Posted on March 1, 2023.
Watch on YouTube.
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More
Do you have a subscription but are struggling to gain new paying readers? Today we cover the 10 common obstacles keeping authors from subscription success and share ways that we all can overcome them.
Read the Subscriptions for Authors Starter Guide for free: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/symmo2fkg7
Read Fans First by Jesse Cole: https://lioncrest.com/books/fans-first/
#27 Episode Outline:
0:00 Introduction
1:28 Subscription Problem #1: When Should I Start My Subscription?
7:20 Problem #2: Tier Structure and Pricing
15:34 Problem #3: People Don’t Know About My Subscription
22:52 Problem #4: Fans are Visiting My Subscription Page But Not Joining
29:06 Problem #5 and #6: Remaining Consistent and Don’t Over Promise
39:32 Problem #7: Struggling to Build Relationships with My Readers
46:24 Problem #8: My Subscription Isn’t Scaling
53:41 Problem #9: Where Should I Host My Subscription?
57:31 Problem #10: How Can I Learn More About Subscriptions?
#27 Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Subscriptions for Authors podcast. It’s me, your co-host, Michael Evans, and I’m here with Emilia . We’re gonna try the introduction. We’re excited today because we have a very special and interesting episode. We’ve talked a lot about writing your subscription, how to market your subscription in recent episodes, but we realized that with all this talk about what to do, we, there’s times in when things go wrong in which we’re having problems with our subscription and which we’re not sure maybe how to start or where to go.
[00:00:36] Michael Evans: So we wanted to create an episode where we share 10 common subscription struggles. We’ve seen this through. We’re probably getting into hundreds of conversations, but certainly a hundred plus conversations with fellow subscription authors and the, at this point, certainly hundreds of posts in the Facebook group called Subscriptions for Authors, which many of you are amazing members of.
[00:00:56] Michael Evans: And if you’re not, it’s free. It’s amazing to join because [00:01:00] there’s lovely people in there like Christopher Hopper who’s dedicating his subscription like Journey, showing us how he’s sending out beautiful sign of books and all these cool things to his subscribers. You get to see insights from amazing authors like him who are extremely generous with their journey.
[00:01:17] Michael Evans: But I want to just dive into these subscription problems because I, myself, feel like some of these, I’m like, oh I feel like this is a problem for me.
[00:01:28] Michael Evans: So I wanna ask you, Emilia, this first one, which you’ve started many subscriptions now, and I feel like. on the question of problem number one, not knowing when to start, not knowing how to start, what would be your response to someone who’s having this sort of problem with their subscription?
[00:01:46] Emilia Rose: I’m biased but I think you should start as soon as possible. And that might not be like launching it, but at least starting to think about what you wanna offer in a subscription with your community and what your readers like, whether they like, like physical [00:02:00] goods or they wanna have early access to your chapters.
[00:02:03] Emilia Rose: Just beginning to just think about where you would like your subscription to go and then potentially launch it if you want to. Something about subscriptions is launching isn’t as big as everyone thinks it is. I like soft launched, I guess we’ll call it that. A subscription in. October or November, but I didn’t really push it.
[00:02:27] Emilia Rose: And people trickle in over time and it picks up over time. So it’s not if, like when you launch a book on Amazon, you wanna get like really high in the Amazon kind store. That’s not what subscriptions are. At least not right now, not where we are. So I would say start as soon as possible, as soon as you get that feeling of where you wanna go with it.
[00:02:49] Michael Evans: Yeah. I agree, and this sounds weird coming from me, given I share a lot of advice about how we can think and strategize and maybe try and retool how we approach our stories and publishing. [00:03:00] But sometimes we can get caught up in our own head with thinking and planning and the best thing you can do is just press publish, press star on anything you’re doing no matter what project it is in life because.
[00:03:11] Michael Evans: Something is better complete than not shown to the world. And if you keep it behind in your computer file or behind a lockbox for a long time, you’re not gonna have that feedback that will ultimately help you have a better subscription. And even if that feedback you’re starting out and you don’t have a lot of readers, you might not even have any readers in the beginning, you learning about what makes a reader join or not join a subscription is going to be more helpful than just being like, oh, I don’t have any readers, so therefore I’m not going to start a subscription.
[00:03:41] Michael Evans: Like it’s always interesting to find out what works and what doesn’t, and you have to try things and be willing to fail, which is a tough thing to say, but I do not want to make a promise or try and sound like everyone who’s gonna start a scription and it’s gonna work magically for you. This episode’s all about talking [00:04:00] about when things going wrong, how we can make it better.
[00:04:03] Michael Evans: and yeah, I would definitely say you first have to be willing to have things go wrong. You have to first start to eventually have things go right.
[00:04:09] Emilia Rose: Yeah. Going off of that, like you, a lot of people when things fail or people might consider a fail if they’re not getting like a lot of subscribers at first or members in their community but sometimes it just takes a long time to get somebody to commit to a monthly like payment to pay you monthly for something.
[00:04:30] Emilia Rose: But also, like sometimes you have to let things go. I, it’s this weird I don’t even know what to call it, but you want to give it enough time to get people to understand what your subscription is. But if something’s not working for you, you can let it go. Something in my subscription that wasn’t working for me for a while was doing audiobooks and I tried, kept pushing it and pushing it, and then I was just like, , this isn’t working.
[00:04:55] Emilia Rose: My readers don’t want this, so we’re just going to let this go. I’m not gonna do [00:05:00] audiobooks for them anymore. I’ll give it to them, but that won’t be like a main benefit. And it, that’s fine. Like it’s fine to take things away. As long as you’re like open and clear about it. And yeah.
[00:05:11] Michael Evans: Yeah, it’s.
[00:05:12] Michael Evans: I was just reading this book that I’ve talked about in the Facebook group and I’ve talked to AME about, and I can’t stop talking about it. It’s called Fans First and Fans First by Jesse Cole. He runs this baseball team called the Savannah Bananas, and one of his rules, he has five E’s in the book and one of the E’S is experimentation.
[00:05:30] Michael Evans: And he has a goal where every night there’s a baseball game, they have to try five new things to help create a more pleasurable experience for their fans. And he states a lot of them don’t work. Some of them go horribly wrong, but they always learn something and eventually some of these experiments end up becoming regular parts of the show.
[00:05:49] Michael Evans: And even more so than that, it’s not saying that every experiment is an extra thing you have to do. Their show has evolved over time and innovated to always fit within two hours, [00:06:00] but include new things so that a new fan, they’re like, oh wow, this is a cool experience. But in an older fan who’s been there is Oh wow. This game is different. Each time there’s a new surprise. So I think with a subscription you’re creating like your own little mini Disney, your own mini experience to your readers. That extends not only to just your stories but beyond that in terms of how you welcome them into your subscription In terms of the community you build around that.
[00:06:23] Michael Evans: In terms of maybe the other benefits you offer, we see authors in our Facebook group all the time offering like cheap, relatively small things that you can mail in like a letter that’s $1 and 40 cents national and 60 cents US domestic. I don’t know other pricing, but that I’m pretty sure about cause I checked it recently.
