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Crime Fiction Comes to Life Through the Eyes of a Former Corrections Officer

• Donnie Hathaway

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In this powerful episode of Palm Harbor Local, host Donnie Hathaway sits down with Jacob Moon, a U.S. Army veteran, retired corrections officer, and now a self-published crime fiction author. Jacob shares his incredible journey from serving in Hawaii and working in Pinellas County Jail for nearly three decades to writing gripping novels like Furlough, Dead Reckoning, and Letter 26.

Jacob opens up about his childhood passion for storytelling, his fascination with the human psyche, and how decades of experience in corrections inspired his authentic, chilling tales. He also dives into the world of self-publishing—sharing the process, the challenges, and why control over his stories mattered more than tradition.

What You'll Learn:

  • How Jacob's military and corrections background shaped his writing style
  • The difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing
  • Why Letter 26 is his most psychologically thrilling novel yet
  • The real-world mental health struggles inmates face and how Jacob captures that complexity in his books
  • Tips for aspiring writers looking to self-publish their work

Links & Resources:

Stroll through the laid-back streets of the Palm Harbor community with this informative podcast, proudly brought to you by Donnie Hathaway with The Hathaway Group, your trusted guide and local expert in navigating the diverse and ever-changing property landscape of Palm Harbor.

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Speaker 1:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Palm Harbor Local, the podcast dedicated to building community. I'm your host, Donnie Hathaway, and today we are joined by Jacob Moon, who's a local author, with his most recent book being Letter 26. Now, Palm Harbor Local is all about spotlighting individuals and businesses who are making a difference, overcoming challenges and fostering connections right here in our hometown. If you're passionate about growing together, getting involved, involved and celebrating the people who are making Palmerville thrive, you're exactly where you need to be Now. In today's episode, you'll discover how long it took Jacob to write his first book, where Jacob gets his inspiration for his writing and the difference between self-publishing versus traditional publishing. Now don't forget to connect with us on Instagram at palmharborlocal, for behind-the-scenes content, and join our weekly newsletter Living Palm Harbor at palmharborlocalcom. Now let's dive in and meet Jacob. Jacob, welcome to the podcast man. I'm excited to have you here.

Speaker 2:

Thanks a lot, Donnie. It's a true pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I want to start with your background. So you're one, you're an Army veteran.

Speaker 2:

I am. I went into the Army right out of high school. Graduated I was a little lost because I didn't know if I wanted to go to college. Just things were just going, as I'm sure it is for a lot of people. You don't really know where your future is going to go. And for me from moving from up north, it was kind of traumatic moving down here in the middle of high school. So I just kind of wanted to get away. So Army Recruiter offered me a spot in Hawaii and I took it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Hawaii, I mean that's hard to pass that one up, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Cool.

Speaker 1:

So then, you had worked for Pinellas County Jail for quite some time. How many years were you in the Army?

Speaker 2:

I was in for three years, so I got out actually about a month after my 21st birthday, unfortunately, oh, wow, yeah, because in Hawaii the drinking age they're very strict with it. So if you want to go out to a nightclub and actually like live the experience of being on the Island, uh, you pretty much have to be 21. So, yeah, I started 21 about a month before I ETS got out and, uh, came back here to my home or record, which was St Petersburg at the time, to have all my family having left out of state, so I was just getting a divorce.

Speaker 2:

It was just a rough time for me and luckily, about a year after I got out, I got the job at the sheriff's office.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and is that something you always wanted to do? Or is that just because of your time in the military that led you to the sheriff's office?

Speaker 2:

It was actually an accident. Okay, how I got the job. So, funny story I'm driving with a friend and I look down on the floorboard and there's a job application with a star on the front and I was like, what's this? Yeah. So I was like, oh, it's a friend of mine's friend's job application for the jail. So I pick it up and look through it and at the time here I'm making seven bucks an hour struggling. I was like, wow, okay, the pay's better. It's actually a profession, a professional career, and what I really was attracted to it was the quasi-military kind of nature of it. You know the training you get to shoot weapons. But other than that, it was just. It just gave me a sense of security and I really was kind of missing that. My family was breaking up, I was alone, I had a new nobody down here, and so what you're missing from the military is a huge family yeah you know, and I went from the nation's largest employer to the county's largest employer, so it kind of made sense yeah, did you?

