The Third Act is what readers, writers, and characters have all been waiting for. This final section of the story is the point. It’s what you’ve been building up to all this time. If the First and Second Acts were engaging and aesthetic labyrinths, the Third Act is where X marks the spot. You’ve found the treasure. Now it’s time to start digging. Like the previous acts, the Third Act opens with a bang, but unlike the other two acts, it never lets up. From this point on, everyone is in for a wild ride. All the threads you’ve been weaving up to this point must now be artfully tied together.

The Third Act occupies the book’s final quarter, beginning around the 75% mark and continuing until the end. This is a relatively small portion of the story, particularly when considering all that must be accomplished.

Within the Third Act, we find the final four structural beats:

• The Third Plot Point – 75%
• The Climax – 88%
• The Climactic Moment — 98%
• The Resolution – 100%

 

The Third Plot Point, which we will discuss next week, is the final major turning point within the story. Like the First Plot Point, it does not explicitly belong to either the Second Act that precedes it or the Third Act that follows it. Rather, it creates the threshold between the two. Often referred to as the Dark Night of the Soul, the Third Plot Point is a moment of reckoning in which the protagonist faces the consequences of previous choices and decides how to re-commit to a final pursuit of the plot goal.

The Climax, which we will discuss in Part 11, begins roughly halfway through the Third Act. It signals the protagonist’s final push toward the plot goal and the final confrontation with the antagonistic force. It will decide the outcome of the conflict once and for all, determining whether or not the protagonist will gain the plot goal.

Finally, the Third Act ends with the Resolution, which we will discuss in Part 12. After the conflict has been decided in the Climax, the Resolution offers a last moment to tie off loose ends and show how the characters have been affected by the story’s events.

One reason the Third Act picks up the pace compared to the previous acts is the simple necessity of cramming in everything that needs to be addressed before the book runs out of time and space.

• All of the foreshadowing planted in the previous acts must now be fulfilled.
• All the characters (and other essential playing pieces, à la the Maltese Falcon) must be assembled.
• Subplots must be satisfactorily tied off.
• Both the protagonist and the antagonistic force must have time to actualize the final aspects of their intentions.
• The protagonist must face inner demons and complete the character arc in concert with the final conflict with the antagonistic force.
• Finally, everything must be capped with a satisfying Resolution.

That’s a lot to accomplish in 25% of the book, so there’s no time to waste. In the Third Act, we can see one of the primary benefits of structure: for the story to work, all the pieces in the First and Second Acts must be in place to lay the foundation for the finale.

Paying Off All Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing has two parts: the plant and the payoff. If the First Act was about setting up your story’s playing pieces—characters, settings, and stakes—your Third Act is about utilizing all these elements to their fullest capacity. Sometimes, this can mean returning to settings that haven’t been used since the First Act or reintroducing certain characters.

Most importantly, the Third Act is about fulfilling any expectations you have raised in readers. Some of these may be general expectations. For example, readers may expect an exciting action sequence in the Climax. Or they may expect the romantic couple to experience a Happily Ever After.

They will also expect all of their questions to be answered. In the First Act, you raised many questions to hook their attention. Now that you’ve successfully kept their attention until the end, you must satisfy their curiosity. If a backstory secret was teased earlier in the story, that must be revealed by the end. If tension (sexual or otherwise) was brewing between two characters in earlier scenes, that must come to a head before or during the Third Act. If a specific emotion (e.g., fear, desire, foreboding, grief) was emphasized, then you must make sure you’ve explained its origin and given it space to express.

Remember, the more heavily you emphasize a foreshadowing plant earlier, the more dramatic the payoff should be. If you’ve hinted at that backstory secret over and over again, you will heighten reader anticipation for the reveal. For example, if you’ve indicated a character was traumatized by something in the past, readers won’t be satisfied if the backstory event turns out to be pedestrian. This doesn’t mean you must always go big with your reveals; it does mean the intensity of the foreshadowing should be crafted to match the intensity of the reveal.

Fulfilling Your Character’s Arc

This final quarter of the story is a place of no escape for your characters. Their backs are against a wall, and their only remaining option is to fully confront the antagonistic force. All their reactions and actions in the previous acts have led them to a point where they must face every last one of their weaknesses and mistakes. If they’re to triumph, they must allow themselves to be broken—and then to either rise from the ashes with new wisdom and strength or to fall even further into destruction.

When your characters reach the Climax, they will make a last attempt to obtain both their story-long goal and their deepest Need (which may or may not be the same and, indeed, may even be antithetical). They’re putting all their cards on the table. If they don’t win now, they never will. The stakes are at their highest in the Third Act.

The First Act was where your characters were confronted with a new set of problems that required them to change their way of being. This kicked off their character arcs. The Second Act was where they slowly began learning the ineffectiveness of old perspectives, as well as new modes of being that allowed them to move through the world more effectively. The Third Act is now where these new viewpoints and skills will be tested.

A good Third Act will resonate deeply with audiences exactly because it hammers home the reality that true personal transformation is never easy. Beginning with the Low Moment at the Third Plot Point, the characters will face the consequences of their mistakes. They will learn of the sacrifices they will yet be required to make to finish their transformation and reach their plot goals.

Not all stories will see the characters emerging triumphant from their character arcs. Indeed, in contrast to Positive Change Arcs in which a character successfully transforms, Negative Change Arcs are all about characters who are unable to adapt to a new and more efficacious way of being in the world, leading them to moral failure and probably practical failure within the plot. Whichever type of story you’re telling, you’ll need to set it up in the First Act and pay it off in the Third. (For more about Positive Change Arcs, Negative Change Arcs, and Flat Arcs, see my book Creating Character Arcs and its accompanying Creating Character Arcs Workbook.)

Ending the Conflict

The story ends when the plot ends. The plot ends when the conflict ends. And the conflict ends when the protagonist’s relationship to the plot goal is definitively decided one way or another. Either the protagonist reaches the plot goal and “wins” or fails to reach the plot goal and “loses.” Sometimes, this will correspondingly mean the antagonist loses or wins instead. In such stories, the Climax is usually decided by a confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist—a winner-takes-all final contest.

For Example:

• The antagonist cannot stop the protagonist from achieving the plot goal, as in Star Wars: A New Hope when Darth Vader fails to kill Luke Skywalker before he blows up the Death Star.
• The plot goal is destroying the antagonist, as in Stranger Things when Eleven obliterates the Demogorgon with her telekinetic powers.
• The protagonist and antagonist meet in a mano-a-mano competition, which either may win, as in Rocky when the antagonist Apollo Creed wins the boxing match.

However, the outcome of the conflict may also be more complex.

For Example:

• The protagonist may lose the plot goal but gain a more valuable moral victory, as in Rocky.
• The outcome may not be a destruction of one of the characters but rather a union between them, as in romances in which the love interests represent each other’s antagonistic forces as they work through the relational conflict to reach their ultimate desire of being together.
• The protagonist may “win” the plot goal away from the antagonist, only to realize the victory is compromised, as in The Maltese Falcon, in which detective Sam Spade recovers the priceless artifact but must have his lover arrested.

As we will discuss more in Part 11, the Climax represents a definitive closure of the conflict that halts the story’s forward momentum. Although later permutations of the same conflict may arise in sequels, the story arc shared in this book reaches a conclusive end.

Examples of the Third Act From Film and Literature

Pride and Prejudice: After learning the terrible news that her youngest sister Lydia has scandalously run away with the scoundrel Wickham, Elizabeth returns home from her interlude with Mr. Darcy at Pemberley. The Third Act is a whirlwind of revelations, as Wickham mysteriously marries Lydia and Darcy’s aunt descends upon Elizabeth with demands that she promise never to marry her nephew. The plot and theme in this story are exceptionally tight with no loose pieces. Everything that was set up in the First Act and developed in the Second comes to fruition in the Third, as Elizabeth must recalibrate her opinions of Mr. Darcy in a realization of his worthiness and her love for him. Everything is complicated nicely with the dramatic doubt of whether her folly, not to mention Lydia’s, has forever compromised her ability to be with him.

It’s a Wonderful Life: The Second Act ends with Uncle Billy losing the Building & Loan’s $8,000 and George frantically attempting to recover it. This dramatic event is followed by the appearance of the angel Clarence and his granting of George’s wish to “never be born.” The Third Act is made up almost entirely of George’s exploration of the tragedies that would have filled Bedford Falls without his presence and influence. The main antagonist isn’t present in the unborn sequence that comprises most of the Third Act, although his presence looms large. The focus here is on George’s inner journey and transformation.

Ender’s Game: When Ender is forced to kill fellow student Bonzo, he is pushed to his breaking point. The time has come for him to leave Battle School and command Dragon Army in a larger arena. But after Bonzo’s death, the commanders realize they’re on the brink of losing the boy they’ve been grooming to save the world. Ender is permitted to return to Earth to visit his beloved sister Valentine. While there, he must make the decision that will change not only the fate of the world but also his own life. When he decides to return to space and take his promotion, events are sent into an irrevocable spiral to the Climax.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World: When a convalescent Dr. Stephen Maturin is set loose upon his long-anticipated and long-delayed Galapagos expedition, he accidentally discovers the enemy ship at anchor on the far side of the island. This launches the Third Act in a flurry of preparations. Captain Jack Aubrey formulates his plan to lure the enemy privateer near enough to make the kill. His crew hurries to prepare for the climactic battle that has been foreshadowed since the opening scene.

Top Things to Remember About the Third Act

1. The Third Act begins around the 75% mark.
2. The Third Plot Point ends the Second Act and begins the Third. This plot point may be a reversal of the gains made in the Second Half of the Second Act (as in Pride & Prejudice), an unexpected event (as in It’s a Wonderful Life), a personal decision (as in Ender’s Game), or a meeting between protagonist and antagonist (as in Master and Commander).
3. From its opening plot point onward, the Third Act picks up speed and doesn’t slow down.
4. Despite its comparatively fast pace, the Third Act must be thoughtful enough in its first moments to allow all the extra pieces to be either tied off and set out of the way (such as Ender’s relationship with his sister) or assembled for the showdown (such as the Surprise’s preparations for battle).
5. The Third Act pays off all foreshadowing. Everything set up in the first two acts comes full circle.
6. The Third Act completes the protagonist’s arc. Whether the character is following a Positive, Flat, or Negative Arc, the events of the Third Act offer the final possibilities for transformation.
7. The Third Act ends the conflict between protagonist and antagonist. The protagonist’s relationship to the plot goal will be definitively decided, whether victoriously or not.

If you can deliver a solid Third Act, you will have accomplished what myriads of novelists struggle to do (even published ones). This is where writers become authors!

Stay tuned: Next week, we will talk about the Third Plot Point.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Does your Third Act tie off all the loose ends? Tell me in the comments!

Related Posts:

Part 1: 5 Reasons Story Structure Is Important

Part 2: The Hook

Part 3: The First Act

Part 4: The Inciting Event

Part 5: The First Plot Point

Part 6: The First Half of the Second Act

Part 7: The Midpoint

Part 8: The Second Half of the Second Act

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

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How can you be successful at connecting with readers and selling books at live, in-person events? What are some practical tips as well as mindset shifts that can help you make the most of the opportunities? Mark Leslie Lefebvre shares his experience.

In the intro, Beventi for author events, Reader survey results [Written Word Media]; “How do I market myself without feeling gross about it?” [Author Stack]; 12 Concepts for Authors to Make $8333/Month; Results of AI training survey [Draft2Digital]; LionsGate partnering with RunWayML; Networking workshop [LSF]; Blood Vintage.

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Mark Leslie LeFebvre is the author of horror and paranormal fiction, as well as nonfiction books for authors. He’s also an editor, professional speaker, and the Director of Business Development at Draft2Digital. His latest book is A Book in Hand: Strategies for Optimizing Print Book Sales via Signings and Other In Person Events.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• What does “going wide” really mean?
• Benefits of in-person signings and events
• Always connect. The power of creating personal relationships with readers
• The different types of in-person events
• Using props to attract the right readers to your booth
• How to grow your email list and audience from in-person events
• The logistics of in-person events — payment systems and inventory
• Managing your energy when planning for and attending events
• Staying relaxed about changing technology and using it to your advantage

You can find Mark at MarkLeslie.ca.

Transcript of Interview with Mark Leslie LeFebvre

Joanna: Mark Leslie LeFebvre is the author of horror and paranormal fiction, as well as nonfiction books for authors. He’s also an editor, professional speaker, and the Director of Business Development at Draft2Digital.

His latest book is A Book in Hand: Strategies for Optimizing Print Book Sales via Signings and Other In Person Events. So welcome back to the show, Mark.

Mark: Always great to chat with you, Joanna.

Joanna: Oh, yes. Obviously many listeners might know you from author events or listen to your podcast, Stark Reflections. So you were last on the show in September 2021.

