Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi everyone and welcome to the Author Wheel podcast. I'm Greta Boris, USA Today Best Selling Mystery Thriller. Author.

Speaker 2: 0:45

And I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy adventure author. Together we are the Author Wheel. Today's guest is the renowned Mark Leslie Lefebvre, and we are so excited to have him on the show. He has been one of my online virtual mentors for a very long time, and so it's a great interview and we were thrilled to have him as a guest. It's quite the draw for us.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Yes.

Speaker 2: 1:15

I'm so honored and so excited that he agreed to be on the show. But before we get into that, Greta, how are things going for you this week?

Speaker 1: 1:25

Kind of crazy but good. So as this episode airs, I'm probably actually in the air flying back from Idaho, so that's when I'm kind of getting ready to get out of dodge. We're going to visit my dad for a long weekend.

Speaker 2: 1:42

That'll be nice.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Yeah. So leading up to the trip, I'm like frantically putting together the finishing touches on that round robin author across promotion and I think I may have mentioned before I am so, so, so excited about it. You know, last year in September we interviewed Tanya Kappas. She's a really successful cozy mystery author. It was. I looked it up. It was actually season four, episode two. If anybody wants to go back and listen.

Speaker 2: 2:14

It was a great interview. That was like one. That was like one of those level up moments where you kind of go, whoa yeah, Mind blown it was, it was good.

Speaker 1: 2:24

It was, and there was so, so much in that, and but one of the things she talked about were these round robin cross promotions that she was doing and how successful they were, so I decided to do one too. The theme of this one is unconventional sleuths. My friend Karen Walker, who we also had on the show, I think in season one, she and I have pulled together 11 authors and each author has an interesting amateur detective and we're setting this all up with a spreadsheet and all the things. So every author will be sharing a different authors week each month and, of course, we'll be shared each month by a different author, and Tanya Kappas is in our group. So just amazing, yeah, and she's been very helpful.

Speaker 2: 3:18

And I can't wait to steal all of your spreadsheets and materials, because I want to do this now. Well, I think we're going to do something similar for nonfiction, so other authors, or books for authors, books for writers, that kind of thing, but I want to do it for fantasy as well, so I'm going to steal all your materials.

Speaker 1: 3:40

And then you can learn from all my mistakes. But yeah, I know I went through three or four different spreadsheets last night before I landed on the one that I was like, okay, this one makes sense for the calendar. So anyway, it's great, I'll keep everybody posted as it goes along. So how about you? What's going on with you?

Speaker 2: 4:02

Well, the biggest thing for me right now has been the new cover design for the limited edition hard cover that I'm doing for the Last Descendant and I'll be launching that on Kickstarter. At some point. I did get the pre-launch page up. It's super generic. Right now I don't have it completely built out because I don't have any graphics yet, because I don't have the cover design finished yet, but it's in progress and so that's been really exciting. I love this cover designer. He is just an amazing artist and it's been super collaborative, which is kind of unique.

Speaker 2: 4:42

Most of my other cover designers in the past you fill out like a form or something and then maybe they'll approve have you approved the model from the stock photography that they want to use on the cover or something like that? But for the most part they give you one or two choices and then they kind of go here, what do you think? And then you go, ok, but change this. And then OK, and there you go, you now have a cover. But with this one he went through this process of he 3D models the character. So we went through and we picked how muscular she is and how tall and her body position, and then we did pick a base a model's face to use as the base for the painting for her face, I guess and then it's like all 3D models.

Speaker 2: 5:35

He made the knife that she carries. So it's all exactly as I imagine. All her clothes are unique, exactly how I imagine and described her in the book. So it's really cool and I am really excited about it and I can't wait to get this Kickstarter off the ground because I am hoping well A that it'll be very successful, but, b that this is going to finally be the hardcover, limited edition, beautiful book that I've always dreamed of.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Well, I have seen some of your early as he's working and it really is phenomenal. It's great. He might be an interesting person to have on the podcast someday down the road too, because we've had Mariah Sinclair, my cover designer, and she works very differently so that people could hear what kind of an artist would be a good choice for you in your particular project and all of that, yeah, so I think that's great. I will say I didn't imagine the pixies looking like that.

Speaker 3: 6:40

I imagine them cuter.

Speaker 1: 6:42

They're pretty scary-legging, but they're great. It's super great-looking.

Speaker 2: 6:48

Well, it's funny because we ended up bringing together so when I originally wrote it sorry we're going off on a tangent, as we typically do, but when I originally wrote it, if you remember the little creature in Galaxy Quest, that is this cute little they come across this planet sort of a desert planet, mining town kind of thing this cute little blue guy with this big round face, and then all of a sudden he goes, yeah, and he's all scary. That's pretty much how I imagined this, and so then we added on the kind of an inspired by the wings from the fey in Carnival Row for the flying aspect, and so they are mid-attack, so they had to be scary at that point.

