Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi everyone and welcome to the Author Wheel podcast. I'm Greta Boras, usa Today bestselling mystery thriller author.

Speaker 2: 0:45

And I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy adventure author. Together we are the Author Wheel. This week, we're excited to have the Author Nation showrunner, joe Solari, on the podcast. This was a deep dive into all the new features that are coming to the conference, formerly known as 20 Books to 50K, in November in Vegas. But even if you're not planning on attending, we had a great conversation about the state of the indie author nation, so you definitely want to tune in. But before we get into that, how's your week been, greta?

Speaker 1: 1:16

Well, it's been okay. I'm fighting another stupid cold flu bug because I kissed a toddler on the nose, which is Never a good idea.

Speaker 2: 1:26

No.

Speaker 1: 1:27

I know, I know it's what I've been saying. No matter how cute the dang thing is, just don't kiss it you can boop it.

Speaker 2: 1:36

Boop it with a finger and then hand sanitize.

Speaker 1: 1:41

That's what my daughter said. She says, mom, just boop it and he loves the whole boop thing. Anyway, I digress. You don't want to get me on my little that's me on her.

Speaker 1: 1:53

That's all I'll talk about. So personal news To Die For. The first book in the Mortician series is coming out in audio from Tantor Media this month. The date they gave me was May 28th. I've seen the cover. It looks great. It's just a square version of the book cover, but it looks great, and that's all I've gotten from them at this point.

Speaker 1: 2:16

I think I'm supposed to get some marketing materials and all that, but I haven't seen it yet and I am still working away on the Almost True Crime series. I actually had a brainstorm a couple of weeks ago about planting a mystery within these mysteries, so I'll be doling out, so it'll be within. I'll be doling out the clues a little bit at a time for the full seven books and then at the end of them I'll write a novella where my podcast character, narrator character, goes and solves the crime that has been teased for all seven books. That sounds fun, I know. So today, when we are done recording that's, what I got to do is start working. I'm calling it Molly's Mystery because Molly Shore is my podcast host.

Speaker 2: 3:06

Instead of Polly Shore. I like it.

Speaker 1: 3:09

Thanks, well, and I spell Shore S-H-U-R-E like the microphone company. No, shore, microphones are really good in singing. Anyway, those were our preferred. So yeah, she's Molly Shore.

Speaker 2: 3:24

Yeah Well, I have to say, like hearing you talk about how you've been rewriting and revising, you've been able to add in so much more detail or depth to these books that you couldn't have done, I don't think, without writing all seven first and then going, you know, and then going back and like like I feel like this is a very interesting case study that we're really, really, really, really going to have to talk about at some point, because it's it's unique in a lot of ways. I feel like I don't know, maybe that maybe somebody else has done something similar, but as far as like the puzzle within the puzzle, over the course of the whole series and stuff, but I feel like it just takes so much extra planning and work and reconstruction that it would be hard.

Speaker 1: 4:10

It would have overwhelmed me if I tried to do it with first drafting. Yeah, you know what I mean, it's like that. But yeah, I think you know, maybe in the fall or something like that, we're going to have to tackle this. Yeah, I think you know, maybe in the fall or something like that, we're going to have to tackle this.

Speaker 2: 4:22

Yeah, once they start coming out.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Yeah, on a podcast, yeah because right now I don't, I might say all the wrong things if I try to tell you what I do. Because I keep changing it. Yeah, yeah, anyway, what have you been up to this week?

Speaker 2: 4:36

Well, so this week has been a little bit of a coming down from my Kickstarter campaign. A little bit of a coming down from my Kickstarter campaign. I am thrilled to say that I did fund, which was amazing, but it was at the very last minute, and thanks mostly to well, I shouldn't say mostly, but thanks to an angel investor who made up the final gap.

Speaker 1: 4:57

That was really like I was already going into mourning for you. I'm so sorry to admit.

Speaker 2: 5:04

No, I was too.

Speaker 2: 5:05

I was so sad, yeah, and it was what an emotional roller coaster. Oh my gosh. No, it's like I was literally writing the I'm so sorry, I can't, I didn't make it work, we didn't reach the goal, I can't make this happen. I was like close to tears, um, and like writing this out, and then, all of a sudden, I got a text message from a friend and actually a friend of the show, melissa Storm. She was on a text to me and she was like congratulations, you funded. And I was like what are you talking about? Like I did not. I was still so far from the goal, um, but uh, but no, sure enough, an angel investor came in, made up the gap, got me over that that finish line, and so I went from over a thousand dollars, right?

Speaker 1: 5:49

Yeah, yeah, give us the numbers, cause it's too.

Speaker 2: 5:54

Okay, well, so yeah. So I had managed to get up through like five minutes before the end of the campaign. It was at about, I think, 5,300 funded and my goal was seven, and Kickstarter is all or nothing. So if you don't fund, you don't get paid, that nobody gets their book, you don't make the book or you know the project or whatever. So, um, yeah, so she, my angel investor, came in and she, she pledged eighteen hundred dollars. Oh my what, oh, she's getting every book that I've ever written, ever.

Speaker 2: 6:37

I think I'm gonna dedicate the special edition just to her, like no. I mean, I actually am putting all the special edition hardcover backers in the acknowledgements, so they will. It will be dedicated to all of them, but I will give a special shout out, if she'll let me, to my angel investor.

Speaker 1: 6:55

So I would yeah, it was a big deal A character after her like a fancy, nice character. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:03

Yeah, maybe I'll like write like one, like little cameo or something. I'm not sure. I haven't figured that piece out yet, but I definitely have to do something extra special for her.

Speaker 1: 7:13

It could be in another book, but just she's obviously a super fan who will read everything you write. So if you did it in a Lilith book or something like that, I'm sure she'd be thrilled.

Speaker 2: 7:23

Yeah, maybe, maybe, yeah, so anyway. So yeah, emotional rollercoaster. Obviously I went from near tears to like ecstatic in the span of about two seconds flat.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Um, it was like I was shocked.

