Posted on June 15, 2023.
Shelby Lee has grown her subscription to nearly $200 per month as a new author with subscriptions making up the majority of her revenue. Today, we learn how this dark romance author got her start and found success in subscriptions.
Shelby’s Links:
Her website: http://authorshelbylee.com/
Her subscription: https://reamstories.com/authorshelbylee/public
Subscriptions for Authors Links:
Join Ream, the subscription platform by authors for authors: https://www.reamstories.com
And join the waitlist for the next cohort of the Six-Figure Subscription Author Accelerator: https://learn.subscriptionsforauthors.com/subscriptions-for-authors-accelerator
#36 Episode Outline:
0:00:00 Introduction
0:04:04 Shelby Lee’s Start in Self-Publishing
0:06:50 Why Shelby Started her Subscription Early in Her Career
0:14:32 Shelby’s Experience on TikTok
0:17:47 Finding Your Path and Navigating Mental Health as a Writer
0:24:09 The Dos and Dont’s of Facebook Parties
0:30:05 Shelby’s Early Bird Subscription Tiers
0:33:14 Pricing for Tiers with Shipping
0:39:42 Shelby’s Future Subscription Goals
0:43:18 A Note From Michael about Year 1 of the Podcast
#36 Episode Transcript:
this author started her publishing journey in late 2022, and by mid 2023 is now making well over a hundred dollars a month in her description. Actually, it’s close to $200 a month and it gets cooler. She’s not at serial fiction author. She used to be in ku. Now she’s wide, so she hasn’t written mainly on serial fiction platform.
She’s dabbled a little bit, but most of her audience comes from retailers and at this point, The majority of her revenue in her publishing business, and the vast majority of her profit comes from her subscription. So this is, as an early stage author, as soon as being able to, at the beginning of her career, be able to go from zero to a hundred now approaching $200 at the time of recording a [00:01:00] month in subscription revenue.
Really incredible, and this author is named Shelby Lee. We’re gonna be diving into her story today and really getting into an nitty gritty, not only about her subscription, but her mindset as a writer and how she approaches this industry. It was just about this time last year when she was diving in to writing books and learning about the publishing industry, and this time one year later, her business is gonna make thousands of dollars this year, and hopefully that will just keep growing for her now.
This episode has two parts to it. I would say it was a conversation that played out naturally in the first half. We more talked about Shelby’s story, why she started her subscription, talked about. Facebook party’s how she started to grow her audience, Billy CU readers, and the second half really dives deep into her subscription.
We talk about her tears, we talk about physical benefits, and we talk about ultimately making her subscription work for her. It’s a really insightful episode. And Shelby, we actually had [00:02:00] speak at the Subscriptions for Author’s Summit on our breakout subscription author panel. And the branding workshop. So she was doing a lot for us at the Subscriptions for Author Summit and we’re really excited to have her back officially as a guest on the podcast.
I know you all will love this episode, but. If you want to be in touch with the community and meet other amazing authors like Shelby who’ve been able to grow their subscriptions in the last year, who are at all different stages of their career, you should join the Subscriptions for Authors Facebook group.
It’ll, it’ll be linked down, the subscription, totally free to join. But anyways, let’s get into this episode. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
Okay. One last thing before we get into it. , Amelia had a little bit of a technical issue with her audio while we were recording, and we realized after the fact, so in post-production we did our best to clean up her audio as much as possible. But when you hear Amelia, there might be just a slight weirdness.
Fuzziness. I am sorry. We did our best to make the audio crisp as possible, but we didn’t want to take Amelia out entirely from this interview, but there were some sections of our audio [00:03:00] that we cut out. In order to keep the audio as clean as possible. Just wanted to let you know before we get into it about that.
I am sorry. We do our best. We’re a small team and we’re just so excited and grateful for you listening to this podcast. But if you want to help out the podcast and wanna help us be able to keep making more office some episodes for you, all you gotta do is share this podcast episode with Author of Friends.
If you have a Facebook group that you go to, that authors in there, Look for self-publishing advice. You can share this podcast with them. Share this podcast with any writer friends you have. It would mean a lot. We do our best to make it worth everyone’s time. But anyways, apologies in advance. Let’s get into this episode.
Shelby, I feel like we’ve been friends for a very long time. It also hasn’t been because you’ve only been a published author for Bare like half a year, almost seven months. And in that time your subscription has gone from zero [00:04:00] to well over a hundred dollars a month now, which is amazing.
And before we dive into the details and all of that, I just wanna ask you, how did you get started? What made you decide to go so deep into your author career so quickly? Cuz you’re now like four books So I’d say late 2021, I was like, I’m actually gonna publish a book, right? I have so much content from other stuff I wanted to do. Ya dystopian when it was out that just didn’t work out with life and everything. And then, so I have so many notebooks, so many like half books written.
And then I got really deep into reading Dark Romance and I was like, this I really I wanna write this now. And ironically my husband was going through my Kindle cuz we were organizing it cause I was just losing everything. And he’s there’s a lot of like dark college Bully Romance on here.
He is I dare you not to read it for a month. That, not reading it for a month turned into me writing one. So I kinda spun it on him. He is I’m not reading it. And [00:05:00] so I was like, oh, write it. And then I started studying because me, if I’m gonna go into something, I’m gonna go full force.
