No Magic Formula For Marketing

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Well, I think it's different for every author, is part of the thing I would say you. So there's there's no one, two, three formula, even in the book marketing area, that you need to do. Part of the journey that all of us are on with our books is to find that best place for us. That's why my friend John Kramer has this book, 101 Ways to Market Your Book. I mean, there's a lot of different ways out there. So look at the different ways. Try it a little bit, see if it works for you. If it doesn't, stop it.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Hi

Meet Terry Whalon And His Work

SPEAKER_01 0:42

friends. This is Read and Write with Natasha Podcast. My name is Natasha Tines, and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel, I talk about the writing life, review books, and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journal. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me author and industry legend, Terry Wallen, who has worked both sides of the editorial desk as an editor and a writer. He worked as a magazine editor, and his magazine work has appeared in more than 50 publications. He's a former literary agent and an acquisition editor at Morgan James Publishing. He has written more than 60 books. Several of his books sold over 100,000 copies. Wow. And he has an innovative online training course to help authors effectively connect with literary agents and editors called Write a Book Proposal. His latest book is 10 Publishing Myths. Wow, Terry, we have a lot to discuss. The topics that you discuss like perfect for this podcast. So I'm really excited. So,

How A Book Hit 100,000 Sales

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Terry, I think my first question for you is how did you sell over 100,000 copies? What is your secret?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Well, I don't know that there is any secret, uh, Natasha. It's basically the fact that I wrote a book with a co-author who is it's the foundation book for this, for this particular organization called First Place. And it's a diet book, actually, that I wrote. People buy diet books in general in January. You know, they want to, they make New Year's resolutions, want to lose weight, all that kind of stuff. So I had this publisher approach me to help this diet book get finalized and everything. And so I said, Well, I've got to go to Houston to meet my co-author, and they said, fine. So I flew down there, met with Carol Lewis. I told her my agenda was simple. I was there to collect the rest of the book, chapters 10 through 20, something like that. I walk into this meeting with her, Natasha, and she looks at me and she says, 10 through 20, what are we talking about? She had never seen the outline of the book. She had no idea what we were doing. And I thought, I am in big trouble here because I'm supposed to deliver a manuscript to this publisher by the end of the month, and you don't even know what the outline of the book is. And so thankfully, she sent me home with transcribed messages, all kinds of stuff. And so I wrote that book, 48,000 words, in about 14 days. I finished two weeks early. I got two weeks of bonus for that book. And because this book, it's called First Place, was the foundation book for this ministry. That's why it sold 100,000 copies. Now I was a hired gun for the publisher. So my name's on the cover of all these books, but I haven't been paid for it since I wrote it over 20 years ago because of the way that part of the system works. So we all learn something from each book we do, and that's some of the lessons I learned from writing that book.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Oh, wow. Okay.

The Publishing Myths Authors Believe

SPEAKER_01 4:13

So I'm actually intrigued to about your latest book, The 10 Publishing Myths. What are these myths? And how do how can we bust these myths? So she can tell me about all these myths.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Yeah, I wrote this book because now, as an acquisitions editor, I work with a lot of authors and I ask them about what kind of expectations and dreams they have for their book. And what I find is many of those things they tell me are completely unrealistic. Because, like, like the very first one is that I will make a lot of money. Everybody assumes they're going to make money. I don't care whether self-publishing or whether with a big five publisher, they all assume they're going to make money. Well, that's not necessarily true because booksellers, what I've learned about publishing is that publishers can make really pretty books. They can get them in the bookstore. But if the author isn't doing anything to be telling people about their book, those books don't move out of the bookstore into readers' hands. So that's really the hard lesson that I've learned through the years is that as an author, I have to be doing something to be telling people about my book. Otherwise, it's not going to sell.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

What other myths? Well, and so what so what I've done with this book is I've tried to help authors have realistic expectations about what's going to happen with their book. Like, like on the money issue, for example, writing a book is not so that you're going to make a lot of money, but it gives you authority. It opens up speaking doors. There's all kinds of opportunities that open up for you through this book. So what I tried to do at the end of every chapter, I had what I call a myth buster action, something that the reader could actually do for their book to help them along the way. Because, like, you know, I talk to authors all the time. They say, well, my audience is over on Facebook, or my audience is on LinkedIn. Well, don't get me wrong, those are good platforms, but I don't own LinkedIn and I don't control Facebook. Matter of fact, I could get kicked off of there tomorrow, knowingly or unknowingly, I could violate the terms and get kicked off. So you want to build your audience, not on a rented platform, but on a platform that you have control over, your own blog, your own newsletter, your own website. Those are things that you can control. And so I really try to give practical information throughout this book, uh, like that, so that people can actually actually do something.

