Posted on July 27, 2023
Aria Glazki is a romance author with 10 paying subscribers who also has a chronic illnness. In today’s episode, we chat all about navigating indie publishing and building a sustainable author career as an author with chronic illness.
Aria Glazki’s Links:
Aria’s subscription: https://reamstories.com/ariaglazki/public and https://www.patreon.com/AriaGlazki
Aria’s website: https://www.ariaglazki.com/p/books.html
#42 Episode Outline
0:00:00 Introduction
0:03:33 Aria’s Subscription Success Patreon & Ko-fi
0:06:20 Aria’s Flexible Approach to Chapters and Release Schedules
0:07:34 Diving into Serial Fiction: Aria’s Journey of Early Access, New Platforms, and Serial Fiction
0:11:00 Finding the Optimal Posting Schedule for Serial Fiction Success
0:17:57 Crafting a Sustainable Publishing Schedule Beyond Serial Fiction
0:22:25 Building Reader Connections with Chronic Illness
0:32:53 Capturing and Engaging Your Target Audience
0:47:34 Enduring Adversity: Unraveling Aria’s Motivation Amid Personal Health Struggles
0:57:30 Conclusion
#42 Episode Transcript
Michael Evans: Today we’re gonna be chatting with Aria Glasgow, an amazing romance writer who has actually been publishing now for a better part of the last decade. It started when she won a Nan RiNo contest way back in 2012, and she has written over 10 books. And in her words, she writes heartfelt romances about relatable people overcoming real world obstacles to build love.
That lasts, and she’s had a subscription for the last several years and has 10 people paying her month, which is awesome, which is great. But the thing is that she also struggles with chronic illness and having a subscription is another extra thing to do that at times can suck energy out of her. And not just subscriptions, but her whole publishing career, making that sustainable, wondering, where do I go from here?
Is kind of [00:01:00] the crossroads that she’s at in. Her life now. She’s been publishing for so long, she’s put so much energy into it and she’s really tried to make this a career and she needs to figure out the next steps and how she can either make it a career or what is that next move for her. I think this is pretty relatable cuz there’s so many of us who have been in the indie publishing world for a long time and are feeling similar things to Aria and there’s also a lot of us I know listening to this podcast and who are in the descriptions for authors community who.
Have chronic illness and who have specific things in their life that make being an author, that make their writing, that make having a subscription different from maybe the mainstream conversation. So I think this conversation will be really helpful for everyone and thinking about how to build a more sustainable subscription, how to build a more sustainable career as an author, but it’ll be especially helpful for folks.
Who like Aria may have chronic illness. I think it’s a very, very important conversation and I commend Aria for her bravery for coming on and sharing her personal story with us about this. Now, if you aren’t a part of Descriptions, Rather’s Facebook group, you should join because that’s how we spark this conversation with Aria.
[00:02:00] She commented on a post that we made a couple months back about. Helping people in the community through live coaching sessions, conquer problems or struggles in their subscription off their journey. And she commented about her story with her Patreon, her subscriber base, and wanting to grow that, but also having chronic illness and that being a unique challenge.
And we’re like, we’ve gotta talk to her. So that was this podcast and it’s a lot of fun. I hope you all enjoy it and if you wanna join the conversation in the Facebook group about this podcast and about subscriptions for author in general, you can find that in the link in the description totally for free. And if you listen to this podcast and you want to get your subscription started as well, then you could go to reem stories.com and you can create a free account.
It’s subscription platform by fiction authors for fiction authors, and. Everything about it is designed to help you supercharge your subscription journey. Make your life easier by being able to easily schedule and publish chapters, connect with your readers through a social reader where they can comment on each paragraph, and truly be immersed in your stories so that’s what reams all about, making your life easier, making your reader’s life better, And ultimately [00:03:00] helping you make more money from subscriptions. As an author, it truly is a subscription platform by fiction authors for fiction authors, and it’s very simple to join. You can create a free account, write@ringstories.com, and when you start making money in the platform, you just take a simple 10% fee of the revenue you generate..
If you wanna switch your subscription to Ream from other platforms, reach out to us anytime for our concierge migration service. Yes, we’ll get into this podcast with Aria. It’s a very fun, very intense conversation that I’m very excited to dive into.
Michael Evans: So today we have Aria with us and I’m really excited for this conversation because we’re gonna be talking all about how to grow your subscription after you’ve already had some success.
You have already over 10 patrons, which is really incredible. But also how to keep up with a subscription that kind of by nature requires delivering something consistently when your health might not be very consistent. And that’s a very common problem that so many of us writers face. And I just wanna first say so excited to ha be [00:04:00] chatting with you today, cuz it takes a lot of courage to talk about.
anything that you need help with as a writer, nevermind something so personal as your own health and how it interfaces with your writing life. So thank you for this. And I wanna start it off by asking you what got you to start your subscription. And when I say subscription, I really should be saying subscriptions because you have two kind of membership platforms where people can donate to you on Patreon and Cofi.
So talk to me about those, how they came to be and how they’ve been going so far.
Aria Glizki: So first of all, thank you for having me. Patreon really came about first and it came about because I was really struggling to keep up with my health. When I first started out as a writer, I was feeling much better physically.
I was still ill, but I, it just wasn’t impacting me quite as much. And so at that point, I had published three books and 10 months and it was at a pace that might not be as fast as a lot of people, but was at least, doable to try to. Get up steam in independent publishing.
As I started getting sicker, I realized that it just wasn’t sustainable, as you said, right? It wasn’t something I could be doing. And I had read a book by Amanda Palmer [00:05:00] the Art of Asking, and that kind of got me over the hurdle of, okay let me see if I can get a slower pace in terms of putting out books or whatever, but maybe start growing a community, start trying the Patreon thing, start saying, if people care about my writing, who’ve enjoyed my writing in the past, might wanna support me.
Kofi was very new. I added that on when I started releasing my last book, my latest book, serially. And Kofi was recommended as an extra platform because I guess not everybody likes the commitment of Patreon, and so Kofi just cross-posting the chapters there. Gave an option for people who weren’t ready to say, oh yeah, I’m gonna commit monthly, but I’ll do one-off donation to, to read these extra chapters.
And then the other part of Cofi that I found is that I can do like a physical goods store there, which allows me to slow my books directly if people want an autograph copy. So that’s where I am. I’ll say that Cofi, I don’t, I do not have supporters there other than one of my friends and my mother.
So that’s a side thing for sure right now.
Michael Evans: No, that totally makes sense. And I love how you got into approaching your subscription and how you wanted to be able to have a [00:06:00] more sustainable way to publish. But as anything going into it sounds great, but then when you’re actually doing it as part of your subscription, one of your benefits is being able to get chapters of Unleashed.
And I love how you frame it cuz you don’t necessarily say how many chapters you’re getting or how often you’re getting them. But I’m curious how you approach that. Do you have a schedule that you’re releasing early access chapters or so?
Aria Glizki: Yes. So actually Unleashed finished up in March for patrons and in April on other platforms.
But what I was doing was, interestingly enough, my patrons preferred once a week, so I was actually doing two chapters for them, but in one weekly post to keep up with doing twice a week on other platforms like Radish and Bella.
Michael Evans: Okay. Yeah.
