Meet Olivia Zugay

Olivia Zugay is a marketing and sales strategist for self-published fiction authors. As the founder of Story Flow Solutions, she helps authors market and sell their books with clarity, confidence, and sustainable strategy—so they can grow their readership, increase their sales, and build thriving full-time author careers.

Full Transcript.

Your Book Won't Sell Itself: The Reader Magnet Strategy Behind 30,000 Downloads

Laura Williams: [00:00:00] What if the secret to a sold-out book launch has nothing to do with social media algorithms, and everything to do with a tool you already use every day? We have a fantastic episode lined up today with Olivia Zugay, a brilliant marketing and sales strategist, and the founder of StoryFlow Solutions.

Laura Williams: Olivia specializes in helping fiction authors cut through the noise of self-publishing to build sustainable, highly profitable writing businesses without the burnout. Today she's sharing her expert blueprint on how to build a passionate, eager audience well before your book hits the shelves, and exactly why a thriving email list is the ultimate foundation of a long-term author career.

Laura Williams: Olivia, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Olivia Zugay: [00:00:47] Happy to be here, and I love talking about email marketing, so I'm excited to dive into this.

Laura Williams: [00:00:52] Like a lot of people out there, this is something I struggle with.

Laura Williams: So let me start here — why is it important for an author to start building an email list, whether that's before publishing or even after? [00:01:00]

Olivia Zugay: [00:01:05] Starting an email list can really happen at any point. You don't have to do it before publishing, you don't have to do it on book one — you could do it on book five.

Olivia Zugay: Some people don't start until way down the line, and that's perfectly fine. That said, if you haven't published yet, starting your email list very early gives you a lot of time, freedom, and the ability to play — and I think that's so incredibly beneficial, as a marketer for your own books and your author career, to give yourself room to experiment with content and understand your audience, instead of doing it while feeling desperate to recoup the money you spent publishing the book.

Olivia Zugay: That's where I find a lot of my clients, or newer authors, when they come to me. They have this dream of being a published [00:02:00] author, they put all this money and investment into it, but they don't have an audience yet, so they release to crickets, and it's frustrating and pretty disheartening.

Olivia Zugay: I want everyone to feel free to play, to genuinely have fun with marketing, instead of treating it as a dire need to sell books on day one — which we obviously want to happen, but we shouldn't be desperate for it. We want to feel appreciative and excited about it. If you start building your email list very early, you'll have an audience on day one of your release who are genuinely ready to buy, or even pre-order if you set that up, which is even more exciting, because it means you've truly marketed your book successfully and have engaged readers, engaged subscribers.

Olivia Zugay: It's important to start early enough that you can really nurture your audience, make sure you're engaging with the [00:03:00] right people, the right kinds of readers — the ones who'll actually buy your book, read it, and love it. I think an email list gives everyone the time to build that understanding of who you are as a writer, and who you are as a person.

Olivia Zugay: A lot of authors forget that. We assume people are just following us for the book, or for what we write, but honestly, they're still following you as a person, as an author. They're engaging with you because they like you, they like your take on things, they like how you handle certain elements within your stories.

Olivia Zugay: It's not just about the books, it's about who you are as a person, and I think an email list is really important for showing that behind-the-scenes side, and giving people a real chance to get to know you.

Laura Williams: [00:03:53] So how do we go about actually getting subscribers?

Olivia Zugay: [00:03:56] Getting subscribers really isn't that big a task, [00:04:00] I'll say that up front.

Olivia Zugay: I know it seems complicated, and as a business owner myself, I always tell authors, clients, and people I work with that they actually have far more opportunities than a typical business owner does. There's so much already built out there, available to you as an author, that I don't have access to as a business owner.

Olivia Zugay: I always recommend having a free novella, if you're able to plan ahead and get one written. I have a whole starter kit mapped out, available on my website, that walks you through thinking about your first two years of publications strategically.

Olivia Zugay: One of the points in there is putting out a free novella, because then you have a reader magnet, something genuinely enticing that gets people [00:05:00] to join your email list. Having that also builds your credibility as an author, since you can list it on retail platforms and actually sell it there too.

Olivia Zugay: You can put it on reader platforms like Goodreads, StoryGraph, Fable — anywhere people can review it — and that builds credibility. People start understanding your writing, liking it, sharing that they like it, and you get that social proof, so that once your actual debut novel comes out, you already have engaged readers eager to spread the word.

