Posted September 2, 2022
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In 1 year, Elle Griffin has grown her audience from 0 to 20,000 readers on her newsletter with hundreds of subscribers generating a healthy five-figure revenue from subscriptions. Today, we learn how she grew her audience, what she offers her paid subscribers to convert her free readers, and tons of insights on the future of publishing.
Elle’s Links:
https://ellegriffin.substack.com/
Free subscription insights delivered to your inbox each week: https://subscriptionsforauthors.com/
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#9 Episode Outline:
0:00 – 2:10 Introduction and Context
2:10 – 4:54 Elle’s Journey from 0 to $15k and 20,000 subscribers
4:54 – 8:25 Who Reads and Pays for Elle’s Newsletter
8:25 – 10:55 Why Social Media Hasn’t Worked for Growth and What Has Instead
10:55 – 15:30 How Elle Has Built Her Community as a Fiction Writer Through Newsletters
15:30 – 17:12 How Elle Converts Free Subscribers to Paid Readers
17:12 – 22:10 Why Emilia and Michael Subscribed to Elle Griffin
22:10 – 22:51 Elle’s $200 Subscription for Readers
22:51 – 24:31 DOJ vs PRH and What it Means for Authors
24:31 – 28:07 What if you invested in books like a start-up?
28:07 – 29:35 Elle’s Subscriber Stats, Conversion Rate, and Growth Rate
29:35 – 33:31 Niche Crowdfunding Ideas + Why Subscriptions Are Mainstream
33:31 – 35:16 Balancing Fiction and Non-fiction in the Same Subscription as One Writer
35:16 – 38:06 Elle’s Future with Subscription Newsletters and Turning Newsletters into Books
38:06 – 41:33 Why Media Undervalues writers, and How Subscriptions Can Help You Reclaim That
41:33 – 46:10 Life Update + Our Mission to Highlight Subscription Success Stories
#9 Full Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: If you are a fiction writer with zero newsletter subscribers, wondering how you can get all the way to 20,000 newsletter subscribers with some paying subscribers making you over $15,000 per year in recurring revenue. Well, then this is the podcast for you. Welcome everyone back to another episode, the Subscriptions for author’s podcast.
[00:00:20] Michael Evans: It’s me, Michael. And I’m here with my co-host Emilia rose will be here in just a second after this intro
[00:00:26] Michael Evans: Today we are joined by Elle Griffin, the author of obscurity and the forthcoming oblivion. She’s a journalist in the technology space and she’s an incredible writer who documents her journey, trying to make it as a fiction writer in 2022 on a newsletter, the Novelleist.
[00:00:44] Michael Evans: I’ll encourage you to subscribe to it’s in the description or comments, wherever you’re listening or watching. And it’s really full of incredible insights about how she’s been able to grow her subscription. Because as I mentioned, she has 20,000 people reading this and she [00:01:00] hasn’t really done any fancy paid advertising.
[00:01:02] Michael Evans: She tried social media, but as you’ll find that wasn’t what really ended up working for her. And as she kind of shares some of. Secret tips and story that really got her to where she is. I think it’ll be inspiring and also incredibly insightful for all of us writers. So I won’t hold us up anymore before we get into it.
[00:01:22] Michael Evans: If you aren’t part of the subscriptions for authors,community, you should join our Facebook group you get insights from hundreds of authors, some best selling, some who are just getting started.
[00:01:30] Michael Evans: Everyone trying to do better running subscription business as a fiction author, and as well, we are talking a lot about subst stack today. It’s a newsletter platform that enables you to monetize your newsletter and make money. And we are actually building something here. F by fiction authors for fiction authors.
[00:01:48] Michael Evans: It’s called ream. It’s launching soon. And if you’re interested in a platform that allows you to have a community in your stories, all in one place, then you should check out our mailing list and the description and will [00:02:00] notify you when it launches.
[00:02:01] Michael Evans: Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Let’s get into it.
[00:02:05] Michael Evans: I am so excited to just be here with you. If I didn’t encourage anyone already to subscribe to the Novelleist, which is her amazing newsletter, I’m going to encourage them here and sorry for two called actions, but it’s urgent. You should really be there experiencing elle’s great work, but.
[00:02:21] Michael Evans: Obviously you haven’t been writing the novelist forever. This has been a journey for you over the last really year and a half, two years of growing this newsletter that both has a free component and a paid subscription. And you’ve done really well. You’ve done some pretty fantastic things. So I would love to just get an overview of what your journey’s been like from day one to now.
[00:02:42] Elle Griffin: Yeah, so I wrote a Gothic novel, did the normal thing of submitting it to agents. They didn’t want it because my comps were all 100 year old books, which is not a smart marketing strategy. It’s a Gothic novel, so nobody reads. So as I started researching the industry, I realized that I was [00:03:00] gonna have maybe a thousand people who liked my book more than I would have a hundred thousand people who liked my book.
[00:03:05] Elle Griffin: In which case, putting it up on Amazon and trying to sell it for $10 was not a very good strategy. So I started kind of researching Emilia’s world, using the creator economy and using subscriptions where authors earn in a monthly subscription instead of like. One time thing.
[00:03:21] Elle Griffin: So I decided to, I tried Patreon and subs stack at the same time. Subs was, there are some fiction writers that are already using Patreon for this purpose, like Emilia. But. I ultimately decided to go with Subec because it was based specifically for writers. So you can follow a writer on the platform.
[00:03:39] Elle Griffin: You can have as many free subscribers as you want, and then you can also have a paid component. And so I did that and I serialized my Gothic novel there. it took me about a year. It just completed like a month ago. And then I put it up on Kindle. And while I was doing this very important part, I just kind of documented my whole journey.
[00:03:57] Elle Griffin: So there was a non-fiction [00:04:00] newsletter of just like me researching the industry and learning more about it as I went in addition to the fiction that was serialized, after the kinda one year in. Like when I started, I had 1700 newsletter subscribers and $0 in income. By the end, I had 5,600 newsletter subscribers and $15,294.
