Learn (Nearly) Everything You Need to Know About Traditional Publishing with Author Jamie Sears

What if landing a book deal wasn’t about luck at all, but about learning how the publishing world really works? In this episode of Kind of a Big Book Deal, Meghan sits down with bestselling author and former teacher–turned–entrepreneur Jamie Sears to break open the truth behind traditional publishing, platform building, and writing a book that actually gets picked up.

Jamie shares how she went from creating classroom resources with nothing but scrapbook skills to building a massive online audience and securing a major deal with Penguin Random House. Her story is a reminder that success isn’t instant, it’s built through consistency, listening to your audience, and choosing your “hard.”

Listeners will learn why a strong author platform matters, how proposal-writing becomes the true test of book readiness, and why rejection from agents isn't a final verdict but part of the journey. Jamie also offers an honest look at mindset, deadlines, collaboration, and the surprising ease that comes once you finally take the first step.

This conversation is a must-listen for every entrepreneur who dreams of seeing their book on shelves someday.

This week’s guest is Jamie Sears. She is the Founder and CEO of the Not So Wimpy Teacher company, as well as the author of How to Love Teaching Again. A former third grade teacher, she now runs a multi-million dollar company creating curriculum, hosting a lesson planning platform called Lesson Genie, and delivering professional development for elementary educators in grades 2-5. She has educated over 15,000 teachers in her digital courses and her articles have been viewed more than ten million times by teachers around the world.

Find Jamie online
https://www.facebook.com/NotSoWimpyTeacher
https://www.instagram.com/notsowimpyteacher/
https://notsowimpyteacher.com/ 

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:20) Jamie Sears’ work and her mission
(2:46) Becoming an accidental entrepreneur
(4:55) Building a platform one step at a time
(8:00) Mindset and choosing your “hard”
(9:16) What a book proposal really requires
(15:10) Handling rejection from agents
(20:25) The mindset shift of writing a full book
(23:22) Breaking down the writing process
(29:01) The joy and pride of finishing a book
(32:20) How publishing really works behind the scenes
(44:03) Jamie’s advice for first-time authors
(50:15) Outro

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Have a great idea for a book but don't know where to start? MeghanStevenson.com/quiz


Traditional publishing expert Meghan Stevenson blasts open the gates of the “Big 5”—Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan—to share what every entrepreneur and expert needs to know about landing a book deal. 

In episodes released every Monday, Meghan shares wisdom and stories from 20+ years in publishing as well as interviews with authors, literary agents, and editors. She also answers questions from listeners like you. 

Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur with an empire, or are just starting out—this podcast will help you understand what you need to do in order to turn your dream of being a bestselling author into real life. 

Transcript

Welcome And Publishing Reality Check

Speaker 0:00

I do think that they have a lot of authors who want to write. So, how are they going to determine which ones to work with? Well, people they already know and trust have a priority. And I think that I really didn't understand that that's how publishing really worked.

Meet Jamie Sears And Her Mission

Meghan 0:19

Welcome to the Kind of a Big Book Deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Meghan Stevenson. After working as an editor for two of the biggest traditional publishers, I started my own business helping entrepreneurs to become authors. To date, my clients have earned over $7 million from publishers, including Penguin Random House, Simon Schuster, Harper Collins, and Hay House, just to name a few. In these podcast episodes, I will blast open the well-kept gates to traditional publishing. I'm going to explain what every entrepreneur needs to know about landing a book deal without losing your mind. I'm going to share stories, answer your questions, interview the successful authors I've had the pleasure to work with, and probably say platform more than a tech bro. So if you dream of landing on a bestseller list but have no idea how, this is the podcast for you. And I am so, so glad you're here. All right. I am so excited, you all, to have Jamie Sears on this podcast. Jamie and I worked on her book together, which is how I how to love teaching again. Jamie, welcome. I did not grab your official bio, but you are a badass boss B. You're amazing. Um, and you help teachers love teaching again and help them thrive in their jobs. Am I missing anything on that?

Speaker 1:47

I think that we focus so much on just making things simpler for teachers. We can never make it easy. The job is so challenging, but we always try to find a way to make all of the tasks they have to do just a tad easier so that it takes less time so that they can still become the person that they truly want to be after 3 p.m. Because teachers are more than just teachers. They are spouses, parents, friends, children. They have hobbies and loves beyond the classroom. And so we want them to be incredibly successful in the classroom and still get to be whoever they dream of being after 3 p.m.

Meghan 2:23

I love that because it's true too. Like the people who are listening to this podcast want to be authors and they're entrepreneurs, but they also are runners or moms or wives or girlfriends or, you know, all these things as well. It's not just one thing. And I think sometimes that one identity can kind of suck all the air out of the room. So tell me a little bit about your journey to becoming an entrepreneur. So you started out as a teacher in the classroom, right?

