From IT to Publishing: Kim Eley on Writing Books, Creativity, and Finding Your Purpose

In this episode of Books4Guys, Chris sits down with author, publisher, book coach, and founder of KWE Publishing, Kim Eley, to discuss writing books, publishing, creativity, storytelling, entrepreneurship, AI, and helping people finally share the stories they have inside them.

Kim shares her journey from working in IT to building a successful publishing and book coaching business focused on helping authors turn their ideas into finished books. Although she originally studied English, Kim found herself building a career in technology before eventually realizing she wanted to pursue work that felt more meaningful and aligned with her passion for writing, creativity, and helping others.

The conversation dives into:
 • What it really takes to write and publish a book
 • Why so many people struggle to start writing
 • The emotional side of creativity and storytelling
 • How book coaching and ghostwriting work
 • The growing role of AI in publishing and writing
 • Why authentic human stories still matter
 • The importance of finding your unique voice as an author
 • Building confidence as a writer and creator
 • Entrepreneurship, purpose, and career transitions

Kim also discusses her books, including From Mess to Message: 10 Steps for Writing Your Book and Tickers: What Makes People Tick and Pursue a Career They Love. She shares insights into the publishing process, working with nonfiction and children’s book authors, and how KWE Publishing helps aspiring writers move from uncertainty to becoming published authors.

Chris and Kim also explore:
 • The challenges of balancing creativity and business
 • Why writing a book is much harder than most people realize
 • The importance of community and collaboration for authors
 • How AI should and should not be used in writing and publishing
 • Why every person has a story worth sharing

Books discussed during the episode include:
 • Who Moved My Cheese?
 • Finding Your North Star by Martha Beck
 • The Babylon Blueprint by David Hancock

If you are interested in books, writing, publishing, entrepreneurship, creativity, personal growth, storytelling, or becoming an author yourself, this episode is packed with practical insights and encouragement.

Connect with Kim Wells Eley:
 • KWE Publishing: https://www.kwepub.com/

Subscribe to @Books4Guys for conversations focused on books, leadership, personal growth, entrepreneurship, creativity, wellness, and helping people become better readers, thinkers, leaders, and professionals. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Okay, cool. And I saw where so I actually didn't really realize this before doing some research on just your background, but like Morgan James with David Hancock and and I David and I had lunch just a couple weeks ago.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Awesome. He's amazing. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

He is amazing. That's the response I get from anyone that works with them. They're like, David's the best.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

He really is. He's just fabulous. So hey, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

It is very cool. But no, Kim, great to have you on the Books for Guys podcast and excited to talk with you. As you have you do a lot of things. You publish books, you coach individuals on how to write their books. You run your own stuff. And I mean your background, you came from technology in a lot of your work. And so just to tell a little bit about your story. How did you progress from that career over to a life of books?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah, thank you so much, Chris. Well, I always jokingly say I was an English major. So of course I went into IT after I graduated because doesn't every English major. It was a great career and I enjoyed it. I love IT. I'm fascinated by tech. But the biggest thing that was a draw for me, Chris, was that a lot of people in tech don't enjoy writing. So it was like job security. I always like to say I was able to translate IT into English. And so it was great. And then one day we had layoffs at work. And I was fortunate I didn't get laid off, but most of my team did. And I was like, I'm good at what I do. Am I doing what I'm really put on this earth to do? And that kind of shook me out. I always like to say it took me out of my sleepwalking mode. And I was like, what do I really want to do? I decided I wanted to write a book about people who do what they really love for a career, really just for me to figure out what I wanted to do. And it ended up being very meta. Um, people after that, after I wrote and published my book, go, I would pay you to help me write and publish my book. And I'm like, what? So that's how I got into publishing.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

It sounds like everything just kind of came to fruition organically and kind of you were able to just to kind of jump on the wave of what you were interested in doing and and the path would the path opened up for you.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

