Join us as we reflect on Month 3 of Going Wide and look at the progress made, the challenges encountered along the way, and discuss solutions to the obstacles we faced this past month.

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Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 053: Going Wide Progress Report #3: March 2021

Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. Welcome to episode 53 of the Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast. I’m Crystal Hunt.

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

If you find this show helpful, you can help us keep the episodes coming by clicking to the buy us a coffee button on the website and the show notes.

Crystal Hunt: In this episode, we’re taking a look at the past month and sharing progress and challenges we encountered along the way. So it’s a progress report on our going wide adventures. And hopefully there’ll be a few gems in there to help you as well. If you were coming up against any of the same challenges that we are, but first we’re going to do a quick update of what is new this past, week, is really two weeks, actually, since we had a break due to a house move and a few technical challenges. So we had a week off, but we are back. We are here and excited to tell you what we’ve been up to. Michele, what have you been doing? 

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele Amitrani: Yeah, those were a couple of a very exciting weeks. I don’t know about you, Crystal. But, yeah, I was actually taking some of the time to read a lot.

One of the latest book we already spoke about that in Erin’s episode, was Wide for the Win. I have finished it and am rereading it, it was that good. Very helpful. There were a ton of things that I didn’t know. I even contacted, Mark just to compliment on how much the book was helpful. I’m usually very happy if I read the one nonfiction book and I learn one new thing.

With Mark’s book I stopped counting at 29, because it was so many things one after the other. And that’s since we’re going to speak about wide a lot, and since we speak about wide a lot I think is one of the best book on the subject so far, I strongly recommend it to you if you are interested in really being serious on the wide front.

So that has been a very interesting reading. And I’m finally happy to announce that I am sitting back and enjoying something that I’ve been working on for quite some time. The Permafree book the very first one that I wanted to release in the Italian market is out.

And it’s been out for five days now, and I’ve been seeing the copies downloaded. And hopefully, I’m going to learn something from this experiment. I’m going to talk about that a bit more in one of the future reports, because now it’s a bit too early to see, but it’s basically been one of the strategic moves, if you will, that took the most time to coordinate. And I’m really looking forward to see what results this double fairy tale permafree books are going to bring to me. I also was on the process of rewriting the sixth story of my mythological fantasy collection, and I’m planning to send it next week, if everything goes well, or this week to my second beta for feedbacks. 

I’m also going to speak about some Kobo’s promotion that I’ve been in, in the progress report. And as Crystal was mentioning, we are both on the way of moving. Well, actually she is in the middle of the moving part. I’m organizing the moving. And it has being a bit challenging and has been taking some time from my writing, but at the same time, it’s something that I’m very looking forward be over. Now, Crystal, what has been happening in your world? 

Crystal Hunt: Well, As you mentioned, moving is always exciting. So pretty much dismantling my entire working environment at home and moving them to a new location. So I’ve been painting, I’ve been setting up my office, which included rearranging the furniture 42 times to try to figure out what would be the best configuration of everything and just settling into the new space.

Fun things: I did get contacted by the city of New West and they are doing a book walk for families where they blow up a kid’s picture book and put pages of it out in a park somewhere and then people can wander around the nature and read the book. And apparently there were 20 different books that were nominated and they chose my Vernon and the Snake book as their top choice.

So that means Vernon and the Snake will be part of a book walk around New West. So I’ll keep you updated if anybody’s in the hood, I’ll let you know when you can walk around and see what that looks like out in the wild. That was really fun. That’s a book actually I wrote in 2007 was when that one was published.

So it is getting a little bit of a new lease on life. I’ve had a few interviews around it lately, and I’m really excited to get that one back out in the world. Our InfoStack promo ran. So that was exciting. It went really well. And we’ve actually been accepted into another one in June for one of our other books.