I’m not gonna Just, I’m not doing it. Just write like I’m gonna go for it. And so I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna do it. And I actually had met another author around the time that she was looking for beta readers for her first book. And as I was asking about her journey and what she was doing we got really close friends, but then at the same time I’m like, wait, this is like attainable.
This isn’t just like this far out there dream that I’ve had since I was a kid. Like this is something I can do. So I kept diving. I helped her, she published her first book. It was really amazing to be like part of that journey with her as well as she was helping me cuz she started alpha reading for me at the same time.
And that I published in September of last year. My first book and it, the KU versus wide debate, that whole thing in my head. And I was like, the only thing I can count on is a subscription. [00:06:00] That is the most reliable thing I can do. And for me, I have a really bad relationship with numbers in general, so I’m like, this is what I’m gonna do.
And I launched it. Right around October, and I think I had five subscribers by November, and then I think I found Ream like a month after that. So I had been hyping ream up literally since probably month two of my subscription. And they were excited for it. I’m excited for it and I just kept putting the hype out there.
Now I’m at, I was at 10, I lost one, but, finances, I’m not gonna as somebody who cannot scrape $5 together most days, like I needed this to sustain itself or I couldn’t do it. So this is the one thing I can control is having this place for readers
no, it’s, it’s very cool. And actually go to Shelby’s subscription page, which, we’ll, we’ll link to that and we’ll also link to your website, um, the description. But you can [00:07:00] see that it’s not just like your readers, you, you mentioned $5 as an example, and I believe you do a $5 tier, $10 tier.
And a $25 tier and a $50 tier. But out of those nine members as of today, as of recording, five of those people are in the $25 tier. And I only know that because you say you have a limit of 25 people in the tier and there’s 20 people remaining, so that means that there’s five people, five outta your nine subscribers are paying you $25 a month.
That’s what does that do for you at this stage? Like I know that you are still like most of us listening in the earlier stages of your career, if you had to ballpark like what portion of your income that subscriptions make up, cuz we always get this question, maybe I should just do subscriptions when I’m like already established already making a thousand dollars a month in ebook royalties or in a platform like radish and then I could launch my subscription.
We get that question all the time. You obviously didn’t do that. You [00:08:00] started the subscription almost at day one. Has it been worth it
This has I will say even from the beginning, because I got so many right away, I was able to almost month two, month three, I was able to pay for the monthly
Author business expenses. So my newsletter just all the little things you don’t realize that goes into this until it’s like too late and you’re like, $5 here, $10 there, $20 here.
All those things add up really fast. And instead of having to pick and choose, because I had a subscription, I was able to immediately just keep on the things that bare bones ran it. So I would say, right now with how much I’m making just off of the nine subscribers it’s 80% of my income right now because it’s the battle of the algorithms elsewhere.
And I don’t run ads because again, that’s another nickel and dime thing that I can’t do right now. So yeah, if my subscription just keeps fueling me to go forward.
I just think that’s amazing. [00:09:00] You started prescription right very close to when you started like publishing your books. It’s already helping you pay for, author business or most of it. That’s amazing.
That’s really awesome.
It took a stress off for sure. Cuz especially when everybody does it, everybody checks the dashboard and you’re like, this is really lit. If I don’t make X, y, Z by this time, like I can’t do this thing. And its been helpful to know that, hey, I can afford my newsletter, I can afford to do this.
It’s been such a, for me, a stress relief knowing that I can continue to do it and I don’t have to. Check the dashboard every two seconds to make sure that I can continue.
It very relieving , even me now, I don’t my Amazon dashboard wide dashboard because all of most of my income is coming from my subscription. I’m just like, I’m cool and ., I don’t have to worry about how much Facebook or Amazon’s taking from me.
I have a really bad relationship with numbers like, and an addictive personality on top of [00:10:00] it. So add trauma and an addictive personality, and then throw numbers that you have to focus on. My husband’s been great. He’s trying to do a lot more on the back end, especially financially for me.
And it’s just like I know that when I check into my subscription, Hey, as long as this covers my expenses, I can continue. That’s all I need to know. That’s all I need to worry about. So right now I think my subscription is actually triple what my monthly expenses are. A little bit under now that I have an assistant, but my assistant is doing a lot of the things that were genuinely stressing me out now.
Yeah,
Well, now you’d even do because it sounds nice. Like, okay, know, just start a subscription you know, make it dollars a month. Right? Right. In the beginning, and now I can, you know, make this whole thing as an author profitable. I don’t have to look at my bank account and go, wow.
Each month I’m investing into this. But instead can be like, okay, obviously full-time yet. You’re not getting paid an amazing hourly rate, but, but it, it’s it’s there and it can [00:11:00] become something bigger. But how did you get to where you were today? You mentioned that like in October you had those first five subscribers.
Facebook parties. I was doing TikTok for quite a while until I, it just didn’t work for my brain. But again, I had that author friend who had started. And the moment I had my pre-order up, I was able to join quite a few author groups. And so I went headlong, I did all the research I could. I moseyed around some other Facebook parties.
I was like this isn’t working and this is working. And, I asked questions because that’s me. When I joined something new, I’m like, I need to know everything before. So it was a lot. I would say last summer was probably the biggest info dump into my own brain that I’ve ever done in my life.
