Get a Book Deal with 15,000 Followers (or Less) with Nick Wolny

In this episode, Meghan Stevenson sits down with author and media expert Nick Wolny to unpack the real mechanics behind getting traditionally published. Nick shares how he secured his book deal by identifying a clear niche, validating market demand, and leveraging relationships instead of chasing vanity metrics. One of the biggest takeaways is that platform is not just about audience size. It is about distribution, engagement, and your ability to move people to action.

Nick introduces a simple but powerful content framework built around four questions that every funnel should answer, along with practical advice on practicing your craft consistently and creating for humans rather than algorithms.

Whether you want a book deal, a stronger platform, or a more sustainable business, this conversation offers clear direction and actionable insights you can apply immediately.

This week’s guest is Nick Wolny. A classically trained French hornist by education, Nick Wolny is a managing editor at CNET Group, where he oversees the Perspectives franchise and written branded content across CNET Group's publications. He was previously a senior editor on CNET's Money team, and outside of CNET Group is the finance columnist for Out magazine. Nick has previously written for Fast Company, Business Insider, Fortune, Entrepreneur magazine and The Advocate, and has provided broadcast commentary for CNBC, Good Morning America, and others. He writes Financialicious, a newsletter about business, money, and queer culture, and his first book, Money Proud: The Queer Guide to Generate Wealth, Slay Debt, and Build Good Habits to Secure Your Future, is out now.

Find Nick on social 
instagram.com/nickwolny
TikTok.com/@nickwolny1

Sign up for Nick’s Financialicious newsletter at https://nickwolny.com/newsletter.

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
1:32) Nick Wolny’s background and publishing journey
(3:07) Platform building lessons and audience tiers
(7:28) How networking led to a book deal opportunity
(11:51) Claiming a niche and creating urgency for publishers
(12:42) Why follower count is not the most important metric
(15:00) Distribution, media leverage, and platform strategy
(22:27) Backlist strategy and bookstore relationship building
(30:26) Mindset barriers that block entrepreneurs
(41:34) Why your idea matters more than your identity
(42:10) The four questions every funnel must answer
(49:14) Advice for aspiring authors: practice publishing often
(51:39) The Beyoncé story and loving the craft
(56:02) Creating for humans instead of algorithms
(58:25)  Outro

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

The Four-Question Content Funnel

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What I would teach is that in your funnel, you only need four pieces of content. And your four pieces of content have to answer four questions. Why do anything? Why do this thing? Why do this thing with you? And why do this thing now? And that last one's a bitch because that's the urgency and the scarcity. You know what I mean? They're like, okay, I got it. Megan's the best. Like, that's the one where, you know, we as entrepreneurs have to kind of assert ourselves the most.

Show Opening And Host Intro

Meghan 0:31

Welcome to the Kind of a Big Book Deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Megan 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. Y'all, we are in for H greet today. I have invited my friend Nick Wolney to the pod. So Nick is a classically trained French hornist by education, but actually he's the managing editor at CNET Group, where he oversees the Prospectives franchise and written branded content across CNET Group's publications. He was previously a senior editor for CNET's Money Team and outside of CNET Group. He's the finance columnist for Out Magazine. He's written for Fast Company, Business Insider, Fortune, Entrepreneur, and the Advocate, as well as provided broadcast commentary for CNBC, Good Morning America, and basically everywhere else that you would want to be featured. He writes to Financial Issues, a newsletter about business money and queer culture. And his first book, y'all, Money Proud, The Queer Guide to Generate Wealth. I love it. Money Proud, the Queer Guide to Generate Wealth, Slay Debt, and Build Good Habits to Secure Your Future came out last December. And Nick, you are the first person to put very subtly your face in the title of a book. So this is a new one for me. So I was I just thought that was so cute when I saw it.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah.

Meghan 2:42

So Nick, welcome to the pod.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Meghan 2:47

Of course. So we have a long history. So we were in a business entrepreneurial group in like 2020, 2021. And then when I actually taught platform building in a membership, you were one of our members. So I want to start way back there and talk about what you learned when you were in the membership. The membership no longer exists, but I still teach about platform, especially on this pod. So I would love to hear like what you learned and maybe how that influenced your journey to becoming a published author.

Meet Nick Wolney And His Book

Frameworks, Platform Tiers, And Consistency

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah. I was in platform builders for a little more than a few months. And actually it was a physical injury where I ended up shutting down most of my business as a result and just kind of needed to reprioritize and focus on my personal health for a bit. And in those few months, I got so much value because you lead with framework the way many winning IP approaches lead with framework and then and really focus on like the adherence to the framework, why the framework works, the context of the framework, things like that. And so in that program at that time, you had a terraced system of kind of like definitions of platforms, you know, platform tiers and various checkpoints and things like that that allowed me as a consumer to not only self-identify where I was in that journey, but also what action steps I could take to get to the next tier rather than to get all the way up to, you know, Kardashian level platform, right? Which feels too distant for people. But to give those kind of actionable steps and also how at various degrees of platform build, your priorities change. I was in one of these smaller earlier stages and have a smaller, more niche audience, which we can get to in a moment. But as a result, much of my work at the time is about consistency of content and beginning very granular and very specific with information delivery and style and context and making it native to respective platforms. So I think that was a lot of it. And I think that a lot of that focus, like I had, I knew I wanted to hold out for a traditional book deal. I knew that there was the option to self-publish. Um, I have been a professional writer for about 10 years now. I know that I can write, I know that I could write the book. It would probably take me a long ass time to write it myself, you know, if I didn't have an editor breathing down my neck, uh, you know, and just did it kind of of my own volition. I could self-publish and blah, blah, blah, and be, you know, Amazon bestseller in a mega niche category so that everyone can be another one bestseller in something. Uh this will be a very shady episode, by the way. Um just I think everyone's ready. Uh, but I also think, you know, but there are there are things that there's um mentorship and distribution opportunities and resources that you cannot buy, uh, that you can only get access to when working closely with a traditional publisher. And I experienced that as well working in professional media. I got into professional media because I felt like my writing had plateaued as a digital marketer and as a writer and as a copywriter. And um I came in to professional media being a professional editor, being like, oh, I got this. And then uh, you know, it became very clear, oh, I don't got this. Um my ass kicked. Um, because it, you know, just like career journalists and career editors and things like that, um, where it was just it was when my writing got so much better so quickly because it's the kind of mentorship uh and just day-to-day interaction that that you can't buy. You can only earn. And so I think that really just further galvanized my desire to pursue a traditional effort. At some point in the future, I didn't have a hard timeline on when that would emerge. Um, but I knew that I had a, you know, I had a topic that I was passionate about and an audience that I felt needed that topic and needed, you know, like a deep uh piece of IP that can really provide foundational knowledge there. Um and I'm really glad I held out. Yeah.

