Brand Spotlight: Patricia Bates

Hi guys, welcome back to Finding Your Indie. I'm Bonnie Paulson. And I'm Mandie Stephens. And today we are doing a Brand Spotlight. Somebody reached out, we're so excited.

We are actually going to be doing Patricia Bates. Now I'm going to talk about Patricia really quick. I met her, she was my moderator for my round table at Inkers Con. It's phenomenal. The round tables, they have transcripts of everything, the handouts, have you had a chance to get in?

Two years. I went to the live one.

Yeah. We went to the live, but man, it's cool. I was like, hey, I've even got a transcript on my course on all mine. It's awesome. Well, I know we have access  for six years, seven years.

Yeah.

Yeah. Crazy. And it's awesome.

I am going to get in.

Yeah. Oh, I know. I was like, okay, so I downloaded all of the PDFs of the handouts, the PowerPoints. I mean, they have the transcripts for all of the presentations. So, I downloaded all of them and I'm going to put them on my good notes.

I think it's good notes app is what it's called on my iPad. I'm just going to highlight from there because I was thinking, man, that's cool because the videos are great. I just don't have the time to watch an hour long video, you know, but I do have time to go through the transcripts and the handouts.

And so that'll really help. So if you don't have access, you guys can use our link. I'll put our link in our code down below. You can still get in there and you can still, you can get 50% off. It's phenomenal. It's really well done. I love the girls at Inkers Con though. You know me. I love those girls.

It was awesome. So anyways, yeah, that's where we met Patricia from and she's a sweetheart. And I'm really excited to get into her stuff and to kind of go for her brand with Mandie, but just a quick push. We have Orlando Reads Books coming up at the end of August. So, so exciting. It's crazy.

And then we'll be at NINC and then we will be at 20 Books. So if you're looking for us, I'm going to be at Smut Lovers too. That's right. That's also in Orlando. That's going to be awesome. We're already busy and Boss Mode launches at the end of August. Hive Mind is going right now. We've already started Hive Mind.

So if you want to jump into Hive Mind, join us, or you can just join our free Facebook group, like there's so much going on. We've got so much great stuff. We're just super excited

Let's get into Patricia’s Brand Spotlight.

We have not looked at her page. We have not looked at anything. I went and before I clicked here, I opened up Amazon and I went to her. I just looked it up. Patricia Bates. Then I went back into the zoom meeting. So I have not even looked at anything. I don't know if she shows up under the first thing. I'm sure I probably still have my add to cart open.

We're going to get in and we're going to actually start critiquing her brand. What we see Mandie, if there's anything that you see that we should, that you want me to look at different, just let me know so I can go to that page. Okay. So here we go.

We are going to share screen. Here we go. So, I did a search for Patricia Bates, and this is what's coming up.

Oh, okay. She writes Highlanders and military romance and historical romance.

Yeah. Military romance. What's Thine Love Thy Neighbor?

I don't know. It looks like it could be Amish or Western.

I was thinking religious, but yeah it definitely looks different than the other.

Yeah, should we go into her author page?

Yeah, go into the author page and we can peek around.

Okay, so we're on her author page. We're not going to read the bio. We're just going to go down Hunter's Desire is that MM you think? You see it? Hunter's Desire.

Oh. It might be. Maybe.

Okay. So there's Paranormal.

I don't know if these are all Paranormal. They don't look all Paranormal. Okay, so we have Highlanders. We have Military Romance. Dark Paranormal Romance. Possibly MM and… Okay, let me see, That Visconti's Prize looks historical.

It does. Okay, so we know for sure it's Romance. Claiming Her Dream looks like it might be very contemporary or I don't know.

Can you click it? Okay. It looks like that might be a pasture or something. I can't see.

Yeah, so that looks like it could be, it's kind of paranormal, her ancestry and her gift of sight. She's been celebrated. Yeah, but that doesn't look paranormal to me. I mean, I write paranormal, it doesn't look paranormal to me.

That looks more like it looks contemporary.

I think it's historical.

Well, it doesn't really, I mean, you think it looks historical because I'm thinking the cover up here and then it's just a landscape. It could be because of the gun, the cannon things. Yeah, the cannon is what makes me think it's historical.