So Full Time Author will be part of the write-publish-profit InfoStack in June. And we’re super stoked about that over at to Creative Academy. In fiction land, I had a very strange renewal of my books into the KU select program, which appear to be done by a ghost there’s many conspiracy theories about exactly what went down there because it was very much, unenrolled in very much deselected and suddenly somehow was back in KDP Select. So a bit of a rocky patch in terms of getting those books out wide. So I am going to just sit on it for a couple of weeks. And then once I have my office, re-established I’ll request and see if I can get them back out. But I figured I might as well leave them there for a couple more weeks until I’m actually in a place to do something about it. 

And of course we are wide for non-fiction books already. So on that front, we’ve been doing a bit of an audit of our author pages and our sales pages on the different stores and made a giant list of things to tackle over the next few weeks to optimize for each of those wide stores.

And that has been an interesting adventure. Reading the Wide for the Win book, then reading all the specific ones, Killing it on Kobo, which is also by Mark Leslie, and just looking at each platform and what you can do to optimize for that particular platform and making a giant-normous to-do lists for each thing, which it was a little overwhelming, but we’re going to break it down and take it piece by piece. So all of that I think will be really what occupies me for this next month. And I can fit, hopefully, some of those things in and around painting and unpacking boxes. 

Now today being progress report date, we’re going to look back at what happened in March and we are going to put each hat on in turn.

So we’re going to wear our creator hats, our manager hat, and our marketer hat. And talk a little bit about what challenges we ran up against or what successes we found in each of those areas. And then talk about what we’re going to focus on for this next month.

Michele, do you want to kick us off? What has your creator self been up to in March? And what did you find was going smoothly? Or what challenges did you run into that required some clever fixing and working around. 

Creator hat updates and goals

Michele Amitrani: Yeah, I found especially after we interviewed Erin a couple of weeks ago that really, since we decided this path for the wide dividing our strength and keeping in front of us, what’s the real objective in this case, which I think as Wide for the Win books stated is ‘bank over rank’. I think it’s going to serve us well in the long run. One of the things that I usually do with this progress report is I make you aware of what were my objectives for the past month.

And if I achieve them, And for my March objective one was to finish the first rough draft of my sixth mythological fantasy story. I achieved that, and then I wanted to publish both my fairytale reader magnets in Italy. This one I did not achieve in March. So I had to work a bit more to make it happen at the beginning of April.

And the third objective that I had was to start submitting and giving Muse of Avalon in Italian to my betas and that one was achieved. And it’s actually now on pre-order that book. Out of three, I was able to manage two of them. 

Creator wise was a great month for me. I have to say Crystal, I was very pleased with how, somehow I managed to focus really on the last big task of the year, which was to just get the last book, at least the first rough draft, out. So you have something to work on. It was not easy but at the end. I actually have something I can work on. It’s ugly at the moment, is not defined, but it’s something like … I can see the light on the horizon, if you will. 

I have something and I now just need to fix it now, I don’t have to create it from scratch. So this has been a great month compare with the previous one when it comes to generating content, but also transforming it. You know full well now that if I write for 40 hours per month, which is not a lot, but I’m happy.

I am happy with 40 hours per month. This month I was actually able for the first time since the recording, I started to go above that 40 hours and I wrote the 66 hours in the whole month, and in February was just 33. So I doubled that. And translating wise because you know, I’m also working on that side, I was able to translate my books for approximately 17 hours, which was again an increased compared to February when I translate only 14 hours. And this was helpful for me and also I needed to, because one of my objective was to release the fairytales in Italy.

And so I needed to go a bit more above and beyond on that side, because they were ready, the English version, but I needed to finalize the translation in Italian. So I was able to do that too. Fourth think on the greatest side after completing the six mythological novella, I gave it to my first beta. I got some feedback, now I need to rewrite it as I was mentioning and resend it to another beta.

And this was actually the thing that took the most. 66 hours is not a lot for I would say a full-time author. I will say they probably write 40 hours per week. So I wrote 66 hours per month, but at least for me, it was a way to see something like: Am I tired after writing for 66 hours? Can I do it more? Can I leverage a bit more of my time and write a bit more? Can I go to 70, maybe to 80? And so far I can probably say since I have to do 1000 more things, probably 66/70 is the maximum that I can do writing-side. But since now the translation side, it’s finished since the fairytale is done, I might be able in the next few months, after the moving and after all the craziness is finished, to trying really to reach a milestone, it would be awesome.

