Posted on January 16, 2024.
In this episode, we cover how to plot out a sustainable future for your author career. This is a new series where Michael will be sharing weekly insights on the podcast in solo episodes or with the Ream Team.
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#64 Episode Transcript:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Descriptions for Authors Podcast. This is the Storyteller Rules, Storytellers Rule the World Diaries. I’m gonna be doing this every week and we’ll also keep doing the interviews, too. So you’ll see like those keep rolling out. So, there’s gonna be more episodes and the goal of these episodes to be like usually under a half hour, maybe right around a half hour, and just to share some of the insights and the things in my mind as, as we’re building Ream, as we’re creating, Everything and to try and really hopefully help you all in your author career with some of these insights.
And today I want to talk about planning for success in 2024. I know I’m kind of a little sick again. So if you hear my voice sound a little weird, just a little bit of a cold. But this is going to be less about how to plan because we did a whole podcast on like planning for success. Earlier, and you can see that down below.
This is instead some like real big picture thinking about the future of your career. And this is honestly a lot of thinking I’ve been doing recently because in three months I graduate and I will be officially full time on me. Although to be frank, I definitely put in full time hours to the company. But regardless of that, I will be like actually officially full time.
No distractions. college graduate, which I’m, which I’m very excited about. I’m very, very much looking forward to it. And, you know, you start to ask yourself the question, like, what is my 20s going to look like? Now, that’s the question I’m asking myself. For you, maybe you’re in your 30s, maybe you’re in your 60s, maybe you’re in your 70s, maybe you’re, doesn’t matter.
Maybe, maybe you just had kids and a family. Maybe your kid just left the home. Maybe you don’t have kids or plan on ever having kids, but have a partner or whatever your situation is in life, right? Thinking about, like, the next era of your life. There’s kind of these periods where we enter new chapters.
There’s periods where the world enters new chapters. And I want to talk about, like, how to actually think about the future. And actually, how to think about creating the future that you want for yourself. And, with that, I have five points I want to cover. First, the mindset. First, why then next, why you’re doing it.
The third is, like, actually imagining what that dream life is like for you. And, the last thing, maybe most important, is going to be talking about your synergy map. And actually getting specific about what does the future look like for you, and how to plan that out. So, starting with the time traveler mind.
This is, this is a really weird one because I actually haven’t fully adopted this until recently. You know, with, with Ream, we’ve always had this, like, very big vision of, like, what we want Ream to be. Like, our mission’s simple, and it’s true. Like, we want to create a future where storytellers are the world.
And that means, you know, giving you the power on Ream to connect directly with your readers. That means giving you the best tools to be able to build a business as an author. That means helping you build recurring sustainable revenue, which, you know, Marine focuses on subscriptions and helping you do that.
And that’s still, like, core to everything we do, but if we think about the future, like, what does it actually look like for storytellers to rule the world? You know, how do we actually achieve that vision? That means we want, you know, Ring to be, you know, the best publishing platform, period. We, we want it to be the number one space for authors to go to, to be able to connect with readers to be able to have discovery.
And with us launching discovery, kind of like a new product in the Ring ecosystem, it gets me really thinking about, like, again, like, What is, like, the long term, like, seven year vision here? And with something like Discovery being so foundational to it, you know, Ream has entered a new chapter. Not only Ream, but my life.
And it’s easy to kind of think about the future, and hit planned goals, but the time traveler mindset is something different. The time traveler mindset is actually living in the future. It’s not that you have a vision, it’s that you know the future. You are in this future, and you see it. You are living in it, and your job is to bring that future to life today.
And that is how I view my role at Ream. But I also think that it’s very valuable for us all to view our role and our author careers similarly. You might have a vision for where you want to be. You might have this idea of, you know, where you want to go. But what if you actually pretended like it was true?
Like, you are that author who makes 100, 000 a year, who is able to work from home, maybe that means that you’re able to spend more time with your family, maybe that means you’re able to travel more, whatever that means to you, live in that future, pretend it is true and work backwards. How do you get there?
And it’s important that I’m, I’m using the word 2030 here, right? Because at least for me, like, Ream’s gonna be what I’m doing in my 20s. Like, I’ve dedicated basically this decade the 2020s to building Ream. I’m so, such a huge part of this long term mindset that I think that you should be thinking about your author career not in months or weeks, but in years and potentially even decades.