Building An Audience With Consistency

SPEAKER_01 6:56

So Teddy, you have a lot of you have a big audience, and I'm curious how did you manage to build that big big audience? And if you can tell me, if you can just throw some numbers about your audience, just to know how big your audience is, and how did you manage to build that audience? Because one of the things that when I talk to authors is like, oh, I don't know how to build an audience. I post stuff on social media, I get uh likes here and there, but there's just nothing. So if you can just guide us of how you built that audience.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, you know, that's a that's a great question, Natasha. Part of part of the audience building process is to be doing something. And so I I have over 170,000 followers on X, Twitter, I have 19,500 connections on LinkedIn, I have over 4,900 Facebook friends, I have over 1,800 entries in my blog. I mean, they say there's over six, there, there could be as many as 600 million blogs out there. Uh, I found an article about a year ago that listed the top 27 content producers out there. My name was one of the top 27. And it's not that I'm doing anything magical here, but for since 2004, I've been blogging every week. I blog once a week and I write this little article and I put it out there. And so that consistency and persistence is really what it takes. My real wake-up moment when it came to book publishing is that in in 2007, Mark Victor Hansen, the co-author on Chicken Soup for the Soul, invited me to come out to Los Angeles. I was I had a little literary agency back then that I was running in in Scottsdale, Arizona. So I I flew out to Los Angeles. I took pictures from people throughout this meeting. But I also decided to sit there and listen with all the different speakers because at that point in my life I'd written about 50 books for traditional publishers. Now, when you write books for publishers like that, once a year or maybe quarterly, they'll send you a royalty statement to tell you how your book is doing. All of my statements back then were in the minus category. They were getting advances, but they weren't earning back their advances. They weren't making any additional me money. So I knew I must be doing something wrong. So as I listened to these speakers, about halfway through, it's almost like I'd been asleep and I woke up because one of the speakers there was the other co-author on Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfield. Now, Jack has this book that I have on my shelf up here called The Success Principles, where he's really studied what does it take to be successful? The very first success principle says that I will take 100% responsibility for my own success. Now, none of us want to take 100% responsibility. We want some publisher or some editor, please, somebody other than us, to do that work. But I decided during that session that I was going to take 100% responsibility for my own success because I was doing so little. I had a Terry Whalon.com website, but I was doing almost nothing to be telling people about my book. So I changed. That's why I started blogging, and that's why I've been blogging all these years. And my whole situation kind of turned around. I have a newsletter that I send out every week. There's all these kinds of things that I, as an author, am doing just to be telling people about my book and what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Okay, so you mentioned taking responsibility for your success.

Self-Publishing Versus Traditional Reach

SPEAKER_01 10:41

This might bring me to ask you about self-publishing and making money. Because I interviewed authors on this podcast who'd done so well self-publishing that they were actually approached by one of the big fives and they turned them down because they said, I can make, I'm actually making more money on my book as a self-published author. And a lot of self-published authors in certain genres as well. They just turn these books out. They have a fat a very loyal fan base. They just don't need a publisher anymore. They don't need the gatekeeper. Where do you stand when it comes to this?