Speaker 1:

did you ever think about, like, where was your family moving to? Were they all moving back up north, or or kind?

Speaker 2:

of uh they kind of scattered everywhere.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so it wasn't like, oh yeah, let me go.

Speaker 2:

Let me go back where my family's at right, yeah, and the only reason reason I came back here is because the Army will only ship your household goods and your car to your home of record. So I was kind of stuck.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, so you get this job at the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, and then is it the same job you had. You cut that same job for how many years, or did you bounce around in that?

Speaker 2:

I did. You. Had you cut that same job for how many years? Or did you? You bounce around? I did. So there's a there's a distinction between the the corrections academy and the law enforcement academy. They have about the same, about half the classes are about the same, but they're different disciplines. Okay. So corrections will teach you how to work, the jail patrol will teach you how to work on the road. So I eventually actually went back to the police Academy and finished those classes, so I could have done both jobs. But my daughter had just been born, I got some seniority, I was on the shift I wanted. So those mean, those things mean a lot, yeah, and they did to me. So that's where I had stayed and stuck it out for 28 years 28 years.

Speaker 1:

What did you um? What was? What was your biggest takeaway about that job, that career?

Speaker 2:

Oh, the biggest takeaway. There were so many things, but if I had to distill it down to the most important were if you're in a job and this applies to anybody who's who's in any kind of job or career that has um, requires a lot of mental fortitude and what I call stick-to-itiveness. Where you're getting up and it's a grind, you know whether you're a teacher or a real estate professional or an electrician, whatever it is. You know if you're a single, a single parent or a dual parent, it's hard to raising kids hard enough doing that, let alone having an extremely stressful job. So just the fact of me getting out of that career after 28 years being broke, as can be for the first half dozen of those years, I mean it was a struggle.

Speaker 2:

Uh finally building it up, keeping my sanity, uh keeping myself safe, because you're literally working around every type of criminal and killers that you can think of every day. Uh watching coworkers who you knew and respected uh unfortunately die of suicide or accidents. Uh, just life in general. It was, it was a tough experience and uh just getting out of that in one piece. I feel very fortunate.

Speaker 1:

And for 28 years too. That's a long, that's a long time. What, what was it that that made you like stick with it?

Speaker 2:

Mostly it was the security. So it's it's a tough job, uh, but it's not all bad. So the benefit package that the sheriff's office offered really can't be beat in the civilian sector Not that I could find. So the retirement in itself is motivation to stick it out, because basically, you know, I went in at 22 years old and it was either 25 years of service or when you reached age 55, you could retire with a full pension. And when I compared apples to apples, from the military retirement to the sheriff's office, which is the Florida state retirement system, uh, the sheriff's office, one out every time and I get to go home and sleep in my own bed every night.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's always nice. Yeah, what um? What was your? Day to-to-day, like with that job.

Speaker 2:

So the first half of my career we're on eight-hour shifts, the second half 12-hour shifts and you can bounce around to different divisions. But the day-to-day you're dealing with county prisoners and basically there is a distinction between the county jail and state prison. So everyone that winds up in state prison started out at the county jail. Okay.

Speaker 2:

So we were dealing with everyone from the petty thief to serial killers, and you got to keep your head in a swivel. You have to know how to talk to people for sure, because you don't carry guns in the jail. Yeah. Unlike our brothers and sisters in patrol that had every kind of weapon, including firearms. You don't have that in there, is that?

Speaker 2:

for safety reasons, like for the inmates to steal it from you, or whatever, absolutely, absolutely crazy, yeah which yeah, even if they gave us the opportunity like zero deputies, I knew that worked in the jail would have elected to carry one. Yeah, it's gonna. It's gonna get taken at some point yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Wild, so you're. So you, with that position, you're in charge of just kind of like keeping order, making sure they're doing inmates are going where they're supposed to be and kind of doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, the. The basic tenant of the job itself is care, custody and control of the prisoners. So most of them are pre-trial detainees. So they've been arrested, they haven't been sentenced yet, but some have, and if they're in the county jail they're there for a year or less. If they've been sentenced to a misdemeanor, a felony, they're going to state prison for a year and a day or more. They're going to state prison for a year and a day or more. So everything you see in the movies and all that you know, there's a lot of television shows and movies that have to do with prisons, not a lot that have to do with the jail. So that's another reason why I'm, you know, I feel fortunate to be able to shed a little light on that part of the society.

