S01E21: When the marketing machine is in motion

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda try to figure out the best way to keep the wheels in motion with their marketing plans!

Next week Sam and Matilda will take a quick break from the schedule to talk about writing processes! 

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:

Ricardo Fayet - Amazon Ads for Authors: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BQ3BR152/

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 Samantha Cummings, here with my co-host, Matilda Swift, 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 quick-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, and this week's topic is going to be continuation equation.

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

It still makes me laugh.

Would you like to start with your wins and whinges?

If we come to going to go win, I don't know why.

I don't want to win.

I'm sure I will at some point, but currently I'm just all wins.

So I'm going to say I'm going to pick yesterday.

So yesterday we had our monthly mastermind meeting.

And it's like five solid hours of talking where it feels like it goes in a minute, but also it's exhausting.

So we talk about everything and kind of look at stats and look at things that don't make sense to us and try and get some other perspectives on it.

We talk about like big picture stuff and small, tiny things we've tried.

And it just feels like it feels like having a colleague, which is just fantastic in a business that's so...

I mean, isolating is not the word, but it's like you can feel very isolated at times and it can feel like you can't confide in people.

I think that's it.

So I think you can get a lot of support, but you can't necessarily confide in people.

And that's what our Mastermind Day gives me.

And it just is such a breath of fresh air month.

So that was my win of the week, even though you were also there.

So I'm stealing it.

But I'm going for it.

Amazing.

I would say that's my win of the week as well.

Yeah, I do feel like we talk about literally as much as we can squeeze into five hours.

And there was not a single moment where we're not talking.

When I like met up with my boyfriend afterwards and we were going home and he did comment on the fact that I sounded quite hoarse.

He's like, have you been talking a lot?

And I was like, we never stopped.

I wonder if we had a whole weekend of it, would we run out of things to say?

I don't think so.

We could talk forever.

And it does feel good.

It's kind of like a writing therapy session.

Because we do confide in each other about a lot of stuff that we wouldn't say to other writers.

Because you just don't know, you just don't have that relationship.

Well, I don't have that relationship with other people.

It does, it just feels so comforting to know that there's like nothing wrong that I can say.

There's nothing embarrassing to admit.

It's just like the best thing in the world.

And I think that everybody who writes should have at least one person that they feel like they can just ask anything of and say anything to within reason.

Yeah, I've been thinking about this.

I think we talked about having like a session, a podcast about how you have mastered my partner.

And I was trying to think like, how would I, how would I, if I were going to do it again, like go about finding somebody to have a mastermind partnership with?

And I think it is really hard to find the right person because I think that is the key that you want to find someone you can confide in.

It isn't about, or at least for me, and that might match with like personality type as well.

It's like, for me, that's what I'm missing from other groups.

I've got plenty of friends I can get ideas from, and I've got plenty of resource I can find online.

But I don't have enough people that I can confidently say, I don't know what I'm doing.

Does this look right?

And often after I ask you something like that, I will then go and ask other slightly more experienced writers as well to get kind of different feedback.

But I never feel confident enough to make them the first person I ask.

And it's really nice to have someone that I feel comfortable being able to say, what am I looking at?

This looks crazy to you too, right?

So it's really good.

So absolutely hell of a week.

And yes, it's very nice to also be able to do the podcast with you.

So we'll get on to today's topic, which is Continuation Equation, which was a genius title of yours.

So we're going to start with you and tell us, what is a Continuation Equation and how does it relate to self-publishing?

So for me, when I came up with this amazing title, which is just overly complicated, just to sound fancy, Continuation Equation is just making sure that you have got, constantly got things built into your processes, which means that nothing gets left behind and everything is always in forward motion at the same time.

So for me personally, I know once I've published a book, I'm the bad person that's like, well, that's done, on to the next thing.

And then I forget to ever talk about that book ever again, because it's just so drilled into you that once you've written a book, start writing the next book immediately.

Don't stop.

Don't take a break, which obviously is terrible advice and not something that I would ever tell anybody else.

But...

That is like everywhere, right?

That's like nothing sells a book like the next book.

And it's like sort of, but also if the next book is book like seven in a series, how is that possibly going to...

That's not the best marketing advice for selling your entire series.

No, exactly.

So the continuation equation is just having that...

In the back of your mind, once you've released a book, don't forget about it.

Keep it in your plan to constantly talk about it.

You still have to try and sell it, even though you've published it.

And as you continue to build a backlist, you can't just rely on readers finding that backlist without you ever talking about it ever again.

But it's also things like, in my mind, the continuation equation is also about future proofing your work.

So once you have finished writing a book, you know what the next steps are to get back into doing other stuff.

So you've finished writing something, so you start editing it.

Once you've edited it, it goes like proofreads and all the different edits.

So that's like a process that everybody already knows.

