Chelle Honiker takes us on a journey exploring all that IAM has to offer to hopeful Authorpreneurs, from the magazine, to Indie Author Training, podcasts, the Author Nation Conference and more!
Indie Author Magazine (IAM) is on a mission to inform, educate, and inspire authors at every stage of their careers. Flip through the pages of any issue and you'll see thoroughly researched, unbiased content dedicated to helping authors build their businesses. But there's more to IAM than the magazine. Join us as publisher Chelle Honiker takes us on a journey exploring all that IAM has to offer, from the magazine, to Indie Author Training, podcasts, the Author Nation Conference and more!
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Kevin Tumlinson [00:00:01]:
You just tuned into the hippest way to start and grow your indie author career. Learn the ins, the outs, and all the all arounds of self publishing with the team from d two d and their industry influencing guests. You're listening to Self Publishing Insiders with Draft2Digital.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:25]:
We are live. Yay. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Self Publishing Insiders. I'm Jim Azevedo from Draft2Digital, and joining me today is Chelle Onaker. Hi, Chelle.
Chelle Honiker [00:00:38]:
Hey, Jim. Good to see you again.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:40]:
Good to see you again. We need to see each other more often, you know, besides just, like, crossing paths at the occasional conference. Let let me give everybody, for the uninitiated, let me introduce you properly here. So for those of you who don't know who Chelle is, Chelle Honiker is an advocate for the empowerment of authorpreneurs, helping them to take charge of both their craft and careers. Now get this. As the cofounder and publisher of Indie Author Magazine, Indie Author Training, Indie Author Tools, and Direct to Readers dotcom, Shell's team of more than 80 that's not a typo. Shell's team of more than 80 writers, editors, trainers, and support staff provides resources and insights that help authors navigate the complexities of self publishing. We can all use Hello Help.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:33]:
Not to mention not to mention But wait. There's more. But wait. There's more. Her role as a programming director for Author Nation, an annual conference in Las Vegas, further exemplifies her commitment to fostering a community where authors can grow and succeed. And I didn't even mention your author automations blog on substack. So welcome again, Chelle. We're so happy to have you here.
Chelle Honiker [00:02:01]:
Thanks. I don't
Jim Azevedo [00:02:04]:
know how you do it. Before we went live, I was telling everybody, like, we love Shell and her team because we align with this mission of our mission being to help authors become more successful, to help them become more successful publishers. So Yeah. Let's break it all down. We have a lot to unpack.
Chelle Honiker [00:02:26]:
I think the first thing is, though, that my team does most of the heavy lifting. Right? And they are all working in the authors themselves. So Yeah. You know, they they they uniquely understand the challenges because it's the same challenges they face. So, you know, I it I look like I do a lot, but, really, I just I just walk over and, you know, ask how all the plates are spinning, and everybody tells me how the plates are spinning. So I I really do have a great team.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:51]:
Fabulous. It looks it looks like you're creating this enterprise Yeah. Yeah.
Chelle Honiker [00:02:57]:
That was by design, though. Yeah. That was by design. So Alice Briggs is the cofounder of Indie Author Magazine. And, and, really, we we looked it's the the best problems that you solve are the ones that you're having, right, when you build a company. So we looked at what classes were great and which ones weren't really great for our genre, which, you know, which things we resonate with. And so when we just started asking our friends, and our friends, we were all sharing the same stuff. So it it everything was born out of that organic, ecosystem of solving our own problems first.
Chelle Honiker [00:03:31]:
Right? So, so the magazine, we when we set out, it was to educate, motivate, and inspire, and it and that's what it does. Its primary purpose is to educate. And then, you know, indie author tools started as our love language our love letter to the industry where we crowd sourced all the stuff. Right? So you can go there and find, apps, services, downloads, tools, and, you know, that was a labor of love, for us just because that's the stuff that we were sharing. Right? And then Yeah. So those, you know, those sort of run on autopilot. And because it's crowdsourced, it's there. And we try and set up all the tech, which is kinda how I fell into doing the newsletter for myself at author automations was I was kinda documenting what we were doing and how we were connecting all these systems together and how we could get Substack to talk to Gmail, to talk to our CRM.
Chelle Honiker [00:04:22]:
So that's it's really just me kind of taking everybody on this zany journey with me, of what I'm doing. And so that's been helpful to me and to the people that I work with. So we thought it would be bigger and more helpful for the broader indie author audience at large. So
Jim Azevedo [00:04:40]:
Yeah. And it's and you guys are moving very quickly. And all of us, you know, ourselves included here at D2D and T, like, we can only be as good as our teams. And we're I'm so fortunate to have this team, you know, along right alongside the journey with me. Yeah. Absolutely. I say nice. Go ahead.
Chelle Honiker [00:04:57]:
Oh, I was gonna say I say a lot. I wake up and get to play with my best friends as a job. Like, it doesn't suck. It's just the greatest job ever.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:06]:
And the thing I've noticed too along the same lines is, like, even when I'm completely slammed and I'm just, like, kinda treading water, I never feel like I'm alone. I always feel like, you know, it's it's okay. You always have some support. Someone's got your back here.
Chelle Honiker [00:05:20]:
Yeah. I think even more I feel that more so, right, because I tend to, like, get out over my skis sometimes, and I have trusted people that will say, hey. Maybe we don't rewire the office this weekend, and, you know, maybe we don't start a new comp like, maybe we just stick with what we've got.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:41]:
Maybe we don't start a new company?
Chelle Honiker [00:05:43]:
Oh, yeah. I'll I have, like, 47 domain names. Right? So that they're just, like, on my whiteboard next to me that I'm like, oh, I wonder if I could spin up that. But, you know, you've gotta stay mission critical, and I think that's the biggest thing that, I'm learning this year with my team is to stay mission critical, to stay on what we need to move the needle on. And that's what we're that's what they're helping me do because I'm number one activator. So I get these big ideas and decide to, you know, spin something up, and then it's like, oh, well, we forgot to tell everybody about it. Oh, that was smart. So yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:19]:
Yeah. And I let me tell you. The corporate communications people who the people who need to talk about that stuff and, like, spread it out to the world drives us crazy. I know. I know.
