Posted on October 2, 2023
Collaborative subscriptions are an emerging opportunity in the author subscription market, and today we will be learning how Jason Sizemore, the founder of Apex Books, built a subscription for his small press with hundreds of paying readers.
Join the next cohort of the Six-Figure Subscription Author Accelerator: https://academy.storytellersruletheworld.com/subscriptions-for-authors-accelerator
Jason’s Links:
Apex Book’s website: https://www.apexbookcompany.com/
Apex Book’s subscription: https://apex-magazine.com/product/apex-magazine-subscription-one-year/ or https://www.patreon.com/apexbookcompany
Episode Outline:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:09 What Is Apex Books?
00:04:05 Jason Sizemore’s Origin Story
00:07:48 Jason’s Role in Apex
00:10:01 Apex Books and Their Successful Digital Magazine Subscription Model
00:12:38 Strategy for Attracting Readers and Growing Author Audiences
00:14:10 Navigating the Changing Landscape of Twitter
0016:38 Evaluating Writer Success and Nurturing Author-Publisher Relationships in the Small Press Landscape
00:23:12 Diversifying Revenue Streams: The Evolution of Apex Books’ Business Model
00:25:30 Balancing Act: Project Management in the World of Hybrid Publishing
00:27:22 Strategies for Introducing and Growing Patron Support
00:32:48 Advice for Writers
00:35:43 Conclusion
#54 Transcript:
00:00:00]
Michael Evans: hello, everyone. This episode is going to be a ton of fun. It’s with Jason Sizemore from Apex books, who literally has hundreds of paying readers on his subscription, subscribe to speculative fiction, magazines, and zines and books that he’s publishing through his small press Apex books in the process.
He’s working with tons of other authors and creatives, and not only able to create a successful subscription for himself, but also for tons of other creative people that he’s supporting through. Apex books. So we’re going to learn all about how subscriptions can be really effective for small presses.
And if you’re not a small press owner listening to this, I know most of our listeners are authors, I think a lot of the things Jason talks about, you can take and apply to co authors subscriptions and other sorts of [00:01:00] things you want to do. And in subscriptions for authors, we’re really excited about co authors subscriptions, and we have a lot of really exciting developments that we’re going to announce on that front.
Maybe a little foreshadowing, but Before we officially dive into the podcast, I actually want to let you know that we have just one month, that’s right, one month until the next cohort of the Six Figure Subscription Author Accelerator opens up. It’s an incredible educational experience and group coaching that allows you to go from zero or wherever you are in your subscription journey and accelerate you to taking six figures a year.
It’s Four live group coaching sessions with a small group of authors, over 70 sessions of video and course material, and a bunch of other fun resources and bonuses to help you succeed in your subscription author journey. It’s truly the best educational experience out there, by far. And so many of our authors in our first cohort are often…
Already finding tremendous success and we’re going to be sharing some other stories over the next couple of weeks as we prepare to launch this next accelerator and just show you what’s possible. It’s so inspiring. We have people like Lauren of our, who have already well over 20 paying members in just.
Two months after starting Kitty Thomas is nearly at a [00:02:00] thousand dollars a month after just launching for one week and closing it up I mean just incredible Success that’s coming from this and our authors have worked so hard We’re so excited to share some of those stories with you and we’re so excited to potentially have you part of the second cohort So if you want to join us, you can sign up for the waitlist and you’ll know when it comes out It’s only going to be open for a limited time.
So I just wanted to give you guys a heads up so that you know to prepare for things and when it’s coming. We’re going to do the live coaching in January and February but we’re opening up so you can enroll in November. We’ll place you on your team. You can get started with all the courses get into the video sessions dive deep into it and me and Amelia will also be hosting some exclusive office hours as well.
But enough of that. We’ll, we’ll talk more about that later. We still got the meantime, we got this podcast with Jason, which is going to be awesome. A ton of fun. Huge thank you to Jason coming on and a huge inspiration because what he’s doing in the subscription is truly unique and awesome.
