Posted on February 9, 2023.
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In this solo episode, Michael Evans breaks down how 500 fiction authors make $10 million in subscriptions and other findings from the 2022 Subscription Author Report.
Read the top 500 Fiction Authors in Subscriptions 2022 Report: https://subscriptionsforauthors.com/top-fiction-authors-in-subscriptions-2022/
#22 Episode Outline:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:38 Breakdown of Top 500 Fiction Authors in Subscriptions Report
00:25:45 The Future of Subscriptions and Publishing for Authors
00:43:25 The Struggle with Balancing Our Life and Identity as Authors
#22 Episode Transcript:
[Michael Evans] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Subscriptions for Authors podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about how the top 500 fiction authors in subscriptions make $10 million plus per year annually, which in reality, we’re actually going to be sharing the report and some of the top takeaways and some of the key insights in this report that features 500 fiction and authors and you can actually check out all their subscriptions.
We’ll link to it in the description for free and also how much they’re making per month or how many subscribers they have. It depends on which information the author has public, so we’re going to be breaking that down. But this is also a solo episode. So it’s just me and you all today, and I’m going to do my best to, one, not talk too fast, but two, after we go through this report, I’m want to share some insights that I’ve learned. One, around building a vertical business as a subscription author, maybe, where this industry is going, because clearly we can see there’s a lot of people doing this. So what will this look like five or ten years from now?
And then I want to talk about something a little bit more personal. I want to share with you all a bit of my reflections on the industry, but also my life as. 1s Being a science fiction author for now six years, but also some recent work with ream and give you a peek behind the hood in a very personal way. So I hope you all enjoy that and know that this episode probably won’t be as long as most of our episodes, so hopefully we can pack in a lot of information into a short period of time.
But to kick it off, we’re going to go into a report which is called the Top Fiction Authors and Subscription Authors for 2022. So we’re focused on 2022 here. Maybe we’ll come out with a report each year and that would be really fun. All these links I painstakingly found myself, but I had some help in terms of categorizing the actual data. And right now upfront, I’m just going to break down the data and then we can start to talk about maybe what this means for us. One of the first big findings. And again, you can all check this out in the report and see it yourself. What you’re going to get today is not only me summing up for you, but sharing some of those juicy insights that might be a little bit more behind the scenes. And one of the big things that we found in this is that there’s over 206,000 paid subscribers.
206,000 that pay authors either monthly or annually in a subscription. Now, to be clear about what a subscription is, just so that everyone understands what we’re talking about a subscription, we’re not talking about something like kindle learning. This is a subscription that a reader pays an individual author or a group of authors, a smaller group of authors, for access to content, maybe access to merchandise or other physical goods, access to an exclusive community, or just knowing that you’re supporting one of your favorite authors, create more of what they love. So that’s just what this is. And it’s really a way that authors can build sustainable, monthly, recurring revenue from their super fans. And there’s 206,000 readers paying for this. Now, to give people a scope of what this means, so, Ku, we don’t know how many paid subscribers are in counter loaded, but it’s safe to say there’s at least 5 million subscribers and counter loaded.
I say this because the kind of loaded pool is up to about $500 million per year, and subscribers are paying, on average, $10 a month into that pool. So 5 million is a big number. But we already have 200,000 plus readers paying for subscriptions, which is a considerable amount. And with these paid subscribers, on average. 2s They’re paying over $5 a month to their authors, which means that these authors net are generating well over $10 million a year in revenue. And it’s worth stating that this is only the top 500 fiction authors. And this list isn’t even comprehensive. Of the top 500 fiction authors, I found 500 fiction authors that are doing really well. Most of them have over 100 paid subscribers monthly. But there’s tons thousands of authors who have subscriptions that might not have 100 paid subscribers. Many have only a couple. Some have a couple dozen. And there’s also plenty of authors who are not indexed on this list because I literally don’t know every author in the world and how the subscription is doing. I just did my best to find 500 that are doing, I think, really well.
So what this means is that the subscription market is at least these numbers, right? It’s at least 200,000 plus paying videos, at least 10 million plus in revenue a year, which means that it’s already a pretty significant market. And what I want to do now is break down how this market works, meaning who is succeeding in this market. And I first want to talk about the average subscribers that authors have, right? Because there’s a big difference between having 100 readers paying you a month and 1000 readers paying you a month. Some authors have 100 readers paying them close to $100 a month. We actually had an author in our podcast who had their average reader was paying her on $80 a month. So 100 readers paying $80 a month works out pretty nice. Most authors don’t have that as their average reader paying them $80 a month. Most authors have their average reader paying them a bit less than that. It’s hard to actually tell the average. I don’t have that data because most authors don’t make their income number public. They make their subscriber number public. So it’s hard to actually tell what the average is. And this is something that, over time, I’d love to get more data on. So stay tuned. Stay tuned. But. 2s When it comes to authors of 100 paid subscribers, we can assume that they’re maybe making anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars a month, which is a wide range. But they’re probably not at the point of being able to make a living off of subscriptions. That doesn’t mean it isn’t excellent. We’ve talked to plenty of authors who have 100 subscribers make over a month in subscription revenue.