Chelle Honiker [00:06:29]:
So necessary. They get in the way of me tinkering under the desk with things when they wanna ask me questions.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:35]:
But then it's like the marketing and communications people who are like, you know, hey, developers. Hey, engineers. Like, can you guys just put a button on a website? And, like, how hard can it be? Yeah.
Chelle Honiker [00:06:45]:
It it's harder than you would think, but yeah. I know. Those are the the the main I think the main lesson that I'm learning this year is listen to my team and not, you know, think that I know. And that's I think that's actually a good lesson for authors too is listen to your readers. And you don't have to write by committee or navigate or market it by committee, but you should be paying attention to what they're saying. So
Jim Azevedo [00:07:06]:
Yeah.
Chelle Honiker [00:07:06]:
Yeah. Big big lessons.
Jim Azevedo [00:07:09]:
So, Shel, do you mind if we kinda go through each of the properties kinda 1 by 1 just to give a little bit more detail? Yeah. And I'm gonna bring up the the link for indie author magazine too. So this was the first baby. Is that correct? Was the first
Chelle Honiker [00:07:23]:
well, it was actually the second baby. The first baby was indie author tools dot com, And then that morphed into yeah. So in the author tools.com started when, I was over I was stuck. I have to do air quotes. Everybody says I can't say I'm stuck in Ireland. But I was stuck in Ireland at the beginning of the pandemic, and there was a group of 24 of us that started to Zoom and and talk to one another about what was going on. We were sharing stuff, and we started a note that went into a spreadsheet that eventually became the mag that became indie author tools. The magazine came along because we were thinking well, we wanted to talk craft, and we wanted to talk and have more context.
Chelle Honiker [00:08:04]:
So Alice had a background in art and creative design. I had a background in magazines in the travel industry. So we smooshed those together and brought along everybody. So the magazine started in May of 2021. So we just turned 3, which is insane. And we publish monthly, and we publish just like an indie author would. So we're wide through Draft2Digital. We have direct sales and use book funnel to deliver our epubs.
Chelle Honiker [00:08:29]:
We are on all of the major retailers, everywhere, plus we have a podcast, plus we have 2 apps on the app stores. So, yeah, we went big. And now in year 3, we've got it down to a fine science of publishing every month. It's pretty cool actually now.
Jim Azevedo [00:08:44]:
That is something considering 3 years isn't that long to get you know, to really have it down as far
Chelle Honiker [00:08:49]:
as, you
Jim Azevedo [00:08:49]:
know, having everything run smoothly.
Chelle Honiker [00:08:51]:
Yeah. So I always say, you know, we had 2, managing editors when we first started, Erica Everest and Robin Sarty, who handled the heavy lifting of the content of the magazine while Alice and I focused on the tech and focused on, you know, the back end of it because we were building the business while we were building the magazine. So I really have to give credit to those for, you know, getting us a really great head start. And most startups fail. That's just the statistic.
Jim Azevedo [00:09:19]:
For sure.
Chelle Honiker [00:09:19]:
So for us to pass year 3, huge milestone. Like, it's a huge milestone for us. And we're really, really happy. How long did it take
Jim Azevedo [00:09:28]:
to go from the the idea to actually launching the magazine?
Chelle Honiker [00:09:31]:
Oh, so about 8 weeks, honestly. It was pretty What was it? Yeah. It was pretty fast. It was pretty fast primarily because we had all hands on deck. Right? So and because Alice and I had playbooks from other companies that we'd had before. So Alice had playbooks for putting together a beautiful magazine, and I had playbooks for how to build the websites and how to do the automations and how to set everything up. And so we already had a business structure in place through my company, Athena. So it for it was really, like, 8 weeks from ideation to launch.
Chelle Honiker [00:10:02]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:10:03]:
Alright. That's unbelievable. It was. Can you can you talk about the content? Like, how you arrange the content in each issue? And then on top of that, if you offer the magazine both digitally and in print.
Chelle Honiker [00:10:15]:
So we started at the beginning, and and we had, Nicole Schroeder, who is our editor in chief now, was always sort of hanging out in the back as an adviser and a writer. And so the managing editors with Nicole, we kinda ideated and asked people, what do you wanna hear about? So we did a we did an entire spreadsheet of ideas, and we had something like 3 or 400 article ideas. And we just thought, gosh, that's just insane. And then it started to fall into good natural sections within the magazine. So we obviously cover tech, obviously have some craft, but we did some things that were kind of interesting. One of which was because we were a team initially of 24, we decided to have an avatar, be our sort of person that's out in front. Right? I didn't want it to be me. Alice didn't want it to be her.
Chelle Honiker [00:11:04]:
So we we have Indie Annie, and she is kind of an amalgam of all the people that started. She's British. She's a little bit drunk sometimes, but she's an advice giving agony aunt. So she takes these weird questions, and she writes bridgerton like letters back to these folks. And it is absolutely hysterical. There is a person that writes it. She's chosen to remain anonymous. But we have Indie Annie out front as the voice and the face of the magazine for the most part, and that's been so fun to be able to play with and to have her there to kind of buffer some of the questions and answers.
Chelle Honiker [00:11:39]:
And she gives great advice, by the way. So if you get on our newsletter list, you'll get an email from Annie. Annie is our welcome sequence, and she's the one that talks about it. So so that's that was kind of the, you know, the start up of that section. Then we also have things like we've always paid attention to health and wellness. That's always been a big part of having an author's sustainable career. So we talk about mindset. We talk about wellness.
Chelle Honiker [00:12:05]:
We talk about chair yoga. We talk about treadmill desks. We Yeah. Interview with great experts about that. Yeah. So those are the biggest sections. Then we just have features where we talk about craft and design, best practices, advertising, and marketing, which are separate. So you'll find something really for everybody in the magazine, whatever stage of the career they're in.
Chelle Honiker [00:12:27]:
So if they're prepublished and have never published, there's stuff there to help them get off the ground. And if you're, you know, trying to hack the Instagram algorithm that just changed last week, you'll find something in there too. We pay attention to everything.
