Uploaded August 10, 2023.
EJ Frost is a steamy romance author that makes $500 per month from her subscription bolstered by a unique cross-promo strategy that has helped authors in the group achieve dozens of paid subscribers. Not only this but EJ shares brilliant insights on reader retention and community building that you won’t want to miss.
EJ Frost’s links:
EJ’s Website: https://emmafrostuk.wordpress.com/
EJ’s Subscription: https://www.patreon.com/ejfrost and https://reamstories.com/ejfrost/public
EROS Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/368625391891021
Get your ticket to the Subscriptions for Authors Summit (May 6 – 7, 2024 in Boston): https://summit.subscriptionsforauthors.com/
#44 Episode Outline:
00:00 Introduction
06:27 How EJ’s Subscription Cross-Promo Works
12:50 How EJ Gets Readers To Upgrade + Her Subscription Income Details
17:47 How EJ Retains Readers as Paid Subscribers
22:42 EJ’s Physical Newsletter
27:19 EJ’s Unique Strategy for Signed Books
37:28 How EJ Leverages Her Time in Her Subscription for Profit
42:15 What EJ Has Learned About Short Stories
48:06 EJ’s Monthly Zoom Call at Her $25 Tier
55:46 Conclusion
#44 Episode Transcript:
Michael Evans: [00:00:00] First up, big announcement alert. That’s right, big announcement. The first ever in person Subscriptions for Authors Summit is now announced and you can get your ticket to join us. It’s in Boston on May 6th and 7th at the Art is for Humanity epicenter. A gorgeous venue, only two and a half miles from the airport, five minute walk from the metro station, and right in the heart of beautiful South Austin.
I can’t wait to see so many of you there. It’s going to be the single best event to be able to learn how to start and grow your subscription as an author. We already have some incredible authors signed up and in December we’ll be announcing our speaker lineup. Right now we have some very extra special early bird pricing where you can get access to the entire conference, the virtual recordings, everything that we’re going to be doing.
for just 1. 99. It’s a really great price. I think one of the best value [00:01:00] conference tickets that you can buy as an author. And the entire event is designed to help you accelerate your subscription, grow your subscriber, grow your readership, build close relations to your superfans, and also use subscriptions to supercharge the rest of your publishing business.
A very exciting topic that we’re going to be diving Deep into with the best in the industry. It’s a great conference for authors who are just getting started because we will have a lot of information about how to help you get started. We’re even going to be getting everyone a signed book all about subscriptions who comes.
to the summit. But it’s also a great conference for more advanced authors because we’re going to be having lots of topics focused on helping you scale your subscription and helping you start a subscription as an already successful author, maybe in retailers and serial fiction platforms. So it’s just, it’s going to be amazing.
I am so excited to meet so many of you. And if you want to come, you just have to click on the link in the description. It’s summit. subscriptionsforauthors. com really [00:02:00] easy landing page to remember has so much information on it. We’ll definitely be talking about it more because there’s some time between now and May 6th and 7th of 2024, but if you want to get in on that early bird pricing, now’s your chance.
And also, now’s your chance to listen to an incredible and special podcast with none other than EJ Frost. EJ is… She’s a longtime member of the Subscriptions for Authors Facebook group, and has always been someone who I admire. She’s brilliant. She has a successful subscription, generating roughly 5 a month and makes up about a third of her income as an author, which is super impressive.
And she’s a steamy romance author that has been able to publish on retailers, but also again, make a significant living through her subscription. But we’re now going to get to the real details of what EJ Frost has done. And I was blown away. I was blown away. Thank you. EJ is easily one of the most impressive authors we’ve had on this podcast, and this is one of the most useful [00:03:00] episodes.
EJ, you are amazing. The knowledge that you dropped on us is incredible. I was just like, she shares her secrets about how she’s had 90% year over year retention, how she’s been able to build a community of readers who… Run their own calls, basically, now, and are paying 25 a month to be part of this exclusive club.
And then, she talks all about the thing that all of you want to hear about, which is cross promo, which is how she’s built an incredible cross promo group that helps uplift other authors through a steamy one shot called the Wheel of Smut is what they’re spinning. Oh my god, it’s just, I don’t want to spoil it, we just have to get into it.
It’s amazing. And no matter what your genre is, there’s so many insights that you can learn to take from this podcast and bring it to your own author business. So get ready. This is going to be amazing. EJ Frost, descriptions for authors podcast. Let’s begin. EJ is so amazing that off air she just is sharing all these amazing things like we’re gonna press the cord we’re gonna press we have to get [00:04:00] into this because EJ you have done something in subscriptions that I’ve really I know of you know the HEA collective is something that’s different but of a similar nature but this is truly unique in the author world in terms of exactly what you’re doing and how you’re doing it which is steamy one shots which is Explain it to me.
I think it’s such a cool concept.
EJ Frost: The Steamy One Shot started as a cross promotional hop. So there were about 20 of us who have some kind of subscription service, whether it’s Patreon or Reem or Substack that had an erotic romance element to it. We were having trouble promoting it. Patreon in particular hides 18 plus creators within the platform.
So you can’t search us natively within the platform. And so we were looking to promote each other and we thought the way to do that was to open a special tier in our subscription service and write a story a week or every other week [00:05:00] based on a prompt that would have a naughty element to it.
And. And put those stories up on our subscription service, and then cross promote the stories within a Facebook group to our subscribers. And that has turned into a little bit of a larger thing with a working group to promote erotic romance writers with subscription services. But the hop element of it is still very much there, where we are cross promoting each other’s subscription.
every week or every other week with a story that is themed based on a prompt that we generate on a Saturday with the hope of getting the story up by the following Friday.
Michael Evans: Oh
EJ Frost: how it works.
Michael Evans: It sounds amazing. I mean, I, that’s how it works at a high level, but I actually want to dive deep because I think that, you know, authors who are listening, there’s so much inspiration here where it’s like, if you’re not an erotic romance writer, like, this is still an amazing podcast for you because there’s so much to learn about that could [00:06:00] apply to your genre.
And if you are an erotic romance writer, well then, I mean, EJ, you have, you got it going on. So. I’m aware that you do something called the wheel of smut in terms of how you picked your props. Walk me through if I, what is the wheel of smut? How does this work?