But once you've published something and you're doing the ads for it, if you're not used to jumping right straight into another project and you don't have those processes built in, you can stall and I think sometimes that kills people's creativity.

So for me, with self-publishing, I'm just at the moment, for the last few months, I have been really trying to figure out what my processes are so that I can look back onto my list of, well, once you've done this, you do this and you do this.

Just to feel like it's more robust, like I'm not going to fall between any gaps because I know how my business works.

Does that sound like what you think it is?

I think you covered everything within that.

I think that's a really good comprehensive look at things.

Because I do think it's interesting in that I think I'm now about five years into self-publishing.

And obviously there's been fits and starts with that.

So the start of it was like, I'm going to go for it and know exactly what I'm doing.

And I got great advice at the beginning.

And then I got maybe six months in, maybe even less.

Yeah, I think about six months.

And then a pandemic hit.

And it hit where I lived the hardest.

And I moved internationally.

And I spent, and I have a multi-immune condition, so it was very tricky for me to be out and about in the world.

It felt very intense for me.

And I had just lived through protests in Hong Kong.

So it was an incredibly turbulent time for me.

So it feels like five years in which I've constantly been battling status quo.

Like I've been trying to find some status quo, and it has not come easily.

So I think for the last, and then I bought a house.

So it's like everything, everything has changed in my life in every possible way.

It has been hard in a way that I think I have not been generous enough to myself about accepting.

It's been hard to try and find some of that like continuation, which I think now I'm trying to get it, and I'm trying to work towards it.

I can really see the benefit of, and I can really see where I will start to build it.

So I think this is a great topic to talk about, and it's a great thing to think about once you've got a few books out.

I definitely felt like when I was starting self-publishing, I felt like I had to have things right from the beginning, and I had to set things up as I wanted to go on.

There's a lot of that, thinking about, or not thinking about, there's a lot of people talking about, should you rapid release?

The argument against it is you don't want to set up a process that you can't continue.

You don't want to make a promise you can't continue, but then also rapid release is the best thing you could possibly do.

It's like, I can't do both those things.

I can't rapid release, I'm not rapid release.

But there's a sense of like you want to set up the way that you're going to continue.

You want to start very professionally.

And there's an argument definitely to say that is true, but also you don't know what works for you.

You don't know what works for you in a writing sense or a publishing sense.

And we were talking yesterday about like different kind of publishing broad scale tactics, and you just don't know what those are when you're starting out.

You can't see them even.

You listen to what you hear in podcasts and on forums and things, and often there's a few loud voices that make it very strong arguments that you have to do it a certain way.

And that's not the only way.

There are people who are quieter, who are doing it a different way, but by nature, they're not saying as much because they are quieter and they're choosing a quieter path.

So I think it takes you quite a long time to figure out what everyone else is doing, what the options are, what works, what doesn't work.

You have to try everything.

So you have to have at least tried Facebook ads, you don't have to, but you want to.

You want to try everything, Facebook ads, Amazon ads, but every single thing just to see how does it work, what works for me.

And sometimes I think there's too much pressure on getting your continuous process up front.

And feeling like you have to invest both time and energy and money in the correct way of doing it.

And so I'm really glad that I haven't got a process, that I had been able to really organically find it.

But now I definitely feel like I absolutely do need a process.

I don't have it.

And part of that is I'm still sort of working towards getting that status quo where I can really find it.

I've definitely got my writing process down, which actually we're going to talk about in the upcoming podcast.

But I don't have it for marketing and sort of publishing in general.

But I'm really working towards it.

So, yeah, I'll talk a bit about that in a minute.

Do you want to talk first about maybe what aspects you've got in place already for good dimension equation?

Yeah, so I don't have any in place.

Like I said, like, yeah, exactly.

I know where I'm at.

And so, like you say, what you don't know what processes you're supposed to have until you're already knee deep in it.

And I do think that's sometimes, well, that's the best way to learn for me is just to do stuff and figure out along the way.

I'm not the sort of person who tries to get things right immediately.

I'm just like, well, you didn't say like, oh, let's see how this works.

And yet, we're still both come to the same part where we realize, well, I need better processes.

I, yeah, I definitely am the sort of person who has once they've published a book, it just gets shoved to the back of like my brain because I'm always on to the next one, which is great because that means that I have got good processes set up to always be working on something.

And that's one of my strengths.

But I have just as I have just when we've been talking about advertising and having those sorts of things in place and looking at our books as products, I did draw myself up a social plan, just to remind myself that being on socials and doing adverts and things aren't just things to do as and when I feel like it.

It's something that I should be doing consistently.

So in my social plan, I do have now a little reminder on particular days to talk about a backlog or a backlist book.

So I feel good about that, because even though I have not yet done that, and I'm just talking about future books and like current books and future books, the fact that I've written it down now means that that's in play in my mind, because that's how my brain works.

If I write it down, it makes it real.

