Posted on August 17, 2023
Starting from a small or zero readership is challenging. Today, we have a live coaching session with historical fiction author Gina Hogan Edwards to help her increase her subscription as she moves from nonfiction into fiction.
Read the Author Creator Marketing Playbook for free: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iOymUlZ4ydk9DPTVr00FRSkzeLj2FVcigsWECK-v_sk/edit?usp=sharing
Content Curation article by Michael in The Tilt: https://www.thetilt.com/audience/content-curation
Gina Hogan Edward’s Links:
Gina’s website: https://www.ginahoganedwards.com/
Gina’s subscription: https://reamstories.com/gina/public
#46 Episode Outline:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:41 Exploring Gina’s Author Journey
00:05:59 Challenges and Focus Areas in Gina’s Author Journey
00:12:37 Understanding Your Reader Profile
00:14:17 Capitalizing on Your Fiction Advantage and Crafting a Subscription Vision
00:29:49 Potential Content Strategies and Collaboration for Discovery
00:32:30 Breaking Down Short Form Content As Marketing
00:46:21 Content Matrix
00:52:31 Researching Reader Format Response
00:55:08 Addressing Gina’s Doubts
00:57:02 Gina’s Subscription Tiers
01:09:08 Conclusion
#46 Transcript:
[00:00:00]
Michael Evans: Welcome to probably one of the most useful podcasts we’ve ever filmed. And if you’re someone who is just getting started as a writer, who doesn’t have an audience yet, kicking off a new pen name, and you’re trying to think, how do I start a successful subscription from zero? This is the podcast for you.
We have Gina Hogan Edwards on as our guest. She’s a wonderful historical fiction author who, like many of us, it’s tough to build an audience. She’s wondering where to start, wondering how to really get going. And is working through that. So together, we’re going to help her. And what’s so special about this is that Gina’s been a part of our community for a long time in the Facebook group and actually participated in This live coaching session.
This is part four of that six part series where we brought on authors in the Facebook group Who were having challenges and want to help them and in this case [00:01:00] we go deeper than ever Into how to market your work as an author we go into some really interesting concepts like a content matrix and I’ll save the rest for the podcast.
It’s a longer one than normal, but it’s because we go deep into a lot of amazing insights that I haven’t really shared much elsewhere. And I want to give you all something totally for free that will be really useful, which is called the Author Creator Marketing Playbook. It’s 90 pages, an excerpt of my book Creator Academy for Authors.
And I’m going to give it to you all for free. I’ve never given this away before and. It’s yours now. So check the link in the description. There’ll also be a really cool article that I wrote for The Tilt as a guest writer that I think will be really useful for thinking about marketing. It’s one of the biggest questions that we get, and I don’t think we’ve ever dove in just as deep as we did into it as we did today.
So I hope you enjoy, I hope you like this podcast. If you enjoy it, definitely share it. That’s how this grows and let’s get into it.
Michael Evans: Okay. So Gina, I’m very excited to have you on the Scriptions for [00:02:00] Authors podcast today. We, one, have known each other, it feels like for a very long time, even though maybe it hasn’t been that long, but I feel like I know you very well. And second of all, I’ve been looking forward to this for a while because we scheduled this a while back as part of our subscriptions for authors live coaching slash talking through sessions of how we can help you take your subscription to the next level.
And I’ll just say, I know your historical fiction out there. We’re going to talk a lot more about that and all the other things you do, but it’s really great to have an author in a genre that. Maybe not everyone else in the group is writing it. So it’s a very, it’s a genre other people write in, but it’s niche and in a good way.
So I’ll ask you about your journey so far, not just the subscriptions, but in your author career. And then we could talk a little bit about how we can help you. So that’d be great. I’ll throw it over to you.
Gina Hogan Edwards: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here. Like I said, before we started recording, I have so much going on in my head.
So just to give you a little bit of background about myself, I’ve been an editor for decades. I’ve worked with lots of writers on both fiction and nonfiction books. I’ve been a writer myself for a long time, but most of what I put out [00:03:00] into the world has been nonfiction related. A lot of times, craft related.
I’m a creativity coach. So about creativity and those sorts of things. And so I haven’t put a lot of my fiction out there. I do have a couple of short stories that have won awards and been published in chapbooks. But other than that, I haven’t published a book. So I’m in this liminal space right now.
Okay, so I still support writers. I host writing retreats. I will probably continue to do that no matter what else I do with my writing career, but I’ve cut back on the editing work that I do and just tried to trim away some of the business related things that I have been doing so that I can devote more time to my writing and to figuring out, how can I really build a writing career?
And like I said, I’m in this liminal space. It’s trying to find this balance between my time, my energy, where I really want to put my focus and what my goals and my interests are. And that’s where subscriptions comes in. I know that I’m in this for the long haul and I know that I’m [00:04:00] writing in a genre that.
It does not have a proven track record in terms of the way that we’ve been thinking about subscriptions over the last, I don’t know, 8, 10 years or so, but I’m willing to be a test case and in terms of let me try stuff and see what works, let me experiment. I am fortunate that I do have these other things that I do to help me get through that transition, but I have to rein myself in because I want it to happen overnight and I know that it’s not going to,
Michael Evans: I’m with you. I think it’s a very inspiring mindset. And I also think it’s one that a lot of us are in. Meaning so many people who are in the Facebook group who are in this community are coming at subscriptions and aren’t, in the exact subgenre of, paranormal romance has had a lot of successful subscription authors, dark romance lit RPG, progression fantasy, right?
So I’m naming genres that like have had a lot of proven success stories and. I know when you look on and I’ve done this before I look before this podcast to double check. I was like, let me look on the list that we developed of the top 500 fiction authors and subscriptions. Couldn’t really find one in [00:05:00] historical fiction.
I’m being honest. Which isn’t bad, but it’s just. It’s just a sign.
Gina Hogan Edwards: And the ones who do write historical fiction lean more toward the romance. And while some of my stories do have aspects of that is not the primary focus of the story. So yeah, I found the same thing. I’ve scoured that list many times over and looked at a lot of examples of different writers with different kinds of Subscription pages to see what I can learn from them, but finding somebody, coming of age, there’s themes of that in my writing family saga type things, the complexities of family and those sorts of things but historical fiction is really the core.
Michael Evans: I’m with you completely and before, because I, knowing the background information I know about you, I’m already feeling oh, I want to say this, but I’m like, wait. Let’s have her say for everyone knows what is your focus area in historical fiction and what right now would you consider the biggest problems you have writing in your subject, not that your subject is a problem, but just in your career right now, overall taking subscriptions is a piece of it.
What are the biggest problems you’re facing right now? Okay.
Gina Hogan Edwards: As far as [00:06:00] historical fiction is concerned, I love the era from basically 1800 to about 1970. Okay. The novel that I’m working on now starts out in 1968, actually, and then I’ve got a couple of others that are set back in the 1800s stories that I’ve been working on.
So biggest challenge, is what I mentioned a few minutes ago. Is this being in this in between and knowing that historical fiction doesn’t have a long track record in the present. Subscriptions, so there’s no one out there that I can look to, it’s not like there’s a model out there or somebody I can bounce questions off of, you know what they faced and what they’ve overcome and those kind of things.
So feeling a little bit like I’m out here alone and not sure. Exactly what I should try knowing that there’s so many different things to try gets overwhelming sometimes and I’m very curious and I love to learn new things. And so I have to rein myself in, it’s I can’t splatter paint this thing.
I have to have a strategy and I operate better when I have a [00:07:00] strategy anyway. So that’s what I’ve been working on and really challenged with over the last few months.
Michael Evans: How about currently where are your readers where are you finding fans? And because subscriptions, right? Think, thinking about it, just what is a subscription? It’s yes, a way to make money as an author. We love that. It’s a way to provide our fans more of what they love and have them support us.
But primarily what it’s meant for is a reader who’s already gone through multiple stages of the reader journey where. Yes. They have a degree of trust in you to want to support you monthly. I know, you know that. So I’m curious, what’s. In your subscription, you don’t have a lot of years there yet.
You want to grow that, but where would you say, what stage of the journey are your readers at currently? Like where are they? Do you have a mailing list? Tell me what platforms you’re using now. Tell me what areas you’re using to connect to your fans.
Gina Hogan Edwards: So full transparency. On my Ream subscription right now, I have zero because this really is the challenge for me.
