Posted on September 30, 2022
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A new trend is emerging out of Eastern Asia that may have big impacts on the world of publishing. It’s called VTubing. And today we are talking all about the rise of making your fictional characters famous on social platforms, how to approach setting up a subscription for beginners, crushing it on Kickstarter/crowdfunding for special bookish projects, and opening a mobile bookstore with the amazing author Z. Knight.
Z. Knight’s Links:
https://www.patreon.com/authorzknight
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#13 Episode Outline:
0:00 – 2:00 Introduction and Context
2:00 – 5:20 From Indie Games to Indie Publisher to Indie Author
5:20 – 6:47 How Z Got Started with Subscriptions
6:47 – 8:44 What Z Learned When Starting Subscriptions
8:44 – 12:15 What Z Knight Learned from Starting her own Publishing Company
12:15 – 17:47 How Z Started a Mobile Bookstore
17:47 – 19:38 Trigger Cities from Spotify, Trigger Cities for Books
19:38 – 21:53 How Z Got Her Kickstarter to Fund Successfully
21:53 – 25:38 Selling Your Readers On Unique Projects (Special Editions, etc.)
25:38 – 30:40 Finding Readers through Live-streaming
30:40 – 32:51 Getting Your Character 1 Million Followers on the Internet
32:51 – 35:44 The Ideas Segment: Study Rooms for Your Readers, Twitch meets LitRPG and GenZ
35:44 – 38:09 Why Experimenting is Key as An Author
38:09 – 39:58 VTubing as an Author or as one of Your Characters
39:58 – 41:47 Livestreaming is Mainstream for Storytellers and a Gen Z Audience
41:47 – 44:32 The Start-up Creating Audible for Latin America
44:32 – 49:59 How Z. Knight Is Building Her Subscription
49:59 – 54:00 How Z Knight Finds Readers for Her Books
54:00 – 55:56 Conclusion
Interesting Links:
Trigger Cities Spotify: https://playlistpush.com/blog/trigger-cities-bot-cities/
Graphic Novel/Comic Book Market Size: https://bit.ly/3LW6pJa
Audible for Latin America: https://beek.io/en
Video of Michael’s Bus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFN7M2ED1lE
Join our Facebook Group to see a picture of Z. Knight’s Book Mobile!
#13 Full Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Subscriptions for Author’s podcast. Today we’re gonna be talking about how the main character of your book can get a million followers, like how they can become famous. It might not make a lot of sense, but this is because there’s something new happening in the creator world might not know this, but on some social platforms, there are virtual creators with millions of followers.
[00:00:24] Michael Evans: By virtual creators, I mean, Either digital images or sometimes like full digital personas that can move and talk that are overlaid onto video so that it’s basically an animated character. It’s not a real person on camera, but it’s a real person that’s obviously behind this person dictating the story That’s being able to create this experience that people are.
[00:00:47] Michael Evans: And a lot of these characters have millions of followers on social media. Komiko is an example of one. There’s dozens and dozens of them coming at it from Japan. It’s actually a trend that started there. What’s funny is that a lot of big trends in [00:01:00] books come from other countries that RPG is a big example.
[00:01:04] Michael Evans: Of really gaining steam in Russia first before it came to the United States. And serial fiction in itself, especially like web serials, gained traction in East Asia before the United States, and that’s why we see the rise of platforms like Radish. The founder of radish actually is from South Korea, so all this history is just to say that there’s this emerging trend happening.
[00:01:23] Michael Evans: It’s something new. It’s yet to be seen how mainstream this will come in the United States. But today we’re talking about this and how we as authors can potentially capitalize on this and make the main characters of our stories famous. Which is really, really cool, but we’re not just talking about that today.
[00:01:39] Michael Evans: We’ll also be diving into subscriptions, running a bookstore on bikes. Yeah, as always, tons of interesting ideas about the future or publishing here, and we have an amazing guest with us to talk about it all in Author Z Night. I’ll let her do the talking to introduce herself and we’ll get into the podcast right now.
[00:01:55] Michael Evans: Hello, Z. Me and Emilia are so excited to be with you here today, [00:02:00] and for everyone who’s listening who might not be aware of who you are, I want you to just talk a little bit about your author business and what got you into writing books.
[00:02:09] Z. Knight: Hello everyone, and again, thank you so much Michael and Emilia for inviting me. This is really exciting. So what got me into being a writer is stereotypical, but like most writers, I was writing since I was really young. I was an avid reader too. And I was really interested in the process of book publishing.
[00:02:27] Z. Knight: Wanted to know like every facet of it. And so before I actually published my own book, I was involved in. Freelance writing in general. I worked on tabletop games. I worked on a bunch of indie games. But from there I decided to launch a publishing company called a really Leo.
[00:02:44] Z. Knight: It was renamed over the years, which is roughly Golden Lion. I was trying to do Golden Lion books. But you know, every English name is taken in the universe at this point when it comes to the internet . So like, what was the really Leo? And I started publishing scifi fantasy authors. And [00:03:00] so I got involved with the whole process and knowledge of how the book industry works.
[00:03:04] Z. Knight: How do you take a manuscript and turn it into a physical book, ebook, a audio book, et cetera. And from there I got comfortable enough to say, Hey, I wanna try this out. You know, I write. Primarily in the speculative genre, but in romance. So I write scifi, fantasy, romance, et cetera. And I branched out over the years too.
[00:03:23] Z. Knight: And so I put out my first novel Valor, which was an alien romance. Learn very quickly. When you’re publishing yourself, it’s a little bit of a different process. You know, you have to do this thing called write the book, which was different for. And so from there, you know, I kind of took a break and then I restarted in 2020 and I really.
[00:03:42] Z. Knight: Got down to business and was like, Okay, I really wanna do this author thing. I’ve been an editor, I’ve been a publisher, but I really wanted to do this author thing so long, roundabout way of saying that I was involved in the book industry and then I was like, Hey, I can do this. And then I realized it’s a lot more to this when you’re not just the one receiving [00:04:00] manuscripts and short stories.
[00:04:01] Z. Knight: But it’s just ex exciting and I’m really happy to, be here in 2022 and still publishing.
[00:04:07] Michael Evans: You’re definitely not only still publishing, but doing tons of really interesting things. It seems like you’re the kind of person that really likes to experiment and has a ton of ideas and is always playing around with different things.
[00:04:20] Michael Evans: I want you to dive more into all this, but. Just give everyone a brief intro of some of the things that you’re doing. You on Twitch have experiment with being a v streamer, which that’s a huge conversation. I’d love to just hear some of your insights on that and what you may have learned through your research process as you’re beginning to get into that.
[00:04:39] Michael Evans: And then you also are restarting your subscription, which I think is another really interesting topic. You have a mobile bookstore called Pride Book Cafe, which is amazing, and there’s. So much to talk about there. And it seems like you’ve been involved as not just an editor and producer in in Books, but also games, [00:05:00] tons of different media.
[00:05:00] Michael Evans: So again, that’s just like wild and I don’t know where you want to begin, but I think it would be really interesting to hear a little bit about just subscriptions to start with and then we can get into the rest of the Z Universe.
