Posted on September 17, 2022
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Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf in Thomasville, GA, and host of From the Front Porch, joins us to chat about how she has built multiple streams of revenue for her bookstore powered by subscriptions. She runs a physical book subscription and a digital book club for the superfans of her podcast. So many insights in here for us authors!
Annie’s Links:
https://www.bookshelfthomasville.com/
https://www.fromthefrontporchpodcast.com/patrons-only
Instagram: @bookshelftville, Facebook: @BookshelfThomasville
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#11 Episode Outline:
0:00 – 2:24 Introduction and Context
2:24 – 4:56 The Overview of the Bookshelf’s Subscription Model
4:56 – 7:08 Why Annie Started Subscriptions as an Indie Bookstore
7:08 – 8:39 Tweaking Reader Subscriptions to Drive Hundreds of Sign-ups
8:39 – 12:25 Subscription for Annie’s Bookish Podcast
12:25 – 16:02 Virtual Events for Authors
16:02 – 20:10 How Annie Markets Her Subscriptions + The Start of From the Front Porch Podcast
20:10 – 21:50 Making The Bookshelf Community with Subscriptions
21:50 – 24:19 How Annie Manages the Bookstore, Podcast, and Subscriptions
24:19 – 28:08 The Growth in Annie’s Team and Online Direct Sales
28:08 – 32:46 How Annie Hired a Community Manager
32:46 – 34:56 How Annie Cultivates Direct Relationships With Her Readers (And Sells Directs Online Too)
34:56 – 37:58 The Power In Book Curation and Community Curation
37:58 – 41:00 Has Annie Tried Selling eBooks Direct?
41:00 – 43:26 Gen Z Reading on Mobile Phones + Future of eBook Direct Sales
43:26 – 45:25 Creators as the New Booksellers
45:25 – 48:30 Boundless Futures for Books and the Adapting Tastes of Readers
48:30 – 50:05 Life Update + Conclusion
#11 Full Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: Hello everyone. And welcome back to another episode of Subscriptions for Author’s podcast. Today, we have a very special episode cuz we actually have an indie bookstore that utilizes subscriptions both like physical in person, book subscriptions, but also a digital subscription to their book club.
[00:00:15] Michael Evans: I’ll give a brief rundown of Annie and really the bookish empire she’s built. The bookshelf in Thomasville, Georgia and her podcast from the front porch. But essentially she has subscriptions connected to both the bookstore and her podcast, private community, and all this amazing things that hundreds of readers are subscribed to a month and has actually been able to make up a significant portion of her business.
[00:00:37] Michael Evans: She also says about 50% of her sales online now as a physical independent bookstore, which is kind of incredible. And today we’re gonna be talking all about how Annie’s selling directory, readers, how she’s building a community, both in person, and also globally of readers who love the bookshelf and who want to buy books by Annie and her staff.
[00:00:57] Michael Evans: This is a really amazing episode. And [00:01:00] honestly, I have so many ideas coming out of this. You wouldn’t normally think like as authors, that we’d be able to learn so much from indie bookstore owners, but we really can, and Annie is an innovative one and so privileged to be able to speak with her today, you can check out her links to both her podcasts, to her bookshelf, both to buy books online, but also visit in.
[00:01:20] Michael Evans: The description below. In addition, you can find our links. If you wanna be part of the subscriptions for author’s community. It’s a group of now 750 plus authors, which is wild. All people who are looking to grow their subscriptions and pioneer our new model for publishing. We also have a newsletter that’s free that we develop weekly insights on
[00:01:36] Michael Evans: and we also have Ream the subscription platform, by fiction authors, four fiction authors. It helps save you time with great scheduling features. It combines your community and stories all in one. So you can have an immersive fandom and build relationships with your readers so that we can turn your audience from customers of Amazon, into your readers.
[00:01:54] Michael Evans: Anyways. I hope y’all have a great time listening to this podcast. The launch link for Reem is below. We’ll be going into beta soon. And [00:02:00] depending on you’re listening to this, we may be out. If you’re listening to this at a later date, I’m aware that podcasts are kind of like, you know, kids be beaconing enough folks in the future, which is cool.
[00:02:08] Michael Evans: So hello for the future. Hello from the present. And we’re about to say hello to Annie Jones in today’s podcast about how an indie bookstore utilizes subscriptions. Let’s get into it.
[00:02:18] Michael Evans: Annie, I am so excited to be here with you because it feels like you are a bookstore innovator of Renegade.
[00:02:27] Michael Evans: You’re really doing something fascinating. And I think people listening to this will be both authors. They might be publishers people in this book world who are looking to maybe make some money and run their small business through subscriptions. But you obviously do more than just subscriptions.
[00:02:42] Michael Evans: So it might be nice to have an overview of what is the bookshelf, what is. Everything that you’re doing underneath, like Annie Jones and we can dive into maybe a bit more of the subscriptions.
[00:02:53] Annie Jones: When I think about the bookshelf, I kind of think of the big three. So I think of our reader retreat.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Annie Jones: Switch. I’ll talk about, I think about our subscription services. And I think about from the front porch, which is our store podcast. So when I think about the bookshelf, we’re an independent bookstore first, and then those three things help us run and maintain and grow our independent bookstore. So from the front porch is our weekly podcast where we talk about books, small business and life in the south.
[00:03:24] Annie Jones: We have done that show. Well, I think we’re approaching 400 episodes. We have run that show, I think since 2014, so a long time. And it took a while for that show to kind of grow and find an audience, but we stuck with it. And that podcast has really helped us extend the bookshelf from our small town in Thomasville, Georgia into the wider book community.
[00:03:48] Annie Jones: So I really credit from the front porch and the podcast for allowing us to grow outside of Thomas. Our subscription services. We’ll talk about at length I’m sure. But it’s essentially a book of the month [00:04:00] club based on our staffer’s individual tastes. And then our reader retreats were designed in 2019.
[00:04:06] Annie Jones: Of course we’ve been set back a little bit by pandemic things, but they are designed to be weekend long, almost like mini summer camps for people who hated summer camp designed for readers to come together and. Meet authors, hang out with our bookstore staff find out about upcoming titles, have a dinner party inside the bookstore.
[00:04:26] Annie Jones: So kind of a weekend long event devoted just for readers, many of whom live outside of Thomasville, Georgia, and come to visit. We want people to come visit our small town. So kind of providing an outlet for readers who also enjoy traveling and who like to kind of be tourists in small towns. So those are kind of the big three things that we do to grow our independent
[00:04:46] Michael Evans: book.