Aria Glizki: Yeah. So it was an experiment. I hadn’t done that before with any of my books.
It was very uncomfortable releasing an early draft of a story that I normally wouldn’t have let anybody read. But it was something that I was trying to do to keep my subscription alive. Cause a year be before that I paused billing for about a year because I was just too sick. I really couldn’t provide any kind of content.
So this was an interesting [00:07:00] option that I just started experimenting with, and now I’m trying to finish up on leash so I can actually, publish the book. the chapters part was an evolving thing, I guess I should say, because it started out as being one a week just for patrons before I joined other subscription platforms.
Got it.
Platforms, I should say.
Michael Evans: Got, yes.
And I know you mentioned that you’ve been, offering early access to those books and this year platforms are something new for you because you’ve been publishing on Amazon, some of the other retailers for quite some time, but you haven’t necessarily been taking the dive into serial fiction for as long.
How has that gone for you in your subscription? Because we know a lot of authors do serial fiction. With their subscription.
Aria Glizki: So my impression is it got me exactly zero new patrons. Which was certainly frustrating because, that was part of the hope. I will say thankfully with Vela bonuses, I was able to make a little bit of money.
And on radish I was able to make a little bit of money and just having for me, having people subscribe to the story on Radish, even people who are reading it for free on that platform cause they have a wait to unlock feature that people can wait and unlock episodes for free, which is having people [00:08:00] subscribe to my story as I was releasing it.
That was really gratifying because I’ve struggled with finding my audience as well.
Michael Evans: Yeah.
Aria Glizki: And so it was that combination of my patrons loved it cuz they got to read the book much sooner than they would otherwise. And Vela was a little bit of drip of an income and then radish was the bomb to my soul that people were actually interested in reading this story.
So it was definitely a combination approach.
Michael Evans: I’m curious for you before serial fiction, you’ve been publishing now for a decade plus, or close to a decade. Yeah.
Aria Glizki: Something like that.
Michael Evans: First of all what has worked for you and maybe what hasn’t throughout this journey and when you’ve started your subscription, what kind of made you start this shift towards subscription and serial fiction at this point? Because you’ve already, been publishing for so long, this wasn’t what you started with, I assume or at least I’m almost certain of,
Aria Glizki: Yeah.
So like I said, it was really illness that made me have to say I can’t do it the way other people are doing it. I certainly can’t publish a book every month the way a lot of romance authors do. And I knew that I wasn’t being consistent enough for what the market wanted for me in terms of putting [00:09:00] out books regularly.
Even saying, oh, I’ll do one every six months or one every year, but I promise it’s gonna come out every year. It wasn’t the guarantee that I could make. As we talked about a little bit before, there is no predictability with my specific illness. And so being consistent, even for something like Patreon is a big challenge.
But being consistent for the broader market where, people are talking about, oh, I have a new release every month, every two months maximum. It was a non-starter for me at that point. And so that’s when I started transition to subscriptions and with releasing Serially, the idea was that I had this draft that wasn’t finished.
The draft was finished in terms of the story was written, but it wasn’t ready to be read in my opinion. And I was really encouraged by some other authors on Patreon to try releasing it, serially to try releasing it with early chapters, early access. And the goal at the time was to finish it while that was happening.
And that didn’t happen cause life exists. That was really from other authors who had found success with serial fiction kind of encouraging me to give that a shot. It was a very recent thing. It was a very spur moment thing, and it was still [00:10:00] basically just saying I have this draft that’s languishing on my computer.
And if I don’t finish it in terms of making it super polished, nobody’s ever gonna read it. So I guess I might as well just let it out in the world while it’s in its infant stage and not quite ready, but
better than nothing.
Michael Evans: Yeah. No, I think, the mindset’s great. The mindset’s great. I’m already thinking you’re circling right in that, especially like you’re wide as an author, which is great, but, and there’s nothing wrong with being KU for people who are listening.
But being wide, I think already obviously gives you a little bit less of the maybe 30, 90 day cycle trend that a lot of the KU publishing cycles on, which obviously for you, you’re like, yeah, that’s not gonna be sustainable for me. Which for the record, for most people, it’s not sustainable for, I think we’ve starting to see so many authors who are like, I’m burnt out from that.
But serial fiction also, I. Re not requires, but there’s a sense of consistency that helps. For instance, Emilia, what would you say is the optimal posting schedule for serial fiction? I’m not saying everyone has to follow this, but is there an optimal posting schedule that is helpful? Is once a month how to be successful on radish or should you post a little bit more often than that?[00:11:00]
Emilia Rose: On radish specifically I would say at least every week I have a lot of books on, like a lot of my back lists that hasn’t released onto radish yet. And each book has a lot of chapters in it. So for the books I’m currently updating on radish, it’s more once or five times a week. But that’s a lot.
I would say at least once a week at the same time interval.
Michael Evans: That’s challenging.
Emilia Rose: Yeah.
Michael Evans: And yeah, especially because. You might have a couple months, half a year, even more than that, where writing is not something that you’re able to maybe do, right? Because other things come first.
Your life and your health. What would be your advice, Emilia? Because I know you, just from knowing you, like you’re not like every week writing the same out. You actually take off a few weeks outta the year, and I know that which is great. I recommend even if you can write 52 weeks outta the year, taking some time off, what would you recommend to an author who is okay, I wanna do a subscription.
I wanna be able to write more on my own terms, but my readers still expect something from me every once in a while, so maybe there’s not a set schedule, but I, just dropping off phase third for a while and then coming back every so often can be a little challenging. [00:12:00] Especially when trying to find new readers, right?
What would be your advice to them in developing a sustainable publishing schedule when you’re writing might not be a. Actually on a consistent schedule.
Emilia Rose: Yeah, that’s hard. But I’m I guess what I would recommend is having a backlog of chapters. So maybe instead of releasing as you write them try to store one or two cha maybe instead of writing two chapters a week, you write three, but when you release two or something along those lines, you can even make the chapters a little bit shorter to conserve your energy and be able to write a little bit, more chapters instead of a few longer chapters, especially for serial fiction.
Or write the entire book before. You start your subscription or serial fiction book. And if you do wanna do the live release where you’re writing the chapter and releasing it right, then you can offer additional benefits. So maybe artwork or I don’t know, something that doesn’t involve writing, because it does take a long time to sit down and write and [00:13:00] actually get that, those thousand, 2000, 3000 words out.
Sometimes. Sometimes it’s really hard.
Aria Glizki: Yeah. It can take a lot outta you too.
Emilia Rose: Yeah.
Michael Evans: You know what I recommend doing cuz I work in a similar manner to someone who might have a inconsistent writing schedule just with everything I do in my life. Like I work in sprints and then I move on to the next thing.
And. I kind of work and think in seasons like, this is going to be the season I approach and do this, and then I’m not gonna do that as much for the next season, even though it might not even look like a season. Like for instance we’re gonna be releasing 20 new podcast episodes the next couple months.
But we’ve filmed all of those now basically, and I won’t be filming podcast shows me and Mil won’t be filming anything for the next three months. So that’s how we do it. Because I don’t want to get burnt out on working on the podcast all the time. I want to be able to move to something else.