Speaker 2:49

I did start off as a teacher in the classroom, and I was incredibly surprised by how few resources I had. I don't know, like when we go to school, we just think that like all the things the teacher gave us that the school provided them, like workbooks and whatever. But I got in the classroom and I had desks and four walls and nothing else. And so I needed to create my own resources. I didn't exactly know how I um had scrapbooked before. That was the only skill set I had to use. But I didn't have a choice. So I learned, like I Googled, I watched YouTube videos, I figured it out and I made my own resources. And another teacher friend walked in my classroom one day and she said, Wow, that's amazing. I would pay for that, which I've kind of always had an entrepreneur brain. My first business was actually selling beanie babies on eBay. So I've always just like seen business opportunities. And as soon as she said, like, you could sell these, I would buy them. I was like, who else would buy them? Like maybe there's a market. I will say though, I didn't know I was becoming an entrepreneur. I was like, I just want to make $10 to $15 a month so I could buy some resources for my students that I don't know how to make. And that's how it started was that I was gonna put some resources up in this online store and hope that I made $10 a month. So about a year later, I realized I'm making tens of thousands of dollars and I've actually become a business owner. And so I would say I'm a true accidental entrepreneur.

Building A Platform That Actually Converts

Meghan 4:19

I love that for you. When we met, because we met through a former client of mine. You already had this gigantic author platform, right? Like hundreds of thousands of people following you and buying your products. How did you build that audience for yourself? Because I know a lot of people listening to this, they hear author platform and they just see like endless Instagram posts. And it seems like such a big climb, such a big haul, such a heavy to-do list.

Why Proposals Matter More Than Ideas

Speaker 4:44

And I think that your audience wants me to tell them about like this button that you get to push, and all of a sudden you're at the top of that mountain. But I think that you're right, it is a tall mountain to climb, but you don't climb it in a day. And that's what makes it manageable. You cannot just go from zero to hundreds of thousands of followers in a day, and it does take work, but it's just one thing at a time. So I grew my platform on Facebook, and so I didn't use much of Instagram or any other platform. I focused on one platform with the goal being to actually grow my email list while using this platform. And so I put a lot of time and energy into Facebook and I showed up. I created weekly content. For me, it was a blog. I know for some people it's a YouTube show or a podcast, but I created a blog post every single week. And I went to Facebook and I shared and I talked to myself for a really long time. I talked to just like my mom and my husband for a long time. And then slowly people started to come and I listened. Like you can't just talk. To grow a platform, you've truly got to be uh a fly on the wall and be a good listener. So you listen to the problems that you have that they have, you listen to the language they use to describe those problems, and you create something that solves that first problem that they know they have. You give it away for free as a lead magnet and you grow that email list. So I did. I showed up with content weekly, I showed up on a platform even when no one was talking to me. I kept talking. I listened and then I created a solution to a problem, grew that email list just year after year after year of growing it. And I feel like I'm still in those Facebook groups. I'm still listening. I'm still creating new lead magnets, new solutions to the problems they have today. You don't just like grow your platform and then it just like you stop having to do the work. It is work. Um, this is the kind of hard I would rather have. There, there's a lot of hards that you have to choose between. I got to leave the classroom. The hard I'm in is no longer working 60 hours a week, I'm making almost nothing. I now work less than 20 hours a week. I make good money. And yeah, some of the things I have to do are hard. But the benefit outweighs the hard for me at this point. But I know that when you're just getting started, the mountain just feels like you're never gonna get to the top. And I don't know, maybe I'm never gonna get to the top because I don't think I'm at the top yet. Maybe you maybe you're not supposed to get to the top. Maybe it truly is all about the climb like Miley Cyrus. But when you're first starting, you see the top and it feels like you'll never ever get there. Well, now I I can see it, but I'm not even sure. Like maybe it's gonna keep moving out of reach, but all about growing my business is that I'm never going to be done. Like it's never going to be complete. And you have to be okay with knowing that you're never done. It's actually kind of exciting once you get into it.

Meghan 8:00

Yeah, it's kind of like that moment where I had this moment probably a decade ago where I realized personal growth never ended, and I was like, shit, I have to do this again. And then I was like, I'm never gonna be done. Like with this ever. Like it's probably exercise. It's like, you know, just do one workout and then suddenly you're fit for the rest of your life. You have to keep working out, right? Much to I like working out, so that never bothered me. But like I like doing this, I like posting. I I hired someone to do the stuff I don't want to do. But like, yes, it's it's very much like choose your heart. I love that so much. Okay, so let's talk about landing the book deal because that's what everybody's here for. So, what was we worked together on your proposal and your book? I have to say that Jamie did write the lion's share of the editorial content for both of those things, which we do uh I say allow, but we do encourage our authors to do just because if you want to write it, the proposal is great proving ground to see if you can write it. Um, both in terms of like actually having the bandwidth to do it, being able to deliver once a week, like you did. Um, you still have our benchmark for fastest proposal in four months or less. Um, but tell me about the proposal process. Like, what was that like?

Handling Rejection And Finding The Right Agent

Speaker 9:15

Before I met you, I had no idea, even what the first step was. And so I don't even know if I told you. Maybe I did because we talked a lot, but I wrote a letter to like a small educational publishing firm about my book idea first. And I got like an immediate like, we're not interested in books like this. That's what it said. That's like all it said. I didn't write a legit proposal. I didn't know what a proposal was, so I couldn't possibly write a legit proposal until I met you. So I when somebody said you have to write a proposal, I'm like, I don't know, in my head, that's like I don't know, a cover letter. So learning that the what the proposal actually was, once I once you taught me what it was, the writing of the proposal was actually fun for me. Like I had a really good time with it. Um, it was fun to dig into my stories and all the things I had taught in the past, and also not having the pressure of having to write out the entire chapter. It was like getting to just dip your feet in first before you had to go all in. And I was scared about writing the book. So the proposal warmed me up and helped me to see that I could write the book. But prior to meeting you, I didn't know what a proposal was, and I never would have figured that out without your your guidance. I truly had no idea. Somebody told me they're like, oh yeah, you have to write an outline, and I don't, I was not fully understanding how much you really did have to give them before they would even take you seriously. So the book proposal process was really good for me. It proved to myself, like, I'm actually going to write this book. I think this is fun. I'm having a really good time imagining what I could put in this chapter. And so I think getting your feet wet, maybe that's why they have you write the proposal in the first place.

