Posted on December 27, 2022.
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As authors, especially indie authors, planning is hard. Today we chat about planning your business for success in the new year with some insights to help you develop a better mindset and focus to grow your publishing career.
#19 Episode Outline:
00:00 Introduction
03:00 How Emilia Rose Planned Her Author Business for 2023
05:30 Mistakes Authors Make When Planning
09:38 Why Self Publishing’s Culture Can Be So Competitive and How to Combat That
11:28 Michael’s Toxic Goal Setting as an Author
15:36 Trying to Not Be Too Hard on Yourself
18:10 Planning the Author Life of Your Dreams
20:07 Making Your Writing Process Work for You
24:00 Dealing with Comparisonitis as an Author
26:28 Why Billionaires Still Don’t Have Enough
28:52 Changes AI and Subscriptions are Bringing to Authors in 2023
34:16 How Macroeconomic Conditions Affect Subscription Revenue for Authors
39:15 Reflecting on Your Subscription and Making Changes to It
42:02 Focusing on the things that Drive Success as Authors
44:43 Warning: Don’t Plan Too Much
46:13 Conclusion
#19 Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Subscriptions for Authors podcast. My name is Michael Evans. I’m a science fiction and thriller author of a dozen novels. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Reem, and I’m also a college student at the moment. And my cot Emilia Rose, who will meet in a second. She’s a bestselling Tomy romance author.
[00:00:18] Michael Evans: She make six figures a Your Inscriptions, and she’s now been a full-time author for the last three years. And together we’re gonna share our insights on how to plan for 2023 or just the year ahead. If you’re listening to this in 2023 or in future years, we wanna help you set yourself up and your business for success in the future year.
[00:00:38] Michael Evans: Whether you’re a beginning author who’s just getting started, someone like me who. I’ve been doing this for a while, but I’m not making a full-time living for my writing. Or someone like Emilia, who’s been doing this for a while and is making a full-time living for her writing, no matter where you are at in your spectrum, I think we have a lot of interesting insights in here and a lot of actual tips for you to be able to grow your business, be able [00:01:00] to become a better writer, and ultimately be able to develop a great game plan that can help you live a healthier and happier life.
[00:01:06] Michael Evans: So we’re gonna dive into it, but before we officially get there, I just wanna say, . If you aren’t already regular listener of the podcast, you should definitely stay tuned to what we have coming because in the coming weeks we have some really interesting episodes releasing all by helping you to start your subscription.
[00:01:24] Michael Evans: Definitely stay tuned for this in future weeks. And if you haven’t already shared this podcast of Friend who you think would enjoy it, that’s the best way you can help us out is just by spreading the word of this podcast. So if you enjoy it, definitely share it with a friend. That’s all we ask of you.
[00:01:39] Michael Evans: For now, I’ll stop taking up more of your time and dive right into this podcast. planning as authors I find is like very difficult especially as indies or tried published authors who are thinking about going more hybrid or integrating more indie focused stuff because it’s not like that simple path of, query, editor buys it, [00:02:00] publisher, and it’s all out of our hands.
[00:02:01] Michael Evans: Even though, to be honest, process is way more complicated than that. But we can at least plan for it in a linear process. Most jobs, most careers, you can kind of just follow the steps. We have to make our own steps. Yeah. That’s harder. . That’s much harder. It’s quite hard. So we’re gonna talk all about planning today, and I’m just curious, like off the bat,
[00:02:24] Michael Evans: What do you kind of think are like the big important reasons that planning is like a really good thing to do?
[00:02:33] Michael Evans: Because I know it seems necessary to plan, but, but is it like, why do you plan? Because I know you just finished planning for 2023.
[00:02:40] Emilia Rose: so this was actually the first year I’ve planned planned in my author career. Most of the time I find stuff to do that I wanna do for my community, and the next day, I send Assis my assistant an email and just break it all down.
[00:02:56] Emilia Rose: Like, this is what we’re doing. But it was actually really nice to plan this [00:03:00] time. I started planning, I think in September for 2023. So I had four, four full months and I’m still like finishing up some stuff. But for me it was very useful because I can actually break down exactly what the projects I wanna work on instead of just coming up randomly with a bunch of them and I get time to tweak things that I.
[00:03:21] Emilia Rose: Plan to do to make them even better for my audience because the more we actually do podcasts, the more I learn just about how I wanna run my business. So it’s really nice to like, go back in there before I launched anything and be like, this is what I wanna do. This is how I wanna do it.
[00:03:38] Michael Evans: I think that evolution’s really interesting.
[00:03:40] Michael Evans: You didn’t start planning out in the beginning and now plan. I actually love. And that might sound weird cause we’re talking about plans today, but I wanna like kind of divide like who we’re helping into two segments because. I think that it’s very different planning for someone like you who’s a six figure author who is now a career author and has been for some time [00:04:00] and, has a very serious business that you have to, get into somewhat boring, but very important things like cash flow and making sure that you can pay things out like contractors and all expenses that can come up.
[00:04:11] Michael Evans: Like you have to plan for these things ahead of time because, We don’t have money to operate the business. That’s, not gonna be too great. Now. I might be wearing my Hawaiian shirt. Because I am manifesting, so it’s very cold out right now. It’s like the coldest week in America. Why you have that on? I was like, . Yeah. No, no. It’s like the coldest week in America, like 40 years. It’s insane. So, but at least when we’re recording, we’re recording like a few days for Christmas.
[00:04:38] Michael Evans: This probably won’t come out though until like a, a week or so, but regardless of when you’re listening, it is cold. Now I’m manifesting warmer times. I’m manifesting being on an island somewhere. What I would say about goal setting is that it’s, it’s much about vision and where you want to be, rather than getting bogged down and planning out every second of every day.
