Posted on February 20, 2023.
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Terri Bruce is a speculative fiction author who has never fit neatly into one genre. That’s why today we are speaking with her about how to set up the foundation of your subscription. Who is your ideal reader? What can you offer your readers in a community? And ultimately, how can you create stories that turn strangers into superfans? All of this and more will be explored in today’s expansive episode.
Terri’s Author Website: https://www.terribruce.net/
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#23 Episode Outline:
0:00 Introduction and Context
2:58 Terri’s Journey Into Subscriptions
5:50 Co-Creating Stories
12:56 Building Communities as a Writer in Indie Publishing
17:33 Struggles of Identifying Your Ideal Reader
21:20 Connecting with Readers at In-Person Signings
29:25 Building Trust With Your Readers
42:16 Breaking and Crossing Genre Boundaries
57:01 The Long Feedback Cycle of Being an Author
1:04:53 Marketing as a Writer
1:10:20 Expectations and Subscriptions
1:16:22 Terri’s Final Piece of Advice
1:20:34 Conclusion
#23 Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Subscriptions for Author’s podcast. Today we’re gonna be talking all about how you can set up the foundation for your subscription, and we have a very special guest in the author Terri Bruce. She’s been a great friends of ours in the Subscriptions for . Author’s Facebook group for almost a year now.
[00:00:21] Michael Evans: I feel like somewhere between a half a year and a year. It’s been awesome. She’s. Fantasy and adventure author and honestly blends genres together, which if you’re an author who doesn’t necessarily fit into a predefined subgenre, or might be trying to write to market, but not for the same market always.
[00:00:38] Michael Evans: This might be a really interesting podcast episode for you because we talk all about how Terri is looking to build her community. How she’s found some success in moments, but also some of the moments in which things haven’t gone as planned. Before we actually started this podcast episode, I asked Terri what she thought we should title this as, and she suggested that we should [00:01:00] use the titles that things they don’t tell you about how to apply author marketing device or it’s easier to learn from those who first failed than from instant success.
[00:01:09] Michael Evans: I think those sorts of ideas give you a really good sort of introduction into what we will be chatting about today. Terri has learned a ton, in her career as an author. Has a lot of amazing insights for us that span from how to recruit fans on social media, how we should price and actually.
[00:01:27] Michael Evans: Communicate our subscription to our fans and how to think about building a community that spans genres in our broader author marketing plan and really career. So her insights were amazing. This is a longer episode than usual because. Me and Emilia actually start giving her some advice. She starts giving us some advice and it becomes, we think, a really vibrant conversation.
[00:01:47] Michael Evans: So I hope you enjoy it and if you’re not already a part of the Subscriptions for Authors Facebook group, you should join it because you can meet amazing people like Terri, who she’s very generous with her time and insights in the group, and also plenty of other [00:02:00] subscription authors. We have like I think 1400 people in there now, which is amazing, and we’d love to have you as well.
[00:02:05] Michael Evans: Enough of me talking now. We’ll get into the interview, me and Emiliawith Terri.
[00:02:09] Michael Evans: Terri, I’m so excited to be with you. Honestly, you’re one of the people who is the most insightful and certainly the most friendly in the Subscriptions for authors Facebook group, which is where we met. And from there have become like good, good virtual friends. So it’s amazing to actually talk to you today and I’m really excited to share your journey, your writing journey with the world or just the people listening to this podcast.
[00:02:34] Michael Evans: But hi everyone. We’re very grateful for you. So Terri, I wanna just start by asking what kind of got you in subscriptions, cuz you’ve been writing for a long time, you’ve been doing this for a long time. And obviously we all know that subscriptions is not like exactly, at least at the moment, the traditional thing to do.
[00:02:49] Michael Evans: So what got you interested in it to begin with it?
[00:02:53] Terri Bruce: It’s interesting because I’ve been thinking about the subscription model for a while. And there’s [00:03:00] kind of two things that kind of like came together for me. One is I started sort of my publishing career, if you will writing serial fiction in high school.
[00:03:10] Terri Bruce: I would type it on my mother’s typewriter, her electric typewriter and pass it out on the bus to school you know, to friends. So I had started out writing that way, and then in college I was writing fan fiction and posting weekly chapters. And I love that model. I love that immediacy. I’m a very slow writer.
[00:03:30] Terri Bruce: I am a turtle writer. When it comes to my novels it’s like, two to four years between books. So I do like that immediacy of being able to connect with readers faster to be able to get work into their hands while they’re waiting for like a completed book. And then at the same time, I’ve looked at what’s been going on in publishing in terms of revenue that’s coming out of both in indie publishing and small press publishing.
[00:03:53] Terri Bruce: Even with self-publishing these days where, you know, advances are drying up, royalty splits [00:04:00] are, you know, in the toilet and you look at the amount of piroting that’s happening, like sales, like it’s such a struggle. And I thought to myself, you know, like Charles Dickens started out doing serial fiction, like a lot of the classics were published in magazines as serial fiction.
[00:04:19] Terri Bruce: Yeah. And so I was like, I think it’s time to go back to that model where authors connect directly with their readers. You control your revenue. You are forming this community. Have that closer connection. You get that immediacy of feedback. Like it is just a win-win across the board for everything that authors and readers are trying to do and the way that they can connect.
[00:04:40] Terri Bruce: And I was like, we kind of need to go back to that. And it wasn’t until the last few years where the technology has shown up. Cause I was like, I’m not gonna get a printing press in my basement and crank out pamphlets like Ben Franklin. Right. And, and Thomas Payton and stand on the corner and give those out every week.
[00:04:55] Terri Bruce: How do I do this? And now the technology is finally catching up and we’re [00:05:00] going back to that. And then of course there’s apps, you know, now on your phone too where you can do serial fiction and I was like, This is the moment. So yeah, that’s what brought me in.
[00:05:09] Michael Evans: Wow. That’s, I love that , the serial fiction, like in college and fan fiction is, is amazing.
[00:05:17] Michael Evans: I think you, Emilia have a lot in common with that .
[00:05:20] Emilia Rose: That’s, yeah, definitely. Oh my gosh, I, I didn’t even know that you started with serial fiction, so I think that’s really, really cool. Yeah, I missed my fan fiction days. I used to, we used to do Round Robins. I do some virtual readings with this other group that helped organize and we were actually gonna do some round robin In December, because I miss those so much where you just, like, somebody starts a thread on the forum and then other authors just jump in.
[00:05:45] Emilia Rose: You just go and you’re co-creating. Yeah. You’re co-creating stories and we’re like, let’s co-create some stories and then we’ll just, we’ll wrap those suckers up into a book form and get those out to readers too is like this like freebie bonus thing and it’s, it’s fun and it’s creative. You, you spark off other authors, it’s [00:06:00] like mm-hmm.
[00:06:00] Emilia Rose: brain candy. You know, kind of like when you did a palette cleanser, you just need to have some fun as a writer. And so I was like, yeah, I miss those days so much. Cuz it was great to be in an author community and a, a reader community. And that’s what, at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it just, it’s great.
[00:06:17] Emilia Rose: That’s what I love about serial fiction. I, I love, like you were saying, I love like the instant like connection you get with your readers. It like the, the feedback is instant and just like being able to see them like, love something or hate something in a good way or, or maybe even a bad way too. Like that’s
[00:06:32] Emilia Rose: why I started with serial fiction and why I like, it’s like huge in my business.
[00:06:38] Terri Bruce: Yeah. And , I love what authors are doing too. Like there’s some authors that have banded together, right? To run. Mm-hmm. a pat, or run a Kickstarter and are doing box sets. And I think that’s what’s so great these days, you know, with the rise of like self-publishing where authors can form community together.
[00:06:56] Terri Bruce: Yeah. And that then feeds into the reader [00:07:00] community. Like they can pool their readers, give their readers more content, more content faster. So it’s a value added for both sides. But as an author, you’re not out here struggling alone with the marketing and struggling with production and having to do everything yourself if you can get a group of authors.
[00:07:15] Terri Bruce: And so I do love the flexibility with the subscription service where you can do it solo or you can do it with other authors and community as
[00:07:21] Michael Evans: well. Yeah, no, that’s something that, I heard it on the Story Grid podcast, which. I listen to a lot of writing podcasts, that’s one. Not no shame on the podcast host, but it’s like down at like, maybe mid-tier in my arsenal.
[00:07:35] Michael Evans: I won’t listen to everyone, but I’ll listen to some. But I believe the, the host of that podcast were, this was like three years ago, but talking about the rise of like self-publishing 3.0, which this is a such a confusing term because people don’t really, I don’t really know what it means when I say it, so I’ll just like clarify that and say that people like Warner Ross who runs Alliance of Independent Authors and she’s wonderful and she actually published a book called Self-Publishing 3.0 that I [00:08:00] recommend people read it.
[00:08:00] Michael Evans: It’s a short read, like two to three hours. And it’s all about kind of direct sales authors taking back control from platforms and where this is all going, which I thought was super cool. Their focus when they were highlighting self-publishing 3.0 was actually about writers forming what you’re talking about, Terri, these small collectives.
[00:08:15] Michael Evans: And it almost feels like both of these trends are working in convergence. It’s just, there’s no like clear definition of it cuz we’re not, we’re still creating that future as we speak, but. I find that to be really, really cool. And it reminds me of something that I think I’ve mentioned on this podcast before.
[00:08:32] Michael Evans: The Dr. Dream Sm p i i, I don’t know if I have mentioned on this podcast, but you were talking about serial fiction, Emiliaand, and Terri. You said that it’s about bringing closer, like fans and authors being in the same place, that community being won. It reminded me of the culture right now in gaming and if you’re like in a world like Minecraft or Roblox, which there are like literally hundreds of 17 year olds making like $500,000 plus a year, like streaming [00:09:00] Minecraft and Roblox.
[00:09:01] Michael Evans: So we just have to like let that sit in, like that’s market. Minecraft is, Minecraft alone generates more revenue and like downloadable collectible. Than like most of the e-book market in the United States. So, and that’s not saying that like, oh, people don’t read, people love reading. It’s that these immersive worlds, people are willing to pay a ton to be a part of.
[00:09:24] Michael Evans: Like these people, I know this from my brother, my brother’s paid like a thousand dollars to be part of video game stuff. And he’s like, he’s 19. Not an amazing decision on his part. Financially I’ll, I’ll say that. Because he went broke for it. But regardless of these stories, he was fine.
