Next Level Publishing with Best-Selling Fantasy Author Rachel Rener

Hard magic systems, finding community, and creating luxury hardback book...

This week is all about publishing on Kindle Unlimited and creating beautiful deluxe special edition books on Kickstarter.

Join us for a deep and insightful conversation with renowned fantasy author Rachel Rener, whose international best-selling Gilded Blood series has left readers spellbound...and tattooed. She shares her experiences on everything from writing and publishing in Kindle Unlimited, to community building and managing a successful Kickstarter campaign for a luxury limited edition series omnibus. It's absolutely gorgeous!

Rachel Rener is a #1 International Bestselling contemporary fantasy author who loves blurring the line between science and magic. Rachel is an animal loving, language learning, picture taking, mineral collecting, video game playing, modern rock listening, celery hating, acrylic painting kind of gal.

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Rachel Rener
Website: http://www.rachelrener.com
Facebook,  Instagram, & TikTok: @AuthorRachelRener

The Author Wheel:
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Greta Boris:
Website: www.GretaBoris.com
Facebook: @GretaBorisAuthor
Instagram: @GretaBoris

Megan Haskell:
Website: www.MeganHaskell.com
Facebook & Instagram: @MeganHaskellAuthor
TikTok: @AuthorMeganHaskell

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi everyone, welcome to the Author Wheel podcast. I'm Greta Boris, USA Today Best Selling Mystery Thriller Author.

Speaker 2: 0:45

And I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy adventure author, and together we are the Author Wheel. So today we are absolutely thrilled to have my good friend, Rachel Renner, on the show. She is the internationally best selling author of the Gilded Blood series, which is a fantastic portal fantasy adventure featuring a tattoo artist who gets pulled into a magical filing cabinet to enter the Faye realm. I was lucky enough to be an early reader on the series and advanced reader, beta reader so I can fully, 100% endorse the series as being a fantastic read. If you enjoy fantasy at all, especially portal fantasy or contemporary fantasy that crosses between realms, you're gonna like it. You're just gonna like it. It's just the way. Just the way it goes.

Speaker 2: 1:42

But she actually just finished. Well, at the time of our interview recording, she just finished a Kickstarter for a gorgeous limited edition hardcover which grossed over $50,000 for her. It's a fantastic story. I mean, the Kickstarter story itself is a fantastic story and it was a fantastic journey for her as an author. So we're gonna talk all about her writing and publishing and Kickstarter and all of this stuff in this episode. So it's a really, really good conversation.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Yeah, and it was fun for me too, because she is in Kindle Unlimited and I know that a lot of authors are not. We kind of talk about controversy there, and she also had some really good tips about how to run a Kickstarter and things that kind of went awry that she would do differently next time. So it's a really good conversation. But in terms of news for us we really don't have a lot, because we're recording this intro a few weeks early, well in advance of the air date, which means that we don't have a lot to say. In fact, when this airs we'll just be getting back from 20 books to 50K. So we're probably sleeping when this airs that's my guess and recovering. But we did decide what we would do is have a special Duo episode next week with a full update on the 20 books conference, everything we learned, all the amazing people we met and probably some preview lineups for podcast guests that we're gonna have on the air next year. So it should be really fun Duo episode. Do not miss that. And now here's Rachel.

Speaker 2: 3:33

Rachel is the number one international bestselling contemporary fantasy author who loves blurring the lines between science and magic, and I'm actually gonna read a little bit from her website, bio2, because I just think it's so funny, so sorry I'm going there. So Rachel is an animal loving language learning, picture taking, mineral collecting, video game playing, modern rock listening, celery hating, acrylic painting kind of gal.

Speaker 3: 4:04

I forgot that I had written that I love. I do feel like that sums me up in a nutshell, though. Thank you yeah you're welcome.

Speaker 2: 4:12

I had to share that Like it's just perfect for you, it is.

Speaker 1: 4:17

Off air. We are gonna have to talk about the benefits of celery juice. That's all I'm gonna say. But moving on, I don't you know what, greta?

Speaker 3: 4:25

I like you, I respect you, but I don't wanna talk about celery with you.

Speaker 1: 4:29

I'll talk about it if the other hot button topics.

Speaker 3: 4:31

I'm not talking about celery, okay, I feel that strongly about it, okay Well, Okay, we can still be friends.

Speaker 2: 4:41

Oh good, that's awesome. Okay, well, vegetables aside, rachel, why don't you go ahead and, you know, tell us a little bit more about yourself, how you started writing, where you kind of came from and what your journey has been like to becoming the number one international bestselling contemporary fantasy author. Amazing person that you are.

Speaker 3: 5:03

Oh my gosh. Well, thank you. That makes me sound so much cooler than I actually am. I will try and keep this super concise. I was one of those people who bounced all over jobs. I just I couldn't help but get bored. I was not one of those people who knew from, you know, the time of conception that I wanted to be a writer. You hear these writers who were like I wrote my first novel when I was two. That was not me.

Speaker 3: 5:28

What I did was, you know, like, in third grade we had to write a little short story to like spiral out of control and it was, like you know, 30 pages long of nonsense, total nonsense. When I was a freshman in high school, we had to write a very scientific paper on I think it was like Ebola. I don't know if it had to be Ebola, but for whatever reason, I chose Ebola and I don't know if, I don't know if we got it right, like, and I don't know if you're familiar with scientific papers but there's no adverbs, there's no adjectives, it is just pure, dry. And anyway, I failed it so hard because I turned it into dramatic, like gory, like super, like in the moment this woman was like going through the jungle and ended up like cutting her hand on bark, and then it ended with her like bleeding out of every crevice and so on and so forth. And my science teacher wrote my mother and said, look, she's gonna fail this, but I am gonna send it off to her English teacher because I'm just not in my classroom. And then, you know, I lived in Japan for a little while and I had this blog, you know, back in blog sort of thing, and I wrote about like singing toilets and the fish heads that I was forced to eat and that really took off what I didn't mean for it to.

