In this episode we’re chatting with non-fiction, poetry and children’s book author Bonni Goldberg about the process of getting rights back to a traditionally published book and re-publishing it as an indie author. We dig into what it means to get the rights back for a book. How do you go about that? And then what steps had to be taken to republish the book? How do you get around not considering yourself a technical person? What would you do differently if you could go back and start all over again? What can you do to help launch your book strategically? And if you’ve ever wondered how to organize your files to help your future self out, we’ve got some tips for you!

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Resources we mentioned in this episode

• Jacqui Nelson (book formatting)
• Indie publishing checklist
• Strategic Authorpreneur by Crystal Hunt (Coming Soon)

Connect with special guest Bonni Goldberg

• Bonni’s Website: bonnigoldberg.com
• Bonni on facebook 
• @goldbergbonni on instagram
• @bonnigoldberg on Twitter
• Room to Write by Bonni Goldberg (Kindle)
• Room to Write by Bonni Goldberg (Paperback)

Visit our websites

• Crystal Hunt (Non-fiction)
• CJ Hunt (Romance)
• Michele Amitrani (Fiction)
• The Creative Academy for Writers (Community/Resources)

Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 020: Re-publishing your traditionally published book as an indie with Bonni Goldberg

Bonni Goldberg: Hi, I’m Bonnie Goldberg on the strategic authorpreneur podcast and today we’re going to talk about how I rereleased my traditionally published book as an indie title.

Crystal: Hey there, strategic authorepreneurs, I’m Crystal Hunt

Michele: and I’m Michele Amitrani. We’re here to help you save time, money and energy as you level up your writing career.

Crystal: Welcome to episode 20 of the strategic authorpreneru podcast on today’s show. We’re talking with author, Bonnie Goldberg, about the process of taking back rights to one of your books that has been traditionally published and republishing it as an indie title.

Before we dive into that. Let’s talk a little bit about what we’ve been up to this week. So what are you working on?

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele: I’ve been working on a couple of different projects Crystal I have to admit, uh, but at the same time in between projects, uh, I always make sure that I read something. Um, and I make sure that I recommend you something that I think might be of value.

This time before diving in, in what I’ve been up to, I want to suggest to the listeners and viewers an article about writing. So it’s not necessarily about only the business side of things. This one is going to be more on the writing, kind of things, and is teased by you Hugh Howey and the title, if you can see it on YouTube is: The Tao of Writing a Novel.

So you can already see it’s like something a bit more on the philosophical kind of things. But there are a lot of very useful suggestions that Hugh, who is a science fiction author. And, um, I just love this article because it’s very genuine and, it basically makes you realize how you can actually take from the Eastern philosophy and you can apply it to your own writing and it’s very empowering. It’s very, it’s something that really gives you permission to write the things that you want to write, but at the same time doing it, following the craft. So don’t think of it just as an art, think of it as something that you can be better and get better edit day after day.

So I really, really recommend this article. It’s short, it’s sweet, but it’s like a, as I like to say, it’s a punch in the face, especially if you are at one of these moments, you’re a bibitg down maybe, uh, it’s also motivational. So I highly recommend this article. The Tao of Writing a Novel.

Well, what I’ve been up to, I have been up to a couple of different things, one is I am happy to announced, that 50% of my 12 by 20 challenges is completed. Uh, and I’m now working toward the second part of the challenge where I, really try Crystal to understand what I did in the first part, writing-wise, crafting-wise and trying to make really a work day stands by itself and that in the future I can use for something like, like a product, more like a product. So for the selling kind of thing. So I now wrote six stories in six months, in my books. I have no excuses anymore. I need to be a bit more daring.

And that means like a writing something a bit of outside of my comfort zone, this is the moment. Uh, because like, I feel like now I’m at school. I’m learning still. So if I have to do a mistake, a big mistake, it’s better to do it now when I’m giving stories for free. And someone told me there are no stupid questions when you are still at school. The thing is you can do damage to yourself if you don’t learn from that part of your journey of your learning journey and just go outside there, you didn’t try, you didn’t learn your things and just go outside and you do mistakes, in that case they have real consequences. So I’m excited about that.

And, I’m excited to actually about knowing what you have been up to.

Crystal: Well all of that talk about mailing lists on last week’s episode, got me kind of reviewing some stuff and I have been working on moving my fiction list over the last couple of stages from MailerLite to SendFox and just making sure that everything is all good there and doing a bit of a makeover at the same time with my onboarding, which of course leads into updating the website, which of course leads into, oh yeah I changed a bunch of covers and so just really refreshing everything in, in advance of a big kind of push for the fall. So I have been doing a bit of revisioning and so the main things I’ve been using for that, I love Scrapple for doing some outlining of a mailing list, onboarding sequence and Scrapple is made by the same folks who make Scivener.

The company is called Literature & Latte. And it’s a very affordable tool. I think it’s maybe $20 now for a lifetime license.

I think I bought it a few years ago. It was like 12 bucks and it’s a forever license. So you only pay once and it’s a sort of mind mapping or mapping tool. So you can do really visual layouts. It’s the equivalent of putting sticky notes on my wall or coloring in a notebook, but it lets me map out the reader journey and what all the emails are going to have and how things lead into other automation sequences, because it’s impossible to keep it all straight in my head.

So, and then I don’t remember when I come back six months later to review everything and do an update. It’s really hard to remember exactly what you set up and why. So I was using Scrapple to map everything out, SendFox, to get it all set up, BookFunnel to set up delivering of the cookies that are offered in there.

And then using the second half of the book Sell Like Crazy by Sabri Suby, which I have digitally and it, it just talks about the funnel and sales onboarding and the welcome sequence order and what you should have in that to make sure that deliverability criteria are being met as well. So that, that was really what I’ve been up to this past week has been a pretty heavy on the business side of the writing world stuff.

