Posted on June 1, 2023.
For our first-ever subscription workshop session we have Jen Cantwell with us, a best-selling dystopian and fantasy author. She has a few paid subscribers but is struggling to break through and really find a subscription audience. In this podcast helps we try to help her do just that.
Jen’s links:
Her Website: https://www.jbcantwell.com/
Her Ream: https://reamstories.com/page/ld0fcu0qn1/public
#34 Episode Outline:
0:01:45 Jen’s Subscription Model
0:06:45 Michael’s Take on Abandoned Carts
0:08:20 Jen’s Current Reader Journey
0:13:00 Focusing Your Strategy
0:17:20 The Importance of Looking Up to Authors
0:19:40 Strategic Offers for Readers
0:21:20 What Excites Jen About Epic Fantasy
0:22:55 Jen’s Audience
0:36:10 Getting Personal with Readers
0:48:45 How Can You Focus on Your Subscription Goals
0:57:25 Final Questions From Jen
0:59:05 Conclusion
#34 Episode Transcript:
Michael Evans: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Subscriptions for Authors podcast. Today we’re with Jen Cantwell, besting, dystopian and fantasy author, and she has recently started her subscription . She’s focusing her subscription on her fantasy books, and today we’re gonna talk all about how she can grow her subscription.
In the early days, she’s gotten a few subscribers, but she’s wants to get more and she ultimately wants to grow her fantasy pen name. So we figured live together, we’d learn about how Jen could grow her subscription. So hopefully y’all can learn a bit about . You can growyours. We dive super deep into her business.
Jen comes with some awesome insights and really shares so openly about her journey as a writer. So huge. Thank you to Jen for coming on and to all of you at home. If you like this style of episode, Let us know. We’d love to do more of these and if you want to be someone that we do a live workshop with, but we try and live, help you take your subscription to the next level, then join the Subscriptions for Authors Facebook group and we’ll make a post at some point.
We’ll have to do some sort of competition about who can do the next [00:01:00] podcast episode Live with us cuz we love to not only help you, but if we can help everyone live well that’s, what this community’s all about.
So Jen, I’m very excited to chat with you today because you’ve been a member of the community. You’ve been just one, one of the most helpful and insightful authors we have here. And you’ve had your subscription now for a couple months.
Mm-hmm. You, you’ve had some triumph, but you’ve also had some things that I know we can help with, so we’re kind of gonna flip the script and you’ll kind of get to interview me, Emilia, specifically with the problems that you’re facing, your subscription, the general, and even very specific questions you have.
So I’ll turn it over to you. And we’ll see where this goes.
Jen Cantwell: Okay. Well, I mean, one of the things that I’ve learned through being part of this group is that it’s really important to be personal with people and to make like, personal connections with potential readers. I have always been good at doing that on like a non-fiction level, but not very much on a fiction level.
So I’m kind of stuck right now where I’m not really sure. What the best way is to bring readers in? I’ve [00:02:00] tried many things, but right now where I’m at, most of my subscriptions, my members are people I know. So, and that’s not too surprising. Like when I started out one of the things I did was I got in touch with friends and family and I was like, Hey, it’s gonna cost you five bucks.
Can you get on with me so that it looks like I have some social, some social proof? And so I was thinking that I was very clever to do that. But it didn’t really work. So now I’m kind of in a place where I am releasing content at least once a week. And emailing my newsletter. I have about 1500 people in my newsletter, usually twice a week right now with new content.
And I just, I cannot close the deal. I know that I have people clicking through and looking at the subscription just from analytics on my MailChimp, but when they get there, there’s definitely something missing. And one of the things that I started out with, I had six different tiers. And I thought, great, you know, I’ll be able to get people to like, [00:03:00] choose some, you know, choose your own adventure, basically.
Like how in depth are things gonna be? But that wasn’t working. And so what I ended up doing was going back to just to have one tier. And I had seen Emilia’s subscriptions and noticed that she had, you know, a whole library of, of books available for people. And I happened to have a pretty robust back list in the same universe that I’m writing in.
So I put all that stuff up and it’s intended to be like, something I’ve called it before is like a library card. You get that? Yeah. That $5 subscription and then you get access to everything, almost like a little mini ku. But yeah, it’s not really working. I don’t know really kind of what to do from here on out.
So that’s kind of where I’m coming from.
Emilia Rose: Okay. Before we begin, can you explain a little bit about what your genre is so everyone knows as well as what your model is in subscription? So usually there’s like early access or exclusive access. And then I have another question, but after that. Okay.
Jen Cantwell: So my [00:04:00] genre, I write in a few different genres, but I’m focusing on epic and Dark Fantasy for the, for the Ream subscription. And I think I’ve got nine books out in that world. , so I have that library card like I was saying, so people have exclusive access to any new work in progress that I’m putting up every week.
But I’ve just started to do early access where I’m sending links to members and my newsletter with chapters that are about six weeks ahead or six weeks behind rather, that I’m sending out to the new. And then, you know, at the end of everyone, it’s like, Hey, you can get the rest of the chapters if you just subscribe and you can unsubscribe and all that kind of stuff.
But again, like just, you know, having a hard time closing that deal. So when
Emilia Rose: you link out from your newsletter where are you sending them? Are you sending them to your main page or are you sending them within the
Jen Cantwell: story? Both. The template that I have for my [00:05:00] MailChimp has different links.
Like there’s one at the top for a different project and then one at the bottom for all the ream stuff. And when I send out and I just started doing this last week where I started sending out advanced chapter, or not advanced chapters, but the, the newly public chapters. And those link directly to the content.
So like yesterday, I sent out chapters five and six, and chapter five was where I linked to. So people are definitely like, getting dropped right into the story. But I don’t know how many are doing that, reading that stuff for free. But I do know that nobody’s actually subscribing.
Emilia Rose: So, sorry, I have all these questions, Michael.
Michael Evans: It’s good.
Emilia Rose: So I know for me personally, when I’m doing stereo fiction, I don’t see people start converting a lot until around chapter 10. Okay. I don’t know how long your chapters are, but mine are pretty short, it might be different for you.
But yeah, it’s, there’s the, okay. Yeah. How long are your chapters.
Jen Cantwell: [00:06:00] Between three and 4,000 words.
Michael Evans: I’m just gonna guess three to five.
Jen Cantwell: Yeah.
I mean, this is
epic fantasy, so it’s different ministerial, and I know we were talking about cereals the other day which is very interesting to me. And I have tried to write shorter before, but I just can’t, it’s one of those things you just can’t quite make myself do it.
But yeah, they’re pretty long. So anytime that I send out an update or a free content, it’s usually 7,000 words or so that people are getting Yeah, total because I do two chapters
Michael Evans: at a time. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a big update. That’s good. I think that’s what readers in your sub genre would certainly expect.
