Posted on November 25, 2022.
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Here are the top lessons from 10 authors that combined make $1 million per year from subscriptions. They span genre and strategy, but by the end you will have more insights on how to price your subscription, brand your subscription/Patreon/Ream, and the best ways to manage your subscription to maximize your recurring revenue as fiction authors.
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#17 Episode Outline:
0:00 – 2:36 Introduction and Context
2:36 – 5:31 Special Message from the Hosts
- Katee Robert (5:35 – 8:58): https://www.patreon.com/kateerobert
- N.K. Jemisin(8:58 – 13:10): https://www.patreon.com/nkjemisin
- Matt Dinniman (13:10 – 17:19): https://www.patreon.com/dinniman
- Nikki St. Crowe (17:19 – 23:29): https://www.patreon.com/nikkistcrowe
- Tamora Pierce (23:29 – 27:24): https://www.patreon.com/tamorapierce
- Jeph Jacques (27:24 – 31:12): https://www.patreon.com/jephjacques
- Seanan McGuire (31:12 – 35:03): https://www.patreon.com/seananmcguire
- Becca and Krista Ritchie (35:03 – 38:41): https://www.patreon.com/kbritchie
- Onley James (38:41 – 41:17): https://www.patreon.com/OnleyJames
- Pirateaba (41:17 – 48:01): https://www.patreon.com/pirateaba
#17 Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: Today we’re obviously looking at some of the 10 most successful. Fiction authors that are monetizing subscriptions in the world and seeing what we can learn from their subscriptions. Everything from their tiers to their pricing, how they’re branding their subscription, and ultimately seeing what maybe do readers want in subscriptions and what can we learn across different genres from romance, web, serial, sci-fi, LitRPG, and many other things in between.
[00:00:26] Michael Evans: I also want to note that the authors in this list are in no particular order, but these 10 authors in aggregate make well over a million dollars per year from subscription. There’s a lot to learn from these fiction authors, and they’re very diverse in terms of their approach and genre, but I think there’s a lot of big takeaways we can have from all this, and of course, You’re probably curious about, well, what do their subscriptions actually look like?
[00:00:52] Michael Evans: Cause of course we’ll be chatting about it in the podcast and you’re listening to the YouTube version. You’ll also be able to see some screenshots of it. But if you [00:01:00] wanna actually check out the links of the subscriptions, you should definitely go check it out in the description. We link to all of them.
[00:01:08] Michael Evans: We even have a spreadsheet of a hundred fiction authors. We can’t cover them all in this podcast. There’s actually over 130 on the. And in aggregate, they make over 10 million per year from subscriptions. They span genres, they span strategies and price points, and some of them have 80 subscribers and make almost a hundred thousand dollars a year, and some have over 10,000 subscribers.
[00:01:33] Michael Evans: It’s really, really cool. And if you want to check out the spreadsheet, you should go to our Facebook group. Once you’re in our Facebook group, in the welcome post, you’ll find the spreadsheet. That’s how you can find it and it’s free and it’s awesome and has a ton of amazing resources. And we’ll also be updating that spreadsheet as well, and you’ll get updates about that in the group.
[00:01:57] Michael Evans: So can’t wait for this episode. I hope [00:02:00] y’all enjoy it. And as always, it’s really helpful if you can share this. With your author friends who would also enjoy it. Subscriptions are a really awesome, interesting business model that helps you as an author, connect with your audience and turn your super fans from customers of retailers and to subscribers that pay you monthly.
[00:02:20] Michael Evans: That’s our mission here at Subscriptions for Authors podcast, and if you’re into that mission and wanna support us, the best way is just to share this with other people, cuz you wanna spread the word and help more author. Enjoy this awesome business model and really have freedom from the platform. We wanna help empower authors.
[00:02:38] Michael Evans: So thank you in helping us do that, and let’s dive into this
[00:02:42] Michael Evans: And for our first author, we have someone who’s really crushing it as someone who’s really awesome. Named Katee. Robert. So she’s author number one. And let’s dive into her subscription. What are like your first thoughts when you see it?
[00:02:56] Emilia Rose: So she is writing love stories [00:03:00] on her subscription.
[00:03:01] Emilia Rose: She has a bunch of different tiers. Some of them have physical rewards with them, but they are more of the higher priced tiers. And what’s really interesting about this one her international tiers or her swag merch tiers are fairly low. The amount that people are spending. Her highest year is $31 per month.
[00:03:22] Emilia Rose: They don’t get the MER every single month. They get it every other month. So really they’re spending $62 for the march and I’m assuming for shipping along with a signed paper back. That’s really interesting to me because for me it costs a lot of money to ship international.
[00:03:38] Michael Evans: I know. I’m curious. I’d be like really wondering how the economics work out there, like what her margin is on this, but no doubt. Yeah, it something that readers feel are getting a lot of value from, because out of these upper tiers, she has 11 tiers in total and. She has six tiers that you pay over $15 a month for, and [00:04:00] four out of the six are completely sold out.
[00:04:02] Michael Evans: Her international hot in my hands tier, which is $18 a month, you get a signed copy of new release books. They come out. Any books will be special edition with the digital signature. Trad Books will have a book play. Books will be mailed out every other month, so that’s what you get for $18 per month, which is I think really great.
[00:04:21] Michael Evans: And then for $21 a month, this is international only. You get codes from book funnel for indie audio books. They release. And then you also get what’s in the $5 and $7 tier. So it seems like she has like a whole system here.
