Wouldn't it be cool if there was one site to help authors ease their marketing burden? That's the idea behind StoryOrigin, and it's creator, Evan Gow, is here to tell us all about it.
No one ever said indie publishing is easy! There's the writing, the publishing, the distribution. If that wasn't hard enough, there's the marketing. Indie authors have to worry about their websites, newsletter subscriptions, beta readers, book reviews, and more. Wouldn't it be cool if there was one site to help ease the marketing burden? That's the idea behind StoryOrigin, and Evan Gow, who created StoryOrigin, is here to tell us all about it. Join us!
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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 D2D and their industry influencing guests. You're listening to self publishing insiders with Draft2Digital.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:26]:
Alright. We're live. We did it, Evan. Welcome everybody to another rousing edition of Self Publishing Insiders. I'm Jim Azevedo. I lead marketing and corporate communications here at Graphtec Digital. And today, it is my distinct pleasure and honor to welcome the founder and creator of StoryOrigin, Evan Gao, to the podcast. Welcome, Evan.
Evan Gow [00:00:49]:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:53]:
We're gonna have some fun, Evan. There's a lot to learn from you and from your expertise and about the company. Can we hop into it? Because I think we have a lot to talk about. Alright. So, I mean, I was doing a little bit of research on your background. | 00:01:05.110 - 00:01:07.405
Jim Azevedo [00:01:07]:
I was out on vacation, as you know. So I'm like, okay. I wanna talk to Evan. I wanna get ready. But, like, you are a developer by by trade by by training. You've done some pretty interesting things, some some neat little, like, hackathons and stuff like that. So it seems like the the, the kind of lure to build, to to create is flowing in your vein.
Evan Gow [00:01:32]:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, I I mean, when I was a kid, I like to invent you know, make little drawings of things and, you know, pretend I was an inventor and stuff. And, when I was, when when I was a kid as well, I I like to say I invented the Swiffer wet jet.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:50]:
Oh, you totally did.
Evan Gow [00:01:52]:
Yeah. For sure. My my parents, we had this big wood floor, and, my parents would, you know, have us kids, like, wax it every now and then. And so, you know, I had the, like, bottle of wax, and I had the, like, broom thing. Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:02:10]:
Yeah.
Evan Gow [00:02:10]:
And, you you, you know, spray it out of the bottle on the floor, and then you you wipe it up. I taped the bottle to the handle of the broom, and then got a bunch of straws and taped those together so the so Nice. So I could squeeze the bottle and go through the straws and chewed out in front.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:30]:
And,
Evan Gow [00:02:31]:
and then 6 months later, the Swiffer wet jet came out, and, you know, I still haven't gotten my check.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:36]:
Yeah. I was right. We're the law we're the law to you. Right? You're gonna be reading about that in the Wall Street Journal next week. Kinda patent that stuff, man. So you learn a lesson there.
Evan Gow [00:02:47]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Got it. Got got it's all about the IP for sure.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:54]:
Right. Right. Alright. So let's let's talk about story origin. So first, let's start with the basics. Like, what is story origin?
Evan Gow [00:03:03]:
It is a lot of things. Okay. When I, when I left my previous role to
Jim Azevedo [00:03:10]:
Uh-huh.
Evan Gow [00:03:11]:
Build story origin, I went and I talked to a bunch of writers. I had some ideas in mind of what I wanted to build. And I asked them, like, what what other things are you doing? And they said, you know, I use this service for my for building my mailing list and other service for finding reviews. I use some combination of like Facebook groups and Google forms, do arrange newsletter swaps, and I've got, you know, services for beta copies and links and, my website and all of this stuff. And I was like, okay. So you've got 5 different services, like 8 different spreadsheets. You're doing all this context switching constantly between, like, writing and then all of your marketing activities and things are split up among all of these services and spreadsheets. I wanna build one thing that simplifies all that business side for authors so that they can focus on writing.
Jim Azevedo [00:04:02]:
Right. Yeah. So that was the
Kevin Tumlinson [00:04:03]:
gap that you saw.
Jim Azevedo [00:04:04]:
Like, they were just kinda going all these different services everywhere and, you know,
Evan Gow [00:04:08]:
like, hey.
Jim Azevedo [00:04:09]:
Okay. So what are the types of services? So it's is it email newsletter building and reviews? I mean, you're bait you exist out there to help authors essentially get the word out about their books, sell more books, sell more units.
Evan Gow [00:04:25]:
Yeah. So, usually, what I recommend most authors who are, you know, sort of new to marketing or or or haven't have written a a bunch of books maybe, but haven't ever really focused on building their audience per se, I always recommend starting with building your mailing list because that is something that you control. You own that connection with your readers when you're, you know, putting a book up and you're advertising it through other, you know, means you don't have a direct relationship with those readers. They might click on your book. They might buy your book. But then when you release book 2 in your series, they don't know. Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:05:06]:
That's it. The creators become the customers of that the retailer where they bought your book.
Evan Gow [00:05:10]:
Exactly. And so I always recommend authors start with building a mailing list. And so that's where I started with when I was when I was starting story origin and I had, you know, all these ideas for all these different ways I could help authors. The first thing, the first feature that I started with with was helping authors create reader magnet landing pages. So for those authors are familiar unfamiliar with the term, a reader magnet is usually a free story, that you give away when someone signs up to your mailing list. And so story origin can help you create a land, a nice landing page for that. It delivers the files to the readers. We, you know, store origin handles the tech support if they run into any trouble, with those files.
