Posted on January 16, 2024.
Join us for a special episode as we wrap up our series of live author coaching sessions on subscriptions! In this final installment, we sit down with Lori. From navigating the intricacies of building a subscriber base to troubleshooting marketing strategies, Michael Evans and Emilia Rose offer practical advice and tips to help Lori—and all aspiring authors—reach the next level in their careers!
#65 Episode Outline:
00:00:00 Coming Up Next
00:01:14 Introduction
00:02:55 Starting Lori’s Subscription
00:04:58 Running a Subscription as a Co-author
00:07:21 Initial Subscription Expectations
00:09:06 Lori’s Subscription Goals
00:11:19 Lori’s Ideal Subscription Reader
00:15:11 Looking At Lori’s Subscription
00:24:42 Getting Subscribers Excited
00:33:21 Growing Your Subscription Using Facebook
00:42:03 Lori’s Questions for Michael & Emilia
00:45:44 Conclusion
#65 Episode Transcript:
Coming Up Next…
there’s going to have to be some sort of like, there’s demand for book boxes that are high, right?
And for like the personalization for it, but the bandwidth for authors to do it is low. And especially for like even very successful authors who are doing really well. So there’s going to be a solution that, trust me, I spend a lot of time thinking about this, as does Emilia, about how can we like make that easier for people so that like you can scale the personalization, but you know, the personalization is focused on the side book, the, the actual part, like only you can do not all this other stuff and the packaging and basically turning yourself into a mini fulfillment warehouse.
That is how like a lot of these authors are right now. And I just, I think although there’s big opportunity in it, don’t, don’t enter a problem that’s not going to benefit you economically right now. Amen to that. That’s, that’s a good, that’s a good advice for everyone. Don’t, don’t create problems that don’t make you more money when you’re trying to make money doing something.
Welcome to Subscriptions for Authors. Meet your co hosts, Michael Evans, sci fi thriller author of a dozen novels, and Amelia Rose, a semi romance author that makes six figures per year in subscriptions. Together, we will help you make more money with subscriptions and succeed in the future of publishing.
Introduction
So, this is a special episode. This is our last of the subscriptions for authors coaching sessions. We did these live. We put a post on the Facebook group about six months ago asking fellow authors in the community if they’d like to have a call with, you know, me and Amelia and walk through their subscription, walk through how things are going, walk through how we can help them.
Lori, I remember meeting at a romance conference in Charleston just about a little over a year ago now. Actually, maybe a year and a half ago now. And So, when Lori reached out that she’d been starting her subscription but just struggling to get traction, I thought what a perfect moment to sit down and figure out how we could get Lori to the next level.
So we talk a lot about just general author career stuff, helping her succeed in subscriptions and I think it’s a really helpful episode for people who are getting started. This podcast, I hope, is a really good fit for you because it walks a lot through how to get started, how to think about subscriptions, and if you’ve tried marketing it and things aren’t going right, well, this could be an episode to learn about ways you can troubleshoot what you’re doing and work on getting your first paid subscribers and growing from there.
So super excited for this episode with Lori, let’s dive into it.
Lori, it’s been about a year. You met at Lost in the Low Country, which is an amazing conference that we’ll both be back out this year, but. All of us will be but yeah, we’re talking a lot about subscriptions today It’s really your subscription and I want to ask you what got you to start your subscription And when did you start
Starting Lori’s Subscription
it?
Okay, so I started Right around the end of March of this year and the deciding factor. I think was just kind of watching Amazon and how it was Treating its authors. I mean, it’s, it’s been, I think, in the works for a while now, but particularly since January, it seems that things just sort of started going downhill and you know, I watched my daily, my daily reads, my daily profits just start going down and I made a decision that even if it costs me some money initially, I needed to start going wide. And I I think the best way for me to do it is to start moving you know, a book at a time, a series at a time, just very slowly wide and start looking at all the different ways I can do it.
And one of the ways that really interests me is subscriptions. So it’s one of my first forays, forays into the wide world and I was working on a co write with Vi Carter. She’s kind of a big mafia name. And you know, she. Kind of a year off and this is sort of both of our, our year to, to bounce back into things because we had both taken a year off of writing and we’re in one of those spots where there’s no, no harm, no foul, and it just seemed like a good time to get into it.
Yeah.
No, totally. It makes sense. And I know your, your actual like subscription is is a coauthor one and it’s focused on your contemporary dark romance series. So I actually have some specific questions about. How are you doing on the back end? I’m assuming you’re splitting.
I don’t need to know the exact percentage that you’re splitting. I’m assuming that obviously part of you is getting part of the revenue. The other, the other coauthors getting part of the revenue. I’m curious how you’re splitting that up because I know there’s a lot of people have considered coauthors descriptions, but as you know, anything you do as a coauthor, the payments can be
Running a Subscription as a Co-author
tricky.