[00:04:21] Elle Griffin: Wow. In income. And that’s where I am now, and I’m getting ready to serialize my next novel and do that one live. So that’ll be interesting. .
[00:04:29] Michael Evans: This is amazing. And when she says $15,000 in, in change, in income, that’s also recurring income because it’s through subscriptions, which is incredible. And you’re actually the first like person I’ve ever like joined a, I did the annual membership, but that I’ve like sufficiently subscribed to like as individual creator.
[00:04:48] Michael Evans: Cuz I was just so inspired by what you’re doing. And I originally found. In the means of creation article that you wrote, cuz I’m a big fan of Li Jin and Nathan who, who run that and you were [00:05:00] talking about partially like part of the power law in publishing and the idea that I believe it was like 70,000 books that sell between one and 10,000 copies a year.
[00:05:08] Michael Evans: Then you have maybe like a much smaller amount that are between 10. And a hundred thousand and then very few ever sell above a hundred thousand, which I thought was fascinating. And for you, as you’re uncovering these learnings about the publishing industry, How did your subscriber base evolve like your, who did your readers end up being?
[00:05:28] Elle Griffin: Well, it was interesting because yeah, I was looking at the publishing industry. You’re correct. There was like, I looked at a bunch of stats for 2020, and it turned out being that 268 books sold more than a hundred thousand copies. So. That’s not very much that’s like the smallest of any industry, like the top 10 best streamed movies on Netflix.
[00:05:49] Elle Griffin: See like 60 million watches, , meanwhile, like the top books that we sell, sell a hundred thousand, it’s like nothing. So I was like, okay, nobody’s reading books anymore. At least we’re not really buying [00:06:00] them. But I was like not, I wasn’t really willing to like pivot my craft to like movie writing or something.
[00:06:05] Elle Griffin: I, I still see the value in writing. And luckily kind of around the time that I was starting, my newsletter, like subs stack was really starting to get into the flow. They’re they’re only five years old. They like just hit their five year mark. And the first, like four years of sub stack, especially the first three years of sub stack was like, It was a very small company.
[00:06:27] Elle Griffin: They had like very few writers. It wasn’t very mainstream. . And so like right when I started on subs stack, a bunch of other people started on subs stack and they got subs, got a huge investment from Andrews and Horowitz and became, suddenly became this, like started putting all these resources into developing it.
[00:06:44] Elle Griffin: They came out with the app. When I published my article about fiction, all these fiction writers, flocked to the app, and now there’s like a huge fiction base there. So it was kind of fortuitous that right when I was starting my newsletter Subec was also getting really big. And that very much [00:07:00] like helped my subscriber base.
[00:07:01] Elle Griffin: So now, like now Most of my subscribers come from within the sub network, like people are subscribed to other sub stack newsletters, and then they subscribe to mine cause they just find it through the network effects of the app. So I said I had 5,600 newsletter subscribers, 1200 of those came from just within the network.
[00:07:19] Elle Griffin: So So those are, so now there’s starting to be like this market of people that are just used to subscribing to newsletters and to paying for them. And I think there’s even some stats on subset that it’s like, if somebody pays for one newsletter, they’re like 30% more likely to pay for another one.
[00:07:36] Elle Griffin: Because they’re payment information’s already in there because they could just one click like pay. So yeah, so it’s been, that’s kind of who my subscriber base is now and continues to be.
[00:07:47] Michael Evans: The fact you’ve been able to get 1200 from stuff
[00:07:50] Emilia Rose: that’s crazy. That’s amazing.
[00:07:52] Elle Griffin: People are like, can just do it on ghost and do it yourself.
[00:07:55] Elle Griffin: I’m like, no
[00:07:56] Michael Evans: in terms of getting discovery though, like that is, [00:08:00] that is like the biggest conversation for, I think all writers, no matter what our stages, but especially in the beginning, like in order to have an audience and then to be able to turn that audience to community. That requires other people or maybe Twitter bots, but maybe we’ll get later into your debacles with Twitter, which Twitter can be a, not so fun place, but talking broader about social media.
[00:08:19] Michael Evans: How has that impacted, , your ability to grow? Where are your readers coming in from? Let’s say, outside of subst stack.
[00:08:26] Elle Griffin: So I took a non-traditional approach because when I started my subst, I didn’t have any social media accounts at all. So when I launched my subst stack, I also launched a Twitter account and an Instagram account.
[00:08:40] Elle Griffin: I also, at the time had a clubhouse account. I , and I started using my LinkedIn account. Like I had one for work, but I wasn’t really like publishing anything on it. But because I’m a journalist, my strategy was to pitch. So I would reach out to somebody like you, Michael, and be like, I here’s [00:09:00] something that I’m doing on Subec I’m serializing that book.
[00:09:02] Elle Griffin: Like if you think that’s interesting, I’d love to talk to you about it on your podcast. Or, , I would like share certain articles with journalists that wrote about those industries. Like those two articles I wrote. Tearing the publishing industry apart. That was the first time those stats were available.
[00:09:17] Elle Griffin: That was like my original research. So when I started pitching those stories to journalists, they just kind of took it and went far and wide. And those stories were featured on business insider and in the morning brew newsletter and kind of everywhere. Cause I was. Pitching the pitching it everywhere.
[00:09:31] Elle Griffin: And those stats didn’t exist. Like I updated the Wikipedia article for, for the New York times best seller list with all the stats that I had found and citing my own article, ? So, so I think that just caused people to share that really far and wide. And that’s where my subscriber base came from.
[00:09:47] Elle Griffin: So it didn’t come from social media. By the time, this month when I deleted my social media Twitter had my Twitter account, had 1000 followers. And my Instagram had like [00:10:00] 50 or something. Cause I didn’t really use it. And my LinkedIn had like 1500. Followers. So I wasn’t, I kind of like was growing them at the same time as my newsletter, but it was also a waste of time because people weren’t only like a hundred, something of people came from social media to subscribe to my newsletter.