[00:09:36] Michael Evans: It was a summer job, you know, he could make it back next summer. You can do these things as a teenager. But when I thought about this all, I was thinking like, this is open conversation at this point, but is this why LIT RPG does so well in serial fiction? Because that comes from the video game community already.
[00:09:53] Michael Evans: That behavior where we’re in these worlds together, we’re building, we’re. We’re in these online servers where we’re collaborating [00:10:00] to create these real-time stories, like something like Dream s and p does. So then when you actually take it to the text form, which spoiler text is never going away, we love reading.
[00:10:09] Michael Evans: They just do the same thing and then have like taken over the Amazon store. I don’t know if that’s like, am I just speaking out my mind or that real?
[00:10:17] Terri Bruce: I think it’s not just the, the lit R P G but a lot like games in general, right?
[00:10:24] Terri Bruce: Like some of these worlds like Final Fantasy and stuff, and like it’s the community. It’s the world that people have built. And I go to several conventions every year. So scifi Fantasy Conventions a big one. in January in Boston and it’s amazing. And people do costuming. You know, and you’ll see people walking around and it, it’s just, yeah, it’s these immersive worlds.
[00:10:48] Terri Bruce: And whether it’s coming outta movies, I mean, you’ll see people, you know, people write Star Wars fan fiction, they write Fire Five fan fiction, right? Like, it could be television, it can be movies, it can be games, but when you create a world and characters [00:11:00] that people want to live in, they live in that. And, you know, some of the, the costuming people, they’re spending a lot of money and time and effort and skills and love and craft to create these costumes, you know?
[00:11:13] Terri Bruce: Yeah. People who writing fan fiction, I’ve read some fan fiction. There was one fan fiction I read. Online that I actually contacted the author and I was like, you can’t publish this book because of the copyright characters. Just change the character’s name and change and publish this as a romance because this is the most beautiful story I have ever read in my life.
[00:11:32] Terri Bruce: So like even fan fiction, you know, the craft, the care, the love that people are pouring into these worlds. And I think that’s, you know, the gold standard for any author, right, is we want to create something that people love that much, that they’re willing to go broke, collecting our characters, making fan art, costuming, going to the movie, watching the television show, going to the convention, you know, supernatural.
[00:11:57] Terri Bruce: That television show became. Very popular in [00:12:00] part because some fans started a convention and then the convention started bringing in other fans who then fueled the show, and the show managed to go, it was 16 seasons that they, they managed to go, they canceled two or three times and CW had to keep bringing them back because the fans were like, no we just do not accept this.
[00:12:18] Terri Bruce: You must continue.
[00:12:20] Terri Bruce: So, yeah.
[00:12:21] Michael Evans: I’m with you. I’m sold on this like immersive world concept. I think we can all feel it, but this is the difficult part, which I think we all know, is how do we actually like create this for ourselves and for our readers as authors? And I’m curious, Terri, with your journey through like a decade in self-publishing and indie publishing, what have been, what you’ve learned about building that sort of community that makes like fans want to like write fan fiction and to dress up as your characters?
[00:12:51] Terri Bruce: See, that’s the nut I have not cracked. Partly, it’s been difficult building community and that’s kind of on me because I’ve made every [00:13:00] mistake possible going through that journey, but also partly because this mindset is fairly new, you know? Mm-hmm. , I started in publishing 10 years ago. My first novel actually came out 11 years ago.
[00:13:11] Terri Bruce: Like as, as I look at the clock, I’m like, oh gosh. It was August, 2012 for a book that I sold. Yeah. That I started shopping in 2010. It took two years for that book to get sold and published. But it was the traditional sales model. Right. And I also was with a publisher, so the publisher took care of a lot of that, but that also means they controlled a lot of that.
[00:13:30] Terri Bruce: Right. So they were doing the marketing and the sales. Yeah. And so I was free to just keep writing, but. That means I had years where I was not connecting directly with fans unless they were emailing me, or I was doing an appearance. And then I’d meet people and you sign a book and they walk away like, you’re like, can you gimme your email address so I can email you later?
[00:13:49] Terri Bruce: That didn’t happen. So it’s been hard to like try to go back and then like find the people about like, Hey, I’m still here and you really liked my books 10 years ago. Now you [00:14:00] can connect with me directly. So I think for some of us who’ve been around for a while and didn’t have, didn’t create those books, you know, that went viral, that are very big.
[00:14:10] Terri Bruce: You know, I’m not a Kelly Armstrong, I’m, you know, none of those kind of like authors like Cher Con, right? Like that have their own convention where you can connect directly with fans. It is a lot harder. And then just the type of stuff that I’m writing I’m kind of over in a very hard to define. Genre vibe.
[00:14:30] Terri Bruce: And we’ve talked about this, you know, in the, the Facebook group, but like I’m kind of with like literary speculative fiction. I’m over with like Audrey Nier, Tim Powers, China Mayville, a little bit of Neil Gaiman and I don’t really see a lot of like fan fiction about like her fearful symmetry, like maybe the time Traveler’s wife, which is Audrey Neer, but not her other book about ghosts, which is her fearful cemetery.
[00:14:54] Terri Bruce: I don’t see a lot of like fan fiction and character dressing up cuz the stories don’t [00:15:00] lend themselves to that. And my stories are set in the real world. They’re kind of also magical realism. So my characters are just sort of like ordinary people, so it’d be a little like hard to dress up and my stories are set in the real world.
[00:15:13] Terri Bruce: So there’s sort of not something to like glom onto that can self insert into that world and exist there. Which also I think is one of the reasons that for authors like me, , it is a little harder to build community, get that engagement, build like a Facebook group, build a subscription, because we don’t have a world and characters that fans can really connect with in that deep way.
[00:15:37] Terri Bruce: Because so much of what I write is just so much reality, , you know, it’s like, oh, it’s the world we already inhabit.
[00:15:44] Michael Evans: Well, I, I agree, but I also think that for, and every genre is different, but for, for the romance genre, certainly there’s a lot of people writing carnal romance, which I don’t think I know of anyone who’s like actually been with the werewolf in real life, but that would be [00:16:00] cool.
[00:16:00] Michael Evans: But, so there are fantastical things in romance, but also so much of romance is small town contemporary romance. It’s you know, set in worlds and characters. Situations that are very familiar and sometimes like scarily familiar, it’s why we relate to things that are in romance. And I don’t think that genre is alone in that thriller is is similar, but I think there’s a huge difference between each genre.
[00:16:24] Michael Evans: So I, I’m wondering because now we can dive a bit deeper into like who your readers are cuz we’re just talking about readers broadly now and I think that, you know, romance readers probably no matter what the sub genre are generalizing, like to be a part of community more so than readers of something like maybe crime crime thrillers.
[00:16:42] Michael Evans: I don’t see as much fanfiction really ever about any crime thrillers there. There’s not people who are doing that as much. Certainly, I wouldn’t say I’ve seen fan fiction about things like post-apocalyptic survival fiction. There’s not really many communities of posto survival fiction. That doesn’t mean people don’t love it, it doesn’t mean anything like that.
[00:16:58] Michael Evans: It also doesn’t mean that subscriptions can’t work for you. [00:17:00] But I guess we’re in one podcast, we can’t talk about all about subscriptions in 1 1, 1 go. So let’s focus on this community point. And I wanna ask you, Terri, as you say, you write this nebulous ish, but you also called it literary speculative fiction, which I feel like I have an idea of.
[00:17:16] Michael Evans: But I want you to give me an idea of who you think your readers are. Not like, oh, Bob and Jill, but what are they interested in? What kind of person are they?
[00:17:28] Terri Bruce: When I find out, I’ll let you know. . And I think, that’s been the struggle for me for like 10 years. Like all the advice that’s out there about like connecting deeply with readers, forming community is like identifier you know, step one, identify your ideal reader. And I’m like, okay, but how when you write something that’s a little more complex or sort of not straightforward, it’s like, yeah, I need the roadmap for that, please.
[00:17:58] Terri Bruce: And I have not found it. And that’s [00:18:00] what’s been really difficult and scary about kind of moving to like the subscription model. You know, I just finished David Gore’s book the changes Super fan. Yeah, the superfans one. And you know, the, the model where it is don’t cast wide net cast, you know, a very focused net.
[00:18:20] Terri Bruce: You know, in the traditional sales funnel, you fish in a lot of ponds and you throw all your bait out there to track every kind of fish and you bring them into the funnel and let them self select out, right? And so more leads is better. And the model where it’s no, you can do more with just a hundred super fans, right?
[00:18:38] Terri Bruce: So you just need to cast a very focused line and fish in one spot and just get a small number of people who are the right fit. Well, for someone like me, that’s terrifying because it’s like I get two people from that pond and one person from that pond. , my readers cross the genres. I get a lot of urban fantasy readers, for instance from my [00:19:00] novel series which is set in the real world.
[00:19:02] Terri Bruce: And it’s sort of urban fantasy, but there’s no monster slaying. And so people who want the real adrenaline action packed urban fantasy don’t connect with my story, but the people who like the magical realism aspect of urban fantasy, like my story, literary, speculative fiction, where do you find those people?
[00:19:21] Terri Bruce: I find that most of my readers read paperback and not eBooks. So I do much better hand selling and at events where I can sell paperbacks directly to people. But a lot of those events, it’s hard to get those people’s like address, like to follow up with them, right? They buy a book at your table and then they go away and you hope they come back and send it for your newsletter.
[00:19:42] Terri Bruce: So,
[00:19:42] Michael Evans: mm-hmm. I, for that, I have an idea.
[00:19:44] Emilia Rose: Me too. .
[00:19:45] Terri Bruce: Okay. And I have some overlap with, Neil Gaiman, China Ville Tim Power, slipstream, new, weird. That’s also kind of what I write. But not exactly cuz a lot of those like, and Chuck, we Diggs [00:20:00] Blackbird series, but like Chuck writes and I love Chuck’s work and I love the Blackbird series, but it’s very dude centric.
[00:20:07] Terri Bruce: it’s very dude literature versus I’m sort of the feminist version of a Czech Wenig. So his audience is not entirely my audience. So it’s all these like little pieces and like different authors I can identify that I have overlap with like Shirley Jackson, but not if you’re like into the hardcore horror aspect of hers.