Speaker 1:

So county um the county jail. They're only there for a year or less, not necessarily they're.

Speaker 2:

Usually, if they're sentenced, they're there for under a year, but we've had inmates there for four or five years awaiting trial, like big murder cases. There are people there. It didn't even have to be for murder. You could be any type of serious felony. You're going to be there for a while if you don't make bond and if your bond's $100,000, you're going to be there for a while if you don't make bond and if your bond is $100,000, you're going to stay more than likely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's crazy to sit there for that long just like waiting for your trial, right? Okay, so you are now a published author, now a published author. So where did you know? How did you go from you know Army veteran to you know Pinellas County Jail, to a published author? Like, where is that something you, like, you've always had a passion for?

Speaker 2:

That journey started when I was probably 10 or 11 years old and it just that flame, never really died. You know, I was writing all through high school, all through the army, publishing short stories, scribbling in notepads, typing on manual typewriters. But it wasn't until about maybe about 10 years ago I really wanted to become serious at it and for me that meant writing a novel. I didn't know how to do that. I had an outline. I knew I wanted to write a jailbreak story because I was familiar with that environment and I'll never forget what really motivated me to start. That is a coworker of mine. We're discussing the book and she was like you know, you should go home and just start it today. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I will. You know, we all have those kinds of motivations and you know it's just putting things off and I'm a I'm a procrastinator. She's like, no, go home today and start it. And I did and it was just the greatest feeling, getting that out and just starting the process. Now that book took me seven years to write. Wow, Because I took.

Speaker 2:

You know, in the beginning I kind of just took it as a hobby, and anyone out there listening who wants to write a book and isn't sure how. First just get your butt in the seat and write that's what I was told. And then, when you do, it's a long process. Just imagine writing a 30-page thesis. Multiply that by 10, and now rewriting it five or six times, and even then you're only about 25% done. So it's a long process, but the first book came out in December of 2020, furlough. It's about the% done. So it was a long process and uh. But the first book came out in December of 2020, uh, furlough. It's about the jailbreak, and, uh, it was a big accomplishment for me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what do you? What is it you enjoy about writing?

Speaker 2:

I've always had a very vivid imagination and just growing up being fascinated with just stories yeah, Watching the Twilight Zone, amazing stories just being just enraptured by how someone could create a story that brings you to another world. You know we all watch movies, yeah, and TV world. You know we all watch movies and TV. So, whatever is your, whatever your thing is, you know, do you want to recreate that? Or are you fine just being a spectator, and there's nothing wrong with both? But I didn't just want to be a spectator. I was like I want to do that and I started doing it and it's just something magical about getting those thoughts out on the paper and for other people to read it and enjoy it is just a very special thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I imagine. So it's like you you have these ideas and that's kind of like your way of of expressing those ideas, right, like some people, like a musician might express it through music, or a producer might produce a movie, but you enjoy writing.

Speaker 2:

I do. It's a very cathartic experience being able to get those thoughts out. You know you could do it by journaling. You could write a memoir. In fact I'm writing a memoir now about my sheriff's office experience and it just it helps me process just a lot mentally, emotionally, psychologically, just it is like self-therapy in a way. And aside from that, you know, on the fun side, it is just extremely satisfying and fun just to create a story.

Speaker 1:

Do you wish you would have done it earlier Sort of writing earlier or does your experience because some of your books that you just mentioned too, is about a jailbreak right, so that leads into your 28 years of the jail. Is there any like oh, I should have started this earlier, or like it was, it was the perfect time.

Speaker 2:

I think it was the perfect time for me. Yeah, I have been writing and, like I had mentioned, I was a short story and a short story writer and a poet before that. But as far as the books I think that was that came about at the right time for me. You know, I was raising kids, I'd reached a level of my career where you know that was safe, retirement was close on the horizon, and so once that first book came out, I was like okay, wow, this isn't just a hobby anymore. I want to actually turn this into a career and do this full time. And it was only three or four years away from retirement, and so I just put my nose at the grindstone and the second book dead reckoning, uh, took me about 11 months.

