Story Sensei

This is the first in a series of blogs about marketing for fiction authors without using social media. One thing I focus on is building up my email newsletter. One way I do this is through Lead Magnets. I don’t know if this is true for non-fiction writers, but I’ve heard of two different kinds of fiction lead magnets—one for a cold audience who has never heard of you (called a Funnel Book), and one for a warm audience (Reader Magnet). The Funnel Book is for things like BookFunnel group promos or newsletter swaps. BookFunnel group promos (you can also do the same on StoryOrigin ) are where you join a promo event with other authors in your genre or niche. Everyone shares the link to the promo in their newsletter. The link goes to a landing page with everyone’s book covers that readers can click on. That goes to the individual book’s landing page with a blurb and a link to either buy the book (if it’s sales promo) or to sign up for your newsletter to get the book for free. The...

I have been a big fan of the podcast Writing Off Social for a while now, and I met the podcast hosts, Sandy and Mary K., at the 2025 Novel Marketing Conference. I had taken their Writing Off Social—the Course Lite , and while I was very, very good, I felt it didn’t have as many insights for fiction authors as opposed to nonfiction authors. Which makes sense since Sandy and Mary K. both write nonfiction. When I talked to them about it at the conference, I spouted off some feedback I had come up with while listening to their course, and they asked me to write it down in an email and send it to them. Well, I had time to wait at the airport and it turned into a huge long email missive with lots of information. They were very gracious and invited me to join them for an interview on their podcast, which was totally exciting! It was my first podcast interview! But we didn’t talk about everything in the email since we didn’t have time.  I thought it might be helpful to take what I’d alrea...

  This is actually a lesson from my Synopsis worksheet, so forgive me if you’ve taken my class and this sounds vaguely familiar. :) An agent might use a one-sentence hook when she presents your story to an editor, or you can use this hook in your proposal, and an editor might use it when she presents it to the pub board. Actually, I would strongly suggest you have a one-sentence hook in your proposal, because even if your editor doesn’t use it in pub board, you may be asked to submit a one-sentence hook later, after the book is contracted, to give to the Marketing and Sales team. This hook will also help you step back from your story and adopt a more high-level view of the manuscript. It can be hard to wrench yourself out of the nitty-gritty of the story and take this bird’s-eye view, so, well ... make an effort. Be a little impassive about your story—don’t be too tied to it. That’ll help you to step back and look at the overall picture. Here’s the actual one sentence hook I...