[00:20:25] Terri Bruce: But her as her horror is sort of this slow, weird, you know, psychological piece. So some of my work, my short stories crossed with that, not my fantasy series. So yeah, it’s been like. Pieces, it’s not like I know who these people are. It’s an amalgamation of a lot of different pieces that come together to form my audience, which A, makes it hard to find them, and B, hard to find content and value added community building stuff that appeals to all of them.
[00:20:56] Terri Bruce: Cuz they’re all coming for different pieces of what I do. And [00:21:00] it’s hard to find like what that core nugget
[00:21:01] Terri Bruce: is.
[00:21:02] Michael Evans: I understand. But I think we have a challenge for the rest of this podcast, , which is, let’s try and at least talk about it and we can figure it out. Cause that would be fun. And in this journey we’ll be able to learn a lot about what a lot of people struggle with their description.
[00:21:15] Michael Evans: But I wanna let Emilia share what her idea was. for your in-person signings to be able to connect and maybe get someone’s contact information there. What was your idea, Emilia?
[00:21:24] Emilia Rose: So actually have two things. But the first is that I’ll go, I’ll go through so what I do at book signings is I usually bring my iPad or I bring like a sheet of paper that basically says like, Hey, do you wanna sign up for my newsletter?
[00:21:36] Emilia Rose: Put your email down right here. And a lot of people sign up, even if they don’t buy a book, they’ll put their email down because they like, could be interested. So that’s something you can possibly do. So you don’t have to like, hope that they’ll come back. You can immediately say like, if you don’t want book now, you can put your name and email on my newsletter and I’ll follow up with you later.
[00:21:56] Emilia Rose: Well, a different book I might have that I didn’t bring today [00:22:00] or something like that.
[00:22:01] Terri Bruce: Yeah I have done that , sign up sheet voluntarily, give me your email. And I think. That has not worked well. Okay. But I think the, the added piece that you had there, the key is, and I’ll follow up with like a free book or something.
[00:22:14] Terri Bruce: Like, if you’re offering something of value, then I think yes, that is gonna be the hook versus, Hey, I am a complete new to you . Yes. Swag pack. Yeah. Like, yeah. I think it’s, you gotta offer something of value. You can’t just ask people like, Hey, voluntarily, give me your email. You don’t know me. And now you think you’re signing up for spam.
[00:22:33] Terri Bruce: That’s just gonna like scare them off, which has been my experience.
[00:22:37] Michael Evans: Well, so a lot of it this town, this, everything’s about trust at the end of the day. So yeah, we all, most people have great intentions. In this framework, there’s like three kinds of people. There’s people who are like really good at selling and have bad intentions.
[00:22:53] Michael Evans: That’s someone like Sam Maman Fried. Look ’em up if you haven’t made attention to the news, that’s a crazy story. Then there’s people who [00:23:00] are good at selling and have good intentions. That’s what we properly aspire to be. And then there’s people who have good intentions and are bad at selling and there’s people who are bad at selling and have bad intentions, but we don’t need to really worry about them because, you know, they’re bad at selling to begin with.
[00:23:13] Michael Evans: But I know that to think of us as selling sounds so weird as creative people, it’s like, I’m not a salesperson and I don’t think that we should be a salesperson. I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of authors get into is getting so caught up in like the stereotypical internet marketing guy advice.
[00:23:29] Michael Evans: And we could like, probably dovetail a lot of the self-publishing advice to, like, the advice that drop shippers give their people when, like, the psychology of this business is completely different. Competing on pricing isn’t always what needs to happen, et cetera, et cetera. But what I’ll say about this though is that you should lean into your, Ability as a storyteller to get people interested.
[00:23:51] Michael Evans: So what is it that excites you about your world? When you sign up to my newsletter, like, I’m going to send something really interesting that’ll interest this specific kind of [00:24:00] person I want, interested in my books now. We’ll we’ll come back to that, but I do wanna share with everyone cuz I know you all saw it, but for those listening who can’t see it, this is a swag pack from Christopher Hopper who when you go to his site you can sign up for his mailing list and he asks for your address.
[00:24:14] Michael Evans: And it’s like a complicated process, but he does it deliberately cuz he wants only very high quality leads in his mailing list. He shared in a Facebook group, he has a very high open rate. I won’t share exactly what cause it was in the Facebook group and I don’t wanna like make all of his info public, but I will share that he sent this to me and he says this to every reader.
[00:24:32] Michael Evans: I’m not special. Well I’m special cuz I’m one of his readers, but I’m not like an extra special reader. Right. And. I just thought, what a nice way to get my address. Like now he knows where I live, which is kind of sounds creepy, but I’m, I’m cool with that. Chris, you can show up at my house anytime and I’ll make you dinner.
[00:24:49] Michael Evans: Or actually my, I’m not gonna make you dinner. I’m not very good at that. We’ll have to like do takeout or something, but regardless of, you can show up my house, Chris. I thought about this is like if you get a fan at a convention, right? [00:25:00] If you say, Hey, if you want extra books, I’ll like ship it to you and sign it and sign it, then that, that defeats the whole purpose of that fan interaction.
[00:25:08] Michael Evans: But what it could be nice to say is like, Hey, I am actually in the process of like, you could do a little white lie of getting these, custom bonuses. They didn’t ship in time to this event, but if you want one, I’ll just send it to you for free. Cause I couldn’t bring it here. What’s your address?
[00:25:21] Michael Evans: And, and that, that could be a little bit creepy. To like a new fan who’s like in a whole different area like that. But if it’s an existing fan who is showing up at a convention that could be something that you do. Like I wanna send you something. I wanna send you a card. And I see people doing this now with their subscriptions where their rewards, again, the people who already trust them are, Hey, I’m gonna send you a card once a year, very cheap.
[00:25:45] Michael Evans: So with that, gimme your address. And I know this sounds like, so like why do we care about having readers addresses? But I think it would be so cool to be able to, again, new books coming out, why send them a newsletter or still send ’em a newsletter? But you could send ’em a postcard too. And that would make someone [00:26:00] just be like, whoa, I forgot to buy their book after the newsletter, but like, they sent me this postcard, I’m just gonna put it on my desk.
[00:26:06] Michael Evans: And then if they don’t do it right, then they’ll remember it later. So I mean, that’s just like marketing 1 0 1. Be everywhere for the people you want. , there’s definitely a better way to , a approach it than just like straight up asking for their address. But for Christopher, right, he’s not directing cold readers to his website.
[00:26:21] Michael Evans: The readers would already love him, and then they’re like, oh, Christopher wants my address. He doesn’t even really mention why. Like, honestly, I didn’t really understand why he wanted my address, but I was like, I trust Christopher cuz I do. And then he sent me this and I’m like, whoa, what did I, it was a surprise.
[00:26:35] Michael Evans: Like, that’s really interesting. But there, the psychology there is, he found an ability to generate trust in us. So one way you can obviously do that at convention too, is like talking to your fans just like you would on social media. Talk to them for a long, like you don’t wanna talk to one person the whole time, but sometimes giving that person that attention instead of like, every author has their sales pitch.
[00:26:57] Michael Evans: Like, here’s my book and this is the tagline. And [00:27:00] everyone gets that constantly. And if you’re the person who’s like, how are you doing? How is it here? Someone might be hit with that and be like, what you care about how I’m doing? Like I just had people sell me for the last five minutes and honestly I’m tired.
[00:27:12] Michael Evans: That person might be more interested in you because they realize that like your main goal isn’t to sell them a book, it’s to build a relationship. And then through that relationship they will hopefully buy your book one day. And I think most authors approach with the sell immediately and we feel like used car salesman and that’s not comfortable for me.
[00:27:29] Michael Evans: At least. I might work for other authors.
[00:27:31] Michael Evans: Well, while you’re talking
[00:27:32] Terri Bruce: Michael, my brain is like on fire right now. Like I have three different directions I wanna go with this conversation and I can decide , which first. But cuz what you, you said, you said something that just resonated very strongly with me that was kind of like you know, light bulb moment.
[00:27:46] Terri Bruce: But before we get to that, I will say, yeah, when I do events I see people, like they’ll, my poster will catch their eye with the book cover and they wanna approach. , but they, they go past and they’re kind of like side eyeing because they’re worried about that sales pick. They’re afraid, [00:28:00] like if they make eye contact, they’re gonna get sold.
[00:28:02] Terri Bruce: Right. And they, they’re like, please do not , give me the hard sell. And sometimes I’ll see people like try, they’re like closing in on me, right? Like they’re tacking like a sales ship. Cause like a, a cell phone because they’re, they’re getting closer. They really want to check out the book, but they just don’t want me to talk to them.
[00:28:18] Terri Bruce: And so, you know, and I’m a high introvert, people do not believe that about me. But doing events, I just. Sweat through my clothes. I am just like, also don’t talk to me please. But, I do genuinely love talking to people one-on-one. I don’t like doing the sales thing. And so I’ve developed my own kind of approach where I’m like, sort of make eye contact, but not really where I’m just trying to signal with my body language.
[00:28:43] Terri Bruce: It’s safe to approach. I will not jump on you and try to force you to buy a book. But yeah, you’re right. People just, they don’t want that being sold to in that hard sell. And I think this kind of goes to the, the thing that really resonated that you said, it’s about trust and doing that trust-based marketing, [00:29:00] and I’ll share one story for instance, you know, when you say authors, we get caught up.
[00:29:03] Terri Bruce: In all that marketing and early on, you know, they said, oh, you need a newsletter. , you gotta have a newsletter. And so I was like, okay, how do I set up a newsletter and how do I get people to subscribe to this newsletter, blah, blah, blah. And there’s many authors who make a very good living selling services to other authors.
[00:29:20] Terri Bruce: Sorry, my cat is coming up over the top of the computer. So there’s newsletter builders that you can do. And lots of ways that you can get subscribers to your newsletter. Okay. Get their cats . My gosh, these are kittens. I got kittens and they’re outta control. That’s amazing. Yeah. And so like I hear stories of like authors selling their newsletter subscriber list to other authors that this authors who think news newsletter swaps means giving your subscribers to another author where I was just like, horrified.
[00:29:49] Terri Bruce: I was like, oh my god, no, those people signed up with you. And if you turn around and sell their names to other people, to market to them, like you have broken your trust. Well, I did a newsletter builder where every author [00:30:00] puts in, it was 25 or $50. This was quite a few years ago now. And all that money gets pooled to buy a beautiful gift pack, right?
[00:30:08] Terri Bruce: There’s books and gift cards in this giant package and then market that giveaway. So people enter the giveaway and there’s a disclaimer that says you were. Signing up for these authors, mail list, the 50 authors who are in this giveaway, you’re signing up for all their mailing lists by agreeing to enter.