EJ Frost: We found a wheel, a literal sort of Roulette kind of wheel on the internet and you load it with prompts. So the our first assignment within the hop was for each of us to generate 10 prompts. And we ended up with about a hundred. They, we typed them into the wheel. And now we spin the wheel on a Saturday live within the Facebook group.
And it, it. lands on a prompt we can construe the prompt literally or we can try to construe it a little bit more broadly and sometimes they’ve been really out there. I think everybody’s favorite is the fainting minigoat prompt and we were supposed to write an [00:07:00] erotic romance story about a fainting minigoat, and we did.
We all did.
Michael Evans: That takes real skill and imagination. I mean, I don’t know if I
EJ Frost: Daring. Let’s call it
Michael Evans: should ask about the story in there, but that is fascinating. So in this Facebook group, is it like readers are able to witness this live too, or is it just the authors who are in the working group?
EJ Frost: We, we do it through StreamYard, and so we’re streaming directly into the Facebook group real time. And the patrons have been great about watching and commenting and giving us feedback on the prompts. They seem to really like it. And then we also save it up to YouTube and so they can be uploaded into our subscription services as well.
If they support non embedded videos. And that was also seemed to be great because a lot of my patrons in particular are not on Facebook. I don’t know why, but they’re not.
Michael Evans: That is, oh, I, I don’t want to derail, but let’s go back to that and your patrons and all your attention tactics and just a [00:08:00] bit. Cause that’s. I think that that’s interesting, but I’m then curious, so I have this prompt as an author there, you know, out of all authors, which, how many authors now are in the Stingy One Shots cross promo group?
Because I know it’s probably, the authors have, must have come in and out out of the last year, right?
EJ Frost: Right. So we have 35 in the cross promo group at the moment. But not all of them are hopping with us. And so as active authors in the hop we have about 12.
Michael Evans: Okay. And what does it mean to, like, if I, okay, so I get this prompt. I’m here. I’m part of the hop and is every author writing a short story based on that prompt in the hop every week. Do you take turns? How long are the short stories? Are we talking like? 5, 000 words, or what is your, is there even a requirement?
EJ Frost: They’re one shots, so they’re supposed to be short. So this was initially the idea was initially flash fiction, 500 to 1, 500 words. There are a few of us like me who are a [00:09:00] little wordy and cannot contain ourselves to 1, 500 words. And so we tend to overwrite a little bit, and either we split it into two stories, which I do a lot, or we offer part of the story, To the steamy one shots, the 1500 or 2000 words to the steamy one shot here, and then an expanded story to higher tiers on our subscription service that seems to be working quite well.
I know Malverna McFarlane in particular has been doing that very routinely as she overwrites these stories into the three and 5000 word stage.
Michael Evans: Oh, interesting. Oh, okay. That, that’s very, that’s smart. And now let’s talk about the tier itself. So, cross promo for a subscription, I mean this is, cross promo, as so many people are saying now, is like one of the ways that authors get discovered. It’s one of, you know, the tried and true ways, really, that work.
How is a cross promo working from a subscription standpoint? Are readers getting access to also, like, All of the authors like [00:10:00] how is that how is that working?
EJ Frost: You own your, you have your own subscribers. So the subscribers are invited into the group to be group members and I think we have about 50 of them in the group. And so they can see what’s going on in the group. They can watch the spin. If we put up a teaser, if we put up a little snippet from the stories that we’ve been writing, they can see all of that.
We had a holiday party and we did some giveaways. So they get to see all of that, but if they want to see other authors stories, they have to become subscribers for the other authors tiers. It’s a 2 tier on Patreon and a 3 tier on Ream. And we mostly post every week, although everybody is busy and has lives.
And so it’s all about what you promise your own subscribers. I do not promise my subscribers a story every week, personally. I simply promise them that they will get stories every month, multiple stories. And usually I give them three out of four, on average.
Michael Evans: [00:11:00] Oh my god I mean, there’s so much to love about this model I mean one how impressive that you have a Facebook group that’s like 50 paying subscribers one of the biggest things I see when authors cross from out back and forth is that They have a list and one author has a list of people who are completely freebie seekers that they’ve got in all these list builder Book little things isn’t bad there.
There can be great people there. But you know, you think oh, well, it’s going out to a thousand readers It’s like well that conversions gonna be you know, you have to adjust Expectations accordingly, right but you are crafting this high quality List of people, these high quality relationships, but then they all go in the group and then for subscriptions, it’s all about the fandom.
It’s all about, you know, the interaction and feeling a part of it. And you’re able to then have this community basically can have all these other communities that pollinate off of it. So I can imagine being a reader, like, Oh, like, you know, this author isn’t my author that I’m subscribed to now isn’t doing a prompt this week, but I really want to see another author’s prompt on this or, [00:12:00] Oh, like.
I loved this prompt for this week and I’ve read that one already, but I want another story. Genius. It makes the cross promo so easy. And then you get someone in these two and 3 tiers, which is great, but I don’t think that’s the end game. So talk to me about how has it been when you get a subscriber in this cross promo authors making their own promises, authors have their own tiers.
You know, this all makes sense to me. Now someone joins the 3 tier. Have you seen people when they joined the steamy one shot tier? Have they upgraded to other tiers or are they just hanging out 3? I mean, it’s better than nothing, but it would be nice if they upgrade. Has that happened?
EJ Frost: I have almost no one at my 2 tier on Patreon, and I actually have no one on my 3 tier on Reem, because they’ve all upgraded. I think one of the things that is wonderful about the way subscription services are set up is how well they upsell the subscribers. So I post on my subscription platforms. But almost every day, if not every other [00:13:00] day, I give content constantly and that can be anything from A graphic that i’ve been working on that i’m giving them early access to to a work in progress A snippet a couple of pages to a video of me and my bunnies i’ve started talking about author process online as well giving them short videos three five minute videos a couple of times a week about my process and so they can constantly see that I am posting content, but if they are not a subscriber to a higher tier, they can’t see what it is.
They just get the headline of it. So they can see when this story goes up three, three or four times a month. But what they can really see is that there’s constantly content going up every day or every other day and they don’t have access to it. So they buy up and I have almost nobody that stays at the 2 tier or 2, 3 tier.
They buy up into the either 5 or 10 tier almost immediately.
