Latest / The Two Authors’ Podcast / Conferencing with Doug and Nick

Transcript

Conferencing with Doug and Nick · The Two Authors’ Podcast

• 0:00
  We got a lot of cool free tiers on there.
• 0:02
  So this tears.
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  All right.
• 0:08
  Welcome to the two authors podcast, an entertaining chat show
• 0:12
  hosted by bestselling mystery and thriller authors, Douglas
• 0:15
  Pratt and Nicholas Harvey in lively, humorous and informative
• 0:20
  conversation with distinguished guests who share their thoughts
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  and experience about forging a successful author career.
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  Welcome to this week's show. How are you doing today, Mr. Nick?
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  Fan.
• 0:37
  Oh, fabulous. We are always going on about how much we love our sponsor, Velom. So sometimes
• 0:46
  you love serenading your house right here. Serenading you.
• 0:49
  Sometimes you'll be beautiful.
• 0:51
  Like love somebody like that you want to sing a song to him and so
• 0:56
  We came up with this lovely little ditty just for
• 1:02
  Valom careful what you wish for people
• 1:06
  You like to make it nice
• 1:11
  Stage advice you need a fancy header for the book on your print and pics and pretty edges
• 1:20
  There's only one solution when it comes to uplowing.
• 1:24
  The finest looking books come from the Bradcoing.
• 1:28
  Valum is the bestest when it comes to formatting.
• 1:32
  Valum is fantabulous and lets you bring the wing.
• 1:35
  Don't be a great loser and screw up formatting.
• 1:39
  'Cause Valum is fantabulous and lets you bring the wing.
• 1:46
  (guitar music)
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  - I'm telling you what, we are going to be canceled
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  for this, like they're gonna be like,
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  "This is a travesty to humanity right here."
• 1:59
  - No way!
• 2:00
  I'm good, hey, my phone's ringing right now, hang on.
• 2:02
  Just set, can I make the Grammys?
• 2:04
  Yeah, yeah, we can do that.
• 2:05
  - Oh, the Grammys, oh yeah.
• 2:06
  - Yeah, we just got the invite, yeah.
• 2:08
  - The invite to the Grammys,
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  are you sure it's the right Grammys?
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  (laughing)
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  - The Grammys.
• 2:13
  I think we just got invited to the grandies.
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  Yes.
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  It's a whole different ball game there.
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  I think my poor granny is just rolled over in that grace.
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  Honestly.
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  Hey, Brad, how you doing, man?
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  We're sponsoring podcast.
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  That'd be a great idea.
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  I just want to say sorry.
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  I thought, huh?
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  [LAUGHTER]
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  Just a podcast.
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  I'm sorry.
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  All right.
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  So let's plug our Patreon right now.
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  That'd be a good time.
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  Why?
• 2:40
  They're leaving right now.
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  They're like, oh my God, they might put this on here.
• 2:43
  - Unsubscribe.
• 2:45
  - Now, if they'd be, thank you to all of our Patreon supporters,
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  of course, so you guys were always great
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  and we appreciate your support.
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  And if you guys feel you're getting any value
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  aside from that song, please.
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  - I can't even strum properly now.
• 2:59
  - You didn't strum,
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  well, your strumming was the best part of the song.
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  Now, check us out over at patreon.com/thetoeauthorspodcast
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  and check out, we got a lot of cool free tiers on there.
• 3:12
  - There's tiers, all right.
• 3:14
  - There's tiers.
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  - All right, carrying on with what we've been doing
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  through May, although I think this is actually,
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  yeah, there's still May.
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  All right, I don't know what month it is.
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  We're doing our pod pal shout out to our besties
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  over at the Wish I'd Known, then podcast writers
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  whose guest this past week was Lindsay Hughes
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  and the subject was How to Pitch Your Book to Hollywood.
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  I just feel that I should say that I think Jamie is one of the
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  classiest, wonderful people with a lovely accent.
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  Oh my gosh, you're trying to pull your foot out of your mouth
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  like right now. It's Jamie. I apologize. But but in fairness,
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  we didn't actually call her a hick and like the week before
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  she no, we did. And the week before she was like, I don't
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  know what those boys are thinking like, see, she, yeah, I
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  don't know. I will also say that I decided that you were
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  I decided instead of speeding it up. I decided to slow them down. So I really slow so I took it instead of being an 80 minute episode
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  It was like, you know, but it was a great episode. So like the sloth of the DMV. Yeah, so so I got Jamie going
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  Oh my gosh, we love though. We just I love Jamie and Sarah when I just we just like poke and find a job
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  That's why but no, it was really great. It was the episode was good. Yeah, it's how to pitch your book to Hollywood this lady
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  It's also about how to pitch your book to other people.
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  Just in general, if you want to pitch your book to a podcast,
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  or you want to pitch your book to a blog,
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  then it was really great information on how to do it.
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  I thought it was really good.
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  Absolutely.
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  All right, let's move on, because we have terrible guests
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  this week, because the guests this week are us.
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  Oh, that's right.
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  But hopefully, we got something between now.
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  We got to leave you a listener question coming up first.
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  Absolutely.
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  So you get a brief break from us with Adrian Giordano.
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  Adrian Giordano, thank you for the recent interview we had
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  with you, which is wonderful.
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  And for sticking around to ask us an author question.
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  What do you got?
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  - I would like to know when it comes to your writing,
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  what does success look like for you?
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  - Yeah.
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  (laughing)
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  (laughing)
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  - I'll take that one first if you want me to, Nick.
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  - Go for it, man.
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  - Like, the fact is, like, I've always wanted to be a writer
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  since I was like a little kid.
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  And so, and I think we talked about this,
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  I published my first book back in 2011.
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  So for me, the fact that I actually can do this
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  for a living and it's the best job I've ever had to me,
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  that's already, I'm already pretty successful with it.
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  So I like that.
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  So that to me is really what I just gauge my life and my career is successful because I can do it.
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  And while it's still a lot of work and I have a ways to go with my career, I'm pretty happy with where it is right now.
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  So if that answers that.
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  Yeah, I love that.
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  And I get to work with somebody like Nick on a regular basis that alone is, you know, has been a bonus for me.
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  So that's why he needs the will of life to try and balance things out.
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  He's got to balance it all.
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  Offset his interactions with me.
