I don’t recall how I met Carmen Amato. Whether it was on Twitter or Facebook or Pinterest, I just can’t say. What I can say is that I’m glad I did. She’s a fun Facebook friend to have (we both love dogs and books) and infinitely intriguing.
Also, her books are fascinating, maybe because Amato spent 30 years working with the CIA. How well does she write? Amazon Hall of Fame reviewer Grady Harp wrote: “For pure entertainment and a gripping story likely resulting in nail-biting, read Carmen Amato’s addictive prose. She knows this territory like a jaguar!” Wow! Right? Keep reading to learn how this Indie author became such a savvy success story among Indies.
Carmen Amato: Prolific Writer
Q: You are a prolific writer. What drove you to write? Had you always wanted to be a writer?
A: I’ve always loved to read and write, even writing little stories for my mother when I was in grade school. I discovered authors Leon Uris, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ken Follett, Herman Wouk, and Roland Huntford in high school, beginning a lifelong love affair with deeply immersive books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Q: How long does it take you to write a novel?
Now that I know the characters in my Detective Emilia Cruz series so well, it takes about 9 months from start to finish. It took 3 years to write my first standalone novel, The Hidden Light of Mexico City, but much longer to edit it.
Along the way, I wrote another standalone thriller, the first Detective Emilia Cruz, Cliff Diver, and the collection of short stories Made in Acapulco. So, I actually had a lot of content before starting to publish in 2012.
Amazon Reviews
Q: While some authors have difficulty accumulating reviews on Amazon, you don’t seem to have any trouble. For Cliff Diver: An Emilia Cruz, for example, your novel has 232 reviews. What do you attribute that to? (Do you have a street team or use another strategy to encourage your readers to spread the word about your books?)
I try not to compare myself with other series authors who have hundreds of reviews, like Caimh McDowell or Jinx Schwartz!
Back when more Amazon reviewers listed their email addresses, I combed through books similar to mine to find well-written reviews. Then I emailed those readers to complement their review of the books and offer mine as their next book to review.
It was hugely time-consuming but a remarkably effective tactic that is no longer viable. In the last two years, Amazon reviewers have stopped posting contact information. Now, I include an appeal in the back matter of all books and periodically ask newsletter subscribers to post a review. Reviews come organically, albeit slowly.
CIA Background Grounds Her Writing
Q: How do you use your 30-year career with the CIA to inform your novels?
A: The CIA taught me to write on demand. As an intelligence officer, there is no such thing as writer’s block.
Beyond that, being analytical and suspicious are highly evolved skills at the CIA that easily translate into writing complex mystery and thriller plots. Add in in-depth area knowledge and all the tools are there. Maybe that’s why people remark that my books are “something fresh” in the mystery genre.
Q: Made in Acapulco: The Emilia Cruz Stories is ranked 52 in Women’s Detective Fiction. That’s incredible. What do you attribute to the success of that novel?
Price and a great cover.
This collection of prequel stories sets up the Detective Emilia Cruz series and is free in several e-book marketplaces. It gets around 100 downloads every month without any advertising besides a Facebook post now and then. I always see a flow-through from this prequel to the first full novel in the series, Cliff Diver.
Amazon Categories
Q: One of your categories for Pacific Reaper is Pulp Thrillers. I didn’t even know that was a category. Who decides on your Amazon categories and keywords? If it’s you, how did you learn this skill?
There is no skill involved, just hours combing through the Kindle Store. Last year I did a marathon and found something like 8 categories for all my books and sent Amazon a bunch of emails.
Now, Julie Smith and her team at BooksBNimble handle ads, pricing, and category placement for the Detective Emilia Cruz series. So far, they are doing a great job.
Book Covers Clearly Branded
Q: Your book covers have distinctive branding. Just by looking at the covers, I know it’s one of your novels. Did your cover designer come up with the branding or was it a joint effort? It’s definitely a smart marketing strategy.
A: Graphic artist Matt Chase, is the one responsible for the distinctive look of the Detective Emilia Cruz series. Matt is a real pro, with artwork across national media. As far as I know, I’m the only Indie author he works with. His artwork is by far my most significant business expense.
