Posted on June 8, 2023.
Natalie Keller Reinert is an equestrian fiction author who makes a full-time living writing romance stories for horse lovers. In this episode, we cover how she writes and markets to her niche of readers and her shift to direct sales and subscriptions. So much to learn in this conversation with Natalie!
Check out Natalie’s Links:
Her website: https://www.nataliekreinert.com/
Her subscription: https://reamstories.com/page/ldyqjca7qp/public
#35 Episode Outline:
0:00:00 Introduction to Podcast and Natalie
0:06:12 Natalie’s Marketing Experience
0:09:08 Natalie’s Book Distribution
0:11:54 Natalie’s Subscription Evolution
0:18:07 Breaking Down Natalie’s Income
0:20:17 Taberton Equine Books
0:23:30 Protecting Your Energy at In-Person Events
0:27:40 Advice for Niche Authors
0:30:30 Subscription Evolution & Surprises
0:33:30 Burnout
0:35:50 Advice for Managing New Subscriptions
0:37:30 Conclusion
#35 Episode Transcript:
Today we’re chatting with someone who may just have one of the most unique subscriptions in the world. Her name is Natalie Keller Reiner, and she writes equestrian fiction. That’s right. She writes books for horse lovers, and she is the number one author in the world with this, like dominates the categories in Amazon and has recently been shifting more and more of her business towards subscriptions and direct sales, which we’re gonna talk all about.
We’re gonna talk about how she’s made this shift where her income streams are and. What she’s learned from managing a subscription. But there’s even more insights here for someone who is writing to a specific niche or community. This is an essential podcast cuz you are going to learn how Natalie approaches discovering her readers in so many unique ways and has been able to build this fan base over the course over a decade.
That was in a subgenre that before her, basically no one was making a living in. She’s been able to carve out a market for herself, carve out a readership from a [00:01:00] community that existed, right? But no one was serving it before her. Ah, it’s gonna be a great episode. I think you’re gonna enjoy this one a lot.
Huge thank you to Natalie for coming on. Let’s get right into this conversation.
Michael Evans: Natalie, welcome to the Subscriptions for Authors podcast. I’m very excited to chat with you because you have a really unique subscription because you do two main things in it. One, you write novels for equestrian lovers.
You write equestrian fiction. I think that’s super unique. We’re gonna talk all about that. But you also. In your subscription for readers also have a writer, like a nonfiction subscription, bundled into there, which I think is really cool that you do both in the same place. And I think there’s a lot for a lot of our authors to learn from you.
So I just wanna say thank you for being here. And before I talk about your subscription, I wanna first talk about how you’re out, out in the farm taking care of your horses. You are a horse lover, but what decided you to turn your passion for something like, you would think maybe you would film videos, you would do, there’s a lot of different things you could do.
Related horses. You chose to write fiction books, right? That’s unique. What inspired that? For one thing, I [00:02:00] have absolutely no interest in video or video production. I’ve only watched like the four, same television shows over and over again, and the same goes for movies. So you can imagine the current trend to put everything onto a reel or TikTok does absolutely nothing for me.
Natalie Keller Reinert: I’ve always been a reader first, like a very nerdy reader from the earliest years. And so when I grew up, I thought I was gonna be a literary fiction writer and or a, as I was growing up, I thought that, and that was always my aspiration, but my. Sort of college years and years as a young parent and stuff, everything was just not going the way I expected.
And I ended up writing a novella while I was still on a farm in Florida before I took a gap, sort of a farm gap, and moved to New York City for a while. And I met some people in New York who. Could have helped me along with the, my traditional writing journey that I’d always anticipated. And ultimately I decided that the novella, which was about [00:03:00] horses and why people are obsessed with horses and maybe why I was obsessed with horses just trying to Dig down into those emotions really it needed to be read by the right people.
It didn’t need to be changed for everyone. It wasn’t for everyone. I didn’t write it for a general audience. And at that point, I actually had a fairly popular blog, which had started out just about retired race horses, which was an up and coming topic at the time. And so I had a lot of readers built in and I said, does anybody wanna read this?
And people did. So it was, 2011 ish, 2012 ish. And self-publishing was just hitting this interesting moment with Kindle and, more Kindle users than there were books to read and that kind of thing. So I said, okay, let’s do this. And I self-published it and That was the start because it found its audience within about six months.
The short, little sad little novella about basically about having a nervous breakdown. The literary fiction novel of my dreams really found an audience of people who got it and knew what I was talking [00:04:00] about. And so I kept going and here I am.
Michael Evans: Amazing. Amazing. And you recently started a new pad name like, I wanna say like first published maybe six or seven months ago.
Yeah. Based around theme parks. I love, like you wrote a fiction novel incorporating your passion for theme parks. Like I love it because one, it reminds me of Stephanie Garber’s car Carnival, like that book, just like I get the vibes. Even though your book’s quite different from that, but I immediately think of that.