[00:30:24] Terri Bruce: That’s all about board. That’s great. I got the list. I got 5,000 names from that builder, which is amazing. And I imported those into my newsletter list. Started sending newsletters and the poo hit the fan. I started getting all these complaints about spam. I never signed up for this. Now, in some regards, people sign up for giveaways all the time.
[00:30:43] Terri Bruce: They don’t read the small print, didn’t realize they were signing up for newsletters. I was like, okay, whatever. But it started getting worse and worse. And then I started talking to some of the other authors in the giveaway, and it turns out that the person running this giveaway was reselling names.
[00:30:56] Terri Bruce: These names did not come from the giveaway where they were agreeing to send it for my [00:31:00] mailing list. These were names she had sold to authors several times from previous giveaways. Hmm. So I just paid for 5,000 people. Dumped them into my mailing list and now had them in my mailing list that legitimately I was spamming them.
[00:31:16] Terri Bruce: I had basically bought a list and not had people who had opted in to hear from me. And I am still trying to clean up that mess from my mailing list. There’s several things that had happened, but so yeah, sometimes when you’re an author and you’re like, I’m trying to build this newsletter and I wanna build it fast, and you’re not building that trust, right?
[00:31:34] Terri Bruce: Yeah. Like that and it’s just a transaction. It ends up being worse for you in the long run than if you do it slow and steady and do it the correct way. Yep. And even like, I’m doing a lot of book funnel group promos and going back to David Gore again, like, you know, there was, there’s some authors who were like, I signed up for every book funnel promo.
[00:31:53] Terri Bruce: I don’t know that you can market those well, and you’re also grabbing as many leads as possible and a large percentage of those are not [00:32:00] gonna be interested in you. And so I moved to a model where I curate what I’m joining very, very carefully. And I’ve changed my onboarding process too, to be much more authentic.
[00:32:12] Terri Bruce: And kind of connecting like, this is how you got to me. You signed up for a book funnel thing. This is literally the book you got from me in that. So I’m connecting my face and name with what they have. So they’re like, oh, okay. That’s how I got here to start trying to build that trust. And I think, you know, as you were talking about the authenticity of connection is what builds that trust.
[00:32:35] Terri Bruce: And a lot of times as authors we’re so focused on the product and the merchandise and not that authenticity. So like you said, getting a card from an author where people are like, Who would want that? I do printed chatbooks that I send with my Christmas card. And then I always have extras that I’ve started giving out as like giveaway prices.
[00:32:54] Terri Bruce: And people don’t expect that. And they’re like, I got a mail from you. Like something tangible that’s [00:33:00] amazing. And you’re like, it’s a chatbook. I printed on my home computer, but okay. . It’s
[00:33:05] Terri Bruce: so possible.
[00:33:06] Terri Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. That’s what it is. And like,
[00:33:08] Michael Evans: yeah. Wanna be thought of, we live in a world in which we’re all one of 2 billion users on Facebook, or now 3 billion, one of a billion people here.
[00:33:16] Michael Evans: And, and no one’s thinking of us. We have all these creators, influencers that have hundreds of thousands, millions of subscribers. They can’t possibly be there for each of their fans. But I think this is the interesting part. Cause when you say authentic, I think that work can be nebulous. And I also think that I want to maybe share something that could be helpful as well to people, which is that.
[00:33:36] Michael Evans: I think that your readers develop trust when you take them on an emotional journey that meets an unmet desire of theirs. And it can be a short journey. And when you start to resonate and create those emotions inside of someone, you begin to build what is called a parasocial relationship with them, where they begin to view you and or your characters and or your [00:34:00] world and maybe a combination of all like they would a friend.
[00:34:04] Michael Evans: And that is a very powerful neurological mechanism that when you bring a bunch of people who are under that spell into the same place, a, a community then you could or I don’t think that was the right word. Via a community that’s way better. I like don’t know where that came out.
[00:34:19] Michael Evans: Via a community, then you can actually do something that I think most authors. Don’t fully understand yet where this is. I think I’m confident going in self-publishing, which is that as creators online, not only is trust essential to sell books, but. Most YouTubers, for instance, make about 70% of their income from brand advertising.
[00:34:44] Michael Evans: Now there’s a completely different business model there. I don’t see authors making that or advertising being a huge thing, but if I’m a YouTuber and Sam’s Instagrammers with the very niche audiences I’ve literally seen Instagrammers with about like five to 10,000 followers, drive 70 to [00:35:00] $80,000 sales for a brand with one post for a brand that like isn’t theirs, that they’ve never posted about before, just one post.
[00:35:07] Michael Evans: And it’s a genuine post. Cause the audience trusts them like that is a tremendous amount of money. And that brand, you, you bet, is willing to give them 20,000 plus to make one post. Now these are people who like, they’re upper, upper echelon of engaged communities, but that’s on a social media platform, on Instagram, email newsletters.
[00:35:25] Michael Evans: Typically it’s thought of as being worth more, but all of it’s just numbers really. It all comes back down to trust. And if you have an engaged newsletter list that trusts you of five to 10,000 people, you, especially if you understand your readers, are able to then sell them anything. Now that is a dangerous word cuz you should not sell them anything.
[00:35:45] Michael Evans: You shouldn’t, you shouldn’t sell them everything, but you can sell them things adjacent to your books that either are your products or other people’s products and get paid a very handsome amount to do that. And that’s a revenue stream where if someone like you, Terri, who’s publishing [00:36:00] a book every two to four years, it might be tough just from a loyalty standpoint and from an income standpoint to have book rail T speed all.
[00:36:06] Michael Evans: And I know here, like we talked about subscriptions and subscriptions being this recurring revenue stream that could hopefully solve that for you, but it’s not gonna be the only thing in your business. There should still be more. And I think that there’s this valuable sector that like authors haven’t even tapped into, but.
[00:36:19] Michael Evans: Authors have some of the most engaged and trusted audiences in the world, like compared to all these other influencers online. Yet the influencer marketing industry is about to hit 15 billion a year, which is massive. So this is something that authors have just not even stepped into, and it’s because I think we’ve failed to understand that trust is everything.
[00:36:36] Michael Evans: The biggest creators in the world. The people who have million subscribers on YouTube who get people watching them on Twitch for four hours each night, and they’re not like throwing online shows, they’re just sitting in their desk at their computer. They are like so gungho on trust and they understand that like everything is about their relationship to their audience.
[00:36:51] Michael Evans: And when you come in and create a marketing email that just looks like everyone else, you basically have already started to damage that trust [00:37:00] because they’re like, I thought we had something unique, but we had like something cool here, but you just sent me this boring email that just has three different panels.
[00:37:09] Michael Evans: Tells me the latest thing you did, the latest work in progress. Go buy your book. And, that’s it. Like. I will press delete on that and 95% of readers will also press delete on that.
[00:37:18] Terri Bruce: Guilty as charged. And you know what I used this word authentic and I agree that is sort of nebulous, but I think that’s part of that trust, like there’s that Venn diagram.
[00:37:28] Terri Bruce: Because like I think for me, you know, I was told oh you need to get a newsletter because that’s the only thing you’ll be able to control and reach those readers. And I came late, you know, I was already five years into my publishing career at the point where I was starting a newsletter and I had sold my books, you know, and those people had bought those books and gone away.
[00:37:47] Terri Bruce: And so I was kinda like, well, what am I supposed to say in a newsletter? And because I don’t have a clear vision for what I’m communicating, I think that those newsletters don’t feel authentic cuz it’s just like, here’s the latest news on me. You know? And I think that [00:38:00] comes through where it’s like, yeah, this is clearly just like, I wrote exercise and it’s like everybody else’s newsletter and it’s clearly just a sales push.
[00:38:08] Terri Bruce: Like, here’s where you can buy my books, here’s the next book that’s coming out. So I think that’s what the key is. But I think that’s also what’s really hard, especially for an author like me where I don’t have a clear brand and niche is yes, authenticity of of the experience. And I’m struggling to figure out like what do people wanna know or what do they care about and like, and also it’s scary talking to a crowd versus like that one-on-one.
[00:38:35] Terri Bruce: And I think that’s just my mind shift where I have to think about when I’m writing my newsletter, pretend I’m writing it to one person. I’m writing it to a dear friend. And what would I tell them When I started out, my biggest success as an author, It was a, a new author, you know, nobody had heard of me and I need to get reviews.
[00:38:52] Terri Bruce: And the publishing company was doing a little bit of that, and book bloggers were very key then they’re, they’re still key now, but not [00:39:00] in the way that they were five to 10 years ago. And I, there were book bloggers who had very big blogs, but they weren’t reviewing exactly my genre. And I started on Twitter.
[00:39:12] Terri Bruce: I joined Twitter at that point, and Twitter had already been around for a very long time. I was late to Twitter. I was like, this sounds like the stupidest thing in the world. And then I joined Twitter and I was like, I love Twitter so much. It’s so great for introverts. And so I just started following book bloggers and striking up conversations, not even to get them to review my book.
[00:39:28] Terri Bruce: And then some of them would actually volunteer, because now we’re like friends and they were like, Hey, you have a book coming out. You didn’t ask me to review it. I was like, oh, you don’t review this genre. So I didn’t think it was worth asking. They’re like, send it to me anyways. And I got some of my best reviews and best, you know, kind of exposure being highlighted on these blogs of people that started from an authentic trust-based relationship that I approach them on Twitter to become friends, not to get them to review my book, not to sell them something.
[00:39:58] Terri Bruce: And so [00:40:00] I, I have to remember that and I think authors have to remember that. Of course, I go the other way. I do too much of that and forget, like for Twitter, I never mentioned that. I had a book for a long time and I was like, oh yeah, I probably should occasionally mention that I’m an author that has books.
[00:40:14] Terri Bruce: I should do a little sales in here, occasionally. and I just realized yesterday, I’ve been looking at my newsletter onboarding I’m getting all these new signups that come in through book funnel. I don’t actually introduce myself in that onboarding. I’m like, here’s what you can expect in my newsletter, and I promise not to spam you.
[00:40:32] Terri Bruce: I didn’t actually tell people what I write . I just realized like the bio complete missing and I was like, oh yeah, these people just grabbed a free book, but they don’t know me. I probably should tell them who I am. So I seem to go either a hundred percent marketing with nothing personal or a hundred percent personal and no marketing, and I have to figure out how to like, bring that together and do a balanced mix of those two.
