Interview with Rea Frey: Author, Writing Coach, and Publishing Industry expert. Rea Frey is the author of four nonfiction books and two novels. Her debut novel, NOT HER DAUGHTER, was named one of Marie Claire's Top 27 books and was a Silver Falchion Award Finalist. Rea also runs a writing coach business, where she helps authors land agents and book deals.
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women (& women-identified & non-binary) entrepreneurs, founders, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles. #patriciakathleenpodcasts #wildeagency #femalefounders #femaleentrepreneurs #femaleauthor #womeninbusiness #nonfictionauthor #LiftNotDrag
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's w i l d dot agency or my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:25][77.9]
[00:01:30] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia, and today I am sitting down with Rea Frey. Rea is an author, writing coach and publishing industry expert. Welcome, Rea. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for meeting with us. A quick bio on Rea for everyone listening. I'm going to give you a brief bio Rea and then I'm going to drop into the road map for how the podcast is going to work today. For those of you that would like to refer back to it, Rea Frey is the author of four nonfiction books and two novels. Her debut novel, Not Her Daughter, was named one of America's top twenty seven books and was a Silver Falchion Award finalist Rea it was also runs a writing coach business where she helps authors, land agents and book deals. When not writing or coaching, you can find real homeschooling her daughter whipping up some yummy plant based food or plotting her next great adventure. So I'm really excited to get into your background. We haven't gotten a podcast series. We've not hit with a lot of people kind of dedicated to writing and the publishing industry. And so that'll be fun for those of you listening. The road map for today's podcast is similar to that of the series. We're going to get into Ria's academic background, unpacking how she came into the publishing industry and her professional life and then later professional life. And then we'll launch into the goals that she has looking forward with writing and publishing and other business endeavors that Rea has. And then we'll wrap everything up with advice that Rea has for those of you looking to either work with her or get into the industry that she is kind of evolving in Syria. Will you launch a straight into your academic background and early professional life following that? [00:03:15][104.9]
[00:03:15] Yeah. So I grew up I mean, I knew that I kind of wanted to be a writer, but it wasn't something that I really thought, like, I'm going to make this a profession. I was always just journaling. My dad is a writer. He's not a published writer. But I was always surrounded with books and words. I was very academic. I was salutatorian of my high school, valedictorian of my college. But before I went to college, I got a few scholarships, athletic training, scholarships. I was very, very into health and wellness. So I kind of had this split trajectory where I wanted to go down to health and wellness path, but I also wanted to go down the right path. So I received a small a small scholarship from Columbia in Chicago, and they had a great creative writing program. And I decided, you know what, I want to do this. I want to see what it's like to go to school for writing. I kind of was a little burned out on school. Honestly, it's time I got to college. I just stress myself out so much. So ironic. I'm homeschooling my daughter because I was just so I was in that fixed mindset and just producing and perfectionism and have to get straight A's. And I kind of carry that into college as well. And I ended up I started as a journalism major and kind of abandoned that and switched to creative writing that I but then after I graduated, I got right back into journalism. But I had a novel of really crappy novel that I never even talk about. I published it before I graduated college. And I yeah, it's I mean, again, I pretend that that book doesn't exist because it was so bad, like no one should ever read it. I think it's still floating out there somewhere. But I learned so much about the publishing industry just from that experience alone. And I also ended up getting married before I graduated college and divorced seven years later. But so college, those formative years, I feel like I spent my 20s living this domestic life rather than graduating college, going to New York, working for a literary agency or a publishing house. I did intern at a literary agency in Chicago and I loved it. But as soon as I graduated college, I kind of just it's really funny. Like I wanted to write novels, but I took the long way around. I started working for magazines, for newspapers. I was a journalist on three death row cases and worked with inmates on death row. I was fascinated by that world. I worked for corporations and did a lot of ghostwriting. I worked for publishing the publishing industry, as well as some literary agencies and publishing houses where they would hire me to work with their clients or to write a specific part of a health and wellness book. So I kind of dabble. I was just like through my twenties. I wasn't very focused and I was just saying yes to anything I could in the realm of writing. But it was just great. It gave me a lot of experience, but