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Well, I would say those people that you talk to that are making tons of money on their books are the exception rather than the rule. The normal self-published author sells 100 to 200 copies throughout the lifetime of their book. They're very small sales, limited sales. So my take on the whole publishing world is that you want your book to be out there as broadly as it can be. So, for example, at Morgan James, we're selling our books not just on Amazon. Amazon is only 24% of our overall business. We're selling our books into 98% of the bookstores in North America, including the brick and mortar stores. So that very broad distribution that we have is something that no self-publisher can do. I mean, we we sell books at Target.com, for example. We have a book right now, a memoir that we released of that's on the USA Today bestseller list. And so that's what you look for. You look for publishers that can really help you to be able to move ahead to the next level. So even those self-published people, like like I'm I met the author of The Shack, for example. Sure, they they were self-published, but once they moved to Simon and Schuster, they sold even more books. So it's all a matter of your perspective and where you think you're gonna go with your book. Sure, you have to give up a little bit on the financial side, but if you can get a bigger audience, why not go that direction, is the way I look at it.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Okay.

Modern Book Marketing Beyond Reviews

SPEAKER_01 13:00

So in terms of book marketing, because I know we talked about book marketing, and part of me thinks that writing the book is not the difficult part, it's the easy part. The hardest part is actually selling the book and marketing the book. And now there's a lot going on with book marketing, and the let's say the traditional way of selling books was like, oh, I want to get review, my book reviewed in the Washington Post. Well, guess what? There's no book review section in the Washington Post. They close this down. Okay, fine, I want to get it in the New York Times. Guess what? It's behind the wall, so people cannot access it. So, and um, you know, and so people are going to places like TikTok and Book Talk, and BookTalk is actually moving the needle to the degree that Barz and Noble have a whole section about called book talk books or whatever. So, what are the latest marketing tactics in this age, the age of AI and age of TikTok that authors should follow?

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Well, I think it's different for every author, is part is part of the thing I would say you so there's there's no one, two, three formula, even in the book marketing area, that you need to do. Part of the journey that all of us are on with our books is to find that best place for us. That's why my friend John Kramer has this book, 101 Ways to Market Your Book. I mean, there's a lot of different ways out there. So look at the different ways, try it a little bit, see if it works for you. If it doesn't, stop it, go do something else, is really what I what I think. And so there's a lot of different ways. I mean, at Morgan James, for example, I just noticed on my, I don't get on Facebook a lot, but I noticed on my Facebook that suddenly there were these reels that showed up from Morgan James on my Facebook that announced our new books that just released. Well, I thought, who in the world, who's making that? Who in the company is making that? How is that getting out there? Well, one of our one of our art people in in the author support team has been making these reels and putting them out there. So we're trying new things like that all the time just to see what really what really catches on, what helps people get the attention that they need for their book. It's different for every book. It's not not any cookie cutter can answer for you.

Red Flags Editors Reject Fast

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Okay, so you're an acquisition editor, and you get a lot of manuscripts, and I'm sure there's lots of good ones and lots of bad ones. And what are the for you is the the red flags in manuscript that whenever you see that, it's like there's no way I'm accepting it. Like the major mistakes that it's like non-negotiable that that you see and that would make you turn down that manuscript.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah, if it if it comes in handwritten or if it comes in in old English type or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