And I’m just going to tell you, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen soon, but the 100 hours of writing per month. So I’m just going to get it out there. Let’s see if this summer, I am able to go back to you guys and tell you, yeah, I actually wrote 100 hours. So the three digit number now it’s my objective. Definitely. 

And reflection and challenges on this creator. This is something that I’m learning about my writing craft, I spent way too much time when it comes to crafting a story. And I’m now mainly a discovery writer or a pantser if you prefer that term, I find that I have to write and rewrite and rewrite again a story multiple times before it’s really ready for being edited by another human being.

And I feel that if I could master better the planning of the story, rather than just trying to figure it out in the moment, I would be spending way more time in doing something that is more important for the story, like character creation or plotting, twisting something that is more on the craft of writing.

So I need to be seriously starting developing a system. That’s what I’m trying to get at; a system that allows me to rewrite less because I’m rewriting too much and to plan a bit more ahead. So that’s basically something that I’ve been realizing in this month, Crystal, by writing more. And I don’t know if you have a similar issue when it comes to your writing? I definitely, 100% I found to be true for me. And I’m curious to know, what do you think about your creator month? 

Crystal Hunt: Creator month was quite interesting, actually. We are working on the Create with Co-Authors book for our Creative Academy guides for writers series right now.

And we’ve done co-writing multiple times. Now this is the sixth book in the series and it’s the sixth way we’ve done co-writing. And this one we did very differently in that we broke the content up into three distinct chunks. And then each of us drafted a chunk and then we’re going through it, each of us wanted a time and doing a round of revisions. And it’s been really interesting to see how that works and how each of us in our drafting process are different.

And it’s really quite different. It’s actually takes exponentially more time with three of us than it does with two of us or one of us, or even all three of us where one person drafts it, and the next person, does the first round of like deep developmental edits, and then we do a more polished thing.

It’s a very different process when we’re collaboratively writing at all three stages. So that has been an adventure and we found our timelines just didn’t work. And the way we thought it was going to go, it really didn’t. And I think maybe the most important thing is that when you’re co-writing, there’s always this starting out feeling of, fair means the same for everybody in terms of, Oh, we’ll break it up, and we’ll each do this amount of each of these stages. But actually we all have our strengths and they are not in the same places and it’s really inefficient and it’s actually not very smart of us to do the same. And my mom was always really good for this. She said: ‘fair does not mean the same’.

If my brother and I got the same present for Christmas, that may be fair in the sense that it is the same, but neither of us would maybe be happy or only one of us would. And we could each be equally pleased with something that was custom created for us. And I think the co-writing is the same thing where each of us has a really different skill and process.

So that was the big learning from this month’s creator time. Was that trying to apply the same process to something written with one, two or three people, it’s not a matter of just multiplying it, you have to really change how you come at it, and as long as everybody agrees that it feels fair, then it really doesn’t matter what everybody does or how their contribution fits in as long as it works for everyone.

So we’re just tweaking that process and working on figuring out what our template looks like. And of course, because we’re writing a book about co-writing and this is, each of us have been co-writing in multiple other contexts as well, it’s also informing the content of the book as we g and we’re able to integrate some of that, which means rewrites, which means it’s just this loop that keeps going.

So eventually we will finish it. And it has been a really fun thing to work on and because I have been so disrupted in my space and in the moving and everything else, working on the nonfiction has been a really good fit because I do find it, for the fiction, I need a certain level of concentration that I just haven’t had.

So I’m good. I’m getting there. Our draft is just about done and we are in the revision kind of rewrite cycle for that which was our target for this month. So we’re doing well. And I’m feeling really good about that. 