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  Yeah. For me, success is certainly, you know, this is a second career. I walked away from
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  something that I was reasonably established in. So, yeah, being able to sustain us and make a
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  living as an author was definitely the goal. And I'm the king of moving the goalposts on
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  myself all the time. So I'm at a point where I don't, you're when you're a kid, you want,
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  you know, you know, all the cars and all the homes and all the things. And I'm way beyond that.
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  I'm not interested in fact in we live in a place
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  Yeah, one thing I've learned is they're like having extra rooms for people to stay in is they build these things called hotels
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  And not pay for an empty room for this time
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  But I wouldn't mind having an extra room that we could have as a dedicated office
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  But I think you had the bathroom. I don't know your problem is I know I'm on it
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  It's got me rethinking I'm gonna
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  My wife's gonna go no you're not I think success at this point where I'm at is
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  Moving forward every year so not going backwards
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  So that means you know both in financial income and whatever it is sales levels
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  More interest in each of the series that I do something and it doesn't have to be giant strides for that
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  I don't have to double everything every year, but just to feel like it is moving forwards and not
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  Regressing I think that
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  What do you have to say about this as you as as the coach
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  Yeah, as the coach well again the two-year-old inside you know like when I talk to the two-year-old inside me
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  We have very different views on what success looks like.
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  So for me, it's about just knowing
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  that I've worked really hard on putting out every time a product
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  that I'm proud of and just knowing that I didn't phone it in.
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  And I am blessed to be able to do this for a living.
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  So yes, that's success for me on the first part of it.
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  But the second part is trying to look beyond
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  the money aspect of it, right?
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  And just because this business can be so brutal
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  is just finding peace and knowing that
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  I did the best I could and, you know,
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  I'm proud of every book that's out there.
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  - That's great.
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  That's marvelous.
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  All right, great listening question.
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  Thank you so much.
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  (upbeat music)
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  - All right, welcome to the proper part of the show,
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  everybody.
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  - The proper part.
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  - The proper part.
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  No more goofing.
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  We put the ukulele away.
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  We're promised we're not gonna sing at you anymore.
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  - We don't promise no more goofing,
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  but no more singing.
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  How's that?
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  - Well, there you have it, that part of it.
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  So what we are going to talk to you about is conferences.
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  So this was brought up, the idea of us doing a show
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  without a guest, just the two of us chatting,
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  I was brought up to us at a recent author event,
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  something that we're about to talk about.
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  And it was suggested we do this and pick a subject
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  that would be useful for everyone or we think would be.
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  And so conferences is something
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  that we've been to quite a few of them,
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  Doug more than me,
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  but I've been going to them for four years now.
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  - I've been dragging on you to a couple of them.
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  - Yep, yep.
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  - And we're really getting into conference season.
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  Usually it starts kind of in the spring and summer and fall.
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  So it's a good thing to start talking about now.
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  - Good timing.
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  there's a lot of different ways of going about these conferences and different types of conferences.
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  So we're going to try and touch on a little bit of all of that. And the first thing to bring up
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  is one of the great opportunities you get through going to conferences is you're going to hang out
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  with like-minded people. So we're very isolated in our jobs a lot of the time, and we don't spend a
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  ton of time around other writers and authors. So you get this opportunity to be amongst in,
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  sometimes in small groups, sometimes in bigger groups, but it's like-minded people. So when you
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  talk about, hey, the struggle I'm having.
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  I love that phrase.
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  And I know that's one that are good from Becca.
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  We'll use all the time is try, but I think that's really cool because it is
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  kind of interesting how we do, you know, you and I talk every day, but it's a lot
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  different. We start hanging out in person and we don't get to do that very often.
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  And I think that's with most other authors, all of my author friends.
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  It's the same way we end up connecting at a conference and then that relationship
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  blooms and it's amazing the networking and connections that we've made through there.
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  So big time, big time. So let's talk about a few different types of these things because they can
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  vary greatly and what you are going to, the type of event that you are going to want to go to is
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  going to vary greatly according to where you're at in your career. If you're just putting that first
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  book together and looking to publish for the first time, you're going to look at this very
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  differently from a seasoned author who's got a bunch of books out there and been doing it a while.
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  But there's something out there for everyone at every level. So let's start off, we'll talk about
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  the in-person events that we're doing this year and we'll put some links in the show notes to them.
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  And there's also a link in there I found to the wonderful indie author magazine. They have an
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  article about all the major 2026 conferences and list them in there and links to them and all
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  stuff like that. So that link will be in the show notes too. But the three that we're going to,
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  and we're not, it's just around the corner now, is SPS London. It's the first one.
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  So self-publishing show, who is James Blatch and his group who are back doing their podcast again.
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  They have the whole line of courses and stuff like that. But they've been doing this
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  conference for a few years now. Neither of us have been before, but I got tired of hearing from
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  from people how good it was.
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  (laughs)
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  I'm like, well, screw it.
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  I better go.
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  - I know, every time I hear it, I'm like,
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  now we gotta go and check it out
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  to make sure it's excellent.
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  So James puts on a great show.
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  I have no doubt every time I talk to James,
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  he has more knowledge than we that have put together.
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  So.
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  - He's very buttoned down and organized too.
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  So I'm sure it's gonna be really good.
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  We'll talk about it a little bit more in a minute.
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  There's Nink, which is the novelist's ink conference
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  that's in September.
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  And the NINC conference we've been going to now for,
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  I think this will be my fourth or fifth year,
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  I think you fifth or sixth for you, is really good.
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  A little bit more about it,
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  it has a requirement to become a member of NINC
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  and you've got to reach a certain sales volume.
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  It's not a huge sales volume,
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  but it isn't for beginners basically.
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  And that way they're able to cater the conference more
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  in the talks and presentations that they do
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  for slightly more experienced authors.
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  So it's one that we enjoy it since St. Pete Beach, Florida.
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  It's in September and it's a good one for networking.
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  I think it tends to be my, my favorite one of all of mine, but I like all conferences,
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  but yeah, it's definitely nice.
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  It's a, it's a good opportunity to have a lot more networking, a lot more
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  opportunities to really just sit down and talk with people and get to know them.
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  In my opinion, and, and you can kind of chime in.
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  You haven't done authorization, but when God should come in this time, it's really
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  great to do where it is because it falls in September.
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  Some of the bigger conferences, you kind of go on either side
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  of it. So it's a good opportunity to kind of either
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  decompress after London or IncursCon or one of these other
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  ones, and then move into Nink and have a chance to kind of
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  decompress with a smaller group of people and really dig into
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  some of those details, which I like.