Jim Azevedo [00:12:40]:
Yeah. You have to as journalists. Yeah. Do you do you organize every month by themes? Like, do you have a theme of an issue every month?
Chelle Honiker [00:12:47]:
We do. So we when we started, we did sort of the iteration of what an indie author goes through. So the first one was plotting, and then we did first drafts, and then we did editing, and then we did you know? So we do carry a theme each month. And, usually, the 3 feature articles are sort of tied to that theme, and sometimes the cover subject will be part of that theme, but not always. It's it's it we follow sort of a loose pattern. The good thing is is that all that content is indexed on our website. So if you see something in, you know, issue 31 of the magazine and it has that theme, you can go back to the website as a subscriber and you can read all of the
Jim Azevedo [00:13:26]:
I see that.
Chelle Honiker [00:13:27]:
That around that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we've we've structured it so that it's evergreen. Right? And we go back like, last December, we went back. We had, at that point, two and a half years of content, and poor Elaine Bateman sort of went through all every single article to be sure that it was, you know, up to date and factual and worked with the editors. December, we try because we've been coming traditionally off of 20 books, we try and take December to just breathe because we're all real tired, and it's the holidays.
Jim Azevedo [00:13:57]:
Yeah. What were some of the problems that you that you wanted to talk about with that very first issue? And I wanna get your sense of how things have kind of morphed over the last 3 years. I mean, 3 years goes by so quickly, but then our industry changing every day before our eyes. So can you talk about some of those problems? Because I wanna make sure that our audience, like, really, really understands how valuable a resource in the author magazine is for them, not to mention all of the other properties as well, but especially the magazine because I see it as, like, the portal where not just aspiring authors, but authors who have been doing this for a while can tap into the knowledge base of our entire community, which is
Chelle Honiker [00:14:37]:
huge. I think the first challenges that we talked about were writing faster and finding resources, like, in editors and things. Yeah. And that sort of changed. Now we're talking more about transmedia, how AI affects our industry, how, how you can, you know, work with people in different ways, how you can structure your automations to do things. So we've we've talked a lot in the beginning about just the business of being an author and how to set up your business and things. And now we are still talking about those things, but we're updating them for what's obviously been the biggest game changer, and that's how everybody's responding to AI. We did an entire AI issue.
Chelle Honiker [00:15:16]:
And the one thing about the magazine that I wanna stress is that we do things You guys took that early too.
Jim Azevedo [00:15:21]:
You you do that early on the cusp of the wave coming, and everyone was still kind
Chelle Honiker [00:15:25]:
of like There's so much fear. There's so much fear around AI. So our stance is we're we're neither pro nor con AI. We're gonna present the facts, and then it's up to everybody to make their own business and ethical and moral decisions how they're going to do that. But we we have an obligation to talk about it. Right? We do have an obligation to talk about it. The great thing about having Nicole Schroeder there as our editor in chief is I am prone to hyperbole. I know.
Chelle Honiker [00:15:54]:
Shocking. So I will say, this is the greatest tool, and she will say, no. It is a tool, and now let's describe the tool. And and and that's, I think, you know, a big difference between us and, like, say, blogs or things is that we're not ultimately trying to sell you or purse persuade you. We're trying to educate and inform you. That's our mission is to educate and inform. If we inspire you too, great. But mostly, it's so that you can get the good information.
Chelle Honiker [00:16:20]:
And then you'll know what your resources are to continue to to do that, which is honestly, not to segue too quickly, but, that's why we built in the author training was because you have context and information in an article, but, oh, hey. Now you really need to employ that and and do the thing, right, that you just learned about in the magazine. So if you wanna sell direct, you can come and take a class on how to build a WooCommerce shop, or you can take a class on how to build a Shopify store. You can learn how Payhip works or, you know, that's there was more context needed even beyond the magazine itself. So that's why we did indie author training.com, which, yeah, is my is my personal baby. My my current passion, is training and seminars and webinars and things.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:09]:
When so remind me I know I I should know this off the top of my head because I had a conversation with you and Elaine.
Chelle Honiker [00:17:16]:
Think you have everything memorized, Jim. My god.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:18]:
Oh my god. It's so rude. I know. I told you I was a slacker before this even began. Don't write that down, anybody. So indie author training, about a year now ish?
Chelle Honiker [00:17:31]:
Okay. So indie author training first started as the Author Tech Summit. We, at the time, were hearing from our readers on the magazine side that just said, you know, how do I do this? How do I how do I use plotter? How do I use readsy? How do I use Kickstarter? And so what we did was we went and said, hey, Orianna Lekert of Kickstarter. Can you
Jim Azevedo [00:17:53]:
Yep.
Chelle Honiker [00:17:54]:
Do a Kickstarter 101 for people? And so we have indie author or Author Tech Summit, which was just technology. And we said, okay. We'll do it. We just want, like, a 100 people in there. We're just gonna stress test all the tech and make sure it works. We had 700 people sign up overnight. Like, literally overnight, we had 700 people. We're like, alright.
Chelle Honiker [00:18:14]:
This is obviously a need that's going unmet, technology training and and how to use the different things. Because you can go to each of the different companies, and they'll they've got, you know, documentation and things to teach you how to use it. But if you wanna just step back and compare technology or compare 2 different tools or compare email service providers, there wasn't a way for us to easily do that. So that was the idea was we would step in and say, alright. Here's MailerLite. Here's Mailchimp. Here's MailPoet. Here's the, product tours of each of them.
Chelle Honiker [00:18:47]:
And now here's a discussion board where you can kind of talk to other people that are using them and get the firsthand skinny on what's happening. Right? Is it easy to use? Is it not easy to use? Does it work for this genre? Does it not work for for this genre? So so indie author training sort of morphed over time over the last year into what it is now, which is educational courses, educational webinars, and a community where you can talk about all this stuff. And you can come in and say, I don't understand what, you know, an RSS feed is. Can someone tell me, like, I'm 5 years old? Yes. There are people that can that can do that. Or I'm running my 1st Kickstarter. How do I you know, what should I pay attention to? There's people that are in there that are talking about it. So and we wanted a community that was not beholden to the algorithms of the different social media tools too.
