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Transcript

Will it Stick?—Book Marketing · Reality Writes

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, hey, welcome to another episode of Reality Rights, the podcast where I, Ellie Alexander and my Chega husband.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hello.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hello.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Peel back the curtain on all things bookish.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh today we are going to talk about our marketing efforts over the years and whether or not they will or will not stick.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh boy.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of mess on the floor.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's stuff that didn't stick.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Just take the spaghetti and launch it.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Launch it.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was so much spaghetti.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So much spaghetti.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I think before we get into it, there are two things we should talk about.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that is, first of all, the chattering the myth a little bit that if you are writing for a traditional publishing house, that there is this massive marketing arm and machine behind you.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: That is just not so true.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and we learned that early on, right?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, well, we go we we assumed that that would be the case when um when you first got started writing.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like we didn't expect like the JK Rowling or Dan Brown treatment um out of the cage, right?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we were we because I mean honestly, I I think a lot of writers do, right?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think they they think, oh, I got a publishing contract, there's gonna be an army of people that are just gonna market my book, and yeah, it's just gonna be amazing.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I won't have to do anything, I just need to write.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things that um that we learned early on is writing is is like that, that's the hard part.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then it gets harder, right?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's the hard part, and then it gets exponentially harder.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I feel like we I was a realist, and then you being in marketing and advertising for so many years, you were also a realist.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one of the things that's been so amazing about my writing career is that we've been able to team up on so many things.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and many of my writer friends do not have somebody else who knows marketing and technology to support them.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm super fortunate in that.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there is this myth, I think, that limos are gonna pull up in front of your house and there are gonna be bottles of champagne, and you're gonna be whisked away on these major international book tours, and that just does not happen.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I mean it doesn't.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It it I mean, you know, there's there's like like every industry, right?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's the 1%, and there are some authors that that get that treatment.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they sell millions of books.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh exactly.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: They just do.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's not like I don't if you don't sell millions of books, you are by no means whatsoever not successful, right?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like the the 99.99% of books out there don't sell millions of copies.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: They just don't.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um it there are so many um successful authors, um, but both traditionally and independently published that um sell thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of copies.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they still don't get any help from the marketing side.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So but wow, there are some creative people out there.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And over the years, you know, we've we've tried to create some of our own things.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: We've tried to uh emulate some of the more successful stuff that other people have done.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And wow, have we learned lessons along the way?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: We have learned a few lessons along the way.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but just to backtrack quickly, I thought it would be fun to uh give, we decided on a name.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: On our very first uh yeah, on our inaugural episode, we asked you, listeners, watchers, readers, for ideas.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And this shout out goes to Kat because she came up with darlings.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because I talk all the time when I'm teaching writing about killing your darlings and the importance of that.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a little bit of a nod to the big shop mysteries because Lance always calls everyone darlings.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I have to put a little inflection on it like that.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, our darlings out there.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I found a candle in the Etsy shop quality.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we do.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Kill your darlings, kill the book.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: But that's that's the subject of another episode of coming episodes.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's a whole other ball of wax.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, it's not really a ball of wax, but I'm just using bad puns.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um I pulled out some of the early things that the publishing houses did for me.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, I should also say, like, that's not to say that publishing houses don't do a lot.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they do.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: They they get your bar your books out for professional reviews to the trade magazines.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: They have an army of book bloggers and book influencers.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there are certainly many things that they do, but just shattering that idea of that you're gonna be um showered with this generous marketing campaign is just not true um in 2024.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't true in 2012 either.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, and and I mean that that's the thing, right?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is they they're like it it behooves the the publisher to market your book to a certain extent because they don't make money if you don't make money.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so they need to sell books, but they have hundreds, thousands of authors that they, you know, and they don't have a staff that they can dedicate to all these.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So these poor, like you know, from editors down to you know, the the um publicity assistants, like they've got dozens of authors that they're and and then those dozens of authors are writing dozens of books.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can imagine that you're 24 years old and you're given this stack of like a hundred books that you have to, you you just have to you do the bare minimum to promote.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so what you're about to show is the result of, I think, one of those things where it's like, hey, this sticks, so let's just do it for it.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just keep doing it.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh boy.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy, will it stick?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it does.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so my very first series when it came out, um, every book that would come out, my publicist would send me, you can't see these darlings, uh, if you're listening.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So for those of you who are watching on YouTube, you will see these lovely, easy crosswords, word searches.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're like the little magazines that you would find at the checkout counter at the grocery store, which I don't even think you can find them now.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the back, there would be a flag where they would have an ad for a bunch of upcoming books or um killer reads, find them here.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the emails that I would get, they would just be over the moon, like so excited.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Look what I landed for you.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, I don't know.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we'll hear from our darlings out there that this this really moved the needle, but somehow I just don't think it did.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that's that's a great that that's perfect.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know, I want to hear from the darlings.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Did did have any of you discovered Ellie in the back of a word search?