That’s how I work. I kind of work in this sort of like a lion type of way. Like not nine to five at all. You attack and then you rest. And I think that. That might be how you work. But in terms of releasing, you can do that too. So I see Netflix do this all the time. Netflix will [00:14:00] drop a season and it doesn’t even have to be a full book.
You might only have half a book ready. They do this too, they drop part one and then you don’t necessarily know when part two is coming out, which might be the same arc because this is the tough part. The idea of, oh, I don’t, I could get sick halfway through writing my next story. So it sounds great to prepackage everything, but what if I get sick halfway through writing it?
That’s challenging. Cuz then you don’t have a complete season. But if you’re open with your communication, your readers, and being like, Hey, half the season’s done now. And then when they get to the end of it, a little note that says, this story is going to continue, it will.
But at the moment, I have an illness. Or you don’t even need to share that. You’d say I had something come up in my life that’s preventing me from writing for the next couple months, which is valid. Then even when you have a break and even when you write ahead, but something unexpected happens your illness keeps you away from the keyboard from a very extended period of time.
At least you have that communication with your readers, because especially with your paid subscribers, that’s gonna be the stuff that they understand for your unpaid subscribers. For people on free serial fiction, reading platforms, the biggest thing is getting to an end of a chapter, not being able to continue reading and with no explanation.
It all goes back to trust, right? You’re gonna be like, oh, I’ve been [00:15:00] burnt by so many authors before. Did they just move on from this? Are they gone? What I would even do. Is update them in that meaning. Okay, so you put at the end of the chapter, written on April 1st, 2023. Right now life came in the way.
I will update y’all when I can get back to it. I promise you, I’m going to one day finish this story. But as you all know, some things can come up and I wanna make this story amazing for you, and I can’t do that right now with all these things going on. That’s like the super generic template response. Two months go by, you’re still not feeling great.
Maybe you have a family member if people have close family members at home or yourself, if you’re able to go back and pop in another note, and it’s June 1st now things are still going on. I’m really sorry I haven’t gotten back to this, but I haven’t forgotten about you. So then as people keep looking at it, they can still be like, oh, okay.
I’m not missing out. And then what you can do, it’s a helpful hack on most of these serial fiction writing platforms. You’ll never get their emails. There’s no reason for someone to give you their email. But if you have an unexpected unknown release date of when this next chapter will go on the platform and they need to know about it, drop in a comment.
Maybe because you don’t wanna get in the way of [00:16:00] any t o s, but a link to your website or a landing page where they can sign up for your mailing list to know when it comes out. Because when you’re ready for that next half season or the next few chapters, you’ll be there. Is that ideal for the whale reading audience?
Maybe not. Maybe whale readers spin through stories so fast that they might forget about it halfway through. But then that’s the thing. You can send ’em that email and they could go back and reread the chapters. They forget.
Emilia Rose: I would say, just to add to that It’s not ideal, but it can work.
And I’ve seen authors who have very popular serials on different platforms who take a year break and they come back and as soon as they post that first chapter, everybody is talking about it in their Facebook group. They’re like, oh my gosh, you didn’t read this last chapter that she just posted five minutes ago.
And it has worked. You may lose some of your readers, but it’s not like you’re gonna lose at least most times that you’ll lose all of them if you take an extended break.
Aria Glizki: So could we talk about that same concept but with the subscription models rather than serial fiction specifically?
Because Yeah, [00:17:00] on the one hand, yeah. My, my patrons were great when I said, guys I’m pausing billing. I can’t have content for you. I am out to, to deal with my health. I didn’t lose a single patron through that, which was great. I didn’t have that many, but I didn’t lose anybody, which was awesome.
Michael Evans: Yeah,
Aria Glizki: But it also means that it’s one, right? I can’t keep going on these year long hiatuses with them, and I felt pressure to pause the billing, not to be earning, taking their money in that time. And then on top of that, you can’t really find new patrons that way. If I’m disappearing, for six months or a year I might not be losing anybody.
Hopefully, people will have their own life, things come up. But I also won’t be gaining people to the subscription. And so that’s a challenge partially because I keep feeling like I’m starting to build something. If I have a stretch where I’m feeling a little bit better, or if I’m, I was trying to do with Unleashed releasing a rough draft, which gave me content to give them.
And I try to build and I try these new things, but then something will happen and I will be knocked out for three months, six months, a year and a half, right? Whatever. It’s
Emilia Rose: So I have two kind of notes on [00:18:00] that. I know one of the biggest subscription authors he takes, I think it’s two months out of the year, he takes a break and he pauses billing for those entire months.
And he doesn’t seem to lose people either. That’s a note on that. D I wouldn’t feel bad about taking breaks when you need to, or feel like pressure that you have to come back after a certain amount of time. I don’t think that he, at least for him, and like you were saying, gains many people during that time.
But I think you could, if you automated your funnel a little bit more. For example, say you have a completed book that you have on Amazon but you haven’t run it through a, I’m assuming your funnel into your subscription is serial fiction, unless I’m wrong, please.
Correct me.
Aria Glizki: Yes. There’s nothing else.
Emilia Rose: Okay. So what is that at this point?
So it would be the funnel from serial fiction. And so you take that book on Amazon that hasn’t been run through a serial fiction platform yet, you schedule it out ahead of time on radish or Wattpad or Radish, wherever you’re posting, and then funnel people [00:19:00] into your subscription and have that subscription drop a chapter every week, however you wanna use it.
And so that way it’s all scheduled out beforehand. You can take a break when you need to take a break. And there’s potential for you to gain subscribers from a backless book that you have been utilized yet if, does that make sense?
Aria Glizki: Yeah, absolutely. I guess I would wonder how to handle current subscribers or something like that cuz they’ve read all my books.
Emilia Rose: Yeah.
Michael Evans: They probably don’t wanna be spammed by me saying, here’s an update of a chapter of a book that you read 10 years ago.
Emilia Rose: You could put it in a different tier possibly. And just release that book to that tier.
Aria Glizki: Okay.
Emilia Rose: That’s how I would do it. And that’s how I plan to do it for, I’m doing the audio subscription soon and that’s exact kind of model that I’m going to be using cause I don’t wanna deal with
it.
Aria Glizki: Okay.
Michael Evans: Another piece of advice I’d have too is when you, even if you do take a break for a year and you might not have anything new to give your super fans who have already read everything of yours and already basic, experienced [00:20:00] everything in your world, I understand what’s underneath the question you asked because at least to my understanding, part of the subscription is being able to divorce your writing income from your output, because that’s something that is literally something that’s unpredictable.
So if it’s your income’s tied to your output, then that’s gonna be, it’s gonna be a problem. The subscription in theory is recurring, but the benefits are somewhat consistent. Therefore, if your benefits are going to be unpredictable and then you keep pausing that subscription, now that’s unpredictable income.
So how do you make more predictable, consistent subscriptions with benefits that. We can try and puzzle piece things together and make it feel more consistent for your readers and that’s definitely worthwhile, but still is never gonna be exactly consistent because first of all, no one’s a machine.
So I don’t think that’s true for anyone listening, but especially for someone like you who has chronic illness, that’s makes it more challenging. Now, one thing to think about is for these super fans, right? you’re never forcing anyone to pay you, right?
You’re never forcing anyone to pay you. And this can feel really uncomfortable and a lot of authors are gonna hear this and be like, I’m not cool with this, and maybe you aren’t, and that’s okay. But I have a few authors that I [00:21:00] actually currently support because I support them as human beings, and I do not read their work at all anymore.