Speaker 2: 7:34

Like I was literal, literal shock, um, like couldn't function for a while, but anyway, so yeah. So this week I kind of I mean, I started to take care of some of the detail work on that I did. I've been putting together that anthology with Rachel Renner, so that's almost kind of sort of finished. I mean, we got the stories. The stories are all well. I wrote one story new for that, so that's going to be exclusively available in this paperback, at least through. You know, probably July, august. It'll be exclusive to this paperback. But the rest were all pre-existing short stories, so it was just a matter of, and they'd all been edited professionally and everything. So it was just a matter of, like, putting it together into the right format, getting a cover and writing a book description. So we're like about 80, 80 to 90% of the way done with putting that together and then we'll get that printed up. So anyway, so yeah, so that's when that, taking care of all the little odds and ends and all of that. So work, but less stressful.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Thank God, I don't think your heart or your stomach could take much more of that. Yeah, yeah, that's one of those stories though that looks like it would be in a movie or television show and everybody would go yeah, that doesn't happen in real life and it did, it, did I, yeah, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2: 9:11

So it just goes to show you know, push all the way through to the end. Uh, finish through the finish line. It's the old you know. Race um metaphor, or push all the way through, yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:23

I got there, so yep, good deal.

Speaker 2: 9:26

All righty Well for this week's subscriber shout out, we have thanks to Stanley B Trice. Stanley writes science fiction and short stories, and you can visit his website to check out his novel High School Rocket Science for Extraterrestrial Use Only, and the link to that website is in the show notes, but it's stanleybtricecom. Thank you so much, stanley. We truly appreciate your support, and you, too, can have a subscriber shout out by becoming a subscriber and supporting the show. The link to that is also in the show notes. But for now, let's jump into the interview with Joe Solari. He is a consultant for authors and publishers known for his experience in business ownership, private equity and fundraising. He holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Since 2016, he's been helping authors navigate the complexities of the publishing market and has written guides for this purpose. He's the managing director of the Author Nation Conference and co-founder of Cybercraft Studios. So welcome, joe. We are so excited to have you here.

Speaker 3: 10:40

Yes, I'm excited to be here. Big deal, my first time on.

Speaker 2: 10:44

Yeah, hopefully not your last. This goes well.

Speaker 1: 10:49

I feel like already, I'm feeling like we have so many things to pick your brain about, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:55

But why don't we get started just real quick and why don't you tell us a little bit more about how you got into the author industry?

Speaker 3: 11:04

Sure, so I'll make it quick because you know it's not that exciting a story. How I got interested in this whole thing was my wife's nonfiction author. She started writing back in 2014. And if you remember those days of Create Space and formatting and all the joys of early, I got pulled in as the technologist. And when I got real interested is when I realized she made about $4,000 on a book about t-shirt and jeans style.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Oh wow, in those days. Yeah, remember those days. Yeah, those were good.

Speaker 2: 11:40

Yeah, yeah, those are good.

Speaker 3: 11:41

Yeah, so at the time I was running a startup business in the oil and gas industry. I was doing a bunch of stuff. When I got done with that, when that business sold, I decided, well, if she could make that kind of money writing a book, I would write a business. And that book, you know, there was at least 20 people that bought it and they happened to be the folks that were in the 20 Books group and I think it resonated with folks that were kind of thinking of. They were creatives that were thinking about this as a business and I got pulled into that group to help on the business side.

Speaker 3: 12:23

And really the seminal moment was the first 20 Books conference. I was asked to speak. Craig didn't have any idea what we were going to be talking about. Just like I need people come speak. We've never done this before and I showed up there not really knowing what to expect, not liking to go to Vegas a lot because I'd spent a lot of time there in the day and recognize the situation of, like holy cow. There's people that are at this conference that are going to come away from this whole what I call the golden age of content creation with like generation building.

Speaker 3: 12:57

Well, I just could see that all the things were in place, that people there were going to be building these great brands around their imagination, and I wanted to have some part of that. So what I did is I called up an old partner of mine, lisa. We had worked in this other business and I said I'm meeting a lot of people here that are making some really good money writing books and they don't have any kind of business support at all Like some of these people are. They don't even have companies set up. I'm like I think there's an opportunity for us to help them. She was like well, sure, let's try it. So, like I walked away from that conference with customers that we were going to help, and so I built. Initially I built this business all around the idea of helping authors with their business practices to to really achieve the life that they want to live, and so that's really my foray into this.

Speaker 3: 13:54

Along the way, I've always stayed involved with the community in a big way and very close to the, to Craig and the group, and when he and Michael determined that they were going to kind of wrap up the show and think about how they were going to do that he talked to me and that took the whole time when we talk about all the backstory and that. But the windup is that I agreed to take over the financial piece of that the contracts that he had signed so that the show could carry on. His ability to keep going with the contracts that he had signed so that the show could carry on His ability to keep going with the stresses that it was doing on him personally was not really good. It was affecting his health severely. Now that I took it on, I understand the stresses that he had running the show that season. That's a really quick synopsis of how we're at this point, like how I'm in the industry and like why would I be the guy that would be dealing with this new conference?

Speaker 1: 14:50

Well, I have to say, I think it's just really brilliant to have somebody who is not a fiction author but somebody who has a business background, who can kind of step back and look at the big picture. And look at, because I listened to you for the first time a number of years ago I think it was on Anchors Con or something and I, you know, I'm like your typical, I'm a musician, I'm a writer, and you were talking about, like actually having spreadsheets and keeping track of things. I was like, oh, you're supposed to do that. I'm like that person.

Speaker 1: 15:24

I was just like I thought you were brilliant. I was like this is really new stuff for me. And so I do think having somebody move into the author space who's like kind of wait a minute, you guys, this is a business or could be a business, and this is what you do, and this is how you move, and think that way and have that kind of philosophy, I mean I think we need you is what I'm saying At least I do.

Speaker 3: 15:48

Well, you know, when you read my little thing at the beginning there, it's like my bachelor in fine arts is from an art school and then I go to a business school that is like one of the nerdiest quantitative places. All the stuff that I've it's, you know, sitting where I'm at today. You know I'm really a big believer in there's like a plan and like if you get aligned with the universe, things work out how they're supposed to. And like what I'm doing today did not exist. What you're doing today did not exist when I was making decisions about what schools to go to and what I was going to do.