[00:04:35] Emilia Rose: It’s very well thought out. She also is offering annual, like if you pay annually, you get like I think it’s 8% discount across the entire board and her subscription is set up mostly.
[00:04:46] Emilia Rose: The core of it is offering like bonus content as well as physical goods rather than early access. But she does have some early access sprinkled around, but it’s more in [00:05:00] like complete arcs, instead of just chapter by chapter.
[00:05:03] Michael Evans: She has 2,400 people subscribed, which is incredible. So it’s all for, like Emilia said, this bonus content.
[00:05:11] Michael Evans: I really find it interesting. At $5 per month, what you get is nominate and vote each month on a brand new short story featuring your favorite characters. And this tier also gets early access to each of her NDE book releases. So that’s like her early access to here, but also first thing. You’re really finding out how you get to participate in the story.
[00:05:30] Michael Evans: She’s making that like almost the main benefit of it, which I find really interesting.
[00:05:35] Emilia Rose: Yeah, I think it’s really cool too. And with every subscription the bio part of it is very important and it’s very personable. Like a lot of, Bios are in the subscription world. It’s very like opposite what they are in the Amazon retailer publishing world where everything is in third person, you have to talk about yourself in third person.
[00:05:55] Emilia Rose: But she’s very personable. She tells her readers about like who she is, [00:06:00] like not only as an author, but like outside of the author world as well,
[00:06:04] Michael Evans: I love it. And there’s a lot to learn from that.
[00:06:06] Michael Evans: And that takes us into our second author, which will switch gears to a different genre, but also an author who comes from the TRA world and actually is mostly in the trad world versus Katie, Robert being a hybrid author with India and trad published works.
[00:06:23] Michael Evans: And that is NK Jemison. NK Jameson has a pretty famous story with subscriptions because when she was on her tra published deals, it was tough for her to make like a consistent income. You didn’t really know what your royalty check’s gonna be.
[00:06:35] Michael Evans: It’s still that way. So for her, setting up subscription was to. Basically a way to make this writing thing her passion, sustainable, and be able to have a predictable monthly income. So now she has over a thousand subscribers to her subscription and she makes over $4,000 a month, which is great. And these are all public information that’s on her subscription page.
[00:06:56] Michael Evans: And what we’ll link down to all these subscriptions in the descriptions, so [00:07:00] you can go check it out yourself, but she has seven tiers and they range in price from $1 all the way to a hundred. And these high priced tiers are sold out. There’s five available at the a hundred dollars tier and there’s only one remaining and there’s 10 available at $50 tier, and there’s only one remaining.
[00:07:17] Michael Evans: So she’s doing really well with this high priced tiers, but also clearly has a lot of people at the lower price tiers cuz she has 1000 subscribers. So I find those like high level things pretty interesting.
[00:07:26] Emilia Rose: What she’s offering at the 50 and a hundred dollars tiers are physical goods again which I think is kind of common once you get up to like above 50 dollars per month.
[00:07:37] Emilia Rose: She is offering , signed author or copy of any of her print books while her readers are subscribers of her. And then in the a hundred dollars tier, You also get a chatbook, of electronic content and a thank you note in December.
[00:07:53] Emilia Rose: So a little end of year gift.
[00:07:55] Michael Evans: I think it’s an amazing idea. I know a lot of nonfiction authors have really [00:08:00] been able to do well with this similar model for, for years and being able to. Bundle their stories together into like exclusive additions, workbooks and things like that. And this really feels like that kind of experience for her fiction, like that really curated things.
[00:08:17] Michael Evans: That’s her a hundred dollars tier, but I also find her lower price tiers. Equally interesting, and I’m sure these are the tiers that she has most of her people in. And at $1 per month, it’s basically just framed as a donation. She does it in a really funny way. Ain’t got much, but still wanna help.
[00:08:33] Michael Evans: Thanks. Seriously. Ozzie will also thank you with a monthly cat pick. So for $1 month, it’s not like you get nothing, you. To interact with her, you get to see her cat, but it is framed as donation. And then $2 a month you get your subscriber only blog post. So you kind of get like a behind the scenes newsletter of sorts.
[00:08:52] Michael Evans: And then you finally get to see original draft chapter or short stories before the public gets to and that’s at $5 a month. So [00:09:00] I think that’s an interesting number, that $5 a month, because I see that kind of across the. Being like an interesting barometer for authors to have as their early access here.
[00:09:10] Emilia Rose: And something interesting about her subscription is she has goals related to it and it’s more like community related goals. So one of her goals was to reach $3,000 and. She has like a little description underneath it and just like thanking her subscribers. And she’s like saying like anything over $3,000 that she makes is a pay raise and she could go on a retreat or do another research trip.
[00:09:34] Emilia Rose: And all these little cute things that, an author can do with extra.
[00:09:38] Michael Evans: Yeah, I think she does an amazing job and I mean, she’s currently making, like we said, $4,000 per month, but she’s posted two times in the last month, which it’s not like she’s on here every day posting constantly in order to make that happen, definitely some months she posts more. It looks like in September she may have posted two or three times.
[00:09:59] Michael Evans: [00:10:00] August is three. But June and July was only once. So she definitely is active. She’s giving her subscribers something and being able to interact with her community every month. But it’s not like she is writing a chapter every day in order to make that kind of money. She’s not at all doing that.
[00:10:18] Michael Evans: I think now we can move on to. A LitRPG author named Matt Dinnimon. He’ll be author number three for us so Matt Dinnimon also has his subscriber and income number public, so he’s making roughly six figures a year, just under that amount at the time recording and has 1800 people subscribe monthly, which is awesome.