After an initial exchange, Matt created 5 different design concepts for the series for me to choose from. I loved the one with the stucco bleeds. Now that we’ve done 9 book covers and 4 audio covers together, the process is smooth. I’ll give him some idea of what the book is about and any thoughts on a motif. He works up designs and colorways. After 2-3 rounds of tinkering, the cover is done.
There were 3 books in the series, plus the prequel when I switched to Matt’s covers. Sales immediately went up.
Lesson learned! My 2 standalone thrillers got new covers, too. The final designs are more eye-catching and use the same sans-serif font you see on my website and swag, which is a slimmer version of the font on the Detective Emilia Cruz covers. The goal is to have eye-catching covers yet be consistent for easy reader recognition.
Translation into Spanish
Q: Your novels – or at least some of them – are translated into Spanish. How did you find your translator, and how well are your novels selling in Spanish-speaking countries?
- I’m at the very start of the journey so please ask me in about 2 years!
I released the bilingual novella The Artist/El Artista last year, and it won the 2019 Silver Falchion award in the Short Story/Collection category. I began a project to provide it to schools as a language learning tool and hope to donate 100 copies in the fall.
Hecho en Acapulco, the Spanish edition of Made in Acapulco, is available, but I have done no advertising yet. Gabino Iglesias, the author of Coyote Songs, is currently editing the translation of Cliff Diver, which will be released later this year as La Clavadista.
Once both books are available in Spanish, I’ll assemble an advertising campaign to primarily target audiences in Mexico and Spain, as well as Spanish readers in the US.
The translator is Karen Leclair Ayestas. A personal friend, she is a professional translator, editor, and Spanish teacher.
Carmen Amato’s Marketing Savvy
Q: You have more than 2,300 Likes on your Facebook author page. Those Likes are hard to come by these days. Do you buy Facebook ads to encourage penetration of the newsfeed and boost engagement? Or, is the engagement on your Facebook author page brought about organically?
A: The first 1000 likes on the page came from sponsored posts in 2013-14. The rest have happened organically. I post a mix of evergreen blog posts, current events related to the books, mystery content from other sources, and promos for my books. I often take cues about what to post on Facebook from reader emails.
Q: How did you learn to market your books? For example, which blogs do you read regularly, what webinars have you attended, which podcasts do you follow, and which marketing books have you purchased? Are there any book marketers that you favor?
A: I’m not sure what I do can be called marketing. It’s more like building a wheel and pushing it along with wishful thinking! I can’t say this is a scientific method, but it aligns with my interests and helps me build skills.
The hub of the wheel is my website carmenamato.net.
Social Media
The spokes, or “primary channels” in marketing lingo, are my blog, Facebook, and twice-monthly Mystery Ahead newsletter. My secondary channels are Pinterest and guest posting on industry blogs. My goal is to add YouTube as a secondary. Twitter can be a two-edged sword these days, so I’m rarely there, although I have over 8000 followers.
A few years ago, I took online classes with Derek Halpern of Social Triggers and Tim Grahl, author of Your First 1000 Copies. This gave me the push to start the Mystery Ahead newsletter.
I gravitate more toward business and blogging advice for entrepreneurs than specifically book marketing content. I regularly read Entrepreneur magazine, Mark Schaefer’s {grow} blog, Ann Handey’s “Annarchy” newsletter, Tim Ferriss’s Five Bullet Friday, as well as more book-related content like blogs by Anne R. Allen, Nicholas Erik, and Jane Friedman. And yours, of course!
Books I’ve found useful include:
The Content Code and Born to Blog by Mark Schaefer
Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
The Profitable Content System by Meera Kothand
The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
Facebook & Pinterest
Q: I have followed Ann Handley for years and years and I’ve also read Mark Schaefer’s books. Which social media platforms do you use? Which social media platforms garner the most engagement for you?
A: Facebook is my go-to social media. I have a content calendar for my page that I rarely follow, but it comforts me to know there’s a plan! I also belong to several useful Facebook groups, including the active and supportive Mexico Writers group.
Pinterest group boards help me find readers. I include a Pinterest-sized graphic in most of my blog posts, which feeds my graphic design hobby. When I pinned a picture of a very handsome man floating in the ocean while reading my romantic thriller Awakening Macbeth, the book got a very nice lift!
Q: I remember seeing that image and thinking, wow! I noticed that you give away the Detective Emilia Cruz Starter Library. A lot of authors resist doing this. Has the giveaway improved the sales of your other books?
