Latest / Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors Podcast / How to Navigate the Landscape of Children's Publishing with Joe Licari

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How to Navigate the Landscape of Children's Publishing with Joe Licari · Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors Podcast

• 2:34
  Joseph L.
• 2:35
  Licari People call me Joe.
• 2:38
  My books include Mia's Mouses, Mia's Marvelous Farm Adventure, Mia's Farm Adventure, Word Search and Puzzles, a coloring book and puzzle book for Mia's Mouse.
• 2:51
  Thanks, Joe, for appearing on the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors Podcast, Joe's Mention.
• 2:57
  He has written several children's books and today we're going to discuss his book, Mia's Marvelous Farm Adventure, and I look forward to our conversation.
• 3:07
  Joel, before we jump into the details of your book, can you tell us what being a children's book author means to you?
• 3:16
  I sure can, Rick.
• 3:17
  For me, it's about reaching out to kids and their parents and visiting many times in schools as well, but helping them learn in new ways in fun ways.
• 3:32
  I feel like education nowadays has changed a lot and there's a lot of pressure on schools, a lot of pressure on teachers.
• 3:38
  I have a sister who's a teacher.
• 3:40
  I have one of my daughters is a teacher down in Nashville.
• 3:44
  And boy, they've stuffed a lot into those curriculums.
• 3:48
  And they have very little playroom around that curriculum.
• 3:54
  So it's difficult for them many times even for the teachers and certainly for parents to help their kids with learning in ways that are fun.
• 4:04
  I want kids to be curious and to figure out for themselves what's that next thing that they may want to learn in addition to the school curriculums.
• 4:12
  So for me, being a children's author is really about taking difficult things or difficult concepts and embedding them in stories that are really fun to read, where the kids love the characters, but they're also learning something.
• 4:25
  They're getting something out of the book beyond the story.
• 4:28
  And to me, that's the magic.
• 4:30
  That's fun.
• 4:30
  That's fantastic.
• 4:32
  Tell us about the inspiration behind your latest book.
• 4:36
  And were you a farm boy or like, how did you come up with this idea?
• 4:42
  No, I wasn't a farm boy.
• 4:43
  I maybe was more of a camper in growing up, did a lot of camping, did a lot of hiking and visited plenty of farms.
• 4:50
  I grew up on Long island in New York, and and Long island is, if your listeners are familiar with it, is really much different than New York City.
• 4:59
  It's 120 miles east of New York City and there was a lot of farmland out here.
• 5:06
  A lot of it's been developed, but there's still a lot of farmland.
• 5:09
  We have a lot of vineyards and a lot of winemaking.
• 5:11
  But when I was a kid, there were a lot of potato farms and people used to know Something called Long Island Duck.
• 5:17
  So I grew up in that environment, but I didn't grow up on the farm.
• 5:21
  It was just part of our culture.
• 5:23
  So this book, Mia's Marvelous Farm Adventure, is really the second book in the series.
• 5:29
  Mia's Mouses was the first.
• 5:31
  And I can tell you a little bit about that inspiration for that book because that leads into the second book.
• 5:37
  I, frankly, I knew I wanted to write, but I'm an older guy and I've had a full career and in a completely unrelated career, I was in business and I did a lot of writing on the job.
• 5:51
  And I, for a few years I wrote a number of newsletters and so forth for the business, reaching out to our customers, and I really enjoyed that.
• 6:00
  But as a product manager, I really had to come up with the concepts for the product, understand what the competitive environment was like, and help our sales teams sell our products once our products were developed.
• 6:12
  I think that gave me some kind of essential but very broad based skills.
• 6:16
  So I retired and I had already had a book in mind that I was going to write.
• 6:21
  And guess what?
• 6:22
  I didn't write that book.
• 6:24
  I ended up waking up one day with this idea about a little girl who has fun, makes friends with three mice and she names them and they have a great time together.
• 6:37
  But the concept was she continues to call them mouses instead of mice.
• 6:45
  And so she stumbles upon plural nouns.
• 6:47
  And so the story really is about the relationships and it's about the fun and.
• 6:51
  But then they start to learn a little bit about plural nouns, especially the irregular plural nouns.
• 6:56
  Why is the plural of mouse mice, but the plural of house?
• 7:00
  Houses.
• 7:02
  And then to really foul up, especially those that have English as a second language.
• 7:06
  The plural of moose is moose.
• 7:10
  So these are words that all sound similar.
• 7:12
  And yet the English language is completely illogical at times.
• 7:16
  I know adults that have problems with that.
• 7:19
  For kids that are learning, I wanted it to be fun.
• 7:22
  And that was really the inspiration behind the first book.
• 7:25
  The second book, I continued the concept because I ended up getting a lot of great feedback from teachers and school visits and children.
• 7:32
  And I actually put out a poll.
• 7:35
  I could take the second book in the series in a number of different ways.
• 7:38
  But one of the things that came back was that a lot of people said that homonyms and homophones were difficult as well for other reasons.
• 7:49
  And I latched onto that because we'll talk a little bit about homophones, but yes, boy, they're a lot of fun.
• 7:54
  And my books are written in a rhyming verse And I do that on purpose because I find that's the way kids remember things they remember in rhyme and verse.
• 8:05
  I also do it because I'm a musician, and writing in verse and writing songs and playing them is really part of who I am.
• 8:15
  And so I bring that to my books and my writing as well.
• 8:19
  Terrific.
• 8:20
  So we're going to get deeper into your books.
• 8:23
  And I'm curious now that we know you've published, it's two books or three books in the series.
• 8:30
  And you also have a coloring book and a word search book.
• 8:35
  Now that you've got these products to sell.
• 8:38
  I'm curious about your children's book business.
• 8:42
  Explain to us you've got your books on on Amazon, you have the ebook and the soft cover.
• 8:49
  I noticed you don't have a hardcover.
• 8:51
  And you also have your word search and coloring book as a combo.
• 8:57
  And so explain to us the strategy behind all that.
• 9:01
  We'd like to do is give our guests some insights into once you've written and published a children's book.
• 9:07
  Now what, like, how are you building out your children's book business?
• 9:12
  Yeah, a lot of authors, I think, get into writing books, and they often think if I write it, they will come.
• 9:19
  And unfortunately, that's not really how it works.
• 9:21
  Even if you traditionally publish your books, there's a lot of competition out there.
• 9:25
  Absolutely.
• 9:26
  And there's a lot of things competing.
• 9:28
  When I say competition, I don't mean just books.
• 9:30
  There's a lot of things competing for the eyeballs of children.
• 9:33
  Right.
• 9:33
  And for the attention of teachers and for parents as well.
• 9:37
  And you know what, Joe?
• 9:38
  I've been told I've had several traditionally published children's book authors on our podcast show.
• 9:45
  And you know what they all of them have said, every one of them is that the publisher still expects them to do most of the sales and marketing work.
• 9:56
  So it's not like you give it to a traditional publisher and then poof, you've got all these sales because they had this incredible marketing arm.
• 10:07
  Generally, the traditional publisher does not.
• 10:10
  That's true.
• 10:11
  Yeah.
• 10:11
  I've learned that as well.
• 10:13
  So for me, I'll say that my first book, I was new to this.
• 10:16
  Like maybe some of your listeners that are thinking about writing a book and thinking about getting published, I was new to it, so I did a lot of research and I ended up choosing to self publish.
• 10:26
  But I used a hybrid publisher.
• 10:29
  And there's a lot of warnings and concerns out there about hybrid publishers.
• 10:32
  And I think some of them are very warranted.
• 10:34
  You can you want to make sure you pick the right one.
• 10:36
  Are you also using ingramsparks?
• 10:38
  Yes.
• 10:39
  For the first book, I did use the hybrid publisher and they in turn used Ingram.
• 10:44
  The books become available worldwide.
• 10:46
  For the first book, I did have a hard copy as well and an ebook and a soft cover.
