In this episode we’re chatting with USA Today bestselling author Angela Pepper about magic, romance, new adult, cozy mysteries, making money as a writer, burnout, and the “fire hose” approach to success in your author career. We talk about different ways to change up your process and approach to story, how to trick yourself into being productive and what the stages of building an author career can look like. We look at what’s involved in launching a trilogy / new series, and what kind of strategies work for that.

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Complete Episode Transcripts

This site contains affiliate links to products that we have used and love, and that we think may be of help to you on your authorpreneur journey. We may receive a commission on sales of these products, which is how this podcast stays independent and free of advertising. Thanks for your support! Click here for a full list of recommended tools and resources. 

Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 024: The Firehose Approach to Author Success with Angela Pepper

Angela Pepper: Hi, I’m Angela Pepper and you’re listening to the strategic authorpreneur podcast. Today we will be talking about many things, including the fire hose technique of successful indie author publishing.

Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs I’m Crystal Hunt.

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

Crystal Hunt: Welcome to episode 24 of the strategic authorpreneur podcast. On today’s show we’re talking about the fire hose approach to success with USA Today bestselling author Angela Pepper. But first our usual updates and we’re going to talk a little bit about what we’ve been doing this past week. So Michele. Well, what have you been up to?

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele Amitrani: There is a resource, right now there’s a livable for free. It’s a book by David Gaughran. The title is Let’s Get Digital. You know, that I, Crystal, I always suggest the one resource of self-publishing or authorpreneurship, but I’m reading this book now, it’s the fourth edition, David put it out for free and I think it’s going to be free indefinitely or, well for when, just for what I understood, as long as he can keep it free.

So I definitely suggest you, if you’re interested in self-publishing and platform building, to get this book because I am almost one third of the way through, and I’m like devouring it. It’s basically, I already mentioned Following, which is another shorter, book that he wrote about platform building and how an author can build that and why it’s important.

But Let’s Get Digital is more into the nitty gritty of the business. And there are so many resources about cover creation, platform building, the business of being an author, formatting things. It doesn’t go in the details or all these things, but it gives you the right coordinates to do it right.

And one amazing thing that he has been doing in this fourth edition is that, Crystal, he created the page with all the resources you can possibly need from how to make your Facebook page or how to tailor with Canva and Facebook ads to how to start your own welcoming sequence with emails. So there is basically everything you possibly need as a self-published author, either that you’re starting out or that you are even at an advanced level, me, myself, I’m finding so much value, I really can’t recommend the book enough. So Let’s Get Digital. I don’t have a copy here, unfortunately, because it’s like in the internet, but it’s from David Gaughran.

It’s really, really suggested maybe, I don’t know. Crystal was moving, maybe shared it somewhere. There you go. Yes, that’s it!

Crystal Hunt: No, in fact, I have the third edition, so the fourth edition is the one that just came out. But for anyone watching on YouTube, I am holding up the book and, yeah, this is the third edition version in print, which I ordered about a week before he announced he was putting out the new one.

It’s terrible timing, but I will read the new one digitally. So that’s fine.

Michele Amitrani: Yeah, so it’s really great. Then I read a recommended. In my authorly world I am doing one thing, that I’m not sure how it’s going to go because it’s kind of an experiment I can call it like that. I am trying to write basically two stories.

This month at the same time. Meaning, I’m going to write one story and then when I’m finished with that immediately after, and when I start writing the second one, rather than waiting another month and writing that, and the reason why I’m doing this, this is part of my 12 by 20 challenge of writing 12 stories in 12 months in 2020, it’s because I really want to focus a couple of months on a bigger project, which is writing a series and then publishing it, but I need time to focus on the planning stage and I really need to, of course, keep my word and my promise to my audience. Like you have to drive in publishing one story each month, but the only way I’m going to make this fly, Crystal, I really need to work my butt off. And I need to use this a month on really focusing on the creative, generating, side of things so that, August and September can really be focused on really the writing of these, fantasy series. So wish me luck. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, never done this before, and I’m curious to know, what have you been up to?

Crystal Hunt: Well, I have been playing with magic. I have gotten back into writing my Rivers End romances that have a touch of magic in them. And so I’ve been researching all kinds of things. So learning about runes and Oracle and tarot cards and Palm reading and all kinds of stuff like that, psychic abilities, which is not technically magic, but I feel like there’s some overlap in terms of things that people can do that have just a little touch of something extra to them. So I’ve been just reading, really digging in and I’ve ordered a book about runes that is supposed to arrive any day. So I’m very excited about that and have added to my collection of taro and Oracle card decks with a like a handmaid allgum, which is like a kind of tree symbolism stuff. So I don’t know too much about it yet. I’m about to learn a whole bunch more, but a couple of these families have Irish, Irish heritage, as I do in, in Rivers End, who have that magic lineage. So I’m going to dig in and see what I can learn about that.

So those were the resources that I’ve been focusing. I haven’t been doing too much nonfiction reading actually, aside from the, not about writing publishing anyway, just digging right into the creative side of things, which is a whole lot of fun. So I am loving that. So we are going to talk about the fire hose approach to building an author career, which is super interesting. But before we dig in with Angela, you know, how important reviews are in the book world, and they are equally important in the podcast world. So if you can take a moment to leave us a review, we would be forever grateful. And now let’s dive into our interview with Angela and we’ll be back at the end of the interview to decompress a little and discuss what we’ve heard.

About Angela Pepper

So welcome to Angela pepper, who is a USA Today, best selling author, according to her website. And you write mystery and you have two different kinds, right? Cozy mysteries and supernatural mysteries. Is that how you would describe them or would you describe them in a different way?

Angela Pepper: I, it depends on who I’m talking to, even the supernatural ones are cozy-ish. Okay. Yeah, they’re pretty warm and fuzzy and, family friendly, not, not a ton of gore, although I can’t really say that because then I’ll write something really gruesome. And then people say, what do you mean? It’s not gory. You had brains all over the place and…

Crystal Hunt: We all have our different thresholds, I suppose, compared to horror then not so gory, but, yeah, everybody definitely has their different lines of what is scary or what is, even supernatural.

There’s a lot of stuff that I consider sort of light magic that I wouldn’t even think to mark as supernatural, but not everybody has those same definitions. So what kind of magic do you have in your books?

Angela Pepper:  Well, my main character is very powerful. She can pretty much do anything, which makes it hard to plot because you’ll, you’ll give her a power or you’ll teach her a new spell in book one.

And I’m 12, I’m writing book 13 now, and every time she gets in a jam, I have to go through my a series Bible and have a look at all the spells that she can do in her powers, just to make sure that she’s not being too stupid. Either that the author hasn’t forgotten that, you know, so what’s funny is like, there’s no such thing as like a lock door to a witch, it’s just, it’s so easy anywhere.

So she’s actually a fairly moral person. So she doesn’t just, you know, randomly break into people’s houses when, if she wants to find something out or, uh, she kinda, she eavesdrops a little bit on people, but I think, yeah, her, her powers are great and there’s almost nothing that I can’t figure out a way for her to do.

So the powers are … they’re vague. It’s not like a, a thing where she just does one thing. Like she’s, here’s people’s thoughts or something, but it’s really difficult. It’s so challenging. You can, you can have them do anything. So that means that you can have them do anything. And how are you going to limit your choices anyway?