Mark: Has it been that long?

Joanna: Yes, it has been, which is crazy. You’ve been on the show lots over the years. We co-wrote The Relaxed Author together, and we’re going to come back to that later. So it’s been almost three years since you’ve been on the show—

Give us a bit of an update on your writing and publishing journey, as you’ve had some big milestones lately.

Mark: So I’ve continued to write in my Canadian Werewolf series. Book seven, Only Monsters in the Building, that was released earlier this year, 2024. I’ve got book eight planned for mid-2025.

So that’s been fun because in 2021, I think, I had only had two or three books in that series. So I’ve continued to chug away at that. Only one book a year, just sort of standard speed.

I did release a co-authored book with D.F. Hart, Accounting for Authors, which is important because she’s an MBA. That was a great co-authoring experience because she’s really smart and knows everything about that. I took the role of the author who knows nothing about finances. That is kind of close to the truth, so it was an easy role to fill.

Then also, with D.F. Hart and Erin Wright and Susie O’Connell and Bradley Charbonneau—

We registered and founded a company, Wide for the Win.

It is like a long, slow build for this company. All of us are working collaboratively together, trying to leverage that movement into something that could help more authors in different ways. So that’s like this long, slow thing where the company’s not really earning money yet, it’s breaking even, but we have these plans.

I mean, for example, sales of my book Wide for the Win, a portion of the sales goes and funds into the company, which is kind of good.

So other things I’ve been up to is I’ve written two movie trivia books. This is drawn upon my love of 80s films and nostalgia. So I had The Canadian Mounted, which is a trivia guide to planes, trains and automobiles, because it’s a reference to a book that one of the characters is reading in it.

That took off beyond my wildest dreams. I thought 15-20 people in the world would buy it, and I wrote it completely as a passion project, and it just keeps shooting. It’s been out for a few years now, and every Thanksgiving season through Christmas, it sells like gangbusters. Then I did a trivia book of Die Hard called Yippee Ki-Yay, you know the rest. So that came out.

Then this December, I’m working on a book, which is Merry Christmas! which is a line cousin Eddie uses in Christmas Vacation. Again, that’s going to be like the 35th anniversary of the release of that movie. So that’s been a weird tangent.

Of course, I then attended Western Colorado University’s Masters of Creative Writing Program taught by our mutual friend Kevin J. Anderson. I got my specialisation in publishing. Why not get a piece of paper to go with the 35 years of experience?

Then three days after I got my degree, Liz and I flew from Colorado, where I was on campus, to New York City. We got married there on the 10th anniversary of our first date.

That, ironically, was inspired not only by the fact that that’s our city, we love New York City so much. We’ve been there about eight times in a six-year period. It was inspired by a co-authored book in my Canadian Werewolf series called Lover’s Moon, which is a romantic comedy tale.

There’s a scene that takes place in Central Park on the Bow Bridge, the bridge where people tend to propose. After we finished writing that, I turned to Liz, and I said, “You know, we could just elope and go to New York and get married in Central Park.” So we did that, which is fun.

Then, of course, I’ve got A Book in Hand coming out. So that’s the Reader’s Digest version. Could you imagine if I did the long version?

Joanna: Can we also say that you work at Draft2Digital. So you also have a day job!

Mark: Yes. Well, I mean, that’s only 20 hours a week.

Joanna: It’s a part time day job, but still. Just coming back on the Wide for the Win, because just for people who might not know, basically the idea is that you’re not exclusive to Amazon.

It’s interesting, when I say wide now, I actually mean Kickstarter and Shopify stores. Like it used to just mean Kobo Writing Life and Apple and Google and stuff like that.

Now publishing wide is much, much bigger than just the other e-retailers isn’t it?

Mark: Yes, and my version of wide has always been that. I’ve always thought, okay, the other retailers are just the beginning. Direct sales, Kickstarters, Patreon, and all the different things you can do, there are so many other platforms, so many other ways of selling.

I really want to help authors understand the ability to extend and expand to audiences outside of the regular places. That’s partly what A Book in Hand is trying to get into.

I’m focusing very specifically on physical products because I think a lot of indie authors don’t.

I think you and I both know the value of that physical artifact. Even though it’s harder and it takes more work, there can be a long-term benefit.

So yes, wide to the other retailers is a small version of wide. My wide means every possible avenue, as a creator and as a storyteller.

Joanna: Yes, I really like that. I actually think that the shift is happening. It’s great that you’ve set that company up with the others because I feel like maybe we’re in year one or two of that being the movement.

I mean the movement in the first 15 years, really since you and I met, before 2010, was very much focused on the Amazon model first. Even though there were other retailers, obviously, you were at Kobo back then when we met.

Now I feel like there’s a real shift, and people are opening up to that. So I think starting the company now, whatever you’re planning to do, really is the right time because people are realizing they need to do all this stuff.

Not just for the money, but also for the creative expression, and the experience, and the other possibilities of being out there.

Mark: For sure. Again, education and making sure people are getting good information was the key thing that we all cared about. Not just sharing the passion for doing all the things you can do, multiple streams of income and all those things, but also helping steer people in the right direction.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and we wanted to get a little bit better at formulizing trying to help authors.

Joanna: Great. Well, we’ll look forward to that. So let’s get into the book. So it is mainly about in-person signings and in-person events. I wanted to talk to you about this because I resist this completely.

I have, like you know, the only signed books I’ve done are my Kickstarters so far. I really love them, but I go up, I sign all the books, and they get sent out. I have never done a book signing.

I don’t do fairs or conventions or any of that. If I go speak somewhere, I don’t take books with me. So people have to bring their own copy and I’ll sign them, which, you know, I’ve done for people. Basically, I want you to start by convincing me and some of the listeners—

Why should we do these types of in-person signings and events? What are the benefits?

Mark: I’m going to first start off, Jo, with saying, I may not convince you to do the in-person events because you’re already leveraging the principles behind A Book in Hand by doing what you do.

You go to BookVault, you sign the Kickstarter, and you have the benefit of that relationship with the people without having to sit there at a bookstore.

Let’s go back to the concept in general. It’s derived from something that you’ve often said, as things move and progress in this industry, doubling down on you and your authentic self is key, and that’s at the basis of this.

Especially in a tech-heavy and high tech digital world, especially with AI-charged content that can surpass even those rapid release people—like that’s coming, we’ll probably talk about that in a bit—it’s the connections that people crave.

Connections are the most fundamental reason for storytelling and for writing and books.

There’s so many readers out there who want a connection with the writer.

Now you, with what you’ve done with your magnificent Kickstarters and signing the books, it’s like if I want a signed copy of Joanna’s book, this is the way I get it. You’ve done that in a way that’s very comfortable for you, and I love that. I think that’s amazing, and that is still part of that mandate.

Sometimes an in-person event, when somebody connects with you—and I’m sure you’ve experienced this numerous times, people are fans, and they’ve heard you.

For example, I was talking to someone at a conference in Calgary who’s a huge fan of yours, like I am, and they’re so jealous of the fact that I talk to you, get to hang out with you, and stuff like that. When they meet you, it’s a real experience, and not just because of what you’ve done for authors.

Liz, for example, she’s pretty much read most of your Morgan Sierra novels and loves them. So there’s this whole cool experience of “Jo’s really sweet and lovely and optimistic, and yet, look at all the stuff she writes.”

Joanna: You are the same, by the way. People should read your fiction!

Mark: Same thing, and people marvel at that. It’s like, really, you wrote that? I’m just like, yeah, that’s why it’s therapy. That’s why I’m okay as a person. I get it out in my writing.

It brings the reader something well beyond just the words on a page. It gives them an experience.

So you’re creating a unique and dynamic experience for the reader that they may cherish. Maybe it’s posing while you signed a book for them, maybe it’s something else in person.

So I’ll give you a couple examples. At one of the events I did a couple years ago at Frightmare In The Falls in Niagara Falls, Canada, I had somebody who had bought my hardcovers online, probably Amazon or some other store, and came in a werewolf costume to Frightmare In The Falls just to meet me and get my book signed.

Of course, I took a picture with him. I didn’t sell anything to him at that event, and it cost me a lot of money to be at that event. I did make my money back and a little bit more from that event.

Me being there with somebody who loved my books so much that they show up in a costume with my books just so I can sign, that experience hopefully gave this fan something really cool that he can share with other people.

Another thing I’ve done, there’s a brewery in Hamilton, Ontario, and one summer, eight of the ten of those weeks of the summer, I was there on Saturday. It cost me $25 to have a little booth and sell books, and I was the only book vendor there.

There was one gentleman I had handed a card, it had a coupon code for Kobo and the book cover of one of my thrillers, Evasion. So he was looking around, and he recognized my name because I’d edited a science fiction anthology by a small Canadian publisher years earlier. He’s like, “Oh, I think I have one of your books.”

I gave him a card, and I said, “Here, go inside. There’s free Wi Fi,” he’s going to go in and have a beer, “Check it out for free.” He comes back 45 minutes later, and he goes, “Do you have that book?” I said, “Yes, well, I just gave it to you. I just gave you the ebook.”

He said, “No, no, I want the physical book. Can you sign it for me? I’m really enjoying it. I want to own it.”

Since then, this one in-person experience of just chatting and not trying to oversell someone, it’s turned into a lifelong fan who buys every single one of my books and leaves reviews for them too.

That personal relationship with a reader is one of the more powerful things you can do.

Joanna: Yes, it is, and I am convinced of that.

Even you and I, we’ve met at events over the years, and because we meet in person, I mean we talk like this sometimes, but because we meet in person, we have more of a relationship, and we’ve done business together.

So I think that, even if it’s not just the readers.

Say you’re at a convention and no reader even buys a book, you’re still you can still connect with other creators who are there, and learn a lot from them, and maybe meet some of the people you’re fans of, and stuff like that. So why don’t you just—

What are the different types of in-person events and what kinds of authors do they suit?

Because there are so many different things, aren’t there?

Mark: So for example, I mean, the most common one authors often think of is a lonely author in the front of a bookstore in a mall, right, sitting at a table.

Joanna: Don’t do that!

Mark: Well, I mean, there are situations where it may be okay for you to do that. Some authors it’s good for, and others it’s not.

So that’s one, for example, that you’ve got specialty shops. So shops that are specialty, because I write horror, and I write scary stuff, and I have true ghost stories and things like that, specialty shops.

I was at a gem location this summer at a metaphysical fair festival, so people interested in metaphysical and paranormal and stuff like that. So that’s a good fit.

There are friends of mine who write epic fantasy, and they do a lot of medieval fairs, sometimes dressed up as knights and stuff like that.

I think going to book adjacent events could be even more important.

So for example, I talked about the brewery, I was the only book vendor there. So a couple things happen when you’re the only book vendor there. Not everyone reads, right? Like one in four Americans have read a book since high school, I’d say maybe even fewer than one in four.

The book nerds, the book fans, really recognize when there’s a book anywhere. When I see books and beer, I’m just excited about either one of them. So anytime it has anything to do with beer or books, I’m just all over it like a cheap suit.

So if you’re the only book vendor there, the book people are probably going to come to you, which can be beneficial. Now, depending on the genres you write, maybe the books are not for them, but that doesn’t mean that you still haven’t made an impression on them.

The challenge with in person events is you can’t do cost per click measures.

It’s so hard to do that. With online ads and stuff like that, you can kind of see how many people looked at it, how many people clicked, how many sales that translated into.

With some of these things, it’s this long-term touch event. So for example, one of the events I was at, which was another brewery, I had somebody approach me who said, “Mark Leslie, I know your name,” and it goes back to a podcast I was on 10 years earlier that’s no longer on the air.

It’s like one of these things that I couldn’t measure the fact that doing this podcast 10 years earlier was going to result in a book sale from somebody who walks by and sees my book. Had I not been there in person, she wouldn’t have seen my book.

There’s so many different local fairs, craft fairs, markets, pop up fairs, and, like I said, book adjacent specialty shops. Even coffee shops, breweries, and places like that. You’re limited by your imagination, right?

Like when you want to go wide, think about going wide with physical books. Not necessarily just sitting and planting yourself in front of a bookstore and hope somebody takes pity on you and buys one of your books from you.

Joanna: I think you’re right. I mean, of course some people want to do signings in bookstores, but as you said, actually—

The book adjacent events can be much better, as long as you can find some overlap.

I was thinking, there’s a lot of Christmas fairs as this goes out, I mean, towards the end of the year, land you’ll be next to people who’ve made knitted things or have some food things and wine and stuff. So that, to me, is a kind of book adjacent event to consider.

I think one of the things that puts me off is, like you did mention there, you can’t do cost per click. You can’t necessarily do an ROI.

If you spend a couple of $100 to get a store, and then you spend a couple of thousand to print enough books to make the day worthwhile, like if it gets sold. Then you have to get them there, and then maybe you have to drive there. There’s just all kinds of things that make me worry about it.

