Latest / The Daily Writer / When Client Work Goes Wrong | Alice Sullivan

Transcript

When Client Work Goes Wrong | Alice Sullivan · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, welcome back to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, my name is Kent Sanders.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an author and ghostwriter, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining me for this episode of our Summer Expert series.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know about you, but many times I've had this experience when listening to interviews on podcasts.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love what the guest is talking about, and it's really cool to hear about all their wins and successes.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: But then I relate what they're saying to my own experiences, which by comparison don't seem so successful.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a clear reason why we feel this way sometimes when we're listening to interviews or reading interviews, perhaps.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's because in public settings, people generally only share their wins, their successes, the things that make them look good.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we all do this, right?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Our tendency is to protect ourselves.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to share things that make us look bad.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is that everybody has good and challenging times in their business.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is that we don't often hear about the challenging times.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why on this episode today we're turning the tables just a bit.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: My good friend and fellow ghostwriter, Alice Sullivan, actually suggested the topic of today's episode.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: We had talked before about how we handled it when client work goes wrong for various reasons, and she thought it would make a helpful episode, and I completely agreed and thought it was a brilliant idea.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in that spirit, what you're going to hear in this conversation is two ghostwriters sharing crazy stories about what happens when things go off the rails with clients and also how you've handled it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, these situations include clients who take a long time to pay or maybe don't even pay at all, getting fired from jobs, dealing with a client's personal crisis, dealing with clients who hate what you've written, how to deal with tricky situations with publishers, and much more.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, just to be clear, in my experience, these kinds of crazy and unusual situations have been mostly pretty rare.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the clients that I've worked with have been amazing and really delightful, and it was a pleasure to work on their books.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: But just like in real life, sometimes things don't go according to plan.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope this episode will not only be a fun listen for you, but is also going to give you some strategies for handling future tricky situations with your own clients.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get into the conversation, let me tell you a bit about Alice Sullivan so you have some context for how successful the ghostwriter she actually is.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Alice is the number one Wall Street Journal bestselling ghostwriter, New York Times bestselling editor 11 times over, a collaborator and a speaker, a natural-born storyteller, she's written nearly 70 books and edited over 1,300 titles since 2001.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to her New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, other books have achieved Amazon bestseller status and won several awards, such as Reader's Favorites, Living Now Book Award, and Nashville's Best Local Children's Book Award.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Alice has written for Forbes, Hayhouse, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Abingd Press, Maine for Grace Publishing, and many more publishers and outlets.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Alice specializes in memoir, self-help, personal growth, and leadership because she loves personal stories and practical advice.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Her favorite projects challenge her point of view, expand her knowledge, and add meaning to her life.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Alice is not just a consummate storyteller and writer, though, she's also one of the most kind and down-to-earth people that I've ever met.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to connect with her at aliceullivan.com to find out more about her story and her services.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, with that said, let's get right to the conversation with Alice Sullivan.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Alice, it's good to have you back on the Profitable Writer podcast just a few months after your last appearance.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a record for the shortest time in between appearances.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So really?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_04: I'm honored.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_04: I will do this as many times as you invite me because I love talking with you.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is like the the old tonight show where they would have comedians on, you know, like every few months.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, great.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I saw a clip the other day where Robert Klein, I didn't know he was still alive.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I hope he doesn't listen to this episode.
• 4:08
  unknown: Oh.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Where he was talking about Johnny Carson.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: There was a segment on CBS Sunday morning talking about Johnny Carson.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they said he had been on the Tonight Show like 90 some times over the years.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_04: Oh gosh.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh my gosh, that's crazy.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I've never had a guest be on that many times on my show, but yet.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you're always yet.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: But you're always you're always welcome.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Love your insights and um and your wisdom.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So um so let's dive in.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So this episode is all about what what do we do when stuff goes wrong with client work or projects?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm framing this specifically as client work because I think editors can learn something from this, graphic designers, um any sort of any people who are in or around books or publishing, no matter what form that takes, traditional, hybrid, indie publishing, whatever.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because stuff does go wrong in projects a lot of times.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Just because we're all human and things go awry sometimes.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just dive in here.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you've got kind of an outline that you want to walk through with some of this, and I've got a few stories prepped, uh, which I'll sprinkle in occasionally if I feel like they're interesting.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So of course, of course.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, where do you want to start with this?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is kind of a big topic, and we could probably do a whole series of episodes on what do you do when stuff goes when stuff goes awry in client work.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I figured we could start with the four times I have been fired, which is not a breaking point, but it is it is true in the 24 years that I have done this work, I have been fired four times.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_05: Um and some of them were foreseeable events, and some of them I could never have predicted, which is sort of the way it goes.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_05: You know, things just come up.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_05: So um do you want me to just I'll just go into the details?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's dive in.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super curious.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_05: So two of them were because I took on the role of developmental editing.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_05: And which is fine.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_05: I don't do a lot of that anymore, but sometimes when a person already has an existing manuscript and it might be, you know, freakishly too long, or for whatever reason there are just things missing, we will do a developmental edit to point out all the gaps and what can be changed to make it better.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_05: Anyway, so I I've done that, and two times I was fired because I did not progress through the manuscript as fast as I thought I would.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_05: So laid out in the contract.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_05: I was basically I was behind, I was missing deadlines for when I would be done with various things.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_05: And that is the timeline thing, you know, on me.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_05: The other aspects of those two projects was that there was immense scope creep.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_05: So we started both of the projects around 90,000 words, and both times the authors, you know, fantastic storytellers, but kept on adding more and more and more to the Google Doc until one of them was at about 170,000 words, which is more than double where we started.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_05: And the second one, I forget how many words it was, but it crashed my Google Doc.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_05: It was 600 pages.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_05: And again, what I should have done in both of those instances was to do like, hey, time out.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_05: This is immense scope creep, you know, this is well beyond what we discussed.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_05: So we need to renegotiate both the timeline and the price because now I'm doing more than twice the work for the same amount of initial money.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_05: So, but I didn't because I have uh something I'm still working on is when that happens, to bring it up and say, hey, this is different from what we agreed upon.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_05: Let's talk about it, maybe renegotiate.