it wasn't like I wasn't just sitting still and kind of like going all into this one area of writing throughout that time. Throughout my twenties, I ended up writing several non. Books that it's funny, I could write them and I knew what I was talking about, but I did not have that author platform and the author platform is one of the most important things when you're writing nonfiction and wanting it to get published, because if you're writing something and no one, no one knows who you are and no one is going to read it, then what's the point? So I was a little frenetic. I was just kind of all over the place and, you know, went through a divorce at that time, like I'd move back to Nashville, went through a divorce and then moved back to Chicago. And I immediately got hired to go to Switzerland and go write a book called The Swiss Chocolate Diet by some lady that I didn't even know. And I was like, yes, I'm going to do this and go. And I did. And it's funny. Like through that, I kind of got back into health and wellness and then I got hired. I got hired by several corporations to kind of run their editorial department to run to be a managing editor. And I settled in for a little while and that in that area before my life totally changed and I grew the business that I have now and then went back to writing fiction. So I was all over the map. And I don't suggest that anyone takes the bat. I don't know. [00:07:53][277.5]
[00:07:53] I don't know because it sounds like you garnered a lot of times when people talk about, oh, I was doing everything under the sun, I had all of these different jobs. It always comes to to be, at least in my mind's eye, that that's part of what sculpted them into the expert that they were. It was those kind of what seem seemingly meaningless moments or non communicative ventures that actually came together to create this force. In the end, not not the greater picture. And you talk about the author platform. Is that something that you really identified? I don't. So in my naiveté, I don't even know. That's a technical term or one you've developed. But is that something that you identified as what was kind of missing as you were going through all of these sub author kind of experiences as opposed to kind of launching your own independent coaching enterprise? [00:08:46][53.1]
[00:08:47] Absolutely. So when I I'm trying to think that the first book that I had come out was called The Cheat Sheet, and it was a book about infidelity, actually, it's in the relationship section and the author platform. So that is that is a phrase that's used in the publishing industry. And that really means kind of what you are doing already that is exposing yourself to an audience. So back then, that wasn't really around social media either. Social media was kind of just starting, whereas today that's everything. But it's who are you in the public eye? What are you are doing? How are you going to market this book? And for me, I didn't have that huge, robust audience. I didn't have hundreds of thousands of followers. So when my books came out, I had one that did called Power Vegan. And I was on TV and radio and podcasts. But it's so hard to get someone to spend 15 dollars on a book. There's so many books that come out every year. You have to figure out how to differentiate yourself. And today, in today's publishing landscape, the author platform is everything for a writer. And I really work with my writers on that because I've been through the other side and not having an author platform. And yes, I got published. My book sales still suffered because of it. So I'm really glad I went through that experience. So I kind of know how to coach my clients actually on how to build that robust marketing section. [00:10:20][93.3]
[00:10:21] So is there a platform akin to or does it encompass brand or. [00:10:26][4.5]
[00:10:26] Yes, absolutely. So that's exactly what it is. It's your personal brand. And again, everyone has a brand. I think that that that word gets a bad rap sometimes or it feels narcissistic or selfish and it's not it's it's what content your you're sharing. You know, we all consume content, but we all create content. Look at if you look at yourself objectively and see what you're sharing online, what you love to talk about, how you present yourself at work, at home, at play, all of that encompasses your brand. But for many of us, it's kind of all over the place and it's not really focused. And when you're going to write a nonfiction book, it needs to really be in alignment with your book. Your book needs to serve almost as an extra like tool for sales for your business, which is so much easier of a sell than, say, a novel where no one really needs that. It's not solving a problem. You're writing it to entertain someone. But the author platform is not as important in fiction. So that's a really important difference. Factor nonfiction author platform is everything in fiction, it's important, but it does not dictate usually whether you get a book deal or not. [00:11:36][70.4]
[00:11:38] Yeah, easily to discern that. So how when you made this leap from kind of peppering all of these different experiences that you were into being your own coach and author and getting into your own publishing experiences, was there a main impetus or did it gradually and organically happen? And when you first launched it, were you alone? Did you have clients? How did you structure that? [00:12:02][24.0]
