Latest / The Daily Writer / Vellum Co-Founder Brad West on Creating Beautiful Books

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Vellum Co-Founder Brad West on Creating Beautiful Books · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyRiderLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have amazing opportunities to create, publish, and distribute our self-published books.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the greatest tools created for self-publishers in recent years is the Vellum app, which is software that helps you create ebooks and print books that look stunning.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've been a heavy Vellum user for years and I absolutely love it.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most fun apps that I have on my computer.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I was really excited to chat with one of the co-creators, Mr.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Brad West.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Brad has been in the world of indie publishing for over 10 years, and before that, he was a senior software developer at Pixar Animation Studios.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, Brad shares the fascinating story of how and why he and his co-creators developed the Vellum app.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: He also shares his thoughts on the future of self-publishing.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: This was a really wide-ranging conversation touching on a lot of aspects of writing, software development, business, and a lot more.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope you enjoyed as much as I did.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my conversation with Brad West.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Brad, thanks for joining on the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I am so thrilled that I get to have you on the show.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can, in my world, you're kind of a celebrity.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're one of the guys behind Vellum.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel really honored to get to talk with you.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, it's great to talk to you.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is kind of interesting, and I don't know if you've had this experience before, Brad, where there's a product or a tool or an app that you use a lot, and then you talk to the people behind it, and it's kind of like, whoa, like you come to the realization that, oh, people have actually created this.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't just something that magically came from the ether of the universe.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people actually developed this and created it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that this is kind of cool to people to have this conversation for sure.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's you know, especially when you get into something that is, you know, uh self self-publishing, any publishing is always getting bigger, but it is still kind of a niche.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: So um it is, I I think it's great when you find uh people who have, you know, come across some problem and and try to develop a solution.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, that's where we came from, but we, you know, when we go to conferences, we love talking to other people who have who have been in the same boat and and you know help found some great solution that helps a lot of authors, you know, get their books out there.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd love to dive into the story of how you develop this because I know there's a lot of lessons here for authors, entrepreneurs, anybody who's really creating anything.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then I do want to get into some of the you know features and and more details of Vellum itself, but I'm super curious about how you actually developed this from the beginning.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've been a Vellum user for several years, but I don't think I used it from the very, very beginning, although it's probably pretty close.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious if you can go into that story.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that was around um 10 years ago that we we started this.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um really 10 years.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so previous to this, um, my uh partner Brad Andleman, um, he and I both worked at uh Pixar Animation Studios.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: We worked there for about 15 years, and both of us were at a point where we were just ready to to try something else.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think you know, a lot of people listening find themselves in a similar position.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we we didn't at the time, you know, we're both readers, we both like design.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, we didn't have um self-publishing in mind.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, this is what we're gonna go.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: We we but we did want to find something where you know we could give a really focused, specialized solution.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's particularly a place where we felt that you know a lot of things sucked, frankly.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's true that uh and at the time um my wife uh was really big into reading self-published books, and and she, you know, I got her a Kindle and I I figured she would, you know, buy a book every three months or so.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I look at the Kindle, and there's like hundreds of books on there.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how what is this?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: How you know what's going on here?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I obviously this is you know, when self-publishing was kind of new to me and she was getting a lot of you know, free books and 99 cent books and you know, from a lot of authors that were either very about to become bigger, yeah.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think she had an Amanda Hawkey book or something like that.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, um she I was talking to her about this and she said, Yeah, I'm I'm I'm really waiting for the third book in the series, but um she stuck on formatting.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, What's formatting?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, uh, I don't know, you know, anyway.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: We looked into that, and it was the kind of thing that um Brad and I got some stuff on a whiteboard and we just kept digging.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the more we found, the more it was like, uh this is really hard, you know, especially for someone who is trying to do something on their own and thinking about all these different things.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: We we kind of walked through the process of how to just get a book, you know, from a word file onto a candle and and have it look good.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we found it was just really difficult.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I what we often found is once people got their books on there, they're like, okay, I'm done.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's it, you know?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and yeah, it would look kind of terrible, but they're like, I I don't care.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: I need to get it out there.