10:00

email me joanna at the creative pen

10:02

calm but yes that is available there

10:04

and the webinar will be in July

10:07

all the details are on that page JF

10:10

pen calm/destiny and of course if you'd like

10:12

to buy the book that would be amazing

10:15

I'm on the ancient heroes podcast

10:17

this week with Patrick Garvey or

10:19

last week as this goes out

10:21

talking about my research process for

10:23

spear of destiny as well as

10:25

why I love action-adventure so

10:27

that is the ancient heroes podcast and

10:29

Patrick also has his own Kickstarter the

10:32

air of Achilles and he's a brand

10:34

new author so we also talk a

10:36

bit about that too I've

10:38

put a transcript up on the creative pen

10:40

calm so you can read it if you prefer

10:42

plus you might have noticed

10:44

the extra in-between he so this week

10:47

on writing action-adventure several people emailed to

10:49

say the tips are useful whatever your

10:51

genre so I hope you enjoyed that

10:54

as I record this the Kickstarter is just over 8,200 pounds

10:56

which is around 10,000 US dollars I'm really pleased with that

11:02

and there are still 11 days to

11:04

go so thanks for

11:07

all your emails and comments this week

11:09

Elizabeth said on the seasons of writing

11:11

with Jacqueline episode I have

11:13

been trying to incorporate this idea into

11:15

my life and loved hearing about it

11:17

as it applies to creativity winter

11:19

is for hibernating resting spring you start

11:21

planning summer is for being social and

11:23

enjoying and in fall you're taking stock

11:26

and settling up for the winter I'm

11:28

going to buy this book and see

11:30

how I can do more in life

11:32

and creativity around the seasons so

11:35

yes more evidence that podcasts sell books

11:39

Colleen on YouTube around the action adventure

11:41

writing tip said I enjoyed this so

11:43

much useful and interesting would love

11:45

to have more and of course that episode had

11:47

a lot of clips from author interviews I've done

11:49

over the years in it is a it was

11:52

only like 35 minutes but

11:54

it took forever to make so

11:56

seriously hardcore amount of work doing

11:58

that but I agree, it was

12:01

fun and I enjoyed it. So

12:03

I might do another one, but it is pretty intensive. Also,

12:06

lots of people emailed me about Hamilton

12:08

and how much it means to them

12:10

after I said I took my mum

12:12

to see it and we really enjoyed

12:14

it. Lisa said, Hamilton is a big

12:17

obsession for me, especially since here in

12:19

the US, the irony of the struggle

12:21

for freedom and to create our constitution

12:23

strikes deep. Hamilton always lifts me and

12:25

reminds me of what we can be

12:27

if we continue to push forward. And

12:29

finally, Corinne on Adam's episode on mindset

12:32

and video, she said, loved this episode,

12:34

one of my favorite yet. Adam is

12:36

both reassuring and inspiring, a testament that

12:38

you can adapt to the age of

12:40

video and achieve a stable income doing

12:43

so, all at very low

12:45

cost, so long as you're willing to

12:47

learn new skills, challenge yourself and maintain

12:49

a nimble mindset. Fantastic, so

12:52

please leave a comment on the podcast

12:54

show notes at thecreativepen.com or on the

12:56

YouTube channel, message me on X at

12:58

the creative pen or email

13:00

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13:02

as well, I haven't had some pictures for

13:05

a while, Joanna at thecreativepen.com. I

13:07

love to hear from you, it makes this

13:09

more of a conversation. So

13:11

today's show is sponsored by

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14:11

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slash the creative pen. Right let's

14:52

get into the interview. Steve

14:57

Piper is a USA Today best-selling

14:59

thriller author under the name Lars Emmerich.

15:02

He's also an entrepreneur and

15:05

business consultant specializing in digital

15:07

marketing and selling direct with

15:09

his course AMO, Author Marketing

15:11

Mastery Through Optimization. So welcome

15:13

back to the show Steve.

15:16

Thank you very much such a pleasure to be here Jo. Oh

15:19

yes so you were last on the show

15:21

in January 2023 when we went into your

15:24

background so we're just gonna jump into the

15:26

topic today. So it seems like

15:28

selling direct has gone mainstream in the

15:30

author community since you were last here.

15:32

So what do you think has happened

15:35

to make authors embrace selling direct in

15:37

a much bigger way over the last

15:39

I guess sort of 18 months? It's

15:42

a great question. I think a few

15:44

things have combined to make it more

15:47

mainstream as you say. I think

15:49

the first thing is that Amazon

15:52

has effectively capped ebook

15:54

sales prices at $9.99 and nobody's capped the average

16:00

advertising expenses at any particular

16:02

number. So it becomes

16:04

more and more important as

16:06

ad costs to generate interest in your

16:08

books, as they continue to

16:10

increase along with everything else, aside from EBO

16:13

prices, it's more and

16:15

more important to be able to track your

16:17

metrics and to be able to reach people

16:19

who are purchasers, as

16:21

opposed to people who are just merely kind of

16:23

curious. And so those

16:26

things are made possible when

16:28

you sell direct because your

16:30

store knows exactly who purchases

16:32

from you. You get

16:34

their email address, you get their name, your

16:37

store processes their credit card, and

16:39

that information can be fed back

16:41

to meta, so Facebook

16:43

and Instagram, to

16:46

make your ads operate more efficiently

16:49

and to bring you

16:51

new purchasers more profitably. So I think that's

16:53

the first part of it. I

16:55

think the second part is that we've

16:57

heard plenty of stories of some

16:59

fairly high profile authors having trouble

17:02

with their Amazon accounts, often through

17:04

no fault of their own. I

17:06

mean, whenever you run a big enterprise, you

17:09

have to, such as Amazon, you

17:12

have to pay attention to the quality of the listings

17:14

and the quality of the accounts, and you also have

17:16

to deal with people who are trying to abuse the

17:18

accounts to make a quick buck. And

17:20

the only way to do that at scale

17:23

is algorithmically, which means the machines are making

17:25

decisions about whose account to close and leave

17:27

open. And often that happens without any opportunity

17:29

for authors to, you know,

17:31

Amazon doesn't even ask them what was happening. You

17:34

just find that your account has

17:36

been closed. So I think those things

17:38

have combined to make direct sales a

17:40

more viable option for people. The

17:42

third reason is that we've

17:46

noticed, and this has been true since I

17:48

first started selling directly in 2017, whenever

17:52

you advertise for your direct

17:54

sales system, there's

17:56

this beautiful thing called a

17:59

cross-channel affiliate. where

18:02

your book advertisements that point

18:04

to your store so

18:06

people can purchase from you, they

18:08

produce sales through your store, but they

18:11

also get people excited

18:13

who are diehard Amazon customers, for example.