Speaker 1: 7:31

No, that's true and I did. That is, the Galaxy Quest Aliens were more along the lines of what I imagined, but I guess I kind of kept them cute in my brain.

Speaker 2: 7:43

They do have sharp teeth, though.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Yeah, this is true. Anyway, we should get on talking to Mark Leslie Lefebvre, because he's way more interesting than we are.

Speaker 2: 7:53

Yeah, yeah. So let's get into the show.

Speaker 1: 7:56

Mark first became a bookseller in 1992. The same year his first short story appeared in print. He has since worked in numerous roles across the book industry and published more than two dozen books. Writing, storytelling and helping other authors are among his greatest passions.

Speaker 2: 8:16

So I want to quickly go into a little bit more detail about the quote-unquote numerous roles Mark has had over the years, because it's really true it's quite the amazing resume for someone in the book industry. But I first came across Mark, in your role with Kobo Writing Life and now you're the director of business development for draft digital and, as a wide author myself, I've used both of those services or companies throughout my entire publishing career over the last decade or so. So we're going to talk about that quite a bit. But then I also just learned that he was once the president of the Canadian Booksellers Association, which is kind of just a cool bit of trivia. It was a cool role.

Speaker 2: 9:05

It was a lot of fun.

Speaker 3: 9:06

Yeah, no one else wanted the role, so I know it is a great role where I got to represent independent booksellers across this beautiful country of ours, and indie booksellers are as awesome as indie authors.

Speaker 2: 9:18

Yeah, well, I mean and that's kind of the thing that I find so inspiring or thought-provoking about your experience is that you really have run the gamut as far as traditional or indie booksellers and then through, of course, being a wide author and promoting wide for the win, or you had the book wide for the win how to sell wide and be successful wide, which is a great book for all you listeners out there. I read it Amazing, very helpful. So tell us a little bit more about how you A first got into writing and then B, like this journey sort of progressed for you.

Speaker 3: 9:56

Yeah, I mean, I've always loved, I've always been a storyteller, from the time I was a little kid, telling little stories to myself with Fisher Price figurines, to discovering my mom's typewriter when I was a teenager and the magic of when you put words on paper and somebody else could enjoy that story at another point in time. It wasn't, you didn't have to be there live. That was just incredible. I got my first rejection at the age of 15. And when I started writing, there wasn't really a self publishing industry that was useful to me. You had to type your manuscripts out, send them away, to get rejected six to nine months later, and I slowly started to build up my resume by selling stories to small markets. And 1992 was the year I graduated from university. It was also the year my very first short story sale made it into print and I became a bookseller and I've worked throughout the industry.

Speaker 3: 10:52

I think I've been very, very lucky because I've always loved books. I've always loved reading. I would define myself as a book nerd, but I've had a great opportunity to work in almost every kind of bookstore imaginable Campus bookstores, independent bookstores, mall bookstores, big box bookstores, online bookstores, ebookstores and I did a stint as representative of the booksellers as the president, and so I've had a variety of experiences there. I've also worked with traditional publishers and sold books to several eight or nine different books with traditional publishers and many more self-published. So my version of white is really, really white. It's not just Amazon versus all the other five big retailers, it is all the possibilities, because I think as authors we've never had more opportunity than ever before in the history of writing and publishing. We can have it all. If only there were more than 24 hours in a day.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Right Amen to that, oh yes.

Speaker 2: 12:00

I mean, that's the key right there. How do you clone yourself and become two or 10 or 12?

Speaker 1: 12:07

There's a movie about that. What was it called Multiplicity?

Speaker 2: 12:10

Yes.

Speaker 1: 12:10

Yeah, it was super funny and hysterical. Only each clone got stupider because it was like a Xerox copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. Yeah, oh, yeah. So maybe we shouldn't clone ourselves anyway Moving along. So I want to ask you I mean, there's so many things we could talk about. Before we go there. We always ask everybody what is the greatest roadblock you've had to overcome to get where you are and how did you overcome it?

Speaker 3: 12:44

I still haven't overcome the greatest roadblock. The greatest roadblock is often that imposter syndrome that faces all of us at all points in our career, and I've been so lucky and so fortunate to have had some really incredible roles and to get to work with some amazing people, and the imposter syndrome comes from both the side of the business. Where I'm on stage beside like a big name author that I've always admired my entire life, or I'm interviewing them, or I'm just I'm a colleague, I hang it out with them to being at. I was just at a book signing event in a store this past weekend and just remembering how amazing it is that there are people out there that buy and read my books and that they do that willingly, of their own volition, and they find it informative or entertaining or whatever it is, and I still feel like, who am I to waste eight hours of their time. So I think that can get in our way.

