Indie Publishing and Human Art with Angie Kelly, Indie Publishing Episode 1

What does it take to make human art today? Is worth it? We kick off a new series on Indie Publishing with my dear friend and found-sister Angie Kelly today! Welcome to Episode 1. 

On this episode, Angie and I work to pull back the curtain on the emotional and economic substrate behind a book: the thousands of quiet hours, the minimum‑wage calculus, the edits that cost more than many tired authors even earn, and the launch-day silence that can follow years of work.

From there, Angie and I dive into the attention economy bent on reshaping how readers discover books, and all art, from BookTok and Bookstagram to other strange realities that can crown a title overnight, and we highlight how trend saturation squeezes nuance and human-ness, leaving quieter and highly crafted novels invisible. Angie speaks well on why publishers chase velocity, why flashy debuts can fizzle just as fast, and how fan-fiction-to-film pipelines and algorithm-friendly marketing pathways distort realities of art.

If you care about books built by human hearts, you’ll find both something here. Join us, subscribe, and share this episode with a reader or writer who needs it!

Angelina Kelly is an indie author and biologist who was born and raised in Alaska and has an inherent love for nature. She now lives in British Columbia where she works as a biologist and writes epic fantasy books that weave in her reverence for wilderness and the natural world. 

Learn more about Angie's work and books HERE!

Learn more about Daniel's work and books HERE!

Chapters

• 0:00 New Series And Purpose
• 0:59 Authorship In An AI-Obsessed World
• 3:50 Post-Launch Letdown And Sales Reality
• 8:04 Trend Saturation On BookTok
• 10:17 Counting The Hours, Counting The Cost
• 12:01 Minimum Wage Math For Authors
• 14:41 Are We Past The Breaking Point
• 20:39 Why A Former Editor Said Don’t Publish
• 25:12 From Ingram Spark Nightmares To Better Tools
• 29:36 The Indie Gold Rush And Who Profits
• 33:32 What Publishers Are Supposed To Do
• 38:36 Profit Over Quality And Reader Needs
• 44:12 Viral Books, Flashy Launches, Fast Fizzles
• 50:00 Fanfic To Film Deals And What’s Real
• 56:56 Contradictions In Publisher Decisions
• 1:03:36 Algorithms, Oversaturation, And Fatigue
• 1:09:36 Craft Vs Speed: What Gets Lost
• 1:18:12 Writers As Mapmakers Of The Future
• 1:25:40 Social Media Burnout And The Work
• 1:31:36 Building Community Beyond The Book
• 1:36:40 Lessons From Farming: Serve The Few

Transcript

Daniel Firth Griffith: 0:01

Hello. Welcome to the podcast. It is my absolute pleasure to welcome us into a new series, which will be uh run uh simultaneously to the God is Read series, which will obviously continue on with my dear friend and brother Taylor Keane about indie publishing, both for readers, so people who like to read books, and for authors, people who like to write books. Uh I'll be joined uh every week with my dear friend and found sister, Angelina Kelly, who is an amazing author. Um, she's written two amazing books um in the epic fantasy space, uh, all within the storm-bound series, which we'll talk all about throughout, and more information is in the show notes about that. Uh, definitely check that out. Um, and uh, I don't know where we're gonna go with this. This is the introduction to the first episode. And the first episode is a uh one and a half hour rant about all things authorship and artistry and human creativity in a world gone sour um against the very fundamentals of what makes us human. Um, in a world um that looks at AI and sees beauty and pushes the human aside. And Angie and I, we get to talk about what that means, how that affects authorship and human creativity, what that looks like from a practice or structural perspective or paradigm within the sociocultural framework of today and capitalism and so much more. We'll talk about how to publish books in some episodes. We'll talk about the nature of editing and uh what that means if you're a reader of books in future episodes. I don't know. We have a lot of ideas, and uh maybe some of them will happen, some of them will not. Um but uh yeah, it's it's going to be interesting. I'm I'm I'm really stoked for this series because I think regardless of where you come at the question of authorship or readership, whether or not you'd like to write or read what is written, we were at a we as a people are at a pivotal point in in the human evolution and experiment of that human uh evolution, both biologically but also socially. And so what what does it mean for the very mores and foundational cornerstones of the human species to be in jeopardy? I I think that's what today is absolutely casting uh the playbill to be. Um, while also what does it mean to be a human that reads and partakes and supports that art, and and how can we do that much more humanly, a lot less capitalistically, uh, much more honorably, and with uh more reciprocity and relationship than we have hitherto uh put up with and accepted uh in our very social and modern and capitalistic lives. So there's a lot of words there. I mean some of them, others I think we'll unfurl and unpack in a later episode. Um but let's jump in. Uh enough of this rambling. I am no good at it, and uh yeah, I've listened to myself speak enough. So uh without further ado, episode one in the indie publishing series with Angie Kelly. We can edit this. I just always forget to hit that, but um that's good. I'm going through like the the withdrawal of having a book come out and like nothing mattering, you know what I'm trying to say? Like I'm the only one that's excited.

Angie Kelly: 4:03

Yeah, it is it I don't know. It does always feel like a I mean I've only done it once, but it is there is that like letdown afterward where you're like, oh, this big thing and this big accomplishment, and I've done it, and then it happens, and you're like, wow, okay, this is not anything, no one cares. I sold two, awesome.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 4:24

I was looking at my Kindle numbers recently, and they're just atrocious. They're so bad.

Angie Kelly: 4:29

But um Oh god, yeah, mine too. Like insanely bad. Yeah, like I don't know what's going on bad. Like it's just wow. Sorry, I'm still uh tinkering with my uh volume here. Yeah, it's crazy. Like something has happened. I don't know I don't know what, but it's not good.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 4:50

I think the thing that I want to think, I should say it that way, is I was really excited when I first stumbled on book talk and books to gram and all of these things because well it was cool. Like everybody's talking about books again, you know? And now it seems like what's um the the um Jay James Islington, is that his name? The Will of the Many, is that a book? I think it's a book. He has like it's one that's like everybody is talking about in the fantasy space or whatever. It's like a Roman fantasy or something. Well, like his sequel comes out this month, and it's like all I'm seeing. Like the only thing I see is this thing, which I don't I don't understand. But it it does, it's weird. It's like in publishing, you have like a publisher will buy a hundred books knowing your a hundred, you know, written novels that they then turn into books, knowing that they're never gonna sell that many and they're never gonna make their money back because they publish also Rebecca Yarros or whoever that's just gonna sell millions. And so they'll take the many, many, many millions that they make in profit from that one deal and finance or subsidize all of the deals that they need for their portfolio, or they need, you know, for X and Y's reasons, or because they want to, but they know that they're never gonna actually sell many, you know, 200 to a thousand copies, and then it will just fizzle out. It's never gonna be a thing. I feel like the same thing, though, is happening in the book marketing and bookstagram book talk space, where you have so many books that want to be seen, and yet all of these big, noteworthy, well-funded campaigns, all through publishers, I think, are just dominating that space. And then all those accounts, which I I follow and and enjoy some of them. Um, some of them are really nice people. Um, you know, they try to give voice or give light to, oh, this is you know, a local author or an indie author, you know, Angie Kelly and their new book, whatever. And then they go talking about the other thing.

Angie Kelly: 7:07

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 7:07

I mean you get in there for split.

Angie Kelly: 7:09

Yeah. You get in there for one post, if you're lucky, that a fraction of their audience sees because they don't know who you are. And then they're on to trend surfing. Because that's what like they're trying to grow their audience and their platform and their followers too. So they're right trying to just make sure they hit all the same trends that everyone else is hitting.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 7:27

I like that too.

Angie Kelly: 7:28

And it becomes like really saturated trends.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 7:31

Trends. Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 7:33

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 7:34

I like that. That's exactly what it is.

Angie Kelly: 7:36

I learned that from my husband, actually, because he says he was telling me about YouTube, and he was like, that's the big way that people do it. And that's like why it's an important thing for marketing for a lot of um that's like why people will market so hard to big influencers, because they set the trend. And then you get all of this free downstream marketing that happens if your top 10 biggest people in that genre are talking about it.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 8:00

Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, that that makes total sense. Yeah, but it is a weird thing. Um like before this, because I don't know where this series is gonna go. Um, I'd like to try to document as much as I could so that when I say something mathematical or numerical, that uh it's a little bit founded. And I was thinking about how long it takes to write a book. And I've never really spent the time to do that. Like count how many hours a day and how many days a week, and how many weeks it takes to draft book one or draft uh draft one, to write draft one and to revise it into draft two and all of the car rides or showers or nights where you're just crying because it's not working.

Angie Kelly: 8:43

Yeah, or you're just thinking about anything.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 8:47

But it's a weird, it's a weird place that I I think we get to experience together, you and I, on this podcast in ten different ways, I I hope. But like to put so much effort in for this tangible good that um, well, I don't know, it feels quite intangible uh from a like a value perspective or from like a being seen perspective or you know, whatever that might mean to the individual writer. But like it takes me, I wonder about you. Like it I I bet I spend over a thousand hours drafting a draft.