[00:12:03] Yeah, so it was it was pretty organic. So I met a woman named Jessica's wife, who is in Chicago years ago, probably close to a little over 10 years ago. And she hired me as her managing editor for a women's magazine called Chiki Chicago. And I managed over 40 writers. I mean, I love that job so much after several years that shut down. And she took me with her to another company based out of Dallas, where I was also doing a lot of managing editing work that ended after that was just a mess. We both left that she started her own branding agency, her personal branding agency, and she asked if I would be her editorial director. I was like, yes, absolutely. So, again, I was responsible for all of these huge CEOs and executives managing all of their content. So I really learned a lot about marketing and branding there. And during the time that I worked there, I actually got an idea for a novel of my own and ended up I mean, the path to publication is a crazy story. But at that time with her, I was working. I'm working three jobs. When I was the the agency, I was still doing some side work. I owned a gym as well, like I was just at my hands and everything. I had an idea for a book kind of about this reverse kidnaping. And I had not touched fiction in ten years. It's what I really wanted to do. But I just I had not I just I don't know. I felt like I didn't have the right to to dove back into fiction because I had abandoned it for so long. But I was in an airport and I witnessed this really, really violent exchange between a mother and daughter. And I had this idea for a woman kidnaping a five year old child to save her from her abusive mother. And I saw this pair in the airport. I went home and I was like, I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to I'm going to write this book. And so I quit two of my jobs that very week, not simply the agency. I cut back and I gave myself eight weeks to write this book, and I wrote it in a month and ended up landing an agent and a two book deal. And it was kind of off to the races, but I still had my job. I think it's very important to keep your day job until you can make enough money as a writer. And so I was trying to manage all of this prelaunch with my book and like being a fiction writer and branding myself as a fiction writer and still being very much plugged into my job. And right before my book launch in August of twenty eighteen, I like sat my boss down. I was remote. I've always been a remote worker and just told her like, hey, I want to go off on my own. I want to write full time. I've never believed in myself one hundred percent enough to do this. And she was so supportive. She was amazing. And I was like absolutely go for it. So I was like, this is it. I'm going to be a full time writer. I'm going all in. And all of a sudden I launched my book. It did very well. It got ended up getting a movie deal before it even came out. It was very buzz worthy. I traveled all over the country, went on a great book tour, was having so much fun. And then I kept organically getting inquiries from people who wanted to write books, who wanted to write nonfiction books. And I had dabbled in the past with writing nonfiction book proposals for clients and the nonfiction book proposal. For those who don't know. When you want to get published and write a novel, you complete the entire novel, you write the novel, you polish it and then you pitch it and see if it can get picked up for a nonfiction book. Nine times out of ten, you create what's called a book proposal, which is basically like a roadmap to what your book will become. It has very specific parts. It's very comprehensive. The book proposals I work on are sixty to one hundred pages and I've done them throughout the years, just like here and there. There were a lot, a lot less comprehensive. I'd helped authors. I always kind of been helping authors for free and all of a sudden I started getting these referrals and getting reached out. I was like, OK, like, who am I to turn down? At the time I was charging a lot less, but with all of my publicity efforts and the book travel, I was like, oh, this can kind of supplements my dreams as a fiction writer. So I started saying yes to clients. And then all of a sudden at one time I had 20 plus clients at the same time. And I was just overwhelmed with the response for people who were wanting to write a nonfiction book who really believed that they had these books in them. So I kind of like use it as a beta launch and was like, huh, maybe I can kind of make this into a business. And it's scaled in a very short period of time to a six figure business. Within twenty nineteen alone, I had eight clients, Slaínte agents and book deals. One of those was a six figure book deal and it just kind of clicked. I mean, it's something I love to do know. The landscape of publishing is changing a lot and it's it's getting harder and harder to really stand out in the crowd. So I have to constantly pivot my tactics. And I've over the past few years, have really built up wonderful relationships with agents, with literary agents. And I just love explaining to my clients. I feel like that's why people are really hiring me as to understand how the publishing industry even works. When I get an inquiry, I always ask people the first thing I ask them is why they want to do this. You know, the answer I get the most is literally I want to be a New York Times best seller and I want my book to be in the airport. And I'm like, OK, then