[00:40:56] Terri Bruce: So that’s, yeah, after 10 years, that’s what I figured out. . [00:41:00]
[00:41:00] Michael Evans: No, no, no. So I like, these are all amazing reflections and I think you, you clearly, you have all these ingredients that like if we combine them together, Will create something beautiful, but it is just not the right, maybe mixture, temperature.
[00:41:15] Michael Evans: So we’re gonna figure that out. But I wanna switch the conversation to who your readers are. I know that’s a really hard question, but I wanna give everyone just this upfront advice, which is that I, I think genres are a super, super useful framework, and they’re very, very helpful for a lot, a lot of authors, and they’re helpful to think about.
[00:41:33] Michael Evans: But a big caveat with this is that we have to understand what a genre is. It’s a boundary, right? It’s a constructed boundary that is understood by both publishers, readers, and authors that collectively make up the market. But every boundary, first of all, has gray areas, and it also leaves out specific groups of people and can’t fully encompass any one particular story.
[00:41:53] Michael Evans: So what that means is that these boundaries are useful in many instances, but maybe not in other [00:42:00] instances. And especially someone who’s writing across these boundaries, it’s very easy to think, well, I’m just all over the place, but are you really? Let’s find out. So, Let’s break down. Let’s not even use the word genre.
[00:42:11] Michael Evans: We’re gonna, we’re gonna erase that word from our vocabulary just for the time being, because it’s not helpful to use these preexisting frameworks. We’re trying to create our own right now. And I’m not saying every author should do this. In fact, most authors probably already write in a genre. It’s relatively defined, and you should stick to that because genres have already done the hard work for you.
[00:42:28] Michael Evans: Genres have already figured out without you needing to do the hard work of what a lot of the values are that readers are really coming to, and the emotional resonance that they have in your stories. And it’s just a lot easier to then just do that. But so many of us don’t want to be pigeon hold to one genre, and so many readers also aren’t that way either.
[00:42:47] Michael Evans: So there’s an opportunity in this, but we need to figure it out. So I need to ask you, Terri, because we’re not gonna talk about your risk, we’ll talk about you. What would you say are some common themes across your books? What [00:43:00] drives you to write a book that is common across your books? If there is anything?
[00:43:06] Michael Evans: Let’s, let’s challenge ourselves to think about that.
[00:43:08] Emilia Rose: It is challenging but I think I, people who read my work and know me well, read my stories and they go, oh yeah, that’s a Terri story. So I definitely have a distinct vibe. Usually sort of set in the real world where things are just a little bit weird.
[00:43:26] Emilia Rose: You know, I have a short story where. Big Burley due to ride motorcycles actually are unicorns. And if the light shines on them the right way, then you can tell that they’re unicorns. And that’s where unicorns live these days. I have a short story about, it’s the end of the world and the government has created a website to help guide you through it.
[00:43:44] Emilia Rose: So there’s always this little bit of like satirical edge and a little sly humor in there. But overall, my vibe is sort of melancholy. I’m sort of like Peter Beagle. We read all of his stories and they’re beautiful, but they’re also just sort of a little bit [00:44:00] sad or a little bit like, eh, you know, the world’s not ending, but the world sort of sucks ,
[00:44:06] Michael Evans: so You got you.
[00:44:08] Emilia Rose: Oh, I was gonna say, so me and Michael have a mentor who he always talks about the jobs to be done. So it, it’s basically like this concept, like. , why do you write your stories? Like what does it satisfy in you? Like emotionally or like, I don’t even know, I guess emotionally, like what is, what are like behind it all?
[00:44:32] Emilia Rose: Like deep, deep, deep down. What is, what are you trying to satisfy, like in your readers? Is there like one theme that gets at that instead of the broader, kind of on the surface type of theme?
[00:44:46] Terri Bruce: Yeah, see that’s the difficult thing. You know, I do like organizational development in my day job, like goal setting, mission statement stuff.
[00:44:54] Terri Bruce: And it’s really hard to apply it to me. And when we get to these conversations, I actually feel [00:45:00] like, I don’t wanna say uncomfortable, like you guys aren’t making me uncomfortable, but like I am a Virginia Wolf. I enjoy having written, I do not enjoy writing writer. And so a lot of other authors will say to me, well, if you’re not, if it’s not fun, why do you do it?
[00:45:13] Terri Bruce: I do it cause I feel compelled cuz I can’t not, and I also am a Stephen King. I don’t make up the stories. This is the way it happened. Right. Like I feel like I am just channeling, like my husband’s often, like a lot of people are like, I didn’t like your ending. Change the ending. I can’t. Cuz that’s not the way it happened.
[00:45:32] Terri Bruce: Yeah. Right. So I am not trying, like, I don’t have a mission to write uplifting stories to give people hope or to write thrilling adventures. I’m not that kind of writer. I’m stories pop into my head. The, the characters are just talking. They won’t shut up until like that story is done. Like, they take over my brain and then, and I know when a story is done because everything gets quiet and the story just mm-hmm.
[00:45:55] Terri Bruce: like immediately forget the story. If I hadn’t written it down, I wouldn’t be able to recount it to you. It’s gone. [00:46:00] So I kind of feel like I’m a very self, like what’s the word I’m looking for? Like I write for me, I guess not for my audience. And so that I think is also part of my marketing challenge is like finding people who are like me, who like these weird little things that I’m creating really just for my own sanity.
[00:46:18] Terri Bruce: Like just writing and coming up with these weird things that just are there and feel, I feel compelled to write, but I’m not doing it for any particular purpose other than that.
[00:46:30] Emilia Rose: So I’m actually the same exact way as you are. I I don’t have any That’s not a friend . Yes. I don’t outline, I don’t do any like pre-work usually I just write the story as it comes to me.
[00:46:41] Emilia Rose: And like you said, I know the story is finished when they stop talking. Yeah. And when everything goes silent and everything starts to like close up, I’m just like, oh, so this is where we end. And a lot of times my readers like, they’ll want more and I’m like, I can’t give you more cuz I don’t have it. But at least for me, I don’t know, like everyone’s different [00:47:00] obviously.
[00:47:00] Emilia Rose: And I don’t know if it’s like the same for you and if, if it is, you don’t even have to like say what it is. But I know like whenever I write a specific story, I don’t know it at the time, but I’ll like go back and realize, hey, like I wrote this specific thing because it like satisfied something in me.
[00:47:19] Emilia Rose: So even if it’s dark and, excuse my language, but like fucked up it satisfied something in me that I wasn’t getting elsewhere or I couldn’t find elsewhere in like literature or in movies or whatever I watch like entertainment wise. And yeah, so maybe look at the stories that you have written and you obviously don’t have to like, say anything on the, on the podcast.
[00:47:40] Emilia Rose: And just see where you were in that mindset and when the story finished, kind of like review it and say , Hey, this is what I got out of this story for me personally. Maybe my fans got something similar out of it.
[00:47:54] Terri Bruce: Yeah. And I think, well, it’s interesting because, so like I have a short story collection, right?[00:48:00]
[00:48:00] Terri Bruce: And. I’m an idea writer like mm-hmm. characters will come in too. And I get attached to my characters, but really all my stories are kind of like idea stories. I love idea stories. Like I have a short story. I had read an article there’s a phenomenon and, and trigger warning miscarriage.
[00:48:18] Terri Bruce: But sometimes a fetus will die in utero and it actually becomes calcified and it basically turns into stone. And I read this article about a Chinese woman who had a stone baby for 42 years. Nobody had ever, and she couldn’t get pregnant. Nobody could figure out why. Well, it turns out it was blocking her fallopian tubes.
[00:48:37] Terri Bruce: And she’d had this like, stone baby for 42 years. And so it was like, okay, a, that’s horrifying. like, oh my God. But then it was kinda like, What else is made outta stone? Gargoyles are made outta stone. Maybe that’s where baby gargoyles come from. And like, so I ended up writing this short story about it.
[00:48:54] Terri Bruce: So it’s weird, things like that. Like I love mixing fantasy and reality. Cuz [00:49:00] I, I grew up in like my grandmother every morning would get up and go in the dining room and have her tea and toast and talk to my grandfather who’d been dead for 20 years, like have an out loud conversation.
[00:49:11] Terri Bruce: And that was normal. And I never once asked her, did she, was he talking back? Was she just venting? Cuz it didn’t matter. It was between her and my grandfather. And so my whole life was like that, signs importance. Like stuff was just weird. But it wasn’t scary, weird. And it wasn’t horrib weird.
[00:49:28] Terri Bruce: It was like normal, weird. And I write that into my stories, but like my short story collection. So I think they’re like these goofy little weird things. So many viewers have been like, these stories are so horrifying. It gave me nightmares that I couldn’t sleep. And I’m like, I’m not a horror writer, am I?
[00:49:44] Terri Bruce: Oh, maybe I am . So even what satisfies me and like what’s driving me is not necessarily what my readers are getting out of the story. So I was like, hmm. So also sometimes I feel like people like my work, but I’m not sure they get me .
[00:49:59] Michael Evans: Well, I, [00:50:00] I know who would be interested. This, this is where I think, like, we talk about, you were talking about book bloggers earlier and how they’re not as important kind of, except they’re actually like maybe 10 x more important since then, except they’re not writing on blocks.
[00:50:12] Emilia Rose: That’s what I meant. Yeah. I, I just wanna mend that like Yeah. Books, Instagram and TikTok now.
[00:50:18] Michael Evans: Yes, and, and YouTube. I’ve seen YouTube grow where there used to be like one or two creators three or four years ago with 400,000 subscribers. Now there’s dozens in the book space that have hundreds of thousands, a million plus, some of the biggest.
[00:50:32] Michael Evans: Creators culturally especially v lifestyle, female vloggers have started to get into now becoming book vloggers and are getting hundreds of view. Yeah. So this is really important, but now let’s talk about like, I think another kinda unique way to find audience because on social media there, because you have to, everyone has to go through a phase of like endless iteration to actually figure this out.
[00:50:55] Michael Evans: Like, you can’t just sit there and write this stuff down. And the problem with writing books [00:51:00] is that this cycle of feedback is way too long. Serial fiction is a way to, again, make that faster, but not everyone’s readership reads in serial fiction. So some readers, like Amelia’s readers, she found a lot on serial fiction platforms like Wattpad and Radish.