Angie Kelly: 9:23

I didn't even guess. I mean, probably like yeah. If you count all of that, like not downtime, but like all of that not writing but thinking time.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 9:36

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 9:37

It really does like, yeah, it's a ton of time. It's like all of my waking time when I'm like really in that mode of producing draft one, you know, it's constant. It's like when I'm driving, when I'm in the shower, when I'm at the gym, like I'm sometimes when I'm at my day job. Like that's just what I'm thinking about instead. So it definitely adds up.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 9:57

I'll I'll like zone out and Morgan, my wife, will be like, oh shit, you're gone. Where'd you go? And you're like, oh, I figured it out. I have an idea. There it was. Um but so I I looked at this and I I don't know, I just wanted to start here because uh to me, this is just astounding. If I got paid minimum wage to write, I would need to sell 6,500 books per sick every six months, would be about would be about that time, would would be the the the payment for that time. 6,500 books, or let's say 12,000 books a year would be minimum wage. And that's not taking into anything else. That's just time. Like that's just like the the the sheer net profit off of a book sale multiplied or divided into the number of hours spent writing.

Angie Kelly: 10:50

And uh that's way too much, dude.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 10:53

That's way too much, right? Way too much. I think that's like a common plea for many people who work today. Like the the mayoral um candidacy in New York City is so important right now because of the with the Mandani, I forget his first name, but he attacks it as a democratic socialist. He's all over Inst Instagram, especially, because everybody's losing their brain. Like Trump said he's gonna fire it. Like whatever. It doesn't matter about Trump. But um, but he his his whole play his whole platform, regardless of I mean, politics aside, um, his whole platform is people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week in New York, because he's the mayor of New York. So he cares about you know the cities and the five bureaus. But he says people are working 60 to 80 hours a week and they can't even afford to like take a bus or a cab or an Uber to get to work, let alone the life and the food and everything else. And so he said in the past, yeah, socialism doesn't work, but I wonder if democratic social socialism moving forward may work, in the sense that like we won't have people soon. And I wonder the same thing we again, regardless of the politics there, I wonder the same thing about books. Like if an author requires a thousand hours plus editing, plus redrafting, plus all the marketing and things, which I'm not even taking into account, and they have to sell, you know, on Amazon or other wholesale platforms, you know, Target or Barnes and Nobles or bookstores or something, 12,000 books a year to make it work. At what point in time does authorship look like life in New York City?

Angie Kelly: 12:24

I think already. I think we're past that. I think it has for a while, at least. I mean, like, and it's not just New York City. Like that's I feel like so many of my friends even here are like we're professionals with degrees and we have salaried jobs and we are falling behind. It's like, you know, like we're not keeping up.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 12:44

To push, you know. But no, I I totally get you.

Angie Kelly: 12:47

Yeah, but it's just radiating everywhere now, like every. And then yeah, that's the first thing that goes is the arts. It's the things that aren't essential, it's the things that aren't paying your bills. Like, even for me, these last couple months, I've been like, dude, I might have made a mistake. Like, like this is not sustainable, and it's not something I can justify continuing forever at this pace. Like, I'm just dumping money into these projects, hoping that they will turn around and eventually become profitable. But like, I can't keep doing this for 10 years. Like, my day job doesn't pay well enough to float this hobby of mine for that long. Like eventually it's gonna have to pay.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 13:26

And you're a highly educated, highly um I mean, you have a master's degree in biology, right? I mean, yeah. It's not uh yeah. And and I think that's the the point of this, the series, you know, as this being episode one and feeling our way through it. To me, what I would like to explore with you again over untold episodes, we'll see how it goes and where it goes, is like that pain. And then also there there has to be hope. And I don't mean to be cliche, but I I know you believe in stories, and I know I believe in stories. And if stories really matter, then as life gets harder, the storytellers become more important.

Angie Kelly: 14:08

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 14:09

Right. And so like I want to find that hope with you. And so I think throughout these episodes would be really cool to go into different areas and look at the bad and look at the ugly and feel through that. Um but then also get into like, and this might not be a topic for this uh this this episode per se, but like when I got into indie publishing, self-publishing in 2018 was like the first foray. I got into it because I was actually in South Georgia for this agricultural conference and I was rooming with a guy I've never met before. We all kind of got roommates, and uh and he had been a senior editor at a publishing house for many years, and and went back to his family's farm when his uncle got cancer or something like this and took it over. And 10, 15 years later, I'm in a hotel with tell hotel with room with him talking about how I wanted to write a book. And and he said, Listen, if I could tell you one thing, as somebody who's worked in the publishing space as a senior editor for many, many, many years, it's the last thing I would ever do is publish a book. Like, don't don't do this. And I was like, why? You know? And he's like, Listen, none of the publishing houses care. None of the editors care. None of the marketing teams know what they're doing. Like, if you want to market something, go get a marketer. Like, don't don't go to a publishing house that has a marketing team. Like, they don't, that doesn't happen. Publishing houses are built, even the new ones, they're still built on the old framework of selling books to bookshops, to magazines, to literary magazines, to colleges, things like this. Publishing houses are not built really to sell books to Amazon and the and consumer and things like this. And so they're not good at what they do. And he gave me all of these reasons. And I was like, well, what do I do then? And he's like, if I was you, I would just print like a limited run, sell it, and and be like this weird indie guy. So I started researching, and Ingram Spark was like the only option at that point. So like the first print on demand company where as an indie or self-published author, you can go on, upload a manuscript and a cover, and you know, have a book that you could order at any point, right? Like a real bound book. And Ingram was horrible. Like, oh my gosh. Like if you wanted to change the manuscript back in like early 2019, 2020, it was like $150 just to update the manuscript at any point. And if you had any problems, Ingram Spark. So Ingram Spark is a subsidiary of Ingram, like the largest book distributor in the world.

Angie Kelly: 16:44

Right.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 16:44

And so like they don't they don't really care about their little subsidies, subsidiary, little Sparky, you know, as I always made fun of them by. So they don't have any customer service. And so like I I published a book, they distributed it via Ingram, the largest district book distributor in the world, to Amazon and everything else, but they distributed it with the wrong cover. Like it wasn't even my book's cover of somebody else's cover. So on Amazon, you typed in my book's title and you saw my information in the book, but it was with a different cover. And when they bought that, it came with the wrong cover. Like it was it was a nightmare, a horrible nightmare. Three months it took them to even answer a customer service email. It just it was horrible. Horrible. I highly recommend not self-publishing a book in 2018. But today, I mean, like Book Vault, another organization, has their own issues, but just illustrating the hope of today, because I think there is hope. Like Book Vault has instant, like you can the uploading platform, you can upload it at any time. I think you have to pay like what 20, 30 bucks to create the book on their platform. But you can upload update the manuscript for free at any time. It's really easy. You can use like this 3D um like uh validator, I think they call it, where you can like upload all the files and you can explore the book in this 3D interface online where you to make sure that like the book looks right and the images are where they're supposed to go, and the text lays out, and they have a two-day customer service team, which is very exciting, not three months. Um, they have other problems, of course. But it's just like there there's a lot of emphasis coming into this space. Like originally we had one organization, now we have ten that you could use, and yeah. Um some of the big authors are using it, you know.

Angie Kelly: 18:33

Yes.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 18:34

Go ahead.

Angie Kelly: 18:35

Yes, some some of them are. I think one thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is like you are right, there is a lot of effort and emphasis coming. Like people know that people want indie books and then it's an accessible thing and that people are I don't know if it's because they're getting tired of the traditionally published stuff, or if it's just because indie books are cheaper, or it's just more a fun trend to be on, or whatever it is. But I have this suspicion or this feeling lately at least that like all of these bigger companies are getting in on the indie trend because they can suck so much money out of people like us. Not necessarily like individual me or individual you, because we don't have that much money.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 19:21

But only suck for about a minute and then dry.

Angie Kelly: 19:24

But if you convince 10,000 people that they can do this and that this dream is something they can accomplish, and you give them the tools, I mean you can pull a few thousand bucks out of ten thousand people every single six months or more. Yeah. So, like, I don't know.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 19:41

That's a really great point you raise. One that I would I think I would would be fun to explore is like the role of publishing, right? So I'm not great at setting up conversations because I just I like dialogue too much and interview podcasts are not my thing. But to be very clear, sorry. You've you've published yourself indie published two books. Your next one's coming out and your second one's at like December 12th or something.

Angie Kelly: 20:06

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 20:06

Is that right?

Angie Kelly: 20:07

Nice. Good job remembering that. Thank you. Since we both forgot your release. Yes.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 20:12

I forgot my I looked at Morgan.

Angie Kelly: 20:14

You remember mine.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 20:15

Yeah, I remembered yours. I looked at Morgan that that day and I was like, Morgan, I forgot about my book. And she's like, That's okay, you can post now. And I was like, No, it's it's 10 o'clock.

Angie Kelly: 20:26

It was yesterday.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 20:27

It was yesterday. Um I still haven't really posted about it. Um but yeah, okay, so like the like you're you I I always have so much um you so okay, so you've you've written a couple books, you've gotten it out, you got your feelers, you have your own perspective, which is really cool. I guess I have my own perspective, which is interesting, and yet at the same time. I don't know. There's there's there's nuance there, right? But the role of publishing, the role of publishing and publishers is something that I want to discuss. Because I think it's very easy talking with indie authors to immediately to immediately disregard the healthy role of a third party saying this is a book, or helping you craft that book, or giving you a community to help maturate that book, right? To allow it to become what it's supposed to be. Like those are all the roles of the publisher historically. And I think that those things are really, really good because playing off of what you just said with the 10,000 people every six months, I think there's a lot of books flooding the market, which I'm not saying don't deserve to be there in the slightest. I mean, I don't really care what anybody does. And yet at the same time, the ease of access to these more improved systems are yielding it exponentially more and more and more lower quality or lower entry quality work from people who wouldn't exist otherwise. And yeah, and I want to I want to be very clear. If you want to write a story, write the damn story, right, and get it out. But it doesn't also have to be a book. And I think that's where a lot of people get really confused. Like I know a lot of people who write short stories and they publish on Substack and they make $30,000 a month doing so. They're they're an author, right? But they don't want to take those books, put it in a bound copy and say, I'm a book author, right? Like they would much rather make their 30 grand a month on Substack writing short stories. And so today, when the mediums, that is, to say, actual bound book or Substack or blog or magazine or poetry journal, in an era when those mediums uh are completely accessible to the masses, I think there's also a confusion on what medium is right for you, right? So like I don't know if all books should be books. Sometimes I wonder if they should have been like limited run pamphlets to your greatest fans or something. But that that said, my point is publishers have a re like a role. Um but it doesn't to me feel like publishers today acknowledge that role or attend well to that role. I don't know. I'm setting the framework for a conversation.

