The Next $10 Billion+ Opportunity in Storytelling

Quite possibly the biggest opportunity we've ever seen as indie storytellers is coming right now. And I want to share it with you how you can make the most of this new market that's going to help storytellers make $10 billion plus per year. It's literally going to 10x this indie storytelling market as we know it. And it's all about going beyond the book, taking your stories and bringing it into this entire new world. I'm doing something really big to try and help you get there, but what I want to talk about is a lot of y' all listening to this probably consider yourself as authors. This is the beyond the Book podcast. And I've been an author for eight years. I published 12 sci fi novels while I was in high school. I've considered myself an author for most of my life, but no longer do you have to just be an author. And in fact, what you really are is a storyteller. As an author, you tell stories, and a storyteller is your core identity. Those stories happen to be written down. That's the input you really enjoy. And those stories end up being turned into books. So you call yourself an author, but technology's making it so that those stories can be more than just books. The stories can be movies, shows, games, and more. And that's what this podcast beyond the Book is all about. Which, if you're new to this podcast. Hello, my name's Michael Evans. I'm the host of this podcast. And each week we bring on some incredible folks to talk about where publishing is going and how you're able to turn your stories into an empire. And it really all starts with your audience, which if you are watching the version on YouTube. I've got some slides pulled up for a little mini lecture today. And you can see that audience is at the center of our map here because it's really audience that makes everything possible. Our relationship, our connection to our fans, the trust they have in us. And once you have an audience built around your stories, you can turn your stories into different media formats. Because your stories are just stories in and of themselves. They don't need to have be written down. They have the stories, the ip, the ideas, your ideas, your stories can be turned into these other forms of media can be turned into different fans experience. We turn it into different products and services and even licensing and partnerships. I myself, after writing all those books, did YouTube live streaming. I built a software platform while at Harvard that helped authors make over a million dollars a year on memberships and then went on to go work for Mr. Beast, who has this massive empire built around his audience, one of the largest in the world. So I know a ton about going beyond a book, and I'm really grateful to be able to host this podcast. It's just so much fun. This card that I'm showing you, if you're on the YouTube version that actually illustrates this audience is everything concept is from this card deck, which has 50 marketing superpowers for authors. It's a ton of fun. You can get the version for free. Sending up to my mailing list authorside guide.com and you also can actually hold these physical cards for real if you want them. @authorsidek.com you'll find the website get the author decks. They are for an affordable price and they're really awesome. And the shipment, it just arrived at the warehouse on Monday. It's coming on Monday, so that's super, super exciting. Now, I mentioned this $10 million opportunity in storytelling, and it really is the most exciting thing I've ever seen. Like I said, I'm devoting a lot of time to attendance to this. So I want to share with you where this is going so you can capitalize on it, because you're not just an author anymore, you are a storyteller. And it's something bigger than that. First, I want to recognize that this has been my first episode back in six or seven weeks. Very long break for me. I started this podcast a couple months ago, and I always build in an off week here or there. Did not expect to be taking this amount of time off. I've been growing the team. I've been now I have two business partners, I've got an assistant, and it's gonna be more people joining for the end of summer, that's for sure. I've been building a lot of systems that scale, creating like the content behind the scenes, the different growth flywheels, getting some different standard operating procedures and tech set up. Things are in a much better place now. I definitely have more time to devote to the podcast, which is great. But the other thing that's really come into the picture here is I've been working on a platform to help storytellers go beyond the book. And it's this platform and really this new industry that we get to create together that is going to 10x this whole market for indie storytellers. And I just can't wait to share that with you today. So I want to start off by sharing what's been happening in technology, because if you haven't been following super closely, the last couple months have been transformative for AI videos. Look, I know AI is a weird word, loaded language. A lot of us as writers and creators, we might feel a particular way about it. I think that we're at this really interesting moment where we can use this technology change, social change and business change for good and to try and bring more power to storytellers. And that's my goal and exactly what I want to share with you today. But there's been some wild things happening, and VO3 just launched a couple days ago, and it makes it so that really very impressive movies, shows can be produced. It's just clips for now, but you can string these clips together into coherent scenes, coherent films. I've seen a lot of really cool stuff coming. And we're really at this sort of beginning of this transformation where. Where the cost of creation is coming down for films. And what used to cost a million dollars