Posted on May 27, 2024
Join Michael Evans and USA Today Bestselling Author, Elana Johnson, for a discussion on the essentials of author success! In this video, they delve into the critical aspects of building a strong author foundation and Elana’s strategies for growing and sustaining an author ecosystem. Whether you’re an aspiring writer or an established author looking to elevate your career, Michael and Elana share their invaluable expertise to help you navigate the world of publishing.
Check out Elana Johnson’s subscription here: https://reamstories.com/lizisaacson/public
#82: Episode Transcript
Michael Evans: Elena. So excited to be chatting with you. You are one of my favorite people and one of the authors that like just seems to always just be Just crushing it. Whatever you do. You are so smart and One of the recent things you’ve done, recent ish, is start a subscription.
And before we even dive into how did that go and all the things that I know people are very curious to hear about why did you start a subscription? What was that sort of process? Because. I know for an author like you, you don’t just do things like you don’t have the time to just [00:01:00] try something out and, just do it over there.
There’s a million things you could be doing that for. And if you did all those things, you would have no time. So what made you be like, this is something I want to actually invest my time and invest my resources into?
Elana Johnson: Sure. So subscriptions have been on my mind for years, actually. And I’ve been paying attention to Patreon before Ream, of course, came onto the scene. I started learning about, Kickstarter and other sorts of more direct kind of communicating with readers like three or four years ago.
And I actually met Amelia at Ingerscon. Gosh. So this is 2024, it’s 2022. 2022. And I’ve been thinking about subscriptions for about a year, maybe a little bit longer. And I go to a lot of conferences and I always think I am going to meet the one person that’s going to help me. And at anchors 2022, it was Emilia Rose.
And she sat on a panel where people talked about lots of different things, book boxes. I’m not sure if they talked about Kickstarter, but they talked about book [00:02:00] boxes and things like that. And Amelia talked about subscriptions. My biggest problem is what would I do in a subscription? And I think that’s a problem for a lot of people is what will I offer people inside of my subscription?
So I’ve been thinking about that. I even had a call with you and Emilia, I think, before you guys even launched Dream. And I was like, I just don’t really quite grasp what I can put in the subscription. I tend to think about things for a long time before I do them because, As you said, it is difficult to split your time and energy and resources and your money, which is really all you have to spend is those four things across a wide array of things.
I do like to experiment and I do fail a lot. So I tend to try to fail forward, learn from what I did and do it better the next time. So I’ve been thinking about subscriptions specifically, What could I do? What would people pay for inside my brand, which is clean and wholesome romance, which is not necessarily the most popular thing that you see in [00:03:00] subscriptions because there’s no not safe for work art, there’s no extra sex scenes, there’s like none of those things.
So when I saw Emilia at Inkers, she talked about having an audio book only subscription. And that really I don’t know why, but it was like this zing in my heart. And I was like, that’s what I should do. And of course that was in June and I didn’t do anything with it because I was like, I’m really not sure how that would work.
How would I distribute that? I had a few friends in the Sweet Romance, Clean Romance sphere start on Patreon and Not do well at all. There were two or three people that I knew, which is not a substantial, size a significant amount of people if you’re talking about a data set, but I thought, I’m just not sure what would that look like for me.
And I just held off on it. And when Ream launched I thought, okay, I’m going to do it on Ream because it was easier than Patreon. I knew Patreon didn’t have discoverability. I had a WooCommerce [00:04:00] site set up on my WordPress site with kind of an ultimate goal of having subscriptions through WordPress.
I even bought the subscriptions for WordPress plugin, and just never really did anything with it because, again, it was just too nebulous out there for me. I’m I like checklists. I like being like, if I do this, then I might see something that works. I set up my subscription, finally, on the early access model.
And I thought, I can charge people to read my books early in this subscription program, And I’ll offer, I have such a big brand, which is another thing, I have a lot of books in my backlist. And so it was hard to think do I narrow in on one name? I had already launched under my big umbrella, which is Feel Good Fiction Books, which encaps, encompasses all of my names.
I decided to go with the big umbrella, Feel Good Fiction Books. And I was doing an early access model, and it did not go very well. And so I was like, okay, that’s fine. Ream is so easy to use that I really set mine up pretty quickly in about three hours one [00:05:00] day. I had decided, sketched out a couple of days before I was going to do an early access model, called that a sneak peek tier.
And then I was going to do like a backlist binge tier and give people like, get into the backlist. Like I’ve got a lot of books. Don’t worry. I can carefully lead you through the ones you’re going to love. And then I did a super fan tier that included audio. And then I’d been doing book boxes. I send out book boxes for influencers and other things like that.
For the past couple of years and so I thought I’ll do like a book box tier and that was my original subscription and I did it because I do, I’ve been really trying to connect with fans on a more one on one basis. On a more personal basis where they know my name and I know their name and I know what they’ve read and I know what they like and I can give them more of those things.
We can talk like real people, like friends. For the past two or three years now, that’s why I combined my brands. It’s why I launched my website. It’s why I combined all my reader groups. Everything is in one place [00:06:00] now. My pen names are not secret to readers. So the subscription for me was this next step of personalization, where I wanted to be able to reward people who basically have rewarded me over time by reading a lot of my work.
And that’s why I wanted to do subscriptions and how I started in subscriptions but yeah, I think that answers that one question of how I started, right?
Michael Evans: no, it. Totally answers it. And there was, there’s a few things you said because I think it was the words, like the quotes, like I, cause I put it down, I fail a lot. Which like, It is for a lot of people who might be listening to this might sound especially if they haven’t been your Facebook group and seen like some of your writing for because I know you do share your struggles and the ups and downs of the journey with folks, which is amazing.
But for people who maybe haven’t read that, they just look at you, they go, Oh, I’ve seen Elena speak at X conference. I’ve, seen her books doing, incredible in the stores. The idea that you fail, like actually probably surprises people. And the idea that [00:07:00] I fail a lot probably surprised people even more.
What does failure look like for you? And how are you failing forward? Because I mean that I will say myself, I fail all the time and almost everything. I try and fail forward, but how do you fail forward? And then, I guess the lead into that is what did the subscription will say failure or not going as well as you wanted?
But what did that specific failure look like?
Elana Johnson: Okay. So I do feel a lot. I try a lot of experiments. I could give you a list of things that I’ve done that I’m like that worked in now it’s not working so much or that didn’t work at all. I’m not doing that again. Just even in the writing and different tropes and things you’ve used.
So here’s a really good example. I love a motorcycle club romance. I’m not sure if you’ve ever read any Motorcycle Club Romance, or those of you who have watched it. It’s not clean. And I thought, I’m going to do that. I’m going to write a clean Motorcycle Club Romance series. And I did. And you know what?