So that’s what kind of magic, you know, levitation, making the dishes wash themselves, you know, fun sort of fantasy fulfillment stuff. But, she’s not exactly great with her love life. Right. She can’t, she can’t fix that by magic.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah. I hear that’s the thing. So how did you, I guess, to dial back for those of you in the audience who does not happen to be psychic and know how Angela and I met was many, many, many, many years ago, we met for the first time, I think about a decade ago.

We were just kind of much earlier on in the process. I think it was a workshop somewhere in Vancouver, we were getting ready for a big conference and, working through some pitching stuff if I remember correctly. And since then, you’ve done all kinds of things along the way. So maybe can you fill us in on a few highlights of how did you come to be doing what you’re doing?

How many books do you have? That kind of thing. Just so people have a sense of kind of where you’re at in the writing journey.

Angela Pepper: Okay. 2010, I was getting a little burned out on making pottery, which is a thing that happens. And I was looking for a new hobby. I started writing, took a creative writing class with this really mean lady who was amazing because the more she was discouraging toward me, the more excited I was about writing. So, which I think have, you know, but the class was encouraging and some of the people I met were, were pretty cool about it. And so I believed what everyone told me about how authors don’t make a living writing.

Everyone says that, I believed it. And so I set out my first, a couple of books. I just wrote something that seemed appealing to me. I wrote a young adult kind of coming of age book, and I was querying it back in, I think it was 2011 when you and I met. Yeah. And then the whole indie publishing thing took off.

And it wasn’t really, I was getting some interest from agents in my first couple of books, but nothing was really coming together. And then I found out about the wild world of indie publishing. And so I started putting my work out there and it was amazing to have people read my books. It was a fulfillment of a life dream that I didn’t even realize I’d had until it was happening.

And that made me very happy. And then I found out that some of these jerks were making a whole bunch of money off their books. And I said, tell me how you do that. Because like, I’m pretty happy now, but I think I’d be even more happy if I also got some money for this stuff. And so then that became another layer to the fun of it, which is I love marketing and I used to work in website design and do marketing for people. So I knew how to use Photoshop and do my own covers. And so then I started selling my books, but there wasn’t a huge markup or markets with, adult readers with the kinds of books that I was writing.

So I was writing sort of more middle grade. So I switched into romance just on a lark with a new pen name. And it was pretty exciting to have people reading my books and paying, to read my books.

Crystal Hunt: The ultimate in the writing life is being paid and having readers.

Angela Pepper: That’s pretty exciting. And then, okay, so that was like I think it was 2012 or 2013 that I first hit the USA Today bestseller list with my romance pen name with a new adult was really popular at the time, which is sort of angsty, I don’t know, drama, drama stuff. And, sat out on the porch of the house with my, the neighbours who lived downstairs, who were lesbian folk band. And I told them I’m a bestselling author.

And they were like really excited. And we, we sat in the front yard and we had a beer and I thought, well, this is a life to get to cool, to get, to do things that you didn’t even really know that you wanted to do sort of a overshoot your calls. And then of course the inevitable burnout, because when you get paid to do something that you love, it kinda weirds—it makes it weird messes, messes with your head a little bit. We humans have these, just these weird systems where we just inadvertently kind of like destroy our own happiness. And the more you understand about it, the more it makes sense, but you can’t really trick yourself anymore. So long story short as sometimes you have a successful career and you know that if you just write more, one more of this book, that’s exactly like this, that do well. And you know, you can sit in your porch with your neighbours and have another beer, but the second time around, it’s just not as good as it was the first time around. So you have to keep, reinventing yourself.

So you have to, I mean, I get it. I understand why Madonna did what she did. We, we authors kind of just doing it necessarily for them, probably doing it for herself cause she needed to do that. Yeah. So yeah. So now, fast forward a couple romance pen names, a couple of ventures. I did a shared pen name with, with another author, which is a really, it’s really cool to work with someone on something and to have that team thing going, and then I ended up getting into cozy murder mystery because I realized that it was actually quite similar to middle grade fiction, a lot of similar themes about friendship and not as angsty, and kind of more of a plot driven.

The narrative drive comes from like a mystery. I like writing a book with a sort of an external thing driving the action forward. I don’t really have the hangout. I don’t really have the hang of like growth kind of literary stories. I don’t know, maybe one day. So that’s how, that’s how I got into mystery.

And it’s funny because some of my early young adults, middle grade novels were basically which cozies. Just, just it, I didn’t even know it was a genre at the time. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of looked into it. I’d say, um, I’m really lucky now and how I keep it fresh for myself is I try to find the challenge in every book.

So I’ll do a slightly different genre or, I’ll play these silly games with myself where I’ll just set some sort of arbitrary way that I’m going to write this book. Like, then I’m going to go through and I’m going to write all of the characters, physical descriptions. Because I hate writing those. Yeah.

So it goes through the whole book, do all the character, introductions, write all their descriptions first. And then I go in and I do the dialogue and the action, and it’s not the perfect way of doing it, but it makes every, mix, every book, different. I hate writing characters descriptions.

Crystal Hunt: That’s an interesting way to think about it because it’s, that’s like old offset printing where you have the four different colours of plates and you basically stamp a different colour on top of each one until you get the full picture, right?

They do that colour separation. So it’s kind of a neat way to think of, of printing a story where it’s, it’s layering in those pieces. Um, Yeah.

Angela Pepper: And it’s funny cause that they don’t even, they don’t even do that kind of printing anymore. Cause everything’s digital. But yeah, it used to be CMYK and I, I had a boyfriend who was a pressman and I actually, he would look at flyers and say, Oh, that the cyan is off or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Old timey things that don’t happen anymore.

Crystal Hunt: Picture books are still, some of them I think are actually printed offset still out there in the world.

Angela Pepper: Well that makes sense. Yeah. Cause it’s not like a pizza delivery flyer.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah. If you’re going to do a few thousand of them, then it, it, I think anything after about 2000 becomes worth it to do offset because the press setup is so involved, but then the print cost per unit comes down a lot.

Once you get past that point, it’s pretty cool. I have some, from back in the days, actually, when I, when I, I first met you, we have some of our plates from a world of stories, which was a, an anthology we did as a literacy fundraiser. And the printer sent me the four colored plates and they’re still there.

They’re metal and they’re super sharp and scary, but they have each different residues have different colours on them. It was very, it was a really fun way to see that. But anyway, that’s what came to mind when you said later those elements, that’s really fun. Is there another sort of way, you’ve tried to write a story in terms of a different process? I think that’s a cool thing to explore.

Different writing processes

Angela Pepper: Well, different, different levels of outlining. So I’ll do extremely detailed outlining one book and then I’ll do really light outlining the next book. I always come up with something, something silly. I remember reading once that the, like, I think it was John Truby was saying that the he’s a screenwriting story guy.

He was saying that the real pro screen writers they put in the dialogue last. Yeah and so I’ve tried, I’ve tried doing that, sort of creating the whole story and then putting the dialogue in last, but really that’s just an outline, right?

Crystal Hunt: Yeah.

Angela Pepper: So yeah, just, I play around with different, the process or I give myself a challenge, like write 2000 words today or write one chapter or try to speed write it.

And it’s, it’s hard getting the productivity out of yourself. If that’s the tough part.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah, we’ve got to use all the tricks at your disposal to get around those little avoidance. The fear level is high when it’s something with high stakes for you as a creator, and you have this perfect vision in your mind of how it’s going to be.

