41. An Author’s Guide to Thriving with Camille Pagan

Listeners, you’re in for a treat today. I’m chatting with friend and author coach, Camille Pagan. We’re diving into the topics of... 

• author mindset
• career decisions 
• roadblocks 
• market trends

...and so much more.
You can learn more about her work at www.camillepagan.com and www.evenbetter.co
For more on Nicole: Website | Instagram | Free Guide✨

Transcript

STEPS TO STORY - Mindset, Milestones and Market Trends with Camille Pagan

[00:00:00] Nicole Meier: Listeners, you're in for a treat today. I'm chatting with friend and author coach Camille Pagan. We're diving into the topics of author mindset, career decisions, roadblocks, market trends, and so much more. But before we begin, let me introduce you. Camille Pagan is the number one Amazon Charts bestselling author of 11 books, the founder of Even Better Co.,

[00:00:25] Nicole Meier: which coaches novelists on creating even better careers. And the host of the Career Novelist Podcast. You can learn more about her work at CamillePagan. com and EvenBetter. co. Let's dive right in.

[00:00:47] Nicole Meier: Welcome to Steps to Story, the show that helps aspiring authors turn their ideas into action and transform their dream of writing a book into a reality. I'm your host, Nicole Meier, multi published author and certified book coach. I spent the first part of my fiction writing career desperate for guidance that was unavailable to me.

[00:01:09] Nicole Meier: I wrote draft after draft, flying by the seat of my pants, with lots of passion but little guidance. Thankfully, there was a writing community that opened its arms and welcomed me. This community sustained me. But when it came to strengthening my novel writing process, I was determined to find a better way.

[00:01:30] Nicole Meier: One that didn't involve piecemeal strategies. and confusing courses. Now, more than a decade later, I'm serving my younger self who yearned for support while writing a book. If you're an emerging author seeking guidance, this podcast is for you. Are you on the list to get my novel writing guide? I designed this workbook to take you through five essential strategies that will level up your novel writing process.

[00:02:00] Nicole Meier: Grab your free copy at nicolemeyer. com forward slash crafting greatness. That's nicolemeier. com forward slash crafting greatness or at the link in the show notes.

[00:02:21] Nicole Meier: Okay. Welcome Camille. I'm so happy to have you here. Oh, thanks, Nicole. 

[00:02:25] Camille Pagan: I'm thrilled to be here. 

[00:02:27] Nicole Meier: So I am lucky enough because I get to catch up with you when we meet in person. Bye. We know if we go to a conference or retreat, and we've also at one point or another shared the same publisher, but from the listeners who haven't had that opportunity to get to know you, could you just share a little bit about who you are, how you first got into writing novels?

[00:02:49] Camille Pagan: Oh, yeah. So I am Camille Pagan. I am the author of 10 books, soon to be 11. My next book is coming out in 2026, which is all I can say about that for now, but it's coming out. 

[00:03:00] Nicole Meier: Can't wait. 

[00:03:00] Camille Pagan: And I am also an author coach. So I'm a career and mindset coach for primarily novelists, though I have worked with plenty of other writers, nonfiction writers, especially memoir, children's fiction.

[00:03:15] Camille Pagan: But my jam is really novelist because I am a novelist. That's what I always wanted to do. Spent 20 years as a health and psychology journalist, which is kind of how I transitioned into coaching, but we'll talk a little about that later and just wanted to write books. But like many people, I'm sure you hear this all the time.

[00:03:33] Camille Pagan: I was told that that was very unrealistic, high in the sky, don't get your hopes up, all of that. And so, gosh, 16 years ago, I had just had my daughter and I had just lost one of my dear friends to colon cancer. She died very young and It was this kind of life death moment 

[00:03:54] Nicole Meier: and 

[00:03:54] Camille Pagan: I thought, let's go. It's time to write that book.

[00:03:56] Camille Pagan: So every night my daughter was a newborn and I would put her down to bed and I would write for about an hour if I could manage to keep my eyes open. And after four months, no instructions, no nothing. P. S. I would never do that again. The next three books were terrible, but that one worked and I went on to sell it at auction to Dutton at the time.