They still do that.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

They do, they do, believe it or believe it or not. Okay. Several years ago, when I was when I was a literary agent, I had somebody call me. They were coming to Arizona to visit family, and they wanted to meet with me with their manuscript. And I'm like, well, just mail it to me, you know? And so they they did. I got this big box in the mail, and I opened it up, and it was a stack of legal pages, handwritten, a novel that they've done. And I thought, oh my goodness, is this this person's only copy of this thing? It might be, you know. And so so I read a few pages of it, copied a couple of pages, so I know that I'd seen this thing, and then sent a polite thanks but no thanks kind of letter back to this person because I didn't want to be responsible for something like that. I didn't want to have that in my office. And so, yes, authors do all kinds of things, you know, try to get attention, mostly negative attention when they when they do the wrong thing. So basically, at the end of the day, you want to, you know, do a good job of pitching your book. I've I've interviewed other acquisitions editors, Natasha, and I ask them how they how they know when they find a good submission. And the answer that I've heard that makes sense to me and what I do basically is I I read the first page, and if it's a good page, I read the next page. And so, and if the next page is good, I keep reading. So, what that shows me as a writer is I don't want to bury my good stuff over on chapter five because that editor may never get there. So, you know, really start off with a bang. Have a good title, you know, have a professional appearance to your manuscript, all those kinds of things. These book proposals, they're they're hard to write. I know that book proposals take a lot of work to put those things together, but even if you self-publish, I believe you need to write a book proposal because that proposal is your business plan. It's your way that you're going to sell your book. Uh, who's your competition? And don't tell me you don't have any competition. I mean, every book is gonna compete in the marketplace. So every one of us is gonna compete with some other book. So figure out what that is. What are you gonna do to market the book? Years ago, when I started in acquisitions, I was a frustrated acquisitions editor. And so out of my own frustration, I'd sit, I'd sit in these meetings with the president of the company, the vice president of sales, the vice president of editorial, the vice president of marketing, and they shoot me down. You know, when I presented a book for an author, I didn't have the ammunition that I needed. So out of my own frustration, I wrote this book called Book Proposals That Sell: 21 Secrets to Speed Your Success. This book has over 150 five-star reviews. It's helped authors get in get a literary agent, get a $50,000 advance. I mean, all kinds of great things have happened from this book. Your listeners can get this book from me free, the whole book. All they do is they go to Book Proposals, plural, bookproposals. And there you can get this whole book. Now, why do I give away my whole book on ebook? I give it away because at Morgan James, we've learned that if you get that ebook and start to read that ebook, there is a high probability you're gonna turn and buy the print copy of the book. So I lose nothing by giving away that free ebook. As a matter of fact, I'm driving print book sales by doing that. The other thing we do at Morgan James is we give you, as the author, those email addresses. So you can use those to build your email list and develop your relationship with your readers. So the other day, I hadn't asked for my my email addresses from this book for a while, you know, a number of months. They sent me like over 1,500 emails that I can add to my email list. So, there again, those are all practical things that every author can do to be helping themselves and get getting out there with their book.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Fascinating. Okay. So you said you publish blog posts every week. I do. And you've been doing that since 2004. And what's the content about the publishing industry, the publishing trends?

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Yeah, I'm right. I'm writing about my my journey, my interaction with authors, things I've learned about publishing. So, you know, for example, last week there was a strange thing that happened in the industry. All of our books at Morgan James suddenly on Amazon suddenly showed up as unavailable. And we couldn't figure out what happened. Well, it turned out we learned that Amazon shut down last week for about five hours. And it's because in Iran and in the United Arab Emirates, there are two big huge data centers that are there. And so the Iranians blew up these data centers, one in their own country and one in the A UAE, and it it screwed up Amazon, you know, when that happened. So you wrote about that. No, I didn't write anything about it, but I learned about that. So I I'm I'm just saying I've learned about new things all the time about publishing. I don't know what I'm gonna write this week, but I'm gonna do something. That's a good topic, actually.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

That's a good topic. It's like where do you put your data center? And why does Amazon have their data center? In Amazon in Dubai, not California, for example, or Seattle. Yeah, just curious. Okay. So I think for me is how do you keep up with the latest industry trends? Like, what do you read? Who do you follow? Do you and where do you get your information from? Like, for example, I follow this person called Jane Friedman.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

I know Jane, yes. I know her.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Yeah, I actually saw her last week in Baltimore at the AWP.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Yeah. And it was really nice to yeah, it was fun. Because that's I'm in DC, so it was, you know, it was a short drive for me. And so, like, these are some of the examples of the people that I follow to just stay informed of what's happening. What about you? Who do you follow? What are your content sources?

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Uh, I follow all kinds of stuff. I follow I follow Jane. I I read things from Publishers Weekly. I read things, I follow the Christian market. So I read things from the Evangelical Christian Publishers

Staying Current On Industry Trends

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Association. They have a newsletter every Monday called Rush to Press. I follow booksellers because I read Shelf Awareness, which is another free publication. Today, for example, I was reading in Shelf Awareness and I they they highlighted this book from a bookseller. In I forget where they are, but uh, I was fascinated that they they're built this bookseller is building what they call literary bridges. And so I thought, oh, that's interesting. Maybe I could learn about that. You know, so I I read all kinds of stuff, and it all feeds into my my publishing life and everything.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

All right, so now to I guess the big elephant in the room or whatever you want to call it is AI. And where do you stand when it comes to AI? So there's a lot of uh heated discussion about AI in the publishing industry, where some authors say, why not? You know, I can use it as an editor sitting next to me. I can ask it to review my chapter, give me ideas, whatever. And others say, no, that's cheating, it's it's affecting your creativity. We're no longer going to be creative, we're using other people's work, blah, blah, blah. Where do you stand?

