Episode 059 - Author Newsletter Swaps and StoryOrigin with Evan Gow
December 29. 2020
Evan Gow discusses the role newsletter swaps can play in author promotions, the etiquette of swaps, and some gotchas authors should watch out for, as well as advice for authors with small or inactive email lists. Evan also talks about the many other services that StoryOrigin provides, and why the fact that he’s both the development team and the support team for StoryOrigin means that its current beta (i.e., free) status still means high quality.
Evan Gow is the indie developer of StoryOrigin, a marketing tool and community of authors that work together to build their mailing lists, increase sales, find reviewers, and stay on top of deadlines.
"With a cross-promotion with another author, like a newsletter swap, those are, number one, free because you're just making an agreement with another author. They are easy to set up because you don't have to figure out some sort of ads dashboard and targeting and all this stuff. And third is they're targeted. So when you set up a newsletter swap with another author, you can set up that newsletter swap with an author that's in your genre. So that is the context as to why newsletter swaps are growing, why authors are looking for other sort of marketing avenues." --Evan Gow
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[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast, today my guest is Evan Gow. Hey, Evan, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Evan: Pretty good. Thanks for having me on.
[00:00:08] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of an introduction to you. Evan Gow is the indie developer of StoryOrigin, a marketing tool and community of authors that work together to build their mailing lists, increase sales, find reviewers, and stay on top of deadlines. And the topic that we're going to be talking about is author newsletter swaps, and Evan, we now know you're the StoryOrigin guy based on the bio, but before we dive into the details of newsletter swaps, I'm curious what you are doing when you discovered the need for StoryOrigin, when the idea for StoryOrigin first came to you.
[00:00:44] Evan: So the genesis of StoryOrigin was that I've always been interested in writing since high school. I used to write short stories and then in college I got really interested in entrepreneurship and the idea of trying to build something. And so when I was leaving my previous role, I went and I talked to a few authors about what are some of the problems that you're facing? I had sort of an idea of what I wanted to build. And then I went and talked to a bunch of authors and I was like, "Hey, how can I help you best? What are you currently doing?"
[00:01:19] And I found out, Oh, okay, so you're using one platform for building your mailing list. You're using another platform for getting reviews. You're using a combination of Google sheets or some other platform or Facebook groups to set up newsletter swaps. And you're using some combination of your own website or multiple other websites to run group promotions with other authors. Soyou've got eight different services and three different spreadsheets and you're using all these different things. It's just a huge headache. Authors were seeing value from these tools, but it just was a headache to manage.
[00:01:57] So I was like, there should be one place where you can do it all, and that was the genesis of StoryOrigin -- trying to build a one-stop shop where authors could meet all their marketing needs around these different goals.
[00:02:11] Matty: We're going to get a chance at some point to talk about all the different tools, that StoryOrigin offers, but the one that is particularly interesting to me is newsletter swaps because it's one of those ones that I always hear about, and I've never done it because it always feels a little creepy to me. Can you just talk about not the tool yet but the philosophy behind newsletter swaps and why they're a good idea?
[00:02:35] Evan: Yeah. So as context to this conversation, as you look at what the different avenues are for marketing for authors today, the two biggest advertising platforms that authors go to are either Facebook ads or Amazon ads, and generally the bids for those ads are increasing over time because you have to essentially bid on getting placed in a feed or in a search result, so the cost is increasing over time. ...
[00:00:06] Evan: Pretty good. Thanks for having me on.
[00:00:08] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of an introduction to you. Evan Gow is the indie developer of StoryOrigin, a marketing tool and community of authors that work together to build their mailing lists, increase sales, find reviewers, and stay on top of deadlines. And the topic that we're going to be talking about is author newsletter swaps, and Evan, we now know you're the StoryOrigin guy based on the bio, but before we dive into the details of newsletter swaps, I'm curious what you are doing when you discovered the need for StoryOrigin, when the idea for StoryOrigin first came to you.
[00:00:44] Evan: So the genesis of StoryOrigin was that I've always been interested in writing since high school. I used to write short stories and then in college I got really interested in entrepreneurship and the idea of trying to build something. And so when I was leaving my previous role, I went and I talked to a few authors about what are some of the problems that you're facing? I had sort of an idea of what I wanted to build. And then I went and talked to a bunch of authors and I was like, "Hey, how can I help you best? What are you currently doing?"
[00:01:19] And I found out, Oh, okay, so you're using one platform for building your mailing list. You're using another platform for getting reviews. You're using a combination of Google sheets or some other platform or Facebook groups to set up newsletter swaps. And you're using some combination of your own website or multiple other websites to run group promotions with other authors. Soyou've got eight different services and three different spreadsheets and you're using all these different things. It's just a huge headache. Authors were seeing value from these tools, but it just was a headache to manage.
[00:01:57] So I was like, there should be one place where you can do it all, and that was the genesis of StoryOrigin -- trying to build a one-stop shop where authors could meet all their marketing needs around these different goals.
[00:02:11] Matty: We're going to get a chance at some point to talk about all the different tools, that StoryOrigin offers, but the one that is particularly interesting to me is newsletter swaps because it's one of those ones that I always hear about, and I've never done it because it always feels a little creepy to me. Can you just talk about not the tool yet but the philosophy behind newsletter swaps and why they're a good idea?
[00:02:35] Evan: Yeah. So as context to this conversation, as you look at what the different avenues are for marketing for authors today, the two biggest advertising platforms that authors go to are either Facebook ads or Amazon ads, and generally the bids for those ads are increasing over time because you have to essentially bid on getting placed in a feed or in a search result, so the cost is increasing over time. ...
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[00:03:06] With a cross-promotion with another author, like a newsletter swap, those are, number one, free because you're just making an agreement with another author. They are easy to set up because you don't have to figure out some sort of ads dashboard and targeting and all this stuff. And third is they're targeted, right? So when you set up a newsletter swap with another author, you can set up that newsletter swap with an author that's in your genre. So you know that their audience is going to be receptive to whatever you're writing. You're not going to set up a swap with someone that's outside of your genre. So that is the context as to why newsletter swaps are growing, why authors are looking for other sort of marketing avenues.