18:15

And so they might see your ad

18:17

for your store like what they see,

18:20

but just prefer to buy from Amazon

18:22

because of convenience or familiarity or whatever

18:24

else. So it's kind of

18:26

a two for one deal and in some cases

18:28

like a three or four for one kind of

18:31

deal depending on who you are in terms

18:33

of advertising dollars and sales that come in.

18:37

Yeah, just coming back on that Amazon

18:39

cap on $9.99, I actually

18:41

at London Book Fair talked to an Amazon person

18:43

and said, look, it's being capped at $9.99 for

18:46

like forever, right? And this

18:50

is a while ago, it wasn't that

18:52

big a deal, but it is a

18:54

real big deal now. And I mean,

18:56

I write nonfiction as well. And nonfiction

18:58

in particular can take a lot higher

19:00

prices on eBooks. And

19:03

I agree with you that this is a bit

19:05

of an issue. Do you think they'll ever change

19:07

that cap? I mean, inflation is hitting

19:09

everything it seems except ebook sales. Exactly.

19:13

I don't know for the life of me why

19:15

they haven't yet. It seems

19:17

in their best interest, as well, because

19:20

they're taking 30% of the sale price.

19:23

So I don't know what

19:26

economics they're looking at, what data they

19:28

have. I mean, I can't imagine they

19:30

have much data on sales performance above

19:32

$9.99 because that just doesn't

19:34

make it, you earn half the royalty above $9.99.

19:36

I can't imagine many

19:39

authors at all have chosen to take that

19:41

route. So I have no idea why

19:43

they haven't made those adjustments yet. I mean, I think

19:46

it's far more appropriate that if there were

19:49

a cap at that royalty rate, it

19:52

would probably, it seems to me that it

19:54

would be on par with what you typically

19:56

see traditionally published eBooks priced at like around

19:58

$14.99. Yeah,

20:00

exactly. So that'll be interesting if they

20:02

ever change that. I guess they're still

20:04

trying to push people to subscription for

20:06

eBooks. But I also wondered whether another

20:09

thing that shifted is the almost

20:12

the maturity of the indie author

20:15

market and also the

20:17

emergence of different ways to learn. I

20:19

mean, your course has been around for

20:21

a number of years now, but

20:23

there are other people starting to teach. There

20:25

are, I guess, even people like myself being

20:27

more vocal about it, even though I sold

20:30

my first PDF online in 2008.

20:32

But it certainly wasn't the way

20:34

you do it. So do you

20:36

think there's also maybe this confidence?

20:38

I mean, it's been 2007

20:41

when the Kindle launched. So we're

20:43

at 15 years of an indie

20:45

author market now. I

20:48

absolutely think the market has matured. I think in

20:50

the beginning, the people who did really, really well

20:53

in the early days of the Kindle were

20:55

those folks who had a catalog and had

20:57

their rights returned to them or who had

21:00

repurchased their rights and had

21:02

a dozen 15 or so books

21:05

to place on the platform who

21:08

were midlist authors in sort of

21:10

the traditionally published ecosystem. And they

21:12

found tremendous purchase in

21:15

the new ebook ecosystem. And

21:18

there were some really high quality authors there.

21:20

But I think what's happened over the next,

21:22

over the, like you say, 15ish years in

21:25

the meantime, is that most,

21:28

many if not most, really

21:30

high quality authors, they're just

21:32

not seeing much economic advantage

21:34

to the traditionally published route.

21:37

The royalty split is

21:39

not attractive. And you,

21:42

there's a lot of authors who are in

21:45

our community who are doing extremely well, who

21:47

at one point were traditionally published

21:50

and their careers only

21:52

began accelerating when they got their rights back

21:54

and when they became their own business owner

21:56

and their own business manager for their career.

22:00

So let's, I guess, get a bit more

22:02

into the benefits and the challenges of selling

22:04

direct because you

22:06

mentioned the data that you get, the

22:09

cross-channel effect. But what are some

22:11

other things? What are some of the good things and

22:13

also some of the challenges? So

22:15

once you start getting into

22:18

the advertisement game and with

22:20

60 million titles available 24-7, 365,

22:22

at least on Amazon and many

22:25

other real tailors, it's

22:27

really hard to have anyone discover

22:31

your books unless you're actively advertising

22:33

or you're spending a tremendous amount

22:35

of effort to build a brand, a personal

22:37

author brand around it. That also works. It

22:39

tends to take three to five to seven-ish

22:41

years to do so. As

22:44

soon as you get into that ecosystem,

22:46

you are not just

22:48

a writer. You are now an

22:51

entrepreneur. You have

22:53

to run a real business. You have to

22:55

pay very close attention to your cash flow.

22:58

You need to be a professional

23:00

about how you test and create

23:03

your ads. The

23:05

other thing that happens is that as

23:07

soon as you start spending real money

23:10

to bring eyeballs to your books, it

23:12

rapidly exposes any weaknesses in your product

23:14

quality. The

23:17

first inkling you might have that things aren't quite

23:19

right is that people just aren't buying

23:22

your books. What

23:26

you find along the way is that you have

23:28

to pay a good bit of attention to exactly

23:30

how you're presenting books, both on your

23:32

Amazon product detail page, but

23:34

also if you're doing direct sales

23:36

on your Shopify pages and your

23:39

sales pages leading to a Shopify

23:41

purchase. It

23:44

opens the door to

23:46

business operations that many

23:48

authors, lots of us

23:50

just want to do the thing we just want to write. But

23:53

again, in a world with 60 million books, it's

23:56

fine if you just want to write because you

23:58

love writing, but if you have commercial aspirations

24:00

if you'd like to make a living or you'd

24:02

like to make additional money on the side, it

24:05

takes a more disciplined approach, a more

24:07

methodical approach, and that

24:09

can be certainly a challenge for authors who

24:11

are already busy or sometimes holding down day

24:14

jobs and raising kids and all of those things.