SPEAKER_00 25:03

I think AI is great for research. I don't really like it in the writing, because if it sneaks into your writing, then you know the the these AI things grab information from all over the place. So that can lead to, you know, plagiarism, copyright violations, all kinds

Where AI Helps And Hurts

SPEAKER_00 25:24

of things that you're really asking for there. So I j I just encourage people to use it for research and other things as opposed to you know editing or writing, writing their books for them at the end of the day. That's kind of where I stand on that.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

So yeah, do you follow Penn, uh Joanna Penn podcast? I do.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

I do. I know I'm I know her as well. I met her years ago as well. So yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah, because she's she's heavy on AI and she's using it uh a lot in also her writing as well. And I love the fact that she's vocal about it, like she's not hiding it. You know, some people might use it, but they want they don't want to talk about it because they're they're worried that the anti-AI activists will come after them. That's right. But I love I love that fact about her, and and I'm wondering if she's just one of the few that are actually very vocal about using AI even in fiction, not only in nonfiction. So it's just you know something I always grapple with. All right. So as an editor, you you read a lot and you're a lover of books. What are you reading now?

SPEAKER_00 26:38

You know, a book that I just got that I'm I'm starting to read is No Random Life by Gail Feldman, which is which is about the life of Bennett Surf, the guy that started Random House. I think I think there's really interesting stories in there. It's it's kind of a doorstop book in a sense. It's over a thousand pages about about Bennett Surf. But Bennett Surf, you know, is is the guy who challenged Dr. Seuss to write a children's book with a le a limited number of words. I I forget if it was like 60 words or what it was, but that children's book that that Dr. Seuss wrote ended up being Green Eggs and Ham, which is still on the children's bestseller list. So I suspect

What Terry Reads And Audio Growth

SPEAKER_00 27:25

in this thousand-word biography of Bennett Cerf, there's some really interesting stories in there about the publishing world that I'm gonna learn about Random House and how how that whole big publishing house started way back when.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Oh wow, that's nice. I I'm gonna check it out. I'll probably listen to it. If 1,000, I'll I'll listen to it. Which which takes me to the question. Do you think odd listening to books is is or like like audible in place is becoming so big that it might exceed the number of actually people buying books? Because I've known so many readers now that they switch to listening. Like I'm I'm saying people who use who read like one book a week, they're most of them are just listening and reading like or consuming more books because of that.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Well, I think audiobooks are are growing, and I think that's a great trend that's that's out there. I get books from my public library that I read through Libby or something like that. But I think that reading and print books are not going to disappear. I think they're going to be around forever. I was on a webinar a little over a year ago with Marcus Duhay, who's the who just stepped back from being the chief executive officer at Penguin Random House. And what he was saying on this webinar is that we live in one of the greatest times in human history since Gutenberg invented the printing press. And I believe that's true. And he he was saying that worldwide it's 80% print and 20% electronic. So, you know, print books aren't going aren't going to disappear. They're they're just going to keep going.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Okay. So why does he think we live in the greatest time ever? What what changed?

SPEAKER_00 29:16

I th I think one of the greatest things that we live is is just just think about the the communication opportunities, the the reach that you and I have with our books, the way we can get them all over the world, basically, uh through through distribution and all that kind of thing. I mean, it's it's amazing the type of things that are happening. So, for example, at Morgan James, I mean, we we're selling books all over the world, not just in the United States. I mean, we have an office in the United Kingdom, in the in Australia. I have authors in those places. It's it's a great time to be alive and to be be in the publishing business, is the way I look at it.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Okay. So I have a lot of aspiring authors listen to this podcast, and I'm sure some of them might get excited and they want to reach out to you and maybe pitch you a manuscript.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

What are you looking for now? What are the kind of books that you're looking for?