[00:04:21] Camille Pagan: It came out and it did terribly. I wrote three more books and I could have used your help, Nicole, but I didn't know you existed then. And then I was about to throw in the towel. It had been probably another almost four years. And I wrote my second book, second published book, Life and Other Near Death Experiences, Which sold for pennies to my then publisher, but it did very, very well.

[00:04:47] Camille Pagan: It sold hundreds of thousands of copies and my true career was launched. So when I hear people talking about how a second book can never work, I just kind of giggle. 

[00:04:56] Nicole Meier: Yeah. 

[00:04:57] Camille Pagan: It's not over until you call it, right? So yeah, here I am 10 books and counting later. 

[00:05:03] Nicole Meier: Well, congrats and I am such a fan. I actually adored your debut and I love your second one too.

[00:05:10] Nicole Meier: I could read that multiple times in a row. I really enjoyed that. Thank you. But I think you hit on something which is so interesting and I guess relatable for me is that A lot of writers have that pivotal moment where they think enough, I keep thinking secretly in my head that I would like to be a novelist.

[00:05:28] Nicole Meier: I'm actually going to put pen to paper and go for it no matter what the outcome. Yes. Both of my parents passed, you know, before I was, I was mid thirties. And so I just thought. Okay, life is fleeting. There's lots of things I want to do. And that was a wake up call for me. So that's why I said it was so relatable.

[00:05:45] Nicole Meier: And I know that listeners out there are probably nodding along that there comes a time when that calling is just too strong and you can't ignore it. 

[00:05:53] Camille Pagan: Yeah. And I think that's almost the secret ingredient of I'm going to do this. No matter what, when clients come to me and they hire me or they're looking for a book coach and you know, I often send them your way and vice versa.

[00:06:06] Camille Pagan: Yeah. I can tell if it's gonna work when they're like, I'm just going to keep writing Like this may not be the one it often is. I see a lot of people sell their first book or successfully self-published if they choose that path. But it's that attitude of I'm going to do this and it's going to be meaningful for me really I think makes the difference and also gives them the motivation to keep going because No matter how well you plot it out, how excited you are in the beginning, how high concept, it is still like running a marathon with your brain.

[00:06:39] Camille Pagan: You just have to keep going. And it can be tough at times. So I think that overall mindset is really beneficial to getting the book done and continuing on. 

[00:06:50] Nicole Meier: Yeah. I'm so happy that you address that. And it's actually a perfect segue for me because I wanted to talk more about, you know, the Mindset. You help writers, especially those who want to be a career novelist, work on thinking about their mindset, thinking about long term rather than reacting to what's right in front of them.

[00:07:09] Nicole Meier: Yeah. What are some of the things that you would say are crucial for authors when they're thinking about mindset and success and also avoiding burnout? 

[00:07:17] Camille Pagan: Yeah. So it's interesting to me, I've had people say, why would I hire you? And I say, well, why would you? Everything is on the internet that you need to know.

[00:07:28] Camille Pagan: All of the information about how to write a book, what to do to get it published, how to market. It all exists. The difference is Are you actually going to follow through and do it? And will you hate every second or not? And when people come to me, they often know the steps. They need that support to put it into action.

[00:07:48] Camille Pagan: And that's really what I do. You know, kind of caveat here is I am a whiz at marketing in terms of pitching books. I do edit queries for my clients. I help them write their book blurbs. That is really in my wheelhouse. And that is one thing where I know it exists on the internet, but I can help. Yeah, usually they're hiring me for mindset.

[00:08:11] Camille Pagan: And what I have found is A lot of what I do in the beginning is kind of disassembling this idea of I have to be positive all the time for this to work. That is not what it is about. I will often, with a client, help them feel their feelings. So they'll feel a lot of shame over being jealous about other people's success.

[00:08:32] Camille Pagan: And I'm like, Oh, me too, right? We all feel this way or really discouraged because they're stuck in their draft. And while we'll talk about, Hey, could you use a book coach? Could you use a developmental editor? A lot of it is, can it be okay for you to feel this way right now and not take it as a sign that the whole project is not going to work?