It was a massive failure. Nobody bought it. But I loved it. [00:08:00] And I thought it was so fun to write. And I’ve rebranded it now. So Failing Forward is going, okay, these books don’t sell to the Motorcycle Club. crew, clean romance readers don’t even really like them because they’re so far outside their zone of comfort.
So what can I do with these books that I’ve written? They’re not on retailers anymore. They’re only on my direct store and I’ve rebranded them as romantic suspense. So even if you have some books, like even in the book realm, like going all the way back to your writing, not even talking marketing ideas, but going back to what you chose to write, if it didn’t work out for you.
Is there a way that you can rebrand it a little bit, still be really true to the words inside the book? I want to be very clear about that. It is a romantic suspense. It happens to be with my motorcycle club heroes, right? And they’re a little bit down on their luck. They’re bad boys. They’ve had some trouble with the law in the past, but that’s pretty typical in romantic suspense.
And then they can be heroic throughout their [00:09:00] story. I wrote a whole series of stories about these cowboys who are ex cons. They literally, the book starts with them in prison, all of them. And I did, I was just calling it clean romance or whatever, I have rebranded them to redemption romances, which speaks a lot.
clearer to people who read what I write. Like clean romance readers understand redemption. And most people on the earth believe that we can be redeemed and that we can make up for our mistakes. So for the most part, even without being religious or preachy or anything like that, for the most part, we think people can change and we can do bad things and apologize and do better in the future.
So I rebranded even some of my books and have called them different things that has allowed them to sell better. So I think that’s one really good example. As far as subscriptions go, I think for me, I didn’t understand the kind of reader that I was trying to get. Whenever I do something new, I always think, I want to start [00:10:00] with the core people that I already have.
And I think about that kind of reader and who they are, what they read, how much money they have to spend, where they spend that money where they have bought books from me in the past. Is it a paid book? Is it a subscription Kobo Plus, Everand, libraries, right? Like those sort of things that they pay for in bulk and get a lot in return.
Like a Netflix subscription type of thing. But I didn’t used to do that. And I think subscriptions taught me that more than anything else. Is to really consider the type of reader that you’re expecting or hoping will come over to your subscription and click subscribe. I think the subscriptions taught me that the most.
When I started I sent it out to my newsletter, which is quite large. It’s about 65, 000 people. And I wasn’t expecting people to flood over. I have very I don’t know if I even have expectations when I try something new like this. I think I’m hopeful that I will get some of that core [00:11:00] to come over. So in my massive success, I had eight people come from my newsletter, which I don’t know the math on that, but I could figure it out.
Eight out of about 65, 000 is not great. And I talked about it a lot in my reader group, and I was telling them how excited I was, and I was putting it on my genius link so that you could come over to Ream and read it right now. And from May, June, July, I got literally, I think I had eight people. It was not a huge success.
And during those three months, it made me really realize, What am I trying to do? And for me, and this is not going to be true for everybody, but I think it’s a good point that authors need to really drill down to what they, how they interact with fans and what those fans will do for them and where they come from.
Like I said, if they’re coming from ku, now you’re asking them to spend another certain amount a month, every month. And in KU, they have access to millions of books and in your subscription, what do they get? [00:12:00] So for me, I have a very large KU base and I was trying to sell like early access or like exclusive access to me, my readers, I think they like me just fine as we move down the path of they read my books and then they funnel down into, oh, getting to know the author, but I am not the draw.
And I learned that I’m not the draw doing a zoom or a call with me is not the draw. a subscription type of platform. So what I realized when I was writing a book is I was going to have to skip about five years at the end of this book to the beginning of the next book. It was between book eight and book nine in a series.
And people were reading through the series a lot. It’s a family saga series, tons of open loops. I get very high read through, through books like that. It says under my Liz Isaacson name. So people can look that up. And. I thought, you know what I’m going to do is I’m going to write a whole bunch of extra content, which can be [00:13:00] scary for people because now there’s more work involved, right?
But for me, I’m a fast writer and I had learned over the three months where my subscription was not doing basically anything that people wanted more of my families, they wanted more of the story world, they wanted bonus chapters, they wanted deeper connections with the characters. over anything else like to do with me personally.
At the back of that book, I said, if you want the bonus chapters, I’m going to give you like, I don’t know how many I go. I didn’t give them an X number, which I recommend for subscriptions. Don’t say you’re going to give them 10 chapters. Maybe you only have six chapters in you. So I said, you’re going to get some deleted scenes from this book.
Because the book’s already 120, 000 words and I can’t put any more words in it. It’s just too much. And you’re gonna get all the chapters that will link the end of book 8 to the beginning of book 9 in this 5 and a half years with this family. And [00:14:00] I put that in the back of the book. I, of course, told people about it in my group, in my newsletter.
And that is when my subscription swelled. Almost overnight. I think in that first week that book came out. I have 160 new subscribers into that tier. So I created more tiers. I had to create more tiers, which created some work on the back end of Ream. Where I created a small town. I can’t remember what it’s called.
It might just be a small town reader. It might be a small town reader. I think is what it’s called.
Michael Evans: Yeah. It’s small town resident.
Elana Johnson: Small town resident. So they get to come be part of the world. So through subscriptions, I learned, I knew this and it’s always been in the back of my head and I put it in my books, but through subscriptions, I learned that my specific brand of reader wants a place to be long.
So I called them a resident. They get to come to that small town and live there with us. And then I give them bonus content. [00:15:00] I have two small towns now that I release chapters into every week. So on Wednesdays I release into Three Rivers, which is my now active series. Last year I was releasing and I still release into Coral Canyon, which was my active series, Book Eight and Book Nine.
And so I’m still releasing into Coral Canyon. Book 9 came out in November, and I’ve been releasing deleted scenes, and now I’m on to scenes that take place after the book but before Book 10 comes out. And Book 10 is on pre order. I’m earning money because my business model right now is more money from more places more often.
So the subscription also fits into that, which is why I wanted to do a subscription. It’s because I get paid more money for content and books that I’m already working on. And it comes more often, right? And it’s a chapter a week for me, which I write my Three Rivers chapter on Monday, and then I write my Coral Canyon chapter on Wednesday.
I just incorporated it into [00:16:00] my release schedule. So the Three Rivers chapter releases on Wednesday, the Coral Canyon chapter releases on Friday. And I mean it’s pretty raw. I do edit it before, I write it on a Wednesday and then when I go to post it on Ream, I will edit it, lightly just to make sure I have, things spelled right and all of
But I’m not worried about content. I’m not worried about how long my chapters are. I’m not worried about if I do everything perfect the way I would in a book, because this is for people who are deep in the story world. They’re deep in the lore. That’s what my 25 year old son calls it is the lore. And I’m like, yeah, that’s what I’m going for.