Manager hat updates and goals

On the manager side of things, it’s been really an interesting month. The InfoStack set up and the AppSumo set up with the sales platform and their marketplace took a ton of time and really absorbed the focus of the manager stuff. In addition to that, we were also casting for all five of the existing non-fiction audio books and getting all of that set up, getting our audio accounts, set up everything else, which was a goal and we’re well, on our way, we’ve picked, voice actors and things are about to go into production for that. 

So the manager goals were definitely hit for this month and our InfoStack did better than we ever could have expected. And it actually surpassed even our Amazon sales with everything else. So it was a really, it was a great experiment.

It did take a lot of time and a lot of energy, but it was worth it. And it was a neat, different way to come at that stuff. That was a really great experience. And I’m feeling really good about the manager side of things in the midst of all the chaos. And Michele, how about you? What were you focusing on for your manager self this past month?

Michele Amitrani: First was setting the pre-order for the Italian version of Muse of Avalon. And I’ve been doing that with the English version and it was great. I basically worked well with my admin stuff to do so I decided, okay, I’m going to go along also with the current version and probably I’m going to do the same for the box sets both in Italian and in English, because once you master it, Crystal, is just, in one day you maybe take a couple of hours. 

And since I’m wide now, and I’m going to be wide for the box set too, you just take your time and you release the book, which doesn’t have to be ready. And that’s the other thing that is great. You give it the cover keywords that you need, if you are uploading it.

But you don’t need to have everything figured out, but you know that it’s out there. So you have been doing 70 or 80% of the job, and then you just need to upload the final version of the book a few days or a few weeks, if you have the time, before and all of that admin job has been cut in two for me.

So I’m going to use the same system for the books that aren’t going to release. And, although I didn’t get a lot of pre-sales I saved a lot of time in the process, so it is something that I did not do before. And I’m definitely going to repeat and replicate because pre-order are great on the different point of views.

And my sanity is one of those. So I’m going to keep replicating it. The second thing on the manager’s side, I got Song of Forever, which is one book of the second box set already edited by the person that have been following me, with the first three books of the first box set.

And so that’s another thing I don’t have to think about. Song of Forever is done, is edited. I just need to format it on Vellum I could even potentially put the pre-order, even though this is the third story of the second box set, I can’t really do that because I don’t really have the first story yet, which is the sixth story that I’m writing now.

So maybe it doesn’t make sense, but I’m basically writing now the first story of the second box set. So I have ready the sixth and I already the fifth, but I’m working on the first. So I feel like I’m doing Tetris right now. So that was my second thing on the manager’s side. That I’m looking forward to know what happened on your marketing side of things, because I think you’re being very busy on that side.

Marketing hat updates and goals

Crystal Hunt: Yes, the great thing about marketing stuff, a lot of it, once it’s set up kind of runs in the background and I am in the position where I have a couple of assistants who have been working away while I was packing. So we had our InfoStack focus was, are pretty heavy focused on a lot of the things that went out to our newsletter list and our social media channels and everywhere else.

We’re definitely focused around that. And it did take a lot of time and a lot of energy, as I mentioned earlier, but it was a really great opportunity. And it was a pretty cool bundle of stuff. So I also purchased the InfoStack and I’m trolling through all the resources that were in there and downloading lots of books and there’s courses and all kinds of good stuff.

So I’ll be interested to work through that over the next few weeks. And we’re also prepping to add in BookBub ads for our nonfiction books series. That has been an interesting experiment as well. And we’re really just prepping the creative, where, as I mentioned earlier, auditing our author pages and auditing all of our listings on BookBub and making sure that we’re recommending relevant books and doing everything we can to optimize our pages within that community.

And then also doing courses and reading books and gathering knowledge for BookBub ads in general. And there are some very different strategies of how to approach that. And just trying to filter through the different approaches and decide which one is a good fit for us and what our budgets will be and all of those kinds of questions, which rolls back into the management side of things, but was interesting and just, keeping us out of trouble for sure. 

One thing that I guess comes under that is a big win… and it’s also an interesting interaction effect is the way that our books and our Creative Academy community and the podcast and all the things swirl around each other. So our Creative Academy passed a thousand members again this week. 