Chelle Honiker [00:19:38]:
Right? Because that's, I think, gonna be That'd
Jim Azevedo [00:19:41]:
be a bit distracting.
Chelle Honiker [00:19:43]:
Yeah. I think it's gonna be a big change. I think, you know, we've already seen so much change in the social media space in terms of people not getting the likes and shares and comments that they used to and having to pay to talk to your own groups and Sure. Fears coming out. So we just decided to build a community that wasn't on a social network. It's not
Jim Azevedo [00:20:04]:
That makes sense. I think the focus the focus community seem to be more helpful anyway. They kinda they police themselves, but they're just more helpful in general.
Chelle Honiker [00:20:13]:
Right. No. And, also, I mean, you look at companies like Wide For The Win or entities like Wide for the Win that is going to their own group, which is wildly successful, and it's you know, I'm in there. And and, like, Ally. Right? They've got they've they've moved off of having groups beholden to social media companies like Meta, which you I just came back from CEX a couple weeks ago. And one of the things that is big, the content creators, it's the Content Entrepreneur Expo. One of the big things that they're talking about is how we can own our own tech stack and how we own our own stuff because and this is my analogy. What if Elon Musk decides to buy Mailchimp? I don't know.
Chelle Honiker [00:20:53]:
It could happen. Right? And so that would fundamentally change it. So you you don't have any control over market conditions, but you do have control over how you utilize different apps and services so that you're protected as a, you know, as a business yourself. So
Jim Azevedo [00:21:08]:
that's an excellent point. That's one of the reasons why, you know, I've I've heard you and I've heard others in the industry, you know, best selling authors consistently say over and over and over again that you have to own your platform. You have to have a newsletter list because, Elon or oh my gosh. They're completely drawing a blank. Facebook.
Chelle Honiker [00:21:29]:
Oh, Zuckerberg.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:31]:
Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If if they decide to cancel your account for whatever reason or the algorithms change or whatever, you still have those email subscribers in your pocket that you could still communicate with. Well, I having the most followers or likes. It's about your ability to interact with your friends.
Chelle Honiker [00:21:49]:
Right. I I heard the analogy, and it made great sense is, you are renting space on social networks. Right? You're renting space on any social network, even TikTok, which I absolutely adore TikTok. You know, we we've seen changes that it might go away. I don't think it will. That's my, you know, futurist hat, but I don't think it's gonna go away. But it could. Right? And so if all of that traffic and all of those things are rented, what do you own? The only way you can own that that customer engagement is to have a newsletter, to have an email list, and to be sure that you have the ability to contact them.
Chelle Honiker [00:22:25]:
And, also, I think what's gonna be interesting is, SMS marketing, text marketing, which I think is gonna be another thing. People say they hate it, but it's actually cuts through the noise quite a bit. And it's gonna be I
Jim Azevedo [00:22:37]:
thought about that
Chelle Honiker [00:22:38]:
a little. Fixing.
Jim Azevedo [00:22:39]:
Yeah. I wanna ask you a quick question, though. When it comes to indie author magazine and indie author training, if if someone subscribes to indie author magazine, does does that also get them into indie author training? How does that work exactly?
Chelle Honiker [00:22:51]:
It doesn't. They're 2 separate entities, and I'll tell you why. Because, we set up indie author training to be a marketplace. So any instructor can bring their courses in to there. And so it's not something that we run or we're teaching. There are courses that I personally teach in there. But, for example, we've got courses in there for my name is Johnson, and we've got courses coming from David Vergutes and Angela Archer. So it's set up to have any instructor or anybody that wants to teach a class come and teach a class.
Chelle Honiker [00:23:24]:
And then you decide it's a marketplace, so you as the instructor can decide what you wanna charge and you, you know, decide. So we can't we can't take our base of people and give them access to someone else's course, in other words. But we set it up to be a free marketplace where other instructors can come and teach really anything they wanna teach, which is kinda cool. Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:23:45]:
Are you guys open to are you open to authors coming to you and saying, hey. I really would like to learn about x. Do you do you reach out to your community and and find an instructor that way?
Chelle Honiker [00:23:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Actually, we did. Like, I I had someone say, I really wanna learn about Shopify, and now we're putting together a course with Ines Johnson on how to use Shopify because she uses it brilliantly. And and that's the other thing too is we'll have courses that are kind of 101 courses. Uh-huh. Like, here's the very basics. But then we do have people that we consider subject matter experts that can come in and say, oh, wait.
Chelle Honiker [00:24:17]:
Hey. For this for this genre, you might think about doing this instead. So you've got, you know, the the general course, but then you've also got really super smart people in the room, so to speak, that you can ask questions of. So, like, you know, Pierre Alexjanti will come in and talk about Shopify or, you know, we've we've asked, you know, several people to come in and talk specifically about email and talk about how you can leverage the power of email. So, like, Tammy Labrecht can come in and talk about how to, you know, use ConvertKit or we can we can leverage really smart, simple things. So people can have courses there, but then we also have a few billing webinar.
Jim Azevedo [00:24:55]:
Yeah. And you've got, like, terms of the crop coming in here and teaching some of these courses.
Chelle Honiker [00:24:59]:
We really do. And, again, because we're coming at it from the agnostic journalistic platform, we can have compelling ideas for things. So if they come in and they say
Jim Azevedo [00:25:09]:
You should.
Chelle Honiker [00:25:10]:
Actually. Yeah. Exactly. Right? If they say, I wanna learn about Amazon ads, of course, we're gonna ask Janet Margot to teach that. But, you know, someone else might come in and say, alright. Well, here's some other ways that you can use Amazon Ads. Those aren't, competing ideas. Right? We can have everybody in everybody's welcome in the pool of learning.
Chelle Honiker [00:25:30]:
So come on in. Water swag.