And because this is only a portion of their business, that’s really exciting for them. And to actually look at how much authors are in this range, there are 270, yes, 270 fiction authors that have between 100 and 499 paid subscribers. It’s a lot of people. Amazon said in 2017 with a thousand number was a thousand. A thousand authors made six figures or over in KDP, which is 1s a very good look. Now, I said 2017, I hope 2017. Amazon said there was 1000 authors who made over one hundred K and kind of let it. Now, 270 fiction authors is not 1100 to 499 paid subscribers most of the time does not equal $100,000 plus in revenue per year, but it’s usually tens of thousands of revenue per year. That’s what this is ranging between anywhere from probably five to 10,000 at the low end to some of these authors in this category could be even generating as much as $100,000 per year if you had 499 paid subscribers paying you something like 15, $20 a month on average. So what this means to say is that there’s already a huge chunk of fiction authors who are doing well in subscriptions. So I think that’s really inspiring. And it also doesn’t stop there. Because there’s 55 fiction authors who have between 501,000 paid subscribers, I think it’s pretty safe to say that for most of this group, they’re doing really well subscriptions.
They may even be able to have a livable wage just off of their subscription revenue, which it’s worthwhile saying that subscription revenue for these authors, for some it makes up the bulk of their business, for some it makes up a smaller portion of their business. But for almost all these authors, it isn’t their only revenue stream. They may have revenue coming in from serial fiction platforms. They may be selling directly ala carte book sales. So it’s not just subscriptions. They may be selling on retailers. So what this is to say is that this is just one revenue stream for these authors. But clearly for the 55 fiction authors who have between 501,000 paid subscribers is a very significant revenue stream. And I think that’s really exciting. And to get up another level talking about authors have over 1000 paid subscribers. So in total we found 46 fiction authors with over 1000 paid subscribers. 2s That’s a lot. They’re doing really well. These are the people who are likely making a full time living or able to have a livable wage off of subscriptions. That’s not always the case. You know, 1000 people paying you $5 a month could look more like 50 ish. Thousand dollars as your take home after platform fees and payment processing, which is wonderful. But depending on where you live in the world, depending on your circumstances, that definitely might not be enough to feed your family. But for authors who have 5000 paid subscribers, certainly is. And also for authors who have different tiers, their net paid subscriber, even if they have a $5 tier, their average reader may be paying them a lot more than $5 a month. So again, I don’t have exact metrics on the average monthly payment for each individual author in these segments that we looked at. But the big takeaway here is that there’s 46 authors with over 1000 paid subscribers, 46 fiction authors that are paying them either monthly or annually, which is just tremendous. And the big thing to break down in here is that 32 fiction authors have between 1000 and 2499 paid subscribers. And 14 fiction authors have over 2500 paid subscribers. 14. So that’s kind of that split. 1s Within the thousand plus range, what we can maybe call our platinum diamond authors who are absolutely crushing it in subscriptions. Now, what does this mean for you? Because we need to talk a little bit more about who are these authors? Right? Who are these people? Because 1s not just everyone is succeeding in subscriptions, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. But we should figure out who is so that we can help you. So 1s what I chose to look at was what authors we’re putting in there is creating section. This is a common feature among subscription platforms because most subscription platforms at the moment aren’t tailored for authors, of course, might know we’re building Ream, which is the fiction platform, or sorry, the subscription platform by fiction authors, for fiction authors, and it’s launching the public on May 7, but that’s a thing. But most platforms will have like an is creating section. Ream does too.
So authors don’t have to share explicitly a genre here, but can share a little bit about their books, a little bit about their brand. So I was searching for what are like common words that probably identify an author as being a part of a particular genre or subgenre, and then indexing these authors based based on that to then figure out how many of these top 500 fiction authors fit into specific genres. Here’s what we found. So. 2s There’s 69 mentions of the word romance. 1s I know just was that number. Then there’s 30 mentions of the word science fiction. There’s 82 mentions of the word fantasy. 1s That’s really interesting to me. You see that there’s more people who mentioned romance or sorry, fantasy than romance, but the big thing I want to take away from here here is that one, a lot of these fantasy stories are still grounded in romance and definitely would cater to a romance reader. And also there’s other words that pop up. There’s 16 mentions of the word serial and there’s 32 mentions of the word erotic, seven mentions of the word steamy and 13 mentions of the word love. Some of the times an author uses the word steamy, it comes next to the word romance. So this isn’t a perfect analysis, but it’s pretty close and it’s pretty close to giving you an idea of what the fiction market looks like in subscriptions. In addition, there was 28 mentions the word web novel, 29 mentions the word literary PG, and six mentions a thriller. Three mentions of mystery. 2s Why there’s two takeaways here, I think. One is that clearly the three front runner subgenres in fiction are romance, fantasy, science fiction, and then, of course, I should have said four, because, of course, lit, RPG, those are the four 1s genres that seem to perform best in subscriptions. Now, of course, you could have looked at that and seen that. So I’m going to tell you today a bit deeper than I even go into the report. I’m going to share a bit beneath the surface. So when thinking about these genres, one thing I’ll just say from observing the report myself and kind of like low key creating it, when I was looking at all these authors, romance was definitely the one that stuck out.
