I'm just gonna go learn all about it and do it to the best of my ability. And that you Thought of going back and changing them too.
Penn Cole: Yeah. I very firmly believe that success, especially as an author, is not necessarily making the right decision every time, but it is a series of decisions that you make and everything is a decision. And I think success is about making each one of those decisions very intentionally and with thought and research and careful deliberation. And so I tried to never do anything when it came to my book, just thoughtlessly. I tried to really research each one and get as much information as I could, because there is a wealth of information out there for free if you're just willing to do a little work to go find it. And I think that's a really big part of why I was able to be successful relatively early on, because all of those decisions were super strategic and intentionally made.
Brittany Herzberg: I could not agree more. So the way that I consumed the books was audiobooks. Was that something that you did when you were first self published, or is that, you know, something that's been released since you became traditionally published?
Penn Cole: A little bit in between. So a few months after I published Spark and Glow, an audiobook publisher called Podium reached out to me and offered to make audiobooks for my books. And so I sold the audio rights to them very early on. That definitely had some pros and cons, but it at least allowed me to get the audiobooks onto the market pretty fast for an indie and especially for a debut indie, since this was my first series. So that was my first kind of stepping my toe into the traditionally published waters was selling my audio to an audiobook publisher. And I know that's a route that a lot of indies go is through Podium, Tantor, Dreamscape, those kind of indie focused audio publishers.
Brittany Herzberg: Gotcha. So I listened to tons of audiobooks. Were you able to select who was going to narrate your books or at that point, it was all over with their company.
Penn Cole: I did. They gave me a few options. I told them, okay, this is the kind of person I think we need. This is what's important to me. I had a casting director who took my preferences and gave me some suggestions. I went and listened to their samples for my male narrator. They actually did some auditions. So I had three narrators read a passage from my book and send that back. And I chose the one that I liked best. And then after we hired them, I sent them a big document of okay, it basically is every character and then my thoughts on how that character should be played. So, like, this guy's really funny and lighthearted and goofy, and this guy is very gruff and serious. And, you know, whatever.
Brittany Herzberg: And I know who both of them are.
Penn Cole: Right, exactly. Because they're effectively actors. And that way they could put that into their performance. Because they can't read the whole series before they start narrating it. So that at least gives them some idea of how those characters should be.
Brittany Herzberg: Oh, that's interesting. So they don't read it through.
Penn Cole: Maybe there's some narrators who read a little bit ahead. I'm sure it's different for all of them, but they're recording, you know, 100 plus books a year, so I imagine they probably don't have time to read all of the books they narrate before they narrate them.
Brittany Herzberg: That is even more impressive. And I just have to say, selecting the narrator is very similar to selecting your cover, where that can totally crash your book too. Because there have been books where I'm like, I know this is good. I'm going to have to get the physical copy because I just, I can't deal for sure.
Penn Cole: I felt really strongly, especially since this is a first person POV and it's in my female main character in her pov and she has a very specific personality. She's kind of a little bit sassy, kind of humorous. And I really felt like the audiobook success or failure would be based on the narrator's ability to hit those comedic beats, but also really show the emotional depth that she has at times. And so that was one of the instructions I gave the casting director is I need somebody who can do humor but also can do, like, drama. And that's why she found me Amanda, who I love and thinks is like the most perfect Diem there ever could be.
Brittany Herzberg: Oh, my gosh, she's amazing. You did. You did a beautiful job. And she did a beautiful job actually, like, bringing that to life. I had to just shout that out. Okay, so as we wrap up this part, are there any words of advice that you haven't shared or anything that you really want to just, like, stick on a billboard for indie authors when it comes to marketing?