Angie Kelly: 23:33

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 23:34

How do you feel?

Angie Kelly: 23:36

Yeah, I mean it feels like yeah, go for it. Um I mean they do, and I feel I mean, the it feels like their role is just becoming to be as profitable as possible. And like we've talked about this before, but when you're a publicly traded company, if your profits aren't going up, you're failing every year. So like they have to do this. They are beholden to make more money this year than they did last year, and more money next year than this year. That is just the system that they operate under. And as every company in the world and every person in the world gets squeezed tighter and tighter for everything we have, as this wealth gap continues to grow and we all suffer for it, these companies are just gonna get hungrier and hungrier. And like Yeah, I mean, uh it was told to me by agents too. Like they they publish what they think they can sell, not what they think is good.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 24:31

And you know, which obviously there's some overlap there, but so interesting though, because that's the flip of most readers, don't you think? Yeah. Like most readers want what is good, not what is there.

Angie Kelly: 24:46

Yes.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 24:46

Like even if what they think is good, you may not think is good, right? But like it's still subjective. All art is subjective. But even still, though, like I think they would rather have an less accessible book that they had to wait a month to get delivered, right? But have it be better for their own subjective idea of what better is than have it be not better, but immediately accessible. Yeah. Like that does like that why why is that? Like, that's something I can't figure out. Why would all of the big publishing houses run with a model that is literally anterior to literally on the back end of their customer's model, all for the customer's sake?

Angie Kelly: 25:30

Like that doesn't make sense. I know. It well, to some degree, but I also think that like yeah, but like in it, it's almost ties into what we were saying at the beginning. If you look at it from that reader perspective, with the rise of book talk and bookstagram and book influencers, there is this like and it's not this way for everyone, but it feels like there's this almost level of competition to it, where like people are setting their goals for how many books they read in a year, and it's posted on their Instagram bio, like what number they're at, and they update it, and like people are surfing the trends of like whatever book is coming out that they have to get, and like there's been a big rise in popularity of special editions because of that. Because like you have to have the prettiest bookshelf in the most photographable book collection.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 26:20

I hope they all get mold. So bad.

Angie Kelly: 26:24

I take that back.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 26:25

I take that back.

Angie Kelly: 26:27

As an author, I'm like, oh yeah, I mean, great, buy multiple books from the same author, because that's the only way that I'm gonna actually make this one book make money, you know, if people buy five copies of it. Yeah. Because I can't reach five different readers all of the time, but I can reach one and I can maybe convince them to buy two versions. And yeah, that's my best hope. But yeah. So I do wonder if if these publishers are playing off that idea of like this it's a consumerism mindset, right? It is that like it's not viewing art in the way that like our human being brains and storyteller human brains want to consume art for the story because that's what we do as humans. It's consuming it as a consumer. Like, what is the fanciest best version that I can get? How quick can I get it? How cheap can I get it for? Because I have this idea in my mind of what I want my Instagram page to look like. And I can achieve that if I spend two grand on special editions. Which, like, if that's what you want to do, great. You're supporting a lot of authors, and that's very fun and good. But I do wonder if that mindset has made its way into these two big publishing houses that have to make a profit. I mean it must.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 27:49

Yeah. Well, it's so interesting because most like the uh a good friend of mine um he writes a lot on Substack, a guy named Kern Carter, a very well published author in Canada. Cobec maybe? I don't remember. Doesn't matter. Somewhere up your way. And uh and he always throws out these statistics on Substack that I so value because they're completely against this mainstream narrative that like people aren't reading as much anymore or people aren't buying digital books any or uh uh physical books anymore in place of digital books or things. 2023, he recently showed the statistics for according to like the Library of Congress or something, which I don't know. I don't know where else you would get this information, so let's pretend that's credible. I don't I don't know.

Angie Kelly: 28:45

They did they track all the ISBNs in red so like countries, so they should know.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 28:49

They should know something. 2023, there were more books sold than 2022 and 2021 combined, physical books. However, 2022 was the highest year on record for physical books sold. So it wasn't like 2023 came after two really bad years. Like 2023 came after two really great years, some of the best. And it like doubled it or something like that, or almost doubled it, or some rendition of that. And his point was that we're told that people don't read anymore, but we're selling more books than we ever have, physical books, maybe to the same person for the five different signature editions on their shelves. Maybe that's what it also is. But then, so like you have that narrative, and then on the uh uh the ulterior side, the publisher side, you also have this idea that publishers are struggling, they need to make money, but then you look at their numbers because they're all publicly traded, it's all online. Um, you and I have talked about this. Penguin Random House, the largest of the top five publishers unequivocally. They're they're King Dick, as I say. Um, do you know what their annual profit is?

Angie Kelly: 29:54

Again, look it up on line.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 29:56

It's one point, I think it's one point three or one point seven. billion.

Angie Kelly: 30:01

Oh, it's all of them combined to send the trillions.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 30:03

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Something like that.

Angie Kelly: 30:05

And it it's That's insane.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 30:07

It's it's like the they're not struggling. Like, do you know how much of a billion?

Angie Kelly: 30:13

Like I was trying to, I was telling my we don't know how much a billion dollars to be honest, I can't fathom how much a billion dollars is.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 30:20

So like one, just imagine 1% of the so Elon Musk is worth $300 billion. So 300 times the profit of paying a random house. If you take his net worth in $100 bills, the biggest domain of our currency, and you lay the dome and you lay that currency end to end so that you have the little sides touching so that they're long strips. And then you tape them together, his money, that $300 billion, would go three times, it would build a bridge three times around the globe at the equator, the thickest point, the swelling of the body of the belly of Earth, right? Three times around the equator. Then you can make a rope that you can then float into outer space with tethered to those three lines. You could float all the way to the moon, put a post in the ground, right? Have another string and float all the way back to Earth and still have hundred dollars like money left. That's how much I mean in length. Not that we measure money in length, but like that's how many hundred dollar bills goes in $300 billion. And so when you think about like the one side readers don't read anymore and yet they're reading more today than they ever have. Then on the other side it's like well publishers need to make money how dare you say that they can't chase a trend but they're making $1.3 billion in profit every year. Yes. It it doesn't make sense that none of this makes sense.

Angie Kelly: 31:43

It doesn't make sense and that is what I'm saying of like this wealth gap growing it's the same in every industry. Yeah just squeezing this industry too. And like it is that idea of like oh well we're the publicly traded company and our profits have to go up but you still have to write as books. You still have to write books for us to sell. Yeah. And like I understand that whole teams of people go into producing these books. People have heat about editors. I think that's going to be a shit yeah yeah yeah we should because it it's a wildly different experience than what you and I are doing. Um but like the this industry was built on the back of artists. It was built on writers and it still is like you need a writer with a brain to make a book not so much with AI anymore if they really want to go there, which is a whole other episode we could do because I have very strong feelings about it.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 32:35

But do you think that there's books on the market today that are 100% AI written?

Angie Kelly: 32:42

Yeah. Yeah oh yeah I know it. Remember there was that one that got busted recently that I don't even remember the name of because I don't I can't retain information or pay attention to the news anymore. But someone got busted because they left the chat GPT prompt in the book when they published it.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 32:57

Are you I don't I don't know this story.

Angie Kelly: 32:59

Oh I need to look at I think it was a I think it was a romance or a fantasy romance and it went up on Amazon and it was like this whole you know they pushed for their release and they did a whole thing and people got first copies and were like whoa like you left your prompt in the book of your writing and so people freaked out and they took it down but like what's that book silver is silver elite silver elite I know that book was um they have conspiracy theories about yeah there's conspiracy theories or I was going to say argued that that was AI that like the whole thing was AI that wasn't even true.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 33:35

I don't think I don't know if that was ever brought to to the fore. But like okay but like even in the same way individual booksellers. So like Barnes Noble it it it it is very interesting the way that Barnes and Noble as a bookseller treats book talk or popular books. Because like you'll go in there and you'll see these things. Like they'll have a whole table on like noteworthy book you know hashtag book talk books or something like that. And there's they're all there.

Angie Kelly: 34:04

It's a tag on Amazon now too.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 34:06

Is it really yep you can win then you look at these books and and it's so interesting because they'll be there right so like Silver Elite is one of them. Like I I walked into a Barnes Noble a couple months ago whenever that book came out and oh my God there was I mean there could there's a whole display just for that book. Yeah there was just I mean a hundred of them or something like this. Oh my God. Just a whole table was overflowing with this Silver Elite book. And it was the first time I saw it and I was like Morgan I I study books. Like part of my writing process is studying books. I mean it's weird but like I know what's going on in in and such and I'm always interested to see how certain authors write certain books following the release of a book that they wrote last year that did 10 times better than the previous books and then they start writing like I just I just I like to study that. Like what are authors doing not just telling stories but like how are they telling them in view of the ones that they've sold or in view of the ones that are best selling today? Like are they adapting like my favorite authors modern authors are they adapting to the trends are they steering clear of the trends like this is a passion of mine I guess. So when I walked into Barnes Noble and I saw Silver Lead I was like I never heard of this book. Like it came out of freaking nowhere.

