Disappointing your fans . . . a good thing?

In this supporter-exclusive chat, we talk about Becca Syme’s thoughts on fandom and why disappointment is an essential part of growing a fandom. 

💙 Thanks to all our supporters who made this episode possible!

Links mentioned:

Four Roadblocks to Growing An Author Fandom:

https://pod.link/1690263635/episode/cXVpdGNhc3QucG9kYmVhbi5jb20vYjNmYzMyZWMtMzAxZS0zNmZhLThkOGMtYmIwN2Q0OGUxOTNh

Disappointing Your Fans:

https://pod.link/1690263635/episode/cXVpdGNhc3QucG9kYmVhbi5jb20vMTU1Yjk2YTItYjU2My0zNzE1LTg4NjItMTU2MDhiYWU1ODA2

Becca’s related substack article: 

https://open.substack.com/pub/mythofuniversaladvice/p/please-disappoint-your-fans?r=20i3qj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

🚀 Jami’s Consulting and Workshops: https://www.jamialbright.com/authorworkshops

❤️ Jami’s books https://amzn.to/3wSraA5

🔎 Sara’s books https://www.sararosett.com/bibliography/

📚 Sara’s How to Write a Series book and audiobook: https://www.sararosett.com/how-to-write-a-series/

The Big List of Craft and marketing books mentioned on WIKT podcast episodes https://bookshop.org/lists/recommenced-resources-for-writers-from-the-wish-i-d-known-then-podcast

Transcript

Sara 0:00

Welcome to our May supporter chat. I was going, wait, what month is it? It is May, right? So thank you for being a supporter. We really appreciate you guys. This month we are going to talk about this topic that Becca has brought up. And we're going to go through some of her links. I'll put links in the show notes if you want to go listen to her podcast about this. But she's talking about fandom, some new thoughts around that for me.

Jami 0:24

Yeah, I really liked it. I liked everything she said, but it's she talks a lot about food for fandom, and it reminds me of sourdough. I don't do sourdough, but a lot of people do. And you know, you have to feed your sourdough starter to get it to do what you want. It's the same sort of thing. There are things you do and things you don't do. Sourdough starter to grow. Same thing with fandom.

Sara 0:47

So yeah, so we're going to back up and look at the four roadblocks to growing an author fandom. She had a podcast about that.

Jami 0:54

Before we go on, Becca Sign is who we're talking about. Sarah said Becca because we all pretty much know Becca, but in case there's that one person listening that doesn't, that's who it is.

Sara 1:05

And her podcast is called The Quick Cast. And I'll put links to that in the show notes. So if you want to go listen to these episodes, first we're going to talk about her list of things that cause your fandom not to grow. So yeah, there's only four. So we're just going to hit them pretty quickly. We'll just talk through them and then we'll talk about one of the things that she says about disappointing your fans. The first thing that is a roadblock is treating your fans too individually. I think you start out that way though, right? Because you start out and you have a couple of people who sign up for your newsletter list, and easy to maintain a relationship, friendship sort of connection with them, right? And if you have a small group, you can do that.

Jami 1:46

Yeah. And I think that it's important to point out that she's talking a fandom to her, like a large group fandom, is anything over 200 people. Like below 200 people, you can still maybe treat them individually as much as you can. But once you go over 200, you need to start looking at the fandom as an or one organism and not as individuals.

Sara 2:11

And she said the that can be a roadblock for us. We don't want to disappoint people. And so we continue to interact with people one-on-one. And then that limits the group because as she described it, it is an organism and it has to function on its own. I know my readers, I don't consider that I have fans, but I don't think I have a fandom the way she's defining it.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Yeah.

Sara 2:36

One limit is treating them two individually. Another one is that there are so many, there are only so many fandoms people can belong to. There's limits on time and money. So if you're a fan of fourth wing and you're all into that community and chatting with those people and consuming everything about that, you may have time to do maybe one other or one other interest, but you're probably not going to have seven.