SPEAKER_00 30:09

What are you open to? I'm looking for good books at the end of the day. And I can generally tell, reading a short amount of it, whether it's going to be a good fit for us or not. I actually have my personal email address in my Twitter profile. And part of the reason I have it there is because I want people to be able to reach me and and reach out to me with their with their pitches and their their material. I'm always, always looking for, I mean, at Morgan James, we publish somewhere between 150 and 180 new books a year. Of course, for those spots, we receive over 5,000 submissions. So

What Editors Want And Keep Going

SPEAKER_00 30:49

there's a lot of material pouring in, pouring in. But I'm I'm looking for, you know, great, great storytelling and good, good and solid nonfiction as well as fiction. I'm I'm even doing a few children's picture books, Natasha. Believe it or not. We're doing those middle grade novels, chapter books, all kinds of books. We're doing it's it's historical fiction, romance. I'm looking for all that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Fun. And what would be the number one advice you would tell them when they send you the manuscript?

SPEAKER_00 31:21

The number one advice that I would I would give them is that they are at the end of the day with their manuscript, they're looking for the right fit. They're looking for the right connection. And it it'll be different for you than it will be for me. So keep looking for that type thing. One of the things that I've learned the hard way in this business is there's only one person on the planet that I have any control over. And that's me. If I quit, then it stops. But as long as I don't quit, that's that's really where you need to be. You need to keep going. I've I've been, Natasha, in some of the top literary agencies in this country. I've met with a lot of publishers and editors in New York. And the thing that's fascinating to me is that all those people are very, very busy. They they get thousands of pitches, they get stuff in the mail, they get stuff in their inbox. But when they meet with me, they're asking the question where's the next bestseller? Where's the next diamond in the rough that we can bring into our publishing house? And so even though they may be telling you their client list is full, thanks, but no thanks, just know that they are actively reading their email and they're looking at their stuff that comes in the regular mail because they're they're looking for that, that next next book. We all are.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

What are the upcoming authors? Uh no, like up and coming authors that you think are gonna be the next Stephen King.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Uh I don't know that I have any names for you out there, but I don't know. We're we're all we're all looking for that that next really great, great read that's that's out there. I don't know that I have one like that, but uh what I what I will encourage your your read your listeners to do is to get my 10 publishing myths book. I've I've set up a site if they go to publishingoffer.com, publishingoffer, o-f-f-e-r dot com, you can get this book for only $10, including the shipping, along with over $200 worth of free bonuses. Now, these aren't just funky bonuses, for example, Natasha. One of the bonuses that I give away is an audio recording where I interview a self-published author who sells, has sold thousands of his books to public libraries. Authors never think about selling their book to the library. There's over 9,000 libraries in this country. And this guy goes through the whole deal about where did he find the list? What

Library Sales And Smart Preorders

SPEAKER_00 34:12

kind of librarian did he call? Uh, how did he pitch them with his book? He took an order from them for his book. Sometimes they'd order five or six copies of the book. After the call, he would pack them up, mail them to them with an invoice. He sold thousands of books doing that. I mean, it's it's a simple strategy, but people aren't doing that kind of thing. But they could sell a lot of books doing that. So I want people to go to publishingoffer.com and get this book and learn about these things.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Huh. Fascinating. I didn't even know that you'd actually sell to the public library. I thought the library orders the book. But if you're a self-published order, they buy it from you individually, as an individual, you don't have to put it like on Ingram Spark or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

No, they could buy it from you individually. And you could they they could put it in their in their stack and out there for the public.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Hmm. Wow. Okay. So I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna play the devil's advocate here because I'm a journalist, I cannot help it. KDP and the rise of KDP. And I I talk to a lot of authors who say, Natasha, I just life is too short. I don't know how many years are left in me. I want to publish that book. I don't want to keep waiting for an agent. I don't want to keep waiting for an agent to pitch to an editor at a publishing house. I'm tired. I want to get the book there. I have the money to hire an editor, a cover designer, a typesetter. I don't need all of that. I I can publish a good solid book on my own. Are the traditional publishers scared of this mentality and uh and KDP and and is is becoming better and better. The options to distribute with Ingram Sparks and others are also available. Are the traditional publishers worried about that?

