Facebook Ads for Children's Authors with Stacy Bauer

Are Facebook ads on your to-do list?

Stacy Bauer joins Laurie on the podcast and achieves the impossible - she managed to get Laurie excited to try Facebook ads again! 

For those of you who don't already know Stacy, she is the author of the best selling Cami Kangaroo & Wyatt Too series. Becoming a published author has been a dream of Stacy's since childhood and 3 years ago, she made that dream a reality!

Contact Info

www.stacycbauer.com
instagram.com/stacycbauer
facebook.com/stacycbauer
twitter.com/stacycbauer1

Transcript

Facebook Ads for Children's Authors with Stacy Bauer

Laurie: [00:00:00] Hello writers. Welcome back to the Writer's Way podcast. I'm here today with the fabulous Stacy Bauer. Welcome Stacy. 

[00:00:08] Stacy: [00:00:08] Hello. Thank you for having me glad to be here. 

[00:00:11] Laurie: [00:00:11] Thank you. Everybody knows Stacy. I'm so happy to have you here. You are really a fixture of the children's authors groups and so helpful. Such a wealth of information.

[00:00:24] So we could have talked about a lot of things today, but I haven't seen that many authors talking about Facebook ads. So I'm  excited to talk to you about that, but we'll start first maybe with you and your background and your journey, if that's okay. 

[00:00:38] Stacy: [00:00:38] Oh, sure. Yeah. So, um, I'm here Minnesota. I have my two kids Cami, Wyatt.

[00:00:44] My husband and I'm a teacher. I'm like a lot of you. And a few years ago, I decided to take the leap into the author world. Not knowing anything about it. Publishing or marketing or anything like that. Like a lot of you. So, I wrote my book thinking it was going to be super easy to get it out there.

[00:01:04] And then, and then after I wrote the rough draft, I realized I didn't really know what to do next. So luckily I found some other Facebook groups and I made a lot of connections and, I learned about Kickstarter campaigns. And I ran a campaign for my first book. And now here we are, what, two and a half years later.

[00:01:23] And I'm working on both number five, but it's been hours and hours and hours of, of research and reading and watching webinars and taking courses and learning from other authors. 

[00:01:35] Laurie: [00:01:35] But you're full time now. Right? You were able to, well, I mean, you're teaching your own kids. 

[00:01:44] Stacy: [00:01:44] We're all teaching. Yeah. So I was teaching up until last year and then, I don't know, it just kind of all worked. Oh, because I, at my school where I was teaching at, we lost a hundred kids. Cause my district built a couple of new schools. And so, we lost 17 full time positions. And so I decided, okay, well maybe I should just, take a leave and kind of focus on my author career.

[00:02:08] So with my husband's support, I did that. And I'm kind of glad because otherwise I'd be struggling with teaching during this whole, whole thing. I was teaching my own kids here plus doing the author thing. 

[00:02:20]Laurie: [00:02:20] I can't even imagine how hard that would be no time at all for anything ever. 

[00:02:28] So you have five books out and you ran Kickstarters for all of them for three of them for three of them.

[00:02:35] And was that a marketing or was it really like the need for the funds? Was it a bit of a combination because I just was talking to another author the other day about Kickstarters as a marketing tool. 

[00:02:45] Stacy: [00:02:45] Right. So for me, for the first one, Cami Kangaroo has Too Many Sweets. It was purely just for the funding because I, I, of course didn't realize how much it was going to cost me to get the hard covers made.

[00:02:57] And so when I found out I was going to be about $18,000, I was like, like, Ooh, I don't want to have, I was in dollars. So then I started reading about Kickstarter and I, again, had never heard of it. Didn't know anything about it, but I have, um, I had met Jay and Diane from the group and I saw that they had ran Kickstarter campaigns.

[00:03:16] So I just started again, researching Kickstarter. And so for the first book, too many sweets, it was just for the funding, but I. I realized that it was helping me grow a following. And so it is a good marketing tool. So then for book number two, a year later, I ran another one because I just thought, you know, Kickstarter is a great way to really get your project out into the world.