[00:05:14] Z. Knight: So subscriptions. Yeah. So. Back in, Oh my goodness. I’m trying to think. It was either 2016 or 17. I heard about Patreon, and Patreon was really, really popular in the game space already. A lot of people would put out demos and then people would subscribe, and as you subscribe, you would get.
[00:05:33] Z. Knight: Well, I guess in regular world would be like DLC downloadable content, but they were really building their games off of Patreon. And so I was like, that’s a very interesting concept. And originally I got on Patron to do just that, to work on indie games and do that. And you know, I didn’t build up a huge audience.
[00:05:48] Z. Knight: You know, my family supported me and a couple other people that were interested in my stuff, but I had built up an audience and it was really, really interesting to. Do that process. But then after a while, I kind of moved [00:06:00] away from the game world for no dramatic reason. I just, as you said, I like the experiment.
[00:06:04] Z. Knight: I love to try stuff and see if it works, see if I love it and go with it. And so at that time I was moving closer to publishing and getting more to that. And so then when I went. Back on Paton after a while, pass them changing their subscription fees and all that other stuff that was going on. I realized a lot of authors were on Patreon and I thought that was such a, at the time, strange concept.
[00:06:25] Z. Knight: Cause I was like, are you writing a chapter? Like, is it like serialized fiction or something like that? And I found out a lot of it is like that you basically took sites like Raddish and other places. Amazon now has Kindle Bella and you basical. Uploaded a chapter, you know hit a schedule or sometimes books that hit a schedule.
[00:06:42] Z. Knight: And so I was like, that’s such an interesting concept. And as I was building up my writing, I was like, Yeah, I wanna try that. So one thing I learned very quickly, serializing fiction is a different beast together than doing things in the game world. Cause people are a little bit more patient. You don’t expect a whole chapter plus art, plus [00:07:00] music, you know, done in a week,
[00:07:01] Z. Knight: But what I was finding was people were putting out like chapters every week or sometimes even more frequently, and I was like, Oh, that’s. Different, You know, that’s a different process. I’m kind of a slowish writer. And so I was like, Hmm. And so I started doing a lot of research, especially in the romance space.
[00:07:18] Z. Knight: What were people doing? What was making them subscribe or get subscribers in the hundreds, that were really interested. And getting paying ahead of time or paying piecemeal for fiction. Did a of research, I
[00:07:37] Michael Evans: I guess it’s a good time to mention that we do have a Facebook group for those who might not be already in it. It’s called Subscriptions for Authors. It’s completely free and it’s a space where we share our insights, not just Emilia, but also all the authors in there.
[00:07:51] Michael Evans: Of course, Emilia is quite active. And then we also have a newsletter that you can subscribe to. Each week we give some weekly insights. The one that went out [00:08:00] today actually, Was about the description mindset, which you wrote, Emilia.
[00:08:03] Emilia Rose: I really love how you came from the game world because I’m like, my husband is in into games and he’s making like a video game right now.
[00:08:12] Emilia Rose: And he has actually done, or he at least started doing a subscription based like crowdfunding thing and it was going really well. But yeah, I think that’s so interesting. And we recorded a podcast last night with him actually, and we were just talking about how authors can take so much from looking at like other industries, like the gaming industry especially.
[00:08:35] Z. Knight: Love when the universe works out like that. I know. Yeah. ,
[00:08:39] Michael Evans: everything’s a small world. I especially think just having a creative storytelling mind lends itself to being able to do so many interesting things. And I’m curious from your days being a publisher, What insights did you have and especially into the business of this all that [00:09:00] you are now taking as you’re launching now three Penn names and growing your own readership?
[00:09:05] Z. Knight: Yeah, so one of the things I learned very quickly in the publishing world, and this is true of any industry, it is not set up for people outside of the mainstream, right? People that are traditionally published, Vastly more resources available to them and not even just in the sense of just cohort cash.
[00:09:24] Z. Knight: You know, bigger publishers have more money and budget for things. They just have a lot more ability. For example, in the book publishing world, which is different than any industry or the planet I’m aware of, when you sell books, You’re not really selling them, right. They’re not final sales really. You basically loan your book to a bookstore and if it sells, you get paid.
[00:09:46] Z. Knight: And if they can’t sell it, they can return it to you. Right. And, and so this is something that actually came around in my researching the era of the Great Depression to basically give people in the book world a sense of, you know, You’re not gonna be [00:10:00] stuck with a bunch of stuff that you can’t move.
[00:10:02] Z. Knight: And it has never gone away, . And so this small insight really got me thinking about it and my own, the career, especially being in romance, which is a bigger genre, has sky high potential for making money. But at the same time, you’re competing with a lot more people is that I was like, I’m not gonna pursue a strategy of trying to get into bookstores, I had to be realistic in the sense that until I could build up an audience , to make that work, I’m not gonna have drawers of people going to Barnes and Noble picking my books off the shelf. Right. If I can get Barn and Noble in the first place. So it really had me pivot and say, I really wanna focus on the digital side of things.
[00:10:40] Z. Knight: I wanna focus on audiobook, serial fiction, things that I have a lot more control of versus. In the print world’s a very different beast. So that’s one insight from being a publisher. I realize pretty quickly, a more positive insight I realize is that there’s a lot of people looking for fiction, that the traditional world is just [00:11:00] not publishing, right.
[00:11:01] Z. Knight: You know, they are just behind the curve in a lot of things. They see something get successful in the any world, and then they either snatch up that author and you know, publish it in their. Or they start saying, Vampires aren’t dead anymore, we’re gonna start publishing vampire fiction. Well, while traditional publisher wasn’t publishing that, all the indies were doing it right.
[00:11:18] Z. Knight: Cause you had that gap that needed to be filled that wasn’t coming out. They’re saying, you know, after Twilight Vampires are dead, they weren’t dead. They just weren’t getting published by bigger name presses. So the positive thing I saw was that a lot of my weird experimental things, they had audience.
[00:11:33] Z. Knight: It wasn’t. A big enough audience that I think I could have taken it to a bigger publisher or even published it in know a different way than I’m currently doing. But I was like, you know, there’s people that want my cyborg romance on dystopian, you know, on the far away planet. You know, they’re not going to get that if they pick up a hollo novel, for example.
[00:11:52] Michael Evans: I think that’s beautiful. You know, one of the biggest things, I think the internet. Made possible and still is making [00:12:00] possible, is that like every niche is a thousand times bigger than you could possibly imagine. Like in my hometown, maybe you have a few people who are interested in reading those kinds of books.
[00:12:10] Michael Evans: So the local bookstore, they’re probably not gonna carry it because what are the odds that they walk in? On a given day? It, it might be quite low, but on the internet it’s like, oh, if one person, every town wants to read that kind of book, all of a sudden you now have. A ton of readers. A ton. So I’m really curious about your actual like mobile bookstore because you focus on diverse titles there and I think that’s really great.
[00:12:36] Michael Evans: It’s called Pride Book Cafe, which I’ll leave the link down description for for everyone who’s listening and wants to check it out. And I’m just curious what made you start that, Cuz that’s such an interesting thing and breakdown what it even is for people who might be listening and going Is a mobile
[00:12:49] Z. Knight: bookstore.