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we really found we really thought that this was something where we can make something that's easy to use, hopefully, and can get something in there that can really help authors get something that looks professional.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I there are a lot of authors out there who who know design and like design, but there are a lot of authors who, you know, just they've got so many things on their plate and getting into little specifics on of how much you indent and where you indent, like it just really seemed like, oh, this is the kind of thing that we can build into software and have it be really easy and have people see their book and get really excited about it and kind of flip it on its head rather than being this process that people totally dread and it's a mystery.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Have it be something that's like very obvious and very easy.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the inspiration.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we launched that in late 2013.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it only did ebooks at the time.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't do images.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you you asked, mentioned what it's like to be an entrepreneur.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is the idea of a minimum valuable, uh minimum viable product, you know, getting something out there that that, you know, it wasn't going to replace InDesign or you know, any of these tools, but like, is it something out there that people could use and get excited about?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when people started using it, they had plenty of suggestions of what to do in the future, but we they were really excited about it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and so that's kind of what has just carried us since as we've added more features and added stuff like print print design and kept going further.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is is just you know, trying to maintain one, that excitement, and two, just have it be simple to use and have it be, you know, as foolproof as possible.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like Vellum has a really passionate user community.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember so I started using it back in back in the days before you launched the print capability.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, oh, it would be and I would hear rumors, you know, on message I would see rumors on message boards or something.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're kind of like anxiously awaiting, thinking, okay, they're gonna do print at some point.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be so excited.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was really, really cool that okay, now we can format an actual print.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's really fun to be a part of a community like that where people are just like waiting to give you their money, they're like, yeah, you know, they just want to come and dump a wheelbarrow full of cash on your doorstep to give you something.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is that like on the other side of that, where you have a really engaged community of people who love your product, they have all these ideas.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: How do you actually sort through all those and and deal with that passion?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it it's tough.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, there's a lot of ideas out there.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Print was print was the kind of thing that like, you know, when we first did Vellum, the tone at the time was print is dead.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Ebooks are the future.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so, you know, and our emphasis was okay, if if ebooks are the future, let's let's make them look nice.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Let's not forget everything that we learned designing print books.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then and then we had that that interest of like doing print.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and we tried to stay as quiet as possible on our end because we to be honest, we just didn't know if it could be done.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: We were, you know, to there's so many little details in print.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we didn't know if we were going to be able to find that you know sweet solution where, okay, you got the right end amount of controls, but you don't have to deal with every single little detail.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it took us, it took us a long time and a few rounds to to get it right.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was it was really exciting when we were able to ship that.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we've we've since fine-tuned that and added some options, but the overall idea of of you know, our goal was our ideal goal, and not everyone does this, but like if you would have set everything up in an ebook, you could press the checkbox for print and you've got a paperback edition.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And there's always more you can do from that, but that was our baseline of if you did that, you'd get something that looked good and was reasonable, and something you know, far from what people are used to who've done it in Word or something like that.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that going forward, that's we try to keep that same mindset of you know, we we want to listen to people and we want to hear their ideas.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make sure it actually works, you know, works in a way that makes sense for ebook and and makes sense for print.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we want to be able to have time to um get it wrong internally.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and that way we, you know, we've we do this every time, you know, we get some feature ready and we're like, ah, this isn't quite right, and and let's tear it down and and do it again and get it out there in a way that just you know keep maintains that, you know, give people the flexibility when they want it, but doesn't um hit the user with a thousand different options when they're starting.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I feel like Vellum strikes the perfect balance between that.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and so how how many months was it ago, or maybe it was a year ago, where you you introduced kind of a whole nother set of um print options.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was like it felt to me like a really substantial upgrade.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was I can't remember how long ago that was.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was a year ago that we launched 3.0.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we actually started that project um in 2019.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and you know, things happened in 2020 and 2021 that that that a little something happened.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we ended up um uh putting some things on hold, and we realized there were pieces that we wanted to get straight, get together first before we launched that.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: So a big feature in in 3.0 was this idea of doing full bleed um heading backgrounds and which I love, yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's been it's really like it really wows us um when we when we get to see these books that that people have created with these backgrounds.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: It just you know, and we talk to people and they're like, oh, you know, now I've got something that like looks better than traditionally published books.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it, I mean, that just makes us so excited.