But what I’m curious to hear a bit more about, You’re talking about how when they hit your subscription page and they click to join, they’re not converting and I, that that is true. , I can actually see that in the backend. I’m sure you can too. So there’s something happening there. But also there hasn’t been that many people that have clicked join.
Like I think in the last month for you it’s been five who’ve clicked to join and then have abandoned [00:07:00] cart, which yeah, to not speak like pseudo a language in front of everyone, abandoned carts when someone clicks to join your subscription, but then doesn’t actually convert. And that’s very, very common.
Around 70% of online transactions and in an abandoned cart. So that’s having, having five abandoned carts with like you’ve had five in a row with no conversions is actually not really that abnormal. Like you would expect one every three Okay. To actually convert. So right. There seems to also be, again, I, I’m only going off the data, but I’m, I wanna, before we think about the bottom of the funnel and the subscription, because it’s not clear to me that anything is going horribly wrong.
Like if you had 50 people click and no conversions, right? Then we’re starting to talk about something that’s just not working right. But I want to think more about, for lack of better words, the top of your funnel, how you’re bringing these fans in, because you say that you write epic fantasy, that’s what you want to target this subject around.
I know you also write dystopian, right? But that’s what you’re focusing on for your subscription. How does a fan who does not know about Jen [00:08:00] right now. Start to know about you and your fantasy works, and then wanna join your ream. Take me through your reader journey as it stands currently.
Jen Cantwell: Okay. So right now I have backed off of Facebook and Amazon ads for everything.
Because that stuff just, you know, I’ve been banging my head against the wall for years as I know many other authors do. But something that has worked for me strangely is book funnel, getting those promos once a month to draw people in with a free book. And that particular book is also in the same universe and is also as part of the Ream subscription.
Funny enough, the people that I get from Book Funnel are way more engaged than the people who’ve been on my list for years. They’re just interested, you know, they see, I don’t know, that’s right. What it’s, that they’re seeing or reading, but they stick around. So that’s kind of, you know, where like people are originating from.
Right now I have a Facebook group and a page, so between those numbers I’ve got another 1500 or so. But you know how Facebook is, I mean, like, stuff [00:09:00] isn’t necessarily getting shown even though I’m putting up, you know, frequent posts. So I would say that right now the funnel is coming through through those promos.
And then I’ve got like a six email onboarding process some of which talks about ream and some of which doesn’t. Because I want, I don’t wanna like bang people over the head with. Yeah. You know? And then I’ve been working on another livestream project and a lot of what I’m doing right now is pushing people in that direction to just like, kind of try something new that, that I haven’t done before.
And I don’t think that, that a whole lot of other people have done before, which is live dictation. So I’ve been doing that and I’ve gotten a little bit of interest for that, but I’m kind of at this experimental stage right now where I’m trying a few different things just because going back to the Facebook and the Amazon ads, that stuff, you know, you can do that stuff for years and I could always break [00:10:00] even, I could always say, Hey, I’m, you know, I got 10,000 in the store, you know, for my rank or whatever.
But of course, you know, I’m breaking even. When you actually , get down to the numbers. And so in order for a rank on Amazon to really like help you, you need to be way higher than 10,000. So for me, that just wasn’t worth the effort and that’s part of the reason that I got so interested in subscriptions based on basically what you guys have created for us, which is awesome.
But yeah, I end up with people looking at. My page, my newsletter, my Facebook group, getting into the onboarding process, seeing some of the stuff that is there in that, in, in those onboarding emails. So I definitely have people clicking through, but what I can’t figure out is why they don’t convert.
So that is that, I mean, I kind of feel like that’s like half of a funnel, you know? Like I feel Yeah, I feel that I’m missing some steps in there. And like you said, if it, [00:11:00] if it really is only a few people, that’s one thing. But how do I up those numbers? How do I get it so that I’ve got people coming through and looking at it and kind of playing that numbers game a little bit.
Hmm. So that’s kind of where I’m at right now. And I do have something that I started and I’ve backed off of because it’s really labor intensive. In November I launched a short fiction Wattpad and Royal Road and was also sending it to my newsletter. Not advertising, but talking about it on Facebook.
And I wrote about 25 short stories in the same universe. And I already had several of them done, but most of them were flash fiction. So they were about a thousand words each. So I was releasing two of them a week, and I was getting some people who were really viewing but not that many there either.
So I kind of feel like, I’m not really sure. Which avenue I should really focus my efforts on, because I feel like I’ve tried a bunch [00:12:00] of little avenues and it ha and there just hasn’t been anything promising enough for me to push. So I’m not really sure, like, did I give up too soon with those short stories or, or what?
So one thing that I’m thinking about doing since I’ve been doing the livestream, I’ve become more comfortable on camera and speaking. So I think I’m gonna start releasing audio chapters just with me reading of some of the books that are on the Ream subscription. And my books are 30 chapters long, so I could do that, you know, plenty.
So I have stuff like that that I’m kind of like thinking about. But I mean, certainly I’m not a professional narrator or anything like that, so I have a bunch of ideas, but. It’s just, it’s just not
Michael Evans: happening. Well, well, I think I, yeah, I want to, I know Emilia has something, so I, I wanna let her, her share what she’s thinking.
But I, I wanna say just, I think part of the problem, I love all these ideas mm-hmm. But is we need to figure out more of a focused plant. Yes. [00:13:00] Because you cannot throw spaghetti at the wall. Yeah. I think it’s going to hit there needs to be a bit more of a focus strategy. And when I’m listening to all the things you’re doing, I’m wondering if, like, you know, you try something, you don’t see something promising.
It’s like, well, did you, did you really give it the best possible shot for that specific strategy, which I think we should talk about. But Emilia, I know you have something.
Emilia Rose: Yeah. I was just gonna actually kind of say the same thing. I know at least I think you should do, you should find something to focus on and focus on it for a while.
So don’t just like go in like, study what. Each platform like people respond to on each platform and then focus on it for a while. So for example, lap Pad, at least something I found that they don’t respond to short stories as well as they do longer stories. Because when you have a longer story, they get hooked in and wanna continue reading.
What short stories are kind of like, oh, it’s like a one off thing. And so I’ve actually found, I write short stories [00:14:00] every single week, and I found that it’s, it’s really hard to get people interested in those. So I leave those only four, my subscription. I haven’t found a great way to like sell them in other places.
Jen Cantwell: Yeah.
Emilia Rose: So that’s that. But yeah, I definitely think you should we should find a place to focus. And I had another question about your main funnel bringing people just into your worlds in general. Do you do any like epilogues in the back of your book that lead people from like an Amazon retailer or any of the big retailers to your newsletter and have like a
Jen Cantwell: Okay.