Michael Evans: Wow. That’s, that’s really cool. And for those who are wondering, like, [00:14:00] what is EJ offering? What are her tiers look like? Definitely, like, in the description, I’ll link to your subscription so people can check out. I only see one shot tier, but all of your other tiers. And now you’re at the point where you have literally, like, dozens of subscribers.
And
EJ Frost: That’s 30.
Michael Evans: how much. In terms of like your overall business, because I know you have books, why do you have also some series in KU? What are subscriptions making now in terms of your total income? What’s the portion of it? Like,
EJ Frost: Third.
Michael Evans: there’s a third.
EJ Frost: A third.
Michael Evans: Wow. And to be clear, like to, to the audience, I got so many people who like do well in descriptions from serial fiction platforms.
Like do you write on serial fiction platforms or does most of your readership come from retailers?
EJ Frost: So I have a lot of different sources of income and definitely 75% of my income comes in through through book sales of some sort, either direct book sales or [00:15:00] retailer book sales. But 75% of it is book income. And, and then. Of that, it’s now beginning to move into subscriber income. But I also have affiliates, some affiliate programs that I’m part of.
And I see a decent amount of affiliate income. And then the subscription services as well. And so my original plan, my original business plan, because I have a day job that I don’t want to quit. It’s, it’s a day job that’s very still. near and dear to my heart, and I don’t, I wouldn’t want to leave it.
But the idea was that I would replace my day job income, a quarter of my day job income, and be able to cut down to two thirds hours in my day job and spend the other third of my time writing. And of that income that I now need to support, you know, a third replacement a third of that is now coming from my subscription services.
Michael Evans: Wow. So you
are,
EJ Frost: and that’s been huge for me.
Michael Evans: Yeah, because once you get, [00:16:00] once you are able to replace, you know, the income level that you need fully with your subscription, it’s like, actually, you, you can, once you include all the other income changes, like, it’s actually pretty, pretty realistic to make that move.
Pretty safe.
EJ Frost: It’s significant and it’s given me confidence to do a lot of things. So it gave me confidence to hire a PA and keep her on instead of just saying, well, I’m going to bring you on for, you know, book releases or whatever. So I have now of a PA who gives me It’s basically part time, she gives me half time.
And it gave me the confidence to take one of my serieses wide, because I didn’t feel that I needed to be constantly dependent on KU income anymore. And it’s also given me confidence to really diversify into things that I wouldn’t say are direct book sales. I’ve taken time to develop swag, I’ve taken time to look at Kickstarter campaigns.
And that has all come out of the confidence of having A subscription income every month and getting paid immediately not [00:17:00] having to wait 90 days for the retailers to release my income so it’s given me it’s not just about replacement of income or or income streams. It’s about confidence and feeling that there is a Sort of reliable base of money that I can build off of
Michael Evans: Well, let’s talk about that, because it, in theory, it’s confident, and I don’t doubt it’s confident for you, but subscriptions are only monthly recurring revenue if fans continue paying. If, if a
reader unsubscribes. Right. Then it’s
EJ Frost: Well, sometimes they buy a year in advance
Michael Evans: yes. Oh, you’re right. Not always monthly. You’re right. Right.
But if it’s the idea that it’s recurring, right. There’s something that’s continuing to happen in the future. How have you seen that in your scripture? Cause obviously no one’s going to have, or very rare. Do you see 100% retention? You will expect some readers to drop off at some points for [00:18:00] personal financial reasons.
Maybe they’ve moved on to support other authors and that’s natural, but what kind of retention Have you seen, and how have you achieved that?
EJ Frost: So I, I do offer people the ability to purchase a year in advance if they want to and I have had some people take me up on that which has been lovely. It’s guaranteed money. Nice. So I’ve seen some of that. And I, I, Recommend that to everybody there. It’s no skin off your nose if no one ever takes you up on it.
But if they do, it’s really great. So make sure you offer it. And the other thing that I would say is that my retention has been incredibly high. For which I’m very grateful. But I spend a lot of time checking in with my patrons messaging them and doing Zoom calls with them and polling them within the subscription service itself to find out if they’re happy and if they’re enjoying it and what they want to see.
What am I not doing for them? What would make them stick around and, and, you know, subscribe for another month? So, my [00:19:00] retention has been 90% of the patrons who signed on between July and when I launched last year and August. And of those, I’ve still got 90% of my, of the people who originally signed on.
Michael Evans: I mean, that’s, that’s incredibly high. I mean, 90%, you’re, you’re 90% year over year retention.
EJ Frost: Oh, I’m almost at a year. That’s right. My, my I’ve had my subscription service for 11 months.
Michael Evans: I, that’s like, I mean, huge congrats. That’s like almost a mind blowing level of retention. Because, you know, you would typically see anything under 5% a month. In terms of the drop off. So 95% a month retention month over month is really high. But if you compound that over a year, you’ll still start to see that even in very high performing subscriptions, having a 70% drop off after a year is, is, is actually not bad.
That’s actually decent. That’s very, if you’re, if you’re there at that position, I wouldn’t be mad about [00:20:00] that. 90% is like, like, that’s so incredible that like. That’s almost like, wow, that’s very high. I’m proud of you. And that’s incredible. So you, yeah, no, I mean like you’re, you put a ton of work into it, but what would, what would be your advice?
Like in terms of what you’ve learned over the last year. How are you going to now look to hopefully retain that and keep, you know, we won’t even put a number on it, but ultimately keep your fans happy going forward into the next year. You know, what’s looking different from, you know, year one. Now we’re getting close to year two.
What
EJ Frost: you. You too.
Michael Evans: you’ve learned about keeping?
EJ Frost: Find out where your readers sit. And that has a lot of, a lot of broad implications. Where, where do they actually physically sit? Do they physically sit somewhere that you could see them? Could you go? And have a holiday party with them. It’s something I’m really contemplating for, for this year too.
I have a cluster of patrons who all live [00:21:00] within about five hours of each other in the United States. And so I’m looking into spending. Having a holiday party with them next year. I’d really like to do that. So where do they sit? Where do they physically land? Can you interact with them in some way physically?
So one of the things that I did after running the, my subscription service for three months was to open a physical newsletter tier. It was one of the things that when I pulled them they had asked for. They said they’d really like something physically from me every month. I wasn’t sure I could keep up with it.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to put in it. What do you put in a newsletter, a physical newsletter, month after month, that you’re not putting in your e newsletter every, every, every week or every other week? So I had to sort of figure out what series they connected to, what books they were interested in, where their interests lay.