Like I actually, I won’t say who they are because. That is nothing against them. They’re still producing consistently, and I’m paying them consistently, but I’m not experiencing their content consistently. I actually, literally I think about them and I care about them, and I look at my subscription and I’m I could cancel it, but it’s $5 and I want them to have the $5 more than I want the $5, even though I’m not getting anything tangible from it.
I care about them. Your readers may feel the same way about you, and as long as you’re open about them, you could even tell them, feel free to unsubscribe and come back. I’ll let you know on my mailing list when there’s more things here. You’re not telling people, pay me just for forcing them.
Don’t do that, but you give them the option instead of partying a subscription to states that you. Can continue to get that consistent income.
Emilia Rose: Yeah, I completely agree. I know I’ve done the same exact thing as Michael has but with an artist that I really liked. She hadn’t updated her subscription for over a year, and I saw that, and I still subscribed to her just because I wanted to support her, even though she wasn’t updating.
Nothing [00:22:00] was happening, but I was like, I love your work so much that you could take my $5. Like I’ll give it to you for a few months, maybe a year. And hopefully one day when you’re feeling better or when you have that creativity back or whatever it is you come back and you draw, even if it’s not for me.
You find that passion again and you do it. So there’s definitely people who are your super fans and will support you no matter what.
Aria Glizki: I guess the other side of it then is as somebody with. Of severe illness. Somebody who is limited in how much contact I can have with building those super fans, engaging with people to the extent that they become the kinds of super fans who will support you no matter what. Is also it effectively is I either write or I build a community around how I’m not writing, which just feels incongruous. And so my access to community and to readership is limited partially by my illness.
Partially by oh, I need to create content. And so how would you go about connecting with people better? I guess if, let’s say you have three hours a week total for your writing [00:23:00] business, that’s, whether because you have a day job or because illness or whatever else. Let’s say the limit is three hours a week, inconsistently.
And I was reading, one of your blog posts, Michael about becoming an active member of a community, becoming a leader in that community and branching out your readership and your own community that way. But I can’t do that. I can barely participate in the communities.
I’m already was parti trying to participate in as an author with author friends or whatever. I dropped out of everything at this point.
Michael Evans: first of all, thank you for reading my blog post. That one was like crazy long. So Good for you.
Getting through.
Aria Glizki: I skimmed it to be fair. Sorry, but I did go through it as much as I could.
Michael Evans: No, you’re good. It was basically a book that I wrote in a blog post, but I think first of all, you are right, what you’re saying is right. You cannot do all of the things possibly when you have limited time and bandwidth and energy in a day. And that’s true for everyone, but it’s especially true when.
As an industry, obviously our industry conforms to human limits. So no one’s advocating, people write a hundred books a day because no one can do that. So that’s not a possible business model. People only have so much attention. But there’s the standard of being an indie author and what we’re expected to do, [00:24:00] which is a lot, and it’s not sustainable for everyone.
And especially in your position, that’s, it’s not something you can realistically do all the things that are required, quote unquote. I don’t necessarily know if building a community and engaging a community is as intensive as it’s often made out to be. But I think you have to focus on three things. One is where do you want to engage?
And it has to be super focused. It has to be very intentional. Yet you’re definitely not gonna be able to be a part of 10 author groups and three different reader groups and still have time left over after the end of three hours in a week. You’re just not gonna be able to, so that’s one important thing.
What one community. Literally think about it like that. Can you really participate in that’s going to really, even from a forget, contributing back and creating continent or commenting, but just looking at because every hour you spend looking at your social media feed, keeping up with things going on and not doing things is also part of that equation.
So for instance, myself I’m a human as well. I do not have chronic illness. So my limits are, we all have a different sort of as Russell Nte who came on the podcast talked about we all have a different number of spoons. And I think, with that in account, I really only participate in one Facebook [00:25:00] group subscriptions for authors.
That’s it. I don’t participate in any other Facebook group or any other community online period. Literally, period. I only do one thing and I try and do it as best of my ability now. I probably spend more than three hours a week descriptions throughout this community. It’s a very big community now.
And it also is something that I’m not just a participant in, but also help to lead. So there’s a different commitment level there, but you don’t have to lead a community to still be a participant in it. And there’s different scales and involvement, right? And subscriptions for authors. Like what brings this author community together is the podcast we create.
the events that we do is all the content we’re creating to educate authors. What brings your Kenny readers together is your stories. It is that’s the core of it. So yes, it’s not like you’re doing something totally separate. Your stories. And part of what me and Amelia teach is your stories are building community, whether you like it or not.
Your readers are connected to your stories and wanna connect to other people who connect with your stories regardless of your involvement. And someone like Amelia and literally tell me if I’m wrong, I don’t think you spend hours and hours a week building a community of your readers regularly.
I think you spend most of your time writing, [00:26:00] right? That’s the best thing you can be doing.
Emilia Rose: Yeah. And even when I started, I did social media, but I didn’t focus on it. my whole focus was when I originally started, it was rappa. And just writing my stories there and connecting with my readers.
And if I were to give you advice, I’d say focus on writing your stories and wherever you’re posting your stories. So whether that’s radish, there’s already a community that’s going to be forming there. There’s always already gonna be people who are going to comment or follow along every time you post a new chapter.
So just as a preface, I don’t like social media at all. Like I’ll, I’m on it, but I’m, it just for me it’s very time consuming and emotionally and mentally draining sometimes. And so it’s just not my thing. And so I’m not on there trying to build a community all the time. It’s the community comes from my stories.
Michael Evans: I know it’s weird because
Aria Glizki: it’s not weird. It’s just that it feels like another barrier, honestly. Because when we’re talking about, using radish, for example, radish, it’s so hard to get [00:27:00] visibility on it at this point unless you get one of their promos. So you could be posting regularly, you can be doing all the, you can get the right tags and all that and still.
Reach 20 people, not thousands of people. And then as we know, it’s like less than 1% of your readers are ever gonna consider supporting you on something like a subscription platform. So it feels like the answer seems to be right as fast as possible, publish as fast as possible in order to have exposure enough people to then potentially grow your community.
But then how do I do that? Or how do people in my shoes do that?
Emilia Rose: I don’t think it’s writing as fast as pro possible. I know Brit Andrews she’s a, I think par Romance author, but she writes a book here and maybe not even that, I don’t know. But she focuses on creating the best story possible with the most in depth characters and creates this really awesome world building.
And she really focuses on making the story awesome for her readers. to consume. So I don’t think it’s [00:28:00] necessarily writing as fast as possible, but writing a story that’s high quality that has,
Michael Evans: if anything, you’re playing a different game. Yeah. Than a lot of people are, most people are playing the game as an author where they make themselves and their stories composable and I’m gonna be really careful with my language cuz tropes are good, hitting block beats is good.
Like all these things you need to do to a certain extent. But when you basically make your book a carbon copy of other books that exist, but slightly change things. First of all, there’s been lots of controversies in the community around, oh is that copying? Is that plagiarism or not? I wanna draw a really clear example that’s in another community that I feel safer talking about cuz I won’t call any names out that people listening will be.