[00:10:17] Elle Griffin: So it just wasn’t really worth it
[00:10:19] Michael Evans: for me. Super super interesting. You got discovered doing what you do, which is writing long form content, actually like people can read that and then they get more of what they already were there for which, which makes a lot of sense. And I know that you. Think a lot about social media.
[00:10:37] Michael Evans: I mean, it, for those who haven’t read her newsletter, she like really dives deep into where this is all going in publishing and trying to really think about how we can build a better space for writers and for you.
[00:10:49] Michael Evans: How do you imagine building your own community? How, how have you gone about that and how is your long form writing?
[00:10:58] Michael Evans: Becoming the center of [00:11:00] that because a lot of people feel like they have to do a bunch of other things to build a community, like go on TikTok or, , tweet 10 times a day. And you, you haven’t done that, which is, which is very cool. And it still worked for you. So what’s your whole process in building
[00:11:14] Elle Griffin: community?
[00:11:15] Elle Griffin: Well, when I started on substack, I didn’t know what I was doing. And I was like, I have this idea that Subec could work for fiction, but could it really? And so while I was doing that research, I looked on subs to see, like, you could see that there were subs writers that were making a million dollars a year from their sub, but they were all nonfiction writers.
[00:11:34] Elle Griffin: So I started like scouring sub for fiction writers. And at the time there were only. Eight other people putting fiction on there. So I reached out to them and was like, Hey, you’re read writing fiction on subst. Like, let’s be friends. I wanna know more about this. And originally we had created a Twitter.
[00:11:53] Elle Griffin: Like a Twitter DM, I guess, like a group chat in Twitter. And then we [00:12:00] started finding more people that started becoming fiction writers in, in, on Subec. And so we started a discord server called Subec writers unite and just were like originally, it was just like fiction writers in there, but then we added a non-fiction role too.
[00:12:15] Elle Griffin: So that there’s two roles now in the server and then. And then when, when I published my article about why I was gonna publish fiction on subs stack the subs stack team Hamish, who’s one of the founders of subs reached out to me via email and was like, this is what we’ve always wanted. Or like, that’s so cool.
[00:12:34] Elle Griffin: Like I’m so into that idea, , and was very supportive. And they had just hired a community team. And so he like set me up. The brand new sub community team. And they were like, will you host a, a workshop for substack fiction writers? So that was like, kind of at the beginning of my journey. And I did that.
[00:12:53] Elle Griffin: And then that drew a ton of fiction writers to subs and subs mentioned the discord server. And then just [00:13:00] all these subst writers started joining the discord server. So it like became this paid place where you could like go in and be like, I’m thinking of going paid this week. Who’s done it. What tips do you have?
[00:13:10] Elle Griffin: Like. I’m just dropped my first chapter. Here’s what it’s like, what do you guys have any advice? And so it was just all other writers kind of helping each other out. And that was really fun, but eventually I started kind of developing. Alongside this, this discord server started developing a following from my individual subs, not just for all subs writers, but like my specific subs.
[00:13:32] Elle Griffin: And my comment set section on each post just started growing. To the point where I would have like 80 or 90 comments on, on an article I read. But I think that it was I’ve I’ve since kind of workshoped this with other sub writers, cuz other sub writers have been like, I get zero comments. I don’t know why nobody is commenting.
[00:13:50] Elle Griffin: And I think the reason why my sub gets so many, so much community interaction is because. I’ve never been the expert. Like, it’s not like me telling you [00:14:00] here’s, here’s how it is. It’s just like, I feel like this is the, this is the research I’m seeing. Like, are you guys seeing this too? Like, I, I kind of was looking to my readers also for support and for their information.
[00:14:14] Elle Griffin: They started sharing resources and links and we kind of just became more of a community in the comment section. And for a long time, I wanted to make that more robust. And I thought about starting a discord server just for my newsletter. But then I’m a beta tester for subs stack and they started.
[00:14:32] Elle Griffin: Announcing that they were gonna do something like discord, but on platform. And they actually just launched it this week. And so I launched my subs stack community, which is called threads there, which I’m very excited about because it’s like, You’re keeping your community on the same platform where you’re writing, as opposed to asking, to try to go somewhere else, which I think can be very tricky.
[00:14:55] Elle Griffin: And I know a lot of writers have, like, they write on substack, but then their communities in a Facebook [00:15:00] group, but then they promote all their work on Twitter. And I was just like, I wanna do that. Be in one place. It’s so nice and ti, so. That’s what I have now.
[00:15:08] Emilia Rose: It’s so much easier that way too. Like you’re not pulling from all these different places. Everything is just right there and yeah, you don’t have to promote anywhere else or ask people to like, Hey, like come over here to have community like, Ugh.
[00:15:23] Elle Griffin: I know it’s awesome.
[00:15:24] Michael Evans: That’s amazing though. You you’ve found your home. Yeah. And you’ve also able to monetize that as well, which I, I am a subscriber, so I’m curious if you have any questions for me and my experience, cuz it’s like subscriber to, to author, to creator at this point. But I am curious for you. What has been the way that you’ve been able to convert free subscribers into paid subscribers and , what are the benefits?
[00:15:48] Michael Evans: What is, what is paying get you?
[00:15:50] Elle Griffin: I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I still don’t know why people subscribe for my, to my newsletter. I’ve tried a lot of different things. Like I [00:16:00] lock, I lock commenting to my paid subscribers now because I wanted to like, protect that space and not have caters, even though apparently that doesn’t
[00:16:07] Elle Griffin: are locked. And I. I used to do interviews with people like Emilia and I would make those paid where I’d like talk all about how amazing Emilia is, and then be like, if you wanna read her interview, like lock the rest to paid. And I would see like two new subs paid subscribers. Every time I sent one of those, like on Substack that’s called like a gated post where you can like put a paywall up and after a certain point you have to pay.