Jami 3:02

Exactly. She one of her examples, and it was a good one, think of it like a little Lego block. And once all the nubs are full, it's full. You can't like you just can't put any more on there. And that's really how it is with fandom. Let's take, I think of fandoms. There are a lot of contemporary romance authors and rom-com authors and stuff. But when I really think of fandoms, I think of romanticy right now because it's so big and there's so many huge ones. But if you are a fourth wing in the fourth wing fandom and the Sarah J. Moss Avatar fandom, you're probably not going to be in them anymore because those two are huge and they're they take up a lot of space in your mind, in your social life, and whatever.

Sara 3:48

So yeah, and money too, because if you're buying special editions, I've had people with my Kickstarter. One person emailed me and said, Hey, um, I really want to buy this, but I'm kind of maxed out right now. How long does it run? Because I want to wait until payday. And I totally understand that. Because if you're buying special editions, those are not cheap. So that can max you out too. Let's pause for a minute and say, I feel like romanticy and romance have big fandoms, they have active fandoms. Yeah, they do. Mystery, the mystery writer world. I can think of I know the Miss Fisher's Mysteries. Do you remember that show on PBS? It's the 1920s when they the fans of that show actually have a conference that they go to. And so that's but that's the only one I and Agatha Christie has a fandom, a following, you know, that's self-propelling. But I can't think of many authors in my genre that have that. So I think it depends on your genre as well, don't you think?

Jami 4:48

Yeah, like thriller, there are fandoms in thriller, but not I don't know about straight mystery, but I think you're right. I think it does, it is genre dependent.

Sara 4:57

But I mean, like thriller, like Jack Reacher, huge following, yeah, you know, for that. But those fans don't act the same way that Sarah J. Moss's fans do.

Jami 5:08

No, no, not at all. But Freedom McFadden, I think she probably has a fandom, and they would act different. They would because I think it's also gender specific. It's more of more women focused or more women. And I would say probably more women read Freedom McFadden because it's these domestic fit thrillers, and you know you never know if your neighbor or your babysitter or your housekeeper trying to kill you. So stressful way to live. It is, and it but it's very they're very women-centric, yes, and very home-centered or family-centered, yeah.

Sara 5:46

But like sci-fi fantasy, I think of Star Wars.

Jami 5:50

Yeah, they do.

Sara 5:51

They have huge fandoms, and Brandon Sanderson has huge fandoms.

Jami 5:54

And then the next one is not enough curiosity food. Fans need open loops in their stories, they need mysteries that go unanswered. They need you should close. She talks about you should close the loops, and we all know this, that that are vital to the plot of the story telling, but you should leave things open to draw people to the next book. I think that's one of the mistakes that I've made with my bride's books because I didn't plan it out in advance. The first to second book had that open loop and you knew that. So the read-through rate from one to two is really high, but there's not a open an a big open loop. There's the intention of the next heroine, but not the hero. We don't see them together in book two. And I think for romance, that's really important. It's important that you keep those things open so that they know to go to the next thing, or they're always if you have a long-running series, they're like, Oh, is so and so and so gonna get together, or I want so and so and so, or like Lucy Scores Knock Them Out series, her third book involves the rogue character, the guy you love to hate sort of thing. And everyone was waiting for his book. She purposely did not write his book until the third book because draw it out, yeah. That threw it out, and then inevitably, when you write that book that everybody's been wanting, they're gonna be people that are disappointed, they don't like the what you did, they thought you should have done something else.

Sara 7:29

Yeah, I think that it's too about the world. The characters are part of it, like the care. What are we gonna hear about the characters? Yeah, but also the world you create. So is your she talked about is your world big enough? But readers can get lost in it and can create their own stories, their own art. Yeah, I think that's a big part of this. Is there enough there in the world? And if it's if there's not, I think you that's why you need the open loops and the things that they can explore.

Jami 7:56

I think that's true, but I think that contemporary romance a lot of times, or rom-com that's small or small town romance, that they it's harder to do that, but they still have these big fandoms, and so a lot of it's more about the author and what they're gonna do next, as opposed to keeping these open if you don't have a series.

