Episode 240 - The Sales Flywheel with Chelle Honiker
May 28, 2024
"While email still remains incredibly important, there's also video that people are used to now. They're used to seeing authors and storytellers in a much more relatable way, as opposed to what we used to call spray and pray. Back in the marketing days, we would spray out an offer, spray out a message, and you would pray somebody would come back and buy something. Those days are kind of over." —Chelle Honiker
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Chelle Honiker discusses THE SALES FLYWHEEL, including what a sales flywheel is ... and what it is not; building a community through the flywheel; finding the nugget of humanity; the danger of teaching readers to expect free; sharing of yourself, but within parameters you set; building cyclical, not transactional, relationships; the importance of not emailing people only when you have something to sell them; and the flywheel approach to book launches.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
Listen to the full episode ...
Listen to and watch the interview ...
Chelle Honiker is an advocate for the empowerment of authorpreneurs, recognizing the importance of authors taking charge of both their craft and careers. She is the co-founder and publisher of Indie Author Magazine, IndieAuthorTraining, Indie Author Tools, and Direct2Readers.com; the programming director for the Author Nation conference; and a TEDx Organizer.
Links
Chelle's Links:
https://indieauthormagazine.com
https://facebook.com/indieauthormag
https://twitter.com/indieauthorzine
https://instagram.com/indieauthormagazine
https://www.linkedin.com/company/indieauthormagazine
https://www.youtube.com/@indieauthormagazine
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
https://indieauthormagazine.com
https://facebook.com/indieauthormag
https://twitter.com/indieauthorzine
https://instagram.com/indieauthormagazine
https://www.linkedin.com/company/indieauthormagazine
https://www.youtube.com/@indieauthormagazine
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Chelle! Did any of the perspectives Chelle shared convince you to think differently about how you approach sales?
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
AI-generated Summary
Introduction to Chelle Honiker
In this episode of "The Indy Author Podcast," host Matty Dalrymple introduces Chelle Honiker, an advocate for entrepreneur empowerment and co-founder of several platforms aimed at supporting indie authors, including "Indie Author Magazine" and "Indy Author Training." Chelle's work focuses on helping authors take control of their careers through community building and strategic marketing.
Concept of the Sales Flywheel vs. Sales Funnel
Chelle discusses the transition from the traditional sales funnel to the sales flywheel. Unlike the funnel that tends to drop customers after a purchase, the flywheel promotes ongoing engagement by creating multiple touchpoints. This model encourages continuous interaction through newsletters, websites, and merchandise, enhancing the customer relationship rather than focusing solely on transactions.
Community and Collaboration
The conversation shifts towards the importance of community within the indie author ecosystem. Chelle highlights the benefits of collaboration, such as sharing newsletters and participating in anthologies with other authors. This approach keeps readers engaged and strengthens the community, moving away from the transactional nature of traditional sales funnels.
Human Element in Marketing
Chelle emphasizes the importance of personal connection in the digital age, especially post-pandemic. With the rise of video content and generative AI, there is a significant focus on maintaining the human aspect of storytelling and marketing, ensuring that technology enhances rather than replaces personal connections.
Challenges of Free Content
The dialogue also covers the challenges associated with offering free content. Chelle argues that while freebies are common to attract new readers, they can inadvertently teach customers to expect free products, potentially devaluing the work. Instead, she suggests assigning minimal costs to content to maintain its perceived value.
Social Media and Direct Engagement
The discussion addresses the evolving role of social media and the necessity for authors to build and control their own platforms. By fostering direct relationships with readers and reducing reliance on third-party platforms, authors can better protect their data and maintain engagement.
The Power of Collaboration
Chelle talks about the power of collaboration within the indie author community. By partnering with other authors and sharing audiences, indie authors can create a more robust and supportive network. This cooperative approach contrasts with traditional competitive market strategies, emphasizing shared success over individual gains.
Listening and Adapting to Audience Needs
The podcast covers how authors can listen to their community to adapt their marketing strategies effectively. Using analytics tools and engaging with audience feedback, authors can refine their approaches to meet readers' needs better, ensuring the flywheel continues to spin effectively.
Conclusion
In closing, Chelle invites listeners to explore more about her work through "Indie Author Magazine" and upcoming industry conferences. The podcast encapsulates the essence of the indie author movement—fostering a collaborative, engaged, and adaptable approach to authorship and marketing in the modern digital landscape.
Overall, the podcast serves as a comprehensive guide for indie authors seeking to leverage the sales flywheel concept to build lasting relationships with their readers, emphasizing the importance of community, ongoing engagement, and the human element in all aspects of authorship and marketing.
In this episode of "The Indy Author Podcast," host Matty Dalrymple introduces Chelle Honiker, an advocate for entrepreneur empowerment and co-founder of several platforms aimed at supporting indie authors, including "Indie Author Magazine" and "Indy Author Training." Chelle's work focuses on helping authors take control of their careers through community building and strategic marketing.
Concept of the Sales Flywheel vs. Sales Funnel
Chelle discusses the transition from the traditional sales funnel to the sales flywheel. Unlike the funnel that tends to drop customers after a purchase, the flywheel promotes ongoing engagement by creating multiple touchpoints. This model encourages continuous interaction through newsletters, websites, and merchandise, enhancing the customer relationship rather than focusing solely on transactions.
Community and Collaboration
The conversation shifts towards the importance of community within the indie author ecosystem. Chelle highlights the benefits of collaboration, such as sharing newsletters and participating in anthologies with other authors. This approach keeps readers engaged and strengthens the community, moving away from the transactional nature of traditional sales funnels.
Human Element in Marketing
Chelle emphasizes the importance of personal connection in the digital age, especially post-pandemic. With the rise of video content and generative AI, there is a significant focus on maintaining the human aspect of storytelling and marketing, ensuring that technology enhances rather than replaces personal connections.
Challenges of Free Content
The dialogue also covers the challenges associated with offering free content. Chelle argues that while freebies are common to attract new readers, they can inadvertently teach customers to expect free products, potentially devaluing the work. Instead, she suggests assigning minimal costs to content to maintain its perceived value.
Social Media and Direct Engagement
The discussion addresses the evolving role of social media and the necessity for authors to build and control their own platforms. By fostering direct relationships with readers and reducing reliance on third-party platforms, authors can better protect their data and maintain engagement.
The Power of Collaboration
Chelle talks about the power of collaboration within the indie author community. By partnering with other authors and sharing audiences, indie authors can create a more robust and supportive network. This cooperative approach contrasts with traditional competitive market strategies, emphasizing shared success over individual gains.
Listening and Adapting to Audience Needs
The podcast covers how authors can listen to their community to adapt their marketing strategies effectively. Using analytics tools and engaging with audience feedback, authors can refine their approaches to meet readers' needs better, ensuring the flywheel continues to spin effectively.
Conclusion
In closing, Chelle invites listeners to explore more about her work through "Indie Author Magazine" and upcoming industry conferences. The podcast encapsulates the essence of the indie author movement—fostering a collaborative, engaged, and adaptable approach to authorship and marketing in the modern digital landscape.
Overall, the podcast serves as a comprehensive guide for indie authors seeking to leverage the sales flywheel concept to build lasting relationships with their readers, emphasizing the importance of community, ongoing engagement, and the human element in all aspects of authorship and marketing.
Transcript
Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Chelle Honiker. Hey, Chelle, how are you doing?
Chelle: Hey Matty, I'm great. Thanks for having me.
Matty: I am pleased to have you here.
Meet Chelle Honiker
Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background, Chelle Honiker is an advocate for the empowerment of entrepreneurs, recognizing the importance of authors taking charge of their craft and careers. She's the co-founder and publisher of "Indie Author Magazine," "Indy Author Training," "Indy Author Tools," and DirectToReaders.com, the programming director for the Author Nation Conference, and a TEDx organizer. And I was recently listening to an episode of the "Author Nation State of the Nation" podcast, and I heard Chelle mention the topic of the sales flywheel. I was so intrigued by that idea that I invited her on the podcast to talk more about it.
What is the sales flywheel... and what is it not?
Chelle: What is it, and what is it not? Okay, so in the concept of marketing, we've traditionally been taught that there is a sales funnel, meaning you start at the top and you bring a bunch of people in, then you move them through a funnel until you get to an eventual sale. Traditionally, you start them over again, and you start more top of funnel activities, offering them maybe free things, then you move them to the middle of the funnel, where you try to sell them something or go deeper in the relationship until you get to the bottom of the funnel, which is an eventual sale.