[00:06:41] Michael Evans: Regardless, shipping, things like that, like the Pickle Patreon was something that an author Deanna Aubrey started and it has been going really well and she sends a pickle postcard each month with basically a message to her readers in the back. That’s an experiment. It’s working well for her, but each month’s a new experiment of a new message and a new design that might work best to your readers.[00:07:00]
[00:07:00] Michael Evans: So I, I encourage people to. experiment, and each experiment is starting something new. And it’s scary, but what’s the worst? If it doesn’t work, you learn something better. And at the end of the day, as long as you’re trying to prioritize your reader’s enjoyment, they’ll understand that. Hey, that one that was a little weird, that was not as fun, but we still trust you.
[00:07:18] Michael Evans: We’re still here for you. Yeah,
[00:07:20] Emilia Rose: I agree. Okay, so problem number two is pricing tiers and structuring them. Do you wanna start Michael, or do you want me to, I’ll say
[00:07:27] Michael Evans: something quick. I think this one’s more difficult for subscriptions than it is creating a, what we’ll say like a typical ebook that you’re selling all a carte and you, Emilia, I know you have all these tiers, and for someone who’s like just starting, who maybe goes to your subscription, goes to the ream site and checks it out, there’s a lot there.
[00:07:50] Michael Evans: What would you tell someone when they’re trying to price their tiers and structure their tiers, they’re not sure how to wrap their
[00:07:56] Emilia Rose: mind around that. Start small. Don’t start with five or [00:08:00] 10 different tiers. I suggest starting with three maximum just because it’s going to get very confusing for you and for potentially new readers that you want to come into your like subscription or membership or community.
[00:08:13] Emilia Rose: And one thing that you should definitely do, your lowest tier shouldn’t be lower than, it shouldn’t be a dollar. You’re gonna get no profit off of that $1. A lot of people have been pricing their lowest tier at $3 and $5. Those are becoming like the industry standard. There are instances where $1 is a great tier to have but.
[00:08:37] Emilia Rose: if you’re looking to get a big profit, $1 is probably not the way to go.
[00:08:44] Michael Evans: And that’s because there’s payment processing fees that come out of that. So when you actually have a dollar tier, and we’ve mentioned this before, but about 40% of your revenue goes to the banks it’s definitely at least 35%, that’s a lot of money in a dollar [00:09:00] tier.
[00:09:00] Michael Evans: It’s why Amazon only has a 30% royalty rate there. Okay. That’s like the baseline structure of tiers, but how do you know that something’s not working in your tiers? How do you know, Emilia, you’ve set up a new tier at a new price point. How do you know that price point might be too high or too low or that what, your benefits are not quite there.
[00:09:17] Michael Evans: How do you know that there’s a problem even to begin with in your tier structure?
[00:09:21] Emilia Rose: It takes a lot like we were talking about a little bit ago of experimenting and again, , it’s going to take a lot of time to understand what’s working and what’s not. Because if you have say, three tiers the majority of people are probably going to come in at your lowest tier.
[00:09:37] Emilia Rose: That’s probably what’s going to happen. And if you want people to, if you want your like higher tier to be more appealing not as many people are going to be willing to spend more money. So if you have a $3 tier and you have a $50 tier, chances are the majority of people are going to be in that $3 tier because it’s what they can do.
[00:09:58] Emilia Rose: Some people can’t spend [00:10:00] $50 a month on your writing or on your business, even though they might be like one of your biggest fans. Like it might not be doable for them. But if that, if nobody is converting to that $50 tier, That might be a little bit of a problem. And I would say look at it and reevaluate it after a few months because it will take time to convert people to the higher tier if it actually has really good rewards in it.
[00:10:27] Michael Evans: That’s huge. I, we have to highlight this point and I want to just follow up and ask you that. So if I create a new tier tomorrow, I have an existing subscription, maybe I have 20 members, maybe I have 10, maybe I have a hundred, a new tier tomorrow. Should I expect a flood of people into that new tier on that day that I send out a mailing list of, Hey, I have this new offer, I have this new reward that is coming out in this tier.
[00:10:47] Michael Evans: Maybe it’s hard back cover books, maybe it’s special signed book plates going to international readers. What would be your.
[00:10:57] Emilia Rose: No. You should not , expect everyone, even if you [00:11:00] announce it, a lot of times people won’t see that announcement. They either won’t be on your subscription every single day, every single moment.
[00:11:07] Emilia Rose: They won’t read their emails where they get a notification. You are probably going to have to send them multiple emails multiple times in order for them to like in, in multiple different places too, because some people might be active on certain social media and some people might be active on certain, like maybe they open up all their newsletters and it’s just you should not expect everyone to jump over as soon as you make one post about it.
[00:11:31] Emilia Rose: It’s like an effort throughout the entire month, throughout the next few months to get people to, to see Hey, I have. This reward. And a lot of people, like even on my subscription, they don’t know that I have these higher tiers that they can subscribe to. Like even after five months. And that might be on my part, but I’ve tried to tell them multiple times and some at some place, like it gets lost so it’s very important to [00:12:00] continue to tell people about your rewards and what you’re offering.
[00:12:02] Michael Evans: Yeah that’s very interesting because how you actually tell them about your rewards without like constantly selling the you are already supporting you, I think is a tough balance to strike.
[00:12:14] Michael Evans: What would be your advice on that? Because I can imagine it being very annoying as a reader, being like, okay, I’m part of this author’s subscription at a $5 tier, which to me is. a lot of money and you as an author might not know what’s a lot of money’s reader. Like a reader might never be able to afford your $25 tier.
[00:12:30] Michael Evans: There’s no way to segment that out in your mailing list of oh yeah, this reader can’t afford them, so you’re gonna wanna let all your readers know. But I could see where the hesitance comes in from authors about you, you have these two extremes. How do I stop myself from selling always, but then stop myself from never mentioning it because I’m afraid for asking my readers for more money who are already paying me?
[00:12:49] Michael Evans: How do you get over that hurdle and how do you actually manage that when you talk to your readers?
[00:12:54] Emilia Rose: Yeah it’s really hard because I know it’s very hard for me to just like [00:13:00] constantly talk about it and you don’t wanna talk about it like you’re trying to sell them because again, these are people who are already bought into your community.
[00:13:08] Emilia Rose: They’re paying you monthly and you don’t wanna take advantage of like your biggest fans. You wanna, you don’t wanna. Grab money from them constantly, because that’s just not cool. If somebody did that to you, you’d be like, I’m turned off now. I’m gonna leave. But what I do is I just if I’m working on a book and I have a art print that’s coming out in my $25 tier at the end of the chapter I put in my lower tiers, I’ll be like, Hey this month I have an art print of these two characters that you just read about.
[00:13:37] Emilia Rose: If you’d like to get that art print, you could only get it in this specific tier. And other than that, it’s not it’s not like super pushy. You’re not trying to try to push it on your reader. You’re just like letting them know Hey, I have benefits that you might enjoy because you’re reading this specific book.