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  Yeah, it's a bit smaller than volume of people wise than
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  authentication. Now in saying that it's still like 300 people,
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  But it's a good event.
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  It's well run.
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  They've put on talks.
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  They'll run up to four talks going on, presentations going
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  simultaneously.
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  So we'll talk about how to handle that situation
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  a little bit later.
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  And then the third one we already mentioned
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  is authentication that we're going to.
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  It'll be my first time going there.
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  Joe Solari and his group took over that a couple of years ago.
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  Used to be 20 books to 50K.
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  - Yep, now it's Author Nation.
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  I'm excited, I'm really excited about it.
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  I mean, you've been talking it up for a couple of years now
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  and I finally had enough.
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  - They'll price up for you this year.
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  - No way, no way.
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  And we're gonna be doing some stuff there
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  involved with it.
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  So I'm excited about all that side of things.
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  And Author Nation is bigger, volume-wise,
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  and it really does cater to everybody.
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  As does SBS London, it has stuff that'll cater
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  to the new authors, the budding authors,
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  and something for everyone at every level.
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  - Those are just three,
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  those are just three we're going to.
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  There are plenty of others.
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  One that just happened in Toronto,
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  one in Ireland that are these big,
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  so they're like Nick said,
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  in the indie author magazine,
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  there's a list that they pop up.
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  If you're looking at something and you look around,
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  'cause there's also some more regional ones
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  that we don't even know about
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  that we've kind of not heard about.
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  So it's kind of nice to keep track
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  of what's going where and going on in,
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  in, in or near your neck of the woods. So.
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  Absolutely. And we'll talk about that later as well. Okay.
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  So the first thing that they're,
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  they're the three that we are going to, as Doug said.
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  So there's plenty more,
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  but that's the three we chose this year.
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  So we have a bit more experience with them.
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  But let's start off with how do you prepare? All right.
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  So you take a look through this selection of and,
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  and try and match something up that fits for you.
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  I like to hydrate first.
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  Hydrate hydrate, hydrate, always hydrate before you do anything.
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  There's a lot of drinking that goes on at some of these conferences.
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  Yeah, we probably should forewarn you.
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  The after hours can get a little active.
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  Not for me because I'm an old fart and I go to bed earlier, but you won't find Doug
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  up at six in the morning.
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  Let's just put it that way.
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  So how to prepare.
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  All right.
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  So the first thing is make some notes.
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  What are the questions that you need answers to in your author career at this point, right?
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  And don't just think about this as you're on the plane or in the car going there.
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  Think about this in the months leading up to this event that you're going to, and start
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  making that list, right?
• 16:45
  Hiccups, bumps in the road, things that are becoming a barrier for you, problems in your
• 16:50
  writing.
• 16:50
  I like to go in with an idea sometimes, especially if you're keeping up with what's going on.
• 16:55
  I like to go in sometimes with, a couple years ago, it was translations.
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  I wanted to go in and learn everything I could about how people are doing translations and
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  how they're succeeding at it.
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  So that was kind of my focus for that one.
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  This year might be more Patreon as I'm trying to work on Patreon.
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  So I have an idea of what I'm wanting to get out of it.
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  The way I look at it is I try to pick a few things that I know I want to work on.
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  And depending on where you are, where I am now in my career, I know I've gotten
• 17:22
  past a few things you may be looking at.
• 17:24
  I just like to figure out how to do Amazon ads properly.
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  Those kind of talks are going to be going on too.
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  And you'll have an opportunity, if they aren't there, you'll have an opportunity
• 17:32
  to talk to people who are doing them successfully.
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  So, but those are the kind of notes.
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  I start thinking about.
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  And then the schedule.
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  Everyone puts out a schedule beforehand of who's going to be talking, when they're going
• 17:43
  to be, and what have you.
• 17:43
  And as I mentioned earlier, like at Nink, they'll have four of them going on at the same time.
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  And often there's a vendor meetup that kind of goes with that too.
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  There's only so much stuff they can cram into.
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  Basically, it's like three and a half days, I think.
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  So there's going to be stuff that you can't go to.
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  So start picking and choosing your first choices of events when you go to and make a note
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  of those that conflict. So you want to see two of these speakers, but you can only be
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  in one place at one time and keep that in mind because we'll talk about how to handle
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  that a little bit later. And then get the app. Most of them have an app or they're on
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  social media and have a Facebook group or something like that. And you'll start getting
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  to know the players and the people and the folks that are really active in those groups
• 18:32
  that can help guide you towards other groups.
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  If you're a romance author,
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  you're an alien romance author, right?
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  Believe me, there's a group for you
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  and there'll be a bunch of other authors there
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  in your same genre.
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  So you'll be able to find--
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  - Honestly, I would hang out with alien romance authors.
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  They're usually pretty cool anyway.
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  So, you know I'm a thriller writer, you come find me.
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  I will say this, one of the things,
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  and our good friend Franklin Horton did this to me
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  'cause really before we even got to know each other,
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  we were going to a different conference,
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  Shacan which was more of a readers conference
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  But Franklin gets on to the app and looks at who all is going to be there and reaches out to make connections beforehand
• 19:08
  So if there's you know, if you're a newbie author and you're like pan
• 19:11
  I really want to meet Nicholas Harvey because he sings this amazing song about vellum then if you reach on you know
• 19:18
  These apps said no one ever
• 19:21
  I don't know. I think you might be able to bring your ukulele to the beach
• 19:25
  I might play with but it's a good chance most of these apps you're gonna get them beforehand
• 19:32
  They're gonna have chat features get on there and find somebody you're interested in meeting and connecting with and just say
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  Hey, I really like to connect most I would say 98% of the authors
• 19:42
  We know are so willing to give their time
• 19:46
  Within reason obviously, but the you know, they're willing to give their time and talk to people
• 19:50
  There's not that many authors out there that I know who are unfriendly and mean
• 19:56
  Not it's not at these not at these events. It's it's amazing how open people are
• 20:00
  It's also a little bit scary to do that. I mean we're we tend to be a you know
• 20:05
  I'm from the South where we don't like to bother people
• 20:09
  You know, I don't want to be rude and go. Hey, you know, I'm a text somebody
• 20:13
  I don't know but it's something you got to push yourself
• 20:16
  These are these opportunities to push your boundary a little bit and kind of step outside of where you were
• 20:21
  So that's good. That's good. And you bring up
• 20:25
  Franklin and I realized we were absolutely remiss and not inviting Franklin to come and sing our vellum song with us
• 20:32
  Next time Franklin next time. I believe me. You're getting the call. All right moving on
• 20:38
  He's locking himself in his bunker
• 20:42
  He has methods of defense that I don't even want to talk about
• 20:47
  A quick word from this episode's sponsor.