And it’s paid off. And I have now tested quite a few things out that I’m like, okay, this doesn’t work. But Facebook parties, the giveaways as much as I don’t do them as much anymore because Facebook’s just become super oversaturated and [00:12:00] notifications aren’t going through. So I now pick and choose what I do for those.
But especially if you can get them in the big book groups, like for bigger events or holidays or something like that. I did one Facebook party, it was like two days before my third book came out. So second, my series technically third, but that’s a whole reading order thing. But I did one and it was like four hours of just me and a group with a thousand members and it was super high engagement.
But I went back to the year before and I checked that engagement before I grade to it. Of course this was way after, so this was December. If you can get into the Facebook parties and they’re good, which sometimes it’s throwing spaghetti at the wall, which is really frustrating. But if you can get into ’em and they’re good and they’re right genre, you’re with the right people, it’s easy to get them to a Facebook group.
And what I did right away, because I do have [00:13:00] branding background, at least with graphic design and I do have business degrees. So it was like, I, I had some stuff in my head, like I know a little bit, I know enough to help me move forward. So I branded my readers. I didn’t say, Shelby Lee’s Reader Group, they were Shelby Lee’s Dark and Twisted Readers.
Take my name off of it. That’s who they are. And that was from day one. Like we just did a Facebook party last month for the one year anniversary and they had a blast. Like it was like, cuz it was for them, not really for me, it was for them. And so I made sure that they knew, one, I cared about them and two,
This is your space.
yeah. No. Well, there’s a lot to unpack there because first of all, you Just mentioned your year anniversary of the group, but you published your first novel onto a retailer seven months ago, so this was something that you had done well before. Because a lot of authors write, well get the [00:14:00] book out into the and then think, how do I market it?
How do I build my cuny? Right? it’s like that sort of process of, well, it’s already out there, but you almost did the opposite process. You had the CUNY set up. Literally well over a hundred days in advance of you releasing book.
TikTok. Because everybody says if you can get on TikTok earlier social media, share your process, you’re pulling people in. My beta readers, my art readers all came from that. Because, beta readers, that was the first thing I knew I needed. So I was like I have to have a present somewhere to find them.
interesting because I find a lot of times, and I, I I actually wanna talk to you a bit about about this before. So I, I wanna wanna chat, chat about live. When I hear a lot of conversation in the author coming around TikTok, it typically tends to almost feel like we’re entering a casino.
I love some of the author comps that take place in Vegas. Big fan of Vegas, but almost like we’re like living in the casino now. Where can we, you know, pull that slot, hit that trend right, and go [00:15:00] mega viral and skyrocket through the charts. Like that tends to be a lot of the mindset that I feel Like, can that next video get a hundred thousand views, 200,000 views and you know, every video you’re shooting for that breakout. Yet you never had that breakout video yet still, it was something that was clearly worth your time when you were doing it, were you approaching it with the idea of trying to go viral or What
So with having a bit of a business background and with working in gaming and every I, I think I’ve dabbled in so much stuff. It’s all kinda led up to this culmination of stuff. I’ve worked in the music industry, I’ve worked with gaming. I’ve, I’ve worked on Twitch. It’s been everything.
So hashtags, seo, all of that is in the back of my mind. Heck, I did direct sales for two a year. I knew it was like the hashtags matter. What you say matters. What you put out there matters. It’s that research that, that research into my genre. What are other people doing that’s working?
What am I not willing to do? I really did, I started out doing like the three to seven videos or tried to a [00:16:00] day, and that drained me so quickly. But it worked for the first couple months. It brought my readers to me, and now it’s to the point where I do have some super fans that they post on TikTok and I get followers, so I don’t have to throw myself at it.
But again, I never went viral. I just found the right people because I dug and dug for the information I needed.
That’s the biggest thing is I don’t know when I joined the 20 books to 50 K group, I love that group. My favorite thing is just the smorgasboard, right? Take what you want, take what will help you, and don’t listen to anybody who’s gonna sit and tell you have to do something.
I started just not listening to a lot of people and I’m like, yeah, it’s working for you, but why do I have to?
And there’s so much good advice, but at the same time, just because it’s good advice doesn’t mean it’s good advice for you. And I’m stubborn. I declared 2022 my villain era. And [00:17:00] so I really stopped listening to people and I just I’m four books in. I’m working on the fifth to finish out a series.
And had I listened to what everybody said I have to do, or this works for me, so do it. Wouldn’t be here.
peak villain era. We also have the info and it, it’s interesting because agree with everything that you’re saying. Like, it, it, It’s beautiful advice but actually thinking about, okay, I’m just entering of subscriptions and I, in fact, with Ash Ashley.
Ash, Ashley Elizabeth, who is um, wonderful author, darker man’s author as well. And she was at a conference she was telling me and she was talking to people about subscriptions. They had their ream invites and they hadn’t joined yet cuz it was just to think, to start, and
it’s not that pressing up.