SPEAKER_00 36:07

I don't think they're worried because they are continuing to do what they're due. They're continuing to realize that there's opportunity for all of us out there at the end of the day, is the way I look at it. Sure, you can keep doing your thing with KDP, but you know, like I mentioned before, Amazon is only 24% of our overall business at Morgan James. So it's you're missing 76% of what we do for the book out there.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

So sure, keep it not necessarily because if I if I like the distributor is Ingram Spark, they can distribute the book for me at books at bookstores.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Yes, online you can, but we're are we're physically selling the book inside the bookstores.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Yeah, yeah, they can do that too. So what you do is you create you go to Ingram Sparks and then you can go to your local bookstore and you sell them, hey, you can order the book from my distributor, which is Ingram Sparks.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

And they can order the book, but is that book physically inside the bookstore?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Yes. If they order it, if they want to put it, they can.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

If they or if they order, if they order it.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

If they order it and if it arrives, yeah. If but you know, you have to tell them about it. Like as a like traditional publishing company, you have your distributor, and then you pitch your book to the bookstores, and then they can we do and they they order it from your distributor. So as a self-published author, my distributor is Ingram Spar. So what you know, so I I can still put it in bookstores.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

Yeah, you can put it in there, but it's not automatically in there, I guess is what I and one of the and one of the things that we learned, Natasha, from our main distributor at BarnesandNobles.com, we learned this during the pandemic, actually, is that if during that pre-sale period for your book, where your book is being sold into the bookstore, if you can get 300 people to go to BarnesandNobles.com to pre-order your book, that is the trigger that those 300 pre-orders that the national distributor will notice and then order print copies of your book for every Barnes Nobles in the country. So that's a way to get your book inside over 700 bookstores.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

I see.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Something that a number of our authors are are doing successfully to get their book in there because I mean you can imagine these each of these bookstores have limited shelf space. They have limited books that they can carry. They want to carry books that are going to sell at the end of the day. So those 300 pre-orders show them that they've got an active author that's actually going to be able to sell books for them.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Cool. Okay, so before we go, what are you working on since in terms of publishing a book?

SPEAKER_00 39:05

I'm working mostly on my Morgan James stuff with my Morgan James authors these days. Got a lot of really great authors that I'm that I'm working with on their questions and helping them to get their get their books out there into the market. Before we leave, Natasha, I want to tell you about the 11th myth that people can get from me. When Alice Kreider, who's an was an acquisitions editor at David C. Cook, sent me her endorsement for this book, she said, Terry, you're missing the 11th myth. I'm like, okay, Alice, I'll buy it. What's the 11th myth? She said, Well, the 11th myth should be that if I send my book to Oprah Winfrey, she'll book me on her show. And I'm like, well, I laughed, and I thought, that's a pretty good myth, you know? And so what I decided to do is I wrote that chapter.

Free Resources And Final Goodbyes

SPEAKER_00 39:55

And when we designed the book, we designed it to look exactly like this book. And people can get that for free from me if they go to Terry Lynx, plural, Terry Lynx.com forward slash levent myth, one one th myth. And so you get this chapter totally free from me. So I'm trying to give away, give away these things so that people can people can get the help that they need at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Fascinating. So Terry, how can people reach you? You said that you were active on X, you have your website. Where else can they meet, you know, reach out to you, especially if you an author who wants to pitch you a book?

SPEAKER_00 40:38

I think they could they could even use my personal email address, which is in my my X account. They can use that to pitch me if they want to. I would would answer that probably from my from my work email, from my Morgan James email. But I'm looking every every day for the for the right authors and the right books.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Well wow, Terry, this this has been fascinating and enlightening. And for anyone who's listening or watching, please make sure to get Terry's books that he's giving away for free, some of them. And make sure to follow him on social media. As I said, he's an industry legend, he has a lot of info and he provides a lot of value. And I appreciate your time, Terry. I know. Thank you for taking the time to come on this podcast to talk about this stuff. For anyone who's listening or watching, thank you again for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. And until we meet again.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Thank you, Natasha.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, Natasha Times. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time, happy reading, happy writing!