What are your tips for making the event successful, in terms of preparation and then also on the day?

Mark: So there’s a few things that can be helpful. I guess it depends on how many books you have.

I know this sounds weird and odd, but having one or two books is so much easier than having a lot of books because one of the challenges is determining what I’m going to take.

Now, I do a lot of events now. For example, this week, I did one this past Sunday, I have an event Thursday night, an outdoor event in Uptown Waterloo. Then I’m driving almost two hours to Ontario’s west coast, just south of Goderich, to do an open air book festival on Saturday.

I have stock of a lot of my books. I have a room dedicated in my basement, because we live in a big enough house, that is my shipping, receiving, and stock room. It’s where I have all my books laid out on shelves so I can track and I can see.

I use local printers. I use Amazon. I use Ingram. I use various ways to get these different books in stock.

It is expensive, having 10 of this, and 10 of that, and 10 of the other.

Then with my traditionally published books, I order from a local bookstore. They give me a discount, and I support a local business. It goes through their register, and also a year later, I’ll get like chump change royalties from the publisher on it. I make more margin on the ones I’m planning to resell anyway.

So tips for making the event successful I think are, obviously, you’re going to want to share that on social media. You’re going to want to put it out in your author newsletter. All the ways that you let your fans know.

Again, no, I don’t necessarily know where all my fans are because I don’t have those demographics from where they are, if they’re local or nearby. So no matter where I go, I try to let them know, “Hey, I’m going to be here. I’m going to be in South Dakota in September, South Dakota Book Festival.”

I’m going to send it out my newsletter because maybe there’s somebody in my newsletter who lives there. I’ve had people show up at events saying, “Hey, I got your newsletter last week that said you’re going to be here, so I made a point. It was an hour drive. I came to see you.” So that’s really important.

I think having merchandise props, some sort of setting part based on your brand of who you are as an author in the book or the books that you write, that can work. For example, I have Barnaby Bones. I have my skeleton.

Usually the skeleton either tells people stay away from the crazy bald man, or they come running over because that’s their jam. Like skeletons, yay. Love it.

I also have a sign that I hang there, it’s like a bat shaped sign that says, “Ghost stories told here.” It’s a great icebreaker. People will come over and say, “Well, you tell ghost stories. Well, tell me a ghost story.”

Then I say, “Well, first of all, because this is an important thing, I’m not just going to tell you any ghost story. I want to find out what kind of ghost stories you like because I have thousands.”

One of the more important things is not necessarily selling — it’s engaging.

So one of the other things is props. Even having access through our good friend Damon and Bookfunnel print cards. I have cards. I have ebooks.

Some people may say, “Well, I’d rather just get the ebooks.” Well, I have the whole Canadian Werewolf series here in ebook in the little oversized postcards that I print from Vistaprint with a cover on it. I can sign with a marker on the front, there’s room on the back to sign, but then there’s also that special code.

So I can do one of a combination of things. I could give something away if I feel like, “Hey, check this out.” If they really like it, then maybe they’ll come back and they’ll buy the series wherever they buy ebooks, or they’ll get them from the library.

So I can sell the ebooks that way. I can sell the audiobooks that way. I can even add them as somebody who buys the whole series. Like here, download the eBooks for free. So you can have these signed copies and then listen to the book.

So I think having physical merchandise is tricky, but very expensive, of course, and again, something that will draw the right fans to your table. If you write cat mysteries, you better have some cat stuff.

With the master’s program, we just released a book called Feisty Felines and Other Fantastical Familiars. I remember having the book at a fair earlier this summer, even just before the book officially launched, Kevin said it was okay for us to put those author copies out and start getting people excited.

I mean, I had people running over when they saw the black cat on the front because you can see it from far away. They came over because there was a cat on it, and they were all over it. They were all over it and loved it. So that was a really exciting thing. So again, you never know what’s going to catch someone’s eye.

Joanna: It’s a good point.

You’ve mentioned a couple of times not to be too salesy. Don’t do the hard sell.

I remember, it was one ThrillerFest in New York. ThrillerFest has a big book sales room, and people do signings in there. I mean, it is an event for authors, so everyone there is an author.

If you go, they can stock your books in the main thing. I remember going in there, and of course, everyone wants to buy books, but I remember going in there and this guy just came up to me, holding his book, and said, “Do you want to buy this?”

Obviously, my first reaction is, no, I don’t want to buy this, but because I’m English, I’m very polite. I was like, “Oh, that looks very interesting.”

Then, of course, you’ve reached out a hand, Then you’re holding the book, and he’s done what people on the street do, you know, with little things where they give it to you, and once they’ve given it to you, and then you’re like, oh, no, now I have to buy it. I still remember him. This is like a decade ago.

I still remember him being someone I did not want to buy his book. I don’t think I did buy it in the end, but I was annoyed that he was even taking the time in my head when I wanted to be looking for books I actually wanted. So that’s like an example of definitely do not do.

What are some of the other big mistakes you see newbies make with these in-person events?

Mark: Well, I want to double down on what you just said to make sure that your listeners pick up on this. The difference between making one sale—like he was very forceful, and put putting a book in your hand that you were not interested in.

That was an anxious, uncomfortable moment that still lives with you. He made the worst possible—well, one of the worst possible impressions, there could have been worse things—but he made a really bad impression. It’s still with you.

You’ll probably never buy anything from that author because of that bad experience. So I would rather not make a sale now, but have a potential long-term relationship or long-term interactions with somebody.

I think too many authors try so hard to get the sale now, because I paid for my table, and I want to make my money back, or my flight, or whatever it cost me to get here. They’re so fixated on that that they miss out on: is this the right person for the book? Is this the right reader? That should be their focus.

So we talked about overspending, with the merchandise, and by printing too much stock and stuff like that. I think —

Focusing on a legitimate and genuine connection with the right person is way more important.

That includes—and you mentioned this earlier, and it’s so important—talking to the other authors, talking to the other vendors, getting to know the staff wherever it is that you happen to be. You never know who might be or might know someone who’s going to be your ideal reader.

So it’s not always be closing, it’s always be connecting. So, for example, if I was in that gentleman’s shoes, and you walk by—and probably not you because you do like dark things—but I’m standing there, and somebody comes by, and says, “Oh, what do you have there?”

I’ll be like, “Well, then do you like horror?” Then they’re like, “No, I’m more of a romance reader.”

I’m like, “Oh, well, I don’t really have anything for you. Well, I sort of have one book, but not really your cup of tea. But you know what? My friend Bella, just down there, you’ve got to check out her Sullivans Series. It is absolutely amazing.”

“If you like thrillers with some action and adventure, Marie Force has a fantastic series, The Fatal Series. You’re going to love that.” So get to know who else is there and what they have.

If somebody comes up to you and asks for something and you don’t have what they want, don’t waste their time trying to sell them something and fit the square peg in the round hole.

Try to help them find what they’re looking for.

As a bookseller, I did this when I was managing a bookstore. People would come to my bookstore in the mall to ask non-book-related questions because they knew I would do everything I could to help them. They liked me and they trusted me, and people buy things from people they know, like, and trust.

So they would come to the mall and say, “Oh, I’m looking for a really great hardware store,” or something like that, “I figured you’d recommend something.” It has nothing to do with books, and I would help them.

Guess what? The next time they needed a book, guess who they were going to refer their friends to or come to.

Joanna: Or buy a gift. I mean, that’s the other thing, isn’t it? Like a lot of people are buying gifts at these things. It doesn’t have to be for themselves. Then oftentimes it’s like, “Oh, well, I like that guy. I’ll go back and buy a gift from him,” or whatever.

Mark: They had a good experience. So imagine that person came by and they said, “I’ve got this book. It’s this genre that you’re not interested in,” and you just had a nice, short conversation, and he wasn’t pushy and didn’t try to force it on you.

Then you remembered, oh, that was an interesting book, and then you’re talking to someone in a coffee shop later on when you’re in line, and they’re like, “Oh, I really like this.”

Then you’re like, “Oh, there’s a guy, he’s just around the corner by the red pillar. Look for him. I bet you his book would be good for you.” You never know.

Again, the biggest challenge, especially with indie authors who grew up trained digitally, on ebooks and cost per click and all that, you can’t measure that. That’s probably the most frustrating aspect.

Joanna: You said there about thinking about the other person, and you also have to think about the kind of event. Also, not giving people too much choice. So both you and I have a lot of books, and it’s expensive to print everything. Also, if I take every single one of my books, people are like, ‘oh, too much choice.’

There’s all those studies, aren’t there, that if you give people three different jams, for example, they’re more likely to buy one than if you have 20 different jams. So you have to really think about what event it is.

I was actually just thinking then, because I am considering doing a Christmas market here in Bath, and I was like, well, which books would I take? Then I remembered, my mum has a book called A Summerfield Christmas Wedding.

Mark: Perfect.

Joanna: I’m like, well, of course, I would take my mum’s book. Then I’d have maybe my thrillers and some non-fiction, just one of each or two of each. Then I have my mum’s Christmas book, and maybe that would be the one that sold a ton.

Mark: Well, that’s the primary display, but then somebody’s like, “Oh, I love Christmas stuff, but I have a friend who loves archeological thrillers,” or whatever, because you’ve got so many different things now.

That’s the other thing is, maybe just feature the first book in the series and then have the other ones kind of subtly off to the side, but not as visible until someone really gets into it. That’s the other trick.

Joanna: Or even just the first one in each series. Then in talking to people, you can say, “Well, look, I have an email list. I can send you the details of the other books.”

I was going to ask you about this. So I’m kind of trained on very much the anti-spam thing, so I have never added someone to my email list manually. When I hear from people like yourself who do live events—

Do you keep a manual email list and add people to it live?

So how do you deal with that?

Mark: I stopped doing that. I used to have a clipboard, and one of the problems with the clipboard is people write like they’re doctors, like a prescription. You can’t read what their name is anyway. I stopped with the manual board, and I go with a QR code that brings them right to my list.

I say, “Hey, you want this book for free? Scan here, and you get the download. You can get it on your phone with the free Bookfunnel app, and you can start reading it now if you want. Then you’re on my newsletter list, and I can let you know what’s going on.”

So I find that’s way better because it’s not forcing anyone to have to take a clipboard and write things down, and then you have to go in. Again, it’s manual labor to go and enter it in.

Joanna: Just a QR code on a sheet of paper?

Mark: Yes. I mean, most people have a smartphone on them, so they can quickly and instantly sign up for your newsletter right then and there and get the free book right away.

So one of the things I’ve done as well as, so in my Canadian Werewolf series, for example, I have a little postcard and I have a sign with a QR code on it where you can download the eBook or the audiobook, or both, through Bookfunnel on a Bookfunnel landing page.

The QR code takes you right to the Bookfunnel landing page, and again, it’s not you have to opt in for my newsletter because I don’t want that. I’m sorry, I pay for enough deadbeats on my newsletter who do SFA. I’m sorry. I’m pushing really hard right now on my newsletter, and I’m happy.

Joanna: You have to get rid of people.

Mark: Well, if you’re not going to click things, or respond, reply, or buy things from me, what the hell are you doing there? Get the hell out. You’re just dead weight, and you’re costing me a lot of money.

I don’t mean to be mean, but I would rather have somebody who’s engaged and wants to hear from me on the newsletter, because those are my people. The other people just got a free book once, and they’re just costing me money.

So again, I don’t force them. Like, even when they get the free download, it’s an option. I don’t have it clicked by default. They have to choose to be on my newsletter because I don’t want to put them on my newsletter unless they want to be on my newsletter. So I give them the option.

Joanna: That’s a good tip. The other thing I wonder about is the money side. So, of course, you mentioned at some events there is a bookseller there, and it will go through them.

Do you need to have a Square or some kind of mobile payment system?

Because a lot of people don’t even have cash anymore?

Mark: Great question. I used to have one of the small Square Readers that tapped and connected to my phone, and it was just problematic software-wise. I ended up investing last year in one of the full size Square Readers that has the receipt printer built into it. It cost me a few hundred dollars.

The other thing I like about it is I can print a receipt for someone right there on the spot if they want one. I can also email or text all the things that they want. All my inventory is in there.

I used to, when it was a cash sale, I had a little notebook where I would say I took $10 for this book and whatever. I remember one time at one of the really busy events I was at, my sister was there helping, a lovely person, of course, but she makes me look organized.

She forgot to mark down which books I sold for cash, and so when I go to balance the next day, it was like, well, I have all this money, but I don’t know what it was for.

So I even put my cash sales through the Square Reader, so I can, A, print a receipt for them. B, I used to print a second receipt for myself, throw it in the cash box, and I knew I sold that book for cash, or these books for cash.

Then in Square, I run a report the next day, and if it’s just a cash sale or credit or debit or whatever it is, I can see exactly what I sold, and all of it’s through the same system.

