My entire life I have tried to get up early to do things like exercise, read even, which I love to do. And I have never ever been able to motivate myself to do it. But I get up every day now at 5 a.m. or even a little earlier to get some writing stuff done. So now sort of I feel like the business stuff tries to take over and can take a lot of time, but I do try to devote the mornings to the writing.
SaraAnd it's at 5 a.m. writing club.
JamiWelcome to the Wish I've known them podcast. I'm Sarah Rosette. And I'm Jamie Albright. And this week on the show we have Finley Daniels. That's a great interview.
SaraIt was. She is part of the new author series. And we talked to her about basically getting started. She's still working a full-time job. Yep. And how she's balancing all that. And she's doing some marketing and ads, and we commiserate over that together.
JamiOh, golly. Actually, I have an ad that's working right now. So I shouldn't even say it. I'm gonna jinx it.
SaraBut yeah, I'll take that out. She should be gone.
unknownYeah.
SaraI love about TikTok at the end and book bubs and how she has marketed her books and some interesting things she's doing. So that is coming up. And we should also mention that this week's corporate sponsor is Vellum. So we'll talk to the game, them about them in a little bit.
Yes, we will. We will. We love them. So we got a writing update or a life update? I have not been writing. I'm still I'm waiting on my editor. She's I knew that she had some family kind of obligations, and she actually switched some stuff around so she could take my book. And so it's taken a little bit longer, but it's fine. I'll get it at the end of the week. But I did hear back I'd asked somebody to read it because they read a lot and read across genres, and are in a lot of book clubs that read different things. And I knew she would tell me the truth if there were issues. And she came back saying it was five stars, no no, which I know it was, and to hear her talking about it, she was just very enthusiastic and it really was encouraging. What it shows me is for the people who are going to like it, they're going to really like it. This book isn't for everybody, and I get that. I don't want it to be, it's not supposed to be for everybody, and I just now have to market it in such a way that rep I repel the wrong people because the right people will love it. And that's what I had hoped. One of the things that she said was that it really made her love my sister or a character that based off my sister. The way she said it was like I I could feel I could feel your love for your sister and the way you wrote this. Therefore, I loved this character too, and just her bravery and everything. Yeah, I'm encouraged. So we'll get and my editor has already told me there aren't any major unless right at the end, because she was three-fourths of the way done, but there aren't any big rewrites or anything, just the usual suspects. Typical corrections. I had one character named John. I had four characters named John. These are all my minor characters, I hope. What the heck? What was I don't even like that name.
SaraBut you're it's a placeholder name, right?
JamiI I can't. Oh my gosh. No, I just named him that. It was ridiculous. I had several other a couple of other double characters named two characters named the same thing, but four characters named John. What?
SaraSo there's really if you had named one J-O-N and another one J-O-H-N, but then you're kind of out of it after that.
JamiBut anyway, but that just basic grammar stuff that I always mess up, but repeating phrases. So that all is fixable, not a big deal. That can be done over a weekend.
SaraRight. Well, that's good. And a funny what our brains just totally turn off. I was gonna say when you said it's not back, like you're fine with it. And I am too. If it takes longer, that's totally fine. I just want to know. It's when you get that deafening silence and you think, Yeah, have they fallen off the face of the earth? Is something going on that I don't know about? Right. Or do they hate it and they don't and they're trying to figure out how to tell me how they don't like it?
JamiExactly. Well, I mean, initially she emailed me like after a couple of days and was like, oh, this book is special, I can tell. But then I didn't hear from her for a week at all. And I was having flashbacks to when I didn't hear from her for two weeks because she there was she felt like I there were some issues. Yeah, yeah. Nine paragraphs later. But this was a different book.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
Nine paragraphs later for another book. I found out what the issues were. I did reach out and I was like, I'm a nervous wreck over here, and just wanting to check in. And that's when she told me there were no major rebites or anything, so that's good. And then this week I have been reaching out, just continuing to reach out to Instagram and TikTok influencers and or bookstagrammers and book talkers to see if they want an arc. And y'all, like I was initially keeping it to people that had one to ten thousand followers, and then our friend Amy was Amy Wolves was like, when I reached out, I just reached out, I didn't limit it. All they can say is no, and I can't, y'all. I have as many like higher numbers. Yeah, I've got some really big ones that want arts, and I'm just shocked and very pleasantly surprised. Shoot your shot, is all I've got to say. Do not limit your again. All they can say is no, or just not answer. I don't care, it's not hurting my feelings. And so I don't have a ton, I think. Right now, I've reached out to probably 50, and I've got about 15. But I'm gonna I'm continuing to do it. I can't send it until next week anyway.
SaraAnd yeah, that's actually high because about whatever you do, like this is one thing I've learned if you do direct sales, if you reach out to people, about one percent, one to two percent will respond positively. And that I think is a really good, is that right? Like, my is my math right? Never do live math, but I think it's it's a good percentage that you want.