Writing Mindset, Deadlines, And Momentum

Meghan 11:08

To prove you'll do it. Yes, a little bit, a little bit. I mean, I think like that's so interesting is I've had people walk away after the proposal process was done. They're like, Thank you, but I'm not doing this. Like that was hard enough, or I don't really have much more to say than these 40 pages or whatever. It's like it's a really good proving ground. Or we have clients who are like, Yes, I'll write it. And then, you know, we give them a deadline, and two weeks go by, and I'm like, all right, two weeks has gone by and you haven't written two pages. How long is it going to take you to write 30 pages for this chapter? And that's when the light bulb comes on of like, oh, hey, I want to write this book, but maybe I don't have the time. Maybe from a practical perspective, it doesn't make sense. Like all these things. So that's why we we really do encourage people to, you know, try out proposal. Like we can step in and ghostwrite for you anytime, right? Or edit, which is what I did with you. So, like, I did a pretty heavy, heavy-handed edit on the editorial content, and we did all the business sections for you because that's easier for me to execute on than for you to me to teach it to you, and then you try to, it just doesn't make any sense. But like it was very cooperative and very collaborative, right? Um, so once we got the proposal done, and I have to give credit to your team because your team was right there with me. And once they understood like sort of how a publisher would see your company, then we were able to like alter like what y'all were doing in terms of your strategy to fit uh what the publisher was doing, right? Like, because at the time you guys had a podcast and it wasn't performing well, although you really loved it. And I was like, ooh, if these numbers are low, publishers could point at that and say, Hey, what about this? And I was like, nah, let's kill that, right? And so it was it was a really interesting, um, true collaboration with your team too, in terms of all hands on deck with getting the book proposal done and ready and in good shape for a publisher to consider.

Speaker 13:10

Yeah, my team was amazing. It's I think it's really helpful to have wonderful people that are backing you up. And for me, it was my team and my husband. But I mean, my team had to make the space for me to work on the book. And that wasn't easy because at that time I was working 40 plus hours in my business. I had meetings all day, every day. And so one of the best things my team did for me was look through my calendar and start pulling things off of it and either just us not doing them anymore or somebody else on the team taking over that part for me. It was magical. And honestly, we don't want to tell them this, but I never went back to doing all that stuff. It was like they were gonna cover it and write the book, but I was like, I'm not going back. Now that we've realized that we can make this space for this project, the project's over and I'm gonna leave this space. And that's what I did for a fair amount of time.

Meghan 14:05

It's so interesting too, because I feel like I hear that conversation from our clients more often. Whereas like the people who want to build platform, they're like more willing to go hidey hole off and write the whole book and like be like, no, you need to put the platform together because they're equal parts, right? They're very much equal parts in terms of getting your book deal. So let's talk about the proposal was done, and you have an interesting experience where it does happen once in a while, where it was so much easier to get you a deal than to get you a literary agent. Like, I like could not, and and I brought up the podcast on purpose because we had a literary agent and I love this person. I work with her on many, many books, but I sent her your proposal and she's like, shouldn't this be a podcast? And I was like, No, because educators don't listen to podcasts as it turns out, they read blogs because apparently they're love to read, which is great for us in terms of producing books, right? Instead of even audiobooks or podcasts or any kind of like sort of digital audio content. Um, but I know that we went to a lot of folks and I know we got a lot of no's before you ended up getting a yes. So, how did that experience go as an author? Because I think uh all the entrepreneurial authors I know would be like, ooh.

Systems, Team Support, And Deep Work

Speaker 15:20

And I'm not gonna lie, I also felt uh it doesn't feel good to be told no. It definitely doesn't. So you have to have some thick skin. I don't know everyone else's experience, but I'm guessing you have to be prepared for some no's along the way. I mean, unless you are like Stephen King, then people are gonna say no to you a few times. Um, and it's gonna hurt. And I do feel like I wanted to argue like, no, you're wrong because of this, this, and this. But thank goodness you were the one doing the communication. And I think that helped me a lot because they didn't actually say no straight to my face and I didn't have to be the one to respond. And I think that helped me to get through it. But yeah, there were some uncomfortable days, but I also felt like it was really exciting. Um, I kind of was on the edge of my seat the whole time, waiting to hear from you again, knowing that you were talking to some agents and and really um on the edge of my seat. And the day that I actually interviewed with the person who became my agent, I literally had just had surgery. I was still on bed rest, but I was like, I'm not gonna tell them I can't come to this meeting. So like I show up, I'm in my pajamas, I just wore black ones, so no one would know. And I'm at my kitchen table. I could barely walk there. And I thought, I hope they don't realize, but it was just so exciting to me to finally have the meeting that I was not gonna say, Hey, could we wait a week? I was like, I'll do it right now. And I did it like straight out of the hospital because I did, I just wanted to, I wanted to land it. Let's do it. Yeah, I was excited.