It’s actually the second time that we’ve passed a thousand members, because we got to a thousand, we had this major tech glitch with our platform, which kicked everybody off and we had about 300 of those initial members who were super active and they came back right away and everything was all good.

We had a lot of members who had joined just for a special event or two that we had done about a year ago and they didn’t necessarily come back right away. So this is actually our second batch of a thousand people. And we have a couple thousand on our mailing list and people follow along and attend events and all of those things, which is a huge milestone for our community.

To have, five or 600 really engaged people and new people adding daily. And that is, I think, a side effect of people getting the books and reading the books and being invited in and just words spreading as people tell a friend, or bring a friend or somebody who says, Oh, I’m trying to learn how to do this.

And they say, Oh, go sign up. So that’s been a really great … Passive … and passive is not the right word to use because it’s taken a phenomenal amount of effort on the part of our core team and all of our early founding members who have been so great about supporting the growth and supporting each other and being encouraging and wonderful and making people want to join the community.

So definitely huge shout out to everybody who’s helped make us happen. It has not been passive in the least, but now that everything is established and with each book that sells and, each course that goes out or whatever, we’re adding to the people in a way that feels more positive in the current moment.

So that is an interesting shift where the growth is still happening on a really steady rate, but it’s not requiring the same level of daily kind of push on our part, which means we can turn our attention back to the writing of more books and be more in maintenance mode than growth mode, which as a creator is much more sustainable long-term so that’s fantastic. 

And how about you? What have you been marketer focused on?

Michele Amitrani: I’m probably going to be boring, but I’m going to mention the book again, Wide for the Win. There was something that I read there that changed something in my mindset. Mark, the author of the book, uses a lot the word WIDE, and it’s completely capitalized.

So all the four letters are capitalized, and I think it’s more like a mindset that is meaning than just a strategy or a tactic. That’s why part of the thing that I decided to do from now on are more trying to get into that mindset, which is not easy. It’s actually something that is going to be challenging because I need to reframe some of the very basic beliefs that I had even on self publishing.

One of the shifts that I did made and that I’ll be making in the future, is trying to think of every single store as something that deserves the most of my attention and my respect. So I’m going to think about that as people, rather than stores.

So there was something that Mark said in the book that I think is going to be helpful to explain my marketer approach. So one of the things that I’ve been working now, but also a bit in the past, is trying to not focus 100% of my energy on Amazon or ‘the Zon’.

Just because I think it’s important to me. I’m sending books everywhere. I’m sending books on Kobo, on Google Books. I’m selling books on Apple Books. All of them deserve a certain amount of attention. I need to learn the ropes as I invested some time in learning the ropes for Amazon, the other stores deserve that. 

And that’s why I decided to being much more strategic with my, Amazon answer. And I will try to spend a bit less there, but at the same time, trying to turn a bigger result. And how am I going to do that? In the past few months I’ve been reading a lot about Amazon ads and that’s why I think the marketer becomes so important.

I’ve been attending courses, I have been reading a lot of books specifically related to Amazon ads. Some of them from authors that are exclusive in the program KDP Select and some books that were focused on wide authors. And I’m basically trying to understand which is the thing that might work for me because you take something and then you apply to yourself.

Maybe you fail, maybe you try something else. That being said in the last three months steadily, but increasingly I’ve been trying to spend less. So in January I spent around 40, 50 euros per month. In February, I spent around 27 euros. In March I spent 17 years, so I’m spending a bit less, but the thing that I noticed, the earnings, the books that I’m selling have slowly but steadily increased. 

So even though I’m spending way less on the Zon, I’m also earning more, which is something mind blowing for me. And it’s something that I think I have to thank of all of the authors that I read, but at the same time, it’s more of a mindset and I think it is something that will serve me well in the long run as I become wide, because will allow me to use more of these resources on other stores.

And so I was able to make a bigger profit on March. That was way bigger than all the other months, even though I’d been spending less than the other months. That’s something to keep in mind then I think I’m happy for that. I think it can be done even better. I will keep you updated on how it goes in the future. The other thing that I’ve been doing was leaning over on Kobo more and trying to learn more about that store. Now I will be the first one to admit, I do not know enough about the store, as I do not know enough about Apple Books.