Meghan 7:10

I love that. Okay, so we didn't work together outside of platform builders. So I didn't work on your book proposal, TR, and I did not work on the manuscript. But in the acknowledgements to your book, you mentioned that the deal itself came out of a cocktail conversation. So I would love to hear that story and share it with our listeners.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, yeah. I had had conversations with a number of different people. Um, and I, you know, I had a conversation with a friend who worked in publishing, um, where I was in New York City. I was in New York City for work, and it was like, hey, I'll be in New York City, you know, do you want to let's get a drink or let's get a coffee or something like that? Um, I think I say in the acknowledgments, do the coffee dates, you know, even if you're tired from the flight, do the coffee dates, do the um do the happy hours, get yourself a little mocktail as needed, you know, just like kind of put in that FaceTime. Um and because I was talking about uh my work at Out magazine, how I'd done the finance column for a little over three years at that time, and not only the reception to that column, um, but just the body of work that we have, the body of data that we have about LGBTQ people and their financial well-being. And how I felt that's really underreported, and also felt from a service journalism perspective, um, that that information can help a lot of queer people, and it can also help a lot of allies in general be more aware of the various ways that that shows up for people. Um, I joke that my column in Out magazine is often sandwiched between two man spreads, you know. So it's like it's quite performing because I, you know, there's Anthony's abs, look at like the Rocky Mountains, and then there's me, you know, inflation, uh, and then there's, you know, looking for the beautiful fashion spread, right? It's an entertainment magazine. Um, and so part of what um I have focused on with that column uh is delivering it in a way that is appropriate for an entertainment magazine to have a finance column, right? And like what is the style of that? What is the voice and tone of that? Unfortunately, that's kind of similar to my voice and tone in general in my writing and in my work, but really meeting people where they are in that, you know, and and also contextualizing and providing some of that data and doing some reportage and some journalism, making people aware that queer people have more debt, we have less in savings, we experience various aspects of discrimination. I say in the introduction of the book, money is not different for queer people, but our lives are different. And so that inherently changes our relationship to money. Uh, and so yeah, we had this conversation, and this person was like, Hey, I'm I can introduce you to someone. Um, and that person introduced me to another person who introduced me to another person. And so for me, it was quite a quick process because I don't say that to be like, ooh, look at me.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Although, woo-hoo, look at you.

Why Traditional Publishing Mentorship Matters

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, yeah. Um, but you know, yes, it's so not from a place of ego, but rather from a for me, the agent and the proposal kind of came together at a similar point. And the urgency around my particular book deal was we feel like there is not a book that covers this on the bookshelf right now, and we want to go and claim that niche. And so there was urgency in um, you know, getting the proposal up, getting the proposal ready. There was urgency in articulating the value of the market. Um, for many, you know, many young people identify as queer. That's actually what's driving up the Gallup data point so much, is that Gen Z and millennials identify as queer in much higher numbers. And it's almost like we've um, I said it on an interview earlier this morning, we've skimmed some of the stigma off the top. We've skimmed some of that stigma cream off the top, and now it has emerged that more people are queer than previously thought, and that they're willing to say that in phone surveys and things like that. And so this is actually a much bigger market, and this is something that impacts a much greater number of people. Um, and so my deal had like an urgency to it. Um, I had seven months to write the manuscript, uh, which if you're not a professional writer, I don't know if I would recommend that timeline because it's fast. It was fast. Uh and I mean it came out amazing. But I had quite a few wake up at 4 a.m. and put in your two hours for the day before, you know, before the workday starts, things like that. Um, but that was to um move quickly and have an overall timeline. So from deal to book on shelf was about 18 months, which is comparatively accelerated for a traditional deal. Uh and so I think that was kind of a lot of the veneer of of my particular process. Um, that I also want to that I want to articulate here is there was urgency to claim the niche. There was market validation that the niche existed, even if it wasn't in something, some sort of like influencership. There were other like external data points and clear evidence that you know, if we don't do this, someone else is gonna come in and do this. And folks aren't gonna be fucking funny like mine is. So they're like, like, let's hurry up and let's go claim this and let's go like actually set the tone. Uh, and let's do this together.

Meghan 12:21

So I love that so much. Yeah, because I think in terms of your standard your turnaround time, I mean, I think that's a little fast, but not like extraordinarily fast. So we usually say six months, and then I would say a standard turnaround time from deal to done is like two years. It can be longer, it can be shorter, but like 18 months is it's expeditious, but not like insane. Um okay. So we talk a lot when we talk about platform in terms of follower count, and you know, I'm just gonna share that you don't have a huge following on social media. I added it up yesterday. It's roughly 15,000 people across platforms. Obviously, you have the news outlets, which are way bigger. How did you overcome the idea that like your follower count mattered so much in getting your deal? How did you and your agent like frame it up or position it?

