Matt: Welcome back everyone to episode number 32 of Publish & Prosper. And today we're going to be talking about some of the things that you should be thinking about or know before you go into publishing a book. Pretty broad, I know, but I promise we'll whittle it down a little bit. 

Lauren: They can’t all be - 

Matt: I'm also staring at Lauren's bracelets and one of them says Cry Now. I'm not sure if that is something you put on just for the recording of this episode. If I should start crying now or… 

Lauren: You know, it's funny. No one ever really calls me out on this.

Matt: It's literally my job description. 

Lauren: That's true. Ever since my Eras Tour show last year, I have gotten really into making friendship bracelets for things. I think it's a lot of fun, and it's like a cute little way to connect with people and whatever. And I have worn three every day. Like, I literally wear them every day. And I have a whole box full of different ones, and I always pick three different ones every single day. But I've been wearing them every day for the last, like, year and a half. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: And I absolutely pick them based on both color and vibes for the day. 

Matt: So - 

Lauren: And no one has ever called me out for them before. 

Matt: Are all three of them supposed to kind of be read in succession to make sense? Or are they just all three kind of significant of your mood that day or what? 

Lauren: They’re - So they're not - 

Matt: Are you manifesting? 

Lauren: Yeah, no, no, we're not reading them in order, because - 

Matt: Okay

Lauren: They tend to move around on my wrist a little bit too. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: So you don't have to worry about that. But the three that I'm wearing today are Born in 1989 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Because Taylor Swift and I are the same age. 

Matt: Gotcha. 

Lauren: And that's the Taylor Swift reference. You'll Be Fine is also, it's actually from the song Anti Hero, which is the one I have a tattoo of. 

Matt: Gotcha. 

Lauren: And then Cry Now is actually a Fall Out Boy reference.

Matt: Oh. 

Lauren: And my sister and I have matching friendship bracelets that say Cry Now and Cry Later.

Matt: Wow. 

Lauren: But yeah, the You'll Be Fine and Cry Now are definitely... 

Matt: Well, aren't those a little bit contradictory? 

Lauren: Yeah, if I cry now, I'll be fine.

Matt: Ah, okay. 

Lauren: And you know what? Actually, this is unintentional. The Born in 1989 just matched my shirt really well today. But this episode, the day this episode comes out is my birthday. So unintentional, Born in 1989 on my birthday. 

Matt: Gotcha. I'm not going to cry now, but I might cry later after all of that.

Lauren: That's understandable. So you don't want me to make you a bracelet? 

Matt: Can we come back to that?

Lauren: I'm going to make Matt so many friendship bracelets now and he's going to be guilted into wearing them. 

Matt: Oh my God. Man, I totally forgot what you're talking about. What are we talking about?

Lauren: I don't know. 

Matt: Things you should know before you decide to publish your book. And technically some of these things you should probably already be thinking about or spending time on before you start writing a book.

Lauren: Yeah, for sure. If you've been listening to this podcast and you are finally convinced that a book would be a great way for you to connect with an audience or grow your business or share your story or whatever. First of all, congratulations for listening to this insanity when you're not even currently a published author. 

Matt: Congratulations or condolences? 

Lauren: Condolences perhaps is the better word there. 

Matt: Cry now. 

Lauren: Don't cry later. 

Matt: And cry later. 

Lauren: Well, all of the crying. It's always good to get a little cry in every now and then. Hey, depending on what kind of books you're writing, that might be what you're going for. 

Matt: Oh, it's true. 

Lauren: It's fine. But yeah, you know, if this is something that you've been kind of building up towards, and you've been learning more about what we do and what we think you should do. This is maybe step zero we're talking about today. And if this is your first episode of this podcast, welcome, and I'm sorry. 

Matt: Cry now. 

Lauren: Cry now and cry later. 

Matt: Run. You should make a bracelet that just says run. 

Lauren: I'm trying to think if I have no, I don't. 

Matt: See, you're welcome. 

Lauren: I do have one that says Chrissy Wake Up and then I have a matching one that says, I Don't Like This. That's probably the closest it gets. Because I did make some Stranger Things ones for Halloween Horror Nights last year. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: Got all kinds. I got so many different ones. Thanks for noticing. 

[4:20]

Lauren: Anyway. 

Matt: Alright, let’s, let's jump in here. Speaking of noticing, the first one we're going to talk about is really knowing or understanding your content. I guess that's not really relevant to noticing necessarily, but maybe I'll draw a correlation here in a second. 

Lauren: I believe in you. You got this. 

Matt: This one sounds like it's probably obvious, but it's not always obvious. I think some people start out writing a book or with a book project, regardless of whether it's fiction or nonfiction, even though that's part of it, you really should know going into it: What's your strong suit? What is it that you're going to write and why you're going to write it? 

But understanding, are you going to create content from scratch? Ie If it's nonfiction where you're going to be sort of playing around in, have you identified a problem, let's say, within an audience that you've been working within? Have you identified a problem and you want to solve that problem with your writing, with your content? And so from scratch, you're going to create this content that you're going to share with that audience. 

