Latest / Ready Set Collaborate with Wanda Pearson / Navigating the Publishing Maze with Polly Letofsky - From Self-Publishing Insights to Mastering Book Marketing

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Navigating the Publishing Maze with Polly Letofsky - From Self-Publishing Insights to Mastering Book Marketing · Ready Set Collaborate with Wanda Pearson

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Ready Set Collaborate podcast with Rhonda Pearson, where we will dive deep into the world of networking, collaboration and partnership, unlocking the secrets to a successful team working within innovation.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Whether you're an entrepreneur, a creative professional or just someone eager to understand the power of networking and collaboration, this podcast is your go-to resource.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Join us as we explore the stories, strategies and insights from experts, entrepreneurs and thought leaders who have experienced the magic of networking and collaboration to achieve successful results.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Tune in to Ready.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Set Collaborate podcast on a journey towards achieving your goals with host Rhonda Pearson.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Ready Set Collaborate podcast, but I am actually starting my well.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I have started my series on the book collaboration.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I am so honored to have my guest as a wealth of knowledge that you guys are gonna just be over blown away, polly.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Polly is actually a person I just met, but I feel like we've been friends for a long time, polly, right?
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Getting.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I better be invited to your house for Christmas next year.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you will have a lot of fun.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I tell you, we like to have fun.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: We like to dance down to my grandkids, to me, and they know this man likes to have fun, but I love it.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: No, thank you so much for joining me and helping us to get the myths up.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: You're gonna teach us some pitfalls of self publishing and you're gonna teach us this different options and publishing so thank you so much for that.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Before I get started, I want to actually make sure people subscribe and share the podcast Ready Set Collaborate, because you're gonna get a wealth of knowledge from a lot of experienced entrepreneurs that actually have been through this journey.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: But thank you, polly, but why don't you tell them a little bit about you?
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: When Polly Levtowski wrote her book 3MPH and I got that book too, thank you so much for writing it One woman's walk around the world and got ripped off in the publishing world and launched her into starting a new publishing model that protects authors.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you, you should have been around a long time ago, polly.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: In 2012, she started my Word Publishing, a publishing model that interrupted the publishing world by helping authors professionally self-publish their books while maintaining 100% of all their rights.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: My Word Publishing is now going to a publishing library of over 900 books Wow, four publishing consultants, 45 editors and has recently been submitted into the US Congressional Record for interrupting that and established publishing world and helping authors protect their rights.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: I love this, polly, because you really say anything right here in these sentences, though I advise you to get her book.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: 3mp, 3 miles per hour, to mention the one woman's walk around the world.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Polly, tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: You tell me something, but I want the world to know exactly what you're doing here.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: How do you get the point?
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Okay, I'll try to do this in a couple of paragraphs, but it's started from the age of 12, believe it or not, when I got this dream to go walk around the world.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Finally, at the age of 37, I left and I learned how to write on the road.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Okay, when this thing called the Internet was coming out, no one had a website except me.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: I was so cool, so I learned how to write and it took five years, cross-four count as 22 countries and over 14,000 miles.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: Over the course of that time, I won a couple of writing contests like who knew, and learned how to write.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Anyway, I got done with that walk, submitted my, took six years to finish writing the book and then handed it over to a crooked publisher.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: And that's when I started to learn a lot about publishing and watched as people continued to make the same mistakes that I was making, and that's what I want to talk to you about here today.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: So people learn from my $15,000 mistake.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Is that horrible?
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: So anyway, I finally got out of that situation.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: I didn't really legally get out of that situation.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: My attorney said run for your life.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: I said okay and I thought now what?
