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Welcome to the Author Revolution Podcast.
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I'm Carissa Andrews, author and your host, here to help indie authors like you master mindset, harness manifestation and embrace cutting-edge innovation to elevate your career.
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Let's dive in.
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Well, hey there guys.
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Welcome back to the Author Revolution Podcast.
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Okay, I'll admit it, today's episode is about Taylor Swift.
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But before you roll your eyes and think I'm about to break into all too well, 10-minute version, obviously stick with me.
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This is actually about your author career and how you can sell more books without churning out a brand new novel every other month or every month.
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For nearly a decade now, certain corners of the indie publishing world have been pushing the rapid release mantra.
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Publish fast, publish often never stop producing.
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Basically, if you stop to breathe, you're already behind, and you know that.
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That's not where I stand.
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That's not my go-to mantra, right?
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So here's the thing that advice has left a lot of authors running on fumes, myself included.
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Perhaps you are one of them as well, right?
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And it convinced so many of us that the only way to make money is to write faster.
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Meanwhile, our backlist you know the books that we've already poured our hearts and souls into are sitting quietly in the corner like the kid who didn't get picked for dodgeball, and that's where Taylor Swift comes in.
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So, no, she's not secretly publishing cozy mysteries under a pen name although tell me you wouldn't read those, because I totally would but she's a master at keeping all of her work alive and relevant, year after year, and she does it in a way that makes fans lose their minds in the best way possible.
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So today we're going to unpack what Taylor's doing, why it works and how you can use the same principles to breathe new life into your own books without burning out.
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Okay, the how.
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Well, that's what my August masterclass is for.
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Let's start by talking about the real problem with how we treat our backlist in indie publishing and why it's time to change that.
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Now you know the indie author advice that sounds like it came from the 90s motivational poster, the just keep publishing.
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Or, my personal favorite, you're only as good as your last release.
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Oh, it's been circulating for almost a decade now in certain Facebook groups and, honestly, I'm not a fan of Facebook anymore either, but it's exhausting just to think about it.
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Right, somewhere along the line, the convention turned into this If you're not cranking out a new book every 30, 60, or 90 days, you might as well, pack up your Scrivener files and just go home.
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But here's the truth.
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This constant push to always be creating new stuff ignores the goldmine sitting in your back pocket, which is your backlist.
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That book you published three years ago.
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It still has value.
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The series you wrapped up before your current work in progress still valuable.
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In fact, every book you've ever released is a tiny salesperson, except most of us have left ours in the break room with no coffee and no instructions.
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I see it all the time.
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Authors move on from a launch so fast.
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It's like they broke up with their book and honestly, I gotta say I've been there.
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I've done the same thing right.
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There's no more promo, no fresh marketing ideas, no reasons for readers to rediscover it.
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And because we're so focused on the next shiny project, we forget that books aren't milk.
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They don't have an expiration date.
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So this is where Taylor Swift has the indie world beat by a mile.
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She understands that.
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Her backlist, you know every album, every song, is a part of an interconnected web that keeps fans engaged forever, and she doesn't just let it sit there gathering digital dust either.
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She actively breathes new life into it.
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So let's take a look at what Taylor's been up to lately, because her latest moves prove she's not just creating in the moment, she's weaving everything together into one big, irresistible universe.
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So if you have been anywhere near the internet lately, you know that Taylor made her podcasting debut on the New Heights podcast with Travis Kelsey yes, that, travis Kelsey where she casually announced her 12th studio album, the Life of a Showgirl, and what's crazy about it is that she actually wrote, produced and sung, directed, did all the work for this thing while she was in the European leg of the Heiress Tour.
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So she was flying between concert dates all the while.
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She was also promoting and adding in the Tortured Poets department and continuing to re-record previous albums because she didn't yet own her masters.
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So is this savage productivity or strategic synergy?
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I mean, I lean into mastermind because she makes it look effortless.
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Here's the thing, though, when we think back to all of her works and all the ways that she's been reviving her music.
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You know, every Taylor's Virgin re-recording brought older songs back into the chart mix and into fans' hearts again, and that catalog was rejuvenated with intent, like think about it, like let's remember when she took All Too Well, which was originally released in 2012, and turned it into a 10-minute version in 2021.
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And it was a whole cultural moment because her fans were asking her to resurrect this long song that she just flippantly said it was actually a 10-minute song that she cut down and it's literally like resurrecting your backlist character and having people still cry about it a decade later because this song, this story, this entire experience was able to be brought to life right.
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And when you think about her not going through all of the shit that she's gone through, all of the ups and downs and trials and tribulations, she wouldn't have had the heiress tour, she wouldn't have had the re-recordings.
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If she didn't do the re-recordings, she wouldn't have had the 10-ress tour.
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She wouldn't have had the re-recordings.
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If she didn't do the re-recordings, she wouldn't have had the 10 minute version, she wouldn't have all these extra versions of her songs.
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And on that podcast episode she talked about how a lot of the re-recordings are actually better than the originals.
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And it's just wild to think that she, at any given moment, can create and recreate and reweave things together so that the relevancy that maybe people didn't get the first time around is now a part of the Taylor-dom version right Now.