[00:13:53] Emilia Rose: And I know on Reem we do something similar to upsell your customer. So [00:14:00] if your customer’s reading a specific book, With we call it early access to a book on a $3 tier. But you have even earlier access on a $5 tier. When they get to that earlier access, it’s blocked off and it says if you wanna subscribe or if you wanna read this next chapter right now, you can subscribe to like the $5 tier and you get that access.
[00:14:22] Emilia Rose: So that’s something that kind of helps you out.
[00:14:25] Michael Evans: It’s always nice when you have a platform and a brand that isn’t yours directly that’s helping assist charging a reader because you can always say oh, that’s a ream thing. Which it is. We did build that to help you ultimately and help your readers connect and hopefully help you make some more money.
[00:14:44] Michael Evans: But yeah, building those kinds of things into it is how we’ve tried to offload some of that pressure. Cuz it is. Difficult to feel like you’re constantly promoting as an author when you just want to create and be a part of your reader’s community and give them awesome experiences. Yet the other side to that [00:15:00] is that if you are just focused on that and never at one point decide to be like, Hey, I have this thing that you could buy or support me with.
[00:15:08] Michael Evans: If you never do that sort of asking for money at some point everything’s always free, then you might not be able to build a career with it. And that’s totally fine. There’s so many artists who are very happy to not have a career like that pays them money doing what they love or they are happy with how much they’re making right now and don’t want to entertain a new business model or revenue stream.
[00:15:29] Michael Evans: But for the people who would like to make more money doing what they love and would like to provide additional value to their fans, that’s why you’re listening to this podcast to be begin.
[00:15:34] Michael Evans: So let’s talk to problem number three, which we touched on a bit, but it’s also a little bit different here, which is I’m having trouble marking my description.
[00:15:44] Michael Evans: I’m having. Trouble getting people to join. And let’s say that this isn’t a pricing problem, this isn’t a structure of the tier problems. This is, I’m having trouble getting people to actually know about it, to even click on the page to eventually subscribe. [00:16:00] How can we help an author solve that problem?
[00:16:02] Emilia Rose: A lot of people think that the way to market a subscription is on social media. And it could be if your audience is active on social media. But if you don’t already have an engaged audience on Instagram or an engaged audience on Facebook or TikTok that you’re connecting with that you want to be part of your community, then that’s probably not the best.
[00:16:26] Emilia Rose: To market your subscription. If you have a newsletter and people are very active on it and they might not even like email you back but they’re consistently opening your stuff and they’re clicking on your buttons, that would be a great place to say Hey, here’s my subscription, here are the benefits.
[00:16:43] Emilia Rose: Why don’t you take a look at it? But if your audience is not there, find where your audience is. ,
[00:16:50] Michael Evans: I also want to even elaborate a bit more on your point with the budding clicking thing in the new newsletters, because some people are like super deep into newsletters and some [00:17:00] people are like, I just send.
[00:17:01] Michael Evans: One email, I have one big list. I don’t segment it all. I don’t think it’s necessary as an author to segment your list a bunch. For those who dunno what segmenting is, it’s just breaking your list up into different sections based on predefined parameters. So you could set a segment of people who regularly open your emails.
[00:17:19] Michael Evans: So if they open three emails on average each month they become part of a segment. You could create a segment or a group. It depends the language on what email software you use, but you could create a group in almost every email software that says if this person with an email clicks on X button, they will then get added to this group.
[00:17:39] Michael Evans: And then, just automatically there may be not one of your super fans, cuz you say that they click on the button of a new release regularly. That’s a way that you could do what Emilia’s talking about and not have to literally think wait, what are the specific emails? Those super fans. Now it would be cool to create something special to ’em and be like, hey, , I know you love my work.
[00:17:58] Michael Evans: You’re one of the few people who [00:18:00] like is getting this invite first. Do you want to get that, that I see that being an opportunity if you’re someone who’s like super deep into mailing list, but if not, maybe you’re on Instagram and you’ve had a list of people who’ve direct messaged you in the past or even on Facebook, for instance, and those are people that’s oh, maybe that’s someone that you might not wanna literally reach out to them over direct message with a link.
[00:18:21] Michael Evans: That might not be the taste that you want to go for, but maybe you add them to an Instagram group or a Facebook Messenger group. Maybe you tag them in a special post and do something special for them and say, Hey I wanna send you these special notes and as a thank you for being a fan. And then in the end of the note, you invite them into your subscription or something like that.
[00:18:44] Michael Evans: Be tasteful with it. Don’t just find your biggest fans and send ’em to a subscription link. But if you warm them up to it, create a story that gets them excited about what’s inside, which could literally be giving away some of your chapters that are gonna be inside. Here’s the first three chapters of my new book.
[00:18:59] Michael Evans: You’re one of my [00:19:00] biggest fans, so I wanna send it to you early. They get to the end, they see a link that says to continue reading, join your subscription. That’s tasteful to me. Other authors might have different things they find are interesting. That’s what makes this beautiful. And your readers might have different things that they find interesting.
[00:19:14] Michael Evans: That’s also what makes this fun. But I definitely would approach it from, think about you being a reader and getting a message from an author. Would you like to receive just a link that says I’m ready for you to start paying me monthly. I know you’re ready to get paid monthly, author, but I don’t want to pay you monthly.
[00:19:30] Michael Evans: Make that person really understand what you’re doing. . And with that said, people wanna support you, right? But then let them know this is an opportunity to support me. This is direct sales on Amazon. They keep 30% of my income here. I get a higher share of my income. I get a direct relationship with you.
[00:19:46] Michael Evans: And I would just love to be able to have that extra support and do more work that’s much better than just a
[00:19:50] Emilia Rose: subscription loan. Yeah. And going off of that, make sure you really understand who you want to be joining your subscription. I’ve seen I [00:20:00] know a couple people who promote their subscription their books, their book subscription to other authors.
[00:20:07] Emilia Rose: And to me, as an author, I don’t wanna join another author’s subscription just because I’m. Friends with them. I would like to join a subscription because I’m invested in the material. I’m invested in the book already. Not just because oh, she’s one of my friends. That’s bad.
[00:20:25] Emilia Rose: But like I, I’ll support my friends, but at the same time, like if I’m putting myself in the reader’s shoes, I’m more likely to join somebody’s membership if I care about what they’re offering and if I care about the material and stories they’re writing.
[00:20:42] Michael Evans: Yes. I agree. And one caveat that I would add to that is some of my favorite authors, are like, I’m an author myself, so I have my own favorite authors that I like to support, and I also wanna be descriptions for a few authors.
[00:20:53] Michael Evans: So there is an overlap, but it’s probably not your only audience. And there’s probably more readers out there for you who [00:21:00] aren’t authors than readers who also happen to be authors. But I do know that, especially in the beginning as well, building relationships with other authors that you work to uplift each other.
[00:21:10] Michael Evans: that.
Yeah,
[00:21:11] Emilia Rose: that can be great. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I’m not saying I think that is awesome, but if you’re just like cold messaging people and say, Hey, join my subscription, like other authors that you like, have never talked to before, that might be a little I don’t recommend that.
[00:21:26] Michael Evans: I also want to maybe save authors some struggle.