And it turns out that superfans have slightly different… Interests in foci than maybe your general fans. And so, although it’s not my best selling book series, [00:22:00] the books that they were the most interested in was the mystery romance series that I’ve got going called Daddy PI. And that helped me figure out and focus down on what things they might enjoy, you know, coming out of that.
So part of the Daddy PI series is a kink club called Blunts. And so what I opened for the P the physical. Newsletters here, was Blunt’s Talk, and this is a physical newsletter, it’s just one page, sometimes it’s a page and a back, that comes out of the club,
Michael Evans: Why not?
EJ Frost: and it carries stories, out of the club, so it usually has a central story, that’s patron only, only, only they get this.
This is very exclusive to them, so that’s the exclusivity element of it. It has news, what’s coming, so that’s the early access element of it. And it has kind of fun stuff. [00:23:00] One of the things I really wanted in my subscription service was to have a sense of fun and playfulness, because I feel like I’m losing that.
The business of publishing is a serious business. And it’s easy to get bogged down in the seriousness of it and lose the kind of play element that I really like in my books and in my writing. So, there are fun bits. Mischief and Mayhem is one of the sub headers of my newsletter, and I always have something in there.
So last month’s was, The stables have been expanded to exclude, to include an exclosure, an enclosure for the Blunt’s Menagerie, including Harry! The fainting mini goat from the story and a fluffle of rescue bunnies who are being trained as therapy animals for the elderly. Please visit our new editions at your leisure.
Take carrots. That kind of thing is not something I could really do in a book, probably. Unless, I don’t know, if I, if it is a way I could [00:24:00] do it in a book, I haven’t thought about it. But I can do it in a newsletter. I can do it in this and I can give them that sense of fun and that’s what they’re looking for.
And I think that’s what keeps them coming back month after month.
Michael Evans: I mean, I just want to take a moment here and be like, what an incredible thing that you’ve done. Most authors can’t get their readers to open their newsletters. You’ve got to them to pay for your newsletters and get them in the house. I always encourage authors to think about their marketing like an experience.
Like, instead of feeling like it’s a chore, like I have to slog this. I mean, it’s how can I make this? Exactly like you said, and it’s hard because all the things that go behind the marketing, the pressure, the expenses you put into it, the stress, that’s not fun, but you have to divorce yourself from that and be like, wait, how do I make this fun because readers are here to have fun, to experience your stories.
They’re
EJ Frost: To be entertained.
Michael Evans: stuff. And yeah, and you do that. That’s incredible. I mean, printing perspective. Are you just. You know, it’s hard. I was able to tell on video, but that [00:25:00] it’s definitely a nice paper, but how are you getting printed? Is it just your printer at home? Are you getting it specially printed?
EJ Frost: No, I, I, I can’t turn this stuff around if I get specially printed. That was actually, we were talking before about the signing. I did my first signing in seven years, two weekends ago, and I did get some stuff professionally printed for the signing and was reminded of how long it takes to get stuff professionally printed and turned around.
So no, I have a nice laser printer. It’s not. You know, anything awesome. But one of the reasons that the newsletter is in black and white on pink paper is because my laser printer only, only prints in black and white. So I have a nice, a nice laser. I bought pretty pink paper off of eBay. I’m a big fan of eBay.
And I bought purple paper for my other series, which is a paranormal romance series. And so that sort of distinguishes the two you can subscribe very specifically to the paranormal newsletter instead of. This, this that EPI newsletter, [00:26:00] although I think there’s only one who’s actually subscribed to the paranormal newsletter and And it goes out, and I send it in a unmarked brown envelope so that the neighbors don’t realize that they’re getting an erotic romance newsletter.
And I send stuff with it. I send pretty character art. Whenever my subscribers have a birthday, I send them a branded birthday card from Blunts. And I sign all of the major characters. Laughter.
Michael Evans: to YouTube. See this for the people who are listening. Very pretty thing. She showed us.
EJ Frost: I send them bookmarks. So there’s a sort of swag tier. Yeah. That goes out
Michael Evans: Yeah, that’s.
And then you also, in terms of like thinking of shipping, I saw something very unique in your subscription that I [00:27:00] very few authors I’ve seen do, but I think it’s smart, but I’m curious how you do it, which is you offer signed paperbacks. But the, and that’s all in one tier, I believe in Europe, 25 a tier for new releases, 25 a month, or you could pay annually discount.
But the big thing here, I was like, Ooh, I like this, is the reader pays for shipping and chooses whether they want the book plate ship, which is presumably cheaper for quite a few readers, especially because for folks who don’t know, you’re located in the UK. So a lot of your readers, I imagine are U. S.
based international
folks in that nature, or they could
EJ Frost: of them are in the U. S.
Michael Evans: All of them. All of them are in the U. S. Okay, there we go. So, you either choose to have the book shipped to them internationally, like paid, when you sign the book, or the book plate, but you have it in one tier, and they pay extra for that. That is really smart.
How do you do that?
EJ Frost: Right, so I actually have two tiers where they’re getting, well it’s three, but mostly two where they’re getting [00:28:00] mailed stuff. And so, the bookplate goes out with the newsletter, which they’re getting anyway because they’re a higher tier than the newsletter tier. So if they’re getting a bookplate, and they’ve all nominated what they want, whether they want to pay extra for shipping or whether they want a bookplate through a poll.
And so if they are getting the, the book plate, it goes out with their newsletter and then I go into amazon. com and I ship them a book directly as an author copy. So that saves me a ton of money and it probably only cost me five or six dollars. And then these newsletters, I’ve been relatively careful to make sure that they stay below the international posting rate.
So as long as I have only five sheets of paper. In whatever I send in the envelope, I’m at the base letter rate from the UK to the U. S. And so it cost me, I think, 1. 35.
Michael Evans: That’s, that’s awesome. And when you say they pay for shipping just because, like, in many subscription services, depends, different ones [00:29:00] have different sorts of commerce functions. How are you having them pay extra? Because if they’re paying a certain amount per month or year, but they have the election to pay more, are you like sending them a link direct to pay you through like a PayPal or a
EJ Frost: Yeah, I just sent them a PayPal invoice, but almost
Michael Evans: And I guess if they don’t pay, which
means that they’re getting the book plate.
EJ Frost: They’re getting a book played.