[00:03:51] In terms of what a newsletter swap actually is, that is essentially just an agreement between me and another author or let's say me and you. I've got a mailing list, let's say, with a thousand people on it, you've got mailing lists with a thousand people on it. I'll agree to mention your book in one of my upcoming newsletters and you would agree to mention one of my books in one of your upcoming newsletters.
[00:04:15] And it doesn't have to be a recommendation of my book. You don't need to say, "Hey, I've read this person's book and it's amazing and you should go read it," because you're not going to have the time to read every single book for every single newsletter swap that you set up. So what I recommend to authors who are setting up newsletter swaps is you just have. a section of your newsletter that's, "Here's some other things that you might be interested in." Like when Amazon shows you here's other books that other people bought that are in the same genre. Amazon isn't saying, "Hey, we've read these books and we know you're going to like them." It's simply a recommendation that, "Hey, this might interest you and you can figure that out on your own.
[00:04:58] Matty: I think that's where the creepy aspect comes in because I have always felt as if I shouldn't put something in my newsletter -- I'm struggling with my newsletter anyway, about figuring out the right content -- and I think readers see it as a recommendation. Even if you don't say it's a recommendation, they still see it as a recommendation. "Oh, this author I like, they have this other thing in their newsletter." And It's hard for me to get past that idea that I really do have to read and love the book that I would want to promote in that way. Do other people experience that?
[00:05:28] Evan: Certainly other people experience that hesitation for sure, that they don't want to feel like they are recommending books that they haven't read. And it's definitely a fair hesitation, which is why I say the framing by which you include it in your newsletter matters. Typically it's just in a section of "here's other books that might interest you," and you might have three or four or five books in that section. So your readers will understand conceptually that you didn't just read all of those five books in the past week, right? It's just, here's other things that might interest you.
[00:06:02] And you can frame it like that as well in your newsletter so that you're making sure that your readers understand that you haven't read these books. It's a super effective way to market your books and I've never had any authors tell me about having any sort of bad experience from doing newsletter swaps.
[00:06:21] I've seen authors who have run surveys of their mailing lists to see what they actually want to get in their newsletter, and one of the most popular things in that is that readers want to know what other books they should check out from that newsletter. So you can become a source of potentially new leads for them to check out what might interest them to read next. So I would say if anything, it's something that readers want you to do.
[00:06:55] Matty: Do you have any sense of whether the authors who are using StoryOrigin are putting multiple books in their newsletters or is it more common to have one book per newsletter? One book per newsletter feels more like a recommendation, whereas multiple books per newsletter feels more like just what you're describing: here's a set of other books you could consider.
[00:07:14] Evan: Exactly. I would say most authors generally will do somewhere between two to four books in a newsletter. And it's up to you when you do a newsletter swap if you want to have it be a "solo" swap where they're only going to talk about your book in their newsletter, and you're only going to talk about their book and your newsletter, And you guys aren't going to have any other books or promos and that newsletter. That's up to you if you want to arrange it like that with them. But it's certainly not what the norm is. The norm is definitely more around including multiple.
[00:07:52] Matty: You said that some of the parameters are obviously a comparable author in your genre. Are there other parameters, like will it be a solo presentation or one of several?
[00:08:04] Evan: On StoryOrigin, the way that you search for newsletter swaps, the assumption is that it will just be a mention in their newsletter, that it's not going to be a solo swap. If you want it to be a solo swap you after you agree to do a newsletter swap through StoryOrigin, you can get the other author's email in case you have any specific things that you guys want to talk about. So you can then arrange it to be a solo off of StoryOrigin, just over email. "Hey, let's do this as a solo." But I would say that's not super common.
[00:08:34] Matty: Obviously knowing comp authors is a key to having this be successful. Another thing that I often struggle with, because I think for every author, their own books are so nuanced -- it's not quite like anything else -- but of course it is. So do you offer any tips on how to identify the people within the StoryOrigin community that are going to be a good match for you?
[00:08:56] Evan: Yeah. So StoryOrigin, when you sign up and you go to your homepage, there's going to be a big button there that says Browse newsletter swaps, and when you go to that page, you'll see a list of upcoming dates that authors plan to send out their newsletters. So you'll see this person is sending out their newsletter on December 2nd, it's going to be going to a mailing list of, let's say, 1000 people, and they've got an open rate of 30% and a click rate of 5%. So StoryOrigin gives you all that information.
[00:09:28] And then you can also filter by tags that they've included with their newsletter. So you can filter by romance or sci-fi or fantasy. There's a huge list of types. So you can find exactly who's in your genre and you can combine those tags. So if you're in romance, but you're cozy romance and you don't want to swap with someone who's written a steamy romance, you could search for cozy romance.
[00:09:54] Or you could search for clean romance, so you can combine those tags to find exactly the kind of other authors that you want search for. And then you would want to look at their newsletter stats and see okay, would this make a good swap? And then you just submit a request to them through StoryOrigin.
[00:10:11] Matty: For someone who's starting out and maybe has a very small email list, do you have any recommendations for how they can best use a tool like that?
[00:10:19] Evan: Yeah. So if you're just starting out building a mailing list, I would actually recommend that you first get involved with doing group promotions. So newsletter swap is a one-to-one cross-promotion where I'm including your book in my newsletter, you're including my book in your newsletter. A group promotion is one where you, me, and let's say 20 other authors all agree to list our books on a single landing page. And then we all drive traffic to that landing page. And soif you can only contribute maybe 10 or 15 clicks to it it matters less than when you're having a one-to-one cross-promotion with someone else who let's say has a mailing list of 2000 people, and they're going to send you a hundred clicks. You might feel that maybe that's off balance
[00:11:05] With a group promotion, it's more just try your hardest to help other authors in that group promotion. So everyone is individually sending their traffic to that single landing page that has everyone's books. With StoryOrigin, you can set up these newsletter swaps or these group promotions for various landing pages that you set up on StoryOrigin. So that landing page could be for a reader magnet, which helps you build your mailing list. It could be for a review copy, which helps you get reviews. Or it could be for a universal book link, which sends readers to the retail page for your book at Amazon or Google Play or Barnes and Noble, whatever their preferred retailer is, where you have the book available.