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: So I had to figure out how to do self-publishing by myself, and that happened to be at the very beginning of the self-publishing explosion.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: And so I did that for a couple of years just helping people finish my own book.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: And then I started helping other people under my word publishing.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: And it took off from the beginning because I think my timing in history with the new industry was right and started helping people stop making the mistakes that I make because they're dangerous and expensive and not necessary anymore in today's world.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Wow, and I'm glad we had someone like you, because you learn from experience and the problem is you learn the expensive way from experience, and it's a shame.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: You don't know who's honest, who's truthful.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: And probably the biggest thing is integrity.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Integrity means so much to me.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: A lot of people don't have that integrity anymore, so thank you for sharing it.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: That really does make a big difference.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: But I want you to tell us about the options in publishing, and you're going to give us that Publishing 101 lesson.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there are four major kinds of publishing.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: One is traditional publishing.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: I'm going to give you the pros and cons to that in a second.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: And the second option is the small independent press Pros and cons to that, Pros and cons to all of them.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: The third one is the subsidy press.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Subsidy publishing Subsidy meaning you're subsidizing, You're giving them the money.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: And if you were to Google how to sell publisher book, these subsidy publishing companies are the ones that come up.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: The giveaway is, if they have packages the Vietnam package, the gold package and there's no flexibility and all the rest of it and who would?
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: I guess, my goat.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: And then the fourth option is true independent publishing Pros and cons to all of them.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: The pros and cons to the traditional model is that you don't have to spend money.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: Okay, and so your learning curve is a lot less aggravating because they're taking care of everything and they know the way around the system.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: But cons to that are you ain't gonna get a deal.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but a true independent or a true professional traditional publishing house will give you an advance.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: That is their investment in you.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: Okay, you have to do all the marketing Every time I give a class on publishing, I'll say how many want a traditional publishing deal because they'll do your marketing.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: All the hands go up.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: I'm like I hate to be first your bubble, but it has never been the case.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: It's never been the case.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: So people are like Michelle Obama's not out there marketing her book and I say, yeah, she is and she has the big platform.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: Therefore, they're gonna put money towards that.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Okay, so that's one of the big downfalls is you're doing all the work these days.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: You're gonna get very little advance and, of course, very small chance you're gonna get a deal today.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: So the pros.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: To the next one, which is the small independent publisher.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: The good news is they'll take almost anybody, Okay.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: The bad news is plenty is you're not gonna get an advance.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: A lot of times, a lot of times, this model there are different variables within, but I've seen the model many times where, no, you don't get an advance, but equally, you don't have to pay for any of the services up front, but then you don't make anything on your book either.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: So it's the bottom line in all of this is that there's nothing they can do for you that you can't do yourself today.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Nothing, Bring it.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: I promise there's nothing.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: They don't have special relationships with distributors.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: There's nothing that they can do for you that you can't do yourself today.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: The subsidy publishing model the pros are, it's a one-stop shop.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: You're on the internet going I'll take that and that and that.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: Here's your receipt and a for it.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: The bad news is plenty, however, but you might not all of these companies take your copyrights, but some let you leave have your copyrights and some don't.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Okay, Great, but the cons are plentiful, and that is that whoever owns that ISBN on the back of your book ISBN, the 13-digit code that represents your book.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: It's your book's identification number.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: Whoever owns that owns your sales and distribution rights.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: Okay, Maybe not your copyrights, but your sales and distribution rights, and what that means is all of the sales go through them and every six months, they distribute your portion of the royalties.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: Okay, no one's ripping you off.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: They're taking their portion.
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: They're giving you a portion.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: No, one's ripping you off, but there is a much better way.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: Okay, so that's what I tell people.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: There's just bad decisions.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: And then they're being ripped off.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: They're not ripping you off, it's just a bad decision.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: There's a much better way to do it.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: You should own all your copyrights, sales rights, distribution rights, foreign rights, digital rights, everything.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: You should own it, okay, and so they own it.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: Okay, and their printing costs are four times Not even exaggerating.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: I might be known for exaggerating a few times, but this I am not exaggerating.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: It's literally four times the cost of just doing it yourself.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: That's where they're making their money on the printing of the book.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: The fourth way is true independent publishing, and the pros are you get to make all the decisions.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: You get 100% of rights and royalties, decision-making.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: The cons are, of course, you've never done it before.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: What do you know?