• 20:49
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• 20:49
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• 20:51
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• 20:54
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• 20:59
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• 21:02
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• 21:10
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• 21:12
  13th in Las Vegas.
• 21:14
  Now back to the show.
• 21:15
  Now at the event itself, let's talk about that.
• 21:18
  So networking, you just touched on networking.
• 21:20
  We know authors that go to these events and maybe sit in one or two of the talks that are available.
• 21:28
  Some, none of them.
• 21:30
  Their experience, they've been around, maybe the subjects aren't aligned with what they're trying to work on at the moment,
• 21:36
  but they're there to network.
• 21:38
  And the groups that get together, and most of the conferences give you opportunities to get together in little groups.
• 21:45
  They sort of promote that environment where you can do it, nink tried some stuff, some
• 21:50
  new stuff this past year, which I thought was great.
• 21:53
  It needs a little tweaking, but it was a really great idea, those rooms with folks in.
• 21:57
  So the networking is huge.
• 22:00
  Man, I don't think either of us can stress highly enough how much you come away with.
• 22:05
  That is by far the most I've gotten out of any conference has always been the network.
• 22:10
  I might pick something in the talk, but immediately I might take that talk and we'll discuss it,
• 22:16
  throw it out there with other people going, "Wow, this is a brilliant idea.
• 22:20
  Why haven't we been thinking about this?
• 22:21
  Or how can we make this work in our genre versus another genre?"
• 22:26
  It's amazing what we talk about and how some of the things that we've discussed have become
• 22:32
  habits that I've now moved into my workflow because of things I just picked up in talking
• 22:38
  to somebody else.
• 22:39
  Oh my gosh books co-op books that have been written ideas
• 22:43
  Relationships, you know vendors that you're now working with oh like I said most of my best friends meddle at conferences at this point
• 22:51
  So you know yeah, yeah true. Hey, we wouldn't even have a podcast if I didn't get you to need that first time
• 22:57
  That's true. That's that is true
• 22:58
  I mean this these are these are the kind of the the events that you get into and and you'll find
• 23:04
  Like dummies these would be the
• 23:06
  If you're smart when you get through with these you're gonna have a little chat groups with all these people and in the next thing
• 23:12
  You know these are the people you're talking to about
• 23:15
  Events in your in your work life on a regular basis. Oh, I've got a new book coming out and that's how you kind of make these connections
• 23:22
  So yeah, absolutely. All right, the next thing's important. Take a breath
• 23:27
  They can be overwhelming and they can very quickly become
• 23:31
  Overwhelming they're very busy. There's a lot of a lot of talks going on
• 23:35
  There's a lot of people moving around, going between talks.
• 23:37
  There's a lot of side conversations and everything.
• 23:39
  It can become overwhelming a lot.
• 23:42
  Many of the events have replays.
• 23:44
  A lot of them have notes.
• 23:45
  A lot of them have handouts.
• 23:47
  The speaker will tell you at the beginning how that rolls and what they have for you
• 23:50
  and things like that.
• 23:51
  But don't try and take on too much.
• 23:53
  That's part of the planning ahead.
• 23:56
  Then when you get there, you'll get pulled and tugged and you'll find a new friend here
• 23:59
  and a new friend there.
• 24:00
  Then you, "Oh my gosh, we've got to go to this one."
• 24:02
  It's just keep your eye on the prize, right?
• 24:04
  what you were there for at the beginning, be flexible, but also stick to your plan.
• 24:09
  You want to be flexible because what you came in to learn may not be what you need to learn too.
• 24:14
  You're going to discover something you didn't realize that you needed to really focus on.
• 24:18
  It helps to come in with your plan, but when you get there, be flexible because it may be that,
• 24:23
  hey, you have an opportunity to go sit down with some big author or publisher and instead of going
• 24:30
  into this talk about translations, which in all likelihood will be replayed in a few
• 24:36
  months. Think about those opportunities and what you can take from that.
• 24:41
  The next thing is what I talked about earlier is you make your list. I want to go to this
• 24:45
  presentation, but at the same time as this other presentation, well, you've been at
• 24:49
  Nink for a day now or you've been at Author Nation and you've been piling around and you've
• 24:54
  got somebody you met online beforehand that was going that you're there with and you both
• 24:58
  want to see the same things. Cool, perfect, divide and conquer. One of you goes to one,
• 25:02
  one of you goes to the other, make notes and then trade the notes afterwards, right? So,
• 25:07
  they're the kind of things that it just fast forwards relationships and stuff like that.
• 25:12
  It's amazing to see people who'd never met each other before and then after a couple of days
• 25:17
  at a conference, they're like besties. Oh, and they're arranging things like, "Hi, Nick,
• 25:21
  you're going to go to this company here that Damon Courtney is doing and I'm going to go to the one
• 25:26
  over here that, you know, this guy's doing and oh, we can't forget about the Amazon
• 25:32
  ad books, so we grab somebody else to go over there. You start doing this like big coordination.
• 25:36
  So who's going where and let's bring out our notes and talk about this or what'd you learn,
• 25:39
  that kind of thing. That's so important. And again, that kind of falls back to the networking.
• 25:43
  That's that part of connecting with people that, you know, don't walk in there and expect to be
• 25:47
  by yourself. Reach out, make friends. Absolutely. Absolutely. And we've been remiss if we didn't
• 25:54
  say this, respect the speakers. I mean, it goes, it's obvious, right? I mean, everyone's,
• 25:58
  you, everyone goes in with the intention of being polite to everybody. But well, well,
• 26:09
  with the intention of being polite to most people, most people. Yeah. Yeah. Have that.
• 26:14
  Most people are very, most people are very, very good. And I think the other thing is remember
• 26:18
  that like some of these speakers, there are speakers who are there who are donating their time.
• 26:23
  They're just trying to give their knowledge to our speakers who are there who are with companies like vellum or book funnel or some of our other
• 26:30
  Vendors who are talking about their products and stuff and depending on where you are in your journey
• 26:35
  You may want to learn a little bit more about different things
• 26:37
  But you want to be able to respect that they take the time to do it
• 26:41
  It's a lot of effort to put down a talk people think people just get up and ramble on and
• 26:46
  That's not really true. Even I have to put in effort to do a talk and I don't put a lot of effort for anything
• 26:51
  So.