Her hand right there is making me feel like there's wings. So now I'm sitting there, what is it? Like fallen angel?

No, I don't think so. Right. But that's what it's looking like. Okay. And the price point was only $1.49.

How long is it?

77 pages.

Oh, that's okay.

Yeah, that's good. I'd say either 99 cents or 2.99.

Nobody wants to hover in the dead man's one dollar. I know 1.99 was a weird spot for a while.

Yeah, it was. Okay. So we're looking here. The Kidnapped Grooms book too. I like it.

You what?

I like it. It looks good.

Oh, yeah. I'm not looking at the covers anymore. It looks like these aren't KU, so it looks like she's wide.

Okay, so the book twos. This one and this one. This, I have it sorting by popularity. The book twos look like they're in the top, and then this book one is also in the top and she's charging for this one. I wonder if this series has book one free. It does not. Okay. Let's look and see why the reviews are low on this one.

Cause it shouldn't have that rating.

I don't know if it'll have reviews.

Oh, here we go. Okay. Okay. Very slow burn with the characters. Writing we're not okay.

So she's yeah, but it was from book sprouts.

Yeah, exactly like yeah I mean a lot of people like slow burn slow burn is good. Yeah, especially in the historical area.

That's a really good one. She definitely needs to reach out to her list about that and see if she can get some good reviews on it because I mean the cover is gorgeous.

Yeah. The cover is phenomenal. Blurb looks good too. And I know it's romance. So I'm sitting there going, Ooh, gladiator. I love gladiator romances.

That's like some of my favorites actually. So she made the cover too. Yeah. She did a good job.

How do you know that she made the cover? Is it because author illustrator? Oh, there it is. Author illustrator. I don't even look at that stuff, but yeah, it's beautifully covered. I like it. Okay. So let's go back and look a little bit more where she's hitting.

It looks like she's has higher reviews on the more contemporary stuff and her suspense. Yeah, but she doesn't have that many reviews. Period. Right. But I'm wondering why.

She might just need to reach out to her list, you know?

Yeah. Let's see. And since she's wide, we can look at the rate, that doesn't even matter.

Cause if she's wide, it's not going to give us an accurate number.

When I'm looking at her covers in general, they're kind of all over the place.

Yeah. You know, because she has the, the paranormal romance, I mean, it's just so many different genres.

Right. Let's look at her full bio and see what she says that her brand is.

Dark and edgy historical and contemporary suspense romances. She does have a contemporary readers group, so that's just her contemporaries though. Is that her  historicals too, or?

Not sure. I'm going to go look at her website. Okay. Okay. So, she has a launch thing. She is looking for a new arc team for this book. She doesn't have her paranormal ones on there unless they're under something else.

Hunter's Desire. Oh, that must be under Contemporary. Okay, this is the one that we thought, is this MM? I mean, looking at the cover, it looks like it's MM.

The cover says it's MM, yes.

The cover says MM, like, very clearly. Yeah. And I always recommend because I saw somebody else who has multiple genres and I don't mind them, but I have to know ahead of time.

Right. Yeah, you do.

Yeah, because it's a different readership. It's a different tone. Just like I need to know ahead of time if I'm reading a mystery or not.

If I get into a book and it has a mystery in it, I won't be happy unless I know ahead of time because it takes my brain power, right? Most of the time when I read. If I'm going to read something, I'm like looking for brain candy. Just something I can just go through. It's not going to affect me too much one way or the other.

It's just a good read to pass the time to take my mind off of work, right? Or off of whatever. So if I'm getting into a mystery or I'm getting into a thriller or, or MM because there's more thought process involved, then I need to know. I think it's, that's the same thing for me with bully romances. And also I have to be in a specific mood.

Yeah, exactly. Like urban fantasy compared to cozy mystery, you know? I just want to know what I'm getting into. So yeah, I completely agree.

If this isn't MM, then I mean, the cover looks awesome, but I can't tell. If it she says she writes romance I'm just not sure. I'm going to go back into her Amazon page and see if I can look and what if it says more, where did that go?

Oh, yeah, like in the reviews or whatnot.

Yeah. Okay. That's all the blurb is, is this.

