Latest / The Daily Writer / Building a Multifaceted Writing Career | Savannah Carlisle

Transcript

Building a Multifaceted Writing Career | Savannah Carlisle · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, welcome back to the Profitable Rider Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, my name is Kent Sanders.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an author and ghostwriter, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining me for this episode of our Summer Expert Series.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you've listened to this show for any length of time, you've probably heard me talk about the value of building multiple streams of income.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, almost every successful writer who I know has followed this path of building their business.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what the specific income streams are, the common element of almost every successful career writer is that they have a variety of outlets for their writing, and that is certainly the case for my guest today.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Savannah Carlisle is the pen name of Christy Dodge, who has spent more than a decade as a sports business reporter for outlets such as ESPN and Forbes.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: She's also the author of two books on college sports.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: However, even though Christy has had a lot of success in the college sports realm, she also wanted to write romance novels.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so she created the pen name Savannah Carlisle for that side of her writing business.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Her debut novel, The Library of Second Chances, came out last year, and her second novel, The Summer of Starting Over, was just released this past April.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So just three or four months ago.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: On this episode, you'll hear me refer to her as Savannah, since that's how I was introduced to her, and also since we're focusing more on that side of her writing here in this conversation.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Savannah and I talk about how she built her career, her advice for building a multifaceted writing business, her process of writing fiction, and much more.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: This was a really, really fun and wide-ranging conversation, and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I also encourage you to check out her books and writing at SavannahCarlisle.com and businessofcollege sports.com.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's savannacarlisle.com and businessofcollege sports.com.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: With that, here's our conversation.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Savannah, welcome to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to have you.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for having me.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you have a really fascinating career.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: You have done a wide variety of things as a writer.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of times we see people who are they're writers and they basically do one thing and they build a career around a central type of book or central themes or something like that.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: But you've had a really interesting journey in your career, and I'm really excited to dive into this.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe let's start here.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um take us back to where you first knew that you wanted to be a career writer and how you made that decision and maybe some some factors that kind of just led you down that road.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I always like to explore how people got into this crazy world we call writing to begin with.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good question because now I look back and I can see how my love of writing has guided so many decisions in my career, but I don't think I understood it in the beginning because I started my career as a corporate lawyer.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And as I look back, I know now that I was drawn to corporate law because I drafted documents all day.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I never wanted to be in a courtroom.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to be a trial attorney.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was drawn to the law and had worked in it even before law school.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: What I loved about corporate law was that I got to draft documents all day.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: And while I was in law school and then on into my early years in my attorney career, I was blogging about legal and business issues in sports.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a huge sports fan.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And because I love to write, that fandom sort of expressed itself in uh early blogging.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like one of those OG bloggers.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: I started blogging in 2004.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I've been doing it for a very long time now.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And blogging for me led me down that path of becoming a full-time writer because after um quite a few years of blogging, I got a book deal for a nonfiction sports book and shortly thereafter got a job offer from ESPN to become their sports business reporter.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I think about full-time writer, like I became a full-time writer when I left law and I went into working at ESPN because I was being paid to write for ESPN full-time, although I did a little radio and TV work for them as well.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I essentially have been writing in some format full-time since then.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that work led to more nonfiction sports books.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, I have another new nonfiction sports book out this year.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: But as I dove deeper into writing those nonfiction books, I kept thinking, boy, those people that write novels, that seems easier to me because I spend years researching and coming up with data and interviewing people to be able to write a nonfiction book.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And boy, like a novel, you just get to sit down and make it all up.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I thought then.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I feel differently about it now that I've done it.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that was the initial thought process.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I had an agent for my nonfiction and I told her, I'm gonna try fiction.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I sent her um part of a manuscript when I finally got like half of one done, and she ripped it to shreds.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she said my character development was off.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: She hated the male character so much that she wanted to scrap him entirely.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was nothing usable from this manuscript.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: It lives in a file folder in a filing cabinet I have here in my office.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that I like taking on hard things.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so the fact that it was hard and the fact that she sort of told me no just made me want to get better at it.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so as I continued sort of my full-time job writing as a sports business reporter, I started spending more time on craft books and courses and figuring out how to write a novel.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And now I do all those things.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I write as a journalist, I write nonfiction books, and now I write novels.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: What were the most helpful things anytime that I interview people who have done fiction or who are currently doing fiction, what were some of the most helpful books or resources or uh anything that was helpful to you in terms of how to know how to write a novel, like story structure, characterization, those types of things?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the two books I go back to over and over and over are Save the Cat, writes a novel.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that I think was the very first craft book I ever got a hold of.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then later, as I sort of started writing in women's fiction, uh, none of those books ever saw the light of day.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then I shifted a little more towards romance, and I got uh Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And my copy of Romancing the Beat, literally the pages are falling out of it because I've used it and opened it so many times, and I've always got something like wedged on top of it because I'm looking at it while I'm typing.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it is falling apart.