The Wordslinger Podcast

Kevin chats with author Mary Keliikoa about the debut of her new mystery novel, and how she’s building a platform before she even as a book released! Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe

Evan Gow is the indie developer of StoryOrigin, a marketing tool and community of authors working together to build mailing lists, increase sales, and find reviewers.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLESHOW LINKS:Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinsonWordslinger Podcast on YouTube: youtube.com/c/wordslingerpodcastAuthor.Email: author.emailIndie Author Blueprint: indieauthorblueprint.comGUEST LINKS:Website:: https://storyoriginapp.com/SPONSORS:INDIE AUTHOR BLUEPRINT: You are not alone! Find out where to start, and how to build and grow your indie author career. And we’ll be with you the whole way! http://indieauthorblueprint.comDRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acornsAUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslingerTRANSCRIPT Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe

Longtime podcaster, full-cast audio pioneer and independent filmmaker, and author of 30 books, J. Daniel Sawyer hosts the daily writers podcast The Every Day Novelist dedicated to creativity, process, writerly discipline, and cultivating a fertile mental life.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLESHOW LINKS:Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinsonWordslinger Podcast on YouTube: youtube.com/c/wordslingerpodcastAuthor.Email: author.emailIndie Author Blueprint: indieauthorblueprint.comGUEST LINKS:Website:: http://www.jdsawyer.netAmazon Author Page:: https://www.amazon.com/J-Daniel-Sawyer/e/B003L9JM92Twitter:: @dsawyerFacebook:: https://www.facebook.com/jdaniel.sawyerHow can people join your mailing list?: http://jdsawyer.net/about/mailing-list-signup/SPONSORS:DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acornsAUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslingerTRANSCRIPT:SUMMARY KEYWORDSbook, people, podcast, nanowrimo, pandemic, years, worldview, everyday, talking, novelist, life, interesting, grew, read, thought, recorded, held, listen, writing, questionsSPEAKERSKevin Tumlinson, J Daniel SawyerKevin Tumlinson 00:01Hey everybody, thank you for tuning in for sticking through the intro. I'm not even sure what I said in the intro, but I promise I will, I can guarantee at least I was interested in it. So thanks for tuning in and playing along. So today we're talking to Jay Daniel Sawyer. Now I'm going to read his bio here because it's it's got some great details for you but longtime podcaster full cast, audio pioneer, and independent filmmaker and author of 30 books. Jay saw your hosts the daily writers podcast, the everyday novelist, dedicated credit to creativity, process, and writerly discipline, and cultivating a fertile mental life. That's the part I wanted to get to in your bio. I like the idea of a fertile mental life. How's that? How's that shake out? And welcome to the show.J Daniel Sawyer 00:52Hi, Doug diggin Kevin. Yeah, you were on everyday novelist. What about it? But two years ago, I thinkKevin Tumlinson 00:58Yeah, a little bit. Doesn't seem like that long.J Daniel Sawyer 01:01I guys been crazy packed two years and like, every sense. Yeah,Kevin Tumlinson 01:06yeah. I feel like I've done a billion podcasts and webinars and live stream since then. And that's just this week. Oh, no. Yes. And I, you know, and I told you this before we started and I'm, I'm going to apologize to the rest of the world. Because if I sounded all frazzled, or off my game, it's because we've had so there's that on top of a pandemic, and I don't know when you're listening to this, it's probably a little bit in the future for sure. Maybe things turned out all right. And if so, thank you world for playing along. But uh, you know, things have been a little crazy. In terms of stuff we're doing with DDD, we got these spotlights, we're doing like every day, and then my buddy here pops in and I for some reason, I thought it was one of my author consults. So So I'm off base. I'm off kilter man. We're gonna get back on trackJ Daniel Sawyer 02:04so I think we'll do fine.Kevin Tumlinson 02:06How is everything in the James J Daniel Sawyer world man Tell me a little bit about what you're doing right now.J Daniel Sawyer 02:12Oh well right now I'm stuck up in the backwoods I moved up to the backwoods of New England for a week in order to help my parents relocate a year ago It turned out that their their retirement house needed some renovations. So Oh, got stuck here. And just as we were getting ready to leave the quarantine comes down. So I might be stuck here another year. So there's a lot of interesting refactoring going on.Kevin Tumlinson 02:36But that seems to be the way that works out. I mean, we we were we moved out of our apartment and moved into our in laws place for a few days, quote, unquote, and then 14 hit and we're like, well, they're gonna hunker down anyway. Go ahead.J Daniel Sawyer 02:54Yeah. But yeah, it's it's good. It's, you know, we're on we've got 50 acres to play with. So there's a Lots of good time for outside notice and using the opportunity to resurrect my fiction podcast and get some work ahead done on the homestead we're building on the other side of the country. Right? So it's, it's gonna work outKevin Tumlinson 03:15what kind of work ahead can you do if it's on the other side of the country?J Daniel Sawyer 03:18There's a lot of design stuff. Yeah design, designing and costing sourcing stuff for the first buildings figuring out order of operations for at what stage we do the well when we do the catchment, what's the priority of how much electrical build out because where we are, it's a quarter mile beyond the last electrical pole. So it's 20 odd thousand just to bring power in. It's actually a lot cheaper. Even though we're in an iffy climate zone. It's actually a lot cheaper to go solar. So, right. Yes, that's a whole new set of things I've been learning about andKevin Tumlinson 03:53Oh, man. Yeah, you're talking to the right guy. Cool. This is I have to so you know, You know that we're getting into an RV full time again? Yeah. So the the two biggest problems, the three big problems. One, the two are bigger than the third. But internet is the biggest challenge. You know, power isn't such a big challenge unless it's going to be hot. And then we have Eric. Right. So, yeah, so solar power and generators and alternative energy are all in my mind. I'm thinking about installing something on the wheels of the camper that as we rolling in generates power.J Daniel Sawyer 04:36I've been studying doing that kind of stuff. It should be pretty, pretty simple.Kevin Tumlinson 04:40Yeah, man. Yeah. by simple, you know, that's a relative term.J Daniel Sawyer 04:44Well, it's a relative term. But the question is, would it be more efficient than just putting a bigger alternator in the truck? Yeah. And then, and then routing it to the chargeback.Kevin Tumlinson 04:55That's something else I I've considered. Well, yeah, whatever. This has been alternate energy talk everyone.J Daniel Sawyer 05:03So, well, you know, we were talking about a fertile mental life. Yeah, exactly. I mean, one of the one of the things about creativity is it's nonlinear, you can't reason your way into what you have to do is you have to create a broad, a broad base of knowledge and experience and interests to pull from. And so, you know, one of the ways that I keep myself Spry is by picking interesting stuff that's not related to anything else I'm doing and finding a way to get interested in it because I always get story ideas out of it.Kevin Tumlinson 05:35Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's interesting. And that and so that's what you mean by by fertile mental life?J Daniel Sawyer 05:42Well, partly, I've just finished a book called The autodidact Bible, which should be coming out. I think we've set the publication date for early July. Yeah. Which is a basically a comprehensive toolkit for teaching yourself how to self educate, eat, whether you're self educated. With philosophy or with carpentry, and everything in between,Kevin Tumlinson 06:04man, I gotta tell you, though, hmm, you should call it a fertile mental life. The other didactics Bible. Thank you.J Daniel Sawyer 06:11I've been looking for a good title for it because the working title is a bit wonky. Yeah, so I'll write that down.Kevin Tumlinson 06:20I think that's gonna work. I would buy that book. All right, I wouldn't buy the first one.J Daniel Sawyer 06:25right because it sounds really technical. ItKevin Tumlinson 06:27sounds like it's gonna Yeah, like, I'm gonna have to read this with like one of those clear rulers. Oh,06:35I lost I lost your lightingKevin Tumlinson 06:36just went away. Yeah, well, good thing nobody everyone listening is doesn't know that.J Daniel Sawyer 06:41Yeah, speaking of off grid power,Kevin Tumlinson 06:44no joke. Now, I'm not really sure why that happened. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna let that charge up while I'm on with you. Okay,J Daniel Sawyer 06:52both backlit, so it's sort of fair. Exactly.Kevin Tumlinson 06:57Things things like this are always happening to me lately. I don't What's going on? Um, so yeah, we'll get off that see this one talking about some I get off track justJ Daniel Sawyer 07:09because I'll just chase whatever and that's okay. you stumble ontoKevin Tumlinson 07:12you know, I studied improv and you know, you roll with whatever is gonna come at you. Yeah,J Daniel Sawyer 07:17yes, yeah, yes and or no but but never Yeah.Kevin Tumlinson 07:20So, uh, I, let's talk a little bit about your well wouldn't talk about your book. Do you want to talk a little about your book? I was gonna get off on your podcastsJ Daniel Sawyer 07:32there. Let's get off on the podcast. They're related. They'reKevin Tumlinson 07:35related, okay, who partly out of the other. So tell me. How did the show get started? Like what made you decide to do itJ Daniel Sawyer 07:41back in? I think it was 2006 Yeah, 2005 or 2006. I went to a write in for NaNoWriMo at Central Park in Berkeley. And Chris, whatever his name is the guy that started NaNoWriMo was there and so I got to talk to you too. Like, why'd you know why did he do this? I'd never done it before. It always seemed kind of silly to me. And he said, Well, I wanted to be a writer and I couldn't motivate myself. So I decided to pick the most difficult month in the year and intentionally write a book there to prove to myself I could do it. Yeah, I thought that was kind of a cool idea. So I wanted to trying to do NaNoWriMo that year and I completely failed. But the the lit the minor features of the conversation like going in the direction of greatest difficulty in order to build up your writing chops, really sunk in made a big difference to me as a writer to my productivity and to my general approach to all things writerly. So, I had in mind always want especially once I started podcasting, I always thought it would be fun to do sort of a walkthrough of NaNoWriMo for the newbie who'd never written a book before. Okay, and about 2016 I had the free time. So I sat and did it. And I got to the end of this 30 day walkthrough, which has since evolved into my book becoming an everyday novelist. And I started getting emails from people saying, Please don't end it here. We've become dependent on it. And so I, I went on pod and I read a couple of these. And I said, Okay, so look, here's the problem. It took me, God, you know, God knows how many untold hours to work out the program for this 30 day walkthrough to put things in the right place to write the copy that whole bit. So if you want me to keep this going, you've got to make it easy for me send me questions or something. Yeah. And I thought that was gonna be the end of it. But they sent questions. And they kept sending questions, and they kept sending questions, and it's now four plus years on and we're just creeping up on 1000 episodes now, and they're still sending questions. Occasionally, a question will spin off and I'll do a special series or or I'll have a guest on every once in a while. Then about about two and a half years ago, I wrote a I cracked the formula for hemlines juvenile books. And so I wrote a Heinlein juvenile and did a walkthrough of how to write a headline juvenile interesting and you know, some other stuff like that. But as the years have gone on, the questions have gotten more and more interesting. We get into history in psychology and philosophy in general auto didacticism and mental health management and physical health management. And the reading list that I refer people to keeps growing and growing and growing.Kevin Tumlinson 10:41Yeah, was what puts you though, on that specific course like you are? Well, I guess more the more important question is like how are you answering those questions like where are the answers come from?J Daniel Sawyer 10:55Well, I read the questions when they come in and then about one second Good enough to do a block I record 15 to 30 episodes in a day. Yeah. And do it all off the top of my head. Okay, I'm, I'm Constance I grew up in I literally grew up in academia, both grandfathers are cattle ranchers and then my father is a theology professor. So I grew up idolizing my blue collar grandparents and hanging out in the college where my father taught. So I was like, auditing classes when I was six, seven years old. Just Yeah, I thought it was cool. Not realizing I was picking up useful stuff. Right. And I've just always loved learning and hated school. So I've become the I quit. I dropped out of school at 15. I started working full time and going to college on the sly. And just read, read, read, experiment, learn, do a bunch of different stuff. I've, I've run a courier company. I've run a couple of publishing companies. I've been in the tech world. I've run a music company. or not, that was music services company like MC live sound mixing and doing videos, that sort of thing. And over the years, I've built up this toolkit for how to navigate any situation and come out of it. Come out of it, learning a lot about it. That's crazy and how to cross apply those things to other areas so that you can bootstrap on multiple fronts at once. Yeah. So when someone comes in and asks a question, and I'm really I'm always really careful to separate my opinion from the state of the art in a given field and what the state of my knowledge is, and then, if it's something that's, you know, socially controversial, or that's fraught in the field, I refer to sources that contra counterbalance each other and when it's when it's something more historical, I just didn't refer to a couple of good books that are they give more depth on this. subject that I'm able to give. We've done deep dives on the history and background of the writing of certain influential books, you know, that kind of stuff.Kevin Tumlinson 13:09Yeah. And you're cataloging all this somewhere so that people can can access Yeah,J Daniel Sawyer 13:14yeah, there's a there's a on the website at everyday novelist calm there's a reading list of basically every book we've ever recommended on the cast. Do you album,Kevin Tumlinson 13:25are you monetizing that somehow? Are you you know, people got paid?J Daniel Sawyer 13:30Yes. No, no, well, it's, it's free. Listen, I've got Patreon subscribe star and the gumroad subscription feed all currently doesn't bring in very much but yes, for me, it's kind of a pay it forward thing I need to figure out how to monetize it a little better, because that's taken ungodly amount of time.Kevin Tumlinson 13:46That's always a challenge too. Because, you know, you like me. I mean, I I've lost track of how much I've put out there. that's meant to help the community but you know, at some point you do have to make a living. Luckily, my books make money. Living. So that's great. But he put in all this time and energy, you feel like there should be some sort of monetary reward.J Daniel Sawyer 14:09Well, people who listen to this, if you come over and listen to the cast kick $1 in here and there or buy the books through the Yeah, the site that really helps out a lot. One of the lovely things and you'll know, that's one of the lovely things about being sort of off the beaten track, whether you're in an RV or going or we were in an RV for a couple years or going off to the middle of the woods, is you have the freedom to live on quite a lot less than everybody else does. Right? So it doesn't take a whole lot to meet your monthly bills. So you know, we don't make a lot it really does help with the budget, but genuinely, every dollar helps us both nice and a little bit of a downer.Kevin Tumlinson 14:49Yeah, well, but I guess if you really think about it, that's just gonna be true no matter what I mean, you. Yeah, I mean for most people, for like, we'll say 90% of people. That's probably going to be the truth.J Daniel Sawyer 15:01It's got interesting. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting watching what kind of long term effects this whole. This whole endemic pandemic adventure has on people's determination to work from home and other things over the long term that could seriously change the shape of the way things work.Kevin Tumlinson 15:18I predict that I honestly think we're, we've just we just witnessed, like a leap forward in the evolution of a civilization. As you know, everything we understood has come to an end. And we're now going to reinvent ourselves.J Daniel Sawyer 15:35That's a lot more true than you might realize. Because it's not just the social changes that this is forcing. But there is another set of social changes that was waiting in the wings for coming to three years from now when the boomers hit mass retirement that this has accelerated. Yeah. And that is that because of the global demography, the demand driven economic expansion that started With the Black Death just ended, right just ended. Right? That's 500 years of political, social, and economic and ethical systems all premised on the notion that things would continue to grow at a moderate rate forever. They don't work anymore. Right? I'm planning on editing an anthology later this year dealing with potential new ways to do things where growth is not an embedded obligation of the system. Figure science fiction needs to get back to hardcore speculation. SoKevin Tumlinson 16:32I think we also just witnessed the opening of a whole new door when it comes to intellectual property and the way culture reacts with it.J Daniel Sawyer 16:42Yeah. Very interesting.Kevin Tumlinson 16:44Yeah. I'm real curious to see what happens. Because you know, you think about everything we've seen of late like all the little sessions where people do like, you know, oh, sorry about that. No problem. You got to clean anything up. You Good.J Daniel Sawyer 17:00No, no, I just wasn't my reflector wasn't backed by a strong enough, strong enough Wait,Kevin Tumlinson 17:05all right. You know those all those videos and everything that have popped up like nurses and doctors singing or high school kids singing something and performing something, you know, all that stuff is out there, it's getting a lot of attention. And some of it is easily even sort of inadvertently monetized. And but nobody is having to secure the rights to that stuff right now. SoJ Daniel Sawyer 17:30I'm curious to see what happened has to be some there's gonna have to be a new new compulsory licensing scheme, like happened in the 20th is when radio came in?Kevin Tumlinson 17:39Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know that there's a whole thing going on with this has been in discussion for years really, because this is why the Creative Commons first kind of came on the scene, but, you know, can you really truly own an idea and is it beneficial to society for you to own the idea Yeah, and we need to make a living as content creators. But do we, you know, how far does that extend in terms of ownership? So, you know, I'm, I kind of am on in that boat of, you know, ideas want to be free, like the guy who created Yep. Was it Oracle? No, it was a Linux, creator of Linux. Yes. But at the same time I make my living from my ideas. So.J Daniel Sawyer 18:30Oh, no, it was, it was it was it was a bill, what's his name from Sun Microsystems said that.Kevin Tumlinson 18:34Okay. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. No, no, probably. Yeah. No, IJ Daniel Sawyer 18:39yeah. No, I'm the same way. I've quite a lot of my stuff is creative commons license. And I you know, I've interviewed Cory Doctorow years ago and yeah, and, and the greatest The greatest enemy of any new artist is obscurity and not piracy, all that sort of stuff. Yep. totally on board with that. And on the other hand, the yeah The rationale for copyright law is that the for the civilization to benefit from the culture, people have to be incentivized to make it. And when everything was expensive to publish, that was very easy to that was a very easy line to draw, but it's not anymore and we've delayed rethinking that seriously. years and nobody has put Yeah, I think you're right, that dam just broke.Kevin Tumlinson 19:27Yeah, I absolutely think it has. And, you know, of course, one of the things that's that's been happening since since the pandemic started almost hesitate to talk about the pandemic at all honestly, because by the time this episode airs we should hopefully be out ofJ Daniel Sawyer 19:45don't bet on it. I'm expecting that I'm expecting that there'll be a sawtooth quarantine forKevin Tumlinson 19:50we'll see we'll see if you're right if this good when this goes live, we'll see if that things change. I don't know what but whateverJ Daniel Sawyer 19:57I'll on record. So if my prediction everyone laughKevin Tumlinson 20:00at me gonna be a transcript and everything, man. Absolutely. So I think, you know, right now I know from, from my experience with drafter digital and in my own personal experience that ebooks, ebook sales have been just going through the roof. You know? And I mean, we've we've seen, like a 45% increase across retailers, but like 175% increase with libraries. So people are out there. IJ Daniel Sawyer 20:27got my book library sales have also gone way up. Yeah. Yeah. It's, so I seem to have the greatest penetration in libraries with my audiobooks. SoKevin Tumlinson 20:37that's interesting, though. That's interesting. Because most of the time when I think about audio books, I'm thinking like people are getting them to listen to while they drive into work or something. I would think so too, butJ Daniel Sawyer 20:49that maybe, you know, while there would be out everybody taking walks or Yeah, or cleaning the house, and if you're living in the house, you have to clean a lot more often.Kevin Tumlinson 20:59So how are you Balancing the podcasting and everything else you're doing with the writing, like how you keep on track.J Daniel Sawyer 21:08I tend to batch a lot, current. So like right now, it is called the everyday novelist because I usually write everyday but the last few months, because things have been so weird, it's been a little bit different. So I've currently got four books that I'm redlining. And the podcast is actually as much time as it takes sexual easy because I can batch it. So I'll just say okay, at the end of the recorded buffer is coming up, like when we're recording this, I've got another recording session tonight, because my buffer just ran out. I say at the end of the recorded buffers coming up, take one night to record them all. Then take a day to edit them all and post them and then that's that and but I do a lot of stuff with batch work. So I let you know enough of a pile pile up that I can do it as a project because With the exception of getting in a groove and writing every day, almost everything else I either get bored of or get. It starts to grind on me if it's a chronic thing, but if I have projects I can get through, then that Jazz's me up. SoKevin Tumlinson 22:16yeah, so that's it, you know, are you how much production goes into each of your podcast episodes?J Daniel Sawyer 22:25For the everyday novelist it's about a it's about a two and a half to one timewise. As you can tell, as we're talking here, I have a bit of a scatter shot. I tend to circle a topic before before angling in on it and sometimes there's a lot of stumbling associated with that right right. I like what I'm doing the everyday novelist because it's all improv I like to to narrow the stumbling down as much as possible. So right, it takes about twice as long to cut every episode as the final Listening length winds up being. Okay. So overall, I met including the recording time at about two or three to one production ratio.Kevin Tumlinson 23:10Alright, well alright, that's that makes sense. That's about what it what it takes for me so that I feel a little more comfortable. I am actually because I've been doing some other stuff recently live I'm actually considering shifting the model of this show to being a live format, essentially producing it on the fly. Yeah, it can be fun. It's a little tougher to get certain guests on. But you get the benefit of you know, the production is is done that day.J Daniel Sawyer 23:42Yeah, absolutely dead set out. And I really, I dig doing interview shows that way. When I'm, when I'm doing monologues. I like to massage the timing a lot because that that really helps with the delivery. Yeah, when you've got a conversation going on. The timing emerges from the interaction so you can avoid the editing if you want to.Kevin Tumlinson 24:03Yeah, that's exactly yeah, I like that part where everything is done for me automatically.J Daniel Sawyer 24:10Oh yeah.Kevin Tumlinson 24:12I started my I started this thing called the Kevin show. I don't know if you've seen any of those and they're ridiculous I haven't seen that yet. They're not right.J Daniel Sawyer 24:20They were your YouTube channel. Yeah, yeah. So I started I've got a tab open, but I haven't watched any of them yet.Kevin Tumlinson 24:26Yeah, well, I'm just gonna warn you in advance don't go there hoping for writing wisdom.J Daniel Sawyer 24:34But I figured it's us so it's probably gonna be like RV weird DIY stuff. And strange. There's gonna be all kinds of stuff.Kevin Tumlinson 24:41Yeah. So it started literally that show. So yeah, okay, I'm gonna bring us back around to what we're discussing here. But that show started as me and Nick factor. I said to Nick, you know, when I was so stressed out from the moving from the pandemic from, you know, just being inundated with things So you know, what I would love to do is just do something stupid fun, no agenda, no plan and call it I could call it the Kevin show, because that's ridiculous. And just put it out there live and have fun for 30 minutes, distract people. And he, he said I'd go on that. And so within an