Or conversely, maybe you've been writing about this particular problem or just in general have enough content built up through some blog articles that you've been writing or podcasts you've been doing, so you have the transcripts from them. Are you creating from scratch? Are you using existing content? Are you kind of marrying the two and then turning those into a manuscript? And on the fiction side, understanding and knowing your content should be… 

Lauren: We talk about this a lot. We talk about whether or not you're going to repurpose existing content for nonfiction a lot. We almost never talk about it for fiction. And I think that's a little bit of an oversight on our part. We tend to talk about nonfiction more in general, but it is actually like, very common to repurpose existing fictional work and turn it into a larger book. 

So if it's something, if you've written a short story that you're turning into something into a larger project, if you have written, maybe you have an existing book and there was something in it that kind of like sparked your interest and you want to write a spinoff to that or your fans were like a huge fan of one of the minor characters in your book and you're like, okay, sure. Yeah. Let me write another one that has this character as the main character, we're gonna explore their story for a little while. So you're building off of an existing world. 

Also, you know, this is something that we have to tread very lightly with, but it's getting more and more common. We're seeing it more and more in traditional publishing where fanfiction authors are turning their fanfiction into original fiction and getting them traditionally published as books. It is definitely a successful, viable option for a lot of people, but there's also a lot that you have to do to make sure that you are turning your fanfiction into original fiction in order for it to be legal. There are things you have to do to it to make it identifiable as your own work and not fanfiction. So if that's something that you're interested in doing, you've got a lot of work ahead of you to repurpose that content. 

So it's definitely something that I think we talk about a lot for nonfiction, but it's also very common for fiction authors too. So if you are a fiction author that's considering repurposing content instead of writing it from scratch, you're going to want to know that going into your project. 

Matt: Yeah, no, I think that's a really important distinction to make or correlation of draw between nonfiction and fiction that can apply to both. Because I do think you're right. I think most of the time, either the way it's talked about or the way it's thought about is that fiction is always built from scratch and it's always something new and it's never repurposed. And I think that's a great idea or concept that no, in fact, that's not accurate, that there is a lot of fiction that has been repurposed or draws from previously created content. 

Lauren: Yeah for sure. 

Matt: That's great. Understanding how you relate to your content, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. You know, this is a part of your brand. We've talked on many episodes about building your brand, identifying who you are, having that come through in the way that you brand yourself, your content. So making sure that the content that you're creating relates to who you are, your brand, and your genre - if you're one of those who are very genre specific and you don't tend to go outside of those lines - making sure that you stick closely to that, I think, will keep everything that you do true to your brand. 

Lauren: Yeah. And just talking about the idea of… I don't want you to go into writing. I don't ever want to encourage people to go into writing already thinking about how they're going to sell what they're writing, but also you kind of have to. That's kind of the point is that you have to have that in the back of your mind. And one of the things that you have to keep in mind when you're getting ready to write a book and when you're working on a book is how am I gonna sell this? Not literally how am I gonna sell this, like how am I gonna distribute it or whatever, but like. 

Matt: Well, you gotta think about that too. 

Lauren: Well, I mean, you do. 

Matt: Later. 

Lauren: Yeah, that comes later for sure. 

Matt: Yeah, yep. 

Lauren: But you have to think about what your selling points are, what your story is, what is the thing that's gonna make people say, this book is interesting to me because this author is somebody who has worked in this profession for ten years and they really know what they're talking about and I feel like they definitely like, I'm going to get information from this that I wouldn't get from another book or this person is writing a fiction novel from the identity of somebody that I don't know in person. Like I don't know anyone who identifies this way and I'm going to get a unique viewpoint that is authentic to them because they're sharing a story that is relatable to them. You want to know that you're setting yourself up for something marketable, pretty much. Which is a kind of a dire way to think about writing. But if your goal is to be a published author and not just to write for the sake of writing, you do have to think about that. You have to think about the marketability of your content. 

Matt: Yeah, a hundred percent. I do think a lot of people we've talked to a lot of people that they're their strategy, their approach is, they just jump in and start writing stuff. They don't think about the, the why, the who, the where, any of that. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Um, and that's okay because then you can always go back to some of that stuff, like you said, and incorporate that into an actual book project once you figure out some of these, these things that we're talking about. So writing for the sake of writing is okay, but understand that's really not going to get you anywhere until you, you've answered some of these questions or you know, some of these things that we're talking about and turn those into goals and or benchmarks.

[10:09]

Matt: Which brings us to the next one that we want to talk about is really understanding what your goals are for this particular project. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: This particular book that you're writing. 

Lauren: Yeah. A lot of people will disagree with me on this one - maybe even Matt is one of them - but I think planning is really important. Matt is…is much more of a off the cuff kind of guy in a lot of ways. And I respect that, but it could never be me. I need to have a... 

Matt: I'm so glad we don't have video right now. 

Lauren: I know, your face is great right now. 

Matt: Because I'm not even sure where to go. Because, yeah, I am not a planner, but I do agree with you that for something like this, like you really have to plan it out as best as you can. I'm not a planner. So my version of planning out a book project is going to look completely different than Lauren's version of planning out a book project. But I think what's important is that you have some sort of plan. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Right? Mine, anytime I do actually make a plan, it's always very loosely based. There's a lot of room for fluctuation and pivoting and changes, but that's definitely not going to be what Lauren's plan looks like, and that's okay.