And of course, extracting that and making it a real thing is not flawless as the process goes.

Angela Pepper: Yep. I found interesting things through talking with other writers, and discovering things about yourself. Like for example, I have almost no visual imagination. I don’t see anything like a lot… I know it’s weird, but a lot of writers we’ll just sit down and they’re just, the scene is playing out in their head and they’re writing it.

I have nothing. There’s nothing in there. I don’t know how I’m able to write, but I literally it’s the story doesn’t happen until I’m putting the words onto the page and then it becomes very real. But it’s not there until I write it. So that’s why character descriptions are so hard for me, because if I, if I go and I write what the character looks like, then I can see the character.

And then it’s really clear to me, but yeah. You know, from book to book, I forget, and I have to go back and a half to like, figure out what they look like. I have to, it’s almost like I have to write it for myself. So that I can.

Crystal Hunt: Interesting. Do you use visual cues? Like for me, I’m, I’m terrible with geography and layouts of things. And I have to use floor plans that are real house to describe cause I can’t picture it in my head, but for characters, I usually pull a stock image or an image from the internet somewhere of what that character looks like, because I don’t remember it very well either. Like, is that something that you find helpful or is it a…

Angela Pepper: I guess you can, occasionally I’ll imagine, an actor, like I’ll cast it for an actor. But for the most part, I just reread over the descriptions. So for example, in my series Bible, I’ll have, like there’s a recurring character named Frank and every time I describe him in a book, I’ll describe them a little differently. I don’t do a copy paste. Like it’s yeah. I don’t know if you remember Nancy Drew, but the copy paste description every time. Um, so I do new description. So then every time he appears in a book, the first time he appears I have a new description, so I added into the series Bible. And so I go, I read all of that over and it creates this really clear image of him.

And I’ll just kind of go with whatever, like in the early books, I didn’t realize that he had like a crooked, like a crooked chin. And then at some point he had a cricket chin and then I really, I really liked that and I could picture it. And so now I always mention it. So it’s sort of like builds up in, in layers over time.

Crystal Hunt: Excellent. Back to the layering again, that’s going to be our, that’s going to be our theme. So let’s, let’s apply that layering theme to building an author career because you’ve kind of done that process multiple times with different pen names, layering in those different pen names and experiences to kind of get to where you are now.

So what are some of the stages that you think kind of happened through the, through that process of building a pen name or building a writing career? Where there consistency?

Angela Pepper: I think the big breakthrough for me was when I realized that people don’t really follow authors and they don’t necessarily even know whose book they’re reading.

Right. It’s like, not us. We know, and our audience, we know what we’re reading, but most people don’t know who they’re reading. And so, so the big breakthrough for me is that every series that you write is a separate business. You might get some crossover from one of your series to another similar series, but I’ve, I’ve got 10 years of data of sales, of different pen names and different series.

I can run a massive promotion on one of my mystery series and if you just look at the sales chart for my other stuff, it is as though nothing happened, right? The cross crossover between a different series is just, it’s really low. You now, the people who do crossover, they’ll be your, your most supportive and amazing fans and they are really important. They’re the ones who post the reviews. They’re the ones who send you like the encouraging comments on your Facebook page and makes you happy. It’s all very important but when I realized that nobody cares about me, however, they really, really care about my book characters.

Then that was sort of like the magic thing. Like Angela Pepper, you know, they could kind of take her, leave her, but like Zara Riddle, who’s in the book. They love her. They love her. If Angela does the wrong thing by Zara, then they’re mad at me. So, yes. So once you realized that you think, well, my website, my Twitter, my Facebook page, those are all about Angela.

And they don’t care about Angela. So definitely have a website, have a mailing list, have all this stuff, but I don’t, I don’t suffer any kind of delusion that they really care what’s going on with Angela more than just like a passing curiosity. So I would say like my whole marketing, my own marketing comes from understanding that the characters that I write about are my business.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah. Yeah, that kind of made sense. It does for sure. Yeah. I think that’s really interesting because we do. You know, we have this idea that if we just build up our own author brand, that we’re just anything that we launch is going to be snapped up by our readers. But in fact, and I’ve heard stats quoted before, and I wish I could remember the source, but I can’t that around 10% of readers will make the jump with you when you go to a new series, like if you’ve built up an audience, that you really can’t count on any more than about 10%, that will just read it because it’s you. There was some direct connection. I think if you can do a sort of bridge where some of the characters crossover, like the spinoff series they do on TV all the time with a, they take a character from one series and they make them the main character of a new series.

Then you can sort of lead a few more people across that way, but that people really do, as he said, get attached to a certain point world, a certain setting, a certain cast of characters. That’s really, really what they’re interested in.

Angela Pepper: I did at my book. I mean, book five and six, most people with series know that there’s a big drop off after book five before you hit book six.

So on my book six, I actually switched the main character point of view. And I went back in time, which people do not like. But I like so I had a big drop-off between five and six. Then once I got booked eight and nine out there was no drop-off people just kept reading right through, because I thought, well, maybe this isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but they want to keep going.

And it’s a funny thing, but I would consider when you, when you take an existing character and you branch them off, I would consider that still basically the same series. I don’t, It’s not as risky of a move as doing something completely different. Yeah.

Crystal Hunt: There’s definitely a slightly higher percentage of…

Angela Pepper: I mean, it’s a little hard on your ego there, for sure. If you, if you’re getting into this business, so have people, you know, validate you and say that you’re great and your work is great and your writing is great, that won’t, it may not, it may happen. It may not, but we have to. No, well, we’re, we’re going through something interesting in our house.

My husband who is the big sci-fi nerd has been working for the past three years on a sci-fi trilogy. And so we held back his first book so that we could launch all three of them at once. And he was really excited that as his first reviews came in and they were really good. And I said, you can’t really believe them because if you believe your five stars, you’re going to have to believe your one stars.

You have to go with how you feel about the book and that’s, that’s the truth. That’s the reality.

Crystal Hunt: Well, and you know, my cohost on the show is sci-fi and fantasy author. So if you’re wanting to give your husband a little name, shout out, and send our listeners to check out his books as well. You are welcomed to reveal his identity.

Angela Pepper: Oh yes. It’s not a secret. I’ve told my readers and to both of our surprise, a bunch of them went and read his books and thought they were great. His author name is Darcy Troy Paulin.

Crystal Hunt: What’s the series name?

Angela Pepper: Boy, I’ve stared at it enough. Lost Colony Uprising and the book titles, I’ll say Starship in them.

He’s doing great. As of, as of the moment that we’re recording this, he is doing a free run on book one. And we’ve got some ads booked and it’s the first big marketing push. And then in the next couple of days, book two and book three come out. And so he has told me he doesn’t want the login to Amazon to see the book sales, but he just asks me every couple hours.

Crystal Hunt: It’s a wise person who knows where their boundaries need to be. It can be a terrifyingly addictive click refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh.

Angela Pepper: It is weird. It is like, it just sends us a little pellet of happiness or something. It’s so bizarre.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah. We’re like little durables, like pushing the little, validate me water button.

Angela Pepper: It’s so weird. And, and, and the sad thing is you just need a stronger dose all the time. I used to get excited when I sold one book. Yeah. And now I look at the charts: I’m like only a hundred books today?