Joanna: That’s really good.

Mark: So I have something I can load to ScribeCount because I’m tracking my sales in many different ways, but it’s also a report that’s useful for me to understand.

Then I can go back, no, I don’t have my inventory properly managed where I go downstairs and look at the shelf and go, okay, I have 10 copies of this book, better order some soon because I’ve got so many shows coming up. Then you’ve got to do it in time, right?

I mean, I’m in Canada, so some of the printing is locally here with a printer. Some of it’s printed with Amazon Canada, now that they print. When it’s coming from Ingram in the States, crossing the border, you have to plan weeks in advance.

Joanna: I was thinking about this, so let’s say Author Nation, you and I are both going to be there. It’s in Las Vegas. I know they have, like in that hotel, they have a FedEx or business shipping site. I was even wondering about, I know it’s Amazon, but on Amazon they have those lockers and things like that.

Do you do shipping to the points where you’re flying to?

Mark: I have not yet done in-person sales outside of Canada because customs fees and getting nailed for selling across the border. So I have not yet. I have shipped books to the States to put in consignment with a vendor who’s there, like a bookseller.

I’ve dropped shipped to hotels and stuff like that. I have also shipped books or brought books to give away. I learned that from Becca Syme. It’s just too much of a hassle to fill out all the paperwork.

Joanna: I was wondering, I don’t know if I’m going to do this, but one could do presales of special editions, get the money now, and then ship them all to Las Vegas, and then give the people who are there those signed copies that they have pre-bought.

You’re not doing the sales on-site, you’re doing them beforehand.

Mark: Maybe the pre-bought allows you to buy an extra bag that you check in that’s filled with these books.

Joanna: No, I would just ship them to the location. I did notice that last time—

Mark: But you’re paying taxes to your government, right? So if you’re selling, you’re paying taxes through your online system. It’s already taken care of, so you don’t have to worry about any of that. Which I think, Jo, that’s genius. I love that.

Joanna: I mean, obviously in America, a lot of people are flying around to these things. Well, it’s just something I was thinking about, I was thinking, what if I did this, how would I do it in a way that’s easy enough?

I think this is the big thing, like even the Square Reader you said there, a couple of hundred dollars doesn’t worry me, it’s the how nervous I would be using it for the first time, or screwing it up when I had someone buying a Christmas present, or somebody who didn’t really know how to do it.

I do think the pandemic has probably changed it, though. Now people know how to use QR codes, and everyone pays with a tap now, don’t they?

Mark: They do, yes. The other thing too, I mean, I guess I have 20-plus years working in physical bookstores at Christmas. So I don’t get stressed out by that. I mean, if I ever have a line like that again, oh my god, like Brandon Sanderson style lines, that’d be nice.

Joanna: You’ll be happy. Also, people are nice. I mean, if your Reader isn’t working, whatever, you sort it out. Okay, well, that’s loads of my questions. Is there anything else you think we haven’t covered that people need to know? I mean, obviously they can get your book, A Book in Hand, but is there anything else?

Well, let me bring something up, actually. I saw a post from an author who did Comic Con, I think, or one of these bigger conventions, and they said, “That’s my last time. It’s too exhausting.” So there’s that energy management, as well as expensive, and it’s like that “I’m done.” So that would be a question.

How do you manage your energy at these live events?

How are you like, okay, I’ve done enough events? Or are you just your Energizer Bunny self, and just go forever?

Mark: It is so tough because I’m an omnivert, and I do get exhausted from being on, because I look at it as being on. So that is tough. That is really, really hard. You have to know yourself and understand yourself and what you need.

You can’t overextend yourself. That’s so important. Whether it’s trying to write books too fast, or whether it’s trying to do in-person events when that’s not your comfort level. So that’s really an important thing.

I can’t advise you to do anything other than listen to your body, and listen to your emotions, and listen to how you feel. It’s like, I eat this thing and it feels something afterwards, stop eating that thing, right? So that’s so important now.

Also, in a weird way, it exhausts me. Then I connect with somebody who’s come back because they bought something last time. They’re like, “Oh, you’re here again. Good because I wanted to get a signed copy of the next book in the series,” or they even just talk to me about it. Again, I’m creating an experience for that reader.

When you create an experience for that person, that’s marketing.

Dean Wesley Smith had shared one time that a print book is, on average, handled by seven people. So that print book that somebody bought from you and has signed from you, maybe they have a picture with you and that’s exciting, that’s something they’re going to share.

That’s the marketing. That’s the seven points, you know what I mean? Your book cover is a billboard. That’s really important.

Then the other thing that’s funny, and Liz and I had this conversation, I did Frightmare in the Falls in Niagara Falls a few years ago that was far enough away I had to stay in a hotel overnight.

The table cost me a lot of money, and I had my stepdaughter come in one day on the Saturday. I could handle the Friday night and the Sunday myself because they were slower, but the Saturday was going to be a busy day. So I paid her to come in and spend the day with me.

I think I brought in maybe $1,500 or $1,600 in sales, and by the time I calculated the cost of my inventory, plus the costs of all the other costs, and the meals and whatever, I think I made $100 off that conference. It was like a three-day weekend.

Here’s the thing. Liz goes, “Well, that was a huge waste.” I said, “Well, A, I’m ahead slightly.”

Yes, it was a lot of work for 100 bucks, but that was the event where the gentleman showed up in a werewolf costume. That was the event where new people who had never bought any of my books or even knew who I was, walked away with some of my books.

That event was a marketing campaign, no different than like an Amazon ad campaign, where your book is seen by somebody who may be interested in buying it.

So I say, okay, yes, I only walked away $100 richer from this event, but I have the experience, and I’ve given lots of people the experience of who Mark Leslie is, the name I write most of my stuff under.

That, again, is so frustrating because I can’t point to anything and go, “Look, Liz, my sales went up magically on Amazon a week after.”

Joanna: Well, I think the other thing here, actually, this is important, and I’ve done this many times, is you—

Take photos that you can use for social media that make things look bigger than they actually are.

I mean, even my signings at Bookvault. You know, Bookvault is a printing factory. It’s not like some sexy location, although, of course, book printing is very sexy.

Mark: It is very sexy.

Joanna: They’ve just got a room, well, it’s not even a special room, it’s like a corridor, and we set up a thing. The angle you take photos at can make things look much better.

Mark: They look amazing. I’m like, I can’t wait to have that one day. Meanwhile, you’re in a hallway, right?

Joanna: Yes, you’re in a hallway. I mean, you and I, do you remember when we did Frankfurt Book Fair together? When you had hair.

Mark: Yes, I had some hair.

Joanna: You had some hair back then. There’s some pictures of us at Frankfurt Book Fair.

Mark: The pictures are pretty amazing. It looks like a huge audience.

Joanna: Actually, we were in some random hall. There’s loads of halls. I mean, it’s a huge fair. There was hardly anyone there, but we did it, and the photos look really good. So, I mean, that’s a little secret, I guess.

Mark: All six people in the audience looked way bigger.

Joanna: So I guess that’s the other thing.

If you do an event, and you’re doing it for marketing, make sure you get pictures.

Just get your friend or some passerby to kind of look as if you’re signing or something, and then you can use that in social media, and that will help too.

Mark: Oh, for sure. I mean, and the same thing too, I’ve been at book events where nobody showed up. I was in Vancouver once at an independent bookstore for three hours signing copies of one of my books, Haunted Bookstores and Libraries: Tomes of Terror, and nobody showed up.

I didn’t sell a single book to anybody, even though my publisher advertised it, I advertised it, and put it all on social media. I spent three hours hanging out with the staff and having a blast chatting with them, instead of being a miserable guy who was all upset because nobody came to my party.

I had a blast with these booksellers, and I’m positive they hand-sold my book when I left. Again, the experience we had together was richer than me just selling a few books that day.

Joanna: Yes, always be connecting. That’s probably the quote of the day.

So we’re almost out of time, but I did want to come to a sort of bigger question. Now, you and I co-wrote The Relaxed Author back in 2021. The reason we did that was we had a conversation, and one of the listeners were like, oh, you should write that book. So we did.

Mark: Thank you, Jo’s listeners.

Joanna: At the time we wrote it was because authors were really stressed. At that point it was really the end of organic reach. The end of organic reach on Amazon. The end of organic reach on Facebook. It was a real shift to paid ads. There was a lot of angst about KU.

That was what was going on in that period. Now, I mean, that’s kind of as normal now. The changes have really sped up. We’ve got generative AI and the impacts of that, and there’s always stress in the author community. I wondered what your thoughts were on—

How can authors be more relaxed about change, in general?

Any thoughts on the impact of AI, given that you also work at Draft2Digital? Or your own personal thoughts?

Mark: It’s a tough one because it’s like exponential. The change is just growing at a faster rate than we can keep up with, and there’s more things to be anxious about.

So the first thing is to take a deep breath. I know it’s a weird question to ask, but I mean, it’s like, how does this affect my goals and my long-term plans? Or am I just fixated on looking at a dashboard all day instead of getting the important work done?

I think people need that more. I need that more. Jo, I pick up the book sometimes because I get anxious about stuff, and I pick it up and go, oh yeah, we said some pretty smart things here. We should listen to ourselves every once in a while.

So if I have to remind myself to listen to the things, I mean, I can imagine that there’s a lot of change.

So here’s a couple things we know. The technology is not going to get put back in Pandora’s box. It’s not going to go back into the bottle. It’s going to keep going, and it’s going to grow, whether we ride the wave or we get swallowed by the wave.

So there may be ways to look at a new technology, and I know this is hard, especially in this divisive world we live in, but look at something with a mind not of “I don’t like this because I’ve never tried this vegetable, but I think it tastes horrible, so I’m never going to try it.”

Try to look at it with an open mind.

Try to see if there’s a way within your goal set and within the things that are important to you and that you value, whether it’s your moralistic values, or the things that you just value in general.

Are there ways that you can leverage that for your author business in ways that can ease some of the pain points that you have?

Because we all have pain points, right? So you may never be somebody who’s going to use a technology a certain way, but you may want to use it in another way that can ease you.

So for example, I’ve been using, thanks to you, and I got the code off of your website, the ProWritingAid, I got a discount on that. So I clean up my manuscript with ProWritingAid before I send it to a human editor because it saves me money, and probably saves my editor a lot of anxiety and ulcers.

It cleans up some of the boring, redundant stuff I always do, the habits I have as a writer. So there are ways that technology can help in so many different ways if we’re willing to work with it.

I don’t just mean use it, I mean work with it. I mean understand. No different than understanding how to operate a vehicle, no different than how to understand operating a word processing software.

I had to go from typewriter to Paperback Writer, then Word Perfect, then Microsoft Word, over the years. I started off pen and paper and then I went to typewriter, because I’m one of those old guys. So I see it’s no different.

Sometimes we get so anxious about the extremes of what this could do, as opposed to looking at what it could do. You know, it could be bad, but it could also do these things for us. It’s a hard thing for us to do, so deep breath is usually where I often start.

I’m a guy with high blood pressure, and I get excited very easily, so I have to monitor this. So I’m speaking from personal experience, stop and take a deep breath.

Joanna: Yes, and also, I think this does come back to, as you mentioned it earlier, obviously the double down on being human and in-person events. To me, there are things that AI is useful for. Certainly for me, cover design.

You mentioned editing there. Marketing, oh my goodness. I mean —

I think most authors are going to be very happy the day we can just tell an AI agent, “Here’s my book. Please go market it.” That will be amazing, and that’s coming.

Mark: Authors hate marketing. It stresses them out.

Joanna: Exactly, and so there are things that we very, very much would like that to do.

But in-person events. I mean, for sure, the robots will come at some point, but there still is going to be a human sitting behind a table at a human event, selling books to other humans.

You can’t get much more human than selling books at physical events, I suppose.

Mark: I mean, it’s one of the things that allows you to stand out in the digital slush pile, in the digital masses, is the real human. Now, I can talk about the story I wrote because I know it inside out because I spent 10 years writing this book, or whatever it was.

You know this better than anyone else, and so you can connect with people in a more meaningful way that even the technology that exists can’t. It can’t respond and interact and engage the way you can. You are the best marketing tool for your book.

Joanna: Fantastic.

Where can people find all your books and everything you do online?

Mark: Well, you can find me at MarkLeslie.ca. You can find links to me on all the social medias, etc. If you’re looking for A Book in Hand, the preorder links for this book will be at MarkLeslie.ca/abookinhand. Nice and easy.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Mark. That was great.