[00:10:40] Michael Evans: And he has four tiers, which is less than our prior. Authors. But one thing I wanna just put in as a caveat is that the authors that we’ve been looking at, including Matt himself, have been running a description for a while and are very advanced authors. So if you’re like just looking to step a subscription, it might not be best to have 11 tears from day one.[00:11:00]
[00:11:00] Michael Evans: Katee Roberts even mentioned that she started. Her subscription to offer bonus content and it grew from there based on fan feedback. Yeah, she literally says that in her information page. So don’t look at all these tiers, all these high price tiers and think, oh my God, this has to be me day one. But these are all just things and information that you can take into account as we study the most successful authors doing this thing.
[00:11:23] Emilia Rose: So for Matt’s, he, one of the first things you see when you jump on his subscription is he is offering exclusive merch to his subscribers. And these are only in the $10 and $30 tiers and in the $10 I believe it’s only like a one time thing. I could be wrong. But when you join, you get an exclusive sticker.
[00:11:46] Emilia Rose: And that exclusive sticker has to do with his, one of his series or one of his books. And if you join the $30 per month tier, you get an ex exclusive T-shirt, which includes global shipping. So pretty
[00:11:59] Michael Evans: cool. [00:12:00] I think, he has a great subscription and the including Discord benefits too is apparent here, which means that they probably get access to a private community Discord or access to specific rooms within his Discord community.
[00:12:17] Michael Evans: And it should be noted that Discord is a platform that is honestly picked up steam among many different kinds of cu. But it’s certainly really popular in the gaming community. And lid RPG or literature role playing games is a genre of fiction that has a lot of roots in the gaming community. So I think for him, having a discord and having that be the spot that he interacts with community makes a lot of sense, but don’t feel like you have to have a discord if you wanna interact with community.
[00:12:45] Michael Evans: There’s other platforms. Facebook’s a really common one, obviously, but there’s other platforms beyond that that are also interesting. So don’t feel. You have to set up an exclusive community on the same platforms as these authors. [00:13:00] However, it’s definitely something his readers, I think, value and I know on platforms like Twitch.
[00:13:05] Michael Evans: Twitch makes like a billion dollars a year from subscriptions plus for Twitch streamers. And you don’t get any sort of exclusive content really. You just get special Emos in the live chat for the live streams. And people being able to have that support and visibly show that they’re part of a creator’s fandom is enough for them to be paying $5 a month.
[00:13:26] Michael Evans: So it’s really interesting. Sometimes the value that you’re providing to your readers might not be what you think it is. It doesn’t have to be necessarily tangible in the form of like X number of words or this specific coffee mug, I’m shipping them. It can be just a feeling and a space you give them to show their identity, show their love for what you’re doing.
[00:13:47] Emilia Rose: And what he has his subscription set. Where he is giving early access to advanced chapters.
[00:13:54] Michael Evans: Yes. And he’s posting his chapters to Royal Road. So a lot of these readers are [00:14:00] coming in through the serial fiction pipeline and are already used to kind of reading his chapters in that way. So I find it interesting too that he’s kind of providing his. Membership tiers in a way that’s probably familiar to how his audience is already interacting with him.
[00:14:19] Michael Evans: So if you’re not yet on his subscription, the things that he’s offering are still probably familiar to you.
[00:14:23] Emilia Rose: And his tiers range between $3 and $30 .
[00:14:27] Michael Evans: Yeah, it’s super, super impressive. That’s awesome. Okay, then we can move on to our fourth author, which will be Nikki St Crowe, I just love her tagline. So I’m just gonna read this first steamy paranormal romance for the villain, get to the girl and her image is, is very simple, but it’s also really beautiful.
[00:14:48] Michael Evans: It’s this dark like red violet sky. All these crows, I hope I got the bird name right, but they look like crows to me flying through the air. And it just gives me a very specific vibe.
[00:14:58] Emilia Rose: It gives me a vibe [00:15:00] too. It like sets you in the mood where that kind of story. Like villainous stories and paranormal romance
[00:15:06] Michael Evans: I picked better B crows because now I’m realizing like, oh, her last name literally is crow.
[00:15:13] Michael Evans: With an E. And then her tiers, which I love, the branding of her tier are right, right on point. So Blackwell House is her $5 per month tier Tree House is $10 per month. Crow House is $20 per month and it’s limited. There’s only one remaining. And then Crow House for International is $35 a month. And I just, I love that each of these tiers.
[00:15:39] Michael Evans: Branded as if they’re like separate spaces and homes you get to enter and that everything from the image to the name is directly in line with her brand and the kinds of like stories and worlds her readers wanna be immersed in. It’s
[00:15:54] Emilia Rose: extremely well thought out and I love it. It’s very personal again even within the [00:16:00] tears she has instead of little bullet points, they’re black hearts.
[00:16:04] Emilia Rose: She’s offering a bunch of content. Again, this is both early access and. Bonus content and physical goods. So, her lowest tier’s $5 and she has a lot of early access to discount codes and cover reveals and books as she writes them.
[00:16:23] Emilia Rose: And then she also has, in 20 and $35 tier you get signed paperbacks and not say for work sneak peaks, before she shows anyone else. Really cool.
[00:16:35] Michael Evans: It’s honestly one of my favorite branded subscriptions across the board. And a big part of when you’re building a relationship with your readers is making yourself likable.
