S01E14: When x meets y

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda talk about everyone's favourite marketing tactic - X meets Y!

Next week Sam and Matilda will discuss what Butter is and how, when, and how much should be added to the story mix.

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:

The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic by Breanne Randall: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/75532088

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24453082

7 Figure Fiction by T. Taylor: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59014783

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 Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

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

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

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our mastery through missteps journey.

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

This week's topic is going to be X meets Y marketing.

But before that, let's do our wins and whinges of the week.

Sam, what have you got?

My win, I'll start with the win.

I do have a win.

My win is that I got my proof.

It's not a proof, but my formatter sent me back the formatted book that I'm releasing this month, which is Lost Girl, the third installment of my Fantasy Girl series.

So I've got the PDF back, which has been formatted, and I am 95% through doing a final check.

So I'm going to finish that later tonight.

So that is my win of the week because the rest of my week was nothing.

So that's kind of my winj.

First winj is I have a headache today because I've been staring at my screen forever.

But also I just had a week where I didn't really get anything done.

I got mental stuff done.

I thought a lot, but I didn't.

I didn't equate to anything.

I do feel like I've kind of figured out some stuff that I just need to put into action.

But it's still a winj.

I had to spend months doing thinking stuff.

I knew the assistant and I'm like, that is stuff.

So we have to be thinking stuff is stuff.

Let's get this on a t-shirt.

Yeah, thinking stuff is stuff.

We need to rephrase it some way better than that.

Thinking is stuff.

Yeah, thinking is stuff.

Yeah, so I feel like a little bit like I wasted my week, but I also had a great week.

And I also celebrated my anniversary with my boyfriend this week.

And I don't really want to say how long, but I will.

This is how old I am.

15 years we have been together.

Oh, my goodness.

You were a child bride.

I know.

That's what I said.

I told someone, they were like, oh, wow.

I was like, I know I'm a child bride.

He's a pervert.

How dare he?

But you were both really reasonable odds.

He is, I mean, he is a mythical creature, so he could be of any age.

Yes, he is.

No one has ever seen him in the real world.

No, we like to pretend that he doesn't really exist.

It is this post of Nicholas Cage.

I cannot verify that you just exist.

Yes, but he has been romancing me for 15 years, so I guess that's a win as well.

Yeah, that is lovely.

So you've had a week of focusing on yourself, and you will say before we recorded that you've been on the allotment this week.

I have.

Cooking.

Yeah, I think you've been having a thinking week.

Yes, maybe I shouldn't have whinged about it.

Apologies.

Extra win.

I have only got one gigantic win this week, which I'm so excited about.

I got selected for a Buckbuff feature deal.

Which feels so crazy to tell other people outside of the publishing world about, because it's like, I got selected to pay $1,000.

I was explaining it to Brian, my mythical boyfriend, and trying to explain it to him why it was so exciting.

And he was like, oh, yeah, okay.

And I was like, can't translate it.

Yeah, I tried to explain it to him once a day, and I just had to really give him a lot of foregrounding of like, okay, look at this website, look at the other people, like this newsletter, look at the people who are on here.

Let me share about how the whole concept of sales works in indie marketing and what I'm hoping for.

And then I will tell you the price.

But I do think, A, unbelievable.

If manifesting were a thing, I have manifested this.

You definitely are a manifesto.

You like to say that you're not, but you definitely are.

But you also do put in the work, because you have been working towards it and submitting.

Mentally, you were giving yourself, or allowing yourself, the opportunity to do it.

You had the money to spend, so you weren't hesitant.

You just were going for it.

So you have manifested by hard working.

Yeah.

And I think I have been applying for it for a long time.

I have not been applying as regularly as I would like.

It's in my planner to do it every week.

But some weeks, it just moves along day by day and doesn't get done.

And I can't remember why, but I decided to do it a few days ago.

I was like, I'm going to do it this week.

I'm going to get on it.

And I was like, I've got five minutes.

Let me take another thing off my to-do list.

Because I'm having a real to-do list taking off week.

So I was like, I'll do this quick one, put it through.

And this is how I know I manifested by accident.

Is that when I clicked it, I almost thought, I'll be a bit annoyed if I get this one, because it's on a book that hasn't already got many reviews.

I picked the 99 cent deal rather than free.

So I feel less confident I'm going to make the money back because I'm not sure people will buy it.

It's like, oh, you know what?

I bet this is the one they pick.

And it was.

So I think it's going to be great.