A lot of these authors were certainly romance based. A lot of them were steamy romance. And maybe we’re creating content that’s not safe for work, which we love. And it’s just something to note, right, that’s a lot of the authors that are doing well in this, it’s a big portion of it. I don’t want to give an exact percentage because we didn’t calculate that in this report. I did as much as I could as a single human being that had some help from some wonderful people in the community and also some contractors, but we didn’t have an army collective support. 1s But that was definitely the biggest genre. Fantasy was also very big fantasy and science fiction. There was lots of fantasy and science fiction authors, which I think is evident from mentioning that there’s 30 mentions the word science fiction, 82 mentions of the word fantasy. There also was a lot RPG authors, right? There was a lot and they’re doing really well. The little RPG authors, like a lot of them, were very high earners. And then of course, a lot of these people who did well in subscriptions are coming from the world of serial fiction. But not all. Not all, but a lot are a plurality come from the world of serial fiction. Meaning they’re posting serialized content on mobile reading apps, typically places maybe like Wattpad, Radish, 2s Royal Road, those are just examples of some platforms. Platforms. And we actually have a guide on serial fiction platforms for authors that you can check out, I’ll link down to in the comments. And when we look at all this, I think there’s some interesting findings. So one, what is missing? What is missing? From what I just said, mystery was one of those genres that was missing. Thriller was one of those genres that was missing. 1s And 1s that might make a lot of mystery and pillar authors think, oh, is there not a place for me in subscriptions trying to start a subscription? And the answer ultimately depends on where you are in your business. What are you looking to bribe to your readers? And what do your readers want from you in a subscription, which a lot of that is less about you figuring out magically, but actually talking to your readers, seeing their feedback and going, what is working? And this is why me and Emilia recommend authors start their subscriptions as fast as they can without making a huge plan. I don’t mean make it hastily, but what I mean is that you’re not going to be able to plan the perfect subscription launch and the perfect subscription offering and maybe even pricing until you get a few readers inside and see what they think. So the best feedback you can get, regardless of genre, regardless of the stage of your career, is real readers in your subscription, even if it’s only a few. And we always try and give you the advice to create a subscription away that’s low lift based around maybe early access so that you’re not having to outlay so much time to figure out, is this going to work? Right? Because the biggest thing in publishing is that we’re always told to take these huge risks to see, is this going to work? Is this ad going to work?
Is this huge book release going to work? And it feels like we have to take these huge bets to figure out who our readers are and how to create books that fit the market that we want to write to, that fit the community that we want to create, that fit the ethos and the life that we want to live. We got to figure that out. And a lot of times it’s through expensive trial and area. We’re trying to have you do it through a more cheaper and quicker trial and era, not only so that you can build a career faster, but you can do it with less money spent. And a lot of times you don’t have to really spend any money to start a subscription. They’re free to get started. So that’s just one thing I want to share. 1s Upfront. Another thing that I want to share, though, is that definitely on that point, these genres that have done better in subscriptions I don’t think are a coincidence. I think they mean something. So a lot of the readers that are subscribing in subscriptions are under the age of 40, and as you know, many whale readers are under the age of 40. So there’s kind of this difference in the market in terms of what different broadly, what different generations of readers want. And thriller and mystery are ku heavy genres. They are genres that also are ones that a lot of times aren’t read as much on serial fiction apps. In fact, when it comes to thrillers in serialized format, typically fiction audio podcasts do best for that. And that we didn’t index in this, we didn’t we only index fiction authors writing in text. We didn’t index authors who are creating stories and more of a native serialized audio format. But that market is huge. 15% of podcast listeners only listen to fiction podcasts, and that market too, skews younger. So clearly subscriptions are something that younger readers who are quickly becoming older because they’re getting older every year. But right now, maybe more towards the younger side of the market, this is something that they may be there a bit more interested. 2s Another thing to know, the big thing to note is that subscriptions are new. And that part of the reason why it hasn’t picked up a mystery and thrilling these other genres yet is because three years ago, fiction authors are barely doing subscriptions at all. Like three years ago, LiDAR PG wasn’t doing very well in descriptions, there were a few romance authors doing well in subscriptions. And now, three years later, this is a market that hundreds of authors are successful will end, and that is generating well in excess of $10 million a year.
