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How can you sell a fiction experience rather than just selling a story? How do our personal obsessions arise in our books, whatever the genre? David Viergutz shares his thoughts in this episode.
In the intro, the best marketing investments for authors [Self Publishing Advice]; Abundance mindset for authors [KWL Podcast]; Written Word Media have now announced direct sales links in their email newsletters.
Plus, Redefining a profession [Seth Godin]; Achieve more with Gen AI [Masterclass]; My thoughts on the Draft2Digital survey on AI licensing; My book, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds; Spear of Destiny out now, and Blood Vintage: A Folk Horror Novel.
Today’s show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn
David Viergutz is a disabled army and law enforcement veteran and the author of over 20 horror, dark fantasy, and thriller novels. He also hosts The Nightmare Engine Podcast.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- The similarities and differences between dark fantasy and horror
- Why horror is the genre of hope
- Religious elements in horror
- Multiple streams of income and selling wide
- The mindset shift to selling direct
- ScareMail — creating a unique fiction experience
- The behind the scenes work involved in selling a physical product
- Building your email list through your e-commerce store
- How to market your store for direct sales
You can find David at DavidViergutz.com
Transcript of Interview with David Viergutz
Joanna: David Viergutz is a disabled army and law enforcement veteran and the author of over 20 horror, dark fantasy, and thriller novels. He also hosts The Nightmare Engine Podcast. So welcome to the show, Dave.
David: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Joanna: Oh, I’m looking forward to talking to you today. First up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing.
David: Sure, I think my story is probably pretty similar to a lot of authors out there. We just had this dream very young that we were going to write books and stand in front of a crowd in Barnes and Noble, and there’d be all these people flocking to meet us.
So we start writing with this dream, and I think a lot of authors, they continue that dream. Then for me, I kind of fell off. So for about 15-20 years, I didn’t write anything. I was focused on career and military and that sort of thing.
Eventually, I actually got hit with an ad for a popular publishing course, and it kind of opened my eyes. I was like, wait, there’s other options. It doesn’t have to be the pipe dream of a traditional contract and that sort of thing.
So I started exploring it, and I was a personal trainer at the time, I had that business going. Basically, I wrote my first book, and I was hooked. I realized I could write. I could write anytime I wanted.
I could learn how to write better, it wasn’t a talent. I was told by a teacher a long time ago, like, you have to be born with talent, you can’t learn this. I’m like, wow, way to crush my little dreams.
Yes, I learned, and I started writing, and I started studying, and I went all in on writing. I sold my fitness business and I joined this community, this self-published community. It’s just brilliant, and people are so kind.
I tell every author I can meet, every time we talk, I say thank you for being a part of this community, for making it what it is. I came from fitness and its cutthroat over there, and it was not making me happy.
Now I get to do things that I love. I get to reach people directly. I get to be creative, and it didn’t feel like fitness was very creative.
So l wrote my first novel, I think, in probably about a month, month and a half. Second one came out a few months after that. Third one, just a little bit faster than that. That was about four and a half, about five years ago. I’ve written 23 at this point.
I started in dark fantasy, realized it wasn’t for me, and went into horror, and have pretty much stayed there. I wrote a couple outside the genre. I wrote some thrillers and crime thrillers. With a law enforcement background, it is a lot of fun.
So yes, I’m fully seated in horror now, that’s where my heart is, and that’s where I love to be. In general, I just love this community. So I’m going hard on it, on horror, and I don’t plan on quitting anytime soon.
Joanna: That’s great. A few things to come back on. So in fact, you and I were talking about this before the recording, about dark fantasy and horror, and the lines are pretty blurred, I think. For example, with vampire novels, some can be horror, some can be dark fantasy.
Where do you draw the line between dark fantasy and horror?
David: I remember asking this question of myself, because I’m like, man, maybe I need to rebrand. When things weren’t going great, maybe I need to rebrand under dark fantasy to see if it might sell a little bit better.
So I started kind of examining these lines, and I said, well, in fantasy, the hero can be a hero, and he can solve the problem. Versus in horror, what makes it horrible is that we’re just trying to survive, we’re just trying to make it. It’s about humans having a human response to something that is otherworldly.
Versus like dark fantasy, where you can have a hero dealing with something otherworldly, but he handles it in a fantastical matter. He has a chance, right, through magic, or through power, through spells, and through strength. In horror, the hero is just trying to survive.
I think that’s more related to kind of what we deal with on a daily basis, you know, for our lives right now, or is it more dark fantasy? I’m like, man, it’s definitely more in the horror if you kind of take a look at what’s going on, and we just have to handle things in a human way.
