#AmWriting

Struggling to put a price on your time? Jess and Sarina (an economist and former trader on Wall Street) help your find that elusive number. A listener asked Jess for advice on consulting fees, so in order to find an answer more satisfying than, “It depends,” Jess and Sarina get down to economic brass tacks. Sarina explains how publishers or anyone else who wants to hire you for your writing value your time, and how you can propose a figure that takes everything from opportunity costs to fungibles into account. In an attempt to make pricing your time less complicated and emotionally fraught, Jess offers a simple formula to nail down a number that represents your hourly worth. Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, January 20, 2020 is ONE OF THE BEST YET: Top 5 Ways to Win at Newsletter Subject Lines. So sign up, support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. (If you’re on KJ’s mailing list and have been impressed by her style lately—she read this early and took it to heart.)As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: MasterClass and The Collected Schizophrenias Esmé Weijun Wang (and her Twitter feed)Sarina: The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan StradalThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, where January is Become a Book Coach Month. Sign up for mighty and wondrous Business of Book Coaching Summit here—or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.NEWS ABOUT USWatch KJ’s latest in the #BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut series on Instagram HERE. Find more about Jess here and Sarina here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by TKTranscript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey writers, it's KJ this week. Jess and Sarina recorded without me, but you'll barely even have a chance to miss me because I'm both right here and back next week. While they recorded I was off to a hockey tournament in Ottawa, but it didn't mean I wasn't writing. You have heard me talk about Jennie Nash's Inside Outline before and this was the tool that's really pushed me through a tough novel writing spot and has me feeling like I'm able to move forward, even if the muse is not present and mine definitely doesn't do Canada. Even if the hotel is depressing, and the weather is dreary, and I'm really not feeling it. Because I know where this book and I are going, I can still sit down and at least nudge us both in the direction of getting there. And if things change along the way, as they do, and have, and will, I can see where those changes fit in and what will happen when I make them. In fact, for this book (at least as it stands now) I've written about 17 outlines, which is a whole lot better than 17 books. So, if you're feeling the least bit stuck on your project, try applying the inside outline to what you've already written and to the scenes to come. It just might be exactly what you need to get over the finish line. #AmWriting listeners have exclusive access to a free download that describes what the outline is, why it works, and how to do it. You can find it at authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?Jess:                                     01:36                    Now it's recording. Go ahead.KJ:                                        01:37                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     01:41                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        01:43                    Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Now one, two, three.Jess:                                     01:54                    Hey, I'm Jess Lahey and this is #AmWriting. The podcast about writing, about querying, about pitching, about what else? What else do we write here?Sarina:                                 02:05                    Finishing.Jess:                                     02:06                    Finishing things. That seems like such a long way off. Finishing things, but essentially really this is just the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done.Sarina:                                 02:18                    I'm Sarina Bowen and I'm the author of 30-odd romance novels and you can find more of my work at sarinabowen.com.Jess:                                     02:25                    And again, I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book, The Addiction Inoculation, Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence coming out in spring of 2021 and a book I'm not ready to talk about, but I'm already researching for the year after that. And KJ you may have noticed is not here today. She's at a hockey tournament. So it's just Jess and Sarina today talking about a near and dear to Sarina's heart in particular since she has the background in economics. And one that makes me want to throw up sometimes - about your value, getting paid, how much you get paid, how much you quote, how you ask people, how you value your time. It came up because in this month's Poets and Writers is an article called Finance 101 for Writers. And part of that article included a worksheet for valuing your time and I took a picture of it and I texted it to you and I said, 'This does not seem right to me.'Sarina:                                 03:39                    Yes and I had harsher words for it.Jess:                                     03:42                    Okay, so essentially what this worksheet (by the way, I will say that the new issue of Poets and Writers, I guess the November, December, 2019 has some fantastic articles in it) I'm not dissing the magazine, but I am dissing the worksheet, but let's talk about it as a starting place. The worksheet itself asks you to figure out your expenses, and how much your life costs, and therefore how much your time is worth based on what your life costs, like what you would have to make per hour in order to justify spending an hour on something other than, I don't know, your main job or writing an article that can get you paid or whatever the thing is. And what's the problem with that?Sarina:                                 04:26                    Well, the problem is that somebody who lives in an inexpensive rural place is always going to, according to this worksheet anyway, price themselves down. And that's because there's a cost that the sheet is not picking up and it's pretty much our entire discussion here, which is opportunity costs.Jess:                                     04:44                    What is an opportunity cost, Ms. Economy?Sarina:                                 04:47                    Well, it's the term for exactly what it sounds like, which is what is the cost of what you're not doing in order to do the thing you're trying to price.Jess:                                     04:56                    Right, which is something I was thinking about yesterday as I was not editing my manuscript. Because if I hand in my edited manuscript, I will get the next installment of my payment from my advance, from my book. And instead I was cleaning up my Twitter stream, cleaning up my follows, and all that sort of stuff on Twitter.Sarina:                                 05:18                    So, opportunity cost of zero there, right?Jess:                                     05:20                    Exactly.Sarina:                                 05:20                    But also I have the benefit of having worked on Wall Street for 12 years. Where I was a trader of derivatives and everything there is really calculable. So it's one of the only careers where you can see on a day to day basis how much money you've made for the firm. And how valuable you are. Now also, that number isn't as measurable as it appears because some of that is franchise value. Like a monkey sitting in your chair could make a certain baseline amount and your real value is how much more than a monkey, you know. Anyway.Jess:                                     05:55                    So it's sort of like monkey plus Sarina.Sarina:                                 06:01                    But the thing about that culture is that you're always measurable at any moment and you're not afraid to measure it. Like you can see on the page, Hey, I made $7 million trading this year, so my bonus should look like some fraction of $7 million. But of course that's not how it works. The goal (somebody told me early on) was for management to pay you exactly the minimum that you'll accept without walking out the door to go someplace else. And if you think about it, book advances are just the same. So if your publisher is saying yes to your book or they're going to make an offer on your book, they're going to run a P and L first. Like how big is a market for this book? How much do we think we could possibly make on it?Jess:                                     06:50                    Which is why that section in your proposal, if you're writing, for example, as I do a nonfiction proposal, it's really important to say, here are the books that are out there, here's how my book stacks up, here's why I'm the uniquely perfect person to write this book, and here's how that will affect sales of this book.Sarina:                                 07:06                    Right. And if your agent is paying attention, she'll help you pick comps that performed. Because if you pick loser titles, then that doesn't work out.Jess:                                     07:15                    Actually, in my proposal, I had both winners and losers because I want to show how I'm different from one of those losers because they're going to find it. It's not like if I don't tell them about it, they won't know about it.Sarina:                                 07:27                    Right, yeah okay. So then it's their job just like on wall street to pick a number. That 1- they think they won't lose money. Like if we pay you $100,000 advance then are we going to lose our shirts, but also to pay you just $1 more than the next best bid.Jess:                                     07:47                    So in the conversation we're having now, just to sort of guide you through this conversation, at first we're talking about what your writing is worth for example, to a publisher. I also want to have a conversation about as a writer, how I decide, for example, what my speaking fee or my consulting fee because sometimes that comes up. If you write nonfiction, as I do, and you become an expert in something, people may come to you and say, 'Hi, we would like to buy your time.' And that seems to be the really wiggly part of this because I talked to my husband last night (he was recently asked to be a consultant for someone) and I said, 'How did you value your time?' And he said, 'Well, I went to someone at the hospital and asked what the going rate was for a physician on this topic and they told me.' And I said, 'Well, here's the thing, I'm going to have to come up with a number and I have nowhere to turn.' And it seems really relative to me, not only relative based on myself, but based on who's asking. So it's not like with a publisher where I say for example, my publisher, Harper Collins, and I don't have to worry about how much money they have. They have a pot of money to pay their authors. And I don't question how much money Harper Collins has, but I do question, for example, if I'm going to pitch my services to a for profit company versus a nonprofit company, or a school versus a private individual who can fly me somewhere and it's not going to make a huge dent, so that's why I think for writers in particular, plus so many of us just feel so darn grateful that we get to write words and make any money for it, that suddenly all these weird value judgements, and shame, and undervaluing ourselves comes into it. Which is why I'm so jealous of the whole, here's how much I made for the firm and here's the very basic, the bottom level of what you can pay me without me walking out the door. Because that's a big question mark for so many places and why it's been such a relief to hand the negotiation for my speaking stuff over to an agent, who has some of that background information about what organization's budget is before. So anyway, let's talk about that a little bit.Sarina:                                 10:04                    So I have a response to a couple of those things. And one is that yes, I will cheerfully speak at a Romance Writers of America conference for 150 bucks or whatever because I know that they just don't pay up for speakers and I'm going to get something else out of going there. The Goodwill of my fellow authors and maybe I'll learn something as well. So there are those moments when you just put aside your time calculation, but because you've chosen to.Jess:                                     10:36                    Right. For example, I will be speaking next year at South by Southwest EDU and South by Southwest/South by Southwest EDU, they don't pay. They just don't, no one gets paid. I was their big marquee keynote and I did not get paid. They put me up for one night, but that's sort of understood. There are certain places - you're not going to get paid to do TED, you're not going to get paid to do South by Southwest. There are just certain places that just do not pay. Hello, that's just sort of part of it.Sarina:                                 11:07                    Right. And we make those choices anyway. And that's why also if you've been asked to write a blog post for $100, you have to look at who's asking, right? Like, Nancysblog.com. You know, maybe you won't be able to say yes to that, but if it's the New York Times or the Atlantic who's asking, there might be other reasons why you would want to say yes.Jess:                                     11:32                    And it's funny you say $150 because when I started writing at the New York Times that's pretty much what I was getting paid. So you mentioned opportunity costs - could you give like a really just a description of what a definition for what opportunity costs are - just really quickly again.Sarina:                                 11:50                    Sure. Well, opportunity cost is the price that you could be making doing something else with that same amount of time.Jess:                                     11:58                    Does that take into account - for example, if I write for the New York Times, as a freelancer I am still expected to adhere to their journalistic ethics rules, which means that there are a lot of places I'm not allowed to speak as a speaker. It doesn't matter actually, their theory is if you're a full time writer there on staff versus a freelancer no one really knows the difference. Like the average reader is not going to know the difference. So I (as a total freelancer, with no benefits, no job security) I can't take a speaking gig with let's say for example Microsoft. Because the New York Times is probably going to write about Microsoft and there is this appearance of impropriety or that kind of thing. So, I then am undermining my future ability to earn in speaking.Sarina:                                 12:57                    So that all goes into your opportunity cost. And that's a pretty unusual one. Like most writers who are listening to our podcast aren't hemmed in like that.Jess:                                     13:07                    You would be surprised. You know, some places are a little more forward about it than others. But for example, like I said at the New York Times you have to sign something, the ethics stuff and you have to read this whole document that they resend out every once in a while just to remind you hello, just to remind you. And if you were to scratch deeper, I think a lot of places that should be doing that more with their freelancers, don't. But you would be surprised.Sarina:                                 13:38                    Well, I did sign that thing once and I remember specifically that you are not allowed to be a travel writer who takes trips anywhere and still write anything for the New York Times. That wasn't a problem for me.Jess:                                     13:51                    Part of the rule is also you really can't take money from anyone who might possibly be the subject of a future New York Times story, which is everybody. I mean, really, I mean obviously there are a lot. So that was one of the major reasons that I gave up my column at the New York Times after three years is that it was so restrictive in terms of my ability to write.Sarina:                                 14:15                    Well that's all opportunity costs. And the way that we come across our real opportunity costs is different for every writer. So I have five years worth of data on what I make when I write a novel. And I began to look at that in terms of what was my pay rate per word? Because before I was writing novels, I was doing some nonfiction for magazines.Jess:                                     14:44                    How can you know that immediately afterwards? Like that you would have to have a lot of accumulated data in order to do that.Sarina:                                 14:49                    Well, I do though. So I can look at books that I wrote in the past, and I can look at books that I wrote last year, and I can say what was my total take each time I managed to finish an 80,000 word novel? And what do I get paid? And I know roughly what it is.Jess:                                     15:04                    And you know how long it takes you to write X number of words. So you could come up with an hourly rate for your time.Sarina:                                 15:10                    Yes, or at least a daily rate. Like if I make 1200 day word count, I know roughly how much that's worth going forward in my life. So if I took a day off to write 1200 words for somebody else, I know roughly what I've just handicapped myself. Or here's where it gets interesting - if I accept my French publisher's invitation to go to a reader convention in Lille (which I turned down this year) and it's six days of my life, well that's like a really expensive trip. Even if they pay for everything and I meet a lot of cool French people.Jess:                                     15:46                    This comes up a lot when I'm asked to speak, for example, in the middle East or Australia. One of the reasons that I have not gone to speak in Australia is that by the time they pay to get me there, we're pretty much at my fee that they would also then have to pay on top of that. So it's an extraordinarily expensive proposition.Sarina:                                 16:05                    I was actually offered a romance convention in Australia with travel paid and I've found that there was yet one more kind of opportunity cost, which is my family would be so deeply hurt if I went to Australia without them.Jess:                                     16:19                    Well, and then on top of that, is, you know, if I'm going to Australia, there's not just the travel time, there's the recovery time. Honestly, after I've been on the road for a while, there for a day or two my brain is dead anyway.Sarina:                                 16:34                    Right and you're one of those rare people who can write on a plane.Jess:                                     16:37                    Not often, I'm just not good at it. As we have discussed in the past, I'm terrible about writing on the road.Sarina:                                 16:43                    So, I have an idea of what my days are worth. And sometimes when you're developing like a second stream of income, which is obviously a wonderful thing to do if you're a freelancer, right? So I have this sideline consulting business where I help other people publish their stuff. And sometimes, I have discovered by accident that my rate is too low. Because if I'm feeling kind of busy and I suddenly quote a more expensive rate and then the person doesn't blink, then my understanding of what that consulting work is worth just notches up a little bit. So that's useful.Jess:                                     17:21                    There's also another interesting thing that happens is I was feeling pretty good about a rate that I secured for a talk and I went to my group of people (my other speakers who are about in the same position. They also had bestselling books. They also have about the same amount of experience speaking. You know, they're sort of my wing people.) And I was feeling pretty good about the rate that I got. And then I found out that one of them got more. And now, no matter what, moving forward, I have this sort of chip on my shoulder about that event and I'm going to just chalk it up as experience to ask first.Sarina:                                 18:05                    On wall street we would've called that tuition. That's the tuition you paid.Jess:                                     18:10                    Believe me, with speaking there had been a lot of tuition payments that I've paid over time.Sarina:                                 18:16                    Yeah. And sometimes the opportunity cost is really only emotional. Like if I open Facebook right now, I'll probably see somebody announced that their romance novel is going to be a Netflix special in 2021. So, that's like emotional tuition. You know, get off social media because 1 - it's opportunity cost of your time and 2 - you will just feel bad if you look.Jess:                                     18:37                    So for example, time reading the comments, not good use of your time. As we try to be as concrete and as helpful as possible, I wanted to talk about a very particular scenario and I wanted to get your take on it. So let's say that a person comes to me and says, 'Hi, what should I charge as a consultant?' This is a total hypothetical (although I get asked about fees all the time and it's a really hard conversation for me because sometimes in consulting you can give an hourly rate or you could give a flat fee for a particular event or project.) Most of the time people are asking me about what should I ask for speaking. And so I'm going to do that one first. So if you're new to speaking (and I had to actually email the person who is now my agent who was not my agent at the time) because I did not know even what to quote as a price for our first time keynote, I had no idea. And she said, toss $5,000 out there and see what happens. And at the time I'm like, 'Oh, well that's embarrassing. Am I worth that? I've never done this before.' And I tossed 5,000 at them and they said, 'Respectfully, you are totally worth that, but we can't afford that. Here's what we can afford and we'll put you up.' And it wasn't $5,000, but it was fairly close and that was great. So I usually say to a first time speaker throw $5,000 out there and see what happens. I happen to know that even schools with small budgets can usually pull off $5,000, given certain parameters. Consulting is a little harder because given also who your audience is $5,000 for a talk I think is fair. Whether it's a nonprofit, whether it's a school, whether it's a for profit. Obviously if it's a super successful law firm, you can go higher than that. But for a first time keynote, $5,000 seems about right. But then you get into consulting and you get into situations where it's an individual asking for your services. For example, in a situation I end up with a lot is people asking me if I will consult one-on-one with a family to talk about parenting stuff. The answer is no, I don't do that. But I get asked a lot. Someone asked me about that recently. Another person asked me, 'Well, what if the place is a nonprofit, a place that I would be very likely to donate money to?' For example, I've worked for Vermont Public Radio, I've worked for the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, a place I send money every single year. And it's really hard for me to take money from a place like that because, I don't know, I feel like it's just money swapping places. Just feels really weird versus a corporation. So talk us through a little bit. Is there a way to figure out, from a consulting perspective, like what you should ask and how much do you figure in who the client would be?Sarina:                                 21:50                    Well, the concept you're grappling with is the fungibility of money and time.Jess:                                     21:55                    And what does that mean?Sarina:                                 21:56                    That all of your money is fungible, usable in one spot as opposed to in another. So, humans have been demonstrated to be quite bad at something called mental accounting. Which is in our minds, we move money around in buckets and put little walls around it, when there really isn't. And it's actually quite necessary to one's health. Because there are these days when I'm standing in the food co-op thinking, 'Wow, the organic onions cost $3 a pound and the traditional onions are $1.50, can I afford the extra $1.50? And then I'll go home and somebody will show me a BookBub that costs $957 and I'm like, 'Yeah, take my money.' So, you know, if I were to stand in the grocery store and ask myself how many books do I have to sell tomorrow to pay for the organic granola, like that is not a good place to be. You have to make some little walls and buckets to move your life around without a lot of undue anxiety.Jess:                                     23:00                    Well, and it helps if you don't want to actually do the thing that you're being asked about because then you can quote high without the concern that you'll upset them or that they'll say no and never want to work with you again. But, what if it's someone that you really do wanna work with and you're afraid (as so many writers I talk to are afraid of offending or getting the feedback that, 'Well, oh my gosh, no, we couldn't even possibly.')Sarina:                                 23:28                    Well, first of all, this is going to happen at some point and you're just going to have to survive it. But when you said that first time speaker fee and you were told to throw out $5,000. I could hear how stressful that is. Because what if that's your one big shot and what if you just blew it because you said 5,000 instead of three? So it's all in the wording, right? We all know that when people speak to us or ask us for things that there's a way to put anything that is palatable...Jess:                                     23:58                    I used to do it in my proposals for speaking engagements. I would say this is my fee, but I am a teacher and I understand school budgets, and so if you can't afford that fee, let's talk. That was my sort of my way of giving them that, 'Yeah, yeah, but pat on the back, don't worry, we can still have a conversation.'Sarina:                                 24:16                    Right. So 'let's talk' is better language than 'or best offer'. Like when you see things on the list serve and it says asking $412 or best offer and you're thinking, 'Oh honey,' you know somebody's going to come in and try to get that for half that price. So yeah, so let's talk is really powerful. Like I might need to jot that down...Jess:                                     24:37                    I wanted to add also that it doesn't get easier (for me anyway). I mean, I have more information now than I used to in terms of who can afford what, but that's a matter of experience and time. I worked for amazon.com as a consultant on the Stinky and Dirty Show and we arrived at a fee for services, which over two seasons. You know, that first season, everything took me forever, and reading scripts was hard, and I couldn't visualize anything, and I wrote a ton of notes on everything, and I probably only made minimum wage that year. Whereas season two, I was much better at it and I did much better. So in my brain, I kind of averaged the two. Exactly, the first season was tuition. And that negotiation worked pretty well because they were skilled negotiators, which actually helped me a little bit because I didn't feel so embarrassed doing the negotiation because it was part of the process. But when I'm talking to a single person, especially in a nonprofit, and they're less skilled in their negotiation and I always feel a little apologetic.Sarina:                                 25:48                    Well, sure. So I get asks to go and speak at, for example, RWA functions all the time, like Saratoga Springs, Providence, Rhode Island. And these are places that if you look at a map, I'm reasonably close to, except the roads don't go from here to there. And I always turn these down, because they're on the weekends, during the school year. And it'll take me four hours to drive there and I won't enjoy it. And I just know going into that, that you have to listen to your gut. You know when it's not going to work out, almost from the first moment. So, if you say yes to things or low ball yourself, then you know how that's gonna turn out. And after you do it a couple of times, cause we all do...Jess:                                     26:38                    Yeah, it was a little easier for me. As I said, my husband who is physician, was asked to consult on something and I knew the price that he had quoted as sort of a professional fee that's accepted in the industry. And then I was able to say, 'Okay, well wait a second, I have a bestselling book, I have been researching this topic for 15 years now. Okay, I think it's fair for me to ask the same amount.' But also, without having sort of evidence of someone else's ask, would have been a really hard thing to do. The numbers that I tend to see out there in terms of professional, they're such a huge range. If you go online and you Google things like what should a consulting fee be, there are some websites that will give you, for HR it would be this, for marketing it would be this, so you can get kind of an idea. For writers, because what we're talking about is banking on our expertise that we've earned through lots and lots of research and experience, that can be a little bit more difficult to quantify. But, I feel like as writers, if we want to be dealt with as professionals, then we need to view ourselves as professionals, and we need to quote a number commensurate with the experience that professionals might have. And I will say one other thing, I also do pro-bono work and I love the organizations. I choose the organizations that I choose to do pro-bono work with very, very carefully because (and I'm going to say this is going to sound horrible) but in my experience, if I do something pro-bono, I am valued less. I usually get lower turnout, it's usually more work on my part because there isn't anything invested in the other side in making sure that it turns out great because it was free. It's free, so if it doesn't go great, we don't get great turnout, then it was a wash. Whereas I'm sort of expecting that people will say, 'Oh, this is free and your normal rate is whatever, thank you so much.' But that's not what happens. What happens is that I actually do better if I ask for a token amount as sort of an honorarium, because there's some investment in the other party's side. But I can tell you right now that when I undervalue myself, I am valued less by the person who is hiring me.Sarina:                                 28:58                    Well then we need to talk about book advances for a minute. Because this is a lot of the same stuff. So an advance, as you know, is money you receive up front and then as the book starts to sell and royalties come in, you know, it's clocked down until finally you hopefully earn out and then start receiving royalties on top of it. And there is widespread confusion on the part of even successful authors about what this all means.Jess:                                     29:27                    Basically my royalty statements are so confusing. I don't get royalties yet, I have not earned out my advance for the Gift of Failure. But, as you point out, there's two different, earn out my advance.Sarina:                                 29:40                    So hang on a second, because earning out is really only material to you. It's not material to them. So the royalty rates quoted in all of our contracts are fairly standard. And that means for each copy of a print book you sell, you are earning between 7% and 10% of the cover price. And sometimes we can have escalators, which it's fun to say this with a New York accent. I have an escalator, which means that after the first X thousand books, you get a slightly higher royalty rate. But let's just say pretty much 90% of the book contracts in the world are paying between 7 and 12% of the cover price, depending on whether it's a paperback or a hardcover or whatever.Jess:                                     30:29                    What if it's on sale? And it's not getting the cover price?Sarina:                                 30:33                    But it's the cover price, okay? So e-Books though, in that same contract, I swear to God, will say 25% of net proceeds, which does matter about being on sale. So that means your publisher is going to ship the books. It has a $30 cover price (just because that's a nice round number) and if you're getting 10% on those, that's like every time they send one out and it doesn't come back, you get three bucks. But with your e-Books, they're literally gonna look at the receipts that came in from Apple, and Amazon, and Kobo, and Barnes and Nobles' Nook and pay you the 25% of net receipts on that. So if they put the book on sale for $1.99 for a couple of weeks, then the amount of money that you earn in royalties (or counted against your advance) is 25% of 70% of $1.99. So, all of this ends up on your royalty statement, but those numbers do not reflect how happy or sad the publisher is.Sarina:                                 31:37                    Because they are doing a profit and loss equation in the background that you're not privy to, you never get to see it. Whereby they will be happy even if you never 'earn out' and start earning royalties because that is not the rate.Jess:                                     31:54                    So for example, I have not technically earned out the amount that I got for the Gift of Failure (which I had mentioned the number in an earlier podcast) but that can be okay. Because they can still be in the black for me, even before I get to the amount that I got as an advance for the Gift of Failure.Sarina:                                 32:19                    That's right. And if you need a concrete example of why that might be. Just think about your marginal e-book rate sale, like right this second as we sit here in the library talking about this, somebody is buying your e-book. And if it's 10 bucks, because I don't really know. Okay, but it's usually $10 and of that 10 bucks, your publisher gets about $7 and it didn't cost them anything today to sell that and they're only going to credit you with 25% of seven bucks. But that's okay because they're pretty happy to have the balance.Jess:                                     33:08                    As we've