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Or crossword.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, five dollar ninety-seven cents.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: It says now 97 cents on the cover.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Have any of you discovered Ellie through a 97 cent easy crossword book that you picked up at your local grocery store?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to know.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because the other thing about that that I find interesting is it wasn't like it was just your book that you you showed.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, they're all yeah, yeah.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: You showed a page that that had maybe nine books.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they're all it's it's all the authors that they, you know, that the so like for that was cozy mysteries.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So those were all the new cozy mysteries coming out from that particular publisher's top authors.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: You just happen to be one of them.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, which again, no shame.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's totally but um we'll do an episode about uh we we've been brainstorming a bunch of episodes and we've got one coming up, um, the math of math of of book writing, right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, like what and and so the the we'll get we'll get deeper into that um on in in a future episode.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the like the that ad did not move the needle in sales.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like just it did there's just it didn't, you know, it it never will.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I have a good souvenir now.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a great stack that uh will stick with me forever.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then um another one of my publishing houses would put together these little recipe cards uh to promote the upcoming book.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I would send them a recipe and they would create this recipe card again.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: My darlings, you can't see it if you're not watching on YouTube.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: But this is the the finest of the finest print.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, love the idea in theory, in execution, so hard.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then also there's nothing on the back.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is wasted.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I gotta I gotta tell you that's a guy from a design.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as an advertiser as a marketer, um, and just like from like save the planet a little bit too, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're gonna use a piece of paper, like use both sides.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why why wouldn't you use both sides?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it costs more, but you know what, you could make the you could you could have made the type like twice the size that it is on that and filled up the oh yeah, it just and also there's no information about like the book cover is on there and it's like on sale, the date on sale, but there's no other information, there's no contact information.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's no right.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Go to your website, go to um, yeah.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, yeah.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: So those are the sort of um, in addition, obviously, to the more traditional book marketing that gets done by the publishing houses where they are, like I said, reaching out to trade magazines and and reviewers and um obviously promoting the book to booksellers, which is huge, you know, from uh a traditional publishing standpoint.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't have to work on distribution.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: That part's great.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: When we've done our indie stuff, then you know, that the onus is on us to make sure we're getting the books out to bookstores.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: But um that this, these two examples would be more like the the global idea of uh an exciting book win early on.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we were like, no, we got to do better, not just do better, but also um, I think the slant that we have taken, and this has been awesome to partner with you, is that anything I do, I want to expand the world because I'm such a reader myself.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm doing anything marketing related, I want it to feel like it's tort then.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: I want it to feel like we're going to nitro.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I want that immersive experience.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, that that's it, it's it's interesting you say that too, because we've we've done some fantastic things.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have to do an episode on um like your traditional book launch, like the pre-pandemic book launches that we used to do.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um because those were those were incredible.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, we wouldn't have been able to pull them off without the people we had helping us either.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it it was a tremendous amount of work.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the where things I think and this we'll get into this with this episode, I think where things tend to get harder is um perfectionism.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And like I I know, like me personally, I'm always the first one to go, no, that's not good enough.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll spend two hours on the stupidest little tiniest thing, and no one will, no one probably sees it or appreciates it, and you'll be like, let's just get it done.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, we can't do that because we won't look like X, Y, and Z.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then you know, you get into this whole like uh comparison thing, and that's a that's a that's a dangerous, dangerous path to take.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a dark path, man.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a dark path.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Comparison is the thief of thief of joy.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's my favorite expression.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: But then, I mean, I think that's what makes us such a good balance because I'm like, no, it's fine, let's go.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I uh my creative energy is like fast and furious, and you are more um calm and centered when it comes to an approach and thoughtful in terms of like, oh, well, let's make sure this looks really good.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then, especially early on when we were venturing into Instagram or YouTube, the aesthetic 10 years ago was that we were also trying, not competing, competing isn't the right word, but like in my mind, like when I write tort, I know what tort looks like.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know what Juliet's pastries look like.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Level it up, right?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Always, yeah.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so then whatever we're creating is never gonna live up to that.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of the Juliet style bakers who I'm following on social media, we we can't hold a candle to what they're creating.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's no chance.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the thing, right?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: We like you are an expert writer, and I am you know an expert in what I do, which is somewhat mysterious and will remain that way forever.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but I like, yeah, it was hard.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Comparison is a thief of joy.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we uh I I would say me, me personally, probably me more than you, um, but probably you through just having to work with me, um, have had a lot of joy uh theft, stolen.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of a lot of joy stolen uh over the years because my joy.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean that the because you know like even six, seven years ago, um Instagram, like, oh wow, it was it was hard to put something together and we'll get into some of the things that we we put together, but it was hard to put it together and then just realize, oh yeah, we're not expert videographers, we're not like expert sound people.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, honestly, this even this podcast right now is a great example of you just say, no, let's just do it.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: We we let's do it and we'll we'll you know we'll get it out there and we'll we'll do it.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, but it doesn't sound good.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have like great mics and you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I find out that you know I can just drop this into Premiere Pro and hit a button called enhance, and it just suddenly we're in a professional studio.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you to the people from Adobe, because uh we are not getting ads money from Adobe, but thank you for it.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea we exist.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this mention of Adobe is like the 97 cent crossword thing in terms of reach right now.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not right now, but right.