But it’s amazing that you’ve found these like niches, that you’re able to write for. Yeah. And for these Kennys, yeah.
Natalie Keller Reinert: I always thought that niches were where an independent writer could really find their footing and build a career. Instead of seeing what’s popular and writing into a wave that is already, crashing without me, instead of saying a lot of people are reading, this kind of romance or that kind of novel.
It seemed to me that I could lean really hard into one tightly knit community, either become a part of the community or just indulge myself with a group of people. I already really enjoy being a nerd with like theme park community and just lean into that and [00:05:00] write about those things that make that passion not just so fun, but so weird.
Because they’re weird, right? It’s weird to be really passionate about something to that point that I think people like me who have upended their whole life and, live on a rural farm with a couple of horses and just devote their whole life to it. That’s really weird, man. And I like to explore that with people who get it.
Michael Evans: I love that. And it’s such like a refreshing approach because I think that oftentimes when we talk about niche and fiction, we narrow it down to I would say subgenres that a lot of new ones exist now, but they’re not always based around interests or passion. They intersect, but it’s not always there.
Like you would write maybe a romance story overall or a contemporary story just for in general, but not for Equestrian lovers. But I’m curious how marketing goes because I saw your event schedule on your website and I remember. I think when we were scheduling this podcast, you were talking about all the events you do a lot of in-person events, like you’re traveling.
is that how you find readers going to conventions where there are equestrian levels or how is that going?
Natalie Keller Reinert: That [00:06:00] has become a way that I find readers, and it is also an incredible way for me to find inspiration. When I do something like a couple weeks ago, I went to a huge three day event in Kentucky, which my most popular series is based in that.
Riding sport of eventing. And so for me to be able to go to that event, I’m not only able to connect with people who might read or are reading my books, but I’m able to go out and talk with the writers on the course or go on a course walk cross country with, an Olympic level. Equestrian and so I can absorb more of their language and the way they think about the approach to offense or how they’re going to ride their horse towards an obstacle.
And I just, sometime I took a lot of notes on one, I walked with the the coach for the British eventing team, and I just wrote down so many things because. The British equestrians always have a very unique way of a unique sort of terminology that they use. So I have all that in my pocket and in my head for later.
But getting to meet people in the equestrian world, [00:07:00] one-on-one is important because a lot of them live in the country and they don’t have bookstores or they don’t read a lot outside of what they can find maybe on Amazon. And it’s not easy to advertise a book outside of a category. I have struggled with marketing on Amazon to the point where I said, you know what, I’m never gonna do this again.
And I don’t bother, I don’t send anybody to Amazon anywhere. But it’s amazing to get out and meet people and be a part of the community. It’s really, Made me feel like I’m on the precipice of a big jump in my career, just becoming part of the community. The number of people who know me, who shout my name it happened to me over the weekend just volunteering at an event.
Ah-huh. The first person there was like Natalie. I said, no one knows I’m here. And I turn around and it’s a reader. That’s awesome. Yeah, going headfirst into it has been great. But before that, honestly, I’ve relied on Facebook ads for many years because of my ability to market to a specific niche on Facebook.[00:08:00]
Michael Evans: You’d be able to target an interest for maybe equestrian, and then be able
to segment that by Kindle eBooks and then be able to kind exactly have an audience of, I bet probably several hundred thousand people that you could then target in the United States. I’m just guessing
Natalie Keller Reinert: tons of people.
Unbelievable number of people are interested in horses to the point where sometimes I have to narrow it down literally to professional organizations. Because a lot of I’ll get start getting comments that just say Ooh, beautiful horses on my post. And I go, okay, these are not, this is not what I’m looking for.
When I find people who start critiquing the position of the rider in the picture, that’s when I know I’ve found my audience.
Michael Evans: I love that. That’s such a. Good metric, like they are horse people. These are horse people. The crazed among us. Yeah. Yes. Oh, so you just mentioned, cuz I know you’re wide and definitely I wouldn’t from looking at, how well your books have done on Amazon.
I wouldn’t guess that is not a main sales channel for you, but it sounds like you have moved your sales channels elsewhere. So I’m curious what that’s looked like for you. You said you’re [00:09:00] not directing leaders to Amazon. Where are you directing them more to now?
Natalie Keller Reinert: I direct them to my own site.
Now I have a Shopify site that I started last year, and so that’s been my big push. I would have 20 books out of 25 in all the equestrian categories on Amazon when I was in Kind Unlimited. I just, I owned those categories to the point Wow. Where sometimes I felt bad about it because they weren’t even, a lot of ’em were non-fiction.
Or else it was the young adult fiction, there’s no adult equestrian fiction category. So I actually felt quite guilty and. Asked Amazon to remove my books from the non-fiction categories and they paid lip service to that request, but their algorithms just dropped them right back in.