• 10:50
  The soft covers are the ones that really sell the most for me, and the hardcovers tend to be more expensive, so it's difficult to keep the price point low enough on the hardcovers to make them sellable.
• 11:01
  The second book, Mew's Marvelous Farm Adventure, I ended up using both kdp, which is Amazon's publishing tools, and I separately at the same time used ingramsparks.
• 11:13
  I went both ways and there's a rationale behind that which I'm happy to share as well.
• 11:17
  What would you say is being your most successful book sales promotion to date?
• 11:24
  Can you give us a little insight?
• 11:26
  Yeah, I can.
• 11:27
  Everything ties together a little bit and I've learned as I step into this and continue to learn along the way because my books have educational value as well as being humorous and fun.
• 11:38
  They've allowed me to get into schools and I love doing that.
• 11:42
  The thing that's really been most successful for me is getting into schools, doing pre sales for the schools.
• 11:50
  Let's say I'm doing an event in a month from now.
• 11:53
  I often work with the school.
• 11:55
  I share with them my overall program and and I create some marketing materials that they can hang in the school and a letter that they can send to their parents and they can modify it.
• 12:06
  It's in words so they can change it, but at least I'm giving them something that they can run with.
• 12:09
  And then the key is to be able to get pre orders and that's great for the business and that's really been my most successful.
• 12:17
  But it's also great to make sure that assembly, whether it's a 200, 300 kids in an assembly in a gym, or if it's one classroom at a time, it helps make that more successful too, because the parents and
• 12:30
  the kids know a little bit about me.
• 12:31
  They know the idea of the books, they've placed an order for the books, and the level of excitement and interest and engagement is already there by the time I step into the room.
• 12:41
  That's terrific.
• 12:42
  So have you developed a curriculum to go with your book reading sessions?
• 12:49
  Yes, I've created some teaching teacher tools that I also make available to the schools.
• 12:53
  Did your sister and your daughter help you?
• 12:57
  You know what they My daughter in particular is a second grade teacher so the age and the classroom is perfect.
• 13:03
  And she and the principal of her school has been very kind.
• 13:07
  And I actually visited the school and read an early version of the book before the first book was published and I did it with the second book as well.
• 13:15
  They be it was almost like a beta test.
• 13:17
  Absolutely.
• 13:18
  And I read to the kids and I got great feedback and, and it was terrific.
• 13:23
  So they've been really great supporters.
• 13:25
  And my daughter Jessica in particular has been a terrific sounding board and she's provided some good editing along the way as well.
• 13:32
  So it's nice when you have a family member or friend who's really in your target audience that can.
• 13:36
  Well, I love that beta idea because I have five grandchildren and we've written 38 stories in our book series.
• 13:45
  We haven't published them all because as you know, as a self publisher, it's not inexpensive to launch a book.
• 13:51
  But the positive thing is that my grandchildren have helped co write the books and they often said papa, that that word is too difficult for the audience.
• 14:03
  So it's worked out really well.
• 14:05
  And the other thing is that we've narrated about half of our stories.
• 14:10
  And the best thing that happens, Joe, when a child narrates the story is you can tell right away if you've got the flow, if you've got the right words.
• 14:20
  So it's kind of cool.
• 14:21
  So I'm glad that you're using a beta group.
• 14:24
  I hope any aspiring children's book author is.
• 14:28
  Joey, you're the first one that's told me you've actually taken your stories prior to launching and used a beta group to get a feel for how it was resonating with the children.
• 14:40
  Hats off to you.
• 14:41
  That's probably from my business experience that we had new product ideas and new product concepts and we would run focus groups and we would meet with customers and we would say, hey, what do you think if we did
• 14:50
  something like this?
• 14:51
  And does this help solve the problem that you might be having?
• 14:55
  So being able to share the concept and the ideas with teachers, I told you, I did a poll, I talked with teachers and said what do you think about the next book?
• 15:03
  And it's helped me take and prioritize different things.
• 15:06
  What you said about reading the book too, that's especially valuable if you're writing in rhyme because a lot of people think that they can write rhyme and it's relatively easy.
• 15:18
  And it's not.
• 15:19
  It's one of the most difficult things to do.
• 15:21
  Right.
• 15:21
  Because it's not just rhyming and finding the Rhyming words.
• 15:25
  You have to continue to tell the story.
• 15:27
  It's got to move the story forward.
• 15:28
  That goes without saying.
• 15:29
  Some people just stick things in there because they rhyme and then they go on.
• 15:32
  And that's.
• 15:33
  Boy, that's where you do a lot of editing.
• 15:35
  But there's also something very important in rhyme.
• 15:38
  And that's the meter, right?
• 15:40
  And that's the beats of each line, where the emphasis is and where the accent is on each of the different words.
• 15:46
  And when you ask somebody else to read what you've written, you can immediately pick up things that you, as the author, will skip right over and not even recognize.
• 15:55
  It's interesting, too, that you bring out.
• 15:57
  I'm not sure if we talked about this off air before we started, but you talked about you play the guitar, you also teach lessons.
• 16:05
  And I had this children's book author, Susie O', Leary, episode 95 from Australia.
• 16:12
  And she was a musician, first place, like the ukulele.
• 16:16
  And she would go to these children's festivals and perform.
• 16:21
  And what she ended up doing was she wrote her books.
• 16:24
  So she's written two or three.
• 16:26
  And she sings her books.
• 16:30
  They don't rhyme, but she sings her books, the words from her books.
• 16:34
  And she's made these little videos that support the words that she's singing, which are the words in her book.
• 16:43
  And so I thought, yeah, I'd never seen something like that before.
• 16:47
  So I thought, that is fantastic.
• 16:49
  We have something in common.
• 16:51
  Because when I started doing this with school visits, at first, when I did school visits, I had enough.
• 16:55
  I brought my books, I did the reading, I had worksheets for the kids to work on and so forth, and that was great.
• 17:02
  But actually, earlier this year, I said, you know what?
• 17:05
  I'm going to bring these two worlds together.
• 17:07
  And I bring my guitar now into the schools.
• 17:10
  We read a book, and then I sing a song about the book.
• 17:13
  I've written a few songs, and they're very simple, but the kids get so engaged as soon as you bring music into it.
• 17:20
  And I don't think I'll bring it, break out my guitar and sing on this podcast.
• 17:24
  But there's a song that kids sing when they're young.
• 17:27
  I remember when my kids were in preschool and even kindergarten and they sang a song called down by the Bay, and it's a silly little song.
• 17:36
  Are you familiar with it?
• 17:37
  I am, yeah.
• 17:39
  It's down by the bay for years.
• 17:41
  But it's great.
• 17:43
  It's down, down by the bay where the watermelons grow Back to my Home I dare not go for if I do, my mother would say.
• 17:49
  And then the next Feniet speaker line, have you ever seen a bear combing his hair?
• 17:55
  And I thought about that song.
• 17:56
  I said, boy, that is perfect for my book about homophones.
• 18:02
  And so there are a number of homophones in the book, like a hare combing his hair, or a bear baby bear, or a horse whose voice is hoarse, or pears that are falling down from the tree.
• 18:15
  In Pearson, I change that song and bring in the lyrics that align with the things we just read in the book.
• 18:22
  And it works so well with the.
• 18:24
  That's terrific.
• 18:25
  That's terrific.
• 18:27
  I love it.
• 18:28
  I want to bring you back to publishing because it's important.
• 18:31
  And the nice thing about it, you've dipped your toes in two types of publishing.
• 18:37
  And it gives anyone who's listening in and wondering, what's the best route for me to go.
• 18:43
  Sometimes it's trial and error.
• 18:45
  You started out as using a self slash hybrid publishing approach, and then you switched totally over to self publishing on your own.
• 18:57
  When it came to publishing your children's book, what was the biggest challenge or frustration because you pivoted.
• 19:04
  So talk to us about that.
• 19:06
  Give us a little more insight into why you did that.
• 19:09
  I'm pretty good with, with the digital world, I'm pretty good on a computer.
• 19:13
  There were a lot of things that I didn't know.