So that is something to know, something important, and something that I hope 1s inspires all of you, because this is really a wave of change that’s happening in publishing, and we’re going to come back to this wave of change later and where I think it’s going. But I do want to dive into a bit more of this report. So 1s another big thing that I found was that authors 1s consistently underprice themselves. Now let’s have a conversation. So 1s when it comes to pricing your subscription. 1s A lot of times we are feeling a pressure to want to create as much content as possible so that we can provide our readers as much value as possible and not overcharge them. We feel like our work isn’t valuable as authors. Trust me how much I understand like this. But also you’re lying to yourself because your work is really valuable and your readers do want to pay for it. Your super fans do want to support you. And we didn’t find any correlation in this report between numbers of chapters released in a week 1s and number of subscribers. There wasn’t really a strong correlation there. 1s There wasn’t a correlation between necessarily even chapters released in a month and number of subscribers. There was less of a correlation than one would imagine. In terms of subscription history. People who have been doing a subscription longer certainly did tend to be more successful, but this wasn’t always true. There’s definitely some newer authors that have broken in subscriptions and done well on a shorter timeline. So being in subscriptions for three or five years doesn’t necessarily mean you’re more successful than someone who’s had a subscription for a single year. But certainly we were rarely seeing authors in our first month of starting a subscription launching into this type 500 list. That is a rarity. 2s But one thing we did see was a lot of authors in the pricing themselves. We saw literally like hundreds of authors with $1 tier, which is totally fine, because $1 tiers for many authors is a way that they upsell their readers into higher priced tiers. But one problem with $1 tiers is payment processing fees, credit cards and banks charge a minimum transaction fee anytime someone pays for something. And the transaction fee varies based on your country. It varies based on 1s the payment processor you use, but it usually will range anywhere from 20 to as much as 35% of the transaction at only a dollar.
Whereas if someone’s paying $10 a month for a subscription, that transaction fee is probably three to 5%. It’s a big difference. And that money is just evaporating, right? It’s just going to the banks. This is why Amazon has their 35% royalty rate and 99 cent books. And it’s actually too why 199? In the UK, you can get that 30% royalty rate and 299 in the US, you get that royalty rate. There’s a discrepancy in where that cut off is and why that is is because in the US. 2s Typically payment processing is a bit more expensive. Just in general, the banks charge a bit more and typically there’s like a $0.30 fee tacked on to each transaction in the US. Something that no one can avoid, not even Amazon, right? This is why they charge you or give you less money. In the UK, 2s that transaction is a little bit lower, which is why Amazon gives you a 70% royalty rate and other retailers as well, at a little bit of a lower price, they’ll let you go down to as low as 199 and still retain that 70% royalty rate. This isn’t like magical Amazon setting arbitrary rules. Even though it feels like that. There’s actually some reasoning behind it that relates to their own costs. And their costs, when you run a subscription, still exists because those are costs that the banks have. And if you’re working with banks to move your money around and process credit cards, those are there. Now, a lot of times these platforms take care of that for you. They take care of that expense for you, meaning that you don’t necessarily have to worry about directly working with the bank or directly processing payments. You don’t have to do that. But that expense is still there and these platforms still incur the expense and they pass it on to you because otherwise in the platform we’ll lose money processing transactions and that’s not really a way for anyone to stay in business. So what that means is that lower tiers could have some downsides.
Now, there is some upsides to it, but consistently I see authors really pricing themselves low. And unless you go in with an intentional strategy that this is going to be what I use to upsell my readers, it can be a definite downside. It can be something that actually hurts your brand in the long run because you’ve undervalued your work. And psychologically, there’s not that much of a difference in conversion between a three and a five dollar tier or three and a $5 item. So that’s one big thing to know. And the other big thing to know is that if something is a dollar a month and there’s already so much going to payment processing fees, there’s also not a huge difference between a dollar and free. And maybe you just want to use free content to lead them in to more of your paid content. Just an idea. And you don’t have to take my advice. I’m just sharing something I’ve broadly saw. But another thing, I saw an interesting trend. 1s Is that a lot of times officers did have their income public. Their lowest tier might be $3.