And just making sure that every thing is all good to go. Another thing that’s very important on the businessy side of stuff is reviews. You know, how important those are in the book world.

So the podcast world is exactly the same thing. We would be forever grateful if you’d leave a review on whatever platform you’re listening to this after the episode and let us know what you think.

And without further ado, let’s dive into our interview with author Bonnie Goldberg and see what she has to say about republishing your back catalog. We’ll be back after the interview to break it all down for you.

About Bonni Goldberg

So we are here today with Bonnie Goldberg, who is the author of Room to Write a fantastic book of writing prompts, to kick you into gear and get you out of that. Writing slump. Bonnie, could you tell us a little bit about your background and what kinds of other things you’re right, because I know that’s not the only thing that you do.

Bonni Goldberg: No, it’s not. Um, actually my background, I started as a writer. I came in through the Avenue of poetry, which is a very rarefied place to begin and, uh, I have a master’s degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins from many, many moons ago.

And basically I hit my earliest early-ish, mid thirties, and realized that I really needed to, yes, something published besides a poem here or there, or a couple of poems and decided that, I needed to figure out what could I write quickly, I didn’t have to research and with a poet’s brain, which means, you know, keeping things kind of short.

And what I came up with was actually Room to Write. And that was the first nonfiction writing idea outside of little essays and things that I’ve written in the past. I sold that book. Fairly quickly. And that is how I began thinking to myself as more than just a poet or not only a poet. And from there, I wrote on a lot of nonfiction for adults that led me to be looking at other things that were interesting to me. I had a child and then I started writing children’s literature, middle-grade and picture books. That’s. Pretty much how it went from, from the beginning.

Crystal: So you’ve had a nicely varied writing career and touched in a whole bunch of different genres, which I think is, is a really interesting way to do it, to explore all those different pieces and kind of see what feels like the right fit.

But you, it is kind of unusual to have that first sort of book experience to take off right out of the gate. And you, I remember picking up a copy of Room to Write and being very impressed by the quote on the cover.

You had a pretty impressive blurb on that one.

Bonni Goldberg: I did that was Julia Cameron. It’s still on the cover because it still counts.

The reason that that happened is because Julia was also a writer at the same publishing company. That book was traditionally published first and Julia had just written before mine came out. The, uh, the Writer’s Way. And so she was not difficult to contact. I didn’t contact her publishers were like, Hey Julia, will you please, blurb this book?

And she really did like it. And she was like, sure. So that was one of those advantages that comes with traditional publishing is that you do have some kind of extra access to the other writers that are part of that publishing house.

Crystal: Yeah, absolutely. And so what brought you from that experience into your current reality, which is you have just rereleased Room to Write as an indie published title.

So tell us a bit about that adventure.

Bonni Goldberg: Sure. Well, before I start on that, I just want to say that you, you mentioned earlier that it was kind of unusual to be going from genre to genre like this. And it was extremely unusual back when I was first writing. In fact, it was called jumping shelves and it was a terrible thing to do if you wanted to have a career as a writer.

So jumping shelves is essentially going from genre to genre because it’s very hard to build an audience and readership and have people go quickly to the next book from you if you keep changing your subject matter and you even change your genre. Uh, so that was something that I had to really except about myself and I had different times of my life when I was more or less accepting of that. And so in that spirit, as publishing changed and indie publishing became more of a popular normalized, almost mainstream thing to do. I realized that there were a lot of books and subject areas that I would love to write about, but didn’t necessarily have the same size audience as it would be necessary to be able to interested a traditional publisher. And that doesn’t mean though, that those things aren’t important to those readerships or that I didn’t want to reach those readerships. And so I became very interested in the indie publishing world and I had a few forays with Jerome books. So these are books that are basically based on a particular topic and using journaling, uh, with prompts as a way to get deeper and broader and have more insight. And so I did a few of those, which was a very different experience than we publishing Room to Wright. And they were, was very hands off in a certain way, Much more so than with Room to Write.

And, uh, so there I was with those books out, but still not really feeling like I had it down, the indie publishing part, those were only paperback books. They were not done in eBooks. The whole E thing, you know, I feel like I’m challenged, technologically challenged and so that was extremely intimidating to me.

What happened was that, I was encouraged, bye. That’s fine. A particular fan or for him to write, but we both know, uh, to republish it and it had not occurred to me until then, but it was true that back in the day, when Room to Write was originally published, people weren’t publishing eBooks. And so there never was an ebook.

There were never was that option.

Crystal: Right. And so people talk about, you know, in an abstract sense, when you get the rights back to your book, you can republish it on your own as an indie, but I don’t think that necessarily people know what that means. When you get your rights back. I think it’s kind of this amorphous concept. So what, what do you physically get? What happens? What comes back to you and what do you have to work with that kind of.

The process of re-publishing your book after getting the rights back

Bonni Goldberg: For me, uh, nothing. So the, to get your right back, you have to ask for them. So the first thing is going back to the publisher and sending them an email saying I’d like to have the rights back to my book.

And then that can take a really long time, which it did for me. And I had to keep bugging them about it because imprints get moved to other imprints and publishing companies buy other publishing companies and this book was over 20 years old. So there was a lot about it that made it more obscure to find and get the right people involved.

But what it essentially entailed was me getting an email saying, yeah, we’re giving you the rights back. And I think I actually may have gotten a paper letter, like a snail mail letter as well. And it basically gave me back the right. And that’s it. There was no file. I mean, if there had been a file, it was probably like on a floppy disc or some the technology that we just don’t even think about anymore.

So I basically got permission to use the material in any way that I wanted to. Now, that didn’t mean the cover or the interior design or any of the other aspects of the book, but the actual material itself.