Speaker 3: 13:47

So many times we don't take chances or we don't do something because you think, who am I to do this? And I like to tell authors that well, you are the best person to tell that story or to share that particular thing. Whether it's fiction or nonfiction or whatever. Everybody has something really valuable to share and the worst thing you can do is hold back and not release that into the world, because there's a very good chance that, even if it's only one person that you end up reaching, and that you show them that they're not alone. And that's one of the most powerful things that we do as writers is we can get into the minds and hearts of the readers and ensure and that really is what reading is about writing and reading is about is that magical connection of writer and reader. And of course, I get excited and very philosophical about it, but that's really what we're doing, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 14:37

at the end of the day, yeah Well, so I think imposter syndrome is something that I know I struggle with pretty much on a daily basis, and I think, like you, have not figured out quite how to get over it except to just keep doing the work. But do you have any like tips or tricks, like you put post-its up or anything interesting that can help people who are struggling with that?

Speaker 3: 15:00

Yeah, I got this quote in the early 90s. I found it an author by the name of Hugh Prather and it's a book called Notes to Myself and it's just more general. It's not for writers, but I always took this. One quote is if the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire is not to write. And for decades I had that on my writing space. It's not there right now because the whiteboard I had we're just in the still remodeling it used to be written on the bottom of the whiteboard, it was on a sticky note, it was on billboard in front of my writing space forever and that was just a reminder of that pure thing. Because I'm hit with dozens of ideas every day. I rarely can use them, you know. So sometimes you take one or two of them and they become something and you work with them. But I think that's an important aspect of that writer's life is actually, are you actually committing that passion to a process that's going to string words together in some sort of meaningful way, even if it takes years? I mean, one of my books, which is now a series, took me 10 years to finish it and I'd already published and written other books prior to that, but there was that one book that I mean. Yeah, 10 years, that's ridiculous, how long? So I look at things like that.

Speaker 3: 16:23

The other thing, too, is I've been giving advice to writers for a long, long time and I am guilty of not taking my own advice, like one of the things that I told writers and I said you know, really, books in a series are really. There's no guarantee, but if you want a better opportunity for a bigger chance of larger sales, series tends to be the common thing I've noticed among both traditionally published authors and self-published authors. It's usually after one book three or book four. That's when things start to take hold. I went most of my career without writing in a series. I had all these book ones all over the place and then in 2020 was the first time I actually started to write in a series and I went oh my God, it works. I should have listened to myself. I was telling other people what to do.

Speaker 1: 17:10

So why is that, Mark? Why were you doing all these stand-alones instead of a series, even though you knew?

Speaker 3: 17:19

I think. Well, for the longest time I was working full-time and I didn't leave full-time work for another company until 2018. So I'd been first published piece in 1992. In 2018, I was starting to earn enough money that I didn't really need to have a full-time job. Yeah, a full-time job makes things easier, but that was the first time I thought, okay, I can give this a crack. I didn't make it a full year because I had too much free time on my hand and I learned that other thing about myself is that I was like tortoise in the hair, sitting back eating bonbons, watching cat videos, going oh, I'll write tomorrow because I have all the time in the world. And so it wasn't until I mean. That's why I joined Draft2Digital part-time and working that 20 hours a week for Draft2Digital was exactly what I needed. I'm still an independent consultant for them. It's 20 hours a week, which meant I had that writing time, and so all of these things finally came together where I had enough time to get the writing done and enough time to actually think about the writing.

Speaker 3: 18:26

As opposed to, I was working 40, 60, 80 hours a week, and so trying to squeeze writing in was always an afterthought for years and years and years.

Speaker 3: 18:37

It was very passionate. I would get up early to do it, I would squeeze it in wherever I could, but suddenly having ample time really made the difference for me to sit back and analyze what I was doing. And, ironically, it was an editor who wanted a short story who prompted me to think of this character and to return to a character I had written about in a novel with an actual story that made sense. That would be the next adventure for the character. And then when I told the editor, I remember she said, yeah, I don't think that's going to be a short story, that's going to be at least in a vellum, the way you're talking about it. And lo and behold, it was. And that became book two in the series and that prompted a whole bunch of other ones, because once it was almost like once I opened that Pindora's box, once I explored that there were more stories for this character to have that kind of opened up the breadth, and I thought, ok, now we've got something, we can really take this to town.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Yeah, that's a really good point about series, by the way. I just that it takes out a lot of thinking and planning, not just writing time. I personally think to do a series and to do it well, and if you don't have it, don't not write, keep writing. Yeah, don't be hard on yourself if you're not writing a series, and if you're not writing a series, don't be hard on yourself if your books aren't flying off the shelves. I would say yeah. That's a good bit of advice.