mentioned in earlier episodes of the podcast, I had to go out with a full proposal for this book that I am editing right now because we were worried that it's a tough topic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had said to my husband, 'I bet you I don't get as much for this book that I did for Gift of Failure because there was buzz and it was a viral thing and blah, blah, blah.' And I got the exact same amount. So that can be a pretty good indicator to me that my publisher is happy with me.Sarina:                                 33:36                    Of course. And also is a good indicator for the whole wide world that earning out doesn't mean anything in terms of publisher happiness. So, remember that though it's sometimes hard to be paid a ton for something. And this is probably true for speaking engagements, too. Like if you hit the jackpot or get paid a whole slug of money for a book and then it doesn't super perform, then you're kind of in the hole with that publisher. And if you want to publish again, you might need to...Jess:                                     34:09                    Now when she says in the hole, this is a question I get all the time, no, you do not have to pay that money back. But from a publisher karma perspective, you're a little in the hole.Sarina:                                 34:20                    Like if there's a frothy, frothy auction for your book, because that was the flavor of the week, you know, and this happens and that's like both an enviable and a tricky spot to be.Jess:                                     34:34                    That was, and believe me, the source of much anxiety. Because if I tanked, then I don't get to write another book probably.Sarina:                                 34:43                    Right. Well this has happened to me.Jess:                                     34:47                    I wasn't going to say it.Sarina:                                 34:49                    Well, that's okay. My publisher basically said in 2012 or 13, like you're dead to me. And that same publisher offered me a three book deal a few years later, but under a different name.Jess:                                     35:01                    Alright. So we have covered how much you're worth to a publisher. We've covered ask $5,000 for your first keynote. Consulting - let's say you are an expert - so I think a safe number to throw out as a consulting fee if you're going to be an expert in education for a company that has a budget, I'd say $500 an hour is a high end, but still acceptable number that won't make people vomit.Sarina:                                 35:44                    So lawyer money...Jess:                                     35:45                    Lawyer money. Well, because remember how I just said these are the professional numbers. If you look at what money lawyers get per hour and you look at what physicians get per hour. Now the reason I say that is this, I want to point out really quickly, I know we're running out of time, but I want to point out really quickly that when I looked up, how you calculate how much your time is worth as a contractor. The calculus is this. Look at how much you make you make per year. What is your income per year? And then divide it out. Divide it by 50 weeks per year, accounting for those two weeks of vacation, divide it out by 40 hours per week. And there's your basic number of what you're worth per hour, based on how much you make, which we already talked about as a flawed calculus. But still it's a good starting place to know sort of what an hour might be worth to you. And then according to organizations that sort of this is what they do - valuing consultants, they say now triple it. Because tripling it is an important thing to do because you're not being paid benefits, there's, there's no risk being taken on by your employer. And as we just mentioned, as with the New York Times, for me, there are costs to me of taking that. So freelancers take on a lot of risk without a lot of benefit. You may have to pay for your own healthcare, you may have to pay for your own retirement. All these things, which is true, for me. And that costs a lot of money that they're not having to pay. Now, the reason that multiplying by three may not phase someone who's looking to hire you is they know they don't have to pay your benefits. They don't have to pay for your retirement, your pension, whatever. So, valuing yourself at three times what your hourly rate might be makes sense. So I'm tossing between $250 and $300 out there for experts in science, or education, or parenting, or whatever that thing is that maybe you've been recognized as 'an expert', which fraught term, but whatever.Sarina:                                 37:53                    I'm considered an expert in parenting. I'm considered an expert in education and therefore here is my professional rate as an expert in that field. There you go. Do we want to talk about what we've read? We didn't even discuss if we're going to talk about that, we had so much money stuff to talk.Sarina:                                 38:10                    I'm reading The Lager Queen of Minnesota.Jess:                                     38:12                    Oh, how is that? The one with the bottle cap on the cover.Sarina:                                 38:14                    I'm really enjoying it. It's a third person narrative. And it's a really interesting third person voice and I can't wait to tell you how I liked it when I'm done.Jess:                                     38:22                    I've been listening to Masterclasses, still. And I listened to part of an economics master class with my younger son who's interested in sort of wanting to be able to get up to speed to have conversations with his economists major older brother. That's been interesting. Also, I'm learning how to do makeup with the Bobby Brown.Sarina:                                 38:46                    I'm watching that, too.Jess:                                     38:47                    I'm so bad at doing my own makeup. In fact when I first started speaking, I think I had been married for at least a decade at that point. And I still had the eye shadow that I wore the day I got married, which is an indicator of how rarely I wear makeup. So there is actually a very helpful a makeup tutorial with Bobby Brown. So anyway, I've been listening to those. I've also been starting to learn Spanish. I spoke about that during our goals episode and I am happy to point out that now I have switched from having anxiety dreams about not graduating from law school to a dream I had last night about the fact that I had a Spanish exam coming up and that I had never, ever studied for it. I just finally read The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang. The Collected Schizophrenias is a collection of essays KJ insisted I read it and I love it. I tend to love essay collections anyway, but this one is by Esmé Weijun Wang. And not only is the book fantastic, her Twitter feed is really, really good, too. So you should check her out. It's a remarkable book, I'm really absolutely loving it. And it is about schizophrenia, mental illness, personal experience with that it's been a fascinating read.Sarina:                                 40:40                    And until we see you again, KJ, and for the rest of you, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game.Jess:                                     40:57                    This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

She writes Emmy-winning television comedy, bestselling children’s books, plays, and sentences for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Is there nothing Jill Twiss can’t do?Musical theater actress and stand-up comic Jill Twiss dreamed of writing for television but did not know how to break in to the world of late-night comedy shows. The stars aligned when a few supportive women called some chits on her behalf, and lo, she landed a spot in the writing room of the Emmy-award winning show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Her work on Last Week Tonight has earned her multiple Emmys, WGA and Peabody Awards, and led to a series of bestselling children’s books as well as the opportunity to write humorous “Can I have that word in a sentence, please?” hints for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. This week, Jill and Jess talk about how Jill got her start in television, her love of Vice President Mike Pence’s pet rabbit Marlon Bundo, how her children’s books came to be, their shared need for pressing deadlines, and Jill’s play-in-progress about the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, you know we dropped the Top Five Ways to Find the Right Agent to pitch into everyone’s inbox last Monday. What will our supporters find there this Monday? It’s SO FRESH WE DON’T EVEN KNOW. But if you become a supporter, you will. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. Want to share this one? Click here to share on Facebook, and here for an editable tweet. LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Good Luck with That by Kristan HigginsJill: The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America by Isaac Butler and Dan KoisOur guest for this episode is Jill Twiss.Last Week Tonight with John OliverA Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo The Someone NewEveryone Gets a SayThe Marlon Bundo episode of Last Week Tonight (full episode): Just the excerpt about A Day in The Life of Marlon Bundo with a clip of the animated all-star cast audiobook: This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by Kate DeCarvalho. The music in our podcast is by Max Cohen.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hello fellow writers. The beginning of the year is a great time to think about what you really want from your writing life and if one of the things that's filled you with joy in the past is time spent encouraging, editing, and helping another writer you might want to consider becoming a book coach yourself. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator provides book coaching to authors like me, but also needs and trains book coaches. And they'll be hosting a free book coaching summit in January for anyone who wants to learn more. If that's got your ears perked up, head to authoraccelerator.com/summit. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:39                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        00:40                    Yay.Jess:                                     00:40                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:41                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:45                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:47                    Awkward pause and I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:50                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:50                    Now one, two, three.Jess:                                     00:58                    Hey, I'm Jess Lahey and this is #AmWriting. Our podcast about writing all the things, the podcast about sitting down, getting the work done and often that work looks like pitches, looks like queries, looks like invoicing so that you can get paid for all that stuff. But really this is just the podcast about the nuts and bolts of being a writer.Sarina:                                 01:22                    I'm Sarina Bowen, when I do my writing it's about fiction and novels. I'm the author of 30-odd romance novels and my new one is called Heartland.Jess:                                     01:32                    And I'm Jess, again. And my work of writing is about mostly nonfiction and I'm in the process of writing a new book and in the process of editing it. But my first book is the Gift of Failure, How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. And we are missing KJ again today. She is still hockey tournament-ing. And we are going to have an interview today with someone really, really cool. But I wanted to catch you at the beginning of this, Sarina to tell you that you and our guest today have something in common.Sarina:                                 02:01                    We do, what?Jess:                                     02:03                    So a couple of years ago you sent us a text, KJ and myself, a text about the fact that someone had gotten a tattoo in your honor. And are we still at a couple of people, two people who have tattoos of your books?Sarina:                                 02:18                    I know of three...Jess:                                     02:19                    Three people. And what do they have on their bodies?Sarina:                                 02:22                    Well, the first one had the cover of Him.Jess:                                     02:27                    Okay. Him being one of the books that you have written.Sarina:                                 02:31                    Right. And then another one has a quote from The Year We Fell Down.Jess:                                     02:35                    Oh, that's cool. A quote, I love that.Sarina:                                 02:38                    And hers is in French because she helped me proofread the French edition. And then I have a lovely friend, Claudia, who has a tattoo of The True North titles.Jess:                                     02:49                    That's just so permanent. It's so permanent. I mean, number one, you gotta be a super fan to get a tattoo of. Well the other thing is you said that one of them has The True North novels, which means this is a tattoo that will expand over time, maybe.Sarina:                                 03:05                    Well, perhaps...Jess:                                     03:11                    What if you end up writing like 70 books in this series? It'll be like all the way up her arm or his arm.Sarina:                                 03:16                    Yeah, but I'll be dead from writing all those. So you know, we have bigger problems...But, so tell me about our guest.Jess:                                     03:24                    So our guest today is Jill Twiss and she is a writer on the show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. And she found someone who has a tattoo of a rabbit on them and that rabbit's name is Marlon Bundo. Do you know who Marlon Bundo is?Sarina:                                 03:41                    He's the bunny in her book.Jess:                                     03:43                    The bunny in her book. And we'll talk to her a little bit about that tattoo and what it was like to find out that she has landed a place of permanence on someone's body, which just to me, blows my mind. I can't even picture. It's just amazing.Sarina:                                 03:57                    You know what blows my mind?Jess:                                     03:58                    What's that?Sarina:                                 03:59                    If your first book in Amazon is a picture book with like 8 million reviews and went viral, like I'm so excited for this.Jess:                                     04:09                    I know, this is going to be great also because as you will find out when you listen to this interview, it's her first writing job.Sarina:                                 04:16                    That's amazing. Okay, I'm ready to have my mind blown.Jess:                                     04:20                    Alright, so with no further ado, here is my interview with Jill Twiss. I am here today with Jill Twiss. She is a senior writer at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. She has a crazy, amazing story. She has Emmies, she has WGA awards, she has Peabody awards. There are some other things she does that I am so excited to talk about. I'm not going to burst the the surprise right off the bat. But Jill, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.Jill:                                       04:52                    Thank you so much for having me. I'm such a huge fan of your podcast and I'm so excited to be here.Jess:                                     04:58                    What was really funny was when I first asked you to be on the podcast, you were on Twitter, I was on Twitter, and we were following each other and I messaged you about being on the podcast and you were so excited. You're like, I'm a fan. And I'm like, I'm a fan. So we got to fan girl a little bit. It was very, very exciting.Jill:                                       05:14                    Well, I'm new-ish to book world. And so this podcast was sort of as I was thrown into it, how I learned about what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     05:26                    Well, and you come at it from a really unconventional angle, which is part of what I want to talk about today. Speaking of books - so you have now two books. One is about to come out. But you have a book out that some of our audience may have heard of, which is called A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, which is a children's book. And I wanna talk a little bit about how that book came to be. But I'm also going to link to a wonderful article that you wrote for Glamour about why you wrote this children's book since it seems in contrast with what you do day to day, which is to write for a late night audience. Which is a story that I love. Could you tell us a little bit about how Marlon Bundo came to be? Because he is a cool, cool character. Oh, and by the way, before I keep going, you tweeted recently that you saw someone with Marlon Bundo tattooed on them. How did that happen? How did you come across that?Jill:                                       06:28                    Okay, well, it was at my gym. I just happened to be there and I go to sort of a very fun, weird gym where we all know each other pretty well. And so we do a name game at the beginning of every class. And this woman heard me say, my name was Jill and she said, 'Are you Jill Twiss?' And then she held up her arm and she had a full Marlon Bundo tattoo. And she said she'd gotten them with her cousin. It was the craziest thing. I can't imagine ever even getting a tattoo of my own books, much less someone else's, but it could not be a bigger honor.Jess:                                     07:06                    Well, and I mentioned in the introduction to Sarina because she knows of three people that have tattoos of her books on them and one is a line from one of her books and two of them are just pictures of the books. And that blows my mind. That's a level of permanence and fandom that I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine. So tell us a little bit about this book, Marlon Bundo. Who in the heck is Marlon Bundo?Jill:                                       07:33                    Sure. Okay. So as you said at the beginning, I am a writer at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. And I have been a writer there since the show started. So I am a pretty, you know, dark, angry, comedy writer kind of person.Jess:                                     07:51                    And I just realized that with you saying that, that I started in absolutely the wrong place. I don't have KJ here to kick me under the table to say, 'No, no, no. You're starting in the wrong place.' Which she does so brilliantly. Because am I correct - I heard somewhere that this is your first writing job, the Last Week Tonight. Is that correct?Jill:                                       08:11                    It was my first professional writing job, yes. I had done stand up comedy,Jess:                                     08:17                    I'm sorry, but we have to talk about how that happens because the idea that your very first job, professional writing gig out of the gate is with a late night television show. I guess we kind of have to start there before we can even talk about how Marlon Bundo came to be.Jill:                                       08:32                    Sure, it's a lovely story about women helping women, actually.Jess:                                     08:40                    Oh, we like those stories a lot.Jill:                                       08:42                    I don't want to mislead you, it wasn't an accident. I was very much trying to get a late night writing job. I had done standup comedy. I'd loved the comedy part, but the standing up in front of people made me sort of sick to my stomach all the time. And part of me was like, if you're not happier when people clap, maybe you're a writer, maybe this isn't for you. And I started to try to find writing jobs. And as everyone listening I'm sure knows, it's really hard. And the TV late night world is just really hard to break into because it's really hard to find out how those jobs are out there. And crazily I got an email one day from a woman named Nell Scovell, who I now know was the co-writer of Lean In. She wrote for The Simpsons. She wrote for David Letterman. I had never met her, or at the time heard of her, and she said, 'Have you ever wanted to write for late night?' And I said, 'Yeah, that's all I want. Who are you? What are you talking about?' And she said, 'I've been reading your Twitter. I think you'd be great at it. She said, you know, she had been a woman writing comedy for decades and sort of thought that was enough. You know that she was the woman in the writer's room, wasn't she doing enough for women? And she realized things weren't getting any better. So she wanted to start to find women. So in any case she said, I can't get you a job but I can get your packet read, I can get someone to read your stuff. So, literally within four months I had this job.Jess:                                     10:23                    You do realize that you're inadvertently ratifying David Sedaris's advice that he gave on our show (which is to never, well, and I'm sure you weren't like in a position of just sitting in your apartment waiting for opportunities to come to you) but his advice on our show was to never ask anything of anyone and just wait and be ready when the opportunities come to you.Jill:                                       10:47                    Well, if I go back one more step. I actually did ask something of someone because my job (I was a musical theater actress and I was a standardized test tutor) and I tutored a real smart kid whose mom worked for David Letterman. And when he did really well on the SAT I asked his mom if she would meet with me and if I could write a packet, and I ended up asking someone who I didn't really know to read over that packet. She was a writer for Conan and it turns out five years later Nell had gone to her and said, 'Do you know anybody that should be writing for TV?' And she said, 'I read this packet years ago. She should be writing for late night.' So I did ask for a little help in someone just reading something and giving advice. And she couldn't help me at the time, but when she could, she did.Jess:                                     11:42                    That is so cool. And you've used the word packet a couple of times, and that's a word I don't think we've ever heard on our show before. So I'm sure there are people out there saying, 'Oh my gosh, what's a packet? I don't have one. I need it. What is it?' \.Jill:                                       11:55                    Fair. In the late night world, and that's, you know, shows like The Daily Show or Jimmy Fallon show, all the Jimmy's shows, Jimmy Kimmel's show. Instead of doing what you do I think in narrative television, which is you write a spec script of like a whole show, they want packets and every show wants a different packet. So you might write a whole bunch of monologue jokes that happen at the beginning of Stephen Colbert's show. For a show like ours, you're going to write something similar to what is going to air on the show and they give you that assignment. So you have to find out about the packet. At the time I did it, we didn't have a show, so it was a lot looser. It was a little bit like, guess what John Oliver might do on a show that doesn't exist yet. I think specifically they asked to write a domestic and an international story. For something like The Daily Show, you would write maybe something similar to what happens in like a seven minute increment. They might tell you exactly what they want, they might not. Every late night show has a different packet, but you generally have to write it specifically for that show.Jess:                                     13:09                    So there's no just like writing some vague generalized packet and hoping that it lands right.Jill:                                       13:15                    No, although weirdly I would recommend that, just because there's no way to practice this but to do it. And so I had written packets for shows that I never, ever got to submit that were just me trying to figure out, you know, how do you do this? How do you write a packet for this show? I had seen (it sounds crazy now) but I used to read like every article about writing for late night and someone had said, 'You know, well, at this late night show, they write monologue jokes. They show up at 9:00 AM and then they write till noon.' And I was like, great, three hours, I can write monologue jokes for three hours every day. So that's what I did. You know, I just tried to find like, let's pretend I have this job and figure out how to do it until finally, and it took a long time, someone gave me the opportunity to show what I'd been working on all that time.Jess:                                     14:08                    Is there a magic format for a packet? Like there are certain tells for hacks. Like you know, if I try to send in a spec script in just the wrong format or in a way that doesn't adhere to the look of the standard spec script, someone's going to ding it right away cause they're going to say, 'Oh, this person doesn't have the slightest idea what they're doing.' Or, we had a children's book author come on and she said one dead giveaway of people who don't know what they're doing with children's books is that they send in the wrong format, or an odd number of pages, or they say, and here's the illustrator I need to have in order to write this book.Jill:                                       14:52                    I did all of those wrong things, by the way. Literally, all the things you just said I'm pretty sure I did, but whatever.Jess:                                     14:58                    So is there a magic format for a packet? Is there a program out there that you have to have that adheres to this magic format?Jill:                                       15:07                    Weirdly, no, like late night I think is the Wild West of everything. Every show is different. I can't tell you they're going to be great about telling you what they want, but I think some of the best shows will give you samples of what their scripts look like and you can do your best to copy them. The closest I can give you is that you have to put it in the language of the show. You know, the packet you write for John Oliver is not going to be the same packet you write for Trevor Noah. Even if you're writing on exactly the same topic. So the big thing that they're looking for is, 'Yeah, are you putting some of yourself in there because we're hiring you because of you, but also are you in the voice of the show? We're not interested in you changing the whole format of the show. I think some people like to come in and be like, you know, I have a new idea. Like what if Jimmy Fallon was in space the whole time? And it's like, well, you're not showing us that you can write the show that we have. This is really you showing you could start today and fit in with the show that's already there.Jess:                                     16:16                    I was a political speech writer for a while and part of the fun (for me anyway), was the challenge of writing in someone else's voice completely and not letting my voice dominate. So that's a really interesting balance. And are there times when you write scripts and then the person who for example, John Oliver, will put his own particular read on it so you don't have to be too worried about writing it exactly the same way he would say it?Jill:                                       16:41                    Oh yeah. I think of course he's going to put everything in his own words. I will say, because some of us have been there since the beginning, I've absolutely adapted to John's voice, but I think in some weird ways he's adapted to our voices, too. There are jokes he tells because I love them or because you know, someone else loves that voice and he (I think) has just a lot of skill at doing lots of different kinds of jokes. So I for sure have adopted his speech patterns, but I think he has in some ways altered his speech patterns for all of us, too.Jess:                                     17:20                    That's fascinating. Alright, so back to Marlon Bundo. So you're writing on a television show, which isn't the normal pattern of things that the next thing on your plate, affiliated with the show is a children's book. Will you tell us how that came to be?Jill:                                       17:37                    Sure, yes. We are not a children's show. We say a lot of words that you wouldn't say on children's shows.Jess:                                     17:45                    But you do have a lot of very cute, mascot looking creatures that come on the show.Jill:                                       17:54                    It's true, we do love that. So it happened that I was and am obsessed with a very real bunny named Marlon Bundo. Who is, if you don't know, the Vice President, Mike Pence's actual pet.Jess:                                     18:10                    Now is he still around? Bunnies don't have the longest lifespan. Is the real Marlon Bundo still around?Jill:                                       18:15                    To my knowledge, the real Marlon Bundo is still around. I don't want to start any conspiracy theories here. I believe that there is still a Marlon Bundo living.Jess:                                     18:29                    I will put it in the show notes if I find otherwise.Jill:                                       18:32                    Right. Yeah. Don't blame it on me. And Marlon Bundo had an Instagram and I loved this bunny. It's a very cute bunny. I am not, perhaps, the biggest fan of Mike Pence and some of his policies. And one day I saw an announcement that they were releasing a book about Marlon Bundo. And for some reason I got like weirdly territorial, as though I had any ownership of this bunny, which I obviously do not. And I was like, 'No, I want to write the book about Marlin Bundo.' So I pitched it, I just wrote an email that said no, we should write a book about Marlon Bundo. That, you know Mike Pence himself does not have the kindest record perhaps with same sex marriage. And so we decided to make Marlin Bundo a gay bunny.Jess:                                     19:27                    So you pitched it to the show, not necessarily to a literary agent first?Jill:                                       19:31                    Oh, not at all. No, that was in no way involved.Jess:                                     19:35                    Did you have a literary agent at that point?Jill:                                       19:37                    Nope, I did not. I also didn't have a TV agent, for whatever that's worth. No, I just pitched it to the show as like we should put out a book, which, you know, I pitch a thousand things to the show and most of them don't happen. But they said, 'Okay, yeah, let's do it.' And we had a quick meeting just to decide if it should be an actual children's book or if it should be one of those like parody books that's really for adults, but looks like a children's book. And I think we just decided why not? Like, why not write a kind book for kids about a thing that really matters to us.Jess:                                     20:20                    Now the writer in me and the person who now understands publishing timelines is freaking out. Because if you have just seen that a press release or some sort of release on the Twitter feed about the fact that they're going to come out with this book about Marlon Bundo, how on earth do you get a children's book out in time to have it still be relevant to the release of the other book? Because that was part of the deal when it was announced is that it was a competing book with the real Marlon Bundo's book. So how do you make those timelines work? Publishing moves slow, Jill.Jill:                                       20:55                    The great news is I didn't have to do any of it. I wrote the book, actually I didn't even... I went back to my office and we didn't even assign a book at that point. We were just kind of like pondering some ideas and I said, 'You know what, I'm just going to write something that way it'll be easier for them to be like, Oh no, not that. Now that we see that, we'll say, not that, we want something more like this.'Jess:                                     21:26                    You have a comfort with rejection of ideas that will be so refreshing to so many of our listeners because still - there's a pitch I put out there like two weeks ago and I haven't heard back and I am just feeling all sorts of rejection and yet now I can have Jill Twiss's 'almost everything I say gets rejected at some stage of the game' You're my new voice in my head. I love it.Jill:                                       21:52                    I mean, all of us probably write I would guess 30 to 50 jokes for every joke that goes on the show. So that's just the norm for sure. So I wrote this - just a thing just to be like, 'Hey, I don't know what about this?' And they said, 'Oh yeah, that. We'll just publish that.' So, it turned out to be like a day-long process. We changed literally a couple of words, had someone help us with things that you're talking about now. Like this is the number of pages or whatever. And I now realize that the publisher, Chronicle, was probably flipping out. But, not my problem. I didn't know. I had no idea. We found, again, what I now know is an extremely fast illustrator. We just picked the best person we found. Who was E.G. Keller, who is fantastic.Jess:                                     22:55                    I have to say, the illustrations are absolutely fantastic. I love the illustrations.Jill:                                       22:59                    When you were saying earlier you can't ever come in demanding an illustrator, that's exactly what I did for my next book. I didn't demand anything. That's not at all true. But after this (we're skipping ahead), I did get a literary agent, and she did sell us together. So my next two books are also with the same illustrator.Jess:                                     23:20                    And your next two books, including the one