JamiDon't ask me to give you the percentage, but I think it is yeah.
SaraSo that's really good. And I feel like the that is so in your wheelhouse because you are a people person, you're on social media, you like to talk to people, and I think that's great. It just seems like that would be something that would just be perfect for you.
JamiYeah, I have a good pitch, and I think that helps a lot. And I feel like the book that's the person that read the book said, you really do deliver on that pitch. Still Magnolius meets Shit's Creek with the heart of this is us. All three of those things are very recognizable. So yeah, I had said, you know, still Magnolius meets the Dukes of Hazard, but mostly that was because it's not quite lined up when we were in our retreat. Yeah, uh, someone pointed out the Dukes of Hazards aren't real positive. They're a little politically incorrect in some areas.
SaraPlus, nothing blows up, true, and you don't want people thinking that's what they're getting.
JamiBut so Becca Syme helped me with it, and she came up with Shits Creek, which is very true. Perfect, yeah. Yeah, it is, it's very true. So, anyway, yeah, that's what's going on. It's just getting ready for release, and there's just so much, and it's been a while. Oh, it's been a while, and I'm I pulled out my checklist. I've got Claude making me a checklist, and still I think there are things that aren't but right now I'm gonna holding pattern because it it's a little too early for me to put up the pre-order, I think. And I want to do a giveaway, so all of that will happen next week. I'll put up the pre-order next week and do a giveaway and like that. One little hiccup happened today. This is going long, I'm sorry, y'all, but I had reached out to one of these book talkers and she messaged back and said, I don't read romance or romantic comedy. But I clearly state in the pitch that it is not that. But but what she did was she probably went to my profile and saw that I wrote romance and romantic comedy. I'm a little bit concerned about that, but I'm still right now sticking with my name. I'm just gonna go with this name.
SaraAnd yeah, I think that's good. I think you've got to make the choice, you've got to make the call and then just go with it and see how it works out, right?
JamiYeah, clearly she just skipped scanned the pitch. She didn't read it. I need to go in now and change my socials and everything. So I need to do that. Yeah, yeah. Just another thing for the list. Yeah, yeah. Add it to the list, and that's it right.
Yeah. I have two updates for personal things. We went out of town last week and went to birthday, 85th family birthday. So many family were there. It was great to catch up with everybody. Yeah, it was good. It was really good. And came back and today we're recording this on Monday, April 13th. I opened my manuscript, looked at it, and I had not exported it since March 13th. And that's, I just we had personal travel, we did the writers' conference, and then I've been doing a bunch of promo stuff for the trope book that I did with Jennifer Hilt. And so I just haven't been writing. And it's really funny because today is the day that the podcast with Joanna came out. I was on the pen.
JamiAnd one of the things you all ought to listen to it this morning.
SaraIt was a fun conversation with her. And we did talk about phases and how I do things in phases. And I thought, okay, that was just a promotional family phase, and now it's time to get back to the manuscript. I did get some writing done today, and it was great, and it felt really good to get back into the book, but it feels really weird after you've been away for four or five weeks to catch back up. But anyway, so I'm back writing, and that podcast is out, and we did talk about like special editions and low-key marketing ideas and ways to do things because I'm not a big ads person. I kind of have all these things going on that are always running in the background. I tend to do things like I'll focus on writing, and then I'll focus on a launch, and then I'll focus on the letters. Right. So we talked about all that, and I did listen to part of it today, and I thought, wow, I sound way too relaxed. That's not really what life is like all the time. I'm like, oh yeah, I do this and I do that. And I did not capture the franticness that sometimes that there is, but yeah, I think it's because we know Joanna now, and we it's I feel comfortable talking with her, so it was just a fun catch-up. But anyway, so I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
Yeah, that's great.
SaraYeah, and thank you to our supporters. We appreciate all the supporters we have that have stuck with us through thick and thin.
JamiThick and thin.
SaraYep, and commiserated us with us when things go wrong and celebrated new things like book releases. So we appreciate that. And special shout out to longtime supporter Angel Lawson. She's been a supporter for three years. Thank you, Angel, and everyone else. Yeah. And if you want to support the podcast, you can go to wish identifyriters.com slash support and or you can find us on Subs Substack and you'll get access to the backlist. We have supporter episodes. We have a new one out, one about truths about book marketing. So we we don't hold back on that one. Yep. And then we also should talk about Vellum, our corporate sponsor for this month. Vellum is a software that you can use to format your books and your ebooks and your print books. And it's a Mac only software, and you can format your Word documents. And they have something new out that I haven't tried yet, but I'm looking forward to it. It's a word count visualizer, and it gives you a graph so you can see each chapter how long or short it is compared to the other ones. And then it has a midpoint, you can check where the midpoint is. And I love all that because isn't that cool?
JamiYes. I didn't have that either.
SaraIt's brand new.
JamiIt's brand new, it's brand new then there.
