Posted December 18, 2022
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Lindsey Sparks is a best-selling science fiction and fantasy author of dozens of novels. Today, we chat with her all about how she’s utilized YouTube and serialized audio for discovering thousands of new readers, why and how she’s shifting the core of her business to subscriptions, and so much more :).
RESOURCES:
Lindsey Spark’s website: https://www.authorlindseysparks.com/
Lindsey Spark’s subscription: https://www.patreon.com/lindseysparks
Fool and Scholar Productions: https://foolandscholar.com/
Join our mailing list to be the first to access the Subscription Starter Guide in early 2023: https://subscriptionsforauthors.com/
#18 EPISODE OUTLINE:
0:00 Introduction and Context
3:47 Lindsey Getting Her FB Account Hacked
5:42 How and Why Lindsey Spark Started Uploading Her Audiobooks to YouTube
9:52 How 500,000 Views on a Full-Length Audiobook Convert to Sales
13:10 How Lindsey Utilizes AI Art for her Subscription
23:19 How Lindsey Runs Her Subscription: Her Tiers, Pricing, and More
29:04 How Lindsey Runs 3 Podcasts that Find Her New Readers
31:38 The Market for Serialized Audio and Sponsorships for Authors
34:20 How Lindsey Produces Her Fiction Podcast
37:00 Creating a Podcast Where You Interview Fellow Authors For Readers
39:04 Migrating Your Reader Community From Facebook to Discord
45:42 In a Sea of Opportunity, Advice for What to Focus on in 2023
48:04 Transitioning To A Subscription-Centered Business
55:18 Conclusion and Outtro
#18 Full Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Evans: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Subscriptions for Authors podcast. My name is Michael Evans. I’m here with my co-host Emilia Rose, and we’re chatting with Lindsey Sparks today all about how she’s gotten 500,000 audiobook listeners on YouTube, 500,000 views across the first in series audiobook narration.
[00:00:25] Michael Evans: She’s posted to YouTube, but not just that. Lindsey is an innovator in audio. She, in fact, has three podcasts, one of which is a serialized audio podcast. Basically serialized fiction of her narrating out loud her books, and they’ve gained some traction, enough traction so that half of her overall business revenue is generated from audiobooks.
[00:00:48] Michael Evans: And she’s been a full-time author. She’s been doing this for now 10 years. So business has evolved a lot over time. And another thing, it’s also evolved to. Our subscriptions. She has [00:01:00] over 40 subscribers, honor subscription, and makes hundreds of dollars a month in subscriptions, which is great. That definitely adds up over the course of a year.
[00:01:08] Michael Evans: But she’s beginning to make subscriptions, the core of her business, the center of what she does. So we’re gonna be talking today from an author who really kind of gained traction in ku. That was where she was able to build a lot at the beginning of her career. Then she transitioned from ku.
[00:01:23] Michael Evans: to going wide, and now she’s transitioning from being still a wide author, still having her books to all these retailers, still making good money in all these retailers, and still being able to find new readers in these retailers. But ultimately bringing her super fans into a subscription where she gets to have a closer relationship with her.
[00:01:39] Michael Evans: They pay her monthly for things like early access to her works, there’s art included, and a lot of other interesting and awesome benefits. We’re gonna hear all about the breakdown of her subscription, how she promotes. Lindsey’s very innovative audio strategy, and we’ll even be talking a bit about AI art.
[00:01:57] Michael Evans: Which is something that [00:02:00] I just wanna warn everyone up front. Copyright issues are very, very difficult and murky, and it’s very difficult to monetize art.
[00:02:07] Michael Evans: So we touch on that. But I definitely just wanna let everyone know upfront that, and then also that at the end of the day, we care about humans. The humans we care about our readers, our families, our loved one. We all care about different people, but we care about humans, and I definitely feel for the humans, the artists, our dear artists, our friends who’ve been affected by this onslaught at least.
[00:02:30] Michael Evans: It could definitely feel like that of AI art and how this has changed the ecosystem. Again, I think there’s opportunity in this. I think there’s also a lot that’s unknown. So as this comes up, I just wanna put that in the foreground. I’m not trying to take sides. I want to shy and just spark a conversation that can bring us all together behind building a better future for this industry and for ourselves through the power of subscriptions and thinking differently about how we can connect our readers, give them better experiences, and ultimately make a living from our writing.
[00:02:59] Michael Evans: That is what [00:03:00] we’re all about. The Subscriptions for Authors podcast, which speaking of thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. We also have a Facebook group. It’s called Subscriptions for Authors. So if you’re not a part of that already, you should check it out. And we’re releasing a subscription starter guide in the next two weeks. So if you wanna be among the first to get the subscription starter guide completely for free, and it’s an in-depth guide.
[00:03:21] Michael Evans: 20 plus pages long. That gives you a really good start on how to begin and crush it in subscriptions in 2023. You should definitely sign up for our mailing list blow. I’ll link to that, but enough for me. We’re gonna get into this lovely conversation with Emilia as always, but also Lindsey, our wonderful guest today.
[00:03:41] Michael Evans: So let’s do this thing.
[00:03:41] Michael Evans: Lindsey, we are so excited to be here with you today. You have, , so much going on as an author I wanna first dive into all the amazing things you’re doing to discover readers and then of course monetize your fiction business.
[00:03:55] Michael Evans: And then I think we need to talk about how you manage all this. So first I wanna just ask you, [00:04:00] how do you find readers? How do you discover new readers?
[00:04:03] Lindsey Sparks: Well I’ve been doing this for. Quite a while. I’m not like true OG in the self-publishing world, but I got in, in the big wave in 2012.
[00:04:12] Lindsey Sparks: So how I find readers has really transformed over the last decade. So currently I’m finding readers by offering books and audio format for free on YouTube. So my series starters. which has been, is its own thing to talk about also with, in terms of like monetization and demonetization and how to manage that.
[00:04:32] Lindsey Sparks: Whole fun experience but also podcasts. I don’t know. I’m all over the place. , Facebook used to be. Facebook ads used to be one of the main ways. Not recently, not in the past couple years, but Facebook ads used to be one of the main ways that I found new readers. But for many reasons, one of them being that my Facebook account has been shut down
[00:04:51] Lindsey Sparks: That is no longer a viable option for me. And even if they do reinstate it because I have a meeting with Facebook people on Monday I’m still not going to. Be [00:05:00] doing Facebook ads anymore because the people who took my account also spent a lot of money in Facebook ads. So I’m not interested in that anymore.
[00:05:07] Lindsey Sparks: Fraudulent charges. So I’m not responsible for it, but it’s not, and it’s not just me, it’s also my co-author. They got her ad account through me. So, I guess my public service announcement regarding this is if you don’t have the Authenticator app, two factor authentication turned on on your Facebook, you should switch from the SMS to the Authenticator app because I had the SMS on and they were able to override it with the Authenticator app.
[00:05:32] Lindsey Sparks: So,
[00:05:32] Michael Evans: wow. Wow. Switch it. . Yeah. Wow. There’s so much to dive into here. Wow.
[00:05:37] Michael Evans: So I first want to just say that you are definitely, on YouTube have done really well, so I think we should dive into that because. 5,000 subscribers. You’ve had some videos get hundreds of thousands of views. Yeah. And I think that’s honestly incredible.
[00:05:51] Michael Evans: And oh, it’s this new discovery kind of method that authors are utilizing, being able to repurpose their content for YouTube. So I want to talk about what got you into [00:06:00] that, cuz , this isn’t been something you’ve been doing for this whole time. It looks like you’ve really started to get into it in the last year.
[00:06:06] Michael Evans: So what kind of sparked your interest in YouTube and what is your process for publishing content there? You talked about demonetization. Let’s just dive into YouTube. . Yeah.
[00:06:15] Lindsey Sparks: Cool. I honestly can’t remember when I started YouTube, if it was this January or 2021 January, but it was one of those Januarys where I uploaded my first in series.