But YouTube, this is the hugest problem on YouTube. So you have someone come up with an idea, like a trend, right? This is super common in what’s called i R L, challenge based creators and. Then you have people it used to be morgues. Today you have people like Brett Rivera. Brent Rivera is a huge YouTuber.
All of his ideas are direct rip-offs from other YouTubers. And he basically is constantly playing this game of how quickly can I rip [00:29:00] off an idea from another YouTuber while it’s still hot and enough people haven’t seen the original video. So I can create, honestly, a slightly worse version of it. I’m not gonna put my own spin in, it’s a slightly worse version of it, but I’m doing it fast enough to get enough eyeballs to keep this business going.
It’s whew. Sounds stressful, right? Yeah, it’s mind boggling A lot of authors and a lot of us can do the same thing. I’ve done the same thing myself where I’ve gotten to a similar mindset. I didn’t think of it that way cuz I wasn’t, and Brent Rivera probably isn’t literally trying to plagiarize people.
I’m not trying to say that about him. But there is a line where as a viewer, as a consumer of the content, it’s not differentiated to me. It isn’t. So I could just interchangeably watch him or someone else creating these sorts of things and it would make no difference. So how do I compete for that viewer’s attention and trust.
Create more and keep up with the engine. But there are other creators. I watch an example of them, and I’m talking about YouTube now because I think it’s helpful to, again, talk about another ecosystem when we can all look at books and be like, but wait, this is where I am. Their creator is called Boy.
They’re hilarious to me. Feel free to check out the channel. They create videos. They’re from Australia [00:30:00] that are like, they’re memeing on American culture, which I enjoy it. I’ll just say that. So you can go check it out. They would post videos so inconsistently, wildly, inconsistently, like once every four months, once every five months, whatever.
It was so not often. And when they post a video, it’s not like they would say, oh, this is gonna be the most highly produced video ever with every cut. Perfect. No, they’re humans. They had 10 hours in the last six months to work on their video. But guess what? That video I would click on and watch it a hundred percent of the way through.
And I would love them. And I also, when they started subscription with the whole purpose of it being, we know we create inconsistently, we have lies, but we wanna do more of this and it would help us if we had more support to do more of this. I was like, yes, please sign me up. Literally the second I saw it, I signed up.
So that’s a fan, right? I’m a fan of them. But it had nothing to do with the volume of constantly produced. It was that it was this unique spin and it was, again, stories I was familiar enough with titles that I was familiar enough with to click into. So I’m not saying ignore the genre as.
Ignore the tropes, but I will say that I think by being yourself and putting your own spin on your [00:31:00] stories, that own little spin, that own 10%, that’s, you can make the huge difference that keeps readers coming back. And it’s often getting out of the limiting mindset that we have where we have to do these things and have to write this speed and have to hit all these things that makes us able to add that little spice that keeps the readers coming back.
Aria Glizki: I don’t disagree. And then I also do disagree. I feel because of my illness I did say, listen, I wanna be writing the things that I wanna be writing. Not, market expectations, not whatever’s gonna make money, not I wanna write the stories that matter to me. And my experience is that readers who do read my stories, Tend to love them, right? I get negative reviews like everybody does, but more often people really enjoy my books, which is, like I said, so gratifying. And then also nobody reads my stories or that’s an exaggeration, but it feels like getting in front of readers, whether on a serial platform or just regular publishing, it is still a barrier in something that takes time to either learn how to do or run the marketing or whatever else that then you’re still back to can write something else or I can try to do all this other [00:32:00] stuff.
Michael Evans: Yes. I think the key is realizing that packaging is what, the main thing that it’s going back to, right? Because packaging is everything and getting readers in, but I don’t think volume of production is everything. I think that’s the key. You need great packaging, but you don’t need great volume in production necessarily.
That can help, but it’s not a requirement. But in terms of your packaging all these platforms essentially function off like very similar metrics. What is the ctr, what is the conversion rate? And they wanna see that you’re having a similar group of readers with similar demographics clicking in with high frequency and converting to that story at a similar high frequency.
That is reader behavior that’s good. They are liking your story, seeing your story, liking it, and then wanting more of it because they click to start reading it. And I’m curious, for you, what would be your ideal reader? Because that’s the key that you want to know Who, what is your ideal reader that you wanna hone in on Being able to capture with good packaging?
Aria Glizki: Yeah, so that’s always been a challenge for me. Partially because I write in multiple genres, which I know multiple do, but I write multiple genres, subgenres of [00:33:00] romance, I should say multiple subgenres, but then also multiple heat levels. And so I guess my ideal reader is somebody who. Cares about that emotional journey more than about the tropi or the formula, right?
There are readers who, what they want is a book that is predictable, gets them their happy ending, has a specific heat level, and that is what they’re looking for. And I write a little bit more toward people who wanna step outside of that, people who are looking for something that’s a little bit more focused on the humanity of the characters than on hitting the it necessarily.
scratching a specific itch
Michael Evans: I would argue that just in general, most readers, even if there’s archetypes that fit, certain framings, probably do want, like that similar emotional journey, especially like in a romance novel. Like the novel format lends and serialized fiction lend itself really well to that emotional journey.
So I, I’d ask you what specific emotional journey, I’ll put more context in this. Mal Cooper, I’ve mentioned this, talk to the podcast, but it’s so good that I just need to keep mentioning it. Mal Cooper. Did an incredible talk at 20 books, 50 K back in 2021 on the meta story. And this is how they, cuz they write across a good bit of genres have their own [00:34:00] branding.
It’s in their meta story that each time the reader picks up a book that says MD Cooper on it, they can expect a similar emotional arc, a similar emotional journey, no matter the sub genre. And I’m curious if you have a metas story, a similar emotional arc, because then you could reverse engineer who would need that Metas story?
Who would wanna be taken on that emotional journey?
Aria Glizki: Okay. I guess when it comes down to it, what I have are usually women who have particular obstacles or challenges or trauma and finding space and supportive partners and getting to a happy place, a healed happy place in their life, more or less.
I think. That might be oversimplifying it. And it doesn’t apply to at least one of my books. There’s at least one that I can think of that it doesn’t apply to.
Michael Evans: That’s okay, but that’s doesn’t need to be perfect. Yeah, I think
that would be the
meta story. Shelby Lee, an author who we’re quite close with and who has been on the podcast before she rebranded herself thinking about her meta story and now says that she writes books books that hurt and then heal.
Hurt, but Heal. It’s something similar to that. I’m sorry you worded [00:35:00] it better than me, Shelby, but reminds me a lot of that and I feel like I feel what you’re doing and that makes a lot of sense. And the challenge then, because the challenge right now seems to be You have paid subscribers, they’re sticking around for what you have in your subscription.
They’re loyal and there’s a decent number of them. Like most people would love to have 10 paying subscribers where you’re at. But obviously 10 paying subscribers is maybe not what you’re looking for. You might want to have more because that could help with all different things that come up in life and potentially be able to help you be able to do this whole thing more.
Yeah. So how do you feed more people into the funnel so that you can have a hundred times that Just throwing out a number? Yeah. No,
Aria Glizki: that would be wonderful, but Right, exactly. How do you manage that and then how do you, especially with the inconsistency of illness, how do you maintain that?
Michael Evans: I think the inconsistency, like consistency is a little bit more overdone than I think it needs to be.