Speaker 3: 6:48

So I've always sort of been an accidental writer and a few years ago I was working in translation and localization. My client was Amazon and I just never stopped working. You know, I worked holidays, I worked nonstop, and so when I quit that, I immediately went to look for another job because I was pretty lucrative and my husband was like nope, enough of this, enough of like job bouncing, enough of doing these like corporate jobs and so on. You need to do something creative. And that's when I found out that, unlike some pretty famous plotters like Brandon Sanderson and JK Rawling people who know the entire story, the last sentence of their book, before they even sit down to write it. I learned about pansting, and I found out that I am a panster because I just started writing and my first 90,000-word novel was done in seven weeks. So I think my brain was just dying to do this and I had been denying it for a long time.

Speaker 3: 7:52

So and then? The short answer to how I got here was I made a lot of mistakes. The first few years. I did not find myself a crew of authors. I figured out all the things to do wrong. So eventually, after a few years, I just knew everything to do right and was the smartest person ever after all of the mistakes that I had made up front.

Speaker 3: 8:13

And that's Rachel Renner in a nutshell.

Speaker 2: 8:17

There you go yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Well, so how did you settle into fantasy with the sounds like it's really with a sci-fi bent kind of?

Speaker 3: 8:31

Yeah, it's pretty much fantasy, but I really enjoy hard magic systems, and so the first series that I worked on you know that book that I wrote in just a few weeks, it was your traditional elemental magic, because I just I don't care how many times it's been done, I just love elemental magic, but I wanted it to be like a hard magic system with rules and based in like the natural law of things you know. So my lightning isn't just conjuring lightning from the sky, although that can't happen and it does happen in that book, but in the Lightning Conjurer series, because our bodies actually run on electricity, our brains run on electricity. I was able to turn lightning powers into an almost empathic ability, using science as a foundation for it, and, like my tarot mansors, can make new elements, not just move rocks around Not that there's anything wrong with just moving rocks around. I mean, that's great but I really do enjoy magic that feels super real.

Speaker 1: 9:31

Yeah, yeah, I can't move rocks around, so yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:35

Yeah, and I have to say too, with the newer series, the Gilda Blood series, which I read Start to Finish, and I was lucky enough to be an advanced reader on that one, which-.

Speaker 3: 9:46

I loved having you as an advanced reader. Probably that was so great. The best advanced readers are authors.

Speaker 2: 9:54

Well, I mean, all I said was oh my God, this is awesome. So I'm not sure how much help I was really, but Well, you were helpful, truly Well. That's good. At least I was motivational. No, but I was gonna say, one of the things that I really appreciated about that series and then I actually found inspiring for my own work was your, I guess, drawings that's not quite the right term but like the tattoos and the intricacy of the designs that you created using geometry to represent the magic, I thought that was so cool. I mean, she's a tattoo artist for those that haven't read the Gilded Blood series and so obviously you have to draw it all out and it was amazing and I really appreciated how much thought you put into how the magic worked with that.

Speaker 2: 10:47

So actually I'm curious how did you come up with those designs? Like, what was your process for developing out that magic system?

Speaker 3: 10:54

Yeah, well, first of all, because she's a tattoo artist, I actually went and I got a tattoo, like as part of the research process. I wanted to make sure that I got that down really well, because I knew if I wrote about a tattoo artist, people who either were tattoo artists or who had tattoos would be interested in reading it, and I didn't want anyone to say, hey, now wait a minute. And so that was a lot of fun. But art is a really big part of the series and art is a big part of my life. I mean, people who are listening to the podcast can't see, but you and Greta can see, like in my background, like I have a bunch of art on the walls.

Speaker 3: 11:34

And so I looked at sacred geometry for inspiration. I had never heard about it before, but it's very like pro-nature, it's very like life affirming, and so I just like looked at a few of them and then I would sit there at 11, 12 o'clock at night just like drawing out these designs in these runes. And I was super excited in the fourth book I have a cheat sheet for aspiring runemasters in the back and I put every single rune that we had done in the book back there and I even turned them into temporary tattoos. I know I know people who like them so much, but it's been so much fun. I love the tattoo magic in that book.

Speaker 2: 12:14

Yeah, no, that's great and in fact, I believe, I think I mean I backed you on your Kickstarter, so I think I get some of those tattoos maybe. Yeah, I do. I didn't back the hardcover because, well, I don't have bookshelf space, quite honestly, but I think even though I'm not sure, but I think even still I might get some of those tattoos. I was very excited because they're very cool.

Speaker 3: 12:33

You will. You will. In the art pack you will get some of those and they look really cool. I'm super excited for that. Thank you, by the way, for backing that. I super appreciate it. Oh, of course, that Kickstarter was wild.

Speaker 2: 12:45

Yeah, it was, and we are going to talk more about that a little bit later, but first, why don't you tell us a little bit more? So one of the questions we always ask is what was your greatest roadblock as you were coming up in the writer ranks, and how did you overcome that?

Speaker 3: 13:03

Yeah, so do you mean like initially, initially, or after I had started writing and was kind of progressing as a writer?

Speaker 2: 13:12

Your choice, your choice. I think a lot of our listeners are on the maybe newer end of the writer spectrum but, that being said, I think the whole journey is important, so kind of what's the thing that stood out to you as far as, like, you felt like you had a hurdle that you really needed to figure out along the route.

Speaker 3: 13:32

Yeah, I think initially my hurdle was impatience and wanting so badly to get this story out into the world, and it really was so important to have the perfect cover, to have a professional editor, to have a lot of people read the book before it went out there. So, like my very first book was actually a little bit of a hurdle just because I wanted so badly to like tell this story and have everyone read it right, and I'm so glad that I stopped for a moment. I said, okay, hold on, we need to do this the right way, not the rushed way. And then there were also some things in there like indie versus trad, which were kind of obstacles for me. That's sort of a whole other podium to stand on, though we could maybe talk about that as part of another podcast, right, because I know there's a lot that goes into that.

Speaker 3: 14:25

And then I think the biggest hurdle for me was finding my people and realizing that I didn't have to do it alone, that you are actually a better writer when you have other authors in your life and you're a better marketer when you have other authors in your life. And that just because I was used to being a lone wolf doesn't mean that that was the right way to do it. And so, after I found my people who had been publishing longer than me, who are better writers than me, who just knew this stuff because they've been doing it longer, I feel like that's when I really was able to overcome that hurdle of how do I get these books out there. And so, right, like finding people like you, megan and Greta, like it's been, it's been wonderful to kind of crush that knowledge.