Penn Cole: Yes. I think too many authors especially, well, really indie and trad get caught up in number one, chasing virality. This is particularly on everyone's mind with the TikTok ban coming up and also just thinking that the marketing is going to make or break their book and maybe putting too much emphasis on that over the book itself. I don't actually think marketing is as powerful as people give it credit for. It certainly is important. I will never deny that. But it really does come down to the book. If you have a viral moment and the book doesn't deliver and all these people go read it and hate it, it's going to turn into negative virality, right? And people saying, don't read this book. It was my most disappointing read, you know, dnf these books. And so you don't want that either. The book has to deliver. So I would say I really think marketing begins with writing to market and studying the market, studying the bestsellers in your genre, looking at what they do well, looking at what readers love most about them, what readers don't like about them, and asking yourself, how can I adapt those into my book in a way that's authentic to me and my voice? And writing a book that makes people keep thinking about it and keep talking about it long after they've read it. If you're only starting to think about marketing when the book is done, you've missed the boat. So start there from the beginning, thinking about how you're gonna market the book. I know a lot of people who write the synopsis for their book, like the marketing copy before they even start writing the book. As you're writing, constantly be thinking about, how am I gonna market this? How are people gonna talk about this once it's on the market? What do I want readers to say about this when they finish it? Do I want them to say, oh, this is like the best found family I've ever read. It's so nuanced, it's so diverse. Like, I love all of these characters. Cause if so, you gotta write a found family that delivers on that, you know? And don't think that you need a viral moment to be successful because slow and steady wins the race. As cliche as it sounds like, a lot of books have their viral moment and then they vanish. If you really want to have a long term success that lasts for months and years of sustained sales, then it comes down to the book and whether it keeps people talking.
Brittany Herzberg: Oh, yes, for sure. Because it needs to be said. And I don't think enough people really think that way. And clearly, because you did think that way, that impacted things at least to some degree, you know, I think so. All right, so you had the self publish. That's kind of continued for you, like you said with the ebooks. But how did marketing change once you became traditionally published?
Penn Cole: It hasn't changed that much, to be really honest with you. I know a lot of people who really want a traditional publishing deal because they believe that that means they get to stop doing marketing and they can just focus on writing and their publisher will do all of that work. That's not how it works. I'm sad to say. I don't really know anybody who gets their book recommendations from publishers anymore or, you know, kind of legacy media like magazines and newspapers, the kind of stuff that traditional publishers have a monopoly over. I just don't think that's where people are finding their books anymore. They're really finding them from social media, from their friends, from book clubs, reader groups. And those things are much more driven by authors and readers rather than publishers. So where I think a traditional publisher has helped me is I was very lucky that they sent me on a book tour, like an in person book tour. When my book released, they were able to get me into some conventions, they have gotten me some interviews on some, you know, large legacy media like Wall Street Journal and New York Times, things like that. But I don't think those things really moved the needle that much with sales as much as the stuff I was still doing from when I was an indie author, which is just being present all the time, engaging with readers, having my reader group posting on social media, all of that stuff. I don't think you can escape that even as a traditionally published author, which I know a lot of people don't want to hear, but I'm sad to say I think it's true.
Brittany Herzberg: I was actually hoping for that answer because that's what I've seen, at least from the nonfiction side of things. And I was imagining it was pretty similar with fiction. But so many people that I hear, at least in conversations that I'm having are like, I'm going to write a book and it's going to be a bestseller and I'm going to do this and I'm going to get it traditionally published. And even conversations I hear with my boyfriend and his clients and they think that traditional publishers are like the end all be all, and that it's hands off at that point, like you said. And it's really not.
