The Mainstream Is Dead. Long Live Unique Tribes!

The publishing industry isn’t just changing—it’s completely fragmenting. In our latest episode, we talked about why two former Christian publishing professionals (Mick Silva and David Morris), have shifted so strongly toward a new model of authors aiming not for everyone, but for the readers that specifically fit them. Based on Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans“ concept, this episode, as usual, gave us plenty to discuss.

•    Why a massive reach isn't necessary anymore to succeed as an author
•    Why you need to be able to define your specific audience in a sentence
•    How to start finding those "1000 true fans"

Publisher and Literary Agent David Morris is at DavidRMorris.me  

Editor Mick Silva is at MickSilva.com

Subscribe for more, and join the conversation at Substack: publishingdisrupted.substack.com

Publishing Disrupted is at PublishingDisrupted.substack.com

Mick Silva is at MickSilvaEditing.substack.com

David Morris is at dvdmorris.substack.com, LakeDriveBooks.com, and Hyponymous.com.

Transcript

Intros

Mick 0:01

Hey everybody, welcome to Publishing Disrupted. I'm Mick Silva. And

David 0:06

I'm David Morris.

Mick 0:08

And we are two former Christian publishing professionals talking about the changes and disruptions in the publishing industry today. Yeah, so what's new? What's new in your life?

David 0:21

What am I disrupting? Or what's disrupting you? I'm disrupting myself in good psychoanalytic fashion. That's a good thing. I'm reading about that quite a bit right now, too. A book called Theology After Freud from 1970, very obscure book by a scholar named Peter Homans. That's what I do in my fun time. Wow. That and some other things, but that's part of it. Sounds good. I don't know what's going on. You know, I keep really busy, so I'm a... publisher and literary agent. I do both from a sort of one man plus some helpers setup, some really good helpers. And so, you know, I mean, this morning I was editing a manuscript, got almost my daily Goal of 20 pages, almost done. All right, that's awesome. Really good memoir coming. It'll be out next year, in 2026, early spring. And, you know, publicity work. Yeah. I do that. Right. And I was working on a book proposal with an author. All of the above. As an agent, sending it out, right? I'm constantly, constantly learning. I'm on more of a learning curve in my professional career after 30 years than I've ever been in my entire career. Isn't

Mick 1:43

that crazy?

David 1:44

It's crazy and it's amazing. I've been in jobs where like, oh man, I am just so, I gotta do this again? You know? And some of those were situations where you're asking yourself, why do we even do this? This isn't really actually growing. It's just stagnating, not just for me personally, but for the company I'm working for. Tread and water, man. And no one's listening on some ideas that maybe would shake things up. And in the meantime, the world is shaking up, as it always does every single minute of history.

Mick 2:24

Things are changing, but we're not. Yeah,

David 2:27

and I think that's That's true for publishing. I will say a couple more specific things. I might have mentioned this before, but just a couple weeks ago, released a book called I Hardly Knew Me, Following Love, Faith, and Skittles to a Transgender Awakening by Nia Karamonti.

A new Lake Drive book!

David 2:46

Wonderful author, wonderful story of gender transition, both from a family and conservative faith point of view, as well as a physical point of view and a wider community point of view by someone who's just an amazing human being and professional in the work that she does during the day, which I won't bring up right now. But yeah, that came out. I actually ran an ad for it on Facebook for this, for Lake Drive Books. Is that new

Mick 3:24

for you? I mean, do you do that?

David 3:26

No. I mean, I've been doing it here and there, pretty much for every book, at least initially when it comes out. Where it

Mick 3:32

makes sense to do.