And it is exactly the right time for me.

So this series has got this box set for the first three books in my main series.

There are three more books following that.

So it gives me a chance to kind of think about what do I most want to get out of this?

Because I have to sell a good number of copies of just the box set to make back the money.

But I have got three other books to follow along with.

And I need, or I think I really want, a big ARC team for my next series, which is coming in six months.

So I've got a new show that's launching in six months.

If I want a big ARC team, what I could do is use this box set and like a splashy page in between each book.

Here's an extract from the next series.

Do you want to join the ARC team?

Or here's the X meets Y for the next series, which we're going to talk about in a minute.

Join the ARC team here.

So fantastic opportunity.

And I think I'm going to try and make as much of it as I can.

So yeah, it really, it's not like, it's coming at the right time.

It's really validating the effort I'm putting in this year and just the mental effort and the commitment to myself.

And it's making me sort of recommit.

And it's really feeding into a lot of more like the mindset things and just the practicality.

I think even if I got a book bub a year ago, I would have felt scared about spending this much money without any concept of like, oh, do I really think I'll sell enough books?

And do I really think I'll, you know, be able to build on it?

But actually I was thinking, annoyingly, it's come right after my Kindle re-update.

So I can't do a long lead up in terms of like, building up promo bookings.

I've booked two on the day before, but that's pretty much what I can fit in.

I'm going to mail my newsletter list the day before that, if I can get the deal to go through before then.

But I'm also going to start running Facebook ads, because it's in KU.

I could run Facebook ads knowing that they won't necessarily, you know, make the money back, but they will be building up the, like, the ranking of this box set, which is really poorly ranked because I never do anything to promote it.

I just have it because I can put it in KU, and some people prefer to read that way, but not many.

And I don't do anything to sell it, but I could take this chance to sell it and try different things.

So it's like everything is...

All the stars are aligning, manifesting.

And it's like a lot of stuff, yeah, a lot of stuff that we've been talking about, a lot of stuff you've been thinking about, about where all marketing leads to and the different opportunities that come from putting yourself out there.

So it is all tying in together.

I'm very excited.

So exciting.

And I will keep everyone updated on it and the progress.

So it is late this month.

So I will let you guys know.

I can't, I really can't wait.

As you said, you're going to put in an X meets Y in the back of your book.

So that's what we're talking about today.

X meets Y marketing.

What does this mean to you and how do you use it?

So I don't know when I started thinking about this.

I think because I know I want to make this new series that I'm putting out this year, I want to find a way to, even just on a mental level, make a bigger push with it.

Like I want to invest more mentally.

I want to put myself out there more.

I also want to invest more financially and feel confident about that investment.

And as I was kind of thinking about that and considering that, I was looking at the books that are both tried and only published, where people feel like they're making a really big marketing push.

Like they have invested money and energy in that.

And often those ones that you see around that stick in your head a lot are using that X meets Y structure.

And it can be, and it's really just two comp titles.

So that's what we mean by X meets Y is two comp titles.

And the one that we talked about most when we got together and chatted about this was a book that came out last year, maybe the year before now.

That was Gilmore Girls Makes Practical Magic, which whatever that book's about, I want to read it.

Like without question.

That could be a book in a genre that I would never normally touch, and I want to read that book because I have such like deep in my belly love for both of those things.

And to think about them both together, it's like whatever I'm addicted to that is it.

And I really felt like that kind of tied in with the idea of what I want to have in this new series.

I want to have a series that people love.

So I was really drawn to it.

And I think X Meets Y, it's in all genres, but you don't tend to see it at huge amount in Cozy Mysteries.

There is someone that I've seen that does it, and she does a really good one.

I think she does Downton Abbey Meets Miss Fisher Mysteries, which is great because you know exactly what they're going to be.

And it's like, oh, fun.

Yes.

Charming, some humor, a bit of, you know, maybe obsessed-downs things.

And it's like, yeah, I know what it's going to be.

I love it.

Again, click.

Yeah, so that's kind of like my introduction to it.

What about you, Sam?

What's your kind of introduction to the topic?

I originally, I was a bit hesitant about X meets Y marketing because I think when I was, before I like self-published, or actually kind of, I had already started self-publishing when I did this, but when I was approaching agents and sending out emails to agents to try and get representation, they always want comp titles for books.

And I always, always, always struggled with comp titles for my books.