Lauren: Well, yes, but I think that that's still important. You're still trying to figure out… I mean, okay, obviously, Matt and I are gonna have very different plans in place, but we're both gonna know what our target is. And that's where we'll, like, how we choose to get to our end goal is gonna be different for both of us. I'm gonna probably be more meticulous about it and over the top about it. Matt is probably gonna be more… I'm gonna be flexible with it as I'm going along to get me where I'm going. And there are pros and cons to both of those approaches, but the overlap between both of us is that we know where we're going. It's just a matter of how we get there. 

Matt: Yeah. So I like to bowl with the guard rails on and I just throw the ball down the aisle. Whereas Lauren probably steps up, takes aim. She knows which pin she's going to try and roll that ball towards. And I'm just flinging that thing down the aisle and hoping that I hit some of the pins. Matt’s forgetting a very important - or overlooking a very important detail on this. And it's that I have all the athletic grace of a hippo. So I also bowl with guardrail or I think, I think the words are bumpers. 

Matt: Oh yeah, they are bumpers. 

Lauren: And an alley. But I also bowl with bumpers.

Matt: Well, you know all that. 

Lauren: Okay, that's true. 

Matt: I just learned that you're a closet bowler. 

Lauren: Ew. 

Matt: You knew all the terminology, I didn't. 

Lauren: I go bowling on average once a year. 

Matt: Sounds like a professional to me. I feel like I'm getting bowl sharked here.

Lauren: But, so, okay - 

Matt: All right. So terrible analogy, sorry - 

Lauren: Your point - 

Matt: On to the next. 

Lauren: Okay. All right. The point is that you need to know what your goals are. 

Matt: Yes, you do. 

Lauren: In order to be able to plan your approach to achieving those goals. 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: So what do we mean by that? We're talking about… is your goal to monetize your content. Are you a content creator who's been creating content for free and you have a decent following and you'd like to figure out a way to monetize that? Your goal is to publish a book where you can monetize your content, create a new revenue stream. Is your goal to establish yourself as a thought leader or an expert in your community? Is your goal to be a published author? Is your goal to use a book that's going to function as a lead magnet and bring in new clients, new customers, anything like that? You need to know the answer to that question. And it can be more than one. It can be more than one of those things. 

Matt: That’s right, yeah, that's what I was going to say. You can definitely have more than one. 

Lauren: I knew that's where you were going. 

Matt: But it does start to complicate things. But I just wanted people to understand, you can have more than one goal. And in fact, you should have a primary and a secondary goal for every book project. And it's okay if the primary goal of your book projects or a couple of them is to make money. So many authors and creators out there, they're like, oh, you know, that's kind of icky or you shouldn't say that you're just out to make money. No, of course you're out to make money. You got bills to pay. So if your primary goal is to make money, that's fine. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And that's going to inform how you create this next book project. And that's okay. Your secondary goal might be to also use it as a lead magnet to bring in other forms of clients and or money. Or your secondary goal might be to just be able to say you're a published author. And that's okay too. That could be your primary goal. You know, you might just want to be able to go out there in the world and say, hey, I published a book. Who knows? You might actually like it and then start publishing more books. 

Lauren: Yeah. And then your secondary goal is to make some money. 

Matt: That's right. Yeah. I mean, I always liked the goal of making money. So I would always want to put that up there if not first every time. Second.

Lauren: Matt left a bunch of stickers on my desk when I came into work this morning that were all book related stickers. And one of my favorites that I picked out was I work to fund my reading habit. So if your number one goal is to be a published author so that your secondary goal can be to make money to support your reading addiction. Hi, very relatable. 

Matt: I work to fund my Disney trips. 

Lauren: Well, that too.

Matt: That's it. 

Lauren: I mean, that's… my Disney, my Disney addiction is a lot more expensive than my book addiction, so. 

Matt: If my Disney trips ever became free… Disney. If you're listening. I would quit my job. Sorry, Lulu. 

Lauren: I would be right - I'd be right out the door with you. I totally understand. It’s… yeah, okay. 

Matt: There are several episodes we've done that are relevant to each of these goals that we've talked about and Lauren will link to those in the show notes. I'm assuming. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Again, extremely important. You got to know like, what's your goal? Why are you doing this? And that way you can kind of stay on track with what you're writing and the rest of the goals that you create in terms of timeline for getting it done, getting it to the editor, getting the cover done. If you know what your overall primary goal and objective is, it makes all of those other tasks a little easier. 

Lauren: Yeah, Matt just gave me a really good segue into our third thing you should know, but I do just want to underline the point that he just made. A lot of the stuff that we're talking about today, we're obviously doing just like a high level, bird's-eye view of all this stuff. If you want to dig deeper into any of the things that we're talking about right now, I'm gonna list out a whole bunch of references and if you want to talk more about how to use your book as a lead magnet, go listen to this episode. Things like that in the show notes. So go check out the show notes. 

[16:04]

Lauren: But to the point that Matt just made, another thing that you're gonna want to think about while you're getting ready to publish or write a book, is to know your limits. And by that, I mean - I know, I was trying to think of like a more positive way to phrase that, but it just was the easiest catch all. When it comes down to things like, okay, your goal is to publish a book that you can use as a lead magnet for a conference that you're going to be speaking at next year. 