What my thinking is, and what I have seen tremendously on the rise in this industry, is the advent of what's called a flywheel. A flywheel means that you have different touch points. Think of it as a circle; you have different touch points, and you might touch someone with a newsletter or a website or something, and you keep moving them around in a circle so that you have a continuous conversation with them, rather than trying to get them to a zero-sum sale every single time.
Chelle: So the importance of that is that you're continuing the conversation and you're deepening the relationship with them. You're asking them questions, you might give them polls, you might offer them some version of Patreon or Kickstarter, you might have some merch, so you're basically just keeping them in your ecosystem and you're talking to them on a continuous basis rather than just cycling them through a sales process.
Building a community through the flywheel
Chelle: I've also expanded that a bit now as I've thought about it more to include not just you participating in the sales flywheel, but also other people in your ecosystem. For example, if you think of a satisfied reader as your goal, you can offer them other books. You might have other authors that are part of that sales flywheel that you collaborate with, or with whom you have anthologies, or that you swap newsletters with, so that you're continuously keeping that satisfied reader engaged, rather than funneling through a sales cycle every single time.
And you don't really need to start over; you just continue the conversation with them.
Matty: It does feel more comfortable in the sense that a funnel suggests—and I don't think I thought about this until I heard the alternative of the flywheel—it feels like dropping people off based on a perceived sense of their value.
Chelle: Yeah, their worth, right?
Matty: Their worth, yeah, exactly. It felt uncomfortable, and I think that the way you're describing it, there's a sort of more community-oriented approach. Interestingly, both with the people you're trying to reach as readers and, as you're saying, through the authors, it's just a more comfortable way of thinking about it.
Finding the nugget of humanity
Chelle: It's a more comfortable way of thinking about it, and it's more, I think, especially with this generation, they're used to having conversations and more personal connections with folks. While email still remains incredibly important, there's also video that people are accustomed to now. They're used to seeing authors and storytellers in a much more relatable way, as opposed to just blasting; we used to call it spray and pray, right?
And back in the marketing days, we would spray out an offer, spray out a message, and you would pray somebody would come back and buy something. Those days are kind of over, I think, because people are more sophisticated, and because now, especially with the advent of technology during the pandemic, we all sort of had to find a little more nugget of humanity and more ways to relate to one another.
I also think that with the advent of generative AI, that is going to be the salvation for the storytellers who want to continue and have successful careers, because nothing can replace that humanity. If you have a connection with your reader, if you have a connection with your listener or your viewer, if you're setting them up with video, generative AI is not going to replace that.
Chelle: It's not going to replace the heart and the humanity of the person-to-person connection. It's just not. And I have great hope for the things that AI will be able to help us with to get rid of some of the busy work and the junk so that we can get back to connecting with our readers and our fans. We can connect with our stories and make sure that we're doing the thing that we love, which is telling stories.
The danger of teaching readers to expect free
Matty: Yeah. You had mentioned freebies as an important part of the sales funnel that everybody's advised to offer—a free story or novella—in order to get people on their email list. What kind of role do you think giving away content plays when you're looking at a sales flywheel instead of a sales funnel?
Chelle: So I think, I have always felt that was a tricky endeavor, because you're teaching your reader to expect free. You're basically saying, here it is for free, you're devaluing it. I don't think readers realize that our initial thought was by offering a reader magnet, a lead magnet, those things for free, we were getting them hooked. But because they're inundated with so much, we've just trained them to expect things for free now.
And I think that's backfired in a certain way for us. You know, there are different genres that have different successes, so I think it's very different for each individual author as to how they incorporate some of that. But for me and for our marketing mix, we tend to do that a little more sparingly because it's a race to the bottom, and it devalues your work immediately. So even if you offer it for 99 cents, you're still assigning a value to it, and you're still teaching your reader to value your work. And I think ultimately, that's really been one of the most important hurdles that we as indies have faced because self-published has always been equated with vanity press rather than as a marketing strategy.
And I hope that we can start to reframe that conversation so that 'indie' now means taking charge of your career as opposed to just being self-published. So an indie author could be hybrid. An indie author could be traditionally published in my world. It just literally means that you are building a business and building relationships with your readers.
So I have mixed ideas on that. I mean, coming back to the idea of the flywheel, if you do a free newsletter swap and you get all those people in there, the way our email systems are set up—because we pay for every subscriber that's on our email list—we're often taught to shed people who don't open or engage, or do something. When in fact, we might think about how we engaged with them in the first place and how can we bring them deeper into the conversation or offer them something that's a little more of value.
For example, authors could offer to show up to book clubs if they're reading their book. You can offer a little bit more of yourself, which I know is very scary, right? There are a lot of us who are introverts and a lot of us just want to write books or just want to tell stories. I get that, but I think that we're overlooking an opportunity that we might not have thought of by connecting more deeply, connecting outside of social media networks, even.
The changing role of social media
Chelle: I think social media is going to change a lot as well.
I think we're going to have to rely less on social media and more on owning our own ecosystems, our own groups, our own direct sales, our own relationships. The data of our customers will be our intellectual property that we need to protect a bit more. So, I think we need to do more business shifting and start thinking about our businesses and not be so dependent on freebies or even retailers, right?
I think those are conversations that we need to have. I think that's sort of the future of publishing—owning our own distribution network and owning our own relationships with our customers in a slightly different way.
The power of collaboration
Chelle: That also means there are opportunities to collaborate with people because we don't have a zero-sum game of selling a single widget or selling a single book. We have the opportunity to satisfy a reader as the end result, and we can partner with people we trust and other authors we trust to keep that satisfied reader happy and in that ecosystem, and keep touching them on that flywheel. It's a subtle shift, but I think it's a necessary one.
I think it's going to be something we really need to think about as we move forward because there are things that are changing, and we are, to some extent, at the mercy of some retailers. And they are great partners; don't get me wrong. They've opened up doors and they've built careers. But if they decided not to give us commission, if they decided to shut down anything, there would be many of us who would be in deep trouble because we don't have a way to contact our customers directly, which is why newsletters have always been so important. In my world, they're vastly important because you need to have a way to connect with your customers.
If Facebook shut down the ability for us to have groups, which they've already done with some features—we're not able to go live in groups anymore—we need to be able to control how we connect with our readers. That's probably the scariest part of all.
Matty: There were two things I wanted to delve into. One is that I think this idea that there's more value in the relationship between a creator and the people who are accepting their creations is compelling. I had talked about this a little bit with Jennifer Holt and Megan Haskell. We did an episode on Kickstarter, and we were talking about how there are readers out there who are browsing for their books on Kickstarter because they like that idea of not just picking a book off a shelf or a virtual shelf; they like the idea of having some kind of connection with the authors. And I think that's very appealing to authors.
And then, kind of contradictory to that is this idea that you have to sort of be more putting yourself out there more if you're pursuing a sales flywheel versus a sales funnel approach. Do those feel contradictory to you, or do you have advice about how people can get over any part of that feels uncomfortable to them?
Sharing of yourself, but within parameters you set
Chelle: I mean, there are ways to... I think one of the things in social media is that we think that we're seeing an entire video of someone when actually we're just seeing the highlights. And so, everybody can choose what to put out there and what to say and how to say it. You don't have to give 110 percent of yourself all of the time.
You don't have to show your children's faces. You don't have to show your husband's face. You don't even have to, you could use initials, right? So, there are ways to keep some of that anonymity for yourself. And you have to choose whatever level of comfort you have with that. But I will say that some of the more successful authors that I see, for example, Lucy Score—she has a fantastic newsletter where she talks about things in a very humorous way.
And I devour her newsletters, just because they're so entertaining. The fact that she sells a book is almost ancillary to the whole reason why I read her newsletter. I like to hear about her shenanigans. And the other thing that she does at the bottom of them is she promotes good news. Those have nothing to do with her personally.
She's just created a vibe, if you will. She's created a network of positivity and engagement and lighthearted things. So she'll say, you know, here's something that happened that was really good. Here's a dog that was rescued, or, you know, there's really good things happening in the world, and she is perpetuating that without... She wouldn't have to do all of the things that she does, and no one should have to feel like they're sacrificing themselves on the altar of their readers. But there are ways that you can connect and create a persona that is very viable and engaging and worthy of it.