SaraYeah, it that's thing something I need when I'm working on a book. I want to know where certain points are in the total overview of the book, and sometimes that's hard to figure out.
JamiSo it's really helpful too if you write in Vellum. And I know like some people do. Yeah, Melanie Harlow writes in Vellum, Kat Johnson writes in Vellum. Yeah.
SaraSo that's cool. They're adding some features for that for people who use it. And then you can use it when you're editing and formatting too to check things.
JamiI'm not just randomly saying people's names. Those that they've been on the podcast. But you can scroll back in the feed.
Yeah, scroll back in the feed. So if you're interested in that, you can go to trivellum.com slash wish. All right. We should get on with the podcast because this was a great interview. Yeah. Here's Finley. Here's Finley. Today we are really excited to have Finley Daniels with us today. Hi, Finley. How are you?
SPEAKER_00Hi, I'm good. How are you?
SaraWe are great. We're so happy you're here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you guys.
SaraLet me introduce you and give a little background for our listeners. Finley Daniels is a newer contemporary romance author who's been publishing for about two years. She writes heartfelt healing love stories with humor, emotion, and happy endings, both kinds. Wink wink. Well, tell us how you got into writing.
SPEAKER_00So I listen to you guys a lot, and I know that a lot of people say this, that they always wanted to be a writer or write books and later in life. That's a nice way to put it. I'm probably I've done many years in a career already in healthcare. And but I've always wanted to write a book. Like it's always been that thing in the back of my head. And so about in 2023, the summer of 23, I was taking a position of somebody who was retiring. And so she had to train me. And we liked to walk on lunch. So we walked on lunch and she would tell me about the secret plan she had to write a book about her grandchildren and global warming and all of this stuff. And it was going to be like a fantasy. And so I was very intrigued because I had been reading about like self-publishing a little, and she and I talked, and that kind of got the bug in me. And then the next thing I remember about it is being on, we took a 10th anniversary trip to Hawaii in September. And I just remember having my laptop there and writing on in Hawaii and then showing my husband my first Jamie scene. So somehow it happened between that summer. I started writing and then I just did not stop because it was very, I found it therapeutic. I find it settled my mind. So yeah. And I just kept going. And now it's very hard to think about not doing it.
JamiYeah. And the reason I left is because it was almost like a fever dream. The next thing I knew, I had a screaming scene.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And he's like, did you write this? And like I wrote it.
JamiAnd that you know then you have to explain yourself. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
SaraDo you still work full-time as well as writing?
SPEAKER_00I do. I have a actually a pretty demanding full-time job. It's uh like a management slash leadership position. It's very busy and demanding. And I I'm that person that has a hard time saying no, or if I see something that needs done, not jumping in. And I was going to ask my boss to cut down a day a week and I figured I would clean my house and write. And then that that week he called and somebody else quit and he said, I will help with it. So yeah, so I'm still working full-time and writing. I get up every morning to write.
SaraTo write before you go to work.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So my entire life, I have tried to get up early to do things like exercise, read even, which I love to do. And I have never ever been able to motivate myself to do it. But I get up every day now at 5 a.m. or even a little earlier to get some writing stuff done. So now sort of, I feel like the business stuff tries to take over and can take a lot of time, but I do trying to devote the mornings to the writing.
SaraI did that for many years.
JamiMe too. 4 30 and 5. Yeah, that's how I wrote my first two books. It's funny because you were talking about your job, you were thinking about cutting down, and then the next thing you know, you're working more. That actually happened to me because when I was work had a full-time job. And I'm gonna tell you, it was an easy job. It was a good I loved it, and it really fit in my well wheelhouse because I was really assisting my boss, and I worked in medical too. But I there were there would have been times that I could have worked, I could have written and not hurt anybody. Nobody's life was in danger. And then and I was thinking, this job is just great. Also, it just gave me time to think. And the next thing I know, I've had to take on, I had to take on a le uh the role that my boss had, only in a different place. And I had always said I never I will never do that job because it's horrible. And it was horrible. It's hard to write and do your day job. But I also think that a lot of people should keep their day jobs. I should have kept some sort of day job in if for no other reason, just for because of my personality to be around people. The dream is to quit. That's the dreams.
SPEAKER_00And I I I do what I do during the day, but I I have I feel like it's okay at this point in my life to my husband always says, Why do you always have to have the most intense job? And I'm like, I don't, but of course, like I'm like sure I can take that on. Yeah, but I like writing so much now that it's like the thing that has made me want to not do that as much.
SaraWhat do you wish you knew about writing and craft?
SPEAKER_00It's very humbling, I will say. So to go back and read your first books. Yeah. So I wrote down things. I tried to stick to the writing and craft idea, but I was a very good student in school. Always was. I could always memorize things. I didn't realize how much grammar I forgot. So I really wish that I had maybe gone back and freshened up on some of that. It would have made those early edits so much easier. I wish that I knew then what passive voice was and could have just not had so much of it everywhere and be trying to see the editor. Passive voice, passive voice around the top. And then to be honest with you, I didn't even know what a beat was or a trope. And I was extremely naive. I was a significant reader, I still am, but back then it was not uncommon to read like a book a day. So I was not surprised when I learned about tropes, but I didn't have the knowledge to try to write them into my books more intentionally.