David 3:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they say you're supposed to spend a certain percentage of your revenue on advertising, regardless of whether you know it's working. Right, and then the question's where? You can evaluate cost per click, and I see that. I do pretty well on Facebook. I get a lot of clicks, a lot of traffic to the website. How much of that is really converting to a sale is another question sometimes. It's often not very great. But, but it gets the book out there. I think, I think with just like a lot of media and paid ads, like earned media, which is like podcasts and getting in magazines where you don't get paid or then when you, and you don't get paid, obviously you don't pay for it and it's always, but then there's other ads that you do pay for it. That's paid media. Um, okay. I think it's always just a question of impressions too. Like what is it, you know, you've got to hit people up a certain number of times before they finally realize this is a book I need, you know, I can't do without this. And, um, so, and I also feel like it gets, you know, if it doesn't immediately work out in a sale, it does connect the author to people at times. It gets them connected to the brand of like drive books. Um, so I try to keep a pretty optimistic view about it, but yeah, after a while it's like, okay, I'm only making this much money and I'm spending this much money so right gotta gotta be careful yeah yeah the return is yeah and we did get some negative ads just some people who were just outraged that transgender people exist no that's gonna happen and that that was I don't usually see negative ads on the things I post for like drive books or my agenting yeah but this is an ad that goes out to anybody in a way and so therefore there was you know you know I delete them yeah you know who needs that negative stuff in the world right It's just a beautiful, beautiful story, and I don't know how you can deny it. Yeah. And then...

Where to find books on faith deconstruction?

David 5:25

And this morning, just this morning, and I'll stop, there was a cool post on Threads where someone's just asking, where can I find some faith deconstruction books? I've read this book, I've read that book. And it was just fun to just say, have you tried Lake Drive Books titles? We have options. Quite a few. And I even posted the link to one of the books right in there. And I think that was sort of refreshing for me. I mean, I know... there's such a movement out there in the world of faith deconstruction and publishing plays a role can play a role in that in fact believe it or not you've heard of the dummies books, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So did you know there's going to be a faith deconstruction for dummies? No, that's perfect. Like you knew it was coming.

Mick 6:11

Of course.

David 6:12

And then, you know, there's also the idiots guy, which is owned by another country, country company might as well be a country, but, um, they're going to probably have one eventually.

Mick 6:21

I was thinking chicken soup for the deconstructionist soul.

David 6:23

Oh, Hey,

Mick 6:25

something

David 6:25

like that, man. Okay. Someone should send a memo. You could volunteer to aggregate some stories for them and get it

Mick 6:30

going. Or I was thinking the gospel according to was a big uh sort of brand for a while yeah those series were big yeah according to like star wars and peanuts it was the first one i think simpsons i remember but yeah yeah we need more of these

David 6:45

yeah yeah but it was fun to just kind of go out there and say hey you know these books are out there yeah you know i'm following a deconstruction and an ex-christian group on uh reddit and i know there's i know there's similar things on facebook discord um and it's just it's a question of how do you reach people who just aren't aware I mean it's funny too like some of the answers I saw in the replies to this threads post was sort of like wow some of these are some obscure books that they're coming up with to help this person with faith deconstruction and there's so many other things coming out that have come out and many that are still coming out that it just it always surprises me how vast the movement is and how how much a lack of common knowledge there is in the movement. Broad, not just vast, but broad. And how there's people who are at the beginning of the journey, and then there's people who could claim that they've been on it for decades, all of which is true. And, yeah, I mean, the fact that that Dummies book is coming out, it's like, hello, folks, there's a real movement going on here. This isn't just like, you know, the emergent church moment that we had for a little while way back when. And it is not just a movement of, like, the times per se that's going to come and go. It's like, oh, there's a real change going on with religion, the makeup of religion in the United States. And just like anything else, it's inevitable. Right. I can go on about this and I apologize. No, this is good. But there's Phyllis Tickle, and this is publishing related somewhat,

Phyllis Tickle's "500-year rummage sale"