• 19:15
  I, as I mentioned before when I was publishing my first book, so I learned a lot and that's part of the rationale for me, it cost a little bit of money to take and use a hybrid publisher, and
• 19:27
  a lot of authors will use a hybrid publisher and they'll never make back their initial investment.
• 19:32
  I ended up selecting, and you'll see it on my book, I selected a publisher called Archway Publishing.
• 19:37
  Yes, again, I did a lot of research, but Archway is a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster.
• 19:45
  They were a really good one for me to work with.
• 19:47
  They brought in a lot of talent from Simon and Schuster, but there was no upfront money, there was no contract.
• 19:54
  Right.
• 19:54
  I had to pay for things along the way.
• 19:56
  I ended up, I needed the editing.
• 19:58
  I knew I needed that.
• 20:00
  And you can pick and choose almost a la carte different types of things when you choose a publisher like that.
• 20:05
  My guidance, and I'm sorry, Archway, some people can really benefit from it, but my guidance is to spend the money on the things that help improve the quality of your book.
• 20:15
  Whether that's editing, whether that's paying for illustrating.
• 20:19
  Those kinds of things really matter.
• 20:22
  Take it easy on spending a lot of money up front on marketing.
• 20:25
  And a lot of the hybrid publishers will offer things, and a lot of those can cost thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands of dollars.
• 20:32
  A website is important.
• 20:34
  If you don't develop your own website, you can use a hybrid publisher to provide the website for you.
• 20:39
  But beyond that, be careful about spending too much money on things that you don't need or you can do yourself.
• 20:46
  And you know what, Joe?
• 20:47
  It's interesting because during COVID and it's funny, I hear this constantly, during COVID a lot of people had a book in them and they wrote it, finally wrote it, and a lot of them published it.
• 21:01
  And I was one of those people.
• 21:03
  Now I wrote two business books during COVID and they had nothing to do with children's books.
• 21:09
  But then my oldest granddaughter came into my life and myself and her did so many adventures in the Rocky Mountains that eventually she said, papa, we got all these adventures.
• 21:21
  Can we write a story?
• 21:23
  And that's how it all started.
• 21:25
  And because I had already self published to business books, I just fell into it.
• 21:31
  But I'm like you, Joe, and I'm encouraging people who are listening, is that there's only six or seven major things that you have to do to get your children's book published.
• 21:44
  If you have like Joe had, Joe's got this business background.
• 21:47
  You don't have to have a business background.
• 21:49
  You could have a teaching background or whatever type of background.
• 21:53
  But if you can take on the role as of the general manager or the project manager, then you can then, as you're saying, Joe, save that money that you're paying a hybrid publisher who then takes on the role
• 22:07
  as the general manager, Take that money and decide, okay, am I the right person to edit, if not hire an editor?
• 22:15
  Am I the right person to illustrate?
• 22:17
  If you're not an illustrator, hire an illustrator.
• 22:19
  Because at the end of the day, that's what a hybrid publisher ends up doing anyway.
• 22:24
  So.
• 22:24
  So if you can take on that role, you can backend that money to put it into the most difficult thing about children's books.
• 22:33
  And that's distribution, sales and marketing.
• 22:36
  It's not writing and publishing the book that to be honest with you, I think 95% of the people listening in on the show can take on that role.
• 22:46
  They just have to find the right people to do that.
• 22:50
  So I thank you for sharing that because it's really important that people understand that it does cost a lot of money.
• 22:58
  If you go the hybrid publishing route, they don't Unless you pay for that, they don't offer you free marketing and sales opportunity.
• 23:09
  A lot of companies offering things like, and not even through the publisher, even post publishing, a lot of people reach out to you and say, hey, we can do a press release and we can reach 1500 publications.
• 23:21
  And those are the kinds of things you have to be careful about because.
• 23:25
  And again, I know this, you probably know this from business as well.
• 23:28
  A press release doesn't really do a heck of a lot for you.
• 23:31
  And if you're going to spend, if you're going to spend a thousand dollars on a press release, I would say don't bother.
• 23:36
  You're better off.
• 23:37
  Maybe if you want to pay for ads on Amazon or Facebook or Instagram, that would be a better way to spend the money than necessarily.
• 23:45
  And it's interesting too, because I was talking to a children's book author, Laurie or Linsky F48 talked about, because she had five or six books and she talked about what's called earned media.
• 24:00
  And that's where you go out and hustle and it.
• 24:02
  But it's free.
• 24:03
  And we talked about how you through earned media can get a way bigger bang for your time because it's really your time you're investing to get your book promoted.
• 24:15
  And we talked about community newspapers who are always looking for human interest stories.
• 24:22
  We talked about radio stations.
• 24:24
  You know what?
• 24:25
  She, because she's in a big market like Chicago, she was even getting television and she wasn't paying for that.
• 24:31
  And she would take her daughter, one of her books was called Being Middle, and she'd take her middle daughter to the interviews and her middle daughter is very cute.
• 24:41
  And, and so it, it helped.
• 24:42
  So those are the type of things that I think that if you're starting out as a children's book author, do some research, Google, earn Media, and then build your campaign from there.
• 24:53
  In the beginning, now that you've pivoted to self publishing completely, tell us about the differences between the hybrid experience and now that you've taken on a much bigger role in the publishing of your books, what's the biggest difference
• 25:11
  you've noticed?
• 25:13
  To be honest with you, Rick, there's not a whole heck of a lot of difference.
• 25:18
  Yes, I had to do a lot more legwork.
• 25:20
  I had to rely on myself to get a lot of things done right, getting the ISBN numbers.
• 25:25
  And I did use somebody to take and do the website.
• 25:28
  So I, I had changes.
• 25:30
  As I published a new book, I went put in changes.
• 25:32
  I might change that in the future as well.
• 25:35
  But it really was more of a.
• 25:37
  A gradual shift because my first book is still available through Archway and through the other distribution mechanisms.
• 25:45
  What really changes is the amount of upfront investment.
• 25:49
  Right.
• 25:50
  If you did nothing else but write a book and decide to publish it on kdp, you could almost do it for free.
• 25:56
  Right on Ingram Sparks relatively cheap once.
• 26:02
  You formatted the files.
• 26:03
  Yeah, that's the work.
• 26:04
  And you're doing that work yourself.
• 26:06
  Now.
• 26:07
  I would recommend, and I feel strongly about this, it's very difficult to be your own editor.
• 26:13
  I think I'm a good editor.
• 26:14
  I've been editing things my whole life.
• 26:16
  I think it's worth spending money on some paying somebody else to do the editing.
• 26:22
  Now it could be somebody that you know.
• 26:24
  It could be a family friend who has those skills.
• 26:26
  That's great.
• 26:27
  Maybe it doesn't cost you anything.
• 26:28
  Maybe just you just take them out to dinner or something.
• 26:30
  But I'll give you an example.
• 26:31
  I've not going to get too much into it right now, but I've written a manuscript, a young adult book that I'm in the process of working to get published.
• 26:40
  It's called Petals to the Point.
• 26:42
  But I paid for a developmental editor to go through my 60,000 word manuscript and find problems and find areas where the character arc wasn't as developed as it should be to make sure there's consistency throughout the story.
• 26:57
  Now that's young adult, so it's still in the children's book category, but it's young adult.
• 27:03
  So that's a novel is much different than a 32 page children's book with a lot of illustrations.
• 27:08
  And it's interesting you should say that, Joe, because.
• 27:10
  Because I started with a business book first.
• 27:13
  My business book had 82,000 words.
• 27:16
  The cost to edit, that was quite significant.
• 27:20
  It was.
• 27:21
  But to your point, and I want to emphasize this to children's book authors, I actually went to my editor and I loved her.
• 27:29
  So I said, I've written a children's book with my granddaughter.
• 27:32
  Will you edit it for me?
• 27:34
  And because it was less than a thousand words, it cost me $100 instead of three to five thousand bucks.
• 27:42
  It cost me $100.