24:18

I guess, yeah, I mean, to come back

24:20

on this, I feel like for many years

24:22

we did say that we were entrepreneurs because

24:24

an indie author, and I

24:27

certainly did, I have a book, Business

24:29

for Authors, How to be an Author

24:31

Entrepreneur. So I did use the word

24:33

entrepreneur, but when I look at now

24:35

how to run a Shopify store and

24:37

an e-commerce, essentially an e-commerce business, I

24:39

think actually we didn't know what we

24:42

were, Fat-Fu didn't know what we were doing

24:44

before. So just on that,

24:46

the process flow of, let's just

24:49

take, and I think a print is a

24:51

really good example. If you sell a print

24:53

book on Amazon compared to selling a print

24:55

book on your Shopify store,

24:57

Lars Emmerich, what's the difference? Because I

24:59

feel like a lot of people don't

25:01

understand the difference. That's

25:04

a terrific question. So hidden behind

25:06

the Amazon paperback purchase is

25:09

also an Amazon logistics operation

25:11

to print a

25:13

copy of your book that is just sold, or

25:16

if you have negotiated a wholesale order

25:18

with a third party printer and shipped

25:20

those books to one of Amazon's warehouses

25:23

for them to fulfill, i.e. to

25:26

pick from the shelves and package and ship to your

25:28

customer. All of that's happening

25:30

behind the scenes if you are selling

25:33

paperbacks on Amazon, but

25:35

you have to actually understand

25:37

how to do those things and set them

25:39

up so that they function if you're selling

25:41

paperbacks from your Shopify store. And

25:44

you should, especially now, we already talked

25:46

about the delta between book

25:48

prices and how they've gone compared

25:51

to advertising costs and how they've gone. So

25:54

you do need to, depending on your

25:56

genre for sure, pretty much anything other

25:59

than romance, you'd really need to be

26:01

very serious about a paperback operation as

26:03

well. And so it opens

26:05

a few different discussions. There

26:08

are print on demand services

26:11

and depending on where you're at, they can

26:13

make a great deal of sense logistically,

26:16

but they tend to be quite expensive because

26:19

they have to do all the logistical things,

26:21

but also run their company and provide profit

26:23

for their shareholders and all of those things.

26:26

So you can hook those up

26:28

to your Shopify store such that whenever

26:30

an order comes in, they're just fulfilled

26:32

behind the scenes for you by a

26:34

print on demand company. The

26:37

difficulty with that arrangement is that

26:39

depending on say your format size

26:41

and your page count, your

26:43

profit margins can be prohibitively thin

26:46

and it can be difficult to recoup costs. The

26:50

other way that folks go and the

26:52

other things to think about is to

26:54

negotiate a wholesale order to drive your

26:56

per book cost down, which increases your

26:59

gross profit per sale. So

27:01

for every sale at a given price

27:03

for your paperback, you make more money because

27:05

your expenses are lower. But

27:07

what that means is that you either

27:09

have to fulfill that purchase yourself, meaning

27:11

you have to pack and ship. Many

27:14

of our authors do that. Or

27:16

there are also author assistants who will

27:19

pack and ship on your behalf. And

27:22

then there are also third party logistics

27:24

companies that will warehouse your titles until

27:26

sold. And then when they're sold, they

27:28

will pull them from their shelves in

27:30

the warehouse and pack and ship them.

27:33

So there's a host of considerations that you

27:35

suddenly have to think about if you are

27:38

selling directly to your readers. It

27:40

sounds scary and it certainly can be. It really

27:42

helps to have a few tools to help you

27:45

calculate costs and make heads or tails of the

27:48

process of finding the right

27:50

source for your books at

27:52

a good compromise between cost

27:54

and quality, also

27:56

fulfillment time. And

27:58

you have to look carefully at the... prices in

28:00

your genre to understand

28:02

if this is likely to, or under what

28:04

circumstances is likely to be profitable for you.

28:07

So as you mentioned, it's suddenly a whole

28:09

host of things that are really

28:11

common to an e-commerce business, but have

28:14

not been as common to the author

28:16

world, especially the indie author business over

28:18

the last call it five-ish years. And

28:21

I think this is really important because

28:23

I've had more and more emails recently

28:25

saying, oh, it's really hard

28:27

to sell a book on Amazon now. Oh,

28:30

it's really hard to sell direct. So

28:34

what shall I do? And I'm like,

28:36

you could try pitching traditional publishing because,

28:38

and I think this is really important

28:40

and it's important that we emphasize them

28:42

that we are running this e-commerce business

28:45

by selling direct, because if you do

28:47

want to work with a traditional publisher,

28:49

then there is a reason they get

28:51

most of the money. It's because

28:53

they also have those logistics

28:56

set up and all of that. So I

28:58

do feel like it's a choice to

29:00

go this way. I use Book Vault here

29:02

in the UK and they have great print

29:04

prices. And so I find that I actually

29:06

can make more on selling a paperback than

29:08

I even do on some of my eBooks

29:11

in terms of profits, which I think is

29:13

very exciting. So I guess I would say

29:15

to encourage people that once you get it

29:17

set up, this is the other thing, isn't

29:19

it? Once you get your head around this,

29:22

you get it set up, it is just to sort

29:24

of plug and play the next book. I found there's

29:26

a lot of work up front and then the work

29:29

is much less going forward. That's

29:32

absolutely right. Once you've figured out how to get

29:35

it uploaded to your store or to the service,

29:38

then it's pretty smooth sailing. And Book Vault

29:40

has a tremendous reputation in the UK. They're

29:42

in the process of expanding over into the

29:44

US. What they're finding over here is

29:46

that they're subject

29:48

to the existing printing and shipping

29:51

infrastructure in the United States, which

29:54

leaves a lot to be desired. The distances

29:56

that have to be covered here in the

29:58

US between customer locations and say

30:01

business locations, those change

30:03

the economics quite a bit for those

30:05

printing companies. It's a bit harder. Here

30:07

in the US, primarily

30:09

the print-on-demand company is

30:11

at least with a terrific Shopify

30:13

interface is Lulu. I

30:16

have been extremely happy with their quality.