Michael Evans: jason, welcome to the Subscriptions for Authors podcast. I’m really excited to have you on today because you have done so many incredible things at Apex Books, [00:03:00] which I think we should let everyone know what Apex Books is and how it came to be.
Before we actually get into talking about what you do on Patreon and how you serve authors and readers. So what is Apex Books?
Jason Sizemore: First thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here and to talk with your audience about a little book company. Apex Books is what I call a progressive independent press that publishes speculative fiction in novel and short form in.
But short form, collections and anthologies. We do both physical and any books.
Michael Evans: That’s awesome. Yeah. You all have, I just looking at, and I’ll link the website. It’s apex book company.com, the design of your anthologies, even your merch. I’m like, this is, Just very cool.
Oh, thank you. Before we talk about how Apex has grown and what it’s doing today, I’d love to talk about your origin story and how this all began, because you have been in the writings world for a very long time, but Apex was [00:04:00] something that started also quite a while ago, but not.
Immediately. So tell me what got you into this?
Jason Sizemore: Yeah, back in 2004, I was working for the city government of Lexington, Kentucky in risk management, which is The insurance and risk mitigation portion of city government. As you can imagine, that was a very exciting job for a creative type like myself.
I was a software developer and was functioning as a admin person for them. The nature of the job was basically draining me and I needed to do something. For myself in terms of creation and art. And at the time I knew a couple of genre writers here in Lexington, Christopher Rowe and Gwenda Bond, and they ran this really cool saddle stitched zine called Say, and I was a dedicated reader, really liked what they were doing.
And thought, okay, I want to do that. And because I always like [00:05:00] to bite off more than I could chew. I was like, okay, I wanna do that, except I’m going to have it nicely bound and I want to get a distributor and have it available to the world. And. We did that. We got a distribution deal with Ingram and that lasted for three years.
By the time we finished our run of 10, what is it, 12 issues we had Circulation of about 4,000 and was in like 1100 Barnes nos, so that’s awesome. I decided, okay, ebook revolution is coming. I just don’t how this print stuff is gonna work. Here in a couple years, so I’ve decided to redirect the energies of the company, me into publishing books and print on.
The man at the time was really starting to improve, and I thought, okay. I just do an anthology and invite writers that I had published in the Digest. And [00:06:00] on that very first anthology, it’s called Ed Grace Somnia, the Darkest Dreams of Mankind picked up a Stoker Award nomination for best anthology, and that was probably the best and worst thing to ever happen because I immediately got the.
The book Publishing Bug and have been doing it ever since. So right around 2007, eight is when that happened.
Michael Evans: Wow. And then you went full-time sometime around 2016, right?
Jason Sizemore: Yeah. In 2016 I had a bit of money saved. I’m a wife is a nice job with insurance benefits and we both were like, yeah, let’s make this happen.
Let’s give this a shot on a hold. It’s been pretty successful. In the middle of that, I had some health issues that. Derailed things for a little while, but now we’re back going full steam. And I mentioned we were doing p l D for everything and now we’re switching, trying to switch to more [00:07:00] traditional distribution model with offset printing and.
Hopefully having everything we publish eventually available in bookstores.
Michael Evans: That, what an incredible journey that you’ve had, just over a decade, really being able to, from just you and your incredible writers. Be able to like actually build a force in speculative fiction, especially because as so many of the big houses have really shut down a lot of their speculative fiction imprints or if there’s cost changes, all these things where it’s this sort of system in the traditional sense to be able to help writers have editing all those sorts of things is much more difficult.
But, I’m, there’s a lot to talk about here because one, you’ve worked with so many writers at this point and in different contexts as well, because you served as a developmental editor as well, which, do you still do any of that editing work for Apex, or are you more like big picture and you hire out that work?
Jason Sizemore: What’s your role now? No, I still do a lot of that work. Wow. Yeah. That’s the fun stuff, so I can’t let that go. Good.
Michael Evans: And through that process, especially like when you’re bringing together some of the anthologies that [00:08:00] you’ve done, the different collections, the zines, what has been some of the challenges, but then also some of the amazing parts of like ultimately bringing creatives together, creating a joint work that might have 10 writers involved.