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, there's a lot of pieces there to get right.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so we you know introduced full bleed on its own as a feature, and then we staged in, we completely replaced our print engine to use a high grade professional quality, get straight through Ingram Spark and totally be validated.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: We introduced that before 3.0.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we put laid these uh pieces in, and then you know, once we were confident in that we were able to ship 3.0, which had a ton of new styles and then those backgrounds that that people have been just doing amazing things with.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is uh a question uh from a person, me namely, who is a non-techie, non-coder person.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm genuinely curious about this.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever you're releasing a new version of a product, what determines whether it is, let's say like 2.4, 2.5 versus a 3.0?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is there some kind of industry standard demarcation where you're gonna go up like a whole nother level as opposed to an incremental thing?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's no like hard and fast thing, but you know, people when they hear 3.0, they expect yeah, yeah.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we try to, you know, and we come up with these crazy rules internally, like okay, we we shouldn't call this well, this is a big jump, so let's call this 2.5 instead of 2.4, and you know, right, right.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know, if if um if we required people to purchase at every upgrade, which some software does, then that's when that comes into play.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: They say 3.0.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um we don't do that.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: We so three to 3.0 was a free upgrade, but it was just you know, there's so much in there.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um we also you know, some things changed a little bit.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: We had to make sure that files made with 3.0 would, you know, you couldn't load that in 2.0.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's mainly a communication to help communicate, hey, there's a lot in here, this is a big change.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, it's also help, I think, people who are about to publish a book and you know, and they get a prompt to update to 3.0, like, hey, this is gonna be a big change, you know.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you're about to publish something, maybe you want to wait a week or something like that.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: So just doesn't make sense.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Help communicate the this the scope of the change.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when you left, um, when you Brad left Pixar, did you so you knew you were going to do this when you left, or did you leave and then you decided to develop No, it was afterwards.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um we just we just decided, you know, we had some ideas.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: We knew we knew we didn't want to get into games or something like that.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: We knew we wanted to help um people with their work.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, other ideas we you know, we're like, oh, you know, are there architects or contractors or you know, are there tools we could develop for them?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it was definitely wanted to create something uh professional.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but as for you know, for authors, no, we had we had we had no idea.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was but it was one of those things we had it on the whiteboard and we just kind of kept coming back to it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of, you know, just felt like, oh, you know, this this really is a good match for our interests and our skills.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's how we ended up in the self-publishing world.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So again, another kind of geeky technical question.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you're going to develop an app like this, how do you do that technically?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is there some and I feel like I'm asking a really dumb question.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: But is there some other kind of program or app or computer language that you use to code all this?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then it kind of spits it out, and then you have this app that you can then upload to the app store.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is that how kind of how that works?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, basically.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it depends on what kind of app you're you're developing.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you're developing something like a web app, that's a very different set of technologies and how that's deployed and how people use that versus something like Vellum, which you know runs natively on your Mac.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um so when you're developing Mac software, the standard is is a program called Xcode that ships with Apple.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just designed for um making apps for Mac or for iOS or for any of the Apple platforms.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you can you can use a variety of languages, but things work best when you work with those languages languages designed for that platform.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: That totally makes sense.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: See, now you've got me curious.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should develop an app someday.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have absolutely no coding skill at all.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So probably that's not gonna happen.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's uh you know, the it's continually gets easier and easier.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and there, you know, that's kind of the the standard way, but there are also like cool toolkits that are you know a little bit more um intro-oriented that help you put together if you have got a like a very uh common style of app, like you know, a restaurant or something like that, there are tools out there that can help you make an app specifically designed for that purpose.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: But a whole new, you know, I'm designing this for thing, then you're getting into Xcode and that stuff.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: But again, that's specific for designing something that you know is designed for Mac or iOS.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I love about how you have designed this app, and I know this was part of it, at least I think it was part of it from the beginning, is uh I forget the name of the feature.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's where you make changes in the kind of the main window and then you immediately see them and what they're gonna look like in print.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Was that part of it from the very beginning?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because that is the most genius feature ever.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that we just really wanted to just have that, and because and that went from a we want to just turn it on its head, you know.