[00:11:49] So you can have different goals. So if you're just starting out, I would recommend looking for and joining some group promotions that are for reader magnets that help you build your mailing list. And then from there, once you've got a few subscribers, it starts to make more sense to set up newsletter swaps because you actually have some more people on your mailing list. So you know that you can send people their way.
[00:12:11] All that said, though there have absolutely been people who have very small mailing lists on StoryOrigin and go ahead and start setting up newsletter swaps anyway. And there are a lot of authors on StoryOrigin who are generous enough to accept those swaps because they understand that they were in your position not so long ago. You will find authors on StoryOrigin who have a mailing list of a thousand people, and they were sitting at zero maybe a month or two months ago. It's not very long ago that they were in your shoes. And so they're like, "Oh yeah. I'll gladly accept helping you build your mailing."
[00:12:47] Matty: Oh, that's great to hear. And I think what you're describing is also highlighting. an important aspect of newsletter swaps -- that it is not exchanging email addresses, which would be illegal. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:13:00] Evan: Yes, the term newsletter swap is what the community has adopted, but it is a rather confusing term to a lot of people who have not participated in one before. So a newsletter swap is essentially simply an agreement that I will promote your book in one of my upcoming newsletters and you'll promote one of my books in one of your upcoming newsletters. I'm not giving you access to my mailing list. You're not giving me access to your mailing list. All it is is I'm going to put your book in my newsletter and whoever clicks on it, whoever doesn't, you don't gain access to their emails, unless I'm promoting one of your reader magnets and that reader specifically signed up to get your reader magnet and sign up to your mailing list. Otherwise, you do not want to actually share a mailing list or contact information with one another as that would be breaking some data regulations.
[00:13:52] Matty: Do you have any tips about etiquette for newsletter swaps or gotchas that you see people falling into when they're new to this?
[00:14:01] Evan: I would say that the typical etiquette is that you want to include the other author's book cover and then maybe a short description in your newsletter. You don't want toonly have some very small text there, with just a tiny link that goes to them.
[00:14:17] The other thing about StoryOrigin is when you set up a newsletter swap on StoryOrigin, the number of clicks that you send to a swap is visible to the other author and it shows up in your past history on StoryOrigin. So when other authors set up newsletter swaps with you, if you've sent zero clicks to your last 10 swaps that you've set up, other authors probably aren't going to apply to swap with you. And if you apply to swap with other authors, they're probably going to decline your application because you're not actually fulfilling your end of the bargain.
[00:14:50] So when you set up newsletter swap, you need to actually do it in good faith that you're actually trying to help the other author out. And StoryOrigin provides that transparency. Whereas if you're just setting up newsletter swaps with people like Facebook groups and using Google sheets and stuff like this, you don't have that true transparency about how effective people have been in past newsletter swaps that they've set up and whether or not they're just being a free rider and justgetting other people to send clicks to them while doing nothing in return for them.
[00:15:22] This is why I recommend, you don't want to set up too many swaps, per newsletter. You don't want to set up more than four, five, because if you set up 20 swaps in one of your newsletters, you're not going to be able to send a decent number of clicks to all the people that you agreed to promote in that campaign. And that's going to reflect poorly when other people are looking at what your past campaigns performance has been.
[00:15:46] Matty: What sort of options does StoryOrigin have in terms of encouraging a sense of community among the authors that are using the service?
[00:15:56] Evan: There's all of that transparency, which encourages people to actually fulfill their end of the bargain whenever they're agreeing to set up this kind of stuff. But in terms of community aspects, there's a Facebook group where authors can get advice about using StoryOrigin or just marketing in general. That's where more of the free form community goes on is in the StoryOrigin Authors Facebook group.
[00:16:25] And then I also send out newsletters where typically I might ask an author who I've seen do really well in either building their mailing list or getting reviews or increasing their sales, I'll ask them for a case study about, "How did you do this? How did you get started? What encouragement do you have for other authors who are just starting out?" And I'll share those case studies in my newsletter as well. So you understand here are the other people that are in the community, here's what they've done, here's what's working for them. And it gives that sense of belonging.
[00:16:57] Matty: How many authors are using StoryOrigin?
[00:16:59] Evan: There are about a thousand authors that use StoryOrigin every single week. It's variable of course. And the way that I say there are thousand authors using StoryOrigin every single week, those are authors that are applying to or setting up cross promotions with other authors. There's more authors than that who are using StoryOrigin. They might have the link to one of their landing pages for StoryOrigin in the back of their book or on their website or somewhere else, but they might not have set up a cross promotion that particular week. So the community is much larger.
[00:17:34] Matty: You had mentioned a couple of other things like support for reader magnets or review copies. I think universal book links is another service that StoryOrigin offers. Right now I'm all about having a limited number of tools and using a hundred percent of the functionality. So I think that a lot of times, people will hear "newsletter swaps": StoryOrigin. And then they'll hear "review copies": BookFunnel. Or "universal book links": Books2Read. And so it is leading someone down the path that you were talking about before of having these many disparate tools.
[00:18:08] So if somebody is using StoryOrigin -- here's your opportunity to just put in a blatant plug for StoryOrigin -- what other tools might people be using that they could stop using based on the StoryOrigin functionality?
[00:18:21] Evan: I'm not going to mention any competitors by name because they're nice people and they offer good tools, and they offer different functionality. What I will say, though, is that StoryOrigin runs the gamut, and the way that I build each feature on StoryOrigin, I build it with the intent that it's going to be the best-in-class feature for what it does.
[00:18:40] So if you're evaluating other platforms for getting reviews, StoryOrigin offers a bunch of unique features that you will not find on other platforms. Like one of the most compelling being that you are in control of your own review copies. So you get to approve who you're going to get for review copy versus other platforms, they approve or decline people for your review copies based on their own sort of math. And you don't have control over your review team necessarily.
[00:19:10] Other platforms, you can't see the reviewer's past history of how many review copies they've agreed to do, so StoryOrigin gives you stats of this person has agreed to review 10 books on Amazon. They've only completed two out of those 10. So you might decline them for your review copy because there's a low chance that they're actually going to complete it. So you can decline them. StoryOrigin gives you that power of who you want on your team.