Speaker 3: 16:20

But now, you know, maybe this is all me reframing it when I retell myself the story, but it's like this all lines up to how I can be really helpful in this unique space that exists now, where people are taking those daydreams that their teacher used to yell at them about when they were looking out the window in class, that like we can turn those things into cold hard cash, right, isn't that fun?

Speaker 3: 16:44

Yeah, and then if I can get you to start understanding that, um, like 90 of the business stuff is just tools and techniques, that really, when you start applying your creativity to your business when you start using your imagination, that it on on it opens up a new world of things that you can apply your creativity to right, and I really believe, as we're going to talk through today, a lot of this stuff that is going to drive the most successful businesses of the future are going to be around how authors are thinking about their business in a very different way, but they already be thinking about it as a business. Different way, but they already be thinking about it as a business.

Speaker 2: 17:24

So so one of the questions we usually ask are you know what are the road blocks that you have in your own career, that you see with the authors that you work with? But I'm actually a little bit curious, kind of more, in how are you currently seeing the changes in the industry? Because, as you mentioned, you know we talk about the good old days, the golden age of indie publishing, when you could just, you know, put out a book on how do you style jeans and a t-shirt and make $4,000 in a month, but you know.

Speaker 2: 17:56

so, going from that now to a space where I think a lot of authors are struggling, what are the changes that you're seeing in the industry over time, and where do you see that kind of moving?

Speaker 3: 18:07

Sure, sure. So I think there's two, two kind of tracks we can go on this. I think the first one to talk about is kind of personal, philosophical stuff, and then we'll talk about, like, the industry as a whole. So when I, when, when I work with authors that are that are doing real well, a lot of times what then they come to me is they've grown the business and crossed a lot of these milestones that we all think are big deals and, in our minds, are going to solve all our problems. Like if I just made this much, if I just made a hundred thousand dollars, everything would be fine. Just make a million bucks.

Speaker 3: 18:38

It's like, and they're not like. They're like this is worse. And it's like, oh well, like what? What do you like? You know I got a staff and you know I retired my husband, and like now I'm I'm waking up in the middle of the night because I got all this financial stress, and it's like, oh well, what if we stopped and and decided that the business's sole purpose was to to support the life that you want to have?

Speaker 3: 19:01

Let's not talk about money or what do you think is important in the industry? Like, what do you want? And a lot of times it's pretty I don't want to say meager, but it's just like it's more reasonable. Yeah, right, it's like, oh, we can do all that on a lot less money and you'll be happy. Yeah, okay, well, let's build the business to do that, support that.

Speaker 3: 19:24

And you know, you find when you do those kinds of things that you become more creative and you have more you know, more time to fill your well and all that stuff that's important, versus kind of a thought process that's endemic in a lot of the industry. It's like, well, I'm going to go to a show or I'm going to take a course and I'm going to learn this system and I have the expectations it's going to give me X result. I don't even know if I want X result, but people say this is what I need to do. So that big side, like part of this, is like stopping and saying I'm going to really consider what's right for me.

Speaker 3: 19:59

And the other part of this is that we're you know, the industry is not the same industry when I came into and I think, if you've listened to any of the Author Nation podcast stuff that we've done, there's a sometimes contentious conversation around what's to come and what's it supposed to look like? And when we decided on the show change, it was like I have a real hard, hard time with the idea that making this thing all about money, because I've seen a lot of people with different types of success and we get wrapped around the axle of our own messaging. It's like this is what this is only. There's only this version of success and it is piles of money falling in on you with books that you sell and it's like, well, no, there's people that are semi-retired, that are caring for aging parents, that need to have a support network for people, that are doing that kind of stuff and write two or three books a year and maybe they're making money, maybe they're breaking even, maybe they're not, but it's something that they need to do.

Speaker 1: 21:04

Like almost for their mental health.

Speaker 3: 21:06

Right, right. It's like I'm sick of changing my dad's diaper. I go and I write a book. It makes me like get my life in order.

Speaker 3: 21:14

It doesn't matter whether they make money or not. But if we're like, have this philosophy, that oh well, that's bad. If you're not like, it's not helpful, right, Because it means you're taking money from somewhere else to do this thing. And so we're hopefully, as the show, as we talk about the show, you'll see how we're trying to help people address those issues. But I think the bigger thing about this whole thing is is to say let's stop as a community and say we're going to be sane, and we're going to be sane and we're going to say what's your best life through writing. And if you say it's something that I'm going to say, you know what? That's not my idea, but I know somebody that might be able to help you, Right, yeah?

Speaker 2: 21:53

yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:54

I'm not going to judge, I'm just going to see, like okay that's not how I would do it, but I know some people that do it that way. Let's get you with those people. Does that make sense? Yes, totally, and I think you know, because the independent publishing space is fairly new in the grand scheme of things, and when people first started I like because my dad was in publishing I come from like a background of this it never occurred to me to independently publish, you know fiction, because that just wasn't a real book and that wasn't that long ago. That that's how people thought.

Speaker 3: 22:30

There's still people that think that way.

Speaker 1: 22:32

Right, yes, there is. And success then, like back then, success was having somebody agree that your book was good enough to publish, and so an agent in a publishing house. That meant you had arrived. Whether you made money or not, you had arrived because somebody agreed. Once we got into the indie space, like how do we know? How do we know if we're successful? I think it then became all about money, which, as you said, can progress into insanity because the goalposts just keeps moving. You hear about somebody who made $10,000 more than you did and all of a sudden, their books must be better than mine. It becomes this ego-driven thing that I think we have to stop, because it's just going to burn everybody out.

Speaker 2: 23:21

And it seems like it's simultaneously a little bit of a class system where you get the authors that are making the big bucks, but then you have people who have those lifestyle challenges or whatever, that kind of I don't wanna say get in the way, but that modify their abilities, and so there becomes this sort of class system and this immediate judgment based on a financial metric, when it has nothing to do with the quality of the books, it has nothing to do with the lifestyle or the goals of that person, or their motivations or their internal drivers, and all of these things too, which I think are so important to the creative professional.