JamiYeah.
SPEAKER_00And how to do market research, any of that stuff. Yeah, it's humbling to see how I was, but I'm also proud to see the difference in my writing between my first book and my book.
SaraDid you read in the romance genre a lot as well?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't really read much outside of if I read, I used to read like a lot of fantasy romance, but it's always had to have the romance piece. And then the last several years, it's even like several years before I started writing, it was reading romance. I love a good mafia romance. Yeah. Yeah, I love I read all different kinds. I read contemporary, I read mafia. I really don't read much fantasy romance anymore. I had a long period where I was on a vampire kick like 10 years ago. But as one does. Yeah, of course. I think though, I like women's fiction, but I also have this, I don't want to be upset at the end of a book. I don't want to I want to cry during the book, but I want to be happy at the end. So I'm careful about what I read.
SaraYeah, I like to know what I'm getting when I pick up a book. And some readers are not like that. Some readers are open to wherever this takes me. And I don't want that. I want to know.
SPEAKER_00This book destroyed me and I'm still not okay. And I'm like, okay, I can't read that. Yeah. You can destroy me, but you have to make it better. You gotta put it back together. Yeah. And I love that about romance. Yeah, I really that's you know what you're getting, and there's not a lot of cliffhangers. Yeah, that's because I am the one that will be up at 3 a.m. reading if there's another book when something happens.
JamiExactly.
SPEAKER_00That's not very conducive to going to work.
JamiGetting up at five in the morning, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
JamiWhat do you wish you'd known about marketing?
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh.
JamiAnd did you have a marketing plan when you published? Okay.
SPEAKER_00I so there's a couple of things. I think one of the simplest is the importance of your title.
JamiYeah.
SPEAKER_00And to a lesser extent, tropes, because I do try to write them into books, but I've gotten to a point where I also don't want it to be just about. Filling a book with tropes. These stories pour out of me and I they're usually pretty emotional and deal with heavier topics. I can't seem to stop doing that. Like it just keeps happening. But the titles, I wish I had known more about that because I would have probably named things differently. And so that's and I think that's more important than newer authors realize.
SaraSo do you do you feel like your titles are too general, like they're not specific enough? Or do you change them?
SPEAKER_00I didn't learn from my first to second series. But my first series, so that I wrote a novella and it was going to be Come Back to Me, but there was a bunch of those, and I didn't like that. So I named it Come Back to Us, which ended up being stupid, and I had to go in and change the name to me eventually. And then the rest, they weren't super off-genre, but like come dance with me, stay with me, only you and me. But it was, I just felt like I wish earlier in the series I had done that a little bit better.
JamiYeah.
SPEAKER_00My I may have gone backwards, like when we were more, when we were them. I think that hints at it, but it's not as clear as I probably should be. So yeah, it's not easy though.
SaraThat's no, it's not. And sometimes it's almost if you can get a pattern, if you have a series, get some sort of pattern going, that helps too. But yeah, it is challenging.
SPEAKER_00And so next series, I will I think I'm gonna try to plan those out from the beginning. The first one is really important, right? Because it leads into what all the other ones are gonna say. But I don't like I said, I don't think they're horrible, but I think that they could be more marketable. And then I think you don't have to do it all, you don't have to do every single marketing thing and take every class. And I did not I did not do well with that in the beginning. I was like, I gotta consume all this knowledge, and and that's can it confuses you, quite honestly, and exhausts you when you're trying to do everything at once.
JamiIt absolutely does, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I also didn't know this is embarrassing to admit, but until like maybe eight months ago, I didn't know what Amazon attribution links were. I thought that they were Amazon affiliate links. Um we keep calling them attribution links, and then when I found that out, I was like, I felt really silly that I didn't pick that up.
Well, for those people in our audience who do not know what they are, tell them what they are.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So Amazon attribution links are links that you can create in the Amazon ad network that you can then put in your books, well, in the page for your book, so that when people on Amazon or on Facebook or whatever, they go to Amazon to buy your book, it can track that your reads came from that book. Yeah, so it can help with ads and things like that. And I think they're really important now because I feel like I probably lost a lot of money not realizing, like thinking that my stuff looked good, but it was not coming from my ads.
JamiVery good. It wasn't a test, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, but it is important to know. I do think like I started a list a couple months ago of everything, it's a lot of little things that I didn't know. Um that if I ever am talking to a new author, I want to make sure that they know those things so they don't have the pain.
SaraWhat are you glad you know now?