[00:16:45] Michael Evans: There’s this concept, it’s psychological concept that was actually came out of television and it’s called Parasocial Relationships, and it’s basically this concept where, You as the author or a [00:17:00] creator of any sort of story, build a relationship with your audience where they feel like they’re your friend, but you might not feel like you’re friends with them.
[00:17:09] Michael Evans: Sometimes you might literally be friends with your audience, but not all of the times, and this is just because the power of story and being able to connect with them. But when you align your branding with that too, and when you’re trying to essentially sell your readers here on why this could be a great place to further develop that relationship, it feels so homey.
[00:17:27] Michael Evans: It feels so familiar that it’s like a friend talking to you rather than just another sales page on Amazon. And for something like subscriptions where this is a long-term commitment, ideally, that are readers making to you, you, you don’t wanna have subscription only when someone’s on for a month. Like you want ’em to be subscribed for a year, even years, ideally, like that would be what you.
[00:17:44] Michael Evans: Then it’s all about that relationship, and I think she does a really great job at that.
[00:17:48] Emilia Rose: Her houses kind of remind me of like Harry Potter.
[00:17:52] Michael Evans: Oh yeah, they do.
[00:17:54] Emilia Rose: Like, which house are you a part of?
[00:17:56] Michael Evans: That’s so interesting. And right there you [00:18:00] can have a sort of community among your parents.
[00:18:01] Michael Evans: That gives me an idea of something that authors could do as well. We see a lot of times authors have like the same price tiers, same benefits, but this is just an idea. But if you had three tiers for like $5, let’s think about dive. What if you were the author Diversion? Veronica, if you’re listening, actually love your books and you should come in our podcast just because I’d love to talk to you.
[00:18:23] Michael Evans: But , if she had like the Don list here, the, all these different, right? Stop. Like you could, they’re then the same about, right? Like the same price. You maybe get similar benefits, but if you’re part of dont list, you get different merch than if you’re part of, Oh no, I’m for, I am actually blanking on the other factions in diversion.
[00:18:44] Michael Evans: I am a horrible diversion reader. I, I, I will circle back. , divergent factions. Let me look this up. That’s so funny. I’m forgetting the moment. Okay. Yeah. So you might be part of Dauntless, but then maybe there’s an Amity tier that’s the same amount. Right. But maybe what happens is you funnel [00:19:00] your readers into a, a Discord, a Facebook.
[00:19:02] Michael Evans: And there might be an exclusive section that’s just for Dauntless people or just for people an obligation or an amity. And then you get start to build like tribes within your overall tribe and maybe. For people who are part of this, you do like a special little event or you reveal something extra. Like I write an extra little chapter that’s just for you.
[00:19:25] Michael Evans: Don’t list people. And then you can have maybe an overall tier if you have in, in the case of divergent. There’s five different actions, so it would cost $25 subscribe to all. But maybe if you wanna subscribe to all and say you’re like a mega member, I don’t know you, you are the people controlling the genetic engineering experiment.
[00:19:44] Michael Evans: If you’re in that world, then maybe it’s like 15 or $20 a month, and then you’re still giving them like you’re not doing any extra work. You’re just sending that person all of it. I don’t know. It’s just an idea for authors who are really. In that it has to work with your world. But
[00:19:58] Michael Evans: it could be interesting.
[00:19:59] Emilia Rose: That’s [00:20:00] super interesting.
[00:20:01] Michael Evans: If you have multiple series set in the same world, which I feel like a plurality of authors have worlds that are like that. I know I do. I have three series set in the same world. You could do the same thing with specific series.
[00:20:12] Michael Evans: If you’re offering bonus content in early access, you can brand these in specific ways where it’s not early access to your entire Penn name, but access to specific parts of it and. Kind of building that sort of anticipation to like be maybe a part of all of it. You kind of built an upsell into your subscription.
[00:20:29] Michael Evans: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Really, really cool. Just ideas everyone. All just ideas. But that’s why, that’s why we do this podcast. So I’m excited.
[00:20:37] Michael Evans: We can move on to author number five, which we’ll move to Tamora Pierce and. Honestly, I think this author really has a fascinating subscription because her tier range all the way from $400 per month to $2 per month, and you might be asking who would pay $4 per month.
[00:20:56] Michael Evans: I don’t know these people personally, but it says that there’s [00:21:00] three of five remaining at the $400 tier, which means that two readers are paying her $400 per month. She has a thousand subscribers. It makes $11,000 per month doing this, which is just incredible. So what are your first thoughts as you see her subscription?
[00:21:15] Emilia Rose: I love the branding of her tiers. Each tier is like I haven’t read her books, so I’m assuming it might be like, like types of species or characters in her books or something along those lines. Like the first one with a $2 tier sparrow and right before she gets into her tier benefits, she defines what as Sparrow is, and as Sparrow is clever, loyal, and beloved.
[00:21:40] Emilia Rose: And she does that with every single one of her tears. It’s really cool. . She also has if you pay annually, you get a percentage off. She is offering a book snippets and behind the scenes content, so it seems like it’s more of like bonus content. In her highest year, which is 400, $400.
[00:21:59] Emilia Rose: [00:22:00] People must maintain pledge for five months to be eligible for material rewards. So that’s like, $2,000. And some of her benefits are arc copies, personalized copies, as well member of Tammy’s Cat Cafe Club equal to one personal zoom call per month. Really cool.
[00:22:22] Emilia Rose: Personal gift, hand selected by Tammy once annually. And a bunch of other smaller stuff, but like, those are the big big things in that tier.
