DISCOVER YOUR IDEAL AUTHOR ECOSYSTEM...

Use your natural skills and tendencies to thrive as an author

WHAT IF YOU COULD…

  • Know exactly what’s going to work for you before you even try it.
  • Understand your audience on a deeper level than you ever have before.
  • Make money in a way that aligns with what you love to do instead of what’s working today for some people.
  • Grow your readership in an organic way that makes sense for your business.

Whether you’ve been struggling to get traction in your author career, running on the marketing treadmill barely able to break even, or absolutely killing it as an author, finding your perfect Author Ecosystem can help take you to the next level starting today.

After working with thousands of authors to help turn their love of writing and publishing into a sustainable career, we have observed five clear and unique publishing ecosystems (or archetypes) that closely align with author success. We believe that identifying your ideal author ecosystem and focusing on marketing actions that work with your natural tendencies is the surest path to thrive as an author.

We’ve mapped these archetypes onto the five ecosystem biomes on Earth (desert, grassland, tundra, forest, and aquatic) to provide a clear, easily visualized metaphor for each type and linked them to successful publishing strategies that work best for each one. We’ve also identified healthy and unhealthy habits for each type and have developed guidance to create a healthy ecosystem and foster a sustainable author career using strategies that align with your natural strengths.

While we’ve created this framework to work across the entire publishing cycle, including craft and mindset, our focus remains on sales and marketing, and this is where we think we can help people create individualized plans for themselves the most.

Some of the questions we hope the Author Ecosystem Archetypes can answer include:

  • Why am I struggling to turn my writing into a career?

  • What advice should I take (and what can I filter out)?

  • How can I prevent burnout while building my career?

Depending on your archetype, there will be certain things that resonate with you more than others, and different strategies will help you to thrive. The Author Ecosystem helps you identify those things that will help you most and abandon things those that don’t serve you. 

Are you a nimble desert, a rolling tundra, an expansive grassland, an interconnected forest, or a dynamic aquatic? 

Dig deep into the new methodology developed by USA Today bestselling authors Monica Leonelle and Russell Nohelty, creators of The Kickstarter Accelerator, Go Wide Grow Wide, Book Sales Supercharged, and more.

Each of these ecosystems is deeply committed to fostering a devoted audience and building a supportive community for them. However, they do it in very different ways.

Only forests would find exceptional value in having a traditional Reddit forum or Facebook group and fostering interactions between their fans. Their superpower is imbuing interconnectivity between books and their career grows more successful with every member they add to the community, so of course that’s what they love.

Tundras generally like to share cool things with their audience, so creating a mailing list to curate interesting things they find is perfect for them to interact with fans around common interests. Tim Ferris has used this exact strategy for years. Tundras also love marketing in short bursts, so conventions work particularly well for them.

Grasslands create a community around a topic, as everyone nerds out about the same thing with focused attention. They build community by leading people and being there to catch them when they fall down. Content marketing is a perfect avenue for them to build community, using their own Substack, Medium, website, or another platform where they get the advantage of SEO and backlinks for years to come. Since they are always right about emerging topics, they can benefit the most from network effects, too, as the topic grows in importance and more people talk about it.

Aquatics are interested in creating lots of products to further the brand, so while they might have a community like forests do, the way they interact with them will probably be by providing new experiences to their fans, not necessarily interacting with them on a personal level.

Meanwhile, if deserts want to create a community at all (and of all the types deserts are least likely to want to do that) then they should probably join communities filled with readers where new trends are happening so they can interact directly with readers to collect data on what readers actually care about right now.

These are all communities and ways to develop deep, meaningful connections with people. They are all also equally valid depending on what works for you. 

Do want to make more money in your author business? Are you ready to grow your author business and take it to the next level? Are you sick of struggling with strategies that don’t work for you? 

Then take our free quiz and learn how to take your career to the next levell starting today.