[00:51:13] Michael Evans: That’s wonderful. But not everyone has readers that read serial. But if we go to platforms like YouTube, TikTok, there’s billions of people there. The issue we always get into is that as authors we’re just like, first of all, getting into the standard marketing things and peddling our books like one else.
[00:51:27] Michael Evans: But then we also fit ourselves into this narrow genre of book talk, which is hugely valuable and very targeted. But then how much can you experiment there when you’re really trying to figure out something else? What kind of things are my reader design interested? I’m not even really trying to figure out what books are yet, where is that overlap between who I am and what readers want?
[00:51:48] Michael Evans: And I’m just thinking, because I’ve seen YouTube channels that do what your short stories do that are huge. Meaning like, first of all, like you know that that there, there’s people who like this stuff and it’s this bizarre, wacky stories are [00:52:00] somewhat creepy about this weird thing in a Disney park.
[00:52:02] Michael Evans: And they’re gonna tell you about this weird story and, and maybe some body that’s somewhere in a Disney park. And then, and then this other person who’s gonna talk about this weird, bizarre fantasy meets reality thing in Japan. And, and they’re kind of covering things.
[00:52:16] Michael Evans: They’re like real, but questions almost like, not mysteries, but this kind of like unknown, definitely uncomfortable type of thing. So there’s people doing, this is the point. And I think that you study creators who are doing this. You could create videos yourself doing this, and it might be uncomfortable like me, Terri, on camera.
[00:52:31] Michael Evans: You don’t have to be on camera. You can literally just use your voice. Use a voice modifier. They’re free online now and then. Use music and images overlaying these videos. 90% of creators in this specific sub genre do that anyways. And then you’ll be able to test. Huh? They seem to really like this idea where I was mentioning this specific thing and this specific thing together.
[00:52:54] Michael Evans: Like, you know, unicorns meets bartenders. I don’t know what really gets people going, but you’ll be able [00:53:00] to know that and then riff off a short story like that. And you have your perpetual marketing engine. Because the, the problem is if we write all of our ideas as writers we sense have ideas that we’re really compelled for.
[00:53:11] Michael Evans: But I know more writers who have like a hundred ideas and they need to figure out five that they need to really write and they might feel really compelled for one, fine, get that outta your system, but then what is this other stuff you’re gonna write? And I think that one way to iterate those quickly is like you can create a hundred TikToks.
[00:53:26] Michael Evans: A hundred YouTube shorts way faster than you could create you know, a hundred short stories probably. And if you get good at it, not only can you build an audience, but you can test this kind of thing. Because you just need to figure it out. And you will literally have people start telling you, oh my God, like this really worked.
[00:53:43] Michael Evans: But until you get any feedback, you’re just in the dark. And
[00:53:47] Emilia Rose: kind of going off of that, like when Michael was talking, it kind of reminds me of at least that short story collection of Love, death and Robots on Netflix, which is hugely popular. And it’s just short stories that are kind of weird, kind of funky [00:54:00] about the future and robots and it Yeah, that’s what it reminded me of.
[00:54:03] Emilia Rose: But as you were talking Terri, I was like, I think you’re, at least for me, when you were talking and talking in story like about the, the calcium. Baby. I was like, that was so much more powerful to me than you mentioning, like, other writers that you’re similar to or the genres that you could be part of.
[00:54:25] Emilia Rose: Like you telling that story was so much more powerful and I was like, oh, I’m interested now. Like, I wanna read that.
[00:54:31] Michael Evans: Yeah. Yeah. I actually want you to send that to me after this. Cause, and what’s so great about short stories too, is like, they’re so underrated because I can get a feel for this author and get the complete emotional arc in a few minutes, maybe 20 minutes, hopefully 30 minutes top.
[00:54:47] Michael Evans: That would be a long, short story. And then it’s like, we’re done and they could start to really like you. And this is where , again, going back. The forms of content that have captured generations. We think about like Dr. Nightmare. So Dr. [00:55:00] Nightmare creates horror content on, on, on YouTube and he basically is like creepy pastas that he goes and Reddit and he finds stories on Reddit and then repurpose them.
[00:55:07] Michael Evans: And we don’t know if it’s fictional or not. Like honestly, they could all be fictional. There’s this kind of illusion that it’s real. And it’s just scary music underlay of those mi images. So basically just telling stories, making it a bit immersive and like I, last time I checked like at least 3 million subscribers.
[00:55:20] Michael Evans: It might be well over that. So there’s tons and tons of people watching this and this is what I would watch, like, cuz we have to think about even terms of our attention during the day. I would just turn this on when I’d find a new one cuz everyone’s already habitually opening these specific apps and then like, I’m sucked in for 30 minutes.
[00:55:35] Michael Evans: Like, while I’m like maybe like doing, doing like a chore or like working out. And the, these are things that are really, really popular. And I, I definitely think too leading with this story where people. . People need to think this is a Terri story at the end of the day. And, and Stephen King, I’m glad you like him.
[00:55:51] Michael Evans: He’s my favorite author. He’s wacky. He’s bizarre. Stephen King doesn’t say, oh yeah, I write like this author and this author, so you should read [00:56:00] me. He’s like, no, I’m gonna tell you this like really weird character that’s like, definitely like uncomfortable. Like you’re like, why are you writing this dude?
[00:56:06] Michael Evans: But also like keep writing like Yeah. And that reader like you need to think that about you and, and maybe all of your stuff doesn’t hit with every reader, but really, is that true for any author? But you’re gonna be able to develop that unique brand because I don’t think there’s many like dude writers, cuz most of your comp authors, which you shouldn’t mention cheer readers, I don’t think you should just lead with your story, but they, a lot of ’em are dudes.
[00:56:29] Michael Evans: I don’t think they’re gonna be writing about stone babies. Like that’s like already so unique, so interesting and fits into this, this feminist land that you have, which. Would connect with a specific subset of this whole world. I can’t tell you exactly who, I don’t think you could even tell me who, but the biggest thing I see is like, just test before you write a whole book.
[00:56:47] Michael Evans: Because investing time into writing a book is like Disney producing a movie without knowing if the franchise is going to succeed. It’s not the best idea.
[00:56:56] Terri Bruce: And you know, you said the, the feedback cycle of being an author [00:57:00] is so long and that is so true. And I had mentioned this in the Facebook group recently that some authors like me, you write one book, right?
[00:57:10] Terri Bruce: And you’re marketing that book and that’s the audience you’re pulling in. But that may not be your brand. And that’s been the case for me. And I, you, you know the example of no Gaman, like if you’re a Stardust reader and fan, you may not be a Sandman reader and fan. Like if you just thought no Gaiman was Sandman.
[00:57:30] Terri Bruce: Your emo goth, moody fiction over there. If you read Stardust, you’re into happy adventure stories, right? And so, but when you look at those stories as part of his canon and his whole body of work, then you get a vibe. And I’m the same way where I wrote the first two books of my contemporary fantasy series, which is very different than my short stories and very different from my science fiction.
[00:57:54] Terri Bruce: And so I wrote one book and then I wrote another book, and that came out two years later. [00:58:00] And then the third book in the series came out two years after that. So now I’m six years into my author career and I’ve only written one series, and that series attracted certain people. Then I started writing short stories and getting short stories published.
[00:58:13] Terri Bruce: A lot of those are sort of that darker, creepy pasta kind of adjacent area. Those are very different readers. So they come in, then they read the Contemporary Fantasy and they’re like, what? Now? This is not who I thought she was? Like, I like a particular story, not a particular her brand. Now, 10 years in, I’ve written enough work that I’ve got that ab feedback about who I am as an author and who my ideal reader is for my brand and not for specific books, but it took 10 years to get that data.
[00:58:42] Terri Bruce: And it’s the same sort of thing, like with a newsletter. I send a newsletter monthly. So if I do one month and it’s kind of like crickets, it’s like, well, was that a bad month? Or you know, was it the content? So now I have to send another newsletter. So two or three months goes by before I’m like, people are not engaging with this content.
[00:58:58] Terri Bruce: I need to change it up. I [00:59:00] need to change the frequency or the content or something. But it’s months. And so yeah, that has also been a huge struggle. You need data, but getting that data sometimes takes forever.
[00:59:12] Michael Evans: Well, what you can do, because I’m, I believe in repurposing content, so what you would be able to do, because as authors, we only have so much time and we feel like we have to be everywhere.
[00:59:21] Michael Evans: So you should not create everywhere. You should have this foundational piece. And it seems like, so a commonality between Stephen King and you is that you both seem to write short stories, and that’s how he got his start. And I do think like as much as you’ve studied Stephen King, it’s probably worthwhile going back and studying him 10 times more in terms of how he’s operated his brand and business.
[00:59:39] Michael Evans: You know, I think h his brand that you building, not that you’re gonna build the same brand as his at all. But Michael Anderly talked about how if he studied James Patterson, he would’ve saved him years in his brand. And he’s a very different readership than James Patterson. Definitely a very different brand, but the same kind of strategy of this idea.
[00:59:56] Michael Evans: That’s Michael Anderly, who’s very well known in the indie community. You obviously have a different [01:00:00] strategy, and my advice would be, so you write a short story, there’s a thousand words, right? What you can do with that short story is what I said. You could literally create a YouTube video about it. You can probably create three tos about it, honestly, like taking the same text, like you’re not changing anything.
[01:00:12] Michael Evans: That same newsletter or that same short story can go out in your newsletter. And that same short story can exist in your subscription a month earlier. And, and the readers could get access to that. And now you’ve created from one idea, hopefully like, you know, a few hours of writing, you’ve created five pieces of content that’ll go in all these different areas that can engage your existing audiences and continue nurturing them.
[01:00:32] Michael Evans: And then hopefully go out onto these discovery platforms, places like YouTube and TikTok, find you new readers, cuz you’re not gonna find new readers in your newsletter. You have to participate in things like book funnel. But it’s very hard to find the right readers doing that. You can, and it’s, it can be worthwhile.
[01:00:46] Michael Evans: But you could really find the right readers on these social platforms. And I’m not trying to say everyone, it’ll work for everyone at all, but. It’s gonna get you more data. And if it’s flopping, you could think , huh, let’s go back. And then [01:01:00] let’s look at the retention graph. Because you can’t see when people stop reading your story on any platform.
[01:01:04] Michael Evans: You can see when people stop watching your videos on all these platforms. So you could start, see, oh, this is a three minute long video, and at second, like one 30, there’s a dip off. Oh, that’s because the paragraph before, like, I totally went on a tangent and I lost my reader. That means that I should next time not do that and you’ll just slowly keep refining this.
