Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
How to succeed as an 'authorpreneur' with Veronica Kirin
Join us as award-winning entrepreneur and author Veronica Kirin discusses the transformative power of paradigm shifts, drawing on her anthropology background.
We talked about how crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can catalyze personal growth or pose significant challenges, sharing insights from her acclaimed projects, Stories of Elders and Stories of COVID.
In this episode, we also covered the distinct paths of fiction and nonfiction publishing, emphasizing the importance of a well-crafted proposal and strategic decision-making.
We also challenged the relentless hustle culture in entrepreneurship, exploring how to build a balanced, sustainable business.
Discover strategies for scaling, strategic partnerships, and innovative marketing techniques, including TikTok and book club engagements.
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➡️ P.S.: If you enjoy the insights shared in this podcast, you'll love my newsletter, The Storyteller's Quest, where I openly share the highs, lows, and behind-the-scenes realities of the writing journey.
Well, like. So you and I both know this language of like blue ocean, right, like when we're in entrepreneurship, people talk about blue ocean marketing and blah, blah blah, and like blue oceans don't exist. So the idea is that, within marketing, that a blue ocean is super clean, super empty, whereas a red ocean is red because all the sharks have come in and they're like eating each other and it's a frenzy. So, like right now, red Ocean would be like starting a shoe company. It's like, okay, adidas, nike, new Balance, like they all have the market now. It'd be so hard to enter, whereas if you were to go maybe five years ago, the Blue Ocean would have been ride sharing, right, uber. And like that's why Uber made such a splash there was no one doing it.
Speaker 2:Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes 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 journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today Veronica Kirin, who's an award-winning entrepreneur and author. She is the founder of Asterix DAO and co-founder of Anodyne Magazine. She's also the author of the award-winning book Stories of Elders and creator of the Stories of COVID Research, which documents the pandemic in real time. She's been named a Forbes Next 1000 entrepreneur and BEQ40 LGBTQ leaders under 40 and has spoken at two TEDx events. Hi, veronica, thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 1:Hi, natasha, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to talk about books and reading and publishing and writing and entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. You have a very impressive resume, so I think my first question is what is an entrepreneur?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. So my background and my area of study is actually in anthropology, so I'm curious about people. Big surprise, I became an entrepreneur with that. But my actual area of expertise within the anthropology is paradigm shifts. So that's why you see me researching things like the high-tech revolution and COVID-19, and then starting a business to shift the paradigm of women's non-reprojective health with asterisk. Okay.
Speaker 2:So paradigm shift. So how do you define paradigm shift? Is someone quitting their nine to five job and, you know, trying, like me, being an entrepreneur? Is that considered a paradigm shift?
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Paradigm shift is a major change, change within one's reality. Typically, it is preempted by a crisis, and then we either use the crisis as a jumping off point or not, and then we become consumed by the crisis rather than using the crisis. So COVID was a really amazing example for me because, first of all, it was global, so, like I, was the subject matter in addition to being the interview and interviewer and researcher, but it was a complete crisis and we had these two groups of people.