[00:03:37] I mean, it's a platform that has millions of, of people that have been on there. And it's an easy to use, easy to, um, to set up. And, uh, you know, and just give the link to your followers and they can go support you. And so I decided to do that again for book two, cause I needed the funding again, because you know, you're anything you make goes right back into the business.

[00:03:58] And then for books, the same thing I thought, you know, I already know how to do it. I might as well just do it again because it's a, you know, all my followers can kind of come together to one place and order the book. Um, and then it's, you know, use it to build up more of a following and raise the funding for book number three.

[00:04:14] And now I'm planning another one for my Christmas book, but I decided I'm only going to do it for 10 days. Because I realized that with the 30 day thing, like the two weeks in the middle, really nothing happens. So I'm just going to get rid of those. And plus it's 30 days of high stress and I just don't, I don't know if I can handle running a 30 day campaign with my kids here and all that stuff.

[00:04:37] That's going to do it for a couple of weeks this time. 

[00:04:39] Laurie: [00:04:39] Okay. And is it getting easier? Yeah. 

[00:04:42] Stacy: [00:04:42] Yeah. Yep. As I get funded more quickly. Now that you have hands on your goal. So I like to kind of push myself if I don't. I set a higher goal every time, because the first book, my goal was I was, I'm not a risk taker at heart.

[00:05:00] So for my first book, my goal was only 4,000 because that's what I needed just to pay the printer. So, um, but I made that an eight days and I realized I probably should have set my goal higher, but I just didn't know because I had never done it before. And I didn't, I was nervous. I wouldn't get any support.

[00:05:17] I just didn't know. Yeah. Um, so I ended up with 6,200, which was good. Cause I was able to use some of the funds from my illustrator. And then for book two, I set it at 8,000. Cause I thought I'm going to see if I can get the whole covered the illustrations and the printing. And I ended up with 96. 9,900, I think.

[00:05:36] Wow. If you're book three, I set it for 9,700 because the printing costs went up the illustrations, went up, everything went up. So I set it for hire and ended up with almost 13. Oh, I realized I had gotten better at, at marketing the whole, as I'm getting better at market doing my following, I'm able to, get more support from my books.

[00:05:58] Yeah. So I'm going to, I have to kind of think about what I'm going to set for my Christmas book here for 10 days. I don't know. So I haven't really decided yet. 

[00:06:07] Laurie: [00:06:07] That's good to know. That's hope for people out there feeling like, Oh my goodness, does it ever get easier? 

[00:06:12] Stacy: [00:06:12] Yeah, you do. But you're also very persistent.

[00:06:16] Laurie: [00:06:16] I mean, like, it sounds like you do a ton of research about everything, which is what you should do. 

[00:06:22] Stacy: [00:06:22] Well, this born type a personality. Get all the information first, no persists. My husband will tell you I'm kind of a pusher. He's the baby of the family and I'm type a born. So I tend to be kind of, um, I wouldn't say bossy. I have leadership. 

[00:06:44] Laurie: [00:06:44] Yes. That's how you say it. Yeah. 

[00:06:46] Stacy: [00:06:46] And I, and I, I pushed and I pushed myself and I pushed others sometimes too hard, and my expectations can be sometimes too high. So that's something I have to work on. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so, Oh, wow. There's pros and cons. 

[00:07:01] Laurie: [00:07:01] I mean, you've done a great job. Your books are really successful and they're gorgeous. I know my kids love them frequently, pull them out and they're really like 

[00:07:10] spot on the too much stuff. I go in there and I'm like, okay, it's time to read too much stuff. And I just skipped that page where the mom has to be at all. Um, okay. 

[00:07:25] So why don't we talk about the Facebook ads?

[00:07:28] I forget because we're going to keep talking. So, uh, I I'm well versed in Amazon ads, but the few times I've delved into Facebook ads. I could like, it just eats my money and I know there's loads of potential, but I haven't been able to make it work at all. 

[00:07:42] Stacy: [00:07:42] So please share. Okay, so, so, right. So Facebook does a, so it's kind of like Amazon answers.

[00:07:51] Yeah. There's similarities and there's differences. So in the similarity is, you know, you set your, you set your budget. And you set your time that you want to run a board, kind of like Amazon ads. You can run Facebook ads continuously end of time, and then stop pause it when you want to be done with it just like Amazon, or you can set a set amount of time.