Takeaways:

• In-person signings and events provide opportunities for authors to create connections with readers and offer unique experiences.
• Authors should focus on genuine connections with the right readers rather than making immediate sales.
• Book adjacent events, specialty shops, and local fairs are great venues for in-person events.
• Authors should prepare by promoting the event on social media and in newsletters, having merchandise and props that align with their brand, and engaging with other authors and vendors.
• Avoid being too salesy and instead focus on connecting with readers and helping them find the right books.
• In-person events can lead to long-term relationships and word-of-mouth recommendations. When selling books at in-person events, consider bringing a variety of genres and titles, including your own books and books by other authors.
• Use QR codes to make it easy for readers to sign up for your email list and receive free books or other incentives.
• Accept mobile payments to accommodate readers who may not carry cash.
• Manage your inventory and sales using tools like Square to track transactions and print receipts.
• Focus on creating a positive experience for readers and building connections with them.
• Embrace technology and AI to streamline processes and alleviate pain points in your author business.
• Take a deep breath and approach change with an open mind, considering how it aligns with your goals and values.
• In-person events provide an opportunity to stand out in the digital world and connect with readers on a personal level.

The post Selling Books In Person At Live Events With Mark Lefebvre first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Today, I want to talk about learning how to trust yourself as a writer rather than relying too much on other people’s advice.

This is a question I receive in one form or another quite frequently from writers, particularly the writers who are just starting out and are trying to find that balance of honoring their own creativity and creative instinct—which is probably quite strong or they wouldn’t be interested in creating art and writing stories and balancing that against the need to learn and to understand the techniques and the tenants of the craft by seeking resources that can help you understand writing.

I say often that writing a novel is an extremely complex art form. Whether it’s a screenplay or whatever else—creating any type of story is a very complex art form. There are so many techniques and skills involved that you have to master if you’re going to pull off the whole. Part of it is understanding story theory, understanding the shape of story, character arc, story structure, and plot. Then you also have to learn how to execute those techniques: how to write good dialogue, how to write good prose, even just spelling, punctuation, and grammar. These are all part of the foundation of good writing. Then there are the little nuances of bringing characters to life, writing prose that’s entertaining and interesting and makes sense to readers.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are just so many little skill sets that go to make up the big skill set of being able to write a successful novel or a successful screenplay. Put simply: there is a lot to learn about writing.

When you start getting serious, you realize, Oh there’s like stuff to learn here! You don’t just do it instinctively. There’s actually technique and and people who can guide you and help you figure out all this stuff you’ve been struggling with and that seems really hard. They can help you understand, for example, why doesn’t your prose or your story look quite like the ones you’re reading.

All the information any writer needs is out there. And it’s fabulous!

I clearly remember a day when I was probably in my in late teens, rambling around the library, and I found the writing section for the first time. There were, like, actual books that taught you how to write fiction! It was a revelation to me. I just gobbled it up and it was so exciting.

From there, however, it can be easy to get into a place where you feel overwhelmed by all the information. Again, writing is a complex skill set. There’s just so much to learn, and it can be very easy to feel like your brain’s going to explode (and not in a good way). There’s just so much information to take in and integrate just so you can write a chapter in your story.

You must find a balance between being willing to learn (i.e., being able to recognize your own ignorance and that there’s stuff to learn and people out there who can help you learn it) and feeling so overwhelmed by having to take in all the information or having to follow somebody else’s rules that you lose touch with your inner artist, your own inner compass of how to write stories, your own inner story knowledge.

Why You Can Trust Your Own Story Instincts

What is story? Story is just a reflection back to us of our arcs of psychological transformation. It’s a mirror of life. This means that, inherently, story is something every human has an innate understanding of. Nobody has to tell you what a story is. You know deep in your heart and your gut. You know what a story is—and particularly if you’re drawn to writing a story.

You’re probably deeply immersed in fiction yourself. You watch movies. You read books. You learn by osmosis what stories look like on a more intricate level. You come to the act of writing with an innate knowledge. It’s important to recognize that. I always tell people, “Trust your writing gut.” When you’re writing something and it feels really good—or it doesn’t feel good—trust that. You may not understand what it’s telling you specifically, but there’s a truth there, waiting for you to understand it.

It’s important as you’re going through that early process of learning lots of stuff from other people and hearing their voice in your head—whether it’s mine or some other writing instructor or your peers as you’re trading critiques or engaging with beta readers—not to get lost in the voices you’re hearing to the point that you forget your own innate and very accurate sense of story.

Now again, this is not to say your innate gut knowledge and instinct of what a story is and what makes a good story automatically translates into the ability to do it. The gut instinct doesn’t always translate into the mental realm. You have to gain a certain consciousness around what your instincts are telling you so you can bring mastery to the techniques.

One of the most important things to help you find your balance in a situation like this (or anything really) is understanding where you are in the context. If you understand the big picture, then the better you can understand where you’re at and therefore what questions you’re actually facing and what answers you need to be able to execute in your story in the way that you want.

One of the models I particularly have found helpful in my own life is the Arabic proverb that points out the four stages of growth.

You start out not knowing that you don’t know. Then as you progress through this state of complete ignorance (basically where where you think you know and really you do know nothing) to knowing that you don’t know. This is arguably the most powerful place to be because from here, you can move into a place of curiosity and learning and gathering information that’s extremely helpful. Then you move on to not knowing that you know. You’ve gained enough informational context that you have shortened the gap between your gut knowledge and your mental knowledge, so they’re both aligned and pulling in sync, but you still haven’t quite gained an awareness around that fact. And then from there you move on to mastery, which is knowing that you know.

If you can dentify where you are within those four stages, that can give you an understanding of how much reliance you can give to your own um understanding of any topic versus how much information you still need to glean and and learn and grow before you can reach a place where you shorten that gap between your own gut instinct and your ability to put words to and comprehend and bring a mental knowledge to that gut understanding.

The Dichotomy of Ignorance and Perfectionism

Something that gets writers hung up sometimes is this kind of dichotomy between ignorance and perfectionism. Really, though, it isn’t a dichotomy because very often these two things are the flip side of each other.

Perfectionism is very much a topic writers discuss because many of us do struggle with it. But I have found in my own life that really perfectionism and the harshness and the toxicity of that inner critic is really rooted in ignorance—either not knowing or knowing but not knowing that you’re knowing.

It’s an uncertainty. It’s like, “I don’t know what’s good enough and therefore it’s never good enough.” Sometimes when you’re stuck in that place of perfectionism,  there is a sense of, “I have to learn and learn and learn. I have to get all the rules right. I have to learn everything perfectly.”

There can be kind of an abandonment of your own gut instinct in that process—in replacing it with that toxic inner critic of perfectionism. Try taking a step back and recognizing that perhaps this is simply arising from a place of ignorance. And that’s not a bad thing. It allows you to move into that stage of knowing that you don’t know. And that lets you know exactly where you’re at.

There’s nothing wrong with that stage. In some ways, it’s the most powerful and exciting stage. You’re discovering everything. However, it can lead to an overcorrection where you flip the script, and instead of feeling this pressure of, “I have to learn everything. I have to pay attention to what all the experts say and make sure I get everything perfectly right,” you flip it into that space where it’s like, “Well, phooey on them. I’m just going to do what I am going to do because I know better than them anyway. What do they know?” That, in itself, isn’t usually any more helpful than the perfectionism.

Instead taking that step back and recognizing this feeling is just a signal that I don’t know something and that it’s a stage of not just learning more rules, more mental stuff, but instead trying to figure out how to shorten that gap between your own gut instinct and what you know.

Instead of Looking for Better Answers, Learn to Ask Better Questions

If that need to know is arising out of a sense that, “There’s some things not working in my story and I’m not able to execute something the way I want to,” then that lets you start working on better and better questions. That will help you find the answers you need instead of it taking this shotgun approach where you feel like you need to know everything.

So that is something to think about it just like,

If you feel like you’re just pressured to follow the advice of everybody else who’s out there who knows more than you do, then try to narrow that down into a place where you are recognizing yourself as a student rather than someone who’s less than or is feeling unworthy because they don’t know everything. Instead, you are now someone who has the opportunity to figure out AND use your gut instinct to narrow down, “What do I need to know?”

Another troublesome dichotomy is that of curiosity versus judgment.

A lot of writers I hear from who are anxious are thinking either, “I need more advice. I need somebody to tell me how to do everything there is about my story” or vice versa, “I don’t want anybody’s advice. It’s too much. I don’t want or need anybody to tell me what to do with my story.” In both of those scenarios, there’s this energy of feeling judged. But ultimately, it’s not really that anybody else is judging or going to judge your writing; it’s that you’re judging it and judging yourself.

Again, this can be that perfectionistic toxic inner critic talking. You have to learn to take a step back from this place of judgment. Art does not thrive under judgment, particularly the creative act. Judgment is not a place that enhances or allows for curiosity,  and curiosity is not only the best place from which to create art, it’s also the best place from which to learn. When you’re in curiosity, it doesn’t feel like there’s a teacher standing over you. Instead, not knowing becomes exciting.

Most of us are readers. We love to learn and get to experience new things and gain new skills. Moving into that beginner’s mind where you are not feeling like, “This is a test. I have to cram for this test and ace it.” You have to realize that becoming a good writing is a lifelong process. We’re all still learning. The very fact that story mirrors life  shows us it’s a neverending school. We will always be learning more. We’ll always be experimenting. We’ll always be refining. The best art comes from that place where we don’t quite know—where we’re following that true creative instinct within ourselves but we don’t know where it’s going to go. We’re open and we’re flexible to what might come. We’re in a place of curiosity.

That’s also the best way to approach any writing advice. Whether you’re watching my videos or reading my books or my website or my podcast or somebody else’s or you’re getting feedback from critique partners, wherever you’re receiving advice or looking for advice, the best mindset to engage with that is from a place of curiosity.

After all, just because somebody is out there telling you how to write a story doesn’t mean that they know what they’re talking about. And it certainly doesn’t mean that even if they’re right in some contexts, they’re right in all contexts because art is extremely varied. Again, you might be creating something that’s never been created before, and others can’t necessarily comment on that.

Now, obviously there’s also the other side of that where artists think they’re creating something massive and original, but really it’s just a mess. So again, you have to find that balance of humility and curiosity, of recognizing  where you are within the stages of growth—what you don’t know and therefore what you need to know—while still approaching what you don’t know with curiosity and approaching people and advice and teachers with curiosity. You have to ask, “What do they have to teach me?” rather than being this submissive mindset of, “They have all the answers and I need them.”  That can either put you in this submissive place of wanting them to tell you what to do or the flip side of that, which is, “I don’t want anybody to tell me what to do. Therefore, I don’t want any advice.” That ultimately isn’t helpful either.

Broadening Your Context as a Writer

Context is extremely valuable in understanding what you need to know, why you want to know it, and what you’re going to do with it. And the only way to gain context is to go out and gather lots of information. Context is the broad field, the map, and then you get the little pointer that says, “You are here.” If your context is tiny and it says “you are here,” you still won’t really know where you’re at. But the bigger your map and the bigger your context, the more sense it makes when it says, “You are here.”

The only way to gain that is to go on these discovery trips and to learn all you can. There is a period—it’s ongoing to some degree, but particularly in the beginning—where maybe you don’t know anything and you’re just reading and watching everything you can, whether it’s videos like this from people who have advice to offer or from fellow writers who are offering you specific critiques or whether it’s just really immersing yourself in the art form—in novels, in movies—and studying what they’re doing. “What’s working? Why does this work?”

Honestly, the single most helpful thing for me in my journey of discovery has been studying books and movies and paying attention to my own reactions. What is my gut reaction to whatever I’m experiencing in this story, whether it’s good or whether it’s bad and why? Why did this work so well? Why did I think this was such an amazing story? Why did this affect me so deeply, or why did this make me so mad? Why did this totally not work for me?

How to Create Your Own Personal “Cosmology of Story”

Fine tuning that not only helps you learn story by osmosis and not only helps you shorten that gap between your gut knowing and your mental knowledge, it’s a way to learn to hone and trust your own instincts, so that at a certain point you’re not as dependent on other people telling you stuff in order to broaden your context. You’re able to create your own cosmology of story, where you can say, “Oh yeah, that was that technique from that story. And I learned why that did or didn’t work.”

And then, of course, there’s the practice. You start putting what you’ve observed into practice in your own stories by writing it. And that’s a whole other ballgame. You may think you understand something, but then you try to execute it within your own stories and you realize there’s so many more layers to it.

Bringing the experiential aspect into your practice is the quickest—well, I won’t say the quickest because, again, it is a process—but it is the most efficient and the most effective way of really getting to a place where you do know and you do understand and therefore you can trust your own advice. Then when you go out and you’re encountering information or advice from other people, you can also trust your reaction to that. You can look at some bit of advice and say, “Well, that doesn’t resonate with me. So I’m gonna reject that.”

And you can trust yourself to do that. You can say, “I am trustworthy. I have the authority to be able to say ‘no, that’s not what I want to do with my art.’” And vice versa, you can say, “Wow, that’s great. That is such an insight. I never saw it that way.” Now, you an claim that insight in a way that makes it yours. It’s not “their” insight anymore once you have that reaction to something.

