We'll get back to Dear Becca Letters again soon, I promise. :)

First off, today is my one-year anniversary dating this wonderful man. Happy anniversary to Roland (and to me)! <3 I'll post more about this on Facebook today, but I wanted to take a second to celebrate because it's worth celebrating. We started dating a year ago, and I'm not sure it's possible for me to be happier. <3

The only thing that would have made me happier was to have today also be the first day of the digital summit, but since we still have the Kansas City event this weekend, I needed to wait until next week to do the summit. I really think we're going to have a great time next week, and I wanted to give you some insight into what's driving this conference. Below will be a primer on the content, and the schedule.

If you're interested in learning more about creating demand for your books by understanding the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of fandoms, please join me!

​Here's that link.​

But read on first, if you'd like to know more before you decide. Obviously, no conference is for everyone, and this might not be for you, but I didn't want to assume I'm selling too much (like I usually do) and instead, I want to just let you know what we'll be talking about so you can decide. We'll get back to Dear Becca Letters again soon, I promise. :)

In our last digital summit (actually, both the last two summits), we had conversations about demand that really struck me.

In the Platform Growth Engines, I'd mentioned that the way to tell which platform you have was to look for the demand.

In the Business Phases, I'd mentioned that the way businesses grow is by increased demand for their product.

In both instances, someone in the conference had asked me how to increase demand, and I think the question took me off-guard because my immediate answer was, "make a product people demand access to." The answer seemed so easy and quick to me, I was pretty sure there was something else going on there.

But it sent me down a rabbit hole--all the Input/Learners would be very happy with the width and breadth of this rabbit hole, and the wonderland at the bottom. Like a typical Input/Learner, I assumed if I could just understand enough about how demand is created, I could help authors figure this out.

How do we create more demand?

So I undertook the responsibility of deep diving into what makes readers love books and want more of them. I'd already been working on some ancillary work with my Tropes stuff, so I had a rudimentary understanding of how reader psychology works. (It helps to have such a deep foundation of human behavior patterns already, but this was a slightly different task. This wasn't about individual brains. It was about how the organism of a fan group or a fandom would function.)

I wanted to make some easier guidelines about how to maximize our natural fandom building capacity as writers, and I put my Input and Learner to work gathering resources, and my Analytical/Individualization/Intellection to the task of understanding the underpinning systems, and then my Strategic/Arranger/Connectedness to the task of devising my foundational theories so I could produce a good curriculum.

I feel like what resulted was a pretty in-depth understanding of how demand works. At least in the mechanics of it. What I'm hoping to do in this summit is to produce my findings. I've written and produced some content about some of these things, in working out my thinking.

In any group, there's an alchemy of how things function that optimizes the group's purpose. It's very similar to how plants grow, which is a handy metaphor. Rules guide everything, even when we don't want them to.

With a plant, there's a combination of space, water, and seed that, when you add enough heat to balance the elements, produces growth.

Demand is the "heat" or the light element of book growth. You can't have a growing business without demand.

So, if we assume that you have found some demand (you're in Phases 2-5 of your author business), then your question is: how do I get more of it?

And if we assume you're in Phase 1, where you don't know if the demand exists in high enough volume yet, your question is: how do I find it, or how do I know for sure it's not there?

Both of those pathways make some assumptions, and I want to cover those first.

Assumption One: This is a long game. Books take time to write (even if you're a fast writer--I can put out a Substack in a couple of hours, but a book might take me a month or more to write... if the last few books are any indicator, they might take five or six months to write, or even a year or more). So the learning curve is slow.

Assumption Two: Every person has a silver bullet that will make them know for sure whether there's demand or not. But every person's silver bullet will be different. (And there may be more than one.) Unfortunately, you can go for years and years without finding it, and that can be a frustrating process. But also, my hope is to encourage us in the process. There will always be more that we can change or work on that will increase our demand.

Assumption Three: You want to find more readers, and you're willing to do the work to find them.

Assumption Four: Nothing is precious except your personal values. This is a business mindset thing. If you find out from many releases that there's just no current room in a genre you love, are you willing to switch to try making better money elsewhere? Or does that violate a core value you have (a value of not letting the market tell you what to do, for instance, or a value of only writing what you love)? If it does, then we go with the value. But if it doesn't, at some point, you make a change. Nothing is precious except your personal values.

Assumption Five: Nothing is inevitable except death and taxes.