So I just stuck with that. I’m like, if my characters are doing things the way humans do, then I would probably say that that’s a horror novel. If there’s magic and power and spells like that, I’d kind of lean more towards dark fantasy.
Joanna: It definitely blurred. I mean, on your website, you say, “I only write what scares me to create horror that stays with you.” I like that. I mean, that’s your definition.
I was thinking of what I’m writing at the moment, a folk horror novel, Blood Vintage. Folk horror is quite a specific genre and quite a specific feel. It’s got supernatural elements and organic elements, which I’m really fascinated with, but it’s very, very different to something that might be, as you say, more human horror.
It’s got elements of human horror, but obviously, some of these more supernatural angles are different. Many people don’t even understand why we love this genre.
Why do you think we love horror, and readers of horror love it?
David: Yes, and I love asking that question. I think that question is the most fun to answer because people look at us as, you know, as horror writers, and like, what’s wrong with you?
People are starting to understand that horror can be fun, that thrill. I think it’s safe thrills for some people. It could be therapeutic. It’s fun to imagine the what ifs, and then be kind of safe from that in the real world.
Horror is also a level of escapism. There’s escapism in it, just like we would have in any other novel, except for us, it’s just kind of scary and thrilling. So, I mean, I think people are still looking for a good story.
I think people are still looking for maybe a story they can relate to with their fears. I mean, that’s the most basic human desire and basic human feeling is just fear. Fear and love is closely related, but fear is just so raw.
We can all experience it, no matter what language we speak, how old we are, we can all experience fear. So there’s some connectivity there. I think horror just brings people down to a very basic human level, and says, hey, we can all kind of join in on this and experience it.
So horror, for me, it’s that human connection. I think that’s the same reason people like romance is because there’s human connections. It’s all about the human connection. It’s all about the relationships. So horror can do that for us too.
Joanna: Yes, and also perhaps the monsters in the bed—or under the bed, or in the bed—as kids, there were sort of monsters that were hiding. We need those monsters. We need to keep tackling those monsters. Those are the things that come up over and over again in our books.
Are there themes that you return to over and over again?
David: Yes, I’m a religious person. I don’t fail to acknowledge that in my stories. There’s always some sort of religious overtone that’s very important to me, and so I try to include that. I don’t necessarily have it as the forefront of things, but I think it plays a role of just having faith in general.
I like to say that horror is actually the genre of hope, and people look at me sideways when I explain that. I say, well, it is, because without this great terror, right, this sense of awfulness that nothing can solve this problem, there can’t be great hope. You have to have it.
So I think a lot of characters want to hope for things to be all right. So I look for that type of type of theme where it’s like, man, what can my characters hope for? What can they return to that wasn’t how it was before they encountered this thing? So I try to bring them back to that.
I like a lot of superstition. I bring a lot of superstition in. I’ve been writing a lot of short stories lately, and a lot of them have to do with like weird stuff. I’m like, can I make a horror short story about the superstition about walking under a ladder? Or a broken mirror?
I like to bring in folklore, stuff like Roanoke, The Lost Colony of Roanoke. How terrifying is that about what happened there? Then the one thing that was written on the fence post or whatever. I like to bring in stuff that’s really happened and then throw a twist on it. I think people can relate to that.
Joanna: Yes, it’s interesting. The folklore, I am deep into English pagan folklore right now. It’s like, seriously, this is so weird. There’s some really good stuff over here in the UK as well. Just on the religion because I’m pretty obsessed with religion myself, Midnight Mass—
Did you like Midnight Mass on Netflix?
David: I have not seen it. Maybe that’s a crime. I’m going to write it down because my wife and I are always looking for something scary to watch. So Midnight Mass, I got it right here.
Joanna: Oh, I think it’s genius. It is vampires, but it is a really interesting idea around religion and the isolated community, and all of that sticks in my mind. If you do watch it, the hymn singing will really get you.
David: Now I’m excited.
Joanna: Yes, you’ve got to do that. I mean, this is the thing, I think when people don’t read horror, they assume it’s just one thing. Like, they assume slasher gore, right. They assume the movie Scream. That’s what people think, or like chainsaws or whatever.
That’s not what I write. That’s not what I read. To me the supernatural stuff, the things that are written about in the Bible or in other books of faith, I mean, these are the things that are pretty scary, right?
David: I mean, if you think about the Bible, and just this one, just pull pulling one text, we’re talking about mass Armageddon. We’re talking about flooding of the entire planet. We’re talking about people turning to pillars of salt.
I mean, there’s hope in it, sure, of course, the great text. But also, at the same time, you think about some of the stuff that happened. I mean, talking about Cain and Abel, and then the things that were required of Abraham and his son, and it’s like, these are horror stories.