[00:12:49] Z. Knight: Yeah. So another great Facebook group, well on top of subscriptions for authors is called Nontraditional Book Sellers. And basically I was doing eCommerce [00:13:00] already, so I had a publishing business. I had other stuff, and so I was doing eCommerce and Pride really came about. Because I was like, I would really like to take this concept in person.
[00:13:09] Z. Knight: Like it would be you know, local events going on for Black History Month or local events going on. That was just on farmer’s markets. And I really wanted to take more than my work there that I published from others or. For myself. And so I was really like thinking like, how could I make this concept?
[00:13:26] Z. Knight: I knew I didn’t want like a brick and mortar bookstore that even though I loved to put my hands in a lot of pots, that was a little too much, you know, on top of everything else. So I was like, Can you book sell? In a different way. A lot of people go to conventions, like the convention circuit is really, really popular.
[00:13:42] Z. Knight: And I had seen sci-fi fantasy bookstores at conventions. So they would hold like 200 books with them and come to a local convention and sell there. So I looked at that concept and that wasn’t really possible because of the thing we shall not name , that a lot of those conventions had got shut down.
[00:13:59] Z. Knight: So I was like, How can I [00:14:00] do that? But like in my local community, And so I came across first I joined the American Book Sellers Association and I came across non-traditional book sellers. And basically they were saying, I took a concept like you would do with any bookstores, mines would be a niche concept diverse books specifically, and basically made a business around it and started selling.
[00:14:20] Z. Knight: At these events, you would buy a table and brand yourself, so I was. Oh, that’s really interesting. That’s not really much different than e-commerce. I basically say, Hey, I have physical books and if you don’t wanna buy here, go to my website. I’ll ship it to you. And so that’s really how Pride came about.
[00:14:35] Z. Knight: I was looking around how to store all those books cuz I have an suv but not being big enough to hold that many books at a time, plus my dog, plus myself. And so I was looking around and I found. There is a lot of people that, you might see a street taco vendor or something. You basically have these mobile bookstores.
[00:14:53] Z. Knight: Basically it’s IC tricycles mosque from furlough bikes. That’s where I got my mobile book bookstore. And [00:15:00] basically they’re companies that specialize in motorized and non-motor. Tricycle businesses. And so a lot of them, you know, they do food vendors, so like they do hot dog sellers and stuff like that, but a lot of them saw that people wanted to sell books.
[00:15:12] Z. Knight: Local libraries were like, Hey, we wanna go out and you know, promote our library. And so they made these specialized bikes. And so I knew I didn’t have that much money, so I launched a kickstart and say, Hey, you know, if anyone’s down for this concept, was able to raise the. And got my little proper cafe.
[00:15:29] Z. Knight: So I can’t obviously show a picture on a podcast. But I’m going to be doing much more vending starting next year cause I move state, so you have to, you know, certain local laws and stuff. I can’t just go out there and, you know, start selling 23. I’ll be out in about much more.
[00:15:44] Z. Knight: You made a really good point, Michael. It’s like a lot of people don’t think outside the bike about bike. Think outside the box. And so for me, I was like, Well, if people could sell tacos, you could sell books ly. It can work. And people have been doing it. So I was not like, I came up with the [00:16:00] concept, I went online.
[00:16:01] Z. Knight: I was like, Oh, people had this concept already and I just kind of followed in their footstep.
[00:16:05] Emilia Rose: Stop. I love that so much. Oh my gosh. I didn’t I didn’t know that’s what it was. Yeah. When I heard mobile bookstore, I was like, oh, just like a, maybe like on your phone, but Oh my God, that’s so cute.
[00:16:18] Emilia Rose: I love it.
[00:16:19] Michael Evans: Yeah. That is amazing. I. In my, like hometown, had a bookstore that would go around in a bus and it was really interesting and that, along with kind of seeing a few other things, the line inspired me actually to buy a mini school bus. For those who are watching the YouTube version,
[00:16:38] Michael Evans: I will post a picture that you will see right now on the video and.
[00:16:42] Michael Evans: I, yeah, me and my buddy in college spent like, was that crazy amount of money. It was like maybe $5,000 for an old bus. So it wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t a ton. And I did have an ambition to sell books out of there. Unfortunately, bus broke down. We did drive maybe around a couple thousand miles in it, but it was didn’t end up [00:17:00] being the vision that we had for it.
[00:17:01] Michael Evans: But I’ve always had that dream. And to hear that you’re doing that right now, Literally writing around on books. What for? For authors, especially a lot of times, I have a friend who’s spoken on this podcast, good friends with Emilia as well. Her name’s Susie Webster, and a lot of her romance books are set in Charleston, which is my hometown and.
[00:17:21] Michael Evans: And I just imagine her, like if she had a cute mobile bookstore like this stop, he would be able to find readers. If you’re listening, Susie, you have to do this. So obviously you’ve set this up and funded this and using a really interesting not a novel method, but something that is becoming more and more prominent in the author world.
[00:17:42] Michael Evans: This is Michael from the Future here, coming in with an idea that I had to share. Cuz when talking about Susie going around Charleston, which is where I live, potentially selling her romance novels, like outta the back of the car, there was like this image garnered in my mind of like the beginning of self-publishing decades ago and even [00:18:00] like a century ago, when there wasn’t ways to distribute online.
[00:18:03] Michael Evans: If you wanted to self publish your book, you had to also figure out how to sell it and distribute it yourself too. And I started thinking. It sounds ridiculous to do that today. To promote our own books is not there. It sounds like ludicrous. But then Spotify has this thing called Trigger Cities.
[00:18:17] Michael Evans: There’s been a lot of studies done on how the Spotify algorithm can pick up certain songs and there’s actual like literally certain cities in which it’s more cost effective to promote your song into. And if you can get it to start, get action in those cities, it’s likely to spread globally. I’ll link down the description, what those cities are.
[00:18:36] Michael Evans: Some of them are. Bangkok, Mexico City, not like a New York or a Paris. Even though these are global cities, those are like the most cost effective to actually promote your music in. And it got me thinking about like, as authors, what are like trigger cities for books in certain genres. Like maybe for Susie’s books being set in Charleston, that could be like a trigger city for her.
[00:18:55] Michael Evans: If she can get her book selling in Charleston, they might not only sell well there, but spread [00:19:00] beyond that. But then, for other authors and other things that we write, it just got me really curious of. Has there ever been triggers that these done in the publish industry? I couldn’t find a study done on that, but it got me thinking.
[00:19:10] Michael Evans: I think we know our readers best, but man, if, if you know a spot where your readers would likely be hanging out that you could go and sell your books in, it could actually really help speed up your career, even though it’s such an old way of book selling. Right? It seems so like almost retro, but I think that’s the point, that old tactic.
[00:19:30] Michael Evans: Can still really work. Anyways, back to the main conversation now.
[00:19:33] Michael Evans: And I’m curious what you learned during your Kickstarter. How did you get this to fund successfully?