And only because even if you study throughout history, great artists were they known to be like consistent like every day, like creating a new painting or every year? a lot of times great artists like first of all had huge [00:36:00] struggles whether illness wise, me mentally, huge struggles, life.
Huge, like financial fortune come up and come down, everyone from Mark Twain to Michelangelo has had these things happen. So I don’t know if there’s something like embedded into human psychology that makes consistency necessary. And if it’s not embedded into human psychology, then anything we’re doing to try and be consistent, it’s probably just a short-term algorithm game, which algorithms, again, are abstractions of human behavior and we’re trying to cut to the core of human behavior to actually build sustainable business.
So that’s one thing I would say
Aria Glizki: the core of capitalist society is what I would say we’re conditioned by, the same society that says that if you don’t hold down a job you don’t have as much value, which is bullshit, but it’s still very much messaging that’s out there by that same society that like if you’re not producing that you are not. Worth the value.
Michael Evans: I think maybe the core of a capitalist society, but I think there’s more to it. It’s the core of a consumerist society. We are what we consume and produce, but that’s not what memberships are about. The membership economy is about connection and [00:37:00] belonging, and it’s an iteration of almost getting beyond this consumerist culture.
That’s what a membership’s about. And I think that stories are less about mindless consumption because we can feel when we mindlessly consume stories that we end up with worlds where now we have more people who are depressed and anxiety burden and more lonely than ever before. That’s where we’re at now, in a world that has rewarded mindless and endless consumption and turned us and our stories into something that is hyper, I won’t use the word capitalist, but consumption.
But membership’s something slightly different. So I think as much as I agree with you and agree that this is totally a thing, I think you, given how smart you are and how aware, self-aware you are, thank you, actually have the opportunity to go beyond that. And I think now the world’s coming around to it where we need more people like you.
Aria Glizki: Thank you. I generally don’t know how respond to that. I would love to believe that’s true. And I’m sure a lot of people who are in the author space, people who are focusing on community and subscription memberships and all that’s why we do it. Right?
We aren’t sitting here being like, just give me your money because that’s what I want. That’s not the goal. But we also still exist in an ecosystem that is structured, right? There’s that balance of getting people. One of the things that has been pointed out to me in the past is that, look at my patrons who only wanted one chap, one post a week.
They didn’t want multiple chapters a week, even if I was willing to give it to them because they’re used to sitting down with a book and reading a full book. And so they’re also different ecosystems. The readers who buy your book versus the readers who read serially versus the readers who then come to a subscription to get bonuses and getting into each ecosystem is also a challenge or like transitioning among them in a way that lets you not have the best of both worlds necessarily, but just reach people in multiple ecosystems.
But then how do you build when you’re scattered all over the place? So is it about maybe giving up Certain extra things, like you said earlier, focusing on one one group or focusing on one path or focusing on something. But then that feels a little bit like self-selecting out of other spaces that may lead to readers who love your work, readers who will become super fans, readers who [00:39:00] will do anything to support you even if you’re not producing right in that moment.
Michael Evans: This is a, really great points. Like really great. I’m curious what you would say, Emilia.
Emilia Rose: I think that by you were speaking, I was thinking like that kind of sounds are you exclusive to KU or are you wide to get everyone? And there’s like either way that’s completely fine of how you wanna run your business.
But. It could come down to what do you have time to do? What, do you have time to run? Multiple different platforms and multiple different payment structures or can, do you have time? Are you mentally or physical, physically able to do that? Or do you wanna just focus on one because there’s no, there’s nothing saying you’re not going to succeed if you just focus on one.
So for me, when I started, I was just focusing on subscriptions I was doing and serial fiction. So serial fiction mostly. But for me to succeed in like a subscription world. I didn’t have to post on Amazon. I didn’t have to release books and bundle them [00:40:00] up and release audiobooks. I just focused on this one.
One thing that I knew I was really good at and I loved doing, and if you have a bunch of payment structures or bonus or subscriptions and serial fiction and Amazon books or physical books and you don’t like doing one of them, even if it’s social media, you don’t like being on TikTok or you don’t like being on Facebook, you don’t have to be there.
You could potentially be losing out on some readers, but there’s going to be other readers in other places that if you just like, I don’t wanna say B down if you just focused on that one place, you can capture those readers.
Michael Evans: It goes back to a big principle that Joe Solari talks about in a book that I absolutely love called Advantage.
And I’m gonna just recommend to everyone listening to this. It’s a great book I publishing, but. The law kind of running publishing that he traces back hundreds of years ago is this concept of advantage. And it goes back to really network theory, which I won’t nerd out [00:41:00] about in this podcast, but it rules our life.
Network theory rules, everything we do in the modern age. And essentially stories. Stories are what cope here and run through social networks communities ultimately. That’s right. We keep going back to commmunity cuz it’s really there’s math that goes into this and I’m not gonna go into all that, but the big point with this is that your stories, once they gain crown and traction in a specific community will continue to stay popular as a result of their popularity and viral infection within that community.
And outside of like mega bestselling hits specific genres, Community is my, doesn’t have to exist in Facebook. In a Facebook group. K is a bit broader than that, right? But a specific group of readers, specific kind of person is going to learn more about your books over time. And the more that you can focus on a singular group or a focused group of people, the more momentum you will gain within that group, which will make you be able to do better with less effort.
This is what he studies across the publishing industry. An incredible book there. There’s numbers in his book that back this up. So what my advice would be to you is think about the just across industries, look at social media. So social media is a space where like you can be a video creator, right?
What does a video creator mean? I could be a TikTok or I could be Instagram reels, I could be YouTube, I could be on Twitch. All that involves video. Typically, creators focus on one singular platform as they get big one singular platform. That’s it. One singular channel. That’s it. They don’t post anywhere else.
They just do one thing. And I think as authors, I’m not then suggesting be exclusive to KU or not go y the ebook retailers aren’t traditional social media platforms. They work a little bit differently. So don’t take what I’m saying and then say I shouldn’t be y with my books. But what I am saying is that one discovery method, one funnel is probably all you need to focus on at first, right?
Unless you wanna do two or three nailing one funnel and doing it really is what will lead to a cumulative advantage, which will get you more readers at time. If you only have three hours in a week, putting all of that into one project and getting 10% further on that project each month versus going 1% further on that project each month, the compound effects of that aren’t 10 x faster or three x factor.
If you’re dividing it between three projects, it’s hundreds times faster over [00:43:00] the course of years.
Aria Glizki: That’s certainly fair, and I will chime in here to say that I also hate social media and I’ve tried my best for the sake of trying to, find readers, communicate with readers, but I have let that fall by the wayside just because it’s, it takes a lot out of me and doesn’t have the the kind of return that it would need in order to be a priority.
But I think one of the other things that I struggle with is as we talk about, historical artists, as we talk about specific people that you’ve named, who’ve found success in doing specific ways, there’s always an issue of survivorship bias. Because, like you said, once your story is popular, it sustains its own popularity.
But getting your story to be popular is, I think where a lot of people struggle. And it’s one of the reasons I’ve, in my decade of publishing tried different paths is because getting to that point is.
Michael Evans: A challenge? It’s cumulative advantage. The full word is cumulative advantage. So what that means is it actually is okay, you’re not gonna go from one to 1000 and blow up overnight.