• 14:32
  unknown: Yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's so true.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um always wanting to approach whatever we put out there from a place of authenticity, because that's just so important to me.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's so, I mean, it is the core foundation of what I write, of how I write, it's how I want to show up.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think we've ever tried to spin it like I am a professional pastry chef, or you know, like what we're doing is that level.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it's hard not to then have that get into your head at some level because the other, I think, grandiose myth is that it's also easy to do this marketing side of things.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we put as much, if not more effort into all of the things that we've done over the years.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hours and hours and hours of time.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then sometimes it's like, oh my gosh, yay! Like we're it's actually working.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like two people watched, which we're so happy for those two people.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it takes a long time to build community.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm so grateful for everything that we've tried, what did stick and what didn't stick over the years, because that's what has created this amazing community, community that we get to be part of.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: But the other myth is that then, you know, you do something, you do a video, you start a podcast, you do whatever it is, and overnight you are suddenly a success and you're getting millions of views.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like that also is the same as being Stephen King being sent out on book tour.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a minutia of people who are putting anything out onto social or the interwebs.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it comes down to to just the the whole thing of whether no matter what you're doing, um, whether it's writing or or being a social media influencer and everything, it's it's do you do you want to do it to build on the other thing that you're doing?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So in this case, everything that we're doing on social media, you know, to your point, we're trying to grow the community and we're trying to and and of course sell more books, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because that that's like if if we're not selling books, you're not writing.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like the it comes down to like, are you doing it to have fun?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Are you doing it to make some side money, or are you doing it to make a living?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're doing it to make a living, like I just I'll be I'll be honest, like it is a lot of work.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Even the people that are getting millions and millions of views on social media and and they tell you, oh, I put together a year's worth of content in 30 minutes.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, they didn't.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Their team of people put together a year's worth of content in 30 minutes.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: They may have put together the content ideas in 30 minutes, but then they had a team that like worked on that stuff forever to put it together and schedule it and put it out there and everything.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's just like I I wish people would be more honest about the the effort that it took.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's not to say that it's not worth it or that it's not fun.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, I'm sure I have more gray hair now because of some of the things we did, but um, but it was fun too.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you and you can you can tell them what did I say to you when I was putting some of the clips together for this.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, you said, ah, I can't believe I'm gonna speak this out loud into the universe because then we're gonna manifest it.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: You said we should do more tort test kitchens.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: We should go back and do more tort test kitchens.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: We had we did have a ton of fun doing the tort test kitchen.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we baked a lot, we shared a lot of food with neighbors and Sky Guy's friends, which was great, especially because we did so many different um promotions during the holidays.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like we did 31 days of pie, 31 days of cookies, we did all of these massive bakes.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: So not only were we, we're the team, like we were the team.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's no one else behind us, but maybe recruiting Sky Guy and a couple of his friends to come help every once in a while, uh, mainly to eat the stuff.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: But not only was it all of the baking, and also it's all our funds going into paying for all of the supplies and everything like that.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, how much time did you spend just setting stuff up?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, hours, you know, it takes a long time.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's we've we've and we've shared some images of the tortes kitchen specifically about like just the equipment and everything that goes into it.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's funny because the the aesthetic and the style um changes over time.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we started doing Tortez Kitchen, you had it, like the level was just it was so high in terms of what you had to hit, like the bar was up there in terms of production quality and lighting and color correction and all of the things that we are not experts at.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and sure, you can actually learn all of that stuff if you've got time.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: But like we just, I mean, it was yeah, it was a lot.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was hours and hours and hours.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think a lot of them turned out really well.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them did not, and we've actually made videos about that.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So exactly, totally.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh should we start?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Did you pull some videos of those?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is a cringy for me.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Cringy.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this this is a deep cut.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna play like for those those watching us on YouTube.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're gonna show the video, but we'll we'll talk through it and everything.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing we're gonna talk about is the monthly mystery box.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is a deep cut.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is one of the very first things that we did.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: This was the first thing.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So at the time, um, giveaways were what?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: How many books did I have out at the time, too?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like how many of these did we?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't know.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: This was one of the first, I think this was the second monthly mystery box we did, and it was uh it was me.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, Batter of Life and Death.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because we started in January with Meet Your Baker, and we were gonna go like through the whole year.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you I mean maybe 12, or or by the time we got to December, your 12th book was gonna be out.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I I can't remember exactly, but but it whenever it was, it was well at this point it was probably six years ago, seven years ago.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: More okay.