Since I left Ken Unlimited, And since they changed categories and you only show up in three now, just my books only occasionally show up on bestseller lists on Amazon. It has not affected my Amazon sales in the slightest, and I have, when I decided to go wide, which was in 2020 I had pulled people fairly regularly and if you ever seen my books on the bestseller lists and the responses were uniformly, there are bestseller lists, they had [00:10:00] absolutely no idea.
And that might be a reflection on my audience, that they’re not going out and looking on Amazon for the next eight books they’re gonna read. And once that they’re specifically reading my books because they’re horse books. And I think that’s often the case, but it was just another indication to me that it was no longer important to me to be on a bestseller list.
It didn’t have any real bearing on my sales and I wanted to be in libraries and because a lot of, you know, horse people tend to be horse poor, and so I wanted to make sure that there was access. For everybody, while they’re not, they have 10 or $15 to spend on a book in a month because their vet bills are crazy or something.
You know what I mean?
Michael Evans: Yeah. I love that awareness of the community, like you’re one of them and I imagine the in-person events for you, because it sounds like you picked up that recently, so that’s something you’ve done probably maybe post pandemic. Is that something that you’ve leaned more into recently, last year or so?
Natalie Keller Reinert: Yeah, I was able to make a big change because I was able to go full-time in 2020 and that was because of the pandemic. Okay. I was working at [00:11:00] Disney and I was part-time, but I was working full-time hours and I was wiped out as it was, and the pandemic rolled around and we closed and I said now I’m tired and I’m panicking.
So it just started revamping my business like 15 hours a day. I’m the kind of person that works through my panic. Really hard and then has like a depressive fit much later. So I held it together for like almost a year and completely rebuilt my business to focus on wide sales and reaching out to subscribers and things like that.
Michael Evans: Wow. I mean that productive anxiety. I’m sorry you had feel that way, but you’ve accomplished a lot. And one of the things you accomplished was setting up your subscription, which. Has done quite well. And I’m curious wh when did you specifically start that and.
So far up to this point, you have, you actually have quite a number of tiers. What’s led to that evolution? How has it changed over time?
Natalie Keller Reinert: I think my Patreon, my date to 2017 or 2018, I honestly don’t know. And the reason I set it up was I was struggling with marketing and I was working full-time, had a child, and I.
Just, I kept having to take on [00:12:00] freelance work to get me through the gaps between releases, and I was only doing two or three releases a year because I was working full-time. The freelance work was taking up too much time and I wasn’t enjoying it. So I started researching Patam because it was making the rounds here and there on different Facebook groups and I did a lot of research and I finally launched it and I was very clear.
I said, look, this is to help me get through the lean months so that I don’t have to take on freelance work. When I don’t take on freelance. I write fiction. It’s as simple as that. And so it started, Slowly, but I think I was making a hundred or 200 a month pretty quickly, which was great. Yeah.
And the model for it has always relied really heavily on early access. I am so addicted to early access now that it’s a really huge part of my writing technique. I write a chapter. I post a chapter almost always. Within minutes of finishing the chapter, I will post it and I will use the comments and the questions and the feedback to gauge how it’s working and decide where it’s going.
So the ability to expand it. Over the years, it’s been really organic. [00:13:00] I’ve really never pushed it. Outside of back matter. And every now and then when I’m working on a really popular series, I will say, Hey, did you know you can read the chapters of it right now? I did that yesterday and got two new subscribers.
So it just filters through. So that’s the Patreon approach. And then I’ve so now it’s a pretty decent part of my monthly income that I can rely on, and that’s what I really like about it, and that’s what I tell people when they question why I would do it. It’s because it’s reliable and subscribers get everything first because they care about my stuff They’ve proved it.
Michael Evans: Yeah, no that totally makes sense. And I love so you have like your lower tiers where I imagine most of your people in, and when I say lower tiers, just like lower in price are based around a lot of the early access one of them I believe at $3, they start to get some discounts at your direct store, which is great if they’re buying like, sign paper, back books, all these sorts of things.
But then I was like, oh wow, this is pretty genius at. The $50 month tier, it’s the owner’s box tier. You receive an exclusive I think, [00:14:00] special edition of the hard cover of each release, but you get to add a horse of your own. To an upcoming book of yours.
Natalie Keller Reinert: Yes. That’s that actually, that’s always people suggested that to me.
I don’t remember what happened, but I think I might have had a vet bill. I used to have a fox hound with a serious way of collecting vet bills. And I think I came home with one huge one, and I posted on my author page that I was reeling from this vet bill. And somebody said, Hey. Why don’t you put a higher tier on your subscription that lets somebody name an animal?
And I said, yeah, okay, let’s do that. And it took off right away. So I actually and I’ve met people at shows that, have been like, show me pictures of the horse that I put into the book. And some of these horses show up book after book. I literally just added one today. That’s awesome.
It’s really fun because they tell me, they’ll tell me what their horse looks like and, special markings, but then they tell me their horse is quirk. One horse really loves bananas. He’ll do anything for bananas. So that goes in, and this horse has a way of picking up her hoof to ask for treats.