Michael Evans: Okay. That’s, I really, I like that. Because again, too, if you have a reader who’s not responsive, To the message that themselves doesn’t even say, then you just send them the default option.
That’s going to be cost effective. You give the reader, the option really, really smart. I, I think that’s honestly, I’ve ever only had in the podcast, probably one of the most unique ways. I think probably the most effective ways to do you know, shipping for physical goods, which can be, can be challenging, especially when all your
EJ Frost: It can be challenging. You don’t want to end up in the hole on this. And international shipping is one of the ways to end up, you know, actually losing money on your subscription service really quickly. [00:30:00] Now, I don’t issue a book every month. I issue a book probably three or four times a year. And so, as long as they’re sticking with me for a time, I’m not, even if I end up…
physically getting a paper back here in the UK, signing it and posting it to them. I’m probably not losing too much money. But I don’t really want to lose any money on this. I would like to actually turn a profit on my subscription. And so I have been very focused on how much the postage is going to cost me.
Particularly because for the higher tiers at the 50 and a hundred dollar tier I’m offering them book boxes and book boxes are sort of curated by me. It is a physical signed paperback and other stuff in it. And so when I had a paranormal release recently, this stuff was a dragon toy and a little tiny crown and a little mug that said, which is brew.
On it, which was really cute. But the shipping on it cost 25 25. And so that wiped out my profit at the 50 [00:31:00] tier and really cut into my profit at the a hundred dollar tier for a month. So I have to have the confidence that these people are going to stick with me. And so following Kay Webster’s model, I’ve said that if they haven’t been a patron yet or subscriber yet for three months, they don’t get the book box.
Michael Evans: Yeah, that’s very fair because you don’t want to, you don’t want to get burned on something like that. And I think what, what a, one incredible way to do physical good tears. Now I’m curious, kind of like bringing it back because we’ve like gotten to so much in your description. Like, I feel like I. Beautiful. But bringing it back to the beginning, like before Sweeney one shots, before you even had, you know, your subscription page set up, what brought you to saying, you know, now’s the time? Cause you started it just about a year ago now. And now looking back at that year, has it been worth it?
EJ Frost: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s been awesome. So two things brought me to subscription services and the the patreon hop was one of them[00:32:00] so I was already interested in the idea of building a community around my books Because I knew from my reader group that I had a group of super fans who were interested in slightly different things than other people casual fans are interested in how often i’m going to bring a book out When’s the next book going to come out?
That’s not really what the superfans were looking for. The superfans wanted things that were more in depth. They wanted character profiles. They wanted character art. They wanted to understand the relationships between secondary characters. Some of them were asking me if they could write fanfic about my book and I wasn’t really sure where to come down on that.
Do I say yes or do I say no? I might want to do something with these characters in the future and I don’t really want you going off canon. So it became this sort of Weird, weird tension where I knew that I had a group, a big group, a core group of superfans who wanted more and wanted different things than casual readers and I felt like I was losing them.
You know, I felt, I felt like they were [00:33:00] slipping away and going to other franchises, going to other book series. So I wanted to retain them. And, and the way to do that, it seemed to me was to step outside the normal selling platform of Amazon and the other, the other retailers and do something different.
And so I began looking around very actively at different models, including Kickstarter and subscription services and subscription services felt more comfortable to me like, like I could do more to build a community. The Steamy One Shots thing, as soon as I joined Subscriptions for Authors and saw Kira Fox put up a notation about the Steamy One Shots, I jumped straight on that, and that’s actually why I got my subscription service up and running as quickly as I did.
Because I have never written a short story before doing this. Everything that I’ve written has been novels, and I really wanted that string to my bow. I know a lot of writers. who write, who, who go the other direction. They write short stories for a long period of time to sort of hone their skills and [00:34:00] then jump into novels.
And I did it backwards. And I’ve never felt confident about my short story ability. And so I thought, well, this is the, this is my chance. And, and my risk is so low. It’s 2. If they hate it, they leave the 2 tier and I’ve lost 2. And that’s, that doesn’t feel too bad. But they didn’t. They loved it.
They all loved it. And now I’ve brought out two books of collections of the short stories. So this is the first one and the second one just came out at the end of May. And it’s collecting the short stories out of the, out of the subscriptions and all of them, by the way, get a signed copy of that.
Michael Evans: Wow. Wow. So, okay. Okay. So, first of all, I’m, I’m actually curious from like an economic perspective. Well, actually you have no readers to the 2 tier anymore, but to ask a hypothetical, if you had a reader saying at the 2 tier, you’ve released two of these collections down the last year, right? That would be 24 you make from them in a year. And you would send your, would you actually send those [00:35:00] people in that tier the signed copies or would that be kind of an up,
EJ Frost: Bookplate, bookplate,
Michael Evans: Yeah. Yeah, okay. No, I’m with you. This I love it. And now to be clear to everyone, when you make those collections, are you keeping those collections exclusive to your description or are you repurposing them to be sold outside of your description?
EJ Frost: both! And you say, what? How do you do both? Because you can do patron only versions, can’t you? So, each of these books has an alt version with an alt cover that has additional material in it. And that’s for the patrons. And so the ones that I put up on the retailers… are different. And my patrons have the, I don’t know, what, what is it?
The, the, the, the satisfaction of knowing that they have something different and they talk about it, which is amazing. So in my reader group, they will start talking about the, the extra short story or the deleted scenes or whatever it is, [00:36:00] the epilogue that they’ve gotten for their, for their subscriber only version.
And the other readers are like, what are you talking about? That wasn’t in the thing I read. And they’re like, yeah, well, you know, I’m a patron and this is what I get. Which is awesome, and I’m sure that I’ve gotten patrons that way as well.
Michael Evans: Oh, yeah. I mean, the fans talking within your broader community is… That’s the magic. I’m curious for you because you’ve like perfectly leveraged your content where, you know, you put an hour into creating a Steamy One Shot and now that Steamy One Shot gets to go to, to your patrons, you know, immediately it gets to get rolled out to far and wide on a retailer and, you know, several months once you have a collection of them. I’m curious now as you look forward into your next year and things that you’re thinking of doing your subscription. How are you going to continue or even further, you know, repurpose what you’re doing? And I guess really give the day increase your leverage, right? Because you have a job full time. You can’t be spending a ton of [00:37:00] time in your subscription at the end of the day.