That’s okay. Yeah it’s a starting point, you got to start from somewhere. And I have a mailing list, but because of the work that I’ve been doing over the last decade or so, my mailing list is mostly other writers. And while I do have a tier [00:08:00] that is geared toward writers, most of what I want to focus my subscription on is the historical fiction.
And I don’t, there are lots of Facebook groups of historical fiction readers. Most of them are making book recommendations to each other, and most of them don’t allow authors to drop in and promote themselves. Now, I have had a couple of recommendations from some of the other subscriptions for authors and Ream writers who’ve again, have that sort of romance element, but also historical fiction.
They’ve recommended some groups to me that I have just in the last few days gotten into. So I’m really still trying to find what Where do I find my readers? So I’ve thought about a couple of things since I am, totally unknown in the world of fiction. I’ve got to get. My writing out there so that people see it.
So I’ve been deeply researching substack and have opened up a publication there where I will start publishing my fiction and also have been looking at medium don’t know. I’m going to do some tests and see which 1 seems to [00:09:00] get more interest in terms of fiction, because that’s not really been an area that those people Those platforms have been known for, although I will say that on Substack, I have met an incredible group of fiction writers who are really trying to make that a robust area on Substack.
The way I envision it is Ream is my first, Ream is my home, that’s where my writing is going to start out. But initially, since I am totally unknown, I’m going to have to start releasing chapters first to my tiers. Thanks for watching! And then eventually put it out there so that the general public can see it so that I can start drawing some interest into ring.
I don’t know if that makes sense. I, I don’t know if I’m starting from the right
Michael Evans: place. Yeah, no, I think all interesting stuff. I think I want to zoom out a little bit because all that’s great context. And where are you at right now in your content production for your books?
describe to me exactly, like I’ve written this much. I’m writing this now.
Gina Hogan Edwards: So many of us on Reema, I have a gazillion ideas, which I have [00:10:00] finally gotten into some, form that I can actually track. So the novel that I mentioned, that’s my work in progress that starts in 1968 is almost finished with my 1st draft.
And so it’s something that I can start releasing and I actually have the 1st chapter out on my page now, but it’s something that I could start releasing and, with my. Subscribers, commenting and so forth, which is what I’m really looking forward to is being able to share that with the readers on Ream and get some of their feedback and it will evolve.
I know that it’s not in its final form, but it is almost complete. And then I have a number of short stories that are in progress. Some of them I can finish quickly. Some of them are going to need some more work. And then, I have a gazillion ideas for some series, some novellas. But I’ve got to, because I am still doing this other part of my life that requires me to make a living and make this transition until I can make a living as a writer my time is really a [00:11:00] challenge right now.
Michael Evans: No, totally. makes total sense. When you say time, how much time do you think you would have in a week in terms of hours on average to devote purely to fiction? Anything related to your fiction business. I’m talking about discovery, learning. The whole shebang. How many hours a week do you think that is?
Gina Hogan Edwards: Probably five or six.
Michael Evans: That’s great. No, I think that, no, it’s not a lot, but like at the same time, for those listening and most people are in this camp, the same camp as you, you have a full time job. And you have a family and you have a life and when you have all that in, it’s writing is something that you want to become more than a hobby, but it is functionally a hobby for now.
And to do something an hour a day roughly is a great start. And honestly you can make that work, right? If you were to tell me I’ve got an hour a week, I might be like, so you’re basically not doing it. Okay. But an hour a day is commitment. That really is current and you can do that.
And I think an hour a day is really all you need. Now that doesn’t mean an hour a day in a month, you’ll make a living. As we don’t need to hammer home anything about the long game here. What I do want to talk about though, is the profile of your reader, because I’m just, I know I’m asking all these questions, but I’m trying to understand the full map [00:12:00] of what’s going on here and I don’t want to, I’ve totally asked other authors, comp titles, this and that I’m not going to do that with you.
I want to ask. You the behavior of your reader specifically how avid are your readers? I’m not talking about for you. Obviously your readers are die hard for you. Your ideal reader loves you But are they the kind of reader who’s reading 10 books a year 100 books a year? Are they reading only fiction?
Are they reading split between fiction and nonfiction? Are they I know this seems weird to think about, but what is your readers reading habits? Obviously that all readers are the same, but you probably will have an audience that’s similar in that sense. So what do you feel like? I don’t, it’s a feeling now, what is your hypothesis about your audience?
Gina Hogan Edwards: So if I had to create the human, Probably female, probably read anywhere from 10 to 15 books a year. Interested in history beyond historical fiction particularly U. S. history, probably 40 plus in age. What else? What else could I tell you? Likes to travel.
Michael Evans: Yeah, that’s a lot. Ooh.
I’m already getting ideas that I’ll plant later about [00:13:00] that, all of it. Okay. So that’s great. There’s a really important thing to know. And you probably already know this, but it’s really important to remember, if you’re creating, you’re now creating for more of a casual reader. It doesn’t mean that they don’t love reading, but a lot of the indie author market and the tactics we talk about up this point.
Have been about getting whale readers to fall in love with our books. And well, readers are great. I love you. Readers who read a hundred plus books a year, there’s obviously no cutoff definition that makes them on a whale reader, but a reading addict for lack of better words. And that, that is great.
Your readers don’t seem to be falling into that camp. I don’t think anyone would consider roughly a book a month. A whale reader, but that still means they’re reading right there. A lot of Americans, a lot of people in the world don’t read at all. So they’re readers, but they’re more casual readers. That’s important in terms of how you’re building your whole brand, because this now comes to my second question.
Let’s pretend close your eyes. You’re an author who’s working full time as a fiction author. You’re not doing anything else outside your work. Your work is coming from fiction. What does your day look like you in an ideal world at this given moment? How many books do you think you’re writing per year?
Ooh,
Gina Hogan Edwards: that’s a good one. I am writing and traveling at the same time. [00:14:00] And I’m sharing with my readers not only the fiction that I write, but also the exploration that I’m doing. And,
Probably,
the kind of books that I want to write, a novel, probably every two years. The novella is a little shorter, and of course, sprinkled in with short stories here and there.
Michael Evans: That’s really good to know. And thinking about it now let’s go back to the business. I love that. And honestly, if I was to describe how I want to be a fiction author in the long run, I actually don’t know, being completely honest with myself, if I ever actually want to be a full time fiction author. I might always want to be working more on the hard science, technology side of things.
We’ll see where my life goes. But. Going about your life, knowing that writing is a core piece of what you’re doing, but you’re not the type of author who’s writing a book, let’s say every three months or even every six months. It’s not a bad thing. Nothing wrong with that. But now when we look at the economics of how the business works and where, and what the value proposition is that you’re going to be able to provide to your readers sustainably.
To make a living at this very few authors, very few. I am, I’m not [00:15:00] suggesting that it’s impossible at all, but very few authors make a living writing one book every other year. That doesn’t mean that you can’t make a living. I’m saying that they don’t make a living solely off book sales. Yes. There are some blow out top tier top 0.
1% authors who can do that. And if. I could tell you to try and go for that and like beautiful, but that’s also it’s harder to engineer breakout success or harder to engineer becoming the top of your market. But I do think from what you’re saying, it fiction is like you, you’re already talking about being able to explore the historical elements of your book beyond just fiction that interests you and you want people who are interested in that.
So just plotting out your whole business model. And then in tandem, thinking about your discovery model, I’m immediately wondering serialized historical fiction chapters, might be able to find an audience. But at this point, being frank about where the market is in serial fiction, because I don’t like to talk about where it could be, because I could definitely say in five years, it’s all going to be different.
That’s all I know. It’s all going to be different. But today it definitely will be 100% in five years. I don’t know what’s going to be different. I’m not a prophet of the future. [00:16:00] I want to tell you the present moment in a serial fiction market for serialized fiction, for historical fiction, non romance.
Let me ask you the question. Do you know anyone who’s succeeding in that? Nope. Now that’s not a bad thing, but I will say that. Maybe that’s a side that, okay. Cause subscriptions and serial fiction are different. Like subscriptions. I believe that anyone can succeed in serial in subscriptions because it’s a business model.
Not a one strategy or one way of doing things. It’s making it work for you and the early access strategy sounds great, except are the readers that, and then here’s another thing, right? If you want to be top of your reader’s mind. And you’re writing a book once every two years, which is lovely by the way.
And I don’t want you to do anything different. I’m trying to now figure out how can we make a career that works for you? And immediately thinking, man, if your readers are just coming there for the new chapters, you can train them to wait, once a month for a chapter once, maybe every other week would be maybe a little bit more realistic.