Speaker 3: 20:06

Excellent advice actually, yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:08

Well, and even just being patient with yourself in general. Right, I mean, you're talking about fitting words in around a day job that was potentially up to 80 hours a week. I mean, come on, right, it takes time, and so for I think I don't know, I was watching one of Claire Taylor's recent reels that she has done and she's talking about how, you know, we're not patient enough with ourselves. We have this expectation that you're going to write a book and it's going to take off, and you're going to just all of a sudden, you're going to be a full-time author, like tomorrow, and those expectations are actually harmful because the people that last in this industry are the people that stick around, and it's never an overnight success I mean rarely Like it's lightning in a bottle when it is but you know, most people that are ultimately successful are the ones that just stick with it and persist over time. So that patience and I'm not a patient person myself, so it's a hard thing, it's tough.

Speaker 3: 21:09

I'm a fast walker. I'm one of those impatient people on the street who's like man. Everyone walks so slow.

Speaker 2: 21:14

I'm going to go around, I'm going to call it shooting the gap. I shoot the gap.

Speaker 3: 21:18

Yeah, exactly so no, I feel you and it's amazing. I think I'm lucky. I've been in the industry for enough decades I've never had a single super number one bestseller, new York Times bestselling title, so I never fell into. And this happens a lot. You can do all the right things and I do consult with authors and I see this all the time and I look at what they're doing and they're not doing anything wrong. There is no one right way of doing it, but I can't find any mistakes in what they're doing. What they're doing is on target, it's perfect, everything's beautiful, the copy is good, the cover is good, the editing is good, they've got everything in the right categories and everything.

Speaker 3: 22:00

The one thing that we can never control is that magic bit of luck happens and because I never had some super breakaway bestselling hit, I never said, oh, I did this one thing and magic happened and that's what every writer's dreaming that they'll find. They'll find that, oh yeah, I just need that one thing to do. The reality is it's doing a whole bunch of things and sometimes luck happens. And I find that so frustrating about our industry because, again, I see so many great writers writing amazing books, doing great things, and the one thing that hasn't happened is they haven't had that weird stroke of luck that makes all the difference, and that's the one thing we can't control. But what you can control is, as my good friend Kevin Anderson says, is the more lightning rods I plant, the more likely one of them is going to strike.

Speaker 2: 22:55

Yeah, yeah. You can't win the lotto if you don't buy a ticket, kind of thing. Same kind of concept there, yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:03

Yeah, he just had a conversation with Jonathan Yennes Well, when this airs it will be at the end of last year, yeah and he was talking about how your odds just keep getting better and better the more you show up, and he was talking about like, if you have it was an analogy about if you have a pool full of balls and there's 99 red balls and one green ball and you close your eyes and reach in. The more times you do that, the better your odds are getting that you're actually going to get the green ball. It's all about showing up and, honestly, I think that the vast majority of authors, including household name authors, it didn't make it because of just one book or one series. It was, yeah, the longevity, you know, and maybe one book or one series that finally took off, but they had 20 others before that, you know yeah, yeah, no, and that's why yeah patients, practice and persistence or I always say that, three of the three of the hallmarks of successful writers.

Speaker 2: 24:13

I gotta write that down. The three P's Patience, practice and persistence.

Speaker 3: 24:17

I like it, I like it, yeah, and Alliteration makes life so much easier.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Well, it certainly makes it easier to remember.

Speaker 3: 24:24

Why adapted it into a book called the seven P's of publishing success? And only because sevens are really nice. We own seven habit's highly effective.

Speaker 1: 24:32

So what are the other four P's?

Speaker 3: 24:34

because we obviously need them patients, practice, persistence, a professionalism, patronage, promotion, and I always forget the other one. It's not, it's, it's, it's like persistence, and this is embarrassing and I need to. The other thing is then I wrote, then I wrote another one. Go the publishing pitfalls for authors and it's all, peace, yeah, but but that I think that's. That's the part of and again, that was just me just trying to force everything into into the alliteration sphere. But the whole idea was was just the way that you were, you work and and and, putting that extra effort into it and never stopping learning are some of the key ingredients and say, okay, this didn't work, what did I learn from that? What am I gonna try differently next time? But I'm going to try something. I'm going to keep trying.

Speaker 3: 25:32

Yeah, now, that's not to say, hey, I spent ten thousand dollars on Amazon ads this month and I lost ten thousand dollars. I'm gonna keep doing that. Well, that's not necessarily Smart thing to do, but you know, learning from those mistakes. I mean, speaking of Amazon ads for the most part, for every hundred Amazon ads I run, two of them actually make me more money than I spend, right? I would never advise people on how to do those ads, because I'm really good at spending the money. I'm not really good at making the money and and I look at the the fact that I've gotten some to work Well. Was I just lucky, or what was it? Was it the right keywords at the right time and the? And nobody else was bidding on the same things I was bidding on? I have no idea.