Yeah, I mean I have sort of standard back matter and I try to keep it pretty spare. You know, usually with just one link or maybe two because I don’t want people to have to struggle. To figure out Yeah. Which link they wanna click on. That’s fine. And I always put it in a separate chapter heading like, so if the book is 28 chapters long, I’ll put a [00:15:00] new chapter in or I’ll put it at the bottom of an existing chapter so that when they get to the end, you know how like if you’re reading on Kindle, it immediately cuts you off and and they might not see the back matter if it was in its own place.
Does that make sense? Yeah. So yeah, I’m doing everything I can to make sure that that information is being seen. And I do get some subscribers from that. But I mean, really it’s book funnel that is just where they come from at this
Michael Evans: point. And curious just about that. Are the people. Because you mentioned at this moment, they’re coming in from BookFunnel.
Mm-hmm. They’re not really subscribing to subscription, are they? I know, and this is true for probably every author listening, most authors don’t just have a subscription. You probably are selling books on retailers, and I know you do. Are they converting elsewhere? Are they buying your books elsewhere?
Like those people who are coming in from book funnel, are they paying customers of yours in any way? Or you typically
Jen Cantwell: not? Well, not so much. That’s another frustration that I have is I have really good reviews on that series.[00:16:00] 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, but it’s hard to get people into that series as well.
And now that I’m doing the subscription model, I’m not in ku, so that’s kind of part of the issue. Like you mentioned before, that I write dystopian. I do find with the dystopian, it’s, it’s pretty easy to convert a dystopian reader. And I find that anytime I do like a regular email type promo, then I do see a fair bit of read through in that series.
But when it comes to Epic Fantasy I and Dark Fantasy, especially these days it’s hard because there’s no like option for them to just read. You know, sort of un in Kindle Unlimited way. So that’s kind of how I came to the, the conclusion that I wanted to have that library card like I was talking about.
But yeah, that’s, that’s kind of how things are rolling right now.
Michael Evans: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I feel like my first question to you now is, who are other authors who [00:17:00] are successful in the subgenre that you’re writing in that you could maybe build a business similar to? What are some of your comp authors, for lack of better words?
You have them off the top
Jen Cantwell: of your head. I don’t have them like in a list or anything like that. So no, I don’t have
Michael Evans: an answer to that question. You should have those should which is probably a big problem. Yeah, no, that, that has to be like everything. Like you need to know your comp authors. Like if you don’t know where you’re situated in the market, you probably don’t have a market, which maybe explains the struggle and that sounds really brutal.
But I recommend everyone listening because you can start to get into this habit at two of thinking, well, I’m different. I don’t wanna like, just jump on a trend. And it’s, no, you don’t need to do that. Austin Cleon wrote this book, it’s very, very famous, called Steal like an Artist, and it’s all about. How people who are successful and really anything but especially anything creative, they’re not just ripping off one person’s idea, making it theirs, but they’re taking, let’s say they’re four or five comp authors, right?
Four or five movies that you wanna be similar to that have done well, that have a market, and taking and mix matching those things together [00:18:00] into your own thing. But ultimately, like you have to see someone who’s having a successful business already. Because I’m thinking about your genre already and I’m thinking, I know a few authors, like for instance, like I’d recommend looking at like Kickstarters that have done really well in Epic fantasy.
There’s lots of them that have done really well. It’s one of the strongest genres. And when you think about like. Fantasy in general, like it actually does really well in subscriptions. It’s one of the better genre of subscriptions, but you have to utilize the strategies that these other authors are utilizing.
And that epic fantasy is a broad subgenre, right? But you need to nail down on whose books have you read? And you’re like, I love those. Like I part of their subscription now. Like I guess I should create something similar. You know, I know an author his name is AC Fuller and Emilia also knows him.
Wonderful, wonderful guy. He’s been plotting his like epic fantasy pen name for like three years now and been working on a project. He built his own like language connected to the world. He hired the like person who did the Game of Thrones language. He has world building maps and that’s gonna be his launch because Kickstarter that [00:19:00] basically funds the pen name and then he wants to step a subscription basically based around world building maps, bonus content to immerse these readers deeper into his world.
That is something that he’s been living in for years. So one, I guess he’s maybe an author who, I don’t know if he’s a comp author for you, but he might be. But he’s also someone who has like, been very deliberately attacking this, you know, market and studying it for years before he even launched.
Right. That’s cool.
Emilia Rose: Yeah. Kind of going off that, as you were talking, I was thinking maybe you should switch your what you’re offering people, me, people like in the romance genre, they love reading that like sexy, like those sexy scenes. Mm-hmm. And while people in the fantasy genre might love, like the world building that you do within your story, right.
I think they might like other world building that you do outside of your story. So if you actually build a world for them within your subscription, that might be like, I don’t know what like maps like Michael was [00:20:00] saying, or like those kind of items. It might be more enticing for them and stuff like that
Michael Evans: too.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I see role playing games do really, really well. I’d say particularly role playing games will do better in the, like, more science fiction niche. But I, I mean, Dungeons and Dragons, think about how many people who are epic fantasy readers now played d and d I mean, like, it’s, it’s a huge niche.
I think for you it’s about thinking about what brings you to epic fantasy, like as a reader of epic fantasy. Cuz you might, there’s authors, you, you have two types of authors. Authors who don’t even read. I’ve talked to authors who make a million dollars a year who don’t even read their sub genre, don’t even read books like just period, right?
They were like, let’s see if I can do this. But they have to be very deliberate about, okay, you might not be a reader of the genre, but you have to know the tropes. You have to know the emotional highs readers expect. You have to know the market. Most authors I find don’t take that approach, but are just, just readers of their genres.
They naturally know these things. And what I’m curious is, cuz you’re saying you don’t have comp authors, but if I ask you the question, why do you read [00:21:00] Epic Fantasy, what excites you about Epic fantasy? I bet you have an answer to it. What would be your answer?
Jen Cantwell: Well, I would say, this is kind of a long answer.
When I started I used to work in visual effects for film and it was really intense work and a lot of people would listen to music while they were working. But for me, I wasn’t able to focus if it was something loud in my headphones. So I started listening to books and there were several or at least a couple of series that I kind of got hooked on.
One of them. Which is sort of funny. It was Harry Potter. I had all of the British, you know, audiobooks from Harry Potter, and I would listen to them really low so that if I had something that I really needed to concentrate on, that I could really focus. And I knew the stories already, so I would listen to them over and over again.
And I really think that that was what solidified story structure for me listening to series like that again and again and again. And then when I started writing, since I had such a big [00:22:00] Harry Potter kind of influence I went for middle grade, like right away and middle grade fantasy which was sort of like a mashup from from Harry Potter and then the Stephen R.