In my teaching, I don’t teach something unless I understand it from the inside out. The information comes in, but it has to be metabolized. It has to be digested until it becomes your own and you have your own understanding of it. When you have that feeling and you experience that insight, it doesn’t feel like you’re learning something new.

All learning is remembering.–Socrates

It feels like you’re remembering something you always knew. It’s that flash of recognition that says, “Yes, this is true. This makes sense.” That’s what you’re looking for, because when you can experience that—particularly in a physical reaction within your body—then you know that insight is yours. You know you can trust that that is the essence of your gut instinct responding to something.

Finding the Balance Between Becoming a Master and Being an Eternal Student

Bottom line: it’s really important for artists to trust themselves. It’s equally important to be humble, to be curious, to read widely, to study, to be willing to be a student before you can be a master.

For some of us mastery is a lifetime’s journey. We may never get there. But again, as is often said, it’s more about the journey than the destination. Related to this, I really like Anne Lamott’s quote where she says,

Being published isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But writing is.

I think that’s pointing to the same thing—of reaching some end point where you’ve written the perfect book. It’s there and it’s done. It’s great. But what’s really valuable and interesting is the journey to get there, and that journey is ongoing because as soon as you reach a mountain peak, you realize, “Oh wow, there’s a whole mountain range out there that’s still to explore.”

Keeping that context in view—that big picture and that long-range view that there will never be an end to learning. There will always be more to learn. But the more you can consolidate yourself and shorten that gap between your mental acuity and your gut knowing, then you become an accurate guide for yourself on that journey.

And really all we’re looking for is that grounded knowing that we can trust ourselves and our own responses to whatever information that we learn. You’re the guide that goes with yourself no matter what. Ultimately, you’re the one who makes all the decisions. So you want to be able to trust your choices when you are creating your stories and your art.

So that’s just some thoughts on the topic that comes up in one way or another quite a bit in emails that I receive from people. I hope those thoughts were helpful again.

Happy writing!

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Do you trust yourself as an artist? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

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The post How to Trust Yourself as a Writer (Not Relying on Advice Too Much) appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

Success as an author comes with challenges around managing money, setting boundaries, and living sustainably without burning out. Sacha Black/Ruby Roe talks about her lessons learned after five years as a full-time author entrepreneur.

In the intro, Content marketing for authors [BookBub]; Vineyard research [Books and Travel]; AI-generated voice cloning for select US Audible narrators [The Verge]; How AI is changing audiobooks and how it echoes changes in the music industry [Music Tectonics]; Blood Vintage; Comment écrire un roman — Joanna Penn;

Today’s show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Sacha Black writes spicy sapphic fantasy romance as Ruby Roe, as well as books for authors. She’s the host of The Rebel Author Podcast and an international professional speaker. Sacha recently did a solo episode on her lessons learned after 5 years full-time, and we discuss aspects of that in the interview.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Why pivot to a new genre — mindset and money shifts
• Finding freedom from writing under a pen name
• Publishing and business model changes required with rapid sales growth
• Learning to outsource as your author business grows
• Repurposing content across multiple social media platforms
• Your books are not your pension. Your pension is your pension — so invest! (Check out my list of money books here.)
• Avoiding burnout — spending time on hobbies and social activities

You can find Sacha at SachaBlack.co.uk or at RubyRoe.co.uk.

Transcript of Interview with Sacha Black

Joanna: Sacha Black writes spicy sapphic fantasy romance as Ruby Roe, as well as books for authors. She’s the host of The Rebel Author Podcast and an international professional speaker. So welcome back to the show, Sacha.

Sacha: Thank you for having me.

Joanna: I’m excited to talk to you today. Now, you were last on this show—I mean, you have your own show—but you were on the show in August 2022, when you had just celebrated three years full time. We talked about your lessons learned.

Now you’re at five years and things have changed a lot. Now we are going to break this down into sections, but let’s start with the genre stuff, the type of books you now write. Like what you were doing then and what you’re doing now, and—

Why change your genre and the type of books you write?

Sacha: So when I left my day job in 2019, I had found some success sharing all the lessons that I’d learned as a writer and compiling those and putting them into craft books.

I was doing okay. I was averaging sort of 40,000 to 50,000 pounds a year across the business, but I’d also reached a plateau. I wasn’t really growing and wasn’t really earning anymore. With the type of business it was, as a nonfiction author, you have so many different streams that you can actually have too many different streams.

So I was getting really, really tired, and also kind of feeling like I was making a job for myself, rather than having left my day job to like, “live the dream.” Especially because I’d left my day job to write fiction, but the fiction that I had written up to that point was young adult fantasy.

I think that’s like most indie authors that I meet do that, or think they’re going to do that at some point, and then we all find the thing we’re supposed to be writing.

So then I’d kind of gotten tired and felt like I was in this job instead of running a business. Then I stumbled upon a sapphic, so lesbian young adult book, and for the first time, I read and I had emotions. I was like, oh, my goodness me, is this what everybody else feels when they’re reading?

Then, of course, I dived into binging everything that I could get my hands on, but it was all young adult.

I stumbled across a spicy adult lesbian book, and everything changed. I knew that that was what I wanted to do.

So that’s what I’m writing now, adult fantasy romance, but for lesbians. Or sapphic people, I should say, because that’s more inclusive.

Joanna: Or people who like reading those books. I think you don’t have to identify that way to enjoy reading those books.

Sacha: No, absolutely. There are straight characters and all kinds of different characters in the books. I guess that’s just the genre catchphrase is, you know, sapphic fantasy romance.

Joanna: You said there, so many indies do this. They start writing in one area, and then eventually they kind of find what they really want.

Why do you think it takes time to find what you really want to write?

Sacha: I think for me, it was dealing with expectations. I’m a bit of a people pleaser. Thank you therapy for knocking that out of me. So I was sort of doing what I thought I should be doing. Doing something polite, reputable, and that’s also what I’d read.

I mean, as a queer person, queer fiction, up until recently, was really hard to find. There wasn’t a lot of it. There certainly wasn’t any of it when I was at school or in my formative years. So it just took me that amount of time to actually find it.

In terms of why other people do it? I’m not really sure. I think we all have our different journeys. Sometimes it’s other people’s expectations. “Oh, well, if you’re going to write a book, you have to be traditionally published,” or, “Oh, you have to write proper fiction,” or, “Oh, write literary,” or whatever.

The more creative we are, the more we sink into that love of art, that love of the word, we free ourselves from those expectations and constraints.

That’s really what art is, I suppose, and I do feel like writing is art. So, yes, I think it’s a shedding of expectations. Especially as indies, we’re naughty.

Joanna: In terms of those expectations there—I mean, obviously you use the word spicy, so we’ll keep that word—and for me, it has been writing darker things, I guess. Maybe it’s that those are the things that our parents or people who know us in real life or whatever, are like, “Oh, I didn’t know you were like that.”

Sacha: 100%. Neither of my parents have read my books, thank god.

Joanna: Well, they told you they haven’t!

Sacha: Yes, they told me they haven’t. My mum keeps threatening to read it. I’m like, “Don’t though. It’s really okay, you don’t have to.”

I think it’s very difficult because you can tell things about an author from their words. People come up to me and go, “Oh, I’m really sorry about ‘blah, blah, blah,’” and I’m like, wait, what, how did you sort of work that out?

I think any type of writing does force us to be vulnerable in a way because we cannot help the subconscious things that come out on the page. So people do make judgments, and so there probably is a bit of fear about what people will think. I’ve just reached the “I don’t care anymore” point of life.

Joanna: You wait until you’re in your 50s! I’m not even there yet, but I keep thinking about it.

Okay, so let’s talk about your name. So Sacha Black’s not your real name, and now you’ve got Ruby Roe.

Why did you decide to go with (another) pen name, Ruby Roe?

Sacha: Well, originally, when I decided to write this spicy lesbian stuff, because it was so new, and because I did have a podcast, and I had been a speaker in certain conferences and things, I had enough of a reputation that I didn’t really want anybody to know what I was doing.

I wanted to do it in secret so that there were no expectations. It’s all this people pleasing, you know, doing what I think other people want me to do rather than doing what I want to do. Thank you, therapy. So I had to do it in secret, which meant I needed a different name.

It was, funnily enough, my stepdad who suggested I write spicy books. I was like, well, I’ll write spicy if I can use your name. So his surname is actually Roe, and I love a bit of alliteration, so that’s where Ruby Roe came from.

So it was basically I needed to do it in secret with nobody watching over me, so that I could be really free to write whatever I wanted, and it to be the most true story to me. Not necessarily my life, but just free of expectation, free of pressure, free of anybody looking at me.

Actually, the funny thing is, is that when I then finished it, it was done, and so it felt like a cutoff point. So actually, I was then like, okay, I don’t care what anybody thinks now because I’ve done it. It’s too late, I can’t take it back.

So it was at that point, when I sent it off to the editor, that I was like, you know what, I don’t mind talking about this anymore. Then I felt much freer because I’d done the brave thing of writing it, and then talking about it didn’t feel so scary anymore.

Joanna: So I think it’s been about 18 months, hasn’t it?

Sacha: Yes.

Joanna: So about 18 months since you started. So how has it gone? Tell us about how the Ruby books have gone compared to the Sacha Black books, I guess.

How have you driven your incredible success as Ruby Roe?

Sacha: Okay, so for anybody who is numbers sensitive, like fair warning, I’m actually going to give you numbers. I think it’s really important that we’re honest.

So, okay, I have to pull the timeline back a little bit more. So in the summer of 2022 I released my last nonfiction book, or my most recent nonfiction book. It was at that point, just coming in towards the end of 2022, that I decided I was going to not just write sapphic fiction, but throw everything at writing sapphic fiction.

This meant more or less giving up sort of that 80/20 rule. You know, I could only spend 20% of my time on nonfiction, and at that point I was still doing freelance, so really it was even less than 20%.

In January 2023 I made 926 pounds on Amazon. I’m a wide author, but we’re just going to look at Amazon for now, for the sake of these. 1.4% of which was fiction. So like 15 quid or 13 quid or something. Everything else was nonfiction.

Last month, July 2024, which was 17 months later, I made 20,000 pounds on Amazon, of which 1.2% was nonfiction. So 250 quid.

Joanna: Thank you. Everyone’s like, “Woo hoo! That’s amazing. I want to write spicy sapphic romance!”

Sacha: So, I mean, it was like 17-18 months for a complete 180 business shift. I still am shocked by those numbers. So that’s how it’s gone, pretty darn well.

Joanna: We should just say that’s not been one month. You’ve been pretty consistently doing a lot better.

Sacha: I mean, last month was a launch month, but I’m averaging between 10,000 and 15,000 on Amazon, and I am a wide author. I do have one series in KU, but it’s my biggest store, followed by Apple, I think is next after that.

Joanna: And, of course, the Kickstarter. So tell us about all those other things because you have changed your publishing model as well.

Sacha: Totally.

Joanna: And your marketing.

Give us the publishing and marketing side.

Sacha: So Kickstarters, I’ve done one Kickstarter. I can’t really say I “do them.” I did one Kickstarter in February, which was the worst timing ever, but in very Sacha fashion, I was like, “Yes, I’m going to do it. Let’s just do it!” Then I did it, and it nearly killed me, but I did it, and it was amazing.

So I’m doing my second one next month, as we record this. So September 2024 is the second one. That does bring in huge chunks of money. Obviously, there are huge costs associated with it, but it’s also a different platform, a different group of readers, definitely. Obviously, you do drive some readers there, but it’s other people who are very, very willing to pay more per like—what’s the phrase—per order.

Joanna: Average Order Value.

Sacha: Thank you. Average order value is just incredible. I can’t even quantify how much higher, a lot higher.

Joanna: It’s 10x for me. It’s a 10x average order value than fiction on Amazon.

Sacha: Yes, exactly. So that is amazing. I also have Shopify. I’m driving all of this through a range of different means, which I’ll talk about in a second, and wanting to expand how I’m doing that.

So at the moment, a lot of my traffic comes from TikTok. Not all of it anymore because there have been an awful lot of algorithmic shifts, and so we’re doing a lot of replication across Instagram.

Social media typically doesn’t really sell books — until it does sell books for you.

It’s just one of these weird situations. TikTok, particularly, is quite good at driving traffic, and ultimately traffic means visibility, which means more sales. The more visibility you have, the more sales you’ll end up getting.

I am trying very, very hard to look at other ways and means because nothing lasts forever. That is definitely something I have learned from this industry.

So I’m doing low level Amazon ads, just about to start looking at Facebook ads for Shopify. Just so that I am not reliant on any one source of the traffic, for one, or income. I don’t want anybody owning me.

Joanna: What about TikTok ads?

Because you’ve done it organically so far, haven’t you?