[00:08:51] Camille Pagan: Because I'm guilty of that too. We think that that setback is like the universe's flag being like abandon ship, go do something else, become an accountant. It's not, it is just the creative experience. It's the human experience. And so there's a lot of that as well as holding on to that long term vision of what you're trying to create.

[00:09:13] Camille Pagan: For me, that was really key to going past that first book. And then I had a mid career slump. I was, I believe, five books in and my publisher. had said, we'll buy anything that you sell. I was doing really well. And they're like, we love your writing. Just pitch us and we're going to buy it. And I wrote a whole book and I gave it to them.

[00:09:35] Camille Pagan: They said, no,

[00:09:38] Camille Pagan: I was just ready to throw in the towel again. And this time I hired a coach instead of throwing in the towel. I thought, okay, there's power in saying I can quit, but I know D. John, I'm not going to do that. So I could use some support right now. to make this happen. And I love coaching so much that I ended up getting certified and then master certified as a coach.

[00:10:01] Camille Pagan: And that's how I spend the second half of my day now. 

[00:10:04] Nicole Meier: I love it. So that is a really great journey. And I'm so happy that you shared that because People want to know that someone like you has walked the walk, which you have, and you can relate to all the different touch points of that journey. Yeah. I always tell people, it doesn't matter how many manuscripts you've written or how many books are published.

[00:10:22] Nicole Meier: We all face obstacles. We all have moments where we feel vulnerable or have, you know, that imposter syndrome. Yes. I can imagine that people come to you saying, hey, I just want you to take a peek at my query, but then they wind up saying, what I really need is mindset. 

[00:10:36] Camille Pagan: Yes, like all the things. Yeah. And that career strategy too.

[00:10:41] Camille Pagan: I, saw a space in the marketplace that I wanted filled. So when I have hired coaches, they have never been author coaches because I could not find myself out there. Now things have come a long way since five years ago when I first started doing this. I think there are more author coaches out there, but I couldn't find myself when I was seeking someone like that.

[00:11:02] Camille Pagan: And so I hired an entrepreneurial coach and then a mindset coach and did a group coaching program and kind of all of that stuff. And it worked just fine, but I think there is something about combining that strategy and implementation with the mindset piece. I think that's why my clients end up getting results.

[00:11:20] Camille Pagan: I really believe it. For me, it really makes a big difference to be in the industry with them, understanding And I'm not saying that I have to put out a novel every year for this to work, but understanding what is actually happening in the market, sitting down to market my own work, that makes a big difference.

[00:11:39] Camille Pagan: And I think it helps them to just hear, I'm like, Oh, I had a terrible week, right? Yeah. Sometimes in group, I'll just be like, Oh, this book is a slog. And they're like, really? Yes. There's no, I don't know. Talk therapying, mind setting your way out of having a human experience when it comes to writing.

[00:11:57] Nicole Meier: Absolutely. But that community piece is key because people feel seen. They know they're not alone and they know that their problem isn't that of they shouldn't be a writer. It's this is what we go through and this is how we're going to go through it. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So now that we've kind of talked about.

[00:12:15] Nicole Meier: that beginning and in working with writers or just writers that you talk to, let's talk about when it comes to making career decisions, right? Because you're a career novelist coach, what advice would you give to writers who actually feel torn between something that might be a passion project and something that's more commercially viable?

[00:12:36] Camille Pagan: Well, first, I have faced this question, I think every time I've written a novel. And I believe that you can marry those concepts. I seek to do that with my work in that I think as novelists, yes, it's art, but also it's commerce. We want to sell our work and we have to be upfront about the fact that we're putting it out for readers.

[00:12:58] Camille Pagan: So I think you can harness the market. Making sure that you are positioning the content in a way that hits the beats that your reader is expecting. Making sure that your blurb or your query really sounds like other books in your genre. Understanding that your title needs to sound like it fits in that kind of segment of the marketplace.

[00:13:18] Camille Pagan: Those couple elements alone can be game changers in terms of making sure you can still write about what you really want to write about. And the reader can pick it up and the reader even can be the agent at first or the editor or the publisher and say, Oh, I know where this goes in the marketplace. So in a way, I almost think it's not a true debate.