[00:19:38] And then there's other sites for building your mailing list. In providing reader magnets. There are a couple of services for doing universal book links. There are a couple services for doing newsletter swaps. There are a couple services for running through promotions. There are a couple services for doing word count tracking, which is another thing that StoryOrigin does. So you can actually. set goals and StoryOrigin will tell you what your daily word count needs to be. And you get a nice graphs of how many words you're actually hitting each day and what you need to do in order to hit your plan, to hit your deadline. So for each feature that you see on StoryOrigin, there are probably two or three competitors and StoryOrigin just does it all.
[00:20:19] So you don't have to use all the tools on StoryOrigin, and if you're using other providers and you like who you're using for review copies, or you like who you're using for reader magnets, whatever, you can keep using those other platforms and start using StoryOrigin for just the features you want. And then you can try out those other features on StoryOrigin as it suits you and see if you just want to start using that instead.
[00:20:40] But you know I've gotten a lot of feedback that StoryOrigin has essentially saved people hours of time because they're like, okay, I don't have to do all this context switching between all these different log-ins and spreadsheets and stuff. So it can be super helpful in that way.
[00:20:54] Matty: That was very diplomatic.
[00:20:56] You were talking about review copies. So do you have a pool of readers associated with StoryOrigin as well as a pool of authors?
[00:21:04] Evan: So the way that you promote any of your books on StoryOrigin, whether that be your reader magnets, your universal book links, or review copies, or even audio promo codes -- that's not something we've talked about either, but if you get promo codes from ACX or from Findaway and you want to give those codes out to people for them to get your book for free so that they can leave a review, StoryOrigin will also help you distribute and track those reviews.
[00:21:28] So whether you're using any one of those things, the way that you promote those on StoryOrigin is either by sending the link to that landing page to your own audience, whether that's through your social media or through a mailing list that you've already got set up, or it's through doing a cross promotions, either group promotions or newsletter swaps on StoryOrigin. So StoryOrigin doesn't maintain a reader mailing list or have a public directory of what books are available. The way that you promote it is mostly through setting up cross promotions on StoryOrigin, where you're targeting other authors in your genre that you want to work with.
[00:22:07] Matty: Would the logistics of that differ between looking for sales versus looking for reviews? Would you set those up differently?
[00:22:16] Evan: So it's pretty simple. On StoryOrigin, if you're looking for sales, then you would set up a universal book link because that sends people to the sales page on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever you've got set up. And then once you've got that universal book link and you're looking to increase your sales, you can join group promotions on StoryOrigin that are focused on sales. There are group promotions are focused on sales or there are group promotions that are focused on reader magnets or group promotions are focused on review copies.
[00:22:43] So you just select the group promotion that is targeting whatever goal you're trying to achieve. Or you can set up newsletter swaps where you can just say, "Hey, I want you to promote my universal book link and I will promote. your book," whatever books that author might be looking to promote. They can say, "I've got a universal book link I'm trying to promote," so you can say, "Oh, I'll promote your universal book link. You promote my universal book link." And then you're driving people to your sales page.
[00:23:11] If you're trying to get reviews, then it's essentially the exact same process. You set up a review copy landing page on StoryOrigin and then you look for group promotions that are to promote your review copy landing pages, or you set up swaps where you're asking the other author to promote your review copy landing page.
[00:23:28] Matty: I know as of earlier this year, I heard an interview you had done and at the time you were a one man show. Is that still true?
[00:23:35] Evan: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm the indie developer of StoryOrigin, is what I like to call myself. That means I'm the guy that built it. I do the customer support. You get emails from StoryOrigin, they come directly from my email address. So if you run into an issue, you can just reply to it and I'll help you out. So yeah, it's just me. And it's super beneficial that it's just me because If I get too many emails about, "Hey, I'm having trouble figuring this out, I'm not quite sure how to do it," and I get a bunch of emails that are similar, then I'm just like, "Okay, there's something, broken about this process where people are having trouble understanding it. I'm just going to go fix it." Because I'm the guy that builds it too. So I can just go in, rearrange things, change the layout, add more information or tool tips, whatever need be. There's no communication overhead between the tech support team and the development team.
[00:24:27] Matty: Excellent. As somebody who came from many years of project management in the IT world, I can appreciate that.
[00:24:33] Evan: Yeah, I can imagine.
[00:24:35] Matty: Yes. And so what is the pricing for all these services?
[00:24:40] Evan: So right now, StoryOrigin is in what I call an open beta, which means that it's completely free to use right now while I'm figuring out what the pricing plan is going to be and while I'm continuing to build out new features and continuing to upgrade the existing feature set. If you've been on StoryOrigin for a while, I send out email updates with what changes I'm making and how I'm improving the system. I send those out probably every week or every couple of weeks. So I'm constantly making improvements.
[00:25:12] The one thing I get from some authors is, "Oh, beta means crappy software," right? In this case, beta really just means I'm still building new features and stuff. All the existing feature sets have been tested by thousands of authors that use it every week. So there's not going to be any glitches where something just straight up doesn't work. That's not what beta means in this case. So yeah, I recommend joining now while it's an open beta, because you'll continue to get it for free for several months even after it becomes paid for new authors who want to sign up.
[00:25:44] Matty: And do you have a plan at all of when it would become a paid service?
[00:25:48] Evan: It's pretty high on the priority list. I don't have an exact timeline. Like I said, there's still other stuff that I'm trying to build. And having worked in project management, I'm sure you understand that development timelines don't always go exactly as you planned. So I don't have a hard deadline or anything like that, but it's something I'm working towards for sure.
[00:26:08] Matty: Are there any upcoming features that you're able to share with the listeners?
[00:26:13] Evan: I like to play the upcoming features a little close to the vest, especially because I'm not exactly sure whether I want to build that feature first or the other feature first, or am I going to upgrade something or am I not? And I change my priorities depending on where I think most authors needs would want to be met first. So yeah, I'm not exactly sure yet as well.