Sara 8:19

I think it's the relationships like you're talking about in romance, it's so important, right?

Jami 8:23

Yeah, and I think if you don't have a series that is like an aunt, like a like your series that that is follows one character through eight books or whatever, it and you have this whole world, then if you've got a town, like if you could set all of your books in one town, different series in one town, that would do it. And then you could create this town that has different little things going on that people could do, but it's harder, yeah.

Sara 8:52

And I for me, I do get the questions I get from readers are when are Olive and Jasper going to get together, get married? Yeah, and the answer is not for a long time. And then also I've had people message about I had a book where one of the characters, she was side character, she came in, she did her thing, and it's 1923, and she meets a person and goes off to Germany. I've had people saying, When are you gonna tell the rest of her story? And I was like, Oh, I thought that was things like that. I know she had one, yeah. I was like, Okay, so I did bring her back in another book and kind of gave her wrapped up her story. Yeah, so things like that that maybe you have side characters that people get really interested in, and you could write a whole story from their point of view, or just bring it back, taking two characters, having a book about them, and then they have cameos in the other books, or maybe they're just a minor character.

Jami 9:47

Yeah, I remember Nora Roberts saying once about her JD Robb series, the Naked Death series. So Eve Dallas is the main character. She marries Rourke in the third book, but they begin this relationship in the first book. But people are like, when is Eve gonna have a baby? Like when and Eve is the most non-maternal person you would you will ever read. But you could see that she would have a child because Rourke really wants a child, kind of thing. But Nora Roberts said, I don't know, but when that happens, the series is over. That is so that is a disappointment to her readers. They really want to see Eve evolve into this mother, but that's not gonna happen as long as the series is going. Like when she becomes a mother, the series is over, kind of thing.

Sara 10:42

Yeah, so that's one of those essential things. Like you're talking about the sourdough, you have to feed the sourdough. So one of the things you have to feed your fandom is the curiosity about what's gonna happen, and then disappointment. And so this is what we'll get into. We'll finish off this the fourth point, but disappointment is essential for a fandom to grow, which is crazy because I've never thought or heard of that, but I think it is true.

Jami 11:04

The last one is the product just isn't good enough, and the work simply lacks the resonance. And I will have to say that I do believe that while my bride's books have done so well and people have loved them, that is not a series to build a fandom around because of the things I said. I have drop off from book two to book three, and then if they get to book three, they'll read book four and five because I've set that up, but I wouldn't say it's not good enough. I would just say that it is not robust enough to build it's not at the level it needs to be, right? Yeah, it is not, yeah, and I don't have a lot, I don't have a lot of books or a lot of series, different series. Let's I go back to Lucy because Lucy has such a fandom in that people love Lucy. I would say it's a little bit unlike what Becca's talking about because fandom is built around Lucy more than her books in a lot of ways. They love her books and they talk about her books, but the fandom is built around Lucy. That's hard because then when you have to step back, which she has had to do, Laura disappointed people maybe feel like she's left them or not. I don't really know. But I'm just saying that it's a little there are different kinds.

Sara 12:26

So I see Yes, there are, and we've talked about this before. There's the characters, people like the characters in the world, and then people who really are attracted to the author. We've talked about how we're very different in the way we market, you know. Yeah, and then there's a third one I can't remember at the moment, but yeah, anyway.

Jami 12:42

But anyway, so yeah, that's the tough one. Robust enough, yeah, or your work isn't appealing enough. Your world isn't appealing enough, your writing isn't appealing enough.

Sara 12:52

This is the one that Becca said, this one hurts. Yeah, it does because this is there may be nothing wrong with the book, it may be technically perfect, but it just doesn't resonate with readers, like a gymnast or an ice skater or something like that, or a musician. Some people just have that little extra spark. Some people are technically perfect, but it feels dry. And so sometimes you that happens with our books, and we just have certain series that they just don't resonate for some reason. Maybe it's they don't speak to what people are interested in at that moment, at that time. But in five years, things may change and they may be interested in that theme that you're writing about.