Olivia Zugay: It's like a grassroots effort, a wildfire — things start to snowball just from having that free novella. And having a free novella also lets you tap into platforms that are already built up. You can use BookFunnel or a StoryOrigin swap, trading that freebie with other authors who have email lists they're trying to build too, and [00:06:00] it's a win-win.

Olivia Zugay: You both share audiences. You can join swap groups, use platforms like Written Word Media — I have a client in romantic suspense, and we run freebies or free book promos through them regularly. I believe their romantic suspense list alone has around 200-something-thousand subscribers.

Olivia Zugay: So think about how many people —

Laura Williams: [00:06:25] Absolutely.

Olivia Zugay: [00:06:26] — you'd put your book in front of by doing that. And if you have the back-matter link to your email list in the back of that free novella, people who want to know when your next book is coming out, or want more information about you, will want to join.

Olivia Zugay: There's so much visibility opportunity that comes from a free novella.

Laura Williams: [00:06:50] So that kit you mentioned — is that the self-publishing starter kit?

Olivia Zugay: [00:06:53] Yes, that's the one. It's on my website, it's free — [00:07:00] you join my email list to get it, of course.

Olivia Zugay: I'll say too, a lot of clients or authors I talk with will say, oh, I could do a writing checklist, or something about how to become an author, and I tell them, that's great for people interested in that, but not every reader wants to know how to become a writer.

Olivia Zugay: You might have real knowledge in that area, which is great — you need it to build your own author career — but your readers don't necessarily care about that. You need a solid understanding of your readers, your genre, and what readers in that genre actually expect, and then figure out what would genuinely incentivize them to subscribe to your email list.

Laura Williams: [00:07:48] I think something like ‘my top ten books I've read this year in this genre' would work well.

Olivia Zugay: [00:07:55] Yes.

Laura Williams: [00:07:55] Or, if you've done a lot of research for your book — historical fiction, fantasy, whatever it is — sharing some of that research, [00:08:00] like details on vampires, or what people wore in the tenth century.

Laura Williams: Just fun stuff like that. People think, oh, I want to read that.

Olivia Zugay: [00:08:18] Exactly. So if you don't have a free novella yet, if you're just starting your email list and don't have anything ready to give away, you can absolutely do something like that instead. I always recommend asking your readers — or if you don't have readers yet, it's the same idea as having beta readers review your book ahead of time to tell you if they like it, if it meets genre expectations.

Olivia Zugay: You can ask early readers, post in Facebook groups, ask on social media, ask friends or family — do you read this genre, what would make you want to sign up for an author's email list? Or go to Reddit — it's such a great place to ask questions. [00:09:00] You can do that research to understand what's genuinely enticing to readers, whether it's a free novella, or your top ten books in the genre with your own analysis.

Olivia Zugay: It's really about giving people something — obviously your readers should get real value from it, but they're getting a lot from your emails themselves too. It doesn't have to be entirely the reader magnet or the freebie. But you'll want to consistently put out there that, hey, if you want more information about this specific thing, sign up for my list, get this free thing — and then down the line they keep getting more through your other emails, or your welcome sequence.

Laura Williams: [00:09:48] Right. So what makes an email subscriber more valuable to a fiction writer than a follower on TikTok or [00:10:00] Instagram?

Olivia Zugay: [00:10:00] Social media is great, we all spend time on it, but we're not really serious when we're on it, since a lot of the time we're just there for entertainment.

Olivia Zugay: We're very quick to decide whether something showing up in our feed is entertaining or not. And the biggest thing is, even if someone follows you, your posts or whatever you share on social media, on any platform, isn't guaranteed to actually show up in their feed within whatever window of time they're scrolling — fifteen minutes, five seconds, an hour.

Olivia Zugay: It depends where they're browsing on the platform. You're never guaranteed to actually reach them. But with an email list, you're guaranteed a spot in their inbox. Whether they read it in the first minute, or the first [00:11:00] month after you send it, it's still sitting there, and they still have access to it.