[00:26:34] Matty: When you are thinking about the new features, where are you getting that information? Is that something that gets talked about in the Facebook group or do people have a way of suggesting their high priorities?
[00:26:44] Evan: So certainly people talk about stuff in the Facebook group, but the best way is to just shoot me an email. Like I said, every email that comes from StoryOrigin comes from me and you can shoot me an email back there. You can go to the contact page on StoryOrigin and my email address is there. My email address is also on the very front page of StoryOrigin. So it's easy to get it there. I'm a very easy-to-reach person, probably too easy to reach. But that's the best way to make a suggestion to me about any sort of enhancement or additional features that you might think would be valuable.
[00:27:13] But where I get my feature ideas is a combination of getting suggestions from authors, but also just looking at the community and seeing what authors are talking about and understanding what they're struggling with.
[00:27:26] So I built the audio promo code distribution feature on StoryOrigin. And because I saw authors talking about "Oh my gosh, I have these hundred codes -- how do I find people to give them to? I only get a hundred codes, so I want to make sure I'm going to give them to people who are actually going to leave reviews."
[00:27:43] Because one of the recent changes is ACX used to pay you to give those codes out. Now they no longer pay you to give those codes out. So the only real value you get from them is by giving them to people who might actually leave a review for your book. So that's super valuable. That feature was built around helping you to promote those codes in order to get reviews.
[00:28:03] And so I just heard from authors, "I have to manage all this through a spreadsheet, and then following up with reviewers as a pain, it takes hours and it's an ongoing process." So it's just a combination of getting suggestions and then just paying attention to what authors are talking about and what struggles they're facing and trying to find ways that StoryOrigin can help them save time and keep them from getting frustrated.
[00:28:28] Matty: Yeah, I think that the possible sales benefit of those promo codes is if you have a series and then you're driving people to the first in the series, and you're hoping to make sales on the subsequent ones. But the review thing is interesting because I have, especially for my first series, the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels, I have a bunch of reviews for the first book, and then it drops off precipitously, not I think because people didn't like the subsequent books, the ratings are good for the reviews that are there, but I think that just based on my own experience, after a while, you don't think to go back and write a review if you're on the second or third or fourth book of a series. Then what are you going to do? Go back and write once more that you like the way the author treats character development or something like that? I tend not to do it because it starts getting repetitive, but there could be more opportunity there to drive people to reviews of those two through N books of a series, so it doesn't look so uneven on the ratings and reviews scale.
[00:29:28] Evan: Yeah, promo codes can be super valuable there for sure.
[00:29:31] Matty: Well, you've told us all the places that we can find your email, so also please tell us where people can go in order to find out more about StoryOrigin and you.
[00:29:41] Evan: They can go to storyoriginapp.com which is where StoryOrigin is at. And then you can also go to the StoryOrigin Authors Facebook group, if you just search that on Facebook, which is where we have a lot of conversations about getting and sharing advice and that's where authors will share case studies of how they're using StoryOrigin to build their mailing list or increase their sales or get more reviews.
[00:30:06] Matty: This was great. Thank you so much.
[00:30:08] Evan: Thanks for having me on.
[00:03:51] In terms of what a newsletter swap actually is, that is essentially just an agreement between me and another author or let's say me and you. I've got a mailing list, let's say, with a thousand people on it, you've got mailing lists with a thousand people on it. I'll agree to mention your book in one of my upcoming newsletters and you would agree to mention one of my books in one of your upcoming newsletters.
[00:04:15] And it doesn't have to be a recommendation of my book. You don't need to say, "Hey, I've read this person's book and it's amazing and you should go read it," because you're not going to have the time to read every single book for every single newsletter swap that you set up. So what I recommend to authors who are setting up newsletter swaps is you just have. a section of your newsletter that's, "Here's some other things that you might be interested in." Like when Amazon shows you here's other books that other people bought that are in the same genre. Amazon isn't saying, "Hey, we've read these books and we know you're going to like them." It's simply a recommendation that, "Hey, this might interest you and you can figure that out on your own.
[00:04:58] Matty: I think that's where the creepy aspect comes in because I have always felt as if I shouldn't put something in my newsletter -- I'm struggling with my newsletter anyway, about figuring out the right content -- and I think readers see it as a recommendation. Even if you don't say it's a recommendation, they still see it as a recommendation. "Oh, this author I like, they have this other thing in their newsletter." And It's hard for me to get past that idea that I really do have to read and love the book that I would want to promote in that way. Do other people experience that?
[00:05:28] Evan: Certainly other people experience that hesitation for sure, that they don't want to feel like they are recommending books that they haven't read. And it's definitely a fair hesitation, which is why I say the framing by which you include it in your newsletter matters. Typically it's just in a section of "here's other books that might interest you," and you might have three or four or five books in that section. So your readers will understand conceptually that you didn't just read all of those five books in the past week, right? It's just, here's other things that might interest you.
[00:06:02] And you can frame it like that as well in your newsletter so that you're making sure that your readers understand that you haven't read these books. It's a super effective way to market your books and I've never had any authors tell me about having any sort of bad experience from doing newsletter swaps.
[00:06:21] I've seen authors who have run surveys of their mailing lists to see what they actually want to get in their newsletter, and one of the most popular things in that is that readers want to know what other books they should check out from that newsletter. So you can become a source of potentially new leads for them to check out what might interest them to read next. So I would say if anything, it's something that readers want you to do.
[00:06:55] Matty: Do you have any sense of whether the authors who are using StoryOrigin are putting multiple books in their newsletters or is it more common to have one book per newsletter? One book per newsletter feels more like a recommendation, whereas multiple books per newsletter feels more like just what you're describing: here's a set of other books you could consider.
[00:07:14] Evan: Exactly. I would say most authors generally will do somewhere between two to four books in a newsletter. And it's up to you when you do a newsletter swap if you want to have it be a "solo" swap where they're only going to talk about your book in their newsletter, and you're only going to talk about their book and your newsletter, And you guys aren't going to have any other books or promos and that newsletter. That's up to you if you want to arrange it like that with them. But it's certainly not what the norm is. The norm is definitely more around including multiple.