Jim Azevedo [00:25:32]:
I was looking at one of the Zapier courses because I my team knows I broke our Zapier. I mean, it works, but it doesn't work as well as it did before. I don't know what I did to it. I need to figure
Chelle Honiker [00:25:42]:
out. Zapier is my jam. Yeah. I Zapier is like my it's like my personal I love it so so much. And I'm in their beta. I don't know how I got lucky enough to be in their, like, super secret beta group a couple years ago. So now I get to see, like, interfaces and how they're building apps with no code stuff and how it inter integrates with chat GPT and stuff. It's mind blowing.
Chelle Honiker [00:26:05]:
It's absolutely mind blowing. It's fantastic.
Jim Azevedo [00:26:09]:
So let's before you I wanted to ask you again about SMS marketing because I think that's really interesting, but I wanna bring in a quick comment from R. A. Morley who says stuck in Ireland. It sounds like a contemporary rom com. It kinda was. It totally does. It kinda was. It was.
Jim Azevedo [00:26:25]:
I I
Chelle Honiker [00:26:25]:
probably should write this, but, I mean, the the TLDR of it was I was in, London for the self publishing formula show in March of 20 20, and we all know what happened in March of 2020. So I was scheduled to go on to Ireland, spend time there with a friend, and then come back to Scotland. And then I was looking at Airbnb's, to buy, right, to build, like, a a place where all the authors could come and hang out. And then I got stuck in Ireland, and I was there for 4 months. So before my airline went bankrupt and, you know, it was kind of a crazy time, but I was I never felt alone. The friend that I had there in Ireland, her family took amazing care of me and made sure I was fed and loved on. Even did, like, a Mother's Day thing for me because I was there and my girls were, of course, back in Texas. So, yeah, it was I have to say stuck in air quotes because I wasn't stuck.
Chelle Honiker [00:27:17]:
I was hiding.
Jim Azevedo [00:27:20]:
How funny. Okay. So I wanna get to some of the newer things that you're kinda seeing out there. But you mentioned SMS marketing, and I agree. Like, to me, that sounds like, what? SMS marketing, really? So what what's what's the what's the insight here?
Chelle Honiker [00:27:34]:
Well, the insight there and and I'm gonna butcher this badly. Dana Clare is actually doing a session on this at Author Nation, which is the conference in November, November 11th through 15th. But she talked a little bit about it. We we met up at Superstars and talked a bit about it, and it's really having another point of contact with your readers or with, you know, the groups that you're that you're trying to contact. And so when someone signs up, you kind of incent them to give their phone number, and then you can use some of the modern email service providers like Brivo, have that baked in where you can buy credits and send text messages when you've got a launch or when you've got a, you know, local, event or or something. So it's it's pretty powerful. I think it's
Jim Azevedo [00:28:23]:
It sounds like
Chelle Honiker [00:28:24]:
think it's the next thing. Right? There might be a little bit of pushback and people hate their phones, but people don't hate their phones, which is why everybody has a phone.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:32]:
But they're very intrusive.
Chelle Honiker [00:28:34]:
They can be. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. But that could be but for marketers, or if you're an author trying to reach your readers, that's a good thing. And for your readers to to receive something from you, I mean, it's not gonna be like, what's who's this? They're gonna be like, right on. I got a message with Michelle.
Chelle Honiker [00:28:50]:
Right. Especially if you make it interesting or you gamify it or you make it, you know, worth their while, like, click here or not, maybe something. Right. Right. And, again, all marketing has to be marketing should be both attractive and repellent. Right? So you'll know very quickly what's what's going to attract those people. But, you know, their people have the right to have messages delivered to them the way they want it to. So if they don't want it, they can opt out, or you can ask them in advance before so you know that they're opted in.
Chelle Honiker [00:29:19]:
But it is an interesting you know, we're always looking for ways because newsletters are getting very, very busy, and there's always people trying to figure out the best way to do them. It's just a new channel, I think.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:29:31]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:29:31]:
And it's a world channel. Bring up this. I missed I think we answered it, but I wanna bring up Tisha's comment just in case. And and Tisha's asking, what does she mean by SMS marketing? Something like Telegram or text messages?
Chelle Honiker [00:29:44]:
So SMS marketing by definition is short message sending. So a lot of people lump it in. Text messaging is one of them. Telegram is another one. WhatsApp is another one. Some people lump all those together as SMS marketing. But it's essentially short messages of a 140 characters, that you're sending to a device as opposed to sending to an email.
Jim Azevedo [00:30:09]:
Okay. Thank you for that. I'm gonna bring up another comment here. This is from, one of our regulators, Guillaume. Hello, Guillaume, who asks question. I have been a full time author for 3 years now, but not making much sales. How can I make more sales? There there could be so many answers to that.
Chelle Honiker [00:30:30]:
Yeah. It depends. Kinda. I was just gonna say, it depends. And I think that was what you were gonna say is it depends. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:30:41]:
There's a lot of strings you can pull on there from your for the manuscripts themselves to editing, to cover design, to your platform. Do you have, I wonder if we can point Guillaume somewhere in India Author Magazine. Are there any what like, is there a particular issue or a particular theme where he can go and kinda search about, like, kind of reigniting or sparking sales.
Chelle Honiker [00:31:08]:
Yeah. So, in fact, this month's issue with, Celeste Barclay on the cover is all about reinvigorating your backlist. So that's that's there's articles in there that talks specifically how to reignite your backlist. And, indeed, Annie answered a question specifically about how to reignite your backlist. There's also things that you can think of doing that are, you know, a little bit more out of the box. So one of the things that we've talked about a lot, author nation specifically too, is looking at our books as not just books. How do we look at those as content and as stories, and how do we leverage being a storyteller to be able to expand that story? So, for example, you might do short audio or you might, you might think about turning it into YouTube and monetization on YouTube with some of your books. I know a lot of folks are doing that.
Chelle Honiker [00:32:01]:
How can you can you leverage, translations? So there's all kinds of ways to think of our book, not just as a book to sell, but as content and as stories that we can now leverage into different mediums and platforms. So that's we're focusing a lot on that. Again, with author nation, we're focusing a lot on that because the market conditions have changed so much. People that are afraid of AI, rightly so, AI can be a disruptor, but they don't need to be if they're, you know, looking at their work as a body of work and how to sell that body of work in different ways over and over again.