[00:16:32] Elle Griffin: So I tried that, but now I think I’m not really gonna do that anymore because I want people to read the things that I’m writing and I don’t want them to just be closed off to a small community. A lot of subs writers who do really well only have only have comments locked or things like that. So.
[00:16:49] Elle Griffin: It’s that’s what I’m trying right now. We’ll we’ll see. We’ll see if it works randomly. I got like 15 new paid subscribers just from my social media post on Monday. And I don’t even know why that [00:17:00] is because I didn’t lock it. The paid subscribers commenting was locked. I know a couple people subscribed because they wanted to comment.
[00:17:07] Elle Griffin: But, yeah, I don’t know. Why did you subscribe? .
[00:17:09] Michael Evans: I have a real answer to this cuz I did it. I had already really loved what you were doing. And I was like, kind of like on the fence of like, I think I’m gonna make this, like, I think I’m going take the plunge and do it. And I had like never done it before and like, subscribing like for a year, cuz like if we’re thinking like $5, like, , for, for coffee or something, like that’s kind of more impulse.
[00:17:29] Michael Evans: Like I can do that, but I wanted to do it for the year, the annual description, which I think was like $50 and that wasn’t like an impulse purchase. That was something I was going to make an active decision on. And I’m also in college. So it’s like dispensable incomes, like it’s there, but I wanna be careful with my money.
[00:17:43] Michael Evans: I was like, no, I think I’m gonna do this. And then you released this kind of like spreadsheet. I think that was like catered to like traditional, published agents if you’re querying this year. And I was planning to query this year, I since have revoked that, but we can get into that and a whole other conversation.
[00:17:59] Michael Evans: Yeah. [00:18:00] And I was like, I think I’m gonna go make the plunge and do this. So I, I paid and was very pleased with that. But then, as it kind of going along like that was what made. Kind of, I was already considering it. That’s what got me over the hump. But like, I know you’re not gonna probably release one of those next year.
[00:18:16] Michael Evans: That’s not why I’m there now. I’m just there. Cause I really like you. And like, it feels like this is how I get to support you. And that’s just what got me over the hump. I don’t really, I know this sounds weird, but I don’t really care what happens next year. Like you can do anything and I’m still gonna renew.
[00:18:31] Michael Evans: Cuz I just wanna follow your creative journey now. And even locking things like paid and I don’t, I, this sounds really weird, but I don’t think, cuz as authors, we are always thinking about how can we provide value to our paid readers? That’s exclusive. But, I don’t know if that would be a factor for me, although that’s cool and that can help get new people over the hump.
[00:18:49] Michael Evans: I’m there just to support you in your work. And of course I want other people to experience it too. For something like your social media post, like. I want to send that to my writer, friends, and then [00:19:00] to have to be like, oh, like, , behind a pay wall for them. Like, I don’t want to force everyone into paying, but there will be a certain percentage, I guess, 15, as you saw from one post, which is kind of wild.
[00:19:11] Michael Evans: It’s amazing, but I’m not surprised to hear that. So that’s why I subscribed it. It was like this relationship that I feel like I have with you and. That to me is something that I’ve had with a few other people. And if they haven’t had a subscription, like I’ve just like reached out to them and actually did reach out to Elle after I subscribe.
[00:19:27] Michael Evans: And I’m like, Hey, Elle, I love what you’re doing. And then like, I’ve done that to other creatives and they, maybe you don’t have subscription, but I still wanna like at least talk to them . And there’s nothing more to it than that. Like, I’m not trying to like, , get on a FaceTime call thumb, I guess I brought her on a podcast, so I won, but , , in general, right?
[00:19:42] Michael Evans: Like that’s not my goal. It’s just to be closer to this person. And I did this once with a friend max Reisinger, who’s now a friend, but he was not a friend. I was just an admirer of his work. And he created like videos about being a creative person and mental health. And I was like, dude, I love what you’re doing.
[00:19:57] Michael Evans: And that’s pretty much it. And he is like, why don’t [00:20:00] we jump on a call? And I’m like, okay. That sounds amazing. And then two weeks later I was flying out to like Detroit,
[00:20:07] Emilia Rose: oh God.
[00:20:07] Michael Evans: With him. And a bunch of other creative people. I’m like, it was amazing. So community’s super powerful and yeah, I wanted to support you in that, that that’s my honest thing.
[00:20:15] Michael Evans: But I do think for people out there, at least how it works for me, if you’re trying to sell me to get me to make that like, purchase to get me over the hump is like important because I think the people who already like your work are already considering it. It’s always like friction for anyone considering to make a buying decision.
[00:20:33] Michael Evans: Like even if it’s like $1 there’s still friction and it’s important to try and like really tell someone like, Hey, now’s your time. It’s okay. Take the plunge now. And I don’t think much people are regretting. Any sort of subscriptions they make to creative people and I can guarantee you, I don’t
[00:20:50] Elle Griffin: think Elle has.
[00:20:50] Emilia Rose: Okay. Going off to that, actually, Michael sent me one of your posts that was behind a, a paywall. And then I was like, I wanna read this so bad. So I subscribe to you too, [00:21:00] after he sent me that post. So it’s definitely like the community aspect is definitely there. And I, I completely agree with you. A lot of people who I follow.
[00:21:09] Emilia Rose: I follow this one girl on Patreon who does like this really awesome, like artwork and she hasn’t updated in a year and I just continue to follow her cuz like I love the artwork so much. I wanna support her. Like I don’t care if she’s not drawing. Yeah. Like anymore. Like I loved it. I was like, I want more, like you don’t have to gimme more, but here.
[00:21:31] Elle Griffin: It’s so true. I mean, even the people that I support, like. Some of them are silly reasons, but all of them is just because like, I wanna support them. Like some of them, like on Substack, you’re the people you subscribe to as alphabetical. So when you look at my profile, like all the, a newsletters show up first, and I was like, but if you have paid newsletters, they show up at the very top.
[00:21:50] Elle Griffin: And I was like, well, I want everyone to see that these are the ones. These are the newsletters that I follow. So I like paid for a few, just they show at the top of my profile. The same reason, right? Like it’s [00:22:00] like, well, these are my favorite. And I will like support them no matter what, and they don’t need to publish all the time.