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: I also have the audiobook version.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I'm stuck on a piece of my manuscript, when I'm out walking the dog, I will find that section of Romancing the Beat for the part of the story that I'm on, and I will re-listen to that section of uh her book to try to get myself back on track.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that book I feel like I can't live without.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had Jessica Brody, uh the author of Save the Cat Rights a novel, appear on the podcast a couple years ago.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, number one, she's just a she's brilliant with that, and she's a genius.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad that she took the Save the Cat stuff.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I loved Blake Snyder's books for years when I taught college.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I use a couple of those as textbooks in a couple of film courses I was teaching.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad that uh she took those and put those into a form where novelists could use those.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So would you say that that's like that is pretty accurate in terms of if you follow these beats, then then you're gonna be more likely than not to have a compelling story.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have to say it was hard for me in the beginning because I was trying too hard to like fit inside these boxes.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had the beats, and I think I downloaded a spreadsheet.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember if it was from Jessica or if somebody else sort of built it around her book, but it was a spreadsheet that broke down the different beats and like you put your word count in, and then it would calculate out for each beat where that should happen in your word count.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I really tied myself in knots on the first manuscript that I like finished and was done, and I showed my agent and she said, Okay, we can work with this.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: That manuscript, I tied myself in knots trying to fit in those word counts and in those boxes and hit everything at the right time.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: But now that I've written quite a few novels, like I don't do the spreadsheet anymore.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't look at the word count.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: It comes a little more naturally to me now.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I think that it's still ingrained in me.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: I still know what the beats are and I still hit them, but I had to let go of trying to hit them at a specific word count and like trying to force it in.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm at 18,000 words, so this beat has to happen right here when sometimes it happening at 19,000 words is okay.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Almost like a movie where, you know, basically every every movie, whether it's comedy or thriller or superhero, whatever, they're all gonna hit the same basic beats in terms of act structure, but the exact minute count might be off.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they might switch a few of those beats around and those kinds of things.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm a type A perfectionist, as I think a lot of attorneys are.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I had this need to like, this is the way they say to do it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I have to do it exactly like this.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really hard for me personally to break out of that.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I do a much better job of it now.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: I actually, in the beginning, I wrote as a total pantser, but I was trying to like hit those beats while I was pantsing.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm a plotter and I do plot out the beats.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't write down the word count for them, but I do plot all the beats out before I sit down and start writing.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that helps me.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: I that's not for everybody.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I like having a plan.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: It works for me.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you sharing that.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I'm gonna get into writing fiction at some point.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've been saying that for a long time.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just haven't done it yet.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: I will do it at some point.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you're writing plenty of things, you know.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it's tough for me too.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like people ask how I do it, and it comes in waves.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like I spent all of this morning writing stuff on the sports journalism side.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't even started on the word count I would like to hit today for my novel, you know, and I'm I'm recording with you, I'm recording with somebody else after this.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know what'll happen to my word count today, but there was breaking news in my sports business world, and that had to come first this morning.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: So finding those like pockets of time to write is really hard if you're somebody who's writing in more than one area, like you and I are.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me ask you this.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm really glad you brought this up because there are a lot of people listening who so I'm a ghostwriter, so I'm writing for clients in a variety of genres.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's mostly business books, but you know, business books can run the gamut on all kinds of perspectives, topics, industries, all that stuff.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm writing for clients, I'm writing nonfiction for myself, and then I at some point I will write fiction for myself.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So doing a variety of things.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you're writing you know, romance, but also sports.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: There are people listening who are maybe they're editors or they're doing maybe they're a graphic designer, but they're also working on their own stuff.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting because I think most of the time, whenever we're younger and we dream of what it what it would look like to be a writer, we tend to think, okay, I'm gonna be doing this one thing and I'm gonna be really successful with it.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: But the vast majority of people that I know who are full-time writers, they do a variety of things.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Even people who you know, even somebody like uh Ryan Holiday, the Daily Stoic guy, who I follow really closely, um an author who's very, very successful in his own right, he still ghostwrites for people occasionally.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really interesting.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious your thoughts on the value of doing um a variety of things in your writing career.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're doing two very, very different kinds of books.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: How does that help you?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do each of those things help the other side of your business?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: I guess is really is what I'm getting at.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I can write more in a day if I'm writing on different projects than if I'm writing on one project.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I'm under a deadline and I'm only focused on one project, it's hard to like push through, like, say I've got to write 5,000 words on a novel today to meet my deadline.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I try not to ever put myself in that situation, but I've been in a situation where maybe I needed to hit 3,500 a day.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if I'm only focused on that and I'm only thinking about that story and I'm forcing myself to just write on that all day, I struggle and I take a lot of breaks and I walk the dog a lot and I'm snacking and like, because sometimes it's just hard to dial my brain in on what I need to be doing.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: But if I'm working on multiple projects at the same time, I actually have an easier time.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh today's a little abnormal because I'm recording podcasts today, but yesterday was an all-writing day, but it wasn't all writing on the same thing.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote an article on the sports business side.