[00:15:00] So that went straight in, like straight away. So that’s really cute. People love it. They love, who wouldn’t want their horse in a book? They’re so cute.
Michael Evans: I know, I agree. It’s such a good idea. I’ve seen, authors before do tears or you get to name a character, but like getting to build your own character in a book, that is an option for people, but it’s also challenging cause it’s wait, like these characters, like if it’s a main character in this story and they get to build their own no, like the author needs to have that set, but with the horse, it’s like a dog.
Like you can have a really. Awesome animal who’s a part of the story and has that quirk. But it’s a nice way to collaborate with the audience and not have it be Too much control. Like where they’re literally like, oh, hey, I get to dictate the story. I like it a lot.
Natalie Keller Reinert: Yeah. And they tell people about it, right?
So it’s the whole selmar newspapers by putting someone’s name in the newspaper concept where somebody says, oh, to their friends, they say, oh, my horse is in this book. You have to read it because my horse is in it. And I’ve had people do that right in front of me to sell my paper back while I’m sitting there.
They’ll snatch it up and say, you have to read this because my horse is in it. And they go, okay. And they buy the book.
Michael Evans: [00:16:00] Oh that’s genius. Oh, I didn’t even think of oh yeah. That’s amazing.
Natalie Keller Reinert: It saves me the effort of coming up with the horse because I honestly, for this one that I wrote today, I was stumped I’ve been pantsing this draft really hard, which I shouldn’t be doing.
But I’m on vacation this month, so I was like, yeah, I don’t really wanna write an outline. I’ll just fiddle with it. And and I was outright gain and so was thought, oh, you know what? I could use so-and-so’s horse. She’s given me all the details on it. I don’t have to make up a thing. So when she went, it was easy.
Michael Evans: That’s beautiful. I love it. I love it. The, it’s such a good high priced tier concept to have. And then of course, You have all of the other tiers that people can come into if they don’t wanna, support it $50 a month, they still can get, obviously, access to all these things. It’s. Genius.
It’s great. It’s amazing to me. Like
Natalie Keller Reinert: I’m deeply grateful that anybody would pay me $50 a month, and I have a lot who have paid me $25 a month for a really long time, like for years and years. And when you see how those numbers add up, it’s really humbling. Like you get to know what that word actually means when you say it about yourself, [00:17:00] because who am I to be getting this sort of monthly payment from somebody?
And for me, I am a very frugal clearance only person. And so like $25 a month. Are you sure about this? But I learned a long time ago in marketing you, you have to, work with. Other people’s wallets, not your wallet. So it just went for it and it worked out.
Michael Evans: Yeah, no, that’s what’s great about a subscription is you literally have a tier as little as a dollar and as high as 50.
So you have different tiers that cater to different price points, just like your books are. Why in libraries as well, so that people who want to, go support and buy that new paper back the second it comes out can do that. But those who wanna still read your books can as well. I love it. And. I’m curious for you now, just as a broad picture, cuz you’ve got all these wide retailers, you have direct sales, you have subscriptions, you’ve got lots of revenue streams.
That’s great. Where’s I guess as a portion of your income, where does a subscription fit in? And as a wide retailer, is Amazon still the biggest or has your direct sale store past that? Where is the. A broad [00:18:00] income pie breakdown. If you’re able to
Natalie Keller Reinert: it really depends on the month and I couldn’t quite give you an annual figure because my sales channels have really begun to change in the past year as I’ve started pushing in different directions.
So in a month like this I had my last ever pre-order on Amazon go out this month. So Amazon is overwhelmingly my top retailer this month. Whereas in February, I had a very anticipated sequel as an exclusive pre-order on my site. And my site did, I’m going to, I’m gonna say it’s at a quarter.
Of my income for that month. Maybe once everything came in, it was, that’s really good. Yeah, it was big. I’ve, I was, I’m very happy I’m moving in that direction with with exclusive pre-orders on my own site. That’s how all my books are going here on out. The subscriptions are, they’re probably gonna be one of my top wides.
It pretty much would go Amazon and then my store, and then if I have an event, direct sales will come in. About even with Amazon. Because I usually push, I work really hard at events [00:19:00] and I do big bundle discounts and things like that, so I move a lot of pieces at events. and then after my site, Probably subscriptions comes in there, and then all of the other ones trickle after Apple, Barnes and Noble, Cobo.
I’ve never put a ton of effort into any of those in terms of, the whole concept of. Really learn what sells on Cobo and then do that for a year and then really learn what sells on Google and do that for a year. That sort of mindset. I’ve never had that. I just I just stuck with my own stuff and it’s available elsewhere if people want it that way.
So it does its own thing. Some months it’s big and some months doesn’t exist.