Speaker 1:

Wow, so seven years. Second book is 11 months and your third book, letter 26,. That's the most recent one.

Speaker 2:

It is. It just came out in December of 2024. And that one was a ton of fun to write for a lot of reasons. So I grew up as a horror writer. I love scary stories, and the first two have some of those elements, but the third one really it's a horror police procedural. So I get to mix the detective story, almost silence, of the lambs type, where they're chasing this very inventive serial killer that's stalking women, based on the first letter of their, of their jobs. And so I came up with the, with the idea actually what the short story contest is. Just, it's's just weird how you get these, these ideas sometimes. Yeah, and it was a short story, a thousand words, and I decided to turn it into a novel.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Very cool. What are your so? Um, yeah, so most of your. So all horror kind of stories that's, that's what you enjoy. Writing is in same thing, like when you were younger were you writing the same like your short stories.

Speaker 2:

Then were they all the same actually right in all genres, okay, uh, but horror is just one that I think I write the best. Okay, or I should say, maybe enjoy writing the most just comes about kind of naturally. Like I love stephen king when I was growing up, all the scary creature features and all that those didn't scare me, it's just being able to create. It's not just about instilling fear. It's like in letter 26,. Yes, it's the scariest book I think I've written by far and there are some very serious issues involved in that.

Speaker 2:

But more so than that is like the psychological angle and I think that's why I worked primarily and volunteered to work with a lot of psych inmates at the jail for probably 20, almost 25 of my 28 years working directly with them, just because the power of the mind and seeing why people do the things they do, even if they're doing terrible things, is it nature or is it nurture? And a lot of the, a lot of it, at least in my experience, was the nurture. What happens after we're born with our childhood experiences, childhood trauma. I'm sure a lot of us have dealt with it I have, and I've had family members and friends who have and so being able to express that through writing and in a story, even if you're writing about a bad guy like the killer in letter 26 is doing despicable things and just because what happened to him as a child kind of created this monster doesn't excuse it. It just kind of helps explain it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you're using your books to kind of highlight that right, like the mental struggle that people go through.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And so tell me about your experience working in the jail, so your experience working with those inmates, it's from their traumas are from their upbringing or childhood in some way, and it's, you know, led to their current state, their current situation.

Speaker 2:

Yes and no. So I don't pretend to be a criminologist. I don't have, you know, letters after my name. I'm certainly not a like a psych doctor myself, but I do feel like I'm an expert in the realm of just the actual behavior. Worked every single day in the housing units or in the booking desk. So I had direct contact with inmates every day. Never worked in administration no, knock on that but I think what it did is it just gave me an immense amount of experience with criminality in general.

Speaker 2:

But to your point, yes, there's a segment of the inmate population that had a bad upbringing, single parent or no parent home, living in an impoverished area surrounded by crime. Yes, absolutely. But there are also high-powered executives who are wealthy, who murdered their ex-wife and her new lover. There was the young kid what probably a year or two younger than me when I started at 22, who came from a well-to-do family Dad was a doctor, you know silver spoon kind of situation Killed his girlfriend in a failed murder-suicide, decided not to do himself and here he is just sitting there in a cell, convinced that he's going to be acquitted, just because that's how he was brought up With privilege.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, parents got me out of everything. I've got all the money I could want, you know, driving a BMW to school, all this or that, whatever and it was just a very sobering thing for me to realize that it's not just the poor person of color or someone who didn't have a good upbringing who goes to jail or prison or does bad things. Really, everybody does good upbringing. Who goes to jail or prison or does bad things.

Speaker 1:

Really Everybody does. Do you think there's some aspect of like, even like the privileged kid, that, like you know, maybe his, his experience wasn't, you know, in a surrounded by other criminals or whatever, but just there was some aspect of his upbringing that wasn't nurturing, I guess, and you know, and loving, so maybe that's his you know kind of reasoning, for you know, having that mindset of what he did. Investing is extremely important, but it can also be somewhat confusing With taxes, asset allocation, stocks, bonds and funds. To know what to do with all this could be overwhelming.