Because not only do you have a job, you have writing your books. You have all your things in your book business. So how do you like leverage your time for your subscription? What did you learn maybe that has helped you do that more effectively? Because I imagine in the beginning things are a little less efficient than they are now.
EJ Frost: less efficient. I’m sure it was much less efficient. One of the ideas behind the subscription was getting paid for the content that I generate. I generate a ridiculous amount of content. I do graphics constantly. I love finding pictures of characters and, and taking them into my graphics editor, messing about with them and making them into a graphic.
I love doing teasers. I love doing short stories now that I feel confident writing them. And so I was giving all of that content away. I live read all the time through, throughout COVID. I live read one of my reader magnets to my, to my reader base. All that content was free until I set up my subscription service.
Now I’m actually [00:38:00] getting paid for it. So I put up content constantly and this is content I would have given away before. And I think a lot of. Writers do give it away, but I’m finally getting paid for early access to it. Because this content will eventually go out to my entire fan base. It’s just that I’m giving it very early to my patrons, or generating very exclusive content just for them.
And so I just, I, I’m delighted that they’re paying me for it. How am I going to keep repurposing it as I go? The, the Steamy One Shots, I’ve been so dedicated to the Steamy One Shots because they’ve served so many purposes for me. Not only do they give the patrons content constantly several times a month, but they’ve provided an overarching story line connecting one book that came out many years ago now with the book that I’m currently giving them this year in that series.
And that’s given them sort of a new, I don’t know, Lease of Life, a new interest in that [00:39:00] series, all of a sudden I’m seeing page reads and sales of that series go up, even though I haven’t published a book in that series in over a year, because I’m bringing out stories about it all the time.
It also keeps me publishing, because I can bring one of these out every three or four months, as the exclusivity period on these stories expires.
instead of publishing three or four times a year, I can publish every other month because I’m
Michael Evans: Oof. Oof. EJ, you’re, you’re, I mean, I’ve already told you this all. You’re a genius.
EJ Frost: I don’t think quite so, but we all talk about that 90 day cliff on Amazon, right? Your book has about 90 days worth of visibility on it. And it’s only if you publish another book within that 90 day visibility period that you boost your visibility again. I was feeling that very strongly. And that was sort of behind my three to four time a year.
You know, book publishing timeline, but I’m telling you, if [00:40:00] you can sort of, you know, it’s, it’s the coherence thing, the ripples in water, if they bounce off each other, make a bigger ripple than if they’re just going out from a stone’s throw, right? Coherence is issuing one of these every third month around your book’s publishing schedule, because all of a sudden your entire.
Backlist, and your entire KU page reads go up because you’ve published again, even though what you’ve published is a little collection of short stories. 40, 000 words. Not very big.
Michael Evans: And meanwhile, you, in all of this, the big takeaway that I had, I was like, oh, this is so interesting, is you’re able to basically re The biggest thing I’ve seen with authors, like, you get one fan in, They read one of your books. They love it. But like you can have the links to the bottom of your newsletter.
You can have all the books listed on your website. Most people never take the time to go through it. They never know. They don’t, they don’t look at [00:41:00] your backlist. So you have to have a way that’s like, how can you start to dig your teeth into my backlist in a way that Make sense and you’re able to take this content because it always, you know, we know the, we know the word, no story markets, your existing story, like another story, right?
But at the end of the day, it’s like, what am I just going to keep writing new books in every series forever? Like you can’t, eventually you can’t keep up with that, not in every series. Right. And you then have these product lines that almost like lie fallow. And it’s like, how do you give new life to those product lines?
You’re doing that. Through these short stories, which are much more cost effective in terms of time to write. Genius! I’ve never actually thought of that in that way, and you just, I think, like, you’re doing it, and that unlocked that thought for me, which makes me wonder, going into this year, short stories are something completely new to you.
What have you learned about writing short stories in the last year? Because now
you’ve written, like,
EJ Frost: So much. That’s right. I now have three dozen short stories under my belt. That’s really something new and different. [00:42:00] I started by rereading Stephen King’s On Writing because I actually think Stephen King is the master of the short story. And then I rewrote, I reread the Bachman books which are his, his original short stories that he wrote before he wrote, I think it was Christine.
So I highly recommend those, even though they’re horror or suspense they are broadly applicable. The skills of writing a short story are broadly applicable. I am a plotter rather than a pantser. So I thought my short story is down to the dialogue level before I write them. And I’m always looking for the three act structure in a short story.
So at the beginning I want, cause it’s romance usually, I want the meat, how they, how they, how the two characters or three characters, five characters meet, what the conflict is for the story and then how the conflict is resolved. And. If I can’t get that, because some of these stories are only a thousand words, and boy, you try to squeeze a three act structure into a [00:43:00] thousand words, you’re really doing well, if you can do that, but I can’t, usually.
If I’m doing, if I can’t, if I can’t get that. much into a story, then really I’m looking for character arc. I’m looking for a character to start in one place and end in a completely different place. And if I can get that, then I think the story is still compelling, even if I haven’t managed the really strict three act structure.
Some of these stories are character sketches, and they are clearly characters that I’m trying out on my readers. Do you think this character is compelling? Do you want to read more about them? And the overwhelming… Feedback has been always, yes, they love the character and they want to read more about them.
Some of them deserve their own books. Some of them, I will continue to simply thread through the short stories, but readers getting hooked on my characters has always been part of sort of my brand. I have recurring characters who show up in lots of different places [00:44:00] throughout the series. They cross over, they feed into each other, they meet each other, they, they leave.
And And that is something that readers have always glommed onto and said, I love the fact that your demon from Neon Blue is in Teddy’s Boys as well. And so using the Blunt’s Tales to thread through, hi honey to thread through characters who are recurring and give readers more about those characters has been really successful.
And it has led now to two more books that will come out in my mainline series. For these characters that I can develop. And they’re characters that I don’t think I really would have found my way to them if I hadn’t been writing these stories. Like I knew about them, they were there, but they weren’t very interesting to me until I wrote a story about them.
And then all of a sudden I was like, wow, now I’m really interested in you. So I think it’s a way to get to know your characters as well.