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: And, frankly, that's where I know we're not here to just advertise myself, but that's what people like me come in.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: Okay, so we come in and we do everything that a publisher does, but we maintain no ownership.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, so we manage everything for you, because there are many pitfalls, even though you're doing it right.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: The pitfalls are a plenty and we can talk about those, but I don't want to overwhelm you, so we can breathe for a minute.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: No, and I want you to tell because you aren't talking about what you can do as far as what makes it easy for people Like your business, what you do, but with my eyes, what I did one through two collaboration books that I've had, that's Shining Impact.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: One Voice I said I want to do my own.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: So I did my own.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Now I actually have my checklist.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I did my copyright, I did my own ISBN and then I went through KDP.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: What do you think about one?
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Through KDP?
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I get my own, I order my books from them, but if they do buy them from Amazon, I do get a portion of what they sell for me on Amazon.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Big advocate of KDP.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: And for those who don't know, kdp is Kindle Direct Publishing.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: It is Amazon's Publishing Arm.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: Yes, I like those.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: There's always a debate in my world as to who is better KDP or Ingram Spark, because those are the two big print on demand self publishing options.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: And we like both and I don't have an allegiance to one.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: I don't work for one.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: I don't get kicked back from nobody, but I usually fall on the side of KDP For a number of reasons.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: But yes, I do think that's the way to go.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: One thing I'd like to clear up that I hear all the time is KDP your publisher?
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: No, the publisher is the person, entity who is putting together all the pieces.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: Okay, they are the producer.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: A publisher is a producer of books.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: They are KDP is your printer and distributor fulfillment platform.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: You are the publisher.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: So all the books we've worked on 900 books and our author is always the publisher.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: We are the project manager.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: So we're doing everything, but everything is in their name.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we will present them an option, and so I'll tell people in advance.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Sometimes there's an option A or B and it's just an opinion, but sometimes there is.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: This is the way to do it.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: It's just like I've got to be a tough guy in that and sometimes there's legalities no, you can't use the lyrics in the, etc.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: But if it's an option, I'll just say I am, but there's color better.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: There's nothing right or wrong about it.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: I love it because, actually, at least what I did, I did right.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Yes, you did, yes, you did.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: You didn't have to go down the painful no that I did, yes, and it was great because actually I did my.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I was a publisher, I copyrighted it myself, my girl, and then I went through KDP to actually print it out.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: And the good thing about it was all in the family.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: So my daughter created my book cover, so I already had the book cover done, and my son-in-law, who's my graphic designer, he actually did my editing.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: No, I had another lady, mary Marvell.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: She actually did my editing and then he did the formatting.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: So it was all in the family that I brought it all together and I'm just glad that they turned out the way it is.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: So thank you so much.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I wanted to try the self publishing mode, because I tried it two times the collaboration and it's great Because they got me out to do what I'm doing.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: I would never have written a book at all if I had not started with the collaboration.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: So thank you for that.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: So, let me ask you something.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: So by you doing it and I really love your business and I would love for people to contact you and what you're doing but how did you handle the marketing and promotion of the book?
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Do you do that, Especially when you could sit in multiple authors?
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: If you don't put collaboration Right, Great questions.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: As I mentioned before, no one will do your marketing for you as far as the traditional houses being big deal with Simon and Schuster Penguin.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: No one will do your marketing for you.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: It's the one mistake I didn't make.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: So hit that book.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: I knew no matter what I'd have to do my own marketing.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: But equally I felt bad just sending our authors into the universe without a plan at all.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: I haven't liked book marketing.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: I had done it.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: I'd kept track with this little word document, bullet pointed list on how to, and over the years I just kept adding to it and then I started making designs out of it and then eventually I came up with Buzz your super sticky book marketing plan.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: And here's the thing it's Buzz your super sticky book.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: And this is the fourth edition because of course, these services are changing constantly.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Right, and you'll see it's big and fat and colorful.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: I was trying anything To make it not overwhelming.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Very doable, yeah, because when I started in on my marketing part of my book publishing process, I ordered all the books and they come back with like hundreds of pages and just blocks and blocks of content and it was so overwhelming and never I never opened them a second time.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: And so once I got my head around it, I started creating my own and just sharing it with our authors.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: And then of course, now I share it with everybody.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: But what we do.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: If you're an author of ours, I guess you don't even have to be an author of ours, you can.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: We have what's called a book marketing consultation.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: So we sit down three different one-hour sessions and we make a plan together, because a marketing book marketing is this magical intersection of who is your target demographic, of course, what is your happy place.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: For example, if your target demographics all hanging out on Instagram and you hate Instagram, you're not going to do it.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: So it's the intersection of where your target demographic is, what you enjoy doing and your budget.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: The good news is there's a lot of free marketing tools these days, a lot of them, and yay.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: That helps and I advise people to get Holly's Buzz.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Is it called Buzz?