30:18

They are expensive and it

30:21

does eat into profit margins.

30:25

Bookball is a beautiful solution in

30:28

the UK currently. There's not currently

30:30

a beautiful solution at my page

30:32

count in the US for print-on-demand.

30:35

It's doable and

30:37

a lot depends on the quality

30:39

of your marketing assets. A lot

30:41

depends on your marketing assets in

30:43

general. Like a terrific

30:45

book is Table Stakes to be

30:48

a professional author and a terrific

30:50

marketing system and process is also

30:52

Table Stakes to be a successful

30:54

indie author today, I believe. I

30:58

kind of think it always has been, but

31:00

it's just changed. The things that used to

31:02

work more easily back in the day now,

31:04

as you say, are more expensive or just

31:06

things have changed or there's more books. Let's

31:08

just talk about one of the very, very

31:11

good things about Selling Direct, which is how

31:13

fast you get the money. This is such

31:15

a big deal. I feel like people don't

31:17

understand it because if you're traditionally published, you

31:19

might not get paid for months or sometimes

31:21

years. As an indie author, you still only

31:23

get paid sort of 60 days later, 90

31:25

days later, sometimes longer, depending

31:28

on the contract and the system. But I

31:30

have my Shopify set up to pay me

31:32

every day. Now, I know some people don't

31:34

have that. They have it every week or

31:36

whatever, but I really like making money every

31:38

day. Talk a bit about

31:41

the cashflow as well with the print

31:43

books because that's also different in terms

31:45

of when you get the money and

31:47

who pays for things. Absolutely.

31:49

It's so important, so critical not to

31:51

have to carry your own advertising costs

31:54

for two or three months. If

31:56

you spend a dollar today on an ad and it

31:58

produces a purchase, You want

32:01

that dollar back because your credit card company is going to

32:03

ask for it when your credit card bill is due. And

32:05

if you're waiting that 60 to

32:07

90 day window for Amazon to

32:10

issue their royalty payment to you

32:12

for today's sale, well,

32:14

you have to float that cost. So that

32:16

either means that you can't advertise to your full

32:18

capacity. You can't sell as many books as you

32:20

would otherwise be able to sell because

32:23

you can't afford probably personally just to

32:25

keep paying these ad costs without getting

32:28

cash flow back. So it's

32:30

a much, much slower ramp up to selling books at

32:32

scale when you have to wait up to three months

32:34

to get paid. Whereas if

32:36

you buy your ads today and

32:38

today or tomorrow, like the next

32:40

business day, that money shows

32:43

up in your bank account is that I'm like you. I

32:45

want that money deposited every single day. I

32:48

love those deposits

32:51

and I don't like them sitting, you know, sitting wherever they're at. I

32:53

like them in my account. So

32:57

you can pay off that credit card

32:59

bill for your advertisements every single month

33:02

and it just makes everything much healthier. The

33:04

other thing is that if you're

33:07

waiting for a royalty

33:09

payment to come in and

33:11

you're purchasing your own copies

33:13

of your paperbacks or your hardcovers to

33:15

sell, those orders come

33:17

out of pocket while you're waiting

33:19

for for those royalties to come

33:22

back. So again, it's just a

33:24

much slower and much less responsive

33:26

scaling capacity. And that's important because

33:28

there are seasons in an author's

33:30

year and also in an

33:32

author's career when you catch

33:34

a bit of a flyer where there's a

33:36

lot of demand suddenly for what you're offering.

33:39

And it's really important to be able to

33:42

take advantage of that. But if you're waiting

33:44

around three months to get the cash available

33:46

to purchase more books to sell to the

33:48

people who want them right now, that's a

33:50

really frustrating position to be in. So the

33:52

cash flow management in an author career is

33:54

a thousand times easier

33:56

when you make a sale today

33:59

and the money shows up. tomorrow in your account? Yeah,

34:03

and as you say, if you do hit

34:05

some big thing, like I know someone who

34:07

had a really massive day on TikTok, and

34:11

let's say you get a thousand orders

34:13

for your paperbacks through to your store

34:15

today, you get that money, but

34:17

you also have to pay the printer. So

34:19

one of the confusions that I feel people

34:21

have is at the moment, you don't have

34:23

to pay for Amazon, I say you don't

34:25

have to pay in inverted commas for Amazon

34:27

to print your book if you go through

34:29

KDP print because they take it out of

34:31

the sales. So you never have

34:33

to pay them out of your pocket. Whereas

34:36

when we're selling direct, we're paying for the

34:38

printing and then a customer pays us. So

34:41

I feel like this is so important, this

34:43

cashflow. And if you're doing a massive campaign,

34:46

then just remember this cashflow management, when does

34:48

the money come in? When does it go

34:50

out? But again, once you get it sorted,

34:53

you can manage this. So I do just

34:55

also want to talk about

34:57

when in an author's journey

35:00

might they consider selling direct through

35:02

your methods. And you're mainly talking

35:04

about Shopify, which is quite different

35:06

to Kickstarter, or some people might

35:09

be on Payhip. Some people

35:11

might sell at a local school, for

35:13

example. So what sort of points should

35:15

authors consider this? That's

35:18

a terrific question. And

35:20

it's very similar to the platform

35:22

that you're selling from, whether it's

35:24

Shopify or Payhip or Samcart, or

35:26

there's a bunch of them out

35:29

there. The considerations

35:31

are quite similar. What

35:33

we're seeing across our community, and we're close to 12

35:36

or 1300 authors strong in our

35:40

community at the moment. And we

35:42

have some folks who are doing really

35:44

well and can generate a purchase of a

35:47

bundle of their books for

35:49

$6, $7, $8 in advertising costs. Those

35:52

tend to be outliers. What we're seeing on

35:55

average is that the average cost

35:57

to bring in a new paying customer

35:59

is between 12 and $20. And

36:02

that's a range, it's not like author A

36:04

gets sales at 12 and author

36:07

B gets sales at 20. That's

36:09

a range that every author experiences throughout the

36:11

week or day or month. There's

36:14

a lot of fluctuation running any kind of business.