So, okay. It says it is gay romance.

Oh, okay. Well then, yeah, then the cover's right on, but the rest of her branding doesn't say that.

Right. And this isn't it doesn't say anything about romance.

Yeah. It needs to, so the blurb needs to be a little bit clearer on what it is.

A lot clearer. Yeah, because there's, Rebel can be a girl name or a boys.

Exactly. And there's a female ghost here. So I'm like, maybe there, it's RH and there's a female ghost and that's, I don't know what's going on. But the cover is gorgeous. Perfect for that. The cover looks good. Yeah. And now that I know for a fact it's MM, then it looks amazing, but I just didn't know.

So what are the reviews saying?

If I can get to the reviews. I don't think there are. These are just ratings. They're not, they didn't tell us what's.

Yeah. I hate that. I don't think anybody should be able to leave a review unless they at least write five to 10 words.

Yeah. It sucked. Or it was great. Or. I mean, it could just be some, well, yeah, maybe somebody, yeah. Like I said, the covers are great. So that just needs to be clear in the blurb because this was not, this isn't clear. It's not even clear that it's an actual romance besides the word desire in it.

So that needs to be cleaned up a bit.

Yeah. I think her covers are beautiful, especially where they're appropriate for like, this one is obviously a highlander romance.

I mean, yeah, that's very well branded.

Yeah, very well branded The Gladiators Promise. Love it.

Change the Room. Perfect. Counter Strike. That looks good. I do like different pen names for different genres.

So that does make it a little difficult. And if you're doing like contemporary or historical or whatever, where it's set in the real world versus paranormal, I think those two for me personally, I need those separated, but that's me. Yeah, I think it tightens up your brand more.

Yeah. Because people say, oh, Patricia Bates writes this and Patricia M. Bates,  you know, a variation of the name writes this.

Yeah, exactly. I agree. And then she has her name for her MM. or whatever, you know what I'm saying?

Yes. Yeah. I really do think the MM. needs to be separated out into a pen name for sure as well, because that's. Yeah. I know so many readers who love MM, and if they know, Patricia Bates writes this…

Right. And that's all that’s under that pen name. They'll go right through it like its candy.

I agree with that. I think that one needs to be separated out. If you don't want to separate out your historical and your romance, your romantic suspense, that's fine. But if they are female male. Then they can be one male, male, or female, female, whatever. You're going to have them separated out because that's two different readers, two different kinds of readers, and they don't necessarily cross.

So that might be a stunting. With historical contemporary like that, they don't necessarily cross either.

Oh yeah, exactly. I'm just saying, if she's like, no, I'm not gonna, you know, change it or whatever, then I would at least separate out for those. But yeah, you should have the paranormal and you should have contemporary under different ones.

And I know a lot of people like, oh no, I just do all the same pen names all under one pen name. That's totally fine. We are whatever you do you I just noticed that readers are hoping for certain things, right? Like, and I've been through this. I had all my stuff under one pen name and I'll tell you what.

Separating out was a huge difference for my income.

Oh my gosh, I remember that. I remember. You know, because people might know Bonnie writes this, but they know B. R. Paulson writes this, and it's just easier for the reader to know which book they pick up.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. You're right. So that's something to think about.

She does a good job on our covers. She really does. That's so nice. I agree. They're really pretty. I'm not sure what Master's Mistress is, and I'm not sure what this one is. So those two might need to be looked at for a new cover to adjust expectations. And I would put that at like 99 cents or 299, probably 99 cents.

Or you could, if this could be made like the claiming her dreams, if that one could be made into where it's like a magnet and maybe funnel into another series, that might be a great place to put that. For her website, I would be a little bit like, this is great. Like this is all good information and stuff, but I would definitely organize it a little bit tighter.

Like this is, she has this under contemporary, but it's not just contemporary. It's also romance. It's that paranormal, like that mystery. So yeah. See, because I'm a person who would rather pick up a paranormal book compared to a contemporary book. So once I saw contemporary, I would just move on because I wouldn't know that there was paranormal there.

Right. And they're not the same thing. This one's marked as contemporary romance and ghost romance and paranormal romance and romantic suspense. And they're not, it's not, it's, they're not the same thing. Contemporary romance is real worlds. You know, I read this one book this one time and it was like, everybody like was like, Oh, this is going to be the best book ever.