I’m going for people who are into my lore. And it’s not necessarily about me. It’s about a place and a family that I’ve created. And I knew that, like I said, it’s always in the back of my mind when I write my books, but the subscription really brought it to the forefront and now I get paid for it. I’ve worked out that for me, I write, I’m writing about eight chapters a month, two a week. And I [00:17:00] do, I am writing a book with readers as well. So they get one chapter. I was trying to give them one a week, but just didn’t work out. So I was doing, I do more like one a month now, but for me it’s working out that I’m making a decent amount per chapter.
So for me to decide if something’s worth it and what’s a failure to go back to the beginning of your question there, like how do I decide if it’s a failure or not? Putting up a book I’m writing anyway for, 5 a month for eight people is 40 extra dollars. It wasn’t a lot of people, and I thought, oh, people aren’t interested in this, so it felt like a failure.
But in terms of my time invested, it was not that much, not that big of a failure. If I was writing, nine extra chapters a week for, eight people, that would feel like a massive failure. And I’m not sure that I would continue to do that. So it just depends on every person is going to have a different number for them of what would be a failure and what wouldn’t be for me, I’m currently making enough per chapter is how [00:18:00] I’ve decided to look at it.
If I’m writing nine chapters a month and I’m making X, Y, Z amount of money every month. So that means I make, 200 a chapter. I’m okay with that. I can. I’ll take my 200 for writing that chapter. And if I feel if it ever so that feels successful to me, I feel like that’s a success for me personally.
I feel like if it dropped below a certain amount, which honestly I’m not even sure what that amount would be at this moment in time, then it might feel more like a failure and I’d have to go, okay, this isn’t quite working the way I want it to work, how can I get it back to the place that feels like a success for me in terms of.
That money coming in, the reward I’m giving out. And also it’s not always a monetary reward, the interaction with readers do I have more people coming over to Ream? Do I have more people pre ordering this book? Cause they’re excited about it. Do I have people talking about the Ream subscription in other places about this bonus content that other people go, wait, there’s bonus content.
Bonus content model [00:19:00] has worked a lot better for me because I also realized that a lot of the people that I’m marketing to are ARC readers. They’re already getting the books for free. And they’re already on my ARC team, so they’re not going to come over to a paid subscription. And for early access, for the early access model.
So for me, the bonus content and really solidifying them inside of a story world or a family has worked far better. And that has led to a lot more success inside the subscription. And honestly, when I did it, I wasn’t sure what it would do, just like I wasn’t sure in the early access model that I set up a few months previous, but I’ve been really happy with the result of that.
So for authors considering a subscription or have a subscription that’s maybe not doing what they want I think the key for me was going, okay, what kind of reader am I trying to get over? And I know that Ream specifically has [00:20:00] discoverability. I’m not really looking for discoverability on Ream.
Not really. Maybe in my early access model, maybe in my backlist tier. But my real bread and butter is in my small town resident tier and my combo tier, where they get to read the small town chapters and get the sneak peeks, which is a combo tier that I put up. So it just depends on what kind of reader you’re trying to attract.
I do enjoy the idea of discoverability and that it could happen that I could find a new fan or something there, but I think for authors to really consider what kind of reader am I trying to get am I trying to get them from my own core? Am I trying to find new readers? And where will those come from?
How will they find me? And what would be appealing to them specifically about my work? That would allow them to click that subscribe button because that’s really what you’re asking them to do And if they click that subscribe button What do they have to give up to do it? Because most of us do not have [00:21:00] an unlimited supply of money to have everything we want All the coffee, all the movies, all the, everything that costs 5 or 10.
And we think, oh, it’s only five or 10, but that means maybe they won’t be able to, do something else that is only five or 10 as well. So I’m always trying to think about that consumer. And I, they’re more in the front of my mind than ever since I started subscriptions. And so I think that’s one benefit for me that has come from setting up a subscription and really trying to think about.
Who am I trying to get over there? And what do I want them to do? And what will their reward and benefit be when they do it?
Michael Evans: yeah. What you’ve done, like your way that you’ve pivoted and experimented is so inspiring. And I think that one point that I just wanna highlight, because I think it’s a really important one, was your realization that, like going into descriptions, you thought, I guess this is about.
I guess they’re going to be wanting to, get the exclusive access to, feel good fiction or, [00:22:00] Elena Johnson or name the pen name, but that being the whole thing. But it’s like for readers not all readers are like this, but for most readers, honestly, it’s actually not about that.
It’s about your characters and about your world. And sometimes it’s about the specific characters, sometimes it’s about the specific world, the small town, whatever that may be. And it does really depend. It might be about a family instead of a specific romantic relationship. It could be about whatever things, but.
What it’s interesting is like the subscription model, like people subscribe to different creative people, whether it be a podcast or or an artist or musician like that is something we are hyper familiar with, which is why you’ve been thinking about it for years. Cause it’s been something that’s been popular for a long time.
Elana Johnson: Yes
Michael Evans: Those are all creators. Who have, it’s a very different relationship than an author, right? Like authors aren’t normally public figures in the way that a musician is, or a podcast or YouTuber. And you know what, that’s a, it’s a good thing. You still can be the public face that they have relationship with as an author.
But if that’s not you don’t have to be that you can instead lean into something else. And I also think, you mentioned the discoverability piece of everything and just what you’re [00:23:00] using it for. I think it’s really. I think it’s important for people not to feel like, oh, because this is the quote unquote best way to get discovered or best way to do a subscription that I have to do it that way because maybe you don’t even want to do early access like maybe that’s just not even for you as an author.
Certainly wasn’t something that your readers were as interested in and I think that’s like not only okay. But we have to give ourselves permission to be like, you know what? There’s a lot of different ways to do this thing. And we look at the authors who did well, especially like in years prior, a lot came from serial platforms.
A lot of them were their early adopters. So they had specific models, you have a different model. And speaking of these different models and your, I love this quote, like more money, more often for more places or something to that effect of how does subscriptions fit into. You’re doing direct sales, all these other different models that you’re having, because if we flashback five years ago, it was a little simple, like you either in KU you’re wide, but you’re selling books or getting readers to read individual books and read [00:24:00] through series.
Now it’s like the business has expanded more money for more places, but how are you viewing subscriptions in the rest of your, I’ll say author ecosystem, because it’s a pretty good way to view it.
Elana Johnson: Yeah, so I view subscriptions as just another arm. So I’m actually, I have a conference coming up that I’m teaching at, and I generated an image from AI, which might be controversial, but I generated this image where I have this, like you said, author ecosystem. I view it as an author house, and it is over water, so it’s above the water, so it’s on stilts.
