Posted on July 1, 2023.
Deanna Roy is a best-selling romantic comedy author writing under the pen name J.J. Knight and the creator of the infamous Great Pickle Patreon. In today’s episode, we learn about her unique subscription benefit and how she has used Picklegrams to build deeper connections with her fans and a growing subscriber base.
Deanna’s Links:
J.J. Knight Website: https://jjknight.com/
The Great Pickle Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thegreatpickle
Join the waitlist for the next cohort of the Six-Figure Subscription Author Accelerator: https://learn.subscriptionsforauthors.com/subscriptions-for-authors-accelerator
#38 Episode Outline:
0:00:00 Introduction
0:02:40 Trigger Warning: Miscarriage
0:06:03 Finding Community with Readers and Other Writers
0:09:15 Advice for New Writers
0:12:40 Deanna’s Four Patreon Points
0:23:14 Deanna’s Picklish Patreon
0:26:45 Deanna’s Pickleverse Inspiration
0:30:26 Breaking Down Deanna’s Subscription Approach
0:38:29 Being A Hybrid Author
0:40:40 Conclusion
#38 Episode Transcript:
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Subscriptions for Authors podcast. Today we have a really special guest with us. Her name is Deanna Roy, and she’s created the infamous Great Pickle Patreon. It’s so cool, she’s been able to grow it from zero to dozens and dozens of readers who pay her monthly, not for early access to her stories, although she’s tried that out before.
The main benefit is to get a pickle gram in the mail, a beautiful postcard that. It is full of laughs, full of fun and makes her readers really, really happy. So we’re gonna explore how she’s built this community around her romantic comedy novels called The Pickle Verse. And we’re gonna learn all about Deanna, about connecting with your readers, building a fan base on social media, navigating the world of any publishing, and ultimately making a living as an author with subscriptions being one of her newest and one of the most exciting revenue streams she’s guarding on.
Now, before we officially get into it, I just wanna say, Hello, it is your first time. Listen. My name is Michael Evans. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Ring. We’re subscription platform specifically for fiction authors that you can actually join for free in the length of the description. You can join completely for free and get started and see if you’d [00:01:00] like to bring your subscription here and monetize your super fans, provide early access to your books, bonus content, host a community of your fans.
There’s a ton of awesome things inside of free. You can think of us like this description platform by fiction authors for fiction authors. Also Emil Rose is another one of our wonderful co-host of the podcast. She’s a six figure subscription author and has just so many insights and me and her run the descriptions for author’s Facebook group together, which we’d love to see you in.
That’ll also be linked down below. Totally free to join, and we also run the Six Figures subscription author accelerator, which won’t be open again until the fall, and a lot of other cool stuff. So we are. trying to help you all grow, start, and make more money from subscriptions. As an author, it’s gonna be a ton of fun.
In this episode. It’s gonna be really special, but I just wanna say that we kick it off on a little bit of a different note because. Deanna Roy, she has an incredible history writing some infertility books and I had noticed that and we just kind of kicked the conversation off getting into that. So slight trigger warning if miscarriage is something that you don’t want to hear talked about, just skip two minutes ahead On the podcast, we only talk about it for like two minutes because we’re introing the really cool [00:02:00] beginning of Deanna Roy’s career, which starts like 20 years ago in the indie publishing space.
But if you. Don’t want to hear that. Skip. Next story. I have a personal experience with my mom and miscarriage, so kinda bring that up, but please skip if you don’t wanna hear that. It’ll be like a minute and a half. You won’t miss any of the good insights to the podcast, but can miss that potentially.
You know, don’t wanna have anyone have a bad experience listening to this podcast. Anyways, I know that you all will have a great one because Deanna’s incredible. Hope you enjoy this. I’ll stop talking now and we’ll get into this one.
I saw your book on The infertility kind of guide that you have for free? Wow. That’s had a lot of downloads. I could just tell from the reviews, but really cool.
My mom basically I was the fourth child, but the first one she actually had so she had three miscarriages for me. I think really great that you put that out there and we’re, I’m sure that’s helped so many other women.
Yeah, that was definitely how I got started in everything.
I was very motivated by that whole community and helping that community because when I started doing all the baby loss things, this was in 98, there wasn’t much on the internet. Of course, there wasn’t a lot on the internet anyway. But I had a [00:03:00] Geo Cities little website and that, that actually parlayed into my writing career everything started because of the baby loss content that I did.
Wow. Okay. That’s really interesting. So did you figure out at that point, cuz self-publishing is possible? Oh, I can actually write books on the internet that are fiction as
well. Yeah, so the whole frustration when I first got started was that I was, trying to find an agent and I had a huge community online.
By the time I wrote my first adult book, which was Baby Dust, I had a community where I got 100 hits a month on my website. And Wow. Especially back in, 98, 99, the early two thousands, I was the second highest rated website on the search engines under the Male Clinic for miscarriage and pregnancy loss.
Wow. So when I would go to agents trying to get signed for my book, it was very frustrating. I’m like, I have this huge audience. I know I can sell this book. And in hindsight, I underst. Stand now. Why they didn’t take me on? Because they weren’t looking for someone who could, at the [00:04:00] time Amazon existed, but it just wasn’t a trustworthy website quite yet.
They were looking for bookstores. They didn’t really know how this was gonna look. For a book that had to flash into a bookstore, make an impression in six weeks to two months, and then be withdrawn to be backlist, that wasn’t the model I could do with my. People who came along every month and had lost a baby and were looking for help and who could buy my book.