36:16

And you can tell this just by looking at

36:18

your, you're looking at

36:20

your Amazon purchases back on the dashboard. Some

36:22

days you sell more books than others and

36:25

it's the same when you're selling directly. So

36:28

that 12 to $20 customer acquisition

36:30

cost is relatively agnostic to

36:33

the advertising platform that you're

36:35

using. We use Meta because they're

36:37

by far the best. I test these every year

36:39

and spend thousands of dollars. And I always

36:42

wind up at the, I have always wound up at

36:44

the same place, Facebook and Instagram are where book buyers

36:46

mostly are, at least from an ad perspective.

36:49

But when you have to recoup a 12 to $20 customer

36:53

acquisition costs, that dictates how you need

36:56

to structure your business. So you have

36:58

to have enough products to sell to

37:01

make that profit, to make that

37:03

money back in profit and then

37:06

some so that you keep some for your

37:08

store. So if you're

37:11

a novelist and you're selling one

37:13

or two titles so

37:15

far, it's really rare

37:17

to do that profitably anywhere, including

37:21

on Amazon, but it's

37:24

really rare to do it profitably if you're selling

37:26

directly for those acquisition

37:28

costs reasons as well. So

37:31

the number of books that you have is

37:34

important. Each of them have

37:36

to be professional quality, professional grade. They

37:39

have to be so good that your readers know that

37:43

they're gonna love them, love them and tell

37:45

their friends about them. So that's what you're

37:47

aiming for product quality wise and

37:49

you need a bunch of products that way. So if

37:51

you're writing the romance genre,

37:55

we see typically around eight to

37:57

10 titles being sort of the price

37:59

of entry. for all the goodness that comes

38:01

from selling directly to your readers. And

38:04

in the other genres where there are typically

38:07

longer page counts and a slightly

38:10

less voracious reader community,

38:13

we see in the neighborhood of five to

38:15

eight titles. It's useful to know

38:17

too, like what's a sustainable number of titles? And

38:19

so a good metric for that is, I like

38:22

to think of it in terms of, I look

38:24

across our community and I ask myself,

38:26

what's the smallest number of titles that

38:28

an author has had and

38:31

they have used to sell over a million dollars

38:33

worth of their books? And what's magical

38:36

about a million dollars is just a nice milestone,

38:38

but what it really tells you is that their

38:40

setup is resilient. So it's not

38:42

like they have a good week and then everything

38:44

falls apart. To sell a million

38:47

dollars worth of your books, you're in pretty

38:49

rare air, which means that you have a

38:51

system that is working really well for you

38:54

and you have the right number of high quality

38:56

titles to work for you. So

38:58

that number, if you are a novelist, the

39:01

smallest number of titles that an author has

39:03

used to sell over a million dollars of

39:05

their books is eight. And

39:08

if you're a nonfiction author, this is

39:10

an interesting one, the

39:14

smallest number of titles that one

39:17

of our nonfiction authors has used to sell over a million

39:19

dollars worth of their books is three,

39:23

but it's a little bit misleading because it was

39:25

one main title with a workbook

39:28

and an associated poetry book. So

39:30

it was like a suite of three products.

39:33

Really, the Vanguard was led by that one

39:35

individual title. So

39:37

I mentioned that just to give you

39:39

a sense for what you can expect.

39:41

If you're looking to build a sustainable

39:43

business that produces enough cash for it

39:46

to be really interesting and really worth your time. And so

39:48

those are good numbers, I think, to aim for. If

39:51

you are topically on point

39:54

in your nonfiction title, it can be done

39:56

with a single title. It's really rare. If

40:00

you are a novelist, then

40:03

I would be looking more toward five to

40:05

eight as the, as

40:07

the, uh, really the point when

40:09

you can expect if you're doing

40:11

a good job testing your marketing

40:14

assets and elements and testing your

40:16

books and writing high, high quality

40:18

professional titles. That's when you

40:20

can reasonably expect, uh, to

40:22

start doing so profitably in a direct sales context.

40:25

Mm. And I'll put a little

40:28

caveat on this, which is if you

40:30

have one or two books, but you still

40:32

want to do this, you just can't do

40:34

big paid ad spend.

40:37

So if you're building up

40:39

your author brand slowly, you

40:42

can sell direct just through driving your

40:45

own traffic through building an email list, or if

40:47

you have a podcast like I have had for

40:49

many years, because this is how I've done it.

40:51

I've moved platforms over the years

40:53

as things have grown. But I do

40:55

think that some people are just launching

40:58

on either Kickstarter or through

41:00

Shopify and they don't necessarily have to do a

41:02

lot of ad spend. They don't have to sell

41:04

a lot of books. Your course in

41:06

your system is for the

41:08

very, very ambitious people who have

41:10

more books. And that's what we

41:12

all want. But sometimes if people

41:14

are starting out now, I wonder

41:16

if going through the building, the

41:18

store, learning the business can

41:20

also be beneficial, even if they're

41:22

not expecting the massive

41:25

sales just with the caveat that they're

41:27

not spending a ton on ads. Yeah,

41:29

I believe that's absolutely true. And that's

41:31

what I mean by the brand building.

41:34

Like if you're building a brand through

41:36

podcasts and in emails and newsletters and

41:38

appearances at conferences and media

41:40

appearances and such, that is

41:43

absolutely effective. In fact, that's

41:45

ultimately where all

41:47

of us need to end up if

41:50

we really want to grow into a

41:52

really recognized and successful brand. I

41:55

will say that there are certain elements

41:57

that certainly that we teach that are

41:59

quite important. no matter where you

42:01

are in your author career. So it's

42:03

not like you should wait to

42:06

engage with paid ads until you

42:08

have eight titles or five titles.

42:10

It's actually kind of tragic to

42:13

do that. And the

42:15

reason is that we

42:17

tend to overestimate the

42:20

quality and marketability of

42:22

our own work. And

42:24

so one of the worst situations, and I

42:27

see it unfortunately over and over again, where

42:29

people come into the community with lots of

42:31

titles, which need lots

42:33

of work. And so

42:36

the way around this is not

42:38

to ask your friends if they like your

42:41

work or not to ask your family members

42:43

if you're going to be a star author,

42:46

but to test your ideas in front

42:48

of total strangers who

42:51

are known to read in

42:53

your market. And this is

42:55

different than sending a survey out to your email

42:57

list. It's again, different

42:59

to asking people in person for

43:01

feedback because they're solving a different

43:03

equation. They're thinking about their relationship

43:05

with you and your feelings. And

43:08

so they're not directly answering this question.