Evan Gow [00:05:52]:
And so it makes that takes a lot of, that off your plate as an author. And so creating those reader magnet landing pages was the first thing that I set up, for authors on story origin. And then from there it was creating group promotions. So authors could work together to promote all their reader magnets, and we can all build our mailing lists together. So those were the first couple of features that I built.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:17]:
That's very cool. That's one of the things that struck me about when I was reading about StoryOrigin for the first time is that, oh, this this company seems like it's geared more toward a collaborative approach to marketing. Because I think as a as an author, marketing the idea of marketing a lot of authors don't really like marketing so much. You know, we wanna be back in our little caves running our books, and the idea of marketing and promoting ourselves, but most of us are kinda like this over in the corner, can be kinda scary and challenging and at times overwhelming. But it looks like you're focused on, hey. Let's do this collaboratively. Like, you know, I'll help you. You'll help me.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:59]:
That way, you're not just one single person trying to broadcast out. You've got multiple people helping each other market their books.
Evan Gow [00:07:09]:
Yeah. And I totally understand that fear because, like, I mostly just wanna spend all of my time programming, like writing software. And it can be hard to do marketing for sure. I found that my newsletter though has been one of the most important things that I have done for story origin though. So, you know, I send out updates with here are the features I'm working on or send out, Hey, I'm doing this thing over here. Like, come check this out. And that is hugely valuable. And so I can say that it's having those relationships with my own, you know, customers is been so valuable to StoryOrigin as in the same is true for authors.
Evan Gow [00:07:58]:
When you have that direct relationship with your readers, it can be scary. It can be anxiety inducing when you're writing that newsletter, and then you're hitting send and it's going out to, you know, 100 or maybe thousands of people. Yeah. And I still get that anxiety. You know? This is this is like, it doesn't necessarily go away, but you just gotta keep doing it because it is so valuable for you and your your business.
Jim Azevedo [00:08:26]:
You know, I I try to advise authors that that little, I don't know, that little tinge of of anxiety or fearfulness when you before you click publish, whether it's a newsletter or a book or hopping on stage for a speaking gig, that's kinda your superpower. And the reason is was because, you know, the folks who are the extroverts, the ones who are like, hey. I could just wing it and go out there.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:08:53]:
For them, okay. Maybe they
Jim Azevedo [00:08:54]:
can wing it. However, for those of us who have this anxiety all the time, I think that's a superpower because it forces you to prepare. It forces you to ensure that, you know, the t's are crossed, the i's are dotted, and to make sure that you that you're putting out the best content that you possibly can for your audiences.
Evan Gow [00:09:13]:
Yeah. For sure. For sure. The one thing that I I would say though is that the sort of pitfall that I think a lot of people run into a lot of times is authors create these sort of artificial barriers for themselves because
Jim Azevedo [00:09:29]:
Like what?
Evan Gow [00:09:31]:
You know, so I generally recommend to authors write a prequel short story to your book or your series and use that as a reader magnet because it's great. Like, it provides, like, a sort of a cliffhanger at the end of that prequel. You can put, you know, chapter 1 of your of your first book in your series, put chapter 1 at the end of that prequel. That way they get started reading into book 1, and then they're that provides them a smooth transition into, oh, I wanna buy this book, right, to keep reading this story.
Jim Azevedo [00:10:02]:
And Get them a little taste of what's coming.
Evan Gow [00:10:04]:
Exactly. So a prequel is a is a great reader magnet. But if, you know, you work a full time job and you only get, you know, a couple hours a week to write and you've already written book 1 and you put ahead of yourself. Well, okay. I have to do a prequel. It has to be this way. And that's gonna take you 3 months to write it and then another month to edit it. And then you're only gonna start building your mailing list then, and then it's gonna take you 3 months from there to sort of get a decent sized audience between group promotions and newsletter swaps with other authors.
Evan Gow [00:10:39]:
Mhmm. You you that's like that's a very long long timeline. So I recommend, you know, whatever authors can do, try to tear down those barriers that you might impose on yourself. Like, it needs to be this way. Right? If you've already got your book, 1 in your series, take the first three chapters, use that as your reader magnet, right? Anything so that you can get started with building your mailing list today, rather than waiting 3 months or 4 months or whatever. And the other, the other thing is, like, a lot of times, authors will hear advice from authors that are much later in their career, and those authors might talk about, oh, I've got, you know, 7 different will welcome sequences, and I've got all these branching decision tree things. And authors who are just starting out think, oh, that must be the right way to do it, and so I have to do it that way. And then eventually, you know, they stall out because it it's become such a, a complicated thing that it seems impossible to tackle.
Evan Gow [00:11:42]:
And so always recommend to authors like, you know, whatever you've got, whatever you can get started with today, even if you're welcome email, even if your welcome sequence is just one email that says, hey. Thanks for joining my mailing list. Like, I hope that you enjoy the free book that you got or the free, you know, sample that you got. Feel free to reach out to me anytime or something like that. Like, if that's all you've got, like, if that's what can you can get started with today, do it. Because those authors that you hear that have, you know, all of these all of these different welcome sequences, all of these different branching things, They didn't start there day 1. Right? Mhmm. Like, they might not have had a welcome email email at all, and they only built that stuff up over years years years of just tweaking things.
Jim Azevedo [00:12:27]:
Yeah.
Evan Gow [00:12:28]:
So, you know, you gotta learn how you can.