What have you learned from that?
Jason Sizemore: I’ve learned that it’s a lot more work than. Even a experienced publisher would imagine if they’ve never done an anthology before, there’s just, the paperwork involved. There’s, with a novel, there’s one author usually with an mythology, you’re dealing with 20 plus people and.
Anthologies also are harder to get funded. Because generally the, business, you’re supposed to pay for short fiction upfront. So you gotta have that stash of money ready before you start work on the book, as opposed to a novel. The advance that we’re able to pay is usually less than the total sum of all the short stories in an anthology.
So financially. And then there’s just lots of [00:09:00] more communications and lots more people to rope in For marketing, it’s. It’s a fun process. It’s also exhausting, so it’s not for everyone. But if you like to work with many people at once it’s a good way to go.
Michael Evans: Yeah, I know quite a few, one small presses who do.
Of course anthology as well. But a lot of indie authors will get together and try and do a similar sort of thing and it’s always the person who’s leading it. And like in your case, apex Books being the publisher, it’s always a lot of work. But it can be a really great thing to get new writers exposure because you’re having a collection that readers can now go through all these different stories.
And speaking of collections that you offer to your readers, Of course this is Subscriptions for Authors podcast, so a lot of people here are interested in people who are, growing successful, patons successful subscriptions, and you have over 250 readers who are paying for like a digital magazine that you’re doing you’ve iterated that.
What’s that process been like in starting that digital magazine that you’ve now monetized [00:10:00] through subscription? I think it’s such a cool thing.
Jason Sizemore: Yeah. The Patreon has been a very positive thing for us and as you mentioned, we’ve got a decent sized group of backers over there.
I love being able to offer them, the sweet benefits of rewards that we do and.
That revenue stream has turned out to be very important. Partially because Amazon recently canceled the Kindle periodicals program, which was the way that we were selling subscriptions through Amazon. So now we’re that’s just fun. It gives us more time to focus on Patreon and building that up.
And we also do su direct subscriptions and we sell subscriptions through weightless books, which is a nice little independent ebook shop.
Michael Evans: that’s awesome. I didn’t know about weightless books. what do they do? Is it like a. Online independent bookstore, like you have a or is it in-person. Okay. Online independent bookstore. Yeah. It’s an
Jason Sizemore: online independent ebook store.
Michael Evans: Okay, that’s great. So you have the [00:11:00] subscriptions there, you have the subscription to magazine on your own site, and you have the subscription to Magazine on Patreon. So all these different places, but ultimately the same kind of product. And I know on Patreon you have a lot of different tiers where at the higher tiers, they’re also getting a discount to the store. On your site that has all of the authors books in it, or at least a lot of the titles you publish?
Jason Sizemore: Yeah. Running a digital zine isn’t necessarily a major profit center.
It, so you know, you got to leverage the cross promotion opportunities as much as possible. And so that’s something that we do as much as we can. We do keep. What I think of is the magazine as holistic in that all the content is from submissions. Doesn’t matter if you’ve been published with us or not, but we do try to promote our title, our book stuff quite a bit through the main scene, just through ad placement on the website or Add inside the ebook edition of the magazine. Yeah. Plus, with the Patreon, since [00:12:00] we have it all integrated, you get the books and the magazine, we have different reward tier options for one or the other, or for both. We’re able to cross pollinate that way as well.
Michael Evans: So smart. Yeah, you have that whole little ecosystem.
And I, I’m curious cuz one I can see now, once a fan, once a reader finds out about Apex, starts reading one of your things, I can see the clear way that they can get lost in all the different worlds. But how have you. Found your readers up to this point as a publisher. I know there’s always collaboration in terms of the marketing that you do with third parties, then also authors but what has worked for you in being able to start to build, apex readership and by proxy or author’s readership?
Jason Sizemore: I think probably the obvious one would be social media. I had a lot. I’ve been on Twitter since it started, Facebook since it started, and have a bit of a grassroots effort in building our readership that way. Very cool. I think we’re up to 28,000 Twitter followers. That’s awesome. Yeah, and it blows my mind that we have [00:13:00] that many people following us.