Michael Evans: No that’s so cool. And just hearing also as well, like the direct sales figure at these events, it makes me want to ask you about, So there’s, and I’m not too familiar with this and I, I don’t think anyone listening would be either Taber equine books is like it seems like who you work with these events because to be clear, for authors who are listening, you’re not going to like events where there’s a hundred other authors and it’s just all a book signing. Correct. You’re going to equestrian expos ,equestrian. Basically Faires and then you’re partnered with, [00:20:00] or the book signing is hosted by Taberton Equine books, which is not you, I can tell from the site That’s not you.
Who is that? What is the relationship there and are you like the only author at these events?
Natalie Keller Reinert: No. I it depends on the event. Okay. But for the most part, I started partnering with Taberton Equine books, which is an. An online slash mobile bookstore. When I had two books out, I think way back when.
Wow. I lived in New York City and there is an equine event in Massachusetts every fall called Equine Affair, which is four days. And Somebody said, Hey, I think that you should go and sell books with this bookstore. And so I went and I think I had a four hour sort of window of book signing, maybe it was even less.
And I sold all my books and I was like that was really fun and I really liked the atmosphere. And so it became an annual thing and it really ramped up in the past two years where now I go to all of the big trade fairs with her and we went to. The Land Rover, Kentucky three day event for the first time she’s gone to that event.
And one other author came for the first day, and then it was me for the full four days of the trade [00:21:00] fair. Just holding down. And so at this point, we’re so close help run the store. I tell her to go on breaks and I run the register. I we come up with all these crazy publishing schemes during slow periods, which we never put into.
We never put into action, but someday we’re gonna do it. We work together really well at these shows and I’m just so fond of the owner of this store. And she is one of the only equestrian only. Book vendors left in the United States, so she is on an event only schedule where, you know, any big horsey event like the Duchess County Fair in upstate New York is a big one in the event, right?
The Aquine Affairs and Horse World Expo is a huge one for us in Pennsylvania. And she finds books that I’ve never seen before. She contacts authors, with dusty old boxes of hard covers and Wow. Yeah. So it’s a really great relationship. It means I don’t, yeah, I was able to start doing events without taking on that big financial risk of having to drive a, because none of them are close to me.
And when I started, I lived in the city and [00:22:00] I didn’t have any real way of getting their. With a vehicle, so I don’t have to bring inventory. Like she took all of that pressure off so I was able to just show up. And so it’s, that’s allowed me to really start. Traveling the country with this is that she holds the inventory and I just cut her the best deal I possibly can.
Michael Evans: That’s a dream partnership. That’s incredible.
Natalie Keller Reinert: Yeah, we have a wonderful time together. I always say, she must be so tired of me because while I’m there I outline all the things we’re going to do differently in the business and like just take over completely. I have a strong retail management background, did you do retail management when you were at Disney at all or? When I was at Disney, yeah. And I started in retail at Barnes and Nobles. So I have a lot of background in book sales as well.
Michael Evans: That’s so cool. Ah, that seems like one of those really unique situations that authors listening man, if you know someone like, Taberton, in your case, like a Taber equivalent, that would be really cool.
But for people who maybe don’t. No a Taber equine books but still want to go to in-person events. What advice would you give after going to so many events in terms [00:23:00] of obviously these go well for you. How do you make an event go? Especially cuz as authors I imagine even in the horse, Kenny too, we love our horses.
We’re excited to be around horse people, but like at the same time a lot of us are introverted. I definitely know that’s true in the author cuny, a lot of us are introverted. So how do you do these events and not walk away being completely exhausted because you travel so Just looking at your schedule.
It’s not a full-time concert touring travel schedule, but it’s not terribly far away from it,
Natalie Keller Reinert: spring was very busy for me. Okay. But I don’t have anything now until July. I have something at Barnes and Noble, but that’s like down the road, so that’s easy. I do look at months where I have nothing on the calendar and get very excited.
Like I don’t have to go anywhere this month. I do get deeply exhausted. I lose my voice. I end up going out for dinners with people, which I regret, not the people, but just the extra socialization just wrecks me. I have a way of agreeing to go on large group dinners, just ordering a drink and then ordering an Uber before anybody orders their meal.
And I just tell the punchline of a joke and run and. That’s been helpful to me. So having an exit strategy for all the [00:24:00] friends you’re gonna make on the road is a good idea. But. For me, I came out of my shell working at Disney, and so I’m not saying you should work at a theme park if you’re an introvert, but maybe work at a theme park if you’re an introvert, because they won’t let you be an introvert for very long.
And I am, but I have learned that I am comfortable speaking in front of people when I am in control of the situation or when I am the resident expert of the situation. And so when I was standing in front of, a store inviting guests to come inside and try a fudge sample, I was the person in charge of getting people into that store.
And I knew everything I needed to know about my area. And so I was very comfortable being that person in charge and selling your books is, So similar to that where you bring people in with a smile and I love your purse, or Where did you get that? Or, wow, that’s a really nice dressage whip you just bought.
