DartFrog plus is a full service hybrid publishing program that combines editing, design, publishing, marketing, distribution and PR. Every DartFrog Plus author is assigned a dedicated professional publicist to seek out & schedule media opportunities on their behalf. The DartFrog Plus program is highly curated both for writing quality and the book’s potential for generating media interest/interviews. Authors are not required to have an existing platform. Evaluation of every manuscript is free and if invited to publish through DarFrog Plus, there is no obligation to accept.
Standard Features for all DartFrog Plus Projects include:
Every DartFrog Plus author has an account manager that they can correspond with through Basecamp (the platform we use for all team communications), or by Zoom if a face to face meeting is needed. The account manager oversees the team working on your book, is your direct point of contact, and also manages the administrative tasks that are important to the publishing process (the assigning of ISBNS, Library of Congress registration, uploading files, etc).
A full proofread of the manuscript is included (if we like your story but it requires more than a proofread, we will tell you).
We manage the interior design & formatting process (for print & ebook) as well as the cover design process (for print & ebook). We do not impose a restriction on the number of revisions allowed, because every project is different. We will revise until it is perfect.
We optimize your book for Amazon, which includes selection of keywords and categories that will give it the best chance to successfully engage Amazon’s algorithms and achieve ranking status. We also tweak the book description and author bio for optimal engagement.
Professional video trailer (60-90 sec) with motion graphics, script development and custom background music.
Over the course of three, one hour zoom calls we assess your existing platform and provide guidance on the topics relevant to growing your specific platform. Topics may include:
- – Social Media Strategy Development
- – The technical side of social media channels (navigating around)
- – Tactical methods to build your following (strategy)
- – Basic social media rules, expectations, and recommendations
- – Visual Branding (logo, colors, fonts)
- – Messaging (tone, personality, and voice)
- – Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube
- – Email Marketing
- – Advertising
DartFrog will provide a custom researched report identifying the existing groups across social media that would be interested in a book like yours. The report will also include the best hashtags for you to use when posting on social. The idea behind the report is to help you build a long term strategy for your social media engagement, by identifying who to reach out to and then (in connection with the Platform Development coaching) how to begin the conversation. If done right, members of these groups may, in time, become interested in buying your book and/or helping to promote it. This report is not about generating immediate sales, in other words. It’s about truly building a social network.
DartFrog will create a custom banner for your book to appear on our website homepage and some initial social media designs for you to post immediately before, during and after the launch. Additionally, we will design A+ content for the Publisher section of the Amazon product page to give it a fully custom and polished feel (A+ Content is the term for product specific custom graphics that make your Amazon product page more visually appealing).
Custom website design & construction. The website incorporates Book Funnel (for disbursing reader magnets and capturing reader email addresses) and all DartFrog built websites enjoy free hosting.
Every DartFrog Plus author is assigned a professional publicist who will pitch the book to a wide variety of media outlets relevant to the book’s subject matter. The publicist is fully engaged for 8 weeks (two weeks prior to launch and 6 weeks after launch). Authors can, if they wish, continue with their publicist on a monthly basis after the initial 8 week period.
We connect your book to influencers (Instagram, TikTok, and/or the blogosphere) who read the story and share their honest opinion with their audience. We guarantee at least 10 influencers will review your book.
We promote your book to 52,000+ book clubs through our exclusive partnership with BookClubs.com, which also includes a direct link to the book in their email to all members (300,000+) on the first day of the three month promotion.
A four color feature ad for your book will be placed in Ingram’s Independent Voice magazine (25,000 librarians and retailers) and another feature ad will be placed in the Ingram Holiday Guide (6500 print and 35,000 digital circulation). Additionally, some books may be included in a full page DartFrog ad in Ingram’s flagship catalog called Advance (7500 print and 35,000 digital circulation to libraries and retailers).
DartFrog will place your book in up to 5 independent bookstores. The book will be displayed face front in a genre appropriate section of the store at eye level, with a handwritten shelf reader card attached. The store will also include the book in an email newsletter to its customer base. We will provide a photo of the book on display in the store, which you can then share on your social media.