Donaldson that I read when I was growing up.
Michael Evans: Now I’m hearing some comp authors.
Jen Cantwell: Right. So that’s pretty much it though. Mashing those things together was sort of how I got going. And I’m not quite a panser these days, but at the beginning I really was. And I think that I had good luck to have had that constant, you know, listening that I was doing for years.
And and it really helped me structure and understand, how a story should be, you know, in order to get a full novel. So do
Emilia Rose: you so who is your audience now? Or do you have, is your, are your books for middle.
Jen Cantwell: No they would be considered young adult. My main character is female, 17 years old.
And I’ve had, let’s see, I think I had a book, Bob for a Box set, but it was [00:23:00] international and it just, it didn’t go anywhere. So yeah, it’s definitely like a young adult fantasy, but it’s not spicy at all. So I actually, I have a few different series that have , been offshoots. One of them is a series about my bad guy, and that’s where the Dark Fantasy comes in, because I wanna explore how he went from being a kid to being this like super evil person.
Based on the idea that you’re not born evil. Like for the most part, you know, you’re made into a lot of that without Without it just coming to you naturally. So I have a lot of stuff going on, like in that universe. And so I would say that the, the books about the bad guy, the audience is definitely gonna skew older and people who really wanna see that dark stuff, you know, who wanna know, like how does a child become an evil super villain?
I read a quote recently that said something about the movie Joker [00:24:00] and they were talking about how it explored the ways that an ordinary man becomes a super villain. The process by which that happens. And I’m really interested in that. So yeah, that’s kind of how things are set up right now.
Michael Evans: Okay. Yeah, I mean, I’m immediately thinking cuz I agree the audience probably skews older, but that’s the most general thing to say in books because everyone Right, and everything skews older in reading. Sure. That’s just in general, there’s definitely a lot of people who are Gen Z reading and you’ll find them on TikTok.
But and plenty of other generations on TikTok too, by the way. Mm-hmm. Although there’s as at the time of recording when you’re listening, who knows if TikTok is still a thing, but that’s totally an offshoot, but what I’m curious about is, okay, I’m already thinking of my favorite y a fantasy authors.
And , where do you, because you mentioned JK Rowling, so many things outs springing from Harry Potter. I mean, urban Fantasy owes a lot of its roots to Harry Potter. There’s so many different sub genres that exist today.
You obviously , have a very specific influence from her. Where, where would you fit? Cuz I’m just thinking in terms of like finding your audience. It feels like what you [00:25:00] have to do is find your paying readers, the readers who really want to support you and your book’s like you’ve said, they’ve been reviewed.
Well, you know, even I’ll ask, I’ll ask a question as well. Did, do you have a high readthrough rate on your books? You don’t need to give the exact percentage, but would you say you have a good readthrough rate? If someone reads book one, they’re probably gonna read book two?
Jen Cantwell: I do. Once they get to book two, then they go all the way through.
And I actually had book one re-edited as well as book two to try to increase like the cliffhanger kind of feeling where they wanna immediately go right to book two. But the read through was tough. I mean, my read through on the dystopian stuff, like to get from book one to book two for, for orders is about 60%.
And for KU is about 80% ticket from book one to book two, and then the dystopian
Michael Evans: rest, that’s healthy. Yeah,
Jen Cantwell: yeah. But the read through for the fantasy is just terrible,
Michael Evans: terrible. That’s your problem. We’re figuring it out. Right? There we go. That, that’s it. So I think, and, and a lot of authors I know, I’ve been in the same boat myself, where I think, okay, [00:26:00] because I have a low read through, it’s because they’re just not buying book one.
Like, you know, they, they read book one, but they don’t get to book two. So let me just make a cliffhanger ending. The sad truth is that probably almost all readers who aren’t reading through never got to the final chapter of your book. Okay. They probably didn’t get past page 50 because once you get to like a hundred pages in the book, Right you get a certain emotional investment in where it’s like, I’m gonna finish it.
And then once you get to the end of the story, even if it’s not a cliffhanger, most readers, , hopefully we’ll keep reading. So obviously you’re never gonna have a hundred percent read through. No one has ever had that because readers just, you’re never gonna get ’em all. But it seems like you might need to hone in on.
That specific sub drawing that you wanna hook someone in on and really know those comp authors. And if you can do that, I feel like if you can tell me, Hey Michael, I’ve got these five authors, Stephanie Meyer, Le Bar, Dugo, I’m just throwing out names, but they’re all in your market. These are the ones that like my readers would absolutely fangirl over.
And these are the ones that I need to know. Like I wrote a book that’s similar-ish to them, but my own take on it. And it’s really [00:27:00] awesome. And then now you just have to go and figure out where do the readers of those five authors hang out? And literally, because all of its public information, you will be able to know where the authors sell best, cuz their sales ranking will be the highest.
You’ll know what social media platforms they have the most followers on because you can see that publicly and it becomes so easy to know where you should focus on from. Marrying the two circles of, from a data standpoint, where is your market? And from a a heart standpoint, what will you enjoy doing?
Like maybe you see that TikTok and maybe. Facebook groups are your two best places, and you go, yeah, stand away from TikTok. I want to lean into Facebook groups. I’m just throwing things out there. But I think you actually need to go back to those first principles right. So you could grease this funnel more so that the people at the top are the right people.
Right.
Jen Cantwell: Okay. That makes sense.
Michael Evans: Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. You know what’s interesting? We’ve been talking, this is advice to everyone listening of course, too. You know, it’s really easy to think that , once someone’s in there, you just have to have like a, a, you know, a 10% better automation sequence or that one extra email that’s gonna convince them.
The sad truth is that if you [00:28:00] got the wrong person in, nothing is gonna convince them to be a super fan of you. Yeah. That’s the wrong person, and sadly as well, oftentimes bringing the wrong person is a sign that , if you don’t have such a zone on who that person is and what your story needs to be, that that’s really what it’s all about.
Like we can hack your way to anything with like nice ads or nice, this like that, but nothing beats a story that resonates with civic group of readers. So with that, I’m wondering if we go down to more the bottom of your funnel. Let’s assume that the top of the funnel, I wanna give you a chance, if you have more questions about the top of funnel, let’s talk about it.
But if not, then I think we can move to the bottom of the funnel and talk more about that. Sure. Yeah. We can move on. Okay. Okay. So for kind of the bottom of the funnel, when it comes to, you have a reader who’s now opening on, mm-hmm. Your emails is clicking. Do you see. When you said that your book funnel readers are engaging a lot more than your readers that were there previously for your Epic fantasy.