It’s not that actually the setting it up is the hard part. It’s thinking about what to do, what do I do? How do I approach this when there’s so many different ideas and [00:18:00] they’re still trying to figure out, I know I can’t do all 10 things, but what one thing do I listen to? How do I figure out what’s dump that you experienced, you know what? what made you decide to go on the path that you did? What questions did you ask yourself to give yourself these sorts of answers that worked for you? Because I feel like the questions that you ask yourself might be really important, people listening, cuz then they could ask themselves
My biggest question, especially because I actually have stress-induced seizures we can’t find like a legitimate cause for them. I’ve done so many medical things to try to figure out how do we, how do we do this? I started having ’em in 2017, so I can’t work a normal job because a normal job you can’t just call ’em up and be like, I am stressed out.
I need a week off. Like you can’t do that. And as I started to do more and to do more and to do more I started getting sick and I looked at my husband, I was like I wanna keep doing this. I wanted to be an author for my whole life. And we sat down [00:19:00] and we picked apart all the things that I was doing, and he is you need to decide what you wanna do.
I was like, okay. I was like, I wanna write can I just I, you can’t just leave it at that to make it a sustainable business. You can’t just be like, I just wanna write, unfortunately. So I actually hired an assistant super early. That’s a whole bad story. Be very careful about who you hire.
It doesn’t matter who they know. . But it was like, what do I really wanna be doing? What’s gonna bring me joy? Because I can’t add the stress. If I add the stress, I’m gonna get sick and I’m gonna be useless to everybody.
If I do this, I won’t stress about the money. And if I’m not stressed about the money, I’m not stressed about how the marketing’s doing. Yes. I still know I do it at this point. Now I plan one day a month and I sit down and I plan all my content for Facebook and Instagram, cuz you can schedule it on the Meta Business Suite.
I schedule that out for the whole month and I don’t think about it for the rest of the month. I do the same thing in my reader group. It’s all scheduled and all I focus on is one day and then the rest of it, you know what I can focus on. Righty. [00:20:00] So it’s what do you want to do and what parts of it bring you joy?
What parts of it. Are you doing that you don’t actually have to be doing, if it’s not moving your business forward,, why are you doing it cuz somebody told you to or are you doing it because you wanna be doing it? Like there, there’s a whole, I’ve done a lot of reading and it’s an interesting, cuz I’ve been in a burnout slash depression in the last two weeks, so I’ve had a lot of time to think.
It’s really about what you want to be doing, weighed against what everybody’s telling you to do,
That is like,
if that makes sense.
it’s very deep and so much sense, but it’s really hard to know. There’s a there’s a quote that I like that, I don’t know who said it, but I didn’t come up with it, which is, you know, when you have something that you feel where there’s something on the to-do list, You options. You can do it, do it later, or cross [00:21:00] it off and not do it at all, and just say it’s never gonna happen. And that is the most powerful thing, like the decisions you don’t make, the things that you don’t do, the things that you cross off. You give yourself permission I am freeing myself from this task.
And. It is, It is quite challenging because so many of us are Andy authors because we want to have the freedom to be able to not stress ourselves out at a nine to five, to not have to, you know, follow the rules of this or listen to this restricting schedule to be able to be there more for our family be able to live a better life for ourselves.
And then the the, the thing which is that running your like, it’s like the, the extreme of freedom is slavery. Uh, So you go, you become so free that you become enslaved to your own vision, to your own creativity. And I was reading a book about this recently and burnout, and you were about stress and the health toll it took on you. And I think, I mean, it relates to me cuz I don’t have, um, any sort of, I’ve never had a seizure before, [00:22:00] But just this past week, um, Part of why we’re recording a few days later, let me plan on, because I had a eye thing. My eye got super swollen because I had pink eye.
And why did that happen? My immune system was down. And this happens to me quite frequently and I’m aware of it and it’s something I struggle with, which is like basically chronic stress and I enjoy it. Chronic stress actually. Like the pressure of this or this, or I need to get this done or is this gonna work out?
Like it actually is kind of fun in moments, but you can’t live that way. Always. The stress has to turn off. And the number one reason for premature death is correlated to every major disease, obesity, heart disease, you name it. It’s chronic stress. It’s the worst thing ever. And I feel like a lot of us
Last week we were talking about the thing, cuz I’m so many projects that I really, truly wanna work on and I don’t have time for. I can’t do all this, but I want to.
And[00:23:00] I had this running disc that just I could never get done. And it just kept piling and piling up until I just like super stressed out. I totally get where I’ve actually likely hired two assistant last time we talked Michael,
proud of you both. I think all that’s fantastic. You know, the, the tough part is you’re never, there’s never a moment where you’ve like conquered it. Like you’re never gonna be like, I’ve got the perfect plan. Perfect. It’s something, and I love that you said, Shelby, that we revisiting, right?
Every 30 days that you look at this and every 30 days you’re thinking about it to have a sort of regular reflective process of like, am I going off the rails right now? Am I like following someone else’s path that I don’t need to be, is really important because the world moves fast and things internally in our minds, and to be able to slow things down.
So I think that’s really really important. And I’m curious, over the last six, seven months since you published your first book, since you released your subscription, [00:24:00] I know you’ve made some big internal changes in how your business functions and what you’re prioritizing, but I’d be curious what some of those lessons you’ve learned have
You don’t have to join every Facebook party. I was doing up to four a day even
wild.
felt like the only way, it was ridiculous. I have scripts
so that I could just copy and paste to get them scheduled, right?