[00:21:29] Michael Evans: Cause I’ve seen this strategy, people have talked about it, and as an owner of a subscription platform, me and Emilia both run ream. It’s always nice to we want people subscribing to things, but I would not recommend you doing a cross promotion subscribe thing to all your fellow authors, that you build social proof in your subscription.
[00:21:49] Michael Evans: You could, but why I personally don’t recommend it is because I don’t know if the difference between having five and zero subscribers will make a huge difference if you could just hide the subscriber account in the [00:22:00] beginning because. Unfortunately, doing all of that could create an awkward situation for some authors, especially if they’re not really close friends, where it’s I don’t wanna be paying $5 a month to all these five authors forever, but when do I unsubscribe?
[00:22:13] Michael Evans: When do I do that sort of thing. And if you’re like close friends, family, things like that, you could always do that sort of thing just like having friends and family buy, buy books in the beginning. But I do want to caution people around literally subscribing to authors that they may know well, but not really well entering a monthly payment with them because they can see when you unsubscribe and if there’s an expectation that isn’t set very clearly of, ooh, we’re doing this for 90 days I worry that could damage some relationships and I don’t know if it’s gonna actually benefit your subscription that much.
[00:22:44] Michael Evans: So I just wanted to add that point cuz I’ve seen a few people do it. I understand where it comes from, but. Some caveats to it.
[00:22:51] Emilia Rose: Yes, I agree.
[00:22:52] Emilia Rose: And I guess that kind of gets into our fourth problem, which is, all right, I’ve set up the subscription, but people aren’t [00:23:00] joining what’s going on?
[00:23:01] Michael Evans: Yeah. So let’s say like people are going to your page and you know it, you can see that they’ve clicked you’ve promoted it to your readers.
[00:23:07] Michael Evans: People are reading maybe your story on a platform like WPA or Royal Road or Radish, and you’re getting all these reads and you’re promoting your subscription for early access to go read there. And no one’s joining that. That’s that. This one’s hard. I wanna ask Emilia, like when you’ve seen this happen, like what could be going wrong?
[00:23:26] Michael Evans: Is there normal things to look out for or is it really all just very person. .
[00:23:31] Emilia Rose: I think it, there are a lot of factors that go into it. So first you wanna look at your pricing and what you’re offering and make sure it’s reasonable. If you have a $50 tier and you’re giving them one chapter, $1,000, 1000 word chapter a month, that might not be reasonable to a lot of people.
[00:23:51] Emilia Rose: So I, that was the, that would be the first thing I look at. But also you have to look at where you’re directing people. Like where are [00:24:00] these people that you’re directing to your description coming from? If they’re coming from Wet pad and Royal Road, like these people or breeders are used to reading books for free.
[00:24:09] Emilia Rose: And this is like a very success, a successful model to bring people from Lap Pad and Royal Road over to your subscription. But I would say like the majority of people who go, come over just to look, aren’t going to join. You’re going to get a certain percentage of them to look at your subscription and actually subscribe or become a member of your community.
[00:24:30] Emilia Rose: But the majority of them are not going to subscribe because they are coming from a free platform. But if you’re leading someone to your subscription from maybe like the back of a book that they’ve paid for, that could be different. And I haven’t tried that, so I can’t really give any background on that or anything.
[00:24:47] Emilia Rose: So yeah, I would say look at those two factors as you’re seeing Hey, people are joining, people are not joining. What’s going on?
[00:24:55] Michael Evans: Yeah. I think that’s a really good point. You want to set the expectation [00:25:00] of how much do you expect to, to join anyways, because not every. Not every like stream of readers is created equal in the sense of being able to subscribe.
[00:25:09] Michael Evans: I think for myself, what I oftentimes view with authors is that they, when they’re, they have around 10 to 20 subscribers and that range of you’ve started something, you have some readers, but you’re maybe not getting, you’ve gotten like your few core fans, but the rest aren’t joining. I certain think people can be a little bit too quick to assume failure and assume that people aren’t joining because a lot of times building like that core group of 10, 20 people before the record might be paying you now, anywhere from 50 to a hundred dollars a month when you add up all of that.
[00:25:45] Michael Evans: That can be pretty substantial just in and of itself. But if you really work on serving those readers, they do talk and we just Even Ellis she posted in the subscriptions for Robin’s Facebook group about how in her subscription sh she [00:26:00] has her readers there and she has a community of like super inner fans, but one of those people posted in her other community on Facebook group that’s public, so any reader can be a part of it.
[00:26:10] Michael Evans: So it’s free and posted about her subscription and was like, so excited about it and what she had gotten. And that’s like the best marketing you could ever ask for as an author. Like you delight your readers inside your subscription and then they tell your other readers about it. Because the best thing a fan wants is to invite more people into that feeling of fandom that they have.
[00:26:32] Michael Evans: But you first have to really work on nurturing that. Now, if you don’t have 10 or 20 people in your subscription, if you’re like, have zero and you’re like, okay. , this isn’t working. I really want to get to the point where I can’t even have a few people to begin that process with. Then I would go back to, especially if people are clicking on your subscription and think, where is there a disconnect?
[00:26:54] Michael Evans: Does my copy make sense? Is the message that I’m leading them here? [00:27:00] Is the expectation being fulfilled on this page? Am I talking about my new book that you’re gonna get inside your subscription and then that isn’t mentioned at all on your tier and not and at all on your subscription page?
[00:27:11] Michael Evans: That would confuse me as a reader cause I’d be like, wait, I was so excited to get early access to this book. , where is it again? I’m confused. I’m
[00:27:17] Emilia Rose: leaving. Yeah, going off that you have to be very clear. That’s something I’ve learned even like I’m still learning. You have to be very clear with what you’re offering in your tiers and very clear when you communicate what you’re offering, like through email.
[00:27:31] Emilia Rose: So for example, I’m migrating people over to my ream right now and a lot of people are just like, oh, so are these like, do we get the same things on from Patreon that we like, do, do you offer the same things on Patreon that you do on Ream? And I’m just like, yeah. But when I emailed them initially, I didn’t mention that.
[00:27:51] Emilia Rose: It was like in my mind, yes, in the tears on the page it says you get the exact same thing. But in that email that I sent to [00:28:00] them, I didn’t explain, you get the same thing. I said, here are the benefits of joining. But I was like, for some reason I just didn’t mention it. And . I’ve had messages like that and I’ve also had messages other places that are basically like the tiers were confusing.
[00:28:15] Emilia Rose: Like I didn’t know which books I was going to get and which tiers. So make sure your tiers are really laid out and they say exactly what you want and your messaging is very clear to your readers.
[00:28:24] Michael Evans: Yeah. That’s key. And it’s not easy. I don’t wanna pretend like it’s easy and we have a subscription starter guide releasing soon that gives you a high overview of a lot of this stuff and goes into detail on a lot of it.
[00:28:36] Michael Evans: But unfortunately, like a whole copywriting class, like episode that we can actually, we should do a full episode. I’m thinking about this now on just having like good copy for your. Because I don’t think we have Doven deeply on that yet, and I don’t think this is the space we should probably move on to the next problem.
