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- [DIGEST] If all else fails, you are not a failure...
[DIGEST] If all else fails, you are not a failure...
Your weekly stackable roundup
Hi friends,
I’ve been doing this a long time, and have learned so much, but if I had to boil it down to a top 10 list, these are the most important things that I’ve learned in my life.
Bad luck can tank a career. I have seen it happen many times. They were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and the universe screwed them unfairly. It's heartbreaking every time.
Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. The reverse is also true, even if you don't see it.
If you have enough projects going, eventually, good luck and hard work can save a career. I have also seen this happen, often with the exact same people who lost their careers to bad luck. Every project has its own luck baked into it, and every project is a chance to turn it all around. Once you do, everything else you've made has more value.
You have absolutely no idea which project will pop off or where. The book that has made me the most getting optioned is one most of my fans have never read and never heard of (My Father Didn't Kill Himself, FWIW). Ichabod and The Godsverse Chronicles, my two most successful and enduring works, have made $0 in Hollywood during that time.
The only thing you truly control is the work you do. You can give yourself better odds by understanding marketing, sales, writing to market, and all that stuff, but even then, you can't control who resonates with your book. You can show it to them. You can tell them about it. You cannot force them to buy it, read it, or love it. The only thing you truly control is the work. If you don't love the work, you should stop doing it because even when you have a career doing this, all you have to look forward to is more work.
For some people, the path is clear from the beginning. For almost everyone, though, it takes searching through the mire and the muck, sometimes forever.
If you believe in something enough, double down on it. However, if you're not ready to be proven a fool, or push a boulder up a hill for a long time until people see things your way, then pivot to something else. There are infinite projects, and they all have within them the chance to break through and completely change your career.
Making money doesn't determine the importance of something. Some of my favorite things I've ever made are also my worst sellers.
There is no shame in doing things for the money. We all have to eat. There is also no shame in doing something for the passion, even if it never makes a dime.
Just because a project fails now doesn't mean it's a failure. It took seven years for Ichabod to find an audience, and many of my best works never found theirs. They were still worth doing, though.
BONUS: If all else fails, you are not a failure. This is the most important one of all.
If you want to share how you are doing this week, then there are two ways to interact with this post.
1 - If you don’t want to say anything, or bristle at identifying yourself, then you can reply with this nifty poll.
2 - If you’re feeling very brave, then reply below and tell us how you are doing right now on a scale from 1-5.
LAST WEEKEND: This is the last weekend for my NSFW comic Death’s Kiss, with our publisher Laguna Studios!
She was born of death, and it was only through death that she could survive. As the last of her kind, she was forced to walk the shadows of the world, stepping into the light only when she must claim a new soul.
It was a simple existence, yet she never wanted more. Until she saw him, and somehow he saw her too. The impossibility of their connection drew her closer, and soon she found herself wishing she was more than just a waif condemned to live apart from humanity.
For centuries she merely existed, but now she longed to live. Can she escape what she was to find who she's truly meant to be?
WHAT WE WROTE ON SUBSTACK: This week, I wrote about the concept of planned serendipity and how it can help writers build more sustainable businesses.
Plus, showed us how to sell one million books and explained how writing doesn't follow a path.
We arrived in Hell inside a sewer pipe filled with bile and sludge. It wasn’t unlike a sewer pipe on Earth, except that it was made of clay instead of concrete. I knew we had arrived in Hell by the smell. The air was tinged with sulfur and brimstone and was so dry it hurt to breathe.
Drownt the ogre studied the map he’d pulled from inside his armor. “This way.”
He led us through the slop until we reached a ladder. He pointed at Igor and Bob to go ahead of us, then Blezor, before he grasped the ladder and began to climb.
“After you,” I said to Aimee as we looked up at the open manhole. “Please.”
“What do you think is up there?” she asked.
“Whatever it is, it won’t be good.”
“That’s a given.”
She pulled herself up the ladder, and I made my way behind her. When I rose above the sewer, a big, orange hue lit the air. Aimee gestured from the end of the alley, and I walked toward her until the alley broke into a busy and bustling street. Hundreds of monsters walked around just like people did on Earth, completely nonchalant and effortless. A market lined either side of the street, with vendors of all sorts selling shoes, weapons, tools, and all kinds of products.