that is going to be coming out soon, which is called The Someone New...Jill:                                       23:26                    Oh, that one's out.Jess:                                     23:27                    Oh, that one's out now. Okay.Jill:                                       23:28                    That one was out last June so you can buy that one right now.Jess:                                     23:31                    Okay. So the two books you're talking about are in addition to the Marlon Bundo book and The Someone New?Jill:                                       23:37                    No, sorry, I'm saying this weird. So Marlon Bundo exists in the world of the show. My first book, that is entirely outside the show, was The Someone New and that is about welcoming someone new to your life, or your country, or your whatever.Jess:                                     23:57                    It is delightful, and beautiful, and sweet. I got a little choked up reading The Someone New. Well, mainly, I mean the town that I live in (I'm right near Burlington, Vermont) has been a sanctuary city. You know, there are lots of someone news in Burlington. Every single time I'm out and about in Burlington I run into people who are new to town and it had a really important place for me in terms of thinking about what it must be like to try to be new somewhere. And I love the book. I absolutely loved The Someone New.Jill:                                       24:36                    Thank you so much. I went to 11 schools in 12 years, so I was always the someone new. So when it came down to, Hey, you can actually write anything now, generally when I write for the show, I have very specific parameters. So when it came down to I had a literary agent, I could write a children's book on anything I wanted. What I wanted to write about are the things that really mattered to me right now, which is welcoming someone new to our country, but also just - kids are faced with new things every day. And new things are scary. You know, you don't know when you're a kid. And I really wanted to help that new kid in school...Jess:                                     25:23                    Which gets back to your Glamour article, you talk in that article about the fact that it can be really, really difficult to reach people who are adults, who can be really entrenched in their thinking, and really entrenched in their views. Whereas with kids, there seems to be more of an openness and (that's not easier to write to) but it's a welcome and it's the reason that I've been a teacher for so long is it is so wonderful to be able to reach someone when before they've become completely entrenched in their views one way or the other and have a conversation about things that are difficult.Jill:                                       25:59                    Yeah, I think that whatever side of the political spectrum you're on, one thing that we're all experiencing is just finding out that adults are tough sometimes. They're frustrating. It's hard to watch things happen and realize that people are just so set in their ways and they don't want to hear always what's true. They want to hear what they want to hear. And kids, everything's new, you know, and they are perfectly willing to learn a new fact, take it in, change their mind if it changes what's previously there. There's just such a wonderful openness and I have so much hope for the next generation and I need that hope right now.Jess:                                     26:48                    Yeah. There was a moment when I was teaching at my very first teaching gig, I was teaching middle school kids and there was a kid who came from a really, really remote rural town. You know, he came into my classroom and from the first day he would say things that I could tell were not his words. He was parroting things that he'd heard from other adults. And it was really interesting cause he was putting things out there to see what our reaction would be. And it led to some really, really interesting conversations and moments when he realized, 'Oh, I do believe that thing I said', or 'No, I don't believe that thing I said, but I'm just putting it out there because I've never had the opportunity to get feedback on the thoughts that I hear from the adults around me. So it's just really cool to be able to get inside of a kid's head and see how their thought process is when they're forming their identity, and their views, and their beliefs, and their ethics. It's really cool.Jill:                                       27:47                    I've really fallen in love with the book world, first of all. But the children's book world and just like the chance to go and read books to kids and sing songs with kids. I don't have kids, so this is new to me. Everything I've learned in the children's book world has been a shock as far as like what age kids read what kind of books, like all of that stuff. I'm learning at sort of double speed as I go through this. But it is just delightful to get to work with kids and see them and you get nice emails instead of mean emails, you get nice pictures of children and dogs with your books instead of like me and emails of people threatening to you know, hurt you.Jess:                                     28:33                    Well, and speaking of kids you do something that I just had never even thought of as a task. You write sentences for the Scripps Spelling Bee. How did that come about? And how is that a gig that you become aware of and get?Jill:                                       28:52                    Yeah. Well first of all, I'm obsessed with the spelling bee. I have been for years. So it was very much on our radar. And again, I would pitch it as a story for the show and we did do it on the show once as just a short, funny story in the show. Right around then, I hit this stage of my life that I would I highly recommend, which is just ask for things you want. I don't know. Maybe they'll say yes. I've never done that before. But we did that story about the spelling bee and then I went to our executive producer and I said, 'Do we have a contact there? Can I ask them if I can write for them?' And she was like, 'Why would you want to do that?' And I was like, 'Fine, not your problem. It's fine. And I literally just emailed the spelling bee, told them what I do and that I had worked on the piece for the show and I said, 'I know you must have comedy writers write sentences. Like, I've seen the sentences that show up there, can I be one of them?' And they said, 'Yes'. That was really that easy, which I know is not how life works. And I know I had many years of opportunities not coming like that. So, now that I have a little clout and a little something, I'm just asking for all the weird things that I want. My next goal, I'm just going to put this out in the world, I want to write for the Tony awards. So if you know anyone, if you could make it happen, let me know.Jess:                                     30:20                    Very cool. So wait, they give you the word and then you write the sentence to go with the word that helps? So when the kid says, 'Could you give me that word in a sentence?' you're writing that sentence?Jill:                                       30:31                    Yes. Not all of the sentences. They have like really great experts writing sort of I'll say 'not funny sentences'. But, yes. So they do that to make sure everything is grammatically exactly what it needs to be. It's really important. It's so much more important that the sentences be correct than that they be funny. But they have comedy writers that go through maybe a month before the B and write a certain number of comedy sentences for it. And then this year for the first time, I actually got to go to the spelling bee. And as it was on the air, we were up there writing sentences for words that were coming up because they could switch the order of the words, for anyone that saw it this year, everything went crazy because there were eight champions and so everything was sort of getting decided on the fly. So we write sentences there, too.Jess:                                     31:31                    Wow. I actually had read somewhere, I think it might've been at the Tony awards one year, that they were writing - it was the year that Neil Patrick Harris rapped at the end and they were writing the rap during the show as winners were announced. First of all, Neil Patrick Harris, all hail Neil Patrick Harris and his ability to learn that stuff and perform it with like 10 minutes to spare. But the television world always to me, you know, Shonda Rhimes talks about writing for television as laying tracks while you're on the train that's going to... Sorry, Shonda, I'm sure I said that terribly, but it has always petrified me because of the speed at which things need to happen. So I'm always amazed when I hear things like the script story, where you're actually under pressure writing stuff while the show is happening.Jill:                                       32:20                    I was nervous because our show is once a week. And I have a lot of people, I have a lot of oversight on Last Week Tonight. But I actually found it incredibly calming. There's something really nice about not being able to read over what you've done. I'm writing a play right now and it could not be more stressful because I just have infinite time to revise and do and if it's up to me I will just revise for the rest of my life and no one will ever read anything I've written. So there's something really calming about being there and being under time pressure and being like, well it's out there. It worked or it didn't work. Who knows?Jess:                                     33:00                    Now this play that you mentioned, I had read that you are working on a musical about the convention at Seneca Falls. Is that what you're talking about?Jill:                                       33:06                    I am. I think it is turning into not a musical. Primarily because 2020 is the Centennial of women getting the right to vote. So this is the year for this and it takes so long to get a musical out there. That's what I thought I was going to do. And I think it's just going to be a play either first or always.Jess:                                     33:32                    That is so cool. So you have in fact someone in the #AmWriting Facebook group very specifically this week asked about not just wanting to know like the big picture nuts and bolts of how we (KJ, Sarina, and I) divide our time, but they wanted to know the close view of what it looks like - the granular view of how you divide your time. So what does your weekly schedule sort of look like in your daily sort of writing routine?Jill:                                       34:04                    Right now I'm on hiatus, so that's different and I'm going to kind of throw that out. But generally during the season, we work Wednesday through Sunday. We tape on Sunday and we work (theoretically) from 10-6. But it's whatever it takes you to get your work done. I consider myself a slow writer and I will very often write till midnight, one in the morning, whatever, when I'm on a piece. But it's really just write till you get it done or for me it's write till the singular moment when it is due. Always, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter when I started, doesn't matter how much time I have, if it's due at 9:00 AM then at 8:59 AM I will be writing.Jess:                                     34:53                    I've talked a lot about the fact that my deadline was supposed to be like July 1st for the book I just finished and then we moved it to October 1st but there was a conversation about, well, should I maybe propose like if there's time, which there is, because I'm not coming out until 2021 should I propose December 1st? And I'm like, Hmm, I need the pressure. I need that sort of looming-I-can-make-it-but-I got-to-keep-my-butt-in-the-chair-in-order-to-make-it. Because the minute I've got a couple extra months, I'm like, 'Or I could wash the baseboards in the bathroom.'Jill:                                       35:29                    Okay. I never do that. Never.Jess:                                     35:31                    No, I need the pressure.Jill:                                       35:32                    No, I am a queen of making fake deadlines for myself. Because yes, there's things I do for work. It is really hard to motivate myself to write all day and then write something for myself at night. So I will commit to other people, generally. Even when I was writing these children's books before it got to the point where there was any kind of deadlines, I would just email my agent and say, 'I'm gonna have a book to you by Tuesday at 4.' And then I had to write a book.Jess:                                     36:06                    I do the exact same thing and I know it's going to bite me in the butt at some point because I don't need to do that. I'm imposing a deadline on myself, but that seems to work for me.Jill:                                       36:18                    I think that I can't write anything without them. I'm having someone come over later today. He doesn't know this, but it is literally for the purpose of I was like, 'Can we plan out the next few scenes in this play?' But actually he's not writing the next few scenes in the play I am, but it's so that I have to write them and that I have some kind of accountability because it's a play. No one's asking for it. Frankly, no one wants it. There's a zillion plays in the world. So, in order for me to do it I have to invent a world where I'm accountable when I'm not.Jess:                                     36:51                    Do you have a series of deadlines then? Like do you have short term deadlines for certain scenes or do you just have some like big glowing day on your calendar, which is 'Have this mofo first draft done'Jill:                                       37:01                    No, I have to do it scene by scene. It's mostly just me. I mean, I'm hoping to say to this person, 'I'm going to get you a scene every day for the rest of my hiatus.'Jess:                                     37:15                    I mean, it sounds like this person is kind of your accountability buddy, but we've talked about this before. I'll say to KJ or to Sarina, 'I'm going to have chapter six done by end of day on Friday, hold me to that.' And they'll ask me, they'll text me, and say, 'How you doing on chapter four? How's it going?'Jill:                                       37:35                    I mean for most of my life I did not have a writing job. So I spent a long time crafting ways to pretend I was a professional writer. I didn't have an agent, as I said I've never had a TV agent. I got a book agent, not after Marlon Bundo came out, but maybe a week before Marlon Bundo came out, and she didn't know about Marlon Bundo when she signed me.Jess:                                     38:05                    So you approached her? Or she approached you, obviously?Jill:                                       38:08                    Because Marlon Bundo didn't exist. It was a weird situation where I had an offer for a YA book that I thought I could write while I was writing the show. I don't know how I thought I could do this. And so I needed an agent to broker that deal and so I asked friends who their agents were and if they would talk to me. And I actually chose her because she was like, 'I don't think you should this deal.' And I didn't know anything else in the world, but I was like, 'Well, she wants to work with me and she obviously doesn't want my money cause she's telling me to turn down this deal and maybe not do it at all.' So I signed with her and then I had to call her a week later and be like, 'I wasn't allowed to tell you this, but I have a book coming out tomorrow.'Jess:                                     39:00                    Oh, you were embargoed on that...interesting.Jill:                                       39:02                    Yeah. No, my parents didn't know. Noone knew I had written a book. It was all a huge secret.Jess:                                     39:09                    Well, parents are one thing, but not being able to tell a potential agent, that's a whole other thing. That makes talking with that person like impossible.Jill:                                       39:18                    She happened to be a children's book agent. But by sheer luck, I sort of fell into that because I loved her. And then I told her that. And of course a week later she was like, 'What were you talking about writing? A YA novel, obviously. You're going to write some children's books.Jess:                                     39:39                    That is so excellent. I love it. So we are out of time, I could talk to you for so long, but I want to talk a little bit about, have you been reading anything recently that you like?Jill:                                       39:53                    Oh my God.Jess:                                     39:53                    Anything you can talk about? Any stuff that you've been reading and enjoying?Jill:                                       39:57                    I'm looking right next to my bed. So give me five seconds to look at the name of it. It's called The World Only Spins Forward. And it is an oral history. It's a book about how the play Angels in America got written and sort of the world behind it, and the politics that were going on, the AIDS crisis that was going on, all of that stuff that led to Tony Kushner writing Angels in America. And I think it's lovely.Jess:                                     40:28                    Okay, so I will be picking this up on the way home because my husband is a super fan. My husband is an HIV doc and uses Angels in America to talk about what politically was going on at the time and essentially he re-watches the movie every six months or so. So I will be picking them on the way home.Jill:                                       40:52                    It's necessary reading. And it's also just fascinating, so far, from a writing perspective, when you imagine a young Tony Cushner going out and just starting seven hours of writing a play. This gives you a little idea how that happens.Jess:                                     41:11                    No, it's two parts. It's a two part play. We're going to need seven hours for this thing. I mean, can you even imagine?Jill:                                       41:20                    It seems like he did not think he was doing that, but then it'll also talk about how he'll go to a cabin and just come back with 700 pages of what he wrote there (for the play). And then he was like, 'Yeah, this will be a two hour show.' It took a while for them to figure out that perhaps it was not going to be one night of theater.Jess:                                     41:40                    Perhaps. I actually was just talking to Sarina when we recorded the intro that I have been listening to a book by Kristan Higgins, who our listeners will recognize. I'm listening to a book called Good Luck With That, which is a really cool premise about these three friends who met at (and I know this is not the term we're supposed to use, but they use it in the book) that met at fat camp, you know, nutrition and health camp for girls kind of thing. And 20 years later, one of them dies as a result of her morbid obesity. But leaves behind a list of (and this is not a spoiler because that happens right at the beginning of the book), their wishlist, the things they they wanted to do once they were thin. And she said, 'I want you to promise you have to do these things now.'.Jill:                                       42:35                    Oh my gosh.Jess:                                     42:36                    You can't wait till you're thin, you got to do these things. And it's a wonderful premise. The characters are fantastic. You do get to hear from the woman who has died because you're reading along; it's three women and you're reading along with her diary even though she has died. And then the other two women trying to fulfill the promises that they made to do these things now and not wait for someday about losing weight. It's three really lovely characters and Kristan Higgins is a truly gifted storyteller. So she has these three really individual women and it's a wonderful story.Jill:                                       43:11                    Can you say the title one more time?Jess:                                     43:13                    Yeah, it's called Good Luck With That by Kristan Higgins. And she's just absolutely lovely, her writing is wonderful. And it's a book that I didn't expect to fall in love with and now I'm like, 'Can I just go do some tasks or get in the car and drive around so that I can listen to it some more?' Which is always a plus for me, I love that. Are there audio books of Marlon Bundo and The Someone New?Jill:                                       43:43                    Oh my gosh. Is there ever an audio book of Marlon BUndo? The character of Marlon Bundo is voiced by Jim Parsons, who is a delight. Wesley is voiced by Jesse Tyler Ferguson. It's the best cast. I'm going to leave someone out so I'm not going to tell you all of them, but in it my voice shouts, 'Hooray.' So I'm a little bit in it, but it's wonderful and oh, I didn't say this, but I should say this. All the proceeds from Marlon Bundo go to the Trevor Project. Or all of our proceeds; meaning any money I would've made, any money the show would have made, any money our illustrator would have made, go to AIDS United and to the Trevor Project.Jess:                                     44:28                    I was just thinking about the Trevor Project yesterday. I did something really entertaining this year. I made a donation to the Trevor Project in the name of someone who would not want to be making a donation to the Trevor Project. And I specifically emailed them and this one other organization to say, 'Please, could you send a note to this person that I have made saying that, you know, I'm making this donation on behalf of you for the children under your care that really deserve to have fulfilled lives where they are seen and loved for who they are and not who someone else wants them to be.' And it was the best donation I've ever made in my whole entire life.Jill:                                       45:12                    I love it so much. I feel like Marlon Bundo was exactly that, on a slightly larger scale. It was a way to use the name of someone (who perhaps hasn't been kind to the LGBTQ community) and to make a lot of money for people that help those people.Jess:                                     45:35                    Now, do you still follow the real Marlon Bundo on Twitter?Jill:                                       45:39                    I absolutely do.Jess:                                     45:39                    Does he still have a Twitter feed? Oh, well I'm going to have to follow him as soon as we get off.Jill:                                       45:44                    It's absolutely worth it. And just to mention another organization cause we're doing it. With The Someone New we work together with K.I.N.D. (Kids In Need of Defense), which is an organization that helps kids at the border who are applying for asylum or, and gives them legal help. So, that's great. And I'm gonna throw out that in June I have another book coming out called Everyone Gets a Say that's about voting.Jess:                                     46:15                    Oh, I'm so excited. And we've been having a lot of debate in our house about what the voting age should be. There's a fantastic episode of the West Wing, actually, that I plan to make both of my boys watch where these kids come to the White House and they're trying to encourage the voting age to be lowered. They're trying to convince the White House to lower the voting age. And so we've had a very spirited conversation in our house about what the voting age should be. And actually it was reflected recently on Twitter. There was a whole thread that was going around about what various ages should be for various things. I happen to think that the voting age should be 16, because I think kids are smarter than we give them credit for. And they do have the ability to look at what's going on in our country and in the world and have a say in that.Jill:                                       47:01                    I don't know what I think. So I'm not going to state an opinion, but I do think voting on climate change bills should definitely be by people who are going to be around when they go into effect. I think if perhaps climate change isn't going to affect you because you're 89 years old, you shouldn't be the one making all the laws about it.Jess:                                     47:23                    Alright. So if people want to find out more about you and what you do, where would you send them?Jill:                                       47:28                    I have my name Jill Twiss, J-I L-L T-W-I-S-S is my Twitter handle, it's my Instagram handle, it's my website. So if you know that, you can find me in any capacity.Jess:                                     47:41                    Alright, so we've got A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. Go get it. It's fantastic. The Someone New. Go get that. It's fantastic. And what's the release date for the new book again?Jill:                                       47:50                    It is June 4th, I think. It's the first week in June and it's called Everyone Gets a Say.Jess:                                     47:58                    Go preorder it now so that everyone will get a say. I'm going to be pre-ordering it myself. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I am so grateful to you. This has been a fantastic conversation.Jill:                                       48:11                    I loved it. Thank you so much.Jess:                                     48:13                    I'm going to go off and work on my packet. Alright, thank you Jill. Bye-Bye. And until next week, everyone, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

“Every writer,” book coach Jennie Nash tells us, “ thinks at some point that they just cannot do this. That’s just part of the process.” It’s not our favorite part—but it’s true, and getting past that stage and on with the job of finishing a book in any genre is the part of the process that many writers just can’t seem to conquer. But for some of us—like Jennie—helping other people get past that road block is a superpower. If that’s you (and you know if it is)—then we might just have a side hustle for you. In this episode, we talk to Author Accelerator’s Jennie Nash about the five things that make a good book coach, how she trains book coaches and her process for guiding a writer’s process—and why a good book coach must be paid. Transcripts are having a holiday break—but the next #WritersTopFive is already scheduled for Monday, January 6, 2020: Top Five Ways to Find the Right Agent to Pitch. Those Top Fives are how we thank our supporters, who tell us how much they appreciate the podcast by funding it at $7 a month or $80 a year. The end of the year is a great time to do just that—and you won’t want to miss that Top Five or the ones that come after. Ready to join us? Just click the button.As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, where January is Become a Book Coach Month. Sign up for mighty and wondrous Business of Book Coaching Summit here—or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Love and Other Words / Roomies by Christina Lauren KJ: Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka MurataSarina: Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, Kate RacculliaJennie: The House that Lou Built, Mae Respicio#FaveIndieBookstoreThe Crow, Burlington, VT.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Whoa. Fellow writers, 2020 is upon us. And here at #AmWriting HQ, we love setting annual goals. We really do. We adore everything about it, from the anticipation and planning to the writing them in our handy dandy notebooks (although this year KJ got paralyzed by the need to make them pretty and ended up with temporary under a to-do list scribbles). One reason we love it so much is that we feel good about our goals. Typically, we tend to reach them—and that isn’t because we’re super-people. It’s because we set the right kinds of goals. Things we can control, that are within our reach, that can me measured and revisited and that hold us up and support us in our work. And we also love words—which means we love choosing our word of the year. This year we’ve got three good ones. Listen in, and then share yours in our Facebook group. If you’re working on goal setting and want to read more about how we make goals work for us, we’ve got something for you, our loyal email subscribers: a goal-setting mini-ebook. Download it here.Links and transcripts are having a holiday break—but the next #WritersTopFive is already scheduled for Monday, January 6, 2020: Top Five Ways to Find the Right Agent to Pitch. Those Top Fives are how we thank our supporters, who tell us how much they appreciate the podcast by funding it at $7 a month or $80 a year. The end of the year is a great time to do just that—and you won’t want to miss that Top Five or the ones that come after. Ready to join us? Just click the button. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, where January is Become a Book Coach Month. Sign up for mighty and wondrous Business of Book Coaching Summit here—or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

We’re reviewing our 2019 goals. Did we gloriously achieve? Live up to our words of the year by focusing on the worthy? Check every box and climb every mountain? We did okay. In some cases, we killed. In others, there were extenuating circumstances. Goals were revised, cast aside, postponed. All part of the process. To hear how we did, listen in—and be sure to share your bests and worsts from 2019 in the #AmWriting Facebook Group. Then, get ready for some #2020GoalSetting next week.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a request. Can you work supporting the #AmWriting podcast into your end-of-year budget? The next Monday’s #WritersTopFive: Top Five Ways to Find the Right Agent to Pitch, will drop into inboxes Monday, January 6, 2020—just in time for a new year of pitching goals. Every weekly #WritersTopFive email features fast, fun, actionable advice from KJ, Jess, Sarina and our guests. Supporters also get subscriber-only bonus PODCAST SHORTS. A little randomly timed inspiration from one of us every so often, straight into your podcast feed. Want in? Click the button.As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. LINKS FROM THE PODCASTJess’s video of an eagle trapped by an octopus (which is not nearly as dramatic as I feel trying to wrestle all my goals and to-dos into submission).#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: The Bromance Book Club, Evie Drake Starts OverKJ: Unmarriagable: Pride and Prejudice in PakistanSarina: The Bromance Book ClubThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript are on a break for the holidays. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

