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[DIGEST] NOLA...
Your weekly stackable roundup
Hi friends,
This week is the culmination of something we’ve been working on for over a year. and I launched our first in-person conference, The Future of Publishing Mastermind in New Orleans back in February of 2023, and it unfolded live this past week.
I’ve exhibited at almost 200 shows during my career and spoken at over 100. Monica’s also done a ton of them throughout her career. This was our thesis defense of everything we learned about conventions, and how we think they could be improved.
I have a lot of feelings about how it went, and I think it’s going to take longer to unpack than just this last couple of days since it ended, but I’m so proud of our team and what we accomplished. We were about to get over 70 amazing writers, creators, publishers, and vendors into one room to talk about the challenges and opportunities present in our industry and try to chart the future together. The community was amazing and it was incredible to watch our vision come together.
I don’t think I could have asked for anything more, but as I mentioned I’m still dealing with a lot of feelings about it.
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.
Great week in NOLA. Here are some more pictures. I’m tired, but fulfilled.
WHAT WE WROTE ON SUBSTACK: This week, I showed you the secrets behind writing an awesome round-up.
Plus, dissects Maria Bamford’s new memoir for tropes and is addicted to Substack.
I waited out front of the bar until the next morning, watching angelic and demonic pairs leaving the bar together like old friends. It threw everything I knew about the universe into stark relief. My mother taught me that her love was unique with my father, and that part of the reason it was so looked down upon was because the angels and demons were on two sides of an eternal war, with nothing but bad blood between them. I didn’t see any bad blood in that bar.
The one consistency between all the denizens of the bar was their distaste for me. When they saw me after walking outside, they turned the other way, not wanting to distort the balance they kept between each other. I threatened their fragile peace.
Finally, when the sun was high overhead, I stood up and began walking back toward Dad’s pub, feeling like a complete failure. I was passing a blind alley when I felt a tug on my sleeve. I turned to see a thin, red arm pulling me toward it. I allowed the arm to lead me behind a dumpster, where I found it was attached to an imp crouched low, hidden from sight.
“Get down here,” a voice hissed, pulling me toward it. “If any of those mooks found out I was talking to you—forget about it.”
I knelt down, tucking myself small so that I was hidden from the street. “Who are you?”
“Unimportant. You can just call me the wind because nothing I tell you can be traced back to me ever, understood? You heard it from a man who heard it from a man who heard it on the wind. You got me?”
“I got you. I never met you.”
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.
UPCOMING ARTICLE: Next week, we’ll be sharing how to build out website sales for every ecosystem.
Website sales are as simple as they are complicated. Webstores, for instance, are the thing most associated with direct sales in the author community. Anyone who has read our work or heard us talk knows that’s utter nonsense, but Shopify specifically has done a great job convincing people that if you have a webstore then you are doing direct sales, and otherwise you’re not doing it at all, even if you run Kickstarters, manage a successful Ream/Patreon/Substack, and attend conventions.
Interestingly enough, webstores aren’t even the only type of direct sales you can have on your website. You can host landing pages on your website without ever having a webstore. I’ve seen people run crowdfunding campaigns and subscriptions on their websites. I’ve even seen people host virtual conventions there as well.
For our purposes, though, we’re going to be talking about the two main types of website sales; webstores and landing pages.
Webstores are webpages where you list your work for sale in a catalog, like Amazon, but with direct access to your readers.
While services like Shopify, Payhip, Gumroad, and Woocommerce are most often associated with webstore sales, we also consider sites like Etsy to be webstore sales. Even though an Etsy store doesn’t exactly exist on your website, the functionality of how you set one up and the methodology about how you succeed is similar enough that we’re squeezing them together. Additionally, a site like Teachable that lists multiple courses would also be considered a webstore.
As long as you have direct access to the customer, then we consider it direct sales. If, however, you sell on a site that doesn’t give you direct access to your customers, then we would consider that retailer or catalog sales. Still good, just a different thing.
ROUNDUP: Here are some of my favorite articles of the week.
Business-y:
sources power, reads the Reddit IPO docs, and wants businesses to be more innovative to solve climate change.
shows us how often to post on Instagram, teaches business rules just to break them, and needs their own Vizio.
dupes the future, abandons Google abandoning “don’t be evil”, and kills CPM.
uses networking as a superpower, explains outbound community management, and parties with the devil on their shoulder.
isn’t owed a favor when they help you, becomes their best ambassador by focusing outside themselves, and creates cool maps.
Publishing-like:
writes Teen Titans, paints a picture with 50 shades of loneliness, bets on Jezebel’s paywall, and cries (just a little) at every new paid member.
teaches Booktok 101, makes money on Medium, gives 3 productivity tips for writers, and brings logic to fiction.
draws hands for 100 days straight, messes up their keyboard, analyzes what makes a high quality lit mag,
feels stupid while doing something brave, goes from 0 to £10k, and dreams of electric chatbots.
draws a comic page, throws out the marketing rule book and starts over, and chases the empty pursuits of money and fame.
avoids Substack writing pitfalls, finishes a book six years in the making, and drives paid memberships without a paywall.
Culture-ish:
comes out, stops giving their attention away, and holds a grudge.
juggles postpartum life, has a good agave day, and moves from self-care to community care.
doesn’t sleep, enjoys a person, and admits their extreme nosiness.
needs self-driving cars, sees the privilege of being able to break down, and asks the dishes what to do with their life
Find anything you loved enough to swoon over or hated enough to make your blood boil? Let me know.
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Gilda will die today.
She has lived her whole life for one purpose—to be sacrificed to the great dragon lord, Ewig. And now, when the sun falls over the horizon, the time will come to fulfill her duty and walk to her death.
It was a fine life, but a lonely one.
As payment for her service, the City Council lauded her with riches, allowed her to live in the lap of luxury, and fed her the finest food. She never knew hunger, or strife, even when others worked themselves to the bone and suffered starvation.
The others always resented her for that, but they never knew her pain. Theirs was a hard life, but at least they got to live it. Gilda never had that choice. She would not live to see adulthood. She would never be married or have children.
All that remained of her brief existence was to walk up the lonely volcano to the dragon’s keep with honor, even though nobody treated her with any during her life.
Join her as she lives she last hours of her life, and find out what happens once she enters the dragon’s cavern inside the pages of The Dragon Scrouge.
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