Or columns. And my goal, my, and what I would really love to be is an author forever. And so I taught elementary school for almost 19 years and I don’t, I liked it. I didn’t love it and I don’t want to go back to it. I love kids, but it is a rigid, it’s too rigid for me. Like I can’t even go to the bathroom when I need to go to the bathroom.
And so when I tell people now, I’m [00:25:00] like, you know what? I have the greatest job ever. I can go to the bathroom whenever I want. When you teach elementary school, you can’t go to the bathroom when you need to go to the bathroom. You just can’t. Kids are there. They need you. There’s sometimes kids you can’t leave alone, even for two minutes, to run down the hall to go to the bathroom.
I don’t want to go back to that. I want to be an author forever. I view my author house out in the middle of the ocean, or, very near a nice beach, because I love beaches. But at any time, a wave could come in, a big wave, a tsunami, all kinds of things. The terms of service can change on Amazon.
We just saw changes to terms of service in on Spotify. We see Kindle Vella changing how they’re gonna pay for episodes, which I also want to deviate to Kindle Vella for just a second. So I’ve taken, I view Kindle Vella as another subscription site. I’ve taken all my bonus content and my early access model and I put it on Kindle Vella also.
So I’m getting paid twice, once on Ream and once on Kindle Vella for what I’m [00:26:00] doing already. So that speaks to the more money from more places. I didn’t jump into Kindle Vella like a few other people or lots of other people did several years ago. I didn’t do that. But they have changed a lot of how they operate.
And you can actually put your books up now there, as long as they’re complete 30 days before you launch them on Amazon, they can Vella. So I’m like, dude, I got to get my book done 30 days before it’s due on Amazon. And I can earn money from Kindle Vella too. And I put all my bonus content there as well.
So I’m getting paid twice for the work I’m doing once. So that just speaks to one of the pillars or one of the columns or one of the stilts holding up my author house. So that when those tidal waves come in of changes on platforms that we don’t control, or I, Lose my newsletter list or whatever I don’t even want to imagine the dozens and millions of things that could go wrong.
And I’m not a doomsday er, I’m not any of that, but I want to [00:27:00] have as many stilts, as many columns, this is me like building columns under my author house as possible. I don’t want only one column underneath my author house in the middle. To me, that’s too easy to get washed away. So subscriptions is another column that I’m trying to build piece by piece to hold up my house.
And then I look at that work and I go, where else can I put this that I can make money? And I could do that on radish. I could do it on. I could even put it on release it on my website or be like, and get more here. Like I can use my work to drive to paid platforms. So the work is never lost is how I think about it.
Like writing something. That people want is never a bad thing, and it might be that you have to tweak how you thought you’d originally use it or where you thought you might originally put it to different places, but it’s never lost. So direct sales to me is another arm. [00:28:00] It’s just like Kobo. I make, X, Y, Z on Kobo.
I make X, Y, Z on direct sales. I personally, and I’m not bagging on what other people do or the direct sales model that other people have. I’m not viewing direct sales as what I want to be the most income for me. So I’ve done very little in terms of ads. The ads that I run are very low ads, meaning I don’t spend very much on them.
I want direct sales to be another pillar and I’m building it as such. But again, I started with my core. I started with my 65, 000 core and I know what they are now. I know who they are. I know where they come from. I know what they like. And when I give them what they like, they will buy from me. So I tend to make more money from my own fans that I already have.
Then from any paid ad. So the discoverability might be, I didn’t know you wrote under Jesse Newton, or I didn’t know you [00:29:00] wrote under Liz Isaacson, or I didn’t know you had this series from 2015. I know there are authors who’ve been in the business for a long time who maybe didn’t, I don’t know the words, strike it big, or really see a book take off until later in their career.
So people who came into your brand in 2019. Or 2020 or 2024. They might not even know about the books that you wrote five years ago. So part of my job is to tell them about the books that I wrote five years ago and get them excited about them. And since they’re not front list, I tend to allow more discounts on backlist, if that makes sense.
So that’s where direct sales comes into play in a really big way, because The bundle is king and direct sales. And for me, I’ve decided that I would really like to make 3 a book. That’s a pretty, pretty good rate. I can make 3 royalty a book. So most of my bundles, if there’s six books or eight books, I’m making, [00:30:00] I’m pricing those high enough to make 3 a book off the direct sales platform.
And then I’ll bump it up a little bit more and I’ll offer people a discount. I give them a 25 percent discount on top of. The quote unquote discounted books because I know who my reader is and my reader loves a discount. So if I tell them that they can get eight books for 30, I might get some people going to do that.
But if I give tell them that they can take 25 percent off that 30 again, I will get way more people to go do that. And I’m still making about 3 a book. So I think direct sales comes in as another pillar. Subscriptions comes in as another pillar and then think outside if you’re thinking about expanding in that way I didn’t start putting my stuff on Vella until November And my subscription grew in August.
And I thought, why am I not using other platforms as well? If [00:31:00] my goal really is more money in more places, I can take content I’m writing and put it in other places where people might pay for it. And I don’t make a ton in Bella, but it’s more money. And it comes more often, so it’s more money coming in for work.
I’m already doing so. I view these things that we’re expanding into as what can I do? How can I get the people? I already have to go do that because. I have a lot of books. I’ve said that. I don’t think I could even name all of my books. I guarantee you that there are fans who have just barely come into my brand.
I got a message today in my reader group that said, I have a free book today. I put it up. That’s what you do. You tell people about your free books. And somebody said, I loved this book. I just read it. Everyone should read it. Be careful if you read it because you’ll go on to binge read the rest of her books.
I’ve read 34 books this year. Most of them are hers. I’m like, great. She is a person who [00:32:00] doesn’t know about me. So just when you think there’s people that like, maybe you’ve reached everyone, maybe you’ve done high ad spend or you’ve been around for five or six years. I guarantee there’s someone out there you haven’t reached.
And now I have 185 ish books to try to sell them. So my job is to try to get them from book to book. And I say my job, But I want to be really clear, and I’ve said this for many years, that I don’t work as hard as my books. My books work harder than me. So she read book one, and then she’s gone on to read more books.
That’s because the book did its job. So again, it’s not about me. It’s about the book. So I am far more product focused than I am me focused in, in terms of building these pillars or building fandom. I really want people to come into my books, fall in love with the people and story worlds and families and places there and [00:33:00] have that book, sell them on reading more books.
And so I write very interconnected things at this point across all my names. Which can be tedious and it can be a lot. You have to be aware of that and not burn out at that if that’s what you’re going to do, that track. I’ve been doing it for five years now, but that is really when I saw my career take off is when I started writing bigger sagas.