If you’re writing your chapters probably longer, given your job every other week would be tough to do more than that. There’s nothing wrong with that, but from a discovery perspective. You now get like 24 hits a year max to try and find new fans in this sort of discovery model, right? 24 hits actually isn’t a lot, right?
That’s not a lot of swings [00:17:00] at bat. You’re not going to learn that much. And I’m not saying that like you’re learning a lot about writing and all these other things, but you’re not going to learn a lot about discovery. So that’s interesting to me, right? Here’s another thing. If you are also saying that your readers are interested in things beyond fiction maybe there’s a way to create something that isn’t just fiction, but it’s directly related to your fiction.
That can be a better funnel, right? And this is where the business model comes in the long run, because then you might question. Why would I waste my time doing that if I’m making my money for my book sales, but learning about your writing process and learning about the realistic business you’re going to build, you’re building a business that’s much more.
A creator economy style business with many different revenue streams. And what I could see you having is I’m going to just throw out all the different ideas in the world of Gina that we can create. Might have a podcast, that podcast might have brand sponsors, right? Ads that you’re reading for products, different places that would interest fans of your podcast.
And you might have that podcast to talk to awesome people and experts in history that. Can fuel the inspiration for your books that can interest your fans and also help bring new fans in. This is just one idea. [00:18:00] Now you also might have, and this is an and world, so you could do any of it. All these things.
We’re not at the end yet, but you also might have a blog that blog might be based around a very specific topic. I know that part of what you’re really interested in is world fairs. So maybe you become the ultra world fair expert in the world, and you’re going to be doing really interesting original research connected to your books.
Again, all of it’s because it’s connected to you at the day, but. That’s a way to funnel fans in. And then how are you able to get discovery on that? Oh, there’s Twitter. There’s threads as of less than 12 hours ago, all these different new platforms, that you can then repurpose that content to that each times a different swing at bat.
that’s another thing you could do. And another thing is thinking about off of what you’re doing. Oh, okay. And in the niche of subscriptions, we always talk about what are the super high value things that you can create where a fan might pay you a hundred dollars a month.
And for a lot of fiction authors, it’s book boxes. It’s that fan immersion, having them vote on what you’re doing. Now you’re still a fiction author, right? A lot of that’s directed towards advice that might be better for more genre fiction authors who have established success in these fandoms and these readers who are dying for the next story.
They need [00:19:00] it. And that’s beautiful. Many people listening to this podcast, you’re in that camp and great, but for you, I would maybe more think, huh, yes, you could do that. Maybe your readers are interested in a very special. Hardcover edition of your book, but also, if the value proposition is you traveling, why wouldn’t they want to travel to those same places and you could be like Johnny Harris, he started a company called bright trip.
I’m just going to throw all this stuff at you right now. We’re going to dive into later, but bright trip is a company that Johnny Harris started. He’s a YouTuber, which is a totally other business model. You can have this if you want to create videos, but that’s a whole other side. Side quest. He has a, basically a course company where he is one of the creators and other creators.
Create courses that help people travel better. You want to travel to Paris? Buy this course on how to travel in Paris. Think about from your perspective. I want to travel to X city that you wrote a fiction book in, that you’ve done 10 podcasts in, that you wrote 20 vlogs in, and now if I want to travel there because I love the city, but I want to be immersed in the history.
I want to have the historical trip through that city that your fans would love. You can teach the course on that, right? There we go. Now we start to get into how you [00:20:00] have a value stack where you don’t have just, oh, books here. You have tons of different revenue streams with the books being the core centerpiece of it.
Why am I saying that? Because that is the core trust mechanism. If you could get someone to read your full book all the way through and love your story. One, that’s such a unique thing to share with people, right? Word of mouth in books is so high. And two, once they get to the end of your book, they’re going to be like, she created this is so impressive.
I’m much more likely to go buy whatever it is, whether it’s the travel guide you’re creating. Thatch is a whole website. I’m friends with the co founders Friendly, I’ll say of Thatch. a subscription site just for travel creators. So Ream exists for fiction authors, there’s niches for subscriptions for every different kind of creator.
I’m not suggesting, maybe Reem still, Reem probably is best for you because you’re focused on writing but maybe you look at Thatch and look at what those creators are doing who are creating travel guides. Yeah, for people to travel different places because you can repurpose that for what you’re doing.
So there’s this whole world out there that you can expand into and it’s Oh, wow. And then thinking about, Oh you already have expertise in writing retreats. I can already imagine the day where you’re [00:21:00] saying, Hey, fans, I’m going to go on a vacation to this city and you could have them effectively pay for your vacation by having a managed trip that you help manage for them.
They pay for their way and pay a little bit to you so you could travel the world for free. And this isn’t. Fiction, one of my best friends, Max, did this. He’s a travel creator and he literally got asked by the embassy of France to create a trip for kids who are in high school and college to study abroad there.
And he lived in France for free for a summer. And that’s all because he’s a creator and people trusted him enough to travel with him. Now that’s crazy, right? But we’re talking about like the value stack. You have the 5, the 25, a hundred dollars now, the thousand plus dollar item. And. This is how most businesses think about what they’re doing, and a lot of authors were just so focused on the book sales that we don’t think about the broader picture.
And when I think about the broader picture for you, I’m like, Oh, maybe there’s a better way for you to acquire readers that fits into this larger potential vision for your business that is ultimately more sustainable for you, given your desired content output. And it was a lot. I just dumped a lot there.
Gina Hogan Edwards: You blown my mind. I will tell you that when I first started thinking about [00:22:00] subscriptions. My mind went to all of the possibilities as if I did have a readership, I was thinking about merch and so I’ve had to really scale back, but you have opened up some doors that I hadn’t even thought of opening.
I knew that I wanted to share information, content about my travel. Little tidbits here and there, but I hadn’t thought about doing it on the scale or in the ways that you’re talking about. So I appreciate those perspectives.
Michael Evans: You also have such an advantage because you do something that still 98% of the world finds impossible, which is writing a book and specifically fiction.
People are blown away by someone who writes a fiction book blown away. And there’s always think about it from perspective. The ecosystem that you’re entering in an ecosystem of other creators, other very talented, amazing people who are creating similar content, but not competitive, but similar that’s targeting a similar audience like they exist out there.
Those people, when they get to hear that, they get to collaborate with the fiction [00:23:00] author. Who’s an expert in this, how many people they’re getting professors, knowing your niche, they’re getting professors who study at X college and they’re brilliant, right? But how many people have written that nonfiction book or that PhD thesis, right?
That is about X topic in this niche. Yeah. That’s the thing. How many people have written the fiction book who are then going at it and marketing it and building. An audience in the angle that you are much fewer. So it’s a content till where you will be able to build a unique brand very quickly because people are like, Oh, wow, Gina, is it just knowledgeable about history?
She writes stories about history and that is immediately a differentiator. But now I want to zoom in because really, obviously the vision that we can see for your business, it’s there and I could totally see how it can exist through membership. From a subscription perspective, you can have people sign up where they’re able to get access to new, maybe travel guides you put out to your world at very high tiers.
Yes, there will be a tier with early access to get bonus, more in depth things. Maybe you figure out that LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever you’re posting, they like more short stuff. But maybe the long in depth [00:24:00] research is just for your subscription, right? Just for your members. So you can start to build this whole, the tiers, all the possibilities are there, but we have to figure out how to start sustainably.
We have to figure out ultimately how to get you your first fan, which requires one thing. Mastering some sort of discovery channel and then obviously funneling them into a very simple offer for your description. Because yes, down the line, we see the vision. We both agree. So now let’s start today. My general advice is that it’s better to master one channel than none, which usually means when you have six hours in a week to work on it, that you’re not going to be able to master three different platforms, just period.
And. Also, my second piece of advice is that every platform probably has some of your fans on it. So don’t be too precious about that. If it’s a discovery focused platform where you can find fans, you can probably find your fans there. So I would ask you, my first question always is, where do you consume content that is similar to the content that you might create?
Where are you consuming now?
Gina Hogan Edwards: Lots of random places. There’s so many places on the internet.
Michael Evans: List them.
Gina Hogan Edwards: That’s a really good
Michael Evans: question. If you’re comfortable, you don’t have to unpack all of the different platforms you go to. But I think it’ll be good for me to [00:25:00] understand. I ultimately want to figure out what problem I want to solve for you here or attempt to solve is how can we build a great marketing plan for you?