Short Timelines, Chapter Cadence, And Tools

Meghan 16:55

It is a super exciting process, and honestly, I'm I have the same like feeling, the same instinct to be like, no, you're wrong, and here's why. And occasionally I will clap back. Like to that agent, I was like, look, actually, they killed off the entire K to 12 segment at Apple Podcasts because it wasn't performing. So you're wrong about this, uh, respectfully, right? You're wrong. Or we recently had a client who we went to this agent, and uh she's a I don't think she would care if I said she's a a black business coach for educators. And we we took her proposal out, and the agent was like basically proposing a book that was very similar to Rachel Rogers' book, We Should All Be Millionaires. And I was like, Oh, that book's already out. It's called We Should All Be Millionaires. Maybe you weren't familiar with it, you know. But it was really funny because I was like, I'm gonna have to be really nice about what I say to her back, right? Because we're sitting on this call and my client is like chatting, you know, the secret chat in Zoom. She's like secret chatting me. She's like, apparently this bitch has never heard of Rachel Rogers. And I was like, apparently not, you know. Um, but it's just interesting because like, and occasionally I will legitimately clap back. Like I had a client where an agent that took a meeting with them uh went off on like transgender as like a definition. I was like, yeah, no, you're not gonna have to do that, or like the client who uh black author again, like she comes from a first-generation immigrant background, and the agent suggested that she write for first generation immigrants. I'm gonna handle that. I'm gonna come in and be like, no, bitch, and here's why. But like that shouldn't have to be the author's domain, and in a lot of ways, that's something I do for my clients is do that, like kind of in between like work, um, which like actually your literary agent turned out to be like in the edge case of edge cases in terms of being fired from the agency she worked for. And that all went down like on the on when I was on vacation.

Speaker 18:57

Yeah, well, I would just say I think you know, people turned me down first, but that's not that doesn't define who you are. That's like one person's opinion about your proposal, knowing only the limited amount of information they know about your audience. You know way more about your audience than your agent will, no matter what industry you're in. So it's one person's opinion based on limited amount of research that they might have done. And so I think you just have to be real with yourself and be like, okay, it wasn't for them. They don't want to take on this project. It doesn't mean the project isn't good. It doesn't mean that my idea isn't good, it doesn't mean that it won't be successful. I've I've heard of very successful books who got turned down quite a few times. So I think that reminder that it doesn't define me. It's they literally choose books they really they're passionate about too. And so it just might not be a good fit, which doesn't mean that my project is not a good idea.

Meghan 19:50

Yes, exactly. And it comes from this idea too of like, my reality is not reality, it's just my reality through my own lens. And so, like that agent who You know, thought educators would listen to it on a podcast. I was like, that's her reality, but it's actually not true. It's not real, right? And so that's cool. It's fine to move on with. Um, and you did get a literary agent, and she got a great deal for you at Pango and Random House at an imprint called uh portfolio. So let's talk about writing the book. So, what was the biggest challenge that you encountered writing the book?

The Joy Of Finishing And Holding The Book

Speaker 20:30

My own mindset, my own brain. I think the first thing like I'd always wanted to write a book. I wanted to write a book when I was actually in elementary school. I mean, I thought I was gonna write like fiction, and it turns out like my life took me a whole different route. So this person who always wanted to write a book suddenly is told, you get to write a book. We're gonna pay you to write a book. You would think I'd be like grabbing the computer, like, let's go, chapter one. But instead, like the first thought is, oh my gosh, now I actually have to write a book. It's it's scary. I'm not gonna lie that my brain instantly was like, How are you gonna write a whole book? You couldn't even write a 10-page research report in 12th grade government. How are you gonna write a whole stinking book? And I think one of the first questions I asked you was like, How many words is it gotta be? Because, and you gave me a number, and I remember feeling like, whoa, I've never ever written that many words before. And it's the truth I never had. And so I think the hardest part was the first step. Because after I took the first step, it got so much easier. But it's like my brain was telling me just how hard it was going to be from the get-go. It's like I celebrated the offer for about 24 hours, and then it clicked my brain like, oh my gosh, now I have to actually do it. And there was definitely a good week where I was like, I'm panicked. I'm really panicked. And I've talked to some other authors who literally felt the exact same thing. It almost like maybe you need to plan it in your calendar, the week for you to freak out because now you actually have to do what you wanted to do, but now it seems sort of scary.

The Long, Messy Path From Manuscript To Shelf

Meghan 22:01

Yes, a hundred percent. Because it was like you're contractually obligated to do it, right? It's not like you're doing it for fun, it's not like it's the it's not nano rhymo or whatever the hell they call that thing in November where you do the challenge of writing a certain amount of words per day. It's like, no, actually, you will get sued if you don't put this in, right? And then you've usually got like if you're working with us, it's it's our responsibility to get you to do that, right? But we have clauses in our contract where we're really not responsible if you don't show up. It's a little thing called author's delay. Like, we can't make magic happen without you. And so the real like the way I talk about it with authors is and the way I think I talk up talked about it with you, it's been a couple of years, is to chunk it down and to really look at chapter by chapter and even maybe segment by segment when we have outlines because that's the way I do things too, right? Like, I'm like, okay, let's reverse engineer it. We need it to give a publisher on this day. How much time do I think this author is gonna need? Maybe they leave less time because if they have more time, they're gonna go to Tinkertown, and that's not a good place to be. Maybe we you know, maybe they can be trusted with the manuscript for four weeks without completely throwing bombs into it. I don't know. Uh let's let's let's find out, right? Like, let's look at that and see. Um, and then from there, like once you sort of get your feeling, once you get the first couple chapters under your feet, I feel like it goes a little faster, it goes a little nicer.