We all know you can’t really buy the things we writers want: inspiration, the power to spend as much time writing our books as we do thinking about them—not to mention sales, agents and editors. But you CAN grab a few things that make the writerly journey more fun. In this episode, we talk about the joys of journals and the perfect markers, tech tools that qualify as investments and those that are a little less spendy and suggest a few gifts for your writer groups stockings—including custom socks. Episode links follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, December 16, 2019: Top 5 Things to Do to at the Start of a New Nonfiction Project. Remember, you can GIFT a supporter subscription! Or sign up to support us yourself.On that note, there are affiliate links in this post. Most will go to support the podcast, but the things KJ “borrowed” from Catherine Newman’s gift guide are her affiliate links (and she’s donating the proceeds this year). As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. And now, this week’s links!LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe Leuchtturm B5 bullet journal with monthly pages we all use.From KJ:KJ’s two sets of sticky notes: the color dots, and the color flags, from the glorious gift guide of one Catherine Newman.KJ’s new favorite notebook, from Sarina (and Paipur—here’s their direct website).Books and art supplies KJ is craving: Finding Your Creative Voice, Lisa CongdenA set of watercolor paints like this one, also snatched from Catherine’s gift guide. And hey, why not this book she liked, too? A Field Guide to Color, Lisa Solomon.The outline pens KJ keeps seeing on Instagram—or something like them— are here in plain, and here in glitter.We talked about classes from Skillshare, BluPrint and Master Class.Give the Gift of a Podcast here.From Jess: Book Nerd hat I bought at Parnassus but you can get from Out of PrintNight Scout Rechargeable LED beanie in redTät Tat “sacco” upright pouch for glasses in grey blue The Every Day Calendar from Simone Giertz (her useless robot video is here)Pre-order Benjamin Dreyer’s Stet! Grammar game, out July 7, 2020From Sarina: Snarky notepads Frixion no-bleed, erasable markers in fineliners and plumper versionsNew apple pencil Nebo app for handwriting-to-text This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.There’s no transcript for this week’s episode. Transcripts will return next week. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Turns out you should judge a book by its cover, and readers do. Which means authors need to consider that (and not our own taste) when we think about our own covers. This week, we talk about the two things to consider whether you’re an indie working with cover artists or a trad with a publisher and an art department: reader expectations and those now-you-can’t-stop-seeing-the-flowers trends, and it turns into a bit of lesson in heading to the bookstore and making some cover judgments of your own.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, have you heard that we recorded our first #SupporterMinis this month? #SupporterMinis are short bursts of advice or inspiration (or maybe commiseration) to punctuate your writing week, which appear in the podcast feeds of our supporters. Supporters also get weekly #WritersTopFives like Top Five Goodreads Secrets for Authors and Top Five Things You Don’t Need to Be a Real Writer. Support us and we’ll do everything we can to support you!As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Running with Sherman: The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero, Christopher McDougallKJ: Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, Kate RacculiaMore Reading on Book CoversThe 78 Best Book Covers of 2019 from LitHub9 beautiful book cover design trends for 2019, 99designsThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work done. Check out their FREE (and epic) upcoming summit on the Business of Book Coaching if you’re intrigued, or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration was compiled by the people at the magnificent LitHub, which you should bookmark and read constantly, and used in the article that’s linked in our shownotes: The 78 Best Book Covers of 2019. I note that I have not read one single one of these books. Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hello fellow writers. The end of the year is a great time to look back at what filled you up in the past months and for many of us that's not just our writing, but the time we've spent helping others with their work. For some of us that's come out in small ways, but for others it's a calling and an opportunity to build a career doing work you love. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. And they'll be hosting a free book coaching summit in January for anyone who wants to learn more. If that's got your ears perked up, head to authoraccelerator.com/summit. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:43                    Now it's recording, go ahead.KJ:                                        00:44                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:48                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:49                    Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:52                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:52                    Now one, two, three. Hey, this is KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the weekly podcast about writing all the things, be they fiction, nonfiction, proposals, final drafts, pitches, essays, whatever it is that you are working on. We are the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done.Jess:                                     01:20                    I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids and I am deep in the land of editing right now and you can also find my work at the Atlantic and the New York Times and the Washington Post.Sarina:                                 01:33                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30-odd romance novels and I am revising a book called Heartland, which will come out in the late winter and my revision is due on Monday.Jess:                                     01:49                    Ouch, but you're going to make it.KJ:                                        01:53                    I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of a novel coming out next summer, as well as How To Be a Happier Parent coming out in paperback next summer and former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, where I occasionally still contribute, and right now, not in fact in the land of editing, or revising, or anything along those lines. But I will own that my bold declarations regarding NaNoWriMo and trying to finish my current project, I did not. It is not quite the end of NaNoWriMo as we record, but I can guarantee to you that I did not write 50,000 words of a novel during November, but that's okay. I needed to do a lot of thinking, so I could not write. If I had written 50,000 words, it would not have been a good use of my time. Sometimes, it turns out that way.Jess:                                     02:45                    Well, I said I pulled the rug out from under my NaNoWriMo, anyway. So I've been doing something that was completely unplanned and has been going pretty well, actually. Oh, this is also fun news. I had a meeting with my editor - the same meeting that I had post sort of her taking a look at the first draft of Gift of Failure. And whereas the Gift of Failure meeting was vomit inducing, it was horrible. Some of you have heard this story, but basically suffice it to say it was a nightmare of a meeting with your editor, the very kind of meeting you hope you don't have. Although she's quite a lovely person. This meeting was its exact opposite. It was lovely, it was a love fest, everybody's happy. It was just really, really nice to have a positive meeting to offset the negative meeting that I had after Gift of Failure was turned in. One and one - is that what you say?KJ:                                        03:50                    I was going to look at a little more positively and say not many writers can have such a ringing guarantee that they have learned.Jess:                                     03:58                    Well, that's actually something that has been really interesting. I had a huge checklist of basically the what not to do stuff. And it was really nice cause during the meeting she said, 'I could tell that you were trying really hard to not do the things that you did last time.' And I'm like, 'Oh you have no idea. You have no idea how organized I was in my efforts to not make the same mistakes twice.' So that was a ringing endorsement of at least my anal retentive sort of attempts to to do better this time. To learn from my mistakes.KJ:                                        04:30                    Massive gold star. For learning all the things and we're going to talk about other things that we've learned today. We do have a topic and I'm really excited about it. Today's topic is cover art.Jess:                                     04:49                    I can fall so deep into this whole...like this topic, especially now since I'm at the point where I get to start sort of like really thinking about this. This can consume me for days.KJ:                                        05:01                    So we're going to talk about covers when you need to create your own cover. Covers when you're working with a publisher and they are presenting covers to you. Covers internationally. Covers, you know, what it is when you are working with a publisher, what you ought to be thinking about. So let's just start broadly like, what makes a good cover?Sarina:                                 05:24                    Well, I was thinking about this yesterday, as we were getting ready for this and I had a really good time thinking about it and making notes. And I thought that at the end of the day there were really two things that every author is supposed to think about. Two broad things - and they are, number one reader expectations, followed by (distantly) trends. So when I say reader expectations I mean that all of us, when we walk into a bookstore and we take that first glance at the table in front and maybe your eye comes to rest on a book, I don't know if until you're in this seat where you have to think about it, that you really realize how much information you're getting from that cover just at the first glance. About is that book fiction or nonfiction, is it literary, is it practical, is it a romance, is it for children? You know, you get a lot of information really quickly and, and when it's time for the gut wrenching question of what cover art is going to be on your book, you have to like back out a little and think with your analytical brain about what information you want readers to have.Jess:                                     06:44                    This is something that when Gift of Failure was in the process of getting its cover the first round of covers really were a clear statement that my publisher wasn't really sure what this book was. And so when we backed up, my agent and I did a really clear conversation about what exactly do you want this book to say about what's inside. And I knew little things, like I wanted people to be able to know what this book was from far away. Like I wanted someone on the other end of a subway car to say, 'Oh, I recognize that book.' But above and beyond that, if you think about what Gift of Failure is, it's a parenting book, but it's an education book. And so there were all these like how do you convey that through a cover design? And it's really a tricky thing. And looking forward to the next book, I don't even know where to start with that, but I love the fact that you have to somehow get all of these messages across graphically. And that's what's so exciting about a cover.Sarina:                                 07:49                    It is. And we should also say where Gift of Failure ended up as cover art because it's really telling; and it was such a great cover.Jess:                                     07:57                    Well, and it was a total redesign. And when my agent and I rejected the first set of covers and asked for a redesign, we found the image of a ladder with a broken rung. And then we're like, 'Oh, but what if the ladder was made out of pencils?' So that was kind of a joint effort between me and my agent. So while my agent said (you know, she neve,r hardly ever recommends that an author sort of say, 'Here, look, here's a cover design.') She was very into the idea of us giving them ideas, especially once it seemed like their artists were stuck.KJ:                                        08:34                    I want to jump on the word rejected. Cause you didn't, cause you couldn't. I have not read your contract, but I can almost guarantee you that that right is not in there.Jess:                                     08:48                    How about we gently suggested?KJ:                                        08:51                    But that is something to be aware of if you are in a situation where you're working with a publisher, you don't have control over the cover art. If the publisher said, 'No, no, what we really like for the book, the Gift of Failure is this shot of a Christmas tree with presents on it and gnomes hanging off of it and that's what we're going with. You really got nothing. So when you're in that situation to take like a sort of more diplomatic approach is very necessary. Because every new design really costs them money too, right?Sarina:                                 09:32                    Right. And in one case, my first novel was women's fiction for Penguin in 2011, basically. And when I first saw the cover, they hired an outside illustrator to make it and I was told upfront that that was sort of an expensive thing to do. And they said, 'Here is your cover.' And I freaked because the cover was a whole bunch of things that did not make sense for this book. It looked vintage to me and the book was straight up contemporary. It was super busy. And I have to tell you, it had comic sans as the font. In black and the rest of the cover was not dark colors. And I just lost my mind there for a minute. But after I freaked out to my agent (and you're allowed to do that) I...KJ:                                        10:31                    Yes. That's the person to freak out to.Jess:                                     10:33                    Yeah, absolutely.Sarina:                                 10:34                    Then I wrote, very carefully, a note about I didn't actually mention how much I loathed with every fiber of my being the imagery on this cover, but rather I explained why the readers we were looking for would not pick up that cover. That it looked too old, it looked too big. You know, because my opinion is not important to this equation, but reader opinion really is.Jess:                                     11:01                    That's a fantastic point.Sarina:                                 11:03                    Yeah. That's where you want to go with your angst. Is here's why this would be an error, you know, in a very analytical way.Jess:                                     11:12                    I had this really cool situation with my publisher where the CEO, President, whatever, my publisher was teaching a class on publishing at a college. And one of the books that he had offered up to the students to do some sample covers for, just to sort of get an idea of how marketing works, one of them was mine. And the student got in touch with me through my website to talk to me about the fact that she had chosen my book as the book that she was working on in this college class on publishing, which was really cool. So that meant that my publisher was thinking about my book, not only from the perspective of 'I'm the publisher of this book and we want people to buy it, but I'm teaching students about marketing using this book.' So it was a really cool opportunity to have lots of perspectives. But also, unique, not many people get that opportunity.KJ:                                        12:06                    That is very cool. My nonfiction, the How To Be a Happier Parent came back to us the first time with an image of like cartoon parents on a roller coaster with their children. About which there were many, many problems. Among them was that all the parents and children were white. And also being on a roller coaster does not make you a happier parent. I mean, it had its point. I could kind of see where they were coming from, but we did something similar where we went back to them with just talking about how we didn't think it represented the book and ultimately they asked me, 'Well, what do you like?' And this same process, just to jump ahead, it happened to me with the novel, you know, show us some pictures that you like, show us covers that you like, tell us what it is you like about this. They actually did that in the case of the novel before we even went into it. So, in the case of How To Be a Happier Parent, I actually gave them a magazine that I like, it's called Flow, and if anyone ever found Flow and also found the cover of How To Be a Happier Parent, it ended up kind of looking like an issue of Flow. It has a chalkboard, and a floral, it's very trendy to be honest. And I like the cover very much, but it's definitely of its time. And then for the novel this time around I went to the publisher's website and tried to pull covers from their website that I liked.Sarina:                                 13:45                    Yeah, that was actually really fun to just think about the novel cover with you, KJ.KJ:                                        13:51                    Yeah, we were all pulling things and it was really great.Sarina:                                 13:56                    It was super fun. And that's kind of where part two comes into this, which is what trends have to say about what should be on the cover of your book. So one is reader expectations. And with The Chicken Sisters, you know, this is a novel about sisters. It's not a spoiler to say that. So, it's contemporary, it has a family dynamic, there's an element of competition regarding the whole book is about a contest, right? You had all of those things to kind of juggle and play with. And then there's also the trends of what's on the cover of women's fiction right now.Jess:                                     14:43                    And not just what's on the cover, but what colors. Because it turns out, and I had no idea, obviously there are trends just like in fashion for colors and you can see what colors are trending when you go to your local bookstore.KJ:                                        14:56                    Oh, you totally can.Jess:                                     14:58                    It's really interesting. All of a sudden everyone decides teal is the color. Or everyone decides yellow is, it's really fascinating to watch.KJ:                                        15:06                    Let's hope yellow is the color of 2020 because that's what I ended up with. So The Chicken Sisters went through two cover drafts. So the first cover was very typical of commercial women's fiction. That's commercial, small, the tropes and chicken sisters, just to use the lingo. It's a small town, there's restaurants, there's foodiness, there's women, there's lots of conversation. That's not really a trope. Anyway, the first cover was a picture of two women sitting in a restaurant, talking. And there was nothing wrong with that. Like it was fine, but it didn't really leap.Sarina:                                 16:01                    It lacked conflict.KJ:                                        16:02                    It looked like a happy women's, commercial women's fiction book, which it is. But it didn't show that it's a dynamic story. And also, like yours, it looked a little vintage, and it's a very contemporary story. And so we went back and sort of went through it again and talked again about different covers. And the thing that they came back with when they decided to do a complete redesign is such a perfect icon. What they've got is two women's hands pulling at a wishbone, which you guys can see. We will put it up in the show notes, of course. It's all over my Instagram and will continue to be all over my Instagram for the next who knows how long.Jess:                                     16:55                    Here's a question - did you suggest the wishbone or did they come up with that?KJ:                                        16:58                    I did not, they came up with it.Jess:                                     16:59                    It's so good.KJ:                                        17:02                    It's really perfect.Jess:                                     17:04                    Because that first one, you're right, it really did look like two friends sitting down and having a cup of tea together. But this is perfect cause there's the conflict, there's the competition, there's the luck. All of that stuff, it's great.Sarina:                                 17:17                    It's amazing.KJ:                                        17:18                    And then I suggested (we made it super clear that they are different hands. You can tell by the fact that they've got different nail polish and they look a little different) and then it's got this background of sunflowers, which I love. And apparently floral backgrounds are super trendy, but I love them because the book is set in Kansas and sunflowers are very Kansas. I think what that communicates to readers is just, I don't know what the floral background communicates to readers to be honest. I like it, I pick them up.Sarina:                                 17:52                    It's just an it item. It's pretty like who doesn't want to look at sunflowers. And we should also say, KJ, that this whole cover art, so gorgeous, is illustrated because that is also a big trend right now. So, in the nineties I read lots of like chicklet novels that had illustrated covers like the Bridget Jones era. And then there was a while there after chicklet kind of had a big moment and then went away that that like illustrated was gone from book cover land because it was like you can't say anything serious underneath an illustrated cover.KJ:                                        18:34                    The pause here is me trying to remember what commercial women's fiction looked like in the...I guess it would...Sarina:                                 18:46                    Well, there's photos of like porch swings, and adirondack chairs, and women on beaches with big floppy hats. And all of that is still there. Like Elin Hildebrand has beach covers, but hers are starting to look more illustrated, too.KJ:                                        19:03                    They're starting to be illustrated pictures of women on beaches in big, floppy hats. And let me just say, I love a good women on a beach and a big floppy hat novel. So, you know, it's a good cover. If there were a beach and hats in my novel, I'd have been all over that.Jess:                                     19:19                    I have to say all of the books I was going to talk about today. I've done this fun reversal to you know, stuff I don't usually read, the sort of women's romcom stuff and it's all illustrated. You're totally right, I was just looking at the covers.Sarina:                                 19:33                    Yeah. And that's new. And it's also hitting the romance market pretty hard right now. So like four years ago you couldn't find a single romance novel with illustrations on the cover. It just didn't exist. And you know, everybody knows the history of romance covers with Fabio and like ripped shirts open and people. But a couple obviously screams romance. So people were used to seeing that. And then we hit the 50 Shades era and also self-publishing kind of ripped up all the rules because people didn't have photo shoots at their disposal, so...KJ:                                        20:11                    They were busily sort of begging their brothers to stand around shirtless and it just wasn't working for whatever reason. Come on, come on, it'd be great for your Instagram.Sarina:                                 20:23                    It became a stock photo market and there are certain stock photo models that when I see it that I just laugh because they're so overused. Like there's this one model that I call Creepy Eyed Santa Guy. I went for years without a photo of Creepy Eyed Santa Guy because there are a whole bunch of photos of him with a Santa hat on, but lots of photos of him without one. And then my check publisher actually used Creepy Eyed Santa Guy on one of my check editions. So now I do have that guy. But then 50 Shades of Gray came along and this author chose to put like cufflinks and a neck tie on her very stark covers.KJ:                                        21:09                    And it was self-published. So that was her choice.Jess:                                     21:11                    I think you mean handcuffs there, Buckaroo.KJ:                                        21:15                    Oh, that's true.Sarina:                                 21:17                    No, there were cufflinks.Jess:                                     21:19                    Oh, were there?Sarina:                                 21:20                    Yeah.Jess:                                     21:21                    I only remember the tie and the handcuffs. I don't remember the cufflinks, excellent.Sarina:                                 21:25                    No, there were like fine menswear stuff on and it. And it was moodily lit so it just looked like, you know, the guy took off his tie cause he had things to do. And that just ushered in what now in romance, people call object covers. And so now, if you see a book cover with a slip on it or just some piece of clothing moodily lit on a dark background, it tells you that that is going to be a very erotic book or have very erotic themes because that one author changed the way that romance novelists looked at cover potentials (in that sub-genre anyway) by her own success made it that way.KJ:                                        22:09                    Well there were so many things to sort of tease out of that and one of them was your international publisher. But I was thinking about the question of illustratation - You tried an illustrated cover lately? We're talking about reader expectations and I know that recently you had a moment when you felt like the cover that you chose did not meet your readers' expectations.Sarina:                                 22:38                    Oh yeah.Jess:                                     22:39                    We want to hear more about that.Sarina:                                 22:41                    Well, that was just last month and I was spinning off a character. So he was from my Brooklyn series and I had retired him from the hockey team in a book and I was spinning him off into a story about his family's very bizarre security company, like a cybersecurity thing. So I needed readers to know that that beloved character was getting a story and that they were connected. And my wonderful cover artist, she is so talented, made me exactly what I asked her for, which is something a bit trendy, with a bit of a blur to it, really interesting cover for this new series that had an element of suspense. She did exactly what I asked her to. It was gorgeous and the preorders for this book were terrible and I panicked and they just didn't improve and I thought, well, something's just wrong. Like readers really like this guy. They'll like this story, the blurb is good. Like I knew enough to know which things ought to be working and so I woke up six days before the launch - positive that the cover was a problem and I thought, okay, well I'm going to write my poor cover designer an email and say, 'Listen, I've made a big mistake. Do you have any time to help me?' And she said yes. And I bought a photograph from a photographer that day and I sent it over to her and we changed the cover so that you can tell that it's a spinoff from that other series by the typography.KJ:                                        24:23                    Right. Now it looks like it looks like the other series.Sarina:                                 24:27                    It does, except the background is dark instead of light and there's no sports imagery on it. But you can tell from the typography and the minute I showed it to people (another author who reads some of my stuff) said, 'Oh, it's a Brooklyn book.' And then I knew exactly at that moment that I was right and that book ended up doing great. It hit USA Today at number 89. It's performed in line, the audio is selling well. Like everything about it did what I had originally expected it to, but I had confused my readers and they did not know what to make of that new cover.Jess:                                     25:01                    Well and how brave of you. Well, and keep in mind not only how brave of you to make a change at the last second, but making a change at the last second involved a lot of moving parts that a, you couldn't necessarily have anticipated like weird moving parts that that we can go into in just a second. But the other thing is, in terms of expectations, it's okay if your readers expect this to be a Brooklyn Bruiser's novel because they'll pick up that it kinda sorta a little bit is, but it's a new entryway into a whole new series. So, you didn't have to worry too much about people getting confused by it being, but not being, a Brooklyn Bruiser's novel.Sarina:                                 25:43                    Right. Because that was true. It's just that I had lost them at like maybe it doesn't have anything to do with any of your other books and that was a mistake. Basically I was kind of tired of putting shirtless men on my covers and I wanted something artsy and interesting and it didn't work. Like my readers were not ready. Well, they just weren't there for me to say, 'Hey, my brand today looks different, you have to respect the brand that you've built.' And that's the mistake I made.KJ:                                        26:18                    Here's a question. Does the illustrated trend extend to Indie and if so, is it a pricey thing to do to have an illustrated cover?Sarina:                                 26:27                    You know, Indies are a little confused about it, because many of our cover artists are not illustrators. And so I have some friends that have found good illustrators to make this trend work for them. And then there is stock illustration, though. So a good cover artist isn't necessarily going to freehand everything. Like you can find illustration vectors that will contain the imagery that you're looking for and you can move it around however you wish.KJ:                                        27:04                    Even publishers use that stuff. There is a little bird on the cover of How To Be a Happier Parent that I really loved and wanted to use in other places. And we had a problem because they had licensed it and they had only licensed it for cover use. So we worked it out. But yeah, even publishers use stock illustrations.Sarina:                                 27:23                    Of course they do.Jess:                                     27:24                    And publishers will also outsource stuff. There was one of my international editions, the publisher in that country wanted to use the original art from Gift of Failure in the U.S. and apparently my publisher had outsourced that art to someone that didn't necessarily work under that for Harper Collins. And so that art was no longer available because that person, for whatever reason wasn't making it available. So there's all kinds of snags that you can run up against with illustrators and licensing and all that stuff.Sarina:                                 27:56                    Yeah, I bet that like almost half of U.S. traditionally published books have some element of licensed stock art on them. I see it all over the place.KJ:                                        28:11                    And now we will all see it all over the place.Jess:                                     28:15                    Well, I'm in that phase right now where I'm paying a lot of attention to covers because the cover for my next book is going to be really, really tricky. Because for me, I would love it if people would see this next book and identify it somehow with me, or my brand, or my preexisting cover art. How exactly you convey the title (which by the way we think is probably gonna stick) we probably think we're going to stick with the title of The Addiction Inoculation. We had a very specific conversation about this. And there are some worrisome images that you could use.KJ:                                        28:50                    We've spent some time coming up with the worst possible combination of pencils and The Addiction Inoculation. We've enjoyed it, but you know, it's probably time to give it a rest.Jess:                                     29:03                    Exactly. So what they end up with, so now I have tastes in covers and they may not necessarily be what's on trend right now. So it's going to be really interesting to see what they come up with. And I'm going to be brainstorming a lot about what possible covers could look like. In fact, I even got an email recently from someone who said, 'You know what, I was in a bookstore recently and I had this idea for you.' And believe me, those things are welcome. I love that.KJ:                                        29:30                    So Sarina, walk us through creating a cover. As an Indie published author. Like where do you start? Where are you getting this art? Where do you find that person?Sarina:                                 29:42                    You know, there are 10 or 15 cover artists that my friends and I all use and you can look at somebody's copyright page and see who did their design. So that's one place to start. Or you can even search book cover art.KJ:                                        30:03                    Yeah. If you search this people definitely pop up. But I personally wouldn't have any way of evaluating them. I guess I could look at their covers because we can judge them by their book covers.Sarina:                                 30:15                    And I honestly look at designer's websites all the time and I rarely find what I'm looking for cause I'm just super picky now. But the important thing is to find someone who understands the genre because without that key component, it doesn't matter how talented they are. In romance, if somebody showed me a cover without humans on it in some way, I would not be able to take that. And of course these things are really dependent upon the location as well. So all of my German books have flowers on them or other vegetation and they are so pretty. There are just gorgeous. But the first time I saw that flower cover, or actually it was a tree for a different book, I was a little panicked. Like people won't know this is a romance if there's no people on it, it's a tree. How is anyone gonna understand? But that was me just trapped inside my own stereotypical understanding of what I see at the bookstore when I look at a cover and Germans just don't need that, I guess.Jess:                                     31:30                    The cultural divide can also be really interesting. One of my prettiest covers, I have no idea how it would get any Gift of Failure kind of idea across, it's Korean and it's got this beautiful deer on it. But someone told me that it actually appeals quite well in Korea. So who knows what I know. And by the way, your German covers I think are some of the most beautiful covers out there. I love them so much.Sarina:                                 31:53                    Well, they were just geniuses with this because the first flower one came out I believe in March or April. And I began seeing it all over Instagram next to pictures of real flowers and it just photographed really well. And the season hit it just right. And yeah, it's pretty great.Jess:                                     32:41                    The interesting thing is there are some people who also try to hook their website art into their cover art and some people's website art ended up, I'm thinking about Gretchen Rubin's specifically, she worked with a designer who sort of helped to do branding for her all over the place. And that art from the branding company ended up also being her cover art. And so, you know, there's all kinds of convoluted ways this can happen. But some of the most recognizable art out there, I think Gretchen's art is incredibly recognizable from her happiness project. And that was the result of a partnership with a branding company. So anyway, there are lots of ways to to tackle this beast, I suppose.KJ:                                        33:28                    Yeah. And then when you get your cover art, I would guess as an Indie, you probably want to make sure that you have it licensed so that you can use it in every possible scenario. And if you're working with a publisher, you can ask can I have the elements of the... So for example, I asked for the sunflower background so that I could use it as a background for social media and for for some paper stuff that I wanted. So it doesn't have the cover image, it only has the sunflowers on it. You can take your own cover art, whether it is Indie or publisher driven, and you can you can take a screenshot of a tiny chunk of the color and then just Google, what color is this? And pop the screenshot in there and it'll give you the number. So you'll get this crazy six digit/letter number that signifies that color digitally. And you can go to Canva and make your brand palette with your colors and you should. And then you can use that for everything. You can ask your publisher what your font is and then you'll have to look, maybe Canva and other places have that font. I actually had to buy the font that they used on my title for like $7.99 or whatever. But I bought it and I bought the license so that I can use it on cards and things like that. A publisher might pay for that for you, but in this case the amount that it cost to buy the font was not worth it. And then once you've bought the font, you can upload it to Canva. There's a lot you can do with this stuff once you've got it in hand.Jess:                                     35:27                    I have these lovely book plates with pencils on them and and that's been a wonderful thing to have and it matches the