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I also did some research I needed to do for a sports business project.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote, I think about 2,500 new words on a sports romance, which is a whole nother story.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: I actually swore I was never gonna write a sports romance and I wasn't gonna go to cross-pollinate my worlds like that.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got an idea that wouldn't let me go and it's not contracted.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm writing it for fun.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I like need to get it out of me.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote about 2,500 words of that.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then I am on deadline for a contracted novel that's due in a couple of months, and I got in a thousand words on that one.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so over the course of the day, I probably did write 5,000, 6,000 words between the three projects.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I could have never sat down and written 6,000 on just one of those projects, not 6,000 good words, but I think I did write good stuff on all three projects yesterday because I switched.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: I do it in blocks.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like I'm constantly switching back and forth, but like I did the sports business in the morning and I sort of split my afternoon and my early evening between the two novels.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I had pretty good stuff across all of it.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if if it goes back to, you know, sometimes you hear about writers who they have a day job and they write their novel on the side.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like John Grisham early in his career, he famously wrote um what was his first book?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um it wasn't the firm, it was um what was his first book?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: A Time to Kill, I think.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it was.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, and um you know, on his way to work, and and there's this thing where people kind of despise their day jobs and they write on the side, they become successful, they quit their day job, and then they find out oh, that there was something about having other things in their life that took up a lot of time, and they had to kind of fit some aspect of their writing around it, or maybe all of their writing.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: But then when you have all these blocks of open time and you're working on one thing, then you're not as productive.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you kind of feel that way too, where you have you know two or three different kinds of things you're working on?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And because you have not just one thing, it makes you more productive on all those things.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I have definitely always been that person because when I went off to college, I had played sports my whole life.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: I played softball all through high school, but I opted not to play softball in college.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I got to college, and for the first time really in my life, the only thing I had was school.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have practice, I didn't have games, and I had no idea what to do with myself.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized that when I have all the time in the world, that I'm a procrastinator.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I wouldn't have described myself as a procrastinator prior to that because I had this really full schedule where, you know, I was going to high school, I was playing softball, I worked a part-time job.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so you had these tiny little places, like your homework had to happen in this hour and a half span, you know, that you had between things.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so you got it done.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then when I had, you know, three days to do homework between classes, I would wait till the very last minute.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't take advantage of the fact that I had three days.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I learned pretty early on that I need to be involved in a lot of things.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: So after my first semester of college, I like joined a sorority.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: I decided to do cheerleading in college instead of softball.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: I joined all these student organizations because I do better when I'm overscheduled.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I am a procrastinator if I do not force myself into these uh very strict scheduling blocks.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And even now, where I make my own schedule and I get to decide the types of things I'm working on, I block schedule in my Google calendar and I very much will stick to that.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: If it's in my calendar and I have said this is the block of time I'm gonna work on this thing, I have the discipline to do that.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious if you could talk about the role that publishers and agents have played in your career.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I know you we I think before I hit record, you you mentioned um you know, you're maybe looking for an agent for this other thing that you're doing.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um if your agents are listening, it's not that you're getting rid of them or that kind of a thing.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, agents specialize in different things, of course, or other writers listening.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: What what do you feel like the role of of those entities, agents and publishers have been in your success versus let's say if you decided to just do all independent publishing?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I guess what I'm asking is do you feel like would you still be a successful if you would have done independent publishing versus traditional publishing with agents and uh and how you think about all those things?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I currently don't have an agent.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: I have been agented twice before.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um my first agent I had for 10 years, my second agent I had for about seven months.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: So two really different experiences.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and probably without detailing them, you can guess.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: If I was with somebody for 10 years, it was going pretty well.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: If I was with somebody for seven months, it's not going well.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I've had I do have had two really different experiences, and I'm querying now because I want to have an agent.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I even had an agent who said to me, You probably don't really need an agent because I my novels are with a small press.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I'm contracted with them in through 2026 for different novels.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my nonfiction, both of those were agented.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: My my last two nonfiction were agented when I sold them.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's a press that would work with me on my I'm with Wiley and Wiley takes unagented submissions.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: So they would continue to work with me without an agent, but I want one because I want somebody to help me strategize sort of my career, like this sports romance book that I'm working on, and I have another completed manuscript.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do to the with those.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Do I want to try to go get a bigger publisher?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do I want to play around with self-publishing?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I self-published a novella last year just to sort of test the waters and see like, could I do it on my own?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Could I figure out how to do, you know, hire the right people for cover design and editing and actually figure out how to get it into, you know, KDP and how to sell it?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was doing it as kind of a lead magnet.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was like, you know, if this turns out great, and if it doesn't, not the end of the world.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it went pretty smoothly.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel feel like I figured out most things.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I really want an agent because I do want to have that access to the bigger publishing houses that don't take unagented submissions, but I also want somebody to help me strategize like these manuscripts that I have and these ideas I have for future manuscripts, where do they fit?