The Cocktail Conversation To Book Deal

SPEAKER_00 13:09

The well, first my personal shift comes from my background as a queer person and seeing what is happening with many queer creators and influencers, in which they have a follower count, but follower count does not equal distribution. And I also think my experience in media has helped me realize that. Um, I have peers who have a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand followers, they will post a real and the real will get fewer than a thousand views. And so my question there is is that platform? You know, like if you're if you have this audience, but you are reaching a fraction of a percent of that audience, is that platform? Like what like what is the what is our working definition of platform? I think the working definition of platform that I asserted in my proposal is the quality of the audience matters. The conversion of the audience matters. Um, conversion meaning people are actually gonna open the email and then they're gonna click through and they're gonna buy the book and they're gonna buy the book for a friend and they're gonna tell five other friends about it and they're gonna post about it, right? That'll be like really that like that thousand true fans thing that's been around for a while now. Um and and also with with personal finance, I think in queer culture, you know, you don't have people running around saying, like, God, I'm in so much credit card debt, you know, and like some things like that, but it is something that a lot of people grapple with. Um and so what I asserted is that some of those usual social media outlets in which engagement determines distribution might not actually be super powerful for the distribution of this message and of this book. It will be other things like newsletter and um also particularly media outlets. The word that emerged in my proposal process was media genetic, um, which I do not know if that is a word or not. Um okay, great. So we will call it. I've used it. And perhaps it's in and perhaps it's in book culture as well, where it's like, like I can go get a lot of media. I have years of a media rolodex. Um, I sold media previously, you know, when I was when I was self-employed prior to media, uh, you know, so PR and things like that. Like I am aware of the various mechanisms there and how to tailor the message accordingly, and not only to do it at the point of launch, but to do it in an ongoing way. Um, and that was really attractive because it allowed for this kind of PSA energy and this service energy and the ability to, you know, when there's a moment, when it's time to hold up the book and give like the two-sentence pitch um on television, uh, that I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna deliver on that in a way that sells books. Um, and so that is something that was, you know, really inherent in the proposal. Um that yes, audience will continue to grow. Uh, and my audience is growing as a result of the book, and also just as as I focus on social more now, you know, I think in this moment. Um, but I think also really asserting like quality of audience, uh how queer people receive information, how they prefer to receive information, some of the other forces that are potentially at work. You know, there wasn't a full-on SWOT analysis in the proposal, um, but I have a I have like a corporate SWAT energy. Um in terms of like strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, a threat is that something's gonna happen with one of these algorithms and queer people can't get in touch with their audiences anymore.

unknown 16:51

Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

Right?

SPEAKER_00 16:52

So, like, do you want me to have 100,000 followers and not be able to get in front of them or not be able to reach them when it is time to launch the book? Or do you want me to have this you know much more engaged audience and things that are happening behind the scenes in email? Um, you just don't you don't know my continuous stream of consciousness because I'm not posting about it all day long. But that you know, the inbox is quite busy and it's um and it's not broadcasts, it's replies to people, to decision makers at institutions, it's things happening at ERGDs, um, you know, it's looking at deals and things like that. Um, so that's my encouragement of uh for platform. Like if you have a small platform, you do need to figure out how to grow that platform and you need to demonstrate evidence of growth, certainly, because you have to demonstrate market interest. Like that's certainly the most important part of this. Like this is you say this all the time. Um, and I will just back you up here that the publisher cares about selling books. Yeah, the publisher cares, like this is business. The publisher cares about selling books.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

It's really simple. It's just really super simple.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

I will get pitched all the time to do profiles or things like that. And it's like the media outlet what the media outlet wants clicks because clicks equal revenue. And you can have an opinion about that, or you can not have an opinion about that, whatever, but like clicks equal revenue, right? So clicks are going to be a priority for a media outlet because that is literally the revenue driver, and that is literally business 101. Um, and so I think if you can get into that world as you are thinking about publisher relationships, book proposal relationships, things like that, like this is business. What is the business case that is being made here? Um, and that the publisher is going to realize the return on investment from this, rather than you this just being some like pet project or just like, ooh, looky looky, scratch it off my bucket list. They don't give a fuck about your bucket list, okay? They care about selling books. And if you want, like, I like I was joking with someone where I was like, is this what it's like to be pregnant? Because I'm like the whole time writing the book, I was like, I hate this, I hate this. Oh my god, I'm so uncomfortable, right? And now it's come out, and I'm like, ooh, I want another one.

Meghan 19:00

Yes, I I hear that from my pregnant friends. I do, I do. And you forget how hard it is. So it's so easy. I just had a book come out last week, and I was like, oh, right, I remember that summer of writing that book forever. And like, but now I'm just like, I love her. I would love to write another book with her. Meanwhile, last summer I was cursing that bitch out, you know?

Urgency To Claim An Underserved Niche

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Yeah. And now that and also like it's different. I imagine it's different going from zero to one, from one to another one, because with zero to one, there's also like this air of mystery about it, like, oh, let's see what happens here. Um, so now we are seeing what happens. Like the book is out, and they are Harper Collins is watching. Moro is watching to see what happens and what I do with this in the next few months, in the next year, things like that. And if my goal is to come back to them and say, Hey, you want to do this again? You know, uh, and and or you want to do this, like we should this should be a series. Like, look at what's happening here. I have to now it's like there is no way to hide. Um, and I remember that was one of the pieces of advice you gave in that platform builders membership, or perhaps even in some of your um content, where you talked about when you do a self-published, if you do a self-published book and then you try to pursue something traditional later, the performance of your self-published book is going to become the narrative.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Right. And if you haven't, you'll be they're gonna be like, well, why not? You've already done the book part. Um so yeah, what I what I lacked in audience numbers, I have made up for and am making up for in enthusiasm. Uh and like, and my goal is is another book deal. And now that it's out, you know, it's really about demonstrating and continuing to demonstrate that um to the publisher and continuing to bring that audience in in ways that can cultivate super fans and can cultivate those true fans. I've never been um super into vanity metrics or things like that. Um, and I refuse to implement AI in terms of or bots or anything like that in order to juice the engagement. And so it's like, okay, well, how how are we gonna bring them in? And also, how am I gonna make people, you know, how am I gonna win them over that it should be me, they should be my book, you know? You you work with a bunch of finance authors. I can throw this wallet and I can uh hit a finance book or a few finance books, not just behind me, but in the bookstore, clearly.

Meghan 21:27

There's like five right behind me, actually.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Yeah.