book. I love it. We are running up against the end of our time, but I wanna make sure we have time to talk about what we've been reading, cause I've been reading a lot.KJ:                                        35:43                    Are we done with talking about covers?Jess:                                     35:45                    I don't know. I'm happy to go over and I assume our listeners are happy to go over, but, but there's definitely a lot to talk about and definitely a lot to talk about when it comes to cultural stuff.KJ:                                        36:00                    Yeah, we didn't talk about like trends in nonfiction and the sort of the big book cover, which is basically nothing but letters on either a background or a background image. Or I was reading some interesting stuff about how there's a new trend for like having the illustration kind of overlap the letters. So that's a neat thing. I don't know. It's just fun to see what's coming and then watch for it. It makes you look at covers differently, even while all the while you're using them in your mind to judge whether or not you would want to read the book. Because the truth is that we do judge a book by its cover.Jess:                                     36:39                    Well, and you know, it was funny when I was looking at covers for Gift of Failure, I kept sending pictures to my agent of covers that I love. And she'd emailed back and she'd say, 'Yeah, Jess, that book sold like 40 copies.' And I was like, 'I can't help it that my my taste in book covers is a little esoteric, but whatever.' Books, let's do it people, What have you been reading, KJ?KJ:                                        37:07                    I've actually been reading a lot. It's been a good season for reading for me. So I've been all over Instagram with doing a new thing. I'm doing book chats, which Sarina also does, where I do a little video about the book that I've been reading. It's been a really good reading season, but I'm gonna pull one out. Partly because I like the cover. I just finished Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts. I loved it. And it's got a gorgeous blue cover with this sort of Zodiac looking thing around the type. It's a big book cover in that the type takes up most of the cover, but there is a person on it. Do we think having the person on it sort of signifies fiction? I think it might.Jess:                                     37:57                    Really? Well, what are you talking about in terms of a person?KJ:                                        38:01                    This is an illustrated cover but it does have like a silhouette of a person. And now that I'm sort of coming to think of it, it's kind of rare to see silhouettes of people, or any form of people, or body part on nonfiction other than memoir. And I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I'm just thinking about like what are the subliminal cues here?Jess:                                     38:25                    That's true, I hadn't thought about that.KJ:                                        38:26                    Anyway, Tuesday Mooney - it's a little bit ready player one-esque - there's a millionaire with a big game. There is a ghosty element, but it's not very strong. I don't know, it's not like magical realism world. It's very much the real world with a flare of ghostliness, which I like very much. The characters are all incredibly fun. No matter how small the character is in the book, you would totally have a beer with that person. And it really, as a writer, reminded me of what I think of as fun in a book and that I need to focus on those things. Anyway, recommend.Sarina:                                 39:11                    I can't wait to read it.Jess:                                     39:13                    Is that it or do you have anymore?KJ:                                        39:14                    That's it, I'm going to leave the others for other episodes.Jess:                                     39:18                    Okay. So I have a couple. Sarina, do you mind if I go next?Sarina:                                 39:23                    You should go next because I don't have a meaningful contribution.Jess:                                     39:26                    Okay. Well I have a fair number because I've been traveling a fair amount to speak and so that means audio books, obviously, and lots of time on planes. And I was in New York walking all over New York. I got so much great walking done and listening to books. Speaking of great covers. I just finished a book by Christopher McDougall who wrote Born to Run and a couple of other books. You know the one about the, the Mara tribe running this ultra marathon. His new book is Running with Sherman, and Sherman is a donkey. So, of course there is a fantastic picture of a donkey on the cover of this book. And so obviously nonfiction, tells you exactly what the book is going to be about, it's about running with a donkey, and it's great. I loved the book. Christopher McDougall is so good at doing going off on really appropriate tangents, whether that's relationships with animals, mental health. There's a whole side story because of one person in the book about a mental health issue and how animals can affect your mental health. And anyway, so the story of Sherman, this donkey that he rescued from near death and then ended up running a long distance sort of burrow. It's a thing apparently, running with burrows. And it's very, very funny. So that book had a great cover. And then two of the books I listened to, both of which were kind of romcom were illustrated. One was Frankly in Love by David Yoon, and that was a YA. Although, that line between upper YA and adult YA it's such a fine and silly line. But this book was fantastic.KJ:                                        41:15                    Tuesday Mooney sits on that line, too.Jess:                                     41:18                    Really?KJ:                                        41:18                    Totally. It's totally got YA characters, some of them, but it's also got adult characters. Well, you know what Ready Player One sits on that line. I read it, my kids read it.Jess:                                     41:29                    And this is definitely a first love story and it's a kid finishing high school and going into college kind of thing. But I also learned a ton about Korean culture. The characters are Korean and it was a wonderful love story. And then the other illustrated cover romcom book I read (that I just started today and I'm already completely in love with) is Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren. And I did not know until Sarina told me that these are two separate authors. I did not realize that they're a team.Sarina:                                 42:02                    Yeah, Christina and Lauren.Jess:                                     42:04                    And it sounds like they have what, like 30 books under their belt and they're great. Well, this one so far is fantastic. It's there is an echo of The Accidentals there, Sarina, that's really interesting. And it's just a really fun story to listen to while I'm baking and things like that. And there were also two books that I'm not gonna mention that I wanted to throw across the room in frustration because they didn't stick the landing. And that was incredibly frustrating for me, especially since one of them is in all the airport bookstores because it's a current bestseller at Hudson Books. And I just get so angry. Like this has happened to us many times where I say, 'There's this book, I'm so excited, it's on the best seller list and it's another suspense kind of story. And I get so excited and I get into the characters and then, man, it just falls flat at the end and I get so angry.KJ:                                        43:04                    Endings are hard. I mean I read something recently, which I will at some point talk about on an episode cause I did end up liking it, but I'm not going to name it right now because this is mildly critical, you know at the end you could see the wheels, you know the machine was cranking. It's hard, I mean I think you could say that about almost any book if you lose your suspension of disbelief for any reason and yet you still keep reading. And sometimes as writers, I think we might lose our suspension of disbelief in ways that we wouldn't as readers. Like something pulls you out and makes you go, 'Oh, I remember them putting this in in chapter four.' And then all of a sudden you're watching the writing and now it's hard not to see the machine moving because you know that there's a machine.Jess:                                     43:56                    One of the two books that I wanted to throw across the room though, had a clanking machine so loud that I nearly said out loud on the streets of New York, 'That makes no sense and could never happen.' I was so irritated. It was just really, really irritating to me. But I guess I'll leave it at that. You know, I have some other critical things to say, but it's been a really fun reading period because I've realized I've got some dark stuff going on that I'm dealing with personally. And so I'm in that happy place with romcoms and that's really, really fun. Alright, I think we're good people. I think I missed you guys cause cause you did one without me and so I'm so happy to be back.KJ:                                        45:07                    Before we sign off, let me just remind everybody that if you would like the show notes for this episode, you can always find them at amwritingpodcast.com. If you are interested in getting our top fives for writers, which come out weekly, the most recent one was top five BookBub with secrets for authors. You can also go to amwritingpodcast.com and sign up to be a supporter of the podcast. Do that and the weekly top fives will drop into your mailbox as well as our new mini supporter episodes of which we have so far recorded one. And we're loving building this writerly community, which I might add, you can also check out on Facebook by looking for the AmWriting group.Jess:                                     46:02                    Okay, until next week everyone, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

The infamous how-to meets self-help meets memoir-with-a-dash-of-stunt genre. It may be awkwardly named, but we love it.This week’s guest didn’t realize she was laying the groundwork for her first book when she decided to write 50 thank you notes to the people, things and places that shaped her in honor of her 50th birthday—but of course she was When you can define a thing and the time frame and the reasons for doing it so clearly, what else can you do but inspire other people to do the same? But the road from I’m doing this thing to I’m publishing this book isn’t clear (although in this case it was lightning fast). This week, Nancy Davis Kho talks to us about what it took to make her book saleable, then write the damn thing and make it really really good.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, did you catch the #WritersTopFive that popped into your inbox Monday? (And if it didn’t, HELLO, you need to subscribe to our free weekly #AmWriting emails!) That was just a little taste. We do those every week. I just scheduled Top Five Reference Books for All Novelists, and Three More for Special Occasions, and you don’t want to miss it. (You won’t believe the kinds of things that can be turned into an encyclopedias or dictionary.) We also recorded the first of many #MiniSupporter episodes that will slip right into the podcast feeds of #AmWriting supporters everywhere. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. LINKS FROM THE PODCASTAya deLeon, author of the Justice Hustlers series.#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Nancy: The Good Lord Bird, James McBrideJess: Sense and Sensibility, narrated by Kate WinsletKJ: What Should I Read Next—the podcast from Anne Bogel, aka the Modern Mrs Darcy. (I’m obsessed with it. I’ve found so many great new reads!)#FaveIndieBookstoreA Great Good Place for Books, OaklandOur guest for this episode is Nancy Davis Kho, author of The Thank You Project and host of the Midlife Mixtape podcast. Find the book, the podcast and all things Nancy HERE.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work done. Check out their FREE (and epic) upcoming summit on the Business of Book Coaching if you’re intrigued, or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:02                    Hey there listeners, it's KJ. What with Jess starting in on a new project lately, we've been talking a lot about nonfiction and research. If that's your kind of work, our sponsor, Author Accelerator can help and you don't have to go all in with full on book coaching if you're not ready. Check out their new four week long nonfiction framework program that will help you nail down your structure before you start to write, or after your writing and realizing, dang, this thing needs a backbone. Authors of self-help, how-to, and academic texts will find the shape of their books, create a working one page summary that helps reveal that shape at a glance, and develop a flexible table of contents to guide you through the drafting and revision process. You can find a lot more, including previews of much of the material, by going to authoraccelerator.com/nonfictionframework. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:02                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        00:02                    Yay.Jess:                                     00:02                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        01:00                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     01:01                    Alright. Let's start over.KJ:                                        01:06                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers. Now one, two, three. Hey, I am KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting the podcast about all things writing - nonfiction, fiction, book proposals, essays, not poetry. I made that joke a few weeks ago, but I just can't stop because I feel like it's not all the things. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, your rambling host, and this is the podcast about getting your work done.Jess:                                     01:45                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book. It won't be till spring of 2021, a book on preventing substance abuse in kids and you can find me at the New York Times, and at the Atlantic, and at the Washington Post. And we have such a guest today. We have such a guest.KJ:                                        02:05                    I didn't really introduce myself.Jess:                                     02:06                    Go ahead, please go.KJ:                                        02:08                    I just introduced myself as your rambling host and I am so much more than that.Jess:                                     02:13                    You go, and then we'll let that weird person who no one even knows, we'll let her talk after. But KJ, you go first.KJ:                                        02:24                    I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters, which you can't buy yet, but you'll be able to next summer and believe me, you'll hear all about it. Also of How To Be a Happier Parent. I'm the former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, where I sometimes still contribute and I am working on novel number, whatever it is if you count the ones in the drawer and we don't know if it will be published, that's what I'm doing. So that's who I am and why you should (or should not) listen to me.Jess:                                     02:57                    We have a guest today who you should definitely listen to. Because she's hysterical, and wonderful, and funny, and has a book coming out that is fantastic and very near and dear to my heart. We are talking today to Nancy Davis Kho. She is a writer. She's written for Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Adirondack Life, The Rumpus, all these various places. She's in an anthology called Listen To Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We're Saying Now. And Listen To Your Mother, by the way, is hysterical if you've never come across it before. Nancy has a fantastic book coming out this month that is, as I said, so near and dear to my heart because it's about thanking people. And so, thank you Nancy, for being on the podcast today.Nancy:                                03:41                    I pretty much wrote a book in order to be on your podcast, just so you know.Jess:                                     03:46                    Nancy has her own podcast, one of my very favorites. It's the Midlife Mixtape podcast and if you are not already listening, you should. Because it's wonderful, and fantastic, and it makes me very happy every single time I listen to it.Nancy:                                04:03                    You guys are so nice. Can I call you every morning, Jess, and just have you say, 'You matter.'Jess:                                     04:09                    I love this book, not only because thank you notes are really important part of not only my personal life but my professional life, but because I feel like KJ and I have had a personal stake in the project because we've gotten to hear about the process of you writing this book, and pitching this book, and how it all came about. So we usually like to start by talking sort of about how you got started writing, KJ often likes to ask what the first thing you got paid to write was, and we'll go from there.Nancy:                                04:44                    Oh wow, I'll have to think about the answer to that question. Thank you so much for having me on the show. And also you guys have been such tremendous cheerleaders and sources of real pragmatic information. I have listened to so many of your episodes and just scribble down as I'm going because this podcast is so invaluable in helping people as they're going into various, you know, the first time you're doing this, the first time you're doing that, you guys have had guests on who've talked about that. So it's such a great resource and I really am honored to be on the show.Jess:                                     05:20                    And you're going to have to listen to some of the publicity episodes - like the marketing and publicity episodes.Nancy:                                05:26                    Jess, am I brand new? I've already listened. I started listening to them a second time, please. The one where you guys were talking about your book launch plans. I listen to podcasts oftentimes when I'm hiking and I can picture the stretch of the Oakland Hills where I was, where KJ was talking about how many rows were in the spreadsheet and I was like, 'I can't do all of this. God.' But it was good.KJ:                                        05:53                    You're just lucky Jess didn't talk about how many rows in her spreadsheet.Jess:                                     05:58                    Tell us about how you got started.Nancy:                                06:02                    My background is in international business. I studied that in college. I got a couple of degrees in that, I picked up a husband in an international business program. So it all worked out. And I spent about 17 years doing that and I loved it. But whenever anybody would ask me, 'If you could do anything, what would you want to do?' I would say, 'Oh, I'd like to be a writer.' Here's my reason: it seems portable, I think I could do that from anywhere. That was my basic feeling about it. But I did always love writing. And you know, I've been an avid reader. All of us, right? Anybody listening to this show, we've all been reading since we were in short pants. And nothing like a 40th birthday to give you a bit of an identity crisis. And I thought, 'My God, I'm going to turn 40. And I tell people I want to be a writer. I've never tried. Maybe I should try writing. That would be a thing I could do.' So I took a class the summer before I turned 40 and by the time I finished (it was a class in creative memoir or I think it was just personal essays) and by the time I finished the class, I'd had two things published. And I was like, 'You know what? I love this.' I loved getting the byline and I just loved the process of writing. So that is now 13 years ago in the rear view mirror. And I thought at the time, as you do when you're a beginner at anything, I was like, 'Hmm, what's the hardest thing that I'm not qualified to do? I know I will write a novel of historical fiction that deals with race issues from the standpoint of a white woman. That's what the world needs now.' So I commenced to spending six years researching and writing a novel that is composting very nicely in a drawer. I can see which drawer in my office it is sitting in right now. And that was hard work. I told my husband, 'I'm a writer now, I'm going to quit my corporate job. Neglecting to factor in that I had two small kids who needed (we live in the Bay area, everybody needs to work) So it was a bumpy time - the writing I loved, the researching I loved, like the whole writing part of it was great. It was trying to figure out how to balance the lifestyle with that that was challenging. And also just realizing how much I had to learn as a writer. And I think one of the messages I try to put on the podcast all the time, so the Midlife Mixtape Podcast is about the years between being hip and breaking one. And I started it because I wanted there to be a counter narrative to midlife being a crisis because what I found was that it wasn't an identity crisis to become a writer. It was like I was adding something to myself. I was doing something that made me happy. And now it didn't work right out of the gate. I didn't publish a novel when I was 41, but I was challenging myself, and learning new stuff, and eventually I ended up going back to corporate work and doing that part time. And that's kind of been my gig ever since. I have a day job, I work in digital content licensing. I really like it, I have mastery at it, I've been doing it for years and years. And then I have this creative side where I can do the writing. So I think as a writer, I just feel like I've been pragmatic in terms of forgiving myself for not being successful right away. And so, I spent six years getting better and better and still not having a novel that needed to see the light of day. And then when I finished with that, I got frustrated and I had started the blog, Midlife Mixtape, and I realized that what felt very comfortable to me was humor writing. It came to me naturally. I'm the youngest of three in a family of very funny people and you really have to bring your A game all the time in my family. So, for me that was a much easier voice to write in. I always say my goal is to sound like Erma Bombeck meets David Sedaris, you know, not mean spirited but funny, and kind of poignant. And so after a little while writing in that voice on Midlife Mixtape, I thought, 'I know I'll write a book about my midlife music crisis.' And I wasn't really having a midlife music crisis, to be honest. What had happened is, I went to a concert and a bouncer said to me, 'Are you just here to drop off your kids?' I mean, I've been an avid concert goer since I was 14 and that shook me. So I was like, 'Oh, maybe I am too old to go to a Vampire Weekend concert. Maybe I should try to find more midlife appropriate music.' But the truth was, I still kept going to shows like that. I started going to the symphony, I started going to heavy metal shows, I was trying all different kinds of stuff. But I felt like I was manufacturing the arc of my story a little bit. And I think that always kind of stuck with me that I was telling a funny story people could relate to, this memoir that I spent only three years writing that one. So I doubled my speed from which I had written the historical fiction novel. But there was something about that story that never connected, even for me, because I just felt like, okay. As this one writing mentor of mine said, 'What, you wanted to go to a concert, you kept going to concerts. There's not a lot of character change here, you know. Any good memoir needs that needs that arc.' And so I got to see a lot of fun shows and I wrote about those on the blog. But that book also came closer to what I wanted to write, but it still wasn't quite the right thing. So that one went into a drawer and that was now I guess about three years ago, four years ago.Jess:                                     11:55                    Well, and I have to say you're definitely learning your lessons. Because all of the things you're criticizing about the early work that stayed in the drawer is like the antithesis of what I found when I opened The Thank You Project. So keep going with your story, but I just want to say that like all of these realizations, you're having, you know, the sort of there being no trajectory, there being no personal connection. Like that's what The Thank You Project is about from the very first page, a very personal project that came out of a very important moment in your life. I think even if I didn't know you personally, I would be very connected with you as a writer from the first page of this book. So, those lessons were really important for you to learn. I think that's how we get there, as KJ and I both know, you got to write a lot of bad stuff.KJ:                                        12:48                    We never talk about this, but you and I both, Jess, have memoirs in drawers.Jess:                                     12:53                    Yup. Yeah we do.KJ:                                        12:54                    I mean that just, it just doesn't come up. Like we talk a lot about my novel in a drawer. But it rarely comes up that I have, I can't remember if I wrote the whole thing, but I definitely have a memoir proposal in the drawer. And you have a memoir proposal and I think pretty much the memoir.Jess:                                     13:10                    Oh no, I have the whole thing. I sold chunks of it as essays and and that was sort of the thing I got out of it.Nancy:                                13:22                    Well, and I think this is really my message to anybody who's listening, and feeling frustrated, and wondering why the project isn't working. Fast forward to spring of 2018, which is when the idea for this book, The Thank You Project, came along and I know we're going to talk about it, but my message is every misstep I took was actually getting me closer to this book that I feel so strongly about, I feel so proud of, I feel like I'm the right person to tell this story that's in this book. And all that other stuff, all those years I wasn't getting published. What was I doing? I was meeting great writers. I was reading books by great writers. I was very happily sharing the work of other writer friends and promoting them and I was getting better at my craft. I was building my network of support. And so now I'm hugely gratified, but you know, there's so many people trying to help me with this book and that's because I put in 12 years of work that didn't feel at the time like it was amounting to anything. But now it's all paying off. So anybody who's listening and feeling frustrated, I would just say, please don't give up. Because there's a reason, there's a path.Jess:                                     15:03                    Well what's funny is before I wrote the proposal, as KJ well knows, for the book I just finished, I actually went through the trouble of writing proposals for a bunch of books that weren't quite right and what they were was sort of circling around the topic, but also really important work for me to do to figure out, Oh okay, so this aspect of this topic fits in somewhere, but I'm not quite sure how. So that finally when that idea comes, you have some familiarity with the things that aren't particularly interesting, or working, or whatever. So when you have that moment, it's super exciting when you have that idea for, Oh this is the thing. In fact, I pulled off the road and I texted Sarina and KJ right away and said, 'This is it. This is the thing, I know this is the right thing.'Nancy:                                16:26                    Well, and that's how it felt. So the book is called The Thank You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. And what happened was I found an agent for that music memoir, it did not sell. And I really had a time where I thought maybe I'm not a writer, I know I'm good at writing these little blog posts and I get essays published, but maybe I don't have it in me to do a full length work. So I'm going to take this creative energy and I started the podcast and turns out I love podcasting; I'm a tech nerd at heart. A lot of the work I did the first 17 years of my career was in the software industry. So I love working, learning new technology, and everything. I was really struggling a little bit with this idea that maybe I'm not an author, I'm a writer, but not an author. I guess that's probably not an uncommon thing. And it occurred to me one day (and I was 49) it occurred to me that the reason my book didn't sell was because my character, myself in the memoir, wasn't unhappy. There wasn't a transition because she started off happy and she ended up happy. And I'm like, that's not a problem, that's something to be really grateful for. And this was at the end of 2015, and in 2016 I was going to turn 50. And I'm like, 'You know what, the thing I should do to honor and commemorate my 50th birthday is to thank the people that have made it possible for me to be where I am.' You know, my parents were alive, my husband's great, been married to him since forever, we've got two girls, you know, everything's fine. So I thought the way I want to celebrate my 50th year is I will write a letter every week, a thank you letter once a week, to somebody who has helped, or shaped, or inspired me up to this point in my life. And of course when you tell the universe that you're doing this because everything's going great, everything goes to s**t pretty darn quickly. So I started writing my letters and it was really great. I'd sit down every week and you know, write a letter to my nephew Tristan, or to my friend Kitty who lives in Australia. And it just was wonderful every week to sit down and think about this person who had been meaningful in my life and what lessons that I learned from them and how they'd help me.KJ:                                        18:44                    I'm going to interrupt, cause I know where you're going. At this point, this isn't a book?Nancy:                                18:49                    No, no. These are just letters.KJ:                                        18:51                    This is just something you're doing. So this is not like stunt journalism, in which you're, 'I don't know what I'll do. I'll write...' This is a genuine thing, right?Nancy:                                18:59                    I wasn't even an author at that point, anymore. I'd kind of tried it and not gotten through anything. So I was just writing thank you letters because that seemed like a good way to mark a period of my life. So halfway through the year, my dad gets diagnosed with cancer and he is gone in six weeks. We had no idea he was sick. My older daughter left for college a couple of weeks after the funeral and that was certainly not a sad thing, but it was a big adjustment to have your older kid to go off to school and she goes to school on the East coast. So she's far. And then it was the 2016 presidential election, so everybody's anxiety level was through the roof. And I realized the worse things got, the more I needed the thank you letters. Because it was just this moment every week where I could crowd out all this sadness, and this tension, and the worry, and I'd be like, 'Hmm, I'm gonna write a letter to the city of Oakland. Because you know what? It's not even just people who have shaped me, it's places I've lived. And then I had a period of writing letters to cities and then I started writing letters to dead authors. Like I love Jane Austen. I'm going to write her a letter, but I'm going to have to explain some things to her. And it got to be really fun. And anyway, I got to the end of the 50 letters, (took me longer than a year) printed them all out, bound them in a book, and flip through that book all the time. You know, you rifle through it and you go, 'Oh yeah, my Aunt Nooney is so nice to me.' You're having a bad day, read about what your Aunt Nooney did for you. You know, it'll cheer you up, it'll remind you that when you're in hardship, you've almost never been alone. That there's always people around you. So, just in and of its own self as a writing exercise, writing the thank you letters was really important. So now it's spring of 2018 and one of the people who got the letters, Ann Imig who is the editor of the Listen To Your Mother Anthology and the founder of that empire said, 'Nancy, that's your book. You need to tell people how to do this.' And I'm like, 'What? It's so straightforward. You write a thank you letter.' But then another friend of ours who knew that I had done it, sat me down and she's like, 'Okay, who did you write to? How long was the letter? What did you put in the letter? How did you organize it?' And I answered questions for her for like an hour. And I thought, 'Okay, maybe it's not as straightforward as I thought it was.' So I thought, you know, at this point, the podcast was cooking along, my day job's cooking along. My kids are, you know, I've got one in college, one in high school, nobody needs me around anymore. I got some free time. So I thought I'll just start writing a few chapters of this, just think about how I would write a book that explains to people how to do their own thank you project. And it poured out of me, I wrote that proposal so quickly. Why? Because I had two other book proposals that I'd already done. Yes, I wrote a book proposal for a fiction novel. Don't ask me, I know it's wrong. And now I know that. At the time when I was writing my historical fiction I didn't know. So, there's the reason I wrote two proposals because when I really needed one, I literally just could do a find replace, for the most part. So it was just kind of a proof of concept to myself that this could be something. And I wasn't going to get an agent, because agents hadn't sold my book before, so why would I bother? And then people like KJ, and Jess, and a couple other people said, 'You should talk to an agent.' So I started in April 2018, at the end of May 2018 I reached out to a few agents who I'd met in person and online, and three or four of them came back and said, 'I would love to see this proposal.' And I was like, 'Oh, that's weird.' And I got it out the door. And then the timeframe was I signed with our wonderful agent (we all have the same one, Laurie Abkemeier) who's been wonderful, signed with her in