The monsters did not have to hide their true faces. Not one of them wore an illusion charm. I had never seen anything like it. Even when I found a pocket of monsters on Earth who seemed truly free, they still were forced to wear a fake face to prevent humans from finding them. Here, in the middle of a bustling city, these monsters were unrestricted in a way I had never seen before.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Dis,” Igor said with a wistful tone. “This is where most of the monsters and demons that work the pits live. Think of it as your New York City, except instead of working stocks and bonds, these monsters work pits.”
All chapters of The Godsverse Chronicles are now free for all subscribers. You can read the whole series from the beginning right here.
You still only get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog by becoming a paid member. You can start your membership with a 7-day free trial.
JOIN US FOR A FREE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE: Do you have FOMO from missing our Future of Publishing Mastermind? Then I have good news. You can join us virtually from May 22-24 for free and relive the experience with us.
We’ll have tons of speakers talking about how to take advantage of the future of publishing…starting now.
If you want to know where the publishing industry is going in the next 3-5 years, and how to take advantage of it NOW, then The Future of Publishing Virtual Summit is perfect for you.
This is an event curated for forward-thinking, self-starters who want to be at the leading edge of the publishing industry for years to come. Publishing is shifting faster than ever. Do you want to help chart where it's going?
UPCOMING ARTICLE: Next week, I show you how to build a sustainable and profitable subscription into your author business. I’ll tell you right now this will have a paywall break in it so you can be prepared.
I didn’t start feeling comfortable in my business until I began seeing consistent, recurring revenue inside of it. For years, my sales were 100% launch-based. I would gobble up a ton of money in short bursts, and then watch it slowly wither back down to nothing before the next launch.
It was a nightmare because I could never plan for the future. Even when I was launching five times a year, I didn’t feel safe investing in the future because every launch was still filled with uncertainty.
For years, I tried to set up some form of subscription income, and always fell flat. I ran a Patreon in years past. I tried Ko-Fi and Buy Me a Coffee. I tested Kickstarter's short-lived Drip subscription platform. I even built an app to showcase my work. Nothing worked until I found Substack.
This is not a pitch for Substack or any specific platform. It’s just a demonstration of how hard it is to set up a subscription that gains traction. Sure, some of it was the platform, but by the time I found that success I had significantly grown my audience with Monica Leonelle for the better part of two years and had spent the last 15 years blogging and working with creators, not to mention growing my back catalog.
In my opinion, subscriptions are the hardest business model to get right, the hardest to get started, and the one with the highest upside if you can get the mechanics to work for you.
That said, I think most authors focus too hard on growing their subscription base in the short term instead of building it into their overall business model as a long-term engine for growth. Subscriptions will break your heart if you look at them as a short-term play instead of a long-term development. More than any other direct sales income stream, subscriptions should be measured across years instead of days, weeks, or months.
AD BREAK: Many of you have been following my growth journey on Substack and beyond. It should come as no surprise that I’ve been testing out email providers. On top of Convertkit, Flodesk, and Mailchimp, which I use for my various businesses, I’ve been testing out what would work best for a newsletter like this one. While I still like Substack, we have also built a 10,000 person list through Beehiiv and Facebook ads.
I’ve had a lot of growing pains with Beehiiv in the past, but working with this company has showed me how their system is built for growth, including API access, their own ad network, and more. Gun to my head, if I had to leave Substack today, I would go to Beehiiv, and use Sparkloop, because I’m looking to grow a larger publication. I think Convertkit is perfect for my other businesses, but Beehiiv is as close to Substack, or what I wish Substack was, to anything on the market. I think Convertkit still integrates natively with more places, but their pricing is quite a bit higher than Beehiiv, and frankly Beehiiv’s network pays more than Sparkloop does by a wide margin. If you’re looking at other options, especially if you want to grow a large publication, I recommend at least looking at Beehiiv and taking them for a test drive.
ROUNDUP: Here are some of my favorite articles of the week.