[00:04:46] Michael Evans: Starting a podcast back in 2014 that was just so early .
[00:04:50] Michael Evans: And I’m really curious, from a standpoint of what got you into subscriptions in the sense of you were doing this [00:05:00] podcast.
[00:05:00] Michael Evans: Mm-hmm I get the sense that you didn’t have a monthly subscription set up from day one. Walk us through the subscriptions that you have tied to the bookstore and the podcast
[00:05:09] Annie Jones: In 2016, I had owned the store or run the store at that point for three years, two and a half years.
[00:05:16] Annie Jones: And I knew other bookstores were doing subscriptions. And so I thought it would be fun. It’s something I would love as a consumer, as a customer. And so we created, I think maybe even before 2016, we created a book of the month service where. We had a form that you filled out on our website. And I would hand pick a paperback book for you, like curated specifically to your taste.
[00:05:44] Annie Jones: And we probably had, well, six people subscribe to that and it was super fun, but it was not sustainable because paperback books, many times people already have read the hard back. Like it was very difficult to be able to find a book that somebody had not read. And then. It was very hard to do [00:06:00] that personalized taste and have the program grow.
[00:06:03] Annie Jones: And so if the point was for subscriptions to grow, we needed to change the model. So I think, yeah, 20 14, 20 15, we had this kind of book of the month program where I hand picked a book for you. 2016, we launched what is called our shelf subscription service. And I wanted to retain the feel of a handpicked book selection.
[00:06:21] Annie Jones: That’s what bookstores are so good. But I wanted something that was sustainable, that we could grow the program went. And so I decided to feature our staffers. They’re amazing at what they do. They’re frequently devoted to a genre or two that kind of allows them to specifically meet different readers. But instead of just saying, oh, I’m a fantasy reader or I’m a mystery reader, you would get to say, oh, I’m an Olivia reader.
[00:06:43] Annie Jones: And it kind of ties you into our physical bookstore. Like, I want you to know that our store is not run by robots. It’s run by people. And so I’m an Olivia reader. I love literary fiction. Well, I’m an Annie reader. And so we launched that in 2016, probably immediately. It [00:07:00] was more successful than the previous iteration of the subscription service we had about.
[00:07:03] Annie Jones: 30 people subscribe. And we send out a hard back first edition book every month. And you pick, do you want Olivia’s books? Do you want Annie’s books? And those staffers have rotated, you know, we’re retail business. So Olivia’s been around for a long time, but we’ve had other staff staffers come in and out.
[00:07:20] Annie Jones: But we’ve still been able to retain a lot of our subscribers. Now fast forward. And in 2020, that subscription service obviously grew even more. So it was already pretty in my mind successful. But with the pandemic and with a growth in our long distance customer base banks in part to, from the front porch, the subscription service was just something people could easily support.
[00:07:43] Annie Jones: Easily purchase at a time when they weren’t being able to shop in store, whether they were local or not. Right. They weren’t being able to shop in store. So this was a way to get books delivered to their door. It was a way to sustainably support a small business, which I think people were really interested in during peak pandemic times of 2020.[00:08:00]
[00:08:00] Annie Jones: So, now it’s 20, 22. We have. Almost we have between 350 and 400 subscribers that we mail books to every month, it has become a huge part of our business. We our entire upstairs is devoted to shipping , which is something I never would’ve thought or dreamed back in 2013 or 2014. So anyway, that’s kind of the trajectory of shelf subscriptions and kind of how they started and proof that you can kind of start with something and tweak it.
[00:08:27] Annie Jones: That’s all, that’s what small business is, right? It’s like throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks and tweaking it until it really makes more
[00:08:33] Michael Evans: sense.
[00:08:34] Michael Evans: And I’m also curious too, because I know you have a Patreon that people can support you and also subscribe monthly with your podcast. Give me a load on that description. Cause you also have a community too tied
[00:08:45] Annie Jones: to that as well. Yes, absolutely. And that feels more recent. So shelf subscriptions feels like something we’ve been slowly building over time.
[00:08:52] Annie Jones: Pay Chan is something we added as a part of our, from the front porch podcast, probably 2018, maybe 20 18, [00:09:00] 20 19. And it became a way to have monthly support. Really to pay for production costs from the front porch, like from the front porch started as something I literally Googled how to start a podcast.
[00:09:12] Annie Jones: I watched a YouTube video and I did, I did a podcast. Like that’s what you did in 2014. And obviously as the show grew or as we wanted it to grow, we knew it had to become more professional and more well produced. And so having a Patreon support system , these customer. Most of whom are long distance, some of whom are local who can support us at the $5 level is our most popular level.
[00:09:35] Annie Jones: $5 a month feels like a relatively inexpensive ask for people. But it makes a huge difference to us and pays for our production costs. And in return we give bonus content like our conquer, a classic episodes where we, this year, we’re reading the count of Monte Christo and recasting it. Recapping it in podcast episode form.
[00:09:54] Annie Jones: So that is kind of the exchange. We also have a $20, a month’s tier, which was a [00:10:00] big, that was a leap for me that felt like a big ask, $20 a month felt like real commitment. But in return we do a, from the front porch book club where we have monthly book club conversations and it’s me and some other staffers who come in and facilitate those.
[00:10:13] Annie Jones: And we base. Our book selections on our subscription service. So it ties in our Patreon members and our subscribers and kind of encourages if you’re a Patreon supporter, but you don’t subscribe. Now’s your chance if you’re a shelf subscriber, but you are on Patreon, you’re getting the books. If you want the book club hop over to Patreon.
[00:10:33] Annie Jones: So it’s a way to kind of. Capture both of those audiences and grow both of those audiences. And then my podcast production team, they’re called studio D they I’ve never met them in person they’re they do the podcast remotely for us, but they really believe in what the bookshelf does and what independent bookstores do.
[00:10:50] Annie Jones: And they said you should have a tier. That’s just a big dream Patreon here and ask for $50 a month support. And that’s like your benefactor. Those are people who just believe in what the [00:11:00] bookshelf does and they wanna support it financially. And so we have a handful of people about six to eight people who support us at $50 a month.
[00:11:07] Annie Jones: Like I said, that feels like a big, that was a big leap for me personally and mentally to take that felt like a big ask. But as my husband is constantly reminding me, people want to support financially what they believe in, whether it’s political candidates or local organizations. And we’re a small business and small businesses play a big role in our communities.