43:10

Would you buy this right now? That's

43:13

the question. And you

43:16

can't be asked them directly. You just have to put

43:18

things in front of them that give

43:20

them the opportunity to show you

43:22

yes or no, how

43:24

resonant, how effective your

43:27

messaging is. And so we do

43:29

this and the

43:31

name of the process is called click testing.

43:34

Click testing has been used

43:36

in about 75 plus

43:38

different industries. It's helped to drive over a billion

43:40

dollars, including a $200 million per year in extra

43:42

revenue. It's a way to test a

43:49

number of your ideas very

43:51

quickly, but also with

43:53

high fidelity and a pretty high

43:55

level of precision. And

43:57

one of the things that we discovered is like 800 authors.

46:00

So the beginning of that process, the

46:03

direct sales process, actually is

46:05

click testing and it applies

46:07

to pretty much anyone

46:10

at most spots inside

46:12

of your author career trajectories.

46:14

Whether you're already selling a

46:16

lot of books, we've got

46:18

folks who are multi-million dollar a

46:21

year sellers who have really dramatically

46:23

improved their profit margins. So they

46:25

took a lot more home and

46:27

we've got folks who were

46:30

beginning who had financially successful

46:32

titles through testing

46:34

the ideas and

46:36

the concepts. And it's not just

46:39

the ideas and concepts. It's also the specific words

46:41

as writers. We know this, but it's also the

46:43

specific words that we use. So

46:45

that's a really important way to think, in

46:47

my opinion, about if you want to do

46:49

this professionally and if you want your work

46:51

to be read, it's really important

46:53

to get midstream and early stream feedback on

46:55

whether anybody might be interested in reading this

46:58

book once you're done with it. Yes.

47:02

And I wanted to talk to you because

47:04

I have been through the click testing module

47:06

and I've always been pretty resistant to this.

47:09

I tried your course a while back

47:11

and it was a lot

47:13

of data. And so I'm not a massive

47:15

data person, but I did this click testing

47:18

process and I actually found it quite fun.

47:20

And I tell you what's different now, and

47:22

this will help people listening, is chat GPT

47:25

because you're right. I basically, I was

47:27

like, I can't come up with 15

47:31

different taglines. I just can't. My brain can

47:33

only think of one or two taglines. Or

47:36

maybe I can't think of any. Maybe I

47:38

can only write 70,000 words. I can't put

47:40

it all into like a tagline. But I

47:42

use chat GPT to come up with a

47:44

lot of the variants for the click testing.

47:47

And I don't think if I put this

47:49

on my email to you, but I

47:51

changed the tagline for Spear of Destiny,

47:53

which as we speak right now, has

47:55

just launched on Kickstarter. It's already funded.

