Today’s interview is with Young Adult and middle-grade author Tara Ellis.
Tara Ellis, an Amazon best selling author, lives in a small, rural town in Washington State set in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Tara was a firefighter/EMT, and worked in the medical field for many years, before committing herself to writing young adult and middle-grade novels (almost) full-time.
Her on-going middle-grade mystery series, The Samantha Wolf Mysteries, has hit the best-seller status on Amazon in the children’s detective story genre several times, and continues to grow in popularity. The engaging, fun stories herald back to the days of Nancy Drew and Trixie Beldon, and several readers have commented that the series is of the same caliber.
In this interview, Tara covers lots of different topics and especially helps with some great advice for getting a Bookbub feature.
Tackle the writing craft seriously and don’t be afraid to try new writing techniques. Tara’s middle-grade series is written in third person, present tense.
Marketing is the other 90% of being a writer!
Use certain elements or themes that are similar to movies or other books to help promote your own books.
Discover your “why” motivation in what you’re writing and why you’re writing it. Understanding yourself better and who you’re writing for will help with your longevity as an author.
Goodreads can be a great place to get feedback about your books. You need to be able to take on constructive criticism as an author.
Writing a new book every three months if you can is a great way to gain traction on previous books and stay relevant in the Amazon algorithms.
At the end of your e-book put a link for people to review the book, and you can even add free chapters for the next book to encourage read through.
Bookbub will read your book before accepting it, so write a great book. They will also re-write your blurb if it’s accepted which you can then borrow from!
You can find Tara online at TaraEllis and follow her on AMAZON.