Those are the rare stories. Those are the exceptions. [00:44:00] The real rule is I went from one to 10 readers and then my next launch, I went from 10 to 20. My next launch, I went from 10, 20 to 40. My next launch, I went from 40 to 80. My next launch, I went from 81 60, 1 60 to three 20. And now you start to see a build where it’s oh wow.
Overnight then from a couple hundred readers to a couple thousand. But that’s because it took them years to go from one to two to three to 10. As Chris Hopper says, you, you don’t have a million readers. You have A reader. A reader. Yeah. And that’s how this works. So I would, and this is where I think publishing like is changing, right?
Because of this very much like hyper capitalist way that we approach publishing. It’s this huge hit or bust, right? Each one is gonna be a bestseller or not. It’s at the top list or it’s not. And. It’s honestly a toxic mindset that oftentimes makes us as authors, and I’ve had the same mindset myself. It took me forever to break out of it dependent on publishers and retailers.
The only things that can really juice us up to the top of the charts overnight, but that is, like you said, the outlier there. That is survivorship buyers. I a hundred percent agree that’s not the story for most people. And replicating what worked for them [00:45:00] doesn’t account that. Sometimes people get lucky, doesn’t shade their work, but science people get lucky.
But I do think focusing on your existing readers, which is the subscription mindset and one at a time growing and growing it’s not sexy, but it’s also something that’s achievable when you’re like, okay, I only have so many hours in the day. I might actually get sick for the next couple months and not be able to keep up with the latest trends and the latest platform in this.
But what I can do is focus on what I have really cared about since day one, which is, My existing readers, cuz they will help you find my readers. Now, yes, you will need some sort of discovery mechanism in to find your readers, especially in the beginning. But it doesn’t have to be every discovery mechanism.
The biggest thing that people don’t do in that discussion that I have done and made this mistake myself, it’s not really ask yourself the hard questions about why.
It didn’t work because. Oftentimes we shoot for the success metric is like going viral, but did this get you a few readers? Was this something that brought people in? And if that worked a little bit, was it worth your time? Maybe not, maybe ultimately readers want great stories, right?
And that [00:46:00] sounds simple. How do you get them to start reading your stories? I think this is where packaging is worth spending. If you had three hours in a week, I’d write for two and a half hours and spend the rest of my 30 minutes exclusively focused on how I could package my stories. Meaning how could I put titles that resonate with the market?
How could I have covers that resonate with the market? That stuff is important. And people do judge a book by its cover. Absolutely. Just period.
Aria Glizki: Absolutely that’s very true. And it’s funny how divergent people’s opinions are on covers cuz I’ve, had people compliment the same cover that somebody else will tell me will never sell that book.
That’s obviously everything is subjective in our industry too, from to some extent, right? Which is why you see authors changing up their covers while you see people changing up their blurbs and making all these changes. I guess
Michael Evans: I would say there’s a few things that data will be helpful for and a few things that data aren’t helpful for.
I think with a cover seeing what works best from like a readership standpoint, where is the C E T R highest? If platforms give you that many don’t, but seeing what’s resonating with readers from a data perspective probably gives [00:47:00] you a better insight. And a thing that is a great hack to that is if you have an existing newsletter list, let your readers pick your next cover, especially if you have a couple hundred readers that’s getting close, technically a.
It’s not Sicily sign sample size, but it’s getting there. So if you have even a small connection to an audience your readers might know a lot better than you do what a good cover is. If you get three mockups from your cover designer, just have your readers pick the best one. The thing about publishing, like it is hard. And that’s one thing too. I wanna ask you, how have you given all your personal health struggles, what has kept you at it so long? Cuz I think it’s honestly incredible.
I’m really proud of you. But what is, I imagine there’s been some low moments there.
Aria Glizki: There definitely have been, and there have definitely been times when I just wasn’t writing in the sense of, I didn’t, I wasn’t working on a story that I was excited about. I was trying to work on the business of publishing part of what.
Keeps me doing. It’s just the reality that I’m stuck in bed a lot of the time, and so writing stories allows me to do something that’s fulfilling, but also allows me to get out of my head in a even deeper way than consuming stories does. I can embody these characters within my head and [00:48:00] have that almost out of body experience, which sounds kooky, but I don’t mean it in like a literal sense.
It gives me space to say, okay, what would my life, not my life, what would a character’s life personality would ever be in this scenario? What if like my unleashes a dragon shifter novel, so like they get to fly and run and have all this super strength and stuff, right? So it partially is the insistence of characters in my head, and partially is the fact that there are limited things that I can do when I’m stuck in bed and writing is one of them, and writing is a way that I.
Would like to, or have tried to make a mark on the world and impact people despite the fact that I’m so limited and stuck in bed and dealing with all my health stuff. And so I will say I have definitely been like, I should just stop. I should just give up. And I’m very much on the brink of that right now.
Wondering if I should finish unleashed and then just set this aside because it is so challenging to reach people when you can’t do A and B and C and D, right? Like when you can only do a very limited amount. I think partially it’s circumstance and [00:49:00] partially it is that I really do enjoy it, right?
It’s a part of me that I don’t want to have to give up unless I have to. And publishing and writing for me are separate, but I would like my stories to actually be read and not just exist, in my head or on my
computer. Of course.
Emilia Rose: It sounds like writing is like ex escapism for you.
And I don’t think that you should give up on something where you can get lost in a story cuz I do that all the time. I have characters running through my head and I want to live out experiences through them and I can only do that by writing their stories. So I definitely don’t think you should give up on writing.
Michael Evans: and also one thing that’s true is And obviously to do writing sustainably. And as a living there’s a certain number of people we have to hit to be able to make enough money to be able to, pay the expenses of life.
And there’s no way around that. You can obviously see I’m making enough money where I’m not to do this. And that’s a harsh reality when you’re not. And 99% of writers are not. And I’ve been in that boat for that’s a boat I know very well. So I very much [00:50:00] feel you. But one thing I don’t want you to do is forget that your books have impacted people and your books have changed the lives of people.
And it’s a shame that this industry can have a lot of guilt, myself included, when we aren’t, when we aren’t at that level where we feel like our stories our fan base is big enough to be worthy, but impacting just one life is and it sounds cheesy, but it really is priceless.
It really is the most beautiful thing. And you haven’t just impacted one life. You as we speak, have 11 patrons. You as we speak, have a history of reaching hundreds and hundreds of paying readers, thousands of readers throughout your career. That is an achievement and a mark in the world that I will never, ever tell you to settle for.
And I’ll never tell you that you aren’t valid to it in moments. Feel like, I wish I had more readers. That’s a very valid emotion. But I also hope you take the time to also feel like, wow, it’s pretty cool that I was able to create something that connected with people, period. That is really cool.
Emilia Rose: I would say like even for people who are making a lot of money publishing, they feel the same exact thing. [00:51:00] I know I’ve felt the same way since I started and I always feel like, oh, my books should be reaching more people, but they’re not.
That means they’re not good. And it’s like this really vicious cycle that happens no matter where you are in your career. And it’s really hard to stop comparing yourself to other people and putting that value on how many readers you can get, new readers, you can get over and over again.
