How Quinn Loftis Runs Her Best Business With PublishDrive
“You guys do make our lives much, much easier...You guys have helped grow our business.”
— Quinn Loftis
PublishDrive’s Kinga Jentetics got to chat with Quinn Loftis and Bo Loftis, the loveliest power couple running their self-publishing gig for over 10 years. While Quinn does all the world-building for her expansive fanbase, Bo takes care of everything else. Here’s what the duo had to tell us about managing their successful business with the help of PublishDrive.
About Quinn Loftis
Quinn Loftis never thought she’d be a writer. She was instead working as a nurse for seven years before self-publishing her first book in 2011. With now 36 novels under her belt, Quinn is a multi-award-winning author who primarily writes paranormal romance for her dedicated readers ranging from young adults to mothers and beyond.
Quinn writes full time as she works side by side with her partner, Bo Loftis, raising three kids and a couple of furry animals. With a finance and law background, Bo naturally stepped into a business management role. As a couple-run gig, time is of the essence.
“With all the marketing, editing, getting all the beta readers, anything that saves time leading up to that [book release] point is amazing.” — Bo Loftis
PublishDrive helps with not only the time but the money.
“When you’re selling 5,000 books a month at 10% versus a flat fee of 100 bucks, that’s sort of a no-brainer...We can use PublishDrive, save a ton of money, and still reach the same audience and actually a bigger audience which is awesome too. When I first heard about that, I almost thought it was too good to be true.” — Bo Loftis
Main Results
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Saves money with PublishDrive’s flat fee to distribute in multiple (and more) markets
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Saves a week’s amount of time uploading on multiple channels per book release
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Reaches a bigger audience, making extra revenue from Google Play Books and Dreame
Challenges in Self-Publishing
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A competitive market that requires a faster publishing time
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A lot to take care of, including editing, formatting, marketing, and more
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Takes too much time to distribute on multiple platforms
“Every book release is a big deal...there’s a ton that goes into it. We think about how many books do we have to sell to pay for this time...Being a small business, not just a writer, is hard...Any way you can save time you are also saving money.” — Quinn Loftis
As veterans who have been in the game since 2011, Quinn and Bo shared pain points commonly felt by self-publishing authors. Back in the day, mainstream publishing houses used to juggle their authors to ensure no one outsells each other. That meant an author would launch a new book every year or so.
With self-publishing authors and the number of books they release today, readers have gotten used to a way faster release time. If the next book doesn't come out in 90 days, readers will find something else. To keep up with market demands, Quinn and Bo are on a robust schedule.
“For us, the publishing process starts when I write the first part of the book. In between that, you got a cover being made and schedule the time with your editor...And then you're setting up the marketing scheme for that book. Where are we going to market? How are we going to market?
For all of that, you're looking at a four-month process. You don't want the process to upload the book to take five days because by the time you hit finish, he's now finishing the edits and I’m now 40,000 words into another novel. So that's how fast you are moving...We just don't have the time to go okay let's now take the next three days to get it up on every platform. If you upload on every platform, it would take forever.” — Quinn Loftis
Bo emphasized the importance of having a solid publishing plan. With such a massive and saturated market, it takes more than just uploading on Amazon.
“There are so many books out there to compete with. If you don’t know what you're doing, you'll go down in flames...But that’s just like any small business. There is absolutely no difference between being a self-published author than owning your own construction company or whatever you have to deal with.” — Bo Loftis
How PublishDrive Helps
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Tech tools that save time with uploading, setting up metadata, distributing, and more – all in one go
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A massive book distribution network that reaches retailers like Amazon, hard-to-reach channels like Google Play Books, and niche markets like Dreame
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A monthly flat fee instead of the usual 10% cut by most 3rd party distributors
Quinn and Bo self-publish wide, meaning they sell not only to Amazon but to other channels and markets. Their revenue is roughly divided into 50% from Amazon, 20% from Apple Books, 20% from Dreame, and 10% from Google Play Books.
“When you guys brought up Dreame, that was a game changer for sure...When we first got our Dreame check it was almost equal to iBooks and everything else combined except for Amazon. I was really shocked at how much revenue Dreame generates.” — Bo Loftis
The duo’s performance with Dreame is part of a global trend. In 2020, Dreame’s sales growth spiked by 92,441%. Among thousands of channels, Dreame was PublishDrive’s #1 store in terms of growth.
Despite the pandemic, 2020 was a lucrative year for self-publishers. On average, indies made 85% more sales via PublishDrive. As readers drastically shifted to online formats like ebooks and platforms like Dreame, the digital trend continues in 2021 and the foreseeable years ahead.
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The most successful indies (like the Loftis’) are distributing everywhere they can, especially in bestselling stores and countries. For challenging platforms like Google Play Books where it can take up to a year to publish, PublishDrive’s partnership with Google speeds up the process.
“Honestly, the amount of time it takes to upload to each platform is ridiculous. There’s no way we can distribute to all the channels that PublishDrive distributes to...We wouldn’t even bother uploading to Google Play if we weren’t going through you guys. It’s just too much.” — Bo Loftis
Best Practices From Quinn and Bo
The Loftis couple stressed two tactics in self-publishing:
1) Follow and adjust to the market
“In order to be successful, you can't just write whatever you want to write. You can't make a career doing that. You have to be willing to target the audience and market for that time period. Books change. Contemporary has been popular for years and the swing is going back to paranormal and fantasy.
We were in that when fantasy plummeted and contemporary took off. And now, thankfully, we're swinging back towards our genre. You have to adjust to the market. We're looking ahead and going, what do we think is going to do well? What do we need to write next?” — Quinn Loftis
2) Write more, always
"We’re lucky enough that we have enough series going on that if [Quinn] decides she wants to write something new, she can. And it's not really going to hurt us, because we have all these other revenue streams going on. We shouldn’t do that two or three times in a row. We always have to go back and write a Grey Wolves book just to pay the bills." — Bo Loftis
“Mark Dawson’s thing is to write books, and that’s how you make money...If you sell 10 of one novel, it's still 50 bucks you have that you didn’t have without that novel. So that's always the goal. People always ask me when I finish a book, what's next? And I'm like, the next book!” — Quinn Loftis
Streamline Your Publishing Business
Join the Loftis' and tens of thousands of other indies selling globally (and boosting sales by 85%) on PublishDrive.