Episode 233 - Data-Driven Publishing with Pamela Fagan Hutchins

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Matty Dalrymple talks with Pamela Fagan Hutchins about DATA-DRIVEN PUBLISHING, including business and creative collaboration with a publisher; the rise of "super indie / alt traditional”; changing one's genre or plotting approach based on the data; battling imposter syndrome; the danger of violating reader expectations and the power of targeting the enthusiastic sub-genre fan; and the value of writing between bright lines. 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.

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is a USA Today bestselling and Amazon All Star mystery / thriller / suspense author who believes in soulmates, loves to laugh, and lives out the adventures in her books at a rustic lake camp at Maine’s Mooselook Lake and in an off-the-grid lodge on the face of Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains with her husband, sled dogs, and draft horses. She was also a guest on an installment of my video series What I Learned, when we talked about her book HER LAST CRY.

Episode Links

https://pamelafaganhutchins.com
https://www.facebook.com/pamela.fagan.hutchins.author
https://www.instagram.com/pamela_fagan_hutchins/
https://www.youtube.com/pamelafaganhutchins

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, host Matty Dalrymple and Pamela Fagan Hutchins, a bestselling mystery thriller/suspense author. The discussion focuses on Pamela's transition from being an independent ("indie") author to signing a contract with Bookouture, a digital publishing imprint of Hachette UK. Pamela describes Bookouture as a "super indie/alt-traditional" publisher that is highly data-driven in their approach.
 
One significant change Pamela discussed was Bookouture asking her to write a police procedural genre instead of her previous amateur sleuth and legal thriller books. Pamela was initially hesitant due to impostor syndrome, as she had no direct experience as a police officer. However, she embraced the challenge, seeking guidance from subject matter experts like police chiefs and sheriffs to ensure authenticity and accuracy.
 
Another critical shift was in Pamela's plotting approach. Her previous method was more organic, while Bookouture pushed her to adopt a structured five-act structure with a strong midpoint at around 49-51% of the book. This midpoint was meant to provide a significant revelation or plot twist to propel the reader towards the conclusion. Pamela acknowledged that incorporating this structural change was initially difficult but improved with each book, as her editor at Bookouture provided guidance.
 
Interestingly, Pamela mentioned that Bookouture was willing to change book covers if the initial designs were not performing well, something traditional publishers are often reluctant to do. This flexibility allowed for quick pivots and adjustments based on data and reader feedback.
 
Pamela also discussed the data-driven nature of Bookouture's decision-making. Their data suggested that readers preferred police procedurals with law enforcement protagonists, leading them to request that change from Pamela. While Pamela did not have direct access to Bookouture's data, she acknowledged that their decisions were informed by insights into reader preferences and buying patterns.
 
A notable challenge Pamela faced was introducing her existing indie readers to her new Bookouture books, which had a slightly different branding and style. She made efforts to align her indie branding and pricing with Bookouture's to signal continuity to her readers. Bookouture was supportive of these efforts, encouraging Pamela to maintain her independent success while collaborating with them.
 
Pamela highlighted the value of adaptability and writing within specific guidelines, which, though initially restrictive, can focus an author's attention and improve their craft. She emphasized the importance of understanding one's motivations for writing – whether for personal expression or commercial success – and tailoring one's approach accordingly.
 
In conclusion, the transcript provides valuable insights into the collaborative relationship between an author and a data-driven digital publisher. It highlights the potential benefits of such partnerships, including access to broader reader insights, structured guidance on plotting and genre choices, and the flexibility to make quick adjustments based on data. However, it also underscores the challenges of balancing creative freedom with commercial considerations and effectively introducing a new audience to an established author's work.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Pamela Fagan Hutchins. Hey, Pamela, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:06] Pamela: Hi, Matty. I'm great. How are you?
 
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great also.
 
Meet Pamela Fagan Hutchins
 
[00:00:09] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Pamela Fagan Hutchins is a USA Today bestselling and Amazon All-Star Mystery Thriller suspense author who believes in soulmates, loves to laugh, and lives out the adventures in her books at a rustic lake camp in Maine's Mooselook Lake. And if you watched an earlier video, you'll know why I'm emphasizing Maine. And in an off-the-grid lodge in the face of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains with her husband, sled dogs, and draft horses. She was also recently a guest on my video series, "What I Learned," where we talked about her book, "Her Last Cry," and there I accidentally identified Mooselook Lake as in Minnesota. So, apologies to Maine, one of my favorite states, for making that mistake.
 
[00:00:43] Pamela: At least looking at such a small community, you offended very few people. A hundred at most.
 
[00:00:53] Matty: Well, still, I don't want to offend anyone in Maine as my second adoptive home there.
 
So it was actually our conversation about "Her Last Cry" that led me to invite Pamela to the podcast because we started talking about some changes to her publishing approach that I'm going to ask her to describe in a moment. And we wanted to talk about data-driven book creation.
 
What is "super indie/alt traditional"?
 
[00:01:14] Matty: Pamela, I thought it would be useful to start right out having you describe for our listeners what that big change recently happened in your publishing approach.
 
[00:01:23] Pamela: Well, I've gone from being a dyed-in-the-wool, rebellious, you can't control me indie for the last 12 years to signing a contract with Bookouture, they're with Hachette UK, and I think of them as, these are my words, not theirs, but what attracted me to them was I think of them as super indie or alt-traditional as a digital publisher that is extremely driven by learning from data.
 
[00:01:51] Matty: Yeah, I'm kind of a student of Bookouture, and one of the things that has led to is that I'm kind of struggling with a different way of representing indie versus traditional because I don't think that's the case anymore. I just think that professional indies have learned so much from the good stuff that the traditional publishing world has to offer. And the traditional publishers are starting to learn from what the indies are doing well. And I think Bookouture is a great example of an organization that's kind of tapping into the best of both worlds. So it's definitely a spectrum. It's not an either/or if it ever was. And I just think it's a fascinating company to follow. And you must have too.
 
[00:02:31] Pamela: I do too, and a mutual friend of ours is who I really got interested in originally, because of Lisa Regan, and she was so happy with them. We started chatting and I thought, "Wow, that sounds really smart." It sounded smart to me because it's what I've been trying to do in a smaller way on my own for 12 years. And all of a sudden, here was someone doing it bigger on behalf of a large number of authors with some very successful books. And I just salivated after all that data. How can you not want to be part of using good data to its highest possibility? I only have a small amount of data compared to them. I want their data. And I don't get their data, but I get the use of their data. I get to learn from their data.
 
And the other thing I really liked about them is, first of all, they embrace authors from the indie space because they don't have any snobbery to it, right? There's no "Oh, you're indie, you're dirty, we won't touch you." It's "Can you write? Can you sell books? Okay, we can do something with that. I think that falls in what we do. So cool, let's all play together." And they encourage you to continue whatever is working for you outside their space as well. Whether it's multiple publishers, indie career, keep those going. Just don't step on each other's toes. We put together schedules and things that honor that with each other.
 
The Value of Adaptability
 
[00:03:55] Matty: One of the things that I've really been impressed with, from what I've heard and read about Bookouture, is its willingness to pivot. And I think because it is digital-only, there are things they can do like changing up a cover if the first one isn't working, as opposed to having 50,000 copies of a print book in a warehouse somewhere. That's the cover that people are going to be seeing for the next decade, which I'm a big fan of.
 
[00:04:22] Pamela: Exactly. I think it's wonderful. A friend of mine early on told me, "Oh, think twice about Bookouture because they'll change your cover on you at the last second." And I was like, "Wait, that's what I like about them." I like that they're willing to say, "We were wrong, and we're going to do better in the long run by changing now than just letting this title not work after all the work that went into it." Letting it not work as a vehicle to reach readers because of some antiquated notion that "that's the cover, forever, we will never change it because we shipped it from China with 48,000 of its friends on a boat."
 
[00:05:03] Matty: I'm surprised at that reaction. Was that reaction about "watch out for them because they'll change your cover at the last minute," did you have a sense of what was driving that reaction?
 
[00:05:12] Pamela: That it ruins publicity. That you have these moments to publicize, and the cover reveal is one of them. Here you've done the cover reveal, you've created the impressions, and now you're changing it out on people. But frankly, as an indie, I've changed some of my book covers five times. I just keep playing with them and testing them through ads until I find what's working best right now, usually a series lead, right? The rest of them don't matter as much. I want to hook them on that first book, and so with "Saving Grace," which is the very first book in my "What Doesn't Kill You" super series, first book in the Katie Connell series within that, and "Switchback," which is my lead in my Patrick Blintz books, I've changed those covers over and over. I don't have anything tied to an identity with it or anything else. It's about what's working now. What makes someone say, "That's the book I want to read," when they hit that page. And we get it wrong, which is one of the reasons I wanted to work with somebody else, frankly. I felt like I was too emotionally invested in things like titles, descriptions, covers. That was my weakness. I felt like I could write well enough anyway, and that was my weakness. I was the one calling those shots, and maybe that needed to be a more data-driven decision.
 
Changing One's Genre Based on the Data
 
[00:06:32] Matty: There were a couple of things that we talked about earlier that were places where your writer life changed as a result of partnering up with Bookouture. And I'm going to throw them out, and we can take this conversation wherever. But one of the things that you had mentioned that was very interesting is not only does an author obviously get tied to their cover and description and so on, but also their genre. And so one of the things that Bookouture asked you to do was to write a police procedural. Could you describe a little bit about where that request came from and what your reaction to it was?
 
[00:07:05] Pamela: I had all these long, lovely conversations with the woman who is my editor now, before I'd signed with them. She'd say, "Great, we want to work with you, and we love this book, but we'd like you to change it from X to Y,” from what it is now to a police procedural. And I kept saying no, I don't think so. At one point, I literally said to them, "You know what? I'm going to go away for a year and we can talk again later, but I'm going to go ahead and write more books in this series because I believe in this book and I'm going to do it now." And they were like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's talk again." And I thought we'd reached a point where it was going to be amateur sleuth again because it was really an unconventional sleuth, not a cozy. I'm not a cozy writer, but an unconventional sleuth, meaning non-police.
 
And somehow we ended up again with, I was going to start immediately and start a police procedural. At which point, my husband and I, who collaborate closely on both our careers—I am his other half in his career, he's my other half in mine—we said, "If we're going to do this, let's just do it. You want to learn from them, you want to break yourself free of things that may be holding you back by working with them, just go ahead and do it." And so I said yes, and immediately called our dear friend who's a police chief and said, "Help me!" And he has.
 
[00:08:21] Matty: So, what was it specifically that was deterring you from pursuing a police procedural?
 
[00:08:28] Pamela: That impostor syndrome, feeling like a fraud. I had been the things that were often at the helm or the protagonist's main career or avocation. Whatever it was that stood out as their identity, I could identify with, in my other books, either through a close family member or myself, I felt I could write them with authority. And authenticity is really important to me, getting things right. I had never been a cop. I'd been a private investigator; I'd been a lawyer, but I'd never been a cop, and I was scared. It turned out that with the help of others, I could handle that just as well as I did any of those other fields.
 
[00:09:09] Matty: And did your publisher provide any help in terms of getting you the information that you felt you needed, or was that really on you as the author to find the subject matter experts to tap into?
 
[00:09:20] Pamela: I never asked them to help me, so they might have, but I did it on my own, and I told them what I was doing. I actually reached out to the sheriff and the undersheriff in our county. The sheriff was wonderful, but it ended up I relied on the police chief more heavily even though I was writing something that was more rural and was a sheriff's department.
 
But I found that the law enforcement people, most of them found it fun. Some were nervous. Some were like, "Oh, don't tie my name to that." But I found just the right guy, one who's ready for me to crow his name and find him lots of writers to work with.
 
[00:09:53] Matty: Yeah, as I often say on the podcast, it is fun to find those subject matter experts who know inside and out what happens in real life but are willing to say, "Well, yeah, that normally wouldn't happen, but you could make it work if this." Like, "Oh, I love you. Yes."
 
[00:10:07] Pamela: There's nothing worse than the expert who says, "But it just wouldn't happen." And you're like, "Hmm, can't or wouldn't?" Wouldn't is good. Wouldn't is exactly where we're pushing to. We want something that is more exciting than every day.
 
[00:10:21] Matty: Yes, if the books were all about what happens every day, then nobody would be reading them.
 
[00:10:24] Pamela: Exactly. Yeah. So, that was different for me, but I've enjoyed it. I'm on the fourth book in the series right now, and I'm feeling more confident about trusting my instincts and knowing we can fix it later, and saving some of my questions for Travis, my consultant, until we're down the road.
 
[00:10:43] Matty: And we can fix it later is related to the details that you put in about--
 
[00:10:49] Pamela: Yeah, and I want to strike a balance between my details being correct and not burdening a book with details. And I found that one of the things that's good about me never having been a cop is I am not, I don't feel burdened by the details. I want as little as possible so that we can keep the pace of the book up. And I'm not constrained by needing to include all this background and all this detail, etc. Because to me, it's meaningless. I really think of it more like a reader. How do we get from point A to point B, while doing it correctly, but on the edge of vigilantism, and not getting thrown in jail.
 
So we don't get fired or thrown in jail today; it's roughly what a cop could and would do, and yet we get there fast enough to satisfy a reader who wants to read a thriller.
 
[00:11:36] Matty: Yeah, I think that, the idea of what details do you leave out, I was at a talk that James McCrone gave at the Brandywine Valley Writers Group meeting last night, and I think he was quoting Keith Richards, or maybe about songwriting, but it was, "You're not done when you have nothing else to say, you're done when you've taken out everything you can." Something to that effect, but I thought it was great words to live by for authors.
 
[00:12:04] Pamela: I think that's fantastic. It's one of the things I find challenging when I write books that are written more by people who are subject matter experts, is that it's harder for them. The ones that have that expertise and can leave out enough are spectacular. That's what I want to aim toward.
 
Changing one's plotting approach
 
[00:12:24] Matty: Absolutely. Genre is obviously a pretty central thing that you were asked to change, but another really important thing that you were asked to change was your plotting approach. So can you describe what your plotting approach was before, what your publisher asked you to change it to, and how that change went for you?
 
[00:12:41] Pamela: My plotting approach was pretty much "throw it all to the wall until it sticks" and get there somehow. And I roughly was embracing a three-act structure, really it's a five-act structure, with an inciting incident somewhere at, say, 15 to 20 percent of the way into the book, then three major acts, and then an act five, which is your ending, your denouement. That's how I looked at it. I did a lot of work on these in the past. I would print all my pages out, in a two-page book format, tape them to the floor, go through with highlighters, and look for continuity issues, see if I was dividing the acts up correctly. But in dividing the acts up correctly, what I wasn't thinking about was the midpoint of the book.
 
The midpoint of the book is the midpoint of the middle act. I was thinking about the beginnings and ends of acts and how do you get between those. So when my first draft came in, they said, "We really need a midpoint." And I'm like, "Talk to me about this midpoint." So they had me read a book called "Into the Woods" by John Yorke. So I read "Into the Woods," and for the most part, I was going, "Yeah, yeah, this is what I do," until I got to the part about the midpoint, which basically was, this is the point at which you move from what you didn't know towards having some kind of explosion of knowledge or a change point that leads to, at the end, your acceptance of what you've discovered, your reawakening, your endpoint.
 
And that your big moment of key discovery is right there at the end, between 49 and 51 percent, hit it right on the nose, Pamela. And I went through and, sure enough, for a crime thriller, I did not have that huge key discovery, which in a crime thriller, one would expect also to come with some whiz-bang, right? You want something at risk so that the protagonist is pushed forward into the second half of the book, resolving whatever it is they've now discovered and can't avoid resolving.
 
I'd always thought of it more as an inciting incident, and then you have an act, and an act, and an act, and an ending, and that whiz-bang in the middle was missing. So I did that. The first structural edit was just awful. But then the second was good.
 
And by the time we got to "Her Last Cry," the third book in the series, my editor gave it a kiss and a hug and said, "By George, I think you've got it." And now I'm writing book four. And literally last night, that's what I was doing, was looking at what I'd written so far, realizing I'd crested what I intend to be the midpoint, and that I needed to revisit it before I moved on, because my key discovery was there, but I didn't have enough whizbang. So anyway, I went back, and that's what I did this morning, was worked on my midpoint, because to me now, I really think of the book in two halves, as the biggest structure, and then I obviously also think of it in all those little micro pieces as well.
 
[00:15:56] Matty: I want to loop back to the same question for genre because I realized I kind of lost the thread of the data-driven thing. But talking about the structure, did you ever get a sense of what data your publisher or editor had that was leading them to push you so forcefully toward this structural approach?
 
[00:16:16] Pamela: No, I don't really know, from a data perspective, what they have that pushes them toward that point, other than it is their predominant theory of how you structure books and that they sell a lot of books. And when you master that, they feel it pushes their readers through the book and into buy-through, if they're buying the books, or read-through if it's on Kindle Unlimited.
 
My suspicion, and it's a question I didn't actually ask them, was that their data came from series writing and moving on to the next book. Someone can buy your book and stop at 47 percent because it wasn't satisfying, or they can stop at 75 percent because you didn't show them a compelling enough reason to be pushed from this key discovery towards the inevitable ending. That was my feeling.
 
The genre issue was much clearer. They were saying their data shows that their readers prefer police procedural or crime fiction that has a law enforcement detective, usually, as the protagonist. This isn't all readers; it's the readers they can reach, their data, specific to them and who they have reached in the past, and as a result, keep expanding into selling more too. For this particular portion of their business, because they have multiple genres, but for crime fiction, their data showed that they didn't do as well with Amateur Sleuth, except in the cozy space. They didn't do as well with what I was writing when I came to them, which was more of a legal thriller. That just didn't translate to series that took off and were worth sticking around for a few more books.
 
[00:18:02] Matty: It's interesting that this can be extrapolated on a micro level for an individual indie author. I don't think anybody has a favorite publishing imprint, but Bookouture books are very distinctive looking. You can run through a montage of the top 100 Kindle books or top 100 selling eBooks, and you can kind of pick out which ones are Bookouture books. They're very heavily color-saturated with a natural scene with an object in it, like a barn or a boat. You can see them and know, "Oh, that's a book like this other book that I read and really liked." I can imagine they're using data because you have a sense of what readers everywhere are looking for, and you home in on that. Or you kind of create your own data because if they've now trained Bookouture readers to recognize the books, and then to expect that between 49 and 51 percent there's going to be that midpoint moment, then you're satisfying a reader expectation that you've created. A publisher can create an expectation among a pool of readers in a way that maybe an indie author over many books can do, but you're exponentially expanding the expectation setting if you're doing it through a publisher.
 
The danger of violating reader expectations
 
[00:19:22] Pamela: But I think that's a really good point. When I reached books 12 through 15 in my "What Doesn't Kill You?" super series, which as I wrote it was probably 9 through 11, but I pushed them to the end of the series because they didn't perform well. I'm convinced the reason they didn't perform well is because I moved out of what I had set reader expectations to be.
 
I took a character that I, one of my favorite characters, and I personally think the books are great. I think the books are great, but they were not what readers had come to expect from my protagonist in my first few times giving protagonists their turns at bat, and the sales showed that.
 
And to take that another step further, by doing this with Bookouture, I've taken a two-year chunk out of what I'm doing, right, because I'm on books four through six with them right now. And I'm not meeting reader expectations because I was writing amateur sleuths. My covers looked like my covers. There were no serial killers, or there were, but they didn't get a point of view. This is a very big difference in this genre they asked me to write versus what I was writing. I still had multiple murders in my books; people are dying left and right, but I never did the antagonist, the nasty bad guy point of view in my books. Bookouture's brands their crime fiction towards what their data shows them is the way to brand it that will reach the most readers, their readers and hopefully additional readers. That brand doesn't necessarily match what reaches mine.
 
So it's been a struggle for my readers to realize that these are A, my books, and B, they should be their books. Even though when you open them, they're still Pamela Fagan Hutchins books. Very character-driven, you're going to fall in love with this kick-ass protagonist, and there's no glorification of serial killers, and people aren't getting mutilated on the page. But that isn't so clear to them from the brand, so it's all been very interesting, their data versus my data, and where in the end this will have us all end up, right?
 
But teaching my readers to shop outside of the brand to get me has been interesting. I changed all my covers, some of my descriptions, fonts, everything. I changed my website, I changed my pricing, all trying to signal, "It's okay, we're all the same. This is the still Pamela." But it was an interesting shift and we're not there yet.
 
[00:22:11] Matty: Did you alert your publisher that you were making changes in your independently published books to make them visually more similar to theirs? Were they concerned about that at all?
 
[00:22:23] Pamela: No, what they want is for those over 3 million books that I have out there in people's hands to bring those readers with me while also wanting their readers to embrace me. What they didn't want, which is contractually prohibited, is for me to release books 45 days before or after they release one of my books so that our advertising doesn't overlap. Our major advertising pushes can't completely avoid overlap because you always have to be doing something for your indie books, or they'll die, and you'll never get it back. But they were like, "Whatever you can do to bring your people along."
 
We coordinate on newsletters—I have a list of 15,000—and how do I bring them along? What does it look like for authors with medium to big lists when we coordinate with what you're sending out? Coordinating on advertising, when they're advertising, what do I do, etc.
 
All of that, we've been trying to signal to my readers that it's okay, these serial killers aren't going to get you. They've been really cooperative with that and very open when they think they don't want me to do something, asking me please not to do X or Y.
 
They may not love everything that I do, but I know that they do have some of us, because some of us bridge indie and this new world of digital publishing, which is quasi-indie or alt-traditional, whatever you want to call it. We get way more into their business on this than their other authors do. The ones that come from traditional are like, "Okay, you take care of it," and I'm like, "What were the numbers like?" I literally woke up last night because there's a price promo running on book two in the series, and the rank tanked for 24 hours, so I wrote a letter to my editor asking what happened, what didn't scale, and expressing concern about not being able to pivot very fast. Then I didn't send it because I know they're aware. But it's my first inclination. If it were me controlling this advertising campaign and the spend increased but the rank went in the wrong direction, I'd say I had the wrong audience, but I've already told them that, so they know.
 
[00:24:49] Matty: So when you, in other circumstances where maybe you've sent the email or you've talked through it with them, have there been other circumstances and how does that interaction with them work where they have one group of authors who are saying "you take care of it" and the other, a second group of probably indie authors who want to be more involved in it? What has been your experience with how they receive that?
 
Business and creative collaboration with a publisher
 
[00:25:10] Pamela: They're so polite, first of all, because they're British, so I'm not really sure what they really think of me. But when I say, "I'm so sorry, I know that I care a whole lot about this, maybe more than your other authors, and here's why," they've actually invited me to give them more feedback, and I've caught them in some boo-boos. They're not perfect, they're humans. We had some things that on the first promo they did didn't go real well. And when they finished it, they said, "What would you have done differently?" And they literally got on the phone with me and said, "What is it that you see that may have gone wrong here? What can we learn from this? Because you're right, this didn't go like we expected." And it was nice to have that conversation.
 
Yeah, the second one is going better. Notwithstanding me wanting to send that email this morning. But going much better. I think they were having like a 35 percent conversion rate on people who clicked on the ad, and they were really excited about that, that was 10 points better than their normal conversion.
 
So, I think that when you do work together, especially when you're trying to combine audiences, if you will, they want my audience, I want theirs, or they want my readers, I want theirs. Audience is probably the wrong word. I'm thinking in terms of ads, which is audience, but at the end of the day, those are readers. And when we're trying to strategize on how to find the readers that are going to love this book out of their readers and my readers and the whole world of readers and collaborate on it, that's been nice. I didn't expect it.
 
They also changed my covers when I didn't think that they were going to work. And I was told never to expect that they would ever change a cover. And they changed all three of them. I wasn't ugly or anything. I was just like, "Those are barns in Kansas. And these books are set in Wyoming. And honestly, those aren't the same places, you know?" And they were like, "Okay, you're right. We really looked at this too much from an 'America is America' perspective and not what really shows the ruggedness of these books." So they changed them all. I thought that was cool.
 
[00:27:13] Matty: Any publisher is probably going to have more data than any individual independent author. Did you feel that the areas where you were able to bring more value in terms of maybe correcting some misdirection were more personal or because of reader interaction? You're not tapping into a giant database. So where did you have the edge in those conversations?
 
[00:27:37] Pamela: I have a lot of engagement with readers. And while you can't take what any one person says, a lot of times, if you get a couple of people saying something in different places, they're representing a large number of people; they're just the ones that spoke up. So if I get a couple of data points spread out over different platforms, I start to think they're saying something here and I should listen.
 
I started getting people saying, "I'm so glad I read your book. I really was afraid that it was a serial killer book. And I was really afraid to read it." Bookouture was saying, "Your pre-orders were fantastic. They were the best we've had in a very long time for a new series. And then we didn't get the sales we thought we'd get once the books launched. Do you have a feeling for why?" And I said, "I don't think my readers are coming to the party. And I don't think they're coming because of something that I don't think you're going to change. But it's the description of the book. It doesn't read like what they're used to reading."
 
They're trying to please the hardcore crime thriller readers, and my readers are trying to move to crime thriller from where I had them. You open the book, and it's a combination of crime thriller and Pamela Fagan Hutchins, and my readers are happy, but some of them are scared. So, I think we're getting late adopters.
 
We're trying to figure out how to bring my people along at the same time as we bring the world along with it. It's going to be hit or miss. The conversation was very much about what I would be doing differently, how I would adjust the audience. We were talking ads, basically. What would you be looking for?
 
I was able to come back to them a day later and say, "That feeling I had, that the ads weren't reaching the right readers when you did the 99-cent price promo with heavy Facebook advertising. They were using their proprietary ad groups, and the day after the promo finished, all my also-boughts on the series were British-based crime drama. That's not who's going to ultimately fan me. I'm more like C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Jeff Carson, D.K. Hood, the people that write Mountain West, rural, rugged, etc. Amazon is telling me these are the people who responded to your ads, and that says that's who received your ads. If I was looking at what to do differently, I'd be thinking long term, which is, are these going to be devoted fans of these books? And you haven't convinced me that the answer is yes yet. So that's what I'd be looking at: Are we reaching the right people?"
 
[00:30:24] Matty: That's interesting because that's data that anybody can have access to. You don't need a giant corporate database to do that.
 
[00:30:29] Pamela: Exactly. Look at your also-boughts the day after you run a promo, you've got more data than you're ever going to have, but a lot of it disappears very quickly, right? Those change every single day, so it's a matter of looking at your own data while it's hot. It's there because it's going to go away. I mean, I look at things like rank every single day for my top six books, my series leads, and my new releases just because it's an indicator of what's happening. But looking at those also-boughts right after a big promo, that tells you who bought your book. It's the closest you're ever going to get to knowing with Amazon.
 
Targeting the enthusiastic sub-genre fan
 
[00:31:11] Matty: Any conversation about reader targeting that I've ever heard assumes that if you're writing cozies, you're finding the people who read all cozies all the time. If you have a very niche romance, you're looking for those people. But I've got to believe that there are a lot of readers out there like me, who one day are reading chick-lit, the next nonfiction history, then a sci-fi series, then a police procedural. I feel like a successful publisher with access to all this data is almost incented to target the enthusiasts of a specific sub-genre, like readers of C.J. Box but not Liane Moriarty, whereas in reality, I think there's a lot more overlap in real life than any publisher, indie or traditional, is allowing for. Do you agree with my assessment, and do you think an indie author or a publisher is better positioned to tap into readers who have a wider interest?
 
[00:32:34] Pamela: I think that for an indie author who's been at it for a while, you potentially have a better ability to tap into that wider interest because you're doing it specifically for your books, as opposed to a group of books where you're getting more granular. You're grouping the books and readers together.
 
I do agree that people read broadly, but with advertising, your best conversion comes from targeting your best converter. You're looking for someone that sees your image and your copy and immediately thinks, "This is for me!" So when planning my advertising, I'm looking for the superfans of the genre, the superfans of what I write, and then hoping that through their recommendations and their reviews, they bring other people along with them.
 
But I'm looking for the most efficient use of my spend. So, I agree with you, and when targeting, I would really focus on those superfans.
 
[00:33:41] Matty: It's always tough to distinguish the marketing targeting from the creative process because I know that I limit my own ability to reach readers because I have to write the things that are of interest to me, not necessarily the things that I think will do best in the market. And so, if I could train my creative brain to be more disciplined in that way, I'd probably be doing better. But on the other hand, I probably wouldn't be writing books. Kind of doesn't matter.
 
[00:34:06] Pamela: I do the same thing. When I sat down to write this series for Bookouture, I first wanted to make the protagonist an MMA fighter. I wanted her to be really badass and it just interested me at the time. And they were like, "Our data says that women who actually physically fight in an organized fashion are a turnoff. She can still kick some ass if she wants to, but it needs to not be in an official capacity." At first, I had my feelings hurt, and then I realized I had other things that interested me. But had I been writing that book on my own, I might have just run with that. It interested me right now.
 
The value of writing between bright lines
 
[00:34:41] Pamela: I'm going to see what I can do with a really, really badass woman. Instead, I went a different direction. It's been interesting to me because it's trained me to work a little bit more between some pretty bright lines, whereas before, my lines were pretty dim and fuzzy and wherever I wanted them to be. And if I wanted to write a series of books that did terrible, which I've done before, then I can do that, and I can waste two years. So, yeah. It's never a waste, right? We always get better. Somebody loves those books. They become the body of work.
 
[00:35:17] Matty: And I don't think there's that much difference between an exercise, well, except for the time you're spending on it. There's not that much time between an exercise where you're saying, "I'm going to write a really great story in 150 words." That's a really interesting and intriguing exercise. Maybe I don't want to spend a year writing the 80,000-word version of that, but those guidelines can be restricting, but they can also be sort of empowering in the sense that it's focusing your attention in a way it otherwise wouldn't be focused.
 
[00:35:50] Pamela: Yeah. I agree with that. And at some point, you have to decide why you're writing. And what I mean by that is if you're writing for yourself, then you should write whatever you want all the time. If you're trying to sell your books, then you need some kind of idea of who you're writing to and what they like to read, and thus that creates some guideposts for you. It may be that you are unconscious of them, and you aim toward it just out of affinity with your readers, and that's fantastic, but they're still there. If you are writing towards it being a commercial venture as opposed to, "I'm doing this for me, and I don't care if it sells. I just love it. I live to write.”
 
I'm trying to make money. I mean, I'll be honest, because I gave up my day job. You know, I'm trying to make money. So, at first, it felt a little bit limiting, and then I embraced it because I embrace data. It's like, 'This is a learning experiment, and it either works out or it doesn't, but either way, I'm better for it,' you know, having gone down this road.
 
And that's really how I look at it. If it all ends tomorrow and I don't write another word for them, I'm a better author, an indie author, and businessperson in the world of publishing than I was before because I've been exposed to a new way to do it and have that to consider and potentially inculcate into what I do."
 
Matty: I actually could think of other questions, but that is such a nice wrap-up. I think that I'm going to go with that. Pamela, it is always so much fun to talk with you, and I appreciate so much you sharing the kind of behind-the-scenes inside scoop of what your experience has been making this transition. So please let the listeners and the viewers know where they can go to find all your books, regardless of who publishes them, online.
 
Pamela: All right, I can do that. PamelaFaganHutchins.com will point you in the right direction. My Bookouture books, the new series, Detective Delaney Pace, are only available in Kindle eBook form on Amazon, although the paperback and audio versions are available anywhere that you can order your books. Bookouture is a digital-only company. They do partner with print providers that stock bookstores and things like that, but anywhere online. My books are available everywhere online. We're not exclusive to Amazon with those anymore, so you can get them anywhere. And the best place to interact with me, and I encourage you to do it, talk books, whatever, talk publishing, dogs, is Facebook. I have a Facebook page and a Facebook group, and that's where I'm really most active.
 
Matty: You do have a super fun Facebook feed, so I'll just put another plug in for that.
 
Pamela: It's always nice to see Matty come up on there.
 
Matty: Well, Pamela, thank you so much. It's been so much fun to talk with you.
 
Pamela: You too. Thanks for having me.

Episode 232 - What Has Changed and Stayed the Same with Amazon Ads with Bryan Cohen

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Bryan Cohen discusses WHAT HAS CHANGED AND STAYED THE SAME WITH AMAZON ADS, including ads as a research tool; whether Amazon product pages are actually getting busier; the impact of A+ content; the advice to go deep rather than wide on ad platforms; how AI is (or might be) changing the ad game; budgeting for beginners; and whether one book is enough for an ad campaign.

Bryan Cohen is the CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. He's helped over 30,000 authors learn ads through his 5-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge. He also runs the Author Ad Agency, which helps full-time authors to scale up their self-publishing earnings. He lives in North Carolina with his wife, daughter, and cat.

Episode Links

https://learn.bestpageforward.net
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2230194167089012
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT_vHN_rKtRhtxs81s892vQ

Summary

This episode of The Indy Author Podcast features a conversation between the host, Matty Dalrymple, and guest Bryan Cohen, CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. They discuss various aspects of Amazon ads, providing insights and strategies for authors, particularly indie authors, in marketing their books.
 
Bryan Cohen has helped over 30,000 authors with advertising and emphasizes that Amazon ads can be an effective research tool to understand book positioning and market receptiveness. He notes that while the perception exists that Amazon ads have become more expensive, he's observed that costs can remain low, offering valuable data on how well a book is positioned in the market.
 
The conversation delves into the strategic use of Amazon ads, with Bryan pointing out that these ads can serve not only as a marketing tool but also as a means to gather insights on a book's reception and market fit. He suggests that even with just one book published, authors can benefit from Amazon ads to assess market response and refine their marketing and content strategies.
 
Bryan discusses the changes in Amazon ad placements, indicating an increase in ad spaces on product pages, which has made the pages busier. However, he advises that not all ad placements are equally effective and emphasizes the importance of strategic ad placement and understanding Amazon's advertising mechanisms.
 
A significant part of the discussion revolves around the use of A+ Content on Amazon and its impact on book sales. Bryan shares insights on how A+ Content can affect conversion rates and the importance of testing to see whether it enhances or detracts from sales performance.
 
The dialogue also touches on the broader marketing landscape for authors, comparing Amazon ads with other advertising platforms like Facebook and BookBub. Bryan suggests that while different platforms have their strengths, authors should focus on understanding and leveraging each platform's unique capabilities to maximize their advertising effectiveness.
 
Throughout the conversation, Bryan advocates for a balanced approach to marketing, where authors should not only focus on advertising but also on creating quality content and engaging with their audience. He emphasizes the importance of adapting strategies based on market feedback and continuously learning and refining advertising approaches.
 
In summary, the transcript covers a comprehensive discussion on the use of Amazon ads for indie authors, highlighting the importance of strategic advertising, market research, and the continual adaptation of marketing strategies to achieve success in book publishing. Bryan Cohen's insights provide valuable guidance for authors looking to navigate the complexities of online advertising and market positioning for their books.

Transcript

Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Bryan Cohen. Hey, Bryan, how are you doing?
 
Bryan: Hey Matty, I'm doing well. I'm happy to be here.
 
Meet Bryan Cohen 

Matty: I am pleased to have you here. And just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Bryan Cohen is the CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. He has helped over 30,000 authors learn ads through his five-day Author Ad Profit Challenge. He also runs the Author Ad Agency, which helps full time authors to scale up their self-publishing earnings. And he lives in North Carolina with his wife, daughter, and cat. And I also wanted to send out a big congratulations to Bryan for passing 500 plus and 10 years of his great Sell More Books show podcast. So, Bryan, congratulations.
 
Bryan: Thank you, Matty. It's been a great, a great long time helping indie authors.
 
Matty: Yeah. Well, that is a very, very impressive track record. And the fact that you, you've done it so consistently and for such a long time and with such great information is, a great testament to you. So thank you for doing that.
 
Bryan: Of course. Of course.
 
Matty: So we are going to be talking today, not surprisingly, about Amazon ads, because obviously Bryan's the guy to go to for Amazon ads.
 
Strategic changes in Amazon ads 

Matty: And so I wanted to start out by asking What have you seen change, if anything, at a strategic level with Amazon ads? Like, if someone had asked, are Amazon ads, any good, is the answer you would give about why different now than it would have been a year ago, five years ago, however far back you want to go?
 
Bryan: Sure. Yeah, no, I do think it's a little different than it would have been a few years ago. not for the reasons people might think. People might think, oh, well, Bryan's going to say it's more expensive, which Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's not necessarily more expensive from what I've seen. I've seen authors get hundreds of clicks at very low costs here in 2024.
 
Ads as a research tool 

Bryan: So I know it's not necessarily that it costs more. I have seen that it can be a really good research tool to know how well your book has been positioned. which I wasn't always aware of, even, that when ads, we've heard the refrain, Amazon won't take my money, you try to run ads and it doesn't work.
 
We have found that sometimes it's not about Bidding too low, or it's not about, oh, this market is too expensive. I can't get, sometimes it's about your book's seven KDP keyword phrases and your book's three categories and your book's title. Sometimes little things like that actually will let Amazon spend your money or not spend your money.
 
And so, I used to think, and this is something I even see people still talking about today, when Amazon, when you have a book out on Amazon, you're not ready, you should wait until you have three books. And I've changed my tune on that, because I think Amazon ads can be really helpful, even just with your first book out, helping you to figure out, okay, Is Amazon taking my money?
 
If there's not, if they're not taking it, it's probable that something in the information you gave Amazon when you publish, Amazon isn't receiving it in the way you thought they would. And so I find that Amazon ads can still be one of the lower cost marketing methods. But it can also be a really good tool when you're starting out or when you're trying out a new series to see, okay, is Amazon figuring out what I'm sending it?
 
Is it picking up what I'm putting down? Whatever metaphor you want to use, that is one of the reasons I still recommend Amazon ads.
 
Matty: And is Amazon better at identifying those things than let's say, I don't know, book club ads or Facebook ads or something like that because there's such a strong tie between the data you're giving KDP and then the performance of an Amazon ad?
 
Bryan: I do think that Amazon can be in line and more so in line than maybe a BookBub ad or a, a Facebook ad. I think it can be. The problem is a lot of authors do have misalignment issues somewhere in the midst of the keywords. Subtitle categories, all of that stuff. And so I think the public perception of Amazon ads is that they are not as strong at connecting readers, as the other platforms, but it is interesting that when we have seen, and this is especially the case with a lot of our agency clients, they are already selling well, cause they're already full-time authors. It's easier to get those ads to spend even as low as 27 cents a click. We're getting those ads to spend when a newer author comes to, through our challenge or through ad school, and they say, I can't even get one click.is the platform broken? And then we look at this other account and we see a thousand clicks in a day.
 
We say, no, platform isn't broken, but there might be a disconnect here. Yeah. Yeah.
 
The desire for immediate social feedback 

Matty: it is. It's a very different mindset. I have, experience, I've had some experience across all three platforms, but more on Facebook and BookBub. Those are the three I think of, like, when I'm thinking about advertising for my own books. Those are the three I think about, and I think one of the things that appeals to me about Facebook ads is you get this very immediate and personal response.
 
Feedback on why people are liking or not liking your ad, in some cases. So the example I can think of is that a couple of years ago, I was testing out a new tagline for my, Lizzie Ballard thrillers, and I, the tagline I had come up with was, what happens when an extraordinary power transforms an ordinary life?
 
And so, I thought that sounded pretty cool, so I started writing ads against it, and then someone made a response to the post, that made it clear that they thought it was going to be like a religious book, like an extraordinary power. They thought that was not true. We're talking this through non religiously affiliated power, but it was going to be, really does it.
 
Oh, well, that's really good to know because, that's something I could easily pull back from, whereas it's harder. My experience is it's harder to get that kind of sense of why, like you could see that your ads aren't spending, but is it the keyword? Is it the quality of the cover? Is it the quality of the content? Can you glean that kind of stuff from the Amazon ad results?
 
Bryan: I think that's a really good point, a really good observation, because you do get that social feedback on Facebook. You do get that social feedback on some, on a platform like TikTok, and you wouldn't get that feedback from, from Amazon. And so my answer to a certain extent has always been, well, take our free challenge and send us the links.
 
Cause we do it. eight weeks a year that we're around there for free, send us the link. We'll go take a look. we'll look at your keywords, but yeah, I mean, I think that if you have some money to spend and you want that immediate result, absolutely makes sense for Facebook or TikTok to get some feedback, but I think it really depends.
 
And this goes back to Authors having individualized ways that they take care of things based on their personality, based on the way they like doing things. Fortunately, I think they're, if people like the hand holding, they come to us. If they want to get immediate results and don't want to have to talk to a person for real and make it more on social media, go to Facebook, go to TikTok.
 
Either way, I do think it still comes back around to when you have a book that is selling. And maybe you found success with it on Facebook. We have found that success can be doubled when they're also running the ads on Amazon and not just confining it to one platform. I think that Amazon ads can be a primary driver of traffic to a book.
 
But they're a really good secondary driver when something else is working.
 
Are Amazon product pages actually getting busier? 

Matty: One of the things that I feel like has changed over time on Amazon, and I'll ask you to confirm or deny, is that the pages seem busier and busier. So, if I'm shopping on Amazon and I go to a book and I start, looking for, I realize I've clicked into book two of the series and I want to go look for book one.
 
It becomes harder and harder to find that information because there's just so much there. Is that actually changing? And if it is, is that something that has made you adjust your strategy about Amazon ads?
 
Bryan: I learned some interesting things this past year. late last year, as part of my agency, I reached out to Amazon and found out some things. And it turned out that, and my team was helpful with this. Amazon has their AMG ads is what they used to call them. They're called something different now and the name escapes me, but as it often does, but there is the AMG ads were always known as, okay, if you've got 10,000 to burn, you can go to Amazon and say, Hey, I've got 10,000.
 
And they say, great, that's our minimum. You spend 10,000 with us a month, we'll run some special ads for you. I said, okay, well, I don't have these 10,000 to burn for my books, but, is there a way to do this without 10,000? And they said, well, we subcontract through some agencies to let you run ads that are very similar, which Amazon refers to as DSP or platform ads.
 
And it turns out that we've Could, if we hit 10,000 across lots of authors, we could actually run some of these ads for authors. And these ads are what has made the system feel busier. It used to be there were a couple places you'd see ads. The carousels on the product pages that you'd see that kind of have replaced also boughts in a lot of places.
 
And the search results. That became a little busier with sponsored brand ads starting to show up at the top of the search results. But then how does it feel busier? You go to an Amazon page, you see at the very top of the browser, there's now an ad. Underneath the buy button, there's an ad, and often underneath the product description, there's an ad.
 
Now sometimes regular old sponsored product ads can show up in these places, but more often than not, these are DSP ads or Amazon's own AMG ads. Now, interesting data from running these for six months. Most of them don't convert. The top of the page ads. Terrible. The ones that are even near under the button. Terrible.
 
The only ones we found that have been able to convert for us, and mileage may vary, is right under the product description, which makes sense. In the web terms, these are above the fold, so you don't have to scroll to get to them. Now, all of that being said, to answer your question, yes, the pages are busier, they're busier because of these other ad placements that Amazon is now selling in other ways.
 
Us normal folks, we can't usually get access to these kind of ads. But the good news is, those ads, for the most part, in our experimentation, aren't really that valuable. And so, it's the kind of thing where, even though sponsor product ads a little bit cheaper, a little bit more affordable for the regular author. We still find that these ads that all authors have access to actually do better and have better tracking somehow than these fancy pantsy ads that we've been able to peek under the hood and see. And so, I think that despite it being busier, there are still lots of really good opportunities there.
 
The impact of A+ Content 

Matty: One of the things that I realize makes some pages look busier is the A plus content, so I know that for my Ann Kinnear books, there's a huge part of the page now taken up with one of those, like, triptych, sort of, I made them in Book Brush, you load an ad and then it breaks it up for you so you have, like, three parts of one image, which looks super cool, but I'm like, I wonder how long Amazon's going to keep doing that, cause that's, A huge amount of screen real estate for basically just a giant picture that I uploaded that was associated with my story.
 
Have you seen any pro or con impacts of A plus content on the success of people who are running Amazon X?
 
Bryan: Well, you brought up that Amazon, are they going to keep doing this? Amazon loves A plus content. Not sure why. I wonder if there's a search engine optimization something. They get more search traffic by having more images. That I don't know. But they love pushing it. I've been fortunate enough, Amazon has had me come on and teach some classes.
 
And at the end, they have these, Q& A sessions that aren't really live. They're just answering some questions in an Amazonian kind of way. And Amazon loves making sure that A plus content is delivered. mention. Maybe it's because it was a very requested feature and they're hoping that it makes readers happy, or authors happy. But, for a long time when A plus content was first announced, we did experiments on it. We looked, hey, does this improve a chance of a book being profitable or does it reduce the chances of a book being profitable? And because of all that real estate taken up, we actually found that because, and we think it's because it took so long to actually get to the reviews.
 
That it did reduce conversion. It did make the royalties, and, the profitability worse for those books. It's gotten a little better over time. places like Book Brush having tools so that the images don't look bad because part of the reason I think conversion was worse is because the images looked bad, but it's still a bit of a problem that it takes up all that real estate.
 
And so I'm a big fan of testing. Get 100 clicks without the A plus content, get 100 clicks with the A plus content, compare group 1 to group 2, and see, did you profit better, did you convert better, when you had the A plus content in place, or did not?
 
Matty: If someone does not have A plus content yet, do you recommend that they provide some in order to run that test? Or is it the kind of thing that you say, if you don't have it now, don't bother, but if you do have it, maybe test it without to see if it improves?
 
Bryan: If you don't have it now, don't bother, is what I would recommend.
 
Matty: Okay, this example just popped into my head. I recently got a screenshot of a friend's Kindle. He had opened up his Kindle. He had, purchased other of my books before, and it had an ad on the lock screen for one of my books.
 
Unpaid lock screen ads 

Bryan: Inexplicably, it had an ad for one of my short stories, which I thought was weird.
 
Matty: But that was with me not thinking. Not having paid anything, I wasn't running any Amazon ads, do you know how often Amazon just puts an ad up? Like, I've got to believe that for that person's Kindle lock screen, there was a whole queue of other books that were maybe paying to have that placement.
 
Do you have any insight into how, those lock screen placements, are assigned?
 
Bryan: So you're not the first person I've heard who's had a book that they weren't running any ads for just randomly show up. I do think sometimes this is a function of kind of a pseudo also bought or books that you might like kind of carousel loaded in for when there aren't enough lock screen ads to actually go around.
 
but it is pretty rare. I don't think that it's something we can count on with any, reliability. I don't have deep, deep insight, like, one of my contacts at Amazon has told me specifically. It will show up 1 percent of the time, so I don't have anything specific to that. But anecdotally, it can happen sometimes, but as many know, and many have probably come on this show to say, we're in a pay to play environment.
 
More often than not, you are going to have to pay to get placement. That being said, I would not pay for the lock screen ads. They tend to be, a little bit pricier, and often it prices out authors who are trying to get a lower cost click on their ads.
 
Follow one course until success 

Matty: So you had mentioned earlier the idea of Amazon being sort of a primary driver of sales and perhaps being supported by other ad platforms. for someone who's relatively new to the advertising, the book advertising game, are there combinations that you recommend or combinations that you recommend people stay away from?
 
Bryan: That's a good question. I think if you're new, sticking with one is probably going to be better, better to go deeper on one than to necessarily broaden out and try to learn multiple things at once, because it is like a four year degree, any of these things that you are going to be going deeper on in order to truly go as deep as you need to go, you know.
 
Go deep rather than wide 

Bryan: You need to focus. the old, acronym, I heard John Lee Dumas say it once. I don't know if it's his. Follow one course until success. It is helpful to focus on one. Let's say, though, that you have learned one of them. And, there are various combinations. Let's say you've learned Facebook ads first. Amazon ads are helpful to set up. in addition, it will look like they are not doing anything because if Facebook ads are already sending traffic to your books, you may assume just, this is our natural psychological assumption. The thing I was already doing is the thing that's working. The new thing probably isn't. That isn't always true in what we've found, but I will say that if you are running Facebook ads already and then you start Amazon ads, I would run the Amazon ads for at least three to six months. I would not make any quick assumptions on whether or not those are working. Let's say you've already run BookBub ads.
 
and you're trying to run Amazon ads. These can work really well together. BookBub ads spend a lot faster. And so, you are going to want to keep an eye on your budget. I don't necessarily have any huge concerns, oh, that I, that are different than the Facebook and Amazon combo. Similarly, give the ads three to six months.
 
If you've run Amazon ads, or you know Amazon ads, and then you're adding another one, I would probably add Facebook next, but take it slow. No need to add big budgets. There are some really good courses out there. I'm a big fan of, Matthew Holmes's, work on Facebook ads. He's got a great free book out there, that can help you start.
 
I've learned from other great people, like Mal Cooper, like James Blatch and company. Like, there, there's a lot of good stuff out there. But when there are different schools of thought on the same platform, sometimes it makes sense to take this idea, and this idea and combine them together, but a lot of the time it doesn't.
 
And so just be careful when you're saying, well, I tried to take Matt's idea. I tried to take James's idea and mash them together because it felt right to me. But feeling is not fact. You need to consider going deep on one of the methods. For that specific platform first, then you can consider adding some bells and whistles to it, but I would not, go to the buffet and add different parts, to, to one particular learning style because it is possible they will not go together well.
 
Relying on the algorithms 

Matty: Well, the mention of, Matt Holmes is interesting. I'm going to glom together two questions here. So I took the Matt Holmes, course on untargeted Facebook ads, where you allow Facebook to determine, you don't provide these, this, people who like Stephen King are going to like this.
 
You let Facebook do that. And it totally made sense to me. And I tried that for a while. It wasn't really panning out for me. I'm not necessarily blaming the theory. It's there are a lot of moving parts. So. I know it's working well for some people, but one of the things that appeal to me about it is that it makes sense to me that if, if AI is writing novels, if AI can do the things that it can do, then Facebook algorithms as a form of AI, like I trust that they could be better at picking targets for me than I could be.
 
And that the platforms that rely on me doing research into my own books, like Better Understanding Comp Authors, I'm kind of looking forward to the day when I can press a button and, Chad GPT will say, as it does now, I'm not sure how accurate it is, but, oh, you know who good comp authors are for your books?
 
These. And I think Amazon is. is perfectly positioned to do this because they, like, they have the text of your book. I feel like it can't be that far away that they're going to be doing the equivalent of untargeted Facebook ads. That was a whole mess of stuff, but can you comment on, like, the pros and cons of you making the decisions about who will like your books versus a machine making decisions about who's going to like your books?
 
Bryan: Well, it's very interesting because, we have found that especially for some of our authors who are making over 6,000 a month, so they qualify, for our agency, they, they find that they're getting the most clicks on their auto ads, which is, Somewhat just generated by Amazon, based around your 7 KDP keyword phrases, based around your categories, based around previous maybe data that you have going to your book.
 
And so it is kind of similar in that way, nowhere near as detailed or sophisticated as Facebook's Advantage Plus, audiences, and I have heard of them working for some people, not working for others, but yet you got to try it because if it does work, there's your push button, there's your chat GPT, pick all the things that, if you can get it to work with less Input from you and less effort from you, and it works.
 
You got to do it because there is only so much time in the day, right? There's only so many hours. There's only so much energy. There's only so much passion that can go into a single day. And if we can figure out that, oh, this Facebook method saves time, saves energy, great. Amazon doesn't feel like it's quite there yet.
 
I would love for it to be there. I would love for it to be a little bit easier. I feel like, sometimes teaching Amazon ads, we're bending over backwards, trying to explain the little, quirks of the platform. It'd be nice if those quirks weren't there and it just kind of worked. but I do think in a few years, Matty, we will be in a position that it will be easier for everyone to be able to advertise, but that will mean some of the people that here in 2024 who currently have an advantage, over, over authors who maybe are struggling with those ads, that advantage may dissipate.
 
And, you know as well as I do, when, authors who are secure in their earnings start to see that gap, dissipating, they're going to be angry, and they're going to say, this is no good, and they're going to say mean things about that platform, or the machines, or how it works, and it's like, Well, this is why you build up an email list.
 
This is why you try to future proof your business. This is why you, you become anti fragile in whatever ways you can. This is why you connect deeper with your readers, while you have that advantage because these kinds of advantages could be temporary. And so it's good to build a stronger foundation for your business.
 
Matty: Yeah, I can imagine that the improvement of AI is not only going to be potentially a time saver for authors, but also remove, provides a more objective source. So for example, I could see someone writing a book and they say, this is definitely a police procedural. I'm going to, I'm going to put in a lot of police procedural related terms into my keywords.
 