It really did. It was amazing. And so I started as a side hustle. And then in uh November 2017, I took the big leap. And uh I've been doing this full time ever since.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Yeah, that is incredible, and that is so awesome because I can see the excitement and even like looking at your website and finding some videos of you, I could just see like just how happy you are doing this. And I I can imagine it's very rewarding working with somebody on something that they maybe it's not something they do naturally. You know, I don't think anyone well, some people do, but most of us are not ready to to write a book or we don't really know how to do it properly, and to have someone that brings that excitement to the work for us, I'm sure it makes a huge difference with everyone you work with.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Thank you for saying that. And I think it does. I think often we're so focused on because it is, it's a lot of dang work to write a book, right? I think it's important, very similar to starting your own business as well. When you're starting a book, you need to have that excitement and that engagement because there's gonna be days that aren't as much fun as others, right? Requires that commitment. It's not just a, hey, I sat down one day and wrote a book. No, it it's a lot of work. So having that excitement and having that support, I think makes a big difference for our authors.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah. No, I can see that. I can see that. Well, I've got a couple of questions I want to go down, but I'd like for you at first, I would love for you to just kind of brag on yourself for a moment. So I know you've got you've got multiple books out. Can you talk a little bit about each of them and what they're geared towards and who they're for?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Absolutely. The very first book I I wrote and published is called Tickers, What Makes People Tick and Pursue a Career They Love. And that was the one I was sharing with you. That's what got it all started. It's so funny. I'm always like, don't look at my cover. Because I did that when I first got started, and I haven't gone back to revise it because I've been working with other authors and improving their covers. So I'm always like, don't look at it. But I'm proud of that book because it was um 11 different people, one couple I interviewed, all different walks of life. They just absolutely love what they do. So that really got me started. I'm always telling our authors, I'm like, you should really write a book about what you do so that you can, you know, share with others. And somebody went, Kim, have you written a book about what you do? No. So I just I was like, busted. Okay. So I decided to write and publish my book. And it's called From Mess to Message: 10 Steps for Writing Your Book. And um, I really had a lot of fun with that. Actually, how that came about, and I like to share this with authors because I'm like, this is an easier way to write a book. It started with articles I was writing for an online um magazine, and they had asked me to write a series of articles about, you know, writing a book. And after I finished the series, I was like, I can make a book out of this. So that that's how that turned into from mess to message. And um, I've done a couple of ebooks with a dear friend also named Kim. And it these are like photographic um uh uh prompts for writing. And one is called Two Weeks in Barcelona, and the other one is called Two Weeks in Portland. And Kim Brundage is a professional photographer. She took all the pictures. And what I did was took the prompts, the photos, created prompts from them to, you know, just kind of jumpstart people's creativity.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's all I and we'll make sure your link is in the show notes so everyone can go find your books and these articles because I was looking through them and they're very cool. And as I was saying, you can just see like they your website just screams like positivity and excitement and happiness. And I'm like, I can't wait to talk to Kim. This is gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

