Transcripts for Episode 152

These transcripts were generated by robots, not writers.

Stacy: For me, the biggest thing I have done is to share my work, to write and to share my work. People are so afraid of this and I completely get it. There are so many ways that you can share your writing and your ideas in a way that hopefully can feel very aligned, very safe because it is vulnerable to share your work. You could start with sharing your work with a friend and then start sharing it in the world. Publish on LinkedIn if that’s where your audience is, or start a blog. This is really important. You will never find your voice as a writer if you are not writing in public.

Welcome. I am so happy to be with you today. I am writing on a cloud, floating on a cloud. If you listen to a previous episode, I shared a little bit about our cat going missing, and I am so happy to say she is home. She’s pretty beat up from being out on the streets for a week and a half, and she’s 15 and it’s been so hot. But this family of the road, not knowing it was a house cat, they took her in, they fed her for three days, and then they called us and she’s home. And it’s just so much joy, so happy. So I come to this episode with all the excitement and all the energy of, you know, all our effort trying to find her paid off.
We also had another really exciting thing happen this past week. As of this recording, we onboarded a business operations manager, so that has been so, so fun getting to onboard him and help him kind of understand the business. But what has been so interesting about it is that it has also helped me understand my own business better and the team better. And I am so excited to just see what we can build together and all of the goodness that we’re going to be able to bring to the world and more authors we’re going to get to grow. I today I’m going to be answering some really great questions around writing. I also have a business question I’m going to answer as well, which will be useful for any of you authors or aspiring authors who have businesses.
So that’s going to be the focus for today. But before we get into that, I do want to share with you that I am running early enrollment to my six month book coaching program idea to draft. This is a truly amazing program and it’s a wonderful opportunity to get to work with me as your coach and also to get to journey alongside other driven humans, people who are working toward a goal that you share, which is to write a book and get it out into the world. And not just write any book, but to write an amazing book, one that you are deeply proud of and one that will help you scale your business, brand and revenue. If you want to learn more about the program, you can go to staceyannis.com ideatodraft or you can reach out to me, hellotaciennis.com or do both.
Do both, and I’ll be happy to book a call with you, share more about the program, and support you in reaching your goal of authorhood. With all that said, let me move over into the questions that I have for today. I have a question around my CRM platform, which I’ll talk about in a minute. I have a question around how to determine the right publishing pathway, and I also have another question asking about how to expand your writing portfolio and some tips and resources. So I will address all of those in today’s episode. So let’s start with the first question, which is from Joel. Joel asks, I am trying to decide if I should use a CRM platform, but I wanted to check in to see what other people are using.
He asked me to share a little bit about the CRM platform that he uses. That was his question. What CRM platform do you use? Okay, so just to clarify what a CRM is, I hope I have the acronym right in my brain. It’s always been a customer resource manager. I hope that’s right. But that’s what I’ve always known it as basically it’s how do you track and manage your clients? And so for me, I don’t call our authors customers, I call them clients, people that go through my program, our students. But we certainly use a platform to manage those relationships and make sure that we are serving people really well.

And it’s great timing to ask this question because as I mentioned, I’ve been onboarding our operations person and we have been diving through all the systems, all the things that we do as a team to track our different client projects. And I’m really proud of what we’ve built. Certainly there’s always room for improvement, but we’re doing things very well internally, which has been interesting to walk through that for someone else and to detail those systems and think like we’re doing really well, you know? Again, lots of room for improvement, always life work, always room to improve. But we have some really solid systems. So I think about our management as being broken up into two areas. On one side we use HubSpot. On the other side we use Asana.

We use HubSpot for tracking people who are interested in working with us, for reminding on follow up. So for example, you listener, let’s say that you reach out to me about idea to draft. You want to write your book with me in this amazing program. When you write me, I will add you into our platform so that I can make sure that I’m following up with you, that I am supporting you, and hopefully getting to coach you eventually on your book. I really like HubSpot. We are not fully utilizing it as well as we could, but we are continuing to expand and grow our use of HubSpot. We’re using the free version right now, which works really well. It’s been everything we need at this point in the business.

Certainly in the future I see upgrading because they have a lot of marketing, especially marketing tools. You can get a lot of data in there and have a really good sense of marketing performance and just being able to track things and understand what’s working, what’s not working. So we use HubSpot really for that process of connecting with people and hopefully supporting them into working with us in whether it’s my six month program or it’s private book coaching or it’s co writing, ghostwriting, one of those ways that we help people complete their draft when they’re a client. Then we use Asana. And I love Asana. Asana, if you’re listening to this, I love you so great. It’s such a useful tool. Everything well you know, we’re not perfect. So certainly some things exchange over WhatsApp, but most everything lives in Asana.

