Farnoosh: A lot of times you’re lost as an author, and it doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing. It just means that you do need help. This is a lonely journey. And traditionally, when you’re working with publishers, you get this editor, but maybe you talk to this person three times, four times. I’m talking quality conversations. We’re actually going through the material and going back and forth. And I felt like we had that lunch and then were off to the races. And I, you know, felt intimidated to reach out to her to say, hey, I want to get a better understanding of what to. How to organize this, what am I writing about? And so my first draft was absolutely horrible. And I think you just sometimes have to go through that awful first draft so that you can actually figure out what you’re doing.

Farnoosh: And as I tell a lot of authors and prospective authors that don’t worry about what you’re writing right now being perfect or making any sense. Just get it. Get your thoughts on paper. It’s part of the process. You. You cannot get to a good book without going through the mess, the. The dumpster fire.

Stacy: Welcome. Welcome. Have you ever wondered how bestselling authors and media icons write so many books? Have you been curious about their process, what marketing strategies they use, how they get the book deals in the first place? We’re going to be talking about all of that and more with this week’s guest, Farnoosh Tarabi. I had Farnoosh on the podcast a while back. We got to talk about her most recent book.

Stacy: We got to learn about some of her philosophy around fear and learn a little bit behind the scenes on that book. But we didn’t really dig into her long journey of authorhood. She has written four books over 15 years. She has gone through many different ways of writing those books, from doing it completely solo to working with a coach to working with a ghostwriter. And so I’m really excited today to get to dig in with her and ask some questions that if you’re an aspiring author, for sure will help you along your author journey. Here is a little bit about Farnooch. Farnoosh is A multi bestselling author, former CNBC host and creator of the Webby nominated podcast so Money, which is a fabulous podcast. Her most recent book is A Healthy State of Panic.

Stacy: Follow your fears to build wealth, crush your career and win at life. Her award winning and critically acclaimed podcast has surpassed 25 million downloads thanks to its one of a kind interviews and deep conversations about money. The New York Times calls her advice perfectly practical. Furnoosh, welcome back.

Farnoosh: Hi Stacy, thank you for having me back.

Stacy: I am really excited to get to talk to you about writing since it is one of my favorite things to talk about and having known you now for a little while and also followed your work for long before I knew you. I hear you talk a lot about how your books have been really foundational to your success, to all of the media wins that you’ve had, to the growth of all of the various stages of your career. And I’d love to hear a little bit about that and how becoming an author has impacted all of the other goals that you had.

Farnoosh: Career Bias thank you. So my first book, you’re so Money, published in 2008, I was in my 20s, I was working as a journalist working for media companies at the time and I had this unique and really life changing experience. Prior to that book coming out I worked with an editor at a magazine who had also a very successful book career. She was an author of multiple books and being her assistant I was able to see how her book was this instrument to get her out there more as a thought leader. She was speaking multiple times per month and getting paid for those speaking engagements. This was on top of her full time job as an editor. Her book was getting her on television shows. And for me, again as an aspiring journalist, I also aspired to have career security.

Farnoosh: And what I saw from her was that with these multiple revenue streams, most of them deriving from this book and her books was at least one method to getting to that place of job security and more so just making a big impact right in the world with your work. And again, this was the mid 2000s, late 2000s, when it was there weren’t a lot of personal finance books, let’s just say so getting a book deal specifically around personal finance and also as a woman and as a younger person, it was fresh. And that coupled with the fact that I had this book was this great way to sort of launch the next stage of my career which became more about me being independent. I wasn’t working for any specific employers full time. In fact I got laid off when the first book came out.

Farnoosh: And because I had that book, it was my parachute to safely land on my two feet and be able to go out there even during the Great Recession, without a full time job to leverage that book. And the authority that it had essentially given me as an author, you know, it was my literary agent that had to point out that whether you like it or not, you are now an authority because you are an author. Those two words are from the same parent company. So I was like, oh, okay, got it. I’m going to now be this authority on personal finance. And I went with it. You know, the book kind of gave me permission and the platform to be that person. And that was just book number one. From there, you know, it allowed me to have a sustainable financial life.