David 8:30

who used to be the religion editor for Publishers Weekly, the trade magazine in the publishing business. She started, or around the time she was the religion editor there, they started the religion book line, which is a weekly, no, probably more like bi-weekly newsletter, e-newsletter. A lot of good reporting went on back then in PW with regard to books and religion. Phyllis was known for a little theory she put forward. I'm not sure where she got it or how she kind of came about it, but she made up this idea that, and I don't want to be ungracious, but she, with my choice of words there, but she put forward the idea of there's like a 500-year, always a 500-year rummage sale in Christianity. And I take a little bit of issue with it. I feel like I find it a little bit dubious at this point. You know, God rest her soul, she passed away a while back. But it's sort of like, Well, if you really look at it, since Christianity started, that's not very many years, millennia to collect data. That's like, okay, two millennia, that's four or five sets of 500 years. I don't know about that. Also, I find it a little bit ahistorical in that it just sort of centers Christianity as the only spiritual narrative globally, in a sense. I mean, maybe she was never making those kinds of claims, but Christianity has a way of sounding rather like what else is there as we talk about it. I mean, that's like a built-in assumption. But I really feel like when it comes to spirituality, religion, the way we practice, the way we think, what we believe, what we do, how we behave, Because religion is all those things, folks. It's not just theology. That's right. And I feel like it is constantly changing. And in the United States, which is the most religious Western industrialized, post-industrial country in the world, strangely religious compared to our European friends. That's right. it's definitely bound for change. And it's not just a 500-year rummage sale. The church is not going to be what we think it is. It's never coming back the way it ever was. It's out of the box. It's always on its... And then, so that very much connects to... Man, we're already 10 minutes in, and I've been just motoring here. This is perfect. It's a great setup. That connects to what we're doing in publishing. How do we adapt? We both had jobs in evangelical publishing. Yep. And, you know, what does that mean for not just you and me, but many of us who are who are suddenly find themselves not in that that sort of prosperous, wealthy stream. Right. That sort of. given reality unquestioned reality uh in the subculture right and it is a subculture of yeah of evangelicalism

How can authors best respond to this disruption?

David 11:33

in the united states

Mick 11:34

yeah and you said a lot there and i mean we could unpack this the entire uh hour and and then some so but to me coming out of uh christian evangelical publishing there's like a big banner right that we all sort of exist under in publishing in in particular right there we're publishing to the church but we're also largely publishing to general Christians who read books. And not necessarily in Christian bookstores. That's going out, obviously, to Amazon now and whatever. But I think what you said, and Phyllis Tickle might even sort of revise her theory at this point, because of the internet and because of the disruption that largely we're trying to talk about on this show, It's out of the box, and it's not going back in a box. There isn't a large banner under which a lot of people identify now. I mean, the mainstream does exist in America, and we could argue about the characteristics of that. But what you just said, I mean, there's many different expressions. There's many different approaches. There's not many different gods, but we're not even talking about that. We're just talking about our own experiences.

David 12:41

Please, let's talk about different gods. No, I know. I'm tired of the one god all the time.

Mick 12:46

Or just different. It's boring. Like views of God, right? Like we all see different pieces of the elephant. I love that metaphor. And we're trying to all like give each other some grace

David 12:57

to understand. Wasn't Ganesha an elephant? I'm sorry. I'm really being bad. Oh, that's

Mick 13:01

good. Yeah, so like there's not many gods, but there's many maybe ways to see God. But let's put all that aside. There is a mainstream that used to exist, I'd say even up to maybe the 90s, 95s. somewhere around where the internet starts taking over and saying, all there are now is subcultures. There's not a major culture, and people bemoan this in every industry, the news. I hear this all the time. There's no Walter Cronkite every night. You've got all the bloggers giving you their opinions on the news. And then just go down the line of all the media that has been disrupted because of the internet and the you generation. Everyone has to have their opinion out there. It's not even just like a softball. solid mass of people that we're trying to reach. You've got to find your own audience. And that brings us to our topic, which

How do you find your unique tribe?

Mick 13:54

largely, I think, to kind of nutshell this very unfairly, we're trying to help authors figure out what is their subculture, how do you find then your audience, and this idea, Kevin Kelly came up with the thousand true fans idea, that you're basically just trying to find the thousand people. Who are your true fans? Who can be the the people that you will rely on, whether that's through Patreon or selling your books or even just being a speaker or having a podcast, people who are going to listen to you, and then buy your books, whatever it is, if you're an author. So to me, I think we're trying to help people understand this shift, how that, not deconstruction, but disruption of the marketplace in books, and largely Christian That's what we come out of, but trying to go toward a general marketplace and then understanding this subculture that you're basically trying to build on your own. Right. Of people who want your content, whatever that is. Right. Build a brand, build an idea around, you know, your, your materials and your, basically your own little media empire.