[00:07:52] Matty: You said that some of the parameters are obviously a comparable author in your genre. Are there other parameters, like will it be a solo presentation or one of several?
[00:08:04] Evan: On StoryOrigin, the way that you search for newsletter swaps, the assumption is that it will just be a mention in their newsletter, that it's not going to be a solo swap. If you want it to be a solo swap you after you agree to do a newsletter swap through StoryOrigin, you can get the other author's email in case you have any specific things that you guys want to talk about. So you can then arrange it to be a solo off of StoryOrigin, just over email. "Hey, let's do this as a solo." But I would say that's not super common.
[00:08:34] Matty: Obviously knowing comp authors is a key to having this be successful. Another thing that I often struggle with, because I think for every author, their own books are so nuanced -- it's not quite like anything else -- but of course it is. So do you offer any tips on how to identify the people within the StoryOrigin community that are going to be a good match for you?
[00:08:56] Evan: Yeah. So StoryOrigin, when you sign up and you go to your homepage, there's going to be a big button there that says Browse newsletter swaps, and when you go to that page, you'll see a list of upcoming dates that authors plan to send out their newsletters. So you'll see this person is sending out their newsletter on December 2nd, it's going to be going to a mailing list of, let's say, 1000 people, and they've got an open rate of 30% and a click rate of 5%. So StoryOrigin gives you all that information.
[00:09:28] And then you can also filter by tags that they've included with their newsletter. So you can filter by romance or sci-fi or fantasy. There's a huge list of types. So you can find exactly who's in your genre and you can combine those tags. So if you're in romance, but you're cozy romance and you don't want to swap with someone who's written a steamy romance, you could search for cozy romance.
[00:09:54] Or you could search for clean romance, so you can combine those tags to find exactly the kind of other authors that you want search for. And then you would want to look at their newsletter stats and see okay, would this make a good swap? And then you just submit a request to them through StoryOrigin.
[00:10:11] Matty: For someone who's starting out and maybe has a very small email list, do you have any recommendations for how they can best use a tool like that?
[00:10:19] Evan: Yeah. So if you're just starting out building a mailing list, I would actually recommend that you first get involved with doing group promotions. So newsletter swap is a one-to-one cross-promotion where I'm including your book in my newsletter, you're including my book in your newsletter. A group promotion is one where you, me, and let's say 20 other authors all agree to list our books on a single landing page. And then we all drive traffic to that landing page. And soif you can only contribute maybe 10 or 15 clicks to it it matters less than when you're having a one-to-one cross-promotion with someone else who let's say has a mailing list of 2000 people, and they're going to send you a hundred clicks. You might feel that maybe that's off balance
[00:11:05] With a group promotion, it's more just try your hardest to help other authors in that group promotion. So everyone is individually sending their traffic to that single landing page that has everyone's books. With StoryOrigin, you can set up these newsletter swaps or these group promotions for various landing pages that you set up on StoryOrigin. So that landing page could be for a reader magnet, which helps you build your mailing list. It could be for a review copy, which helps you get reviews. Or it could be for a universal book link, which sends readers to the retail page for your book at Amazon or Google Play or Barnes and Noble, whatever their preferred retailer is, where you have the book available.
[00:11:49] So you can have different goals. So if you're just starting out, I would recommend looking for and joining some group promotions that are for reader magnets that help you build your mailing list. And then from there, once you've got a few subscribers, it starts to make more sense to set up newsletter swaps because you actually have some more people on your mailing list. So you know that you can send people their way.
[00:12:11] All that said, though there have absolutely been people who have very small mailing lists on StoryOrigin and go ahead and start setting up newsletter swaps anyway. And there are a lot of authors on StoryOrigin who are generous enough to accept those swaps because they understand that they were in your position not so long ago. You will find authors on StoryOrigin who have a mailing list of a thousand people, and they were sitting at zero maybe a month or two months ago. It's not very long ago that they were in your shoes. And so they're like, "Oh yeah. I'll gladly accept helping you build your mailing."
[00:12:47] Matty: Oh, that's great to hear. And I think what you're describing is also highlighting. an important aspect of newsletter swaps -- that it is not exchanging email addresses, which would be illegal. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:13:00] Evan: Yes, the term newsletter swap is what the community has adopted, but it is a rather confusing term to a lot of people who have not participated in one before. So a newsletter swap is essentially simply an agreement that I will promote your book in one of my upcoming newsletters and you'll promote one of my books in one of your upcoming newsletters. I'm not giving you access to my mailing list. You're not giving me access to your mailing list. All it is is I'm going to put your book in my newsletter and whoever clicks on it, whoever doesn't, you don't gain access to their emails, unless I'm promoting one of your reader magnets and that reader specifically signed up to get your reader magnet and sign up to your mailing list. Otherwise, you do not want to actually share a mailing list or contact information with one another as that would be breaking some data regulations.
[00:13:52] Matty: Do you have any tips about etiquette for newsletter swaps or gotchas that you see people falling into when they're new to this?
[00:14:01] Evan: I would say that the typical etiquette is that you want to include the other author's book cover and then maybe a short description in your newsletter. You don't want toonly have some very small text there, with just a tiny link that goes to them.
[00:14:17] The other thing about StoryOrigin is when you set up a newsletter swap on StoryOrigin, the number of clicks that you send to a swap is visible to the other author and it shows up in your past history on StoryOrigin. So when other authors set up newsletter swaps with you, if you've sent zero clicks to your last 10 swaps that you've set up, other authors probably aren't going to apply to swap with you. And if you apply to swap with other authors, they're probably going to decline your application because you're not actually fulfilling your end of the bargain.
[00:14:50] So when you set up newsletter swap, you need to actually do it in good faith that you're actually trying to help the other author out. And StoryOrigin provides that transparency. Whereas if you're just setting up newsletter swaps with people like Facebook groups and using Google sheets and stuff like this, you don't have that true transparency about how effective people have been in past newsletter swaps that they've set up and whether or not they're just being a free rider and justgetting other people to send clicks to them while doing nothing in return for them.
