EP24: Joelle Hann, the Brooklyn Book Doctor, on The Fourth Trimester and Writing Your Book

This episode is a whole lot of fun. I hope that those of you with book dreams still have them by the end of it, because I hysterically laugh talking about so many parts of the my book writing process, that kind of play out like a blooper roll. But Joelle is a master. She knows how to escavate the soul of a book and make you a better writer in the process. If you want to write a book, my number one piece of advice is find an incredibly editor and stay with them from start to finish. This episode is like pulling back the curtain of the whole process from idea to publication.

What Joelle Shares:

• The story of how Kimberly and Joelle met and how Joelle’s role in The Fourth Trimester (spoiler alert: she edited my book proposal which got me a publisher)
• The most successful writers that Joelle works with are the ones who understand where their book fits in their system and their world
• What you need to write your first book
• Why you need a book proposal for yourself and to be able to sell your book- your proposal is your road map

What You’ll Hear:

• When Kimberly tells Joelle to leave her job (6:33)
• Joelle decides to leave her job at a textbook publishing company (7:30)
• The process of writing a book proposal and editing A LOT (9:40)
• Dumpster analogy (10:30)
• Joelle comes to Rio from New York to walk Kimberly through final steps of completing the book proposal (11:20)
• How you situate a book in a market and why you need to (15:40)
• When you are not a writer and you are writing a book (16:15)
• Knowing how your book fits in the world and your world (17:25)
• False beliefs about what happens when you write a book and how publishing works (18:35)
• Monopolization of publishing in the big 5 (25:40)
• What you need to write a book and the investment (27:45)
• The dream coming true of writing a book (31:40)
• Getting out of the coma of individual suffering (33:05)
• Developing an idea, expressing yourself, and taking the reader on a journey (36:10)
• Birth of an author (36:20)
• Romantic relationship with your editor (39:50)
• Joelle’s loyalty is always to the book and what the book wants to be (40:25)
• The idea has to be in place and the idea has to be true, and then the structure happens (41:30)
• Why do you need a book proposal (43:30)
• What a book proposal includes- its purpose for the author and its purpose for an agent or publisher (45:30)
• The “Who You Slept With” part of the book proposal (48:30)
• Writing a proposal that someone wants to buy (52:20)
• Use your drive to make a difference in the world through your book
• Joelle’s favorite book project, Happier Now