Mm-hmm. Tell me what that looks like. Is it a higher open rate? Are they responding to [00:29:00] your emails? Are they clicking off the emails more to the links you put in? What does that look like? I’m
Jen Cantwell: not getting a lot of direct responses from people. Like I’ll put out a poll every once in a while. And I have found that the book Funnel people, at one point I had them on a totally separate list and 50% of them would open my emails.
And on my other list it was like on my more organically found list, it was more like 25%. So that’s why I’ve leaned in a lot with the book Funnel promos because I always get people who they just loved whatever it was that I was sending out, what I don’t have. That’s great. From that particular type of situation is a personal connection.
I think that’s something that is so important and that you guys have really drilled into our heads that having that personal connection with a reader is what creates a super fan. And, and I’ve had that experience. I have a couple people who are just like, whatever you write, I bow to you. I will read it.
I love [00:30:00] it. You know, it just, they’re so wonderful to have, but there’s not that many of them. So yeah, that’s kind of where I land.
Emilia Rose: So what are you giving them on Book Point? Oh, are you giving them like a whole book for free or free chapters a whole book. Yeah.
Jen Cantwell: It’s, it’s sort of like an edge of a novella, but it’s about 50,000 words, so they’re getting a pretty meaty book from it.
Okay.
Emilia Rose: So my only concern there is if you’re giving them a whole, pretty much a whole book. I mean, for you in Epic Fantasy, that probably wouldn’t be considered like a whole book. Yeah. But it’s a huge portion of a book for free. Right. I’m assuming that your readers from Book Funnel are coming onto your newsletter and opening your newsletter for more books that are completely free, and then they might get to your subscription page and be like, oh, I have to pay for this.
I see. So it, it could, I don’t know. That’s my perspective of what could be happening there. Yeah. And I know like from my experience too, my book funnel subscribers have been very [00:31:00] active, but they’re more of like the freebie, like chaser type of people Right. As well. So yeah, I don’t know if Michael, you have anything to add on that, but that could potentially be one of the reasons, right?
Jen Cantwell: Why.
Michael Evans: Yeah, no, the, I think that’s, it’s a really good insight and I guess mm-hmm. What I would say is I’ve kind of made the mistake with like, the bad, bad reader magnets before. Cuz I think as authors , it pains us to like, we wanna give away like a novella. We wanna give away something that’s like on the side.
Cause we don’t wanna give away like our main book. But the thing is, that’s what your readers come there for. Mm-hmm. And if you really want to get the right fan in, they have to be the fan who is like, this is the gen story arc that lasts 120,000 words. And this is the highs and lows that I get over that period of time.
And that emotional payoff I get in the end. Like, you need to get them hooked on your drug, essentially, on your story drug. And you’re not gonna be able to do that if you’re giving them something that’s kind of like offbeat Jen, right? they want like the ambi, they don’t know what offbeat is by the way.
Right. That’s the trick. You need to give them[00:32:00] that thing. So that’s the first thing I would say, just in terms of like reader magnets in general is. You know, if you’re, if you’re really trying to like, bring in new fans, like I’ve seen authors do, like, you know, pre quill novellas of a side character. Right?
Which is fine, but who cares if you don’t. Or I’ve already read the actual novel. That’s a good freebie for a newsletter right at the back of a book. And I think we can plate it sometimes in the sense of, oh, well if that’s a good freebie at the end of a book, I could just use that freebie for new fans. No, you can’t.
Those are two different groups of people. When it comes to building relationships with readers, though, I think there’s a lot to dive into here because I know that you said that you feel like you do this better and nonfiction and I also know that you genuinely enjoy building relationships through your art because you had a photography project that Right was covered, got you into the New York Times, all these cool things, right?
So I’m curious about When I ask like, how do you build relationships with your readers now, what is that like? Just tell me your thoughts generally Sure. On your relationship with your readers.
Jen Cantwell: Well, I mean, I feel like I’ve tried a lot of [00:33:00] things, you know, like I’ve tried, I mean, mostly my interaction with readers is gonna be on Facebook and newsletter, so I’ve kind of gone through different phases where I’ve tried to be really personal and tell them like details about my life.
Images are really important to me, so and my pets are really important to me, and I know that is one of those things that people kind of go crazy over. So like, some of the time I don’t put, I’m not putting up puppy pictures every day or anything like that, but when I was kind of in that more personal realm, I would be sharing things.
Nothing too dark. So they’re not hearing all, you know, any bad stories through my life. I try to be positive if I can. But I still get that crickets. You know, a lot of the people on my lists have been there for a long time and I can put out a poll and I’ll do okay, but me asking questions, me saying, Hey, email me whatever you, you know, wanna know about.
I just don’t get much [00:34:00] response from that. When I was working in the photography field and I did, I started a small fine art photography magazine right outta college. And it was very personal work that many people really responded to because I was really putting my heart out there.
Every single issue along with a bunch of other artists and some of their writing and some of their photography, And the, the whole driving force behind that magazine was that it was personal work. It was work that a photographer would do on the side. Because, you know, like a commercial photographer, they’re, they’re working for magazines, they’re working for advertising, whatever.
But it was those personal projects that I was interested in and that I displayed in that magazine. And it was personal enough and pretty honestly, I mean, it was a beautiful magazine that people started to notice. , the New York Times thing happened pretty quickly out of school, like within eight months I was working at the Times.
Not too long. Cause New York was not for me, but it was a [00:35:00] hell of a job. Right. You know, here I was like a photo editor at the New York Times, like right outta school. And it just turned out to just be. Miserable experience, but that’s kind of beside the point. Like the point is that I was able to get the attention of people in high places, specifically with being personal in my writing and in my photography now where I’ve had this problem, I feel like, cuz we talk a lot about being personal on the subscriptions for authors group, but I’m not sure how that, what that looks like in a successful way.
And part of that is cuz I’m writing fiction. How, and that’s one of the questions that I have, , just in general, how does one make fiction personal? How does one figure out how to have enough emotional impact with someone? I mean, clearly people really like the books just not enough of them.
So then it’s like, you know, what am I missing? Like what am I. What am I doing?
Emilia Rose: Yeah, so I know I’ve actually, I’ve [00:36:00] always been really personal with my readers, in my author notes. But that, we’ve talked a lot about author notes prior, so I’m not gonna talk about that as much. But I’ve struggled similarly.
Mm-hmm. In the, in the same exact way., I’m a panser, and so when I write, it’s just coming out. Like I have no idea where it’s coming from. It’s just coming out. And so just recently my assistant was creating my newsletters and she was asking like, Hey, so can you give me tiny little fun tidbits about each of these stories?
And I was like, I just sat down and I was like, well, I don’t really have anything like, it’s just the story I wrote. But then I was thinking back to the certain scenes and certain characters and how they developed, like subconsciously in my mind, in all of my stories, I’ve had places in real life where people in real life who’ve kind of like inspired those characters or those places or that story in some kind of way.