Jami 13:33

And I would have said, I like when I was four years, five years ago, I was really pushing those books, putting books out. I would have been hurt. I would not have been able to say, my books and my world is not robust enough. I would not have been able to say that. Stepping back five years to be able to look and having not sold those books for five years very well. I think I can look back and see, okay, yeah, that's the problem, or that may be one of the problems in why, besides the fact that I stood stepped back, I completely stepped back. But I my fandom, my fans never grew to the size of a fandom.

Sara 14:16

And I think that's why. I think that's one of the reasons why. Yeah, and it's hard to tell, especially when you're in it. Distance gives you perspective that you don't have.

Jami 14:23

So right, those books are great, they've sold well, they've done well. They're not enough to build a fandom on. That's the bottom line. Yeah. Yeah.

Sara 14:32

Okay. So now I'm gonna also link to another podcast that Becca did, another quick cast about disappointing your fans. And she really went into detail on why this happens and why it's actually a good thing. She talked about the size of your group. Once your group gets to about 200, like you said, it's very difficult to have that close connection with each person. At that point, you kind of have to step back if you haven't already and let them interact on their own, which that goes against all the advice used to be I used to only hear reply to every comment, interact on social media, never let an email go unanswered, always reply to every email. And so this is just so counterintuitive. She's questioning the premise that she always does.

Jami 15:17

Again, I'm going back to Lucy because she's the one I'm most familiar with as far as yeah, being on the she has a big fandom. But yeah, and I was in her group, and Lucy and I became friends when I really right after my first book came out. And so I saw the evolution of what she was already doing amazing. She had this group, and she still has this group that is so robust. But at the time, shortly after that happened in 2017, when my book came out in 2017, she or maybe right before she had hired two people to run that group. She had two assistants, and they mostly run that group. And that's when Lizzie started. She was in there, but not all, she wasn't running that group. She would come in and then she would pop out, and then she would come in and say something, and she would, and so that is the kind, but that group continued to grow, it continued to be her champion, it continued to buy her books, so and it was that and her newsletter. And I will say that probably her newsletter is what has propelled her to not to the stratosphere, but pretty close to the stratosphere. Before her before Things We Never Got Over took off, she was already at a really high level. Uh and that is because of her group and her newsletter. And that newsletter is where they get Lucy. You know what I'm saying? That they get that, they feel like they get that one-on-one. That connection. Yes, with Lucy. Because when she writes her newsletters, she writes it as if she's writing it to one person, and it's very individual.

Sara 17:03

And you do have to back off a little bit. And Becca talks about how you can dip in to your group, you can pop in, but you're not there all the time. And the only thing that I can compare that, that I can think of, like that I'm involved in, some of the K-drama communities. Because you know, there are there's a huge fandom. I guess that is a fandom that I'm part of.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Yeah.

Sara 17:23

But you have to have a way for the fans to talk among themselves.

Jami 17:28

Right.

Sara 17:29

And that was another point in this episode that Becca talked about, how disappointment creates horizontal relationships among the fans. Yeah. And the fans will take care of the disappointment. People will complain, oh, the book's not out. And then another fan will say, Yes. But you know, if somebody comes in bad mouthing, then the group comes together and creates relationships among the people, and then the people who are running the group manage it, and then the author is just they come in and kind of an overseer. Like you're moved out, you're hopefully off writing.

Jami 18:05

Yeah. And I think about Diana Gabaldon or Gabaldon, Outlander. It was years, it's years between books. It's not a year, it's years between books. And she is a huge fandom, even before the show, she had a huge fandom, and I was part of that. And people would complain about the books not coming out. That was a huge disappointment. But of first of all, that keeps people coming back because they want to know when the book is coming. But it also creates this time for people to either speculate about what will happen, right? Or discuss what did happen.