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: The big complaint that we would see is they'd set several uh something up in Word, and they would have no idea how that would actually appear right in the final thing.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was a big thing.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and from our perspective, our original perspective, was you know, solve that problem, solve the mystery, make it very clear, make it very transparent.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: The um, and so, you know, for print, it will be pretty much exactly what the printed page will will look like.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: In ebooks, it's hard to get exactly right um because um like Amazon does all sorts of transformations, but we're gonna get you like 90% there where you can get it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that was the goal.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: The unintended feature that we ended up with is kind of just excitement of seeing that.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: We just hear this over and over again that oh, it's just like so exciting to see.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's fun to play with, you know.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we hear from authors who are actually writing in Vellum.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we we worried that, oh, you know, is that preview going to be distracting if you're trying to write?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we make sure that you can hide that if you want to.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: But we hear from a lot of authors like, no, that's my favorite part.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: It just makes everything feel real to just see like it actually look like a book as I'm writing, and it doesn't feel as much like I'm writing a college essay.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually writing a book.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's been a fun surprise feature.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we and we try to make sure that like we can still deliver that excitement.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: It I was I was surprised.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this has been a few months ago.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing some editing for a client book, and I didn't realize this is such an obvious thing, but I had never had an occasion to use it before.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize that you could export your Vellum book into I don't does it export into doc or is it uh right now uh it's or is it RTF?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: So right now it's a format called RTF, which sounds like you're familiar with.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, anyone else?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a really um vendor neutral file format.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you can open pretty much anything, and that's why we chose that.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we've gotten a lot of requests from people, a lot of people who are writing in Vellum.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, hey, can I and so you could take that RTF and you could just open that in Word.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we've gotten a lot of requests of like, hey, I just want to open it in Word.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that's something we're um looking at for a future version of just export straight to a docx and and open that in Word.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you've written something in Vellum, but you still need to send it out to an editor who is only going to work in Word, you can get something off to them.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was it was a great feature.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea it was there because I just I never used it before, but uh, I was kind of making edits in his book and I was also doing the formatting, so I just kind of blended the two into just one step.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so awesome.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because he doesn't have Vellum and I think he's a PC user.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, that was fantastic.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that I'll that I'm really curious about.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So in in leading this company, you know, uh I realized that part of what you have to do is not only make a good product for what people need now, but you're trying to in some ways anticipate where, you know, it's like Wayne Gresky used to talk about, he's he skates to where the puck is gonna be.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: So as you try to think about where self-publishing is going to be in the next two, three, or five years, what are some of the things that you and the Vellum team anticipate might be happening in the self-publishing world?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, uh we get this question sometimes.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and one thing that we start with is um things that we are less confident about.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And because when anytime there's some new technology, uh people ask, oh, are our books gonna move there?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Are books gonna move to VR?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are books gonna and right for the most part, we feel like no, book books work pretty well, you know.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um so and I think it's a reasonable question given that ebooks came along.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, that is a new way to read books, even though the the whole mental model and how The process of reading books is pretty similar.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: It is different.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of those things that people sometimes forget that changed is it wasn't just how you read books, but how you get those books.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that that was, you know, e-readers existed before the Kindle, but what really made the Kindle work is it was connected to Amazon and how, you know, and so I I feel like there's there's room in in both of these realms.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, we're slowly maybe moving away from e-ink Kindles and more to our phones, you know, the devices are changing.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I what I hear um happening a lot is some people just realizing, oh, you know, if they're reading on their phone, um why am I why am I making them go to Amazon to get my book?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't work for everyone.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you're if you're brand new starting out, you're probably not going to get a lot of people just randomly coming to your website.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but people who have established a readership and have a great relationship, we're hearing from people who are starting to sell from their website.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we've, you know, we're good friends with people at BookFunnel.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they've really helped uh set up some tools that make that easier.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so for us, it's like, okay, um, let's just make sure that our our books work in that way too.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, and make sure that, well, you yeah, you may not be going to Amazon, but you may just be downloading it from a website.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure that works.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's something that you know it doesn't affect us that much, but we are um excited just kind of watching that happen and watching authors continue to take more control over how they're selling the book, how they're uh relating to their readership.