Mm-hmm. Even if it’s like something super simple like a place in my old hometown. Right. So some similar [00:37:00] things like that, just saying , Hey, did you know that this character I, or my example, I used to wrestle when I was in high school and I used to be around all these , really crazy guys used to do all this illegal stuff pretty much.
And so I didn’t realize that , that experience kind of shaped. One of my books and one of like the group of guys in my books. And so it’s basically, you can say something like, Hey, did you know that , I wrestled in high school with a bunch of crazy guys who did illegal stuff and that’s who inspired these particular characters.
And so it doesn’t have to be like, Hey, let me show you what I’m up to this week. You could definitely do that. But if you wanted to stay on topic of your story, kind of related out to what inspired it. Okay.
Jen Cantwell: One thing that I do Relatively frequently is share imagery. Because those are the things, I’m a visual person.
I went to school for photography and when I see something it just, floors me. It’s how something [00:38:00] launches. Like, I don’t know if you can see behind me some of the stuff that I have on the wall. Let me turn it a little bit so you can see that other one. There’s this artist named David Planeta who makes these pieces of work that he calls mini people.
And it was a major inspiration for the series that I’m working on now where there’s these tiny little people and these giant animals and you, it’s hard to see back there, but there are, they’re in there. And that, when I saw that stuff, I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. And then I went on a trip with my husband and found this beautiful picture of a forest that looked kind of creepy and I was like, I think I know what I’m gonna write book for about, you know, it’s, it’s about people getting stuck in those trees and like they can’t get out like they’re being ingested, you know, so when I see stuff like that, I do share it.
But maybe I’m not sharing enough, you know, about where things are coming from.
Michael Evans: You know, I don’t necessarily know if it’s the volume of sharing , you don’t need to post five times a week in your career. Right. And that feels, you know, that that’s not really, there’s no [00:39:00] metric there.
I think you’re on the right track with what you’re saying, right? I, and I think in fact you are maybe exactly in the right track. And I’d be curious if you had the top of the funnel working to bring the right readers in and then you keep showing them behind the scenes your work, what that would do.
But it’s really easy as like authors to kind of look at like other personalities online and kind of like map ourselves onto them. Like how do non-fiction authors do it? How do YouTubers typically build brands or TikTok ERs, but I like to think about a different kind of group of artists and storytellers that have, I think, a similar challenge to us as writers, which is musicians if I’m musician, right?
In fact, I have a friend who runs an app called Mellow, and he actually just blew up on TikTok where his like videos are getting like four or 5 million views now and his app’s getting 10,000 downloads. So I’m proud of him. But his whole app is basically designed to like help discover underground artists, and he’s a saxophone player and what he found just throughout his career is, Just playing music.
Mm-hmm. Just being a saxophone player, just creating songs and putting on Spotify is never [00:40:00] going to get people to start listening. You need to somehow get yourself out there. It’s the problem we all know we have. Right? But how do you like get yourself out there when inherently just your art isn’t enough?
That sounds really bad, but because there’s so much competition for art and so much competition for like the song, the this, there’s too much friction to open your book. You need to get to them in a lower friction way. So all these musicians now feel all these pressure to create TikTok to, to create the same thing that we do as authors, the same exact thing.
They’re spending ad budgets as well. They have all these very similar problems that we have and our industry. And I looked at an event that another friend of mine, Danny Desat threw in Los Angeles. Really interesting event. So he brought together about 10 musicians and. They got together for four or five hours in a night and it was called like the story behind the song.
And that musician just shared what inspired that song. And it was a magical night. It was like five or six hours they played the music live. And that’s obviously not something scalable. We’re not all gonna go to LA and hang out with my friend Danny, although that would be really fun, wouldn’t it? But I think there’s something [00:41:00] in it, which is that those artists, cuz he’s noticed the same problem, he works in creator marketing, that’s what he does.
He’s constantly trying to help people get discovered online. And he noticed that prom musicians have like, I just want to create and I don’t feel I need to become an influencer tomorrow or , to follow that TikTok trend. I don’t wanna do that. So how do I still find people? And it was actually sharing the story behind that story that was so capturing in that moment.
Now if we look. At what does well and what, what songs get to the top of the charts now through short form video or online, and you look at the creators, the creative people who are creating content around it. Nine times outta 10, you see that song and you see them just sharing the story of what inspired that song.
I’ve seen this in my feed so many times and I’m now hooked cuz I’m like, whoa, this is really interesting. This comes from such a real place. I need to listen to this song now. Right? That we can do the same thing with our books, right? When we create TikTok and we get ourselves out there, whatever way, the same readers we’re interested in your stories are gonna be interested in how you created it, what inspired it, are gonna be interested in the top 10 places that exist in your book, that [00:42:00] exist in the real world.
These are all things that provide value to people, right? Outside of. The actual stories you’re creating because we have to realize we have to earn attention. None of us deserve attention. Attention’s not a God-given. Right? This is something we have to earn and fight for as artists and it’s the greatest privilege cuz when you have someone’s attention and can keep it and make them feel valued, that’s why storytellers of the world, but you have to provide something to them outside of just, here’s my story, here’s a screenshot of maybe behind a light that gives them value.
And I don’t mean in some sort of non-fiction way of like, I’m gonna help you make money. That was the easy stuff that’s the Internet’s been flooded for with decades obviously. Yeah. But this is about something much deeper than that. And I think if you look at TikTok musicians who are blowing up, you will see dozens of videos that inspire you and go, wait, I could do that with my book.
I could do that. And that’s what builds community.
Jen Cantwell: Yeah. I think, you know, like you said, too many shiny things. It’s definitely not surprising to me that I [00:43:00] don’t have more traction , but I’ve been doing this for a long time and, I think I started in 2015. So I’m just kind of tired, you know, and frustrated.
And I love to write. And I saw something, I think it was actually on your fireside chat the other day. I wrote down The only successful writers don’t quit. And I think that’s something that’s really important to keep in mind because you’re not gonna get anywhere if you just walk away from it.
But yeah, figuring out how to get that personal connection for fiction for me is tough. But I like what you’re saying, about sharing different little things that inspire. One of the ideas that I have, which I think I mentioned already, is to be reading. Cuz at the beginning of my live stream every day I read what I wrote the day before.
So I’m thinking about doing that with my novels and just, I mean, I’m not a voice narrator or anything like that, but one of the shiny ideas that I have is to do that. And then maybe with that I could [00:44:00] provide more insight to people about how this stuff came about. And then I also have the live streaming.
I can do that there as well cuz I’m actively writing a novel on the live stream. So, I’ve definitely, Struggled to come up with stuff. When I was putting the short stories on on Wattpad and on Royal Road, there’s that little section where the author can put in their notes and sometimes I just look at that and I just don’t know what to put there.