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_05: For whatever reason, that has always been a sticking point for me.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_05: And I um have always just remained silent and then silent, you know, like seethed and um and done the work as best I could, but in these two instances, there was just no way I was gonna get through them in the time frame.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_05: And so I've been fired twice because of those situations.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you know I think you bring up a really good point here?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that term silently seethed.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't I don't know who said this.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's an old quote, but it talks about they were talking about men, but I think it applies to anybody.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Where the the quote is something like men living lives of quiet desperation.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's in some literature somewhere.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who said it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's what a lot of us writers do when we encounter these situations with clients where we have scope creep or there's something goes amiss, and it ends up being a lot more work for us, but sometimes we're really reluctant to say something or to charge more or to just do a timeout.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: What why do you think that is?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I and I don't have a clear answer, but I'm just what do you think?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_05: I think for me, part of it is growing up as a woman in the South and just sort of being bred to be accommodating and say yes and make other people happy.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: I am a people pleaser.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_05: I I desperately want everybody to be to be happy in general and also happy with me.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think that has been um part of the reason I've been reluctant to speak up.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, the other thing is simply because I haven't done it a lot, I don't have a lot of practice and it feels uncomfortable because my ultimate fear is they're gonna be mad, they're gonna fire me, I'm gonna lose the work.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: Would I rather have this work, even if it's not what I should be making, versus not have it at all?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_05: So a little bit it is a fear, and a little bit it is, I think that's just how I've grown up.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_05: And also, you know, starting from a traditional publishing house and then becoming a freelancer, whether it was specifically taught or not, all of the editors, which I was, I was a managing editor, your goal is to make the author happy.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_05: The author is always right.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_05: Even when you're fighting about grammatical rules, the author is always right, which but but um but that's how it is.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think all for all those reasons, I have not been comfortable speaking up when I should.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm still working on that.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: See, that's an interesting thing with traditional publishers.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I wonder if that's the case with every publisher.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I've only done uh a couple of traditionally published books, so I have pretty limited experience in that realm.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting because in the process of you know, an author getting, if they want to do traditional, getting an agent sort of fighting to get publishers to take a look at their manuscript, it's the dynamic is always the publisher is the one with the power.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're the gatekeeper.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're saying that a lot of times it's actually the opposite after an author is sort of uh after they've been signed with the publisher that the that the dynamic that the power dynamic shifts, where the author is the one with more power and the publisher sort of acquiesces in a lot of different ways.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is that true generally?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_05: Or am I always I would well so the publisher is always right, the editors are not always right.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a hierarchy.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_05: So I, you know, in in the position I was in, we did a lot of high profile authors.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_05: And so they have far more authority over, you know, what they want to say than I do.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_05: And I actually got my hand slapped once for arguing over commas um with a client because I was trying to line edit and he was coming back going, no, no, no, I want to be far more poetic.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_05: I don't want any punctuation.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_05: I was like, you have to have punctuation.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_05: At the end of the day, he got his wish and I got a reprimand for trying to hold the line of copy editing.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so it depends on who the client is, but the publisher definitely has the say.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_05: The publisher will change some of the content, they will change the title of the book, they may even rearrange chapters.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_05: But for my role as a managing editor, it was sort of like a yes woman.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_05: Like, I'm gonna do what I can, do all the technical stuff, edit it, manage it, and then if anybody needs to go above my head, you know, they will.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's it's interesting, like from a ghostwriting perspective, and I know this isn't really sort of on topic, but um just from my very limited experience in traditional publishing, I had one project that went really, really well.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was very smooth with HarperCollins.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they were great to work with.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't have asked for better people.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very fast project.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: But then as I have sort of done other stuff with traditional publishing, I'm learning, oh, that's actually kind of rare.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And things are very slow, and sometimes, depending on the payment arrangement that you have as a ghostwriter with the client or the agent or whatever, sometimes it takes a while to get paid, and there's all these sort of things that muck up you just being able to do your work and get paid quickly with it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: So as a ghostwriter, I'm inclined more and more just to lean toward independent projects because they're just way faster and easier.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_05: I agree.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's why I primarily work with with private clients.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_05: For I mean, for that reason, for many reasons, but you know, yes, the payment is more clear, um, but there are a few people in the pot to like muck it up.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I agree.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I I found it easier.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_05: I have also found this is a another our next podcast, is on pricing, of course.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_05: So um with private clients, I have found I'm able to charge my actual rates, where if I take a project through an agent or a publisher, usually they have lesser rates.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm both being paid less and not getting payments when I would normally be paid.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's always fun.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's great.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's always a lot of fun.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: When something has to go through other other parties and you've got to wait to get paid, that's always like you know, part of it, I guess, if that's what we choose to do.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or when you have a situation where you're working with a client who's like the CEO of a big company and they're not paying you directly, their company is paying for it.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it has to go through their money, people then through an agent, and then to you, and it's like by the way.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_05: And sometimes also through a bill pay or stripe, and so there's four percentage taken off before even you, yeah.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and by that time you're like, oh, I forgot I worked on that thing, you know, 18 years ago.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or whatever.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_04: I agree, I agree.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you talked about getting getting fired.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: How did how did those firings actually happen?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always interested in firing stories.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do they send you an email?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do they do a phone call?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do they say, hey, we need to have a powwow?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: How did how does that actually happen?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what did you feel emotionally in those moments?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because you had been working on projects for a long time, and I assume it was kind of a surprise to get let go from those.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_05: Um, one of them it was a surprise.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_05: One of them I had felt for several months that the wife of the client was displeased with me.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think she's Oh, that's always fun when the spouse gets involved.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: I had I've had some of those.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_05: Well, she she's a very structured person.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_05: I think she was acting as project manager.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_05: So um which is yeah.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_05: So one of them, I just got an email, you know, with a client exp expressing his displeasure.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_05: The second one, um they took me to lunch someplace and hired me at a or fired me at a restaurant.