[Some of the Bible] would be classified as horror, and I think a lot of people forget that.
Joanna: Yes, they just read the nice bits.
David: Then you get the other side of it. They love to read Revelations and everything that happens, and they just focus on that. There’s so much in between.
I mean, I’ve read through quite a few religious texts. I won’t go into them all, there’s quite a few, but just pieces of it, and there’s so much similarity between people seeing, like, you said, the positive things. They’re seeing all the positive things.
Then, also, they don’t really talk about what’s happened. They kind of gloss over the fact that she turned to a pillar of salt, or, hey, this guy was thrown into a lion’s den. It’s like, these are not cheerful things, but I think we just kind of gloss over it.
It’s kind of akin to real life. I mean, real life terror happens every day, but we just walk past it, and we just keep moving, and we see the positive. Oh, you get to do this today, but, oh, look, there’s a car wreck right there. When you really think about a car wreck, they’re not good. That’s a horror story.
If you think about King too, I love King, specifically for this thing, I call it The King Method. I wrote about it my thesis. I got an MFA, and I got to study hard, and that was a lot of fun. So I call it The King Method.
The King Method: Take a bunch of people, and you smash them into a room together, and then you force them to deal with each other for a little bit, and then you force them to deal with something on the outside.
So perfect example is Cujo. The whole thing takes place in a car with a mother and her kid, and then there’s just this rabid dog. The terror does not come from the dog, the terror comes from the fact that that car is heating up. It’s like, wow. Then you realize like, man, the dog is just there.
In the end, it’s the mother and her child that are experiencing this real horror. So when you start thinking about it, it’s all around us. You know, it’s all around us. It’s every day, and we just kind of keep going past going past it.
Joanna: It’s so funny because you take The King Method there from that book. Obviously, he’s written so many books, you can take anything. Whereas for me, The Stand and It, to me, are the completely, almost other worldly books. I mean, The Stand is my favorite. It’s the iconic book for me, good versus evil horror. The end, it’s not hopeful.
I revisit that book many, many times. I mean, it’s still a group of people in a situation where bad things happen, but the supernatural elements are what I come back to. It’s so interesting, you picked a book there that is your angle on horror, and I’m picking books that are my angle.
Yet, he manages to write across such a range that we are all encompassed in his writing. I mean, you did an MFA, and they allowed you to do King.
Do you think King is a modern classic?
David: Yes. I mean, he’s got to be. I mean, partially, he was stood up by the publishing companies to be that way. When you’ve got that many works out there, he’s that well-renowned.
What I think makes a classic is, who’s impacted? If you’ve got the biggest impact—I would put JK Rowling in there, you can put George RR Martin in there. These are modern classics because of the reach and the impact.
It’s like he’s his name alone is where the impact is, not necessarily across the book itself. Kind of the way Shakespeare is, its name itself is recognition. Poe was the same way.
When you think about King, like one of my favorite books is his lesser known books, and that’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. That’s my absolute favorite of all his books. It’s actually a novella.
People are like, what, of all books, that one? I’m like, yes, go read it and you’ll understand, because it’s just a girl lost in the woods. I mean, I’ll leave it there, but that’s the premise of it. It’s so simple, and I think the most terrifying stories are the most simple ones.
I also, on occasion, will teach undergraduate English. One of the things that I’ll teach my students is about going that extra level of terror. I think that extra level terror is not, “Hey, my kid’s home alone and something’s happened to him.” That’s not the terror.
The terror comes from, “Hey kid’s home alone, and then you get arrested, and there’s something terrible happening.” Now the person you’re trying to explain that, “Hey, my kid’s alone, something terrible is happening to him,” they don’t believe you. That’s the terror right there.
It comes from that situation, it doesn’t come from the fact that the kid’s just there alone. It’s that that person who’s supposed to be there to save the day, to be the hero, to be the dark fantasy hero that runs over there and strikes the monster down, you can’t. So you’ve got to handle it a human way.
Joanna: Yes, I think that is interesting. For more horror, people should go over to The Nightmare Engine Podcast, which has got some great interviews in.
I did want to talk to you about direct sales because when you pitched me, you said in your email, “I do abysmal numbers on Amazon,” but you are now doing very, very well with direct sales and other streams of income. So just give us an overview.
What are your multiple streams of income?
David: Sure, so product first. That’s always where I’m at. I have a subscription called The Nightmare Writers. I deal a lot in physical products. I believe the US mail system is my greatest friend.
I ship out these Nightmare Writer cards when they join my subscription, and I give up a little bit of creative freedom, and my readers get to vote on short stories every month. I compile them into a novella, and then they get that as well. Then that gets generated for audio, and that goes up on YouTube.
