S01E01: When year plans attack

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda make their 2024 plans…then remake them to factor in all the different hats self-publishers need to wear.

By next week, Sam and Matilda will have completed a marketing audit to as the first step on their plans for 2024.

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: The Deathless - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deathless-Frances-June/dp/B0915V5L6F

Most recent book: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/fVXwW3j

MATILDA IG: @matildaswiftauthor

Website: MatildaSwift.com

Book to start with: https://books2read.com/TheSlayoftheLand (book #1 of The Heathervale Mysteries)

Most recent book: https://books2read.com/ButterLatethanNever (book #3 of The Slippery Spoon Mysteries)

Mentioned on the show

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz: https://www.amazon.com/dp/073521414X/

ALLi (Alliance of Independent Authors): https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/

Orna Ross: https://ornaross.com/

Join Orna’s patreon, or take part in her weekly check-ins for free here: https://www.patreon.com/OrnaRoss

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books About Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ad courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now, we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello, and welcome to the Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Sam Cummings, here with my co-host, Matilda Swift, and we're here to write our way to financial success.

We are two indie authors with over a dozen books between us and still a long way to go to the quit the day job dream.

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our mastery through Mis Steps Journey.

Each week, we will cover a topic to help along the way.

This week's topic is going to be Year Goals.

But before we get on with that, we're going to do a little bit of an introduction because this is our very first episode.

So Matilda, tell me about yourself.

Thank you, Sam.

I'm very excited to be here.

So I am Matilda Swift.

I write quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

I've been writing Cozy Mysteries since 2019.

I maybe even started in 2018.

I have been writing for a long, long time, and it took me a long time to figure out that every single book I wrote had a murder in it, and a murder mystery of some sort, even when I thought it was a whole different genre.

And I finally, I have a very good friend who's a self-published author as well.

And she said, did you know there's a big genre on Amazon called Cozy Mysteries?

I did not.

It's not as big in the UK as it is in the US for some reason.

So when I looked into it, I realized, oh, I have written a Cozy Mystery, so I should publish it.

So that started my Head of Veil Mysteries.

And those are set in the Peak District, one of my favorite parts of England, which is like really rural, rolling hills, lovely farmland, absolutely beautiful.

And it's set in a small village where somebody sets up a sixth form college.

And there's kind of a bit of conflict there because nobody wants this big school there.

And she's an outsider and she doesn't know much about farming.

And then, you know, she starts detecting and finding bodies and finding out what happens.

And I have that.

And then I have another series as well.

That's about someone who runs a sort of more like a diner or a greasy spoon record in the UK.

And in the back, there's a secret detective agency.

And it's just a little detective agency.

They find things like missing jewels, maybe even lost pets.

And then somebody dies and they have to find out what happens.

So really, very, very culinary cozies.

I'm in fact going to start a new series that is even more of a culinary cozy.

So again, that's sort of a sub genre that I've fallen into by accident.

But yeah, as I've been writing since 2019 or publishing since 2019 on these, I am about to put out my 11th book.

I've got a couple of novellas and a short story collection within that.

And I'm definitely 100% a cozy writer.

I am sticking in that genre.

I think that's maybe the only thing that I have done along the lines of, you know, the received wisdom, what you're meant to do as an indie author, because I've stuck with one genre and I love it.

But there's still a long way for me to go to see self-publishing success.

And I'm really looking forward to learning more about that with you.

Tell me about yourself, Sam.

Well, I have been self-publishing since 2016, but I did the bad thing and dipped into different genres.

That's how I started with a little bit of like a novella series, which is like a young, not even a young adult, more like middle grade about a young girl in 1930s Hollywood.

And it's all magic and monsters and demons.

And then also have a novella series, which is like an urban fantasy about seven brothers living in New York.

And they are the human embodiments of the seven deadly sins, you know, just for fun.

And then, yeah.

And then I have also got a standalone young adult book.

And I've just started last year my young adult werewolf series.