[00:11:26] Annie Jones: And if you believe in what we do, then here’s a chance to financially support us. So Patreon has become a way. For us to receive some financial support that helps us grow and sustain our business. It also has given us a built in community to communicate. When we have a business change or when we have an exciting project, we wanna tell people about when we wanna invite people to read a retreats, like our Patreon supporters are who we go to first, when we kind of have this thing that we wanna launch.
[00:11:53] Annie Jones: We have between 500 and 600 Patreon members a month. That’s a huge community that you can kind of test things out [00:12:00] on that you can say, Hey, here’s an event we’re trying here are tickets. And they’re almost like a focus group. So that’s an added perk to Patreon that I wouldn’t have anticipated.
[00:12:07] Michael Evans: That focus group aspect I think is really important as well for authors too, because. You can test out the new book idea you wanna write? Yeah. On a small group of people, just like you can test out, what books should we order more of next month?
[00:12:19] Michael Evans: And I’m curious too, when you’re working with authors and doing events, you also do virtual events. Mm-hmm what kind of success have you seen with that and how has that helped you to maybe further foster your community?
[00:12:30] Annie Jones: So our. Store is a little bit off the beaten path. So we’re not maybe on your typical author tour, right? If you’re coming to Georgia, you’re probably stopping in Atlanta and we are very far from, from Atlanta. So we have had to learn what events work best for our store. So virtual events became, we already were doing a few because of our patron community because of our longest it customer base.
[00:12:54] Annie Jones: But virtual events became a much bigger part of our business beginning in 20. And one perk of [00:13:00] that was that we were able to do author events that we would never have gotten to do otherwise. One author who comes to mind is a woman named Erica Bower, Meister. She wrote a book that I loved called house lessons.
[00:13:10] Annie Jones: I reached out to her because I just really loved her book. She lives in Washington state, never in a million years, would she have gotten to come to Thomasville, Georgia? I could not have paid her to come. She could not, you know, we’re, we are very far about as far from Washington state, as you could possibly get.
[00:13:25] Annie Jones: And so during the pandemic, we were able to do a virtual author event and it was very successful and it felt like a really big deal for us. We don’t normally get. Big name authors, just because of the location of our store. So that felt like a real win. And so we did a few of those throughout the pandemic I hesitate to say has the pandemic subsided?
[00:13:44] Annie Jones: I don’t know. But as the pandemic has ebbed and flowed we. Learned that author virtual author visits were not where we wanted to do our bread and butter. Like that’s not what we wanted to do, because what often happened was we became tech people, as you probably know, from [00:14:00] hosting a podcast where we would have to like figure out how to get the author of the tech, they needed how to support them.
[00:14:05] Annie Jones: And we really weren’t in the place to be able to do that long term. So instead, most of our virtual events that are most successful and that have continued beyond the pandemic are. Our literary lunches where I will preview seasonal books or a staffer will preview seasonal books. And we have a couple hundred people attend those from all over the country.
[00:14:27] Annie Jones: Hopefully then they turn around and pre-order fall books from our store. But those virtual events where staffers. And I are talking about books. Those are still our most successful. Our author events are more successful in person with our regional authors and our regional customer base. So every Saturday, mostly every most, every Saturday we host regional authors.
[00:14:50] Annie Jones: Saturdays are our biggest day in store. So we put ’em at the front of the store. They bring their books and we have a lot of success with local author signings in person [00:15:00] because that captures our in person customer base. So we’ve really had to learn over the last couple of years. What does our long distance customer base want?
[00:15:08] Annie Jones: What are they going to attend and what is our in-store customer base going to want and what are they going to want to attend? Cause they’re very different. We are super grateful to both of those audiences, but they’re not the same. And so we, as a business have really had to ask ourselves what works for which audience and how can we retain and capture them both because we love them both.
[00:15:26] Michael Evans: I think there’s so much in that for just anyone to take away from cuz. I often think about like my readers kind of like in one group of like high readers, you’re all here. Mm-hmm and then we start talking about like, something like subscriptions and I there’s that one south American river that the customers of that platform tend to be a bit different than maybe someone who would go to any bookstore, nothing wrong.
[00:15:48] Michael Evans: Not at all. We love all readers. Yes. But as also it’s different ways that we can cater to different groups of readers. And yes, I think you articulated. Unbelievably well.
[00:15:57] Michael Evans: And when catering to these readers [00:16:00] specifically, let’s say the readers that are converting to your subscriptions and are interested in that both Theon subscription that you have for, I suppose there’s overlap, but that can work for in person, but can also work for your.
[00:16:12] Michael Evans: Long distance listeners, and also then your subscriptions that are shipped outta your store that I assume a lot of people in your regional area would like to have, but also you could be anywhere and have these subscriptions. Mm-hmm , I’m curious how you marketed these. I know that you spent time each day marketing, and it’s a word that is not always super fun.
[00:16:32] Michael Evans: Cause we just like to kind of hold our books and read and write, but it’s important one. So how have you been able to.
[00:16:37] Annie Jones: Yeah. So my background pre-book selling was in journalism, which is not the same as marketing, but when I graduated with a journalism degree where I found myself was often working in marketing, right.
[00:16:48] Annie Jones: That’s where a journalism degree will occasionally lead you. And so I was very lucky to experience. Some to gain some marketing experience through my early work, before becoming [00:17:00] a bookstore manager and I’m very grateful to that experience because if we want our businesses to grow, if we want our books to sell, if we wanna put them in the hands of readers, we do have to market.
[00:17:09] Annie Jones: Right. I think Mar I think people can kind of feel like marketing is this evil thing, but it’s really not. It’s all about getting books into the hands of readers. And so for us, one of the ways that we market is obviously through from the front porch. So. I wanna talk about from the front porch. And it kind of started as this idea.
[00:17:26] Annie Jones: I bought the bookshelf from an another owner, so it was already an existing store with an existing local customer base. And I bought the store from her and she had the idea for a podcast. And I very much am. If you give me an idea, I’ll run with it. So I YouTubed it, tried to figure out how to. And she really thought the podcast could be a great way to introduce me to the local community because I’m not originally from Thomasville.
[00:17:49] Annie Jones: And we thought it would be a good way for me to introduce myself to local readers. It was not not very many people were listening to podcasts in 2014. I think my mom was listening to my podcast. But that’s [00:18:00] about it instead. We realized it was a way to grow the bookshelf, like I said, beyond Thomasville.