Olivia Zugay: They can go read it whenever. I'm personally subscribed to a lot of platforms myself — I get Barnes & Noble's weekly emails, Fable, Simon & Schuster. I don't look at them the second they land in my inbox. But typically, at least once a month, I'll sit down for about fifteen minutes, go through all those emails, pull out the books that interest me, and add them to my Goodreads TBR.

Olivia Zugay: That's typically what readers do — they might have a backlog of emails from authors they follow, waiting for the time to actually sit down, dig in, and engage with them. That's so different from how we interact with social media.

Olivia Zugay: Social media is just for fun, [00:12:00] fleeting — whereas people are so much more intentional about how they engage with email. That's why subscribers matter more than followers.

Laura Williams: [00:12:10] Yeah, I completely agree with you on that. Could you gently bust the myth for debut authors — what does the actual reality of a sustainable indie career look like behind the scenes?

Olivia Zugay: [00:12:26] Oh, goodness. I'm usually the one popping that particular bubble. I feel bad doing it to debut authors, but I want them to have a realistic picture of what building a sustainable career actually looks like. The more you understand what's really going to happen, the better your expectations, and the better your overall experience. Debut authors often come to me and say, my book's coming out [00:13:00] next month, and I ask, great — what have you done to market it? And they say nothing, or maybe a few social media posts.

Olivia Zugay: And I say, okay, we need to build a plan together. The best thing you can do, and the reality of a sustainable career, really comes down to planning and strategy. You have to map things out. You can't go into this purely on the excitement of, I wrote my first book, I'm going to publish it, do all the things, and hope people buy it.

Olivia Zugay: Realistically, I'd love for you to have already written two or three books, or at least two books and a novella you can give away for free, with one book ready to publish once it's in the pipeline. Meanwhile, you're writing your second book to build on the momentum of the first release. It really comes down to being strategic, having a plan, and [00:14:00] building this like a business owner, rather than an author who's just excited to share their book with the world.

Laura Williams: [00:14:05] Even well-known authors don't write purely because they enjoy it — they have a drive to build their business, and that requires

Olivia Zugay: [00:14:15] Yes —

Laura Williams: [00:14:16] more books, more exposure, until they actually become successful. Because it's rare to become successful off your very first book. It happens, but

Olivia Zugay: [00:14:26] Correct, yeah, it can happen — and I know that's where a lot of people's minds go, thinking, if I release this, I'll get that whirlwind moment where a thousand followers show up on day one, or my first reel hits a million views. But that's not reality. The reality is your first reel probably gets a hundred views, maybe fifteen followers, and meanwhile you haven't even started an email list, or given them anywhere to go after that first touchpoint of visibility. [00:15:00]

Laura Williams: [00:15:00] And how many of those actually buy the book?

Olivia Zugay: [00:15:02] In reality, statistics show about a one percent conversion rate from social media to an actual purchase, which is very low. To make that meaningful, you need a genuinely significant follower count. So honestly, I wouldn't recommend chasing followers as the strategy.

Olivia Zugay: I see this every day — I currently work one-on-one with a six-figure author who's been publishing since around 2015. As her business partner and marketing strategist, our conversations are constantly less about the writing itself, and more about how we keep the momentum going.

Olivia Zugay: How do we keep readers happy, find new ones, sustain the business, make sure everything flows, make sure the reader's journey makes sense, so that once we find new readers, they want to [00:16:00] go read all twenty-something of her books? It's constant strategy, keeping people engaged, building visibility.

Olivia Zugay: We do talk about her writing — I proofread every one of her books — and we do get excited about a new release. But our everyday conversations are about finding more readers, keeping current readers engaged, and keeping everyone happy and wanting more of her books. That's the real reality of running an author business.

Laura Williams: [00:16:32] Your ability to actually sell a book does tend to go up in face-to-face settings — local book signings, visiting libraries or bookstores, you tend to sell more that way. It really becomes a whole ecosystem of marketing. You just have to do your best across all of it. But you're right, planning is incredibly important.

Olivia Zugay: [00:16:57] Yes, exactly — you have to have a plan. [00:17:00] I wish we all just found success by winging it.

Olivia Zugay: For my overthinkers out there, my type-A people — it's not necessarily about doing everything either. You'll want to be on every platform, try everything, which is great, but don't make that your everyday reality, especially early in your author career.