[00:19:38] Z. Knight: Yeah, so Kickstarter is a beast. It’s a beast. I actually have a couple that , I need to be fulfilling very soon too, and it’s just been difficult with everything going on. My first Kickstarter , it actually failed, right?
[00:19:51] Z. Knight: It was not a successful one, and it really gave me a lot of knowledge. What makes a kickstart successful? And for me, what I learned cause I do see a lot [00:20:00] more author or funding, like hard cover editions, special additions, things like that. Audio books on Kickstarter. The one thing I would say it’s.
[00:20:08] Z. Knight: Really s strip down your budget to the bare bedroom. In my ideal world, my mobile bookstore would’ve had all the bells and whistles. It would’ve been the biggest version that Burla puts out. It would’ve had it literally had ones that had whole like freezer compartments and all that. Like I would’ve gone, you know, to the wall was.
[00:20:27] Z. Knight: But then I realized I was like, A, I don’t even know if it was good or fun, successfully, and B, this is a pretty unique concept. I don’t know how much of my existing readership or base of support are gonna go for this, right? I had tried several Kickstarters when it comes to anthologies and other things.
[00:20:45] Z. Knight: They were used to that. You know, I would say I wanna put out in anthology, here are the authors, here’s the budget. When I’m like, I wanna start a mobile bookstore. That was a very different concept. So the main advice I would say, Do something related to your core readership. Maybe you [00:21:00] really love Potter pottery, but if you’re like a scifi author, don’t try to fund pottery off your first Kickstarter.
[00:21:06] Z. Knight: You know, try to do something relevant. Have a small budget, right? Try to pay for special cover. Something. Like that. And then it’s really a lot of marketing, and that’s the really difficult part. It’s no different, in my opinion, than trying to sell books. You’re trying to sell a concept to people and say, Hey, not only do I not have this book ready, you have to believe in me that I’m going to have something ready after you , spend the money.
[00:21:30] Z. Knight: I can’t say I’m a Kickstarter expert, but I’ve had several successful Kickstarters now, and every time I learn is that I take my. Condense it, make it much smaller, and then have this beautiful thing called stretch goals where you’re like, Well, if you gimme a little bit more, I can do X, Y, Z, but just try to fund that core concept first.
[00:21:48] Michael Evans: I’m curious, especially with your. Mobile bookstore, how that resonated in the sense of like, how did you sell your readership on what is a unique idea? [00:22:00] Like I’m trying to think about like any sort of specific genre that would be like built for like where that makes sense. Like mobile bookstores or something that I think could be fun for almost anyone, but it’s also, difficult.
[00:22:13] Michael Evans: So I’m just curious how you actually got that successfully funded. What do you think were the big reasons that made that work for you?
[00:22:19] Z. Knight: I think one of the big reasons it was able to work For me specifically is that I niche down. Like I didn’t say I wanted to start a general bookstore like Corn Wheels.
[00:22:30] Z. Knight: I said I was known at that time for putting out diverse fiction. I put out Dominion, which was the anthology was my co-editor, Open Troll, which was African and black speculative fiction fiction. Had a few trans authors had a few, you know, and I don’t mean to say this in like a token way, but people had known me for putting out diverse work, champion diverse work.
[00:22:51] Z. Knight: And so it wasn’t a stretch for them when they were like, I basically said, I’m gonna sell the book stuff I already published, which is diverse, and then [00:23:00] add a couple more books to it. So it’s a selection of stuff. And so people. They, you know, they were like, Okay, I can kind of get down with that. And I had already been vending, so I was able to show, hey, I’ve, I’ve done this concept, you know, I went, brought a bunch of totes and yeah, sold books at a, at a local thing.
[00:23:16] Z. Knight: And so they could get down with that idea. I think it wouldn’t have funded if I said, Hey, I just want, at that time, cuz I wasn’t publishing as much, Hey, I wanna make a mobile romance bookstore. Like, I don’t think they would’ve funded as well. Cause they. You don’t publish romance, you know or they didn’t read romance as much, et cetera.
[00:23:36] Z. Knight: So I think it can work for anybody, but I would really say, and that’s where that non-traditional book seller group helped me a lot. It was like, it’s just like a brick and mortar bookstore. Try the concept first. It sounds cute. You know, cycle around and sell books until you have to cycle around in sell books, , And so they, Get out there, go to some local events, see what your community is like.
[00:23:56] Z. Knight: You might not have a community or big readers, right? I’ve [00:24:00] published mostly adult work. The stuff that sells consistently when I was selling back in Louisville was children’s novels and people wanted teen fiction. They wanted children’s comics, they wanted that kind of stuff. And so I had to start buying a lot more of that because they weren’t as interested in the adult work.
[00:24:15] Z. Knight: You know, I don’t know what I currently live with. The suburbs of Salt Lake City. I’m not sure what people read out here. Maybe they’re really into, I don’t know hiking, books and other stuff. Cause it’s a real fit town. I don’t really know until I get out there. And so I, that’s really one thing I would say too.
[00:24:30] Z. Knight: If you’re interested in this concept, don’t just jump right in. I know I’m the worst to say that cause I jump with my 10 toes down all the time. Like, I just try a concept but try it in a small way. Like get out there, find a local event, you know, get some books and see, you know if that’s something you really wanna do.
[00:24:46] Z. Knight: Cause it’s not as glamorous as it seems. It seems very like cute cottage core, you know, just cycle around and sell books until you get out there. You’re like, man, it’s hot outside. I have to pedal, if that’s something you’re into, try it. You [00:25:00] know, you never know. I didn’t think my community would be really interested in it.
[00:25:04] Z. Knight: And I was featured in the local paper and other sort of stuff, people really about the concept.
[00:25:09] Michael Evans: It makes me think about all the ideas. Rare additions or you know, we have even in the Facebook group, a group of authors who started the wheel of smut.
[00:25:19] Michael Evans: And I think that’s like super fun and the readers seem to really like it and it’s worked for a lot of the authors to participate in that collaboration. So, I think that’s, there’s always something interesting that you could think to provide more value to your readers,
[00:25:33] Michael Evans: but of course we have to find those reader.
[00:25:35] Michael Evans: And that’s difficult. And I see you experimenting with maybe a new way to find readers. And I’m curious what your thoughts and what your adventure has been like so far in the world of V streaming and V streaming, V tubing. There words that we’ve maybe thrown around a bit in the podcast, but I’m not sure that we’ve actually ever really gone in depth.
[00:25:57] Z. Knight: I’m gonna do my best , cause I’m not an expert [00:26:00] in this. But I first got acquainted with V2 being around 2020. I am not a. Big person that’s into Twitch or et cetera. Before then, I’m meant really into games for obvious reasons, but I was never like, I never thought like I wanna sit down to play games for people.
[00:26:16] Z. Knight: I’m not like a pro or anything. I just like my Cozy, comfy games and my Sims and other stuff like that. So I was really interested by this concept. Of Vtu. Cause it was really started by Japanese entertainers and kind of really cutting edge technology. Nowadays you can find a lot of these apps literally on your phone, but back then they had to have full productions of like, you know, pretty cutting edge software to turn a person into a virtual YouTuber, which is what Vtu, V YouTuber stands for, Virtual YouTuber.