And then, they put it up, it doesn't do anything, but behind the scenes, if you let a machine. Picket, they would say, oh, no, this is really more cozy. And they start showing it to cozy readers. And then suddenly the sales boom. And I just think that a lot of these is, ad approaches require the person who's probably the least good at objectively assessing the work to assign this stuff that is supposed to be objective, like keywords. It provides that third party perspective in a way that I think it can be very difficult for authors to bring to their own work.
 
Bryan: Yeah, you need, whether it is a person or a program, getting some neutral point of view on your books can make a huge difference. I absolutely agree.
 
Matty: Yeah, an experience I had was taking my, The description of one of my books and putting it into mid journey or something like that, and saying, give me a cover, not because I was planning on using the cover, but I was just curious, and it featured a secondary character much more prominently on the cover, and I thought, oh yeah, because you know what, that character's name shows up Before my protagonist's character in the description, maybe it would be a good idea if I didn't do that, actually put my protagonist's name first. So, those kinds of insights, I think it's useful to play around with this stuff, even if you don't end up using it in the real world, just to see. Oh yeah, I never thought of it that way before.
 
Bryan: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Good exercise that you did there for yourself.
 
Attributing performance results to advertising efforts 

Matty: I think one of the challenges of using multiple platforms is this question of to where do you attribute the results? And so for a lot of my author career, I've only been doing one thing at a time. So if I get a big jump in sales, I'm like, okay, well, I was running Amazon ads. It's probably from Amazon ads.
 
Is there any, again, sort of strategic advice you can give when people are running ads on multiple platforms or making multiple promotional efforts, how they know where those came from?
 
Bryan: When you get really complicated when you're like some of the clients that we work with who are running Facebook ads, Amazon ads, they have a vibrant TikTok following. They're doing maybe TikTok shop or they're also doing Shopify, and some of the people who don't buy on Shopify will then go over to Amazon and buy This makes it.
 
Like, if you think back to high school calculus, this is a multi-variable equation. And so you want to look at potential cause and effect. Any assumptions you have to throw out the window, because if you see that, hey, I got more Facebook clicks this day, it must've been that. But then you dive deeper, and you see that, oh, well, there's a chance that Facebook, that Facebook traffic was actually going to a bad, irrelevant source that day.
 
And so you say, well, maybe it wasn't the Facebook. It is very, very difficult. And so, what you have to really look at You have to look at the data very objectively. You cannot go into it with a bunch of assumptions. I have had authors say, well, I know that these five sales didn't come from my ads because my uncle said he told his friends about it, and they must have bought it.
 
And it's like, well, you don't know anything when it comes to this because Amazon is not going to share that data with us. And so you really have to come at it very much from as much of a neutral perspective. We were just talking about a neutral perspective. As much as, as neutral as you possibly can be, because once you, when you throw in Amazon plus Facebook, okay, it gets a little more complicated.
 
If you have 3 or 4 promotional methods going at once, it is very difficult to tell where the sales actually came from. I would, for the most part, not recommend 3 to 4 promotional methods, unless you're already doing pretty well, because it, there comes a certain point in your career, and we've seen this with some of our agency clients, they’re making 20 grand on a bad month.
 
And so they know, well, if I spend five to 10 grand across these platforms and make 30 grand, it doesn't really matter where they came from to a certain extent. They're just happy that they threw money at ads and good things happen. They had a good profit margin and they're going to do it again. And there might come a time where they have to kind of reckon with that.
 
but in the short term, if they know I'll spend 10, I'll make 20 30 or 40, then they can go ahead and do that. But for folks who are starting out, you might want to keep things more simple.
 
Budgeting for ad beginners 

Matty: I think that brings up another thing that I always like to encourage, people who are experts as you are to talk to is if someone is just starting out, I think we hear these, I spent 10,000 a month on Amazon ads and I earn, 10,000 times whatever. When people are just dipping their toe in the water.
 
What should they be budgeting, as a daily budget, as a weekly budget, however they, you would recommend they approach it, when they're just starting out.
 
Bryan: Yeah, absolutely. With Amazon ads, we usually put a 5 daily budget per ad. but then if you're worried that those ads are going to spend. All that money. If you have five ads, you have 10 ads, and you don't want to spend 25 to 50 a day, which they usually won't if you bid pretty low, around 34 to 39. But let's say you're nervous about it.
 
You can actually put all those ads into an ad folder that's called a portfolio, and you can set a portfolio budget cap and say, Actually, I don't want this to spend more than 40 for the month. And you say on a recurring basis, each month I want to spend 40 or less. I would say that. When you're first starting out, you could set those portfolio budgets, 40 to 50 in a month.
 
when you're just starting out, when you just have one book, it's not even likely to spend all that. but it's nice to know that budget is in place. I think a lot of authors, when they come into this, they say, well, I've got 400 earmarked. I'm going to spend this on ads. Then you go to Amazon, and it spends 4.
 
And you're like, but I budgeted 400. Why didn't it spend it? I'm going to raise my bid, which is not what we would recommend. And so you might want to budget for a certain amount, but you just got to keep in mind with a platform like Amazon, it might not actually go and spend that money, but, it’s good to know those numbers so that you could put them in as a portfolio budget cap.
 
Is one book enough for an ad campaign? 

Matty: So I wanted to ask a time investment question. you would mention before about, we all have lives, and so how much time do we invest in this kind of thing? So I think that a piece of common author advice is, if you're wondering what to do with your time, you never go wrong using it to work on your next book.
 
And I think that's generally true, although I'm kind of hearing a shift, because I think if I had heard you speak as I have years ago, then the message would have been, if you only have one book, maybe wait until you have another book. Now I think I'm hearing more of a shift to, there's no harm in running ads against an early book, because it can advise, it can give you that market research insight.
 
That suggest, maybe this is really cozy and not a police procedural, or maybe people aren't sympathizing with your character, whatever that might be. But, I think there's also a point where you've got a bunch of books, like, I have, I currently have, 10 novels by the end of this year, I should have 11 or 12, and I almost feel like, maybe it's better, like, maybe I should make 2025 my promotional year, not stop writing altogether, because I think there are dangers there, but do you ever think that there's a time when you would advise an author to say, now it's time to shift your, Let's shift your focus a little bit.
 
Let's have a concerted chunk of time that is strictly going to be focused on learning and optimizing and using promotional tools like Amazon ads.
 
Bryan: I think folks do this naturally. I think that people do kind of go into promotional mode, especially if they buy a course or they are trying out a new method. I think there can be benefits of it, but right now, and I got a little bit in trouble for this, this was exciting. So I was talking about on some more book show that this exact question, if you have, one book out, or how many books would you wait until you run ads?
 
And I say one, because if you are planning to write a ten book series, and first book has no chance of selling once you've run the ads, and you realize, like, maybe you didn't quite get the genre right, maybe you didn't get the tropes right, then, hey, the ads have actually pointed you in the direction of, well, maybe you could write something a little bit different and see how that goes.
 
I got in trouble for it a little bit, because someone listened to that post, or listened to that, episode, and said, Bryan is telling me that I should cancel my series if it didn't sell well on ads. And then that was posted in a public group, the writing gals, and a lot of people were like, That's terrible advice!
 
And it's not exactly what I was saying, but it's not exactly the opposite of what I was saying either, because What are you going to get more out of? Are you going to get more out of writing and researching a series starter, running ads to it, determining, eh, it's not where it needs to be, and then writing and researching a second series starter.
 
And then maybe taking the lessons learned from that and writing a third series starter for a totally different series, maybe even a different subgenre. Or writing three books in one series and then running ads to it. do you get more out of? I wonder if you get more out of option A, because that writing and research process that usually we don't do until we've finished a series, put it on the shelf, moved on to another series, is where the growth can happen to a certain extent.
 
I remember I was writing a series, and I was writing book 5, and I was like, this is the best book I've ever written, and no one's ever going to find it. Because it's deep in a series that the book one isn't so good. And so to go back to the question of, is there a time where you focus on promotional methods or you, or do you always just keep the writing going? a big fan right now of you focus some time on the writing and research and. You can focus some time on promotion, but I think the big growths, the Richter scale, 10x growths, those happen jumping from a series to a different series to a different series. Now, I did message the person and all these comments come in and I said, you don't have to quit a series.
 
You don't have to give up a series. But there is nothing wrong with saying, I'm going to write another book one and I'll come back to book two of this later. You never have to kill a series, but I am very big right now, Matty, on can I save an author two to three years of their lives? And this is kind of the theory I'm going on of, especially based on lots of authors I've seen who've had success.
 
This might be the thing to concentrate on. And you might want to wait until you have the big hit where one of those series starters does seem to take off on its own. maybe you go into promotion mode, not necessarily when, you're in a position where you'd need to double your sales to be happy. To me, that feels like, well, ads are going to bump what you have up 20 to 30 percent at most. If. If you're not happy with what 20 30 percent more would bring, then I wonder if you focus on that next series starter and go deeper into that writing to market genre research and then save the promotional time for later.
 
Theoretical? I'll put that, forward, philosophical maybe, but I'm always trying to think of how can authors kind of level up, and this feels to me like maybe the direction they need to go in.
 
Matty: Well, I like that idea that you're not suggesting people trash their starter if it's not doing well on the ads, but that by the time you've tested your third starter, and this is the one that catches on, then it's easier to step back and say, oh, you know what I did differently?
 
I spent more time developing the character, and you know what I could do? I could go back into series one, and I could write that second book, except this time, guess what? more character development, or an interesting backstory, or whatever that might be. And so, the learnings that you can gain from what it was about that one that finally hit could be profitably applied to the earlier ones.
 
Bryan: right. that's, like I said, the theory, but I've seen too many authors. All of those have success with their 3rd series or their 4th series or their 5th series. And I wonder, well, what if that didn't happen in year 6 of their career? What if it happened in year 2? And it just makes me wonder.
 
Matty: So, Bryan, I appreciate you being willing to delve into all these sort of philosophical and theoretical questions about, Amazon ads, and I know you have lots of resources for the more tactical side of Amazon ads as well, so, please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about those resources and everything you do online,
 
Bryan: Absolutely. And thank you, Matty. It's been a lot of fun talking with you today. So, the 5 Day Author Ad Profit Challenge is a free event that we do quarterly. The next one's coming up April 17th, 2024. We'll have more in the future each quarter. this is a free course, free support, free Q&As. Often copied and duplicated. People try to do these kinds of challenges, but, I feel like we've really gotten a good handle on our process here, and that's why this one coming up is the 19th challenge we've done, and usually several thousand people are taking it at once, we love putting this on, it's a good way to learn the basics, it's a good way to.
 
Matty: Get your hands dirty and actually make a few ads, but do, to do it in a safe environment where you have a lot of support, where you're not doing it all on your own. That is at AuthorsAdvertise.com. That's AuthorsAdvertise.com and you can register for the challenge. as I have done myself.
 
Bryan: As you have done yourself,
 
Matty: That's right.
 
Bryan: I'm so excited that you'll be there.
 
and then I have a podcast too, the Sell More Book Show podcast, sellmorebookshow.com or anywhere you listen to podcasts. as Matty mentioned, we just hit 10 years, hoping to do as many more as we can.
 
Matty: Great. It was lovely talking to you, Bryan. Thanks so much.

Episode 230 - The Good, the Bad, and the Surprising of Kickstarter with Megan Haskell and Jennifer Hilt

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Megan Haskell and Jennifer Hilt discuss THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SURPRISING OF KICKSTARTER. They offer their insider perspectives, covering both fiction and non-fiction books, including how Kickstarters enables authors to tap into a growing desire among readers for access to creators; which comes first, a Kickstarter campaign or a reader community; how Kickstarter has become a platform where readers browse for books (and aren’t looking for bargains); the importance of starting small; the challenge of data management; the value of a campaign as market research; ideas for backer tier offerings; which parts of the campaign were harder or easier than they expected; and the importance of not just adding a Kickstarter campaign on top of your existing schedule and of building in rest time.

Megan Haskell is the award-winning author of The Sanyare Chronicles, the epic fantasy "Forged in Shadow," and a women’s contemporary fantasy series, starting with "Aether Bound." And she and Greta Boris are the forces behind The Author Wheel.

Jennifer Hilt is the author of THE TROPE THESAURUS series, including TROPE YOUR WAY TO A STRONGER STORY and books on horror and romance tropes. She is also the USA Today bestselling author of 24 books across four pen names. And Jennifer is my co-host for the MINING THE MOVIES WITH TROPETALK video series that you’ll find on The Indy Author YouTube channel.

Episode Links

https://meganhaskell.com/​
https://www.jenniferhilt.com/

Summary

This episode of "The Indy Author Podcast" features a discussion with Jennifer Hilt and Megan Haskell on their experiences with Kickstarter campaigns for their books. They cover the basics of Kickstarter, their personal motivations for using the platform, and the different strategies they employed in their campaigns. Jennifer focuses on non-fiction projects related to tropes, while Megan discusses her fiction series. They share insights on setting up campaigns, choosing reward tiers, and the importance of direct reader engagement. Challenges such as fulfillment, international shipping, and managing backer expectations are also discussed. The conversation highlights Kickstarter as a tool for expanding reader reach, testing market interest, and providing unique reader experiences. Both authors stress the importance of understanding Kickstarter's community-driven nature and the need for clear planning and execution in campaigns.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guests are Jennifer Hilt and Megan Haskell. How are you guys doing?
 
[00:00:07] Megan: Good!
 
[00:00:09] Jennifer: Happy to be here.
 
[00:00:10] Matty: Yes, I'm very happy to have you here, one of my few multi-guest podcast episodes. So, this is a special acknowledgment for you guys.
 
Meet Jennifer Hilt and Megan Haskell
 
[00:00:18] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Jennifer Hilt is the author of the "Trope Thesaurus" series, including "Trope Your Way to a Stronger Story" and books on Horror and Romance Tropes. She's also the USA Today bestselling author of 24 books across four pen names. Jennifer is also my co-host on the "Minding the Movies with Trope Talk" video series that you will find on the Indie Author YouTube channel.
 
Megan Haskell is the award-winning author of the "Sanyare Chronicles," the epic fantasy "Forged in Shadow," and a women's contemporary fantasy series, starting with "Aether Bound." She and Greta Boris are the forces behind the Author Wheel. So, as soon as you've caught up with the Indie Author Podcast, please go over and subscribe to the Author Wheel Podcast, which is a wonderful podcast.
 
[00:00:59] Megan: Oh, thank you.
 
[00:01:01] Matty: And I invited Jennifer and Megan on the podcast to talk about Kickstarter because Kickstarter is just in the news so much, and I thought this would be a good combination because we have someone who has had success with a non-fiction Kickstarter, Jen, and someone who has had success with a fiction Kickstarter, Megan, and then we have someone who has no experience with Kickstarter whatsoever, me. So, we figured that we would bring a good combination of perspectives to this. Jen and Megan have also promised to share not just the glory moments of their Kickstarter but also some of the more challenging moments as well.
 
What is Kickstarter?
 
[00:01:48] Jennifer: Before that, can I just take a minute to define what I think Kickstarter means? Because I didn't know that.
 
[00:01:55] Matty: Oh, sure. Yeah, please.
 
[00:01:56] Jennifer: If you're listening here and don't get it, Megan, chime in with whatever you think. But Kickstarter is a way of what we call direct sales, and you're interacting with your readers. It's similar to GoFundMe in that idea, except Kickstarter is only for creative projects. That's just kind of like the basics, which I didn't even really understand when I first was like, what is this Kickstarter thing? So just to give you a rundown of what that is. You can only use it for creative projects, and then we'll go into all the details about that.
 
Background on Jen's Kickstarter campaign
 
[00:02:27] Jennifer: My Kickstarter, the reason why I was interested in it, is I sell non-fiction; my non-fiction books are obviously about tropes. I've been using those wide, and I was seeing people like Sky Warren, Brian Cohn, and Russell Nolte doing Kickstarters with their non-fiction books and having success with that. I was like, I know zero about this, like, probably even less than zero if that's possible. So, I was wondering if that would be something that would work for me. That was kind of how I got my entry; I just plunged into it.
 
I had a book, "My Trope Thesaurus Romance," my second book, that I hadn't put out on Amazon or wide or anything like that. And I had a pretty good draft of it. It wasn't completely done, but I had a pretty good draft. And I thought, well, what if I use that for a Kickstarter? That was pretty much all I thought with it. And I went into it quite naive, I would say. Megan and I can talk more about that. But that was my entry into doing it: I have this product, I see other people having success with it, let me give it a go and see what happens.
 
Background on Megan's Kickstarter campaign
 
[00:03:37] Matty: And Megan, how about you? Give us a little background on your Kickstarter.
 
[00:03:41] Megan: Sure. So I actually have done two so far. The first was nonfiction, which was for the Author Wheel. We did a Kickstarter for our "Foundations of Great Storytelling, Preparing to Write," and that one was reasonably successful as well. Then I did my fiction one, which was kind of me putting my toes in the water because, like Jennifer, I didn't quite know what I was doing and was figuring things out. I wanted to test something that I already knew how to do.
 
So I did a paperback Kickstarter for the second book in the "Rise of Lilith" series, "Aether Crossed." Like Jennifer, it was successful. I fully funded within a couple of hours and exceeded my goals. I was really excited about it as a way to kind of get going. And now I'm just about to launch my second fiction Kickstarter, which will be for a special edition hardcover of my debut novel, "Sanyare: The Last Descendant," for the "Sanyare Chronicles." I think that's my big tip of the day: go slow, put your toe in the water, and build from there. That's my two cents on my Kickstarters.
 
The mechanics of Kickstarter
 
[00:05:10] Megan: The way Kickstarter works is that you set up your sales page, your campaign page, and you set up different tiers for the rewards that your backers can opt in and support you at. Then you hit launch, and you can choose how long your campaign is and how much funding you need to make it happen. For my paperback fiction campaign, I set my funding goal at $500, which would basically cover the print costs and shipping costs of the books and give me a little boost for the launch of the book. You can launch elsewhere afterward, but for the Kickstarter, I set a small goal because I was putting my toe in the water and wanted to fund those costs.
 
Then you set your time period; mine was a 21-day campaign, meaning I had three weeks to convince enough people to back me to achieve that funding goal. I managed to do that, getting $500 in a couple of hours, which was fabulous. That let me know I was going to meet my minimum goal and would be able to fund the print of the paperbacks and all the associated costs.
 
If you don't fund on Kickstarter, meaning if you don't get enough backers to meet your goal, the campaign doesn't fund. I don't like looking at it as failure, but it fails. And so, none of the backers get charged, and you are not required to complete that Kickstarter. For example, there are Kickstarters out there, like for a board game, they set usually high funding goals because they have bigger costs than we do as authors for books. So if they don't hit that 100,000 funding goal, they don't have to make the game at all. They don't owe it to anyone. But if they do hit that funding goal, they have to fulfill it for their backers. So it's really important to set your funding goal at a level that is achievable but covers your costs, so that if you fund, you can actually afford to make the product.
 
Expanding reader reach
 
[00:07:44] Matty: I'm curious to ask both of you, what were your own author business goals when you decided to pursue it? Jennifer, you had talked about that a little bit, but did you have very specific goals in mind, like what you wanted to achieve? You wanted to fund something, or you wanted to expand your reach, or you wanted to get more visibility or anything like that. Any additional goals you had there.
 
[00:08:06] Jennifer: Yeah, I definitely wanted to expand my reach and find other readers/community because it seems like often the people who are supporting Kickstarters are not exactly the same people you're going to find on the other channels. So it's really a way to give you more audience. That was kind of the thing that I was interested in because, like Megan said, when you're finished with your Kickstarter project, authors usually wait a minimum of three months before they put up the product for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other vendors.
 
So, you're selling the same product twice to two different groups of people, I guess. That was obviously very appealing as an author because we don't get that a lot. That said, there's a lot of work involved in doing that. And, like the things that Megan talked about, like setting up your page and campaign, the first time I did it, I would say that all that took me a month. I'm not a particularly techie person, probably that's not a surprise, but just figuring out what everything meant took me a lot of time to figure out what rewards really mean, what a tier is, how that works with someone, and then just working out the pages themselves to make them look attractive and those kinds of things.
 
For me, all that was a really big part of the learning process that I was glad I did, but it definitely takes time and energy to do. It's not a set-it-and-forget-it thing in any kind of way. And it's just important for people to know that. I wanted to look for more of an audience, and I definitely had that opportunity, but it also took a lot of time and energy to learn how to do that search. So, that was really my biggest thing, because, oh, one of the things that was really nice about it is because the Kickstarter people are often other creative people, they really tend to want to sign up for your mailing lists. We're always trying to improve our mailing lists.
 
So that was a really great benefit that I found as I gained a whole bunch more newsletter subscribers. Things like that were more long-term goals. But the initial thing was just to broaden my reach and learn a bit more about ways to sell direct besides what I had been doing.
 
A growing reader desire for access to the creator
 
[00:10:28] Megan: I think for me it was, like Jennifer said, reaching a new audience. The interesting thing is that we're in this moment of transition within the author and reader communities, where there are huge differences between the readers that are in Kindle Unlimited, for example, who just want to read as many books as they can, and maybe they find favorites and become a different kind of reader, but they start out there, at least. And then there are the readers who are interested in having a physical copy of something, in supporting an author directly, that kind of sustainability of the creative industry. There are readers out there who are strongly in favor of that and in favor of reaching those authors and having access to more, you know, to the creative process for that author.
 
So I'm not saying you need to go out and have coffee with them, but like, just that access is a premium.
 
[00:11:30] Matty: That's a really premium deliverable to give them.
 
[00:11:31] Megan: That would be huge.
 
[00:11:33] Matty: It would be a really premium deliverable.
 
[00:11:36] Megan: Absolutely. One of the premium tiers that I did offer on mine was a one-on-one coffee on Zoom. I didn't meet them in person, but on Zoom. It was a very high tier, a high-cost item, and there were a few other things involved with it as well, including the books, obviously. But I did have a few backers who were like, "Yeah, I'm going to spend a couple hundred bucks so I can sit and chat with you because I think it's so cool to have access to an author and talk about the creative process and how you came up with the story idea." So it's a different audience. And for me personally, that's the direction I wanted to go, or wanted to pursue, that more community-based, experience-based group of readers rather than the 'as many books as fast as possible' reader community.
 
So that was just a personal strategy decision for myself. It feels right for me. It's the kind of business I want to run. But I know there are plenty of authors out there who are like, "No, I just want to write and I can write fast and I want to put out a lot of books and make sure my readers have that bingeable quality." And that's totally cool. It's just a very different mindset and a very different type of reader.
 
So for me, it was largely starting to try to tap into that community. And then also that first campaign, the paperback campaign, I knew it wasn't going to be a big-ticket seller like the really super high edition, luxury hardbacks. But it was my way of being like, "Is this even really feasible for me? I know how to make a paperback already. So, okay, let's do that and see if we can start to figure out what this Kickstarter thing really is, and how much work goes into it," because it is a lot.
 
[00:13:34] Matty: Yeah, we're definitely going to be delving into that, and I wanted to share a story that I think I heard at 20 Books, but I remember someone talking about the fact that someone did something like a Kickstarter, and one of their tiers was where the author would fly to the contributor's hometown, meet them at the airport, have lunch with them, and hand them a signed book. This was a multi-thousand-dollar tier, and he got like two people who were willing to spend, I don't know, $10,000 a piece or something like that for him to fly to their airport and hand them the book. It was really just a great example of almost literally the sky's the limit if you have the kind of community you can tap into.
 
The chicken and egg question of reader community
 
[00:14:15] Matty: Which leads to my next question, which is sort of a chicken and egg thing because you want to build up more of a community using the Kickstarter, but you kind of have to have a community that wants to interact with you in that way to start with. I do sense that a certain amount of the Kickstarter activity is Kickstarters supporting each other, especially in the author community. There's this community of Kickstarter-using authors, and they're very generous about supporting each other's Kickstarters, but among your reader base, it has to be seeded with people who want to, or maybe already are interacting with you in that way. So, Jennifer, can you talk a little bit about that? Which comes first? The seed of that kind of community, or can that come as a result of the Kickstarter?
 
Kickstarter as a platform for browsing for books
 
[00:15:02] Jennifer: Yeah, one thing that I keep learning, and I keep forgetting, but I keep relearning, is that there are so many people out there. Especially in our author communities, we sometimes feel like there's only a finite number of people interested in our work. That probably is true, but there are also just so many people out there. Kickstarter has shown me a window into just how many other people out there that I didn't even know who could be potentially interested in my work. There's a lot of people on Kickstarter. The biggest challenge when you put something up there is gaining visibility for them to see you. They have this little sticker that if your project funds in a certain amount of time, you get a "projects we love" thing, and then you get a little more visibility.
 
In general, I just think there's a whole lot of people out there who want to read and are interested in different ideas. Like when I did two campaigns, either time I have done very little promo, like pre-order equivalent, just because it's taken me so long to set it all up. I tend to be like, "Okay, guess what, this is coming out in three days, the campaign's going to start," and it's been really interesting to me that immediately I see people backing it who I don't know any of these people.
 
[00:17:12] Matty: Yeah, I guess I always just assume, because this is how I would use Kickstarter, and of course, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking everybody else is using something the way I'm using it, but I only ever go to Kickstarter if I hear somebody that I already like announce they have a Kickstarter. Then I'll go look and say, "Oh yeah, that looks good, I'm going to fund that," but I would never go to Kickstarter just to poke around.
 
[00:17:34] Jennifer: But I know people that do.
 
[00:17:36] Matty: Yeah, evidently. Megan, what are your thoughts about that?
 
[00:17:39] Megan: Yeah, so I agree. I think there are people that Kickstarter has become the primary way that they shop for books. They want, especially book collectors, who want that physical copy in their hands. I think there are people, that's how they do it. They like the system, they like interacting with the authors directly, they like having that physical, gorgeous product in their hands. It's a completely different audience than the people who are just reading ebooks online and are used to that. So I think there's that aspect to it.
 
As far as the chicken and the egg, I think it's both. You need both. If you've been primarily or exclusively online with Amazon, especially if you're exclusive with Amazon, but even if you're wide, even if you're across all the ebook platforms, your audience is therefore going to be mostly digital. They're going to be the ones that have subscribed to your list. Now, some of those people will be super fans or want that physical, beautiful collector's edition because they love your work. But, as a percentage, it's hard to say what that percentage is going to be. It will fund some, but it's probably not going to be everything.
 
Meanwhile, now you've got this Kickstarter page, and especially after your first campaign. And we'll see how this works out for my second campaign. So, Jennifer, you might be able to speak to this a little bit more. But it starts to snowball because all the people that backed your first campaign you can now message them and say, "Hey, I've got a new campaign up, I've got a new book, or I've got this special edition." So now they do already know you, they're already in the system, and I think there's more momentum there. Start small. On that first campaign, again, this is why I think, my personal belief, and I have not done enough Kickstarters to prove this out yet, but, my personal belief is that you start small. You put your toe in the water, easy funding goals, something you already know how to do, something that's digital, or, I mean, Kickstarter likes physical products, so you still should do a physical product of some kind, but start small, don't have massive goals for your first Kickstarter.
 
[00:20:22] Matty: I'd be interested in hearing from both of you about how your Kickstarter experience differed from what you expected, like what were your biggest surprises as you went through the process? And Jennifer, let's start with you on that one.
 
[00:20:34] Jennifer: Biggest surprises... Let's see, I would say, overwhelmingly, backers have been lovely. Like, if you have some worry about like, oh, I'm going to get some, no, people have just been great. I've really enjoyed interacting with them; they've been nice, enthusiastic, understanding, just great.
 
The challenge of data management
 
[00:20:52] Jennifer: The management of how you deliver the stuff is a whole other thing and a very real part of it, and so the data management part of a Kickstarter campaign is kind of basically three things for me. One, a product that you create. Two, the Kickstarter campaign itself that we were talking about, that you're trying to get funded. And then three, what they call fulfillment, of how you actually get all those things that you've promised people to them. And so those are, in my mind, pretty much three distinct things that I have to do. The fulfillment part takes a lot of time and energy from me as I'm learning how to do it.
 
And there's not just a platform you can use Kickstarter to do it, but there's another platform that can help you do it, and one of them that I use is called BackerKit, and they do it for a fee, but it helps you manage all the people, like the email addresses and the physical addresses and who gets what, because as you get a whole bunch of tiers, it can get very confusing very quickly.
 
So, learning how to do all that has been something that's taken a lot of time and energy, and I feel like, oh, I'm really understanding it the second time, but the first time that I did it, I was like, very much pulling my hair out, like, "What am I doing? How does this work?" And it was very intense for me to figure all that stuff out.
 
So I think it's just kind of like everything else. You don't know until you do it, and I wouldn't have thought there would be so much, like, data management involved, which is probably incredibly naive on my part, but that, but there it is.
 
Controls on use of backer data [00:22:26] Matty: I'm curious as to how much of the backer data you get. Do you get email addresses and mailing addresses because you need them to fulfill, and are there any restrictions on how you can use that data?
 
[00:22:46] Jennifer: You cannot just take and download all the emails and put them on your list unless you ask. I can communicate with them through Kickstarter or BackerKit about their order, but if I want to send them an email privately or send them my newsletter, there's a way that you ask them in a survey at the end of your campaign, with a question that says, "Hey, do you want to be on my mailing list?" Overwhelmingly, that community says yes, which is why it's a great way to grow your email list. But you absolutely, 100 percent, cannot just take and download all these emails and put them on your list.
 
[00:23:47] Matty: Makes sense.
 
[00:23:49] Megan: And they don't give you any of that information until your Kickstarter funds and closes. During the campaign, other than sending backer updates within Kickstarter, it's like a message through Kickstarter to your backers or people who are following your campaign. So you can do that, but you don't actually see who those backers are until after the campaign closes and is funded. Then you can move them over to BackerKit or there's another one called PledgeBox. There are a few different companies, as Jennifer was saying. That's when you get that information, and on all the sites, they have this big thing that you have to check the boxes that say, "I understand, I will not copy, save, or distribute this email list. I understand this is their privacy, laws and all that stuff." So that's an important consideration as well. But for people who are concerned about being backers, that's what you can tell them, is that you don't have access to their information other than what you need to do to fulfill the Kickstarter, and you're not keeping or saving it anywhere.
 
[00:24:59] Matty: So Megan, I want to give you a chance to answer the question about what was the biggest surprise for you as you ran your Kickstarter campaign.
 
Kickstarter as market research (e.g., readers want to read but not take online cocktail classes)
 
[00:25:05] Megan: So again, kind of going back to this is an ongoing learning process, right? So I thought for my fiction campaign, because my series has a protagonist who is a bartender, I created cocktail menus for each of the books with the help of a bartender friend. And I thought as an upper-tier add-on, people would love to have an online Zoom cocktail class with my friend who teaches them, right? It was just such a no-brainer, why would you not do that? But nobody backed it.
 
[00:25:45] Matty: Really?
 
[00:25:45] Megan: Yeah, nobody backed it, except for a couple of people who bought in at the highest tier because they wanted the one-on-one. Honestly, they didn't really care that much about the cocktail class, but nobody else backed it. So, I was like, "Oh, well, fun fact of the day, readers like to read, not attend a cocktail class." Sometimes I think Kickstarter can be another great way, like live events, to really start to understand who your audience is and what they really want, as well as interacting with them more personally and so forth like we've talked about. But that was a big aha moment that like, "Oh, no, this is, that didn't fit. It wasn't what the readers wanted." So taking that information moving forward, I will not be offering a cocktail class in the future.
 
Ideas for backer tier offerings
 
[00:26:43] Matty:  Well, we've mentioned sort of in passing what you were offering as different tiers. Megan, can you just go through what your different tiers were in one of your Kickstarters and what the financial commitment was from a backer for each of them?
 
[00:26:55] Megan: Yeah, I'll do my best. I don't have it up, but, so the base level was just to support the project. So I think for $3 or something like that, you could just support the project. And I had a couple of digital downloads, like coloring pages, for that one. Then I had the digital-only or ebook-only tier, which was just for the ebook of "Aether Crossed." I kept the same lower-tier items as well, so it still had the coloring page, a computer wallpaper, but digital downloads. That one I think was $10. Then I had the two-book series in digital, it might've been like $15 for that one or something. So that was all my digital-only tiers.
 
And then I had the paperback, so that was my first physical tier where I actually had to ship stuff out. With the paperback, you also got a bookmark, and it was signed by me, and then I think I charged $25 because it included shipping. Shipping is tough, and I'm still, for my next campaign, I want to figure out international shipping, which Jennifer, I don't know if you've done international shipping, but I may have to
 
[00:28:09] Jennifer: We should talk because I would like to figure it out too because people ask all the time and I'm like, I'm afraid, I'm afraid.
 
[00:28:14] Megan: Yeah, international shipping is tough. But for U.S. shipping, I included that in all the tiers so that it was all wrapped up in a single price. Then I had the two-book paperback tier because it was the second book in the series. And then I started adding on the VIP tiers, or the experience tier. It was an expensive high-ticket item, but it was a cocktail class, a group Ask Me Anything on Zoom meeting, and of course, all the digital books, all the physical VIP tier, which had all the physical books, as well as all the digital stuff, as well as all the classes. And then I had the super extra VIP experience, which included the one-on-one. So, yeah. I want to say that one was like $350.
 
I think I offered a discount at the beginning of the campaign to try to get people in there, and then after a week or something, I think the full price was $350, I want to say, so, yeah, that was how I broke that one up.
 
Now, for the hardback edition that I'm about to do, I'm going to try and keep it a little simpler because it was a lot to manage on the back end as far as understanding which backers were in which tiers and what they got and making sure they all got the things that they were supposed to get and all that stuff. So I think I am going to try and simplify it a little bit, but we'll see. Sometimes my ideas run away with me.
 
[00:29:51] Matty: And Jennifer, how about you? What were some of the things you offered at different backer rates?
 
[00:29:55] Jennifer: Yeah, similar to Megan, the same thing of like ten dollars was the ebook. I had like a one-dollar PDF. Ten dollars was the ebook and I think thirty dollars was the paperback. So when you get the paperback though you get the ebook and you like everything below it. So it all kind of meshed. And then the BackerKit, the users are used to that. So you don't have to explain that. You know, it's pretty laid out. So that makes sense. I simplified for my second one because it really seemed like people are just basically interested in books and classes and then doing some more one-on-one things.
 
So those are the kind of things I offered. The neat thing about this is that in addition to the things that you're actually offering for the tiers and things, there's also things that are called add-ons. And that's how people who have a really good backlist, like Megan's fans, per se, they can go back and get copies of her books that she has. I can also get those also, even if they're not in a tier. So it's a different way of adding.
 
I think the one thing that I really learned that I think is important that sometimes gets lost is, if you have a really good product, you don't have to knock yourself out with lots of bells and whistles. So I think it's okay to not offer 9 million other things to have a good thing and some various versions of that can appeal to people at different price points, but you don't have to do all the things. And I think that, I've seen that has helped, you know, work for me, but I also see other campaigns where that's working, too. If people like it, they're going to like it. You don't have to entice them with a whole bunch of other extraneous elements.
 
Backers aren't bargain hunters
 
[00:31:39] Matty: I'm curious about how you balance the price you're charging or asking for from a backer for a product, and then what you eventually want to sell it for when you get to the point where you can put it up on a retail platform.
 
[00:31:51] Jennifer: I don't actually think that's an issue. Early on, I made the mistake of thinking these were different kinds of backers who want different experiences. They're not just looking for a bargain at $7.99 for an ebook. They're happy to pay a higher price if they're going to have some interaction with you, they're going to have a paperback that's signed, and those kinds of things, so it doesn't really compare directly. It's not as much of an issue as I would have thought at first.
 
[00:32:22] Matty: That's interesting.
 
[00:32:32] Jennifer: Did I have a philosophy? I guess I'd heard or read somewhere that the $60 tier should be really good stuff, so when I do a $60 tier, it's like, it includes a class, a digital copy, and a physical copy if you're in the U.S. I really try to make sure that has a lot of good stuff for that price point. The things below it tend to just be more like regular book sales. That was just my way of doing it.
 
[00:33:33] Megan: To add on to that, the key part here to remember is that you have to know your costs. Understanding your budget before you go in is incredibly important. So figuring out what it's going to cost you to print, are you going to do print on demand or a print run, what the shipping materials costs, the credit card fees costs, all these other costs have to be built into that Kickstarter tier. Backers understand that.
 
So when you're coming up with your pricing, it matters, but not as much as you might think. The nice thing about nesting everything is that you can have all these little digital add-ons that give your backers something exclusive for Kickstarter, like the wallpaper or coloring book page I made, which haven't been sent out any other time or place. For some backers, that's going to be awesome.
 
If you just have a lot of digital items included in your tiers, you can build up over the course of all the tiers what those are, and those digital items, at very basically zero cost, add to that backer experience and give you that higher tier price value.
 
[00:35:19] Jennifer: For example, I just did five small videos, mini vids, talking about tropes in various movies that are only available to people at the $60 level and above, and they get the little code to watch those, and those are theirs.
 
[00:35:32] Megan: So those are like in addition, you know, so like she's saying, you can add other things on digitally that's not more like things that you're shipping.
 
Which parts were more difficult than expected?
 
[00:35:40] Matty: That's cool. So, that leads into the next question I wanted to ask, and I'm anticipating the answer a little bit. But, of all the people I've spoken to about Kickstarter, the thing that people said took much more time than they expected was fulfillment. I'm wondering if that was the case for you, or if there was some part of it that was much more difficult than you expected, whether that was time-wise, effort-wise, or psychically, what was much more difficult than you expected? Jennifer, let's start with you.
 
[00:36:08] Jennifer: I think it was just, like we talked about, figuring out who gets what, when. You can just use Kickstarter to do it. You don't have to use one of these other fulfillment providers. I used BackerKit the first time because people had said it makes it easier for subsequent campaigns. It was pretty stressful figuring out all the stuff the first time. The second time, things have gone a lot smoother. Part of it, I think, is BackerKit has improved. It still takes a lot of time to figure out how all this stuff gets to everybody.
 
[00:37:09] Megan: There's a learning curve. Go in knowing that it's going to be challenging, from campaign setup all the way through fulfillment. Don't bank that money until you get everything shipped out because there is a new ecosystem to learn. It's going to be challenging, especially if you haven't ever worked in a warehouse. You have to give yourself patience and grace and break it down into small, easy-to-complete steps. Figure out the next thing you need to know, and then the next thing. Don't expect to create the campaign page in a week and then launch the campaign and think it's going to be all smooth sailing. It is a lot of work and a lot of learning. So just be prepared for that.
 
How KS compares to running an online store
 
[00:38:38] Matty: It might be useful for people who aren't familiar with Kickstarter to think of it as setting up an online store, a more elaborate one. They need to figure out the technology, fulfillment, and how to reach the customers they want to reach. There are analogies to all those things for Kickstarter. It's like establishing a new outlet with all the little pieces and parts that need to be accommodated.
 
[00:39:12] Megan: For authors interested in more direct sales, Kickstarter is a great first step because it guides you through the process. You can use templates and information out there. It's easier to do direct sales like a Shopify store after Kickstarter because you now have inventory, copywriting, and many pieces you need, which you built with Kickstarter's help.
 
[00:40:21] Matty: That's interesting because I would have assumed it would be the other way around, starting with the online store and then Kickstarter.
 
[00:40:32] Megan: You can do it that way, I did. But Kickstarter's active community and the guidance they provide can make it easier to then transition to an online store setup. It's just that the nice thing with Kickstarter is that there's such an active community, and they do kind of walk you through the pieces to get you set up, and then you have all those pieces in place, so you can more easily transfer them onto a website, what would be an ad hoc or more ad hoc website system.
 
What was easier or smoother than expected?
 
[00:41:02] Matty: Was there any part of it that was easier or smoother than you expected? Megan, let's go back to you.
 
[00:41:12] Megan: The easy part for me was actually running the campaign. The setup process to get the campaign ready was stressful, making sure I was going to make a profit. But the actual campaign run was less stressful because I had systems in place. I pre-scheduled a lot of stuff, so during the actual campaign run, I wasn't as stressed as I thought I would be.
 
[00:42:52] Matty: And Jennifer, you had mentioned that you found the BackerKit experience made that part smoother than you had worried it would be. Are there other things that ended up being smoother than you expected for you?
 
[00:43:03] Jennifer: Like Megan, I found the pre-launch pretty stressful, as I was trying to figure all this out and wondering if anybody would want the things I'm coming up with. But once the campaign itself is going, it does kind of roll along. You tend to it, but you aren't making big changes or doing big things, so it's more just emotionally being there. When it's going, you're less actively working it as opposed to the beginning and the end.
 
[00:43:58] Matty: That's lovely. So I wanted to ask both of you about just in general, how did you feel about the results of the campaigns you've run? Did it deliver what you were looking for? Are there any major changes you would make the next time you ran one? And Megan, let's start with you.
 
[00:44:13] Megan: The biggest change for the next campaign is that I'm going to simplify the tiers a bit and not offer a cocktail class. This next campaign will be very much more focused on the product itself, the hardback, making it really beautiful, getting enough backers to afford the print run. The first fiction campaign was successful because I learned a lot, what my audience is looking for, and what the audience on Kickstarter in general is looking for. The first one's tough, I'm hoping the second one is less so.
 
[00:45:18] Matty: Jennifer, what's your thought on that?
 
The importance of building rest time in
 
[00:45:20] Jennifer: I agree with all the things she said, and I'm just really thinking about going forward, making sure to build some rest time in because when you finish, you're like, "Oh, you have all these other things to do." And then you're thinking about the next one, but also realizing, "Oh, I need to take a break." There are people who can run many close together, but I'm probably not that person. And just to kind of honor the way that it works and not feel like, "Oh, just because this person did it this way, I have to do it that way." Kickstarter is very much a great platform to take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and work out what thing works best for you. But you don't have to follow so much of a set pattern and knock yourself out.
 
Don't just add KS on top of your existing schedule
 
[00:46:03] Megan: I like that a lot. Expanding on that, the thing I learned from my nonfiction campaign, which we're finally almost completely fulfilled with because we had to make some courses, is that you can't maintain your standard schedule on your creation of stuff when you're trying to fulfill or when you're trying to do these Kickstarters. You can't stay at that same level and then add something on top. It stresses you out. So, making sure that you go, "Okay, this is now a component of the process, and so some of the other things that you normally do are probably going to slow down. And that's okay, and you need to be able to breathe." My current mantra is "pause, breathe, recover."
 
[00:47:00] Matty: It could be PBR, except that's already Pabst Blue Ribbon, right? You could use a PBR to PBR.
 
[00:47:06] Megan: Yeah, there we go.
 
[00:47:08] Matty: Well, I love any suggestion that a guest ever makes in support of self-care and reasonability, and taking care of yourself as well as taking care of your business. So thank you so much to both of you, and I want to give both of you a moment to share where people can find out more about you and everything you do online. Megan, let's start with you.
 
[00:47:26] Megan: My fiction website is meganhaskell.com. All of my books are available there, in signed paperback as well as ebook, and I have a few titles that have been done in audio at this point as well, so that's all there. They are also available wide. For the nonfiction side of my life, you can visit authorwheel.com. And then I also have started recently writing a new newsletter called Clarify, Simplify, Implement on Substack.
 
[00:48:16] Matty: Perfect. Jen, how about you?
 
[00:48:19] Jennifer: You can find all my stuff at jenniferhilt.com. I've got my nonfiction there, and there's a little bit of my fiction too, if you'd like to take a look. And like Megan, I have a Substack going to trope talk and YouTube channel so you can find me around doing that stuff. And Megan's Substack, I really love.
 
[00:48:39] Megan: Well, I was going to say, I really love yours too, so we can all be happy together.
 
[00:48:44] Jennifer: Whenever your thing comes, I'm like, "Oh God, I needed to hear that right now."
 
[00:48:49] Megan: Yay!
 
[00:48:50] Matty: I love it when you guys do the promotional work for me. So thank you both so much. This was a great conversation.
 
[00:48:56] Jennifer: Thanks, Matty.
 
[00:48:57] Megan: Thank you for having us.

Episode 229 - How to Make Your Work Accessible with Michael Johnson

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Authors, who would like to tap into another 20% of the reading population? You can do that by making your works accessible to the community of potential readers with print disabilities.
 
Michael Johnson discusses HOW TO MAKE YOUR WORK ACCESSIBLE, including the requirements of digital accessibility, such as making images and graphs and charts accessible; tools and services for accommodating accessibility; IP financial and rights considerations; SEO benefits; and the impact of AI. Michael talks about both the social obligations of making work accessible as well as the financial benefits of doing so—there’s a substantial audience out there eager for more accessible content.

Michael Johnson is a seasoned executive with almost 40 years of experience in the technology, publishing, and distribution markets. He is the Vice President of Content at Benetech, working with publishers, conversion houses, technology platforms, and booksellers to help them understand and implement processes that allow for accessible content to get from authors all the way through to the end reader. 

Episode Links

Michael’s Links:
https://bornaccessible.benetech.org

Mentioned in episode:
https://authors.sounded.com/
https://www.vitalsource.com/

Summary

This episode of "The Indy Author Podcast" features Michael Johnson, Vice President of Content at Benetech, discussing the importance of making digital content accessible for people with print disabilities. Johnson, with nearly four decades of experience in technology, publishing, and distribution markets, emphasizes the necessity of creating digital books that can be easily consumed by individuals facing challenges such as blindness, low vision, dyslexia, and other disabilities.
 
He details the role of conversion houses in transforming manuscripts into digital formats, highlighting the critical nature of this process in achieving accessibility. Johnson outlines key issues in digital accessibility, including the need for alt text descriptions for images and graphs, accommodating mathematical and scientific content, and maintaining print page fidelity in digital formats to ensure that readers can navigate texts as intended.
 
Additionally, Johnson discusses the tools and standards required for creating accessible digital content, such as the use of specific markup languages and platforms like Microsoft Word and DAISY Consortium's tools. He addresses the accessibility of print books, mentioning large print and braille as alternatives, and explores the financial and rights considerations for authors and publishers looking to make their works accessible.
 
The conversation also touches on the impact of AI in improving accessibility, particularly in audiobook production, and the potential for digital braille to offer on-demand access for readers. Johnson concludes by highlighting the commercial value and social justice importance of making digital content accessible, suggesting that reaching the underserved market of readers with disabilities not only aligns with authors' desires to be read but also offers significant untapped commercial potential.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to "The Indy Author Podcast." Today my guest is Michael Johnson. Hey, Michael, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:06] Michael: Doing great. Thanks for having me.
 
Meet Michael Johnson
 
[00:00:08] Matty: I am pleased to have you here, and to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Michael is a seasoned executive with almost 40 years of experience in the technology, publishing, and distribution markets. He's the Vice President of Content at Benetech, working with publishers, conversion houses, technology platforms, and booksellers to help them understand and implement processes that allow for accessible content to get from authors all the way through to the end reader. And that is what we are going to be talking about with Michael today: achieving accessibility for your work.
 
What is a "conversion house"?
 
[00:00:36] Matty: But before we dive into that, or maybe as a way of diving into that, I had mentioned in your bio that you have done work with conversion houses. What is a conversion house?
 
[00:00:47] Michael: Okay, that's a great opening question. Most publishers in the world no longer handle their own end-to-consumer or reader process. They're not printing their own books anymore. They've been contracting out for decades to printing houses in various parts of the world, and they rarely do their own conversion from manuscript to an eBook for your Kindle store or any of those types of things. So, there's a subset of the publishing ecosystem that takes publisher files, typically InDesign files, or perhaps files from Vellum or a platform like that, and turns them into the various eBook formats. So when I say conversion houses, that's what I mean: they convert manuscripts into digital content.
 
What is digital accessibility?
 
[00:01:33] Matty: And I can see how those kinds of services would have a key role to play in accessibility. But I think to lead us into our conversation about accessibility, can you just describe a little bit, when you say accessibility in terms of books, what are some of the things that you're talking about there?
 
[00:01:50] Michael: When you talk about accessibility at Benetech or anywhere in the digital world, what we're referring to is making the books readable by people who have a print disability. A print disability might be blindness, low vision, dyslexia, color blindness, or any of a host of other muscular, skeletal, or neurological challenges, which basically means if I handed somebody my phone and it had an eBook on it, would they be able to read it? If the answer is no, the odds are there's some sort of print disability getting in their way. There are a number of ways to make a digital book accessible to those types of readers. By the way, those types of readers represent between 22 and 25 percent of the Earth's population, so it's a significant number. When we talk about digital accessibility, we're talking about some key issues.
 
Making images accessible
 
[00:02:39] Michael: The first one is around images. These could be simple images, like a picture of a dragon at a chapter heading, or more detailed images if it's a biographical work. Maybe you have a picture of George Washington or Sojourner Truth, whoever your biography is about. And these images need to be described so that people with different visual challenges can still understand what the image is.
 
[00:03:27] Michael: So the rule of thumb there is if the image is part of the comprehension of what we're talking about, then it's critically important to do an alt text description or perhaps a long description so that a reader with a visual challenge would still be able to get that comprehension from the image.
 
Making graphs and charts accessible
 
[00:03:27] Michael: The next thing would be anything that has to do with math, science, accounting, or any sort of numbers, like charts and graphs. A lot of this shows up in science fiction because people are talking about breaking space barriers, magical time travel, and other things, and there's often math involved. Not always included in the books, but when they are, anything around math, formulas, tables, charts, those sorts of things need to be made accessible.
 
[00:03:52] Matty: Is that a matter of helping someone who is visually impaired absorb the information, or is it about converting that information, like in a table, into some other format to make it more accessible to more people?
 
[00:04:15] Michael: No, it's not about repurposing the image itself. Some might say, for example, pie charts are easier to understand than bar graphs. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about whatever the image happens to be, you can use specific markup language as you're creating the manuscript that describes the image. If it's a pie chart, you could say, "This is a pie chart representing population counts. The largest part of the pie is blue, representing 52%," and so on. It's additional information as part of the image description.
 
Accommodating print page fidelity
 
[00:04:49] Michael: And the last one, which may seem mundane but is really important, is print page fidelity. If the page numbers are important in your book, then you mark them as such so that the reader who's reading in a digital format can follow along with the pages. Typically, if it's a mystery, sci-fi, romance, or family history, the page numbers aren't that important. But if you're publishing an economic treatise or something where the page numbers are referenced, like "see the chart on page 26," the digital copy needs to know where print page 26 is. So when the reader goes to page 26, they're not on page 17 in the digital copy because you didn't align the page numbers.
 
[00:05:41] Matty: I'm intrigued by that last point because I imagine that in many cases, if people were doing this without accessibility in mind, they might replace what would have been a page number with a link that takes someone to that data. Is that still accessible? Are you describing a different scenario that isn't accommodated by that kind of link that would adjust according to how the information was displaying on the person's e-reader?
 
[00:06:12] Michael: Well, you asked a Boolean question there, either-or, and the answer to both is yes. People still do link in their digital copies to other parts of the book. The danger is you either have to let the reader know, "I'm taking you away now, and I haven't provided a way for you to come back," at which point the reader can make their own bookmark or whatever it is in their book so they can click back to it. In terms of print page fidelity, what I'm talking about is literally having markings in the book that indicate "this is print page 26," "this is print page 27," so that the reader can navigate that way.
 
Tools for accommodating accessibility
 
[00:06:47] Matty: And what tools would authors use to do this? If someone has a package like Vellum, which is very commonly used, especially in the indie author world, are there built-in things in a package like Vellum, or is it something you have to add on?
 
[00:07:01] Michael: We have not done an in-depth analysis of Vellum, but I have had a few exchanges with them, and some of your indie authors have published on Vellum, and I've seen some of the output. It is certainly possible to do these things in Vellum. How one does it, I don't honestly know because we have not analyzed the Vellum platform. These things are easily done in Word, which has pretty good accessibility markup, and there's a free tool available from the DAISY Consortium called Word to EPUB, so you can take your Word file, run it through accessibility checkers built into Microsoft Word, and then convert it to EPUB, which you can usually upload to most eBook services. I've seen output from Vellum that is very accessible.
 
[00:08:01] Matty: I do know that being a Vellum user myself, they support the provision of alt text for images. So I'm sure they accommodate those other things as well, but I haven't done that myself. So, I have some to-dos coming out of this.
 
Accessibility in print
 
[00:08:21] Matty: We've been talking exclusively about eBooks so far. Is there an accessibility aspect to print books as well? Like, I have large print editions of my books. Is that a world you get into at all, outside of eBooks?
 