Angie Kelly: 35:23

It did come out of nowhere. It came out of nowhere and it hit the market so hard. And I don't from a marketing perspective because that's obviously what I'm trying to learn how to do so that I can also continue to do this. I have no clue how you pull that off without throwing insane amounts of money behind it and having like a lot of connections and strategy.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 35:45

Yeah yeah money you know but like there's not even a silver elite book in that Barnes and Noble today. And I asked them because I was curious like oh they must have sold out right they said they haven't had it in stock for about a month and they don't know when it's going to come back in stock at Barnes and Noble. And I was like wow it really sold out well and they're like no we just we just don't stock it because nobody's buying it what and I was like oh okay like that was a fast like it my my point being and again this is just one Barnes and Noble right like we are surveying one section of the Charlottesville book scene you know Charlottesville Virginia where this Barnes Noble was so I'm not making some blanket large claim here but the point still being these publishers have the ability maybe using AI or aided by AI to create these massive affairs that then spread everywhere. But like the book is that from everybody that I know that would even maybe like such a book as Silver Elite which I probably won't enjoy they don't even like Silver Elite as a book. Like they didn't think it was that good. And I don't know what everybody else thinks but and and so it's interesting that a publisher AI or not would publish a book let's say it's real say not AI put millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars behind this unbelievable launch of a book that when it went out nobody really liked and now nobody's buying it and it was just like an immediate flop if if that makes sense like that I wonder if there's the way we can like look this up for later probably not but I'd be interested to know if it did.

Angie Kelly: 37:30

Because it it was just such a flash in the pan.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 37:33

Like have you seen it on on Instagram or book talk recently or have you seen anybody reading it?

Angie Kelly: 37:39

No I saw a few reviews posted when it came out and you know everyone's freaking out about it but uh no it it seemed to disappear really fast. But a lot you know a lot of them do.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 37:50

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 37:51

Yeah yeah they do they do but it it is crazy to come out that hard yeah and then to come up with that in a it makes me wonder did you hear about um the book Alchemized? Mm-hmm I'm curious I'm interested in this I have thoughts on it because it was originally a fan fiction um so if you're not familiar with yeah if you're not familiar with the story I don't really know it super well either but I know that this author she wrote fan fiction it's a Draco Malfoy and Hermoyne Granger uh fan fiction of Harry Potter obviously and she wrote this whole like 900 page fan fiction or something um and published it you can't solve fanfiction for money so she published it got a big following because of that and then she took the book rewrote it in her own world with you know renamed the characters whole new world different magic system republished it before the book came out they sold the movie rights for that book in the biggest deal that has ever been made no see that doesn't exist I don't buy that just like I don't buy that like Elon Musk is real you know like no it's not I live in a world of real things why does this not feel like this is my world like it's not because it's not there's nothing organic happening here.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 39:17

There's nothing and that is my other I see that's my grip of fanfiction too you're saying she wrote the fan fiction and then started working those things and then as soon as those things realized that like there was goodness there they said hey you have to rewrite this in your own world so that you have the rights. So when you rewrite it it's all there already.

Angie Kelly: 39:38

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 39:39

Yeah I see what you're saying.

Angie Kelly: 39:40

And then she sold it to whatever publisher she's with and then sold the movie rights and not adjusted for inflation I think. So it might I don't think it's actually if you adjust for inflation I don't think it's bigger than the original Harry Potter deals. But I'm not certain I read that headline the day the deal went down um so I don't think they were coming out with like the comparisons yet. Yeah we could look it up because I this was like a month ago I don't keep up with things. But yeah it it's it's like you're you're right like it's not it's not real. It's not like it's not the same world that you and I move in or that anyone does. Like there are so many confounding conflating factors going into the production of something like this that it is astronomically beyond what you or I could do. And I don't I don't know how one climbs their way into that world or like like I don't know who you have to meet or what you have to sell your soul to to achieve that. But I mean it's awesome. The um one of the artists that is doing some character art for me she's done a ton of character art for it and she knows the author and stuff and she's really sweet and it seems really cool. And all the art that she's done for it is incredible. So she did like the the cover for it and everything too it's very awesome but I'm just like so many people like she's done tons of art for it and I think she's done a lot of it just on her own time too because she loved it so much. So many people love it so much that I'm like is it because it was fanfiction is that where we're at now that that people just want to recycle these same tropes that they loved when they were 12 because it that is our generation right like I grew up with Harry Potter as it was coming out. I was at that age like as each book released my sister and I fought over who got to read it first and she always got it first because she was older. So like it was that was so integral to my childhood and I still love it as an adult. I rewatch the Harry Potter movies all the time. They're a big comfort for me.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 41:45

She do you know is a fantastic writer but there's like staying on Harry Potter um JK Rowling um she's I think she might be the only author you could fact check me on that she could be one of the only authors um do you know she's worth 1.2 billion yeah and and there's a lot of reasons for this I am not trying to generalize her success only to this of course but one of the reasons that her money got such a kickstart and you understand money once you get a kickstart your interest makes interest and then you know everything else. And then obviously other things happen and such and you have money to use to make more money and again there's a there's a role money starts making its own money. Exactly but one of the one of the main reasons as I understand it that she started to really actually tip the charts if you will as a from a financial perspective as an author was when she sold the rights to um her books which are obviously the Harry Potter series at the time ebooks and e-readers weren't really a thing but they were enough of a thing that her agent negotiated that she retains the rights to the ebooks. And so she only sold the print rights at the time that was possible because no publishers wanted the ebook rights because I don't even think what they were called ebooks it was just digital rights or something. So she she has full ownership over all digital sales. Now maybe not anymore but I think still today maybe not though I don't know that but like over the last whatever 30 years whatever it's been 25 30 years. She she that that those are hers. So like every time you buy like a Harry Potter ebook for instance just using that as a simple metric when hundred that's that's her like she's a self-published author from that perspective. So imagine being cool self-published ownership but with one of the biggest book series of all time mainstream traditional publishing marketing. Wow you know because like when let's say when her marketing team for the publisher markets the book like you might go to Amazon and buy the ebook.

Angie Kelly: 43:52

Yeah you know that's not going back to your publisher.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 43:55

No. And that isn't that so interesting which is why I think when I meet a traditionally published author that became traditionally published before Instagram I have a viewpoint of them. And then when I meet a traditionally published author that became traditionally published after the rise of Instagram I have a particular view of them and it's not the same view. You know it's just it's it's not the same game. It's not the same it's it's not even at all the same it's it's it's yeah. Even even okay so like do you know who um I I could pronounce his name wrong but Ryan Cahill Cahill do you know who that is?

Angie Kelly: 44:34

I know I know who it is because you talk about him a lot.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 44:36

Oh do I think it's I I actually don't enjoy his books which I feel really bad about.

Angie Kelly: 44:43

Oh no Yeah whatever but I but he's a really interesting point now we're like people not enjoying books or anything I'm just like that's fine. Even people not enjoying my book I'm like good don't don't read the next one. I don't care that's okay.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 44:59

But he he's this he's a really interesting case study for indie authors though because so he wrote his entire series I don't know what it's called I'm staring at one of his books because I tried to I bought it and I tried to read it of Blood and Fire it's called the first book. And I read maybe half of it and I just I couldn't it's just it's not unique. Like everybody that I know that's read Lord of the Rings and then they read that one like it's it's just the same thing, just a little bit different. And the problem with that is not necessarily that it's like fan fiction. Like of course not like it's a it's a it it's an original story but it's close enough that it just doesn't do it as well. It's like it's like a bad mimic anyway it doesn't matter. Those are the opinions of me and my people what whatever that may mean. But it's interesting because I mean he sold I don't know thousands hundreds of thousands maybe like he is one of the top selling independent authors that exist today in the fantasy genre maybe even in many genres. And and what a publisher will tell you like a I have a friend um who self-published their first book in a series and then tried to query to an agent the second book in the series and she got an agent she ran with that agent for maybe six months. So it was you know out in proposal to publishing houses and the publishing houses all loved it. Like they they were really interested at least from her perspective she iterated that to me but they ended up nobody bought it and so she's self-publishing the second book she got rid of her agent and she's going back to her old ways because the first book in the series they felt had already sold through the market for that book. Like they didn't they didn't want to invest into a series that kind of has reached its pinnacle point. Now don't get me wrong it it's only sold maybe five 1000 copies total which is a lot of books but for a publisher to look at that they said five 10,000 books for this fantasy book we don't want to invest into this series. Like you've already found your audience they're big they're not going to get bigger like that's whatever. But Ryan Cahill writes his whole series sells hundreds of thousands of copies and then at the end of it sells a traditionally published book deal and now it of that series. So like a publisher just bought the series yeah right which totally and and there's a lot of fantasy readers out there but like I don't know any fantasy readers that like dragon fantasy that haven't read of Blood and Fire. Like everybody if you're into dragon fantasy you've read that book say what I said me but I'm I don't know.