I don’t know what to say.
So
Emilia Rose: I think it will definitely depend on what you’re writing. So if you’re writing short stories or like that flash fiction like you were saying earlier, it’s going to be a probably a little bit harder to write, like to create something that’s like community focus because. Like when you’re doing serial fiction, the community forms over the entire period of story, the entire story.
And so when you’re doing something very quick, it’s a lot harder to, to form that community so quickly. But if I were you [00:45:00] and I was doing author notes on the flash fiction, I would say, Hey, this is what inspired me to write this particular piece today. And then I would do more of like, this is what inspired me, rather than traditional, when I say author notes, I mean like, Hey, how did you like this chapter?
What do you think is going to happen next?
Jen Cantwell: Right.
Michael Evans: Okay. So, Hmm. Yeah, I am still just going on and on in my mind about all the ideas you have and trying to help focus you. And I’d love in the final minutes here to maybe. Help you come out with some sort of game plan where we can kind of think about how you can, in a focused way, find the new right fans and then bring them back into your subscription, which I just wanna note for everyone.
It’s almost funny how this is Subscriptions for Authors podcast. We’re here helping Jonathan’s subscription, and we’ve talked for maybe 20% of the podcast about your subscription if that, and that’s not because your subscription isn’t important, but because if something’s going wrong at the very bottom of the funnel, you have to look everywhere else in the house [00:46:00] that you’ve built and see is there problems there, which is what we’ve been doing.
And oftentimes, you know, I see this time and time again, an author has a really, really healthy, strong, strong connection to their fans and has all of these cylinders operating, you know, the subscription’s. Just one more thing to add that, I’m not gonna say it’s effortless, but it is. I mean, their top authors do well across the board.
And then I know the feeling that you have, Jen, because when I was writing 2017 is when I started and I got really burnt out after three years of doing it and putting a lot of money, a lot of time, the Facebook ads, the Amazon ads, same thing as you and like, you know, feeling like, oh, I made $1,500 last month, but I really broke even.
Another problem I had too was this just feeling like I didn’t want to write to any of the preexisting subgenres, but wasn’t willing to confront the fact that because I wasn’t truly writing. To the comp authors and really nailing down on who my reader and market was. My read through rate was lower.
Mm-hmm. And I wasn’t really able to gain [00:47:00] momentum, but I finally just did something that I loved, which was YouTube. And YouTube changed my life. And I’m not saying everyone should start a YouTube channel, but what changed my life about it was being able to put myself out there go on adventures and start to just create content that I felt like I didn’t have to be on this treadmill of constantly trying to win the next day and to finally break even, to finally make it.
And then ironically, through that process, ended up doing well on it. But it’s really tough thinking., how do you get back to doing what you love and making this process sustainable? Because at the end of the day, like if there was an easy way to blow up in 90 days, everyone would do it.
But there is a way to, to really build a career over five or 10 years. But that takes time and sustained excellence. And that’s something that I want to help you focus on. You know, what can you do so that this is sustainable in terms of time for you, and that as you go to find new fans, because attention is what fuels us as artists.
Like from a money standpoint, we need fans, but also from just the standpoint of creating for no one gets [00:48:00] really depressing really quickly. It’s really demotivating. So you have to go and find fans. You, you know, you can’t just Right. Focus on the writing needs to do both. So. Where do you think you can find fans in a way that it feels less like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall and you’re always not being able to keep up, and there’s always another marketing to-do list thing.
I know most authors listening feel that way. How can we help you feel a bit more focused? Like, yeah, I’m not utilizing every platform, but my brand and me right now is happy. Do you have any ideas on what that could look?
Jen Cantwell: Well, I think just from talking to you guys talking about author notes and sharing , the tidbits of information about inspiration sounds very appealing to me.
And it kind of fills in a blank spot for me where I’ve just been frustrated and not knowing how to move forward, how to get that connection. So for me, talking about ways in which to bring the personal into the equation because it, it’s something I’ve [00:49:00] proven in the past few months, like, just because you build it doesn’t mean people are actually gonna come and support it.
That relationship that you have with people needs to be there first before they’re gonna be, you know, willing to do that. So then you come to the question of where are those people are going to, where are they gonna come from? Are they coming? F yeah. You know, from book funnel, is that gonna be enough?
The remaining people that I have on my newsletter, is that gonna be enough? We’ve got the 1500 that I’ve got on Facebook, but then there’s the algorithm of Facebook that you’re sort of just hoping, you’re hitting it the right way. Yeah. So those are kind of like the limitations that I have right now as far as numbers, those are where my numbers are.
And then something that, that I’ve also thought about to go along with the the podcast idea of just doing one chapter at a time, like just narrating with my minimal narration experience. But just so people can like, get into the book that way I kind of feel now like. You [00:50:00] know, we talked about using Wattpad for example, and how it maybe was not the best platform to do short stories, but something that I’ve thought about just over the past few days thinking about the podcast thing for the narration is, well, I mean, those books are not in ku.
I can do whatever I want with those books. So yeah, maybe it would make sense to start releasing a chapter at a time on Wattpad or on Royal Road or something like that so that people can, kind of rally around something like that. But then, To offer the author notes and tidbits of inspiration that you’re talking about.
But you tell me if that sounds insane because most of my ideas are crazy.
Michael Evans: Well, I don’t, I don’t think you should. No, no, no. , , you’re thinking about things in, in a great way, but I just want to offer some help in that. I don’t think, when you’re talking about like Facebook and your existing fans of Facebook, you’re a newsletter.
Mm-hmm. That’s not a reader acquisition strategy like that. They are your current readers. If we kind of think about it like this big funnel, right? You’ve got new readers up here who don’t know about you. Mm-hmm. Then you’ve got [00:51:00] the people who know about you, who are maybe on your mailing list, following you on social media, right?
And then you have your subscribers, your super fans who are supporting you each month. And obviously you want as many of the bottom as possible, right? But it’s not to bring it down to a math equation, but. If you’ve got no one at the top of the funnel, you’re gonna have no one at the bottom. If you’ve got a 3000 people at the top, now you can focus on how can I get more to get further down the funnel?
And those are two different completely scenarios. How do you move someone from a warm reader to become a super fan, right? It’s a very different situation. Then how do you get people who don’t know you to become a warm reader? And I think that you need to focus more on. We’ve already addressed how maybe at this given time, you might not have a really good grip on exactly who those comp authors, exactly what that audience is.
When you figure that out, I think you need to develop one reader acquisition channel. That’s what I’ll call it. One reader acquisition channel that’s gonna really work for you, that finds new fans, to bring them into your Facebook group. That could be book funnel, whatever it is. Become the best period at it.
