The evolution path of each Author Ecosystem

Knowing your ecosystem is great, but how do you actually use it to have success? Evolution is the key.

This is an advanced article about our ecosystems. We recommend you at least read this article first, but you should probably read through at least the overview section of this publication to get a handle on what we’re talking about here.

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We’ve talked a lot about ecosystems already, but knowing your ecosystem is only half of the Author Ecosystems equation. The other half is knowing your evolution path.

Monica Leonelle

and I did a lot of research this past year, both digging into data and having conversations with writers about their businesses. We found there are five evolution levels in a writer’s career. Knowing both your ecosystem and your evolution level allows you to triangulate the advice you take and the advice you give to others.

Here are the five levels we found through our research. Please remember, these ecosystems are about marketing and sales success, so if you are not even ready to think about that kind of thing, then you would be a Level 0.

• Level 1 - Inert. Authors at this level don’t even know how to start doing things because it’s so overwhelming. They are pulled in every direction and feel like they are drowning in information from every direction. In order to get out of this level, you need to start doing something and it doesn’t much matter what you do.

• Level 2 - Developing. Authors at this level have started doing things, which is great, but nothing is working. They are following all the best practices as best they can, but they are failing at everything they try. If you want to get to the next level, you have to find something that works and latch onto it. NOTE: You probably won’t know your ecosystem until you get out of this stage, and that’s okay. Until you know what works, you are just using what feels right to you. Once you know what works, then you’ll have a better handle on it.

• Level 3 - Emergent. Authors at this level have found something that works, but they are also doing all sorts of other things that aren’t working. To get out of this level, you need to shed everything that’s not working and double down on things that are working for your ecosystem.

• Level 4 - Evolved. Authors at this level have fully embraced their ecosystem and are making money, but they are capped out at what they can earn without evolving beyond what they’ve been doing. In order to exit this level, you need to integrate other ecosystems into your author business.

• Level 5 - Expanded. At this top level, authors have found ways to integrate new bits into their business that help them continuously grow.

If you know you are a level 3 Desert (we call that a D3), then so much suddenly becomes clear to you. For instance, you know that the thing you should be focused on right now is optimizations to get from level 3 to level 4. You also know you should be focusing on finding the next hottest trope in your genre and writing a bunch of books in it before the arbitrage goes away.

You also know that you should be focused on learning from other Deserts who can help you embrace the qualities that will help you thrive. Conversely, if you’re a level 4 Desert (D4), then you know that you should be focused on learning from other ecosystems to help you expand.

One of the biggest things that hampers authors is that they try to expand too quickly into other ecosystems. While you should be testing things to find what works at level 2, once you have found those things that work you should be shedding everything else in level 3 to double down on what’s working to push through into success. Once you have had success, then and only then should you start adding other ecosystems back into your business.

Each stage has its own growth metrics.

• Are you inert? Then you need to settle and start somewhere, anywhere.

• Are you developing? Keep testing and experimenting with different ecosystems to find something that works for you.

• Are you emergent? It’s time to double down on what’s working and cut things that aren’t so you can focus your attention and find success.

• Are you evolved? Now it’s time to start integrating new things into your business to allow you to build.

• Are you expanded? Awesome. Keep going.

One thing to remember about these levels is that you can ascend or descend them. Authors often think that once they are a level 3, they can never descend back to level 2, but more often than not this descent is a major cause of burnout.

Strategies that have worked for years can suddenly start failing, which causes an author to double down and double down again, losing ground with each iteration until they collapse in a heap from exhaustion.

This is why it’s so important to double down quickly once you find something that works, so you can create a stable income and then start incorporating other ecosystems into your business before those strategies lose efficacy.

Most authors become stuck in level 3, getting distracted by shiny objects while their business stagnates and they fall back into level 2, only to continue that cycle again and again until they burn out. If instead we can double down on what’s working quickly without getting distracted, then we can push through level 3 and start building out systems in level 4 to make our businesses more resilient.

The vast majority of authors we talk to are stuck between level 2 and level 3. They are either floundering to find something that works or using all their energy on actions that don’t work instead of focusing on those things that do.

Most authors will never get out of level 3 because they are bogged down with actions that have marginal efficacy to them. Instead, they are in a continuous cycle between level 2 and level 3. They are so tired that they can’t get enough momentum to achieve escape velocity into level 4.

But, let’s say you have reached level 4, how do you evolve beyond your ecosystem? After all, focusing on one ecosystem for a while is great, and gives you something to fall back on in times of trouble, but a robust author business needs multiple ecosystems and streams of income working together so that when one fails they can pivot their business quickly.

We’ve charted evolution paths for each ecosystem, and while there are commonalities between them, each one is unique.

As we go through this, it’s important to remember that when we talk about “evolving into an ecosystem”, we aren’t telling you to abandon your base ecosystem. Instead, you are incorporating aspects of the other ecosystems into your business in ways that make sense to create a stronger author business.

Here is a possible evolution path for each ecosystem, though you might see something different in your own business that makes you take a different path.

Desert

• Forest - Forests are the most antithetical to Deserts, but creating a shared language and making your books stickier solves one of the biggest Desert weaknesses, creating ephemeral books that stop generating revenue quickly. Forests are great at creating a shared language, and we think you should be incorporating that part earlier in your journey.

• Aquatic - Most Deserts want to evolve into Aquatics first, but Aquatics are the hardest and most expensive to get going, and the most superfan focused. That said, you know how to drive traffic, and now that you’ve gotten your books hookier, you can start turning all those casual readers into superfans.