Speaker 1: 15:13

Now that is a very reoccurring theme in this podcast. How many authors we talk to who say very similar thing. And I think if you come from something of a business background, often you're taught to think of other people as your competitors. So you have this natural, you know, like reticence to I'm not going to share with you how I do my Amazon ads, or I'm not going to share with you how I do this or that because you know they're my competition. But when you think about the fact that we're dealing like with readers I mean I listened to probably one to two audiobooks a week. You know somewhere in the average of five to six audiobooks a month. No matter how much I love your work, you could never write fast enough to make me Right.

Speaker 1: 16:08

So we working together. It's just, it's critical and it is. We interviewed an agent and I was surprised to hear that she's trying to do the same thing with her traditionally published authors which I think, because it's always been kind of a sometimes indies will like you know they'll, they'll make the path they'll go before and then the yeah people come along behind and go. Oh, that seems to be working for them.

Speaker 3: 16:36

You know, I completely agree with you. Yeah, it does seem to be in the news who in a lot of ways, are kind of paving the road for not just the methods that work, like coming together and doing like multi author series that works so well you don't ever see that in the trad world but even like the stories that we're telling, I think in some ways are affecting the and I wish even more are affecting the traditional publishing world, because I do feel like they've gotten a little bit stuck in like certain certain stories and I feel like they need to pull back from that and start expanding like the way they tell their stories. But again, that's like a whole other podcast that we could get into. Yeah, and he's definitely forward to the path in a lot of ways, for sure.

Speaker 2: 17:24

Well, and I think it comes down to speed, to market and risk tolerance because, quite honestly, indies, because it is your book and your story and the thing that you want to do that feeds your creative soul, you're willing to kind of go and expand in different directions, to say what is it that I want to read that I haven't found in the market, and then go for it, whereas with trad, no, they're looking for the same thing, just slightly different, all the time, because that's what sold last month, and so they want to make sure that they're putting their money behind the thing.

Speaker 3: 17:57

That's more or less quote, unquote, guaranteed which none of it is, and half the time very bad bets.

Speaker 2: 18:03

But that's what, that's the data that they have in front of them, so it becomes more of a data analysis. And then, yeah, it's stuck in these, these ruts where that's, that's all they put out.

Speaker 3: 18:14

Yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. The word I was looking for earlier was formula. They've got these formulas that work and like, yeah, maybe every few years they reformulate a little bit, but in the end it's all very similar formulas because, yeah, it's the same. You're exactly right, it's the safe way to go. It's a safe way to make money.

Speaker 1: 18:32

Yeah, exactly the break, the breakout. Books are rarely two formula you know they're they're, they're some they've taken, they've taken something like I'm just thinking thriller like gone girl. Somebody took some big publishing company took a risk on that and it really broke the traditional thriller formula. And look how people responded.

Speaker 1: 18:54

And then everybody in their brother or sister wrote a girl book and they were all based on gone girl and those never, none of those did as well, because it often is those really creative things that, yeah, kind of break them all old, you know.

Speaker 3: 19:09

Yeah, well said yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:12

Thank you.

Speaker 3: 19:15

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 19:20

So how did you find your other community?

Speaker 3: 19:24

Um, you know the the first community I found, which is the one that I just love the most, is indie fantasy addicts on Facebook. It's it's very reader centric and I really appreciated that. And I think, like some authors, I initially went in there saying like, oh great, like a channel to sell my books, and quickly realize that that just is not the way to do it. And thank goodness I learned that fast, right the way to sell your books it's not going to do reader groups and push your books. It's terrible, don't do that. And then they had a sister group called authors of IFA, and so after a few years of like starting off just kind of like quietly in the background and then like becoming more active in the group and then offering to help where I could, eventually I became president of the ad and one of the admins of the author group.

Speaker 3: 20:28

So then through that I learned about you know like 20 books to 50 K and the authors who, dad, who do that. And then I learned about like like Dragon Con. You know where some of like the biggest fantasy names go. And then I went to Dragon Con. I met authors there, so it's like it just kept branching out and meeting different kinds of authors in different stages of their career, and I just it's just so great, like just yesterday. You know I'm going to a few really big conventions in 2024 and 2025 and I and a lot of authors do preorder forms.

Speaker 3: 21:04

And I was like I have no idea what to put on a form other than hey, you want this book cool. What's your address, right? Um, and I asked the question and the authors of IFA group and I got, like the best, my back, you know. So it's been, it's been wonderful, and that's how I met you. Megan was through IFA.

Speaker 2: 21:28

Well, kind of sorta actually. So we both know J Andrews, janice and, if you recall, we were both on a panel for corn con in 2021. Something like that. And so Janice was like you have to talk to Rachel, you're going to love her.

Speaker 3: 21:49

I do, I do and I never would have met Janice. Yeah, yeah, uh-huh, yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:58

And then I got hooked up with IFA and so I loved that group as well. And it isn't a book promo site. It is a book sharing site, meaning like you love, you know readers who love the books. They post reviews and doing the. We did the summer reading challenge and I've now done it for two years. I mean this year. This year you were kind enough to invite me to be one of the author hosts, which was amazing. That was so much fun. It was great.

Speaker 2: 22:26

Yeah, it was great, but. But even as a reader, like seeing all the different books that readers are really loving and then, as an author, understanding why they're loving those books and what's involved in those books, what, what speaks to those readers has been illuminating.

Speaker 3: 22:44

Yeah, yeah, Exactly yeah, and, and, and. Like I never would have known Janice or any of these other authors, like if I wasn't in there and then Janice never would have introduced me to you. So I think the moral of the story is like go make friends with authors so you can then make friends with more authors.

Speaker 2: 23:01

Well, and it's. It's interesting to see how all those communities interact and cross over, because I know. Janice from another community that I was in, and those authors are all fabulous people, but they don't a lot of them don't quite write what I write. So then I've had to be like, okay, I need to expand and find more writers that write what I write.

Speaker 2: 23:21

And like can networking out. But all of those connections help over time. So the more you put yourself out there and give yourself that time, the longer you're in this game, the you know, the more of those connections and networking opportunities and all of that stuff that you're you're come across.

Speaker 1: 23:39

So it is, it is amazing.

Speaker 2: 23:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:42

So let me ask you guys for our listeners' sake Say, we have somebody out there who's a pretty new writer and maybe they only have like one book out. You know, what would you recommend, Like what would be the steps they could take to start to build a community like like you two have?