[00:08:36] Michael: Benetech does not. We are a digital-first, digital-only organization, and our focus is on making digital content available for the print disabled. There are two main choices for people with reading challenges: large print and braille. There are still many blind people who read braille. The American Printing House creates braille, and the Library of Congress has the National Library Service, which is a massive braille production workshop. Those are a couple of entities, the American Printing House and the NLS, where your authors could make a query to get their books produced in that way. But we don't do any physical, so I don't have details about that.
 
[00:09:27] Matty: Yeah, I found, just to share my own experience, that getting large print books is quite easy. The only added expense for me was the brief amount of time I had to spend in a tool like Vellum, which was hardly any time at all, just a couple of clicks to create an interior version that was large print. Then, a little bit of extra money with my book cover designer to create a design that was large print-specific with a large print badge on it. If you do that at the same time as your standard print cover, it's not very much extra because they're working on it anyway.
 
I found that I haven't been advertising it as much as I did when I first put them out, but it's one of those things that serves a new population, as you're saying. Especially if one is writing in a genre where the demographic might skew towards people who are looking for larger print, then it's a worthwhile thing to do and quite easy.
 
[00:10:21] Michael: That was very gently phrased.
 
Braille book production
 
[00:10:24] Matty: Can you talk a little bit more about the braille production process?
 
[00:10:30] Michael: I can talk about it in general, certainly. Most people are familiar with what Braille is — a series of raised dots that enable communication. The American Printing House and the National Library Service inside the Library of Congress are probably the two largest braille producers, but there are other blindness organizations with braille creation capabilities as well. Just a word to the wise: a large print book is much bigger, not just in footprint but also in pagination, than a traditional print book. A braille book is huge, typically given away under various government stipulations and processes. The National Library Services, for example, gives away their books, and I believe the APH does as well, though I'm not certain.
 
There's also digital braille, which brings Benetech back into the conversation with the electronic braille format (EBF). Imagine a blind person, who doesn't necessarily have to be blind as almost all Braille users are, with their hands on a Braille display. This is how they send emails and perform other computer tasks. With digital Braille, the keys pop up as if they're reading a print book, so they can lay their fingers on the display and the Braille appears. Benetech has a collection called Bookshare with 1.25 million titles, and any of those titles are available to our members in Braille. We do the Braille translation on the fly. It's not a physical production, but we do offer a digital braille format for our members.
 
IP financial and rights considerations
 
[00:12:18] Matty: If authors want to make their books available in these kinds of formats, is it something where they're granting rights to an organization to create that, or are they paying to have it done? What's the financial side of that? Or the rights side of it also?
 
[00:12:35] Michael: When it comes to Benetech, there's a donation agreement, and authors must sign it. There are no payments involved; neither we nor you pay anything. We handle the conversion for free, and the Braille copy is available to our members at no cost. We are a charity and receive some funding from the federal government, but a significant portion of our funding comes from various foundations and individuals who donate to us.
 
There is an agreement in place to protect the author's rights, and we have our own security measures to ensure that only qualified users can access the content on Benetech.
 
Most authors who are not associated with a publishing house contribute content because they want to reach readers who benefit from these services. The best recommendation is from one reader to another, saying, "I read this book, you're going to love it."
 
We have completed 29 million downloads in the 20 years we've had the service, so a lot of people are reading our books. Authors, individual people, small presses, and even some of the largest presses in the world, with a total of 900 publishers and almost 2,000 imprints, donate content to us. We add about 10,000 titles a month. So, in our situation, there is no cost for conversion and no revenue generation; neither we nor the authors make money from these distributions.
 
Most other Braille production houses do incur significant costs for creating physical Braille books. I don't believe the Library of Congress charges for these conversions, although they certainly bear the cost of production. For physical Braille inquiries, one would have to consult the American Printing House (APH) or the National Library Service. However, since we are a digital-only organization, I can't provide details on their processes.
 
Creating digital editions on the fly
 
[00:14:38] Matty: Creating a physical Braille book can be financially and time-consuming, and there may need to be an assessment process to prioritize which books to convert. If you're offering digital Braille versions, do you need to prioritize among the books submitted for conversion?
 
[00:15:13] Michael: At Benetech, we translate Braille on the fly. We accept EPUB files into our collection, and when a qualified member requests a particular book in Braille, they initiate the process. Our servers perform the translation, which takes some time, and then we provide the member with a link to download the Braille file. We only translate books when a reader requests them.
 
Terms to address authors’ and publishers’ rights concerns
 
[00:15:51] Matty: And as you were putting together the contract that you sign with the author or the agreement, a lot of people, knowing there are bad players out there, would be concerned about signing over rights and may feel nervous about that. Can you talk a little bit about what is or is not included in the contracts to accommodate authors' or publishers' concerns about that?
 
[00:16:14] Michael: Sure. The donation agreements were co-written by the American Association of Publishers. So that's the publishing world speaking. I realize that's not the independent publishing world, but that's the big folks, and we had guidance from them on what publishing houses and authors would demand.
 
It's a very straightforward agreement, if such a thing can be true in legal terms. Basically, the person asserts that they have the necessary copyright permission to donate the file, and we confirm that we will only use the book to make it more accessible, and only qualified members of Bookshare, who have a certified print disability, will have access to it.
 
We do not hyperdistribute, so we won't put the book anywhere other than Bookshare. Some authors and publishers give us worldwide rights, some only English language rights or North American rights, or other specific distributions, similar to the typical publishing rights matrix. There are no royalty statements because there are no royalties since there are no sales. The arrangements are not exclusive, so authors can distribute their books elsewhere as they wish. It's about as harmless as a legal document could be.
 
[00:17:30] Matty: If someone has an update to their ePub, what is the process for updating it on Bookshare?
 
[00:18:00] Michael: You would use the traditional feeds you use anywhere in your distribution channel, typically ONIX for that sort of thing. You can inform us if a book is out of publication or if there's a new edition and request us to use the updated version. While I'm oversimplifying the process, that's the general idea.
 
Accommodating the desired reading experience
 
[00:18:27] Matty: Accommodating readers who are blind versus those who are dyslexic can be quite different. Does Benetech address both kinds of needs? And if yes, what are the differences, and how do you accommodate them?
 
[00:18:43] Michael: Yes, we serve all of those print disability categories mentioned earlier, and it really becomes not just about the certified print disability but also about the intended reading experience of the individual.
 
[00:20:18] Matty: I can imagine that AI is making a huge difference. Certainly, the availability of AI-generated voices is going to make the production of new audiobooks much easier. Can you speak to how AI is being used to improve accessibility?
 
[00:20:34] Michael: There are a couple of things there. You mentioned AI as it relates to voices. There's a very interesting group, I have no connection, I just find them interesting, called Sounded. S-O-U-N-D-E-D, Sounded.com, and they have very good audiobook technology. They also do a tremendous job protecting the voice actor themselves.
 
So what they do is they get a voice actor, sign a contract with them. One of their founders is a lawyer who's very sensitive to rights and permissions. So they get the voice actor to agree to say, yes, I understand I'm going to do what you asked me to do, get my voice recorded.
 
And if you use my voice downstream in a commercial enterprise, then I get paid. So that's one thing. They use that voice and then apply artificial intelligence to take that specific person's voice and apply it to a textbook. They're not just reading a text and having what we used to call Microsoft Bob read it to you.
 
Even though those synthetic voices are getting much better, this is not that. This is an actual human's voice used in an enhanced way. So that's one thing I think every author, every publishing company should look at that group, Sounded.com. We use artificial intelligence to try and correct machine correctable things for accessibility.
 
I'll give you a specific example. We are far away from AI being able to solve the problem around image descriptions. Here's just a quick story, right? We're going to have three books. Each of the three books has a picture of the Eiffel Tower. The first book is a cookbook, and at the chapter header around soufflé, someone in editorial thought it would be interesting to have a picture of the Eiffel Tower.
 
Not teaching me how to make a soufflé, not teaching me what kind of eggs to use, whether I want them at room temperature or straight out of the fridge, there's no information being conveyed; it's an affectation. So, you can do two things. You could mark it as "Image: Eiffel Tower," which is probably just going to annoy people because it's a cookbook; what do I care about that?
 
Or, you can specifically mark it to say this is a decorative image, and the assistive technology would just ignore it. A lot of blind people read cookbooks, so if you just mark it as a decorative image, then the screen reader will just pretend it's not there. That's one thing. The exact same picture in a different book, in a travelogue book, whether it's a Frommer's type travelogue thing, or whether it's my own personal travel, or whatever it is I'm writing this book about, and now we're on the chapter about what to do in Paris.
 
Okay, the picture of the Eiffel Tower makes sense. So you say "Image: Eiffel Tower" and then you're going to add a long description. Maybe something interesting about Gustave Eiffel. Maybe it says don't go on Tuesdays; they're closed. I don't know what you're going to say, but something which says it is the Eiffel Tower and here's why I bothered to put the picture of the Eiffel Tower in this chapter.
 
So again, we're trying to convey knowledge. The third book, the same picture. Maddy, you could have taken the picture. They could have got it from Getty. I don't care where it came from. The same picture, but this is an engineering book. And the picture of the Eiffel Tower is there because we're going to be discussing the tensile strength of structural steel.
 
So AI is not going to be able to understand. AI could probably say it's the Eiffel Tower with growing degrees of accuracy, but I don't know how AI is going to be able to say, well, the author probably meant this. That's just, that's not a thing, right? AI is useful to us, right? When it comes to things like math and chemistry because the AI can read those formulas if they're in a good format and then translate in a long description to say, "X squared equals Y plus 4Z."
 
Okay, AI can take that, which might actually be a picture, a PNG or something that the publisher put in the file, and perhaps turn that in. So we do use AI in those circumstances, but to use AI to solve the image problem, to use AI to solve the print page correlation problem, I just, we're not seeing anything about it, and I spend a fair amount of my time talking to these guys.
 
I just had a talk yesterday with a firm that's focusing on image descriptions. And it's happening. It's better on the web in February of 2024 than it was in February 2023, and it'll be better in 2025, but there's a long way to go. Machines don't actually learn, despite what people tell you. So, we do use it.
 
It is helpful in certain circumstances, but with my simple Eiffel Tower example, I hope you understand that there's much work to be done yet.
 
[00:25:10] Matty: Yeah, it seems like the most immediate, practical benefit for people with reading disabilities would be the easier and cheaper availability of audiobooks. And, in the face of people who hate AI, one of the arguments I've made on authors' panels and things like that is that I think the positive side of this is that there are many books that would never have been available in audio had it not been for AI, not that it's suddenly going to displace all the human narrators.
 
Like I still hire a human narrator for my fiction books, but I do make my nonfiction books available, when I can, via AI-generated narration because those are books that wouldn't be available in audio otherwise.
 
[00:25:55] Michael: You're absolutely right. And we've been producing DAISY audiobooks for a very long time. The disability community and the accessibility community have been working in the audio space for quite some time, not forever, but for many years.
 
What is DAISY?
 
[00:26:15] Matty: You had mentioned DAISY a couple of times. Can you discuss in a little more detail what that is?
 
[00:26:20] Michael: Sure. The DAISY Consortium is a global organization focused on accessibility standards. I happen to be on the board at DAISY, representing Benetech. I can't even remember how many countries are involved, but there are scores of countries that participate in DAISY projects worldwide. The primary focus of most DAISY organizations is on people who are blind, but not exclusively.
 
Benetech, for example, covers a wide range of disabilities. So, we interact with the World Wide Web Consortium and the EPUB standards. Actually, the organization is very heavily involved with all sorts of digital and accessibility standards.
 
Accessibility best practices beyond books
 
[00:26:59] Matty: And I wanted to also jump back to something we talked about earlier, which is accommodating people with dyslexia. I have read that certain fonts are easier for people with dyslexia to read. Independent of books, if someone is, say, putting together a PowerPoint presentation or something like that, do you have advice on how they can make that more accessible with relatively simple to implement changes, like using one font over another?
 
[00:27:27] Michael: This becomes a religious debate, to be honest. I usually stick with Times New Roman because most of the people I interact with seem to think that Times New Roman is okay. However, everyone has their own personal preference. The important thing around disability and font choice is not to lock it up in a file, like a PDF, where I can change the font size but can't change the font itself.
 
So, if you have a properly done digital file, the user should be able to change the font to one that is suitable for them. PDF, of course, doesn't allow for that. But PDF has been a staple for many years, and it does an excellent job of taking a picture of pages.
 
The issue, of course, is that blind people can't see pictures, so it's not useful from an accessibility standpoint. There are some things that make PDFs more accessible, but really, EPUB is the answer. And EPUB is what the distribution channels want, anyway.
 
All Microsoft tools have built-in accessibility checkers and aids to help you ensure your documents are accessible. The big challenge with PowerPoints is reading order. So, you know, have you done a good job of defining headings, subheadings, bullet points, and so on? The accessibility checker will help you a great deal with those things.
 
[00:28:47] Matty: Can you talk a little bit more about that? Like, what is the significance of defining those elements clearly?
 
[00:28:53] Michael: Sure. Reading order is critically important for people who are blind or have low vision because the PowerPoint is essentially an image. If the image is not effectively described and the content's consumption order is not clear, especially with a complex slide that has a graph here, some words there, and various other elements, it can be confusing. Those with print disabilities, whether they're blind, have low vision, or dyslexia, need built-in navigation that allows keyboard use, as clicking is not an option for those who cannot see where to click. The slide should be structured logically, just as one would order a table or headers.
 
Imagine you're in a classroom, like in my early days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and you have a pointer, tapping it against the board to direct attention. You want the user's focus to follow the flow of information you intend to convey. That's what I mean by reading order.
 
[00:30:26] Matty: I can imagine that for both books and presentations, the trend of placing headers at the bottom of the page can be problematic.
 
[00:30:37] Michael: Yes, and please avoid doing things like having a header three without a header two. Assistive technology does not handle that well.
 
[00:30:45] Matty: Interesting.
 
[00:30:46] Michael: It's not that hard to count to three. You know, it's H1, H2, H3. It's really not that complicated.
 
Next steps for making your work accessible
 
[00:30:51] Matty: Don't skip any numbers. So, Michael, if someone has listened to this and they're enthusiastic about making their books available to a broader audience, what steps would you recommend they take or what resources would you suggest they use to do that?
 
[00:31:05] Michael: Well, certainly, we're here to reach the disability audience. My email is michaelj@benetech.org. Anyone can reach out with questions. Michael La Ronn, one of your members, is an accessibility superhero. So, you know, ask him questions. He's probably already built a YouTube channel about it or something. He's on top of things. That's another good resource. The DAISY Consortium is an excellent resource. If you make your books accessible, you can deliver them to Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and others, and much of your work will translate across these platforms.
 
I can't speak for what Amazon or Barnes & Noble are up to, but they are certainly aware of, and will accept, EPUBs. They are quietly rolling out more accessibility features to their reading environments. Through the generosity of a company called VitalSource, Benetech even has its own ebook retail store, which is exclusively for accessible ebooks.
 
[00:32:52] Matty: Okay. Well, Michael, thank you so much for sharing that information. That's an area that is new to me and, I'm sure, to some of the other listeners as well. So thank you for giving us a glimpse into that.
 
If there are any other places you would like to send people to learn more about you and what you do, please let us know.
 
[00:33:14] Michael: Yes, benetech.org is the main site for the organization. There's a ton of information there, including some really compelling stories about how lives are changed when readers who previously couldn't access books now can. That's basically why I left my commercial work to join a charity. You read some of those stories, and it's clear it's not that hard to do, and the impact you're going to have on someone's life is incredible. And again, it's over 20% of the population. So, I'm not saying all 20% of those people will buy your book, but I am saying they're not buying your ebook now because they simply can't read it. There's a lot of commercial value there too.
 
SEO benefits
 
[00:33:53] Michael: There's also the group of people who decide what you see when you search for things on the internet. I talk to those people all the time, and they are delving into your ebook files, your EPUB files, and taking those alternative texts and long descriptions and using them. So, when someone searches for, say, Sojourner Truth, if you were doing work on slavery, civil rights, or the Underground Railroad, and you might not have Sojourner Truth in your book title or in your ONIX feed, but if you have an image of Sojourner Truth in your book and you've described it with your alt text, that will start to surface when people search for it. So there's that aspect too.
 
You should do it for the social justice reason, of course. Independent authors typically have struggled their entire lives to be heard and to get published, and we're trying to reach readers who have struggled their whole lives to get books they want to read, so it's a natural match to me. There's the social justice part, but there's also a lot of commercial value, a huge marketplace that is being underserved, and also the challenge we all face as authors: just getting people to know about our work. It's hard enough to write a book and get it published, even if you self-publish. But to get people to know that you did it is even harder. So this is another opportunity.
 
[00:35:20] Matty: Yeah, well, obviously, you've said all the things that are going to really attract the attention of authors everywhere. So, Michael, thank you so much.
 
[00:35:27] Michael: Well, thanks for having me. It's been fun.

Episode 228 - Six Keys to Author Success Part 2 with Nick Thacker

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This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I have Part 2 of a wide-ranging conversation with Nick Thacker about SIX KEYS TO AUTHOR SUCCESS. In this episode we talk about BUILDING AN AUTHOR PLATFORM, including the importance of building on land that you own; NETWORKING AND COMMUNITY, and the options offered by in-person and virtual communities; and ADAPTABILITY AND PERSISTENCE, including whether persistence can ever be a disadvantage.

Nick Thacker is a USA Today Bestselling Author of over 40 thrillers. He owns and operates Conundrum Publishing and Book Career in A Year and runs the write/repeat workshops and writing intensives. He is also the founder of Author.Email, the only email marketing platform for specifically for authors, and RadioWrite.com, the 24/7 writing inspiration radio platform, and he is the VP of Author Success with Draft2Digital. His passion is to help authors figure out what their plan is — not just the “what,” but the “how” and the “why."

Episode Links

nickthacker.com
https://www.bookcareerinayear.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorNickThacker
YouTube
https://twitter.com/NickThacker

Summary

The transcript features a discussion between Matty and Nick Thacker on the keys to author success, with a focus on building an author platform, networking and community, and adaptability and persistence. Nick emphasizes the importance of authors having their own platforms, such as a website, to maintain control over their presence and not rely solely on social media, which can be unpredictable. They also discuss the technical aspects of website hosting and the transition between different hosting services.
 
Networking and community are highlighted as essential for authors, especially given the solitary nature of writing. The value of in-person and virtual interactions is discussed, with both being important for forming meaningful connections within the industry. Such networks can lead to opportunities, support, and shared experiences that are vital for personal and professional growth.
 
Lastly, adaptability and persistence are identified as crucial traits for long-term success in writing. The industry's dynamic nature requires authors to be open to change and continuous learning, while persistence is about maintaining focus on core activities like writing and marketing despite challenges.
 
Overall, the transcript underscores the multifaceted approach needed for authorial success, combining practical strategies with personal development and community engagement.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: So, we've now gone through three of the six keys to author success: quality writing, professional presentation, and strategic marketing.
 
BUILDING AN AUTHOR PLATFORM
 
[00:00:06] Matty: And we are on to the fourth, which is building an author platform. Talk a little bit about how building an author platform differs from strategic marketing.
 
[00:00:15] Nick: Sure. This doesn't have to be the fourth thing you tackle as an author. I mean, I had a web design company. I was building websites and hosting. So building platforms, which are effectively just a website, was sort of the first thing that I did. And I'm glad because I'm good at it.
 
It was a place I called my home base. Everything started and ended there. But it was also something I could do while I was waiting around for query letters to be sent out and rejected. And so it felt like taking proactive action. You don't need to wait until your marketing game is on point before you build a platform.
 
Build on land that you own
 
[00:00:51] Nick: Frankly, I might even put building a platform before marketing. Start building a platform when you've got a few books out, you know that this is something you want to do long term. They need a place to live online on land that you own, as we say. You don't want to build your empire on rented land. Having those social media profiles—Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter X, I don't know—those are great, and they're a great way to reach potential new readers and fans. But they can change the game, and they do change the game at any time. And so having your own author platform, also known as a website, is very important. At some point in your author career, you're going to want to focus on that.
 
It's the combined reach of your author's presence, both online and offline. It's not just a website, but this is your brand platform in some sense. It helps work for you 24/7. When you're not doing something, like being online or doing book signings, your website or your brand, whatever it is that you've built, will be working for you. And so it's important to be strategic about this. If you are building a brand, take the time to get a logo that you like, that's going to go on everything. Maybe two if you have different pen names. But get that website up so that no matter how people find you, they end up there and they see a whole world they can now get lost in.
 
You can find different series, and you can buy them from the website, or link out to Amazon or whatever. But now you control a platform online that cannot be changed by external forces unless you decide to change it. And that's the power of a platform—it's something you fully control. It's land that you own.
 
But think of the platform as everything. The website is what I call the home base, but all those outposts—putting your branded memes on Facebook, your branded images on Instagram, or your branded trailer videos on Twitter or YouTube—all of those things are part of your platform.
 
And the reason I have this broken out as a point is, it's not just about getting a pretty Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress website and calling it a day. It's about thinking through how people might find you. And once they do, what's the call to action that I've put?
 
[00:03:33] Matty: I'm going to use this opportunity to ask a completely self-serving question, which is that when I was getting ready to publish my first book in 2013, I got MaddyDalrymple.com. Later on, I got other ones like AnnKinnear.com for a character in one of my series who has a business and occasionally they refer to her website. I got them through GoDaddy because I didn't know anything. I am using Weebly as my website builder, which I don't mind, but they were bought by Stripe and they're not promising to support it after the middle of next year. So, I'm looking for options to replace Weebly, and based on my research, Wix seems like a good option. But I'm really confused about the hosting side of it. I don't love GoDaddy, but I have no idea what is involved in moving a website off its current hosting service. Can you give a primer for the non-technical people among us? If people are looking for that kind of change, how do they go about it? How extensive is the process?
 
[00:04:55] Nick: Well, depending on when this goes live, check out AuthorHosts.com. I've been hosting websites for probably 20 years at this point. I'm not new to the game, but I am finally making it more official and saying, "Hey, there's a way to do this in a process." I've got a team that I'm hoping to put in place so that we can scale. But the point is, this may be ready to go. So you can just go there and we can handle transferring it in and getting it hooked up with whatever hosting you need. Generally speaking, your domain name is like the address. If you own a trailer and that's where you live, that's your home, and you can move that home wherever you want, and the street address changes. That's the domain name, and that domain name can change or stay the same, but it's essentially a wholly separate thing from hosting the website. Your host can be on hosting company A, but you bought your domain from GoDaddy or Hostinger or HostGator. And all you have to do is connect those by way of what's called an A record, a DNS record. You can absolutely move to probably any other host depending on how your website's built. If it's modern, most of these places are, so you can pretty safely assume that, "Hey, I found hosting, I'm going to move my website over here."
 
Now, the complexity of the process of moving a website really depends on the site itself. Even with platforms like Weebly, there could be gigabytes of pictures and videos, or special code that was written for the website. It's important to realize that every website is different. Even the most basic ones can have different PHP configurations and so on. I'm hoping to help authors by saying, "Hey, okay, you want to do this, move it over to us. Great, we'll handle that. No worries. Or if you want to move somewhere else, understand you might have to upgrade your PHP installation, which could break your site."
 
I know this doesn't make things any easier for you, Matty, but the truth is, it can be complicated. There could be a lot more to it. Typically, what authors do when building a platform is get a WordPress website, a Weebly site, a Wix site, or Squarespace. Sometimes, with Squarespace and Shopify, they host the website for you, so you don't have to worry about it. That's a great option because you just pay them the money and they do the work. However, when you start moving things around, like a Shopify store, you can't self-host it. You pay them, and they host your store. If you want to move, you have to rebuild the website. It just depends on the configuration and what the website is built on.
 
Then there's the e-commerce component. For example, if you're using WooCommerce, which is a WordPress plugin, you can't easily move to Shopify because they're made to compete with each other. Anyway, I don't know if that helped you at all. But generally speaking, a WordPress website running on server A will work on server B that also hosts WordPress websites. There's usually not going to be any problem.
 
So, as long as you find that you can take your code and self-host it, which you can do with WordPress, and maybe some other cPanel stuff, but you can't do with Wix or Squarespace. By design, their model includes hosting the website for you. If you have your own code, your own files essentially, you can generally move those to a new server, and you're good to go.
 
And yes, it's involved. It can be an hour-long process or a 24-hour long process depending on how comfortable you are with all that stuff. But it's effectively just taking files on your computer and moving them into another folder, then just making sure that folder can still run the website. That's really what you're doing behind the scenes.
 
[00:08:18] Matty: I didn't realize that aspect of Wix being both a web builder and a web host. That's interesting.
 
[00:08:23] Nick: I think Wix is, I could be wrong, but like something like Squarespace, I know you pay them, it's like Medium. If you want to start a blog, you can blog on Medium all day long, but you can't take Medium's code with you to have another Medium website on your own server. You can take your content, you own that, depending on the terms. You can take your content and say, "I'm going to post this on a WordPress website," but now you're building a whole new website on WordPress.
 
[00:08:47] Matty: I back up my Weebly sites every month and always wondered if I could just take that backup and implement it somewhere else.
 
[00:09:00] Nick: Sure, that's the idea. That's how we move websites. So a WordPress website, which is what we host and recommend, can be backed up using a plugin like Duplicator Pro. It will create an archive file of all your files and folder structure, as well as the WordPress core installation. But it also includes your database, which holds the data, content, and all that on your website. Then it makes an installer file. You just load both of these onto a new server, and it will extract the stuff and set it all up for you. In a perfect world—though the world's not perfect, so hear me say this—there's always going to be an error or ten, but ideally, it'll be running right away.
 
However, even though it's WordPress, and every server on the planet can be configured to run a WordPress website, not all web servers are configured to run that exact website in the same way. There could be differences like Apache versus Nginx. There's a lot of stuff behind the scenes.
 
But my goal with AuthorHost is that you don't have to worry about that. You just say, "Hey, I want to pay you $15 a month to host my WordPress website." We'll get it, install it, make sure it works, and you never think about it again. It's just going to work and it's going to be the fastest website you've ever seen.
 
[00:10:09] Matty: Excellent. We talked a bit about building the author platform, which could be three or four pillars, depending on your perspective.
 
NETWORKING AND COMMUNITY
 
[00:10:16] Matty: Another one, and I love talking about this, is networking and community as one of the six keys to author success. So, what is your perspective on networking and community?
 
[00:10:24] Nick: My perspective is that you need it. Especially with a career like being an artist and being somewhat isolated, where you work by yourself. It's so much better to have these networking and community pieces in place. That's all I can say, really.
 
I started doing this over a decade ago when I began writing while still working a day job. When I decided to leave the day job and become a writer full time, I had panic attacks, major anxiety issues, depression—my world came crashing down because I was isolated. I got scared because I didn't have anybody in the trenches with me. I obviously had a wonderful loving wife, but she's not a writer, she doesn't get it, she's not in that world. So, I realized the hard way how important going to conferences, talking to other authors, and having interview-type situations like this is. Just having friends—that's your community. Being part of that community, being active, and talking to them, and just recognizing that we're both writing books, we're both experiencing the same Amazon woes or battling with Facebook ads together, whatever it is, is absolutely crucial for our mental health.
 
Period. End of story.
 
But, even if your mental health is great and you never need to see another human being, I still think building relationships with other authors, publishers, industry people, opens up so many more opportunities than you thought possible, whether it's collaborations, endorsement deals, traditional publishing contracts, or just insights.
 
[00:13:18] Matty: You know, there are people that I call—I don't know how to call; I'm a millennial, I don't call people—but like people that I might reach out to and say, "Hey, I hear you're moving over to ACX, which is Audible, Amazon, can you tell me this or that?" And if they can tell you, they'll tell you because they're your friend. You only get that by participating, by being part of that community, by being active. Usually, in person, it just works better. Yes, you can spend all your time on KBOR, which is a shithole, sorry, I never want to go to places like that because it just tends to be hostile. It's so much easier to just go in person and talk to these people who are normal human beings in real life, and shake their hand, give them a hug, and say, "Oh, what are you doing? What's going on?" And then you call them a friend. When you talk to them online, they have that relationship already. They know who you are, and you know who they are. But it's just—I mean, I don't need to really belabor this point either. I think we all understand how important it is—like, humans were made to commune. We were made to be together, not all the time, and certainly not if people are negative and all that. I want to cut them out of my life, sure. But generally speaking, we are made to be with other people. And so you have to, as an author, who has to do their job by themselves almost, it's that much more important to go make sure you have a community, a network to tap into, to be a part of, to plug into, just be around other humans. Simple as that.
 
[00:13:18] Matty: This is great because it's giving me all the opportunities to repeat the things that I like to repeat over and over again, but I definitely agree about the power of the in-person event. But I think that people can capitalize on that by extending it to virtual get-togethers because, like, I wouldn't be able to chat with you if it weren't for Zoom.
 
[00:13:35] Nick: Oh, totally. Tapping into both in-person and virtual communities.
 
[00:13:36] Matty: And another good example is from 20 Books. I went to 20 Books and got to meet a bunch of people that I had met through—they had all been on the podcast or were imminently about to be on the podcast, or I'd met in some other way, I'd been on their podcast, what have you. And now we're having monthly Zoom get-togethers just to check in. So it's nice to be able to tap into both of those. Especially because conferences can be so expensive and the travel is both expensive and stressful. I think it's often uncomfortable for people who are maybe more tending to be introverts. So in the opportunities where people can do in-person, I think that's great. And if you can't, then don't think that those opportunities are missing for you.
 
[00:14:18] Nick: No, thanks for saying that, too. The last four years have taught us that we can do a lot of this stuff remotely, including being part of a network and part of a community. And you're absolutely right. You don't have to go to conferences. I like conferences, and I am extroverted, but I understand that not everyone is, and that's okay.
 
[00:15:06] Matty: Totally fair. I do think that being in real life with people can accelerate some of that process. Whereas it might take you and I five or six of these calls before we can call each other friends, and we're sharing stuff together, maybe, maybe not. But if I meet you in person, you're going to get a story, something that happened today that has nothing to do with writing, and we might have a drink together, whatever. It just tends to accelerate that relationship, I find. But it's not a requirement, by any means. Don't feel like you can't be a writer if you're not going to conferences. That's not true at all.
 
[00:15:06] Matty: I think there's also a nice tie-in between that idea of community building or networking. Networking feels a little creepy and LinkedIn-ish, but,
 
[00:15:13] Nick: Yes, the word 'networking' is not one I like to use, but it is the best way to describe this idea of being with other people in your industry who work in the same sort of field as you do.
 
[00:15:24] Matty: And I think that the pro, if you can get rid of the weird baggage that the word 'networking' has, the value of it is this idea of the web of connections. Many years ago, I started realizing the importance of building these kinds of networks, and I tried to do a visual representation of it. Oh, I met this person at a conference, they gave me a blurb on my book, then somebody read the book, and it immediately became so complicated that it didn't work well graphically. But I think back on all the opportunities I've had, and many of those I can trace back to a conversation I had with somebody at a conference or something like that.
 
So first of all, there's just the fun of it. There's the good karma of being a member of a community and both benefiting from that but also paying it back. And then there's a ton of concrete business, financial, career benefits you can get out of it that you miss if you don't participate in that way.
 
[00:16:25] Nick: Absolutely. Yeah, it's kind of a small story. I was just at the Superstars Writing Conference here in town. I went to get coffee with some industry people, friends of mine. One of them pulled out a credit card, paid for all our drinks, and I made a comment, "Oh, I have the same card because it's such a great card. You get three times the points on social media ad spend." You know, that's the kind of stuff, that natural in-person interaction, like you mentioned financial stuff. That's the sort of advice that you get. I didn't go to a class or an online course to learn that. I'm sure someone would sell that to me if I asked, but it's just those quick little interactions where, had I not known about that card, he would have told me, "Yeah, I use this one because I get three times the points on whatever." It's just little things like that, that you pick up. Taxes, whatever it is that authors have to deal with because we're also people in a society, those are really great networking opportunities. But like you said, it feels very corporate to say that's networking, even though that's technically what we were doing.
 
[00:17:58] Matty: We're just hanging out. We're just buddies. And the conversation that we had when we had our coffees led to all sorts of things that could become partnerships and fun and opportunities. You can do that online, but it is a little faster to do it in person. So I am a proponent of going to conferences and getting out of your comfort zone. You don't have to go to 20 a year like I do, but go to one. Pick a big one to go to and say, "I'm going to save my money, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to just go and be around." I highly recommend it because I think you will walk away with at least something you didn't have before that you couldn't get anywhere else.
 
[00:17:58] Matty: Well, it's funny that Superstars came up because I was recording an episode of a different video series I have called "What I Learned," where I interview authors about their latest book. And I was interviewing Todd Fahnestock. He mentioned that he had just been at Superstars. And I said, "Oh, I started listing all the people I knew that were going, including Joshua Esso, who had been a previous podcast guest who turned out to be with Todd, and then I had been... I mean, this is a perfect example. I had been introduced to Todd because I knew Mark LaFave, who I had met through being a patron of his, and then contacting him about wanting more information about short fiction, which led to us co-authoring a book, and then I stayed in touch with Mark, and when I met Todd at 20 Books, I wanted a virtual introduction, and I knew that I had seen a post, a social media post with Mark and Todd, so I asked Mark to give me a virtual, like, you know, I think that's a perfect example." But, that actually comments started out saying that it's also a great way to vet opportunities, because now I've met and spoken with so many people who go to Superstars, and I can learn more about it, and I can get the behind-the-scenes scoop and see if it's for me.
 
[00:19:06] Nick: You can ask them exactly how they felt about it. And if it's not a conference worth going to, you'll find out very quickly by talking to the people you trust.
 
[00:19:12] Matty: Exactly.
 
[00:19:13] Nick: And I, and we talked offline too, like, well, I want to get you in there. I think you should go speak. And we're, you know, trying to figure out how to make that happen and stuff. But it, cause it is a conference that is worth going to. It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of people there that, that are, you know, I would want to network with, you know.
 
[00:19:26] Matty: Yes. Yeah, there are a couple of ones where not only do the programs look great, but all the people that I wanted to catch up with are there, and Superstars is definitely one of them.
 
[00:19:35] Nick: Right. Right.
 
ADAPTABILITY AND PERSISTENCE
 
[00:19:37] Matty: So maybe this is a good segue to item number six, which is Adaptability and Persistence. So, I love that you included this as one of the six keys to author success. I think it's another one, just like quality reading, that can sometimes be overlooked. So, share some insights on the importance of adaptability and persistence.
 
[00:19:54] Nick: Yeah. So similar to the idea of quality and our craft being foundational to our success, I don't think a long term author, someone who's in it for the long term, will be successful long term if they're not teachable. You know, willing to learn, willing to adapt, but also persevering through that.
 
To go through change after change after change after change. Because if there's nothing else true about any of the stuff I've said, it's that change is coming. Change will happen. You will be forced to change something about what you do, big or small or in between, maybe both, and it's so important to recognize and acknowledge that.
 
Now, everybody I tell this to is like, "Yep, that's fine, I understand, I got it." And then something happens, like Amazon says, "We're changing the payout to this," and KU's going to be kind of this 2.0 thing, and everyone loses their mind. Or a new industry veteran pops up and says, "Hey, I'm doing this or that," and it's unethical, surprise. And everyone loses their mind. Or Amazon comes out and says, "We're going to ask you to check a box that says, is this AI-generated or not?" And people lose their mind. So the point is not that authors are always losing their mind—that's probably true, too—but the truth is, if we can't adapt, we're going to die, we're going to get left behind, we're going to just quit.
 
If you cannot adapt, and you can't be forced to change in some certain ways, you're going to get left behind. You're not going to get to call this a career for very long. It's an adolescent industry, you know, it's not a baby anymore, but it's certainly not grown up. It's certainly not the 200 plus year history of traditional publishing that you can go and find.
 
And it's a dynamic industry, right? It's subject to variables that we wouldn't think are related, and the point is just that things change, and if you aren't on board with that, you're going to have a hard time. And you might make it for a year, you might make it for two years, but five years into it, things change every single week. You're going to probably be exhausted if you didn't expect that.
 
So I put this in there because it's a reminder to myself that hey, change is coming, but it's also a reminder to people who think that they're ready, you know, think that, "Okay, well, I understand how this industry works right now." It's going to change, you know. Just because email marketing is important today, and Facebook advertising, and all that is important, and social media is important, pick one of those things. How many changes have we seen? It's February, and we just had two weeks ago, Google and Yahoo colluding and deciding how we're all going to send email from now on. And they just laid down the hammer. That wasn't expected, for the large part, it wasn't expected.
 
We're talking about TikTok, BookTok becoming so popular. I didn't even know what that stupid website was four years ago, three years ago, even. And it may not be around, you know, another... I mean, it'll probably be around, but it's not going to be as useful, right?
 
[00:24:41] Matty: And so, the point is that everything will change. A lot of things in the indie author community will change very quickly and can take us by surprise. So the second half of that is persistence. It's being able to say, "Okay, I know things are going to change, but I'm going to write my books, I'm going to study, I'm going to be teachable," which is such an important thing. "I'm going to network and commune with other people doing it, I'm going to share ideas and swap horror stories of advertising, figure out what I need to do, and I'm going to keep going, stay the course, write more books. At the end of the day, I'll figure out how to do the marketing thing."
 
I don't know how many times I've felt like the rug's been pulled out from under me when I figure out an advertising tactic. Personally, Maddie, I think I broke the ACX promo code thing. They used to give you free promo codes for every book—50 to you and 50 to the narrator. I reached out to my narrators and was like, "Give me your codes if you're not using them. I'm going to make us a bunch of money." And I set up a thing on my website called The Amazing Audiobook Giveaway Thingamajig. You'd have to be signed up to my mailing list, but I would give you a code for any book that you want. I had all my book covers on the page; you'd click it, put your email address in, and I would send you a code for that book. We all knew that promo code was just a generic code for any book in their store, but I would tell people, "Go get this book with this code."
 
They used to pay you a certain type of payout for a sale from that promo code. I made like $18,000 one month, and then $12,000 the next month. I was doing great, and I thought, "This is it, I've made it." And I talked to this girl named Hannah from ACX at Superstars four years ago. I was like, "Hey, what's the deal with this? I'm making a killing. I feel like I'm gaming the system." She said it was kind of what it was designed for, a loss leader to get people an Audible account set up. And I swear, within two weeks, they were like, "Hey, we're going to sunset this."
 
[00:24:42] Matty: Oh no!
 
[00:24:42] Nick: I was doing this, and I was like, "Damn it, I shouldn't have said anything." But the point is, things change. The point is, it's always going to change. If I didn't have a book to advertise, I wouldn't be able to continue working, right?
 
My point is, it all comes back down to what we're writing. It all comes back down to writing more books and building those relationships through email marketing, social media with our readers. It doesn't matter—the way to do that is going to change, and the way I communicate with people will change, and my quality will get better, hopefully, over time.
 
But, you know, if I'm just the Mickelson twins, teaching people to go steal an audiobook and sell it, and then this happens, those people are all out of business. They don't have their own books to use, they don't have their own audiobooks to rewrap in new content, new ways, and so on.
 
[00:25:47] Matty: So, and I do mean to bash on them because I think they're scammers and they should probably go to hell, but the point is, you can build a career in spite of all this change by being willing to persevere through it and write more books. And you'll be fine. Truthfully, you really will. Can persistence ever be a disadvantage?
 
[00:25:47] Matty: I wanted to probe the persistence a little bit because it's one of these things where persistence is a positive quality, but any quality taken to an extreme can be a bad thing. I'm trying to frame this question in a way that isn't impossible to answer. When I look at my own business practices, I think some people pop in and out of stuff, like Facebook ads or Amazon ads or book swaps, and I'm not a "pop in and out" kind of person; I'm a "stick with it-er." But I think sometimes I stick with it longer than I should. Obviously, the way you have to judge that is going to be very different than if you're thinking about whether to continue writing versus continuing a Facebook ad. They're quite different questions, but I think they both carry dangers if you stick with something for too long. So, are there any caveats you would add about persistence? Is there a point at which persistence in an author's career can hold someone back rather than helping them move forward?
 
[00:26:55] Nick: Well, I don't mean persistence in specific practical tactics like Facebook ads. I do believe that having ads running all the time is generally better than not, but if you are running a Facebook ad that isn't working, you should stop the ad. I mean more generally, you should always be using email marketing, generally doing social media, generally doing advertising. There's a lot of wiggle room within it. My definition is to generally do those things. Generally be persistent. I'm not saying that you have to post on social media at 12 p.m. every day. I'm saying pop in and out. Set up a bunch of content at the beginning of the month. I'm late this month because we had a dog die, and my parents are in town, and there was a conference, but I like the idea of not ever having to log into Facebook. But I also know that Facebook is important. So persistence in social media for me means letting me batch a bunch of content or have an assistant get a bunch of content together, schedule it at the beginning of the month, and that's my social media touch point for the month. If I don't log in, I'm still being persistent in using social media as a tool that can be a force for good for my career. And yes, I agree with you, there is a lot of benefit to popping in and out. Mental health is the first thing that comes to mind. If TikTok is driving you crazy every time you do it, and you're kind of going nuts, like a political wingnut or something, then stop! Don't be persistent in that. But generally be persistent in reaching out to your tribe, wherever they may be.
 
If it's TikTok, figure out a way that's healthy for you to schedule posts, respond, or whatever you need to do for TikTok. Does that make sense? Yeah, I definitely like your caveat. You don't have to be doing what I do every single day. I teach a lot of this stuff. I do live streams all the time and try to make it clear that, hey, I'm being descriptive here.
 
I'm telling you what I do. I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not telling you that you have to do this the exact same way. But persistence is in the long term. Like, over the last 20 years of my career, did I do social media well?
 
You've got to be able to answer "yes" to that question, or you're just missing a lot of people you could have reached. But that doesn't mean you were persistent every single day in posting on Facebook, right?
 
[00:29:28] Matty: Yeah, I think that pairing that with adaptability is key because when those things happen in life, I'm very sorry to hear about your dog, when those things come up, then you have to take a step back and say, "Well, persistence might say I continue working on my book or I continue working on my email strategy or whatever, but adaptability says, sometimes not so much. Sometimes taking a break is what is needed." So yeah, I like pairing those two things.
 
[00:29:55] Nick: And that's why I did it. They sound like they might be contradictory, but they really need to go hand in hand. If all I did was be persistent in taking naps, I would never write another book, right? Definitions are important, and how we break this stuff down. But most reasonable authors will be able to hear that and say, "Alright. Okay. Being able to change and adapt and be willing to move forward and progress also goes hand in hand with being persistent to the things that are core to who I am as a writer, which is writing books, generally marketing, you know, and all the other things I said here."
 
Have that community of people. That doesn't mean you're persistent in going to conferences every single month, no matter what. It means I'm going to go, and when it feels like I'm not getting what I need out of it, or my mental health is struggling, or whatever, my family needs me here, take a break. No one's going to fault you for that.
 
You can still be persistent in being a networking and community individual, you just need to take a break.
 
[00:30:51] Matty: Well, that is all so great. Nick, thank you so much for joining me to talk about the six keys to author success, and please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
 
[00:31:02] Nick: Sure. The easiest place is nickthacker.com. You'll see the homepage there has all the little links to the things that I'm involved in, which is, or as you mentioned at the beginning of the episode, gratuitous. But that, you know, you find my fiction there if you're interested in action-adventure thrillers, and I do a lot of non-fiction, you know, teaching, training, coaching, all that kind of stuff at bookcareerinayear.com. So those are the two big websites I would recommend.
 
[00:31:24] Matty: Perfect, thank you so much.

Episode 227 - Six Keys to Author Success - Part 1 with Nick Thacker

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Nick Thacker discusses SIX KEYS TO AUTHOR SUCCESS PART 1, including This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I have Part 1 of a wide-ranging conversation with Nick Thacker about SIX KEYS TO AUTHOR SUCCESS. In this episode we talk about QUALITY WRITING, including how marketing serves as a force multiplier for our craft; the opportunities and the responsibility of being your own gatekeeper; balancing quality control with over-engineering; and how writing the first draft is assembling the raw material for your creation ... or maybe like building sandcastles. We talk about PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION, and the importance of setting the right expectations with your packaging, understanding the cover design tropes of your genre, accepting that cover design isn't one-and-done, and ways indy authors can provide better quality than trad pub. And we talk about the three buckets of STRATEGIC MARKETING: email, social media marketing, and advertising.

Nick Thacker is a USA Today Bestselling Author of over 40 thrillers. He owns and operates Conundrum Publishing and Book Career in A Year and runs the write/repeat workshops and writing intensives. He is also the founder of Author.Email, the only email marketing platform for specifically for authors, and RadioWrite.com, the 24/7 writing inspiration radio platform, and he is the VP of Author Success with Draft2Digital. His passion is to help authors figure out what their plan is — not just the “what,” but the “how” and the “why.”

Episode Links

nickthacker.com
https://www.bookcareerinayear.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorNickThacker
YouTube
https://twitter.com/NickThacker

Summary

This episode features a conversation between Matty Dalrymple, the host of The Indy Author Podcast, and Nick Thacker, a USA Today bestselling author of over 40 thrillers, owner of Conundrum Publishing, and VP of Author Success at Draft2Digital. Nick shares his insights on six keys to author success, emphasizing the importance of quality writing, professional presentation, and strategic marketing.
 
Nick argues that quality writing is foundational for an author's success, highlighting the necessity of continuous improvement, focusing on craft, structure, pacing, and outlining. He stresses that marketing efforts can only amplify the inherent quality of a book, advising authors to focus on their weakest areas for improvement.
 
Professional presentation extends beyond the manuscript to include book packaging, cover design, and overall aesthetics, which significantly influence reader and publisher perceptions. Nick advises authors to stay abreast of genre-specific trends in cover design and presentation to ensure their books meet and exceed market expectations.
 
Strategic marketing, according to Nick, involves a well-considered approach to advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing. He emphasizes the importance of building an email list from the outset and engaging with readers through social media. Nick also discusses the nuances of advertising, advising a gradual increase in ad spending to avoid overwhelming potential audiences and to allow for iterative improvement based on performance data.
 
Nick's overarching message is the importance of balancing artistry with market savvy, suggesting that authors should continuously refine their craft while also being strategic about how they present and market their books to readers. He encourages authors to view their writing career as a long-term endeavor, focusing on building a body of work that resonates with readers over time.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to the Indie Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Nick Thacker. Hey, Nick, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:06] Nick: I'm doing well.
 
Meet Nick Thacker
 
[00:00:08] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Nick Thacker is the USA Today bestselling author of over 40 thrillers. He owns and operates Conundrum Publishing and "Book Career in a Year," and runs the Write Repeat Workshops and Writing Intensives. He is also the founder of Author Email, the only email marketing platform specifically for authors, and RadioWrite.com, the 24/7 writing inspiration radio platform. He is the VP of author success with Draft2Digital, one of my favorite indie author platforms. His passion is to help authors figure out what their plan is, not just the what, but the how and the why.
 
[00:00:39] Nick: Hearing my bio from you, Matty, reminds me of all the things I have to catch up on. There are a lot of things that you said that make me think, "Oh, I forgot that I did that. I'm supposed to do that. I owe somebody for that."
 
[00:00:50] Matty: Is there anything that isn't included yet in your bio that we should know of?
 
[00:00:55] Nick: No, nothing you should know about, but there are other things. I'm setting up a web hosting service for authors and a printing company that authors can use for conference materials. But I just thought it was funny, hearing all that from you. I'm like, "Oh, okay, I owe somebody for that thing, and that thing, and oh, I forgot I did that."
 
[00:01:15] Matty: We should have some little automated thing that reads us our bio like once a week, so we can go, "Oh yeah, yeah."
 
[00:01:21] Nick: That would be really helpful. I should have ChatGPT do that every morning, just to remind myself what I'm supposed to be doing.
 
[00:01:25] Matty: Well, our topic today is six keys to author success. And Nick and I talked about discussing this topic, and I had asked Nick to provide me with six bullet points that he would like to cover. So, I'm just going to feed you the bullet points, Nick, and we will see where it takes us from there.
 
QUALITY WRITING
 
[00:01:41] Matty: Not surprisingly, the first item you put on your list is quality writing, which I think is sometimes overlooked as an aspect of a successful author career. So, what do you have to say about quality writing?
 
[00:01:54] Nick: You're exactly right. I believe this strongly. I actually just did a three-hour craft intensive on how to write and how to outline in genre fiction, specifically thrillers, because that's my area of expertise. I did this last week, and it was just a reminder of how important this is for us as authors. At the end of the day, nothing else matters if we don't have something good to show the world.
 
The reason it's often overlooked, I believe, is for two reasons. First, we might think, "This is who I am, I'm an artist, and this is my art." You might believe you can't get better or worse, which is a strange way to think about it. So we ignore it. Or secondly, improving our quality is not easy. If we acknowledge that we need to get better, the question becomes how do you do that? Growth requires practice and sometimes writing with the intent of never publishing, which is hard.
 
It's challenging because while we all want to improve, there isn't always a clear, easy path to betterment. So, quality is very important; it's the foundation on which we build everything else.
 
[00:03:08] Nick: You'll hear me say this in the marketing part too, but anything we do after writing is a force multiplier for what we're putting out as craft. If I have a bad book and then advertise that bad book, I'm just throwing money away to advertise something that's not very good.
 
So it's crucial to ensure we are doing the best we can in terms of artistry, craft, structure, pacing, outlining. It's not easy, but we cannot forget that's our ultimate goal. That's why most of us got into this — because we like to write, we like to be artists. It's important to constantly focus on whether this is the best we've got, if we can get better, or identify any obvious weaknesses.
 
As an example, I've focused on character development in my own writing over the last few years, as I felt that was a weak point for me. I study books on craft and character development and work on building better arcs. This is practice for maintaining and improving the quality of my writing. We'll see if it pans out, but the idea is to identify our weaker areas and improve them.
 
And just like when you build or improve a house, once you paint the walls, you might notice the trim looks bad. Once you fix the trim, the fixtures might stand out. So, you find the worst thing and improve that.
 
Balancing quality control with over-engineering
 
[00:04:50] Matty: I think there are a couple of seemingly contradictory pieces of advice, especially in the indie publishing world. In the early days, it was about having no gatekeepers, publishing anything one wanted, even if it was subpar. But as the industry matured, we realized the professional need to have others assess our work. Now, it's more standard for indie authors to realize they need an editor, beta readers, critique groups, and so on. It's not that there are no gatekeepers; it's that you become your own gatekeeper and usually need to hire professional help to maintain that role.
 
[00:05:45] Matty: Then there's the challenge of balancing quality control with over-engineering, like futzing with a book for another year to perfect the first sentence versus the advice to eventually just get it out there and move on to the next project. Do you have any advice for how to balance those two?
 
[00:06:10] Nick: Yes, there's a dichotomy. A career is never built by someone who constantly churns and improves their book but never releases it. You don't become a writer if you never release anything. However, you can still define yourself as a writer if writing is just for you and you're not looking to sell or make a career out of it. If you want a career, which implies making money and all that comes with it, you can't achieve that without releasing your book.
 
The goal should be to reach a point where you're comfortable releasing your book. Often, the hesitation isn't about the book's quality but fear—fear of putting ourselves out there and letting the world critique our work. If you're hesitating because you think it's not good enough, it's probably fear rather than a true lack of quality. Now, on the flip side, rushing through work to publish as quickly as possible for financial gain, like writing a book every two weeks and publishing the first draft, is equally problematic.
 
[00:08:03] Matty: Yeah, and I think that if you've taken all the recommended steps, like engaging a professional editor, or if that's not financially possible, at least sharing it with readers in your genre or people in your writing group, and you've done everything you can and you put it out there, then you can use reader reaction to decide whether your assessment of its quality was correct.
 
[00:08:25] Nick: That's true, and I highly recommend what you first said. Even if it's not feasible financially, do your best to find a professional editor, enlist their help, and yes, you'll probably have to pay them. If a full edit isn't an option, consider a proofreader or someone to give general feedback about whether your book is ready to publish. This isn't a new industry anymore, and it's not a secret what makes a book successful. There are still variables and luck involved, sure, but quality isn't a secret. We know that fixing typos can make your book better. We're also in the era of AI, with tools like Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and ChatGPT that can help improve the line editing of your book. I'm not saying these are alternatives to a human editor, but they can be that last push to ensure your quality is acceptable.
 
Usually, a writer who isn't brand new, maybe someone who's written a book or two, knows whether their book is truly good enough. If it's not, take the time to make it better, find an editor, and use the tools available to improve it. We're doing this because we want a career, which isn't just about making money. It's about building a long-term reputation and trust with our readers, who we hope will read us for the next 50 years or longer. Write for that person, for the reader decades from now, because that's where quality matters.
 