Crystal Hunt: Oh, how we grow?

Angela Pepper: Yeah. Yeah. Spoiled, but also spoiled, but still at the same time. Very grateful.

Crystal Hunt: And I think it’s interesting to kind of have come back around to starting over with multiple pen names and multiple projects. I would say, what did you learn from Angela’s adventures and other pen name adventures that you applied to releasing your husband’s books in the present climate?

Angela Pepper: The big thing is the technique of holding back the early novels and releasing a batch of them all at the same time.

Crystal Hunt: Right.

Angela Pepper: It’s just, it’s so boring. And yet it works. Yeah. You can release book one people can love it, but the, the chances of you being.., I mean, you can put a link at the back of your book for signing up for your newsletter, but so few people are going to do that and yeah, it’s just, it’s just sad to think of all the people who read, who read the first book and then two years later they don’t know that the upcoming books come out because it was just one book. And anyway, it’s sometimes it’s easier to just kiss goodbye to those early sales that you might’ve had. Um, just so that you know, that there’s a better chance that you’re going to, I don’t know, it’s almost like, well, you’re, you’re, you are in competition with other books. Like don’t tell anyone, don’t tell anyone. I mean, I know we’re all in this to help each other, but you, you really are fighting over people’s mental real estate. And if you can get someone to discover your book and then rate three of your books, where they, they laugh and they cry and their hearts break and they, you know, go through this emotional journey that they’re gonna remember that book more than they will, the book that took them a third of the way there.

So it’s a little for…

Crystal Hunt: And how far apart are you releasing these three?

Angela Pepper: We just, so with my husband’s book, we just put up book one, I think about three weeks before we released two and three. Just to give it some time to get the reviewers, to post some reviews on book one and I don’t know, kind of a soft launch thing.

And the first three weeks we made $25. I know, really, I think it’s really important because like in our writing group, people believed that because he lives with me that he was going to have this amazing, magical, perfect launch and everything was going to happen. And, you know, the stars would align.

And I think it’s important to say that no, even knowing everything that I know, he made, it was $25 for the first couple of weeks. It’ll ramp up. Now that we have some promo booked and we’re doing a free, a free giveaway on book one for five days and the next, and we have some advertising books and so it’ll grow from there.

But, man, I could not sell consulting services to save my life because I will tell people that and I tell people that in the writing group and they just think, oh, well you must be lying. You must be trying to keep the competition down because that can’t possibly be true. How could you put your heart and your soul into these books for years and years and they’re so good and you do everything and like that’s all that you make. It’s just, yeah. Anyway, we, I had a zoom meeting recently with my writing group and there was a lady who asked about, about marketing and I told her how it is and she’s just, so upset about it. Just like, well, I didn’t get into this to have to learn how to use Facebook ads and, and, uh, outraged.

And I just, Hey man, take the outrage down, down the hall. We have the freedom. We have the freedom as authors these days to put our workout, literally nobody is stopping me from publishing any dumb idea that I get over the last 10 years and I’ve had some pretty dumb ideas. Nobody stopped me when I was a kid growing up, no one was able to do that. You had to go through a publisher. So, I mean, on one hand, sure. You can complain about how it’s not very glamorous to have to learn how to run advertising campaigns. But on the other hand, you get to, you, you get to be in charge anyway. That’s, that’s my little soap box moment for the day.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah. I think if you are, if you are the kind of, and we are the strategic authorpreneur podcasts. So if you are the kind of person who’s willing to embrace the opportunity to be an authorpreneur, to really just accept that the business you don’t, and in fairness, you don’t have to embrace the business part, there is nothing that says you have to do that unless you want to make money. If you just want to write and put your books out as a hobby, great. Do that. But stop whining about not making any money. If you’re willing to embrace the business part, then do what you can and learn how all of these tools work.

And then you can have some expectations of, you know, revenue generation happening. But unlike in our witchy books, the magic doesn’t just happen all on its own. Right? Magic always comes at a cost. So if you want magic in your sales numbers and your other things, the universe is going to extract that in another way.

Angela Pepper: I just hope I don’t listen to a podcast one day where a wife makes her husband’s new book a smash hit right out of the gate because that, that sort of raise the stakes.

Crystal Hunt: Then we’ll all judge you. But that’ll be then, and this is now. So I think you’re safe. You’re safe.

Angela Pepper: About the selling thing. I think that we’re, I think that you and I, and some of the people who started over 10 years ago, I think we’re really lucky that we had to deal with those brick walls of traditional publishing.

Because I think it made us more, more appreciative of the tools that we have nowadays. Whereas these, these kids, these days, these kids, these days, they jump into internet forum and they say, I wrote a chapter of a book could someone tell me how to make it perfect and tell me what genre to write so I can instantly make a million dollars and quit my day job?

Crystal Hunt: My favourite is like this tool that instantly formatted my book into a perfectly ebook. didn’t know this one thing about my book. And so this is broken, this is silly. And I’m like, do you know how long it used to take to hand code an ebook? Like to have to HTML every stupid little formatting thing.

I’m like, you don’t understand. And then you sound like that person who was like, I had to carry my brother both ways to school uphill in the snow with no shoes, but we really do have a different perspective and that what used to take us, you know, potentially hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars for InDesign to be able to lay out a book and, you know, and then, then figure out how to get it to a printer physically.

It was discs involved. This was a thing.

Angela Pepper: You’re knowledge of old things is older than your age appears to be, be accidentally dating yourself

Crystal Hunt: 2007 was the first indie published book that I did. And it was a full colour children’s book, which was offset printed in Manitoba by Friesens.

And there was no indie publishing. There was no any of these tools, that was not a thing. So yes, I did all of the things, the absolute hardest way you could have done them at the beginning before there really was an industry of indie publishing. So yes, I am older than I look true story.

Angela Pepper: I can relate. I used to do site design and I remember designing for the average monitor size, which was 640 by 40 pixels at maximum 256 colors, half of which were green. And people access the websites through dial-up. Oh, yeah, yeah,

Crystal Hunt: Yeah, no, it is. It is quite it’s miraculous. When you look at our current publishing process, when I compare like my original indie publishing process to what, you know, your first indie publishing process would have been like in that 2010, 2011 kind of era, and then look at what we have access to now where it’s this abundance of tools and these instant like click a button, then you’re distributed around the world inside of 24 hours. It is so amazing to see. And it is interesting to see how that then trickles out to the capacity of the indie author. Because if you’re not spending thousands of hours on the publishing side, you do have the opportunity then to turn to either ads or to generating more content.

And that brings us around to something that you and I talked about when we were setting up this session was that there are kind of a couple of different approaches to how you can grow an author career or grow a brand or a series brand. I don’t know if you want to elaborate that a little bit for our listeners.

Fire Hose approach

Angela Pepper: Fire hose is just a word I use all the time to explain, like, like everyone knows that you have to put out a lot of stuff and you have to work hard. And, but the word a lot ,is it’s, it’s not as good as description as a firehose because when you say firehose to someone, they get it. When you say you have to firehose out content they understand that that’s Oh, far more than is comfortable or, or so, yeah, the, the two big ways that I see other people making it in indie publishing is by either firehosing out content or firehosing ad spend. And you could do a combination, the people who are. I’m a bit Amazon centric, and I apologize, other vendors for eBooks do exist and I’ve been on them.