Yeah, we’re 50 50. She’s, she does a lot of the marketing end of things. And I tend to do a lot of the editing end of things. Like her strength is in marketing and my strength is in editing. And so we, we tend to divide a lot of our workload that way. And it just kind of all works out. She was interested in getting into subscriptions too, but she was.
Perfectly content to kind of let me run with that while she did some other stuff. And we just kind of split the workload that way. And, so yeah. Yeah, it does. It should. We’re both pretty easy going. How do you actually,
I’m curious how you actually like, meaning like, like what software do you use? PayPal? Like when you get paid, right? You’re getting paid out by the subscription platform as one person. So how are you splitting that up? Is what I’m curious about. Just cause I know a lot of authors have that question. How do I split co author royalties?
It’s not royalties, right? It’s, it’s
revenue, but yeah, we’ve, we’ve been using PayPal so far. We haven’t run into any, any big big issues with it because we haven’t even published our first book yet. Our first publication date is June 23rd and the Patreon is so new. I don’t even think we’ve received a payout for it yet because I mean, we’re, we’re.
Yeah, we’re, we’re really, really small right now. So it hasn’t been a big deal, but if we get to a point where we are paying like huge fees and stuff, I think we’re going to have to look at something to, to make sure that we’re not giving PayPal really big fees, but we haven’t gotten there yet, but that is a
question.
Cool. Cool. I just, yeah, yeah, it is a question. I have that question like myself, cause I always like look into all these solutions and you’re right, PayPal, you can do, but all of them are pretty. I’ll say imperfect at the moment, but they are.
And I look with my editing business, I’ve already started using Zelle over PayPal because I don’t have to pay the fees with, with Zelle.
So it’s, it’s definitely something to, to think about.
Zelle’s definitely great. If like everyone’s like in Zelle’s mainly strong with us banks. So both authors in the U S it’s a great option, but okay. Okay. That’s, this is all really good stuff to know. So. Your subscription you mentioned is small. Yes.
Talk to me about, is, is that what you expected or are you disappointed about how it’s
Initial Subscription Expectations
gone so far? Nope, I’m not disappointed at all. I expected it to be a, a turtle to start off with. Especially because I, I have my finger in so many different little pies right now. I, I just didn’t have the bandwidth to hit it full force and full steam ahead.
So just mixing all kinds of metaphors right here. I, I didn’t have the bandwidth to hit it with everything I had. So I expected it to start slowly and I’m okay with that. And that’s part of the reason I wanted to talk to you guys. I wanted to know what I could be doing to, to, to gain momentum and to get more followers because I don’t have a lot of.
energy and time to chase after people. I want it to happen organically. I want to find readers who want to be there, who are fans, who, who are interested in reading my things, but I don’t want to chase after either. So what do we do?
I mean, that, that is, that is the problem. That is what we’ll try. That is the question that we’ll, we’ll definitely try and help you with today.
And I think before I like. Just start giving ideas. I want to, I want to first understand like thinking about, and I say this a lot, people listen to the podcast, might even get annoyed with me, but the reader journey, I always think about that. And I want to take a step back. And before we even get into the reader journey, where we’re going to really get to the good stuff about how to grow your subscription, I want to talk about your journey and mainly think about.
Where do you see a subscription two or three years from now? Like as part of your author business, what is your goal? Like if you had to tell me, Michael, this is my dream outcome for my subscription. What is that dream outcome? It’s a
Lori’s Subscription Goals
good question. It’s not something I’ve thought about. I think I’d like to see all of my, all of my different little platforms working together to.
Comprised one, one big brand, they’re all cohesive and they all like build different parts of who I am as an author. Like readers, I think, you know, especially today they approach authors in different ways. 10, 15 years ago, there was one way for a reader to approach an author, and that was through a paperback book.
And now, it seems like there’s so many different ways a reader finds and appreciates an author. And that could be through an audiobook, or through passion flicks, or through You know, through a subscription service like Bella or radish or ream or Patreon it could be through an ebook or whatnot.
And so I want all of those different individual platforms to add up into one cohesive brand and strategy to reach. All of the different readers.
Okay. I get the vision. Passion flicks, by the way, not everyone might know cause all the other ones are pretty common. Passion flicks is like a Netflix or romance novel started by the sister of Elon Musk.
And I’ve heard that has pretty predatory contracts. So watch out. I’ve heard, heard, heard rumors about that in like a very reputable people. I don’t want to call people out, but a PSA on the podcast, you know, look at those contracts if you get offered anything, but. That’s true for anything. Always look at the context.
Yes it is. Your big author vision. I’m with you. And now I want to understand with your subscription, you know, you have, you talked about it, your different areas of your brand, right now with this subscription part of your brand, which kind of readers do you imagine it’s serving? Which readers are you serving with your subscription?