SPEAKER_00So now I think I would say, and I am working on this, the importance of branding and what you're promising to your reader. My first series was a firefighter series. I spent several years doing emergency room, the high energy, and I knew firefighters, nurses, that type of world. So it was a series around a family, and there was always a firefighter in the each book. One of them was a female, but still there was a firefighter theme. And I didn't realize until people started saying in reviews that it was small town, that it was like small, I still say I still think it's small ish town. Then when I started my second series, I had created some characters that people like I think like them more than they like the main couples. There's a child in my books that people love and they keep mentioning her in all the reviews. I'm like, oh my god, I gotta carry her through five books. How am I gonna keep her so funny and cute? But I think like knowing what your brand is and what readers can expect when they pick up your books, right? I also didn't, I also thought I was, I guess this is I'm glad I know this that I thought I was spicier than I am apparently. I thought like readers, I thought I was like a four out of five spices, and readers are like, nice little spice, or a two out of five. And I'm like, oh my goodness.
SaraIt's like reviews, five and three and one. They all mean different things to different reviewers. And so everybody has their own. And so when you're looking across the scale, it's hard to compare.
It's and it's always a part of the it's not the main part of the story, it comes as a result of the romance, it's not the driving. And I think that's really important for newer authors. I think that naturally happened for me, thank goodness. But sometimes I'll read a book and it's the it's the primary driving thing. And so I usually I don't like to not finish books, but sometimes I will if I feel like really there, I'm not seeing much of a story because I really want the emotion and the feeling. Exactly. Exactly. What do you still need to figure out? I am horrible at ads. Facebook ads. I have taken several classes, watched the material several times. I can run the platform, I can do all of that, but I just don't seem to know how to make them make good ads. I don't know if it frustrates the heck out of me because I'm like I've spent so much money on it. Yeah. Um, I don't feel like I people will say plan to spend money to test them and to learn. And I don't, I have learned, but when I say a lot of money, it's been a lot of money. Like I worked, I worked overtime because I felt guilty. My husband didn't make me feel guilty, but I felt guilty taking from our budget book stuff. So I worked a lot of overtime in the last couple of years to put towards my book stuff without feeling bad. Yeah. But it but a lot of that is in Amazon and Facebook's bank. So I've learned and I'm giving them another try, but I just they are, I don't know, it's it makes you think about needing to do something different. And really, I think right now with last summer, all of the targets changing. I really think that it highlights more than ever the importance of your newsletter. And I don't have a huge one, but I have a dedicated one. I just did my first cleaning of the newsletter and it was very hard to do because it dropped a lot of numbers of people who weren't answering or but my now my open rates are they were like 50s, and like the last couple have been 60s to 70s. So I'm like, okay, that makes me feel better. But yeah, because I don't know what's going to happen with the ad world is very confusing right now.
JamiRight. I'm not sure you can judge how well you are how good you are at ads right now because it's just not good. In fact, I was just thinking about that today. I was I had to drive a lot today, and I was thinking about when when I first started ads, I remember exactly where I was when I started my first ad. And my friend Maria had there were a group of us, five or six of us, and she had walked us through how to set up an ad and everything, and just how those ads changed everything for me. It they were just life-changing, and they worked so well immediately, and it wasn't just me, it was other people too. So it wasn't so I think it was just the platform was friendlier, and it's not now for various reasons, and you're not the only person you're definitely not alone. Like, I'm not running ads right now just because you know, waiting till this book comes out, my new book comes out, and but everyone I have talked to, everyone that's talked about ads has talked about how difficult they are and they're not really working the way they did, and so I don't think it's you necessarily.
SPEAKER_00That's very kind of you, but it might be partially. And I think the one like the upside is that because I wasn't really great at them and didn't see them do a ton. Like I read a lot in the a couple of the groups on Facebook. I think you're in at least one of them, a romance-specific one. And I read in 20 books, and it makes me feel worried for people because some people are you can feel the anxiety that they're having because so much of their their income is coming from or was coming from what they could do with ads. And I guess that's the good side is that I wasn't at that point yet. And I now know don't let that become what where I'm at because I don't do well with that kind of panic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to know, like I need to steady and I need to know my job right now, is a really good job. And but I'm also like, I have a plan I have before even writing that I would like to retire or cut back significantly, like when I'm 60, if not sooner. And so I am like, okay, it's not super long time. Um I've got some years, but not a tremendous amount of years anymore until I get there. And I'm like, okay, I could still keep working if I had to, and just build up my backlist. And it really is true what people say about once you get a reader and you have several books for them to read, you do see that read through. And that's when you do start seeing things change a little bit. I did have some luck this past year. That was my first year that was a little bit successful, but I spent most of it.
unknownYeah.
That's the cycle, though, right? Yeah, that's what happens. What's the most unhelpful advice you've gotten?