And if you do that and you then work backwards, how does that change how you approach your life today? I have a feeling it will. It definitely has changed how I approach things and already kind of taking this with a new level of seriousness and responsibility of, you know, it’s not just that we want Ream to be the best publisher in the world, it’s that Ream is, like it is going to be that.
It is And we’re just making that true. It’s just coming true, but that is what it is. It is very powerful when you switch your framing to that. And suddenly your goals don’t become goals, they become like a reality. They become inevitable. And when you frame it to yourself like that, it changes how you make your daily decision making process.
It just does. Because you are a time traveler.
The next step is getting serious about your why. Because it’s one thing to like envision a future and have it be all fancy and nice and this and that. But, The process between getting and making that future true, actually bringing that future to life, right, takes time. And it’s not always easy, right?
There’s a lot of late nights. There’s a lot of times we have to do admin work that we don’t want to do, whether it’s uploading our books to xPlatform or, you know, reviewing line edits. Maybe not the most glamorous parts of the job, but nonetheless, they are important. So, how do we get through these moments when it feels like this future that we’re living in, you know, is still in the future, like we kind of want it to be now.
Humans, a lot of us are impatient. We can all be that, including myself. How do you kind of get through that? How do you get through that? And I think that comes down to like getting serious about your why. And this is the biggest thing for, for us as authors that can really set us apart when we think about differentiating ourselves from a brand perspective.
So it’s a very important point. Why are you writing stories? Why are you doing this? In the moments that are hard, in the moments that you’re making a sacrifice, in the moments that you’re maybe, you know, working a little later than you want to be. In the moments that you’re, you know, working for months on a novel that may or may not sell.
You want to turn to this, and there’s two, I think, general strategies here. One is having, like, a bigger, like, mission or purpose around, like, what you do. And you can have that. Like, you know, Reams is, you know, create a future for storytellers of the world. From you, maybe it’s something different. Maybe it’s you want to be able to give, you know, people who’ve been through divorces you know, and are trying to find, you know, Second, second love giving them hope and maybe even potentially the insights and tools to have better healthier relationships Maybe it’s helping people who you know might have different different identities different sexualities aren’t accepted by their family You know find find a new home find a new space for themselves where they can be themselves and they see that through your characters Maybe it’s helping people learn about science and technology or helping people be able to You know, uncover the monsters in themselves, the horrors that you display in your novels.
Like, there’s so many different things you could go through this. You can’t go through every mission statement, every potential way. But like, that could be your why, like that passion you return to that. But it also could be another person in your life, and this is really powerful. Maybe you have a kid, maybe you have a parent, maybe you have a friend that you’re doing this for.
Like, you’re writing books for them. You’re writing books because you know that, like, you want your kid to see that it’s possible to pursue your dreams. Like, that, then make that be your driving force. And that is huge. I think it’s, like, underrated in how powerful it is, and so important. Sorry, there’s sirens right now on the streets of Rome.
But so important. And the next thing is thinking about what is the life of your dreams? Like, what are you good at? What are you good at as an author? What do you want to do? What does the day to day look like? And with this, you know, I think it’s really important to actually reflect on what is your nature.
Are you a kind of person who works under pressure well? If that’s the case, then you might be someone who wants to do a lot of pre orders. Are you someone who works under, you know, a structured regime very well? In that case, you might want to have, you know, daily word count goals. Are you someone who really enjoys getting into the nitty gritty?
And, you know, loves whether it’s, you know, design or tier copy. You know, really focusing on how to optimize these things. Or, are you more of the big picture kind of person, who’s creative and has these ideas, but that type of stuff doesn’t inspire you? Why I ask this is because, you know, achieving a mission and bringing the future that you see for yourself to life, and actually how you do that, are two different things.
And we talked about why you do it, but in terms of how you do it, it’s really up to you! And, you know, when people say, oh, you have to do it this way, or you have to do it like this, or you have to learn this, the truth is that you don’t really have to do anything, but like, eat, sleep, drink, and, you know, Take care of your bodily necessities.
And there’s a lot of different ways you could do that. Besides probably doing what that one person tells you. So, the point is, you want to do something that’s accustomed to your nature. This is what makes subscriptions stuff for people, right? Because, you know, subscriptions you can offer chapters of the cadence you want.