Which segment of your readers, you might have different tiers that serve different segments of your readers. That’s perfect. But I want to understand. Who it is that’s your ideal reader for your subscription
Lori’s Ideal Subscription Reader
for this, for the for the subscription reader. I think it’s a younger reader. I think you know, without putting necessarily, you know, labels on it and everything.
I think it’s, Early twenties as opposed to mid thirties. I, I think it’s, you know, I, I don’t think that people my age that are outside of the publishing business necessarily would even hear of it or know about it. I think it’s kids out of college and, and that kind of thing that are more immersed in that
culture.
I want to push back on that. I just want to push back on that because I think you’re right in a sense that there may be subscriptions lean a bit younger, but we have to think a little bit more about like, okay, so serial fiction and authors offering early access to their serial fiction, that’s a younger audience, full stop, no doubt that’s, that leans younger.
And you can see that on platforms like for instance, Wattpad and Emilia Rose, for instance, has a readership that probably leans younger than a lot of other authors. Doesn’t mean she has young readership. One though, Radish has a lot of readers above 40. So Radish, which is really only taken off the United States.
Yes. A lot of readers that are above 40 on Radish. So that’s one thing. And then another thing is that your subscription service. I think this would be my advice. I think you, you’re not thinking about it wrong, but I want to give you another idea about how to think about it, which is that maybe it’s when talking about the reader journey, it’s the last step in the reader journey.
It’s where your super fans are, or part of your super fans, not every super fan. We’ll be inside your membership, right? But that’s where they come to support you and get that maybe early access, exclusive access, the VIP experience of Lori Rae White. And in this case, also your co author as well Vi Carter.
So they get to go in there. And get that awesome experience. So you can have, so for instance, I’ll talk about a few authors have different subscription models. Nikki St. Crow has a very, very, very successful subscription focused mainly on physical books, mainly physical books. There’s a lot of downsides to that cause it’s hard to manage, but you could, you could check out our public subscription, it’s, you could see the member account.
It’s impressive, right? Then you have people like Amelia. You do it all, Amelia, really at this point, you didn’t start off doing that, but now you do the book boxes, you do the different kinds of subscriptions and audio or mainly graphic novels now and other different formats, and you obviously have the early access.
So there’s a lot you could do, right? Like, it’s that same reader who’s paying someone like, you know, Emilia and other authors, I see it on Ream every day, like 100 a month, going to be 20 most of the time? Probably not. 20 year olds probably can’t afford that. That’s true. Bye. That’s, that’s an interesting reader, right?
And there’s authors who have that. So I’m curious for you, let’s dive into your subscription as it is right now. You have three tiers. And I see in your first year, which by the way, for everyone who wants to like read along with us and participate in this the subscription is linked in the chat.
So you’ll be able to see their subscription there or in the description of the podcast, not the chat, but I was doing the conference so much this weekend and there was a chat. So I would just link things in the chat and now there’s no live audience, but you have a 2 and a 6 here. I want to go back to your pricing because I think.
There can be some adjustments there, but what I really want to talk about is what you’re offering, right? Because what you’re offering goes back to how we market it. So that, that determines your benefits, determine the marketing that, that is really it. Because no two subscriptions are equal. If I’m marketing, you know, book boxes versus early access to very different reader profiles, you can do both right now.
Talk to me about your subscription and why you choose to put those benefits in it.
I don’t even remember what I offered now. It’s been so long since I’ve looked at it.
Looking At Lori’s Subscription
I understand. I could, I could show you your Patreon page. Show me my page. I can share the screen. I don’t have it pulled up. Yeah, I’ll do that.
So, right now, do do do, hopefully you can see. Yes. A screen? Okay. Great.
Okay. And I think I, I looked at different authors. I looked at their pricing. I think I kind of went somewhere in the middle, you know, I didn’t go bottom of the barrel, but I didn’t go sky high either. And I’ll, I’ll be honest with you.
I think this, I’ve been reading like a book on abundance. And I think this hits somewhere to my beliefs about What I have to offer and what you know, people value as far as I am concerned, you know, are they going to look at what I offer and ha ha, you know, why would I, why would I pay for that?
And that kind of thing. So, you know, some of it is, is that kind of a value system? I grew up poor. And so some of it is, is a mindset shift. You know, why would somebody pay more than 2 just for a scene that I deleted? Why would they pay more than 2 for a first look at a teaser and that kind of thing?
Why would they pay more than 12 for You know, exclusive bonuses and things like that. So, you know, there’s a lot of a mindset shift when it comes to how I how I charge for things like that. And that’s just something I need to work on.
Yeah, that’s,
that’s how I, that’s how I came up with pricing.
I was just gonna hear me. Yeah, I can hear you. Okay. I was just gonna say I came up and did that like the exact same way. I came up from a low income family. And so. When I was placing my tiers for my subscription, it was very difficult to start at a higher price. And so, my first subscription, I started at a dollar.