But on the other hand, don't spend 50 years trying to make your book perfect because perfection doesn't exist. I've read manuscripts from authors who worked on their books for five years and ended up making them worse. At some point, the book was good enough to release, and that's as good as that author could do at that time. They just ended up making it more watered down and less enjoyable to read. So there are definitely two sides to that coin.
 
Writing the first draft is assembling the raw material for your creation
 
[00:10:45] Matty: Yeah, there's a metaphor I'm working on. It's not quite polished yet, but to combat the idea of publishing your first draft, it reminds me of a beach my mother used to take me and my sister to. There was a spot where you could dig up clay under the sand. We kids would make little things out of the clay. This is a great analogy for a first draft. You dig through the sand, gather the clay, which is the raw material, and then you create something. But nobody would claim that the heap of clay thrown over their shoulder is a finished statue. It's just raw material for whatever you want to make.
 
But as I think about what you said, regarding manuscripts that get worse with every revision, it's clear that if you keep picking at your creation, eventually it becomes a formless blob. The trick is to find the perfect balance between polished and over-polished, engaging and bland.
 
Writing is like building sandcastles
 
[00:12:01] Nick: I love that analogy. It reminds me of something I heard on a podcast where an actor said he enjoys making movies because it's like building sandcastles, knowing the tide will eventually come in. He doesn't aim for the perfect sandcastle; he just likes building them. Apply that to writing: don't spend years trying to make the perfect book because there's no such thing. Write the book, make it good enough, release it. That's your sandcastle. It might be gone tomorrow, but you'll be working on a new one. You need to fall in love with making sandcastles. Over time, they'll get bigger, better, more polished, more intricate. That's how you improve your writing.
 
It won't work to perfect just one book, hoping everyone will love it. Especially if it's your first book, most people might not love it. It's more fun and rewarding to build multiple sandcastles, to keep writing books, and to get better with each one. This is the iterative process seen in startups. Get your unique selling proposition, your book to a minimum viable product, and then move on to the next one, improving each time.
 
[00:13:39] Matty: Of course, it all depends on your goal. If you're aiming to make writing a career, it's different from writing a passion project that you simply want to share. You're not likely to retire on the latter.
 
PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION
 
[00:13:54] Matty: This leads us to the second bullet you mentioned about the six keys to author success, which is professional presentation. We've talked about the need for professional presentation in writing, but I believe this extends beyond the words on the page. Can you elaborate on that?
 
Setting the right expectations with your packaging
 
[00:14:12] Nick: Yes, this is about book packaging. You've written the book, you've got the content and the interior file. But when you release a book, it comes with certain expectations from readers, stores, and you as the writer about what your creation should look and feel like. All of this feeds into professional presentation. You're aiming to be a professional if you're serious about making this a career. It's not just about the manuscript but also the cover, the layout, what it looks like on the page, the editing.
 
Professionally presented books significantly impact the appeal to readers and publishers, especially if you're pursuing traditional publishing. Even if they may not use those materials, putting together a professional package demonstrates your competence. That will stand out in a query letter more than just another submission in the slush pile.
 
Understanding the market and the marketing levers we can pull is crucial. It's not just an extra if you have time; it's essential. The market is saturated enough that readers looking for something specific on Amazon, like "fast-paced action thrillers," will be presented with hundreds of options. They'll first see the cover and maybe the title, which must meet their expectations and fit within their interests.
 
If your book shows up in the wrong category, it won't attract the right clicks, even if it gets more visibility. A good book cover isn't just the icing; it's the cake itself. It's vital to ensure your cover positions your book correctly in the market. I believe a book cover's sole job is to prevent losing a sale.
 
[00:17:57] Matty: A recommendation I've made a couple of times before, which I like so much I use any opportunity to recommend it to people, is that everyone should be subscribing to some kind of email promotional service like BookBub for their genre. There's really no better market research than to open an email every day that has books in your genre that a bunch of professional book selectors have chosen as ones they think are going to be very popular. Look at the covers and read the descriptions.
 
I'm a huge cover design nerd, and I'm struck by how often there will be clear visual consistency across the covers, like a dark teal and gray background with large sans serif yellow letters. That's the thriller thing. You see one of those or, for a while, it was the woman in the yellow coat running away. I don't know why they all had to have a yellow coat, but they did. And now, for certain genres, it's the letters intertwined with a vine over it or something like that.
 
Even if you're not doing your own covers, this is another area where I recommend people get professional help. Even if you're going to a cover designer, it will help you interact more productively with your cover designer if you're familiar with what those tropes are.
 
And then I think also, from the point of view of cover design, getting a cover design done once, even if it's lovely and brand-right and genre-right and all those things at first, it should probably be revisited periodically because all those tropes that I just described, the BookBub emails would have looked quite different two or three or four years ago.
 
[00:19:35] Matty: Do you have a sense, like, do you have a schedule where you look at your covers to see if they're still current?
 
[00:19:42] Nick: I don't have a regular schedule, but I was a cover designer. I did all my own covers early on, and I was a graphic designer professionally.  So, dare I say it, I have a good eye for design, and I typically will wait until I get that inkling of a feeling that, hey, maybe these covers are getting out of date. And it's for the same reasons you just mentioned. I go to the airport and look at the very limited selection of books in that Hudson bookstore or whatever it is, and those books are there not because they're not selling well; they're there because the purchasing department decided these are the ones that are going to sell best. You can see those trends, and you can see exactly what other people in my genre are doing, up to the minute.
 
And so, if I get to the point where I'm like, "Oh, this is becoming really popular in the genre I write in," then I'm going to go back to my cover designer, who now does all this for me. He's observing the same trends, by the way, so sometimes he'll say, "Hey, you don't have to pay me for this yet, but I'm just saying this is kind of a trend and these covers no longer work in that genre."
 
But between the two of us, we'll decide, "Alright, this series needs an overhaul." And that may happen once every year. If we're lucky, it's not that often. I think for my main Harvey Bennett series, I've redesigned some of the earlier books maybe five times in total, and I'm hoping the iteration we're on now is one that I can keep for the next four years. But I don't know; I'm not in charge of setting those trends. I wish I were. But you're exactly right. There definitely is a time period where you say, "Hey, it's been a while. Let's do a deep dive into what's working in this genre in terms of cover design and do mine fit?" Be honest with yourself because it could mean more sales if you get it right.
 
All this to say, I don't think we should just chase trends blindly. Like you said, the intertwined text with the typography that's really big in psych thrillers and women's fiction right now. That's not what I write. So chasing that trend would be detrimental to the books' success because there's an expectation that's lost. The readers are going to open it up and be like, "This is not what I wanted. This is about bombs and Jack Reacher-type stuff. This isn't Colleen Hoover." So it is important to understand what these trends are, but specifically the trends within our genre when it comes to cover design. What we're trying to do isn't just gain more sales; we're trying to prevent people from thinking, "Ew, that cover's old and out of date. I'm not even going to bother reading what it's about."
 
[00:22:09] Matty: Yeah. You do yourself more harm by getting your book in the hands of someone it's not right for than you do good. You pay the price for that sale in unhappy reviews and so on. And I think that for both quality writing and professional presentation, we've talked about the importance of genre-specific knowledge and direction. It's important to have beta readers, an editor, and a book cover designer who specialize in your genre, not just someone who designed a beautiful cover but it was for a poetry collection, and you're writing horror. Although that actually might be a pretty good combination now that I think about it.
 
[00:22:46] Nick: That could work. I'd absolutely accept some horror Lovecraft style. But you're absolutely right. It is so important to understand that we're writing in a genre. Usually, I don't have to hammer this point home because if someone's writing in that genre, they're a reader and a consumer of that genre. They see the book covers, the descriptions, the keywords, the major trends, like sparkling vampires, because it's their favorite genre. It's not always the case, though. There are definitely situations where someone is writing in a genre that's not their usual, like myself currently working on a sweet hockey romance, which is not my genre. But I am doing the research. I need to make this my genre and understand the tropes, which are particularly crucial in romance.
 
It's important to know these things just by being a consumer and a lover of that genre. You'll pick up on these trends because Amazon will show them to you. They know what you like to read. They'll suggest, "What do you think of this category?" and you'll see all the covers. So paying attention to these things isn't as hard as we make it seem. It's really just a matter of reading in that genre, studying it, just being present there, and you'll get marketed to by other authors. It'll be pretty easy to find some of those trends.
 
[00:23:56] Matty: Yeah. I also think there's this kind of reverse engineering aspect. If you think you're writing hard-boiled thrillers and you subscribe to the hard-boiled thriller email newsletter, and none of it appeals to you, guess what? You may not be writing in the correct genre. Maybe it's actually a cozy. Sometimes you need a little reality check, and that kind of research can be a good way to do that.
 
[00:24:19] Nick: Absolutely.
 
[00:24:21] Matty: And the other thing I'll add is that I used to say early in my indie author career that indie authors can provide a product that's just as good as what traditional publishers can. But now, I really think that, in many cases, especially with ebooks, indie authors can provide a much better product. I'm surprised at how still print-centric traditional publishers are and how bad their ebooks can be—badly formatted, just a bad experience. So, there's no harm in setting the bar higher than what the big five, or the big four, however many there are these days, are putting out.
 
[00:24:56] Nick: You're absolutely right. Watching traditional publishing can be so frustrating because they make decisions that seem incompetent, but they're not. They're just in a whole different world. The way their economies work is entirely different from what you and I live and breathe every day.
[00:26:00] Matty: And it's exactly true with that. I mean, they're almost obligated not to reinvent the wheel when it comes to things like layout and formatting because it's somebody's job to do that. It's job security to make sure that they continue to do that work. They're on their own with Microsoft Word or InDesign, heaven forbid.
 
They're not going to use something like Vellum because that would make their job too easy, and then they wouldn't have a job anymore. So, you know, it's one of those things where you're right, you get a traditionally published book, and I just had this happen a couple of nights ago. I downloaded a new book from a big publisher, one of the big four, and I thought, "This is atrocious."
 
I just wanted to reach out and say, "Can I do this for you? Just give me the Word file." This isn't supposed to be hard. It's 2024; we're well past this being difficult. So it makes me mad, but hey, I'm a software guy too, so I understand some of the reasons why, but it does look like incompetence on their part when it comes down to what the consumer sees.
 
[00:26:08] Matty: It was interesting, a number of episodes ago, I interviewed Leslye Penelope, who has extensive experience in both the traditional and indie worlds. And we were talking, and she said, "Well, the one difference is that indie publishers' customers are the readers and traditional publishers' customers are bookstores." And that took me by surprise so much that I think I just had to take a beat because I had never thought of it that way. It was such a bizarre way to think about it, but obviously, she knows; she has experience on both sides.
 
And I think it's also true that it depends on the publisher. It's not just indie versus traditional; there's a huge spectrum. Early on, indie authors picked up many great practices from traditional publishers. Now, I think traditional publishers are picking up practices from indie authors, so there's a spectrum of--
 
[00:26:59] Nick: To the other. Yeah, absolutely. One informs the other for sure. And you're so right that a traditional publishing house is positioning books to be sold to the one purchaser for the company purchaser. If it's Barnes & Noble, there's one person sitting behind a desk looking at a catalog once a quarter going, "Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no," and deciding how many we want per store. They have 250 stores in the United States alone, whatever it is. And those are the books that will be stocked. So that's the person, absolutely. And it's mind-boggling that that's true, but it's absolutely true. That person doesn't necessarily know anything about the readership of the genre. They probably only read in one or two, maybe three genres, so they don't know what's happening in anime or memoir because they don't read those. They just look at what the publisher gave me, and this looks intriguing to me. So it's mind-boggling, but it's true.
 
[00:27:51] Matty: Yeah, it is mind-boggling.
 
STRATEGIC MARKETING
 
[00:27:52] Matty: So the next of the six keys to author success is strategic marketing. Now that we have quality writing and professional presentation, what would you say about strategic marketing?
 
[00:28:05] Nick: Make it strategic. There's no shortage of marketing activities, tactics, tips that you can try as an author. There used to be a shortage, but not anymore. There's somebody out there willing to take your money and say, "Let's try this; let's do that." And so if you don't approach this category with a strategy, you're going to spend more money than is necessary.
 
[00:28:50] Nick: And I'm saying that while also knowing that if you do something like advertising, which I think every author should do, you're also going to be spending more money than is necessary. That's how advertising works. You spend more money than is ultimately required to keep an ad campaign running because you want to test and gather data. You try and fail many times and iterate. So, you don't have that much money to throw at this marketing game in general if you're doing advertising while already spending a lot of money, right?
 
The three buckets of strategic marketing: email, social media marketing, and advertising
 
So the point is to be strategic about this. I break marketing for authors down into three buckets that I think every author should be involved in. Not necessarily start these at the same time, but they should be doing them if they're serious about this career. The three things are email marketing, social media marketing, and advertising, probably in that order. If you're brand new to this game and you only have one book out, it's probably not a good use of your time, money, and energy to be advertising that book.
 
There are many reasons we can dig into, but the point is, wait until you have 6 books out before you start investing advertising dollars because it's a force multiplier. If you have 6 points of entry to a series and you advertise the first one, you also have 6 products that you can sell to that person when they click through. That means you have more income; your ROI is higher than if you just had one book, right?
 
Going in order, email marketing is essentially free, not entirely because you need an email service provider, which costs money. Some offer free services if you have fewer than 2000 subscribers, but let's just say it will cost a little bit of money. However, it's a small amount. I run all my email marketing through [brand name], so shameless sales promotion here. It's $10.99 a month for up to 9,999 subscribers, and you can send as many times as you want. There are no restrictions. We allow autoresponders, segmentation, templates, and there are no feature gates in that way. Email marketing, in general, is very affordable, but the point is, you should be building a mailing list from day one, maybe even before day one. Say, "Hey, I'm going to write a book and launch it, sign up for my mailing list to find out more." This is something we should absolutely be doing from day one as an author.
 
Then, once we start building a small readership and developing relationships with individuals on that list, it might be worth our time and energy to start using social media because that's also free. You can get on TikTok, Facebook, or wherever your readers congregate, wherever that genre typically spends time online. Have some presence there. Be willing to say, "Hey, I'm going to spend an hour a week, no more, especially if you don't hate social media." Spend that time scheduling some posts, making funny memes or jokes about your content, or giving a behind-the-scenes view of what it looks like in your writing cave.
[00:32:39] Matty: Whatever it is, do something, because even though it will not be a quick path to success, it is so valuable over 5 or 10 years of doing this kind of thing at least weekly, if not daily. Like I said, I could talk a lot longer about that. That's probably the next big thing to do as an author. And then, finally, once you have the first two—writing good books, the craft is there, and you're presenting it really well—then you can start using advertising to multiply that force. Because it's now a force for the good of your career.
 
You can use advertising through Facebook ads, BookBub ads, and Amazon ads. Those are the top three, and they are pretty much the only three that I pay attention to these days, at least in terms of where most of my budget goes. Those are the ways to get people into the top of your funnel, into your world. At least they've heard of you now. Maybe they've clicked over to your website and seen your stuff. So there's that little cookie pixel on their computer now, so you can remarket or retarget them. Very simply, it's also a way to get people to go and see your books and say, "Hey, this is something I'd like to read, let me buy it."
 
So, advertising is a very powerful way to find new eyeballs who have never heard of you before, and a way to find people who have maybe heard of you but aren't quite sure, and then convert both of those people into a subscriber or somebody who's a fan of your books, someone who actually buys and reads them. Those are the big three. That's what I would say strategic marketing comes down to: email marketing, social media marketing, and advertising.
 
I just had an interesting experience on the advertising front that I kind of always believed, but this was such a stark example. I was at 20 Books Vegas, and one of the presenters was giving a presentation on Facebook ads. I was already working with someone in this person's organization on Facebook consulting. During the Q&A portion, somebody asked a question, and what came out was this guy was spending over a hundred dollars a day on Facebook advertising. She said, "Well, just stop doing that right away." And his feeling was, "Well, if I spend $100, I'm making this much. If I spend $200, I'm going to make twice as much." Or, you know, hopefully some multiple. And she was explaining that that really wasn't the case, necessarily.
 
At the same time, I was working with this consultant from this woman's group on my Facebook ads. I understand the theory behind it, but I hated doing it. So I get together with this person for one hour a month, for 50 bucks. It's $50 for an hour. And we go over my Facebook ads and she tells me what to tweak. Then I just do kind of like checking in for the next month and then we meet again. And it's working out really well for me, but the thing that really struck me about it is that I'd always spent like five, ten dollars a day on Facebook ads. She said, "Well, let's start at five and see how it goes." So we had an ad that was doing pretty well. So I said, "Well, should I put it up to 10?" Because for some reason, I always defaulted to going in increments of five. And she said, "Oh no, no, let's go to six." And I thought, I appreciate so much that someone's willing to say to me, "Don't go to 10. Go to 6." Like, don't, not only don't spend $100, but don't even spend $10 until we know that $6 is going to work as well.
 
[00:34:47] Nick: Absolutely. And I agree with that advice. A lot of times, the understood or often recited way to do it is by increasing a budget daily by 10 to 20 percent. So going from 5 to 6 makes perfect sense. That's 20 percent. And that's a good way to do it because it won't shock the system, whether it's Facebook ads or Amazon; they all work similarly. If you put too much budget into it too fast, it can freak out the system.
 
With Facebook ads specifically, there is so much data that has nothing to do with books but can be used to make decisions as to what people might like to click on. That's Facebook's job. When you have a $5 a day ad and it's working really well—your click-through rate is good, your purchase rate is up, your ROAS is good—you might think you're ready to scale. Let's say you decide to start spending $100 a day. It's not that Facebook is mad at you and wants to steal your money; it's that the ad will suddenly stop or stall or not work as well because it's doing its job. It's saying, "Okay, this worked, but now you're forcing me to find exponentially more people every single day." And I don't have any more who liked this particular thing that my algorithm found that led to them clicking when it was $5 a day. I've already hit those people. So it has to find new people that might click on your ad within 24 hours, and it's not going to get that right every single time.
 
The reason you scale slowly is because you want to make sure Facebook finds a little bit more people every day. And then, if that didn't work, tomorrow Facebook will try a different lever behind the scenes. Maybe people who like James Rollins didn't click the ad, but people who like Clive Cussler did. Or maybe people who watch Indiana Jones clicked it, but when it advertised to fans of Dan Brown movies, nobody clicked. Whatever it is, it all happens in the black box, and all we see is that our click-through rate went down today. We don't know why, but that's what happens behind the scenes. So if you scale really big, really quickly, you end up with no more information than before. You just know that you spent $95 more than the day before, and you don't have anything better to show for it.
 
So why not spend $6 for a week, then $7.50 for a week, and then $9, scaling up very slowly by 10 percent to 20 percent. And it's really hard to do because as authors, we think, "Hey, this works. I've got the images designed. I'm not a marketer. I don't want to do this all day. So I'm just going to jack it up to $100 and hope for the best. I'll check it two weeks from now." And then you've spent $2,000 and it didn't work at all. So, it is important to scale slowly when it comes to advertising, but it does work. It's definitely a game we should all be playing, iterating, testing, and doing all the things that are required within that.

Episode 226 - From Gatekeepers to Guides: The Evolving Role of Agents with David Morris

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David Morris discusses FROM GATEKEEPERS TO GUIDES: THE EVOLVING ROLE OF AGENTS, including the decline of gatekeeper roles in the publishing world; the agent business model and how it is evolving, including the emergence of an indie equivalent of the agent role; red flags to watch out for when seeking that support; and the role of hybrid publishers.

David Morris is a creative leader, content strategist, and accomplished professional with 30 years of publishing experience. He has worked for major publishers like HarperCollins and Guideposts Books at the executive level with both bestselling and debut authors. David is a literary agent at Hyponymous Consulting and the founder and publisher of Lake Drive Books, an independent hybrid publisher.

Episode Links

Author website: davidrmorris.me
Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/davidrobertmorris
Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/dvdmorris/?hl=en
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dvdmorris/

Summary

David Morris, a literary agent and independent publisher, discusses the evolving role of the agent in today's changing publishing landscape.
 
Morris describes his background, starting in inspirational publishing and later working as a publisher at HarperCollins. This gave him insight into traditional publishing deals, agents, and author personalities. However, the industry has consolidated considerably, with fewer major publishers and imprints remaining. This consolidation has impacted literary agents, raising the bar for the types of authors and deals they pursue.
 
Morris notes that a lot of old-school mindsets still prevail, valuing traditional publishing deals that get books into bookstores. But the reality is that most book sales, even for established authors, now happen online through retailers like Amazon. The gatekeepers who once controlled access to readers through bookstores no longer have that power. Authors are now expected to drive sales through their own platform and online presence.
 
The agent's role has shifted as a result. Agents today may need to take a more opportunistic approach, looking beyond just securing significant advances from major publishers. Morris highlights hybrid publishing as one area agents could explore, where authors pay upfront but earn higher royalties. However, he doesn't see many agents pursuing these types of deals currently.
 
Morris emphasizes the growing importance of an author's platform, particularly in nonfiction. Publishers want to see that authors have expertise, a strong online presence, and the ability to connect with readers directly. For fiction authors, a great book can help build that platform organically. Agents should advise authors on developing their email lists, social media engagement, and launching strategies.
 
The traditional agent model of taking 15% commission on advances and royalties hasn't changed much. But Morris sees his role evolving beyond just securing a publishing deal, into more of an "author coach" providing ongoing guidance across an author's career.
 
For indie authors seeking similar support, Morris suggests exploring services like Reedsy or directories from the Independent Book Publishers Association. However, he cautions against overpromising "magic bullet" solutions and encourages authors to develop authentic strategies for building their platform.
 
In summary, the agent's role is adapting as the industry shifts. Agents must now be more entrepreneurial, open to alternative publishing models, and prepared to advise authors holistically on developing their careers and connecting with readers in a digital world.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is David Morris. Hey David, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:06] David: Hey, I'm doing great, Matty. Thanks for having me here. Meet David Morris.
 
[00:00:08] Matty: I am pleased to have you here. To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, David Morris is a creative leader, content strategist, and accomplished professional with 30 years of publishing experience. He's worked for major publishers like Collins and Guidepost Books at the executive level with both bestselling and debut authors. David is a literary agent at Hyponymous Consulting and the founder and publisher of Lake Drive Books, an independent hybrid publisher. I invited David on the podcast to talk about the evolving role of the agent. And as we were talking about before I hit record, I'm just interested in among all the many changes that are happening in the publishing world, you know, the agent is such a key role, has been such a key role for so long in understanding how that role is changing.
 
The evolving role of the agent
 
[00:00:50] Matty: So, David, I think it might be useful just for you to describe, you know, as far back as it makes sense for you to go, what your evolving role has been, the biggest changes you're seeing, and especially how that would impact authors who are looking toward agents for help with their careers.
 
[00:01:06] David: Sure. Yeah, if I kind of rewind on some things a little bit, you'll have to just make sure I come back to the main question, you know, what's going on with agenting. Yeah, I mean, publishing is the accidental profession quite often for so many of us, and I thought I was going to be a psychotherapist. And so, I studied psych and religion, but I got into religion publishing 30 years ago. Actually, it was political science textbook publishing for starters, and I worked for a major inspirational brand that was magazine-based, so, it had a large mailing list, and we would use that mailing list to market to this captive audience, saying, "Hey, we like this book, we think you'll like this," you know, direct mail publishing.
 
It was a different kind of publishing business, but it also introduced me to all the different publishers out there because we would license things from other publishers. This is while I was at what was, what's called Guidepost Magazine or Guidepost books, a little inspirational magazine that's been around for a long time. It's not a newsstand, but it's got a very large, one of the top circulation numbers in the country. And then I ended up being the publisher at the Zovin division, HarperCollins, and that introduced me to really big book deals, the agents that came with that, the authors and the author personalities that came with that.
That experience really taught me what I came to like or dislike about literary agents.
 
And so, you know, my story is one of consolidated publishing consolidation. And so my position eventually was changed and moved to a different office. And I'm out on my own now. And I decided that, you know, corporate life maybe isn't what I need to do for the rest of my career, and so I decided that I wanted to help authors in a specific content area. I wanted to help them with the expertise that I learned in my publishing career apply it in new ways because the business really has changed. It's very different. So many people, I think you, you kind of know that intuitively, or you kind of know that from what you've observed, but you're not quite sure why or how, why it's happened this way.
 
[00:03:05] But there are reasons. Being kind of in the belly of the beast at a major publisher, having to be responsible for a multimillion-dollar publishing budget and working with a sales team and the executive suite, I got my finger on it, I think, or at least I got underneath it some, and it taught me a lot about what I want to try to do now.
 
You know, I think there's a lot of old school mindsets still in publishing, that, to be a real publisher, to be a real author with a real publisher, you've got to have a traditional publishing deal, and that's with a publisher that gets your book into bookstores, and that's just less and less a relevant idea, even though it's something I think a lot of people still hang on to.
 
I meet publishers, and they love to point out to me sometimes their large sales teams and all the great, amazing things that their sales teams are doing. And I'm thinking, okay, yeah, but I know a lot of entry-level authors and mid-level authors, and their book sales are still 90 to 95 percent online retail, most of which is Amazon.
 
[00:04:14] Matty: Yeah, it does seem as if the things that used to be maybe five, certainly ten years ago, pretty much hard barriers, there aren't that many hard barriers anymore. It's just that, how hard do you have to work to clear the lowering barriers? So, for example, I wouldn't put it past me as an indie author to see my books in a Barnes and Noble, but I'd have to expend so much time and so much energy in pursuing that that I've looked at it and decided it just isn't worth my time, but the black and white lines that I think were there for a long time are just not there anymore.
 
[00:04:46] David: I totally agree. One of the things I like to say that's just right in line with that is the gatekeepers aren't there like they used to be. You said barriers. To me, the gatekeepers in the past used to be the bookstores and funneling things through bookstores. The thing I like to say to a lot of authors these days is, publishers used to have the exclusive relationship to consumers, to the readers. And that was because they had the exclusive relationship to the bookstores, and the bookstores were actually a marketing mechanism for discoverability. So if you got a book deal, great, because that meant you're with somebody who has access to consumers.
 
Well, when people stopped showing up at bookstores or ordering books from physical bookstores in big numbers, in big percentages, they lost that relationship, and now suddenly they're reliant on the author to drive the sales, the author's platform, the author's readership. So, that just means that, you know, a lot of the need for the author to do all the work has shifted to the author. But on the other hand, it also is an opportunity.
 
You could conceivably get your book into a Barnes and Noble bookstore, especially lately, because they say that Barnes and Noble is more open to local authors and having events. I'm hearing that more from more than one source, but that doesn't mean you're going to get a national buy into all of their 600 plus stores, which is not as many stores as it used to be. Despite all the good news you keep seeing about BNN and NPW.
 
[00:06:17] Matty: Well, it does seem, the other thing we had mentioned briefly before we started recording was this idea that, perhaps it never was this cut and dry, but it seemed like when I first started exploring publishing in 2013, 2012, 2013, it was pretty much there was sort of the either-or choice.
 
[00:06:59] David: I think it's challenging, honestly, because for an agent to get enough authors and land enough significant book deals, and a lot of their income is, at least when you're starting out, it's based on the advances, but even still, it can end up being based on the advances quite a bit because the way publishing works, it's very speculative. They'll invest money in an author and a lot of authors in a given year, but they won't necessarily make their money back on each one of them. They won't, those authors don't necessarily see royalty checks. A lot of them don't see royalty checks after that, and it's speculative in the sense that you hope that out of all those that you've invested in 20 percent pay for the 80 percent of the business that you need to generate.
 
So, I think that some agent, like I talked to an agent a while back when I was first getting into this, and this agent is trying to do deals with all the major houses in New York City. And his view was he's got to sign authors who can get a six-figure book deal.
 
Well, that's a pretty big author. That's a pretty exclusive and rare space to be in. Just to warrant a six-figure advance, 100,000 advance, you've got to be able to sell 30,000 plus books in one year for the publisher to see it as a good financial deal, or maybe in 18 months to two years at worst, and that's, that I think is having an effect where, you know, probably there's fewer agents than there used to be. I just have to speculate on that. I don't know that for sure. I mean, there are fewer publishers. There's less variety of imprints. There's been so much consolidation that I have to believe that there are fewer agents who are making it work. And all those publishers who've consolidated, they've raised the bar on what they're looking for in terms of author sales.
 
So I think there's that pressure on literary agents. Now that doesn't mean for an opportunistic agent, which is kind of what I am, I guess, that there's some in-betweens. And, but I think I don't know very many agents who are operating and like doing deals with hybrid publishers, for example.
 
[00:09:12] Matty: Can you just, clarify what, when you're using the term hybrid publisher, what that means?
 
[00:09:17] David: Yeah. So a hybrid publisher is, sort of a spectrum of publishers that, basically the way I like to explain it is they work on a different financial model. They ask for money upfront from the author, but they also pay a much higher royalty. Now that might sound just like vanity publishing of old, but there's more aspects to that. One is, it's got to be curated and well-edited and designed content, not just like a service. It's got to have real distribution, which, what does that mean in this world today? Well, if you can get it on Amazon and all the other online retailers, that's basically real distribution. I subscribe to the, with my hybrid publishing, I subscribe to the Independent Book Publishers Association, standards for hybrid publishers, and you can look that up at IndependentBookPublishersAssociation.com, and they explain what hybrid publishing is.
 
It's turning out to be a pretty good option because there are some very skilled people who have come into that world. You still have to be careful not to spend too much money there. Don't get into a program where they're asking for this package, plus that package, plus another package, but it still can be pretty expensive. I had one hybrid publisher tell me that he tells authors that you've got to plan to spend around $10,000 because that's what it costs to produce a book.
 
In my experience, he's right. If I add in all of the macro edit work, the copy editing, maybe if there's line editing, the two proof passes, typesetting, design, interior, and cover, and all the labor hours involved in that. Just the freelance stuff that I pay for is at least half that. But if you add in all the labor hours around it, it's definitely a big investment. If a publisher is going to pay you in advance, remember that they may pay you in advance, but then they're also paying upfront for $10,000 plus dollars just to publish one book. So it's a big investment on their part. But that's what hybrid publishing is.
 
[00:11:17] Matty: And in that scenario, I think you were talking about the role of the agent with regard to hybrid publishing, which I imagine is somewhat different than the role of an agent with regard to traditional publishing.
 
[00:11:27] David: Yeah, and I don't know very many agents that are really doing it because there's really no advance involved. So they would have to be more of an opportunistic forward-thinking agent that could see that, oh, hey, maybe I can help my author into a hybrid publishing arrangement that's a good one, and if they're making that really much higher royalty rate, and it really is significantly higher, so if your book is going to work, you could earn your money back and pay an agent at the same time, and if it works in perpetuity, great. But for say for a fiction writer who's putting out a lot of different novels, it's probably not a great option, just because, you know, your sales aren't going to warrant that for any one book. It's a different strategy altogether. Yeah. So, I mean, I think in general. In my experience, if you want to go the agent route, you've got to be prepared to really want to hit it big, and that's rarefied air. It's just really tough to be, to find yourself in that position.
 
[00:12:25] Matty: And what are the considerations that differ between, fiction authors and nonfiction authors and the relationship that they could expect to establish with an agent?
 
[00:12:34] David: Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of comes down to platform and how platform relates to fiction writing versus nonfiction writing. In nonfiction writing, where I'm more experienced, platform is often related to what your day job is and. Do you have expertise and an idea that comes out of that expertise? And does the expertise in your day job structure give you opportunities to talk about your book, to get speaking going on, to build an, to build an online platform? So like, I tend to like wander into the self-help world a little bit more than most people. Let's just say a psychotherapist who gets a great podcast going, for example, or, you know, and really strong social media to support that. Now, having expertise as a psychotherapist with original ideas that are well articulated can help you build a following. An agent and a publisher can recognize the value in someone presenting a unique, significant concept.
 
However, in fiction, the challenge is more about originality within the genre you're writing. Literary fiction, for example, is a domain I'm not well-versed in, so I'll refrain from commenting extensively on it. However, there may be considerable agent involvement due to publishers' interest in this genre. The financial rewards, especially at the outset, might not be substantial or scalable. This isn't a judgment on the value of the work but a practical consideration of the scale and the potential for representation by agents in such cases.
 
The agent business model
 
[00:14:20] Matty: And can you describe just at a very basic level how the agent is making his or her money in different scenarios, and if that has been changing over time?
 
[00:14:30] David: Yeah, I don't know that it has changed a whole lot. I think that it's sort of like general market book royalties where, a standard offer for hardcover is 10 percent of List price, to a certain number of units, like 12.5% for the next five, 15% thereafter. I suspect agenting commissions are pretty much the same as well. I haven't heard, and certainly up until a couple of years ago when I was still a publisher, I haven't heard of very many agents deviating from that. And the standard agent commission is 15 percent of your royalties, which includes the advance, which is an advance against royalties. Plus, once you've earned out of your advance, you've paid for that advance with your actual royalty, accruals, you know, then they get 15 percent in perpetuity for that particular book that you contracted the agent for?
 
[00:15:27] Matty: And this is a really basic question, but I realize I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. So, would-be author, a writer would pitch the agent to have the agent accept them. It's an odd relationship because it strikes me as being, each is kind of the client of the other. So it feels like going to get a lawyer to go represent you somewhere, that probably not how to pitch yourself to a lawyer. You just go to the lawyer, you say, I want to hire you. And then, and now you have a representative to do whatever you need legal expertise for, as opposed to an agent where you're having to pitch yourself. But then once that relationship has been established, is the agent representing you to publishers in the same way that a lawyer would represent you in legal scenarios to third parties? Or am I misunderstanding the relationship between the author, the agent, and the publisher?
 
[00:16:24] David: Well, I think an agent really should be committed to the author. And maybe, you know, in more ways than one, they should be of like mind in terms of the topic of the writing. They should know the right publishers to pitch that topic to and have some, hopefully some relationships with some of them. I also see it sometimes as like a real estate agent too, kind of that, you know, some similarities there. You approach the agent with your blueprint of the property in a real estate situation, and they're going to want to see what your house is like. How good is it?
 
How many features does it have? Can they actually sell it? Are they going to make the commission needed to pay for their nice agent, literary real estate agent car? But I think with an author approaching an agent, it's still a similar thing because you're presenting an agent with your intellectual property. However, there really is a big difference; it almost gets back to the lawyer analogy. I talked about what I like about an agent and what I saw in agents that I liked. Those that didn't just help with a proposal, but also helped get the proposal in good shape, shopped it to publishers, assisted with entertaining offers, accepting an offer if you get one, and then negotiating a contract. It goes on much longer than that, really.
 
It almost gets back to the publishing environment today. I enjoy this part of agenting—author coaching. It's an ongoing part of the relationship. If my author needs to fix something on their website, I'm going to say something. If they're heading into the launch phase and haven't done a few steps in preparation, I'll start saying, "Hey, you need to get a launch team going," or "You need to work on raising your email list in the coming six months before your book launch."
 
Also, an agent should be an ongoing translator between the author and the publishing house. They speak different languages, have different expectations in the relationship, and the agent can help the author understand why the publisher behaves a certain way. They probably have good reasons. Sometimes the publisher needs help remembering why an author has certain expectations, and they probably have good reasons too. It's a careful relationship, more extraordinary than litigation or real estate brokering. Hopefully, you find the right agent if you're in that situation.
 
The indie equivalent of an agent role
 
[00:19:14] Matty: Well, I can imagine many indie authors would be very interested in someone who would point out the problems with their website and encourage them to start an email list and all those other things. Everything you just mentioned, except for negotiating with the publisher. I'm not even sure what that role would be, like a business manager for an indie publisher or something like that. Are you encountering any agents who are doing that or moving into that as the industry changes?
 
[00:19:44] David: It's interesting, I see people pitching their publishing expertise to everyday authors. Oftentimes, it's more about how to write a good proposal. Yeah, and it's not necessarily about helping you build up your platform, which I think is far underrated. People see it far too cynically at the same time. I don't know that I've seen a whole lot of it going on, but it's definitely something I'm committed to because I've seen, especially in my latter years in my position at HarperCollins Zonderman, I was seeing the authors that were working, and it didn't matter your creed, the color of your skin, your gender, your sexuality. It was like the authors who could connect with their audience online were making things happen, even on a subterranean level, with nobody really knowing why or noticing why. The authors with email lists were the ones that were working.
 
The role of the author platform
 
[00:20:42] Matty: We've mentioned the platform a couple of times, and I think that's a really interesting example of how things are changing because I've seen two flavors of the platform idea. One is that a traditional publisher is never going to be interested in an author who has established a platform, especially as an indie because they want someone they can start out fresh with. And then there's another flavor that is, if I attach myself to a publisher or an agent, then they're going to help me with my platform. And then there's the third flavor, I think, that is a publisher or an agent is going to be looking for someone with an established platform so that the author has illustrated that they can communicate effectively with their email list or that they have a compelling social media presence. Is that changing? Do you have recommendations on any of those fronts about an author and a platform?
 
[00:21:36] David: I still believe that it's the third option. Most publishers are in that space. If you've got the platform, then you'll be more attractive to where publishers are today. Publishers do a lot more celebrity books than they ever have. The ghostwriting business is up. From what I've heard, the thing about that's kind of cool though, is if you actually have original writing, and this kind of gets back to the old idea of, if it's great writing, it should work. You know, I shouldn't need a social media platform or an email list, but if it's great writing, then your social media and your email list should grow naturally too, right? And that can actually be fun. If your content's strong, and you're connecting with people, and they're interested in your stories and your ideas, you're going to find that your social media, your email list, and your website traffic are growing. And you're going to start establishing even a little bit of community.
 
What's cool today about all that online platform stuff is that you can now have a direct relationship with your readers more than you ever could before. I sometimes say, what would you rather have, 10,000 book sales with people that you hardly ever meet or 1,000 book sales with people who are reading your every newsletter and responding sometimes? It can be very gratifying, and publishing isn't always about the money. It's about the influence, the storytelling, and the fun.
 
[00:23:07] Matty: The other thing that I was thinking of when you were saying something earlier is that I was asking if there's basically a job title for someone who does some of those agency things for indie authors, except for negotiating contracts with traditional publishers. And I think that the way that's panning out in the indie author community is that it's up to the author to recognize the different areas where they may need specialized expertise, like developing an email list or establishing and then optimizing a website, paying attention to search engine optimization. This is all kind of top of mind because I'm trying to refine several of these things for myself.
 
And the challenge is that each one of those is an independent standalone thing. So I can spend time researching what a reputable and effective service or individual is to help me optimize my SEO or to optimize my YouTube channel or whatever it might be. It seems as if those people who combine some of those things together so that there's a more holistic look at all those parts of the indie author business other than the actual writing sort of get a bad rap, I think. Because, as you were saying earlier, there's this fine line between people who are doing that legitimately and the people who are just bundling together stuff in a vanity press package and saying, "Here are the 10 things you need." And I don't know that I'm hearing people talk about how to track down that expertise other than one person at a time. You find the person who's the expert at email list building, and then you follow their advice. But nobody who's kind of looking across it.
 
[00:24:43] David: I agree. I agree. I mean, you know, I get pitched all the time about, "Hey, your website could have better SEO." There's search engine optimization. There's a lot of schlocky stuff, actually, and there's a lot of overpromising going on about if you get the right keywords on your website, you're suddenly going to experience rapid growth. I don't think it's that simple, and yet people, I get pitches all the time about it. So I think it's one of those kind of churn and burn things where people are paying for it, but it's not necessarily panning out. But somehow SEO is seen as like a silver bullet.
 
I often like to say there's no magic. Try not to do magical thinking in publishing. Try to have a strategy, not magic. Even magicians practice a lot at what they do, and it's illusion. It's not actual supernatural magic necessarily.
 
Where to look for help and red flags to watch out for
 
[00:25:36] Matty: So if someone is looking for that kind of help that an agent in other circumstances would provide, do you have tips about where they can look for reputable options or what would be red flags for that one should steer away from?
 
[00:25:49] David: Yeah, I think one of the challenges is when you start looking for people to help you with an email list or website building, they don't necessarily have experience with book publishing or book authors. So I think that would be the thing to do would be to maybe go onto Reedsy.com, which is one of those online brokerage freelance brokerage firms that connect people with a lot of it is with editors and book designers, but there are marketers there too. And some of those folks know about book marketing for sure. What's the other one that's really Upwork is it?
 
[00:26:24] Matty: Yeah. I've used both of those. I really like Reedsy because I feel as if, well, Upwork is so general, whereas Reedsy is very much focused on author services. And I've found that, I mean, I've had pro and con experiences on both those, but I do feel like the Reedsy pool is a little more focused, and their contractors are a little better vetted.
 
[00:26:44] David: Yeah. I would also mention again the Independent Book Publishers Association. A lot of their members are author publishers—in other words, authors who start their own publishing enterprise, however big or small it might be. And I know I can think of at least one person, I won't mention that right now per se, but I know at least one person who's quite present to that organization and its folks. So if you join, or if you just get close enough to that organization, you'll probably start figuring out who those people are.
 
Selective rights licensing
 
[00:27:12] Matty: Okay, well, the other thing, I haven't had an opportunity to ask anybody about this, but some time ago, sometime last year, maybe even longer ago, I was interviewing Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and we were talking about selective rights licensing. I said, what I would love is to find someone who would take care of non-U.S. rights for me because I'm making a lot of money. Other than the fact that I sell my English language books into foreign markets, you know, I'm not doing anything to pursue translations or anything like that.
 
So, I would be willing to pay a big percentage of my earnings to someone who would say, you know, if I could say, take these books and whatever their area of expertise was, if they thought that my books would kill it in German, take my books, bother me as little as possible, and then I'll give you, I don't know, 75% of the royalties. I would be willing to give a lot of money to someone because it would be a matter of me earning a little bit of foreign language translations.
 
[00:28:12] David: Well, there's a very big international rights agency business out there. If you Google international rights agents for book publishing, I'm sure a whole bunch will pop up. People who attend the Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Book Fair and so on. So I would think that there's plenty to research, and there are people to make phone calls with. I don't know how much they take on of the independent author. That sounds interesting to me because I would imagine they're really trying to target publishers a lot of the time with their business.
 
[00:28:46] Matty: And I think that the impression I've gotten is that if you decide to actively go after foreign rights or translation rights or things like that, it's a research effort. And if you're going after it, you're in essence pitching yourself as you would be pitching if you were going after an agent for a traditional publisher. It's not like you can make a phone call and say, you know, I'll give you 75% of my sales if you find a way to get this into the hands of German-speaking readers in a German translation.
 
[00:29:18] David: My guess is they're going to ask for a pretty big cut anyway, so you just kind of want to get their attention first and then see how it goes. And maybe it would make it more attractive if you said something different than most publishers or other authors do in terms of offering a bigger royalty. But, yeah, that's interesting. Especially in the fiction market, I would think that in non-fiction, it's harder to translate into other, well, I'm speaking metaphorically, but it's harder for, you know, like American knowledge to be as interesting in Europe or else or more broad than that, especially in my area of religious studies, because it's just very different flavors everywhere.
 
[00:29:55] Matty: Yeah, I don't normally think about this except when I'm having conversations like this, but I do think there are these big swaths of opportunity where there is opportunity, but the terms of negotiation, the terms and conditions or whatever that aren't really firmed up, so it's hard to distinguish reputable people from disreputable people because there's kind of no history to judge it against. Like is $10,000 reasonable or not reasonable? You know, you have the background to know that in certain circumstances, it is reasonable, but then there are plenty of people out there who are charging $10,000, and you're not getting $10,000 worth of value.
 
[00:00:00] Matty: I always like to use the opportunity to let people know about Writer Beware. If people are not subscribed to Victoria Strauss's Writer Beware blog, they should definitely do that because it's a great place to learn about disreputable practices. It's a great resource.
 
[00:00:14] David: Yeah. There are some disreputable actors out there, without question, who are trying to take advantage of authors. I've seen it happen firsthand. One was impersonating Simon & Schuster executives. It was incredible. They even warn about this person on the Simon & Schuster website. I'm amazed they can get away with it, given Simon & Schuster's legal resources.
 
[00:00:42] Matty: I imagine people are missing legitimate opportunities because they dismiss an email as spam, but it's much more likely to be genuine.
 
[00:00:54] David: Publishing is very mysterious, and you want to make headway. Books are also very personal, so it's a mix of personal desires and hopes with someone making big promises. It's hard to resist.
 
[00:01:16] Matty: Are there any pieces of advice? I'm just lamenting the fact that I want this service and don't know how to get it. David, can you share some useful information for those listening who feel they need help with their author career? Are there steps they can take to position themselves for that?
 
The platform has come up so much that I think it's a good example. If people feel they don't know how to do it themselves or they're at sea, don't have time, or whatever it is, are there resources to help them?
 
[00:02:03] David: There are one or two outfits that help build author websites. R. R. Bowker, who handles ISBN numbers, is starting something like that. There's another affiliated with the Independent Book Publishers Association. Services like marketing people on Reedsy could help authors take the next steps.
 
[00:02:27] Matty: There's so much food for thought. There are ideas for where people could look for help, and if anyone is looking for a career in the indie publishing space, there's an unmet need they could pursue.
 
[00:02:46] David: I agree. If you've learned some things, you probably know as much as anyone else. A lot of the work is very rudimentary, like helping people with the basics of building an online platform. Because it just takes a lot of steps to start getting a website to start doing consistent social media posts to kind of get your head into it. To not be like, "Well, I got to set up a social media posting calendar." That's a lot of advice that you'll often hear, and yeah, that can be beneficial. But you also have to learn how to post organically and become acclimated to the medium. Then you'll have an internal motivation and a desire like, "Oh, it's time for me to post again. I haven't posted in a while."
 
If you could, you have to establish that sort of dynamic first for yourself before you can realistically start plotting things out on a calendar. People are wired differently, but to me, at a very basic level, having that internal motivation to know how to post on social media is probably the thing to figure out first. And then you can put more structure around it, like a calendar. So there are steps to it. I think anyone aspiring to this position you're talking about could get plenty of work just helping people with some of the basics.
 
[00:34:50] Matty: Yeah. So interesting. Well, David, thank you for humoring all my wide-ranging questions and for joining me on the podcast. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
 
[00:35:02] David: Sure, my literary agenting work is at hyponymous.com. You can also find me at lakedrivebooks.com. It's a road here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I am. It's a small indie publisher, more in religion and spirituality, but it's very progressive and kind of exciting stories going on there.
 
[00:35:29] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.

Episode 225 - Right-Timing Your Release Strategy with Kristina Adams

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Kristina Adams discusses RIGHT-TIMING YOUR RELEASE STRATEGY, including the creative price of too-rapid release and the importance of choosing your own “right-timed” schedule; the need for sustainability in an author career; the influence of the writing communities you join or create; distinguishing burnout from temporary boredom; the importance of keeping the writing sacred and the red flag of writing out of a sense of obligation; pursuing the trifecta of fun, energy, and money; deciding what to stop; and the creative value of stepping away from the work.
 
Kristina Adams is the author of 17 novels, 3 books for writers, and too many blog posts to count. She publishes mother / daughter ghost stories as K.C. Adams. When she’s not writing, she’s playing with her dog or inflicting cooking experiments on her boyfriend.

Episode Links

Kristina's Links:
www.kristinaadamsauthor.com
​www.kristinaproffitt.com
https://www.facebook.com/KristinaAdamsAuthor/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC60CK8JT885rHT2RSe_HCPA

Kristina's previous podcast episode: Episode 094 - Debunking Writing Myths with Kristina Adams

Companion episodes:
If the conversation with Kristina about her decision to bring her podcast to an end resonated with you, you might want to check out Episode 090 - Bringing a Creative Endeavor to an End with Michael La Ronn
 
And for anyone who, like me struggles with incorporating movement into a creative life, please check out Episode 129 - Moving for Creativity with Mike Kuczala

Referenced in the interview:
On "Quitting" YouTube - Marques Brownlee - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQAvce3MA44  

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Kristina Adams. Hey Kristina, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:06] Kristina: Hello, thanks for having me back. I'm good, how are you?
 
[00:00:09] Matty: I'm doing great, and it is lovely to have you back.
 
Meet Kristina Adams
 
[00:00:11] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Kristina Adams is the author of 17 novels, 3 books for writers, and too many blog posts to count. She publishes mother-daughter ghost stories as Casey Adams. When she's not writing, she's playing with her dog or inflicting cooking experiments on her boyfriend. Kristina was a guest on a podcast way back in episode 94, debunking writing myths.
 
I invited Kristina back to talk about "Right Timed Release." We're going to be talking about a couple of aspects here. I think when people care about the idea of a release schedule, their thought is, you know, what are the professional, what are the sales, what are the marketing drivers for it?
 
What drove Kristina's release schedule?
 
[00:00:46] Matty: And I thought that would be a good place to start, but we're not going to stop there. But I thought to give some context for the conversation, Kristina, why don't you just describe at different points of your author career, what was the schedule on which you were releasing books and what were the business reasons behind the decisions you have made about that release schedule.
 
[00:01:04] Kristina: So when I started out, I was still working a full-time job, and I was doing about one a year. “What Happened in New York” was 2016. “What Happened in London” was 2017. I think I did my first non-fiction "Productivity for Writers" in the same year, about six months later. I did one book in 2018, and then from 2019 to basically the start of 2023, I was doing three to five books a year.
 
That was from finishing the "What Happens In" series, starting "Afterlife Calls," and moving on to the "What Happens In" spin-off, "Hollywood Gossip." The sales for "What Happened in" didn't really take off until the penultimate book in the series came out. So I was always like, I'm not going to judge a series until I've got three or four books in that series out because I don't know if it's going to be successful. I do tend to write things that are quite serial as well, and I don't class them as cliffhangers. Certain readers class how I write as cliffhangers, so I need to give people a satisfactory ending, to a point, so that if I do have that gap in publication, then they're not coming after me with pitchforks and stuff. You know, and so I was constantly chasing that.
 
Then in January 2020, I became full-time self-employed. So then I had more time on my hands to work on my books. I was trying to recreate the success of "What Happened in" books. That didn't happen with my second series. It doesn't resonate with people as much. It's almost more of an experimental series at this point. When I interviewed Lee Savino, she described it as the weird donkey in the back. I, and you have the fancy show ponies or whatever it is. I'm not really into horses; I'm a dog person. But you have the show ponies that lure people in, and you get them in that way, which would be the "What Happens In" or "Afterlife Course" series. Then you've got the weird donkeys in the back, which is the "Hollywood Gossip" books for me.
 
And it's such an analogy; three years ago, she said it, and it still sticks with me. But it is because Hollywood gossip is heavy. It covers so many things and a lot of detail. It covers alcoholism, eating disorders, death, grief, bullying in the workplace, and so many more things I can't even remember because it was just emotionally exhausting to write. It taught me a lot about myself, about writing, about my audience. I tend to find the people who love the Hollywood gossip books are the ones who will literally inhale anything I write, so they are like my super fans when they enjoy the Hollywood gossip books.
 
[00:03:41] Matty: And just orient me. The “Hollywood Gossip” ones, are they the show ponies or are they the weird donkeys?
 
[00:03:46] Kristina: They're the donkeys in the back. And this the show pony is "What Happened in New York."
 
And this is the first book anyway, and then there's five books in this series, and that leads into this series, which is a spin-off set in the same universe. So the Hollywood gossip books are more told from the perspective of the celebrities, whereas "What Happened in New York" and the books in that series are more told from the perspective of people like you and me, who are like, "What is this madness?" and then "Afterlife Calls" is Ghosts.
 
Based on what I'd experienced with the "What Happens In" books, I was trying to make sure I'd got four or five books in the series before I started marketing it properly, you know, doing the emails and doing the ads and stuff like that. That meant that I was writing Hollywood gossip and Afterlife Calls kind of alongside each other.
 
The creative price of too-rapid release
 
[00:04:43] Kristina: And it's, I do get bored easily, so it's nice to have that change of pace between the two. So I'd kind of alternate between which series I was working on. And it got to the point where after how stressful "Hollywood Heartbreak" was, and how far I pushed myself as a writer in later "Afterlife Calls " books, I just had no creative energy left.
 