But then you’re spending so much time on the interaction, which is great. But depending on where you are and depending on the readers,
You end up , attracting a lot of people who just want the free stuff and they don’t like, they’ll literally join the Facebook group, share the screenshot, they’ll get their free book, and then they’ll leave the Facebook group and then a a couple weeks, Later you’ll find the same person doing the same thing for the same book.
It started wearing on me cuz yeah, it’s nice to give ’em the first book for free, but then when they hold on, no, you’ve now got the first book three times over for free. You’ve got the second book for free. You’ve got the third book for free and you’re not even leaving reviews.
So it’s like, what, where, what is my [00:25:00] ROI on doing this? And so I was just like, okay. So I took, and I picked the Facebook groups that fit well with my genre and I said, okay, these are worth it. I. Cut down on who I did parties with because we share too much of the same readership now there are like three friends that I will do a Facebook party with no matter what.
I’ll even grumble to ’em about it and be like, all right, fine. But they’re my friends. So at this point it’s not showing up to a friend’s birthday party is eh, just, you kinda go with it. But you gotta pick and choose where you put your time. And really what I’ve found is you can go back and see the few past parties.
You can find out if the interaction is worth it. I just did one, my assistant got me in one that was like, the interaction was like 30 plus comments per post, per person. It was just huge. Whereas generally you get maybe two. So it’s all about. Asking and vetting the [00:26:00] experience from other authors before you jump in because you throwing spaghetti at the wall is great but it’s not effective.
And when you’re doing the same groups, the same people over and over readers get tired. I actually had a conversation with a group of readers, cause I have a group chat with some readers that I’ve been really good friends with and it’s almost the start and they’re like, yeah, I don’t even check it.
Like they just scroll and they’ll go get the book and then they’ll ignore the group until the party’s done. And so I was like, okay, that’s interesting to hear. And I heard that like month two. So okay. So then I started paying more attention and then I started saying, okay, why is everybody’s Facebook groups just full of promo for everybody else?
So I cracked down on my group. And I said, I don’t wanna do this cuz my group is for me and selfish or not. I can say, Hey, yeah you can share your stuff. But I did it for okay, so you can only share it on this post during the week. Readers said they [00:27:00] couldn’t see that. So instead of just saying, Hey, it’s a free for all, I pick and choose what I allow people to promote my group cuz then it keeps my group, free and clear for my readers.
We’re getting up to where my readers are interacting, not my, just the same people over and over anymore, which is great. So it’s the marketing itself is such a pain, but if you study and you pay attention to what you’re doing and quality over quantity is the big thing. Cuz I know now
I’m sure Amelia knows this too. You end up adding so many other authors and then you see so much other promo and then you just flooded with it.
It’s hard to check on Facebook anymore, but if it’s quality and not just spammed everywhere, I feel like it’s more important.
I subscription marketing that like trying to like make the make the sale, the onetime is not the, the [00:28:00] approach to, to how You do it. you wanna build a lifelong relationship With the reader in the world of subscription marketing, which I know we all here firmly believe that regardless of whether you have a subscription or not, or all your readers are on your subscription or not, we’re all engaged in a subscription industry where your readers have to stick with you month over month.
If they don’t do that, you’re gonna wink to die as an author. It’s that simple. It’s harsh but true. So building. Relationships with your readers. Providing them value upfront is the way to build trust. And I think people are increasingly becoming more and more blind to ads and more and more blind to things where they think someone’s asking something from them.
I think you can view it like, do you wanna be the guy? And I’ve had this experience myself. You maybe walk down a city like New York City as an example, but there’s other places that do this. You’re walking down the street in New York [00:29:00] City, maybe in Times Square, going by a restaurant, and the guys outside the restaurant with the menu going, Hey, do you wanna sit inside?
I got a This is where you go to eat. And it’s like two things. Two things on that one. I immediately be like, why are you so desperate for walking. And most people think that, honestly, most people think that. And the second thing is that anyone like Tom no matter who it is, anyone in the world can market a discount. Like like the nothing anyone can give away free toilet paper. Right? But do you wanna be the books that people like, you know the metaphor there, do you wanna be that kind of book or do you wanna be the kind of person who can convince someone to actually pay more like $25 a month, like your readers are paying you than anyone else?
Cuz you can provide that value to someone. provide value. Health, wealth and relationships and stories are building relationships. So I think that sign of marketing is just like a, the [00:30:00] Facebook parties can be interesting, but I sending them chapters every week.
So it’s interesting.
And to bring it back to subscriptions, what I really wanna dive into now, and we do this with every author we bring on who has a subscription, which is almost every author on this podcast, of course, I wanna talk about your tears and. I’m really specifically interested in asking you about how you structured, what we’ll call your early Bird or founding reader benefits, the people who are joining your subscription before May 1st, I think it is.
Tell me
So I actually, again, like everything else I’ve done it backwards. Because I was initially offering things same price. I wasn’t gonna do founding member anything. And then, I think, yeah, no, it was a chat with you Michael. We were talking about pricing and cuz I went to the post office and I was just like, this is going to eat everything.