Sacha: I have. It’s so difficult, isn’t it, because all of these social media platforms eventually die out because they put advertising on there, and then your organic reach reduces, and then people either pay to play or they don’t.

Then people don’t always enjoy what’s on their feed, and so people leave the platform. We are seeing a bit of that at the moment.

Will I do TikTok ads? Maybe. I definitely think that it’s still in the forming stage. They’re still very, very new.

TikTok Shop is something that I’m looking at because I’m seeing a lot of authors talking about the fact that their videos and posts that are linked to their TikTok Shop accounts are getting vastly more visibility than their non TikTok Shop accounts.

Joanna: So just on that, just explain why. Because—

TikTok is essentially now a publisher, aren’t they?

Sacha: So they’ve just set up a distribution warehouse in Birmingham as well, Birmingham UK, that is. So they are doing sort of the fulfillment side. We print and then send all our books there. So I don’t know whether they’re necessarily a publisher.

Joanna: In the US, they do some printing, I think.

Sacha: I don’t know about that. I mean, I only know what they’re doing in the UK because the TikTok Shop in America is completely separate. They don’t even have the same team inside TikTok. I actually had a conversation this week about that, looking at whether or not to do it.

You have to choose the right income streams, the right traffic streams, the right advertising streams for you.

You can very easily do all of it and then get exhausted. Ask me how I know!

Joanna: Yes, it was funny, earlier you said you had too many different streams of income and it’s tiring. Now you’ve just done it again, but in a different way.

Sacha: Exactly. Well, I mean, that’s why I am trying to. So with the Sacha stuff, that’s changed. I used to do all of the things. Now if I do speaking, it’s only certain things, and also webinars because they’re higher value than, I don’t know, things that are lower value.

I’m basically trying to be sensible with my time so I don’t burn out. She says laughing because that’s exactly what she’s always on the brink of.

Joanna: Well, I think it’s interesting though, because —

You are surfing a moment where your organic content has hit. You’ve also hit a hungry market, which is authentic to you —

— because of your lived experience. So you’re making the most of that, but as you said, things go up and down, and nothing lasts forever.

You’re writing pretty fast as well, aren’t you?

Sacha: I mean, proportionately, I suppose, but not compared to the old model of rapid releasing a book a month. This year I think I’ll have written three or four books, and I’ll only have released three, but then I will have done two Kickstarters and seven conferences. So, I mean, that’s the interesting thing.

One of the things that I’m trying to do next year is reduce the amount of stuff, the other things, so that I have more gaps, like more still time and more time at home, so that I can produce more words. That’s my happy place. When I’m drafting, that is my most joyful bits of work time.

Joanna: I think also, I mean, there is the time for the strategy as well, the kind of step back and have a look. It’s great being in the maelstrom of everything going gangbusters, but then at some points kind of stepping back and thinking of the bigger picture.

Sometimes I find that if I’m traveling or at a conference when someone else is speaking, that can give you some different perspective, can’t it? Or even like—I wanted to talk to you on this because obviously I learn a lot from you.

I found your five year thing really, really interesting. It’s a far cry, actually, from your three years.

Sacha: I do not even recognize the person I was two years ago. Like, I actually am not even sure I recognize who I was last year. I am so different.

It’s very, very hard to quantify the mindset and psychological changes that happen when you go through such a significant change like this.

Joanna: Well, let’s talk about some of those things. Actually, I wanted to point out I have a timeline. So everybody can go to thecreativepenn.com/timeline, and I’ve been sharing these lessons learned every year. In fact, by the time this goes out, I might have shared my latest one, whatever that’ll be, 14 or 13 years, whatever it is.

Sacha: They’re like my faves.

Joanna: What’s interesting, I went back and had a look, and in my year four, I went from five to six figures. Then in my year five, I doubled that to multi six figures. It’s so weird that in a completely different way you’ve done the same thing, which I just thought was really odd.

I wonder, because, of course, mine wasn’t TikTok, I wasn’t doing that genre. So when people say, “Oh, well, that’s okay for Sacha. She can do that because she’s writing sex, basically,” or, “That’s okay for her because ‘blah, blah, blah,’” or, “That’s okay for me because whatever.”

Like, people always seem to say these things, and yet, both of us have done such different things.

On year five, I actually wonder if there is something just about the maturity of a business that shifts it at that point.

You needed those earlier years to get to that point.

Sacha: Yes, I wonder the same thing. I certainly had people telling me not to write lesbian fiction because it doesn’t sell, and I’m just laughing so hard now. I think we all face those people, like the naysayers that are like, “I don’t know if you should do that. There’s no market there.”  

Maybe it’s easy for me to say because, blah, blah, blah, but also, it’s not because I worked myself so hard I nearly burnt out.

So, yes, I am literally on an identical pathway. So last tax year, 102,000 pounds. I’ve already done that this tax year, and we’re only four months in. So I’m definitely on track to double, well, probably more than double, this year. That’s bonkers. So that’s going from year five to year six for me, so I’m a year behind you.

In terms the practical stuff, I mean, so many things, Joanna. So many things I have learned. Okay, I need to take a deep breath because this is mortifying in some ways.

So the biggest thing I think that has happened is the amount of—and I don’t want to use this word, but it is true, or it’s how I feel—but like bureaucracy around the money.

There are so many things that we should be doing with money that I possibly wasn’t doing.

You know, very, very strict record keeping. Certainly in the UK, when you go over the VAT threshold, you have to be so militant with your record keeping. That means things like receipts, like reconciling stuff.

You need to be on top of the amount that you’re keeping aside for tax or VAT payments.

Actually, you get to a certain point where even if you can do it, you’re probably not best placed to do it. There are other people who are very qualified, and that’s their job, and they really enjoy doing it.

That’s one of the things that I’ve learned this year, is that I don’t have to do everything.

It really hurts me saying that out loud, but I don’t, and actually, I’m not best placed to do everything because I’m not an expert in everything. I just need to be an expert in one thing.

Then like on the side of that, understanding legal terms, financial terms, there’s so many more words and like clauses and laws that you need to be aware of. Like that alone is different in every country.

If you are a business owner with your own website, selling books from your website, you actually are the responsible person who needs to understand all of those things. I certainly experienced some quite scary moments where I knew more about our industry and the legal implications than accountants.

Thank you, Jo, for educating me on those topics. The accountants didn’t necessarily know the right things because they also are not experts in every single area. So I had to move accountant.

Things like cash flow as well. This was a huge, huge problem for me.

Before I exploded, I was bringing in maybe like 3000 a month, 2000-3000 a month. Then that first kind of viral month I had, I did just under 3000 on Shopify alone.

Now that seems like, oh, great, you’ve made 3000 extra pounds. Well, no, because with Shopify, the way that it works with the printer, they charge you immediately for the sale and the printing of that book, but they also charge you for the shipping of that book.

Then Shopify doesn’t give you that money for, say, I don’t know, three days, five days, something like that.

What it does is cause this really jarring cash flow problem where you don’t want to close shop, because obviously you want to have those sales and encourage them and keep that going, but you can’t afford to pay for the shipping and printing of the books that need to be shipped and printed.

So I had to get a credit card, which I hadn’t done in, donkeys, like, probably five years I hadn’t had a credit card. So that was, like a really big, terrifying step for me.

Obviously, it all got paid off because you know the money’s coming in, but those are the kinds of things that you have to think about when you do spontaneously explode like this.

Joanna: There’s a couple of things there. So the first thing is, I really love that you talk about the—I don’t like the word bureaucracy, basically—but I mean, I guess it is all of the stuff you need to run a business.

This is the big difference between what authors think they are, which is, “I’m an author,” and even if you’re running a business just on Amazon, they do all of that for you, but as soon as you start to run your own store.

Generally, if you are a director of a company, even if you’re the only employee — as both you and I are of our companies — the responsibilities of a director of a company are legally required.

In any country where people are listening, and you can use ChatGPT for this, it’s very useful for all of this legal stuff. It’s like, what are the responsibilities of a director in whatever country? One of those, like you mentioned, is record keeping.

As you said, as well, even if you outsource your accounting to someone, which, again, you should if you’re running a company, you are still responsible for it. So you have to understand enough to look at your accounts.

I mean, I know you’ve got an accounting system now, and you’re doing all the right things, but it’s scary, isn’t it?

It’s scary to suddenly have to be a grown up business person.

As opposed to like, was it just a hobby before?

Sacha: Well, I think I always wanted it to be a business and to be a serious business person, but when you’re just making ends meet, which, more or less, I was just making ends meet. It was fine. We were fine and comfortable and paying all the bills, but there wasn’t an awful lot left at the end of the month. You’re not forced to think about it.

Whereas now, if I’ve turned over 100 grand in four months, I’m going to have a pretty hefty tax bill, which means you have to put money aside. Actually, I still am nervous about money and about the accounting side of it.

So I’ve actually got the accountants to make me custom reports so that I can track through the year approximately how much tax money I should save, how much self-tax, whatever the words are. I know it all clearly, but you know the corporation tax, things like this.

I still feel like I’m a baby in this world and need that level of reassurance. People who are fully trained can do these things for you, you just have to ask. So yes, I do have an accounting system. It’s almost like somebody who knows more than me was really helpful and helped me to do that, and told me to set up a pension and things!

I’m trying to save for tax, I’m trying to put money into a pension, because you also have to understand how you can take money out of the business sensibly without incurring huge, huge bills with the government at the end of a tax year.

It’s a lot to learn.

Almost like when you’re a new author and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to publish indie,” and then all of a sudden you have all this stuff to learn about marketing, about publishing, and it’s a new language. It really, really is.

You think all of these words that we talk about, and other people, non-writers, when you start talking about your business, they just gloss over. It’s the same here with money. I feel like I’m still learning all of these terms, and I wasn’t stupid beforehand.

Joanna: But it made you feel stupid, didn’t it?

Sacha: Yes, it did. I felt really naive and foolish thinking that I knew everything that I was supposed to know about this area.

Joanna: But how could you? That’s why I wanted to talk to you about this too.

Obviously, we have had a lot of conversations over the last 18 months, and what struck me in talking to you was,

“Oh, my goodness, how many other people out there are not doing the things they need to do in order to be successful in their business?”

The reality is, since 2008, since I’ve been in this industry, I have seen so many people, in fact, like yourself, who have hit some big wave, and they’ve made a ton of money, and then they’ve kind of disappeared. Now, you know, you said nothing lasts forever.

That wave passes on, or the genre shifts, or TikTok shifts, or whatever it is, shifts. Then suddenly you can’t necessarily hire a whole family to be in the business, or you might have bought some massive house or whatever.

I’ve seen too many people disappear because they thought the cash flow would last forever.

Sacha: If you are lucky enough to make excess money, like more money than you actually need to pay your bills, then the clever thing to do would be to make that money make more money for you, which is what I’m trying desperately hard to do now.

It is scary because you have to sometimes lock money away for a really long time for the future. Some of us thought we’d be invincible forever, and 20, except now we’re heading towards 40, and we’re really tired.

Joanna: We might think a pension is a really good idea! Actually, it is good to talk about pension because, again, you’re the same age as one of my sisters, and I’m the eldest.

We’re both the eldest of five, and so we feel responsible for our younger siblings, but it’s impossible to talk to your siblings because they never listen to you. So, of course, you have to find a proxy and lecture them about pensions, which is what I’ve been doing with you.

I think what’s interesting, on a serious note, is a few years back, and I think I was guilty of it too, is there was at one point, there was a sort of trendy thing that people were saying, “Oh, my books will be my pension.”

At the time, and this may have been in the earlier days of when there was more blue water, as Becca Syme would say. Then people just thought, “Oh, well, let’s say I have my 50 books or whatever, then when I’m old, it’ll just pay me enough money to live.”

We’re at a point now, where that is not true now. Given that you’re, let’s say, 30 or 20 years off retirement or whatever, then it’s like, well, what if my books are not my retirement? Who knows what the hell the world is going to be like or whatever.

My books aren’t my pension (superannuation), but my pension can be my pension.

What do you think about that?

Sacha: Yes, I mean, I definitely always thought my books would be my pension. I was definitely of that era in the indie world where I’m like, “Yes, yes, my books are going to be my pension.” Whether it’s naive or not, I feel like now, at 37, that I won’t retire because I don’t want to retire because I’ll get bored.

Also, at 37, I’m definitely not as energetic as I was at 20. So I’m not naive enough to think that I might change my mind about that.

So what we see with books is that we have the nice launch spike where they make a lot of money, and then for a couple of years, they do really well, and they’ll plateau at a certain amount of money per month.

Unless you either make them current and relevant, or you continue to have successful marketing—which I do see that my Girl Games books, the first series that I wrote with Ruby, sells more now than it did when I launched it—but unless you continue to work on that, it won’t.