Speaker 1: 26:14

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 26:16

And, and that's the challenge, but I'm not gonna stop Trying, I'm not gonna stop learning different things that I can do as a writer and and, ultimately, I'm not gonna stop Wanting to see how I can get the books that I've written in front of the right people. Yeah which is really the magic right, if you can get, you can get in front of the right person, and that's, that's gold, yeah, that's gold burden the hand, burden the hand.

Speaker 2: 26:41

So let's talk then let's transition into a little bit more about Getting your book into the hands of wide readers and using wide. You said yeah. I think this is my words I don't think you said it quite this way but radically wide. What does that mean for you? Not just the different platforms, but what? Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 3: 26:58

I love that term Aggressively wide, I think Monica Lee and L use is radically wide. I love that phrase that you use. It means not just publishing your books to all the platforms and then sitting back Resting you know, like me with Bonbons on the coach when I thought it would be a full-time writer. It's actually publishing. Publishing actively wide, meaning you never just put your books up on Amazon and then expect Amazon to do all the work. Authors really push Amazon like crazy. They do everything. Now Amazon has built-in tools where you can feed the money and and that's one of the ways you can do it.

Speaker 3: 27:34

But pretty much every every bit of advice out there is about all Amazon all the time, which is why I wanted to write a book about covo, just to help writers understand the differences. But take some time and look at the differences in the nuances of the retailer. So Amazon and Google are two good examples of the inmates run the asylum. It's all about gaming the system. It's all about the algorithms and tricking people into getting your book in front of someone else's book. I mean, that's that's kind of what those two platforms are.

Speaker 3: 28:01

But covo and Barnes and Noble and Apple are very much Manually human curated very much like independent bookstores where, yes, there are algorithms and there are very complex algorithms, but there's a lot of manual Negotiating of getting books there and there's limited space. Think about the front book store, front bookstore in a street shop Window. There's limited space for what books they're gonna put in the front window and what are the things that you can do? What are the, what are the things you can participate in to get their attention, and that involves stuff that writers are not comfortable with. Writers are really comfortable because many of us are introverts and I am An omnivirt.

Speaker 2: 28:43

Oh, that's a good term.

Speaker 3: 28:45

But I'm introverted by default most of the time. If, if required, I I can wear the mask of an extrovert In public, on stage, whatever it's great I, and then and then it just exhausts the heck out of me. But Networking and connecting and listening to the various people From the other platforms and understanding the differences and actually building relationships, that's key. The other thing I like to talk about when I think about why I mentioned I was doing a bookstore signing this past weekend at indigo, which is like Barnes and Noble In here in Canada, and it was part of a writer's group. So there was a bunch of us and we were all there for, you know, the few of us Saturday, a few of us Sunday for most of the day and it was just great to be in the store and talking to people and they saw the books and I only sold a few copies of the books. But you get to the end of the day and you think, oh, that was a waste of a day. I only sold a handful of books and I was there for five hours and wow, that was a lot of work.

Speaker 3: 29:48

But the other thing you got to remember is I was curating relationships with the booksellers. I mean the other thing I did I brought a bunch of donuts and Timbits, which are like little donut hole things, for the staff to say thank you, because it takes a lot of effort for them to set up book signings. They don't have to, they'll just sell books anyways. So it's a lot of extra work for them. So I want to show my appreciation and, of course, interacting with the staff very professional, chatting with them, being kind, being courteous, being a professional is really important because you never know that when somebody comes in and is looking for a particular book on a particular topic or in a certain genre, they go oh, mark Leslie was just here this weekend and he signed all his copies of the Canadian Werewolf books or the Paranormal books or the Movie Tribunal books.

Speaker 3: 30:37

I had an embarrassingly huge amount of different titles in front of me, whereas many of my colleagues had the one book. So it actually was a lot easier for them. Well, what's your book about? Oh, ok, I'll tell you what's your book about. Well, what do you like? Because I got everything.

Speaker 1: 30:54

Which one yeah?

Speaker 3: 30:56

But I think that advertising the fact that somebody can pick up the book and hold it in their hand and talk about it or whatever, or even the people that I spoke to who didn't buy a book they had an interaction with me as the author. They may not have bought my book, but they may think of that for someone else, and that's marketing that you can't measure on a cost per click level, which is so it's hard to say well, this was worth xxx, because I can do all the calculations in an Excel spreadsheet and understand that that was worth my spending five hours that day. You can't do that the way you can look at cost per click ads, which is a challenge. But I do remember weird anecdotes, such as being at an event in person at a brewery in Hamilton, ontario, and having somebody come running over because she recognized the title on one of my books, because it was in big enough text, because myself published it, because it made it big, and she goes oh my god, you're Mark Leslie. I heard you on a podcast six years ago talking about this book, and so the weirdest things can lead to a sale. Because of that.