[00:28:53] Michael Evans: However, just know that I understand when we say make it clear, it’s how do I do that? There are some [00:29:00] best copywriting practices. Keeping it simple is always good. But yeah, we should, we’re gonna dive into that one.
[00:29:06] Michael Evans: But let’s go to problem five. Let’s go to problem five. So this one’s all about consistency, whether it’s, I’m having trouble remaining consistent.
[00:29:14] Michael Evans: How do I remain consistent? I’m afraid I can’t be consistent yet I feel like I need to because it’s a subscription and they’re getting something recurring from me. So my explosion, what do I do?
[00:29:26] Emilia Rose: Oh, I think look, a lot of these depend person on person. And what kind of model you’re using. So for example remaining consistent in a early access model could be difficult depending on how many , how many chapters are the access you’re giving your readers every single week or every single month?
[00:29:43] Emilia Rose: And this kind of ties into problem six, which is don’t o overpromise. If you don’t think you can be consistent with releasing like 10 chapters a month. Don’t promise 10 chapters a month. So promise what you can do, if you could only write a chapter a month, [00:30:00] only write a chapter a month and people will subscribe.
[00:30:02] Emilia Rose: Right now I’m writing a graphic novel subscription and I’m only releasing one chapter a month. And I was like, nobody’s gonna join. Cause it’s one chapter. But people are joining like every single day. And it’s crazy. But if people really want the content, they will join for it. And if you create like that experience and that community where people want to be in they’ll want to join.
[00:30:24] Michael Evans: That’s a lot of great insights there.
[00:30:26] Michael Evans: I love it. I think the one chapter thing and you sharing, that’s really interesting because a lot of times authors do feel like a pressure is it two to three chapters a week that I should do? Is it a few chapters a month, at least one a week? And, people are searching for a number and.
[00:30:40] Michael Evans: I, I think that there is no number, and that’s so frustrating. So frustrating. I know , it’s I like, I hate You’re gonna be like, you’re screaming at us now. I know you’re like, ah you’re so annoying. But if it’s true, right? The ideal description is that you have the power as an author to give your readers what they want.
[00:30:57] Michael Evans: And your readers don’t just want set amount of content.[00:31:00] Let’s be real here. If your readers just wanted a guarantee of an x number of words a month, like Kendall Unlimited has a lot of words. Words that none of us will ever be able to write in our lifetime. There’s so many books in there, and this is, I get this question a lot from authors, like, how do I compete with Kendall Unlimited?
[00:31:18] Michael Evans: If my readers are reading so many books a month and can unlimited and that costs $10 a month and I’m gonna charge $10 a month, which there’s nothing wrong with charging $10 a month. There’s author to charge a lot more than that. And you should get paid for your work because you deserve it. It’s worth it.
[00:31:31] Michael Evans: But then how do I judge that worth and. That’s difficult. But I think Christopher Hopper said something really interesting in the Facebook group this week that I wanna highlight in the podcast because I was gonna say an idea very similar to yours and you said it 10 x better than I ever could.
[00:31:49] Michael Evans: Christopher, and I won’t paraphrase, I’m paraphrasing here, I’m not gonna quote him directly. You should go read his comments, which is on a post he made about recent changes that Audible has [00:32:00] made to their subscription, which highlighted Audible now is essentially making books cheaper. And they claim that authors will receive hopefully similar royalties because they will see a net increase in total sales on the Audible platform.
[00:32:13] Michael Evans: And Audible has a right to do this. I’m not saying it is right that they did it. It definitely is, I think, frustrating for a lot of authors. Frustrating for me that we don’t have a say in it, but at the same time, it’ll be interesting to see how it works out. , I do hope authors end up making the same amount of money they were for.
[00:32:29] Michael Evans: I hope they don’t take a hit in their paychecks. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, audible has a very different model than what we have as subscription authors here. And Christopher highlighted this and he said that we began kinda have two models to think about and they’re not mutually exclusive, right?
[00:32:47] Michael Evans: Meaning you could be in kind the limited and audible and still have a description, but you have one model in which a company like Amazon has prioritized as much content as possible to [00:33:00] offer as cheaply as possible to readers. And in the process has squeezed the artists. They have the control at the end of the day and definitely readers enjoy it.
[00:33:09] Michael Evans: They wouldn’t be paying for it if they weren’t, but it’s just one idea of one experience that can be. What happens if you create immersive incredible concert like experiences for your readers? And he actually mentioned how his wife got paid $25,000 for one single. For one single as a musician, which is like very hard to do.
[00:33:29] Michael Evans: Very unheard of nowadays. And if you were to do that in streaming, you would need tens of millions of streams, which ironically, to make $25,000 off a book and can alone it, you would need, I believe it’s like a million page reads, gets you about 4,000 ish, five to $5,000. So we’re talking you would roughly 6 million.
[00:33:50] Michael Evans: So it’s a similar business model streaming and reading now, and one that it’s very hard to make money in unless you have millions of reads or millions of [00:34:00] streams. However, that’s not Jennifer’s case. How he framed it is that his wife is instead focusing on creating incredible experiences. It’s like concerts, merchandise, special edition records that can get her to, have some more money from her work to actually pay back the $25,000 ban she got for that single song.
[00:34:25] Michael Evans: And as authors, that’s one way to think about it. And she’s on abandoning the streaming platform. She could still find readers there, but, or I guess listeners, readers in our case, . But to bring together these industries, I think as we see these changes going forward, the opportunity for authors is that you’re not offering what Spotify is at all.
[00:34:45] Michael Evans: You’re giving them early access. You’re fighting to become their favorite author, not just another author out of a sea of millions. And is that strategy that Christopher is employing, which I am so inspired by, and it’s why I’ve now mentioned you twice, Christopher? You know [00:35:00] I’m a fanboy.
[00:35:00] Emilia Rose: Yeah, I completely agree. I don’t think they’re two separate different things. Like you’re not competing with Kindle Unlimited, you’re not competing with anyone. When you set up your own subscription, you’re creating your subscription to give your fans more of a community, to give your fans maybe like rewards in order for or for them paying you monthly and supporting you.
[00:35:21] Michael Evans: Oh I agree. I agree completely. And I wanna share a quote from the book fans first, cuz it’s all about building superfans. And I love this quote because it talks about why fandom and fanaticism is so important. And it says that when you are a fan, you are always a moment away from connecting with another fan.
[00:35:44] Michael Evans: Fandom creates belonging and makes people feel like they matter. And like I said before, nothing matters more than making people feel like they matter.
[00:35:55] Emilia Rose: Yes. I love that. Oh my gosh. People wanna feel [00:36:00] connection, like when you’re be like, some people might feel connection while reading in Kindle Unlimited and like connect with other people who are reading in Kindle Unlimited.
[00:36:06] Emilia Rose: But when you have a section of the internet just for you and for your fans where people can connect, it’s so refreshing and if the author is like participating in that group or community, people like feel like they’re heard and they get to connect with you. The author who they like, they love these worlds that you’re creating and they just wanna be a part of it.
[00:36:29] Emilia Rose: And you can make them feel like they’re a part of this world in this community. You don’t even have to think about competing with Kindle Unlimited because. , you have these people who are here for you. I just, I love that quote so much.