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and you're like just to fire me on the phone.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_05: It would have been great.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_05: I know.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_05: So they fired me at a restaurant, and this is back like this is so long ago, I used to carry my checkbook.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_05: They made me pull out my checkbook and refund them like a hundred and something dollars because she had calculated the wife had calculated down to the word that I was supposed to be at in the manuscript.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_05: Oh my god.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_05: I had not hit yet, so I I had to write them a check right then and there for a hundred and something dollars.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_05: I was mortified.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_05: I was mortified.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's insane.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_05: So I would say if you have to fire somebody, don't do it that way.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, please.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that just that's that's a level of pettiness that's almost hard to comprehend.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it was that was a unique experience.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_05: The the other, so that that was two times.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_05: The other two times, once um again, well, this is uh once again, I've been fired by the wife.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um which whatever it happens, but I was I was interviewing somebody again, a high profile person, and the PR team had specifically asked me to make sure I questioned him about um something he had been in the news for, and it was not a flattering thing, but they wanted to address it rather than completely avoid it in the book.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_05: And the wife did not like that I was asking those questions because she was trying to protect her husband's persona, which again, understandable, um, but I got fired for that.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_05: And then the the fourth time was again totally my fault.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I was working on a science-heavy uh project, and the author would sometimes revise chapters, like the same chapter, multiple times in a day.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_05: So I'd get like one document uh for like, you know, chapter four, version three in the morning, and then he'd send it to me two more times.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I did not do a good job of saving the very last one of every chapter.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_05: And so when it was time to put together the first um, the first full draft, I had some of the outdated chapters included, and he flipped his crap.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_05: And again, like that that's my error.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_05: I did not, it was my fault.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_05: It was correctable.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_05: I fixed it overnight and sent him the new file the next morning, but he was already, I had already been fired like by email immediately.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_05: And then he called me and yelled at me.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_05: So that was awesome.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_05: So those are my four getting fired stories.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I have not been full-time ghostwriting for that long.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've been doing this a lot longer than I have and are a lot more experienced.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've only been fired once.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, than I than I know of.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there have been times where I have wanted to fire clients, but I've only been formally fired once.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there will be others in the future.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a weird situation where uh there was this gentleman, and I don't even remember how I got connected with him.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he was probably in his 70s or something like that, which which is kind of irrelevant to the story, except to point out he had had this long career with these really very, very large tech companies everybody would recognize.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: He had been like this really big sales guy, blah, blah, blah.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And over the years he had put together this like massive material that he had used in presentations.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of it was like these really badly drawn cartoons that were like sort of popular in the 80s and those kinds of things.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he just brought this massive material and basically was like, Hey, I want to make a book out of all this stuff.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it was like seven or eight or ten areas of sort of leadership and sales in business that really didn't have anything to do with each other, they were just kind of silos of material.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, Okay, you know, I was a little younger then, and so I was a little bit probably just feeling overconfident in my ability to deliver because I had gotten my first two or three clients pretty quickly after I started my ghostwriting business, and I was, you know, feeling really, really confident.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And when I first met with him, you know, he was sort of this gruff, sort of curmudgeonly kind of a guy, and told me what he was looking for, and then he kind of offhandedly mentioned that he had had another writer on the project, but that he had fired them.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't really inquire that much about it because that seemed like it would be kind of awkward.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, now that turned out to be a huge red flag later because we worked together for two or three months on the material he didn't like anything that I did, the book outline or anything, and I said, I'm just curious, like, can you send me what the previous writer had put together?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he showed it to me, and I said, Well, this is really exactly what I would do.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I thought the writer did a fantastic job, and I don't really understand what it is that you don't like about it.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when a client cannot articulate what it is they don't like about something, that's really a problem.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because then you're just guessing.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you're doing all this random work and you don't know if it's gonna stick or not.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So and my stubbornness kept working and he kept not paying.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I kept thinking, well, he's he's gonna pay eventually.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: He would always sort of I would send him like a link and he would be like, Well, I can't get this link to work, and I you know, it's like, oh my gosh.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so finally, I had I was just so fed up that I had planned to fire him as the client on our next call, but he got on with his assistant, and within 90 seconds, he had actually fired me.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was very short and impersonal.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the call was then the call was over, and I just kind of sat there looking around, going, What just happened?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I was actually really relieved.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Oh my gosh, he still owed me 2500 bucks for this for the work that I had done, which you know, at that at that time in my business, that I mean it's it's not that$2,500 is never meaningful, but at that time it was that was a significant chunk of like what I was just kind of overall making.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I was like, I'm not, I'm just gonna let it go, you know.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not worth pursuing any kind of legal action or anything.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_05: I know you do have to make that decision.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_05: I've I've had several people who surprisingly will get to the very end of the project right before the final copy edit, and they just drop off the face of the earth.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_05: Either they they lose interest in the project and you can't force them to be engaged.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: It happens a lot, doesn't it?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it like it does?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_05: It really does.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_05: I'll tell you well, I'll tell you what I've done to sort of help combat that and then I'll go on.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_05: But so knowing that that has happened to multiple writers, what I try To do now is I front load my contracts when possible so that they're paying the majority of it up front.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_05: By the time we get to the editing, if they walk away, I haven't lost a ton of money.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_05: Because as you said, you have to decide is this amount of money worth getting a lawyer involved or not?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_05: And sometimes it is, and sometimes it's not.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_05: So, but that does happen.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: It does.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is it's a weird dynamic where I've seen this with clients sometimes when I'm and I'm curious what your experience is with this, Alice.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've noticed that so typically with a with a full-length book, and by full length I mean 50,000 words or more.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know people kind of argue about what does full length mean, but a lot of books I do are in that range.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I've noticed that if a book takes more than nine months from beginning to end, there's something about that nine month point or thereabouts where the client really starts to get frustrated and lose interest.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if anything is wrong or it just has to do with the emotional involvement that it takes, even from the client, even if they're not the ones doing the writing, but they are very engaged in it, hopefully.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they're doing calls and they're doing revisions and they're looking at stuff.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, if it goes past nine months, it seemed there is a major drop-off of interest and energy.