Speaker 1:We had people who were trying to take advantage of the crisis not to take advantage of people, but just to say, okay, I'm learning something here, I'm realizing I don't want to go to work anymore, or I've been working too hard, or I don't see my family, or I actually always wanted to be a writer and I didn't know it until I had this break. We had all these moments. And then we also had people who were in the other side of it, who allowed themselves to be taken by the crisis and to fight it and to really hate it and be angry, and so we saw two different outcomes with that as well. Yeah, but crises can be self-imposed as well, like you said, quitting the job, going into something new. It's still a crisis. You still have to shift your identity, shift your habits, change who you are and start anew.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean many people that I interviewed here on this podcast I can't tell you how many told me, well, during the pandemic I started writing a book, or during the pandemic I started the podcast, or like I started the podcast during the pandemic, for example. But, and yeah, it's fascinating because some people, like the pandemic, you know they got darker, they got. You know they got depressed, you know they got. You know they got depressed, you know the world is ending, while others took it as an extra time that they have that they wanted to invest in. So it's interesting. So recently I read this term like, which is, instead of post-traumatic stress, they call it post-traumatic growth, and I was wondering if they're like now, after the pandemic is like people who either had a PTSD, ptsd, I guess G yeah, that's a way to frame it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I want to talk about your publishing route. So you published these books. One of them is you documented what happened to people during COVID. Is that what the book about? If you can tell us a bit about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so actually, stories of COVID is not yet published. It's still in data analysis. We did so much more work. There was just such a greater body of data and interviews that I brought in for that project compared to Stories of Elders that it's still taking me time to process through, and I'm actually in the process of like typical writer experience, like applying for grants and trying to get support in order to make sure that I can, you know, do it, do it the right way, because it wasn't just one easy group of people. I went as far as I could for diversity, and so I need to really honor that, whereas Stories of Elders was only people in the United States and only people who identify within the greatest generation, so born before 1945. And so, while I went for ethnically diverse, because I wanted a fair subset of the American people, it was still American, it was still a specific age group, and so it was a lot easier to do data analysis and it was a much, much more targeted approach, which was the hydro revolution. That's what I was looking at, whereas we didn't really know what was going to happen with COVID, so I didn't have as targeted an approach.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, stories of Elders was published in 2018. I did a TED talk for it in 2019. It won two awards in 2020 and the documentary also won an award in 2020. So it kind of kept like living. I'm currently talking to my alma mater right now about coming back and doing a course on it. And so it's still. It just has life, because I think what we were talking about with paradigm shifts, and especially ones that take place generationally, right, there's this curiosity that continues to exist around the high truck revolution and what it all really means. We try to assign meaning to it because it somehow helps us feel better, and so the body of work continues to have life, even though it's technically an old book.
Speaker 2:So I just want to ask you about the COVID book, one of the things like I read a number of COVID books and part of me maybe I have a PTSD I was like I don't think I'm ready for this, like I felt it was too soon, like it brought back some memories of maybe fear and being stuck at home with three kids, no school, all of that and you think people are ready for. But that was my experience. People might have different experiences, but uh, so now I like I try to avoid anything related to covid. It's like I want to block this time, although there was again. There was some growth, but for me, for me personally, with three kids stuck at home, home and worried about their health and all of that, it was a hard time. So do you think people are ready to read books about?
Speaker 1:COVID now, I think everyone has a different readiness or a different approach. There are people who will never want to talk about it again. There are people who won't stop talking about it. It's so healing for them to continue to digest and communicate. And so I don't want to say like, are people ready for it? Everyone's different. You know. We all had different experiences with COVID too. Like I don't have kids, my experience of COVID was as somebody who's child-free and moved across the country in the middle of it and then moved across the world in the middle of it and then moved across the world in the middle of it. So, like, different challenges affected our brains differently. Income status affected our experience differently. There's so many factors, right, so are you ready for it? I don't know, but I do think perspective. You know, as they say, hindsight is 20-20. I think the perspective of time is very important with regards to this area of research.
Speaker 2:So how did you publish your books? I mean the first and the second one. Did you get an agent? Did you self-publish? What was your publishing journey?
Speaker 1:So I also have had many podcasts as an entrepreneur, and my co-host thought that a particular publisher was going to be a good fit for me and he has that talent Like some people just have the talent for connecting others and so he said you, publisher person, be our guest, Me Veronica, here you go. And then that publisher flew out to uh meet me and to discuss the book further for stories of elders, and the next week we signed a contract. So it was an agent list publication with a boutique publisher that specializes in nonfiction. That is unique in some way that it's it's just unconventional in some manner, which mine was. It was the first of its kind.
Speaker 1:Study uh, stories of COVID. Again, it's yet unpublished. I am now agented, though, so I'm I'm heading in a little bit more of a traditional route. Shout out to PS literary, and so we're working on it again, trying to find the right voice for it, which is going to emerge as the data analysis completes halfway through, and so, like, what's emerging out of it? Right, as we go through the data, we'll then determine what's the angle, what's the point, what did we learn? And then that translates to how sellable it is to a traditional publisher.
Speaker 2:Wow. So one of the things that you know, I talk to authors, inspiring authors all the time, like sometimes I record three or four episodes a week and one of the things that they tell me is I want to see the gray hair.
Speaker 1:I mean, like you get to hang out with authors all the time Sounds wonderful. How do I?