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do they fit with my small press?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Should they, should I try to go somewhere bigger?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is that particular idea better for self-publishing?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I sort of I want that teammate.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I had nothing but benefit from my first agent.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I had a wonderful experience with her.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: She had signed me for nonfiction.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: We parted ways once I started uh writing more novels.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I think she brought so much value to the relationship from advice to negotiating contracts to getting me higher advances.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had nothing but a wonderful experience with her.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my second agent I had a very different experience with.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I kind of know what I'm looking for.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe third time's the charm.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: So for you, you would say that the the obviously the downside of having an agent is that you're giving up 15% of whatever you make to the agent, which is standard across the board.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the upside is that uh you're getting much more than that in terms of uh opportunities, relationships, sales, advances.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So for you, it was it was at least with the first agent, that was really a huge upside.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I would say to so my first novel um that ended up with the small press, I did submit that between agents one and two.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I was unagented when I got the deal from the small press.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the middle of querying.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually sent the deal to some of the agents I was querying and said, like, I've got a deal on the table.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, most of them didn't want to sign me if I thought I wanted to take that small press deal.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: They only wanted to sign me if I was interested in continuing to take it to other publishers.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: I really wanted to be with that small press for that book.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so I decided to do it on my own.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: But here is the piece of advice I want to give people.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a lawyer.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I could have negotiated my own contract, but I didn't because smart lawyers do not represent themselves.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: I went and found um an agent who is a lawyer who does contract review on the side for people who are not agency, her agency clients, but she for a flat fee would look at the contract.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And she caught stuff I didn't because I'm not a literary lawyer.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are little things about the way my royalties were calculated and about some of the other terms that looked fine to me on the face of it, but she knew industry standard and she sort of knew, you know, what you could push back on or what sort of language you could get to better protect yourself.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And she marked it up for me and she caught all kinds of things I didn't.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I see people now saying they have an offer from a small press and they're just, you know, gonna do it on their own.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, please, please get one of these agents who's a lawyer who will charge you.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: It I think it was like 250 bucks.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was not a lot of money to review the contract for me.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was worth every penny.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my goodness.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: A a good attorney, um, I mean it's gonna, of course, you're an attorney, you know, attorney as well, but gosh, there's just so much value to having somebody protect you and to catch those things that if you're not trained in those things like contracts, can really be your downfall.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say my publisher is wonderful.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like they were trying to do anything in a It was just little tweaks to wording that down the road, if we had a problem, you know, you might want it worded a certain way to better protect me.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'd had a really weird situation happen actually with uh one of my nonfiction books, where I was with Wiley for that book.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Wiley sold the division that had my book to another publisher.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had a horrific experience with that publisher.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I also sort of knew like things that could go wrong.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so, especially with the small press, I think I had seen in the news that another small press, the owner had passed away.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a lot of question as to who was going to keep this press running and what was going to happen to books that were in the middle of the editing process.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so, for example, one of the things I went back and asked for was a clause that if the owner of my publishing company passes, that if things don't happen in a certain time frame, I get all my rights back because I don't want to spend the next three years fighting with somebody over my rights.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want a very specific date on which they come back to me if somebody hasn't taken over.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that, you know, that's unique to working with a small press.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's not something you need to work into like a contract with, you know, Penguin Random House.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I do actually have something even I'm with Wiley again now for uh my new sports book.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I joked, I was like, if you sell me off this time, like I will never work with you again.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I was like, please promise me you're not selling this book to anybody.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I did put a clause in there that if unforeseen things happen and that book did end up with somebody other than Wiley, which we're like 45 days from publication, I don't think that's gonna happen.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I did still ask for and build in something even in my Wiley contract, which is a much bigger publisher than my fiction, that um kind of protected me if I ended up in that situation again.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get back to the conversation in just a minute, but I want to take a moment to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, Vellum.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: As a writer, you not only want to write great books, but you also want them to look professionally formatted and give your reader a great experience.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why for years my go-to choice for book formatting software has been Vellum.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Vellum gives you the power to build, style, and preview your book and have more fun than you ever thought possible while doing it.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Vellum is the go-to choice for Mac users who care about creating beautiful ebooks and print books and they want to save tons of time in the process.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Best of all, you can download Vellum and play with your book's formatting to your heart's content.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you only have to purchase when you're ready to publish.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do, Vellum can create ebooks and print books for every platform.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: To download Vellum for free, visit trivellum.com slash Kent.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's trivellum.com slash Kent.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get back to the conversation.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I would have never thought about the contingency of okay, if a publisher you know sells off a division or if if something happens, then what happens to your stuff?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a very real very real possibility.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously it happened to you, but man, with so much consolidation and change in the publishing industry happening right now.