Speaker 3: 24:06

I'll let you take that first, Megan. I know I think I think you've just think you've done such a really nice job of doing that, so I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Speaker 2: 24:15

That's really funny that you say that, because I don't think I have at all, but that's what you said.

Speaker 3: 24:21

Well, you're doing a great job of faking it then.

Speaker 2: 24:23

There we go All right All right, I'll take it.

Speaker 2: 24:26

No, I mean, I think the. I think the key thing is putting yourself out there quite honestly. So in my case it's. I met gosh I don't even remember how so, like I was, did not call myself a writer until I went to the Southern California Writers Conference, which is where I met you, greta. So all our listeners know at this point I've mentioned this several times, but. But we met at that conference and prior to that, even though I was writing, even though I was doing things, I didn't have a novel published. I didn't have one. Well, when I went to the conference, I had my first draft ready to go, but it wasn't ready to be published quite yet. But I put myself out there. I asked for, you know, I did an editing critique of my work. I met other authors and I started there.

Speaker 2: 25:13

So I started local and then from there I don't really remember how it all kind of panned out, but it's like you start meeting oh well, this author knows this person, so you should go talk to them about your book, because you write sort of the same thing, right? So I would do that and I'd say I just email people. I mean, I did this to you, rachel, too. I was like would you be my friend, would you like to talk once a month on the phone, right, like and and I? And so I just do that. And I am not an extrovert, despite appearances sometimes, so it is a little scary, but by doing that those connections start to work out and it's like a spider web. The more of those connections you have, the more likely you are to catch the fly. I took that metaphor in a weird, weird direction. I'll be your fly Megan.

Speaker 3: 26:05

Yeah, that's so cool.

Speaker 2: 26:06

You just catch those authors so you can scum dry, you can suck them into your web, but yeah, and then it just goes from there. So it's like one connection leads to another connection and you just have to pursue those opportunities and be open to them. I think.

Speaker 1: 26:22

So go to go to writers conferences, join your local writing group, get on Facebook groups that are genre specific groups. To the groups you write, I'm saying all the things right.

Speaker 2: 26:35

You're doing a much better job of being having a concise list of actionable items.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Because I've been having internet connections, I've been doing a lot of listening, so I've been pulling out the things that you guys have said. So you know where I want to go. Next we've talked about this is because Rachel is doing very well in Kindle Unlimited and Megan does never want to talk to me about Kindle Unlimited. I want to hear Rachel, all your joy in Kindle Unlimited, Tell us they're good, the bad and the ugly. Yeah, the good, the bad and the ugly. But before you do that, I just want you to dial it back from one second. We never know who's listening. There may be people out there who are going what the heck is Kindle Unlimited? So maybe just start there.

Speaker 3: 27:25

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so before I start there, the prologue. Before the prologue, I just want to put out the disclaimer that, hilariously, this is one of the great dividing lines in the world and I say this lovingly, right, like no one's actually fighting about it. But there are people who feel very, very strongly about going wide, and then they're like it's almost like and I'm making fun of you, megan, I am it's almost like a cult, like there's like the wide cult versus, you know, like us, kindle Unlimited sellouts, right, and so there's some contention about this, which I find hilarious. And then Kindle Unlimited. Kindle Unlimited is a subscription program through Amazon. You pay a certain amount every month I don't actually know what that is, I don't think it's a lot and then you can read all the books you want without limit that are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, and then the authors get paid per page read. So that's that, if you aren't in Kindle Unlimited, go sign up and read my books. Just kidding, megan.

Speaker 1: 28:37

Oh no, no kidding. Yes, do it, do it.

Speaker 2: 28:39

You can read mine too.

Speaker 1: 28:41

So, yeah, I'm with you.

Speaker 2: 28:42

The irony is, as a reader, I am actually subscribed to Kindle Unlimited. As an author, I don't like the exclusivity agreement with it and that's my big thing, so we try to present, you know, all the pros and cons of everything, so that is the one thing that Kindle Unlimited requires that the Kobo subscription program does not. So I'm in the Kobo subscription program, but Amazon requires you to be exclusive and only have your eBooks available on Amazon if you're in Kindle Unlimited.

Speaker 3: 29:15

So that's my little disclaimer, caveat thing Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 29:20

And so, like I was white and I wanna talk about what a pain in the ass it is to publish wide, at least when I was doing it. I think it's probably gotten better now. But when you're formatting and preparing your own manuscript and you have to give one to Amazon with their guidelines and one to Kobo with their guidelines and one to Smashboards with their guidelines, and now I know we have like drafts to digital I believe it's called and it's easier but you're still like formatting multiple manuscripts and having to upload them to multiple sites. And oh, megan is shaking her head, no, but like you do have Amazon and you do have draft to digital and you do have a few other sites, that draft to digital does it still like? If you are really really wide, you will have at least three sites to upload your eBook too, and then that's not counting paperbacks, right. So it was really stressful. Publishing was really stressful. Advertising was also really stressful because, yes, there are like universal links and so you would then advertise that universal link and then, like people would click it and stuff, but I personally just found that my ads weren't working. I wasn't getting click-throughs. I have thoughts on, maybe, why that is, but it just I wasn't making very much money.

Speaker 3: 30:39

And then for the Indie Fantasy Addict Summer Reading Challenge, when the first book of my newest series, the Gilda Blood series, came out, when Inks came out, I was like you know what I wanna thank our readers. It's really hard to spend $4.99 or $3.99 or $5.99 every time you buy an eBook to read. For this challenge, I'm just gonna enroll it on Kindle Limited for the summer and then I'm gonna pull it right back out because they have 90 day terms. And so I unpublished everywhere else and like my heart broke every time I didn't unsubscribe or an unpublished button, right Um, and then I started making so much money. I was like this is probably just a fluke from the summer reading challenge, I quadrupled my income without even trying.