You can offer benefits of the cadence you want. Price things that are comfortable for you. It’s kind of like you choose your own adventure, but it can be confusing because no one’s telling you you have to do it this way. But that’s kind of the thing about the retailers that has chained us, right? Like, we have to do it this way.
You have to game this algorithm in this way to get discovery. And it ultimately leaves a lot of us who maybe could have made it in a different kind of system, a system that we can build, a system where storytellers of the world actually cancels us out of having that opportunity. It’s really important that you have that control.
It’s really important that you Like, take that agency to heart and really work on what is my nature. And there’s a simple reflective process that I have to figure this out. Because we all have hunches about what we like to do, what we don’t like to do. But sometimes you just have to get in there and do it and figure it out.
But how do you figure that out? How do you figure out after a week of working on your stories, what parts of it are your strengths and what parts of it are your weaknesses? First thing is documenting everything you do in a week. Kind of like keeping a journal. And next to each task you do, writing down.
Whether you felt more or less energized after that task. It’s really simple, but ultimately that’s going to help you figure out the things that you should be doing, and the things that you maybe shouldn’t be doing. And here’s the interesting part. You don’t have to do the things that you don’t have time to do.
You can just forget about it. I know, weird, but you can. You can just be like, you know what? This isn’t for me. I’m going to, you know, basically not get it done right now. Do you need to be on every platform if you don’t like uploading to every platform? Maybe not. Maybe you just focus on one. Do you need to be running ads if ads stress you out?
No, maybe not right now. You don’t have to do that strategy for growth. Do you need to be, you know, writing in this specific subgenre because you think it’s going to sell well? And there’s another subgenre that sells decently well that you also like? Eh, maybe not, because odds are the first book in that subgenre is not going to blow up.
It’s going to take successive books. And, if you only write one series in that subgenre and not multiple, that’s probably not going to be good for your long term sales history, right? So, thinking about these things, your how can change, and that’s a good thing. You don’t have to write every day if, if deadlines work well for you and that you had more passion writing for five hours on one Saturday night rather than one hour either day during the week.
So the next thing is a Synergy Map. And, and this is where we start to get, I think, really good and, and really exciting with, with what this looks like. Which is actually mapping out the specific steps and parts of the future that you see. And why I say Synergy Map is this. Because storytellers of the world, right?
I mean that so, so literally. And so deeply. It’s, it’s a core fundamental truth. Storytellers do rule the world. Stories are what make the world go round, they’re what bring people together, they’re what build communities, and those communities are the things that end up creating change, makes this world a better place.
But, what is built around those stories? That’s your business, right? You have your stories, your IP at the center. What is around that in the Synergy app? That is, all the different things you can do. It is the platforms you publish on. It is the different ways you monetize, maybe subscriptions, maybe a la carte.
It is not just that though. It is different products you can create. It is the merch, it is the virtual experience for you, it is maybe a book club, it is the conferences you can attend, it is the marketing avenues you have, it is everything. Map it all out. You can use something like Lucidchart create like a free trial and like cancel it after 14 days and create this and then like every year go back and create a new one using a new email.
I, I’m not telling you to like game, game, you know, free software, but I guess I am. Regardless, I, that’s what I use. I use Lucidchart for things like this. You create a Synergy Map where you get to actually map out concretely what it looks like. Then there’s another step to this. No, they don’t teach you this in school.
You have three different shades of the colors in this bubbles. So, the first shade is like a darker shade that you’re already doing, right? Like a dark filled in shade. Then there’s like a medium shade, medium opacity, where you’re going to be doing it in the near future. Like this is maybe something you’re doing like in 2024.
And then there’s the light circles, which is the far beyond. You’re not going to be doing it anytime this year, maybe not even next year, but in the future you will do it. And you get to kind of see, like, what part of the vision is filled in, what part of the what part of your future still needs to come to life, and what part of that future is, like, coming to life soon, right?
And you can then reflect on that, and every year, create a new one. Maybe you’re adding new things to it. Maybe circles get completely ripped off. But it’s a beginning of the year reflective activity to basically get straight, like, where you’re going, and not just envision this time traveler mindset. And not just, you know, envision what the life of your dreams looks like, but actually put it down onto paper.
This is so powerful because you articulating this as if it’s real, right? You’re just changing the shading of the colors. That’s all you’re doing. You’re not saying future, this, future that you’re just changing the shading of the colors immediately makes this vision to you immediately. Makes this future, immediately makes your business, and where it can go and where it can grow.