Crystal: So then what? So you’ve, you’ve got this permission letter and basically a hard copy of your published book one assumes on a bookshelf somewhere, then what do you do?

Bonni Goldberg: So then you panic.

Crystal: Yes, absolutely.

Bonni Goldberg: And then you figure it out. So the first thing I needed to do was make, get this, this hard cover, hard cover, but this paperback book into electronic form. And I’m not as fast typer and I’m not, Oh, a whiz with anything.

And I also, uh, have a limited budget. So I found this company called blue leaf online and they will actually, you can send them your physical book and they will scan it and make it into a document, I mean I don’t even have a scanner. That’s how low tech that I am. Right. So I sent them a hard copy, a physical copy of this book.

And after a couple of few weeks they sent me a zip file with the book scan. Now, I don’t know if you remember, but you probably do remember that room to write was really heavily designed. The interior was heavily formatted. And so what I ended up with was a file but not one that could be easily transformed into a word doc to then turn it into an ebook. So the next piece, having to find somebody who would then take that very formatted version and re type it as a word doc and I used Upwork for that, I found a very, good person in another country who was willing to do that for the price that I had in my budget. And that gave me a now working word document that I could use.

I was lucky in the fact that it was already an edited book. Right. So a lot of that work had already been done, a wonderful friend of mine, the same fan of that book, uh, offered to read through it, just to see if there were any things that got messed up between the scanning, then, you know, the, putting it into a word doc.

And so she went through that and made changes. And then I went through it one more time. And then when I had what I thought was as clean a copy, as I possibly could, the next step was to get a cover. So for the cover, I found a really great company, 100… What’s called 100 covers.com and they were having a great half price sale.

So I snapped that up and I hired them to do the cover, which they did a great job.

Crystal: It’s gorgeous.

Bonni Goldberg: I love that. Actually, my old covered was drawn by my husband. He was the cover illustrator. That’s a whole another story. Uh, so it was going to be a big deal to find a new cover that I liked and they did it. Terrific job. I really do love the cover. And then everything was all together, except for the fact that the, that the cover and the word document had to be put together into a ebook documents. And for that, I got a referral, uh, to the lovely Jackie Nelson. And she, I paid her to do that process and voilà. I had an ebook.

Crystal: Excellent. And so for somebody who’s not saying they’re not very tactical, I feel like that’s a lot of steps that you went through and you must have learned some interesting things along the way. So was there anything that really surprised you about the process or that you learned about yourself by doing all of these steps?

Bonni Goldberg: Well I learned that I could move through a lot of my anxiety and worry because it really was so daunting to me. The whole process just seemed like it was going to be insurmountable. Because it, of course it wasn’t just putting everything together that I just explained. It was then actually launching the book.

And that is a whole other group of things that I had never done, and needed to do and had read a lot about and listened to a lot of things about, but hadn’t actually done it myself. So I think I learned that I learned something that I already knew, but I really got it on another level is that, the secret is really chunking things down, asking for help and giving things a try. On one level, I was prepared to pay for things I couldn’t do. And in the creation of the ebook, I did pay. That’s what I did. I, I did pay professionals do the work. It wasn’t horribly expensive, but it was an output. I was working on having the same kind of budgets for launching the book.

And I turned out that I was able to do a lot of the things that I would never have imagined that I could do in that process, I do strongly believe that it was being empowered by doing pieces that had to do with it making the book that gave me some of the confidence or the willingness to give it a try, uh, when it was time to launch the book.

Crystal: Yeah, I think you bring up an interesting point, which is that sort of desensitization in a sense that everything seems terrifying and new and unfamiliar when you’re not really sure what you’re doing or how to go about it. But once you dig in and start breaking things down and have a little bit of a roadmap, and then you realize, okay, well, I just did those five steps and I’m still here and everything is fine. The world hasn’t crumbled. Okay, well let’s add one more and then one more. So now having done this, would you do it again?

Bonni Goldberg: I will do it again. Yes. I have plans. It is going to happen again. Uh, I have a second writing book that came out several years after Room to Write. And that will be the next project that I will go from … and the have to do it exactly the same way, because I don’t have it in any kind of file form because it’s that old. And so that’s also has already actually gone to Blue Leaf and that’s been taken care of, and then I will find my Upwork person and go through the same process all over. Yeah. Before I do that, the next phase, which I hope will be done by the time people hear, this and see it is that I’m going to also release Room to write in its new lovely cover, as a paperback again, because as a book, the, what, what is does then what it’s about, it’s something that a lot of people have said to me, they really would love to have a hard copy of. Ebooks are terrific and it was a much quicker process to bring it out as an ebook. But I think there’s still value in all of physical copy for a book like this.

Crystal: Yeah. With any kind of prompt book, it’s nice to be able to dip in and out of it and just pick it up and open to any page you want. And yeah, you can jump around with your e-reader, but it really isn’t the same.

So I will be very excited to grab a copy of that when it hits the stands as the, as the kids say, I guess not the kids, the opposite of the kids. Um, okay, so here’s a question for you. If you could go back in time and give your past self some advice to make your current self’s job easier. What would you say?

Advice to your past self

Bonni Goldberg: I would say a couple of things. One, I would say give yourself a little more time. And the other thing I would say is write it all down, what you did and how you did it. And not only write it down, but put it all in the same place. So I didn’t do that. And so it is going to make doing this again, that much harder, although I do know how to do it now, and I have my resources and I do know where those live, but I think that it’s always, and I even said to myself, I started making a list and keeping track and the way I got myself to do it was to say, You know, somebody else is going to need this.