[00:36:43] Michael Evans: It’s, yeah I’m a fanboy of the book too. I I think this is the thing too about being a fan, right? You it feels amazing to love something to love something. And like now, after reading this book, like the guy owns a baseball team, I’m gonna go travel to one of his baseball games [00:37:00] if I can ever get a ticket, spoiler, there’s like a wait list of over a hundred thousand people who want to get a ticket.
[00:37:06] Michael Evans: So they, there’s a wait list for this subscription in his case right now. Imagine an author went a wait list to join their subscription. This is a future that we’re gonna hit, I think in the next few years as we see this industry change and more and more people focus on creating these.
[00:37:22] Michael Evans: incredible experiences. Like at some point an author might realize, just like a concert stadium can’t fit a million people in one night, the biggest stadiums in the world can fit tens of thousands, which is insane. That’s a lot of people. But an author might realize once I hit a thousand people in my subscription, that’s it.
[00:37:38] Michael Evans: This tier, we already see this authors limit higher priced tiers to say there’s only gonna be 20 people who are getting this physical goods done. And I’m gonna spend my time personally packing it with care personally, signing these books and writing them a letter, that means a lot to people. You’ve now created your own concert like experience your [00:38:00] own baseball game, your own, pick the industry metaphor that you all probably go out and spend money on one of these things.
[00:38:07] Michael Evans: Your readers are willing to spend that money on you. That’s pretty cool. And that’s why I want to leave off because we bundled problem number five on number six together . Problem number six was over promise, and it is, but we’ve connected them.
[00:38:20] Michael Evans: I just want to give on my advice there that if you’re over promising on volume of content, thinking that producing five extra chapters next month will be the difference between you having an amazing subscription and not, that’s probably you’re, that’s probably not the way to think about it. In Kendall Unlimited rapid release can work really well.
[00:38:39] Michael Evans: It’s also working less well. It seems like over time, three years ago seems to be the peak of rapid release, but it’s still a strategy, right? Writing more content into Kendall Unlimited can work well, but that is a totally different subscription model than what subscriptions for authors your subscription is about.
[00:38:55] Michael Evans: Your subscription is your world, and I highly doubt you busting out three nights [00:39:00] late in a month to try and get those chapters in at the last moment and feeling like, oh, this isn’t that fun anymore, will make the difference in your subscription, but. , connecting deeper with your readers, turning them into deeper fans by doing these things that we’ve mentioned in terms of creating a CUNY of belonging, going the extra mile to gives a fan and experience they would never get in a place like an Amazon retailer that could make the difference.
[00:39:28] Emilia Rose: Yeah, I agree. I completely agree.
[00:39:32] Michael Evans: Goes into problem number seven.
[00:39:34] Emilia Rose: So problem seven which is building relationships with readers. How do I start?
[00:39:40] Emilia Rose: And what if my readers in my community are being silent and not responding to anything I put out? So how do we build those relationships? I
[00:39:50] Michael Evans: wanna say, first off, cuz a lot of times we expect . Why? Why is no responding? But most people won’t respond when it comes to [00:40:00] digital communities.
[00:40:01] Michael Evans: And I think a lot of this tracks in the real world, but the data I can share on that is that typically 80% of people are lurkers. So they will basically never respond or tell you what they think, which, and there’s nothing wrong with being a lurker. You actually probably see this like in the Facebook group if you’re part of subscriptions for authors, there’s a lot of people who are lurkers, and I love you lurkers.
[00:40:22] Michael Evans: There’s nothing wrong with being a lurker. And there’s a few people who, this number is around 15 to 17 and a half percent. It’s a small percentage. A smaller portion are active sometimes, so they might post regularly, right? So think about it like having 20% of people liking a post is pretty good.
[00:40:37] Michael Evans: That’s the people who are engaging. And then you have the two and a half. , and those are the people who are gonna be most vocal. They’re gonna be the ones who are maybe making the new posts in your reader Facebook group, who are gonna be commenting on every post you create, who are gonna be responding to your emails, who are gonna be in your subscription.
[00:40:54] Michael Evans: Inside of Reem, we let readers comment inside of your chapters on each paragraph. So they might literally be in those [00:41:00] paragraphs commenting, and you might be like, I have 20 people in my subscription. And there’s one person here commenting, like one person. Everyone else just doesn’t talk to me. They don’t let me know how it’s going.
[00:41:09] Michael Evans: They don’t respond to my emails like, like I, I’m a failure, which I understand feeling like a failure. I tend to feel like that oftentimes. Oh, we can always be ourselves. It’s very easy for people. Yeah, especially artists when no one’s telling us like, Hey, like Pat in the head, you got an A buddy. Or, good job, you hit the bonus.
[00:41:28] Michael Evans: There’s no like moment where someone pats you on the head as an artist and tells you that. So when you have 80% of people not responding, it’s like, what? But just know it’s normal. . That’s like my first big advice is know it’s normal. Now I wanna ask you, Emilia, how you build relationships with your readers.
[00:41:42] Emilia Rose: Yeah, so usually I do the early access model. So I’m releasing chapter by chapter through my subscription. And what I usually do is at the end of every chapter, I wanna connect with my community. Cuz this is like one of the only times I’m connecting with them in my community, [00:42:00] in, in my subscription.
[00:42:01] Emilia Rose: And so I will ask them what they think of a specific chapter. It’s like it’s called an author’s note or that’s what I call it. And I leave an author’s note and I ask them questions that I know will spark engagement. And even if it’s something like, so I’ll have steamy chapters sometimes and all I’ll say is leave fire emojis to rate this chapter.
[00:42:23] Emilia Rose: And sometimes I’ll get just like 1 billion fire emojis, like just scroll, like forever, just see them. And just simple little things like that will get people responding to you. And then the more you do that, the more people feel comfortable in their, in your community and they’ll start responding to each other.
[00:42:42] Emilia Rose: So it’s not like you’re just building the relationship between you and them. You’re like inadvertently building relationships between your readers as
well.
[00:42:50] Michael Evans: Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s, I love that. And I think serial fiction lends itself really well to that kind of thing. [00:43:00] And it’s something that I may have mentioned in the podcast before, but I get things blurred in my mind that I’ve maybe said and that I’ve like just thought of before.
[00:43:06] Michael Evans: But serialized television has been a form of media that is more effective at creating fandom than. Pretty much any other form of media and why that is. You could see it as yourself as someone who watches your life. Televis, just wait, like that episode ended. Oh my God, like I have to wait till next week until another episode comes out.
[00:43:25] Michael Evans: You’re like hearts on the edge of your seat. And then immediately you want to tell other people about it and get them involved so that they can experience the same thing as you the next week. And then you bring in your friends, you tell people about it and you talk about it. Those water cooler moments, movies don’t necessarily have as freaking on those water cooler moments because it’s one big movie, one big release.
[00:43:47] Michael Evans: There’s exceptions. Most of the exceptions come from the comic book world and our IP derived from that, which is not a coincidence in my opinion. So all these things are just something to take into account, and specifically serial fiction as [00:44:00] well. I don’t think everyone authors should be writing in serialized format.