• 26:55
  Right.
• 26:56
  So part of that is at the beginning of the presentation, generally speaking, whoever's
• 27:01
  up there will tell you if they have a handout.
• 27:04
  They'll tell you if it's okay to take pictures or not take pictures.
• 27:08
  And we've both been in plenty of presentations where the speaker says, "Look, this is proprietary.
• 27:12
  Please don't take pictures of it."
• 27:14
  And phones are up in the air, you know, two seconds later.
• 27:17
  There's always somebody that goes, "It's like he just said, 'Please don't take pictures
• 27:22
  So just respect the rules and respect the peaches.
• 27:25
  - It's like bars and a zoo, those are just suggestions.
• 27:28
  Don't get in there with a gorilla.
• 27:30
  - Oh, I'm fine with that.
• 27:31
  If you're stupid enough to get in there,
• 27:33
  you deserve what's coming.
• 27:35
  Yeah, that's different, Doug.
• 27:37
  That's evolution taking care of itself.
• 27:39
  All right, post event.
• 27:41
  What do you do post event?
• 27:42
  Okay, well, the first thing is you decompress.
• 27:45
  - Sober up.
• 27:46
  - Yeah, sober up.
• 27:47
  Yeah, I guess push those fluids,
• 27:49
  but dealing with the overwhelm for introverts,
• 27:51
  It's a lot of people at these events.
• 27:53
  And for me, I'm reasonably social.
• 27:56
  We joke about it, but I am reasonably social,
• 27:58
  but I do spend a lot of time on my own with just Cheryl.
• 28:02
  And--
• 28:03
  (laughing)
• 28:04
  - You're reasonably social with me, so.
• 28:06
  - Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 28:08
  I try and get out of the house once a week,
• 28:10
  and then I go underwater where no one can talk to me.
• 28:13
  (laughing)
• 28:15
  But it can be, I find it very overwhelming.
• 28:19
  And I find I tend to compensate for that by being overly not into an extrovert.
• 28:25
  I tend to turn into a bit of an extrovert in that environment sometimes.
• 28:31
  And in, and I finally wears me out when I, when I leave a conference, I am worn out.
• 28:37
  I'm worn out from talking.
• 28:38
  I'm worn out from, you know, being, sitting, absorbing all this stuff.
• 28:43
  Well, there's a dope of being crash.
• 28:44
  You're gonna find you're enjoying this opportunity to
• 28:49
  Be around people who actually want to talk about books because as authors
• 28:52
  We all know we all want to talk about our books and nobody really wants to talk about our books with us
• 28:57
  But guess what there's 300 people 500 people in this conference who want to talk about your book
• 29:01
  And so you just there is a dopamine rush
• 29:04
  But when you leave that don't mean rush crashes and so you kind of got that same feeling too
• 29:09
  So, you know, it's also like this sudden realization that now I've got all this information
• 29:14
  That's the other part that's massive and I'm gonna do something with it
• 29:17
  And so you combine that with what is already a chemical crash and you're gonna you're gonna feel overwhelmed about like Nick says
• 29:25
  What am I doing next? How do I how do I do translations and how do I do?
• 29:31
  Narrations and how do I do dual narrations plus my regular narration? You know we're a folk, you know full cast
• 29:36
  It's gonna be all this information thrown at you and you're gonna have to
• 29:41
  Piece through it at this point. I think then that's usually it's a fire hose. Yeah, it's a fire. Usually for me
• 29:46
  I don't know it to you
• 29:48
  You know oftentimes you fly out of these places I tend to drive
• 29:50
  So usually for me is that drive home where actually comes along with me almost almost all my conferences
• 29:56
  So we'll be driving back and I can decompress with her
• 29:59
  Tell her the things that I've learned and if she's gone through the conference with me
• 30:02
  We'll talk about the things that we both have seen and to me that helps you and I will do the same thing
• 30:08
  we get through with Nink, we sit there and we'll talk about all the stuff.
• 30:10
  And to me, that's a little bit of decompressing, but also allows me to organize the things
• 30:15
  that are really important compared to the things that seem important.
• 30:20
  That's the key, right?
• 30:21
  So we got to prioritize.
• 30:23
  So you're going to come away.
• 30:24
  It was a fire hose.
• 30:25
  You've got all this stuff.
• 30:27
  And remember, everybody that's talking about their subject, they're very passionate about
• 30:32
  it, and it's very immediate.
• 30:34
  And this is the thing, right?
• 30:35
  You're going to hear about all these subjects that are the current thing, the trend, that
• 30:41
  this is happening, that's happening, this is going on.
• 30:43
  And it's going to feel like, "Oh my God, I've got to be doing all of this stuff."
• 30:48
  Nope, you do not.
• 30:49
  You do not have to be doing all this stuff.
• 30:52
  And maybe eventually you're going to do all this stuff, but you don't need to be doing
• 30:56
  all of this stuff now.
• 30:59
  So make sure you take the time to relax, decompress, evaluate what you learned, and then stop prioritizing.
• 31:11
  And we always talk about this, you know, you always want to prioritize, right?
• 31:14
  It's every list basically comes down.
• 31:17
  If it's a job list, it always comes down to prioritizing, right?
• 31:21
  It has to, right?
• 31:22
  And how do we prioritize?
• 31:24
  What goes to the top of the list?
• 31:26
  You prioritize, prioritize.
• 31:27
  Yeah.
• 31:28
  prioritized the priorities.
• 31:29
  - That's right, you got to do that first.
• 31:30
  - Yeah, no, but what?
• 31:31
  What makes it go to the top of the list?
• 31:34
  - I look at it a couple of ways.
• 31:35
  I want to know what's actionable.
• 31:36
  What can I prioritize the quickest
• 31:39
  with the least amount of effort
• 31:41
  for something like translations?
• 31:43
  That's a pretty easy one to kind of,
• 31:45
  all right, I can start looking at that.
• 31:46
  It's a time consuming one,
• 31:48
  but so that one may not be as easy
• 31:50
  as I'm thinking right off the bat.
• 31:52
  So it might be something else.
• 31:53
  Oh, just add a link to the back of my book
• 31:55
  that with a reader magnet,
• 31:57
  I hadn't thought about that.
• 31:58
  That's an easy one right off the bat.
• 32:00
  So that's for me.
• 32:01
  I wanna look at what is,
• 32:03
  because I like, I am one of those people
• 32:05
  who likes to see something accomplished.