That’s sustainable and easy and can help be an aspect of what you’re doing and not take away from you need to keep building that backlist. You should still keep writing every week. So it’s not about taking your whole life, devoting it to marketing. It’s saying you’ve got maybe realistically 2 hours a week to devote to this.
So how in two hours a week can we help you find new fans? The rest of it devoted to long term building your IP and building the place that they can come to. That’s going to ultimately lead to everything we talked about. That’s the goal. So what platforms are you using right now?
Gina Hogan Edwards: Honestly, I don’t know. As a creator. Yeah So are you asking me what platforms that I’m currently using in the efforts to try to build my readership and try to. No, you
Michael Evans: know that you like you’re bored, but maybe you aren’t like this, but you’re bored You have nothing to do or you’re waiting online What is the app you open on your phone?
And who are you looking at? Who are you watching? Who are you consuming content from who are you a fan of?
Gina Hogan Edwards: just [00:26:00] recently substack has become one because I’ve become very curious about the way that other authors are using it, but I’m not necessarily using it for the history kind of thing. It’s usually books, honestly, because if I want to do a deep dive into a particular region of the country or particular city, because I want to use it in a book, then I’m probably going to.
Reference some book about it, maybe not read the whole book. And, Internet searches that end up landing me in different places that aren’t necessarily this cohesive 1 spot. If I’m trying to I was working recently on a short story about. Roller rinks in the 70s. And so I had to do some research on them, even though that’s, I was in roller rinks when I was in the 70s, but I wanted to be reminded of things.
So I just started doing searches and ended up on all of these random, places. So I, that’s a really interesting question. I don’t know how to distill down into a
Michael Evans: really, my thing, you have to be a creature You have to be a creature of the culture that you want to contribute to.
And I would first recommend [00:27:00] the author communities are great, but author communities are always an echo chamber. And if you’re looking to actually discover readers get in and get out sometimes the best advice. Like I’m saying, this is someone who runs an author community.
If you’re trying to find new readers, descriptions for authors, Facebook group, it’s a bad idea. We all know that, but it’s true. So I would definitely look at if you’re looking at medium, if you’re looking at sub stack, don’t look at what other writers are saying can help people get discovered.
Because the truth is that. Most of the writers saying this don’t have discovery either. That is the truth. I see that. That’s what they’re working, which is nice, but it’s okay ultimately, this is the kind of industry where it’s like. You want to make it right.
And you want to be able to find those fans. So you have to be ruthless about your time. And it’s like, where is that time best invested? And I definitely think building up an ecosystem of Oh, this person’s working on this. Like it might even my first advice be might be for two hours a week.
And so focusing on discovery, focus on intelligently consuming content from people that you think your fans. Future fans would be likely to consume and you mentioned something really interesting about search engines, right? So right now you would say one that you’re really reading books on time It’s just beautiful and you’re finding those books probably because you search it [00:28:00] up.
Am I correct about that? That’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. So there’s a few really interesting things about that one That really leads me to believe, and I already had this to hunch, but as a long term discovery play, some sort of blog that’s leveraging SEO, essential for you, because it seems I already knew that was a lot of what your audience is doing, but again, if they have a specific historical question, knowing that you answered it, that’s awesome.
They’re going to find you like that. And if you know the questions, because you’re already asking them yourselves, that people in your audience are most likely to ask. That’s your title. That’s your article right there. So that’s really interesting. I really liked that because that’s a good sign.
The only problem about SEO is that it takes a long time to build like years, but once you have it, it ain’t going anywhere. And another issue with SEO is that. It oftentimes has that chicken and egg problem where you need some discovery or people already searching for your articles, then to surface them higher.
It’s the same problem we’re used to see with all these different, on Amazon, it’s great if people search for your books on Amazon, except you’ll show up at the bottom. Telling you start to get some [00:29:00] sales and, when it comes to blogs and things like that, there are blogs that obviously pay for Google ads to try and get higher in search rankings, but I haven’t seen too much success from like creator businesses or for like authors and Google ads.
I’ve seen a few, let’s just say I’m going to caution against trying to do. Google ads as your first strategy to gain an SEO. So that’s a more longer term thing. I can see Oh, you’ve repurposed all these short stories, all this content that you created, maybe exclusive to your subscribers. It answers your blog one day.
So there’s something there, but okay. So I personally think that we need to get you creating something that is exciting for you and that, that. Would make you be like, oh, wow, that’s interesting. And I think that it could fall under two buckets. Either you’re creating on a discovery platform where new fans can find you, or you’re collaborating with other people.
And just off the bat, which one of those sounds more interesting to you?
Gina Hogan Edwards: Probably the first one. Creating something. Okay. On a platform.
Michael Evans: It’s interesting because you could definitely go both routes. personally with subscriptions for authors, we took the second route super hard. We’ve never created [00:30:00] on what I would call a discovery platform. I’ve never posted on a Facebook feed optimized for it.
Never posted Instagram, never use Tik TOK, never ran a Facebook ad, never created a short form video. I’ve never done anything optimized for discovery. This community ever. I will, I’m sure I’ll hire someone to do that. I’m sure. But right now we’ve never done that. We’ve grown purely off of one thing, one thing, which is collaborating with podcasts, existing communities and conferences, again, existing communities to create something of value for them.
That’s it. That’s the only way we’ve grown. Up to this point, the ARK, our community, Subscriptions for Authors and that, that’s one thing I want to share in terms of and I see the bump every time we do a collaboration it’s obvious. I know it. I can point to the most successful ones.
I see the data. So I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t do something, but I am suggesting that don’t rule out the possibility of Hey, there’s this great writer that you found on Substack. What if you were to have one of your short stories that they publish to their audience, you give them content for the period, and then they, you might be helping them out with that.
Maybe you go onto some podcasts that are in your space that are historical fiction focused, and you’re the guest, and you’re bringing them [00:31:00] back to that central place, which is maybe Your mailing list maybe a place like ream where they’ll be able to follow you by the time this podcast is probably released and be able to subscribe to your tiers if they want there is something there and it’s not totally ignored. It’s always someone at some point, it’s always useful to tap in that lever. But for a discovery platform perspective, frankly, the thing that’s going to give you the most shots on goal is short form content, and I’m not talking tech talk here.
I’m not talking TikTok. Thank goodness. I’m basically talking Twitter and it’s where it’s all blowing up into, that idea of if you, cause shots on goal is the biggest thing that I’ve seen help someone create content engages an audience. And the toughest part about a book is it takes forever to produce.
It’s super challenging. And then if you realize you missed the mark, it’s very hard to adjust. But with a short form piece of content, it’s Oh, this worked. This didn’t work. I could pop out a new one. I could pop out a new one. You can easily do three a week. easily. it’s actually not within two hours, you could very easily do that.
And then another thing about it that’s nice is that you right now are writing your book, you’re writing your short stories and that’s what you love. And it’s really tough to say, Gina, keep doing that. But add [00:32:00] 3000 extra words to your week writing blog posts that hopefully will one day attract people. So that is a recipe.
For in the long run, when you’re working full time, it’s different. You can write, have one day dedicated to the writing one day, get it together. I have blog posts, but for now, I’m not trying to force you at anything, but I am trying to ask, cause I’m like, how does the idea of I’m not saying on Twitter, definitely not, but how does the idea of something like Twitter ish creating short form text content sound to you?
Is that something that you’d be interested in?
Gina Hogan Edwards: Yeah, if what I’m visualizing is short form content in the same way that you are that’s actually, tell me what you’re visualizing. I had posted when I was working on the roller rink short story I had one of my characters reading Tiger Beat Magazine and I had Until I wrote about it, forgotten about Tiger Beat Magazine.
You’ve probably never even heard of it. You’re probably too young, but it made me go back and look at some of the old covers and there’s this like whole website devoted to Tiger Beat and I found a cover that I knew was the one that she, that the character was looking [00:33:00] at. And so I did a post about Tiger Beat Magazine.
Actually, it’s on my Ream page. And it’s, just a few paragraphs, but, it’s about the nostalgia of that magazine the performers who were on it, David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman and the Osman, all of that. So that’s what I envision is these little nuggets of discoveries that I’m making when I’m working on my storyline or my characters.
Michael Evans: I love it. I love it. a year ago I published an article in the tilt about how you can use content curation for discovery. And there were three frameworks I came up with, which I think is effectively what you’re doing here, right?
You’re sharing content or information that. Maybe others have created that’s part of history, part of events, and you’re creating it in a valuable way for your audience and basically repurposing your research, which I love that, right? Because now we get to maximize your time even more.