Business-y:
tracks how Dropbox went from 0 to 500 million users, calls out Netflix for using AI to enhance audio without disclosing it, , and clears up inflation confusion.
grapples with the three levels of relevance, feels guilty for quitting something they worked really hard to get, and tires of the endless cycles of hype deflation and inflation.
deskills creative work, builds a culture of ownership, and suffers from performativity at work.
plots Disney’s winning messaging, provides a simple, 5 step system to stop solopreneur stress, and buys a bookstore.
does nothing by doing everything, socks it to them, and finds the optimal ARR per employee.
owns their expertise, Convertkit dissects 10 welcome email examples for new subscribers, and works as hard as a man and is still penalized for it.
breaks down why companies ship broken tech, fights SAFe misery, and properly calculates a CAC payback period.
Publishing-like:
balances on the thin line between perserverence and clenching, and get to the bottom of Medium’s latest changes, and lands a book deal to write a book about books.
puts a “porch on it” to incite confusion induction, does writer math, and provides overlooked reasons people quickly get bored with your online writing.
removes the blockers standing in their way, balances practice with production, and doesn’t ruin their chances of finding a traditional publisher by publishing online.
arrives in the fashion capital of the world for a book signing with no clothes and the continues their French book tour with them, goes from self-published to Scholastic, creates content and overthinks it.
Alissa Quart bursts the myth of the middle class writer, prepares for their book launch, and makes readers feel something.
shares 10 interview techniques from the world’s best interviewers, surprises even themselves to find out they really are creative after all, and Sarah Mechum parses out what it takes to become a NYT bestseller.
Constance Grady shows how scammers filled with garbage ebooks, Brett Chang sells $150,000 worth of ads in their newsletter’s first year and offers up everything they about growing a newsletter.
faces the compulsion of writing even through failure, highlights a self-published author who sold 10 million books, Elizabeth A. Harris finds a way forward for publishers who just lost their distributor.
tells what nobody tells first time authors, creates in public for a whole year, demystifies non-compete clauses.
spices up their writing beyond just being from the heart, ignores popular business and writing advice, and lauds the perks of a day job.
Substack-esque:
learns from a high-earning Substack publication, grows their income, fits right in by being the odd-one-out, and finds a simple thing that brought them 480 subscribers last month.
Culture-ish:
faces the grim reality of “Youtube Face”, listens to Taylor Swift in the bathroom while doing stuff, realizes a staircase is just a staircase even when it isn’t, and pumps up the jam.
shares love in artwork and prose, celebrates Lauren Oyler week by defending critical reviews, knows that Beyonce knows how to talk without talking, and rocks out to Don Bluth’s garage band ethos.
buys happiness with money, have 2 big questions about the Shohei Ohtani case, and explores New York’s smallest neighborhood.
walks away from toxic people, explains AI butthole music, and rails against how capitalism has stolen all the online weirdos.
Lifestyle-oid:
plays for joy, breaks down whether you should move to Europe, stops resenting their husband, and allows themselves to be awed.
deals with passive-aggressive behavior, picks through the compost bin, and plots their relationship through book orders.
learns how cognitive distortion plays tricks on their brain, brings three kids into the world, takes responsibility for their past behavior.
isn’t ready to embrace their grays, asks their doctor if David Lynch is right for them, and goes out without their phone.
checks whether people are made a them, practices fierce compassion, and doesn’t want to be that girl.
learns to give themselves a break so they can actually grow, honors her father for believing her when nobody else did, stops procrastinating by washing their cat.
Find anything you loved enough to swoon over or hated enough to make your blood boil? Let me know.
If you like what I’m doing around here and want to check out the archives, you can do that with a 7-day free trial, or simply go straight to being a paid subscriber. You also get access to my YA novel, Sorry for Existing.
It started with a bang. No, a slap. My mother's head hit the floor. My father stood over her. We had to get out. If we didn't, my dad would kill her. So, we ran.
My mother dragged me out of the house in the middle of the night. Where will we go? How will we survive?
There's nobody who can take us in, except for my grandfather... ...and mom hates him more than dad. There's no way we could wind up there, right?
If you love coming-of-age stories, fantastical adventures, family drama, and heartfelt romance, you'll love this book.
Paid members can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with 650+ exclusive interviews, courses, articles, and more.
If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.