Speaker 2: 24:02

I mean, we can't create if you're completely misaligned on your personal drivers and motivations and goals and all of those things. So I do, I think this, this conversation has been happening and I'm I'm enjoying it or I'm appreciating the, the complexity, but the diversity of these experiences and positions as well. So I think that's I'm glad that AuthorNation seems to be moving in that direction, which, I guess, then takes us to the next question, which is what is the, what is AuthorNation and where are we going?

Speaker 3: 24:42

Yeah. So I took the contracts, the financial obligation that Craig Martel had with the hotel. I took over that. He had signed a contract for three years and essentially what we did is we said we're going to use those contracts to create a show. That is kind of what I think we need to do right now and there was a lot of changes.

Speaker 3: 25:06

It's not just the name. We brought in a big team so that we could get a lot more voices in on this. So there's a programming committee that has I think about 12 or 13 people on it right now and it's like, why do you need so many people? It's because we're trying to get voices from all the other author communities that some didn't even know about author or 20 books. Some weren't really aligned with that philosophy. But the idea of trying to bring it together where we could get those people that are experts and say going wide to come and talk, or people that are good with other types of things like live shows, coming and talking, so bringing in like actual content.

Speaker 3: 25:53

The other thing is this idea of us I'll pose this as kind of a question Like does anybody want the industry to stay just like it is now? Not me Like, change is scary and change is like I don't know what's gonna happen. It's like what, if the option was, I could flick a switch and it stayed exactly like this the rest of our lifetimes. Like, to me, that's a much horrible outcome to be stuck in that world. Yeah, so it's going to change.

Speaker 3: 26:27

So how can I facilitate that change?

Speaker 3: 26:29

How can we, as a community, how can I build that system? How can we together, collectively, start to influence this? Right, because this whole thing is a big, complex, self-organizing system which means like, oh, it's hard to organize unless you try to do it in certain ways. Right, and if, as a community, authors start to organize in a way, to, to, to really collaborate in a good way, and then they influence their, their readership, and that readership has a place, their readership, and that readership has a place and that's another part of what we're doing with Author Nation, with Rave, is figuring out how to create a reader community Then we have a way to make sure that this thing is cool and fun and we're no longer getting trapped as sharecroppers on other people's platforms. And that's kind of my bigger picture on this and I think like it's the promised land that we have to go build Like. It's not like, oh, it's just, we just need to go over there. It's like no, we have to go there and turn it into our promised land.

Speaker 1: 27:34

So let me. But there may be listeners who have never heard of 20 bucks, which is bizarre to me, but there are. I mean, I was just talking to a group of author friends the other day. I said something about 20 bucks and they're like what's that? I'm like really. Anyway, so if you would tell our listeners the philosophy of 20 bucks, how that kind of got off the ground, and then you know, however you want to address this, but maybe what you are now doing differently, where's the pivot point? Into AuthorNation, how is AuthorNation going to be different?

Speaker 3: 28:13

Sure, yeah. So 2017 was the first 20 Books Vegas conference. Before that, there was a Facebook group that had formed around Michael Landerly and a group of authors around his idea. He had come up with this idea, if he could, and it was just kind of like his goal. Like it wasn't like a manifesto, it was just this thing like hey, if I wrote 20 books and they made this much per day, I'd get to 50K and that would be like this retirement strategy he had right, which is really interesting when you think about what we were talking about. So initially it was just like, hey, I just want to make some side money so I can go hang out and fish. Yeah, good goal. He got into this and like he saw this big opportunity. Now he's running a multimillion dollar publishing business, right, so like, yeah, two really important messages there. Right, it's like hey, this was founded on something very different than what it kind of coalesced around. And two, along the way, people change their minds on what they want, and that's okay too, right, yeah. So like, look at all the messages.

Speaker 3: 29:21

That conference became a way to kind of get the people that were in that group together and they never thought it was going to turn into what it did. But you know, when I was at that very first one, I'd never experienced anything like that, where people kind of came together and were helping each other to figure things out. They were sharing ways to do things, they were talking about different methodologies and, because of Craig's background as a business consultant, he brought people like me in to be very focused on, like, this is a business, right, and I think that's for an author thinking oh well, I just want to write and if I can make some money, that's awesome. It's like okay, let me reframe it to you in a different way. You're choosing to go into a very saturated market with a startup business with an unproven product. That's a startup, indie author, right. And I can tell you a whole litany of things. It doesn't matter what the business is. If you're deciding to go into a mature market with no proven product and you've never done this before I can give you a whole list of things that you should probably get right or prepare for so that you don't fail before you even get a chance to be successful, because most businesses fail because they run out of money, right? So what would we do to do that? So that was kind of that was really different messaging at an author conference Guys like me talking and other folks that were there talking about protecting your intellectual property. That grew to be last year 1800 people live and 680 people virtual the biggest author conference, in both cases by far.

Speaker 3: 31:11

Um, and as we discussed earlier, craig and michael decided to exit out of that I've taken it over and it was an agreement that the, the branding wasn't going to continue and that was a mutual thing because I I felt it was really important and you know maybe I'm reading too much meaning into it. But, like when we're talking about all the stuff that's changing, the fact that this really important show that has helped so many people be successful is now going through its own transformation, I think is kind of metaphorical for the industry. So I hope that you know what we're executing will deliver on. Here's a place where you can come and we can ask hard questions. We can be adults about talking about through those, because we're not all going to agree on what those ideas are Now getting into kind of specifics of like what we're really changing.

Speaker 3: 32:03

That's going to be obvious for somebody that hasn't been or has been to the show. We're looking at three specific tracks across seven domains of knowledge. So a pre-published explorer is somebody that hasn't ever written a book. They want to. They may have gotten it written, but they're coming there to kind of figure it all out. Our idea is to help those people answer those last questions they need so they can go home and press publish. Then we have this next group and this is all based on the statistics of the show over the years. We did.

Speaker 3: 32:39

All this analysis Is the you know, the folks that are published but aren't necessarily profitable yet and helping them to look across those domains of craft and marketing and figuring out what it is that they need to focus their attention on to get to profitability and understand that sometimes it's just patience and time right.