I don’t know enough about Google Play. I need to learn more of that, but since I am just one human being and I have a limited amount of time and energy., the second store that I’m really focusing on is Kobo. And you mentioned a book Crystal, Killing it on Kobo from Mark Leslie, that’s another book that I’m super curious to read, and I think is going to be very useful in understanding a bit how that particular store works.

That being said, if you remember in the past few months, I’ve been applying on some promotion in my promotion tab, and I was very happy to see that the human being that is behind the veil has been accepting most of the time that I submitted one of my books. I will tell you more. Kobo the first month accepted the my books for two promotions, then they accept in my book for three promotion and now I am on five different promotions schedule March and part of them are going to be April. 

And again, I don’t know exactly how it works. I know that there is a human being, deciding and selecting each and every book, but every single month, I’ve been seeing as slow increase in sales. And it’s not a lot. I’m talking about a few euros here, but they add up so much that this month on April, if I’m not mistaken one of the percent I might be making money from Kobo on my mythological fantasy series that I’m doing on Amazon. And the very last thing that I’ve been doing as a marketer you might be remembering one of the other venture was trying to get as many reviews as possible before the box set of the mythological fantasy series are released.

And I was able to achieve that also. Soul of Stone, which is the first book of the collection, which is probably going to go free for some time in the future, we don’t know when. Crystal and I are still thinking about the strategy behind that, but we know one thing for sure that it needs to have the most number of reviews and all the others, because it’s going to be the access point.

At the very beginning of this reports we had something like six or seven reviews and now we got 24 reviews. That was basically my objective. And also we were able to increase from 7 reviews to almost 10 reviews on Amazon, UK which is another big market.

So as you can see, I think these reports, Crystal, are very useful because, you don’t see like a huge change from month to month, but very slowly and steadily a small increment. But I think like in 12 months, or imagine 24 months, like those small increments are going to be so much more. You were mentioning the Creative Academy and you started that like very small group of very passionate people about books.

Now that group is getting bigger and bigger. You know, that you put so much work at the very beginning. Now it’s I can’t say it’s running by itself but it’s definitely, you’re delegating a bit more, you’re seeing that there is more there is more engagement for the people because they are genuinely interested in it.

And I do believe that incremental growth is better than, maybe being a startup and growing 100 or 200% in two days and not being able to managing it. So that’s what I think is important on my marketer month, but even your month, that we are growing slowly but steadily, but we are growing and you can grow too.

If you just put both the time, the effort and just believe that this thing is difficult, but can be achieved. What do you think about that, Crystal? 

Biggest challenges this month

Crystal Hunt: Definitely, a hundred percent agree, those incremental moving forward, super important. And I think we don’t always understand that we’re laying the groundwork for the future and that it may be several years later that you see those things actually come to fruition.

So our Creative Academy has been almost four years now in terms of the slow and steady growth and moving from platform to platform and learning as we go and figuring out how everything will work and all of that, it takes time to evolve and it takes time to kind of cement itself in the world. And I think the books are the same thing and we are building a foundation that we’re going to be building on top of, for the rest of our creative lives and beyond, because our estates will live on after we are gone. It’s very important to reconcile with yourself that just because something doesn’t immediately catch doesn’t mean it won’t cycle around again after a few years or even cycle repeatedly as things change and shift in the world. And that’s something that’s really important to keep in mind. And that ties in nicely to what I found was the biggest challenge for me this month. I was teaching a class in the Creative Academy this month about the book Drive with the focus was motivation.

It was one of our, Just One Thing sessions. And we were talking about motivation and the book Drive by Daniel Pink was the book that we were using as the context for our discussion. And we were looking at different types and forms of motivating ourselves and how we can do that and which contexts, certain types of motivation work.