Farnoosh: I was making money from speaking, I was contributing to magazines. People who were, you know, struggling with their finances at the time. The media companies were wanting to support them through content. And I was a content creator essentially at the time. So I was hired. I was very hireable at the time. And my book was what was sort of keeping me head above water. You know, it was like giving me sort of still a title in a world where I didn’t have a full time job. And that was really scary. And I thought, who’s gonna hire me? I don’t have a job, I don’t have a title and. But you do as an author. You are the author of your book.

Farnoosh: And now you’re also, if you wrote self help or if you wrote nonfiction, maybe you’re also a thought leader and an expert in that field now because of your book. So leveraging that was something that I learned to do pretty quickly. It wasn’t always the goal. The goal was to keep a full time job, have a book like my boss did, right early in those early days, and just kind of have the best of both worlds. But as it turned out, the universe had different plans, the economy had different plans for my career. And that was in 2009 when I got laid off. So one year after that first book came out. And I’ve never gone back to having that sort of like full time employer relationship. Fast forward, you know, the book also led to television shows.

Farnoosh: So again, more exposure, more visibility all through this one book. And then you get more books out of. The bigger you get, sort of the bigger your sort of audience becomes, the more people start going, okay, what’s your next book? What’s your next book? And so that’s how it started for me. And I so I have a lot of faith in books as being a tool for those of us who want to expand our careers and get out there more as thought leaders and diversify our revenue streams. The book, funny enough, the book in and of itself, the advance and potentially residuals, is not really where the money is.

Farnoosh: The money is in using the book as again, a tool, an agent to help you get other opportunities that actually pay nicely, whether it’s a speaking opportunity, a consulting gig, more clients for your business. Because a book is a great business card. It’s a great calling card, as it turns out.

Stacy: It really is. And one of the things that strikes me about books when they’re well timed is that it can be such a great kind of transition point for people. With my clients, a lot of times they are coming out of, you know, long corporate careers. Maybe they’ve reached the height of where they can never really reach in their career, their chief, whatever. And the really, the only option for them is either to make a lateral move to another company, another challenge, or to go out on their own and they’ll use that book really as the pivot to make that transition, or they want to stay in corporate and they want to put a personal offering out into the world, so start to make an impact through their story.

Stacy: It’s incredible that yours was so well poised when all of that hit for you to be able to just make this step out into this next stage. One of the things that I’ve noticed about you in all of the work you do, and this includes your books and your podcasts and all the things, is that the work you put out is well done. You put effort and intention and quality out. And I imagine that part of your. Well, a lot of your success has also been when you get these opportunities, you rise to them and you deliver on them. And then you’re not like, okay, I’ve written my one book, that’s it, here I am. But you’re using that as an opportunity opener and kind of looking beyond that book. Can you talk a little bit forward for us?

Stacy: Because you’ve had these multiple books now, and I imagine that each one has opened up a new phase or a next transition for you. Can you share a little bit about that?

Farnoosh: So my first book, as I mentioned, was called you’d’re so Money. And it was really a broad based personal finance book with the goal of mostly educating younger people about money. And from the voice of a woman, God forbid, a younger woman who is in the trenches to some extent too, with her audience you know, I hadn’t figured it all out, but given that I was a financial journalist and I had access to experts and had a little bit more of a running education start on personal finance, I was able to be in that position. I was able to be trusted as an expert for my generation. And so that opened doors where I was, again, like I mentioned, doing all those exciting things with writing and speaking and television. And it.

Farnoosh: When I came to doing my second book, you know, what do I write about? I think that before you are on the other side of it, you really want to think about before you hit pen to paper or start typing is thinking about your. Where you actually do want to take your career. Where are the circles you want to show up in terms of the conversations that people are having in your community? I was grateful that my first book was this broad based book because it sort of established me as somebody who could talk about anything under the personal finance umbrella. And so I got a lot of diversified experiences from that.