[00:08:13] And then the difference is with Facebook, you can set a set amount of money. So if you only want to spend a hundred dollars total on that ad, you can set it for a hundred dollars with a daily spend of whatever $5 or something. And then after they spend your money, they'll just stop the app. So that's something a little bit different.

[00:08:34]And then with, Facebook ads, you don't set your keyword, click, you, you create your ad and then depending on how good your ad is, Facebook, will tell you, okay, you're spending 35 cents per click, or you're spending 6 cents per click, depending on how relevant it is and how you set up your audience.

[00:08:56] And, and how, you know, how, how people are attracted to your ad are not attracted to your ad. So there's a lot of things in play. So there's a lot of different Facebook ads out there. You can do a single image where it's just one picture. And then you add, you put a, subtitle on the top and you add a link.

[00:09:16] So it might say something like, you know, join Cami Kangaroo  as she tries to figure out a way to clean up her messy room or be more organized than I might just have a, a photo of my book cover or some kind of graphic I created in Canva. And then, you know, they'll let you put a button on there, which is kinda nice.

[00:09:34] There's a call to action. Um, so all in the same ad, I'm like Amazon, there's a call to action, the Facebook ads. So it might say shop now or learn more. Um, so you, so then people are like, Oh, shop now. Okay. I'll click on that. And then you will pay for that click because they clicked on your, just like with Amazon, you'll pay for that click and it will come out of whatever budget you set up for Facebook.

[00:09:57] So if they click on it and we'll take them to your link and I, I always point my. Facebook ads to Amazon because that's where I sell, um, you know, 99% of my books. Some people, um, have it go to their website and that's fine. So wherever you want to direct your Facebook ads to a, you would add that URL in there.

[00:10:14] Okay. And then after, so then, so one of the options is the single image. Then there's the carousel. So carousel would be two or three images. It is, and it, and it kind of plays like a video. So if, if people are seeing it on Facebook, they might see it, an image of your book cover. And then you could add a couple of the inside pages.

[00:10:36] Or something else. So I had, I had those for my, um, my books when they first come out, I might have a tape line that says, you know, check out the latest book in the candy cane grew in Y two series, join the fun or something like that. I usually spend like an hour trying to think 

[00:10:50] Laurie: [00:10:50] of what I want 

[00:10:51] Stacy: [00:10:51] to say.

[00:10:51] Cause you want it to be okay. Short and sweet, but also you want it to have a hook so that people are kind of like, Ooh, what's this all about? I want to click on that and then you have your carasol of your two or three images, and then you have your call to action, and then it leads to your. Your, whatever site you're heading to go to.

[00:11:10]You can also create a slide show video and I do have one of those going right now, so you can add up to 10 there's different templates you can use and it'll show up on there. So the one I'm using right now, I believe has 10. Images that you can add, and then you can set, I think they're each set for like two seconds or something.

[00:11:30] And then you can add words underneath the images. So you have to think about, okay, what do I want to say on each of these slides? and then when it's is in people's Facebook feed, it will show it as a video, so then people can click on it and watch the whole video. And then at the end, then on the video, we'll have the call to action again, leading to your website.

[00:11:54] So that's a good one. I have a video running right now for one of my, for my whole series actually, and something I'm trying that I've never done before is I am. Collecting those, the people that watch the video all the way through for the whole, 15, 20 seconds are probably pretty interested in myself.

[00:12:12] Otherwise they wouldn't take the time to watch it. I'm harvesting those people's information and I'm going to try to, I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to try to create an ad, just targeting those people then. So then you have that group of people that are interested in my series that I can target and hopefully get from some sales for that.

[00:12:31] And then another type of ad that I'm running right now is called a lead ad. So I see a lot of posts about how can I get more subscribers to my website, to my newsletter. And so something I'm doing as a lead ad.  what it is you just, you just go into your Facebook business manager and you click on, add a campaign.

[00:12:52] And you click on lead and Facebook creates the lead form for you. It just has first name, an email address. And then, you again, and do a single image, carousel video, whatever you want to do. I can't remember what mine is my mind. It might be just be a carousel of my books. And then it says, and then I created the line that says sign up here for, um, freebies and principals and other.