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, buzz, you're great, buzz, your super sticky book.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: This is.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: It just came out, so this is the latest version.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: You'll see this is the proof, but that's mine too.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's awesome.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: That's awesome, and I'm sure they can get that off your website.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: She has it right there, my work publishing right in the background there, so yeah my word publishingcom.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: If someone's interested, there is a freebie called bookmarketingcalendarcom.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: Go to bookmarketingcalendarcom and I have everything all your tasks to do for the first six months of your book Wow, wow.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: Marketingcalendarcom.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: And I wish you were around when I was doing my second to head all these here.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: But it didn't take me long when I said I made a commitment, I want to get my book out, and this is what I actually.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Marched it this year Well, and I'm sorry this year is 2024, isn't it 2023.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: When I lost it.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: But I was going through step by step, so I feel good that I actually followed what you were saying to do when I did it.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: Yes, you did, and sometimes there are a lot of pitfalls and when I talk to people sometime I'm like no, you're way ahead of the game.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: You did not make the horrible mistakes I did, so congratulations.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: And usually mistakes are just things they haven't done yet or things we just need to tweak.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: But no, that's great.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: So I want and actually I wanted the pitfalls of self-cublishing.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Give us some pitfalls of self-cublishing, yeah.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: One of the biggest pitfalls we see is doing things in the wrong order.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Okay, so here's an example, as someone the other day just said to me yeah, I went to lay out, I went to formatting, so I want to go to editing next.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Hold on there, Shreve.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Back it up.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Gotta go to editing first, absolutely.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: So we see that all the time they're doing things in the wrong order.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Someone actually put it up on Amazon.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: They did the whole book by themselves, put it up on Amazon, and their theory was I just want to go and get some sales and then I'll come back and do it.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Right, that's just going to bite them in the ass.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: And did because here's what happens is, you can't take reviews off Amazon.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: So the reviews said great information, but he really needed to get an editor and a proper layout designer.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: And all the reviews were saying that, yeah, he can't take them down.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: So the wrong order is a big pitfall.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: Can I tell you another pitfall?
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: Yes, please, when you hear the word free, okay, I want to respect your wallet.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: Okay, I honestly do.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: But when you hear the word free, it's coming at a cost of something.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: It's a cost of skill set or limits, limitations Okay.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: So there are, just be careful of them.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: And if you're okay with those limitations, like you can do this layout design for free.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, polly said be careful of the word free.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: So what is the limitation in that?
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: Limitation is in the design elements, and how advanced can you get?
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: How professional can you get?
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: Does it look like a free version?
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, gosh, another one.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Another pitfall is you do not do your layout for a book in a Word document.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: Don't think we can't tell.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we can tell at a glance.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: And that, oh, yeah, yeah, I did mine in Google Docs, that my editor was able to go in and edit and take things out and even like when out it was four minutes.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you learn from experience, but yeah, yeah, so give us another pitfall.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I know you got some.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: Oh, look, sure, we get this.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: All the time.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: We'll say it's in editing.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: Okay, is the broad category of this, but we'll get it all the time We'll start working with someone.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: We'll say tell us about your editing, have you done any at all?