A: This is the reader magnet I use to get people to subscribe to my newsletter. Subscribers get three emails—one per day for three days—and always have the option to download the entire thing as a single PDF. This way I don’t have to pay extra for Bookfunnel to send them a .mobi file.
I have tried various magnets, but this is the one that brings in subscribers who enjoy the newsletter and eventually buy books.
BookBub Promotions
Q: Have you done a BookBub promotion? What were the results for you?
A: I’ve scored a few BookBub promotions. The best was 14,000 downloads in one day and enough downstream book sales to triple my usual income for about three months.
BookBub ads are more accessible, and you can target readers who follow specific authors. I had good luck with an ad targeting Don Winslow readers for The Hidden Light of Mexico City and another that targeted Diana Gabaldon readers for Awakening Macbeth.
Q: I think it’s terrific that your protagonist is a woman. What made you decide to have the main character of your novels a female?
A: I’m a write what you know author. All my role models are strong women, as are all my friends. I wrote both male and female POVs in The Hidden Light of Mexico City. Still, for the Detective Emilia Cruz series, I want the reader to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with Emilia and no one else.
The CIA
Q: Was it due to your position with the CIA that you gained experience working in Mexico and Central America? Can you talk about one of those assignments?
A: Uhhhh, yes. Uhhhh, not really.
My official resume says: “Positions of increasing responsibility in the areas of intelligence analysis, open-source intelligence, international negotiations, change management, and strategic communications. Recognized for multiple innovations leading to enhanced US intelligence capabilities. Significant overseas experience.”
My career was somewhat unusual because I had the opportunity to work across all of the CIA’s mission directorates: analysis, operations, and science and technology.
The job that really gave me the background for the Detective Emilia Cruz series involved a program of collection, translation, and analysis of breaking events. I supervised employees in multiple locations across the Western Hemisphere.
A Distinguished Career
Q: During your career, you received two awards, the National Intelligence Award and the Career Intelligence Medal. Tell me about those awards and how you felt when you received them.
A: I was overseas on a different assignment when the National Intelligence Award was processed for prior actions and never heard about it. I got it two years later, when I was back in Washington, making the rounds of friends and colleagues to catch up. A friend who’d worked on the prior action reached into her desk and casually handed me a velvet box. What a surprise!
The career medal was a similar thing. I retired in March 2016, during a major reorganization. I did not want any ceremony besides walking out the front door over the great seal emblazoned on the floor of the CIA headquarters lobby.
Six months later, I got a call saying did I want my CIM award mailed, or did I want to come for a photo ceremony? When my kids came home from college for Christmas, we all went, and I formally received the award.
Thankfully, these experiences are not typical. I received many other awards and citations over a 30-year career, which were all handled with the appropriate gravitas.
BOOKS BY CARMEN AMATO
Detective Emilia Cruz series
CLIFF DIVER: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 1
HAT DANCE: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 2
DIABLO NIGHTS: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 3
KING PESO: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 4
PACIFIC REAPER: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 5
43 MISSING: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 6
RUSSIAN MOJITO: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 7
MADE IN ACAPULCO: The Emilia Cruz Stories
THE ARTIST/EL ARTISTA: A Short Story in English and Spanish
Suspense
AWAKENING MACBETH
THE HIDDEN LIGHT OF MEXICO CITY
About Carmen Amato: After a 30-year career as a CIA intelligence officer, Carmen Amato writes mysteries and thrillers loaded with intrigue and action. Expect fast-paced tales riven with corruption, deceit, and suspense.
Her Detective Emilia Cruz police series includes CLIFF DIVER, HAT DANCE, DIABLO NIGHTS, KING PESO, PACIFIC REAPER, 43 MISSING, and RUSSIAN MOJITO, plus a prequel collection of short stories MADE IN ACAPULCO. These crime thrillers pit the first female police detective in Acapulco against Mexico’s cartels, corruption, and social inequality. Optioned for television, the series was awarded the Poison Cup for Outstanding Series from CrimeMasters of America. Find all of her books here. Grab a free copy of the Detective Emilia Cruz Starter Library.
About Frances Caballo, the author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media consultant for writers. My focus is on helping writers like you surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online and building their platform. I also provide content writing and email marketing services. Be sure to download my ebook on Twitter. You can get it now for free!