So when self-publishing came along, it was. A no-brainer. I already had the website. I already knew where to sell the books. So when it came time for me to make that transition from Baby Dust, which was a very specific book and a very specific market into trying to be a full-time author my friends who were writing romance, which I read so much of, I had romance review.
Website at the time as well.
Cool.
Said, move this material that you know with your whole heart and your whole soul, and wrap it into a very marketable type of book. You’ll pull in the people who are already with you, who have lost babies and then just love you and wanna support you. They’ll buy your book.
It will make it visible to everyone else who just wants the [00:05:00] romance and. Feels the emotion of a very authentic story at the heart of the romance. So that was forever innocent. That was 2013. That was the book that made me a full-time author, and I’ve never looked back since 2013 as far as being a full-time author and that being my career.
Wow.
I love that origin story. The fact that you also as well, like we use the word creator a lot now and authors building up an audience on maybe TikTok and all these other platforms, which are great, but ultimately trying to, gain trust in a fan base and then hopefully launch a book that can get that initial push.
That’s what we’re all looking for, that initial push. And it seems like that first series that you came out with, just it hit almost immediately from the looks of
it.
Yeah it really did. I had a lot of help from my friends and a big thing I tell people, when you’re starting this process of becoming an author, no matter how you’re gonna do it with subscriptions or Kickstarters or if you’re gonna go with retailers, you gotta find the people who are already doing it and
everybody lift themselves up together. There will always be in those communities people. I’ve have a reputation for being, I’m willing to help, I’m willing to answer your questions people who are [00:06:00] farther along in the journey. But then there will also be tons of people who are right where you are.
You’re starting out and you will learn. Together and you’ll make mistakes together and you’ll realize, oh, she made this mistake. I’m not gonna make this one. He made that mistake. I’m not gonna make that one. I’ll make my own and they’ll learn from me. But we don’t have to make all of the mistakes. We can only make what we don’t know about.
How did you make your first, cuz you said your author of friends, you’re reading a bunch of her romance albums. Like how did you initially meet them? Did you reach out to them. Did they reach out to you? Cuz they read us your blog. I’m just curious cause the initial connection’s always the hardest
part for authors.
So initially I didn’t know any authors, so I had huge communities of baby loss moms, but there really weren’t any authors in it. So I, at the time we were using a website called Kindle Boards, which is now known as the KBoards. Yeah. KBoards is not a place where a lot of us go now. It’s still there.
The community has shifted in tone over the years, and we’ve moved to Facebook and we’ve moved to Discords and other places, but that was where you go to where people are asking questions. Like even the most basic questions like what’s the difference between [00:07:00] Kindle and K D P? And that’s a super basic question for a lot of us, but when you’re starting out, you really don’t know.
I just taught a class last week once a year. I teach a class. That’s a fundraiser for the writers that Give Texas, which I support wholeheartedly. They’ve been very important to me through my career, and I had a brand new beginner in there, and when she asked her questions, it was I don’t know, it, it’s like took me back.
I always think of that scene in Ratatouille when he goes back and he eats the, and he remembers himself being a small child, and when she would ask her questions, I would like, oh, I remember when. This was so hard to parse. There were so many details to know, and I, of course, I’m answering her questions and I’m going, wow.
To be at that place where you’re at the very beginning, you gotta find people who aren’t frustrated with your questions because they’re so basic to them. Cuz they’ve been doing it for 10 years. Facebook groups are still one of the best places right now. I, that’s gonna fade away. Discords are on the rise, circles on the rise but they’re, we’re all out there.
Clubhouse is also really big. I’m really all over Clubhouse. And that’s an app just for voice talking. And we have meetings all day every day that you can just jump in and listen. You could listen [00:08:00] for weeks and before you even open your mic and never say a word. And you could just learn a lot from there and meet people and decide who you wanna get to know.
Yeah. Clubhouse is interesting. I’ve Actually heard, I think in the last three months, a significant uptick in the number of people going into this clubhouse in the author community. I’m curious about today, if you were starting today, what you would do differently, specifically, I know you are getting into and shifting you started a Patreon, the Great Pickle Patreon. I’m curious, obviously the platforms that we use, the language, the ways that we can find readers and even make money doing this has changed a lot in the last 10 years. And I’m curious kind of what led to your most recent shift and if you were giving advice to new authors
you were wide for your first series, JJ Knights, ku, but now JJ Knight also has a Patreon and has expanded that universe. I’m just, I’m curious for you what you would say to an author who’s beginning and why you’re making these new shifts, these new things that you’re starting.
So where I would suggest to you start’s gonna be so individual because it’s gonna depend on what you bring to the table.
For example, if you’re starting with, like I did with a [00:09:00] non-fiction, maybe very personal based. Story then perhaps a subscription is where you start from the beginning. You start with a free community and then as you start creating more and more things for new members of the community, especially to own to have whether it’s books or art, whatever it is you’re doing, that’s when you could pull them into a subscription.
But I think really creating your very first actual works and figuring out who you are is really important. And perhaps it can be a little discouraging to see people who already have large followings or who already have settled a lot of books, jump into a subscription and have, 200 people subscribe right away.
Cause I don’t think that’s gonna be the. Experience of everyone. So you gotta really start where you already love being and build your community. So that would look different. However, if, let’s say you write, thrillers, for example, you’re probably not gonna build a community around murder.