So let me put it all together and then I can give it to people. And that was enough incentive to get me. Yeah. But I had a pretty short turnaround time that I had given myself. And so I think that I might have been better at keeping up keeping track of what I was doing if I hadn’t been, uh, so time-crunched so time and attention to keeping track of what I’m doing.

I think that’s great advice for every writerpreneur, no matter what they do, because we aren’t always, even with my jumping shelves, I’m still doing a lot of the same things over and over again in the publication process. And so I think that really helps.

Crystal: That documentation part is key for sure. Because yeah, no matter how well we know the things we think we are doing, does it, it doesn’t matter. Every time we do it is like relearning it all over again. And if you have a record of where did you launch the last book, which of the promotion sites did you use? What was effective? It just makes it so much easier for your future self, for sure. So. Okay. If we go way back in time, like, is there anything you could have done or might have done differently along the way? Like we go way back to when your book was originally published, something you would have kept or something you would have done differently to make it easier when you did get the rights back. Can you think of anything that would have it made that process easier?

Bonni Goldberg: Hmm. I mean, it would have been probably a better move as career move to be more in touch work consistently in touch with the publishers.

Uh, just because, you know, keeping part of it, the network and the community. Um, I wish that I had been a little more savvy around the internet, what was going on because I think I missed a big, giant, old opportunity to keep that book. More alive than it was. Lots of people have the book, the old version, but it’s a really old version.

And, um, I think I could have gotten some momentum, even a new fan base and really grown an audience for it if I had done that kind of thing. But yeah, this is the piece, right. At the time I was busy with the next book and the next passion, and it didn’t have a sense of how to do the kinds of things that we do now.

So I don’t really have any regrets or ideas of things I should have done differently in creating the book. I really feel read about it. There were very, very few edits and changes that I made in the new edition. There were some things that were, I had to, I had to sort of revise based on the way technology has changed and the kind of preferences that I was making. But the rest of it. I really, I really have a soft spot of love for that first book. Yeah. It really is. Even then it really felt to me, like I was writing the sort of 2.0 or 3.0 version of the writing prompt book. Not that I knew what 2.0 or 3.0 meant back then, but I know now, but I was really writing something that was going to be valuable for people over and over again and not just okay I tried that writing prompt and now yeah, done. And that’s why I called them writing studies. Cause they are studies. They’re not just something to sit down and write. You can go back to them and, and there developed in such a way to, I encourage you to do that.

Crystal: Excellent. And now you had mentioned earlier that you did a few things as part of a soft launch for the ebook to kind of get things rolling. Can you tell us a little bit more about which things you included in your plan?

Plans for a soft launch

Bonni Goldberg: Sure. I sure can. So I got a small street team of, of readers who would read and review, uh, so that when the book became available. There’d be reviews out there. And I also had a small budget that I used to do the KDP promo. So I put the book for my by hard launch, I guess my first launch, I put it on at 99 cents and I had maybe four or five book promotion sites that, uh, featured it or listed it or whatever they do, they all do different things in order to get some attention to the book.

So that worked out really well. And I’ve had really good sales during that week, and other than that, the reviews and the promos, I think that was supposedly what I did, uh, to get things going. I also was planned the, uh, the launch to coincide with a remote writers conference that was going on. And so I could also get some, some energy and some momentum from there. And then later on, there was another writing conference kind of thing going on. This is all happening kind of a little bit before and during COVID start that I then took the book back down to another low price, not 99 cents, but I think I did it at the a dollar 99 or two 99 to also create some momentum around that.

So I did try to think about when it was launching, so that I would have some built in reasons and ways of getting more people connected to it.

Crystal: Excellent. And if people are looking to connect with you online, where can they do that? And where can they buy Room to Write?

Bonni Goldberg: So you can buy Room to Write on Amazon.

And as I said, I hope by the time you hear this, you’ll be able to choose between the ebook and the paperback and that you’ll really want both of course. And you can connect with me on Facebook. So I’m at BonnieGoldbergBooks. B O N N I G O L D B E R G, books. And that’s the best place to come to talk with me.

And I’m really happy to have people there. I am on Instagram and I am on Twitter. I think I’m on Twitter as Bonnie Goldberg, but I think I’m on Instagram as Goldberg Bonnie. Not really sure how that happened, folks, but that’s how I am. And I, uh, have a lot of joy when people connect with me.

I have, sometimes I have people who have been working with Room to Write and they’ll email me or they’ll, they’ll connect with me. And I always want to know what your favorite prompt was, and what you’re using it for. So, please, I love that. I love that connection. I also, as someone that’s an education is all about that connection for me.

Hearing what works, what doesn’t for the next project. The choice to, to take back your rights. Well, not to take back your rights, but the choice to publish something Indy that was traditionally published, because I think that’s a really interesting question as to, you know, why would you do that and when would you do that? So I, it didn’t, I think about doing this at all on my own, but I was prompted by other people, by people from the Creative Academy. And bye several people going, Oh, you’re that funny Goldberg? That one, the one that wrote that one, you know? And, and so, um, it wasn’t in my mind and the reason that I felt like I could do it just because it’s a very evergreen book, this is something, a writing book, book of writing prompts. This is something that is really never going to go out of fashion. You know, people there’s always going to be writers and there’s always gonna be people who enjoy that kind of, uh, additional support and a resource to be out there. So I knew that it would be something that was viable. Uh, and I think because the next one is a writing book, I think that’ll also be viable.

I do have another book that I also own the rights to that is from an entirely different topic. And I’ve been back and forth about bringing that one out, republishing it, because I think that is something that would be really valuable to have out there, but I don’t think there’s going to be as big an audience, or maybe I’m just not willing to do the work involved in finding that audience and letting them know about it.