But yeah, from Mess the Message, I love the title of that book because a lot of authors that I talk to, you know, they kind of talk through their process, especially their first book, and they're like, man, like where do I start? I I write a lot of notes, I don't really know how to structure it or edit it. And so uh I love the title of that because I've learned there's a lot that goes into putting your story out there. Um that was kind of where the next question I was gonna ask you is just so obviously you've been approached to help people with their books, but how do you personally determine who you work with? Because you've only got so much time, and I'm sure you still you have projects that you're working on and writing on on, you know, with your passion and interest, but how do you determine, I guess, how many people and who to work with when you're approached?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, so when it comes to uh who we're gonna work with, we always ask for a writing sample. So I usually have a conversation with a potential client to, you know, get a feel for what they're interested in. Then I ask them for a writing sample. And um, you know, we we we always say we're not looking for perfection, but what we're looking for is to see your writing style. We always like to say we'll we'll meet you where you're at. Meaning, you know, it could be somebody has um a great story, they just really need to tighten it with some developmental editing, or somebody may have a you know, great story developmentally, but you know, that has a few typos and some things that could be reworded. No worries about that. We are just looking for that engagement. We usually work with nonfiction and children's books, although we have worked with a few fiction authors as well. But we're looking for somebody who's passionate about it and has a pretty good idea of a narrative. We do work sometimes, I work as a ghostwriter. So we have had some authors that we've done ghostwriting with. And so that's a little bit different. But yeah, and as far as how many projects we take on, I have a small but mighty team. Um we have uh uh another fellow um book coach and editor, Emily. And then um we also have um an amazing lady on our team, Jean, who is our, I gave her a fancy title, VIP marketing concierge. Uh and also we have a new team member, Christina, who's gonna be working with us as a book coach and editor. All of us read the feedback, you know, read the writing samples, and then we give feedback to the people who have submitted it to us. And we like to do that because not only do we want to make sure that they're a good fit for us, we also want to make sure that the potential client feels like we're a good fit for them so they can read through the feedback that we've given and decide if they feel like, you know, we're gonna be that support and it and have the insights that they need.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah. No, that's awesome. And well, and it sounds like it sounds like business is growing to where your team is growing and you have a lot of people to work with. What's the typical, I guess you don't have to give me like exact numbers, but from like a workload standpoint, like how many people reach out to you all for help um in in a given year or a month? Like how many at one time are you sorting through to determine will we be able to work with this many people or this particular person or not?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Yeah, usually per month we end up with about 10 to 15 inquiries at any given time. And and this sounds kind of like nuts, but we we usually have about, I'm gonna say um 25 to 30 people that we're working with. Now, having said that, they're in different stages. Like, for instance, we we just had two authors who launched their books last week. Yeah. And we have a couple of uh people who we just onboarded, and then we have people who we're working with. And often when we're working with authors, they are writing their chapters, they share them with us, we edit them in either Google Docs or Word, and then we hop on a call together. So, you know, we have a a lot of authors who are in that stage where they are busy working on their books, and then we meet with them either weekly or every other week.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Got it. And how long, so say someone like myself says, hey Kim, I I've got an idea. I want to, you know, put together this book. Here's my sample, here's my thoughts. You know, from from start to finish, if you determine, hey, Chris, this is great, like let's let's work together, put this, let's get this thing out there. What's the what's the duration? Does it take a year? Does it take two years? How long does that whole process take from start to being able to hold a physical copy of a book?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah, it all depends. I know it depends, but uh on the length of the book and also how much some the author has written ahead of time. On average, I would say for us, it's usually about six to nine months. Having said that, some people are, you know, they've come to us, they've already pretty much written their book. We've done them before in three months. And then some books are pretty heavy duty. We had a book uh launch um uh two weeks ago, so excited about this book, and it took 16 months. It was an anthology of different stories from different families, and so that took a ton of coordination between me and the author. And wow, she just knocked it out of the park. The longest book we've had, and this is out of the norm, was about four years. And that was a book. She's a beefy book. It's a book that we did with a uh medical expert and a dietitian. And um that puppy took a good long time, but that's that's kind of the outlier. It does take a little bit longer for children's books because we're usually helping our authors to find an illustrator, and of course, we allow for the time for the illustrator to do their work. So those are usually more like about a year to a year and a half.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I've I I you know, I doing this podcast, I get to talk with so many different people in this space, and I always learn something new though. Yeah. Just because, you know, like you said, style of book. Is it a series? Is it fiction, nonfiction? How much research do you have to do to to you know get this put together properly? Or, you know, what are you writing about? What's the topic? It's just there's so many factors, but it's always just interesting to know what a process looks like. Because I again I know people put a ton of work in to put this product out there for people to read, and everyone wants it to be perfect and you know, everything look right, learning, you know, how to how to get the right cover art and how to organize it. It's just things that a lot of people don't think about when they're just reading and enjoying it.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Chris, you're so right. There's so many different, I always call it moving parts. There's different decisions to make between, like you said, the cover and you know, even deciding what categories to put your book into, the keywords that you select, ensuring, you know, especially with with children's books, have you identified the right, you know, ideal reader range? So many different things. Um, I think people don't realize that they're just like, oh yeah, I have a book. And it's like, you know, it's a lot of work that goes into it.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah. You mentioned ghostwriting, and I know that seems to be something that's more popular as people maybe they can talk their thoughts and have someone else put it together, you know, better for them. Have you seen that from your side as far as people reaching out saying, like, hey, I'd love to do this. I don't want to write though. Like, can somebody just listen to me and and do this for me?