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Probably um but but giveaways were huge, and that was a that was a vehicle for growing your your reading community, your reader community, and um getting more darling.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so we thought, well, I mean, everybody's given away books, and that that's great.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you can do that, but I mean you just get lost in the noise, right?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's like how many giveaways do you want.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we thought, well, let's we'll work, we'll come up with a theme for each month based on the color of the cover of the book.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And sort of the theme of the the baking in the book, too, I think was the concept, right?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so however many days were in that month, we would find one thing for each day that had to be in that color.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: In that color.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the the example we're using here is a batter of life and death.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: The cover's red, primarily red.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's February, so it was perfect, you know, Valentine's Day.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so we're gonna find 20 28 things.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um 28 things that are red and tie into baking.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: That tie into baking.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the kicker we're gonna lay these things out on our table.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Table or dining room table, we're gonna buy like a$400 C stand, which is in the corner behind me, disassembled.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, which is for those who don't know, it's this this really crazy heavy um uh like it has four feet metal stand.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's got four feet and a big arm that comes up uh and then uh vertically, and then an arm that comes off at an angle that's adjustable both in length and and angle.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you can mount cameras and mics and everything to the end and position them for whatever it is you're doing.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we get the C stand and we're and we're put the camera on and we're shooting straight down on the table, and we've got these 28 things on the table, and now we're gonna cover them up and we're gonna put so I built boxes to cover all of these things but by hand out.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Physical boxes, yes, yeah, like different sized boxes, tried to make them roughly the same height, and then I used my cricket machine to cut out like really ornate like numbers, and with you know, like for February, they had hearts cut out and everything.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so box number one would have a one on it, and box number two, or day number two, the box would have a two on it, and so on and so forth.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're gonna shoot this video and we're gonna have Ellie reach in and uncover each item one at a time, and we're gonna release these videos every day.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: So on day one, yes, we'd lift up the box and oh, it's the book.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the day two, it might be like a red spatula.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um day three might be red recipe cards, you know, and we just go until we got to day 28 and it'd be the big reveal, and then we would draw like the um winner from you know, the the ultimately the winner on social media would win all 28 of these things.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like big mystery box and everything.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, you want to talk a little bit about how long it took to do each of these things?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: It took so freaking long.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what the hell were we thinking?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Why did we decide like, here's a great idea?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Will this stick?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, I did stick, like, and it was an amazing giveaway.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone who received these monthly mystery boxes were so very grateful.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like that, that was all wonderful.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: But damn, like, no, I would never do that again.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And also, it took hours and hours to go like find all the items, which we kind of had fun with too.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I that's always like the balance, right?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: We love that piece of marketing.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's like such a sweet spot for both of us.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, did I do it again?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is what it looked like.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And won't for those of you just listening, we'll walk through it.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sorry, sorry to the listening darlings, but yeah.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it it um it it really uh it it yeah, we just and and again, it wasn't just the physical part, it was then I had to edit all these videos.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: We were so like cued in on the whole color theme, too, because I have red nails.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have red sleeve shirt on.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh I don't know why we were so focused on this idea that like we're going hard on the red theme.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it was super creative.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it was creative, it was, and people were excited about it for like a month and a half, and then we're like, well, we we gotta find better items, or we gotta do this, or we gotta do that.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't, I think we still have that sifter.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um like because we're gonna be able to do that.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because we got a deal where we got like two or something.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, and looking back, these are our super cute items because it was all themed after um like winter coziness and everything.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that was that was a lot of work for a very small return, very small return.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and you know, it finally I can't, I don't even think we made it through the whole year.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think we made it to like August or something, and it just like the videos were out of the gate.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of those things where out of the gate we're sharing each of these videos, and people were getting really excited about them, and and we were getting like hundreds of likes um per day, and then it just started going downhill.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then when we got to about April, I think it just like fell off a cliff.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time we were getting like less than 10 likes per video, we're like, we can't, I just can't do this anymore.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so much work for for no return.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: In fairness to anyone who was like, like, I I would probably get bored with that.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like it's a fun concept initially, but am I invested enough to want to keep watching that?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not, right?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, I think this is all in this same, and especially for any darlings who are writing darlings, uh, you have to try it too.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you don't know if it's gonna work or not.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um it could have been the biggest thing we'd ever, I mean, it could have been a huge success.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: You just never know.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it it just like was that?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: I said probably was never gonna be a huge success, but you never know.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, you do have to balance.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the other thing is um you learn a lot from everything you try too, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: We yeah, you you learn a lot.