One of the things that we've done at "Indie Author Magazine" is we created an avatar. Her name is Indy Annie, and all of our newsletters come from her. We've created her as a slightly drunk agony aunt that gives advice, and she's an amalgam of all of us. There is someone that actually writes the advice columns, but her articles and her advice letters are hilarious, and they're so much fun. But we've chosen to make all of our newsletters come from her, so you know, there are ways to do that.
I know there are other authors that have personas, right? They have, I have a friend who writes mystery thrillers, and she has a hat over her eyes, and it's a bit mysterious, so she doesn't show her face. I have another who writes cozy mysteries, and she has a cute little spyglass over her face, and it's an avatar, so there are ways to do that.
You don't have to put yourself completely out there, and again, you don't have to be a Kardashian and overshare absolutely everything. But I think the opportunity is that indie authors don't have PR staff and don't have publicity teams and don't have gatekeepers. You have the ability to connect directly with your readers. So you can show them the highlight reel. You don't have to show them the behind-the-scenes.
Building cyclical, not transactional, relationships
Matty: It does seem like another key difference between a sales funnel and a sales flywheel is this idea that the funnel feels transactional, whereas the flywheel, not surprisingly, feels cyclical. Wheel, cyclical. How would you recommend that authors internalize that in their own reader outreach processes? Like, are there steps people should take, or red flags they should watch out for, that would point them in one direction or the other? Oh, you're going to have a better result, you're going to develop a better relationship with your readers if you approach it in a less transactional way. Do you have any tips there?
Don't just email people when you have something to sell them
Chelle: Yeah, so I think the biggest tip is don't just email people when you have something to sell them. And that's probably the biggest mistake. I try not to be prescriptive and say do this and not do this, but I can say that I see more success when people continue to have conversations. For example, if you're sharing recipes and just giving generously, not saying, "Here's a countdown timer and here's my book and it's coming, and it's coming," and having these transactional emails that lead up to it, that's priming the pump and people know when they're being sold to.
The difference is not subtle. If I'm being honest, I can see a subject line and know immediately if it's somebody interesting and engaging versus just priming the pump and getting me ready to sell something. If it says "countdown" or if it says "open now" or if there's a sense of urgency, we tend to listen to a lot of marketers, and marketing advice is great.
But I think the shift now is getting—not necessarily away from the commerce because that's important—but also focusing and prioritizing the relationship with your reader, asking good questions, giving them the opportunity to weigh in on things, talking to them on Kickstarter or other places, making one of the levels about killing off a character or saving a character. You don't have to write by committee, but there is something to be said for keeping them engaged and keeping them interested in the ecosystem and in the sphere that you have.
So, I would say, try to just analyze it and have people look at it. And if you find yourself only emailing your readers when a new release is coming, there might be a different way that you can engage.
The flywheel approach to book launches
Matty: It makes me think of a topic that I would not have expected to bring up in a flywheel versus funnel conversation, but that is book launches. I found that for the last couple of launches of my books—since I'm publishing a book maybe every nine to twelve months—by the time it's ready, I'm already onto the next book. And I became sort of fed up with launch parties and things like that. My last couple of launches were like, "Hey, I have a new book." And I realized that that was probably not the best way to do it. But as an indie author, I also feel like the real value of my books is in the backlist.
And I don't bank a lot on the backlist, so an underwhelming launch wasn't going to be a big impact for me. But do you think that there's an aspect of an indie author promoting their backlist that is better served by using a flywheel approach than using a funnel approach?
Chelle: I think, sure, especially depending on your genre, because you can thread in conversations from your backlist and maybe do a character study or maybe introduce a character or maybe have a short conversation in your newsletter about it or on social media. So you can remind people of interesting things that they have said without beating them over the head with "This is also for sale." And I think that's the difference too, is we have this run-up to a launch and so many times launch parties are meant to, I think the intent was to celebrate the launch when really it just means for the authors who are doing it, they're just beating their readers over the head with something new and they don't realize that it's not a celebration anymore.
And I think, you know, as indies, we are responsible for pushing it, but there's no doubt about that. There's no one that's going to push your book. You don't have a publisher that's going to launch a full-court press for you anymore. This is our responsibility and it's our opportunity to do that.
But again, I think if we look at the language and we start to think about how we can continue a conversation with them, bring in interesting things to engage and ask questions, satisfy them, bring in other authors and collaborate and do different things to make them feel special and included rather than transactional. I think it's going to make all the difference in the world.
Matty: Yeah, I'm realizing that one thing that had drifted off my radar screen was the idea that a launch celebration is supposed to be a celebration; it's not supposed to be a sales event. And I really like that idea. It would definitely be more comfortable for me to think about in what way do I want to celebrate the availability of this new book with the people who... And maybe attract the attention of people who don't follow me yet. That could be part of it too. But think, you know, I'm going to go on a Facebook Live with a glass of wine and I'm going to chat with people for an hour. It's a much more fun and less stressful way of thinking about it than some of the things that I see people doing for launches.
And I guess the other part of that, which kind of goes back to the cyclical idea of the flywheel, is that it's much more comfortable for me. So I have a book that's based on, its backstory is a big fire that took place in Maine in 1947, the fire of '47 in Bar Harbor. And so every October, I pull up, I find some video clips or something like that about the fire, which was a fascinating event.
And I post them. And I say, if you want to learn more, you know, I have a book with this backstory, which is much more comfortable for me and feels more organic than, than a big splashy launch for that book when it first comes out and then kind of letting it sit aside. So I think that there's a lot of nice comfort there to be had from the organicness and the non-transactional nature of this kind of relationship, this kind of flywheel relationship.
Pursuing out-of-the-box ideas for engaging readers
Chelle: Yeah, we also did a webinar the other day that talked about out-of-the-box thinking, and one of the things we talked about is, you know, if you write fantasy, instead of trying to do this big social media push, why not partner with a Renaissance fair? Why not have some of your characters cosplay and show up at the Renaissance fair, and get people to learn and know about your story and your world and bring them into your world? Instead of saying, "Here is a book I have for sale. Come read it," get them engaged in it. That's sort of one of the interesting things that we talk about in the "Future of Publishing" issue too, is the advent of transmedia, which is, you've got folks that learn about your world from alternate sources. A good example of that is "The Witcher," because it started out as a game, and no one knew that there was a book. And then there was a Netflix series, and no one knew there was a game. And so that's an example of bringing people in, and then, you know, taking them deeper or figuring out how they can learn more about your world and bring them into your fandom.
So, you know, there's lots and lots of ways to do that in very small ways, right? So you could offer a cookbook for sale, that's connected to your cozy mystery. The cookbook almost has nothing to do with it, but you know, learning about who wrote the cookbook, you know, it was a grandmother that wrote the cookbook or there's a ghost that wrote the cookbook. I don't know. Somebody wrote the cookbook, but it's tied to your story. So you've got different ways that you can make it interesting and engaging and do it out-of-the-box rather than, you know, slogging up Launch Mountain, which I think some of us just get so, it's exhausting. It really is.
So if there's a way that you can think out-of-the-box and come back to and make it fun for yourself too, how much more do you resonate with someone who's enthusiastic and engaged and excited about what they're doing? And, oh, hey, they have something for sale as opposed to, you know, feeling like you're getting beaten over the head with a credit card machine.
It's just a more organic way for you to feel better about it as an author and for them to feel better about it as a reader and to keep that connection a little bit more solid. Yeah.
Matty: I think that is an area where indie authors definitely have an edge on traditional publishers because traditional publishers are all about the launch, and I think they neglect the backlist. And I see some traditionally published authors that I follow on social media and it's like, "Oh God, I just can't look at another 'coming in a week, coming in six days, coming in five days.'"
Chelle: And it's also not their writing. It's not them writing it. It's some social media... you know, and there's nothing wrong with help. Believe me, there's nothing wrong with having people manage your social media for you or do something. But it's, again, it's that faceless transaction as opposed to how exciting it is when the author goes on there?
I live for Neil Gaiman's tweets. I live for them. He's engaging and he's charming and he answers people. And, you know, I said something one day about one of the audiobooks I love, "The Graveyard Book," which I absolutely adore, and he answered me and I was like, "I'm going to go buy 'The Graveyard Book' 74 more times."
Matty: Yes, I've listened to "Neverwhere" on audio more times than any other book I've ever read. I love it so much.