[00:26:45] Z. Knight: And then over the years a lot of people migrated to Twitch, which is like, well now it’s kind of. Up for debate, but Twitch at the time, it was the premier streaming website for gamers. And so a lot of people became the streamers, Virtual streamers that’s [00:27:00] not as popular. People still will call themselves YouTuber and they never touch YouTube.
[00:27:03] Z. Knight: I’m not the one that makes the rules. But anyway what I. Found when I was looking at that is similar to when I was on Patron. I saw all these writers coming on the Patreon and selling their work that way. I saw a lot of people attempting to do things that weren’t gaming. They were doing things like the original, I would say V YouTubers, they were being entertainers, so a lot of that was playing games.
[00:27:24] Z. Knight: But they would do skits. They would do a bunch of different things. And so I was on some panel, I can’t remember, and a writer said she played. Game I can’t remember the name right now, but basically you have to keep typing or you die. So it was like a gamification of getting words into your manuscript and et cetera.
[00:27:42] Z. Knight: And she was streaming it on Twitch and I was like, Who would sit down and watch a writer write? And I was surprised to see that people were interested in watching writers write. And so I was like, Huh, that’s a very interesting concept. Now you might think it’s strange cause I’m on here right now. I hopefully sound pretty [00:28:00] comfort.
[00:28:00] Z. Knight: But I’m not someone that thought that they could sit there in front of a camera and just sit here and go, Yes, and today I’m going to write my manuscript. I just didn’t think that was gonna be pretty entertaining . So I looked and I was like, What is some of the appeal of Vtu being? And a lot of it’s the.
[00:28:16] Z. Knight: Overlay of anime. MAGA is the appeal of looking at cute characters, handsome characters, you know, doing cool things. And so I was like, ok, you know, let me see if I can get into this. Now I’m gonna say, I don’t wanna take up the whole podcast explaining, but it is much more complicated than you will be led to believe watching one or two YouTube videos, the what they call Ricky to turn your, well, hey, that’s the ones that make your character
[00:28:41] Z. Knight: Okay. Very difficult and very pricey depending on what you do. Then from there, finding someone to make your character move very difficult, and very pricey, and then from there, uploading and learning all the software to then make your character move on screen pc. Very, very difficult . So there’s easier [00:29:00] ways to get into it.
[00:29:01] Z. Knight: It’s this thing called p and g tubing which if you’ve been on YouTube in for a while, you might remember like a lot of animators, they would have simple characters that will talk for them on YouTube videos. That’s basically what it is. So you have a simple character and their mouth might move, but they won’t do much else.
[00:29:16] Z. Knight: That’s a simple way to do it. But I decided to do the difficult way cause like was everything else. I wanna know all the steps, the processes of how something works. And so I haven’t launched that, but I have gone through the whole process of getting a model done and I have to say it is pretty dark. Cool to see yourself.
[00:29:35] Z. Knight: You know, move and talk with his virtual character. When I was younger I was like, Oh, I would always love to be in an animator manka. Now you can become an animate character, which is pretty amazing, I will say. So, yeah, so I’m up testing it out and seeing if it will work. I’m not sure if people will really love to watch me be a character and, write and do other things.
[00:29:56] Z. Knight: But I think Emilia said that. And the beginning is I think [00:30:00] writers should always be looking at different industry, looking at industries or about entertainment. Cause that’s what writing is. At the end of the day, you’re writing to intervene, to sell, to get your passion out there. And a lot of different industries have the same overlap.
[00:30:14] Z. Knight: So I don’t know if this, the writer, I don’t know, a career thing will work out if people will be interested. But at the end of the day, you’re always trying new things. The publishing world changes every single day. Things that were there when I started have disappeared in the year 2022, and we don’t know what the future will bring.
[00:30:32] Z. Knight: So I’d say try it out. You never.
[00:30:34] Emilia Rose: I like really love the concept of me tubing. I like actually I haven’t done btu, but I’ve done where like I write a chapter and I have my community, watch me write the chapter. And I was surprised too, there was a lot more people that wanted to watch me write the chapter than I thought there would be
[00:30:52] Emilia Rose: and I’m just like sitting there like the blankest face ever. Just like typing is completely silent and people are watching me. I’m like, Oh, [00:31:00] this is kind of cool, but also awkward. . But yeah, rigging a character and making a character look good is very hard. Like my husband, when he’s creating the, like when he started creating his video game, it took him like, Weeks to make the character just like look good and then to rig it, to make like the animation, look like it’s real and it’s not like just robotic it, It’s a lot of time and if you’re going it, it’s,
[00:31:27] Z. Knight: yeah, a lot of time and a lot of money.
[00:31:29] Z. Knight: And so I’m always a big proponent of don’t let the costs scare you. There’s always an alternative. Right? When I started this, I was like, Oh yeah, definitely. I was like, There’s no way. Like I. The cheapest I could find. And I was still like, This is a car. Like this is not, you know, something you just get into.
[00:31:48] Z. Knight: But I found there’s always a way to do it. There’s free models out there, there’s stuff you can do. You can do what Alia did, which is literally just right in front of people. I dunno why that terrified me. It really shouldnt. [00:32:00] But you can do those, which is turn on your camera and just start writing.
[00:32:04] Emilia Rose: VT tubing, , I feel like a lot of people don’t know about it. The V YouTubers that I’ve seen on like Twitter and stuff, they have huge followings, like millions of people follow them and it’s just like this anime character or this 3D model
[00:32:18] Z. Knight: and just people love it. Yeah, it’s like, it’s definitely a niche audience, but as Michael said, a niche audience could be millions of people,
[00:32:26] Michael Evans: That niche audience in particular though, is quite massive because a lot of graphic novels are now set to be basically like a 10 billion industry United States in the next five or six years. Wow. They’re growing 300% between like now and then, so it’s a huge, huge, quickly growing industry that’ll basically rival.
[00:32:46] Michael Evans: Fiction, print, book industry, and a lot of graphic novels are based off anime and are very much anime and manga driven. So I think it’s a niche that is massive and that a lot of people can [00:33:00] participate in. I also love the idea of just writing live. I think about this particular YouTuber that’s quite famous called Lofi Girl.
[00:33:08] Michael Evans: Lofi Girl. Has like hundreds of millions of views. People who watch their streams and they just play like lofi music, and it’s just an image. It’s just an image. That’s it. There’s no, no real person there. There’s no vtu being involved. And as an author, like, you know, you could think about like just playing some chill music and who really does this now?
[00:33:30] Michael Evans: Mostly who’s like joining these sorts of things are students and there’s this startup called study verse.live and they are basically creating study rooms to help students chill with low five music. You come together in these online communities, it’s quite interesting and. I think this is something that with working from home becoming more and more common, we’re gonna continue to see more people doing this who aren’t just like 18 years old or you know, grinding for their next college essay.