Be much more tangible. And it’ll allow you to have deeper focus. Because in the process of doing this, you might realize, like, Oh my god, I’m marketing myself in ten different ways. That’s crazy. Why am I doing that? And, and I think that, Yeah, creating your own Synergy Map is super, super cool. Super, super fun.
I recommend it. I think you should do it. I think it’s really, really helpful when, like, planning out your future as an author. And that’s, like, the map on how to do it. The three things. One, like, the core of your Synergy Map is stories, because storytelling is really important. That’s gonna be the core of it.
Branching out of that, you’re gonna have all the different activities you do. The distribution activities, where you’re publishing, where you’re marketing. You’re gonna have admin potentially on there. You’re gonna have different product lines you create for yours. Different mediums, different series and how they overlap.
What series and where. You’re gonna have all of that on this map, right? And then you’re gonna shade the different colors of it. And over time, you’re gonna edit that thing once a year. You don’t need to look at it too often, but it’s something really cool to be able to ground yourself. So that when you see what you’re working on, you can see why and how it fits in.
And the Synergy Task is other things. And to be clear, these bubbles on this map, right? You’re going to be connecting the dots. It’s not just like a bunch of random dots. You’re going to be connecting, drawing lines between them. And maybe even writing out how they are similar. Now, actually creating a Synergy Map is actually not that easy.
It’s somewhat difficult. And I’ve done it. It takes me, each year, when I did Dreams this year, it took me like maybe about 20 hours to do. So it really is a process. But I would love to help walk you through that, and if you are interested in me doing, like, a SynergyMap workshop just, like, post in our Facebook group.
You can join our Facebook group at the link in the description. I would love to, you know, see what you think about it, and if you want me to do that, I’ll make one of the Fireside Chats this year about it. I’m only doing five more Fireside Chats now, and then I’m retiring from Fireside Chats, where I’m just not doing it anymore.
So this is a great chance that if, like, you want To see me do this. I will make it one of my last 5 Far Eyside Chats. I just want to see that you guys are interested. So do post in the group if you’re interested about it. Because that’ll help me know if this is actually something you’re interested in.
Thinking about like, the future of your career, the future of, you know, where this is all going. And how I can help you get there. And thinking through that with this Synergy Map. Which I think is like, I’ve done this like, for years. I’ve been doing this Synergy Map strategy. And it’s, it’s, it works really well in clarifying your thoughts.
Especially when you’re very creative, which I know all of you listening are, and you have all these ideas, and you need to like, kind of like, get them down on paper somehow it, it’s very, very helpful. Okay, so, the last thing here, the last thing I want to talk about is the future of publishing. Where it’s going, how I think you should think about it.
I’m definitely very, very fortunate to be in a position where I can kind of see, actually, a bit of that future, and have, whether it’s friends, and authors, and conferences that we attend that kind of give us, Gave us some other insights and kind of trying to congeal it all together, you know, people talk about artificial intelligence technologies people talk about all these changing tides and publishing and I firmly believe when it comes to storytelling that Trust is everything in music over half of like songs are listened to we’re not released in this year They released in previous years the backlist of music Including like classics like Elvis The Beatles is more valuable than ever People are listening to those songs more than they ever have, basically and in terms of the portion, right?
And the backlist of books is similarly, like, very, very valuable, but they’re not all equally valuable, in the sense that they’re not all gonna get equal readership. And they’re definitely not all gonna have equal readership in specific sub genres, right? Like, there’s certain types of readers who are interested in certain types of stories.
What am I getting at here? What am I getting at? It’s that as much as we’re going to see publishing change, as much as we’re going to see new technology potentially disrupt things that could happen. What we will see, what we will see is that readers who trust specific authors, those authors are going to do great.
Which is why I think thinking about this long term future and where you’re going is so important. Because you’re not just getting a quick injection of sales and then moving on. There’s much easier ways to make money. If you wanted to make quick cash, like just don’t, like there’s other ways to do it. But if you’re building a long lasting brand, there’s, author businesses are actually incredibly sustainable when you have a group of core superfans.
And I think that having visibility into who those superfans are, and being able to connect with them directly, has never been more valuable. And this does sound like a yield pitch for subscriptions, it’s not just that. I think subscriptions are one way to be able to monetize relationships and things that you’re offering those superfans, and be able to have greater visibility into it.
