I quit my job to create the platform for reader intelligence
Bet On Yourself
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them” – Walt Disney
I wish I could say I was scared. But I’m not.
Nothing has ever felt more right in my life.
On Friday, January 31st, 2025, I will spend the last day at my day job.
I resigned and gave my two weeks notice.
It’s time to reignite the mission I have poured my life into. The mission to free us storytellers from the villainous mega corps, and to give us all superpowers to achieve our storytelling dreams.
This is my announcement that I’m coming back to the indie author world. Now.
And Act 1? Building the ultimate reader intelligence platform to give every author the insights they need to write better stories. I’ll share more on that soon.
For the first-time ever, starting Feb 1st, I’ll be devoting myself full-time to bringing Power to Storytellers. No school or other jobs as distractions.
I’m all in on doing what I love for the people I love (all of you) – with the control and the freedom to pour everything into this community and what I create.
This may just be the best day of my life.
I’m all in on making the publishing world a better place.
I’m all in on us.
In the first week of February, you can expect the official launch of a new podcast, newsletter, and community for authors in addition to more information about Reader Meter, the reader intelligence platform for authors.
To stay up to date, you can subscribe to Author Sidekick, right here👇
Hint: I’ll give you a sneak peak at the end of this article… Reader Meter, the new software platform I’m building, is going to change the way we revise books forever and give authors more power to write better stories than ever before.
It’s all based on some wild things I’ve learned the last 6 months working with the largest creator in the world.
Which speaking of…
6 Months With MrBeast: My Dream Job
Many of you who follow me know I had a big, unexpected change in my life 6 months ago.
One unbelievably important lesson I learned:
Control what you create (the Shakespearean tragedy in that I said that to you all constantly but didn’t heed my own advice).
But what do you do when everything in your life changes over night?
Lean on the people around you.
I called up a friend. One of my favorite people, and easily one of the smartest people in the creator world.
He is on the team at MrBeast, the brand and company created by Jimmy Donaldson. MrBeast has nearly 1 billion followers (yes, with a ‘B’) and is the most followed social media creator in the world.
He offered to fly me out to meet him in person and just one week later I had a full-time job offer to work on MrBeast’s Strategy team doing data and analytics.
It was my first “real” job. I had just graduated from college in May and spent my entire college years first self-publishing science fiction, then doing YouTube and live-streaming, then starting a publishing platform for fiction authors.
With just a suitcase and backpack, I spent weeks on the road between Seattle, Chicago, California, North Carolina, and Vegas – jumping right from one adventure to the next.
After all of the chaos of July, I don’t think I even got a day off.
But it was in many ways, the fulfillment of one of my biggest dreams.
Now, here I was in the belly of the Beast (not literally… well kind of).
For this, I’m extremely lucky.
To have friends who believed in me and to have a company as amazing as MrBeast bring me onto their team was one of those incredible opportunities in life you can’t pass up.
And in many ways it was my dream job.
Getting to help the largest creator in the world change lives and reach nearly a billion people. Bouncing back and forth between business strategy, content strategy, and solving crucial problems that the leaders of the company faced.
It was awesome and both one of the hardest times I worked in my life but the most rewarding.
I remember telling my mom I’d be there for years. Meanwhile, she kept telling me to quit and do my own thing.
All of a sudden, I had an apartment in Chicago, a job with a great salary, and a team I got to work with everyday with some of the smartest, most passionate, and fun people to be around.
And for the guy obsessed with the creator economy, I was now directly in the nexus of it. Maybe even the pinnacle.
To say I’m lucky is an understatement. I have the best friends. The best mom.
But I also have all of you.
As time went by, I kept receiving messages from authors. At first it was hundreds, then a few here and there… but it never stopped.
What we had, our community, our movement, was unbelievably special.
It lit me up more than anything.
And no matter how sexy my new job was, no matter how much I was learning, and no matter what the perks were… it didn’t surpass the love that we all have for each other.
Soon it became clear what had to be done.
My mom was right.
I don’t work for creators.
I am a creator.
And everyday I don’t do that is a crime against myself. A crime against what I love. A crime against all of you.
My mom bet on me.
It was time for me to bet on myself.
I had to quit my job.
Power to the Storytellers: The Mission Will Never Die
People > Platforms. I’ll die on that hill. And I believe it now more than ever.
This movement was never about the next 6 months, or even a few years.
It is a decade-plus battle to take back publishing from the grand River Baron (*cough Amazon*) who has exploited our intellectual property and reader relationships for too long.
Compared to when I started as an author 8 years ago, there are endless more ways to get discovered, make money, and connect with readers.
But… there are also new challenges.
Increased marketing costs. An increasingly tight grip of control that Amazon the River Baron holds on authors. And new emerging technologies (i.e. AI) that provide great promise but simultaneously great threats to storytellers.
And paradoxically, sometimes all of the possibilities can paralyze us from making the decisions that are best for us.
In short, there’s a lot of work to be done.
What to Expect from Me Next
Behind the scenes, I’ve been plotting for a while.
Long term the goal is simple: bring Power to the Storytellers.
Now what to expect from me in the month of February:
The launch of a call-in advice show for authors called Author Helpline.
The launch of Author Sidekick — a newsletter all about helping you grow your readership and revenue by unlocking your storytelling superpower (you can read the about page here).
The launch of the Authoropolis Facebook Group — focused on tech help for authors... a place to talk about tools to run our business and write better books.
And most of all… the waitlist for Reader Meter — this is the software platform I’ve been teasing throughout this article. It’s expected to launch in mid to late 2025. TLDR: it helps you edit + revise your stories by giving you data on where your readers are most and least engaged with your stories. It makes improving your read-through rate easy by highlighting the precise areas of your story where readers are dropping off. Typically authors share Zero Edition stories using Reader Meter (aka stories that are pre-first edition and will go through future revisions such as beta copies, arc copies, etc.)
Oh and last but certainly not least… Story Suppers – together with the amazing fantasy author Maggie Beeler we are hosting writer meet-ups across the country. Whenever I travel, the goal is to now host a Story Supper :).
It’s going to be an amazing month.
And it’s just the beginning. 2025 is OUR YEAR.
Power to the Storytellers. Forever and always.
It feels damn good to be back.
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You
To everyone who has ever experienced anything I’ve created – thank you.
To everyone who believes in the future we are creating and the power of this community – thank you.
It’s your love that brought me back.
And it’s the incredible story that we get to create together that will keep me here for many many years to come.
Love is the only thing that matters. And I love this community more than any other on the planet.
It’s time to make authors more powerful than platforms.
It’s time to give authors more power to write better stories than ever before (wohoo Reader Meter!).
It’s time to give us all the mindset, tools, and community we need to live the author lives of our dreams.
Let’s let the stories begin 😊.
So allow me to re-introduce myself 👋.
My name is Michael Evans. And for our new storytelling heroes here, I’m your Author Sidekick.
And together we can conquer any villain.
Together we are boundless…
With 💙,
Michael Evans
P.S. Feel free to email me at hello@authorsidekick.com with any questions or ways I can help. Much more news is to come… but you will have to wait a few weeks.
Quitting one job to do something you love and were meant to be doing is a huge leap of faith, but one you have to take if you can. I did this a couple of years ago when the opportunity to write (a life long pipe dream I had) landed in my lap.
I still have my day job of working for the Cubs, and I'm not making any money from my writing, yet, but I'm DOING WHAT I WAS MEANT TO BE DOING.
Fyi, it was SO MUCH FUN to meet you last night at the first story supper thing and connect with other local writers. Really looking forward to more of these in the future!
Yahooo!