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Speaker 2:

That could be the case. I also think and I try not to be cynical about this because I try to judge things at face value and not generalize it's important not to ever generalize any situation and it's hard not to do that when you're working in any kind of profession, you see the same types of things being repeated. You're working in any kind of profession and you see the same types of things being repeated. Sure, but boiling it down, I could just say as simply as this that oftentimes and this is the scary thing about jail, prison or really anything in life where there's serious consequences, sometimes it just boils down to one bad decision in an isolated situation. And that's really the unfortunate thing about it, because I've seen so many wasted lives and just great opportunities that are gone forever. Like the kid I told you about he could have gone on to be a doctor himself, followed his father's footsteps, or cured cancer, or gone into real estate and helped people find homes, or written books or whatever it was, but he'll never get that opportunity the way in the traditional sense, because he'll spend the rest of his waking life in prison, and it's just. You know, I don't know his story and there are so many inmates. I've probably dealt with Hundreds of thousands of inmates that got booked into the jail. Some of their stories I knew better than others. Some are easier to kind of distinguish how they got there. They've been arrested 50 times. Yeah, the recidivism is just crazy. And they just refuse to. You know, judge gives them chance after chance, yeah, and they're getting out and they come right back in two days later. It's just okay, you're just never going to learn.

Speaker 2:

And then you have the other kid or whoever. It is young woman who was a straight-A student. She gets into this thing with another rival about a boy. She goes over and, you know, a fistfight turns in. She brings a basically a knife to a fistfight. Wow, 20 years, just like that. So it's like you could. You could say you're fortunate because you're going to get out and only lose two decades of your life. But think about that. That's two decades of your life gone, living in a cage, having other people tell you to do.

Speaker 1:

That's brutal it is. Have you noticed like any changes like since when you first started in the jail, like any changes in, I guess, behavior or that kind of stood out to you over that time since you retired?

Speaker 2:

I've definitely or times kind of been similar.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've seen differences like, say, for instance, with the types of drugs, for example. So when I first started working, people came to jail all the time for marijuana. They almost never come for that now. Part of that is because the laws have changed and you know whether it's medicinal or what have you. But even you know I could go down to downtown, st Pete, and it's like you're walking through a dispensary, you know outside. So it's just some of those things societal have changed, where they're just. But with the inmates themselves they tend to mirror the rest of society. You know, like the types of inmates that were coming in when I was starting out were kind of old school, like we were. You know they'd been brought up in the 80s, 70s and 80s and toward the end of my career these kids are being brought up with cell phones and the Internet and just society is just seems faster. So they were very different, very different. They fought us a lot more back then than they do now.

Speaker 1:

Interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yes, that was a strange thing to see happen, where things seemed to be much more violent back then. Part of it could also have been the jail policies that we had. We also were in the old school era, so things tended to just work differently on patrol as well, there were no cameras back then, and not to say that anything we were doing was wrong, it was just we also didn't have any weapons. We had no tasers, no OC. So you have a radio and a pair of handcuffs and you're walking into a cell and someone balls their fist and says it's on. You're not talking your way out of it at that point.

Speaker 2:

You're fighting your way out of it, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that is interesting. All right, so let's jump back into your books. So the three books that you've written. You've self-published all of them.

Speaker 2:

I have.

Speaker 1:

And did you ever think about what led you to self-publish versus you know and yeah, let's start there what led you to self-publish your books?

Speaker 2:

So my main editor, great guy, his name is Jason Pettis. He used to run a small press, so he's a wealth of knowledge. Not only is he an editor, but he gave me advice on pretty much every step of the publication process to anyone else who's listening. Who wants to write a book is, if you're serious about getting a publisher and going traditional uh, less is more. So furlough my first book was 550 pages. That was never going to get picked up by an agent or a major publisher. Uh, they're looking for a word count under probably 90,000, 80,000 words and furlough was almost 190,000. Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

Right. So that was my main motivation to self publish. Uh, and also I was new, I didn't really know how to get an agent and I just wanted to get it out. Yeah, I was excited out. I was excited, you know, I'd spent all the seven years to write this, to edit it, hired a cover artist, hired a formatter. So I get this idea that I've had, and now it's in a book form, and just the thought of getting an agent who might take me on and even then might find a publisher. It could take two years to publish. So I wanted it out now. And that's one of the biggest advantages of self-publishing is you have ultimate control over your project and if your book is finished today, you could conceivably, as long as you have the files, the proper files, you can publish it tomorrow.