It might not continue anyway because different trends come up, different mediums of story come up, different tech things come up which will change the face of how we consume entertainment.

Anyway, there are no guarantees, and therefore the only thing that we can do, just like when we talk about either being exclusive or wide with our books, the only thing we really can do is have enough pots of money, investments, assets, that we’re not reliant on any one of those for our old age and our pension years.

Joanna: Yes, and pivoting into new things as they come up. I mean, both of us in our careers so far, we’ve pivoted out of one thing and into another thing. That’s the other reality, even if you think, “Oh, yes, of course, my books can be my pension,” well, I guess they can be if you want to keep doing the marketing.

We’ll use TikTok as an example, because you very kindly, like one weekend when I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do it. I need your help. Get on the phone with me,” and you very kindly got on the phone with me. Then I was like, “Yes, I’m going to do it.” Then it was within 24 hours, I messaged you and said, “No, I’m not going to do it.”

Sacha: I did laugh.

Joanna: I know, but I did try briefly. Obviously, I didn’t try that hard. I already knew that it wasn’t going to be great for me, and then I did, I tried, and it didn’t work.

This is the reality. Like I know that there are people listening who felt the same way about TikTok. There are lots of people who are loving it and lots of people who are not.

That’s going to happen in another five years, in another 10 years, in another 20 years. Like wherever you are in your life, your life changes, and what you want to spend your time on changes.

Do we want to be doing book marketing forever?

Sacha: It’s almost like a privilege problem, right? When we reach a certain amount of income, we have the privilege and the freedom to be able to choose how we spend our time. So, it’s like, well, will I do this forever? I honestly don’t know.

I’m doing it now because it brings me joy, and I feel like that is the biggest lesson of this whole journey.

The minute I stopped doing things for other people and started writing the things that I wanted to write, doing the business things that I found enjoyable, all of a sudden, success came.

I do feel like that is a very common thing that happens in this community. I mean, obviously it doesn’t happen to everybody, but I don’t know.

Joanna: I think so. So just on the mindset, I mean, you’ve touched on it a little bit. One of the things I liked in your lessons learned was this kind of realization, you said, “I work the same level of hard as I did a year ago, but now I earn more. That was a strange thing to try to process.” I guess that is about money mindset, but—

What are some of the mindset shifts for you over the last couple of years?

Sacha: So the big lesson that I learned around actually hitting a really arbitrary financial goal that I’d set years ago—that I just hyper focused on, and was like, no, this is what I need to do—is that nothing actually changes when you hit that goal. Other than I fell into a giant deep depression for two weeks.

I say depression, I mean “small d” depression, I don’t mean clinical depression. I really struggled to get out of bed for two weeks. For two weeks, I was miserable. I’d hit the most successful financial point I’d ever hit, and I was miserable.

It’s because I hadn’t thought further than success, and I think a lot of us don’t do that. A lot of us don’t really think about, okay, what if we actually do hit the success?

We think about it only in terms of fear of judgment and fear of expectation. We don’t actually think about it in terms of the logistical consequences of that.

So I had to take a hot second to make some new goals and get some new long-term plans because you definitely get to a certain point, and more money is just more money. Like, it loses some of that meaning that you were chasing it, or it certainly did for me anyway.

I think some of the other things are boundaries. Like, I am so bad with boundaries, and that’s definitely something I’ve learned from you. Well, I am learning. It’s a work in progress.

So putting boundaries in because one of the brilliant consequences about earning more money as a consequence of selling more books is that more people know who you are. More people find you on social media, and more people want to take a piece of you, right?

They want to send you messages. They want to say thank you. All of those things are lovely, but if you take on the responsibility of replying to every single human being that reaches out and contacts you, you are going to put yourself in a hole.

Ask me how I know. I spend my whole life learning everything the hard way so that other people don’t have to.

Joanna: I don’t think it works like that, though. I think that you still have to learn it yourself.

Sacha: So, yes, putting in some boundaries. It’s been a very difficult process of forcing myself to step back and reminding myself that I don’t owe anybody anything, because I really felt like I did.

Also, bringing a team on. So I have a social media manager who will reply to certain things and comments and DMs and will send on the things that I need to personally respond to. Just having that person in front of me means that I don’t have to be the pit bull, somebody else can do it for me.

Joanna: Yes, and I know that was hard for you to outsource.

How did you find that person to outsource to?

Because a lot of people want to find people like that.

Sacha: So I actually have four people now that I’m working with. One was in the community and a friend of an author friend.

One is somebody I met 10 years ago through the blogging world and is a social media manager by day, like that’s their job. So I went to them through their company, and just said, look, can I use your services?

Somebody else is an author and also a VA. Then somebody else was a patron and wanted to offer help. So I can’t give any hard advice other than networking, I suppose. The advice is networking. Talk to people, make friends with people.

Joanna: Yes, and also ask for referrals. I mean, when I lost my virtual assistant, I’m now working with the same person that you use for your podcast now works on my podcast. So I think referrals and networking.

The reality is a lot of authors are not making that much money and do services. So I think it actually keeps it in the community, and that’s quite nice.

So I guess the other thing we should mention is that you’ve mentioned burnout a couple of times. You’ve worked super, super hard. You’ve just come back from a wonderful trip to New Zealand, which was a work trip that you combined with a family holiday.

What new perspective has this time away given you?How are you going to make sure you don’t end up in the same place [of burnout]?

Sacha: So three or four big things, I would say. Well, I mean the first one sort of happened before I went, in that I stopped writing. I was hell bent on finishing a book before I went, and I realized if I continued, I wasn’t going to make it to New Zealand.

So I stopped, and I spent the last two weeks setting up this system with these four people, and outsourcing, and taking everything off my plate. The big lesson there is knowing that even if I can do something, I don’t have to do it.

I’m not good at everything, and you actually have to let go in order to give yourself the time, grace, and space to be able to do the thing that gives you the most joy. Which ultimately, for all of us writers, is the writing. So that was one.

The other thing that’s connected to that is knowing that even if I’m on holiday, our businesses are such that they create passive income.

So last month was my best sales month across every single platform, and I was on holiday for like three quarters of last month, having a very jolly time, not doing any work, really. So recognizing that nothing is going to fall over if I take a week off.

So that was that was pretty big, as well, because I definitely had the incorrect mindset that if I wasn’t working, I wasn’t earning. Of course, I don’t know how many times you say it on your podcast and how many times I’ve read it, but until I saw it, I didn’t really believe it.

Joanna: Just on that, because we did talk about that before, about your pension. I say to Jonathan, if something happens to me, you know, unfortunately, I think it’s about two years.

If I do nothing for two years, like if I’m gone, then I think the income will just spiral down after about two years unless you do something.

So, in a way, it’s passive income. The fact is, taking a couple of weeks off makes no difference. Taking a couple of months or a couple of years off does make a difference.

Sacha: Yes, but that does go back to what we were saying about the pension and the era of maybe five years ago, when everybody was like, “Oh, my books are my pension.” Well, not if they only last making income for two years.

Joanna: Exactly.

Sacha: Then the other one. I have to rest. I hate saying that, but it’s true.

Apparently, apparently, you feel better after you’ve rested.

Who knew? Who actually knew that when you do fun things that are not at your desk, you feel better. So that was awkwardly embarrassingly horrible, but true.

So I’ve kind of come back like, okay, I need some more hobbies. I need some more vacant time.

The other thing is the social side. I hate this, but I need people. I really like my own time. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely have never been more filled with joy than not having to work with people directly in person, but that doesn’t also mean I need to never see people.

Apparently, seeing people also gives me joy. So that’s another one, is that I do need to find different ways of socializing and spending time with others.

Joanna: I actually think that this comes back to this whole being a writer, when before we had a day job. Then when it becomes your job, as well as something you still enjoy, then it’s like, oh, I have to find a hobby or some other way to get yourself out of the house.

It’s so funny, because we’re quite similar in many ways, and one of the things we do like is our exercise. So, recently, I’ve joined a second gym. So now I’m doing powerlifting, but also doing calisthenics.

So one of my goals now is to be able to do a freestanding handstand, with no wall or anything. Just like a handstand, and not wobble and fall over. That feels like a really big goal right now, but I know at some point I’ll be able to do that.

It’s interesting that I get my energy pennies, as Becca Syme would say, from exercise, as I know you do. It’s also been a lot more of a social experience, so that’s been good.

It’s finding these other things in our life, isn’t it?

Sacha: Yes, it is. I find, like as an indie author who’s on the entrepreneurial side, I enjoy everything I do, and so the desire to do more of that all of the time is really strong. When that’s combined with your office also being inside your house, it’s extraordinarily difficult to take time off.

Even if I watch a TV show or a movie or something, or I read a book, it’s still work because you can’t help but deconstruct them, or go, Oh, that was a great line of dialogue,” or, “I know what’s coming,” or, you know, whatever.

So I actually go back to the gym next week because my kid is still off on the summer holidays at the moment, so I don’t have childcare. I am, funnily enough, we had a conversation about calisthenics because it is those things that will take me physically away from the desk, because if I don’t physically move my body, apparently, I put on weight.

Joanna: And also feel worse.

You feel happier when you move.

Sacha: I sleep better as well when I exercise.

Joanna: Yes, all of the above. Oh, so there’s so much. I think what’s so interesting is your five years was a really big shift.

Then, just from my experience, what happened was a bit of—well, why I’m very interested in your trajectory as well, is when I hit a certain number, I pretty much have stayed at that same number because I’ve been happy at that number. So it’s almost been exactly within about 10 grand difference per year for a decade.

Sacha: Wow.

Joanna: Although every year the percentage of money coming from different things has changed, it’s almost like the set point that you have in your head is like a set point for your finances where you’re happy. You know, if you’re not heading towards that, you push a bit harder, and if it’s going well, you can maybe pull back a bit.

I feel like I’m at my financial set point, and it’ll be interesting to see where you hit your set point.

Although I did go through a time, and I’m sure you will, I went through a time where I was like, “Oh, I really, I need to make seven figures. Like, I need to do that,” because that was the thing that everyone was talking about. Then I was like, well, why? Like, why?

Sacha: Okay, let me justify it, though. I need to beat my dad.

Joanna: Your dad doesn’t even write books!

Sacha: No, I know, but he made seven figures by a certain age, and I’m like, no, I have to be him. I have to do it when I’m younger. So like, look, is it another arbitrary financial goal? I don’t know what you’re talking about, okay.

Joanna: Well, this is interesting, and I talked about this a few years back around —

The type of business you have to run to make seven figures is very different to the business you have to run for multi-six.

You’ve just seen the difference between a five-figure business and a six-figure business.

So this is the thing again, there’s these growing pains at different times of your business. I think your journey is so fascinating, and thank you so much for sharing everything.

Tell us where people can find you and everything you do online.

Sacha: So for Sacha, you can visit SachaBlack.co.uk or The Rebel Author Podcast. For anything Ruby, RubyRoe.co.uk or RubyRoeAuthor on TikTok.

Joanna: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Sacha, that was great.

Sacha: Thank you for having me. Bye.

xx

Sacha Black discusses her transition from writing non-fiction books for authors to writing spicy sapphic fantasy romance novels. She explains how she found her true passion in writing adult fantasy romance for sapphic readers and the impact it had on her business. Sacha shares her experience of changing her pen name to Ruby Roe to write in this genre and the freedom it gave her to write authentically. She also discusses the financial and administrative challenges of running a successful indie author business, including record-keeping, tax obligations, and cash flow management. In this conversation, Joanna and Sacha discuss the financial aspects of being an author and the mindset shifts required for success. They cover topics such as personal taxes, saving for retirement, and the misconception that books will be a sufficient pension. Sacha shares her experiences of hitting financial goals and the importance of setting new goals and boundaries. They also discuss the need for rest, finding hobbies outside of writing, and the value of socializing. The conversation concludes with a reflection on the set point of financial success and the different stages of business growth.

Takeaways

• Transitioning to writing in a different genre can lead to renewed passion and success in an author’s business.
• Choosing a pen name can provide the freedom to write authentically and explore new genres without the expectations of previous work.
• Running a successful indie author business requires careful financial management, including record-keeping, tax obligations, and cash flow management.
• Being aware of legal and financial responsibilities as a business owner is crucial, even if certain tasks are outsourced to professionals. Authors need to be aware of personal tax obligations and consider setting up an accounting system to save money and avoid large tax bills.
• Books should not be relied upon as the sole source of retirement income, and authors should consider setting up a pension or other investments.
• Mindset shifts are necessary for financial success, including letting go of the belief that more work equals more money and setting new goals beyond financial milestones.
• Setting boundaries and outsourcing tasks can help prevent burnout and free up time for writing and other enjoyable activities.
• Taking time off and engaging in hobbies and social activities are important for overall well-being and creativity.
• Financial success has a set point, and it’s important to reassess goals and priorities as the business grows and changes.

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