Speaker 3: 33:02

That's the thing that's not really been talked about at the previous show. It's like sometimes we all forget that the overnight success took seven years Right and to have the time to find your voice and to find your audience right. So one of the guys we're going to have speaking is a guy named Joe Pulizzi Comes completely out of the industry. He's coming to speak. He wrote a book, content Inc. He's been doing content marketing for 24 years and he has developed content marketing strategies for all these different industries John Deere, doctors, all kinds of stuff and one of those big points is like it takes 18 to 24 months to develop an audience in one single medium, so like if he was going into, say, an email marketing thing or a magazine. Where else do you hear that? Like you just think, well, I suck. I put out a book and nothing happens. Like what?

Speaker 2: 34:02

or, or I think almost worse is well, I gotta do everything perfectly all the time, across all the different streams, in order to be successful. And when that doesn't happen in three months or six months and that's you're being patient then you know right, right, right and then I obviously failed.

Speaker 3: 34:22

Yeah, and so we'll have people talking about that and saying like, oh, we can get this knowledge from other places to understand. That's great Things that are for somebody like him really obvious. Like well, you, just it just takes this long. And that's when you focus all your energy like a laser into one channel To your point. You know, if you spread it across five channels, they're all like just creeping up versus like cracking that one audience. Yeah. So yeah, that's the. I think I answered your question.

Speaker 1: 34:54

You did, you did, yeah. And then there was a third track which you did not mention yet.

Speaker 3: 35:00

So then we have our third track, which is folks that are profitable and they're just kind of trying to figure out what's next, and I think this gets to kind of this bigger theme is that a lot of times we used to come to these shows and it would be well. What do I do? Like, what's the new best practices? So show me how I knew to run my Facebook ads, or show me this, and I think the industry's mature to the point is that anything like those types of things that you learn their efficacy drops off really quick, because as they're shared and everyone does that, then it becomes the new me right. Like so we've seen that happen a gazillion times. That's not going to stop. We've seen that happen a gazillion times. That's not going to stop.

Speaker 3: 35:44

What I hope we start doing and this is stuff that we've talked about and you guys were talking about with Kevin Tumlinson on previous episodes it's like what is it that you're trying to do with your intellectual property and your audience? Like? These are our two guiding principles you need to have intellectual property that people want right, and you need to have an audience that's prepared to buy that right, and you need to own both of those things. If you're renting them, then you don't have a business, right? So, just like we rent our audience from some platforms, they rent their content from us. So don't ever forget that You've got power in this relationship.

Speaker 3: 36:26

But my point is is that, with everything that's going to change, right, like, the way I think about this is, with how this phase of what we're going in, with just general industry turmoil, whatever we're going to go a seismic shift with technology, with AI and I'm not just talking about books, it's just like it's going to make, it's going to change the world. And for those of us not you, because you guys are much younger than me, but, like for those of us that went through something like the internet, like, saw that, like, if you went back to 1990 and you looked at who you thought was going to win that game and what that game was going to look, like you'd have missed the boat. You're going to be completely different. So let's not worry about that. Let's not worry about how that's going to turn out, let's just worry about as this stuff all happens.

Speaker 3: 37:17

We're focused on those two things Awesome content, audience as close as humanly possible to me, right? Because then what can I do with that. Well, when some dude in his garage uses AI to invent some entirely new medium for storytelling that no one ever thought of, which will probably happen, we can go pile into that with our audience and our IP and make money Right. So I'm really excited about where this goes. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, not gonna say we're not gonna make mistakes, but if we get the big trend right on this and we stay focused on something like oh what, you're not really.

Speaker 2: 37:53

You're not really a writer, hate to break it to you, you're in the experience, selling business okay yeah, I I think that I love that the, the you know best content you can possibly create, or the best story, the best work, and combining that with finding your audience and keeping them close.

Speaker 2: 38:13

I that that my mind's blown because that is so key, and I think that's where a lot of us are sort of struggling through this transition right now, because historically, you know, yeah, you just put your book up on Amazon or Kobo or wherever you sell it, right, you go to these other platforms and you sell your book and the gap between you and your audience was pretty far and I don't know for me personally, I've come to realize that I want that closer relationship. I want to give readers more of an experience. I want to hear from them as well. So, how do you incorporate? That, I think, is such a good question for authors going forward what kind of? Where are you in the stack? What formats or mediums or places do you enjoy? How do you find your readers there and then keep them close? I really, really like that concept because I think that is the AI proof model in a way, because it's about you and it's about the experience and not about necessarily just the words on the page.

Speaker 3: 39:26

Yeah, you know, I think that we can get really distracted by some of the bugaboos that are out there. I'm not saying they're not true and they're not a possibility. I just think that when you start to think about how, what again? This gets back to how we can manage this whole thing, right, so how, how am I using the show to do that? Well, if we're going to have content to talk about this stuff, we're going to have these conversations and we're going to have innovation. Right, this, the stuff that you guys are going to be what sets you on that path? Right, that makes you decide. You know what.

Speaker 3: 40:08

I was really afraid of doing this live show thing, but I decided I'm going to double down and do live shows, because this is one of the crazy things. If we went back just two or three years and you went to a lot of romance writers and you said, well, what's your big problem? My readers, they're just reading Kindle and they're getting older, they're all dying, so they would never think that there's going to be an audience of young romance readers coming in who want to buy physical products, right, you see what's going on with a lot of these book shows where people are coming and buying hundreds of dollars worth of books and getting them signed, and they're buying special editions. It's like, oh, here we go, like this isn't just about the reading experience, like a lot of those books they're never going to read, they don't even want to crack this, they're just going to like fawn over it and put it on the shelf. That's the experience, right, that becomes part of something.

Speaker 3: 41:06

You know I was talking with Johnny Truant and Kevin about this is this whole idea of, like, ownership of the brand, like people identify themselves with your brand. Their construct of how they think about themselves is determined by the clothes they wear and the car they drive and the phone that they carry, books they read and the shows they watch. And when you lean into that, marketing becomes fun and easy, right. And if you decide to say, well, you know what, I'm going to give this a shot, and you figure out, oh, now I'm so close to my fans I can touch them at a show. That's a big deal. So I know I went off a little tangent there, but I hopefully no, no, no.