So I've kind of dipped in and out of different things, but young adult is really my bread and butter.

It's like the whole thing, the whole reason I wanted to write in the first place.

And it's taken me a long time to realize that's what I should be doing.

So my whole thing is magic, monsters and myths.

So that's the path that I'm going down from now.

So werewolves, monsters, all sorts of things.

I've got lots of books that are coming up that I'm very excited to find success with, hopefully.

No, definitely.

Yes.

So I moved back to the UK at the very start of the pandemic.

So I moved back in 2020.

Is that correct?

That feels like a long time ago.

So I used to live in Hong Kong.

I lived there for about eight years.

And that's where I got into self-publishing.

That's where my friend lives, who is also self-publisher.

She is a sci-fi fantasy writer.

And there's a great writing community there.

A lot of people there are really dedicated to their passions.

So I absolutely love living out there for that.

When I moved back to UK, it was a pandemic.

I knew no writers here.

It felt very isolating.

And it really took me a long time to try and get back into the writing community.

And then I found that I have a mutual friend who knows Sam.

And we sort of connected a bit online.

And then we did some writing critiques.

And then a couple of months back, we both realized we have the same goal that we want to quit our day jobs to become full-time writers.

And we just absolutely figured out we're on the exact same path.

We want to have a mastermind group.

And I think if you haven't really thought about much about a mastermind group or a mastermind pairing, really it's the idea of looking for somebody who's at your same level.

Or you can be at just slightly different levels in different areas, but there should be somebody who is able to share your journey from now onwards.

And you work together and collaborate not necessarily on books, not necessarily on business, but just on ideas.

And you might get some co-writing out of that or you might not.

So we formed a little mastermind group, and we meet once a month face-to-face for a whole day session.

And then we meet once a week for an online session.

And we both realized that we want to have podcasts.

So we love the idea of it.

We both love podcasts.

But also we both realized that we listened to a lot of podcasts and that there are plenty of podcasts that are by people who are already successful, who are 10 years into a success journey.

Often they're interviewing people who are further back than them, but it's very reflective.

It's very much people saying, I can sift through everything I tried, and I can find the thing that did work for me.

And it's really hard to be somebody who's further back and not knowing what's going to be successful, not knowing what to try, what's worth trying.

So we really want to have this podcast to go through all the steps and see the things that we do wrong and talk about what went wrong with that.

And so that hopefully people can listen and see, oh, I know why that went wrong for them, but I think it would be right for me and I want to try it.

Or just help people shortcut when they're not sure which of the 10,000 possible things you could try, which of those things you might actually want to give or go yourself.

Or you can listen to us and think, actually, I've heard them, I've heard Samantha and Matilda try that, and it's not always right for someone at this stage of the journey.

I'm going to pick something else.

Hopefully, I think at some point, we would look at maybe getting more of a community around this, or just letting people listen in and hear our, hopefully, fast and speedy and fun journey to success.

So, as you said, every week, we pick a topic, yes.

Every week, we pick a topic that we think is going to help us towards the goal of becoming successful for Pen Authors.

This week, our topic that we picked is year goals.

So we're right at the start of 2024, and we really wanted to treat this as a year where we make big changes.

So as such, we wanted to put together year goals.

So we're just going to talk about that and give you some ideas of how we thought about it, where we changed our minds, how it might help you figure out your year goals, and what has maybe gone not so well that you can learn from.

So Sam, tell us about your work this week and making your year goals and how it's come for you.

Yes.

So this week was really all about like going into inside and trying to figure out like who am I as a writer and what does that mean like for the future.

So we both started a course which started on the 1st of January, which was with Orna Ross, and it's the Creative Planning for Indie Authors course, which is-

And just let me say in trap, so for anyone who doesn't know, Orna Ross is, you know, the head of Ally.

She runs Ally, the Alliance of Independent Authors, which you should join if you're a self-publisher, kind of anywhere on the journey.

They do podcasts, they have lots of free resources.