[00:33:58] Michael Evans: We’re gonna see, you know, people who are [00:34:00] working in marketing for X company, people who are doing whatever their job is that are work from home. And I think authors, like if you brand that community in a way that is created to your readership, there could be demand to do things like that. Now, I definitely agree with Uzi on the point that a, a lot of it is still yet to, to be seen in a sense, but that’s why we like to talk about this kind of stuff because we do not wanna sit here and talk about how you can make a million dollars a year on can.
[00:34:27] Michael Evans: There’s a hundred thousand other places you can go to see that. We wanna talk about the stuff that’s at really the cutting edge of publishing and you’re someone who’s right there. So I think it’s super inspiring and I, I do believe live streaming is going to be a bigger and bigger section of this creator economy and author’s gonna play a bigger role in it, especially for lit art.
[00:34:49] Michael Evans: PG authors. Yeah, I think. Literary PPG is going to explode when people my age figure out that that genre exists and people my [00:35:00] age don’t even know it exists yet cuz they don’t read. They play video games all the time. But like that’s exactly what happens to all the millennials who are now reading Litera I ppg.
[00:35:09] Michael Evans: So if I’m a literary PPG author, I would be really curious. Like you were talking streaming games on Twitch, there’s already a huge market for that and that could be an interesting path to go down. All just ideas I haven’t seen, frankly, too many people do this, to be honest. I actually found you by like trying to find authors who were doing anything in Vtu Inc.
[00:35:28] Michael Evans: And when I saw you had a profile and did tubing, I’m. Oh, let’s see what else is he’s doing. And then I’m like, Oh my God, it’ll be fantastic to go talk to her. But there aren’t that many authors who are doing vtu right now.
[00:35:39] Z. Knight: And that’s the thing too, is that one thing I’ve noticed over the years, cause technology moves so fast, and I think a lot of people think of publishing as like this antiquated business, which.
[00:35:48] Z. Knight: In a lot of ways it is. But in a lot of ways it’s always at the cutting edge of a lot of things too. Just the rise of audio books in general, you know, doing audio back books. Even when I started doing [00:36:00] audio books, people were like, Who reads audio books other than the Bob on tape? And people that were You know, blind that couldn’t, read books so they would, do it that way.
[00:36:08] Z. Knight: People were into podcasts, but they were like audio books. Huh. And then next thing I know, LiRo fm, Audible, everybody was like exploding. And because people had more time, they were like, Oh my, I love books. I want all my, And I’m like, where Not years ago, Like, where was this audience? A lot of the stuff that you do right now, you might think, ah, you know, it’s not working out, It’s not successful, but it will give you skills that will be so useful in the future, and you won’t even know about it.
[00:36:35] Z. Knight: I don’t know if writers being live streamers will take off, but the skills you’ll learn of. Carrying an audience and talking and you know, and making sure things, Or even just having chill music and making sure all the tech works. You don’t know how that’ll be useful. And hey, maybe you start a podcast, Maybe you start something that requires you to edit, to work with sound, to do a bunch of stuff that you might learn from live streaming, and that’s just a chill hobby [00:37:00] for you.
[00:37:00] Z. Knight: It’s not like a business or a side gig. So I always say, you know, try something. I’ll try something new. You know, it’s so many things that I look that some of them failed, but some of them became, like you said, they’re one pace to become billion dollar industries, you know? And so get a part of that action sooner because then you won’t be the person listening to people say, This is how you become a millionaire.
[00:37:22] Z. Knight: Cuz they’ve already become millionaires. You don’t wanna be late to these waves. Try it out. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. You know, I feel like a lot of times people put a lot of pressure on themselves that as a creative, you have to be successful, quote. But if you did successful, if success that’s.
[00:37:42] Emilia Rose: It’s very hard to see the value in things when you’re in the moment and nothing’s happening. But like you were saying five years from now, the world and the internet is just going to be so different. And how we publish is gonna be so different just like it was five years ago.
[00:37:57] Emilia Rose: And. You can have [00:38:00] skills that you’ve honed now that are really gonna help you. But I have actually a question.
[00:38:04] Emilia Rose: When you’re planning to do Bing, are you doing it as an author or are you gonna , pretend like you’re one of the
[00:38:10] Z. Knight: characters? My concept or, a lot of times, cause they take it a lot from Japanese idle culture, so they have debuts, they have concepts and stuff like that. And so my concept is basically I get. Something to one of my book rules. And so I’m kind of like this magical character, like I look normal and then I become this magical character and I’m in this underwater mermaid world.
[00:38:32] Z. Knight: Cause I originally started because I was like, I’ve really had this manuscript I’ve been wanting to write for so, so long as black mermaids. Black mermaids are popping off the charts right now. And I’m like, ugh. Every single time. Like I could never get something done when it gets popular. And so I was like, Man, this would be a really fun way of basically me writing chapters and, you know, pertaining to be this mermaid character.
[00:38:54] Z. Knight: And so that’s gonna be my concept. You know, I get sucked into my book world and I forced by the [00:39:00] will of the ocean gods that I have to finish this book, or I can’t escape. And so that’s gonna be the concept when I quote unquote debut.
[00:39:07] Emilia Rose: I’m gonna watch 1000%. You send it to me when you’re,
When
[00:39:11] Z. Knight: you’re ready. Yeah. That’s the one thing I really liked about V YouTubeing. A lot of V YouTubers have this thing called lo, so they write these really elaborate back stories that if you were like me as a kid, you did a lot of role play.
[00:39:22] Z. Knight: Mm-hmm. . It’s basically making back stories for your original characters, your ocs, and so I was. I could just make myself a character like this is amazing. And so that’s why I really got into it. So if you’re nerdly like me, you like that concept, I would say go for it. It’s really fun. And maybe I only get a couple chapters done, but then, you know, I’m the author so I can just say I was released from my magical, bold.
[00:39:45] Z. Knight: And that’s why, you know, I didn’t have to finish this book that I really wanna finish. But yeah, you can make it your own. It’s your own world that you create and present to people.
[00:39:53] Michael Evans: And also as well, with you being the character that these now fans get to be immersed in your world too, you’re [00:40:00] able to make it interactive in so many interesting ways. I actually think about, this is a very prominent example, but I’m using this example just to show people how popular storytelling and world building can be in live streaming, and there’s.
[00:40:14] Michael Evans: Collective of YouTubers and Twitch streamers called Dream smp. Dream is one of the largest Minecraft YouTubers and he’s someone who has never showed his face on camera. You might be able to find some niche pictures come online, but he does not show his face. He’s just, he just plays Minecraft. He’s basically Steve, the main character, Minecraft and whatever skin he chooses to use, and he’s created a world collaborating with other creators to.
[00:40:39] Michael Evans: Build this fictional universe inside of the game of Minecraft, which for those who don’t know what Minecraft is, it’s a game where you like build basically Legos, but in a video game.
[00:40:49] Michael Evans: That’s the easiest way I could describe it. And they. Basically create like real immersive stories where they’re running around as characters, as if you’re watching a movie inside of this video game. And they get about [00:41:00] 2 million people watching live every time they do it, which is more than almost any show.
