In this week’s episode, Crys and JP talk about different ways to deliver stories beyond the normal trifecta of eBooks, print books, and audiobooks that indie authors typically use. From serialized platforms, to social media stories, they cover lesser known methods that get your story out there.
Show Notes
You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story by Howard Houston
Episode 34: Book Club–You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story
Stand Still. Stay Silent by Minna Sundberg
The Wandering Inn by Pirate Aba
Your Brand Should be Gay (Even if You’re Not) by Re Perez
Transcript
JP: Hello, friends. This is episode number 41 of the Write Away Podcast and it is the 29th of April as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my co-host…
Crys: Crys Cain
JP: Hello, Crys, how has your week been?
Crys: Oh, gosh, I forgot I had to answer this question. I don’t know why, I answer it every week. I don’t know how my week has been. The days have run together, it’s Thursday. Work was done. I don’t know what work was done. I’ve had a bit of a chaotic week. I kinda took two days off because my kiddo is sick.
And so I have been doing a lot of cuddling and playing Minecraft. But work was done. Work has been done. That’s about as far as I can remember.
JP: Good? No, that’s good.
Crys: How about you?
JP: I have had a good week. Finally done with revision one of book two. Yay.
And then I’ve been working on a little mini, I don’t know what you’d call it, but analysis of the book two in between my two revisions to try and just locate any sort of peaks and valleys and places that I can build upon. I’ve been basically in a reverse outlining and creating these little segments for each scene, determining like word count and who’s in the scene and then using all that data to chart it out, because I’m a data nerd, and figuring out if there are instances in which the villain is not mentioned enough which I realized was a case, or where a character that we have heavily in the end, is not even mentioned at the beginning. So it was really useful way of me to just visually see, Oh, we need to add more here and here.
So it turned out to be really useful and it didn’t take that long. So that was my week so far.
Crys: Excellent. We do have at least one comment, two comments to share.
JP: Do you want me to read them?
Crys: Yes, please, because I don’t have them up.
JP: Our first one is from Kim from Episode 39: How Do You Write Trauma? She too is a cruel god of her world. She loves to traumatize her character. Her work is for a time period that is over a thousand years old. So there’s just a lot of trauma going on. So she tries to balance the effects of that trauma with a sense of inevitability with her characters.
No one in her world is untouched by trauma. So they can relate to one another and in that way. And then last thing was that one thing that she tries to do is show how the rituals they perform and the stories they tell are ways in which they deal with big trauma.
I think that’s excellent. Very reflective of like where my mindset was with trauma.
Crys: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense.
JP: And then our second comment is from Lon, who is commenting at my time at 1:48 in the morning for the Tarot Episode. He said he doesn’t reuse a lot of tools for his stories. He tried using the Three Story Method once, yet all for him is really just start writing. Characters slowly come to him and he just massages out the ideas as it comes along.
Crys: Yeah, and that’s completely valid. I can write a short story without using a lot of tools. But there’ll be heavier on revision to make sure that it actually meets what I want it to often, but I am far more likely to finish something when I use tools.
And that’s just a difference of styles.
JP: Yeah. I find that if I use too many tools, I will put it aside and I’ll be like, this doesn’t have enough of me in it, but then I’ll just forget about it. But if I don’t use any, then it’s almost like, I like to have a little bit of both. I like to have a direction to go, just to kinda make sure that I have a little bit of chaos, a little bit of something that wasn’t directly from my brain.
Crys: I find the longer I write, the more I write, the more the tools are ingrained in my process. And so they don’t necessarily feel like tools anymore.
They just feel like what I do. And then it just seems like I’m a giant machine constructing these puzzle stories together because I do have all these tools and pieces that are going together, but it is more ingrained in my process as I found the things that are innately working for me, and I just learned to use them more strongly, like more fully and powerfully.
JP: Yeah, totally makes sense. So what’s our topic for the week?
Crys: I will have to think of a pithy way to title this afterward. But our topic this week is about expanding beyond eBooks, beyond print books. Our normal trifecta that we indies have adopted as our way of telling stories is eBooks, print books, and audio books. And we have limited ourselves to that.
That’s been all that’s been available to us for the past 10 years and even print and audio are far newer than eBook. But I think we mentioned a bit in the last couple of weeks that at least I am obsessed with Kindle Vella right now. And not necessarily even Kindle Vella, which if this is your first time hearing, it is Amazon’s attempt to get back into serialized storytelling. They’ve tried before and with less success. Common and well used serial platforms right now are Wattpad, Radish Fiction, Dream Web Novel, Royal Road. Any of the fan fiction websites, all of these are serialized storytelling platforms. And so Vella is Amazon’s bid to get in on that magic.