Michael Evans: Yeah, if you’re ultimately, you get to know your characters, your readers get to know your characters, and you’ll be able to pick, oh yeah, seems like, seems like this one’s a winner. We, we’re going to write a book about this [00:45:00] one, because I enjoy it, my readers seem to enjoy it, and you don’t have to invest all the time into going, yeah, you get 30, 000 words into a book, and then you realize, oh, this isn’t for me, which, I do want to
EJ Frost: like these people.
Michael Evans: Yeah, right, exactly. When you’re, when you’re at that stage and you’re like halfway into the book, it’s like, Oh, there’s not much we can do about this. Oh no. But you figured that out.
EJ Frost: I had that experience as I was telling you before this this spring I was contracted to write in a series, a shared world series. And I had an idea for a story that I fleshed out and they liked it. The series liked it. So great off I went and I got. A third of the way into the contracted length and I couldn’t, I, I lost my way.
I didn’t like these characters and I didn’t know them and I hated their story. And it ground to a halt with two months for me to deliver the book. So I called the, I have a monthly zoom call with [00:46:00] my 25 and up tier anyway. But I called an emergency zoom call and a bunch of them responded. And we sat on the Zoom call for an hour and I, I walked them through what I had already.
And then I said, look, I’m going to spoil the book for you. So if you don’t want to listen to the rest, you can go. But you know, and they all stayed on. Yep. No, they all stayed on. And then I said, this is where I was going to go with the story. You know, what do you think? I knew a lot of them were readers of that series anyway.
And so I said to them, what is it about this series that you love? What keeps you coming back? This, this series is 30 books long. What has you reading all of these 30 books? And they gave me this long list. of things that they love about the series. Self discovery. It’s not a dating service. It’s an opportunity for them to really get to know each other in a setting that’s very comfortable for them.
It’s not Tinder. It’s not a nightclub. It’s not a bar. You know, and [00:47:00] that was really valuable because that allowed me to pull back and say, wait a minute, what’s important here is the setting. It’s not a bar. It’s not a nightclub. It’s a safe place where they can get together and they can have experiences that are shared that bring them together.
But also allow them to actually talk to each other in a place that’s not a noisy bar. So that was a really valuable call with them and it got me back on track. With the book and I was able to finish it and turn it in on time and they’ve accepted it. So it couldn’t have been that bad. But yeah, it was, it was life saving in that sense.
If I hadn’t had that call, I think I probably would have contacted the publisher and said, I’m really sorry, I just can’t deliver this book.
Michael Evans: That is this powerful and it makes me want to ask you in general about these monthly zoom calls you do with your fans. I mean, I have to admit, like I, I do, I’m on zoom with a lot of authors, but being on zoom with readers seems
EJ Frost: It’s
Michael Evans: seems like like that. It’s different. It can be intimidating. How have [00:48:00] those gone?
What kind of author would you recommend? Good.
EJ Frost: Yeah, it’s been amazing. So I like to theme everything back to blunts, which is. The club in my books. And so I’ve made them mistresses of blunts and the 25 and up tiers are the management committee. I have a very high level patron and she is the chairperson of the management committee.
And I knew that she was sticking around because she’d paid for a year in advance. So all about that. And so she chairs the meetings. One of the things I sent her in her early book boxes was a little gavel and a little thing, a little Striker plate. So she calls the meetings to order with her little gavel. so into this that she went and got this book on the rules of order for holding committee meetings, and she holds it strictly to that. So she prepares an agenda before the meeting. And we, you know, do it together[00:49:00] and we send it back and forth to each other. And then. We, we promulgate that agenda out to the larger chat group before the meeting so that everybody has a chance to review the agenda first.
And then when we get on the meeting, we run through the agenda. And the mistresses have roles within the meeting. So if, one of them is the Mistress of Paddles, and she chooses characters to be in a punishment scene every month. And another one is the Mistress of Toys, and she chooses toys that are going to feature in the scenes, in the steamy one shot stories.
So, that, that’s the kind of thing that we do on the Zoom calls together. And then we talk about what’s coming and I’ve given them a huge amount of input. Into particularly the order that my books are coming out because frankly, I don’t really care about the order. Like, it doesn’t really matter to me very much.
I know all these books are going to get written. Those stories are all in my head. I, I, it doesn’t really [00:50:00] matter to me when they, they come out. And so I’ve given them pretty free reign to say, you know, yes, we want this book out next. And after that, we want this book. And yeah, I’ve, I’ve given them a lot of leeway on that.
Michael Evans: I mean, I’m just still like, I’m, I want to watch one of these meetings. They seem so interesting. I’m sure like other readers who hear about this are like, wow, I really want to be part of it. I want to highlight like giving people, you know, status in a role within your community. Is so powerful and we oftentimes think of it very superficially and just slap a label on things and think that’s enough and sometimes those things can be work for some people, but really, when you get into it, it’s like when you give someone like they have power, like the, like the mistress of toys, she gets to, she gets to decide, you know, this is month.
This is what’s happening. That is pretty cool. And they have a specific role too. That is, that’s really important to feel like I’m [00:51:00] special. I’m not one of a thousand people with this role. I have a specific place to play in this CUNY and think about any CUNY you’re part of in real life, like. Imagine if there was like a hundred clones of you and your sister or you and your brother, that would be weird, like, we’re all part of our family community, but we’re the same exact thing, the same exact thing, like, when we treat our fans like that, it, it, it really loses the power of community and you’ve elevated themselves and who they are so beautifully.
I’m, I’m just, I’m, I’m having so much fun.
EJ Frost: They’re having fun, which is the important thing to me. I pull them at least monthly, but very often, probably more than they want to be pulled. And the thing that I ask them constantly is what would make the subscription more fun for you. Not, you’d pay more for, because I don’t really care about that that much.
I want to know what keeps them coming back, and the thing that they’ve identified as coming back is fun. They really have fun with this. They have a good time with this. When we’re on the Zoom call, they’re having a great time. [00:52:00] Without getting into the legalities of it, we drink together, and we toast as part of, you know, each, each point of order.
When I want to bring a new character into the club, I have them vote on the application, and most of the time they let the character in, but some of the times they don’t, and I’ve had to sort of rework the books to make sure that that character’s inclusion from the club isn’t gonna screw up my plotlines.
That’s the kind of input that they have, and they keep telling me how much fun they’re having doing it. That’s the key.