Okay. That's your goal. You have a conference next year that you're going to be speaking at. So you need to have a book written, edited, formatted and published by then. Can you work backwards from that? And can you say the first draft has to be written by this date so that I can get it to an editor to get it back to me by this date so that I can finalize it and get it to a formatter by this date so that I have enough time to get the whole thing done, get proof copies, get everything ready to go and be live with this book at this event? 

Matt: Yeah, what Lauren just described to you is called a work back plan, pretty much how we do things here at Lulu and how a lot of people do things. 

Lauren: And in life. 

Matt: Knowing what your final date is, where something has to be ready and available. And in this particular scenario, what Lauren is describing is those books actually need to be delivered to the event by a certain date. And so you start from there and you work backwards. Okay, if they've got to be delivered to the event this date, how long is the delivery window? Five days. Okay, five days for delivery. Now working back from that, how long is it gonna take to print and bind those books? Five more days. Okay. Ten days on the printing and shipping. Okay. Now to get it to print, you know, I have to publish it. I have to run it through a platform, a system like Lulu. How long does that take? What do I need to do that? Oh, that's simple. That's, that's one day. Okay. Then I got to get the files ready, which means that… so you work back from those times and that'll give you a much more accurate idea of what your timeline is going to be and where those goal markers are. 

Lauren: Yeah. That's also going to give you, depending on your level of planning that you're down to do, whether you're more like me or more like Matt. For me as a writer, I outline everything I write, whether it's - I outline these podcast episodes, I outline every blog post that I write for Lulu. I outline full length novels, short stories, whatever it is that I'm writing for fun. I am a big fan of outlines. 

I have other friends that are writers that don't like outlining at all, but they have daily word count goals and they don't care what they write in any given day, they don't know, they're, you know, they're just going to see where the blank Google Doc takes them and where the narrative takes them. But they write a thousand words every day, you know, and we have different ways of approaching that. But it's still like setting up kind of that same like, I have to have X number of words on a page by this date that are readable and make sense. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Which is another thing in talking about knowing your limits, knowing your audience limits as well, and knowing kind of… so if you know your content, you know what kind of book you're writing, you know who your audience is, which we're going to talk more about in a minute. Knowing how to put that kind of stuff together. If you're writing a romance novel, it probably shouldn't be a thousand pages long. If you're writing sci fi fantasy, you might be able to get away with a thousand pages. If you're writing a business book - Matt's talked about, I don't remember the exact phrasing that you used, but it was something about like an airplane book where it was basically like. 

Matt: Everybody has different names for, I call them airport books or airplane books. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But some people actually literally call them little books or whatever. 

Lauren: Yeah, but like specifically like business books or like marketing books or something that like the intent is that it's short enough that you can read it in a single flight. 

Matt: Yeah, the Harvard Business Journal does that a lot, right? So you'll see these little books in the airport bookstores and it's this little Harvard, and it'll be on one topic.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And what they do is they take a couple of journal entries that they've had over the year for the Harvard Business Journal. And maybe all three of those entries were on emotional intelligence, for example. That's one that I bought. Haven't read it yet, so don't judge me. 

Lauren: Explains a lot. 

Matt: But it's like, it's probably 80 pages, if that. But it's a great book. It's a small book. I can read it on one flight. I've done that with many others, and people love that. So I think that does really speak to understanding, you know, what your limits are, but what your audience's limits are. And all those are relative to the topic you're writing about, any problem you're trying to solve if it's nonfiction or what type of story and experience you're trying to create for a reader if you're doing fiction. Because as a fiction writer, really what you're doing is creating experiences. And so can you do that in 50 pages? Can you do it in 100? I would hope you could do it in a thousand, but that doesn't mean you should. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: So yeah, understanding what those limits are, not just for yourself, but for your audience is really important. 

Lauren: It's also a great way to get to know your audience, which I'm going to stop giving myself segues into the next topic when I'm still talking about this one, but.

Matt: Or you could just go into the next. 

Lauren: Well, I guess we could do that, too. So, okay. All right. Let me - let me take one step backwards then. And I'm going to say another thing to know about your limits is a budget. And that's another reason to kind of plan in advance what you want to do if you're going to be contracting anybody to help you with your book editing, your book formatting, your cover design, anything like that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You know, set a budget in advance, especially if that's something that you have to be conscientious of in life in general - 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Is you need to know, okay, I need to be able to spend X amount of money on the production of my book by the end of this year, so I have to budget that into my everyday finances or my business finances or whatever it is that you're doing that with. 

Matt: Yeah, yeah. 

Lauren: So something to keep in mind as you're working out all the details of your book. 

[21:25]

Lauren: Back to the audience stuff. Number four. 

Matt: Know your audience. 

Lauren: Know your audience. And one way, just based on what we were just talking about right now, to get to know your audience is to talk to them. But find out, you know, depending on what kind of content you're writing, don't hesitate to ask people what they like, to do some market research to figure out what they like. I read a lot of fiction, I talk a lot about romance, so that's the example that I'm gonna pull from here. 

Matt: Cry now. 