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know, that's that's the whole idea is having that connection.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: So is the stronger that connection gets, I I that can only be better for both authors and readers.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like there's there's an even greater interest these days in creating really nice-looking print books than there was even 10 years ago because the technology is better?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, 10 years ago we we thought, you know, I said, you know, that people thought print was dead.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: You five years ago when we were looking into making print, the the biggest concern was, hey, these print books, they're not gonna turn a profit for me.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing this because I want to, you know, fill out my listing and I want to have something on my bookshelf.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: But and that was a big motivation for us, is like, okay, you know, it needs to be as simple as possible because it's too easy to say no to print.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um you've got to have like some good reason to do it.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because for most authors, there's always exceptions.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sales is not going to be the primary reason.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And what's been exciting in the last couple of years is people really stepping up uh what print looks like.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we've been seeing people, you know, speaking of both stepping that up and having relations, uh better relationship with readers, people um authors creating you know special editions of their books, limited editions, sold straight to readers, um, you know, sometimes on platforms like Kickstarter.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, that's an exciting way to connect with readers.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: But then the things that authors can do, you know, using some of those heading background options that we had in Vellum, going in and doing cool covers, um, really just taking the time um to produce something that, you know, it's called special edition for a reason, just something that just feels special.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's been uh really exciting to see.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: We um we kind of when we find one of these, we'll email an author and say, hey, where you know, where can I buy one?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's I want to put one of these on our bookshelf.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when we get those, it's just like so exciting to see.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: One, it's just cool to see like, oh man, they used our software to make this cool book.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's just so exciting.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're just excited for them.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and then you see, you know, I'll go on to some of these books that have Kickstarters and you see how excited those readers are to, you know, a lot of times it's someone, uh, an author who's built a readership over several years, and to see these readers be like so passionate about um those characters or those stories and seeing just something that's just really amazing, like really going above and beyond what you can find, even like going again beyond traditional publishing, producing just uh we've seen like super cool uh uh reversible covers and putting gold foil on the on the page edges.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just it's just great.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, again, we got into this because we wanted to preserve what's great about print, and it's been so cool to see just these beautiful pieces of art that are also you know readers' favorite stories.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do you hear from Vellum users who are working a lot with custom printers or with with printers other than Amazon and Ingram?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's still a very small minority, but um especially when you're dealing with something like Kickstarter, where you're not you're not tied to print on demand.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Print on demand is fantastic, and no one wants to go back to having a garage full of unsold books.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: But for cases, I mean Kickstarter is a great way where you can say, Oh, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna have a garage full of books, but it's gonna be for one month, and because they all have uh people's names on it.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so when you have that setup, when you're like, okay, I know I need to print 100 books or 200 books or or something like that, you do have more options.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so we do hear from some people who've printed um, I'm blanking on their name right there.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's an outfit in um the UK that has become popular for doing that.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's you know, printers in China that typically do traditionally publish, but can do a relatively low run, and you're not gonna have the same like two-day turnaround, but you can have a different economy of scale if you can wait that out, or you can do different options for your printing.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: People, you know, want to get into like if you have a box set having a nice slip case for that, you know, right?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's not something that KDP can do.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it again, it's still, you know, I would not advise anyone brand new to self-publishing to go down that road because it's a rabbit hole and it can take a lot of time.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: But when you really, you know, are at a point where you have the time to invest in something like that, it it's cool how many options are out there.
• 28:59
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I I'm feeling the pain.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had a situation a few months ago, wrote a book for my son for his 18th birthday back in April, and I wanted to do a hardback edition of it.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that um Amazon or Ingram do not do five by seven hardbacks with cream colored paper.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted specifically that size, and uh Amazon did a great job with you know, just the paperback, but I wanted a hardback with a local printer here in St.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Louis.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Worked with uh my designer, format person, went through all the rig and roll of the specs and all the communication.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was a big elaborate process.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was really surprised.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Got ready to do the job, and then come to find out they they couldn't get the right uh weight of paper.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they they kept asking, well, can you go with like 80-pound paper?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, it's way too thick, that's not gonna work, uh-huh.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just because of shipping issues.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, there's so many things that can get messed up in the printing process.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I'm so grateful for Amazon.