SPA Girls Podcast

Your brain is a liar! Heather Hildenbrand is a bestselling author and business coach for creatives. This episode she demystifies how our results are determined by our beliefs first, and our efforts, second. Listen up for amazing (and do-able!) mindset tips for authors and how to overcome our blocks with less woo and more “do”! About Heather: Heather Hildenbrand was born and raised in a small town...

In this episode we chat to YA Fantasy author Katie Cross. She has so much passion and enthusiasm for what she does, and loves her readers!  We talk about direct sales and how to relate to your readers, and these are just two of the topics we covered. Sit down with your favorite beverage and enjoy because it’s action packed and full of information! We first interviewed Katie back in 2017. The...

You are your own publishing house when you self-publish. There’s lots to do, and lots to think about, especially the first few times you publish a book.  That’s why we’ve created this helpful, back-to-basics SPA Girls Podcast episode – to help you go from rough manuscript to published book, with our notes on what you need to plan for and schedule, and how to figure out what you’re going to ne...

This episode, we’re joined again by the effervescent Kathleen Sweeney from Bookbrush. Book Brush is a platform where authors can easily create their own professional-looking ads and marketing images for social media. Kathleen is going to update us on best practices, new additions to Book Brush software and added service options that can save authors time and stress producing graphics. Kathleen’s k...

Inspired by Dr Michael Moseley’s JUST ONE THING ( https://michaelmosley.co.uk/ ) we use his framework to give practical tips for uncomplicating your writing and author business life. Keep It Simple Be Realistic Create A Trigger Know Your Why Stick With It For At Least A Month Try To Replace Bad Habits With Good Ones Try To Do It Daily Involve A Friend Or Loved One Be Kind To Yourself Keep A Record...

Business Planning for authors isn’t too often discussed, but the minute you go from hobbyist writer to publishing-for-profit, congratulations! You’re now a business entrepreneur. So what is a business plan? It’s the foundation of your business, a road map of your business structure, future projects, markets, earnings and expenses. It sounds more complicated than it needs to be. With that in mind,...

Want to set yourself up for an awesome 2024? Then this is the SPA Girls podcast episode for you. We go through our top eight tips to help amp up your career and kickstart your year!  From looking at the data and knowing what you want, to getting your newsletter humming and revamping blurbs, we give you all our best advice for 2024.  SHOWNOTES:   Our Top Eight Tips:   1. Know what yo...

We’re celebrating you, our wonderful listeners, in the SPA today by sharing our 12 Christmas Wishes for you and your self-publishing journey. We want you to know how special to us. We’re so proud of this journey we’ve all embarked on and with what everyone has achieved. No matter where you are in the publishing process, it really is time to celebrate! May your holiday be filled with love, joy, goo...

Are you dreaming of an easy approach to create successful book releases? Listen up, because we’re joined again by the bestselling fantasy author, Helen Scheuerer, who shares all the secrets of a Successful Series Launch, including: How You Should Handle Your Book’s Backmatter Using Pre-Orders Effectively Getting ARC readers Running A Successful Street Team Easily Best Timing For Book Releases Hele...

Congratulations! You’ve finished your first book (or series) and are ready to hit the publish button! So what can you do to get your book noticed in the sea of other new books, and how can you find the right readers for you? In this episode, we’re getting down and dirty with practical suggestions for you to create your own successful launch plan, even if you have no existing fans / mailing list /...

Most authors know what BookFunnel is these days (just in case: it’s a platform that helps you deliver reader magnets, ARC copies, audio files, and so much more to your readers) but do we all know how to use it the best we can?  I’m pretty sure the answer is  no !  That’s why we spent this episode with Damon Courtney, creator and CEO of BookFunnel, going over all th...

Bumps on the publishing path are unwelcome yet inevitable and they can affect us in a variety of ways. So how can we reset ourselves when the wobbles and disappointment set in? Today we’ve got a SPA Girls 6 – Step Guide to turning those setbacks into success: Embrace The Rain Reheat The Pasta Rapunzel It Be Like A Dog Jump Off The Cliff Be An Antelope, Not A Hyena (For an explanation of thes...