Lauren: And cry later when I finish the book I'm reading. 

Matt: Oh my goodness. 

Lauren: Every time. 

Matt: Why would you do that to yourself? Why would you knowingly go into reading books that you just know are gonna make you cry? 

Lauren: Oh, they always make me happy cry. 

Matt: Ew. 

Lauren: It's, I'm a, yeah. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: I like I just love a good happy ending. 

Matt: All right. No, no. Carry on. 

Lauren: Okay. So a lot of people when they get into writing fiction, they assume they have to write novels. And yeah, you do. You do have to write novels in order to, like, get a following and get people in. But that doesn't mean that there also isn't space in the market and especially in fiction and subgenres like romance and stuff like that for novellas, for short stories, and for serial fiction, which is then smaller bite-sized writing. 

So if that's something that you want to experiment with, if that's something that you think that you're gonna turn your repurposed content into serial fiction instead of a lengthier novel, or maybe that's how you're gonna turn your 1,000 page romance novel into ten 100 page novellas instead. 

Matt: Ten graphic novels, that'd be sick. 

Lauren: Well, now you gotta hire, well, unless you are an artist. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Okay, fine, I guess. 

Matt: I'm an artist. 

Lauren: You sure are.

Matt: Man, if I wrote a graphic novel, holy cow. 

Lauren: Would you do your own illustrations?

Matt: I'm just saying if I did, that'd be terrible. I'd have to refund everybody that bought the book.

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Actually, I don't know, man. You see some of the art these kids are really into these days. It's literally like stick figure stuff. 

Lauren: That’s true. 

Matt: Some of the tattoos these kids are getting, even my own kids, literally looks like something I could have done in like ten minutes.

Lauren: I was at the Met on Saturday actually and I was looking at some of the pieces of art that were in there and I was just kind of looking at it and thinking like I feel like I could have seen that on a refrigerator and I wouldn't have thought twice about it. Like as, as somebody's kid's doodle that they colored with markers while watching Bluey. 

Matt: On a separate note I truly, I don't, I don't feel like we have enough graphic novels in the world right now. Like whenever you come across a really cool one like it's just so much cooler than reading like a normal book or… Yeah, I was trying to think of the one I came across the other day and now I can't remember the name and it sucks because - oh, it's some stuff that Johnny Truant is working on and he writes horror, suspense, comedy, horror, stuff like that. I just really enjoy like a good graphic novel. 

Lauren: Graphic novels are awesome and they're also really great - we're getting so far on a tangent right now - graphic novels are great gateway to reading for like reluctant kid readers and also reluctant adult readers. 

Matt: Well, I think it's also a nice break. So like if you were doing, let's say you're writing serial fiction or you're writing a series and you know, this series is going to be at least five or six books, right? A couple hundred pages each, whatever you're going to crank them out every other month or something like that. Maybe break it up halfway through and turn one of them into a graphic novel. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Just to do something different and like give your reader a little bit of a break for a hot minute and then go right back into the other ones. 

Lauren: There is a very popular series. It's a YA series called Heartstopper. It was also turned into a Netflix show. So it's a very, very cute show on Netflix. But the author, the actual like original Heartstopper books, which is now five volumes, they are graphic novels. But then she does have spin-off novels that are actual like full written novels and not graphic novels that are like side characters from the graphic novels get their own like one-off story. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So she does a little bit of both. Where she's got - 

Matt: See that's cool. 

Lauren: And it is very cool. And it's also, it lent itself to TV production very well. There are scenes in the show that are lifted like right off the pages of the graphic novel. And it made it really cool to kind of see that translation and how that worked out. 

Matt: That's awesome. 

Lauren: Yeah. Anyway, back to the episode topic, which is definitely not graphic novels. 

Matt: Well, I think we're talking about knowing your audience. 

Lauren: We are. 

Matt: Yeah. So I was just saying, you know, sometimes your audience might appreciate a little break, 

Lauren: I am in awe of the way that you tied back that. You just tied that loop. Wow, great job.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Great job. So yeah, I guess the point is to know your audience and to get to know them. And after you've written the book, it's too late. 

Matt: Oh, for sure. 

Lauren: Like if you wait until you've written the book to get to know your audience, you are already too late. So you wanna start now. And I mean, realistically, if you're writing a book, You should already know the audience that you're writing the book for. It should be an audience that you're probably an active member of. 

Matt: Yeah. I know that there's a whole sort of thing of where people will sometimes say, don't worry about appeasing a certain audience or look - like just write what's in your heart, just write what you want to write and you'll find an audience. I think to a degree that might be true, but it takes so much longer to go that route. 

If you know that you want to write like what Lauren reads, what is it called cute romance, cheesy romance, cozy romance. 

Lauren: You can just call it romance. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Contemporary romance. 

Matt: Contemporary romance, right? Like if you know you're gonna write something and that's fine, but go find that specific audience that you think will identify with your books, with your content, with your characters, with your arcs, because even within Contemporary Romance or niche down even further, let's say cowboy romance. 

Lauren: Not one that I read just in case anyone was wondering, but go ahead.

Matt: I don't even remember where I came across that. It's a thing.

Lauren: Oh, it is. Yeah, it is. 