So I’ve got YouTube AdSense going for that. Then I’ve got The Nightmare Writers, which is my subscription, and there’s all kinds of other perks too.
Then, of course, I have direct sales through bundles and print books. I’ve got my terror box, which is two mystery novels of mine. Then a cool associated swag and merch, and that gets shipped out, and there’s all kinds of bonuses in there too.
Then I’ve got my bread and butter ScareMail. So that’s a letter service, and I know you want to talk about that a lot. So it’s my letter service, it’s an annual subscription.
Joanna: Are you wide with all your normal sales?
David: Yes, and I have no idea how much money I make there because I haven’t checked it in however long, and I don’t really care. Same thing with Amazon. It’s there, but it doesn’t really do anything for me anymore. I’m on Shopify, and that’s where all my focus is.
Joanna: When did you shift your focus to direct sales?
David: Only six months ago. I had been considering going direct for a very long time, and I finally pulled the trigger because I realized that, hey, this isn’t sustainable for me. I don’t like not knowing my customers. I’ve been doing everything I can to try and gather customer data off my email list.
I used to purchase Facebook ads to get people’s email addresses onto my email list, and run them through that, and then try and sell them on the back end. I’d gather as much customer data as I could and just try and reach them on a personal level. It was just so tough. I couldn’t figure anything out about them.
Amazon wouldn’t show you who your customers are, of course. I was always chasing that rank, and that just didn’t do anything for me. I got burnt out with it, and Amazon was not giving me any love.
I did a test with my co-author, Boris. He’s doing very well, and he does very well organically through Amazon. He puts a book up and it shoots up to about between 5,00 and 10,000 just kind of sits there.
So we did a test where we attached my name to his name, and we wrote a book together and launched it, just like we would normally. We put a lot of ad spend behind it, and it tanked, and it tanked.
So I said, well, maybe it’s associated with my account, maybe it’s my books. Either way, if Amazon’s not going to give me any help, then I don’t need to be pinned down to Amazon. That was my point where I said, okay, I’m going direct.
I was already starting to go direct through paperbacks, doing mostly paperback sales. I do a lot of in-person markets. I do local markets, those are always very fruitful for me, and I love it.
I get to meet readers where they are, I ask readers for the email addresses right there on the spot. Before they even buy the book, I say let me get your email address.
So my shift was gradual, but it was coming eventually. I’ve never really liked the model, the KU model. I understand that people do enjoy it, but it’s just not a risk that I’m willing to take.
Joanna: This is what’s so interesting, and people don’t believe me anymore either when I say, look, I really don’t even look.
I do publish wide, but my focus is on Kickstarter, my focus is on Shopify and Patreon. These are the places that I’m focused on.
David: I guess for me, Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and Ingram, and all these other things, these are almost lead-gen.
I do make decent money on these other platforms, but they’re almost bringing a smaller group of those people to my platforms, and that’s kind of where my focus is.
Joanna: That attitude shift to me is so important because otherwise you’re trying to keep your fingers in too many pies, I guess.
David: I mean, it’s got to be the decision that you’re like, look, this may be harder than just put a book on Amazon, run some ads, and hope the organic will do the rest of the work for you, hope the algorithm works for you.
It’s more difficult, it’s more time consuming, but in the end, there’s a security there that I have.
If I ever went to somebody, and this is just kind of from a business perspective, but if I ever went and tried to get my company evaluated, right now, I can be evaluated.
I can be evaluated because I can tell you exactly how much my customers are worth, how much they’ve purchased, how many there are. I can tell you how often I get new ones, what my expenses are, I can tell you all that.
If you went and did that and your focus was only on KU, and you said, “I want an evaluation for my company,” they’d look at you sideways. You’d be like, oh, I make $8,000 a month. Well, that’s fine, but how many customers do you have? Well, I don’t know.”
I get 6 million downloads on KU or whatever, and it’s like, okay, how many customers do you have? I don’t know. So, Amazon has your customers? Yes, okay, there we go.
Joanna: It’s a business view versus just the author view, I think.
David: Yes, I think so. For some people, that’s totally fine. I mean if that’s what you want to do. I don’t want this to be like a cautionary tale, but at the same time it’s like, what happens if the faucet shuts off?
I think wide had the right idea. I don’t agree with the wide mindset. I think if you’re going to be wide at all, you need to be direct, and then wide.
Joanna: When I say wide now, I almost mean direct.
David: Yes, absolutely because why would you feed one beast when you could feed six beasts?
Joanna: Okay, I really want to get into your ScareMail, which is your very cool premium offer.
Tell us about ScareMail, your letter service.