I was like, I can't keep writing at this speed because I'm just going to quit altogether. And that was when I was like, Okay, so I need to slow down on my writing so that the quality doesn't suffer. Also, if I'm relying on my books as my sole source of income, I don't feel like I can enjoy the writing process, which is the thing I actually like. I hate publishing. I hate that process. But I also don't know how to outsource it for a bunch of reasons. So I had to find a way to do it that worked for me, and that has been slowing down. It's meant going back to doing writing. It's meant that the last Hollywood gossip book is with beta readers at the moment, and then I've got drafts of the next three "Afterlife Calls" books already just because I've been going back to writing and enjoying that writing process and thinking about some of the upcoming lore that I'm going to need. But the next lot of "Afterlife Calls" books, because there's a lot more, that book six expands on a lot of what's happened in the first five books.
 
If I was still releasing four to five books a year, there is no way I could have done that on this level. I couldn't have really done the research that I needed for some of the next books. I couldn't have enjoyed the process; I wouldn't have had the energy to grow other aspects of my business that make me money and still give me the dopamine from having finished something. And I would have been a shriveled heap on the floor, you know? I just couldn't do it.
 
And for me, when I was younger, I always said I wanted to make money from writing. I never specified what kind of writing it was. There was definitely a part of me that was like, am I a failure because I'm not doing it purely from writing fiction? But I can't keep publishing at that pace. It's not good for any of my health issues. It's not good for my books. It's not good for my readers. So I would much rather pull back and have that quality and enjoy writing for HR businesses as well, which I do.
 
What drove Kristina's rapid release schedule?
 
[00:07:09] Matty: When you were deciding to move to a more rapid release schedule than you originally had been doing, what were the drivers behind that? Because of things you are hearing in the industry, like other authors whose careers were models for you, primarily clamor from your readers, what was the impetus there?
 
[00:07:33] Kristina: It was always one of my goals to be able to publish four or five books in a year, just because, I don't know, mentally, that's what I wanted to be able to do. But yeah, it was that whole, everyone was saying, if you're not publishing this amount of books a year, you're going to lose readers, and you're not going to have the read-through, and you're not going to make as much money, and blah blah blah.
 
Keeping the writing sacred
 
[00:07:51] Kristina: I really had to reevaluate my priorities and take a step back and be like, well, do I want to rely on my creativity all day, every day, writing eight hours a day, like Nora Roberts? Or do I want to really keep that as sacred for me and enjoy that process? And if I had just kept going on that scale, I would have well and truly hated it, and I don't think I'd finish "The Afterlife Calls" books or "Hollywood Romance," to be honest. Because I can't express to you how much I was resenting having to finish the last book that I released back in March last year, which was "The Mean Girls Murder." And, you know, my readers have all said it's my best book ever, and their reviews have been amazing for it. But because I put so much work into it, and I'd put so much work into the previous "Afterlife Calls" book, and then found "Hollywood Heartbreak" so draining, it just got to the point where I needed to recharge and kind of reset because those goals of following the industry trends and doing what other people told me to do just didn't work for me.
 
Never say "I'm only" about your writing
 
[00:09:03] Matty: Yeah. I think that there are two things that this topic reminded me of. One is that I hear this somewhat less than I used to, but I still occasionally hear people saying, "I'm only writing a book a year." And I want to say, Dude, you're writing a book a year! that is a super impressive accomplishment, and I'm sure that there's some multi-millionaire author out there who's saying, "I only have 30 books, if I had 50, you know, then I'd be a real writer," or something like that, and anything I can do to encourage people not to have that kind of attitude about their work is good.
 
[00:09:40] Matty: But it also makes me think that, I think goals are so easily influenced by the community that you put yourself in. I realized this a couple of years ago that I was joining a lot of virtual groups, taking a lot of classes, and reading a lot of stuff or listening to podcasts. Almost by accident, I had affiliated myself with rapid-release authors, authors who were writing three or four or five books a year. Without really thinking about it critically, I started applying those standards to myself.
 
It wasn't until I started looking at how I was similar to and different from those authors that I realized trying to apply that business approach to my own writing just wasn't working, both for personal reasons, like you're describing, and for professional reasons. So, I do think it's important for people not to, especially early in their author career, affiliate themselves with groups before they are aware of these nuances and then stick with it uncritically.
 
Always be assessing whether the group of people you're surrounding yourself with is aligned with what you want to accomplish. It's not that one of the goals is good and one is bad, but one is more appropriate and one is less appropriate. You can really mess yourself up if you start holding yourself up to a measuring stick that is different than what's appropriate for you.
 
The need for sustainability in an author career
 
[00:11:04] Kristina: Yeah, I saw a really good video the other day by the YouTuber Marques Brownlee. He does tech videos and he's noticed a pattern where a lot of YouTubers have been quitting lately. He did a really good video on creative burnout, talking about it in comparison to YouTubers, but a lot of it resonated with me as well. He was saying, you know, you can love what you do, but it will still burn you out. He had this good analogy where he compared it to a Daft Punk music video that I forgot to look up. In the music video, a character starts walking, then running, sprinting, becomes a robot, and at the end, disintegrates because they're running so fast. It's a metaphor for burnout. You're running so fast; there is nothing left of you.
 
Just because you love something, it doesn't mean it can't exhaust you. That's what happened with me in fiction writing, and that's why I had to separate out what I was doing because it just wasn't sustainable. I loved it, but I hated it at the same time.
 
[00:12:14] Matty: Yeah, I think that point about burnout, people associate it with having to do things they don't want to. That reminder that no, you can burn out doing the things you love is a great one.
 
[00:12:24] Kristina: Well, it's interesting because I wish I could remember what psychologist said it, but apparently you're more likely to burn out if you love what you do because you will put more effort in. That really resonated with me. I was putting so much effort in, but the extra effort wasn't necessarily increasing my profits. And it's like, well, am I doing the wrong thing? Do I need to try this tactic instead?
 
Actually, you just need to put the brakes on. Because it's not chasing publishing that fulfills me. It's spending time with my characters and seeing my reader reactions. So that kind of middle bit is where I was spending all my time, when actually it's the beginning and the end that I enjoy. If I'm too focused on the publishing part of it, I never get time to actually enjoy the fun parts, at which point it gets to, well, why am I bothering?
 
Distinguishing burnout from temporary boredom
 
[00:13:14] Matty: Do you have any tips for how to distinguish true burnout from something more passing? As an example, I'm working on a non-fiction book; I'm now on my, I don't know, third or fourth or fifth pass through it, and I just have to say at this point I'm pretty bored with it. But that's just a passing thing. I recognize that as just a passing thing; pretty soon, I'm going to slog through the 150 pages, and then it'll be done, and that'll be great. But I think that's quite different than burnout. Are there markers that you noticed in yourself or you've noticed in other authors that say, no, this is truly burnout and now you have to look at changing things?
 
[00:13:53] Kristina: So I've learned a few authors get burnout, and quite often they will say, oh, I'm feeling depressed. It often starts with feeling depressed or feeling a bit more anxious or maybe they get sick more often. They tend to have more germs because the increased stress kills your good gut bacteria. So the bad bacteria comes in and has a party, and then you get the flu for three weeks.
 
Yeah, it does mess with you. So some of the other things, I suffer from hair loss. I developed new allergies that I never had before. I can't have rosemary oil on my scalp because it burns, and I've never had an issue with rosemary before. But it's little things, like you might be a bit snippier, you might lose your temper a bit more, feel angrier, get annoyed at something, like, you know, the dog's barking because another dog's walking past and you lose your temper.
 
If you've got other health conditions, like I've got asthma, for example, you might find they get exacerbated. My asthma is a lot more sensitive to things like candles than it used to be, or deodorant even.
 
You may find that you're just empty. I think that's the biggest thing, is there is nothing left in the tank. You open your work in progress and you go, what are words? And you want to write, you want to spend time with your characters, but you have absolutely no idea what to do, even if there's an outline right in front of you. You might try to type and you're like, is that a complete sentence? And then you might write that sentence and then you're like, I can't keep going.
 
The red flag of writing out of a sense of obligation
 
[00:15:19] Kristina: You might even resent opening your work in progress because it feels like you're doing it out of obligation. And I definitely think if it ever feels like you're writing something out of obligation, it is time to take a break from it. And that's part of why I took so long to do Hollywood Romance because it is very different from the previous book in that it is more of a romance, whereas Hollywood Heartbreak was, let's turn my characters to shreds emotionally. Because of that, it did rip me to shreds emotionally as well. When you're writing about grief, eating disorders, alcoholism, and all these things in one book, on top of having it overlap with previous books that you've written, worrying about the timeline and stuff, it really messes with your head.
 
The other thing is, I became a lot more scatterbrained, and it was through that that I realized I probably got ADHD. It really heightened that, to the point where I could not function, and it probably took me, well, I don't know if I'm fully recovered now, if I'm entirely honest with you. It was part of why we put the Writer's Mindset on hold because I could not keep going. I had to cut back. We spoke to Becca Syme on September 22 about burnout. We talked about people who burn out repeatedly. She said it's the people who want to go back to how things were before they burn out that are more likely to burn out again because you are repeating the same pattern.
 
To avoid that burnout, you have to stop and change how you do things. That's why I stopped and changed how I did things, doing client work, publishing my books, doing the podcast, juggling my health issues, juggling the dog's health issues, it's a lot. Sometimes those little things that you don't consciously realize do drain you. So it is those little things, I think.
 
[00:17:31] Matty: Yeah, I like the example that you had given earlier about the fact that you sometimes had multiple projects going on. This is more a way to address those things that are more temporary, not true burnout, but just exhaustion with a particular project. I'm almost always only working on one fiction work at a time, but I always have a little pool of non-fiction work. If I start thinking, I really don't want to write another chapter of this novel, I'll have something to switch to. Then I find that refreshes me because it's using a different part of my brain, exercising different muscles. I can go back to the fiction work more refreshed.
 
Deciding what to stop
 
[00:18:11] Matty: The example of the Writer's Cookbook, that you did the work but continued the podcast, that's a whole different flavor of decision-making. I imagine that decision to stop doing something you've been doing for so long and were so invested in was quite difficult but necessary for you to avoid this burnout. Can you talk a little bit about that decision?
 
[00:18:35] Kristina: Yeah, so I'd been feeling pretty exhausted anyway for most of 2021-2022. We had the talks with Becca Syme in August-September 2022, and then Ellie and I went away for a few days for a business conference. Ellie suggested to me, you know, do you want to put this on hold because it is eating into so much of your time?
 
I did the math and thought, well, I have limited time and energy. The podcast was taking up a significant amount of my time, leaving me with less time for novel writing (the fun stuff) and less time for client work (the thing that pays the bills). And the client work, I kind of see how the nonfiction serves as a reset, a change of pace, a change of focus, but it's still the writing muscles.
 
Analyzing the trifecta: fun, energy, and money
 
We got to the point where, you know what? I think it's better to put this on hold because I truly did not want to do it anymore. I hated it. Ellie works full time and has her own stuff to deal with.
 
It got to the point where it wasn't fun; it was draining and felt more like an obligation. The same happened with the blogs on the Writer's Cookbook. I didn't want to write them anymore. It didn't feel fun, had a lower ROI than everything else I was doing, and took a lot of energy. That's kind of the trifecta, if you will. Is it fun? How much energy does it take? Is it making me money? If the answer is no to all those things, I'm quite harsh these days, and it ends up going in the bin.
 
I don't always enjoy posting to LinkedIn, but it gets me client work. It's semi-fun because I get to talk to people, raise awareness about things that matter to me, like disability in the workplace, and I get money from it. Whereas the podcast won't make a minimum wage, and I hated doing it, and Ellie didn't have the time to do it. So there was no reason for us to keep going.
 
[00:20:48] Matty: That sounds like a pretty straightforward decision.
 
[00:20:51] Kristina: Well, exactly. The fun part for me is talking to other people. And I can do that by being a guest on their podcast.
 
[00:20:56] Matty: Yeah. I like that trifecta, and I think the trick is taking a moment to step back and apply those considerations to the work you're doing. It's a whole other thing. Every once in a while, after spending hours editing a podcast episode or whatever, I think, can I justify continuing to do this? So far, I have because I love it. It takes a lot of time and doesn't make me a lot of money. It's hard balancing personal considerations like I love doing this against the business considerations, which is, I could be spending my time some other way and making more money. I think the pointer to step back and remember to do that assessment periodically is super important.
 
The creative value of stepping away from the work
 
[00:21:41] Kristina: I get asked quite a lot how you let go because you seem so good at sacrificing things. I'm like, because I don't have a choice. When you get to the point where getting out of bed is painful and more tiring than staying in bed, you have to prioritize. You have to choose to do those few stretches and a meditation over doing some podcast editing. Personally, if I don't walk the dog, if I don't do some stretches, if I don't take a hot or an exceptionally cold shower, the blood flow is not going, and everything hurts more. So I need that movement to relax the muscles and be able to do more work. I've not done as much exercise the last few days, and I can feel it. Several of my muscles that are bad are a lot more painful than they would normally be if I'd taken 10, 15, 20 minutes out of my day to do some yoga.
 
So, obviously, that's my fault because I've not been prioritizing it. But this whole "you need to rest," it's not always as simple as you need to spend more time in bed. It's about that change of pace and reassessing your priorities. Is it more important to get out, get some fresh air, spend some time in nature, or is it more important to give yourself eye strain from editing that next chapter when you don't really want to do it?
 
[00:23:07] Matty: Yeah, this is something I continually struggle with. So this is more of a "do as I say, not as I do." But one approach I used to try to trick myself into this is to treat those things that are easy to set aside like a business assignment. Putting an entry on my calendar that says after my writing sprint, "Go for a walk," and it's on my calendar like a business meeting. So it's a little bit harder to say, "I could go for a walk, or I could go review and refine my Facebook ads," because it's, you know, you go review and refine your Facebook ads, you get a little hopefully more or less immediate sense of accomplishment by doing that. Maybe you get an actual bump in financial payback by doing that. Trying to keep in mind that the walk is just as important for different reasons for your long-term well-being, personally and professionally. It's very hard.
 
I mean, I've interviewed a number of people, and I'll try to remember to put links to these episodes in the show notes for this one, but I've interviewed a bunch of people about incorporating exercise and movement into a creative life. And you know what, this shouldn't be this hard, but it's this hard. It's hard to do.
 
[00:24:26] Kristina: It's so hard because you want to spend all your time writing. But legitimately, no one can spend all their time writing. I remember with my previous book, "The Mean Girls Murder," the first round of beta readers, they were like, "I get what you're trying to do. It's not working." It's not working because I upped the ante so much with the previous book, "The Witch’s Sacrifice," that when I tried to tone it down and make it a bit more cutesy with Book five, no. No, you need to redo this. So I was like, crap, what do I do? And that was probably the most significant rewrite I've done since some of my early books. And I had no idea what to do.
 
But I decided to just take Millie for a walk to clear my head. And I actually discovered somewhere new in our local area, which is where the books are set. It was the most gorgeous graveyard, and it's so pretty to walk around. The way the light comes through the trees, it's so atmospheric. And when you're writing ghost stories, come on. From walking around that, I came up with the new antagonist for the book, who is a psychopathic Victorian doctor. If I hadn't taken that time out to take Millie for a walk, I never would have come up with him. But it was walking through that Victorian graveyard, with the light coming through the trees, and the layout of it, and the church, and how secluded it is, even though it's right in the middle of town. That helped me come up with these ideas.
 
I think that's the thing—when you're stuck, or bored, or restless, or pick any negative emotion, snapping yourself out of it by getting out of the house can be quite underestimated. I don't know if you find this, Matty, but I find having a dog quite useful because when I don't want to get up and get out, she won't give me a choice. She won't go to the toilet in the back garden. So to make sure she's been to the toilet, we have to leave the house.
 
[00:26:27] Matty: Yeah, letting your dog relieve herself is probably the ultimate incentive to get out of the house, but yes, having dogs does help. I would also encourage, because I'm suspecting that a lot of the people who are listening have this same issue of, "I'm just going to do this one more thing, one more thing, one more thing," and then you realize it's the end of the day and you don't have time anymore. It's dark, you can't go for a walk. I would encourage people, if nothing else, to try this experiment of actually putting an item on your calendar that says, "Get outside, go for a walk, go to your coffee shop," and don't write, maybe.
 
[00:27:00] Kristina: Socialize. I find that really helpful. I've made some new friends locally in the last year, and when I'm in a bad mood, I will either text one of them and say, "Do you want to go for a walk?" or I will go to my other friend who runs a dog-friendly cafe, so I can vent to one of them and get it out of my system, either get food or exercise, and I feel like a different person when I get home an hour or two later. And that does make a difference, to have those friends that you see in person, and that exercise, that nutrition, that, you know, a problem shared is a problem halved, and all of those things, it does make a massive difference.
 
[00:27:40] Matty: Yeah, this isn't seeing people in person, but I do have a daily writing sprint between 12 o'clock every day except Friday, and it's with a small group of fellow writers. I really like that because we don't socialize a lot. That's part of the rule. This is mainly sprinting, but there's always like a minute or two at the beginning, a minute or two at the end where we kind of catch each other up. The other thing that's helpful is it's a marker in the day. So when I am successful at exercising, it is usually because that's what I do right after the sprint. Like I know 12:30 to two is the sprint and then two to three is when I go for the walk. It's also a marker. like it keeps me from just doing administrative stuff that trickles through the whole day because what I always try to do is restrict anything I'm doing other than writing to the time before 12:30. It is kind of a marker like that.
 
Right-timed release
 
[00:29:05] Matty: Well, I think we've shared a bunch of great tips about avoiding burnout, recognizing burnout, and avoiding burnout. Let's take the conversation back to the idea of right-timed release. So, as somebody who puts out more or less one fiction book a year—one of my pieces of advice is don't let anybody say I'm only publishing one book a year.  That's just wrong. But as a way to wrap up, talk a little bit about the right-timed release schedule that you set for yourself once you've recognized that we're contending with this burnout.
 
[00:29:37] Kristina: Yeah, all I knew was that after I finished "The Mean Girls Murder" and "Hollywood Heartbreak," the characters in both series were in a decent enough place where it wasn't a massive cliffhanger readers were waiting for, and so I could leave them for a little bit. And then I thought, well, I'm going to go back to basics. I'm going to write the sixth "Afterlife Calls" book. Then I got to a certain point in book six, and I was like, well, this is going to directly affect the next few books, if not the entire series, because of, like I mentioned earlier, building on the lore and expanding it, introducing new characters, all those things.
 
And so I skipped ahead, and I wrote book 7, and I wrote book 8, and I outlined part of book 9 and started writing it as well. Because I wasn't sure what I needed. It was through writing the opening of book 9 that I realized. And then, weirdly, after I had the flu, I started to hear the characters from "Hollywood Romance" again and went back to that.
 
It's only because I've slowed down, I feel like the books are in a better place. That sounds like they've crossed over or something. I'm happy with the books. For me, I think what it is a case of is that periodically I go into, like, a period of hibernation, if you will, where I recharge. I am exploring that creativity again.
 
My plan this year is to release two books. There's a possibility that it will be three, but that's only because I took the time last year to write them. If I hadn't given myself that room to explore, I don't think I'd be as happy with where they are now. In terms of the actual plot, I like to plan slightly far ahead, but not too far. That allows me to foreshadow without getting bored. I'm sitting on book six, but I'm writing book twelve, and that's a bit much for me.
 
When I get to a certain point, I just want to finish the book and share it with people because it's been in my head for so long. I came up with "Afterlife Calls" in 2020, published the first book in 2021, and I was already thinking about book 5. By the time book 3 was out, I was thinking about book 10. In my head, the characters have done a lot more than what other people have read, and there's a lot more in the cast. There's some really new stuff that I'm so excited to share with people, and I'm trying not to give stuff away. It's really hard.
 
Involving your readers
 
[00:32:13] Matty: I think the consideration of reader expectations is really important. One of the lessons people could take from what you just said is that you don't necessarily need to choose a release schedule and stick with it forever. The trick is making sure that readers understand what the ride is going to be like. If you have multiple series as you do, then a good approach might be having different schedules for different ones. If you publish a couple of books and set an expectation that they're going to get one every four months or something like that, it requires a certain level of communication with the reader base to say, "This is why there's going to be a little bit of a stretch before the next one." Or you organize your release schedule across series in a way that they're consistent among the series, but they don't have to be consistent with each other. You might have one that you're publishing once a year, you might have one that you're publishing three times a year, and the readers of each of those series will have that expectation.
 
[00:33:13] Kristina: Yeah, and I think this is a good tip when people go, "I don't know what to write about in my newsletter on my socials." Talk about your writing process because I've been honest with my authors and my authors with my readers and said, look, I'm knackered. I can't write “Hollywood Romance” yet because “Hollywood Heartbreak” destroyed me. It did, you know. There is a piece of my soul in every one of my books, but that one—I cried reading it every single time I got to a certain scene, I cried.
 
I've never had that with any of my other books, and I've published 20. I was in pieces every time. That book took so much effort. I said to people, "Look, Hollywood Romance is coming eventually, but I can't tell you when." I've been quite frank since the Mean Girls murder came out, saying how drained I have been and how I've needed to recharge. Some people are afraid to be open and honest with their readers. If that's you, fair enough, but I was upfront and said, "I cannot keep going at this pace."
 
I need to slow down. Every single one of my readers, whether they've been with me from the start or found me from my last September book, has said, "We would rather you look after yourself and be in this for the long haul than exhaust yourself." I go through Hollywood romance, and I feel I can spot more minute details in it that add to the world and really bring it out than if I had been just constantly trying to focus on, "Is this going to hit the release date? Is this going to be out on exactly the date I've set?"
 
So when I do pre-orders, I will always set it for the furthest date possible. I say to my readers, "I've set this for a year's time. This is where the book is now. It will probably be out sooner, but, you know, I have six chronic health issues. Occasionally, that does put a spanner in the works." They understand that, and that makes a massive difference because it almost feels like it's a load off. For them to understand and know that they will still be there, still enjoying my books, still sharing them with their friends, that they are the kind of readers that you want. Yes, you'll need the casual readers as well because they do make a difference as well, but it is the superfans who will help you grow that platform and turn into friends sometimes.
 
Matty: Yeah, and I think that people, your superfans are going to personally want you to do whatever's most healthy for you. But I think maybe a final tip that I'm gleaning from what you're saying is that I think sometimes people force themselves through burnout, through personal burnout, because they think they're achieving a professional goal.
 
But I think in the end, your personal well-being is so caught up in the quality of the work you can put out that it's not just a personal decision, it's a professional decision if you say exactly as you're saying, "Look, I need to give myself another month, I need to ask my publisher for another month, another six months, whatever it is." Because that's not only going to be a better personal result for me, but it's going to be a better professional result for the reader, a better experience for the reader.
 
Kristina: Totally. I was originally planning to release Mean Girl October 22. I'd got it up for pre-order on everywhere but Amazon, basically. And it got to September when I had those beta reader comments, and I was like, "I can't put this out. I know it needs changing." I was upfront and told them I was pushing it until the end of March.
 
The amount of comments I got from people saying, "We understand, take a break, make it the best you can be, we will still be there." Then the level of comments I got when it came out in March, saying it was the best book I'd ever written. This from people who've read every single one of my books.
 
You know, I don't want to say that the burnout was worth it, but slowing down was worth it because, isn't that the kind of comments people want from their readers? Saying how good the book is? You don't get comments like one of my readers, the only review that I can remember verbatim, is one of my ARC readers called me “the queen of character writing.” And that's always stuck with me. You don't get that from constantly burning yourself out and resenting what you're doing. You get that from loving the craft, from loving your characters, from spending time with the world, and engaging with your readers.
 
Matty: So great. Well, I can't think of a better way to wrap up a conversation about the right time to release. So, Kristina, thank you so much. Please let the listeners and the viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and your work and everything you do online.
 
Kristina: Yeah, so the best place to find me is KristinaAdamsAuthor.com, and that's where you'll find all of my books, including the stuff that I plan to release this year. I've been doing a few blog posts about stuff that happened in 2023 as well, like my five days of power dressing experiment and stuff I've learned about the microbiome. It's really random stuff, but it kind of helps me to think and digest it, if you will, when I write that kind of stuff. And if you want to find my HR stuff that I've been talking about, that's KristinaProffitt.com.
 
Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
 
Kristina: Thank you for having me.

Episode 224 - Secrets of Maximizing In-person Sales with Todd Fahnestock

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Todd Fahnestock discusses SECRETS OF MAXIMIZING IN-PERSON SALES, including the background of Todd’s less than successful early in-person sales experiences; his first success, and what he learned from it; how to find the opportunities, and the power of saying yes to everything (with some caveats); how to achieve a professional set-up, including advice on effective banner design, book displays, and use of QR codes; the four categories of readers, and tips for improving your changes of a sale for each; how to overcome the fear of being too salesy; options for a low impact approach when sales is not your main goal; the vital importance of understanding your goals and of knowing your numbers; and the importance of setting boundaries and conserving your energy.

Todd Fahnestock is an award-winning, #1 bestselling author of fantasy for all ages and winner of the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age Award. He is a founder of Eldros Legacy—a multi-author, shared-world epic fantasy series—two-time winner of the Colorado Authors League Award for Writing Excellence, and four-time finalist for the Colorado Book Award for Tower of the Four: The Champions Academy, Khyven the Unkillable, Lorelle of the Dark, and Tower of the Four: The Dragon’s War. His passions are great stories and his quirky, fun-loving family.

Episode Links

Author website: https://toddfahnestock.com/
Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/todd.fahnestock
Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/todd_fahnestock/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indie Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Todd Fahnestock. Hey Todd, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:06] Todd: Hi, I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. This is great.
 
Meet Todd Fahnestock
 
[00:00:10] Matty: It is my pleasure to have you here. To give our listeners and viewers a little more background on you, Todd Fahnestock is an award-winning, number-one best-selling author of Fantasy for All Ages and the winner of the New York Public Library's Book for the Teenage Award. He's the founder of Eldross Legacy, a multi-author, shared-world epic fantasy series. He's a two-time winner of the Colorado Authors League Award for Writing Excellence and a four-time finalist for the Colorado Book Award for "Tower of the Four," "The Champion's Academy," "Hive and the Unkillable," "Laurel of the Dark," and "The Tower of the Four: The Dragon's War." His passions are making great stories and his quirky, fun-loving family.
 
I invited Todd on the podcast because I heard him talk at 20 Books Vegas about the secrets of maximizing in-person sales. This is something that was of great interest to me because, after a long period of weighing going to in-person sales and feeling like the time investment really wasn't paying me back in the ways I wanted to be paid back, I finally, at the end of last year, 2023, decided to rethink that, and I am focused much more on in-person sales now.
 
Todd's early in-person sales experiences
 
[00:01:14] Matty: I've already implemented a couple of the tips that you shared at 20 Books and will be sharing here. So, Todd, I always think it's fun to start out when someone has become an expert on a topic, as you have about in-person sales, just to make us all feel a little bit better. Talk to us a little more about your early experiences, maybe before you learned the lessons you're going to be sharing with us today.
 
[00:01:33] Todd: Yeah, I mean, I think it's funny that people are starting to call me an expert in this field at all. Like I'm still stumbling along and learning things and figuring things out. But there's definitely been some successes along the way. But I'll start with the opposite. Because one of the things I really enjoy talking about is my failures, my crushing failures over and over. So yeah, so it was, I believe it was 2017. And I'll back up a little bit. So I went full time in 2017. Not because all of a sudden I had the lucrative 6-figure contract or anything like that. But because my wife and I decided to swap places. She had been the stay-at-home parent for the first 7-8 years of the kid's life. And she's, you know, I would actually like to use my college degree, get out into the workforce, do some things, make my stamp there, and I'm like, you don't have to twist my arm, I'll go home, I'll stay home, I'll write. And so, we kind of switched places, and of course, I mean, that's probably a very skewed version. I had been wanting to get home and write for a long time. I didn't tell that part. I'd kind of been, like, hammering on her, I want to stay home and write. So we finally made that switch.
 
And at the time, I had just, in 2016, released "The Wishing World," two TOR books. And I was waiting for them to pick up the sequel because, you know, we hit the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Top 10 list right up there with names like Dan Brown and some pretty big names from a lot of promotion that I had done locally. And they didn't pick up the second book.
 
So what was going to kick off my going full time as a writer didn't happen. It's like the floor dropped out from underneath me, and you know that's a lesson. One should never count on getting another book contract unless it's a three-book contract or four-book contract or whatever multiple book contract to start, and I had relied on that, and it didn't come through. My goal was to make 20 grand the first year, 50 grand the second year, and then be off and running, having a replacement income for what I was doing. And that first year, I made fourteen hundred dollars. It was just so, so, I mean, I was lost. I remember in October running around to some of my nonprofit cronies, going, "Have you got a job for me? Because I may need a job in like about a month and a half."
 
But one of the things my fabulously supportive wife said to me is, "You know, I'm like, what do I do? What do I do? I'm writing novels, but I've got no connection between me and where I need to go as far as making money." And she said, "Just say yes to everything. Anything that comes along, regarding writing, if somebody wants you to teach a class on writing, you say yes. If somebody wants to come down and volunteer reading to kids at the library, you say yes." So I just kind of took that attitude.
 
When the Colorado Authors League reached out to all the members of the Colorado Authors League, of which I was one, I planned that and still am at this point, actually on the board of CAL at this point, but they reached out and said, "Hey, we've got a holiday market that we're going to. If you want to, you can pay $50, come down, you'll get two hours on Friday, two hours on Saturday, two hours on Sunday, and sell books." And I was like, "Well, that sounds horrible. I don't want to do that. I'm a writer. I don't want to be a salesman, right?" But I thought of what my wife said, you know, say yes to everything. So I'm like, "Okay, what else am I doing? I'm going to go down."
 
So I went down on Friday, and I tried so hard to sell books. I was looking at the other authors that were selling books, and the ones that were, like, getting out there were like, "Hey, come on over here. It's the Colorado Authors League. Find a Colorado author that you like, and you can get a book in any genre." And it just sounded so horrible to me. I didn't want to be some 1800s barker with a shoe slamming on the table saying, "Come on over, you know, get a box of popcorn if you buy a book." Whatever, right?
 
And I tried that. I felt awful. I sold zero books on Friday, went home completely dejected. Of course, I had two more slots, one on Saturday, one on Sunday. I said to Laura, "This sucks. This is not, you know," and she's like, "Well, at least you tried it, so I'll finish out the weekend." I went in on Saturday, and I'm like, "You know what? I got to readjust my attitude because I just, I'm hating being here. I need to not hate being here." Well, I love the holidays, right? And it's a holiday market, so there's Christmassy stuff everywhere. So I'm like, "You know what? I'm just going to get into the holiday mood a bit and just sort of relax."
 
I'm like, okay, I'm happy to be here, and I don't have to do anything. I don't have to slam my shoe on the table. I'm just going to sit here. I'll just wait it out until the end, and then I'll be done.
 
Todd's first success
 
Across the aisle, there was a Christmas store, a Christmas booth with wreaths and all kinds of other stuff. A mother was looking at a wreath, and a little girl, like seven years old, maybe six years old, was holding onto her mom's hand. She had turned around to look at my poster, my "The Wishing World" banner. I caught her eye, and she immediately went and looked away and wouldn't look at me. I just chuckled because, you know, at the time, my kids were close to that age, maybe a little bit older, and so I love kids. I thought, "Okay, well, this is something I can do. I can play with this kid who's looking over at the banner, then looking away from the banner."
 
Later on, she comes up, kind of scared to come any closer, looking at the banner. I asked her, "Do you like this kind of story?" She said, "Uh-huh, I do." I said, "Do you want me to tell you about it?" She said, "Yeah, yeah, you can tell me about it." So I started telling her the story. I'm a storyteller. I love talking about my stories. By the end of the day, I had half a dozen kids gathered around the booth, listening to story time. By the end of the weekend, I'd sold 33 books. All the Colorado authors were coming up to me, saying, "How did you do that? That was the most we've seen sold in a weekend here by one single author. How the heck did you do that?" I said, "I don't know. I wasn't doing any sales tactic or anything like that. I was just telling stories."
 
So that's what I went forward with—this genuine, heartfelt urge to tell my story. That was the first success. I did another one, and that one went okay. Some of them went better than others. Eventually, there were some leveling up, which we can get into as we go forward.
 
Say yes to everything
 
[00:08:09] Matty: Well, I have all sorts of questions that I want to delve into, but I do want to ask you one question that's not related to in-person sales. The "say yes to everything" advice obviously worked out really well for you, based on the stories you're going to be telling, but it also sounds like it could be a recipe for a nervous breakdown. On this other topic, just for a minute, can you talk a little bit about, did you have to moderate the "say yes to everything"? What made it more likely that it turned out well for you than it turned into a nervous breakdown?
 
[00:08:39] Todd: Absolutely. No, that is a very good point. The "say yes to everything" was certainly situational advice that my wife had given me because I had nothing to do. I was at home, I was writing, but I knew that to level up my career, I had to do more than just write books at home. Right? So I had to do something, and I didn't know what to do. So she's like, how about you say yes to everything? Any little opportunity that comes along until you find your feet. Of course, I mean, now I have to say no to all kinds of things, right? I can't say yes to everything because, like you said, there's not enough of me to go around, and I still do need to write books at home. So you’ve got to chunk out a certain amount of time for that. But I got to get out and sell at cons, so I got to chunk out a certain amount of time for that, plus conferences, writers’ conferences, chunk out time for that, plus family, plus all the different things, right? So, yeah, you can't continue saying yes to everything all the time.
 
But the problem that I had was that I had nothing to do and my career was kind of flat. Now the career is on a right trend, so it's like saying no to certain things and then making the judgment call of, okay, what's going to push the career forward, what's going to just waste time, those kinds of things. There's still an art form, I think, to what to say yes to and what to say no to, which is probably a completely entire other topic that I could go into for a very long time, but yeah, I didn't continue just saying yes to everything. Eventually, your dance card gets full, but that's what you want, right? I mean, that's the whole point of saying yes to everything in the beginning, is that you want to fill up your dance card, and then once it's full, then you're off and rolling.
 
[00:10:13] Matty: Yep. And you can pick the people you want to dance with.
 
[00:10:16] Todd: Exactly, exactly.
 
The importance of a professional set-up
 
[00:10:19] Matty: So one of the things you had sort of mentioned in passing is, well, one of the things you mentioned in your talk at Vegas is the importance of a professional setup. And it sounds like you started out with at least some of that because you had something at your booth that attracted the attention of a little girl. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of a professional setup?
 
[00:10:37] Todd: Yeah, so it seems to me that the biggest difficulty of selling face-to-face is breaking it down into four different categories of people, right? It's a matter of catching attention. So the setup is one way that you can catch the attention of people. Another one is talking to them, right? Another one is having a welcoming demeanor, right? Another one is what you're wearing, even, right? I oftentimes in my Conquering the Con, I talk about, you have an opportunity all over the place. Are you maximizing those opportunities? How do you set up the books on your table?
 
Tips for effective banners
 
[00:11:18] Todd: That's another opportunity. So the setup, I mean, to me, it has to start with the books, right? You've got books, and you're going to put books up, so that's one thing. But another thing is the banners. The biggest thing that attracts people to my booth from a distance is going to be my banners. That is the staple. I've seen all kinds of different banners, and I'm not going to call anybody out for the way that they want to decorate their booth, but my personal thought is the fewer words you have, the better you're going to attract people from a distance. It's important to have a couple of things on there, but man, you better choose your words carefully.
 
If you've got a banner that has prose going all the way down the front of it, I mean, who likes to look at that? We all love to read. Anybody listening to this podcast is probably an avid reader, right? We all love to read. But catching somebody's attention out in the wild, out in the world, is not the same thing, right? We are visual creatures from a distance. We're far more inclined. Now, I'm not speaking for everybody. I'm sure there are some people that are like, "Ooh, words," and they'll come closer, right? I'm talking about sort of this mainstream attitude of what's going to catch the most fish in your net.
 
There are lots of specifics that will catch very specific clusters of people. If that is your entire audience, then don't listen to me. Do what you know that cluster of people is going to be attracted to. But for my part, let me just speak about epic fantasy, right? So I do my epic fantasy banner, and I told my artist, and this is my big 8x8 banner that, and I've got three 8x8 banners at this point, but the one 8x8 banner that I take with me no matter where I go is my "Tower of the Four" banner, which I told my artists, I'm like, "Okay, I want this to scream epic fantasy."
 
Which means we need a dude with a sword, somebody with a sword's got to be on that banner. We need a dragon, right? And we need somebody working magic. If you're trying to capture the people who like that fantasy-esque feel of this exotic place full of beauty and danger, then a good-looking female protagonist on the banner, not a bad idea either. So that was everything that my banner had, right? Had to do with the sword, had a fierce female mage working magic, and it had a dragon, right?
 
So this image from a distance, you can see it from a hundred feet away. You can see the dragon. You can't really see the characters. Maybe you can see the guy drawing the sword, but you're definitely going to see this dragon that is crouching in over the whole thing. And I've had people come up to me and say, "Man, that thing caught my eye from way up the aisle, and I had to come over and see what this was about." Boom.
 
And I've seen other people do banners where, and this is to give advice to writers who are doing this. We want people to understand our work as a writer. I get that, right? But understand that we can't make somebody who's walking by a booth understand all of the nuance and all of the character development and the world-building and the originality of our work in five seconds. We can't do it. Nobody can do that, right? So, what we have to do is give them almost this, and this is going to sound horrible to some of the authors out there, this cheating illusion for a moment, right?
 
That it's just not what the book is about, but it sort of talks about the tropes, right? You just want to create a funnel, right? All I want is people that are vaguely interested in dudes with swords, girl working magic, and a big dragon, right? That's all I need to funnel the audience this way. Once I get them closer, then there are next steps. But for that first one, I don't want to make it complicated. Like I said, image over text. So, I've seen some banners where it's, "Oh, I want to make sure all of my books are shown," because part of us as writers is like, we want to feel worthy to be writers. Every writer I've ever met has imposter syndrome. Every single one. The successful ones and the non-successful ones alike, or the newbies and the successful ones alike. Everybody's got it. We wonder if we're really worthy to put stories out into the world that people are going to want to read, right? So, we want to prove to them our credibility.
 
I think this works really well in non-fiction books, but for fiction books, it's more important to get them pulled in based on what genre they like, based on the kinds of things that they're going to be interested in, right? When they get closer, then, like I said, you can start pouring on the layers. But for the image, don't put all your books up on a big 8x8 banner. It is, in my opinion, a waste of an 8x8 banner. You've got all this real estate, and you've put four images on. Guess what you just did? You just shrank your images a quarter of the size that they could be, and you put four of them up. So now, people aren't really looking at anything. They're looking at four books, you know? That's what they see from a distance is, "Oh, there are four books over there," as opposed to, "Whoa, dragon and magic," you know? I mean, that's what I want them to think when they're walking up to my booth.
 
[00:16:19] Matty: Yeah, I was inspired by your talk to get two banners of my own. I made them on Canva and then I ordered them through Canva, and there was only one retractable banner size. I decided I wanted to make them plain for all the reasons that you're describing and also so they wouldn't get outdated because if I put all my book covers on them, then the next time I put a book out, suddenly they're outdated. I didn't want them to get outdated because I doubt this is much in comparison to the 8x8 thing, but they were like 150 bucks apiece, so I wanted to make sure I was going to be getting my money's worth out of them. So one of them has, I have one for my nonfiction, one for my fiction, the one for my nonfiction just has my logo, my name, the writing craft, and the publishing voyage. That's everything that's on one.
 
[00:17:06] Matty: And then, the other one has my name and the two series titles. I have my name separating the middle, and I have the series title and the cover background of one at the top and the series title and the cover background of the other at the bottom. They turned out to be so big that, being 5'4, I'm not tall enough to hook them at the top of the little...
 
[00:17:29] Todd: Are they three feet by seven feet banners?
 
[00:17:31] Matty: I think they must be. But that was fun, and it does attract attention. Also, the other tip that I came up with was not putting anything too low that you want to make sure people see because if it's behind your table, then people are going to miss that, yeah. But it does make a nice backdrop.
 
[00:17:48] Todd: Absolutely. And here's another sort of hack that you can do. You can get a plastic bench at Costco or Walmart or wherever, and you can jack those banners up another foot and a half because those little legs on them, you can turn them so that they're at an angle and they'll still stay up. If you get a stiff breeze in there, they might fall over, but I mean, come on, you're in a con setting; probably there's not going to be any breezes going by. So yeah, you can do that also. I've done that before, where I have like a bench, and I jack up those 3x7 banners. So, that works too, to get a little extra visibility.
 
[00:18:22] Matty: Yeah. Another pro tip.
 
Finding the Opportunities
 
[00:18:24] Matty: So, there were other things about setup that I wanted to talk about, but I realized that we really haven't talked yet about finding the opportunity. Is finding the opportunity something you should be looking at first, or do you already have your setup, and then you look for opportunities?
 
Don't Knock the Small Events
 
[00:18:41] Todd: Yeah, so for me, it happened really organically. Like I said, I got invited to do this Christmas thing. And my advice to somebody who's just starting out in this is: Don't knock the small events.
 
I mean, the small events are where you can cut your teeth on your pitch and things like that, and there's not a lot of investment. At this point, I'm paying as much as $1,700 for a booth in certain areas. You don't want any piece of that unless you know you're going to make $2,000, $3,000 from that con. You'll never earn your money back.
 
But some of these local holiday fairs, like I started at, that I still go to—I still go to that same holiday fair; I've got my own booth now—but I mean, I still go to that holiday fair. It's one of the more expensive booths that I pay for, but it's totally worth it.
 
If you start small, you could go to a local farmer's market or something like that, get a booth for 50 bucks, and then you're not on the hook to sell 100 books. All you’ve got to do is sell 10, and you can go home saying, "Hey, I paid my booth cost back, and I got a little extra change on top of it, and I met some new superfans." My assistant actually just got a new book out, and she's starting to build her, in-person sales in Utah. She's setting up at this little atrium off of the symphony—people get out of the symphony, and they come out and they're buying books and things like that.
 
There are so many different places to sell books, and she's getting her pitch in shape, right? Because it only cost her so much money, and she's not on the hook to make a whole ton of money, so she gets to play around with the pitch. You talk, you know, you do a pitch to this one person, and they're like, "Ew," and they walk away like they smelled something bad, and you're like, "Okay, I need to adjust that pitch." So you get to try on the next person, and there's not a whole lot of pressure on you to really perform.
 
That's what I would recommend to start. So, any city's community calendar is going to have these types of local sales opportunities. And then, of course, there's the con circuit, the comic con circuit. For somebody who sells science fiction or fantasy, it's great for that. For somebody who sells mystery, it could work.
 
I mean, I've never sold mystery books, so I really couldn't tell you firsthand, but I know that the fans coming to a comic con are not completely plugged into that, though I'm sure there are plenty of them that would buy a mystery. So I'm not saying don't do it, but you make the call based on what you think is going to work best.
 
Know Your Numbers
 
[00:21:16] Matty: Setting aside the size of the event, any types of events, like I think you mentioned in Vegas that craft fairs turn out to be a surprisingly successful approach because it's not wall-to-wall books.
 
[00:21:30] Todd: Yeah! Yeah! So, I mean, you’ve got to kind of do the math on it. You go to, say, FanX, and FanX has 70,000 people showing up as attendees, but it also has, you know, probably 100 authors there, all in Artist Alley trying to sell their books, right? So let's say, you know, 10,000 of those 70,000 are people that are going to buy books, right?
 
And then, you know, so you divide that by, let's say there's 100 authors there. I'm not big on math, so if I screw this up, you got it, but I figure if I'm working with 10,000 and 100, I should be able to figure that out. So that's like 1,000 people per—is that right? I've already screwed it up. Anyways, you get my point.
 
There's a certain amount of people that you can expect will buy your book, you know, if they haven't already bought somebody else's. If you're at a small event, right, and there's a thousand people at this event, and you're the only author, and ten percent of that thousand people are going to buy books, they're all coming to your booth.
 
So you're going to make as much money there as you might at Comic Con, and it's going to be way cheaper for you to get into that booth, right? So that's something to think about. Just, I mean, I'm always looking at the numbers, despite the fact that I'm mathematically challenged. I use spreadsheets to help me out with that, right?
 
Because you have to know the numbers. You have to know them. If you're going to a con and you sold 300 books, and you're like, "Wow! I am making so much money!" But the costs to drive there, to put you up at a hotel, to eat food there, to get the booth, and that sort of thing, not to mention the cost of the books, you could be underwater.
 
You could have made $3,000 at that con, and you're $1,000 in the hole, you know, as opposed to this little con where you made $500 and you only spent $150, you made $350. Your net is higher at that small event where you only sold 30 books than this other event where you sold 300. I mean, you have to pay attention to that. Otherwise, your business is going to go down by the head.
 
[00:23:16] Matty: Yeah, I'm definitely not at a point where I'm planning on going anywhere that requires me to stay overnight unless I'm there anyway, you know, for other reasons, and there's an opportunity to sell books, but.
 
Tips for Displaying Your Books
 
[00:23:30] Matty: You had also talked about the setup of the actual books on the table. Can you talk about that a little?
 
[00:23:35] Todd: Yes. Okay, so everybody's got their way of looking at this, and some people really, like some readers, some customers, really like the idea of walking into a library, right? That's kind of what draws them, right? And so that's definitely an effective way of doing it. I've seen, you know, Barnes and Noble setups or tatter cover setups, where essentially they create a little library. You walk in, and you've got all the books lined up, or rather I should say a bookstore. You know, you've got the sort of typical racks and that sort of thing with the books facing out and that sort of thing, and some people really like that.
 
In an individual table, the way I like to go is clean and sparse, 25 books. I don't want a stack of books, every single one of my books, with a book on top of it. It's just so busy, right? I want one book on display, laid out in the series set. I've got several different series, and that is part of my selling structure as well. I separate the series, use little table banners behind them, and make it as clean as possible because with 25 books, it's hard to make it clean anyway, right? One book in the middle of the table looks lonely. Three books on a four-foot table looks clean. For two eight-foot tables, with 25 books, it's still getting kind of crowded, but it's definitely more crowded if you're just piling books on top of books, right?
 
Some setups I've seen, I just shake my head. Somebody has one book, and they've got 500 copies of their book on this table, with maybe two of them faced out. It looks like you can't sell books unless there's a line up to your table, and people are just buying that book and moving along. It looks like you can't sell books, and you don't want that impression. You want something clean and simple where people can come up and look and say, "Ooh, I like this cover" or "I like that cover." I can't tell you how many times, even at my table where I'm trying to make it as clean and simple as possible, people say, "I really want something with dragons," and they're looking at one of my series that doesn't have a dragon on the cover. Literally, 12 inches away is a cover that has a dragon on it. I'm like, "What about this one?" They're like, "Oh, ooh," like they just discovered it. They didn't see it because there's so much stimuli at a con like that, where there are images everywhere, and they tunnel vision on something. They're really doing everything they can not to look at everything else at that moment.
 
Even if you have it laid out simple, the odds are against you of somebody looking at exactly what you want them to look at. So, helping them also sometimes is good.
 
[00:26:13] Matty: I'm taking it you have one copy of each of your books out, and then somebody looks at, finds the one with the dragon, then do you have a little stash behind the table where you take out a different book, a separate copy of that book so you're not handing them the one on the stand and say, "You know, take a look, read the back cover or page through."
 
[00:26:34] Todd: Oh, of course. I mean, I go to something like FanX, or Planet Comic Con, or Fan Expo Denver, these are some of my heavy hitters that I go to, and I can barely belly up to the table for all the boxes of books that I have underneath the table. It's an issue. Some of them I have to sell a bunch one day and then bring in more the next day because I just don't have enough space underneath the table to fit all the boxes of books that I want. And yes, I always take out a fresh copy. I shouldn't say always. That is my method, but sometimes you get a reader who comes up, they pick up a copy, and they're literally clutching it to their chest. I'm like, "Well, I'm not going to take it away from them. That's the one they bonded with. They can buy it. I'll just put another one on the rack. It's fine."
 
A Low-Impact Approach When Sales Are Not Your Main Goal
 
[00:27:24] Matty: So, I had a little bit of a tangent, but I'm going to a conference this summer where I'm a speaker, and there's this opportunity to have a book sales table that's part of the conference setup. And I really don't want to go with any book. The idea I had was I'm not going to be able to bring my fancy banners or anything like that. It's basically what can I put in a knapsack or something like that. So I have ten novels now, and I don't even think I'm going to bring stands, but have the 10 books out, have one copy of each book, and then I was going to have cards with QR codes that would take the reader to either where they could buy the print book either from me or from a major online retailer, same for the ebook, which I realized isn't optimal from a sales point of view, but it's the best I can come up with in terms of meeting this requirement that I don't want to have any extra luggage or boxes or anything like that when I go to the conference. Can you talk about if that's worth it?
 
[00:28:30] Todd: Yeah, I've done that before. I've actually done that before because sometimes you sell out, right? And then people still want more books, and then you've got to figure out a way to sell them those books. So there's different ways to do it. One, the QR code that takes them to your Amazon page, or your website page, or your Nook page, whatever it is that you want to send people to. That works really well. I've got a lot of cards of those myself. Something else I do is if they want hard copies, for example, when I've sold out and have no more hard copies or in this case where you've only brought one of each and can't sell them hard copies but they want a hard copy, I will take their information. Usually, I work in tandem at the big ones. I'll ask my assistant to take down their information, say we want an email address, a phone number, we want your address so that because I had once where I took somebody's address, and that's all I took, and there was something wrong with the address, and I never could get them the book. You know, I kept waiting for them to email me and say, "You're never sending my book, you jerk!" and I'm like, "Oh, I'm glad you reached out to me. There was something wrong with the address, and it never went out." So, I collect all the information just in case something goes wrong. And then I mail them all out when I get home, you know, and some people prefer that. I did that at 20 books to 50k just because people were like, "Ah, my suitcase is full, I don't want to carry anything." I'm like, "Oh, I got you, you know, let's ship it to you." So yes, that can work.
 
I will say that it has a disadvantage. If you're comparing that to actually having the book there, it's a pretty big disadvantage because people get attached to material things when they get them in their hands. So, you can definitely sell them that way, but I wouldn't do that for an entire event if it was going to be like, "Oh, I want to make a lot of money at this event," but what you're talking about where it's like, "Oh, I'm going to this thing, and there's an extra thing." It's perfect. It's perfect.
 
Using QR Codes
 
[00:30:06] Matty: I've started experimenting with QR codes, and what I found is that I think so far I only had two QR codes. One was where people can go to sign up for my email newsletter and then some other one. I forget even what the other one was. But having enough text on whatever the material is that has the QR code on it to explain what it is without it being like a novel they have to read was kind of confusing. And then I've also seen people do the QR code where they almost have a binder. And it's like pages, maybe one page per book. And so if someone says, "Oh, I'd like this one," then they get out the binder and they flip to the page that has that stuff on it. Do you have any advice about the best way to execute on the QR code approach?
 
[00:30:54] Todd: The QR code is hit and miss for me. I mean, that's why, like I said, I usually write down their information. I charge them right there. I take their money right there, and then I'm on the hook to deliver the products to them. Giving them just a QR code and saying hit that QR code. I've even done that where I'm like hit that QR code right here at the table. They're like, "Oh, okay, great. I'll do this later." What are you going to tell them at that point? "Okay, no, do it right here. Do it right now." I mean, that doesn't work, right? So, you're taking the control out of your hands, and if you put time and energy into trying to sell them on the story, and then essentially you cut them loose with the QR code. Roll the dice, you know, I mean, they may buy it, they may not.
 
My experience with people who are like, "Oh yeah, I'll buy this later," 1 in 50 maybe that follow through on that. It's not high because I'm watching, I'm like, I give them the QR code that takes them straight to my website or whatever, and then I look for that sale or even look on my Amazon reports for that sale, and nobody bought a book that day or the next day or whatever, right? So, I'm not a big fan of that. It's certainly better than nothing, but if you're trying to make money and build superfans with it, it's a backup at best, I think.
 
When Sales Aren't Your Primary Goal
 
[00:32:07] Matty: Well, I'm realizing that I almost said yes to the option of having books in this author event because more as a resume builder, because otherwise, the people who are there hearing me speak aren't going to have any concrete evidence that I actually have the experience to know what I'm talking about. So if all I get out of this is people wandering by looking at my books and chatting with me, I will have met my primary goal of that event, which is to show them that I have books. My primary goal of that event, of course, it would be nice to sell books, but it's not really what I'm looking for, as opposed to a book sales event where that is really what I'm going for.
 
[00:32:48] Todd: Yeah, well, I think that brings up a very interesting point that for people who are going to do in-person sales, I recommend you have an idea of what you want out of that event, right? And to, so actually, curiously, my priorities are not making money at a con. Believe it or not, even though I'm being pretty successful at doing that at this point, my goal is to meet and talk to superfans, market my books, and my tertiary concern is trying to walk away with a profit, right?
 
