We recently connected with Kandie Marie and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kandie, thanks for joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
As an author you never know what readers are going to feel when they’re reading a book. I take my time with creating each story, each book, each character; each character is built them from pure imagination, and I fill each book with love. The longer you stay in the industry, the more you want to grow, and you want to expand your reader base. So last year I took a leap of faith and worked with my literary agent Racquel Williams to publish my first mainstream book, Making Love to a Dope Boy. I can’t lie. I was nervous about the results, I was nervous about if people would purchase the book, and how well it would hit the charts. I’ve learned that the charts are one of the biggest biggest things to worry about, but telling a story that captivated a reader is the most important part. And in taking that risk, I have gained multiple new readers that have went back and read some of my older works, and even with that gaining new readers is always an important thing because that means that I’ve expanded and continuously expanding my reader/clientele base, and it’s exciting.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Hello again, my name is Kandie Marie. I am a 11 times Amazon best selling Author. I have published 50 books in county my 51st book releases on October 29 titled my kinky ABCs part two. I started writing when I was about 12, and I started with poetry and actually writing songs. Overtime I thought it would be intriguing to see if I could write a book. So during classes when I was in high school I started to write and one of my friends took the notebook and started reading it. It was like oh my gosh, this is so good and they would send it around the school and that’s when I knew I had a really had a talent and not just a love for literature and for writing and this could really be a path for me. Fast-forward a few years later after having my first child, my son, Jay, I decided to publish my first book which is no longer available, but it was definitely the leap of faith that I needed to really see if I can do this, and the love that I received the support that I received from that first release pushed me took it to you to go further. Now pushing forward almost 10 years into the game I celebrate my 10 year author anniversary on January 3 of next year and I am honored to have published and released two mainstream books making lots of adult boy and sense of a side chick that is available anywhere books are sold domestically and internationally. One thing that I can say about when you pick up a book from Kandie Marie, you are picking up a book that’s going to take you on a wild ride; rather if it’s a erotica/smut, urban fiction, romance, dark romance, street lit or a thriller, a urban thriller; you are going to receive an amazing story with characters that are going to pull on your mind, your heart and other strings. And. I can say that the biggest thing that I am proud of to this day outside of my children would it be the fact that I have published 50 books not a lot of authors could say that there are a few that could say that, but to be one of the ones that can say hey I’ve published 50 books. I’m doing something that I love. I’m doing something that can set my kids up for the rest of their lives. It’s a beautiful thing, and I am overly blessed and honored to have the readers in the fan base that I have so if you have not read a book by Kandie Marie pick up a book today I promise you’ll love it
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Social media has been such a huge impact to me as an author it still is there’s a lot of things that I’m still learning about social media especially with TikTok. TikTok is probably one of my weaker strong points when it comes to promotion because I’m still learning the proper hashtags and how to engage on TikTok the way that I should gain the readers that way. I’ve had some luck so far but the constant engagement sometimes you just wanna post abd log off but that’s where you can’t; social media is like having another job when you’re in this industry or any industry that requires you to connect with the people. So for me, I use Instagram a lot. I use Instagram and Facebook ads, I also use threads. I no longer use Twitter or what is now called at. Again I’m starting to use TikTok a lot more just learning the hashtags you know what drives people to your page finding your target audience finding other and literally finding social media, influencers Big or smaller in between a really hopeful and insightful because they can help with your promo. Sometimes you can do a quid pro quo like I prefer for you to promote for me or something in that nature which helps build both of your brands. And so with that, I tend to do a lot of that sometimes I just do the ass and sometimes I just do the promote myself and just push and push and push and push, especially the reek of the week of releases the day of and the week after I heavily pushed on social media just to make sure that people are seeing the book seeing my name, but like I keep seeing this book, I keep seeing it and I feel like the more people see something the more people hear about it the more you can get people to share your post. That is such a huge thing. I believe in having people share your post and support is support cost nothing right so supporting somebody else will make them more likely to support you so if you see another business online and you see them post something about their business share it so when they see you post something about your business, whatever it may be they’ll be more inclined to share the love as well even they may even go a little bit further and purchase something from you and vice versa. So using social media, especially as a networking tool is super huge in for me, especially with promoting and getting my name out there consistently.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
So I like to call my readers my Kandie Canes. My Kandie Cane’s are definitely my backbone. They keep me going when I don’t feel like writing anymore when I feel like the industry has gotten water down, when I feel like I wanna give up even though this is my passion, my candy, canes my readers, new and old and in between they have been such a ground for me. So when the time comes, for example I’m gonna do something in January for my readers, but I like to get back to them like they’ve been supporting me, especially readers that have been supporting me these last nights and a half years that I’ve been published and putting that book after book after book I like to give them like little freebies I give them a free book if I know that I have a book coming out next month and I finish it early and I’m able to get paper backs. I do it as a way to say thank you as make sure it’s assigned copy as well. I think it’s important to always shout out those who support us especially those that support us from the beginning because that genuine support and love does not come easy and to have people that genuinely do that for you without batting an eye you know let you know that you’re doing something right but also you know you don’t want to take those people for granted cause you never know they could be here today and gone tomorrow. So it’s really important to always show love to them the best way that you can. It’s so my way is you know maybe sending them a present or giving them a special birthday shout out or giving them a free book or if they have a business finding a way to help support their business because they supported me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/Kandiemariethekandieyshoppellc
- Instagram: Kandiemarie_author_ksllcceo
- Facebook: author Kandie Marie
- Twitter: Authkandiemarie