[00:22:05] Elle Griffin: And I’ve been thinking about that with my own work, because I do have a $200 tier where I have subscribers who pay to get the print edition of my book. And my mag, I did a magazine print magazine for my last year of my work. So I printed the, the first year of my subst into a magazine and.
[00:22:22] Elle Griffin: Thick, it’s literally a full sized thick ma like a kin full magazine. And , the fact that I wrote this, all of this by myself just goes to show you for the price of magazine subscription, you actually get a magazine ? So it’s not like, it’s not like the work is unvaluable or something.
[00:22:40] Elle Griffin: So I’m glad that we’re creating a, a world where writing is
[00:22:43] Michael Evans: valuable. Like completely valuable.
[00:22:46] Michael Evans: But with that. Is the craziness that I think is really interesting to talk to about penguin, random house, potentially merging with Simon Schuster
[00:22:55] Elle Griffin: watching this case is crazy.
[00:22:57] Elle Griffin: Like I’m, I’m writing a post right now. That’s just [00:23:00] like all the things that people said during this trial that are just like blowing this industry wide open. It is insane. It is crazy. It, they literally can’t. They’re, they’re trying to determine if this would be a monopoly and they literally can’t because they don’t know the size of the market because Amazon hides their numbers.
[00:23:17] Elle Griffin: Could you imagine just not knowing how big a market is because it’s just like all secret.
[00:23:22] Michael Evans: And not only do you not know that they have started this debate. Because of how the defense and the prosecution’s kind of framing things. And there was a New York article titled is publishing art or commerce, something like that.
[00:23:35] Michael Evans: It was basically commerce word for that really fasting discussion
[00:23:39] Elle Griffin: commerce. Books, art authors, art mm-hmm yeah. Artistry for sure. But that was the biggest feedback I got from my esquire article. Everyone was tearing me down, like authors in the literary community were like, you’re trying to make books into a commercial capitalist, like greedy thing.
[00:23:56] Elle Griffin: And I was like, Wait by wait . So [00:24:00] what do you think publishing houses do right now? Yeah, they literally buy, the work that they think is gonna make the most in sales. Not, not what’s the most literary work and not only that, but they buy it outright. They own the rights to the art, to the book.
[00:24:13] Elle Griffin: The author doesn’t own anything anymore. Like they could do whatever they want with your book. ,how do you not see that as like a capitalist commercial empire? Like that is not, that is not for literary value at all.
[00:24:26] Michael Evans: I, I agree completely. And I think we should maybe give people a little bit of context in the Esquire article.
[00:24:32] Michael Evans: Yeah. So, and in, as in summing up, cuz it it’s quite quite a beautiful piece, so I don’t want you to, to ruin the nuance, but trying to keep the nuance in, how would you sum it up?
[00:24:43] Elle Griffin: Well, I just made the case that you could. You could theoretically invest in your favorite book. Like you say, you read Harry Potter when the first book comes out and you’re like, oh, I really love this.
[00:24:53] Elle Griffin: I would love to invest in it just as you could in the stock market, you could buy a number of shares and own like [00:25:00] 3% of Harry Potter, which if you still owned today, you’d be a billionaire, , So this is antithetical to the current model where as we said, publishing the publishing house just owns your work outright.
[00:25:12] Elle Griffin: In this model, investors would be a part of the equation. And you could, the author could still own like 51% of your art and then have these funders that are like investing in the 49%, and still get your work funded while still retaining ownership of your. On the escquire article in particular argues that you could do this using blockchain technology.
[00:25:33] Elle Griffin: But it doesn’t even need blockchain technology to make that happen. But that was just the premise of the article. And so I wrote a tweet that went something like, what if you could invest in your favorite book? What if you could get rich, if it succeeds, what if you could buy characters of your favorite novel and use them to write fan fiction?
[00:25:49] Elle Griffin: But yeah, literary community hated that idea. Like with a vengeance thinking that that was destroying publishing that it was this, this turning it into this capitalist endeavor. [00:26:00] And I was like, wait like Taylor swift right now can’t even like her music is owned and a vaulted by some venture capitalist company.
[00:26:07] Elle Griffin: And she has no control over it whatsoever. That’s why she’s rerecording all of her original albums right now. Like, could you imagine how it would change to say. Instead of a publisher owning 100% of your work, they could only own 49%. Like it’s a better deal. It’s not a better deal than self-publishing.
[00:26:24] Elle Griffin: And self-publishing, if you can afford to own your own work a hundred percent and still be able to handle marketing and distribution and, and getting fans and all of that, then absolutely self-publishing is the best way to go. If you want to , some help with distribution and marketing and you want some investment to do that, then having investors involved is such a better option than getting a publishing house involved.
[00:26:46] Elle Griffin: So, but then again, I’m a, I’m a journalist that covers the tech industry and I watch these investing deals happen all the time. And I’m just like, why don’t books happen? Like this?
[00:26:56] Michael Evans: It’s super interesting. Venture capital itself was born out of [00:27:00] Hollywood.
[00:27:00] Michael Evans: And that’s just as, as much as, , having Stanford nearby and, , access to all of these semi semiconductor, like raw materials, all these things that were in the Silicon valley area, a lot of things that Silicon valley came. But one of the biggest was access to capital and friendly banks because they were used to taking these kinds of risks on movies and movies and books are pretty connected.
[00:27:20] Michael Evans: One thing that I dislike about the venture capital model how everything’s incentivized to be a power law.
[00:27:26] Michael Evans: And it already works like this in the author industry where we always think about the big breakup books we admire it. That’s where most of the money comes from. And that’s. Investors and, and authors and publishers are all incentivized to try and, and create, and basically like creating, not monopolies, but these massive story empires, these franchises.