[00:15:22] This is why I recommend, you don't want to set up too many swaps, per newsletter. You don't want to set up more than four, five, because if you set up 20 swaps in one of your newsletters, you're not going to be able to send a decent number of clicks to all the people that you agreed to promote in that campaign. And that's going to reflect poorly when other people are looking at what your past campaigns performance has been.
[00:15:46] Matty: What sort of options does StoryOrigin have in terms of encouraging a sense of community among the authors that are using the service?
[00:15:56] Evan: There's all of that transparency, which encourages people to actually fulfill their end of the bargain whenever they're agreeing to set up this kind of stuff. But in terms of community aspects, there's a Facebook group where authors can get advice about using StoryOrigin or just marketing in general. That's where more of the free form community goes on is in the StoryOrigin Authors Facebook group.
[00:16:25] And then I also send out newsletters where typically I might ask an author who I've seen do really well in either building their mailing list or getting reviews or increasing their sales, I'll ask them for a case study about, "How did you do this? How did you get started? What encouragement do you have for other authors who are just starting out?" And I'll share those case studies in my newsletter as well. So you understand here are the other people that are in the community, here's what they've done, here's what's working for them. And it gives that sense of belonging.
[00:16:57] Matty: How many authors are using StoryOrigin?
[00:16:59] Evan: There are about a thousand authors that use StoryOrigin every single week. It's variable of course. And the way that I say there are thousand authors using StoryOrigin every single week, those are authors that are applying to or setting up cross promotions with other authors. There's more authors than that who are using StoryOrigin. They might have the link to one of their landing pages for StoryOrigin in the back of their book or on their website or somewhere else, but they might not have set up a cross promotion that particular week. So the community is much larger.
[00:17:34] Matty: You had mentioned a couple of other things like support for reader magnets or review copies. I think universal book links is another service that StoryOrigin offers. Right now I'm all about having a limited number of tools and using a hundred percent of the functionality. So I think that a lot of times, people will hear "newsletter swaps": StoryOrigin. And then they'll hear "review copies": BookFunnel. Or "universal book links": Books2Read. And so it is leading someone down the path that you were talking about before of having these many disparate tools.
[00:18:08] So if somebody is using StoryOrigin -- here's your opportunity to just put in a blatant plug for StoryOrigin -- what other tools might people be using that they could stop using based on the StoryOrigin functionality?
[00:18:21] Evan: I'm not going to mention any competitors by name because they're nice people and they offer good tools, and they offer different functionality. What I will say, though, is that StoryOrigin runs the gamut, and the way that I build each feature on StoryOrigin, I build it with the intent that it's going to be the best-in-class feature for what it does.
[00:18:40] So if you're evaluating other platforms for getting reviews, StoryOrigin offers a bunch of unique features that you will not find on other platforms. Like one of the most compelling being that you are in control of your own review copies. So you get to approve who you're going to get for review copy versus other platforms, they approve or decline people for your review copies based on their own sort of math. And you don't have control over your review team necessarily.
[00:19:10] Other platforms, you can't see the reviewer's past history of how many review copies they've agreed to do, so StoryOrigin gives you stats of this person has agreed to review 10 books on Amazon. They've only completed two out of those 10. So you might decline them for your review copy because there's a low chance that they're actually going to complete it. So you can decline them. StoryOrigin gives you that power of who you want on your team.
[00:19:38] And then there's other sites for building your mailing list. In providing reader magnets. There are a couple of services for doing universal book links. There are a couple services for doing newsletter swaps. There are a couple services for running through promotions. There are a couple services for doing word count tracking, which is another thing that StoryOrigin does. So you can actually. set goals and StoryOrigin will tell you what your daily word count needs to be. And you get a nice graphs of how many words you're actually hitting each day and what you need to do in order to hit your plan, to hit your deadline. So for each feature that you see on StoryOrigin, there are probably two or three competitors and StoryOrigin just does it all.
[00:20:19] So you don't have to use all the tools on StoryOrigin, and if you're using other providers and you like who you're using for review copies, or you like who you're using for reader magnets, whatever, you can keep using those other platforms and start using StoryOrigin for just the features you want. And then you can try out those other features on StoryOrigin as it suits you and see if you just want to start using that instead.
[00:20:40] But you know I've gotten a lot of feedback that StoryOrigin has essentially saved people hours of time because they're like, okay, I don't have to do all this context switching between all these different log-ins and spreadsheets and stuff. So it can be super helpful in that way.
[00:20:54] Matty: That was very diplomatic.
[00:20:56] You were talking about review copies. So do you have a pool of readers associated with StoryOrigin as well as a pool of authors?
[00:21:04] Evan: So the way that you promote any of your books on StoryOrigin, whether that be your reader magnets, your universal book links, or review copies, or even audio promo codes -- that's not something we've talked about either, but if you get promo codes from ACX or from Findaway and you want to give those codes out to people for them to get your book for free so that they can leave a review, StoryOrigin will also help you distribute and track those reviews.
[00:21:28] So whether you're using any one of those things, the way that you promote those on StoryOrigin is either by sending the link to that landing page to your own audience, whether that's through your social media or through a mailing list that you've already got set up, or it's through doing a cross promotions, either group promotions or newsletter swaps on StoryOrigin. So StoryOrigin doesn't maintain a reader mailing list or have a public directory of what books are available. The way that you promote it is mostly through setting up cross promotions on StoryOrigin, where you're targeting other authors in your genre that you want to work with.
[00:22:07] Matty: Would the logistics of that differ between looking for sales versus looking for reviews? Would you set those up differently?
[00:22:16] Evan: So it's pretty simple. On StoryOrigin, if you're looking for sales, then you would set up a universal book link because that sends people to the sales page on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever you've got set up. And then once you've got that universal book link and you're looking to increase your sales, you can join group promotions on StoryOrigin that are focused on sales. There are group promotions are focused on sales or there are group promotions that are focused on reader magnets or group promotions are focused on review copies.
[00:22:43] So you just select the group promotion that is targeting whatever goal you're trying to achieve. Or you can set up newsletter swaps where you can just say, "Hey, I want you to promote my universal book link and I will promote. your book," whatever books that author might be looking to promote. They can say, "I've got a universal book link I'm trying to promote," so you can say, "Oh, I'll promote your universal book link. You promote my universal book link." And then you're driving people to your sales page.