to create, now you can create for a thousand dollars and a couple hours of your time. And it's gonna have a huge impact on how movies are made and ultimately who makes movies, what movies are made and what movies are watched. And this is going to completely rewrite Hollywood. It's what we're calling Craterwood, which I'll share more on that in a bit. But I think this is truly the KDP moment, the Kindle Direct Publishing moment for film. With Kindle Direct Publishing, you didn't need money to run big print runs anymore and get into bookstores. You had distribution now online. A bookstore allowed you to be able to sell, and you didn't need to have tons of money spent printing books to be able to do it. We're now living in an age where it's not distribution necessarily. That's the moat that Hollywood has. Anyone could post a video online. The issue is creation. Creating fictional content is difficult. Scripted fictional content, especially with special effects and decent production value, is something that just wasn't economical for everyday creators. And it's why the gatekeepers, Hollywood, they controlled the capital, right? Just like in publishing beforehand, you know, the publishers who had the relationships, the printing presses, they controlled the capital. And the capital is really important. But with the cost of creation going down, that capital is no longer as important. And AI is essentially now doing the same thing that happened for film, which happened for books years ago, right? You don't need these big Hollywood budgets anymore. You just need a story, a laptop and a passion. And this changes everything. This is where you see things like Cling Helio Freepik, Ideogram Midjourney and many more tools. I'm just naming a few really. There's Sora, there's veo, as I already mentioned, and this sort of new tech stack along with 11 labs Suno just makes it really simple to be able to start producing movies. And you can take the words that you're writing, which those words used to only be able to be words, those words were words, and now you could turn those words into movies directly. That's all you need. That's the magic in all this storytelling. And your ability to write is what drives all of these creation processes. And it's now that ability that you all have as storytellers that allows you to expand into new mediums, into new industries. And when we talk about going beyond the book, like this is it, this is why I started this podcast because it's not just about AI mind. I've 5 or 6 episodes already filmed that are coming out. One of them about pre ordering books, one about retail and like physical retail for your books, one about automations that's operationally focused, tons of awesome episodes. This whole podcast will not just be focused on AI videos and AI movies, but the whole idea is that going beyond the book, there's this whole brave new world of incredible opportunity that we get to, to really approach as storytellers. And today's the first time I'm really coming out and saying and sticking my flag in the sand going I bet hell over high water that as any storytellers there's a massive market in film. And I want to show you how you can capitalize on it and really build the home for you to run that business. That's where we're going here. Okay, but I want to explain how we're getting here. Right? And it is this once in a generation technology, social and business model change. So as I said, the AI tools have brought the cost of creation of films down by 10x. In reality it's been like a hundred or thousandx. It's just, it's insane. You can now really turn your books into movies. And if you don't believe me, go to like clingai. Com, go to go check out these tools. Veo's behind a pretty expensive paywall right now. But if you go check out these tools and go check out the demos online, you'll see like this future is not a future anymore. It's already here and you get to go create it together. And I view this with both hesitancy and excitement. I think AI in general, it's too big and too broad to bucket into one thing. I think there's great uses of intelligence, I think there's great uses of it. I think there's also ways in which it could be destructive and ways in which we should watch out. And I think as a community, we have an interesting opportunity to take this technology and actually do two equally interesting things, which is that we have this business model change coming out right now. YouTube is not built for episodic content. To make a living on YouTube posting videos, you have to get lots and lots of views to make money from Adsense. Same thing with TikTok. It's just these are social platforms not built for episodic fictional content. So then you might be saying, great, Michael, so I've got my movies. I'm not going to even make money unless I get millions of views on YouTube. What's the point of this? And the point is there's going to be a whole new world created for you. And this new world is already being pioneered by these other players because Netflix, right, they don't allow indie content on. You can't just upload to Netflix, you can't just upload to Disney plus. But the thing is, there's this new business model coming about where we don't need some big overall subscription rolling over us as creative people. Reel Shorts and Drama Box are two apps that are essentially real vertical movies right on your phone. And they're episodic fictional based content. And they're downloaded now millions of times a month in the U.S. essentially, they're downloaded just about as half as much as the streamers are put together each month, which is crazy. These apps are very popular and they make billions of dollars a year now. And it's all people paying per episode and per season to get access to these shows. It's incredible. And these shows are featuring more niche genres than we're seeing elsewhere, which is also part of their