If you get banned by Amazon, I know that they are an excellent resource, so you should go to them and they will help you figure out the next steps.

So Orna runs that, she founded it, and she also runs, she has a great Patreon where people collect together.

You can join the free tier and just share your goals.

You can join and do all sorts of other planning things.

And she has the Go Creative planning process, which is, she's been running that for a couple of years as well, a year-long program where you're really focusing on professionalizing your self-publishing business.

So yeah, so we're both doing the Orna Ross program.

How have you found that?

Like, mind-frazzling.

The way that my brain works is very non-linear.

I am a very scatterbrained person.

So I am usually just like go, go, go, just working from one thing to the next and never really planned that far ahead.

Not like to like the minute details, but this plan that we are going through is quite like, it's really drilling down into like the nitty gritty, which is completely out of my comfort zone.

So I've really enjoyed it because it's teaching me how to be a lot more intentional with what I'm doing, which is amazing because I would never have thought to, to set myself like not just like goals for work, but goals on like how to rest more.

And like I do usually use that quarters for setting up goals and stuff.

But yeah, it's just like a lot more in depth.

So that's what I've been working on this week.

And it's, it's been great.

But I don't feel like I've made that much progress.

Yeah, I was going to say, have you set your year goals yet then?

Or just start to think about the enormity of the task?

I've filled the boxes in.

I mean, I know what I already knew at the start of the year, at the end of last year, what things I wanted to publish this year.

So it's really my whole thing this year is trying to work out my timings.

So if I want to publish three books this year, my whole thing now is trying to figure out, like, well, if I want to publish this, when do I have to do the steps before it?

So that's really my big thing at the moment.

So I've not quite nailed it, but I have started to think about it.

So I think that that's progress for me.

That's like, yeah.

Is there anything from looking at it from on a system or from kind of things that we have talked about in the mastermind sessions that have kind of helped you plan the year slightly differently to the way you might have done it before?

It's not changed the books that I wanted to do, but it's definitely made me think more about planning in marketing.

And this also this thing with Orna's course is that we have like, she talks about three hats that you wear.

So you've got your maker hat, your marketeers hat and your manager's hat.

So it's just looking at writing as like a three-part business.

And that's really helped me categorize things better than I ever would have done and really take time to think about, well, you're going to have to run ads and set up finance things and market things differently to how you were doing it before, which isn't basically nothing.

So it has, usually all of my planning of stuff is just like a jumbled mess, and I've managed to put it into neat boxes, which, yeah, I've enjoyed it, it's been difficult, my brain hurts, but I'm feeling happy and I'm still raring to go, which is probably the best thing you can ask for after a week full of just like using your brain for stuff that you don't usually use it for.

I know it's interesting to think about those three hats.

So I know one thing that Orna really talked about, so I went to her kind of kickoff year session a few days ago and she's going to do a session at the end of every month from now on.

So the kickoff session, there was a lot of talk about the three hats and kind of interchanging them.

So figuring out how they work together rather than write the book as the maker, then think about how to market it.

And I know there's a lot of things on the Indie Author process, a lot of things that I talked about that had to do with right to market without necessarily much of like, what does that mean?

Have you managed to plan your year in terms of like putting those hats together and really thinking how you will rather than just stay on the hamster wheel of like write the next book, write the next book.

What maybe have you thought about in terms of professionalizing the process and making it that you are writing with, think about all three of those hats, the maker, the manager and the marketer.

So far, like I had a bit of a revelation yesterday because I have been writing every day this week, which has been like, I didn't think I'd really get much writing done this week, but I've like hit, I've done about 11,000 words this week, which is on top of everything else, pretty good for me.

And then on Saturday, I thought, oh, on Saturday, I'll have a great writing day.

But I started doing manager stuff.

So I put my manager hat on and started thinking about finances and budgets.

And, and realized that if I need, if I'm going to take this all as seriously as I want to, then the manager's hat for me is like a huge step in, in that direction.