hour, I had designed that entire show, from the graphics to music to a video intro to booking my first guest. And the next day it went live. And I've done one every week since so that's dad said, to bring it back to the important thing of this interview, which is you that shows I think that process of the fertile mind, you know, the the fertile mental life that you are, that you are focused on, or would you would you disagree with that? kind of put you on the spot?J Daniel Sawyer 25:56No, no, I think that's a great example to the brain. branching out. It's Oh, I'm trying to think of something pithy to come back to that. But yeah, I think you've got it exactly.Kevin Tumlinson 26:07That's something.J Daniel Sawyer 26:09Life is chaotic, interesting and complicated. And it doesn't easily fit into any of the categories that anybody likes to impose on it. Yeah. And I can't remember who I ran into from it might have been, it might have been something out of one of two labs books. But I came across this idea of it's better to have strong opinions loosely held. Yeah, then then weak, then weak opinions strongly held. Most people have weak opinions strongly held. They have ideas that they like, they can't really support them in in the face of a monumental challenge, but they'll hold on to them for dear life because they're identified with them.Kevin Tumlinson 26:50Exactly. Sort of. Yeah,J Daniel Sawyer 26:52I like that core way. I prefer to be able to articulate what I'm thinking in a very useful strong way, right and be comfortable enough with my own level of ignorance that I can change my opinion when something challenges it and it doesn't, in my opinion doesn't stand up in the teeth of whatever I'm engaging with. As a result of course, I've had multiple interesting worldview shifts over my life. I've been all over the political spectrum. I've had three different religions. And but, but it's but the reason is that, that I'm more interested in figuring out what's actually going on and engaging with life in a in a deep way. And if that's my priority, then what's expendable has to be my determination to cling on to the things that might otherwise make me feel secure.Kevin Tumlinson 27:54Yeah, okay. That is I Exactly. I love the way you have Put that if that is an actual quote, I need to go find it about strong or strong opinions. Loosely held. Yeah, yeah, that's I feel like that's me. And I think I think the danger is people hear strong opinions and then decide. That's where you stand. And so the idea that you might change your mind from a strong opinion, and pivot to a new worldview is is completely foreign to some folks. But I think that's that's the right way to be personally, I like that.J Daniel Sawyer 28:30Yeah. And I do and I mean, one of the things you're, you're like me, you're, you're a little bit north of 30, at least. And one of the things by the time you hit your mid 30s, you realize that whether you want it to or not your worldviews gonna change. Yeah. Because the cumulative experience you build up, gradually goes out of sync with your ideology, whatever ideology that is, because ideologies are models that we build to deal with the world. They're not the world itself and any model is going to have holes in it. Yeah, and the. So when you're in your 20s, it's really easy to righteously hold on to everything because you are fighting for the good. But the older you get, the more that instead of that makes you look, instead of making you impassioned, and a person of great conviction, makes you look kind of stupid. Yeah, because you're not you look vapid and hollow? Well, yeah, because what's happening is while your practical worldview is changing, and you can always tell by the evidence of someone's behavior, rather than what they say, what you believe is reflected in what you do not in what you say. And as you get older, if you're holding on to those, to those early convictions that tightly, the gap between your behavior and your speech will grow. And if you look in the mirror, and all of us eventually do or at least most of us eventually do. You notice that disconnect and that's when you have the existential crisis, who,Kevin Tumlinson 30:02yeah, if you've ever read Carol Dwight's book about my called mindset, it talks about exactly you should tell you, that will probably end up on your list of recommended books, because it talks about that very idea. And it's the closed mindset versus the open mindset, you know, and we tend to look for things that become part of our identity when, especially when we're young, especially when we're vulnerable. Like we're, you know, the bullied high school kid, you know, can say, Well, people pick on me, but at least I'm really good at math. And so if you identify with that, and then you fail a math test,30:40you're crushed, suddenly, yep.Kevin Tumlinson 30:42Your whole identity was just taken for you were murdered, you know, in your, in your own mind. And so you start to think if I don't have that, what am I? Who am I? So anyway, um, so, unfortunately, we are we're closing in on our timeJ Daniel Sawyer 30:58on the end,Kevin Tumlinson 30:59which was is really unfortunate man I always I dig talking to you we know when am I coming back on your show man? I knowJ Daniel Sawyer 31:13whenever it's good for you let me know I would love to have you back on especially now you're working with Jeff to digital. I'd like to Yeah,Kevin Tumlinson 31:19cuz i don't think i was last time wasJ Daniel Sawyer 31:21last time you were last time you wereKevin Tumlinson 31:25completely independent.J Daniel Sawyer 31:26You You were just leaving your first stint at draft to digital I think it wasKevin Tumlinson 31:31no it would have been because I was still Oh yeah, so I was working for DDD, but IJ Daniel Sawyer 31:36stayed with a different position. Oh yeah, I was.Kevin Tumlinson 31:39I was getting on the road though. That's the only guy that would have been. So okay, yeah, so I still fresh it D to D Really? Because that happened like right after. Okay, there we go. That's the you haveJ Daniel Sawyer 31:50this. this. Yeah, the stuff you guys are doing over there, especially now that marks on the team and whatnot has gotten a lot more interesting. I keep signing up for the meetings and then not making them because Everything else in the world that's there recorded I really want.Kevin Tumlinson 32:04I'm gonna have to look back through from my recorded pop into your YouTube channel. Okay, which is officially youtube.com slash c slash draft to digital everyone. And while you're there, look for Kevin Tumlinson and you can tune into the Kevin show xo into plugs but tell everybody the more important URL is where can people find you online?J Daniel Sawyer 32:30You can find me at everyday novelist calm that's for the daily podcast. You can find a whole bunch of my other stuff audio books, full cast audio fiction podcasts, my rather scattered and sometimes very dark musings on the universe on my blog, and a complete list of the books that are available for purchase at the moment as well as my autodidacts reading list at WWW dot JDC. All your.net and I just want a very, very dark take on some of the stuff we were talking about earlier about the changeover and ages. Check out my blog post. The Abyss stares back.Kevin Tumlinson 33:12Yes. Excellent. All right. Well, you heard him everybody. Make sure you check that stuff out, buy his books, go see his stuff. Listen to his podcast. There's a lot you can do to keep him going throw a buck or two his way on Patreon. Let's let's make sure we're taking care of our own here, man. So Jay Daniel Sawyer, sir, thank you so much for being a part of the word slinger podcast.J Daniel Sawyer 33:34Thanks for having me on. It is a delight.Kevin Tumlinson 33:37Everybody else right now. Right now you're probably hearing the groovy bridge music. You may dance in place it will and if you stick around, I am sure to say something profound on the other side, and if I don't make fun of me, see you next time. Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe

Carlyn Robertson is responsible for partner education on BookBub’s Partners Team. She’s an expert on BookBub’s promotional tools and ensures that authors, publishers, and book marketers know how to use those tools to accomplish their marketing goals.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLESHOW LINKS:Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinsonWordslinger Podcast on YouTube: youtube.com/c/wordslingerpodcastAuthor.Email: author.emailIndie Author Blueprint: indieauthorblueprint.comGUEST LINKS:Website:: http://bookbub.com/partnersTwitter Handle:: @bookbubFacebook Page:: https://www.facebook.com/BookBubPartners/MENTIONS- https://www.descript.com/- https://wavve.co/- Otter.aiSPONSORS:DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acornsAUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslinger Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe

Joanna Penn is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers under J.F.Penn and also writes non-fiction for authors. She’s also a podcaster and an award-winning creative entrepreneur. Her site, TheCreativePenn.com has been voted in the Top 100 sites for writers by Writer's Digest.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLESHOW LINKS:Written World Podcast: WrittenWorld.usSubscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinsonWordslinger Podcast on YouTube: youtube.com/c/wordslingerpodcastAuthor.Email: author.emailIndie Author Blueprint: indieauthorblueprint.comGUEST LINKS:Website:: www.TheCreativePenn.com , www.TheCreativePenn.com/voicedoubleAmazon Author Page:: https://www.amazon.com/Joanna-Penn/e/B002BM8ICWTwitter Handle:: @thecreativepennFacebook Page:: https://www.facebook.com/TheCreativePenn/How can people join your mailing list?: www.thecreativepenn.com/blueprintMENTIONS- https://www.descript.com/- https://wavve.co/- Otter.aiSPONSORS:DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acornsAUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslinger Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe

Jonas Salzgeber is the author of The Little Book of Stoicism and writes for a small army of remarkable people at NJlifehacks.com. On his quest to be the best he can be he stumbled upon Stoicism – and got hooked. His practical writing style helps people with the most important step: to put the wisdom from book page to action.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLESHOW LINKS:Written World Podcast: WrittenWorld.usSubscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinsonWordslinger Podcast on YouTube: youtube.com/c/wordslingerpodcastAuthor.Email: author.emailIndie Author Blueprint: indieauthorblueprint.comGUEST LINKS:Website:: www.njlifehacks.comAmazon Author Page:: https://www.amazon.com/Jonas-Salzgeber/e/B07MY6LC4TTwitter Handle:: https://twitter.com/NJlifehacksFacebook Page:: https://www.facebook.com/NJlifehacksHow can people join your mailing list?: https://www.njlifehacks.com/lp/free-download-20-stoic-exercises/Do you have any giveaways, promotions, or special offers?:https://www.njlifehacks.com/lp/free-copy-of-the-little-book-of-stoicism/SPONSORS:DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acornsAUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslinger Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe

Jared Angaza is an Identity Architect, author, podcaster, and philanthropist. Over the past 20 years, he's leveraged the studies of behavioral science, consciousness, philanthropy, creativity, and culture to develop remarkable brands, events, and campaigns. Today, he guides seekers on their spiritual quest and continues to develop socially conscious brands, cultures of innovation, and experiences that bolster the vitality of humanity and our planet.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLESHOW LINKS:Written World Podcast: WrittenWorld.usSubscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinsonWordslinger Podcast on YouTube: youtube.com/c/wordslingerpodcastAuthor.Email: author.emailIndie Author Blueprint: indieauthorblueprint.comGUEST LINKS:Website:: http://www.jaredangaza.comAmazon Author page:: http://amazon.com/author/jaredangazaTwitter Handle:: @jaredangazaFacebook:: https://www.facebook.com/jared.angazaYouTube Channel:: youtube.com/channel/UCtPST6zZKqA0s0-QdL4OTOAHow can listeners join your mailing list?: http://www.jaredangaza.com/feed/SPONSORS:DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acornsAUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslinger Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe

Heath Armstrong is a creative writer and the co-founder of Rage Create. He is the creator of "The Sweet Ass Journal to Develop your Happiness Muscle in 100 Days," "Sweet-Ass Affirmations: The World's First R-Rated Motivational Card Deck," and the host of the "Never Stop Peaking" podcast.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLESHOW LINKS:Written World Podcast: WrittenWorld.usSubscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinsonGUEST:Website:: www.heatharmstrong.com and www.ragecreate.comAmazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/Heath-Armstrong/e/B0711P71MG%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_shareBooks2Read Author Page::Twitter Handle::Facebook:: facebook.com/heathfistpumpYouTube Channel::How can listeners join your mailing list?: https://heatharmstrong.com/resources/SPONSORS:DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acornsAUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslinger Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe

No such thing as talent? Kevin doesn’t think so! In this episode he talks about the idea of talent, aptitude, and inclination as it applies to what you can do and achieve in your life. Tune in to see if you agree. PLUS stick around to the end for a special holiday message from Kevin!And otherwise, here’s to a merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a wonderful new year!TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLELINKS:Get 30 days of Otter.ai for free and start dictating your books! https://otter.ai/referrals/JXGR47U0THIS EPISODE OFTHE WORDSLINGER PODCASTIS SPONSORED BY:DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acorns Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe

Jennie Nash, CEO and founder of Author Accelerator, talks about her program for training book coaches to help writers write books worth reading. Kevin and Jennie discuss coaching, as well as Jennie’s new book, Read Books All Day and Get Paid For It: The Business of Book Coaching.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLELINKS:Website:: jennienash.com, authoraccelerator.comAmazon Author Page:: https://www.amazon.com/Jennie-Nash/e/B001HD414ATwitter Handle:: @jennienashFacebook Page:: @jennienashHow can people join your mailing list?:https://author-accelerator.ck.page/5d4425a182Giveaways, promotions, or special offers:A free week of programming on book coaching starting January 20 https://www.authoraccelerator.com/summitTHIS EPISODE OFTHE WORDSLINGER PODCASTIS SPONSORED BY:DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acornsTRANSCRIPT:Jennie Nash - Wordslinger PodcastSUMMARY KEYWORDSbook, people, author, helping, writers, coaches, money, offering, writing, pay, calls, accelerator, coaching, business, marketing, viable, expertise, service, ideal reader, agentSPEAKERSJennie Nash, Kevin TumlinsonKevin Tumlinson 00:02Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in. Now I, here's what's interesting about what I do. I travel, I go to all kinds of conferences all over the world. And I meet some some pretty incredible people, and in particular, I meet a lot of folks who work in some aspect of this industry. And that is what happened with today's guest. I'm talking to Jenny Nash. There's a lot of ways that Jenny and I are connected. But one of the first ways we met was at San Francisco writers conference about two, three years ago. I think. I'm not even sure at this point.Jennie Nash 00:37Yeah, that's right.Kevin Tumlinson 00:38Now, okay, just the official stuff, Jenny, I'll throw it in there. Jenny Nash is the founder and CEO of author accelerator, a company on a mission to train book coaches to help writers write books worth reading. And we're going to be talking to her about that and about her new book, read books all day and get paid for it, the business of book coaching. I'm looking forward to Ironically, we discussed this just before the show, but I've got like back to back, our author consultations all day today. So this is an ironic topic for me to tell people how to make money doing it, that's where I need to start upping my game. like I always do a lot of these for free. So I need to start making some cash on this stuff.Jennie Nash 01:21Oh, let's talk about that. Should we jump right into it?Kevin Tumlinson 01:23Let's jump right in. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for being a part of the word slinger podcast. So yes, let's jump right in. And how does somebody make money reading books all day?Jennie Nash 01:32So I want to talk about the money because I've been a book coach now for about 10 years. And I make multiple six figures as a book coach, and we at author accelerator. We recently did a poll of about 180 people who do this type of work, and I turned out to be one of the top paid people and that's great for me, but what was horrifying was The number of people who are not making very much money at it and the more that you dug into it, the number of people who give their work away for free and here I am talking to such a person.Kevin Tumlinson 02:11I don't give it all away for free, let's just make that clear. But I am obsessed with helping authors succeed and so that sometimes Trumps me charging them for it. I think so.Jennie Nash 02:22Okay, so here's the thing. I'm obsessed with that too. And, and it is such a noble and good thing to be obsessed with because, as you well know, the publishing industry is super fast changing all the time things it's pretty chaotic things come, you know, companies come they go trends come and go. There's, you know, self publishing wasn't even a thing. Basically, when I when I started coaching like it, it everything changes so fast. And that combined with this pervasive myth that writers don't make money writers don't have money to spend to help them. or invest in their careers, this whole starving artist thing this whole, you know, oh, we all just do this for love thing. And it makes me crazy because so many of the myths that I just spun off are not true writers, a lot of writers do make money a lot of publishers and publishing companies and people that are helping writers do make money. It's a big industry of infinite and people were making money it would not, it would not be so right. So I am, I am kind of on a mission to to change this and to help people who help authors with their writing to help coaches, raise the bar, be more professional, ask for what you're worth realize the value of what you're giving. So I want to talk about this all day long.Kevin Tumlinson 03:49Well, you're in luck. We can talk about it for at least 30 minutes. Yeah, no, I, I understand I you know, that's the thing and then the sector of authors I tend to deal with Our incoming. So how do you build a profile? I don't want you to give away the story here. But, you know, how would someone like me who deals with a lot of incoming authors who don't typically have any money? They're not making any money from the books yet. They may have a book yet, right? I'm like where's the starting point of that my my trouble with so I did author coaching for quite a while and charge people money for but I never really managed to make it a viable business because I maybe I was overcharging maybe I was under serving I don't know. So I never, it never took off as a business for me. Now I do it as part of kind of other things.Jennie Nash 04:41Right. Right. So I mean, the way that I like to think about it is is this, the, there's this idea with writers that this sort of lottery idea, like I'm gonna roll the dice, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna get picked and I'm going to get picked either by a publisher, an agent and a publisher, I'm going to get picked by readership out in the universe. And the thing behind that is, is that and then I'll leave my day job, right? And then all I'll get a movie deal with Reese Witherspoon and and then you know, like whatever the thing is that that the get picked mentality. And that mentality is so pervasive that writers think that that, you know, I'm just rolling the dice and and it's like they're holding their breath. They're not thinking of their own book and their own career as a viable business. And part of what I do is to help people change that mindset, like what other industry and what other industry which you bring a product into the world and that product could be anything. It could be a podcast, it could be a service industry, it could be, you know, you're growing firms to sell to people for their Fern gardens. I don't know where that came from, but you No, like whatever business nobody starts a business, thinking, I'm just going to get picked and, and like look out of the despair of my day to day job by by selling this thing to people people don't think like that. But with books, they think like that. So part of the mindset is shift is helping them think, okay, like the one of the first questions that I asked him out there is what is your goal with this book? And if their goal with this book is I want to write something to leave a legacy for my kids. And, you know, I don't care if it sells, I don't care if it gets read beyond that. That person's not going to probably make any money off of their work. Right. But if they most people are not going to say that, by the way, if they say, Well, my goal is, you know, if you really can have an honest conversation with them, they're going to state a goal that has something to do with selling books. And so what I talked to them about is then what do you need to invest in? In order to make that come true in order to have a viable business model? What skills do you need? What support do you need? You know, the business that you're in? One of the businesses you're in isn't helping people actually produce their book, you can actually produce a book and not invest money in that in that production. production costs. So the same should be true with writing the book, how are you going to learn how to write a book? How are you going to get the support, you need to do it? How are you going to decide which publishing path to go on? All of those things are investments in that outcome that they're trying to see? Right? And get people to start thinking about their outcome, then you can start talking about the value that you might add to their process. And then that means you have to be really clear about what value you're adding and what you're actually doing for them. Yeah,Kevin Tumlinson 07:56yeah, yeah. I agree. I agree. One of the one of the things that always nails me is I have all my little excuses lined up and then somebody comes along and pulls that peg and I can't use any of them.Jennie Nash 08:15That's me.Kevin Tumlinson 08:16That's exactly what that's supposed to be right. So what is that what author accelerator is about? Like, tell me about author accelerator?Jennie Nash 08:26Yes. So I have been training book coaches, I've trained more than 50 book coaches. certifying them and part of that process is teaching them how to manage a Writers Project with a project being the book, how to help that writer, raise the bar of that writer, raise their their own writing standards and skills, make a good publishing choice. The author accelerator is all about the development process. So once you get to the point where you're going to produce the book, you Have to go to somebody like draft to digital or some other person that's going to or entity that's going to help you produce the book. We don't do that. But we help people all the way up to that moment. And so I'm training book coaches, to guide writers and to help writers think about how they're going to make money from their book, if they're going to make money for their book, you know, a huge part of what we do is burst people's bubbles. That if how hard it is to make money at a book, you've got to know that in advance and why you're doing it again, back to the goal of that writer and the goal of that book and, and really making a plan for it. And so I'm helping the coaches help the writers think through that process and think through what they're doing. And we're we do that work in the context of helping them with the writing of the book. I I am Market focus by market focus, it's like, okay, who else is writing a book like you for a book, and it's going to be a book of essays. And it's going to be a book of essays about all the bad boyfriends I've ever had. And there have been 23 of them. So there's gonna be 23 chapters about all the bad boyfriends I've ever had. And I'm going to write these essays about that. The first thing I'm going to say is, are you aware that for an unpublished writer with with no platform to bring out a book of essays is The hardest possible thing in the world to sell. That's the first thing that I would say, right? And they would then then they always come back to me and say something like, but Tina Fey did it, or David Sedaris did it. And it's like, well, Yes, that's correct. But let's look at the hurdles that you might have getting to the marketplace with this book. I'm not trying to get them to write something different. I'm not trying to shoot down their dream, I'm trying to be realistic about it. And, and if they say to me, okay, what how can I ship this so that it might be viable for the marketplace, then we might talk about their structure, we might go look at audiences who are buying books like that we might try to find a way to bring that content to life in such a way that it is viable. So that's what I mean by being market focused. And if I'm going to do that, I I've been in the publishing industry for more than 30 years, I've helped a lot of people come to market. I've seen a lot of books, I'm going to charge for my expertise and my time, I'm not going to help that person out of the goodness of my heart, which sounds super cold and calculating now that I'm going to help that person if they're serious about reaching the marketplace, they're going to have to pay me to get my expertise.Kevin Tumlinson 12:21Yeah. And I and again, to draw on your earlier examples. I mean, this is not an unreasonable ask, when it comes to any other business is just for some reason, when it comes to businesses tied to people's dreams. Then all of a sudden, we are cold, heartless, capitalists.Jennie Nash 12:42Right. And that's the thing that makes me crazy. And I mean, the other