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: You've um and that we learned uh the amount of effort that went into it.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: You you have to the thing I was saying about balance is you have to balance out like how much effort is going in versus how much return you're getting.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and return can be many things.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, ultimately, like again, we talk about book sales all the time, but return is really like growing your audience.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if if that had if that had really moved the needle in terms of audience growth, we'd probably still be doing it, honestly.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it we probably would have revised, you know, it several times over the years.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but it just like, I mean, the first you could talk of the first few months when we were going out, like finding stuff, it was like, oh, look what I found.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we found this, we found that.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we we had a really good time.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: But by the sixth or seventh month, we were like, huh, we gotta find like 30 purple things.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Purple is what killed us.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Purple, that's so funny.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Purple is what came to my mind too, where we were just like, no, I can't see another purple thing.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Purple broke me.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: And also, um, I think like, well, on the plus side, for me, it really taught me a lesson about like, what kind of conversation and engagement do I want to have uh with people?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I I want readers or friends, like, because I read in the same way.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, like that wasn't those, they were fun, but they weren't really, you're not having a conversation then.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're not talking, like you're not engaging in in that level.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that was like a good learning lesson for me.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: But for you, like, I think you just kept improving your video skills and your editing, but that was gobs of hours to put, I mean, like again, so many times where we're like, okay, on an entire month of December, we'll do we'll do a video every day.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I wouldn't do that now.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: No way.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I I don't want to age myself, but I was also a younger man at that time.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: So uh staying up late was not a problem.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it should have been because you get for all you darlings out there, like you get get your sleep.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's important.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, it is important.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: So don't stay up late working on promotional videos.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but yeah, it was.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I you most of the time you'd go to bed and you'd wake up and it'd be like, your 20 videos were ready to go.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I know.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then you'd go to your other work job and I would go to my writing job, you know.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: So there's always that balance point too, of like, this was not, and still to this day is not like uh either of our full-time jobs, too.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, but but you know, it is fun.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I love it.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: I love the even this podcast is fun.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love I love being able to do this creative stuff because my day job is not super creative.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and um this this is a great outlet for me, but it is a lot of time.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so um let's talk a little bit about tort test kitchen because I think the mystery boxes came first and then tort test kitchen came, or maybe we had already started dabbling a little bit in some tort test kitchens.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: They might have overlapped, but it was really like I I think I think the we we really thought that like tort tort test kitchen was gonna be the thing, right?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because it you know it tied in so well.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your Bay Shop series is you know your longest running series.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it it is it is the one that has grown your um uh your community the most, I would say, to this point.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, although Sloan is the Sloan series has really, really pushed it, you know, pushed it along too.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: So Sloan, I love Sloan's.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Which is great because I'm partial to the beer.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you you've got to start writing like a a workout series, like a workout murder mystery or something.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some something that will like, because I'm like I'm not I'm having to run 10 miles uh you know a day to just keep off the weight from tort test kitchen.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean you talked about sharing that that that was I mean that was one of the products of it, but yeah, Tort Test Kitchen was um that was fun.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I think it resonated with readers, right?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I I mean again, I feel like that was like that next step of like, oh, actually I do, and it informed my writing so much because that's also authentic.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: When I'm working on a book, the last thing I do are all of the recipes.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I go into our home kitchen and I bake the recipes sometimes two or three times to get them right, to make tweaks.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that felt like a natural evolution.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, well, you can show the video and then I'll talk about something else after the fact related to it.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I I again we're gonna walk through this, but um, so tort test kitchen evolved over time because I think tort test kitchen is probably one of the longest running um marketing and promotional things that we've done.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, we started out um we had kind of subpar camera.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: We I mean you gotta you gotta use what you have, right?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and so we had um the house we were living in at the time in Ashland, um, you know, we I don't know why, but we started out shooting like a way with it it had this beautiful white brick wall that had like a double oven in the brick um and everything.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: So what did we do?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: We said, oh, we'll put Ellie on the other side of the kitchen by the sink, and that's where we'll shoot the torch.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what I don't anyway.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: We shot some of them that way, and then we decided when we turned it around, whoa, the lighting looks a lot better.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like the kitchen looks really bright and light now and everything, and we figured uh that out.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but we we used what we had.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we had like a uh lapel mic that was pretty substandard and everything, and so it it you know we started out with just different camera angles and everything, trying to emulate some of the I mean, there was at the time there was some incredible baking videos on yeah, amazing, right?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and we should also say at this point in time, no one was filming on an iPhone, like that were all like professional setups that you were seeing on social media.