It’s how we track things, it’s how we manage things. We create templates for things. And so as an example, when a new client comes in, we have a whole project that tracks to make sure every step of bringing them in is completed properly, that we’re getting all the things assigned, the dates added to the calendar. And then I’m also creating an individual project that we share in private coaching. So we have a shared Asana project in idea to draft. We give a template to you as an aspiring author to manage your asana. So I’m just a big fan of project management on that side. So those are the two tools that we use for managing our client relationships and making sure that care and excellence that is absolutely foundational to everything that we do that’s happening. It’s like the systems behind the care.

And I love those platforms and cannot recommend them enough, I think. Okay, I should say I I can give that to Asana. I mostly recommend HubSpot. It’s just that I’m a little newer to it. We only implemented it probably six months ago. I’m super happy so far in what we’ve seen, but I haven’t used all of it. So I don’t know, there may be some other tools out there that other people like more. For me, it’s worked really well. Thank you for that question, Joel. The next question comes from Anonymous. Anonymous asks. Hi Stacey. I’m looking for someone who can give me some direction. I’m just finishing my book and I’ve been approached by several quote unquote, publishers who want to edit and print my book. Their prices range from $1000 to $10,000. Do you have a word of direction? Yes.

I could do a whole episode on this, and I have. We will be sure to link in the show notes to a past episode I did with Shane Friedman. We talked all about publishing options. Certainly if you are in my idea to draft program or you are a private coaching client, I go into a ton of detail about all of the options for publishing. But in a short q and a podcast episode, I will still answer this question to the best that I can in a few minutes. First of all, I’ll say that those prices do nothing really shock me at all. The higher end, I should say $1,000 seems crazy cheap to me to produce a high quality book. Just the editing process alone is usually a couple thousand dollars. Even up to several thousand dollars, depending on the shape of the book.

Of course it’s more if your book needs more work. It’s less if your book needs less work. But all in all, I typically am seeing pricing quite a bit higher than $1,000 for full production of a book. The $10,000 range is more in the ballpark of what I see with my clients. Especially if you’re self publishing anywhere in that general ballpark, a little under, a little more is pretty accurate. I mean, you have to think about all of the things that go into publishing a book, even if you are managing the process. So let’s just start with the completed draft. You have a substantive editor coming in to edit the book, also known as a content editor. They are doing so much work.

I’m trying to think back when I was a book editor, I think I used to put around 60 to 70 hours in each book project that I worked on, something like that. And I if you’re working with a good editor, this is fresh brain time. Hours, meaning it’s not like they’re sitting there at their desk for 8 hours a day. They’re probably working on the draft two to 3 hours a day, and then they’re moving on to other things because their brain is screaming at them. So it takes multiple weeks often and a lot of care and attention to be a great editor and do great work on people’s books. So that’s just one step. Then you have copy editing, which is a different type of editing. You have a proofreading. I typically recommend three rounds of proofreading on a book. That’s just the editing. Okay, so then you have to think about your cover design, your book interior design, your book formatting, your ebook conversion audiobook if you’re doing that. Although a lot of my clients are doing audiobook after the fact. So they’ll release the paperback or the hardcover and the ebook, and then they’re releasing the audiobook a little later. Sometimes that’s a practical reason. They just don’t have the time, energy to produce everything. Sometimes it’s strategic. They have an opportunity to relaunch the book, to kind of a soft relaunch. So you have that potentially you have all of the marketing that goes into it that you have to think about. You have your Amazon profile to complete. You have files to upload to various places. If you’re running a Goodreads review or a Netgalley net G A L L e Y review.

That’s its own thing. If you’re doing Amazon ads. I mean, there’s just so much to consider. Even if you strip out all the marketing, simply the production of a book, that’s the editing, the design, all of the uploading and profile creation on Amazon, optimizing that proof, the proof of the book. So you get a physical copy and review that physical copy, looking at the ebook, making sure that there aren’t any funky things going on there. All of that requires money, time, people. And so it’s expensive. It costs money. I think that sometimes when people get into this journey, they’re a little bit sticker shocked at first. Certainly even with, sometimes with the coaching that I do, people don’t even, number one, realize they can hire a book coach. They don’t know that’s a thing. And then when they’re considering working with me, it’s, you know, they don’t understand all of the time, energy and money that coaching saves them down the road because I’m helping shortcut the process. Which means that opportunity cost is now off the table because we are moving this process along and there’s just so much to it. So I understand 100% why some of these fees, you’re like, what? Had no clue. But having been in this and been in so many different moving parts of the process, knowing how much energy goes into every single step, how much expertise it takes to be able to edit a book well and think about the many years somebody has spent honing that craft. They are not robots. They are people who care deeply.