Jim Azevedo [00:32:37]:
Good points. Let me bring up this, this comment from Richard, and then we'll we'll we'll share this with you in a here in a second, Richard. Richard's asking I'm looking for these online courses she's talking about that Shell's talking about. What is the URL?
Chelle Honiker [00:32:51]:
Indie author training yeah. Indie author training.com is the main URL. And some of the courses are in progress, and we're putting up new courses all the time. So get on the mailing list, and then once we've got some new courses to release and to publish, they'll be there. But we're we're right now, we've got tons of webinars that are in there that have been recorded. We've recorded a lot of courses that are being added continuously, and we're repurposing some of the ones that were author tech summit. So if you go to indie author training.com, get on the list, and we'll tell you about when we start releasing them. We're gonna do a big release June 1st.
Chelle Honiker [00:33:26]:
So if you don't see things in there now, you will.
Jim Azevedo [00:33:30]:
Okay. And, again, that link is for our podcast friends, indieauthortraining.com. How was that, Lexi? Thanks thanks for the reminder. Every week, they're like, Jim, you have to repeat it for the audio lessons on him. Oh, I forgot.
Chelle Honiker [00:33:49]:
I do that all the time.
Jim Azevedo [00:33:52]:
I'm such a rookie. Shall we shift and talk to talk about author nation?
Chelle Honiker [00:33:58]:
Sure. Oh, gosh. I could talk about author nation all day.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:01]:
I yeah. I know. Oh, but but but first, I want I'm looking at the clock. I think we have enough time. Can we talk about direct to readers?
Chelle Honiker [00:34:09]:
Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:11]:
Okay. So
Chelle Honiker [00:34:12]:
Yeah. You just want me to launch into it? Okay. So direct to readers, direct, the number 2, readers.com. So a couple years ago, Alice Briggs, there it is, Alice Briggs went to the Nink conference. And at the Nink conference, she was chatting with a group of ladies that said, they sell direct, but it's so hard to find people to buy direct from them because you're marketing your one solo website. That was interesting.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:43]:
And readers are used to going to stores. Yeah. They used to go on to retailers.
Chelle Honiker [00:34:47]:
And so separately, I went to a shorter Mastermind conference, in Austin and and, I was chatting with Damon Courtney of Book Funnel who just said, I just want someone to tell me the next book to read. And I went, that's an interesting idea too. So what we did was we sort of smooshed these two ideas together, and we, we are in beta testing right now for direct to readers.com, which is not a bookstore. It is a directory. So as authors, you can come and load your books in whether you sell direct. That original idea was if you sold direct, but now it's like if you wherever. We don't care where you point people to. But the idea is to connect readers with authors, and we function as kind of an agnostic intermediary as a directory to get those 2 together.
Chelle Honiker [00:35:42]:
And, and so that part was kinda simple for us to put together in terms of technology. Where we took it a step further and where Damon's idea came into play was it was I just want someone to tell me the next book to read. And what we looked at is, you know, if you if you look at, like, search functions in the different bookstores, you start with a category, you start with a, you know, a trope, not really a trope. You start with a category, and you have to kind of drill down. So you're going down down down down down until you kind of get what you want. And what we said was, well, that's kinda dumb. Right? Because we know all the things about this book. We know about the tropes.
Chelle Honiker [00:36:23]:
We know about enemies to lovers. We know if it's a female protagonist. We know if it's, you know, a post apoc like, we know all of these things about this rich book. What we did was we set up a, a chatbot, but it's only trained on the content that's indirect readers.com, and it does not feed a larger language model. So if you put your book into direct readers, it's not gonna feed chat GPT. It's not gonna feed anthropic. It's not gonna feed anything else. And so but we're still leveraging the chat.
Chelle Honiker [00:36:57]:
So you can go to direct readers once we release it in the wild fully and say, I'm looking for a female protagonist, enemies to lovers set in Britain. Sure.
Jim Azevedo [00:37:08]:
Okay.
Chelle Honiker [00:37:08]:
We can find that very specific, but I'm looking for something that, you know, the hero wears an eye patch. Done. We've got that. So we've kind of
Jim Azevedo [00:37:16]:
tried readers to beta test it now, Chelle?
Chelle Honiker [00:37:19]:
So we are yes. We are. The what you see on direct readers is the beta version. There's a version behind the scenes that most people can't see, so it's very stripped down. That's just the the the concept there. So but behind the scenes, we're working with a couple of groups to talk about how to really ramp up for those readers so that the readers have choices. But the search is fantastic. It's really, really good.
Chelle Honiker [00:37:44]:
I'm really proud of it because you can engage with that chatbot and ask it leading questions like, hey. I'm looking for a, you know, steampunk romance, you know, set almost like an urban fantasy. And the book the books that are in there, know what the books are about. And you as the author control how much or how little you put in of the Books2Read we're not scraping books. We're not asking you to upload full concepts of the Books2Read, and we're not gonna again, we're not feeding any any other outside LLM or or, you know, you own what you own and it's your privacy. But the search is pretty contextual, and it's, like, not Boolean search. It's all this for all the nerds that are listening, it's not like any other search that's been in the past. Right? And so that's that's the concept for direct readers.
Chelle Honiker [00:38:34]:
And, again, we're connecting the author and the reader together. So the so the reader, when they find that book, goes and buys it from where the author wants to sell that book.
Jim Azevedo [00:38:43]:
Love it. Okay. And, again, for our listeners only, that's direct, the number 2, readers.com. Okay. I wanna get to author nation. We got about 10 minutes left. I wanna I wanna get to author nation, but I felt like we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about, your substack, author automations, because Yeah. That's yet that's yet another destination where authors can learn about these fabulous tools that we all have available to us now to help them become more efficient businesses.