• 24:59
  unknown: Yeah.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's not gonna be the last time.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: If you lose the person who championed your book, like when I signed with Wiley for the last book, I had an editor there who actually he's a ghostwriter now.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: I had this editor who was phenomenal who believed in me, believed in my book, like was super passionate about the subject, like I was.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we were on the same train of thought.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: We got all the way through editing, and then it got sold off to this other publisher who did not care about it, had no like subject matter expertise.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't publishing other books really in the sports space.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I just had some really unfortunate things happen to me and my book and my publication date, and even the like physical layout of my book change after it went there.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't keep Wiley or anybody else from selling my division away.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: But like, for example, one of the things I didn't want to happen was the other publisher ended up with the option on my next book, except I never wanted to work with them again.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have built into this one that I have the option worded a little bit differently so that I don't have to get stuck with a publisher I don't want on my option.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this gets into like nitty gritty stuff, but this is why it's important to have an agent or a literary attorney look at these contracts because it might seem like it's not a big deal now and you're just so excited that somebody's willing to publish your book.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I've seen so many people who once they're in the editing process or even their book's been out a couple of years, one of these catastrophic sort of situations you never dreamed of happens, and all of a sudden your book is in limbo, and there's nothing you can do about it.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I just think it's super important to have somebody look at that, even if you're not gonna get an agent to represent you, you know, all the time, at least have somebody look over your contracts.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: So for uh for somebody who is um who's listening and they want to grow their writing career, you know, the this obviously this podcast is called The Profitable Writer.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so we talk a lot about business and the mindset required to grow your writing career.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Things like being assertive, being smart business-wise.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, a lot of writers are creative types, they don't think in terms of business a lot of times exactly like what you're talking about.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: For people especially who are looking at that at that who are looking at at their career from that kind of perspective, what are maybe some tips that you would have for growing your career as a writer or for looking looking at the big picture and really being more intentional about your own success?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's a very open-ended question, but I'm curious if anything comes to mind.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, the first thing that came to my mind when you said that was just how many writing podcasts I listen to, like including yours, but there's probably 15 that I'm subscribed to on my phone in my little podcast app.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: I listen to writing podcasts all the time, ones that are hosted by agents, ones that are hosted by writers, ones that are focused on only self-publishing, you know, ones that tend to only have guests on who are traditionally published.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like I listen to so much content on being a writer.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I've learned so much.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the podcasts are what gave me sort of the idea and the confidence to self-publish this novella last year.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had gotten invited to be part of a promotion with some other authors, and all of the rest of them had a novella as a lead magnet.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I just had not gotten around to it because I was too busy writing full-length books.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I sort of challenged myself to write this novella and then figure out like how to actually turn it into a book and get it out into the world.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I wouldn't have had the confidence to do that if I hadn't been listening to a bunch of self-publishing podcasts.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I at the time was contracted with a small traditional publisher, had no plans to be a self-published author, but I still pick up things from those podcasts about, you know, marketing.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm writing a series for my small press now.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so much of what I've learned about both how to write a series and how to market a series come from podcasts that I listen to.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's that continuous education.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like I am just still learning new things almost every single day as a writer.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And no matter I want to believe that no matter how many books I have, you know, out in the world, I'm gonna still be that learner and still wanting to learn new things because the, you know, the market changes.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've got all this stuff with AI now and all the different like tools you can use to write your book.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, the like you said, the publishing houses consolidating, like so much happens in this industry.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like you have to stay on top of it.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: You do, and it's really hard, and things are constantly changing.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um what do you feel like are for people who want to build a career in writing?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And and again, that's that's what this show is for.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's really for people who are serious about it.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I had a I had a conversation with somebody yesterday.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I'm not gonna name who it was.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I run a membership group called The Prophet Writer, it's a membership community.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody had come into the group uh recently and um they were kind of trying it out, you know, they came to a call and really enjoyed it, and but then they were kind of like, I'm probably gonna get in trouble for sharing this if they listen to the show.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um which I think maybe they do.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, You know, I've just got a lot of things on my plate right now.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'm really ready to jump into a community.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, That's so okay because uh this community is really for people who want to take the lead in their career to be assertive and jump in and do things.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you feel like you don't if you feel like you can't really fit writing uh into your life right now, then this isn't the community for you.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that feels like that's the thing that's missing for a lot of people is just this kind of assertiveness and willing to learn and to realize that things are shifting and that you you gotta be constantly learning and you gotta change with the times and you have to you have to just have this this desire and this drive that is missing, I think, with so many people.