Speaker 23:27

Yeah, I think that was my biggest surprise about writing the book is as scared as I was to write it, it was way easier than I thought it would be. Now, you made it a lot easier, and I still remember that once I got the deal, you asked if I still wanted you to help me with the actual writing of the book. And I asked my husband, like, should I just write it on my own? And he says, Heck no. Because I don't want to be the person that has to listen to you when you can't figure out what to write about or when you're struggling with deadlines. I don't want to be that person. And he was right, like, that's not a good place for your spouse to have to be. And so he was like, I would definitely pay somebody else to tell you what to do, so I don't have to do it. So I'm really thankful that he was encouraging. Um, and he he was right. Working with you did make it easier. So I still remember when we first started meeting that I would talk, you would like to ask me a question. I would talk a lot about my content, and it you have an amazing ability to listen to what I'm saying and just narrow it down into like outlines, and that's what you would do. It's like you would get me talking and I'm going off, and you're like, okay, perfect. So we need this chapter and that chapter. And then I couldn't start writing my book right away because the summers are the busiest in my business. And I said, I've got too many launches, I have too many things going. So we actually had to wait a bit to start writing. So I had a short time. I remember they asked me, when can you have it done? And I was like, I asked them, I go, how long do authors normally take? And they were like, huge ranges. So I feel like I just picked like a number out of my head or something. And I don't know why I picked it, but I still remember that I said, Oh, I can have it done by February 1st. And they're like, All right, perfect. Now, as fast as they accepted that, I should have known I probably didn't give myself a ton of time. But you know what? I kind of liked that we kept it in uh like a tighter box because I don't I feel like my excitement was really strong in the beginning. And if I let the project go for a really long time, it was gonna be hard to keep that kind of excitement and momentum going. So you put deadlines on when my chapters were due, and we ended up setting up a schedule where I had basically to write a chapter every two weeks. And I I set myself up that Tuesdays and Thursdays were gonna be my writing days, and we, my team and I, we went back and forth about how I worked best, how I wanted it to be. I know some people like to do like an hour every morning. I found that I needed some.

Meghan 25:50

That's the bird clock. Like it has a bird clock that joins the podcast. That is a house finch.

Using Your Voice: Edits, Covers, And Compromise

Speaker 25:56

I love it. But I found that I needed like deep work time. If I only had an hour, I wouldn't get far enough in and then have to remotivate myself every day. So I worked on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I didn't schedule any other meetings except for with you. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I wrote. Sometimes I wrote in my bedroom, sometimes I wrote at coffee shops, but I knew that I basically had to write a fourth of a chapter every time I sat down to write, or I was gonna get behind. And I did not want to be behind. So I just kept that, I really kept that schedule and wrote a fourth of a chapter every day that I wrote. And I was at first, it still sounded like a lot, it's still a lot of words, but it really went fast. And they worked hard with my coach and with you about how to keep the momentum. I would voice detect a lot of stuff. Sometimes when I got stuck on a chapter, I would work with you. I would work with my other coach. I have a life coach I work with, and I would just talk. And oftentimes when I would talk to you, you could pick it out, be like, oh, it's right here. This is what you need to write about. And I was like, Oh, I like I didn't see that. It took an outside person often who didn't know my content that well to be like, oh, wait a minute, right there. That's where you lit up, that's where you got excited. Can you can you do that? And I was really, really surprised that writing the book that was probably the easiest part of the entire process. And I thought it was going to be the hardest part.

Relationships, Leverage, And Industry Muscle

Meghan 27:22

You know, it is that too. And I think in terms of timing, what happens a lot when our clients get deals, especially for the agents that we work with a lot, the literary agents we work with a lot, they'll come back to me usually when they're mid-process, because that's when the publisher is going to ask, hey, like, how soon could this be written? All those sorts of things. I am usually giving a shorter deadline rather than a longer one. Because again, that longer deadline. So a short deadline to me is six months or less. Um, four to six months is it's kind of if it's faster than four months, that's considered a crash, and that's like not what you want. Uh, too much pressure just doesn't make a lot of sense. But um, six months to 12 months is kind of a good sweet spot. Any more than 12 months is disaster because you're gonna put it off. Also, it's gonna fuck with anybody's business launch cycles and like the actual client delivery that like you actually it's too long. So six months is kind of that sweet spot, and that's just writing the draft. It doesn't include editing, doesn't include proofing or copy editing or any of those production stages, but like definitely that six months is is what you're gonna want to carve out in terms of writing a book for any major publisher, and you're absolutely right. Seeing that outside person, getting that outside perspective. I was stuck on a client chapter yesterday, and I was like, well, let's put my brain on it. And then this morning I was walking the dog and I was like, Oh, I need to cut these sections, they belong somewhere else, right? And it I'm they're not going away. I'm going to literally lift them out of the document and put them in another document and then wait and remind myself that that's there. But like that's such a normal part of the process for people. Um, so I love that you say that writing it was the easiest. So, what was the biggest joy in terms of the overall publishing process for you?