Jim Azevedo [00:12:31]:
Yeah. The thing that we keep telling our authors too and the viewers of this show, they probably heard you say it or heard all of us say it a 1000000 times is that when you have one of these email newsletters, the way we the way the reason why we keep pushing for email newsletters is it's it's helping you build your platform. And the platform isn't just a measure of your of your fame. It's a measure of your ability to communicate with your readers, the people who want to hear from you, the people who manually sign up to hear from you. And that email newsletter is going to stay with you and grow with you as you grow your author career regardless of what happens with Amazon's algorithms or regardless if Facebook kicks you off the platform for whatever reason, your mailing list will always stay with you. So all those mailing lists
Evan Gow [00:13:17]:
Yeah. I mean, in in the age where, you know, you might have your Facebook account canceled, you might have your Amazon account canceled, you hear stories from authors. And and a lot of times, a lot of times, it's just like the algorithm does it. And then you you reach out to customer support and and you might be able to get your account reinstated, but having something there so that, you know, if for 2 or 3 months or whatever before you can get the issue resolved, like, you have something so that you own that, relationship with your readers. It's so valuable. And that's why, I've built you know, that's why I generally recommend, like, authors get started with building their mailing list with story origin, but then story origin also has, you know, a bunch of other capabilities so that you can, you know, have that platform. Right? Yeah. So you can build your website with story origin and you can set up your you can set up a direct sales, on that website with story origin as well.
Evan Gow [00:14:18]:
And so it's all sort of, about putting the power in the hands of authors. Perfect.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:14:24]:
That and that's that's the mission of
Jim Azevedo [00:14:26]:
the company to put that power back. Hey. That's our mission. You can't have that.
Evan Gow [00:14:32]:
I think I like to think that all of the service providers
Jim Azevedo [00:14:35]:
Where, you take the sweeper, and now you're taking
Kevin Tumlinson [00:14:37]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:14:38]:
You know,
Evan Gow [00:14:39]:
all of the service providers that, you know, build things and help indie authors, it's all about helping indie authors, you know, run their businesses, and sort of, empowering those authors because it, you know, used to be all of these major public houses. You sort of just sent your manuscript off and there were gatekeepers. And then,
Jim Azevedo [00:14:59]:
you
Evan Gow [00:14:59]:
know, you either get through the gate or you don't. Right. And once you're through that gate, then they have all these different sort of arms that handle all these different things. The editing, the marketing, the, you know, all these things. And now with so many authors being independent, all that comes back to you as an individual. Can you do all these things that these, you know, large companies used to have teams for? Right? And so Yeah. All of us are, you know, trying to lower those barriers so that authors can manage all that just as a single individual.
Jim Azevedo [00:15:35]:
Yeah. For sure.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:15:36]:
I was gonna ask you about that
Jim Azevedo [00:15:37]:
a little bit later, but you but you kinda covered it, the difference between traditional marketing and the control now that indie authors maintain. But I wanted to first ask you, the company was founded in 2017 or was it 2018?
Evan Gow [00:15:53]:
I left my previous job in July 2017. Mhmm. And then I had StoryOrigin's first public launch, like, when it became available to people was in April 2018.
Jim Azevedo [00:16:07]:
Okay. Okay.
Evan Gow [00:16:09]:
How about six and a half years now.
Jim Azevedo [00:16:11]:
Okay. How has the company evolved through that time? It sounds like you've been offering some newer features over the years. And how was that informed? Is that informed mostly by, like, what you're seeing happening out there in the market? Or are those your authors, your customers who are coming to you and saying, hey. You know what? It would be really cool if we had this feature or that feature, or is it a a combination?
Evan Gow [00:16:34]:
It's it's definitely a mix. Right? Okay. There there are definitely things that were on my list where I said, okay. These are things that I want to have eventually. And then there were some things that were not on that list that I got requests from authors about. And then I went, that makes sense. And I think storage and could help you with that, and that would kill another one of those spreadsheets that you've been having to update. Right.
Evan Gow [00:16:59]:
Let me let me handle that for you. So, like, a good example of that would be, storage engine had, one of the things that was on my list was, storage, and I developed a review copies feature. So you can distribute, you know, your epub or you can distribute an Amazon prepaid, book link. If your book is in Ku and you're exclusive with Amazon, you can really only distribute your e your ebook through Amazon. So we can also distribute Amazon prepaid links. So this review copies feature is a way for authors to collect interest from readers that are interested in getting a free copy and would be up for leaving a review after they've gotten that copy. And story origin gives, the authors when that person requests the book, they say where they're gonna leave a review. So Amazon, Goodreads, BookBub, Apple, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, etcetera, And they would leave their reviewer profiles, the links to their reviewer profiles from those sites as well.
Evan Gow [00:17:59]:
And then authors are in the driver's seat about who they approve to be able to download a copy of, of that review copy and then, storage and lets you know, like, when they've written their review, when they've submitted their review to the various retailers or review platforms, etcetera. And, I had an author reach out to me. She said, I've got all these audiobook promo codes, right, from Audible. And I wanna give these out to reviewers, people who are gonna leave a review, and I'd love to be able to get that same sort of vetting and tracking system that store origin does for, ebooks, I'd love that to do that for my audiobooks. And I went, that makes a ton of sense to me because you've been you've been managing all this, like, with a spreadsheet and then manually, like, emailing everybody their code and then emailing them, like, a couple weeks after they get the code, like, hey. Just wanted to follow-up. Make sure, like, did you listen to the book? Did you have any trouble downloading it? All that stuff. And so StoryOrigin handles all that process for authors.
Jim Azevedo [00:19:04]:
Oh, really? That's really cool.