And so I have been doing a deep dive into serialized storytelling and what it looks like now versus when I was writing serialized stories as a teen. And I am just delighted, absolutely delighted at the number of ways storytellers are making money without ever touching Amazon if they have to.
JP: Yeah, when you posed this topic I was excited to talk about it, not necessarily because this is something that I feel I’ll be like jumping on the bandwagon for, because definitely at my stage, you can get all these crazy ideas and then never go in any direction.
But I’m one of those people that I like to know what my options are to just see, what can I do if I want to pursue it? So the whole topic of Kindle Vella sparked something in me that I was like, I can adhere some of my work to do Kindle Vella serial, but I don’t have to necessarily pursue it hard.
I can just rework some of the stuff I’m already working.
Crys: And I think one of the kind of necessary pieces for the background of this conversation is the book, You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Story, which we had a book club on a few months ago. We’ll link it in the show notes, if you haven’t had a chance to listen to that.
But I highly recommend picking up the book. It is about trans media, and it is one of the ways that I think that we indies ought to be looking at telling stories over different formats. And that means telling stories the way we have been with eBooks, but also like how might you expand your story world to have something exclusively in Kindle Vella or a different serialized platform?
This is one of the things that I found as I’m looking at serialized fiction and looking at what’s out there and who’s being successful at this. And so there’s definitely like the Radish Fiction and Kiss crowd, and that tends to be very romance focused. And that makes sense, because romance is the largest selling genre, in at least English fiction.
So it just makes sense that no matter what platform you’re on, most of the time romance is going to be the top. But that doesn’t give those of us who don’t want to write pure romance great examples to look at as far as what’s successful. So I was looking for successful serializations out there, and I came across The Wandering Inn, which I think I’ve mentioned before.
And then I started looking at Royal Road, and I had heard about Royal Road before. And I thought it was only LitRPG, LitRPG is if you haven’t heard of that genre before, is novelized game play a bit. It often is a character has been transported into a video game world and has to work within the structures and rules of the video game to succeed.
I thought it was only LitRPG and it turns out it does not. There’s a lot of fantasy and scifi that does really well over there. There’s also a Reddit subreddit for serialized fiction that works on a similar principle. And what happens when those particular locations, and this is similar to Wattpad is, everybody posts their stuff for free. Like these are free platforms. So if you’re publishing in Kindle Vella, you will not be able to publish on these platforms, but on Royal road, on Wattpad, on Reddit, you publish your serialized fiction for free. And us Indies, we are trying to make a go of it. We’re trying to make money off of it.
So like often our first response is going to be like, Aagh, but like my work is worth getting paid for. And I a hundred percent agree. 100%. And some of these people make a lot of money giving stuff away for free, and how they often do this is it’s a free to paid path, namely Patreon. So on Patreon, they will have, you’ll be able to get access to episodes early, which is what a lot of podcasters do to make money off of their Podcast, to support all the costs that making a podcast has.
And so people will pay for early access to fiction for anything that you would normally put on a Patreon. Hey, you get audio of it, of me reading it, or you get illustrations or whatever works for the authors process and their fans’ desires wherever that little Venn diagram slice is, that’s what you can put on a Patreon.
And I have been looking for a way to create that free funnel for fiction for a while because this is a proven sales pattern or marketing tactic, if you will. And that’s to offer high quality free content that draws people into your sales funnel. And most in these have a day job and cannot pump out a lot of stuff that they are just not getting paid for.
The challenge to only putting out work that is for sale is then how do you get people to see you? Because free stuff does get eyes on it. It may not be the best eyes, it may not be the right eyes, but it does get eyes on it. So then you have to spend dollars on marketing. The thing I really like about putting pre-stuff out there is that when you do it, with the intent that this isn’t just an exchange, like I’m giving you this so that you, every single one of you will get in my funnel, then you aren’t acknowledging that the right people will get into your funnel.
And if you are giving it free away, not on Amazon, then you don’t have to worry about reviews. You don’t have to worry about the wrong people picking up your book and then half of your reviews are people saying this didn’t have shooting or there was too much dirty sex in this, because it doesn’t matter if you’re getting it to the right people or the wrong people, because you’re not getting any reviews from these free serialized fiction.