And then when people started doing this X meets Y, which I believe is kind of like, it's something that spilled over from the movie industry because I think that it was really like an elevator pitch thing that people did for movies and that people have adopted for books, which it is comp titles, but it's kind of a bit more, it's more all all encompassing.

It's less like book comps and it's like it could be any media now, which is for me, it's better because I don't just read books.

You know, I watch so many TV shows and so many films.

Yeah, originally, I was a little bit hesitant because it felt like I was just falling into the comp titles thing again, and I was like, I'm really bad at this.

I hate it.

And then I saw this one, The Gumball Girls and Practical Magic, and I instantly pre-ordered it.

It was an instant click.

And I instantly thought, that sounds great.

Click buy.

And I thought, well, if that works on me, I'm missing a trick.

I'm just being really pigheaded for the sake of me finding it difficult in the past.

Did it feel pigheaded?

Because I think the thing about X meets Y is, it feels like a really big promise.

So Practical Magic meets Gumball Girls, that feels like I'm saying, I'm as good as Practical Magic and Gumball Girls, and I've combined them.

Aren't I a genius?

Yeah.

It was a bit of pigheadedness, and I knew that I was, because I'm just one of those people, I hate to admit that someone's doing something better than me.

But also maybe a little bit tied in with the, like, I'm not good enough, like you say, I'm not good enough to say that any of my work is anything like these other people, or anything like this film or this TV show.

My story is not that great.

So it is, you really do have to throw yourself wholeheartedly into this idea of your idea is the best.

It's a mixture of these things.

Wow, isn't this exciting?

And I think that's a really difficult part of marketing.

But it's something that I have been leaning into a lot more recently.

And one of, well, then I started marketing my books as X meets Y.

My young adult book, The Deathless, which I use as My Girl Meets something else which I can't remember right now.

Like, I can't remember what the other thing was.

Oh, My Girl Meets Never Have I Ever, which is a young adult book.

So like, and that's kind of okay.

I don't think it's perfect, but for me, it does encapsule and kind of, it does give me the vibes I want, but I don't think it's very exciting.

So I kind of still push that, but I'm trying to come up with something else.

And then my werewolf book, I always say is like Charmed Meets Teen Wolf.

Again, I think that that's kind of okay, but I don't think that's the best thing that I can do.

My...

Then I guess what I'll say is, I don't want to kind of just go on to the next one, because the next one's like my absolute bread and butter golden ticket of an X meets Y.

But those other books, I did X meets Y after the fact.

So I wrote something and then I came up with X meets Y.

But I think that that's a mistake.

And I think that's going to be something that we talk about over the next few weeks when we talk about writing as marketing, marketing as writing.

It's this idea that you kind of do the work, you do your writing, you write your story and everything, and then you only think about marketing at the end.

But really, marketing at the start works so much better.

So just to take over the conversation.

The book that I started writing in November, I've just finished last week or the week before, I came up with my X meets Y before I started writing it.

And it's so good.

I think, don't share it.

It's as good as Gilmore Girls in Practical Magic.

As soon as I heard it, I was like, whatever it is, I want to read that.

Any words that belong in that category, I want to read it.

Yeah, it's by far the best thing I've ever come up with.

And it really helped me with writing.

So now that I'm like, and I started doing and I've started thinking about it, I think that it's a really fun way to get into marketing your books when everything else often feels like a little bit cringe-worthy.

I feel like X meets Y is actually the least cringe-worthy of all.

And I know that other people don't like it.

I see a lot of people saying, oh, it's so annoying.

But for me, it's...

I mean, I think about it is, it's really hard.

Yeah, it's very...

I do think that as well.

I think people don't realize how hard it is.

They just take it for granted.

Like, oh, these people are saying it's like this and this.

They're just slapping on these two names.

Yeah, it's taken us so long to figure this out.

Yeah, so I think you're right.

I think starting before you start writing the book is key.

And I think I've talked about it a few times.

Like, my writing process, I start writing only the first 10,000 words, then I take a break.

So then I can kind of go back and see, it's a tone, right?

Is it setting up enough, you know, of the right themes, of the right pacing, whatever it is, with a kind of clear mind after a few minutes break.

And in that break, so I just did my 10,000 words, I was like, okay, I feel really good about it.

I think, like, it came out really easily.

It was really fun.

It's got the right level of exotristian.

I really like it.

And then you're like, oh, great.

What's it about?

And like my what's it about was just like this really long, like, oh, it's kind of about this person, or like before they start, but wait, let me also tell you, like, and it was just, it felt like I was trying to tell you a story.

And I was drunk.