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we're like, well, shoot, we gotta do that.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started out it uh you know, we put together a little jingle, and I just had like I learned like some text wipe effects and everything for the title, and and it you know, it looked like we just had close-ups of hi, it's mystery author Ellie Alexander, and I am so excited to look at the case.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: You can see like the lighting's really harsh.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: I say it every time, but I like how much here I am not a professional.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And look, we had all the theme in the pages to match a gram of fashion fruit, too.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and there you go.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: You said you you alluded to this earlier, but you said in in the intro of the tort test kitchens, you are not a professional pastry chef.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you like calling it.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I would always say that.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would always say that.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, if we're doing this, I have to make sure people know I am not a pastry chef.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: I put pretend to portray one in the pages of my books.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and so that that was uh um that that's what we started.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was one of the earlier ones.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that wasn't the earliest.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I I couldn't even do that.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean, if you're interested, go to go to Ellie's YouTube channel, they're all there.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think we I think we now what did I tell you, Shreya?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're almost like we have almost 300 videos on on YouTube.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: That just seems I don't know, because none of these are short either.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean they're all like five minutes or or so.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: But try that that was the other thing that we learned is like trying to cram a recipe into a video um that and hold people's attention for that long.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, you know, you what you see in the end is like a three to five minute long video, but what we shoot is like 25 to 30 minutes of video, just so I can take what's called B-roll, all the all the uh you know, extra cuts and clip those in so that while she's talking, we get this, you know, like there's something happening on the screen, because otherwise, if you're watching a video and it's just what was that?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh superstore.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, superstore, yes.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's a character.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a character on Superstore who was he did uh for social media did real-time barbecue videos that were like 16 hours long.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, okay, yeah, that's what Torteskitchen felt like sometimes.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: But sometimes, yeah.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: But we quickly um we quickly learned that we needed to up the up the game on those.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we thought, okay, well, we've done this now.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's take it up a notch.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we got a better mic, uh, we changed the camera angle, we got better lights, and then I uh tapped one of uh my agency buddies to who is an amazing uh um CGI expert, uh and animation expert, and he put together a little intro.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, it's culinary mystery author Ellie Alexander, and I'm so happy to welcome you in to my tort test kitchen.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: This week I am actually testing a recipe from an upcoming book.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Wanna know what the book is?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned and we'll chat about it.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we got a hook.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then I still love the news.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Nick put this thing together.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Nick, you crushed it.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we just yeah, we and we got the tort logo in there and everything, and and that was fun.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was that was like then I felt like, okay, now we're like, didn't you?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Did you feel like, okay, now we're we've leveled it up, right?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: We you know, we're this is gonna go big.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Will it stick?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Ah I mean, we had some darlings who were super fans of Tortez Kitchen, and I couldn't love you more for that.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: But again, was the return worth the hours and hours and hours?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and we were putting these out weekly.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, every weekend then it would be like, all right, we're gonna have to take over the entire kitchen and dining room and the lighting, and then me doing all the prep and you shooting all the b-roll and then editing it together.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was I I I I actually don't even want to think about how many hours we spent doing that in some ways.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, and it it, I mean, the other thing is like we like we're family, we're normal family.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: We had we had a dog and everything, and so inevitably we'd be in the middle of shooting, and somebody would come and ring the doorbell, and our dog would just go ballistic.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like, well, now we gotta start over on that step, but that you maybe you had already cracked eggs into whatever, like the flour and sugar and everything, and we're just like, oh so then we gotta figure out like how do we go back and edit it so that we get rid of that sound, but we can still use that portion of the video, and it just yeah, it was that was something.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: That was something.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and again, I think if it were if fast forward 2024, if we were doing it now, it would be a different beast because things are just the the aesthetic is has changed.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is so much more about quick.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I think it also speaks to the fact that our attention span keeps shrinking, but you know, darlings want, you know, 10 second videos, 30 second videos on a phone.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: This was full lights, sound, again, the C stand, so you could have the shot from above seeing what's happening on the counter.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: There this was not small setup, is my point.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I thought, I mean, I liked our house, our kitchen was was really nice and everything, but it wasn't it wasn't a studio, you know.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: We had like LED fluorescent lighting in there, and that was horrible.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you if we so we we had a specific window that we could shoot at like because the sun would be coming through like the small window and then the larger window in the the adjoined dining room, and it just it created perfect lighting.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if our shot went longer, then you know the video would start out and it would look really well lit.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then by the end of it, when you're doing the wrap-up, it's like we're shooting at night.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh we learned so much from that because we'd be like, oh yeah, and I'm starting the bake at three o'clock.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh that's not gonna be done until 6 30, and it's winter, so now, yeah.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: And poor our poor son is like, when's dinner?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, we're filming.