Um, but I do think it’s a really interesting question to ask yourself if you have published traditionally, uh, if you have something that you think is going to have impact now in a different format and maybe with the different cover. Um, and it’s such a great way to start on the journey of indie publishing and ebook publishing because it’s already done on a lot of levels, you know, you don’t have to get it completely edited. You don’t have to wonder if it’s something that, is of the quality that you might want it to be, to be published. There’s already a cover. So that means you have some really strong feelings about that. Like I loved this part, I don’t like that part. And so you’re coming to it with already an amount of knowledge and sense of it that maybe is not always there when you’re doing this for the first time with a, just a brand new book with a brand new project. So you said an older project can really be a great way. It’s a great entry into this process. So I do encourage people to think of it that way. Uh and I think it’s, it was really valuable for me. It’s been really valuable for me and I will probably always want to be both traditionally published and indie published because in the writing of the younger children’s books, I think it’s going to be necessary for me to be traditionally published for a lot of reasons and I still want to be able to write what I want when I want and put it out into the world. So that is why I am so delighted that there is this indie publishing available now in such a way that has become very mainstream and really acceptable and beyond acceptable, but really brilliant, it’s bringing out voices, for people that we’re not able to have their voice out there and it’s giving us subjects and perspectives on subjects that we also couldn’t necessarily have otherwise because a traditional publisher always is first and foremost needs to, could be concerned about keeping the electricity on and paying bills and health insurance and all of those things. And so if they can’t publish it, uh, with the idea that enough people are going to buy it, that there’s a big enough audience. It’s just not going to happen.

And now there is that opportunity for even a small group of people that really need to hear what you have to say the way you have to say it, or I want to be entertained in the way that you can entertain them. You can do that now. And that’s powerful, tremendously powerful. It’s really all about what, what writing is about which is, uh, the conversation and the, the conversation that we’re all having sort of communal conversation on all different kinds of topics and in all different kinds of ways. So I think as a writer, it’s really important to be participating in the, in the writing world and you know, even if I can have all my books done, traditionally, I wouldn’t.

Crystal: And that that’s an interesting thing to ponder, which is, I was going to say, how, how do you think this changes the way you write, knowing that you have two options or do you feel like it changes the way you write?

Bonni Goldberg: No, I don’t feel like it changes the way I write, but that’s because I am a writer who from the very beginning understood about myself, that I was going to write for my passion, whatever interests me, whatever I think is important because I don’t think that I’m terminally unique, right? If I’m interested in it, chances are other people are interested in it too. And these are the people I want to have a conversation with. When I was only traditionally published, then I had to write a book proposal that my agent had to believe was going to be marketable and then it was up to a lot of other people whether or not, that was going to, he made available two others and as I said, I understand why that is, but that was limiting, you know, I have a couple of manuscripts that I wrote back then or proposals that never saw at the light of day, because they just weren’t going to, no, you have enough of an audience to make it economically a smart move.

And now I don’t have to, I don’t have to worry about it, but I’m also someone who doesn’t write to market. Jump shelves in all different topics. And that is me, I’m kind of a butterfly in that way. You know, that I flipped. And for a long time, I felt badly about that. Like that was a failing of mine, like, Oh, I’m never going to be able to make that a career of writing because I can’t stay in one genre and one idea, and I won’t ever be able to build up an audience and you know, to some extent that’s true. I don’t, I don’t have a full time life as a writer, but I do have the joy and the interest. And I do have an audience and I have a lot of the pieces that matter most to me.

And I also have health insurance from my job.

Crystal: Which is an important combination, I think.

Bonni Goldberg: Well, when you’re the main breadwinner in your family, yes. It really, really is. You know, if I didn’t have that kind of security, I don’t, I think I would have the presence of mind to do the writing that I really want to do or, or be brave enough to say some of the things I want to say.

And if I, and at the same time, my job does mean that I have full time jobs. So that means that I can’t devote as much time as I what I want you to writing, but here’s the trick about me and this is only me. This is not anybody else. If I didn’t have to work, if I didn’t have to be in the world in that way that tethers me to reality that tethers me to what, uh, other people in the world are dealing with and going through, I would not be as good a writer. I don’t, I really believe that. So for me, it is, I do need both. And I think that one feeds the other. And I think that that’s not everybody. Certainly it’s not everybody. But, I have come to, to accept and be comfortable with the fact that it’s me and that’s okay.

Crystal: And I think it has a really important contributing piece to your ability to climb the mountain of indie publishing and to figure out those things along the way, which in some cases meant hiring somebody that it makes sense if you have the opportunity to work and you can set aside enough budget to have a bit of a budget for your project, then it does unlock some of those doors. And it does mean that you don’t have to learn everything yourself. And with a limited number of hours in the day, if you know, going to work for X number of hours a week can fund your life and your home and your family, and have a little bit extra to put into your book publishing fund, then that does, as you said, give you the freedom to make the best choice for you. And it, it stops you from stalling out because when you need the help, you feel like you have the opportunity of getting it in, in, you know, hiring people and having a hand along the way whenever you need it, which is really powerful.

I think this dream of let’s just go full time and just. You know, just write and do that a hundred percent of the time puts a lot of pressure on the art, as you said. And it, it makes us make choices we might not make otherwise, if it wasn’t so much pressure on what we’re doing. So letting things unfold a little bit organically can be a really powerful and important piece of the longevity of a writing career as well, because you can burn out pretty quick when there’s too much pressure and everything stops being fun pretty fast if you make that leap from passion two full time job, uh, it is, it changes the way you kind of approach everything which can take some enjoy out of it.

Bonni Goldberg: It does change everything know, another thing that happened for me was when I was being traditionally published. This is an important piece. When I was being traditionally published I didn’t want to write anything that I wasn’t going to get paid for. Like, I didn’t want to take the time out of my life to write something if I wasn’t going to get paid for it. Cause now I was getting paid for it. And so that was, well, you know, why do anything else? And some of the way my mind I think was working was what am I interested in that I could also write a book about, right? A whole book and you know, a nonfiction book and all of these other pieces to it.