Speaker 2:sign up. It's a lot of work but at the same time, the number one thing that they say is the queering and finding an agent. It's such a long, frustrating process that maybe 80% of them just gave up on that process completely and went the route of the self-publishing or going with small press or even hybrid publishing, where they actually have to pay money out of pocket. So how did you find your agent? What's your secret? Tell us the secret.
Speaker 1:I don't think I have a good story, and that's because I landed my agent in six days.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, okay, you should be proud of that. You should be proud, so tell us yeah, I queried.
Speaker 1:I think 15 agents and I got two very hungry responses Like, yes, we're so excited and I was so torn to this day.
Speaker 1:I think, like, like, like living on a razor's razor's edge, like you can just see like your life went like this and like with that decision, whereas you know, sometimes you meet someone and you're just like I can tell that you're not right for me, right, but like I had these two incredible agents who both were like I really want to represent your work and it was a really hard decision, but that's what took the longest. Like I think it took me two months to put together the proposal, like to really put together a really good proposal. It was 25,000 words when I was done with it, uh, and it was for nonfiction, so a little bit of a cheat. Like with nonfiction you don't have to have the entire book completed, whereas with fiction you need the whole thing, it needs to be polished. We all know the story. Well, not all of us, but the story of Stiggs Larson, right, he submitted the manuscript for what we know as Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.
Speaker 1:The original title is Men who Hate Women, which I think is a better title, a more accurate title title, like with a theme that's in the book, right? But anyway, he submitted that the agent read it in a night, right, this, this was 700 words, thousand words book. Read it in a night immediately? Yes, immediately publishable. Right, he worked on that manuscript for I didn't know that story, yeah, yeah, and he worked on that story for 10 years. And the agent responded the same day, I think. He sent it straight to the editor and and and they, they said yes, immediately, it was an immediate. Yes, it was that.
Speaker 1:But so that's the difference between fiction and non-fiction where, like you, have to have in fiction the perfect, completed, polished manuscript, especially these days where editors are not, they're not the heroes like they were, you know, before the year 2000. Yeah, but so for me, you know I queried on nonfiction, I do have fiction in me, it's just not, um, it's just been in short stories so far. So, and that was for the COVID book, right? No, it's actually for a book that is not yet out yet. Are you going to tell us about it? Um, I think I will hold on to that just a little longer because we don't have a publisher who said yes.
Speaker 2:Yet Okay, all right. So what was like the hook in your query letter that attracted the agent so quickly? Was it the theme, or is it how you phrase it, like, what are your tips for writing a query that would get you that fast of a response?
Speaker 1:Well, like. So you and I both know this language of like blue ocean, right, like when we're in entrepreneurship, people talk about blue ocean marketing and blah, blah, blah, and like blue oceans don't exist. So the idea is that, within marketing, that a blue ocean is super clean, super empty, whereas a red ocean is red because all the sharks have come in and they're like eating each other and it's a frenzy. So, like right now, a red ocean would be like starting a shoe company. It's like, okay, adidas, nike, new Balance, like they all have the market now.
Speaker 1:It'd be so hard to enter, whereas if you were to go, maybe five years ago, the blue ocean would have been a ride sharing, right, uber, yeah, and like that's why Uber made such a splash. There was no one doing it. And so the blue ocean that I found within my query which remains to be true, with the, with the manuscript that I'm I'm trying to sell right now, is getting getting my body of work as an entrepreneur listened to by both men and women. So like there are not. There are not people writing books the way that, the type of book that I'm writing, uh, in 80 to 90 percent of the voices are men, and so that's the hook okay, got it so okay.
Speaker 2:So you're an entrepreneur focused on mostly on anthropology and that, hence, so you coined actually the term. Yeah, no, I, um, I actually I'm not mostly focused on anthropology.
Speaker 1:I would call that, like my, my uh, nightlife. Okay, what's your day life? My day life, uh, for many years was in a web development tech company. I sold that a few years ago right when I published my first book, actually so that I could go on the road and really focus on that. And then consulting for the past several years and now I am the founder of a web three company, asterisk. So in blockchain, trying to change how women's non-reproductive health is done around the world, as well as Anodyne magazine, so we're publishing stories and artwork on the topic of FLINTA health. So, basically, women and queer people health experiences.
Speaker 2:FLINTA health. I don't know what that is, flinta?
Speaker 1:Yep, so Flinta is an acronym that basically is women and queer people. It's female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans and agender. Okay.