Chelle Honiker [00:39:17]:
Yeah. So I went like I said, I went to CEX, to the Content Entrepreneurs Expo, and I was chatting with content creators that were there that were talking about how when they were, you know, writing and they they were writing about things that they liked, but that they didn't love. And, and author automations was sort of born out of that because I love to write about the nerdy stuff. And the magazine content is set, and it's not you know, we set that content 6, 8 months in advance. And so what I wanted to write about didn't necessarily fit in the magazine, format, and I didn't wanna sort of I just wanted an outlet for what I wanted to write about passionately. So I I pulled one of the 4,000,000 domain names that I have sitting on ice in my account.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:08]:
I've That's why I can't find any domain names.
Chelle Honiker [00:40:11]:
It's all they're all mine. I'm sorry. I do have a problem. I'm not even gonna lie. I have a problem. I'm a dorm domain name hoarder. Like, some people are cover hoarders. I'm a Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:21]:
Most people, like, are collecting cups from their travels. They're collecting their name.
Chelle Honiker [00:40:26]:
So I pulled one of the domain names out of Substack. I mean, I linked it up to Substack. So it's authorautomations.com. And I talk primarily about, like, right now, I'm going through a series of talking about why an author should blog, why a fiction author should have a blog. And and it's the first block of your tech stack, and I explain why. Right? And so I get to dive in a little bit deeper in there and have conversations there. So that's kind of my nerdy That's my nerdy outlet.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:56]:
Yeah. And that's is the frequency once a week on that?
Chelle Honiker [00:40:59]:
No. The frequency is promised once a week, but I usually I usually go twice a week for that. And then I do have some things in there that are, for founding members. Like, for example, this week, anybody that is a founding member founding member, I'm auditing your blog for you, which again sounds like work, but it's, like, so satisfying to me. I love doing that stuff. So for me, it's kinda like, oh, I get to dig in and do some techy weird stuff. That's cool.
Jim Azevedo [00:41:25]:
So Some of that, like, back end SEO stuff sounds kinda nerdy and, like, too technological and, like, your eyes are gonna gloss over. But then once you start to understand how it's creating all these different pathways of traffic to you, then it starts getting exciting. I wanna present this comment here from go ahead. Go ahead, Cheryl.
Chelle Honiker [00:41:43]:
I was just gonna say based on what's coming with search. Right? Because search is not gonna be search as we know it. Search is gonna be powered by generative AI, and there's a whole, whole, whole host of things that's that's gonna make that change. So, what I like to talk about is how can you future proof your business, and why should you do some of this stuff? So that's that's kinda what I'm doing with author automations.
Jim Azevedo [00:42:07]:
Yeah. It might seem overwhelming, but I would encourage everybody just to, you know, dip your toe into it. Start reading a little bit about it. It's not as scary as you might think or overwhelming. And once you start to understand this stuff, as more of these stories come to life, these new stories, you'll be able to understand it and then see then you can choose, what would work best for your business or your website.
Chelle Honiker [00:42:29]:
Right. Exactly. Or you can or you can choose to outsource it to somebody, based on now what you know how to do it. You know, you can hire somebody, have a VA or PA come in and do that part, but you understand it. You understand how much time it should take, and you understand how much you should pay that person. So it's just making sure that you're an informed business person.
Jim Azevedo [00:42:49]:
So RW asks and thank you for this question, RW. Yes. Can that link back to other services? And I'm assuming, RW, that you're talking about, the direct to readers. I just wanna make sure that I didn't, you know, skip over your comment here. Can direct to leader can direct to readers link back to other services?
Chelle Honiker [00:43:08]:
I'm not sure what the context of that is. So the end result when someone finds a book is that they go wherever the author wants them to go. Right? So if the author says, I want you to buy my book on Amazon, we'll send them to Amazon. If we or you could put in a UBL for direct, for Draft2Digital, and you can go to whatever it's the author has decided they wanna go. The other thing about direct readers that we've expanded into is we're now linking to subscription services like Rheem or you can link to audio files like with BookFunnels. So we we have the capacity to have however you're distributing that, if it's a graphic novel, if it's a subscription, if it's a video, whatever it is. She'll might have the full I've got a buffet, Lexi. I don't have plates anymore.
Chelle Honiker [00:43:57]:
I've just got a big old buffet.
Jim Azevedo [00:43:58]:
Yeah. For our audio listeners who are wondering what we're laughing at, our own Lexi Green just commented, of all of our guests who are busy with a lot on their plates, Shell might have the fullest plate. 100%, Lexi. I do. Thinking of full plates, let's quickly pivot and talk about author nation. Yeah. What's going on with author nation? Can you talk about what it is and how it was born just real quickly?
Chelle Honiker [00:44:22]:
Sure. So Author Nation, was started by Joe Solari, who bought the contracts for the 20 books to 50 k Conferences from Craig Martell. So Craig Martell started the 20 books to 50 k Vegas Conferences and all over the world, and they're fantastic. And I think anybody that's ever been to a 20 books conference is gonna recognize immediately the spirit of generosity and how everybody
Jim Azevedo [00:44:45]:
Oh, absolutely.
Chelle Honiker [00:44:46]:
It feels like found family and it feels like a family reunion even though there's 1500 people. And, and so I had been to, I think I've all but one conference in Vegas, plus the 20 Books2Read conference in Edinburgh, plus my background is that I used to produce TEDx Talks in Austin, Texas, the TEDx Spartan Springs Women and some of the TEDx Swan.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:09]:
Of course, I did. I'm
Chelle Honiker [00:45:12]:
an empty nester. I have to do something. But what was nice was that I recognized how special the 20 Books2Read conferences were and the fact that they were very, unique. Right? And and paid a lot of attention to things that not a lot of conference people pay attention to. There are anomalies. Right? Mel Jolley and Todrick Kendall are anomalies. They pay attention to every conference they produce. They pay attention to a lot of stuff too.
Chelle Honiker [00:45:42]:
But when Joe, was thinking about taking those on, he and I had a conversation, and I said, yeah. I would be happy to help with programming. And then he offered me the director of programming position. So that was like a dream come true because I felt like I was kind of in a unique position to be able to say, here's what we love about it, and here's now where we've grown and we can do a little bit different or a little bit, you know, better. And so, I think, because most of the executive team in author nation has been to many conferences and planned conference director for 20 Books. He's the conference director for author nation. And Jen Greene is the assistant. So there's all these people that have been involved with it for a long time.