• 27:44
  You know what, it's one of the most important things that you said, Joe, and yet it's probably the least expensive thing you're ever going to do.
• 27:52
  It's cheaper than one illustration or two.
• 27:56
  Yeah, yeah.
• 27:57
  And Rick, I'm passionate about this.
• 27:59
  This is so important because one of the obstacles that you run into being a self published author is credibility.
• 28:07
  And you have to really prove yourself.
• 28:09
  That's one of the biggest differences, I think in terms of being a traditionally published authority or a self published author.
• 28:16
  And that's the instant credibility you have as a traditionally published author because there's a Simon and Schuster or somebody behind you, right.
• 28:24
  Who selected you, an agent.
• 28:26
  Who's your agent, who selected you.
• 28:28
  So when you're a self published author, you have to make sure that you're producing quality work.
• 28:32
  And I think one of the things that hurts all of us who are self published authors are people who produce a book, don't get the editing done, get it published, and then people pick it up and they are
• 28:47
  disappointed because especially for children, right.
• 28:50
  You can't have misspelled words, nevermind incorrect grammar or mistakes in the book.
• 28:55
  You can't have that.
• 28:56
  And if people start to think that self published books are a lower quality, then that kind of ruins it for everybody.
• 29:03
  Right?
• 29:03
  So I think it's very important that editing is the, as you said, is probably the best thing you can spend your money on.
• 29:09
  Second to that is illustration.
• 29:11
  I don't draw.
• 29:12
  I have talents in music and in writing and other things, I think.
• 29:16
  But I'm not an artist.
• 29:18
  And it's wonderful.
• 29:20
  If you happen to be a children's book author who can also illustrate, that's wonderful.
• 29:25
  So did your first book.
• 29:26
  Yes.
• 29:27
  Probably found your illustrator through Archway?
• 29:31
  No, I didn't.
• 29:32
  And I didn't because Archway offered that.
• 29:35
  But it was for me it was prohibitively expensive.
• 29:39
  And again, I'm comfortable in the digital world and I used a service called Fiverr.
• 29:44
  I don't know if you're familiar with that.
• 29:46
  Very familiar with it.
• 29:47
  Fiverr.com and there's really a lot of people out there that can do illustrations for you.
• 29:52
  Readsy is also another good site that you can get editors and things like that out there.
• 29:57
  So let me share with you what I did for the illustrations because I think it will help some of your listeners as well.
• 30:03
  Yeah, very important for me, I decided to go out and what you can do on Fiverr and other platforms is you can look at who these illustrators are and many times they provide samples of the work that they've
• 30:16
  done in the past.
• 30:17
  And they can be located all over the world.
• 30:19
  Right.
• 30:20
  They're not just in the United States or North America, they're all over.
• 30:24
  So you want to make sure you're working with somebody who is legitimate and Fiberx provides some of that substantiation for you.
• 30:32
  But what I did is I ended up providing a few verses from my book.
• 30:36
  And I shared that with three illustrators that I selected, and I asked them to give me a sample drawings based on those illustrations.
• 30:46
  I had them just do one illustration based on the verse.
• 30:49
  And I wanted to see what their creativity was going to be and what type of drawing.
• 30:53
  I knew from some of their samples what the type of drawing, type of artwork they did.
• 30:58
  But I wanted to see how they interpreted what I had written in verse.
• 31:02
  And I wanted to see, most importantly, if we'd be able to work together.
• 31:06
  Because when you're writing a children's book, illustrations are so important, and you want to be able to have a good relationship with that illustrator and be able to see eye to eye.
• 31:15
  And so I did that, and I ended up selecting one of the three illustrators who I felt did a great job with the sample illustration.
• 31:24
  He made changes based on some of the requests I had, and.
• 31:28
  And his pricing was right, and I knew we'd be able to work well together.
• 31:32
  So I did that for the first book.
• 31:34
  And since the second book is in the same series, I naturally used him for the second book as well.
• 31:40
  Where is your illustrator located?
• 31:43
  In South America.
• 31:44
  The only reason I asked that, Joe, because most of my guests have never met in person.
• 31:50
  They're illustrators, and they're not finding them in their own backyard.
• 31:54
  And second of all, a lot of times people are finding illustrators worldwide.
• 32:01
  And that's what happened to us, our illustrator.
• 32:04
  I tried to find a illustrator locally, but we ended up finding our illustrator in London, England.
• 32:11
  He's never been to the Rocky Mountains.
• 32:13
  And the beautiful thing about it is because we, with my grandchildren, every time we do an adventure, I'm usually taking six to eight pictures.
• 32:23
  And so we had photographs that I could send him because he'd never been to the Rocky Mountains, I could send him the photographs.
• 32:31
  And he got the sense of what we were trying to convey.
• 32:34
  And that's great.
• 32:35
  And it was awesome.
• 32:36
  So whether you do it through like you did, which I think is a great idea, send a concept or words to prospective illustrators and then have them come back, then you get a sense that they really are getting
• 32:50
  the feel of what you're trying to convey.
• 32:53
  So important.
• 32:54
  Hats off.
• 32:54
  That's fantastic.
• 32:56
  And your illustrators in South America?
• 33:00
  Ours is in England.
• 33:02
  Rick.
• 33:02
  I'm part of several different organizations, and many of your listeners may be as well.
• 33:06
  I'm part of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
• 33:09
  I belong to the Long Island Writers and Illustrators Group.
• 33:12
  I belong to Long island authors.
• 33:14
  In the last three years or so, I've met illustrators as well.
• 33:19
  And a future children's book, I may use a local illustrator because I want to support them as well.
• 33:26
  And.
• 33:27
  And I think there is some benefit of being able to work closely with somebody that might be as part of the same organization, the same background, or somebody you can meet with face to face.
• 33:35
  I wouldn't discount that.
• 33:37
  I think there's still value there.
• 33:38
  Absolutely.
• 33:39
  And you know what, Joe?
• 33:39
  I've been told by some children's book authors who have.
• 33:43
  Have seven or eight titles.
• 33:44
  Well, they're not all in the same series.
• 33:48
  So then you've got this me as series.
• 33:50
  But you may come up with a different idea.
• 33:52
  That's right.
• 33:53
  You want a different feel.
• 33:54
  And that's what I've been told by other children's book authors is they'll go to a different illustrator because they have a different feel from what they're currently working on, and it just works for them.
• 34:06
  So I couldn't agree with you more.
• 34:07
  Even though a lot of people love their illustrator and they don't want to deviate, if it's not fitting your vision, maybe it is time to look around and look at a different illustrator.
• 34:20
  Yeah, that makes sense.
• 34:21
  Thank you for sharing that.
• 34:23
  I know you talked about you feel comfortable around technology.
• 34:27
  I want to talk to you about your website.
• 34:29
  And you got a great website, a lot of fun.
• 34:32
  And I'm guessing I always say, was it the chicken or the egg?
• 34:37
  Did your book come first and then the website?
• 34:39
  Or did your website come first and then your book?
• 34:44
  So I'm going to guess that your book came first.
• 34:48
  They came out around the same time I launched the website and the first book really simultaneously.
• 34:55
  And so that was.
• 34:56
  Yeah, that was good.
• 34:57
  Look, in hindsight, there's a couple of things I would do different.
• 35:00
  I call my.
• 35:01
  My.
• 35:02
  My website is www.miasmouses.com and I wanted to grab that name because that's the name of my first book and that's really the series and so forth.
• 35:13
  And it made sense to me at the time.
• 35:15
  I didn't know where I was gonna go as an author.
• 35:18
  So that really supported the.
• 35:20
  At least the vision I had at the time.
• 35:22
  I think that's okay.
• 35:23
  But now, as I mentioned, I have a young adult book coming out.
• 35:27
  I think it's.
• 35:29
  I'm curious about your feedback as well, Rick.
• 35:31
  I think it's important to have a website that has your name in it.
• 35:36
  So I.
• 35:36
  I haven't done it yet, but I'm Planning on creating a new website for Joseph Le Carreauthor.com or something like that.
