01.06: Michael R. Underwood and the modern art of selling books

Building the Oracle - with Jay Swanson

Mike Underwood is a rare jewel in the publishing world - a successful author of several (very excellent) SFF novels who also happens to have invaluable sales and marketing expertise with some of the leading publishers in the world. He was also one of Jay's first and best friends within the professional SFF community, so when Jay attended ConFusion, they took the chance to catch up and talk shop - and bookshops in particular.

We discussed the state of the current market for science fiction and fantasy books, and the impact of reduced shelf-space in bookshops around the world. Mike explained why it's so important for publishing houses to craft their own unique voice, and create distinctive sales and marketing material to help ensure your books stand out, even through the complex network of distributors and booksellers.

Mike's new book, Annihilation Aria, is available for preorder now, and we highly recommend you also check out his previous novels. If you're looking for somewhere to start, go with the Genrenauts series.

You can follow Mike on Twitter at @MikeRUnderwood, on his website at michaelrunderwood.com, or on Patreon.

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CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
Building the Oracle posts on the 1st and 15th of every month. It is hosted by Jay Swanson and Richard Bilkey. You can tweet at us on @jayonaboat and @rich_bilkey, find us on Instagram at @jayswanson and @rich_bilkey and follow Jay on YouTube.

Our Super Patrons at the time of recording were Kevin, Karin Bates, Mystery Man, Susan French, Dixie Rose, David Guy, figures.seven.three, Steve and Jane Baker. High class human beings, every single one.

This episode was produced by Zach Egan.

Our theme music is "Glory" and our ad music is "Light," both by David Cutter.

We record everything on a Rode Procaster and mix in Adobe Audition and/or Audacity depending on how out of our workflow we've fallen.

The show's art is from Jay's book Into the Nanten, illustrated by Nimit Malavia.

Gustave the dog sleepily protects us every week as we record.

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