[00:04:57] Michael Evans: So we’re gonna talk about some of the bigger [00:05:00] principles and then we’ll dive into, you’re just getting started. As an author, you don’t, you’re not full-time yet. This is how you can plan. And then you are full-time. You might be someone who’s making hundreds of thousand dollars a year. This is how you can plan.
[00:05:11] Michael Evans: And then of course, since the descriptions for Authors podcast, , we’re gonna talk a bit about how subscriptions can fit into this picture when you’re planning out your subscription, when it makes sense to do certain things for it, all of that good stuff.
[00:05:24] Michael Evans: So talking about like the bigger principles of planning, I think it’s first helpful to think about what do we typically do wrong when planning?
[00:05:33] Michael Evans: Like you could speak personally what you see maybe in other people. What do you struggle with in planning? What typically do people get wrong, do you think? Oh, that’s a good
[00:05:44] Emilia Rose: one. I don’t know. I know like last year when the years that I didn’t plan, I set these like really lofty goals for myself and they were like looking back on at them.
[00:05:55] Emilia Rose: Now, there were goals that if I were to plan. Not [00:06:00] something I would want to do. So like to reach those goals. Like for example one of my goals that I had set was to reach like seven figures. And to do that you would have to sell like a lot of books obviously. And where I am now in my career, that’s not really what I wanna do.
[00:06:17] Emilia Rose: And I think. For a lot of authors we can get kind of lost in all of the numbers. Like I have to sell so many books, but how much money are you going to be spending to sell all those books? And also, You can’t, when you start planning something, especially down to like every second of every day, you don’t really have time for new projects or things that might come up that you really think are interesting.
[00:06:41] Emilia Rose: If you plan heavily, it’s really hard to kind of have that wiggle room too. Do other projects that could come up after you go to a conference and learn stuff.
[00:06:50] Michael Evans: That’s super, super insightful. And I just wanna start with like the goals that you were talking about. Yeah. Because I think the biggest mistake we’ve we make is setting one goal. [00:07:00] And I don’t mean like one actual goal, cuz we probably have multiple goals in our life. What I mean by that is, My goal is to, in writing, write 500,000 words and that be the singular writing goal.
[00:07:12] Michael Evans: And I’m not suggesting that you then have like, oh, here’s a qu qualitative goal of like, I want to feel this way, like I’m writing like that. That’s helpful too. But what I’m suggesting is you should have like a worse case scenario, your target and a best case scenario. And you should plan to be the worst case scenario is what you should plan for.
[00:07:32] Michael Evans: Yeah. So yeah, . A lot of times I saw this, I was watching a YouTube. From Ali Abdal and he’s a creator like all of us, and he, over the last five and a half years has slowly grown his business to where he now makes about 3 million pounds a year, which is incredible. It has kind of happened without much planning, like just kind of naturally.
[00:07:51] Michael Evans: But now he has more of a team and he feels like he kind of has to plan. So he planned to hit in 2022. His goal metric was [00:08:00] 5 million pounds. It was growth from 3 million the year prior, which is a lot of growth. Not impossible, but what he started to realize was like, I’m not answering to investors. I’m answering to myself.
[00:08:11] Michael Evans: Yeah. And I’ve now put so much pressure on myself to achieve this goal that I’m in meetings all day long, every second’s planned out what was supposed to be just a really fun dream. This business that I get to run has now made me a prisoner of my own imagination.
[00:08:27] Emilia Rose: That’s exactly what I fell into this year because I set that, that lofty like a goal of seven figures.
[00:08:33] Emilia Rose: And I’m like, wow. Like what is, what should I do to get to seven figures? What, like, how much money do I have to spend on ads and where do I have to release? I have to be on all these platforms. And then towards the end of the year, I was like, why did I even want to do that? Like, that’s not so. I run my own business.
[00:08:49] Emilia Rose: Why am I trying to get the seven figures when I’m perfectly happy where I am right now? And like I still obviously wanna grow, but I don’t want to grow in that [00:09:00] sort of way. I don’t wanna have all that pressure. I wanna do what I wanna do in my business, and I wanna provide my readers, who are my super fans, what they want.
[00:09:10] Emilia Rose: And having all that pressure is just not worth it for me. Like seven figures to have all that pressure is not like something I wanna
[00:09:17] Michael Evans: do. It’s an off sided quote, but when metrics become a target mm-hmm. , they become meaningless. Yeah. And we constantly do that in the author Wal. And thinking about the why, because isn’t always our fault.
[00:09:33] Michael Evans: There’s always a broader picture and conversation and social pressure. So I just wanna mention a few things. I see two dangerous things in the author Kuni. Now, I’m not afraid to call out being an author, so sorry if I, I get people a little angered, but I think you’ll understand what I’m saying. A lot of early beginning authors seem like they’re writing more for other authors than their readers.
[00:09:54] Michael Evans: And we’ll even act on social media like that, and that’s where drama could get in. This one did this, so in the new release, [00:10:00] that’s not what readers care about. But let’s not just blame the beginning authors because that’s, True that authors who are making seven figures don’t do this. So authors who are making seven figures do the same thing and they’ll get caught up all in their new release ranking and what this one’s doing and their ranking and what are your page reads, did you get this bonus?
[00:10:18] Michael Evans: And that being what it all eventually becomes just a competition and. That is very natural, like as part of human nature is we wanna identify with groups of people we identify as authors. We wanna gain status and hierarchy within that group. So we wanna be competitive, we wanna try and play these games, raise things out.
[00:10:36] Michael Evans: But is that really what being like being an author is not about being competitive with fellow authors or trying to win against the law authors. It’s about creating the best experience for readers. That’s why we all got into it, I hope. I don’t think people got into being an author saying, I wanna. Like the best selling author ever.