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but they can't do everything.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think it's it's a fun thing to to to explore when you're ready and willing to to take on all of those things.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because there's always gonna be something like that when you're when you're diverting from uh an easy way, but it's it is really cool that um options like KDP and Ingro Spark are out there.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Totally, totally.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one final question here before we start to wrap this up, Brad.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Any any little hints you can give us about some things you may be planning for Vellum in the future or directions you might go or features we might be able to expect.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you mentioned a couple so far, but anything else you might want to add about what's in store for Vellum in the next few years?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh by the time this goes out, we'll have announced uh a new feature that um we're excited about.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh let's see.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: It will be you said December or something.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: This kind of so yeah, we're having a new feature.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: It will be um help people with um integrating other forms of communication into their books.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'll leave it at that.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's um but in thinking of both uh the modern world and the world of the past.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um again, one of those things that we've wanted to do for a while, but um getting all the pieces to make sure it works nice.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the other thing that we're just continuing to look into is you know, we designed Vellum to be a formatting platform.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: We really, you know, most of the people we talk to, they had their book in Word, and so we designed it for that.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: We keep hearing from people like, you know what?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: I like writing in Vell.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's not everyone.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, a lot of people have very specific features in Word or you know, Scrivener, we've we've developed a great workflow for working with Scrivener.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: But every once in a while we we hear from an author who she's like, you know, we'll talk to one at uh the Nink conference last week and said she's just loves just that experience.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're continuing to listen to people like that and and think about ways that we can make that easier.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um because you know, and a lot of people is like, I don't want, I don't want too many things.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: I use Vellum because it's it's a clean, simple writing experience, but it'll be something like, oh, I I you know I need to send something to my editor, so how can I make that better?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we are looking at things like that.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just so so amazed at what you've accomplished with Vellum.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I it was one of the apps that I truly do really enjoy using.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Scriven is another one, it really does make people's lives easier, which is really what technology is supposed to do in the first place.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So congrats for doing this.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know Scrivener is another example of you know Keith Blount, the develop main developer there, you know, started as a writer and and scratched a niche and and has really created something.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and we have a great relationship with Keith.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: We find ourselves in similar boat with a lot of things, and um, it's great to see what everyone likes about Scrivner and and um he's very enthusiastic and we try to keep that enthusiasm and and really that's our goal is we want to make something that is enjoyable to use um and feels easy and feels painless and takes a lot of the mystery out of out of what has been a pretty mysterious thing.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you've done a tremendous job with this, and I just and I know you hear this all the time, but I just I'm so glad that that you guys took the leap to create this tool because it it has changed self-publishing it uh dramatically.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure if you anticipated this, you know, 10 years ago when you began this journey, but it's such a cool platform.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really a platform, I guess, but it's such a cool tool that writers can use to get their stuff out there.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's plus it's fun, it just makes it fun to do formatting, which nobody ever thought anybody would do 10 years ago.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's great to hear.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: We we do we do hear that sometimes, and uh uh it's it's nothing makes us happier than than than something like people saying that, like, oh, this is fun.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was our goal, and it's it's easier said than done, but um we're I I appreciate you saying that.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Brad, thanks for being on the show.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've really enjoyed this conversation.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate what you do so much, and um, yeah, thanks for taking the time to do this.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was fun.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I hope this conversation has inspired you to try the Vellum app if you were looking for a great tool for self-publishing.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're a PC user, I'm so sorry to say you're out of luck because this is only for Mac.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: But um, there are other tools that you can use for PC.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: For Mac, I for Mac users, I especially encourage you to give Vellum a try.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is so much fun to use and you can have so much control over how you want the formatting to look for your print books and ebooks.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really a lot of fun if you want to do that yourself.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you can hire people to do that, but I know some people like to do that themselves, so make sure and give Vellum a try.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Before I wrap up today's episode, I want to let you know that this was brought to you by the Daily Rider Club.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Are you looking for a community of enthusiastic and success-minded writers who are launching books and growing their writing business?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: If so, the Daily Rider Club is the missing piece that you've been searching for.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Members have access to weekly writing sprints and live calls with expert teaching, an active online community, access to retreats and in-person events, and a clear pathway for growing your writing platform and business.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure and check it out at dailyriderclub.com.