Like, like obsess about joining all of the book funnel promos that are specific for you. [00:52:00] Optimizing , that lead magnet to be the best thing ever. That’s gonna convert people, become the book Funnel Queen. If you don’t wanna do that, then focus on Royal Road. Become Royal road. I, I can’t figure out something that’s another queen.
I want another queen. I wanted another word, but you will be another queen at railroad. And you keep it going , and what I’d recommend doing is instead of throwing and trying 10 different strategies at once most companies who run marketing departments literally have one person, if not a team, dedicated to each channel.
Like you are a YouTube specialist, you are a TikTok specialist. And as authors we’re kind of running our own mini companies. And in the beginning, asking ourselves to somehow become experts in 10 different marketing channels and still write good books is impossible. So yeah, focus on one and if it doesn’t work, give it like three to six months, then move on.
That’s my idea. Like skip it real time. Don’t just say, oh, in one week I uploaded my chapter railroad and didn’t get any views. Yeah. You and everyone else who’s ever been on the platform.
Jen Cantwell: Yeah. I mean, and for me, I think it was [00:53:00] going maybe for 12 weeks, something like that. And what you’re saying is that that’s not.
That’s not enough time.
Michael Evans: Well, we talked about railroad your strategy. Not to say anything but your strategy on railroad, right? You need to hone in on the strategy, that strategy for railroad. You didn’t study the top five or 10 authors that you were targeted, that you wanted to steal like an artist from and build and grow just like they did and take those strategies.
You probably had a strategy that wasn’t optimized for ARU to begin with. Got it. Which might explain why you could have done that same strategy for three years and still got nowhere. And that’s harsh. But I know that myself from doing similar things in my career. So taking hopefully to try and help you.
Jen Cantwell: No, that’s very helpful to me. And I don’t mind people being harsh. You guys are very kind. So I don’t take anything that you’re saying in a bad way at all. It’s helpful, you know, because , I think what you’re saying is that I think people kind of fall into this idea that they need to do 15 different things No.
In order to run their business. And, you know, [00:54:00] things like one in particular large conference without naming anything has every year, what is it , hundreds of different genres and different performances and different, panels for people to talk about what they did that worked for them.
That is something that I have come up against for years and it’s so hard to figure out what is it that you’re supposed to do, , it’s this buffet of so much information. So I walk away feeling frustrated by that cuz I can’t figure out what is the most important thing.
Yeah,
Emilia Rose: I’ve experienced the same exact thing. When I started I was like hardcore just doing subscriptions, nothing else. And then I venture out into Facebook groups and realized everyone’s doing all this other stuff. And I was suddenly like, I have to do all of that. I need to do all of that right now.
And so I stopped focusing on my subscription that was growing very rapidly and I was like, I’m gonna do all this other stuff. [00:55:00] And some of the other stuff was very successful, but at that point, that was when my subscription began to like, halt and not as many people were join. Like they weren’t joining as quickly anymore.
And so, yeah, my piece of advice just to everyone is focus on something and if it’s working for you, continue to like, focus on it, continue to like grow it. Because once you start thinking you have to do all this stuff at one time. Just to be successful, even though you’re already successful in doing something, it yeah, it’s just not a good time.
That’s all I’ll say. I’m not
Michael Evans: Yeah, no. At, at some point enough is enough. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you do really well at one thing, as, as an author and master, this one channel of bringing readers in and you have this one thing working for you, you’re gonna have to adapt over time.
You’re gonna have to evolve everything, and everyone does. But I sometimes find that in this industry, we kind of have this sort of, and I’ve had it myself, this sort of, we either go so big and dominate the charts, right. And, you know, become that next [00:56:00] big author, or it’s a failure or it’s bust. And we feel, even as we start to see something do well, that means I now have to branch out here and do this and do that.
But the truth is that like almost no one. Statistically ever becomes the next Brandon Sanderson Oh, sure. In the fantasy world. Right. Like, he’s like , an anomaly of all anomalies and, all power to him. Cuz Brandon Sanderson’s a great writer, I think a great human being. And just as thousands and thousands of other authors are who are fantasy authors who’ve never sold even 1% of what he has.
Right. So the, the big takeaway, I think is that, you know, we’re, we’re building what we’re doing so that we can do what we love and hopefully have a lifestyle that enables us to be immersed in our passions. Right. And if we let our passion rule over us, that defeats the purpose of being an indie author.
Jen Cantwell: I think that’s really intuitive there. It’s a very interesting statement because you’re right. I mean, the whole idea. Of life in general, at least for someone like me, is I’m looking for inspiration all the time and people inspire me. So it’s just that question [00:57:00] of getting those connections
Michael Evans: to start being made.
I think you’re on to a great start and I wanna end this off by asking you if you have any last words or last questions for me and Emilia, or the people listening.
Jen Cantwell: I think don’t quit. You know, I have a friend who once something that is inspiring to me, once we were having a discussion about. How to approach.
Like sometimes there can be this kind of fear when you’re writing something that maybe someone’s not gonna like it. What about this, what about that? And his answer to that nervousness was create without consequence. Create something as if it doesn’t matter if anybody likes it or not.
And it kind of brings it into this much, you know, more bite sized kind of of idea where on a daily basis if you can trust your instincts when it actually comes to the creation of the work[00:58:00] that is gonna be a guiding light for you basically create without consequence as. It just doesn’t matter if people love it or not.
And I know obviously we have to, market and try to figure out exactly who is gonna like those things, but the freedom that that statement gives me and gave me at the time is for me it’s pretty invaluable. So yeah, I guess that’s what I would say. That doesn’t speak to the marketing, it doesn’t speak to a lot of things that we’ve been talking about today, but it’s important.
It’s, it’s something that’s important to me.
Michael Evans: I think that’s beautiful and a wonderful message to end us off on. Jen, I had had amazing time and I’m sure that we’ll definitely keep chewing on this conversation. Yes. Not only, not only together, but also I’m sure in the Facebook group with everyone else. So, yep.
Thank you so much for being here.
Sure. Thank you for having me. You guys.
And that’s it for this episode. I want to thank you so much for listening all the way to the end here. And my guess is that if you’re still [00:59:00] listening, you’re interested in maybe starting and growing your own subscription, and I have some good news for you in the link in the description, you can send up for our mailing list@subscriptionsforauthors.com.
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I hope you all have an amazing rest of your day. We have a lot of exciting stuff coming up. Honestly, we’ve had one year of subscriptions for authors one year that we’ve existed. The podcast has been around for now, about nine months, and year two, it’s gonna. Even better than you’re one. And we hope that we can help you even more and help our whole community build a better ecosystem for publishing.
So you’ll catch me in the next one. Thank you everyone for listening.
And in the meantime, don’t forget storytellers Rule the World.