And I need to take at least one day a week to just do management stuff.

So that is something that I've realized just this week and something that I'm going to have to build into my plan going forward is like the managerial parts are just as important as the maker parts.

You can't, you can't continue doing the maker parts if you don't have your manager hat on at some point.

Which has been like, that's, that's really where I feel like I've been failing a lot of the time in my journey is never putting a manager's hat on.

And I'm sorry, I keep saying, I keep talking about the hats, but that's how I visualize it now.

Yeah.

And I think, I think it's hard when you become a self-publisher because there isn't, especially at the beginning, there isn't a big push to put the manager hat on.

There is a big push to just complete the first book, write the first book, and then you should really have the first three books to like rapid release those together.

And then you need more books to keep coming because your audience expects those.

And you just end up on, like I said before, that this hamster-y idea of write the next book.

Like that is the big advice that you just see in all the forums.

You hear a lot, you know, whenever you're asking questions of like, how do I find success?

I've written X number of books, but I'm not really getting any readership.

The advice is always write the next book.

And I think people who are saying that are well intentioned, but they're often not really considering the fact that they maybe are very good at the management side, or they're very good at the marketing side.

And to them, it doesn't feel like a thing they have to very, very consciously work on.

Or they have got processes in place that are so clear now because they're 20 books down the line, that they don't really see what they're doing.

And just write the next book is it doesn't feel like productive advice to everybody.

No, especially when you've got to consider burnout.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

And I know the pandemic has really made people feel more conscious of that and like experience burnout more than ever.

But I think so I was also working on my year goal this week, and I sat down and I always think I felt, in fact, proud that I did it slightly better.

So what I always do is I look ahead at the year and I think of the books I want to publish and plan in my writing time and my editing time, my proofing time when it goes to the editor, when it comes back, how much time to format it and upload it.

And I put all those in for the year.

I want to start a brand new series, which I know takes longer than continuous series.

So I even proudly gave myself a little extra time for that, thinking I'm not going to be full this time into oversheddling myself.

I also even put in time to write short stories for my previous series or my existing series because I don't want my readers to think I forgot those when I'm trying to get three books out in a new series.

So I did all that and I thought I was slightly disappointed because I actually wasn't going to get three books out this year if I do all that.

I was going to get one book out this year and I've already got a book schedule to come out from an existing series.

I was like, well, that would be two.

That's a bit not great.

I want to try and get four in, but as long as I'm setting up something new that feels like I am on the right track.

So I'll have those three books coming out, starting at this year and then to the beginning of next year.

Great.

And then I went to this workshop with Orna.

So Orna did the kickoff session, which was two and a half hours long.

Incredibly exhausting because I have a day job still.

And so I'd done my day job and then it started immediately after the day job, two and a half hours of this, of listening, of doing exercises, of thinking about financial aspects, of thinking about mindset things, of hearing fantastic information.

You got to ask a lot of questions.

The question part was really good.

Like the same few people often asking the questions, but they were really voting what everyone was thinking.

So it worked really well and I want to manage it very well.

I would really recommend anybody at this kind of stage to do something like that.

Like whatever program works well for you.

Just do something where you're having to maybe work someone else's system, but that force you to question your own system.

Because I would say I have this year plan in place.

And thinking about all the hats, thinking about how to get my marketing hat in place.

I was like, okay, I've got this idea of the new size I want to write is deliberately more to market.

And I really took all the things that I love, all the things that readers love and found the magical middle ground that you're supposed to find that gives you books to market.

And then somebody was asking Orna about, so she's got a big profit first idea, a big profit first mentality, which can be really hard for indie authors.

There was a book called Profit First, who I can't remember who wrote that, haven't written that down, but it's the only book called Profit First, you will know when you see it, it's a big, big book.

There's a book called Profit First, which a lot of people have read in the indie author community, it's often referenced.

And we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

And I've read it, and I have implemented nothing from it, because it seemed very complicated, and it's a general business book, so it's about bigger things than self-publishing.