[00:41:05] Michael Evans: Any show ever. They get 2 million playbacks. It’s insane. And they’re watching like hours long stream. So that’s like a. TV show and I can even see there being an opportunity for authors to take their intellectual property, collaborate with creators who already have followings and work to build these worlds and reach their audiences in different ways.
[00:41:26] Michael Evans: So I think, you know, to be honest, like there’s so many different things to do in the creator economy. Like I think 1% of you might actually become a V YouTuber and that’s okay. Like that’s totally cool. If I can help 1% of people listening, like I think that’s amazing. But I actually think what Z’s talking.
[00:41:42] Michael Evans: Is so applicable because there’s insights here that you can take whether you tried or not, because there’s something here that all authors can benefit from. That’s amazing. . So I’m excited. I’m excited. Another thing I wanted to mention too, because it’s just on my mind, is this company [00:42:00] called beak.io and they’re trying to build auto audible for Latin America.
[00:42:05] Michael Evans: I know the founder from a friend and they have. They, they’re very serious operation. And that shows me too, that when talking about like where technology’s at, you know, we’re talking about these really far off things, but there’s still so much growth in the existing markets. Like audiobooks still are not nearly global yet.
[00:42:28] Michael Evans: eBooks are still not nearly global yet, and. I think in time it will be, especially in a market like Latin America, I think there’s a lot of precedent for that becoming a very vibrant, publishing market digitally, especially with eBooks, audiobooks. So, you know, when you view the world as Jeff Bezos hands above it all, I think you miss.
[00:42:50] Michael Evans: The entire world that he fails to grip. Mm-hmm. . That’s
[00:42:53] Z. Knight: a great, great point is always though, like I always see it more from the traditional indie side, but you make a great point [00:43:00] of markets that are untapped for us, Right? Or markets that don’t have a lot of penetration.
[00:43:06] Z. Knight: All your books keep. Doubling and tripling every year. Not cuz you know, there’s suddenly this disposal of growth. People keep learning about audio books. They’re like, Wait, you know, I can listen to a book, You know? And so that’s why every year you see double digit, you know, growth in the audio book industry.
[00:43:21] Z. Knight: So there’s still people that. Have not listened to an audio book once in their lifetime, which sounds strange even now, but it’s, it’s very true. And so I think, yeah, I’m really excited to see people branch out more and more. You know, I’m excited to see what people do. It’s so many projects out there that, you know like Libro FM for example, that when it first launched I was like, Can this work?
[00:43:43] Z. Knight: Can it really be something that can maybe not rival audio bowl but be a viable business? And here we are, 2022 and it’s supporting authors and bookstores and everything else. So I’m just really excited overall, I don’t know how many of you were, try YouTube or all the other wild [00:44:00] stuff that I try to reach new audiences, but I will say listen to podcasts like.
[00:44:05] Z. Knight: You are at the cutting edge of publishing. Publishing is not just putting books out and waiting for sales or marketing or that publishing can be so, so, so much more. And your IP or intellectual property. We are living in the air where people wanna see books become comics, movies, musical productions.
[00:44:22] Z. Knight: They want to see it all. So if you have different skill sets, apply that to your work.
[00:44:27] Michael Evans: Yes, that that is a really, really great note. And I think it also lends me to wondering, with a very specific skill set that we also like to focus on, which is subscriptions, building a fandom, more of these like broadly applicable concepts, cuz the. With subscriptions, you can kind of build a community doing anything that we’re talking about.
[00:44:49] Michael Evans: You can provide those things to your readers. So I’m curious, in your world of subscriptions, which I’ll leave. Zite subscription link down below people who wanna check it [00:45:00] out. I think it’s really great to see fellow authors and what they’re doing and what’s working for them in subscriptions. And I’m really curious for you as you’re launching, what are, what are you looking to and what is
[00:45:11] Z. Knight: your strategy?
[00:45:11] Z. Knight: Yeah. When it comes to becoming, author, when it comes to using subscriptions, the two strategies I’m going to try to use is early access and also the serialized fiction aspect. I think. That’s what people are really, really into right now. They love new content too, so like exclusive content. But with everything I have going on, I can’t really promise I’ll have a shorter month or things like that.
[00:45:33] Z. Knight: I under promises over than the opposite. Cause you know, I’m restarting a whole new. Thing. You know, my audience that have built up are not used to me even really writing serialized fiction, let alone saying, Hey, pay a little bit a month to see my stuff. So the first aspect I started, and I actually got a few but I’m going to, you know, restart and really hone in on this in October, is I basically, my strategy is taking.
[00:45:59] Z. Knight: Two of my [00:46:00] most popular concepts was just alien romance and interracial romance or and basically say, Hey, I’m gonna start a serial, you know, if you wanna read this, you read it here you read it early, you’ll get it down low lake, et cetera, and all these other goodies I had planned. And I’m also gonna start one that’s on my newsletter so they get a taste of it.
[00:46:17] Z. Knight: So they’re like, Hey, if you like this concept, do you want this book early? Go to Myre. At the same time, I’m also restarting YouTube too. Because one great thing about YouTube is that it’s long form content so people feel like they get to know you better. They feel like they know you, right? Cause they watch hours and hours of your content.
[00:46:35] Z. Knight: And so while. I bulked a couple of videos. I bulked about like five videos I’m gonna start releasing and you know, my little plug is always gonna be, if you wanna support the channel, if you wanna support this and get videos early, et cetera, come to my Patreon, you know, if you want a certain me to cover a certain topic, then, you know, come to my Patreon, you can vote on my polls. So basically I’m trying to funnel my newsletter subscribers that are more diehard fans. People that are willing to [00:47:00] hear me ramble, every other month. And then also trying to funnel what’s long form content, giving them some free stuff like free audio books and stuff like that.
[00:47:08] Z. Knight: But saying, Hey, if you really like what I do and you want to promote divers fiction, you. Back my Patreon. So again, I don’t know how successful this will be, you know, hopefully in the Facebook group, if you come and join in a couple months, I can say I’m doing awesome on Patreon. I’ve applauded the tips I’ve learned, you know, and hopefully it works out really well.
[00:47:26] Z. Knight: But that’s where I’m going for and. You know, I wanna just keep absorbing knowledge from the Facebook group, cuz every time someone posts something I’m like, ba I never even thought about that. I never thought this could be something I could do. So here’s the whole thing. And hopefully subscription is a viable service for me cuz subscriptions allow me to do what I love to do, which is right.
[00:47:46] Z. Knight: Cause I know I have reliable income versus. Spending a lot of time writing a book and marketing it and really hoping I make back, you know, everything I dumped into that production.
[00:47:55] Michael Evans: You know, I think that’s a wonderful strategy. I wanna like highlight another thing [00:48:00] going on in the creator world of business to also like give people perspective on why this recurring revenue is becoming more important and something that more creators, people who aren’t even authors are looking to do.
[00:48:13] Michael Evans: And. What I’ve seen paying attention to the brand to creator advertising space, which that’s basically when a creator will have their Instagram postponed or a YouTube video and they’ll shout at a product, and it’s a multi multibillion dollar industry in the United States. It’s huge. And it used to be the kind of thing where a brand would work with the creator once and would pay a lump sum to.