thing it makes me crazy is there are a lot of people out there who are preying on authors, dreams and desires. It's easy to do because you tell an author, I can I can help you publish this book. I am We could do it in 90 days, you could be a best seller on Amazon. And they are all like, here's my money. Right? Well, you know, guess what, I just published a book, my own self. And I put it on Amazon and I literally did nothing, literally nothing other than hit the button. And it came up as the number one new release best seller in whatever category literally not one book sale. And I am I got that little Amazon bestseller flag and the people who are are selling that, like, we have a strategy for your book becoming a best seller on release day and we'll help you with this strategy. And we'll put you through these paces and people pay money for that because they don't know any better. And that makes me crazy, too. So Yeah, same here. There's people that prey on authors desires and dreams and, and I don't think it's right and fair. And so a lot of what I'm trying to do is tell them the truth. This is going to be long. It's going to be hard. And guess what? You're going to have to pay money. Let's talk about what you're going to have to pay to bring this book into the world. And do you want to do that? Right? Yeah.Kevin Tumlinson 14:11It's interesting, because I talked to people about this, this concept all the time in these coaching sessions, by the way, the very same ideas, because there is a hesitation among authors to do things like market themselves. Right? And, you know, it's the exact same idea. You know, I've, I wish I could remember the exact quote, I had a guest on the show, several years, a few years ago now, who said that if you are building something that can help people, then it is your responsibility to to market it and in this case, to charge for the service? Like that's part of the responsibility because that's how you continue to keep being able to offer that. Right.Jennie Nash 14:57Exactly. And, you know, you mentioned other things Jeez, like if I I mean, here's a perfect example. I'm in my car brand new, by the way, three days old. My car was hit the other day somebody backed into the rumor. I was at a standstill back to the road sucks. So hard. So what do I do? I call my insurance. I get a tow truck. The tow truck guy drives into place. Do I have to pay the tow truck guy? Yes. Because he's, he's saving my bacon from it was raining the cars in the middle of the intersection. So of course, I'm going to pay the tow truck guy. And you know, then we take it to the body shop. You know, it's going to be $4,000 to fix the thing. Like all of those. Those things are things that I need. They're solving a pain point of mine and you don't question for three seconds that you're going to pay that fee because it's you have this point of pain. I can't drive my car. My car's been So we pay when we have points of pain and writers have points of pain, they don't know things, you know things you've been in this you're inside this industry, you know exactly how it works, you hone your skills and your expertise, they come to you the reason you're having these calls is because they need your expertise and they have a pain they want to solve. And so that's how I start trying to talk to my coaches is what particular pain Are you trying to help this writer solve? Is it is it deciding on a publishing path? Is it making decisions about your investment towards that is it that the writing is not strong enough and needs to get better? Is it that you're getting rejected all the time out in the marketplace? And you don't know why is it that your covers bad, you know, there's a lot of pain points along the path and if somebody is helping a writer solve those, the that Pain. They're adding value and should be paid for it just like the total.Kevin Tumlinson 17:04No, no, you're you're right, I think is a kind of a supply and demand kind of thing. You know, you can, it's easier to charge someone when they're kind of over a barrel on that tow truck driver, you need this vehicle towed. Now we both know you're going to pay me a little differentJennie Nash 17:22thing. That's what's interesting is one of the things that I guide people to do is to choose what pain point they're going to specialize in as a coach, where are they going to help people and, and how are they going to frame that help? Because the writers are going to actually feel the same way as I did with my broken car. You know, if the writers got a book that they're dying to get into the world, they're going to feel that same pain and, you know, we talked at the beginning about how confusing this industry is, if you're outside of it, you know, how do you know what to do? How do you how do you know what to pay? How You know, there's a lot of confusion. So you didn't ask, but if you were to ask me how to convert these calls into paying into paying customers, I would think of these consultation calls as, okay, you're helping them for 30 minutes or an hour or whatever you're offering them and help them with some of their questions. I would think of them as consultation calls to a service. So it's like, this is the way that I could help you. This is how the decision that is in front of you, I'm seeing that you have these choices, and I can help you walk you through those choices and make a good choice. And then I can help you, whatever the next step of the process is. And if you're interested in that, I have a service that we could talk about, you're signing up for. It would be you can still help people out of the goodness of your heart. I do that all day long as well. But, you know, like, the other day, I was talking to a woman Who writes a column for Forbes? magazine, and she wants to write a book. It's her second book. And she she was trying to make a decision about agent or not agent on this on the second book and, and I got on the phone with her and, and had an hour long conversation, I was sending her links I was sending her, you know, information, I was talking about money, I was talking about what it takes to find an agent, how much it would cost her to work on a nonfiction book proposal with somebody like me how much time it would take, I was feeding her information, I was helping her. And it was all in insert in it that my intention was well, this is probably going to shock you but the the service that I would have worked with her on is a $24,000 service. And that would be for a serious professional to get a nonfiction proposal that hopefully will get them a book deal. Yeah. She turned out she she did not take it, she did not go for it. She decided that she didn't want to go for the agent route she that was not for her. She was horrified at the pros and cons when I laid them out of agent versus not agent. she opted out of the service that I was offering. So I spent it an hour using my best brain work to help her to help her decide not to use me. In my mind, that was a good use of time. I helped somebody I helped her come to a good decision. I did good in the world. You know, I did not get the $24,000 client. But guess what next time I might or next time I might and so you know, I think you can combine the helpfulness with the money part.Kevin Tumlinson 20:50I think in scenarios like that, you could take that conversation, boil it down to the points that were made. And then you can Create something that could simultaneously educate incoming authors who might have the same question and help you nurture mailing list for example so hundred percent right you could totally turn that into a top of funnel offerJennie Nash 21:15100% and and I have so much free content I have so much amazing resources on on my website people are welcome to come you probably do too. You know, it's it's that push and pull between offering something but not offering everything. Yeah. And I think you're right we we tend in these realms that are about creative pursuits, we tend to diminish the, the value of the expertise and I want to change that.Kevin Tumlinson 21:47Yeah, same here. Actually, personally.Jennie Nash 21:53Here's what I do with those calls. Just flip your mindset. Just think this is a consultation call personally. That I could offer. I'm going to help them on this call. I'm going to I'm going to be generous and helpful. And I'm going to, instead of giving all the answers away, think more in terms of framing the questions they have to ask. There's questions that you need to answer. Here's the decisions you have to make. Here's a way that I could help you if you wanted to sign up for that service.Kevin Tumlinson 22:24Yeah. So does does your program I mean, speaking of markets, does your program kind of arm authors that are the coaches rather with how they would market the service how they reach these authors and you?Jennie Nash 22:39Yes, yes, I do. And I studied on my own personally, a lot of marketing people and and tried to adapt the the best practices for book coaching