[00:23:11] If you're trying to get reviews, then it's essentially the exact same process. You set up a review copy landing page on StoryOrigin and then you look for group promotions that are to promote your review copy landing pages, or you set up swaps where you're asking the other author to promote your review copy landing page.
[00:23:28] Matty: I know as of earlier this year, I heard an interview you had done and at the time you were a one man show. Is that still true?
[00:23:35] Evan: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm the indie developer of StoryOrigin, is what I like to call myself. That means I'm the guy that built it. I do the customer support. You get emails from StoryOrigin, they come directly from my email address. So if you run into an issue, you can just reply to it and I'll help you out. So yeah, it's just me. And it's super beneficial that it's just me because If I get too many emails about, "Hey, I'm having trouble figuring this out, I'm not quite sure how to do it," and I get a bunch of emails that are similar, then I'm just like, "Okay, there's something, broken about this process where people are having trouble understanding it. I'm just going to go fix it." Because I'm the guy that builds it too. So I can just go in, rearrange things, change the layout, add more information or tool tips, whatever need be. There's no communication overhead between the tech support team and the development team.
[00:24:27] Matty: Excellent. As somebody who came from many years of project management in the IT world, I can appreciate that.
[00:24:33] Evan: Yeah, I can imagine.
[00:24:35] Matty: Yes. And so what is the pricing for all these services?
[00:24:40] Evan: So right now, StoryOrigin is in what I call an open beta, which means that it's completely free to use right now while I'm figuring out what the pricing plan is going to be and while I'm continuing to build out new features and continuing to upgrade the existing feature set. If you've been on StoryOrigin for a while, I send out email updates with what changes I'm making and how I'm improving the system. I send those out probably every week or every couple of weeks. So I'm constantly making improvements.
[00:25:12] The one thing I get from some authors is, "Oh, beta means crappy software," right? In this case, beta really just means I'm still building new features and stuff. All the existing feature sets have been tested by thousands of authors that use it every week. So there's not going to be any glitches where something just straight up doesn't work. That's not what beta means in this case. So yeah, I recommend joining now while it's an open beta, because you'll continue to get it for free for several months even after it becomes paid for new authors who want to sign up.
[00:25:44] Matty: And do you have a plan at all of when it would become a paid service?
[00:25:48] Evan: It's pretty high on the priority list. I don't have an exact timeline. Like I said, there's still other stuff that I'm trying to build. And having worked in project management, I'm sure you understand that development timelines don't always go exactly as you planned. So I don't have a hard deadline or anything like that, but it's something I'm working towards for sure.
[00:26:08] Matty: Are there any upcoming features that you're able to share with the listeners?
[00:26:13] Evan: I like to play the upcoming features a little close to the vest, especially because I'm not exactly sure whether I want to build that feature first or the other feature first, or am I going to upgrade something or am I not? And I change my priorities depending on where I think most authors needs would want to be met first. So yeah, I'm not exactly sure yet as well.
[00:26:34] Matty: When you are thinking about the new features, where are you getting that information? Is that something that gets talked about in the Facebook group or do people have a way of suggesting their high priorities?
[00:26:44] Evan: So certainly people talk about stuff in the Facebook group, but the best way is to just shoot me an email. Like I said, every email that comes from StoryOrigin comes from me and you can shoot me an email back there. You can go to the contact page on StoryOrigin and my email address is there. My email address is also on the very front page of StoryOrigin. So it's easy to get it there. I'm a very easy-to-reach person, probably too easy to reach. But that's the best way to make a suggestion to me about any sort of enhancement or additional features that you might think would be valuable.
[00:27:13] But where I get my feature ideas is a combination of getting suggestions from authors, but also just looking at the community and seeing what authors are talking about and understanding what they're struggling with.
[00:27:26] So I built the audio promo code distribution feature on StoryOrigin. And because I saw authors talking about "Oh my gosh, I have these hundred codes -- how do I find people to give them to? I only get a hundred codes, so I want to make sure I'm going to give them to people who are actually going to leave reviews."
[00:27:43] Because one of the recent changes is ACX used to pay you to give those codes out. Now they no longer pay you to give those codes out. So the only real value you get from them is by giving them to people who might actually leave a review for your book. So that's super valuable. That feature was built around helping you to promote those codes in order to get reviews.
[00:28:03] And so I just heard from authors, "I have to manage all this through a spreadsheet, and then following up with reviewers as a pain, it takes hours and it's an ongoing process." So it's just a combination of getting suggestions and then just paying attention to what authors are talking about and what struggles they're facing and trying to find ways that StoryOrigin can help them save time and keep them from getting frustrated.
[00:28:28] Matty: Yeah, I think that the possible sales benefit of those promo codes is if you have a series and then you're driving people to the first in the series, and you're hoping to make sales on the subsequent ones. But the review thing is interesting because I have, especially for my first series, the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels, I have a bunch of reviews for the first book, and then it drops off precipitously, not I think because people didn't like the subsequent books, the ratings are good for the reviews that are there, but I think that just based on my own experience, after a while, you don't think to go back and write a review if you're on the second or third or fourth book of a series. Then what are you going to do? Go back and write once more that you like the way the author treats character development or something like that? I tend not to do it because it starts getting repetitive, but there could be more opportunity there to drive people to reviews of those two through N books of a series, so it doesn't look so uneven on the ratings and reviews scale.
[00:29:28] Evan: Yeah, promo codes can be super valuable there for sure.
[00:29:31] Matty: Well, you've told us all the places that we can find your email, so also please tell us where people can go in order to find out more about StoryOrigin and you.
[00:29:41] Evan: They can go to storyoriginapp.com which is where StoryOrigin is at. And then you can also go to the StoryOrigin Authors Facebook group, if you just search that on Facebook, which is where we have a lot of conversations about getting and sharing advice and that's where authors will share case studies of how they're using StoryOrigin to build their mailing list or increase their sales or get more reviews.
[00:30:06] Matty: This was great. Thank you so much.
[00:30:08] Evan: Thanks for having me on.
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