Penn Cole: It's definitely not happy to hear it from you. And the forums of traditionally published authors are just chock full of authors who feel very disappointed because they bought into that myth that once I get a book deal with a big publisher, then I'm set. You know, they're going to publish me, they're going to get me in all the bookstores. They have a lot less power than I think people realize. You know, they go to the booksellers and they say, hey, we think this is a good book. We really think you should put it on their shelves. But it's up to the buyers for each of, you know, all of the retailers to make the decision of what books they're going to buy and stock on their shelves, and publishers cannot make them do it. So, you know, in my case, I was able to actually, before I was even traditionally published, I was trying to build relationships with booksellers, and I had emailed every single Barnes and Noble in the country, and I sent them a little one sheet with, here's how many followers I have on social, and here's how many times my hashtag was mentioned on TikTok, and here's how many TBR ads I have on Goodreads. Please stock my book. Please put my book on your shelves. You know, I didn't have a publisher telling them to do it, right. So I had to do it myself. And so then when I went traditionally published, they already knew who I was. They'd heard of me, they'd gotten that information, and my publisher was able to come back to them and say, hey, she's got this many followers on TikTok. She's got this many ads on Goodreads. You know, all of this stuff, the social proof, again, people are talking about this. They want to buy it. And that was what convinced the retailers to stock my book and put it on their shelves. So if your publisher has nothing to say except we think this is a good book, they're gonna say that about every book they publish, right?
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah.
Penn Cole: So what can you bring to the table to give your publisher ammunition to go to them and say, this is a good book. And also, here's some proof that readers want it, and they are gonna come buy it. And the publisher can't do that for you. You have to kind of create that yourself.
Brittany Herzberg: One thing I'm curious about is getting into libraries. Did working with a traditional publisher assist in that at all, or were you doing the same thing of, like, going and talking with libraries?
Penn Cole: I know my book, even before it was traditionally published, was in a lot of libraries. It was a little bit of an intentional decision. I had my street team, we did a thing where they all went out to their libraries to request that they buy a copy of my book and stock it at their local library. So we did intentionally push that from kind of the reader side I had published through IngramSpark, and I think a lot of libraries get their books through the IngramSpark system. It certainly has ramped up a lot more now that I'm traditionally published. I don't know how that's Kind of invisible to me. Also, one of the downsides of having gone through, like podium is audible exclusive, which means my audiobooks can't be in libraries, which is unfortunate. I don't love that. But it's out of my control, unfortunately. So other than that one kind of push, I didn't really make a huge effort with libraries, but it worked out. I think libraries just want to stock what their readers want to read. So again, it comes down to, do you leave readers begging their local library to stock your book?
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. If you're listening and you're like, I should try this, do it. They listen.
Penn Cole: They do.
Brittany Herzberg: I can think of a couple of books that I requested multiple times, maybe like two or three times, just to the point where they were like, oh, okay, I guess we've gotten enough requests. And then I don't know how it happened, but I was like, this one.
Penn Cole: Yeah, exactly. That's how it happens.
Brittany Herzberg: I love that. So, and I don't know if this would have been self published or traditionally published, but have you ever participated in any, like, promotions or giveaways, and did that seem to be a worthwhile marketing activity if you did?
Penn Cole: I've done a lot of giveaways. I think they're really good for getting followers on social media or TBR ads or whatever. I don't think they are very good for sales, personally. I just don't see them moving the needle at all on sales. But that's okay. There are other metrics for success than selling books, you know, So I think I still, to this day, have done every single giveaway I've ever been asked to do. I think it's just good advertising. It's good for name recognition, cover recognition. You know, social media giveaways are really good for building followers. Do they sell books? Probably not.
Brittany Herzberg: I love that. With social proof and going back to that, where have you gotten the best reviews? And I'm curious, too. Like, have you done anything to try to help people along in getting them to share book reviews?