And so it did.

All the elements, I know all the elements are great.

Like they are fully from my butter list.

We'll talk about butter next week.

All the elements in this book are from my butter list.

There are things that I love reading about them.

I love writing about them.

You get that feeling thinking about those.

Like, you know, when you read a book and like you sort of squiggle down your chair, as soon as you've read something, everything in this book is giving that like squiggle down your chair feeling.

But I could not articulate it to save my life.

And then when we were trying to talk about it, so I'm going to hold up the bit of paper that we kind of, I wrote down as we were talking about it.

And you can see like, it just went through many, many, many stages where you're like, okay, so you, in your convoluted explanation of this series, you talked about this.

So if I think of comp titles for this, so one thing we talked about was like Black Sheep or Small Town or Bookshop.

Okay, so let's think about Black Sheep stories.

Is it a bit like Ryan Minnell's The Proposal?

And I was like, oh, no, no, no, it's not like that.

In fact, we couldn't find the other good Black Sheep stories that kind of fit your vague with it.

And then we're like, okay, think about Small Town then.

What about something like Only Merge in the Building or maybe like Agatha Ray's in there, a popular cozy story?

I was like, yeah, but I sort of feel like it's not quite the same tonally at all.

So can I use that as a comp?

And we just went through lots of different things that are in the book.

And then we got through a list of like actual like concepts that are in the book.

So things like Small Town, Bookshop, like, you know, almost like tropes that are in the book.

I tried to find comps for those and they just didn't really cut it.

And we were trying to figure out like, why are they not cutting it?

When we could find good comps, but they weren't giving you that like, oh my God, I have to, I absolutely have to have that.

And what we realized is that they, what you need is some sort of emotional intersection.

So Gilmore Girls and Practical Magic, they are similar in some ways, right?

In that like, they are, they appear to the exact same audience, right?

They're really like elder millennial female, you know, growth juice.

Like this is in my veins.

But the places where they're similar, like they're about family bonds, they're about like powerful women, kind of overcoming adversity.

They're about like really joie de vivre.

Like they have so many emotional overlaps that are not really about like, they're not both about magic.

They're not both about small town in the same way.

They're not both about, you know, like class even.

Like they think there's things they don't have in common, but the place where they do intersect.

Or really romance.

Yeah.

But yeah, the place where they do intersect has got a very strong emotional overlap.

So we realize we're looking for two things where it doesn't necessarily matter how close either one of those things is to your story, but the place where they intersect must be the place where your story is emotionally.

And that is really hard to find, we discovered.

Yes.

Yeah.

It took us hours of Googling.

Yeah, Googling other stories, we Googled like other X meets Y lists and trying to figure out like what works and what doesn't work in X meets Y lists.

And it is really about, does the place of emotional intersection match the place of your story's emotional like resonance?

Yes.

And Practical Magic and Gilmore Girls, you can feel in your body the connection that both those two things have.

And it's like, it's such a joy and excitement that I like, I want to read the story that is in that feeling.

If there's one thing that brings those two things together, 100% I'm reading that.

And I have just started it, I just started that book.

It's great.

Like I've only read the first chapter, but it really does have that feeling.

And I know I haven't read the rest of it and I've seen very mixed reviews online.

And I think part of the mixed reviews are coming from maybe X Meets Y to some extent, Miss Sells It.

I don't know.

But the beginning part of it, it's so enjoyable.

And I haven't got a copy with me, but just for anyone, I'll put it in the show notes, but it's the unfortunate side effects of Heartbreaker Magic.

Am I getting the title right?

By Brian Randall.

Yeah.

But if I heard that X Meets Y, instantly I'm going to go to it.

I always read the sample before I buy anything, but I would read the sample and I think, love it.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Charm.

The charm and the sass that I'm looking for, that's right there.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you have to think about, really consciously think about for your story, that like, what's the intersection of the X meets Y?

No, because my, well, I stumbled on my X meets Y accidentally.

Just from a series of unfortunate events.

I had wanted, I had wanted to write a particular story.

And I started writing that story, and I got like 10,000, 20,000 words in, probably 20,000 words in.

And I thought, I, and this is the first time I've ever done this, I stopped writing it, because usually I'll just follow through.

Like I had a beat sheet, and I'd had this whole story planned.

And it wasn't a bad story.

It just wasn't my story, what I was writing.

It was, it wasn't young adults.

It was a little bit more of a, an adult mystery.

But it had the elements that I wanted, but I just didn't know.