Chelle: I'm, I live for audiobooks now. It's just, it's one of the most engaging ways to enjoy stories. It's so great. So fantastic.
Matty: Especially when you're Neil Gaiman and you have that voice, and I don't bother buying anything of his books that he's not narrating. I just love his narrating so much, and I love it because, I mean, and this kind of gets back to that whole idea of letting your readers see you, that when you're listening to Neil Gaiman read a Neil Gaiman book, then you know it's the way it was supposed to sound, you know? You don't have any intermediary there. It's a direct experience with the author and there's, you know, there's very few authors that are bigger than Neil Gaiman and yet he's finding ways to make that connection to people.
Chelle: And he does. And it's so personal. And, you know, he doesn't have to—I mean, he doesn't have to—but I think he understands that the relationships, those are what feed his soul. Those are what sustain him and get him excited when someone appreciates his work and has questions about his work. And he's able to answer questions about his work. So that's, I mean, there's that is probably the most perfect example of somebody that's engaging, engaging... yeah. Organically and doesn't hide behind, you know, 16 layers of corporate.
Matty: Well, I'm going to flag Neil Gaiman on this episode and see if he notices, which is a great lead-in to another question I wanted to ask, which is, you had talked earlier about this flywheel idea being not just focused on your target reader group but a way to build a community and involve other authors in supporting that approach.
The generosity of the author community
Matty: Can you talk about that a little bit more?
Chelle: Sure. So, I think one of the benefits of this industry, again, is that we have the opportunity to collaborate with others, because if we think of the product as not being a book to sell, but if we think of the product as being a satisfied reader, a happy whale reader, somebody that reads more and more, you can't possibly satisfy that reader with just your books. There's just no way to do it. Unless, you know, unless you're Amanda Lee, who has 4,000 books or something, it's just not possible for you to be the singular person to satisfy them.
And so, if you think of your end goal as a satisfied reader, and you partner with people that you trust to offer their books or to connect them, then you develop this co-opetition of sorts, so that you're cooperating with your perceived competition. This is the only industry where you're not competing for a single sale. I'm not selling a widget. I'm not selling a sticker. I'm not selling a button. I'm selling an experience. And so if you think of that experience as broader than your one story and you think of ways that you can bring in other people to keep that reader, that fan in the ecosystem...
So for example, if you're an urban fantasy writer, you can partner with other urban fantasy writers. They're going to read more than one book. That is the beauty and the grace of this industry, that they're going to read more. And so if you think of it as putting other people on your flywheel to satisfy your reader and keeping their connection and keeping your own relationship with them at the same time, you can go... there's the saying that if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together, and that is the perfect example of it.
If you partner with others, you're going to go that much farther. And they have to have the same writing style or ethics, or they have to write a good book, they have to tell a good story. Your readers trust you to recommend good stories to them. So you do need to read it. You know, make good business decisions where those are concerned. That's where some of the great partners like BookFunnel and StoryOrigin can help you vet some of those and find some of those. Those are great resources for that, but then, you know, again, your whole goal is that satisfied reader.
So, you're never going to be sad. They're never going to be mad at you for recommending a great book to them. They're just not. They're going to be mad at you if you recommend a really bad book to them. So, be sure you're not doing that.
Matty: Yeah. Yeah, I think that aspect they were talking about, how unique the indie author community is, we kind of lose track of because we're in the middle of it. But if you think, if there was like the auto mall, you know, every city has their auto mall, their strip of auto stores, and you're never going to have a situation where someone says, "Come on down, we're having a big party, and, you know, I sell Jeeps, but across the street, there are Fords, you might like a Ford." Or, you know, there is no other industry other than the writing industry where it makes sense, it's both karmically good and business-wise good for people to be supporting each other in that way.
Chelle: It is. And I'm absolutely astonished at how generous this industry is. Constantly, not surprised anymore, I'm constantly gratified to see how generous people are. I can throw out a question to 20 different people and they're going to answer it and they're going to answer it generously, right? And they're going to open up their books or their ideas or share things. That to me is... I say this all the time, and it's absolutely true, I wake up every day and play with my best friends as a job. Like, come on, this is the greatest industry to work in. It's fantastic.
How to listen to your community to adjust your flywheel
Matty: I wanted to hit another topic on the whole idea of the cyclical nature of the flywheel; it's not linear, so you're gathering information as you're having these experiences, and so the people that you're collecting as your community have an opportunity to provide input, explicitly or implicitly, about how that's going. Do you have any perspectives on how an author should listen to their community so that they can make adjustments to their flywheel if that seems appropriate?
Chelle: Sure, so, of course, I'm a technologist, so the first thing I'm going to say is pay attention to what pages they visit on your website. Pay attention to, like, you need to own and pixel them yourself, right? So that you can ethically stalk them around and know what they're doing. That's the first thing, because those cues and those things are very important.
You can set your email up so that if they click on buttons, you get signals and you do have to pay attention to those signals and those are really helpful. So if, for example, you put out a poll, it's almost less important what they answer and more important that they even answer it all and that you're getting engagement back, so that you can see and gauge what kinds of things that you're asking them and what kinds of things you're putting out and what they're responding to.
So it's a constant, it's constantly testing things. It's always A/B testing, A/B/C/D testing, and so on and so forth. But you can pay attention to your data first. And that I think is probably the best. And it's actually the easiest starting point. So for example, if you have someone that comes to your website, the first thing you can do is you can ask them only for their email address. You're not asking them for all kinds of information. You're just asking for the lowest barrier of information, which is their email address. And then the next thing you can do is... You know, send them something that says, "I always like to acknowledge everybody's birthday. Can you send me yours? I always like to send a gift."
So then you're asking for a secondary piece of information, and you're collecting that as you go through, and you're starting to build that relationship. Then you can ask them for their first name. Then you can ask them for their last name. Then you can ask them, you know, what's the top five books that they love. So you can collect data over periods of time and collect that very slowly as you build trust with them, and then pay attention to what they're doing, and what they're reading, and what they're showing. You can offer free chapters on your website, and you can actually see, did they read the entire thing? Did they only read half of it? You can send them emails based on what they did. So if they only read half of it, you can say, "Were you able to finish this?" If they finish it, you can send them an email that says, "Hey, I noticed you finished it. Tell me what you thought." And if they tell you what they thought, that's obviously an engaged reader. You can then say, "Would you—I would love it if you would tell others about it. Here's an easy way to write a review." So you're asking for transactional things, but you're doing it incrementally as you're building that relationship, rather than just saying, "Thank you for buying my book. Here are 85 ways that you can leave me reviews. Here's my next book launch, and here's a freebie," and here's, you know, you're overwhelming them instead of building a relationship with them.
Matty: And I do think that people appreciate that, you know, in the sense of giving people value. I think traditionally the idea was, well, you give them value by giving them a free thing, but there's value in, as you illustrate, you demonstrating that you're listening to what they have to say and you're acting on it or considering it or responding back to them when they provide you with that. I don't want to take us too far down the path because obviously, we could have a whole other conversation about collecting data. But if anyone's listening to this and they're going, "Oh my God, collecting data, that's a good idea." Is there like one thing that you would recommend people do or one resource you would recommend people go to, to kind of start getting an idea of how they can tap into the data that's available to them?
Chelle: Sure. Well, obviously we have indieauthortraining.com where we sort of help people do that. So that is a free resource that we teach people and have webinars and do different things. I like Personally, I tend to not build on rented land, so to speak, so I don't use email service providers in the strictest sense. I don't use MailerLite. I don't use a lot of those others. They're fantastic. They're great to get started. I use Fluent CRM, which is built into my WordPress website, so it's free to get started. Some of the beauty of Fluent CRM is it's a free plugin for WordPress, but you don't have limits to how many emails you can have on your list. Like, some email service providers say, you know, it's free to 2,500 and then it's X number of dollars and X number of dollars, and they have that tiered system. I prefer systems that you don't charge for the numbers of people that you have on your list, so you don't have that impetus to shed people off your list, right? You don't have to be so ruthless to get people off your list.
That might be counterintuitive to what some gurus say, but That's just me. So I like FluentCRM. I also like MailPoet.com because it integrates with WordPress. And again, it's free. They do have the tiered system, but it's free for up to 25 people and inexpensive after that. The reason why I like that is because, again, your data lives on your website. It's not on a different system. It's yours, and you can do with it what you want. And you can see your data within one ecosystem and not off in others.