Speaker 2:And do you hire freelancers or do you do the writing yourself for the magazine?
Speaker 1:No, no, no. So it's a literary and arts magazine, so we're getting poetry, short stories, flash fiction, artwork, photography, music. We have a very like diverse subset of um genres that we're publishing oh, good to know.
Speaker 2:So if anyone is listening and they want to submit, they can. They can submit okay, that's good.
Speaker 2:Yep, on the topic of health and if you identify as Flinta, so, okay, I want to shift gears a bit and ask you about entrepreneurship and hustle culture and all of that. So I call myself as an authorpreneur because I'm an author, a writer myself as an authorpreneur because I'm an author writer. I make living from writing, whether it's writing books or writing content for clients like blogs, newsletters. Uh, I don't make any money from the podcast. What I make money is from, uh, just providing content, and I personally, like you know to be completely transparent, I struggle with uh, making ends meet as a.
Speaker 2:So, like I'm, I sometimes I joke, I am like a starving artist, but this is the route that I chose and I'm willing to stick with it and hence, for me, hustle is a good thing. Like I'm a hustler, I'm an immigrant, that's what we and hence, for me, hustle is a good thing. Like I'm a hustler, I'm an immigrant, that's what we do. I want to hustle, hustle, hustle to get the next client, to get the next sponsorship. But then lately I noticed it and I also noticed it a bit in your bio is that there is kind of shift against the hustle culture and I was like why I thought hustle is a good thing, you need to hustle. So I want to hear the other perspective. Why are you kind of against the hustle culture?
Speaker 1:Yeah, a couple different reasons. Hustle is not, as you said, a bad thing when it's from one's own motivation, okay, um. But in an entrepreneurship, there's a rhetoric that hustling is the only way. Okay, and in fact that's entrepreneurship done wrong, in my opinion. I got my previous business down to 10 hours a week before I sold it above six figures, and so that's entrepreneurship done right.
Speaker 1:When you know how to scale a business, you are able to reduce your hours and your time and have a life of freedom or choose to work how much you want. Remember, we're talking about choice here. So hustling if you love hustling, if you love beating the pavement, fantastic. But if you feel like you have to hustle because you won't make money if you don't, that's not healthy. That's just a different form of the shackles that we wore at the nine to five.
Speaker 1:The people who do really well in business. They're not working like that. They are absolutely, after a few years, drinking my ties on the beach, buying yachts blah blah. Ties on the beach by yachts blah, blah, blah blah. We like to call that white male privilege, and it is a white man's club. But the lessons can be taken away that there are ways to do business where you don't work, and work, and work, and then, when you get injured, all of a sudden there's nobody to work anymore and the company goes to the ground and you don't have enough money or you need a break because your kids are driving you crazy or there's a pandemic, and so what happens? Um, so that's what I was doing, consulting for the past several years before I went back and launched asterisk and anodyne magazine um, teaching people how to get out of hustle culture if they want to.
Speaker 2:Okay I like, I think everyone wants to drink mojitos on the beach, you know, eventually, I think, who doesn't want to? Uh, pina colada? But in order to get to that level of success, don't you have to hustle before it? Like you know the concept of, let's say, the four-hour week by tim Ferriss, or all of that, in order to automate these systems that he talks about, or having a business that scales. You have to hustle to get there, isn't that true?
Speaker 1:Depends how you define hustle, but I would define hustle as a sprint. It shouldn't be the marathon. You can't sprint for a whole marathon, right? So, yeah, starting up't sprint for a whole marathon, right? So, um, yeah, the starting up a business often takes some hustle, although, you know, if I were to start a content marketing company again which we had a department at my company that I sold so, doing similar to work to you, I never wrote the articles. Never, not once, did I write the articles in my company. I always had people doing that for me from day one, and so if I were to start it again, I would start by. I guess you could define the hustle as finding the people who were going to write the articles and then finding the clients, but maybe doing through doing so through strategic partnerships, so I didn't have to work as hard in order to find those clients first Interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's do this on air. You're going to give me an advice for free here. So I'm an, I'm an uh, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm struggling to make ends meet and I'm I'm sure many uh people who are listening they're, they're in the same position. And I come to you and I tell you how do I scale my one woman business of author entrepreneur and that includes publishing books, writing for clients, so it's not everything like creative working, but I also provide content. How do I scale it where I don't have to keep looking for the next client or I have to do extra gigs on the side? Or some of the people I talk to they try to find a part-time jobs, like, I'm married, so my husband, you know, takes care of a lot of the bills, so I'm privileged in that sense, but not everyone in that position. So what would you tell someone? Yeah, how can they reach that level of drinking more beer and colada on the beach?