Speaker 3: 31:26

I was like, well, while I'm enrolled, I may as well make some ads. I made primarily Facebook ads and I targeted them, and this is another contentious thing is how to target your Facebook ads. But what worked for me was targeting them by Kindle readers and specifically looking for people who were on Amazoncom, audiblecom, kindlecom, who owned Kindle readers, and then narrowing it a little bit by fantasy or fantasy romance. I just started making a lot more money than I was, as much as it kills me to be owned by Amazon, because I am owned by Amazon and they are paying us less than they've ever paid us before. I think it's now one penny per two and a half pages read is what I recently saw last month. Not enough, right? I, just at this point, can't make more money out of Kindle Unlimited than I am in Kindle Unlimited, but that's also why I have an agent now and we're looking at other things to maybe get me out of that exclusivity. But that's a few months down the road, yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:32

I think that's an important distinction, as much as we've had this conversation, and you're right within the indie community there is this divide. We on the author wheel try to be unbiased Indie versus Trad, plotter versus Panzer these are issues that people fight over. We don't fight, we just talk, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:56

Sometimes loudly.

Speaker 2: 32:58

Well, especially me I get. The more passionate I get about something, the louder I get. But I think that's so important to understand is that, yes, wide is complicated. There are things that make it easier Vellum, for example, for formatting they make it so easy. So you were talking about the multiple versions of your formatting and everything like that. Now Amazon is taking EPUB, so it's even easier. I love Vellum, too, because Vellum is my formatting software for those that don't know, and it actually adjusts the links in the book to fit the platform that you're publishing to. So that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 33:37

So it makes it so much easier.

Speaker 2: 33:39

There are things in the works that I cannot speak to that potentially will continue to make that easier for people. So that is progressing, but it is complicated because you are managing multiple sites and I do not make the money that you do. That's just fact. But, that being said, I am hoping, or my goal is, that I build that wide audience. And it's a slower build I write slower, I do all these other things so that long term I am hoping, or I believe, that I will be better off than if I put all my eggs in the Amazon basket today, because I'm basically hedging my bet that at some point Amazon is going to just completely destroy its authors and everybody is going to have to start shifting anyway. So I'll be a step ahead if I do that.

Speaker 3: 34:33

It's fair. Yeah, it's fair, it's a trade-off.

Speaker 2: 34:37

It is a huge trade-off, and so you just have to decide what's right for you and what makes the most sense for what you're trying to do and where you're at right now.

Speaker 3: 34:46

Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right and I could not agree more with not putting all your eggs in one basket, not just with KU versus wide, but I just saw that ex, formerly known as Twitter. Sorry, we're supposed to be unbiased, but I'm just really frustrated with them right now. I am so glad that I never really got deep into Twitter. I really didn't Because there are people who have built up. There are 50,000 followers there and now Twitter is like cool, we're going to start charging new people to tweet and retweet and they're sending people out of their droves. So it's like you build up these huge audiences, you build up these miniature empires. You put all of your eggs in one basket Amazon, facebook, twitter.

Speaker 2: 35:29

I mean, you might as well tweet.

Speaker 3: 35:30

Right. And then I've got 11,000 followers on Facebook, right. But there's a lot of issues with Facebook and you can't reach a lot of younger people there, so you have to spread out as much as you can, and also, we are only one freaking person.

Speaker 3: 35:48

We can only stretch ourselves so thin. So I feel like one of the biggest struggles Indies have is pushing ourselves as far as we can to get that success without burning ourselves out where we can't work anymore. And so, yeah, ku is working great for me. Ku also doesn't pay me enough and is taking advantage of me, and I am glad that I have a literary agent now and we are looking at doing bigger and different things with the series, because I would be afraid to continue to keep all of my eggs in that basket and having to start over if they continue to mistreat us worse and worse.

Speaker 3: 36:31

But for the moment, putting on my blinders. I make good money there, I sell a lot of books there, I rank high. And, greta, if you're going to be in KU, there are a couple of things. I recommend Targeting your Amazon ads specifically for people who are interested in Amazon, kindle and so on. That really helps me with those click-through rates. And also, running Amazon ads, which, I am 100% positive, increase your ranking just because you're running them. I think even if you're not getting a ton of clicks, amazon will still push your book up higher in the ranking to reward you for giving them money. I cannot confirm that, but it very much seems to be the case.

Speaker 1: 37:18

It makes sense. And my Facebook ad I mean I took Matthew Holmes Facebook ads, course, and they're doing what they're supposed to do and I'm scaling up a bit at a time. So they're doing good, but next year, because it's one thing at a time for me, because what you said is so true when you're indie, it's like trying to get it all done. You can get yourself to the point where you just don't have any time to write, and then what's the point? So next year I'm going to learn Amazon ads.

Speaker 1: 37:57

I had one Amazon ad, but it never did anything and I just shut it off. I was like I don't even know what I'm doing. I don't want to take the time to learn this.

Speaker 3: 38:06

I hate it. I hated Amazon ads Like I loathed them. I was like there is no freaking way for me to make more money than what I'm spending. And then I realized that it helped my ranking so much where I think even people who weren't clicking on the ads like they just remembered my name in my books and I think that they helped in that way.

Speaker 1: 38:30

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 38:31

Well, you know what I have. So I look at Amazon ads more as top of mind advertising. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:39

I have a traditionally published series that is wide and doing absolutely nothing. So the way I felt about it is, if I'm going to learn it's kind of like you Like, if I'm going to learn this whole publishing marketing thing, it's easier to learn it at this one place, at one platform, and then once I kind of get that under my belt, then I can take it widen. It won't be so overwhelming. So it's the baby steps. That's my plan. And also I do think, megan and I have talked to other authors about this there's nothing wrong with having maybe one series in KU, because it really fits there and it really does well there, and then another series that you go wide with and yeah, so you cannot have your eggs in one basket in that respect too, because we had on Tanya Kappas sometime back who's got a million books.

Speaker 2: 39:39

I think she said right, megan, a million books, that's what she said, I think it was just shy of a million, of a million books, like 17,000 series.

Speaker 3: 39:52

And she's getting a film deal.

Speaker 1: 39:54

She's like all that 15 bags of chips.

Speaker 3: 39:57

How cool.

Speaker 1: 39:58

Yeah, she is. She's got some series in KU and she has some series out of KU. And this is her. I think she sometimes moves one. If it stops making so much money in KU, she'll try moving it out. Something's not making so much money out, she'll move it in. But she's got so much money she probably has a VA.

Speaker 3: 40:20

Keep on doing that for her, yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:23

That's where I want to get to getting that help.