Michael Evans: That, that fills up a stadium
Jason Sizemore: he’s Yeah. The o other day I noticed that I can’t remember his name, but he’s the, he’s from he’s the alien guy. that has been mean to death. Who says, I’m not saying it’s aliens. But it was aliens that dude, he follows us. And I was like, oh, okay. Now it, we’ve reached a pinnacle fame.
Michael Evans: It’s perfect too because apex literally is the alien as the logo.
Jason Sizemore: I love that. I wonder if that’s what drew him to us. He’s Ooh, alien.
Michael Evans: Yeah. Maybe. That’s funny. So Twitter has been a good place for you. I guess being there. For such a long time, it’s more of a community that you just have built there like you said, grassroots.
So that’s very interesting. You have the Twitter following and then you have been able to with that, get some of those people I’m sure to be a part of the mailing list. You have obviously part of the subscriptions you have, and then also a part of just supporting the authors at local bookstores and all these sorts of things.
I, it’s a great system. I’m curious though, I don’t want to totally derail the conversation, but [00:14:00] how do you feel about Twitter recent developments in terms of you’ve built this audience on a platform that it’s changing, I’ll put it that way. It’s gone through a lot of changes.
How has that impacted you over the last year? How has that, how’s that going?
Jason Sizemore: Yeah it impacted the whole publishing business. Heck, even the the big four. New York publishers all rely heavily on social media. Yeah. Mostly through author outreach because fans like to interact with their favorite writers online and Twitter is the easiest way to do yeah, there was about a month where we really worried that we were gonna lose. We got the 28,000 Twitter followers for the magazine, and then when on the book side we have 15,000. So that’s, it’s a lot of people to lose. But if the fascist shenanigans had continued, like it looked like the night we were definitely, we were like, we’re gonna be.
Leaving, but it turns out not to be as bad as we feared. A lot of the stuff that goes on Twitter is, [00:15:00] not pleasant, but there’s still a lot of good sides to Twitter and lots of good people using it. So I’m glad that we were able to stick around and. Yeah, I’d still be a part of a community.
Yeah, because I’m not sure that an online community could have been formed as maturely as the one that we have on Twitter on a different social platform. Facebook is too constricting, too greedy. And we have all these other upstarts like Mastodon. I just don’t feel are ready to play and tie in the scope that Twitter is able to provide.
Michael Evans: It’s hard to uproot an entire culture that exists in a platform. And just comp and copy it somewhere else doing that is nearly impossible to a certain extent. So you can you’ll get bits and pieces of it elsewhere, but I’m glad to hear that it hasn’t been like, it’s still there and it’s still trucking along.
Even if it’s bumpy road, that’s ultimately a very good thing. What I’m really curious to hear about is [00:16:00] how you have been able to take the writers that you work with, and if I know right now you’re closest submissions, but let’s say, you work with a new writer or you’re working with a writer in their career where do you say, okay, I’ve always been curious to ask someone who’s A publisher and not just an author.
This, how do you determine if a book is successful and if you’re gonna continue working with a writer and for a writer looking to work with, especially a small press cuz there’s lots of small presses that are either have been started in the last hundred 15 years, coming in this digital age or who are getting a start now.
And I love them. They’re great. What would be your advice to an author who’s trying to work for a small press? how do you make that a great time for both you and the publisher? What’s your general advice there?
Jason Sizemore: Oh I could spend several hours on this topic. It’s pretty, pretty important one.
So I’ll start out by saying that conventions and the personal experience are. Probably the most important way of getting a foot in the door at the small press. And this also ties a little [00:17:00] bit back to your previous question about this building and the audience through the services, you know’s, like Patreon and direct.
We do a lot of I wouldn’t say a lot, but I do try to make a couple of appearances a year at the professional level conferences, for genre, there’s a world fantasy, there’s the World Science Fiction conventions, Stoker Con, which is for horror. It’s important because I get to meet.