• Grassland - Since both Deserts and Grasslands are data-heavy ecosystems, it’s relatively easy for Deserts to start incorporating longer series and content marketing into their businesses.

• Tundra - Since Deserts are TOFU experts and Tundras are BOFU experts, you’ll supercharge your ecosystem by being able to create irresistible offers that your newly minted superfans will love.

Grassland

• Tundra - Grasslands are all flywheel, and Tundras are all funnel, so it makes sense to start your evolution journey by embracing your inner Tundra. The biggest problem for a Grassland is standing up and saying “Did you know you could buy this?” That is the biggest strength of a Tundra.

• Forest - Forests are all about shared language and developing a community of readers who can communicate with each other, which would be a huge asset for a Grassland, who generally have the ear of influential people and can move the direction of an industry already because of their intense grasp of their topic, but don’t have a shared language to bring people deeper into their universe.

• Aquatic - Aquatics focus heavily on slow growth and super-fandom. They are building their own category across many years, which aligns with a Grassland’s desire to be future-focused. However, Grasslands are moving the industry to a point on the horizon that is inevitable, so that when the industry arrives there they are the authority. Meanwhile, Aquatics are shining a light on something that nobody even knows they need, which is almost antithetical to the ethos of the Grassland. For that reason, it probably makes sense to leave Aquatic evolution toward the end of your journey.

• Desert - Grasslands are very long-term focused, while Deserts are concerned with immediate success. While we don’t think Grasslands should immediately start embracing the short-term wins that come easily to a Desert, being able to capture attention by using existing virality can help funnel readers into the largesse of a Grassland’s catalog.

Tundra

• Aquatic - Aquatics take the longest to spin up for most ecosystems, but Tundras are great at injecting cash infusions into a business, so it would make sense to start this work from the beginning of your evolution journey. You should also be thinking about creating your category across every launch from the beginning of your career. It will just take a long time to bring everything together, but for a Tundra, you should be thinking about your category from your first launch, and how to make each one feed into an overall whole. The more you can use your launches to complement each other, the better you’ll be in the long run.

• Grassland - A Tundra is a funnel without a flywheel, and a Grassland is a great flywheel, especially when it comes to attracting new people into their orbit. Tundras desperately need somewhere to send people who get through their funnel and to warm new people up so they’re excited for their next project. Whether it’s a Grassland or an Aquatic, Tundras grow best when they have one huge universe or topic to pour all their work into so it keeps growing over time. Even if you’re writing a lot of disparate things, think about putting them under one umbrella so that all your effort isn’t wasted after each launch.

• Desert - Deserts are masters of the opt-in while Tundras are the masters of the irresistible offer. Once you have your ecosystem solid, then it’s time to keep funneling people in and learning how to do it on autopilot.

• Forest - Creating a shared language between your launches will help you craft a narrative to bring your disparate projects together in an umbrella everyone can use to get excited about your work.

Forest

• Grassland - You have a pretty great retention and escalation path for people to fall in love with. However, you’ll get a lot out of taking your shared language and creating longer series with better content marketing around them. Studying data like a Grassland will help you make better long-term decisions once you have some stability under you.

• Desert - Since you already have great engagement, now it’s time to bring people into your universe. Combined with your inner Grassland, a Desert will constantly bring in leads and readers into your orbit.

• Tundra - Forests take a long time to grow, but they grow quicker if they can create big spectacle launches that help bring attention to their work, and the more you can use evergreen tropes to help draw attention to your work. Both of these are huge strengths of a Tundra.

• Aquatic - Forests are great at engaging with fans, and Aquatics are the ultimate superfan ecosystem. They are all about delighting their fans, and creating a huge epic universe across many formats for them to play in once they join up. While your ecosystem grows slowly, you can be using Aquatic tactics to help monetize them across many different mediums.

Aquatic

• Desert - Getting better at opt-ins is something that will bring a lot more people into your universe. You already know how to turn casual readers into superfans, so let’s start by driving people into your ecosystem en masse.

• Tundra - It’s really expensive to be an Aquatic, and Tundras are great at bringing cash infusions into their businesses. You need that since your plans are generally so epic in scope and span many modalities.

• Forest - Once you have money coming into your business, you need a better way to engage with your readers by creating a shared language between them and facilitating ways for them to talk to each other. This is the strength of a Forest, and embracing that evolution can broaden the appeal of your work.

• Grassland - Grasslands are all about depth, and a big, massive universe needs a ton of depth. Whether it’s world bibles, shared universes, RPGs, or any number of formats, embracing your inner Grassland will help give your world depth that will delight readers and bring them deeper into your universe.

As you can see, the evolution paths for each ecosystem can be wildly different. There’s a reason why we didn’t number these paths. There’s a lot of fluidity between them as well, which might make you evolve two paths at once.

We hope you can also see how important it is not to start rushing into these evolutions before your base ecosystem is working well for you. It’s a lot of new concepts and modalities to add to your workflow when you haven’t had sustained success yet. You will likely collapse under the weight of it if you don’t have a solid stream of income in place first.

When we say you should be stripping those things that don’t work and double down on what’s working, that doesn’t mean forever. It means until you have consistent revenue coming in and have breathing room to start looking at the biggest picture.

Until you get there, you’ll be scrambling just to survive. Evolution comes when you have that space to grow beyond what you are doing, and that comes with time.

Even once you’re ready to evolve, you shouldn’t try to incorporate more than one ecosystem a quarter into your business, and maybe even one a year. Evolution is about the long-term stability of your business, which only comes after getting short-term stability in your business.

So, what do you think? Where are you on this path? Have you taken our quiz yet? If you haven’t, then click the button below and start your journey.