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, editing's done, like editing's done.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: Okay, can you tell me about that?
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: My sister, she's a school teacher.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: She edited it.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: Huh, okay, that's not a professional editor and, depending on your goals, okay, that might be fine for your goals.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: I guarantee you it's not a professional edit.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Okay, and it might be okay for you and your goals to have your school teacher neighbor do it.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: But you got to know Chicago manual style you're going to get hit in contests.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: You're going to get hit in reviews.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: I had these two people who were reporters at the Los Angeles Times.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: They did a book together and they are editors by default because they'd been in the business so long, and I said can I just swing it past our editor?
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: I just want to see, because these guys were going for it full on professional, making a career out of it, so they don't want to take shortcuts.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: They said, yeah, show it to her.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: It was just Redmar, page three.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: They're like okay, okay, I get it, I get it.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's what I mean.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: There's good enough, and then there's professional, so national.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: We see that all the time, exactly.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: And it makes a big difference because you wanted to be professional, because that's you, that's your face of your book, so you want to make sure that you get the right setup here.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: It is yeah.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Okay, go ahead and go ahead, go ahead Okay.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Another pitfall is what we talked about already is giving away your rights and not realizing it.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: Okay, so I want you, the author, to own all your rights and royalties, and so you don't.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: My fantasy world is to not have anyone own anybody's rights.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: You heard about the Taylor Swift thing.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: We've all heard about Michael Jackson buying out Paul McCartney's rights this as an example.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: They took his rights and all of those were quote unquote, legal, just dumb.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: And that's what I'm saying here.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: There's no reason in the world anymore why you can't own your own rights.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: And so we're in a world today where you don't have to have someone else publish your book for you and you can become the publisher.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: So that's our model is to have someone else be your, or have you be your own publisher.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: Here's a book as an example.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: So she has her publishing company, that's her ISBN, that is associated with that.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: We put it here, we put it on the copyright page, and that's the case for all of our books Our names nowhere on our books, except if they choose to put us in the acknowledge.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: And that's great.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I'm glad that you have this out here for people who want to write a book, who are not sure of writing it.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: What are the different models of publishing?
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: You may have already said some already, but the different model of publishing, what would you suggest?
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the different models are so that traditional publishing they own your rights and royalties.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: They are giving you an advance and that advance is they are purchasing your material, your copyrights, therefore they get.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: It's an investment for them, so they get the final decision making.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: It's over.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: So when you, I just hear I want to be very emphatic about that, because I hear it all the time when people say they didn't do anything to market my book and you have to market your own book but you're giving all your rights away and here's the thing is you're not making much money out of it.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: $20,000 advance is a pretty good deal these days for a first time, unknown author and you're not actually getting $20,000.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Can I do the math for a second?
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: I'll try to make it easy for non-math people.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: But if they agree on a $20,000 advance, the agent gets 15% at least, sometimes 20.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: We'll just say 15% of it.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: Okay, so 20,000 minus 15, that's $3,000.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, uncle Sam's going to get 25% to 30%.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: All right, so that $20,000 advance, you are actually getting about what?
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: $11,000, $12,000.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: Okay, you have to unback the $20,000.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: That's so.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: The advance isn't advanced on your royalties and it's in advance and so you need to earn that back.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: You actually get, say, $11,000, $12,000, but you got to earn back the $20,000.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: At increments of roughly $0.60 to $0.75,.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: You have to go do all that work, you follow me, yeah, and you are expected to do the marketing, so that traditional publishing model is not good for authors anymore.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: You have to do all the work, you get very little money, mm-hmm.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: And even if I could go a step further, about $11,000, $12,000 is broken up into three parts Over the course of, say, three years.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: It's just not worth it.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: No, but you got to sell a lot of books, sell a lot of books.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: You need marketing to help you sell those books.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I know about advance.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: There's advances for all this.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: That's one model, and then the second model is that small independent press and I hate to be Debbie Downer, I really do it makes me sound all negative when I talk about all these options.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: But I would say, please just learn from my horrible mistake.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: It was so expensive.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: That's what I want to give back anyway and I want to sort of become an advocate for authors.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: But the small indie press, they are doing that old fashioned model where they're either just producing the book and not giving in advance.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the model just doesn't work.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: So what happens?