Lots of up and coming riders that way at these conferences. And it’s a trust is a two-way street. I want to meet the people that I’m gonna work with, and as a rider, you should always be protective of your own brand and your artistic self. So you should be very cognizant of the type of people that you may be getting in the bed with in terms of having your work published.
And there’s no better way to do it than [00:18:00] getting to know someone over a couple of drinks or over a, coffee. Granted it’s not perfect, never is, but. It certainly beats, a random email or just going out and researching someone. There’s the aspect of you got to learn patience just in publishing in general, but in small press, we’re all struggling with resources.
Like for Apex, we have just me and one other person that’s full-time, and then we have a team of four or five others who put in 10 hours a week, 10 20. There’s not a lot of person hours available so things can Take a while or they can just do to the lack of resources not get done. And yet as the author, you just have to realize, that’s part of the small press game of the, to make up for that.
Though you, as the writer [00:19:00] you get a lot more control. Over how the book is published. The art edits are usually a lot more flexible. Plus you’re helping nourish the only ecosystem that publishing has. Other than the big four. In New York conglomerates. So if you’re working with small press it’s good to help keep that little system going too along with the self publishing crew.
Yeah, that was a long rambling answer, but I I hope that I was able to get the point across.
Michael Evans: No, I think that’s really helpful. I think the advice too on, just you. Don’t be a stranger, like just trying to submit to a bunch of different places. Send a diff bunch of different cold emails.
Like especially when working with a small press, it’s about the people and the story and knowing that there is going to be a fit in working together. And that is something that, when you go to a big four publishing house, it’s oh, it’s a random house, whatever, and that brand name gets the writer in.
But a lot of times they’re not treated the best and a lot of times, A writer just gets put into that big [00:20:00] system. There’s broken promises the publisher promotes, they get a group of 10 books in a specific sub genre, they’re gonna really focus on two of ’em. And the other authors are gonna get ignored.
And that can be very challenging as a writer when your advance might not get paid out and then you feel pretty powerless in that. So it’s interesting. And then of course, on the indie side of things, there’s a lot of indie authors. I especially, what’s interesting is, I’ve been a part of the teen writing Kuni on Instagram, which I feel like we’re not teens, I’m not teen anymore, 21, but we were teens and we started, and it’s interesting because, this is a younger generation that’s grown up where indie publishing was an option from day one and is like something that has been very obvious.
Most of them have any published books, but I have a lot of friends who have increasingly wanted to sign and work with small presses because of. The collaborative aspect with the idea that they don’t have to have it completely all on their shoulders. It is something that I’ve seen become more attractive to writers, so it’s really helpful to hear from you how writers can consider that.
Jason Sizemore: I also think it, you don’t wanna put [00:21:00] all your eggs in one basket. I think a writer who. Focuses solely on getting their books out through New York is playing. It can be a dangerous game because you know what happens if your house is consolidated with someone else, you probably lose your editor, but they still have your rights.
So there’s not a darn thing you can do about it. And your book is in limbo for five years. so then you’re not earning and you may have some kind of exclusivity agreement with that publisher. So you may, if you wanted to write and some submit it, it can be a mess. So you know, if you are prolific enough and you have the work available to sell, Think about, some of your more fringe works going to a quality small press, or if you have a title that might succeed in the indie publishing world, certainly go for it that way as well.
I’m a advocate of trying all three routes.
Michael Evans: Yeah. Yeah, it’s [00:22:00] important. All at the end of the day, you wanna get your work out in the world and you want to have it be the best story possible. And it’s dif different stories and different stages of people’s careers maybe demand different options, but being hybrid ultimately both in platform and how you do things.
And you’ve definitely done that as a company, right? Because you are. Very hybrid, just looking at all the different revenue streams you have coming in. You’ve got the merchandise, the anthologies, the novels, the ves. You’ve got all the different bookstores, you’ve got the workshops Now the workshops too.
Yeah. And the workshops are great. I’m curious for you how over the last 15 years have, especially even since you’ve gone full-time, the last five or six. How has those revenue streams evolved in the sense of, was, I’m guessing in the beginning novels weren’t thing a thing at all. Is that your biggest one out writing workshops?
