We’re talking about how to connect with readers online. Social media, mailing lists, events (virtual and in real life), special interest groups, and way to connect with YOUR specific audience. How to narrow down your approach, and where to best invest your energy. We dig into how to be truthful and authentic about who you are in making those connections. Tools are shared—what they are and how they work to help you deliver content.

This site contains affiliate links to products that we have used and love, and that we think may be of help to you on your authorpreneur journey. We may receive a commission on sales of these products, which is how this podcast stays independent and free of advertising. Thanks for your support! Click here for a full list of recommended tools and resources. 

Movie
Clueless

Books
Strangers to Superfans by David Gaughran
Newsletter Ninja by Tammi Labreque
The Power of Moments by Dan and Chip Heath
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
Silmarillion by Tolkien
Glass Into Steel by Michele Amitrani
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Foundation by Asimov

Visit our websites

• Crystal Hunt (Non-fiction)
• CJ Hunt (Romance)
• Michele Amitrani (Fiction)
• The Creative Academy for Writers (Community/Resources)

Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 007: Connecting With Readers

Crystal: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. I’m Crystal Hunt

Michele: And I’m Michele Amitrani. We are here to help you save time, money, and energy as you level up your writing career

Crystal: Welcome to the James Bond episode. 007 of the strategic authorpreneur podcast. On today’s show, we are going to tackle what, personally I find one of the most challenging, but also one of my favorite aspects of the publishing process, which is connecting with our readers.

So this is something a lot of people struggle with. I know. Where do you find them and how do you get them to talk to you and how do you not feel like a bit of a spammy stalker person within you are, you know, sending out emails to your list and trying to put stuff on social but not seem like you’re just a walking billboard and how do you authentically engage with people?

So I’m curious to hear from you, sir. What have been some sort of challenges and highlights of connecting with your readers.

Michele: I’m going to be very old fashioned and I go on to reveal something to you. Okay? This is not the best way you necessarily connect with readers because it’s fewer than the internet, but they’re my favorite ways. Maybe some of you are guessing: in person. And why did I say that? It’s not necessarily the best way because there is a limited amount of space in a conference room or it’s a limit in the amount of space in the room in general, but I love doing it. I love to see the face of the person that may be listening to one of my readings of my books.

I love to experience the kind of feedback that I get when I’m meeting a vendor at an event and selling my books. I love to get like feedback in real life. This is the way I love connecting with people. Like shaking hands and really, really get to know them and understanding a bit more about myself in the process because you always understand something about yourself when you are at an event.

Any kind of event. It can be at a book fair. It can be like when you are doing blue pencils or something. I don’t know, I think you grow up like a, as a human being, but is it necessarily good for book sales or a to reach more people? Not necessarily. That’s why me and Crystal are here, and that’s why we’re going to tell you a lot of awesome ways to get in touch with more people and more readers.

I told you that my favorite way is offline, but I do recognize the importance of the online. And there are several different ways that you can connect with readers. One of the words that is more in the mouth of everybody is social media. You got the newsletter.

If you have one, and hopefully after six episodes, you have started with the newsletter of our podcast series. There is the group that you are a part of online, offline. For example, if you’re writing romance, or in a romance group on Facebook, or an association. For example, in Vancouver there is the Greater Vancouver Writer Association that came from romance writers. Now it’s a bit more a generic and broad, but that could be a starting point. So when you understand what exactly is the genre that you want to write, and Crystal’s case is different from mine, different genre, I think you figure out 50% of more of the stuff you need to do.

Because once you know the genre you want to write, you know what kind of people you want to meet and connect with. So, you have just taken off the equation, something that most of the people will never figure out because they will shoot at just everything and everybody, and we’ll miss most of the times.

So what is important is not just to find an audience, but your audience, and that’s where super, duper extra, extra deeper difficult because you have to do researches. And researches are things that are not necessarily exciting. And me, myself, I mean the process of finding people that are interested in the kind of work that I write.

I didn’t figure that out yet. I’m just starting out. I do know Crystal has more of an answer to that question, but if there is one thing that I figured out is do that exercise. What kind of books are you writing? What kind of people are interested in your book? That’s the audience. That’s the people you want to connect with the most.

And we’re going to talk about the sites or instruments or resources you can use. But I think that’s the first question you need to ask yourself. What does Crystal think?

Figuring out your audience

Crystal: Yeah. No pressure. So what do I think about where people connect up? I think, there’s a really interesting interview that’s coming up in the next episode with Liza Palmer, and she is talking about social media and what’s kind of happening in terms of trends and what we need to be thinking about.