Cuz they all buy whips at these shows. It’s so funny. And I said, oh, you bought a purple whip. How exciting for you. It’s so bizarre how many people buy whips at these shows and then you just engage them in [00:25:00] conversation. And I know that sounds. Like a gross oversimplification, but that is what I learned at Disney, is just to start talking to people about themselves and then they start asking you questions about yourself.
And invariably, even if you talk to somebody for 15 minutes, if they don’t know who you are already, they say after a pause, wait. Did you write all these books? Because I have almost 30 books, which fills a six foot table and then some, and then they start freaking out that I’ve written all these books, and then it just snowballs.
It doesn’t always snowball into a sale, but I got their attention. And because yeah, I go to these sales on repeat, the second year is always easier. The third year is always easier because they remember me from the year before. The first year is the toughest at all of them.
Michael Evans: It’s almost, if anything, it’s like, who’s this new person?
Should I trust them? Are they really serious? And then they see you come back the second year, you have a few more books added to your stack. They’ve heard some friends talk about you, and they’re like, oh. Maybe it’s time I support this author. Maybe it’s time I try it out.
Natalie Keller Reinert: Yeah.
Because there’s trusted brands at these events. You’re sitting next to [00:26:00] magazines that are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, and large breed organizations that these people have personal affiliations with and yeah. So they’re used to hucksters showing up, or people just throwing together bead work or, whatever it is.
They’re used to people who come and go and aren’t really part of the community. So you have to prove that you belong there for some of these folks.
Michael Evans: I think that’s something that’s true. Across almost any community just may engage it in a different way. And I’m curious for you what your advice would be to other authors who you have this, I think, wonderful, beautiful, unique niche of this equestrian fiction and so unique that like you were mentioning, like you were basically completely dominating the charts when you were like on Amazon Kindle.
I understand how it could feel bad, but that’s also a boss move. Look at me, like all of the books are mine. Oh, it definitely was look, you are the number one author now. A lot of authors I’m sure this is true about a question in friction.
You’re making a living now from it. There’s definitely an audience. But when you talk about more like mainstream subgenres, there’s, Really huge [00:27:00] audiences for these. What would be your advice to people who want to write for more of a niche audience that isn’t even something like a traditional publishing?
I’m not sure a traditional publisher would even conceptualize that equestrian fiction is a thing. Like I’m sure they would understand that’s a thing, but not really. You wouldn’t see that in a, you walk into a bookstore, you don’t see a section for equestrian fiction. I think that’s what makes what you’re doing so unique.
How do other authors maybe. Do this for what their passions are. Cuz assuming that most people listening might not be interested in a questioning fiction, but might be interested in fishing, they might be interested in boats, they might be interested in maybe amusement parks like you. There’s so many different hobbies.
How do you do that?
Natalie Keller Reinert: The two keys for me are accuracy. Okay. I don’t write about anything that I don’t know how to do. And that includes upper level of ending. I might not be able to do it now, but when I was 20, that was a different story. And no, I didn’t write at the Olympic level, but I wrote at a pretty decent level and I worked for Olympians.
So I have a very deep understanding of everything that I write. I only write about places that I understand. That can really matter too when I have people who have [00:28:00] moved to this region of Florida. Based on my books. Wow. I could drill down to areas I have people say, oh, I didn’t look at that area because you said it was very dry and sandy.
I’m like, good choice. I’m glad. So people who are deep enthusiasts who are passionate about something will not tolerate inaccuracy. You cannot fake it. Go look at the reviews for James Patterson’s, the horsewoman. Okay. That is a book that came out was clearly aimed directly at the equestrian fiction audience and.
Was very hit or miss with my people. Let me tell you, because of little things. It was little things that upset people. people say again and again to me, that one woman in the book, I didn’t read it. One woman in the book complains that the saddle was heavy. What English jumping saddle would be heavy in this day and age, and she’s not wrong.
I think my saddle might weigh four pounds, like. Why would we have heavy saddles? We’re jumping huge fences. And that piss people off. They can’t stand it. And they write that in the reviews. Accuracy is your literal best friend. You need to be really realistic on your, for me, on my social media. [00:29:00] The most success I have with social media is when I am very real about my life, about my horses, when I didn’t have horses about my dog. just super realistic and open all of the time.
I see advice sometimes on social media like, pick a day and post about your favorite color. Pick a day and post about your favorite food. And that is people see through that at this point. And if they don’t see through that, then. I don’t know. They’re not gonna be great conversational.
It’s either, so you’re gonna think that your audience isn’t that great and they’re gonna think you’re super mad too, because you’re not being honest with them. So you have to pick whatever channel you’re willing to put yourself out on, and then you have to do it. And I really believe that. Social media as much of a curse as it is most of the time these days is so important for us.
If we wanna find our people, if we wanna dig into those niches and have those conversations and ultimately sell ourselves, we have to be part of the community that we want to respect us and read our stuff. That’s all there is to it. You can dislike it all you want, but you also need to learn it and play [00:30:00] it.