Are you carrot or stick, right? Are you a lead to shiny sparkly rewards or like Michele, do you respond really well to a potential punishment if you don’t hit your goals? And looking at which kinds of goals lend themselves well to different types of motivating factors and also taking a very close look at the intrinsic motivation of just loving the actual writing process and what impacts that and what makes you love it or not love it.

And how does it all come together? So I think that’s really important to think about for each of us, because a lot of how we set things up to motivate ourselves can actually work in the other direction. And once you get paid for something, it becomes much harder to still have that intrinsic motivation once you’ve monetized a thing. 

When you take something from hobby to business, there are some major shifts and I’ve been through this cycle a few times now, and it is it’s dangerous. It’s risky. It’s challenging to keep the fun of the activity in your body and yourself and your mind, when you have monetized it and you’re turning it into a job, when you’re making choices based on what will be profitable versus what will be the most fun.

And we’re planning several books out and we’re having these really strict schedules and all these things shift our relationship with the creative process. So for me, rereading that and getting in touch with that was really important right now because I am resetting my patterns in my life and my calendars and my everything, I’m switching up right now about my creative life. And keeping that all in mind, as I explore different possibilities is really important because I have been coming up against walls and I’ve been so much in the business of writing for the last decade that dialling back and forth. Really I’ve outsourced a lot of the business side of things now, and my focus is on writing for the next year, and that’s a completely different focus than what I’ve had. So bringing a lot of the systems that really worked for me when I was totally business focused, it doesn’t work. And that transition period where I was trying to apply the business philosophies and systems to the writing part of my job, my creator hat time, was not working for me and that was causing some major frustration and it still isn’t quite working in that. 

I’m still in the middle of that chaotic transition, but as I’m building the framework and the plans, I’m at least thinking about how I can facilitate that shift more completely and making sure that I set up like a separate space where I write versus where I do the business of writing in my office, now that I have that option, and making sure that, some of the systems are not based around things that don’t respond well to an extrinsic motivator. 

So for me counting my words is not useful. Even counting the time spent writing is actually not that useful for me. The most effective thing is to actually open up my schedule so there’s nothing else in the way. And it’s much like your body when it needs to heal. If you get out of your own way, then, you know, the natural inclination of the bodies to heal itself. And I think the natural inclination of the creator is to create things but only when we get out of our own way. So I’m working on getting out of my own way.

That’s my biggest challenge is how do I not apply my business organizational structured self to the creative time, because it really does. It may work in the very short term, but it does not work as a lifestyle. And that I think has just been important for me to acknowledge and look at.

What was the biggest challenge you faced this month? What did you find was your biggest kind of stumbling spot?

Michele Amitrani: My objective, and you’ve been knowing this since the very beginning, is to be a novelist. The problem with me is that if I really want that, I need to be more strategic about it, and I need to build the system. Hence why at the beginning I was … so I’m upset actually that I do not have a system yet. And that I’m just…. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but I feel like I’m swimming in mud every single time I write something because I’m not exactly sure where I’m going.

And as you said, when you are a professional, and if you have a schedule to respect, you can’t possibly do that. If you don’t have a plan. And I feel that I do not have a plan every single time I start writing a story and that’s taking so many hours. Now, I have time. I have the luxury of time, so I can spend more time on a novella, but I can’t keep this status always.

 I need to develop a system. So this is my biggest challenge. I really need to sit down and understand a bit more about my writing process. And I need to point and pin down something that I can do in order to make that process and answer the question: can I do these things more streamlined? Can I develop a way to see a beginning and an end and to go through the messy middle?

Now I would say my system is very disorganized. And the biggest challenge that I have is that I need to learn more about myself as a writer if I really want to make this my job. And it’s going to be very difficult because every single writer has a different process and you cannot learn that in a book.

And that’s my biggest problem, because I can read all the books you want on Amazon ads or how to make it there as a wide author, but if you don’t have the original matter, which in this case it’s a great book, you don’t go anywhere. It’s that simple. And I need to learn how to write a great story on a deadline.

And that is going to be my challenge. And even just thinking about that makes me excited, but at the same time, it’s a challenge I need to overcome if I want to be serious about that. 