And after a while, I realized, like,
I wasn’t getting any money from
that under payment processing fees. Yeah. And it took a while to actually, like, feel comfortable with charging, like, 3 or even 5 as my lowest tier. It’s just like a cup of coffee one time a month for somebody. And Your work is more worth more than that.
So yeah, it,
it’s, it’s really hard. It’s, it’s, the more I read about having an abundance mindset and you know, valuing our own creative process and things like that, the more significant and meaningful it becomes. I mean, I, I think we really do need to learn how to believe in ourselves because other people do believe in us.
It’s just, it’s, it’s really getting in there and, and
changing that. I think the biggest thing we have to overcome as the protagonists of our own lives are limiting beliefs, right, that hold us back. And I think that’s why, that’s what we learn when we write books, is to take our characters to that journey.
But it’s sometimes hard to take ourselves through a similar journey. But I think that was very, very mature reflection, and I really like it. But I also do want to say that, like, you know, just setting up a subscription, just having the courage to put any price that a reader can pay you monthly, is Is a feat unto itself.
And I think it’s really worth commending. 100%.
Yeah. It was, it was really difficult to do that.
Yeah, it is. And, and you already did do it. It’s live. I’m looking at the page live right now. So that’s like, that’s like amazing stuff. And when, when looking at what you’re offering, I think, I think it’s interesting because.
I would recommend at least moving the 2 tier up to 3 just on pricing, and then that would be me. I wouldn’t even be mad if you moved it up to 5 and then did 5, 10, and 15, or do like a 3, 7. You could keep the 12 one if you don’t want to move up to 15. Anyways, there, there’s more art than science to pricing, as always, but I do think 5 as an entry tier, level tier, is, is a perfectly valid entry level tier, as Amelia was stating.
With this thing with these benefits, I want to now take a look at your marketing and how you’ve actually marketed these benefits and share them with your readers, because that I think will give us a signal of if this resonated or not with people. So first you shared with me going into this that you’ve sent out a newsletter promoting your subscription.
It had 1400 recipients and essentially. It was, it, it looked like about uh, 12, 10, 10 to 12 people actually clicked to your subscription. So there’s a few things about that that are interesting. So one I would say is the 25 percent open rate for me seems a little low. Is that your typical open rate for
your email?
I think so. Yeah. Yeah, we, we just switched from MailChimp to MailerLite, and I think we’ve done some culling of the list during that switchover, but yeah, it’s, it’s not a great open rate, and I, I’m not, yeah, I’m not sure why.
Well, how did you get your list? Meaning, like, if I was to Thinking about the reader journey.
How did I get on your list as a reader? I’ve been authoring for about two years. And when I first started authoring, I started building my list with a couple, I think I did two book throne builders. And I didn’t know at the time you really shouldn’t do book throne builders. They’re getting you subscribers who are just not, they’re there for the contest.
They’re not there. To, to read your books. So I think there were plenty of you know, book thrown subscribers in there who just weren’t going to, be good, good engagement. So those are some of the ones that we’re working on culling out, but yeah, we’re, we’re in the process of building it.
It’s just not as strong as it could be.
Got it. Okay. Cause the email itself that you actually like wrote, I thought was like. Like, like like pretty decent. I thought it was pretty good. So I, in, in it, my only thing would be just in terms of like email copywriting looking at it, you, you have like two big paragraphs and then the button and they kind of like, they overwhelmed me first looking at it because there wasn’t a lot of spacing.
Okay. And I do have a PA.
So if you think I should tell the PA to break the paragraphs up, I can definitely do that.
Yes. I would say that.
Okay. Can we also
have another comment once we’re finished, Michael?
Sure. Oh, no, you go now.
Okay, so I was going to say, I was looking at the email as well, and yeah, maybe break it up with like some images or something, but also think about it from a reader’s perspective.
What do they really want? So if, if you’re offering, let me just go back to your subscription. So you’re, you’re offering first look at chapters as you write them. So early access. What is going to get them to move over? Like what is going to get them to click? And for me, how that looks, cause I do early access too, is I put the first chapter.
I get them hooked because readers want to read. They want to read your stories that you’re creating. They might care about like your process and how you did it but readers are there first to read before they become your superfans. So give them that chapter to hook them and then add a link to your subscription.
I
gotcha, good idea. Yeah, yeah, because right now, right now as well, I’m like reading this, like I’m gonna read the email out loud so everyone listening can also be along with this with us. So the email reads, We joined Patreon as a way to bring our readers our stories while they are in progress. Here you’ll get early access to our as yet unpublished books.
Or unpublished works, as well as teasers, character profiles, and all sorts of other fun stuff. Check out our tiers and start enjoying content today. There’s some improvements to be made there, but that’s not like, that’s not too bad. But the thing is, you don’t have the join button there.
Like if you were to, like, Amelia said, like the teasing chapter, you could totally do that and have a chapter in there. But I also am like, why is the, the join button not right beneath there? Then I have to read this other paragraph, which is even longer, and it says, Sins of the Mafia, our series introduction novella.