Everything’s about leverage, right? You’re leveraging your time where you’re putting research time in that research time gets put into long form fiction, and then you get to take the little tidbits and tease it and provide value in short form text [00:34:00] content. So you’re literally not. Really doing any extra mental work to create the short form text content.
You’re just approaching your research slightly differently. You’re not only researching the perspective of writing a novel, but I’m also going to repurpose this time, the most important thing in the world. You’re going to leverage that time to also be in short form text content. So that’s the mindset, but there’s three kinds of different frameworks you can take with it.
The first one is. actually want to pull up the article, make sure I get it right. Cause I honestly share so much stuff. I forget the weird frameworks I come up with because I did come up with this one. The tilt content creation, Michael Evans. This one I was like proud of, cause I was like thinking for a long time how this model makes sense for people and the three frameworks to build an audience through content creation.
I have them up now, translator, synthesizer, and tastemaker. I’ll go through those. I’ll go to those. Do you think they might help you? I’ve never shared this before on this podcast. Or probably ever in the subscriptions for authors chain. So a translator is someone who curates complex or discordant information into digestible content for a specific audience.[00:35:00]
It could be someone who translate a philosophical concept for a business audience. Think in this case, Ryan holiday, he has gotten super famous off of translating stoic concepts, mainly for a business audience. And when I say super famous, super famous. Or, it might be a podcaster who interviews an expert in a manner that a general audience would understand.
Those are just two contexts. So that’s a translator. In this case, for your specific context, historical fiction, it might be taking some really complicated themes. I’m thinking back to AP history classes and the sort of themes of an era, right? The themes of society, the themes of culture at a time, and you’re breaking it down into five short bullet points in a Twitter thread.
I’m calling it a Twitter thread. It could be in any of these platforms. They have similar functionality because when I’m saying platforms, there’s massive on now there’s threads. There’s, oh my, there’s some, there’s so much going on, but the point And the next one is a synthesizer.
This is someone who mashes together ideas and concepts [00:36:00] from multiple sources into a chimera. So this one’s interesting, but this would be like taking information from historical resource, right? And then comparing it to something today. It’s I can give you an example, like here’s the Amazon of the 1800s, like the Amazon company.
Like what is the equivalent of Amazon in the 1800s and the gilded age America? You’re combining information from two sources and ultimately like giving it context with an audience. So that’s another thing. Another example would be in your case if you were to combine. Your historical fiction novel knowledge with travel knowledge.
So now you get to say, I’m not just going to create a travel guide for city, but a travel guide for here are the top 10 historical places to visit in X city. You’ve now combined historical knowledge and travel knowledge into one guy. That’s very short. The next and the last one, and I hope this is helpful, but I’m just going off is a tastemaker.
This one is probably going to the former two. I feel like it will be more helpful [00:37:00] for you. The last one, I think this is very helpful for probably everyone listening, but also might be helpful for you. A tastemaker is someone who creates the best or most useful iteration of an idea, product, or vibe. I did say vibe.
That is what we think about booktalkers. Booktalk is tastemakers. I… Have I love maybe this very niche romance novel. I love very niche historical fiction novels set in these worlds. And I’m going to recommend to you the top books in those genres. Don’t underutilize that uplifting other authors, creating content that’s valuable to reader.
If you can list five awesome books, five awesome, anything for someone, five awesome songs, whatever it is, that’s going to create value for an audience. Obviously in this context, we’re more talking about books and to be frank, this is probably like the. Biggest way authors are getting discovered right now through content creation is becoming a tastemaker of some sort that’s trusted in a community.
Now, because we’re merging all this nonfiction and fiction with you, I think you could still apply the other two frameworks pretty well here, but. That was a lot. What do you think about that? Is any of that [00:38:00] applicable to you? Does any of that spark something? I
Gina Hogan Edwards: think I’m going to have to digest it and really think about that.
I do really love the idea of sharing these nuggets that I run across sometimes unexpectedly as I’m doing my research and being able to use it in a way that is of interest and adds value for potential readers. And I guess my big 2 questions for myself will be in what form do I want to share that in terms of the 3 different ways that you talked about?
And if you can, you’re going to link to that when you post the podcast, so I can go read
Michael Evans: it. Yes, I’ll send it to you separately, but yes, thank you.
Gina Hogan Edwards: Thank you. Yeah, because I need to process that. But then also, if I do create this short form content. There’s always the question of where is the best place to share that and I don’t know the answer to that.
Michael Evans: So that’s a great question. I first I want to touch on the concept of a content matrix. So we will get to that because I think a content matrix is [00:39:00] essential for anyone with short form because you don’t need to actually decide if you’re going to be a tastemaker or synthesizer.
A content matrix solves all the brainstorming problems for you. It makes it super simple. So I will talk about that in a minute, but this question you asked first is very important, which is where should you post it? So here’s the beauty of short form. How long does it take you to copy and paste something like that into a different platform?
I’m not saying it should be on a hundred different sites, obviously, but if you were testing out different places for I’m going to test out this place for a couple of weeks. It’s not going to take that long. In terms of where you should be, this is where you’d be a creature of the culture, right?
You want to see I’m probably not going to be the first creator ever to create about something like this on xPlatform. Unless, If it’s threads, which as we’re talking about this literally just launched, you might be the first person on threads to talk about it, which is okay. That’s more of a gamble.
We don’t know where that’s going to be, but talking about, more established networks you’ve got something like a medium that you could share more short form stuff. You don’t need to make long posts on medium. It can be short. You’ve got Twitter, you’ve got something like a sub stack notes.
You’ve got something like Macedon, you’ve got blue [00:40:00] sky. And there’s a lot of other web three derivatives of Twitter. We won’t even go there. I wouldn’t even think beyond those. Okay. I wouldn’t even think beyond this. LinkedIn could be an option. I feel like it’s a little bit too professional for this.
So I wouldn’t really like this sort of content could be repurposed easily. Ultimately you want to double down on one platform. If we were talking like two years ago, it would be very easy. It would be a very easy conversation, right? I’d be telling you, you should build an audience on Twitter because Twitter’s had its events fraying chaos.
So the fact of the matter is that Twitter still has a lot of weight and has more users than all the other platforms combined, and then some. That Twitter, probably you don’t want to ignore unless you, and I understand this, if you feel like I don’t want to be there, it’s too toxic for me right now, this is where we’re seeing a total shift, right?
In social media, which is a big shift. You also could potentially share these things on Facebook. Facebook doesn’t have great native discovery. Threads might be the best place for it. So these are all experiments. I know it’s all experiments. The best thing that you can do. Is C accounts that [00:41:00] are performing well, creating content.
That’s not too dissimilar for yours and see where are they? Because wherever they are, you want their audience and that’s where you should be. So if you’re on, x platform. And you see so many different people who are creating content. You’re like that inspires me. Like you have to use this framework of which content would you want to create fan fiction for, even if it’s like a hundred word posts, which will you create your own version of and wherever that is you’ll feel that.
And I do think that takes time to start, to really digest the concept, become a consumer of it. Because what that’ll do as well, we’ll teach you the different formats that are going well. Instead of having to guess Oh. What’s the best headline structure? What is the best way that they’re using to engage someone with a short form piece of content?
You’ll just know it because you’re going to have already experienced so much of it. And this is why you have 16 kids creating Minecraft videos on YouTube, making millions of dollars a year. It’s not because they’re like they’re genius. And what they’re a creature of. And that’s because they grew up since eight years old, watching YouTube.
They know that better [00:42:00] than anyone on the planet. So you have to pick your spike and know that better than anyone on the planet. And my main advice is you do want to eventually find one place that you’re at least in the beginning, really developing an audience. And one of the mistakes, and this is going to be controversial, but one of the mistakes I see people make is thinking that they need to be on all platforms, everywhere, all at once.
But if we think about it from a time perspective, you’ve got six hours in a week, and we’re talking about a small sliver of this being devoted to this specific discovery outlet. You can’t be everywhere all at once. So that’s why we’ve narrowed it down to, at least in this session, we’re thinking about just short form text.
And I would even, mind you, yes, there’s an experiment of platforms, there’s a unique Change going on in that space out of the options. I recommend do some testing, see which ones have the best audience for you based on prior successful creators and probably zone in on, I’m only going to really focus on one because you have to remember you’re gonna have to respond to comments.