[00:22:32] Michael Evans: If you think about that model as well, we talk about this a lot, just me and Emilia, but when you see this author doing it, it’s like, wait.
[00:22:41] Michael Evans: You now, if you get a reader to describe to that tier, are going to be getting $2,000 from one reader, now you’re putting a lot of work into it. So like, let’s not say you just do nothing else and a reader’s willing to give you $2,000 just to read your book, like maybe someone out there exists like that.
[00:22:59] Michael Evans: [00:23:00] But how she’s really doing this is being able to give additional value in a closer relationship with her on top of it. But she only needs. Five people, that’s all she can fit in the tier. But if you add that number up over the course of a year, it’s not an amazing living if you’re in the United States, but just from that one tier, just from five people, you can significantly.
[00:23:21] Michael Evans: Impact your business and it just shows you like if you have one reader. Yeah. Develop a really close relationship with even one reader. It can be really meaningful. So that’s a great thing about subscriptions and obviously you don’t have to convince someone day one to join your subscription at $40.
[00:23:35] Michael Evans: These readers have been with her probably for decades. Probably for decades. She’s been writing for a really long. She is a fantasy author, specifically. She writes fantasy featuring a lot of times young heroines, and she’s been in the traditional publishing world for a while. She’s honestly a very successful author.
[00:23:54] Michael Evans: So she’s someone who has been able to have a lot of relationships, the readers, but it just shows you like you have LitRPG [00:24:00] authors writing in a genre didn’t exist a decade ago, and. Tomorrow appears coming from an industry that’s existed for a hundred years and making use of this model. So really diverse in terms of the ways that you can utilize this, but the principles that are happening here are quite similar.
[00:24:15] Michael Evans: Every author is providing a way for the readers to become closer to them, their world, and other readers. And readers are willing to pay more than you typically would for an ebook, audiobook or print book to do that sometimes. A lot, lot more depending on exactly what you offer.
[00:24:32] Michael Evans: We’re gonna dive into our sixth author, Al, and this author is Jeph Jacques, who is. Not a traditional novelist, but a comic book creator and is really, really successful. Like 12,000 monthly subscribers successful.
[00:24:52] Michael Evans: So there’s a lot to unpack here.
[00:24:55] Emilia Rose: So his comic is named Questionable Content, and I’m [00:25:00] actually curious about what this questionable content is. He’s updating the comic five days a week for more than 10 years. Wow. And it has always been free to read. Oh my goodness.
[00:25:11] Michael Evans: That’s so fascinating.
[00:25:12] Michael Evans: I know an author who. Creates this comic called Romantic Apocalypse, and they also have their comic free, and I think they’ve gotten a hundred million views over the last 20 years on it. So they’ve been doing it for like a very long time. Wow. But they make a, basically a full time living doing it from people buying like the print rare additions of it.
[00:25:34] Michael Evans: There’s a certain percentage, obviously not a hundred million people, but a certain percentage of it who each year go on and buy these things. And they’ve also had a subscription. Not as successful as Jeph Jacques, but they have these sorts of focuses, which I think shows something important about subscriptions, which is that you might be starting a subscription day one as an author, and that’s great.
[00:25:53] Michael Evans: I think it can be a really useful thing, but rarely will a reader subscribe to you day one of knowing you. This [00:26:00] is probably not their first thing. Yeah, they’re subscribing to. They’ve probably read your work already. They probably know a bit about you, and there’s a degree of trust that they have before they make the leap to commit monthly to your work.
[00:26:10] Michael Evans: But if they do trust you and you’ve been doing it for a lot of time, then you can get something like 12,000 people on it. And now you have a lot of social proof where someone who maybe doesn’t fully trust you yet, at least trust that this many people trust you. It was like, okay, I’m gonna take the leap maybe a bit sooner than I would’ve.
[00:26:27] Emilia Rose: He has one of the highest amount of people I’ve seen for an author or a creator like a story creator. He has one tier that’s named nice and it’s $69 a month. And the description of the tier is literally just the word. Nice.
[00:26:42] Emilia Rose: And that’s it. So these are people who are They have to be super fans of him. And they’re just like, you know what? I’m going to join his subscription because I love his work so much and what he has in the descriptions and what I’m getting doesn’t really
[00:26:57] Michael Evans: matter. Holy moly, for a hundred dollars per [00:27:00] month.
[00:27:00] Michael Evans: And he says, I’ll make a video where I tell my dog, Ollie your name and pet him in your. A month, it’s custom commissions and I’ll do a custom drawing for you up to two characters. Portrait of you and a loved one, your dog. I’ll give you the digital file sobriety for so you can do what you want with them.
[00:27:14] Michael Evans: That’s really cool. He has a really robust subscription and for $5 a month it’s whoa dang. With his dog Ollie sleeping on a bed and it says Five bucks gets you early comics. Exclusive access to the monthly music column I wrote a couple years ago and sporadic I exclusive picks and footage of my good boy Ollie.
[00:27:32] Michael Evans: And right there, right, like it’s written in his voice. It’s not formatted like Nikki’s, which is great because I’m not sure his readers would want hearts. And they want whoa. Day in all cats . And I think it’s just amazing that with this kind of model, you can break free from these headlines, the same ad copy, and actually get to be creative like you have the license to be you here.
[00:27:56] Emilia Rose: And I think that his really shows that more than [00:28:00] anyone else, like you can do and you can talk to your readers how you naturally talk. These are the people who want to support you. They wanna see who you actually are as like a person and not just this author who writes their favorite stories.