Speaker 3: 32:05

Jim Bain often said that a book covers a billboard and the mantra that it takes about seven impressions before somebody buys something. So I don't see it as a waste of time to do that kind of. It's a marketing exercise in my mind. I could have spent $100 pushing ads where the book covers are going to show up in front of some customers who are browsing, or I can stand there and smile with my skeleton beside me and my books in front of me and make that sort of impression on the customers who came through the store. It's a weird thing.

Speaker 2: 32:41

Yeah well, so one of the things so I do direct sales in person events somewhat frequently. I'm not out there every weekend like some people, but usually four or five, six maybe times a year, especially now after COVID trying to get out there. That's fantastic. One of the benefits, in addition to everything you just said, is actually in the marketing copy itself, because when you're in front of someone, you can pitch it. You're pitching your book constantly. So if you can put yourself out there, get people to your table, talk about your book, now all of a sudden you can test different taglines, you can test different blurbs, different short comparisons. What's going to attract your ideal reader who then buys the book? Now, that's gold. That is just pure gold. Information that you can't get necessarily, or at least not as easily or cheaply, potentially as on if you're just selling online, if you're just selling on Amazon or whatever.

Speaker 3: 33:46

Oh, megan, I agree with you so much. There's something I call the lean in moment. So when you're talking to someone and you say something and you see them lean in they may not physically lean in, but their eyes may lighten up or something you go, aha, that was the thing that got them. So I'm going to start with that next time. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 34:04

And I love that. And sometimes they actually do physically lean in. So if you can put yourself out there and at some of these events, like, I will almost shout across the room Greta's been with me sometimes like, hey, do you like cocktails? Cause I got a book that has cocktail, has a cocktail menu, right.

Speaker 1: 34:22

Like Based on your belly. You look, I'm no, don't. It's a Hawaiian shirt. Usually it's the Hawaiian shirt yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:30

If somebody comes up with a Hawaiian shirt, I'm like you might like Tiki, Guess what you?

Speaker 1: 34:35

know, another thing too that has happened for me from direct sales kind of things is book clubs. So I did it was actually a church like the Lutheran church Christmas boutique kind of a thing and you know, just talking to the people who are going through about my book, I ended up doing four different book clubs that year. Yeah, yeah From that, because the people who were in book clubs and or ran book clubs they're like, oh, would you come to our book club? I'm like, yeah, if it's in a 20 mile radius, you're darned too and I will, and if it's out, I'll come on zoom. You know, and and that's a really nice I did one book club that was a corporate book club that started during COVID for a big company.

Speaker 3: 35:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:24

And I had like a hundred sales that month. That's fantastic Because this not everybody came to the zoom meeting, but there was like 30 people at the zoom meeting but the book club was a huge company. Yeah, a hundred people went and bought the book, you know.

Speaker 3: 35:40

But then you get people talking about your book, and when they talk about your book, then other people are going to find out about it and that's gold yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:47

And some of those people are from all the different book clubs, are now my art creators, yeah, and they are like fabulous, like I'll wake up in the morning the day I launch a book and I'll have 50 reviews. Yeah, it used to take me a year and a half to get 50 reviews. So I agree with you the in-person thing, and I kind of look at it a little differently. Like I think that advertising is one thing and I think that once you have a certain number of books you need to do it. But I think that kind of what you said, mark, about how being in person that's more of a marketing thing, it's more of like public relations and remembering that, whether you want to be or not, as an author you are a public figure. Yeah, and P, that's a P word. Feel free to use that one of your books and you don't even have to pay me for it.

Speaker 3: 36:45

Yeah, no, I won't, it's all yours. I'll just reference you in the acknowledgments.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Perfect, another P word.

Speaker 3: 36:54

Yeah, the enemy of done. But that is in one of my books because perfect is the enemy of done.

Speaker 3: 37:01

But no see, that's such an important thing Because what you did in that in-person event because I want to break that down is you created an experience and I've gone to some events where people guys showed up in a werewolf costume with my hard covers that he bought online just to meet me, just to get me to sign the books I didn't make. I mean, I'd sold books to him in the past. I didn't sell a single thing to him, but I gave him an experience he's going to share with his friends. And remember, I've got a picture of the guy who wrote the novels and he signed them and we stood together and we took pictures and we goofed around. I gave him an amazing experience.