Speaker 1:

So what's the process for writing and publishing a book, kind of like you know over, you know big picture Like? What does that process look like?

Speaker 2:

As far as self-publishing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and then, like in traditional publishing, publishing too. What's the difference and is there a benefit? I feel like self-publishing has maybe become more like. I've heard that word thrown around more often with some books. So I don't know if it's easier now because of technology and the availability of resources and whatnot, and maybe it's not uh, not any more common. But what are your experiences?

Speaker 2:

it's much more easy today than it was 10 years ago, yeah, and 20 years ago it almost didn't exist at all. You had to go through a vanity press and then you had to worry about, you know, are they going to take your rights, are they going to steal your work? You know, and it was, it was looked at, it was looked down upon. If you self-published 10-15 years ago, you know you weren't a real author unless you were with a traditional publisher. So, just in a nutshell, traditional just means that there is an established publisher who publishes books and the gatekeeper to get to them is the agent. So it is possible to send directly to some publishers, but the majority of them, especially the big five, you know, penguin, random House, simon Schuster and the type they will almost always just go through an agent, which is very difficult.

Speaker 2:

You know, my last book, letter 26, is the only of my three books that I try to get an agent and you query them like a one page document saying this is what the book's about, this is my background, these are the comp titles. You'll query them and they can come back and say yeah or nay. Well, I've queried 50 agents and got 50 rejections and that's a very common thing. So I was just at a writing or a book fair yesterday and so many authors I spoke to had the same story Rejected 70 times Famous novelists, stephen King, jk Rowling, harry Potter. She rejected 100 hundred times before she found. You just need to have one person say yes, yeah. So what are?

Speaker 1:

they looking for? Like? What is the agent looking for? Like a story they believe in or the story that they think will do well and sell a lot of. You know, because they're, I'm sure they get a cut of of the sales or whatever right ever write they do, the agent will generally get about 15%.

Speaker 2:

That's the standard percentage that they get. It's so nuanced with agents and going traditional that a lot of times you could write the best book, the agent could love it. But if they just published a book or two books like that or they feel the market is oversaturated with that, then it doesn't matter what the story is, how well it's written, You're probably going to get the rejection, unless your name is so prominent to where they're going to sell the book. It doesn't matter if you write a story on a napkin. But with self-publishing it's absolutely, uh, much easier.

Speaker 2:

Nowadays, with the advent of Amazon, you know you could write a book and publish it for literally nothing, no cost. No, they'll take their cut, obviously, Um, but it's, it's, it's. It's a very complicated process. Uh, on my website I've got a blog that kind of gives like the nuts and bolts of it. Uh, this writerjakecom and there are obviously tons of other resources out there. You could just Google how to self publish a book. Um, different podcasts, YouTube is a huge resource you could learn to do. I mean, you could almost do brain surgery nowadays.

Speaker 1:

Isn't that crazy, yeah, yeah. So self-publishing, like let's go back to that, like that process, right? So you have a story, you've written, a story is there, and then what are the next steps after that?

Speaker 2:

So we'll assume that you've written the book. Yeah, it's finished. You know a lot of different steps. First and foremost, you want to get a copyrighted. So once you have it copyrighted and you want to actually get it into print, being the self-publisher, you're in charge of your own business. You are the publisher. So, at a major house, they've got editors, they've got cover artists, they've got formatters and all that. That's your responsibility. Most people don't know how to do all that. I certainly didn't. So it's incumbent on you to make those hires. So I went online. Uh, the company I used, or the website I used, was upworkcom. They've got freelancers of everything you can. If you want to build a website, web designer, editors, you know what have you. So that's where I found mine, as well as my formatter, and you vet them and you agree in a contract, a timeframe, and they'll give you your, your files that you need, as well as a cover, find a good cover artist. So, as long as you, if you just want an ebook, they'll just send you an ebook file. Okay.