You’re gonna start, you’re gonna write your works first and figure out who you are and who fit into in the larger scheme of publishing. And the subscription may be [00:10:00] different if you like writing the extra little bits and pieces in creating like an exclusive model.
And it may be that you decide that you like writing serialized fiction that’s becoming so much more popular than it was for a long time. And that you right away start on a place that’s, Free and that you move people into a paid place based on wanting to get it faster. I think that’s a great model.
I’m really looking at the YouTube monetization model that I think is really big. I’ve started reading some of my books that I know I won’t be putting into audio aloud on YouTube as a way, just a new discovery place. I don’t know that I’ll make money. Directly doing that, but it’s a great place to point people.
I love pointing readers and people to places where they can start sampling who I am and what I do. That moves them into the paid models. So if I had to start all over again, I don’t think I’m quite ready to say that. Yeah. I would jump straight into the Creator economy. I would jump straight into Kickstarter or even subscriptions.
I still think you have to figure out who you are before you can say, this is my community and this is what we’re [00:11:00] about. I still struggle with that after 13 years when I started thinking about the Great Pickle Patreon, which was about. I don’t know. Toward the late summer last year, I really, it took me about six months to really figure out what I wanted that subscription to look like and what it was for, and what I would do with it.
It wasn’t automatic that I was gonna do it this way cause I could have easily done like a baby loss. Focused subscription where I’m pulling in my community and having, a lot of free stuff and then, people getting more information or more stuff from me at the other tiers I could have gone many directions based on who I am versus what I produce, but I chose that.
The model of the Great Pickle Patreon because it’s just fun to say out loud. It’s, and it was also I’ve figured out four pain points in my current business model that a Patreon could solve. And once I knew I could solve all of those pain points in my business with the Patreon, it was very clear that the direction that I needed to go with that subscription.
Okay. That is, first of all, I love your perspective on the advice and starting, and I think being [00:12:00] able to give yourself this space to almost breathe in a sense and discover yourself and what you want as a writer. Before putting all this pressure on, no matter what the way is in terms of making money, there has to be a sort of a period of exploration.
But you talk about the four pain points that your Patreon and your subscription solving for you. I want to know what those are.
Before we talk about the four pain points, I have to talk about what inspired me to do it to begin with. Yeah. I was aware of Patreon for a while and subscriptions and of course as I was very early, quickly tuned in to the fact that you were starting ream.
And I knew that was gonna be a choice as I made my choices. And probably if I had done a different pen name, I would’ve gone straight into Ream, but, Pickle Patreon. You just can’t, you just can’t get The alliteration is, it’s just too great. Yeah. But I was a patron of Marta Pellerin Bacon. She’s a okay.
She’s had a Patreon for a long time. I’d known her for a while. She’s both an author and and an artist, visual artist, and she had an Etsy shop that I regularly got her work because her work is so amazing. She takes pages, printed pages of her manuscripts and cuts them into shapes, and then she does her art around [00:13:00] that.
So she incorporates her art into The wonderful, concept of like sometimes it’s hard to be an artist. Sometimes you get rejected. All of those themes are in her art, and I just loved her, so I did her Patreon, but she would send these amazing little envelopes every so often with her art in it and.
Every time I got one in the mail, it was like a huge rush of emotion and happiness. And I remember about the third one I got from her. I’m like, I have got to do this for my fans. I want what Marta is doing for me to be something I can do for other people. And I’m a huge patron of hers. And she really inspired what I knew would.
Be a core component of my subscription. No matter how I did it, whether it was the baby loss direction or whether it was the Comedy Pickle direction, this connection through a piece of mail that we so rarely get anymore was going to be a core component. So once I had that in my head that this is, I know gonna be a core component, I started thinking about my business.
Like what all problems can I solve with this subscription? In my particular case, I’m already a six figure author. I already am well supported in My journey in [00:14:00] writing. I don’t necessarily need the subscription to be in addition to my income, although I can grow it that way. So initially I was mainly thinking how can I solve some problems?
My biggest problem I needed to solve was that my super fans wanted all the swag I was creating. But I was using it for giveaways and they weren’t winning it, and they were very frustrated. They’re like, we want every piece of swag that you create. And I’m like, Ugh. I tried briefly to put it in my direct sales store, but some of this stuff, I just felt it was not, it wasn’t easy to keep it going.
I have stickers. If you’re on the YouTube, you can see them. I love making them. I love making the little magnets. I love making the bumper stickers, but, To collect them. What was happening is I would create a little bag of them and sell it for 10, $15, and then I would run out of one component and I would have to order more of them, and then I would’ve a few of the others left.
And then I was constantly ordering swag just for this, and it was not the greatest use of my energy. So I took it off. I said I can’t do that anymore. I was also discovering Swaggo was becoming a big line item in my expenses. It was really, I could absorb it, but I was, it [00:15:00] was becoming larger and larger because that need for the physical, tangible thing around your house.
That reminds you of your love for a story or a series was becoming more and more native. The explosion of book boxes in the few years, like right before the pandemic was incredible and I’d played with the idea of doing book boxes, but I wasn’t ready to commit at that level. Yeah. And the subscription could solve both of these problems, right?