At least the people I work with and who are true experts many of us have gone through to get our master’s degree as we are not only formally trained in education, but we have worked with multiple projects. I’ve worked with over 100 books over 15 years in the industry. So you can understand, I think, when you really think about it, why all of this costs money. And this is also why when you work with a hybrid publisher. So a hybrid is kind of in between self publishing and traditional publishing. So you are really hiring somebody to produce your book, essentially, but they are getting a revenue share. So typically they’re going to have a much lower revenue share on their end. You’ll get more money on the book, you have a lot more control and that sort of thing.

But that option can be a lot more expensive because they have in house editors and a lot of their team is in house, or they really have put whole teams together for each unique component of the book. So some of the hybrid publishers I work with, they have a titling team for you. They are meeting to determine the title of your book. They’re looking at the market. They’re looking at what’s performing well right now, their cover design process is not just about the book looking pretty. They’re also paying attention to the market and what people are buying. Books have expected convention. Book covers have expected conventions by genre. So it doesn’t mean you want to fit in exactly, but you want to fit. You want your book to feel like it belongs. If you’re writing a leadership book, you probably don’t want it to look like a risque romance novel. Right? There’s certain things that you follow and conventions that you follow to belong, quote unquote, in a genre. So understanding that, understanding what’s trending, what’s classic, what’s going to have a strong shelf life, that’s all super important. They also have a marketing team that help with the copy on the back cover of the book. Oh, yeah. That’s another thing we didn’t talk about. Back cover copy is its own art. I remember when I started writing back cover copy way, long time ago, that was like a whole new world. I had to. You have to not only have read the book well, you need to understand the audience. You need to understand what they’re going to want to read in the back cover copy.

It’s an art and a skill, so there’s so much to it. And hybrid publishers just do it. They tend to do it at another level because they have the team, they have the expertise, they have a more holistic look at it. So those can be in the tens of thousands of dollars. And certainly I’ve even seen people spend closer to the six figure mark on their projects. Now, that’s fully inclusive, right? That would include their marketing. And I think it’s really important if you’re writing a book that does not have clear ROI. I did an episode on ROI. We will be sure to link in the show notes. It’s one of our most popular episodes ever.

If you’re writing a book because you care deeply about this topic, but you don’t have a bigger vision behind it, like to grow your business and scale your revenue. If that is not existing for you and you don’t have the budget, especially do not invest that kind of money into your project, please. But if you have a business, a brand, a really clear pathway of how this book fits into scaling, and you understand what the ROI will look like for you, that’s why people make those investments. And getting up to that number that I mentioned, that’s because they’re investing a ton in marketing and that marketing has long lasting ROI in their business. They’re going to have, at least for me, I can speak from experience. Pr that I have done has lasted me for years and years.

It has like for a while I had this one piece that was almost ten years old and I was still getting new clients from it. So just bear in mind that it’s not really about the book as an investment per se. It’s about the entire investment effort and how that connects with how you’re going to earn back that investment later on. It’s opportunity. It’s all of those things to come. And the other piece of it for me in particular, because I really focus on the writing process, becoming an author makes you a better everything, a better business owner or leader or human, and I should say not or. So this anchoring, this confidence that you build and really this elevation of your thought leadership is this chef’s kiss magic key that brings you into that next level of your impact and influence.

So as you’re thinking about those investments, really think about how this book connects for you. I just had a conversation with somebody just recently who was working on a book that fit into that earlier category that I mentioned. They cared about the book, they wanted to get it to market, but they didn’t have the energy, interest or really wanted to put the budget behind, really like going for it. And that’s a very different conversation and consideration than I’m writing a book. That’s part of helping me reach my next level of impact, influence and revenue. That’s a very different thing. So you really need to assess where you’re at and how this book fits into that big vision. So thank you for that question.

Anonymous I have another question from another anonymous, this time a female anonymous this person says, hi Stacey, I really enjoyed your podcast on the offbeat life travel podcast. That was a super fun episode. I really enjoyed that I said that, not her. She says it was really inspiring. I am looking to expand my writing portfolio and would appreciate some tips and resources if you have any to share. Thanks so much. I made me happy to receive this message. I love hearing from people who hear me on other podcasts or attend a webinar maybe that I do or a live that I do with somebody. It just fills my cup and it makes me feel so good. So thank you anonymous for reaching out and for sharing this.

You know, it really, this really put me back so many years, back in my own journey of growing my writing career. The thing I’m not sure about in this message is whether you say writing portfolio. I don’t know if you want to make money as a writer or if you’re looking to grow as a writer because you have, you work in the healthcare industry. I know that from part of your message that I didn’t read. And so maybe you’re building your writing so that you can go into writing more within your industry. I don’t have that information. So that’s going to influence a little bit of the information that I give you. But I’ll try to speak to both of those because I imagine we have both people listening right now.