Bigger connections. When you’re done with this world, remember this person that you’ve read about in five books. They have a book now, and I see far greater success moving fans through products, through my backlist when I do that. So that’s something that I’ve been doing, and the subscription is almost like an add on to Because they get more.
They can go deeper into that world outside of the paid books that they’re getting. So everything to me is a pillar. Everything. And some pillars are barely above the water and the water washes over them because they’re new. And others are, have been around a while so they’re stronger and taller and maybe thicker.
But [00:34:00] and I’m very selective about what pillars I work on. So let’s be clear. If you have, let’s say, 20 pillars holding up your author house. over the ocean, you cannot work on all 20 of them at the same time. You really can’t. So you have to choose. You have to pick. I’m gonna work on subscriptions for 12 months.
So typically what I do is I have three really big things that I’m working on for that year. And sometimes they extend into the next year and then the next year. So for example, wide audio, I moved out of ACX and Audible exclusive audio Three or four years ago, whenever the whole return debacle was, I took everything out.
I moved it all wide and I have been working on building my wide audio ever since it’s been like a four year endeavor, but I start with 12 months like a really focused. I’m going to this is what I’m working on. Sometimes I go, I’m going to work on building nook for the next 6 months. And I work on increasing milk income [00:35:00] for six months.
I, I try to take something that’s six to 12 months with really consistent, persistent effort to build that pillar up. And then I go, okay, you’re good. I’m going to switch over to say Kobo. Or I’m going to switch over to talking about Everand. Or I’m going to switch over to talking about Hoopla and library services and building in different ways.
And so one of those is subscription. One of those is direct sales. One of those might be Kickstarter for me one day, which I have investigated and taken courses on and done private meetings with for three years now, but I still never run a Kickstarter, right? So one day I’m going to do it and hopefully it won’t fail massively publicly for everyone to see, which is one thing I don’t like about Kickstarter.
I’m like, if I fail, everyone will know. And cause it won’t fund, but I really do try to just pick a couple of things that I’m really working on you. And then I have other things that percolate in the back that I’m thinking about, that I’m learning about, that I take courses on. And eventually [00:36:00] those might come up to the top where I go, I’m going to work on that now.
But ultimately I want to have as many pillars holding up my house so that no matter what happens to any one of them, the house might shake a little bit, but it’s not going to go down. Does that answer the question? I think I did.
Michael Evans: Totally. It gets me thinking about a few things. Let me, let’s start with this. So I think it’s like the pillar mindset working and focused, right? You can’t build the Roman Coliseum overnight. Quite literally Rome was not built overnight as one says, but you When it comes to, I’m just getting started and, or I don’t have any pillar, like maybe I’ve been doing this for a while, but I don’t have a singular pillar that actually feels like it’s really above water.
Obviously it’s nice to have, three, four, five, any number of pillars above the water, but just getting that first one or a few pillars of the water Is the mindset different for someone in that situation [00:37:00] or what would be your advice for an author in that scenario?
Elana Johnson: Absolutely. First I just want to say, and I’ve said this before in my group. I have a group on Facebook called Indie Inspiration with Elena Johnson. Everyone starts at zero. I did too. Everyone starts at zero. And I think Zero Ground is writing a really good book. So if you are like, I don’t really have a lot of pillars above the water, I would look at books first.
It’s okay not to go back to books. I hate going back into my own books. I won’t do that. I don’t like rewriting. I don’t like revising. I don’t like expanding. I’m not going to do it. So I don’t do that purposely. Because I hate it. But what I would do is look at the books I have and go, is there a way for me to rebrand them in a better way?
So that I can sell them to readers in this market today. Which constantly changes. That’s the first thing I would do is if I don’t really have any pillars above water, I’m gonna take the easiest route. And honestly, the [00:38:00] easiest route is Amazon because it’s the biggest it’s just the biggest, it’s the biggest bookseller.
It’s the easiest way to search for books. It’s the easiest way to get people to a product page and get them to buy or download into KU. So I built my business on Amazon in KU for a lot of years. That’s all I did. I did not even start in paperbacks until two years later. I only published e books. I think it was easier for me 10 years ago because there was no noise.
And the indie author community now is very noisy. And I think that can be a benefit, but it can also be a huge detriment. I felt zero pressure to put my book into paperback. I didn’t need to do that. I was focused on learning how to format and publish ebooks. That’s all I did. I put them in KU and I utilize the KU term, the ku incentives, benefits.
So that’s my, also another piece of advice to people is. Sometimes when I [00:39:00] consult with people or I talk to them, I said you’re in ku. When’s the last time you did a free day? And they’re like, oh, I don’t do free days. I’m like why are you in KU then? Like it’s literally the only way you can schedule a free day on Amazon is through ku.
I can’t do it as a white author, we can’t set our books to ku. We can’t schedule the book to go to free. It can, you can’t schedule a price at all on Amazon. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, that’s another rant, but I’m like, why are you not using your KU benefits? I used my KU benefits religiously. I use the countdown deals and the free days in ku.
I still do. My book that’s free today is a KU book that I’m using the KU benefit on. The more books you have, the harder it is to do that, but they renew every 90 days, which means you have automatic marketing opportunities built in to your business if you’re in KU every 90 days. through the KDP Select Benefits of a Countdown Deal or a Free Book Deal.
I would start there. I would literally start with eBooks on [00:40:00] Amazon. And if you’re not one to go into the book to see if you can improve the quality of it, which I would never do. I then look at packaging and I go, how am I packaging this book? How am I talking about this book? How can I talk about it in a different way that might reach readers, but based on things that are popular now, so Yellowstone or, other popular streaming things.
Bridgerton is one that’s pretty big right now. How can I leverage those things to my book? And if you can’t, then you can’t. But there might be something that you can. If you can afford to do a new cover or better packaging. Better packaging. Every company in the world improves their packaging over time.
I used to be a starving college student and we would buy those Totino’s pizzas. You know the ones I’m talking about. When we were younger. I’m in my mid forties now, but when, 25 years ago, those things were like 39 cents. And my husband and I, we, that’s what we would eat for dinner.
And they’re just little pizzas, right? [00:41:00] And they came in boxes. They don’t come in boxes anymore. They come in bags. And so every company and, they’re more expensive now, like a dollar 79, it’s like a real splurge. But every company in the world changes packaging, improves packaging, improves their look, new package, same great taste, right?
So there’s no reason that we shouldn’t do that either. We’re, and I gotta be real honest. I did not think I was running a business until 2018. I was making multiple six figures when I incorporated, finally. It was a hobby for me. I started writing as a hobby in 2007. I did not incorporate. I sold to Simon Schuster in 2011.