you don't know anything about the publishing industry because that's a motivating goal they want to get at the moment that they are interested. Interesting. And The New York Times best selling author, which of course we all want to, but but really understanding how it works, what's realistic, what's not, how to read a contract, what a literary agent does, how you even get paid, doing this major, doing it for money, you're doing it for the total wrong reason. But I, I mean, I kind of just take these clients under my wing. And when you leave with a with a comprehensive book proposal and hopefully an agent and maybe even a book deal, you really understand what you're doing. So you can apply it to the next book and the next book and the next book. So it's crazy. I'm now two books and in my fiction writing career and this business has kind of scaled up, hired an editor and a proofreader. And again, I'm referral only. I haven't even advertised business, but I'm I'm I'm trying to streamline it and change it for twenty twenty and be more selective about the clients that I take on and continually refine and hone that process. [00:19:22][439.1]
[00:19:23] Yeah, absolutely. I'm interested. So with the the nonfiction book proposal, I guess that's something that I even myself haven't been fully acclimated to for this the nonfiction. Right. One hundred page proposals and then you proceed to write the book when it gets picked up or that's the normal trajectory. [00:19:44][20.9]
[00:19:45] Yes. [00:19:45][0.0]
[00:19:45] And I mean, sometimes you can sell a book, a nonfiction book by just writing the whole book. But that's that's very rare. I always explain the book proposal as it's a sales tool for the agent. So you're trying to pitch yourself and your idea to a literary agent who is someone who will represent you, who will get you a book deal, who is there to really shape and hone your career. They do not get paid unless you get a book deal. You get a book deal. They get 15 percent of everything. But the the book proposal itself is to really show that you've thought through your entire idea. So a lot of people have these great ideas. I'm like, wonderful. Can you actually write two hundred, two hundred fifty pages on this idea? And sometimes that's a no. Sometimes it should be a blog, sometimes it could maybe be a webinar or a really short ebook. And I have to I have to be very discerning. I look at an author's brand and what they're doing on social media or if they're out there on the speaking circuit, you've got to look at what they are, what the client is already doing in the public eye and and make sure that they really have something beyond just an idea. So my target is really CEOs, entrepreneurs, people who don't need a book to make ends meet, but they're really doing it as a sales tool for when they give those big conferences or keynote speeches, they can have their book there to to sell there. They're going to be successful. They do need a book. They have the brand and the business, the. Already kind of establishes the need for for this thing, I do work, though, I have a take on a lot of passion projects as well. But sometimes if that idea is good enough and the author has no social media following or they're not out there in the public eye, sometimes an agent will still see the merit in it and take them on as a client. I've had that happen with three or four clients, which is great. So I consider myself like you're coming to me. It's almost like a vetting process. And we're really going to, like, pick apart your idea who you are. We've got to make sure there's enough substance there and that that you really do have a book in you to write. And we work so much. I mean, I always tell people, like writing the book proposal is so much harder than the book. When you sit down to write the book, it's so much easier because you have this amazing roadmap and already kind of like thought through it. It's a bit like slogging through mud, honestly, but it's so much fun. And then you have this amazing product in the end that you've worked so hard at. And I notice a lot of authors come to the table with one idea and when they get into the pieces and parts of the book proposal, it becomes something else completely. And I think that's the great part of the collaboration, is you're getting an objective viewpoint. You're getting someone who knows the marketplace, knows what areas are saturated. So it's it's just really fun. I mean, it's a lot of work, but it's fun. [00:23:01][196.5]
[00:23:02] Yeah. Let's get into online publishing. You touched on that briefly. Do you feel like one of the limiting factors or the distinguishing factors, rather, is that its length issue when you get into fiction or even nonfiction publishing online, it feels like the Wild West. [00:23:17][15.2]
[00:23:17] Still, for me as a reader, at least even as a writer, I think that there's been it was the slowness when I was coming up. I'm old, I'm forty two. [00:23:27][9.6]
[00:23:27] And so when I was 40 in college, when I was coming out, people part of the bane of the writer's existence was still that the delay, the nine month publishing delay that at the time 20 years ago, incredibly common from this publishing house when you did a deal or prospective deal, it was nine months to a year before publishing, before it came to market. And that kind of a delay was the death sentence to a lot of people's bottom line. So the online publishing seemed to take care of or at least compete with that with the other venue. And it also opened up audience. Certainly the pay was an issue. But you you just brought in the idea briefly that if someone comes to you with a smaller idea, it being more of a blog or perhaps something that's in E published, can you get into what you see between like that, the publishing industry, hard copy versus online? [00:24:23][55.6]