So I think if this is something you want to deep dive in to make sure you definitely show up for the next episode. One thing I like to get people thinking about is who actually is your audience for your books? I mean, it’s really tempting to just say everybody, and you know, we tried the default to the broadest possible group, but it’s actually the opposite it that you want to do, which is really drilling down into very specifically who is your audience?

And I think it can be really helpful to do the exercise that you may have heard mentioned before, which is who is your ideal customer? And if you can actually give them a name and a job and an age and you know, a daily kind of life that they are living, then you can target everything you are doing to be specifically beneficial for that person and it will really help you avoid the trap of trying to do all the things in all the places.

And one of the things that we, I think you also have to look at is what do you enjoy doing? Because there are hundreds of platforms you could be on, there are so many tools, so many communities, so much stuff you could be a part of, but we cannot do everything.

We really can’t. There are a very limited number actually of hours in the day. That does not change. It does not get bigger. Even if you are efficient, there is still only a certain amount of  energy and a certain amount of time you want to spend in this part of things. So for me, I sat down and I made a list of what are all the possible things I could do?

Where are the platforms I could be on and what am I enjoying. And where are my people? And then seeing what crosses over. So if your perfect a reader is, you know, maybe a mom of two who is in her you know, late twenties to forties, depending. Then you can look at, okay, well where do those people hang out?

Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? What are the platforms where those folks are? And then you can think about for your own content, what kind of stuff do you want to share? What platforms do you love? So for me, a lot of my readers hang out on Instagram and I really like taking pictures, and I really like connecting in that format where I can look at my world in a different way and share bits and pieces of the things on Instagram. Now I don’t have a brand account in a way that some of the authors do. So that’s another decision is are you interacting, sing with your readers as yourself or as your brand or as your characters, and then seeing what fits.

I don’t like spending a lot of energy on being anything other than myself. So you’ll find some pretty high consistency across channels. I just am me, but on Instagram. So you’ll see stuff that’s you know, there’s cocktails, there’s fun friendy things. There’s a lot of board games. There’s a lot of bubbly because when I hit milestones, I get to open the little baby bottles of champagne.

So yeah, there’s a lot of drinking only when I’m doing all my work though. So I think that’s that that’s what you can expect from me. But I think that’s also what you can expect. The same kind of tone in my social profiles as in my books. So if you like the tone of my stories, which is about people connecting with people and you know, finding joy in their daily lives and beautiful bits of nature, since it’s all set in small towns; like that’s what I take pictures on my phone, daily walk, and I post those. And like, it’s all just me. But you know, other authors will have chosen to feature, I mean, I write romance, so feature hot security dudes as like a daily picture that’s something that some people do. If that’s what your books are about and that’s what your audience is looking for and that’s what you have fun doing, then Hey, rock on with your bad self.

It’s just whatever makes sense for you and whatever you can sustain right over time, I think it’s consistency that’s really important. Yeah for me, it’s just decide what feels good to you, because if you don’t like it, you’re not going to do it. Then it doesn’t do anything for you at all.

Michele: And there is actually one thing that you said, like knowing your audience. I know that is true. For example, for some authors, that are starting out, it is definitely applicable to me. I’m trying to find ways to discover my audience in a nonconventional way. And I’m telling you, I want to tell you now, what I’m doing. And don’t laugh, okay?

So I have decided a few months ago to start releasing the stories for free. And I think I mentioned this before, it’s because I want to understand exactly what people like about my stories and putting them for free because I’m also learning how to write in my second language which, which is English. Now I did start getting some feedback. How is this important or meaningful for this episode, which is connecting with your audience?

It is meaningful because every single time I now get feedback from the reader; I’m going to use the word “stalk” the reader, but it’s not the right word. But for example, I got a review yesterday from one of the short stories I released in January, Glass into Steel, and this person wrote like…almost a poem of a review. It was very in depth, it explained everything I basically needed to know.

Which is basically the message in my eBook, I said, this story is for free. Please let me know what works and what doesn’t for you. And this reader really went out of their way to let me know what she thought. Super, super important stuff. For what I want to do to understand as a writer, but it doesn’t necessarily help me to understand what kind of reader is this person.

So what did I do? I went to Goodreads. And Goodreads for the maybe three people that don’t know, is the biggest social media of readers and authors. So it’s a very important platform that you can use to understand your audience. So what did I do?

I checked her name on Goodreads. And I went on their profile and I started reading about her and I started understanding what she liked. I went on her list of favorite books. And I studied every single one of them. Every comment she gave a on a book that she recently read. And I’m doing that on a scale that gives me data I can work on.