But Orna has kind of a simplified idea, Profit First, which is really setting yourself up for the need to go on.

So give yourself something like a loan from your personal finances, not taking out an actual loan, but just say, I've got savings, I put that lump of saving into a bank account, I saved my business fund, and then taking from your profits from your books or from the income of your books, an amount of money that is salary, an amount of money that is business dividends, an amount of money for taxes, an amount of money for business reinvestment.

Even though you're really taking money from your business loan to yourself, to do everything else, you should still be setting up this Profit First system.

So that was already really, really helpful to think about because it helped me think about it more professionally.

About my year plan and I was thinking, okay, if I were thinking about giving myself a business loan from my savings, and I use my savings already, use my savings to pay for my cover designer, I use my savings to pay for my editor.

But I don't ever have to question whether I'm going to spend that money because I either have it in savings or I don't.

And so I either do it or I don't.

I'm never thinking about it as a business decision because I don't have to.

Whereas if I gave myself a lump sum loan into a special dedicated account, I said, this is where I'm going to say, this is one year's worth of self-publishing investment.

And I have to decide how to spend that money in every pot.

If a course comes up, I want to do, if I want to rebrand my covers, whatever I want to do has to come out of that pot, and I have to make the business argument.

So that was really helpful to think about.

And then someone, when we're talking about that, was saying, I find it really hard to think about a profit-first mentality because I don't make any profit.

I've got six or eight books, but a good number of books.

I've got maybe eight books, and I don't make a profit.

I've got a new series I want to start.

So this wasn't my question, but it felt very much like it was my question.

I've got a new series I want to start.

Does that mean that I can't start the new series, or do the covers, or whatever it was, because I don't have any profits?

And how do I take a bigger business over myself to do that?

And I know one of the says that I really haven't heard people say before, which is that if you have eight books out and you're not making a profit, maybe don't write more books for now.

That shouldn't be a necessary next step.

You should be thinking about how to get marketing systems in place, to sell your books before you just keep writing more books.

Which I think it felt initially counterintuitive, and like it's the opposite of write more books, it's the opposite of just write the next book.

But in a way, it definitely isn't, or it didn't come across to me that way.

I don't want to necessarily misrepresent what she's saying, but this is what I heard from it.

And I think that often what you hear from something is just the right message for you, not necessarily what somebody actually said.

So what I heard from it was, it's not about write the next book or don't write the next book, is that make sure when you write the next book, you have got a marketing system in place to sell that book.

And it might be that you need to do just a little bit of work to figure out, you know, I'm missing this step.

I should spend just maybe like a few extra weeks on this step before I think about finishing those books.

But for me, I have got about 11 books out.

And I feel like I don't have a marketing system in place or don't have sufficient marketing systems in place because I get really lovely reviews from the books.

And I have got a good mailing list and I get good opening click through rates.

And I have tried advertising and I've made them break even on Facebook ads, but not make a profit.

I have tried lots of things and I feel like I'm close to a lot of things.

But I am not, I don't have the marketing system in place.

To launch a new series unless I am very lucky.

So if I could buy luck, release this new series, it just sparks.

I could do that.

And it feels like that's one way to do it.

That's sort of the way that a lot of people seem to be promoting is like, just hope that luck sparks your next series off.

And then you've got a back list and people will buy that back list.

And then you'll be quids in.

Then you'll be rolling in the money.

But I do think Orna's, like I think Orna's answer to that question really struck a chord with me because I'm currently taking time out of writing to really think about strategy and business things.

And I do need a better marketing strategy, a better publishing strategy in general before I think, let's just write the next book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I feel that deeply.

And I think that's a bit of a universal truth for a lot of indie authors, because the marketing element is really like seemingly the most difficult part.

And it shouldn't be, but it is for whatever reason.

It's like you say, like a lot of it does feel like it's down to luck.

But also probably it's not down to luck.

It's just about having a good system in place.

But where do you learn the system?