It’s currently free and available on Amazon book funnel. There’s about every other retailer you can think of. Okay. So now I’m like really confused because you’ve mentioned now like literally four different platforms in like my first 30 seconds reading this. We’re hip deep in book one for our Sons of the Mafia series, due out June 23rd, and we’ll be pushing those chapters on a bi weekly basis for tier two and three.
Okay, now that makes a little more sense. Patrons, over the course of March and April, as soon as we conclude book one, we’ll move right into book two with no waiting. Chapters are posted weekly as we write them. Being a patron of tiers two and three guarantees you at least two chapters a week until the book is published by January.
I’m gonna be honest, that overwhelms me. Like, that’s just a lot. Makes sense. That’s a lot of information. And We need We need
bullets. Yeah.
Getting Subscribers Excited
Or don’t even share that with them here. Like your subscription page is a landing page that already does that sort of selling, right? Like we already looked at your subscription and saw tier two and three tell you, you get these early access chapters.
So how can you get them excited about that before Amelia suggestions? Great about, you know, Hey, literally just share the chapter. But the other thing too, I would say is like your readers. Like, they, they don’t just want another story, not these readers. They want your stories. And I don’t get a feel for what these stories are really going to be about.
What that story is. What
is that? Oh, I said for what that story is.
Yeah, like just reading this email, I wouldn’t really know, like, I can guess since the mafia, since full dark romance, like I get the vibe, I’m with the vibe, but why do I need that specific story from you right now, you know, I don’t walk away with that, and I think that, that might be something that could be
improved.
So question, you know, you’re saying give them the first chapter, would you even give them an entire first chapter, or would you give them something more like what you would do in a Facebook ad, just a, a brief 200 word hooky, yeah. kind of thing that’s gonna, you know, stop them at a key point and make them want to keep reading.
Personally, my chapters are short. They’re 1, 000
words long. Okay, mine are like 2, 000.
But make sure you have a cliffhanger.
Okay, that’s what I’m talking about. Yeah. Okay.
I also wanted to add so Michael was talking about why people, or why theorists need this story, why they need your story.
Yes. And I would say you also need to reflect that on your landing page on Patreon. So right now, it, it’s very very broad, so contemporary dark romance. I would make it a little bit more Specific? I guess we’ll use specific as the word. As an example, I call my readers the Smutsluts, and they like to call that, that’s their thing. And so it’s very specific to them, and they know that this is their community to talk about Smut. And so your community might be like, Hey Darklings, or hey, something
that’s referring to my readers, but then drawing into my world too.
Okay. This goes back to the purpose of the subscription platform. In the beginning, you were mentioning like, I want to grab all this money from all these different places, which is great. I’m with you on that. But this is, subscriptions are not. Subscriptions is not going wide. This is totally different than like, yeah, I might see a wide retailer and I’m going to be on these different discovery platforms.
No, that’s not how to think about subscriptions. Yes, you can be wide and can be a subscription author, but also the most successful subscription author in the world happens to be in KU. So, so that definitely doesn’t line up, right? Like. Why he’s not wide, but yeah, he’s the biggest subscription in the world.
His name shirt alone. So, so what is his subscription then? If it’s not wide, it’s something different. And, you know, there’s been a lot of writing about this online. There’s a lot of authors that are confused, I think about what a subscription really serves. But honestly, I think me and Emilia, when we, when we say this for people, mainly listening up you, Lori, I think we know what a subscription is and what it really is, is that place.
That is like your home, like it’s your place, it’s your membership club to bring readers back to. So when you get a reader who sees your subscription, that’s not a cold fan, that’s probably not even a casual reader. It’s a reader who’s really warmed up to you and really like, again, wants to support you more.
So you have to think about like. The lifetime value of the average subscription customer, the average super fan is much higher than your casual reader. That’s why you have all these higher paying tiers. That’s why you can write all this extra access. That’s who this is for. And even in serial fiction, it’s still for that kind of reader.
You know, you see these authors with massive. Subscriptions in serial fiction and you go, Oh my, I can’t imagine having that many people. It’s like, did you, you know how many millions of people have like read their books to just get a thousand people? There’s like millions of reads to get a thousand paying subscribers because that’s in a free platform.
The kind of funnel that you have to then get through to finally be in that subscription and be there for a long time. Like. Literally millions of reads online. So that’s the kind of thing that you have to think about in terms of what this subscription serves. And that, that means everything in terms of how you talk to them.
It’s much different than an Amazon sales page where the Amazon sales page has to be attractive to people who love your book. And love your work and would buy everything you ever did and want to support you always, but also has to be attractive to new fans, right? Someone who doesn’t know who you are.