Assumption Six: The answer, "I just don't want it that bad," is a valid answer. Some of the things we'll suggest in the experiments for demand growth will feel uncomfortable. I'll try, whenever I can, to provide pathways for people who aren't uber-talented at the thing. (Skill-building suggestions where I can.) And also, you may get to a point where you say, "I know that's the way, and I just don't want it that bad," and that will be a valid answer. No one will judge you for it.

I'm still going to provide the experiment pathways. Some of you will say yes, and some of you will say no, and that's exactly what I expect to happen. You will not be asked to do any of this in public.

In order to understand demand, we have to understand the people and the groups where demand originates, which is why I've focused this conference around building a fandom. I think understanding how fandoms and fan groups operate is essential to increasing demand. When I read books on economics about demand (I took Econ in college, too, and it was the same), it all feels too abstract to me. Demand comes from people wanting things.

So we need to understand why people want things. And we need to understand what groups look like when they want things. My hope is that understanding will produce action.

My goal for the for the conference is twofold:

1) To provide a framework for understanding fandoms and building engagement around our author business. This comes out of my deep study into fandoms and fan psychology, and also from my years of work with human behavior and personality. I want to give specific, practical help with understanding how to grow and build fan engagement around your books.

2) To provide specific, tactical insight for how our personalities can cause barriers to leveling-up in our author business phases and what keeps people from leveling up. We will also cover common mistakes that can prevent leveling up, with practical guidance.

In order to do this, I've got some pre-conference resources you can consume--including an introductory workshop on the Author Business Phases if you haven't heard of that framework before, and including an assessment of where your business might land.

Each live lecture will come with pre-written materials to consume to prepare all the Intellection people with their thinking caps. I want to get into the meaty questions, not the "help me understand the Shipper better" questions. And I want to get into questions that are as specific to your growth as possible.

We have Q&As for each session (including daily separate Q&As for non-US-time-zone people). We have a follow-up Q&A, 90 days after the conference.

We also have a 30-day follow-up program meant to help you execute on the information. The schedule is below if you keep scrolling...

​I hope you'll join us.​

Schedule

All sessions are live with Becca on Crowdcast, (though some workshops will be recorded ahead and broadcast while Becca is also live so she can be in the chat on Crowdcast). Q&A sessions happen directly after each broadcast, so they will be embedded in the main session. (EU/UK/Africa and Asia/NZ/Aus will each have their own Q&As for each of the day's sessions.)

(All times listed below are U.S. Central Daylight Time.)

Day One

(All times listed below are U.S. Central Daylight Time.)

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

9:00 - 11:00 Using Fan Psychology to Level Up Your Business Phase

11:00 - 12:00 Break

12:00 - 2:00 Fans, Fan Bases, and Fandoms, Oh My! (plus Q&A)

2:00 - 3:00 Break

3:00 - 4:00 Feed Your Fandom and Create Brand Loyalty

4:00 - 5:00 Q&A and Brainstorming

Day Two

(All times listed below are U.S. Central Daylight Time.)

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

(early morning: UK/EU/Africa Q&A from Day One)

9:00 - 11:00 The Eight Foods of Fandom (Part One) (plus Q&A)

11:00 - 12:00 Break

12:00 - 2:00 The Eight Foods of Fandom (Part Two) (plus Q&A)

2:00 - 3:00 Break

3:00 - 4:00 Launch Plans by Phase of Your Author Business

4:00 - 5:00 Q&A for the Day

(evening will include a Q&A for AUS/NZ from Day One)

Day Three

(All times listed below are U.S. Central Daylight Time.)

Thursday, May 21, 2026

(early morning Q&A: UK/EU/Africa from later Day Two)

8:00 - 9:30 Level Up Barriers: Influencing Domain (plus Q&A)

9:30 - 10:00 Break

10:00 - 11:30 Level Up Barriers: Executing Domain (plus Q&A)

11:30 - 12:00 Break

12:00 - 1:30 Level Up Barriers: Relationship-Building Domain (plus Q&A)

1:30 - 2:00 Break

2:00 - 3:30 Level Up Barriers: Strategic Thinking Domain (Plus Q&A)

3:30 - 4:00 Break

4:00 - 5:00 Leveling Up Your Author Business

(evening will include Q&A for AUS/NZ from Day Two)

The following day will include Q&As for both EU/UK/Africa and AUS/NZ/Asia to follow up on Day Three.

All sessions are recorded for you to watch later, and will be directly available on the same links for ease of use (this is why we keep using Crowdcast).

You can find the signup page for the Level Up Digital Con at: http://betterfasteracademy.com/links

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