So, yeah, it's like it's I can't wait to watch because I didn't get to watch the live stream of that.

I'm looking forward to getting the catch up and and having my brain melted as well.

Seeing what I get from that.

Yeah, that's, it sounds very good.

It also sounds very, very much like what our next topic is going to be for next week, because we're going to be looking at our own marketing audit.

Yes.

So that's going to be looking at what we've done so far, if we've done anything.

And like, was it worth it?

Which we have, right?

I think the question we stressed the topic is, we have both some things, and it is worth that we're thinking, what do I think of as marketing, rather than like, what have I just tossed an attempt at?

I think it could feel like I've just tried a bunch of things that I don't know if they worked, and maybe they really did, and they cost you no money.

And maybe they absolutely would tank, and you spent loads of money, and it wasn't worth it.

And I think so much of this idea of, it being luck, and just write the next book, and see what works for you, can just feel like throwing spaghetti at the wall, and seeing what sticks, and don't even take time to look back.

Yeah, but the thing with the spaghetti thing is that there's going to be a certain percentage of people where that does work, and that's great.

I'm so happy for people that find the right hook, or the right cover, or just do the right something that gets them that immediate success.

But that's not the reality for everyone else.

As much as you think it is, as much as the whole competitive nature of the online system, and comparisons and stuff makes you think that everybody's doing better.

Why am I so bad?

And it's not, like, if that's how anybody listening to this feels like, like the whole imposter syndrome thing.

You're not alone.

Yeah, I was really thinking about this earlier, that it's, sub-publishing is a really female-dominated industry, and a lot of women, you know, not university, but a lot of women are less in the workforce than men, and that they might look like they're writing full-time, or they might just not discuss their day jobs, or they might be very, very busy with caring responsibilities that they wouldn't necessarily talk about.

There is a lot of people just not talking about their struggles, and they can look like they are full-time writing, but really they have an enormous weight of other responsibilities that they don't discuss.

And they may be in the exact same boat as you.

They may be writing the books and not making the money, and there's no way to talk about it, because we all want to project success, or feel successful, or not feel like we're the only person at the party without any friends.

You know, I think people are not honest enough about it, and it really felt when I first talked to you about this, it was so nice to just be honest with somebody, and say, this is exactly where I'm at.

This is where I want to be.

I don't know the gap between here and there.

I've got some ideas.

Can we work on it together?

So hopefully people listening to this will also feel like, okay, I would also like to have someone to work on it with.

So either find a mastermind part of yourself, be inspired by this to find that, or listen along with us for that.

I'm really looking forward to our marketing audit next week.

Hopefully people are having this, and this will be making their 2024 goals, and really think about it as more than how many books will I write this year.

Think about it from many perspectives.

And then next week, they will join us for thinking about a marketing audit.

So definitely by this time next week, I want to have a list of everything I've tried that I think is marketing, and how it's gone, and whether I do it again, and what I want to think about for going forwards.

Yeah, same.

And it's not even so much as having like the dreaded social media plan.

We'll talk about that next week, because I'll have to really like get my thoughts in order for that.

But it's not all about a social media plan.

There's so much more to it, and it can be fun and creative, and it can be more than just trying to convince people on Instagram to buy a book.

That's really what I'm looking forward to thinking about next week, is what are the other things that will help us move forward?

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to hearing yours, and to having a chance to think about what I haven't already done that has felt successful, because I think we spend so little time reflecting on that.

It's always looking forward.

An audit of our previous work done is going to be fantastic.

I'm looking forward to sharing that with you, and hearing about everything that you've done, and what has been successful, and what will be successful when you take it further forwards.

Yes.

I am, yeah, and my brain is already whirring, so I'm going to have to, we'll catch that.

I want to get some notes made already.

So I will look forward to speaking to you next week to talk about those.

And hopefully this has helped everybody else get some ideas together as well.

So we will see you next week for Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

Goodbye.

You will.

Goodbye.

You've been listening to Pen to Paycheck.