And I like it. But Amazon has a bonus system, the Kindle unlimited all-stars. And a hundred percent of the people who are taking those all star bonuses they’ve got two, firehoses going, they’ve got content coming out monthly, if not more. Uh, and they have high, high ad spends like 10 grand a month is like nothing.

I’m sure, I’m sure there are indie authors who are spending 50 grand a month on ads without them there are, and it’s a little, and that’s what I mean by firehose. Like far more than any person would feel comfortable with.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah. And I think the idea of a pressurized line is also important there because it isn’t just that you are putting out a whole bunch of content, you have to keep that flow going in order to maintain that momentum. And so that’s, the second piece is there’s gotta be more in the tank. That’s going to follow in order to keep that working for you. It’s not, you put a whole bunch out and then you just sit back and watch it do its

Angela Pepper: Yeah, the whole idea of passive income, it’s kind of a, kind of a myth, although there is, there is a certain amount that anything will sell on its own in kind of a set it and forget it method. So you can still make your first in series free and it’s more of a trickle, but, but it does work. I’ve got some stuff in my back list that I don’t have the time and energy to put a lot of focus in and I’ll just make book one free and sell a couple of copies of book two and three and yeah, the water metaphor I guess.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah, it is valuable. And so for a little bit of context or scale, you know, when we’re talking about a lot of content, you mentioned like something every month, is what a lot of authors are doing. I think that magic space is about six weeks between things on Amazon, that after that point.

So they say after release month, you’re going to lose about 30% of your sales every month, if you don’t do something to offset that. So that’s where a lot of people, even if they’re not doing that massive, massive, massive, mad ad spend me, they’ll, still be doing, uh, just a reasonable amount of advertising to keep that flow up a little bit so that they don’t lose all the momentum after launch month. If they do have a little bit of a break between releases, because if you’re writing full length, novels and going through the full editing process and everything else, you can’t necessarily be putting out one of those months.

Lots of people leaving three to four full length novels in a year is four times what most traditionally published career building authors would have done like a book a year is an aggressive publishing schedule in the traditional world for the most part, unless you’re talking romance and category romance in which case, you know, four to six was kind of expected, but even then, I don’t know how much of that is an artifact of the changes in the industry to try to compete with Indies and how much has always been like that.

Angela Pepper: I like with my, with my schedule. I like that no, one’s going to quit reading my series because I put out too many books for them to keep up.

That’s a nice, I think I’ve, I’m currently, I’m only, I’m only putting out maybe two books a year in that series. Yeah. And yeah. I like, I like, knowing that if someone’s a fan of the series that when a new book comes out, that they will be, they will be excited and it’ll be an auto buy for them. So to, to my tips for like bringing up the firehose of content, some people are really productive and they’re just how they’re geared up. They can write three or four books in a month. It’s, it’s pretty amazing. Not everyone can do that. There are other ways that you can achieve that. So I did, I did share pen names once with a couple of authors where we were writing these romance serials. And so we, we were sort of taking turns, releasing books under the pen name and, What’s another thing?

Just shorter books. Yeah. So my husband, he wrote these, this trilogy, they’re a hundred thousand words each and now that he’s got the three books out, he’s figuring out how to do adventures with the characters and he likes kind of more of a TV, serial format. So he’s going to do short adventures with like a big arc.

So he’ll be, he’s still, he’s kind of slow writer, but. But yeah, I mean, there’s things you can do to increase your release frequency.

Crystal Hunt: Yes absolutely. And writing short, we in fact, have another podcast episode that we’ll be out by the time this one airs, which is talking about some opportunities and advantages if you are able to write some shorter stuff and you can mix and match as well in your links and have some variety. And that buys you the freedom and the ability to do some more sort of fill in the gaps releases between your big, big books in your series, and to get some action being generated and to keep those algorithms working in your favour for sure.

Angela Pepper: And the other thing is too that I, I consider a 30,000 word book, a book. Most readers do so. If you’re putting out 30,000 word books and they’re complete stories and people like them, there’s no need to apologize in the description for, for the length of anything that’s over 30,000. You don’t have to call it a novella.

I mean, technically it is, but, I’ve, I’ve got a friend I coach and she is doing these mysteries around 35,000 words, and nobody has complained about the length of them. Because people are happy. They’re happy if they get a complete story. So I think some of the, some of us just have these, I don’t know it’s almost like these, these good girl anxieties. I don’t know if you’re born or your first born. Okay. Yeah, of course you are. Yes. Yeah. So am I, big shocker? But like we have to get over. We have to get over these things of. Um, Oh, am I allowed to do that? Am I allowed to put out a novella and just act like it’s a real book?

Crystal Hunt: I did that, and that’s exactly what I thought. And it was like, I don’t know. I think, well, I’m still working on it, but it’s been like three or four years now, and I only, I only have novellas, which is an interesting conversation. But to, to this date, you know, the longest book I’ve written in the fiction world is I think it’s about 36,000 words.

So that’s, it’s an interesting conversation to have that perception of ourselves that it’s not a real book because you know, in the categories where I write, if I had been pitching to a traditional publisher, I would have needed 55,000 words and I couldn’t get there, which is why I was writing novellas because I could get there.

And so it is that interesting as an indie person, you have to make those definitions of what it works for you because it works for you. I mean, the old rules were in place because they knew that a category romance should be X number of pages, which took X number of words to fill up on their printing, press template.

It wasn’t because you know, it wasn’t a good story if it varied from that, it was because those presses were set up at a specific size shape, and number of words and pages, and you had to fit that model. And that was how that works. So that’s a, it is an interesting exercise for all of us as our own bosses and our own CEOs of our strategic authorepreneur companies to decide what works for us and for our author business.

Angela Pepper: So I found something helpful for getting over you’re kind of like your good girl tendencies was to actually hang out with some really shady people. I mean, I say that with the utmost respect, uh, I mean, people who are very business savvy when it comes to publishing, it can be an unsettling experience to, to run in circles with some of these people, but there’s a lot to be learned.

Like just like the, the things, the things that some people do you think will, if you would never admit to doing that on a podcast, because people think it’s wrong, but, um, it’s like, like sending out, like even to something as simple as sending out review copies, some people get so upset about the whole idea of sending a free book to someone and hoping that they’ll post a review.

And Oh, but if you only send it to people who are fans of your work, they’re only going to post good reviews to which so? It’s still okay. It’s okay. Send your book to people who are going to like your book and then to say, could you please post a review? Like it is okay, it is not like I’ve seen some people do some immoral things and so I know that the bar for the bar for what’s questionable is it’s, it’s a bit further out then sending out arcs to your review group.

Angela Pepper: It’s okay. It’s okay. If you knew about what what’s going on in the sausage factory and how the sausage was getting made for real behind the scenes, you’re going to be okay with your little kind of your, your things that you felt like even just like, you know, comparing your book to, to another book.

Or saying something positive about your book in your book description? It’s okay. It’s okay for you to say this is a great book.

Crystal Hunt: I think that’s something that we struggle with as writers so much, is that. If you can’t say nice things about your book, nor will anyone else like who else is going to tell people by it, you are wearing all the hats.