[00:27:48] Michael Evans: Something about that rubs me wrong and something about what you’re doing with the novelist, with this whole creator economy. This feels like maybe an antidote to that. And I’m curious how you’d [00:28:00] put what you just said in conversation with that.
[00:28:02] Elle Griffin: Well, okay. For example, I made $15,000 for my subs last.
[00:28:07] Elle Griffin: That is not enough to, , quit my job and do that full time. So that means that I will be working 40 hours a week and doing this on top of my job. A lot of people do this. This is how a lot of people in the creator economy get their start, but I will also say.
[00:28:21] Elle Griffin: There’s a reason why a lot of creator economy, folks are super young because they’re like either they get their start fresh out of college when they don’t need to have a job yet, or they’re doing it during college, when they don’t have a lot of other things going on responsibilities. So it’s like very much easier to just like, okay, I’m gonna take one year, put my all into my substack or my YouTube channel or my Instagram or whatever, and like make, see if I can make a living from it.
[00:28:45] Michael Evans: Yeah, that’s me. That’s full disclosure. That’s me. Yeah. It’s much
[00:28:48] Elle Griffin: different later on. Right. So I’m not gonna just quit my job and make $15,000 a year. So where I think this can be helpful is, okay. If I look at my stats [00:29:00] I. I took a look at my stats and it’s like, oh, I could just pull ’em up.
[00:29:04] Elle Griffin: It’s something like, at my current conversion rate, which is like 5% of my list converts to paid, and the current rate at which I gain new new newsletter subscribers, which is I gain about 250 new newsletter subscribers a month. then I will need about 20,000 newsletter subscribers free to be able to have the amount of paid newsletter subscribers.
[00:29:27] Elle Griffin: I would need to earn like $70,000 a year.
[00:29:30] Elle Griffin: At my current rate of gaining subscribers, that would take me 7.7 years to arrive. Am I gonna keep writing a weekly newsletter every single week for seven years. And then maybe take it full time at that point. I could see why you might not wanna do that.
[00:29:47] Elle Griffin: And at some point you might burn out in a couple years, I might just decide I’m spending too much time at the computer and I wanna have other hobbies.
[00:29:55] Elle Griffin: So I think that if you can provide that investment upfront to an author, [00:30:00] that could be really helpful. If somebody wants to come in and say, I wanna invest in the novelist, I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars. So you can do it full time for the next year. And like that will seed it.
[00:30:11] Elle Griffin: And then we go from there, like. I, I could see that being an attractive thing because it just, , makes everything happen so much faster. I think you, you see this happen all the time with creator economy startups, where it eventually Peters out because they weren’t able to make it.
[00:30:28] Elle Griffin: Full time. And so I think sometimes having some upfront funds or like startup capital actually could really help a lot of artists, at least at the beginning, especially if they should promise. So I think that what I want to like do that right now, probably not like I’m not really keen to give away any percentage of my art right now because I’m doing okay.
[00:30:48] Elle Griffin: And I I’ve found like a balance. I don’t need anything else, but I could definitely see the appeal.
[00:30:54] Michael Evans: Me and Emilia have even faced this with building what we’re trying to. Building a subscription platform for [00:31:00] fiction authors.
[00:31:00] Michael Evans: We were really strong about like, not wanting to go the publisher route, which the publisher route of building a technology company very much felt like similar to the venture capital model. Eventually 80 to 90% of your company is gonna get end up being owned by people. Who might not share the incentives and interests of the community, and that just wasn’t an option for us.
[00:31:19] Michael Evans: And then there was this other extreme of like, well, you bootstrap it, which is like what we’re doing full disclosure. And , we were also exploring these kind of like middle ground paths, but there’s not many good options either. For anyone who’s doing anything, never mind if you’re a writer and that would be something cool that I would like to help solve.
[00:31:36] Michael Evans: One day. You can only do so much at once and we’re just focused. Very similar, trying to be sustainable plug along. Things happen at a slower rate, but, , maintain that. Ownership’s very important, but man, if there was a way to help, like our community be a part of that like actually made sense.
[00:31:51] Michael Evans: That would be something we’d consider except there’s. The infrastructure, the culture, the conversation isn’t there yet. But I think you’re helping push it forward. And, I really respect [00:32:00] that.
[00:32:00] Elle Griffin: There are two options for that middle ground though, because you can, while one, you can crowd fund from fans, which I think, , is a great option, but you can also use the platform Republic and crowd fund equity.
[00:32:15] Elle Griffin: So you could go directly to your fans and say, do you want to fund this company that we’re building? We’re giving away 30% of it to the fans and they can, they can buy in for a small amount each, and be owners. That’s what the bucket list family did. They were like an Instagram family.
[00:32:32] Elle Griffin: They wanted to make an animated video about their family’s travels and they crowdfunded it a portion of it on Republic and just like their Instagram followers paid a hundred dollars each and got like a small, tiny little portion of equity, but they could invest more.
[00:32:47] Elle Griffin: So there is that option now to crowdfund directly from your fans and even to crowdfund investment from your fans, which is interesting right now I think that those ideas are fairly niche and , [00:33:00] Subscription models are really what’s coming into prominence.
[00:33:02] Elle Griffin: People are starting to get used to subscribing to the things that they want to receive. People are not used to investing in companies on Republic. So I’m gonna stick where like the mass appeal is and those niche things, maybe you could do ’em if you’re Steven King and you wanna crowdfund your book on Republic you could make that happen.
[00:33:23] Elle Griffin: But I think you have to already have a very big audience to make that work.
[00:33:26] Michael Evans: And for you, because you’re having non-fiction and fiction, or you’re creating kind of stories and work that relies on earned insight and research things that may be a fiction author, like Emilia, for instance, I don’t think does any of that, but I would be curious to hear about your subs.
[00:33:44] Michael Evans: And for you Elle I’m also really curious to hear about how have you balanced the, the fiction, the non-fiction, your newsletter, and what have you learned throughout that kind of process over the last year and a half that you’ve been doing this?
[00:33:55] Elle Griffin: Yeah, the last year I did too much.