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think you have to really want it because it's hard, and it's hard in any number of different ways.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to learn how to write well and to do character development and do world building, and there's all those things that are hard.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to figure out how to market, it's hard to find your audience.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's all these roadblocks that will come up.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I always say, and I say this actually over in sports reporting too, because I get a lot of young journalism students coming out of school and they're big sports fans and they want to be sports reporters.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I say the exact same thing to them that I say to aspiring uh, you know, novel writers when I meet them.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: I honestly think that the biggest difference between the people who make it and the people who don't is just the people who make it never gave up.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think it's just like wanting to keep having that desire to keep going, and it has to come from inside you.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody else can manufacture that or push you towards that.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be what you want to do when you get up every morning.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I wrote my first nonfiction book, I was a full-time corporate attorney.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was working like 70 hour weeks and I still found time to write a book.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, some caveats to that.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't married, I didn't have kids, like outside of work, I didn't have a lot of responsibility.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I was writing that work like while I was eating lunch at my desk, you know, if I was waiting on something to come back from a client, I was writing it late at night.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was writing it on the weekends, you know, I was giving up going and doing hobbies on the weekends.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: And when people would ask me what my hobbies were, I would say writing, because at that time writing was a hobby.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I did it to the exclusion of other things I could have been doing with my weekend.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that if you want it bad enough and you can sort of figure out how to protect yourself from the rejection and handle it and just keep pushing through, even when you're getting those no's, you will get there.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just think you have to not give up.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: You have to want it so bad that you're not willing to give up.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing that anybody can do to make you want it.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: It it has to be an internal thing that is that lives within you.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I I've seen so many people in life, just like you have, I'm sure, where you're like, man, you're so gifted.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you would just you know, if you just had that fire or that spark within you, you could really do some great things, but they just don't have the drive.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't I don't know how to help people to get that drive if they don't have it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: I used to work for a partner in my law firm and he always said, You can't teach hungry.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like when he would talk about young associates and which associates were gonna make it and become partner one day and which ones weren't, he would always say, I can't teach hungry.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's true.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you can't teach that.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: You either really want it and you're willing to sacrifice things to get it, or you don't.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um I guess and until you just have enough pain in your life, or you you're you you have to get so frustrated with your current life and whatever state it is that you want to change.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's I guess ultimately when we all change, is when we there's a threshold of pain that we have to cross.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then we go, oh wow, I've got to make this health change or this career change or this whatever change.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's really hard.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um what is next for you?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do the next couple of years look like for your writing?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've got a sports book coming out very soon, correct?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a sports book coming out July 2nd.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it is for parents of college athletes.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: So my specialty on that side is something called name, image, and likeness.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have any listeners who have kids uh playing sports or college age athletes, name, image, and likeness is sort of my specialty on the sports side.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a book on that coming out in July.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: I have another novel out in August.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's called If I'd Have Known.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it is the second in series behind um the summer of starting over, which just came out in April.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then I have the third and fourth books in that series coming out in 2026 in March and May, I believe.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm in various stages of editing and writing these different books um on top of sort of writing for my, I don't even call it my day job anymore, but writing on the sports side.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: So your rhythm basically is a couple novels per year.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's generally what you do.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that only came about like I had my debut last year.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: My debut was actually my second completed novel.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: My first completed novel, my first agent took out, and unfortunately, we went out in early 2020, about a week before the world shut down.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was the worst possible time to be on submission.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: We just didn't know that when it happened.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that book ultimately died on submission.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then I wrote another book.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up getting my small press deal for the other book.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I said to that publisher, look, I have this other book.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's totally done.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: It went out to a handful of publishers in 2020 and sort of died.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I put it aside and I wrote this other one, but do you want to see it?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so part of the way I was able to get two books for 2025 is that one of them was already written.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: So all I had to do was edit it last year and it was ready to go.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: And because that one only needed editing, I was already writing on the second in series that I had planned out.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I sort of spent the second half of 2024 editing the book that came out in April and writing the book that's going to come out this August.