And so, you know, it does. It does impact you. In terms of what you do and how you do it. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you want to have a career, a full time career as a writer, you have to do that. That is part of a job. And it doesn’t mean that you’re writing isn’t it wonderful and powerful and valuable. It’s just a different way of relating to the work that you’re doing really and the relationship to that. Uh, and now, you know, when I, when I first published those, those journals of the paperback journals, those were based on subjects and areas and things that I wanted to, put out there. I could just do that.

And they have small audiences. Some of them have no audiences, but the ones that do, you know, that’s really helpful for those people. You know, the poet Sharon Olds said once that she, that everybody has the poets that they love. So every poet will have an audience of, I forget the number 5,000 people and that the, really the job of the poet is to find those people.

And she said she didn’t worry about dying and no longer writing her poetry because other people would come and they would pick up the people that were her audience and everybody would have their poets. And in the same way I feel about writing is that there’s an audience, our audience and, you know, we’re looking for them and we’re finding them and they’re finding us and that’s a beautiful thing.

Crystal: Nice. That’s a lovely way to think of it. Um, is there anything else we want to add?

Bonni’s final thoughts

Bonni Goldberg: I feel like it’s a little weird because you know, it is your other thing, but I do want to say that one of the things that I didn’t have back, when I first published Room to Write and was writing traditionally as it did not have a writing community.

And the, the thing I believe that really allowed me to do this project, to go from you know being completely overwhelmed, to, chunking it down and doing it, was The Creative Academy was having a community where I could reach out where I had a weekly accountability group to talk with where I knew I could get the help that I needed, the questions answered and the anxiety … I could get the support to not let the anxiety get the better of me. And I just can’t stress enough that writing is not … Writing is a team sport, and anyone who tells you that it, that it isn’t is lying to you. It’s straight out it’s lying to you. It is a collaborative effort and I’ll tell you honestly, the thing I loved the most, the hands down, most wonderful thing about being traditionally published it was the collaboration. You know, the editor who was so interested in every word that I said in my writing, like the only other person that was that interested as I was in those words and the artists and designers working on it on the cover and all the pieces that brought it together. It’s not just words on paper. It’s a lot more than that. And having a community as an Indy writer, indie published writer, I just, I don’t know how anybody does it without that community. And even if they do, they’re struggling unnecessarily. So I, I really, if I, if there was one takeaway is a community of other writers who are at different phases of the process, then you are okay from beginning before you, and after you is invaluable. And accountability group is invaluable. There’s really nothing, nothing like it. And it is something that I hope for every single person that is on the journey, the creative journey, whether it’s through art and writing dance, whatever it is.

Crystal: Well, for anybody out there who does not have their own writing community yet, we would love for you to join us in the Creative Academy. You can come and say hi, Bonnie. And I hang out there all the time. Michele is around there as well. We all would be in very good company. We have lovely, lovely and large group of writers actually. Um, so you’ll be able to find people who write in your genre and who are at a similar stage and an a really nice. Uh, array of folks in there. So, the link will be in the show notes to the Creative Academy and also to Bonnie’s website and Bonnie’s social media stuff. So if you’re looking to connect with Bonnie, you can find our show notes and click on some of those links we have where we’ll also of course have a link to Room to Write in all of the additions that are available as the date this airs and all that’s left to say, I think is thank you Bonnie so much for coming and spending time with us today and talking about your exciting publishing adventure, we will be looking forward to checking in with you again at a future date when you’ve got it few more books out as

Bonni Goldberg: Well, thank you, Crystal. This has been a pleasure.

Post interview discussion

Michele: Okay, we are back. And the interview with Bonnie was really interesting. There are a couple of things that I found really useful, uh, not only for the writing side of things, but especially for the keeping track of things that we do as writers and that we can use later on in our writing journey.

And there was one thing that Bonnie spent some times on. Um, so she explayns how she had to understand the process of self-publishing by herself bit by bit, right, Crystal? So she basically dive into that process. How did that look like for her? And at some point she gives a suggestions to our listeners.

She said, basically give yourself some time, especially if it’s your first time again. And write down every single thing, every part of the process, put everything in a document, something like, um, you can write it down now you can create a word file. It doesn’t really matter, but what’s the what’s important what’s empowering is that, um, Say something like self-publishing is very complicated. And we said that more than once it’s not for the faint of heart. Um, and if you can save yourself some time, the next time that you have to launch a book, for example, and you check the first time, which, promo site, uh, worked the best, or how did it look like the process of, uh, sharing your launch on social media. What did you do on read it? Which where maybe the resources you use to, to make people aware that your book was out, what are the things that worked for you? And again, this can work for the publishing side of things, but also on the promotion side of things. So I really found Crystal that that was super helpful, uh, because it’s her experience laid down in front of your eyes and Bonnie she’s basically saying what I have been doing and what I wish I would have done a bit better was the documenting side of things. And Crystal, I know that you are really big on this. You are almost crazy about this kind of things. And you’re making me more crazy because now I have more of your, um, point of view on this subject, but it’s really true with self publishing, you have to deal with different kinds of things and the more you are systematically, organizing your content the less time you’re going to invest in the future, because it’s not just the book, it’s many books, one after the other. And again, and again and again, and I want to know your opinion on that Crystal, if that resonated with you too.

And, uh, actually I want to know. How do you go on that process? Like what do you do to document the steps? And if you have some suggestions for the listeners on that side.