You have to log in. You’re gonna have to see notifications. You’re going to want to see what’s performing. That’s all mental bandwidth and time that even if it’s like, Oh, five minutes a week. If you’ve times five by three platforms, now that’s [00:43:00] 15 minutes a week and 15 minutes divided by you’ll have 900 minutes or not even sorry.
You have 360 minutes. That’s 3% of your time, 4% of your time. That’s a lot. Just checking analytics on a given week, maybe having that be closer to 1% of your time is better. I know I’m getting crazy with all of this, but this is actually how I would think about it, like being that strategic about it.
Cause again, what’s going to be successful on Twitter. You’re not going to blow up there next month. Probably not. I hope you do, but probably not, or whatever platform you choose. You want to be able to dedicate yourself to it for a year of saying, I’m going to, this is going to be so sustainable. So that might not mean posting seven times a week.
That might mean posting one good threat a week, one good short form content based off of your research. But once you post 52, that’s a lot, you’re going to learn a lot by them. And at the very least, if we’ve done this, you’ve literally just repurposing research that you’re doing pure fiction anyways.
So it’s not. Not gonna the risk is low. The payoff is high. [00:44:00] And that’s how those are the bets that I think we need to take as authors.
Gina Hogan Edwards: Okay, you got me thinking about a lot of things,
Michael Evans: Yeah, there’s a lot to go over here.
Gina Hogan Edwards: There really is. My mind is going in 14 different directions. I can tell you that probably won’t be on Twitter. That’s okay. Not probably I won’t be on Twitter. I. Avoided downloading the threads app just because I heard so many people saying that it was just overwhelming, but I will investigate it.
And I think I’m going to continue doing something that I so when I decided that I was going to be on sub stack. I created my profile there and what I’ve been doing, and this was the challenge from Kim Bu York, one of our other reamers 200 words a day. And so I decided that I would turn that into a prompt for the readers too.
So I’m writing 200 words a day that I want to write, but I’m also turning it into a prompt for people. That are reading it, if they want to, use that as a launching point that they can. So I’m wondering if you’re going
Michael Evans: to, if you’re going to go in on [00:45:00] really that network specifically, you’re going to want to really listen to the second thing that I said in terms of, before we got into the content creation side of things, connecting, collaborating with other creators.
That’s what’s driving discovery through email right now. And if you’re using ConvertKit, whatever email newsletter platform you use, all of them now have rolled out features. That the only ones that have it are the ones that authors use all the time. It’s just Miller Lite. We’re always behind the curve people, but most newsletter platforms like ConvertKit included now have discovery networks where 90% of the discoveries coming from creator recommendations, one creator recommending another creator, just, you know, to their audience.
That, that is how discovery is happening right now on those networks, which means building relationships with other creators in your niche. Just got a lot more important on if you’re targeting those strategies. It’s very similar to a book funnel promo to be honest But a little bit different you’ll see it when you I’m sure you’ve seen it when you actually get recommended Yeah, different email [00:46:00] newsletters that it’s right.
That’s where they’re getting discovered there the notes or thread like feature there. I think it’s picking up a little bit of steam But that’s not where most of the discovery is coming in that network from at least a sheer volume. That’s important to remember. Just keep in mind.
Gina Hogan Edwards: Yeah.
Definitely. Oh, it’s a lot of information, Michael.
Michael Evans: It is a lot. It is a lot. I do want to share one last thing because we’re on this topic, and I’ve never talked about this before either. A lot of times people know this about Subscriptions for Authors. We focus in Subscriptions for Authors a lot on, you already have your fans, now let’s focus on…
Monetizing them. Now let’s focus on, building deep relationships building a single business, building sustainable CUNY, all these things that’s are the value we’re providing to the author of CUNY because so many places don’t talk about that at all. A lot of places will tell you different things to get discovered.
And to be frank, like this is the thing where I also like to speak where I have credibility. I see so many different authors who are doing subscription and study that extensively work directly with Amelia Rose. So that’s where I know I can [00:47:00] help with that, but all these conversations, and this isn’t bad, they always go back to like discovery.
And when I talk to authors one on one and trying to help them, a lot of the conversation goes back to. Discovery and we don’t always openly talk about that. At least now, we’ve only been creating content per year for this. So we’ll see where we go in the future in terms of different things we could talk about, but I have not talked much about content creation and I do want to share one thing while we’re live that may be helpful to you, which is a content matrix
and this to me.
I think I’m adapting from Justin Welch. Justin Welch teaches people how to blow up on LinkedIn. And he’s a pretty good guy. And I’ve appreciated his content. And the concept of Content Matrix is taking themes and formats and in a spreadsheet, putting themes at the top, formats in another column, and then generating ideas based off that.
What do if you’re going to be a creature of the culture, you’re going to see that there’s some formats that tend to do well. I’ll use an example that we all can relate to, because we all at this [00:48:00] point know about BookTok. I’ve heard about BookTok. Maybe I participated in it. And you have the page flip format.
Okay, that’s one. You have the format where someone’s recommending multiple books on screen, right? I don’t even know what to call that. I’m not an expert on BookTok. This is why I don’t, my, we don’t have podcasts about BookTok, but you see those formats, right? Okay. So maybe there’s five or six that you see work in your audience.
That’s why I’m saying like, be a creature of the culture. You’re not looking for just random things. You’re looking for formats. You need formats that are going to do well. So now once you have those formats. Then you take your own themes, right? This is the themes that you want to talk about. In your case, it’s like maybe you have one theme about, Gilded Age I’m coming up with examples for you.
Gilded Age companies, this might not be you at all. It might be then another example with, World’s Fairs, from, this 20 year period, right? Et cetera, et cetera. These are my themes. So I, Then what you could do, this is the idea generation hack for short form content is you take that idea that you have that theme, and then you [00:49:00] take a format thing.
That’s an idea, theme, format idea. Now you just need that unique piece of research, but you have the framing. So much of the mental bandwidth is taken off because you can just open up your content matrix and then have your research decided. You’d be like. That’s interesting. How will this fit into my content matrix?
It’s underneath this theme. It’s underneath this. And then what you could do, and this is the magic thing, is track that with data. You can then say, okay, on this day, I made a post. That was, this theme and this format and performed like this. Okay. After a couple of months, I promise you will see a pattern.
You might see that this format and this theme does well together and this theme and that format doesn’t do well together. And what you will see too, because short, this is for short form content, by the way, everyone short form content, that it’s all about a hits game. You can very easily create a content matrices.
Which means that you will have so many things to test that it could take a hundred tests to really start to get an idea of like content that can perform, but you’ve done it systematically. You’ve done it where you’re taking a lot of the, bandwidth of brainstorming off [00:50:00] you, off that plate and you can focus on the fun part, which is.
Doing the research you love and plugging that into a format that is designed to work based on you being a creature of the culture and the themes you know your audience cares about on a specific platform you’re trying to gain discovery on. That is my masterclass, if there is any, on how to create short form content.
Really across video, text, any sort of platform. In your context, we’re just talking about text. Video adds a few extra production steps. But no need to get into that today.
Gina Hogan Edwards: Yeah, I wanted to be clear about what you meant by format too, because I’m thinking like, Instagram reels.
Michael Evans: Format is think about the like I said, like the different trends.
We use the word trends on TikTok, but think about what, what would be one, one format is that’s very common. It’s like the parasite. So the parasite is when you have a contradictory belief that you share that people in your audience are most likely not to believe. And then you give them a reason why they should believe it.
I’m saying this cause I actually did this today. I, in the Facebook group made a post where it was like. [00:51:00] You should, or stop trying on your subscription. Most people believe that they should try very hard to have a great subscription. So my parasitic belief is what this format is called is, Hey, I’m going to say something that they don’t believe, but they’re like, why is he saying this?
And then you actually provide the reason why they should believe this. So one thing would be, saying a contradictory belief about history that people would be like, what? Are you sure about this? That’s a parasitic format. Another format would be like a listicle. A listicle is a very common format.
This has been across the internet forever. I’m gonna list top 10 things, right? So you can purpose a theme of World Fair. The World Fair theme could be top 10 exhibits. Top 10. You could see how many different things could be under that one matrix. Like you have 25 things in this matrix. One thing could have the World’s Fair.
Just underneath the World’s Fair, you could have the top 10 World’s Fair, top 10 countries, world fairs, top 10 world exhibits. That’s just bang, idea generation like crazy. And then obviously if what you’ll see is that you’re going to, your matrix is going to change over time. Your theme’s going to change over time and your format’s going to change over time.
