Interview with Successful Indie Fantasy Author Jason Letts

We’ve got an interview with indie fantasy author Jason Letts for you today. He’s been e-publishing for less than a year, but he’s already sold thousands of ebooks. As you can see from his official author picture, he’s a bit of a character who doesn’t take himself too seriously!

Here’s a quick intro, and then we’ll jump into the questions:

Jason is an author and editor of young-adult and paranormal fiction. The books in his young-adult fantasy series, Powerless, are available. The first book in his new paranormal trilogy, Inevitable, has just been released on Amazon and BN.com. You can find out more about Jason and his books by visiting www.powerlessbooks.com.

Welcome, Jason!

Thanks so much for having me, Lindsay!

What made you choose the life of an indie author?

I’ve always loved writing, and I was an English major in college, so I always felt like I would end up writing novels eventually, but becoming an indie author and selling books on my own was something I couldn’t have imagined. It just wasn’t possible even a few years ago. But things have changed, and now I write my stories the way I want them to be, produce them just how I like, and hope that readers find them just as enjoyable as I do. It’s great when it works out that way, and that’s what makes it worthwhile.

Your main body of work is the Powerless series. Can you tell us a bit about it and how well it’s doing for you?

Powerless is a young-adult fantasy series about a girl who has to bring her family together despite being the only one in the world without a unique, magical ability. The first book was published in June 2010 with the next two books following after that. After selling thousands of copies, I’m very happy with the series and the response that it’s getting, but there are things you can only learn after you’ve put the book out. So like every other author, I’ve got to take what worked, leave behind what didn’t, and try my best to create the most entertaining work possible as I continue to write.

Congratulations on all those book sales. Pretty impressive considering you just started last summer! Is Amazon your biggest seller, or do you do better elsewhere?

I sell about 60% on Amazon and 40% on BN.com, which is actually hugely surprising to me because for the first few months I didn’t sell much at all on BN. I think there are different strategies to have success on each site. For Amazon, you’ve got to get in touch with readers and work on getting good reviews. For BN, you’ve got to be extremely lucky and hope your book magically gets a good search result for a few keywords. I’ve heard creating a shrine in your bedroom can help with that.

As I’m learning, the biggest challenge for us indies is being found. What kind of promotional tactics have you pursued?

Yes, obscurity is one of the most difficult things to overcome. Of course, blogging like this and being active on kindleboards is a good start, but it helps to be outspoken too. While a lot of people might tell you that it’s important to be ultra-professional all the time, which is so often true, I also take joking around very seriously and try to bring that spirit with whatever I’m doing. At the end of the day, we’re entertainers and we’re people, and we’re naturally drawn to people with which we can share an easy laugh.

I see you sell the first book in the series for $0.99 cents and the latter ones for $2.99. How is that working for you? Does the low-priced introductory ebook draw in a lot of readers who go on to purchase the others? Have you experimented with higher prices?

Ebook pricing is always a touchy issue, and people base their decisions on countless factors. The second month my book was out I tried to raise the price to $2.99. This didn’t work for me, and it severely squelched my sales beyond what the revenue increase would provide. For new authors, you want to create the lowest barrier possible for people to try your work. After that, it really depends on what the market will bear. Especially for a series, starting the books out at .99 is a good idea to cast the widest possible net for your other books.

I see you have an omnibus edition of the Powerless trilogy on Amazon. What a great idea, and it’s a deal for the readers, too. How well does that sell compared to the individual ebooks?

The omnibus sells surprisingly well, and it’s something I recommend all authors with a series think about doing. It’s sort of like building a sale into your pricing structure, and a lot of readers have jumped on it. It sells probably twice as well as the 2nd and 3rd books do individually, and on some days it does just as well as the first book. Putting it together was a great move!

Would you like to talk about your new ebook? You wrote it with e-publishing superstar Amanda Hocking–how did that come about?

My new book is called Inevitable, and it’s sold about 100 copies in its first two days. Many of the things I learned from Powerless went directly into this. The biggest one is importance of including romance in books, and so the genre of this story is actually paranormal romance. Though PR isn’t that distant from young-adult fantasy, it was enough to make me feel a bit like a fish out of water. Enter Amanda. I am her editor, and when I told her about the book I was working on, she was very interested in helping out. I have to say the book was drastically improved because of her guidance, and I’m very confident that paranormal readers will enjoy it.

Thanks, Jason!