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, yeah.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: We gotta get Sky Guy on an episode.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: He'll have lots of therapy, I'm sure, from just years of that's gotta that's gotta be for the after party, though, because he'll he'll get too real for for the the regular show.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's fair.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's fair.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh okay, so the one thing that I will say about the entire experience of Tort Test Kitchen is I think the second, the first or second most um asked question that I get is will I do a tort cookbook?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: I get asked this all of the time.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the intro that Nick shot for you, that's like as close as we have been able to get in terms of what I imagine the tort aesthetic would really be like.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have to do another episode about some of the partnerships that we've done over the years with actual professional bakers, right?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because that too.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: Then I'm like, yes, this is my vision.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I see when I'm writing.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: But um the only way I will ever do a cookbook is if that could happen.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like if we could hire someone else who is a professional pastry chef to take all of my recipes and make them look the way that I would want them to look.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it I would want it to be like a Jamie Oliver style cookbook where you also get Ashland and Tort and all of those things.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: But that takes an entire team of people, too.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: So and money.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so much money.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Also that.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, because you've talked about this a lot before, right?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you get some some of the some some readers in your community are like, well, just hire a food stylist.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, sure.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: No problem.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: No problem.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just twenty thousand dollars.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: 20 grand, you know.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like it there's a reason that cookbooks are hardcover, and it's because they need to charge like$38 for that book because it it costs a lot to put them together.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, a lot.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, just just the page layout alone and some of these is so crazy.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: I love looking through them because they're but man, I don't know if I could do it, honestly.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: I or be involved in it because just the whole comparison thing, I would just be I'd that might wreck me.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you would have to lay out and set the tone and all of the things.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: So um, we've been smart enough to know that's not our forte.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe I'm not I'm not saying it's it's I think it could happen eventually, but not with this team making it happen.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and then it comes down to your like the people who are in your reader community now, they're gonna buy that no matter what, right?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because they love you and and they as well they should, and and it, and you'd be giving them great content and everything.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the whole idea of doing it would be to give them something, but also grow your community, and nobody in outside of your existing community is gonna pick that up and look at pictures of something you baked, and then you know, no offense, but it's it's oh, you're so dead, that guy.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just wait versus reality thing, right?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen those memes online, like oh, this little kindergartner made that.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's yes.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, and then and that the funny part about that is we had so many fails uh during Tortes Kitchen, like both baking and tech technical fails.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was one point in time where I like I we were shooting with a camera mounted on a tripod, but then I had another camera and I was kind of doing a slow pan, and I bumped into the tripod and knocked it over right into what she was baking at the time.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's and then there've been a bunch of like cakes that wouldn't come out of the pan when we're lined up to get the perfect shot.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: That video or a couple of those videos are on YouTube, actually.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: The flugs.
• 43:54
  unknown: Yeah.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Comes out in pieces.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and what um one of one of your one of the tortes kitchens.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did go pretty big.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a cake mix, right?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's the irony.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like the most successful video baking video that we've done.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it has like, I think, I don't know, a hundred, hundred and fifty thousand views or something at this point now.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people have had eyes on that.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a stupid cake mix hacks.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's not hack.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even like one of my original recipes.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're like, okay.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that, but it feels right.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, my level should be just right.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Just start from that base.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Start with a Betty Crocker cake mix and just level it up with level it up.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean you can do.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know totally.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and apparently a lot of people want to know how to do it based on reviews for that video.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so tour test kitchen is, I mean, it's it's great.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it fits the books too, right?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: It fit, I mean, like you said, because you're already doing this testing and stuff, we thought, hey, why not film it?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a lot of work.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: It turned into a bigger production than we realized.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's a good segue for the last uh clip that you pulled that we're gonna share today, which is this time it's murder.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: You came, you came to me with this idea, and I thought this is like this is really cool.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like I thought I don't know.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: I thought this would I thought this was the one.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this one was gonna be a so much fun, which it was fun yet again.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it it had no legs, it went nowhere.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think five people total saw it maybe if that.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point in time, you know, we had a bigger community.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, obviously it just didn't resonate at any level.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I thought it would be super funny because I lived in at the time in Ashland where the series is set.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so many times if I bumped into readers or somebody I knew in town, they'd be like, oh, you know, is it murder?