Farnoosh: But with the second book, which was about the psychology of money, it’s called Psych Yourself Rich, I think it was this Venn diagram of, like, what am I learning right now that’s kind of new to me or exciting? Where is the market in terms of what it needs to learn? And maybe the third circle is just, you know, does it have legs? Like, is there. Is this something that I want to do? Do I want to explore this? Does it have longevity? And I was working at the time on a television show, working with women with their money. And what I came to realize was that so much of our finances is not about budgets, how to do the budget, or it’s not about we intellectually, we know, like, we have to live within our means, and yet we don’t.

Farnoosh: So what is that all about? And I realized very quickly that it’s actually the emotional underpinning of money and the fears and the anxieties and the lack of literacy, the behavioral stuff that often trips us up. So I’m experiencing this from anecdotal standpoint in my career as I’m relating to my audience. And then I step outside of that and I realize, oh, my gosh, there’s this new body of research. There are Nobel laureates who are writing about and researching about behavioral finance. In other words, how our minds actually think about money and how that impacts our financial decisions, our relationship to money, our relationship to time, our relationship to people, and how that impacts our money decisions. And it was. It was a break. It was a lot of Break.

Farnoosh: It was, it was a breakthrough for science, as I said, Nobel laureates, you know, but. And so I thought, okay, well then there’s a lot of research now that supports what I am noticing in my world. And so that’s a great clue for any aspiring author is that when you start to see a trend, and it can be a micro trend within your practice, within your audience to see, okay, has it been studied actually? Is it, is what I’m experiencing, is there any sort of science behind this or is there any scalability to this? So when I saw that, I realized, okay, maybe there’s a book here as again, a book that is not like an academic book either, because a lot of the science had been in journals at that point. It wasn’t in a book, in a user friendly, accessible book.

Farnoosh: So I wrote that and it excited me. I really had at that point the experience to talk about it intellectually and from my own experiences about how often when I’m working with women, it’s not about like, oh, I didn’t know that this had interest and that I was paying interest. It was like, oh my gosh, I grew up with a scarcity mindset or I grew up poor. And, and you know, our, our ch. Our childhoods often show up in our adulthoods in our financial lives. So that was interesting and exciting and I, that was the next book. So then the third book, years later, I’m thinking, okay, what do I again, where do I want to show up in my community? And, and what do I want to be known for? Because a book is forever, right?

Farnoosh: Like, it’s not an article in a magazine. It’s it. And so in, in some ways it has to have a lot of legs. It has hundreds of pages in a book. And sometimes I’d have ideas and I go, well, that’s more like an article. It’s not really a book. And I remember that at the time I was about to get married, now this is years later. And most of my work had always been interfacing with women. And I, and there were many books at the time that were about how women could get ahead with their finances. And I really wanted to be in that space, but I didn’t want to echo what had already been shared. I was thinking these were the actual questions I was asking myself at the time. You know what, how am I going to move this conversation forward?

Farnoosh: What hasn’t been said yet about women and money? What is an elephant in the room potentially? And most importantly, what am I Experiencing either in my practice or in my own personal life that I haven’t quite shared yet in a way that could make an impact. And I. And I know it’s important. And I realized it was my high English teacher who in high school who said, write what you know. So I wrote on a piece of paper at a bar. I remember I was waiting for my fiance to show up, my then fiance husband. Now, as you know, as an aspiring author, if you don’t have a notebook in your hand, in your backpack, like, are you even trying to be an author? Like, are you even. So this is before iPhones, I think. Anyway, so I.