How’s that going? I love who you have coming in, by the way. So reminds me a lot of what future scapes does. I dunno if you’re familiar with future scapes. Yeah, they’re great. I am. I’m curious for you, what kind of, where you’ve seen subscriptions too, the significance of those revenue streams.
Where’s kind of that pie [00:23:00] right now of the Apex
Jason Sizemore: business where the largest revenue comes in?
Michael Evans: Yeah. What are those streams like? A lot of authors, like Indie Authors will say Amazon’s my biggest one, and then these are the other retailers. But you obviously have a very different model, which I think is fascinating,
Jason Sizemore: sad to say.
But I’d say Amazon still makes up. Probably at least half our income. We, that’s just where people prefer to buy their books. And our Patreon plays a very big role and sometimes can almost match what Amazon is bringing in each month. Wow. Yeah, I would love it to, to get to a point where Paton, is doing way better.
But generally the book side of things is where most of the money is coming in. The workshop program that we’ve started is still pretty new and we’re still getting the word out about it. It’s bringing in some nice money, but it’s, definitely second fiddle to the books. The magazine, it on paper, [00:24:00] we’re probably running in the red on the magazine but there’s.
A lot. I find that there’s a lot of benefit to having the magazine in terms of brand recognition reach notoriety
just the cross pollinization that we talked about earlier. Yeah yeah, it’s this whole hybrid model I think is. It’s a way to go for a small press. It certainly is a lot of work, any small business is a lot of work and you gotta treat your press as a small business, which I think if you’re a writer and you’re looking to get into the small press, you definitely want an editor who has some business sense publisher that has some business sense.
Yeah, I just kinda, I ran out steam on that one, but I do completely agree with your assessment of the versatility of the hybrid model.
Michael Evans: I’m curious cuz with hybrid, and you mentioned this, like there’s so much different projects going on, and obviously as no matter who’s listening, whether you’re.
Someone who’s starting a small press or an author, you with a day job or a full-time author with all [00:25:00] these other things, we all have a lot of different projects going on. And I’m curious from a project management perspective, I can only imagine just the number of titles, different releases you have going on in a year.
It’s a whole, whole other level. How do you literally manage that and stay sane, stay productive, stay, I guess like you said, you love the developmental editing, you love being in the story. How do you not get bogged down by all this other stuff that is fun but not maybe as fun as like literally being inside of a fantasy world?
Jason Sizemore: Yeah. The people who work for me tease me. They tell me I can be forgetful, but at the same time I’d like to point out to them just the incredible amount of things. Going on at any one minute. So I’m surprised that I’m able to remember what I do remember. I do have one person dedicated to handling the project management side of most of the company.
Rebecca Treasurer. She’s awesome. She keeps me sane and She’s so very important to what we [00:26:00] do. Also, my editing partner, Leslie Connor, is also a super organized person and she handles a lot of the magazine stuff, which frees up my time immensely. I just stumbled into getting to know those two great people and have been blessed to, to call them coworkers.
Michael Evans: Very happy for you and that’s so cool to hear. I bet. There’s you gotta find the right person who’s so passionate about Apex and about what you’re doing to be there, but when you get that person, it’s just I can imagine how fun that is.
Jason Sizemore: It’s surreal that there are people as passionate as I am about this little publishing company I created.
But also it’s, they’re the people that really make all this possible. So I’m also, grateful that they have found their passion with what we’re doing.
Michael Evans: Yeah. No, that’s, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. One thing I’m curious about, cuz mentioning that your subscription’s now a significant revenue stream, that’s to launch a Paton launch, anything is hard, and.
It’s now [00:27:00] going well and I think you’re offering is great, but in terms of like the literal Hey, I’m going to let my audience know about this. That’s something I see a lot of people have a question about. It’s very stressful cause I’m all of a sudden asking, my audience to support me in a way, support us what we’re doing and, open up their wallets and pay monthly, which can also be, a big ask for a lot of people.
How did you go about that? Was it something you just put on your Twitter and your mailing list or was there a more concerted effort?