Speaker 3: 40:28

So yeah, I hear you, I'm right on that cusp, but also it's like a control thing. But I'm making enough money now for help and also I need to find a really quality person to help, because these people represent your brand. You can't just find anyone who will spam people's pages with your books and throw up a bunch of hashtags and then say that they're promoting you. I think it's that's something I'd love to talk more about. Down the line is finding really good quality PAs and VA's to help you with this stuff. So, yeah, because I have gotten to the point where it's like I do not write nearly enough because I'm juggling so many balls in my hands and dropping balls I drop balls a lot.

Speaker 1: 41:16

Yeah, yeah. And then they roll under the couch and get desk bunnies, and it's just you never find them again.

Speaker 3: 41:23

Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2: 41:27

All right. Well, why don't we transition then now? Because one thing that I know I mean I backed it, but your Kickstarter did phenomenally well, and that is one way that you are not putting all your eggs on the Amazon basket. You were able to do great things with this Kickstarter, so why don't you tell us a little bit about that and what attracted to Kickstarter and how you like?

Speaker 3: 41:51

I don't remember what your final number was, but it was something massive- it was over 50 grand, yeah, yeah, OK, so trying to make this like super concise too, Because authors who talk about their books are so good at being concise right, we're super strong at that. So the Gilda Blood series is four books. We talked about how art and color are really important to it. So I, when I published them, was like, OK, I need to have a deluxe color addition of this paperback. You're probably like what does this have to do with Kickstarter, but I promise it makes sense. So I printed in color every chapter, both in the black and white and color additions. Have a hand Like I designed them chapter heading illustrations, Because, again, tattoos are color Very important.

Speaker 3: 42:42

I saw these authors going on Kickstarter and just like nailing it, getting these huge numbers, but I thought to myself, even though I had readers saying, hey, what are you going to do with deluxe version? I said I have a color version. I already have chapter headings. I just don't want to milk people for money. You know what I mean. It would have to be so worth it.

Speaker 3: 43:06

And then I saw this cover by Ce Page and it just blew me away and I messaged her. I was like, please tell me who your artist is Because, again, important to know authors right so we can learn stuff. And she was like it's this guy named Yvette Yarling who lives in Germany. So I reached out to him saying, hey, there's no way I'm going to be able to afford this. But can we just talk about this? If I wanted to do 13 full page, full color illustrations for a deluxe, deluxe, deluxe book, what would that cost?

Speaker 3: 43:44

Since he and I worked out the numbers and then finally, after finding a woman named Madeline who does these covers, that just blew me away and looking at Yvette's art and figuring out that, OK, I can do this, I said, OK, we got to do this. And at that point I knew I could make it worth my readers' money, because to do a book like that is not cheap, right? Like the omnibus went for $85. So that was fun. I guess I would say if you are going to make a special edition book because that is starting to get very saturated, particularly in the fantasy market you can't just throw on a new cover or say like, hey, we're going to put one or two illustrations in there. Like I feel like it's getting to the point where you really have to like sex it up, you know, and just make it like really, really worth it, and I think we did Like I think the book we made is stunning.

Speaker 2: 44:44

To the point that I have now booked Uei to do a new cover for Last Stendant starting next year.

Speaker 1: 44:51

Cool, so again networking connections.

Speaker 2: 44:54

Yes, yeah, so he will be designing a brand new illustrated cover for Last Stendant, and I'm thinking about doing the plan, theoretical, tentative plan, although now you've really made me go. Hmm, I might have to think about this more.

Speaker 3: 45:09

Oh, and as I was saying it, I was like I'm stressing people out by saying this no, but it's so true though.

Speaker 2: 45:16

I mean I think this is a microcosm of what's happened in the publishing industry as a whole, where, back in 2012 or whatever, when Kindle first came out, you could throw a book up there it didn't even have to be edited and you could make a million dollars. But that's not true anymore. Now you have to really like go above and beyond. You have to differentiate yourself. I think that's already happening in Kickstarter, which is fine and that's good. But yeah, I mean, the tentative plan is to I want to do each title individually and then, by the end, have a case box set kind of a thing.

Speaker 2: 45:51

Yeah, but the idea would be then to do sort of what you've done in a smaller version, but for Last Ascended, because I was so inspired by your Kickstarter and how beautiful that book really is. You know, it's just I'm at some point I couldn't. I can't buy it because, like I said, I don't have any shelf space. But I'm very excited to at some point see a copy and like actually get my hands on it and look at it and examine it.

Speaker 2: 46:20

Because, from what I've seen, so far, it just looks absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 3: 46:26

I really appreciate that, thank you.

Speaker 1: 46:28

I saw on Kickstarter was a small publisher, I forget where, somewhere in New England, and they had taken, like I think there must have been stories that were public domain, like I saw. One of them was Pinocchio.

Speaker 1: 46:44

So it was like the original Pinocchio, then they had a fine art artist to illustrate it and it was more like a coffee table book. Those things were selling for like $300. And the people were backing them like crazy and they were gorgeous, like gorgeous. And I think that's an interesting thing, because I do think with digital books, if you're really interested in just getting a story as quickly as you can, audio, digital books and stuff like that is great. But there is that when you have that favorite story, when you have that book that you love, getting something you can put your hands on you don't just getting just a paperback of it or a regular hardcover is not that special. You know what I mean. So why not go for the gorgeous thing? It's like the two extremes.

Speaker 3: 47:46

Yeah, exactly, I'm so sorry to our podcast listeners, but I will explain this. So I want to show you guys this book. I got a Dragon Con.

Speaker 1: 47:54

Oh, wow.

Speaker 3: 47:55

Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss. It is covered in real, like soft leather green. It's gorgeous there is a lute, a 3D lute made out of wood, with strings on it. Oh, are they.

Speaker 3: 48:08

Those are actually strings, like you can like pluck them, you, I mean like they don't make noise, but yeah, it's like wire strings they move. And then, like you open up on the inside and it's like foil and stuff. Like I spent $225 on this book. It was handmade, I never thought I would, but I truly do think there's a market.

Speaker 3: 48:28

Like when a book touches your soul, first of all you just want the most beautiful version of that book possible. Like I will never probably get a more beautiful book than this book that I'm showing you right now. And also I think that there are people who are like dragons and they just want to surround themselves with beautiful, shiny things, and those people also tend to like fantasy books. So I do think there are people who are like my money is not going to go to traveling, it might not go to nice clothes, it might not go to like a big house. My money is going to go towards finding those beautiful books out there, surrounding myself, with them in my dragon layer. And I love those people. I want to be best friends with those people because and I don't think that's going to go anywhere and I think the more we push that bar and make even more beautiful books, the more we're going to be sending people to Kickstarter to find more treasures.