Farnoosh: I wrote down, you know, I make more than my future husband. And that’s not something that I feel comfortable talking about out loud. And I have to believe there’s something there to investigate. And I know so many of my friends in New York City, women friends, are earning good salaries, great salaries, are having challenges on the dating field, or they’re in partnerships where I know they make more than their male partners. But there, again, we’re not talking about it. Why? There’s something there. And so I just started to, you know, pick at that. And then, of course, I found some research. I found academic research about women breadwinners. And I thought, okay, this is. This is my. This is where I want to hang out.

Farnoosh: And here’s the thing, when you write a book, it’s like a two to three year commitment, so you have to be in love with the idea. You want to be able to hang out and live in this world for so long. And I. And so that’s really important when you’re thinking about what. What to write, where to go next. And I thought, okay, it was a little scary, actually. You know, do I really want to go out there with this in such a big way? And I shared it with my mom, I shared it with my fiance, and they were like, that’s a great idea. There was no, like, hesitation on their end. So then I felt safe to do it.

Farnoosh: And then, you know, honestly, cc, I didn’t write another book for nine years after that because in the meantime, I had two kids, I started a podcast, and I felt like I’d said everything I wanted to say in the world of. In the world of money. I’d written a book that was a general book about how to be wealthy. I’d written a book about the psychology of money. I written a book about money for women in my way, in my voice. And I was like, okay, it’ll come. It’ll It’ll. It’ll come to me. I don’t really want to go back to writing because it’s a lot of work. I wasn’t. You know, I think you need space. And then again, I had all other things going on in my life that were more of a priority.

Farnoosh: And this more recent book, A Healthy State of Panic, was not intended to be in the personal finance category. Initially, it was meant to be just sort of a. A memoir about me and my grapplings with fear and my immigrant upbringing and. And, you know, helping people find themselves in my story to give. Validate, you know, their fears and also learn how to work through fear. But my publisher was very insistent that this needs to be in the personal finance category because that’s what I’m known for, market. Marketability wise. It’s important to sort of not to do too much of a departure. And so were trying to find sort of that relationship between what I wanted to write and who I had been for the last 20 years. And the bridge was that, well, honestly, I’ve been talking about money for 20 years.

Farnoosh: I’ve been helping people with their finances for two decades. And the emotional underpinning of so many of the money questions that I. That I receive, that I try to help people with, is fear. You know, we’re afraid to make money moves because money is a limited resource. We may not have grown up with the literacy around money, and when there is a lack of education, fear loves to hang out in that gap. And that was it, that it was as simple as that. And I think we made the case pretty well. But it was an opportunity for me to be creative with my writing for the first time and that I hadn’t been before, to really focus on storytelling as opposed to tips and advice. It is a book that has an arc. It is a book that has characters.

Farnoosh: It is a book that is very personal. So in. In many ways, this newest book, it’s not just. It’s not just new for me because it took nine years to get here a book because it’s such a different. It was such a different undertaking.

Stacy: Wow. There’s so much to each of those stages for you and how each of those books were also connected to your life stage and all the things that you were doing at the time. I love your point about the curiosity and interest in the topic because to your point, it is such a long and heavy lift, and keeping that energy and interest and curiosity and care and desire to keep working on it is so important. I know that for each of your books, you approach them in different ways. So you worked with a ghostwriter one. You worked solo. You worked with a coach. Can you talk about the different approaches that you’ve taken to the book writing process and maybe shed some light on each of those and what you learned from them?

Stacy: It’s the new year, and maybe last year you said you were going to finish a book, but it didn’t happen. And so I want to invite you to something that is going to support your author journey. It’s a free webinar that I’m hosting, New Year, New book. How to finally finish your nonfiction book in 2025. This is a webinar I do every January. People love it. It’s hugely impactful in helping kickstart your goal of authorhood. And I’m going to be gifting something really cool that I’ve never, ever given away. So I hope you’ll join us. I hope you’ll take action on your goal of authorhood. You can sign up@staceyannis.com new yearnew book and I will see you there.