Chelle Honiker [00:46:30]:
But it is a uniquely new conference. It's brand new in terms of how we're structuring it. We have, different domains. We're looking out for people that have prepublished, so we've got unique, sessions for them. We've got people that are midlist and wanna do more. How can we help them live their best author life? And then we've got, you know, more advanced topics that we're talking to. We've also broken it up into different domains. So we have craft.
Chelle Honiker [00:46:55]:
We have marketing. We've got, transmedia. We've got advertising, which is different. We've got health, wellness, mindset, and productivity. And then we've got a, business and finance, which, of course, is Joe's you know, that's his primordial ooze. So he's like, yeah. That's a cool session. So we need our necessary.
Chelle Honiker [00:47:15]:
It's super necessary, but it starts November 1st. November 1st is the vendor day, and so we'll have sessions presented. That's this is also a little bit different. We'll have vendor sessions in 30 minute blocks on Monday. So you can come and learn about, you know, all of the different vendors that are gonna be there on Monday. And then you can go around to all the booths, and the booths will be up throughout the week too for some select vendors. So we've paid attention to connectivity with vendors on Monday. Sue Solari has designed this beautiful space now that's gonna be more, welcoming and easier for people to sit and have conversations, so that's a little bit different.
Chelle Honiker [00:47:58]:
And then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we start to transition into education. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are education days, which are gonna be fantastic and back to back fun. We also have a learning lab, which is gonna be different. We have hands on training, which is gonna be a little bit different. Alright. And then we'll also have a little tech cafe where people can come and, you know, take a minute, charge the phones up, talk 1 on 1 or one to many with a couple of people with technology in front of them. So yeah. Then, Thursday night, we transition into our reader event, which Thursday night were we have Kevin Smith, who is an he embodies the spirit of indie.
Chelle Honiker [00:48:39]:
Right? So people are like, well, he's not an indie author. He kinda is an indie author, but more so than that, he embodies the spirit of independent independent publishing and independent Sure. Movie making. So he's gonna come and have a session on Thursday night. And then Friday, I will be dead in my hotel room, and Mandy Stevens will take over with the rave event, which is our reader expo for that day. So we have authors that are coming to sign their Books2Read, and, we'll have sessions where people where readers can come and, you know, hear from some of our, big time author names and hang out and meet their favorite authors. So we transition into that. So and then, we have a fantastic cheap block of rooms, at Horseshoe.
Chelle Honiker [00:49:25]:
It's $99 a night or 109. And Formula 1 is that weekend, so we really scored. You can't get
Jim Azevedo [00:49:32]:
a room here
Chelle Honiker [00:49:33]:
for under $300 a night now. So
Jim Azevedo [00:49:36]:
And Christina is asking, you know, where would the automation be held? Is it in Vegas too?
Chelle Honiker [00:49:41]:
It is in Vegas. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:49:43]:
It is. And So it's
Chelle Honiker [00:49:45]:
same bad time.
Jim Azevedo [00:49:46]:
Yeah. I could I could I could attest to the team that's putting this together. Like, you guys really have, like, the cream of the crop who putting this event together. Like, these folks have been doing things like this for years years years, the authors that you're bringing in. I I went through some of the of the workshop schedule. It's amazing. It's it's gonna be such a good use of author's time. And those room rates are fantastic.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:14]:
I don't know how y'all negotiated that.
Chelle Honiker [00:50:17]:
That's Craig. I mean, I have to give props where props do. Craig negotiated those back in the day. So, Joe Joe picked them up, and, yeah. It is. It's it's go, Joe.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:29]:
Yeah. So we are coming to end of our session here.
Chelle Honiker [00:50:35]:
I don't know how that's possible. I told you I'd keep it to a pithy 4 hours.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:40]:
Well, it's kinda your fault, Chelle, because you have, like, all these different things you're working on. That's all you get to all of. I do. There's a lot.
Chelle Honiker [00:50:48]:
But again, it's not just me. I'm just the one that gets shoved out front. It's the team that's behind it that make sure that everything's like, I work with the literally the best people on the planet. It's the greatest.
Jim Azevedo [00:51:00]:
Yeah. You've got a you've got a good group of people. And, Elaine, if you're watching, I know I got an email from you. I'm gonna get back to you. I promise. So very For all of our viewers out there, thank you so very, very much. If you're enjoying this session and other sessions like it that we've done in the past, please do us a favor and like, share, comment, and subscribe to these videos because then we get to offer guest spots to people like Chelle who come in here and tell us what's going on in the Also, please be sure to bookmark dtdlive.com because when you do that, you could see what our topic is going to be next week and who our guest is going to be. And if you are an aspiring author or maybe even if you're a traditionally published author who's been around the world a few times in this crazy industry, but you're maybe dipping your toe and investigating self publishing for the first time, why not sign up for a free account by going to draft 2, the number 2, digital.com? Well, Shell, thanks again so much for spending part of your day here with us.
Jim Azevedo [00:52:06]:
We really appreciate you. We appreciate your time and your expertise and that you have the pulse on your finger on the pulse of this entire industry. If you could just hang out in the green room for a moment. Yeah. You know? Okay. We'll be I'm gonna play a quick 32nd commercial spot. Thank you again, Chelle. Thank you all of you who hung out with us today.
Jim Azevedo [00:52:27]:
We'll see you here again next week at the same time. Bye
Kevin Tumlinson [00:52:32]:
bye. You books are great, but there's just something about having your words in print, something you can hold in your hands, put on a shelf, sign for a reader. That's why we created D2D print, a print on demand service that was built for you. We have free beautiful templates to give your book a pro look, and we can even convert your ebook cover into a full wraparound cover for print. So many options for you and your Books2Read. And you can get started right now at Draft2Digital. That's it for this week's self publishing insiders with Draft2Digital. Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with your will be author friends, and start, build, and grow your own self publishing career right now at draft2digital.com.