I have lots of opinions, Matty, don't get me wrong. I could share tech opinions all day long, but those are conversations that we have over on IndieAuthorTraining.com, which is the companion to the magazine, and we built it specifically so people could ask those weird questions and not feel like they're asking dumb questions because we have, and there's lots of people that have contrary opinions, you know, we have Tammy Labreck's over there, All the time, you know, sort of telling, no, that's not what I would do. I'm like, great. Let's figure out the best way for each individual person.
First steps to building a flywheel
Matty: Well, that's a great sort of starting point for people who are wanted to delve into the data side of it. And maybe a good way to sort of wrap up our conversation is to say, if people are similarly wanting to take one step, they're, you're, they're hearing this idea of the flywheel rather than the funnel, and it's feeling right to them. It's feeling brand right for the persona that they want to put out with, is there a step or two you would recommend people take in order to move in that direction?
Chelle: So I would start to look at the newsletters and the emails that you get and start to parse them in a different way and start to see because once you see it, you can't unsee it. Right. And once you start seeing things that you're feeling that you're being sold to, you'll start to see very quickly that they start to fall into two camps. And then you can start to start formulating your own system for, "Oh, that's something I like. I might say that in my next newsletter, or I that's something I like, I might, you know, work on that on my website." So I think the first part is just the awareness, start looking at the things that you're looking at your own email in your own newsletters and the things that you're consuming, and start to be more aware of that.
Chelle: I also, you're going to laugh, but I also think TikTok is a fantastic resource for folks to start studying some of this. They'll start to see how people engage. Now, there are lots and lots of theories about TikTok and how to do TikTok and why to do TikTok. But for me, it's probably the most interesting case study, if you will. You can see how people relate and the things that they say. There's one particular TikToker that I love. Her name is Natalia Hernandez, and she is so relatable, and she sells a million, billion, gazillion books, but she does it in such a relatable way. She asks interesting questions, and she stitches people, and she's got a great presence on camera. That's all well, good and fine, but you can start to study people that really do have that relational spark and start to think about ways that you can incorporate it. So it doesn't have to feel so antithetical to what you're doing now, right? You don't have to reinvent everything. You can just start to incorporate some of those things a little bit slowly.
Matty: I like that idea of taking a look at the things that each person relates to as a consumer and understanding that, that probably indicates it would be comfortable for you to do and therefore is the brand you want to put out there and should be comfortable for the people that you want to attract to yourself.
Chelle: Yeah, there are lots and lots of ways that you can start to move towards that without reinventing or, you know, turning the game board upside down.
Matty: So cool. Well, Chelle, thank you so much. I appreciate you talking through the sales flywheel with us and lots of other fascinating topics. So, please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
Chelle: Sure, so, the easiest way is to go to IndyAuthorMagazine.com, that's the baby, and also IndyAuthorTraining.com, that is our new conversation and education platform where we have lots and lots of different educators that are coming together in a space and, with support and a community, to talk about some of these things that are happening in our industry. So, and of course at AuthorNation, I'm the Programming Director for AuthorNation, so I'd love to see everybody in Vegas November 11th through the 15th.
Matty: I will be there.
Chelle: It's going to be such a great conference. I'm so excited. I can barely contain my enthusiasm for this. It's really, really great. I'm really excited about the transition from 20 books and keeping all of the great stuff that we had at 20 books for so long, I was there from day one, and now transitioning into something that serves our industry in the future, it's just, it's going to be fantastic.
Matty: Yeah, you guys are obviously putting a ton of thought and care into that. I've been interested in following that and the updates you're sending out and, the State of the Nation podcast. So, I'm going to be super excited to be there myself and see what's the same and what's different. Thank you so much.
Chelle: Thanks, Matty.
Chelle: Hey Matty, I'm great. Thanks for having me.
Matty: I am pleased to have you here.
Meet Chelle Honiker
Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background, Chelle Honiker is an advocate for the empowerment of entrepreneurs, recognizing the importance of authors taking charge of their craft and careers. She's the co-founder and publisher of "Indie Author Magazine," "Indy Author Training," "Indy Author Tools," and DirectToReaders.com, the programming director for the Author Nation Conference, and a TEDx organizer. And I was recently listening to an episode of the "Author Nation State of the Nation" podcast, and I heard Chelle mention the topic of the sales flywheel. I was so intrigued by that idea that I invited her on the podcast to talk more about it.
What is the sales flywheel... and what is it not?
Chelle: What is it, and what is it not? Okay, so in the concept of marketing, we've traditionally been taught that there is a sales funnel, meaning you start at the top and you bring a bunch of people in, then you move them through a funnel until you get to an eventual sale. Traditionally, you start them over again, and you start more top of funnel activities, offering them maybe free things, then you move them to the middle of the funnel, where you try to sell them something or go deeper in the relationship until you get to the bottom of the funnel, which is an eventual sale.
What my thinking is, and what I have seen tremendously on the rise in this industry, is the advent of what's called a flywheel. A flywheel means that you have different touch points. Think of it as a circle; you have different touch points, and you might touch someone with a newsletter or a website or something, and you keep moving them around in a circle so that you have a continuous conversation with them, rather than trying to get them to a zero-sum sale every single time.
Chelle: So the importance of that is that you're continuing the conversation and you're deepening the relationship with them. You're asking them questions, you might give them polls, you might offer them some version of Patreon or Kickstarter, you might have some merch, so you're basically just keeping them in your ecosystem and you're talking to them on a continuous basis rather than just cycling them through a sales process.
Building a community through the flywheel
Chelle: I've also expanded that a bit now as I've thought about it more to include not just you participating in the sales flywheel, but also other people in your ecosystem. For example, if you think of a satisfied reader as your goal, you can offer them other books. You might have other authors that are part of that sales flywheel that you collaborate with, or with whom you have anthologies, or that you swap newsletters with, so that you're continuously keeping that satisfied reader engaged, rather than funneling through a sales cycle every single time.
And you don't really need to start over; you just continue the conversation with them.
Matty: It does feel more comfortable in the sense that a funnel suggests—and I don't think I thought about this until I heard the alternative of the flywheel—it feels like dropping people off based on a perceived sense of their value.
Chelle: Yeah, their worth, right?
Matty: Their worth, yeah, exactly. It felt uncomfortable, and I think that the way you're describing it, there's a sort of more community-oriented approach. Interestingly, both with the people you're trying to reach as readers and, as you're saying, through the authors, it's just a more comfortable way of thinking about it.
Finding the nugget of humanity
Chelle: It's a more comfortable way of thinking about it, and it's more, I think, especially with this generation, they're used to having conversations and more personal connections with folks. While email still remains incredibly important, there's also video that people are accustomed to now. They're used to seeing authors and storytellers in a much more relatable way, as opposed to just blasting; we used to call it spray and pray, right?
And back in the marketing days, we would spray out an offer, spray out a message, and you would pray somebody would come back and buy something. Those days are kind of over, I think, because people are more sophisticated, and because now, especially with the advent of technology during the pandemic, we all sort of had to find a little more nugget of humanity and more ways to relate to one another.
I also think that with the advent of generative AI, that is going to be the salvation for the storytellers who want to continue and have successful careers, because nothing can replace that humanity. If you have a connection with your reader, if you have a connection with your listener or your viewer, if you're setting them up with video, generative AI is not going to replace that.
Chelle: It's not going to replace the heart and the humanity of the person-to-person connection. It's just not. And I have great hope for the things that AI will be able to help us with to get rid of some of the busy work and the junk so that we can get back to connecting with our readers and our fans. We can connect with our stories and make sure that we're doing the thing that we love, which is telling stories.
The danger of teaching readers to expect free
Matty: Yeah. You had mentioned freebies as an important part of the sales funnel that everybody's advised to offer—a free story or novella—in order to get people on their email list. What kind of role do you think giving away content plays when you're looking at a sales flywheel instead of a sales funnel?
Chelle: So I think, I have always felt that was a tricky endeavor, because you're teaching your reader to expect free. You're basically saying, here it is for free, you're devaluing it. I don't think readers realize that our initial thought was by offering a reader magnet, a lead magnet, those things for free, we were getting them hooked. But because they're inundated with so much, we've just trained them to expect things for free now.