Speaker 1:I mean honestly. When I work with clients I'm deep inside the business. I want to look at the business plan first and usually I say do you have a business plan?
Speaker 2:And they say no Right, so where's? The strategy If there's no business plan, then where's the strategy?
Speaker 1:And there's no business plan, then where's the strategy? And then how are we going to transition?
Speaker 2:Rough strategy Right, right, exactly, and so then there's always that spinning the wheels.
Speaker 1:And so, for me, I want to look at strategy systems and, yes, automation, like Tim Ferriss talks about, but it's not just only about automation. There needs to be this basis, this foundation of strategy that's leading you forward always. And the other thing is I think that, like a hustle culture unfortunately leads us to, is this kind of like solopreneur ideal, which is a false ideal. You can't, you can't have success ever in any respect alone, ever. I'm not talking about employees, I just mean in general, like you can, you literally cannot have success alone.
Speaker 1:And so you know you've got this podcast you're meeting people and building your network all the time. How are you leveraging that network? Like we're spending time together, we're going deep and intimate. How are we going to stay in contact? What's your strategy that way and I actually have like courses built out for this in order to teach people, because now I've transitioned to running other businesses, but I still have this knowledge and I think it's so, so, so important there's this false paradigm of solopreneurship and hustling until you die, whereas I think we all just want to hustle for a short time and then have some peace about the finances and about the future.
Speaker 2:So how do you think I should stay in touch with you? The way I do it is kind of very basic. I just follow them on social media and every once in a while I come in.
Speaker 1:How are you reminded to follow up with somebody? In six months, will you reconnect?
Speaker 2:up with somebody in six months, will you reconnect, Right? It depends If. If the algorithm shows me their, their stuff and I like it, I would like it on Instagram or something that's it Right, right and that's not going to do anything for your business. I mean, like I'm kind of torn, shall I add them to my newsletter, or is that an imposition, or do I have to ask for permission to add to the news, like all of that stuff? I don't quote, unquote, I don't have a strategy.
Speaker 1:Always ask yeah, and you need a strategy. So for me, I never let my clients go away until they're using a CRM or a client relationship manager. That is super robust. My client relationship manager I use Close spelled with a Z. I'm not affiliate. They don't even have an affiliate program, so this is just all me.
Speaker 1:But your client relationship manager should not just like gather all the data on the people that you want to stay in contact with. It should also remind you to contact them and you should be able to titrate how often you want to stay in contact with the different segments within your CRM. So for me, for people who I've done something like this with this, is the publicity category in my CRM right? So I have it set to, I believe, every six months, because if I keep in touch with you more than that, it might start to get weird. But I'll take notes.
Speaker 1:What did we talk about? What did we learn? What was important during this conversation that then I can refer back to who can I connect Natasha to, how can I be a resource for her, and then that starts to engender trust and community and connection and builds more of a foundation for our relationship. And now you can be doing that with literally every single person you interview and then using that to either reach your next publisher, or to find your next client, or to find your next employee, even, or to find the next place you want to go on vacation that that's true.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've been thinking about it, like I have so many connections now in the publishing world and publishers and I was like I'm very happy, but I haven't thought about it. I was like, oh, maybe sometime we can. But, like I, many opportunities came from the podcast, but it was not in a strategic manner, it was just came, you know, because I interviewed this person or something like that. But it's, it's interesting to see and many authors have podcasts as well that I talked to. Yeah, and I don't think that scaling there, you know, using a CRM, is another way. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I see, I see what you're saying about hustle culture and I'm honestly I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the hustle culture. Um, see the bags under my eyes. I put a lot of concealer before this interview but I'm exhausted, to tell you the truth, and I I wanna like be in a four hour a week situation and I think I earned it. You know, I'm almost 50 now and it's it's time to stop hustling.
Speaker 1:Right, it's not like you didn't work hard, so where? Where do we get?