[00:13:17] Fun activities to go with the Cami Kangaroo and why it's book series are relatable and engaging a fun book series for kids, something like that. Not that wordy, but you get the point.  And then when, and then the call to action says either learn more or sign up. I can't remember what it says, but then they click on it.

[00:13:36] And they enter their name and email address. And then I can go into Facebook business manager and I can view my lead forms and I can cut and paste all of those into MailChimp Chimp, which is the service I use for my newsletter. And I've been running and I'm paying about 15 cents per lead right now, based on the ad that I see created, and I've been running it sense July or August.

[00:14:02] And I think I've gotten over a thousand subscribers from wooden mats so I think I set a budget. Most of my ads, I set a budget for about three to $7 a day, depending on how well they're doing it. Of course, Facebook is like the higher you set your budget. The more. you know, how they do, 

[00:14:21] Laurie: [00:14:21] they always encourage you to up 

[00:14:22] Stacy: [00:14:22] your stand.

[00:14:23] You have to think about, starting out, just set it for, for a low amount, just to see how it's doing, and then you can always increase it or decrease it or pause the ad if it's not doing very well. And you can look at the insights and see, what you're spending. Per click and how many people you're reaching and things like that.

[00:14:42] And then another thing about Facebook ads that are kind of nice is that you can choose your audience. So for Amazon ads, it's all about relevance and kind of driving people to you, to Amazon. And for Facebook, you can narrow it down and really target your audience. So since my audience for my series are teachers, and not high school teachers or middle school.

[00:15:05] School, but those, preschool through like third grade and, parents, and even granted parents or daycare providers, homeschoolers you, when you're creating your Facebook ad, you can put in there who you want them to target. So you want to target people who are interested in parenting or interested in homeschooling or interested in, preschool.

[00:15:29]um, if I have a book about too many treats, which I do, I might target healthy moms, or I might target, uh, you know, moms who are interested in nutrition and all of that is in the campaign. When you create it, you can really narrow in and really target, an audience. So that's something I really like about the Facebook ads, too.

[00:15:51] Laurie: [00:15:51] It sounds really 

[00:15:52] Stacy: [00:15:52] powerful. , 

[00:15:54] Laurie: [00:15:54] you have me thinking, okay, I'm going to hop over there.    

[00:15:56] Stacy: [00:15:56] a lot of people are like, do you get sales from your Facebook ads? Okay. I don't know how many sales. Yeah, I get, I haven't figured out exactly how to track that I can see how my ads are performing.

[00:16:08] I can see how many people clicked up, but I haven't figured out how to, I know, I think there is a way to fit to figure that out, but I haven't figured it out yet, but I have noticed that when I'm running Facebook ads, I spend less on Amazon as with the same results. So my, um, ACOS is lower and I also. I don't really use Facebook to make a lot of sales.

[00:16:31] I use it to build my following and my lead ad is to get email subscribers who will then hopefully buy my books, email sequence on the backend that they get. 

[00:16:44] Yep. Yep. Yeah. So you want to think about what your purpose is. If your purpose is to get sales, then you're going to want to run the single image to Amazon or the carousel to Amazon.

[00:16:55] If your purpose is to build a following, then maybe the lead ads or, or just a general ad about your book series or your books that people can follow on Facebook or something. 

[00:17:06] Laurie: [00:17:06] Okay. And so I met a lot of groups with novelists and so a lot of them feel like Facebook ads with it, just a. Book cover.

[00:17:14] Don't do as well as like a random image. Have you experimented at all with that? Or do you always do a book cover? 

[00:17:21] Stacy: [00:17:21] Interesting. So the photos that I use for my ads are I usually do have my book cover on. Now I have picture books. So that when, when people are looking to buy picture books, they buy them based on the cover.

[00:17:36] At least I do. I mean, when I go to the library or on Amazon, that's the first thing you see is the book cover. Right. And that either it attracts you or it doesn't look that interesting. So I have my book cover always. And when I have a new book that comes out, that I want, um, people to look at, I show inside spreads because again, with a picture book, I have pictures in my books.