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then I've spent this year writing the ones that are going to come out next year.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I can pretty reliably write to a year.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sports books a little bit different because, like I was saying at sort of the beginning of our conversation, writing nonfiction is so different because it's a lot of like gathering data, it's a lot of interviews.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I, because it's what I write about every day on the sports side, I've really been working on that book for three years now in little bits and pieces.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of it's gathering stuff I wrote articles about, and now I'm sort of repurposing in the book.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so that book is hard to write in the sense it takes a long time, but wasn't hard to write sort of around the novels because I could go weeks at a time where I didn't have any interviews or somebody wasn't getting back to me with the data I needed, and I could be working on my novels while I'm waiting on stuff to come in for the nonfiction.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it is just kind of a lot of juggling the pieces.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I make sure that when my publishers give me the schedules, that I don't have two deadlines at the same time, that it is kind of back and forth and I can schedule them all out on my calendar.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: And both my both my nonfiction publisher and my fiction publisher are great about running timelines by me and making sure that they work.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I like I just adjusted the one for one of my books next year because I saw when it was going to come back and I have a big conference I speak at and a bunch of stuff going on at that time.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, there's no way I'm gonna be able to get this in on that deadline.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: Can we just move it a couple of weeks?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they said sure, and they rearranged things and moved it.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's always nice to have a variety of things going on because you you especially when you're dealing with publishers and agents, those kinds of things, um, things can always shift and you're sort of at their mercy.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: One of the one of the just one of the dynamics of working with a publisher.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is really different.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there are things about self-publishing that it's like, oh, like I'd get to, I've loved all my covers so far.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: That, but so that hasn't been an issue.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: But like you get control of your cover, you know, we've had some back and forth on some of my titles, and like you'd get to pick your own title, and you know, you get to decide all the ways you want to market it.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever it's kind of nice that you have no rules, but on the other hand, like I really appreciate the expertise my publisher has.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: My publisher only does romance and women's fiction, so like they're really dialed into what works in that space, including that like my debut last year, there is a woman on the cover.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: She you see her from the back.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I don't have the cartoon covers, I have more realistic looking covers.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when we were getting ready for my book for this year, she said, I've been doing, you know, market research and covers with people aren't doing very well.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we originally had a concept that again had a woman from the back, and we took it off and completely redid the cover because she'd done the market research and didn't think that that was selling well.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And like I appreciate the expertise the publisher brings with that that I don't have or have time to figure out on my own.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Unless Ginny Hale, you're talking about ISO.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is, yeah.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: I had her on the show here a couple of years ago.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Ginny's incredible.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about somebody juggling a lot of things.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Ginny's writing two or three books a year and publishing a whole bunch of us.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that is?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on with the psychology of readers that they would not like seeing actual people on book covers?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I've dug into Facebook group threads on this and read people's replies, and it seems like the number one thing that comes up over and over is that people want to be able to read and visualize the person as looking however they want.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want a cover that sort of tells them what the person looks like.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, in the book you describe them, you might say they have blonde hair or brown hair or blue eyes or green eyes or whatever.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it seems like people like to take sort of creative license to have that person look however they envision in their mind.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe, you know, there's a lot of psychology about wanting to read books with people who look like you or look like, you know, your friends, your sort of your worldview.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, versus if you have a cover and you see not only is the person blonde, but they have a certain build and they wear a certain type of clothes, like that maybe starts rewiring who that character is for you.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of get that.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: I personally don't have a preference and I buy books both with and without people on the covers.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if that's not what people want to see, then by all means we won't do it.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: And what's really funny is my book last year, The Library Second Chances, it does have a blonde woman from behind on it.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I just got my German cover because um Ginny ended up selling the rights for that book to a big German publisher, and we got the German cover and the woman's brunette.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Well, in the book, I say I think more than once that she's blonde.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Are they gonna change those references?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: So at least the I don't care if you change it, but I want it to match.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want a brunette on the cover and a blonde inside the book.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: And about a week later, the German publisher did email and say, Are you okay if we change the main character to being brunette?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Yes, please, because I want it to match the cover.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting, and maybe that is somewhat genre dependent, those preferences, because you look at like Harlequin book covers and they all have like the shirtless guy and the the swooning woman and all those kind of things.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I I guess it depends on what readers come to a book wanting.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they want to visualize the main character, sometimes they want it pictured on the cover, and I don't know.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I think Jenny always says that that I agree with, and we have the most incredible designers at Harpeth Road.