And so I couldn’t do it and so I’m like, okay, I’m gonna stay with offering the physical goods that I’m offering, which [00:31:00] like everybody that joins up right now can get a bracelet now. It’s just a rose gold bracelet, and I give them a charm upon joining, and then three months they get another so six months, they get another nine months. They get another, they get an extra special one in a year, and then it just rinse and repeat.
wear it on their wrist. Like I, I have these charms. Imagine one day you have a reader convention or just readers online in a Zoom, and they’re going, oh, let me show you your bracelet. And then immediately you’re gonna have these readers who only have one charm.
Then all these other readers who have six charms, are gonna be like, oh my God, how can I get six charms? It’s like, you weren’t here early enough. Sorry. Now you’ll get six charms in a year and a half, and that’s okay. And then there’ll be people looking at you like, oh my God, I can’t believe one charm.
But status is so important, and
And I see, and I got that from the subscription for authors group. I got inspired by Christopher Hopper like everybody else did. And then I’m like, wait, how do
I turn this now? the pineapples.
have to talk about the
it was a joke.
Way too far. And it [00:32:00] is now just what people associate me, us. I was like, all right, whatever. I was like, this is just my thing. So it’s not my branding. And I’ve gotten to the point where the pineapples are just on my things. That’s just my merch. It has nothing to do with anything but a stupid joke. And then it just, that’s where we’re at. And now I make sure to add a pineapple, any pineapple reference in every single thing.
I write it like, it doesn’t matter how big or small, the readers will still comment on that
I love that it’s something that like, what? Like pineapple. But that’s the point on the inside for the fans. It’s like everything that pineapple is, it it represents their to you, which is I think really great branding. and it’s, It’s authors when they’re searching for their subscription. It’s like if you’re looking for things to title gear, to your names, things to maybe give out in charms, which I wanna talk a bit more about the postage and specific because I know that was a bit of a Whoa postage.
Wow, that’s more expensive basically, uh, [00:33:00] you should think about the symbols, the colors, the settings, the places that your readers will connect to in your books even. And it doesn’t have to be something so profound. It could be something silly. And if that’s what your readers are connecting with That merch, that is the whatever it is
. And I think I think you nailed that, but what you maybe didn’t nail was the pricing, which is okay How, How did you think about pricing your subscription beforehand and then you figured
Yeah, shipping is ridiculous. So we had already priced things out and Hey, if I send it this way, it’ll be cheaper. But then I was like the bracelets need something special to go in. think that the post office is gonna charge as much for a padded, a little padded envelope.
I don’t know the sizing of it. We already had them because I ordered them, they weren’t the right size for the books. And I was like the bracelet’s [00:34:00] perfect, we’ll just send them in that. And had I sent them in a regular letter, it would’ve been like $2, something like that. But in the little padded envelope, it was like $5 a piece to send.
And I had one reader in Canada. Now this one reader has been with me since the start of my subscription. I didn’t charge her, so she would’ve paid, she wanted to pay. I was like, no, you’ve been here since what October? So I was like, you’re fine. I’m not mad. But that was $15. So I was like, okay, I’ve got to switch this because I was doing 5, 10, 25, 50.
Nobody’s on the $50 chair, which is fine. I wasn’t separating US and international because I didn’t, I didn’t look in, again we’re back to the numbers where I don’t like to study too much. It’s just, that’s just me. But we priced it, we thought it was gonna be fine. And then my husband who goes to the post office for me he went and they charged him $5 a package and we’re like, that’s.[00:35:00] There goes the whole $5 tier plus the extra paid for the bracelet, plus the charm. If somebody wants to come in, even like in this early stage where I said, everybody gets the bracelet until May 1st, and then it was gonna go up to the $10 tier and up only like that just ate into almost two months of that $5.
And so if somebody wants to come in, grab the braze and leave, now they can do that. So I bit the bullet the first time, and then I reached out to you, Michael. I was like, panic. I was like, what do I do? Like I can’t do this. So now they will get the bracelet after three months, plus their, they’ll get their bracelet, the joining charm, and then they’ll get their three month charm.
So at that point, they’ve been with me long enough. It covers the cost. But. Especially cuz that $5 tier, so now they’ve three months, they’re 15, they’ve now paid me $15. It cost me $6, let’s just say [00:36:00] overall $6 when you chop everything up. So you know what, that’s fine for me right now cuz I’ve already offered it up.
It is what it is. But after that I was like, okay, how do I make this work? And so after May 1st, all of my prices are changing, not all of them. So I’m gonna do the five, then I’m gonna do 15 and 15 gets the bracelet, and then it’s gonna be 25 still. then I’ve since decided, I don’t know if I’m gonna continue to offer paperback books just yet because I’ll leave it for the early adopters, because again, the ones who join you earlier, the ones who really want it anyway at least right off the bat, So I’m gonna take that benefit away for a little while
This is a good cautionary
I’ll have to separate the US I had just got paid for my December release and that was my biggest month yet, which by big, like
it
150 overall, was, it’s it’s good. But I don’t wanna be like, oh, it’s a really good number, is eh, it worked.
So I was able to pay, but all of that went, it was just all [00:37:00] gone because of shipping. And I’m sitting here, I was like, I still have to get a whole nother pack of ESPNs and those aren’t cheap. And I have so many other things that I still have set up costs for. And I was like, I can’t offer this anymore.