[01:01:23] Michael Evans: And it takes a long time. But the, the scale is tremendous. Even if you’re not getting a million subscribers, having 10,000 subscribers is very doable and way, more powerful than one could imagine in terms of being able to drive readers to your newsletter. That could be easily a couple hundred engaged fans for you, which is worth a lot.
[01:01:43] Terri Bruce: Yeah, I think that’s, you know, going back to kind of the original point of , Smaller but better fit funnel versus the very wide funnel, you know, and, and trying to, to connect with people that way is much more valuable. And then, but just figuring out what that is,[01:02:00]
[01:02:00] Michael Evans: You’re leading with trust as well, right?
[01:02:01] Michael Evans: Instead of sales, if you’re running a Facebook ad, we always have to position ourselves in a Facebook ad. We always have to say, oh, we’re in this market because you have to, you don’t actually trust me. How are you ever gonna trust an ad? So I, you’re gonna have to trust what I’m telling you that’s similar to something else.
[01:02:14] Michael Evans: Which for someone like you who’s like creating their own unique way of things is like shooting your brand on the foot. It’s not gonna do you any good. So you have to figure out how can I create unique positioning for myself? So you need to lead again with something that can build trust in readers that isn’t going to sell them, because no one wants to be sold immediately.
[01:02:30] Michael Evans: So that’s leading with your story. But then it’s like, where can I just get someone to click on my story? And that is where we go back to this world of like serial fiction and to just apply a broader lens to it. As I tried to hammer home serial fiction is more than just text on a page. It can be repurposed into content on other social platforms that maybe your audience.
[01:02:49] Michael Evans: And, and bigger numbers on because Wattpad it will not be fit for every genre, but serial fiction podcast and crime and Thriller are one of the most popular podcast genres. I’ve already mentioned this in the [01:03:00] podcast, but 15% of podcast listeners only listen to fiction podcasts. realm.fm is a huge company doing this.
[01:03:06] Michael Evans: Some podcasts get millions of downloads a month in the fiction space, meaning, okay, thriller readers don’t read serial fiction on Wattpad. They might not even be on YouTube, although they actually are. But they’re definitely reading the like, serial fiction podcast and you can get this whole thing creepy.
[01:03:22] Michael Evans: Pastes are huge on YouTube. I’m just telling you that the massive, so like, you should, you should definitely look into that space. Cuz like there’s, I like have multiple friends and I, I don’t hang out with like horror friends. Not that like you could have a horror friend group, but I just like, there, there just like people exist in my life who are obsessed with creepy pastas.
[01:03:39] Michael Evans: So this is something that’s like a phenomena that you could tap into and create your own unique lane. Yeah,
[01:03:45] Terri Bruce: I think it’s then the, the, the challenge becomes the time right now, now going back to like that additional, I’m like, yeah, I probably could go find my people on YouTube or TikTok, but a, I gotta learn those platforms and then I gotta learn, like [01:04:00] I have to record videos and now I have to learn video editing and sound.
[01:04:03] Terri Bruce: So then as an author too, you have to kind of figure out kind of where your niche is. In terms of TikTok, like I’ve had, I’ve spent so much time learning like how to do a newsletter and onboarding a newsletter and made so many mistakes. Running a newsletter and finding newsletter software.
[01:04:18] Terri Bruce: And then it’s you know, Facebook ads and spent and set so much money on fire. So much money on fire with like Facebook ads and then Amazon ads, and then book bub ads and like, so as an author too, I think that is always. Difficult and frustrating is like once you get the data and then it’s like, okay, now I have to try these different things.
[01:04:39] Terri Bruce: And that’s why I like going back, you know, to the beginning like those author communities, like when you band together with a bunch of other authors, to be able to cut down some of that work that is also,
[01:04:48] Michael Evans: well could do that with this, right? Because you might have, and you don’t even need to collaborate just with other authors.
[01:04:55] Michael Evans: You could collaborate with other creators. I’ve seen people do this literally in the book world [01:05:00] where they’ve had a creator who creates basically exactly what they’re writing books about. But they’re create like a history creator who’s like sharing like their like 30 minute lectures about history.
[01:05:10] Michael Evans: And you’d be surprised there’s hundred thousand people listen to like 30 minute lectures in history. They’re nothing special. It’s just a guy either standing there or like there’s images over it. That’s really uncommon. And then like, they’ll like partner with the guy to be like, Hey, you know, this is, this is my book.
[01:05:24] Michael Evans: So you could tap into existing creator audiences to test things. And then another thing is you could literally say Oh, you are an author who’s really good at creating YouTube content who’s like likes doing video. Then what if we created a joint channel that was five of us that you kind of took on a lot of running that, but then I can focus on the newsletter.
[01:05:44] Michael Evans: So if you wanna collaborate with authors across platforms, that’s what you could do If you don’t wanna collaborate with authors or you’re not in that position yet. My honest advice is focus on one platform, but in the beginning you have to do a discovery platform that’s gonna find you new people and just plain and simple newsletters don’t find you new people.
[01:05:59] Michael Evans: Like you’re never [01:06:00] gonna send a newsletter out the world and have an algorithm pick it up and find you new people. And I’m not trying to say we should worship algorithms. There’s plenty of ways to find new readers, but just, I’ve seen very few authors successfully have a viral newsletter. I’ve seen very few authors have a newsletter that just by publishing pressing publish on that newsletter generates them new readers.
[01:06:18] Michael Evans: There’s cumulative effects there. If you have 10,000 readers, 1% share, yes, you’ll get more. But how do you get started with the newsletter? That’s where it’s a lot to learn, but when you go to these discovery platforms, serial fiction being an example of one as well, like all these serial fiction platforms, you don’t have to necessarily worry about how am I gonna bring readers to here?
[01:06:37] Michael Evans: To this little thing. It’s how do I create great content that fits within the rules of this platform and adapt my story slightly to fit the psychological expectations of someone here. I mean, you could literally just go back to okay, when am I gonna trigger this dopamine in someone to get them to keep watching?
[01:06:53] Michael Evans: That’s like a very thing that the biggest YouTubers do all the time. They have teams. There’s full-time YouTube retention specialists for these creators [01:07:00] who get 50 million views, like full-time jobs studying these graphs and then analyzing it. So this is like a massive industry that people are playing hard, but you as an author can begin to break in on that with whatever thing it is.
[01:07:11] Michael Evans: But yeah, my biggest advice is don’t be on all platforms. That’s like very much a bad idea. You have to find one and stick with it. Like we’re not like 30 days, but commit to at least 90 days of consistently doing something because just like subscription. It’s all about consistency. Creating on any platform is all about consistency and building that trust.
[01:07:33] Michael Evans: And if you can stick to it for 90 days you’ll probably have a good signal of where it’s gonna go, if you like the process or not. And if you hate the process, just stop it and go somewhere else. Cuz there’s really not too many big platforms that you could try. Like there’s, if you’re trying to do this creating thing.
[01:07:49] Michael Evans: And the other big thing about it, which is why I support this, maybe Sam’s over advertising, although advertising can be useful, is that you’re spending your time still writing. And we will build a system for you. And hopefully you can build a system for yourself that [01:08:00] maximizes the time that you’re still creating stories.
[01:08:01] Michael Evans: Cuz you’re creating stories to these other platforms, not advertising, not marketing content. You’re creating stories that can be used elsewhere. You’re still building up your intellectual property, you’re still building up your back catalog, you’re just releasing it and maybe a slightly different place than you originally would.
[01:08:14] Michael Evans: So hopefully that can marry this problem of like, oh, well I’m just spending this time marketing. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You’re spending this time creating because you are a creator and that’s what creators do. People wanna see you create things. And I think we have to lean into that. That’s like my big like the, the big thing that I want to drive home.
[01:08:32] Michael Evans: I don’t know. .
[01:08:33] Terri Bruce: I think, you know, it goes back to that authenticity thing, right? Again, like when you’re just doing a marketing thing to do a marketing thing, , it’s pi, it’s always gonna fall flat cuz it’s just, it’s not authentic. It’s not gonna resonate with people, it’s not gonna build that trust.
[01:08:46] Terri Bruce: It’s not gonna interest them in you. It’s very forgettable. And so leaning into who you are as an author and the value you add or you know, what you create and focusing on sharing your creativity [01:09:00] in different ways and getting that creativity into people’s hands is, as long as you focus on that, I think those are always the times that I’ve been the most successful.
[01:09:09] Terri Bruce: Is just always remembering that I’m not marketing, I am creating and sharing that creativity, whether it’s through a video, through a short story that I’m mailing to people as a chatbook, whether I’m putting into a newsletter and emailing, whether I’m posting on serial fiction site, I’m sharing what I created.
[01:09:26] Terri Bruce: And, and having that mindset, I think is part of the, the success soup that the, an ingredient in that success soup. Finding the right platform, obviously finding something that you engage with as a creator. Like, if I hate TikTok, then it’s just gonna be a grind to, to create there, right? So like those are all part of the ingredients.
[01:09:47] Michael Evans: You don’t need to be on TikTok if you don’t like it. And I think similarly on this point of creating, maintain consistent, my final question for you is about what have you learned [01:10:00] in doing your subscription? And it may be not having the financial success that you’d expect, and, and you could even share a bit of how that’s gone for you and maybe what you’re thinking about doing next.
[01:10:14] Emilia Rose: Yeah. I have consistently been frustrated with a lot of the advice that’s out there because, I’m finding that it’s like a rope bridge and there’s a bunch of boards missing. Like people are like, identify your ideal reader, set up a newsletter, then set up a subscription, 1, 2, 3. Easy peasy. And I’m finding there’s a lot of little microsteps in between that get skipped and, you know, going back to like that AB testing and, and data and discovery, right?
[01:10:44] Emilia Rose: It’s taking me a very long time through trifa cycles , to like find out what those missing steps are. And I’ve realized that I tried to jump to subscriptions too soon, that I had not done the foundational work and now I need to kind of go back. [01:11:00] and I’ve got an onboarding process to my newsletter through Book Funnel.
[01:11:04] Emilia Rose: But I haven’t done a great onboarding process. Like I said, I’m not even introducing myself until yesterday when I changed the content of my emails where I was like, here’s a newsletter from an author whose book you got that you probably haven’t read yet cuz you literally just downloaded it yesterday.