[00:17:59] And so I use a lot of photos of the inside of the book. And then I use, um, images of kids reading my books that I've gotten permission for. So either parents using it in the classroom or are teachers using them in the classroom or parents using them with their own kids or just pictures of kids reading the books.

[00:18:18] And so I feel like then people are kind of like, Oh, look at those kids. They look like they're enjoying those books. So they can kind of see their own kids enjoying those books, or they can kind of see themselves using it in the classroom. So those three things are what I have used in my ads sense, actually.

[00:18:35] Laurie: [00:18:35] Totally. Um, so do you find the carousel ads do better than the single image so that you can show off more? I think so. Yeah. I've experimented with both, but I feel like, I mean, you think about too, what are you drawn to when you're on Facebook? Are you drawn to, because I have clicked on ads before. Yeah. To just have one image.

[00:19:01] Stacy: [00:19:01] I mean, I guess, depending on what it is, maybe, but for a book, I would like to see images of the inside. Just like on Amazon, when you have your, you want your look inside feature activated because then people can kind of see what they're getting. And I don't, honestly, I don't buy books where I can't look at a couple of pages on the inside, unless I already know the author and I don't really like it.

[00:19:23]so I, I believe that showing the inside of the picture book really can get more people interested in the book. 

[00:19:31] Laurie: [00:19:31] Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. how many apps do you have going, like at any time? 

[00:19:36] Stacy: [00:19:36] I try to just keep it to like two or three as with so much going on. I just can't because I have Amazon too.

[00:19:43] And then sometimes I boost Instagram ads and then. I was preparing for a Kickstarter and, and so, and then my website and, you know, manage it all yourself was somehow be a mom and a wife and whatever. It's like, nice to see you today. I'm like, I know, I'm sorry. 

[00:20:07] I don't know how you do it. 

[00:20:09] So I try to keep the Amazon ads and the Facebook ads as compact as I can, and really only have the ones running that are really getting the good results.

[00:20:18] Otherwise it's just gets overwhelming and I can't can't manage it all 

[00:20:22] Laurie: [00:20:22] like you, like if that's too much for me to see at a glance, it's too much. It's overwhelming. you talked about the league needs, the video views, people who looked at the whole video, how do you know who that is? Facebook capture that info for you.

[00:20:37] Stacy: [00:20:37] They do. Yeah. So when you go into your, when you go into your business, when you go into your business account and you go into campaign manager or ads manager or whatever, I can't remember exactly what it says, but you go in there and you can click on your ad that you're running and it will show you the insights and the results from that.

[00:20:55] So then retarget what's that 

[00:20:58] Laurie: [00:20:58] you can retarget those. Okay. Cool. I 

[00:21:01] Stacy: [00:21:01] have to figure out exactly how to, I haven't figured out exactly how to do it yet. There's too much else going on, but I'm still running it. And since I'm only thinking, and actually with that video ad, I'm only paying 6 cents a click, which is really good.

[00:21:16] So I don't know if it's, because I think it's because, it only shows people a preview of the video and then when they click it, they can watch the whole thing. Okay. So then the people that click it. Really are interested in it. And since it's probably a smaller, more narrow, set of people, then you know, I have everybody clicking on my single image.

[00:21:37] Whereas, people aren't gonna take the time to watch the video, unless they're really interested. maybe that's why I'm not paying very much. 

[00:21:42] Laurie: [00:21:42] And I think they push video a little bit more. Right. But you said that was made up of 10. It's still images. Like you didn't have to go shoot a video, you put 10 images together and made it for you into like a slideshow video, because that can be intimidating when you see a video ad.

[00:21:58] Stacy: [00:21:58] Yeah. It's not like a video and you pick the template. They have it. I mean, it's, it's pretty easy to set up. You pick whatever template you want to use. You add the images? The trickiest part for me was figuring out the wording under the images. So I kind of write out and there's only, of course you let you use like, you know, 15 characters or something underneath it, not very many.

[00:22:22] So then I just do the.dot that thing. And then I put the next thing, I want to stay on the next image. So then it kind of carries through the whole video and then people want to keep watching to see kind of what happens next. And so for my video, It's images of, um, my books and then the inside of my books.