[00:06:27] Lindsey Sparks: I only do my first in series audiobooks on there, the professionally narrated audiobooks and audio. I’ve always leaned really hardcore into audio because audio is my main way of reading. I just really wanted to appeal to those readers. I have highly prioritized it and because I highly prioritized it, I also always sought out really, amazing narrators.
[00:06:44] Lindsey Sparks: So I think one of the reasons that one of my audiobooks on YouTube has done so well is because it’s narrated by Julia Whelan, who’s like a superstar in the audio world. Then she did like Addie Luk and I think Nora Roberts year one, a bunch of stuff. She’s mega [00:07:00] huge. So that’s my number one, like viewed, YouTube video.
[00:07:04] Lindsey Sparks: It just has a still frame of the audiobook cover. But I also on YouTube, I do video. I do a video recording. I also put it up as a podcast, other places of me reading my books and I’m working through my entire catalog because I love reading out loud. So I am reading I started with one series.
[00:07:21] Lindsey Sparks: I have like five series maybe, maybe six, I don’t know. But I’m just going through like series by series and that’s called Read by the Author. And it’s really fun. That one’s more just like for fun, but it’s actually doing pretty well. And it keeps gaining more momentum. So I’m really excited about that.
[00:07:36] Lindsey Sparks: And then I have something else that’s not on YouTube, but it’s going to be on YouTube. But I will talk about the demonetization which I actually managed to coast along pretty long being monetized before they demonetized me. And the reason they gave me for demonetizing, so at this point when they did demonetize me, mm, I wanna say it was like maybe four months ago.
[00:07:56] Lindsey Sparks: They said it was because I was using unoriginal [00:08:00] content and there were copyright issues and stuff, which I think is pretty common for people who put audio books up there. And I think one of the things that flags it also is when you have a still photo on there with just audio.
[00:08:11] Lindsey Sparks: Like YouTube wants video content and they want original video content that’s not up elsewhere. I had just audio got it, content with a picture. But I also had a bunch of videos of my like, Podcasts and then like the video versions of my podcasts. And so I think that saved me a little bit when I did my appeal.
[00:08:29] Lindsey Sparks: But the main thing, if anybody is on YouTube with their audiobooks and they get demonetized,. Like do a screenshot film or I don’t know what you call that when it’s video. But anyway video your screen, record your screen. Oh, screen recording.
[00:08:41] Lindsey Sparks: duh. Do a screen recording of your acx and find a way voices, if you’re on Find a way. And show like the books that you have on YouTube. Show those on the other actual audiobook platforms because the only way to put those on the audiobook platforms is to hold that copyright. So that’s what I did.
[00:08:58] Lindsey Sparks: And I was back to being monetized [00:09:00] within like a day. People struggle with not being able to. be re monetized. And I will say that YouTube advertising, which is not a huge part of my income. It’s nice, but it’s not, when I first started, it was huge.
[00:09:13] Lindsey Sparks: And then it got smaller as less people were listening to the audio books than at the beginning. But audio and YouTube together I would say make up probably about half of my income. So that’s definitely paid off leaning into that, format.
[00:09:25] Michael Evans: That’s super interesting. I also wanna mention that I, I think I’ve heard from some authors for you since you had published these books previously, and then we’re putting them up on YouTube, the audio books demonization could be a special problem, but for authors who are about to publish a book in audio and haven’t put it on any retailers yet, I’ve seen that works when you put it on YouTube first, that’s kind of like they know you own it and then you publish on other retailers.
[00:09:47] Michael Evans: That’s kind of another way to get around the demonization. But I wanna talk with monetization because I think that 210,000 views is like your most, I think one, which is that’s just incredible. And then your other audio [00:10:00] audiobooks, you have two other ones that have above a hundred thousand first in series, and then your other ones all have tens of thousands of views.
[00:10:07] Michael Evans: So I want to first talk about if you’re comfortable sharing mm-hmm. What would Adden look like? How does Aen even work? I know there’s like a CPM that we get paid through there, but that would be interesting to demystify. And then I’m curious how many people, if you have 210,000 people listening to it, go on to actually buy future audiobooks in your series?
[00:10:29] Lindsey Sparks: I mean, I wish I had actual numbers and really paid attention to that kind of stuff. Better. I will say the AdSense dashboard is not wonderful. Yeah, it’s not for the YouTube ads. , it’s like, there’s like nothing on there basically. Other than they tell you how much you have, but YouTube’s dashboard is pretty good in terms of telling you, like, you can really break it down in terms of figuring out what’s giving you money, how much they have, all kinds of terms and acronyms that I don’t necessarily understand that are different than just cpm.
[00:10:58] Lindsey Sparks: There’s like other stuff that [00:11:00] goes in there. But it’s definitely worth it. If you, I would say if somebody puts their audiobooks up there if they can get enough traction, it’s definitely worth it. In terms of the sell through ev, I would say even if I didn’t have the advertising money, , it would still be worth it for me with the sell through of like books two through six or however many books are in a series.
[00:11:20] Lindsey Sparks: So,
[00:11:20] Michael Evans: that’s great to hear. Yeah. And you just published the audiobook, you didn’t like do any other promotion on YouTube, like the algorithm No. Naturally found that.
[00:11:27] Lindsey Sparks: Yeah, the algorithm I think it’s based on popular or popularity or it seems to be like the more people listen, the more people it recommends it to or the more people watch, the more people it recommends it to.
[00:11:39] Lindsey Sparks: I would say, and something that I would be really interested in the next time I put an audiobook, because I don’t know how these tools have transformed since I put these ones up. And I remember looking into this and there were no good options that I could find, but I would definitely be interested in finding like an AI video production thing that like creates just random designs or [00:12:00] something to fill the video screen.
[00:12:01] Lindsey Sparks: I feel that might be a good way to. Create original video for YouTube that doesn’t make them get all itchy about the fact that it’s a still frame photo with an audio book that’s published elsewhere. I think people like to watch those kind of like wavy, you
[00:12:17] Michael Evans: know?
[00:12:17] Michael Evans: Yes, they do. I actually have something to share on that. I had a friend who published this research paper is an AI researcher called The Imagination Machine, and it basically took text from a book and put music over it so that it can go like underneath it, narrated it automatically, and then also had a video like, which just created like images.
[00:12:37] Michael Evans: Now genuine real time. And the frames kind of moved in a way in which it was a video, like an animation. And now there’s software that’s coming out that’s actually doing this. And one company that is about to go live and there might be in beta with what you’re talking about, text to video is runway.ml.
[00:12:53] Michael Evans: And there’s quite a few more companies as well. And off the top, my head for this podcast, I don’t have all of them, but we, [00:13:00] we’ll probably do a newsletter, I’m sure about this at some point. But that, that’s super interesting.
[00:13:05] Michael Evans: And I think actually talking about AI since we brought it up, I know that you are someone who’s been diving into AI art and mm-hmm.
[00:13:12] Michael Evans: I think that’s another really interesting topic. Especially when thinking about content creation and these social platforms. So I’m just curious how you’re utilizing that in your business slash reader author world right now.
[00:13:24] Lindsey Sparks: So I use night Cafe is my main AI art platform that I use.
[00:13:29] Lindsey Sparks: And it has like a fun kind of social element where you can have a feed that you published your favorite images and people can like them or comment on them. So it has like a fun interaction element, which is nice. You can earn badges and stuff. But I use them in lots of really fun ways and I use them more and more and it’s really addicting.
[00:13:47] Lindsey Sparks: So if people don’t want to, have a new addiction, don’t start doing AI art. But if you wanna do something that gets you off of social media, it’s a really fun thing to do. That’s on your phone, but not social media. , I use it to create character art. I [00:14:00] use it to create so , I pick snippets from my stories or my books, and I’ll use that as like the inspiration and then I’ll create a prompt from that.