It was 99 cents. And they, everybody, cause I think they liked the author so much. Everybody liked the author. Cause she was really integral to the to the author world. Like she just made friends. They're very, really great networker. And I, it was. It was penned as like a contemporary YA romance, new adult romance.

And so I read it and by the end of it, there was like ghosts involved and it wasn't mentioned through the whole like 85 percent of the book. And it was really engaging story. I was really into it. And then suddenly to fix the plot holes, there was like ghosts and then witch power. And then the guy turned into a vampire or something.

And this was like the last. Literally like the last five to 10% of the book, the whole book was contemporary and then suddenly there's, and I was like, whoa, what just happened? Well, how was it marketed? I mean, was it marketed as contemporary romance? Yeah, and it did very well the first week because everybody was supporting it.

And then this book just disappeared because all of re's reviews were like, I don't know what happened, which I was like, I agree. I agree. I do not know what happened. It was a great book. And then that happened. And it was like, I don't know what's going on. So you want to kind of nip that in the bud. In the beginning, this one's 327 pages, it says, so if you figure, yeah, if you figure this is where it's like, okay, pick one.

If you have ghosts, you're probably a paranormal romance. You know, if you have those types of things, paranormal, you have ghost romance, that kind of stuff. Yes. And that's okay to market it that way. That's great. You can totally do that, but don't mix it up and be like it's contemporary romance when it's not.

Yeah. That makes a big, that makes a big problem. So if, if you're trying to find the reviewers, you have to figure out who am I going to target for reviews? Because reviewers are totally different readers as well. They're like, I only want contemporary romance, or I only want this. And if you're sending them here, they're going to be like,

I don't, I don't know what to say. She was probably thinking since it took place. Right. Current times, historically and now. That's probably why she tagged it that way, even though. Right. That makes perfect sense. Marketing wise, that's not how we do it. So for this one, I would've just said paranormal romance and then and gay romance.

You have to say gay.

Oh yeah. The gay romance. Yes, definitely. So yeah, I'm just talking like paranormal versus ghost versus contemporary. So I wouldn't even say romantic suspense. I mean, you can say with suspenseful elements, but if you do paranormal romance, because it's assumed, it's assumed that it's contemporary times now that's paranormal romance suggests that now, if you're like historical paranormal romance, that is one as well.

And people are like, Oh yeah, that's historical. I expect it. So you also give them a heads up. So if I was to take this book and I was going to go to a book signing, which is essentially what you're doing with ads, you're going to go to book saying, and you're like, this is a gay, paranormal romance with suspenseful element.

Like that's what I would start with so that's what you should be able to put into your headlines for your ads into like the hook. It should be in the hook. This so this this needs some work on the blood on the blurbs. But yeah, I mean her the books that the covers are marketed lovely. They look great.

So I agree. Yeah, I think that's just something that just needs to be tightened up a little bit. And then I think all of it just needs a tiny bit of tweaking. I don't think this is anything huge. Even yeah, maybe moving it to a different pen name would be kind of, I think so unless they're all MM or they're all gay.

I didn't see that. Maybe there are, I don't know, but I do think that for sure needs to be separated at least in a two pen. Well, yeah. Cause the other ones don't look like they're MM at all. The chains are grown. I mean, look at Flaming Her Dream. There's like a girl there. That's not, that's not what we're talking about here.

So yeah, I would, yeah. So she's probably looking at three pen names here. So she's got the historical romance. She has the paranormal romance. And then she has the contemporary, but she also has the gay is the gay contemporary. So is this for that? We're looking at those are no, the, the gay, the MM is the paranormal.

So, okay. So that's, that's still three, right?

Yeah. So that's three.

Okay. All right. So that's where, and this one probably needs a guy in it. If it's as well.

Oh, you mean the two men? Yeah.

Yeah. The two MM because this one is very clearly MM in the cover. This one is not. So she probably needs to adjust that. Put another hot guy in there. It's cool. That's fine.