Speaker 2:Exactly Like I pay. I paid my dues. I paid my dues in the corporate world. I paid my dues in motherhood. I paid my dues. So I think the idea is, how do we teach people how to do this, especially authors who are struggling all the time? They do everything. So, for example, I interviewed an author who's on a boat, which is great. I love that he lives on a boat. That's kind of the pathless path that he chose. I love that he lives on a boat. That's kind of the pathless path that he chose. And he's constantly hustling to pay his, I guess, nomadic lifestyle. And one of the things he was telling me that he was going to start recording audiobooks to make extra income. And you know that's great, I think that's it, and you know that's great, I think that's it. But when are we going to reach a stage where we don't have to constantly look for gigs here and there in order to sustain what we're doing?
Speaker 1:And he's in the time for money trap? Oh yeah, because you're paying for him, Right? The only way he sees to make money is to spend time. Literally, our only non-renewable resource as human beings is time, and yet you're spending that, right? So this is again. That's part of the mythos of hustle culture. So I've developed a course for podcasters on how to use podcasting to scale and get more leisure in life.
Speaker 1:I've developed a course for authors specifically because I'm an author, right, but I also had the privilege of being an entrepreneur first. So I thought about my book differently, and that's why, even though the book is five years old that's technically old. That's technically like, how are you still making money off of this book? And yet I might even be flying halfway around the world to present a course on it later on this year, right? So I created an entire course to help to shift the mindset. It's called the um entrepreneurial author, because it's not about writing, it's about the business of being an author. And then I have a free scaling course as well, and I'm not. I know you didn't invite me on here to like sell my courses, but I'm hearing the need.
Speaker 2:I want to take this course, like I need it. Yeah, I need like just the tip you told me about how to scale people who I talk to. I mean that's that's. I mean I never thought of it and I think that's that's really needed in the business of being an author. Because it is a business of being an author, it's no longer Hemingway or whatever, sitting in a cabin writing alone and you get like this huge advance and you live off it. That's. And you get like this huge advance and you live off it.
Speaker 1:That's not the case, it's not and I think that, like people just haven't totally shifted towards that new paradigm, that again, like I said, like your editor, unfortunately isn't going to be the hero that you want them to be. Your publisher isn't going to be the hero that you want them to be. A lot of the sales is going to be up to you. There's a reason that and pardon, pardon the reference, but there's a reason that in I think it was the second Fifty Shades of Grey movie.
Speaker 1:I know I'm sorry about the reference, but serious, there's a reason that she says no judgment In the editor meeting like you had me at editing and writing. Like she works at a publishing house, I'm interested. And she says in that meeting I think that this author might be an interesting person to invest in for this publishing house and and somebody like rolls her eyes or whatever, but she's like this guy has, like I think, a hundred thousand Twitter followers or something like that she's making the point that, like there's a built in following for this author, if we take his manuscript and we publish it, we're going to have more business coming in, and that proves to be true.
Speaker 1:Um, there's a reason that is in that movie. It's true for the, for the publishing industry today, and that's part of my course too, because I think a lot of authors kind of like freak out when they feel like they have to build a brand, right.
Speaker 1:But that's you know circling back to your question about, like, how did I land an agent? Because I'd done two TED talks already, because I had published with a boutique publisher already, because I'd run a business for years and years and years and I had fodder Right. So, like, what are you going to do to build up your brand so that you can land your agent or land your publisher?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm like I'm learning from you. Like, for example, you, you have all of this and you're still pitching um to to podcasts and like I, I don't even do that. So I was like, why don't I do that? You know?
Speaker 1:like, yeah, I'm still pitching to podcasts, I'm still pitching to literary magazines, I'm still posting to to magazines with essays now, yeah, but isn't that a hustle? Isn't that a hustle? It is a little bit of a hustle because again, it's time, it's time spent right, yeah, but that fuels me. So when I am working right in, like my, what I really want to be working on, which is either now my magazine or my own personal writing, like that feels very exciting to me. And I hear so many authors say like, oh, the rejections and I'm like you know, I don't care, Like I'm just going for it. More people know my name now, even if it's been a rejection. It gives me more chances to learn how to write a better proposal every time. So, yeah, I guess to those of you who think maybe getting an agent will change your life, it changes things, but it also doesn't.