[00:14:08] Lindsey Sparks: Well, usually I’ll put the actual direct copy text in first just to see what it comes up with because it’s weird and it’s fun. And it comes up with crazy stuff and I just am really curious about the way that the actual, AI artificial brain works. So then I’ll break it down and I’ll actually create a prompt with keywords to kind of get it, to actually produce something more of what I’m imagining.
[00:14:28] Lindsey Sparks: And then I’ll post that in my Patreon. Well, I’ll pick my favorites and like, create tons of like different iterations of them because. It’s like you can always perfect one more thing. And then sometimes I’ll download it to my iPad and touch it up by hand. But then I’ll upload it to my Patreon and share it with them.
[00:14:44] Lindsey Sparks: And lately I’ve been letting them vote on passages from my Patreon stories. And then they can pick like whichever one wins, then I’ll create an AI art. I’ll create hundreds of AI art images until I find like the ones that I wanna actually share with them [00:15:00] based on that. So it’s like this fun back and forth thing.
[00:15:02] Michael Evans: That’s super cool. And I wanna, wanna first just mention, because I know everyone who’s listening is gonna be thinking copyright, copyright other artists. I know. I think, I think it’s important just to throw in a disclaimer, which is to my understanding and correct me, this is an open conversation.
[00:15:18] Michael Evans: I don’t think that you own the copyrights, those images, is
[00:15:22] Lindsey Sparks: that correct? ? Oh gosh. Night Cafe, the way that Night Cafe works and the reason I chose Night Cafe to work. To work with cuz I tried a bunch of different platforms and there were some that I really liked, but I, they’re copyrights like what they gave you was really murky.
[00:15:37] Lindsey Sparks: So Night Cafe, night Cafe explicitly states that the images that you produce you for now, you are allowed to use those in commercial things that make you money basically. Again, this is like an ongoing conversation in the greater world.
[00:15:50] Lindsey Sparks: But because I believe it’s Google or Microsoft, I can’t remember, one of the big corporations is incorporating AI image generation into their main products. [00:16:00] So they have apparently decided that it’s okay to create things for commercial use. Using AI image generation that’s pulled from like public sources.
[00:16:09] Lindsey Sparks: So I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. Don’t take my advice .
[00:16:12] Michael Evans: No, for sure. I would never put that pressure on you. But it’s interesting to see how you’re using it. There’s not a lot of legal precedent for this. No. At the
[00:16:19] Lindsey Sparks: moment, and so far I haven’t, other than posting it on Patreon and those people pay to be subscribers to my Patreon.
[00:16:26] Lindsey Sparks: I haven’t actually like, monetized anything that I’ve created with ai. So I posted, I think one of my AI images on social media or on Instagram now is my social media. So if people wanna see that, , they can look that up. It’s a picture of a woman standing in a graveyard.
[00:16:43] Lindsey Sparks: It’s pretty. And, oh, the other fun, the other fun interaction element that I use with my patrons is when I generate like the, whatever I pick for the 10 favorite images, then I let them pick which one they want me to finish up and touch up and kind of finalize and happy the official image of that
[00:16:59] Michael Evans: [00:17:00] scene.
[00:17:00] Michael Evans: And I’m curious, one question I have on AR before we move deep into your subscription, because I’m really curious about how you’ve been managing that is when it comes to what you’re entering in. Cuz these are prompt based systems, people who haven’t used something like Dolly Night Cafe, mid Journey , stable Diffusion.
[00:17:19] Michael Evans: I know I’m now ranting these random program names, . But I encourage people to look into these things cuz they give you free credits. Yeah. But I’m curious on two aspects. What prompts are you entering in? Or maybe not specifically, but how have you gotten better at like the prompt engineering of sorts to create beautiful art?
[00:17:37] Michael Evans: Because if people have tried using these things, I have . If you don’t enter in a great prompt, you can get back something completely horrible. So what’s the art to
[00:17:45] Lindsey Sparks: the. . Yes. And not just horrible but horrifying. Like the hands, it just gets weird. There’s like arms coming out of weird places.
[00:17:51] Lindsey Sparks: I don’t know what’s going on. The faces, lips. It’s just, apparently it’s supposed to get better soon. Like way better soon. And I know they just released stable diffusion [00:18:00] too two days ago. Yes. And they’re. It’s, a lot of the platforms are talking about rein or incorporating that as well, but I think it’s still in early stages, so it’s not up to the standards of the original stable diffusion, but prompts, yeah, prompts is definitely an experiment.
[00:18:17] Lindsey Sparks: And that’s most of the fun of it is just like figuring out which words you need to tweak to kind of get it to output what you’d like. Oh, and one of the things I really like about Night Cafe and most of the platforms do allow this now, is you can do a start image, so that can help.
[00:18:31] Lindsey Sparks: Mm-hmm. get you going. However, if you’re planning on using it commercially or on your social media, if you’re an author who sells books, definitely make sure that you own the rights to your start image . Yes. I will say that but you can definitely like download, you know, something from Shutterstock or deposit photos or something and use that as your start image.
[00:18:48] Lindsey Sparks: I do that sometimes if I have. Been able to find something that’s similar to what I’m talking about in my prompt, but it gets really complicated when you’re trying to recreate scenes from a book because you have the background or the setting [00:19:00] and you have the character. And then if you’re an author, you’re totally obsessed with your characters and you have like a picture of what they look like and you don’t want them to look differently.
[00:19:08] Lindsey Sparks: So you wanna hear like thinking about their hair color and their body and their skin tone, and what kind of clothes do they wear. And there’s only so much room that you have in your prompt. So you have to start getting really selective. I had one prompt, I’ll just use an example to narrow it down. I had one kind of image that I was creating that was a, I guess he’s a vampire.
[00:19:27] Lindsey Sparks: Oh. And they’re really picky and strict about nudity and anything that could be seen as inappropriate. So he’s a vampire and he is shirtless in this scene, but it’s they kept trying to put like a wife beater on him. . It was like, oh my god. Gosh.
[00:19:42] Lindsey Sparks: Oh, and they do weird stuff with muscles too.
[00:19:44] Emilia Rose: I’ve tried doing AI art with, I do steamy romance and , I’ve tried to do like guys, and they come out terrible every single time.
[00:19:52] Emilia Rose: It’s either the face that looks all messed up, his lips are like, yeah. Where they’re not supposed to be, or his muscles are very, very weird. I [00:20:00] don’t know. I don’t know another way to put it. And they’re, he’s like muscular, but he’s not at the same time and it’s just, yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:06] Emilia Rose: So
[00:20:06] Lindsey Sparks: yeah, it get you definitely, I would say that the key to getting good images with, AI art, well at least with stable Diffusion news, but I have the most experience with Through Night Cafe is to just, you just iterate over and over and over and over and over. So you’re just constantly evolving these images and moving it closer and closer to what you’re imagining.
[00:20:28] Lindsey Sparks: But that, that’s coming from somebody who’s not doing it just for pure creation of something beautiful. Standpoint, but from seeking an actual, I’m looking for an actual image that represents a scene that’s very specific. So, yes. But in terms of advice prioritize the things that are most important.
[00:20:45] Lindsey Sparks: So if you are really, really need your like person who’s visible in the AI art to have like a certain hair color that needs to be early on. Most of mine are something along the lines of like Auburn hair. The character in one of my series has Auburn hair. So Auburn haired, beautiful [00:21:00] woman.
[00:21:00] Lindsey Sparks: I don’t know if you want her to have like glowy skin, you could add like goddess or something. Usually then they’ll add old fashioned flowy dresses. So if you don’t want them to have old fashion and flowy dresses, you have to say something like modern clothing but then if there’s like stylistic options, mm-hmm.
[00:21:13] Lindsey Sparks: you can put anything you want really. Though there are like band keywords like. , child for obvious reasons. Right, right. Yes. Yeah. Or like, you know, different genitalia parts and stuff like that. You can’t put that stuff. But then there’s other random words that are not allowed and I can’t think of what they are, but, oh, like, I think, I don’t think you can do teenager even.