[00:18:06] Annie Jones: And now we have a lot of Thomasville and nearby Tallahassee listeners, but it took a while to get to that point from the front porch was designed in my mind. What I love about bookstores. What I love about independent bookstores is they are hubs for community and for conversation. And so if you come into the bookshelf and we get to talking about the latest book you read, or that NPR interview, you heard with an author, we can have this really lovely conversation that we might not get to have.
[00:18:34] Annie Jones: Otherwise, I think books allow us to have conversations that we might not otherwise get to have. And so how do we mimic what’s happening in the bookshelf and in the store and take it. To a larger audience and let them know, Hey, these are the conversations we’re having in our doors. Like, this is what we’re talking about with our customers.
[00:18:52] Annie Jones: And we wanna talk about it with you too. So that’s kind of where from the front porch came from. And so it didn’t feel like marketing. It felt like sharing [00:19:00] what we were already doing with a wider audience and getting to let people in on something we were already doing in. So from the front porch is one aspect of that social media is the other aspect.
[00:19:11] Annie Jones: And there are some things, the bookshelf is not good at the bookshelf is not good at Twitter. The bookshelf is at TikTok because I am old. You know, we’re okay at TikTok. We’re not great at it. We’re good at Instagram and. We have cultivated an audience on Instagram. Again, it didn’t feel like marketing.
[00:19:27] Annie Jones: It felt like, Hey, here’s like a camera lens view into our store into what we’re doing here. You can share in it. You can see it too. Like it didn’t feel. It certainly is marketing. It’s talking about the store. It’s talking about what we’re selling. It’s talking about subscriptions, it’s talking about new release books, but it really just felt like, Hey, here’s a way for you to get to see what is happening behind the scenes at an independent bookstore or here’s what’s happening in store for our in-store customers and you get to see it too.
[00:19:56] Annie Jones: And so Instagram has certainly been one of our [00:20:00] biggest marketing tools. I would say Instagram and the podcast
[00:20:02] Emilia Rose: it’s like a little community. I love it.
[00:20:05] Annie Jones: Yes. When I took over the bookshelf, my biggest goal was to make the bookshelf regionally recognizable.
[00:20:10] Annie Jones: There’s some really awesome Southern bookstores and I wanted the bookshelf to be listed among those stores. Well, Thomasville is a small town and it’s a, a vibrant, small town. We are very lucky to, to be where we are. It’s kind of a tourist hub. People love coming here. It’s a little bit stars hollow from Gilmore girls.
[00:20:26] Annie Jones: Like it’s very cute and quaint. So it’s a lovely place to come visit. But I wanted to share that with the wider world, right? I wanted to, I wanted people to see, like, this is our small town. This is our small bookstore. Here’s a way for you to get to be a part of it. So community building. If we don’t like the word marketing, well, maybe let’s like the word community building, cuz that’s what it’s.
[00:20:46] Emilia Rose: I think that’s like such an essential part of any like subscription service too is you’re not Mar you’re not selling anything. You’re like providing this community that people can like gain access to. Yes. And I actually re I’m loving this conversation because.
[00:20:59] Emilia Rose: [00:21:00] I’ve actually have been thinking about opening a bookstore at some point, but it’s so daunting. How do you market, like how do you get people into the store? How do you get people buying your books? Yes. And this conversation is just really, really awesome.
[00:21:12] Emilia Rose: Just to see how you’ve been able to do it and you make it sound like so easy.
[00:21:18] Annie Jones: It’s not easy, but I will say it is, it is worth the very hard work. Like it is, it is something I really believe in. I’m a reader, right? I was a reader before I was a book seller.
[00:21:28] Annie Jones: And I just believe in what we’re doing and so it’s worth the hard work and I mean, it’s hard work, but there are fun parts too. Like it’s, I mean, it’s a pretty fun gig.
[00:21:36] Michael Evans: It’s hard to imagine. Like, What’s better, at least to me. Right. Being involved in making readers happy. Cause you’re delivering them incredible things.
[00:21:45] Michael Evans: And again, giving jobs and like you obviously have people working at your store. Yes. You can support people in your local community. And I wanted to kind of break down actually a little bit more about just the operation in the sense of how are you as the, the figurehead of this all mm-hmm, [00:22:00] able to manage all of these.
[00:22:02] Michael Evans: What definitely is one business, but when you describe it, it kind of sounds like these separate things. So how are you splitting your time and. How are you doing it?
[00:22:11] Annie Jones: I’m doing it with a lot of help. So I should say that 2019 felt like a real growth year for the bookshelf. So that was even pre pandemic.
[00:22:20] Annie Jones: And that was the year I traveled with a cohort of women who were also entrepreneurial. They were not bookstore owners, but they were entrepreneurial. And they opened my eyes to things like business coaching, which I had never heard of. I was not my parents. Aren’t entrepreneurial. I do not come from a background.
[00:22:35] Annie Jones: Entrepreneurship. I literally worked in journalism on a whim, managed a bookstore in Tallahassee. The bookshelf had a location in Tallahassee. I volunteered and wound up becoming a manager there and then took over the store in Thomasville. So a very unusual trajectory where I did not feel. Super prepared.
[00:22:57] Annie Jones: For entrepreneurship or small business ownership. [00:23:00] So kind of mud muddled my way through for a few years. And then in 2019. Really became aware of the resources available. So, had a business coach I’ve since had another business coach, like I’ve had a couple over the years, who’ve helped me figure out how do I grow the bookshelf sustainably?
[00:23:17] Annie Jones: Because I think that’s the key, right? I don’t wanna be the kind of business that grows and then can’t handle the. Like, I wanna be the kind of store that can just slow and steady, build something really beautiful. That’s my goal. I don’t really want to like blow up, like I’m like going viral or something would be my nightmare.
[00:23:35] Annie Jones: Like I just wanna slowly and steadily and quietly do good work that matters. And so how do we make the bookshelf grow? But in a way that’s sustainable. And over the last few years, because of the success that we had with our online sales, In 2020 in 2021, we’ve been able to grow our team. So the way that I divide my time looks a lot different than it did in [00:24:00] 2014 when I first took over the store.
[00:24:01] Annie Jones: Because thanks to the help of a business coach. I am being able to hire and really try to make sure I’m putting the right people in the right seats on the bus. And making sure that the bookshelf has the team that it needs to maintain its growth.
[00:24:14] Annie Jones: So we have a store manager who runs the floor of our store.