My super fans could subscribe and get every single piece of swag because they paid for it. I would know in advance how many I needed to produce because I had that many people subscribed and. It would actually pay for it. It would no longer be a line item expense. So two of my pain points would be solved no matter what I did, if I included a merch level or any kind of level of swag in my subscription.
The third pain point was that I love crafting. That’s just part of who I am, and I couldn’t find time to do it. It just seemed really unless I was making a Mother’s Day gift or a Father’s Day gift or and then I would get to craft those, I just. I had a cricket machine I almost never used. I had a mug press that I’d been given.
I never got to really pull out and I thought, wow, what if I could.[00:16:00] Have this subscription be the way I got to do crafting. So I knew that I was gonna build in fun, crafting things for me to get to, to make, and it would be just part of my career. It’s part of the whole business is the model of my crafting.
So that was the third pain point that I got to solve with my subscription. And the fourth one was a big deal. I sold some books traditionally as JJ Knight. And I’m very excited about those to come out. And I’m, this has been something I’ve wanted for 25 years. I finally had enough like power as an indie author to go in and say this is what it looks like that I’m gonna need for an advance.
This is how I want marketing to go. And I had enough, oomph in there to say, okay, you get everything you want. It was amazing experience. It’s been an amazing experience. My publisher is amazing. But of course a publisher doesn’t want your old branding. They want something new. So I started an entire new series.
So I released my ninth Pickle book in January of 2023, and then now I have to wait about a year before I can release another pickle book. So my fourth pain point was that there would be [00:17:00] no new pickle books for almost a year, and yet the pickle branding is. What makes me such a powerful force to be able to, call the shots in my deals.
So I had to find a way to keep that pickle branding going. So I knew somewhere around September last year that this was the thing that was gonna do. I could use the inspiration that I got from Marta Pellerin Bacons. Patreon and the emotions that she evokes in me. I could solve the problems with the swag, both the cost of it and the fact that my super fans wanted all of it, and I could craft sometimes and make that part of it.
I was, it’s just, it’s been a joyful thing. So those were my four pain points that I solved with, with this subscription.
Wow. First of all, huge congrats on the publishing deal. Reminds me actually a lot of Alana Albertson, who we’ve had on the podcast before, and her experience because she very similarly had to was built off Seven Seals brand and her cereals in her case, but can’t publish those nearly as frequently anymore because she has the traditional publishing deal and then the fans are like, We have to wait so long for the next one.
And it [00:18:00] could be, it’s tough. It’s tough to tell them. I, I literally can’t, you wanna figure out something? So I think this is beautiful. And in your current iteration, your subscription is basically a pickle gram. In the mail, walk me through. I’m one of your, oh, here we go. Great.
Those of you aren’t just listening if you’re also looking yet. These are the little envelopes I had made. So when last year my schedule was really intense cause I had to release three indie books, plus I had to write my two traditional books for this year. So I wrote double my usual amount I couldn’t deal with.
The subscription yet, but once December hit, I was like, it’s time. So I needed to see what would that pigram look like. I had custom envelopes made from Vistaprint. As it turned out, I priced out the green envelopes. Because one thing I wanted is when you got your mail, if you were a subscriber, you would immediately know you got a pickle gram, cuz it would be so distinctive in your mailbox.
And when I priced the green envelopes, they were actually more expensive than doing a custom one. So I could put my return address directly on the envelope. That would save me some time. I could make it look beautiful and cute, have all my branding on it. And I picked a size that most of the things that I would create would [00:19:00] fit inside of it.
And also to Create an expectation. If in the introduction on Patreon I showed this envelope, you knew what you were getting, something that fits in there. So there’s not this expectation they’re gonna get a mug or something, a t-shirt, right? You know that you’re gonna get a piece of slender swag that’s funny and heartwarming or whatever it’s gonna be, but it’s gonna fit in there and that’s what you’re gonna be paying for your subscription.
That clear expectation setting is really awesome. Cuz if. Yeah, you can imagine like a fan like is very happy when they know this is what I’m getting to be like, oh, this is an awesome pilgram. But if they think they’re paying for something I would be shocked if you could find with the pricing of your subscription, sending a mug would be I think very difficult.
But still, if someone thinks that, then okay, I love it. And outta curiosity, where did you use to, if you don’t mind sharing the, just. The printed
custom envelopes,
so that’s Vista Print. Okay. Which a lot of us use. Yeah. I knew that they did Black Friday sales. I knew that I wanted to do the pickle gram.
I knew I already had created a Christmas card that had some of that look to it. I was also using this whole [00:20:00] little pickle and that. So I already had some of the pieces in place that had graphically designed. I’m not a graphic designer at all. I have to hire a lot of this stuff out.
But once I have something, if I do it correctly, I can use it multiple times. So I had a bag made that had pickle. So I just had the pickle Sort of background made. It’s really pretty and green and yellow. And then I use it for my welcome new pickle stuff. I use it for the bags, I use it for tons of things.
And it’s already made. I don’t have to worry about Cru starting from scratch for everything I make so That envelope, I knew I already had created that background that I would use. And then I had already had these drawn and created for me, these little pickle guys. I’d been using ’em on swag, so it made total sense.
That they show up on my stickers too. Yeah. Once you create a few great pieces, and I use Fiver for that. There’s a couple you learn, you go and do a few and you like them and then you pay them more and you get more elaborate things and then you create a relationship. If you don’t know any graphic designers there’s, there’s real people there making real art and that’s how I met a lot of them.