SPEAKER_00I thought about this and I was sure I was going to have a bunch of things to tell you. And but I don't, because I don't really feel like I got any specific unhelpful advice. First, I will say that the writing community in general is very supportive and very helpful to new people. And the romance community, particularly it feels to me, is I'm always shocked when I post on some of the like a question on some of the sites. And I'm like, oh my gosh, Elodie Hart answered my question. Yeah. Lucy Lennox said this. Yeah. Because but they're so gracious and really giving of themselves. So I really didn't get any except that I listened to a lot of podcasts and I want to hear all the different opinions and options. And for a while I got stuck in this trap where I had listened to a lot of like outline outlining podcasts. I really was trying to fit myself, I feel, into this box where I thought you have to outline and you have to do it like they do it. Because I do a little bit of an outline, but it's more of like scenes in my head and build the book around that. I write the scenes down. And but I can't do, I can't outline. It's just I don't have it in me. I've tried so many times. And I really lost like weeks and probably months of writing to trying to force myself to do something that wasn't how I naturally work. Not that you can't learn. Yeah, you can learn some things, but that just it was not that's not who I am as a writer.
SaraYes, it's totally fine. And I think that we're coming to that assessment as we go along, used to everyone thought you had to outline, and that was the way to be fast, and that was the way to be efficient. And it seems like it would be, but it can also be very constraining if you're not used to that. That's not how your brain works. And there's people that they outline the whole thing, and then they're like, Yeah, I'm done. I have no desire to write.
SPEAKER_00You don't know what's you know what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03It's no fun, you know.
Like when I write a chapter, like trying to make it intriguing at the first line and at the last line, but also having a point to each scene, not just to write. But to outline like everything, I just it's just not in me. I tried to push myself into that box. And but it's not necessarily it's not unhelpful advice to outline, but I think any advice could be unhelpful to somebody if it's like not in their character to do something like that. You don't you shouldn't try to force any of it on yourself. If you don't want to be on TikTok, don't go on TikTok. It's okay. Exactly. How did you get your first email subscribers? So I had a novella that I had written. Smart girl. Well, sort of. I wrote it after my first book. I wrote my first, I think I actually wrote it after my second book. And I had some back matter that try to people to my newsletter, and I got some subscribers that way, and then I wrote the novella and had it to give away free. But I I think that helped. But I would what I would really say to anybody new is really get your back matter working for you. And for me, bonus scenes. I get so many subscriptions a day from these bonus scenes, and it's people that want to be there. So, yeah, so I would say back matter if you didn't have a book to give away, but also even if you have a book to give away, you have to get people to know about it. Don't have that novel anymore. I can tell you why. But yeah, so I actually don't have one right now. I just do back matter right now, and I'm thinking about writing one though, like a prequel to the mother of the sons in the series I'm currently writing. I queried my newsletter and said, if I wrote a novella, whose story would you want?
Well, how did you find your editor and cover artist?
SPEAKER_00So I had a I have had a very difficult time with that, to be honest. I have had good cover artists, but not maybe for the books that I was writing. I loved my first covers. And people told me in they really look more like a dark romance or a thriller, and I was like, no, not too. Reject that feedback. And they would say, These are beautiful covers. But so it took me a while, though, to be willing to listen. And I looked at in the front and backs of a lot of covers of ones I liked. I uh eventually I found who I'm with now from my cover designer through recommendations in the different sites. And then when people were giving their recommendations, I would look them up and see like what work they've done and uh you know what I thought of that. And I I do the person I'm with now.
JamiYour covers are great.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you. She's great. I had three cover designers on the first series.
SaraThat's hard. You had to recover several times before you hit the right one.
JamiYou have a lot of reviews. That's amazing. Did you do anything specific to get reviews other than the great book?
SPEAKER_00It was a lot of I I don't know why it happened, but I had a lot of luck, I feel like. So last March I decided to try to do TikTok, but I don't I don't put my face on because I have a job out in the public and I just I didn't want my face there. I want to keep my pen name, my pen name secret.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I started, I learned, I took a course again, because of course I take all the courses. I took a course to teach me how to make the TikTok slideshows, and that's what I started doing. And I got some that was like mid-March last year, and I got some decent, nothing crazy, but like I had only made$2,000 on my books up till then. And so I had started that and I got my first book bub. So I got my first book bub on, so I had a novella and five books total in my first series, and then I got the book bub on book three in April and contemporary romance free international. I thought, what the heck? I'm gonna just see if they'll give me another one. And they did. I made it fun in the comments, like, hey, it did so good first time, and then I got another one in June. So I went book three, book two, I think, and then book four. And then I didn't try anymore for a while, and things were like not going as fast as I wanted them to. And I had released the final book in that series, so I tried for one more, and I got one in October. That one did not work as well. It still worked good. I still made my money back, but I think that it I probably tapped out of that audience in six months. I had four book bubs on one series, so every book in that series has had a book bub except the last one, and I've never tried with the last one.