[00:24:18] Annie Jones: Olivia she’s been with us for a long time. She runs the floor operations of the bookshelf. And she has a team of book sellers who help her with that. And. This is all pretty new. Like this is within the last couple of years. Have we grown a team to this size? When I first took over the bookshelf, there were two or three of us max.
[00:24:35] Annie Jones: I used to call my mom who lived in Tallahassee. I would be working the store alone and be like, you’ve gotta come. You’ve gotta come so that I can have lunch and go to the bathroom. I cannot stress the people enough that like this. This is new being able to have these many staffers to kind of help, with the growth of the store is just a huge blessing.
[00:24:54] Annie Jones: And it’s a recent shift in how we operate. So Olivia has a team of book sellers and inventory [00:25:00] coordinator, all of whom are incredibly gifted at what they do. And who believe in the mission and the purpose of the bookshelf. We were able in 2021 to hire an online sales manager, her name is Erin. And that is because our online store, we went from doing 30% of our sales, maybe on a good month online to doing 70% of our business online.
[00:25:20] Annie Jones: That, and that was peak pandemic. 70% of our business was online. Now it’s evening back out, but it’s still about 50 50, which I would never. I would never have thought. And so Erin now manages our online sales, our customer service, and we have a shelf subscription coordinator who works with Erin, Laura, who packages up all of our shelf subscriptions.
[00:25:41] Annie Jones: I never would’ve thought that would be one person’s job. I mean, for so long, so much of small business is Kind of all the hands doing the work, like all of us packaging, shelf subscriptions, all of us kind of meeting on a Sunday afternoon to package up books. And we’ve gotten to the point where that no longer makes sense.
[00:25:58] Annie Jones: What makes sense is to have one [00:26:00] person devoted to that. Erin and Laura kind of team together to handle our online community and handle online sales. And then in the past month, we’ve hired two people specifically with a gifting and a skill set toward marketing. So a marketing manager who helps handle our marketing and then a community manager who helps manage and maintain our Patreon and community growth.
[00:26:21] Annie Jones: So tho those are very recent changes. So it’s this whole team of people that I hope. In the grand scheme is going to enable me to be able to be the big picture thinker of the bookshelf which is a shift for me personally. I love the boots on the grounds work. I was a bookseller first. Like I love that work, but if I want the bookshelf to maintain.
[00:26:44] Annie Jones: And even potentially grow. I think I can’t constantly be on the floor of the bookshelf. There has to be somebody behind the scenes paying the bills behind the scenes, kind of thinking big picture for the store. And so if that’s what I’m going to do, then I have to make sure we have [00:27:00] a team who can do so much of that.
[00:27:02] Annie Jones: Really valuable, good work. And they do they’re. I have a phenomenal team of people.
[00:27:06] Michael Evans: That is so interesting. Like to go from the moment where you’re like boots, scraping everything, having to. Every moment, worry about like, okay, I’m the only person that they can there’s no one else. The ball, of course the ball still drops with you, but my mom actually owned a muffin shop in Connecticut for quite a while.
[00:27:28] Michael Evans: And when she was owning that and she started it and was like just her and her business partner, who was her friend and they both were doing. And it was very similar kind of thing. And then over time it became a thing where, oh, okay. Like now we’re gonna hire her best friend from college. Who’s my uncle.
[00:27:44] Michael Evans: And he’s awesome. Like, okay. You’re now the manager and mm-hmm it happened slowly, but I think for authors. Especially like the word that you mentioned, community manager. Mm-hmm I think that’s a more and more common role that we’re gonna see. Yes. More businesses have. And I’m [00:28:00] actually curious too, because you, you just hired that person.
[00:28:03] Michael Evans: What inspired you to make that move? Because that’s still a relatively untraditional role.
[00:28:09] Annie Jones: One of the. Exciting things or interesting things that has happened over the last few years is partly because of that trip. I took in 2019, I was able to meet small business owners and entrepreneurs and creative thinkers, even outside the book selling world.
[00:28:24] Annie Jones: So as helpful and as wonderful as it is right to surround yourself with peers and other bookstores and other bookstore owners. It’s also helpful, I think, to interact with other small businesses and to see kind of what they’re doing. So a lot of these women that I was traveling. Are writers or they have maybe big Instagram presences or whatever.
[00:28:42] Annie Jones: And so I was sitting kind of at the feet of these people who were doing entrepreneurship, but in a very different way and in a different medium than I was. And I first heard the term community manager kind of in that setting. That was not something I would’ve known. Really what that was or how to hire it or [00:29:00] what that looked like.
[00:29:00] Annie Jones: And so through kind of that introduction and then just kind of being fr, like I have some friends and acquaintances who run a really successful podcast and they grew their podcast. Their podcast grew astronomically and kind of witnessing their growth and kind of seeing what they hired for. So it started out as just the two co-hosts and then it became, oh, they have a person behind the scenes kind of running their live shows.
[00:29:24] Annie Jones: Oh, they have a person who’s a community manager. I heard this kind of in the ether of these other successful businesses that I was watching, And even in my own family, I have a cousin who used to work at the bookshelf and she no longer works with us, but she still certainly is someone I go to for advice and wisdom.
[00:29:39] Annie Jones: And she became the community manager for somebody else. So I was able to witness the work that she was doing and think, well, how could we, how could we incorporate that in the bookshelf? And so when I was thinking about hiring recently, I knew we needed a marketing and events person to kind of help me with some of this growth and to even take some things off my.
[00:29:59] Annie Jones: [00:30:00] And as I was hiring for that person, I happened to interview a woman named Felicia who I thought, oh, I’m not sure if she could be a marketing manager, but gosh, she’s so personable. She seems pretty internet savvy. Like, is there a way where we could utilize her to be almost I’m super, I’m highly introverted and she, I think is introverted, but a little more personable.
[00:30:21] Annie Jones: Sometimes I feel a little I don’t know, robotic, like she is very personable and I thought, how can we incorporate her and let her almost be the extroverted face to this online community that we’re growing. And that I don’t always have the capacity for. And anyway, so we wound up hiring Felicia specifically because of her personality because of her giftings and also with an eye toward growth.
[00:30:43] Annie Jones: So she’s gonna manage our current community. But I also want her to be thinking about growth opportunities because for so long Really that felt like a job that I was having to do alone because my staff is busy running subscription services or running the [00:31:00] floor of the bookshelf. And they were certainly helpful about thinking about growth opportunities, but there wasn’t really anybody where that was their sole job or responsibility.