Angie Kelly: 47:43

And I also am a writer so I don't have time to read as much as that's true.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 47:46

I would like to it and so it seems like there's this weird um we're being told one thing and yet it's also something else and maybe it's just that something else. So yeah there's no way that that publisher thinks that they're going to be able to sell hundreds of thousands of more copies of a book that has already sold hundreds of thousands of copies and is well played in its audience and the series is six, seven years old maybe six years old.

Angie Kelly: 48:15

There's no way it's done and it's fully out.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 48:17

Yeah there's no way like they wanted that book in their catalog. That's what they wanted. And why they wanted that will never be understood to anybody but their team. And maybe they have great reasons for it. But at the same time they tell this other individual that no your book has sold five to ten thousand you're not going to sell anymore. And so they have a particular view on the quality of that or the marketability. Like I don't even know the that there's a lot of bits and pieces that don't make a lot of sense when it comes down to a publisher when the publisher then tells the author or the agent or the blog article being or the journal article being written about this interview that they may have with whoever and they might lay it out very simply we need to make money it needs to be marketable things like this. Whereas all they do every day is make decisions against the marketability or against the money or this or that it's like they want to set the trends. That's what I'm getting at.

Angie Kelly: 49:18

Or they have some perception of the trends that we don't yeah that's a good point but I don't know I don't yeah I don't know what the secret is or like if there is one or if they are just like because I don't pay I I try to follow along with what readers are reading and what is getting posted of course but I don't pay a ton of attention to it. Mostly because as I now try to publish my own um that comparison has been really emotionally exhausting. So I'm like I'm not really gonna do this anymore. So I don't know for sure um if they are fall like if BookTalk and Bookstagram are still the trend setting decision makers of this world if it's even just becoming more so or if that's starting to fall away. Like I don't I don't know. It's weird. I also feel like we're at this I was just talking to one of my readers about this on Instagram this morning of this like Instagram's algorithm has changed a lot and um I'm just gonna keep coming back to this theme because this is what I see in everywhere to me now it's like all about capitalism and we're in this stage of capitalism where everything is just getting squeezed and they are just trying to take and take and take every ounce that they can and just hoard as much wealth as they can and our attention and and where we put our energy is very important to that. Like that's where money follows really um and I have seen changes in like the Instagram algorithm lately and a lot of people have noticed it and uh it's really hard to use that as a tool to actually reach your readers now. And I think people are getting frustrated and there's a lot of book talk people that I talk to that are like their engagement's way down and they're kind of just falling off trying. Like so one I was actually talking to two different people today but one I was talking to this morning um she was talking about posting on Bookstagram and uh she's an art reader for me for the second book and she was like telling me she was going to start it soon she was excited and I was like no there's no rush like do it you know take your time um and she was like you know I've I've been having a really hard time getting anyone to actually see my post. And uh she posted a couple things by LJ Andrews who is um a big author in the romantic fantasy world um she is also an indie author she's been doing it a long time she recently started selling her books traditional um I think she sold the full series and another one that she has coming out and she's one of those authors that like she does quite well she makes I think upwards of six figures a year from what I've managed to piece together from stocking her different things. She's at the top of the charts in all of the Amazon charts. It feels like she puts out a book like every three months and I think as a lot of her stuff is getting republished by traditional publishers a lot more of it is coming up all the time and she really like she is on TikTok and Instagram like every day she is posting about her books. Other people are posting about her books she does big marketing pushes every time she releases something and because she has so many releases it's all the time and uh it's it's hard because like when that is what you're competing with and you can't you don't have a marketing team and a whole group of people doing this and you it's not your only source of income so you can't focus on cranking out a book every five months it makes me feel very um hopeless I guess. Anyway my point is what this woman I was talking to today said she was like I posted a few things of LJ Andrews books and someone else did too and the engagement was super low and she was like I'm wondering if they're like getting flagged as spam because there's too much LJ Andrews going around right now or something or if if it's just like if the system is doing something and I was like maybe but I think maybe people are getting oversaturated with it. Like if if you're pushing that hard and people are seeing the same shit over and over again I'm like yeah I've seen the cover of LJ Andrews books 50 times. Like I I know what it looks like I'm good. I'm actually reading one of her books right now for the first time and it's uh oh my gosh yes I've seen these books. Yeah yeah yeah the the Rain of Stars or something oh see I don't even know that one she's got a ton the one I'm reading right now is broken Souls and Bones and um yeah that came out yeah she just published I think that came out traditionally published wow I'm pretty sure I think she sold that one um and I was like well this is all the rage I'm probably in for a good time and like it's entertaining enough but the uh man there are some rough sentences see but like that's that's that's that's that's that drives me nuts I'm sorry and like and I get it some of my sentences drive people nuts too but yours are they drive people nuts because you overcraft them if I may say so so boldly they drive people nuts because you are so meticulous about making it beautiful and making it impactful and meaningful and like you know shaping that sentence every time that for some readers that can be really draining. Right. People who like to appreciate writing as an art form awesome like it's that's talent right that's what you should be trying to do. But like this is the flip side of that of like when you're cranking them out every three months you you're given that your editor's given that one pass and we're like good hit the shelf here we go and there's sentences where I'm like man if you took just 30 more seconds and just read this back to yourself out loud you would stumble in the same spot I stumbled and it's such an easy fix.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 55:26

Yeah I I I like reading your books I've only read one um Source of Storms but like I always when I read it I I look I look at Morgan and my wife and I'm like Morgan I will never be able to write like this like it's it's beautiful. No I'm not I can compliment you if you want um I'll say it very even keel for you. Keep going keep going it's it's it's beautiful you know it it's beautiful and yet it's so I shouldn't say and yet and and with that it is also um the word isn't there it's not accessible it's not easy but it's welcoming bridging there's a word. So it's both beautiful and bridging mine is too beautiful and like I bomb the bridge you know it's like swim over motherfucker.

Angie Kelly: 56:21

Like if you can't swim the bay like you don't get to read the and that's a problem you know and and so like but yours reminds me it's not I don't know I also like I read the Iliad and the Odyssey in high school. So like that's what yours feels like to me. Yours is like when I think of reading mythology and that like really crunchy old myth where you're like ooh I don't even really know what I'm saying but I'm seeing I'm seeing the imagery and I'm getting the vibes like I'm there with them. That's what yours feels like.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 56:48

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 56:48

And I think if you're not comfortable with reading that kind of style for some people it can be really jarring.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 56:53

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 56:53

But you gotta just flip into that mindset and be like no a person 10,000 years ago wrote this and I get to read it. Now we're all on the same page and then and then you go with it and you're good.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 57:03

Yeah and really it's Daniel right now but yeah Daniel pretending I I have to it's funny I always I always I don't read as much as I like for all obvious reasons like yourself just trying to write but I when I do read I always have at least two books. One is my style and one is a book that stretches me. Like it's not my style. It's it's like really simple and really accessible. It's like not only is there a bridge but there's like a conveyor belt on the bridge with people that like push you across you know like it's yeah it because I I do like I want to stretch myself that when I'm done writing at the end of my life I hope that the last book I write there's a better bridge. Like I'm trying to get there. Like that's that's one of my goals, you know?

Angie Kelly: 57:48

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 57:48

But but when I when I see books that are just pumped out today that are so atrociously written like like that infuriates me because and the reason I say that is because of this. And I realize I have a particular penchant um to think this very quickly because of the rest of the world that I operate in in like agriculture and harvesting and things like this where you just have these big conglomerates that are just pushing out small farmers and they're trying their best. It's exactly so like I've been in there is no independence anymore. Exactly like I've been a full-time farmer for 15 years. And so I don't know I I just I always get so mad that to supplement my farming life money because you know you also make nothing um I write books and to supplement my book writing I also farm like it's just like I I I need a third occupation that is just non-dramatic and makes more money and such. But the same thing is true. We're like authors like if we really valued food, we would go to local farmers who were producing food for the local community and like get on our hands and knees and say how the hell can we help you? Like how how can we make sure that when we're hungry you're there like how how can we do this? And there's a plethora of ways that would look look like um but we don't nobody does that. Because we don't I don't think feel the pressure of food and food scarcity yet not not many people do. We will. Yeah and I think the same thing is true for art. If we truly believed that it was the storyteller seeing into the future in building a pathway for us to walk to get there. And sometimes that pathway is explicit so like some of Ursula Le Guin's books I think is a pretty explicit pathway to get there. Amanda Scott's whole thing in in in Wales and Scotland right now about through topia we need to be writing from a dystopic state which we currently are in into a through topic state where like we want Want to be in this like new stage of not capitalism and greed and all of the other things. So we have to like write books that bring us through to the topia. Like that's that's her organization. Like if we believed that in the same way that we believe farming and local food would matter, if we truly believe the storyteller mattered, then crafting a world where the storyteller had the space and time to dream into the future, right? Because if the map maker doesn't understand the terrain, like if the person making the map doesn't see what he needs to see, the obstacle, then when we traverse that landscape and we fall into this deep, you know, chasm of a pit, like we're gonna blame the map maker, right? Well, probably should blame ourselves, but not seeing that pit coming would blame the mapmaker. But like if the storytellers are the proverbial map maker, and yet the storytellers are having to put put punch out or put out two or three books a year, they're living on minimum wage, um, they're not able to dream, to sit, to study words, to play with words, to play with stories that they needed to write, but never publish because that story was for them to help them understand some topic that they then fully develop in their next publishable book. When I say publishable, I just mean boundable and sellable book. Like we would treat them different. We wouldn't treat them as we treat them today. And and I think that's the thing that makes conversations like these so powerful and so needed because of the first statement that you made here an hour ago when you said, Sometimes I wonder if I made a big mistake being an author. And it's like, no, like we we need you telling the good stories to your audience from your view to bring us into that future state. Like we need the storyteller now more than ever. And yet it's never been a harder time to be a storyteller. Not like don't like Oscar Wilde. I don't know if you know Oscar Wilde's story, but the dude was gay and uh lost his family, was kicked out of Ireland, died in France by himself, all by like a lot of people think he killed himself. And uh, in my opinion, one of the greatest writers of the English language, no doubt. I mean, his his short story collection is just ridiculous. The picture, the portrait of Dorian Gray, another amazing book. So, like, he obviously had troubles. Like he was a storyteller that had troubles. So, like that, you know, there's always troubles. But for a storyteller today, with all of the accessibility we have to tell stories, to be so overwhelmed and underpaid, simultaneous to that, with the rise of AI and machinery and greed and capitalism and this wealth disparity. Like I was looking at that to me, it seems to be a very hard impasse. Like I was looking at the wealth thing recently, and um it showed a graph. It was a really good Instagram reel that was showing these graphs, and it was showing how wealth should be spaced out in an economy. When I say should, I mean what generally people agree with, you know, and whatever. And and then it showed today, and it was like 70% of the population lives under the threshold of food and shelter. I think it was 70% of Americans, and I don't know about Canadians, but I would imagine it's almost identical. Well, you guys have some healthcare. Yeah, you guys have some healthcare conditions. Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 1:03:49