You are the marketing department. You are the publicity department, you are your books ambassador, and you have to get comfortable with crossing that line of your comfort in order to actually suggest people do a thing. Because I think we also make this assumption that the readers. Are just like us. And they know that if they posted a book review, it would be super helpful so if they’re not doing it it’s for a reason, honestly, is they just don’t even think about it. Like, unless you suggest they do it, why would they think to do that? They don’t necessarily understand the industry or how that makes a difference. Most people just think, oh, whatever, like plenty of other people left review already.

I don’t have anything different to say what could one more. You know, I liked it possibly and so educating our readers and asking them to help us on when we need their help for things like posting reviews or, you know, would you like an Arc copy is interesting. I think to look at where those blocks are for us.

And I know we have to get over ourselves.

Angela Pepper: Sometimes. Sometimes I tell them. I’ll say here it is poster review, just so you know, I’m not asking you to post a review, to like boost up my feelings. It’s, it’s a marketing thing. It’s a business thing. Like I find that being honest is just it’s great. You don’t, you don’t have to worry about contradicting yourself if you’re just always honest.

I mean, you don’t have to tell them everything. You don’t have to say, like, I spent this much and I want to make this much, or, um, anything unsavoury like that, like, oh, you guys better review this or I’m going to quit this series, but, it’s good to, it’s good to, it’s good to be somewhat honest about what’s going on without like, sometimes I wonder if I should even tell people that, like I published the books myself.

Myself. I’m pretty sure most of them think Amazon publishes me.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah. That is an interesting conundrum of like, do you say you’re an indie author? Do people know what that means? Does it just help other authors who are reading your stuff, who get the jury indie? Like where, where is the usefulness in that? I think, yeah, I think it depends a little bit on what genre you’re in and who your audience is.

If, if they, kind of understand in the beginning where that is. And, and if you’re competing with traditionally published authors or not in your niche, because that is very different, as well that you, they understand, it’s just a little old, you there’s no marketing machine behind you. There’s no giant company who’s sort of taking all the money from your sales and supporting you also in the process. I think sometimes it, it could help actually, people understand that, you know, you’re a, a one person show and, you know, running the business along with the writing and everything else, then that can be helpful. But yes, mostly when do I get the next book is really the ultimate question. And the only question that they really care about, and it is that like trying not to be completely sold, destroyed. When you say. You know, you put out a book and not 24 hours emailing you to ask when the next one is. And so if we cycle back around to your original advice, which is like, write a few so that you can release them and that your answer when they’re like, Oh my God, I love this is like two weeks from today or whatever it is.

But you have a date, you know, when it’s not this sort of amorphous, like eventually when I get around to it, um, or can pull this off amongst all the chaos of life. It’s just like, Oh yeah, Thursday, the 17th will be when that book comes out, then they have an actionable, like follow up thing.

Angela Pepper: I was really excited recently, Amazon extended our preorder timeline.

It used to be, you could only put up a preorder three months in advance. Now I believe it’s a year. Is that right? Okay. And, that’s nice because then for your super fans who want to support you, and I think a preorder is like a little, it’s a little pat on the back of encouragement. It’s I love seeing preorders come in.

And, and not, not just, not just the earnings, cause I don’t get a ton of preorders. It’s not like a huge chunk, but it just feels like I know as a person who consumes entertainment, I know that I get excited when my new movie or the new season of Better Call Saul comes out or whatever. I know how excited I am and it makes me, it makes me feel so proud that I’m sharing that little bit of that little happiness with someone else that, I mean, the future is so uncertain, but it’s nice that they know that in November, they’re going to get one of their favourite books. Yeah. It’s nice.

Crystal Hunt: It is something to look forward to. And as the writer, definitely knowing someone at someone specific is waiting for your book to be ready so they can read it and they’re that excited is very motivating.

Angela Pepper: Like those sales count, like 10 times.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah, they do, because I think there’s a percentage wise. It’s like 1% of readers will actually preorder or something. And so it’s teeny tiny little amount, which means that for every person who did take that action, there’s probably a hundred more out there who are interested in reading the book.

They just are going to wait to commit, especially cause you can preorder if you’re in KU. So you have to just wait till the book drops. So I think you can safely multiply those numbers out, um, in a couple of zeros, just like you can with blog comments, you know, for every one blog comment left, you probably had a hundred or even a thousand readers of that post because people just don’t engage like that.

Yep. I have a newsletter list of, I think it’s just under 4,000 people and I will usually get preorders around a thousand for my preorder books. And I find that when I, when I email people through the newsletter that a new book is out like 50 people would buy it that day from that newsletter. I don’t, I don’t know.

I don’t know why people are signing up for my newsletter and then they don’t just run out and get the book on release day. But, um, I’ll never understand it. It’s like, but like, it doesn’t matter. It’s not, it’s important to just know that like you it’s, it’s this there’s nothing wrong with you, but like a hundred percent of the world isn’t super crazy over your book launch day it’s okay. It’s okay is some people have a lukewarm appreciation for your series because those people over time, they also help support your career. So I don’t, like I used to get, you know, stupid. Some of the things that you get offended by, but I used to just get really bothered by people who would sign up for the newsletter and then like pretty small launch numbers.

And then I would email people like. Three times and then more people would buy it on the third email. And then I thought, well, do I have nag you into buying my book? So I have to hit you with it three times and seven magic number in marketing.

Crystal Hunt: Oh, it’s fairly horrifying. But I find it fascinating. I still have people downloading my first book in the series, which is free and like 4,000 places and was published in 2014 and has never been a paid product.

Still people clicking in my newsletter to download it after being on the list for like two years.

Angela Pepper: I would say that’s weird when you have a sale.

Crystal Hunt: So people or don’t take action on things necessarily like it’s, it does take a few tries and you don’t know if they just skim past that email and their kids started crying after they opened it and they didn’t actually see what was in it. Like, you know, we forget that there’s lives being lived on the other end of this process. And so I think that is a good reminder to just. You know, say it more times than we think we need to and be more upfront about the, will you please buy my book in those moments when that’s the appropriate statement to be making like on launch week?

Well I’m conscious that all of the minutes have gone by, in a speedy rush as they do. But I would love if you will tell our listeners where to find you, if they would like some witchy mysteries and, or cozy mysteries.

Angela Pepper: Sure you can visit my website at www.angelapepper.com. Spelled exactly how it sounds. My books are definitely on Amazon. They may be in other places from time to time. Oh, I’m doing really well in audio books, which we didn’t touch on, but, um, I really promote audio books to my fellow writers.

It’s just an amazing experience to have, uh, a narrator dramatize your book. It’s not a movie it’s better than a movie because if someone made a movie out of your work, they would screw it all up. But these audio narrators, they read every word you wrote. And they’re just amazing. It’s just, it’s the reward for writing a book as far as I’m concerned is getting to collaborate with an audio book narrator. So all of Angela Peppers audio books are in audible and Amazon. And, one of my fabulous narrators, Tiffany Williams has gotten us a finalist, two years in a row for a indie audience book award. So that’s exciting.

It’s like the Oscars. Let’s be honest. It’s the Oscars of  audio books.

Crystal Hunt: That is fantastic. Yes, it is a real rush to hear. Basically, it’s like a radio play of your book and, you know, with the accents and the characters and everything else is so fun. Um, and it does open up a whole another world of, of listeners readers as well, since it doesn’t tend to be the same people in both formats.

