[DIGEST] This was 40...

Your weekly stackable roundup

September 09, 2023

This past Thursday was my 41st birthday. I usually take a minute to reflect on the previous year, but I find it impossible to even conceive of how much has happened in the past 12 months. Some of my greatest achievements have happened during that time…and many of my biggest disappointments, too.

I founded this Substack, cofounded a conference, cofounded an archetyping system, became a board member at Alli, launched 10+ books, and spoke at events around the country while also going to Africa on safari and Paris with my mother.

However, I also got long COVID which prevents me from doing much these days. I lost two huge publishing deals, and have had more financial scares this year than ever in my career.

Still, all in all, I can say I like being in my 40s. This is the decade people are supposed to leap forward more than at any other time in their lives, and I can say that I feel like I’ve jumped ahead more this year than in any in recent memory.

As I was going through everything I’ve done in the past year, I kept saying “No, that couldn’t have also happened this year”…but then it did. I have no idea what’s going to happen next year, but I can’t wait to find out.

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.

It’s my birthday week, and while tired, it has buoyed my resolve. Still not enough to get me over a 3, but closer than I’ve been all month. 2.5

FREE WEBINAR: How to Have a Successful Book Event

On Wednesday, I’ll be giving a presentation for the Author Learning Center about how to have success at book events.

Now that in-person events such as conventions, fairs, and festivals are back in full swing, it's time to shake off the rust and prepare for the rush of shows at the end of 2023, into 2024, and beyond.

I’ll walk you through…

•  How to set up your table for success•  How to market yourself as an exhibitor•  How to make every event a success

…and it’s free!

What I wrote on Substack: This week, I veered off my usual course to talk about the biggest mistakes people make when translating their novels into comics.

After Candy finished wolfing down her food, we spent the next hour slowly driving Lily up the Hollywood Hills, working our way up and down switchbacks, rising high and then sinking lower into the mountains. The views in the Hills were majestic but getting there was like navigating through the favelas of a third-world country, with roads barely wide enough for one car. You were stuck going around turns at five miles an hour, and god forbid you missed a turn.

“STOP!” Candy finally shouted. “Pull over here. This is it.”

“You’re sure this is the place?” I asked as we idled outside a house high up in the hills. It was protected by a fortified gate, and a half dozen demon sentries patrolled the grounds. The lip of the house hung over the edge of the mountain, and wall-to-ceiling glass gave it a slick modern look. Unfortunately, the tinted glass didn’t let me see inside, and I had a feeling it was reinforced with bulletproof glass.

“I’m sure.” Candy’s voice didn’t waver. “He made me drive a Rolls up here myself once when all his drivers were busy. Said I was the only one he could trust.”

New chapters are free, but paid subscribers can access the archives. You also get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I have a new Kickstarter that just launched for my first new horror comic in close to a decade!

Do you love horror comics? Are you excited about dark and creepy shared universes? Are you ready for me to get back to writing horror comics for the first time since 2015? 

Then you'll love Hospice: One Damned Good Thing, a one-shot horror comic about a terminally-ill prisoner who is sent to a hospice to live out his last days, only to find a horrible secret that threatens his very soul.

Upcoming article: Next week, I’ll be crossposting an article I wrote about email marketing for every ecosystem.

We’ve all heard the expression “email is king”. When it comes to marketing, there is no better investment than building your email list.

If that’s true, why do so many authors evade their mailing list like the plague, and why is it so hard for writers to extract value from their email list at a level on par with other industries?

Well, one of the main reasons is that instead of keeping readers in their own direct sales environment to maximize the value of every sale, they are instead sending readers to retailers where they are getting a fractional share of an already minimal average order value. 

Most other businesses send subscribers to a web store or sales page with products that range from $20-$1,000+, instead of $1-$10 like on book retailers.

GET COACHED BY US LIVE: We've been talking about the Author Ecosystem a lot recently, but the most powerful part comes from seeing it live. So, we'd love to invite you to join us for a live coaching session on Friday, September 15th at 12pm PT/3pm ET. ​

Joining us doesn't guarantee you'll get coached live, nor does it require you to get coached. You can join as a fly on the wall, but if you're brave enough to join us live on camera, then you could be called on to join us to get a free 15 to 20 minute coaching session.

In order to prepare, we ask you to take the quiz and read the overview to make sure you have the right ecosystem. We'll confirm it live, but the more you know about your own system, the better you will be able to get the most out of our time together.

Roundup: Here are some of my favorite articles of the week, replete with a new feature. This is when I reveal how obsessive I am about curation. I’m about to reveal a bit of my crazy to you, so be forewarned.

Since there are over 40 links below, I’m testing something new. I’ve always tried to group these links by category in my head, but I’ve never made it explicit in the roundup. So, this week I’m going to break these links into two categories: Business-y and Lifestyle-ish.

You might have noticed in previous roundups that I’ve been trying to categorize similar articles together in a single bullet point. This has been happening behind the scenes for a few weeks, but I naturally assumed that people who like one article will be more likely to read the other articles that are “like it” if I put them close together.

I will literally spend half an hour sorting articles into the right bullet points. It’s deeply problematic, but I can’t send it out if it doesn’t feel right to me. Then, once it’s done I read it again at least 2-3 times to make sure that it’s right, and futz with it some more. I spent hours on this process every week, often rereading articles multiple times to make sure they fit.

This is the natural evolution of that meticulous persnickety-ness.

I don’t think these are particularly great new categories, or that this new system is necessarily a good idea, but I am prone to experiment, and this is one of those.

I would love what you think about this new format. I read different people for different reasons and this is my first attempt at categorizing that thought outwardly to help you find more articles you’ll love.

I will admit that some of these are probably miscategorized, but I thought it was more important to keep, for instance, the film posts together, rather than put the Animation Obsessive article in the lifestyle section, where it probably better fits.

Business-y:

Lifestyle-ish:

So, what do you think? Do you like this new format?

UPCOMING KICKSTARTER: Get Your Book Selling Direct to Readers

Monica and I have been talking about direct sales for a long time, and many of you have asked us to put together another definitive guide like we did for Kickstarter.

So that’s what we did, and it’s coming in November.

Learn how to sell from your website, crush it on Kickstarter, make a profit at conventions, and generally succeed at direct sales. It’s going to be a monster book, and we can’t wait to share it with you.

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 coming-of-age 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 subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.