[00:22:41] And so it's got, you know, it's a book cover, but then there's also images of the inside. And then I kind of have a summary, like what it's about. So, you know, join Cami Kangaroo and then the next video or the next image might say, You know, a Cami Kangaroo loves sweets and then the next day might say, she sneaks them when she's not supposed to or something.

[00:23:02] And then what do you, what in Cami's mom? Find out whatever. 

[00:23:05] Laurie: [00:23:05] Yeah, yeah, 

[00:23:06] Stacy: [00:23:06] yeah. Just has its own little blurb. So that's kind of, the hard part is figuring out what to say in the least number of words possible. 

[00:23:17] Laurie: [00:23:17] Take out 

[00:23:17] Stacy: [00:23:17] all the filler words, right? 

[00:23:19] Laurie: [00:23:19] Well, that is that's great. I really appreciate you sharing that. Um, the last question I had from what you said was with the lead gen form. So you have to manually copy and paste those email addresses into MailChimp. 

[00:23:34] Stacy: [00:23:34] Well, that's what I do. I don't know if there's a faster way, but, so what happens when you go into your Facebook page? Is it. It will say, forms. And it will say current forms, you click on that and you go in there and it says, download, and you can actually download where you left off.

[00:23:50] So you're not downloading all the same. This would be really annoying. So once a week, I'll go in there and I'll, I'll click download wherever I left off. It'll say like something like, you know, 200 new leads. And then you can save that to an Excel or I do the, what is it? The C CSP. Yeah, I do that. Um, cause I, cause I have a Mac book and then that'll get saved to my desktop.

[00:24:18] And then all I do is, is highlight, you know, the first name and the, um, email address on the form. And then I just go to MailChimp and I do import contacts and I just import, it takes like two minutes and I just copy and paste. Yeah. So I'm not like doing it one by one. I'm doing it. 

[00:24:37] Laurie: [00:24:37] Okay. That's what I thought, you know, that would take a long time. Okay. 

[00:24:42] Stacy: [00:24:42] Now you can import more than one contact into your email, into your list of people. Okay. 

[00:24:49] Laurie: [00:24:49] That, that sounds awesome. I guess I knew what I'm doing this afternoon. For anybody who maybe would like some help with this process, I think you said you're available to help. How would they reach out to you?

[00:25:00] Stacy: [00:25:00] So I have a website, Stacey, S T a C Y C Bauer, BAU E R. And if you go on there and you go to the homepage, it'll say, contact me, or schedule a consult or something like that. So if you click on that, my calendar will come up and you can schedule a. I consult and I'll show you how to set some ads up. 

[00:25:19] Laurie: [00:25:19] Nice.

[00:25:19] Awesome. I feel like you're going to have lots of people interested in that. So you've been at this for a few years. Can I ask, is there any common mistakes that you see new authors making over and over? Can you pick one and maybe it will save some people, some headaches, 

[00:25:38] Stacy: [00:25:38] So mistakes that I have made, that other people probably might be making, my advice is to start marketing before you even launch your book. So I did my Kickstarter in February and I started the first time I posted it in my facebook page was in November. And, and I, I could have started posting an August when I hired my illustrator and I wished I would have done that because I would have had longer to build a following.

[00:26:06]and I, I, so as soon as you know that you're going to publish a book and as soon as you will hire an illustrator or even with the novelists, as soon as you start writing it, Just open up that, open an Instagram account or Facebook or whatever platform you want to use and just start posting and people we'll always ask me, what do you post about?

[00:26:26] And I made this take two. I was only posting about my book and the very beginning. And I would post like once a month or something post gets your, post yourself working on your book. So in progress, people like to see behind the scenes things because they don't know how books are made. And I didn't know it either.

[00:26:42] So post ask your illustrator to take a picture of them working on your illustrations, or take a selfie of yourself working on your laptop or writing in your notebook or something and just post and say, Hey, I'm working on my novel today. Or, I got, I wrote 10 pages today. I'm super excited for my book.

[00:27:01] That's going to be coming out in a few months or whatever, just bring people along for the ride. and you can also post things that have to do with your books though. Since my book is about screen time, I will look for Screentime funniest screen-time means for parents or a screen time research or whatever.