Meghan 21:29

As I say that.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

And you know, and I think that's also a piece of market validation is that you know why there's so many finance books is because people are constantly looking for help with this stuff. And I know that from media as well. It's like, wow, we're writing about the same stuff again. Um, and you know, it's because it's popular. We're recording this during tax season. Guess what? People are looking up how to do their taxes now, right? And it's reliable. It is perennial, it happens every single year. Things change every single year.

Timeline Pressure And Delivering Fast

Meghan 21:57

So I'm so glad you brought up the idea of like distribution. As a functional platform, because distribution is really nerdy, but I think it's really important. And I actually made a note to do a distribution episode because I think that's something people don't understand. So we can talk about distribution in terms of the author being able to leverage who they know, the outlets they have access to, the follower accounts they've got on social to distribute their message and like distribute the sales, like the marketing, the promotion, the sales of the book. But we can also talk about like the distribution of the physical book itself into stores. So when we think about that, in terms of that, we're looking at in your proposal, like in order to get this second book deal you want, right, you're gonna have to prove out, you're gonna have to like make good on all the promises you made in proposal number one. So if you were saying that it was gonna be like a groundswell and you were continuing to grow your platform and your audience and continuing to grow, that puts you kind of in the backlist territory. So for listeners who haven't listened to every fucking episode of Spod, backlist is books that are older than a year. And honestly, I was trained on backlist bestsellers because backlist is where publishers make the real money. It's not in the front list. Sure, like you know, Mel Robbins makes Penguin Random House a lot of money, but like, you know, that book's maybe gonna sell still in five years, and that's where they're really gonna start making money. So, what's your plan for that? What's your plan to make this a backlist bestseller?

Rethinking Platform: Quality Over Count

SPEAKER_00 23:26

A lot of my effort is on connecting with those specific bookstores. Like, there's certainly digital effort that I can be doing and I'm doing in an ongoing way where people are relating to me as the author. Um, and in terms of getting all of that machinery really built up so that I am synonymous with the book title. And people know that if they, you know, they want me, they want my framework, they want my approach, then like there is this physical book that achieves that. It's also about really proactively building those relationships with bookstores, looking at doing book events when I travel somewhere, calling the bookstores, asking what it looks like to do a book event, mapping out the year, promoting the book event, asking how to get the book in the bookstore, um, asking how to connect with people, scheduling a visit to a bookstore. I think this is something that, you know, is on my strategic roadmap for the year that I don't know if a lot of authors do this, which is that if you can't do a book event at the store, you should just schedule a meet and greet with all the employees, because the employees are gonna be the one who are merchandising the book, right? If you want your book on a little cute little table in all 20 copies on its little own round table, the employees are gonna do that. So you have to talk to the employees about that. And also, you know, even just walking around bookstores, especially um independent bookstores, people come in and they talk to the employee, and the employee makes a recommendation. They're like, oh, I read this recently, or I did that recently. And I think that is a really important part of the backlist strategy is that word of mouth piece, you know, and just being willing to do it a little at a time, like having one visit at a time, having one relationship at a time to connect with the decision makers. Very much how you would do something like um pursuing a relationship with a company. You know, if you're an entrepreneur who does mainly B2B, you know, it's about befriending the decision maker, befriending, you know, whoever is going to sign off on the budget for the year that's gonna bring you in for to, you know, to speak at something or whatever. Like that is a part of the process. Um, and it is not about, uh so that aspect of the strategy is not so much about getting a number of clicks on my Link and bio or things like that, or getting a certain number of likes on a video that is about the book. It is about number of bookstores being contacted, number of bookstores, you know, being visited, being physically visited, or even, you know, like I'll do a virtual coffee with the book owner. I would love to do that. I'll do a, you know, do a virtual presentation for some of these bookstores. Help them create content that gets their own audience and own community excited. Bookstores are often so connected to their own communities, right? There's a very, there's very activist to have a bookstore. Um, and so even an encouragement of that, I invite anyone listening to this to brainstorm how what you would do to potentially like do a do a webinar or do a coffee chat with someone at a bookstore, you know, a thousand miles away. Um, and how that social capital that can be developed as a result of that can lead to your book being the one that the employees are going to recommend and that they're gonna really actively merchandise on a regular basis, because that's what's gonna be the difference between a few copies selling and them having to order replen every couple of weeks. Um, and so if you can do that, you know, and start to do a multiple of that where you have multiple or dozens or eventually hundreds of bookstores doing that and advocating on your behalf or telling a funny story about when you visited, you know, and you spilled coffee all over yourself. I don't know, those are the things that will get people connected. Um, and I'm like, I'm very, I'm not like in, I'm in like an analog era in marketing. I love it. I'm just like, okay, AI has like eaten everything, got it. Like I'm I'm really feeling the analog thing. Uh, and I don't think I'm the only person who's feeling this way. They're just kind of like, ooh, God, I'm really sick of this computer in my hands. Like, I just, you know, I want to kind of do something else. And that, you know, uh, or even I think of Alex Franzen, or I think of other people who, you know, uh they talk about marketing without social media and how for an increasing segment of entrepreneurs or business owners, for them, social media and marketing are synonymous. Like they can't even fathom marketing without social media. When in fact, there are many other aspects of marketing, both online and offline marketing, um, that have nothing to do with social media and yet dramatically contribute to overall sell-through and things like that. Um, so totally. Yeah.

Meghan 28:01

I think too, if you're listening to this and you don't have a book yet, it's like not the time to approach bookstore owners. That's a great strategy for once you have a book. But before you even write your book or write your proposal when you're in growth mode with your business or you're trying to prove out your IP or develop intellectual property, going to the physical bookstores, especially independent bookstores in your city and where you live, and just looking, especially at the prescriptive how-to section, because it is usually very, very small in an independent bookstore, comparatively to fiction, especially, or memoir even, or celebrity books or whatever, children's books, right? The journal section sometimes can be bigger. I always laugh at when that's funny when like the paper section is bigger than the section of books I work on in a bookstore. But uh, but yeah, so you can look because I think it's always really interesting because whatever that independent bookstore is stocking, they're doing one of two things. Number one, someone has already bought it often over and over and over again, or number two, they think someone's gonna buy it. So you can get a really good idea of what's going on in any general community or space. Airport bookstores. I do a pass-through in airport bookstores every time I fly because I just want to see what they have out. I just want to see what's available. And so, you know, it's always a good thing to just check. The bird has joined us. It is the white-breasted sparrow this hour. So welcome to the bird.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Okay, so it's a bird clock.