[00:10:53] Michael Evans: Like maybe, maybe that’s a driving thing for you, but why an author? Like, there’s way easier ways to make money, sorry, [00:11:00] whatever. Like they don’t wanna beat your way. So what drove you to do this? And I don’t think it, it’s, you know, something as simple as trying to beat someone out and get into the top 1000 on the Amazon store, but why has everything become so gamified?
[00:11:15] Michael Evans: Well, one thing is technology gives us the tracking ability. And the second thing is that Amazon benefits from creating these addictive systems.
[00:11:23] Michael Evans: Yeah, I know authors who check their dashboards constantly. I used to do that. I remember Me too. This was, this was toxic, but I had just taken a Facebook ads course from a very prominent figure in the space, and it was a great course.
[00:11:36] Michael Evans: Nothing wrong with the course. What was wrong was what was going on in my head. I made a plan. My plan took a gap. So I graduated high school like a year early, and my goal was by the time I was 18 and was supposed to go to college, I was gonna be making $10,000 a month for my books in revenue. I didn’t think fully throwing the profit point, I just wanted to hit that in revenue.
[00:11:58] Michael Evans: And I was like, my goal, like [00:12:00] everything, my whole self worth was riding on that number. Like I had to hit that number. I’m building up my back list for most of the six months of the year and like getting ready to like send it on ads. And I remember thinking, cuz I’d saved up, I was working full-time and saving up basically every penny I made.
[00:12:16] Michael Evans: So I had like a budget for ads that was like several thousand dollars and I remember thinking well. This first month will work, right? So I wanna like get this number fast, like I have to get to 10 K, right? So I’m just gonna start spending, like, I started spending like $5 a day. It was like kind of working.
[00:12:32] Michael Evans: So I’m like, oh, let’s just start spending $80 a day. And gosh, I remember like going to bed, right? Like I was like sleeping in my bed and I’m like, Like literally like heart beating, like could not go to sleep because I’m thinking like, this ad’s gonna turn on at midnight and I’m gonna like, have spent like $20 by the time I wake up and I don’t know if it’s gonna work out.
[00:12:54] Michael Evans: So I woke up and money and this [00:13:00] is where the horror story comes in. So the ranking went up, rank, rank goes up, rank goes up, and I’m like, whoa. Dopamine like feeling so good. And I remember like, It was my first day, like I had to write, like, I was writing like 4,000 words a day. So I’m like, okay, I gotta get up and write, and then I like get 30 minutes into writing, like in the flow of things with this ads thing, stressing me out.
[00:13:22] Michael Evans: I’m like, I gotta go check my dashboard. I gotta make sure things are good. Check it out. Check the cpc. Okay. All right. Woo. Take a deep breath back to writing. 15 minutes later, I gotta check it. It, it became this like terribly addictive thing and I remember that for like the next five months of my life. I basically had a part-time job of checking the ADSD dashboard.
[00:13:44] Michael Evans: Oh, it was horrible. But I know I’m not alone in that. Like I know, I know. There’s probably like, again, not everyone struggles with different things. Everyone’s mind works different way, but I bet like a, a plurality of authors have felt this feeling, and here’s like the bad story, right? [00:14:00] So the ranking went up, but it was for book one in the series, and we all know because apparently we’ve all emptied out our retirement accounts.
[00:14:07] Michael Evans: And give it to Jeff Bezos to spend an advertising and Mark Zuckerberg can’t forget, mark. So we’re all, we’re all giving these you know, curly involved haired, billionaires our money to try and make it our dreams come true, which is very like, valid, right? So we know that we can’t make money off one book read through, right?
[00:14:23] Michael Evans: So obviously I was like, well, I’m selling enough of book one. Like I’m not making money now, but I. Make money, like clearly I’ve hit the right audience, ranking goes up, right? Like life’s good. Except that by the end of that month, I basically sold none a book too. And I eventually woke up and realized like, I don’t think, like I would see more movement, right?
[00:14:46] Michael Evans: And like I can’t constantly being stressed cuz I’m like, when is that gonna come into book two? I don’t wanna lose my ranking. I don’t wanna lose my momentum. I have to keep spending again, I don’t think everyone’s done this. I did this and it was all, because once again, I had to hit a goal of reaching [00:15:00] $10,000 by that August.
[00:15:01] Michael Evans: It’s like March now, and I’m like, I have to do this right? And yeah, it was not very fun. I ended up not hitting it. And I ended up burning out all because of this crazy goal I set that had nothing. To do the thing that mattered to me most, which was like writing good books and I ended up spending like more of my time stressing about ads and trying to optimize, click the rates and conversions than I was spending time creating really good stories.
[00:15:28] Michael Evans: Yeah. And I probably lost two years on writing career.
[00:15:31] Emilia Rose: We’re always so hard on ourselves, but when those things don’t work out or even me looking back at. What my goals were and what I did. And just don’t be hard on yourself when things don’t go your way or you don’t achieve those goals, or your goals change because they do.
[00:15:47] Emilia Rose: And as you grow and learn, they’re definitely going to change, I hope. But it’s really nice to finally, when you have a goal, that is really important to you as a person and as [00:16:00] an author. And it’s like, I wanna give my readers an amazing experience and I wanna write these books that are living in my head and these characters who won’t stop talking to me.
[00:16:09] Emilia Rose: When you fall in love with like that again, it’s so refreshing and it’s so nice. And that’s the part I am in my journey right now. It’s for the past two years I’ve been like trying to, Chase these like lofty goals and grow as fast as I can. And I forgot the love I had for my stories and actually seeing people comment on my iPad and through my subscription, but I’m slowly getting back into it and I’m just like, wow.