And I think that's backfired in a certain way for us. You know, there are different genres that have different successes, so I think it's very different for each individual author as to how they incorporate some of that. But for me and for our marketing mix, we tend to do that a little more sparingly because it's a race to the bottom, and it devalues your work immediately. So even if you offer it for 99 cents, you're still assigning a value to it, and you're still teaching your reader to value your work. And I think ultimately, that's really been one of the most important hurdles that we as indies have faced because self-published has always been equated with vanity press rather than as a marketing strategy.
And I hope that we can start to reframe that conversation so that 'indie' now means taking charge of your career as opposed to just being self-published. So an indie author could be hybrid. An indie author could be traditionally published in my world. It just literally means that you are building a business and building relationships with your readers.
So I have mixed ideas on that. I mean, coming back to the idea of the flywheel, if you do a free newsletter swap and you get all those people in there, the way our email systems are set up—because we pay for every subscriber that's on our email list—we're often taught to shed people who don't open or engage, or do something. When in fact, we might think about how we engaged with them in the first place and how can we bring them deeper into the conversation or offer them something that's a little more of value.
For example, authors could offer to show up to book clubs if they're reading their book. You can offer a little bit more of yourself, which I know is very scary, right? There are a lot of us who are introverts and a lot of us just want to write books or just want to tell stories. I get that, but I think that we're overlooking an opportunity that we might not have thought of by connecting more deeply, connecting outside of social media networks, even.
The changing role of social media
Chelle: I think social media is going to change a lot as well.
I think we're going to have to rely less on social media and more on owning our own ecosystems, our own groups, our own direct sales, our own relationships. The data of our customers will be our intellectual property that we need to protect a bit more. So, I think we need to do more business shifting and start thinking about our businesses and not be so dependent on freebies or even retailers, right?
I think those are conversations that we need to have. I think that's sort of the future of publishing—owning our own distribution network and owning our own relationships with our customers in a slightly different way.
The power of collaboration
Chelle: That also means there are opportunities to collaborate with people because we don't have a zero-sum game of selling a single widget or selling a single book. We have the opportunity to satisfy a reader as the end result, and we can partner with people we trust and other authors we trust to keep that satisfied reader happy and in that ecosystem, and keep touching them on that flywheel. It's a subtle shift, but I think it's a necessary one.
I think it's going to be something we really need to think about as we move forward because there are things that are changing, and we are, to some extent, at the mercy of some retailers. And they are great partners; don't get me wrong. They've opened up doors and they've built careers. But if they decided not to give us commission, if they decided to shut down anything, there would be many of us who would be in deep trouble because we don't have a way to contact our customers directly, which is why newsletters have always been so important. In my world, they're vastly important because you need to have a way to connect with your customers.
If Facebook shut down the ability for us to have groups, which they've already done with some features—we're not able to go live in groups anymore—we need to be able to control how we connect with our readers. That's probably the scariest part of all.
Matty: There were two things I wanted to delve into. One is that I think this idea that there's more value in the relationship between a creator and the people who are accepting their creations is compelling. I had talked about this a little bit with Jennifer Holt and Megan Haskell. We did an episode on Kickstarter, and we were talking about how there are readers out there who are browsing for their books on Kickstarter because they like that idea of not just picking a book off a shelf or a virtual shelf; they like the idea of having some kind of connection with the authors. And I think that's very appealing to authors.
And then, kind of contradictory to that is this idea that you have to sort of be more putting yourself out there more if you're pursuing a sales flywheel versus a sales funnel approach. Do those feel contradictory to you, or do you have advice about how people can get over any part of that feels uncomfortable to them?
Sharing of yourself, but within parameters you set
Chelle: I mean, there are ways to... I think one of the things in social media is that we think that we're seeing an entire video of someone when actually we're just seeing the highlights. And so, everybody can choose what to put out there and what to say and how to say it. You don't have to give 110 percent of yourself all of the time.
You don't have to show your children's faces. You don't have to show your husband's face. You don't even have to, you could use initials, right? So, there are ways to keep some of that anonymity for yourself. And you have to choose whatever level of comfort you have with that. But I will say that some of the more successful authors that I see, for example, Lucy Score—she has a fantastic newsletter where she talks about things in a very humorous way.
And I devour her newsletters, just because they're so entertaining. The fact that she sells a book is almost ancillary to the whole reason why I read her newsletter. I like to hear about her shenanigans. And the other thing that she does at the bottom of them is she promotes good news. Those have nothing to do with her personally.
She's just created a vibe, if you will. She's created a network of positivity and engagement and lighthearted things. So she'll say, you know, here's something that happened that was really good. Here's a dog that was rescued, or, you know, there's really good things happening in the world, and she is perpetuating that without... She wouldn't have to do all of the things that she does, and no one should have to feel like they're sacrificing themselves on the altar of their readers. But there are ways that you can connect and create a persona that is very viable and engaging and worthy of it.
One of the things that we've done at "Indie Author Magazine" is we created an avatar. Her name is Indy Annie, and all of our newsletters come from her. We've created her as a slightly drunk agony aunt that gives advice, and she's an amalgam of all of us. There is someone that actually writes the advice columns, but her articles and her advice letters are hilarious, and they're so much fun. But we've chosen to make all of our newsletters come from her, so you know, there are ways to do that.
I know there are other authors that have personas, right? They have, I have a friend who writes mystery thrillers, and she has a hat over her eyes, and it's a bit mysterious, so she doesn't show her face. I have another who writes cozy mysteries, and she has a cute little spyglass over her face, and it's an avatar, so there are ways to do that.
You don't have to put yourself completely out there, and again, you don't have to be a Kardashian and overshare absolutely everything. But I think the opportunity is that indie authors don't have PR staff and don't have publicity teams and don't have gatekeepers. You have the ability to connect directly with your readers. So you can show them the highlight reel. You don't have to show them the behind-the-scenes.
Building cyclical, not transactional, relationships
Matty: It does seem like another key difference between a sales funnel and a sales flywheel is this idea that the funnel feels transactional, whereas the flywheel, not surprisingly, feels cyclical. Wheel, cyclical. How would you recommend that authors internalize that in their own reader outreach processes? Like, are there steps people should take, or red flags they should watch out for, that would point them in one direction or the other? Oh, you're going to have a better result, you're going to develop a better relationship with your readers if you approach it in a less transactional way. Do you have any tips there?
Don't just email people when you have something to sell them
Chelle: Yeah, so I think the biggest tip is don't just email people when you have something to sell them. And that's probably the biggest mistake. I try not to be prescriptive and say do this and not do this, but I can say that I see more success when people continue to have conversations. For example, if you're sharing recipes and just giving generously, not saying, "Here's a countdown timer and here's my book and it's coming, and it's coming," and having these transactional emails that lead up to it, that's priming the pump and people know when they're being sold to.
The difference is not subtle. If I'm being honest, I can see a subject line and know immediately if it's somebody interesting and engaging versus just priming the pump and getting me ready to sell something. If it says "countdown" or if it says "open now" or if there's a sense of urgency, we tend to listen to a lot of marketers, and marketing advice is great.
But I think the shift now is getting—not necessarily away from the commerce because that's important—but also focusing and prioritizing the relationship with your reader, asking good questions, giving them the opportunity to weigh in on things, talking to them on Kickstarter or other places, making one of the levels about killing off a character or saving a character. You don't have to write by committee, but there is something to be said for keeping them engaged and keeping them interested in the ecosystem and in the sphere that you have.
So, I would say, try to just analyze it and have people look at it. And if you find yourself only emailing your readers when a new release is coming, there might be a different way that you can engage.
The flywheel approach to book launches
Matty: It makes me think of a topic that I would not have expected to bring up in a flywheel versus funnel conversation, but that is book launches. I found that for the last couple of launches of my books—since I'm publishing a book maybe every nine to twelve months—by the time it's ready, I'm already onto the next book. And I became sort of fed up with launch parties and things like that. My last couple of launches were like, "Hey, I have a new book." And I realized that that was probably not the best way to do it. But as an indie author, I also feel like the real value of my books is in the backlist.
And I don't bank a lot on the backlist, so an underwhelming launch wasn't going to be a big impact for me. But do you think that there's an aspect of an indie author promoting their backlist that is better served by using a flywheel approach than using a funnel approach?