Olivia Zugay: I want you to test and play with different platforms, research your readers, understand your genre's expectations, and really learn how to pitch your book, whether online or in person. Learning to genuinely sell your book, verbally and in writing, is so key. You need to understand what your readers want, what actually gets them to click purchase.

Olivia Zugay: And the more you can have [00:18:00] fun testing and learning, the better you'll refine your strategy, narrowing it down to just a few things you actually need to do, instead of feeling like you have to do everything. That's really the best approach.

Olivia Zugay: For instance, right now, social media is genuinely working well for me — but will it still be working a month from now? Who knows, probably not. So you refine your funnel down to a few key elements with high visibility, but you don't have to chase every possible avenue of visibility.

Laura Williams: [00:18:39] I was talking with Judith Briles last week, I believe, and she mentioned that this past June was a mess for the algorithms — changes on YouTube, changes at Google, changes across other social platforms, all of which really [00:19:00] shifted how statistics get measured and how content gets found.

Laura Williams: I thought, oh my goodness, and went back to check — there was a real drop in my numbers compared to May. It wasn't that my content was any worse, I did the same things I always do each month, so it really was something external.

Laura Williams: You do have to think more now about how you're found on social media, and how AI finds you too. I'll go deeper into that in another episode, but there are a lot of moving pieces.

Laura Williams: My philosophy with social media is do what you actually enjoy. If you like making graphics, make graphics. If you like doing video, make video. Because you need to keep doing it, and it has to be consistent and [00:20:00] sustainable, so it has to be something you genuinely enjoy.

Laura Williams: If not, hire someone to do it for you.

Olivia Zugay: [00:20:08] I'll say, for some authors — there are so many more ways to build visibility beyond social media, it just depends how you map out your strategy to actually get people onto your email list, or onto your purchase page.

Olivia Zugay: To me, social media is really more of a high-level customer-service touchpoint. People don't necessarily go straight to your website these days — they might go straight to your Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, where they feel comfortable just DMing you, commenting, sharing feedback. It's a really high-level touchpoint for customer service. People want to see that you're active somewhere, but that doesn't mean it has to be your main channel for [00:21:00] actually finding your audience.

Olivia Zugay: On the algorithm point you raised — so many platforms right now are quietly changing how content gets shared or surfaced to viewers. There's a lot to keep up with, and in my membership for newer authors who want more guidance and specific education on this, I do a ‘what's hot this week' segment every Thursday covering those social media updates, so everyone stays aware of what's shifting across platforms — because unfortunately, as a business owner using social media for marketing, you do need to track that. The same way you'd need to know if your website platform changed something in the back end.

Olivia Zugay: You need some understanding of all of it, unless you genuinely have the budget to hire people to handle it for you. If you don't, you need to be a bit [00:22:00] techy and build that skill yourself. Also, on the algorithm side, it's currently summer, so people are busy doing other things instead of being on social media.

Olivia Zugay: Views and engagement often drop in summer because people just aren't as engaged, which matters for your book sales too. If your audience is largely moms with kids home for summer, you might not want to release between June and August, since people won't be as engaged with your books.

Olivia Zugay: Or if your audience skews toward college-age readers, they might actually be more engaged over the summer, looking to fill their time with fun reading instead of textbooks. So it really comes down to understanding your readers, their demographics, and where they actually spend time online.

Laura Williams: [00:22:51] If you're at a book show or a signing, you should always have a sign-up sheet for emails, [00:23:00]

Laura Williams: but what I mean is, even in conversation, when you're talking about your book with someone, saying, if you give me your email, I'll make sure you're on my list and you'll know when it comes out. That's something we could all, myself included, get better about.

Olivia Zugay: [00:23:20] Finding readers and engaging with them is honestly a lot like dating — you have to be the one who's a little more forward, ‘can I get your number.' That's really what marketing is — making yourself, your books, everything in your ecosystem as an author, genuinely enticing enough that someone wants to keep going on, quote-unquote, dates with you, whether that's signing up for your email list or reading your books.

Olivia Zugay: It's really important to understand what genuinely interests your genre's readers about you as an author and about your books, because then they're more likely — [00:24:00]

Laura Williams: [00:24:00] Right, but it's — it's funny you put it that way, because that really is what you're asking for. You're putting up your profile, giving all the information about yourself, and saying, like me, like what I'm doing, and hang out with me. So we've talked a lot about the email list — what do you find authors really struggle with, in marketing generally?