[00:27:19] And I'll post that on Instagram and Facebook with my own personal take on it, like, okay. Does anybody else's kids act like. Dragon and you take their iPads away. So I wish I would have, and I didn't start doing that until like a year ago. And I find that. People really relate to those kind of funny meme posts because they're like, Oh yeah, it's good.

[00:27:43] It's not just me. That's like that. So start marketing sooner rather than later. I guess as a piece of advice that I like to tell authors. 

[00:27:53] Laurie: [00:27:53] Yeah, that's a good one. It can be hard. I think it's a real mindset issue because so many people have that question about their own worthiness and their books worthiness.

[00:28:02] So it's really hard. So I agree with you just start. Right. And it's okay to share about that. Right. It's okay to share it. Like, I feel really terrible right now, or I don't know where this is going to go, but this is what I'm doing. 

[00:28:13] Stacy: [00:28:13] Oh yeah. Within my experience. I was super nervous and I still do get nervous when I do. I'm nervous about my Kickstarter right now and I've done three, but I'm, I was really nervous when I first started, because I was like, no, one's going to support me. People think my book is stupid. It's done. It's not good enough. I'm not good enough. I don't want to sell the people. Like I don't want to be annoying.

[00:28:37] All those thoughts that a lot of authors have like. I don't want to bother people to buy my book. You know, I don't want to be that person, but, and I still, when I sent my initial email out to all my friends and family in, December that I was going to do a Kickstarter on my first book. And I was like, there, people are going to be like, 'Oh, why is she sending this to me? She just wants me to buy her book or whatever,' but. I got like 30 people that emailed me back and were just like, wow, good for you for going for your dream. Because there's so many people out there that never do anything. They never take that step because they're scared or they're, or they just don't know what to do.

[00:29:16] Or so I think just, telling yourself, even if you have to fake and lie to yourself, which I do, sometimes 

[00:29:24] My book it's good. Okay. Some people will buy my book. I like my book, I'm going to, I'm not going to be annoying, but I'm going to talk about my book and my dream. And. And, acting competent, even when you're not in it sometimes changes your own mindset then with you, it, even if it's speaking at first, eventually you'll start to believe in yourself, you know?

[00:29:47] Laurie: [00:29:47] So true. Thank you for sharing that with everybody, because it really is true. And I hope that helps. Okay. Last question. Cause I know your kids are waiting for you. You gonna teach them. 

[00:29:57] What's your big, hairy goal with your books? Like where do you see yourself in five years? 

[00:30:02] Stacy: [00:30:02] Well, I just, I honestly, I just want to keep writing and producing books and I don't know, I might do a different series eventually.

[00:30:12] I've thought about doing, As a teacher and as a mom who was trying to teach her kids how to read, I've thought about doing a new, early readers thing based on my books. So Oh yeah. Kids with like sight words and decoding strategies and those sort vowel sounds. And you know that you would use an example preschool.

[00:30:33] So using Cami and  Wyatt in the books, But having them go on their own little short adventures that have to do with short a or here's a book sport I, or so I thought about doing that. And I really like helping other authors. So I started the, you know, the online school thing and the consulting and all that.

[00:30:50] So I don't know. And I, you know, I have people asking me to publish their books with my company and I really haven't gone down that road yet. So I don't know what's going to happen there, but 

[00:31:00] Laurie: [00:31:00] loads of potential. We'll see lots of roads you could take. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming and sharing all your wisdom with everybody and best of luck with your next Kickstarter.

[00:31:11] Stacy: [00:31:11] Thank you so much for having me. It's really fun talking about these things. 

[00:31:14] Laurie: [00:31:14] I know there's not that many people, you can talk books and marketing, 

[00:31:17] Stacy: [00:31:17] right? 

[00:31:18] Laurie: [00:31:18] Okay. And anybody who wants Facebook ads, how do you get it in touch with Stacy? Because you know, tons so helpful. 

[00:31:26] Stacy: [00:31:26] Thank you for having me Laurie. 

[00:31:28] Laurie: [00:31:28] Welcome you too.