Matt: Maybe it's Erin Wright. Somebody we know writes cowboy romance. 

Lauren: Probably.

Matt: I think it's Erin Wright. If it's not, sorry Erin. Anyways, understanding that... 

Lauren: No, you're right. She's a western romance author. 

Matt: Boom. Shout out to Erin Wright. Eh, I lost what I was saying there…

Lauren: Sorry, I interrupted you. 

Matt: That's okay. Oh, I was saying, you can write and then find an audience for it after the fact, but it's just going to take so much longer. Identify that target audience. Write for that target audience. As long as you're staying true to yourself, I think you're fine.

Lauren: I'm actually gonna be a little bit more dire about it than Matt, because I am gonna say that if you build it, they will come is a myth. 

Matt: For sure. 

Lauren: You have to, you have to put some kind of planning or work into connecting with an audience. 

Matt: The only person that ever did that successfully was Walt Disney. 

Lauren: Correct. We could all take notes from that. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: But there are, I mean, there are things and you know, to the point of like, you don't have to write to appease an audience group. That's true. That's very true. But using romance as an example, a novel cannot be called a romance novel if it does not have a happily ever after or happy for now ending. It's just like, no, it’s like -  

Matt: Happy for now, is that really what they call it? 

Lauren: Yes, yes, because we are realistic. 

Matt: You should do a bracelet that says happy for now and then you could do one that says cry later. 

Lauren: I'll get right on that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: It's a great idea. 

Matt: I want some royalties off this. 

Lauren: I'm not selling them. In fact, I'm losing money on them because I'm buying the supplies and then giving them away to people or myself. 

Matt: That's fair. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Maybe Michael's craft should pay me some affiliate money for sending you back there to get more beads. 

Lauren: Now, that is a good idea. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: Yeah, I just, you know, there are hallmarks of any genre that you're writing in, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. If you're writing nonfiction, if you're writing a business book, you can't just like kill somebody in the middle of it.

Matt: Oh man.

Lauren: I thought you'd like that. 

Matt: You just gave me an idea. 

Lauren: I'd like to see where you go with that. 

Matt: Can I marry my love of horror and business? 

Lauren: If there's anybody I know who could, it would be you. 

Matt: Oh, I'm totally doing that. 

Lauren: Challenge issued. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Okay, great. Let's see how it goes. But regardless, the point is get to know your audience, get to know what you need to deliver to them. Also keep in mind things and this is again, you need to think about this as you're writing the book and not after you're writing the book. If you're writing a how-to guide for people that are just getting started in social media marketing, you have to write it to people that don't know what it is you're talking about. 

Like you have to tailor your language. You have to make sure that you're explaining things that might seem really obvious to you, but might not be obvious to somebody who's unfamiliar with Facebook Business Manager. You have to keep in mind who your target demographic is to make sure that you know that you're writing to them.

Matt: 100% it makes sense. I mean, you don't want to write a book titled the beginner's guide to mastering paid ads on social media, but then write all of the content so advanced as if you were speaking to, you know, an executive level social media manager. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Because you just lost your entire target audience that you were identifying in the title. 100%, I mean, we talk about this all the time. We talk about this with the outline of this particular podcast. 

Lauren: That’s true. 

Matt: I mean, completely understanding again, knowing who your target audience is and making sure that while you are staying true to yourself and the content you wanna create, that you are also creating content for that target audience that you've identified. 

Lauren: Yep, absolutely. And we've talked a lot about this in other episodes, so I won't hammer it in too hard here, but. We've talked a lot about authors that are writing in public. We've talked about people that are using their pre-publishing window to start to build a fan base, to start to connect with their audience, to build hype about their books, doing it by getting their audience involved, having them participate in the writing process, stuff like that. Obviously, you can't do that if you're waiting until the book is written to start talking to that audience and start connecting to that audience. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So now is the great time if you’re trying to get to know your audience while you're writing a book. 

Matt: Yeah. And honestly, there's never a bad time to be building an audience. 

Lauren: True. 

Matt: So, you know, whether you've got five people following you on your chosen channels or 500,000, like you should always be thinking about audience building, always, always, always.

Lauren: Yeah. You want people to read that book that you put all this work into, right? 

Matt: I mean, even if you don't even have a book out yet, not a single book, you should be working on building an audience. 

Lauren: Well that too. 

Matt: Yeah. It's much easier to launch your first book to an existing audience than to launch your first book and then try to build an audience around it. Knowing the target audience you're going after doesn't always mean that you don't already have somewhat of an audience built in. So I guess we should have clarified that on the outset. You should always be building an audience of your own, but that doesn't mean you won't be targeting ancillary or extra audiences outside of that. I mean, clearly you're going to be writing for your own audience, but you always want to be targeting other audiences and building your audience.

Lauren: Yeah, especially if we're talking about some of those goals earlier in the episode. Like if your goal is to use your book as a lead magnet, writing a book that's going to be useful for your existing customers or your existing fans is great. But it's not a lead magnet if they're already your existing customers. 

Matt: Yep. Fair enough. That's a retention product at that point. 

Lauren: Exactly. 

Matt: Which is also okay, if that was your intention. 

Lauren: Yeah. But that's why you have to figure out what your goals are before you get started.