Side characters – how do you make them memorable, but not over-take the spotlight? And what purpose do they serve in the story? This episode, the awesome author and educator, Sacha Black, gives us the scoop on developing incredible side characters that will take your story from blah to bleepin’ amazing. She takes us through three different types of side character and how to create juxt...

This week we talk to Carrie Elks about amping up your book marketing. It’s a fantastic and informative interview packed with great tips and advice that you won’t want to miss! Carrie writes contemporary romance with a sizzling edge. Her first book, Fix You, has been translated into eight languages and made a surprise appearance on Big Brother in Brazil. Luckily for her, it wasn’t voted...

This week we talk about the forward planning we all do for our author careers. Because we’re all so different here in the SPA, we all plan differently, and have different goals. But that means there will be nuggets of gold for everyone in this episode! We go through what it means to forward plan in your author business, why it’s important, what we think about when we do our planning, a...

Self-publishing since 2010, Amazon top 100 best-selling Amazon author with 1 million books sold, Sarra writes magical contemporary fantasy novels with both teen and college aged characters (and lots of twists you’ll never see coming). Do you feel like a hamster on a wheel? Sarra talks to us about her solution to planning without all the heartache and leading us to be more joyful. “When...

We’re thrilled to welcome UF/PNR author Sarah Piper to the show today. Sarah has seen great success publishing across a number of genres, and we discuss her strategy moving from Amazon-exclusive to publishing wide, selling her audiobooks direct and working with your spouse! This episode is packed with incredible information and actionable advice from Sarah, so you’ll want to listen more than once...

Amazon has moved the furniture again! This episode, Alex Newton, founder of K-Lytics, explains Amazon’s category changes, what they mean for authors, and how best to categorize your books now. We also discuss other recent Amazon changes dating back to September ’22, the impact on authors’ rankings and specific romance category changes and general trends. Alex Newton is the creator of K...

This week we chatted with Angela Ackerman, one of the authors of the classic writing book, The Emotion Thesaurus.  If you’ve never picked up one of the amazing thesauruses by Angela Ackerman and her co-writer, Becca Puglisi, you’re missing out! Created especially for writers, the ten different thesauruses will help you add emotion, be more creative, and make your book sing!  In th...

There are many ways we get stuck as authors. Some ways you can get stuck is in the writing, editing, time management and making decisions areas. Getting unstuck is much harder and yet easier than we think. Letting go of perceptions of our writing or our characters helped Trudi a great deal when she put off writing the last book in a series – for years! Cheryl had to get past the fear of gett...

We’re thrilled to welcome back Kathryn Le Veque to the SPA! Kathryn is a Publishing Powerhouse, with years of experience as a bestselling author, and CEO of Dragonblade Publishing. After first interviewing her back in 2018, we wanted to discuss what industry changes she’s seen in those five plus years, and what she predicts for the future in the wider publishing landscape. Kathryn shares her uniqu...

Today’s topic was prompted by a commenter on youtube who asked us about reverse engineering bestsellers. What makes a book, be it your second one published or your tenth, sell more than others.  We believe there are many variables to that. Timing, tropes, the first 10% of how a book starts. The cover, blurb, and other popular tv or books that may have similar aspects.  There are many thi...

This week we talk to fiction and non-fiction author Katlyn Duncan, who wrote the non-fiction books The Successful Hybrid Author (all about being a hybrid author) and Take Back Your Book (all about how to get your rights back after being traditionally published). She shares her path to becoming a hybrid author, but also what you need to know about being hybrid, how it works, the pros and cons of tr...

Author Jenna Moreci is a YouTube sensation ! With almost 300k subscribers on her YouTube channel “ Writing with Jenna Moreci “, ten years of making videos, and over 28 MILLION views, she’s produced an incredible body of work and large community. So how has this impacted her writing and publishing, especially as her audience is both writers AND readers? We cover Jenna’s YouT...

Marketing but not achieving results? Maybe you need to do a bit of a deep dive into why. Steady is good and not doing things at warp speed, but I think consistency is the real key. We tend to think if we try something and don’t get instant results, they don’t work. But that’s not always the case. Often what didn’t work first up may the second time around. We in the SPA have tried soooo many things...