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: They go on a business and I'm telling you why don't I see it all day, every day.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: I must get an email twice a month or something about.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: I published my book with who's he, what's it publishing, and just to get notice that they're out of business.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: Wow, they can't get their files back.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: No, they have to start over all the time.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: So that's not a good model.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: No, it's not, and then they already probably paid into it.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Already they paid them the money, so they've already paid for that, because people always say I have my manuscript.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, now you got to do the layout again.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: You got to do the cover again, et cetera.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: And sometimes you can get those files sometime, not all the time.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to pay for the files.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: We're dealing with this right now again, yeah, trying to get files back from a publishing company that is either rotten or has gone out of business entirely.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: So that's another model.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: And then a third model is that kind of subsidy publishing where you just pay and order what you want Click, click, click.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I need editing, click, I need cover, click, and another one of those cons for that is just that they're beginner service providers.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: You're not talking to them, it's not collaborative, you're not joining forces, they're just doing it, sending it back and almost like it can be your belt is what I envision.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: Those are small models.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: You have just given us so much, god.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: There's so much information, and I really want you to reach out to you, because those models, the pitfalls and options in publishing are something that we don't think about when we want to.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: I want to write a book and then people do it.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: So when they saw that I wrote my book at least my third, but the other two are collaboration but how did you do that?
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: And I just follow the process I just followed.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: I went on my checking.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, let me get copyright.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: I want to make sure my first of all, I made sure my name was ready to collaborate.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: I did go down why I actually own my own name, and then I went to a copyright.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: So there was another writer and she told me she didn't want to disassociate.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: So she came in checklist and that's how I was able to do it and it.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: But it takes time, but at the same time, you'll be happy when it's all done, probably.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: If you're going to do it.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: If you want a professional book, you need to get professionals involved, and you got to do it, I would urge anyone to certainly reach out to us.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of information on our website.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: It's MyWordPublishingcom, but certainly someone can reach out to me.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: We can just have a chat, and that's Polly at MyWordPublishingcom.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: Polly is P-O-L-Y.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: I don't know how they got that name.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: But there you go.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: You are just a wealth of knowledge and the energy that you have.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I love it as far as you tell them this is.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you're part of this series, the book collaboration, because I had some of the authors actually one who actually was part of the collaboration but I wanted to get people another option of other parts of ways of doing publishing your own book.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Polly has it all.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: I wish I knew you before, polly.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll have to talk to the guy above here when we get there.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: She was stuffed on that a little earlier there.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: Polly, I know you're getting information, but share your information again, how people can contact you again, if you want to set up a consultation, meaning just let's talk about it, polly, at MyWordPublishingcom and our website is full of information it's MyWordPublishingcom, let's talk and let's help you get your book out into the world In the back of her wall.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: You can see it right there.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: No mistake, mywordpublishing MyWordPublishing that's rightcom.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: But thank you so much for being a part of this.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: My podcast, ready to Set Collaborate in my second series, book Collaboration.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: This was episode 16, the art of book collaboration.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: I want to make sure that everyone subscribe to my YouTube channel.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Wd Tres Associates all of those Polly.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: This is going to be on the video on YouTube as well once we air your episode.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Make sure you subscribe and share.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Share I will.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: I know you will, girl, I thank you so much for that.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Find your impressions, thank you, thank you so much.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Thanks again, pam.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: So my next episode stay tuned.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: We've got some great information on Ready Set Collaborate with the book collaboration.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Stay tuned for the next one.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning into this episode of Ready Set Collaborate.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: For more information about the host, head to WDPearsonAssociatescom and that's P-E-A-R-S-O-N.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Want to connect?
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Send an email to Wanda at WDPearsonAssociatescom and, as always, stay tuned for the next episode of Ready Set Collaborate.