Revenue wise my authorpreneur revenues this month came 32.43% from my freelancing and 67.57% from my fiction royalties, which is a completely different shift from last month, and I want this to be more the thing most of my income come from my novels because that’s where I want to be focused on. And then I also had way less expenses and way more income that helped me close the month in the black. It was basically the best month on that regard on this year.

So I was very happy about that. I know that there is so much more that I can do. And it’s not only coming from my fiction, but mostly of that money came from it.

And again, it’s an indicator that is telling me: move forward, Justin a bit, and you can see the light of the day, then you have to continue and you have to keep struggling, but it’s basically it’s proving to me that it is possible, and I just wanted to share that with you guys because it was a milestone and it’s also something that it’s making me proud.

But at the same time, it did not come easily. And I just wanted that to come across to all of you.

Crystal Hunt: I had a really similar breakdown of revenue sources too. This month, as last month non-fiction was down like 2%, but teaching was up a couple percent and the affiliate stuff as well. So really similar. Almost 50% of my income was from non-fiction and then the rest was the combination of fiction and teaching and affiliate things.

So that seems pretty stable at the moment and will likely shift pretty greatly over the next few months, because we are still in a very building phase for the fiction. I’m still writing and holding. I’m not releasing anything at the moment. So we will see some uptick as I start re-releasing some of my fiction and then also the fall and winter is the big time for me, because a lot of my books are holiday based or Christmas based. And there’s a very definite skewing of three, four, three or four months of the year is usually when I make most of the income for the year and that’s always big. But I have all these other books that are not holiday specific that I’ve been sitting on and we’ll start releasing those in the fall as well. 

So that should be a huge shift, but right now it’s all money out on the fiction side and that will adjust, but the non-fiction fortunately kind of compensates for that.

And I have enough other income streams built in that are active in the background that it all balances out. I can pay out what I need to pay out and I’m still operating in the black, which is great. So that is fantastic. Now, one of the things that Michele mentioned, which I think is so key is that we have a real need to focus on story and to focus on the process of writing the stories and our motivation as creators, then all of these craft related things and we haven’t really talked about craft very much. We have been super focused for the first 53 episodes, which is a lot of episodes, on mostly business and marketing and the publishing side of things.

This is how it’s going to go for the next little while: we’re actually taking a little bit of a break from the podcast because I need to complete the move, Michele is shifting countries with his move, and we didn’t want to be trying to record the podcast in the middle of all that and scrambling around.

We are learning about boundaries and creating buffer time for ourselves and one day may even explore the concept of a vacation. For now, though, our focus is we’re going to take six weeks off and we’re going to be back the first Monday in June is when our next live podcast is going to happen. And then we’re going to do a mini season entirely focused on digging into different areas of storytelling and craft.

Now for those of you, who’ve just joined us, don’t despair. We’ve had a ton of new listeners in the last few weeks. And the good news is you have the other 52 episodes that you can go back through the archives and listen to some stuff. We have some fabulous guest interviews. If you go all the way back to the beginning, you’ll find some really great content in there.

And you’ve got a little time to get caught up before we start releasing new episodes. So I would highly recommend that you go back and check those out, and then we will be diving into all kinds of new topics. Now we would love to hear what you want us to talk about on the podcast. So if you can email crystal@strategicauthorpreneur.com and let us know. What is it you want us to talk about on the show? What are some challenging things that you’ve come across in your own writing? What would you like us to be focused on? Then we will happily work those into the schedule for the next season.

Michele Amitrani: And we are going, of course, to miss you in this few months, but we all as always that you enjoyed today’s show. Remember to hit that subscribe button whenever you’re listening to this podcast and also to visit us at our online home at strategicauthorpreneur.com, if you’re looking for the show notes and links to resources and the tools that we mentioned. Also feel free to hit that By US a Coffee button if you find this show helpful. Even $5, $10, a million dollars, help us keep the show coming and keep our production ads free. Until that time, happy writing everybody.

Crystal Hunt: Happy writing. We’ll see you again in June.