Farnoosh: So, starting with the first book in 2008, I was young again, and I had no idea that you could even hire a ghostwriter. Like, I only thought celebrities hired ghostwriters to write their books. I didn’t think that. And also as a journalist, I felt that if I did go the ghostwriter route, that it would somehow diminish my expertise, my authorship. So I realize now that was not the right way to think. But I didn’t even have the resources, honestly, to hire much help with that first book. My advance was nice, but it wasn’t where I just. My mind just didn’t go there. I just. I just thought you’d write your own books. And thankfully, it was the sort of book where a lot of the content had already been developed and, you know, researched, given my job as a financial journalist.

Farnoosh: So that book was probably the easiest to write of all the books that I’ve written, because it was like I had a running start with the fact that I was so immersed in this and was already writing about this. And it was very like, step one, step two, all the way to step 10. It was very linear. Then the second book, Psych yourself Rich. I’ll be very honest with you. It was a disaster of a process. I. I got that book deal. You know, they never say you get a book deal on the back of a napkin. I did. It was like, I had this TV show, and my agent was like, let’s have lunch with this publisher. She reached out, and then we had lunch, and then she’s like, let’s do something. And I was like, okay.

Farnoosh: And she’s like, I actually have an idea for you if you’re into it. And she pitched me the psychology of money idea, and we did it. But it was like, I didn’t shop a proposal around. It was very unorthodox. I worked with that one editor, and I didn’t. And I. Whom ended up being great. But I was fortunate with that because you could have also, like, not love your editor if you don’t, you know, if you don’t shop it around. And given that I wasn’t even really clear. I wasn’t clear for so long on actually thesis. So I went through a. My husband looks back and he’s like, I think you were depressed, actually, for a couple of months there because I just couldn’t get myself to write. I couldn’t. And I was too scared to ask for help.

Farnoosh: I was afraid that if they found out I didn’t know what I was doing, that they. The deal would be lost.

Stacy: What if you do furnish to get out of that? Because I finally.

Farnoosh: I finally just confessed. I finally just confessed. I was like, I. And. And I think that it was my naivete. A lot of times you’re lost as an author, and it doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing. It just means that you do need help. This is a lonely journey. And traditionally, when you’re working with publishers, you get this editor, but maybe you talk to this person three times, four times. I’m talking quality conversations. We were actually going through the material and going back and forth, and I felt like we had that lunch and then were off to the races. And I, you know, felt intimidated to reach out to her to say, hey, I want to get a better understanding of what. How to organize this, what am I writing about? And so my first draft was absolutely horrible.

Farnoosh: And I think you just sometimes have to go through that awful first draft so that you can actually figure out what you’re doing. And as I tell a lot of authors and prospective authors that don’t worry about what you’re writing right now being perfect or making any sense. Just get it. Get your thoughts on paper. It’s part of the process. You. You cannot get to a good book without going through the mess, the dumpster fire. It’s going to happen. It’s. It’s just. It’s. It can be ugly, but you have to be your advocate during that process, to know what you need and reach out and have no shame about it. Because then I hear from authors like, oh, I never even submitted my proposal, my manuscript, because I just. I just couldn’t.

Farnoosh: I’m like, well, I don’t want to be that author who just doesn’t do the work. So. And if that’s happening, me reaching out to ask a simple question about, what are we doing here? Maybe not so simple. It’s getting ahead of a bigger problem. So I. That’s what I did. And I do think, too, that it was the winter, and I think, you know, you get the winter blues a little bit. And once the new year came around, I felt more revived and I was in a better mental space to do a book again. Because books are hard work. They’re heavy lifts, and they take time. And I. I may have just been burnt out as well from so much else going on that they kind of threw.

Farnoosh: I threw this book onto a pile and didn’t really know how to dedicate space for it. The third book, I did learn from my previous, I would say mistakes, but, you know, missed opportunities, maybe to actually work with someone else who could facilitate the process better for me. I was pregnant at the time, I should mention, while I was trying to get this book out the door. This is now when she makes more. And I knew this was going to be the heaviest lift of all my books because this book was introducing a new concept, and it was going to require a lot of storytelling.