June, we worked on the proposal together in July, and I signed a deal with Running Press in the end of August. This is all last year. So I signed the deal with Running Press in August. My deadline was November 15th for the finished book.Jess:                                     23:16                    You had written parts of it -Yes? No?Nancy:                                23:19                    Well, I'd written the first three chapters that belonged in the proposal...Jess:                                     23:25                    So what had you been smoking to make you think that you could set a deadline that quickly? What was the thinking behind that?Nancy:                                23:33                    I knew how to write this book, I knew how to tell this story. I'd written the letters. I knew how impactful they could be. I really wanted other people to know. I am spiritual, I'm a church lady, I go to this Episcopal church. And I do think this is one of those cases where I was given a message to share because that's something I can do. I can tell like a funny, uplifting story. It's taken me 13 years, but I know how to do that. In the places where the other two books had been a struggle - I don't want to say I couldn't have told those stories, but this one just was easy for me. I just knew what I wanted to say, and I and I knew how to say it. And let's face it, I do use snippets of the letters and there were days that I needed the #AmWriting podcast, I'm like, 'Ooh, I need a burn chart. I need to know what my daily word count is. And there were days where I'm like, 'Well I'm talking about a letter to write to a doctor, maybe I'll include a snippet of the letter I wrote to my OB.' I just covered my word chart, like put in two paragraphs, and I'd be done, go get my coffee. So there was a little bit of source material in that I do include snippets of my letters to kind of get people started. But I didn't want it to just be my letters. I ended up interviewing a few people who had done something similar, so I've got some other people's examples. And then the thing that I loved about writing the book was that it gave me a chance to delve into the science of happiness and gratitude. Cause I didn't want it to just be, 'This is what I did, so you should try it.' I wanted to steep it in some quantitative research that talks about why gratitude letters are so magic. And you know, low and behold, during those 13 years when I was freelance writing, I interviewed a bunch of happiness researchers for various publications. So I had the Rolodex - does anybody listening know what a Rolodex is? I had the phone numbers, okay? So I called the researchers and I got to interview them and you know, again, that was not wasted time. All of that stuff is why I could do it in two and a half months.Jess:                                     25:50                    And it's why KJ, over and over again, insists that I'm not allowed to say, 'You know, boy, I got really lucky with Gift of Failure, right place, right time.' Well, no, it was a lot of work and it's that work that other people don't see.KJ:                                        26:04                    Preparation meeting opportunity.Jess:                                     26:06                    Yeah, exactly. There you go. There you go. The thing that I was really interested in - let's say you've got all of these letters, and you've got this idea about how you want to do this. In terms of organization, I really liked the way you organize the book and it was a little unexpected. I thought it was going to be like sequential, but you did a really interesting thing with the organization. I'm kinda wondering how you arrived at that particular sequence.Nancy:                                26:37                    Welcome to my brain, cause I do think it's sequential. I knew that I wanted the introduction because (I'm not gonna give away the whole introduction) but basically when my dad got his letter (I wrote to him and my mom first) and my dad was very cute and called me and he's like, 'Aww, Nance, I loved it. I put it in a frame and it's over my desk.' So I knew I wanted to start with the fact that my dad had this letter framed and sitting over his desk. And then I figured I would need to go through exactly all the questions that Melissa asked me on the porch that day. Like, 'Who did you write to? How did you...' So there's a first chapter that's all about how you can organize this. And I want to say at the outset, throughout this book, I say, 'But that's what I did, do what you want.' Like nobody is in charge of your pace, what you write, who you write to. And the amazing thing about gratitude letters (as I found out from the researchers) is that even just thinking about what you would put in a letter creates happiness benefits for you. So it's all about firing the neurons and getting the positive outlook kind of codified within your brain pan. That's how I would explain it. So writing it down is great, but even if you read this book, and just think about the things that I'm talking about, people will get benefits. But then, after that section, the whole rest of the book is, here's the kinds of people who you might want to think about writing. And I think some of the categories are obvious - from friends and family. Although less obvious, because do you ever write a thank you letter to your spouse, or to your kid, or to your parent? Probably not. You know, there's a whole category of people that we take for granted and so that's kind of where I start. And part of the reason is because it gets the juices flowing for when you're writing the thank you letters, you know, you have a lot of source material for those people. But as I went through my own process and I just kept coming back to this idea of, okay, who helped me, shaped me, inspired me. Well, one of the people who helped me was my German ex-boyfriend when I lived in Germany and didn't know how to file taxes. It didn't work out with him. But man, he made sure my taxes were done every year on time and properly, and I wouldn't have been able to stay in Germany if I'd screwed up, their bureaucracy is on it. Like I'm sure they would've found me and sent me back to America. So I wrote a letter to him and this is when I figured out that I could write letters and not send them. Nobody needed to know that I was doing this. So I could write a thank you letter to anybody. I could write it to my childhood bully; I was so sensitized to bullying because I had been a victim of it, that my kids from the minute they started school, we talked about bullying. What do you do if you see it? What do you do? How do you help somebody going through it? How do you make sure you're never the perpetrator? You know, I'm not sure I would have been so tuned into that if I hadn't known this person. Now, that was a letter I actually chose not to write. That was one where I was like, 'You know what, I don't want to spend any more time on her.' But you could. And so, it was fun to kind of expand and so I did that in writing my own letters. But in writing the book, what I loved was thinking about, 'Well, who's going to read this? Could be anybody.' So what other things, like what's outside of my world, that I should think about and prompt people to write about. Like, I've never been in the army, but I made sure to say like, 'You might want to write a letter to your drill instructor.' You know, there's so many kinds of people, and I just tried really hard in writing it to have as an inclusive tone as I could. And I had a few people read it who had very different experiences from me, and that's what I asked them to read for. I wanted to make sure that someone who wasn't heterosexual would also feel like this book spoke to them and somebody who wasn't white would also feel...So I was at a conference that I had the chance to hear Aya de Leon, do you guys know her? She's a Bay area writer and professor. She writes these really great crime capers with African-American heroines. And a lot of times her heroines are sex workers and she's really about like, they're very feminist, but they kind of they have a message that's a little bit hidden.Jess:                                     31:18                    I'm looking at the covers right now, they're so good. They're these women, sort of face forward at the camera, The Boss, and then another one called Side Chick Nation, and another one called Uptown Thief. They're fantastic covers, I love them. And really strong women with their shoulders back and sort of facing you like, yeah, bring it. I like it.Nancy:                                31:40                    Right. And she's really smart. And at this conference I went to, she was just saying, 'If you want to write diverse character well, have diverse friends.' I just thought that's so obvious. But as writers, if you want to reach out to a diverse audience, make sure you've got those people in your real life so that you can go to them. And that was, again, my 13 years of preparation. I knew who I could ask to read for different things. And so that was a part of the review process.Jess:                                     32:14                    One of the things that you said, you asked a lot of people who had experience outside of yours to help you, but the thing that you did really well in the book is to create these ideas about how you should think about the thank you notes. And one of the things you said was, 'Who or what has shaped me?' And that is such a personal question, but a question that is universal. Because as you said, it could be the ex-boyfriend that things didn't work out with. But everyone's got those people that you realize, Oh wow, I didn't actually thank that person. And it may not have been a particularly positive experience at the time, but that question alone right there, I think, makes the book nice and generalizes it for everyone. I love that question.Nancy:                                32:56                    Well, and I hope that given that it's coming out before we start another presidential election year, people are so isolated and people are so quick to judge now, and maybe we always were, but it just feels different. And part of what I think these letters can do is remind us the small ways that people in our lives have helped us. Even if we were on opposite sides of a divide now, they've made a difference for us. And just sending those letters (or even if you write and it's not possible for you to send it) even writing it to remind yourself of the humanity of the people on the receiving end, I think is really powerful. So I'm glad it's coming out when it does, I hope it is helpful for people next year. I'm just really excited for it to come out. Can I say one thing? Because of this audience, I think I can share this. The one thing that I wanted to mention is that the same week that I got the book deal, my mom was diagnosed with lymphoma. And my mom's 86, and she's in an assisted living place, and she's got dementia. And they initially gave my mom a two and a half month...I was going to say sentence. That's what it felt like, they said that's how much time she has left. And it was awful, because on the same week I got this amazing news, I got horrible news. And I'm not going to leave you in suspense, Mom's doing fine, we took her to a specialist a few weeks later who kind of said, 'It's not nearly as dire as the first guy said and here's a bunch of treatment options.' And so mom is hanging in, she still loves John Denver, we talk a lot about John Denver. No, but it was a real exercise in compartmentalization. That's why I bring it up, because I knew I had to get this book done, and my siblings are amazing. I would have probably said like, 'I can just not do the book.' and they would have never forgiven me. So they're like, 'Figure out what your schedule is, come home if you can, and you'll get it done.' So the shitty first draft was done in six weeks, and I flew to Rochester to visit with my mom, and spent a week with her, came back, and then I finished the book after that. And the whole time I just had to keep these two things separate, because I could not have finished the book otherwise. And when it was over, I completely fell apart for a little while. And the irony was, writing the thank you notes again, writing about thank you notes, I got to kind of use them a second time in just the same way that I had the first time I wrote the letters. You know, to kind of say, 'My mom's got an X-Ray today, and we don't know what it's going to find, but Hey, I'm writing about how funny it was that time I wrote a letter to so-and-so.' If you think of writers sitting in a cabin somewhere, and having all their diversions taken away, and there's nothing but good whiskey and the sound of this pounding surf, I think that's b******t. You know, you just have to write through what you have to write through. And I felt lucky to have the opportunity. Who's the biggest reader I know? My mom, you know, back when she could read, I was not going to let her down.Jess:                                     36:39                    Is she pretty stoked for you?Nancy:                                36:42                    She's pretty hilarious, my mother. She is stoked; she remembers that I have a book, that's landed somewhere, I don't think she knows what it's about. She's astonished that I told her I will bring her a book in person and hand deliver it to her. Well, she literally was the one who put the love of reading in me, so there you go.KJ:                                        37:06                    I mean we'd all like that cabin, but you know, both Jess and I had big deadlines this year, and we both also had big personal stuff that our families overall prefer that we left as as family. But yeah, it's part of being a pro, and it's also just part of like embracing that part of who we are. It's like, you know, I'm a writer, I'm a writer with the sick parent. I'm a writer with whatever other problem that you have. But I'm a writer and this is what I'm doing now, and then in three hours I'll be doing something else. And I think you're so right to shout that out, because I know frequently I will sit there with my personal problems and with my deadline and go, 'Other people don't have to deal with this.' But honestly, yes they do.Jess:                                     38:07                    Yeah. There were plenty of times going towards this deadline where I would hang up the phone having dealt with some of the personal stuff that was going on, and just take a couple of really deep breaths, maybe have a good cry, and then turn on my monitor, and get back to work.Nancy:                                38:21                    Did you both feel like the writing part was like safe haven? Because that's how I felt. And then I was writing from like five to seven in the morning, cause I still had the day job. But I was like jumping out of bed cause I knew the next two hours I'll be happy.KJ:                                        38:39                    Having the abiity to focus on it - like having spent, (you've been talking about putting in the work) having spent the past decade or more, turning stuff off, and turning to the keyboard or the paper or whatever, and saying, 'You know I got to get this.' So having that practice, the ability to just shut everything else down and focus on it, I've been so grateful - past-me for teaching present-me to do that. So thank you letter to her, I guess.Jess:                                     39:13                    It was also really nice for me occasionally to not feel guilty. You know, I feel like when other people need me or I'm supposed to be feeling a certain way about something, it's nice to have a pass to say, 'Nope, I can't do that. I can't spend emotional attention on that right now because this has to happen.' I have this deadline, so I get to turn that off for a minute and not feel guilty about feeling bad for someone else while I can focus on the words. And so for me, it was an incredible safe haven. It was license for me to focus on something else that really was about what I love doing. And if I hadn't had that, I think it would have been an even more challenging summer than it was. But this really gave me a way out of that.Nancy:                                40:02                    So the message is for writers, if you're having a terrible time, try writing, maybe that will cheer you up.Jess:                                     40:08                    Well, but we do have to move on to what we've been reading because we're running over, so let's talk about what we've been reading. Nancy, would you like to tell us?Nancy:                                40:33                    Yes. So I was visiting my mom two weeks ago, and even if she can't read anymore, she still demands that we do. And in the assisted living place, there's a giant bookcase outside her apartment, and she always makes me take a book when we go by, just take one. They don't care, just take one. So I grabbed one off the top. It was The Good Lord Bird by James McBride, which was a 2013 national book winner that I finally got to in 2019, it's been out for a while. Oh my gosh, I loved it so much. I actually just finished it last night. Ironically, one of the small characters in the book is the main character in my historical fiction novel in a drawer. So I think maybe that's why I avoided it. I didn't want to see him be alive in somebody else's book. But oh, it was fantastic. It was like Mark Twain on steroids. I loved it. It's all about John Brown and Harper's Ferry. I love abolitionist. You know, abolition is lit. And it's really, really well done. It's a fun story.Jess:                                     41:34                    Yeah, that shelf in the bookstore, it's the popular one, The Abolition Is Lit shelf. I have a whole shelf on fishing in New England in the 1850s or so. That's a whole section in my library cause I'm obsessed with the whole Gloucester, fishermen thing. That's a thing for me. I'm still reading away on some of the stuff that's on my Audible. But I will say, that I just found out and I had mentioned this before, that when I am writing stuff, I like to reread things that are comforting, and I had been relistening to a whole bunch of Jane Austen and I just found out that there is a recording of Sense and Sensibility with Kate Winslet. And so that is going to be a evening listen for me.KJ:                                        42:33                    We have recorded multiple episodes this week and I am out, but I have already shouted out the What Should I Read Next? Podcast, but I have to shout it out again. So it's What Should I Read Next? With Anne Bogle, who some might know as the Modern Mrs. Darcy, she's had a blog for a long time. So I listened to an episode of this podcast earlier this week and I ended up downloading samples of four different books and they only talked about like eight. Somebody goes on and says, 'These are the books I like and this is what I'd like to read next.' And it's just such an incredible joy. So, try the podcast and I guarantee that you will come away with something to read, even if I can't suggest anything at the moment. Yeah, it's a really good one.Jess:                                     43:34                    Alright, Nancy, do you have a bookstore you love?Nancy:                                43:38                    I very much have a bookstore I love, it's called A Great Good Place for Books, here in Oakland up in the Montclair neighborhood. And Kathleen Caldwel,l who owns it, is the neighborhood treasurer. Everybody's kid has worked at that bookstore at some point. And she pays them in books and it's just fantastic. In fact, Great Good Place is doing my launch party, which is on December 3rd, and she's just one of those people you walk in the door and she says, 'Oh, Nancy, I knew you were coming in this week, so I've put aside three books for you.' And my favorite story about her was the time I ordered Skippy Dies, it's very dark Irish boarding school, it's like a comedy tragedy. It's an amazing book. And she sold my husband a gift card for me for Christmas, cause that's what I get every Christmas. Andrew, if you're listening, I need a gift card. And I took it in and I said, 'Okay, I want to get Skippy Dies.' And she said, 'Well, I'm going to order you the three part version of the book.' And I said, 'I think it's just a novel. I've been reading reviews, it's one book.' And she goes, 'Oh, it's so much cooler when it comes in the case. So I'm going to get you this. And I know how much is on your gift card, you can afford it.' So I love Kathleen, she is always hustling for those authors. She brings in great, great authors for readings and yeah, so if you're in Oakland check out Great Good Place For Books.Jess:                                     45:08                    Alright, everyone needs to run right out and get The Thank You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time by Nancy Davis Kho. It is going to make such a good gift, that's my plan (sorry, spoiler alert to everyone who's getting presents for me this year) that's what you're getting. So get excited to read this book, it's fantastic. So congratulations on your long path to publication and thank you so much for being on the podcast today.Nancy:                                45:35                    Thank you guys so much for having me. And everybody out there - keep writing, you're on the path, you're doing it.Jess:                                     45:39                    And in order to do that, everyone has to keep their butt in the chair and their head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

We wanted to talk holiday writing—as in, writing ABOUT holidays, not writing during the holidays. So we went strolling through the holly-bedecked halls of the Internet—because, #dominantculture, holiday books as they appear without a more specific web search means Christmas books and specifically, the 250 page equivalent of a bonbon of a Lifetime Christmas movie. We found Natalie Cox, author of the debut romcom Mutts and Mistletoe. And then we found that Natalie Cox is also Betsy Tobin, author of five other novels, co-owner of a bookshop in North London and just generally appearing to live an authorial dream life. So of course we invited her on to talk about not just holiday writing, but switching genres, the real meaning of “debut” and whether or not owning a bookstore in London is as much fun as it sounds like it would be. Links from the episode (which was itself as much fun as it sounds like it would be) follow.As for writing DURING the holidays, if you’re a supporter, you can check out the Top 5 Hacks for Holiday Writing—and if you’re not, why not? Give yourself a little holiday giftie and us a little holiday boost clicking the button below to support the podcast you love, get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice and occasional bonus #MiniSupporter podcasts for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Betsy:Three Women, Lisa Taddeo KJ: Beside Herself, Elizabeth LaBanSarina: Reindeer Falls, Book 1: The Boss Who Stole Christmas, Jana AstonReindeer Falls, Book 2: If You Give a Jerk a Gingerbread, Jana AstonReindeer Falls, Book 3: The One Night Stand Before Christmas, Jana Aston#FaveIndieBookstoreINK@84 Our guest for this episode is Betsy Tobin, aka Natalie Cox. Find more about her at BetsyTobin.co.uk.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:02                    Hey there listeners, it's KJ. What with Jess starting in on a new project lately, we've been talking a lot about nonfiction and research. If that's your kind of work, our sponsor, Author Accelerator can help and you don't have to go all in with full on book coaching if you're not ready. Check out their new four week long nonfiction framework program that will help you nail down your structure before you start to write, or after your writing and realizing, dang, this thing needs a backbone. Authors of self-help, how-to, and academic texts will find the shape of their books, create a working one page summary that helps reveal that shape at a glance, and develop a flexible table of contents to guide you through the drafting and revision process. You can find a lot more, including previews of much of the material, by going to authoraccelerator.com/nonfictionframework. Is it recording?Jess:                                     01:00                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        01:01                    Yay.Jess:                                     01:02                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        01:03                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     01:07                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        01:08                    Awkward pause and I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     01:11                    Okay.KJ:                                        01:11                    Now, one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is our weekly podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, book proposals, essays, pitches, and as we say every week, this is the podcast about getting the work done.Sarina:                                 01:40                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30 plus romance novels. And you can find more of me at sarinabowen.com. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of a novel coming out next summer. Also of How To Be a Happier Parent, former lead editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times and all of the other things that I say every week. And our usual cohost, Jess Lahey, is missing this week. Sarina and I are soloing, but we have a guest. In fact, you could argue that we have three guests. We are going to talk today with Betsy Tobin, who is the author of five books of literary fiction/mystery/I'm not even quite sure how to describe it. Natalie Cox, the author of a new romcom, which is called Mutts and Mistletoe, it's a holiday theme and it is incredibly fun. And the co-owner of the Ink@84 bookstore bar cafe in North London. Conveniently, however, all of these guests are wrapped up into the same person. It's just going to make it much easier to ask questions.Sarina:                                 02:52                    Of course. So welcome, Betsy.Betsy:                                  02:54                    Gosh, with an intro like that it's going to be hard not to disappoint. I'll do my best. I'll do my best to be three people in one. Thank you very much. And also 30 books, my goodness. Respect, Sarina. That's amazing, respect.KJ:                                        03:08                    So I'm going to just own it all for our listeners (as we do every week) which is that originally we thought, you know what would be really fun? It'd be fun to talk to somebody who wrote a book with a holiday theme. Because have you ever written a book with a holiday theme?Sarina:                                 03:27                    Undeveloped, but barely.KJ:                                        03:29                    Right, but barely. I've written many an essay with the holiday theme, and many a gift guide with a holiday theme, many a freelance thing, but I've not done a book. So that was our original thought. So we, we sort of went looking around to see who would be interesting and came across Natalie Cox's debut romcom author of Mutts and Mistletoe. And reached out to her only to discover that she is scarcely a debut author at all. So while I hope to get to the use of the holiday and the trope and the fun that is all involved in that, we really want to start with, Betsy, get us to this point. Walk us through if you don't mind.Betsy:                                  04:17                    How did I start writing?KJ:                                        04:19                    Yeah, how did you start writing? Let's start there.Betsy:                                  04:23                    My very first foray into writing was that I took an evening class in journalism and the teacher told me that my style was too literary. And he really sort of slightly took the wind out of my sails. I was in my mid-twenties and I thought this might be a great career. So I went and did an autobiographical essay writing course and the very first exercise that that teacher set was to write a brief story about your life that incorporated a lie and try to make the juncture between the lie and the truth totally seamless. And I thought that was a really fantastic exercise.KJ:                                        05:19                    That is an interesting exercise. And one I've never heard.Betsy:                                  05:23                    Yeah. I mean, one that it would never have occurred to me to write fiction. And I didn't really grow up in a family where there were any kind of artists or people working in creative industries. We were kind of quite rational type people. And I thought I was going to have a career in a rational kind of occupation. And I don't think I would've had the courage to write fiction until he set this exercise. And immediately I just found it incredibly liberating, because you could make it all up. And to be honest, that was it, I mean I just never looked back from there. I started writing short fiction. I went and did an MFA. I did work briefly when I first moved to London as a reporter. Eventually I was really rubbish at it. I wasn't thick-skinned enough.Betsy:                                  06:13                    And I knew it was just a matter of time before I kind of was able to get myself in a position to write fiction. So that's kind of how it happened. I thought initially I would write plays and scripts. But I struggled early on with the pacing of longer format prose fiction. I wrote a lot of short stories and it was a mystery to me how you pace a novel and then suddenly I kind of cracked it in one go where I wrote something and I looked at it and I thought, 'Oh my goodness, this is not a short story. This is a novel.' And I remember, cause I left the first, like eight or nine pages lying on my desk and my husband kind of wandered by and read it and he sort of came to me and he said, 'You know, what is this?' And I said, 'I'm not sure, but I think it's a novel.' And he said, 'I think it's a novel, too.' And that was my first book, Bone House, which did very well. It sold in the U.S., and the UK, and abroad, and was optioned for film.KJ:                                        07:13                    And that was what, about 2008?Betsy:                                  07:16                    Gosh, no, it was published in more like 2000.KJ:                                        07:23                    I was on Amazon and saw probably what is the latest edition.Betsy:                                  07:27                    That could be, yeah. And I kind of never looked back from there. It did well. I mean it wasn't a bestseller. I've never had what I would say was a huge rating success. I've had critical successes. That book was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, unfortunately up against Zadie Smith, who has since gone on to glittering careers.Betsy:                                  07:50                    But yeah, it kind of put me on the map as a writer. It got me an agent. I wrote another historical novel after that. Then I wrote a third book was mythic/historical. I kind of turned to myth and I looked at the Norse body of literature.KJ:                                        08:11                    How much time is it taking?Betsy:                                  08:12                    So for literary fiction, I would say three years for me. That's definitely what it takes for me to write a novel. And you need about a year where the idea is bubbling along and gestating. And also those novels were very heavily researched, all of them actually. So it took quite a long time to be able to start writing. Although research is something that I use all the way through the writing process. I'm a great fan of using it as a kickstarter for creativity. Anytime somebody comes to me saying they've got writer's block that's probably my single biggest tip is just, you know, plunge yourself into some research on the background of what you're writing. And it's those tiny details that you uncover that will kickstart your creativity and get you going again. So yeah, I eventually wrote five novels.KJ:                                        09:08                    And the fifth one was a bit of a departure too...Betsy:                                  09:11                    That was a comic novel. It was the first thing I'd written based on my own kind of personal history a little bit...KJ:                                        09:22                    So that one is called Things We Couldn't Explain.Betsy:                                  09:26                    That one's called Things We Couldn't Explain. When I first started writing in the UK, I'd only lived over here for about five years and I didn't feel comfortable writing about contemporary Britain. And equally, I was starting to feel a little bit out of touch with the U.S. So I ended up setting my first novel in the distant past. And I felt like that was a middle ground where my readership and I would be on the same sort of footing. We'd all be kind of equally unfamiliar with the terrain.KJ:                                        10:00                    I had never thought of that. Although, you know, Sarina sets her books kind of around here and somewhere else that she's lived. And the novel that I've got coming out is set where I grew up and I'm just now doing one for living around here. And I've lived here for about 10 years and I had the same thought. Can I really? You know, I ended up writing about a newcomer to the area because that felt better. People don't really talk about that, how hard it is.Betsy:                                  10:27                    You have to feel comfortable in the skin of your novel. And then the setting is the skin. And if you're not comfortable sitting in the skin of it, you just won't approach it with confidence. I wrote a lot about identity and displacement in my literary fiction for years. That was kind of a theme that just cropped up over, and over, and over. My fourth novel, Crimson China, was about illegal Chinese migrants living in the UK and I think it is because I was a displaced person. And so I was struggling with that sense of identity and belonging and what happens to your sense of identity when you're taken out of the place of your birth and taken away from your family, and your friends, and the culture that you know. So that was a really big theme for me. And the novel that is set in Ohio was the only thing I'd ever written that was really tapped into my own background. So it was quite close to my heart, actually. So this segues deeply into the holiday issue, because that fifth novel came out in November. And the publisher I was with at the time was very, very big on digital publishing. It was sort of the heyday of digital and digital has come off the boil a bit since then in more recent years. But at the