Traditional Deals And Author Control

Speaker 29:10

I think the biggest joy is really that feeling of finishing something so massive, like setting such a huge goal and then getting to finish it. I'll never forget the day the first copy of my book showed up at my house in a box. It happened to be the first day of my team retreat. So my whole team was there and they videoed me opening up the box. But like the you literally feel tears because you know the blood and sweat and love that went into every dang word that eventually appears in that book. And I still feel insanely proud of that book. When I see that cover, when you hold up that book, I'm like, oh, like I still feel so incredibly proud of myself. Yeah, I still really proud of myself for tackling such a big project because lots and lots and lots of people think about writing a book, but so few actually do it. And it's like I did something that so few people will ever have the courage to do. And, you know, there were definitely hard moments. I said that writing the book was the easiest part, but that doesn't mean every day of writing the book was easy. And there was definitely so much to learn. I was the whole process, you walked me through it one step at a time, which was fantastic. If I had to learn about the whole process without walking through it one step at a time, that would have been very overwhelming to me. And there were definitely certain days that everything felt overwhelming. But knowing that like we tackled those days, when my literary agent was fired and I am a literary agent, we tackled that together. When I got stuck, I want to write a chapter, we tackled that. When my my editor quit going to a new job, hey, we tackled that too. And I feel like each individual thing could have stopped me from achieving something that I really truly wanted to achieve since I was a child. So I feel like that the finishing of something that too often as entrepreneurs, we start a lot of projects. Like I'm guessing a lot of your listeners have a ton of unfinished projects, whether it was a course they were gonna make or whatever. I feel like there's blog posts on my computer that I started writing and never finished. And the act of finishing something so huge. It's like I'll never quite get over that feeling.

Meghan 31:35

And it's a multi-year project too, right? Like I think we started working together in 2020 or 2021. This book came out in 2023, we're talking in 2025. Like it's a multi-steer, multi-stage. It's almost like a forever project because you're gonna be forever promoting this book in your funnels and in your business, right?

Speaker 31:54

Yeah, I mean, it's always attached to me. It's a part of my bio now. It's what people know me for in a lot of areas in my business. So I'm glad we spent a couple of years on it because I want it to be something I'm proud to have attached to my name.

Meghan 32:14

I love that. Okay. Is there something that surprised you?

Best Advice: Collaborate And Ship Faster

Closing, Takeaways, And Free Quiz

Speaker 32:18

Oh my gosh, the number of steps there are in the process really like how is it that I spent like five months writing the book, but it takes like a year and a half to get it like from this Google Doc to an actual book? Like, I'm used to things moving a little fast paced in the entrepreneurial world. I will say that the pace that things moved at sometimes was like hard for me. And what was really tough is to go from like, I'm the boss of my business, I'm the CEO, I make the decisions. I can say like this is the due date for this, or this is when we're launching it. And writing my book, one of the things that was really hard for me to like to really grasp and get used to was that even though I was the boss of my book, I didn't have a lot of control about what was going to happen and when. I had to learn to go with the flow a little bit more than I'm used to in my business. I can't, I can't determine how long it will take them to edit the copy, or I don't even know how many times they edit the copy. It'd be like the copy is back from editing. I'm like, again, I don't really understand that whole process. And um, it was such a surprise to me just how complex it is, how many, how many hands touch it, how many people read my book straight through that probably don't care at all about teaching, but care very much about the book's quality. It was really impressive. I don't think I could have gone through all those steps without you, though. Um wow, there was just they they will go back and forth about a comma. And yes, that level of like detail, I'm so happy for it. I I will say that like people don't find a lot of problems in my book. And I've read a lot of books with a lot of problems, they don't really find that. And so I'm like, the attention to detail was insane and a lot of learning about that process, but thank goodness we did it. It might have felt like a bit cumbersome right in the moment, but the the final product is high quality and like something I'm super proud of now. So I was really surprised just how many times it gets read, just how much you got, how much they're they're gonna suggest you change, but also how much control I still had. I just had to learn when to use it. Like maybe I can't say no to everything they wanted, but I there were definite conversations you and I had where it was like, what if we give in on this, but say we're not gonna change this? And that that worked every time where we compromised. And I was like, I want this story. My audience loves the story and I know my audience best, so I'm not gonna change it. And okay, I will change this other part here. I see where you're coming from. We we went back and forth on the cover, I didn't like the options, uh, but I decided to go ahead and fight for for more options, and I got what I asked for. So lots to learn about the actual process. And even though I had to give up a lot of control, just learning where I did, I could use my voice and still get what I truly wanted.

Meghan 35:32

Yes, and I think that's very much a I mean, it's a perennial topic. I'm just going through editing with a client right now where her editor has returned edits and we're trying to move around chapters. And I said, Hey, you know, the editor's not expecting to get a yes on every single thing. The editor is expecting to get a yes, she'll be thrilled if she gets a yes on 80% of the things. And in terms of covers, too, like this particular client got some covers that were not great. And we're like, okay, great. So it's the agent's job then to go back and yell um about that kind of stuff because they can be then the bad cop. But it's a lot of relationship management and a lot of like, okay, what it and giving you the space to yell and scream and have those emotions with me or with your agent, so that then when you go to the editor, you're more clear-headed because some editors will handle some editors have the bandwidth to like take on those emotions and help you work through them, and then other editors are gonna be like, F you, yeah, I don't have time for this. So it's like uh kind of gauging the editor as well, in terms of like how receptive, how involved are they gonna be? Same thing with the agent, right? So, like, how involved is your aging gonna be? And at the time it wasn't super involved, and so I was like, okay, I'm gonna do more lifts, or I'm gonna use, you know, my um relationship with the agency you're at to get the representation you deserve, right? So all those sorts of things are helpful.