For indie authors, Amazon is the most important selling platform you have. Yes, other platforms are important, especially the ones that support indie bookstores, but the reality is the greatest potential you have for sales is on Amazon. So, a well researched and executed Amazon advertising campaign is crucial. We target genre-specific search terms with the highest click thru conversion potential, and we pay for the ad spend to get those clicks. During the campaign, we analyze the data frequently, making tweaks where necessary. Because we earn a royalty from every sale, it is in our interest to forge the most successful ad campaign we can and then leave it running indefinitely to maintain a steady flow of month-to-month sales.
We typically commission a professional review from Midwest Book Review and BookLife for every DartFrog Plus title. Reviews are submitted once the interior formatting is finished, in the hopes that we can add excerpts from positive reviews to the cover before releasing the book.
We list your book on Amazon, Ingram, and Smashwords, which (through their partnerships) ensures your book will be available everywhere books are sold. We utilize Print on Demand technology because it ensures unlimited scalability and availability, and because a POD book is now totally equal in quality and cost to an offset printed book.
As a DartFrog Plus author, you earn a 70% royalty of all net income from sales of the book. All royalties are paid on a quarterly basis.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. DartFrog Plus has been enhanced and expanded to include many features that the original hybrid program did not. Some of these additional features include a dedicated publicist, direct advertising to retailers and libraries, and more.
The price depends on the specifics of our PR plans, proposed advertising placements, projected size of the influencer campaign and specific approach to the Amazon ad campaign. But all DartFrog Plus titles require significant work from a large team of people involved in the production, marketing and PR. The cost for each project is set to fit the scale.
First, the story must be engaging and well written. In some cases, if we think a story is good but needs more than the editing/proofreading included in the DartFrog Plus package, we will let you know and give you the opportunity to edit and re-submit or hire one of our editors to do the deeper editing for you.
Second, it must have PR potential. If your manuscript is well written but not well suited to a PR campaign, then we will refer you to our Canoe Tree program, because we only accept projects that our publicist agrees would be solid candidates for PR.
Yes. Our publicist has many years of experience in pitching fiction and non-fiction authors. If we approve a submission (whether fiction or non) it’s in part because the publicist feels that he can successfully pitch the book/author to media.
The publicist will begin pitching two weeks before the book’s release and will continue for six weeks after the launch. So, eight weeks in total. If you want to continue with the publicist after that, we can do so on a monthly basis.
The goal with an Amazon ad campaign is to find the lowest cost path to generating the most clicks that convert to sales. It will take us some time and continual tweaking to find this path. When we do, we will run the ads indefinitely, as long as they are producing net positive revenue, because the ads also help keep the book’s search rank up.
Titles are very important to the SEO process, so we will work with you to determine the best title for the story and the search engines. So, the best way to answer the question is to say that the titling process is collaborative.
We have a network of about 200 influencers from Instagram and TikTok. They are all people who built their own followings posting about books, and when they read and review your book, they do so on their own channel to their own audience.
We have no control over what the influencers say, which is in your interest as the author. Honest reviews are the only reviews you want, even if they are not 100% positive. The influencers we work with built their followings by sharing their real opinions on books, and is exactly what they do with the books we send them.
We do ask each influencer before assigning a book if it is one they would like to read. In this way, we try to align the influencer with the book as best we can.
Yes…and don’t let anyone tell you differently! For books that require special printing features like foil stamping, embossing or custom endsheets, offset printing is still the only option. But the vast majority of books in the retail trade market do not need special features like that. They need good quality paper, excellent binding and durable cover material, which POD provides.
The technology is now to the point where it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a POD book and an offset printed book. The print pricing is the same as well.
Where there is a massive difference is flexibility. With a POD book, if we find a typo after launch or we want to add a new review or award emblem to the cover, we simply update the file and all books sold from that moment forward reflect the updated file. No more wasted books or books in a warehouse with a typo that can’t be fixed. In fact, there’s no more warehousing of any books with a POD approach, all of which is better for the environment.
Unless you need special printing features, there’s really no reason for books today to not be POD.
The answer to this question will depend on several factors, but generally speaking the answer is about 6-9 months.
Some of our Favorite DartFrog Plus Projects