[00:28:15] Emilia Rose: So I really like
[00:28:17] Michael Evans: his. I really like his two.
[00:28:19] Michael Evans: And we’re actually gonna be diving into for our seventh author, Seanan McGuire, who I think is really similar in the sense of really being authentic and it has built their entire subscription around host. So there’s a background here, and they give that background in their information page and it says, hello, I’m Seanan McGuire.
[00:28:42] Michael Evans: I had been living at my housemate for 20 years between the apartment we were in before the house and the house itself. And it’s a little surprising how many things I don’t own. It’s essentially divorce after all. Somebody gets the cat and somebody gets the couch.
[00:28:54] Michael Evans: And thus they have set up the subscription with the purpose to buy a new [00:29:00] toaster where the quote unquote toaster is a way of. Thing I need for the house amusingly. An actual toaster is on the list of things I need to get. Some months. The toaster will be painting a room or buying a bookshelf or a scanner or new desk.
[00:29:12] Michael Evans: Otherwise, toaster will be the actual toaster I mentioned. Because this is a scripture with a purpose. I’m not planning to keep it running forever. The current intent is one year from start to finish, 12 toasters, whatever shape those toasters may assume each month, I then post a short video or blog article.
[00:29:26] Michael Evans: I just think, oh my God, this is so interesting, and they keep going on like this, this information page. I won’t read all of it. I encourage you to, to go and check it out yourself that we’ll have linked below. I just think this is so interesting. I’m so into it, and clearly I’m not alone.
[00:29:40] Michael Evans: Yeah. Because 3,700 people subscribed to this and they make $13,100 per short story. They do a per creation payment. Wow. That’s a lot of toasters.
[00:29:51] Emilia Rose: Yeah. That is a lot of toasters and the, highest tier is $1,500. I don’t know if anyone’s in that one or his [00:30:00] $500 tier, but She does have a $50 tier and She has 35 people in it, as well as a hundred dollars tier and five people in it.
[00:30:10] Emilia Rose: So yeah, it’s really
[00:30:12] Michael Evans: cool. One of the most unique,
[00:30:14] Emilia Rose: I love that branded it as like a little toaster project. It like, brings you so much closer it’s
[00:30:21] Michael Evans: so relatable cause people forget a lot of times that creators like need. Like exist and eat and like have families and lives too. It’s easy when you transport. Literally, you have the power to transport someone into a fictional world for them to forget about their worldly needs, but also your worldly needs.
[00:30:39] Michael Evans: But when you give someone a reminder, your readers, if you give them a great experience, probably really enjoy you and wanna support you, but it’s hard to know. If you don’t give them the opportunity, but giving them this space. Yeah. And their rears of space has clearly been unbelievably impactful. And I imagine, although I’m not sure how much Shauna was [00:31:00] budgeting for their move, but I imagine she’s very, very happy
[00:31:05] Emilia Rose: She also has a goal with her subscription and it’s a $2,500 goal and it’s been reached.
[00:31:12] Michael Evans: I think this one in general is just a fascinating the big thing to take away from Shauna, in addition to authentic this story, this mission behind what she’s doing.
[00:31:22] Michael Evans: Is that you can do a per creation model that enables you to have this kind of direct relationship, this sort of subscription mentality, but it doesn’t have to be every month. Another example, this is you can pause your subscription on most platforms, so if you have description, but life gets in the way.
[00:31:42] Michael Evans: You’re not tethered to it forever. You can pause it and then come back to it and your members won’t be charged during that period. So this is just a good time to mention that. And Lindsay Buroker is author and podcast co-host. She’s amazing. And she also has subscription that’s per creation where readers just can get early [00:32:00] access to her books before they’re in Amazon, KU or other wide retailers.
[00:32:04] Michael Evans: And she has like 400 plus people on there, which is great. And it’s not like a, it’s one little part of her big.
[00:32:10] Michael Evans: Then we can move on to Krista and Becca. Richie
[00:32:15] Michael Evans: They are co-authors and they’re writing romance stories and they are also, I would say it’s very, very successful. They have 2,800 subscribers. But their subscription is, more simple than the other ones you’ve been witnessing. They only have two tiers, a $1 tier, and a $5 tier.
[00:32:35] Michael Evans: So we can break these down and maybe talk about why simplicity can be a good thing, especially when starting.
[00:32:41] Emilia Rose: At least for me, whenever I look at a Kickstarter or even like a subscription that has like a lot of different tiers or a lot of different like options, it’s very overwhelming.
[00:32:51] Emilia Rose: And I usually don’t end up like subscribing or joining the Kickstarter because I don’t know which one to choose. Like, I don’t know. Which one is [00:33:00] most beneficial for me? I don’t know if I’ll like a certain thing but with two tiers, it’s a lot cleaner and it’s like, I can join this tier or I can join this tier and there’s nothing else I have to really think about.
[00:33:12] Emilia Rose: Like what do I want? And one thing I really like about theirs is that they brand their tiers as badges. So kind of like the the house thing we were talking about earlier, but if you join the $1 tier, you have a magical badge. But if you join the $5 tier for them, you have a superhero badge now.
[00:33:32] Michael Evans: And for the $5. They get extra bonus scenes and they get, it’s about one bonus scene a month is what they say. So I imagine a bonus scene’s about a thousand words. So that’s I think, a pretty doable amount of contents released as an author.