So I actually, in my newsletter this week, I’m gonna be like, Hey, these benefits are going, May 1st, whoever signs up between now and then, yeah, they’ll get those benefits. But in the long run, I have now, grown that profit
margin, which
is what needs to happen.
Yeah. Yeah, you
So it was definitely eye-opening.
You wanna offer these things, you wanna offer all the goodies and be like, come join, get all the good things. But at the end of the day, if you can’t operate after that, and as much as I wanna be like I just wanna tell my stories, it’s no, I kinda wanna make money too because I haven’t been able to work a job since 2017.
I can’t even do like work at home stuff. Cuz again, you can’t call up any job and be like, I need a whole week off.
Yeah.
So it’s like, as much as I would love to just be like, read my free stuff, [00:38:00] I gotta make it sustain itself first and readers understand. I’m very lucky that I haven’t, I’ve grown, but I haven’t grown to crazy numbers yet.
So those nine people. I can send out a, Hey, so this is what I’ve discovered, and they listen. Now half of them are in a group chat that I talk to daily, so they already know this going in and I get their feedback immediately all the time. So that’s been great. Readers turning into friends. That’s been the best part of it.
really, really great lessons there. I think I think the big one being that you mistakes and it’s never gonna be perfect. So, But you have to make that change. So the fact that you made the change, communicated the change, and are now gonna make it different going forward is, is great.
Another thing too is don’t be afraid to, if something’s not profitable for existing fans, you can still up the price that happens and tell them, please swift shift tier. Don’t be afraid to tell an existing fan. You have to pay more. I [00:39:00] messed up. They might get mad at that, but honest with them about, Hey look, the shipping’s this much, like you don’t you don’t deserve to be losing money every month just because of a promise you made that yes, we say under promise overdeliver, but uh, that sometimes you might make a promise that you’re not sure that that was actually over promising.
So that happens and it’s okay. And I think the last thing that’s really key is that your, most of your subscription now is based around early access and access to this broader world. They’re getting of these exclusive novelas and these other content that they don’t get anywhere
else. That being the foundation of what you’re doing is. Probably a more bet in the long run. And I’m curious
as our final here before we end off our conversation, which is, forward on your subscription, what are your goals or something that you’d like to achieve or release in your subscription
[00:40:00] So I have this whole big world in my head, like most of us. And my goal is short and sweet is I want my subscription to work for me, not me working for my subscription. And then I really. I’m tired for working for the retailers too. So I have, I’m changing my whole release process cuz I was doing every three months and that’s exhausting. I’m focusing on the writing.
And I’m like, you know what, if I grow slower, it’s fine, but , I can’t do the high paced being, being neurodivergent or
neuro spicy. I call it neuros spicy cause it sounds cooler. But
I like that.
being neuro spicy, I’m like, no, I have to go by my own thoughts and my own processes and doing what everybody else is doing is not working.
I actually hit a point of burnout and depression the last month and I just the last two weeks just mold everything over. I’m like, you know what? My [00:41:00] subscription’s gonna get all of it first, and when the subscription is done getting it, cuz I’m gonna write it, that $25 and up tier, they’re gonna get it as I’m writing it.
And then I’m gonna do my edits and betas that I’ve been doing and then. But lower tiers are gonna get it chapter by the
end of that chapter. Then it’ll go on retailers.
tiered.
But I’m not,
like it.
I am not putting pre-orders up until I know that, hey, this is how this is
working. And so I’ll probably put two weeks of pre-orders, but I don’t get a lot of pre-orders anyway.
I’m still small enough that I can make all these changes and make it work for me first. And that is it’s the strangest thing to say I am I’m grateful that I haven’t grown fast, but at the same time I did.
But I’m gonna make it work for me at this point and do my own thing. Charge my own path like I’ve always done. And at the end of the day, I think that’s the biggest advice that I can give to anybody is that [00:42:00] you gotta make it work for you. And otherwise, mean,
for me, it sucks creativity out so.
That’s, I love it. Making it work for you.
It’s very difficult once you build anything to a certain level. To change this direction. It almost has a momentum of itself. And this isn’t true for you, Emilia, but I’ve seen this for other authors where you almost build your business on a sort of house of cards where you actually can’t take profit out.
You can’t take the life that you wanna live out of it. And when you actually pull out that one card to try and finally give yourself some of that breathing room, it can fall apart if it doesn’t have, again, that stronger foundation. And yeah, there’s, it’s underrated to, to, you know, take your time. Most creative people, most people who make a living as an author, don’t go from zero to 100 subscribers, zero to 1000 subscribers, zero to a hundred K in a year.
It’s okay if it takes you three to [00:43:00] five years. It’s more important to actually make that process something you’d love. So Shelby, this was a amazing episode with you today
It’s been a year, it’s been a very long year, but I’ve learned a lot of lessons very quickly
Wow. Episode 36 in the bag. I hope you enjoyed it. I know I had a ton of fun. Shelby’s a great author, great friend of mine, and I just think it’s so inspiring that she has been able to start her subscription at early stage of her career and make it really meaningful for her author business. I hope it inspires you, and I just wanna say thank you.