Crystal: I have a, it’s probably a hundred item checklist for publishing a book that’s broken down into the different stages, which I actually have shared, so I will make that available as a resource for you from the strategic authorepreneur.com website. So you’ll be able to actually download that checklist and you can delete the stuff I have on it. Put your own stuff on it, make it yours, but it’s helpful to have that kind of overview to know what you could be doing.

You do not have to do all of the things. Some of the things are what you just layer in. As you get more comfortable with the process, each time you can kind of decide for yourself when you do your ‘reflect and evolve stage’ of what you’re going to eliminate and what you’re going to keep. And the other thing that I actually was revisiting this week, which is related to this is an as a book that I wrote in 2010, called ‘self-publishing for profit’ and it breaks down all of the steps of indie publishing and walks you through with your turn exercises. So, and it’s called Strategic Authorpreneur now. So it’s a revised, updated a reformulated thing, but it will walk you through all of the stages of self-publishing. So one of the things that it covers, and I talk about this also in strategic series author, is that you really do need to organize your files because when I went back looking through these book files, I mean, this book was published 10 years ago, it’s up there it’s getting on. And I had to dig through all my files and find, okay, which version was the most recent one and my past self wasn’t quite as organized about my file labeling. So it took me a bit longer than it needed to, to figure out which was the most current file and where were the editable formats as opposed to the final PDFs. And so the way that I handle that now is that I have a really regular set of folders that goes into each book folder and that is drafts from the writing process. And I do save as, and then start working for all the major revisions. And then I will have a version as well as a date.

So if I’m working on version, let’s say it’s version three of the Full Time Author book that Eileen and I are writing together, then that one will be version three, but it might have a date of, you know, July 15th and then I might bounce it back to Eileen for her to add some more stuff and so that might be version three, July 20th.Right? And so we only go to a new version when there’s something substantially different, but we make sure that our date orders are all consistent. So we can tell, which is the most up to date one, because if you just find. You might use version one, version two, version three, version four but you don’t necessarily remember, was there a version five? Did you get a version five and six? That just aren’t in this folder and what were the dates on that? And which is the right file, especially when you’re collaborating with someone else you need to have agreed on a very specific file structure. So having the same folders and the same naming conventions, I find to be really helpful in keeping things organized and really helping me to understand how all of that is coming together and which files are the ones that I want to be working on.

It also helps then if you’re sending it to an editor, then their changes come back and you can say, okay, this is version three with a date and then, you know, Amanda edits at the end of it for me, that’s how I do that. So that the files all sorts by file name appropriately and then sort by date. So you want to have your book, title, and then the version and then the dates, and then any sort of identifiers at the end, if it’s somebody feedback or maybe it’s beta readers feedback or whatever it is that gets tacked on the end and a strategy for date usage is if you put the year, so we would say 2020, and then the month would be 07 and the date would be 15 then it’s going to auto sort from most recent to oldest, right? And the one at the top is always going to be the current one, or if you switch it in the other way, it’s going to auto sort itself appropriately though. So you don’t have to visually scan through all of those files to see which one is current. And it’s very tempting to use June 30th. And then you end up with a slightly different format and different punctuation and different everything, and then nothing auto sorts. And it’s hard to find things. So be ridiculously specific in your file naming so that your search functions all work really well and be really consistent.

I actually have a cheat sheet that I use for my file naming structure. And I used that for months before it was just automatic. And then now it’s all burned in my brain. So I know how that works, but just making sure that you’re reviewing that is really helpful.

Michele: You see, I’ve just learned a new thing. I was like: Jeez, I’ve been doing it wrong for a long time. So that’s a, that’s definitely, um, something too keep in mind, like make your life easy. There was another thing that Bonnie said in the interview, a takeaway. Mmm. She had to go through this process by herself, but at some point she said, I will not have been able to do this the way I did without a community.

And in our case, the community was Yhe Creative Academy, which both of us have the fortunate to be part of. There is something fundamentally wrong in a writer saying, yeah, this book is just something that I did. I do believe it’s always a collaborative effort. And we’ve been talking about this a lot, even when we interviewed April.

It’s not something only yours, especially when it’s on the other side of the fence and you finished with it. What Bonnie was hinting yet when she was talking about the community is really that you do not have to reinvent the wheel. There are so many things that you can save time on, and it’s really important for you to understand what is that you can do by yourself and what you can delegate and if you can delegate, and if you can be helped by a community of other writers or authors, please do so. Do yourself a favor so that you can invest more time to your own story or things that you are strong on. And she was mentioning, for example, she was not able to do a cover by herself so she had that website, uh, 100 covers if I’m not mistaken. And she said, you can do that. Yeah. But I know how to do other things it was a process, Bonnie described it and she made sure, to tell us what she did by yourself and was she delegated, but again, the community part, I think it’s very important Crystal, because like, I’ve been part of several communities, but relatively recently I have to say. And before I really felt like a lone wolf. It was me, there was my computer and my laptop and it was typing and there were stories. I’m not saying you can’t do that. I’m just saying it’s more fun if you share the experience with people with that are alone, also, and that are typing on that laptop, you can share the experience. And I think I’m sure that your book, your stories are going to be better because of that. And I’m really curious to know what you think of that point. How can a community help authors or a writers going indy but also with the legacy publishing, what do you think of this?

You’ve been basically on both sides of the fence, both worlds.

Crystal: I think. Yeah, as you said, it is possible to kind of plow through and try to do it by yourself, but it’s expensive because you don’t learn from anyone else’s mistakes, you have to make all your own and often that comes with a price tag attached. It’s also unnecessary and you can really waste a lot of time that isn’t necessary at all, you, in discussing it with other people in finding out what worked for other people, it just means you can bypass so much of the testing. You’re still going to have to tweak it a little bit, but it’s the idea of standing on the shoulders of giants, right?