Farnoosh: Not just my own story, but finding women across the country of all income brackets, of all relationships, of all, you know, all, like, dynamics, career dynamics, to tell their stories of being breadwinners, and then also bringing in the science and the research and the expertise. I was really approaching this for the first time. And yes, as an expert, but really also as like, the most curious person in the room. And I didn’t know a lot going in. I had to depend on interviews. And so it was a big. As I’m telling this, I mean, I just. My. My point in all of telling you this is just like, it had a lot of moving parts. And I’m also expecting a child. So I.

Farnoosh: It was actually the advice of my literary agent at the time who said, would you ever consider working with a ghost writer? And my initial reaction was like, oh, for shame. And then she’s like, you know, actually, a lot of people hire ghost writers because. And there’s no shame in it. And I said, okay, let’s do this. But I really want to approach this very collaboratively. I still want to be very involved. I want to do all the interviews. I’ll transcribe all the interviews. I’ll pick out the best parts of the interviews. We’ll come up with, you know, we’ll. We’ll talk every week, every, you know, sometimes three times a week. And what my ghostwriter ended up really helping me with was the part that I didn’t like to do, which was structure and wordsmithing in some cases.

Farnoosh: She was a much better writer than I, I think. And also she also was a breadwinner in her marriage. So it was a perfect marriage book marriage, I should say, for she and I to work together, because she was kind of editing and ghost writing this book, understanding the complexities on a personal level. And so bringing that empathy and understanding to her work with me was invaluable. It was like a bonus. And then with a healthy state of panic, because it was really memoir driven and personal story driven. I was like, I don’t think a ghost writer is the right person for this project, but I do think that. I think Britney Spears obviously would celebrities, because all their stuff is out there, and maybe, you know, you just have a few conversations.

Farnoosh: I don’t know how actually how it works with ghostwriters and celebrities, but I imagine it being a little more straightforward. So. But I hired Suzanne Kingsbury, who is the creator of the Gateless Academy. And she is an author in her own right, but also a. A teacher of this method which guides other authors and writers through their creative writing process to sort of bring out the best of their work. And she was essentially a coach. Right. So we worked together from day one all the way through the end. It was someone to talk to, someone to bounce ideas with, someone who could go into the book actually and shape things a little bit better than I could. You know, she wasn’t too. She was not the ghostwriter who was just like, writing chapters for me or putting things together for me, but she would.

Farnoosh: We would read things together out loud or together, and she’d say, okay, here’s what I think is the most important takeaway, or here’s what I’m seeing, that maybe you’re not so invaluable, because when you’re in a book, as the writer, you’re so close to the material. It’s really hard to see the forest from the trees. And I was having a hard time sometimes with what we call the global frame, where I would have an experience that I’m telling in the book. Or I would share someone’s experience. And I know there’s relevance. I know there’s some. There’s a reason I was pulled to this story, but I’m having a hard time explaining the relevance or the. The conceit or the, like, the big takeaway for the reader that’s applicable to everybody.

Farnoosh: And having her and her experience with me through and through was just such, like, the best investment I think I could have made in bringing this book to life.

Stacy: I love that you’ve had all these different experiences through all of these different books. And I will echo back as, you know, as a book coach, that. That support and finding the right fit, the person that really gets your book, that really understands that their process works for you. And it sounds like you found that with your. With your process. That is amazing. And it also, I think it’s nice to have a partner along the journey so that you’re not just, you know, going it alone and, you know, trying to muster up the energy to work through. You have deadlines, you have somebody waiting for your work, you have accountability meetings. You have these coaching sessions. So it’s so powerful to tie up our boat on this conversation.