I was just missing, like, the fire.

The fire, that is such a good word for X meets Y.

It's the fire, like the rubbing together of these two sticks.

What is that fire?

Yes.

So that's what I was missing.

So I had one part of it, which I retained.

So I knew that that, that was like an element that I wanted.

But I needed the, like, like the juicier story.

I needed to find the, the thing that was going to bring it to life.

So I put it to one side and had been thinking about it for a while.

It was always in the back of my mind.

And literally, I was thinking about it for the whole of the year until I came back round to NaNoWriMo, because it was a NaNoWriMo project.

And it was only when I started to come back round to NaNoWriMo and do my whole plan, and I thought, I want to give this story another go, but I need to figure out what, what the fire is.

And I was watching a film, which is a film that most people will watch around October time.

And I think that's the important thing about Next Meets Why, it has to be something popular.

It has to have a very quick, instant emotional resonance.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it's difficult in some respects, because you don't want to go too big, but you also don't want to be really niche.

So it really is something that you just need to kind of think about a lot for a long time, I think, is just to find those things.

But my two things are just have been established things for a while.

So they're not particularly new, but they are constantly popular, and both have very vivid, just very vivid lives on their own.

So yeah, this other thing, this other part of my X meets Y, I was watching the film, and I thought, oh, this has everything that I love about young adult stories.

The relationships, the tension, like the fact that it wasn't a romance, because I don't really like writing.

I like having romances, a little bit of a subplot, but I don't like writing romance.

And neither of these stories had really any romance in them.

And I just had an epiphany.

Epiphany!

Epiphany!

And I thought if I mix these things together, this is going to be outstanding.

I think the weird thing about those two things is, as soon as you say them, they belong together.

And it's ludicrous that there's been no crossover before.

That's what I thought.

And I'm really panicking about the fact that, because when you have an idea somewhere in the world, somebody has the same idea at the same time, like the story of my life.

And I'm really, really scared that at some point soon on Instagram, I'm going to see somebody marketing this book.

I really am terrified, because this isn't going to come out till next year.

So yeah, I'm very worried.

But I know that my story is very good.

It does, it needs a lot of editing.

But I know that I have found the right X meets Y, and I found the fire for the story.

And that's what helped me write it.

So I couldn't write it without knowing beforehand what it was.

Yeah, because that is the, the fire is, I think, a good way to put it, like the emotional core of something.

Yeah, I mean, I must feel petrifying having that perfect X meets Y.

Obviously, like these, both these things, the X and the Y, they have been around for a long time and no one has done this before.

Also, I think even if somebody else does do it, they might not hit big with it.

There might be that you, they're a flash in the pan that doesn't go anywhere, so fine.

And then also, you could have two people doing the same X meets Y.

I'm sure I've seen another practical magic musical, more girls around.

I was about to say, yes, it does happen.

It happens every time.

And even the book Big Magic, which we've both read.

I was just thinking about that.

She says like ideas, they'll transfer to somebody else if you don't use them.

Yes, but even if you do use them, they still sometimes will hopscotch around just to see.

So I love the idea of ideas as being these ethereal beings that are just like, I'm just going to spread myself around and see what happens.

That's why I feel like this idea is teasing me.

Because she obviously had her, she wrote a book, and then she didn't do anything with it, and then found she made a friend with another writer who had written the same book, basically.

And I'm just, yeah, I'm just thinking, I hope my idea hasn't been flirting with other people.

Yeah, I mean, it's such a good idea that it's one of the things that feels impossible that no one's done it before.

But yeah, but they haven't.

I think so I after we, when we had our X meets Y conversation, it was really useful to talk someone's got a great X meets Y because I felt like, Oh, I can 100% see the benefit of it.

We could talk through how you're, you know, how it's possibly impacting your writing and how it just makes it so easy to think about marketing it because it is a one click buy.

Like, as soon as you put those two things together, you're like, I have to have this and I'm so frustrated that I haven't read it already.

This book that you haven't even finished or published.

I just, I cannot wait.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, big pressure in the best possible way.

But like, as soon as you mention this to anybody, they will be adoring of it.

But we were talking about with the like, some people, some people are not going to feel happy about it because to some people, the X and the Y, they meet in a slightly different place than you're making your promise.

You're assuming that everyone has the same X and Y intersection as you do.

And probably most people do because...

I don't know.

Hopefully they do.

I don't know why they probably would.

Hopefully they do.

But they're not, they're not always.