• 23:23
  unknown: Right.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: I remember reading an article, maybe it was in Vanity Fair or some one of those publications.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Probably six months ago, somebody had sent it to me about ghostwriters in Hollywood, and they were all sort of talking about client pro you know, like really high-profile projects.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was interesting how many of them said, Yeah, like I finished the whole book, and the client, you know, some famous XYZ person got cold feet, and the book never came out.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just shocked by that.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, it happened.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_05: I know.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_05: I've got one right now where we are in the final stages of editing, and the client messaged me last week, pretty, pretty similar.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_05: He's not sure that he's ever going to publish it.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_05: He only wrote it as a promise to his mother, and she put she's passed that she would write the book.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_05: But he said I didn't promise her that I would publish it, but it's written.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_05: And I thought, well, you I mean, you've invested this money, but it's your choice.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_05: If you decide not to for any reason, that's that's okay.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_05: It still counts on my resume as a book I've written.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you still got paid for it, hopefully.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's good with that.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: I have had one instance um years ago where the client refused to pay me the final payment of the contract because it was a memoir.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_05: And he didn't realize he would have to feel any emotions.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_05: That was the excuse he gave me.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_05: He didn't realize he would have to feel any emotions.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_05: And so, like in the process, there were a few stories he told me that, you know, he was visibly uncomfortable because he'd never done any therapy and he'd never worked through the stories he was telling me.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_05: And he just he thought that was a reason not to pay me.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_05: And I was so baffled.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I didn't really pursue it.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_05: He also is a multi-multi-millionaire, and I knew that I would never get anywhere in court if I sued him.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_05: So it's one of those pick your battles.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_05: But I just thought that's a weird reason to not finish paying a contract because you were forced to feel.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is that an I I wonder if there are some statistics out there.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just I'm sure somebody has put together something where there are a certain number, like for client-based businesses, whatever type of business it is, like there's a certain percentage of income that you should count on not getting paid for because of whatever situations, like people just aren't going to pay.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there are some stats.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't know what it is.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_05: I'll have to look it up after our call because that's uh that would be good information to know.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I I would hate to start a contract with that in the back of my head, but I think sometimes it's better to have realistic information.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_05: This could go this way, so therefore, you know, change your contract payments around a little bit.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get back to the conversation in just a minute, but I want to take a moment to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, Vellum.
• 26:09
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• 26:17
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• 26:22
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• 26:29
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• 26:38
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• 26:45
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• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: To download Vellum for free, visit trivellum.com slash Kent.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's trivellum.com slash Kent.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get back to the conversation.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've noticed I'm curious if this has been your experience too that I'd have to go back and look at percentages.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um but there's a decent percentage.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say I'm just gonna guess like twenty to thirty percent of the books that I work on.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: The client has some kind of personal crisis in the middle of the project that then puts things on hold for a little while.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes for a long for like months or a year or two, or sometimes just a few days or weeks or something.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there's it's just a really interesting situation.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a couple projects like that where I had one client who went into recovery, like for addiction, for a few months.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, had another client who had major health issues in situations like that.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious, have you had that happen to you and how do you how do you typically deal with that?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, as ghostwriters, we have a production schedule.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: We we're balancing multiple projects at once.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have to put something on hold, that it's not just a production thing, it's also a financial thing where now you're not gonna have that income for several months, depending on how you structured a contract.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: So how how have you dealt with those kind of situations?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um, early in my career, I did also have two people go to rehab um during the project, which is completely necessary, right?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: So and and yeah, I'm not speaking for at all from a place of negative negativity or judgment.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's just right happened and that, but you have to deal with that as the writer.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and I again, like that's not something as a ghostwriter you could even predict how people are going to be triggered when they're telling their story.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_05: So um in those instances, I kind of just waited.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_05: And one of them I heard from again, and one of them I have never heard from since.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_05: And so what I have done now is that I've written a clause into my contract where if I do not hear from the author within 30 days, the project is dead.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_05: I just take it off my schedule.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_05: And if they want to start it again, they have to pay an additional fee.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: By that point I have taken.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I mean, you might consider it.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_05: It doesn't totally it doesn't happen at all or the often.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_05: But um That's genius.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_05: Again, yeah, in in conversation with other writers who've had this happen, um, if they vanish or if for whatever reason they just need to pause, I can decide do I want to initiate that clause.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and now I do.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in some cases, if you've had a project stretch out for a long time, you might have actually changed your fees since you initiated that contract.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're gonna have to do a re-engagement fee, plus maybe you're charging more.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's true.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's gonna be, you know, it's really hard for somebody to take half of a book and take it to another writer and want to have them finish.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I would assume in most cases they're going to want to re-engage with the writer who started their book if they're happy.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, if they're happy, yeah.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_05: Although you were talking before about the guy who is a red flag because he told you he had fired another writer.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_05: I have been the second and third writer on projects before.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_05: So it's really a crapshoot.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_05: You don't know.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_05: You know, and in the instances, they were great.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_05: And I guess they didn't, for whatever reason, I don't know.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_05: One of them said that they didn't align on politics, and I thought, why were you ever talking about politics?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_05: Because your book has nothing to do with that.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_05: So they had had personal conversations.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_05: No, no, no.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I I I just focus on the content.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_05: So um, in those instances, for me, they were easy to use what had been started and then finish the project.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_05: But I understand like it doesn't always go that way, and yeah, you just don't know.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_05: And then, like, you know, the the people who I have fired, I fired, I think, three clients now.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and one was again the scope creep.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_05: I kind of like learned my lesson.