So I’m going to share the book that I use to launch my writing business. And it just takes me back to being a teacher. I was a teacher, high school language arts teacher in the Dominican Republic, and I use this book called the well Fed Writer by Peter Bowermande. And the goal of this book was to earn $60,000 a year. And that was like, what he promises to help you reach as you know, if you follow his process. And that was a really important kind of early framing of how I thought about myself as a writer. I bet you that book was published. Like, I don’t know if it’s had a new edition, but I bought it probably in 2000. So it’s really got like some. Yeah, it’s probably pretty dated if you order it today, if you could still get a copy.

But I think a lot of philosophy really holds true. So if you are building a business, that might be a good one to try to get a copy of and then like, add 20, almost 20 years to it and see how you can frame that for today. But as far as writing resources, there are a number of writing books that I really love. I love Stephen King’s on writing. It is such a great book. Another book that I really like is Stein on writing. It’s by Sol Stine, and he was a really well known editor. I used that book as a reference guide as I was growing as a writer. Such a great resource. If I needed help with dialogue or I need to understand detail and storytelling, it’s just such a great resource for that.

I really loved having that as a resource early in my career. Great book and really useful. I liked having the ability to just scan for what I need and improve my writing. I got a master’s degree in writing, and so you could consider looking up university programs, if there’s maybe a certificate program. I know somebody in my life ecosystem, what community network who wanted to move into writing. And so she completed a certificate through, I think it was UCLA’s, like, satellite campus, so and so. That was a great option for her because it gave her a little bit more formalized process to move into writing. For me, the biggest thing I have done is to share my work, to write and to share my work. People are so afraid of this, and I completely get it.

Thankfully, I started blogging when blogging was very early days, and I think it was just early enough that it was before people would leave mean stuff on. You know, I didn’t have that orientation to putting my work out there, and it didn’t feel negative to me. And so I have to acknowledge that the time is a little different. But there are so many ways that you can share your writing and your ideas in a way that hopefully can feel very aligned, very safe, because it is vulnerable to share your work. You could start with sharing your work with a friend and then start sharing it in the world. Publish on LinkedIn if that’s where your audience is, or start a blog. This is really important. You will never find your voice as a writer if you are not writing in public.

Maybe that’s a strong statement, but I believe it to be true, because while we, of course, can hone our writing in private, you really refine your voice through sharing it. And public, to me, doesn’t necessarily mean a blog, but it means that we are sharing our work. I often think about how many great books are sitting on computers right now, how many people have so much capacity to create beauty and have value to the world through their storytelling, through their writing, but they’re holding themselves back with that first step, which is beginning to be comfortable with sharing your voice. I, again, I get it. I have so many conversations with my clients, with my students about this. I understand. I know all of the mental chatter that comes up. I’ve experienced it. I’ve coached many, many people through it.

And I was going to say, but. But now I’m adding, and because it is and, and youre realization of your dreams as a writer require you to get out of your comfort zone and write in public and start to share your work. So it’s really important. The other thing that I’ll add, other than those books that I mentioned, is just reading your face off. Like, read, read. And don’t just read nonfiction. I don’t know if you’re a nonfiction writer like I am, but. Or like all of my clients are. I only work in nonfiction, but I read fiction a lot. And in fact, I tend to listen to more audiobooks of nonfiction and read physically read fiction. I have found I don’t really enjoy fiction audiobooks personally.

My fiction reading and my early orientation into novels, you know, kids novels when I was younger and then eventually as an adult, more sophisticated work is the absolute bedrock foundation everything of my writing today. And it continues to fuel me. It continues to inspire me. I bring my experience reading powerful novels into the work that I do as a coach because I think that our nonfiction world could benefit so much from employing the strategies that fiction authors use and bringing people in of storytelling, of that rich narrative voice. All of that makes nonfiction better. And it’s something that I’d love to see more people using in their writing. So thank you for these questions, Joel, anonymous and anonymous, I really appreciate hearing from you. I hope these were helpful answers to your questions.

If you listener or viewer have a question for me, I really like answering them. So you can send them to me at hello@stacyennis.comc or you can dm me on Instagram, Stacy Ennis or find me on LinkedIn. You guessed it, Stacy Ennis. And I would love to receive your question and potentially answer it on an upcoming podcast episode. If even one thing was useful today, I’m going to ask you what you hear all the other podcast hosts asking, but I hope that you’ll follow through for me today. Would you please, pretty please leave a five star rating and review? I can’t even put into adequate words on this podcast. What a huge, massive, mega difference it makes. It really, really, truly does make a difference. So if you have two minutes to do that right now, I would be incredibly grateful.

That is it for me this week. I want to thank, as always, Rita Domingues for her editing of the Spine podcast. She truly makes all of this flow. And I am incredibly grateful. And for you. Thank you for tuning in with me, being part of my online community, my podcast listenership. I am so glad to be with you this week. And I will be back with you before you know it.