time, she was convinced that there was a lot of money to be made with eBooks. She did a lot of other much, much more commercial fiction and I watched her commercial fiction authors soar right past me in the digital charts that November, December, particularly with the holiday books. While my book kind of languished somewhere in the high tens of thousands in the rankings.KJ:                                        12:23                    Tell me when this was.Betsy:                                  12:25                    This would have been probably about five, six years ago.KJ:                                        12:32                    Right. I think Things We Couldn't Explain was 2014. So you already have sort of a fun commercial read, but it's just not doing what you hoped it would do.Betsy:                                  12:47                    No, and what I would say is My first impulse for writing a holiday book was envy. I absolutely, you know, had envy of watching all of these holiday books, many of which frankly, I read some, I wasn't very impressed. My daughter and I were big fans of romcom. She's in her kind of mid twenties. We looked at each other and we said, 'We could do this, we could do so much better.' And of course it's not, it's deceptively difficult to get it right. And we were far too overconfident, but that said, we did sit down and we came up with a concept which was the doggy, the canine rom-com concept. And we set out to do it and I wrote it. She helped me with some of the plotting. She's a great sort of reality check for me as a writer. She sees through the holes in everything, really - plot, character, theme. So I use her as a sounding board a lot for my writing.KJ:                                        13:52                    How old is your daughter?Betsy:                                  13:52                    She's in her mid twenties nowKJ:                                        13:57                    As is the main character in Mutts and Mistletoe.Betsy:                                  14:00                    Yes, exactly. So yeah, so we sat down to that and then I wrote about 50 pages of it. And then I got very interested in the idea of opening the bookshop and I shelved that book and really for the next three years did nothing but find and open the shop, which really sucked up kinda 200% of my energy. And when the shop was up and running for I would say two and a half years probably, I was ready to go back to writing. And I went back to this 50 pages that I had written, which really I had just done on a lark. It was nothing more than a lark. And I honestly thought I would probably self-publish it myself, digitally only. And I mentioned it to my agent. I have a wonderful UK agent who I'm very loyal to, I've been with from the beginning. And she said, 'Show it to me.' And I knew she didn't really handle that sort of material normally, but I sent it to her and the agency read it, they all loved it. They were like, 'You must write this.' So I did. I wrote that over the next say year, it probably didn't take me more than about another six to nine months to finish. And that was how Mutts was born. It's done really well, it won romantic comedy of the year here in the UK, and it's sold all over really, all over Europe, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Russia. I never dreamed that it would be as successful as it's been.Betsy:                                  15:57                    You know, literary fiction is incredibly laborious. You agonize over every word, every sentence, every phrasing. You know, Mutts and Mistletoe, you're basically trying to get all the elements that you normally tackle as a writer - story, character, setting. But you're basically also just trying to make it really funny. And so it's just such a laugh, you know, I just giggle all the way through writing this stuff. And you look at every page and you think, how can I make this more funny and what would be funnier, and that's really the challenge is kind of just keeping the jokes coming. I don't think you have a joke in every paragraph, but you just have to put your funny hat on and just wear it while you're writing. And it's a joy to be honest, compared to the other form.KJ:                                        16:56                    But you also have a really strong structure.Betsy:                                  17:02                    I think you have to absolutely. You have to adhere, with all writing. You have to play by the rules. I mean, there's meta fiction and some writers can bend the rules, but for most readers we need to have the elements. You have to have your ducks in line, you have to have a strong story, you have to have a strong starting proposition with a protagonist that has a problem or a need, and they're gonna they have to have an arc. All the rules adhere, there's no bending of the rules for any of this stuff. You can't take shortcuts. And I know this because I've tried to do things in a more freestyle manner and where it all just didn't work because you didn't follow the rules. And I think even a seasoned writer can fall at that hurdle if you don't pay attention. I think character is totally the single biggest driver of making compelling read. I think characters drive all good stories. And yeah, you have to have a kind of structure, ideally a kind of three act structure, and you have to have a character who learns or grows or changes. I'm a great believer in happy endings. You know, I think audiences want those.KJ:                                        18:43                    Well, you have those things very cleanly. Many writers have those things but have a lot of noise around them. And in your case, I think you found them very cleanly and it made me wonder if you had a structure that you sort of wrote around or if that just came naturally to you.Betsy:                                  19:05                    I'm not a great one for planning out all the story in advance, I guess the phrase a pants writer.Sarina:                                 19:17                    Oh yes, we use that phrase.Betsy:                                  19:19                    I think I probably am a pants writer. It's not necessarily something I recommend. What I would say is that as much as I'm somebody who doesn't plan everything in advance, I'm utterly meticulous about writing and rewriting. And to be honest, most of my published work, most pages have been edited a hundred times.KJ:                                        19:51                    Wow.Sarina:                                 19:51                    Wow.Betsy:                                  19:52                    Yeah. And I know that sounds obsessive, but that's the sort of writer I am.KJ:                                        19:57                    No, it sounds great. I'm a noisy writer to use the metaphor or whatever that I was just using, which is there tends to be a lot of stuff around my bones and I need to have less stuff around my bones. And it's kinda reassuring to hear that you're peeling stuff away as opposed to never putting it down, which certainly sounds like a simpler way to do it to me. But unfortunately I can't get there.Betsy:                                  20:19                    I mean, I think it means that you won't produce work as fast if you're that fastidious. And I think in commercial fiction the industry demands a certain pace of writers. And I think I'm not able to meet that pace. I'm sure my publishers would say that. But that's just me. I'm afraid I just can't not do it the way I want to do it. And I'm not prepared to put a sentence out until it's perfect.Sarina:                                 20:47                    One thing you said about characters really stuck with me. Because a few minutes ago you were saying you have to really turn on the funny and you know, be funny on every page if you're writing a comedy. But that's so much harder if you don't have a character who can give that to you through all of her flaws and misperceptions of the world, then you just have to spontaneously be funny. Whereas if you have a character who is really set in her ways, then the comedy is easier to find because it's...Betsy:                                  21:20                    Absolutely, it has to be character driven. All the comedy has to be character driven and situation driven. It's not like you're making jokes leap off the page in and of themselves. You're pulling the comic material out of your characters and what's happening to them. It's like you're birthing it.Sarina:                                 21:38                    I had a couple of questions for you about this book specifically. So one is, did you ever just get sick of Christmas, you know, when you were editing the hundredth time in August or whatever where you're just like, 'Ugh'?Betsy:                                  21:54                    I dunno, I mean, I think one of the things - my character is this kind of Scrooge-like character and part of her journey is that she has to learn to love Christmas. So I was able to kind of feed both sides of that debate. It's a book that serves both Christmas lovers and Christmas haters, I think. For that reason. So it was quite amusing to kind of look at the dark side of the holidays. It amused me anyway. To be honest, Christmas became a setting, right? So, yes, it has fantastic comic potential. It has all these iconic tropes and symbols. But really what it was, was a setting and that's how you have to approach it was that you're going to set your novel in a biscuit factory. There's going to be all kinds of comedy that flows from the shop floor. In that way, Christmas was the biscuit factory setting for this. There are writers who make their career out of holiday books. Gosh, more power to them. They're the ones that you should probably be putting that question to are the ones that are writing them year, after year, after year. I'm not writing a holiday book at the moment. I wouldn't rule one out again though, cause I didn't even plumb all the depths of the comic possibilities for Christmas with that first one. I think it's rich terrain for comedy, so I could see me going back to it.Sarina:                                 23:34                    So then my other question involves just a really practical thing about about writing a holiday book. So my first published book, practically another lifetime ago, is a winter-themed cookbook and it is very winter-themed. The sales for that book (it's 10 years old now) they look like a sign wave on the author portal. They peak right at Christmas and then they bucket in July. And I'm just curious if fiction is expected to do the same thing or not.Betsy:                                  24:12                    It absolutely does the same thing. But that's the other beauty of writing seasonal stuff is that there's a readily identifiable market for it, which is why publishers love it. And you know, your cookbook might have died a very quick death decades ago or years ago, had you not had that seasonal hook that brings it back and makes it relevant again in the marketplace each year. I'm a great believer in, you know, I don't believe the world owes us a living as writers. And I think we have to write stuff that people want to read. So I'm sort of quite business minded as a writer. And and I think you need to do the publisher's job for them a little bit when you want to sell a prospective title because you have to be able to identify what the market's going to be. So yeah, I think whereas novels, (and I know this because I'm a book seller) the shelf life of a hardback is something like six weeks to three months. And after that they get sent back. And the shelf life of a paperback is 18 months. And after that, you know, unless you're a bestseller, or a prize winner, or an evergreen your book will be gone. And you know, that's just the reality. Whereas seasonal titles, actually, I think there is an upswing year after year for the best ones.KJ:                                        25:49                    So, wait. Do you put them in a box in the shop and put them aside or do you send them back and then get some new ones?Betsy:                                  25:56                    We send them back when we get new ones. We're ruthless.KJ:                                        26:00                    Isn't that funny - you're both the author who's like, 'No, hold on to my book and the bookseller who's like, 'Nope, sorry.'Betsy:                                  26:08                    It's awful. Authors don't want to know how much gets sent back. I don't know if the retail industry works quite the same way in the U.S. but books are one of the only areas of retail that are full sale or return or at least partial sale or return. You know, that doesn't happen in the clothing industry, right? The stores don't get to send the merchandise back if it doesn't sell. And so yeah, we are ruthless about culling titles that languish on our shelves.KJ:                                        26:42                    Do you think that's part of why you're going back in for another romcom or do you think it has more to do with sort of where you are in life and what you want to write or is it some combination therein and that it would be hard to tease out?Betsy:                                  26:55                    I think it has to do with the fact that I have a two book deal with Orion in the UK and I'm contracted to produce another one. Also, I have the pressure of my agents saying to me, 'Gosh, we have these 12 foreign publishers...', So I was under pressure, both because I'm legally obliged to write one for Orion, but in fact Orion gave me the opportunity to segue into more comic literary fiction last year. And it was really my agent who said, 'Gosh, you know, we've got these 12 publishers queued up.' Mutts is only coming out for the first time in all those markets cause it took a year to translate it. So they're the ones that are going to come knocking on our door in January or February saying, 'Oh, what about the next one?'KJ:                                        27:52                    When was the decision made to write Mutts under a new name?Betsy:                                  27:56                    Do you mean Natalie?KJ:                                        28:00                    Yeah.Betsy:                                  28:01                    Right, sorry. Okay. At the point of sale for publication, the agents, I said to them, 'What about my brand?' And they said, 'We'll sell you as a debut.' And that is what goes on in the industry. I don't know that it's the best thing. I don't know necessarily that it did me any favors as an author, but publishers of course are always looking for debuts. There's an absolute mystique in the industry about making the next big discovery. So it's easier for agents to sell debuts. So I was sold as a debut romcom writer with the caveat that it was a pseudonym for someone who had written in another genre. So publishers at the point of bidding were told that I was an existing writer.Betsy:                                  29:02                    They weren't told who I was, but I was sold as a debut. Does that make sense?KJ:                                        29:10                    Yes, it does. It's a crazy system.Betsy:                                  29:12                    It is crazy indeed. So now I have fiendish social media cause I have social media under Betsy, and I have social media under Natalie, and I also do all the social media for the bookshop. So I'm constantly toggling between Facebook and Instagram and Twitter on all three accounts and kind of posting the wrong thing from the wrong account and getting into trouble. So that's what ended up with, I don't know how desirable it is for me as a writer. One thing I would say is that this has a different title in Britain than it does in the U.S. and that is something I will never repeat again because that was even more of a nightmare publishing two...KJ:                                        29:56                    What is it called in Britain?Betsy:                                  29:57                    So in Britain, we have a really famous dog charity rescue charity, a nationwide adoption center called The Dog's Trust. And their motto is 'Dogs are for life, not just for Christmas.' It's very, very famous. It's a famous enough charity that pretty much everyone knows that line dogs life. And so my editor from day one was determined to call it Not Just for Christmas. And of course it's not a title that works at all well in the U.S., it doesn't play in America. It's not a title I wanted particularly, but it certainly works very well in this territory. I I was worried about it elsewhere and I was worried about the idea of books going out with different titles. The same book going out and it was a bit of a problem, I had kind of angry readers saying...KJ:                                        30:56                    I have as a reader, bought the same book twice.Betsy:                                  30:58                    Yes, exactly.KJ:                                        31:00                    Because I liked it so much one of the times and I thought, 'Oh, it's a different one.'Betsy:                                  31:05                    Yeah. I had irate readers kind of emailing me saying 'Who would do that?' And it didn't help that Amazon in the U.S. had both editions up. Anyway, it was a nightmare. So that's how I ended up as Natalie Cox. Gosh, Natalie was the name of my old dog, so that was a nod towards her. And Natalie's three syllables and I knew I needed a really short three letter surname for the cover. So it was either Dicks or Cox. Fox was taken. I actually did try Fox. My publisher said there was some other writer publishing under that name. So yeah, that's how I ended up with Natalie Cox.KJ:                                        32:02                    And the next one will be Natalie Cox.Betsy:                                  32:03                    Yes, this is a romcom under Natalie Cox, absolutely. And it also involves a very large dog. It's a similar kind of book, similar voice, similar tone. It's about a woman who's fed up with her life, she's got a list of problems, and she just wants to run away from it all until someone steals her identity. And then she wants her life back.KJ:                                        32:28                    Oh, that's good.Betsy:                                  32:34                    So I'm busily beavering away at that at the moment. I'm hoping to deliver that in the spring. So we will see. I do like dogs, I'm a big dog fan. I definitely discovered that almost like Christmas, there's almost an identifiable readership of people who want books about dogs.KJ:                                        32:54                    There absolutely is.Sarina:                                 32:55                    Yes, that is true. In fact, in 2017, one of my publishers said, 'These are the pitches we want next from you. It has to be dogs, or Alaska, or cowboys.'Betsy:                                  33:08                    Oh my God, that is hilarious. All three of those are great!KJ:                                        33:13                    An Alaskan cowboy dog would just walk us straight.Betsy:                                  33:19                    Oh, I would love to write any of those, that sounds fantastic. So did you write that? Did you write that book back then?Sarina:                                 33:37                    No, I didn't because I just didn't want to. And it was also said to me like this, 'This is what Walmart wants.'Betsy:                                  33:47                    Oh wow. Okay.Sarina:                                 33:48                    And I thought, you know what...I didn't want to plan my life that way.Betsy:                                  33:54                    No, and I agree. While I did make that comment about not writing in a vacuum and understanding what the market is for your books, I don't think you should let the tail wag the dog.KJ:                                        34:06                    Well, there's a difference.Sarina:                                 34:07                    Yeah. There's a difference between having an eye on it and letting it run your life. Also, you mentioned digital and so that made me curious. And as a bookseller, I bet this is something you keep an eye on, but is the digital sales ratio of your romcom higher than your literary fiction?Betsy:                                  34:29                    Well, I haven't looked at the figures, but broadly I would say yes. I mean, the thing about digital is we have pretty good understanding of what digital reading habits are now. And they do tend to be in certain genres - so mystery and commercial women's fiction, particularly romance, romance and mystery I'd say are probably two of the biggest consumers of digital. And you know, these are people who are super fans, they're veracious readers, they're constantly looking for new sources of supply, they need to source their books cheaply because they're reading so much. So gosh, what was the question?Sarina:                                 35:18                    I was just curious. So I'm very familiar with this concept because I'm about 98% digital. Or actually, if I put audio in there it wouldn't be 98 it would be more like 85. But also where is the line? So I have friends who do sort of book club women's fiction who are running at about 50/50 digital. And I was just sort of thinking that your book also looks like that midpoint between something that would be strictly a romance and a commercial women's fiction.Betsy:                                  35:55                    Well, what I would say in the U.S. for the Natalie Cox book, is that they have not pushed it digitally at all and they've priced it very, very high because I think they really want to shift paper copies. And so I've looked at my digital numbers and they're incredibly low. I would say below 5%. I mean I think that this title has legs digitally and I assume that they will eventually tap into that and market it digitally and price it to sell digitally. But at the moment they're still not doing that. In fact, I can't see from here what the digital prices in the U.S. are.KJ:                                        36:38                    It's $14.99 I think. It's quite high. And I just want to say it was super fun, I had a totally fun evening read. And I honestly wouldn't have done it if I did not also want to read it.Betsy:                                  37:31                    You totally could've winged it.KJ:                                        37:44                    But I wanted to read it.Betsy:                                  37:46                    Thank you. You will be my one digital sale in America this week. Next week, when I look at my sales figures it will literally say two copies sold and you'll be one of them. I think Putnam really wants...they've got a lot of physical copies out there and they want people to buy those. And that's why it's been priced the way it has. I assume that in years to come that part of their marketing plan...KJ:                                        38:12                    You know the worst part? I could've gotten the British edition for $3.99.Betsy:                                  38:18                    No, you're not allowed to.KJ:                                        38:20                    I could, I could do it right now. I have buy with one click.Betsy:                                  38:25                    But I thought they weren't allowed to. So there's copyright constraints that prevent you from buying digitally.KJ:                                        38:34                    It's priced in pounds.Betsy:                                  38:37                    Kindle should throw it out.KJ:                                        38:39                    Oh, you know what? I'm on the UK site cause I went to it from your website.Sarina:                                 38:46                    So when your new book comes out and there's doing the still the whole paper push maybe you can get them to do a BookBub deal.Betsy:                                  38:58                    Yeah, absolutely. I'm certainly about to press my UK publisher on a BookBub deal because unlike the U.S. they aren't bringing out another edition. They're not pushing it into shops this Christmas. And it absolutely should be. They should be marketing it more aggressively in the UK. The U.S., I've just looked, they've got like 40,000 paper copies out in shops.KJ:                                        39:21                    And the kind of amazing thing is that because I knew we were interviewing you and I've been in one airport bookstores and one non-airport bookstore looking at the holiday. And to be honest, I didn't see it. It wasn't on the holiday.Betsy:                                  39:35                    Well that is disappointing. This is the ultra mass market addition though, so those are only certain types of outlets I assume in the U.S.KJ:                                        39:44                    I was primarily in airport bookstores. I was in one indie bookstore, the one owned by Ann Patchett, actually. Speaking of author bookstores.Betsy:                                  39:53                    She came and signed copies at my shop.KJ:                                        39:56                    Well, darn it, she needs to be stocking your book.Betsy:                                  39:59                    So last year, with the trade paperback, that was a book that definitely was in Barnes and Noble and some of the independents. This year, with this new mass market edition I don't know which outlets stock these kinds of books that are priced at this very low price point, $7.99, I was very impressed with that. I assume it's more supermarkets, Walmart, that sort of thing.KJ:                                        40:30                    The airports had a few, but they were big name.Sarina:                                 40:34                    Also, American airport bookstores hate romance. There's nothing with even a whiff of romance in airport bookstores.Betsy:                                  40:42                    And to be honest, I would not have expected to be in the U.S. airport, actually. That's sad, but I can live with that. There are 40,000 copies out there but they're not in airports, but that's okay. I'm okay with that. Maybe my people aren't travelers, you know, maybe they're not travelers.KJ:                                        41:12                    I have one last question, but it might be a long one. I'm sure it's one that many of our listeners are wondering, 'Wait, wait, do I want to run a bookstore?' Sarina and I are always reminding each other that we don't, in fact, want to run a bookstore. So tell us.Betsy:                                  41:30                    Well, what do I say about running a bookstore? It's a little bit like owning a dog. I always liked owning a dog to having a perpetual toddler, you know, one that never grows up. With that level of commitment, and responsibility, and supervision. And I think running a small business, a customer facing business, it's open seven days a week, trading 70 hours. Yeah, it's the same sort of thing. It's like having a perpetual toddler. It's a lot of work. It's very full on, I have a business partner. We don't staff the shop, but we run it, we manage it ourselves from our laptops, mostly remotely. Although I certainly am in the shop. If I'm in London, I'm in the shop most days at least for a couple of hours to sort of oversee things. And it's terrific fun. I can't undersell that.KJ:                                        42:19                    That's not what we wanted to hear.Betsy:                                  42:20                    I mean it is absolutely incredibly fun, but like any small businesses, it is a lot of hard work. And we are very much a DIY business. We do everything ourself. We do all our bookkeeping, we do all our social media, we do our website, we curate by hand. You know, we're very hands-on for two people who aren't physically there all the time. But I travel a fair amount and so I can run the business from my laptop pretty much wherever I go. And it works and our customers love it and they're incredibly grateful that we're there. So they're happy to support us and are happy to pay full cover price. We never discount anything, we're ruthless about that. I just turned away a customer this afternoon for a book by someone I really, really dislike. When he asked why we didn't have it I said, 'Because we didn't buy it in, because we hate him.' And I said, 'I can order it for you, but can I just sell you something else?' It's done. So I talked him into buying something else. I said, 'His ex wife's book is out next year and it's much worth the wait for that.' He's an odious you would think. That's what you get to do when you run a bookshop. That's a terrible thing, I shouldn't be saying this.Sarina:                                 43:40                    It's hilarious.KJ:                                        43:41                    It's hilarious. Yes, we're all over this bookshop.Betsy:                                  43:46                    In fairness, that customer did look down and he spotted a slim volume by Niche and he said, 'Well, if that's your standard then you shouldn't be stocking this either.' Absolutely, we get to choose. It's really fun owning the shop and it's incredibly gratifying and it's lovely not to be just facing a keyboard all day.KJ:                                        44:14                    And now you make it sound fun. That's terrible, we didn't need that. Well, this is a great segue into what we've been reading. So have you read anything good lately?Betsy:                                  44:25                    So I have just read this book and I'm going to forget the author. U.S. book called Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. So this book, my 28-year-old son, his girlfriend loaned me her copy. It was a bit of a sleeper success for us in the bookshop. It was published here by Bloomsbury, I'm not sure who published it in the U.S. and we didn't really clock it initially on our radar in the shop until it started to kind of sell. I had all these kind of mid-30-year-old women coming in and sort of slyly purchasing it. It's about women and sex and it's a stunning piece of really in depth report where she surveyed hundreds of women and then chose three and followed them for literally years and moved to their home towns and told the story of their sexual history. And when my son's girlfriend loaned it to me, she said, 'Don't read it on the Metro.' And it's very, very explicit. It's incredibly gripping. And the stories are all true and it's beautifully written. It's written like a thriller. She cuts between the three stories very cleverly. And I thought it was a remarkable piece of work, actually. So yeah, definitely recommend it. And a lot of food for thought in terms of sexuality.KJ:                                        46:17                    How about you, Sarina?Sarina:                                 46:18                    Well, I wanted to keep with the holiday theme and I am acquainted with this author named Jana Aston, who writes what is very much an of-the-moment romance in the contemporary space right now. She writes kind of like billionaires and young women and it's very snappy and also kind of romcom, but also probably quite dirty. She came out with three holiday novellas right now and they are brilliantly packaged. And I'm reading the first one right now. It's called The Boss Who Stole Christmas.Betsy:                                  46:57                    And I bet they're racing up the Kindle charts.Sarina:                                 47:00                    Yes. And I have to tell you the title of the second book because it makes my heart pitter-patter. It is so funny. It is called If You Give a Jerk a Gingerbread. Isn't that impressive? And so I'm having a great time reading book one and I can't wait to get to the jerk with the gingerbread.KJ:                                        47:20                    Well, as I've said multiple times, did really enjoy Mutts and Mistletoe. Super fun. Although you need to look for the paperback, not necessarily the Kindle edition. They probably won't let me loan it to you. I also read Beside Herself by Elizabeth Labon. Elizabeth Labon is a Philly author who writes really, really place-centric commercial women's fiction. And I love the cover of this book. It's a coffee cup, like sort of spilling as it topples over. And it's the story of a woman whose husband has an affair and who still loves him but wants to get back at him. And it's a happy ending, romcom, very much fun read, especially if you're a Philly person. And yeah, I enjoyed it. I've enjoyed her previous books. So yeah, it was fun. I think it's a good time of year. You know, I have a stack right now that is a combination of sort of more serious stuff and really, really light stuff because this is just such a rich time of year for book shopping.Betsy:                                  48:25                    Absolutely. And I think over the Christmas holidays, frankly, everybody wants the literary equivalent of a malteser way. I mean, you know, really, that feeds aside for all of us. And you know, there's room for all those books on our shelves.KJ:                                        48:44                    Well, thank you so much for coming. This has been incredibly fun. We thought it would be fun when it was just going to be holiday, but when it turned into let's talk about owning a bookstore and writing multiple books in multiple genres. We got super excited, so thank you.Betsy:                                  49:00                    Fantastic. Thank you so much for having me.Sarina:                                 49:02                    And until next week, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.Jess:                                     49:14                    This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Here’s one way to learn how to write books that work in audio: narrate over 700 of them, like our guest this week, Tanya Eby. If that sounds a little daunting, listen in instead for the condensed version.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, we sent out our first supporter-only #MiniSupporter episode this week: #Prewriting. Those will be short and sporadic bursts of advice and inspiration from one of us, and thanks to the magic of Substack, supporters of #AmWriting will see those drop into a special feed in their podcast apps whenever we’ve got one ready. We’d love to add you to that list if you’re not already on it. Support the podcast you love, get bonus #MiniSupporter episodes AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Olive Kitteredge, Elizabeth StroutKJ: Ninth House, Leigh BardugoSarina: Never Have I Ever, Joshilyn JacksonTanya: The Chestnut Man, Soren Sveistrup#FaveIndieBookstoreSchuler Books in Grand Rapids, MichiganOur guest for this episode is Tanya Eby, the Audie Award Winning narrator of over 700 audio books. Her production company, Blunder Woman Productions, is currently nominated for two Society Arts Awards. Find more about Tanya here.