in in my new book, which is called read books all day and get paid for it. Go way into the marketing. And I've had a couple of other top coaches reviewing the book. That's all happening right now because because it's just come out and I had somebody say to me, Jenny's advice on marketing was so spot on. And it made me laugh out loud. So I'm not going to tell you what that is, you'll have to read the book toKevin Tumlinson 23:21see how this works.Jennie Nash 23:24I totally help people do it. And here's, here's the key thing. It's not what you probably think it is. It's not take out an ad on this website or go to this conference and print out a bunch of swag or, you know, it's not that really what it amounts to is knowing what you're offering and who you're offering it for. Right. I'm going to totally botch how he says it but Seth Godin and his new book, this is marketing says something along the lines of marketing is about doing something That matters for people who care. That's, that's what I help people do is what are you doing that matters? And who's going to care about that. So if you're somebody who's helping people, at the very beginning of their book idea, going from idea to getting it on the page and helping them frame that the structure of their book, you could specialize in that point in the process and do really well because you'd become known for that part of the process. You could become someone who specializes. I have a coach who wants to specialize in helping lawyers who want to write fiction. There's a lot of lawyers who want to write fiction. Yes, yes. What a cool nice, right. Yeah. To be able to speak to a lawyer to be able to help them translate the way lawyers think and speak and write which is a very particular way to to fiction writing. I have somebody else who wants to help women in speculative fiction, because it's mostly a male dominated genre. So they want to focus on helping women get into speculative fiction. So if you focus on who you're helping, so doing Oh, I think we might have froze. Yeah,Kevin Tumlinson 25:33we froze. But we're gonna, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna muddle through.Jennie Nash 25:40So they say that again.Kevin Tumlinson 25:42Yeah, you were to you're just introducing us to the idea of the woman who was helping other women who are speculative fiction, and go, Okay,Jennie Nash 25:51okay. I have another coach who's specializing in helping women break into this big speculative fiction genre because it's very male dominated, and her expertise is going to be that. So if she becomes known for that, everybody's going to send those writers to her because that's her. She's helping those people with that particular pain point. So that's what marketing in terms of book coaching is all about is becoming known for doing something really well, that helps people at a place where they really need help.Kevin Tumlinson 26:24I think you just hit on something that has always nagged at me, by the way, because there is whenever I have offered author coaching, now, right now, I'm doing it through DVD, you know, we do our consultations, little free consultations, and it's, it's meant to help the people who showed up at our webinars and stuff, so I can't charge folks for that. And I'm not trying to, but when I've tried to add this in the past, there is always that problem of, you know, focus, right. And there's that aphorism that if everyone's your customer, no one's your customer. Yeah, I think what you're saying here is that there's an opportunity if you are willing to focus on a specific aspect of this. So for me, I might I might coach, people in writing thrillers, because that's what I write, or I might coach them in, right in using, you know, I might pick something out there, right? Yeah, just the process of writing. I could do all that. But it's too broad too general. And that's probably one of the reasons why it never quite worked. I wasn't advertising or I wasn't marketing, specifically enough.Jennie Nash 27:30Right. So you, you can't make a business on even what you just said. I'm going to help people writing thrillers. Well, what people what kind of thrillers At what point in the process? Have they written a book before? Are they writing their second book? Are they writing a series or do they have a plan to write a book a year like you've got to really narrow down on what writer where they are in the process what they need? Are you helping somebody right faster? Are you helping them right? Like plot out faster. Are you helping them plot better? Are you helping them raise up their writing skills? Are you helping them? Like what exactly are you doing? So there's so many layers to figure out and, and just helping. So if you're on a consulting call with someone, and I'm sure you've been on a million of these calls, people are asking questions about all over the map, right? marketing, about social media about my website about my book cover about the production about the time about the cost about the writing itself about this and that, like that's just scattershot. Yeah, advice, but if you're honing down to really say, I can have your thriller writer, writing your first book, you've never done it before, and you need to make X, Y and Z choices. I can help you do that efficiently, effectively. And, you know, to help you toward your goal. Now I thought a viable business. Yeah, well,Kevin Tumlinson 28:56that that is the ideal reader. concept. That's the ideal reader ideal customer concept. And I'm shocked that I never put it together.Jennie Nash 29:10One thing because it's what book coaches help writers do, like if I'm working with somebody right now who's writing middle grade fiction, and she's actually a very successful nonfiction writer. And one of the things that I've become known for is helping successful nonfiction writers who want to switch over to not true. I helped her write the book that got the six figure deal for her first novel, excellent. And so I kind of have a specialty in that regard, and I'm helping a woman writing a middle grade story and she She had her story was a hot mess. Okay, so she came to me with a manuscript that just was all over the place. And it had all these characters and all these ideas and all these themes and all this stuff. And you know, it's not going to work. And so part of what I did with her was exactly what we're talking about. Who do you want to reach? Who's your ideal reader? Can't it's not enough to say an 11 year old girl, it's like, an 11 year old girl who reads what and who does what and who's thinking about what and who cares about what and we've really got to hone down on who that 11 year old reader is and what she cares about and what she needs in that book. Otherwise, that book is not going to work. So I, I do this with the writer, and we need to do this with the people helping the writers to is, you know, what are what is your gig? What are you doing to help people? Yeah.Kevin Tumlinson 30:53And as That's it, what's funny is here's what you always come back to their sort of universal pieces of advice. that fit no matter what industry you're in. If you're an author, it's no matter what genre you're in. That's this seems to be one of those pieces is to identify the specific reader slash customer you're trying to reach. We are we're at time. So which is unfortunate, because I'm enjoying this quite a bit. And I'm getting a lot out of it personally. Those are always the toughest interviews to end. But I appreciate why don't you back on Now, before I before we drop out of here, I did want to say you have coming up January 20 2020. You have a summit coming up. You want to talk about that for just a second.Jennie Nash 31:43I would love to I'm doing a free week of programming about becoming a book coach and I've got 15 killer experts who we have conversations and take you through everything from how to market how to make money, what book coaching really is how it works. And that you can find all the information at author accelerator.com slash summit. So that's author accelerator, comm slash summit. And it's free. It's a week, it's January 20 2020. And I would love to have people come. And if you can't make it, we'll be sending out those recordings so you can grab them after the fact. Very good.Kevin Tumlinson 32:25Very cool. All right. I am I think I've signed I think I managed to sign up. So I'm going to check that out and everyone listening to the sound of my voice, you should also check that out. Thank you so much, Jay, for being on. I really appreciate all the wisdom you've dropped on us.Jennie Nash 32:44Thanks for having me. All right, everybody. Right now.Kevin Tumlinson 32:47You are probably hearing the groovy bridge music and you may dance and place it will and stick around for whatever I'm going to say whatever pithy fun thing I'm sure I came up with Right after this interview and I'll see you all on the other side Get full access to The Writer_ at kevintumlinson.substack.com/subscribe