This is the totally different level of access to here. Totally different level of the fan journey. And I think the key is like figuring out ultimately with the subscription. The process from no fan to true fan to super fan, and you kind of know where the subscription plays in that, but the subscription isn’t going to turn someone into a super fan, right?
Because you already had this high gating, like you have to pay monthly to even be there. So you also want to figure out to make your subscription successful. How can I get more people to basically become. Right. I
think like what you said in the beginning about looking at this as the last step in your readership, like in your reader journey.
I think that is, that’s pivotal. So like, how do I move them to that step?
Yes, because you want them to be in this step because you get their emails, you get direct access to them, right? There’s, there’s a benefit to having your readers be here for you and for them because you get to give them that customized personal experience.
So all around is a benefit. How do you get them there? The first step is identifying currently where can you connect with? Where are your existing readers who are maybe your warm fans or even now super fans already because you don’t. Superfan doesn’t have to be in the subscription, right? You want to maybe.
Where would that answer be for you? Where are your readers currently? Where could you best reach them?
I would think about it like a heat map.
Okay, I’ll tell you how to think about it. Think about it like a heat map. So like, you kind of have like all these different circles. This platform. You’ve got like a Facebook group. You know, Amazon, like product pages and like book sales. You’ve got your newsletter list. You’ve got all these different places.
And think about it like a heat map of like, Ooh, people who are here, they’re like 90 percent like probably real fans of mine. The people here are like, maybe not as much, but they’re still there. Where would like be the hottest part of your author ecosystem? Do you have an answer? No, it’s yours. It’s for you, it’s your world, your author, your fans, that’s how you have to think about it.
I
feel like my strongest fans are the ones in my Facebook readers group. Okay, okay, yeah. Those are the ones that, you know, we talk the most and they’re the most engaged and that kind of thing.
I love that, that’s a great answer, that’s a great answer.
Those are probably the ones that I can shift. Yeah, most easily.
It’s also the smallest group that’s.
That’s good though. That’s like, that’s an interesting signal because and how small when you say the smallest group like how big is the 250? That’s not that small. I still pretty great. Yeah And it’s
really interesting like I’ll see I’ll see like I’ll put a book on book sprout for arcs and I’ll see somebody read An arc and then join my Facebook group.
And so it’s it’s really it’s cool to see that And to recognize like to see the movement from one place to the next so
I think, I think first of all, amazing that you have had this Facebook group and that that’s the exact kind of reflection you need to think about because I always tell authors like, cause you have one member right now.
The best thing we can do taking you out of this call is not giving you some myth mythical plan about how you can somehow get, you know, a thousand members. Like, that’s great. Maybe we can get you there one day, but let’s focus on how to get five. Cause having five fans might be an extra 20, 30 a month, couple hundred dollars a year.
That’s a good hour of your time. If we can give you that direction. So I want to now shift the rest of this conversation into figuring that part out. How can we get your next five paid subscribers? Let’s think about this. You’ve got 250 people in this group. I think, I think we have, I think we have the audience.
I think we have the offer that maybe needs some tweaking like we talked about, but it’s pretty, pretty close. Tell me what you’ve done to let people in your Facebook group know about. Your subscription up to this point.
Growing Your Subscription Using Facebook
tHe only thing is, is what I’ve shown you. It’s putting up just that you know, I did a couple of, yeah, a couple of posts, you know, Hey guys, I have an announcement coming.
And then a couple of days later, this is the announcement that I announced I was going to make. And then I had, I’ve had my PA like every time we put up a chapter, well Link the chapters to the group. So it’s sort of an automated process So I could probably do more as far as making it more personalized
Play it up a little bit more
So I’m curious like for this one because I’m looking at this post now that you shared with me, right? It says okay guys remember that time I announced a special announcement was on the way Here it is V and I have started a special patreon subscription service and has officially launched as of 10 minutes ago I’m slash we are dash.
We are seriously so excited about this. Here’s why authors can no longer depend on Amazon. Unfortunately, as a single income stream. Give us a little of our power back as creators. Patreon allows us to do so much. We can use it for general support and kickstart campaigns for special covers safer work, book out audio books and tons of other projects.
And then we can share our progress with patrons in real time. I’ve been curious about what happens before a book becomes a book, the editing and revision process, the journey in general, this is by far the best way to tap into that. Fans can support us on so many levels and get great bonus content for as little as 2 a month.
Want to learn more? Check us out before I even. Say any feedback or before Amelia shares any feedback. I want to know what was the response to this post in your Facebook group Did it get any likes to people comment?
Yeah, it got a fair, it got a fair number of likes I think one person commented something like, I can’t pay 2 extra a month or something like that, which I thought was kind of silly, but or the, I think she, she said, but I’ll read every book you write or, you know, something In general, it was positive, but we, I didn’t really see anybody sign up to, to join
Patreon.
that’s interesting. And then now you’ve been doing these sort of, I would say like more automated, here’s a chapter. Right. And if I scroll up, I think right here, it’s kind of just like new chapter and then that’s it. I have a few ideas, but I want to hear from Emilia. What do you think might be better a better way to kind of.