[00:52:00] But how you’re going to study these patterns are by seeing what themes do my audience care about and what formats are they responding to and formats within the specific platform that you’re studying and trying to gain discovery on. Literally the different formats and the different spins on it that different niches have are wild, right?
I could go on and on, but those are 2 examples. Maybe that
Gina Hogan Edwards: helps. Is there any recommendation that you have about how I do the research of where the, potential readers are as, as far as what formats they’re responding to
Michael Evans: how do you’re going to want to see
Gina Hogan Edwards: just researching
Michael Evans: that you’re going to want to see top accounts in your niche, right?
So you can use search engine for this literally Google if you want, but, and go to specific platforms or search threads and have great search on. Medium search on tub sack, right? Search for these craters that you’re looking for. Search online and see different blogs because you can repurpose ideas from other platforms and check those out too.
So the one that you’re trying to. Attack, but you will then look at the [00:53:00] top accounts and basically create a list of 10 ish max And then study their top posts. What is working for them? That’s it. That’s what you’re gonna do And then if you can’t find top accounts and you’re struggling that’s a good sign that maybe I need to reframe what i’m searching for which then is a good thing because it’s If I have to reframe what i’m searching for That means i’m also probably gonna have to reframe how i’m thinking about my content Which is really good to know in your research before you start creating and seeing, oh, that flopped.
But why is that flopping? It’s maybe not in a theme or format that your audience understands. So you have to, it takes some guesswork to stumble into the accounts if you don’t have a good idea already of what it is. But in your case, you know the themes probably. My probably that they’ll so you can, you have a very good start and I think you’ll, from there be able to find, again, you’re just searching for what is already done well.
I’m not suggesting anyone reinvent the wheel because there’s so much data out there and we have public data on views and likes and engagement on these posts and absolute [00:54:00] goldmine, like absolute goldmine. So just look at those and only look for the top performing ones. Obviously. The big kicker in this is I’m not suggesting you copy people.
This is as Austin Cleon would suggest. It’s a great book, stealing like an artist, right? Because you’re putting your own spin on it. You’re having your own themes and format, but ultimately you do have to see what people are responding to. You got the book, it, I hope that’s helpful.
Gina Hogan Edwards: It is, it’s a lot, so I got to digest it and I got to see what can I take from what Michael has shared with me that feels right for me? And yes, so what I’m thinking of as you’re talking about all this is, one of my foundational questions before we began is, am I really? With my subscription, because I’m going to leave, I’m going to have my subscription, no matter what else I’m doing out here and discoverability and all this stuff, the subscription is still going to live there on Ream.
Is it starting from where it needs to begin? Am I promising too much? Am I, if I do all of these other things out here for discoverability and [00:55:00] everything I do, leads them back toward my Ream subscription in some way or another over time. Is what I’m offering there right now, the right thing.
Michael Evans: What do you want to offer there? Take your, take the pressures of what comes with subscriptions and feeling like you need to do X or need to do Y out of it. What are you most excited about and what you’re offering in your subscription right now?
Gina Hogan Edwards: So I know that I finish things more readily when I promise other people I’m going to do them.
And so what I envisioned in my. Subscription was basically giving myself these deadlines for getting chapters out, I’ve got the novel finished, but it needs a lot of work. A lot of it. I wrote years ago. Taking breaks from it, come back to it. So I know that it’s not in finished form, but if I have this commitment.
Whether it’s every two weeks, once a week, once a month, whatever it ends up being, if I have this commitment, then I’m going to spend the time on it and I’m going to get it done. That’s one thing that for me as the writer feels really important to [00:56:00] me in terms of the subscription. As far as what I can see the way down the road, like I said, merch and, all these other big ideas, but I know I’m not there yet.
I know I can’t do that yet. And so
Michael Evans: yeah, no, you’re thinking about it. You’re thinking about exactly right, but I’m also wondering and every author can relate to this. And that’s why we spent most of this talk thinking about discovery. that is your problem right now. That is what you have to solve.
You have to get new fans. And right now I’m looking at your reading, which I’ll link to it in the description of this podcast. It’s awesome. It’s a great ream. There’s so much here. This is a lot to keep up with. Especially because you said you have six hours a week.
Like wow, again, if you’re full time, no problem. You can fit this in. This is reasonable six hours a week. I mean I would consider And again, you’re in a great position because this is like you created a draft. No one’s in it yet You haven’t made any promises to a fan that they’ve signed up.
This is actually so you’re in a great 3. 1 3. 1. Yeah, you’re in a great position Here’s my overall advice. I’m gonna go through your tiers and read through it and I think the audience is going to start to be like, Oh, maybe I’m going to, they’ll under, [00:57:00] they’re probably going to give you the same feedback I’m going to,
but let’s look at your first tier.
So 5 a month wayfair tier
Gina Hogan Edwards: before you do that. Let me tell you 1 thing. Yeah, so the 1st tiers that I created we’re 2 generic, I didn’t have anything media enough for somebody to be able to say, okay, I understand what I’m getting. So I revised it. What I have now, I’m almost wondering if some of it is not too specific.
I remember when I watched the summit. One of the guests, maybe it was on the panel, said something about, be sure your subscribers understand exactly what they’re getting tell them this is the book they’re getting, but I’m wondering now if I haven’t been too specific. So I’d like some perspective on that,
Michael Evans: I don’t think you’ve necessarily been too specific, which is good. I do. It is nice when a reader knows I’m getting this book when I sign up, this is the book that you’re currently giving early access to instead of just like early access to chapters, it’s like what, which chapters like, so I think you’ve done a good job with that, specifically thinking about like your [00:58:00] Coddy Wampler tier they’re getting character profiles, interviews.
Many travelogues, random snippets about research discovery. That seems low lift, that’s still something. Ongoing updates behind the scenes. Then you have a handwritten thank you, which that seems nice. That seems doable. But those three things I just said, profile, character profiles, interviews, many travelogues, random snippets.
I’m thinking back to again, six hours a week. That’s our core resource and time and constraint when we think about everything here, that’s, maybe you just had to do that once every three months, but that’s a lot early access, your current development progress. That’s great.
So again, I think overall, it’s a great subscription, but from a sustainability perspective, I’m worried. I’m personally,
Gina Hogan Edwards: let me ask you this, if those, character profiles, as many travel logs, the snippets. If those were my short form for discoverability, I guess what I was thinking was that I would do that sort of thing here first, and then, two weeks, three weeks later, take it out, be brilliant onto that, that other
Michael Evans: platforms, that, that would be [00:59:00] brilliant.
I do think that to really give your subscribers value, they probably need to be a little bit of like extra flesh at it. You know what I mean? Not like a lot, but just a little bit, but no, that sounds, that, that’s great thinking. That makes me feel more comfortable with that. Because my first just reticence was you’re creating all this bonus content when we really need you just writing your main stories, and then trying to get discovery on that.
So it’s there’s a lot going on here. So if you think you can repurpose it, great. But also here’s one thing as well. You’re making a lot of promises right now and no one’s even in there yet. And you don’t even know what they want. And you’re like making a lot of assumptions about your fans before you even have them.
And one thing that I would just caution people listening who might be thinking about seeing a prescription is you really only need one tier or one benefit, I should say, at multiple different price points, and that’s it. Fans can support you at 5, 10, whatever else, whatever they want to pay you. And you just need one benefit to kick it off.
Yes. Eventually you might do more for those fans, the 25 level, but until you have fans there, what are you doing? Worrying about what are you doing? Worrying about fans, the 10 level. I know that sounds crazy, but really though, like your time is super valuable and do you want to be investing it into something that [01:00:00] you’re not sure is going to pan out yet when starting out with one tier and one benefit will give you like high picture resolution into if they’re interested in that or not.
So that’s one thing, like there’s so much going on here that it’s like, if I’m interested in the early access to your story, it’s not even easy to see that. It’s the first benefit of your second tier. So yeah, that’s a thing I like your second tier a lot. There’s so much like in terms of like pricing and value, like not even a question.
You’re offering so much for the value you’re giving like definitely, like these are great tiers in my opinion. It’s not a question of can your tiers be better? It’s really the idea. I’m the wrong person to tell you that and no one can tell you that except for your readers in a real sense, right?
Because they know what they’re interested in and without that feedback You’re just creating a lot more potential stress and work for yourself than need be till you start to bring them in That’s just why I Rebecca men It’s not that you have to have a lot of fans to start a subscription as you already know But it’s that you should make it dead simple in the beginning dead simple So that would be my one advice to you is okay What do you not need right now?