47:58

So I mean, who. Who

48:00

knows whether that tagline made all the difference, but

48:02

I certainly changed it because when I split test

48:04

it, well, I did the click testing and I

48:06

put in whatever it was, 15 different variants or

48:09

however many it was. My

48:11

one, the one I came up with originally, it

48:13

just did not, it performed like number eight or

48:15

something out of the list. And

48:18

so I switched it to the one that tested

48:20

better and I did that to a market that

48:22

I normally sell to. So this

48:24

is what's interesting. This was a

48:26

Kickstarter tagline. This was not necessarily

48:28

a whole advertising campaign, but it

48:30

really, really helped me. And I guess the

48:33

other thing to say, because we talked before

48:35

about the conversion ads, which were more expensive,

48:37

these are click ads. So the, it doesn't

48:39

cost you that much to do

48:42

these tests, does it? No,

48:44

not at all. In fact, we, we just run it

48:46

a relatively low budget of $30 per day and each

48:48

test, and I recommend

48:51

six of them. And the number is

48:53

six, if you're a novelist or storyteller

48:55

or if you are a nonfiction author

48:57

who solves problems for people or problem

48:59

solver. So each of those

49:01

tests last one to two ish days at a $30 per

49:03

day ad spend. So

49:06

the whole thing is done in like two weeks and

49:08

maybe you've spent two to $300 to de-risk your

49:12

title, or maybe you spent two to $300

49:14

total to arrive at

49:16

a really high converting advertisement. And

49:19

like you mentioned, the things that you

49:21

learn about what people like, they're

49:24

not just useful on the book itself or

49:27

on the advertisement itself. They're useful everywhere

49:29

you're interacting with your customers. So in

49:32

your case, on the Kickstarter page, also

49:35

on your product detail page, whether that's on

49:37

your Amazon product page or on your Shopify

49:39

product page. Also if you're

49:41

doing lead generation and you're getting people to sign

49:44

up for your list, what

49:46

you discover to really resonate and really get

49:48

people excited in your click testing, guess

49:50

what? Get them excited on the

49:52

signup page. Or if you're bringing

49:54

people to a sales page in a direct sales

49:56

kind of scenario for your bundle

49:59

or for your website. for a trilogy that

50:01

you're offering in paperback or whatever, those

50:04

elements, they

50:06

really go a long way toward improving every

50:08

aspect of your business. You

50:10

include them in your emails, you include

50:12

them if you're making videos, if you're

50:14

writing blog posts. It

50:16

really is useful when you find,

50:20

kind of beyond a shadow of a

50:22

doubt, the confluence of your particular voice

50:24

and what you have to say, and

50:27

also what resonates with your market. Like it's

50:30

really nice when you feel good about the

50:32

things you're saying to your market and they

50:34

really respond to it. So it's a really

50:36

cool tool that way. Yes, so

50:38

because we're talking about meta here, we have to

50:41

talk about what's been going on recently. So we're

50:43

recording this at the end of May, 2024. And

50:47

the word in the author community in

50:49

the last month has been the metapocalypse,

50:52

where authors have seen a drop in

50:54

revenue and effectiveness of Facebook ads. Now,

50:56

my personal thought is that meta, we're

50:58

rolling out a lot of AI tools

51:01

and they're trying to make it easier

51:03

on us, but these experiments have caused

51:05

issues. A bit like any of

51:08

these changes, it's going to have an

51:10

effect. But some people have kind of freaked

51:12

out, gone back into KU with

51:15

their eBooks, wondering if it will ever come

51:17

back. What are your thoughts on, I guess

51:19

the short term, but also the long term

51:21

impact? What will change and what

51:23

should authors be doing? This is

51:26

such a good question. I've been advertising

51:28

online since 2003. Back

51:30

then, there wasn't just one search engine,

51:32

there were like six. So I was

51:34

advertising on all of them, different business,

51:36

but different ecosystems,

51:38

they all sort of had their ups

51:41

and downs. And then the advent of

51:43

first Facebook and then Facebook and Instagram

51:45

ads now under meta. And

51:47

those became a real player for us in like the 2015, 2016

51:50

ballpark, maybe 2014 even. And

51:55

I look back and

51:57

about twice a year, here,

52:01

in some community,

52:03

someplace, there

52:06

is the metapocalypse kind of

52:08

meme that circulates. And

52:12

it's really important to understand that in

52:14

any community of businesses and authors are

52:16

no different. At any given moment, we've

52:18

got authors in our community who are

52:20

having their best month ever. And we

52:23

have authors in our community, same

52:25

community, same month, same

52:28

advertising platform, who are not

52:30

having good months at all. So there's

52:32

this continuous up and down in any

52:35

business. Ours is no different. One

52:38

of the things that sort of

52:40

determines which industry takes up

52:42

the kind of meme like the sky

52:44

has fallen in Facebook

52:47

land is just which individuals are

52:49

having a rough month. If it's

52:51

somebody with a prominent platform and

52:53

they're writing about it or somebody

52:55

who's got a course on

52:57

something and they're having their turn in

53:00

the barrel, as they say, for

53:02

a rough month. It can really

53:05

feel like things are

53:07

out of control and we need to

53:09

make drastic changes. But

53:12

let me give you a resource that will stop

53:16

this kind of anecdotal spread

53:19

of information, which may not be accurate. So

53:22

there are a couple of

53:24

analytics companies who only

53:27

exist. They connect to

53:29

your Shopify store and they connect

53:31

to all of the different ad

53:33

platforms. So they see

53:35

every dollar that thousands

53:37

upon thousands of e-commerce

53:40

businesses are spending

53:42

on every relevant ad platform. And

53:46

they see how much a click is

53:49

costing, what are the click through rates,

53:51

how much does it cost to bring in a

53:53

new customer. And because

53:56

they have such a broad view across that

54:00

are relevant to e-commerce and across so

54:02

many different niche e-commerce

54:04

stores, it actually

54:07

gives you a real sense of what's

54:09

going on. And so the resource I'd

54:11

like to point everybody to is northbeam.io.

54:15

So North like the direction,

54:17

Beam like Laserbeam, northbeam.io. They

54:20

have a media buyer newsletter. And

54:24

what they do is they send

54:26

out monthly their statistics. And

54:29

so the main meme that

54:32

the sky has fallen in meta land in

54:35

the book world, that was

54:37

on the strength of April's results

54:39

for better and worse. And

54:43

it was really interesting because the

54:45

recent Northbeam media buyer newsletter, which

54:47

rounds up all of them, you

54:49

can see exactly what market share

54:52

exists on like meta versus Google

54:54

versus YouTube versus TikTok. And

54:57

you can see trends in whether

54:59

it's become more expensive or less

55:01

expensive, more profitable or less profitable.

55:04

And the April 2024 results were better than the April

55:07

2023 results.

55:13

So from that

55:15

perspective, there was no metapocalypse

55:18

this year, which

55:20

is really interesting. You can see the difference between

55:23

what happens socially and anecdotally.

55:25

When we talk

55:27

to each other, but we don't have the ability

55:30

to see what's actually happening from a numbers perspective.

55:32

But when you fold in that data, it

55:36

really helps you make more informed decisions.

55:39

So and how would I use this differently?

55:41

Like if that data came back and said, oh my

55:43

gosh, April 2024, it was 25% more expensive than it

55:45

was in 2023. Things really are looking bleak.

55:52

I would consider making significant

55:54

changes to my business,

55:56

to the structure of it, to the strategy

55:58

of it. But But

56:00

given that it came back, actually,

56:02

April 24 was better than April 23,

56:05

numerically speaking, that's

56:08

different. Then my action is, okay,

56:10

it sounds like I just need to

56:12

work harder to test newer creative, maybe

56:15

test newer hooks, new images, things

56:18

that are resonating now because culture

56:20

moves at a pretty quick pace.

56:22

So things that worked, they

56:25

worked for a shorter period of time now

56:27

because things are moving so quickly

56:29

in media and culture. So

56:32

it's important to be able to

56:34

make strategic decisions like that with

56:37

actual information. And it's not like pages and

56:39

pages and reams and reams of data. It's

56:42

usually, it's summarized usually just in one chart

56:45

and fits on your phone. So

56:47

I recommend that everybody who's buying

56:49

ads in the book

56:51

world, subscribe to that northbeam.io. I'm not

56:53

affiliated with them. I just, I just

56:55

think they're awesome. It's called

56:57

the Media Buyer newsletter. So that'll keep

57:00

you from making emotional knee-jerk reactions that

57:02

you could live to regret. Yeah,

57:05

I think again, it comes back to what we

57:08

were saying at the beginning around being an entrepreneur

57:10

and having a real business. And the reality is

57:12

it's not all up and to the right forever.

57:17

Unfortunately, not everything is like that all the

57:19

time. It goes up and down and things

57:21

change. And that's part of the fun of

57:23

it too. I mean, if it was always

57:25

the same, then it would be so boring.

