A curated collection of the latest and most interesting podcast episodes about the author life.
Hello, JP Rindfleisch here! Hope you’ve been able to get some words down this week, and if not then pop on a pomodoro and give it a whirl. I’ve been juggling several projects, and I don’t know where I’d be without my Google Tasks and pomodoros.
Top 3 Must-Listen Episodes
The Creative Penn // Selling Books Direct With Shopify: The Minimum Viable Store
In this episode of the Creative Penn, Joanna discusses the steps she took to build her own online store. Not only does she discuss the benefits of selling direct, while still having some products wide on other platforms, but she goes through every step that made her store what it is today.
One of my favorite things is her minimum viable approach. When creating her store and site, she didn’t seek out the frills and means to make her site unique. Instead, she ensured that she held to the scope of her project and kept her site standard, so any future upgrades or new platform versions were not impeded by her bells and whistles. Keeping the platforms in this minimal state means less management of the site, and more focus on ensuring your products look good on your site.
I feel like I learned a lot on this podcast, and this is definitely one I’ll be listening to a few times to wrap my head around all the learnings.
The Rebel Author // Social Media for Authors with Suzie Speaks
I, like many authors I know, struggle with social media. Suzie brought up some excellent points on this episode, including the basic foundation, consistency. One helpful tool mentioned on this episode are schedulars like later.com. I’m really curious to delve more into services like that so I can batch create instead of racing to the finish line for my social posts.
A repeated key that stuck with me was to know the audience you need versus the audience you have. Basically, you need to do your research. Follow the accounts of other creators in the spaces you want to be in and learn how they are engaging with their audiences. This is more than announcing new releases and hashtags, but also including snippets of your life or books/media that you are indulging in.
Building your social media platform is a long game, which takes time and practice to know your audience. Best thing you can do is not fall into comparisonitis, and just keep consistent to what you are able to do.
You Are a Storyteller // How Structure Makes a Story Effective
“You can’t build a house without a frame.”
As storytellers, we sometimes forget how important structure is to a story. Once we learn the magic tricks that craft a good story, we assume everyone else can see it too. That’s not true, though. In this episode, Jesse and Brian talk about the importance of story structure and using it to our advantage instead of shying away from it.
Story structure creates promises, builds expectations, and drives an emotional journey for our readers. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but instead use the wheel and find ways to subvert expectations. A prime example would be Chekhov’s gun, where a weapon is shown on page and the reader expects the weapon to be used before the story ends. We’ve created a promise, and instead of never returning to that promise, we satisfy the reader when we use that weapon. Our creative input is not to crush an expectation, but to show the weapon being used at an unexpected time, by an unexpected person, or at a moment where poetic justice pays off.
Structure saves you time and energy while crafting a story. It can inform the direction of the story by answering what should happen within a certain genre or plot, instead of the author spending time wondering what could happen next.
The Latest from The Author Life Podcast
76: TOP THREE MYTHS OF WRITING MEMOIR
This week author Crys Cain is joined by special guest Valerie Ihsan. They discuss the top myths of writing memoir and some tips and tricks to help you write yours.
The Wildcard: Interesting Episode from a Non-Writing Related Show
7-Figure Small // Did Email Just Defeat Social Media for Good?
Email is not dead in 2022!
With the rise of smart algorithm-based platforms like TikTok making waves in the social media space, email might even be more relevant and important than ever as it becomes more and more difficult to reach an audience on these other platforms.
In this episode, they mentioned that email engagement has gone up since the pandemic, and email has always been 40x more likely to convert and 6x more likely to get a user to click than social media. They also mentioned that advertising is important in 2022, but new models like ads within emails using Convertkit sponsorships are testing the waters on how to reach people in this new web space.
If anything, this podcast reminded me that maintaining an email list is the best way to foster relationships instead of relying on social media. One thing everyone on the internet has is an email, but you can’t say the same for social media.
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