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At a glance though, it might look like rapid-releasing mania, but here's the genius part she's interconnecting everything and she has been for a very, very long time Now.
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This podcast debut, the new album, the re-recordings, the tour they all feed into one another.
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It's an ecosystem level promotion.
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I mean when you even think about it like Easter egg wise.
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Now this is me revealing my true dorkdom when it comes to Taylor Swift.
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But when you unscramble the first letters of, you know the life of a showgirl, so that's T-L-O-A-S.
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If you unscramble them and scramble them back around into Lotus, l-o-t-a-s, it's Life of Taylor Ellison Swift.
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Do you honestly think that that wasn't something she thought about?
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I know she did, but whatever.
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Do you honestly think that that wasn't something she thought about?
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I know she did, but whatever.
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Taylor's out here weaving stories across platforms while her fans dig for clues and the rest of us authors can't even like manage to make some promos work right.
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We can do better.
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So what does this mean for you and your backlist?
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Well, pretty much everything, because if Taylor can bring new life into an almost 13-year-old song, well, your books deserve the same play.
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Now here's the part where I bring it back to you.
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Indie author, you don't have a stadium tour, perhaps right.
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Or a boyfriend with a Super Bowl trophy and a hit podcast with his brother, or a team of Swifties even dissecting your every move.
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But you do have something just as valuable, and that is your backlist.
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The difference is most of us treat this backlist like leftovers in the back of our fridge.
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We know it's there, we're sure it's still good, but we never think to serve it up again.
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So I want to give you three principles that Taylor uses to make everything feel like a practically spiritual experience when she's doing any kind of marketing.
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Okay, so Taylor's principle number one is find new hooks for old works.
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Taylor doesn't just release an album and walk away.
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She ties it to fresh hooks a date, a number, a visual theme, a collaboration.
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You can do the same thing with your books.
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Tie a romance novel to Valentine's Day In fact, I'm doing that myself next year, right or even a quirky made-up holiday.
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Reframe a mystery around trending tropes or a true crime buzz that's happening within the industry.
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Relaunch a fantasy novel during a cultural moment that fits its vibe.
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There's so many different ways to be able to take a look at your old works, your old books, and bring new life into it.
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And like this is just scratching the surface, right?
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Okay?
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Taylor's principle number two is make every release feed the whole catalog.
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When Taylor drops something brand new, she makes sure it shines light on her past work.
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Her Taylor's Version re-releases didn't just sell those albums, they drove streams of her entire discography.
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As an author, that could mean mentioning backlist characters or events in your new releases, including backlist excerpts or bonus scenes in your reader magnets, offering bundle deals that pair old and new books together.
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Like I brought characters into new books across all sorts of different things.
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I've laid Easter eggs and some people get it and some people don't, but the whole point here is to make it as much fun as possible to live and be immersed in the worlds that you create.
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Okay, taylor is a storyteller.
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First, she knows how to tell a good story and weave in all of the things that get us excited, right?
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Principle number three is play the long game.
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Taylor is not on a frantic rapid release schedule, really honestly, even though it looks like she might be.
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She's actually running a cohesive, interconnected marketing plan, and here's where most indie authors burn out.
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We try to treat each launch as an isolated sprint instead of part of a marathon.
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Your backlist should be a part of every single marketing cycle you run, not just when the book is shiny and brand new, but always.
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The system to identify the right backlist title, create a month of promo in minutes and automate the process so it happens every quarter is exactly what I'm walking you through in this month's Author Revolution Masterclass.
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So if you've been ignoring your backlist, this is your sign to give it the Taylor Swift treatment.
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And no, that doesn't mean putting a glittery microphone on your cover or a lock or whatever, unless you want to right.
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So if you're ready to stop treating your books like the one and done projects and start giving them life and sales that they deserve, here's how we can make that happen.
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Instead of spending weeks trying to figure it all out on your own, you can join me for a focused, high energy training where I'll hand you the repeatable system that I use to monetize my own backlist and how I do it without using platforms like Facebook or Instagram essentially meta, whatever it's called Backlist to Bank.
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Monetize your books with ChatGPT and in one hour, I'm going to show you how to pick the most profitable backlist title right now.
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How to use ChatGPT to create 30 plus days of promo content in minutes.
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Automate quarterly backlist pushes so that your books keep selling year round without you feeling chained to your laptop.
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We go live this Friday, august 22nd, at 1pm Central Time right on Zoom, just like normal.
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But if you're hearing this after that date or have something going on, no biggie, the replay will be available Either way.
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Head over to authorrevolutionorg forward slash masterclasses to check it out, or get signed up, or even to check out the rest of the backlist catalog of masterclasses.
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See what I did there.
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Now, whether you've got two books or 20 in your backlist, this is your chance to start treating your backlist like it's the asset that it is okay.
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Give it the Taylor Ellison Swift treatment and watch it start paying you back and who knows, maybe a decade from now, your readers will still be obsessing over your version.
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Let's make that happen.
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So go forth and start your author revolution.
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Thank you.