[00:16:33] Emilia Rose: Like this is what I started writing for and I love it. So yeah,
[00:16:39] Michael Evans: I agree completely. And the toughest thing about it. And I wanna share a quote from Sean Patna, who is actually in the, in the room right now listening in or like somewhat producer at the moment. Cause I think this is really good. And he said setting large goals doesn’t really help, especially goals that you [00:17:00] don’t have control over.
[00:17:01] Michael Evans: Yeah. Small accountable goals are better, like a goal to write a certain number of chapters today. You control over how many chapters you write. You don’t have control over how well your books sell if they go. And that couldn’t be more true. And a lot of times I understand that our desire is exactly what Emilia’s saying.
[00:17:19] Michael Evans: Like, you’re grounded in this place of really wanting to love the stories and to write, but there’s these systems of validation where we wanna feel like we write good stories, we wanna, we don’t wanna feel like it’s all meaningless. And you know, this is where art and commerce collide. We’ve been validated through these systems that gamify this whole process through metrics and sales.
[00:17:41] Michael Evans: That sometimes aren’t always as useful,, yeah. Does every book you buy mean the same thing to you? Me, personally. Yeah. To you personally, to anyone listen’s, say, yeah,
[00:17:55] Emilia Rose: no, for me, no. And not, like even every story I write doesn’t mean the same thing to me [00:18:00] as either as a creator and an author. So
[00:18:05] Michael Evans: yeah.
[00:18:05] Michael Evans: That’s like almost the key in this, like if you’re prying to set goals, yeah, it’s necessary to have. If you’re running a business, some sort of financial forecast, so you might need to set a yearly forecast for your revenue. Yeah, but I would purposely be conservative because you don’t wanna one go under and risk your family and risk your own livelihood.
[00:18:30] Michael Evans: You can plan maybe a target in a best case scenario. But really don’t make that the north star. Make your North Star when you get up on every day. Cuz you already know you’ve planned conservatively. And life’s gonna be good. Pretty much almost no matter what, like as long as you. , you know, stay alive and nothing crazy happens, like the business will keep going.
[00:18:49] Michael Evans: Then you want to think about, okay, well what is my goal on a day-to-day? What do I want my day-to-day life to look like and plan out what that looks like? Do I want to have flexibility to take on new projects that you can say, [00:19:00] you know, by the end of a week, I wanna know that there was at least one interesting, cool thing that I like learned more about, or maybe did.
[00:19:07] Michael Evans: I wasn’t planning on going into it. Maybe every month maybe you wanna stick to writing two to 3000 words a day, then make sure you do that, that that can be your goal. But I do think it can be very difficult when we, we get like specific page rankings and sales goals a part of it. But it’s tough.
[00:19:25] Michael Evans: Especially I know for authors who are starting out who are like, me at this moment, like, I’m not making much money for my books every month. I have long passed my peak of a couple thousand dollars a month and, it’s petered out. And I know that, you know, you feel this pressure to wanna make it, to wanna do it full time.
[00:19:41] Michael Evans: Yeah. But you have to realize that most people who make it full-time, don’t do it full-time for as long as you think. And I’d rather build a system and a process and an ethos that grounds me. And something for the long term And be happy. Yeah. Rather than being stressed out and [00:20:00] miserable. Cuz I’ve lived that life.
[00:20:02] Emilia Rose: I know. Oh, I love this. And You have to in, in your goals and in your planning, you have to plan to rest as well. It’s so hard to get caught up and I have to work every day. I have to write every day because this is what I want. And like, that’s a like a good thing too.
[00:20:18] Emilia Rose: Like you want to succeed in writing and you wanna get full-time, but if you’re not rusting, like sometimes I have to force myself not to write for an entire day because I know. If I take a day off my, I’m going to be so motivated the next day to write, and it’s really refreshing, I don’t know how some people do it, right.
[00:20:36] Emilia Rose: Like 10,000 words a day and just like do that consistently for an entire week. I would just go crazy.
[00:20:41] Michael Evans: Yeah, no, that’s a thing. I think we, we time spent these goals out and we think like every day is the same day. Yeah. And like maybe on your writing days you wanna write 3000 words, but if you’re writing 365 days a year,
[00:20:54] Michael Evans: That’s certainly not everyone’s process for me. I found that like when I’m writing, like I am writing, [00:21:00] like I’m gonna be in it writing maybe sometimes even 10,000 words a day, I can be very obsessive. That’s how I like to work. That’s what works best for me. But if I’m writing a book a month, every single month, yeah, that’s wild.
[00:21:12] Michael Evans: So I will typically write a book in a month when I actually sit down and draft it, and I’m not actually writing, like I’m maybe writing 20 ish hours a week. So I’m just finding time, scrapping it together. If I did that every month, and I have been in that place before, that made me feel like my life was like zombified.
[00:21:29] Michael Evans: I was like living completely in a fictional world and I’m like, I wanted to write fiction to be able to enjoy what I do, but also live. Yeah. And it felt like it took over my life. So there’s a balance and when you plan goals, you have to. Likewise plan like time for you to take care of yourself. Yeah, just like Emilia said, and plan it in where it’s non-negotiable.
[00:21:55] Michael Evans: Like get someone who’s keeps you accountable on that. Just like you [00:22:00] would get someone who keeps you accountable writing so as to equally keep you accountable to like, Stopping taking care of yourself. I know how hard that is for the parents out there, cuz like, when do you get a day off from your kids?
[00:22:11] Michael Evans: But I think that makes it even more important because if you’re just writing and writing and writing nonstop and then trying to take care of your kids and have your job, you all of a sudden aren’t like being present in the moments that you’re in. It can happen very quickly and just as, as important it is to support your family and make a living and, and to do your dream, to be an author, it’s important to.