Thanks to this review and thanks to the fact that I met this reader, I now know a bit better what makes my story tick. And what is the kind of audience that is reading my stories. This is something that you can definitely try on your books. It doesn’t matter the genre, it doesn’t matter when you’re writing what you’re writing, at which state of your author career you’re at.

You can always learn from readers of your book. Don’t stalk them, but follow them. Just try to understand why they like your story and then maybe try to see why they liked it and what kind of people are they? What part of the world they’re in. So this person is from the United States, which happens to be also the bedrock of the people that constitute my newsletter.

So you really start adding things, making connection. You know, connecting the dots so we say, right? I think this is an exercise. It might be time consuming, but at the same time, I do believe, Crytal, if you apply yourself in baby steps and you write down in whatever way you want to write it down, can be in a notebook or can be in keeping it in your head as a note.

Why that person took 5, 10, 30 minutes of their life to write a review. You try to understand what person is this? He’s going to really help you figure out the question, what kind of audience likes my story? And at that point you can double your efforts on finding readers that are more in that genre. I do find this to be an interesting exercise.

I do not know if you believe me crazy, Crystal. I do want your opinion on that. And since we also have touched the newsletter point, I was wondering if there is a way for us to also understand from that part of our platform.

Newsletters

Crystal: Yes. So I don’t think you’re crazy. I did basically the same experiments about 18 months ago. Yeah. And that was how I seriously ramped up my newsletter list, was actually by going through and I made a whole bunch of my stories free. I made the first novella in each series free, and I just wanted it to get as many people onto my list as I could because I wanted to email them and I wanted to ask them questions.

So for most of that first year of my newsletter, I was just asking people questions about them, like, you know. Welcome to the River’s End book club basically, and I’m treating it like a book club and that these are not followers, these are other people who are choosing to spend time in my world with me.

And so the most interesting sets of information I’ve gotten have been as people using a direct reply to my email. And I don’t have a newsletter, like it’s not that kind of a mailing list. I just send emails to people and that mentality helps me not make it too salesy and not make it to newsletterish.

And I think makes people more comfortable in hitting that reply button to talk to me. And I’ve found the interactions I was having with people on like Facebook or wherever are super superficial. They’re very public. So people are not very forthcoming with any kind of personal stories or anything, but through my mailing list, I was literally sending emails to people who were then replying, like we were having a conversation on a regular email chain.

And so I got to know a lot of my readers, my ARC team especially. And that’s, you know, it’s over a hundred people. Yes. It takes time because you have to read all the emails that come back and process and okay, it is a conversation, but I believe that those relationships deserve that energy and it comes back a hundred fold when you look at the level of engagement from those people, and then, I mean, they care about me. I care about them. You know, it goes both ways. And so I think that has been, that is my most favorite way of connecting with my readers to the point where I’ve actually eliminated almost all my social media channels and everything else. They still exist, but they’re basically, they’ve been paused for a time because I, it’s not where I want to put my energy.

I find the most rewarding interactions with the readers coming from that mailing list and the emails back and forth. So I have freed up the time that I might have spent on various superficial interactions in social media, and so that I would have the time to read and reply to the things that folks are sending.

And it’s an instant panic reaction for most authors when I say, Oh, everything I send out, I invite people to email me back and there’s this sort of gasp with horror. Well, how could you possibly get anything done? And I’m like, most people don’t take you up on it. They just like to be asked. And so, you know, you don’t talk to all your friends every day.

Like that’s not how that works. Do you have different relationships with different people. And it’s just like that it’s, some people will be more emaily than others and they also often are happy to tell you all kinds of things. I ask what kinds of books are people loading onto their Kindles for spring break or you know, what’s another book that you absolutely loved in the same genre?

Because I am a reader first before I’m a writer actually, so I need more books to put on my Kindle. I want to know what do people love that’s in my genre and from a strategy point of view, that helps because you then know what people are reading and liking, you have other authors you could maybe do a newsletter swap with, cause you know they’d have a similar audience and it just opens up lots of other areas.

But yeah, I think that’s what works best for me, is knowing that that is my preferred method of communication. It doesn’t feel spammy or awkward or uncomfortable. Like personality wise, I can just be myself in there and it’s just a really nice way to interact with people, and I think what feels like a more meaningful, personalized way than a lot of the other sort of mass communication options.

How do I gather feedback? It’s mostly looking at the engagement statistics on my newsletters. So just like you said before, knowing where are people from, which helps me to know what time zone is it there, what issues might they be facing? You know, there’s been a couple of times where there’s been some pretty awful disastery things. So things kind of going on in the world and you know, being able to send out a message that just says, I hope you know, those of you who are in these areas are staying safe and warm with a good book in a hot cup of tea and some good friends, or whatever. It lets you personalize your messaging and it also helps you stay in touch with what else might be going on.