[00:33:49] Michael Evans: But they also do something really fun, which is a monthly podcast, and this is exclusive to their subscribers at this tier. And they discuss anything that their readers want, which I think is really [00:34:00] cool. And as authors like. Lots. We have so much creative pressure on us to come up with these worlds, these stories, these characters, everything.
[00:34:07] Michael Evans: And then you can think of a subscription as like one more place that you have to create for especially if you’re going down an inclusive content path. And if you’re not doing early access or doing early access and exclusive content, an interesting way to think about doing exclusive content is how you can collaborate with your community to create that content, to take the mental load off of it.
[00:34:25] Michael Evans: So what would your readers appreciate? That you wouldn’t have to put a ton of legwork into a ton of ideation work so that that energy can go towards your stories and your worlds That will be release. Book form and serial fiction form on other platforms, and this is where I think the podcast is genius.
[00:34:40] Michael Evans: It’s the only one I’ve seen out of these top authors doing this strategy with a podcast, pulling back the curtain of their author world and. I don’t think they have to prepare for that much. They probably put a poll on their subscription and say, Hey readers, what do you wanna talk about this month with us?
[00:34:56] Michael Evans: And then they take the notes in and they’re like, okay, [00:35:00] well I live my life. I know it pretty well. I don’t have to do too much research for it. Let’s start talking about it. And then they talk about it and people are willing to pay them for this, actually quite a lot. I don’t know what the breakdown of people in their tears is, but my guess.
[00:35:11] Michael Evans: A minimum of a couple hundred are in this tier. Cause there’s only two, potentially the bulk of their subscribers are in this tier. I don’t have that data, but I’d be curious to know.
[00:35:19] Emilia Rose: And in their bio, they’re just basically very personable again. And. Just say why they chose to create a subscription what they write, who they are.
[00:35:28] Emilia Rose: And then they also give a master list of bonus scenes. So if you don’t wanna scroll all the way through their subscription, you can just go right there and you can find all their bonus scenes, you can find all their podcasts and extras and all that fun stuff.
[00:35:45] Michael Evans: Yeah, it’s so cool. I think they’ve done like a really fantastic.
[00:35:49] Michael Evans: And that moves us on to author only James, and they write scorching LGBT romance novels, which totally gives me like, I know what I’m [00:36:00] here for. And they have in the banner s stark angst and kink. So you, you totally. You get the vibe. They’re a gay romance author, so they have a rainbow, like beautiful rainbow like powder ish cloud behind their name.
[00:36:14] Michael Evans: So it’s a really beautiful banner and each of their tier replicate this sort of branding with the rainbow powdery sort of background and. They’re definitely a bit more innuendos in these tiers. So I encourage you to go check it out. You might get a laugh or two when checking it out.
[00:36:30] Michael Evans: So I find that the branding here is spot on. I like them. Yeah, I think it’s awesome. .
[00:36:36] Emilia Rose: So just to give you like a little example, their first three are first, second, and third base, and then it gets a little rounder. So maybe we won’t. We won’t say it all. But they’re making 11,000 per month off of about 1200 patrons or 1200 supporters.
[00:36:53] Emilia Rose: And they’re also offering quarterly march. And these are all exclusive to certain tiers. They have a mini [00:37:00] print, a mug, a poster, and a t-shirt, for all of their tier. And they’re also offering advanced chapters,
[00:37:06] Michael Evans: yes. They do one work in progress chapter weekly for their $5 tier, they do also access to fan art in addition.
[00:37:15] Michael Evans: So they definitely do a lot of really interesting. Things on this that kind of combine a lot of the strategies that we’ve already seen working. They’ve got the early access, providing some physical goods that people can hold and have to represent your brand, and be closer to it. And just in general from the ground up.
[00:37:33] Michael Evans: They’ve done a really great job at signaling to their readers, you’re in the right place. this is a home for, if you like my stories, you’re gonna get more of that. And I think that’s, Another big key with subscriptions is that don’t feel like you have to reinvent the wheel. If you know your readers like something of yours.
[00:37:49] Michael Evans: This is a space to give them more, to bring them closer to it. You don’t have to try and reimagine. Your entire business. I think subscriptions are really supposed to be the [00:38:00] core of it. Like this is the space in which you have to be the most committed to giving your readers what they want, and you can be most in tune to it so that then you can take the feedback in your subscription, see what stories they’re liking that you give them early access to, and know what’s gonna work.
[00:38:15] Michael Evans: When you try and recruit more readers that are interested in similar things and hopefully grow your business, that’s usually a useful thing. Just kind of important. , just a little bit. That’s only James for us.
[00:38:25] Michael Evans: And we’ll move on to our 10th.
[00:38:27] Emilia Rose: Save the best for last. We have a huge
[00:38:30] Michael Evans: tier. Yeah. This is the highest tier that I think you can do I’ve ever seen.
[00:38:36] Michael Evans: Yeah. $1 million per month. I’m not sure they have anyone subscribed to this for the record.
[00:38:42] Emilia Rose: Who knows? They have 5,000 people subscribe to them, so there might be one. Yeah.
[00:38:47] Emilia Rose: Very, very, very rich person who is funding their 1 million per month lifestyle.
[00:38:53] Michael Evans: Yeah, that would be wild. It’s, congratulations if you dated this much money. I’ll go enjoy riding. If I’ve got a million dollars spread of [00:39:00] things I could do, like donate Climb a mountain and forget about worldly needs since I can buy a small site to the world itself.