And if they don't and they feel misled by your X meets Y, you're going to get some negative reviews.

But I think if getting the X meets Y right, 10 X is your sales, say a small portion of them don't like it, fine, you've nine extra sales.

I could not.

Yeah, I've got to that point.

I don't care.

I'd rather people gave me one star than not review at all.

So just any reviews appreciated.

And that's just more eyes on the rest of your books.

Yes.

Oh, 100%.

Because I read so many reviews of books that I love and I'm like, what are you talking about?

This is like the best book I've read in months and people are like, I hate this book.

So I'm not going to review the things that you would love anyway.

Yes.

So I don't pay attention to reviews.

I know that everyone's going to love this story.

The only problem that you have with X meets Y is, it's not even a problem, but this, talking about reviews, you can never satisfy everybody.

It's either too much of X, not enough Y, or not enough X, too much Y.

So I think it's just more, it's just such a nice thing to have when you're marketing, because marketing is already the biggest hurdle.

Like writing, editing, nothing.

Marketing.

You could think of your own X makes Y and not use it.

But for me, it was so helpful just to think about it.

And now I'm going back to rewriting the story.

The X and the Y that I've picked, so I have picked the X and Y for the story, I'll talk a little bit about it.

I think I'm not going to give it away because I'm still, I'm both on the fence about it and also think I don't, it feels like a secret.

It feels like a precious secret.

But both of them captured something that I felt was really essential emotionally about my story.

And when I went back to rewrite the first chapter, I really wanted to make sure I had A, both of those things and B, the intersection of them.

And that my new first chapter is just like bristling with more resonance, more fire, much, much more than the original one was.

The original one was a really good, cozy mystery first chapter.

It had some lovely food, some squabbly best friends.

It had some funny jokes and some slight quirkiness.

My new one has got secrets, conflicts, some backstory.

It's got beautiful descriptions.

It's got some great food.

It's got some great setting.

But there is this tension of things you don't know.

And not thriller retention, but there is a core to what's coming that you feel more led down towards a path.

Or I'm hoping so.

I feel like my problem with My X Meets My is they are not very genre specific.

So we look for ages for ones that would feel more genre.

Specific because the cozy genre is really specific.

And it's a bit like people who are looking for quote unquote clean and wholesome romance.

They never want to see anything that they would consider spicy.

It's an absolute no-go.

And the same for Cozy Mysteries.

There are some boundary pressures, but there are definitely people who have already made a name for themselves doing that.

In a general cozy mystery, no one is expecting people to be swearing, no one is expecting blood on the floor, or someone to be murdered in front of them.

And it's hard to find an X meets Y that doesn't have that in.

So I'm really struggling to figure out, do I need my X and Y to both be cozy, to make it really clear that my book is cozy?

And I've got an X that's very cozy, quite cozy, and a Y that is 100% not.

A Y that I think everyone's seen or is very aware of, and it does capture something very emotionally specific to the story.

And when you cross it with the X, the point of intersect is cozy.

But so much of the two books is off to the side, doesn't intersect.

And especially the Y is 100% not cozy, that it makes me feel concerned that I will be putting people off by using this.

And I can still think about other things.

I now know what from the Y I want to capture.

And there's other stories that I'm sure contain something like this.

So I'm still mulling it, but it really helped me write it to find the X meets Y.

So even if I don't use the X and the Y like type of advertising, I don't say read this book for X and Y.

I've still really distilled them in my head.

Like it helped me to steal the stories.

If someone now asked me what the story is about, I wouldn't say, it's about this person.

Before the story starts, I would not have to do that.

I could think it's about these two things, even without necessarily saying the X and the Y.

I know conceptually what the X and the Y is.

But I thought what might be helpful is to think about some of the X and Ys we looked at when we were looking at this story.

Because what we found that you have to find X and Ys that are emotionally resonant.

They cannot be just conceptually similar.

And just generally some stories are not, they've not got like a lingering common emotional resonance that like the entire audience would see.

So I put some at the top of the page that I thought, I really like them.

They don't fit to this story at all, but they have such a clear emotional resonance.

If I saw them in an X and Y, I would know what it was.

And two that I think I really ever would know and would love was like, Grace and Frankie.

Like, you know instantly what you're getting if someone said, Grace and Frankie meets Y.

And the other one was Amelie.

Again, you can have such a clear emotional connection to Amelie that you know instantly if someone crossed something with Amelie.

Perfect.