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_05: I was like, oh no, no, I just can't do this.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_05: So let's cut ties.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_05: So I did thankfully fire fire somebody for that.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_05: Um in another instance, the guy was verbally abusive, both to me and his wife.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, wow.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_05: Um, yeah, he was it was her memoir.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_05: She had a brain injury, and he was theoretically helping her write her memoir, but he was so belittling to her on all of her calls.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_05: He made her sound like she had the IQ of a you know, a third grader.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_05: And so I really he was telling me all of this, and then I was gonna get on the call and interview her, and and so I I had very low expectations of what I'm gonna get out of you know this lady.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_05: We got on the call and she was as sharp as could be.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't perceive any disability.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_05: And over the course of the project, it we we only worked together, I think, for three months.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_05: He was constantly nagging at her and putting her down, even over emails, and I just was like, I can't do this.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_05: Like, this is not a project I want to continue.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_05: So I fired him.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have energy in your life.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_05: No, no, it just made me feel weird to be like the mediator.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_05: Um, the last one was actually a project I um ended at the end of last year, I believe.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_05: Or maybe right at the start of this year.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_05: Did I ever tell you about the time, Kent, where I agreed to do drugs for a book?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, but now I'm really curious to hear what this is about.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_05: So once upon a time, I agreed to do drugs for a book.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And how do I get in how do I get in with that gig?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: You don't.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just kidding.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_05: You don't want it.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, that's a good one.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_05: So my disclaimer is I've worked, I do a lot of, you know, memoir, and I've worked with several authors who have used plant medicine as part of their healing journeys.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_05: So that's and and from what I've, you know, there's magic mushrooms, there's ayahuasca, there's Wachuma, there's a multitude of other things.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_05: I've never even smoked marijuana, so um, whatever.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't even know where to buy it.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't either, but I literally told my wife the other day we're we're driving, I don't know how this came from our conversation, but I said, you know, if I wanted to do something really illegal, like if I wanted to go buy heroin or cocaine, I would have no idea where to even go to purchase that.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Literally.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure I'm sure somebody I know knows.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: I would have no idea.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: So so yeah.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, sorry to interrupt you.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_05: No, no, no.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_05: So I was gonna sign this project with this gentleman, and it was it was a large, large, large memoir, almost more like an autobiography.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_05: So it like covers everything, everything in his life.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_05: And he wanted it to last for 22 months, which is a long engagement for a project.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_05: So it was the largest amount of money that I had quoted and gone under contract for.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, woo, this is amazing, not realizing everything that was going to happen afterwards.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_05: But right before he signed the contract, and and plant medicine was part of his healing journey.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_05: And again, like I'm comfortable writing about that stuff, tell me the stories, I got it.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_05: But right before he signed the contract, he said, you know, if you've never done it before, I really think that you should experience it so you can accurately write about it as I'm telling you the stories.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I had been intrigued by hearing about uh magic mushrooms, and I was like, Well, so it wasn't a complete no, it was like uh it's illegal, but it's also nature, so maybe not as terrible as heroin, right?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_05: So I I agreed, like Pinky Swear over the Zoom call.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_05: I agreed to do it, and he's mailed it to me, gave me instructions, and I did magic mushrooms in my house, and it was the worst, the worst experience.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_05: It was like nine hours of being completely out of my head.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_05: There was a two-period, two-hour period of time, Kent, where I was not sure if I wasn't my cat.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_05: Like I was in my bed looking at my cat, going, Am I you?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_05: Are you me?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_05: What is going on?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_05: Am I human?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_05: Never had an experience like that before, and I do not think I would do it again.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_05: But um, after that experience, part of his book was advocating for he wanted to advocate for people to do mushrooms by themselves as part of their healing journey.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_05: And after my experience, I felt like that was unsafe because if I had had a mental illness or who knows what could happen.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_05: Like I could have injured myself.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_05: Who knows?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_05: Anyway, so I fired that claim.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Man, my projects have been much less exciting by comparison.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_05: I think that you should stick with less exciting.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Stick with especially the faith-based things, you know.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um somehow, I think because I was a pastor and taught at a Christian college for a long time.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've ended up doing several faith-based projects.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, the the drugs and alcohol and mushrooms don't end up being a part of those projects.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_05: Well, you're missing out.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_05: Uh no, I think you're doing the right thing.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: That is an awesome story.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_05: Very strange, very strange.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_05: So um that was yeah, that was one of the guys I fired.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_05: Um yeah, no, that was all three of my fired clients.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_05: But I mean, there are other things that have gone wrong, wrong in projects, even if neither of us are fired, like uh, and you may have experienced this with some of your clients, but mental health can be a real issue in the project, whether it's a memoir or not, you know.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_05: I've I've had I've had very concerning emails from authors, and I didn't know are we spiraling?
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_05: Do I need to do like all a service and do like a health check?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um, those are things that you really can't predict because on all of the initial calls we have with authors, we're on our best shiniest behavior, and so are they.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_05: Like we want to present well, and um, and you just can't tell what's gonna happen in a few months under stress, under pressure, under deadlines, whatever it may be.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about a I actually never thought about this before this conversation, but there's something about people working on a book.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Look, if they're not, if this isn't their normal life, you know, like you and I we're around books all the time.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're very comfortable, we know what to do, we know how the process works, blah, blah, blah.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: But people who are sharing their personal story or they have the framework for their business, whatever it is, if they're doing a book for the first time, this has a way, it's almost like a touchstone of bringing out sometimes the best or the worst of people because it's because they're they're vulnerable, they're putting themselves out there.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I've noticed that even people who are really wealthy or highly successful, when they're working with a ghostwriter, they feel really vulnerable most of the time.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Very and that that brings out things in people that are not sometimes not normal behavior.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really interesting dynamic that I've noticed.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_05: It is, it is.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_05: I've considered asking people before we begin, if it's a trauma memoir, especially, do you have a community?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_05: Are you in therapy?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't like I don't know what the gray area is because is it a HIPAA violation?