Jason Sizemore: A lot of it was social media. I used to be the sole person behind all of our social media accounts, so Oh wow. I was able to, Give voice to the exact kind of branding and yeah, attitude and mood that I wanted the company to convey. And then we brought people into the fold who had been following us for a while, and they know exactly what to say and do now on social media.
I. Wanna point out that we have had, we have a pretty sizable mailing list as well, and that’s been a great help and I really don’t think [00:28:00] I’ve done anything special other than just being around for a very long time. You accrue people in these lists. I’ve probably got newsletter members who’ve been around for 15 years wow.
And then the conferences, I used to do a lot of conferences a lot more than I do now. Partially because Covid killed off most of the smaller ones. But I used to just travel all the time and go and be like a guest panelist at conferences. And I felt like I probably matched about everyone that was interested in reading a science fiction book at some point.
Since 2005. So
Michael Evans: that’s, the conference is amazing. Traveling is really difficult. But were you also a vendor selling books at those conferences and anthologies as well? Or was it just you Most of the
Jason Sizemore: time. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I’m glad you brought that up.
I’ll add to a large portion of our customer base or people that I just. May not have even sold a book to at that conference, but just spoke with at the table and just, they either, thought this [00:29:00] books look cool. I’ll. Go to his website later or they’re like, Hey, I like talking to that country dude.
Maybe I’ll try out something when I get some more money. I used to get bummed out because I would go to these conferences and be a vendor and I don’t have a very aggressive salesman tactic. I’m very shy and laid back. And so when people would come to the table and ask me not to book, certainly I would talk to them, but I wouldn’t Yeah, give the hard sales pitch.
And while I think that hurt us at the shows, it did help build relationships with customers to. That paid fruit down the road.
Michael Evans: That’s actually, I think, such a helpful thing for people to hear because so many of us, as authors especially we’re shire, right? Like we, we are very passionate what we’re doing, but we do not want to be salesman at all.
And to hear that there’s actually a benefit in that because I can see that myself, it gets a little annoying when like every table you go to, everyone’s just trying to sell you. So they just get written off in your mind, but then they go to you and it’s oh, I actually had a conversation with him [00:30:00] and you know that it was a great conversation.
I’m gonna look at him again and see maybe later. Yeah, if I wanna go to his website, check it out more. Yeah.
Jason Sizemore: I’ll hear jokes about, ah, I’d go to the vendor hall, the smell of desperation chokes me or whatever. And. When I’m vending. Yeah. I certainly want you to buy a book. And while I’m talking to you, I am thinking, I’m trying to place images in your head of you giving me a 20 for a book.
That’s not like really my focus at that moment though. I figured that if they like what? I had the sale that they will come back for it either at the show or later online or in rare instances in the bookstore. Yeah. So if your listeners, I think the takeaway here is don’t underestimate the personal touch and.
Every step of the process from meeting other people in the field, other editors and publishers who you may need [00:31:00] to turn to for advice and help at some point to the writers that you will meet.
The relationships you build with customers at the tables and in events that, that’s all very important too. You don’t have to be an extrovert to make these work. In fact, most people in the publishing business probably would identify as an introvert.
You just have to not be an asshole.
Michael Evans: That’s a good, as a takeaway, amazing advice and I’m curious cuz Does this extend I, cause I can tell you are just a genuine person. And I know this comes through online too, like this idea that like online it feels like we’re always being sold to.
Would you say that like the same idea that you’ve done in-person conventions, this focus on like long-term relationship building, is that kind of your approach to online as well? With places like Twitter, and I know you all have an Instagram. Would that be a similar type of thing?
Jason Sizemore: When it’s a company mouthpiece, like our Twitter account or Facebook account, we do a lot of like announcements about sales and [00:32:00] updates.
But when it comes to my personal stuff, I do talk a bit about Apex and the things that we have going on, but. Also I do try to remain keep it personal and interesting. Not just be a sales salesman for the company.
Michael Evans: Yeah, no you’re ultimately a member of the community. Ultimately, you’re someone who loves sci-fi fantasy and horns.