Speaker 1: 41:53

That's a really good point. So, practically speaking, I'd just like to get your feedback on this. I met a person who will go unnamed I can't remember their name anyway, so it's really easy to not name them told me that they wrote a book with their AI on the way to 20 bucks. They edited with their AI on the way to 20 bucks. They had their AI cover designer create 20 something covers. When they pulled into the parking lot they picked a cover and published and so in a couple hours and you know, that's every author's nightmare, every, I would say, writing author like author who does it the way that we've always done it, where you sit down and you type, and it's everybody's nightmare. And if that kind of thing is coming down the pike like, would you guys, would Author Nation, look at that as well? If that's the kind of thing you want to do over here is, of course, on how to do that, or would that be like no, let's throw rotten tomatoes.

Speaker 3: 43:19

No, no, no, we're not. Like I said before, we want, in my perfect world, if we were having a panel on AI. Everyone that's on that panel should be prepared to argue the other person's side and do it in a civil way, right? And I want to go touch on this AI thing because I think a lot of what people are concerned about is already here and it's not relevant.

Speaker 3: 43:43

So the fact that somebody has chosen that that's going to be their business model, for their business where I start to have a problem with that is if they're being inauthentic and saying, well, I'm writing all these books. I know a lot of people that use ghostwriters or use tools like this to augment their business, and as long as they're being honest or not making it their big issue, then I don't think that's my business to get into and I think that if I stay in my lane and I focus on my customers and my content, that's what I have control over and that's when I can win the idea that there's going to be this flood of books. Spoiler alert that already happened. Yeah, just in the time that I've been in this industry, the titles on Amazon has doubled every three years. Yeah, it's scary how fast, right. The good thing is sort of good. Bad is that the market sorts through that really quick, right. Sort of good. Bad is that the market sorts through that really quick, right. So I trust that the market will figure out what good and bad is. Now here's the thing I would have everyone to think through on the whole AI front. If there is an audience that is completely comfortable with books that are 100% created through an automated process, the guys that you have to worry about in that aren't this person that you met at the show? It's Amazon, because if I was a senior VP at Amazon and I could see that I could get rid of all of you and just take all the content that I have on these customers, which I have all of it and all of these books, and they have the money and the capacity to design their own model that none of us could compete with. That means that KU is gone for everybody.

Speaker 3: 45:33

Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about a dystopian apocalypse for authors. That's a version to consider. Are you protected against that? Because, if you know, here's the other thing is the person you talked about. There still needs to be a human in that loop that can stay on top of trends and can stay there always has to be a human that's guiding that process and making sure they're hitting tropes and doing what, or again the market will sort it out. Hitting tropes and doing what, or again the market will sort it out. So I'm not concerned that AI is going to be the end, all be all.

Speaker 3: 46:15

I also think if you're a mediocre author, like you're not actually working on your craft and making that a core part of your growth process, ai can only get you up to the mean, right If you which may be an improvement, sorry, but like for some people right, but like that same tool in the hands of somebody that's a good writer is going to make them an excellent, productive writer, right?

Speaker 3: 46:38

My analogy with this is if you gave a $1,000 driver to me to play golf with, and I suck, all I'm going to do with that thing is I'm going to knock it further into the woods faster. You give that same driver to Tiger Woods, he's going to put 60 yards on the ball and it's going to be closer to the hole. So it's a tool, and whose hands it's in determines how evil it becomes or how the ball, and it's going to be closer to the hole. So it's a tool, and whose hands it's in determines how evil it becomes or how good or bad it's used. So I would just caution authors not to waste a lot of cycles fretting over that part of the AI thing. I would be thinking about how can I use AI tools to help me better research my audience, make me productive in areas where I don't necessarily want to do the work.

Speaker 1: 47:28

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 47:28

Right.

Speaker 1: 47:29

Book blurbs yeah, getting help with book blurbs I 100% agree with you. And I also agree with you that just things like bots when they first started, in the very beginning, you know you're getting these people who are trying to sign up for your Facebook page and they've got little photos or they've got a page, and in the beginning we all thought they were real people. That lasted for about two months and then it was like we can all spot a bot from a mile away. It's just, you know, they're all over the place and they've become a nuisance. They're kind of like the mosquitoes of social media. So I'm not as worried about it either. I just wanted to hear your take on that.

Speaker 3: 48:13

It's like yeah, I think you know where I'm really focused and this gets back. Kind of the core mission of this thing is like let's talk about where we want to take the industry. Kind of the core mission of this thing is like let's let's talk about where we want to take the industry, not where these other companies want us to go Right.

Speaker 1: 48:26

I like, I really like that yeah.

Speaker 3: 48:28

Right, is it going to be harder? Yeah, do you want to have control over your destiny? Right, like, let's have it where. Like you know, the the children we raise here you and I screwed up together. It wasn't our nanny that did it. So my whole idea is that let's guide this, let's think this thing through, and when I boil things down to basic principles, it's like well, what do we need to build AuthorNation on? Well, we need to build the strong community of like-minded authors that are thinking that way. There's going to be some people that don't think this way. There's going to be those scammer folks. They're going to go do their own mastermind somewhere else and do all kinds of black hat tactics, stuff. They're around. Then what can we do to bring a reader community around that? So one of the other things that's with the show that's changing is we've always had the reader author Vegas event on the last day. We're increasing the size of that and we're focusing on actively getting more readers there, because then that the more like, do you have enough readers.

Speaker 2: 49:35

No, I don't. I've got an author that's like nah, nah, nah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 49:43

So how, how, how, let, let me, let me build that community and and thinking about it, from that like, oh, we're just bringing you in here so we can show you books, no, let's make it for a fun place for people that love the act of listening or the act of reading, and bring them together so they can find their own people and bring this group together in a way that's outside of all of these other people that are trying to turn us into their products.

Speaker 1: 50:16

Yeah, I really like that. Yeah, it's kind of like the resurgence of the small, privately owned bookstore. You know there is a resurgence of that because people like that community. They like the community, they want to walk in, they want to feel the book they want. You know, every Friday night there's an author there talking and signing books. They want to feel a part of that and it's almost like Author Nation is doing that on a big scale. So I love that.