Understanding your goal gives you resilience.
 
[00:33:18] Todd: Now, all those are humming at a pretty high level at this point for me, but it wasn't always that way. When I started, I wasn't looking to make any money. Breaking even was like, "Hey, I made back my booth cost and my gas cost to drive down to Albuquerque or whatever it was. I was feeling good about that. More importantly was I want to get my books out into the world." Going to a con, I think it's pretty important, especially for your frame of mind and your perspective while you're at the con.
 
Here's something my friend Katie Cross said about cons, and she's right. It's like a constant reassessment of yourself, every single moment, every single new person that comes up and either accepts or rejects you. Man, you’ve got to have resilience to pick yourself back up and go, "Okay, I'm going to put on a smile and sell to this next person after that guy just kicked me in the teeth." You really have to have that. So, knowing what your priority is helps with that.
 
If I don't make a sale and I'm like, "You know what? I'm here to meet superfans. If I meet two superfans at this event, it's a success." Then you relax a little bit. Your shoulders unclench, and you're like, "Okay, I'm looking for that superfan who wants what I do. That's the most important from this event." It keeps you clear, keeps you able to be resilient.
 
[00:34:31] Matty: Yeah. And I think that if you have a series, especially a long series or a long set of series as you do, then that makes reaching superfans all the more important because maybe you don't make your money back with the books you sell at that event. But if there are 24 more books in the series that they can go to, then you're improving your chances that over the long haul, that turns out to meet the money-making goal as well.
 
[00:34:55] Todd: Well, it's my take that fans and superfans, readers, it's the only thing that's important. At the end of the day, it's the only thing that's important. They hold the keys to your dreams. If you can impress, please, and put out a product that your readers love, you win. How can you not win? They're going to tell all their friends about it, and you're going to build your audience that way. I mean, that's the only thing that's important. There are lots of other things that are important, but if you had to choose one thing, it's pleasing the reader and making sure that they're going to want to come back for more.
 
[00:35:31] Matty: Yeah, I had sort of talked myself into getting back into the in-person events on the theory that as long as I was going to be with another author that I knew and liked and was going to enjoy spending the day with, it was going to be worth it because, in the worst possible case, the two of us or the three of us or the four of us or whatever would sit around and chat for the duration of the conference, and that would still be a good time. I think that was valuable to get me back into the mindset of doing it. But there's a trap that if that stays forefront in my mind, then I spend my energy on with my fellow authors, not on networking with the readers that come to the table. So I have to be careful about to what extent I lean on that.
 
[00:36:12] Todd: I completely agree. Being clear about why you're there is going to define whether or not you succeed at why you're there or not. I've seen a lot of people show up at cons, not just authors, but others, who came because they wanted to be in the atmosphere of the con and play. They got a booth, they'll sell what they can, but mostly, they'll run off to do cosplay and then come back. They'll have their friends sit at the booth, not interested in selling anything. They're there for a very different reason.
 
Me? I'm there for a very professional reason. I love cons and enjoy the atmosphere; it's one of my favorite places to be. But I'm not there to play. I'm there to work. I will only leave my booth for five minutes to go to the bathroom or grab a hot dog and run right back because I'm there to work. I paid the money to get in here, and I want to make sure I squeeze every ounce of what I came for from that. Honestly, authors sometimes come up to chat with me, and I will chat with them, but I'll give them a caveat. No offense, but if someone looks even vaguely interested in my booth, I will stop talking to you and go pay attention to them. That's what I'm here for, and everyone knows that about me at this point. I get real serious about social interaction when I'm at the booth. I'm as friendly as the day is long with customers, but when it comes to others wanting to hang out and have a beer, I say, "Nope, not during the con. Come see me afterwards. Let's talk when I'm done working."
 
[00:37:43] Matty: Yeah, that's great advice to set that expectation at the beginning of the interaction with that person.
 
[00:37:48] Todd: Yeah, I don't want to be rude, but that's what I'm here to do.
 
[00:37:52] Matty: I've found that's a benefit of being at a conference with other authors at the table because there have been times when I've rescued someone or someone has rescued me. Just tapping somebody on the shoulder who can't get away from a conversation and saying, "Oh, there's somebody over here who wants to look at your book or chat with you," and we help each other out that way.
 
The Four Categories of Readers
 
[00:38:12] Todd: Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it's on your roster of questions to get into my four categories of people at a con, but that's wrapped up in that.
 
[00:38:22] Matty: Yeah, please. I think this is a good entry to start talking about that.
 
[00:38:25] Todd: So, I break down the people at a con or a selling event into four categories. The first category is the one I wish all cons were comprised of. These are the people who came there for you. They know about you, want your latest thing, and make a beeline for your booth. You're their first priority. Alternatively, these are individuals who are really into what you do. They may not know specifics, but they see the dragon or the person with the sword and magic, and they're saying, "I'm buying that. I am buying that." Well, I don't care what it is; I'm buying it. They're your pre-sold customer, right? So, that's the first category.
 
Really, with those, I don't even pitch much. You stand back and don't get in your own way. Let them sell the book to themselves because they've already sold it in their mind. The only thing you can do is mess that up. So, I stand back. The second and third categories are what I call the bread and butter of the pitch.
 
The second one is people who would buy your book if they noticed you. These are the ones who say, "Oh, I saw your banner from a distance, and I had to go check this out. Maybe tell me a little bit about this. I don't know about this." They are perfect for the pitch. They're the best people to pitch to because they're going to get into what you're saying. Give them a chance.
 
Then there's the third category of people. They probably wouldn't buy your book. It's not really their genre, but they don't hate that genre. They just aren't really into it. Those are the ones where you're going to stretch a little bit. You're going to stretch your skills, pour on what you know about pitching your book and what you can do when you get into the excitement of your story.
 
Setting Boundaries and Conserving Your Energy
 
[00:40:07] Todd: And then there's the fourth category. It doesn't matter what you do. They don't want what you're going to sell. You're talking to a stone wall, and there have been times where they're just not going to buy a book for whatever reason. Either they don't like your genre or there are subcategories of that.
 
They want to tell you about their book. They're a writer who has never written a book before, but they're going to come up and take as much time as they can. As long as you'll listen to them talking about their book. Or you've got the guy who wants you to tell them every single pitch on the table, but they have no intention of buying because they have no money or aren't going to buy anything.
 
There are those guys that fit into that fourth category where they're not going to buy. The first subcategory of that, I will try and pitch them sometimes if I'm feeling saucy. It's okay; I know that guy's not going to buy anything, but I'm going to sharpen my skills as finely honed as I can and see if I can hook somebody like that. “Nope. I don't read fantasy.”
 
I'm like, "Well, do you want to start? Do you want to try?" I'll come up with some hook based on their demeanor, and sometimes they'll chuckle, and I'll be like, "Fine. Tell me." I actually had somebody buy a book that was like that. "Nope, I hate fantasy. I'm not going to read it." I'm like, "Well, do you want to start?" And he just laughed. He said, "You know what? Okay, fine. Tell me your pitch." At the end, he's like, "Okay, you convinced me. I don't usually read fantasy, but I'll give it a try."
 
That is, I think, pitching 2.0. You're not going to try that every single time, and in fact, a lot of times, it could be a waste of your time. One of the things I will talk about maybe later is how you've got to conserve your energy at a certain point. If you're wanting to sell a high number of books, you really have to pick and choose how much energy you're going to put into something.
 
But one of the things I did want to say, since we talk about people who come up and want to talk about their stuff to you, and to them, they're here to socialize and see all the cool stuff. They're sort of in the mindset that everybody's here to do that, and so they're thinking, "Well, you know, this guy's got nothing better to do than to spend 60 minutes talking to me about my book."
 
You want to be gentle with those people because they're the aspiring authors, right? They're the next generation. I always tell myself, "You've got a business to do here, but you also want to give a leg up to those that are coming behind you." So, I will tell myself, "Okay, five minutes. I will give myself five minutes with this person." And, in some cases, if someone has picked up a book across the table and they're looking at it like they want to buy, I'll say, "Give me just a second. Hang on. Hold on to that thought. Give me just a second." I'll go over, take care of that person because they're clearly a sale. Then come back and say, "Okay, tell me more. I'll give you two and a half more minutes. Tell me more about it." But as you said, I establish the boundaries. I'm like, "I'll give you two minutes to talk." Most people will be like, "Oh, wow. I'm sorry. I didn't realize. Yeah, you're working here." They didn't see it because they weren't thinking about it. But once they see it, they're aces.
 
Then you got the people that don't care. They're going to keep talking about what they want to talk about no matter what. Like I said, I'll give them their five minutes as well, but I don't mind being a total jerk if they're being a jerk to me. It's, "Look, I’ve got to go work now." Yeah, but there's this thing, and da da da. They want to keep talking. I'm like, "I'm going to go talk to this person over here now." Yeah, but there's, and then I'll stop talking to them. You know what? If you can't engage with me on a human level, then I got no more time for you. But, like I said, I feel that it's important to be kind.
 
They're there, and I would much rather inspire somebody to be the next great writer, you know, to get to the keyboard, to do their thing, than have them walk away feeling like, "Wow, he didn't care at all about what I'm doing."
 
But I mean, again, you got to balance that. It's just like those "say yes to everything" kind of thing. You get to a certain point where you can't say yes to everything, and you have to prioritize your time. But I do feel that it is a priority to give at least a few minutes, encourage them, and then set your boundaries and move along.
 
[00:43:55] Matty: Yep, that's great advice. I think that the whole thing that stands in the way of many authors doing in-person events is the idea of being too salesy. So, do you have tips you can offer that will improve your chances of actually making a sale but make it feel comfortable for people for whom that is not a natural state of being?
 
[00:44:17] Todd: Yeah, so there's a whole spectrum of this, and my first bit of advice, the most important bit of advice, would be to harken back to what I said at the beginning of the podcast: be a storyteller first. Find a way to get into your story and show them that. That's the baseline. There are lots of tips and tricks, kind of salesmany kind of tricks, that will heighten your ability to do that, both in terms of effect, dramatic effect, and in terms of speed and efficiency. Because if you're trying to sell 300 books over the course of a weekend, you kind of got to move it along. You can't spend 20 minutes with each person talking about a book. You've got to juice it up and move it along.
 
I think that if somebody doesn't ever want to do anything salesy, that's fine. That's totally their call. But you're probably only going to go so far, right? I mean, there are certain things that you, and that was a lesson that I learned in 2021. I met this guy at FanX, Lance Conrad is his name. And he fine-tuned his salesmany ability. Sometimes people were turned off by that, but man, he just jumped right back into the cycle and got the next person. It was amazing watching this guy, like watching a fisherman who knew exactly where all the fish were. He would just put his line in the water, haul out a trout, put his line in the water, haul out another one. I'm sitting here trying to pitch to people, and afterwards I walked up and I was like, "I sold 14 books today. How many did you sell?" He's like, "66." I'm like, "How did you do it? How did you do it? I'm falling on my sword here. I thought I was pretty hot to trot at this, and I'm nothing compared to what you just did. Tell me how you did it." And he was really cool, and he did.
 
The next day, I sold 77 copies. He came up, he's like, "How'd you do today?" I'm like, "77." He's like, "Way to go, man." I'm like, "How many did you do?" He's like, "84." I'm like, "Mother." But it was great to know. He kind of talked about how to pull them in and then how to do a pitch. I do it differently than he does at this point. I've developed my own system, but it was good to know. It was important to know that you do, at a certain point, you just, I mean, if you want to do this and never develop a thick skin, I don't know what to tell you, except that you're probably going to get your feelings hurt a lot.
 
One of my favorite stories about this, again, my assistant Becca, who was selling a book, there was this family, a mom and two kids, and I think the daughter was like 10, and the son was like 13. The son kind of gravitated over, and she was going into her pitch, and she got halfway into the pitch, and the little girl comes walking up and she's like, "That's enough out of you," and she grabbed the son and pulled him away. The mom said nothing. It was so, I mean, these are the kind of rejections that you're going to get. So we joke about that, "That's enough out of you."
 
[00:47:17] Matty: Can you share, if we're assuming the type of shopper who isn't there because they already know you and are planning on buying a book, it's that in-between person who's like, "Oh, this is kind of interesting," can you just give a sample pitch of how you would approach that person?
 
[00:47:32] Todd: Absolutely. Do you want me to give you a pitch from one of my actual stories?
 
[00:47:34] Matty: Yeah, that would be great.
 
[00:47:36] Todd: So, first thing I would do is be like, "Do you like fantasy? Are you a Lord of the Rings fan? Do you want to hear about a book?" Something like that. That's the hook. That's your hook phrase. And you've got to develop that hook phrase and figure out what works best for you, right? And that gets them to essentially look over at you, right, and have them say, "Yes," because you want that buy-in. You don't want to waste your time on somebody who has no interest in buying your book, right, that fourth category of people, right? You want someone that at least has a glimmer of, "Yeah, no, I will." So you want that buy-in to start, right?
 
"Do you want to hear about a book? Yeah, I want to hear about a book. Well, let me tell you about this one. This is my Threadweaver series, and it centers around these two main characters. And I've got a poster out in front of me that's got the two main characters on it, right? This one right here. And by the way, when I say Threadweavers, I want you to think magic user, think wizard. That's what they're called in this world. And like I said, it centers around these two main characters.
 
Eighteen-year-old Myrilla. Now, she's just a young woman in a small town and all she wants is a normal life. But that's not going to happen for her because she's the first Threadweaver to arise in a hundred years. A hundred years ago, there were lots of these Threadweavers, and they misused their magic, and they just about destroyed the world. Essentially, they created this magical nuclear war that did three things. One, it sucked all the magic from the lands. Two, it killed all the Threadweavers. And three, it destroyed 80 percent of the world. Everybody else, okay?
 
Now, the magic was taken and locked in this tower far to the north, and that's where it stayed all this time. So, fast forward a hundred years. The lands are dry, they're brittle, they are dying because of this lack of magic. And people hate Threadweavers. So, if the villagers in her town find out that's what Mirela is, they're going to kill her.
 
Cut to the second main character and the title character of the first volume. 1400-year-old demigod and legend known as Wildmane. This guy is an immortal hero who's been fighting for us and kicking butt for 14 centuries, but something happened to him 400 years ago and since that day, Wildmane wants to die.
 
Now here's what happened. During one of his many epic battles, the love of his life, this immortal woman who could turn into a dragon, got caught up in a spell during the fight that took her and put her into this gemstone, and there'll be a picture of the gemstone, right, and then the gemstone locked with a riddle that only Wildmane can solve. Now, if he solves it, the gemstone will open and she'll go free. But it's been four centuries, and he has not solved this riddle. He's languishing in a castle by the sea, and he wants to die. All very well and good for him. But Mirella needs to save the world.
 
Because the lands are dying, the only way to save the world is to go to that fountain far in the north, destroy it, and return magic to the lands the way it's supposed to be. But over the last century, that fountain has twisted, and now it is surrounded by these evil monsters one can't even imagine.
 
No mortal could possibly get through that, but Wildmane could. She needs to pull him from his self-imposed exile. She needs to save the world; he has to get her there. That's "Threadweavers."
 
[00:50:58] Matty: Fantastic. I wish people listening to the podcast would pop over to YouTube and watch it because what I appreciated is the physicality behind that description, which can play nicely in the environment of an in-person sales table or an event.
 
[00:51:20] Todd: Yeah, especially when you've got images to point to. I kept referencing the images I would point to. The drama of my finger coming down, you know, It's the gemstone, dun dun dun. I actually had one woman who I think was a dancer herself. She definitely looked like it. She said, "Wow, I love this dance we get while you're telling your story." So, yeah, I mean, again, these are opportunities, and everybody's got their talents. One of my talents is I enjoy talking to people. I'm extroverted enough that I really dig that. I was a dancer in college, so the big hand gestures and the flowing movements, I mean, I wasn't even really getting into it because there's only so much space in the frame here, but at the table, sometimes I will even take a step and point to my big eight by eight banners, you know, "This is the guy I'm talking about." That's an advantage. Wearing a Dungeons and Dragons t-shirt is an advantage. Mixing up the levels of your voice when you're telling your pitch is an advantage. Shortening your pitch, making it hit all the right things is an advantage. All of these things are advantages, opportunities you can grab to use, and you don't have to use them. You could tell your story in a monotone if you wanted to, and it might come off for a certain number of people, but for another group, it's not going to come off, and it's an advantage you're kind of leaving on the table.
 
[00:52:41] Matty: So great. Well, Todd, I could keep talking to you all day about this, but I don't want to press on your time, as we were talking about before. Thank you so much for sharing all these tips. It was great fun to talk to you and also to watch you give your pitch. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and your work and your books online.
 
[00:52:59] Todd: Yeah, absolutely. So ToddFahnestock.com. That's my website. Everything about me is there, and all my books can be purchased there. So yeah, that's the quickest one-stop-shop for everything I've got.
 
[00:53:16] Matty: Great, thank you so much.
 
[00:53:18] Todd: Yeah. Thank you. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me on the show. Appreciate it.
 
[00:53:21] Matty: Oh, it's been fun.

Episode 221 - Leveraging Your Tribe of Influence with Stephanie Chandler

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Stephanie Chandler discusses LEVERAGING YOUR TRIBE OF INFLUENCE, including the power of tapping into your existing tribe and of expanding beyond that tribe; the value of beta readers to address the problem of obscurity; the downside of promoting outside your target audience, of selling to other writers, and of relying on the "rented real estate" of social media; the importance of creating a reciprocal relationship and exhibiting professionalism; tips for pursuing aspirational contacts; and how each new contact opens a network of others.

Stephanie Chandler is the author of several books including The Nonfiction Book Publishing Plan. She is CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association, a vibrant community for writers, and the Nonfiction Writers Conference, a live event conducted entirely online since 2010. A frequent speaker at business events and on the radio, she has been featured in Entrepreneur, BusinessWeek, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, and Wired magazine.

Episode Links

Author website: https://nonfictionauthorsassociation.com
Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/nonfictionauthorsassociation/
Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/nonfictionassociation/
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniechandler
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@nonfictionauthorsassociati6015

Summary

In a recent conversation on the Indie Author Podcast, Matty, the podcast host, invited Stephanie Chandler, author and CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association, to share valuable insights on how authors can leverage their existing tribes, or communities, to boost their book launches.
 
A Warm Welcome
 
The podcast kicked off with warm greetings between Matty and Stephanie. As an author and a staple in the publishing industry, Stephanie’s insights were welcomed with much anticipation.
 
Background on Stephanie Chandler
 
Before diving into the heart of the conversation, Matty elaborated on Stephanie's background. As a renowned author, the CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association, and the brainpower behind the Nonfiction Writers Conference, Stephanie was portrayed as a trusted authority for indie authors.
 
Stephanie's perspective about authors having an existing tribe, or an audience, was particularly mentioned, emphasizing that authors often underestimate the potential of their current networks.
 
Leveraging Existing Tribes
 
During the conversation, Stephanie gave real examples of how she leverages her network when launching a new book. Recognizing the importance of her personal and professional contacts, she emphasized the significance of authors exploring beyond industry circles. Your tribe could consist of old school friends, neighbors, or even coworker relations in different industries – all of whom could become cheerleaders for your book.
 
Meeting Your Readers Where They Are
 
One aspect of our conversation centered around the transition of an author's tribe. From people who support you because they like you to people who genuinely enjoy your book and stay for the content. It’s essential to recognize this shift and expand your reach beyond your initial group of supporters.
 
Your Community and Your Tribe
 
The conversation then segued into beta readers, a vital part of the book publishing journey, particularly with an eye for building a loyal tribe. Matty underscored the need for beta readers to improve the manuscript and identify the core group of people invested in the author's work. Stephanie added that beta readers could serve as your initial launch team, promoting your book within their networks, thus expanding your tribe.
 
Aspirational Tribe: Beyond Your Immediate Circle
 
Finally, the conversation reached its peak, discussing the importance of identifying the "aspirational tribe," those key influencers and figures in your genre you wish to engage with. Stephanie suggested that showing professionalism, understanding your target audience, and crafting your pitch in a way that offers value are steps towards engaging with your aspirational tribe.
 
Final Thoughts
 
In conclusion, the podcast episode underscored the centrality of building and leveraging your tribe in the book-writing journey. The conversation between Matty and Stephanie shared practical advice for burgeoning and established authors on identifying, growing, and maintaining their tribes.
 
The podcast inculcated the concept that growing your author tribe is not an isolated task. It's about connecting with your network, meeting your readers where they are, and continuing to expand your reach beyond those initial circles. And above all, it's about nurturing relationships that matter, to your book, to yourself, and ultimately to your tribe.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Stephanie Chandler. Hey Stephanie, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:06] Stephanie: Hey Matty, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.
 
Meet Stephanie Chandler
 
[00:00:08] Matty: It is my pleasure to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you. Stephanie Chandler is the author of several books, including the Nonfiction Book Publishing Plan. She is the CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association, a vibrant community for writers, and the Nonfiction Writers Conference, a live event conducted entirely online since 2010. A frequent speaker at business events and on the radio, she has been featured in Entrepreneur, Business Week, Writer's Digest, and Wired Magazine.
 
The Power of Tapping into Your Existing Tribe
 
[00:00:33] Matty: And I invited Stephanie on the podcast because I heard her speaking on the idea of leveraging your existing tribe of influence. Listeners to the podcast know that we often discuss what you can do once you've identified the group of people you want to reach out to. What I really like is Stephanie's perspective that you probably have a bigger tribe than you already realize and that you're not starting from zero. You already have a pool of people to tap into. So, Stephanie, I'm really just going to open it up with that introduction, and we'll see where the conversation takes us in terms of realizing who your tribe already is.
 
[00:01:12] Stephanie: Great, I love that. So yeah, this is something that I do every time I launch a new book. I'm going through it right now. I have a book coming out in January, so I will sit down and think about who do I know, and maybe people I haven't connected with in some time. You and I are busy people, and we have lots of friends in the industry. I make a long list of people that I know, and I go through my emails. I look through my social media contacts because we forget when we lose touch with people.
 
Another thing I'd like to recommend to authors is beyond your own industry. Who do you know in your own circle? This could be people you went to school with, former coworkers, neighbors, people that you coached your kid's soccer team with 10 years ago. Let me just say that these people who have been friends or acquaintances in your life, when you have a book coming out, that's really exciting, especially to people who haven't written a book. Letting them know that this is happening, they want to support you, they want you to be successful.
 
I think about how I come from Silicon Valley, and if I wrote technology books, you can bet I would be reaching out to all my former coworkers who are now at 25 different software companies. They've moved on in the last 20 years, but I'd be reaching out and saying, "Hey, do you want to buy books to give away to your staff? Do you want to buy books to give to your customers? Can you bring me in to do a speaking engagement? Can you put me on your podcast? Can I contribute to your blog or your company magazine?" That's the point of this exercise—spend some time digging into who you know and how they might be able to help you successfully launch and promote your book.
 
[00:03:07] Matty: Yeah, I know that when I left the corporate world after a couple of decades, I had hundreds and hundreds of LinkedIn contacts. There was a period of time where I wasn't tapping into them at all because I just thought, oh, well, that's from a different life, and they don't need to know what I'm doing now. But, I changed my mind about that for all the reasons that you just said.
 
The downside of writers selling to writers
 
[00:03:25] Matty: And I think the other thing that's really interesting is that I realized during a book launch or two ago, I was comparing the book launch, which was just like, hey, everybody, I have a new book. It was the world's most pathetic book launch. When I think back to my earlier book launches, I would have a happy hour at a local bar and do it up more. I realized that part of that is when I was launching my early books, my pool of acquaintances were all non-writers. So, as you were saying, if you write a book, it's big news with that group of people. Whereas now, my pool of acquaintances is mainly writers, and if you say, "Oh, I'm launching a book," we're like, big whoop because, they all launched a book, like, yesterday.
 
[00:04:36] Stephanie: One of my pet peeves is writers trying to sell to writers. Whenever I go to speak at a local writers’ group or a writers’ conference, writers are constantly trying to sell. That is just missing the point to me. With marketing, you really want to know your target audience and explain what's in it for them to read your book.
 
So when you're promoting your book to fellow writers, unless we read the same genre, to me, that is not your best use of your time. Then there's that crossover between those people. Like I said, my former coworkers are in Silicon Valley. I write books for writing, nonfiction publishing, and marketing. Most of them probably aren't interested in that, so they're not my main tribe. I'm focusing on people who can potentially support the book in some way, are interested in the book.
 
One coworker comes to mind who now works at Google. Google has a speaker series. So guess what? I will be reaching out to him because, there's that old statistic that we don't know where it came from, but it says that 80 percent of people want to write a book. So that's always something I could lean on for that.
 
Expanding past your initial tribe
 
[00:05:33] Matty: I think that writers early in their careers, when you launch your first book, chances are you're going to sell it to your mom, your neighbor, and your college roommate. I think there's also a transition to understanding that your tribe changes from the people who know and like you to the people who want to buy your book because they are interested in your book's topic and the genre. Maybe you don't want to keep hammering that initial tribe if you've graduated past mom, your neighbor, and the person you went to school with. Is that a mindset shift about understanding the tribe?
 
[00:06:13] Stephanie: Well, yeah, and expanding your reach, right? I think this is maybe somewhere that authors struggle because you've got your initial community of people that know and love you. But then what happens after that? So how do you keep your momentum? Because book marketing isn't about the first 30 days. It's about the next five years. So you want to create that long game strategy, which means growing your tribe of influence. It means finding your target audience. Where are they spending time? How can you connect with them?
 
I'm a huge believer in building your own email list, getting involved. For example, does your target audience participate in any trade associations? If so, can you go and participate in those trade associations? Maybe you write books about dog care. There are lots of associations for dog lovers, dog owners, and dog trainers. So what events do they have that you could participate in, or could you write for their blog or their newsletter?
 
Can you get involved and get to know them? And who else is influential in that space? How can you connect with them? So yeah, there's definitely that next step where you're expanding out from your smaller circle to try to create bigger circles.
 
The value of beta readers for marketing
 
[00:07:36] Matty: I think that's a real plug for getting beta readers even early on. Most authors I know who actively use beta readers are authors who are later in their career. But I think it would really behoove a first-time author to tap into that beta reader pool and understand the differences. You may love dog care, and you've done a lot of research and have a lot of experience in it, but you're not spending all your time with that community of people. You have to expand your community of people to encompass your new and expanded group of people. I think beta readers can not only help improve a book but can also help identify where that pool is.
 
[00:08:15] Stephanie: I agree. I love beta readers for a whole bunch of reasons. Finding that pool and asking them, what other groups do you belong to? What online groups do you participate in? That's a hugely underutilized opportunity, I feel, for writers. I happen to be a widow and I'm involved in a number of online widows’ groups. Now imagine if I ever wrote the widow memoir, right? I've been involved in these groups for years; I immediately have access to thousands of people, and I've made friends with the admins. I can say, "Hey, can I do a call for beta readers? Do you want to do a book giveaway?" Finding your community and getting engaged somehow is a huge step in creating that long game with your book marketing strategies.
 
[00:09:04] Matty: Yeah, I think that really paves the way to starting to understand your marketing before you launch your first book. I know a lot of writers who finish their first book, and they've kind of been working on it in isolation, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. Then they're ready to start promoting it, and they don't know where to go. But if they've been building that community, the online community, or the associations or all those things that you mentioned, then they're ahead of the game. It probably improves their book too because if they're immersing themselves in that community, it can only be a benefit to the content they're producing.
 
[00:09:35] Stephanie: Absolutely. Just to dovetail off the beta reader thing, right? So, I get this question a lot: how many beta readers do I have and where do I find them? Well, it depends on what your goals are with your beta readers. A lot of writers want editorial feedback on their work.
 
I personally really value beta readers for marketing. If you give early access to your manuscripts to a bunch of people and they like the book, they're going to be incentivized to want to share it when your book is launching. So, it's a matter of starting with your smaller circle and maybe even asking them, who do you know who would enjoy this book? Who do you know that's in this sphere, that's in this target audience that we could invite to be a beta reader? I'm of the belief that you should get lots of beta readers. Two or five or ten is a very small number, especially when it comes to getting support with the marketing. So I like to suggest lots of beta readers, and then I see all the authors kind of recoil because that means I'm giving my work away.
 
You can view it as creating fans, so getting the most eyeballs on your work is a great marketing strategy. Those people will go out and tell their friends about it. During my last book launch, I was pleasantly surprised by how many beta readers turned out and bought the book anyway, even though they had already read it—that was just a show of support.
 
So, it's those things to think about when you're starting your tribe of influence exercise and figuring out who and how many people you're going to give that early access to.
 
The problem is obscurity
 
[00:11:28] Matty: Can you give any guidelines for someone launching their first book? How many people should they be comfortable giving it out to? Maybe how that number changes over time as a person accumulates more books and more followers?
 
[00:11:42] Stephanie: I always think about Seth Godin. He has famously said, "Your problem is not that people are going to steal your content; your problem is obscurity." A lot of authors fear that people will steal their work and share it. When I do my beta readers and I put out a PDF, it says in there, "Feel free to send this to a friend." I want as many eyeballs as possible. I don't view that as lost sales but as a way to gain sales.
 
My personal feeling is the more, the merrier. I had 400 beta readers on my last book launch. You'll be lucky if 10 percent of them actually write a review and follow through. On social media that day, I saw many of them sharing. It was an incredibly valuable experience on various levels. The more, the better. The same goes for review copies sent out prior or during your book launch. I have a plan to send out physical copies to fellow influencers and people I know will support the book—leading to more sales.
 
[00:13:16] Matty: I'm curious what tool you use. Do you have something like BookFunnel to send those out?
 
[00:13:21] Stephanie: Yes, we use BookFunnel. It's a great tool, really worthwhile, helping control the process and making it easy for everybody. I'm a big fan.
 
[00:13:32] Matty: That's interesting. I've always thought that two to ten beta readers were not enough, but I've never thought about 400. I have a book launch coming up. I'm going to rethink that because I think that makes a lot of sense.
 
[00:13:46] Stephanie: Initially, I thought of having a hundred beta readers, but I had 400 applicants and didn't want to turn anybody away. I'm really glad I accepted them all.
 
[00:14:06] Matty: That's interesting. I think different people bring a different interpretation to beta reader. Can you describe a little bit what you're thinking of when you say beta reader and how you're using them beyond what we've already talked about?
 
[00:14:17] Stephanie: Yeah, so, I think a lot of people seek editorial feedback from beta readers. Let me be clear, I wouldn't want editorial feedback from 400 people. That's too many. I viewed them as my launch team, getting early access, following along with the process. Here's the release date. It was creating a community with my beta readers, not seeking editorial feedback. It depends on your goals. If you want editorial feedback, maybe 20 or 30 people in your target audience or those you trust for feedback. Then a separate group of beta readers specifically for marketing support.
 
The impact of release frequency
 
[00:15:22] Matty: Yeah, that makes sense. Do you feel as if the way you tap into your growing tribe of followers differs depending on release frequency? If someone's releasing a book a month, they'll retain interest because there's no long downtime. If someone's releasing a book every year or two, do you recommend a different approach to keep your tribe engaged?
 
[00:15:57] Stephanie: In my nonfiction space, authors usually release one book a year. Regardless, ongoing connection with your readers is crucial. I prefer content marketing, like blogging, creating videos, or doing a podcast. In fiction, you have to get creative to engage your audience. For example, a romance writer giving dating tips or a mystery writer getting involved in the literary scene of the book's setting.
 
Don't rely on the "rented real estate" of social media
 
[00:17:21] Stephanie: We're always looking for ways to continue connecting with potential target readers and ultimately bring them into the email list. I think we've been oversold on social media. Some people have influencer status and a really engaged social media audience. Personally, I prefer email over social media because social media is like rented real estate.
 
We learned this the hard way with our Twitter account for the Nonfiction Authors Association—it literally evaporated overnight, losing 70,000 followers. We never found out why, despite not violating any policies. We spent months trying to restore it, but it disappeared. However, our email list is owned content and data. Even if the email service provider goes away, we still own the content and contacts, so we can transfer them elsewhere. Be aware that putting all your eggs in the social media basket can be risky.
 
[00:18:37] Matty: Yeah, I think there's probably never been a time where the social media environment has made it so clear that no one should rely on it to keep in touch with anyone. Of all the advice I've ever heard, the one thing everyone agrees on is the importance of an email list. Every opportunity to emphasize that advice is great.
 
We've talked a bit about not leaving behind the tribe you bring into your writing life. Assuming people are moving from some other work or have built a community in another way, are there any people you should explicitly exclude? Not try to bring forward into your tribe? For example, when launching your first book, you might avoid asking your mom, neighbor, and college roommate to buy it, to prevent odd also-bought associations on Amazon. Are there other downsides to trying to bring people forward from a different community?
 
[00:19:54] Stephanie: I would never turn away a sale. If my mom wants to buy my book, she can. However, you have to be careful about reviews. Avoid situations where family members write glowing but unrelated reviews. When promoting, it's crucial not to target outside your ideal audience. If family members buy the book along with your target audience, it's fine. To avoid issues, focus on expanding your audience beyond people you already know. Grow your tribe of influence to include fellow authors, influencers, and podcasters in your field.
 
Don't waste time promoting your book to the wrong readers. I don't read some of these types of books, and I don't review books either, so spending your time and money sending books to people that aren't your target audience. Now when someone sends me a publishing industry book, I absolutely pay attention. and that may get, lead to them being interviewed on our blog or our podcast or whatever it is. So just know your audience is so critical to building that community and that marketing strategy.
 
[00:21:54] Matty: When someone is reaching out to someone who's one of those influencers, do you recommend, let's say they have a new non-fiction book, and they've located the pool of people who might legitimately be interested in it, do you recommend that they try to establish a relationship ahead of time, or is a book that shows up in your office about a topic that you're actually interested in, is that intriguing? Is it off-putting? What would your recommendations be on that front?
 
Create a reciprocal relationship
 
[00:22:22] Stephanie: I think you have a much better chance if it aligns. And I love to include a personal note. So, really enjoy your podcast. why haven't you written a book yet? something like that. So I don't think that's off-putting at all. What is off-putting to me as somebody who gets a ton of solicitations is the solicitation. Like, somebody sending me a message saying, hey, I have a new book out. why don't you put me on your podcast?
 
[00:22:50] Matty: What can you do for me?
 
[00:22:51] Stephanie: right, what, yeah, and it's not about my audience. Like, tell me how you serve my audience. I've had a, I got a pitch just last week from a speaker and it was all about him and how he speaks on leadership and he's a great leadership speaker and if I have a conference or event coming up, I should really contact him because he's a great speaker. He's now sent this to me twice in I don't know how he's getting booked because that had nothing to do with how he would serve our target audience.
 
Meanwhile, someone like Ann Janzer, I love her. She writes great books. she creates great content. So she'll come out and say, hey, I created this new, I had a great successful book promotion campaign. Would you be interested in doing a webinar on how I did it? Heck yeah, I would. That's interesting to my audience. She's a non-fiction writer. She figured out how to do this. It landed 50 more reviews on her book. So knowing your target audience and putting that value proposition in when you're pitching or when you're reaching out. podcast. or blog. Reach out and ask to interview that person before you ever try to sell them anything or give them your book or, make it something in it for them to create that reciprocal relationship.
 
[00:24:18] Matty: Yeah, I think that some people take the opinion that, if they send an email to a thousand podcasts, then they're going to piss off. 990 of them, but they might get 10 placements, but, I would also warn them that, you're building bad karma, and I remember, like, I have a list, and if people are spamming me with that kind of thing, even if they come back later and they have a good, I'm not even reading the pitch after a while if I know that this is somebody who's been, annoying me in the past with inappropriate, not inappropriate, but, misaligned pitches.
 
And I do think that anyone who's ever submitting something or pitching themselves to some, to someone or something should, have the experience of being on the other side of the pitch because I know I never fully appreciated, I was probably one of those people who would have complained about like, oh, I sent this to an agent or I said, sent this into a contest and, they didn't even like give me a review.
 
And having been a contest judge in several short fiction contests now, I'm like, oh, man, if you see it from the other side, you know what's going on. I think everybody should have an opportunity to be in that position every once in a while. great point.
 
[00:25:16] Stephanie: And following the directions of a pitch, right? Because a lot of times, podcasters have specific requests or answer these three questions, and then people don't do that. we have a call for guests for our podcast, and it's very specific. How does your, topic Help authors in some way.
 
And then we get pitches on like mental health and medical things and it's like, what does this have to do? how are you going to tie this into writers? Because we're not doing it for you and it's not there in your pitch.
 
Pursuing aspirational contacts
 
[00:26:05] Matty: yeah, exactly. we can all clip this out and have it as like a little, tutorial on our websites about if you want to pitch to us, here's what you should keep in mind. so we've talked about, a little bit about, bringing forward your existing tribe, how to, just a couple of ideas about how to support and cater to your, your evolving tribe.
 
I'm wondering if you can also talk a little bit about, like, the aspirational tribe. like, I have, so on my tickler list, Stephen King, if you're out there on my tickler list, is that someday, when I have the perfect question to ask, I'm going to get in touch with Stephen King and ask him to be on the podcast, because he seems like the kind of guy who might say, Isn't this cute? A person with a podcast! I think I'll do this just as a lark. I haven't done that yet, because I haven't come up with a question I might ask yet. But do you have recommendations for how people can identify the appropriate aspirational tribe members they want to engage and then how they should go about doing that?
 
[00:27:01] Stephanie: So I'm one of those people that believes you have nothing to lose from asking, right? So let's even put this in the context of getting endorsements for your book, because those can be tricky, right? But so here's how I've gotten endorsements, especially earlier on when I didn't even really have much of my own community, I Messaged a lot of big-name authors on social media and they answer their own messages.
 
And those pitches weren't, Oh, my first book is coming out and I'm self-publishing it and I, gosh, I would really love it. And here's what it's all about because I get those pitches too. And they're like nine paragraphs long. No, if you want to look like a pro, it's no more than two paragraphs. It's this book is coming out. I love your work. You know. Pay a compliment and I was amazed at how many well-known authors I got to endorse my books simply by contacting them through social media.
 
The other thing is once you start to build your platform, so I'm thinking for, we run this nonfiction writers conference every year, and back in 2010, we were doing it by teleseminar, remember when that was a thing, before we were using Zoom and all these great visuals, but I started with My Tribe of Influence, our opening speaker the very first year was Dan Pointer. He was a wonderful, mentor to a lot of us in publishing. He wrote self-publishing books and then each year as my sphere grew, I was inviting people and then I started getting really brave and inviting people I didn't know and that's how I got Julia Cameron, Anna Quinlan, Cheryl Strayed, Seth Godin, Don Miguel Ruiz, Martha Beck, Dan Millman, I just started asking.
 
So once you're able to show some platform as well, that also really helps. And so I tell our community, let that be your motivation, right? Your motivation for building your audience, because the fact is, the bigger your audience gets, the easier it is to get yeses from podcasts and influencers and things like that.
 
Matty: And I think the more you can demonstrate your professionalism, the better. Professionalism doesn't necessarily equate to experience. More experience makes professionalism easier, but it's not a necessity. Writing a pitch, and I'm trying to frame this carefully, so I'm not suggesting that you lie about your experience. Framing a pitch as if you've been on a million podcasts and you feel confident in what you have to offer without making any claims beyond what you actually have to offer.
 
The story, I've told this before, but I think it's such a good illustration of this. I was contacted by someone who wanted to be a guest on the podcast because he had his first nonfiction book coming out, and it would be his first interview. So he didn't have any other interviews to point me to, but he recorded an interview specifically to pitch me for the podcast. It was him talking on video for a couple of minutes about his book, very specifically to me. This wasn't a generic thing. He had created this video for me.
 
So I could see he knew his topic. He was comfortable on camera, all the things that I would look for in a guest. The fact that he had never been on any other podcast didn't make a difference because he had proven that he had the professionalism, even if he didn't have the experience. I think that can go a long way if you're aiming for those more aspirational connections.
 
Each new contact opens a network of others
 
Stephanie: One more tip too, like with the endorsement thing. Let's say you get your very first big-name one because this is how I did it, right? So when I sent my pitch, I'll say, "You'll be in good company because here's what Michael Gerber had to say about the book." And then this influencer goes, "Oh wow, she got Michael Gerber. I totally need to do this." So leverage your tribe, especially if you can get an introduction. With fellow authors, we know people, right? Can someone introduce you to a well-known person that you can then get your first endorsement and then show that to others? So you're right, all that professionalism really does help.
 
Matty: I think in any of those, like I was thinking back to the social media message in order to get a blurb. I think a sort of, nothing's foolproof but saying, "I think that this book would appeal to the people who follow you because ...” If you can fill that in, you're halfway there. Because you're illustrating that you're serving yourself, but your intent is to serve the people that the person you're contacting wants to serve too, their own followers, and that you're looking out for them, you're not looking out for yourself."
 
And that's certainly true for podcast pitches. I'm sure you've found this. If somebody says, "Here's a topic that I think will be especially meaningful to the people who listen to your podcast," then your ears prick up.
 
Stephanie: I wish I could remember the author's name, but she had written a real-life memoir based on a story that Judy Blume had written about. Judy Blume is one of my favorite childhood authors, but she wrote a number of adult books. So she had written a book about this actual story that happened to this woman who wrote her memoir. Well, she reached out to Judy Blume, and guess what? Judy Blume asked for the book. She wrote about it on social media. I mean, they actually created a connection over that. Somebody that is such a major, beloved author, and she created that connection. So you're absolutely right. Don't be afraid to reach out. That's what I say. It all starts to kind of create this snowball effect.
 
[00:32:55] Matty: Well, there can't be a better story than that to end our conversation about expanding one's tribe of influence. Stephanie, thank you so much. I appreciate you entertaining my wide-ranging questions about tapping into one's tribe of influence. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
 
[00:33:12] Stephanie: Yeah, thank you. Check us out, NonfictionAuthorsAssociation.com. We have a huge community of active writers at all stages in the process. We have our upcoming Nonfiction Writers Conference. That's also NonfictionWritersConference.com. Then I have a new book launching in January, the Nonfiction Book Marketing and Launch Plan. It's actually an eight and a half by eleven workbook, book, and planning guide, 250 plus pages. It's not full of blank pages. It's a really, really meaty. It's my favorite thing I've done so far. So I'm looking forward to that and appreciate you having me here today.
 
[00:33:49] Matty: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Episode 217 - The Many Levers of Your Author Platform with Andrea DeWerd

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Andrea DeWerd discusses THE MANY LEVERS OF YOUR AUTHOR PLATFORM, including two approaches to social media: going wide or going deep; the pros and cons of social media scheduling and cross-posting apps; tips for finding your target demographic on social media; the evolving status of BookTok and TikTok; the fact that an author platform is more than social media, and how to find those alternatives; tapping into your existing network or community, or even building a platform with fellow authors and author services providers; establishing a presence on Goodreads, BookBub, and Amazon Author Central; and, finally, knowing when it’s time for a change.

Andrea Jo DeWerd is a book marketing strategist, consultant, writer, speaker, and the founder of the future of agency LLC, a book marketing and publishing consulting agency headquartered in Brooklyn, NY. Andrea is also the co-founder of MADonna Writing Retreats, a luxury writing retreat experience in Barcelona. She’s a 13–year veteran of Big 5 publishing with over one-hundred career NYT bestsellers.

Episode Links

Andrea's Links:
Author website: thefutureofagency.com & ajdewerd.com
Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/thefutureofagency
Instagram profile: https://instagram.com/ajdewerd
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajdewerd/

Related Episodes:
Episode 206 - Embracing Your Own Kind of Online Peculiar with Sue Ellson

Summary

The world of book marketing is incredibly vast and can often feel overwhelming for new and seasoned authors alike. In a recent episode of the Indie Author Podcast, we dove deep into this subject with our esteemed guest, Andrea Jo DeWerd. As a book marketing strategist, consultant, writer, and founder of the Future of Agency LLC, Andrea brought valuable insights to the table, discussing author platforms, social media, SEO, and other essential topics.
 
The Multi-Faceted Author Platform
 
Contrary to popular belief, an author's platform is more than just their social media presence. Andrea clarified that an author’s platform is their network, their connections, and anyone they can call upon when it comes time to promote their book. This includes tangible portions of their platform like websites, newsletters, and social media, but it also extends to the author’s credentials and other professional affiliations they might have.
 
She emphasized thinking creatively about what’s in your control and advised authors not to limit their idea of their platform to just social media.
 
Handling Social Media
 
Not every author feels comfortable using social media. Recognizing this, Andrea advises authors against forcing themselves to fit into a platform that they don’t enjoy. She promoted the idea of choosing a platform not only based on where the target audience may be but also where the author feels comfortable and can provide regular content of value.
 
She encouraged authors to think beyond social media if they're feeling hesitant and brought up Substack as a platform for long-form newsletters for authors who aren't comfortable with active social media engagement.
 
Navigating Website Analytics
 
Websites, according to Andrea, offer unique opportunities for authors in terms of claiming and controlling your own search. With Google analytics, authors can see the path readers take from social media to the author's website and then to the bookstore, providing valuable data for marketing strategies.
 
Andrea acknowledged the time and energy needed for website optimization efforts and suggested taking a step-by-step approach to improving your website for search engine performance.
 
Using Goodreads, BookBub, and Amazon Author Central
 
Andrea discussed the benefits of claiming author profiles on platforms like Goodreads, BookBub, and Amazon Author Central. She emphasized the importance of regularly updating these profiles with your latest releases and encouraged authors to be active on these platforms without necessarily reading reviews. She warned authors of falling into the trap of constant comparison and advised them to ensure such platforms remain a positive space.
 
The Future: BookTok and Threads
 
As the conversation turned towards trends, Andrea shared her observations about emerging platforms like BookTok and Threads. While she noted that BookTok has become somewhat insular, catering to a narrow slice of literature, she hinted at Threads as a potential platform for authors willing to try something new.
 
In conclusion, the podcast shed much-needed light on author platforms from the unique perspective of a seasoned book marketing strategist. The central message was clear: ensure your platform is more than just social media, engage with readers genuinely and authentically, monitor your digital footprint, be active on notable book platforms, and don’t be afraid to try out emerging platforms. Above all, find a platform that feels good to you and interests your reader base. It's less about fitting the mold and more about creating a unique author identity in the digital space.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indie Author Podcast. Today my guest is Andrea Jo DeWerd. Hey Andrea, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:06] Andrea: Hi, good to see you.
 
[00:00:07] Matty: It is great seeing you too.
 
Meet Andrea Jo DeWerd
 
[00:00:09] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Andrea Jo DeWerd is a book marketing strategist, consultant, writer, speaker, and founder of the future of agency LLC, a book marketing and publishing consulting agency headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. Andrea is also the cofounder of Madonna Writing Retreats, a luxury writing retreat experience in Barcelona. She's a 13-year veteran of big five publishing with over 100 career New York Times bestsellers. And I met Andrea when I heard her speak at the 2023 Writer's Digest Annual Conference, and I thought the information she had to share was so valuable that  I wanted to invite her to the podcast.
 
Is an author platform more than social media? (The answer is yes)
 
[00:00:45] Matty: And so we're going to be talking about the six levers of your author platform. And I think that a great topic to start out with is, is author platform just social media or is it something more?
 
[00:01:00] Andrea: Okay, so this is a great place to start because so many people come to me and say, I know I need to have a platform, but I don't want to be on social media. What do I do? And I have this conversation so many times. What I always want to remind folks is that your platform is more than just social media. Your platform is your network. It's your connections. It's anyone that you might call upon to help you when it comes time to promote your book.  
 
So I would think about this creatively. There, there are the things that are in your control, which are like website, newsletter, social media.  We're going to talk about those a lot today, I'm sure. But think about what else is in your control that you might be able to call on. Maybe you are an entrepreneur and have a speaking platform.  Maybe it has nothing to do with what your book topic is. Maybe you're writing middle grade or YA fiction and you have a completely different professional life that. But you have connections from that and you might be able to, you know, pull that network and, use it in some way. Let your friends and family, let your professional network know that you have now written a book.
 
So think creatively about that and what you can add. This also extends to your credentials. I was working with a client who is a vet and was selling, one, a memoir, but also two, middle grade fiction about animals. And we really had to make that connection very clear that she is credentialed to write.  Middle grade fiction because she knows animals very intimately from her life as a vet. Her book is not about being a vet; her memoir is, but that particular book, it was important to let readers know, you know, why she's qualified to speak about that topic. So you, using credentials is also part of your author platform and lets you bring in an audience in a new way. So think beyond social media.
 
Tap into your existing network or community
 
[00:02:35] Matty: Yeah, the comment about your network and a network you might have, as you enter an author career is interesting because I spent many years as a project manager in the corporate world, many of those years in IT, and, when I left my corporate job in 2016, I had hundreds and hundreds of LinkedIn contacts, and I'm always happy to tell them if I have a new book or I have a new podcast episode or something like that, but, I sometimes also wonder, like, should I have started fresh? Because it's almost like if you've, put out your first book and you've told all your friends and family and you're writing a mystery, but all your friends and family are always buying books about travel in Europe on Amazon, and so you end up getting this weird also buys. Does the same kind of thing happen with a social network? Like if you're carrying members of your old social network into your author career?
 
[00:03:20] Andrea: Absolutely. I think that's a really important point to make to think about. I was talking with the author today who's starting to write in a new genre. We want to bring her current audience along for the ride. So we're trying to figure out exactly what is her current audience interested in, and then how do we make that shift? It might be gentle and, you know, your shift from project management to writing other kinds of books, that, that might be a more dramatic shift.
 
I think the messaging is really important. I would think about what's the common denominator? And besides, you know, major moments in a book's life cycle, what else could you share with your network there that, that they might be interested in? And is there a hook that would draw them into the book in a different way? So same with social media. If you know that, someone was writing children's books before, and now we're trying to reach, middle aged women's fiction market. That shift might look like, leaning on parents first. So we think parents are the people who are buying that picture book first. Now we want to really target those moms. What is the common denominator that they might be interested in from one book to the next?
 
It's hard. It takes a couple months to do that, to start kind of posting a mix of messaging. Maybe two messages to one message each week about the kind of shifting from the old audience, the old content to the new content, but doing that, that messaging switch just very gently through, through social media posts and through a mix of messages, is a nice way to do that.
 
Look for alternatives to social media
 
[00:04:41] Andrea: The one thing I will add is just also that social media is not for everybody. So if you are feeling hesitant there, look at what else you may be able to do. And I'm working with a client now who is going to just be on Substack. She's going to write a long form newsletter because that is a more comfortable place for her to be than social media. So that is a more basic switch to drop social media and do a newsletter, but think about your comfort level and if there's a platform that really feels better to you than others.
 
Social media is not the be all end all of book marketing, it is not the only thing that is going to sell your book, it is probably like, it's probably more like the icing on top, the thing that maybe pushes something over the edge, it just gets a lot of buzz when we see something really go viral on BookTok or Bookstagram in particular, And but for the majority of authors, it's not going to be the thing that sells your book. So, so look around, look around, look at what you like doing, and maybe choose a different platform. It doesn't have to be social. Maybe it's a podcast.
 
Two approaches to social media: go wide or go deep
 
[00:05:35] Matty: Yes, exactly. I did have one other question about social media because I've heard and, at different times followed two different approaches, both of which make sense to me for different reasons. One is that don't bother being on a social media platform if you're not planning on being active there. And the other one is there's no harm in posting, even if you're not going to be active on a platform, as long as, I guess, you're kind of setting that expectation.  
 
So, for me, I'm most active on Facebook, and, you know, I post everything I do there, but I've also started posting more regularly on Twitter and Instagram. I'm never going to be active on Twitter or Instagram, but I kind of feel like, especially for my podcast episodes, this is more true for my nonfiction than my fiction, that many of my guests are active on those platforms, and I feel like I'm both doing them a service, but also selfishly, reaching their audience if I'm doing that. Do you have a feeling about the pros and cons of posting on a social media platform where you're not planning on being active? Or active in the sense of interactive?
 
[00:06:38] Andrea: This is a really interesting question because I think it's changing right now, especially with folks leaving Twitter, now called X. My answer used to be more the former, what you were talking about of, you know, really only focusing on the platform where you're going to be active and respond to comments and drive engagement. Part of that is because if you're not responding to comments and being interactive, the algorithm does push your content further down, you will be, you know, deprioritizing the algorithm. If it's not your main network. Kind of, who cares? Who cares if you're not at the top of the algorithm if it's not where you're focused?
 