David 15:05

Get your writing going. You said it before we got on, on a record here that, uh, you, you feel that sometimes people just, just write what you want to write and then go find people to convince you that it's worth the, That's valuable.

Mick 15:17

Yeah, I think in many ways we had it backwards. At least I had it backwards as an acquiring editor. There were a bunch of slots that I had to fill. And I saw this almost like a board that I had to fill all these slots that exist in the marketplace.

David 15:31

Yeah, right, a marriage book.

Mick 15:32

Right, or a parenting book. We know what sells, so let's just go find the authors that will do the new version of this old thing. idea and fill that hole and it's it's so commodified and I don't know it's just not very authentic I would much rather do what you're doing which is and you're not just waiting for people to come to you but you in many ways are like looking for what's what's on this person's heart what caused them to have to write a book and how do I then sell that that passion that message put that out there help the people find it who want it and call it good. It's obviously not for everyone. You don't have to sell to everyone. In fact, you're probably doing it a disservice if you try to do that.

David 16:22

Let's get back to that article, but is it a question of are you trying to talk about the human condition through the lens of your own life? Or you just want to talk about yourself. Honestly, not many people want to read that, but you don't have to please everybody either.

Mick 16:42

Yeah, and even authors who maybe have that celebrity status or some sort of larger platform still need to specify and still need to be pretty particular about how they're approaching this because you're still not going to stand out as an author in today's market by just trying to hit everyone and being very general.

David 17:05

Right. So the guy who wrote this, he actually wrote this article in 2008. Yeah.

Mick 17:10

Originally,

David 17:11

yeah. And then it very recently republished it or?

Mick 17:14

Updated it, yeah, for I think, I'm not sure when, but yeah.

David 17:18

And the title of the article again is?

Mick 17:20

I mean, you remember the long tail concept, right? That's where largely he came up with that. I mean, the thousand true fans idea is what it's under. He claims that, you know, Tim Ferriss talks about it in Tools of Titans, but I think that the concept of a thousand true fans is really helpful if you can reduce to just how you're reaching people and who those people are, whether that's in a particular category of book, and then you kind of isolate that and then drill down through Substack and through all of your marketing to that audience, or you're basically a craftsperson and saying, I don't need to reach everyone. I'm really only looking for people who are into fiber arts for goats or whatever it is. And that's a subcategory, right?

David 18:10

People with blue reading glasses. Okay, so he actually breaks it down initially into

The 1000 True Fans "economic model"

David 18:18

a very economic model about what it means. And basically he calculated that what you need is, you need the thousand, because it's all, I mean, honestly, it's all very sort of, hermetically sealed idea and kind of artificial. But the basic idea is that if you have a thousand fans and they're fans that no matter what you produce, they'll buy it. And if you can get them to buy enough stuff that you make $100 of profit off of each fan. Per year or so. Per year, you make $100,000 a year. You can live on that. Yeah, which most of us should be able to survive on that.

Mick 18:52

And most people aren't trying to be super famous or

David 18:56

reach a bunch of people that way. And I mean, honestly, It's artificial, but you get the idea. It's like, okay, that's actually scaling. I don't need to be in the New York Times bestseller list. And when you kind of chunk that whole idea down of who your following should be and who your audience should be, oh, you know, maybe there's a real number that's not that big. I mean, he mentions how you might even be able to know the names of a thousand people. And that doesn't sound unreasonable. I never thought about it that way, but I probably do know a thousand people. I know their names if I see them. Sometimes I forget their names a little bit, but I haven't seen them in a while.

Mick 19:32

Right, I would say a few hundred is probably what I have. And then, you know, from there, it's a larger circle. might be some acquaintances and people who would be into what I'm into in some way. It's still hard. It's still hard to sell to a thousand people.