Hope ideally converts some members of her Facebook group into paying subscribers. What are some of your ideas on that?
My comment is what is the content like I know what it is because you told me
yeah There’s not usually blank. I think there’s something going on it just And I don’t know why, but it comes up blank for the screenshot, but it, it gives a little like three or four line clip of the beginning of the chapter.
I don’t think it’s enough. I, I feel like, you know, it’s convenient because it just slides over from Patreon, but I, I don’t think it’s quite enough of a teaser. I feel like we might need a little bit more Something maybe with like a teaser illustration and like a hooky or a little bit of dialogue or you know, something that leaves you on a cliff to, to get somebody to want to go over.
I feel like it’s
a little bit of a crazy idea. No, no, no. Well, here, but like you’re thinking along the right lines, like I, knowing that you write dark romance, knowing that there’s, I’m, I’m just going to guess some steamy scenes in your story. Sure. One thing you could do right is say, I’m going to share the latest chapter in the book that I’ve literally written totally for free and in my Facebook group.
But what I’m going to do is totally censor. The, the part, right? That people probably want to read. That is a good idea. So you like take, you take it out and basically it’s like, read it there. That, that’s gonna get, people are gonna be like, what? Please.
That’s what I do for my comic.
And it works.
That’s brilliant.
And evil. And this is what you do for, for images as well. So like if you have like not, I know not city for work art was one of your benefits. Yes. Make it funny, like, okay, so maybe, like, you’ve got a character shirtless or something, right, or, you know, scantily clothed, but maybe they have their, I, sorry for, for children listening, I’m gonna use very PG language, maybe they have their private part, I’m gonna, I’m gonna use a very PG language, maybe there’s a private part somewhere, and in the actual image in your subscription, like, you know, they could see the full thing, but, but, but, right, so that’s the, that’s the image.
But you’re not going to put that on Facebook, one, because Facebook’s going to censor you, and two, because you’ve got to go to the description. So instead, maybe you put like, I don’t know, a donut, like an emoji, something, something stupid over it. People know what it is, but they don’t see it. So it’s like, oh, okay.
This is good. Now, can you, along those lines, I need to find an artist that can do these kinds of things. Do you know anybody? Could you recommend somebody? Because Fiverr scares me.
I recommend doing is posting in the Descriptions for Authors Facebook group, which if you’re listing and you’re not in the Descriptions for Authors Facebook group, there’ll be a link to it down in the description. You can make a post in there. Tons of authors, no artists. I think people would be so happy to recommend you people.
There’s a, a big community of people in there. Did
you say Subscriptions for Artists or Subscriptions for Authors? There’s
Subscriptions for Authors Facebook group. Okay.
And I aimed at that one. Yeah, okay.
I think you are. You are. Okay. Okay. You definitely are. Yeah, I definitely. That’s how you got here.
Cause you commented on a post in the Facebook group. Yeah. Yeah. That’s why I asked. I was like,
I
live in that. All right. Thank you. 100 percent are. Yes. For those listening though, that aren’t in it. Good. Good. I got you. Pause. Join. Come back. But I think the, I think those sorts of like real more teasers are a bit more helpful because yeah, right now it just looks like an ad, you know what I mean?
And that’s the thing. We have to, I’m like really, I, I’m very careful about this. I think we all need to be hyper careful about not advertising to our fans. Like you, every once in a while we’ll have to promote to them, you know, you will have to share something, but how can you, how can you get them to support you without them feeling like they were promoted to, because that’s not good for building a community to have a salesperson leading a community.
How often does it use? Which community does it used car salesman? Oh, like what what fanboys is it used car salesman hat? All right, pharmaceutical salesperson, right? Well, no, there’s no fanboys for these people. There’s no fangirls for them You want to have the fangirls and the fanboys and the fan anything you want to have all the fans?
Their fans don’t want to be sold to in fact They can feel used in this case if it is a true friend and they keep being sold to because it’s like they’re Fandoms being commoditized. And that’s something we always have to be careful about as artists because it’s important to make money, but we don’t want them to feel like their only use is money.
Right. So by sharing more, it makes us that they can support you because they are smart. They recognize girl needs to eat, right? Your kid needs to eat. Like that’s a thing, but at the same time, you don’t want them feeling like that’s all she wants from me. And it’s
not all we want from them.
No, it is not.
But it’s so easy when you’re like, Oh, I want to save time. Right. I’m busy. I’m writing my next book. I’m just going to post a link and just tell them it’s up. Like, yeah, you could do that. But think about how that feels for the fan.
Right. Yeah. And that’s why, like, I don’t do a whole lot of it either because it leaves me feeling kind of icky.