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not in the healthcare field.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_05: So is it bad that I'm asking you if you have somebody professional to talk to, or do you at least have family and friends who are supportive?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_05: I've considered asking that before just because I want to make sure when they feel bad, not if they're going to feel all kinds of ways telling us these things like when you feel crappy, do you have a support system?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_05: What are you gonna do?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_05: So it's just something to consider.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_05: And then the other the other area that I have found that can lead to disappointments is with book proposals.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_05: Now, do you do book proposals?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've done a couple.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I actually have uh one literally I mean literally as of uh 90 minutes ago that I completed one.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is for there's actually two agents involved in it.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they're shopping around to publishers and stuff.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I haven't done a lot of those.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've done two of those.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I have mixed feelings about book proposals, like as a service that Ghostwriters can offer, because especially if you're if you're getting involved with agents and traditional publishers, if you're doing a lot of that, that can that can snowball really, really fast because now there's all these entities involved and they all kind of want something different from it, and and everybody sort of defines the win a little bit differently.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um at the same time, I love playing in that traditional publishing sandbox for some of the things that I'm doing.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's it can be a lot of fun.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm curious what your experience with that has been.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_05: So in choosing to work with private clients, part of the reason I do that in addition to it's just a streamlined process.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_05: Is because so many of them choose to use custom publishing or self-publishing.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_05: They have far more control over the process, over the timeline.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_05: Again, it's just very streamlined.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and it doesn't matter necessarily if they have 30,000 followers or not.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_05: You know, they're gonna promote it to whatever newsletter they have, whatever the company they have.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_05: With traditional publishing, I found more and more often they're looking for people who have a large platform, and that is often defined by 20 to 30,000 minimum followers, engaged followers on a platform because the company, the publisher, is is seeing that as like built-in profit generation.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_05: Like we can sell statistically, like 5% of their built-in platform.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_05: That's a good deal, it's a good business deal for us.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_05: So it's all it all comes down to numbers.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't fault them for that.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: They have the business to read too.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly, exactly.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_05: But what I'm seeing with book proposals is people who don't have any social media following still wanting to get a traditional deal.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right, which makes no sense.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_05: It doesn't mean that it will never happen because there are always clients who don't have social media at all, or they have a very limited following who get good deals because the story was phenomenal, or it got press at the right time.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_05: You know, those things happen, but they are few and far between.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_05: And so when I get clients who want to, you know, try a traditional route and they have, you know, 1300 Instagram followers, and that's it, but they are still so determined, even after my advice, to do that.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_05: What results is I write their book proposal, they pay the money, and it goes nowhere.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_05: And then they're disappointed in me.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 41:59
  unknown: Right.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_05: That it didn't get picked up, not because they don't have any social media presence whatsoever, or they're not interested in speaking, or they don't want to do podcasts, or they just think that by putting the book out there it will magically gain millions of reviews, and that's just not how it works.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_05: So I try to do a lot of educating, uh, but I I do I do struggle with that.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_05: Like if they still want me to write the proposal and I know it's not going to go anywhere, do I still do it?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_05: And sometimes it's yes and sometimes it's no.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a really hard call to make.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because ultimately it's it's the the author/slash client's decision.
• 42:37
  unknown: Right.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, as somebody who's been doing this a while, you have insider baseball knowledge and you can pretty much tell if something is gonna be attractive to a traditional publisher or not.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's kind of like this ethical question of do we do we allow somebody to pay us to do work that ultimately is not gonna produce the result that they want.
• 42:58
  unknown: Right.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's hard, you know, sometimes.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine sometimes contractors feel that way when they're working on a house.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, somebody wants some crazy design done and they have to decide, okay, does this but it actually is like gonna detract value from the home.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do they do it?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do they not do it?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Depends on the situation, I guess.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that plays into our ghostwriting book process too, because how many times have people come to us and said, I want this to be a New York Times bestseller?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or some other metric of some kind.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, you can't determine that.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um second of all, it's not really a bestseller list, which is like an open secret.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you did everything right, there's no guarantee you're gonna be on it.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: And right, does that actually move the needle on book sales and whatever you want?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, even if you get on the list, who knows?
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's all a big secret.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_05: But like, do you you know, we go into projects where they say, I want, you know, I want it to be on the bestseller list, and we can't predict that.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_05: So do we say yes, I'll still do your book, or do we say no, try somebody else, you know?