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Yes. We do see that a lot, especially since we work with a lot of consultants and coaches, people who are crazy busy, they just don't have the time. They have a great story, they just don't have the time to sit down and put um pen to paper. So, yeah, we have seen that more in demand.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah, because when you said nonfiction and a lot of the books you work with, I'm thinking of that business leaders, consultants, people who are going 100 miles an hour. And that's where I've always asked them when I meet with them. I'm like, how do you structure your day and time? And like, where do you find the time to add a book into everything else you're doing from speaking and coaching and all this other stuff? It just something I just can't wrap my brain around a lot.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Right? Exactly. We started doing something recently. I hadn't heard of it, um, Chris, until I talked to a friend of mine who's also a ghostwriter, Maggie Mills, and she talked about book doctoring. And I don't know if you've heard of that before.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Oh, what is that?

SPEAKER_01 15:19

It is sort of it's kind of in between book coaching and ghostwriting. It's when you have a subject matter expert who shares, you know, and needs help with the writing portion of it, but um, at least this is my interpretation. Other people might see it a different way. And so the subject matter expert, you know, contributes what they have, the thoughts that they have. And then uh I, as the writer, come in and help to craft their story. So it's not pure ghostwriting. I'm doing that right now with an amazing attorney. And um, he's got this process that he's created, but I d I couldn't ghostwrite it because it's so intense. I really need his input as the subject matter expert, but it's been fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Yeah. I didn't think about that from a ghostwriting standpoint. Like obviously, someone may want you to do it, but what they're trying to put out there could be something that just conceptually you're like, don't quite understand exactly your world and what you're trying to say. So I could see where that would be a little challenging. I didn't, I've never thought of that before.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

It's been intense, but it's been really cool. Uh, obviously, there's a lot of collaboration between us. I'm like, I think this is what you mean. And he's like, yes, or you know, we and so we tweak it from there.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Yeah. What has your experience been the last really, I would say the last six to twelve months in regards to AI? I can assume you having that technology foundation, it's probably something you do maybe use or experience in some way or another, but how is that bleeding into the world of of of books and just what are your, I guess what are you what are you seeing and and is there anything you're concerned about with AI?