So
right. Exactly. And then you don’t, exactly. And then meanwhile, there’s studies that show studies that have been done at broad levels around creator subscriptions that basically mentioning it at least once a week, that doesn’t mean a hard act, but mentioning it once a week is basically like the common thing that most successful.
Subscription creators do. Okay. Well, how do you mention it once a week without just sending an ad every week to your audience? Cause that’s going to get people to leave. It is doing things like me and Amelia are talking about. Yep. It’s how you make it sustainable.
Thank you guys. I appreciate the ideas.
You’re made very helpful.
Yeah. I think, I think that can definitely help you get from, you know, like I said, let’s get from one to five and then when you’re at five, let’s get to 10 and keep going. And I’m curious for you, I mean, after having a lot of information thrown at you in this last almost hour at this point, what are questions you have for me and Amelia?
Is there anything that comes to mind that you’re like, I’m curious about this?
Lori’s Questions for Michael & Emilia
do you think the things I’m offering are enough? Is there
anything else? That’s a great question. Yeah, that’s a great question. Let, let’s talk about that, Emilia. What do you think is, what is what they’re offering on their subscription valid enough to entice a fan?
Emilia’s Audio
Yes, 100%. I, I would say even it could be like too much you think.
I can definitely cut out bonus scenes.
Yeah. I
mean, do you recommend doing like a Michael was saying you do book boxes. Do you recommend doing anything like that on a timeline? Sorry,
you saw my reaction. Did you see my reaction there? I was like, no, yeah, I was like, no, not, not at your, not at your stage.
Okay. I think like put it this way. I just had a conversation today, like totally off air with an author who has a very successful membership that’s with book boxes and like. Even for people who are making a lot of money doing this, it’s stressful and hard in your position, not being unrealistic, but you’re probably not going to make a lot of money doing this in the beginning, right?
Because you’re trying to grow this whole thing. So it’s going to be a lot of stress for a little payoff. Focus on the digital, the scalable, the low lift stuff. Eventually as this grows, you might have demand for something like a book box. And when you launch it. You can launch it and have a lot of people paying you so that you’re not launching with one book box you’re doing a month, but maybe something like 10 or 20, that makes it a little bit more worthwhile.
That’s why for like 90 percent of authors, really, I don’t recommend having like anything too intensive. That’s physical. It’s different if it’s like print on demand merch, or maybe every time you release a new book, you do some signed books and you’re going to sort of those to your house anyways. But book boxes are pretty intense.
Like all the different things you need to get to make a really good book box. Ooh, good luck.
Thank you. That’s one of those things you look at like everybody else doing and you’re like, should I be doing
that? I honestly think there’s going to be, and maybe this is something we’ll do at Ream, but there’s going to have to be some sort of like, there’s demand for book boxes that are high, right?
And for like the personalization for it, but the bandwidth for authors to do it is low. And especially for like even very successful authors who are doing really well. So there’s going to be a solution that, trust me, I spend a lot of time thinking about this, as does Emilia about how can we like make that easier for people so that like you can scale the personalization, but you know, the personalization is focused on the side book, the, the actual part, like only you can do not all this other stuff and the packaging and basically turning yourself into a mini fulfillment warehouse.
That is how like a lot of these authors are right now. And I just, I think although there’s big opportunity in it, don’t, don’t enter a problem that’s not going to benefit you economically right now. Amen to that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s a good, that’s a good advice for everyone. Don’t, don’t create problems that don’t make you more money when you’re trying to make money doing something.
Well, Lori, this was an amazing time. I knew it’d be great chatting with you.
I know we had a lot of fun helping you out and I hope everyone listening also was able to learn something. And just so everyone knows there’ll be a post in the Facebook group. The day this goes live, we’ll make sure it’s pinned for the few days after this episode goes live, where you can share your thoughts that will help Lori.
I’ll share the same notes she gave us in terms of the screenshots so that you all can see what we saw. You all can listen to the same podcast and also give you some advice. Well, I’ll just help each other out. Yay.
Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.
Conclusion
And that was it for this episode with Lori. I hope you all enjoyed it. She’s amazing, and I’m just so grateful for all of you who volunteered your time, who came on and spoke with me and Amelia as part of this series. We definitely want to do this again, so If y’all actually want us to do it, then, like, let me know.
Send us an email, put a comment on the YouTube channel if you’d like us to do another event, another session similar to this. I think we’ll do another series where we’ll make, you know, at least one episode a month of trying to help people, something like that. And bringing on people in the community.
Because it’s one thing to hear success stories constantly. It’s another thing to hear, like, Fellow authors of a similar stage as you, who are succeeding in some ways but also having problems in other ways. And we want to help you. So, I hope that this series was helpful. If you want to check out the other Subscriptions for Authors coaching sessions, you can find them all in our prior podcasts.
I hope you have an amazing rest of your day, and in the meantime, don’t forget, storytellers rule the world.
I’ll be back, I won’t let it fool me, I won’t give it up, won’t let it fool me.