So I've written it down, it's going to be real.

Starting this week, I'm going to start putting backlist books into my social plan.

I'm also going back to my Facebook ads, because I paused them for a while.

I was doing an ad campaign to get people to sign up and follow my Facebook page, and that went really well, and I basically doubled my Facebook followers.

But yeah, like it went really well, and I paused it because I thought, well, this was just kind of to show Facebook that I'm a good business person, and I'm putting money into the machine, and I'm getting results from it.

So the next stage in my ads on Facebook is going to be doing continuous adverts for getting people to buy books.

So I'm going to be running campaigns that are going to be ongoing.

So I will never be taking a break from them.

That's just going to be built into my process.

There's always going to be at least one live Facebook ad that I'll be monitoring and changing and updating.

As and when the data comes in.

So I feel like my manager's hat that I'm wearing is feeling more comfortable these days, which is nice because usually I'm just like kicking my manager out of the room.

But yeah, I feel much more like just thinking about these things makes me feel like a more accomplished publisher and not just a writer with a dream.

So that's where I'm at right now.

Would you like to take it away?

Yeah, so I'm trying to think where I'm up to.

I think I definitely feel like the bookbub has really kicked me into gear into thinking that I could have an effect, that I can have an impact.

It's definitely, you know, I've done a lot of trying different things that have sort of, I've managed to break even on a few things, but then it kind of dies away quite quickly.

And you're like, it's very hard to foresee how you could, you could do anything ongoing with that.

Whereas the bookbub, that it was just over a month ago today that the bookbub email went out.

And, sorry, I've got a bit of a cough moment.

So a month ago, and I've had some of the highest page reads days since that went out, like in the last couple of days.

So it has really, really had ongoing effects.

Looking at the rank effects, I had very deliberately done some Facebook ads beforehand, and I did some other promo before, because the book that I had the bookbub on was a box set that I just never pushed, because I didn't really know what to do with it, because my main audience is my newsletter audience, and they had already bought the books one by one when they came out.

So when I released the box set, some people bought it who hadn't got all three, but obviously most people have got at least one of the books if they wanted to from the series.

So I never read anything with it, and when I released it, I only think I had one book following it, so it wasn't necessarily worth doing a big promo on it, because I wouldn't make each amount of money back after it.

However, now there are three books in the series after it.

It's long, it's got good page reads, so seeing the very, very long time of the book, but some of which has gone spiking in rank, so I can see days when I think Amazon has pushed it organically.

I can see the effect of organic reach, basically, and it finally feels like the continuation is something I can see.

I can see how I could be in a machine, which sounds horrible, but actually it feels positive, more positive than I run this short campaign, and it had this impact, and then it's done.

I can't think of 1,000 campaigns a year.

I can't plan 1,000 and then monitor 1,000 campaigns a year, but what I can do is a few ongoing things with different impacts.

So it's now finally reached the stage where it has started dropping in rank in quite a consistent way, and it's still much, much higher than it was, and it's still much higher than, in fact, most weather books, so it's still doing really, really, really well, considering I'm doing absolutely nothing to it.

So I have decided I'm going to start doing some Amazon ads.

I'm hoping that's a good thing to do because Amazon has got now a month's history of people buying and borrowing the book, who are not necessarily just polluted by the book of our people on the same day.

So hopefully there'll be people that they're pushing it to, they know who it works with, and I can get some Amazon ads to work.

So I'm currently reading through, I'll leave a note in the show notes in this, the Ricardo Fayette book that's about Amazon ads.

I can't remember the name of it is, but it's very, very clear.

And everyone who I was looking at at the time, when I was looking at kind of resource on it, seemed to swear by it.

So they were like, just one of the Ricardo Fayette book.

So I'm doing that.

Very nice and clear.

Gives you a section in it, like halfway through the book, I think, where it's just like your first five campaigns, which I love when someone does that.

And they're like, here's a load of back details, information, background knowledge, but also just do these three things and get started, and then you can go and apply all the stuff later.

So that is very appreciated.

So I'm going to get started on that.

I was going to start it yesterday, but instead what I did was I made tea cups out of biscuits, which I think is equally useful.

That is I'm trying to do things to promo my new series, or build up videos and activities to promo my new series when it comes out.

So I had that on my list of things I wanted to do, and I'm trying to do fun things.

So I had run out of energy at the end of yesterday to read the rest of the Amazon book.

But I did read some in the night last night when I woke up, in the middle of the night, stressed about some work things.

I was like, okay, you're not putting me back to bed again?

Putting me back to sleep is reading about Amazon ads.

But actually the book was very readable, so I did not fall back asleep for a couple of hours.

So I made some good progress with the book.

I will be starting an Amazon ad soon.

And I'm really hoping that I can have an ongoing ad.

And that is definitely something I have struggled with, is finding ads or finding the, I don't know, the will to live with ads.