[32:28]

Matt: Yep. So if you've gotten this far, that means you're actually putting pen to paper or finger to keyboard. One way or another, you were getting words onto a page. 

Lauren: Congratulations, that's really hard. 

Matt: Yep, or compiling previously written words into a larger document, whatever that might be. One of the most important things now after you've considered all of these things and started getting your content put together is knowing how you're gonna publish it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Who's your publisher? 

Lauren: Well, I hope it's Lulu.com. 

Matt: Yeah, I do too. Please don't go with that other firm, Lauren Vassallo Publishing. They'll have you crying now.

Lauren: And later. 

Matt: And later. 

Lauren: But no, for real, know what your publishing plans are. And not - you don't have to decide immediately. We're not saying right now - 

Matt: You should decide immediately on Lulu. 

Lauren: Okay, fine. Am I going to get fired if I say you don't have to decide immediately? 

Matt: Of course you are!

Lauren: Okay, well then I guess - No. 

Matt: No, no, of course you’re not. 

Lauren: No no no. But no, I mean even, even if you want to start by considering ‘am I going to attempt to go the traditional publishing route, or am I going to go just straight into self-publishing?’ There are plenty of pros and cons to both. We have outlined a lot of them, and I'm sure we will in future episodes as well. If you are going to try traditional publishing, there are a lot of things that you have to know before you can get started with that. If you're going to try self-publishing, there are a lot of things you need to know before you get started with that. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, I didn't really have any notes to add there. You were right.

Lauren: I wasn't sure. 

Matt: No, what I will say is that… you know, some of this will tie back to some of the earlier things we talked about, which is your goals for your book. We talked about how understanding and truly figuring out what your goals are for that particular book project will impact and drive a lot of the decisions you make following that. So if your goal is to use your book as a lead magnet, of course, you're going to self publish because you don't want to wait 13 to 18 months for your book to get out there into the market. And that's if you're even lucky enough to get traditionally published. And that timeline, of course, is probably a little bit generous these days, but.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So yeah, depending on what your goal is, that may also impact what path you decide to take to publish. I think these days, most, if not all roads lead to self publishing in one form or another; or hybrid publishing, whereby you pay a company to help you get some of the stuff done like the editing and cover design and distribution and things. But ultimately, you know, unless your primary goal is to be a traditionally published author, which is a very specific goal. Most roads will lead to self publishing. 

But as Lauren said, understanding the pros and cons of each of those paths to publishing is extremely important. And I was just trying to remember, have we done an episode on path to publishing yet? 

Lauren: Actually, I don't think so. 

Matt: Really? 

Lauren: I think that's on our topic list. Cause I wrote that blog post - 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: That was one of my favorite blog posts that I've written for Lulú actually. While Lauren's looking that up, I don't think we've actually done an episode on it. So maybe we'll do that after this one or the next one or two after this one, but we can tell you this. Lauren has written a nice article about you know your path to publishing and breaking down some of the different paths and things that you should know Jane Friedman has an amazing - it's actually called I think the paths to publishing document you can find out there on the internet. Just search for Jane Friedman paths to publishing. 

Lauren: I’ll link it in the show notes. 

Matt: There you go. You're so helpful.

Lauren: Thanks.

Matt: But truly understanding, you know the pros and cons and the reality of each path depending on what you're trying to accomplish is extremely important.

Lauren: All right. First of all, shout out to us. We've officially been doing this podcast for long enough that the content we've already done is a little bit of a blur. Thank goodness for Google Sheets, which organizes my entire life, both professionally and personally. So we did - episode two was why self-publishing is the best path for today's creators, which I would not necessarily call an episode about the different paths to publishing. 

Matt: Right.

Lauren: But it is probably the closest we have. So if you really want to hear that episode. Also, it's the second one we ever recorded. So - 

Matt: So if we do - 

Lauren: Maybe no. 

Matt: Just I'm going to put a disclaimer out there. If we do a path to publishing episode, it's going to get real spicy. And it’s - 

Lauren: Oh, it is. 

Matt: It's probably going to run a little bit longer than normal, so.

Lauren: I think we should do it. But I also think we should wait until we're doing video. 

Matt: I just want to point out that we've gone 32 episodes now and I've not dropped an F bomb. But I'm telling you, for anybody that knows me, if we do an episode on, on traditional versus self publishing. There's probably some F bombs that are going to be edited out. 

Lauren: For anyone who has been listening to this podcast and does not know Matt. I would have lost a bet about 31 episodes ago if I had bet when the first… And, you know, not just Matt, because I'm a little free wheelin’ and that word, too. But yeah, no, we both and I have never I've never even edited one out. We've never slipped up. But I think you're right. I think that would probably be the episode that would get a little hot. 

Matt: Oh. That one would send me over.

Lauren: So we should do that. Maybe that'll be our first video episode.

Matt: Oh my god. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: We’re gonna get kicked out of here. 

Lauren: Oh, whatever. As long as we don't get banned on YouTube. 

Matt: Oh, I doubt that's gonna happen. Have you seen half the crap on there? 

Lauren: That's true. 

Matt: Or three quarters of it. 