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've I really truly have loved every cover that she sent me, and I get so excited when I know they're coming.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: But we always talk about having like one thing on the cover that really not only draws your interest in the sense of your eye going to it, but makes you sort of ask, like, why that thing is there or what role that thing plays in the story.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: So on my debut cover, um, you see this woman from behind and she's going into a library and she has this bright pink dress on, and that just like pulls your eye because it's so bright and it fits sort of my personal branding.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like I wear really bright clothes.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: I live in a in a beach town and I wear a lot of Lily Pulitzer, which is really bright colored clothes.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it fits my branding, but also like it kind of leaps off the shelf because it's such a bright pink.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when we did my cover for this year, the summer of starting over, uh, the first version of the cover I got, um, and it has a female main character who's a country music singer.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a guitar on the cover leaning against a chair, and it was just a normal, you know, tan colored guitar.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I wrote Ginny back and I said, Can we make the guitar pink?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, obviously, I love pink now that I've got it on both of my covers, but also like again, it's that thing that like leaps off the cover in terms of like grabbing your eye because it's a bright color, but also the the title doesn't tell you that there's a country music singer in the book.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's called The Summer of Starting Over.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you know nothing about these characters, but when you see the guitar, I think that creates some interest.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why is this guitar here?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: What role does the guitar play in the story?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is it the male or the female character that plays the guitar?
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's pink.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, once we change the color, you probably think it's the female character.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I love the way she thinks about covers and how to attract somebody's attention because I do think a lot of people buy or at least stop and look because of the cover and being drawn to that aesthetically.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I love that.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's brilliant.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: Her covers are so good.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I don't know how I could ever self-publish unless I used the same designer because I love my covers so much that I don't know that I could ever do that on my own or find the right person to do that.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: I it's one of the strongest things I think about Harpeth Road.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell people who are looking at small presses that one of the things you should do is go on their website and look at their covers and do they have a good cover designer or not?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've seen a lot of smaller presses whose covers just quite frankly don't fit genre expectations and just don't look that professionally done.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think you can tell a lot about a small publisher and whether they are um credible and experienced or not by their covers.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Savannah, this has been fun.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, appreciate you taking time to chat with me.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: And gosh, I'm I was taking notes through all the conversation.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: I try not to do that when I'm interviewing somebody, but sometimes they're just sharing such good stuff I can't tell myself.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed being on.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you having me.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: This has been fantastic.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, where can readers find out more about your books?
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now I would I'm gonna say both both sides of what you do because uh I think our listeners are gonna be interested in both those things.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: So how can they find both of those directions?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: So for my novels, um savannacarlisle.com, and then I'm on not pretty much every social media channel with the same username.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's savvy Carlisle with two Vs.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh on one of the networks, Savannah didn't fit.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to go with Savvy Carlisle, and then I wanted them all to match.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I'm that on all of those.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: For uh my sports stuff, I do own Christy Dosh.com, which is my legal real name, but most of my work is on my sports website, which is businessofcollegesports.com.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then my new book on that side has its own site because unfortunately, that's another thing about nonfiction versus fiction.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: That book could become outdated really quickly after it comes out because it's based on something that is changing in college athletics right now.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it has to have its own website because we're gonna have to have updated materials on the website.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's at um the athletesinil playbook.com.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you again for being our guest today.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really enjoyed this conversation.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: So glad that we connected and I'm looking forward to checking out your next books.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of The Profitable Writer.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I really appreciate you taking time to listen.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: On the next episode, I'm gonna be joined by Jim Bernard for kind of an unusual conversation about how to use your pain as an avenue for powerful writing.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be a very raw and uh open and vulnerable conversation.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: So get ready for something a little bit different, but also something that's very, very powerful.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to that conversation, and I'll see you then.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Before we go, I want to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, The Word Wizard.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you may have written a great book, but it's not ready for publication until it's been in the hands of a great editor.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why my friend Karen Hunsinger, also known as The Word Wizard, is the perfect partner to help you craft the highest quality book possible.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a great editor doesn't just correct grammar and spelling, but they also correct wordiness, gifts in tone and voice, overuse of particular words, and they also enhance transitions, clarity, and accuracy.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've worked with Karen many times, and she is your secret weapon for crafting an amazing book.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Visit Karen Hunsinger.com for a free sample edit.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's Karen Hunsinger.com for a free sample edit.