Maybe you’re getting engagement. That’d be great. So a lot of these platforms have commenting available so you can interact with the readers. Anyways, that’s a long ramble to say that I’ve been looking for a free distribution, free storytelling, a way to share free stories because I feel very strongly that is a way to bring people into the fold, but I didn’t necessarily care about doing that as an eBook on Amazon. That made less sense to me for a reason. It still is very powerful, but it wasn’t necessarily like the oomph I was looking for. And so I have considered doing and do want to do terribly acted TikTok stories by yours truly where I play all the characters. It’s really just an excuse to buy more wigs.
But as I’m thinking about, okay, I’ve got this fantasy serial that I am planning on writing. I haven’t decided if I’m going all in with Vella, I do plan on having a Patreon for it. I may read audio as a podcast, like a season behind what I am publishing. There’s a lot of different ideas bubbling around in my head. But I also want to either adapt the story into a way I can tell it on TikTok in 60-second increments, or write another little side story with characters that are involved in the serial and tell that on TikTok. And all of this will funnel back to some kind of paid, like if I’m selling on Vella, I’ll let them know I’m on Vella, but even more so I’d like to drive them back to a Patreon and be like, Hey, if you like these stories, like you can get access to the text and audio version far ahead of wherever everything else is being told if you’re on Patreon.
JP: I think this whole concept with using a free platform for your story, and then the potential of having merch, works so well when we talk about like fantasy and sci-fi. I see this a lot with web comics, especially one that I’m like obsessed with, every page of that whole comic is free online and you can go and you can read the whole thing right now today. She also does a Kickstarter.
Crys: JP, you have to share with the web comic is you can’t just say, I love it and it’s beautiful.
JP: Okay, fine. The web comic is Stand Still. Stay Silent.
It is a Scandinavian post-apocalyptic magical world. It’s good. I have some opinions about it, but other than that, it’s good. That’s why I was leaving it silent, but that’s fine. So she does a Kickstarter on this comic every few chapters, determining like about a volume, it’s about 300 pages, and those things sell out every time.
And then she also has a merch store where she sells plushies, she sells book plates, images from the comic that were like full two-page things that she’s now turned into posters. It’s just, we could do that too with writing. Like we can, especially when you’re talking about fantasy and sci-fi, you are creating this unique world that you can have iconic items, characters, creatures and you can still sell those as merge.
Crys: Yeah. Glad you brought up I’ve web comics because that was where I was going to go next, because I think that the web comic industry is several steps ahead of us indie authors on this with the free to paid funnel. And they are excellent people to look at about how we can expand, and not just merch. I love the Kickstarter. I’m obsessed with Kickstarter.
I want to use Kickstarter as an author in some way. I just haven’t had the right project for it yet. And I love that with the Kickstarter for web comics, they’re kickstarting the physical version generally to cover the original printing costs. And to know that they have a viable audience and someone who’s several volumes into their web comic knows that they have the audience.
This is also just the best way to get the funds and get paid all in one go.
JP: And also, it’s not even just the physical copy, but putting together a PDF version of that volume. Because for someone like me, I love this comic, but I do not like hitting next and going to the next page. It annoys the crap out of me.
So, I actually wait until the Kickstarter for the volume and I’ll pick up both the PDF and the physical copy because I enjoy both. So, I know that I’m definitely like the target market for this Kickstarter. And one of the reasons why it’s that successful.
Crys: So many of us have been raging against the Amazon machine over the past few years. And in completely understandable ways yes, Amazon is our largest market for the most part, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. And more and more, I am seeing viable options of people who are taking different paths.
Like maybe at some point, they do put their serial boxed up into larger bits in an eBook. And that’s how I’m reading The Wandering Inn serial right now. She’s got three volumes out of the five that are currently out on Amazon. I know that if I want to go read the others, then I’m going to have to go to the serial and read it, but that’s okay.
I am just fascinated with people having fun with their storytelling. And I think that, for me, serialized fiction is just one of the most fun ways to tell storytelling because of the constant back and forth that you get from readers on these little bits and small pieces once you build up an audience. And building up an audience is going to be hard.
I think that’s one of the ways that Kindle Vella is going to help a lot of people who are interested in serial storytelling is that we do have that built in Amazon marketplace, especially as it first starts out. I have seen some big authors jumping on this. It’s going to be a little crazy in the beginning, but almost everyone’s going to be on similar footing.
It’s going to be a bit more equal than just jumping into Amazon KU.