[00:24:24] Oh, yes, so it's funny. Yes, the publishing industry still kind of moves at this archaic pace, like when I wrote Not Her Daughter, I wrote it so fast and then it didn't come out. Honestly, from the time I wrote that book to the time it was published, it was almost 18 months. And I was like, well, I have a lot more than a month. You can look, however, when you are someone new and you were coming into this world, that time is critical to number one, find your readers. Where are they showing up online? What leaders do they follow? What publications are they reading? Where are they on social media? You find and connect with them early before you have a product to sell. So you're engaging with them. And then when you do have a product, it can be based on reciprocity and not like, hey, will you write something about my book or are you just shoving your book down their face? So you need that time in the publishing industry and the traditional publishing industry to reach out to media to really create the buzz for this book. It's it's it's just critical. The time is not I mean, it's actually an asset. I think it's it's very much an asset. You have to build up the buzz. You have to create your prelaunch campaign, your publication campaign and then your post publication campaign. Now, for a lot of people, you know, again, when I have clients come to me, they a lot of people have self published, which is when you pay to write the book and then you pay to get it published. And this is kind of goes along with the online publishing. You can get a hard copy, of course, but it's a very fast process. I mean, if I had an idea for a book published it, I can get it up and running probably in a few weeks or a month. The problem with that, I never suggest self publishing unless you have people to sell it to, unless you are a fantastic salesperson, unless you have a huge, robust audience. Because as I said earlier, the point is to have people find you and to have readers be able to read your book. And a lot of people just want to be published, to be published, quite honestly. And again, that goes back to that. Why like, why are you doing this? If you just want to write and put material out there, great, you can self publish. But there's this new wave of publishing called hybrid publishing, which is another thing that I suggest for clients where it takes the best parts of traditional publishing and kind of the autonomy of self publishing and puts them together. So you get some distribution in bookstores, not as much as with a traditional publisher. The turnaround time is not as much. You usually have a professional editorial team editing your material, working on book covers, doing all of that kind of stuff. And so it's it's kind of the best of both worlds. Your royalty rates are usually a lot higher, but I always tell clients, like if it's a choice between getting paid for your work or paying to publish your work, let's just try to go the traditional route first and see if you can get paid. If that's a no, then we can look into other options. Now, a lot of people don't know, but Amazon Publishing is taking a huge bite out of the traditional publishing industry. So now Amazon has a whole traditional publishing arm where they're plucking a lot of really huge authors from the Big Five, the traditional and the big publishers in New York. And they're pulling them over. They're paying them six figure advances. The authors get paid every month. They're paying for book tours. They're paying for an in-house publicists, and they're treating them amazingly. But most of those sales are going to be e-book sales and they're going to be only marketed to Amazon's database, which is enormous. But it's so exciting right now. Like, if you want to write a book, there are so many ways to get a book published, whether you want it immediately. And I mean, there's an avenue for that. If you want the traditional route, there's an avenue for that. So it's really deciphering what your goals are, why you're why you're doing this and how long you want to wait, honestly. But the but the waiting time again, like I said, it is not a hindrance. It's a total asset for really preparing the market for your product. [00:28:56][271.7]
[00:28:57] Right. And would you say that that is for nonfiction as well as fiction, like preparing your market with a nonfiction? I think a lot of the entrepreneurs that I've spoken with over the past 18 months for the series have kind of always been advised on some level. Even a startup founder will mention in the flurry of the magnitude of things that she has to do. And then I've got to get some book written and I'm always asking where. What is that you're going to write, and I think it's something on the checklist that it is like the Entrepreneurs Guide to Success or something, and someone says you've got to become an expert. [00:29:32][34.6]