Angela Pepper: Yep. And I’ve always, I write for, I’m an auditory reader myself. I’m not a speed reader, so I write for auditory readers. And so it’s just, it’s just, it’s my jam. It’s totally nice. I thought my dream was to do eBooks and I love the eBooks, but I really loved the audio books.

Post interview discussion

Michele Amitrani: Welcome back. So the interview with Angela was really, in my opinion, almost breathtaking.

There were so much things that I didn’t know, and that her experience made shine. I actually took a lot of notes. I’m not going to tell everything that, made my day and that shown, but there are a couple of things that I really want to focus on, then for me, if dissected them are going to explain a couple of elements that I believe to be useful for people that are serious about self-publishing.

These one thing that, Angela says,, and I’m not going to quote her. I’m going to just paraphrase there. She says, most people don’t know they’re reading. And I’m talking about the readers. Yeah. They don’t care about in this case, Angela Pepper, but they love the characters of their stories. And this is something I’ve never thought about before.

I don’t know exactly why, but I always, of course, and I think it’s normal, I identify with the books and with the characters, but again, I failed to see that it’s important how the readers see my work, not the contrary. And this is something we already discussed when we were talking in a previous episode about the David Gaughran approach with, with approach to the readers journey.

So focus your attention to the readers. Um, and I think what Angela says here can be connected to the same meaning that Davis said that in his book, for you as an author, it’s important to ship content, you don’t necessarily have the power to see how this content is going to be seen.

And I really find the Crystal freeing this, phrase that she said that Angela said, most people don’t know who they’re reading. They really don’t care about our name. They care of how good are our stories and our fast that we can write the next one. So I was wondering, Crystal what do you think of this particular approach to publishing, focusing it not on yourself as an author, but on the reader’s journey again.

And if it’s like it does make sense, or it doesn’t really make sense if we, as authors, should be more attached with our things so we should really use more of the businesslike ego, like approach and say,, this is a product the moment I finished this and this the final point, I don’t have control over that. The only thing I can control is the next book.

Crystal Hunt: Yeah, I think it’s, it’s very freeing as an author to think about the fact that it isn’t about you because it takes the pressure off as you said, in terms of when we’re trying to figure out what do I send out to my list through my mailing list. You know, what am I going to say in those emails?

What do I put in my newsletter? If you think about it in terms of, you have to be witty and engaging and you have to be something or someone that people want to follow. That puts a lot of pressure on you to kind of put yourself forward, which since then a lot of others became others because we live in our heads with our imaginary friends most of the time, we often have a hard time promoting ourselves as something out there in the world. And so personally the fact that I can relate to my readers and connect to my readers over a mutual love of these characters and books and this world is very helpful for me to be able to kind of get past that shyness or that awkwardness that I feel around putting myself out there in that way.

And, you know, there isn’t the pressure to share all of the personal details and you can ,or you better be able to generate legitimate excitement about the characters you’ve created, because if you’re not interested in them, nobody else is going to be. So I think that is a really great way of looking at it.

And I have to say as a rule reader, because I read voraciously in my genres as well, I’ve read probably hundreds of thousands of books by this point. I mean, I. I have had long periods of my life where I’ve read two to three books a day in romance because I read fast and the books aren’t that long. And I haven’t had cable since I was well, not ever, actually I’ve never had cable, so all the books get consumed, but if you asked me to rattle off the author’s names, I can’t tell you most of them.

And I’m an author so I am maybe even more attention to that then some readers do, but I can tell you the name of a series or the characters that stuck in my brain. And that is I think really where those connections happen. So that’s something definitely, I think she was really on the right track with that.

And I think is a huge relief when you acknowledge that, for sure.

Michele Amitrani: Yeah. I think like discussing this it’s important for that reason that keeps the pressure off shoulders, but at the same time made us realize how they think, which should be something that is always, always at the back of our mind as creators.

Right? And there was something else that actually, uh, Angela said, and it’s something that I’m using to link to the same title of this episode. She mentioned the firehose approach to different kinds of things. And I was confused at the beginning because I didn’t understand what she meant by firehose or firehosing.

She used also that verb and she basically defined this word as firehosing, for example, fire hosing, out content means to put out a lot of content or a firehosing ad spend it means of course, to spend a lot of money on advertisement. Um, this is something that is major, especially at the moment, I believe in many authors career, Crystal, and I think this is something that you also saw, for yourself when you start in the, producing and publishing, uh, one, novella per month.

And you continue doing that consistently month over month after month, you had your own challenges, uh, that was something significant for you that basically changed, not only your approach to publishing, but it’s also when you start to seeing really result also on the visibility and the sales kind of things.

So she’s basically saying, there is a point and I do believe this is a, like one of the starting point where an author can see, okay, now things are changing to me, which is incredibly difficult to get to this point. So I’m going to tell you my 5 cents on this theory. Okay? So this is, I’m going to use a very awful word, but this is the breaking point.

Meaning, like if you pass this point and then you can, or making as an author, if you keep going, uh, releasing content. But before this, over here, there’s basically an understanding here that the author belief, their work as art instead of craft. So they delay before because of perfectionism. So they may be released one book every two years or every three years.

And this is, I’m just saying this, uh, based on my experience. Okay. Crystal in my experience in about seven years in the self-publishing realm. So I always I’m worried about the content that I was providing the form. So I would have a book finish and then I will just re read it and changing it to changing it over and over again.

What Angela is saying is actually different. She’s one of those authors that went over that point and she just releasing product because she believes in herself and in her stories. So she’s able to release more than one work per year , at one point in her career, if I’m not mistaken, she was raising several works a three year.

Now, if I’m not mistaken again, she said she’s releasing something like two, but there are self-published authors at this moment that releasing one work for per month. Can you believe that? Like releasing a knock, just giving it away for free, like I’m doing it. I’m talking about a polished them great content with a great cover editing, consistently every single month. You do that every month for a year or two, that’s a firehose approach.

That’s basically the definition, because if you are releasing that many content, that much content you’re ensuring that you have a back list, first think of quality works. Doesn’t matter. The length we already discussed about that at 20,000 words novella is as valuable as no, if you’re doing it right, we spent a whole episode about talking about the value of shorter stories.

So fire hosing means this basically having the liberty to understand me as an author, providing entertainment as much as I can nail down this entertainment and I can make it better and more consistent my luck as an author is going to increase, but that’s why I was talking about the threshold. I’m here I think, you know, I’m still I’m figuring out things. Hence why my challenge, because I don’t know what, I, I don’t even know what I like to write. So I’m experiencing it, I’m experimenting. But once you are on this threshold, once you get to know what you can publish consistently with the quality on your back, once you know enough about marketing so you can market your book, not as a professional, you can be helped but as a person that knows what she is doing once, you know, your strength and you know what you can do, and you know that you are delivering a product to a known audience that wants your stories, then you break that point.

And I think it’s something that happened also to you Crystal when you were releasing consistently those romances. You saw a spike on the chart because you so much products, so many products you will deliver how you can cross, promote them with ads on that. If you’re not being you can promote basically anything.

So I just thought that was very useful, even when, uh, she used that approach to the advertisement and she was mentioning, sometimes there are authors, there are so powerful and so established and so rich that they can drop even thousand dollars per month, if not more like $50,000 per month on advertising.