You can, and that’s probably a weird English expression you haven’t heard before, but it’s that, you know, if you come into an industry or into a community where a lot of the groundwork has already been done to figure out the basics you can start at the level of already having a good grounding and all those basics.

And then you can add to that and you can grow past that. So it’s hugely beneficial to be working on something from a place of experience and taking advantage of what everyone else around you has learned. So I think definitely everyone should have a community of people that they can draw on their experience and you can choose exactly what format that takes. It may be that your community involves listening to other podcasts of folks in the industry who are doing these things. It may be watching YouTube videos, it may be reading books on how to do writerly things. It doesn’t matter how you put that together, but having some actual interaction with other people in the moment also tends to be really current, up to date information of people who are actually doing the thing right then and there. And it is just nice to have the emotional support my psychologist self did, well, that’s what my master’s degree was on my thesis was all about social support. So it’s no surprise to anybody knows that that forming communities has been a huge part of what I’ve been passionate about over the last 20 years in the writing world, I really have been focused around creating those spaces and helping make sure that people don’t have to go through any of that alone, which is why The Creative Academy exists. So come on over and hang out with us. There’s a link in the show notes for you to come join us.

Would you call yourself a plotter or a pantser?

Well, the time has come for the curious jar indeed. So. Lid off the jar arm in the bucket. What do you want? Tell me when to stop.

Michele: Now!

Crystal: Oh man. Okay. The green ones traditionally have been extremely difficult. Let’s just see here. Oh, okay. This is a fun one. The last two green ones were like heart wrenching, emotional and existential sort of thing. This one, would you call yourself a plotter or a pantser?

Michele: Oh, I love it. I love it. I already have an answer. But, I don’t know about you, but ladies first always, I don’t know if that’s something that holds on this side of the Atlantic or. What do you do here in Canada?

Crystal: Uh, I write romance novels, so certain amounts of, uh, yeah, that’s all good. We liked gentlemen with manners.

Michele: Okay.

Crystal: Um, yeah, so I am planter. Or a plotser defending. Yeah, I think I’m kind of a mixture. I will plot high level. I need to know who the characters are. I need to know what the central conflicts are. I need to have rough vision of where the scenes kind of take place. And so I tend to use, well lately I’ve been using Plotter. I used to use actual note cards, and then I was using the corkboard and Scivener.

And now I’ve been using, Plotter actually for the last few weeks to help me outline, because it has effectively the corkboard process, but you can load beets into it. So I’ve been finding that really helpful. So I will plot the beats and where I think the scenes take place and maybe a sentence or two about what I think happens in that scene.

And then I make sure I know my characters really well. And then I do what, what some people refer to as discovery writing or pantsing. Yeah, I definitely do the overarching structure. And then I will just kind of follow the story and I will often find out all kinds of crazy things about my characters and the details that pop out are really fun. But if I know how it all goes, I’m bored with it. And I don’t write the story. So I need to make sure that even though I can kind of see the framework in my mind, I don’t actually know everything that happens otherwise I’ll probably never finish it.

Michele: That was amazing. Um, you know, I’ve been doing the writing challenge stuff, so I’m a bit more confident answering that question now, but before this challenge really, I didn’t really know what pantser it was if I have to be very, uh, true with you.

So I’ll tell you, uh, a true story. I have been trying to plot my stories six of them right now and I have failed majestically. So I’ll tell you again, like I’m working on the seventh story of my Challenge, right Crystal? And I was like, this month I will write a science fiction story set in a post apocalyptic word where people, um, are leaving in a desert planet. And there’s this guy that has a bionic arms and people hate him for some reason, this guy has a pasta and it’s a very dark and there is something that is going to be found out in the end. Okay. So that was my, basically more or less plot of the story. I started writing and I came up with a completely different story that has nothing to do with this character and the plot.

It’s a story about the a god slayer, somebody that kills gods for a living. So it’s a completely different genre. It’s a complete different, main character, different time period. And so I’ve learned that, at least at this phase of my writing life, I am, I would say 90% discovery writer.

So I will just sit and I will write something. And at the end of it, when I think that it’s more or less done, I will say, okay, I have some kind of matter, I just need to shape it now. And it’s super painful and I a bit heavy you because you kind of have figure out the process. I don’t know if it’s a process that can be applied to me or not, or if I’m just too immature and I can just do it, I can sit down and plot something, but it’s just, I know that if I have to write a story, it’s going to be painful in that regard that will write to several different things and probably 70% of what I write, what I free write, because it’s usually free writing will not go in the last version of the story. In this time and moment in my life is the way I craft stories. And I was reminded of something Brandon Sanderson said in one of his classes and he was like, yes, there are you still kind of a category? The discovery writer than the pantser.

And then there is the plotter or the architect as George Martin would call them. Most of the people are in between kind of things and what’s something that is interesting hesaid, in my opinion, some thing that Brandon Sanderson said, usually discovery writer build better characters but plotters have a better ending, because they have figured that out.

And I was like, that’s super interesting, but at the same time, I want to make sure that my ending is good. I guess I need to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite the character and the plot in order to uniform of my story, to the vision that I want it to had. So I don’t know if that really answered the question, but I will say now I am a discovery writer more than anything else.

I might change it in the future. But yeah, that was a fun question.

Crystal: All right. We need some more questions for our curious jar. So if you have a question, you can email us ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com and we will add it into the mix. And we would also love to hear your answers to the curious jar questions. So please share that with us in the comments below wherever you are watching or listening to this podcast.

Michele: As always for links to resources that we mentioned and coupons or discounts on the tools we love you can visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com.

Crystal: Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on our next episode as next week, we’ll be taking an in depth look at data driven decision making for authors. Until then we’ll see you next week.