[01:11:17] Emilia Rose: And so I was like, yeah, I think that’s the big thing people are not gonna jump to your subscription unless they’re engaged with you in some way. Either they love the content or they love you personally. Those are the two things they’re gonna kind of glom onto. They love what you do or they love you and wanna support you.
[01:11:32] Emilia Rose: And even if they love you and wanna support you, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re gonna come over to your subscription. Cause I see a, I’m not the only person who’s like, I can’t even get my friends a family to join it. They’re not gonna just give you money cuz you’re cute or you’re their kid or their sister or something.
[01:11:45] Emilia Rose: Like they got financial trouble too. Unless you’re giving them, they can see you for free. So of course they’re not gonna pay to interact with you. So yeah, you gotta go through and make sure all those foundational steps are there. And so I’ve backed up to the beginning and [01:12:00] like rejiggered, who I’m onboarding through BU book funnel, trying to find those better matches.
[01:12:04] Emilia Rose: Yeah. Then am I onboarding and engaging them through my newsletter? Have I created content in the newsletter that’s engaging people? And that’s where I’m focused right now. And then once you’re doing that, if you’re giving people free content and they’re engaging with you and they’ve bought your books and then you’re like, here, give me money in some other way.
[01:12:21] Emilia Rose: They’re like, for what? So then you’ve talked about warming people up to the idea of a subscription and what are they gonna get and are you giving value content? And I started out with my subscription doing monthly chapters of the fourth book in my series, thinking that fans of the series would jump over.
[01:12:39] Emilia Rose: Wanting to read the book in hindsight, and I have all my best insights. In hindsight, I never seem to be able to think this through ahead of time and save myself from failing. But in hindsight, I was like my book, same way about myself, slower paced. First of all, I don’t write like sticky page turners, so people are not hanging on a cliff hanger at the end of every [01:13:00] chapter going, give me the next chapter.
[01:13:01] Emilia Rose: I must.
[01:13:02] Michael Evans: That’s, that’s a good idea for our subscriptions by the way. Yeah. .
[01:13:05] Emilia Rose: Yeah, exactly. And monthly also, like that’s just also kind of, if you are writing something where people are like, give me the chapter and you’re only doing it monthly like that, people are like, okay, I can’t deal with that level of stress.
[01:13:17] Emilia Rose: Like I can’t even watch a Netflix show these days. Like unless I know that it’s been renewed. Like I’m going back and watching stuff from 2015 because I know that it’s wrapped up and done and there’s no clip hangers and I don’t have to sit there waiting two years for the next season to come out.
[01:13:31] Emilia Rose: So if you’re doing that to your readers and they do not like that dynamic stress tension, which I do not as a reader, I should have done a weekly instead of a monthly. So even just looking at all of those things, I was like, this was never gonna work. I need to rethink the content that I’m offering.
[01:13:48] Emilia Rose: I need to rethink the frequency and who I’m appealing to. And so yeah, I’m going back and. Rejiggering the whole thing. from soup to nuts. Basically. [01:14:00]
[01:14:00] Michael Evans: I first of all think that’s very, hard to admit to yourself sometimes. It took me losing roughly like $10,000 out of pocket just publishing and not making money back to realize that me just spending another $10,000 publishing more books and spending more money in ads wasn’t going to magically fix what was a broken system and wasn’t working for me.
[01:14:24] Michael Evans: And I really like understand where you’re at. And I think that for me, as much as I share advice in this podcast, I’m very much still on that journey. And I, I guess at this point I’m mainly working on ream and the last couple years have been focused on working on technology companies. But if I was like full-time focused on my author career, I’d be doing the same.
[01:14:46] Michael Evans: Thing is you, which is really diving into these hard questions. And they’re difficult. They’re very difficult. But I, I do know from my time in, in YouTube and, and live streaming that the faster you can iterate, the better. The faster you can fail, the better. And the cheaper you can fail, [01:15:00] the better. Because you will succeed one day and almost no one succeeds their first time.
[01:15:05] Michael Evans: Almost no one I feel like after three failed businesses across different industries. I finally now know a bit about what I’m doing and, and feeling ready to like actually create something that works and that’s difficult. So we have to be able to know that we can play it this game of like being an entrepreneurial creator for the long run.
[01:15:25] Michael Evans: And it it’s difficult. I don’t wanna sugarcoat it. It’s not something that will ever work probably on the timeline you want it to. Things take longer than you think. You have less time than you think, which is ironic, takes longer. You, you have less time to actually do it. But that is the challenge of being a creator.
[01:15:40] Michael Evans: And I think you were super inspiring because you shared with us today so much interesting information. And I’m walking away from this cuz I kind of thought I knew what the title was gonna be coming into this podcast, but all of you now will know the title, which is something along the lines of setting up the foundation of your subscription.
[01:15:59] Michael Evans: And I think this was [01:16:00] really, really valuable. I learned a lot from talking to you. I hope y’all listening Did. So, Terri, thank you for being here. And as one final word, do you have one final piece of advice? Looking back, your subscription to authors who are maybe trying to figure out this foundation who are thinking about start the subscription?
[01:16:17] Michael Evans: When would you start your subscription? There’s no right or wrong answer to this, but when would you, in hindsight, say you would start your subscription and how are you gonna do that differently next time? I think
[01:16:26] Terri Bruce: my one final piece of advice would be take the problems in the smallest possible bite.
[01:16:33] Terri Bruce: If I look at my newsletter, I’m like, nobody’s engaging. Right? That’s a big problem. But when I start breaking it down into minute, step by step, am I onboarding the right people? What am, how is the onboarding going? What is the conduct? When you start getting into very finite, small problems, it’s much more manageable to start tinkering and figure out what’s going wrong.
[01:16:54] Terri Bruce: And it’s often not one big thing. It’s a series of very small things. And so I would say [01:17:00] just break it down into bite size steps and. Tweak each step and then the whole thing kind of gets straightened out. But when you’re just like, oh, newsletters don’t work, I’m no good at newsletters, scrap that, that’s cuz you’re trying to take the whole ball of wax.
[01:17:13] Terri Bruce: And so same thing with subscriptions. Yeah. If my subscription failed, if I was, I just don’t write stuff that, you know, lends itself to subscriptions or my, my fans don’t wanna do subscriptions, I would’ve walked away. But now I’m looking back and I’m going, I can see about 20 things I did wrong and I’m gonna try fixing each of those and then see what happens.
[01:17:31] Terri Bruce: It, it’s much more manageable and it’s easier to see where things have gone awry in terms of starting the subscription. You know, I have so many reviews of my fantasy series on Amazon of people who are like, damn, she can write, she writes great books. I just, I hated this character and I’m not gonna continue with this series, but I will read other things by this author.
[01:17:53] Terri Bruce: And so, , I wish I’d had a way to connect with those people, , you know, and find them. So I would say , you [01:18:00] gotta start early on as an author, like pre-building. And I realize now, like even like every time I release a book, I’m like, Hey, I released a book. And it’s sort of like crickets because I haven’t warmed people up.
[01:18:10] Terri Bruce: Like it’s coming three months, two months, like countdown, give them samples. So I think it’s always thinking about that engagement, right? And bringing people into your process and building that trust and that authenticity. And you gotta do that from day one. Whether you’re posting pre like unedited word vomit on word pa Wattpad or in blog posts, or sending out in your newsletter, you know, or you are telling people like what the inspiration for your work is and involving them in that process, or just building community, going out, making friends, talking to people, whatever it is.
[01:18:48] Terri Bruce: Start that yesterday and keep building it and put some time into fostering that. Even if you don’t have a story you’re working on, there’s probably stuff bubbling in your head that you [01:19:00] could be sharing. Like I don’t tend to like to share my failures with my readers, but maybe I should be. I have a short story that was gonna be my Christmas chat book this year that I just can’t get that story to gel and it’s making me crazy.
[01:19:14] Terri Bruce: It won’t shut up in my head and it won’t shut up until it’s done, but I’ve been bringing out for six months and it just won’t come together. But maybe I should talk about that, to my readers, like, Hey, it’s not that I’m not doing anything and you haven’t heard from me, like you haven’t had a new story in six months.
[01:19:28] Terri Bruce: It’s this one story is a real bugger and I can’t get it to work. And it’s so frustrating, you know? And even just building those interactions with people. And so that would be my advice too, is just, yeah, thinking about. , how to build that, where you’re building it, you know, whether it’s a newsletter, a TikTok video, YouTube, Facebook, whatever it is, master it on these days, you know?
[01:19:49] Terri Bruce: But building that community and start today, that’s gonna be the foundation for your subscription leader.
[01:19:56] Michael Evans: That makes, ah, I, I love it. It, it’s really great. [01:20:00] It’s great advice. And I just wanna say one final piece of advice to everyone, which is that when you fail, it’s not always your fault. We always like to blame ourselves, say that we’re not good enough.
[01:20:09] Michael Evans: Everyone has a different process of learning and a different process of evolving. And when things don’t go your way as fast as you want, it’s not because you are a failure, you are not a failure. Sometimes just things are of our control that we begin to understand more. But Terri, thank you so much. This amazing, amazing interview.
[01:20:26] Michael Evans: Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks
[01:20:28] Terri Bruce: for having me.
[01:20:29] Michael Evans: And that was another episode of Subscriptions for Authors podcast. Thank you everyone for listening, and a huge thank you to Terri if you’re listening for coming on and having a great time together, I loved it. And if you enjoyed this podcast, episode two, I have a favorite to ask for you. , this is a different one.
[01:20:46] Michael Evans: Haven’t asked this yet of y’all, but I’m curious what you would like to hear from us next. Is there a guest you would like us to bring on? Is there a specific topic you would like us to talk about on the Subscriptions for Authors podcast? We would love [01:21:00] to hear from you. We always have plenty of ideas, but the best ideas are the ones that y’all want us to do.
[01:21:04] Michael Evans: So let us know what you’re struggling with, the inscriptions, things that you would be interested in hearing us chat about and send it to the email. I’ll put it inscription, but contact at reem dot n k. I’ll put it in the description as well, so you’ll find it. I’d love to hear from you and if you have any other feedback on this podcast about how we can make this a better listening experience from you.
[01:21:27] Michael Evans: Always open to suggestions. Always open to making this as awesome as time as it can be for you. But I don’t wanna take up any more of your time, so I will say thank you for listening. We’ll be back next week. In the meantime, happy writing. And don’t forget storytellers Rule the World.