Penn Cole: These days, I don't pay attention to reviews at all. I avoid them like the plague. I had my husband block gutter reads from every device I own, but at the beginning, you know, obviously that's a really important part. For me, the best thing with reviews was just getting as many ARC readers as I possibly could. I gave a book to every person who would hear me out for two seconds. They didn't immediately ignore me. After, you know, a minute of talking. I was just like, here, here's a free book. Please take it Um, I joined tons of ARC reader groups of people looking for arcs. I joined Discord specifically for arcs. I really wanted to give, like, a thousand arcs. I did not give a thousand arcs, but that was my goal, was give as many as I could. If I had had 5,000 ARC requests, I would have given 5,000 ARCs. Happily. I really believe that ARCs drive sales. They don't suppress them. I know a lot of people are afraid to give away too many free books at the beginning because they think that's going to cannibalize their sales. I think it's entirely the opposite, especially with E arcs, because if people get an EARC of your book, if they love it, they tend to go buy the physical copy. Right. Is there, like, shelf trophy, call it? And so it can lead to a lot of sales. And then, you know, when you have hundreds of people talking about your book online, again, you can't buy that kind of marketing and word of mouth. So it's a very cheap way to get a lot of, you know, traction on socials. And I see a direct correlation between the number of arcs I give and how well a release goes. This is something also, I. I watched religiously every new release in my genre that I knew about, and I would just slide into people's DMs and say, hey, so, like, out of Curiosity, how many ARCs did you send? And I had my little chart of, like, all of my colleagues and how many ARCs they sent and how well their releases did in terms of rankings and all of that. Obviously, I didn't know their sales data, but I could look at the rankings they hid and my perception of how well a release went. Again, the ones that gave the most arcs were having the best releases. The ones that gave the fewest were kind of going unnoticed. So I very firmly believed in that. And I think I gave about 350 arcs. And I ended up with. I think I had 120 reviews when it released, and some people kind of trickled in later. So I think I had about 160, so a little under half, which I consider a good number. The return on arcs is low. I would say it's like 10 to 30%, really. So I was pretty happy with that return. And otherwise, I think that was also a really big part in how it got traction early at the beginning, because that's 160 people talking about your book and recommending it. Not all of them recommended it, obviously, but, you know, enough of them did.
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, I'm just, like, beaming over here because I knew I liked You. But there's so many things that overlap between, you know, being an author and what that career trajectory looks like in the marketing activities that you're doing, as well as just being like a quote unquote, normal online business owner. Yeah. Where I will happily go on a podcast and share my framework or share whatever. And the version that I hear is like, oh, you don't gatekeep. This is amazing. And it's like, why would I like the information's out there to your point. Like, you can go and find the information. You and I are just gonna cut down the research time that you have. So, like, why would we not do that?
Penn Cole: Yeah, absolutely. Especially in publishing. Because it's not like a finite, you know, amount of sales necessarily. Readers aren't reading one book, they're reading hundreds. And they will buy as many books as they find interesting. So it's not like because they bought my book, they're not gonna buy somebody else's or vice versa. So it makes no sense not to just work together to figure out how do we sell our books.
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, it's so silly because we have good reads, goals, people. We need to read the book.
Penn Cole: Exactly.
Brittany Herzberg: So you mentioned the tour that you went on in 2024 and I was following along and it was so fun to just like watch you and go to all these in person events and talk to your people and everything. Do you have any, like, tips or advice for really anyone doing any kind of in person event in order to get sales and build connections, but like, any words or thoughts there?
Penn Cole: Yeah, I don't think that in person events are. Well, for me. I didn't think that they were that big for sales. Obviously you sell books at them, which is nice and lovely. Lots of people do conventions and things and those are good money makers for them. For me, it was much more about just building relationships with my readers and having them be invested in me as a person and not just invested in my books. I just did this, the CliftonStrengths analysis test, if anybody knows anything about that. And one of my top ones was significance, which this business coach I work with told me that means you want people to not just buy your books for your books, but buy your books for you. Right. You want them to like you as a person and be invested in you. And that's very much me. I want them to be invested in the penpol brand so that they're with me for whatever I write moving forward and not just abandoning me after this series is over. So the in person events I Did I really tried to engage as much as I could with every single person I talked to and talk to them, find out what they loved about the series, you know, who their favorite character was, how they came to find it. Just get to know them a little bit as a person. And I tried to be fully on 100% with every single person I talked to, no matter how tired I was. And I always want people to walk away from any interaction with me feeling filled up. You know what I mean? Feeling like that interaction left them happier than they started. And that can be hard to do online. So those in person events were really good for making me something other than a name on a cover and making me a human being to my readers, which hopefully, if they have a positive experience, then that will keep me front of mind. When somebody asks them what book should I read next, they're thinking of me because they had that positive experience.