Sara 18:44

And there's camaraderie in the oh my goodness, it's gonna be a company. Yeah, what are we gonna do? Okay, so this is crazy. I'm not into K-pop. Huge brands. Yeah. Yes. And so there's this band called BTS. Yeah, people love them. They went into the military, so they were out of commission for the time of their two years, I think. And so people were like, What are we gonna do? And they formed podcasts and groups, and they were like, We're gonna go back and listen to every song. This week we're doing this album, this week we're doing this song. And so that is an example of how the fans soothe themselves. That's how Becca describes it. She says they will soothe themselves and create these relationships and these friendships as they're waiting. And then that creates anticipation, which brings us to our last point that Becca talked about is fans don't know what they want. I loved her line, anticipation is part of entertainment. So the like for me, when I know I'm going out of town, if I can plan the trip, that's part of the joy of it for me. Is looking forward to it, researching it, finding out. And so that's the same thing with fandom. If you know there's another series coming, another book coming, you can look forward to it. I think that's so interesting because we don't think about that. And I've always felt when I get an email from a reader about when is the next book coming, I always felt uh apologetic. And so I don't need to do that. I need to say it's I'm working on it, it's gonna be great. It'll, I don't want to release it until it's ready. I'll let you know.

Jami 20:21

She talks about friction too. Like part of the entertainment is fans don't know what they want, and part of the entertainment is this friction. It's this friction that is caused when they either don't get what they want or they are not getting it fast enough. And that, but that friction is part of what feeds the stand up. Yeah. And needing knowing that. And I just think about it like they were gone for two years and then they came back. And if anything, they're more popular, BT. Yeah. And so I think that's really important and something to look at. We just don't have to, I think, because we don't she talks about people being a people pleaser, and you know, we're so grateful for fans, and we want we don't want to lose fans and all of that, that we sometimes over overdeliver. And I would say that's probably more uh not to generalize, but more of the female authors than the male authors. But I would say they're male authors too that we're we're all working on.

Sara 21:25

We all feel the pressure, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we all feel the pressure to release, and it's the that phrase that tyranny of the urgent. Yeah, like you feel like you must meet these needs, or these people are gonna go away, you're gonna lose them, and you don't want and you don't want to disappoint people. I hate to disappoint people. This has given me a new perspective on it that it's okay to tell them the book isn't ready yet.

Jami 21:47

Or to not be available all the time. You get 30 emails back from your newsletter or 50 or 100, whatever, you don't have to, you don't have to answer all of them. And it's okay to have somebody else answer them. It you don't have to be the person to do it. And I think that a lot of us don't want to let go of that. And if you can do that and do your other things too, then fine. But some of us, most of us don't have that mental and emotional band because a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times those emails can be pretty emotional. Yes, they can. They can be draining. Yes, they can be a little draining, just knowing that, knowing you don't have to be that person.

Sara 22:38

Because you don't want to be rude, but you also no, but you don't have to yeah, yeah, you don't have to answer every email yourself or answer any any email at all. The other point that I thought was really interesting on this fans don't know what they want is that when they're asking for something, it it can limit your creativity. So if if you're especially in romance, if people are like these two characters have to get together, these two characters will be so good together, but maybe you don't want to do that. But then you know, it does kind of limit you on what you can do in your creativity in some ways. Yeah, I see that too. In I'm writing this spin-off series. Fans really want more high society, but I'm taking a break to do this, and some people are really not happy.

Jami 23:22

Yeah.

Sara 23:23

If I only did what they wanted, I would not do this series. And I needed this break, this creative break.

Jami 23:29

So your creativity, yeah.

Sara 23:31

And then there's one other I'm gonna link to one of Becca's Substacks, where she talked about really practical ways that it's okay to disappoint your fans. And we've talked about a lot of these drop into groups, don't be there all the time, be on social media less, which is super counterintuitive. That the wisdom is to interact with every comment and post every day or whatever, or three times a day or whatever. Right. And that just is not in a way, it may not be helping you.

Jami 24:00

It's probably not helping you mentally and emotionally. And if you especially if you're trying to get a book done, if you're trying to whatever, you just have to be able to say, I can't, and yeah, hire somebody to do it, or just don't do it.