• 32:07
  It's not the actual doing of it,
• 32:08
  but I wanna make sure it,
• 32:09
  I know it's accomplished.
• 32:10
  And I feel better about what I'm stepping into.
• 32:13
  So that's my approach.
• 32:15
  I'm not sure what you do, Nick.
• 32:16
  You might have a different approach.
• 32:17
  - I think the key is ROI, return on investment.
• 32:20
  So when you're trying to prioritize this list of stuff
• 32:24
  that you can't do it all,
• 32:25
  what goes to the top of the list,
• 32:27
  what you can achieve, what is actionable, as Doug said,
• 32:30
  and what is gonna give you the best return
• 32:33
  on this investment, right?
• 32:34
  You're gonna take this time, which is precious,
• 32:38
  'cause writing books takes a lot of time,
• 32:40
  and that's our primary function, is writing books.
• 32:42
  So we're gonna take this time, it's probably gonna cost,
• 32:44
  whatever you do, cost some money of some sort in some way,
• 32:47
  whether it's money in terms of time,
• 32:48
  or money in terms of outlay for this new software,
• 32:51
  or whatever it might be, is take a look
• 32:53
  at where you're at right now.
• 32:56
  And if you're a new author with three books out there
• 32:59
  and you're bringing in five figures
• 33:02
  from these books that you've got out there
• 33:04
  and maybe lower end of five figures,
• 33:06
  you just heard this brilliant speech
• 33:08
  from this seven figure author
• 33:09
  that's expanded their IP into all these different things.
• 33:13
  And you go, God, I'd love to do that.
• 33:15
  That's fantastic.
• 33:16
  Okay, cool.
• 33:17
  Is that gonna get you a return investment, right?
• 33:19
  They've got this reach of tens and tens of thousands,
• 33:23
  where you may be hundreds of thousands
• 33:25
  people on their newsletter list that they're doing these special editions or whatever they're doing for
• 33:29
  and you have a list with 850 people, what is the return on investment for you to do that at this
• 33:35
  stage? So that's what I'm talking about in terms of looking, prioritizing and looking at the ROI
• 33:41
  to pick what you're going to target next. And then for some people, often for like you and I,
• 33:47
  it's like, okay, how can we get efficiency in something we're already doing? How can we improve
• 33:53
  something we're already doing and what is one avenue that maybe we should be looking into that we
• 34:00
  haven't already. That's generally what I end up with. I think you're right about that. I think
• 34:05
  it always comes down to what is, to me, like I said, what is actionable, what is going to return the
• 34:10
  most investment, what is something I probably should be doing, whether or not it's actionable or
• 34:15
  return to investment. Some of those things, you get somebody who says something and you're like,
• 34:19
  Oh, yes, I should have been doing this all along. It's a no-brainer. I just never did and a perfect example is copyright your work
• 34:27
  Like, you know, we've talked about that with the recent
• 34:30
  Anthropics suit that you a lot of people didn't get to think, you know, that should have been a no-brainer
• 34:33
  I should have been doing that all along, but I didn't so that was that was easy
• 34:38
  So I will say and I'd like to add one other thing that you have to remember is and we say this a lot is that your knowledge
• 34:44
  made very too. Like what Nick and I might be talking to somebody who is doing 10 figures
• 34:51
  or who knows some ungodly amount, you know, if we're sitting there. Andy Weir is going
• 34:55
  to be at Author Nation. I don't think we can compare ourselves to Andy Weir. So what he's
• 35:00
  doing isn't necessarily going to work. So somebody, I've got 15 books on my Chase Gordon
• 35:06
  series. If you came in and your own book two, you don't need to be focusing on the same
• 35:11
  things that I'm focusing on. You know, and so you've got to remember that. And if you
• 35:15
  come in and you're writing romance, you got two books, and I've got 15 in thrill, or,
• 35:19
  you know, while there's some crossover, it may vary a little bit. Audiences change, and
• 35:23
  you got to kind of pay attention. So for those of you who are just kind of first go to an
• 35:28
  your first conference, it's going to be overwhelming. You're going to think all this stuff I should
• 35:33
  have been doing all along. Again, like Nick said, it's, it's, you know, what's the old
• 35:37
  is how do you eat an elephant?
• 35:41
  One bite at a time?
• 35:43
  - I'm a pescetarian, I'm not gonna eat an elephant, Doug.
• 35:45
  - Okay, how do you eat a whale?
• 35:48
  (laughing)
• 35:51
  Sorry, gotta change it for the closer.
• 35:55
  - I really don't want to eat a whale either.
• 35:57
  All right, okay, so a couple other things
• 36:00
  we're gonna touch on before we wrap this up.
• 36:02
  So virtual conferences, that's becoming,
• 36:05
  you know, bigger and bigger. Obviously, through the COVID years, all the virtual stuff started firing up and
• 36:11
  all becoming a lot stronger.
• 36:13
  And there's a lot of virtual conferences.
• 36:15
  There's a lot of virtual conferences, and they do it a lot of different ways. And there's some really great stuff out there.
• 36:23
  IncusCon is one that comes immediately to mind.
• 36:25
  That's
• 36:26
  IncusCon is probably the best one. Authorization will also have a, if you don't get to go to the live one, authorization will do the virtual one afterwards.
• 36:35
  Yeah, those are really great.
• 36:37
  Uh, they're, they're great for you.
• 36:39
  If you, if you just can't afford to go, I mean, that's the other thing.
• 36:43
  Yeah.
• 36:43
  If the travel is an issue, the travel is an issue, then that, that's going to be an
• 36:47
  easy way to kind of get some stuff.
• 36:49
  You know, during COVID, I did several of those cause a lot of them didn't
• 36:53
  popped up at that point.
• 36:54
  Things that were normally in person that I couldn't afford to go to.
• 36:57
  I would do the virtual ones.
• 36:59
  And so they're, they're fun too.
• 37:01
  So.
• 37:01
  The big decision of whether you're going to do a virtual one or not,
• 37:05
  And some of them you have to listen to it live where it's going on.
• 37:08
  And most of them have a recording that you, if you pay for the event,
• 37:13
  you then get the recordings at least for a period of time that you can go and listen to.
• 37:17
  But do you do well in that environment?
• 37:19
  So some people can sit in front of the computer and watch it all going on and take it in and soak it up and everything.
• 37:26
  Personally, I'm terrible at that. I will be so distracted.
• 37:29
  Oh, yeah.