Michael Evans: Yeah. Having fun. That is, that is, there’s a big takeaway of this episode before, before we cap it off, I want to ask you one last question. Which kind of goes back to the beginning with cross promotion. And I know that a lot of authors who, I mean, Niblets is so much incredible information. But if, if you were trying to start your own, because I know Kyra started when you’re in, you’ve really taken the reign.
And it’s an incredible group. [00:53:00] But if I’m maybe not, you know, an erotic romance writer, I’m maybe not fit to be part of the steamy one shot group. If I wanted to start my own cross promo group, which for the record, we would totally support this in subscriptions for authors. So I may be trying to plant a seed here for some folks.
What, what would be your advice in sort of getting something started and what you’ve learned with working other authors in this sort of cross promo process?
EJ Frost: First of all, do it. I’ve had a number of patrons coming out of, of the, of the cross promo of the hop. And they’ve told me that that’s where they came from. And that they loved what, seeing my teasers and that’s why they came and joined my Patreon or my subscription. So absolutely do it because I think you will see subscribers come out of it.
The other thing I’d, I’d say is, is know your genre and know what the readers in your genre are kind of looking for. So if you can pull your reader group first, or if you have a newsletter or something where you can get some feedback to find out what it is that readers would be interested in, [00:54:00] I think that helps.
With science fiction and fantasy, they both have a very strong tradition of serialized stories. You know that from, from, you know, the various fandoms that you and I have been part of. So. If you want to, as a science fiction or fantasy writer, you can absolutely do a short story hop because there’s a strong tradition of that in the subgenre anyway.
So capitalize on that. Make your own webzine. If you like to do illustrations with your stories, put these together in a webzine every month and stick it in a Facebook reader group and let them all see, you know, an illustration and then a page of what you’ve written. Thank you. Find a way to, to reach out to each other’s subscribers in an engaging way that is genre specific.
Harkens back to sort of the things that they’re used to, the things they love about your [00:55:00] genre. And pull them in that way. It’s not really magic. It’s, it’s just finding those touchstones. With the, with the readers, the things that they really like, the things that they enjoy and, and it always tie it back to your stories because that’s why they’re there.
They’re there because you’re a storyteller.
Michael Evans: Yes. Oh, I just totally agree. And one, one, thank you for what was an absolutely incredible podcast and two, want to. Last ask you, where can we keep up with all things EJ? Subscription’s linked down in the description, so definitely check that out. Many of you may even want to, want to join it after listening to this, but when it comes to, you know, being involved in the world of EJ, I also know that you have a subgroup as well, Connected Descriptions for Authors.
Tell us about that.
EJ Frost: So the erotic romance only, it’s not intended to be exclusive but the erotic romance only subscriptions subgroup EROS We started because we wanted to [00:56:00] broaden things out. So the, the, the Patreon hop has been awesome, but we didn’t really know how it would work for people who were using other platforms.
We’ve got a lady who wanted to do it on her own website. We’ve got a lady who wants to do it on Substack. We want, we want to be able to pull in authors who are launching their reams. So we created a working group that’s a lot larger than the hop, and we’ve encouraged anybody Within the parent group to come and join that and, and tell us what it is that you’re looking for.
What kind of support are you looking for? And really, I want that to be a best practices group. It is not easy to market yourself as an erotic romance author. You know, the odds are… are stacked against you. We can’t always advertise on Facebook and Amazon. We get constantly thrown into the Amazon dungeon.
Patreon likes to, to censor our, our posts. Substack won’t let you put anything on there that’s erotic at all. So how do you get the word out? How, [00:57:00] how do you market yourself as an erotic romance writer? And, and particularly how do you do it on a subscription service? So I really want that group to be Us helping each other figure out how it works.
And one of the things that I’ve started in there is a discussion thread about tips. For avoiding censorship. Do you have an idea about how to get Blood Play past Patreon? Do you know how to, how to market on Substack? And Wattpad and places like that. So you’re not going to get dinged for content warnings.
If you have ideas like that, stick it in the thread. And that’s what we’re doing. And, and I, so far it’s been great. We’ve been really cross feeding each other ideas. And that’s really what I’d really like to see. I’d like to see that be a working group of authors, supporting authors to, to help us all figure out how to do this job better.
Michael Evans: No, I totally. It’s needed. It’s incredible at that link to join and the application. So that just, you know, you want to make sure that the [00:58:00] writers and there are actually erotic authors. I know there’s, I know there’s a little application. Be great. For folks who are writing erotic fiction, who, who want little censorship.
You can also check the link. It’ll be some of the description for reading because Amelia Rosemead created that subscription platform specifically for authors, but also civically for Simi Romance authors in terms of really having very open and supportive content guidelines. So there’s a lot of people in the community working on a very similar mission as you.
And this was just, I really, one of the podcasts I have to say that I’ve learned the most on. So thank you for teaching me a lot. And I’m sure everyone listening learned a lot too.
EJ Frost: My pleasure. It’s been delightful as always to talk to you and everybody tonight.
Michael Evans: So that was, that was a lot in the best possible way. Thank you again, EJ. Like, you’re just amazing. EJ is also part of the Subscriptions for Authors all star team, which is a wonderful group. People who help volunteer to run the Facebook group, which is a good call that if you haven’t joined the Facebook group, you should join it.
It’s really fun, [00:59:00] but also at the same time, a huge shout out to our all stars. You make everything we do possible. Literally, it was you, Aisling, who inspired us to run the first ever Subscriptions for Authors virtual summit, which was a totally free, incredible online event, and then that is what inspired us to…
begin doing the in person summit, which if you haven’t checked out that landing page, if you haven’t looked at it, you definitely should because even if getting to Boston is difficult for you, which I totally understand, we’re going to be doing everything we can to have a virtual component to also make it accessible to folks who can’t make it to Boston.
But if you know writers who are able to make it to Boston, you should send them this landing page because they’re going to have a lot of fun and. It’s just gonna be amazing. So, All Star team, we have to thank for that as well, because they have helped us be able to do more awesome things through CUNY, have given us so much incredible ideas and feedback, and really hold us up.
So, shout out to you, All Star team. Shout out to you, EJ, for [01:00:00] an amazing podcast. And shout out to all of you listening, because you obviously are listening to the end of this, which means that you’re awesome because you took the time out of your day to support us and to be part of our CUNY, which I’m so grateful for.
And we’re going to be back soon with another awesome podcast. But in the meantime, as always, thank you for listening. And don’t forget storytellers rule the world.