Speaker 2:

Get a. You at least need an ebook cover If you want it in the print. You'll find someone that will give you the print cover and once you get that file you're ready to go. You just go through Amazon, Apple books, Barnes, Noble, IngramSpark is another really good distributor. If you want your books in bookstores, and mainly with IngramSpark is because most bookstores will only order books if they're given a wholesale discount will only order books if they're given a wholesale discount.

Speaker 2:

So if you're just publishing on Amazon, you can certainly do that, but if you want to possibly get into a bookstore, the first thing the bookstore is going to say is are you on Ingram? And if you're not, then it doesn't make sense for them to do business with you, because then that forces them to buy retail plus shipping and just to turn around and sell it for retail. They're not. They're probably losing money.

Speaker 1:

Yeah yeah, that makes sense. So once you have so on amazon, like they'll they print the books themselves or how does that? Like, how does the, how do they get the physical copy of a?

Speaker 2:

book. Yes, so say you're a reader and you want to buy any book out there. Yeah, then you'll order it on Amazon. It's print on demand, so there's not a big warehouse that Amazon has full of millions of different books. Yeah, you'll order the book and their print uh plant wherever it is. We'll literally uh send the order there and they'll print it right then and there and ship it to your house and probably a couple of days.

Speaker 1:

Crazy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So, whether it's like a like a hard copy or a paperback, like they, they have all that set up, I guess, to to print on whatever. Whatever that author is is designated Pretty much.

Speaker 2:

That's. That's that's how it works, cause you, you, you can imagine. There are millions of books available. If you were one on Amazon right now, like physical hard copy books. Multiply that by tens of thousands of authors who are publishing every year and you can imagine the warehouse would like take up city blocks. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that's just not doable. So with tech and modern technology now, the print on demand, that's just the way to the way it works right now, much different from a brick andand-mortar bookstore. Obviously, they have the books there, but they only have a few thousand copies. There are literally millions of copies, and then yep, they just print them and send them right to you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's pretty cool, pretty amazing. But it makes sense, right? You can't have a warehouse full of books, that may or may not sell, would you your next book? So I imagine you have a fourth one that you're writing right now.

Speaker 2:

I do. It's my memoir, based on my sheriff's office career.

Speaker 1:

Okay cool. So will you self-publish that one again, or will you do traditional publishing?

Speaker 2:

Only if I have to. Well, my last experience was very emotionally trying, uh, which was ironic because you think that as you progress in your career, whatever it is, that you get better. Yeah, but sometimes the more you do something, the the less you really know, and I found that out. Made some mistakes, but yeah, it's definitely an option and at least I feel like I'm learning from my mistakes. And it's not just the difficulty of doing it, because I can certainly do it again. It's if you have a story that you really want to try to make or break into the mainstream, which I do.

Speaker 2:

Being a serious author, you know I could sell a few thousand copies. I can go to book fairs, like I did yesterday. I can sell myself. You could even sell on your own website if you want to. I don't, but other authors do. But to get my book into brick and mortar bookstores or just to be a household name, you know, for me it's not about the money or the stature, it's about I have a story that I want to tell and anyone else who's out there that has always wanted to write a book, they would also have to decide am I fine? Just, you know, writing for friends and family sell a few copies here or there, or do I really want to try to break into that mainstream and get my story told to hundreds of thousands of people? Potentially? Yeah, and I would love to, because I think the stories I write are enlightening. They're hopefully inspirational and entertaining.

Speaker 1:

How are you going about promoting the books and getting out there Like what, what, what are those steps?

Speaker 2:

Kind of like what I did and have been doing recently with with the book fair, local book fairs Okay, I go to national conferences. Advertising is is one thing. Book giveaways goodreadscom has has a great giveaway program where you could put your book up and say, okay, I'm going to give away 10 hard copies or a hundred eBooks, and in 30 days my last book had 10,000 entrants for it, so that's great exposure, cool. Uh, social media is another one where you just you know everyone's doing it. Whatever business you have, you have to be on social media, and I'm a very private person. I didn't have Facebook or Instagram until like a couple of years ago. I refused. But then you just realize you're like, oh, okay, do I? Do I just want to like sit in my living room and stare at my own book, or do I want to like try to get other people to read it?