Speaker 3: 50:45

Yeah, I think we're trying to make it so that you can maximize the utility of the show. Like, I mean, it's going to be a long week, right. You come there, you talk to vendors we have all the vendors there and spend time with them. You learn stuff, you get to hang out with your homies and talk shop and share ideas, and then you got to put your author face on and be in front of authors if you decide you're going to be part, or in front of readers if you decide you're going to do that Long, long time.

Speaker 3: 51:11

But, like, if we can get it where you come off of that show with a lot of objectives achieved and that just now allows you to go back and do the things you need to do to nurture that audience, implement those ideas, then we've got something that's really really special and different and that's like, for me, I love this challenge. It's to be able to take something like this that had this great foundation and say, okay, it served its purpose and you know, now it's this new time, it just needs a little bit of adjustment and a little bit of bringing some other people in to get it so that it's set for the next three to five years, right.

Speaker 2: 51:54

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 51:55

Because who knows how long this cycle will be? It's true.

Speaker 2: 51:59

So one of the things that we teach is we teach authors how to write a tagline for their author business, and it starts with a mission statement and then a tagline. So I'm curious, and I'm kind of putting you on the spot here a little bit, but do you have a mission statement or tagline, like a one or two sentence thing, to sum up what AuthorNation will be?

Speaker 3: 52:21

Yeah, we're here to help you find your best life through writing, like that was on the first slide that came up when we put the logo up. I mean, I'm a real big believer and you have to understand your brand promise, because if you don't understand that, how do you infuse it into the books and into your marketing? Right, because whatever my first touch is, I need to get a taste of that and be like it smells like cinnamon and I like cinnamon, right. So then you start moving in. It's like, oh yeah, this is going to be a buttery cinnamon cookie. I love them, right. And then I bite into it and it's like peanuts. Like that's where things go wrong with a brand. It's like you were telling me about butter and cinnamon and not peanuts. And I think that when you start doing that stuff, you know coming with that tagline and honoring yourself I think that's where a lot of authors they come like.

Speaker 3: 53:16

Megan told me I had to have one, so I made it. It's around here somewhere. Where is it? Yeah, yeah, if it's, you know, if I can't sniff it out in the first line of your book, then fail.

Speaker 2: 53:27

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 53:30

I also think that what you're doing is the philosophy is very much, think about, step back and think about yourself as an author and where you want to go. Because a lot of writers don't, especially in the beginning. They think about their book or their book series and everything is about those characters in that world. Because that's the way writers think, their imagination, people and they forget that they are the person behind that and they may write more series and they will hopefully write more books, and so it's like, what is what you just said? What is your brand promise? Because I want my readers to know that, whether it's a more domestic suspense or it's a funnier lightly, I call them the lighter side of death mysteries On this side, you know it's still a Greta Boris book, that there's something about that book. Now, you may like one flavor of my ice cream better than another flavor of my ice cream, but I'm still Ben and Jerry's.

Speaker 3: 54:32

Exactly exactly.

Speaker 1: 54:33

The quality of the ice cream is there.

Speaker 3: 54:36

Yeah, and that becomes. You know there's phases in how this thing escalates right In the beginning. It's helping them to get entry into your product right, because you know there's phases in how this thing escalates right In the beginning. It's helping them to get entry into your product right, because you know I've talked about this in the books I've written and the whole idea of this barrier to entry and exit In the beginning a lot of readers would rather read a book they've already read than read a new book because it's so funny to me. Well, but it isn't. When you think about the transaction of time.

Speaker 2: 55:03

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 55:04

Right. It's like I know if I do this with my time, I'm going to get the experience I was expecting. If I try, if I set aside this time and I go read a book I don't have an author, I don't know, like, then there's a high. I've had a lot of opportunity to be disappointed and so I don't want to have that happen again, so I'll just do this. But if you do get them over that and that's become where the brand promise or your tagline comes into this whole idea, it's like oh, that sounds interesting to me, I'll give it a shot. And they read that first sentence. It gets them to the paragraph, to the page, to the chapter.

Speaker 3: 55:39

Right Now the book's selling itself and now that becomes a barrier to exit. Now they're like oh well, I like Greta Boris. I'm not even really looking at what the book is. I know it's going to be close enough for government work for what I like, and they buy it just on that, right. But that takes time to develop and of course, in that process, if you're a startup and you're finding your voice, so it's a little wonky, right. The product, that's okay, you'll get there. You have to write like that's the crazy thing about this industry is being able to like write books and sell them to people and I'm like, oh yeah, but there's something there, I'm going to read the next one. Right, and then they become a big fan. I think that there's not many places you can learn on the job like that.

Speaker 1: 56:29

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I do love the idea of the three tracks.

Speaker 1: 56:33

I think that really helps because, especially with a really large conference, people can come in. A new person coming in can get so lost. Where do I? And then you can. You know I mean everything costs money the conference, the airfare, the hotel, the food and you can end up wasting the first several days of your conference because you're not exactly sure where you want to go. So I heard you talking on another podcast, one of our favorites, the Wish I'd Known them podcast, that little shout out about how Lulu has developed a product, a notebook, that you're going to be giving people that will help guide them. I love this idea. Why don't you just tell us about this a little bit?

Speaker 3: 57:21

Yeah. So the idea is, you know and there's more to this whole thing and again, like, please bear with me, this is all an experiment. This is how I work. Things will go wrong, I promise. If it's really bad I'll apologize and we'll. But like the idea is like we talked about the tracks and we have the programming. But like the idea is like we talked about the tracks and we have the programming.

Speaker 3: 57:45

This notebook, you know, if you're like me, you come away from most shows just overwhelmed with ideas. And the notebook is designed in a way and we're just finishing up the design of it where it helps you to consolidate your learning during the show, like understanding the questions that you want to get answered. That's a big part of this is what questions should I be asking to get the answers for? For me, like, if I'm early starting, like what are the different technologies I need to evaluate? At the end of the show there'll be a process to consolidate that down to actionable items. So you know what you're going to need to get published, what you need to think to get profitable and then, like the larger group of people, like what you're doing to take your business to where you want it to go next. Right, that's going to be very that'll be varied. Now.