And so a lot of the ones that we looked at were looking for X and Y were things that were like, I know what it's about, but I don't know how it feels.

So things like Midsummer Murders, which is a really popular crime series.

It's great.

It's the greatest crime series.

You would think it fits really well, but I just don't have a strong emotional, like, oh, yeah.

Like, I don't think, oh, I go to that one.

I want to feel, it feels just like warm and cozy, which is like, okay, that's huge and emerald.

So ones that we kind of thought of, which I might use, but I don't feel so necessarily protective of them.

We had Erin Brockovich meets murder she wrote, which I think it captures like someone sleuthing and someone a bit sassier, but doing it in a cosy way.

But I think that is two things that are maybe slightly too similar.

It's just sort of sleuthing women.

But then we had a slightly better one, if Jessica Fetcher landed in Mystic Pizza, which I think both of us have got emotional resonance, but there's something about this sort of this like jarring of them as well that sparks something in your mind.

The fact that like, they don't go so naturally together like Erin Brockovich and murder she wrote.

They're not both doing the exact same thing, but you can have a feeling from both of them that sort of, it's almost like a cognitive dissonance, like your brain is trying hard to find what the connection is.

You know there's a connection there, it's not quite obvious and that work your brain is doing feels exciting.

So that's the kind of the distance the X meets Y needs to have, but also the overlap, which actually it turned out was really hard to figure out.

Yeah, because that's the thing as well.

You can do the ones where like Gilmore Girls, Practical Magic, where it's an instantaneous, you don't need to know the specifics.

You can kind of assume like it's a very good X meets Y, but the ones that make you think can work, but could also work against you.

Because people have had to think, oh, I don't really...

What's X files meets Jaws?

Aliens under water?

I think you would say that was a Lake Placid.

But I think like there's no feeling intersection between those two things.

There's no feeling, yes.

So you can't find one intersection, but you can find multiple kind of bits of overlap, but you can't find like, I can find the intersection point.

Whereas something like, if Jessica Fletcher landed in Miss It Pizza, small town, nosiness, sort of cute queens-ness, but like a bit of sass.

I can see that point.

I can find the overlap point quite quickly.

And I could if I had like something crossed with Amelie.

But like X files meets Amelie, I could not.

I'm kind of intrigued what that would be actually.

Yeah, like there's a thing like any X meets Y doesn't make me think, hmm.

Like the kombucha girl meme.

No, maybe.

I think about everyone that I read like...

Yeah, so it was, it's hard to figure out.

And I think I have started writing my story without feeling 100% confident my X meets Y is the one for advertising, but it is 100% the one for writing.

And yes, it might be that as I'm writing, I can write in a way that is close enough to the X and Y that I can add some sort of qualifier.

So such as, I think I've got a qualifier at the moment, which is like in Aquaint English Village, which does, I think, do something to modify the fact that the Y is quite gritty compared to a Cozy Mystery.

And I want to feel really comfortable with that.

I want to feel like it gives you that instant, bye, bye, bye.

This will be the story for you, because I think it will be, and I really want to convey that.

So I'm excited about X meets Y.

I think it is useful no matter what you do with it, but you should be doing it before you write, not after you've written the book.

100%.

I'm actually considering starting another spreadsheet, because why not?

Sure.

Of all like TV shows, books and films that I can think of, which I have an emotional tie to, because I feel like if I just have a bucket to dip into, a list to have a look and think, oh, this next story that I'm writing, could I crystallise this idea better by using these?

So I am thinking of starting myself a little list of all of my favourite things.

I wish I had that when I was trying to think of, yeah, because as soon as you try and do this activity, you think, I've never seen a film in my life, I've never read a book in my life, nothing.

Yes, that's how I always felt doing comp things when I was writing to agents.

I'm like, I don't know any books now.

Yeah, and the internet is so bad at it, because when you try and Google small town films, small town stories, it turns out nothing.

No one's ever written a small town book, or no one's ever made a small town film.

I know, every young adult thing that I look for, it's like, do you mean Twilight?

I'm like, no, no, I'm never going to mean, I mean, I love Twilight, but I'm never going to mean Twilight.

Oh, maybe I will.

Do you know what?

Maybe I will mean Twilight one day, but not right now.

Yeah, Twilight meets Abby.

It's always Twilight.

What was that?

You know?

I know.

It's both a blessing and a curse to have this list, I think, when you make the spreadsheet, because you could spend your whole life just thinking, yeah, Grace and Frankie meets new girl.

I want all these books.