Laura Williams: And can you give me a couple of examples of where you've seen someone actually succeed?

Olivia Zugay: [00:24:24] Of course. Where I usually see people struggle is the assumption that they have to be on social media, or show up a certain specific way, or they have all these ideas of what they want to do without any real plan behind it. I had a client a while back whose BookBub dashboard I went back through, and I asked, why did you do this twice?

Olivia Zugay: She'd paid around [00:25:00] four hundred dollars for a BookBub visibility placement, but got a very low result. I asked, why did you do it a second time if you didn't get the result you wanted the first time?

Olivia Zugay: She said, I don't know, I didn't even look at how many clicks I got, or what the data showed. And I told her, we do everything with data — measure everything. That's the important piece of building a successful career.

Olivia Zugay: Some things we do more on the fly, just because it feels right, and sometimes that works out better, since we're not overthinking it or putting so much pressure on a specific result. But overall, we work from data. If we don't have specific numbers, we've at least researched enough to have a solid idea of what to expect before we act. For example, with one of my clients, [00:26:00] she'd never run two free books in a series at the same time before. I told her, in running promotions and visibility campaigns for other clients, I keep finding free books myself and clicking on them.

Olivia Zugay: I said, I'm much more likely to click on a book if the first two in a series are both listed in a free promo, no matter the genre or author. So we tried that, alongside our regular promotion, giving her whole audience — across the various platforms and email lists we work with — the chance to get both books free.

Olivia Zugay: And within that five-day promotional window for those two books, we had over thirty thousand [00:27:00] downloads, the highest we'd seen across the board. We've also tested book bloggers, other free promotion platforms. But honestly, for my newer authors, the biggest success I've seen in my membership just comes from giving themselves more time to actually plan.

Olivia Zugay: I had a member who released her book just last week, but when she first joined the membership, her plan was to release in January — and she'd only picked that date because it's when her editor said the manuscript would be ready. I asked her, what have you done for marketing?

Olivia Zugay: Do you have a plan? Do you know when your next book's coming out? Have we actually strategized any of this? Do you have an email list built? And she said, no, I haven't done [00:28:00] anything. I told her, okay — if you're willing to give yourself more time, let's plan for a later release this year.

Laura Williams: [00:28:09] Right.

Olivia Zugay: [00:28:09] You'll already have book two started by then, since book one is finished, and you'll give yourself more time to market and actually find readers to engage with. Over that process, she's gotten so much more visibility. She has reviews. She built an ARC team, because she gave herself the time to find those people, build an audience, and engage with them.

Olivia Zugay: She has more Instagram followers now, she's built her email list, and she already has reviews on both Goodreads and Amazon after just one week of release. Some people release and it takes months, even a year, to get reviews, because they never gave themselves that runway.

Olivia Zugay: Her author name is Anna Cole, and her book is [00:29:00] Marionette. She's averaging about 4.5 stars across Goodreads and Amazon. She really gave herself so much more time, and I'm so proud of her, because it was a real shift in mindset — from just wanting to put the book out, to actually thinking like a business owner, with real strategy, understanding that everything needs to be a bit more deliberate for the plan to actually come together.

Olivia Zugay: And with that, she released to a genuinely engaged audience who were excited to get her book and really enjoyed it. In today's environment, it's so important to keep readers' attention and stay engaged with them, because without a plan — I had another client who was thrilled to release her first book, then planned to release her next one six months later, except she hadn't even written it yet.

Olivia Zugay: I told her, [00:30:00] I can support you, but I'm not fully behind that plan, because life happens. You're new to this, still figuring out how to market. I'd suggest being more realistic — maybe one release a year. The more clearly you can communicate that to your readers, so they have a fair expectation,

Laura Williams: Right —

Olivia Zugay: the more likely they are to stay engaged. That's the important thing — if you can genuinely map things out, keep readers engaged, and keep them in a steady rhythm of knowing what to expect from your books, they're happier. And happy readers are what keep an author business afloat. So the more you can plan ahead, keep readers engaged and happy, and stay in that rhythm, the better. If you haven't planned that out yet, I'd really encourage you to.