That’s the equivalent of the firehosing approach to advertising. Not everybody can do that, especially like I’m talking about I’m experiencing before with a few dollars per month. So, but I can see that happening, authors that have a big chunk of stories they already have double down their effort on the publishing side.

Now they can also use their resources on, make their work more visible. So I wanted to know your opinion on the fire hosing. I thought a very interesting, what do you think of it?

Crystal Hunt: Yeah, I think, and I’ve experimented with both sides of this. So on the nonfiction side, you have a less content, less frequent releases, but using ads to fill that traffic hole. I think one of the important parts to think about when you think about a fire hose is that it needs a constant stream of water. It needs a pool from which to draw the water or a tank from which to draw the water so that there’s. Always more water to push through the hose and it needs to be pressurized.

There has to be always something coming behind it. As soon as the water levels get too low, or you start running out of water or the pressure drops, right? You end up with, with not great results out the other side. Right? And so that’s where it really comes in. It’s not just about having, you know, a regular things happening for a while.

It’s about keeping that flow and the system works as long as that pressure is up. As soon as that pressure drops, it doesn’t work anymore. And that’s what you see. And so it has been really interesting experimenting with both of those approaches. And for me, definitely the more fun one is the building with the content fire hose, because I love putting up stories and you get the reader interaction.

And that really feeds the joy of it, the writing process, and it all kind of takes on a bit of a life of its own. So for me, that feels much more energizing than the advertising. And so I think you can scale a little bit. You’ve got your fire hose and you can adjust water versus pressure or, or size of the hose or whatever.

You can make adjustments in the way you’re building your own author process. So I think it’s just important to know personality wise what’s going to fit some people don’t write as quickly, but they are rock stars with their ads. And so they, they make that work and there is no right answer, it doesn’t matter what you choose to do, but you do have to do something in order to get that belt.

And I think, especially at the beginning, it’s really hard to get any kind of momentum and what we would call a tipping point is the phrase that is often used for what you called the breaking point. So it’s, you know, I think when you were going up and up and up on a rollercoaster, it’s really hard to get to the top.

And then you get to the top of the hill and then you get to coast a little bit because you have momentum built up and you can, can go and ride that next loop or spin or, or go up over the next hill without it taking so much of your energy, because you’ve already built some momentum, and that’s really what it’s like from the author career side.

It is shocking when I look at the difference between I had two Christmas seasons in a row, one where I released something every three to four weeks from September till Christmas. And it looks like going up that rollercoaster, because you do get that momentum and you really do get that pressurized kind of thing. But if you can’t keep following it up, then you see a drop after and you can absolutely pick that momentum up again, once you start releasing content again. But I think if you’re trying to decide how you’re gonna feed your hose, how you’re going to pressurize your release schedule you want to think about maybe you need to stockpile some work.

And that’s what I found was I couldn’t stay on top of it with all of the marketing and all of the releasing and all of the writing at the same time you drew your focus gets divided and it’s very challenging. So, some people solve that by hiring people to do certain pieces of the process so that they’re not trying to do everything, other people will do what I’m doing right now, which is take a year to just write like crazy and then have a whole bunch of stuff in the tank, right. We’re filling up the tank and we’ll look the host start spraying things out in the fall when, um, the next round of releases starts. But I think you do have to be aware that with each sort of consecutive book you add to your back catalog every task you do after that multiplies out by the number of products you also have.

So yeah. Your management responsibilities also do replicates. So just something to think about, and really it just boils down to where is your passion, right? What, what are you going to prefer? Because anything you enjoy doing, you’re going to be willing to do more of. And so if you’re not avoiding it, you will get momentum and growth much, much easier.

So who is your writing mentor, officially or not?

Now speaking of momentum and growth, one of the things we like to do is challenge ourselves with a question from the curious jar. And so lid is off. I am sticking my hand in. You’re going to tell me when to stop.

Michele Amitrani: Stop now.

Crystal Hunt: A blue one. So who is your writing mentor, officially or not?

So. Yeah, I could dive into that. I have, Nora Roberts is up there because she is somebody who she published her first book, the year I was born. So I’ve been reading her stories—I think I read the first one at 11. And so I’ve been reading her storys always, and so I, you know, like every author you have favourites, not favourites, but I really enjoy the ones that dive into different areas of background really deeply. So I think she does like a standalone title each year and those are fascinating in terms of how thoroughly she can bring you into that world. So it’s, it’s the background of the characters. It’s the jobs they have, but the language that’s used throughout the books is so attuned.

Like if it’s a florist, who’s the main character or someone who runs a garden shop all of the descriptive language is around the world of gardening subtly so you don’t really notice until you start breaking it down. I think the characterization is so well done and I really love the fact that she writes on her different name with detective stuff.

That’s kind of a futurist in some of the books and some of the books are murder mysteries and some, she really just, they’re all kind of blended around on a romantic plot for the most part, but I, I like the spirit of play and I like the consistency over time of building these worlds. And I noticed too that some of the stories are woven together, not in a way that they’re an explicit series, but if you’ve read her books, you can recognize characters from some other parts of her writing, that kind of reappear. So I do, I do really like that. So I would say she’s definitely, probably an unofficial mentor. Plus her dedication and hard work is intense.

She is a woman dedicated to putting her butt in the chair and, also very generous with giving back to the writing community and really has always been a strong voice for women in business and the romance community in general and yeah, has been very good about standing up integrity wise, to support other authors who have had work stolen or things that have happened to them who weren’t in a financial position to defend themselves on their own. So I definitely admire the humanity side as well as the actual writing and character development side.

Michele Amitrani: That’s interesting. Thank you for buying me some done. I was thinking what you were talking.  I do not have what I could think of a single writing mentor.

Like if you asking me like, works that have influenced me, I will just go on with Tolkien and Isaac Asimov, good stuff, but I wouldn’t call them mentor. But while you were talking. I was thinking, I have an innate curiosity of how other authors are going about their craft of writing.

So you would remember that I’m a fan of MasterCard and I use every occasion I have to just use one of the stories that I’ve heard from them. So I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I have an idealized version of a writing mentor composed by many things, that are part of different writers.

So, I try to really get to know the writers that I really respect, and I tried to make an idealized version of them in one massive, author. I don’t know if that makes any sense or there is something over like a supernatural kind of things, but let’s say that, I really respect, Neil Gaiman, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, uh, G.Martin, JK Rowling ,none of them really is my mentor, but they’re some compose an individual that I’m trying to follow, and that is going to instruct me on my writing style and make it better. So I have this idealized version of the writer that I want to be. And I guess this, uh, ethereal will mentor, uh, composed by many faces of different authors that I follow and respect, compose the mentor that is instructing me. So I will say for our how weird this can sound, I don’t really have a name to give to you, but I’ve just the idea, the idea that there is some thing out there that is composed by all the information that I have from all the authors that I respect and that I’m learning from it.

Crystal Hunt: All right. Well, we want to hear who is your writing mentor official or unofficial. So you can drop that in the comments below this episode, wherever you are watching or listening. And if you want to send us a curious jar question, you can email it to ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com and we’ll add it into the mix.

Michele Amitrani: And for show notes, links to resources we mentioned, and coupons or discounts on tools we love, visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com.

Crystal Hunt: Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on our next episode where we’ll be talking about how to decide where and when and on what to spend your hard earned money. So tools, services, how are you going to make your cash help you level up your writing career? So until then happy writing and we’ll see you next week. See you next week.