Speaker 2:Okay, so how are you selling your books? What are the marketing tips that you would give to others, since you're the expert? Uh, how do you? You know you have your um, how, how. What do you think authors now, in 2023, should do to sell their, their books? People say tiktok, whatever, but what do you think they should do?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean I. I definitely have found books on Tik TOK Like. One of my favorite books I read in 2022 was um legends and lattes. It was a viral Tik TOK book and I loved it.
Speaker 1:It absolutely felt like yeah like just curl up with your coffee and drink a book, read about coffee. It was perfect. I loved that book and that was a NaNoWriMo. Okay, um, found, oh really, yeah. Another book actually a NaNoWriMo that is super famous now is the Silo Trilogy. It's now on Apple TV. I discovered the trilogy when I was in lockdown and pandemic and couldn't believe it was a NaNoWriMo. And then it got picked up by, I believe, simon Schuster, and then he sold the rights to universal and then, three years later, here we are Apple TV.
Speaker 1:The silo trilogy dystopian, post-apocalyptic future fun. So, anyway, what? What am I talking about here? So, with regards to marketing, here we are right now, like, however many listeners you've got now know about my body of work that they didn't know about it before, they're going to go look up Veronica Zorro-Kirin, maybe Right.
Speaker 2:I'll link to your website Thank you.
Speaker 1:Right, but like so this podcast guest is absolutely a valid avenue for marketing. Definitely, amazon does some of it for me. However, there's a huge myth that, like, once the book is up there, it's going to like do stuff. It's not true and in fact, your book will have no visibility unless you have at least 30 reviews. Most people don't know that. So do not rely on Amazon, do not rely on Goodreads, until you get those reviews built up. It's just, it's not going to help you at all.
Speaker 1:I definitely like to strategic partners, uh, so people within the publishing space, bookstores, et cetera. I'm always like, just kind of like checking in How's it going? You still want to carry my book, et cetera Lectures, speeches, keynotes, conferences yeah, I spoke at a couple of conferences specific to my book this year. And then, if your book is newer, one of the best kept secrets or maybe it's not, I don't know. It was a great. It was a great find for me when your book's new um, the library circuit in the United States. If you're in the United States as an author, um is great and it pays. So libraries put on free events all the time, but they have a budget to bring authors in, so you'll get between 50 and $200 just for showing up and presenting your book. You get to keep the proceeds from any books you sell at the event and then again, more people know about your books and I've got to tell you, seeing your book with that library sticker on the binding is an absolute treat. Yeah, so those are some ideas.
Speaker 2:I also heard about book clubs, book clubs.
Speaker 1:Book boxes. Right Book box subscriptions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, book of the month, but these are hard to get in. They can be, but why not try Mission process? Yeah. So what is in store for you now? So I know you're working on the Secret Project. What else are you working on?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have awaiting publishers Lots of reading, lots of writing. Working on Anodyne Magazine. We're about to publish our first issue. So by the time this podcast comes out, the first issue will be out In December. We're reopening submissions and we're doing so trimesterly, so check back in. All the time I thought for years do I want to start a magazine? Why would I start a magazine? There's so many magazines out there, what's the point? And then now, being in it, it's been delightful, it's been so much fun. And then running asterisk, really trying to. You know, maybe it's fun, but in a different way, because it's sticking it to the man, literally trying to help change the way women's health is viewed in the world. Huge mountain to climb enormous mountain to climb.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially now with you know, with what's going on with the US and the debate I don't take any stand on. You know I stay out of politics on this podcast. Let's say it's a very heated debate.
Speaker 1:Well, in my opinion, women's bodies should not be political period. It's a body, I'm an animal. Why are we talking about it from this perspective? Does is my life as valuable as yours? Yes, End of conversation.
Speaker 2:Exactly. So, okay, you are in Germany now. Do you know, like, if you can share with us? Did you move there because you know, for work reasons, US, but I lived in different parts of the world, I was born elsewhere, so I'm always curious about people who travel you know cross continents.
Speaker 1:So what was your experience? Yeah, I gotta say, you know, moving during a pandemic is a very interesting time to move. In some ways it made it easier because there was less to contend with, like there weren't very many people traveling. You know, when we arrived to Berlin there was nothing to do and so, in a way, the culture shock was reduced because there just wasn't a lot of exposure. So why did you?