I do.

I would happily buy everyone listening if you're looking for a story.

Pick any of these.

Just go for it.

Yeah.

I think it feels fun to try and do the X and Y.

It can feel frustrating, but I think doing it really, even if you do it and fail, I think it's worth spending some time thinking about it.

I found it very useful.

I feel like I haven't got as...

I mean, no one's going to have as good a run as you ever have.

You have won the Universe of X meets Y.

I can't wait.

I cannot wait to tell people about it.

I can't wait to start working on it.

Also, if you are murdered in a mysterious plot, it's me.

I've murdered you to tell you X meets Y.

That's going to be obvious to everybody because I know it.

That's fine.

You can edit it.

Oh, my goodness.

You can edit this podcast.

All right.

Well, watch yourself.

Yeah.

But yeah, absolutely.

I did not expect to have X meets Y because it feels so reductive.

But I am a full on convert.

I'm now a convert to manifesting and X meets Y.

It's great.

What a time to be alive.

Ha ha ha.

Ha ha.

Okay, on that note, on the time to be alive.

So for next week's topic, we're continuing our series on writing as marketing with an episode on butter.

Tell us about butter.

What do you remember about butter?

What are your thoughts you have on butter already?

So butter are the elements in books that make you just melt with excitement.

All the stuff that makes you go, oh yes, I've got to read this, I love this.

So I am new to butter, as a vegan.

I'm doing vegan butter.

So my vegan butter.

So I have got a butter list that I'm excited to talk about.

So yeah, all of the fun things that you know that you love to read in books.

I'm looking forward to talking about the quantity of butter needed in the recipe that is a story, because I think that that is in itself a challenge.

Yeah, I can't wait to talk about it, because it's something that I definitely have been thinking about for future books.

I'm not writing anything right now, so I can't really implement it, but it's a great, like X meets Y, it's a great thing to have before you start.

Yeah, so I think, butter we talked about recently in the book that I can never quite remember the title of, because it's just not quite as like the stack of my head.

It is something like seven figure fantasy.

Yes, and I will read, okay, I'm going to read that book this week.

I've got a copy, I've read it more than once.

Just, yeah, yeah.

I think the problem is that the concept of butter sticks in your head so, so you're like, oh, the butter book, everyone knows there's a butter book.

So yes, I'll put it in the show notes, read it before next week if you can, anybody and everybody, it is phenomenal.

It's, you see some complaints about online saying like, it doesn't really say anything, it just kind of repeats the same ideas.

It does.

That idea is gold.

That idea is all you need.

So yeah, butter is a much better way of articulating the way that I said, all the things that make you like squiggle down in your chair.

Is that?

It's like what will make you want to buy something.

So I have also got a butter list and mine is things like Christmas, because I love Christmas, bookshops, defying social expectations, like a really wide range of things.

What I struggle with is figuring out how to take those ideas and put them in books enough.

It is like the quantity.

How much is, like how do I know I've put it in, in a way that will feel buttery?

I don't know.

Yes.

And I am thinking about it constantly.

I thought when I read a book, what I'll do is like, I'll write a list of butter things per chapter.

And I haven't done that, because the idea of it actually feels stupid when I came to do it.

I was like, what am I going to do?

Have one whole chapter about Christmas?

No.

It should be like, it's stirred through.

You're not putting it on like butter on toast.

You're stirring it through like in a cake.

And it's hard to figure out, like, if you're at the end of the cake, it's too late to put the butter in, because the butter is an ingredient, the sugar in the beginning.

Oh, gosh, I do love a torched analogy.

I'm so sorry, everybody.

Yeah.

More of this next week.

Yes.

Yeah.

Some more butter based ideas.

Yeah, a buttery biscuit base of ideas will come your way next week.

We're going to grease that pan.

I need some puns before next week, maybe.

Yeah.

But yeah, I think it is so useful to think about.

I think I...

This is such a good topic to think about, because in my head, the idea is floating around.

And I think by talking about it, I can articulate what I want to do in my book.

Because I can feel myself at point of view.

I'm right at the stage where I need to add some more butter.

And I would like to figure out exactly how, when, how much.

Yeah, how I can become a butter chef.

And we will master that next lesson.

No, next week.

Next lesson.

It will be like a lesson to me.

I'm so looking forward to it.

Hopefully, you are too.

We will see you next week.

Goodbye.

Yes, goodbye.

You've been listening to Pen to Paycheck Authors.

Stay tuned for our next episode.

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