Evan Gow [00:19:05]:
So you can you can you can when someone requests an audiobook from you, you can distribute an audiobook promo code to them through StoryOrigin, and StoryOrigin provides you all that vetting and tracking process. And and, you know, it started out with just Audible, but, you can now distribute Spotify codes or audiobooks.com promo codes or Kobo, promo codes. And so, yeah, it does yeah. And that was that was another thing where authors were like, oh, well, I've got these codes from this other retailer can storage and handle those 2 and other
Jim Azevedo [00:19:40]:
Yeah. Perfect. Well, that makes sense. Hey. Before I get too far ahead of myself on ourselves, I should probably ask you, you know, how does it work? If I'm an author and I'm coming to the StoryOrigin site for the first time, and I'm like, oh, I need to build my newsletter, or I would love to find some some book reviewers out there. How does it work? Is there a menu of options, or do you sign up for all the packages at once, or can you pick and choose? Can you let us know how it works and how much it costs if you're comfortable with that?
Evan Gow [00:20:08]:
Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Storage and its pricing is super transparent, and it's super easy. There is a free tier, which includes a lot of things. So, like, if you just wanna deliver a ebook file to someone and have storage and handle the customer support, that's free. That's called the direct download. You can, you can do that on storage and for free there's universal book links, universal audio book, links, and then, features like word count tracking storage, and does that as well.
Evan Gow [00:20:34]:
If you wanna stay mode, all that stuff is on the free tier. And then there is the standard plan, which is $10 a month or $100 per year. And that includes the reader magnets, the group promos, the newsletter swaps, beta copies, building your website, review copies, audiobook promo code distribution, like so a lot of a lot of the other, things, all of the other stuff is sort of on that standard plan, which is $10 a month or a $100 per year, which
Jim Azevedo [00:21:03]:
Yeah.
Evan Gow [00:21:03]:
Many authors tell me for the amount of stuff that storage and does, they're like, Evan, you are way under priced. Like, I would have to pay for so many other tools to do everything that storage and does. And I, I like
Jim Azevedo [00:21:18]:
You have educational resources too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Evan Gow [00:21:23]:
And there's lots of educational resources on storage and too. So if you hit that tutorials tab on storage and you'll see video tutorials and you'll see case studies from authors and you'll see in-depth guides that I've written all that stuff. And also once you've logged into story origin and you go to your author dashboard, there'll be like 3 types box boxes there. One says like build your mailing list and other says find reviewers and other says increase sales. If you hit one of those text boxes, it'll give you a checklist that says like, go here, do this, go here, do that, go here, do that. And if you just complete all those steps, you will be on track to, like building your mailing list or finding reviews and stuff.
Jim Azevedo [00:22:03]:
Perfect. Perfect. I wanna bring up a couple of comments that I've seen coming through here before. If we lose them in the shuffle, because I just wanna underscore, what we talked about earlier about people sometimes losing their their accounts at Facebook or at Amazon and opportunities. Thank you for this comment. They say, I knew someone that almost lost their Amazon account because they didn't know not to use the term choose your own adventure. I think I heard about this story too, and I don't I don't think that that's the only person that this happened to. And she says that phrase is actually copyrighted.
Jim Azevedo [00:22:38]:
Who would know? I didn't.
Evan Gow [00:22:40]:
Yeah. I don't think most people know that.
Jim Azevedo [00:22:43]:
Yeah. And sometimes you can make these innocent mistakes and get kicked off. And this is why it is so important once again to have that newsletter and to keep that newsletter close to you.
Evan Gow [00:22:55]:
Absolutely.
Jim Azevedo [00:22:57]:
And I wanna bring up a question here, one of our first questions, from Linda French. Linda, thank you for your question. We were talking about reader magnets earlier. And so Linda asked, what's the best way to use reader magnet landing pages for authors who don't write series?
Evan Gow [00:23:13]:
Yeah. So this this goes back to, you know, sort of what I was saying before.
Jim Azevedo [00:23:18]:
Mhmm.
Evan Gow [00:23:18]:
I I generally recommend, like, a prequel short story to your book or your series. But if that is like a a if that creates some sort of barrier to you getting started building building your mailing list, like, absolutely tear that barrier down. You do not need to do things that way. Everyone has their own sort of way of going about doing things. So a lot of authors will use, like, an anthology of short stories that they've written because they've, you know, they've got a bunch of short stories that they've never really done anything with.
Jim Azevedo [00:23:46]:
Uh-huh.
Evan Gow [00:23:46]:
And they'll just put those together and put that into a reader magnet. And then you can still always, like, put chapter 1 of 1 of your other books at the end of that anthology and say, hey. If you, like, enjoyed these other stories, you can, keep reading my other books. And then at the end of at the end of reading chapter 1, here's the link for where you can buy it. Right? Yeah. So, yeah, you might do an anthology of short stories, or you might just do just a a single short story or something like that. If you are a nonfiction author, it might not be a story at all. Right? It might be like, here's a workout plan or here is, like, some worksheets that you should go through, like, as you're, you know, doing some sort of daily regimen or something like that.
Evan Gow [00:24:34]:
Right? So, yeah, you, it absolutely doesn't need to be like a short story prequel or something like that. You can, you can use anything that you can come up with that simply what you're trying to do is entice readers to want to join your mailing list. And so whatever you think readers would wanna get that you have that would interest them, that is a great reader magnet.
Jim Azevedo [00:25:00]:
Yeah. Okay. Very good. Very good. I like how you how you mentioned nonfiction authors too. I forgot to ask you about that. Sometimes we get so focused on on fiction. There's so many companies out there that seem to just focus on fiction genres.
Jim Azevedo [00:25:13]:
The story origin can cater to both fiction and nonfiction authors. Is there a reason why not?