[00:13:40] Camille Pagan: If you can just shift the positioning a little bit, you don't have to write about werewolves. if you want to write, you know, a weepy love story. Yeah. You don't have to do that just to sell it. I think that there's a place for all books. It's really how do you describe it? How do you position it in the marketplace that makes it work?

[00:13:59] Nicole Meier: Yes. And for those listening who say this all sounds good, but I don't know how to get there, there's help out there. There's people like, there's craft books, there's workshop, there's web, there's things that will get you there. And I always want to remind people that it's okay if you don't have all the answers of how to get from A to B.

[00:14:17] Nicole Meier: There's plenty of support and guidance out there to get you there. 

[00:14:21] Camille Pagan: Yes. Yeah. And when people say, you know, I can't afford this thing. I really, I understand that. I have been broke at different points in my career too. I completely acknowledge that. And I say at least 80 percent of what every good coach I know, including you, myself, Charlotte Raines Dixon, there's a bunch of other coaches out there, 80 percent of what they do is free.

[00:14:43] Camille Pagan: Yes. Right? Podcasts, webinars, PDFs, guides. Yeah. Uh, books that you can get on Kindle Unlimited, I say go do the research and then, if you're able, get that personalized support. 

[00:14:56] Nicole Meier: Yeah, I agree. Okay, so one of the most favorite things that you have said to me, and I know you've said to other people, is It's not always about one title or one manuscript, it's about the body of work.

[00:15:09] Nicole Meier: And that to me, I remember the first time you said that to me, it felt so freeing because every piece of writing, every work has its own sort of experience, whether that's good or bad or somewhere in the middle. Yeah. Think about the body of work, it allows for such a different perspective. So can you talk a little bit about why that's important for writers, especially in today's industry.

[00:15:32] Camille Pagan: So I remember around that pivotal point, five books in, I hired a coach, I was thinking, what do I want to do? This may sound bonkers, but I had not actually stopped to acknowledge what I'd already created. I was so focused on publishing the next book, putting out something that would sell well, while still maintaining my artistic integrity, that I had not acknowledged that I was already a career novelist.

[00:15:58] Camille Pagan: And my coach had said, you know, look, because I would do these coaching sessions on zoom and I had my bookshelf over my desk, like behind me. And she was like, look what you've already created. And I thought, Oh my gosh. And it was a light bulb moment. And from that point on, I began sharing this with whoever would listen, that it really is a body of work that helps you financially.

[00:16:22] Camille Pagan: Your backlist sells. In a way that one book just can't sell the same way. I know there are a couple exceptions, certainly Lessons in Chemistry, right? I don't know if she ever has to sell another book, but for 99. 9 percent of authors, it's the body of work. Every time you publish a new book, the backlist sells better than it was selling already.

[00:16:44] Camille Pagan: And also, it gives you so much freedom because sometimes you publish a book that doesn't work as well. Right. Meaning it doesn't sell as well, it doesn't connect. Maybe you didn't feel as good about it. I do believe overall it gets easier to be a novelist the more you go on. I know when I was dealing with selling my 11th book, it did feel easier.

[00:17:05] Camille Pagan: I've had people say it never gets easier. I'm like, it does because you know that it'll work out. Right. Yeah. But I think having that backlist also gives you that feeling. But there's something about knowing that when a book doesn't work, it's not the end. So my third novel, Forever is the Worst Long Time, was a book of my heart.

[00:17:24] Camille Pagan: I love that book so much. It's an absolute weeper, spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't read it. It will make you cry your face off. It's a good one. I cried the entire time writing it. And it won awards. It was my most celebrated book. It probably has the highest rating. It's a good one. It's a good one. And it never took off the way my other books did.

[00:17:43] Camille Pagan: The publisher said, they're like, we could have adjusted the cover, but they didn't give me a new cover. It just sits there. And I'll tell you, I love that it is part of that body of work. I really felt better about it knowing that it was there. It's in my collection, and it did not sell the way I expected, and that was okay.