Meghan 29:27

It is, it's the most annoying but also amazing thing ever.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

I'm obsessed with it.

Meghan 29:32

Okay, I'm gonna send you the link. We'll put the link in the show notes to the bird clock as well. It's so funny. I had a conversation with a fan and I was like, what do you think about the bird clock? And they're like, You have to keep it. It's the funniest fucking thing. And I was like, okay, great.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

I love it. Yes.

Media-Genetic Strategy And PR Leverage

Meghan 29:44

So let's switch gears for a second to money because your book is about money. Um so one of my favorite aspects of this book is how systematically, and you don't just do it in a single chapter on mindset, you do it throughout the book. Um, you address and you dismantle a lot of bullshit beliefs that readers might hold about money, either that we absorb from the culture or from our family's origin or like the people we're around. So, for this audience, for entrepreneurs, experts, creators who want a book deal, what beliefs do you think stand in their way that hold them back from actually achieving their goals of like building a platform, writing a great proposal, getting a deal, writing a bestseller?

SPEAKER_00 30:27

I would say there are a couple of things from this book, which is about your money and how that transfers over into entrepreneurship in general. One topic I talk about in the first chapter, which is the chapter on mindset, it's called thought patterns, is this idea of binary perspectives. And that is kind of a queer-coded reference, but on a larger scale, uh thinking in terms of binary, that it either has to be this way or it has to be that way. And those are the only two ways to do it. Um, and so in money, uh like debt equals bad is like a good example of that, where it's just this kind of binary, like it has to be black or it has to be white, and it cannot be anything else. And it's not your fault that you do that. Uh, there is a related book, you know, longtime bestseller, Thinking Fast and Slow, by the by the late Daniel Kahneman, um, where he talks about how like your brain is actually wired to make a snap decision when possible, because that saves energy. Uh, and so for many things, you'll just make a snap decision or you'll make a snap conclusion, um, and you know, kind of close the door on something so that you can just move on to the many other things that you're thinking about in any other given time. Like it's a very, very uh uh compelling to just hurry up and make a decision. And I think that's also reinforced by productivity culture in general. And sometimes that holds you back. You are in this fixed conclusion about one aspect of your business or another aspect of your business. It's like, oh, there's, you know, I can't, I can't find anyone to sell to, or you know, things like that. Okay, have you picked up the phone? Have you asked? That is one thing that absolutely emerged for me in the last six months with getting ready for the launch, is I had to stop being uncomfortable with making requests. I had to make requests every single day of people for various things. And if they said yes, then I will request something else. Like I grew up being told, don't ask too much, don't push too much, don't wear out your welcome.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Don't bother people. Yep.

Defining Platform As Conversion

SPEAKER_00 32:28

And I think that's true for a lot of people. Like it's this just kind of um uh manners thing. And uh like that is not gonna fly with a traditional book launch. You have to make requests, you have to get into people's DMs and just, you know, seek out information and ask, and if they're down for it, you know, just sharing yourself and sharing your vision and things like that, or whatever that next action step is or that next request step is, um, taking the time to do that. And also people change their minds over time. I think a lot of people think differently about certain aspects of an industry than they did two years ago. And so perhaps it's kind of going back and speaking to them again. Um, you know, at CNET group, I'm in the sponsored content division. And so we work much more closely with sales than editors and writers do per se. And just to see the general mentality of a salesperson, you know, that it is, you know, it's like it's an outreach game, it's a numbers game. It's just talking to people, it's airing on the side of talk. It's you know, never eat alone, Keith Farrazzi, right? If you haven't read that book, that's a great book to read to kind of get you in the mood of um of reaching out and making those requests. And I think that that's something for entrepreneurs to take away, particularly at this time when artificial intelligence is reshaping a lot of things in online marketing in particular. Uh, it's a very good time to connect to who you are and what is that thing that makes you different and what is that thing that makes you human and relatable? Because that's going to be the thing that people connect with. And again, anyone who has corporate clients or anything like that, like that, they know you're batting the you're batting the ball back and forth for months on end, right? Because you have to go through all these lines of budget approvals and blah, blah, blah, you're to bring you in. And so, in the interim, um, like something that you're cultivating is that the person inside that company can be a champion for you, not only what you do, but who you are and how you show up. Uh, I think that is going to become increasingly important. Um, and so much of this book, the reason that much of this book focuses on mindset related to money is because I feel that is what shapes so much of our approach and our mentality around money. Um, we have to do a lot of unlearning initially, depending on what your upbringing was. Uh, I think for for queer people, there is sometimes a distance that is desired from aspects of money culture because money culture is often really entrenched in purity culture. And so actually recasting this vision of what our relationship to money can be. Uh, you know, I like a both and approach. I want you to go and have a great time and get your little YOLO fantasy on. I also want you to be saving the money in the background. That way, that actually gives you peace of mind, that things are gonna be okay. And it's not this supernova thing that you're just, you know, I'm not gonna be around for a long time, so I'm gonna be around for a good time. You know, I actually think we can cast a bigger vision than that. Um, and I talk about in the introduction, uh, as a, you know, as a young gay kid growing up in the 90s, um, I didn't really see any elder gay people because so many of them had passed away from the AIDS epidemic and things like that. I didn't have examples of gay people living long, illustrious lives. Uh, and I think that's true for a lot of people in my community. And now that we, you know, now it's you know, which RuPaul's drag race franchise are we gonna watch in the retirement world? RuPaul can put it in the budget.