The
Michael Evans: hedonic treadmill. Yeah. It’s tough. It’s tough, I know we’re not coming out of this, like some of these calls we have with authors we come out and they have a game plan and we’re like, wow. Awesome. I don’t feel like I, I don’t feel like I have coming out at least myself. I have a total set game plan. But I feel this was an incredible conversation for people to listen to and I hope for you it was helpful.
But before we go, I want to ask you, is there any question that you have for me and Amelia about anything, writing, subscriptions, anything that we can help you with? We’ll be honest, we’re not gurus that have all the answers, but we will try and help.
Aria Glizki: I think part of my question with subscriptions and how I’ve experienced subscriptions is how to [00:52:00] create that filler content.
Or if you have ideas for filler content that isn’t based on oh, you have artistic skills, or, oh, you have a. I don’t know, some fan who did art for you or whatever else. Something that gives you the ability to say, oh I’m not writing anything new right now. Or, I’m like working on revising my book, but here’s content for patrons that is still worthwhile to them, that isn’t oh, write a short story or, oh snap your fingers and have bonus content.
That allows you to create a stronger connection with people. I’ve tried doing like I do floor plans for my locations and so I’ve tried sharing things like that. I recently shared a song that I wrote, which is like, creating new
Michael Evans: content, but Cool.
Aria Glizki: But a lot of the times, and I think sometimes this is just the reality of a small subscription too, when people being busy, is that it goes out into the void.
You don’t hear anything back, and so you’re. I just, I struggle, with creating content that is gonna help me connect or it feels that way.
Emilia Rose: What if you did, you said you wrote it wasn’t, you write all sorts of steam, all sorts of genres, but you have women who have some sort of trauma. And it sounds I might be wrong.
I’ve never watched this movie before, but I saw an example of it. So I know E Prey Love, I think that’s the name of the movie. Like they don’t fit into one specific genre as far as I know, but they were targeting A certain type of person to watch their movie. And when that certain type of person watched their movie, they went to tell like all their friends who were also that kind of certain type of person.
And so it could be running your subscription could be something for that extra content. Could be something like doing community posts with people who relate to, it might not be your story, but your character story. Or deciding Hey, let’s all watch a movie together. Or let’s watch a short, animation together or some, or something that you can your audience can really like, relate to and really feel a deep connection with that is also connected with [00:54:00] what your characters go through.
If I explained that correctly.
Aria Glizki: No I think you did. I think I understand what you’re saying. guess unfortunately, right? That sounds great. And then I go, oh, wait, but then that’s my three hours for the week. If we watch a movie together, if we, and not even like posting about it and sending it up and getting people hyped out about it, it’s engaging for those three hours.
That’s my week. And then that’s where I go back to oh, maybe for me personally, hopefully not for listening personally. Maybe I have hit that wall with my health where I just need to say, all right, I can’t keep doing this. Not because of you guys. I wanna be clear. You guys have been great.
It’s just yeah, that sounds great. And then I know that I’ll never be able to pull it off, and so it leaves me feeling helpless a little
Michael Evans: bit. Here’s a different framing cuz I, I understand where you’re coming from, but at the same time, this is ultimately not about, you said it yourself, you’re gonna be writing anyways.
Even when you’ve hit dark moments, you come back to the stories because this is what you do. Yeah. This is, you are a writer, you are a storyteller, and there’s not, there’s no taking that out of you. And that is what makes you beautiful. And I think that part of you, that part of you that [00:55:00] needs to create that story and that has that passion to also share it with the world should just focus on the things that it is that you love and the readers.
And this sounds so optimistic, but let’s be real here. Would you rather do all these things that you hate, that have a 99% chance of not working or do all these things that you love that also have a 99% chance of not working people? I’m living? Like that. Let’s be honest, like that is what it comes down to.
Do you want to do the things that everyone else tells you need to do to make a living, but that you found out? Yeah, there’s no formula. There’s no formula. Cause sometimes you get Lucky Sam exhaust and I think don’t. But guess what? You already know you love this and your readers love you and what you are able to give them in a given day, a given month, a given year is enough because you are enough as a person.
And that’s what it comes down to. That something as simple as that. Your worth as a human is worth it and is worth it to your readers. And they’ve already shown you that. And you don’t need to do or make yourself into anything that you’re not. And there’s anything advice I could give to an author.
It is doing exactly that. Because if you do something that you’re not increasing, that you’re not, you will eventually have a business that you hate, even if you reach your dreams. There are so many authors that hate [00:56:00] what they do. That’s a shame. That’s true. Yeah. I want you to keep loving it and if you keep loving what you’re doing and.
It’s a fun three hours in your week, then like at the very least it was that. And if it ends up continuing to go you already are making some money from this. You have 10 people paying you a month. And if it continues to grow, that’s great. Keep loving it. And if you one day don’t love it, maybe figure out how to tweak it.
Or maybe that is a time where you go, writing isn’t for me anymore, but I’m guessing because it’s been 10 years now and you’re still here. Even this is really hard and you’ve been through a lot and you deserve a huge congrats. I feel like you’re gonna be here doing this for another 10.
Aria Glizki: Here’s hope.
say. I’m not, sometimes I’m not sure I’m gonna be here for another 10, but if I am, hopefully I will keep doing this as well. Least to some extent in the ways that I can.
Michael Evans: Yeah, I can promise you, regardless, you’ve left your mark on us. Today. And I think this was like a really impactful and open conversation that real privilege to have here.
Cuz I’ve listened to lots of podcast episodes on writing and I think, being in this industry, long enough conversations like this aren’t had enough because they’re so difficult to have. So I just wanna [00:57:00] say huge thank you for having the courage to be here with us today. Thank you for
Aria Glizki: having me and for being open to having conversations that aren’t necessarily solvable, right?
There isn’t a quick fix or something concrete to suggest. A lot of people don’t like talking about that. So I appreciate you being open to having this conversation in the first place.
Michael Evans: It’s important. And in the Facebook group, there’ll be a post about this podcast and I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on it, your advice as well.
And we can all share maybe some of our own emotions about this because I’m already feeling a lot after this podcast. And yeah just thank you again,
I hope you enjoyed this podcast with Aria all about how you can succeed in subscriptions as an author with chronic illness. It was a very vibrant conversation, a very intense one, I think a very important one. So I hope you all had a great time listening. Now I wanna share something exciting. It’s the first time I’m gonna mention this publicly, and if y’all are interested, we’re having a conference.
It’s gonna be. On May 6th and May 7th in Boston at Artists for Humanity. Two full days be a ton of fun. This is in 2024. It’ll be the [00:58:00] first annual in-person Subscriptions for Authors Summit and the second annual Subscriptions for Authors Summit because we actually had a virtual subscriptions for Author Summit that you can watch for free.
I’ll link to it in the description, so it’s gonna be a lot of fun. I hope to see. Some of you there and if you’re interested in getting early bird tickets, you can find that in the link and the description. It’s not the official launch yet, but you know about it here. You know about it here now. Hope to see you there.
In the meantime, hope everyone has a great rest of the day. We’ll, in a future podcast, we’ll share more about the conference. We’ll have a longer announcement. This is just the, here’s a link. Thank you for listening to the end. You get a little reward. In the meantime, hope you have an amazing rest of your day.
And don’t forget storytellers rule the world.