David: I love physical products, and I said that earlier, but like when people join The Nightmare Writers, my other subscription, they get a physical card in the mail and a solid steel bookmark with my brand all over it. They get all kinds of perks in this little mail package.
It’s 69 cents to send a letter in the mail, and I think people are missing that experience. I thought to myself, I’m like, man, there’s something here. I’m like, when’s the last time I checked my mailbox? I just check it to make sure it doesn’t get full, and it’s always full of spam and junk.
When’s the last time I got something cool? I thought to myself, I’m like, look, I’m already writing short stories. I’m a creative, I like to try new things. This would be a logistical nightmare for people who don’t like to touch physical products or paperbacks. This would be a nightmare for them.
I’m like, maybe there’s something here in the experience. So I looked for an experience that I could sell somebody, I could sell a customer.
It’s hard to sell fiction, and the reason it’s hard to sell fiction is because it’s not really solving anybody’s problem, except for the entertainment.
Well, they can get entertainment anywhere. They get it every three seconds on TikTok. That’s why it’s so addictive.
So I’m like, how could I sell an experience? So I looked, and I was like, man, there’s something here. I sparked this idea, and I’m like, what if I send people letters? I don’t just mean handwritten letters, I mean like a story.
The epistolic type writing is not new. It’s not new, but it’s been forgotten, right, and replaced by ebooks. I didn’t like really the price point of ebooks. I don’t think it’s possible for me to sell ebooks on my website for $2.99.
I believe that I hire premium artists and premium editors, and on my own website, I can set the prices to premium because that’s what I spend, just like every other publisher. So I’m like, well, maybe I need a premium experience too.
I was listening to a lot of Alex Hormozi, who’s very smart, and I looked for a way I could apply what he was teaching to a product that I was writing. So I wrote a story that is told through letters, and then it’s a premium markup.
I deliver 24 letters throughout the course of an entire year, roughly every two weeks.
The first letter goes out within three days, and then we guarantee 100% delivery. Throughout it there’s paper ephemera, and it’s an entire story, and it’s actually a kind of a cool third look into the story.
So in the story, the character is communicating with me, specifically. He encounters this website called scare.me, and he believes he is haunted. So since he believes he’s haunted, he wants to avoid the internet, but he also wants to warn people about it.
So he starts sending me, David the author, letters, and he’s asking me to share my correspondence with people to kind of help them avoid the website. To let them know that, hey, there’s something out there they need to be aware of, do not go here. Now, of course, naturally, what do we do? We start to go there.
So don’t go to the scare.me website. It’s a weird Russian domain that I don’t own. I tried to purchase it, but they won’t communicate with me. So don’t go there, that’s not actually part of the story. Everything is going to be on a David Viergutz Domain.
I had some readers come back, and they were like, hey, what is this? I’m like, it’s not mine, don’t touch it.
It’s just taken off. It’s changed my life. It’s changed my world.
I’m looking at purchasing a warehouse. I’ve got commercial printers that I’m purchasing. I didn’t know if you knew this, but a commercial envelope printer is $24,000. I didn’t know that until three days ago when I bought one.
Joanna: So can you give us an idea of how much this experience is for the customer?
David: So in the US, it’s $107. That’s for the whole year. I can tell you that a lot of that is the shipping of the product. It’s very expensive to ship 24 letters. It comes out to like 7373 cents a letter. So a lot of that is for the costs.
Then you have the paper ephemera and everything else, and then print costs and everything associated. Then there’s the fulfillment, and multiple machines, and all this. This is not for the faint of heart.
Joanna: That’s big volume. I mean, to buy machines, you’re doing big volume.
David: Yes, yes, we are.
Joanna: That’s so impressive. It’s amazing. Wait, I need to come back on the actual letters themselves. So obviously you’re not handwriting these. So they’re printed, but do they look handwritten? And you mentioned ephemera. Give us some ideas, like—
What’s in this package?
David: Yes, so they look like they come from a typewriter. So in the story, Michael Miller, my character, he purchased the typewriter. So the font is typewritten. The artwork, I hired an artist to do artwork. He likes to scribble on the margins and scribble on the pages, and so I hired an artist to do all that work.
The envelopes themselves have artwork on them that he’s scribbled on, and so they’re all printed that way. It’s got my logo and my branding all over it. So each page has kind of this old faded style to it, so it looks like it’s just kind of worn, kind of like a vintage look.
Each letter is different in artwork and in style, and so it’s not like you’re getting the same page over and over again. Let me see, some of the letters have three to four pieces of paper in them, and each one has different pages. I paid for probably somewhere around like 200 pieces of art.
Joanna: Wow.