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_05: There's not a right or wrong answer.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_05: It's just something to consider when taking a new project.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've really learned and and again, you know, you you're more experienced than I am in this field.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've I still feel like in many ways I'm sort of green in some things, because I've only been doing this full time for a few years.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um I totally forgot my point with what I was gonna say with that.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: It just totally escaped me.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: I had something I was I was gonna say, but it never happened to you.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: It just it's gone.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, I have to make notes everywhere.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_03: Notes, notes, notes.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know what it was.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, it I knew it would come back to me.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Increasingly, I have been more and more inclined to really stick in my lane.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um people sometimes ask me for help with developmental editing or author coaching or other kinds of things.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think as I'm getting older and hopefully a little bit wiser, uh don't ask my wife about that, because she would question the wisdom part probably.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um but as I get older and maybe wiser, I I am listening to my gut more and more.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't enjoy developmental editing, and I really don't enjoy I've done a few things and I think they've turned out well, but I I don't really enjoy doing coaching in the sense of like taking something somebody has written and trying to reshape that.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't have the patience for it.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm always I always have the impulse of just give the thing to me and let me just write it.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be done way faster.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, but they don't want to pay the money.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in which case I you know have a network of people that I you know send them to just like you do and and all that stuff.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: And plus I always think if I don't really want to do uh a certain gig, even if I can do it, I'm not really wanting to do it, which means that's not really fair to the person who's paying me if I'm not truly excited about it, and if I don't truly believe that their book can be successful, you know, then I feel like that that's not really ethical on my part.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_05: I agree.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_05: I I only do specific genres because of that.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I could do other nonfiction books, but I don't have an interest in those other areas.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_05: So somebody else who loves that and eats and you know breathes it is gonna be far better than I am.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_05: On that, I'll stick with memoir and business leadership.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: So here's a question for you.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I've got a couple situations.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious uh how you have dealt with these in the past.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um I had a situation a few years ago where this is kind of earlier in my journey, where I was working with the publisher, and actually, speaking of writers who'd been fired, they'd had a previous writer on the project, but they had fired that writer.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um maybe it was the one I got fired.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they had, and I I would, I would talk about, I would share what this book was, but I don't know that the clientslash author would want me to reveal that um that there had been another writer on it.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, they they let that writer go, and I was like, why did you hire that person for the first place?
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a faith-based project.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: The writer they hired did not have a background in that area, and I was like, Why did you hire them to begin with?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: It made no sense.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: So got on the project, I really, really enjoyed it, had a blast working with the clients and everything.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it was we had a few weeks of a rough spot at the beginning of the project because the publisher, um, and really what I mean is the editor, the the primary editor on the project, the editor had very different ideas about what the book was supposed to be than the client did.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I found myself very much caught in the middle because you have you know the client who's like, Well, here's my vision for the book, and the the editor's like, No, that's not that's not the proposal that we bought um from the previous writer.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm sorry, from the agent.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, Wait, whoa, this is really weird.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: But as the writer, you have to make everybody happy, and everybody kind of they have different things that they want from the project.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: The publisher wants a successful book, the the client wants something, yeah, they have emotional things they want.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious if you have been in a situation where you've kind of found yourself between some sort of publishing entity or an editor and the client, both who are looking for different things from a project, and how did you resolve that?
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I have.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_05: And whether it's right or not, in those instances, I go with who is paying me.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_05: If the client is paying me, then I'm I'm gonna advocate for them.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_05: If the publisher or the agent is paying me, I have to advocate for their perspective because that's where my paycheck is coming from.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_05: So, and again, like I I try to be the mediator and I will try to uh diffuse situations, but I don't think that's my job, but that's what I naturally tend to do if there are uh ruffled feathers, but but I always default to who who's paying my invoice.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: That makes a lot of sense.
• 48:58
  unknown: Yeah.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, you're you know, the writer is the one who has to put they have to give hands and feet to these ideas and concepts and stories.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh so yeah, sometimes you kind of feel like you're caught in the middle a little bit.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or sometimes you'll have you know a client who's and I've had this before where their spouse gets involved either with the design of the book, which I don't really do publishing services anymore.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: I used to.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: I had one time where the the client's spouse got involved, and you know, they're like, oh, my spouse is a graphic designer and they're an artist, and they have their two cents about the design of the book, and sometimes that creates some difficulties.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or, oh, my wife, my wife or my husband, they're a writer or they're an editor, and they want to have some input into this, and that can get a little sketchy sometimes.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think in those instances you have to give your best um opinion of the situation, but also acknowledging at the end of the day they may come up with a if they're self-publishing, especially, if they come up with a really awful title or a cover design, but they're happy with it, let them have it, you know.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's who's paying the bill.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_05: We do our best to educate, but at the end of the day, it's not our decision, you know.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, and then isn't that what every professional does?
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you have a doctor who you'll go to the doctor and they'll say, I think you need XYZ things, but for whatever reason the patient says, I don't want to do that, or I can't afford that, or that's not what I want to do.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then they ultimately have the right to do whatever they want.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the professional has to give good guidance and advice and counsel.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: Mechanics do that all the time.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: You need to have XYZ repairs done on your car, and people are like, Well, I don't want to have that done, just do this.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the bec the mechanic doesn't take that personally when people refuse to have things that they recommend.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's weird that I think sometimes as creatives and writers, maybe we can learn something from those other industries who don't take this personally.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's just people have their reasons for whatever they do.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they don't make sense to us, right?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: But they're paying the bill, and our job is to create what they've asked us to create as best as we can.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_05: I know, I know.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_05: That's true.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and hopefully it turns out great for everybody.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sometimes it does.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had a situation?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_05: No, I was just gonna say we haven't talked yet about the people who have perished.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um let me come back to that in a second.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I do want to throw this out there.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had a situation where you have followed to the best of your ability the client's directions, book online, um, vision for the book, etc.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then you do a section of the book, or maybe it's a short book and you do the whole book, and the client just hates the book.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like they don't just dislike it, but they are angry, they're irate, they're unhappy.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: And how have you dealt with that?