[00:31:08] Annie Jones: And so now it’s part of Felicia’s to figure out, Hey, this is our current community. How can we expand it? And so thanks to witnessing other businesses kind of do the same thing. I think we are able to maybe mimic that and tweak it in a way that makes sense for a bookstore.
[00:31:23] Michael Evans: When you see the word growth, that that word happens to be a job title. That’s thrown around a lot in the world of software and, and just creative businesses now that are starting on the internet. And it’s actually like a very heralded role. That’ll be a lot of times the first role that someone hires for in a small business that hopefully wants a bigger overtime.
[00:31:41] Michael Evans: Is growth and that person has their hands in everything. And they’ll just be the growth manager. Mm-hmm and I can see authors as well, hiring more for that because as you’re beginning to grow, the biggest problem I face as an author was now, most of my day is not spent writing like, right, right. [00:32:00] That’s the struggle.
[00:32:01] Michael Evans: Meanwhile, that’s what I thought I was doing.
[00:32:03] Annie Jones: Absolutely. I think that that is entrepreneurship writing. Whichever one you’re talking about, there are things that only you can do, right. Only you can write your book. Like no one else can write that for you only you can write your book, but are there other things that you could outsource, like growth, like community management, like social media management so that you can be free to do the things that only you can do.
[00:32:24] Annie Jones: And I think that is also accurate and true of small business.
[00:32:28] Michael Evans: Another thing that oftentimes small S outsourced, but you haven’t, and most, I should say almost no independent bookstore outsources, this which is what makes them really awesome, which is developing relationship with their customers.
[00:32:41] Michael Evans: But there’s oftentimes, and there’s a lot of benefits to this. We’ll sell their books in a place like Amazon. And for the record, I saw my books, Amazon, every author I does. Yeah. You know, there’s readers there and that’s just. Part of part of it, right? It’s the reality.
[00:32:53] Annie Jones: Yeah.
[00:32:54] Michael Evans: But a lot of authors only focus on Amazon and a lot of authors don’t focus on developing their own [00:33:00] customers.
[00:33:00] Michael Evans: And mm-hmm you obviously now have such a huge business in selling direct online, cause selling direct in persons a little, not that into it, but it’s a little hard to Emilia might open up their own bookstore, but I don’t think everyone listen to open up their own bookstore, but they can open up their own online bookstore and sell.
[00:33:17] Michael Evans: To readers. And what have you learned in that process from both the tech side of things? Because that sounds intimidating what customers like, does your reader base online? Not just locationally, but like what they want and what they read look different. Who’s shopping in store
[00:33:33] Annie Jones: in person.
[00:33:34] Annie Jones: Yeah, absolutely. It’s all about getting to know your people, right? Like in which in store comes quite naturally and easily because you’re constantly interacting. These people are coming in your store. Also. I live here. Like I live in Thomasville. I am in community in Thomasville. So I’d like to think, especially after 10 years of living here, that I know.
[00:33:51] Annie Jones: My community and I know what they want and I know what they’ll read and I know what I can kind of sell them. I know what they’ll like, and I know what they won’t like. And that took a long [00:34:00] time to figure out, but certainly being here and enmeshed and it helped. Online is a totally, it’s a totally different ballgame because we have customers from all over the country from all walks of life.
[00:34:11] Annie Jones: You know, Thomas Wolffer a small town is pretty diverse in terms of kind of who we’re selling to and our captive audience. But online is even more diverse. Right. You just have you’re it’s all over the country. It’s in some cases all over the world do they like fiction? Do they like nonfiction?
[00:34:24] Annie Jones: You know, I know locally fantasy books don’t do. As great. I can handle a few, but like they don’t do as great, but online, I might be able to sell that. And so I think as much as we want to be all things to all people, I also want us to just be good at what we’re good at. So I do want to sell a wide range of literature online to our growing audience, but I also really want to maintain that sense of curation that independent bookstores are so good at.
[00:34:51] Annie Jones: So. I can sell almost anything on the internet, right? Like in any book, meaning I can sell more books on my website than I can in my [00:35:00] physical store. Cause I don’t have to stock all the books that I sell on my website. But what I’d rather do is still provide the online customer, the curated experience that the in-store customer would get to have.
[00:35:13] Annie Jones: And so they know, oh, the bookshelf is really good. Literary fiction or the bookshelf is really good at gosh, their staff has such good tastes. I mean, that’s kind of what I want people to think. I, because it’s true. Like I want them to think that cause it’s true. I want them to think to themselves, you know what, I’m gonna go to the bookshelves website because man, I love Olivia’s recommendations.
[00:35:33] Annie Jones: Or I heard Erin on the podcast the other day and I wanna go browse their website. See what they have because they’ve done the work for me. So much of the internet is vast and wide. And what if I made it a little bit narrower? What if I what if I did the hard work for the reader? That’s what book selling is.
[00:35:51] Annie Jones: And to some extent, maybe librarians or whatever, like. It’s going through the catalogs and it’s narrowing down and saying, okay, what is good here? What is excellent? And [00:36:00] what can I share with my customers that they might also find good and excellent. So I think the impulse is to go big. And go wide for us.
[00:36:09] Annie Jones: And I would imagine maybe even for an author community, maybe it’s no figure out who your community is, figure out who your reader is and write for them or or write for you, but know who your audience is. And so for us growth online, hasn’t just come from like selling everything under the sun or every book title under the sun.
[00:36:29] Annie Jones: It’s more like. Hey, this latest podcast episode, Annie and Olivia talked about X. And now we can find those books on the website or, Hey, we heard Kela one of our book sellers talk about spooky books that she loved. And so I think I can go to the books Shell’s website and find her recommendations and it it’s done the work for them.
[00:36:48] Annie Jones: The because decision fatigue is real. We’re all exhausted. We’re all tired. So let the professionals help, like let the professional book selling world help you. And I feel like there’s probably some overlap. With what [00:37:00] authors can do with that too.
[00:37:01] Michael Evans: I think an incredible amount of overlap. I think in a general, the active book selling, creating a book is not too dissimilar from the act of choosing the next book you want to write because mm-hmm, all an amalgamation of our lives and what we’re interested in, what we’ve read.
[00:37:17] Michael Evans: And then we want to create something else that we feel like. Kind of fills void in us. And I think similarly, what we read does the same thing. Yeah. So sometimes we just go, okay, someone already wrote that great book. I don’t need to write it myself. And I think that it is so creative, the art of being a book seller, that authors as well, you’re looking to build a very specific community, very specific audience.