Speaker 3: 37:35

So you gave these people enough of an experience to say, oh, she would be great to talk to our book club and that's the magic that happened. So you were author brand building in an incredible way and every time you do those sorts of events, you're building your brand. You know, at 20 books, you know you're there. If you're there at the table, you're not only there at the table and doing some things, but you're also picking up on learning from all the cool things that your neighbors and other authors are doing and they go oh, that's so cool. I got to try that Because you're also learning while doing too, and that's an important aspect.

Speaker 2: 38:12

Absolutely. Actually, the very first WonderCon I did, which is a Comic Con. San Diego Comic Con's like nephew or niece, Right.

Speaker 1: 38:23

Relative.

Speaker 2: 38:24

Yeah, relative, it's still a pretty big show, but it's smaller than San Diego Comic Con. But in any case, I tabled next to Russell Nolte.

Speaker 3: 38:33

There you go.

Speaker 2: 38:33

Yeah, he'd been doing shows for years and years and years. Like he's a guy who talked about doing one every weekend. He literally did, I think, one every weekend for a few years in a row. So I learned so much from him. I just stood and I watched him and I watched what he did, and that's honestly where I picked up a lot of good skills and learned that being in person is marketing.

Speaker 3: 38:59

It is.

Speaker 2: 39:00

So learning from others, that's definitely a huge factor as well for live events. But what other avenues for wide other than now ebook retailers and live events? What would else would you consider part of the wide ecosystem?

Speaker 3: 39:15

Well, never forget libraries, right? Never forget that there are other models of selling, right? I mean, obviously you can sell direct to your own website and stuff like that especially. People are coming to your website. Why not? Because sometimes people don't care where they buy the book. They may want to buy the book to support the author and, in that case, reminding them that when they buy it from you, you make more money and that can help you write more books, you know because you keep doing this.

Speaker 3: 39:38

But I think libraries are also critical. I mean, at the end of my author newsletter I always have a link that says you know, you can ask for my books in audio and print and ebook. They are available through pretty much every major library wholesaler, so your library can get my books in. You do not have to pay for them. That's really important, especially if you're training people out of Kindle Unlimited. Yes, everyone can now get them for free at the library. They don't have to pay a corporation. You know that kind of thing. So that's important. But there are so many other models of selling. You've got like RAIM and you've got all these different platforms that are not necessarily the Amazons or the big name platforms in the world, if you write romance, you've got Robin has the. I'm losing the name of the website, which is just romance ebooks.

Speaker 1: 40:24

Yeah, I know what you're talking about, but I can't remember the name.

Speaker 3: 40:27

I'm so embarrassed that I can picture the person who runs it and I know her name, but I can't picture the name of the platform. But you know what I mean Like not being on a platform that specializes in romance. So, for example, if you write erotica and you're not locked into Kindle Unlimited and you don't have books in Smashwords, you're missing out on a huge global market. So, being aware that there's many different ways of buying and reading books and being open to having and again, there's only so many hours in a day but being open to experimenting with different platforms and different models and subscription models and all that, that's part of the wide experience.

Speaker 2: 41:03

Yeah, so how do you manage your time then, like with all these potential opportunities? How do you prioritize or tackle them when it comes to deciding what you're going to do?

Speaker 3: 41:14

Don't do what Donnie don't does, so don't do what I do, which is just, you know, I'm the squirrel man running around chasing a little bit just squirrels all day. So I do try really hard to prioritize and say, okay, my priorities are these books that I have to finish and my priority is getting them to the biggest platforms first and getting them on as easily as possible. I have signed up for, for example, I have a Spotify Shopify store, but I haven't yet had the time to populate it with all my books.

Speaker 2: 41:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 41:50

It does take time. So each one of it. So that's the thing. You, you listen to a great podcast like this and you hear some ideas and you go, oh, I got to do this and I got to do this, I got to do that. Okay, guess what? You put 10 things on your list. You're only going to get one of them done. What? And the other thing, too, is what is something that you'll have fun doing, that will actually energize you because you enjoy doing it. Do those first. Yeah, because if you do the exhausting ones first, you may be, you know, if you eat the, the, the horrible food that you hate on the plate first, you may not have enough room for the stuff you really enjoy and you're not going to enjoy the meal. Yeah, so that's the. That's the advice I always give.

Speaker 3: 42:29

Same sort of thing when I think about some of the books that I've written. I mean I tend not to. I mean I look at the market in some cases, but for the most part, I just write the books I'm most passionate about, because I know the chances of the books selling are against me. The odds are stacked against me incredibly horribly, just like any new book that's out there. I'm not going to get that downer, but that's the reality. So if I don't enjoy the process of writing this book and creating the book, I'm not going to. I'm definitely not going to win. But if I can enjoy that process, I win the minute I release the book and if it happens to sell and people happen to enjoy it, I win again.