Evan Gow [00:25:19]:
Yeah. I mean, from a, like, a from a technological standpoint, story origin is genre agnostic. It doesn't really matter whether you're nonfiction or fiction or what genre you write. The only things I do like to mention in regards to story origin, when it comes to nonfiction, like, you probably aren't gonna find that many group promos or newsletter swaps with other nonfiction authors. And this is not like a story origin specific thing. This is more of a nonfiction thing. Right? Nonfiction authors just in general don't really tend to cross promote each other. And that's
Jim Azevedo [00:25:57]:
It's not like there's, like, a big nonfiction conference out there like there is for, like, Romance Writers of America or fantasy.
Evan Gow [00:26:05]:
Right. Exactly. And, you know, I I would say one of those reasons is that a lot a lot of times nonfiction authors are writing a book, let's say, about, like, weight loss, and that is a and they use that book to upsell people into a course or coaching or some other higher value service that that, author provides. Right?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:26:28]:
Yep.
Evan Gow [00:26:29]:
And so if I'm going to, if I'm, if I'm a, you know, a weight loss author, I generally probably would not promote another weight loss author's books because they might also have their own trait like, courses and coaching and training and stuff like that. And so it doesn't really, you know, the reader that reads both of those books is probably only going to choose one of those higher value services. So, it tends it tends to not work out for nonfiction authors to do a lot of cross promotion. And so, yeah, story origin, like, in terms of, like, all the all the building landing pages, building your website, creating, like, you know, collecting email addresses, all that stuff from, like, a technological standpoint, it's all genre agnostic. You you can you can use that set of tools regardless of of what you write. But when it comes to finding cross promotions, there are certain areas where you're just not gonna find other authors that that do cross promotions.
Jim Azevedo [00:27:34]:
Okay. And speaking of cross promotions, Evan, what would you what would you tell the author who says, but I maybe maybe I don't wanna cross promote because, you know, I write paranormal fantasy, and author x over here also writes paranormal fantasy. She's gonna take all my readers away from me. What would you say to the author who might have that fear?
Evan Gow [00:27:57]:
Most readers will read so many more books than you can put out in a single year. You do not need to worry about that. Right? Like, I I personally listen to lit RPG. It's my, like, I, I that's my genre. Right. As a reader. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't have any particular loyalty to any specific author and say, I'm not going to read any other author's books because this is the only person. Right? So, you do not need to worry about promoting other authors in your genre, especially as a fiction author.
Evan Gow [00:28:38]:
And the other thing that I would say is when you have a newsletter, there's really, there's sort of 2 things that you want to do in a newsletter. 1 is you want to build rapport with your audience, right? So in my newsletters, I always share, like, here's a picture of me doing something I did this week. And, like, here's a 3 or 4 sentence story about it. It might just be as simple as, like, I went to the park. Like, I walked my dog. Or it might be like a Yep. Like, I I ordered what I thought was a single bottle of soy sauce because the product image was a bottle of soy sauce. I did not read the description which said, there's 6 bottles of soy sauce.
Evan Gow [00:29:25]:
And then we ended up with, like, 12 bottles of soy sauce, which took us 3 years to go through. So, yeah, like, you know, a picture might just be of me holding up, like, here's my 12 bottles of soy sauce. I guess I need to find some recipes. And so
Jim Azevedo [00:29:40]:
you're actually personality. So you're building your awesome brand.
Evan Gow [00:29:44]:
Yeah, exactly. And so, like, building that rapport with your audience and, like, showing them, like, what your life like, giving them a little bit of a peek into your life is really valuable. And then the other part of your newsletter so if if all my newsletters were just like, here's a picture of me walking my dog every week, people would stop opening my newsletter. Right? Because they're because the other important thing to do is that you wanna provide your readers with value. Like, what's Sure. What give them a reason, something that they're looking for. Right? And for readers, what they're looking for is what's the next book that I'm gonna read? What's the next story that might interest me? And so
Jim Azevedo [00:30:21]:
And maybe that maybe that isn't your book. Maybe it's a book from somebody that you recommend to them.
Evan Gow [00:30:26]:
Exactly. So unless you're cranking out a book a month, you're just not going to be able to have something of yours to promote in every single newsletter, because you're not gonna always have a new release and you don't always wanna be talking about yourself either. Right? Like, you wanna provide, you know, your subscribers with something sort of fresh every week or every couple of weeks or once a month, however frequently you send out your newsletter. And I I do recommend sending out a newsletter at least once a month so that Once a month, I
Jim Azevedo [00:30:57]:
was gonna ask you about that frequently. But at least once a month, you're saying.
Evan Gow [00:31:00]:
At least once a month. I think the sort of optimal frequency is probably twice a month. But, again, this is another one of those things where, like, hey, Evan. I don't have the time to write a newsletter twice a month. Like, I've got so many other things on my plate. Again, tear that barrier down. Like, if you can commit to once a month, once a month. Like, if it's once every 6 weeks, like, start with it.
Evan Gow [00:31:23]:
And then and then you you can once you've got a rhythm down, it you'll sort of figure it out and it'll take you less time.
Jim Azevedo [00:31:30]:
What about that length of content for those newsletters, Evan? Is it something that has to be epic? Like, oh, here's what happened in my life the past 3 weeks.
Evan Gow [00:31:36]:
No. It it certainly doesn't need to be epic. Again, like, I generally write, like, 3 or 4 sentences. Mhmm. So the the the part about my life is very short. Now my newsletter is a little bit different from most other authors newsletters because my newsletter is like, here's the software updates I've made to store origin. So it might be like a screenshot of, like, how I've updated, you know, some part of the functionality or something. And I talk about, like, how that works or whatever.