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_05: Um I will try to revise to whatever they want.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_05: And if if I revise a second time and they still don't like it, I think we're probably just not a good fit.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_05: And I have had that happen with proposals.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, like way, way early on.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_05: I had that happen twice.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_05: My gut says they just didn't want to pay the invoice.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_05: But it could have also genuinely been they did not feel connected to my writing.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_05: Uh although one of them, one of them I think it was more the invoice, but I I wrote the proposal and her feedback was it didn't uh she was a very unemotional person while she was talking.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_05: She'd been through a lot and she didn't emote much.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_05: And so I sort of wrote in her voice, and so it wasn't as emotional as I thought it should have been.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_05: And I, you know, made that comment like, let's add more emotion.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_05: So anyway, she read the first draft of the proposal, and she said, Yeah, this doesn't have uh this is very cold.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_05: This is nothing like me.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, it's exactly like you, it's from your transcript, but but okay, let me revise it.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to say that a million times.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, this is literally what you said.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just ended it up a little bit.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: Verbatim is what you said.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_05: So I revised it and I made it more emotional, and then she didn't like that it was more emotional.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_05: And so we eventually just it's one of those situations where you don't fire and you don't get fired, you just agree to part ways.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_05: Which is fine.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_05: And so I did not get paid for that.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I think that's what she really wanted, but you know, that happens too sometimes.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but you know, just like you used the mechanic example, which I think is brilliant.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_05: Like you're gonna have some mechanics that you really like and some that you don't, for whatever reason.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_05: And that's the way it is with writers.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna have a connection with somebody, and I just won't have that same connection with somebody else, and that's okay.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's such an emotional thing.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the whole book process.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, something else that has really helped me.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: I when I was working on um the Faith of Elvis book, this has been a few years ago.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I loved there's a whole bunch of reasons I love that project.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you were the one that actually connected me with the agent who got me the project, by the way.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: So uh thank you again.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: That was a blast.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: Something that I learned from Billy Stanley, he's Elvis' stepbrother in the book, and I think we put this in the book somewhere, I don't remember where.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: But he was talking about, and I don't I don't remember the context of this, but basically, he said one time Elvis told him that once you understand that everybody is just a little bit insane, and everybody's their own brand of crazy a little bit, that makes dealing with people a lot easier.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there were two or three things that I took away from that project that sort of Elvis, you know, Elvis advice that have really, really stuck with me, and that's one of them.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I have shared that with my son numerous times.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just this idea that if you expect people to be rational and reasonable all the time, you're gonna be sorely disappointed in life.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we're all I feel like we're all just a some more than others.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: But most of us, you know, we're rational most of the time, but we still sort of lose our sense of reason sometimes.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: We get emotional, we get irrational.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: That has really helped me a lot, just in life, but also in in working with clients sometimes.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: I love that sort of emotional, or you're like, what are you talking about, or whatever.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, just because I would react to a such an a situation in this way doesn't mean that somebody else is going to react the same way or feel the same way, or you know, I can't expect people to be exactly like I am.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's true.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um, to kind of wrap up here, I'm I'm curious if you can let's go back to what you mentioned a minute ago about clients expiring in the middle of projects.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love your word choice there.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's a writer's word.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_05: So it's happened twice.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_05: Um just unfortunate situations.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_05: We were early, early in the stages of doing interviews.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_05: So I hadn't even started writing yet for either of these projects.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_05: Both were uh one was a CEO of a company, one was um, I think it was a financial money manager.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_05: In both situations, the books, they're writing legacy memoirs as a gift to their family.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_05: So the family had no idea that the men were writing these books.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_05: And in both instances, um they just didn't show up for calls for more than a week.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I thought, you know, we have these calls scheduled.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_05: And they're they were Zoom calls, but they just didn't show up on the calls.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_05: And in both instances, like they're busy running businesses, doing you know, all these things.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_05: And so I wasn't concerned until the second week.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_05: And in both instances, I Googled and found their O bits, and one had died of cancer and one had a heart attack at work.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_05: And right, just terrible.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_05: And so what I did because I had all of the audio files is I waited a little bit and then I contacted the family and said, Hey, I was working with this person.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_05: We only got through some of the interviews, but I have the audio files.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_05: Would you like them?
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_05: And in, you know, both cases, they were very surprised because they had no idea the book was even being written, but they were very gracious or grateful to receive the audio files to hear, you know, in one instance the dad and in the other instance the husband telling stories about childhood and life in general.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_05: So for that reason, I always keep I have a stack of um hard drives.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_05: And so once every two years or so, I will download all my audio files, put them on a hard drive, put them in a box so that should something like that happen, I have audio files to share.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 57:32
  unknown: Yeah.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: Plus you never know.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you never know when something, I mean, it's probably not un not unheard of for somebody to get in some sort of legal trouble, or you just don't know what can happen.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got those audiophiles or transcripts to go back to.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: I keep all that stuff too because I'm like, I don't know.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a few books I've worked on, they've they've had things where we have had the discussion of should they have should they change the names of people in the book because they're sort of derogatory about some stories or whatever.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you just never know.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_05: I like to give the transcripts to the clients as well because if they ever choose to do ancillary products, they have all of that content.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_05: So they could do a workbook or they could do use it for social media posts, whatever they choose to do.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_05: They have all of that, they've paid for it.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I've never thought about that.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great idea.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, send it to them.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like that.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Alice, this has been a blast.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh thanks for sharing your heart.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for sharing your stories, some great advice.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, as always, you're a source of wisdom and inspiration for so many people, and I appreciate you hopping on hopping on to talk about client work and ghostwriting once again, which I I always love talking about.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I'm happy to anytime.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_05: And remember, kids, don't do drugs.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do mushrooms.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_05: Don't do mushrooms.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh especially uh in the in the under the guise of a ghostwriting project.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_05: Don't do it.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this has been great.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_05: I appreciate it.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for joining me on this episode of The Profitable Writer.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you taking time to listen, and I'm looking forward to the next episode, which features a conversation with Carol Enniking on her book called The Rebalancing Act.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk about how to bounce back when you're feeling overwhelmed and stuck as a writer and as a human.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to seeing you then.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: Before we go, I want to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, The Word Wizard.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you may have written a great book, but it's not ready for publication until it's been in the hands of a great editor.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why my friend Karen Hunsinger, also known as The Word Wizard, is the perfect partner to help you craft the highest quality book possible.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a great editor doesn't just correct grammar and spelling, they also correct wordiness, shifts in tone and voice, overuse of particular words, and they also enhance transitions, clarity, and accuracy.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've worked with Karen many times, and she is your secret weapon for crafting an amazing book.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Visit Karen Hunsinger.com for a free sample edit.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's Karen Hunsinger.com for a free sample edit.