I did not incorporate a business until 2018 after several years of six figure income. And I did it for tax reasons because I was getting killed. So it was very hard for me personally to switch over from a hobby mindset to a business mindset. So I [00:42:00] do think the sooner you can think I’m running a business, it’s okay for me to give up covers.
I love. It’s okay for me to give up a title I love if I can improve my packaging and build my pillar above water. So I honestly would look at those two places. I know it’s difficult when you have nothing to run ads. So I would look for free ways that I could try to get my, the word out about my books, which would be social media.
TikTok is free. Instagram is free. Newsletter swaps with other people are free. There are lots of and there are people who make. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars on TikTok by putting up videos. So it is a time investment. It is an energy investment, but it costs zero dollars and it can build that pillar to a place where you can be above water, where then you might have a little bit of money where you can run an ad.
You could start an auto ad on Amazon. So I literally, I know we’re talking subscriptions, but you asked me for my [00:43:00] advice.
Literally be Amazon and it would be Amazon e books, unless you’re in a heavily paperback genre, which would be like a nonfiction genre or a heavily audio book genre, which would be like lit RPG or, space opera or some of that sort of hard sci fi, definitely more audio book oriented.
If I was in one of those male dominated genres, I would be audio all day long and I would be pushing my audio and more audio to my truck driver audience. So you really have to understand who am I trying to talk to and am I talking to them in the right place? So TikTok might not be the greatest place for me for my clean romance.
But Instagram is way bigger for my genre than TikTok. But it’s way easier to create content, especially short video content on TikTok. So if I create it there and I reuse it on Instagram, it’s all a win. I hate creating on Instagram, but I really like creating on TikTok. It’s just easier.
It’s what they do. [00:44:00] So I would maybe sit down and take a couple of days and really think through a plan. What do I have? Because product is base zero. And what do I have? And where do I want to go? What am I trying to build? And I would not try to build more than one thing. I wouldn’t. If I didn’t have any pillars above water, I would choose one.
And honestly, it would be Amazon. And if I was in KU, it would be a KU audience, which isn’t going to be your most lucrative audience long term, but it definitely brings money in. Over time I still make a good income from KU. It’s not what I used to make because I am more diversified now. I used to be all in KU, which I also think surprises people.
You’ve left KU? I have. I have two names that are primarily wide, and I only release into KU under Liz Isaacson, and she only has four series left in KU. 11 other [00:45:00] series are wide because I’m trying to expand. I’m trying to be more diverse, but that’s because I built the Amazon pillar, right? I built it.
It took me years to build it. My ultimate goal, and they don’t even do this anymore, was to be a top 100 KU all star, meaning I was the one of the top most read 100 most read authors in KU. I worked on that goal for over two years and that was building KU. So that’s the KU pillar. And then since I achieved that, Liz Isaacson was actually top 10 five times and I still get a KU bonus every month after they’ve restructured it now back to titles or down to titles.
But so I still have a KU audience, but I focused on that and that’s all I did. I focus and focused on ku. And I will give you a hint. If you’re gonna be a KU author your friend is gonna be writing longer books, write longer books, you make more money. And every [00:46:00] reader that gets into the book, you make more from, and you can hook them to, you just can hook people with deeper worlds and deeper characters with more words, and then they go on to read more books.
So I honestly would start there if you have zero pillars. You could do auxiliary pillars where you take some of that work you’re already doing for, say, a release on Amazon and put it in a subscription, early access release it on Kindle Vela as long as it ends 30 days before. That’s their rule.
There’s other ways to utilize that work. Honestly, I would try to put it out on like a website or something like that and drive people to it so they can sample your reading for free. Sampling reading is really powerful and it’s, you can do it for free. I do it in my newsletter and after a while I thought, is this useful?
I can give a free book out to join my newsletter, right? Or through a lead gen ad on Facebook, or in a book funnel promo, or any other number of ways to give a free book out. Because I want my product to be working for me, product first. So that’s [00:47:00] another thing you can do to build, is to get people into that free book, reader magnet, or even just a book one, if you have the ability to do that.
And then, if I know what book they’ve taken, because they’ve either bought it from my store, a book funnel promo, I know what book they have. I asked them if they’ve read the book in my first email. So I tried to set up, this is probably maybe a good tip too, that I’m probably deviating from, but have automations that work for you in the background.
I send them an email and says, thanks for getting this book. Let me know what you think of it. A few days later, I asked them if they’ve read it and a lot of times they haven’t because readers have a lot of free books. And they’re grabby hands, and they just grab as many as they can, and they don’t ever read them.
But by me following up and asking them if they’ve read it, then I say, Don’t worry if you haven’t read it. I put chapter one below. Read it right now. You’re already on your phone. Just keep reading. And I have had a couple of people email me, and it’s not a big sample set, so again, it’s not. Like a massive win, but to me it’s a win.
It means my newsletters did something, at least that one, for that one [00:48:00] person. And to me that’s a win. She said, that is so tricky you put that chapter one there. I started reading it, I couldn’t stop. I’m now 50 percent of the way through the book. So she read chapter one and was hooked and had to go then get the book that I’d already given her.
She had it. She just hadn’t started reading it yet, and she read it. And I’ve had a couple people tell me that. I read chapter one and I had to keep going. So I ran, I hurried over to my Kindle or, looked at my BookFunnel app or whatever and I kept reading. Having those sort of systems in the background that those emails are going out, I know what book you’re getting from me, from my direct sales or from a BookFunnel promo or a lead gen ad, and I’m following up with you.
And I’m encouraging you to read it. Again, that’s my product working harder than me. So I’m always going to come back to product. I always am just because that’s the kind of business that I’ve built. And that’s the kind of marketing that works best for me is product first. I want my book to work harder than me.
Once I get you in, I want to have a system set up that I’ve [00:49:00] already done, but I want the book to convert you. So I always go back to that book always. And your lowest risk is going to be a subscription because people are already paying for it. And I don’t know if it’s the largest subscription, book reading subscription, but my guess is Kindle Unlimited is. I don’t, I can’t imagine it’s bigger than Kobo Plus, or like an EverAnd subscription or like a library. Libraries are big, but you make so little there that I imagine the largest reading subscription is Kindle Unlimited. People are paying for it already. If you can get in front of them and your book does its job, you can start to build that.
Your first pillar.
Michael Evans: No, no. This is definitely the type of thing where focusing again, really having that radical focus like you did. is super, super beneficial. And it’s a power law because yeah, Amazon has most slash majority plus [00:50:00] of the market. It’s not even like Amazon has 50 percent of the market.
Like it’s much closer to 80, 90%. Depending on, the format and depending on the country, it changes. But if you’re like in the English speaking world, you can literally bet that Amazon probably owns 80 percent of the book publishing market overall. As a place to start, it would be almost like you’re, it would be like a little weird if you suggested like another place to go.