Speaker 2: 49:17

I have a little story to tell on my daughter. I think this is yesterday. Yeah, yesterday we went to the library to go see a talk by Victoria Abbeyard who wrote Red Queen and Roundbreaker are her two series. And so we went and we listened to her talk and it was amazing and wonderful. And as we're driving home, my daughter goes. When I grow up, I want to have a house that's just all bookshelves and I want to just walk through my house and just be surrounded by books, piled and piled and piled of books. And I go well, yeah, it's like the ones that touch your heart, that are special, like that's amazing. You should definitely collect those. Have lots of bookshelves, that's wonderful, but let's not have stacks because mom and me like earthquake hazard, oh gosh.

Speaker 1: 50:15

That never occurred to me.

Speaker 2: 50:16

You don't need to trip over the books. Yeah Right, and she goes. Well, ok, I don't mean that literally, but I do literally. I want to have a room that's just all bookshelves, and then people can come into my house and they can sit in that room in a comfy chair and they can borrow books.

Speaker 3: 50:34

I love that.

Speaker 2: 50:34

The library. Anyway, it was the funniest thing ever. But I think she I mean she's 11, right, but I think that mentality and that desire for the beautiful, shiny stories, that, just like you said, touch you and be surrounded by that, really there's a big population, there's a lot of people that feel that way.

Speaker 3: 50:58

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about something. There was something that marred my Kickstarter and I actually think it's important that we talk about this, and I felt very frustrated about it, but it's something that authors and maybe, like readers need to be aware of too. Ok, so I paid a lot of stuff out of pocket, right, because in order to do a Kickstarter, that's the hard thing and why, in some ways, there's like a barrier to entry, and this is not the thing that I'm complaining about. I'm getting there.

Speaker 3: 51:30

There's some gatekeeping for Kickstarter, because I had to pay a lot of money up front. I had to get three illustrations done by UA so I could show people like this is what we're doing. You can't just say, hey, we're going to make it beautiful, you have to show them. I had to pay someone a Madeline for the cover. That was quite a bit of money, right, like these are expenses that go out before you even launch the Kickstarter. That said so, a lot of money was spent. I probably paid $4,000 out of my own pocket, and the art budget for this book is extraordinary. We are doing 13 full-color hand-drawn illustrations. We did the cover for Madeline. We have the four original covers which I have an artist in the Ukraine and I support her and she still lives in the Ukraine throughout the war. So my art budget was astronomical and I employed the work of three different artists to make this Kickstarter.

Speaker 3: 52:35

This is where I'm getting to the point. That was very difficult for me and did casting shadow in the campaign and is controversial. So the chapter headings I told you both, I illustrated them. I did not pay myself for those chapter headings, right? I'm self-employed. I wanted to redo the chapter headings, for them to be beautiful, full-color instead of spot color. There's 110 chapters in this omnibus. I cannot afford that and nor do I have enough time to do individual paintings.

Speaker 3: 53:09

So I used a combination of B-funky MS paint, canva, literal painting with my own hand and scanning it in Sharpie and Mid Journey and Mid Journey and I put a disclaimer on there and I explained it. I said imagine me using Mid Journey and then using all of these other programs to then turn that into something else, right? So I'm not just typing it into Mid Journey, taking the output and publishing it. I'm like using a jarlet to stencil a circle, right, and then turning that into a snowman. I feel very comfortable with that. I realize again, this is a controversial subject, but I personally I wasn't taking money from another artist. I employed three other artists to do this. I wasn't worried about there being potentially any plagiarism IP issues Because, again, I was taking the output and then greatly changing them using my time and my art skills.

Speaker 3: 54:10

People there were maybe four or five people who were furious, who called me a plaguerizer, who said that I was supporting robots and stepping all over people, and there were some pretty angry people that there was any AI used in this whatsoever. So be so careful if you're going to do that I did. Now I did see that there was somebody who used AI for their Kickstarter for a fantasy book. Didn't tell anyone it was AI, said that they redid their whole thing and then people got it and they were furious that they spent money that was on something that was like pure artificial intelligence. I think that really put a bad taste in people's mouths. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 54:55

That whole debate, and this is a very interesting debate. Again, with the author wheel, we try to be unbiased and look at all points of view. The thing that so I'll tell you my little story is that back about a year ago, I was just playing around with my journey. This was not, in any way, shape or form, going to be used for me to make any money, but I was playing with it because it was new, it was something interesting and different, and I am not a visual artist myself those art skills are beyond me, quite honestly so I was just playing with it. So I sent out a newsletter and I said look what I'm doing. Here's the debate. I gave links to all the different points of view and the arguments that were happening at the time and all this stuff.

Speaker 2: 55:41

I had furious emails come back just from that, calling me names, telling me what a bad person I was, that I was not the person that they thought I was, all this stuff. So obviously it is a very hot button issue, but ultimately I think that's what I think readers and consumers of any creative good are going to have to learn how to differentiate, learn where their own boundaries are and just put their money where their mouth is ultimately. But I think getting angry over it is so anti, I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me Because from what you did and your level of change and I've seen those images and they are gorgeous and they are very clearly not pure AI, pure mid-journey you can tell the difference and so you put a lot of time and effort and energy into using mid-journey as a tool to make your own art better and more efficient, and I think that's what AI is good for, right.

Speaker 3: 56:49

But I don't know. I completely agree If we are using AI to make our lives better, if we are still employing artists, if the only thing we're doing is making again. No one else designed those chapter headings. I did so. I am not penguin random house, right. I am not MacMillion, I do not have. I am not Wizards of the Coats, who got in trouble for using AI art because they are multi-million dollar, multi-billion dollar in some cases companies. They can afford to employ artists but me. I already had to charge $85 for this omnibus. So to the people who are like, how dare you allow AI to make your life a little bit easier? I sort of wanted to challenge them and say, ok, would you have been willing to pay $150 for this omnibus, because I don't have $100,000.

Speaker 2: 57:42

I just don't. I just don't. And, like you said, it's not taking anything away from anybody else, because if you didn't do that it wasn't going to happen, right? No, and that's another thing to consider too. It's like if you had the option of hiring an artist.