Meghan 36:03

Um I literally heard a think piece this morning. It's like, is drag gone too big in Seattle? Like, have we lost the drag? Like, has drag gone grunge is the way they put it. And I was like, you gotta be kidding.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

I love that um that that uh niche of a think piece exists, right? It's so it's it's a very cool place to be in. And it, you know, we are gonna live these long, illustrious lives. I also thread in a lot of queer history into just my platform work in general. And one reason I do that is that I want to remind myself and my audience that queer people have been around for a very long time and we are going to continue to be around for a very long time. And so it is important that we learn how to handle the currency of our lifetimes, which in this moment is money, uh, and so that we can we can cultivate the life that we want, and that we need to experience life now to understand what we like and what we don't like so that we can maneuver accordingly. Um, quite often in entrepreneurship, there's you know, people who use, you know, a long haul flight as like an analogy for something. You know, you want to, you want to get it right, don't be two degrees off, you'll end up in a different city. Uh and and I think that's kind of true for our lives as well. You don't just want to be saving like crazy uh and then get almost to the finish line and be like, oh crap, I didn't want this at all. Um it also comes for time in media. I, as an editor, I oversaw a vertical that covered fire culture, financial independence, retire early culture.

Meghan 37:34

And these are edited a lot of fire books back in the yeah.

Business Case Thinking For Proposals

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Yeah, with this extreme saving culture, which just has like an inherent like voyeurism to it. Um, people saving 50 to 90 percent of their income over a period of years in order to retire way ahead of schedule. Um, and what's you know, in just in in terms of doing ongoing research of that vertical in the subreddit, you know, they they they get the money, they get the financial independence, but they lose a lot of other things along the way. They lose their spouse, they lose their family, they lose themselves. They suddenly have all this time freedom and they don't know what to do with it because they didn't ever bother to learn anything about themselves along the way. They just used every waking hour of their existence to work and figured out how to make money while they slept. And so they don't actually know anything else about themselves. And so it is kind of this other existential crisis that emerges. Um and I think that's super interesting.

Meghan 38:26

I mean, I think you can see that there's a lot of analogies in there to entrepreneurship and to people who want to be authors, I think, because you can get this like fire, you can have this like sometimes I think people are Julia Roberts and Runaway Bride, where like they honestly they're like, I want a book deal. And then I'm like, why? And they're like, like her in the egg scene, where they're like, What eggs do you like? And she actually doesn't know. Yeah, like I was like, that's kind of like that answer is really interesting. And I think the long haul flights idea too is a lot of people think, oh, I'm gonna try this marketing strategy on, or oh, I'm gonna try to build a platform, and they think they're strapping in for that 10-hour flight, and they're gosh, strapping in for like a little 45-minute barely pop your ears flight. And it's like, no, no, no, we can make all these small changes along the way. Um, and knowledge is so important in that, so that we can keep like steering the right way and make those two degree differences. Okay, so something we have in common is that we both advocate for and work with people from marginalized communities. Given that you write and speak for people who identify as LGBTQIA plus, what's one belief held by that community that prevents them from landing book deals and getting published?

SPEAKER_00 39:41

From landing book deals. Um let me think for a moment.

Meghan 39:45

Because I can say, like, what I see among black or BIPOC entrepreneurs is that they think traditional publishing excludes them. And so they don't ever actually look at the real data around getting a book deal. And for a long time, for the last five years, it's actually been better for them. Like I can find there's certain literary agents that I have a white male gay client right now. There's certain agents that he wouldn't be diverse enough, right? And that's that agents preference, it's not like a, you know, reverse racism thing, which doesn't exist, but it's it's it's more of a preference. But like, what do you think are the misconceptions among the LGBTIA plus community and even like the non-binary and trans communities about book deals about traditional publishing?

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Much of the book deal is about your transformative idea. And I say this with love if your transformative idea is I'm queer, it's it's not enough. It's it's too one-dimensional. It's like, okay, I'm queer and right, and like here is why this matters, or here is why this approach matters. Um, I was speaking to someone the other day who is like, uh, yeah, I was talking to a, you know, I was talking to someone who uh is a, they're a, you know, they're a health professional, they're a health practitioner, and they work with trans men navigating perimenopause.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

Interesting.

Backlist Strategy And Bookstore Relationships

SPEAKER_00 41:19

You know, and it's like, okay, what you know, the like there, there's an application, there's there's something there that is this, you know, this problem that we need kind of like a deep understanding of or an appreciation of that, you know, that information in particular. Uh and so I still think you need to lead with the idea. And the idea can be about your community and how these topics apply to your community in a different way, or what has been some of the different barriers or some of the different obstacles. Um, but articulating that in a very clear way, that it's still about the idea, um, and then it is about you and why you are the appropriate messenger for the idea. When I would teach content marketing, what I would teach is that in your funnel, you only need four pieces of content. And your four pieces of content have to answer four questions. Why do anything? Why do this thing? Why do this thing with you? And why do this thing now? And that last one's a bitch because that's the urgency and the scarcity, you know what I mean? They're like, okay, I got it. Megan's the best. Um, oh, maybe next year, you know, if it's like like that's the one where you know we as entrepreneurs have to kind of assert ourselves the most. But um, yeah, why do anything? So like do I have a problem with my money? Maybe you're maybe, you know, most people can kind of look at their bank account and be like, yes. And then why do this thing? Why do this thing? So that's very distinct between the second and third. Why do this thing and why do this thing with you? So why do this thing is you you actually need to approach your money the way queer people approach coming out, which is that you need to be in truth with yourself, who you really are and what you really want in your life, and then cultivate your life accordingly in order to be in alignment with that. That's what you want. That's why you should do it this way, because that's actually going to give you more um longevity and more sustainability with your relationship with your money. Oh, and by the way, I'm the Out Magazine finance columnist, and here's me on blah, blah, blah, TV here and blah, blah, blah, there, authority, authority, authority. That comes later. That comes in the in that content marketing funnel. At least that's the way I've I historically talked about it.

Meghan 43:34

Well, it comes once you've already got them on board, right? Once you've already got them motivated, because then you're like, you want to go on this, like it's almost like you're going on this hike, and you're like, Oh, you want to go on this hike? Cool. Well, here's the map, and now I've got you to the trailhead. Do you want me to come along with you?