Speaker 36:57

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I feel like some people who didn't don't know the process as well before I even started writing my book, they were like, Oh, you don't want to go the traditional route because you won't have any say in what your book turns out like. And I feel like you showed me through the process that that's not true. The your agent, your editors, they want your book to sell, they want it to be a success. So they are going to offer up a lot of suggestions based on their experience. But when it comes down to it, it always felt like we were a team. And on the team, I was the person who knew the teachers best. My editor was the person who knew publishing best. And it was just a matter of coming together with all of our different expertise and deciding how we could appease the audience, still get the sales we want. And I don't feel like they made every decision. And honestly, my editor, in the first meeting we had with her, before I even started writing the book, she had just with the proposal said, I feel like you're missing a whole chapter. I went to your blog and you have a lot of content about this topic, but I don't see it in your book. And she said that and I was like, dang, she's right. Like, how did I miss this? It ended up being the longest chapter in my book. It's my favorite chapter in the book. And I'm like, she was not a teacher, but she saw that there was really great content on my blog that I wasn't including. And it's like, you just I got so involved in in writing of the proposal that I missed really key factors that she saw. So everyone wants the same thing at the end. It's just everyone has a different expertise. So we have to come together. And I felt like I definitely had a voice in my book. Like I fought for some of the stuff that's still there in the cover. I pretty much designed it because I wanted to. And so I still had quite a bit of say, but I listened to what they had to say too, because they are experts. They have worked on a lot of books and they have an expertise that I certainly don't. So I think there was a great middle ground that we were able to meet.

Meghan 38:53

It's definitely a business partnership, right? Like that's sort of how it should be operating. It's not this publisher god-like figure coming down off high and declaring things, and it's not an author saying my way or the highway, it's like this in-between navigation. And then when someone works with someone like me and and you have a literary agent, then you have in-betweens. Like I often describe the me as a terrier. If there's something wrong, I'm going. And then I have an heavy in the literary agent where I can send who's like a pit bull, who I can send in, you know, who's gonna really muscle the publisher because they have like love even more leverage than someone like I have. Um, because what I have is my relationships and my ability to speak editor and like bond on that same like, oh, I used to be, let's have this conversation, versus like the agent being like, Hey, if you do us wrong here, not only am I not going to send you any more projects, but neither is my whole firm. That's a lot of muscle. Um, if in most of the agents I know won't do that, that's sort of a Clear option, but they are going to be like, hey, we know this cover is not good enough. Like you and I both know that. So go back to your art team, right? So it's like these conversations that have to happen.

Speaker 40:09

Your relationships were so incredible in the process because everyone respected you. And so it felt really good that you were on my team because they already had either they truly knew you or knew of you. And so there was already this like built-in respect since I kind of came along with you that they they also respected me because if you were going to put your name behind my work, then they felt like that it was good enough. So I felt like your relationships were incredible and really helped me through the process.

Meghan 40:44

And that's something too that like publishing is very old school in that way. Like it's very New York in that way, it's very relationship driven. A lot of the folks, like your um the editorial director of portfolio, we've known each other since at least 2007-ish or so. Um, you're the person who ended up being your agent after your initial agent left. I've known him since at least 2005. Maybe I've known him since he became an agent. Um, and I've known the founders of that particular agency since one of them dated all my friends in the early 2000s.

Speaker 41:18

Um that's like how it goes back, you know? I couldn't not replicate. And I did, I didn't know that publishing was so much like who you know, but it really is a little bit of that who you know. I'm not saying that they don't look at talent, but I do think that they have a lot of authors who want to write. So how they are going to determine which ones to work with? Well, people they already know and trust have a priority. And I think that I really didn't understand that that's how publishing really worked.

Meghan 41:54

Well, if you think about on the receiving end for them, so an agent, um, you know, an author comes into their world, they're working on commission, they're working on speculation, and so they're not getting paid unless they get a deal. And their hardest amount of their work is in creating the proposal, it's getting the author to write a halfway decent proposal if they're not gonna write it themselves, right? And so here I come with Jamie, who has a platform, has a great book idea, it's in the market. I've already sort of put my publishing sense on it. I say this is gonna work, this is gonna sell copies, I've already written a proposal, and here it is in their inbox, ready to turn around and sell and make some money on. That's an amazing like value add. And then when they go to the publisher, publisher's gonna be like, with books like this, either they're going to ask, is there a collaborator attached? Or the agent is gonna be like, hey, there's a collaboration, collaborator and attached. And like in this case, they might have actually gone uh, you know, to portfolio and said, hey, Meghan's attached, and they know what that is, right? So they know what that's about. And that, you know, one of my collaborators is um Vivian too's collaborator. She works for me, and so it's like, oh, we we drop Viv's name all the time. I don't think Viv would care. Uh but like it's like, oh yeah, we wrote Vivian Two's best-selling book, and they're like, oh, okay, you know, it's like that's that reputation, just like in entrepreneurship, you know, just among entrepreneurs, we all know the good entrepreneurs, we all know the generous entrepreneurs, we all know the people that, you know, kind of have a great reputation for being reciprocal and kind and thoughtful. Um, and then we have the people who we all know are kind of sketchy or or don't always behave with integrity. Um, so that reputational aspect is is a big part of succeeding in this world. Um so that's really important too. And there's people coming and going all the time. There's a lot of us who have been around forever, and then there's a lot of people who publishing is very fluid.