Because as much as we don’t want to think this we, we are not everyone’s first priority. You know, you may be launching a book and there’s a lot of other stuff going on in the world. We pick these arbitrary launches dates, and then life happens. And I know I’ve had a few times where I’ve sent out a message to my review crew and been like, Hey, you know, the book is up.

I’d love for the reviews to get posted in the next 48 hours. And you know, I’ll get a panicked email back from somebody on the review group who’s like, I’m in the hospital. Like, I don’t think I’ll be able to get to this in time. Can I still stay on review crew? And like, Oh my God, yes. Just take care of yourself, please.

And I think remembering that, like it’s easy to get. Very like, Oh, there’s, you know, 25 slots on here, and if you don’t review inside of 48 hours, you’re out, kind of thing. I’ve seen emails from authors with that kind of a tone, but like there are people on the other end of these emails and you don’t know what’s happening in their lives.

And so I think just remembering that is that they’re not just people. They are a person, an individual who is living a life. And if you can respect that and act accordingly, your relationship with those readers, is a real relationship. It’s an actual thing. It’s not just a commercial transaction or you asking for a favor.

And that comes through. I think people understand that. They feel that difference if you actually care about them. It completely changes the way your business will work. And I think that’s true of any, we are in a customer service business, whether we want to look at it like that or not. And your customers, ore a hundred percent of the value of your business, because the only way you make money is if people buy your stories and they become part of your world.

And so respecting that is extremely important and acknowledging that your readers are your business. That’s all there is to it. The stories are the medium you’re connecting through, but  they are a tool as much as anything else. But the relationship with those people is what drives this success of your business.

Michele: I was just about to say, and we both have or are having experience. We both worked, in my case, working in customer service. I think I can relate very much in what you’re saying. It’s the way you talk with that person. When you establish a relationship that makes everything. And I believe because we are authors, we have to add another level on that thing.

And I don’t want to be somebody that gives guidelines or anything, but I do believe this when I’m saying it, that I respect every single reader that I have. If there is an opinion on one of our stories, I do believe it’s important for us to pay attention to every single one of them.  Bad, medium, or awesome.

I mean, the awesome are gonna make our day and maybe the bad one are going to break it. It’s just part of the process. But this podcast episode is about the audience, like how to reach it, how to build it. I think what you just said, Crystal. It’s like something that should be written in the wall of everybody’s home.

It is important to establish a relationship with these people because they are investing time over us. Either you think of yourself as a brand or you think of yourself first as a storyteller. Even if you think of yourself as an authorpreneur or just a person that want to write stories and make sure that they are out there to connect with the most people possible.

You have to realize there is another human being on the other side. This is huge. This is so important because when readers read our stories, basically they are entering our own mind. Our own words.  I think the most important thing that we can do is respect this jump of fate. There are a bazillion stories out there.

Remember that this person stopped on Amazon, clicked the bottom and downloaded a part of yourself in a that a Kindle device or, or that computer. It is our job to listen to them. It is our job to understand what works and what didn’t by reading reviews. And there’s one thing about reviews that is super important and I’m just gonna open a parenthesis.

Because I try and I started doing it. I read my bad reviews in a coffee shop or outside of home, basically because Crystal’s thought is that if there is a bad or a critique review. If you can have that audience feedback when there are other people around, you are going to be able to internalize it a bit better, more constructively. Close parenthesis.

But yeah, try to read through your bad reviews outside. What I’m trying to say here is just a more fundamentally basic thing that it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from. The reader needs your respect. And I think it’s important to underline this, even though you just said it and I don’t know if I’m being too sentimental, cheesy, but I do believe on this. This is part of the brand that I am, and this is part I know of the brand that you are Crystal.

Crystal: Yeah, I think we both have very people focused brands, and that is something that’s important to acknowledge. Not everyone is going to come to it from the same place, but we both, I mean, we podcast, we are public about certain parts of our lives.

We like to do events. We are not maybe the most introverted of introverted writers. I think that we’re both people people. And so that is at the heart of the stories that we tell and how those things work. So yes, results may vary, you know, if, if it’s not your thing, don’t pretend to be that, just, you know, figure out what will work for you.

But I think there are some really actually quite easy and practical ways that you can connect with your readers from a quality perspective. So one of those is using the—and it seems counterintuitive—but using the text based email options for your mailing list, it doesn’t have to look super fancy and perfect in order to get people’s attention.