Evan Gow [00:32:04]:
But for for authors, generally, you know, like so that's how I provide value to my subscribers is by telling them about the software updates. Right? The way that an author provides value to their readers is by talking about what books might interest those readers. So that might be, you know, I say here's some other books that you might wanna check out. You know, here's other lit RPG authors or other lit RPG books that have come out recently that you might wanna check out. And you don't need to have read all of these books and you don't need to be it doesn't need to be like a review of them. Right? When you go on a retailer and you see that customers also bought these other products. Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:32:46]:
Yeah.
Evan Gow [00:32:46]:
That's not that retailer saying, hey. We are personally, like, mister Bezos read these books and he's telling me these are the good ones. Right? Right? So those are just those are just other things that those readers might wanna check out. And so treat your newsletter the same way as, like, these are other books and things that you might wanna check out. Not necessarily that, like, I am vouching for all these books because everyone has their own tastes and and taste is completely subjective. So you're never really gonna be able to give tell anyone they're gonna love something necessarily. So
Jim Azevedo [00:33:22]:
Right.
Evan Gow [00:33:23]:
So yeah. So so those are the two parts of your newsletter. It's building a report and then providing value to your readers by giving them something that they might be interested in, which is other books that they might be they might wanna check out. And so that's a that's a 2 parts of the newsletter that I
Kevin Tumlinson [00:33:37]:
I would recommend. And so for that author
Jim Azevedo [00:33:37]:
who's like, you know,
Evan Gow [00:33:37]:
well, do I recommend. And so for that author who's like, you know, well, do
Kevin Tumlinson [00:33:40]:
I wanna recommend other authors? Yes.
Evan Gow [00:33:41]:
You do. Because it provides your newsletter with fresh content and gives your readers a reason to keep opening your emails.
Jim Azevedo [00:33:50]:
Gotcha. Okay. And while we're on newsletters, I wanna make sure that I get you a couple of questions about newsletters here. The first is from Leila Rose. Hi, Leila. Thank you for your question. She asks, are there any requirements to using story origin for newsletter swaps? What does the process of connecting with other authors look like?
Evan Gow [00:34:08]:
There's no requirements for using story origin for newsletter swaps. Like, there's no you don't need to have a minimum number of subscribers or, you know, anything like that. You can start with literally 0 subscribers. Now you should at least have 1 subscriber on your mailing list, which is your own email address. The very minimum you should have yourself. And so so, yeah. And and the story origin author community is quite, it it it's a lot of people in the storage and author community are very helpful to those who are just starting out because a lot of those authors started bill building their mailing lists on store origin when they had 0 subscribers.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:51]:
I love that.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:34:51]:
That's what I love
Jim Azevedo [00:34:52]:
so much about the indie community in general.
Evan Gow [00:34:54]:
Yeah. And so it's like the, you know, giving a hand up, you know, rising tide lifts all boats sort of a a philosophy. Right? And so, so, yeah, so other authors will agree to swaps with you, even if you've got 0 subscribers. Now, not every author has to, you know, if you request a swap with another author, they might decline it. But again, like the worst that can happen is they say no, but you will find that many authors will accept your, you know, request for newsletter swap. And, and so getting into what that process looks like, essentially, you can go to a list of upcoming dates that other authors are sending their newsletters. You can look at what books that they want promoted, and then you can say, oh, yeah. Like, I'll promote your book in my upcoming newsletter, on x date, and I'll and, and I'll promote, you know, your book on y date or or you promote my book on y date.
Evan Gow [00:35:49]:
And so you send that request off to the author and then they approve or decline it. And after they've approved it, you'll get a tracking link from store origin that you drop into your newsletter and store origin will provide you with the the book cover for the book. And, so you can just quickly put all put your newsletter together. All the information that you need is essentially on one page. So cool. Yeah. So it took a process that, you know, authors were doing this through, like, Facebook Groups and Google Forms, like, years ago. And story origin sort of changed the game for a lot of authors in that respect.
Evan Gow [00:36:26]:
Nice. Significantly, like, cuts down on the amount of time that takes to arrange all of this stuff. And then also substantially increase the amount of transparency in the community because when you get the when, an author gets a tracking link for newsletter swap from story origin, it you can see how many clicks that they sent to that link. So if I'm going if I get a swap request from someone and I see, oh, they're sending, like, 30 clicks to every single link in their newsletter. Like, that's great. Awesome. Like, I'm gonna get 30 eyeballs probably if they promote my book. Or I might see, oh, this author is getting, like, 1 or 2 clicks on their links.
Evan Gow [00:37:04]:
Like, they're maybe, like, putting the books, like, way at the bottom of their newsletter in storage and will also if the author has added it, adds their archive link, you can actually go and look at what their newsletter looked like. Where did they put their, like, book into their, like, put their other books that you might wanna check out? Where did that go into their newsletter? Is it, like, way at the bottom after a bunch of other stuff or, like, are they putting too many books in their newsletter, etcetera? And so you can sort of get a gauge for, okay, is this a request that I wanna accept, or is this a request I wanna send to another author by checking out sort of their past history?
Jim Azevedo [00:37:39]:
Got it. Very cool. Okay. And related to that question, is another question from, opportunities. Thanks for the question, opportunities. She asks, Evan, what platforms do you suggest for newsletters?
Evan Gow [00:37:54]:
You know, whatever one looks good for you, you know, a lot of people get started with Mailchimp or MailerLite or, or you could use author email, Draft2Digital's email service. Stor Origin integrates with a lot of them.