[00:21:31] Lindsey Sparks: And it’s, so that’s an issue if you have like a teenager character that you’re trying to show. I think I’ve been able to do like young women, or maybe not young, maybe young’s not allowed either. I don’t know. I had like an issue for a while where I was trying to get a character and it just kept kicking it back and saying it wasn’t allowed.
[00:21:46] Lindsey Sparks: But yeah. And then for the setting I don’t know, you just, it’s really just a lot of playing around, but definitely prioritize the things that are most important. And then after you do that, you can add like the stylistic options. And if you wanna get. Iffy with the copyright and, you [00:22:00] know, play fast and loose, then you can start adding artists’ names.
[00:22:03] Lindsey Sparks: But I try to avoid that because if I were an artist, I wouldn’t necessarily want people to be, you know, using all of my work that I created really, really putting my heart and soul into it. I wouldn’t want people to just kind of cheat and use that to create their own artwork really fast, like thousands of images.
[00:22:21] Lindsey Sparks: So I just try to respect people artists in that way.
[00:22:24] Michael Evans: I think that’s really fair. I think at this point, with this being such a new thing that we can all use and it’s, something that it’s also relatively inexpensive, be able to generate these things. It’s dangerous in a sense to people who are making a living, creating images that are being used for book covers.
[00:22:40] Michael Evans: It, can stoke fear in people. And I understand that and I think that you’re using it in a really interesting way, focusing it on your subscription nurturing mm-hmm. existing relations with your super fans and obviously being careful about not ripping people’s work off. Yeah. Or maybe it’s not your next book cover necessarily, but There is a degree of art [00:23:00] required and even being able to do it as well.
[00:23:01] Michael Evans: So it’s something that I think a lot of people might take a lot of time to get good at. May even find that it, it’s becomes expensive with certain credits to be able to do. Yes, it does. . Right. So sometimes some things are best left to the professionals even then.
[00:23:14] Michael Evans: But I am curious to actually ask you about your subscription and about kind of your tiers, cuz you have a $5 tier, a $10 tier, and a $15 tier.
[00:23:23] Michael Evans: And it seems like most of it is focused around early access to your work, whether it’s audiobooks you get on like the higher tiers and the also early release arcs, like the eBooks. And then you’re also getting access to serial fiction chapters. Mm-hmm. Your work in progress chapters, you have a lot going on, so I’m curious how you manage it and.
[00:23:45] Michael Evans: What time it takes in a month. Is it something that’s worth it for you? Because I get a sense that it’s a smaller part of the Grand Lindsey Spark writing empire.
[00:23:55] Lindsey Sparks: Yeah, it is. But I would love for it to be the larger part of my writing empire, hopefully. So I [00:24:00] will say this is my second attempt at Patreon.
[00:24:02] Lindsey Sparks: A few years ago I set up a Patreon, but it was like much more to have like some people physical books and stuff. I didn’t like it. I was not, I don’t know, I get the shipping is always an issue for me and actually getting myself to like, send stuff. So I decided to remove that . So I restarted it totally revamped everything.
[00:24:21] Lindsey Sparks: My $5 tier is all serial fiction and like bonus stories and chapters and stuff like that. That’s the only thing that’s on that one. The $10 tier is all of that stuff. Well, I guess there’s AI art in that one too. And they can vote on the AI art. I used to have a $3 tier, but I retired that, that one was no voting rights.
[00:24:40] Lindsey Sparks: The $10 tier includes advanced reader, eBooks and audiobooks as soon as they’re ready. Like, so the day that I upload them to acx, I also send them to my patrons. And then the $15 tier, the only additional thing for the $15 tier is people get access to my work in progress chapters the day that I write them.
[00:24:58] Lindsey Sparks: I also do a post [00:25:00] with a link to that chapter. It just links back to my Google Doc that has that chapter in it. So I’m not, I basically have tried to minimize the amount of work that I have to do that’s extra for the Patreon. And it really, the serialized fiction part is probably what takes the most.
[00:25:15] Lindsey Sparks: extra time for me because the work in progress chapters, I’m already writing those anyway, and the eBooks and the audio books, I’m already getting those ready and sending those out anyway. But the serialized fiction is really the thing that’s like feeding my soul right now. So I mean that instant feedback from people knowing that people are excited and waiting for it that just is so addictive.
[00:25:36] Lindsey Sparks: And also it’s really cool because I’m creating more books that will be published, you know, later in a year or two than I would be if I was doing it in my old standard way that I used to do it like last year, which was just one book at a time. And I could manage three to four books a year, but now I probably added like an extra book or two a year just by like this, adding the [00:26:00] serialization or the cereals, and.
[00:26:02] Lindsey Sparks: For some reason, like my brain likes switching between projects. Like it keeps me more excited about it. And each project is totally different. I hop genres like crazy within the science fiction and fantasy realm, but , I was never smart about, staying in my lane.
[00:26:18] Lindsey Sparks: I don’t like lanes. And then the bonus stories . I started this one in June, this version of my Patreon in June. And it slowly kind of grew. Originally I wanted it to be just steamy, spicy, bonus chapters from my books, where I had maybe faded to black or closed the door.
[00:26:33] Lindsey Sparks: My books have see me scenes in them, but I try to only include the ones that are actually necessary to the story. Even if I have other ideas in my head, if they’re not necessary for the story, I don’t. include them usually, but sometimes I do. So this was a way for me to kind of get those stories that were in my head out.
[00:26:51] Lindsey Sparks: And I knew people wanted to read more about some of my characters and their private times. So that’s what it started as. And I had an idea for a [00:27:00] vampire reverse hair and vampire cereal, and I didn’t want my mom to read it. because it’s extremely explicit. So that’s how it always is.
[00:27:10] Lindsey Sparks: I wanted to put it behind a paywall.
[00:27:12] Michael Evans: I love that. So mom’s not gonna read it when it’s, when it’s on page.
[00:27:16] Lindsey Sparks: No, and it is gonna go public eventually. And I’m gonna be like, this one’s not for you mom.
[00:27:20] Michael Evans: not for you is So, I’m curious cuz you have a pen name as well? Cause it’s Lindsey Sparks and Lindsey Farley.
[00:27:26] Michael Evans: Yeah. Would you consider a pen name for that? And how does like, do the pen names intersect in this subscription?
[00:27:31] Lindsey Sparks: Oh, my pen names are totally unintentional. , my pen names are, so, Lindsey Farley was my, , I was divorced and remarried, so Lindsey Furley was my previous name. And then I have kids now and I wanted them to see, and my real name is Lindsey Sparks now.
[00:27:49] Lindsey Sparks: And I wanted them to see , mom’s books are have mom’s name on them kind of thing. I don’t know. It was really important to me. Yeah. And the way my brain works, once I get an idea in my head, [00:28:00] like I have to do it and I have to do it now. That’ss awesome. I was like, all right, I’m changing my pen name,
[00:28:05] Lindsey Sparks: To my name and yeah, it just had like lots of baggage. I didn’t want it. However, understand, I do still have it on my post-apocalyptic co-written series because , which I co-wrote with Lindsey Pogue because we just couldn’t handle the idea of having like three Lindsey names on a book cover because I understand that
[00:28:25] Michael Evans: Yeah, that would be a lot . Like so many Lindsey’s. I was actually wondering for a moment, because I knew that your pen name for sure was Lindsey Fairley, but I was like, is Lin, is there a connection with the Lindsey po? Mm-hmm. is there was, it was from the surface. I was like, but then I looked into it.
[00:28:40] Michael Evans: I’m like, I think they’re different. But No, that makes a lot of sense. I’m always trying to understand how writers manage subscriptions with pen names because that can be tricky. But definitely I think your unique pen name, which is beautiful. Everyone has a unique pen name story, but I really wanna talk about with your serialization because.