David: Then we got the envelopes too, so that’s like 224, so, so we’re, we’re pretty well on there, on artwork. Then you got the ephemera too, and there’s two or three.
One thing that’s in the story, he goes to tarot card reader, and he tries to get answers. He explains it why he goes there, and she ran out the room screaming. So on his way out, he grabbed one of her business cards.
Well, I include one of the business cards, and if you call the number, it actually goes to a real place, to a real voicemail that I had recorded for the story.
Joanna: Oh, that’s cool. So this is real, like transmedia, they call it. I remember talking to JC Hutchins on this show more than a decade ago. This was traditionally published, and it was a book, but it had all the ephemera and things with it. So it’s really interesting that you’re sending it.
So by the end of the year, the story is complete?
David: Yes, it goes through the entire year. There’s an option to purchase the book box. It’s got the standard artwork that I would purchase with my logo and branding and everything else, like I would for my normal books.
It’s even the same size as a book. It’s just a little bit wider, so it actually fit on the shelf next to my novels. Then there’s the novelization of the story. So the letters will actually kind of plus up the story if they want to buy the book version. So you can buy them separate or together.
Joanna: I love this. I think it’s awesome. Just to repeat, earlier you said—
Selling fiction is hard, so you’re selling an experience of fiction.
David: Yes, exactly. The reason why is because I can target people’s problems, right? The greater message behind the scare—the brand is called ScareMail—and the whole message behind it is that we’ve forgotten something on the internet.
Social media was supposed to bring us together, and instead it’s driven us apart into our own little cell phone worlds. Through letters, we are together as humans again. That is because it is personal.
You must go out to the post office, somebody must have put a stamp on this, and they must collect it, and they must read it and consume it. It’s fulfilling that process of the human connection. That’s the greater message.
The second issue we solve is that people’s mailboxes suck. They don’t use them for anything. So we solve that problem for them too.
Then they get the experience, which is the kind of the overarching idea. Like, oh, man, this would be a cool story. Like, this would be a cool experience. I’ve never had this before, and I get the excitement of going to the mail. This is the fun part that we got to figure out. The logistics was not the fun part.
Joanna: I was going to say, who is sticking stamps? Or are you franking or something like this?
David: We’ve got a machine that does the stamps, but there’s no machine in the world that can stuff these envelopes.
Joanna: Right.
So you’ve hired people to stuff envelopes every day?
David: Yes, my wife and children.
Joanna: That’s brilliant.
David: So, I mean, we are going to expand. We’re likely going to purchase a warehouse. This is just the first story. I’m already writing a second one.
Joanna: I was going to say, because if I’m someone who really likes this, I don’t want to finish just with one. I’ll be like, right, I want the next one. I want to see different art. You know, what else will you send me that’s really interesting? So if I’ve bought one, I’m far more likely to buy another one.
David: Yes, and I mean, we have game plans too for cross selling and upselling, of course. We’ve already got the infrastructure in place. Our house was a warehouse, and we quickly outgrew that space just in stocking paper.
I called dozens of printers and signed contracts and everything else to make this happen. This has not been something that you can just spark overnight. If you want to send cool letters to your readers, like do that. You know, create a Google Form and send some letters.
I would just caution anybody about jumping into this thinking it’s going to be a quick buck. It’s not, and it’s taken over my business to the point that I’m having to hopefully delegate out a lot so that I can focus more on creating more products.
So my top level view of this would basically be product design, and then everybody else below me can just focus on running kind of the mundane parts of it.
Joanna: This is the point, I think. Obviously, you’re still writing horror novels, and the books are still there and short stories and all this, but I think this is another of the mindset shifts that happens with selling direct.
For me, at the moment it’s Kickstarter special editions with foil and all the nice things, and that’s already a step further than just a print on demand paperback.
The concentration on physical products and the ability to do more is, I think, another shift from the digital first model.
David: Yes, and I’ve always had this mindset. I’ve been asked like, hey, what did you do? Did you run these ads? Did you this?
I said, no, I did more than anybody else was willing to do. Especially when you go through the same process over and over again, and you’re 22 novels in, and you put it up on Amazon, and it sticks there for about, I don’t know, three days. You look, you’re like, man, I didn’t recover half of my expenses.
I had a list of 20,000. I’ve pretty much abandoned my MailerLite list at this point. I said, look, if you want to make a purchase, then I’ll keep you on the list. I did quite a few write ups in 20Books about it, about how I was able to get the price down to about 20 cents a subscriber, which is very affordable.
In the end, it was not enough in quantity at $2.99 in KU and all that to make it happen. So, yes, I could play the long game, but at the same time I was like, where else could I go?