If it looks like a real email from a person, which is ,and it feels like an email. If people are going to reply to that and they’re going to feel like I sent them a message. Most people in the world don’t realize the mechanics behind personalizing an email. So, you know, we’ve noticed with our writers group, even, who are all writers who have some knowledge of the business and the tools, when we send out an update and we use the first name personalization, they reply like they have to tell us, Oh, I can’t make the meeting or whatever, because they think we sent that email just to them.

They don’t process that it is in fact, a bulk email. And that works for you, right? It’s all of the mailing services have this personalization option on my signup forms on my website when I’m asking people to put in their name and email in the name field, the label is what do your friends call you?

What do you want your friends to call you? Because I want to be their friend when I’m addressing them, I want to be familiar and for them to feel comfortable. And so, you know, it’s up to them to put what they want in that field. And maybe, there’s probably people in my mailing list that have, you know, Mr. Snuffleupagus or whatever, cause they didn’t want to put their real name.

And I don’t care that if that makes them laugh every time they see it. Perfect. That’s great. But I think using that personalization, remembering as you’re writing your communications, whether it’s on social or through your mailing list, just talk to a person on the other end of it. And use language that is comfortable for you.

And it feels like what fits with your books. Your brand wants to be consistent. So regardless of the level of “you-ness” in your brand, it might be that you have created an author persona. You might be writing under a pen name, but everything within that pen name, this brand needs to feel authentic.

It needs to match up. It needs to be in alignment with what you have created. And so I’m using your language useing your image choices using. You know the questions you ask people in the way all of that experience feels it takes a lot of energy to edit yourself. So to be something other than you are takes a very conscious effort and a lot of energy and a lot of work and time.

And so just to be aware, as you’re setting up your strategy as an author and your brand as an author, be aware that you want to keep that brand as authentic as you can. You know, it’s like if you’re, if you’re training for the CIA and you’re going to be a spy, you need to keep your story as close to reality as possible, because that’s less to remember, right? You don’t want to have to remember all the details of what you said or didn’t say, and so you’re basically a spy. When you have a pen name, you’re basically a spy, you’re an undercover agent. You have created a fake persona. You are living that fake persona to the point where it needs to be real to other people. You are a spy.

So read some of sun’s by graft, do a little bit of investigation into how that works and follow the guidelines, right? You want to make it as easy to maintain as possible with the least amount of divergent points. And no, you don’t have to say everything about your private life, but make sure there’s an element of truth in everything that you are saying.

So, you know, I could write to my mailing list and talk about a challenge I faced in my week. You know how I found myself wondering how a certain character would solve it from one of my books and, you know, put on that personality to get you through that challenging time. I do that all the time. It’s just a coping mechanism, but it’s also an interesting mental exercise. And I can talk about something that feels personal. I don’t have to say the name of my child or the fact that you know, particulars about the parenting situation. It’s the essence of that experience. That is what people are going to relate to, right?

That moment in parenting where you’re like, wow, I failed that and I’m the worst parent ever in the history of the world. I don’t have to reveal any details about my kid, my family, my, anything else. But I am able to share that experience and that feeling with other people who can relate. So I think we have a lot of sort of fear around revealing personal thing in connecting with readers.

But you can reveal personal things in a nonspecific way. So I think just cracking yourself open a little bit, being a little bit generous with what you offer up in a safe way is a smart way to do that and really make a genuine connection with the people on the other end of your stories. Okay. Specific tools for connecting with readers.

I feel like there are a couple of things that are really super relevant, easy to use, not super expensive, that give you an opportunity to connect with people. So, Michele, what are the most sort of, must have tools that you have found in connecting with your readers?

Sites and resources we use to connect with our readers

Michele: Now, I’ve been experiencing in the past few months, one of the resources, one of the resource that I name the most in the past few episodes is probably BookFunnel. I’m going to use it again, but there is a reason, again, I’m not just a, you know, blocked on that.

Crystal: And they’re not a sponsor, just to be clear. Anything we mention is just cause it’s awesome.

Michele: I’ve been using that and I do find that the BookFunnel can be a community builder in this sense. Bear with me, okay? Now BookFunnel has a feature, which is very interesting. If you chase, at least the middle a plan, that allows you to participate in book promos.

What is a book promo? A book promo is basically an author gives the possibility to several authors of the piece or her genre to participate in what I would call a collective act of trust, which is basically this, let’s say I’m a science fiction author, and Crystal too. You are a science fiction author, okay? Bear with me. I will create a page in which I say, okay. Book funnel amazing authors, here is my page, I want to create a book promo or about science fiction books with the strong a woman lead character. Okay? If you got one of these books I want to hear from you, Crystal. Okay? I want to definitely hear from you.