• 35:45
  I'm really.
• 35:46
  This is on my list of things to do in preparation for the launch of my, of my novel.
• 35:51
  And then I expect to to link miasmous.com into that website at some future point as well.
• 35:59
  It's a consideration to think about.
• 36:01
  The other thing is, in terms of timing, I think it's very valuable to launch a website first if it's possible.
• 36:08
  That's one of the things I've learned and I wish I did as well.
• 36:11
  And build your following on social media as well before you launch the book.
• 36:17
  And that's what I plan on doing going forward.
• 36:20
  That's great advice.
• 36:21
  It was interesting because when we launched, what I did is locked up like you did.
• 36:27
  I locked up our website.
• 36:29
  So ours is Caboose the Rocky Mountain bear dot com.
• 36:33
  And the beautiful thing about Caboose is my oldest granddaughter who's a co author of her first book.
• 36:40
  Her name is Kira and starts with a K.
• 36:43
  So we had Caboose start.
• 36:44
  With a K.
• 36:45
  Oh, nice.
• 36:46
  So getting the website ended up being easy.
• 36:50
  And so now I had this website and I thought, okay, I got a website, but I didn't develop a website.
• 36:55
  What I did is I got a hold of someone and what they did is if you went to our website, it would link you to our Amazon page where you could buy the book.
• 37:06
  So that was our website.
• 37:07
  You click on it, it takes you to the website.
• 37:10
  But it was actually Amazon.
• 37:12
  And I thought, oh, that's pretty cool.
• 37:14
  But then people kept asking me, where's your home?
• 37:18
  And I said, what do you mean where's my home?
• 37:20
  Where's your website?
• 37:22
  And so I'm with you too, Joe, is that at the end of the day, you got to build a marketing machine if you're serious about selling your children's books.
• 37:32
  And the one thing that I would say to people, because I had a Kareem Aboot Episode 91 Sean from Florida recently, she wrote a simply beautiful book and she had 11,000.
• 37:47
  11,000 followers on Instagram.
• 37:51
  And she thought, listen, I'm the queen of the castle and I'm going to sell.
• 37:58
  All of my followers are going to buy a book.
• 38:00
  And when I push the publish button on Amazon, I'm going to sell 11,000 books.
• 38:08
  Right?
• 38:10
  After three weeks, it ended up being 120 books.
• 38:14
  One of the lessons I got from that was, you know, it's social media that people are just clicking to follow you doesn't mean they are Ready to buy.
• 38:23
  The biggest thing is, if you're going to develop a website, make sure that you're also build a strategy to collect email addresses because those are your property versus social media.
• 38:37
  Instagram or Facebook could change their whole business model tomorrow and you lose all your followers.
• 38:44
  As we're talking about the importance of.
• 38:46
  Your website, I have a good friend who's written not children's books, but she's written novels and so forth.
• 38:51
  And we talked about this just recently because we were both at.
• 38:54
  We ran a lavender festival on Long Island.
• 38:56
  We were talking about farms before.
• 38:58
  We were at a lavender festival out on a farm about 30 miles east of where I live.
• 39:03
  And it was a wonderful day.
• 39:04
  It was a.
• 39:04
  It was a craft fair, and we had several tables of authors that were there.
• 39:09
  And she told me that she didn't care if she didn't sell any books.
• 39:15
  The main purpose for her to be there was to collect email addresses to make contact with people.
• 39:21
  And she was happy to sell books, and she did fairly well.
• 39:24
  But the goal, her objective in participating in craft fairs and book fairs and doing bookstore events is to capture the email addresses, contact information, and then that becomes a key part of her marketing strategy.
• 39:38
  Thank you for sharing that, because it's very important for people to understand that.
• 39:42
  You probably observed her.
• 39:43
  How was she actually getting people to give her their email address?
• 39:49
  Because a lot of people now, when you go to a store and they say, oh, Joe, can I have your email address?
• 39:54
  You say, oh, no, here comes some junk email.
• 39:57
  So what.
• 39:58
  How does she get around that?
• 40:01
  What's your technique?
• 40:02
  I've seen a number of people do this.
• 40:04
  She did this as well.
• 40:05
  I've done it.
• 40:06
  I've learned from others as well.
• 40:08
  I think certainly if you're at a craft fair or a book fair, you're at a table.
• 40:13
  It's great just to leave a list out on the table.
• 40:17
  Sign up for my newsletter, or if you'd like to get an early copy of the next book, or if you'd like to get free worksheets for your children, you try to give things away a little bit in return
• 40:28
  for that email address right up front.
• 40:30
  Okay, that, that helps a lot.
• 40:32
  And when people meet you in person at an event, again, you said this earlier.
• 40:38
  You.
• 40:38
  You're building a relationship with that person.
• 40:40
  And if they like you, they want to follow you and they want to see what else you've got, what's coming next.
• 40:45
  If you're a one book wonder, you write one book and you go away.
• 40:49
  There's really Less of a need to do that.
• 40:50
  But if you're planning to continue to publish and continue to publish other books, that becomes you.
• 40:56
  Talk about beta readers and getting some early reviews and early feedback.
• 41:00
  That becomes a great resource for you in the future.
• 41:04
  No question.
• 41:04
  Great point.
• 41:05
  As we're talking about your website, how you're driving traffic to your website, and how are you using your social media to promote your books.
• 41:16
  Great.
• 41:17
  Very good questions.
• 41:19
  Social media and my website, they've been intertwined.
• 41:22
  I have had a newsletter that I send out.
• 41:26
  I'm not sending it out every month.
• 41:27
  I started off sending it out every month, and now I send it out four times a year.
• 41:31
  Once a quarter, I send out a newsletter with some updates and information, partly because it's just.
• 41:36
  It's time consuming and there's a lot of things that you can spend your time on, and so you have to be selective in doing that.
• 41:44
  Newsletter certainly goes out to the people who are already on my email list, and then I ask them to forward it to people that may also be interested.
• 41:53
  I include my website in my signature of every email that I send out for anything.
• 41:59
  Right.
• 41:59
  One thing.
• 42:00
  I want to give you a big compliment because you're one of the few children's book authors I've seen do this.
• 42:05
  You also have a QR code attached to your signature.
• 42:10
  Tell us a little bit about that, too, because that's something unique that maybe people can learn from.
• 42:17
  Yeah.
• 42:17
  QR codes are easy to create.
• 42:20
  There are plenty of free sites.
• 42:22
  You can Google it, create a QR code, and plenty of legitimate free sites that will.
• 42:27
  Yeah.
• 42:27
  If you go to Canva, for example.
• 42:29
  Yeah, Canva does it.
• 42:30
  Yeah.
• 42:30
  And you bet.
• 42:31
  I'll just show you.
• 42:32
  Joe, we did a bookmark.
• 42:34
  I developed this bookmark from Canva QR code in Canva.
• 42:39
  And it is a free audiobook that my middle granddaughter reads.
• 42:43
  Our.
• 42:44
  Our first story, the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear.
• 42:48
  And also it's my oldest granddaughter telling how the whole thing started.
• 42:53
  There's a story behind the story.
• 42:55
  So that's pretty cool.
• 42:56
  So it provides some value, right?
• 42:58
  Absolutely.
• 42:59
  And then on my.
• 43:00
  On the business card that I have, there's a QR code, and it actually takes you to the latest episode of Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors.
• 43:09
  Yeah.
• 43:09
  That's why I love QR codes.
• 43:12
  There's my business card.
• 43:14
  Same thing.
• 43:14
  I list.
• 43:15
  WW It's a little blurry.
• 43:17
  Sorry about that.
• 43:18
  That's a website, www.meismouses.com.
• 43:21
  But there's a QR code in the corner which takes you to that website automatically.
• 43:25
  I've done it with signage.
• 43:27
  I have a big sign that I have on that I put on my table when I do school visits and do fairs.
• 43:32
  And there's a.
• 44:07
  The website's listed, but also the QR code is there.