[00:28:58] Michael Evans: You have a lot of interesting [00:29:00] things you’re doing related to sterilization. You have your All World online that you’re serializing as a podcast, which you mentioned. Mm-hmm. , but you also have two other podcasts,
[00:29:09] Lindsey Sparks: which Oh my gosh, I have so many .
[00:29:10] Michael Evans: You’re like Audio queen. So I have three other
[00:29:13] Lindsey Sparks: podcasts,
[00:29:14] Michael Evans: three others.
[00:29:15] Michael Evans: Oh my
[00:29:15] Lindsey Sparks: God. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So I’ll rolled online, which is my most successful podcast, . And I still, I didn’t do podcasting is so funny. So I know that people do a lot of like marketing and stuff for podcasts and they haven’t done any marketing for my podcast or for my YouTube. So everything that’s happened has been purely organic in those two realms.
[00:29:34] Lindsey Sparks: I love that. Which is interesting and unique and like maybe there’s something to say about that or to look at their, maybe it’s a larger audience and a less saturated market. I don’t know. But I have all world online, which is so super weird. So it’s a lid, RPG light. Pardon And prejudice.
[00:29:50] Lindsey Sparks: mashup. I love this. Yeah. .
[00:29:53] Michael Evans: This is
[00:29:53] Lindsey Sparks: beautiful. It’s really weird. . I recorded it myself. released it on audio first, and then [00:30:00] when it was done, I released it. I got it edited the actual, word document edited. I went through my normal process, editing, proofreading, formatting, put it out as a book.
[00:30:09] Lindsey Sparks: So it is out there published now, like normal. But it’s also re it’s a spinoff from one of my series that is not an audio serial , so I don’t know why I decided to do that . But there’s like some confusion there in terms of like what connects to what, anyway, so they’re all in book format now, but I had to then pause all rolled online, which is very successful in a podcast and gets like over a hundred downloads a day with me doing nothing.
[00:30:33] Lindsey Sparks: Wow. I know. That’s really good. I haven’t done any more seasons of that because I’m waiting to finish the series that it’s related to because that series. Needs to end before I can continue, like chronologically, it has to go that way. And so this has been paused for like two years with nothing happening on the podcast that’s still going really successfully
[00:30:55] Lindsey Sparks: And I have people asking me like, when is the next season of All World online gonna come out? [00:31:00] But I am definitely gonna work on it in 2023. So I’m really excited about that because I am planning on wrapping up all of my traditional, not tra I’m not traditionally published at all. That’s not what I mean, but my like conventionally written books like that.
[00:31:13] Lindsey Sparks: I write one project at a time and I’m planning on going a hundred percent into serializing my books on Patreon first and then. Going through my normal production, post-production routine. Right. So it’s just
[00:31:25] Michael Evans: more fun. Wow. , this is amazing. I want to actually just share with people, cuz I think when they hear your story, people might think it’s an outlier in many cases.
[00:31:33] Michael Evans: You’re doing excellent. So I’m not trying to promise that everyone will be able to post an audio serial will do. Incredible. Obviously the most important thing is write an amazing story, but I think that people who are listening to this, since this is a podcast as well, m might be like, well do people really listen to like fiction, like for podcasts and actually 15% of the podcasting market, 15% of podcast listeners only listen to fiction podcasts.
[00:31:59] Michael Evans: Serialized fiction did [00:32:00] not know that. It’s a huge, it’s a huge niche. And Rusty Quill is probably like one of the bigger like podcast studios that produces this kind of thing. And their episodes will get like a million, 2 million downloads a month, like across all their episodes. That’s insane. Which is amazing.
[00:32:14] Michael Evans: And they’re able to get sponsorship, which is something that. Is moving into the author ecosystem. I’m I hate using the word bullish, but I’m positively thinking that authors will be able to have more interesting revenue streams come in for sponsorship, for their creative content. And kind of how this model would work is if you are getting, you know, a thousand views a month on your podcast at that scale, it’s tough to get brands to sponsor you, but if you’re getting a million or 2 million people to listen to your serialized audio month, that’s tens of thousands of dollars in sponsorship revenue. So that’s obviously at a really high scale, but you can see how you, at a hundred downloads passively month pretty easy that you could imagine getting into tens of thousands a month and making maybe a few thousand.
[00:32:56] Michael Evans: And sponsorship revenue, which I think would be pretty awesome. [00:33:00] Yeah. And
[00:33:00] Lindsey Sparks: that would be really cool. So I use Buzz Sprout, which is probably not like the fanciest podcast host. But I didn’t know what I was doing when I set up all worlds online . So I’m like, oh, this looks easy, I’ll just use this.
[00:33:11] Lindsey Sparks: But they do get you in a lot of places, so that’s nice. But they just started adding like a native advertising system. If you have, I think it’s over a thousand down, there’s like several criteria you have to meet. But if you have, I think it’s over a thousand downloads a month on a podcast, then you can accept ads from other podcasts in your own podcast.
[00:33:30] Lindsey Sparks: So I did play with that for a little while, but then I don’t know if it was related or if it was just timing and like the economy or I don’t know, stuff. But then my views started going down and I was like, okay, I’m removing this. I’m not gonna do this anymore. And now it seems so stabilized again.
[00:33:46] Lindsey Sparks: So I don’t know if that and I was very selective about the ads that I accepted. I only accepted other, like fiction, podcasts to advertise and in the speculative fiction realm. But I don’t know. That’s a really interesting, [00:34:00] I a lot of, my, my stuff is very like female audience focused.
[00:34:03] Lindsey Sparks: And there were not a lot of female, it was all, everything that I was offered to advertise with all male voices. And so I, I feel like maybe there was like a little disconnect there with my audience.
[00:34:15] Emilia Rose: So can you actually go into , a bit of, a bit about like what do you offer in your fiction podcast?
[00:34:22] Emilia Rose: Because I know a lot of people set it up differently and some people are offering the. Main writer is reading the story or they have voice actors who are reading lines or scripts. How do you have your set up?
[00:34:32] Lindsey Sparks: It’s just me. In All World online it’s a little different than Read by the author.
[00:34:36] Lindsey Sparks: Read by the author is just me reading already published books. And that I’ve broken down into a couple chapters per episode. But it all rolled online. I did it a little more produced in terms of, I had a previously on section at the beginning, like just a short paragraph I would read to recap the previous episode.
[00:34:51] Lindsey Sparks: And then I would get into the new episode and I think I even had music, but I did read some reviews where people complained about the music that I had that it was too loud. So I have since adjusted [00:35:00] those levels. But , I don’t know if I’m gonna continue with the music in it or not, if that, if people even care about that.
[00:35:05] Lindsey Sparks: But yeah, it’s just me reading it. It’s for, I write everything. First person p o v. So it’s me speaking from the character’s point of view, I guess. And so for that one, I did do something a little bit different and interesting, which was each episode there were eight episodes of, I think there were eight episodes of season one.
[00:35:23] Lindsey Sparks: And then there’s a novella that I did that I put up two more episodes. But for each episode it opened with either a voice recording from someone who was working on All World online, the video game plat or the virtual reality platform or like a news story or something related to the world and what was going on, in that very cool kind
[00:35:42] Michael Evans: of chronology.
[00:35:42] Michael Evans: I think that’s fascinating, . That’s really, really cool , and I wanted to actually mention to everyone as well, if this is something you want to dive deeper into and see someone like a creator who’s really focused on serialized audio and doing really well, I recommend checking out Fool and scholar productions in addition to [00:36:00] Lindsey.
[00:36:00] Michael Evans: So I’ll link both of these down in the description. And what’s really interesting about fullon Scholar is that they essentially are creating like scripted audio drama. So they’re like writing what we would consider serialized fiction, but then really investing heavily in producing it. They have 2,300 patrons and I, I would estimate that their tiers are like $5 minimum.