[00:37:37] Michael Evans: Mm-hmm like, Annie’s talking about then if you’re writing books for them, why can’t you also talk about other people’s books? Other people writing for them cuz you definitely can’t fulfill a reader’s entire reading habit. That’s right. Every year that would be quite difficult.
[00:37:53] Michael Evans: But what I am curious about is that when I go to your store online mm-hmm and I see that you sell print books and you’re mm-hmm that’s [00:38:00] great.
[00:38:00] Michael Evans: Like that’s what you do. Mm-hmm and I know that you also have something through liberal.fm. Yeah. Because how they support any bookstores where audiobook listeners can go there. But I’m curious if you’ve ever thought about selling like digital books, eBooks or audio. Direct or if you already do that.
[00:38:16] Annie Jones: Yeah, that’s a good question.
[00:38:17] Annie Jones: So this is one of those, like through the spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks and like something didn’t stick. So a couple of things. So certainly we sold audiobooks, but once audiobooks became primarily digital, we certainly saw a drop off in the physical audiobook purchases. Right? Like, you know, people don’t have CD players in their car, so they’re not gonna play, you know, audiobook, CDs or.
[00:38:40] Annie Jones: So the partnership with Libro FM made a lot of sense for us because it was a way to still have audiobooks and still be able to direct our customers to a dig digital platform. You know, and we, Amazon exists, right? Like, and we’re not here to kind of talk one way that Amazon is fast. It’s convenient.
[00:38:56] Annie Jones: I get it. But some big audiobook platforms like [00:39:00] audible are tied into Amazon. And so we want a way to direct people to an audiobook platform that functions similarly to audible, but the sales of those audiobooks pour back into independent bookstores. So for us Libro FM made a lot of sense. And so rather than self physical audiobooks in store, we are, we almost.
[00:39:22] Annie Jones: I mean exclusively direct people. We can, we can special order audiobooks for you, but we kind of direct people and we help teach them how to use Libra of them. So that’s kind of audiobooks, eBooks. I think other independent bookstore have had some success with this. We did not. And that goes back to kind of our local customer base and like figuring out what our local customers wanted.
[00:39:41] Annie Jones: But there is an e-reader that supports and benefits independent bookstores called the Cobo reader, I believe is what it’s called. K OBO. We started. Off trying to sell that, especially the owner before me, like when I came on board, like that was something that she had tried. And it just wasn’t successful for our local customers because.
[00:39:58] Annie Jones: Look, nothing’s gonna beat [00:40:00] a Kindle. Amazon’s really good at what they do. Right. And so it’s hard to mimic and do well. What they’re already doing well. And so eBooks have not been something since we tried the Covo, they’ve not been something we’ve kind of We’ve really done because for so many of our customers, they’re just gonna read on Kindle, which is fine, but there’s not really a way for us to get in on that.
[00:40:19] Annie Jones: You know what I’m saying? like that’s kind of Amazon’s business. And so instead we pour our energy into okay. Let the Kindle customer support and buy their eBooks from Amazon. That’s totally fine. But when, and we have a lot of customers who do this, by the way, like a customer, the other day came in the store and they were like, I read this book an ebook, but I loved it so much.
[00:40:38] Annie Jones: Now I want my physical copy and we’re like, great. We’re here for you. Here’s your physical copy? So I think we’ve just had to learn What is worth pursuing and what is worth trying. And then what is worth saying, you know what, no, let Amazon take that win and we will throw a dinner party in our store and let that be successful.
[00:40:54] Annie Jones: Cause Amazon can’t do that. ,
[00:40:55] Michael Evans: there’s a lot of great insights there. I think mainly the point on not throwing [00:41:00] spaghetti, literally everywhere at once. like, we’re gonna take this glove and throw it there for now. Yes. Cause you can’t do everything or test everything at once. That’s right. Although I would be curious to see, because I personally like don’t have a kid and I don’t know many people my age who have oh, interesting.
[00:41:16] Michael Evans: Like gen Z does not read on Kindles mm-hmm but we read all the time on our phones. So I would be curious. Because with the advent of being able to deliver books directly like book funnels and app that does this, but there’s plenty of others that enable you to just sell a book directly on your store and then they get it on their phone.
[00:41:35] Michael Evans: Mm-hmm would be curious to see that test, not selling people. Maybe you wanna throw that spaghetti, but I would be curious because. As much as I’m okay with letting Amazon have some wins. Right. I just like to,
[00:41:46] Annie Jones: we like to win. Yeah, that’s a great point too. I think what you’re gonna see is just like, so probably, I dunno, 20 years, it was before I was really in the book industry, but I think a lot of people thought, oh, print is dead.
[00:41:57] Annie Jones: Like no one. And even now [00:42:00] sometimes like a certain, a certain population of people when I tell them like, oh, I own a bookstore. They’re like, do people still buy books? Like, like, like as if it’s just this unheard of thing. And so I think we’re having to learn right. What each Generation what each, what each audience wants.
[00:42:17] Annie Jones: And I think that it’s really trying to figure out, can we meet them? So that’s a great point. Like my peers I’m 36. And so my peers are, if they’re reading eBooks, they’re reading it on a kind, a handful of my friends read on their phone, but very few. But you pointing out that gen Z reads on their phone, I’m like, oh, right.
[00:42:35] Annie Jones: Like, will there be. Libra FM for independent bookstores. I think there’s probably a market there. I don’t know if it exists yet, but like, would there be a Libro, FM like equivalent that would say, Hey, if you buy, you know, this digital copy that’s sent to your phone, the 10% of the proceeds or 6% of the proceeds, whatever, it’s go to this independent bookstore.
[00:42:56] Annie Jones: Like I think there’s probably a market for that, but it’s gonna be, I think it’ll [00:43:00] be slower. Like I think it’ll independent. Bookstores are a little slow On meeting the market where the market is like, I think it just takes them a minute to adapt. And so it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next few years.
[00:43:12] Annie Jones: Will there be a platform will the independent bookstore be able to understand what the market is asking for and be able to provide it?
[00:43:21] Michael Evans: That is definitely a big question. You know, I, myself very much view independent bookstores and authors, all a part of this larger creator movement. And mm-hmm , I think that creators are the new book sellers.
[00:43:34] Michael Evans: I think that we will 100% see a platform that enables creators to build their own digital bookstores Those listening to the podcast might know that me and Emilia are working on something that hopefully helps authors run a better subscription business, like buy fiction authors or fiction authors mm-hmm
[00:43:50] Michael Evans: And that is something that we would like to do. At some point that’s our roadmap and yeah, it’s just something that we think is necessary because at the end of the [00:44:00] day, Amazon takes 30% of every book. They take all the data most importantly, and ultimately in the future, if authors and creators were empowered to have the data and build relationships themselves with customers and their readers, I think it would make a better world because no longer feel as alone.