Speaker 2:move.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So honestly we were getting I mean, we don't want to be political on the show, but we were getting really afraid for our lives and existence as queer people in the United States Me in particular, as a woman in the United States, access to health care was becoming a major issue. So it was a little bit of bodily safety mismatch of values, concerns for outcome and well-being, and then just simply looking towards opportunities that we really wanted.
Speaker 2:So we're very happy here. How is life in Germany as an author, as an entrepreneur? How are you managing all of that? These?
Speaker 1:are great questions, so I do want to preface to say that, like Berlin is very different than Germany.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard that. I really want to visit. Berlin yeah.
Speaker 1:It's absolutely insane here. So, you know, pick your flavor, pick your poison, it's all here. When I have people visit me, I ask them like what do you enjoy? Because it's all here. Anything you want, anything you want, is here. So when they ask me, what do we do, it's like what do you enjoy? Because it's all here. Anything you want, anything you want, is here. So when they ask me, what do we do, it's like well, I can't even begin to define what we're going to do until I know what you, what you like to do when you travel.
Speaker 1:Um, berlin is the entrepreneurial capital of Europe. So, um, you know the, the funds are flowing here. It's especially good for tech companies. So there's meetups, there's events, there's conferences. There's so many blockchain conferences I can't even keep up just in Berlin, let alone across Europe. And landed the job within a month of beginning the search. Oh, wow. I really encourage people who feel like they want to explore a new lifestyle or maybe security, to come on over, especially if they're in the tech scene or entrepreneurial scene. Berlin just has so much to offer in that way, and I mean the job security is amazing here, let alone the work-life balance which is mandated by law. So we love it. We just we absolutely love it, and I don't see us leaving anytime soon.
Speaker 2:Oh, great, happy to hear it. So any final thoughts, tips how can people find you? If you want to, you don't know about like submit to your magazine. Maybe take one of your courses, buy your books. How can they find you? If you want to, you don't know about like, submit to your magazine. Maybe take one of your courses, buy your books.
Speaker 1:How can they find you? The easiest way to find me is just to go to my website, veronicakirancom, which I know Natasha will spell it in the show notes for you. If you know about Kiran Beer, then you know how to spell my last name. If you don't, then you might be clueless. Honestly, like yeah, anodyne is there, my courses are there, asterisk is there. So if anything I've mentioned stirs your fancy, it's all there, as well as all my social media. So if you're just like curious to follow this really wild woman, feel free. I'm on all of the things except for Snapchat, like I've. Technically I'm on Snapchat, but I haven't posted in probably four or five years, so he won't see me there.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, oh fun. And uh, last question how do you think I should stay connected to you? What shall I do? How, how, how do I make sure we still connected?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'm actually really curious. First of all, easy first connection is like, hey, you're not publishing this podcast for another few months, as you said, so the timeline is long, which means there's a natural reconnection point for us Correct. And then from there, like there should be an update at that point, like a question from you what's going on in Veronica's life? Does any of the show notes need to change? And then also, that gives me the opportunity to hear a little bit more about you and what's been going on in Natasha's life. It should be a natural part of the conversation.
Speaker 1:And then from there I would definitely find a CRM that helps to remind you to reconnect with your various guests so that you keep that wheel turning, to keep relationship warm, because there's going to be a time when you want to reach out. And I've got to tell you this happened to me plenty of times where I look in my address book and like that person would be the perfect person to reach out to, but I haven't talked to them in two years, and so it feels really awkward. So I don't reach out to them, you know. So, just because I've been on your show, if it's two years from now, I might not remember very well. So if you reach out to me more in between and then you have a real ask right, then you're much more likely to have a positive response.
Speaker 2:I'll keep harassing you on social media?
Speaker 1:And I've got to say, a lot of entrepreneurs think social media is where it's at. That's one marketing channel out of the available 19. So don't rely on social media alone.
Speaker 2:Available 19. Ah, you have a number. I have to take that course then. Okay, all right, Thank you so much, veronica. It's been amazing, inspiring and I learned a lot, and I'm sure anyone who's listening or watching is going to learn a lot from this. And let's stay in touch, of course, and for anyone who's listening or watching, thank you for joining us today and until we meet again, thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. 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.