Speaker 1: 57:59

if you had that kind of money you would have probably. I worry exactly.

Speaker 2: 58:04

But you weren't going to do it otherwise.

Speaker 3: 58:06

So it would not have happened. It would not have happened right, and I don't have the time, or I just don't have the bandwidth to do like 110 full-color paintings on my own. So I guess this is a word to the wise and a warning. Just like you said, megan, you kind of have to know where your own boundaries are with it. I felt extremely comfortable with it. Other people did not, and I was surprised by the 1% of people. Again, it was only a handful out of hundreds and hundreds, but I was very surprised by the vehemence in which they expressed their disdain for it. So if you are thinking about doing a Kickstarter out there and you're planning on using AI, just be prepared. There will be backlash, regardless of how you use that AI.

Speaker 2: 58:57

Yeah, yeah. But I do want to take this on a slight other tangent too, because I think that's where Kickstarter can really shine. You can make those boundaries and you can give your readers an experience and you can make sure that you are. I use the analogy that it's like you want to drink, right, so you can go to Ralph's and you can get the premixed margarita, handle a margarita off the shelf and take it home and drink it if you just want a margarita and that's all you're looking for. Or you can go to the really high end fancy bar where they especially make all the syrups and it's mixed just so, and then you've got the bartender with the wax mustache who's going to talk you up the whole time and like freshly squeezed, locally grown produce.

Speaker 2: 59:47

Absolutely right. I want to go to that bar, right, yeah, but it's two ends of the extreme. And then there's everything in the middle there's the dive bar, there's the local hangout, there's the pub, there's the whatever. So that's what Kickstarter is allowing for, and so you, as the reader, then decide what experience you're looking for and you put your money where that fits. So I think that's what Kickstarter is great at. It's not like going on Amazon where you're just looking for a book and you really probably I mean now they have the little checkbox on their form or whatever but you really have no idea as a reader, necessarily, if this is how this book was produced. It's just a story and until you start reading it, you might not know. But ultimately, authors, that's how we're going to differentiate ourselves is by making experiences and then allowing readers to find that tribe that they fit into. So that's my soapbox for the moment.

Speaker 1: 1:00:48

Well, the other thing, too, just to throw in, is that technology is what it is and you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Speaker 1: 1:00:58

I mean it is here, and so it just depends on how people are going to use it. And it's interesting because just seeing things like when you go out in the desert and you see people who create a gorgeous art out of old wrecked up signs and rusty bicycles or whatever you know what I'm saying it's like you can take whatever exists in the world and you can turn it into art, or you can just put something cheap out and everybody can tell the difference. Over time. You can tell the difference. So, no matter how you're using this, I use chat, gpt to try to write book descriptions and things, and they're so stupid it's ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 1:01:52

But I can use it to put in a book description and say make this pithier, make this funnier, make this whatever, and I never use their final product. But I might use a phraser too. I might use a different adjective that I wouldn't have thought of, I might use some different things, and is that any worse than using a thesaurus and saying I've used the word amazing 14 times? Ok, I need a new word for amazing. So I guess that's where I'm going with it. It's like we can be creative with that, but I think it's because it's new, and whenever something new comes along, people are terrified.

Speaker 3: 1:02:35

Yeah, and people don't necessarily understand it either. Like my brother is a software engineer and I said to him someone said that AI steals people's art and he said that's just kind of patently untrue. It's like saying I want to draw a peacock and so you go and you look at references of like 50 different peacocks and then you draw it using those references. He was like they rove through the internet and, yeah, they look at millions of different drawings To create this output, but they're not just like pulling a picture from the internet and saying like here's this one photo and I'm going to just reproduce it and plagiarizing it. So I thought that was interesting. I do always think it's interesting when we have something very complex and people who aren't necessarily like software engineers, for example, have to form opinions on these things Not coming from that as like a strong background in their education, and then it's hard to go and do research, right, I wonder what chat GPT would say if you said, hey, talk to me about AI and plagiarism. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:03:48

You know that's a good question. We should all go do that. We should all go do that.

Speaker 3: 1:03:52

Yeah, let's see what it says.

Speaker 2: 1:03:56

Well, I hate to say it, because this is a fascinating conversation and I love chatting with you and having you on. So we'll have to have you on again, but we are coming up to the top of the hour. We do, unfortunately, need to wrap it up. But any kind of final thoughts, rachel? Anything else you want to share before we sign off?

Speaker 3: 1:04:15

Wait up, put me on the spot, megan, I'm good at that. Ok, I do have one more thing. So we talked about why to set up a Kickstarter. We talked about some things to be careful of some pitfalls. I will give you a really good piece of advice.

Speaker 3: 1:04:30

Before you launch your Kickstarter, make sure that you keep the pre-launch page live for at least 30 days so you can get those followers. Also, make sure that you're putting the Kickstarter link everywhere and this, again, is before the project even goes live when it's just that pre-launch link. Put it in the back matter of your books. Put it on your social media pages. Put it in your author bio on author central. Make sure that people who are reading that book and already love that book can say oh hey, there's going to be a gorgeous edition of this book. Now that I've read it and I see it in the back matter of this book, I'm going to click on it and become a follower, because, while those followers don't all convert, having that flood of people go to that page on the first 24 hours really helps Kickstarter say ah, this is the special project, we're going to make sure that we push it out to our followers as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:05:21

Yeah, great, that's great advice. Great advice, thank you, yeah. So, rachel, why don't you tell people where they can find more about you and your work?

Speaker 3: 1:05:31

You can find me at rachaelrennercom. It's only one end in Renner. Jeremy. Renner likes to be extra with his two ends. I'm also on Amazon, and while my ebooks are exclusive on KU, you can find my paperbacks pretty much wherever books are sold online. So it was such a pleasure talking to you both. I feel like you too are such powerhouses of knowledge and you've spoken to so many people, and it's just been such a privilege to come on the show and chat with you. I would love to come back again. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 1:06:01

We will definitely do this again. This was so much fun. So, everybody, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. Don't forget, if you are doing NaNoWriMo or just want to be more productive and get more words on the page, Megan and I, for the end of October and all of November which I think this episode's coming out mid-November are doing Between E Soads, which are short episodes with lots of tips On productivity, how to get in the flow and all kinds of good stuff so that you can get those books written and keep your stories rolling.