[00:36:19] Michael Evans: So they’re doing very well. And they also have sponsorship for their podcast when they’re posting it to broader platforms. They’re based off an early access model to get access to their serialized audio dramas. So it’s definitely. Not like something that no one’s doing. It’s something that is growing and that I think you’re very early on in noticing this opportunity and I think it’s amazing.
[00:36:41] Michael Evans: But you also, like you said, have three other podcasts. I do. And one of your podcasts, , is focused on readers and it seems to be like conversational mm-hmm. Between you and the guest that you typically have on, it’s called No Shelf
[00:36:54] Lindsey Sparks: Control. Yeah, no Shelf Control is, my co-author Lindsey and me Lindsey.[00:37:00]
[00:37:00] Lindsey Sparks: So we, you get to actually see that there’s, that we both do exist. So Lindsey Pos and Lindsey Sparks. So we, we have done two seasons. The first season was us interviewing other authors about their book, but not from craft perspective from like a reader perspective and asking questions that, cuz we would read their book that we as readers had about the book, in terms of what inspired them and who their favorite characters are and who they saw being cast in an adaptation, that kind of thing.
[00:37:29] Lindsey Sparks: There is 20 to 30 minutes of chit chat before we actually get to talking about anything bookish . So it’s a very all over the place tangential podcast. And we are usually drinking something alcoholic, so it’s , just fun . But season two is just Lindsey Pogue and myself, and we pick a book,
[00:37:49] Lindsey Sparks: we were both very busy. We both have very little time for reading and we wanted to have more time to read the books that we actually wanted to read. So we pick books that we’ve been wanting to read and reread [00:38:00] them at the same time, and then we discuss them on the podcast. But we tried to be really intentional about season two in a way that would be interesting to other people.
[00:38:06] Lindsey Sparks: So we alternate between adaptation episodes and popular book talk book episodes. So that’s what we do on that one. Wow. Yeah. And then I have Sparks Notes, which is like my weekly updates podcast. It’s just me talking to the microphone .
[00:38:21] Michael Evans: It’s basically like an audio newsletter.
[00:38:23] Lindsey Sparks: Yes, exactly.
[00:38:24] Michael Evans: Yes. And do your readers like it? They engage with
[00:38:26] Lindsey Sparks: it. Yeah. And when I was , when I was on Facebook, it, well, I can’t remember how long ago it was, but Facebook used to allow podcasts on your page, they would automatically post and then people, they had like Facebook podcasts or something, but they discontinued it.
[00:38:42] Lindsey Sparks: So now you just have to post it and they follow a link elsewhere. Or you could upload the video, I guess. But I was uploading the videos of my podcast to fa to my Facebook group, and those were getting a lot of views and people really enjoyed that. But I have created a du like, not a dummy account, but a new account, but I’m not [00:39:00] putting any effort into it, so I’m not really doing anything at all on Facebook anymore.
[00:39:04] Lindsey Sparks: Yeah.
[00:39:04] Lindsey Sparks: I’m
[00:39:04] Michael Evans: curious about that because you have, I see a Discord as well that’s small. In your Facebook group, are you migrating people from Facebook Outta Discord. Okay.
[00:39:13] Lindsey Sparks: And people seem to be pretty excited about it. I actually sent out yesterday, I sent out a newsletter and it was the first time that I had made any kind of a push towards Discord.
[00:39:23] Lindsey Sparks: And I think I’ve had like, , a couple dozen people joined since that newsletter went out. The Discord. And I feel like, I mean, discord is definitely a less, I feel like this is one of the, like positives that’s gonna come out of this is moving people towards Discord and focusing on my Discord audience versus my Facebook audience.
[00:39:40] Lindsey Sparks: And I feel like the big positive there is, and I’m trying to say this without offending anybody in terms of organic social reach from peer to peer kind of people mentioning my books and spreading the word, I feel like it’s more likely that the younger audience that’s on Discord is going to have, a more I don’t know, viral [00:40:00] reach than the older audience on Facebook.
[00:40:04] Lindsey Sparks: And again, I’m trying to say that without offending anybody or be ageist, , but Facebook, my, especially my Facebook audience is definitely skews much older. than my, the people who are on Discord, which appeals a lot more to like the gaming people because that’s kind of where it started, right? Yeah. So I’m hoping, and I’m planning on, I’m like starting my street team finally way late in the game.
[00:40:25] Lindsey Sparks: starting my street team ,
[00:40:26] Michael Evans: almost a decade in now. . I
[00:40:28] Lindsey Sparks: dunno what my deal is, so my assistant and I are reaching out to influencers on Instagram and book talk, but we’re gonna have it be like, instead of putting it in a Facebook group, which is what we were originally gonna do, we’re gonna have it be centered in a Discord channel.
[00:40:43] Lindsey Sparks: And just have everything. We’re just, I’m just gonna move everybody, you know, if people wanna stay active in my Lindsey’s lovely reader’s community, they’re gonna need to move over to the discord eventually. And we’re just gonna eventually end up kind of not putting so much attention into the Facebook group.
[00:40:58] Michael Evans: Yeah, I think that’s [00:41:00] very valid. I see. A broader trend over the, probably the next five, 10 plus years of authors and creative people moving their audiences to platforms that they can have a more direct relationship with. Platforms of maybe communication that they own. And I think authors in many ways, have understood the importance of this very core with mailing list, right?
[00:41:21] Michael Evans: Like yes. That’s been something that we’ve talked about for, I think forever, since I’ve joined this community. Like five years ago in publishing was something that was pretty made obvious to me, like start a mailing list, but with what you’re saying. Most others might have a mailing list. Mm-hmm. , then maybe they’ll publish their books on Amazon KU and there’s no right or raw model for publishing.
[00:41:38] Michael Evans: I think people who listen to this podcast are that we’re just exploring people , who are innovative and really crushing it with all these interesting different models and ways of publishing. But you are basically successfully doing tons of different things between, we’ve already talked about YouTube, audiobooks, podcasting, urine subscriptions.
[00:41:53] Michael Evans: You’re doing all this stuff and I think at this point of the podcast, people might be feeling a little overwhelmed. Yeah, I’m feeling excited. My [00:42:00] heart’s racing. Cause I’m like, oh my God, I’m getting all these ideas talking to Lindsey . But then I’m also like, wait, we have to kind of zoom out. Yeah. And I wanna get an idea of.
[00:42:07] Michael Evans: What is the overall map of the Lindsey business? Like if you had to kind of look at all your different streams of income, you don’t have to like list them all out , but you’ve got the wide retailers. I’m just naming one. What are the different revenue streams? What are the different discovery streams? So how are you bringing your readers into your business?
[00:42:26] Michael Evans: All the different ways at least that you can sum up. How are you interacting, nurturing them maybe through a Facebook group, your podcast that you’re having a readers like, I don’t know if we can get like the world building map of your business. Yeah, I think that’d be really
[00:42:38] Lindsey Sparks: cool. Well, and I do wanna start by saying this.
[00:42:41] Lindsey Sparks: I didn’t just like do all of this all at once. Yeah. You know, like that’s important. It has slowly evolved with adding new things. if somebody tried to like step in and take over my business, my husband tried to step in and take over my business, I think he would just be like this.
[00:42:54] Lindsey Sparks: We’re just shutting it down, shutting it down. , . So I, okay. All of the places that I have [00:43:00] revenue streams from, so we already talked about YouTube, which is from advertising. I have audiobooks on a ACX and find a way. I have like minor advertising on from my podcasts, but like I said, I didn’t like the way that that was affecting the downloads.
[00:43:16] Lindsey Sparks: So I actually so again, so late in the game. I don’t know why I have this delayed ability to do things. But I inserted an ad read for, read by the author where I’m reading my entire back list into All World online because that one was getting so many more views and that has since kind of.
[00:43:33] Lindsey Sparks: revved up, read by the author. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out to do that, but I did stuck it right in the middle so people have to listen to it. That’s great. So technically that’s not really like an revenue stream, but I kind of count it because it like pushes people towards my books.