Of course, other authors might find other places to start in and there’s nothing wrong with that. But like the vast majority of the market exists within Amazon. And once you do well there, yes, there’s opportunities to build more stable pillars to, to go elsewhere and beyond. And I think even with ads, you were talking about ads and I think that one of the big mistakes people make is they start running ads and, they say like you have to spend like a thousand dollars just testing ads.
And I, that’s actually a lot. If you know what you’re doing, you don’t have to. Spend any money to test on your ad, which is funny because how do you know what you’re doing? If you’re not wasting money now, it’s just if you’re testing your marketing [00:51:00] copy. in a hundred different places for free, you can take that winning copy that worked in the TikTok that worked on your book cover, that worked in the newsletter, that worked in the promo, and that’s going to work on a Facebook ad because all these places are different traffic to reach people.
If you pay traffic, you can reach traffic more predictably and also probably have more predictable income. Like that’s actually one of the big benefits to advertising. At least if it’s not like a, not knocking bookbug, but bookbub is not consistent if you get a bookbub deal, but these are the types of things and you just have to think about are you ready for like repeatable growth in your business yet? And the answer for probably most people listening, and even though this is a more advanced writer podcast, like I still can guarantee you for most people listening, you’re probably not ready for that yet.
Which isn’t to say that ads won’t work for you is that ads aren’t right for you right now. So invest elsewhere and it’ll be when you’re ready for repeatable growth and you’ve built that pillar above water. Yeah, it’s actually possible to grow it fast once you’re ready, but you have to have a product there.
And also you’re right. The systems too, because I don’t know who wants [00:52:00] to like, not have their stories work harder than them. Like it’s, what a, Tough business to have to run where the more money you make, it means the more work you have to do. I don’t think that’s the point of being an entrepreneur.
If we’re actually thinking about it, like a business, like the idea is you make more money and you have more freedom, not we make more money and we have less freedom and it’s very easy to build a business that does do the opposite of that, but it’s inspiring that you have done that and it’s obviously you have to keep working at it.
It takes a long time, but I think it’s something to aspire to and Really amazing.
Elana Johnson: It does take a long time. And I do just want to say that I’ve taken a lot of courses from Nicholas Eric, and I really like his, it’s not a new principle, and it’s not his principle at all. But he talks a lot about the 80 20 principle. People might think, oh, I can’t do what Elena does because I don’t have 180 books, right?
and to that I say, I’ve been writing for 16 years, so in 16 years, When you hit [00:53:00] year 16, then you can come talk to me about how many books you have, right? Like people, even in 16 years, even if you only wrote one book a year, which I don’t want to say is not a lot, it is, that you have 16 books, right?
Like the, and you will have learned something from those books over time. I do think that the majority of my income I think it’s for me more about 70, 30. The majority of my income comes from only 30 percent of my books. The other 70 percent of my books are just. I call them donkeys because that’s what Nick Erickson called them.
Nicholas Erick. I always say Erickson. It’s Nick Erick. He says you have race horses and you have donkeys and he’s right. Sometimes you, if you keep writing and you really are focused on writing a good book. I have always been focused on that. And I think a lot of that comes because I was in trad.
And, we have, we were really drilled into you have to write a good book to get an agent and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And good is so subjective. [00:54:00] What I’ve really honed in on is who am I writing for and what do they want? If I know those things, then I can write a quote unquote good book for them.
I’m not trying to write for everyone. I’m really not. I am trying to write for a specific type of person and I know who that person is, personally for me. And I think some good advice for authors is if you don’t know who you’re writing for then you’re going to have more donkeys than racehorses.
As soon as I figured out who I was writing for, I’ve had racehorses every series I write. Every series I’ve written under Liz Isaacson since 2019 has been a racehorse. Every single one. It took me five years to figure it out, and I have a great many books that are just donkeys that my racehorse readers will go back and read because I got them in with what they liked.
Michael Evans: Yeah. It’s still you.
Elana Johnson: It’s still me.
Michael Evans: Your writing style. It’s still.
Elana Johnson: [00:55:00] It’s still there, but it was a slower growth. I was doing fine. I, I, like I said, I had multiple six figure years. 18, 2019 was a six figure year and it was a higher six figure year. But that was the year that I really figured out who I’m writing for and what they wanted. And then I deliver on that every time.
And I use those racehorse books. To obviously make money in the front list and then drive people into the backlist. If you love this kind of billionaire second chance, I’ve got one of those in this donkey series. Don’t worry, you’re going to love it. I don’t tell them it’s a donkey series. Everything I do is you’re going to love this next book, right?
Everything’s super positive and reader focused and forward. But I don’t tell them that it’s a donkey book, but I know it’s a donkey book. And I also want to say it’s not repeatable across names. I have tried to do the same thing in my Elena Johnson books and it has not [00:56:00] translated.
So it’s still me. I write all the books. I don’t use ghostwriters not using AI for generative text content in my books. But I cannot get my Elena books to have quite the same success as my Liz books. Even though I’m incorporating similar things, my women’s fiction has translated better. I’ve seen far better translation in terms of the types of books I write with the open Lukes and the big friendships and the big found family.
So my women’s fiction is a found family, my Liz Isaacson is actual blood family, right? This place where you belong, this small town. I do that in all of my names. And my Elena books, very little translation. Liz great, Jessie about half. So I just want to say that even when you think you found the formula, It doesn’t always turn out.
That’s why we have, Lab Experiment 34B, with a different type of rat or whatever, because it doesn’t always turn out. But you [00:57:00] just don’t quit. You keep writing and you write a better book and you write a better book and you write a better book for the type of reader that you’re writing for.
And I’m not saying that means your craft has to be excellent, though I think your craft has to be excellent. I think it means that you sit down and you stop for a day and you go. Who am I writing for? Where do they spend money? How do they spend their day all day? What kinds of books are they listening to or reading in ebook?
What format is it, right? Do you know when I sit down to write I have a very specific picture of a woman on the other side of the screen. I know exactly who she is. I know where she spends her money. I know where she spends her time. I know what she’s looking for and I give her that. So I really definitely think that is like step one and it’s not necessarily right to market.
I like the concept of right to market. I’m not going to say it’s not good, but I don’t have to include the super most popular trope in order to [00:58:00] sell books. I have to hit the right notes at the right time inside a specific reader.
Michael Evans: That’s one of the, and I think everything’s like different frameworks. One of the flaws in the right to market framework is that you’re writing for this, broad, almost nebulous, but yet defined in a market dynamic, usually around genre sub genre or potentially tropes market. But I think you’re right.