success. The issue is that real shorts of Drama Box are also not indie led. These are produced by companies behind the scenes. You can't just, as an everyday writer, everyday storyteller upload here. And that's what we're going to see change. That's where I'm moving to. I'm going to show you all about that in a little bit. What we're seeing now is customers are willing to pay per film per episode, per season, so they can pay you directly for your films. Technology is making it possible to make amazing films and this social change now makes it so that you can create films more tailored to what people want. Whether it be dark romances, whether it be fantasy, whether it be niche romcoms, Everything that now can be created that is able to be profitable. Because beforehand, candidly, a lot of niche shows weren't profitable. Because if you're going to spend millions of dollars to make it, you better be making millions of dollars. But if you only have to spend thousands of dollars to make it, a hundred thousand dollars could be a beyond life changing return. So the power law of movies. We used to see only the biggest and widest blockbusters get produced, but now we get to see so many different communities arise because there's going to be so much more room in the middle for people to succeed. Not to see that you can't create the next Hollywood blockbuster, but I think there's much more opportunity in the middle for there to be tens of thousands of storytellers making a living doing this. And As I mentioned, YouTube is not the real opportunity here. There's something bigger and I want to share that with you. But just for perspective on the film market's so much bigger than reading in books. YouTube pays out more each week than creators do in Kindle Limited in a year. So Kindle Limited, right, pays out about $700 million each year to authors. YouTube is paying out billions of dollars a month to creators. Just YouTube, never mind Netflix, never mind the whole video ecosystem. The whole video EcoSystem is easily 10x plus what publishing is. If not, it's closer to a hundred X, which is wild. What we see right now is these existing platforms that do exist are not built for the discovery of sonic fictional content. You need millions of viewers to make significant income on these platforms. And there's also no control for the creator. Right? Like you can't on YouTube get the emails of your followers. You can't build a mailing list there. There's a better way. That's the future we're building. Okay? This is why I've spent the last six weeks a little bit more behind the scenes, building up systems, starting to scale the team. This is what we're really going for here. And I'll be honest, it's the biggest opportunity I've ever seen. And it's one I want to bring to all of you so that you all can create this future. Because we need a home where you can run your business. We need a home where you can sell videos directly to your fans. Where you can build a business based on episodic fictional video content and turn your stories not just into books, but into film and into Film that can reach hundreds of millions of more viewers than your books ever would have. And that is what we're creating with Craterwood. There's two prongs to this and we're going to be launching a good bit of this in June. And I want to share this with you now as a sort of like teaser. Then we're just going to go back to our regularly scheduled program and beyond the book, because I'm not stopping Author Sidekick, I'm not stopping beyond the book. I'm just growing the team so that we can take on more and do better. What Craterwood is essentially this future movement that we see all the moving into. We don't actually have a specific platform yet. Like we don't have a name for it, I should say, although we have it built. I'll talk more about that. But essentially what we're building is a home for you to be able to build a movie business charging per episode season or movie. Then we're building tools allow you use social and paid ads to grow, retain your customer revenue and all customer data. So essentially the ultimate marketing tool for you to be able to grow a movie business and then the ultimate experience tool for your viewers to actually experience movies inside of the app. It's a really cool experience. It's simple yet powerful. And it helps a whole new business model come to life. Our thesis that there's going to be tens of thousands of people making a full time living doing this. New studios, new agencies that come about, studios that are like, think about indie small presses now, like Atheon Press, agencies that like, think about, like the editors that exist now and cover designers in the world of publishing, people who are specializing in taking the stories you have and packaging it up into film. And there's going to be people, many of you, who just do it all yourselves and go indie all the way. And that's beautiful. But the cost of creation again is coming ridiculously low. And as storytellers who have skills at the intersection of marketing, E comm. Storytelling and publishing and how that all works, you're super prime to do incredibly well in this indie filmmaking industry. And seriously, it's just the most exciting thing. And like I said earlier, By 2030, I'm willing to bet my life on this. Storytellers will be making $10 billion plus per year selling films directly to their audience. And the real question is, will you join us? If you want to, if you're curious, if you want to start getting a taste of what the future of making your own movies looks like just send me an email@hellothorpsychic.com this month we're going to be launching our book Craterwood. Me and Nick Young made it. Nick Young is a Harvard trained filmmaker. He worked in Hollywood for two years and he quit his job to really start pioneering the future of filmmaking. So me and him wrote this book together, coming out