Speaker 3: 58:37

We just started implementing a virtual community and the idea of what we're doing with the virtual community is that the different regions will be incentivized for the people in their group that come home from the show to achieve those goals.

Speaker 3: 58:56

So 100 people in this region come back and say you know, I'm looking to get published by the end of this, by the next show.

Speaker 3: 59:06

The percentage of those that get published will rank against each other and we will allocate scholarship money to the regions that do the best job. So we're trying to have a way that, like we have folks like Damon Courtney at BookFunnel, who's very generous and you know, donates a lot of money to have people come to the show. How does that money get doled out will be based on how these local communities support each other. So the whole idea is is that the program and the notebook, like the program helps you pick what to do in the notebook. The notebook helps you consolidate down what you're trying to do and then you come home and you share this with your people you met at the show and people in your region. You say this is what I'm trying to do is support each other. Those of you that achieve the most will then drive next year more money into your region to get more new people, or people that can't afford to come to the show, to go to the show.

Speaker 1: 1:00:07

Oh, I love that, that's great. That's really wonderful, a lot of moving parts.

Speaker 3: 1:00:10

We're figuring it out as we go. We're still looking for some folks to be regional managers in this whole process. This is the way my brain works is putting all these systems in place, and then we'll optimize them as we go along so that we have a way to affect the change we want. Again, rolling back big thing Shows about finding your best life through writing and us being able to influence how the market works. This becomes a mechanism for us to do that.

Speaker 2: 1:00:48

That's great. Well, we actually went way over time. I did not want to stop this conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:00:53

She just ignored it.

Speaker 2: 1:00:57

I did Sorry, no, no, no, we kept asking you more and more questions. It was just such a good.

Speaker 1: 1:01:03

I mean, I just have to say one thing. I tell you, we have this conversation today, the concept of hey, get the authors together, we don't have to be victims of big publishing, of Amazon, of anybody. Not that they're trying to victimize us, I'm not trying but I'm just saying that we can and should influence the direction of our own industry. For goodness sake. I just I mean, that's just a fabulous concept. I just love that.

Speaker 3: 1:01:35

Well, we're suckers. We're suckers for this. We fall for it every time. The playbook that's being run at TikTok right now has been run on us before and that will be run on us again. They are using us to create an audience that they can monetize, and the bizarre thing is that they end up charging us to pay to get to that audience that we help them build, and it doesn't matter and this gets back. I know we're supposed to wrap up, but this, I think, is really important us to pay to get to that audience that we helped them build. And it doesn't matter. There isn't. This is, and this gets back. I know we're supposed to wrap up, but this, I think, is really important.

Speaker 3: 1:02:07

This is what I saw back in 2017 at the show is that it doesn't matter how big Disney gets. It doesn't matter how big Amazon gets. They don't create content. They may be a great distributor of it, they may be willing to pay through the nose for it, but it's folks like us, folks like the indie community, that are going to build this iconic stuff that's going to change the world and make people tattoo it on themselves, not some guy sitting over at Amazon Prime. Yeah, he'll write a check for it, but he's not going to invent it.

Speaker 3: 1:02:41

So how can we start to understand that power, right? Because it's very, very simple what they do when they run up one of these platforms. They want to have a lot of big people on there, but none of them so big that if they lost them it would hurt the platform. And they want to have a massive long tail of people that hope that they can someday be the guy on the top of the pile. And when they get that, we're all stuck in the plantation again. We have to stop it, right, because they need us, they need our content. Going to be a lot of work and hard you having that one-to-one relationship and being able to aggregate that bigger audience to your platform. We just have to do that work, and I don't know what all that work is, but we're going to figure it out at AuthorNation.

Speaker 1: 1:03:33

Good, because I need to know yeah for sure. Absolutely. Why don't you tell listeners because now I'm sure they're just dying to run and find out more about AuthorNation where they can find out all these things?

Speaker 3: 1:03:51

Sure, so if you go to AuthorNationlive, you'll go right to our page to get your ticket. We have a live ticket for the show in Vegas. That's the 11th through the 15th of November. We also have a digital ticket. We have a live ticket for the show in Vegas. That's the 11th through the 15th of November. We also have a digital ticket. That is not a live stream, it's just to get access to the videos. But it's for those folks that are in different budget and can't attend Stan being in Las Vegas. We've got an option for you. Yeah, yeah, that's the place to go. There's a spot there. If you're not really sure, you're kind of Author Nation, curious but not committed then just sign up for our newsletter and you'll get a lot of information and we'll get you into the community and you'll get to start experiencing what we're trying to do here.

Speaker 1: 1:04:37

And you have a podcast as well, where people can listen to more conversations like this.

Speaker 3: 1:04:42

Yeah, yeah, and Kevin is kind of the voice of the nation. He opens up most of our podcasts and does a lot of the interviews, but what we're doing is we're going around the United States because you know I'm an American, so it's like the world centers around us, but so like that's the nation Sorry, bigoted American. But yeah, we've gone around and we're actually, when we go and like we're going to be in Cleveland in a couple of weeks and then we're going to be in Raleigh, we'll meet with locals there and we basically rent out a studio and hang out, because the power of getting two or three authors together just talking about this stuff, what happens off mic and on mic becomes so powerful, and I think it's the essence of what we're trying to do here.

Speaker 1: 1:05:25

Well, that's really great and we will have all those links in the show notes To all you listeners. If you are curious about this whole thing we were talking about brand we do have a free seven-day course on our website you can go. It's called Seven Days to Clarity Uncover your author, brand or something really close to that.

Speaker 2: 1:05:49

Author purpose it's author purpose. Author purpose Uncover your author purpose.

Speaker 1: 1:05:53

I knew it was close to that. Anyway, you can grab that at authorrealcom slash stuff and also, if you enjoyed this show and conversations like we are having, we would really appreciate it if you'd buy us a cup of coffee. Your $3 a month or whatever you can afford really helps us keep the lights on, pay the editor and get these amazing people like Joe Solari that come and educate us. So that link is also in the show notes. Until next time, keep your stories rolling.