[00:22:32] Michael Evans: Experience these moments, you will never get back with your kids growing up, even if they’re like jerks sometimes, like, you know, they’re gonna grow up and life is short. That sounds really depressing, but like, when we die, none of this money matters that we make from selling our books. Like what does matter?
[00:22:49] Michael Evans: I, that’s like a very personal question, but you want to center your life around that. And if all you care about is selling books and making money, Then like that’s cool, but I don’t think I’m talking [00:23:00] to you. I’m talking to the most of you who care about living what your idea is of a better life. And you have to think about that from day one, that vision not of the island and movie, all those easy dreams you have to dream on like the day to day.
[00:23:16] Michael Evans: We write these fictional stories that are climactic in which. You know, if you’re writing romance, you meet your lover and you get swep swept away, or sometimes that lover’s bullies you, all these things, right? But like in real life, not in the story world, what does your real life day-to-day look like?
[00:23:32] Michael Evans: Outside of the movies, outside of the cameras, outside of the stories, we can tell ourselves like, what are you not escaping to? What does it actually look like? That’s a super tough question to answer, but if you don’t have a regular reflection on that, I think that you can lose sight of that very easily.
[00:23:49] Michael Evans: Cause the whole world wants to pull you away from that, right? The whole world has a different idea than it wants to impose on.
[00:23:55] Emilia Rose: and kind of going off of that, like comparing yourself to other authors is [00:24:00] something you should not do, especially when you’re planning and setting goals. Like, or even like, yeah, comparing yourself to like where you were yesterday.
[00:24:08] Emilia Rose: I know a lot of authors who like the first thing they do is sit down and write for a few hours and then they go do like marketing stuff. But me, my. Like I personally, like nothing like that. I write whenever I feel like writing and whenever like the stories come to me and sometimes I have to sit down and do my thing, but it’s.
[00:24:27] Emilia Rose: It’s really hard not to compare yourself to other people who have, like, they’re, they’re like always talking about how consistent they are and they’re like doing this every single day. And especially like, sometimes I’ll look back on what I did yesterday and I’m like, wow, I got so much done. But today it’s just like, not that kind of day for me.
[00:24:44] Emilia Rose: So yeah, like. Comparing yourself just to others and where you were in a previous day or a previous mindset is definitely going to end up being toxic in the end for the most part.
[00:24:57] Michael Evans: No, it’s really good advice and it’s something [00:25:00] too where, it’s understandable to do that when we have dashboards and rankings and all these things at us 24 7, and my only advice would be , it’s better to have more knowledge of your sales than just a royalty check every six months.
[00:25:12] Michael Evans: Yeah, but it’s the same curse to note every second. And you have the power to be able to moderate how much you want to even intune the world in this way. Like sometimes for me, I know it’s natural that if I’m scrolling through things, I’m scrolling through Instagram. If you’re scrolling through social media platforms, you’re gonna just, by nature compare yourself to others.
[00:25:34] Michael Evans: So maybe. Limit your time doing that, which is difficult. But yeah, I’ve done that myself. Like I don’t really use social media really recreationally at all, and I don’t feel like I’m, I feel like I’m doing my own thing. Even if I’m not like it, it feels like that. And that’s a better place to be in, at least for me.
[00:25:54] Emilia Rose: I know I’ve stopped using social media for like, at least the social, I use it for business, but [00:26:00] I don’t really go and just like scroll because it’s, I find myself doing the same thing. It’s just like comparing myself to other people and I’m just like, that’s not something I wanna do. Like, it just makes me insecure and it like feeds like my, all these negative emotions I have.
[00:26:16] Emilia Rose: And so I’m just like, that’s something I’m going to step away from because I don’t wanna feel that way anymore and I don’t wanna do that.
[00:26:23] Michael Evans: I wanna tell you a story about flying Fox. So flying Fox, many may know of a flying fox. It’s a mythical beast that had to tear it out a bridge to even exist. The locals wouldn’t let it tear down the bridge.
[00:26:38] Michael Evans: Didn’t want the flying fox wrecking their neighborhood. The Flying Fox is the largest yacht in the world or one of the owned by none other than the same man who created the bookstore that we’re talking about. amazon.com and Jeff Bezos. Like if you think about it, right, like I’m not trying to like psychoanalyze the dude.
[00:26:57] Michael Evans: At all, but let’s psychoanalyze him. So [00:27:00] I think still being as successful as he is, he clearly is still caught up in trying to like have the bigger, you know Yeah. Thing than the next person next to him. Yeah. Very clearly. He’s caught up in that and he chose to spend half a billion dollars in the yacht because I guess he could, he worked really hard to get there.
[00:27:20] Michael Evans: He has the right to do this. I’m not saying he shouldn’t, but is he happy now with that $5 million yacht?
[00:27:25] Michael Evans: That’s my biggest question. Or is he trying to create a new one? I know that most people who get into that game of buying the yachts and, you know, going to Monaco Grand Prix and we’re gonna go to whatever, I think it’s like. It’s not Barbados, but there, there’s like a New Year’s spot. They’re like the, the billionaire vacation.
[00:27:41] Michael Evans: They’re all flying around always. Most of the time, even once they get the private plane, they’re looking at the new one. Most of these yachts are always for sale. Always for sale. So I don’t know if that’s like an amazing way to live. Yeah. I don’t know if that’s an amazing way to live and I don’t know if it’s [00:28:00] authors, if we have to do.
[00:28:01] Michael Evans: And I’ll just end with like Joanna Pence’s advice on this, which is when thinking about your vision and your life, don’t think you have to go one way. She says it’s your author creator economy. Yeah, and I think that’s the most essential piece in this, right? Like we became authors to not have to climb a narrow corporate ladder that someone else tells us what we have to do.