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Yeah.

Meghan 43:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

You sell the idea first and yourself second. And that is true for many other things outside of just a book. I think it also applies. The book. I mean, I you're the expert, so I if you would agree. No, it definitely does.

Meghan 44:03

And I think too, like if you ran your book through that, right? Like it'd be like, okay, run me through the questions again. I'm gonna answer them from the purpose of buying your book.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

Yeah. Why do anything?

Meghan 44:12

Uh you know that you have debt, want to generate wealth, don't have good habits around money, and your future's fucked. That's all from your subtitle. So second question, please.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Uh why do this thing? Why do it this way?

Meghan 44:29

Uh why do it that way? Because it's a book, so I'm not having to talk to somebody uh about my finances. I don't have to reveal it to anyone but myself. And it is only about$24. So two cocktails.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

I have an Easter egg about that. Let's come back to it after the four questions.

Meghan 44:45

Okay. Third question.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

Why why do why do this thing with me?

Meghan 44:50

Because of all those credits you just gave.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

Why do this thing?

Meghan 44:54

And uh presumably you're like me, because if I'm reading this, I am a ident a self-identified queer person or ally, or I just like the queer vibe. And so I'm in here and I I identify with it. My identity is then connected to your identity.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

And then why do this thing now?

Meghan 45:11

Probably there's a pain point. So for me financially, I had to actually declare bankruptcy in like 2009. Yeah, and it was actually because of a book. So I edited this book called The Ten Commandments of Money by Liz Weston. Do you know Liz by chance?

SPEAKER_00 45:26

I know of it. I know of it.

Meghan 45:27

She's like, Liz Weston's like an OG. She was like the MSN money person, which will tell you exactly how old this book is. So Liz, in her book, she said something like, Oh, if you couldn't, I can't remember, I'd have to pull it out. I still have the book, I think. But you'd have to like, if she's like, if you can't make your credit card like this, you need to consider bankruptcy. And I was like, okay. So I was like, well, I guess I'm gonna consider bankruptcy then. And so I went to breakfast with her in New York. And I was like, so I just actually filed for bankruptcy because of your book. And she was like, What? And I told her, and she was like, Oh my god, she's like, Yeah, it's probably the right thing. And it was absolutely the right thing. Yeah. Um, because I was underpaid by Penguin for so long and didn't have good, and I was shamed for being a spender, which also I was like, this bull. I know now it's bullshit, but it just was really interesting around um like I didn't make enough money not to have to declare bankruptcy. Yep. But like it also like that book, when I read that, I was like, oh shit, that's me, and let me go do that now, right? So I think that's the answer to that. Um, okay, so that just that's a really awesome framework for everybody listening to this because the people listening to this do need to grow an audience, they do need to be better at content marketing. And I think I'm so excited to have this recorded. I had to remind myself not to write it down as we were recording this podcast because I was like, I can go check the transcript a little while to grab it. Because I just think it's uh such good advice. So thank you for the free advice. Okay, so I want to ask you, I have two more questions for you.

Analog Marketing And Community Ties

SPEAKER_00 47:05

I'll tell you the Easter egg. In the so when I submitted the manuscript, the first sentence of the book is it's time to come out about your money. And I saw it and you know, in the typeset, and uh, Mauro hated me because I gave so many edits in the typeset because I just, I don't know, maybe I'm just a visual learner, but I was just like, well, we do say all this differently. Uh, but we got there. Um but for me, what I reflected on is what you just said, where I actually don't need you blabbing to everyone about your financial situation. You know, I think that has a transformative quality as well. Like they what Hannah Williams does over at Salary Transparent Street. She's the TikToker who, you know, she she asks people their salary on the street. Um you have seen her videos. Yeah. Um, I don't think you need to do that to transform your relationship with money. And so we edited that first sentence. And the final is it's time to come out to yourself about your money.

Meghan 48:04

I love that. Yeah, because you don't need to. I mean, I felt very comfortable with Liz. I trusted Liz. I wanted her to know the impact of the work before the book was even out.

SPEAKER_03 48:12

Yeah.

Meghan 48:13

Um, and yeah, but yeah, it was uh it was something that was, and I worked with Farnish Therabi. She was one of my first clients in my business, and she's a personal finance person, and we talked about it too.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

She's my um poll quote, she's my poll quote on the back cover.

Meghan 48:27

I love Furnish. Yeah, she's wonderful. But yes, so yeah, but I think it's really, really important to know that and to understand kind of what why your reader is gonna come to the book. Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs and experts who want to write a book don't actually know that. Don't actually like they say me, me, me. They don't actually understand what other people are trying to do and what other people are doing. Okay, so one last question for you. This is the final question that I ask every guest on the show, given that our audience is entrepreneurs, experts, and creators who want to get a book deal, but who do likely need to prove out their concepts, grow their audience, get great at content marketing, you know, build an author platform, build that distribution for their future book. What is one piece of advice you would give from your journey?

Browsing Stores For Real Market Signals

SPEAKER_00 49:21

Practice often. Practice publishing often. And what I mean by that, my my background is in classical music. I talk about that in the book, where like I have truly played a lifetime's worth of scales and arpeggios on the French horn. Right. Here it is, it's year 13, and I'm still playing the same fucking etude, right? That I played an all-state audition in sixth grade, right? You know, so it's like there are there are times where it will feel pedestrian or it will feel boring. Um, but taking the time to really do that work and be consistent and make small iterative adjustments. I think about, you know, like I'm not I'm not a Mr. Beast fan per se, but there was a few years ago, like his marketing team gave a prep presentation at some marketing conference where they showed that they split test like 20 different thumbnails on his videos, right? Like just and truly in in uh in advertising and marketing in general, like it's so math mathematical, it's so um A B test oriented, you know, it's so red button, blue button, split test it, this and that, and this and that. And that takes time. Um and you also need to figure out how to produce and publish quickly and consistently and at a high level. Um, I don't outsource my social media. Uh, like the moment I am in right now is like this is this is the messaging moment. This is the time to attract people and bring people in and you know, and to answer those four questions um for my audience in that way and to get very, very clear about that. Um, I have a Beyonce story. Oh, great. I was like, oh, but I could get a beyond one.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

Oh my god, we have it go on. I mean, I love that. Okay, that is gonna be the clip. That is gonna be the clip that goes on Instagram to promote this episode.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

I was thinking this whole time, I'm like, I want to have a Beyoncé stuff. Like, I don't because I have, I don't know, just like I'm a I'm a Beyonce fan. Um, okay. So she did this cover interview, and I apologize. It was in either Allure or L. She did a cover interview, and it was hilarious because she like replied to questions via email, and that's like cover story, like because it's Beyonce, like she doesn't need to do the interview live.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

She doesn't need to actually sit there with the reporter.