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. Well, I can say, having only met you online, that you definitely left that impression. And it's been really quite cool to watch you navigate, like, some of the pun intended heat that you've taken for certain things.
Penn Cole: Right?
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. And just, like, you've moved with grace, and you've moved with kindness, and that's one thing that, like, definitely has me being loyal to the Penncole brand, because I can see that you are gracious, you are kind. You are just, like, treating people like people. And that's something I try to do. So I see that in you too. And I'm like, well, I'm stuck with her forever. Like, this is awesome.
Penn Cole: Good. Like to hear that. My husband has this saying. He got it from a friend of his, but it's called leave shiny footprints, and it essentially means when you walk away from an interaction, you want the trace of yourself that you leave to be shiny. Right. Positive and happy. And in order to do that, you have to be very intentional and careful with everything you're saying, everything you're doing. You know, how you run your street teams, or if you have a street team or a hype team or anything like that. How I engage with my arc readers, because that can be a big source of conflict with people trying to never feel entitled to a reader's time or their review or their sale or anything like that. And just every person you interact with, whether it's an author, publisher, reader, moving with kindness and giving people the benefit of the doubt and just leaving shiny footprints because it makes a difference. It really does.
Brittany Herzberg: Oh, I love that. I'm totally using that line.
Penn Cole: It's not Mine. I can't take credit for it, but say it to myself all of the time when I'm in a bad mood or whatever. No, no, no. I need to leave shiny footprints. I'm gonna keep my mouth shut.
Brittany Herzberg: That is so cute. I love it. All right, this has been really a great conversation, and I had so many questions that I created a lightning round for you.
Penn Cole: Perfect.
Brittany Herzberg: Are you ready?
Penn Cole: Yes.
Brittany Herzberg: All right, so just whatever comes to top of mind, and we'll go with that. So I know you have a close circle of author friends because as part of your tour, I saw that. How have those relationships impacted your author journey?
Penn Cole: Oh, my gosh. It's hard to give a short answer to this one. They're my girls. I adore them. This is a hard industry because you're alone so much of the time, and, you know, we're sitting at home alone writing our books, and it feels very lonely putting them out on the Internet and not necessarily getting a lot of feedback at first. So I think that was one of the best things I ever did for myself, was cultivating a close group of author friends. We all started around the same time. We all write in the same genre, and we are able to just vent or share frustrations. See what we're doing that's working for us. Say, I want to do this. Is that a bad idea? And then they could say, yes, it's a bad idea. Don't do that thing. You know, keeping things in the group chat instead of on social media when you're having frustrations or whatever, that is critical for me, and I highly encourage anybody, no matter what genre you write in is drop into people's DMs, introduce yourself. Don't be afraid to just start a group chat with some people. When my group formed, none of us really knew each other that well, but we'd all kind of seen each other around. I mean, we were almost strangers when we started it, but we said, we need friends, and let's be each other's friends. And now we're super, super, super tight, so everybody should do that. I feel very strongly.
Brittany Herzberg: I love that. Which of your books are you most proud of or fond of? I'm not gonna ask you. Which one's your favorite?
Penn Cole: I think Book two, which was the book that I struggled the most with, with Self Doubt. I actually almost didn't publish it because I was so convinced that it was terrible and that people would hate it and there was nothing redeeming about it. And now it's most people's favorite in the series, you know, I really got in my head, especially after I released the first book, did better than I was expecting it to do. And I thought this book's gonna ruin it. Everybody's gonna read the second book and say, oh, she, you know, was a one hit wonder. She can't actually write. And so I think overcoming that self doubt and publishing it anyway, you know, they say do it scared. I very much did that scared. And everybody loved it. It was a really well received book. So I always think about that now when I'm feeling doubt or worried that I'm going the wrong direction with my books. I think I just need to trust myself because I'm the worst judge of what's going to be good. Obviously from how I felt.