[00:28:21] Michael Evans: We can do that for ourselves. Yeah. That’s the empowering part. The empowering part is that you can choose to, , buy yachts or you can do something else. But it is tough and I think that, , when thinking about something more bigger and macro, because when planning, and we’ve talked a lot about like this psychological big stuff, your individual big stuff that’s going on and thinking about the future.
[00:28:47] Michael Evans: But what do you think about what’s going on in the world right now, like planning for. The future of this industry, and we can bring subscriptions into this. Like what do you think’s coming and what do you think we should be aware of as [00:29:00] authors specifically going into 2023?
[00:29:02] Emilia Rose: So one of the big things is ai and.
[00:29:05] Emilia Rose: AI is one of the main reasons I’m shifting my entire business basically to subscription models. Like every aspect that I can get, I’m going to try to shift it there. I’m still gonna be on like the big retailers, still selling audiobooks, but I want the core of my business to be subscriptions and to be community because ai, as a lot of people have seen, is producing really amazing art and.
[00:29:30] Emilia Rose: Eventually, it might not be in the next year, it might not be in the next five years, but eventually we’re going to get to a point where these big companies who have all this data , on our books that we’ve created are going to use that to create thousands of bestsellers every single day. And the market is gonna be flooded with millions of books.
[00:29:53] Emilia Rose: All the time, new, new books. And it’s going to be really hard for authors [00:30:00] if they’re not focused in, in my opinion, it’s gonna be really hard for authors, if they’re not focusing on building a community and a world around their stories. And through that, like, because I have that, that view and that’s what I think is going to happen.
[00:30:14] Emilia Rose: That’s where a lot of subscriptions comes in. For me. That’s going to be a place where I can host my community. That’s gonna be a place where people can connect with each other on my specific stories and not be like, flooded with like a million different books and different covers every single day.
[00:30:33] Michael Evans: It means scary. But yeah, I think it’s also an opportunity because, yeah, for all of history as authors, we have had other players have power over us. In the case of publishers, it was back when distribution was really important and they had the capital to distribute our books. So although stories are really what makes the world go round, stories are what people really care about.
[00:30:57] Michael Evans: Somehow publishers ended up having power. [00:31:00] In the age of the platform economy, we had platforms aggregate tons of data. Now, distribution’s easy, but discovery became something that was, was more difficult. Being able deliver consumers personalized content was more difficult. So they aggregated all of this data and that gave them power leverage over us as authors yet again to be control.
[00:31:23] Michael Evans: Now what happens with artificial intelligence? Well, it’s all based off of data, right? So the sad part is who has the power with this really are like, yes, we as authors can use things built on G P T three, et cetera, but these publishers and who own, you know, have licenses, specific copyrights and then especially platforms, they really have the data.
[00:31:47] Michael Evans: They really do. And. The opportunity in that is that humans don’t actually care about data. Like we’re not just like numbers constantly. Like it can be powerful. It can be a tool that we can use, but [00:32:00] now that this whole world is changing and I think that this whole space is becoming commodified. We’re going to have a space for storytellers to truly rise and build our own platforms and subscriptions is a wonderful way to do that.
[00:32:15] Michael Evans: So the opportunity is actually like that. Yes. This sounds scary, but it’s just change. And this change, yeah. I think will lead to even more power being in the hands of storytellers, it’s almost like the shift that we need for this all to become overrun because that means that we get to have our own home.
[00:32:33] Michael Evans: That now with technology being more ubiquitous, Easier to use and direct selling and subscription payments possible. This is a, this is a future that is happening today. Yeah, and I’m excited about it.
[00:32:49] Emilia Rose: I’m excited too. It is very scared to think about, but it’s also very exciting to think about what you authored can do with ai.
[00:32:59] Emilia Rose: [00:33:00] Like you can create a lot of different. Forms of media, like translations or artwork a lot easier. There’s just definitely some repercussions or , maybe not, repercussions is not the right word. I guess ethics around it right now. But I don’t think it’s going away. Because if we use it or not, companies are gonna use it.
[00:33:22] Emilia Rose: And so we just have to think about how we want to use it ethically as authors and as creators.
[00:33:30] Michael Evans: I agree completely and I think that it’s, it’s something that, when. We get to, again, trot our own path. Yeah. There doesn’t have to be one way of doing or using these things. And I think that at the end of the day, we build our stories, we create these things for other people.
[00:33:49] Michael Evans: So I always want to keep like all people in mind. Whether, whether you are an artist, a reader, or an author, I think it’s important that. We try and include all people in our future no matter what it is. And [00:34:00] I won’t claim to know what it looks like, but I do think another important thing coming in 2023 cuz , we’re gonna get into specifically planning your subscription specifically things with focusing for 2023.
[00:34:11] Michael Evans: But we’re heading into some macroeconomic times and I know I’ve gone this question, so I wanted to ask you this. Have you seen an uptick in people unsubscribing due to maybe they cite like financial reasons not being able to afford it. Is that something that you’ve
[00:34:26] Emilia Rose: seen? Yes, actually. Yeah. It’s not a huge problem right now but that is something I’ve seen going through those exit interviews on my subscription that some people are citing tho that,
[00:34:38] Michael Evans: yeah, I’m feeling.
[00:34:40] Michael Evans: In 2023 with the way the economy’s headed, and I don’t know if we’re, I can’t tell the future, but there’s a potential that we see some down economic times. Usually books holo carte book sales are pretty resistant during inflation cuz the cheat form of entertainment. I wonder if [00:35:00] subscriptions have, A bit more churn, increased churn with that.