The one thing I would say is that apps like Buffer and Hootsuite make it so easy to cross post across different platforms. You can post the same content on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram if there's a photo attached to it. And you don't have to be active in all those places. You can just follow the comments on LinkedIn or, you know, wherever you're most active. But it makes it very easy to cross post and be, maybe have a passive presence in those places.
 
So my opinion about this is really shifting and it's also becoming more common, especially with people leaving Twitter, to say that they have an updates only account. So you'll see that in Twitter bios now that folks are really actively leaving Twitter. I'm one of those people. I've chosen to leave Twitter very recently, which is still a little bit of a grieving process for me. I really am sad about what Twitter used to be for the writing community. But a lot of people are saying there's an up an updates only account, you might see a couple things a year of, you know, a link to buy something, sign up for a retreat, a new product, but folks are really not being active there, but they're leaving a cookie crumb trail of where to find me.
 
So I think that's going to be more common these days, especially as we're trying new platforms, we're trying Mastodon, we're trying Threads. So I think you'll see that more of folks having updates only accounts where you might post once in a while really important stuff, but then leave information about, you know, where to find your more active platforms.
 
I think this is really more a question of an author's energy. So you want to put your best. Social media energy, maybe one to two hours a week into your favorite platform. So whatever that is, put your best energy there for sure. Do that first. If it's draining your energy to cross post to Instagram and Twitter, I would drop that entirely. I don't think it's worth posting once in a while there just for whatever fraction of an eyeball you might gain. If it's a passive repost, if you're able to do that. From Facebook or from LinkedIn without really putting much effort into it, then I think there's absolutely no harm to keep doing that, and you'll reach the people who happen to be there.
 
Social media scheduling and cross-posting apps
 
[00:09:09] Andrea: I will say that Pinterest is a great platform for that. Pinterest is great for searchability, and it's very easy to cross post anything with photos or videos. So if you're posting photos or videos to either Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn, cross post them to Pinterest. It's, there's easy automations to set up through either a website called Zapier or a website called If This Then That. I have these automations set up so every time I post on Instagram it automatically posts to Pinterest. It also emails links to my Instagram to my mom, so she remembers to look at my photos on Instagram.
 
So that takes about a half hour to learn and set up, and then you never have to think about it ever again. But you might grab a fraction of traffic of folks who are looking for new books on Pinterest or happen to be looking for content related to your topic.
 
[00:09:57] Matty: And is there a one time or subscription fee for those services like Zapier and the other one you mentioned?
 
[00:10:03] Andrea: Not if you only, if you're under a certain threshold, so I think Zapier, you can have up to 20 automations for free, before you get charged, so you can set up at least a couple for free.
 
[00:10:13] Matty: I did experiment. I'm not going to say the name because I have the feeling that the issues I was facing were not a problem with this platform. It was just the nature of the beast. But maybe you can advise me that I got a social media scheduling app because I was going to post to those ones that I mentioned plus TikTok. God help us. I'm sure we'll get to that. And what I found was that pretty frequently this dashboard would tell me it had posted something, but I would, it wouldn't be there if I went and like actually checked the platform, it wasn't there, which was just a bug or could have been user error.
 
But the thing that I found most seemingly, disappointing about it or the downside of it was the inability to effectively flag people. So like if I have a podcast episode go up and I get all the social media URLs of my guests, then when I go and post on the different platforms, then I always flag them. So. You know, I'm hopefully, letting them know, and also letting their followers know that this is available, and I didn't really see a way to do that on, the scheduling apps. Was I missing something, or what's your thought about that?
 
[00:11:15] Andrea: Some of them are better than others at that, is what I will say. I recommend Buffer and Hootsuite, there are many others I've experimented with, none of them are perfect. I, the experience that you had of something not posting that does happen to be on Hootsuite once in a while, And, what happens is that, this is nerdy tech stuff, but it's a problem with the API connection. So your Facebook now, Facebook login requires two factor authentication. So you get texted a code from Facebook. Buffer or Hootsuite needs to connect to that text code. So it gets disconnected very frequently now because of that two factor authentication. So it makes your actual social media platforms more secure, but it makes your social media management apps, much more annoying to work with. That is a problem across the board.
 
What I would say then is to make sure you're logging into your management platform at least once a week to make sure that those things are reconnected. It does take a little bit more work, than set it and forget it, unfortunately. But, so as far as tagging people, some, there, there is one platform in particular that is not very good at that is very hard to find people's handles. Buffer is okay and Hootsuite is okay. There's another one that I will not recommend because, it was very hard to tag people in the platform. So that, I think is a preference. It just takes a little bit of experimentation and figuring out, you know, which one, works best for you.
 
The other thing I will say is that for most of them, you have to have someone's handle exactly and know how to spell it. You cannot search in the platform. So you're searching on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook natively, and then typing it in the exact caption back in your scheduling platform. It does take a little bit of work there. So, there is one platform that is more expensive called Meltwater, and they are better about using the live search to find people without having to leave Meltwater to go find it somewhere else. But it's unfortunately more expensive.
 
[00:13:03] Matty: yeah, the, all the interconnectedness, like the admitted benefit of being able to do it, to manage in one place does bring along its own set of challenges as well.
 
[00:13:12] Andrea: That's it. Pros and cons.
 
More alternatives to social media
 
[00:13:15] Matty: So I wanted to talk a little bit about, you had said before, like you had, you were working with an author whose platform was on Substack, not social media. Can you talk a little bit about some of the other non-social media, platforms that authors can use to build an author platform?
 
[00:13:31] Andrea: The other big one that comes up a lot is Medium, right? Authors writing other long form content on Medium, and I would say about either of those, either Medium or Substack or another newsletter platform is, just think about how much else you have to say if you're someone who is writing a lot and, writing prolifically, maybe if you were a blogger back in the day or used to have another blogging platform, maybe that's a good option for you.
 
Offering value for newsletter sign-ups
 
[00:13:55] Andrea: newsletters, getting in someone's inbox, I think it has to deliver value. You're asking someone to give up a bit of personal information, their email address, which can be personal. It's a little bit closer relationship than passively following someone's on social media. So I think if you're going to ask for someone's email, you have to deliver them something of value.
 
So think about, you know, tips or things you can teach them or interesting facts, maybe. I always point to historical fiction authors who have so, so much beautiful research, share some of that really interesting research. Maybe there's some cool resources there, or maybe you can teach someone else how to do that amazing research.
 
If you're writing nonfiction, I imagine you have sources and interviews and tons of ancillary content. also tip nonfiction authors, if you're not recording your interviews with your sources, start recording now. they can be used for podcasts later, they can be used for video, they can be used for, you know, transcripts for newsletter, but they there's so much other content that can be shared in that way, thinking of repurposing anything that goes into just one book, but it has to be something of value to the recipient.
 
So think about, you know, what are they going to get out of it? What can they learn from it? Is there some kind of idea exchange that can happen there? And it might be as simple as, you know, maybe you read prolifically and you're recommending books. Here are three books you might like if you also liked reading my book, that kind of content.
 
So a book sharing Booklist, sharing article lists of, you know, here are interesting things I'm reading this week that are related to topics in my book. But there has to be just a little bit of value for them in it, to make them want to open it, and truly look forward to it every week.
 
And also think about the newsletters that you really like getting, and, you know, what do you get out of it? Why are you excited to open it every week? there are about two that I open, you know, immediately first thing, and one of them is called The Daily Carnage, which is from a marketing agency. It's the one marketing newsletter that I read. so I recommend that to everybody. And one is Astrology for Writers by Jenna Kadlik, who's a Brooklyn based writer. I read her newsletter religiously.
 
So, think, you know, think about that feeling when you, you look forward to getting that email in your inbox. You know you're going to get something really good out of it. You're going to know how to navigate the current, the coming ellipse and know how to plan your creative projects, because of Jenna Kadlik, or Daily Carnage will give me some new marketing tool or insight every day. So, what can you do that is, it’s going to be of value to someone else. as far as other platforms, you know, it's challenging because those aren't really the active ones besides social media and then podcasts. If you're, if you have a topic that is so expansive that it would lend itself well either to interviews or to a long form narrative.
 
Podcast is an interesting platform for that. YouTube is the other one. I think, but unless you're intending to be a full time YouTube content creator, being a video YouTuber, I think that option is probably not, not the best for most folks unless you're doing something that's very like how to, like makeup tutorials or cookbook authors always do very well on YouTube.
 
The role of an author website
 
[00:16:47] Matty: Well, the other one that I always like to ask about, and I've been on this jag of asking guests periodically about this because I'm still trying to get my brain around it, but, an author website. So I've had a couple of interviews over the last year, I guess, of talking with, experts in this field about author websites and, sort of debating a little bit on, being the devil's advocate about our author websites as important as they used to be, because.
 
Don't you want to send people to your direct sales store or social media or, you know, the online retailers or something like that? And, I'm almost convinced, like I'm convinced in my head but not in my heart yet that I should be spending more time on my website as like a destination. But I'm still struggling with the question of what's the benefit to me as an author and a businessperson of driving people to my website as opposed to somewhere else. Do you have a perspective on that?
 
[00:17:42] Andrea: so thinking about website, it is generally a more static platform. So it's not one, you know, where you have to make changes. I'd say still update it maybe every 3 to 6 months, but, my opinion on whether you need to have a platform or have an author website has changed also, I think, in the last couple of months.
 
Especially seeing what has happened with social media, how little control we have over the Twitter algorithm, the Instagram algorithm. I think websites are important because they let an author claim and control your own search. You are completely in control of your SEO for your website, for your name, and for your book titles, really, in that way. Of course, you can do that on Amazon, and you can, we can talk hours about just playing with the Amazon algorithm and getting that search. But Google search is increasingly important, especially for nonfiction, and for topical fiction in particular, but it's also, it's the one place, maybe, where all of your books and projects live in one place, and you have full control over that.
 
So I see the benefit in driving direct to a sales page, you know, direct to retail if you're promoting one book at a time. It may be if you're a debut author, you only have one book so far, but once you hit that threshold, once you have two books, once you have multiple projects, you don't want to abandon the first one, you So managing a website and really taking control of your search there I think is really important because it's really the one place where an author can completely own that, and start to associate their name with their book title, having those things linked together come, help it, help both of them come up higher in Google search and come up higher in Amazon search.
 
So all of those things play together. The more qualified links that you have that go back to your website and then go back to Amazon or other retailers helps all of those things surface higher, higher in search in the algorithm. There's a very top line overview of that, but, I do think it's important for search reasons.
 
[00:19:30] Matty: Yeah, I do keep my website up to date, and the one page that I update all the time is, the upcoming appearances and events page, so it's, there's always, you know, at least once a week I'm up, I'm in there updating something about that, but, you know, occasionally you'll get the people who are all about, you know, the technical things that need to be done to drive people to your website, and I'm like, like, it's clear in my mind that I'm thinking of it as the backup to if I get kicked out of Facebook, And it looks professional, you know, if like, I can send somebody to my own website, it just seems like a marker of professionalism.
 
[00:20:06] Andrea: Very specific in the analytics there. So the benefit is of driving folks through your website and then to retail is that you can track all of that. You can see that they came from Facebook and then they clicked off to Amazon or they clicked off to Barnes and Noble or whatever. You can drive down pretty deep in those Google website analytics.
 
your website and you control that data. Amazon doesn't control that data. That's the real benefit. If like you can see what is actually driving people to your site. You may or may not do anything with it. Maybe you want to optimize and make sure you're getting more people to your website from Facebook or from your newsletter, wherever, or maybe it's just interesting information that you're not going to do anything with. Totally fine. But it is important that you control that data, that you're not dependent on Amazon or someone else for that information.
 
[00:20:49] Matty: Yeah, I think anything that was, removes our dependence on those kind of platforms is good. And I realized that maybe if I were advising someone on this, I would say that the work is no for when you do whatever those optimization steps are, like, If you're going to do those optimization steps and then you're never going to look at the data, then deprioritize it, like bump it down to the back burner for a little bit and then come back to it later because you need both the time to do the setup that's being recommended and then to look at what is providing you and just doing one without the other isn't really giving you much benefit.
 
[00:21:21] Andrea: That's right.
 
Author considerations for search optimization
 
[00:21:23] Matty: so we've talked a little bit about search optimization. Can you speak a little more generally, even outside the website scenario, about what kind of things authors should be keeping in mind for search optimization?
 
[00:21:37] Andrea: A thing a lot of folks don't remember to do at this point, once, once you have an ISBN, claim your profiles. Go claim your BookBub profile, go claim your Goodreads profile, claim your Amazon Author Central, and then related to your website, you can claim your Google Knowledge Panel. these are all things that can be completely in your control for search.
 
So when you search for anyone on Google, there's a little side panel that pops up on the right-hand column, and it will say, is this you? Claim this panel, at the bottom. So you can click that, and you can point people to that. You can put a one sentence bio in that sidebar, or two sentence bio, I don't know the character count off the top of my head, but you can also choose which social media platforms do you want to point people there.
 
So maybe you only want to point people to Facebook, and you want to remove the LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever else is showing up there, because that's where you're focused on your social. You get to control that, and a lot of people don't realize that. So that, I think that is very valuable, because you could also point people to your newest book there. You can really control that information and control when somebody is looking for you, what are they going to find first.
 
Establishing a presence on Goodreads, BookBub, and Amazon Author Central
 
[00:22:31] Andrea: The other platforms, Goodreads, BookBub, and Amazon Author Central in particular, I do like to treat those really as set it and forget it. They are helpful for discovery, for pointing people back to you and your books. What I am talking about is setting up your Goodreads author profile. Like, add your bio, add your photos. You can link a blog or an RSS feed of other content that you're doing. I am not telling you to go read your reviews. That is not what I am saying. So listen to my words. Claim your profile. Do not read your reviews, authors.
 
What is helpful to do there is to spend just a little bit of time adding your books to lists on Goodreads, under, it's under discovery and then lists. you can, there are crowdsourced lists for every topic and genre, so you might find, books to read on the beach or whatever you want. Books to read when you think you want to quit your job. You can find very specific things. So look for about 20 or 25 lists that fit your book and you can add your book there and have people up and people will upload think it's relevant.
 
But it's just one more place to like put your book out there for discovery and see if there's, you know, any fraction of traffic you might be able to capture from that. So do that. Add your book to your list and then leave it alone. Do not read your reviews. similar with BookBub, you can rate. Other books by other authors, which just helps you, become associated with those authors, so if people like books like Water for Elephants by Sarah Groon, which is being made into a Broadway musical, which is why it's in my brain right now, if you like books like Sarah Groon’s, you might like books by, you know, you, author, so there might, there can be a little bit of association that happens on BookBub, it's, it's really just another discovery tool that I think a lot of folks ignore. And BookBub sends so many daily emails if you sign up for different genres, it's mostly, of course, for deals, for ebook deals, for price promos, But they have a huge email list just for historical fiction, a huge email list just for memoir and inspiration.
 
So having your book associated with other books that might be put on deal or on promo helps your book pop up in the algorithm in that way. So, do that once, do not spend a lot of time there, but when you have a new book, I'd pop back to all of those profiles and make sure you've added it to new lists, rated a couple new comp titles in that way.
 
Amazon Author Central, there's limited options for what you can do there, but at least make sure you've claimed your profile, update your photo, update your bio, because that will show up on all of your book product pages automatically. A lot of folks forget where it is feeding from and forget where that 10-year-old photo is coming from, and it's for your Author Central.
 
[00:25:10] Matty: Yeah, I finally put together a big spreadsheet of everywhere I had posted my picture or my bio with a link to it so that when I had a new book or had a new picture I would know the 17 bazillion places I had to go fix it.
 
[00:25:23] Andrea: Brilliant. Great idea.
 
Building a platform with fellow authors and author services platforms
 
[00:25:25] Matty: The whole thing about BookBub is very interesting because I think that the obvious focus of platform building for most authors is to find readers, but I also think that there's this opportunity to build a platform among either your fellow authors or the gatekeepers like BookBub, so I am not claiming in any way that this is true, I'm just saying that there's a part of my brain that thinks that if I'm active on BookBub as a member of the community, maybe I'm going to be more likely to be smiled upon, maybe they have like a little dashboard in the background that's saying how often you do anything other than just submit for a feature deal.
 
I suppose in the past, I might've thought of Goodreads that same way, but now that it's part of Amazon, it doesn't feel that way so much anymore, but can you talk a little bit about whether that idea of building a platform among one's peers is something authors should be thinking of?
 
[00:26:21] Andrea: So you're right. There are editorial teams at both Goodreads and BookBub. it is like one or two people amongst a team of 500 Amazon engineers at Goodreads. And you're right. It used to very much be that way that you could be rewarded for being a good Goodreads citizen is what I would say. I do think BookBub still looks at this to an extent.
 
Because I think it's a place where a lot of authors are not active as a promotional platform. You're, exactly what you said, folks are submitting for deals or maybe for advertising, but not using the platform natively. The benefit of doing that is that when you are recommending books on either Goodreads or BookBub, other regular readers can follow you and follow your recommendations in that way, which helps you gain a following.
 
And on BookBub, you have to have over a certain threshold of followers before they will give you certain promotions like the pre order alert. you have to have a thousand followers on BookBub before you can be considered for that, and that pre order alert is actually, free and a very valuable presales tool.
 
How are you going to gain followers there if you're not being selected for ebook deals? You're going to have to use the platform natively and, you know, be known as a person who is recommending books, of interest. What I can't tell you is how effective it is in general, like how easy it is to catch the eye of those editorial teams. I think there are so many authors and, you know, Goodreads has become very, so, so saturated. but I think BookBub is still an opportunity for folks to make a, more of an organic splash and gain those followers and hopefully get that free presales alert.
 
[00:27:53] Matty: I do have the feeling that the BookBub team, well, everybody's a smaller team than the Amazon team, but the BookBub team is, I just sense a smaller team. I'll just clip this out and send it to them and say, dear BookBub, how many people do you have working there anyway?
 
[00:28:05] Andrea: Exactly.
 
[00:28:06] Matty: so we've talked, I guess one thing that I would take from what you were just saying about interactive, interacting natively on a platform like BookBub is that some of those are just fun.
 
Like, it's fun to be on BookBub and see what people are recommending and things like that. And so, I think there are some things where you can justify it just because it's an enjoyable thing. Like, maybe you don't put it down in the ROI column of your author business, maybe you just put it down in your hobby, you know, your personal hobby thing, and you may be, gaining personal benefits, but, no harm in having fun in places where you might gain financial benefits and platform building benefits anyway.
 
Online options for reader engagement
 
[00:28:45] Andrea: that's right. Yeah, I think, you know, I didn't exactly answer your question, too, about just, peer networking. I think that's part of it. Like, hopefully you will have fun talking to other book lovers and talking about books and sharing what you are genuinely reading and interested in. I would think, really think of it that way, of like, it's one more place for you to talk about books and talk to book lovers.
 
there's also benefit in the same way. There are other book club websites or book club groups on Facebook in particular, Goodreads has great book club groups, that might be a fun place for you to interact and engage. I don't know exactly what the ROI is because it's so dependent on, you know, does the group decide to read your book at some point? Do they decide to promote it? Will they adopt it? It's hard to say. It's very hard to say, but you might have fun as a reader, engaging with those book clubs. And if that's something that you have time and energy for, I would definitely recommend that to authors. Like, I'm in three book clubs just because it's fun.
 
[00:29:34] Matty: Yeah, I have actually had good luck, and as you're saying, I'm not quite sure how to measure the good luck, but good luck with Facebook readers groups. There are a couple that are very well run, and I've participated in a number of events there, and I can see those people coming over to my, author Facebook page.
 
And, interestingly, about once a month, I post on my fiction author page, I say, I know most of you are here because you're readers, but since readers are sometimes writers, too, you might be interested to know that I have this other page called The Indy Author, and I just, posted one of those coincidentally a few days after I had done one of these, Facebook group events, and saw several of those people come over to my nonfiction platform, and then I also often see people that I've met through those book clubs commenting on Facebook ads.
 
And there are even Facebook ads that I didn't target. I'm letting Facebook doing the targeting, but targeting them. And then I see people I've met through those groups, you know, saying, yes, I've read this. This is a great book. So it's kind of a virtuous cycle. Plus being fun, as you're saying.
 
The evolving status of BookTok and TikTok
 
[00:30:35] Matty: now I'm going to, at the other end of the spectrum for me anyway, I have to ask about, BookTok. So BookTok was all the rage for a while and I'm not hearing that much about it now. I don't know if it's because I just tuned it out or it's really sort of decreasing in popularity. What are your thoughts about BookTok these days?
 
[00:30:54] Andrea: BookTok in general, I think, I think it's become a little bit of an insular community. Once one book becomes popular, one author, like Colleen Huber, of course, it was very hard for anything else to break through. And it's like, the ten books that BookTok crowned just keep getting recommended and recommended.
 
I haven't seen a lot of those readers, and this is completely, you know, just through watching and through seeing kind of what spikes at different retailers. I haven't seen a lot of other books been able to really break through. It's like, we crowned Colleen Hoover and we crowned, you know, ten other books. I guess Fourth Wing is probably one of the more recent ones that did come out of that. But it hasn't been, what Bookstagram has become, which is, you know, many more books, many more authors, many more Bookstagramers being able to break through in that way.
 
We are still trying as marketers, and I know the publishers are still trying to provide books and offer recommendations to the big BookTokers and have them, really help us make something else go viral.
 
I haven't really seen it happening in that way. We're trying to make a splash there, we're trying to have them shift their attention to something else, and it seems like the book talk type has become so narrow, they want to read this. So they're recommending this and it just, it hasn't expanded beyond to like a more general readership. TikTok, broader TikTok, I think is helpful though for nonfiction authors, who are operating outside of the BookTok algorithm. So I have seen in very weird examples, serious biographical history and, serious science books. Making a little bit of a splash on TikTok because they were talking about a very specific topic that TikTokers wanted to learn about.
 
People are using TikTok like they use Google or like they used to use YouTube. They're going to learn about how to write a resume or how to, you know, how to spot an XYZ comment in the sky tonight. they're looking, they're using TikTok for very specific information, using it for tutorials. So if you have nonfiction that could fit into one of those categories, I think that's a really good place for you.
 
For our general fiction writers, memoir writers, maybe more of our narrative nonfiction and, fiction. I think it's going to be hard to break through unless you can shoehorn yourself back into like a how to or related category. What I do see working for writers in general on TikTok is more like, more of what you were talking about with your nonfiction platform of like, come learn to be a writer, come look behind my process.
 
That content is working. I can't tell you that it's actually selling books, though. It's interesting content that people are watching and absorbing, but I don't know if it's actually driving people back to buy the maybe fiction that might go along with something like that.
 
[00:33:33] Matty: Yeah, one of the reasons I had pursued this social media scheduling was in order to get to TikTok, because I knew I wasn't going to be posting there. Among other reasons, I'm just not good with my phone. I have to do everything from my desktop, and that was problematic, but I did have, you know, was interested in it primarily for my nonfiction platform. Maybe I'll have to give some other different social media scheduling thing a tool and give it another try, because now I have like four TikTok videos out there about independent publishing.
 
When is it time for a change?
 
[00:34:03] Matty: so as the last question, I wanted to ask you if there are red flags that people should be looking out for, and now I'm thinking more specifically back to social media, that's saying this platform that either I've tried out or I've maybe been using for a long time, like are there red flags that say maybe it's time to move on or maybe it's time to give it a rest, and if that's the case, do you have recommendations for how a person can decide what other platform they might want to move to as a replacement for that platform?
 
[00:34:32] Andrea: That's a really interesting question. I'm thinking, I think first, as someone who's worked with so many authors for a long time, I want to protect your energy. If a social media platform is not fun for you anymore, if you feel like you're getting yelled at on Twitter all day, it's not safe for you anymore, it's not safe for your mental health. And if it's not helping you sell books in that way, if you're just getting started. You know, backlash or getting pulled into conversations that don't feel like a place where you want to be, I think it's time to go. And I do say that, you know, it happens with, it can happen with Facebook comments, it can happen in group chats, it can happen in TikTok, it can happen once in a while on LinkedIn comments. But if those places are feeling toxic to you, I think, you know, feel free to, you know, say goodbye and find something that, that makes you feel good.
 
And that, that's when I am thinking of more of the newsletters, things that are more of a one way street, one way conversation. Sometimes the scheduling apps also help with that, that you're not actively scrolling on the apps and reading all the conversation if you're just posting your content and then getting out. That might be another way to, to approach that situation. So there's that of like, Is it still fun for you? Does it still feel okay? Because I want authors to feel happy and feel like they can invest their time in places that feel good.
 
And then, you know, I will say, like, if you have seen your engagement really plummet on any particular platform, sometimes the algorithm has just decided, and I know I'm talking about it like it's anthropomorphic, but, we don't always know. We don't always know why. There have been one particular word or phrase that got flagged. God knows what happened with your algorithm, but if you're really not seeing the engagement that you used to, and I'm talking maybe, like, Like a 90%, 80 percent reduction in your engagement. That might be time to also look at something else, because it's not worth banging your head against the wall if it's not working. If your posts are being shown to ten people, and you used to get hundreds, or hopefully thousands, it’s not worth it.
 
So as for looking for something new, I will say that Threads is an interesting place right now for writers. There is kind of a lovely book community growing there. Again, I don't know the ROI yet because it's still so new, but there is a kind of a lovely, like, book recommendation supportive community growing on Threads. And I'm like, ooh, could it be the thing that replaces the writing community on Twitter?
 
Hopefully. We'll see. Thank you. So I would say keep an eye on, keep an eye on the new ones. I'm not hearing much about Blue Sky or Mastodon anymore. I'm not hearing much about Clubhouse anymore. I think everyone tried those things and then, you know, decided after a couple weeks that it wasn't for them. But I do see more folks now, especially in the last couple weeks leaving Twitter and giving threads a try. So I would say, yes, keep an eye on that and give it a shot for a couple weeks. See how it feels to you.
 
Finding your target demographic on social media
 
And then what I always say when you're thinking about what social media platform to be on, think about where your audience is. That is really the most important question. If you are trying to reach Gen Z, they are probably on TikTok. If you are trying to reach, you know, Millennials and Gen X, they are probably on Instagram. If you are trying to reach Boomers, 55 they are probably on Facebook, so that is also a, that's a safe bet.
 
LinkedIn skews obviously professionals, but skews a little bit more male, and also higher income. There are parents on Pinterest, parents on Facebook, so I think that's really important too. If you are joining TikTok because. . . You enjoy TikTok, fine, that's one thing, but if you are trying to reach a 55 plus audience, they are maybe not there, so maybe you are yelling into the void and not reaching your primary audience.
 
So I think that's really important too. If you're ready to shift, I would ask yourself, you know, one, where am I going to be comfortable? Where am I going to have fun? And then two, where's my audience?
 
[00:38:15] Matty: Perfect. Well, Andrea, thank you so much for sharing all those tips, all the levers that an author can pull to control their author platform, and thank you for making all those suggestions for alternatives people can pursue. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
 
[00:38:30] Andrea: Amazing. Thanks so much for having me. So my book marketing agency is called The Future of Agency. We are at thefutureofagency.com. And I also run those amazing writing retreats. We are filling for Barcelona, February, 2024 right now at madonnawriting. com.
 
[00:38:47] Matty: Great, thank you so much!

Episode 211 - Creating a Refuge: Creative Planning for Authors and Poets with Orna Ross

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Orna Ross discusses CREATING A REFUGE: CREATIVE PLANNING FOR AUTHORS AND POETS, including what Orna saw that convinced her that writers needed a more holistic approach to planning; the power of linking between your values as an author and the value you offer your readers; drawing deeply on your creative passion and mission as an author and as a publisher; recognize that self-publishing authors must wear three very different hats: that of maker, manager, and marketeer; the importance of incorporating creative rest and play into your weekly plans; encouraging a growth mindset and instituting a pay-yourself-first policy; and the Kickstarter where she pulls all this together for her fellow indie authors.

Orna Ross is a novelist, poet and founder of The Alliance of Independent authors, also known as ALLi. She was also my guest for one of the foundational set of episodes of the podcast—The Seven Processes of Publishing—which, conveniently enough, are episodes 101-107.

Episode Links

Kickstarter at SelfPublishingAdvice.org/planners24 

Previous podcast episodes:
​Episode 101 - The First Process of Publishing: Editorial with Orna Ross
Episode 102 - The Second Process of Publishing: Design with Orna Ross
Episode 103 - The Third Process of Publishing: Production with Orna Ross
Episode 104 - The Fourth Process of Publishing: Distribution with Orna Ross
Episode 105 - The Fifth Process of Publishing: Marketing with Orna Ross
Episode 106 - The Sixth Process of Publishing: Promotion with Orna Ross
Episode 107 - The Seventh Process of Publishing: Selective Rights Licensing with Orna Ross

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Orna Ross. Hey, Orna, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:05] Orna: Hello, Matty. I'm doing extremely well. How are you?
 
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you.
 
Meet Orna Ross
 
[00:00:10] Matty: Just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Orna Ross is a novelist, poet, and the founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, also known as ALLi. And she was also my guest for one of the foundational sets of episodes of the podcast, which were the seven processes of publishing, and those are conveniently episodes 101 through 107. And we're going to be talking today about what I think is a perfect follow-on to that set of episodes. Today, we're going to be talking about creative planning for authors and poets. I think this is a great time of year because this will be going out in November of 2023. It's perfect timing because I know a lot of people like to regroup at the end of the year, plan for the following year, and we'll be able to give them some good tips on that. The way I wanted to approach this is that I was poking around on the ALLi website, self-publishingadvice.org, and I found a description of Orna's philosophy about holistic planning. So, we're going to be diving into that ...
 
What did Orna see that convinced her that writers needed a more holistic approach to planning?
 
[00:01:06] Matty: But before we do that, Orna, I always like to ask people, what did you see either in your own writing life or your colleagues or your clients that made you think, "Oh, you know what, we really need a more holistic approach to planning."
 
[00:01:20] Orna: What I saw, not to put it too dramatically (I do love to be dramatic every now and again), was a lot of suffering, to be perfectly honest. I saw people doing amazing things, and this is in my role in ALLi and also as a writer. So, as a writer who became a self-publisher, I saw the difference that was needed, the need to move from being somebody who thinks about producing words to somebody who thinks about producing books and finding readers for them, and bringing readers to them.
 
So when I became a self-publisher myself, I adapted to that. The only planning system I ever had was a to-do list. I never needed any more than that. I knew what I needed to do, and I would tick it off as I did it and have an occasional flurry, and that was all fine. When I came to becoming a self-publisher, not long after that, I also founded ALLi. So, not only was I now a writer, I was also a publisher, and I was also running a nonprofit for other author-publishers. As Prince Harry said, it was a lot. So, I found that my to-do list was not equal to the task, and I was constantly feeling like I was having a great time, so suffering might sound very dramatic, but at the same time, there was this constant feeling of being harried and harassed. I was running after myself, never quite feeling like I had done anything, despite the fact that I had done oodles of things. There was always this mountainous to-do list ahead of me, and the to-do list never got shorter; it was always getting longer. I ticked something off, and the next thing came on. That was disheartening in some kind of important way.
 
Other things I was seeing in the community were people who were, even though they had achieved wonderful things, not feeling any pride in that, or not feeling always conscious of what hadn't been done, looking at other people with comparisonitis. All these things that we're all very familiar with in the community, and some people then became dangerously burnt out, really not doing well, finding that they wound up in a place where they just could not write because it had all kind of fallen apart.
 
And so, between my own experiences and theirs, I started to realize that the to-do list wasn't enough. I started to use planning programs. You know, I think I purchased every kind of program available, but they were very mechanistic, very much like you were a machine. Tick, tick. Fill that box, do that thing. You know, they didn't allow for the messiness of the creative process for today. You say you're going to do something, and actually, you wind up doing something else, but that other thing eventually turns out to be better than the thing you thought you were going to do. You know, that kind of thing that happens. And all the vagaries of being a creative. So I think, you know, really importantly, rest and creative play. No sign of anything like that. It was all work, work, work, produce, produce, produce, or else they were just fancy calendars. They weren't planning systems. They didn't have an outcome in mind.
 
What I needed was something that actually created a system that, you know what you want at the end, and then you work back from there, and your system provides the things you need to create. Sometimes, yes, that's work, but sometimes it is play, and sometimes it's rest. So that's where the holistic bit came in.
 
The other aspect of the holistic bit was time and money. You know, I think of time as having three kinds of dimensions. There's our clock time, which is what planners work on in terms of calendar time, you know, the chunks of actual 90 minutes or a month or a quarter or whatever. But there's also creative time, which is when you are in the zone, and time just loses all meaning, and you are connected with what you're doing. We all know as creatives that when we're in there, time becomes quite irrelevant, and productivity and everything just come together in a really great way. So that's the whole concept of how you get into creative flow and how your practices and your processes and your planning actually come together in order for you to be in that flow state as often as you possibly can be.
 
So that's what I wanted for myself. I started to try and put that together for myself, which I did, and things really improved as I did that. Then I started to share it with other people because people would often say to me, "How do you do everything you do?" That's the question. Probably the question I get asked most often, actually, "How do you do all the different things?" and I always say creative planning, and they say, "What do you mean?" And then I tell them what I was saying. They say, "Oh, I want to have a go at that."
 
So it went from that to handing it on organically, and then after a couple of years, I decided, "Yeah, you know what? I'm going to formalize this because I really do think it's, at first, I just thought of it as something that's just my kooky way of doing things. But then I thought, you know, there is something actually in this because I did see it kind of working. So I started a small Patreon group, and we've been working together for some years now. And now I'm kind of taking it out, if you like, with a Kickstarter, in November, which will take it out into the wider world.
 
[00:07:08] Matty: There are a couple of things that what you were saying made me think of. One is that the idea that task management falls short of planning because there's usually not much prioritization. You know, it results in busyness but not necessarily productivity. And the other thing that I really liked is the idea of a separate kind of time when you're in the creative zone.
 
And I find that for myself, and it's both a good thing. If I start, you know, I get through my task list, and I start working on my writing, and then sometimes, you know, eight hours go by, and then I suddenly realize it's time for dinner. But then I look back at those eight hours, and I think, you know, could I have achieved what I did creatively in less time and left time for a different kind of creative work or other kinds of work? So I think, you know, these are all things we'll be able to get into as we talk through the five points that are the characteristics that you lay out for holistic planning.
 
Emphasize the links between your values as an author and the value you offer your readers
 
[00:08:01] Matty: So I am just going to dive into the first one and ask you to sort of expand on it. And the first one is that planning should be a holistic effort that emphasizes the links between your values as an author and the value you offer your readers.
 
[00:08:15] Orna: Yeah, so this seems to me to be very important. So a lot of authors come into this space, and they hear other authors who have done well talking about what they did and how they did it. And I think that's completely the wrong place to start. Many authors spend years chasing around, listening to every piece of advice they get, trying out something that was never going to work for them because they weren't the same kind of writer or the same kind of publisher. Because, you know, we have different styles, depending on our genre and our writing style, and everything. There are certain things that will never work for you as the author you are. There are certain things that will never work for you as the publisher you are, and you trying to do them and then feeling a sense of failure because you didn't succeed at them when you never should have tried them in the first place.
 
So I think you've got to start with yourself. You've got to start with your own values. And so the workbook in this planning program begins there. It begins with your passion, what you love to do, and what aspects. We dig deeply into what aspects of writing you love, and also what kind of publisher you are. Are you a volume publisher, an engagement publisher, or a craft publisher? And then as a writer, you know, are you somebody who's looking to entertain, to inform, or to inspire and other levels of both of those things and your sense of purpose as a writer.
 
Some authors know this straight away. They know exactly where their mission and their passion come together into a sense of purpose. Others say, "I don't have a purpose, I just want to write because I like writing," but actually, there always is. There always is if you dig down a little bit deeper, and the more you can find out about your personal values and what's important to you, and then connect and see those values up and running in your writing, and then see, "Oh, they're up and running in how I approach my publishing as well," and if you bring that together into an integrated kind of system, now you know what your values are and you know what you're offering. You know what your gift looks like, and then...
 
In there is embedded so much of what you can then offer as value to your reader, and then you attract the kinds of readers who like the same kind of stuff that you like, who have the same sort of values that you have, who like the language that you use, who like the way you talk about things, the way you feel things, the way you express things. It's all embedded in your book descriptions and in your imagery. Everything becomes easier when you know all that stuff. And you never know it completely, and it's always in a state of flux. This is one of the things that makes our work challenging, is that it never just sits there.
 
It's never just, you know; it's always kind of getting away from us. It's always changing. The world is changing. The readers are changing. How publishing happens is changing. Everything is in a state of flux. That's the nature of life actually, and not just publishing, but... It's always in a state of flux, but the more you can kind of get to an understanding of yourself as an author and as a publisher and the values that you have, and then the value that you're offering the reader, everything really becomes quite lovely. It's a very enjoyable sort of experience, and when you realize that's what you're doing.
 
Because we don't want to be writers, in the main, you know, we don't want to be writers to make money. Of course, we want to make a living from our writing, and of course, we want to be paid properly, and anyone who knows me knows how passionately I believe that creatives deserve a living as much as anybody else. Of course, that's really important, but there's something else going on there too. If you've decided you want to be a writer and finding out your why and what's driving you is immensely enriching, so this planning program starts there.
 
[00:12:08] Matty: And when someone is coming up with their why, is it a statement like, you know, a company might have a mission statement? And if it is, can you share an example of the sort of idea a writer should have about what their mission is, what their why is?
 
[00:12:22] Orna: Yeah, so it might be different, you know, for different genres. So I'll just take myself as the example. But when it comes to my poetry books, for example, what I'm actually trying to do is cultivate the creative state in the person who's reading the work. So, not just to talk about it, inspire, but to make them feel inspired, if you like.
 
When I'm writing nonfiction ALLi books, the why I'm very much driven by is the empowerment, the self-empowerment that I get from creative writing, the enjoyment of the creative freedom, and the creative control that gives me. It's very much about empowering other authors to experience that and to have that. So, you know, that's just kind of two examples.
 
When it comes to my fiction, it's about bringing alive times and places that still have resonance and have caused us to have certain experiences in our time, that have historical tales on them. I want to tell those stories so that we understand the connection between the past and the present.
 
So these are just some examples, but it's very unique, and there may be more than one aspect to it. So each person delves into it. You're brought through a process. There are boxes to fill and lines to write, and then at the end of it, you kind of know what's going on more than you did, and you revisit it periodically as you go through.
 
[00:13:55] Matty: You had said early on that you saw writers who would hear about an approach that worked for someone else and try it, even though another person might be able to tell them that it was not going to be a good match. Are there red flags that people should watch out for, or I guess green lights they should watch out for, that would indicate to them, before they really dive into an approach, whether it is more or less suitable for them?
 
[00:14:19] Orna: Yes, I think so. You know, if you are the kind of person who loathes social media, you're probably not going to be an engagement publisher, or vice versa. If you are that kind of person, maybe volume publishing is what you should do. If you're somebody that loves getting in there and the texture of the words or the texture of the page or the texture, you know, the look of the cover, the crafty kind of stuff, then, you know, don't try to be a volume publisher.
 
Pick the one you know, sell directly and set up a whole different sort of thing around yourself. But if you want to write a lot of books, and the stories keep coming, and they're in one genre, and that genre is really popular, and it's got loads of loyal readers, then you are a volume publisher.
 
The problem is, volume publishing has been the dominant story in Indy because that's what happens on Amazon, and Amazon is the dominant story in Indy, and that big blanket over the Indy publishing sector, author publishing sector, is stifling many other ways of making a living, making income, and approaching publishing.
 
Now, I think that's beginning to shift as the community becomes more mature and as authors are developing the confidence to believe in themselves and start with their own values and so on, the very sorts of things we've been talking about already. We're seeing that more. And as the tools and technology, which allow these things to happen, are improving, and also as readers get used to the idea of buying directly from an author rather than buying from Amazon.
 
There is a shift that's happening, and we saw that with our indie author income survey earlier this year. We saw that there is a small but growing and significant sector of people who are doing things differently, who are making a living or better. Some of them are doing extraordinarily well with, say, direct sales or crowdfunding or different models from the Amazon model.
 
[00:16:32] Matty: Yeah, I think that differentiation between volume, engagement, and craft, I would put myself in the craft category. But early on in my author career, I found myself in a lot of virtual communities that were volume-based and was alarmed by the expectations it set. And I like that idea of needing to match the community you're tapping into for advice to the goals that you have.
 
[00:17:03] Orna: I think that's very important, and sometimes it can be hard to find that because you don't know what you're looking for. I think that's also what the planning process helps you to see. It can be very difficult to see yourself, especially on your first few books, as a writer. You're just following something blindly, and we're all "pantsers" in our publishing life at first because it's very hard for anyone to plot it out fully. It's the kind of thing you have to learn by doing. So seeing yourself, a lot of what the planning process does is try to help you see more clearly what's actually going on for you and to read the signs, as you put it.
 
[00:17:48] Matty: Yeah, I think, not a definitive marker, but an important marker is if you're reading advice or participating in a group, are you feeling energized or alarmed? And if you're feeling alarmed, you probably need to look for a different community or a different source for that.
 
[00:18:03] Orna: I'm really glad you mentioned feelings because we don't talk about them enough. One of the things that's one of the measures, there are four kinds of measures that the planning system uses, and one of them is actually creative, CHQ, your Creative Happiness Quotient. It's basically the pleasure you're taking in what you're doing. As you say, if you're not feeling good, that's a sign. That's not something you need to get over so you can drive yourself and push yourself to be something that you think you have to be. That's actually a sign to you that possibly you're going in the wrong direction.
 
Probably, I mean, there is such a thing as creative discomfort, which we do need to get over because whenever we're putting ourselves out there, we're going to have that scary kind of feeling. That's a different thing.
 
The point being that you need the tools that allow you to do that kind of self-examination. So you understand what your feelings are telling you. So you're listening to yourself. In fact, listening to yourself means listening to lots of different people. You're not just one person as an indie author. You're wearing three hats, for starters. You're a maker, you're a manager, and you're a marketeer. But then there's also all the stuff that comes up when you're writing and digging around in your psyche and bringing out these words. And then there's also the process of putting yourself out there through marketing and publishing and all the stuff that it brings up. So you're going to have different parts of you that are, maybe one part of you is energized, and a different part of you is alarmed, and you need to get them talking to each other.
 
So that's another thing that happens in the workbook, which is what I call the 'finding flow' process, where you don't stifle parts of yourself that want to tell you something; you actually get them engaged with each other. The whole program is about integration, about integrating your writing with your publishing. It's about integrating the commercial with the creative. It's about integrating the different parts of yourself and understanding what's going on there.
 
[00:20:02] Matty: Yeah, the image that sprang to my mind as you were saying that is deciding to dive off the high diving board. And that's going to be a scary experience, but for a lot of people, it would be an exhilarating experience. You know, if you think about getting past the creative discomfort, that could be an analogy, as opposed to climbing the rock wall, which would just be... I'm obviously using personal examples, because I remember that feeling of excitement and exhilaration, but still, some fear when I was young and went off the high dive the first time. But climbing a rock wall, I would have a completely different response to, that would be my sense of dread and discomfort. So, there are negatives in either one. The negatives are taking very different forms. One is excitement, and the other one is just discomfort. I think there are analogies to that as you're trying to find your path among the many that you're describing.
 
[00:20:59] Orna: Perfect. And then the thing is that for somebody else, the rock wall might be the exhilarating, fabulous thing, and the high dive might be pure torture. So it's totally about... nobody knows, you're the expert in your own life, you're the expert in your own publishing business, and you're the expert in your own writing. So, you know, really, I think this is one of the reasons why so many indie authors fall away, defeated, discouraged, is due to a lack of self-engagement in the process and the realization that writing is a creative process, but so is publishing. But it's a different one. It's completely different and it's going to call for completely different sets of skills and ways of doing things. But it is a creative process, and so you engage with it in the same way. Just as you wouldn't expect to sit down at the desk and be a perfect writer on the first day you sat down. Yet it's just amazing how many people expect to get the publishing right the first time. And if they don't get it right the first time, then, you know, 'I'm not selling. It's over, self-publishing didn't work for me. I didn't sell my first book.' And that kind of approach is still extraordinarily common.
 
[00:22:13] Matty: So, I wanted to dive into the second of the characteristics of a holistic planning effort that you outlined, which is to draw deeply on your creative passion and mission as an author and a publisher. And I think that some of what we've talked about already touches on this, but the idea of passion is something that we maybe haven't delved into completely. Any thoughts on that?
 
[00:22:33] Orna: Yeah, so your passion is what you love to do, and your mission is what you'd like to change, what you'd like to see changing in the world. What makes you angry is often your mission, and what makes you excited is often your passion, and it's when you bring those two together, as I said, that you get your purpose.
 
So your creative passion is a tremendous source, as well as your mission. Your mission operates almost like the bedrock, giving you the longevity and resilience to keep going when things don't go well. Passion is more immediate and can be cultivated. When you remind yourself of what you love about this work, suddenly things that seem impossible become very possible. When you're feeling that level of passion, and when you meet other authors who are in the same genre or do things in similar ways, the energy just rises up, and in that moment, they can do anything.
 
So, tapping into that passion, understanding it, and then coming back to it when things get difficult, which they will because writing and publishing are two high-level skills, they will be difficult. Personal development for a writer and a publisher is professional development and personal development; they're the same thing, so there are going to be growing pains, and you're going to feel it. When those things come on board, being able to remind yourself of your creative passion, what it is, why you are here, and also of your mission, why you're here, what you want to achieve, what you want to change, what you want to see happen, the kind of impact you want to have, the influence you want to have on your readers, and so on. Being able to tap back into those, knowing what they are, is the first point, and then returning to them and constantly cultivating them in the proper way. It gives you all this energy.
 
What generally happens instead with a lot of people is a lot of negative feelings about what they're doing. They don't see it as a growth thing and forget the passion and mission, getting bogged down in the work. I think that's where our creative capacity shrinks. So, in fear, there's a lot of leeching of creative energy. When we get into a worry cycle, fear cycle, anger cycle, or jealousy cycle, all of these things just drain creative energy away, and passion and mission are the antidote to those.
 
[00:25:25] Matty: Mission is certainly something I can imagine somebody crafting and writing down as a reference point. When you're thinking about passion, is that something that is more like a barometer that people should be keeping an eye on? Or do you see a benefit to people actually assessing, through writing, what their passions are?
 
[00:25:44] Orna: Accessing passion is done in a certain way by answering specific questions about what you love and tapping back into your past. Very often, we become disconnected from our creative joy, even though we're doing what is our creative joy; we can still become disconnected from it. If your passion is alive and well and functioning for you, you'll know it.
 
 
"You'll feel it. You'll be saying, it doesn't matter what comes up. I'm enjoying this. So, you know, I'm not going to burn out because I'm happy. But if you're not happy, then it's a sign that you're disconnected from the passion in some way. And then there is a way back to pick it up again. And that is, there's a process that you have to go through that time doesn't permit me to bring us through, but it is very much about identifying when you last felt happy about it and also tapping back into earlier years when you knew you wanted to be a writer and what was going on at that time and what you thought being a writer would do for you. You know what you thought the outcome would be, so passion is very much about how you will become self-fulfilled and self-actualized, whereas Mission is more about what you want to change in the world.
 
Recognize that self-publishing authors must wear three very different hats: that of maker, manager, and marketeer
 
[00:27:00] Matty: I'm going to move on to the third characteristic of holistic planning, which is recognizing that self-publishing authors must wear three very different hats: maker, manager, and marketeer. And I have to say that loving the nautical metaphor, I made a play on this in my own private group, which was, the voyager, the 'I'm voyaging, I'm filling the sails.' S A I L, or S A L E, or Swabbing the Decks, he's swabbing the decks as the manager, but talk a little bit
 
[00:27:31] Orna: I love this. Sales and sails. Excellent.
 
[00:27:38] Matty: So talk a little bit about why you think it's so important to separate those out and to understand what you're doing in each of those areas.
 
[00:27:44] Orna: Yeah, it's that, again, back to creative energy. So, and it's also about realizing that publishing is creative as well. So very often, we split in our minds, and we say writing is the creative bit, and publishing and marketing is the, we think of it as admin, and that's not true. So when we separate out into maker, manager, and marketeer, we begin to see how those different things are happening in different places.
 
So making, for example, doesn't just happen when you're working on your book. You have to make blog posts. If you're a blogger, you have to make social media updates, and you have to make email newsletters to your readers and so on and so forth. You have to, if you are that way inclined, you will be making maybe some of your illustrations for your marketing and so on. They're all making tasks, and you make a podcast, you know, the actual deciding what's going to be in the content and the making of it.
 
Then there is the managing part, which happens in writing as much as it happens in publishing, but we think it doesn't, but it does, you know. So there's, you have to be organizing and, you know, even if you're a complete pantser, you still have to do some outlining. That's a kind of a management task, but much more than that, the processes which allow the writing to happen, time and energy and the space even in which you sit down to write and what that looks like, all of those kinds of things fall under the manager's remit. And the manager's job essentially is to make sure that the maker and the marketeer have what they need to do their jobs and enjoy them in a sustainable way. So when we begin to think about the manager like that person who heads up the pace and the processes of the whole endeavor, then it begins to feel different than if we just see it as pure admin. It's much more than admin. It's in the managerial tasks and how we manage them that we become the creative director, not just of our writing, but of our publishing as well, and of how they integrate together.
 
And then the marketeer, I call it a marketeer, not just a marketer, because it's not just about marketing the books, but it's about selling them. It's about actually making sales, and so it's both marketing and promotion, and how we speak. You know, what promise we make to the reader, how we get across to them what the books are about, how we convey all that stuff that we were talking about earlier - the values, the passion, and the mission. How that gets transmitted all falls into the marketeer's role.
 
And the other thing that a manager is very key in is money. And this is another place where people, you know, the holistic thing falls apart when it comes to money. The whole mindset changes, and we go from being growth-oriented people and creative people, and expansive people to being tired, scared, and, you know, pulling in and afraid to spend a penny kind of thing. It's a very common dynamic that we've set up. Writers and artists don't like money by definition.
 
You know, if you want to make a living, then the less of an artist you are. All those kinds of things. We talk about these things all the time, but when it comes to ourselves and recognizing our own dynamics and our own relationship with money and everything, the planning system is very much about putting yourself first, making sure you get paid as well as everybody else, and making sure that you allocate your money so that you realize the money that comes in has to be divided up into the tax people will be taking some of it, and the money that needs to go to your editor and everybody else. But making sure that you get paid as well is really important. So that's what I mean about the holistic aspect of it. Everything hinges on everything else.
 
[00:31:41] Matty: I like that idea of not categorizing a set of tasks like email, let's say. I think that was a great example as one of those, and I'm extrapolating that not only should you be considering this from a planning point of view, but if you go into an activity like, now I'm going to write my monthly email newsletter. There's the maker part where you're crafting the letter, there's the manager part that understands what you hope to get out of the email and what you want your readers to get out of the email. And then the marketeer is considering how what you're doing with the email factors into the rest of your business. Like, is this going to be a sales-focused email or a community-building email or whatever, and I like that. It feels much more comfortable than kind of going, "Ugh, now I have to write my email" because, It seems to somebody like a marketeer thing or a manager thing, and maybe they don't like those things, but if you look at each task, it's having components of all of them. Is that a legitimate interpretation of what you're saying?
 
[00:32:41] Orna: That's so well put. It's exactly right. And the email, I think the email is a great example because so many authors, and myself included, for a very long time, the email is really hard. And why is it so hard? And we all wonder about that. I think the reason why it's so hard is certainly the point of discovery for me about why it was so hard for me was because I was leaving out the maker, manager, and marketeer tasks. I did not see it as just a manager task and a marketeer task, and I didn't craft them.
 
As soon as I began to think of how it connects to the passion, the mission, but also, you know, in the same way to the books and realize that they, you know, you need to approach this email in a way that it isn't just about getting it done.
 
 
I'm getting back to my creative work. This is my creative work, and you know what is more creative than actually reaching out to the reader directly. I mean, this is what writers dreamed about back in the days when you were third-party published, that you actually got to connect with your reader. But how quickly things become chores when we approach them with certain ways of. So yeah, that's exactly right.
 
There is a creative dimension to absolutely everything, actually, if you can find it. And the second you find it, you've got far more energy, and also something else comes in, something that isn't your conscious mind, something that's coming from the unconscious that is far more perfect than anything you would consciously craft.
 
And certainly anything you'd consciously craft when you're just trying to get the job over, so you can go back to doing the thing that you think you want to do more than anything else.
 