Brittany Herzberg: That is so funny. Yeah. Book two, Glow of the Everflame, is definitely my favorite in the series. So I'm so glad you didn't like keep that to yourself.
Penn Cole: Me too. Thank you.
Brittany Herzberg: What is the latest news with the Kindred's Curse saga?
Penn Cole: There's a lot going on. Books 1 and 2 just re released in print. Heat of the Everflame, which is the third book, re releases in print on March 11th of this year. They're also available on ebooks and Kindle Unlimited and the audiobooks are available on Audible. Book four, which is what I know everybody really wants to know about, is in progress. I don't have a release date just yet, but we have set one internally. We're not talking about it or announcing it quite yet because there's still things that could cause it to get pushed. But we're close. I'm very hopeful, fingers crossed, that we will be able to announce something soonish. There's also some other super exciting stuff going on in the background that I cannot talk about yet. But I think we are only at the beginning of what this series can do.
Brittany Herzberg: That is so exciting. And for the record, I told her she didn't have to answer anything about book four.
Penn Cole: I know it's what people want to know.
Brittany Herzberg: So another thing people want to know because I asked a couple of my friends if they had any questions. One that kept coming up is who's your favorite book boyfriend? Who's not, because we all know you love Henri, but who's not in the Kindred's Curse saga?
Penn Cole: Easy. Aarin Warner from Shatter Me. Hands down, that's my husband. I love him even though it's a YA book. So he's technically a child. But we're just gonna look away from that part for a second here. If you like Grumpy MMCs, I mean, he is the grumpiest, right? This is a man who truly, genuinely hates every person on the planet except for the girl he's in love with. And he would do anything for her. She could, say, lay on the floor and like, be a rug so I don't have to step in this puddle. And he would just do it, like, no problem. Absolutely. He'd probably do it before she asked, just in case. But when it comes to anybody else, he cannot stand them, does not care whether they live or die. He's so grumpy, it makes him so much fun to read. I loved it. So I always joke that Luther, who's one of the love interests in my book, that he is Aaron Warner, if he grew up and got therapy, because he's essentially like that too, right? He doesn't really care about anybody else except maybe a couple of people. But when it comes to her, like, he'll do anything for her. So he's like, slightly more well adjusted than Aaron Warner, but just slightly.
Brittany Herzberg: I love that. That is hilarious. It's great.
Penn Cole: It's very YA like. It's, you know, there's no spice. And it's very much teen themes coming of age. And the characters are very much teenagers, so you have to give them a little bit of grace. Can't go into it as an adult expecting them to make adult decisions because they're not their kids. But it's fantastic. Dystopian series. It's really good.
Brittany Herzberg: Oh, man. Adding that to my list number, you know, 500 and something, who knows? All right, last question for you. If readers want to meet you in person in 2025, are they going to be able to do that?
Penn Cole: Yes, there's lots of opportunities. In mid February, I'm going on tour in the west coast, so I'll be in Seattle, Portland, San Diego and la. And I can't remember the exact date, so I want to say it's the 18th through the 24th, something like that. And tickets are on sale for that right now. And then I will be at several different conferences through the remainder of the year. I will be at a PolyCon in D.C. in April. I will be at Ready Set Romance here in France in May. March, an M month, I can't remember which one, but an M month, I think it's March. I will be at Rare London in July. I think we are working on a US and Canada tour in the summer. I don't have dates or cities for that yet, but it's something that I'm working on with my publisher. And then I'll be at Villains and Vixens, which is a conference in Dallas in September. So very exciting. Lots going on. Definitely. If you are at any of those events, come find me. I love, love chatting with readers and with other authors.
Brittany Herzberg: I love that. Well, I just want to thank you so much for joining me for talking. Not really about the books, but this conversation. But I was so happy to hear that you were excited about this conversation.
Penn Cole: Yes, it's very refreshing to talk about the industry. I love shop talk.
Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. Well, thank you. And I cannot wait to see what comes out in the future and, like, what the future holds for you.
Penn Cole: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