[00:44:19] Michael Evans: And like, I have this just big monopoly that I get my books and read them in silence from you’re going to actually build a relationship with the person who’s delivering your books and probably get better books too, because as much as an. Can deliver you books that you will maybe engage with because it can Ize everything.
[00:44:38] Michael Evans: Mm-hmm I think there’s a soul in another person who’s recommending a book to you. Yeah. Can not only get you to read it, but to love it and change your life in a way that mm-hmm, , I’m not confident an algorithm can do as reliably. So, no, I think there’s a bright future ahead for indie book selling by far there better be.
[00:44:59] Michael Evans: And I think that [00:45:00] no doubt, there’s a bright future head for all of us book lover.
[00:45:03] Annie Jones: mm-hmm I think so, too, as long as we’re willing to adapt and be creative, right. Like I think that’s the key. Are we willing to, to tweak our models or to adjust our models, to meet people where they are? Are we willing to think creatively and to maybe think outside the box?
[00:45:18] Annie Jones: And if so, then I think you’re right.
[00:45:20] Michael Evans: I think there will be enough of us who do, and I know there’s a lot of people probably listening to who, I come speaking from a very like particular generation where I literally don’t remember not having a phone, like in my life, right.
[00:45:30] Michael Evans: Don’t remember that I’ve always grown up with the internet mm-hmm and in many ways have been raised by the internet. And mm-hmm I know my mom, she’s much older than me. She’s Not that way. And also like in a beautiful way, it’s good. Mm-hmm and I think that’s too where selling physical books in a bookstore and these, I should say, I shouldn’t say old models, but just other ways of doing things like the, every one of the, world’s not gonna be reading on an app on their phone.
[00:45:53] Michael Evans: No doubt. They wanna read physical books, they always will. And even though those physical books will hopefully be [00:46:00] bought in other places that aren’t you know, a south American river that that’s, it’s still gonna be a thing. So I hope for anyone who’s listening, it’s like you know, not gen Z hasn’t had a phone since the womb, which for the record, I didn’t have a phone.
[00:46:13] Michael Evans: As a top nowadays people do. Yeah. If that’s, you don’t feel scared. I don’t think technology’s gonna completely take over either. I just think there’s new opportunities for new sorts of people.
[00:46:23] Annie Jones: I think you’re right. The thought that print is dead. Hasn’t come to fruition.
[00:46:26] Annie Jones: It’s not dead. Like print is not dead. We’re still selling. We’re still selling a lot of books. Publishers are printing a lot of books. Like print is print is alive and well. And if we can, I think exit that mindset a little bit of, oh, everything is terrible and everything is dire. And instead think, oh, like, people are gonna, like you said, there, there will always be people who buy print books.
[00:46:45] Annie Jones: How can we meet? And I’ve even changed my mind personally. I’ve changed my mind on audio books. Like I think, you know, a few years ago I thought, oh, audio books are good, but like reading the physical book is better. And now I’m like, no, how can people read? However they need to read? Like, so [00:47:00] it’s being able to say, oh, I’ve changed my mind.
[00:47:02] Annie Jones: Let’s get audiobooks into the right into the right hands. Let’s let’s get people who read on an app on their phone. Let’s get them what they want and let’s, let’s help provide them with that. Like I think, I think there’s room for both and both is the way forward.
[00:47:16] Annie Jones: It goes back to instead of going big, which I think there’s a place for that. It’s kind of like trying to narrow your focus. Cause I do think there are a lot of niche readers or niche audiences. Niche needs that different independent book source could,
[00:47:29] Michael Evans: could meet.
[00:47:29] Michael Evans: This is brilliant. You, you are so inspiring and I absolutely love everything you’ve done. Wanna go to Thomasville now,
[00:47:36] Annie Jones: come, come to Thomasville. It’s fun.
[00:47:38] Michael Evans: I in Charleston, South Carolina, most of the year. That’s where, hoping for me, which isn’t too far. That’s not too far. I might have to take a road trip there.
[00:47:45] Michael Evans: Yeah. I’m very serious about that. But no, this, this was incredible. I’m so grateful for your time, Annie and everyone listening, be sure to one travel to Thomasville if you’d like, but more easily is to go to the links [00:48:00] and next time you’re buying a. Check out the bookshelf. You can buy your next book there.
[00:48:04] Michael Evans: And also you can go listen to from the front porch podcast, which everyone on there is so lovely. And I’ll make you wanna buy a book. You probably even more from the bookstore. . Get you into your, your next hopefully good read. Cause they recommend lots of great books. So thank you so much for being here.
[00:48:18] Michael Evans: And I already have lots of things to think about after this show, so
[00:48:21] Annie Jones: that that’s always good. Yay. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation
[00:48:25] Michael Evans: And that’s it for this podcast. I hope you all enjoyed it if you’re watching the video, like the actual YouTube video, there’s a sunset behind me.
[00:48:35] Michael Evans: I didn’t come out very good in the image. You know what that was. That was a failure. It’s sunset right now, as I’m recording this outro and I hope y’all enjoyed this podcast, definitely feel free to reach out to us. I’ll put our email in the description of the podcast. We love hearing your thoughts.
[00:48:51] Michael Evans: We love hearing what you think about this. It’s also especially helpful. If you got to this point in the podcast and you enjoyed it. If you share this with friends, we’re a small team here. It’s just me, [00:49:00] Emilia and Sean. And we’re working to not only produce this podcast. And run this wonderful community, but also build a platform that can help fiction authors build a subscription business and build an awesome home for their fandoms.
[00:49:11] Michael Evans: It means a lot that you’re here. We’re so excited for everything. I’m still at school, actually. There’s people actually behind me in real life looking at me, they probably think I’m about like, oh, weirdo talking in these loud voice, big hand gestures, but we’re recording a podcast for you.
[00:49:25] Michael Evans: Awesome authors. I’ll see you back next week. We have an amazing episode, all about artificial intelligence. I think this might be our best episode yet coming up, . At least I feel like we’re trying to do a better job each time. So let us know what we can improve on.
[00:49:37] Michael Evans: Let us know what you want to hear on the script through authors podcast. And we’ll be back again next week for another episode in the meantime. Thank you everyone and happy writing.