in June completely for free. And again, I'm still doing all the things I'm doing in the author world. We're just doing this because this is where I see the future going and I want to help shepherd this. The second thing is we just today started beta for the platform, which we have not finalized any the platform, but the platform where you can upload your videos, where you can charge by episode and per season, have viewers experience it, and actually get all the data. That platform is free to join. It just takes a 10% cut of your revenue. Think of it similar to Shopify meets Netflix or a stub stack ish version, but for like serialized video, it's epic. It's really cool. We're not ready to publicly launch it yet. It'll probably be a couple months. But we're mostly spending these couple months, of course, building up the tech, but also building out case studies and building out success stories of storytellers actually making films and making money on the platform. So if you're one of those people who wants to get in early and wants to work directly with us, email me. I'd love to help you see how we can help you make these films and make your own movies and then turn it into a business. And if that's not something you're interested in, don't worry. First of all, I'll be sharing these insights so that if it's something you want to do down the line, we'll be learning so much in sharing all of it with you. And likewise, next month we're going to be launching a new newsletter and a new podcast in addition to everything I'm doing here that's specific to AI movies. So if you want to just dive super deep with us beyond the book and AI movies and AI videos, then like we'll have a home for that where you're going to get to learn and grow. And if you're not that interested in that, don't worry. I'll have probably one or more episode in the next couple months about it and then I'll bring it up in this podcast from time to time. But this podcast is going to be my own learning incubator to see broadly where are things going? And then when I see an opportunity to dive into a specific area and make something happen, I'm going to assemble literally the smartest people I know. I have one of the smartest, like he's a software engineer who dropped out from Harvard, who's incredible, who's building the actual platform. Like, I will just assemble the smartest people I know to do everything we can to bring power to storytellers. The core mission of what I'm doing here, and help really revolutionize this industry. And that's we're at the beginning of. And I'm so incredibly excited for this. We're going to just change so many viewers lives together. All of us, you all here because we get to bring stories to life that never would have been made for that Hollywood never would have greenlighted. But now you don't need them to greenlight it. You just need your viewers to want it and put your viewers first. It is going to be insane. This is one of the biggest opportunities I see, period right now is going to completely remake what we think this landscape is of being a creator, of being a storyteller. And I'm so excited to get on the ground floor and do this all with you. So again, if you have any questions, let me know. This is the simple thing. I could dive in, I could talk for hours about the different tech, about different tools, but I just want to bring awareness this. I want you to understand what's coming and understand that I'm so optimistic. Not because the future has to be better, but because we can make it better together. We can actually use this technology in AI and use this platform shift to bring a lot more power to creators, to reorient it. Where instead of the studios having the power, instead of the network having power, like Amazon, right? Because Amazon just displays power from publishers to network. We can actually put the network in the hands of the creators by giving you the data, by giving you the power and control. The power really goes from Hollywood to Creatorwood. That's our future, to bring the power to you. And we have this unique opportunity to actually create this vision. So I'm super excited to see how this works. To experiment and literally create something from the ground up. That's never been done before because there's no comps here, there's no people who are jumping in and doing this. It is the wild west. It's like being in Indie Publishing 20 years ago and you get to now do this together with us. So I'm so excited. Like I said, the world's going to change fast. In five years, we're going to look back and be like, wow, this changed overnight. But I'm telling you, the change starts now. You can be the change. And what's coming in this future is just going to be so incredible. You can make your own movies now. You don't need Hollywood. There's a market much bigger than reading that's here for your stories. You're a storyteller first, and you might not just be an author anywhere, but also a filmmaker. And these tools allow it to be possible. And the thing that matters most is your writing and your storytelling. That's it for me. I'll be back next week with another episode of the beyond the Book podcast. Back to our regularly scheduled programming. I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please subscribe. Please follow this podcast, also share it with a friend. This is a really big message, and it's something that's going to really shake up this industry. But I literally have to talk about this because not enough people are talking about this. Not enough people even see this. And it's shocking me because this is the most wild and cool thing here. It feels almost obvious that this is where things are going. So experiment with us. Try this out with us. Try to make your own movies. And I think it might just change some of your lives. All right, I'll see y' all next time. In the meantime, don't forget, together we are boundless.