Michael Evans: That’s, no, that’s really good advice. And it’s something too that just takes time and it takes a lot of hard work, which you’ve clearly, you’ve been at this for such a long time, and I’m curious even with your subscription, because your subscription now you’re five plus years into.
What have you learned about a subscription that has maybe surprised you or something that about your approach to running a subscription as an author has changed from maybe your beginning to. Now?
Natalie Keller Reinert: I think the lack of expectation on the part of the subscribers really surprised me that they’re not the exception of a few people who know who they are.
They’re not tapping their watch every day looking for that chapter that I promised them. Some of them won’t even give me the address to send them a paperback book. They’re like, no, I do this to support you, not because I want you to send to me things. If I need to take a month off. Which I’ve done in the past.
They say, take care of yourself. We’ll be here when you come back. And they have no expectations. In fact, some people will get on my case if I post before that point. So I feel like people will say a lot of things to you. If you post on your Facebook [00:31:00] page, look, I’m really burned out.
I need a break. You will get a hundred comments that say, Hey, just take care of yourself. We’ll be here waiting, right? And they may or they may not, and that might not even be their fault because they might not see me and you post when you come back, but your subscribers mean it. And they will check in on you in any way that they can to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.
And they will not cancel their subscription just because you didn’t post for a month. They will say, Hey, I hope everything’s okay. We’re counting on you to take care of yourself. They’re really they’re in it sincerely,
Michael Evans: that’s really beautiful. I’m really glad too that you’ve been able to take some time off because I know that outside of what your fans tell you, which as you’re saying, they’re very supportive.
Being a full-time author, you were saying like, when you first did this, it was the 15 hour days, yeah. For a very long time. It, no one’s telling you when to take off, and that is both a blessing and a curse. So I’m glad that you’ve been able to do that.
Natalie Keller Reinert: It’s only really recent, honestly. I had a fallow period last fall that set me really behind and then I worked.
Non-stop for six months to catch up with that. And then I said, you cannot [00:32:00] keep writing like this. This is, it’s not fun. And when it’s not fun, people can read. It’s not fun. So I’ve really had to slow down, like I’m on a vacation right now, but I’ve also written 3000 words today. Cuz I don’t have to.
Yeah, because I sat on my back porch for three hours and I watched the birds, and sometimes I looked at Twitter and sometimes I looked at the weather and then I’d write a little bit, and then I’d look at the birds some more, and it added up eventually to 3000 words. And okay, good. put on Patreon.
Michael Evans: Yeah. Call it a day. That’s, very productive day, but I’m, I’m curious about, I’m thinking about, okay, so I’m a writer. I have my hobbies, right? So maybe I might, there might be someone listening who’s really passionate about let’s say, theme parks. I’m just using an example.
In this case, they love theme parks, right? That’s, they spend their nights watching roller coaster videos. they save up every month to try, maybe once a quarter, go on a vacation to, to a new theme park and went, maybe. Carol wins or a theme park like that comes out with a new ride.
They’re gonna want to be there. So I’m understanding this person, but now this person like you, is in the unbelievable and awesome position because you’ve worked so hard and you’re writing all [00:33:00] these amazing stories to now have this hobby that you’re still doing. Like you’re still, you still have horses.
You’re still like, actively in the e Tian community, but also are a writer in the e Tian community too. So it’s like your whole life kind of-ish. It’s horses like that, that’s a lot. How do you not get burnt out from the hobby? Turning into kind of like everything.
Natalie Keller Reinert: To be honest, I just came back into the equestrian community.
Okay. I did get burned out. That’s how I wrote my first book. And the character in the, in my first book chose horses. I did not, I moved to New York City and I was galloping race horses for a while, but then I quit so that I could just focus on having, A real life. And I went to a lot of shows and wrote for magazines.
But the thing about something that you’re passionate about is that it doesn’t leave you alone just because you wanted to. And within, I wanna say a year’s time, I was. Riding horses in Central Park for a living. I can’t. That’s awesome. It just kept coming back. And so I was in New York for five years and while I was there, yeah, I was a member of the New York City.
Parks department [00:34:00] mounted unit, and that was fully an accident. I didn’t intend to do that, but that’s just, my personality. I’m just like a horse magnet. And I moved back to Florida and focused on work and I was working at Disney and I was working for Virgin and some other tourism companies.
I was working in social media. I was taking all the stuff, I’d learned marketing books and made it into a corporate career and was doing pretty well at that, but I. Decided that I really wanted to write full time and focused on that, and then the horse thing just insinuated itself back into my life.
There was no telling it, no. It just kept coming back. And now that I’ve moved to the country and I have a farm and I’m doing all the things I said I wouldn’t do, and being 110% immersed in the equestrian community, I am so very content. And I think maybe it’s just got something to do with age and the ability to settle down.