Speaker 1:

So yeah, yeah, that's a. I kind of went through the same thing like getting into real estate. I mean, I was young enough where I still I like I had social media accounts, whatever, but I was never big at like let me post and share everything that's going on or create some account or whatever. But yeah, it's um, you have to do it. I heard something the other day, um, about like creating content and it's like you just have to like that's who you are, right, like you just have to become that person that like enjoys creating content and that sort of stuff and it just becomes a part of of what you do. It's like, I think, to really maximize like your goal of promoting the book or promoting your story and stuff. Right.

Speaker 2:

That's a really good point, because if you're going to be in any kind of business you know, in real estate, or if you're owning any kind of business yourself, including being a self-published author, or I will even say, even if you're a traditional author, you still have to market your own book mm-hmm so you know, if you don't have a website, get one.

Speaker 2:

It helps to have a newsletter to put out there. The social media is huge. If you're not a social media person, to your point, learn. You know you're going to have to. You know, and it's like and if and if you don't, uh, you know, no one's forcing you to do it, but you're going to get left behind. So that's the modern age, you know, and I think part of my resistance with social media for so long is I didn't grow up with the internet. Resistance with social media for so long is I didn't grow up with the internet. So I grew up in the late seventies and the eighties into the nineties. You know, I had a pager. My first cell phone was a flip phone that you had to, like you know, go through the numbers to try to type, type something out. I had 20 texts a month that I was allowed to send and for the first few months, I think, I sent like 18 texts.

Speaker 1:

It's great. Yeah, that's wild to think about that, like how fast the technology has changed in that regard, you know, yeah, so next step, so you're writing your memoir. Do you have other other ideas for for books as well right now? Or how does that come? How does that work for you?

Speaker 2:

do they just kind of come to, come to you and you're like let me, let me write on this, write some short stories, and then it kind of expands, or if you ever had like a bulletin board where you had like all kinds of things like to-do lists, yeah, up there, or even like in your phone or whatever, and you just realized like you add one and you just see like an old note of something that you had to do months ago that you totally forgotten Like oh, that's kind of like how it is. I've got ideas everywhere. So, oh, probably a half dozen short stories and two or three novels that are constantly swirling in my head. I don't have time to write them all, yeah, so that's the difficult thing. It's ironic that I retired and I wrote two books, by the way, while I was still working.

Speaker 2:

I just assumed that, okay, once I retired from the full-time job, I've got all my time. You know it's like I'll spit a book out every other month. You know it's just like it's going to be easy. Uh, it's. In a lot of ways it's harder now because I don't have that structure regulating me. So it's like you wake up, I don't have to go to work at a certain time anymore. So you just really having to, you're your own boss and you know you're your own time clock. So that's a huge challenge for me. So I definitely put the work in, but now I also have more time to market and so that takes up a lot more time and all that. But yeah, tons of story ideas. I was just in New Orleans a few weeks ago scoping out something for a potential story down the line Cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's pretty neat. Well, thanks for being here, man. I appreciate you coming on to kind of share a little bit your story and stuff and, um, it's been great being able to chat with you.

Speaker 2:

I really appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So before before you leave, uh, your your three books, where can people get them? And then your website to kind of keep up to up to speed with what you got going on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the three novels are all crime fiction, they're all standalones. They're Furlough Dead, reckoning and Letter 26. They're available on a lot of different platforms, but the easiest way to find them is just to go to my author website, writerjakecom, and there are direct links to like my Amazon page. They can find them there. Links to like my Amazon page. They can find them there. They're available on ebook, print and audio, and on audio they're on audible and uh and Spotify Cool.

Speaker 1:

Did you read the audio yourself?

Speaker 2:

I didn't. No, I didn't, but everything I've heard is that it's a very rewarding process, so I'm putting serious thought into narrating the next book.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you should. You got a great voice for it too.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, we'll see how it turns out.

Speaker 1:

Cool. Well, thanks for being here, Jacob.

Speaker 2:

Thanks.

Speaker 1:

Tony, thank you so much for listening to another episode of Palmer Local Now. We are incredibly grateful for our sponsors who make this show possible. Jacob, with Roadmap Money, be sure to support these local businesses and let's keep building community together. Until next time, stay connected, stay involved and keep making Palm Harbor an amazing place to call home.

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