And authors might then think at some point, like, then all my readers are going to scribe to that three dollar tier, right? All my readers can subscribe to my five dollar tier if that’s my lowest tier. So that’s not going to make a month, you know, and I have to try dollars a month. In reality, there were some authors who had a hundred subscribers and, you know, three and a $5 and a ten and maybe a $15 tier. And their monthly income for the ones just sent it public was like eleven or one $200. Which means that most of their subscribers were actually at these higher tiers. That’s really good to know as an author. And it’s good then to study and see what our authors offering in their higher tiers, what are authors and maybe some other subgenders to me offering to get their readers to pay them that much a month. Because that sounds nice, doesn’t it? That’s where this report comes in. That’s why I’ve linked it in the description and the support takes you through 1s in great detail all of these authors. You can literally look at all their subscription links, search by genre. There’s 500 authors in there. I do not recommend going through all 500 authors, so I recommend approaching it. 2s Is searching based on keywords that you are interested in, whether it’s science fiction, romance, fantasy, lrvg pick, insert your adjective you can control. F search through the spreadsheet, find an author who displays a similar characteristic to what you’re looking for, and then dive in, go look at their subscription and get some inspiration, because this is public information that we’re sharing. These are public subscription pages and we’d love for you to see it. 1s And that is really the big takeaways 1s from the report. I know there’s a lot. I hope you enjoyed it. And I want to now segue in to the second half of this podcast, which is going to be talking about maybe where subscriptions are going in the future, as we can about this 22 report, what my reflections are on that, and then also some more personal reflections. So on the big picture stuff. And I won’t get too carried away, I promise. But thinking about the future, think about where this is all going. I think we are at a turning point in the fiction market. We’re at a turning point.
And I think the new generative technologies that will go unnamed at the moment signify this turning point and signify that we are seeing 1s a revolution in our relationship as writers. To intellectual property. 1s This is a really incredible conversation. It’s what a lot of people might not like. But intellectual property and its role 1s is drastically changing. And the value of that asset in and of itself has always been questionable. Like, if your IP no one’s reading your IP, then it’s not valuable. It’s not wants to add, but it’s not really not that as valuable as you’d think. The backlist is valuable. If the backlist is selling, the backlist isn’t valuable. If the backlist isn’t selling, you can get the backlist to sell. So those are assets that readers want to read through. But as there’s more and more content flooded and flooded the market, what is the average backlist worth? I mean, there is a sort of supply and demand here that’s happening.
That 1s can be scary. But I think we have the greatest opportunity ever ahead of us as storytellers. And it’s a real opportunity that subscriptions has embedded into it, which is creating a networking space and an asset. Because your subscription is an asset, an asset that generates your recurring revenue each month, your community isn’t asset is there inside of your subscription, or at least partially inside of your description that again is generating you. Whether it’s word of mouth connection, it’s important. That is another asset that sits alongside IP. And I think we’re now entering an age where IP might be playing a less important role in ecosystem, but it’s still pivotal, right? So your IP is really important. Your stories are what bring this all together. But as authors, we’re going to be able to create other assets that can also generate additional value for us from our stories and ultimately from our intellectual property, from the worlds that we’ve created. 1s That is really cool. And one of those assets is description. But thinking about what can be inside of the description, thinking about how that asset is actually put to work for you and for your readers and for your life, for your family, is thinking about the different things that can exist inside of it. So what do I mean by this? What do I mean? So 2s we now live in a world that we call all the Creator Economy, where software makes it easy for anyone to create almost anything.
And what this does for you as an author, the world of the Creator economy makes us that you no longer have to just sell books and you’ll be going, yeah, Michael, I knew that there’s audiobooks. I’m already selling ebooks. And there is foreign translations, too. Yes, but no, not really. Because what I’m talking about is selling and creating more value for fans who already love your work, no matter how they’ve experienced. So, yes, readers read in different formats. Your IP can reach people in different formats, different places of their life. You can serialize the story. You can put it in indie bookstores. That’s challenging. But you can still try. You can put it in. 1s To audiobooks format. You can put an ebook format on retailers and meet readers where they like to buy, or you can sell all the directing your own website and cater to local formats for readers. That’s great, but what happens after someone’s read your book? The natural inclination is to think, okay, I’ll publish another book. Which yeah, yes, you can publish another book, and you should publish another book. You should writing is what we all love. Is what I love. And that’s how we got into this. But 1s we’ve been told in this industry that there’s really only a few ways to make a living. You either write an unbelievable amount of books or you sell an unbelievable amount of books. And there’s becoming another way. Not saying that those ways don’t exist. They do. Both of those ways exist. But not everyone’s going to be the best seller. Not everyone can or will write ten books a month or, sorry, ten books a year for a decade. 1s But there is another path that relies instead 1s on trust and how you can leverage that trust to build other assets for you, your business, and ultimately, assets that create additional value for your readers.