[00:44:02] Michael Evans: Certainly not every reader reads in a serialized format, and there’s many ways to build phantom outside of it, but. Serial fiction is growing very quickly and at a recent commerce that was at a digital book world one of the big serialized fiction companies that mentioned that by their metrics it’s growing 20% year over year in the United States, which is re really quickly
[00:44:22] Michael Evans: the whole industry give it seven or eight years might change and be a lot more towards serial fiction. We’ll have to see if that’s trend continues, but it’s something that is very real and I just wanted to mention it.
[00:44:37] Emilia Rose: Yeah, I love that . Something else you can do, especially for your more silent readers is offer polls to get them engaged.
[00:44:46] Emilia Rose: I know a lot of my readers, they won’t comment, but whenever I put a poll out, they’ll immediately be like choosing which option they like the best about something specific. And then if there’s any way maybe you have a survey you’re asking your readers like, Hey, [00:45:00] how can I make this community better?
[00:45:01] Emilia Rose: If you can make that survey anonymous, that’s even better because a lot of times people, one they might wanna participate, but they feel weird or awkward, but having, like being anonymous they’re more likely to give you honest feedback. So those are a couple other things you could do.
[00:45:17] Emilia Rose: Yeah,
[00:45:18] Michael Evans: I love it. And the only other advice that I would share is that, , you know when a fan communicates with you, the portion that do, I know that not everyone fan will. So if one fan communicates with you, there’s a high likelihood that you have plenty more fans than them, but treat them really well.
[00:45:34] Michael Evans: Respond to their emails, respond to their direct messages, treat them like a real person because that relationship means a lot. And it is those relationships and that trust that you cultivate that ends up forming the foundation of your fandom and then ultimately ends up forming the foundation of your subscription and your membership.
[00:45:53] Michael Evans: So it’s very important to, to hold those relationships close. I know that it’s a long-term thing. How [00:46:00] often do you just fall in love and trust anyone in your life in a single day? There’s people out there that feel that way. I’ve met people my day one and been like, oh, you’re the best. And maybe there is love at first sight, but not everyone feels that way.
[00:46:15] Michael Evans: So how can you help people who might. take some time to warm up to you feel like, oh wow, this person gets me. It takes time. ,
[00:46:22] Emilia Rose: it just takes time a while.
[00:46:24] Emilia Rose: We can go on to problem number eight, which is my subscription revenue isn’t growing. Why isn’t it growing? And how can I help it grow?
Yeah.
[00:46:36] Michael Evans: That’s one that I feel like, Emilia, you’ve been running your prescription for three years. Has there been a moment where you’ve looked like month over month, things have maybe stagnated a bit and you’ve been like, how do you get through that struggle if that’s happened to you before?
[00:46:49] Emilia Rose: Yeah, so it definitely has happened to me for my writing specific subscription. And thankfully I was at a place where I didn’t need it to [00:47:00] grow anymore, so I wasn’t focused on growing it with at least the number of subscribers coming in. . But currently what I’m doing is I’m not focusing that much on subscribers anymore.
[00:47:12] Emilia Rose: Like subscribers. Yeah, I wanna build that community, but not the number of subscribers in my community. I’m focusing more on building that community to be the best it could be, and offering other rewards at higher tiers that my readers have asked for that they could potentially jump, become higher tier members and help my revenue increase that way.
[00:47:34] Emilia Rose: So I’ve offered basically what people have asked me, so like artwork or stickers and book boxes. And I know like those work very well in the romance kind of world cause romance readers like that kind of stuff. But I’m not sure specific things that you can offer for other genres, but yeah. That’s super
[00:47:55] Michael Evans: interesting.
[00:47:55] Michael Evans: Yeah, that’s, that with a lot of. , different authors, I think in their subscriptions over [00:48:00] time they will hit a point where it’s I have that core fandom now. How can I give them more? But maybe for someone who is yeah, it sounds great to be at a point where I am making a good living and I’m happy to maybe focus more on providing those core fans.
[00:48:16] Michael Evans: But let’s pretend like you maybe now have 20, 50, maybe a hundred people, but you’re not quite at the point where you’re like, my subscription’s paying the bills right now. You would like it to grow. I think the first thing is one, going, what role do subscriptions play in your current business? Is it most of your revenue?
[00:48:40] Michael Evans: Is it majority of it, or is it a smaller portion of it? Because if it’s a smaller portion of it and you want to make it bigger, then a lot of it comes down to. thinking about how you can bring more of your existing readers over into that subscription, which might be offering books for the [00:49:00] completed book for 30 days early access before the actual launch.
[00:49:04] Michael Evans: You could do things like a pay per book model in your subscriptions that readers enter entering their credit card information once and then have a recurring subscription to your future books. There’s ways that you can make someone your subscriber and bring more of your existing revenue streams over.
[00:49:19] Michael Evans: But then at the same time, you don’t want to take your books down from other retailers. You could find readers in those places. So that’s a situation where you wanna maybe do a better job at communicating that. Is your subscription in the back of your books sounds simple, it isn’t for most people.
[00:49:34] Michael Evans: Is your subscription something that is easy to find in your. . A lot of people it isn’t, and then it’s where does this author want me to go? Is your subscription something that when someone comes onto your mailing list, they might get a reminder about it? It doesn’t have to be a full email promoing it, but even just a little box that says, I have this thing.
[00:49:51] Michael Evans: I have this membership. I’d love if you could support me. I have this whole section and all these different awards you can get whatever it is mentioning. It’s key. [00:50:00] Now, if you’re having a problem where you’re like no, Michael, that sounds great, but I have 20 readers in my subscription. I don’t know how to communicate with bar readers.
[00:50:08] Michael Evans: I don’t have sales coming in from elsewhere. I don’t have readers coming in from elsewhere right now. I’m like at this point where I’m like in this rocky middle, it’s gone well enough to do well, but not well enough to be something livable that is a tougher. , and I’m curious, Emilia, if you have insights to me.
[00:50:26] Emilia Rose: Yeah, that, that’s very tough. I would relu if you’re at that position, I would reevaluate what you’re offering because if you’re at the, in the position where you don’t have extra money to spend to like commission an artist to make artwork or commission somebody to make an audiobook that you can offer on your subscription doing like that bonus model is probably not the best form for your subscription.
[00:50:55] Emilia Rose: Something that is like relatively like cheap, which is like the early [00:51:00] access mono might be best. And from there you can utilize a lot of free websites where you don’t have to pay to promote and you don’t have to do tons of hard work. You’re all gonna be already gonna be writing the book. . So all you have to do is copy and paste it into, like wpa, Royal Road or Tapas or anywhere where you’re, where you can write and publish for free.
[00:51:21] Emilia Rose: So that’s what I would, that’s what I would do. That’s what I do.
[00:51:24] Michael Evans: No, that’s great. I, that’s a great pathway and to offer complimentary advice to Emilia. I would tell you if you’re in that position where you’re like, I wanna get more readers in my subscription, but where are they to think about how you can drive the magical thing that makes books and everything really in this world go round, which is word of mouth and not thinking necessarily about whom, how can I have a great paid ad strategy or this or that.