• 44:09
  Yeah.
• 44:10
  Also, one other note about using QR codes is that when you do fairs, you do events.
• 44:16
  People.
• 44:17
  You want people to pay in the way that's easiest for them.
• 44:21
  Yes.
• 44:21
  And cash is king.
• 44:24
  A lot of people will buy.
• 44:25
  Go to craft fairs with a pocket full of cash, but of course, nowadays a lot of people don't.
• 44:30
  So I usually have a sign available on my table which has a QR code which takes them, which allows them to go directly to my Venmo page to pay me for the book.
• 44:41
  So valuable.
• 44:42
  Makes it fast, makes it easy, everybody's happy, and you don't have to worry about giving change and having cash.
• 44:48
  So explain that.
• 44:49
  Is that part of Square or, like, how.
• 44:51
  Yeah, you can do it with Square or Venmo.
• 44:53
  I use both, but generally Venmo, at least in the areas that I've been in, people use Venmo a lot.
• 45:00
  They often ask, do you have Venmo?
• 45:02
  If they say, can I pay with a credit card?
• 45:05
  Then you can either use Venmo or Square, and they can just tap and pay if.
• 45:10
  Create your profile and set that up in Venmo.
• 45:13
  And how do you spell Venmo?
• 45:15
  V, E, N, M, O.
• 45:18
  Venmo is actually owned by PayPal, so it's very legitimate.
• 45:21
  A lot of security built into it.
• 45:23
  Very helpful.
• 45:24
  Okay, terrific.
• 45:25
  I hadn't heard of that before.
• 45:27
  We have Square.
• 45:28
  It works so well for me, Rick, that sometimes when I'm with other authors at an event.
• 45:32
  Yes.
• 45:32
  Authors will say, hey, Joe, this person has to pay with a credit card.
• 45:36
  Or they can.
• 45:37
  They pay you, and then you pay me the cash.
• 45:39
  It's okay.
• 45:40
  I can do that.
• 45:41
  I don't charge them for that service, but it just shows how valuable that is.
• 45:45
  People thank you for sharing that.
• 45:47
  That's great to know.
• 45:48
  So, motivation.
• 45:49
  I'm curious, Mia.
• 45:51
  I'm not sure we'll get into that, but was there a specific person or event that motivated you to write your first children's book?
• 46:01
  Tell us that story, Mia, isn't based on one single person.
• 46:05
  I have three daughters who are now, you know, older, and they're all working.
• 46:10
  One's a doctor, one's a nurse, one's a teacher.
• 46:13
  But we did a lot growing up together, and we did a lot of educational things together, a lot of fun things together.
• 46:19
  It was subconscious for me, but Mia is really a composite of my three daughters.
• 46:24
  Okay.
• 46:24
  She really is.
• 46:26
  And as I mentioned, I was a soccer coach for my kids.
• 46:30
  I did a lot of work with children through my daughters and assisting my daughters, and I always got a lot of fulfillment out of that.
• 46:36
  I worked for guitar center, and I teach guitar, and I teach piano.
• 46:40
  My youngest student is 5 years old.
• 46:42
  My oldest student is 85.
• 46:44
  So I have the full range.
• 46:46
  They say we become children again.
• 46:48
  I don't know.
• 46:49
  But really, it's the full range of people who I'm able to teach, but I really get the most satisfaction of teaching kids.
• 46:56
  All of that kind of really motivated me to try to do something, and so that would have an impact, and.
• 47:02
  It ended up being a children's book.
• 47:04
  It did.
• 47:04
  It did.
• 47:05
  Okay, terrific.
• 47:06
  So let's talk about your character development now that we know it's a combination of your three daughters.
• 47:12
  So talk to us about Mia's character development and also talk about her relationship with the three mice in the book.
• 47:25
  The mice are.
• 47:26
  Are just fun friends.
• 47:28
  They happen to be mice, but they're the.
• 47:31
  That's where the fiction comes in.
• 47:32
  That's where the imagination comes in.
• 47:34
  You bet.
• 47:34
  And so she first names one of the mice Squeaky, because he liked to play, tease, and sneeze.
• 47:39
  And she named another mouse Speedy because he was the fastest mouse of all.
• 47:44
  And then there's Nibbles.
• 47:46
  Nibbles because he liked to eat berries and cheese.
• 47:50
  So she made friends with the mice.
• 47:52
  They liked to dance together.
• 47:53
  They played.
• 47:54
  But the mice ended up being representative almost of her emotions as they changed.
• 48:01
  So she called the mouses, and then somebody corrected her and said it was mice.
• 48:05
  And she got.
• 48:06
  I don't want to say upset, but she was a little concerned about, hey, this is something new.
• 48:11
  I've never learned this before.
• 48:13
  I wonder if I can learn this.
• 48:15
  And when we get into Mia's mouse's.
• 48:18
  That's the first book, but Mia's Marvelous Farm Adventure.
• 48:21
  She starts to hear these different words, like pears and pears and two, two, and two.
• 48:25
  And there, there, and there.
• 48:27
  And she's confused.
• 48:28
  She's.
• 48:29
  There's a scene in the book where she says, gee, I don't understand all of these words.
• 48:33
  They sound the same, but they mean different things.
• 48:35
  And they're spelled differently.
• 48:36
  How nonsensical.
• 48:39
  And the mice stopped doing what they love doing.
• 48:42
  Right.
• 48:42
  Nibble stopped eating.
• 48:44
  Speedy stopped running.
• 48:45
  That kind of been.
• 48:46
  Was A reflection of Mia.
• 48:49
  Mia wants to learn, though, and that's really her motivation.
• 48:52
  She wants to learn.
• 48:53
  She's got so much curiosity.
• 48:55
  I noticed about halfway through the book.
• 48:58
  So now she's going on a search, like you said.
• 49:01
  Joe and I looked and I thought, oh, now we've got another character introduced, and that's Mia's sister, because her sister, Mia believes, has the knowledge.
• 49:12
  So tell us about that whole idea of Mia's sister.
• 49:18
  Doesn't come in till the story's well developed.
• 49:22
  That's right.
• 49:22
  Again, it's an important lesson there that if you don't know something, it's okay be curious and it's okay to ask others.
• 49:30
  And there's another side to that as well, when you learn something.
• 49:34
  I do this when I'm in school with kids.
• 49:36
  I ask them, I said, you've learned something new today.
• 49:38
  Now what are you going to do with that information?
• 49:41
  And many kids will say, I'm going to remember it, and I'll be able to get a good grade on my next test.
• 49:49
  I said, no, but you learned something.
• 49:51
  What did Mia do when she learned some new information?
• 49:54
  She went back and she shared it with her mouse friends.
• 49:57
  And so that's.
• 49:58
  I said, so tonight, go home, tell the kids, go home, tell your mother, tell your father, tell your brothers, share it with your sister, share it with your dog.
• 50:06
  It's exciting to learn something new and share it with others.
• 50:10
  And that enthusiasm is one of the things I really tried to portray through the book.
• 50:14
  And Mia does that.
• 50:16
  That's terrific.
• 50:16
  And the one thing, I don't know if you did this on purpose, but when I looked at the words, for me, they took on being characters in your book.
• 50:29
  So they just weren't words on a page.
• 50:31
  They were actually characters in your book.
• 50:35
  And I love that.
• 50:35
  And I don't know if that was a purposeful technique or talk to us about that.
• 50:41
  So I'll see if I'll give you an example here.
• 50:43
  They did.
• 50:44
  There were some.
• 50:45
  Not all of them, but some of them are right.
• 50:47
  And the illustrations help that quite a bit.
• 50:50
  Right?
• 50:50
  Yeah.
• 50:51
  They.
• 50:51
  There's a section in the book we say B and B sound the same, but they mean different things.
• 50:56
  Right.
• 50:57
  And there's these very friendly, beautiful bees flying around, smiling faces.
• 51:02
  So children can relate to that.
• 51:05
  The.
• 51:05
  Mia and Peter explained some of the things about homophones.