[00:35:06] Michael Evans: Cuz people will look just simply like, what, what am I spending on? Yeah. And the impulse purchase, they might always buy, but subscriptions aren’t necessarily an impulse. Yeah. So, I don’t know. I would expect that to maybe potentially more of a thing. That doesn’t mean, no one’s gonna describe a description, but it might make things growing a little bit less slowly.
[00:35:27] Michael Evans: It might make things a little bit more difficult with the segment of your readers.
[00:35:31] Emilia Rose: I don’t think it’s going to be , at least right now, it’s not a huge problem and I don’t know if it will be in the future, but. I don’t think that’s a reason not to start a subscription because the economy is eventually, hopefully gonna come back up.
[00:35:48] Emilia Rose: Yeah. And like we won’t be in these like financially harder times. But if you can start building that like consistency and that even if it’s a small [00:36:00] community, it’s going to be a community of people who are consistently like wanna be in your world. And. And just have access to you. I think that’s a great thing.
[00:36:09] Emilia Rose: Because once the economy does start coming up you’ll already have that really strong base of readers. Who, and, and that consistent, like I guess what you, we were talking about like planning you’ll already be consistent in the things you do
[00:36:23] Michael Evans: there. Yeah, no, I think it’s another situation. You wanna plan for the future you want as an author and start creating that today?
[00:36:30] Michael Evans: Yeah. So if you wanna have your own home and a space to connect directly with your readers, there’s no reason to, to necessarily wait because of this. But in terms of like number expectations, in terms of what revenue will you hit, going back to that point, another reason that things are just out of our control sometimes, and it’s not necessarily your fault, anyone’s fault, just that things happen.
[00:36:50] Michael Evans: But I also think that you’re right, building that correl relationships. Could be really key because if we think about just all forms of entertainment and ways you can find [00:37:00] belonging, think about how much people spend to go to yoga classes, go to like gym classes, to be part professional memberships and other sort of, cus people pay a lot of money to be part of these communities.
[00:37:10] Michael Evans: And most of the time, even though subscriptions might be more expensive than buying books, I like har, you’re getting more than just books. You’re being a part of this membership, being a part of this community, having that deeper relationship. It’s still such a great value yeah. For your readers, and I think that people will recognize that.
[00:37:30] Emilia Rose: In going off of that, you can even introduce like a free tier. So where people are still, like, in your community, they’re still part of your subscription, but maybe some of the content that they get is free and it, it’s really just like, This would be really especially useful for people who are already kind of doing this like serial fiction.
[00:37:52] Emilia Rose: But instead it’s all on one platform. So instead of them going back to that serial fiction platform like WAP Powder Royal [00:38:00] Road, they’re in your subscription. And when they have the like funds to be able to subscribe again, it’s very, it’s very easy and very clean. And they don’t have. Switch between multiple platforms.
[00:38:11] Emilia Rose: It’s just like you’re getting it for free. If you want the next chapter, when you’re ready for it, you can get it.
[00:38:17] Michael Evans: That’s a great point. But I also think that people may struggle doing that and a lot of subscription platforms cause of how they’re structured. Yeah. So if you’re interested in using a subscription platform that’s.
[00:38:27] Michael Evans: Specifically for authors. If you’re not already aware of it, you might wanna check out Reem a links in the description. We’ll be onboarding our wait list of authors throughout all of the beginning of the year. So if you wanna boad Dema, call us. If you wanna see what it looks like, definitely let us know and we’d love to have you part of that.
[00:38:46] Michael Evans: Cause. Full disclosure, me and Emilia. Our building room along with Sean Pat note, he’s actually the software engineer behind it, the the featured insight that we have familiar on the podcast. But yes, that’s all I think very good advice. And [00:39:00] I wanna close out just on offering some tips for people who are reflecting.
[00:39:10] Michael Evans: How would you reflect if you’ve either had a subscription or haven’t on how the past year has gone? Let’s start there and then let’s talk about how we can specifically plan things like whether you’re making changes to your subscription or starting your subscription for the new year.
[00:39:25] Michael Evans: How do you like, reflect on the year or reflect on the last 90 days? And Steve, how is your subscription.
[00:39:31] Emilia Rose: I’m terrible with numbers, so a lot of my, a lot of my reflections don’t include numbers like specifically how many people were in my subscription.
[00:39:41] Emilia Rose: What I like to reflect on is how I’m connecting with my subscribers and what I’m providing them. And what I’m doing in my community and my subscription, that really excites me. And a lot of that is like creating other forms of stories like graphic novels [00:40:00] or audio dramas.
[00:40:01] Emilia Rose: Like those things really excite me. And so that’s what I think a lot about during my reflection
[00:40:07] Michael Evans: You can’t plan without reflection. It is. Mm-hmm. my biggest thing. So thank you. And not only wanna reflect on like where you just wanna go, we talked about, like not tangibly, but more like ethos wise, lifestyle.
[00:40:18] Michael Evans: But I think you also wanna reflect on how it’s been and Yeah. What I would always look to. Okay. In your life, are you able to make time for this? What time do you need for this? And will that time need to be adjusted? And then I’d look at what is the feedback that you’ve gotten so far? This is especially up for authors who already are for long.
[00:40:38] Michael Evans: Like if you have a business that’s doing really well, What is going well about it? What are people liking? And yeah, what are you liking and where’s that synergy? Because you wanna do more of the things that you like and other people like. That’s ultimately it. And when thinking about your subscription, I think that you wanna keep things always small, focused, bite size, [00:41:00] achievable, just like Sean said.
[00:41:01] Michael Evans: So don’t try and plan out this mastermind one year, 20 tier plan of how you’re going to. Begin doing all these different things for your readers. But I would think about, huh? Is there something that I’m excited to do? Yeah. The project that I have time for that my readers also seem excited for. Yeah. Is there an intersection there?