And I can go back and I know their turnaround times and I know what my expectations and needs are. But [00:21:00] for a lot of my Pickle Graham stuff, I’m reusing a lot of it. Cause I don’t really have a huge budget. For making a lot of new graphics by paying someone. Cause that’s gonna take up a big chunk of my budget.
But the beautiful thing about the subscription is now I have a budget, right? Yeah. I know how much I have. If I have, 50 subscribers, I’m gonna have $2 20 after the fees to spend. So one month I might do something that’s. Really craft intensive but it doesn’t cost much at all.
The Valentine’s that I did I cut them on my cricket and they’re very fancy and they have their name. Cut Every single pickle member got their name cut out, and then of course is branded with pickles and he goes, do you see that guy again? And you see that background again. I’m reusing all these things that I paid for so that it’s not as expensive to make them and I can stay in my budget.
But, those didn’t cost me very much money. It was my beautiful crafting time that did that. I could save that budget that I had for the next month and I could make something more elaborate. Or in some cases I’ll do something for. this is actually the one that’s about to go out, but by the time ooh, you have the subscription, these are, little book tabs and on the front it says, [00:22:00] mark the good parts in the pickle verse.
So it’s branded and it’s useful. But here’s the thing. Yeah, I could buy these for my subscribers. They get it first. But then I filled my entire two month budget cuz I had two months of budget left and now I have a thousand extra to take to my London book signing. So I was able to fund all of my swag with the swag that I’m doing for my subscribers.
Oh, That’s such a great swag. That’s amazing. Cause I’m imagining for people who are listening. First of all, you should go to the YouTube channel and see it yourself, but that. To be able to like tag specific parts in the book really cool.
Oh, I love it. And then you have one last really cool part of your subscription, which is being able to have your fans, your readers. This is something I already feel fomo with, which is wild They vote on something picklish for you to eat live? I have to ask how that’s gone.
so they are both a little bit cruel and a little bit kind.
So when we start, when we hit certain levels, of course I came on to Patreon after they quit taking, we quit [00:23:00] having goals. So I never got the, when I hit so many subscribers, on the page and they could see how many. So it’s just up to me to say, Hey, we’ve hit it. We can do it.
Which is actually nice too, cuz I can just decide. It’s been a little while since we did one. Let’s just do another one. It doesn’t matter if we hit a goal or not. I just feel like that community needs to come together so they get to vote. They first su suggest what they’re going to have me eat.
And the last one they came up with 20 or 30. Really horrible suggestions of what pickle flavored item I should eat. And this is an offspring from everywhere else. My Facebook group, they are notorious if they run across something ticklish on the internet. They have to drop it into my Facebook group and share, share it with everyone.
So when I came to my Patreon and said, Hey, pick out some things for me to eat, it was easy for them to go to that other group and grab all the things cause they were already there. If they didn’t feel like searching for it, they knew that my community has been sharing this kind of stuff all the time.
The yo link pickle comes up about once a month. There’s certain ubiquitous. Pickle things out there and they’ll be at the grocery store and they’ll see pickle chips and they [00:24:00] feel the urge to take a snap of it and post it in the group.
That’s nice.
They got to list them all. I picked a few that I could buy cuz every once in a while they get fooled.
They, they’re told that there’s pickle flavored, something and it actually doesn’t exist. But tic-Tacs I think is one that’s like a joke, but everybody always wants to post it. And then I give them the list of the things I know I can purchase and then they vote on them. So the last zoom we had, I had to eat chocolate covered pickles, which were absolutely disgusting.
I had a hard time swallowing it. The whole zoom call, they were all laughing so hard is she gonna spit it out? Is she gonna, was it like erupted? It and I really was not faking anything. I struggled. I had no idea it was gonna be so bad. I thought chocolate and pickles, it’s like to a great taste.
No, they do not taste great together. And we did pickle fudge and then we did a pickle soda that I had bought. I think it was a Jones Soda. It was so good. I drank it. Okay. And I was like, wait, this is good. And I kept drinking it and every time I would take a sip they’d be like, she likes it. Yeah. I was just drinking it.
Absolutely. But we played pickle games in that, zoom where, come up with a movie title, but replace a word with pickle. And then [00:25:00] whoever they liked the best, they got to vote. One assigned. Book in the middle of the Zoom. So I think it was was it, oh gosh. I think it was The Star was one, like the Last Pickle.
I don’t remember. There was they were so clever and so funny. We were all laughing so hard. People would be posting them in the chat if they didn’t feel like talking. And we were just, we laughed for 30 minutes straight just on replace a. Word in a movie with pickle. So it was great community building.
It was great for me too. I think as an author, one of the things, when you have a community, whether it’s a free community somewhere or one of your subscription communities, if you yourself are having a hard time Pulling your community together and doing something like this is a great, it’s just a great thing for you to do.
Even if you’re all sitting around and just talking about your favorite Netflix shows, just to having that community It can really get you through.
that sounds like an absolute blast. I’m wondering I am already thinking of all the different, I won’t even go on the tantrum of all the pickle things.
I’m thinking of pickle ball. All the different things you could, you can do, but. That is fascinating and I love it. And I’m curious for you, you started off with the community of moms and people who are having [00:26:00] trouble, obviously having kids, and now you’ve switched, not switched, but I would say probably your audience has evolved, but the pickle verse itself that you’ve built and this whole brand around pickles.