Honestly, to, there was a 10 years ago I couldn’t just sit in my front yard and be like, this is bliss and I never want to leave my front yard. Five years ago [00:35:00] I couldn’t But now, and especially probably post pandemic, I absolutely can do that. I don’t wanna be anywhere else.
Michael Evans: That’s so nice.
Natalie Keller Reinert: I’m sure that it is a blessing of age amongst other things, but some things cannot be denied and they will just chase you down until you give into them.
Michael Evans: Yeah. And you have the dual luck of being both a horse lover and an amazing storyteller. So you’ve found a way to combine both. And my last question for you is specifically on subscriptions.
And I’m curious because you mentioned, and it’s true, you have two subscription platforms, a Patreon and a Ring. What would be your advice to other authors who, I know you reams new, so you started off in Patreon, but in terms of just should you have two platforms, how is it managing? Two platforms cuz they’ll see your links to both down below.
They’re awesome. I’m curious what your advice would be on that to people.
Natalie Keller Reinert: I liked the reason why I’m able to I actually, I have three channels cuz I have a sub as well. And the reason I’m able to have multiple channels is that I. Duplicate some, but not all content. So I’m never writing for just one one location.
I’m always writing for at least two. And so there’s just a lot of copy and [00:36:00] pasting that goes on. Patreon obviously has existed and will continue to exist because some people are always gonna wanna use that platform. Re for me, the e-reader ability of ream is superior in just about every way to Patreon’s, blog post style and or lack of organization.
So I post my serial novels there as well. And I’m also going to continue to post list in a library format so that if somebody reads something on ream that they like, they don’t have to go find another book, they can read it. In platform. So it has that advantage, but everything that I’ve adding to Ream right now is also going to, it’s either going to Patreon if it’s a work in progress, or it’s actually going to Kindle Vela if it is a if it is a cereal and, you have to balance out what gets posted first or whatever, but it’s paywall, it’s fine.
So I’m doing that, just finding ways, different ways to attract people. And the sub stack is just for the theme park side of things, that pen name and Cool. Again, I’m just pasting. The same cereal that’s going into Ream so it’s not I’m not doing [00:37:00] a ton of additional work for each one.
I’m just trying to meet people where they’re at. If there’s people on CK that are interested, I’m meeting them there. If there’s people on Patron, I’m meeting ’em there. If there’s people discovering it on Ream or they wanna just keep reading, then I’ll meet them there.
Michael Evans: That’s a great mindset. it’s awesome.
And we’re very grateful to have you on re And the last thing is, after listening to. All these incredible insights. I’m sure people are gonna wanna find you. So where can we find you online?
Natalie Keller Reinert: My name is Natalie Keller Reinert with no h It’s not Reinhart, it’s Reinert. And I’m at natalie k reinert.com and Natalie k reinert.shop and on all your socials as Natalie k Reiner as well.
I always tell people you can tap in my name or you can, usually you can write equestrian fiction. Into Google as well, and I should pop up pretty quickly.
Michael Evans: That’s as everyone try that. That’s so cool. I love that. You own the search term. That’s incredible. Natalie, this was amazing. I know you already know this, but.
You just have an incredible story as a writer, and I’m so proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish and so grateful we had [00:38:00] you on today. So thank you, Ken.
Natalie Keller Reinert: Thank you for having me. I’m super grateful to live in a time where I can do this, and I’m very thankful for people like you on the back end who are making it easier for us to get our stories out there.
Michael Evans: That’s the goal. That’s definitely the goal. Thank you again.
This is the end of this podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I know we had a ton of fun chatting with Natalie, and the good news is if you want more subscription insights, first of all, you’re already listening to the podcast. We have a ton of other episodes. Odds are you haven’t listened to all of our episodes and let me, let me promise you.
You won’t regret listening to some of them. So this is your first time listening to an episode of Subscriptions for Others podcast. Check out our back list. I recommend listening to our first episode interview with Amelia Rose, how she became a six figure subscription author. I also recommend listening to 10 Steps to a hundred K in subscriptions, great podcasts, but we don’t just have podcasts. If you wanna check out the Facebook group, we already have 2,600 plus authors in there. Oh wow. That’s a, it’s a big number. It’s not like a mouthful to say [00:39:00] It’s a amazing community, and that’s because of all of you.
And if you wanna learn more about subscriptions, it’s a great place to go. We also have our weekly blog. We have fireside chats, and we even have the wait list for an accelerator that we’re running that. We’ll be coming out our second cohort in November that you can find and where you can see all of that.
You can find those individual links subscription, but if you just go to subscriptions for authors.com, you’ll see the home for all of our content and there’s a lot of great stuff. We, even if you send up for a mailing list, we’ll send you a free book all about subscriptions. So we’re excited to have you here.
If you enjoyed this podcast, we have a ton of other cool insights for you. But for now, sit from me. We’ll be back next week. We’ll be back with hopefully another great episode. But in the meantime, don’t forget storytellers Rule the World.