So I would create this page and I will give some specifics and I will tell you what exactly is accepted and not. For example, maybe erotica is not accepted if there is like a steaming scene in the novel. So there are some guidelines that you have to respect. And then there is a time frame. So maybe this book promo is going to last for a couple of weeks.

Why is this important for you now? Why is it important for the audience building? Because of something that I’m going to say now: When I create this page and Crystal decides, okay, this is something I might be interested in. I going to participate with one or two books that I have. Other authors like myself and Crystal may join us.

So these page becomes one: me and myself. Crystal, two, it can be three, four, twelve, twenty, thirty different authors pooling together their weight to promote these pages that will feature all this lovely book of science fiction with the strong female lead character. Now it’s requested one only thing.

So all these people that I have gathered on this page, please share this page. You can do it once or twice. Please use your newsletter, use your social media, and then there are no other rules. Share the love. That’s the rule. Now, I’ve been doing this for a couple of times. I did see the results. People that are interested and only people that are interested in science fiction with the lead female character are going to browse this page. And people that are only interested in my cover are maybe going to click to discover and see the description and want to download my book and by downloading it, maybe I put the feature that is like please subscribe to my newsletter. When you are done this, you can unsubscribe at any moment.

What do you think is the result? The result is that I will have over time, more people that are interested in the genre I’m writing or that I’m selling or that I’m sharing in my mailing list. And I have noticed, Crystal, I have to say every single time I sent a follow up email to this newsletter that is growing by the day, the engagement rate is very high.

Because these people are interested in what I’m saying because these people are following authors that are similar to myself and the thing that I published. I do believe if you have to choose one thing, and maybe you are starting out, BookFunnel is one way you can gather an audience, it’s one of the instruments we talked about.

I’m going to talk about just another tool if you allow me, my dear. One is StoryOrigin. I do hope that I’m pronouncing this correctly, which is another community based platform that is at the moment I’m talking, I think is still free. And the curator is extremely responsible. It’s still a testing. It’s still on the beta process of creating this platform, but you can do some book swaps and newsletter swaps, stuff like that.

And there is also a Prolific Works, if I’m not mistaken, in that you can do a similar kind of thing. But this is a paid service. The point is you can gather a community in a relatively short amount of time. I’ve been doing this for a month and a half. That’s it. Not more than that, but I did see the results and I did see results that are replicable that can be used for people and authors that are at a different stage of their author career.

At least give it a try. Just try and see if that works for you. If it doesn’t work, write me an email and tell me how bad I’ve been. What do you think are the best tools that writers that are listening to us can use.

Crystal: Yeah, I’m with you on the BookFunnel one. That definitely, I think on top of being able to connect with other authors and do promotions and stuff.

The beauty of the tool is when we look at ourselves as being in customer service, yes, you could just email your book files to people who were looking to get their book onto- or your book onto their device. So if we look at how we’re connecting with our review crew or our ARC team. I use BookFunnel to deliver those copies because I don’t want to provide tech support to all the people who are trying to figure out how the heck you get a Kindle file from an email attachment onto your Kindle. I don’t know if anyone’s ever tried to do that. It’s not like the most straightforward of processes. There’s a couple of ways to do that, but they are not oober friendly and most of us would rather be writing more books.

Then trying to talk- you know, I just always picture my grandma when I’m doing this process. I don’t want to try to talk my grandma through how to get the file out of the computer and into her Kindle. Right? Don’t want to do it. So I think that’s another way, like really we’re reducing barriers to sharing a story with our readers.

And you can share audio files. You can share any format of digital files through BookFunnel. You can even  get like cards printed that have BookFunnel codes on them. And if you’re going to the in person events, you can give them away or you can sell them. You can have people pay you $2 to download your eBook directly.

Like it just opens up all kinds of interesting options. And I think that that’s one of the things to always evaluate when you’re looking at a new tool. Does it only work for one part of the process? It says, or can it actually do three or four things for me? Does it simplify, you know, five other aspects of me connecting with my readers?

So I agree with you. That is sort of the primary thing that you probably need. Another one is BookBrush. Because when you are looking at connecting with people and you’re wanting to make nice looking images for social, or you want to make, you know, promo video bits and pieces or whatever, as part of your consistency of your brand, you want things to look polished.

So Book Brush is kind of the tool that lets you wrap all of that stuff up in a really pretty package. And so I would use Book Brush potentially to make an image for if I was going to drop an image into my mail out to my readers, I might make it in Book Brush and then drop it into that email. I am trying to make something that’s easy for my friends to share, right?

Whether there are other authors or readers, you can say, Oh, you know, here’s a Facebook post. Like click here to share this with your own audience. If you’ve got a book for free or whatever, and you’re trying to let people know about it, sharing is caring. I put that in all kinds of -super cheesy, but I put that all the time in my newsletter and people do share like the, asking for the obvious.