Jim Azevedo [00:38:13]:
And You have a list of them on the on the website, right, that you work with?
Evan Gow [00:38:16]:
If you go to stororigineapp.com, you scroll down, you'll see Stor Origin integrates with 9 different email service providers, and I'm always, you know, it's always on my to do list to add more as well. And even if you use an email service provider that storage and doesn't integrate with, none of storage origin's features require an integration. So if, you know, if you're collecting sign ups for your mailing list for your reader magnet and you have, you know, a MailerLite account integrated with Stor Origin, then Stor Origin will automatically send those email addresses straight to your mailerLite list. But if you're using an email service provider that storage and doesn't integrate with, you can always download a CSV just like a list of the email addresses and names of those people that requested your reader magnet on storage engine, and then just upload that CSV to your email service provider. So, yeah, you you don't need to use one of the ones that storage and integrates with. You can use any. But, yeah, a lot of authors that, start with, MailerLite generally like that one because it's got a lot of the automations and, are on their free tier, and they have a decently sized free tier that you can use when you're getting started.
Jim Azevedo [00:39:33]:
Okay. Okay. More questions. You guys just wanna say thanks for keeping the questions coming in. Linda asks, do you have any content restrictions? That is, I wrote an h player story that isn't available on Apple, Kobo, etcetera. So the story origin have any restrictions when it comes to any genres, for example?
Evan Gow [00:39:54]:
Story origin doesn't have any restrictions on when it comes to genres. I mean, if there's, like, illegal content on storage and then I will have to remove it, but it's not something that is, I you know, storage and does not, like, monitor. It is not, like, reading every person's book that they upload. Right? So
Jim Azevedo [00:40:22]:
Got it.
Evan Gow [00:40:23]:
It's more on a case by case basis if there's something going on. But I think in the six and a half years I've been doing this, there's only ever one story where, I said to this author, like, oh, there's a story in here that this can't this can't be on here. And they were like, oh, actually, you know what? I that story wasn't even supposed to be in there. That was like a part of
Jim Azevedo [00:40:50]:
a different thing. And I
Evan Gow [00:40:51]:
was like, okay. Great. Glad we could work that out. So it was literally only ever one time in six and a half years and, like, that author was like, oh, yeah. It's not even sorry.
Jim Azevedo [00:41:01]:
It's like, what? I I wrote the wrong book. That's so funny, but also kind of terrifying. Yeah. Question here from Beth Cox. Hi, Beth. Beth asks, do you work with Substack?
Evan Gow [00:41:17]:
Yes. So storage and, like well, so Substack doesn't have an API. So storage and cannot build an integration with Substack if even if I you know, I can't even though it would be great for a lot of authors on storage because a lot of authors on storage and do use substack. But you just have to go and manually download that CSV and then, and then upload it to sub stack because there isn't a way for storage and to integrate directly with sub stack. So there are plenty of authors on storage and using sub stack, but storage does not integrate directly with it. And a lot of times, what I recommend to authors, if you're using an email service provider that doesn't integrate with storage and like substack, substack's capabilities around email automations and welcome sequences is not great. I think you can set up like one single welcome email, which is generally, you know, I I generally recommend sort of a 3 or 4 email welcome sequence. And again, to those authors that are, like, just getting started with newsletters and marketing, like, if you just have one, that's great.
Evan Gow [00:42:21]:
Like, just get started with 1. I generally recommend, like, getting to, like, 3 or 4 eventually, where you'll you'll like the first email will sort of be like, hey. Thanks for joining my mailing list. The second email will be like, hey. Here's a little bit about myself. 3rd will be like, oh, here's a little bit about, like, the series or the characters. And then the 4th might be like a call to action to join my review team or something like that. And so that's sort of the email series that I recommend, and you can't do that with Substack.
Evan Gow [00:42:48]:
So what you could do is sign up to an email service provider that storage and does integrate with, and you build your welcome sequence on that, on that email service provider. And then at the and then before you send out, like, your regular monthly newsletter or biweekly newsletter, just go into that email service provider, download the list of contacts that made it through that welcome sequence without unsubscribing, and just port those over to Substack or wherever else you you're you've got your newsletter.
Jim Azevedo [00:43:20]:
Great. Bring up a quick comment here from KL Allen, who says, I'd like to give a shout out to Evan for always answering if I email a question, and he's quick about it. So, Evan, like, do you have 40 employees that you're working with out there?
Evan Gow [00:43:38]:
I have me it's all
Jim Azevedo [00:43:39]:
you because we're not gonna believe you.
Evan Gow [00:43:41]:
I have 0 I have 0 employees. It is all me. I'm a one man band. So, yeah, I'm I'm the engineering department, the customer support department, the the marketing department. Although the marketing department is not super great. But but occasionally, like, occasionally, he can, he can he can put on his big boy pants and do an interview. Do
Jim Azevedo [00:44:06]:
you sleep? I mean
Evan Gow [00:44:08]:
I do. Yeah. I get I get I get I get plenty of sleep, but and it works well because I'm the engineering department and I'm the customer support department. So if I get a bunch of emails about, like, hey. I'm running into trouble here. I'm running into trouble there. Like, I'm also the guy that can go, oh, I'm gonna change this process, make it easier, so that, you know, people aren't running into as many issues, and then I have less emails. Right? Now that's not It's
Jim Azevedo [00:44:34]:
good to hear those complaints. It's good to
Kevin Tumlinson [00:44:36]:
hear those complaints because then you you
Jim Azevedo [00:44:37]:
we need to know Absolutely. Those of us who are running our companies.