JamiYour books are in KU, correct?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah. My first series isn't with me anymore, though, and I can tell you about that in a minute. But I I think that this is what I tell myself that somebody at Book Bub thought that my my requests were funny and kept reading them because I would say, now you've given them all the other books, you probably should do this one. And I uh there was a friend of mine, like a book friend that I've never actually met in person, but they said they didn't try book bubs because they didn't get they never got chosen. And I still try this, and then I wrote her like the comments to put, and she got a book the next month. I'm like, this is crazy, but I don't know that was me, but she was so excited. Just got my first one.
JamiYeah, I've been doing this nine years, and I just I know I was gonna tell you, Sarah, I hadn't had a I just found out it does work, it really and the last line of mine says, Ever since I was a little girl, all I wanted was a book bub. Help a little girl's dreams come true.
SPEAKER_00I think there's somebody there that likes that kind of stuff, Jamie, because that's what I was doing. I was trying to be just being fun, I was and I just kept reading everybody online saying, I can't get a book bub. Don't ever think you're gonna get one in contemporary romance, but and I'm like, oh, this is so I really think someone was watching out for me. I don't know, but I kept up the TikTok too, and I have had several viral TikToks. My highest one was 845,000, I think. Oh wow, that's it has not been my most successful one though. I've had several, like well over a hundred thousand, but I had one this fall that like I woke up and my numbers were going up so fast. And at that point it was only like a 31,000, it got up to 31,000 in the first day. Yeah, but it must have hit something because it made like over a thousand dollars in two or three days. This one it was very weird, and I have not figured out why it happened, unfortunately.
JamiWell, yeah, that's the problem, isn't it? Yeah, it's hard to replicate, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I've kept up the TikTok, even though it can be tiring, but yes, I still do slideshows, I don't do anything else. But so I think I got lucky. I get when I got a lot of reviews off those book bubs, so well, there is that component, and you just never know what happened.
SaraYou can do everything right and not get the book bob, but then sometimes you do, and you can't really make a marketing plan around that, but you can certainly add it into any marketing thing you're doing, right? Exactly.
Let me ask you real quick about take the TikTok. Like if someone, because clearly they're still working fairly well. So if someone what are the components that you think are important for a good TikTok? Like is it images, is it cover, is it what is it?
SPEAKER_00Uh, cover has never worked for me. And honestly, I so I have a couple accounts and I have my author account, and that one has never I have two author accounts. One was a TikTok shop one, but the ones that are clearly author accounts and say author in it, they've not ever done anything. The it's been all the it's not all the other ones, I have a couple other ones that I intermittedly use. I think that image people don't seem to work a lot if it's a cute kit. I don't I have maybe done a couple that have been uh shown the steamy side of my writing, but that's not really the ones that have hit home. So I think it if you can make them feel something and leave them guessing, some people will get mad at you, and it's hard to listen to them be me. But I find the like sad or mad seems to because when they think the guy did something bad or whatever. But my but at the same time, the one TikTok that has been most successful is it's not even, I think I keep looking at thinking that's not even that great. Like, why do but it's the one that people always no matter where I put it, it's about a little girl, the little girl, the daughter of so my first book in this series, this the woman is having her home renovated and the contractor makes her nuts. But of course, obviously eventually that gets better. But she meets his daughter for the first time on her porch and didn't know he was even a single dad. So it like kind of but I'm like, I think it's just because I like this kid. Everybody likes this kid. And then my other ones, I had the one that got to 845,000 was a in my last book, it was the last book of the first series, it was uh like marriage redemption, and of course he was amazing and she was battling depression. I can't not put, I don't know, it just comes out of me. And like it's a court scene where he doesn't want the divorce and where he like says some things that are like really like just wrenching, heart wrenching. Of course, all the women love that. But then they started getting all these men though that. were angry and saying, Oh, there you go. But then I got other men that were like with it it made a lot of people talk about their own divorces. So eventually I took that one off comments and and you have to be careful with TikTok and what you put because I've learned this because a scene from my first book, there's a death in my first book that's pretty traumatic. And people respond to that hook, but I don't use it anymore because a lot of people would, I could tell they knew it was a book and they'd give me their and they'd say stuff about real life experiences. But every 20 or 30 there was somebody who didn't seem to get that it was a book and were like offering me prayers and I was like I can't like emotionally deal with that. So I would I just I'm like I can't do that one. It it had 300 some thousand views whenever I I got a couple really good ones out of it but I'm like I I can't I feel it hurts my heart too much to so I would say the hook I have some people I don't think it has to be spicy. I think people like cute funny and I usually do I've had probably I tend to do a lot of black and white with like floral backgrounds that try not to distract. And I usually do 25 to 30 slides but I have had luck with them under 20. So I'm still learning but and they're not nearly as effective as they used to be but I it's been a while since I had one over 10,000 and for a while I would have at least one a week.
JamiDo you like them in Canva?