[00:43:48] Lindsey Sparks: Okay. I have K p, Barnes and Noble, Cobo Drafted Digital, which gets the other places. Google Play. I feel like I’m missing something. That’s how, you know you’re diversified. I have direct [00:44:00] sales but not a ton. I actually don’t really, like, I use, I set up a Shopify store. I haven’t put a ton of effort into it.
[00:44:06] Lindsey Sparks: I previously had a WIC store. I shut that down. Because I don’t know, shipping some of the shipping issues, I didn’t like the way it worked. , I am playing with the idea of only opening up my signed paperbacks shop like once a month and have it be like an event.
[00:44:22] Michael Evans: Oh, that’s cool. I like that. Like a drop, like a book drop.
[00:44:24] Lindsey Sparks: Yes. Yeah. And drops are so popular right now. So a lot of the like fan art artists, illustrators have monthly drops and stuff. So I’m like, this is a term that people are becoming more and more familiar with. So the signed book store is opened and also have like something special for that month, I’m just gonna like add more stuff to what I’m doing.
[00:44:43] Lindsey Sparks: I am currently working with an illustrator to create the entire deck of tarot cards from one of my series. And so we just started releasing those images. And so those art prints of those are something that I’m going to be adding to my store. So that could be something that I include in the monthly drop [00:45:00] kind of thing.
[00:45:00] Michael Evans: It’s great to get that overview. And also, like Lindsey said, you’ve been doing this for a very, very long time. Yeah. And I’m curious, when you started and now that we’re looking ahead to 2023, which is a decade later, a lot’s changed the industry. I’m curious, what would you, if you’re giving advice to someone, because you have a lot of different things going on.
[00:45:22] Michael Evans: You mentioned you have an assistant, you obviously have income streams that can help fund some of the software and things that you help to run all of this, which is amazing. That’s a huge accomplishment. But for someone who’s trying to get there, maybe by 2033 or maybe even earlier, that would be really cool.
[00:45:37] Michael Evans: What would be your advice to focus on in 2023?
[00:45:40] Lindsey Sparks: Oh, that’s so hard because it’s changed so much. I don’t know. I feel like if somebody was just starting out, I have, like, I have such conflicts about ku. I was in KU for a long time. I made a lot of money in ku. , but I feel like if somebody, it depends on what people’s motivations are.
[00:45:55] Lindsey Sparks: So if somebody was becoming an A writer and wa and wanted to make money from their [00:46:00] books, to be able to do it full-time, kind of retire from whatever else they’re doing. I would say start in KU maybe. The issue with that advice is it’s really easy to get stuck in ku.
[00:46:09] Lindsey Sparks: Because the money is really good. And when you switch to going wide, it takes a really long time to even get close. It’s hard because it’s like, it depends on how much money you have to put into your business. I would recommend everybody do audio because that for me is a completely passive income.
[00:46:25] Lindsey Sparks: Like I don’t do anything to promote other than reading my books in a podcast. I don’t do anything to promote my audio books. Everything is either tied to my eBooks being promoted or just however people are finding them or tied to the narrators or, I don’t know, word of mouth I guess.
[00:46:40] Lindsey Sparks: But now through YouTube that’s definitely leading to a lot of sell through of my audiobooks. And chirp. Chirp is amazing. If your audiobooks are wide, definitely constantly be submitting your audiobooks to chirp. Highly recommend that. Try to think long term, even though it’s so easy to like only think about the short term.
[00:46:57] Lindsey Sparks: I wish I had set up my Patreon and [00:47:00] or stuck with my Patreon or just like when I had originally set it up a few years ago. Because then right now I have my Patreon’s, not huge, I have 44 subscribers, which is great. I love them and. , I get a few more each a month. That’s great. It is great. And I love them so much and I definitely like I said, everything is going there first now.
[00:47:19] Lindsey Sparks: Like that is my main priority because I want that to become my main income stream. Very cool. I don’t know, I think maybe I would recommend that people like set up, oh my God, I’m so excited about Reem, by the way. But I would recommend that people set up like a subscription. I feel like subscriptions are the way of the future, so I feel like if you want to make it as an author in 2030, get started now so you’re not late to the game.
[00:47:44] Lindsey Sparks: We did not tell her to say this. No, you didn’t. No, that’s in my very
[00:47:48] Michael Evans: nice .
[00:47:48] Lindsey Sparks: It’s one of those things that like, I feel like deep in my heart that’s, you know, a driving force, subscriptions and audio. Those are my two . Well, really important things
[00:47:56] Michael Evans: for our final kind of talking point before we wrap it up here.
[00:47:59] Michael Evans: [00:48:00] I think we’ve really dive into audio and we’ve talked a bit about subscriptions, but I’m curious, you’ve made the move from KU to Y, you made that transition successfully. It’s a very difficult one. Mm-hmm. . And now, in a way I don’t wanna word it as a transition as if you know, you’re having to move your existing IP around, but you’re in a sense, transitioning your business model into focusing around subscriptions, being kind of the core.
[00:48:21] Michael Evans: How are you doing that and how is that movement going for you? What have you learned as you’ve been now setting up your Paton for the second time?
[00:48:29] Lindsey Sparks: I think it’s difficult from the procedural perspective, it’s really difficult because, I’ve been doing this for long enough that my timeline, my production timelines and like my productions process and like writing to editing, to revision, all of that stuff is very set up.
[00:48:44] Lindsey Sparks: And comfortable, I guess you could say. It’s easy for me to schedule it out into my calendar when I’m starting a project and like to know when. brutally stay is gonna be, however, so it’s a little bit nerve-wracking because as I am transitioning into, a hundred percent [00:49:00] serialization, I don’t know when my books are gonna be done because I don’t know how long they’re gonna be, or, oh, like I’m not gonna be setting up pre-orders while I’m writing them.
[00:49:10] Lindsey Sparks: Whereas before I have been setting up pre-orders before I start writing them. Right. So, because I just know how long it will take me. I am finishing up my two existing series that I have been writing conventionally. So one is the third series in one of my, kind of a greater fictional worlds.
[00:49:28] Lindsey Sparks: And I’m on the fence. I’m writing book two for that right now. The work in progress chapters are going up in my Patreon. I’m on the fence about whether or not I’m even gonna put up a pre-order for book three or if I’m just gonna fully transition into writing it as like, I released an episode a month for all of my cereals.
[00:49:45] Lindsey Sparks: And including that into my, like, rotation of serialized episodes, and those vary in length from like 2000 words to like 9,000 words depending on what kind of I’ve set up as a standard for that cereal, I already have one pre-order. I have two [00:50:00] pre-orders set up right now.
[00:50:01] Lindsey Sparks: that I have am committed to because nobody wants to get like banned by Amazon. Yeah. So I need to stick to those deadlines. And that’s spoke to in the series I was just talking about, and then the final book in another series, which is the one that relates to all world online. But after that I’m saying like, no more pre-orders until I’ve finished writing the cereal and just like freeing myself from that.
[00:50:22] Lindsey Sparks: So that I feel like is the largest struggle for me in terms of the transition because it is a totally different way of scheduling your production as a writer.
[00:50:31] Michael Evans: Hmm. Very, very interesting. Yeah. And one follow up is how are you convincing readers who have been maybe used to buying your eBooks and audiobooks a la carte to say, Hey, like, join my subscription.
[00:50:44] Lindsey Sparks: Oh man. That is something that I feel like I have not fully embraced or fully achieved yet. But I am adding new elements of my, funnels, like my newsletter, my automation sequence. Up until two weeks ago, I didn’t have anything in it. Mentioning my Patreon, [00:51:00] which is just so silly.
[00:51:01] Lindsey Sparks: Again, late in the game, Lindsey. So I have added an entire email. It’s the final email in my sequence. It’s like, hey, you know, tells people about my Patreon. It includes the first scene in my Patreon exclusive serial, which is the Vampire Reverse heroin. That’s like straight up in the email itself.