Olivia Zugay: It's not just for readers, either — it's for your service providers too. If you don't have your editor booked, or your cover designer booked, [00:31:00] within the window you actually need them to hit your publish date, your whole plan falls apart.

Olivia Zugay: Or you end up scrambling to find someone else, maybe someone you don't love working with as much for this particular book, but you like their work well enough as a backup plan. So the more you can build a real plan around your releases, the smoother everything flows. I'd say, don't plan around when you think you can get it done — plan around how your writing actually flows. Give yourself more time than you think you need, because life happens. You could get sick, your kids could get sick, anything could come up. The more room and time you build in for yourself — and honestly, just communicate with your readers, be honest with them.

Olivia Zugay: Tell them, listen, unfortunately my mom's sick and I have to take care of her, so my book isn't going to come out on schedule. People are very accepting of that. I find a lot of authors are just so [00:32:00] hesitant, so afraid of disappointing readers, that they don't share that kind of update at all.

Olivia Zugay: There's also real benefit to releasing standalones between books in a series. Standalones are great. I love series, because they keep readers engaged, they have strong read-through, and they help if you're in KU with pages read — but standalones genuinely help with marketing too, since there's a lot more promotional opportunity around a single book than around a series. In a series, you'll typically run free promos for the starter, or books one through three, but you don't always want to give away books further along.

Olivia Zugay: So standalones give you more room to work with. And if they're seasonally themed, that can be really [00:33:00] beneficial too — some readers want to see your characters at Christmas, or in the summer.

Olivia Zugay: It can genuinely help to play with seasonality, or different ways to engage readers between books. That said, I wouldn't recommend doing that early in your career — start one series, finish it. Once you're one series in, you can start playing with other kinds of releases. But early on, just give people what they actually want, which is the end of the series they're already invested in.

Olivia Zugay: The faster you can deliver that, the better. There are different ways to structure series releases too — every six months, once a year — and it also depends on your income fluctuations, which is something you have to consider for sustainability.

Olivia Zugay: How many books do you need to release in a year to keep a sustainable income? Because eventually your backlist will give you that steady monthly income, and your new releases become more like the yearly bonus on top of that. [00:34:00]

Olivia Zugay: So I'd always plan around whatever income your backlist provides, rather than betting on each new release, since that's how you map out your income more reliably, and it helps with budgeting — your marketing budget, your personal budget, and thinking realistically about sustainability for your career.

Olivia Zugay: Especially if you're transitioning from a full-time job into an author career — you really want that data in hand before making that leap, because a steady salary is genuinely valuable, and sometimes working for someone else, without the weight of running your own business, is genuinely great too.

Laura Williams: [00:34:43] Can you share where people can find you, and what you do?

Olivia Zugay: [00:34:48] Of course. I'm Olivia Zugay, my business is StoryFlow Solutions, and I'm a marketing and sales strategist for self-publishing fiction authors. I do work with some nonfiction authors too, but [00:35:00] fiction writers are typically the ones drawn to me.

Olivia Zugay: I have a number of free resources on my website if you'd like to join my email list or just grab the information in them. There's the self-publishing starter kit, your roadmap for launching an author career, and a guide on how to build your author funnel, covering everything you need to set up your email list and get subscribers.

Olivia Zugay: If you're interested in working with me one-on-one, I do offer that as well. You can find me at storyflowsolutions.com, or on Instagram — feel free to DM me anytime, at StoryFlow Solutions.

Laura Williams: [00:35:44] Terrific. Olivia, thank you so much for taking the time for this.

Olivia Zugay: [00:35:48] Of course, it's my pleasure. I love it. I'm a data and numbers person, and I love testing — so marketing, even though I'll admit I hated it at first, the more I had [00:36:00] fun with it, played around, and tested things, the more I learned to love it. I believe everyone can get there.

Olivia Zugay: It's really about losing some of that fear and those expectations, and just having fun with it. I was really happy to join you today, and I hope your audience enjoys the episode. If they have any questions, they're welcome to reach out to me anytime — I'm always happy to talk through these topics with them.

Laura Williams: [00:36:25] Wonderful. You can sign up to be the first to know when new episodes are up at thewritingbiz.com. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe, and take what you've learned today and put it to work in your own writing biz.

Laura Williams: Thank you, Olivia.

Olivia Zugay: [00:36:41] Of course, thank you.