SPEAKER_00I do so I make them in Canva. So I create an Excel sheet with and then I you I build the down a column the different scenes I save that and then you can do I don't know if you do know how to use bulk create in Canva. No don't think okay so we should talk afterwards because I could teach you and it's really good. So I open it up and I make a template and I put like the text box in and then you can go in to there's a button you click for bulk create and you will upload your CSV of your file that has all of your your slideshows on there. When you do that you upload that and then you connect your template to whichever one you want to show up on your slideshow. And you add a picture and then it will create them. And then I send that to my phone because I can't seem to make anything work on my computer. Like I think it's social media is mostly once to be on your phone. It's very hard to use on the computer. So I upload them to my phone and then I close that out and I go back to the template that's already connected and I just put a new picture create them download. I can do you can do a lot in just a couple hours. So once you learn how to do it it's really easy and fast. So you just have to make sure that you go through and you on your excel sheet that you need to make sure there's no words that TikTok is gonna you know and that's not just like swear words or body parts it's it could be like for a while it was like hand would do it. And it can be things like I don't put any I have one where a gentleman is struggling with alcohol and I when I write whiskey I make sure it looks different than the word whiskey you just never know and sometimes I'm looking at it trying to figure out why it did not show it to anybody. If you use the same picture and I've never had luck using the same picture twice maybe once that slipped by them sometimes you'll do that by accident. You don't mean to put the same picture but if you use the same picture they will not show it to people you'll get a couple views. You can use the same hook over and over though but you need to change your picture each time.
Very interesting this has been so great and we love having new authors on you have done very well and I'm very excited for you. Tell us what you think the best thing you've done to set yourself up for success has been.
SPEAKER_00Besides the 5 a.m thing which again like a small miracle that happens I I was trying to it's a lot to manage all the stuff right and I was not able to keep it all up well and keep writing I submitted to Vinci books I sent like a they have a button on there and I submitted to them and then she called me in a couple days and so I assume she looked at your books online and seized. And I ended up so it was hard because it's hard to sell sell your rights to your books to somebody your babies but people always tell you like you can't look at them as like your babies they have to be a product and so I ended up there it was like a two part with that I ended up going with them. The reason I did it is because their model is such that they take over the marketing they're going to be recovering them and I don't have to worry about that piece. They don't change your voice so I don't have to worry about that piece for them but they also you have an agreed upon like royalties you will get your rights reverted back to you. So I could live with that but what was I think I would be regretting it except that people told me on one of the sites to get a lawyer have them look at the contract and I did I Maggie Marr I think you guys have me put her on yet she's amazing and I'm sure I was an annoying client because I had so many questions but she was so patient and I really believe I felt comfortable with the contract I have because of her and so I went with it and it's been good so far. I just they just got the books on Christmas Eve actually so I'm waiting to see new covers and then what happens with it. But it's they're very transparent and for me that meant that I didn't need to feel like I had to work overtime. I could just because I thought this is enough that it can pay for covers and editing and for future so that's your first series right that's my first series.
SaraYour second series is still ongoing right now we're starting the second series is ongoing.
SPEAKER_00You can have the option assuming they want them to like I could have offered my second series too and then they just would get them as I wrote but I really wanted to see how it goes.
SaraI think it's a way to diversify yeah yeah and I feel protected I feel like I had good like reversion language built into it and they do the translations they do the audio like things I couldn't I could have probably stretched and afforded to do them but like I don't want to be that's just one more stress right time isn't right because if you're working full time you have to decide where can you put your focus and if you're trying to do all those things you're probably not writing new books.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And so for me that was that's been a good decision so far it's taken a lot of pressure off but I am holding on to my second series until if and when I feel like but it would be really hard for me to I want an option to get my books back in the future if I wanted them for something. So I would I'll I I'll be really careful and my I was careful in the first one I feel happy with our agreement but I think I'm getting enough reviews on this this series too that I feel comfortable that it's doing okay on its own. So I think for me that has been what has set me up for success because it has calmed me down. I'm high strung and I think undiagnosed ADHD although my doctor has put me on medication now and it does help. And I feel when I forget to take the second dose I crash like why do I feel so but it has helped me focus and not be so crazed with all the things going on. And this was something I needed to take off my plate and yeah sounds like a really good solution. I remind myself of it whenever I'm like I wish I had my first series I say hey like you your first series is enabling you to continue doing this having to feel like you need to like burden financially.
Yeah yeah it's great. This has been great I think it's got some great and people will really find helpful and so tell everybody where they can find out more about you and your books.
SPEAKER_00So my books are all on Amazon right now and so you can find them all there. You can find me at finleydaniels.com so not very original just but easy to find I am on Instagram I think it's romance author finley daniels and then I'm on Facebook too same if you just search Finlay Daniels you'll find it tick tock those are different the you can search my author name but you won't see like the wild the good ones thank you so much for having me I was like shocked when you said yes I was so excited we are happy to have you this has been great thanks for being here thank you guys so much I appreciate it.
SaraIt's been great and we will have all those links in the show notes and you can find those at wish I know for writers.com if you want to support the podcast you can go to that same link slash support or find us on Substack and don't forget our sponsor for this week Vellum we will see everybody next week bye