What do I mean by this? Okay. 2s Let’s think about every product that ever existed in the world. What if I told you that outside of really, really high tech products or things like a car, I don’t think you’re going to be able to create a car tomorrow. You could almost create anything yourself. The Internet right now. Right now. Tshirt, candle, even consumer packaged goods to a certain extent, like food stocks, 1s a thing for your dog to wear. I don’t know what they call called. Doggy clothes. That sounds cute. My dog would like that. You know what I mean? You could literally create anything. And you can do this online, put on demand very easily. And we live in a world in which fast fashion has taken over. Right. Zara forgetting the company that comes out of China that has two week turnover times. That was going to correct me in the comments. And I love you for correcting me because you’re whatever company I’m forgetting. You know it because you’re smarter than me. But regardless of that, 1s in a world of fast fashion, in a world of five to ten second content, people are actually searching for these things to try and find belonging. So people who are looking at TikTok oftentimes. 1s Are actually looking at TikTok, trying to find other things that they will connect with elsewhere. It’s like the massive discovery platform. Like, TikTok is like the mall of the Internet. And you go to TikTok to walk through the center of the mall. Oop found cool long form YouTube video. OOH found cool song. OOH found cool book. I mean, this is happening, right? People want the long form. People want the things that they can get immersed in in an ephemeral short form world. And when they get immersed in something and the book is the ultimate.
If you get someone to read your story for 10 hours, you just accomplish the hardest thing ever. I have a lot of friends who are YouTubers, we’re TikTokers, and they struggle to get people to consume their things for a couple of minutes. And nothing wrong with that. It’s challenging. But you got someone to read your book for hours and stay with you. You’ve created an unbelievable amount of trust. You’ve created a believable amount of connection in your audience. And the big secret here is how these creators are already monetizing it and how you, as an author, already are a creator and can start to monetize this trust. 1s And it looks 2s on these pillars. One is membership. Membership can include access to all of the other assets that we’ve talked about. But membership really is a place that gives your superfans extra access to your work, extra benefits, and a VIP experience. It’s almost like a creator’s version of having a concert, right? That VIP, digital, concert like experience. And some of this can be tied to other physical goods that you choose to sell. But let’s get into that now. Let’s get into selling physical goods, building physical assets as authors.
This is where merchandise comes in. There are multiple creators who have built merch lines that generated them tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Bye. There are even some authors right now, jason’s Hansbach and Nick Cole have a really great merch line that generate more revenue in merch than they do from actual book sales from their readers, right. That’s just buying it because we just, like, do something simple. In aftermath, you might make $2 off a book. But if a reader goes and buys $60 of your merch and your margins like 60%, you’ve now made like $30 to $35 from that reader who bought your merch. Which means that if you get like, I don’t know, 5% of your readers who’ve paid for one of your books to buy some of your merch, 1s that’s pretty good. That’s pretty good. It’s going to look really good for you, right? So that’s part of how that is. And these merch are repeat purchases because people will come back and they’ll buy 1s the new sock that you come out, the new shirt, the new hoodie. And you don’t have to price these things unbelievably cheap in the sense that the goal isn’t to rip off your readers, obviously, but the goal is to price it in a way in which you can have good margin. And I recommend authors to have around 60% if they could even get up to 70%. That’s great margin on clothing. That’s really good.
That means if you print a shirt for $10, you’ll sell it for something like $30 plus shipping. 1s Which means that yield them clear $20 and have roughly there a 67% margin. I’m sorry for getting to math. I know we’re talking about, like, business stuff, but this is important because we’re all building businesses here, if you want to make a living doing this. And now we have more tools and opportunity than ever to create businesses as authors. And now getting fired up, we have to slow down. Slow down, slow down. Okay, so there’s that, right? So we can get into physical merchandise. 1s There’s also other digital content authors can sell, and typically, nonfiction authors have utilized this asset the most, right? They’ve utilized this asset the most with core sales and online course sales is a huge, massive industry, right? But your subscription can also be largely digital, right? Almost like a digital concert for your readers. They get early access. They get to be part of your community. They get this to be IP experience. And you might not have physical goods tied to some or all of your tears or maybe even any, and that’s perfectly fine. Other things that readers are curious for special signed editions of your books. They want special editions. They want our prints. They want things that can hang up in their room, like anything you see, like the back of the phone case here. Like anything that a reader could potentially. 2s Like, use is an opportunity for you 1s to create something for them. And the best thing is that you don’t have to then sit here and go, like, Michael, Michael, do I have to create, like, 50 designs to create, like, 50 designs? You tell me, like, make 50 different products tomorrow, I’m gonna, like, quit writing for next three months just to build all these products and no, no, no. As your readers start to come in, as they start to be happy, ask them, would you be interested in a T shirt? Want to help pick out the T shirt design? That’s how you can beautifully work with your authors and your readers in your subscription. You can be like, hey, I’m thinking about launching this new thing. Would you be curious about this? I’ve done this before as a creator. I was a YouTuber for a bit of time. I’ve done books, 1s published twelve Sci-Fi novels, did YouTube for bit. And I, like, in the YouTube video, hinted that I was thinking about coming out with merch, and literally ten people responded in the comments asking about that merch. That blew my mind. That blew my mind. So that’s one thing to think about, another thing, another thing to consider on top of something like merchandise. 1s Topson Link digital sales, Topson Link subscriptions, which we’ve already talked about. Other pillars of a creator businesses are partnering with other brands because ultimately, what this whole creator economy is about is utilizing the trust people have in your stories to merge your fictional world, the real world, so that more and more of the things they have in their life become closer to the stories they love. They already find identity, your stories, they already find belonging. And they want to make more of their real world, like the world in your fictional world.