We have socialist programs that help a lot.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:03:51

And getting worse. And then the top half of 1% had, I think it was 10 times more money than the graph could even show. And you don't even see the graph is so big that you can't even see like the the the green that marked on the graph, the people who have money. 70% of the people you you don't even think they have money because it's so small. And then that half of the 1% have so much it's 10 times bigger than the graph, so that's how big it is. And like, whatever. Like people ask all the time, like, should billionaires exist? I don't know. I don't think billionaires should exist. Like that to me is just it that's insane. But like, you know, if you want to be rich, be rich. Like, I don't think we live in like a utilitarian socialist USSR 19, you know, 60 or 19 what it 40 state or 30 state or something. But like at the same time, for a writer to be able to serve that populace. Like it I I I don't know. I don't like we just all the United States just went through a big election cycle this week. And like I didn't see any people running campaigns to raise money for storytellers. So like it's obviously a pretty niche idea to put storytellers at the front of the world saying storytellers would be the ones held accountable for our times. Like I think that's I think that's very true. Like if we can't help people see their way out, they're just gonna continue to bump into the darkroom doors. Like I see that. Like we need to be shown that. That's the power of story. And yet at the same time, I feel like the storytellers are also the ones locked in the darkroom doors, just doing it beautifully. Like we're running into doors beautifully, you know? Like we gotta find a way forward.

Angie Kelly: 1:05:36

Well, maybe that is part of this whole indie revolution. Maybe that is why people want indie books now. Maybe that's why this is more possible than it feels like it is, because people see that, and I do think that like Man, I think everyone's pissed off. I think that the world's, for lack of a better term, is awakening to what has been done to us and what this system has led to. And I think a lot of people are starting to realize that all of this division is contrived and that the enemy is really the system and those few people at the very top that control it. And like there's a lot of other artists that are out there that are feeling the same way, like not just authors. I think authors I can't really speak to anyone else's experience. I think it's maybe even worse for us right now because our final product sells for so little, and we have to be able to reach audiences of tens of thousands to be able to make it work, and that's just not something that one individual can really pull off unless you're a big TikTok influencer, and even then now with the way the algorithms are going, they're not reaching the same people that they used to. But I I do yeah, go ahead.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:06:56

It it does though. I wonder your experience, but it does whenever I meet an author that is like doing really well on social media, there always seems to be an inverse relationship with the overall quality of the work. And I don't necessarily mean the writing from my perspective. I just mean like they only have one book because all they do is market it. Or the books is so contrived that well, it's just you can't read it, or whatever. Or maybe it's this book where you're just light looking at the words and you're like, that that's not a sentence. Like who who proofread, you know? Like whatever it is. And and that does that make sense, and so it's even the the ones that are, let's say, doing well, but like well, it just takes so much, right?

Angie Kelly: 1:07:47

Like I spend I I haven't written a new word. I haven't written a new sentence in almost six months. And I have a new book coming out in uh I mean I guess that's not counting the edits I did on my book like four months ago. But um Yeah, I haven't done anything. I haven't like started I have started my third book, but I haven't touched it in six months. Because I I've just been working and you know, I had other stuff. I got married, I had travels that I did, like I've had a lot of other big life things going on. So that's fine. But um just the sheer amount of time that keeping up with social media takes and like the drain of that. Like I I do love I love Instagram for sometimes I get to talk to really cool people, and it's cool that I can put out a book and people read it, and then sometimes I get these wonderful messages where people are like, hey, finished your book. It was my favorite book of the year. This is incredible. I can't wait for the next one. Like, thank you so much for writing this. And then I'm just like, oh thank God. Something good. But uh it's fucking hard, man. Like it's it feels like the only avenue I have to actually generate book sales and reach new people. And my posts reach a fraction of my followers if I'm lucky. And if they're not good enough, they reach like none. So it is this constant hustle of this really draining thing that like I don't want to talk to strangers all the time. I don't want to be an influencer. I don't, I am very introverted and I don't even like being seen that much. Like, there's a reason I write, you know? Like I want to be a writer. I don't want to be an influencer.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:09:32

I think that's like the essence of the writer. Like, I'm sure that's a personality of yours, of course. But in addition to that, it it seems to me like to write a good story, you have to remove yourself from I don't know, all of the hustle and humming of this like highly consumeristic world, so that like you can actually see, like one of my favorite authors in the modern day, he talks about when he writes a book, which he's written a plethora of um large scores of books, maybe 30 novels at this point. Um he's I mean he's been writing for 30 years, but regardless, it's a lot of books. And he said that you can only ever write a book, I think it's for about three months, and then he has to be done. So all of his books are pretty short, they're all 300 pages or less. Because all he sees is that book. Like he'll be like, he said, I'll be grocery shopping, and you know, good stab will be over one of his characters, would be over in the corner, like stalking him, and he's like shit, and he's writing in the grocery store, you know. And his wife is just like, Steven, you got you got three months, and then this is done. And then you're gonna take a three-month break. I don't, I don't care. And then but like to to do that well, you also then can not be bombarded by the unbelievable pressure of algorithms and posting and captions and images, and like just to create the images required to put on social media stresses me out. Oh my God. It takes so much time. So much, you know, this editing a reel. Like, if I want to get sick, put me to edit a reel, and I will, I will, I will become so anxious that I do I get sick. It's it's crazy.

Angie Kelly: 1:11:19

And then you you trek your I freak myself out all the time. Everything I do, I judge so hard. So I'm like, someone's not gonna like this. Someone's gonna complain that I swore too much or that I did this, or someone's not gonna get the biggest thing I get is that people don't get the jokes, or like when I'm being because I joke around.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:11:33

Maybe that's why I'm why you and I are friends. Yes, nobody gets yours and I's jokes.

Angie Kelly: 1:11:38

Yeah, and I talk a lot of shit, and like I say dumb shit on Instagram a lot, and then if someone will be like, Oh, this is a really negative point of view, and you should try changing your mindset, and it's just some like yoga bro. And I'm like, get the f obviously I'm kidding. Like, fucking get your head out of your ass. This is a joke. Not everything on the internet is fucking literal, like stop. Yeah, I get so many of those. It's always dudes, too. It's always men that are like, I think that blue. And I'm like, all right, yeah, wasn't talking to you.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:12:04

Well, have you fuck off something that I I heard really interesting was uh it was during the pandemic, there was a huge uh reel. I actually saw it, but it's been reminded to me when people are talking about it to create this idea of a phenomenon. It was um this one TikTok influencer put out a recipe for bean soup, and it's now become what's called the bean soup paradigm. But it was like, I mean, it was one of the most viral reels or TikTok whatevers of the moment, because I guess everybody was home and cooking, you know, during the pandemics and whatever. And they were in and there was just, I don't know, I don't want to exaggerate hundreds of thousands, millions of comments or whatever. And the majority of the comments, people have studied this reel. The majority of the comments, the grand majority of the comments, way over 50%, had to do with something other than the recipe of bean soup. So somebody might be asking, well, I don't like beans, what can I substitute in for the beans? Or I don't like black beans, can I put carbanzo beans, or something like this? Or what I don't like beans, or I don't like soup. What do you recommend I do if I don't like beans or soup? And it's now been called how do I yeah, it's now been called the bean soup paradigm because what happened at social media at that juncture is everybody looks at or operates within social media from a from a receiving perspective. So you're looking at a real in a different way than we live the rest of our lives. Like we always see through our own eyes, but when we see a reel, that reel has to apply to us.

Angie Kelly: 1:13:43

Yes, it should be made for me specifically.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:13:46

Specifically, yes.

Angie Kelly: 1:13:47

I think a lot of people read books like that.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:13:49

If you don't like beans, when I'm giving you bean soup, it's like you, as the you know, the curator of this of this meal, this Instagram influencer, has to solve my dislike of beans because you put out a bean soup recipe. That is not at all the way humans need to interact. Like, this is not about you. Like this this reel was put out for the people that need to see it. Like, if you don't need to see it, get the fuck on. Like, why are you here yelling at me because you don't like beans? You know, or I don't read romanticy or what whatever, you know, like you're just then go. This is obviously not made for it.

