The First Billionaire Indie Author

I have a dream that an indie author is going to be a billionaire this decade, and it's going to happen by going beyond the book. Welcome to the beyond the Book podcast. I'm your host, Michael Evans, and I'm so excited to share a whole new world of publishing. Together, we're going to rewrite the world's publishing. Together, we're going to help you build businesses, expand your media, and ultimately expand your readership beyond books and beyond your wildest dreams. And together, we're going to turn your stories into an empire. This is what Beyond Books is about. And I've seen the power of this. For years, I have been helping authors innovate and how they make money, build CUNY with their superfans, ultimately go beyond just selling books or getting KU page reads to grow their income and grow their readership. And this podcast is going to take all of that work that I've been doing for years and build on it and go way further together. So I want to give you a little backstory and step back into time. When I first started publishing, I was creating science fiction novels, and I have always been so in love the future and building worlds around our stories. And I was in high school publishing these novels, sharing them with the world, and I couldn't help but think, there's more to this always. One of my books turned into movies. One of my books turned into all the different things that we dream about as authors. But then I decided, why don't I start actually creating movies myself? And when I got to college, I was a freshman. I had written 12 books in high school at that point, and I went all in on YouTube. And I learned a lot about how to actually create content that is not just written in the board, which is cool. But I learned something more important. YouTubers didn't make a lot of their money from the actual videos. They made most of their money through brand deals. This is when a brand would pay them to actually basically integrate their product into their video, and that brand would get a lot of sales and the creator would get a portion of the revenue. But some smart creators started realizing that the brands were still making more money than they were, and that if the creators just built the brands themselves, let's say you're advertising some kitchen ware, maybe some forks and knives, and you happen to be a Chef on TikTok or on YouTube. Why not just make the forks and knives yourself? And that's what's happening. Creators are building the brands the future. And when I think about what this means for Authors. We have the exact same opportunity with our books and with our readers. It's so exciting because there's a whole untapped world of being able to put our readers first and build businesses, products, and experiences for them that have never been done before. And there's more money in this than just writing books. This is where empires are built. This is where really, authors turn from millionaires into billionaires. And I want to help you get there. Now, my story is a little bit weird because after doing YouTube, I ended up doing live streaming, really discovering the power of Bikuni of superfans. It was a huge moment for me because I started to realize that it's not just about building products. It's not just about inserting and creating your own ad in your video that you now sponsor. Or, hey, readers, on my newsletter, here's the new thing that I think you'll like. If it's romance readers, maybe you came out with a chocolate brand, or maybe you have some sort of merch or something like that you want to give to your fans. It's not just about that. It's also about building relationships between your fans and really building awesome. And that cuny, in and of itself, is a service. That Cuny, in and of itself is a product. That Cuny, in and of itself, is helping combat one of the biggest issues of our time, which is that we're more disconnected and lonely than ever. And you, as a storyteller, can really build a world around what you're doing and can help that come true, can help really solve that for your readers. And I was able to do that through live streaming. And it was literally a thousand hours that I spent doing it. And what was fun is that it wasn't live streams just between me projecting out to the fans, but actually people able to come live with me. It was on this new startup app. And with that multiplayer live streaming, I got to really meet the people that were on these streams, became friends with them, and I discovered this power of cuny. And I got obsessed with. With these two words, creator economy, and how really publishing is less about the actual story and more about how we can build a world, an economy, around our stories. And I wrote a book about it. I wrote a book about it, like, three years ago called Creator Economy Guide to the Future of Publishing. I love that book. It was the first nonfiction book I ever wrote. With that, I started being obsessed about the different ways authors can grow in the future. And if you heard any of my work before, you probably know the moments that I was most excited about are when I talked about Creator street, which is this concept of all these Main street businesses that exist, these small awesome businesses that are local to different communities, which we want to empower, we want to support. But what does the small Main street look like online, where instead of being custom fit to a specific community in the real world, it's custom fit to a specific CUNY in the virtual world? Maybe you have, you know, your bookstore for literary PG readers or your restaurant for fantasy readers. What does this look like in a digital context? This is where I got obsessed with the idea of Creator street, that next era of small businesses that might not be that small. Some of these businesses are going to be big. And that's what we're going to be exploring here together, how we can help turn your stories into an empire and really help you build a mini Disney and. And with where technology's going, with where consumer behavior is going, and with all the possibilities that the world brings today. You don't have to be a bestselling author with 10,000 readers to build something like this. In fact, paradoxically, you can get started without a huge audience, go beyond the books and actually gain a readership through doing it. And I'm going to be sharing with you some incredible stories of people who explored their readership by going beyond the books and innovating on what storytelling even looks like. The medium, the format, sending things through, letters, immersing the readers in a world where you're not just talking about, hey, here's, you know, my book, but here's a drink that goes along with my book. Here's an incredible merch line that is not even good just for my books. But for anyone who likes the genre, here's a conference or an event or CUNY that you're literally going to be part of each day. And instead of just reading my books, this fan club is going to become your social hangout. It's going to become like your local YMCA or your local bar. And we're going to create that all online. Or if it's not online, it's a physical product. We're going to be able to do all of it while sitting behind our computer. That is the magic of what we're talking about here and what going beyond the book really is. And I want to share with you the last formative experience I had in this, which is after graduating from school, ended up going to Harvard and was working in a software company for authors for a while, which was really all focused on helping authors succeed in the future of publishing. I'm obsessed with the future. I'm a science fiction author. It's what I want to do. I want to bring the future to life. And I ended up