[00:33:58] Elle Griffin: I would have always have a newsletter on Monday [00:34:00] alternating an essay, or I wrote with an interview with another author. And then on Fridays I would send new book chapters, but that was sending two things a week and I was writing one of them and then editing the other one. It was definitely, it was too much.
[00:34:14] Elle Griffin: And. I was also marketing myself and my newsletter and pitching it all the time. So that was a lot of work. I had start initially planned on doing, I was calling it my full send summer where I was gonna spend a whole summer focus solely on marketing. And then it ended up turning into a full send year, which I just concluded.
[00:34:32] Elle Griffin: So now I feel like I’m set up more for sustainability. Like now that my book is done now that I’ve finished. Designing the print edition. I can kind of design things differently this year. So now I’m just having a newsletter on Mondays, and occasional interviews first in. And even my fiction chapters will come on a Monday.
[00:34:51] Elle Griffin: So it’ll be like in place of a newsletter that week. So I actually keep a content calendar in the app Asana so I can see like all the [00:35:00] articles that are I plan on publishing like through October right now. And interspersed with that is. Fiction chapters. So I’m gonna kind of just alternate between like essays and fiction chapters going forward.
[00:35:11] Michael Evans: Do you see yourself wanting to continue with the subscriptions and then, , self-publishing bundling up the fiction novels you’re doing, or do you see yourself also wanting to kind of bundle your essays into a non-fiction novel?
[00:35:24] Michael Evans: Where do you see like books? As their place and your overall vision, because we talked about how readers don’t read books anymore, but readers are reading
[00:35:32] Elle Griffin: your newsletter. Yeah, exactly. So newsletters, I feel like is a very burgeoning market right now. And people are like subscribing to newsletters. I think that’s gonna start overtaking like subscribing to publications, like paying for the New York times or the, the new Yorker, the economist or something.
[00:35:46] Elle Griffin: You’ll probably just subscribe to your favorite authors instead, or favorite writers. I think that will continue to become. Kind of how we consume content from, I mean, even if you think about the people that you’re interested in, you don’t, you no [00:36:00] longer wait to, till business insider reports, the latest thing, Elon Musk, does you just follow Elon Musk directly on Twitter .
[00:36:07] Elle Griffin: So I’m optimizing for the newsletter format. I’ll see what happens with that. But my book oblivion what I plan to do is have two books at the end of it.
[00:36:16] Elle Griffin: So it might take you the next three years to serialize, oblivion, and to like, Newsletters as well, but at the end of it, I will print the novel and also another book that matches it. My plan is white line and bound books with gold Bo. But yeah, so one that one will be the novel and one will be all the essays that went into making the novel.
[00:36:37] Elle Griffin: If you kind of think about like some popular old novels, like I have the pillow book it’s like a really ancient book that was written in like China. And I have the pillow book and the pillow book companion, which was, , some author wrote like dissected it and was wrote all about it and stuff.
[00:36:54] Elle Griffin: So that’s kind of how I’m seeing mine is I’ll be writing both live, but at the [00:37:00] end there’ll be two books and they will match. Obscurity, which is a black cover with gold Bo. So that’ll have the white, the darkness and the light.
[00:37:08] Michael Evans: I’m curious with these kinds of projects you have going on and all your insight into publishing with fiction specifically. What would be your advice to someone who’s trying to kind of balance this, , free versus paid approach. There’s a really common strategy that people offer exclusive access.
[00:37:26] Michael Evans: Or early access to their stories on, , a site like patron or subs stack, put it behind kind a pay wall. And for you kind of, how, what would be your advice to people who are doing that? Given that you’ve taken a slightly different approach? I don’t
[00:37:40] Elle Griffin: have any advice. Because I don’t really know what works yet, but I will say that , the way that I’m planning on doing it is making my novel chapters free and my essay chapters free and just locking comments in the community portion to paid.
[00:37:53] Elle Griffin: So that’s how I’m gonna do it. And we’ll see what happens.
[00:37:56] Michael Evans: I love the humbleness. She’s far smarter than she’s letting on, but I totally [00:38:00] think that’s a , great approach.
[00:38:01] Michael Evans: So then I asked Elle about her recent thoughts when applying to a job as a journalist, she already is a journalist, but she was applying to a new job. And this is what she had to say and contained some really great advice for pretty much all of us writers who are out here trying to do what we love, but also have a full time job.
[00:38:18] Elle Griffin: But in the process, I asked them like, what is the workload like? Yeah. And I did not get a good answer. so I was like, no. She used all red flag words. It was like, well, I have to be honest. It’s very intense.
[00:38:32] Elle Griffin: Most of our editors work longer than eight hour days to meet their deadline. And these are, this is a salary position. But we do, to like make up for, , how intense we know it is during the year, we do give people five weeks off so that they can fully recharge. And I. That just sounds like that’s gonna be horrible and I’m gonna be underpaid because I’m gonna be working more than 40 hours a week.
[00:38:53] Elle Griffin: And yeah, so I wasn’t into that. And interestingly, I think that this is a [00:39:00] journalism publishing media wide thing where writers are underpaid and overworked. And that’s when I just kind of, I was listening to her say this and I just thought, well, On sub stack. I have writers who Val, who do value my work and who don’t want take portions of my free time.
[00:39:17] Elle Griffin: And just, and just use that. Like, I, I think that this is finally, we’re finally seeing a shift in the media industry where. where it’s no longer, like, I need to write to try to get page views for my company, but I need to write just because my readers find meaning in that. And that is so much better to me.
[00:39:34] Elle Griffin: So yeah, what you’re alluding to, as I said in opposed this morning, that. I’m no longer going to, , accept jobs like that. And in fact, I’m gonna focus on my newsletter being my next job, because it’s the place where, what writing is valued.
[00:39:47] Michael Evans: I think that you’re creating such meaning in the lives you’re readers, but.