Absolutely. As much as all the readers. And I’m curious for you. If there’s any last advice you’d share with writers who are looking to ultimately, get out there, whether it’s on the convention floor, have their own subscription or out on social media, what your advice would be to writers who are looking to take this next step in their careers and ultimately do what you did, which is, chip it away for years and now you’re full-time doing, doing this, which is incredible.
Jason Sizemore: I think if you’re in your journey, if you’re early in your journey, you’ll find that people will give you money because they want to [00:33:00] succeed. So let’s say I was Jason, size one, the rider and I started at Paton. To promote my writing. Sure, I’ve had a few short stories published over the years, but mostly I’m not known as a writer.
I may get 10 or 15 people to, give a dollar or two each month who just want to support me because they know me or Like something I’ve done in the past. And don’t be afraid to embrace that there are people out in the world who root for you and you’d be, you may be surprised at who shows up and tosses you a dollar or two.
Past that, once you show quality, then you’ll start getting more people. And when you show promise, and then you’ll get more people, they’ll be like, okay, I’m gonna take a bet on this guy. Here’s five bucks a month. Just don’t let yourself doubt and don’t let imposter syndrome keep you from fulfilling.
[00:34:00] What. Your goals are, you may have a goal of, okay, I wanna make a hundred bucks a month, selling my fiction to backers. You’re not an imposter as long as you’re succeeding it. you’re filling your rewards and you’ve gotten, you’re a hundred bucks a month.
Why do you feel like you don’t deserve that? You do? Because. Yeah. The people backing you have decided that you do people lose that perspective pretty quickly?
Michael Evans: that’s incredible advice. I had a really important reminder too, because it’s very easy as writers just in general as people too to feel like we’re not worthy of the things and to maybe not even feel like we can do it and to take that step forward, but,
Jason Sizemore: Imposter syndrome is certainly real and heck, I’ve been put editing for almost 20 years now, and there are times where I still lead workshops for Apex like once every month or two, and I’ll come up with a topic and think, gosh, Should I really be [00:35:00] leading this?
What do I know about this? And then I’ll have to have a friend or a colleague, tell me you’ve only, published 138 issues of magazine. I think you know a little bit about this. So then I’m like, oh, okay. Internally, I’m probably still thinking I’m still an imposter, but at least I can fake it until I make it right, so I’ll do the workshop.
Michael Evans: The feeling never really goes away, but it’s important to have people to be like, Hey no, Jason, you’re,
Jason Sizemore: you got to, yeah. Gotta have those advocates.
Michael Evans: Yeah. No, that’s so important. Jason this has been an incredible conversation and my last question is just where can we find you and Apex Online?
Yeah.
Jason Sizemore: Our website is Apex look company.com. The magazine is apex magazine.com. You can find me on Twitter apex. Jason, although I would encourage you to just follow the Apex. Twitters they’re a lot more active on [00:36:00] social than I am. I’m mostly on Facebook these days. But if you go to our websites, you can find all the links to all our social medias.
Michael Evans: That’s awesome. That’s so cool. Yeah I love it. And if you go to the websites, but you really should, that you’ll see some really pretty covers. And it’s just worth a look if if you, especially if you’re a speculative fiction author listening which I and myself, so I’m like definitely a fan.
So Jason, this was amazing. Thank you so much for chatting with us today. Thank you for
Jason Sizemore: having me. It’s been blast.
And that’s it for this episode with Jason. I mean, what an amazing guy. Brilliant, super nice, and he just shared all of his insights so generously with us. So definitely recommend checking out Apex Books. Huge thank you to Jason for coming on. And if you’re interested in learning more about subscriptions, I recommend checking out our book.
We have a free book all about subscriptions you can get for signing up our mailing list at subscriptionsforauthors. com. We also have a ton more resources on our website, a Facebook group, a free summit we recorded. Dozens of podcast episodes, just so many resources to help you dive into your subscription.
And then when you’re ready, the next cohort of the Six Figure Description Author Accelerator will be opening soon. [00:37:00] But in the meantime, I hope everyone has an amazing rest of their day. And don’t forget storytellers rule the world.