• 37:29
  There is a million, I'm a, I'm a frickin...
• 37:32
  You're lucky I'm not writing my book while we're doing the podcast to be honest with you.
• 37:39
  Like I'll be on a virtual meeting and be like working on a chapter, but I'm the same way and
• 37:45
  that's my attention span. So, but some people do really well with that online learning and you should
• 37:50
  gauge again what works for you. So, yeah, I'm a full golden retriever. So there's no way that I'm
• 37:56
  going to sit there, especially for meeting after a meeting during a day like that. So now will I
• 38:01
  absorb it if I took the recordings and did it. There's a better chance of me doing it
• 38:06
  that way, but quite honestly, my time is so jammed. I don't know when I'm going to stick
• 38:10
  that in there. And that's why I haven't, I really wanted to do Incascon this year, to
• 38:16
  be honest. It's really appealing. Great speakers, some great stuff they're covering. And I passed
• 38:22
  in the end because I just feel like I kept telling myself, "Well, just get the recordings
• 38:26
  and look at it later." Well, later, I have so many things that have to get done that
• 38:31
  I'm pushing to later. I felt like, you know what? I don't know that I'm going to maximize
• 38:35
  this, but one day that might be different and I might be able to get more out of it.
• 38:39
  Otherwise, the virtual stuff, look, it's basically the same prep as you do for an in-person. You
• 38:45
  just don't have to get on a plane or get in the car and go to it. But making the notes ahead of the
• 38:49
  time, focusing on the stuff that you want to make sure you hear, generally the virtual stuff
• 38:55
  is linear. So there's not dual stuff going on at the same time, although some of them do have them
• 38:59
  that way and they'll definitely be recorded if they do do them that way.
• 39:03
  And now a quick word from this episode's sponsor.
• 39:06
  Hi, I'm Jamie Davis, Dad Joke Dude, fantasy author and show manager for the Author Nation
• 39:11
  conference coming up this November in Las Vegas.
• 39:14
  Maybe I'll see you there, but if I don't, here's a dad joke to tide you over until the
• 39:19
  next time we get a chance to meet.
• 39:21
  Why are dragons always good to invite to your cocktail party?
• 39:25
  Because they always spark conversation.
• 39:28
  And now, back to the show.
• 39:30
  The last thing we want to talk about a little bit is retreats and masterminds.
• 39:34
  And these come in all shapes and sizes from three or four people getting together locally,
• 39:41
  you know, down the pub or something to chat up to these huge international travel events
• 39:48
  that have a pretty high threshold to be involved with.
• 39:52
  I would say the first thing I'd start with is whatever's local.
• 39:56
  Like if there's a local writing group, try to join it, try to go to these meetings.
• 40:01
  Just because even though you're going to be there with people who are of different skills,
• 40:05
  you're still going to be networking with people.
• 40:08
  And it's still, like we said earlier, it's kind of like your tribe.
• 40:11
  Those are a good way to get started.
• 40:13
  Anything that is in your city within a couple hours, I love doing those just because it's
• 40:18
  easy and it does.
• 40:20
  And there's so few writers in the Memphis area to hang out with.
• 40:25
  I just wanna find anybody I can, 'cause I'm, you know,
• 40:28
  unlike Nick, I just thrive on chatting with people.
• 40:31
  So...
• 40:31
  - You think it's hard to find right just where you are?
• 40:34
  (laughing)
• 40:35
  I want an island, man.
• 40:38
  - Yeah, well, that's true, yeah.
• 40:40
  They come passing through.
• 40:41
  You just gonna have to set up a little lemonade stand.
• 40:44
  - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:45
  Everyone now wants me to put on a retreat
• 40:48
  or a mastermind here so they can come here.
• 40:50
  - You got such a nice place.
• 40:51
  I mean, we should have a two authors retreat
• 40:53
  in, you know, in Greenham. He only has one bedroom. So we all got to like,
• 40:57
  line up like on the floor, but it'll be fun. Yeah. Yeah. The hate,
• 41:01
  you know what they have here? Lots of hotels.
• 41:04
  Well, there's often you could go social media, like get online,
• 41:08
  look for what's local is my biggest suggestion and get involved because the
• 41:14
  more you're involved, the more, you know,
• 41:16
  don't just be the Alexa on the wayside and watching it. Get involved because even
• 41:20
  these local groups, they need that involvement to stay alive.
• 41:24
  So yeah.
• 41:25
  And libraries, libraries are always a great resource, not just going in, look at their
• 41:29
  notice of board or what have you.
• 41:31
  It's tough to go around a library and ask, Hey, are you in a book group?
• 41:33
  Are you in a, but they do, I, there's a group in, in Memphis that does a once a week, there's
• 41:40
  a couple of them, but I go to one of them.
• 41:41
  I can't, I can't go to all of them, but I do one on a regular basis, which do we just
• 41:46
  get together and do writing sprints and we'll talk about different things.
• 41:49
  All of us are in different genres and different levels of our careers.
• 41:54
  So it's kind of a nice opportunity to connect with people who you like and do something
• 42:00
  different.
• 42:00
  And also, it gives you some accountability.
• 42:03
  Yep.
• 42:04
  That really works for some people and it's a great way of staying on task is to have
• 42:09
  a writing buddy that you're just – all you do is check in at the end of the day and say,
• 42:14
  "Hey, how do we do?
• 42:15
  How do we do?"
• 42:16
  knowing that you've got to get on that
• 42:22
  When I do that with some you know our good friend drew he and I used to do sprints together regularly
• 42:27
  It's always kind of a competition who can write the most in a day back when Drew wrote books
• 42:37
  Now he turned off to he heard us singing early on
• 42:42
  But he's a heavy into writing one right now.
• 42:45
  He's back at it.
• 42:46
  - But that's, you know, that kind of thing helps
• 42:49
  because then you want to be,
• 42:50
  that little bit of competition we have that drives us,
• 42:54
  makes me, I want to write 500 words.
• 42:55
  He only wrote 400 last time.
• 42:57
  I can beat that, you know?
• 42:58
  To me, that helps a little bit.
• 43:00
  So, but I think it's just a, you know, it's goodheartedness.
• 43:04
  It's that kind of an opportunity to connect with people.
• 43:08
  - Yep. And the library, just to finish the library loop,
• 43:11
  is they pretty much all have social media sites now
• 43:13
  for the library and that's a great place to go find out
• 43:16
  what they've got going on for events and groups
• 43:18
  that are there.