Speaker 2: 43:06

Yeah, that's a really good perspective.

Speaker 1: 43:08

Can you tell people a little bit more about Drafted Digital and how it works, because I know a lot of new writers they just get. It's like you said, it's Amazon all day, all the time, and Amazon does make it pretty easy and so and then they get. I can speak for myself here. I mean I have books wide, but those are traditionally published books. My indie books are in KU.

Speaker 3: 43:37

Exclusive yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:38

Yeah, and I will be changing that in the future. Anyway, just explain to people how that works, that there are actually other tools and help available for people.

Speaker 3: 43:49

Well, I mean, you could use Drafted Digital for free with even when you're exclusive. I know authors who use it just to load their Word documents and make a free ebook and export it and then load it to Kindle. You can do that. You can use the books to read tool, which is free as well, even if you're exclusive to Amazon, because it handles geo-targeting, if you wanted to right, and put in your affiliate codes and stuff. So you're not violating that whatever, but it basically is. There's no one way of doing anything. It gives you a choice and option of getting to most of the major retailers, except Google Play and all of the major library wholesalers.

Speaker 3: 44:25

So if you're going direct to some places like Amazon or Kobo or Barnes Noble or whatever, and you use Drafted Digital, you can say, well, rather than sign into 12 different platforms, I'm only going to have three or four or five logins and I'm going to use these platforms directly. And maybe you're an Apple person and that you just do everything Apple. So you go to Apple directly, but you don't go to Barnes Noble or Kobo directly. I mean most people. You know it's easy enough to go to Kindle directly because I've done that first, and so Drafted Digital gives you the choices and the options. The downside of using a distributor like that is they will keep 10%. So instead of 70% you make 60% basically. So that's the you're playing off of making a little bit more by going direct, but also saving the time and hassle and labor. So those are some of the high pros and cons of going with a distributor like Drafted Digital or even anyone else.

Speaker 2: 45:18

Yeah, and just to kind of add on there a little bit too, I have used Drafted Digital, like I said, for years and years and years, and I do go direct to the big players for the most part. But the thing I love about Drafted Digital is that they have relationships with so many small e-book sellers and you're not going to make a ton of money on them. But now, all of a sudden, my books are available in like India on like Tolino, I think is the one Tolino's in Germany but anyway, like all these little ones that we in America have never heard of and would never use.

Speaker 2: 45:55

but now the books are available there and now potentially, you're finding readers internationally that you're not finding on Amazon. So it's small dollars maybe, but it all adds up in the aggregate. Eventually it does. That's what you hope for.

Speaker 3: 46:11

Yeah, and a mistake I see authors make is they oh, I put my books there and I didn't sell, so I'm going to take them down. Why, yeah, yeah, why. I mean, if you're going to expose it to Amazon, yeah, I understand why, but if you're not just leave them, you never know. I mean, I was on Google Play. I was on Google Play. In the first 10 years of Google Play I made $10. Yeah, then Google Play about four years ago, made things better. They actually fixed their systems and made it better, and remember in that first month, making more than I'd made in the previous 10 years. And again, it's not been a big fast climb, but it's been a slow climb ever since 2019. I think, is when they started to improve things. But again, I always had stuff on that platform. You never know when something's suddenly going to take off. But again, lightning can't strike if you haven't planted the rods there.

Speaker 2: 47:03

Exactly, exactly. All right, well, I think that's probably a good place to end this conversation for now. But, mark, why don't you tell us a little bit more about where we can find you online, some of your services and all of your goodies for authors out there?

Speaker 3: 47:20

Sure, you can find out anything you want to know about me and things you don't want to know about me over at marklesleyca. Links to everything. If you can't get enough of my babbling ongoing voice, I do have a weekly podcast called Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing and you can find the link at marklesleyca or starkreflectionsca. Perfect.

Speaker 1: 47:43

Which is a great podcast, by the way, I have listed. I think you don't babble on. You have a very melodious and calming voice. So when I need to be like when I'm stressed out about writing. It's like Stark Reflections is exactly what I need. You calm me down.

Speaker 3: 48:01

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 48:02

Well, you definitely help give a clear path forward. So thank you very much for joining us on the show today. It's always great to see you. So thank you. And to all our listeners out there, just a reminder as usual, if you haven't already taken it, we do have our seven days to clarity. Go shoot, uncover your author purpose. I believe that's the title. Good job, Megan. Anyway, that is available. You just go to authorrealcom it's right there on the landing page and that will lead you through a process to help clarify why you write, so that you can write a mission statement and tagline for your author career. Otherwise, until next time, keep your stories rolling.