Speaker 43:53

Yeah, I definitely learned that.

Meghan 43:57

Okay, so last question. So this podcast is for entrepreneurs and experts who dream about getting a book deal. What is something that you learned that you would want to share, or maybe like if you could go back in time and tell, you know, 2021 Jamie, what was up? What would you say?

Speaker 44:16

I mean, 100%. I actually just got asked this question by somebody who's um trying to get a book deal. She asked me, What would you do now that you've actually written a book? What would you tell me? And 100% I would collaborate with somebody who already has some success and knows what the publishing industry requires and some of the players in it, because I could have gone at it on my own, but it would have taken me significantly longer to get results. And I truly don't think the end product would have been as great because when we work together, like the the culmination of creative, smart business minds created something so much better than just mine alone. And so even though my name is on the front cover, the reality is that working with other people is what got my book on the shelves at Barnes and Noble. And I truly don't think that I would have done all of the hard stuff along the way without some help and reassurance that the hard stuff I was going through was normal and that it wasn't just me. So I think collaborating with someone like you, somebody who is going to walk you through the process, somebody who will hold you accountable. Um, you holding me accountable, setting deadlines. I'm I'm not gonna miss a deadline. I don't, I don't care who sets it, I'm not gonna miss it. And so you held me accountable, got that book written fast, introduced me to the people I needed to meet, answered the millions of questions I had along the way, and just kind of handheld me through the process. I think every first-time author needs somebody to do that for them. I wouldn't do it any other way.

Meghan 46:00

I love that answer. I mean, I love that answer because I want people to hire me, but I also love that answer just because it's really honest. I mean, I think that the there's a lot of people who want to do it themselves for whatever reason. And it's just like, dude, that's gonna take you longer. It's gonna be harder. You're gonna do it incorrectly. Like, I bought a power washer recently because I couldn't hire someone to power wash the to the extent I wanted to have my patio power washed. But I was like, dude, like for the most part, I could hire a professional to do these things, and I probably should, right? I probably should find a power washer. I can't just can't be bothered, so I bought my own. But like at a certain point, like you want to just hand it off to the people that you know, like a social media manager is a great example, actually. I have a social media manager, um, a social media strategist. I create content, she takes it, she puts it on Instagram, she puts all the hashtags on it, she shares all the stories. Like, I don't want to learn all that, I don't want to keep up on the algorithm. So I can hire her to do that versus me trying to do that and do all the other things I've gotten in my business.

Speaker 47:08

Yes, the best entrepreneurial advice anyone ever gave me is you can try to do everything crappy or do one thing really great. And I feel like collaborating in this process meant that I could focus more on the content that I was sharing in the pages of the book and less on like all of these relationships and meetings and back and forth emails and things that I didn't know how to do already, that I didn't understand already. And so if I hadn't collaborated, it might have taken me a decade to get my book out into the world. And that's if I kept the motivation that entire time. But I'd already waited long enough to get my book out into the world. So I still wrote my book. A lot of people are like, oh, I don't want to collaborate because I want it to be me. Like I wrote my book, I wrote the stories, I wrote the tips, you edited it, you zhuzhed it, made it sound, you know, like the best version of me. Not like you, but the best version of me. And I think that I still get to take credit. Like I wrote my book, but I was smart and I collaborated with somebody who could get the book out into the world significantly faster than I could do on my own.

Meghan 48:13

Yes. And that is the value add because we can't really write books ourselves. Like I had a client once come to me and he's like, You come up with the idea, I'll just put my name on it and my platform behind it. I was like, this is not how this works. Like, I don't have, I don't have the I don't have ideas. If I did, I'd be a novelist. So it's like, I don't know, but I can take your idea, I can take your platform, I can take what you tell me is important for your readers, and I can make it really good and really useful and a really great book that like How I Love Teaching Again gets a million five-star reviews when on Goodreads and Amazon, which always makes my day when I go check it out.

Speaker 48:50

Aw, I I really, I really love that. I really love that um I was able to take the content that my audience already loves from me and just share it on a bigger platform, the bookstores, Amazon. But it's all the same things I've been teaching in my business for a long time. And so I feel like working with you, I was able to just really focus on my genius. You focused on your genius, and together the book came to life in two years instead of a decade or more.

Meghan 49:23

Love that. All right, y'all, you should go get Had the Love Teaching Again, Jamie Sears. Fantastic bye for all the educators you know. There's also some really great stuff that I think applies to all entrepreneurship about like your time and your definition of success. And I still have the definition of success that I created writing a book with you inside my planner, which also Jamie got me addicted to plum planners and washi tape and the smelly markers that are like I only use my planners. So I think of you every time I order a new plum planner.

Speaker 49:57

I should really be an affiliate.

Meghan 49:59

You really should. All right, thank you so much, Jamie. I know everybody uh will benefit from this. You should check her out. Jamie Ciro is on all the relevant platforms. How to love teaching again is her amazing book. Cheers to your success, y'all. Thanks for tuning in to the Kind of Big Book Deal podcast. Want to see where you're at on your book journey? Check out my free quiz at MeghanStevenson.com forward slash quiz. That's M-E-G-H-A-N-S-T-E-V-E-N-S-O-N dot com forward slash quiz. See you next time.