Chelle: I think, sure, especially depending on your genre, because you can thread in conversations from your backlist and maybe do a character study or maybe introduce a character or maybe have a short conversation in your newsletter about it or on social media. So you can remind people of interesting things that they have said without beating them over the head with "This is also for sale." And I think that's the difference too, is we have this run-up to a launch and so many times launch parties are meant to, I think the intent was to celebrate the launch when really it just means for the authors who are doing it, they're just beating their readers over the head with something new and they don't realize that it's not a celebration anymore.
And I think, you know, as indies, we are responsible for pushing it, but there's no doubt about that. There's no one that's going to push your book. You don't have a publisher that's going to launch a full-court press for you anymore. This is our responsibility and it's our opportunity to do that.
But again, I think if we look at the language and we start to think about how we can continue a conversation with them, bring in interesting things to engage and ask questions, satisfy them, bring in other authors and collaborate and do different things to make them feel special and included rather than transactional. I think it's going to make all the difference in the world.
Matty: Yeah, I'm realizing that one thing that had drifted off my radar screen was the idea that a launch celebration is supposed to be a celebration; it's not supposed to be a sales event. And I really like that idea. It would definitely be more comfortable for me to think about in what way do I want to celebrate the availability of this new book with the people who... And maybe attract the attention of people who don't follow me yet. That could be part of it too. But think, you know, I'm going to go on a Facebook Live with a glass of wine and I'm going to chat with people for an hour. It's a much more fun and less stressful way of thinking about it than some of the things that I see people doing for launches.
And I guess the other part of that, which kind of goes back to the cyclical idea of the flywheel, is that it's much more comfortable for me. So I have a book that's based on, its backstory is a big fire that took place in Maine in 1947, the fire of '47 in Bar Harbor. And so every October, I pull up, I find some video clips or something like that about the fire, which was a fascinating event.
And I post them. And I say, if you want to learn more, you know, I have a book with this backstory, which is much more comfortable for me and feels more organic than, than a big splashy launch for that book when it first comes out and then kind of letting it sit aside. So I think that there's a lot of nice comfort there to be had from the organicness and the non-transactional nature of this kind of relationship, this kind of flywheel relationship.
Pursuing out-of-the-box ideas for engaging readers
Chelle: Yeah, we also did a webinar the other day that talked about out-of-the-box thinking, and one of the things we talked about is, you know, if you write fantasy, instead of trying to do this big social media push, why not partner with a Renaissance fair? Why not have some of your characters cosplay and show up at the Renaissance fair, and get people to learn and know about your story and your world and bring them into your world? Instead of saying, "Here is a book I have for sale. Come read it," get them engaged in it. That's sort of one of the interesting things that we talk about in the "Future of Publishing" issue too, is the advent of transmedia, which is, you've got folks that learn about your world from alternate sources. A good example of that is "The Witcher," because it started out as a game, and no one knew that there was a book. And then there was a Netflix series, and no one knew there was a game. And so that's an example of bringing people in, and then, you know, taking them deeper or figuring out how they can learn more about your world and bring them into your fandom.
So, you know, there's lots and lots of ways to do that in very small ways, right? So you could offer a cookbook for sale, that's connected to your cozy mystery. The cookbook almost has nothing to do with it, but you know, learning about who wrote the cookbook, you know, it was a grandmother that wrote the cookbook or there's a ghost that wrote the cookbook. I don't know. Somebody wrote the cookbook, but it's tied to your story. So you've got different ways that you can make it interesting and engaging and do it out-of-the-box rather than, you know, slogging up Launch Mountain, which I think some of us just get so, it's exhausting. It really is.
So if there's a way that you can think out-of-the-box and come back to and make it fun for yourself too, how much more do you resonate with someone who's enthusiastic and engaged and excited about what they're doing? And, oh, hey, they have something for sale as opposed to, you know, feeling like you're getting beaten over the head with a credit card machine.
It's just a more organic way for you to feel better about it as an author and for them to feel better about it as a reader and to keep that connection a little bit more solid. Yeah.
Matty: I think that is an area where indie authors definitely have an edge on traditional publishers because traditional publishers are all about the launch, and I think they neglect the backlist. And I see some traditionally published authors that I follow on social media and it's like, "Oh God, I just can't look at another 'coming in a week, coming in six days, coming in five days.'"
Chelle: And it's also not their writing. It's not them writing it. It's some social media... you know, and there's nothing wrong with help. Believe me, there's nothing wrong with having people manage your social media for you or do something. But it's, again, it's that faceless transaction as opposed to how exciting it is when the author goes on there?
I live for Neil Gaiman's tweets. I live for them. He's engaging and he's charming and he answers people. And, you know, I said something one day about one of the audiobooks I love, "The Graveyard Book," which I absolutely adore, and he answered me and I was like, "I'm going to go buy 'The Graveyard Book' 74 more times."
Matty: Yes, I've listened to "Neverwhere" on audio more times than any other book I've ever read. I love it so much.
Chelle: I'm, I live for audiobooks now. It's just, it's one of the most engaging ways to enjoy stories. It's so great. So fantastic.
Matty: Especially when you're Neil Gaiman and you have that voice, and I don't bother buying anything of his books that he's not narrating. I just love his narrating so much, and I love it because, I mean, and this kind of gets back to that whole idea of letting your readers see you, that when you're listening to Neil Gaiman read a Neil Gaiman book, then you know it's the way it was supposed to sound, you know? You don't have any intermediary there. It's a direct experience with the author and there's, you know, there's very few authors that are bigger than Neil Gaiman and yet he's finding ways to make that connection to people.
Chelle: And he does. And it's so personal. And, you know, he doesn't have to—I mean, he doesn't have to—but I think he understands that the relationships, those are what feed his soul. Those are what sustain him and get him excited when someone appreciates his work and has questions about his work. And he's able to answer questions about his work. So that's, I mean, there's that is probably the most perfect example of somebody that's engaging, engaging... yeah. Organically and doesn't hide behind, you know, 16 layers of corporate.
Matty: Well, I'm going to flag Neil Gaiman on this episode and see if he notices, which is a great lead-in to another question I wanted to ask, which is, you had talked earlier about this flywheel idea being not just focused on your target reader group but a way to build a community and involve other authors in supporting that approach.
The generosity of the author community
Matty: Can you talk about that a little bit more?
Chelle: Sure. So, I think one of the benefits of this industry, again, is that we have the opportunity to collaborate with others, because if we think of the product as not being a book to sell, but if we think of the product as being a satisfied reader, a happy whale reader, somebody that reads more and more, you can't possibly satisfy that reader with just your books. There's just no way to do it. Unless, you know, unless you're Amanda Lee, who has 4,000 books or something, it's just not possible for you to be the singular person to satisfy them.
And so, if you think of your end goal as a satisfied reader, and you partner with people that you trust to offer their books or to connect them, then you develop this co-opetition of sorts, so that you're cooperating with your perceived competition. This is the only industry where you're not competing for a single sale. I'm not selling a widget. I'm not selling a sticker. I'm not selling a button. I'm selling an experience. And so if you think of that experience as broader than your one story and you think of ways that you can bring in other people to keep that reader, that fan in the ecosystem...
So for example, if you're an urban fantasy writer, you can partner with other urban fantasy writers. They're going to read more than one book. That is the beauty and the grace of this industry, that they're going to read more. And so if you think of it as putting other people on your flywheel to satisfy your reader and keeping their connection and keeping your own relationship with them at the same time, you can go... there's the saying that if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together, and that is the perfect example of it.
If you partner with others, you're going to go that much farther. And they have to have the same writing style or ethics, or they have to write a good book, they have to tell a good story. Your readers trust you to recommend good stories to them. So you do need to read it. You know, make good business decisions where those are concerned. That's where some of the great partners like BookFunnel and StoryOrigin can help you vet some of those and find some of those. Those are great resources for that, but then, you know, again, your whole goal is that satisfied reader.
So, you're never going to be sad. They're never going to be mad at you for recommending a great book to them. They're just not. They're going to be mad at you if you recommend a really bad book to them. So, be sure you're not doing that.
Matty: Yeah. Yeah, I think that aspect they were talking about, how unique the indie author community is, we kind of lose track of because we're in the middle of it. But if you think, if there was like the auto mall, you know, every city has their auto mall, their strip of auto stores, and you're never going to have a situation where someone says, "Come on down, we're having a big party, and, you know, I sell Jeeps, but across the street, there are Fords, you might like a Ford." Or, you know, there is no other industry other than the writing industry where it makes sense, it's both karmically good and business-wise good for people to be supporting each other in that way.