What inspired this and. what has gotten you to stick with it? Because it’s a very unique thing. I don’t see a lot of romance authors especially say, I’m gonna have a universe that’s called something like that. it’s genius, but I’m curious where that
came from.
So it began with a book by Cara Bristol called Naughty Words for Nice Authors, and it’s a thesaurus for romance authors for body parts. And I believe we were at doing a, I was having a NaNoWriMo National Novel Writing Month write in at my house here in Austin, Texas. We have a very vibrant NaNoWriMo.
Culture and some of my best friends I’ve met through NaNoWriMo write-in. That’s awesome. I was hosting my annual dangerously unproductive margarita write-in and where we drink a lot of margaritas and we try to get our words done and some years we’re really good at it. In some years we drink too early and we don’t get any words.
But at that margarita ride in, I. Brought out Kara Bristol’s book and we were [00:27:00] looking at, euphemisms for male anatomy and one of ’em said, pickle. And it was, I don’t know if it was the margaritas or the laughter or what it was, but immediately, my head just exploded with what if. You know the book was called Big Pickle, and he worked in a delicate testan and he was constantly handing pickles to women.
And they said, I like your pickle. And then he said, oh, can I get your pickle but make it spicy? And I need a bigger pickle than I just, all of the jokes just exploded in my head. And I was like, this would be the funniest book. And at that point I had written. One romantic comedy called Single Dad on Top, and it was a complete and random out outlier book.
I was known for drama angst and emotional catharsis books up until I wrote single dad on top, and it, I didn’t think I was funny at all, but that book had hit. Really well, I’d written a sequel, but then I left romantic comedy cause I, it was not something I identified with, but I thought about that.
I thought, oh gosh, this could be really funny. And in the back of my mind I was also thinking, gosh, if Amazon tries to say something about my title, I just have to say it’s a set in a delicate, what are you talking about? [00:28:00] Cause really it’s, you have to put the, innuendo on it.
It’s not actually there. It’s a guy who works in a deli. It’s not anything up in and of itself. Yeah. If a seven year old comes across it has a logical reason. And actually it did come to that at one point when the book got really popular. It was in the top 100. It was selling like crazy.
They. Went for the title of the book, I was able to successfully argue that this was not a sexualized title, that it was actually referring to the business that they operated in it. I got it. I got the ad reinstated.
Good.
That’s actually that’s awesome. I’m sorry that you had to obviously go, that’s like a very stressful thing, but like you asked, smarted them good for you.
I love that inspiration and I was like literally just laughing at like the excerpts of your books, everything you have from it, and now you’re reading. On YouTube, the pickle verse.
I can’t read it all cuz YouTube does have standards and the books are steamy. And I’m very aware of how much I can put in different platforms.
But yeah, because of the euphemistic nature of all of it, it’s very easy to post [00:29:00] all of these things. There’s also the component of it that my fans really relate to that I think might be why the swag portion of my business, which led to the subscription is so popular.
I have I think the shirt that I have on now, it’s like call me a pickle cuz I’m done, Dylan with you. This particular expression is so popular with my fans. It just really expresses their frustration with a lot of the things. And so if I put this on a tote bag or a shirt, they want it.
I just recently turned that one on its head. This is a piece of swag that’s gonna come out soon and this one turns it to you can’t deal with my awesome. So I am trying to move from like the frustration and upset we were feeling during the pandemic years to. The positive spin of my swag. I will keep the other stuff too, but I’m trying To have the bulk of my swag have that happy spin on it. That’s what they’re looking for now. They wanna laugh, they wanna get away from the problems. They wanna read about guys hand in grills, pickles,
I think it’s awesome. And I’m curious for you, in terms of setting up maybe like a direct store where you’re selling, like I can mean, I can picture this on like merchandise.
I can picture t-shirts of this. I can picture on everything. Is [00:30:00] that something that
I’ve played with it
a little. I do have some mugs I do. I like, here’s my Yeti right here. It’s get pickled. I do a little bit, but. I’m again. I do have to watch my time. I think on, yeah, on your podcast you had someone else how many spoons do I have?
Like, how much time do I have to really focus on that part of my business? I’ve actually moved most of my merch ideas into my subscription and not. The direct store, I do have a direct store. You can buy signed copies of my direct store. You get to it through, if you know that I’m Deanna Roy, which most people do, they know that I’m the same author.
But it’s not my focus. If I do book boxes, they’re giveaways. They’re really for fomo. They’re really to inspire people. It’s what I call the hear ye. I do a giveaway of something fantastic, but book related to get people to follow me on social media so that they’re close enough to me now that I can warm them up and maybe get them interested in my stories.
I don’t ever have the expectation that someone who tries to win a book box is gonna actually. Go right around and buy my books unless they happen to like the tropes or the story. But [00:31:00] I am trying to pull them closer so that I can warm them up and get them to know me, get to know my stories, to hear the other people talk about my stories, their experiences with my stories, and then maybe they go, okay, I am gonna check this out.
But as far as the swag itself, I, I am playing with the option of adding more tiers. I don’t know that I’ll ever add a straight merch tier, but I’m probably going to add a paperback tier. This year. Just the only reason I’ve hesitated is the traditional book deals are Yeah. In the way, and I’m gonna see how that’s gonna go.