• 51:08
  And then she says, okay, now that I've taught you that, go out and see if you can learn for yourself.
• 51:14
  There's so much out here.
• 51:16
  So they explored the whole Farm.
• 51:17
  Mia searched with her mice, the stables, the chicken coop, and the barn.
• 51:21
  They checked twice.
• 51:23
  And the illustrations again, bring it out.
• 51:25
  There's a farmer and he's got a horse voice.
• 51:29
  And there's a horse in the stable.
• 51:32
  And there's a sheep who's smiling as he's being sheared, but his wool is.
• 51:38
  Happens to be pure and very thin.
• 51:40
  It happens to be shear wool.
• 51:42
  So then they start to have some fun.
• 51:45
  And just imagine characters.
• 51:47
  A bear, baby bear, and a deer.
• 51:50
  Deer.
• 51:51
  And I mentioned a hair with.
• 51:53
  With gray hair, only two hairs.
• 51:55
  So we tried.
• 51:56
  I tried to make it fun and amusing.
• 51:59
  And I love what you did as well.
• 52:00
  You know why?
• 52:01
  Bringing the words, having them come to life as characters.
• 52:37
  And I like to share it.
• 52:38
  It just gives aspiring book authors to think outside the box.
• 52:42
  It's.
• 52:43
  There's so many ways to create techniques to get it across.
• 52:47
  And what you've done is just fantastic.
• 52:50
  Discuss a bit further your theme here, because you said that you've intertwined it through your first two books.
• 52:58
  Talk to us how it's developed through that from the first book to the second book.
• 53:04
  Let's see.
• 53:05
  So in me, the general trope, if you will, through the story, is that Mia makes friends.
• 53:11
  In the first book, she learns that she's confused by something.
• 53:16
  In the first book, she actually goes to her teacher, Ms.
• 53:19
  Jess, and asks for help.
• 53:22
  And the teacher ends up almost in the same role that Pia has in the second book, helps guide her and then allow her to learn on her own.
• 53:30
  And then at the end of the book, she learns something new and she shares it back with her friends.
• 53:34
  A very similar transition happens in the second book.
• 53:37
  I tried to keep that same model because it worked so well and also throw in as much humor as I can too.
• 53:45
  And the rhyming as well is very important in that as well.
• 53:48
  So it's a common pattern and trope, but with a different subject matter, different illustrations.
• 53:54
  And as you noticed, different characters are showing up.
• 53:58
  The core characters are the same, Mia and her three mice, but all of the side characters that support it, including a teacher or her sister, that changes.
• 54:07
  And the relationships are different.
• 54:09
  I notice you also have a concept page at the end of your book.
• 54:14
  Yes.
• 54:15
  And so explain to us the thinking behind those pages.
• 54:19
  This is something I've learned as well.
• 54:21
  Certainly a book that has educational value.
• 54:23
  It's valuable for parents and teachers and children themselves to have some back matter that helps explain the concepts.
• 54:33
  So the first thing that I did throughout the book, because it refers back, is that Anytime I used a homophone in this story, that word was highlighted.
• 54:43
  So pear and pear are highlighted or bear and bear are highlighted.
• 54:49
  In the back of the book, there's a page that says examples of homophones, and there's many on the page, but the ones that were used in the book are highlighted.
• 54:58
  So you can see you could have hour and hour or meet and meet one and one, but there's horse and horse, and that's highlighted.
• 55:08
  So children or parents could go reference that back in the book if they like to.
• 55:12
  There's also some concepts, especially with homophones, that can be confusing.
• 55:17
  I mentioned homonyms, homophones.
• 55:20
  There are several other words in that category.
• 55:23
  So I thought it was important to explain the concepts of how homophones are different than homonyms and give some examples as well.
• 55:30
  That really was the concept there is to provide some good reference material, even if it just educates the parent as they're reading to their children.
• 55:39
  Absolutely.
• 55:39
  I couldn't agree with you more.
• 55:41
  We've talked about MIA and we talked about your writing, and now you're thinking beyond me.
• 55:48
  So can you share some insights into your creative development when you're coming up with ideas and your writing process?
• 55:57
  So, so what are you doing right now?
• 56:01
  How much effort are you putting into your writing process every day?
• 56:06
  Quite a bit.
• 56:07
  I just got stumped by you saying every day.
• 56:09
  I can't say that I write every day.
• 56:11
  Some people do.
• 56:12
  Some people are great at saying, especially if you're writing a novel, they'll block out an hour every morning before they go to work or before they have other things and they'll.
• 56:21
  Or they'll get up at 5 o' clock in the morning and that's their writing time or the day.
• 56:25
  For me that everybody's different.
• 56:27
  For me, that doesn't work as well.
• 56:29
  Okay, I can do editing.
• 56:31
  Inspirational.
• 56:32
  I can do editing like that.
• 56:33
  But for writing, I need a block of three or four hours or five hours.
• 56:38
  And I don't get that every day.
• 56:39
  I'll give you an example.
• 56:40
  I.
• 56:40
  I had started writing my manuscript over a year ago for my novel in, In February.
• 56:46
  I went skiing.
• 56:48
  Okay.
• 56:48
  And I went skiing by myself.
• 56:50
  My wife doesn't ski any longer.
• 56:53
  And I used it as really a getaway for writing.
• 56:56
  So I went up to some.
• 56:58
  A mountain up in.
• 56:59
  In Massachusetts, and the weather wasn't great that week.
• 57:04
  So it really worked out in my favor, at least in terms of my writing.
• 57:07
  I skied, I think, two days.
• 57:08
  The other days I was in a condo and I was writing constantly and morning to night, Morning to night.
• 57:16
  And that helped me a lot, really.
• 57:18
  Formulating things and mapping out where things are going to go with the story.
• 57:22
  And so are you doing additional research during this process?
• 57:27
  Yeah, that's part of the process as well.
• 57:29
  I do some research up front for the children's books.
• 57:32
  I did a lot of research up front and then when I felt I knew as much as I could, then I began writing for my novel.
• 57:40
  One of the things I've done, and I don't know if you could see the stack of books behind me, but I've.
• 57:44
  Look, I've read a lot of young adult novels, right?
• 57:49
  Because this is my first young adult book.
• 57:51
  And so it's important to go out and if you're writing a children's book, go out and get a lot of children's books that are in.
• 57:57
  Go to the library, check them all out.
• 57:58
  Read, check.
• 58:00
  Children sometimes ask me what's funny.
• 58:02
  They, they sometimes have a list of questions to ask the authors and they'll come up and they'll say, if I want to become a writer, what's.
• 58:07
  What should I do?
• 58:09
  Read, read, read.
• 58:10
  Stephen King says that, right?
• 58:12
  Yes, read a lot.
• 58:13
  And that helps.
• 58:14
  But that's a longer term investment that helps you be able to write, especially in the genre that you're trying to write in.
• 58:21
  You got multiple titles.
• 58:22
  I want to take you on a little bit of a journey here.
• 58:25
  Okay.
• 58:26
  We talked about your children's book business, but I want to delve a little deeper into how you envision success before and after you wrote your first book and now what success looks like to you now that you've got
• 58:43
  multiple titles.
• 58:44
  Take us on that journey and what it looked like in the beginning and what it looks like to you now.
• 58:49
  Okay.
• 58:50
  For me personally, Rick, how I define success changed somewhat from my first book.
• 58:56
  My first book, I thought, hey, this is a great idea, this is going to be a great book.
• 59:00
  But once it's published, I could see myself selling X number of books a week without any effort.
• 59:06
  I am guilty of thinking that like many people, that you create something once and then it becomes a revenue stream for you.
• 59:16
  And that may or may not be how you measure success.
• 59:19
  So that's not true, by the way.
• 59:21
  It's not going to be a revenue stream that continues without you having some effort.
• 59:26
  And we talked a little bit about that.
• 59:27
  Marketing, maybe a little bit of advertising, going into schools, creating opportunities, supporting the local indie bookstores, and then they in turn support you.