Angie Kelly: 1:14:25

Yeah, people are like just this morning again, someone messaged me and shoot because I draw my own character art now, um, which is really fun.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:14:32

I've seen that. I'm so jealous. I can draw stick figures, you know, that it's just not something I can do.

Angie Kelly: 1:14:37

That until like just a few months ago, that was me too. And then I uh I have a big crush on Rachel Gillick. Yeah, and I've not talked about it. I'm obsessed with her.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:14:49

No, I she's not talked about enough.

Angie Kelly: 1:14:51

I think she's amazing.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:14:53

Nobody is talking about her, especially that last one, the night of the moth or something like Night and Moth. The night night.

Angie Kelly: 1:14:59

That was my top book of the year. I know, but that that's which is like the five books that I get to read this year. But I love her.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:15:05

That's a good summary, I think, of this whole conversation. Like Rachel Gillett is she's a solid author, right? Yeah. She's I really I really think that her writing is beautiful.

Angie Kelly: 1:15:15

Yes.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:15:15

But it's accessible. Like she has a bridge and it's really wonderful. Nobody talks about it. Like that book, we went in two Barnes and Nobles recently. Um, they have good bathrooms sometimes.

Angie Kelly: 1:15:29

So if you're on the road and yeah, that's what he means, by the way, for people listening to this. It's not Daniel's bowel issues, it's that he has children.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:15:39

Yeah. Yeah. And it I mean, it's so bad. You take like a four-year-old into a public bathroom and you're like, Don't touch, don't touch. Fuck shit. Don't touch that. No, don't touch, you know. Well, anyways, and it's nice to walk around and shop a little bit too. Yeah. Um, but none of Rachel Gillad's books were in there.

unknown: 1:15:54

Why?

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:15:54

And neither of the stories. None of them. Because she's not really she's not successful from a publishing perspective. It's ridiculous.

Angie Kelly: 1:16:04

How? I wonder how much she sold.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:16:07

That's my point. There's a lot of Rachel Gillard Gillig fans, but they are outweighed by the sheer volume of alternatives. And the alternatives are exponentially in my head. This is the way I see it, using the bridge analogy. Like, I blow the bridge, make you swim. Rachel Gillig built a nice bridge, but makes you walk. A lot of other authors in her space build a bridge and then have like taxis that'll bring you over, or conveyor belts, or escalators, or maybe they even have like wheelchairs that they'll push you across the bridge. And and so like I get it why they're so successful, because it's like come into my world, it's not hard. You don't have to remake yourself. Yeah, it's almost young adult.

Angie Kelly: 1:16:53

Which sometimes that's really fun. You know, I read um, I actually didn't finish the series, which I need to do. I read uh Oh my god. What uh Akatar. I read those, and I was this is a fun ride. I'm on I'm having a nice fun little time.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:17:07

I could imagine. I love those kind of books.

Angie Kelly: 1:17:10

I hit number four and I got really angry and I quit reading the series.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:17:13

Um those books have a place, but the problem is I think today those books over it's like we only can have 10 books and there's eight of those.

Angie Kelly: 1:17:24

Yes, that's the problem. It's the same with like LJ Andrews and the Avatar series and the Fourth Wing series, and all this is like you can only read so much, and people only buy so many books a year. And like if their favorite author is cranking out for a year plus their backlog, like man, it it is tough to break in there for sure. Um and I don't think Rachel Gillick did. Yeah, I don't think she was crazy because I she is um that's so funny because I feel like she's people talk about auto-buy authors. I was just thinking about her this morning and I was like, I'm pretty sure she's my first one. Wow everything she puts out now. I think I'm just gonna buy it and be like, I know it's gonna be good because it was her. She's awesome.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:18:04

Stephen Graham Jones for me. If you put out a book, I'm reading it, period.

Angie Kelly: 1:18:08

Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. It's fun to have those people.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:18:11

Yeah, we're good friends, you know. He just doesn't know that.

Angie Kelly: 1:18:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how I feel about Rachel. That's why I started doing that's why I was talking about her. I started doing my character art because she does Rachel. I'm sorry, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, she does her own character art that she posts often. And it's just very fun. Yeah, it's cool. If you look at her Instagram, she always has a few of her characters, and like um, it's just very fun to see that of just like her imaginings of them and her style. And um man, I totally forgot my point of this. So whoops.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:18:44

But I I was saying stick figures, and you were just character art.

Angie Kelly: 1:18:48

We're talking about Instagram. I was gonna mention that I posted my character art. Oh, that's what it was.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:18:52

Somebody's probably said it was horrible.

Angie Kelly: 1:18:54

No, they will. That'll come, but so far everyone's been nice. People don't see them. That was the thing. Those aren't the posts that like blow up and get a bunch of strangers on board. It's just like my five fans are like, this is so cool. And I'm like, You're really sweet. Thank you.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:19:08

Buy three copies of my book.

Angie Kelly: 1:19:10

Yeah, please. Buy ten more. I know you've already bought a couple. Um now I posted a little sneak peek of one that I I should post that today. It's already 1.30. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Um, see, this is the shit that takes up my brain power. I'm like, oh, it's too late to post. I missed another day, and then it's just this constant hamster ball stress.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:19:28

You also have a following. You're you're never gonna get to this point because I keep interrupting you. But like I just trusted 3,000 followers on on Instagram. It was a big moment for me.

Angie Kelly: 1:19:38

Yes, that's awesome.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:19:40

You you have like 14 or something.

Angie Kelly: 1:19:43

Yeah, and I have feelings about this too. Um, my only point that I was gonna make with the character art was on something that we were talking about before is that someone responded to me and she was like, I don't even read fantasy, but this makes me want to buy your book. And I was like, Oh, don't. If you know you don't like fantasy, don't worry about it. If you think that you might like it, give it a try. But like we were talking about like being okay with people not liking stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, people, if they tell me they don't like fantasy, I'm like, skip it.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:20:11

My my last book's a horror, and somebody reached out to me. Actually, from your your you shared something, maybe the book last night or something. And somebody reached out to me saying that they wanted to buy the book directly, but I didn't have what they needed on my website because it was actually in air. There was out of stock or something. And so I fixed it real quick and we got into a little bit of a conversation on social media. And they were like, Yeah, I don't, I don't really l read horror. And I was like, Well, it you you might not you might not want to read this one.

Angie Kelly: 1:20:38

Yeah, maybe get the ebook instead. So it's not like a big investment that you're upset about.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:20:42

Yeah, and you've got that review for. Somebody um well, you you and I had that conversation about that independent review organization that provided me a literary review, whatever it's called. And um so I reached out to them, by the way, because the review was so horrible. And uh they basically said that the person who they had review it has never read horror before. And I was like, oh. Well, that's why they thought it was gruesome because it's horror.

Angie Kelly: 1:21:12

Yeah, let's assign this a little better then, maybe.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:21:15

So I looked up who this individual is. No, if you're if you're that's a fine review. Yeah, it's like yeah, like don't pick up romanticy if you were expecting like a no romance. Yeah, like it's just you gotta pick up the right book. Yeah. Um, yeah, anyways, that's a little bit of an aside. But no, I I agree though. Like there, there has to be and and that's the hard part about the social media and the marketing for authors, where you there's like there's days that go by where my phone is just blowing up. When I say blowing up, what I mean is like I sold 10 books off my website, you know, and I look at my wife in a single day. Yeah, though these are these are few and far be yes, but they're few and far before.

Angie Kelly: 1:22:01

That's never happened to me.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:22:03

And I'll be I'll look at my wife and I'll be like, Morgan, if every day could be like this, my life would change. Like legitimately, my life would change. And then I don't sell another book for two weeks or something, you know.

Angie Kelly: 1:22:16

For a week, yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:22:17

And and it's like I like at the same at at one hand I need to sell so many more books. But on the other hand, I I don't I don't want to sell more books to people who are just either not gonna read it, aren't gonna like it because this book wasn't for them, because they felt pressured to buy it because of whatever like it's just like that that's that's hard as an indie author because we are front and center. Whereas like when Stephen Graham Jones, who's published by yeah, and and when like Stephen Graham Jones or Rachel Gillick sells a book and somebody doesn't like it, she doesn't know. She's not responsible for mailing it to them.

Angie Kelly: 1:22:59

Like she's not front and center, like she shouldn't choose who's getting her arcs. Exactly. No, no, no, not she's writing the next book.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:23:04

And so, like, for you and I, we're like we ran out of inventory recently and had a bunch of we people place an order, and I reached out to them. I said, I have some of the orders or some of the books that you ordered, I have in stock. Some of the books that you ordered I don't have in stock. Do you want me to mail individually, then fulfill the next order when it comes back in stock or just send them both together or whatever? And um, and like one of them emailed, or no, two, two, two different customers emailed back and they were so nice and kind, you know, and it was wonderful, fine interaction. Then one of them was like, then why isn't it out of stock on your website? Like, aren't you a website manager? Like, it was just like, like, I'm so sorry, but like I don't want you to read my book.

Angie Kelly: 1:23:47

No, yeah. You know what? Here's a moment.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:23:49

I'm drawing. Do you know a web guy?