So my first book traditionally comes out in June. And so even by the time this airs, I may already know whether or not I’m gonna be moving into, no, I’m traditional. This is the traditional space. The paperbacks aren’t something I control, the advance reader copies, I don’t control. And so I just need to stay where I am.
But it’s possible too that I’ll start writing books serialized that I never actually package into a book, because that’s the competition, but my cereal would not be a competition, so I could expand the pickle verse into digital content. Currently, there is no [00:32:00] digital content on my pickle subscription.
Because I don’t have time to write it right now. Yeah. I’m very deep into my traditional contracts, keeping my other pen names going. I did though, if you. Looked at it. I did release a recent book, a chapter a day. It was insane. A chapter a day. Yeah. On my subscription. And here’s the reason I did that. It was not JJ obviously, cuz JJ is traditional right now.
One of my other pen names was writing a book very quickly. I was trying to capitalize on a big opportunity for marketing so I thought I’m gonna write this book. Just about as quickly as I can write it, but I’m afraid I’m gonna make some mistakes because of how quickly. Cuz normally I have a whole alpha process, then a beta process, then the editor process.
But I didn’t have time for all those layers of editing for this particular book. And I thought who could I count on to read my entire book? Who loves me so much that they would read my book as I’m writing it? They’d forgive me for my typos. They’d tell me if I was messing up. And then they would accept and reread the book once it was fixed.
And I went, of course. My subscribers. Yeah, my [00:33:00] super fans, they would do that for me. So I put it to them. I said, Hey, I know this isn’t a pickle book. Are you interested in reading a chapter a day and help me not make any mistakes? And about 20 to 25% of them were like, heck yeah. And so I took that subgroup of my subscribers and everybody got it.
But that subgroup was active and they, every day they dialed in at 9:00 AM they knew exactly what I was gonna post it. And within an hour I had. Feedback and it was great feedback. They told me like, don’t forget about the grandma. She needs to find her grandma. And I’m like, Ooh, I wasn’t gonna have her find the grandma, but okay, let’s do that.
And it was fantastic. They are feeling a little bereft now that the book is over. They’re like we are really addicted to this now. And I’m like I cannot write a chapter at Dave for you forever. Yeah. But they are my super fans and they understand. Yeah. So it was a great experiment to do with that group of people.
Because the people who are paying a fee every month are the ones who obviously love you the most.
I love that. Now that context makes that make sense to me. Oh, that is so cool. Yeah. You posted 30 something, 35, 36 chapters and Yeah. Yeah. Each [00:34:00] one was getting, you’re right, like 10 ish comments. Yep. People really doing that. That’s invaluable. That’s such a heck. Oh, it was. It was great. I know Amelia does that basically with her publishing cycle with almost everything she writes.
Yeah,
I’ve run it through them and let them comment, see how they like it. If they don’t, I’ll take something out.
If they want me to add something, I’ll add something, but.
And I love that you say that. I think there are people out there who would say are you writing by committee? Isn’t this your art? I’m like it’s everything. It’s my art and it’s my job. Yeah. So in that case, I felt like I really needed the help.
Yeah. So they were elevating my art. I was presenting to them. The story I wanted to tell the characters as I wanted them to be. They were just reminding me that they were taking little tangents. There was a point in the story where they were shipping two people that weren’t gonna be together, and I had to go back and through my story and figure out what I had done to make them want them together, and I needed to fix that because I.
That’s not what I, as the artist wanted to have happen, but that’s what I was leading them to want. That was invaluable feedback, just insanely important [00:35:00] feedback. And, but yeah.
Oh, sorry. You can keep going.
I was like they did in the end get the whole book. So we ran outta time because it was time to release the book.
So a chapter a day. I was writing way ahead of them.
Yeah I was gonna say because they did that and because they got, that, gave you that early feedback, as you were writing it or as you were releasing it chaptered by chapter. I know at least from me, my readers have a deeper connection with that book because they’re like, I helped form this book. And now it’s published, and now I’m gonna tell like all of the people that I know about it because I loved it so much because I helped create it.
And what that can look like as part of your marketing is when I run an ad for that book I can tell my subscribers, I. Here is an ad, do you think I’m showing off the best parts of the book?
And then they all go in and they put all the social proof on the ad because they’re like, oh, I love this book. Oh, it was so great. You didn’t ask for it. You were just saying, did I do a good job with this? And again they’re doing the work of helping that book look like it’s. Amazing.
That’s actually genius. Hey, am I doing [00:36:00] this right? Inviting them into every part of your process. It’s, a lot of authors too, like we feel like we have to build a cuny. Like we have to be both a storyteller and then an influencer. And that can be really stressful cuz you’re like, What do I talk about?
What do I do? How am I going to build a community when I have definitely a full-time job writing here, but it’s like actually you can combine both and it’s almost like you have a, sometimes literally a camera or figuratively, you just documenting your process and sharing it with people that is powerful and something that not everyone’s comfortable doing, but if you are, it’s not about sharing about your kids or your personal life necessarily.
It’s about. What they care about, your stories and the behind the scenes.
And they’re helpful. They’re really helpful, and that’s a strategy you can do in a lot of places. For example, people talk about when you do like an online party, maybe a Facebook party, and they’re like, oh, let’s play a game, and other people will have two hot guys and do this or that.