Sara 24:13

And then let people be disappointed that that's okay. It's an emotional state that it's okay to disappoint people. And we have to, that's a growing point for me to learn to be like, okay, I'm sorry you're disappointed. Do this thing that you're asking me for.

Jami 24:29

And but here's the deal with that it filters out the people that don't need you don't want in your fandom. You if someone's gonna get so angry that they leave or so raise a huge stink or say ugly things, they're not people you want in your fandom anyway. And they will just self, what's the word? Self-deport. Yes, whatever that, yeah, waving with them uh self-eliminate. No, that sounds good.

Sara 24:56

No, that's not it. They'll remove themselves from the group, they'll remove themselves, they'll either fade away or they'll make a grand announcement. Yes, I'm out, I'm leaving. Yeah, and then let's see, don't answer all emails or comments, don't give them the romantic pairing they're asking for, maybe. And then another example is cliffhangers. This is one that I've always said people say they hate cliffhangers, but they will read that next book. They like they like the anticipation and the looking forward to it, yeah, you know, yeah, even though they're upset.

Jami 25:24

She does say don't just create a cliffhanger for no reason. But if it is a natural part of the story, it's fine to do it. They love that. Oh, they don't love it, they love it and they hate it, kind of thing.

Sara 25:40

Yeah, I would say for a mystery author, if you don't reveal the killer, the done it part, people are gonna be legitimately mad and they have a a good cause to be mad. But if you just have a character like that one I was talking about, where she goes off to and people are like, Oh, what happened to her? That's a little cliffhanger that's tiny. Or a little cliffhanger could be it's the start of the next case. You get a taste of it, or you just know that they're going to a new country, or you know, like one of my travel books. I could have done that. I could have said, you know, we bought our tickets to Italy, and that's all you need is just that little tiny right thing, little hook. It's more a hook in that case instead of a cliffhanger.

Jami 26:21

But it's still, I can think of if you wrote a thriller and they caught the killer, but then right at the end, you have something from someone else's point of view who knows way too much about this case, then or it's the puppet master is still at large.

Sara 26:39

But yes, you got the yes, that's such a serious thing where you've got like the small, you you defeat the small bad guy, but the big baddie is still out there. Or the organization is the big baddie. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I watched a show called Nine Puzzles, and it was there were nine deaths, and it each is a serial killer that was leaving a puzzle piece at each crime scene. So they get it, they solve the case, it's all done. And then the very last scene, there's another death, and there's another puzzle piece from a different puzzle.

Jami 27:10

Yeah, yeah.

Sara 27:10

And so you're like, okay, that's a huge puzzle. Yeah, you're but you're just launching another one. You're like, hey, we're not quite done yet with these characters, but that's really common in mystery. I think mystery readers, yeah. They know something else is coming.

Jami 27:25

The last thing she says is trying to please everyone, capture growth. You can't build a large diverse fan base if you're constantly trying to make everything individual, every individual happy. You just physically and emotionally and mentally can't do that.

Sara 27:40

Yeah. So it's probably much healthier for us to be aware of this, yeah, and to think about it. It's a new concept for me.

Jami 27:49

Yeah, yeah. I think it is for a lot of people because I think people, when they think about fandoms, they think about drawing you being the one to draw these people in and hold shepherd them and hold them. And that is not what she's saying. In fact, she's saying the opposite.

Sara 28:06

Yeah, there's an element of that. People are interested in the author, but that shouldn't be the whole focus. And if it is, it's probably gonna wear you out.

Jami 28:16

Absolutely.

Sara 28:16

Well, this is great. I love it. Yeah, this was fun, good to talk about. We want to hear your thoughts. Let us know. You can send us a text and tell us what you think about this. And we're gonna take June off from the podcast, but we will have some re aired podcast, yeah, and then we'll be back in July. Jamie's gonna be in the pool.

Jami 28:36

I'll be teaching swimming lessons, y'all.

Sara 28:39

And I'll be working on my never ending book. It'll be fine. All right, bye, everybody.

Jami 28:46

Bye, everybody.