Stacy: I know that you have an event coming up in New York all around book deals, and so I’d love to know a little bit about what is working right now in the world of landing a book deal, because you’ve been through all these iterations, and certainly it’s changed so much from 15 years ago. And then maybe you can tell us a little bit about your book to brand event and how that kind of intersects with all that you have learned in your partnership with Rochelle Fredson, who is a friend of mine and a friend of the podcast and what you’re offering there.

Farnoosh: Thank you. Well, in terms of how to get a book deal now, if that’s the question. Right, like what sort of.

Stacy: It’s. Yeah, so.

Farnoosh: Yeah, yeah.

Stacy: And tell us what you’re offering as well with, like, helping facilitate that.

Farnoosh: Well, you know, interestingly enough, in the 15 years that I’ve been publishing books, I would say that one thing that hasn’t changed, and there’s been a lot that has, one thing that really hasn’t changed is that process of getting your book proposal in the hands of a publisher who will love it and buy it. You know, that is a very traditional sort of pathway that I don’t see changing. Ultimately, you have to write a stellar proposal. Think of it as a business plan, really. You know, how are you going to sell this book to your audience, not just dollar signs sell, but sell the message to them too, right? And then you shop it around with an agent. Seldom do you go like I had that one experience where I just went straight to the publisher.
Farnoosh: That does not happen and I don’t recommend it. Obviously you want, I think it’s better to go through that slower process of writing a proposal, finding an agent, shopping it around and finding the right fit. Because again, this is a long journey. You want to make sure you’re in the right partnership, the right publisher, the right house. And what I will say to authors today, what wasn’t so important for me, publishing in say 2008 or even 2010, 2014, but especially now with this latest book that was published in the 21st century, that publishers are really looking for platform. And that doesn’t mean you are a TikTok celebrity. It just means that you have somewhere in your world established a direct pathway to a readership that would buy your book. And that could be B2B.

Farnoosh: It could be like I have corporate relationships and I do speaking and I know I’m going to go back on the speaking circuit and I’m going to talk to those hundreds of employees at all of these places. And you know, that’s how I’m going to emphasize my book sales, my book marketing. It could be that you do have a huge social media following. It could be that you have a huge email list and huge. I don’t mean to scare people away and say you have to have like six figure or seven figures worth of followers, but you want to have an engaged following and better yet, maybe even a following that has proven and you have data to support that they will show up for you, buy from you. So that’s important.

Farnoosh: And again, because it’s a deal, it’s a public, it’s a business deal, right? The publisher is investing in you with the hopes that your book will make the publisher wealthy. And to really believe in that, they have to believe in the power of your audience, of your relationships and of your own investment in this becoming successful. So if you are going to hire a ghostwriter, mention that’s an investment in the quality of your book. If you’re going to hire a team, whether that’s a freelancer to help you get organized with your press or an actual publicist or someone to help you with social media, mention that in your book proposal because again, that is music to publishers ears. They want to know that you’re making the same, if not more of an investment in the success of this book than they are.

Farnoosh: Because if you ask any author, whether you’re with a Simon and Schuster or Penguin or Random House, they’re great. But there are limits to the resources they can provide you because they’re not. You’re not their only author. So just to manage expectations, there is an expectation that you’re going to be able to come and be the main driver of your book’s success.

Stacy: I love all of those tips, and I know that, you know, when we talk about platform, that’s super scary for people. I think there’s another layer to this which is simply networking and being in the room with people who can help drive this project forward, which I know is a lot of what you’re offering it, Book to Brand, and having an intimate space where you’re bringing in agents and hybrid publishers as well, and your expertise and Rachelle’s expertise. Can you tell us a little bit about that event and what that lineup looks like?