Could I go to Kickstarter? I’ve done a couple Kickstarters, and they were great, but I just didn’t like the model. Did some ghost writing, that wasn’t very fun. So I tried different things.
I’m like, man, I’ve got to keep trying something different. That’s the entrepreneur in me that wants to do this and wants to solve problems.
Seeing this in horror and being like, look —
There’s got to be something here in horror that can work besides just putting it on Amazon, running ads, and hoping for the best.
It’s always been that way for me. I mean, I still write horror novels, and they sell better than ever.
Joanna: Yes, so just on that, I think you’re a product design guy. You’re an experience design person. Like that’s how your brain obviously works, which not everyone’s going to be that way.
Even if people just want to do books, like you said there, you ditched your MailerLite list. Some people don’t understand that when you sell direct, you get that email.
Are you just building your email list now through people who buy?
David: Yes. So basically, I offered everybody the opportunity—besides my ARC list and my beta list—and the people I knew were buying were essentially already on my list because I’ve been pushing them towards new products.
So as new books come out, I push them over to Klaviyo. I use Klaviyo along with my Shopify store, so they get put onto a different list. I think that Klaviyo lists are more powerful than MailerLite lists, even though MailerLite is trying to come up with some sort of e-commerce capabilities.
I think you need an actual e-commerce platform if you’re going to be doing e-commerce sales. So I am slowly navigating my way out of MailerLite and towards Klaviyo, to the point that I’m like, hey, look, if you’re still here on this MailerLite list, I can assume you haven’t bought anything from me in a while.
It’s like, look, I’ve always spoken to these people as people, as readers, as people on the other side of the world, showing my gratitude and appreciation, but a lot of people are just there to read my story. That’s great, you can be there, but I don’t need to pay for two lists. I’m not going to pay so that you can have this entertainment.
I mean, I sell products, and I want to be able to support the people better who are supporting me. So I can do that from my Klaviyo list. So it’s a mindset shift.
It’s a shift from saying, look MailerLite is an affordable option, it’s a great option, but if you’re looking to get into direct, you can pretty well start with Klaviyo pretty cheap. It’s going to tell you way more about the customer than MailerLite can.
If you have the e-commerce capabilities, you know, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace even does it now, everything connects to Klaviyo. Everything connects to everything at this point. I’m sure there’s Zapier automations for stuff that isn’t connected already.
You can just learn more about your customers. That’s what it comes down to, it’s not just an email address. It’s an email address, and personal data, and you can see where they came from, and you can see what they clicked on, you can see how many purchases they made, and that data is just so valuable.
I mean, there are companies out there that would kill from my email list right now because my average order value is $100.
Joanna: Yes, and this average order value, I’ve mentioned this before as well, but this is how much they spend, and you compare that to putting a novel up on KU. I mean, I think I’m at 45 pounds for my Kickstarter as the average order value, and you suddenly realize that you have more than 10x.
I don’t know how many percentages that is, but that’s a lot. So, you know, and again, it’s a difference. People are like, oh, but you’re cutting off an audience. But—
You’re cutting off a big audience to focus on a smaller audience who actually care and actually buy.
David: I mean, and here’s the thing too, I can explain to these folks too, it’s like, look, it’s nothing personal. If you buy from Amazon, click this button and let me know. Like, if that’s where you want to go it automatically unsubscribes them.
I’m not going to push you towards Amazon. You can go to Amazon, go find my books as you please, but I’m not going to notify you because that’s not where I want you to go.
Joanna: That’s really interesting. So if you offer them the Amazon link and they click that, you’re unsubscribing them from your list.
David: At this point.
Joanna: That’s just genius. Again, just to emphasize to everyone, we are paying for every single person on our email list.
David: Just to send them to Amazon. Look, and I said, I’m not denigrating anybody whose focus is on Amazon. A lot of people have made very successful careers on Amazon. What I’m saying is that there is something else.
People have been selling stuff on the internet long before Amazon came around with KU.
I’m not saying avoid Amazon, what I’m saying is avoid KU. For a long time that was the only option, and it was working very, very well. The market is very saturated right now, and people like me have come around and said, look, I’m willing to give up a little bit of ‘I just want to write books,’ in exchange for being able to write the books that I want.
So that’s what I had to give up.
I was putting out a book a month at my prime because I could. I was making enough money to basically cover my expenses, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted enough to support my lifestyle.
I was writing a book in a month, and I was just like, there’s got to be something more than this. I don’t need to be this generation engine.
Kickstarter, when I did that, that gave me a little bit of freedom to kind of play around with these things. I’m like, I can create this campaign, and I can create these gifts that I can give to people. and create these packages, and I was making artwork. I was really getting into the product design.