[00:29:32] And one of the best ways to do that is to book a book. It is. And I mean, I think that that still exists. I mean, I think that that is still true. You know, I mean, a ton of entrepreneurs and successful people don't write their own books. Like, I worked with several authors or authors that I've actually turned down. I was going to work with them and then said no, because their goal, they just didn't want to have anything to do with it. They wanted a book to have a book. And that's not my type of client. If you're not willing to kind of if it's your brand and your business and your expertize you're wanting to share, no one can really do that for you. But I mean, the people who write books for their business should I mean, it should be there should be a specific purpose for that, not to just be an expert. I mean, I feel like that term is kind of tossed around so loosely these days. Like everyone's everyone's an expert. But, you know, again, that goes back to goals and just really figuring out why you're doing it. If you don't have time to write a book because it is a very lengthy thing, don't do it. I mean, build up your business, see what it is. Number one, you should actually go out and research what's already out there. I mean, the entrepreneurial space and books and the business and stuff, development space is so popular, but it's so saturated. So if you're going to get published, you need to be talking about something that no one's really heard before in order to stand out or it's just kind of going to get gobbled up by all the other books that are out there. [00:31:00][88.2]
[00:31:01] Absolutely. So as far as with your particular coaching industry and things like that, if you look forward at the next three years, you've grown so quickly over the past two with your own personal success as an author and then now this coaching business that just kind of flourished right beneath its first year of development. [00:31:20][19.0]
[00:31:21] When you look forward, it sounds like you're capable of coaching people, not even just throw out book deals, but writing in general because you've gotten to offshoots of maybe that's a blog, maybe it's this. Have you seen those goals for your company, your coaching company over the next three years? Are you thinking about expansion of who you coach or and also how do people contact you? [00:31:42][21.5]
[00:31:43] Yeah, so I'm definitely thinking of expansion. I do work. I don't really advertise it, but I do work with fiction authors as well. So I kind of have started testing this service, this diagnostic service, where a lot of people come to me with fiction and they want me to edit their manuscripts. But something funny about fiction writers is they just want to be told how amazing their work is. They don't really want someone to kind of take part there or touch it. I mean, it's a very sensitive it's very sensitive. Writers can be very precious about the material, especially fiction writers. I'm a fiction writer, too. So what I've done is an editor friend of mine. We're kind of doing this diagnostic service where if a writer comes to us, they have a full manuscript. Maybe they've pitched it to agents and they just keep getting nose, nose, nose. We assess the manuscript, so we read it and we we do not edit it, but we come up with kind of this diagnostic feedback on why we think that it hasn't been picked up. We get specific elements to change and then we take a phone call with the client and really go through on how to fix it, just kind of how to troubleshoot the problems. I also do like a query letter service for writers who want to pitch to agents that they have no idea how so how all these like little services. But in twenty twenty I only want to take on four to six clients and I want to work with them longer, normally with a book proposal. And how us doing two to three book proposals a month in this last year. And I want to really stretch that out with one client. We work together for three months and we get I mean, we go through everything, so we take our time. It's not rushed. We make sure that the client is very, very comfortable, that they have everything they need, even if that is say they get a book deal. They don't want to write their book. I can help them find a ghostwriter. They can hire me as a ghostwriter. But it's very, very, very hands on. So it's not so like just kind of a book proposal, book proposal, book proposal. So I'm really wanting to kind of be more selective in my nonfiction practice, but also really open the door for fiction writers, too. I would love to start doing workshops or corporate workshops where I can come to a space and teach you kind of the book proposal methodology and a single afternoon so people can take those tools and do it themselves. But honestly, what I found is people don't want to do it themselves. They want to have that cocreator and have someone. To assign them tasks and tell them give them a deadline to explain the process and what to do. So I just kind of want to keep growing that way and being more intentional about who I say yes to and see what see what happens from there. [00:34:40][177.3]
[00:34:41] Yeah, well, good things are going to happen if it's if your history is any indication here. Absolutely. [00:34:45][4.8]
[00:34:47] So if you run into a young woman or a female identified or non binary individual tomorrow who said, listen, you know, I did some journalism, some creative writing in school, I got out, I jumped around between about 19 different industries. [00:35:03][16.3]