Which is why buying physical things, putting up the walls of great things and this might seem like rampant consumerism that I’m promoting here, but I actually think it’s exactly the opposite. This is thoughtful consumerism that can actually maybe even decrease waste, because these are things people want to hold onto for a long time. Things have special meaning and can ultimately cause the new businesses and the new brands to be built by you, mr. Author or Mrs. Author. Rather than 1s name this random company in this random city, like, you get to be the person. You, as the creator, you as a storyteller, get to be the person who builds the brands that define the future. And this is why I like to say storytellers for the world, right? Because how has the world changed, right? What does this Internet thing really mean? Back in the day, back in the day, long back in the day, before we had books, we still sold stories. We sold stories in small groups of people to bring us together. Those stories animated our world. They helped us create our world. Great countries, create civilizations. And now we live in a world in which place is decoupled from our ability to connect with stories. This already has happened with the printing press, already happened. But in the Internet, that is taken to an unbelievable extreme and the same tools the Internet gave us the opportunity to actually merge our places together, whether by joining a digital community or by literally shipping out goods to people. If you don’t think this is a big opportunity, this is going to multiply exponentially the income that authors make, the net income that goes to authors, the net revenue that our businesses generate, because we’re turning ourselves from publishing companies into mini Disney’s. And that transformation. 1s It’s going to change this industry a lot. It’s going to rock this industry in many ways, but it’s going to enable authors to build unbelievable businesses. And I want you to be one of those authors who has that opportunity.
And no matter what your publishing model is, when you create connections with fans and create trust with them, you can utilize this. And that’s where the last thing comes in. And this, secretly, is the thing the creators up to this point have made most of their money in. And I’m more bullish, more excited in the future about creators creating their own brands. Like, if you have a makeup line in your book, why don’t you create a makeup line or work with someone to create a makeup line? But all this stuff is hard.
A creator running their own business, like operationally printing, all that stuff, can be a lot of time that takes away from the thing you might love most, which is creating. So then you might be thinking like, 1s Well, 1s I’m done. Thanks for telling me this, but I’m going back to just creating. I’m not going to try and create more things. I’m just going to focus on stories. You should only focus on the stories. You should mainly do that. But there’s also an ability to partner with other authors, but also with existing brands. 2s YouTubers make a ton of revenue from advertising in their stories, integrating brands into their worlds, and with now literally like 40% to 50% of readers even who reading ku reading on a phone or a tablet that isn’t that is not a Kindle device. Kindle device sales peaked in 2012 not even like, five years ago ago. Kilometry sales peaked over a decade ago. Now we’re living in a new world where people can just go in a book and click on a link and buy something.
And once again, if it’s connected to your world, it also supports you because you have a partnership with that brand. It can be incredibly, incredibly valuable. You know, if you have someone who’s buying, you know, $50 worth of goods from a brand because you recommended it to them, that brand may pay you $1020 per per customer, per reader you get them. And even if only 1% of your readers who read your book convert to that brand, that can be a meaningful revenue stream. As an author, I’m not suggesting books are littered with ads. I don’t think these should just be random in the book. Here we go. But this is something you can even do with your newsletter, right? If you have a newsletter, you could work with the brand to develop a short story that’s an extension of your world, that, first of all, makes your readers happy. They love it. It’s great content, but then also brings them closer to your character. Maybe one of your main characters has a specific chip that they like, a specific app that they love, like a mobile gaming app they might play. Because, like, anything, right? Anything, the real world is a real company, and you can work with them. Now, this seems like futuristic, but this is going to quickly happen. In the author. My words, mark my words, in the next couple of years, we’re already seeing brands realize that TikTok isn’t always the best place for money, and that going and advertising in communities inside of communities can be really, really valuable. 1s And that instagram creators with less followers can drive more value than a TikTok creator who has a lot more authors. We have some of the most intense, loyal relationships out of any creator in the world. We have some of the most intense, loyal fans, period. And we can leverage that relationship to create more value for our fans and create more value for ourselves. That’s the creator. Connie’s Bow it’s going to take this industry by storm, and subscriptions are really going to be the foundation of that for many, many authors. So if you’re wondering where this economy, where this market goes in the future, I think subscriptions become a bigger and bigger piece of publishing. And this isn’t the kind of thing you have to FOMO into now, or that if you don’t do now, you’re going to be left behind. Don’t worry. It’s not like that. It’s not like that at all. In fact, start a subscription when it’s best for you, and that might be weeks from now, months now, or years from now, but what I can tell you is that the skills that you’re learning by listening to this podcast, which I’m very grateful for, are going to benefit you in the future. They are. I’m so confident that because I’m seeing the world change by creators before our eyes. And once again, that’s why we like to say storytellers rule the world.