JP: And I think too, like looking outside of the book market, and as a broader media perspective, like the long form TV shows on Netflix that are binge-worthy, but they have these peaks and valleys and these stopping points for each of their episodes. That’s what the mass market people, people like me, get sucked into that and we’ll spend a weekend watching a whole season. But we can also stop on episode four and come back and pick it up and we know where we’re going. So that concept is becoming very lucrative. People love it.
People are just in love with this whole concept over here and Netflix and all that. And bringing that into the eBook world could potentially bring over some of those people that are looking for that kind of binge worthy but capable of stopping at any point fiction that kind of has the same pace. It has the same stop stopping points that they can come back to later.
Crys: I think the thing that I would recommend to all our author friends as they are navigating what marketing is for them, what kinds of stories they want to tell, so many people are like, how do I use social media? How do I use social media? It’s just another storytelling platform.
Yeah. You can tell stories about yourself. But that’s honestly something that a lot of authors have a hard time with. What about the social media that you particularly love? How could you tell a story in your story worlds, in your story style on that medium? So, on TikTok it’s often acting out bits of stories. On Instagram it might be telling a series of stories through images with the text from your story. I know that this has been done in transmedia before. Hank Green’s Pride and Prejudice remake, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries it was a YouTube show, but those of us who were watching it as it came out were obsessed and we followed every social media account that was connected with the show because they were telling bits and pieces of the story over on Instagram in between episodes. One of them had a Pinterest board. There is a blog, like there were so many pieces of the story everywhere else.
I’m not saying you have to do that. That takes a lot of time and energy. But if there’s maybe a short story that you could tell through Instagram pictures or through Facebook updates, your Facebook story. How can you tell the stories you’re already telling? How can you just integrate this with your system in a way that’s really joyful for you?
If it’s not joyful for you, don’t do it. If you don’t have time, you don’t have to do it, but I think that it’s so important that we start expanding our ways of telling stories beyond just selling eBooks, that we then translate into print books and audio books.
JP: Yeah. And your comment about using social media made me think of the Wheel of Time, and actually on Twitter, there are a lot of people, fans, who have accounts in the names of those characters, and they tweet out comments as if they are those characters. And it’s like a self-contained and maintained fandom that determines like who is actually this character and who gets to actually speak for them.
And I think they get voted on if I remember correctly to determine like who gets to keep the name. But that’s just expanding it out to beyond the author at that point. Unfortunately, Robert Jordan had passed away, but even then, having such a rich world that you can play off of, it could even be that your fans will eventually take over the reins of for you.
Crys: That’s our author dream, right?
As an example of an author being able to do something similar, is the way that Netflix sends out updates about Bridgerton is letters from Lady Whistle, a Whistle? Oh, what is the name? I want to say Whistledown… and that’s not it. Anyways, from the gossip columnist of the Bridgerton series, they send out updates and press releases as the gossip columnist. And if you, the author, have a character like that, you can absolutely do that.
I have a bard in my serial, she could be the one who announces things to my list. I could write those particular newsletter updates in her voice. There’s so many ways that you can expand your story, voice your story world.
It’s overwhelming when you’re first starting out. If you’re not someone who naturally adapts to expansive storytelling, you’re just struggling to get that first story down, that’s okay. That’s normal, but I think it should be in your brain.
How might I do this? If I had the time and energy, how might I do this? Build this practice of thinking, how can I expand this story beyond these words on this page?
JP: Yeah. And I think, especially what you said is like very important, because as someone who is at that beginner stage, I know I can’t do 90% of this stuff, but I’m thinking about it.
I’m putting it in the back of my mind and I’m constantly letting it replay every once in a while and taking into consideration, what could I do if I had that availability? And then what can I bring in right now to just potentially really get the gears running or get the momentum going forward?
Crys: Yeah. My question for our readers is: what is your favorite example that you’ve encountered of a story you love expanding beyond the eBook? And not just adaptations, not just, oh, it got made into a movie. But what’s an innovative way that either the author or the community has expanded the story that you love, that you just think is great?
JP: Excellent.
Crys: Don’t forget that our book club read is Your Brand Should be Gay, Even if You Are Not. We will be recording Wednesday the 12th. If you are a supporter of ours, you’ll be able to join us for the live Q and A. And we have two weeks until then, if you haven’t had a chance to read the book, I highly recommend you get on that.
JP: It’s fun. It’s very different than what we’ve read before, because this is a much more broader perspective about branding.
Crys: Yeah. I haven’t started it, but I will.
JP: Good luck.
Crys: All right we’ll be back next week and we hope you have a wonderful week.
JP: See ya later!
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