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Are you out like scoping out murder?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh my gosh, what if we made this really campy, like intentionally campy little series about me being a mystery writer, walking around town and seeing things that I assume are related to a murder and are never related to a murder because that's you know, that's kind of the vibe of the series, uh, which we did, and uh we had a lot of fun.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: We recruited Sky Guy's friends for some of them, and they did not stick.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, and I mean it we can Oh, here we go.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: I like that info.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: I put together a little animation, I put together the animation.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um you did the voiceover for them.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: As a mystery writer, I knew I was the cool thing about this one though is that by this point in time, like mobile phone cameras were amazing.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: So everything is just shot on an iPhone.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that made it a lot easier.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't have like a bunch of gear that we had to take and everything.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it was still a lot to plan out.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um script.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: We wrote the script, uh, we segmented segmented out each episode, you figured out the shots.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: We had to go early a lot of times, like super early to make sure nobody was gonna be around where we were shooting.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know we had to keep moving.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, in a couple of the scenes too, it would have been super awkward had we had we used like had people been around, um, because you know, the like some of the clues they might have been like, um, do we need to call the police?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're not sure what's going on here.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, and we did, I don't know how many we did uh oh, we did we did one with Paddington Station.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, we did a holiday special.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: We all had so much fun.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: That was fun because Kelly's an actual actress, so she was able to like really bring it at a level that I I can often don't aspire to either, you know, like yeah, no, that's not my skill set either.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but yeah, not a sticker.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, yeah, not so much.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't stick.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, and it was the the other thing too, it was a lot of work because um from the on the post-production side, just putting the videos together and everything and then editing them for each of the specific channels because every like uh you know, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, all of the, you know, at the time, um they had different aspect ratios and different file size, you know, restrictions and stuff.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was it was a lot to just like to do an episodic thing where you were uploading, you know, an episode a day or an episode a week or whatever.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember what we were dealing with.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think we did once a week, but for like eight weeks or something like that.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: But you're writing a new post for each episode, and you know.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think they got good traction for the first couple, not even good, but decent traction.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, it just fell off a cliff.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing again, it goes back to like everything's connected.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: That really, I think I didn't know it at the time, but that is the spark of the idea for the Ashland Mystery Fest.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because then I took that same concept and I was like, well, if readers came to Ashland and got to experience it themselves, we could completely like blow this out of the water and then we'll create a mystery that they can actually go solve, which we did last year, and we already have amazing ideas for this year.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: So like it all does layer on.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, it's it's so fascinating to think like the stuff that we get super excited about, and then darlings are like, meh meh meh.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and one of the things that we learned too was just with uh the episodic stuff, which probably affected monthly mystery box, but definitely affected this time it's murder and didn't didn't have as much of an effect on Tortes Kitchen, is that um not all your audience sees everything you put out, you know.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_02: So like yeah, tiny.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: So like a lot of people might have seen episode one and then they'd miss episode two because they didn't see it come through in their feed, and so the next one they see might be episode five, and the they're like, wait, and you know, we thought, well, we'll put them all up on all the channels so they can go back and they can see them and everything, but it just didn't it didn't work, you know.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because by that point, if if if you've seen episode one and then the next thing you see is episode five, like are you really gonna spend the time to go back and watch you know, you're not.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean we don't blame you.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't either.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's all good.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't yeah, totally.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, but it's it's been um it's been a it's been a journey, right?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: It has.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, honestly, like the the the topic of this episode was like, will it stick?
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and we you know, I think in describing these things, we may have maybe it seemed like nothing stuck.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the the truth of the matter is going back to what you were just talking about a second ago, like the the the culmination of everything, like the sum of all of those efforts.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it it it really whether or not it's stuck, it we learned from them and and they all kind of you know accumulate in terms of community growth.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they've all helped, um, some more than others, but you know, it it just um it's it's just like learning the lessons and moving forward with, you know, whatever you're gonna do next, making sure that you pay attention to what you just did and and don't don't repeat history.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, and everything has uh created, you know, just this next level of community every time.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, there's another attachment in somebody else who I get to find along the way.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's been amazing.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we should wrap it up with this.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: Darlings, let's go back to Ted Guide's question.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Have any of you, any single one of you, discovered my books from a word search?
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's hear.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: And uh until next time, we'll see what's next.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.