[00:39:05] Michael Evans: Eventually I’ll go back to the story maybe. I find it funny. It makes me actually, like, no offense to the author, I’m not gonna give you a million dollars. Don’t have that. But I definitely. I like it. It makes me closer to the brand. Probably more likely to spend $5, $10 a month, something that’s more affordable for me.
[00:39:21] Michael Evans: But they write web seals and. They definitely seem to have their kind of like inside jokes in the tier. Me being an outsider who’s not super immersed. Their community blue fruit juice as their name for their $1 per month tier doesn’t really resonate with me, but that’s the point. Right? The idea for subscription isn’t to say, new readers who don’t know me, this is a great place for you.
[00:39:48] Michael Evans: It’s to say you already are part of the club. Join the insider group. This is the v i P lounge. And yeah, like fold of acid flies is the $10 per month tier. It’s just not something you’d [00:40:00] see on a platform like Amazon or Cobo, anything like that.
[00:40:03] Emilia Rose: And again, I think a few, authors back there, we had an author. Basically said the they defined what the tier name meant or like the qualities that the person in the tier might have but him or they. Kind of do the, the same thing in their tiers as well before they get into the, the tier benefits.
[00:40:23] Emilia Rose: So for blue fruit juice he gives a little description, drink a cup of orange juice with food coloring because you deserve it. So it’s definitely probably inside joke with everyone who has read his stuff. These include discord benefits as well.
[00:40:38] Michael Evans: There’s definitely a community that you get to be a part of with this exclusive access to other readers and the author, which is relatively like an easier thing to do that authors don’t realize. Like going back to always stories have brought humans together, but commercially with science fiction as a genre coming about in the forties through like print magazines, like people got together [00:41:00] and found each other in the mail, people got married because they read these serials and found belonging in these science fiction magazines.
[00:41:08] Michael Evans: Then we saw the birth, these conventions, and this is just the story of one genre that I’m uniquely familiar with, and every genre has these sorts of similar fandoms that emerge. So your readers probably would really like to be part of your fandom, depending on your genre, depending on your readers, and certainly I think that’s true for Pirate, a Boz readers.
[00:41:27] Michael Evans: And another thing I find interesting, and it’s an interesting psychological concept that I wanna bring up, and I’m not suggesting everyone does this, but it’s an idea that this author does, is they have a 30 to $50 tier and also a million dollar tier. But we’ll, we’ll put the million dollar tier to this side and just.
[00:41:40] Michael Evans: Maybe that was more of a joke, but the 30 and $50 tiers I think are pretty serious. They set them up and people could theoretically afford that amount, but they don’t give anything extra at the tier, at the $30 tier. They say this, if you want to give me more, that’s what this tier is for. There are no rewards for giving me more money, [00:42:00] none.
[00:42:00] Michael Evans: But hey, why would you let that stop you? And then for $50 a month, it’s reserved for people with lots of money to spare. Seriously, if you donate at this level, you’d better be as rich as Magnolia. Or I’ll cancel your pledge. I can do that. Right? So it’s really interesting, and they opened up this opportunity to essentially donate and you might be like, who would ever do that?
[00:42:20] Michael Evans: But. Two things, a story and a psychological concept. The story is we brought on an author named Elliot Pepper, and he does this effectively where he has a tier where you can basically donate so that he could do more of the work he loves. That’s all he says. And. On his subscription.
[00:42:35] Michael Evans: That’s like the only way he runs it. There’s no thing you get for a subscription besides knowing that. And he gets people who pay him and it’s not cheap. It’s like $50 plus over the course of a year. Signs. It’s, there’s a $200 here, I believe. So people really do support him there. That’s all he does on his subs.
[00:42:55] Michael Evans: But why this works cuz you might be like, what? Yeah, people do wanna support you. They want to give to [00:43:00] what they believe in sciences. Literally like in a sense, donate. But also people have this sort of reciprocal value where if they feel like they’ve gotten so much value from your work and you give them an opportunity to show it, a lot of people will.
[00:43:12] Michael Evans: And a lot of times as authors, we don’t realize. Our books are all priced the same for everyone. $5, $10, whatever they are for everyone. Yet our book may be worth a lot more to someone. What if you gave them a space to be able to show that support?
[00:43:26] Emilia Rose: I know I personally have done this in the past where there was an artist I’ve really loved, I like she did, I really like this show called attack on Titan, it’s Anime.
[00:43:36] Emilia Rose: And she did this artwork that I. Absolutely loved on her subscription, but in her subscription, she hadn’t updated. And I think she said, I’m not going to update this year, but if you wanna support me, you can support me. So I like supported at her highest tier because I was like, I love the work you do.
[00:43:53] Emilia Rose: I want you to keep doing more whether you show that to me or not. Like I want more. And if, me paying you [00:44:00] $10 a month, adds up and helps you like. Finish school or just do whatever, but you’re doing what you love. Like that’s amazing. I, so there’s people out there who will do
[00:44:11] Michael Evans: stuff like that.
[00:44:12] Michael Evans: I’ve done that for at least one or two creatives myself. And I wanna do it for more. So anyways, I think this was such a lovely experience in conversation. I love being able to analyze this with you and I hope to everyone watching that this was helpful. There’s a list of over a hundred offers that are really doing well, inscription that you can look.
[00:44:33] Michael Evans: The link will be below. You’ll have to sign up for our Facebook group to actually be able to go and discover it. But the post is there with it so you can discover it. You just have to be in our Facebook group to see it. So you’re one of us, one of the community. But anyways, I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.