David 19:46

And his math is also based on the idea of putting out your own content and not using publishers or gatekeepers or music labels. He talks about this not just for books, but for any kinds of content creation that you're making money on. Yeah, Patreon is mentioned,

Mick 20:04

so you have subscribers, probably, and a subscriber base. I mean, your email list is still going to be primary in that. But yeah, you don't need millions of fans. And we do need to be more realistic about this, because indeed, for me, what you were talking about with the Philistical idea that Christianity drives Western culture, I don't know that that's as true going forward. I really just don't see that continuing.

David 20:31

Wow, we're really moving around here. That was really good. You've got to be an agile thinker to listen to Publishing Disrupted. I'm trying to relate it back.

Mick 20:41

I'm going to relate it back to what you were talking about. I just got lost. It's a huge transfer of authority that's happening. It's not this on-high idea of maybe the pastors used to be in charge or even the government. People just don't have this idea of authority that they used to have anymore it's like well we are our own authorities and that's not going to change anytime soon that's not going to be like oh we'll go back to you know having a large church that's in charge of and largely in charge of government as well like that's just not going to happen

David 21:19

unless you're the church of Christian nationalism and you're growing by leaps and bounds well they would love to see it go that way

Mick 21:24

the authoritarians would yeah but I just I think the internet prevents that from happening and and Sure, some big EMP could come and take out all the internet or whatever. But we're basically talking about the media culture that existed before and now the disruption is causing... everyone to have to kind of go after their own audience, their own market, and build that. That sounds overwhelming. And so we're trying to do a podcast that helps people break that down. What does that look like practically? You don't necessarily need 1,000 true fans. I mean, if you're making more off of each individual, you could have 500. Or if you're making less off of each individual, you'd have 2,000. It's just that feels more doable to me, that that concept feels useful. And then you don't necessarily have to be thinking so big and broad all the time.

David 22:19

Yeah. I do think it's a lot of work.

Mick 22:21

Absolutely.

David 22:22

But I think that the point is to try to see that you only have to get so far to be what you might define as successful. So even what I do with Lake Drive Books could be seen as more of a macro level, one step up from just being one author.

The Lake Drive Books model

David 22:39

What I'm trying to do is aggregate Not just a lot of content that I put out as one person, as an author, if I was an author. But I'm a publisher, so I'm aggregating content of a lot of other people. And one of the, one of the justifications I've had for doing it, doing it and kind of doing it the way I'm doing it with a, with a hybrid model, I call it traditional publishing with an untraditional financial model. It's really, it really, it's not a service hybrid model, like a lot of other hybrid publishers. It is actual publishing, but a different financial model where the author participates in the upfront cost. It doesn't mean that they get to call the shots either, which is what a lot of hybrid publishers, a lot of hybrid publishers, I just saw one this morning. It's like, that's, they've tried to make that part of their appeal is because you're paying up front, you get to call the shots on things that you wouldn't with a normal publisher. But no, you want a conventional publisher who's going to push back on you and who's going to help curate and guide your content. But what I'm trying to get at is with this model that's enabled by the way technology is these days, With regard to DIY publishing, I can do it on a much smaller scale. And I can start aggregating all these different authors' content to form this business called Lake Drive Books. And I don't have to pay. I mean, the CEO where I used to work, where we used to work, was probably mid six-figure salary. Right. Right. Mid six figure salary.

Mick 24:04

Huge overhead.

David 24:04

I don't need a mid. I don't need. Honestly, I'm not. I don't want one. What do you do with all that money? And then, you know, so so if if I only have to get to a certain level for my own income. Yeah. And I'm not there. But if I have to get to that certain level, you know, there's there's actually a finite number of books that I need to finally publish and have them work to achieve that. It's actually doable. I'm working my butt off and I'm three years in now. Well, I would say

Mick 24:38

you're just probably at that point of critical mass and the long tail is what you're trying to build. Right. Exactly. Which he talks about. Exactly right. So basically the head, the authors, the ones who formed the head of this metaphorical snake in sales are like getting the bulk of sales and that's the way it works. But your long tail is your backlist and a bunch of the books that don't sell more than a few copies copies a month or less are actually what's driving your revenue or at least upholding your business model because they sell enough collectively in order to keep you afloat as a publisher.