Incorporate creative rest and play into your weekly plans as well as creative work
 
[00:34:31] Matty: I think that's a really nice entree to the next characteristic of holistic planning, which is it incorporates creative rest and play into your weekly plans as well as creative work. And, you know, as you were describing, a different approach to crafting an email, you could see how that could become creative play. But I think you're talking here about something separate from the creative work when you're talking about creative rest and play. And this is something that not only I'm going to be very interested in hearing, but my husband's going to be interested in hearing this and then recording it and playing it back for me periodically because I'm a work smarter and harder kind of person. So, talk about creative rest and play a little bit.
 
[00:35:08] Orna: Yeah. So, you know, I'm such a believer in both of these. And, you know, you talked about how email could be playful. It won't be unless you know how to cultivate creative play more widely. And then it comes in, and this is the thing that you do.
 
So something kind of counterintuitive happens. People, when you see play or rest as breaks from the process of whatever it is you're trying to make happen, that's wrong thinking. Actually, creative rest and creative play, when indulged in a certain way, are the process. So work, rest, and play become completely integrated. So it's very counterintuitive. And it's hard to do. Like you say, most of us are indie authors, we're not afraid of work. If you were afraid of work, you wouldn't come into this room, would you? It's just, you just don't. So, some of us are workaholics. We need that compulsive kind of hit that we get from work and achievement and success, however we define it.
 
And that's all good. There's nothing wrong. Hard work never killed anyone, as my mother said. But actually it has killed some people, but probably not writers, but it can kill your joy. And that's what we're coming back to again. You know, kind of where we started at the beginning. Creative play and creative rest. It feels counterintuitive to stop and to go off and do these things. And when I talk about creative rest and play, yes, I'm talking about very specific things. So creative rest is anything that stills the mind. So it might be meditation, it might be sleep, it might be, you know, different people have different sorts of techniques, and that, you know, there are both short and longer versions of these built into the planning program. So the program encourages a retreat once a year, and that means a retreat, not a, "I'm going away to write," retreat, but an actual retreat from everything and downtime, and some writers and some indie authors find that extraordinarily difficult. And then on the other side, play is, again, anything you absolutely love to do, and is often physical for authors, because we get away from the desk, and we need to, you know, dance, run, or climb. In your case, high dive, and in somebody else's case, climb the rock wall, and those kinds of uplifting activities. So holidays, vacations where you are doing, you know, whatever you think is your ideal fun would be, is creative play, whereas, you know, crashing out on the beach and just reading easy novels is more like creative rest.
 
It's different for everybody. What we like to do and how we like to do it is very different, and again, there's a process in finding out what is right for you, and also in seeing, am I resting when I think I'm resting? Or am I just doing more stuff in a different way? And am I playing when I think I'm off? Or am I just thinking, you know, have I just brought work home? And I'm just thinking about the next thing I have to do and so on.
 
So there's a whole process of self-recognition in there. And then there is a kind of dissolving of habits. And when this balance comes in, you know, when work is feeding play, play is feeding rest, rest is feeding work, and work is feeding play, you know, and you've got that benign circle, that holistic, to use the word, that you've been using for this entire episode.
 
When that comes in, now we're really feeling creative energy. Now we're really able to do things that, you know, you don't even know yourself how you did them. They just happened, and you still feel energized. You're not tired, you feel great, and it's all because you took a little bit of time for creative rest, and you took a little bit of time for creative play, and now your creative work just blossoms. And again, it's because this thing comes in that is bigger than us, bigger than our conscious minds. So when we're relying too much on the conscious mind, we're shrinking ourselves. We've got much more to draw on, but we're cutting it off when we don't allow ourselves creative rest or creative play.
 
[00:39:27] Matty: I like that you're dividing that into two things because I think people have gotten so used to thinking of work-life balance, and there are only two categories, you know, there's work or there's life. I like the idea of separating out the rest and the play and how you're defining them.
 
[00:39:40] Orna: Yeah, when people talk about work-life balance as well, they're often talking about family and other people, you know, or life in other sorts of ways, but these are very specific things to do, and they're not things to do in the sense of another thing to tick off your box. That isn't how it is. And if it is like that, there's something not right there in that dynamic. But they are very specific in the sense that you can be “off” and not off at all. You can be draining yourself and not giving yourself what you need for your work or indeed for yourself or for your life. So there are huge life benefits in this as well, but they are done by yourself.
 
One of the practices that's recommended is what I call a "create date," and those of you who have done "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron will recognize the artist's date. It's very similar, and I just find artist's date very heavy. The whole idea of having to be an artist is kind of intimidating, so just a creative date with yourself. Short, once a week, doing something away from everybody else. It's so nurturing. It's just incredibly nurturing. And then also, the creative rest practices, when they're done in a certain way, they just nurture you so much, and everything just becomes, yeah, that loveliness comes back in again.
 
[00:41:09] Matty: The way I'm seeing this play out or not play out in my own life is that I really have to consciously remind myself, if I get up after, you know, 8 hours of whatever I've been doing and take a dog for a walk, then sometimes I consciously remember to remind myself. Not to listen to a podcast, because my go-to activity is going out with the dogs, and now here's my opportunity to, you know, be catching up on the latest in the indie and self-publishing world, and sometimes I have to say to myself, "No, let's just not do anything like that for a little while. Let's just walk the dog. Let's just look around and see what's going on in the world. It's hard to remember to do sometimes."
 
[00:41:49] Orna: It is, 100 percent, and, you know, the more we love what we do, back to the passion again, the harder that can be, you know, because we love every bit of it, so we want to keep going. But there definitely comes a point where you're just, you know, you're just making yourself feel drained. It doesn't work, and being in the moment, as you're talking about with the dog, whatever is around you and feeling and experiencing your life.
 
Because when you're writing, you're taking yourself out of your own life in a way. Even, and obviously, that's very obvious in fiction writing where you're literally taking yourself out of your own life and into another character's life. But it's true in every aspect of writing. You have to be in your head to write. It's a mental cognitive experience, and therefore you're out of your senses, really. You're not aware of what you're, you are in that moment feeling, unless something comes in, I, oh, I realize I'm hungry, or I'm cold, or something like that. But generally speaking, you're not in the moment, you're in your head.
 
And so redressing the balance of getting back into where your senses are activated and you're smelling and seeing and tasting and touching and feeling, and you know, all of that, it's really important. The other thing that happens if we don't fill the well with new activities and feelings and sense impressions. And as we dry up, we don't have a lot to say because we haven't, yeah, we haven't filled the well, so the well's dry and there's no, we have nothing to give.
 Encourage a growth mindset and pay-yourself-first policy 
[00:43:16] Matty: So I'm going to move on now to the final characteristic that you called out about a holistic planning effort, which is it encourages a growth mindset and a pay-yourself-first policy. I mentioned this a little bit about the importance of being compensated for one's creative work, but, talk about that growth mindset and pay-yourself-first policy.
 
[00:43:34] Orna: Yeah. So those two are really important. So I think I've kind of touched on them, but essentially the growth mindset is, you know, growth is possible. And how do I grow here? Because if we are writing, we want to grow as people so that we are worthy of being read. And if we are publishing, we want to grow as a publisher and reach more readers and, you know, have more influence and have more impact in the world. So it is about growth. Creativity is expansive. Growth is what we're after. We're here. We want to be there. There's a gap in between, and growth is what takes us there. And I think I mentioned earlier, you know, the personal growth, professional growth, the profit growth, they're all very closely intertwined in all the creative industries, writing and publishing included.
 
"So it isn't about, 'I don't like this. I can't do that.' That is not a growth mindset. That is a limiting mindset. So it's. At the simplest level, it's about understanding that growth is what you're actually engaged in, and whenever you hear yourself going contrary to that, and instead of being expansive, being contractive, instead of being proactive, being reactive, all these are signs that we are not now in the place of growth. So that's one aspect of it.
 
And then the 'pay yourself first,' that's at every level. You know, as writers, we are offering a gift. We're mining our gift to give it out. Yes, we get paid back and so on, but that is essentially the dynamic, and so we can give ourselves away, and we do. And you can see that, not just writers, but creatives in general, are taking advantage of everywhere, all over the place. Why? Because we allow it. And we allow it as individuals, and we allow it as a group. And I mean, I really, really want to change that. And I don't know if we can, but I feel that we can. And I think that we should.
 
And I think what's happening here, in our time, is that the creative industries are catching up with the other industries in terms of realizing the kinds of things we're talking about doing and the kinds of ways in which we are now approaching publishing and realizing how we reach readers and... how we make sales, you know, how we, all of these things. We're kind of catching up with other industries and thinking about how these things operate for us in our industry because it's not the same, but lots of it is the same.
 
But at the core, what we have to do is value ourselves, so that's it's back to where we started with the values. Valuing the reader and the reader valuing us is contingent on us valuing ourselves and understanding. So we don't see so many writers ending up either in severe addiction or, you know, making money for a year or two and then in poverty for the rest of their lives. You know, all these kinds of things that we have built up around our industries are signs of things. So I often think that we turn to writing or any creative activity to heal and to grow. And so allowing that healing and that growing to happen means putting it first and recognizing what you as an individual need in order for you to heal and grow. That is the holistic, positive, expansive, growth, creative way.
 
But allowing your gift to leech you so that you are giving everything away and you end up with nothing and everybody else gets paid. Money is a good indicator here. Everybody else gets paid, but you don't get paid. That is a sign that something else is going on. That's not expansive. That's not growth. That's not creativity. And so digging in there a bit and finding out what's going on. You could spend 10 years, or you could spend your whole life and never get there. Or you could do some planning, exploration, and, you know, move mountains in days and just change and grow enormously because the whole creative flow comes in behind your efforts to understand and to draw things together and to go there, you know, to go there for yourself, put yourself first, pay yourself first.
 
The varying timeframes of planning
 
[00:47:57] Matty: So, I wanted to wrap up with a question about timeframes. I realized that as we were talking, I was seeing a way to think of planning as a strategic, perhaps quarterly effort. As we were talking, I was seeing many ways to apply these concepts down to individual tasks. We were discussing the email, and I'm realizing that over the last couple of weeks, on my task list, I have a reminder each week to check my plan and my quarterly plan. Each week, I remind myself to review and ensure it still makes sense. I realized that for the last several weeks, I haven't done that because I just wanted to move on to the next item on my list. It's kind of embarrassing, but could you talk a bit about whether people can apply what we've been discussing at both a granular and a strategic level? Also, if they're focused on the strategic level, do you have recommendations for how often this assessment should take place?
 
[00:49:00] Orna: Yes, it starts with the workbook, which covers the topics we've discussed up to this point. Then, you move into a quarterly plan, a monthly planner, and a weekly and daily breakdown of tasks. So, you can take it right down to the task level. The revisiting should happen at least weekly. It's not just about the workbook and planners; we have an online group for this. We used to be on Facebook, but now it's all on Patreon. Every Monday, we map our intentions for the week and jot down what we intend to do under the maker hat, manager hat, and marketeer hat. On Friday, we return to log our accomplishments, what we actually achieved.
 
Some weeks align with our intentions, some are better, and some don't get started at all. It's the logging and the accountability in the group that is powerful. It helps people see progress. Over the years, I've noticed that people come in with grand plans every Monday, with mountains of tasks for the maker, manager, and marketeer hats. But as time goes on, these intentions shrink until they become week-sized intentions instead of year or quarter-sized ones in a week. This connection with how one's creative process unfolds across the week, month, and quarter is enlightening.
 
The quarter, in particular, is effective. It draws on both creative psychology and business principles. A quarter is a quarter for a reason, and it works. You can manage 12 weeks effectively in your mind and make significant changes in that time.
 
It's a really good timeframe, and you could break it into three, which is really great. Months one, months two, months three, you know, and if you haven't caught up, you can catch up with yourself, and you know, all of those things go on a quarter. A quarter is a very manageable piece of time. And so.
 
Anything that I tried from any management system that I met, I kept anything that worked for me as a creative, and I let go of a lot of the big-stick stuff, and the hit-yourself-over-the-head stuff, and the squeeze-yourself-into-a-box stuff. So.
 
Time is very much a part of this, and coming back to the plans. Because one of the things the plan does, what makes it a planning system and not just a calendar, is the actual understanding of your top priority, your top task for that quarter, for that month, for that week, for that day. So, returning to the plan, you can start off the morning knowing this is my top intention, and by 11 o'clock it can be so fragmented, you've forgotten what you even wanted to do that day, but the plan is there. So, you can just return to that. You can take refuge in the plan. It's there. It will hold, it kind of holds you up at the different time levels. And that gives you the space then to breathe and to bring in the three dimensions into the different tasks.
 
[00:52:32] Matty: I can imagine calling this episode, 'Creating a Refuge: Creative Planning for Authors and Poets.' I really like that.
 
[00:52:39] Orna: Okay.
 
[00:52:40] Matty: I think it's not what people think of when they think of a plan. They think of a plan as, almost a restriction in some ways.
 
[00:52:45] Orna: I think so. I think so because so many plans are, they're trying to make a machine of you, you know? And that's the other thing about these, because they're creative plans. They can be messy, and they can be changed as you need to, you know, you scratch out and use them in your way. So all of that is very much a part of being built in again. It's not something that you've done wrong and have to start over. It's actually built in. We have to allow that to happen because the creative process is idiosyncratic. We're not machines, and we never will be. And as the machines become more and more prevalent in our creative field now, I think tapping into our humanity is ever more important, and, yeah, hopefully, they help people to do that.
 
Kickstarter: Creative Planning for Authors and Poets
 
[00:53:37] Matty: That's so great. Well, Orna, it is always interesting and inspirational to speak with you. And I know that people are going to be interested in the Kickstarter now, so please share a little bit of information about where they can find out more about that.
 
[00:53:49] Orna: Yeah, so the link to go to is selfpublishingadvice.org/planners24. The Kickstarter starts on the 5th of November, and it runs for about 15 days. Spiral bounds are coming, people! If any of you are the people who have been asking for the spiral bounds, that's part of what the Kickstarter is about, to actually make those. But there are lots of different things, and also accountability and, you know, there's a sort of a 'give it a try' pack and various different things in the Kickstarter.
 
 
So hopefully, there's something there for everyone, at different levels of both engagement and investment.
 
[00:54:36] Matty: It's going to be an interesting time because I'm going for the first time to 20 Books Vegas, and my planner will be available when I get back from that, loaded up with all sorts of ideas. Having a way to sort through that and saying, "Yes, it would be fun to do 27 things in the next month, but let's take a step back."
 
[00:54:54] Orna: Absolutely. It's a filter. You can filter all that in and know that it will happen, and it's there, but it's not going to happen. You can only do one thing at a time.
 
[00:55:08] Matty: Thank you so much, Orna.
 
[00:55:10] Orna: Matty, for the opportunity, and yeah, happy writing and publishing to you too.
 
[00:55:16] Matty: Happy writing and publishing.

Episode 209 - Natural Orders and Author Email with Matt Treacey

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Matt Treacey discusses NATURAL ORDERS AND AUTHOR EMAIL, including the parallels Matt sees between email marketing and systems in the natural world; the importance of using email to educate, inspire, and entertain (not just sell); the challenge of writing effective emails if you're not an enthusiastic email subscriber; dealing with what can seem like a one-way relationship with your email recipients; the power of awareness automation; how constructing an email sequence is both like writing a story and like writing a business plan; and, related to the cover of Matt’s book NATURAL ORDERS, the pros and cons of bucking cover genre conventions.

Matt Treacey is an Author and Email Marketing Strategist. Combining a decade in email marketing automation with a background in ecology, Matt is an expert at building systems designed for growth. His uniquely designed framework currently generates millions of dollars in email revenue for dozens of small online businesses across the US and Oceania. In his best-selling book NATURAL ORDERS, he describes how to develop a healthy, engaged, and profitable email marketing database, mimicking the timeless growth strategies used by the most successful systems of the natural world.

Episode Links

Author website: naturalordersbook.com
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-symbios/
Other social media platforms: https://twitter.com/matt_treacey

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Matt Treacey. Hey, Matt, how are you doing?
 
[00:00:06] Matt: Good. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
 
[00:00:08] Matty: I am pleased to have you here.
 
Meet Matt Treacey
 
[00:00:10] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Matt Treacey is an author and email marketing strategist. Combining a decade in email marketing automation with a background in ecology, Matt is an expert at building systems designed for growth. His uniquely designed framework currently generates millions of dollars in email revenue for dozens of small online businesses across the U.S. and Oceania. In his best-selling book, Natural Orders, he describes how to develop a healthy, engaged, and profitable email marketing database, mimicking the timeless growth strategies used by the most successful systems of the natural world. So, we are going to be talking about how authors can build a business with email marketing.
 
What parallels did Matt see between email marketing and systems in the natural world?
 
[00:00:45] Matty: And I was immediately grabbed by this idea of using systems in the natural world as a basis for email marketing, because just on the surface, they're not two things that I can imagine being more different than the natural world and email marketing. So I'm very curious about the parallels you saw that made it a good metaphor for this.
 
[00:01:06] Matt: Interesting. I guess, at a surface level, it doesn't seem like an immediate match. However, like you said, my background is in ecology. I studied ecology, worked in the field very briefly before getting into marketing. And it was quite apparent to me when I got into marketing. I guess I was already looking through that lens. I noticed a lot of similarities between marketing more broadly as a discipline and some of these ecological elements of it. So some of this stuff, like, you have niches in an ecosystem, you have niches in the market that you choose, right? Or even some things like your total addressable market being similar to the carrying capacity of an ecosystem. There are a lot of these similarities that I noticed straight away.
 
But I noticed them particularly when I got into email marketing, that there are some really strong parallels that justified the idea behind the book. So without delving too deeply into it, the idea is that your email marketing list, your email marketing database should be managed and approached as though it were a little ecosystem, right? The number one reason for that, that I talk about is when you take that approach, you avoid some of the common mistakes people make when they first get started with the channel, such as getting really low open rates, high unsubscribes, and having what I call your list dynamics end up being poor. It's kind of like the mortalities and the births in an ecosystem, right? Getting those dynamics correct. There are some similarities there.
 
And I mean, the end result of that is poor deliverability, and it collapses in on itself a bit, a little bit like an ecosystem, right? But the second thing, and probably the more powerful thing, is that when you start looking at your email database and email list as an ecosystem, you avoid some of the risks of relying on other platforms that a lot of authors typically do. So if you've got a big audience on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, that can be taken away from you at a moment's notice; it's a platform risk, right? And when you build your email list, you're avoiding that. You're mitigating it to some degree.
 
And I kind of refer to this in the book as building your own walled garden. So the analogy has two sides to it. One is that really strict, yeah, look at it like an ecosystem because it is a little ecosystem, but more powerfully, it's a little walled garden that you need to have your own. And I think just taking that whole view of it helps you avoid some of these tactics that sometimes come to mind when you think about email marketing as well. Like spamming people or sending some of these tactics that you sometimes associate with email marketing. If you think there's this little ecosystem you have to nurture and grow, you instinctually.
 
[00:03:52] Matty: Yeah, I really like the term "nurturing," and I think that this idea of thinking of it as a meta, having the natural word to be a metaphor for email marketing is really nice because it also gets past that idea of people just feeling creepy about it. You know, I think people find it hard to accept that sending an email into someone's inbox can be and should be a desirable thing, not a spammy thing. So, in that sense, about getting people over the hump of wanting to show up in people's email boxes and feeling good about that, is there some metaphor from the natural world that is a good analogy for that?
 
[00:04:33] Matt: Yeah, with that, going straight into the natural metaphor for it. I just have to say that is definitely something that I deal with. I mean, I've built my career around email marketing, and even now today, when you tell some people that I do email, people really do have this knee-jerk reaction of, "Oh, it's like you're sending spam to people." And look, that still exists. I mean, even in some high-profile industries like e-commerce, there are still spammy tactics going on.
 
What I've really come to the conclusion of is that doesn't get you anywhere, and that's the whole impetus behind this book. The whole idea of natural orders is it's like the system collapses in on itself as soon as you start doing it. So, once you shift the metaphor, that helps you kind of avoid some of that stuff and makes it really more about value. And to answer your question, that's really the shift that has to happen. I say it over and over again in my book. Every time you communicate with someone on your email list, it has to be valuable. I've got this kind of framework that I use in the book for the early stages when you're building the foundations, the list, the health of it all, for how you can segment people into different groups to make sure that no matter what stage you're at, they're always getting a valuable experience. It's like you should. It's just good business practice, right? Underpromise, overdeliver.
 
[00:05:54] Matty: I used to work at QVC, and that was like the battle cry at QVC: underpromise and overdeliver.
 
[00:06:01] Matt: Right.
 
Avoiding falling into the spam trap
 
[00:06:02] Matty: So, I think it's apparent, I mean, it's obvious on the surface that one shouldn't be sending out spammy emails. But can you offer guidelines if someone is trying to step back and read their emails as a recipient is going to read them? Are there red flags that you can call out that would say, this is something that might actually catch the email in a technical spam filter, or it's just going to feel spammy to the person who receives it?
 
[00:06:27] Matt: Okay. Yeah, two parts of that. So the first part is the spam filters. It's pretty easy to bypass in the sense that don't do anything spammy. Don't send anything like "Make big bucks today" or anything that the spam filters are built to detect. And I mean, that's a great initial filter because if you're talking about that sort of stuff anyway, you're probably sending spam.
 
Aim to educate, inspire, and entertain
 
[00:06:49] Matt: The second thing is, again, I always say educate, inspire, entertain. If you're doing at least one of those things with every email that you send, you're probably going to be sending a valuable email. So if every time you go to send an email, think, "Am I educating, inspiring, or entertaining, or ideally doing two or more of those things?" then send the email. If not, then take a look at yourself.
 
[00:07:15] Matty: Yeah, we had talked a little bit earlier, and you were saying that your clients are nonfiction authors. You were focusing on the nonfiction world, not the fiction author world. But I said that as someone with email lists in both worlds, I would try to tease out the learnings that fiction authors can take from this.

 
And it's my perennial question. I could probably create a playlist of people I've spoken to on the podcast with this very issue, but I have no idea. I send a weekly email to my non-fiction platform for the Indy Author, and it's basically, you know, a summary of that week's podcast episode and recommended resources that I, as a writer, feel good about recommending to other writers. It's very heavily focused on the informative part, but it's always difficult to figure out how to translate that into the fiction world and not have it be "buy this, buy this, buy this."
When you're advising your clients on how to determine the content that they're going to put in their emails, what are some of the guidance you give them to make sure that it is compliant with "educate, inspire, entertain"? Did I remember that correctly?
 
[00:08:24] Matt: "Educate, inspire, entertain," but yeah,
 
[00:08:26] Matty: "Educate, inspire, entertain."
 
An author's product is their writing.
 
[00:08:28] Matt: I would, to be honest, I haven't done a lot of work with fiction authors, but I would suspect that the principles translate directly. So, if I've found a fiction author, and I enjoy their writing, and I've signed up for their email list, and they send me emails about their writing that contain their writing, that's hugely valuable.
 
So then I would imagine that their newsletter doesn't look so much like if they were doing a newsletter, or their sequence, or however they choose to go about it. It wouldn't be so much about, "hey, buy my book, my book's on sale, promotion, promotion." There would be a time for that, but the majority of the emails that they send should be content, their writing.
The thing that I've signed up for, their product, I mean, if they're thinking of themselves as a business, their product is their writing, so if they're giving that away for free, or they're writing unique content for people who are on their email list, that suddenly becomes quite a value proposition to be on that list in the first place, right?
 
And I'll start to look forward to the writing of that author. The exact same thing applies to content in a business context for non-fiction authors, for example, right? Like I've got guys where they'll just publish a really long article every two weeks. And people love it. They wait for it because they know it's going to be really valuable, and they know they're going to enjoy reading it. And there's no spam in that relationship at all, right? It's like, "Wow, I can't wait for this next email I'm going to get from this author." The same thing applies to fiction people, I'd say.
 
Being a better email writer, even if you're not an enthusiastic email recipient.
 
[00:09:57] Matty: I think the difficult thing for me certainly is that I'm not someone who enjoys receiving any kind of email, even from people that I really like. For example, I'm a podcast listener, so the people that I follow, that I look forward to in the same way that the recipients of that email newsletter probably look forward to getting that very long article from the person they're following, I'd much prefer to listen to that content than I would to read that content. So, it's very difficult when you're trying to produce content for people who have a different preference. You know, you're accommodating the people who want to read that, and you almost, by definition, have to write an email that's not the email that you yourself would want to get. Do you have any advice on how to get over that hump?
 
[00:10:41] Matt: That's very interesting. I suppose you could... And I have done this before. You can send emails with links to different formats of content, right? So if you're predominantly a YouTube person, then every email you send out can be a link to a different YouTube video, right? Structured in a way that introduces your ideas and progresses awareness and builds engagement and all these other things I talk about in the book. Yeah, you can link out to any type of content. My personal affinity for email is the fact that it is a written medium, and the type of audience that you're engaging with are typically readers. I think that's a strength to the channel among the myriad of others.
 
[00:11:22] Matt: I mean, just going back to what we were saying before about why email marketing? I mean, once you get over the whole spammy perception of it, it's the largest and most active group of people on the internet. It's the highest engagement. They're the most ready to buy. It's the highest ROI channel. It's the only one that allows you to own the data of your audience.
 
[00:11:43] Matty: Yeah. And as you're saying, you know, the idea that it's the audience you own, you're not having a social media platform mediate it for you. I think that one thing that's more specific to nonfiction authors, although this is true of fiction authors too, but you're ideally meeting a need, right? If you're sending out a newsletter marketing for a service you're offering, for example, then you're hopefully, by definition, doing it because there's a problem that your audience may have that you can help them solve.
 
Now for fiction authors, maybe that issue is finding entertaining reading, and you could approach it that way. But if I'm sending out a newsletter, for example, to people who are writers, probably earlier in their writing career, and could be either independently published authors or traditionally published authors or pre-published authors that are pursuing either one of those. Is there a way that I can figure out what that problem is that my audience is solving that I would be able to help them with that would make my newsletter educational for them, for example?
 
[00:12:46] Matt: Yeah, I guess, like anything in business, there's a little bit of testing involved. You have your initial assumptions about it. And then you kind of refine it over time. You learn more about your audience and you refine your messaging based on what your audience responds to, right? That's what it's all about.
 
[00:13:02] Matt: And really, I mean, one of the other good things about email is it's all timeless marketing principles, right? And there's nothing more timeless than the fact that your marketing is going to be stronger the better you know and understand your audience, right? I also talk about that in the book. I think that very much applies to fiction authors.
 
So you could look at it from the top-level lens of, okay, I'm entertaining people, I'm providing an escape. Okay, that's probably true for every fiction author, but then you can probably be a bit more granular in that. I mean, someone writing romance novels is fulfilling a very different need within that entertainment umbrella than someone, compared to someone writing a thriller novel or a sci-fi novel, right? They're fulfilling a different need, so it changes the way that you go about that.
 
The challenges of a one-way relationship via email
 
[00:13:51] Matty: I think one of the things that's tough about email marketing is that, and I'm picturing this playing out in the natural world, that if you do something in the natural world, you can kind of see the impact it has on your surroundings. But with email, it feels, at least initially, very one-way. I mean, I think that maybe ideally it becomes more interactive, but unlike social media, where you can immediately see the things that people like, the things that people don't like, and the things they respond to or don't respond to, with email, you can send it out there, send it out there. For example, I very rarely have people unsubscribe from my email lists. I'm super careful about how I go about adding people to the list. And when I add them, I'm strategizing in a way that I think what I'm sending them is what they want, and that they're going to stick with me, and that has proved to be the case.
 
But I also very rarely get any feedback, even when I put an invitation in an email to just hit reply to get back to me. Do you have any advice on how to collect data in what seems, on the surface, like a one-way communication?
 
[00:14:58] Matt: That's interesting. Yeah. So I suppose there you're thinking about the ecosystem dynamic in terms of the interaction between the audience and yourself. I tend to think of it more about the dynamics of the system itself. The same thing could apply to a degree with your social media audience, but I think it is stronger in email marketing.
 
So in your case, if you're sending emails out regularly and you're not getting any unsubscribes, I mean, there's, it means there's no deaths in your system, you're just having a very slow birth rate, and no one's ever dying. So what does that mean? And they're not responding to your emails, so it means that your engagement is probably, there's probably something interesting going on with your engagement. That's how I'd think about it.
 
Alternatives to inaccurate open rate stats
 
[00:15:44] Matt: And that's how I'd use the ecosystem lens to look at it, especially. I think this sort of stuff is more important than ever, and you have to be more critical than ever because, I'm not sure if your audience is aware of this, but open rates and click rates are becoming increasingly unreliable. In fact, open rates, you basically cannot rely on at all anymore. As of about this time last year, with the Apple Mail privacy updates, which are getting more and more strict.
 
So I think it's something like, I saw a thing from Litmus, which does email deliverability stuff, something like 50 percent of opens are misattributed at the moment. So your open rates aren't a good measure of your engagement anymore. You really need to start looking at these things like what you're speaking about: are people replying? Are people interacting with your emails? Are people going from the email that you've sent to the landing page you've specified on your site? Does the traffic add up to what the email marketing system is saying? You really need to look at that now. And unsubscribes are a really big one. That's a huge marker of whether people like it. I would argue that it is actually healthy to have some turnover in the system. You want some people, you know, I'm sure you do have a very small unsubscribe rate.
 
[00:16:56] Matty: Yeah, I think that one of the things that I have not done a good job of is poking around in my email service stats. So, you know, I have just a general sense of how many people I'm sending out to, but the idea of going in periodically and looking at people who are inactive in whatever way the system is defining that and clearing out people who maybe are skewing your deliverability by not opening, like not unsubscribing but not opening, does that happen?
 
[00:17:27] Matt: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it's actually quite a complex dynamic. There's deliverability on the side of making sure your technical deliverability stuff is set up - DKIM and all of that, on the domain side. Then there's something called sender score inside your email marketing system itself. Which is this interplay between what servers they decide to put you on and how much that's going to reach people. That's not exactly like that. That's a crude oversimplification, but that kind of gets us somewhere the way there. And then, yeah, this idea of the top-level engagement, how many people are actually opening your emails and clicking them and interacting with them at all those different stages, right? The funnel analysis of it. So, yeah, there is a bit to that.
 
[00:18:14] Matty: I'm sure a lot of people are in the same situation I'm in, that they have an email list they're sending out at some to be determined intervals, like for my non-fiction platform, it's weekly, but for my fiction platform, I just send something out when I have something to say. Like, oh, I'm going to be at this bookstore signing books, or, you know, one of my books is on sale. It's very much event-driven.
 
Matt's guidelines for target email performance
 
[00:18:32] Matty: Are there statistics or other factors people should be looking at? Like people always say you should look at open rate. Now we've found out that maybe that isn't true after all, but I never hear numbers like your open rate should be over this amount or you should have a certain amount of good subscriber churn. What should people be looking at to see if they need to make tweaks in how they're approaching their email?
 
[00:18:56] Matt: Oh yeah, I can give you stats. That's no problem. I can't link you to anything or I'll mention anything regarding your sending schedule, which is what you referred to earlier, but that's definitely a good idea. In fact, that's one of the first things you should really cement in place. Say, okay, I'm just going to commit to something. If you're going the newsletter route, and newsletters are trendy at the moment, there are some other ways you can go about this. I talk about all of this stuff in my writing, but let's just say you only have time to send one email every so often. Just say, okay, I'm going to send it on every second Wednesday, and commit to that. Then you can build up the system around that, have an automated email go out every week, every first Friday, right? And then put in slots for everything, and that avoids a lot of headaches down the track. So you should have a sending schedule to answer that first part of your question.
 
But in terms of just some offhand best practice metrics, look, open rates are fraught with danger these days. They are still a good lagging indicator, so if you have above a 25 percent open rate, you're probably okay. But you should be getting a lot more than that, especially now that Apple Mail and mail privacy stuff, which is extended to other mail servers, is triggering opens. So a lot of people saw their opens just jump dramatically recently.
 
So look, the rule always was like, okay, above 25 percent, you're doing okay. 35 percent plus, you're probably, it's probably good engagement. That's not as reliable anymore, but it's still a lag indicator. So if you are sitting at 35 percent engagement, and that drops down to 15 percent, you know something's gone wrong. Whereas if it goes up to 65 percent, you know something's probably gone right, right? So it's a good lagging indicator, but not gospel truth. So that's how I approach open rates.
 
Unsubscribes, I typically say it does depend on the audience and your turnover and a lot of other factors that you have to look at individually. But below 0.35 percent unsubscribe rate, if you can achieve that, that's probably good because you don't want it to be zero because that would suggest to me there's probably some problem with engagement that has not yet been uncovered, right? People should naturally opt out of the system to some degree. But if you keep it below 0.35, that's good.
 
Email marketing beyond the newsletter
 
[00:21:11]
Matty: Well, you made an interesting comment, which is, I think that whenever an author hears email, we always think of an email newsletter. But I'm realizing that that's just one small niche of email marketing more generally. Can you talk about other ways that authors should be using email that aren't specific to newsletters?
 
[00:21:32] Matt: Yeah, I mean, that's really my specialty, right? I run newsletters for people. Newsletters are hot, and for a good reason. There are some incredible businesses built off newsletters that are sent once a week, generating multi-million-dollar businesses. They're great and provide a lot of value. They're also relatively simple. If you're just sending one email, it makes the whole system a lot easier to manage, right?
 
But some of the power of email, one of the other benefits I didn't really go into is the fact that you can automate the entire subscriber journey, the customer journey from when they come onto your site and join your email list, everything after that, you control in email. It allows you to do really interesting things like building up a narrative, progress awareness, which I've touched on briefly since we've been talking, but I haven't gone into it in depth.
 
So you can nurture someone from the point where they don't really know much about you, your value proposition, or what you're all about to the point where they're really into it. I use something called Schwartz's five stages of awareness, which is really helpful and ensures that you're sending value all the time. They go from being vaguely aware of the problem you're solving for themselves to understanding the solutions available and the products that can help them. You can build on this over time, right?
 
The power of awareness automation
 
[00:22:57] Matt: And you can only do that with automation. So I really recommend to people that one of the foundation pieces of their system is something I call an awareness automation or something similar, where you take people on a subscriber journey and introduce the ideas from your books or your work or your business over time in a very structured way. That's when you tend to get the best results.
 
The email sequence as a story
 
[00:23:56] Matty: So that might be a good introduction to the other thing we were going to talk about, which is the idea of an email sequence as a story. Is this what you were talking about, this journey that you take the subscriber through?
 
[00:24:07] Matt: Absolutely. Yeah, this is something I haven't explored in too much depth, but I really nerd out on this. I think it's one of the underlooked benefits of email. Let's compare it to having an audience on, let's say, Instagram. I don't know what the post reach is like on Instagram now, but if I've got a series of 10 posts that all build on each other to create a narrative and convey a series of ideas, you might see only five or three of those posts over the whole two or three weeks that I'm putting them out, right?"
 
Whereas with email, I know every time that those emails are going into their inbox. And if my engagement and my list health fundamentals are in place, I can be quite sure that they're going to see every email, at least the subject line, right? So the actual visibility of every message, every point in the story is there and it's there in perpetuity. So if they read the last email and they want to go back to the first one, it's still in their inbox, right?
 
So the ability to build a narrative and construct a story, like you're saying, is something unique, I think, to the channel in the way that you can deliver it. This is not a new concept. One of the old OG email marketing guys is Jeff Walker. He wrote this book called "Launch: The Product Launch Formula." I mean, I don't know when that came out, but it's an absolute classic, still works today.
 
But one of the things he talks about is the power of narrative and it's just the arc that you create. With the emails you send, I mean, we've all heard of Joseph Campbell, Hero's Journey and that, that's one side to it. I actually think we're moving into a stage where it's less like this very linear journey with the reader as the hero and more like this kind of episodic sequence, a serial on TV, right, where you dip in and out at different stages. If you structure the story that way, that can be a lot more interesting, where it's like, it's like watching Friends or Seinfeld or something, right? Everything is a piece in itself, but it's part of this larger whole. You're creating a world that people enter into, and each one is its own little mini narrative that kind of ties to a larger narrative but doesn't at the same time.
 
I think there's a lot to this; it's not just "Hey, hit all of these points in the Circular Hero's journey in the email sequence you're sending." It's okay, what world are you building? What are the ideas that this world is based on? And how does that relate to the problem you're solving and your value proposition, all of that? I think that can be really powerful when you get into that stuff.
 
Matty: That's so interesting. I mean, it does suggest that that sequence has to be planned out in a way that's much different than I have thought about it in the past. So my email sequence, and I just want to preface this by saying I'm not recommending this, just saying this is what it is, is when someone signs up, I think they get two or three follow-up emails, and each of them is a very short email, and it's a link to a different resource. So I think it's something like, the first one is a link to my website, the second one is a link to a playlist on my YouTube channel, and the third one is a link to a different playlist on my YouTube channel. You know, three different resources that I think will be useful to people, mainly just as a way of continuing that engagement and pointing out to them that I have more things than just the way they found me. If they found me in the podcast, then they should be aware that I also have a website and YouTube channel.
 
But that isn't a story arc in any sense. It's just three, it's not even Seinfeld episodes. It's just like three pieces of information. When you're counseling your nonfiction author clients on how to create that story, are there guidelines you give them? Do you have your own, uh, hero's journey sort of structure that you recommend they use?
 
Matt: I'm working on it, and it's very much not The Hero's Journey. I mean, it's more like, uh, The Odyssey. Very much. It's like a Homeric form. No doubt on
 
Matty: This is sounding more alarming with each passing moment. I mean, that sounds difficult.
 
[00:28:15] Matt: No, I mean, it's just a different narrative form, but I think if we're looking at your particular case, right, what I would immediately think is that I see the way you're going about it. It's very logical, but you probably have a huge backlog of content, right? Both on YouTube and your podcast, and you've probably repurposed it in multiple different ways. I would think about where the audience is intercepting you in their journey. Are they aware of the problem they're dealing with? How far along in that problem recognition are they? It's that classic Robert Collier line of entering the conversation going on in the prospect's mind, right? So meet them exactly where they are when they join your email list, and then send them that piece of content. Then begin their entrance into your world with that piece of content and build on that over time. So over the subsequent weeks, you drip out other pieces of content that slowly start to piece together this puzzle, a picture of what you're all about, and what your brand's all about. If they skip one or two, it doesn't matter because they're dipping in and out.
 
How to segment an audience
 
[00:29:14] Matty: Right. So, I'm realizing that I think one of the things I linked to, and if I haven't yet, I'm going to, is that episodes 101 through 107 were with Orna Ross on the seven processes of publishing, and that's a great entry for people who are new to publishing, especially the indie publishing world. But not every person who joins my list is going to be part of a homogeneous group of people with a similar skill set. They're going to be people who haven't even started writing their first book, and they're going to be people who are traditionally published and now they're thinking of changing to indie, or they're indie published and they're thinking of pursuing a traditional deal or something like that. So if you don't have enough information to segment it so that you're creating that journey specific to different people's levels of experience, is there a way around that?
 
[00:30:04] Matt: Yeah. So the first level of segmentation would depend on where people are coming into your list, right? So you probably have opt-in lead magnets at different points. I mean, either you've got CTAs that you've got at the end of this podcast or if I go to your site, there's probably different places where I can give you my email address, right?
 
[00:30:25] Matty: Yes, but not as much as I could, for sure.
 
[00:30:29] Matt: Okay, sure. Yeah. Oh, just as a side note, that's one of the highest leverage areas when it comes to email. I mean, it's very hard to double your traffic, but it's very, very easy to double what I call your traffic-to-subscribe conversion. There's a lot you can do there. You can rapidly grow your list by improving that level. So anyway, that's the first level of segmentation. Look at the traffic coming to your site, tailor your opt-ins to possible different segments of your audience. You mentioned one of those segments, people who are just starting out, right?
 
[00:31:00] Matty: Yeah, like people who are just, let's say, just finishing their first book.
 
[00:31:04] Matt: Okay. Yeah. So say you've got a lot of organic traffic coming to a page, like "How to Finally Get Your Book Out the Door." And then you're offering them something really valuable. It has to be actually valuable. Again, under-promise, over-deliver. It can't be a PDF with the top 10 tips on how to finish that book, although that would be helpful, I'm sure.
 
[00:31:27] Matty: Sure, I think I could get a lot of people signed up for that one.
 
[00:31:31] Matt: Yeah, but I mean, you've got to think bigger than that. You've got to think of something like, I don't know what you're doing in that specific case, but it has to be something really valuable, something they'd probably pay money for, right? So when I do give you my email address, I'm like, okay, well, I've got something really good right off the bat. And then by the time I get your first email, I'm going to think, "Wow, this is just value on value on value," right? And I'm more inclined to enter that world you're building up, right? Exploring the value of email marketing for an author
 
[00:31:55] Matty: So here's my anathema question. Is, what is the value of me doing that? Because, if I think about the Indie author world, for example, I have thought about my email list in a very admittedly limited way, as a way for me to build a relationship so that I'm retaining podcast listeners. And, you know, sometimes I'm pointing them to resources I have that I actually earn money from, like a book about podcasting. If you're interested in podcasting, buy my book on podcasting. So, there's that opportunity. There's the opportunity to maybe introduce them to my fiction work, and there could be opportunities to. You know, certainly pay it forward to the community and things like that, but I'm not getting any intrinsic payback for each person who subscribes to my email. It's only paving the way to something else. Am I just looking at it in too limited a way?
 
[00:32:51] Matt: Yeah, yeah. In short, yes. So let's go with the podcasting thing as an example, so that you said there's a podcasting course that you offer?
 
[00:33:07] Matty: I have a book on podcasting for authors, and I offer consulting services.
 
[00:33:11] Matt: Okay, yeah, so this whole podcasting thing is a sub-story within the whole wider narrative, right? There's going to be a point where you start talking about podcasting, and you're going to receive a certain level of engagement from that. What you can then do is if you've already built a product around it and you know that it's a need and something that's a problem that your audience faces, then you can justify saying, "Okay, I'm going to build this whole subsequence for people who engage with those emails that I'm kind of seeding throughout the broader narrative." And when they engage with those emails, it'll trigger this subsequence that's dedicated to just talking about podcasting stuff. And then you could really focus on that part of the journey.
 
So the next, say you send me an email about podcasting adjacent stuff, and I interact with it. And then two weeks later, you send me another one. I interact with that. You can use that to flag something in your email automation system that says, "Okay, send Matt the podcast sequence." And then I'll be in that for the next, let's say two to three weeks, and then you're going to really start taking me on that journey from talking about the problem that I might be facing regarding podcasting, introducing various solutions to that problem, and then finally talking about your product as one of those solutions among many. That's going to be a way to introduce that series of ideas in a way that's not spammy and creates value the whole time.
 
How constructing an email sequence is like writing a business plan
 
[00:34:30] Matty: So, if people are putting together an email sequence that is following kind of a story arc, it seems to me that thinking through that would be quite a deep dive into making sure you understand your business to the extent that you're almost writing like a business plan for yourself.
 
Like, I would think that if somebody can successfully walk a potential client through that kind of story about the solution they have to offer, they need to have a very sophisticated understanding of their own business. Do you find that you have to advise clients to understand their business better before trying to write that description of it for other people?
 
[00:35:10] Matt: Understand their business in the sense of understanding what they're offering. Yeah, I mean, you have to know what your core value proposition is and what problem you're really solving and think about that quite deeply. I mean, taking it back to the fiction author's thing, yeah, why are you writing? Why are people reading what you write? How are you being valuable to other people? I mean, that's how I look at business, right? Yeah, you have to be aware of those things.
 
The psychology of marketing
 
[00:35:34] Matt: I mean, marketing is numbers and psychology. With email, you get the numbers, right? You see how people are reacting to each set of emails. Like, I'll run experiments where there are three different variations of positioning running against one another. And you can start to see trends in which one is being responded to the best just in terms of engagement, right? And unsubscribes and all those other things we were talking about before. So there's a numbers side of it. The psychology side of it is coming up with those ideas in the first place for the positioning.
 
[00:36:07] Matty: Yeah, this episode title is going to be like the gestalt of email marketing or something like that. Because whenever I talk about email marketing with anyone, I always get kind of stuck on the "why am I doing this" thing. I think it's because I don't have a clear enough understanding in my mind between "I'm communicating with this person because I want to help them start up a podcast" or "I want to help them think through whether they should even think about starting up a podcast." I think thinking through the exact scenario where that is going to be exactly the book somebody needs and then creating the story that leads up to that, I think, quite a sophisticated business exercise. It feels kind of tricky to me to understand what you're trying to achieve at that level.
 
[00:37:00] Matt: It can be a lot of fun.
 
The pros and cons of bucking cover genre conventions
 
[00:37:03] Matty: It could be a lot of fun! It could just make me pull my hair out, but that's so interesting, such interesting food for thought. I'm going to have to noodle on all that. But before I let you go, I had another topic I wanted to hit pretty quickly, and that is the cover of your book, "Natural Orders." So I have to say, I never thought I would say this about a book about email marketing, but it is a gorgeous cover. It's just beautiful to look at. I might just have to order the print copy so that I can just look at the cover.
 
But if I saw that in a bookstore, I would not say, "Oh, look, a book on email marketing," because it has beautiful botanical drawings. And I think there's like a peacock there or something. I'm seeing it quite small, so I'm not exactly sure. But I'm very curious about the thought that went into the design of the book, and I mean, you're making a sale because I just want to have a print copy of this book to look at the cover in more detail. But I'm sure you're acknowledging that you're probably losing people, too, because they kind of breeze through it. They don't even realize what the topic is. Can you talk a little bit about the thought that went into choosing that cover for "Natural Orders"?
 
[00:38:12] Matt: Yeah. First of all, thank you very much. I did put some thought into it. Here it is for the YouTube people watching. I definitely didn't follow the advice for "Here's how to create a book cover that sells really well on Amazon." I mean, it goes basically against all of those rules, and yeah, it doesn't look like a business book, let alone an email marketing book, but I thought, yeah, the people who love it, love it. And you want to attract those people. I've found that in the reviews as well; some people really resonate with the whole perspective I've taken with it. Yeah, that's what it's all about. I think there's a huge branding premium in writing a book that sometimes... undirected knowledge. And I think you should lean into that as much as possible. I've probably really gone down the natural orders route and everything that entails. And yeah, it might get passed over. My click-through rate from Amazon ads might suffer a little bit, but whatever. It's alright. The people who want to read it and find it and resonate with it, they still find it. So I think it's absolutely fine.
 
Also, with a business book, you're not trying to sell a million copies. You're trying to sell a certain amount and get those people who really have that burning problem. And, you know, talking about what you were just. That is the reason I wrote the book, so this whole idea of why I bother with email marketing. That's where people really seem to trip up. I mean, I've gone so deep into this over the years, and I still find people are really at that point. They're like, "Well, I'm doing email. Like basic stuff, but why am I doing it? And what does advanced email look like? And what comes next, right? What does real proper email marketing look like? And it's meant to answer that question. It's meant to be like, here's exactly what it looks like. Here's why you're doing it. Here's what you're trying to achieve with it. Here's where it fits in with your broader marketing mix. And here's how to do it without falling into all these traps that people tend to fall into.
 
[00:40:03] Matty: Well, I think that's a great insight to offer to people because I realized that I, and I'm sure a lot of other authors fall into this as well, but we hear the very valid and understandable advice that says you need to have a list of people that you want to connect with, that you own, and they are not beholden to Facebook or whatever to stay in touch with those people. It totally makes sense to me, and I'm willing to spend a certain amount of time in order to do that. But then I think that's all a lot of writers are looking for. They're looking for that group of people that they own so that if their Facebook account gets shut down, they can still tell people about their latest book.
 
But as we're talking, I'm realizing that's kind of like the nursery school version of email marketing, and that a better understanding of all the other ways that email can serve us would be a good tool to add to the toolkit.
 
[00:40:52] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. I think so. I think there's a lot of people out there that are kind of clued into it. They think, "Okay, there's more to this email thing." There's not a lot of information out there, especially not packaged together in an easy way where it's like, I can just sit down and read this book in a day, and I'll have a whole new view of this channel and what it can do for me. So that's the value proposition.
 
[00:41:14] Matty: So if people are reading "Natural Orders," is it the kind of thing that you feel that they would read through at once and they would have a better sense of it, or is it the kind of book that you have to sort of work your way through gradually? Is the approach something that you need to work your way through gradually rather than trying to absorb it all in one big chunk?
 
[00:41:31] Matt: That's interesting, you say that, actually, because I hate these business books that are a hundred pages just to say one thing. Some of the feedback I've gotten, which is great, I guess, is that it's a very dense book. So a lot of people will buy the physical copy, write notes in it, highlight things, and keep going back to it over and over again, which is. It's great. That's fantastic. I did put a lot of work into this book, even though it's only 200 pages. I think it is quite dense. Yeah, so you'll probably come back to it again and again and get ideas out of it, and there are things that you'll probably realize that you skimmed over the first time that you'll go back to and get something out of when you read it again. Which is great. That's the type of book I wanted to read. When I think of all the best business books, my favorite business books, they're all like that. They're relatively short, but they're just packed with stuff. It's like every line you get something out of. I don't know if mine's achieved that same goal, but I've tried. I've aimed towards.
 
[00:42:24] Matty: That's great. Well, I appreciate you being so generous with following my meandering set of questions. But it is true that this was, you know, less about the tactics of email marketing and more about the value of thinking of it in a bit more holistic way than I think a lot of authors naturally do. But, Matt, it's been so nice talking to you. Please let listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
 
[00:42:51] Matt: So the best place to find out more about me is naturalordersbook.com. So that's naturalordersbook.com.
 
[00:43:01] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
 
[00:43:03] Matt: Thank you.

Episode 205 - The Pros and Cons of Writing Contests with Becky Tuch

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Becky Tuch discusses THE PROS AND CONS OF WRITING CONTESTS, including finding and assessing opportunities, and red flags to watch out for; why contests charge entrance fees; considering what you get for that fee; what should you expect if you win, beyond creative validation; and the vital importance of understanding what you gain and sacrifice in terms of ownership of your IP if your work wins a contest, especially if you’re submitting a book-length work.
 
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.

Becky Tuch is a fiction and nonfiction writer, creative writing instructor, consultant, and editor. Her writing has appeared in over a dozen literary magazines and several anthologies, and has been honored with a number of magazine awards as well as fellowships from The Somerville Massachusetts Arts Council and The MacDowell Colony. She is the founder of The Review Review, a website dedicated to reviews of literary magazines and interviews with journal editors, and The Lit Mag News Roundup, a bi-weekly newsletter that aims to demystify the world of lit mag publishing. Becky lives in Philadelphia, PA.

Episode Links

www.beckytuch.com
https://litmagnews.substack.com/

Episode 203 - The Author Marketing Audit with Joe Solari

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Joe Solari talks about THE AUTHOR MARKETING AUDIT, including what Joe saw in the creative world that led him to develop the audit, the power of using the natural forces of popularity marketing, positioning your product to meet an unmet desire, the value of segmentation and the role of direct sales, setting up a process that allows customers to self-nurture, and considering how you would want to be treated as your customer.

Joe Solari helps authors build great businesses through books, courses, and podcasting, as well as strategy and operations consulting. He is the author of ADVANTAGE: HARNESSING CUMULATIVE ADVANTAGE IN THE WINNER TAKES ALL PUBLISHING MARKET and MAY I HAVE A MOMENT OF YOUR ATTENTION: HOW TO GET YOUR MESSAGE HEARD IN A NOISY MARKET.

Episode Links

joesolari.com/ama
https://twitter.com/Joseph_Solari​
https://www.youtube.com/@JoeSolari​

Episode 200 - How Times Have Changed (or Stayed the Same) with Mark Leslie Lefebvre

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Mark Leslie Lefebvre talks about HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED (OR STAYED THE SAME) in the writing and publishing worlds since 2016. Why 2016? Because that’s when the first episode of The Indy Author Podcast aired, and I’m looking back with Mark to celebrate landMARK episode 200. We discuss what has and hasn’t changed in interior and book cover design, editing, production, distribution, marketing, and promotion, and how we as indie authors can prepare for what the coming years will bring.
 
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.
 
Mark Leslie Lefebvre is the author of more than twenty books that include fiction and thrillers, and paranormal non-fiction explorations. He has also edited numerous anthologies. With three decades of experience in bookselling and publishing, Mark is a seasoned and trusted book industry professional who embraces both traditional and indie publishing options.

Episode Links

www.markleslie.ca
www.starkreflections.ca