And I’m like, okay, that’s great. And it does let people know your books are steamy, but I prefer to do a this or that with two of my branded graphics [00:37:00] about my book, because then. They’re looking at my branding while making their choice of right or left or this or that. So it sometimes just slightly reframing the things that we do online that feel like they’re unrelated or unimportant or superfluous, and making them more part make ’em part of the story you’re telling with your books can actually, 2, 3, 4 elements at one time are being handled.
That. that’s great. I like that idea a lot in terms of just the subtle branding is important. I’m curious for you as you move forward with your brand and now traversing both, you’re officially a hybrid author. Obviously, I think we’ll see how it goes at traditional publishing.
That could be something you lean more into or less into.
I hope. I hope it goes very well. I hope it goes very well, but when it comes to. Your career in terms of, you mentioned the word creator economy earlier. I’m curious how you see yourself navigating this newer future where it’s easier than ever to sell and connect directly with fans.
Do you see yourself, cuz traditional’s almost the opposite in a way. It’s putting like a publisher between you and your vantage. There’s nothing wrong with that, but how [00:38:00] do you see yourself continuing an if interfacing? With the creator economy?
So that’s the beauty of combining the traditional publishing with the subscription is because the more distance you put between the product you’re creating and your audience, the more you can pull in the super fans close to you via the subscription it that will serve you.
Whether you’re waiting six months for your publishing deal to come through and actually pay you or. If it feels too far away, like I can’t get an advanced reader copy anymore, Deanna and I can still pull you in with other material or with other indie projects, I think as this moves along and I expect it to go pretty well and I expect that a lot of my JJ.
Work will be traditional. I’m still gonna get permission to write books in between the traditional ones like I did this year, but I do feel like I can do both things at once because it’s all about discovery. And so whether I’m using traditional publishing to discover new people who will be my super fans and I’m gonna pull close, or whether I’m gonna use Wattpad, or I’m gonna use a Facebook group, or I’m gonna get [00:39:00] on TikTok, or I’m gonna use a Discord, however, it’s gonna be that I discover them.
Having the subscription is obviously a way to keep them close now. I’m not gonna fool myself. I’ve been at this game a very long time. I started my first website in 1998. I saw Geo Cities go away and I had to start completely over and learn how to code my own website. I saw the fall of Twitter. I saw the, the fall of tons of places that we built we used to have blogs and my blog was everything.
And then it was just so overwhelmed with spam that it’s just a normal human without a lot of experience in figuring out how to stop this influx. I quick letting comments be on my blog past 24 hours. I had a huge forum for years, and then again, this spam just overwhelmed it and I had to move on to another platform.
So I’m not gonna kid myself at this point in the game that even Patreon or any of these things are gonna last forever. But I do think that while they’re hot, it makes sense for me to. Learn a new trick, pull people back in, whether I’m gonna get ’em on my email list or a paid place like my Patreon to gather them close to me.
And it’s an, it’s gonna be an ever-evolving thing in my career. Here’s [00:40:00] where I’m gonna gather my people. Now, here’s where I used to. It used to be that I was the number two place. On the internet to learn about the stuff that I talked about. Yeah. Now I’m probably 50 pages in. It evolves. It changes.
I have to be willing to grow with it if I want a full-time career from this. A hobby is one thing, but a full-time career is something I know I need to keep growing. And the subscriptions is where I am this year, and I’m really enjoying the whole process.
Incredible insights. This has been just a fantastic conversation and I wanna ask you one last question, which is, Where can we find you online?
Let everyone know.
Deanna roy.com is my primary website where you do learn that I have other pen names but JJ Knight, of course, is branded to the Pickles. I also have one that’s, I do have the pickles coming.com, which is where only pickles now that I have the traditional books. JJ Knight had to be rebranded.
I was like, when I got my book in They showed me my first covers. I was like, oh, that’s so beautiful. I love it so much, but it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit with my pickle verse, there’s no colors. So I’m like, still in flux on [00:41:00] jj night.com, how I’m gonna brand it. But you can go there and you can see both of the branding as well as the Great Pickle Patreon, which I’ve started and it’s.
Going so fantastically, and I love all my patrons,
And they love you very clearly. You’re doing so much for them and have, I think just a wonderful way to, like you said, solve some really key problems for your readers. And for you. And I can guarantee you that this podcast has probably helped all of us listening solve some of our own problems and take a step forward in our subscription.
So Deanna, thank you so much for being with here with us today. And yeah, this was very
inspiring.
Thank you for everything you guys did. Your summit was amazing, and I’m very excited to see how Ream evolves for us as well.
We’re very grateful and looking forward to it too.
I hope you enjoyed this
podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and a huge thank you to Deanna Roy for coming on. We had a ton of fun chatting with her and I’d love to hear from you. Any follow up questions you have after this podcast, you can share your questions in the Facebook group. We’re always there to help you out.
And if you’d also like to really get started with the [00:42:00] subscriptions and really get to learning about this, I recommend you read the Subscriptions for Author, start a Guide. You could get it totally for free. Well link in the description video that is actually the audiobook of me reading it, that you can listen to free on YouTube or podcast players.
And we’ll also link to the book that you can download for free on ebook retailers. So would love if you haven’t read that book yet, to see your thoughts on it and to have you experience the awesomeness of subscriptions. It’s short read and it gives you so many insights packed into really just a couple hours.
But it’s enough for me for this podcast. I’m so grateful for you all being here. We’re gonna be back soon. We’re gonna be back next week for another episode. But in the meantime, don’t forget Storytellers Rule the World.