Lauren: That's true. More importantly though, cause we were so close to being on track and done with this episode. When you're figuring out how you want to publish your book, we'll dive further into the different paths in a later episode. And until then you can go read the blog posts that I'll drop in the show notes, or Jane Friedman's article about it as well. 

If you're already pretty sure that you're going the self-publishing or the hybrid publishing route. You know, just to reiterate what Matt said, going back to knowing what your goals are, if you know that you want to be using the book as a lead magnet, then you probably want to be selling direct because you want to be able to get your customer information from when they buy the books from you, which means that you want to make sure that you're choosing a self-publishing platform that has a direct sales option. I wonder which one of those would be the best for you. Might I recommend Lulu.com? 

Matt: Charades. One word, four letters.

Lauren: I'm sure you've gotten it by now. But yeah, know your goals, know what you're interested in, know what you want to do. You know, I mentioned earlier, knowing your budget and whether or not you're going to hire any professionals to help you. Or maybe you want to look into a hybrid publisher that offers services and then you don't have to worry about hiring those people, because instead you're going to work with a hybrid publisher that's going to have a built in editorial team and book formatting team. In which case you need to know what that's going to cost you so you can plan that and budget that into your expenses and stuff like that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So, know your options. Think ahead on this. It's not something that you have to do before you get started writing your book, but it's worth poking around and seeing what's out there. Consider it productive procrastination if you have writer's block one day. Put this on your list of things to do when that blank blinking cursor on the page is really, really getting to you. 

Matt: It's taunting you. 

Lauren: It does that often. 

Matt: Yeah.

[39:18]

Lauren: Anything else you can think of that you want to know or you think people should know?

Matt: No, just on this last point around, you know, understanding how you're going to publish based on your goals and what you're trying to achieve. I think you covered most of it.

Understanding budgetary concerns in a number of different areas, right? Cost to publish if there is any cost for distribution, if there is any. Understanding the sales channels that are available to you per each publisher, you know, and knowing how you want to distribute your content and sell it. Again, understanding if you're going to sell direct for whatever reasons, the best reasons, those types of things. And - 

Lauren: Have we mentioned yet that you should sell direct? 

Matt: No, but thank you. Thank you for that plug. 

Lauren: Every episode, gotta get in there once. 

Matt: Yeah. And then lastly, just understanding, are there any other little sort of things that you want to consider when publishing that are important to you? Or maybe your audience. Things like different formats, you know, some, some publishing self publishing companies and other publishing companies might not deal in audiobooks or might be very limited when it comes to the types of print books they offer those formats and trim sizes. Are you super into the environment and you want to make sure that whoever you're working with uses eco-friendly inks and papers and those types of things? Think about those things too, but understanding just deciding on a publisher is not like a, a five minute thing. You should really do your homework. I think that's really important for people to understand. 

Lauren: Yeah, I agree. 

Matt: Yep. I think those are the major things that you should be thinking about as you're beginning to write a book or starting a new book project, especially if this is your first or one of your first, you know, you're still in your first couple. Understanding all of these things will obviously lead to a more successful book launch as well as sustained sales. I mean, that's one of the biggest things we see is that people do a lot of great work upfront, but because they don't necessarily understand a lot of these things we just talked about, or they haven't thought about it, or put those sort of into their strategy, the minute they launched the book the sales they hit the ceiling for like a week, and then they just completely die. And so a lot of that is to just or speaks to not having some of these things sort of planned out well or or a strategy built around some of these things. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I think that's why these are important because we, we tend to try and focus on things that will help you market and sell your books more and so having a lot of these things thought out, strategized, and put in place will help you market and sell more of your books. 

Lauren: See you really are a planner. 

Matt: Ugh. I hate it. And all right. That's all I got. 

Lauren: Wow. All right. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That was easy. 

Matt: I'm gonna go cry now. 

Lauren: I'm gonna go cry later. 

Matt: It's up to you. It's your life. 

Lauren: I hope you're not crying now. After listening to this. 

Matt: You're talking to our readers now, right? Or, our listeners. 

Lauren: I’m talking to our listeners. 

Matt: Heh. Readers. 

Lauren: Although I mean, there are - you can read the transcripts of all these episodes if you want to. 

Matt: Good Lord, that's a whole ‘nother realm of self-torture. 

Lauren: It sure is. I do it every week. But no, if you are listening, I hope you're not crying. Sorry if you are. If you want to cry, I can give you some great recommendations. But that's for later. In the meantime, thank you for listening. If anybody has any questions, comments, concerns, episode topic ideas, you can always reach out to us on Lulu's social media, on our YouTube channel, you can email us at podcast@lulu.com. 

As we've been teasing doing these video episodes, which we're working on getting set up to do that, I think it would be really fun to do like a mailbag episode, or like an ask me anything kind of thing - 

Matt: Oh boy. 

Lauren: Where people can email us questions. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So if you have any questions that you're like I don't know if this would be like a whole episode topic, but I would love to maybe get like a five minute answer to this question - actually let's be realistic, with me and Matt it’s gonna be anywhere between a five minute answer and a fifteen minute answer. But if you have anything that you would love to hear us answer in a mailbag episode on video, please send us an email, leave us a comment somewhere - podcast@lulu.com - and we'd be really happy to hear from you. Thanks for listening.