What it really is, is a call to action, to, you know, building a direct relationship with your audience, where you can have visibility into who those superfans are and continue serving them. Because those people who are loyal to you are who make your business and it’s surprisingly sticky. Those people are surprisingly sticky and surprisingly loyal to the authors they love.
You just have to become one of those authors and how you do that isn’t putting your face on camera, misnomer. How you do that isn’t, you know, sharing all out all your personal life. How you do that is like consistently creating a great story that delivers what your readers want, which sounds so simplistic and so simple, but it’s true.
It’s just true. It’s what we see in the industry. And if you feel like you have to be something that you’re not, if you feel like you have to put yourself on camera to get readers, if you feel like you have to connect with your readers in very specific ways, like, you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to.
You can and it’s great. But instead, what I recommend doing, what I recommend doing, is really, really focusing on how can I get more data, more insight, more feedback on what my true fans want. And how can I create things that more and more align with their expectations. This is where Polling your readers, this is where a conversation with your readers, this is where community posts, this is where newsletters can come in handy to actually interact with them.
And, you know, when we talk about community, community isn’t just like readers chatting, it’s actually making them involved in your process, not in an intimate way, they’re not writing the book with you. You are getting their feedback on how to shape what you’re doing so that you can keep their trust, keep them a part of the process, and ultimately, ultimately, build a sustainable career as well.
I know that doesn’t sound groundbreaking, but what I do think the big shift that we’ll see is. is that storytellers aren’t just going to be creating stories, they’re going to be ruling the world. And I mean that almost literally, that storytellers are going to be building the brands of tomorrow. Whether it’s fashion, whether it’s beauty, whether it’s cosmetics, whether it’s food, the brands of tomorrow are going to be built and led by storytellers.
And those storytellers are you. And I’m very excited about that future. I think that future is going to be amazing. I think that future is going to really help uplift so many of us to be able to do very, very interesting things that are in author businesses. And I’m not actually all that worried about You know, generative AI, or things of that nature.
Because, at the end of the day, people trust people, and people want to be a part of a social experience. Part of a community where others are experiencing something similar. So hyper individualized stories just aren’t going to happen, I don’t think, at a scale that’s going to actually disrupt what it is that we’re all doing.
Which is creating a shared experience, right? A shared experience for our readers. And that’s really powerful. And how you can immerse them more in that shared experience is going to be a really big area of growth. Insight and opportunity for us as authors and I would think about that going to 2024 and beyond and I think the call to action Is that even if you don’t have a paid subscription you should have a place where you can get the emails of your readers Or you can communicate with them in a community and be able to Involve them in that synergy map in that big vision of the future that you’re creating which isn’t some world taking over thing It’s not anything like that It’s instead Where you see your story is going and where you see them impact the lives of your readers and hopefully by the end of this podcast You have now learned how to do that That’s pretty much it for this episode.
I, I would love to share where I see the future of freedom going and the Synergy Map. And, you know, the truth is this. I can get specific, I can show you specific things, and, and that’d be fun. But, but really, it’s about one thing. Which is we are creating a future where storytellers rule. That’s what we want to do.
And to achieve that future, You know, that means being able to create the space where authors can have the best publishing platform in the world. And that, that is what we want to do. To help give you that amazing platform and give you power to be able to build your own platform, to build your own career, to build your own readership.
That is where we’re going. This is where we’re continuing to be. And I’m very, very excited to be doing this for a very long time. And very, very excited to be able to look past graduation and to see what’s ahead of me and to see that it’s continuing to serve all of you. People that I love, people that are wildly creative, wildly awesome, and continuing to work towards the future that we know to be true, which is a future where storytellers rule the world.
We’re gonna make it, we’re gonna create it together, and publishing will never be the same. I think that gives you enough to know what the scope of what we’re trying to accomplish is. And I don’t think there’s any community on Earth that can do this like we can. Because we’re doing this together. Because we get to win together.
A future where storytellers rule the world is a fundamentally better future. It’s a future that’s better for all of us. And we get to create that together. So you’re gonna see a lot of changes coming at Ream in a good way. You’re gonna see the product keep improving. You’re gonna see discovery keep improving.
You’re gonna see the back end with subscriptions keep improving. And at the end of the day, all of this is to help all of you build direct connection to your readers, create a core base of superfans, and build a sustainable business that can change the world. I’ll see y’all next time. Y’all rock. And as always, don’t forget, storytellers rule the world.