It was really helpful. Well, and if you make it as easy as possible for them to do it, then they will so well. Whether you’re organizing a BookFunnel promo or asking your mailing list to share your new book with just one friend who they think might like it, it’s the same thing. The easier you make that, the easier it is for them to just do it without barriers.

I think other tools, I mean your mailing list. Whatever tool you’re using to manage that is huge. So it doesn’t so much matter which one you choose. There’s MailChimp, there’s MailerLite. ConvertKit is, they don’t really have a free option, or they didn’t have a free option. So that’s a little trickier. MailPoet is one that goes directly into the back end of your
WordPress website as a plugin.

So some people like that. That just so you’re not managing two spaces, Send Fox is a new one that’s out. I have used or am currently testing all of these platforms. Just to be clear, I’m not skewed in any one direction at the moment. They all do pretty much the same thing. It really just depends which one can you find a steal of a deal on which one will let you use for free in the beginning while you kind of figure your stuff out. We’ll do a whole separate episode on mailing list platforms at a future date. But for now, just know this: which one you choose doesn’t matter. As long as you are comfortable with it, that’s the key.

And you can check out links for some of those options in the show notes and I will hopefully be able to direct you to some additional resources that might help you make that choice as well. But I mean, really that’s it. I think your own personality is your biggest tool when it comes to connecting with readers.

And of course the David Gaughran book Strangers to Superfans is huge. And the book Newsletter Ninja by Tammi Labrecque, if you’re diving into the newsletter land, is one that is a very, very good starting place. Yes, sir.

Michele: There was another resource. I have to admit, I don’t remember the name of the gentleman that came up with the article, but it’s 1000 True Fans. The title for this. I think it’s very interesting. I read it for the first time in the book by Timothy Ferris Tools of Titans. Very, very simple stuff, but very, very true stuff. So I think like, it’s important because we are talking about audience to find the right audience and you can actually make a living out of what you’re doing, if you really have 1000 true fans. Not like Facebook fans. People that will buy your product in like paperback, hard cover, audiobook. It’s really, really somebody that connects with you. And one of the things that I will add this, like, something that we’ve been repeating like mad people, which is like.

Try to do different things, but try to understand what is the thing that you can keep doing for long amount of time. Something that is repeatable, something that is, it’s going to be hard of course, but it’s like writing, if you exercise on a daily basis becomes part of your routine. So try not to spread your resources too thin.

Gather the data and then decide following the 80 and 20% tool. Very, very important.

Crystal: Yes, absolutely. And just incremental progress. Right. I heard the other day, which just reminded me, um, of this concept that, you know, if you are sailing a boat and you are turned one degree off course, you’ll end up on a different continent.

You can really severely altered the course you’re taking by adjusting things on purpose that one degree. Right? It’s small, small changes. So for you as a focus on connecting with your readers. Think of it from a customer service perspective. What can you do in one situation in that moment that will turn the person you are interacting with into a true fan?

So, you know, I’ve had a couple of interesting examples of this where, somebody was very upset that they hadn’t been able to review the books and they were emailing me from the hospital. They were on dialysis treatment at the time, and they said, you know, my eyes because of health stuff on going through my eyes aren’t very good and I’m really having trouble reading stuff, so I don’t know if I’m going to be able to read the books and post the reviews. I’d really like to. At first I was like, Oh my God, okay, don’t worry about that obviously, but also, so how can I help them get the stories? I mean, because I have audio additions.

I said, you know what? I can send you a link. You can just download the audio books. And so, I was able to send her some links for the audio books since she was able to still be part of the community. And you know, we were back and forth after that. So I think just most really positive customer reviews actually come from taking a problem and turning it around in an interesting way that works out better for everybody in the end.

So if you have an experience where maybe you screw up something about your mailing list and you send out an email that wasn’t the one you wanted, or maybe you have a technical glitch and somebody was really struggling with downloading one of your things, like is there a way you can kind of make it up to them for the extra effort they expended to get to a good result?

Can you give them a bonus one? Right? Cause you can always give out an ARC copy of your book no matter what you know, programs you’re part of. So use your BookFunnel to for good. It’s basically a superpower. You, you have books, you are an author and you have a tool that will deliver them to your readers.

So throw something in for fun. Maybe you sign a bookmark and mail it to them, whatever it is. Like there are ways to escalate that customer experience. And there’s a book by Dan and Chip Heath called The Power of Moments, which is all about creating memorable moments in people’s lives and it is a fantastic read if you are looking, being at that sort of bundle of resources to transform people from strangers to super fans. It teaches you all about what makes for a memorable moment and it’s an interesting read. But I think would also be very helpful for you as an author trying to figure out how to really connect with people. That would be, be a good starting place.