I stopped looking at the book, the paperback, the ebook, as the final product, and started looking at the beginning, and that’s where I look at it. I’m like —
The book is where things start.
You can get the book, but there was so much more with that property, with that thing that you’ve created, that you can use and send it out into the world and do more with.
People are doing it with books and adapt adaptations of screenplays. What is that? That’s just taking a story that’s already been written and adapting it for another media. I just took it to the extreme.
I think if people start doing that, and especially with their Kickstarters, like that’s where people start taking it and going, hey, look, I can take this and turn it into a hardback, or I can take this and turn it into an audiobook, or a radio drama and that sort of thing.
I know one horror author who just turned his books into a board game. Like, these things are totally possible now, and that creates another opportunity for you, as an author, to be like, I don’t need to just be in KU.
Especially when I’m just doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, and I’m running the ads. A lot of authors want to believe that it’s them. They’ll want to say, like, it’s me. I must not be having the right ads. I must not have the right image.
What if you are? What if you are doing the right things, and it’s just not selling because there’s so many other options out there?
A reader sent me her Kindle, and it had 7000 books on it. I’m like, where’s mine in that? You know, even if I had 22 of them and she bought every single one, like when are you ever going to read my books?
It’s not just like the sale that matters to me, it’s I want them to read it, I want them to enjoy it, and I want them to tell me about it. I’ve got so much reader response now.
My books are selling more now than ever because people go in and they get ScareMail, and then they come back and they buy all my books because they absolutely love how ScareMail turned out, and they just figured my writing would be the same, and surprise, it is.
Joanna: That’s wonderful. Just before we go—
How are you marketing your direct sales, other than the email list?
David: I use Facebook ads, I use TikTok, I use Instagram. I’m moving over to lifestyle videos, to YouTube. So that’ll be our next shift is to these longer form content that I can kind of break up.
It’ll be focusing more on me as a person, as kind of this micro influencer, as this micro character in front of the business. Instead of hiding behind the business, hiding behind my brand, I will be in front of it. I think people connect with that better.
I talk a little bit about business to my friends and they asked, are you trying to get an evaluation on this company and sell? I said, no, I’m trying to create a lifestyle business.
I want something that I can just live with, and enjoy, and play with, and put my effort into, and it gives me something back. I just want to be able to do that. I don’t need to build this company just to sell it.
Joanna: Yes, I’m the same. I mean —
We love creating, and we just want to create amazing things, and reach readers, and just be able to keep doing that. That’s how we want to live.
David: Yes, what’s sustainable.
Joanna: Well, it’s been really great to talk to you. I’ve definitely got a lot of ideas from talking to you.
So where can people find you, and your books, and everything you do online?
David: Real simple. DavidViergutz.com, V-I-E-R-G-U-T-Z.com. That’s where my headquarters is. If you want to go on Amazon, I’m sure my books are probably there if you Google me or if you search it, but please don’t.
Go to my website, chat with me. I’m a real human. If you have questions or anything like that, I’m happy to answer, it just might take me a little bit to get to it. So that’s it.
This community has given me so much, the least I can do is give back to the people who have helped make it what it is. So if anybody has any questions, or they just want to mull around new ideas, that sort of thing, I’m always happy to help.
Joanna: Oh, well, thanks so much for your time, Dave. That was great.
David: Jo, that was wonderful. Thanks for having me on.
Summary
David Viergutz, a disabled army and law enforcement veteran, shares his journey into writing and self-publishing. He discusses the distinction between dark fantasy and horror, emphasizing that horror focuses on survival and the human response to the otherworldly. He explores why people love horror, highlighting its ability to provide safe thrills, escapism, and a connection to basic human emotions. David also talks about the recurring themes in his work, including religious overtones, superstition, and real-life events with a twist.
He then discusses his shift from Amazon to direct sales and the multiple streams of income he has developed, such as his subscription service, physical products, and his unique approach to selling fiction through a subscription-based physical mail experience called Scare Mail. He explains how he creates an immersive and personalized experience for his readers by sending them letters, artwork, and ephemera related to the story. David emphasizes the importance of selling an experience rather than just a book and shares his insights on direct sales, building an email list, and marketing strategies. He also highlights the mindset shift required to focus on physical products and the potential for expanding the story into different media formats.
Takeaways
- Selling an experience rather than just a book can be a successful approach to selling fiction.
- Creating a subscription-based physical mail experience can provide readers with a unique and immersive experience.
- Building an email list and using direct sales can be more profitable than relying solely on platforms like Amazon.
- Expanding the story into different media formats, such as board games or radio dramas, can offer new opportunities for authors.
- Focusing on product design and creating high-quality physical products can attract and retain customers.
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