David 25:14

So he defined long

Defining "the long tail" for yourself as an author

David 25:16

tail. I really loved his illustration of it. He talked about how when Amazon came along, when the internet retail, online retail came along, publishers started noticing that uh, well he, you know, we all noticed that a powerful front list title, a book that just came out that maybe is selling a ton for whatever reason, great content, well known author topic is hot. Um, that might be selling, you know, that might be on, on a path to sell a million books in a year. But on, but on online retail, the book that's only going to sell a hundred books in a year is just a click away. And, um, publishers started realizing that the accumulation, and it's probably not a good example, so let's say it's a book that's 1,000 books a year is only click away. Publishers started realizing if they had enough of those other only 1,000 selling books a year and not focusing just on the front list book, which is kind of hard to make happen because everyone's competing for that author. You can't always tell which books are going to break out like that. But if you can cultivate a backlist where it's just constantly selling and it's a ton of other titles. But it adds up to that one big title. Right. That's the long tail concept. Yes.

Mick 26:40

Yeah. And that's going to obviously like help the publisher's revenue at the end of the year and say, you know, that the big breakout book doesn't sell what they were hoping for to make back costs. You know, that the backlist is going to then support, you know, making your right, making your revenue for the year. So and that can work on a on a smaller scale as well.

David 27:06

Right. And that's where he made that connection. I'm not going to remember exactly how he made that connection. But he says, what you want to do is be part of that long tail. For you, as one author, you don't need all the books that the publisher needs to get their business to be profitable in the black, but you can be one of those long-tail authors. You don't have to be the best-selling author. I think that was his point.

Mick 27:34

Obviously, volume does help because with the long tail, you're only selling a certain number of books. You want to have more books. I would say at three years in, if you've published, let's say, 12 titles a year, on average. It's more like six or five, but yeah. I mean, you're just starting to get at that point where you have enough books to create a long tail and each of them is selling a few copies. As long as there's something driving your traffic to your website and those authors' websites.

David 28:04

Which is why I encourage my authors and any of you who are listening, if any of you are listening, keep your book going because I need the long tail of work. Every little thing you do helps. Yeah, but also you'd be surprised. I had an author um in the there's a there's another documentary out and he this author started uh about about like a shiny happy people kind of documentary um that's coming out or is out the second one and um he started posting about it and he's he's absolutely gifted with his posts about these kinds of things on tiktok and yeah and instagram stories reels that is and uh um I haven't quite told him this yet, but it's not like it's a big number, but man, all of a sudden, oh, we see a sale there. I see some copies. He just posted that, and look at that. There's a sale. It just happened. Yeah.

Mick 28:55

Well, and it's because it's probably priced right and looks like a good topic, and he was speaking directly to the content, right, in terms of his brand, like saying, okay, this is what I'm about. This is what my book's about.

David 29:05

Well, he wasn't actually mentioning his book. I think people just found him. Sure, okay. But it was just such compelling content. Yeah. And it wasn't just, it wasn't disconnected from his book. And maybe he mentioned it if I, you know, I don't always watch the whole posts for everybody. Right. And scrolling past. Yeah.

Mick 29:21

Yeah. I was thinking about book talk and whether that's still relevant. I think it is still relevant and people will, will point to it as being a driver of their, their sales. But I mean, are you actually making a marketing push using, you know, your TikTok reels and stuff? I don't know. I'm not on TikTok. So, so I can't speak to that, but yeah. is BookTok still changing the field? And who knows? The next thing is probably out there, and we don't know what it is. But it's coming, and I think there is a need to always be

Be willing to innovate!

Mick 29:58

at least willing as an author. You're constantly trying to get your authors to do more or just be... Be more active on your socials. Be more engaged. Actually comment on some things. Show up and be there. And that is a way to then build your audience and drive traffic to sell books ultimately. But I mean, just to really grow your influence and grow your thousand true fans. If that's your goal is you want to be an author, well, then you got to sell some books.