If you’re listening, if you’re at this point in the podcast, it is crazy to me how much can change. In a year, like just insane. It’s been about like 35 days, something like that. Since Rain launched, [00:44:00] it’s June 14th, it’s like 12 hours before this podcast releases. It’s it’s nighttime and I just, everything in my life has changed in the last year.
Everything in our lives changed, everything. This crei has changed and I was looking today at the numbers, looking at the success that some of you have had in this community, and just last night I posted. In the Facebook group asking for people who have started their subscription last year and seen success and it was so cool to see tons of you respond to that.
And on re now we have over a hundred of y’all that are each month making money in the platform. That is, that’s crazy to me, like out of, out of y’all listening to this podcast, like there’s just so many of you already succeeding it. It’s so cool. And. We created this podcast to hopefully help you all make more money of your subscription, start your subscription as an author, and succeed in the future of publishing.
And I think one year in, we’re still at the beginning of our journey, but I’m really proud of all of us being able to take these steps forward in our a [00:45:00] community to just have such an amazing timeless. Last year, we released the first episode of this podcast, literally just about a year ago.
And in the last year since then, over 20,000 of you have listened to this podcast. Wow. 20,000 times. This podcast has been downloaded or listened to across devices. That’s just, that’s just wild. But beyond the numbers I’ve seen and met dozens, actually hundreds of you that I’ve talked to over the phone at this point, hundreds that I’ve called with.
That have become genuine, huge friendships in my life and huge sources of inspiration and giving me hope that this industry as we move forward, as authors, as we move forward in publishing, is headed into a place that gives us his creatives more control, that gives our readers a [00:46:00] better experience, and that gives us his storytellers more opportunities to make a living on our terms.
And in a way that’s sustainable for us than ever before. That’s ultimately what subscriptions is all about, and that’s ultimately what you all are making come true day by day. It’s so cool and I just really have to say thank you. I. Started this, I guess when I was a teenager, we started working on this community.
I feel like I’ve almost grown up with this cuny, although I feel like I have a lot growing up to do. I was 19 when this all started. I’m 21 now and I’m entering my senior year of college. I’m just like looking ahead to like my life and like the future of like what I’ll be doing when I’m like an adult and.
The answer is so clear to me. I’m gonna be doing this. I’m gonna be working on subscriptions for authors. I’m gonna be working on helping all of you in the ways that I [00:47:00] can move forward in our author careers and move forward in making this industry better for all of us. That is what a dream. What a dream come true.
And this week being the one year anniversary of the podcast, one year since the episode of. Me in my hotel room with my grandpa, where I was visiting a writer’s conference, interviewing Amelia about her story as an author, and how she was able to get tens of millions of views on serial fiction platforms.
And then from there, partly that into the figure subscription that we, we know and have learned so much from. That started just about a year ago. Just about a year ago. There was no website. There was just a YouTube channel. Technically the first podcast episode, like on the RSS feed. Was uploaded like at the beginning, I think of July or very end of June, but this is one year since the YouTube channel started and we are literally just getting started.
I, I think now we’ve recorded through [00:48:00] episode 51 of the podcast, so we’re quite a bit ahead. Sorry, we’ve got a lot in the pipeline and we’re already plotting out rep safety five and. Going just keep like meeting cool people. And I’m like, Hey, come on the podcast. Gotta talk. You know that, that’s kind of the plan.
Like we just go through our lives, meet cool writers, see cool stories, we’re like, we gotta talk to you. We gotta, we gotta share you with our cuny if you’re cool with it, if you’re cool with it, because I think we all can benefit from this. And it’s just been fun. It’s been, it’s been the coolest thing ever.
And I, I just, just want to say thank you. I just wanna say thank you and. If there’s anything I can do in return for you, helping make I Dreams come true by being able to work in this community with you, by being able to help lead this incredible Cuiv authors that is literally at the beginning of a monumental change in this industry, I wanna be able to help you, help your dreams come true.
So feel free to reach out to us anytime at contact [00:49:00] at Ream dot Inc. Feel free if you are on the mailing list. If you’re on the mailing list, you should join it. Set subscriptions for authors.com. We’ll send you a free book all about subscriptions, and then if you’re on the mailing list, reply to our emails.
I’m always happy to help you. I’m always having to chat seriously, like ever since I was a kid, like all I wanna do is be a storyteller, and I just had so much struggles being a storyteller myself, from the mental health, from the business model, from the highs and the lows. That to try and impart some of the lessons I’ve learned and to try and help build a CUNY and build a technology that could be in partnership with us as authors rather than feeling like it’s lording over us, working against us.
It’s just, I, I can’t describe it like it just, thank you. Thank you. And you’ll be hearing more reflections from me. I’m getting into more of a writing reflective mode cuz it’s summertime and. I’m excited [00:50:00] to share a little bit more of some really personal stories that I’ve been through and I think can help us all as writers, but that’ll be more in the future.
I know this was a longer, longer ouch for than normal. Most of you probably aren’t even listening anymore, but if you are, yeah. Sorry for the sappy ending. Sometimes I’m just really grateful and sometimes I just look back and just. Just want to almost like cry just cuz it’s like I would’ve never imagined, you know, being able to be a part of something like this.
And I’m just thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this with y’all, and I’m so grateful for you being a part of this with me and with us. We’ll see you all soon. And don’t forget, storytellers rule the world.