[00:39:50] Michael Evans: As writers, we’re all doing that. And it’s just very difficult to know because we write something, they read it and we have no reaction. We’re not like on a stage [00:40:00] performing in front of them and we get to see them go like wild. And I’m happy about that. I wanna perform on a stage, but it does make it a little bit harder to understand like what your real values worth and a musician charges like, $80 is I think cheap nowadays to go to like, a musician’s concert.
[00:40:14] Michael Evans: It feels like, and, and. Like people are paying it. I’m I think it’s great that artists are getting paid. Although the music industry has lots of different incentives and people on the take. That’s a totally other conversation, but artists like for that experience, right? So it’s not cheap. And the experience that you’re giving your readers either is really meaningful and valuable.
[00:40:33] Michael Evans: And I’m really glad that you get to decide what that value can look like for you. That’s just, that’s the ultimate. Right. And I think it’s really cool that you, you
[00:40:41] Elle Griffin: have that. I’m really grateful that that like the creator economy is happening right now and that artists are finally finding a way to make a living from their art.
[00:40:50] Elle Griffin: This is a resurgence and I think it’s only gonna make art proliferate. So I’m very excited about
[00:40:54] Michael Evans: that. I’m very excited too. And if you’re looking for a guide on your journey, through the creator [00:41:00] economy, As a writer. She definitely, as I’ve said plenty of times, but I mean, it, you should check out Elle and the novelist do it in her newsletter, but that that’ll conclude our conversation now.
[00:41:10] Elle Griffin: Dot com
[00:41:11] Michael Evans: just, The link will be in the subscription or the, the link will be in the description as well. So you won’t miss it. First thing. And otherwise Al thank you so much for
[00:41:22] Elle Griffin: being, yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Obviously Emilia is a huge inspiration on . I’ve interviewed her really.
[00:41:27] Elle Griffin: so awesome.
[00:41:28] Michael Evans: All right, that’s it for this podcast. I’m just gonna do a little life update in the end. I think me Emilia are gonna come back to like doing this ourselves together, but life’s busy for us both. So I’m just gonna hop on the camera this time and next time we’ll try and bring her on with us because who doesn’t want to hear from the best selling subscription superstar, Emilia rose.
[00:41:48] Michael Evans: But if you wanna hear from me, I just kind of got to college. I’m in my dorm room now. We’re here. Luckily, since I’m a junior now I’m kind of like not half classes, but pretty much. So[00:42:00] I’ve been basically working full time on ream and doing this podcast and talking to authors as well, which is always really fun.
[00:42:09] Michael Evans: I did just finish writing a book. So I guess now I’m doing that. I. Mainly focused on the writing. Just a few weeks ago, it’s a non-fiction book called creator economy for authors. So that’s coming on the way soon. And depending when you’re listening to this podcast may already be out in the world and.
[00:42:24] Michael Evans: That’s been kind of, most of my life, I’ve been trying to take good care of myself sleeping a lot, you know, the typical things, I just feel really happy and really grateful overall. Like, honestly, there’s not much like bad’s report. Life’s good. And I couldn’t be more excited for what’s to come for. Not only.
[00:42:45] Michael Evans: it’s a world of subscriptions, but the world of authors in general, because I think that we’re on the precipice of some really great things that can bring more power to our community and that can ultimately do better things for us and our readers. So I’m really excited for it. And we hope [00:43:00] to keep sharing these insights in the podcast, you know, up to this point we’ve still kind of been trying to get the ropes of what this podcast is gonna be.
[00:43:06] Michael Evans: And I think we’ve really kind of narrowed it down. We’ve had some experimental and we’ve really been trying to figure out, okay, like what do we wanna do here? Like, yes, we’re talking about subscriptions, but who do we want to talk to? And what kind of conversations do we wanna have?
[00:43:19] Michael Evans: And I, I think we now have the answer to those questions and, you know, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know, I think what we really wanna do is highlight, highlighted different kind of success story, the success story of not the person who’s made it big and can unlimited. That’s be. and amazing, not the person who’s got a seven figure deal, her additional publisher.
[00:43:38] Michael Evans: That’s also great, but we wanna highlight the success stories of an author. Who’s been able to build their own community, their own fandom and monetize it in a way that’s sustainable, which typically ends up being through subscription. So we wanna highlight these stories. The people at Emillia rose being able to come up from almost nothing to be making almost five figures a month of subscriptions in a very short period of time, [00:44:00] those kind of stories, the people who were able to figure something out, this kind of new publishing model, that from the outside, looking in almost doesn’t make sense.
[00:44:10] Michael Evans: It’s like kind of unbelievable that someone pulled this off, but people like Emilia are doing it. we’re gonna talk to more and more people just like that and share those stories. Do we know how we’re gonna have these conversations? We’re still experimenting on that one. That one, we might have to take another 10, 20 episodes to get through.
[00:44:27] Michael Evans: This is episode nine, if you’re listening to it. And literally every podcast episode, I just sit here and I reflect and I try and like obsessively think like how can this be better? And I, I definitely think that we know what conversations we have and who we want to talk to, which are the big things. With that.
[00:44:43] Michael Evans: If you have any ideas of what specific people we can talk to knowing what kind of person we wanna talk to, then we’d love to hear it. And if you’re that kind of person, we’d love to have you on our podcast because we’re releasing this every week and we really want to continue enriching this [00:45:00] community and showing more and more authors what’s possible with this business model that we think will be the future of publishing.
[00:45:08] Michael Evans: Otherwise. give us your feedback. Definitely rate us on iTunes or apple podcast, whatever they call it. It it’s pretty helpful to us because it helps more people see this podcast. And we’re just doing this ourselves and trying to get this word out to more authors. So if this is again, something you’re passionate about, if this is a podcast and subscriptions is something that you believe in, then we definitely wanna spread the words so that more people and more readers.
[00:45:34] Michael Evans: be happy in an ecosystem like this anyways. Totally enough for me. We’ll keep trying to do some of these like footnotes in the end. We’ll see how it goes anyways. You guys are the best. I hope you all have an amazing rest of your day and happy writing.