Evan Gow [00:44:41]:
Absolutely. So, so, you know, that's not to say don't email me. You are always welcome to email me because, again, like, that is how I get that feedback and how I improve storage. And so my inbox is always open. But, yeah, you know, being being the engineering department as well, I can I can sort of make a make storage and super intuitive so authors don't really need to reach out for anything?
Jim Azevedo [00:45:06]:
Yeah. Well, we kind of the community here, you know, we kinda we understand that indie author go for it, miss. Go for it, miss. Yeah. Yeah. It's made a new marketing department right here.
Evan Gow [00:45:18]:
Well, that's why I call myself an indie developer too. Right? Like, I am very much like, I share, like, 90% of my traits. Yeah. You know?
Jim Azevedo [00:45:28]:
I noticed that because you don't call yourself, like, the founder or the CEO of StoryOrigin. Like, you know, I'm a developer. I I am the developer behind StoryOrigin.
Evan Gow [00:45:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like it would maybe be a little pretentious to call myself the CEO.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:43]:
Okay. We'll do we'll do it for you. There we go. Minute. We've got, like, a minute left. So any more questions for the CEO of StoryOrigin? Feel free to feel free to ask. But I wanted to ask you, like, what before we leave, like, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you've seen, indie authors do when it comes to marketing their books or not do? Maybe it's a better question.
Evan Gow [00:46:05]:
I think, a lot of times, authors are focused on sales too early. Like, they're they're focused on making money, which is great. You should be focused on making money.
Jim Azevedo [00:46:16]:
As you're running a business.
Evan Gow [00:46:17]:
Yeah. But, but, but it's usually better, like a lot of times, like, so you, you, you put a book up for sale and then you start driving traffic to it. You know, how, however that may be. And then no one's buying the book and it's because you have zero reviews on the book. And so many readers are going to check that review section first before they buy a book, because they want to see that social proof that, Hey, this is a good purchase. Right? And so then readers think, oh, okay. Or authors say, oh, okay. I need a review team.
Evan Gow [00:46:52]:
And so, they, you know, they start trying to build a review team and, and they're like, okay. How do I find people to join my review team? And then they go, okay. I'll build an audience with my newsletter and then I can draw those people into, like, I was saying with your welcome sequence, have a call to action in that welcome sequence to get people to join your your review team. Because I've talked to authors who have mailing lists of like 3,000 plus people, and they have 0 people on a review team.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:22]:
And Oh, really?
Evan Gow [00:47:23]:
Had they had just a simple email in that welcome sequence that said, hey, if you wanna get all of my books free forever, here's how just like, you know, submit a request to me through story origin or, you know, set up a Google form, or just set up like, an email signup form somehow where people can join your review team and had they had they had that form at the outset, by the time they got to 3,000 subscribers, they'd have a review team of like probably a 100 people, couple 100 people maybe. And so, yeah, that's super important. So, so don't, don't be focused on sales too early, right? Like make sure you've got, you can, you can get a decent number of reviews on your books after you launch them and, in building that mailing list and having those subscribers is so valuable too because that, you know, that translates into getting those reviews and then later on making those sales as well too.
Jim Azevedo [00:48:22]:
That's great advice. We're at time. But in closing, I wanted to ask you if you had one piece of advice that you can give to authors, aspiring authors, aspiring entrepreneurs out there who are maybe just getting started, what would that be?
Evan Gow [00:48:39]:
Yeah. I mean, I I, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but start a mailing list, like, like, start, start sending a newsletter and, and, and that will set you up for so much. Because again, it's not just about sending out updates when you have a new release, right? It's about finding reviewers for your eBooks, finding people that you can distribute those audio book promo codes. Right? It's about finding people that might beta read for you. So reading early versions of your manuscript, which that's not something that we really covered, but Stor Origin has a really cool and unique beta copies feature for authors as well, where you can track feedback and and do a whole bunch of cool stuff with it. And so, yeah, that that mailing list just comes in handy in a variety of ways.
Jim Azevedo [00:49:30]:
Right. I don't think there's no problem just being redundant with the advice when it comes to newsletter lists. I mean, we've said it here probably a 1000000 times now on Self Publishing Insiders. And you talking about it for 3, 4, or 5 more times, all the better, in my opinion. Everybody, please visit story origin app.com to learn more about Evan and story origin. I've got to do the obligatory end of the podcast stuff, such as reminding our viewers to please like, share, comment, and subscribe to Self Publishing Insiders so that we can bring in more guests like Evan to teach you, how to self publish with more expertise and lead you to even more success out there. Also, be sure to bookmark d2dlive. If you wanna see who next week's guest is going to be and what the topic is, you go to d2dlive.com.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:28]:
We update that weekly. We'll update it, later today to tell you who next week's, guest is. And finally, if you are an aspiring author or if you are a traditionally published author who's maybe wading into the indie publishing waters for the very first time, why not sign up for your free Draft2Digital account simply by going to draft2digital.com. And finally, we're gonna leave you today with a quick 30 second spot commercial spot for D2D Print. Before I run that ad, Evan, I just would like to thank you again for spending your day here with us part of your day here with us. It was a pleasure to speak with you.
Evan Gow [00:51:09]:
Thanks so much for having me on.
Jim Azevedo [00:51:11]:
It was a blast. I really, really enjoyed our conversation. For all of our viewers out there, thank you guys for spending some of our some of your time with us. We know your time is limited, so we appreciate you being here. Until next week, here's a quick 30 second spot for D2D print, and we'll see you all soon.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:51:31]:
Ebooks 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 books. And you can get started right now at draft2digital.com. 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.