[00:18:03] Nicole Meier: Yeah. I'm really happy you shared that, especially as a reminder to listeners that it's very important to write the story that's on your heart, and you will always have people who maybe your work doesn't resonate with or isn't marketed correctly. That happens to everybody, truly. I can totally relate because one of my books, I think it was my second book, it sold the least but I got the most personal emails from readers.

[00:18:28] Nicole Meier: Yes. Yeah. So, who knows, right? Yeah. Who knows how things will land and it's the timing of the market or how it's marketed. We have zero control over that but at the end of the day, we wrote something that we, the story we wanted to tell. 

[00:18:41] Camille Pagan: Yeah. I really believe in that. I believe. you do have to write something that actually interests you.

[00:18:48] Camille Pagan: So, a mistake I see a lot, especially with people who just start working with me, or maybe they come into a free webinar. or something like that. They'll say, you know, I wrote all these books and it's not working. Or sometimes it's a single book, but you know, it's not working. And I'll say, well, what did you write?

[00:19:05] Camille Pagan: And they'll describe the book. And I'll say, well, who do you like reading that's similar? Who are your comp authors? And it's crickets because they wrote something they thought was commercially viable in a genre that they did not care about at all. 

[00:19:18] Nicole Meier: Yeah. 

[00:19:19] Camille Pagan: And You just can't do that. I feel like readers can smell it from miles away.

[00:19:24] Nicole Meier: Absolutely. 

[00:19:25] Camille Pagan: I'm sure that there are exceptions out there. My caveat is always Yes, there's an exception to everything, but again, for 99. 9 percent of us as novelists, people can tell. 

[00:19:38] Nicole Meier: Absolutely. And by the time you want to write to a trend, the trend is over. It's saturated. It's over. Yes. It's too late. Okay.

[00:19:46] Nicole Meier: So that actually is a perfect segue for me to talk about the writers out there who are writing the book they really want to write, the story they want to tell. They're not writing to industry trends. But they're hitting roadblocks, so can you talk about some of the common fears and roadblocks you're seeing with the writers that you talk to?

[00:20:02] Camille Pagan: I think the big one is something we already talked about of knowing what to do and not understanding how to actually sit down and do it. That is where you don't have to hire a coach. You can have a conversation with someone who asks really good questions. And if you listen, if you answer their questions, listen to yourself, listen to what they say to you, a lot of times the answers are there.

[00:20:25] Camille Pagan: I really do believe that we often know or it can be. revealed in conversation what the roadblock is. So maybe you don't really believe in the book and that's why you're not following through. It's not because you're highly distractible or you're a procrastinator, you haven't fully bought into the concept yet.

[00:20:44] Camille Pagan: So that would be a big one. It's a fixable problem. Yeah. I really believe, and I'm sure you've worked with people mid book and even at the end of the book, We're like, okay, you don't believe it yet, but we can do something with that. We can make sure that it really speaks to your mission, the genre, what you're trying to accomplish, the theme, all of that is fixable.

[00:21:04] Camille Pagan: But I would say the one that surprises the majority of my clients who are doing one on one work with me, although we cover this in group two, is the fear of success. Yeah. So, people say to me, I would never, like, I want all the success, I'll be the next Colleen Huber. And then, the closer they get to the finish line, whatever that finish line may be, it's usually the next book, sometimes it's just queering their debut, it starts to come up.

[00:21:29] Camille Pagan: Oh gosh, what if my ex writes a terrible essay about me? Ugh. What if my former best friend, you know, puts mean things about me on Reddit? What if I get canceled for something that I didn't even realize that I did? The fear of success is the fear of failure, really dressed up in fancy, successful high end clothing.

[00:21:48] Nicole Meier: Yeah. It's like, 

[00:21:51] Camille Pagan: and it is real. And so what I do with clients and anyone listening, if you're nodding along, or you can relate to this, I have a lot on my website about this. If you go into the newsletter archives, but begin to actually address what you would do. Yeah. Yeah. The thing about the human brain, and a lot of neuroscientists have pointed this out to me in my journalism days, is that if it understands that there is a 0.