On that note is something I want to share. So 1s we 1s at Scriptions for Office has been working on something called Ream for a long time, which is description platform by Fictional. This is for fiction. All this I do not want to really talk about Ream. If you all want to use Ream because you love it, I want it to be something that’s great for you and your readers, because I care about you. But this is not what I want to talk about. 2s The last like, six years of my life, storytelling, books, creating has been everything to me. Like everything I do. 1s And 2s if I was to say I am, 1s I’d be like, I am an author. I am a creator now. I am a CEO. I am a cofounder. I am a storyteller. I am an author, creator. Whatever these additives are, 2s I wouldn’t always think I am me. I am Michael. 2s That wouldn’t be what I’d think about. 1s That’s a problem. And none of them might need to hear this. You might not need to hear this because this might not be a problem that you have. But if you do have this problem, then I’m speaking to you, and I hope this helps, which is that same as authors, as people who are so passionate about what we do like, this has been my dream to be an author 1s since I was probably 13. I published my first book at 15 every weekend, every night in high school. I’d rather be working a job to save up money to publish my books, or I’d be writing. This has been my life.
This has been always what I’ve wanted. This industry has been everything I’ve ever loved. And 2s most of my friends come from this world now, too. 1s But as authors who love our stories, who love our characters, and who love our readers and what we’re creating, we can’t let that be our whole lives. We can’t let that take over, especially when we think about the world of the creator. Kanye, when we’re going to continually merge our fictional world with the real world and bring our stories to life and the lives of our readers and ways that could not even be imagined just a few years ago. That’s our future, and it’s a future that we get to create together, but it’s not a future that we can let take over completely. Take over us, take over our souls, our spirit. There have been moments when I’ve done that. There have been moments, specifically with rein, where I felt this unbelievable responsibility to just.
Make this the place of all of our dreams as storytellers. And felt the responsibility to serve as best as possible in every moment, every single person here, and also felt the responsibility to see where this could be at five or ten years from now and realize that, realize that vision. That the almost like cognitive dissonance between what will be and what is, and seeing that and not being satisfied and wanting more for all of you. Wanting more for me, because I want this to be a great world for me to have a career as an author. 1s But you can’t do everything overnight, and more so than that, you can’t let that identity take over. And 1s there have been moments that I’ve reflected on recently where I’ve been like 1s my life has been as a CEO, as an author. And it’s important to also discover ourselves outside of this. Also to ground ourselves outside of this. It’s something that I’m working on. It’s something that I think we’re all working on in our own ways. I just wanted to share that. I just want to be open about that, because a lot of times we talk about just business stuff in this podcast, and it’s important. 2s And I want to be more personal on this podcast. I want to share more of me and what I’m going through behind the scenes as we try and create something that can hopefully help a lot of y’all realize your dreams as authors. That’s obviously my goal. It’s weird for me. I’ve never actually realized my dreams as an author in the way I expected. I’ve made a full time living as a creator, but through live streams. Live streams that happened because my readers read my book on a specific app. 2s Weird stuff where like it’s all gone in a circle. If anything, it’s all been leading to this greater economy. This idea that selling books might not be the end game, but creating stories through the power of the written word that get people excited and you can build other things around and other revenue streams might just be the future. I mean, those are how my dreams have been realized. And it’s ever the dream that I would have imagined into having at 15. And to be frank, it’s a dream that is something that is challenging just to do that one thing. So there’s this new way of being an author that I’ve been able to realize in different ways throughout my career, but at the same time 3s that can’t just be it, right? And I know how intoxicating it is to to listen to this podcast and to hear the opportunity and to think all the wide openness you have as an author. Feel that dream, that passion. Know that I am someone who.
Just wants to help you. That me and Emilia just want to help you. And the community we’ve created is here to help you in the Facebook group and everything that we do. And the price admission is your passion and your willingness to commit to it. But at the same time, there has to be a lie, because we can’t let the passion take over us completely. We have to moderate it. We have to be grounded and balanced. And I know how too easy it is with all the passion that we have as authors for what we do to let that take over. So 1s prioritize your family. Prioritize your children if you have them. Prioritize your friends, prioritize your wellbeing before your readers. Prioritize your wellbeing before your stories, because the last thing I want to see from anyone is have their dreams come true, but they be miserable, because that one dream. Well, eventually you wake up and you realize life is about more than just a dream.
Thank you, everyone, for listening to this podcast. I hope everyone has an amazing rest of the day. We’ll be back soon. Let me know if you enjoyed this sole episode. Maybe we’ll have a meal. I do a sole episode. At some point. I might do more so episodes, but to be frank, we have a lot of interviews coming out soon, so that’ll be really fun. I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. It means a lot. It helps us out. It’s really all we ask of you. And one last thing. Don’t forget storytellers rule the world.