Angie Kelly: 1:23:51

Like, yeah, I would love it's cute that you think that I have a website designer or someone that does my inventory. That's precious. That you think it's not just me in everything alone all the time. You know? Yes. And sometimes I count what's in it. Like, and I don't I don't know what's I don't know.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:24:13

Yeah. Yeah. And I I think I think something that I want to discuss in a future episode with you, but uh kind of pin it here like this, is the idea of indie authors bridging into more of like an experience-based um relationship with their custom customers, if you will. Like to sell one book for $10 is one thing, but to sell one book for $10 and then something so much more than that, like allows you to do less marketing while also building more of a community. Because like if you're gonna be front and center as the author, in the indie author, anyways, like if you're the ones responding on social media when your website's doesn't have an ebook for sale, but it has a paperbook and ebook bundle, you know, like if I'm the one that has to respond to that on Instagram, then go on the website and somehow figure out how to fix that. Like we already have a relationship with our customers, unlike all other authors that are traditionally published. Yeah. And so how do we take that relationship? Yeah, they don't. But how do we take that relationship and then like go one step further with it? So like I think Substack is an option. I think that's like an easy way of seeing it. It's like, what else can we do together that can service your needs and your desires while also allowing me, excuse me, allowing me the ability to draw some more capital or money, right, from this relationship that you're willing to give and you see the point of it. That isn't just a book sale. Like that to me is something that's interesting. Um, like if Rachel Gillig threw a weekend experience with her in a, you know, in a in a BNB with 20 other people, like would you go? Money depending, of course, but like that's really like because my autobiograph would be like, man, it would be really hard not to go. Like I would go sit with him for two days and learn about his writing process. That sounds fun. Like in a house with him, like with very small company, you know, or like peel back. How how did he frame that character in that one book? Or how did how did he was he able to like craft this? This was so weird. How did how did you do that? Like being able to sit in that way, I think would be really cool. Now, I'm also an author though. Like there's a lot of nuance that I'm missing or skipping over, but that's that's just something I I think would be interesting to talk about.

Angie Kelly: 1:26:39

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there has to be more than just the books. Like that's just how it has to be if you're gonna be able to make this profitable enough to keep doing it, you know. I think that like at least when I started, I had this dream where I was like, oh, I'll I'll do this and I'll sell enough copies to like, you know, float myself for a little bit and then I'll work on the next books, and eventually it'll become profitable, and then maybe I'll have like a series I can sell to, you know, sell the rights to, or or I'll get an agent after I sell enough to prove that I can sell, and it'll all kind of come together, and then it's like, oh no, you're gonna be fighting for every single dollar you can get, and you're gonna have to keep your day job to float your writing expenses. Like it's and that's just how it is.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:27:25

Something that we haven't talked about, which I I realize we're dragging on here, but is just like and and maybe this is just another fine episode. I just don't know if it's a full episode, but the the the the idea of like like a copy editor costs more than most indie authors sell in books a year.

Angie Kelly: 1:27:48

Oh yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:27:50

You know, yeah. And and like that's that's that's that's a little I mean that's not like that's crazy. That's just flat out crazy. Right. And there's many pieces, that being a single, and also I don't even know if that copy editor feels like they were well paid.

Angie Kelly: 1:28:08

Yeah. You know, she's probably not getting as much as she wanted either.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:28:12

Right. Right. And and so how do we as people move through this if we like I mentioned in the farming and food, if we believe that storytellers matter? How do we move through this? That's that's the qu like that's what makes conversations like these that like that's that's why it's needed. You know, don't get me wrong, it is also an Andy and Daniel Bitchfest. Like I will I will happily rage on. But like episode one of this.

Angie Kelly: 1:28:38

Episode one is just us complaining. That's how they're all gonna be no, it's uh no, it is important, and it's not just complaining. It's like because, like I said, I think that is the source of this Andy spark that is happening and this revolution we're seeing. And I think people want it in all of their media, like um independent movie um That's true. Producers, studios, independent movie studios. There were a few really big movies, at least in the horror scene that came out last year, two years ago, that were from independent creators that started on YouTube and just blew it out of the water. And like people, I mean, I know I for one am fucking sick of the Marvel mash. Like, I don't need another goddamn superhero movie as long as I live. Like, I want something really cool and really unique and gritty, and like I want to feel how human it is. I want to be able to feel like I'm communing with this other person and that divine creative spirit that this other person has, because we all have it. And you I think that's why YouTube is so big too. And like people love speaking directly to people who are creating this art and these mediums that they love. Yeah, and so I think there is like you and I say this all the time there's gotta be a way. There has to be a way, like, there is a way to do this, and I think that like God, maybe some of it is. Just being more upfront and stuff like this, like these conversations. Cause like you said, I have I have a decent following on Instagram. You still sell more books than me, I think. We've never sat down and compared the numbers, but it sounds like you do because you have an audience that's there for what you're selling. And like I do too, but I also goof around and say a lot of silly shit that people are like, oh, follow around for that, but I don't and but that's what you have to do to get the numbers. So, like, my point is a big following doesn't always equal big sales. Right. But maybe if people knew what it took to do this and what what we're really trying to do, they would way more be like, Oh, I I am actually gonna spend five extra bucks to buy this off your website and have you send me a signed copy, then buy it off of Amazon or fucking download a pirated version off the ebook or whatever it is. Right. Right. Like I maybe it's just putting those that knowledge in people's hands of being like, look, this is what it is to be an artist. This is what every artist you know is going through right now. If you think their art is really cool, buy one of their art prints, send them a nice message, order one of their books, like even the ebook, if that's all it is. If it's five bucks for you, but like those numbers make a big difference for us.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:31:14

So Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's interesting honesty. What happened, like I said, we Morgan and I have been full-time in the farming scene for 15 years, and for probably twelve of that, I mean, it was just everyday hustle, the meat, farmers markets, grocery stores, restaurants, you know, that that whole thing. And then really it was more or less overnight. We we finally realized that we had enough serious people. Because I have a lot of health issues and the world knows about it. And so a lot of our customers come from that. And um similar lives in some way, really need the good food or something. And we we realized that we could stop doing all of those high time invested things and just really hunker down to these 20 families. Like we will feed these 20 families 100% of their food. Like this is this is what it and and like we don't have a website anymore. Nobody runs the Instagram anymore. Because it's just like it doesn't, like it legitimately doesn't matter. Like every we have about a hundred and maybe a hundred and seventy-five head of cattle now and horses, I mean a bunch of other things too, I guess. But like we could double the size of our cattle herd and still not be able to service enough food to meet the demand because we like literally just closed down and we were like, no, we are we are gonna serve these people, you know, and it's gonna be through this channel, and and it it almost became like exclusive. And I hate to say that because food isn't, but at the same time, it was like, no, no, no. We're just going to find the people in the community that both share the love for it, share the need for it, and we can meet in a financial position because it's always unique. We don't have a set price for anything, but we set up financial condition that makes sense for us and them and we figure it out. And like our life changed on the farm. It was it was really cool. Like it was a huge moment for us, maybe three years ago, when like now we're just focused on raising food. We don't have a website, we don't have a newsletter, we don't have an Instagram, we don't go to markets, we don't like we don't do any of that. And we still like even today, I had uh somebody call that wants food, like thousands and thousands of dollars of food. And like we just know, like the answer is no. We get calls all the time. It's crazy. It's crazy. But I just wonder so cool. That's really cool. Yeah, that's like the one little win of my life. It's about this big, and it we make about, you know, about one third of what we need to live. But it it, you know, it's what 175 head of cattle can produce, uh, which is also a crazy number. The US farm, the U.S. agricultural subsidy budget every year is $1.3 trillion. I believe that number is pretty accurate. And local farmers don't I mean, like we have 175 head of cattle. That's 300 cows at any time, and at least, and we don't even fit into that sub. It's crazy. Doesn't matter. The point being, there's a there's there's this idea that like you could spread yourself thin trying to make a living until you figure out like, oh no, no, all of our actual customers are over here. And I wonder, and then you do a lot less. I wonder how that works in books. Like, is it is there a similarity there? Is it possible there? What could that look like? Because what a farmer needs to do, and I've been saying this for 10 years in farming, um, but like what a farmer needs to do is farm. Like when you see a farmer at a farmer's market, what they're not doing today is farming, and that's a huge problem, or sleeping, because they've farmed all through the night or something. And the same thing is true for authors. Like every time I see an author on Instagram doing a little dance with a book in their hand, they're also not at the computer writing, or dreaming, or thinking, or resting, or reading, or visioning, or whatever. Like all the things that I need you to do in order to craft the story.

Angie Kelly: 1:35:08

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:35:08

And so, like, it is there a space for that. That's what I also want to investigate in conversations like this. Because if there is, like you're saying, creating that real tangible connection point, that thread between people. And and I'm not saying Instagram isn't a part of that. Maybe it's a crucial part of that. Like that to me seems like a greater source of hope than a publisher getting their ass, you know, on the right back side of their body and like publishing good books, you know. Or like that to me is much more hopeful than the world changing and capitalism all of a sudden not really. Yeah, yeah.

Angie Kelly: 1:35:47

Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know what the way is to do that. Or like what that would look like, because like I said, an individual books don't sell for that much. So you have to cast a really wide net. But yeah, if there was a way to have that connection and have it actually be enough for me to justify continuing doing this, that's I guess that's what I'm looking for. That's what that's what we all need to do this, really.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:36:20

Yeah, things to think about. Well, we have a lot to go, so I'm trying not to. I don't know, I'm bad at first episodes.

Angie Kelly: 1:36:27

Um I feel like we covered something.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:36:30

Yeah, we covered something.

Angie Kelly: 1:36:31

We got our rants out a little at least. There'll be more, especially when we start talking about Amazon. There'll be more, but