Farnoosh: Yeah, it’s one of the most funnest. Is that a word? Funnest. Things I do all year. And I’ll just give a real brief background on the genesis of this workshop. It’s a live workshop in New York City, and it started more than seven years ago. This is our seventh event, although we took a break during COVID So I think it started actually closer to nine years ago. And it started with so many people like you know, coming up to me and saying, how did you get your book deals? I would love to become an author. What’s your advice for me? And I realized there was a underserved market of people who didn’t know anything about the behind the scenes of publishing and how to actually get in the room with agents and publishers and how to write a book. Good book proposal.

Farnoosh: And so I thought, I. I have all these relationships, I have all this experience, I have all these friends in this industry. Let me bring them to these people who deserve to know and shortcut the process for them, essentially, because when I was trying to find these people, you know, it took me years. Why not just introduce. Make these introductions for these people who are so passionate about writing books. And so it was called Book to Brand. And as I said, it’s happening in New York this time March 7th.

Farnoosh: It’s an opportunity for you, as an aspiring authority, to come and really learn about how to develop a winning book proposal that will catch the eye of an agent, many agents, and then how to actually create a proposal that then carries through to an auction, potentially, where you have multiple Bidders from a publisher, if that is your desire to go the traditional publishing route. We also will talk about hybrid publishing. We have two guests from the hybrid publishing world, including we have Naren Ariel, who’s the CEO of Amplify Publishing Group. They just worked with Mel Robbins on her book Let Them which has gone on to be a multi bestseller. And Jesse Finkelstein, who’s the co founder of Page 2 Books. Rochelle Fredson, my co founder or my co lead I should say in Book to Brand.

Farnoosh: She was the one who helped me write my book proposal for this last book and I trust her with everything. She has helped so many authors, not just me, go on to get multiple figure deals for our books. And I couldn’t do this workshop without her because she’s also very well connected in this world. And so many of the people you’ll meet at Book to Brand, it’s thanks to Rochelle, Chrishan Trotman, who’s the editor at Legacy Lit, Donna Lofredo, Marissa Vigilante people from Hay House, Random House, Hachette. We have literary agents coming. My literary agent Sarah Pasek is coming. Wendy Sherman, Amanda Bernardi. They work with many authors who are in the sort of self help space who, especially authors who might work with readers that are underrepresented. So we are really proud of the people that we attract for Book to Brand.

Farnoosh: Not just from at the speaker level. The diversity of speakers is really important to us, but also if you look at, you know, photographs and events that we’ve held in the past, like it’s people from all over the world. In fact we have people flying in from, I think somebody was from Ireland last year. And it’s just a really special event. We keep it intentionally small so you won’t expect coming into a boardroom or a ballroom, I should say with people ahead. One of our speakers, she was very impressed and she’s like, you know, I, I’ve spoken at events similar to yours in the past, but it would be like at a hotel in a ballroom with 300 people. And we keep it intentionally small because we want our guests to have FaceTime and interaction with our speakers.

Farnoosh: Because the real value in this program, in this one day event is in the relationship building which as you know, Stacy is, you know, it’s a way to really, it’s a leaps and bounds, you know, to the, to your goals and just finding that right person. There are people who’ve come to Book to Brand and they’ll say, you know, I found my agent at your event. I found my agent and my publisher at your event. And that is just like, what, what better thing to hear?

Stacy: Yes. And you and Rochelle are both such giving humans. I feel that there’s like no gatekeeping. You’re there to serve and I really appreciate that about everything you do. And I know that’s 100% the case with this event too. We will be sure to link this in the show notes. Burnous thank you so much for this conversation today. I really enjoyed learning more about your journey. I got a whole other layer of your life and book experience that was really fun.

Farnoosh: Thank you. You can go to booktobrand everybody.co to learn more. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Thank you so much, Stacy.

Stacy: Thanks Farnoosh and thank you to you, our listener, for joining us. If you’re an aspiring author, check out her event. It sounds amazing and I’m sure that it can be a great catalyst for you and your author journey. Thank you as always to Rita Domingues for her production of this fine podcast. She truly makes it all happen and I could not do it without her. And thank you to you for joining us. I will look forward to being back with you before you know it.