[00:35:04] I stayed publishing and writing. And I've been here and back again. I've written a couple of things I don't want to talk about a few more. I do. And I'm really looking at kind of going off into my own and and doing this independent writing and becoming an expert. What are the three pieces of advice you would give them? [00:35:20][16.3]
[00:35:21] I mean, first of all, I would talk to people who were already doing that. So really finding people that are doing what she wants to be doing and ask them all the questions in the world. I mean, I feel like this can be a very isolating industry somewhat. But it's also I mean, I feel like authors and people who are in the publishing industry are so generous and will give you great advice and figure out what to do and what not to do. So find people who you can ask a million questions to. I would also get really specific about the products that you were offering. That's one thing that I didn't do up front. I feel like I'm like, oh yeah, I'll edit and I'll copy at it and I'll proofread and I'll go straight and I'll do all of these things. But maybe launch with just one service and see how that goes to kind of test your market and and just start small. Like I feel like we're so we feel like we're supposed to grow so fast and all a business did grow organically. There are I mean, there's a lot of burnout out and there are there are a lot of mistakes and things I learned from. So there is nothing wrong with growing slow, taking them on maybe one or two clients, even doing kind of I mean, I thought about doing what I wanted to do workshops is doing a workshop for like one third of the cost to get that live feedback, take some photos, get some great advertising opportunities, but really do it as a as a soft launch to see what works for you. What did it what would you like to see? Like, do you think that this is worth the price? So really doing your research around that and starting very, very small, I think would be a great piece of advice. And then the third piece of advice, I mean, honestly, this industry changes so quickly and it's constantly evolving, which I don't think is a bad thing. But you have to stay on top of the industry. You have to actually kind of immerse yourself in what's going on, getting engaged in your own community, too, and and seeing what kind of writing events, like if you want to be a writer, you wanna be a published author, start going to book signings, start introducing yourself to published authors, start reaching out on Instagram. I mean, I know that that's or Twitter or Facebook or wherever you're at, but I have gotten more direct responses from my literary idols from sending them a direct message on Instagram, asking just either industry advice or would you be willing to do this or can I? I want to share your latest book. Can I take a photo of this? I mean, people are so receptive and so kind and finding those places where they might not be inundated with emails like I find Instagram to be wonderful for that. A lot of authors are just starting out on Instagram. So if you send them a message, they'll actually respond to it, which is great. LinkedIn is also an I mean, I love LinkedIn for so many reasons, but don't be afraid to reach out and find people that you want to emulate and then again, just connect with them, not because you want something, but just just to connect. [00:38:39][198.3]
[00:38:40] Absolutely. So talk with people who are already doing what you're doing, get specific about the services you want to offer and start small and stay current with industry standards and connect with people. [00:38:50][10.0]
[00:38:51] Those are your top three. I like that. That's a nutshell. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I appreciate your time today. We are out of time and I feel like I could go on and on. [00:39:01][10.6]
[00:39:01] There's just so many facets to the publishing industry and I don't know that getting online and Googling it makes it clear. [00:39:09][7.7]
[00:39:10] And I would say that I mean, that's the thing. Like you can Google anything you want to find. But again, find those people who are doing what you want to be doing, who are all who've already done it or who are building that business or. Or they have those books and and follow what they're doing, even if you can't reach out to them. Look at what they are doing, look at what content they're putting out, research their stories, kind of see how they did it and how you can do it your own way for sure. [00:39:38][27.9]
[00:39:38] So absolutely. Well, we'll circle back around as well. I will find you and hound you until you meet up with us again. We'll come back to you in six months and find out where the next book is at and where your next phase of your company is. I know that everyone is busy and I am in San Diego. Rea is in Nashville, and I appreciate your time today. And one more time that people want to contact you, can you give us a good way for them to do that? [00:40:04][25.8]
[00:40:05] Definitely. They can just go to my website, which is reha free dot com or a dot com. There are ways to work with me. Services page, how to contact me on social media. [00:40:15][10.2]
[00:40:16] It's all right there. Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time today. And we will circle back around and speak with you soon. Sounds great. Cool. [00:40:24][7.5]
[00:40:24] And for everyone listening, I appreciate your time. And until we speak again, remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte. [00:40:24][0.0]
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