Mindset Shifts: Beyond Binary Thinking

SPEAKER_00 51:33

Exactly. Okay, so she told this story. This is so important. This is the most important moment of this podcast episode. Okay. So in 2009, Beyonce uh asked her team to sit her down and teach her Final Cut Pro, which is the video editing software on a Mac. And the reason she had them teach her, like she was worth like a hundred million dollars at this point already. Um, she it's not like if she wanted people to do her videos for her, she could have just like hired, you know, 50, 100 people in order to just do that. But she wanted them to teach her so that she understood video editing because it would inform her vision of how she wanted to express herself. And we see this uh articulation point in Beyonce's discography, because then she comes out with Life Is But a Dream, and then later she comes out with, you know, just just her video, like the Beyonce self-titled album, and like all the videos come out at once. Like there's a moment where Beyoncé becomes much more like videocentric in her creative work, and much more visual, like much more visual, like less MTV visual and more, you know, lemonade visual, more theatrical. This like mixed media where like I believe this is me projecting, but that her fluency in the craft of video informs her vision. And I believe, I think that's actually how I want to answer that question, is that in your platform building, you have to love craft, you have to care about craft and do it consistently and frequently. And you need to find within yourself what you enjoy about craft work. I love making vertical videos. I love it. You know, it's just I love the craft process of it. I think it's because I'm a classical musician by training, and I just love all of that little just details and opportunity to express yourself and the fluency that I've developed in that, it actually changes how I articulate my message. Um, you know, I am scripting my videos and posting my videos and doing my social media thing or doing my platform building thing with all of that in mind. I am not exporting a bunch of, I'm sorry, but a bunch of shitty ass Zoom clips that I'm exporting to someone I hired on Upwork so that I can say I posted 10 times a day, so that I can check my little boxes and say I was so productive. No. You know, like be better with it and like craft, care about craft, you know, be and and we're all like, oh, I love Beyonce. You love Beyonce because Beyonce loves craft.

Meghan 54:15

And Beyonce loves herself and she values her message.

SPEAKER_00 54:18

She does. Yes.

Meghan 54:19

And like that's the other thing. She like the all these smart people, these smart women, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, any of these people, like they are really invested not only in themselves and the product they put out, but in their teams and in the people that help them and in their colleagues and in their network and all of those things. It's like super, like you said, analog, high-touch, relationship-based, all of those things. And so I think a lot of people think, okay, I gotta grow this platform so I can get this book deal. And all of that is inherently kind of selfish, and selfish isn't bad, but like it's it's still me, me, me, versus, hey, I'm gonna do these things to the authors that I've seen be really successful. Yes, they're going after a goal that they've set for themselves, whether that's a financial goal, a business goal, a follower account, all of the above. But like, they also are like showing up to serve their audience and they're enjoying the process of content creation and they're enjoying. I like photo shoots, I like podcasts, I like fucking filming reels on my windowsill, I like popping off. I watched a JVN ice skating video on YouTube earlier today and literally thought about emailing my social media person and being like, yo, we should go do this just for fun. But like, I was just like, let's go do something fun, like, you know, and and I can educate at the same time. And everybody wins in that environment. Do you know what I mean? And it's not just about me, it's not just about them, it's a collective community, you know, it's an reciprocal exchange.

SPEAKER_00 55:54

I think what it also does is it's creating for humans, not robots. And it's creating for humans and not machines, right? There it's very easy to fall into the trap of creating for the machine, creating for the algorithm, creating for what the algorithm will like, creating for uh, you know, these needles to move in this way. That's certainly true for writing. There is a style of online writing that is more attractive or less attractive to algorithms. And so we've lost some of that really beautiful, syrupy literary stuff over the years in digital media publishing. Um but I think particularly at this moment where we're having kind of an existential thing with AI and whatnot, and you know what that means for us as creatives, um, reconnecting to creating for humans. Yet, like you want to do that ice skating thing because you want it, you want it for your team, and you want to share your enthusiasm about it with the people who are watching you. You know, the bots that are scraping us on these platforms aren't gonna give a shit that you went ice skating. But the person who's watching the video is gonna care about that and that helps them relate to you. And um, and I think that that is it's a very good North Star as people platform build um to find love in the work. Because, you know, if if sharing your message feels like a pain in the ass, ooh, it's gonna be an uphill battle. So you better figure it out.

Make The Ask: Requests Drive Launches

Meghan 57:22

And I think in terms of the binary we were talking about before, you might surprise yourself. You might think, oh, I hate social media or I hate this or I hate that. And it's like you might surprise yourself. You might be like, oh shit, like I have a communication studies degree. Most of that undergraduate work was in speech and presenting and rhetoric. And guess what I get to do now? I do speaking, I do rhetoric. You know what I mean? And so it all comes full circle in many, many ways. Nick, it has been wonderful to have this conversation. I know it's been really helpful to our audience. You dropped some real gems around content marketing, some real great gems around money. You gotta go get this book, y'all. Money Proud by Nick Molney. Uh, and I am so, so excited. Yes, let's go in together. I love it. Okay, so y'all, until next time, cheers to your success. And honestly, Nick, cheers to your success. I'm so, so excited uh for your book to be out in the world and for all of this uh to be happening for you.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

And thank you, and cheers to yours as well.

Meghan 58:24

Thank you. 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 MeganStevenson.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.