David 30:31

Yeah. And on social media, a thousand true fans is probably more like... 25,000. Yeah, you probably need

Mick 30:38

to be talking to a lot more than that. To find the thousand in there. That's right. Yeah, socials are difficult that way, and that's why I ask about Facebook ads. It's not apples to apples often. It's going to be difficult. You probably only have a very low percentage of people that actually convert to a sale there or to a follower, let alone a Patreon supporter or whatever. You can get Substack subscribers. I've found that to be true. Mm-hmm. A good social media post can raise all ships.

David 31:11

I ran a Facebook ad once just giving away books, saying if you respond to this and you go fill out a form, you'll be entered in a drawing to give away books. Oh, that's a good idea. And I said, but what I'm asking for is for you to sign up for our e-newsletter for our publishing house. We don't send that many posts. It's your Substack account.

Mick 31:33

Well, and it should be something they're interested in already.

David 31:35

Hopefully, yeah. And actually, that was really effective as an ad. It grew the email list quite a bit. I know I need to do another one of those.

Mick 31:43

Yeah, finding what's working and then doing that again, trying different things, seeing... watching your numbers like that's another thing that is really it's fraught for me because i i hate knowing that people are even listening let alone like that you know now i'm on the hook for this uh it's it's difficult because i think as a writer and this is something i mentioned to you

Marketing is "reader connecting" (like writing)

Mick 32:05

like every time i'm marketing i'm not writing every time i'm selling i hear that a lot i'm not yeah you know creating content and like i i think we artificially separate that

David 32:15

to some degree exactly is that really true yeah

Mick 32:17

you are you are creating content you are creating connection. It's what you're hoping for from a book. Maybe it's not the same process as you go into your little cave and you create content in isolation largely and refine it before it goes out there. I think that's often perfectionism on my part, thinking about that. I do want to stay sensitive to the idea that a lot of writers don't want to do this and they want to hire somebody. That does make sense. For some people, I don't know if I'm there, but as someone who kind of identifies with people on spectrum for many reasons, whether that's OCD or just social anxiety or even just traumas that you've had. It feels very uncomfortable to get out there and be a marketer or be a seller of your books. You don't wanna think in those terms, at least I don't. I wanna think as a connector and doing it on a small scale, thinking that you're always gonna have some people who aren't into what you're doing or what you're putting out there and that's fine, work at ignoring them, but do find the people who you do need to connect with because that's what you're doing as an author. You're trying to connect with people. Right. And you can do that online as well.

David 33:30

Right. And in this sense, his article, I'm going to forget his name again.

Mick 33:35

Kevin Kelly.

David 33:35

Kevin Kelly. Thank you. He used to work for Wired or something like that. He says, if you're going to get someone to help you do it, then you just have to change that to not from 1,000 true fans, but to maybe 2,000 true fans. Because now you have to cover their salary. But it's still something that can have an actual absolute number. Well, that's probably too strong a word, but there's a number there somewhere and that's all you need. You don't need more. Yeah. I do have an author that, on my agenting side, who has someone helping him with social media, who's really good, and I believe they've been at it now for quite a while. They're working on a relationship, and I think he's even expanding it, which hopefully that means it's working. It's been generating more followers, more interest in what he does. He offers more than just books.

Mick 34:31

So this author does need to be on socials as much.

David 34:34

Him personally, right. He's working with someone.

Mick 34:37

Yeah, and I've seen that work. I've seen a lot of people who that's their choice to do. You know, just like an author will kind of make decisions about, you know, paying for house help or some babysitting so they can get the writing done. It's a similar sort of metric you're using. Yeah, exactly. And then trying to say, okay, how does that then work? Because I've got to pay for that, you know, out of my pocket usually. You know, so I got to make more, more fans. Right. Right. Right. And everyone's got to figure this out for themselves. And I think that's, that's doable to me. That's, that's much more doable than saying, okay, well, I'm just going to give it to the publisher and expect them to do it. Right. That's just not,

David 35:17

it's not happening. I'm sorry. No,

Traditional publishers are limited.

David 35:19

it happens. As a new author. It happens around the launch of the book a little bit. And then that is it. Yeah. It's like, there's

Mick 35:24

a lot of promises made. Yeah. And a lot of books not sold. Or there's a lot

David 35:29

of promises perceived made. Sure. Perceived.