going working for the biggest creator in the world. And he has a chocolate company. He has now lunchly coming out with video games. And I see this world that he built and I had the privilege and the fortune of being on the inside of that world and seeing what it takes and seeing how to build these brands, seeing how to build these teams, and seeing just how unbelievably powerful it is when you turn your stories into an empire. That's what he's doing at the greatest scale. Literally multibillion dollar brand that's only going to keep growing. And I know that he's not the only one who's going to achieve unbelievable success. He already isn't the only one. So I want to show you these people. I want to talk to people who are innovating, who are building brands beyond the books, who are going beyond just what we think of, even in terms of storytelling, going beyond what we think of just in terms of a written word in an ebook and innovating on what it looks like and succeeding massively. So there looks like four categories. What we're really going to discuss here. In each episode, we might cover multiple categories that might more fall into one. Some episodes I'm going to have amazing guests. On some episodes I'm just going to share things from my own experience and I'm going to highlight different things I've learned from the community. But the first really big thing is we're going to be talking about transmedia, right? How do you bring your story into other formats? This one I'm incredibly excited about because I think there's just so much opportunity, whether it's video, whether it's text, whether it's actually making new media formats. There's authors who are succeeding here and actually standing out in a very crowded marketplace by offering their readers something unique. And that actually really solves a problem for them. So we're going to dive deep into reader psychology and we're going to dive deep into all the different possibilities. You can mix and match and innovate on what it means to be an author, because that's what we're doing here. We're going to rewrite the rules of publishing together. You were told for years there's only one way to write a book, only one way to make a living as an author. That is a crock of bs. Together we're going to discover that there's endless possibilities for you to be able to make a living, for you to be able to grow your empire. I'm not going to sit here and tell you here's the one way to do it. Instead, I'm going to show you the possibilities, give you the tools, give you the roadmap to find what works for you. And together we're going to discover this brand new world of going beyond the book. Now the second thing we're going to be covering is bringing these books to the real world, from URL to irl. This means creating physical products based on your content and your IP and doing it with the mindset of thinking from the lens of readers first. How can we always put our readers first and actually create experiences and products that are wildly valuable to them? This can look like creating drink brands. This can look like creating food clothing. This can look like creating other gadgets and products that are useful to your readers. This can look like creating games and other formats that are just going to blow your reader's mind, help you make more money, and through that, help you be able to market your books and your brand and your world further and be able just to have a great time creating things you love. Now the next thing, and the third bucket here is cuny and really helping you build a cuny of your fans and turning your CUNY into a product. Thinking of your CUNY as a service and seeing what authors are doing both in the real world but also most importantly in the digital world and how you're able to create these digital cunies that both make you more income and gain you more readership by again, going beyond the book to build these relationships to your fans. I'm so pumped about it. And the last thing that is really exciting here, and especially for folks who are thinking about going from fiction into nonfiction or blending the lines, is education, software and other different tools and technology that can be built for your readers. That last bucket's important. It's really inspiring to hear the types of businesses people are building there and you can build those businesses too. And in fact, I'm building that type of business right now. I spend most of my time creating content for authors. I have Author Sidekick. It's this newsletter that's really diving deep into how to grow your business as an author. So ideally, any author can come into that and learn and grow. And I spent a lot of time on that. I spent a lot of time creating content here with beyond the Book and creating this podcast and trying to help really share this message with the world that there's a revolution happening in publishing. The creator economy is here now. The future of publishing is here now. We can create it together and you can be the one who makes more money, grows a bigger readership and a better business than you ever could have imagined. That's what this is about, right? So I spent a lot of my time creating content, just like you're spending a lot of your time creating stories, creating these worlds and creating content. But off of the back of this, I'm building software as well. Reader Meter is a software that helps authors see where readers are most and least engaged with their stories. So you can literally see what page your readers stop turning on so that you're able to revise your book and make it better before you release it. It's a game changer. And you can sign up to the waitlist below. I'm firsthand building these things and can share with you how you're able to turn your stories and content and your connection with other people into your own sort of mini Disney. I also have beyond the Book Academy, which is having a mastermind cuny, a accelerator, which is going to be so exciting and also a virtual summit. And you're able to sign up for the wait list on that below. All that will be rolling out throughout the year. And I would love beyondthebookacademy. Com. If you go to that website, share it with people who you think are interested. We're gonna build something incredible there. And again, that's me going beyond just the content to create these things. And you'll also hear from me directly some experiments that I'm doing personally. Going beyond the book, collaborating with people in our community to share projects not connected to this little world I'm building here, but that are going to inform my insights to hopefully help you better and also just inspire you in terms of what's possible. I'm going to be a little bit of a mad scientist here and have a lot of fun in also going beyond the book myself. Constantly challenging what I even think are the possibilities to hopefully help you learn more. Sharing my failures, sharing my experiments openly, and hopefully we can all learn together. This is going to be really fun. This is where the industry's going. This is where publishing's going. It's not about just writing books anymore. It's about turning your books into an empire. It's about turning your books into something that your readers can connect and be immersed in. It's about turning your books into a business, into an amusement park. Pure readers that allows you to make more money, stand out in the marketplace, and connect deeper with your readers than ever before. Welcome to the beyond the Book podcast. This was episode zero. Thank you for listening. Y' all are the best. Like I said, my name is Michael. You all are going beyond the books with me. I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. And as always, don't forget, together we are boundless.