[00:51:54] Michael Evans: You could do that. Could be successful, but I would suggest, especially because subscriptions are built around [00:52:00] community trust, fandom and the desire to have a connection to you and wanna support you, and there’s people out there who want to do that, but people might not trust you enough once they hit a paywall to then realize how much they’ll like you.
[00:52:13] Michael Evans: It’s you’ll love me once you start coming inside by membership, but they don’t know that yet. How do you communicate that to them instead of trying to tweak your copy or tweak your onboarding emails more like there’s a point of diminishing returns. Pass a certain point. If it’s working enough to get 20 fans in and it’s working enough to work, then it’s maybe you just need to get more people up to the point where that same messaging that was attractive to the first 20.
[00:52:39] Michael Evans: is attractive to them, and that’s what I’d recommend. Maybe focusing on your free community. Do you have a or Facebook group, a platform that a lot of people use that you’re working to build relationships on so that anyone who might not be even a reader of yours yet, or nevermind a paying subscriber can still see like this author’s a real person.
[00:52:57] Michael Evans: They’re interesting, I like what they’re doing. [00:53:00] Or we’ve talked about it before, but you don’t have to pose as an author. You could create a social media account as a reader. You could become a V YouTuber. You could do like tons of different things that you, again, just create an awesome experience for a reader.
[00:53:10] Michael Evans: If you were a reader, what author Cini would you want to be a part of? What Authors Kini? Or you’d be like, whoa, this is so much fun. I love this author. And as much as I enjoy reading their books, they’re not the only author I read, but every week I’m excited because they do this cool thing in their community.
[00:53:27] Michael Evans: Or we’ve had authors who say Happy Birthday to their readers in their communities who do all sorts of things to just make people feel. Oh, I’m a part of something. That would be my recommendation. Okay, so we’re onto the last two problems.
[00:53:41] Michael Evans: Problem nine, which is, where should I start my subscription? Where should I have my subscription? And I’ll just say that you should start, if you’re looking to get into subscriptions at one particular place, which is the subscription starter guide, I have a link to it down below. But if you [00:54:00] read it, I think it has a lot of great insights.
[00:54:02] Michael Evans: And for people who are like, I wanna start my subscription, but I don’t know where to start it yet. Which platform should I use, which tools should I use? Me and Emilia have talked about this in prior podcast and we’ll definitely talk about it a lot more because we’ve been working on something called Ream, which is description platform for fiction authors.
[00:54:20] Michael Evans: But my recommendation. is just read the book because in the side of it, especially if you would like to use re and be one of our early authors, there’s a little Easter egg that I’ll let you go and find, I’ll let you go and find it. And yeah, that, that’s all I’m gonna say. So if you’ve gone to this point in the podcast, thank you for listening to this point.
[00:54:39] Michael Evans: Be quiet about the Easter egg because if we get flooded with 500 requests in the Easter egg because someone somehow leaked the Easter egg online, then the Easter egg goes away for everyone. So just letting you know, be quiet about the Easter egg. But if you, let us know that you found something cool on a little scavenger hunt.
[00:54:55] Michael Evans: We’d be happy to let you into ream early. But just to quickly talk about [00:55:00] why Reen matters and why we’re passionate about. I would consider the best of both worlds, offloading a lot of the time and effort and annoyance, that using a platform that isn’t designed for reading brings, for instance, the posting time, the time that it takes to upload books, the fact that readers don’t have an e-reader.
[00:55:21] Michael Evans: We solve all of that, but we also give you a greater degree of control.
[00:55:26] Michael Evans: We’re here for fiction authors, not for podcasters, video creators, artists, all these sorts of things. And we wanted to create a future where we’re not another platform or another retailer, but your platform. And we wanna help build a future of this industry or storytellers of the world. That’s our mission, that’s our motto.
[00:55:43] Michael Evans: And we’re really hopeful and excited to maybe have you a part of that, cuz that’s what we do at Ring. We’re launching publicly in May, but you can check out our starter guide that we’ve released that helps. On your subscription no matter where you are inside of the Starter guide, there’s not only a lot of information about just how to run and step [00:56:00] your subscription, but I also share a lot more spicy details on re.
[00:56:04] Michael Evans: So that’s a great place to check out. And if you’re going still, this wasn’t enough information, don’t worry. We’ll be sharing more before our public launch. But if you want to get in early, you can and Starter Guide’s a great place to start. But in terms of other platforms, you can definitely use other platforms.
[00:56:20] Michael Evans: I don’t want to say that you have to only use Ream. I want you to use what works best for you and your readers. Definitely design the place that we think is best. But at the end of the day, what matters most is that you make your readers happy and that you are comfortable with your decision and are able to have ownership of that decision.
[00:56:44] Michael Evans: So I recommend. You you go to places that give you that. When it comes to other platforms, we covered it in other podcasts and I cover it in the starter guide, but there’s places that you can go if you Patreon’s, definitely the a popular one. You could do it on your own website, you could do it all these different [00:57:00] places.
[00:57:00] Michael Evans: And the only difference is that on Ream you get the benefits of selling on your own website and selling direct, but the convenience and power of a real platform built for you as an author. But there’s definitely other places to go. And in the Facebook group, if you ever have questions about any platforms, ream, Patreon, COFI, buy me a coffee.
[00:57:19] Michael Evans: There’s lots out there that serve all creators. We’re the only one that serves fiction authors. But if you have questions, just pop it in there. There’s people using any platform in the Facebook group and they all have really interesting insights that might be able.
[00:57:31] Emilia Rose: Yeah, and I can, I guess that kind of go ties in with our last problem.
[00:57:35] Emilia Rose: How do I learn more about subscriptions and where do I meet other subscription authors? And I honestly think our Facebook group is probably the best place to go if you’re looking to start a subscription as an author for your books or for your worlds that you create. So that’s subscriptions for authors on Facebook.
[00:57:56] Emilia Rose: Yeah.
[00:57:57] Michael Evans: And this is your first podcast episode with us. You should listen to [00:58:00] the past two podcasts episodes, episode 20 and 21. 20 is about starting your subscription as an novel. And 21 is all about promoting slash marketing or subscription as an author. So this could be great episodes to start with us and then check out the link in the descriptions to the subscriptions For Author’s Starter guide.
[00:58:18] Michael Evans: You could go to the Subscriptions for Author’s website and. , if you sign up for our ream wait list on Reem dot Inc. Or you go to our subscriptions for authors website@subscriptionsforauthors.com. If you sign up for an mailing list, we’ll also send you a copy there. This is limited time, it’s early access to the book.
[00:58:35] Michael Evans: It will one day not be available, so you should go check it out now because one day it’ll be on the retailers and things like that. So you should get it while we can send it to you. While you could get the cool stuff inside. That’s this podcast that we’re rolling. Hope you enjoy, hope you have an amazing day.
[00:58:52] Michael Evans: Thank you for listening to this one. It was all about the 10 common struggles we face as subscription authors. As always, I [00:59:00] hope you have an amazing time writing, and don’t forget storytellers or the world. Thank you everyone. Yay