[00:22:15] Camille Pagan: 01 percent probability that the thing will happen. It's going to know, it's going to say that could happen. So I don't spend a lot of time worrying about aliens abducting me because I think there's less than a 0. 01, knock on wood, chance that I will be taken in my lifetime. If so, it's a book. Yeah, I'm going to totally write about it.

[00:22:35] Camille Pagan: But there is a very real chance that a vindictive ex could do something terrible. So, the brain likes certainty, and when we can say, okay, that would really suck, and this is where we don't go into toxic positivity of like, You are strong and you can handle anything. Right. It's more like, let's get practical about this.

[00:22:54] Camille Pagan: What would you do if the IRS came after you because you got a million dollar deal? What would you do? Well, you'd hire a good accountant. You'd really get your books in order. Like these are almost always fixable problems, 

[00:23:08] Nicole Meier: but 

[00:23:09] Camille Pagan: you do have to tell your brain that you can handle them. Yeah. even if you would never want to.

[00:23:13] Camille Pagan: So that is one of the just practical ways to get over that roadblock because it's real. 

[00:23:19] Nicole Meier: That's great advice. I'm so happy you got specific with it because I think in the beginning people might say, oh, success, you know, I'm fine if I have hands, but they don't think about the other nuanced parts of it, being exposed online or having someone come after you or whatever that may look like.

[00:23:36] Nicole Meier: So I'm really happy you addressed that. That's great. Okay, so I'm going to actually flip our talk on its head and the opposite route. We talked about not writing to trans. We talked about writing the story that you love, but going through some obstacles. But let's go back to that idea of trends. I would love for you to kind of share maybe a little.

[00:23:56] Nicole Meier: Insider, behind the scenes, what are you seeing in terms of what's going on in the publishing and writing marketplace? Maybe some trends you see coming down the pipeline, maybe some themes. I would love for you to share a little bit of that. 

[00:24:09] Camille Pagan: Yeah. So one of my favorite things about being a coach, as well as someone who's been in publishing for 24 years.

[00:24:14] Camille Pagan: So, After college, I went to, uh, Harvard's then Radcliffe Publishing course, which moved to Columbia. I have a lot of friends who are still in the industry as editors, publicists, agents. So I have those conversations, people that I met living in New York for a long time, my own agent, and then now I work with at least a hundred clients a year, many of them in group capacity, right?

[00:24:39] Camille Pagan: I take a very small number of one on one clients on. But I get to see what's selling, what is working, why it's working. And just as someone who is innately fascinated by publishing and books, I love that. So what I see right now, no shock, I know this is going to air after the election, but there is a trend towards escapism.

[00:25:00] Camille Pagan: Yeah. There is a reason romance is selling so well. I recently listened to, I believe it's called the Culture Podcast. And they were interviewing the two women who run the Rep Bodice bookstore. And something they noted was that around 2016, there was a lot of romance selling because people wanted to think about something other than politics, regardless of affiliation.

[00:25:25] Camille Pagan: But now it's permanent. We have survived a pandemic. There are multiple wars going on. And so that trend, I think, will continue. Trending towards romanticy, more fantastical elements. I am hearing, and this makes me sad because I love this genre, but I'm hearing that rom coms are really bloated right now.

[00:25:46] Camille Pagan: It's harder to stand out there. My caveat for this is that there is always room in the marketplace for any book. Does what it says that it's going to do. I think we worry a lot about writing a amazing book and I mean, think of the last bestseller you wanted to throw across the room. I don't think books have to be amazing.

[00:26:06] Camille Pagan: Yeah. I think they have to deliver on their promise and there's always room for a book that does that. Yeah. So if you're writing rom com and you're listening to this, please know that you can still sell the crap out of your rom com. Totally. It's okay. A lot of upmarket, uplit, it has various descriptions, uplifting, book club fiction.

[00:26:24] Camille Pagan: That seems to be doing really, really well in the marketplace. What is selling less well right now is self help and nonfiction. Yeah. I assume most of your listeners are fiction writers. They are, yeah. No worries there, but it is getting harder and harder to write anything that's not a true business book.

[00:26:41] Camille Pagan: Right. Memoir, if you have a self help bent, often works well. This is not my words. This is what I'm hearing from the market. Anything around like I had to overcome and that's the story is sitting a lot longer unless the writing is truly phenomenal per the industry standards. So those are some of the things I'm seeing, but I really do believe there's a market for it.