Because all these are good ideas. [01:01:00] I’m seeing a monthly Zoom call with your readers at the 12 tier. And people at the higher tiers. That’s awesome. You have office hours. You have all that stuff for your writers. That’s great on,
Gina Hogan Edwards: on that tier. Yeah, let me qualify that, that Seekers tier. My thinking behind that one, which is for writers.
Yeah. Part of that bridge, to get me from being someone who’s supporting writers to being someone who’s supporting myself as a writer.
Michael Evans: Yes. And that’s beautiful because having an extra income stream for your existing business and where that’s at, knowing that there might even be some overlap in the audience, there might be, right?
And then also in addition to that, just knowing that you’re providing additional value, like that makes sense. That’s great. That’s why I zoned in on that like 10 tier. I’m like, there’s those extra little things there that I’m not quite sure yet. Again, you can leave them there. This is the beauty of it.
You can leave them there and it’s okay too. I’m not telling you necessarily take it away, but I am saying Definitely reflect on that. Reflect on maybe you make it more middle. The writers here is great because you already [01:02:00] have that. That’s the thing that you have. You’ve built a relationship there and that’s good.
My only thing would be is 12 is great, but why not 15 a month? That’s technically 25% higher priced, but I don’t think it’s going to drop off any conversions. 12 versus 15 a month isn’t going to kill anyone. Okay. Small criticism, but if you’re comfortable, I think 15 is a better price point. Okay. For your highest tier, Voyagers I guess I could say likewise, like, why not 20?
Or 19. 99, however you want to frame that. But it’s great. Except I see a digital copy of a guided journal, which is awesome. And I see even more behind the scenes going on. So I am, I’m awesome. I’m excited again, but that’s a lot. Do you need to, do you need to even think about especially cause imagine this is going to sound brutal and you have one reader who signs up for this at the 20 tier that sounds exciting.
And you’re like, Michael, that’s awesome. I’d be so happy to pay me 240 a year. Yeah that’s a [01:03:00] huge, that’s a big deal, and I hope that, and that will happen for you I hope that happens soon. That will happen for you. But, here’s the dark side of that. From a time stamp you’re now investing into doing all of this for one reader.
I love that reader. It’s your first fan and it still might be worth it. It still might be worth it. But the thing to think about is and this is the sad reality of this industry One fan isn’t gonna make you a living that’s impossible Like i’ve very rarely heard of that unless it’s like the medici family So unless you get the medici family to support you, you’re gonna have to have mobile fans And the best service to that fan, they really came there for your books and for the core thing.
And yes, they love the bonus stuff, right? That fan also probably does understand she’s got six hours a week. She doesn’t need to know exactly that, but she’s got six hours a week here. And maybe her time is better spent investing into higher leverage activities. In terms of developing more IP and, working harder at acquisition channels that can then funnel into producing more exclusive fan content.[01:04:00]
That doesn’t mean you neglect that reader at all. That means you can email back and forth with her, ask her how she likes your work, you can do all these sorts of things, but maybe you don’t invest the time into promising, creating something like a journal, when you have to format that and go through all that work, when…
The risk is, what if it’s only one person? I’d recommend building up demand for that. There’s five people now, you could even mention, this is a higher tier to support me, and when we reach ten members, I’ll start the journal. Beautiful! That’s way better in my opinion. The reader would understand that, that’s better for you, and you don’t even really have to change much about your tiers.
Just a recommendation.
Gina Hogan Edwards: So some context about the Guided Journal. That is based on the years of work that I’ve been doing with writers. And it’s basically like what the creative journey is. I’m calling it your creativity quest. Okay. And so it’s ten stages that we go through in the creative process.
It’s something
Michael Evans: that… So it’s not for readers, for fiction
Gina Hogan Edwards: readers? No, it’s that it’s for writers. Okay. And so that’s why it’s in that writer here. [01:05:00] Okay. Okay. And it’s something that I’ve been wanting to do anyway. And it is also something that I talk about on the podcast that I co-host called Around the Writer’s Table.
So we’re like walking people through these stages on the podcast and we’re, I’ll be working on the book at the same time. So something I’m gonna be doing anyway for the other part of my
Michael Evans: business. Okay, that makes sense to me. It’s good to get the clarity on who it’s for. One thing I would say is because I like read your page for this and I’m reading it now.
I guess your writers would know most likely. I was looking at yeah I think. It’s very fused together which I don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing, but that’s something for you to pay attention to are writers coming there just for the writing stuff or more than that?
And if they’re coming for more than that’s great. You have it set up like that, but if they’re not. It does create a little confusion, potentially, depending on who’s coming in. Would it
Gina Hogan Edwards: help in the graphic if I did a little banner across each graphic for the Cottywamplers and [01:06:00] the Seekers Cottywamplers for readers, Seekers for
Michael Evans: writers.
That would help out a lot. Share that in the graphic. Yeah, that would help a lot. Even in terms of the tier name. You might want to play around with. Because you could say four authors in parenthesis after it. Not changing the actual name. Because when I look at all of it, it feels like it’s all for the same person.
So that genuinely got me confused. Gotcha. Knowing those journals for writers makes me feel so much better. But I’m like I don’t know at this point, because I know you said you had one author tier. Now you got all of it’s coming together, but this is a good, this is a very good learning for folks who are listening in, who are, have multiple genres, who have multiple nonfiction and fiction.
It’s very common. You do want to be clear about the branding so that you don’t confuse someone. But knowing that. I guess cautionary tale. I don’t recommend you starting up a guided journal for your readers right now. That’ll take some time. But it’s a great subscription.
I just always want to make things sustainable for you. And that’s my 1 concern from like a mechanic [01:07:00] standpoint. I said, I’ve increasing some of those prices. Maybe making some of the branding more clear, which are important. It’s a very solid subscription. Those are relatively small things at the end of the day that I’m picking on, which I think are we’re here.
That’s what we’re here to do to help you get better. But there’s no big problems here at all. Yeah,
Gina Hogan Edwards: I think I am going to trim back based on what we talked about. And I’ll add those. Banners across each one of the images so that it’s obvious when you first come to the page Okay, this is for readers and this is for writers.
Michael Evans: I know how passionate you are about this I just want you to keep it fun. I want you to keep it fun. I
Gina Hogan Edwards: do too it’s really important to me that it remained fun and that I And that’s why I want to digest everything that we’ve talked about, because you’ve given me so much to think about, and you’ve given me so many great ideas, and I just need to process it and really hone in on the ones that I know are going to be enjoyable for me to do and are going to get me going in the direction that I want to go in.
Michael Evans: Totally. No, that, that’s what it’s all about. And for everyone listening too same thing. There’s no way any human in their right [01:08:00] mind should follow all the advice I said today. A lot of inspiring ideas out there. A lot of it was sharing frameworks that are hopefully helpful, but that might not be helpful for you, it’s all about getting the little tidbits of insight that apply to you and running it through your own filter.
So sometimes that you gotta absorb it all and then run it through the filter afterwards. That’s very normal. That’s good to do. And. I’ll be here to help you answer any of those questions, whether you post in the Facebook group or DM me, you always can do that. But before we have things off, I want to throw it back to you, take a little deep breath.
This was great. You did awesome. Very proud of you. And just ask you if there’s any last questions you have for me, any last things you want to share, anything like that.
Gina Hogan Edwards: I don’t think so. I’m just, I’m really curious to see one year from now after I have implemented some of these things where things are going to stand.
And, I told you I’m in this for the long haul. I know that it’s not going to be easy, but as long as it’s fun, I’m there.
Michael Evans: I love that. That’s a great mindset. We’re going to keep it fun for you. And hopefully today too, we helped narrow in on some [01:09:00] of that in terms of keeping it fun, but also expanding the opportunities that we have as authors.
Thank you. Thank you for this amazing session, Gina. Thank you. Incredible. It’s been great.
And that’s it for this podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. And like I said at the beginning, go grab your copy of the free Author Creator Marketing Playbook. It’s an excerpt of two chapters from the larger book, Creator Accounting for Authors. But honestly, the bulk of it is just right in there. So read it. I know you’re going to enjoy it and I hope you all have an amazing rest of your day.
Thank you again for listening to this podcast. If you’d like, if you’re still listening now, always feel free to rate us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. That helps out. But, in the meantime, I’ll see y’all soon. Next week for another awesome episode. And in the meantime, don’t forget, storytellers rule the world.
[01:10:00]