Mick 35:31

Yeah. That

David 35:32

were, were never really promised by the publisher.

Mick 35:34

And I think we've seen that over and over, just as the former professionals that we

David 35:41

were. And I've said this plenty of times. Media doesn't mean what it used to mean 25 years ago. In today's segmented digital marketplace, it doesn't mean what it used to mean. So if you think your publisher is supposed to get you a lot of great media, now it depends on what the book is. But for most books, media is not going to matter as much as you might think. Um, and so, and what else is there? Well, there's like maybe your professional network, there's speaking, um, um, and then there's your own online platform. Or there's the fact that you've written a lot of books and you've built an audience just by putting a lot of content out there. Yeah,

Mick 36:20

and that's the long tail. For many years, you've been working at this and that speaks for itself. That's

David 36:25

another thing about the long tail is that it's

Mick 36:26

actually a form of marketing in and of itself. Absolutely. Yeah, it's so good to be able to go on Amazon and see that they don't have just one book. Immediately, I'm like, okay, well, this person's obviously committed. This is someone who I can trust more. Yeah. than just like, even if they were on a publishing docket. It would be

David 36:46

one

Mick 36:46

book does

David 36:47

not

Mick 36:47

tell me that they have much of an audience.

David 36:49

And that's where you need a guide on your website as to which book people should read first. Right. Yeah. Oh, that'd be good. Yeah. In fact, this author, I was just thinking about that. He probably needs that on his website. Just thought about that.

Mick 37:01

Yeah. Don't just sell your, your most recent books. Tell us the entire long tail. Yeah. It's like, how do these go together? And what was your, what was your idea? Yeah. Guiding thought there. Yeah. Yeah. This is good. This is good. I think we can continue this, Um, you know,

David 37:16

indefinitely. Indeed. Apologies for any listeners and to you, Mick, for kind of going off at the beginning. It's perfect because it kind of gives us a

Mick 37:23

place to, yeah, a place to jump off

David 37:25

of. When you, when you get an introvert in a groove, it's just, they're not

Mick 37:31

stoppable. Well, both of us, I think we just love to talk about this stuff. So yeah, hopefully that's helpful to someone. And yeah, we'll, we'll reconvene next time. We're on our way to,

Heading to Wild Goose!

Mick 37:42

well, within the next month or so, I guess. Just,

David 37:45

We just pulled the trigger. We're making plans to go. Yeah, we made

Mick 37:48

plans, but we'll be there. You're going to have a lake drive? Yeah. Yeah, like a booth there.

David 37:54

There will be a Lake Drive Books table. You're going to be there with me for part of that. Yeah, I'll be the man

Mick 37:59

in the booth.

David 38:00

Yeah, I'm mostly just looking forward to conversations and meeting people. And I know a lot of folks will be there, and I think you do too, who you've interacted with but maybe never met face-to-face. That's what these things are all

Mick 38:12

about. I mean, are they at 20 years now? I don't know how

David 38:14

long this has been going on. It's been a while, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say that everything... about when you go to a conference like this, like it doesn't it's not necessarily everything isn't what you would have designed for a conference like this or the things that you want to go here. Right. But but it's more broad and diffuse than you might think. And then there's just the layer of, well, there's people here to connect with, and that means a lot of different things. In person, yes. So regardless of the vibe of the conference itself or the organizers, what they want, they're kind of providing a space. That's the main thing they're doing, and it's a safe space for a lot of people who don't otherwise find good, creative, safe spaces.

Mick 38:52

Yeah, and in the progressive Christian context, area there's just not a lot that's that's out there yeah and certainly not that that's of the level i guess or or the experience level of the wild use uh conference so gonna be there and then yeah i mean there's woods just summer enjoy your summer too yeah you know i mean it is summer we're definitely like on summer time yeah it's it's gonna get

David 39:22

back is it friday at one o'clock yet when publishers all go home

Mick 39:27

by the time friday rolls around I'm like looking for those half days. It's only Tuesday as we are recording this. Right. I'm going to Portland too. So I gotta, I gotta get my head around that. But yeah, we'll talk to you guys next time. Thank you. All right. Bye bye.