[00:27:04] Camille Pagan: everything if you just position it to the right readers. 

[00:27:08] Nicole Meier: I agree with that. I love that insight. I love what you just shared. And I know that people are really paying attention, but I also know it's cyclical. I mean, I was just listening for sure. An agent yesterday on a podcast say you won't believe this, but I have editors asking for Werewolf and vampire books again.

[00:27:26] Nicole Meier: And I thought, okay, here we go. This is just, here we go. 

[00:27:31] Camille Pagan: Well look at the explosion of witch books. Yes. So one of my clients just sold queer witch romcom. Yeah. Two books. Yeah. Amazing. Now, I guess it's kind of the purple car phenomenon. If I'm like, Nicole, there are purple cars everywhere. That's all you're going to see.

[00:27:48] Camille Pagan: Right? Reticular activating system is fired up and seeing it. So now all I see is witch books everywhere. Yes. Yes. But yes, everything old is new again. And I think that readers are voracious. The people who are constantly reading, buying, especially fiction. They want as much as you can give them, 

[00:28:09] Nicole Meier: which 

[00:28:09] Camille Pagan: is why I don't believe in competition in the literary marketplace.

[00:28:13] Camille Pagan: There's room for everything. 

[00:28:15] Nicole Meier: I agree with that. I absolutely agree with that. Okay, that was so fun to just talk shop for a minute. Yeah. I love it. Let's bring it back to you because I actually know that you have something exciting coming up at the end of this year. So let's talk about your support for writers and you have something you're launching.

[00:28:35] Nicole Meier: Do you want to talk about that? I do. I'm so 

[00:28:37] Camille Pagan: excited. So I am finally after five years of being an author coach launching a course called bestseller bootcamp and It is about how to be the obvious choice to your ideal readers. It is not about how to spend all your time on social media. It is not about how to run ads.

[00:28:55] Camille Pagan: That's all out there. This is really about kind of the piece that I love best about positioning a book. So making sure that you are on genre, that everything from your title, your comps, your pitch, your book blurb, your description, all really stands out and yet fits in, which is the great paradox of marketing a book.

[00:29:15] Camille Pagan: It really needs to be. Eye catching and innately compelling, and yet must also fit into the genre and kind of positioning of your marketplace. So I'm talking about everything from comps, obviously, pitch, your author brand, how do you sell yourself without feeling like a sellout, and how to put that all into an implementable plan.

[00:29:41] Camille Pagan: So it's going to be super fun. So is this a one time course? Is this do it yourself? Yes. For people who join right away, I will have a live component just as a special perk through the rest of the year. But going forward in 2025, it will be just a self guided course, five modules. Yeah. 

[00:30:02] Nicole Meier: That's great. I know that there are a bunch of people out there right now who are eager to eat that up.

[00:30:07] Nicole Meier: Yeah. So where do you want to send them? Where do you want people to find you? 

[00:30:11] Camille Pagan: Yeah, so I am not super active on social media. I'm for sure, um, a product of my product in which I don't believe you have to be there all the time to make your career work. I have a site called Even Better Co, which is evenbetter.

[00:30:25] Camille Pagan: co. And you can also find links to everything on my author website, which is camillepagan. com. 

[00:30:31] Nicole Meier: Awesome. This was such a great conversation. I'm so happy you joined me. And I know that people are going to be excited to, if they aren't already, follow you and learn more. Thanks Thank you, Nicole. Love this. So fun.

[00:30:42] Nicole Meier: Yeah. And we also will keep an eye out for news of your next book. Oh, yes. Very soon. Okay. Thanks, Camille. And thanks, everyone, for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

[00:30:56] Nicole Meier: If you want to check out my coaching programs for fiction writers, visit NicoleMeier. com. That's M E I E R. And if you liked this episode, I'd love you to take a minute to leave a rating and review for this podcast. This will help more writers like you to discover the show. and to get going on their writing journey.

[00:31:16] Nicole Meier: Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, happy writing, everyone.