That it’s even more powerful. When you write for one person, that one person, and it doesn’t have to actually be a person like you’re saying, you can construct that person. It could be the invisible reader, but when you do that and you write for them and create the best story ever for them, you’re speaking to them.
It become, everything in the book becomes more poignant, becomes more vivid. It’s going to stand out to that one person more. And there’s, trust me, probably tens of thousands, a hundred thousand people potentially like them that you could reach. And. You know the one of the things about a lot of the right to market is if it’s The same book right into the same market as every other book What about your book [00:59:00] makes it special when you really speak to someone?
Elana Johnson: It’s hard to do, and I just want to say, Sky Warren just sent out an email. I love Sky Warren. I think she’s really smart. And I’ve subscribed to her author emails, and if you don’t, I suggest you do. I don’t know how to do that, but I would maybe look up Sky Warren and author emails, sign up or something, or I don’t know.
But I’ve subscribed to them for years. They’re really good. And she said something that I’ve been teaching for years in my group, and in books, and in courses, and in classes on stage, is that your brand is not your colors. Your brand isn’t a, a funny tagline or a sexy tagline or whatever.
Your brand is what you put in your books. For my Liz Isaacson books, they’re Christian romance and there is something in there. Christian romance requires in my mind, and this is nebulous and can change from author to author and reader to reader, but Christian romance [01:00:00] requires a religious growth arc.
So there’s it can be minor, but it can also be big, right? But as part of their growth arc, their relationship with God grows in some way. It can be big or little. And so what I’ve realized in my Liz Isaacson books is that religious growth arc that I put in my books is what people are looking for.
And I just wrote a scene this morning before this, I’m like, this is, I’m like all capital letters. This is the religious growth arc. It’s what they want. And this month is National Reading Month. It’s March, and I’m doing a bingo challenge in my group, and I said post like one of your favorite scenes.
Doesn’t have to be from my books, right? It’s just a box on the bingo board, and I’ve had three or four people post A scene from one of my books, and you know what it is? It’s the religious growth arc. It’s the religious theme of the book. So all of my books have a religious theme. And I think all good fiction has a [01:01:00] theme, whether it’s religious or not.
If your book doesn’t have a theme, or you haven’t identified a theme for that book, Like I said, no matter what the genre is, I think you’re missing out. I think the theme of your book is what brings people back to the book. Let me back up. The theme of your brand is what people brings, is what brings people back to book after book.
And that theme of your brand will be in every book in some way. That’s, I think, what has bred the most success for me, is figuring out what that brand theme is and incorporating it in every book. And it can be different ways, but it’s in every book, it’s in every book. And that’s what Sky Warren was saying in her latest email is it’s not about the colors, it’s not about the title, it’s not about your tagline, like it’s not about any of that.
It’s about the themes and the things that you put in every book that people resonate with, that they want to come back to over and over, which is why for me, it’s always product [01:02:00] first.
Michael Evans: I think a way of thinking about it is i’ve heard mal cooper call it Metastory, I think talking about a very similar concept and then just generally like in business you would say like a brand promise which Is You know, what is your promise to your readers? And I think that’s a good ending because part of subscriptions is under promising and over delivering but continuing to write that promise What is your promise?
Is so important and I know that for me I mean every time I talk to you I learn so much and I guarantee you people are going to want to Check out where your books are. They’re going to want to support you and they’re going to want to learn more from you So where can we learn more and dive deeper into your world?
Elena
Elana Johnson: Okay, so I do have a series of indie books. They’re called Indie Inspiration. That’s the name of my Facebook group, Indie Inspiration with Elena Johnson. You have to answer the questions to get in. I know I’m a stickler about it, but I want people there who like, really want to be in a positive environment.
My group is not for asking questions [01:03:00] about, Kindle Vela or the low payout or doomsday. My, my group is like positive energy, uplift, encouragement. That’s what it is. That’s why it’s called in the inspiration. So I post a lot, or I have a lot of posts about things that I’ve tried and done to hopefully inspire other people.
Think outside the box, try different things, all of that. You Facebook. I have four books out. The most popular one is called writing and marketing systems. So I would suggest that. I have one on writing and releasing rapidly also. It’s pretty good, but it’s pretty dated. I think I wrote it in like 2018 and I’ve admitted that I don’t go back to my books and update them.
But it’s got quite a few marketing strategies and whatnot in it that I think might be helpful. I have one on writing back cover copy, because I think cover copy is extremely important. Before I was an indie author, when I was in trad and. A teacher and struggling to make ends meet. I used to write query letters for people.[01:04:00]
A query letter is what you send to a literary agent to get them interested in buying your book. Sorry, reading your book and then representing you. It’s essentially back cover copy. So I’ve been really good at that for a great many years. And of course now we can augment our own brilliance with some AI help if you’re into AI help for that.
But I have a book on that, and then I have a book on launching, writing and launching a bestseller. And my writing and launching a bestseller, I think, is a quiet giant. Because the whole first half of the book teaches you how to write better books and so I just went through it again because I’m preparing for my own conference coming up and I was like, dang, this is a good book.
There’s some good stuff in here for how to write better books, and I just don’t ever really talk about my indie books all that much, but I do have four of them. They’re wide on all retailers and ebook and paperback. They’re not an audio book, but free place, come to Facebook, look through some of the, feature posts or guides read through some of [01:05:00] the stuff.
There’s a lot of content in that group. It’s been around for four or five years now. Lots of just good things in there. That’s where you can find me. And yeah, that’s where I, that’s some of my author facing stuff.
Michael Evans: That’s so exciting. You’ve sold me on how to write and launch a bestseller. I’ll link to the books, the Facebook group and Elena’s subscription insight down below. But that you, yeah, it’s a sleeping giant. I’m like, Ooh, okay. That’s a good way to describe a nonfiction book that I need to read.
So this has been amazing, Elena. It’s been so awesome having you with
Elana Johnson: Thank you. I appreciate it. Always fun to see you and talk to you as well.
Michael Evans: Thank you.
Elana Johnson: All right.
Michael Evans: Alright, that’s it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed. Huge thank you to Elana. You’re awesome, an inspiration, and I hope you do join her Facebook group, which will also be linked down below. Great resource, great community for authors, and with that said, if you haven’t yet joined our Facebook group or read our free book about subscriptions, you can check that out in the description below.
It’s a great book. It’ll help you get the [01:06:00] primer on starting your subscription, and then when you launch it, you can take Elena’s advice on how to tweak it, make it better, and ultimately grow. So I hope this is a useful episode. As always, thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. We’ll be back next week with more episodes.
It’s gonna be a ton of fun. But in the meantime, don’t forget, never forget storytellers rule the world.