[00:51:19] Lindsey Sparks: And then they can click to read the rest of it, which is free. The first episode is free. So they could finish it on Patreon and then they have to subscribe if they wanna continue. So I’m hoping that that’ll work because I just added it a couple weeks ago. I haven’t seen like, . I don’t have enough data to see how that’s working yet.
[00:51:34] Lindsey Sparks: Got it. Especially because my main , one of my main ways of adding people to my subscribers to my newsletter was through a Facebook ad. Mm-hmm. . And since they don’t have Facebook ads anymore, I am looking at new ways to do that. So I’m looking at offering, I have a prequel to one of my series that was a newsletter exclusive, or a newsletter subscriber exclusive item that I’m probably gonna make put up on, on all the wide platforms for free.
[00:51:56] Lindsey Sparks: And then have the CTA lead to [00:52:00] getting book one for free by subscribing which isn’t any big change on the backend for me because book one’s already free to subscribers. And then starting the funnel ending in the Patreon email. So I just have to rethink the way that I am. , getting people to enter the funnel.
[00:52:15] Lindsey Sparks: I think that’s where this current issue is. But also on social media, which I feel like has been the main way that I’ve been adding people to my Paton. And I know you guys talk about how social media is not the best way to, reach new patrons necessarily. But because I didn’t add it to like my back of my books or my newsletter until recently, that’s the only way I’ve been adding people.
[00:52:38] Lindsey Sparks: So just letting people know about it in my Facebook group, on my newsletter, or in my, like normal campaigns that I send out. Or we just started posting graphics with excerpts on in Instagram. And that has been increasing subscribers a little bit, so that’s nice.
[00:52:53] Michael Evans: Yeah, that’s great to hear.
[00:52:54] Michael Evans: I honestly think subscription marketing, it’s really, it’s tough because it, there’s no one size [00:53:00] fits all. Like, you do this and it’s gonna work. Yeah. And that’s all because it’s based on your relationship with your readers and ultimately by nurturing that and being able to capture the value of that, there’s really amazing business opportunities and a better lifestyle that can be had.
[00:53:13] Michael Evans: At least that’s the promise of this. Yes. That’s what writers like you are proving. But I think that you being someone who’s been in this. A decade who’s had established readership and a lot of connections to your audience. That sort of initial awareness of like, Hey, I’m doing this now, is really important.
[00:53:30] Michael Evans: A lot of times authors who are newer and who are also at the same time newer to subscriptions, are trying to take audiences that they have a bit more of a cold relationship with. Mm-hmm. And, you know, boost out their subscription to them. And I would always suggest that like, that might not be the best way.
[00:53:45] Michael Evans: But for you, if you have a thousand, people roughly in your Facebook group, you’ve got almost I think 900 ish followers, Instagram, those people probably have really deep relationships with your work, , at least a good proportion of them. So letting them know in a space, like that’s great, but if [00:54:00] someone just came to find you in on Instagram and that becomes a.
[00:54:03] Michael Evans: New traffic driver for you. If that first ask when you reach that cold audience is, Hey, start paying me monthly. That’s kind of a poor ask, which is why we say a lot of times if you’re finding new audiences on social media, having that be your upfront ask, start to maybe give your free book first. Bring me your newsletter list.
[00:54:21] Michael Evans: You already, you already know, know this really well. But just reminding everyone at home that we all have different strategies based on our readership.
[00:54:28] Lindsey Sparks: And I will say while social media has helped, I think with finding the new subscribers, I definitely think the main way that people have learned about and subscribed to my Patreon is through my newsletter, which has I know I just had to like upgrade to like the next level.
[00:54:40] Lindsey Sparks: So I just like topped over 10,000 subscribers. So that’s my main, connection to my audience. So I definitely would say like that’s the main, like social media’s fun, but like the newsletter is number one. Got it.
[00:54:54] Michael Evans: That’s awesome. That’s great. Well, Lindsey, I’ve learned so much today chatting with you, [00:55:00] and I’m so, so grateful for your time.
[00:55:02] Michael Evans: So thank you so much. Thanks for
[00:55:04] Lindsey Sparks: having me on here. This was really fun. I love your guys’ podcast. So, oh, ,
[00:55:08] Michael Evans: I love everything you’re doing. And it’s a lot . It’s amazing. It’s very inspiring.
[00:55:13] Michael Evans: And that was it. Our podcast with Lindsey Sparks all about how she not only was able to get hundreds of thousands of people listening to her audiobooks on YouTube and becoming her fans and buying her audiobooks on retailers, but also about how she’s been shifting towards the subscription model, utilizing interesting new technologies, and ultimately continuing to try and create better and better experiences for her readers.
[00:55:35] Michael Evans: Super inspiring to me, and I hope to you as well. There’s also something that came up in the podcast that the very discerning listen. Little detectives out there, especially you mystery writers. I know I see you, I see you. You’re listening closely for any clues. You hear the word ream and you’re like, what is ream?
[00:55:52] Michael Evans: It totally came up organically where Lindsey mentioned how excited she was about Ream, and I’m excited about Ream too. That’s because me and Emilia actually [00:56:00] are co-founders in re and it’s subscription platform by fiction authors or fiction authors. It’s essentially the best place for you if you’re an author of stories like we are, to be able to monetize your stories through subscription, connect with your readers, build a fandom, and do this all in a way that saves you time and makes your readers.
[00:56:18] Michael Evans: I’ll link below to the wait list for Ream. We’re literally beginning invites in like two weeks. It’s wild and super exciting. So we’ve been spending a lot of time getting that ready. But if you want to be a part of Ream set up for a wait list, it’s free to join and we’ll be sending out invites through winter and spring of 2023 as we begin our launch.
[00:56:41] Michael Evans: The reason why we’re not letting the entire world in. on the first day. All that would be fun. It also be super chaotic and not what I envision as a great experience for our authors. So you see, I don’t wanna just send you a link and be like, cool, you’re signed up for Reem. Good luck. And just leave it at that.
[00:56:58] Michael Evans: For our first authors who are [00:57:00] joining in our first few months, I wanna be able to give you a personalized experience and be able to help you create your account, be able to give you advice and create a community of all of us who are really trying to work out like, how does this new platform work? How are we gonna be.
[00:57:13] Michael Evans: Set up our subscriptions in the best light. How are we gonna be able to migrate our readers? So maybe our other existing subscription platforms. All these are big tough questions that I just don’t wanna leave you to answer alone. We’re here with you. You’ll be able to book calls us, you’ll be to chat with me and Amelia personally and that’s why we’re taking things slow cuz we can’t chat with, dozens of people in one week.
[00:57:33] Michael Evans: So we’re gonna dig things week by week and we’re super grateful to be able to do this. That’s rolling out soon. So I just wanna mention. So if you’re interested to check it out in the link description. Otherwise, thank you so much for getting to the end of this podcast. We’re gonna have some new episodes coming out soon, which we’re really excited about.
[00:57:51] Michael Evans: We really feel like we’re barely scrapping the surface of what’s possible with this podcast, and your feedback has been so, so helpful. So if you ever [00:58:00] have any ideas, if you ever have anyone you want us to bring on, let us know because we create this podcast, not just for you, but with you, with your feedback, with your idea.
[00:58:10] Michael Evans: and a lot of that we get from the Facebook group. A lot of that we get from the tons of awesome conversations we have with you, but don’t ever be afraid to reach out. Our email’s all also in the description and it’s contact. Just like contact at Ream dot inc. I nnk Ream dot inc. I’ll leave the email description.
[00:58:28] Michael Evans: You’re always welcome. Hit us up, ask any questions, leave any recommendations. Or just say hello. Hello is nice too. But I’m also gonna say goodbye now, which is sad, but I’ll be back very shortly. In the meantime, I hope everyone has an amazing rest of your day and happy writing. And also, don’t forget. Can’t forget storytellers Rule the World.