[00:48:36] Michael Evans: Be in a single post, but now creators and brands are both more interested instead of one offs actually developing long term partnerships. And the creators are offering the brands discounts on their normal cost per mill rates, which I’m sure we’re all, If you’ve ever done Facebook ads, very familiar paying CPMs to Facebook.
[00:48:55] Michael Evans: Obviously in this situation, if a creator has an audience, they would get paid a CPM by a brand. And [00:49:00] creators are giving them discounts just in order to have that sort of like stable income. And I’ve seen this with some of my friends who literally, who aren’t setting up any thing of subscriptions.
[00:49:11] Michael Evans: They’ll go from making like five figures one month, which is obviously amazing, amazing salary to then, nothing like when I say nothing, literally $0 the next month and it is so up and down. And I think that this is why across the board, more and more people are searching for a new business model. And, and this may be one that works for people, but I wanna end off on this question because I think you’re thinking about subscriptions in a really good way.
[00:49:39] Michael Evans: You know, people who already familiar with work, who already like you, this is how I’m gonna brand it. This is how you could come here and explore more of it, but. When thinking about like who would want early access to your stories, that’s someone who has already found presumably your stories before.
[00:49:54] Michael Evans: They’ve probably read a bit of you, they probably like you. So how are you just discovering readers to [00:50:00] begin with? Because that is ultimately, I think the biggest thing we’re all interested in. If we had a million readers, it would probably solve us for problems no matter how we monetized it.
[00:50:09] Z. Knight: Really good question. And so I would say the three ways I have been finding readers and readers that are willing to go to extra mile. So, you know, leave a review or you know, do the other things that you know, you would just. Only a hundred readers. Did, you know, it would be amazing.
[00:50:25] Z. Knight: But the ways I’ve found that really been helpful, especially in the romance genre, is joining collaboration. So you spoke, spoke about that dream collaboration. That was really interesting because how I like, currently I’m finding a lot of readers students collaboration called Single Dead is a gayer beach.
[00:50:40] Z. Knight: And basically a bunch of authors came together and wrote. It’s gay single dad romance, which is a very, you know kind of like niche trope. But it has a big audience. And so what I found is that people that read one book in a series, they’re automatically going and buying at full price, which is, you know, Woo for me are author like me.
[00:50:59] Z. Knight: They’re going [00:51:00] automatically pre-ordering at full price, the other books in the series. And so I’m finding a lot of readers that way through collaboration, saying, Hey, let’s all come together. We all want to write. Black sports romance and we wanna pool our readers and your readers become my readers, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:51:15] Z. Knight: You get introduced. The second way I’ve been finding a lot of readers is through anthology projects, which I will warn can be kind of messy, , there’s a lot going on right now about that. But it’s been a great way because you can write shorter work. You know, you’re not putting out a novel and trying to find a audience for a novel.
[00:51:31] Z. Knight: You say, Hey, a lot of people love. Shifter romance and I’m gonna put a short, or one of my older works in there. And then they say, Oh, that’s pretty interesting. I’ll join your newsletter. I’ll, you know, buy this. I’ll do that. And so I’m finally readers that way. And then the third way is, you know, the bulk standard way I’m putting out books in hot tropes.
[00:51:49] Z. Knight: You know, I’m saying, Hey, you know a lot of people into Monster Romance, I’m gonna put out a Monster Romance. And those readers are like, I want more Monster Romance. Right? . And so I’m hoping. Funnel them, Hey, come to [00:52:00] my Patreon, I’ll have more content for you, et cetera, et cetera. So I really, it’s getting out there, but the two ways I found that are most successful in less work and anxiety of, really just putting out something really hoping succeeds through marketing and other efforts is anthologies and collaborations.
[00:52:18] Z. Knight: And that could be a little scary, but much like your Facebook group subscription for authors, join a good read group, Facebook groups. There’s always people that are interested in like, We have similar ideas and let’s put out something together. It’s a lot less scary when you work together on a project.
[00:52:33] Michael Evans: Emilia, you engage even in a lot of collaboration still at your level, right? Where you work with other authors to to do things, you still find benefits in collaborations.
[00:52:42] Emilia Rose: Yes, I do. I try to be a part of ’em, but it’s really, it’s sometimes it’s really hard because there are, first of all, there’s like so many different anthologies that you could be part of and collaborations.
[00:52:54] Emilia Rose: And then sometimes I’m a very When I write, I’m a very mood writer usually. And so sometimes I’ll [00:53:00] like sign up for like an anthology and then the Anth, I’ll have to start writing it. I’ll be like, ah, I dunno if I’m really feeling this right now. But yeah, so there are, when I was running I think I ran a shared world like a year ago, and it was, it was very successful, at least in my opinion.
[00:53:16] Emilia Rose: And a lot of the authors benefited from that shared world and they got more readers, which is really cool.
[00:53:22] Michael Evans: So, That’s amazing. I think these are all really fascinating ideas and. I mean, I literally think we could sit here and talk easily for another hour with uc, like easily. But I just wanna let everyone know that if you love this podcast, let us know and we can always bring Zac.
[00:53:41] Michael Evans: We’d be super curious to, especially a couple months from now, a year from now as your journey progresses, because I have no doubt. You’re going to continue learning so many incredible things. And yeah, just thank you so much for being here.
[00:53:53] Z. Knight: Thank you so much, Michael, Emilia, for having me on.
[00:53:55] Michael Evans: And that’s it for this episode. I hope you all had a great time listening. [00:54:00] We have so many exciting episodes coming up that if you’re not already like subscribed to this podcast or have it saved Rssv to be able to listening weekly, you should do so. We have some incredible episodes coming up with also some like insider industry data being dropped that is kind of mind blowing.
[00:54:16] Michael Evans: It’s related to direct selling. So I’m just gonna throw that as like a little cliff hanger for y’all, but also as another cliff hanger. We talked a lot about subscriptions today, as we do on every podcast here, but a lot of times the platforms that we use aren’t really made for fiction. I think we’ve all dealt with this problem.
[00:54:33] Michael Evans: If you have subscription, There aren’t really eres in these platforms that you could use for subscriptions. It takes forever to schedule chapters because it’s built for either video creators, artists, or writers who aren’t writing and serializing actual fiction books. Therefore, you can spend hours just trying to schedule stuff and you feel so tired and drained by the end of it all that you’re wondering.
[00:54:53] Michael Evans: Why don’t I just publish my books on Amazon and get paid half a penny for each page? Read like that sounds better. So we want to make a [00:55:00] platform that actually is truly for subscriptions for authors. And that place is re, it’s not out yet, but we’re launching soon.
[00:55:07] Michael Evans: In fact, like as we’re speaking, we’re working to like bring on more help so that we can bring it out faster and get ready to bring an awesome experience to all of. It’s by authors, four authors inspired by Amelia Rose in three years of her making sick figures and subscriptions, but dealing with all the problems of these various platforms.
[00:55:26] Michael Evans: So we wanna solve ’em all for you and create a home just for readers. So that’s ream. Check it out in the link description. Otherwise, I hope you’ll have an amazing rest of your day and happy writing.