57:27

So this is certainly interesting. And as I

57:29

said, I find the course great. You're a

57:31

great teacher and you've recently redone the whole

57:33

course. So tell people a

57:36

bit about the course and who it's

57:38

for and yeah, who it's most suitable

57:40

for I guess. Thank you. I

57:42

appreciate that. So there are two programs and

57:45

the front door for everybody

57:48

is click testing. Because

57:51

I've just seen almost

57:53

universally positive results in a whole bunch

57:55

of different industries. And the

57:57

reason that the results are positive. is

58:00

because you're learning more about what your market

58:02

wants. Like what do the people actually want

58:05

and respond to? So it

58:07

doesn't matter where you're at, if you're working

58:09

on that first book, you

58:12

would definitely want some information that your market

58:15

is excited about the ideas, that you're spending

58:17

so much time and effort and energy and

58:19

probably money and love to

58:21

produce. And also

58:23

if you're selling well, but would like

58:25

to increase your profit margins, or you'd

58:27

like to be able to advertise more

58:29

aggressively to produce more sales, but to

58:31

do that, you have to be able

58:33

to advertise more effectively. Click

58:35

testing is for you also. Like I say,

58:38

it's helped people who have zero books and

58:40

are making $0 per month, and

58:42

it's helped people who have many books and who

58:44

are really big names, not just in the indie

58:46

community, but out in the world, in the author

58:49

world. And it's improved

58:51

their, the

58:54

number of books they're able to sell and the profit

58:56

margin they're able to sell it at. So that's called

58:58

click testing for authors. And

59:01

that's the introductory program. It's the foundation for

59:03

everything. And the reason it's the foundation for

59:05

everything that we do inside of our processes

59:08

is because it teaches you what your customers

59:10

like. And that's really important. And

59:13

for a subset of folks who have

59:15

the number and quality of titles that

59:17

we spoke about earlier, there's a follow-on

59:20

program called Direct Sales for Authors. Those

59:23

two modules together are inside of

59:25

version four of MO. But

59:28

Direct Sales for Authors really hones in

59:30

on the nuts and bolts

59:32

of setting up a direct sales system.

59:35

It gives you a bunch of tools to

59:37

help you calculate your paperback costs, for example.

59:40

That can be, there can be a hassle.

59:42

So we would put some spreadsheets together to

59:44

do all that math for you because people

59:46

who write aren't always people who love to

59:48

do math. So that's taken care of for

59:50

you. And we also

59:52

walk you through the process of getting

59:54

your assets to work profitably. There's one

59:57

thing to set everything up so that

59:59

it functions. i.e.

1:00:01

when you put your credit card in, a book comes out on

1:00:03

the other end of that, right? That's

1:00:06

one thing, but getting that

1:00:08

process to operate profitably is

1:00:10

another thing entirely. It's a whole process in and

1:00:12

of itself, and there's some art

1:00:14

and science to it. So we

1:00:17

provide tools for that, for those folks

1:00:19

who are interested in building a direct

1:00:21

sales business and interested in doing so

1:00:23

at an exciting kind of

1:00:25

scale based on the number of books that

1:00:27

you have. There's really two programs. The first

1:00:30

one is ClickTesting for Authors. That's

1:00:32

for everybody under the sun who writes books,

1:00:34

in my opinion. And

1:00:36

then the Direct Sales for Authors is a

1:00:38

more focused program for those folks who are

1:00:41

in a position to most immediately benefit from

1:00:43

a serious direct

1:00:45

sales effort. Fantastic.

1:00:48

And if people would like to

1:00:51

use my affiliate link, I'm a

1:00:53

happy affiliate. I have done the

1:00:55

course. I think it's great. It

1:00:58

is thecreativepen.com/click testing. All one word,

1:01:00

thecreativepen.com/click testing. And

1:01:02

where else can people find it? I

1:01:04

always like to give people the actual

1:01:06

link because of course, we don't expect

1:01:08

people to go through my affiliate and

1:01:10

also tell people where your books are

1:01:12

as well, because you are a real

1:01:14

author. I think that's really important. Yes,

1:01:17

thank you. So please do use Joanna's

1:01:19

affiliate link to support Jo's podcast and

1:01:21

her efforts and everything that you have

1:01:24

done for our community for all these

1:01:26

years. But if that's not

1:01:28

your thing, perfectly fine. M

1:01:30

O author.com A M

1:01:32

M O like author marketing mastery

1:01:34

through optimization. M O

1:01:36

author.com is sort of the front door.

1:01:39

And if you want to check out my trashy spy

1:01:41

thrillers, they're at Lars.buzz. L

1:01:44

A R S dot B U Z Z. Or

1:01:48

ZZ if you are British. Depending

1:01:50

on if you are on

1:01:53

the correct side of the pond or the incorrect side of the

1:01:55

pond. Right.

1:01:57

Well, thanks so much for your time.

1:01:59

Steve, that was great. Thank

1:02:01

you so much, Jo. I really appreciate it. So

1:02:06

I hope you found the episode with

1:02:09

Steve useful. And of course, selling direct

1:02:11

is not for everyone because of the

1:02:13

investment in time and money in building

1:02:15

an e-commerce business. But click testing certainly

1:02:18

can be used at any stage of

1:02:20

the process to test ideas or drive

1:02:22

traffic to retailers or your website. You

1:02:24

can check out the course with my

1:02:27

affiliate link at thecreativepen.com/click testing. And

1:02:29

if you want to see my click

1:02:31

testing efforts for fiction and nonfiction, join

1:02:34

the community at patreon.com/the creative pen as

1:02:36

there will be a video available shortly

1:02:38

after this goes out. And

1:02:40

of course, if you want to

1:02:42

join me for that discovery writing

1:02:44

webinar by the bundle or the

1:02:47

ebook plus add on at jfpen.com/destiny.

1:02:49

As ever, I love to hear from you.

1:02:52

Please leave a comment on the podcast show

1:02:54

notes at thecreativepen.com or on the YouTube channel

1:02:56

message me on X at the creative pen

1:02:59

or email me Joanna at thecreativepen.com. Next

1:03:02

week, it's back to craft and

1:03:04

mindset as I talk about writing

1:03:07

through fear with Caroline Donahue. In

1:03:09

the meantime, happy writing and I'll see

1:03:11

you next time. Thanks for listening today.

1:03:14

I hope you found it helpful. You

1:03:17

can find the backlist episodes

1:03:20

and show notes at thecreativepen.com/podcast

1:03:23

and you can get

1:03:25

your free author blueprint

1:03:27

at thecreativepen.com/blueprint. If

1:03:30

you'd like to connect, you can

1:03:32

find me on Facebook and X

1:03:34

at thecreativepen or on

1:03:36

Instagram and Facebook at

1:03:39

jfpenauthor. Happy

1:03:41

writing and I'll see you next time.