You can pick just one book to take with you on a colonizing expedition to Mars. What book do you take?

Michele: It’s that moment, my dear, it’s that moment.

Crystal: It is that moment. We are making magical moments here with our little curious jar. I got all excited. I took the top off already,

Michele: You get excited, I get fearful.

Crystal: Okay. You tell me when to stop.

Michele: Keep going. Keep going. I don’t fear it. Okay now, now now!

Crystal: Okay. It’s orange on this time.

Michele: Okay.

Crystal: All right. Are you ready? Are you ready? Oh, my word. Okay, so you can pick just one book to take with you on a colonizing expedition to Mars. What book do you take?

Michele: Oh…

Crystal: If you’re listening to this as a podcast, you might want to pop over to the video one, just so you can see Michele’s is tortured face aa he tries to think about this. Totally worth it.

Michele: So bad. Must have been a very, a good, bad person. Very smart, very evilish. Okay. I’ll go first. Only one book. Yes. Can I bring like a Kindle loaded with stuff?

Crystal: No.

Michele: Okay. I’ll just tell you the first one that comes to my mind. It would probably be the Silmarillion by Tolkien and I mentioned that in a previous episode and why I really liked it. For the music and the word building and the story. It’s like every single time I think about it, I feel like that book is like a thousand billion different books.

It’s not a huge book. It’s big. But there are so many stories across so many, I believe thousands of years that I don’t think that a book like that can never get old for me. And every single time you read that, nuances of the same story is going to pop up and say, this is a new book. This is a new story. This is something new. So every single time you read it, it’s like you’re reading a new book. I know this is appliable to every single book, I guess, but I think Silmarillion for me, has a magic in it because I enjoyed it. Every book I’ve read by Tolkien, and I do believe Christopher, which is the son of the author did a great job in let’s say packaging this product and the publishing it. I think Tolkien’s family, and Tolkien himself is represented in this work of art, it seems, I think it’s really a work of art. There are music in the words, and it is the foundation of what we think fantasy is right here, right now.

So I dunno if it makes any sense, but I’m a fan fantasy aficionado. So I should have brought also the Foundation series by Asimov, you see now I’m thinking! Stop me now! That was my answer. Go for it.

Crystal: Okay. So at first my instinct was like Pride and Prejudice. It’s one of my all-time favorite books, and I’ve read it hundreds of times, but then I was like, I could actually rewrite that book. Because it’s all in my head. I’m not bringing that one and it would be a waste. So I did this little like cataloging of the books that I’ve read enough times to know that I would want to read them again. And I was like, no, I can put that together. I could rewrite the Princess Bride like, so what did I want is the biggest, fattest, thinnest lined notebook that I’m allowed to bring.

I want an empty journal so that I can put all of the stories that are my favorites from my head into that book in really like small, small commence print. That’s, that’s what I want.

Michele: I don’t know. I feel like that’s cheating though. I want the name. I want the title and I want the name. This is, cheating!

Crystal: If I had to just pick one, it would probably be Pride and Prejudice. I absolutely love that book. I have Pride and Prejudice like writing mittens. I have the scarf with the proposal scene. I have all of the Jane Austin- like Clueless was my favorite movie cause it was like an Emma spinoff. Yeah. No, I am all about, I’m all about that. Ms. Austin is my favourite.

Michele: I held you accountable in this particular, instance

Crystal: Yeah…

Michele: See that, audience? We keep ourselves accountable. You see that? You see that.

Crystal: All right. If you have ideas about what book you would take, we want you to put them in the comments in the show notes. We want to hear it. Come to strategic entrepreneur.com find the episode, answer the curious jar question in the comments, and if you have a question, if you would like to create the tortured face of my lovely coauthor here next time, then you should send your questions to ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com.

See exactly how tough of a job you can give us. Trying to answer these questions now for show notes, links to resources we mentioned and coupons or discounts. It’s on tools we love, you can visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com and if you subscribe to our newsletter each week, we’ll send you just one thing that we think will help you on your authorpreneur journey and a link to our latest episode,

Michele: And you will get the gold star and a million bonus points in the game of life if you leave a review. Even small, wherever you’re listening to this podcast.

Crystal: Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to get to know us.
Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on our next episode where we will be talking with author and social media, extraordinaire Liza Palmer. She is going to give us the inside scoop on what’s happening with social media these days and some interesting ideas about how to apply that in our author lives. So until then, I don’t know what, do whatever the hell you want, but come back for the next episode.