Yeah. Cause that Hunter's desire is it's like a really clear, I think that's a great cover. I think it's awesome. Now I want to read it. Yeah. Right. Love the cover. These are great too. I mean, they're just, they're very appealing. This one I might address.

Look at that in your dream a little bit. This one, Master's Mistress. I might look at that one a little bit and see. Yeah. I'm assuming that it's a historical because it's Master's Mistress with the name, but right. Okay. Let's look ancient Ireland. It said, Oh, okay. So yeah. Medieval historical romance. I was going to say, how many pages is like, cause it's 2.99 to 73.

She could probably go up on the price of that too. Yeah. Especially if she's wide with it. If you want to make this cover, put it a little bit more like this one. Then I can have a better branding and it looks more like a romance. You know, what is it called? Regency? No, the, they call them something covers the breast covers the, Oh gosh.

I know what I'm talking about. The bodice rippers.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. The bodice rippers.

Yes. And that's not what this is, but it could be. That's good. So, yeah, that's, that's where I would think that would be like, cause her covers are great. I mean, her, her blurbs need a little bit of work to make the goal.

So, so Patricia, here's your action plan. You're going to look at doing possibly more pen names. Okay, we would recommend that and then I would also recommend work on your blurbs, make sure that you have a goal, the motivation and the conflict very clear. You don't need last names.

You can put last names in a blurb, but you don't need to and just make it clear what the genre and subgenre are which are very nice in the covers. And then what I would also do is I would create a plan for how you're going to add to each of those pen names. Like, if you write fast, great. See if you can get them some more names up or get some more books up underneath each of those names. And then I would definitely put like an order for that, like be like, okay, I can, I can do a book every two months, a book every three months and pick the ones that sell the best and have the best reviews.

And that's the pending that I would focus on until you get enough money coming in to where you're like, okay, this pen name is doing really well. I focused on it. Look at the reviews and see what people are loving about that specific book or pen name. Would you agree with that, Mandie?

Yeah. And I would also try to get more reviews period. Though, get rid of those story origin reviews because that's crap.

And yeah, it was probably somebody who grabbed a book that wasn't even a genre they usually read, you know, something like that target somebody who reads the genre.

Yeah. Exactly. Or they saw the cover and they were expecting something different.

We don't know. So, yeah. So definitely, definitely do that.

You want to get some good reviews in there. So, like the Mistaken Groom, that's good. The Visconti's Bride, those look really good. We just need more and it's hard. You might consider pulling into KU a couple of the titles to get them pushed a little bit.

Until you have more, more names. Cause it's in, when you go wide or direct or whatever you're doing, when you're doing a wide, a wide version, you want to have more books so that your read through is actually accumulating appropriately and it's more consistent. So, but these all look great. These look great.

The covers are just gorgeous. So, her Agents of Star, I'm wondering how long those are. That's only 2.99.

The Agents of Star this one, the contemporary ones. It says 106 pages.

Okay. Yeah. 106 pages. That's good.

Yeah. It's priced accordingly. Yeah. That's awesome. Cover. I'm going to go. Maybe I need to reach out to her and get a cover done. They look good. Yeah. She does a good job.

Yeah. She does a good job.

All right. So, okay. So I think, I think we covered a bunch. Do you think we did?

Yeah, I think we did. I think overall, she's doing a really good job. It's just little tweaks that she can make that'll probably make a huge difference.

Cause I remember when you took, you know, you broke up your names and we were like, holy cow.

Yeah. I couldn't believe the increase in income. It was like, oh, you mean readers want to understand what they're buying.

Yeah. Yeah. They don't want to shift through in your case, like 300 books.

It was a lot. It was like, and I remember telling you, I was like, I don't want to separate these. This is going to be hard.

Yeah.

You were like, just do it. We're just going to do it. So we did it. That was good. Paid off. So maybe that's something that you look at. And we're just so grateful that you let us look through your brand and spotlight you today.

If anybody else wants to be spotlighted, we'd love to do that. Just sign up below. We have a link in the description.

Click subscribe and the bell that gives you notifications and like this video and share it with a friend because Patricia has some fun things ahead of her and we want to watch how she's progressing.

Thanks again, Patricia, so much for being on our Brand Spotlight and this is Bonnie and Mandie. See you soon. Bye.