[00:41:20] Michael Evans: And you’d be surprised at how many things could fall into that intersection because. We like to box ourself in as authors to the fictional world, when in reality our stories become part of our reader’s real world. And the beauty of subscriptions is being able to merge that.
[00:41:37] Michael Evans: So not only can you maybe engage with your communities, maybe you could start doing a livestream each month with your readers, but you also can start creating things. travel guides, places in your books. You could do cookbooks, like recipe guides. You could get into so many different things. You could do merch, you can do things like book boxes.
[00:41:57] Michael Evans: You can, I mean, the list, like there’s literally [00:42:00] dozens of things. I don’t wanna overwhelm people here, but when you think broadly about the power of story and what your business can do in the creator economy, what things excite you? Yeah. What things do you wanna give time for now if you’re getting started?
[00:42:13] Michael Evans: My advice is very simple. I want you to spend most of your time writing, continue building up that back list. But I think you need one way to be able to nurture relationships, and you need one way to discover or find new relationships. And I wouldn’t do more than that.
[00:42:29] Michael Evans: Maybe you wanna nurture relationships with readers using a subscription just in your newsletter. First. Maybe you want to use it using a subscription sort of platform where you can kind of bundle that together with the community and your stories and your newsletter all in one place. And like we said, reams a an interesting place to do that if you want to.
[00:42:46] Michael Evans: But there’s other services too. Patron’s a popular one, even though it’s not made for authors. And then my advice would be, where do you wanna find new readers? Because it’s always important to find new readers. Every business has churn, like every business ever. Like people, people [00:43:00] disappear at times. You know?
[00:43:01] Michael Evans: Go, go to the the story world forever, which is sad, really sad, but it is something to think about, like you willing to replenish your readers at some point. Word of mouth. . It’s a great way to do that with your existing readers, but still, it’s always gonna get the word out there yourself. So what’s one way you can do that?
[00:43:15] Michael Evans: One platform, one way that you can maybe post pictures on Instagram. Maybe you’re into like blogging. Maybe you want to create talks. Don’t feel like you have to do it all. Do one thing, one promotion thing. One way to nurture your readers, and then maybe in between there, you’re putting your books in Amazon or serial fiction onto places like wapa or, or radish or railroad, and one place to experience your.
[00:43:37] Michael Evans: Or one thing you’re doing. One thing to build a relationship with your readers. One way to find new readers. That’s it. And even if I’m an advanced author who might be doing a few of these things and I might have contractors and a team doing it, I would instead, when I look at the new year, still only think about one way I can focus on finding new readers.
[00:43:53] Michael Evans: One way I can build a relationship with the existing readers, and one way that you know, I’m continuing to monetize my work. Because [00:44:00] at the end of the day, it’s nice to say you’re on five different platforms, but. If you can crush one platform and learn how to do TikTok really well learn how really well Learn how to run a really good subscription and have those things working together. You will be way better off than someone who knows how to do three platforms. Kind of good. Yeah. Way better off.
[00:44:19] Emilia Rose: It’s especially you were talking about feedback. I think that’s really, really important.
[00:44:24] Emilia Rose: , even if you post like something that makes your f the feedback that your readers give you anonymous. There’s so many readers who don’t want to tell you f like face-to-face kind of that something you’re doing is not something that they like.
[00:44:38] Michael Evans: And I think that’s, that’s most of it on the planning.
[00:44:41] Michael Evans: Yeah. So, I’m excited for everyone to be planning out their new year. And just one final advice is that when thinking about your strategy, your overarching vision, all that’s important, thinking about your planning, all that’s important, but you should not be spending much time planning. You know, Emilia didn’t plan much at all the first couple years of your career.
[00:44:59] Michael Evans: If you’re in [00:45:00] the beginning and feeling like you need to plan, you shouldn’t be planning that much at some time. It’s necessary to plan a bit, but. Do not get into plan paralysis. Do not get into the plan of what is the best thing I can do and think about that a million times. You can do anything you enjoy and you can always test to and change.
[00:45:17] Michael Evans: It’s better to test begin and try things out and pivot quickly rather than just plan and desperately. Like that is the big no-no. Do not outline your book forever. You have to open it up just like you have to start not planning your marketing plan, but actually doing it at some point. You can’t just plan your subscription forever.
[00:45:32] Michael Evans: You actually have to start it. And that’s the key. You have to eventually start these things. You can change at any point. You can change at any point, and no one’s gonna get mad. No one’s gonna be like, oh, well they switched this thing up. Especially when you’re in the beginning. That’s okay. Once you’ve established a brain, once you’re further.
[00:45:46] Michael Evans: Yeah. Then you gotta maybe start more having structure to things just because like if Emilia begins pivoting into like, I don’t know, maybe sci-fi, that would be maybe a little weird. Maybe. Yeah. depend. A few readers might probably may not be a [00:46:00] great use of your time. Maybe. I don’t know if it depends.
[00:46:02] Michael Evans: Right? So all these things are things to think about, but I think, I think we’ll leave it off there for this episode.
[00:46:08] Michael Evans: and that’s it from this one. How as self-publishers, we can plan for success in the coming year. I’m really grateful for your time listening to this podcast, and I hope that if you all are still at home during the holidays listening to this, especially if you’re listening to this as it comes out, it’s still the holiday season.
[00:46:27] Michael Evans: I hope you have a great time relaxing and rejuvenating and just reflecting on the small moments with your family and loved ones. That’s what I’m gonna go get back to doing. So I’m gonna say goodbye now, and in the meantime, don’t forget storytellers or the world. Thank you everyone.