• 59:35
  There's lots of different things that you can do, but it's effort.
• 59:38
  But success for me has really changed.
• 59:41
  Book sales are always important, but I guess I've had my full career.
• 59:46
  That's not really the most important thing to me.
• 59:48
  The most important thing is doing something that maybe touches one child, maybe helps one family.
• 59:54
  And I'm not just saying that.
• 59:56
  I sincerely mean that if I'm able.
• 59:58
  It's same thing with, with teaching guitar.
• 1:00:00
  I work at Guitar Center.
• 1:00:01
  Does it pay a lot?
• 1:00:02
  No, but it gives me the opportunity to have this one on one interaction with children and adults.
• 1:00:08
  And if I can change one life in a year in some positive way, that's so fulfilling and that makes it all worth it.
• 1:00:17
  Honestly.
• 1:00:18
  You talked about you've had a full career.
• 1:00:21
  So what's being a children's book author mean to you now?
• 1:00:25
  In the grand scheme of things?
• 1:00:27
  It's part of who God wants me to be.
• 1:00:30
  It's my personal fulfillment, if you will.
• 1:00:32
  I'm doing something with purpose that's beyond myself.
• 1:00:38
  If you work for a company, and I work for quite a few companies through my 40 year career, but if you work for a company, your number one job is to make sure that product that you're selling or
• 1:00:48
  that product that you're making or the reputation of the company all makes money for the company.
• 1:00:54
  And you all have a vested interest in that.
• 1:00:56
  If the company's not making money, then a lot of people start to lose their jobs.
• 1:00:59
  But, and it's a team.
• 1:01:01
  You want to be successful, ultimately the company needs to be profitable.
• 1:01:05
  It's nice when you get to a point in your life where, look, we all want to make more money, we all think we need to make more money.
• 1:01:12
  But if you can get to a point where you say, you know what?
• 1:01:16
  Life isn't about money, Life isn't about things.
• 1:01:18
  It's much more important than that.
• 1:01:20
  And when you start living a purpose in that way beyond yourself, stress goes away, anxiety goes away, and you realize you open your eyes in the morning and say, boy, I'm excited for today because I'm doing what I
• 1:01:36
  was meant to do.
• 1:01:38
  That's what success is for me.
• 1:01:39
  Let's pick up on that.
• 1:01:41
  What advice would you give to aspiring children's book authors who have got this idea, but they just don't know what to do?
• 1:01:50
  I didn't mention it earlier, but I took some courses online.
• 1:01:55
  There were a few that were given by Wesleyan University and I.
• 1:01:58
  I used some education portals.
• 1:02:01
  So I took a number of creative writing classes.
• 1:02:04
  I also participate every year.
• 1:02:06
  This is the third Year next week I'll be going to the Southampton Writers Conference, East End of Long Island.
• 1:02:12
  They're part of Stony Brook University.
• 1:02:14
  Okay.
• 1:02:15
  So participating in conferences.
• 1:02:17
  Since I started writing my first children's book, I belong to a library critique group and they helped me immensely when I was starting out.
• 1:02:25
  Now I'm in a position where I can help other new authors.
• 1:02:29
  That's also very fulfilling.
• 1:02:31
  So it's a give and take.
• 1:02:32
  I belong to Long Island Authors Group.
• 1:02:34
  We meet monthly and then we also participate in some of these book fairs.
• 1:02:38
  So my advice for authors is to network.
• 1:02:42
  Go to the library.
• 1:02:43
  I'm sure they have a writer's group there.
• 1:02:45
  Not at your library.
• 1:02:46
  Maybe another Library within a 5 mile radius.
• 1:02:49
  Participate in.
• 1:02:50
  If you're lucky enough to be in an area that has writers groups, many of them do.
• 1:02:54
  There are silent book clubs in many communities.
• 1:02:57
  Participate in those kinds of things.
• 1:02:59
  You learn from each other and that's.
• 1:03:01
  I think that's probably one of the most valuable things you can do early on is focus on networking, learning from others, sharing with others, bouncing ideas off of other people.
• 1:03:11
  Don't be worried about somebody stealing your idea or stealing your book.
• 1:03:15
  I've talked to people who are concerned about that.
• 1:03:17
  Don't worry about that.
• 1:03:18
  It's a very slight chance that will ever happen.
• 1:03:21
  Authors support authors.
• 1:03:22
  It's a very giving community.
• 1:03:25
  So encouragement for readers.
• 1:03:27
  I usually say this towards the end, but of course if we didn't have readers, we wouldn't be writing our book.
• 1:03:33
  So talk to us about encouragement for readers.
• 1:03:36
  Why should readers purchase your books?
• 1:03:40
  I think parents and teachers are probably the primary buyers of books for their children.
• 1:03:45
  And I think that the reason they should consider buying my books or any of us is because they're trying to share something that's valuable and worthwhile to their children.
• 1:03:55
  It's great if your kids are picking up the iPad and picking up the phone and playing games on these devices, that's wonderful.
• 1:04:02
  But reading becomes a lifelong habit.
• 1:04:06
  And if you nurture that early, if your kids see your excitement in reading a book to them when they're young, and then they'll pick up on that.
• 1:04:15
  And if they read a book, I'm sure there are probably many Dr.
• 1:04:18
  Seuss books that we almost have memorized from when we were kids.
• 1:04:22
  And then we read Green Eggs and Ham to our children.
• 1:04:25
  Those books, even as a parent, we wanted to read over and over again because they were so fun and the rhymes were so memorable.
• 1:04:32
  So my books do that.
• 1:04:34
  They rhyme and.
• 1:04:35
  And children want to read it.
• 1:04:36
  Again, they want to hear the story again.
• 1:04:39
  And each time it kind of reinforces some of the learnings.
• 1:04:42
  Interesting.
• 1:04:42
  I think that's why I couldn't agree with you more, because it was interesting.
• 1:04:46
  This last weekend was my oldest granddaughter's birthday on July 4th.
• 1:04:52
  Her mom took her to different spots to buy presents, and the last spot we took her to was a large bookstore, and that's what she wanted.
• 1:05:02
  We bought her a couple of books and her younger sister came along and she bought three books.
• 1:05:06
  That's great.
• 1:05:07
  Yeah, it's just awesome.
• 1:05:09
  It is.
• 1:05:10
  We've had a great conversation.
• 1:05:12
  Is there any final thoughts you'd like to share before we conclude the podcast interview?
• 1:05:17
  I'll share with you what I often tell tell people about about their own children and about about how they can help their kids as well.
• 1:05:25
  And we touched on it a little bit.
• 1:05:26
  But I always say, never stop being curious.
• 1:05:28
  Whether you're a child or an adult.
• 1:05:30
  Your children encourage that curiosity, whether they're picking up a new book or learning a new musical instrument or studying astronomy, or encourage the curiosity and have fun with it and show that you're interested as well.
• 1:05:45
  It's great for your kids to see you picking up a book instead of turning on the TV and reading a book and even talking about it with your children.
• 1:05:52
  So it's kind of my hope that will be helped somewhat by my books.
• 1:05:56
  I hope that my books help make the teachers jobs and the parents jobs a little bit easier and make their reading time more joyful in the process.
• 1:06:06
  Joe, thanks so much for being a guest on the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors podcast.
• 1:06:12
  Your generosity of time, your insights.
• 1:06:15
  I hope everybody goes back and listens again.
• 1:06:19
  All the nuggets that you shared will definitely benefit aspiring authors and readers.
• 1:06:25
  And we promise to provide our audience with the links to Joe's website, great website, social media, and his books.
• 1:06:34
  And if you've enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe button to listen to our future episodes and feel free to share this episode with anyone inspired by or who enjoys hearing about Joe and his children's book, Mia's Marvelous
• 1:06:50
  Farm Adventure.
• 1:06:51
  Thank you, Joe.
• 1:06:53
  Thank you, Rick.
• 1:06:54
  Really enjoyed talking to you today.