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey writers, it's KJ and if you're listening in real time, there's a pretty good chance you might be in the middle of NaNoWriMo right now, or giving up on it, or flailing around and wishing you'd never started it. If your National Novel Writing Month isn't exactly passing by in a haze of inspired typing, it's well worth taking a break from churning outwards to make sure your book has a strong enough spine to support the story you want to tell. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator has a tool that might help - the Inside Outline. And I have a NaNoWriMo secret. It's not all about the word count. 30,000 words are better than 50,000 if you're going to have to throw half of those 50,000 words away. So, if you're feeling the least bit stuck, try applying the Inside Outline to what you've already written and to the scenes to come. It might be exactly what you need to get over the finish line. #AmWriting listeners have exclusive access to a free download that describes what the outline is, why it works, and how to do it free. You can find it at authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?Jess:                                     01:12                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        01:14                    Yay.Jess:                                     01:14                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        01:15                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     01:19                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        01:21                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     01:24                    Okay.KJ:                                        01:24                    Now one, two, three.KJ:                                        01:32                    Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the weekly podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, every genre, every possible permutation of writing that we can possibly come up with, (especially if it begins with a P, which seems to be where I'm going today) pitches, proposals. See I told you, and as you know, this is, above all else, the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess:                                     02:03                    I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and you can find my work at the New York Times and The Atlantic. And I just finished the first draft of my forthcoming book in 2021 The Addiction Inoculation about preventing substance abuse in kids.Sarina:                                 02:17                    And this is Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of more than 30 romance novels, with a new one coming out in just a few days, called Man Cuffed, and more about that in a minute.KJ:                                        02:29                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of How To Be a Happier Parent as well as a novel coming out next year, The Chicken Sisters, former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, and feeling a bit like a slacker with this just same book, you know, coming out all the time. I'm working, I'm going to have another one soon, I hope.Jess:                                     02:55                    Well, just wait. I mean, my book's not coming out until 2021 so just imagine how sick of it we're going to be by the time it finally comes out, it feels like it's forever away.KJ:                                        03:03                    Yes, we have a guest today. Sarina, I'm going to tell you, 'Take it away.'Sarina:                                 03:11                    We do have a guest today and it's a friend of mine. We're welcoming to the show, Tanya Eby, who is the Audie award-winning narrator of over 700 audio books. Wow. I mean, come on, 700. Her production company, which is adorably titled Blunder Woman Productions, is currently nominated for two society arts awards, as well. And Tanya is here today to talk mostly about the booming market for audio books. But I just have to slide in there and say that Tanya and I also have a USA today bestselling series of romance novels together. They are The Man Hands books. Which everything Tanya does is funny, so I'm going to tell you the titles are: Man Hands, Man Card, Boy Toy, and our new one, Man Cuffed. Welcome, Tanya.Tanya:                                 04:06                    Hey, that was such a cool introduction. Thank you.Sarina:                                 04:10                    You are welcome.Jess:                                     04:12                    The series you two write together that Sarina was just talking about just makes me laugh out loud. I love that series. And it's also really fun to read Sarina with various authors. I love reading Sarina in all the different forms and I'm so excited to hear about audio books. Mainly because number one, I'm a huge, huge audio book fan since I had a head injury a couple of years ago. For me, I have limited on the page time, and so audio books are my preferred way to sort of get at the fun reading. But also, I was on one of my audio book apps, scrolling through trying to make sure I knew which books you've narrated that I've read, and it's like page one of 62 and I'm scrolling through. So I'm glad Sarina said how many because that was going to be a long morning for me scrolling through every single thing you've ever done.Tanya:                                 05:08                    Yeah, I've been doing this for a while now.Jess:                                     05:11                    Well I have a ton of questions, but I know that Sarina has some stuff that she wants to talk to you about first. So I'm going to defer to Sarina.Sarina:                                 05:19                    I was pulling together my thoughts about this and I would like to say that Tanya has been basically a full-time audio book narrator and producer since before it was cool.Jess:                                     05:33                    Which means officially it's cool now. It's very, very cool.Sarina:                                 05:38                    Because some of these numbers I was just finding about the growth of the audio book industry are pretty crazy. So the industry has had, according to the Audio Publisher's Association, which I believe Tanya has just finished a stint on the board. They say they've had seven years of double digit growth. With the last date available 2018 of course, cause we're not quite done with this one. And that in 2018, according to the APA, it was almost a billion dollar industry, which of course means that it was over a billion dollar industry because professional associations that cover publishing can never actually capture all that revenue because there's too many independent publishers. And also because the only people who really know how many audio downloads there are, are Amazon and they're not saying.Tanya:                                 06:36                    Right, but it's a lot.Sarina:                                 06:37                    It's a lot. And 2018 revenue was up 24 and a half percent over 2017, which is a big fat growth number. And I'm, you know, a cynical economist so that when people tell me that something is growing really fast, I kind of sometimes discount that because if a thing is growing really fast, but it's a really tiny thing, then you know, that's interesting, but it's not life changing. And in publishing we love to grasp onto whatever is growing because, you know, it's a tricky industry and wild growth is not something people think about when they think about publishing. But now after seven years of double digit growth, I have to say that it really seems like they're not fooling around this time. And so, I'm a believer now. And just to prove it to myself, I looked up my own audio revenue on my early 2018 release because I thought that that was like the best one to look at to figure out what it was. And 12% of all the copies of my early 2018 release were sold in audio, which means that the revenue proportion is even greater than 12%, because I'm earning slightly more on every audio copy than other formats, including e-book and paperback. So, wow. I'm a believer.Jess:                                     08:12                    I'm so jealous of you being able to look up that information. I mean, when it comes (as you mentioned before) Amazon's not telling and it's almost impossible for me to know. But what's really nice for me when I go to a book signing, go to a book event, more and more frequently people are asking me if the book's available on audio or I listened to you in my car. And I want to talk about that in a little bit - to the sort of the relationship that you build with the voice that you listen to in your car. But more and more people are saying to me, 'Oh, I listened to it on audio and I love that format.' And that wasn't something, even five years ago, that wasn't something I was hearing.Tanya:                                 08:51                    Well, I think that the industry really changed and exploded when we had the technology to support it. So when I started, I was still on tape. This is how long ago I was recording and then it moved to mostly CDs, but then we've had this huge, you know explosion since smartphones and then Audible coming in and now people can access it everywhere, where you couldn't before. And people have discovered how much fun it is to listen. For me, it's like a movie in my mind and it's been constantly growing, which has been great.Jess:                                     09:31                    From the teacher perspective, there have been a bunch of articles in the past couple of years on you know, is listening to audio books "reading", does it count, you know, that kind of thing. And there've been a couple of articles saying, 'Absolutely, yes, it does count.'Speaker 4:                          09:48                    We do process the the words we read slightly differently, but I know from a teaching perspective, if I have to teach a text, especially a text that's really dense, I always listen and read because I get different things from a text when I listen than when I read, and it's a very important part of my preparation. So I think that's added to it.Tanya:                                 10:07                    Yeah. It actually lights up the same parts of the brain as reading does, which is really cool. And I actually got started with audio books - my first experience - I was trying to understand Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and I was like 16 years old and I couldn't make sense of it. So I started to read it out loud and suddenly like the whole book just came to life for me. So, yeah I agree.Jess:                                     10:33                    There's this really cool passage I used to teach in seventh grade, I would teach Great Expectations. There are a few passages that I had to read out loud because the way Dickens structured the sentences lent itself to the same - there's a scene where they're racing through the marshes and the sentence just bounds, and bounds, and bounds forward the same way that Joe is bounding, and bounding, and bounding through the marsh. And so it's a way of showing students that you can use language not only to appeal to the eye and to sort of sound good in your head, but to sound good from an oral perspective as well. So that's one of my favorite parts about reading out loud and who doesn't want to be read to?Tanya:                                 11:15                    It's so nice, isn't it? It's really comforting, I love it.Jess:                                     11:19                    So can we talk nuts and bolts?Tanya:                                 11:21                    What do you want to know?Jess:                                     11:23                    I want to know practical stuff. Like how do you get hired? And Sarina talks about this every once in a while, but how does an author (and often it has nothing to do with the author unless you're at Lucky like Sarina and you're so good at the self pub thing) but how do you get hired for a book in the first place?Tanya:                                 11:40                    So I think the most important thing to realize about narrators is that we are all freelancers. So we may work through a publisher, but we don't work with just that publisher. And you can basically contact us and most of us can produce audio for you or we can work with whichever publishing house you want to work with. So how I get hired is publishing houses sometimes will cast and I've been in the business long enough that they know me and they simply send me an email and say, 'Are you interested?' Or I might audition or I have authors who contact me or I might audition for pieces that authors post online through ACX or find a way or some of those services. So there's multiple ways to reach a narrator.Jess:                                     12:31                    You hear about like actors going after certain roles, have there been certain audio books that you've really gone after because you wanted to be a part of them?Tanya:                                 12:38                    Yes. And it did not work. And I'm still intensely bitter. No, I'm not. But this was before I started my publishing company and I realized that I might've seemed a little creepy because I was just a narrator saying like, 'Hire me.' And that made people uncomfortable. But now that I have a production company, they take me a little more seriously and I have been able to get some really great roles that way.Jess:                                     13:07                    Cool. So in terms of - and these are just the things that I tend to be fascinated by - so when I read my own audio book for my for my book for Harper Collins, I got a flat fee as the author. So they said, here's the amount of money you get. Go away, go read the book. But I also understand from Sarina that audio narrators can get paid in terms of a finished, by the minute....Tanya:                                 13:35                    We are paid what's called per finished hour. So if your book is 10 hours long, we are paid 10 hours worth of work. We call it per finished hour because each hour to record takes about two hours or more for us to produce it. So doing it by the per finished hour simplifies things. And I think there are A list actors who their pay scale is much different, but for most of us it's a per finished hour.Jess:                                     14:07                    There's so many things that go into why it takes so much longer in the finished product.Tanya:                                 14:14                    And I think they don't realize that for every hour of audio book you listen to, it's taken about 10 hours to produce and there can be a team of like 20 people working on that audio book. So we've got directors, we have engineers, proofers, people who listen for mistakes or tummy grumbles or things like that, you have people doing research, you have the narrator who reads the book first and does a bunch of research and yeah, I mean it's huge what goes into it.Jess:                                     14:46                    What's your favorite kind of book to narrate? Do you have a favorite kind?Tanya:                                 14:51                    Well, I mean, I love stories. We all love stories that have great characters. I've been enjoying narrating nonfiction lately, but I like heartwarming stories. But then I also have this dark side where there are times where I love true crime and I love those gritty mysteries. So for me, one of the fun parts about being a narrator is I get to narrate across genres. So once I'd been doing romances for a while, I might get a nonfiction title thrown in and it keeps me really interested.Jess:                                     15:24                    One of the things that I've sort of been really curious about (mainly because it's something that I don't know that I could do) is there are those times that I'm listening to a book and I realize that it is a woman reading the book to me. and yet I get lost in the male voice that that narrator is able to create for me. And I forget that I'm listening to just one narrator. And I'm sort of curious as to how you arrive on that and just sort of what the tricks are about doing that. Cause I don't really get it. It's almost like one of those TV or movie illusions that it's best not to think about. But I'm really curious about how you do that.Tanya:                                 16:02                    Yeah, I mean that's the magic of audio books - that you can have one performer create all these characters. What helps is if we have good writing to start with. So that gives us some clues as to what the characters are. If you have like an evil character, is he gritty? Is he is he smarmy? Is he manipulative, cocky? Like those kinds of adjectives help us choose voices. And for me I've been listening to lots and lots of people talk and I kind of like quietly mimic them to capture voices. And what's interesting is that not all males have this deep masculine voice. Some of them have higher pitched voice and the same goes with women, we're not all Sopranos. So kind of making choices that suit the character, as if you were dressing the character, what would this character wear is kind of how I get into it.Jess:                                     16:57                    That's so cool. One of the things Sarina and I were talking about recently is often Sarina's books, for example, Good Boy that you read along with (obviously you weren't in the same room together) but with Teddy Hamilton in the male character. The thing though in a lot of books is that even from the female perspective, you have to speak in the male voice. And so do you ever get to hear, for example, Teddy Hamilton's performance before you do yours or is it just sort of put together at the end?Tanya:                                 17:27                    When you're doing a dual read like that (when you have two people narrating) with each one doing a point of view chapter. What I do is I'll talk to my co-narrator and we post files that we'll listen to (of each other) where we make character choices and so I can listen to it and kind of get the groove. Now Teddy, I know well enough and I've listened to him a lot and spent time with him, that it was easy to fall into that groove of how he narrates.Jess:                                     18:03                    He's one of my favorites, he's one of my very favorite narrators.Tanya:                                 18:07                    And he's an awesome person, too, which is always great.Jess:                                     18:11                    That is so cool. Sarina, did you want to jump in? I feel like taking over this interview.Sarina:                                 18:18                    Oh no, it's all good. I thought it would be fun to ask Tanya though - Like, which words in a manuscript do you not like?Tanya:                                 18:27                    So...clasping - like, she clasped her breasts or something - is really hard. Sexting, texting - those words destroy me.Jess:                                     18:41                    I told Sarina at one point I had them, I used to work as a political speech writer and I wrote an inaugural speech for someone. And at a certain point we just had to ditch an entire sentence no matter, he loved the sentence, I love the sentence, but it was not coming out of his mouth the right way. It was not going to happen.Tanya:                                 19:03                    Yeah. Sometimes it doesn't. Or you get a character. The famous one is Jack, we love that name. But whenever you have a character, Jack asked, you have to be careful. And fantasy books, character names are difficult because they'll create languages and people think they know how it's pronounced. And then a narrator will make a choice and they make the wrong choice, it's tricky.Sarina:                                 19:29                    So what happens - what happens if you're reading a fantasy novel and they gave you the pronunciation for like everything except this one word and you read that one word. What happens?Tanya:                                 19:38                    So two things. Either they like it so much, they're okay with it. Or you have to record 156 fixes of every time you said that name. I've had it go both ways. And I had one where I said Viola and it was Viola. Because I guess Viola is more popular in the South.Jess:                                     20:02                    And there's nothing that pulls me out of a book faster. I was listening to an audio book a while ago and they mispronounced a really well-known street name in Los Angeles and that was it. Like it was over for me.Tanya:                                 20:17                    Proofers should catch that, but they don't. You know, it's a team and we don't always. But something for writers to know - if one of your pieces are being produced, you can supply some of those pronunciations to your audio book team and they will love you for it.Jess:                                     20:36                    Oh, that's a great tip.Tanya:                                 20:38                    Yeah. Just knowing like if you have some names that are super important, let your narrator know.Jess:                                     20:43                    That's especially important, I guess for us nonfiction writers that were there tend to be researchers' names Dr. So and so in there. That would be really helpful. That never (well I guess because I read my own book) but that never would've occurred to me. And you're right, that would be really, really helpful. It's a great tip.Sarina:                                 20:59                    Can I just say that I have not always been good at this? At giving people the information they need. Except when we were going to record Him, which is I believe my bestselling audio book ever, I did manage to tell the narrating team that Jamie was from San Rafael, California. And I said, 'You don't say Rafael, even though it's spelled that way.' People from Northern California say San Rafael. And I got notes from grateful listeners like 'Thank you for saying San Rafael.' And I'm like, 'Okay. I guess that one thing that I thought to do.' So, the other thing that we should mention, so some of our listeners are authors with published books who may not have an audio edition. So you know, there must be some people listening to think how do I get one?Tanya:                                 22:02                    Well the first thing they need to know is to look at their contract (if they have one) and see if they own the audio rights. Or if they're self-published, they do own the audio rights. And that can make you go into two different paths. So there's lots of paths to get your book into audio. You can request that your publisher consider publishing in audio and if they don't, if you can have the rights back and you can do it yourself. If you own the rights, you can do it yourself or you can hire a company like my production company, Blunder Woman Productions, and we can produce it for you. So there are lots of different avenues, but the most important question is do you have the rights?Sarina:                                 22:45                    Right. And I actually I had a contract with a publisher that I no longer have a contract with, let's say in 2014. And one of the things that my agent did with that contract is that this particular publisher keeps rights like that. They keep audio and they were keeping translation as well, and she couldn't talk them out of keeping those things. But she did put in that if they hadn't exercised the audio rights by a certain date that we got it back.Tanya:                                 23:22                    Right. And that's so great, especially because as audio books have become more popular, more and more publishers are holding onto those rights. So having that clause is extremely helpful. You can also put in a clause that you have some input with the narrator. Sometimes publishers will cast it for you. But if you have that information in there, they can give you choices to choose from. And that's really helpful sometimes for writers.Sarina:                                 23:49                    Yeah. In fact, I have a different contract with Penguin (who always keeps their audio rights), but in this case I was perfectly happy about it because they publish those audio books immediately with the publication of the other books. So here's where it also gets weird if you're an author and you can't quite figure out what's happening. So let's just say you have books with Penguin or Harper or Simon and Schuster. Sometimes your publisher will make them themselves. Like, you know, the book will be from Harper Audio, but sometimes your publisher will sell off those rights to an audio book publisher, such as Blackstone, Tenter, Brilliance. You know, there's a bunch like this. And then those people will make the book. And in this case, I had no rights at all (except of course to earn money when someone else did this work for me) but I was still asked by Blackstone, my opinion about who I wanted to narrate and they sent me audition tapes and it was just terrific.Tanya:                                 25:01                    So nice. So sometimes they will sell those rights to other companies. Sometimes those other companies will just produce it for them. Because not every publishing house can produce as many books as they want to.Jess:                                     25:16                    What's also been cool is to see some of the audio books from before audio really became as popular as it is now and the quality has changed, that a lot of a lot of stuff is being reproduced. And it's really, really nice because it can be updated and you can stay on top of it and they can look uniform. And Stephen King's work comes to mind. They've reengineered a whole bunch of his books and it's been great.Tanya:                                 25:44                    Well, and it's also interesting because in the last 10 years there's been a shift. Audio book started as reading for the blind. And narrators were instructed just to read the words with no emotion, no characterization, but there's been a real shift now, where those books are being performed. So like you had mentioned earlier with vocal characterization, we do accents, so we really act it out now. So that can also be a huge difference from a book that was released 10 years ago.Sarina:                                 26:11                    I'll bet. And another new thing is the popularity of certain narrators. And this is another technology thing. So now that we all carry our audio books around in our pockets and we buy them or rent them from various audio book platforms, you can often search by narrator. So if you have a favorite and you click on their name all of their stuff comes up, which makes the whole recommending machine hum in a different direction than I'm sure it used to in the olden days.Tanya:                                 26:51                    Right. If you're casting your own audio book, it's a good way to find narrators by listening to those little clips and seeing who do you click with? Because I also want to mention something really important for writers - that the audio book is never going to sound the way that it sounds in your head. So it's an interpretation by an actor and that's really important to remember that, that there's many ways to perform a piece and sometimes you gotta let go a little bit.Sarina:                                 27:18                    Yeah. My way of doing this is, I have to say, I never listen to my own books in audio and people will say, 'Oh, this one is so wonderful.' And I'm like, 'That's amazing. I'm glad. I'm so happy to hear it.' But I will never have actually heard it. I've only listened to a couple. The fact that the cadence isn't the same in my head as I heard it is just, I can't deal.Jess:                                     27:44                    You guys want to hear something horrifying. I was at a talk recently and someone came to the book signing and said, 'Oh, I was in a real hurry to get this listened to before, I wanted to get it all done before you came. So I listened to you. I started at 1.5 times, then I went up to 1.7, and then I listened to the very end at 2.0 and I tried it just to sort of see what that was like. I don't know how people do that, it scrambles my brain. It's the worst, but some people swear by it. They're like, 'That's how I get through books quickly is to go at one and a half speed.'Tanya:                                 28:18                    When narrators hear that, it's like we've been drained by a vampire, like all the blood leaves our face. And we're like, 'That's great.'Jess:                                     28:30                    There is something really (and I said this at the beginning that I wanted to come back to it) There's something really magical about having spent so much time in someone else's existence. You know, like I've been in someone's car, or they'd be listening to me on the way to work, and they're like, 'I feel like I know you.' And that is the same way I feel about the audio narrators that I listen to. Like Davina Porter, you know, I've listened to her voice so much that she's familiar to me and soothing and it's a reason that I relisten to those books when I'm feeling anxious because I have a relationship with that voice and I feel really privileged to be in that place.Tanya:                                 29:14                    What's interesting about that, to hear you say that is that many of us when we sit down in the booth, like right now I'm in my basement in my booth, it's dark and I have to sit down and remember that I'm going to tell you a story and I want to pull you in and I want to have a conversation with you. So it's like, it's really intimate. And that's good to hear that that works for you.Jess:                                     29:36                    Yeah, my producer at Vermont Public Radio taught me the coolest trick, and this of course doesn't work when you're totally by yourself, I suppose. But one of the things that she taught me to do is to catch her eye at moments where I felt it was really, really important to connect. And there's something about just looking at another human being when I'm in the booth that really does something to your voice. And especially right at the end of something and that's when I always try to catch her eye and sort of emote in a particular way. That was a really helpful trick she gave me and it helps me connect with whoever out there is listening. It's really a fun, amazing thing to get to do is to be in someone else's head, to be in someone else's ears, I think. So, speaking of reading audio books, listening to audio books, and reading, can we talk a little bit about what we've been listening to and reading? And for me it has been listening to, but I would love to hear what you guys have been reading this week.KJ:                                        30:33                    I have a really good one. I think Sarina mentioned this one on the podcast before, but I just want to shout out to Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House, which was a really, really fun fantasy read, which I personally finished over Halloween, but it's perfect for any dark and dreary fall season, or heck a beach read. Really, anything you could possibly come up with. Fun, paranormal, lots of suspense, great characters, a real page turner for me. I had a great time with it.Sarina:                                 31:06                    I'm so happy you liked it.Jess:                                     31:08                    Yeah. You two have been talking about that one for a long time. I got to catch up and read that one, too.Sarina:                                 31:12                    Do it.Jess:                                     31:12                    Sarina, what do you have?Sarina:                                 31:14                    Yesterday I read Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson, which you guys had an episode about, actually. And her writing is so beautiful and it sent me into a little spiral of trying to define what it means to have an unreliable narrator. And after I figure that out I'll get back to you.Jess:                                     31:35                    And reliable narrator meaning we just can't trust everything they're telling us, which I would think would put the author in a very tricky place. So I'm excited to hear more about that. I decided to re download and listen to Olive Kitteredge again because I'm going to listen to the new book Olive, again, I think is what it's called by Elizabeth Strout. And I have to say all Olive Kitteredge is even better than I remembered. It's just a beautiful, beautiful book. And the audio version of it is fantastic. It's a great book. Plus it puts me in Maine and I get in that Maine headspace and that's always good, too.Tanya:                                 32:12                    Well, I have something I'm reading. Because I narrate a lot of romance I like to read dark things for pleasure. So this is called The Chestnut Man and it's by Soren Sveistrup. It's about a serial killer, so it's pretty dark, but I'm really enjoying it.Jess:                                     32:30                    I'm totally into those books and I've got a lot of travel coming up so will be downloading that one, too. And Tanya, do you have a bookstore for us to talk about this week?Tanya:                                 32:40                    Sure. I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan and there's a great bookstore called Schuler Books. They have two locations and it's cozy and they have coffee and they also highlight a lot of local writers, which is always great to see.Jess:                                     32:57                    I'm sort of excited. I get to go to Nashville next week or later this week, which means I get to visit Parnassus. I'm so excited, it's going to be so much fun. Alright, I think that's it for today. And Sarina, would you like to take us out today?Sarina:                                 33:11                    Okay, everybody. Then, until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.Jess:                                     33:29                    This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. 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