• 43:20
  - Libraries are so desperate to come up with programs,
• 43:23
  especially smaller ones that are in smaller communities
• 43:26
  that if you went into the library and said,
• 43:27
  I like the, do you have a writing group?
• 43:29
  No, I would like to help start one here.
• 43:33
  So many of them would be happy to have
• 43:34
  that kind of volunteer work, you know,
• 43:37
  and it gives you an opportunity
• 43:38
  to kind of craft what you want.
• 43:40
  Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. And then up from there, the retreats and stuff we did.
• 43:44
  We did a, there's some retreats like the one we went to, which is like Fight Club.
• 43:48
  You can't talk about it. And it was an invite only. And it was really flattering for us to be
• 43:54
  invited to go to it. I just got an email. They asked you to bring your ukulele next time.
• 43:58
  I don't even know. I'm not even sure how they heard this. It hasn't even come out yet, but
• 44:02
  they're already like, "Mmm, we gotta have the ukulele. Gotta have more ukuleles."
• 44:07
  Hey, as George Harrison says, no one can not smile when you play ukulele.
• 44:13
  So the stuff in between, so that the local groups, the big mastermind events that tend
• 44:18
  to be an invite into a secret handshake group that go to exotic places, they can be brilliant
• 44:25
  if you're up at that level. But there's everything in between. Again, you find out these things by
• 44:30
  networking. You'll be amazed. You go to that first conference that you go to, you start chatting with
• 44:36
  people, the next minute you're finding about these other events and stuff that are going on
• 44:40
  and you can pick and choose. And again, filter it. You can spend the year running around all over
• 44:45
  the place to these places and it costs money, right? So you've got a way up where you are in your
• 44:50
  career and what you're going to get out of it and whether it's worth spending the pennies to do these
• 44:55
  events versus do something else for your for your author to career. But in most cases, most of the
• 45:00
  the time, these conferences really do pay back in the long term. And the other thing
• 45:06
  that we didn't touch on that I need to mention is some of them are more craft focused, some
• 45:12
  of them are more business focused. When I say business, I mean, not the accounting,
• 45:17
  although they do often cover that sort of thing.
• 45:19
  But the marketing, the advertising, you know, how to use tools, you know, like you talked
• 45:24
  about translation tools and various other narrations, audiobooks, all that kind of
• 45:28
  thing. But most of them have an element of craft in the talks that they do, but some
• 45:34
  of them are more weighted that way and some are more weighted the other way on the business
• 45:39
  side of things. So, way up what you think is going to get the best. I love sitting in
• 45:43
  some of the craft talks. I've sat in some that I went into really not expecting much,
• 45:49
  and that's not because I think I know everything about craft because I absolutely do not. I
• 45:52
  learn every day.
• 45:53
  I've been surprised.
• 45:55
  My final comment that I want to make is my goal when I go is I want to come away with
• 46:01
  nuggets.
• 46:02
  I just a handful of nuggets.
• 46:04
  So when I go into a talk and listen, I'm hoping that I'm going to leave there with a nugget.
• 46:09
  So I'm not going to leave there with this massive project and whole philosophy shift
• 46:14
  in the way I'm running my business.
• 46:15
  I'm going to come out of there with one nugget that will slightly change the way I'm doing
• 46:20
  things for the better.
• 46:21
  And if I can do that and come away with a handful of those nuggets from a conference,
• 46:25
  then I feel like I've been successful there.
• 46:27
  That's a good way to look at it.
• 46:28
  I mean, I think anything you can come in with, I think I would say my final thought would
• 46:33
  be just to remember, to me, when I first started going, I think my first conference was 20
• 46:39
  books.
• 46:39
  I want to say it was like 2017 or '18, a long time ago now.
• 46:43
  But my goal was just to meet people.
• 46:45
  And I was still nervous to talk to people, which is kind of weird.
• 46:49
  I talked to everybody you think that that would be weird, but yeah, I didn't want to go bother.
• 46:54
  I met Diane Capri.
• 46:56
  It was just dying.
• 46:57
  She's not such a good friend of mine.
• 46:58
  And I'm like, at the time I was like, just kind of, I can't talk to her.
• 47:02
  She's, you know, she's writing Jack Reacher books.
• 47:04
  So Diane fricking Capri.
• 47:06
  She's Diane fricking.
• 47:07
  But we've, you know, my suggestion to everybody is don't be shy.
• 47:13
  And it's a challenge because sometimes, you know, some of us are introverted.
• 47:16
  Some of us don't want to put ourselves.
• 47:18
  We don't want to be rude and interject. Oh, you know, hey, I see somebody, this big author over here.
• 47:24
  I'd like to go talk to him, but I'm nervous about it. You know, go ahead and talk to him.
• 47:28
  It's very least introduce yourself, you know, get a chance to put a face to him and, you know,
• 47:33
  you don't monopolize them. But by all means, have take a chance. They're probably gonna be super nice.
• 47:38
  polite, respectful, and you'll be amazed how how much time they'll give you.
• 47:43
  If however, you're at Nink or author nation or SPS this year, and you're like, I want to meet,
• 47:47
  You know, James Blatch, but I'm nervous to go talk to them.
• 47:51
  Think come find me because I don't have a problem going to make an ass amount of an introduction.
• 47:56
  We can play a game of, hey, have you met and I will be happy to take you up and introduce you.
• 48:00
  Feel free to come talk to me. I don't have a problem with that.
• 48:04
  That's brilliant. All right. Well, I hope this has been useful for you.
• 48:07
  I'd like to thank our guests this week, Mr. Douglas Pratt, Thrill of the Extraordinaire.
• 48:10
  Oh, and don't forget that other guest, Nicholas Harvey, sexy song bird.
• 48:17
  ukulele killer. Yeah, a big thank you to everyone that supports us on Patreon. Huge thanks to
• 48:24
  Valam for supporting us and I hope you continue to support us after this episode. I'm sorry that Nick wrote this on.
• 48:32
  Go to trivalam.com/twoworthes and that'll get you in there if you're not on Valam already and you can
• 48:38
  check it out. All the stuff will be in the show notes so take a look there. We'll be back for another
• 48:44
  episode of Song Free, hopefully. Until next time, be cool to each other.
• 48:51
  Fair wins and follow-up fees.
• 48:52
  You've been listening to the Two Authors podcast with Nicholas Harvey and Douglas Pratt.
• 48:59
  Subscribe on your favourite platform for new shows coming every week.
• 49:03
  (upbeat music)