Chelle: It is. And I'm absolutely astonished at how generous this industry is. Constantly, not surprised anymore, I'm constantly gratified to see how generous people are. I can throw out a question to 20 different people and they're going to answer it and they're going to answer it generously, right? And they're going to open up their books or their ideas or share things. That to me is... I say this all the time, and it's absolutely true, I wake up every day and play with my best friends as a job. Like, come on, this is the greatest industry to work in. It's fantastic.
How to listen to your community to adjust your flywheel
Matty: I wanted to hit another topic on the whole idea of the cyclical nature of the flywheel; it's not linear, so you're gathering information as you're having these experiences, and so the people that you're collecting as your community have an opportunity to provide input, explicitly or implicitly, about how that's going. Do you have any perspectives on how an author should listen to their community so that they can make adjustments to their flywheel if that seems appropriate?
Chelle: Sure, so, of course, I'm a technologist, so the first thing I'm going to say is pay attention to what pages they visit on your website. Pay attention to, like, you need to own and pixel them yourself, right? So that you can ethically stalk them around and know what they're doing. That's the first thing, because those cues and those things are very important.
You can set your email up so that if they click on buttons, you get signals and you do have to pay attention to those signals and those are really helpful. So if, for example, you put out a poll, it's almost less important what they answer and more important that they even answer it all and that you're getting engagement back, so that you can see and gauge what kinds of things that you're asking them and what kinds of things you're putting out and what they're responding to.
So it's a constant, it's constantly testing things. It's always A/B testing, A/B/C/D testing, and so on and so forth. But you can pay attention to your data first. And that I think is probably the best. And it's actually the easiest starting point. So for example, if you have someone that comes to your website, the first thing you can do is you can ask them only for their email address. You're not asking them for all kinds of information. You're just asking for the lowest barrier of information, which is their email address. And then the next thing you can do is... You know, send them something that says, "I always like to acknowledge everybody's birthday. Can you send me yours? I always like to send a gift."
So then you're asking for a secondary piece of information, and you're collecting that as you go through, and you're starting to build that relationship. Then you can ask them for their first name. Then you can ask them for their last name. Then you can ask them, you know, what's the top five books that they love. So you can collect data over periods of time and collect that very slowly as you build trust with them, and then pay attention to what they're doing, and what they're reading, and what they're showing. You can offer free chapters on your website, and you can actually see, did they read the entire thing? Did they only read half of it? You can send them emails based on what they did. So if they only read half of it, you can say, "Were you able to finish this?" If they finish it, you can send them an email that says, "Hey, I noticed you finished it. Tell me what you thought." And if they tell you what they thought, that's obviously an engaged reader. You can then say, "Would you—I would love it if you would tell others about it. Here's an easy way to write a review." So you're asking for transactional things, but you're doing it incrementally as you're building that relationship, rather than just saying, "Thank you for buying my book. Here are 85 ways that you can leave me reviews. Here's my next book launch, and here's a freebie," and here's, you know, you're overwhelming them instead of building a relationship with them.
Matty: And I do think that people appreciate that, you know, in the sense of giving people value. I think traditionally the idea was, well, you give them value by giving them a free thing, but there's value in, as you illustrate, you demonstrating that you're listening to what they have to say and you're acting on it or considering it or responding back to them when they provide you with that. I don't want to take us too far down the path because obviously, we could have a whole other conversation about collecting data. But if anyone's listening to this and they're going, "Oh my God, collecting data, that's a good idea." Is there like one thing that you would recommend people do or one resource you would recommend people go to, to kind of start getting an idea of how they can tap into the data that's available to them?
Chelle: Sure. Well, obviously we have indieauthortraining.com where we sort of help people do that. So that is a free resource that we teach people and have webinars and do different things. I like Personally, I tend to not build on rented land, so to speak, so I don't use email service providers in the strictest sense. I don't use MailerLite. I don't use a lot of those others. They're fantastic. They're great to get started. I use Fluent CRM, which is built into my WordPress website, so it's free to get started. Some of the beauty of Fluent CRM is it's a free plugin for WordPress, but you don't have limits to how many emails you can have on your list. Like, some email service providers say, you know, it's free to 2,500 and then it's X number of dollars and X number of dollars, and they have that tiered system. I prefer systems that you don't charge for the numbers of people that you have on your list, so you don't have that impetus to shed people off your list, right? You don't have to be so ruthless to get people off your list.
That might be counterintuitive to what some gurus say, but That's just me. So I like FluentCRM. I also like MailPoet.com because it integrates with WordPress. And again, it's free. They do have the tiered system, but it's free for up to 25 people and inexpensive after that. The reason why I like that is because, again, your data lives on your website. It's not on a different system. It's yours, and you can do with it what you want. And you can see your data within one ecosystem and not off in others.
I have lots of opinions, Matty, don't get me wrong. I could share tech opinions all day long, but those are conversations that we have over on IndieAuthorTraining.com, which is the companion to the magazine, and we built it specifically so people could ask those weird questions and not feel like they're asking dumb questions because we have, and there's lots of people that have contrary opinions, you know, we have Tammy Labreck's over there, All the time, you know, sort of telling, no, that's not what I would do. I'm like, great. Let's figure out the best way for each individual person.
First steps to building a flywheel
Matty: Well, that's a great sort of starting point for people who are wanted to delve into the data side of it. And maybe a good way to sort of wrap up our conversation is to say, if people are similarly wanting to take one step, they're, you're, they're hearing this idea of the flywheel rather than the funnel, and it's feeling right to them. It's feeling brand right for the persona that they want to put out with, is there a step or two you would recommend people take in order to move in that direction?
Chelle: So I would start to look at the newsletters and the emails that you get and start to parse them in a different way and start to see because once you see it, you can't unsee it. Right. And once you start seeing things that you're feeling that you're being sold to, you'll start to see very quickly that they start to fall into two camps. And then you can start to start formulating your own system for, "Oh, that's something I like. I might say that in my next newsletter, or I that's something I like, I might, you know, work on that on my website." So I think the first part is just the awareness, start looking at the things that you're looking at your own email in your own newsletters and the things that you're consuming, and start to be more aware of that.
Chelle: I also, you're going to laugh, but I also think TikTok is a fantastic resource for folks to start studying some of this. They'll start to see how people engage. Now, there are lots and lots of theories about TikTok and how to do TikTok and why to do TikTok. But for me, it's probably the most interesting case study, if you will. You can see how people relate and the things that they say. There's one particular TikToker that I love. Her name is Natalia Hernandez, and she is so relatable, and she sells a million, billion, gazillion books, but she does it in such a relatable way. She asks interesting questions, and she stitches people, and she's got a great presence on camera. That's all well, good and fine, but you can start to study people that really do have that relational spark and start to think about ways that you can incorporate it. So it doesn't have to feel so antithetical to what you're doing now, right? You don't have to reinvent everything. You can just start to incorporate some of those things a little bit slowly.
Matty: I like that idea of taking a look at the things that each person relates to as a consumer and understanding that, that probably indicates it would be comfortable for you to do and therefore is the brand you want to put out there and should be comfortable for the people that you want to attract to yourself.
Chelle: Yeah, there are lots and lots of ways that you can start to move towards that without reinventing or, you know, turning the game board upside down.
Matty: So cool. Well, Chelle, thank you so much. I appreciate you talking through the sales flywheel with us and lots of other fascinating topics. So, please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
Chelle: Sure, so, the easiest way is to go to IndyAuthorMagazine.com, that's the baby, and also IndyAuthorTraining.com, that is our new conversation and education platform where we have lots and lots of different educators that are coming together in a space and, with support and a community, to talk about some of these things that are happening in our industry. So, and of course at AuthorNation, I'm the Programming Director for AuthorNation, so I'd love to see everybody in Vegas November 11th through the 15th.
Matty: I will be there.
Chelle: It's going to be such a great conference. I'm so excited. I can barely contain my enthusiasm for this. It's really, really great. I'm really excited about the transition from 20 books and keeping all of the great stuff that we had at 20 books for so long, I was there from day one, and now transitioning into something that serves our industry in the future, it's just, it's going to be fantastic.
Matty: Yeah, you guys are obviously putting a ton of thought and care into that. I've been interested in following that and the updates you're sending out and, the State of the Nation podcast. So, I'm going to be super excited to be there myself and see what's the same and what's different. Thank you so much.
Chelle: Thanks, Matty.