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's so interesting. I'm glad you asked about that, Chris, because a lot of people are like, they don't even want to mention AI to me. Like I'm gonna be like, ooh, boo. And and AI has its place. I mean, for goodness sake, Grammarly, which many people have been using before AI really became popular, technically is AI. It's it's using an algorithm or using that data to provide support and help. So I like it from that standpoint. The thing we are not crazy about is what we call like generative AI, meaning if you were to prompt AI to say, write me a book, not cool. And candidly, it within this last six to 12 months, we've had fortunately not too many, but more submissions where we're like, oh, this is quite obviously AI, like this is, you know, no bueno. But having said that, you know, we don't mind if people use AI, especially if you're writing your own original story. But then maybe you want to reword a sentence and you need some help with it, or even, you know, run run what you've written through AI and say, do you have any suggestions? I consider that helpful. Just always use it with a grain of salt. One thing we have put our foot down on because we met as a team and made this decision, we will not accept any AI images for children's books because we feel like it's too much like the wild, wild west. We feel like artists are not artists are not getting recognized or getting compensation. So we've we've determined now if somebody comes to us with a children's book and they've already got the AI images, we're like, that's great, you can use that as a storyboard, but we really encourage you to employ a real human being to to illustrate it.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yeah. Well, I think your your approach makes a lot of sense. And I think it's actually very, very welcoming because yeah, I mean, AI is here, so you can't totally be like, you know, we're not gonna use it because it's just that's just not how it can you just can't do that anymore. But I love your approach of saying, like, hey, yes, like let's use it where it makes sense. It can definitely be helpful. Let's not have it type out your entire story over here because that's gonna be obvious and not gonna be as genuine and and readers will know that and it will quickly become something that maybe is reviewed negatively, which would not help, you know, someone's cause or story. I also like the illustration part of it too, like wanting to make sure people get credit for putting in the work to illustrate this story the right way. And that that's very important because again, it'd be very easy and probably cheap and cheesy to do it the other way, but that also gets noticed and it's not, I don't know, it's just not something that's genuine and appreciated as much. You you want to see the work in the book. So I think that's a really good approach you all have.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, we always want and illustrations, as you know, with children's books are so important. So to have those be genuine and authentic and really resonate, holy moly, that makes such a difference.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Yeah. And I think too, I think people, you know, with AI, as helpful as it is, I think there is this shift though of people like wanting to make sure that their work is put out there from them because they want to have that peace out there and before AI takes over everything, you know, they're they're like, I want my story out there and I want my own words used. And there's a a pride that comes with you putting in that work and and having that out there. So I think that's a good thing. And most people probably, it seems, they they do that route with you all. Not not too many people trying to get sly with it, but just for your just a couple more questions for you. Your just your vision of of maybe what the next you know, five to ten years look like for you personally. Do you foresee, I mean, are you working on books of your own that you're working to publish? You know, just what's your vision for KWE publishing? Do you see this growing to where you're working with uh instead of 15 to 20 different authors a month? Are you are you expanding and hey, we're gonna work with as many as possible and we'll grow to meet that demand? Or do you kind of like where you're at? But just just what are your thoughts on what you see for your future?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Well, that's such a great question. What I see is I don't mind growing a little bit. I don't want to grow so large that we can't still have that personal touch. That means a lot to me, and I feel like that's where we differentiate ourselves. You know, I still have the conversations with potential clients. They get to talk to me, the head of the company. And I really like that. I think I I wouldn't mind growing a little bit more, and I would love to take on um a few more. clients and enlarge, you know, our our community. One thing that we've been doing is having like every month we have webinars where we have subject matter experts come and share. And I'd love to do some more of that. I'd love to do some in-person things in the um Central Virginia community. And um heck, it would be really fun to, you know, just have like online training or online, I hesitate to even say training. I'm going to call it edutainment, you know, where it's fun and it's engaging and because I feel like I feel like authors go through a lot of anxiety and a lot of self-doubt and a lot of second guessing ourselves like who am I to write? And you know, all the books have been written and I really like it when people come because I feel like we've been we've anybody who's been called to write a book, you've been called to write that book for a reason. There's an audience for you. You and your neat unique voice will reach somebody I I know there's books that I've read and I may have read like you know dozens of books in that category, but when I read that one author, boom, they got through to me. And that's what I want to encourage authors to know. So figuring out how to grow that excitement and that confidence is something I'd love to do more of in the next five to 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Yeah, that's I I love that just the collaboration and community just how powerful that can be just from a confidence standpoint or or just motivation, you know, to get someone else encourages you to do something, it's a little bit easier to do it then instead of you guessing, you know, should I do this, should I not? But when you have others to lean on and ask questions to really in anything, it makes such a difference. So I think that's really cool that you're trying to create that within your community of authors as well. But Kim, one last question for you. And I love this question because it's kind of unfair but I'm always curious what people are reading. But no I'm always curious to know you know what's a book or two that has meant a lot to you either personally or professionally and what's a book or two that you love to recommend to others?

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Ooh, that love that question. So the first book, well there's a couple of books that really, really got me started. One was Who Moved My Cheese? And that's a fantastic tiny short little business book, but boy, that puppy is powerful. Another one is called Finding Your North Star by Martha Beck. She's an incredible, you know, just super wise. I also took her her she calls it life life life a wayfinder wayfinder training instead of life coach training. I love it. And then here recently David Hancock who I am adore partnering with with uh Morgan James has done the Babylon blueprint and that's a fantastic book. So great. Yeah those those are the books that I give to other people over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah. I love that. Well and I that's why I always ask if if you've read a book more than once or if there's a book you give more than others, like those are the ones I'm adding to my list. Like hey, I I maybe need to read that if someone's willing to read it twice or buy it for someone else. And so but no those are fantastic recommendations. But Kim, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. This is I knew it was going to be exciting just again just based off what I could see from you from afar and it's exceeded expectations. A lot of people will enjoy this and we'll make sure and get all your links posted in the notes so that people can find you and we can't wait to see what all you continue to accomplish and just all the people you work with and all the books you helped put out there is very important and uh and a lot of fun from your side too. And so we're happy to support and thank you again Kim this was so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Well thank you so much Chris I had a blast and I'm grateful. Thank you for the