Just finding like the desire to keep putting consistent effort in.

I've definitely had someone be like, okay, I'm going to learn this, and at least learn how to break even.

And then I would be like, okay, that was a lot of work, and I'm just breaking even, it's annoying, and I've got other things I need to be doing.

But I think I can now, I'm at a stage where I think it'll be worthwhile me putting in effort to do it.

So hopefully that will be good.

I definitely don't have anything that is going to be a continuation in terms of like I will start X and then start Y three months later and then start Z three months after that.

Like there's nothing currently in plans like that.

I think there's still so many things that I am trying.

But I have got a list of things that I want, I still want to try.

So I still want to try book above ads to impact my also boughts.

I'm trying Amazon ads, which I don't know if I have tried Amazon ads before, but like very much I think when I had the first couple of books out, I tried, you know, one of those enormous keywords campaigns.

We just like, I will just guess a bunch of keywords and put in some bids and I don't know what's going to happen, which just felt really demoralizing.

And now I know much, much more and I've got, I understand enough now to actually like, okay, I see why that was stupid.

Okay, now we're going to do it properly, which is fine.

That's the approach you need to go through.

You cannot possibly, I think you could do a degree in self-publishing before you start self-publishing and then you'll be able to hit the ground running.

But really without that, you have to do the degree, you know, as an apprenticeship, just by like trying stuff and then not knowing what you don't know.

So I think I'm now like in a third year of my degree.

Like, I think I know enough to be like, okay, I was such a foolish child when I was in my first year and I'm so wise.

But then I guess I've got to end this and be like, I need to do some postgraduate studies.

I think I know.

But yes, I think I've now got enough things where I'm going to start trying to overlap stuff.

So I guess that's where I'm at is I've got the book club and there is still, there are still sales and reads coming in from that.

So I've still had several sales since the featured deal ended at 9.99 for this book, which I think is sort of unbelievable that people are just seeing this book that has been out for a couple of years, they're seeing it the first time and they're like, yeah, I'll spend a tenner on someone, just take a pop on that.

And it's got 40 extra reviews or ratings, not reviews, but it's got 40 extra ratings.

Still, like people are still buying and borrowing it because the rank is still going up and down and it's still fluctuating.

So I think if I can now overlap that and like feed on that to then take an Amazon ad to work, that is at least me starting to keep the machine moving rather than try one thing and then set back a little.

Now what?

So I don't feel like I've got continuation.

I don't think I've got the continuation equation, but I think I've got some continuation, which is where I'm at and where it feels good moving from there.

How do you think?

Have you got any thoughts on that?

Otherwise, I've got another question.

No, I think that that's a really good idea to have, to be trying to build some sort of continuation from the data that's already accumulated from that bookbub and Amazon.

I think that's a great process.

You couldn't have asked for something better, really.

I think the results that you've got from that is so exciting.

It's just really nice to see.

Building on that is a fantastic place to be.

You say you don't really have an equation, but that in itself is an equation.

It's a good plan.

Yeah, I think the issue is that it's not applicable.

It doesn't feel like it's a process.

I can say, okay, so what I'll do is I'll get a bookbub every three months, and then from that, I'll do this.

Though I do know, you and I are in an authors group where someone posted recently about just their consistent applications, leaves them getting a bookbub approximately once a quarter.

And that's definitely, I have been spurred on to do more applications.

Obviously, just rejected, go back to the state, you know, back to the normal.

But I won't be rejected forever.

I will keep applying and I'll keep applying with the weirdest book possible.

I'll be like, what do I think their leaves like to take?

Bingo, they'll take that one.

So yeah, I'm going to keep going.

But I think it's not something I don't feel like I, I don't think I own my equation yet.

So yes, my other question was, I guess, what's the next steps to get towards having an equation for you?

Yeah, it's a good question.

I think that just consistency for me is the biggest key.

I definitely feel like I flounder a lot.

And I'll just like talk about social media, because that's generally what I've used the most to try and get in touch with readers, because I'm still very much a baby when it comes to things like Bookbub and Bookfunnel and Amazon ads.

I'm not at that stage yet, but I really like using social media.

So for me, it seems like a fun experiment to do.

The only problem that I have is that I often feel like I'm talking to myself, but then at the same time, I don't really mind talking to myself.

So I think I just need to switch my mindset of saying like, I don't care if I am talking to myself, just keep talking, because I know that consistency is key on social media.

And my TikTok has been doing so much better than my Instagram.

So I'm happy to keep plugging into Instagram because I like the community that I'm in there.

I like seeing all the other authors, and I like to see what people are reading, because I'm part of the reader's side of it, which is really nice.

But TikTok is definitely where I get the most interaction, the most views.

So I really want to try and keep the ball rolling with that.

Because when I first started that, it was only at the start of this year, and I decided I was going to post every day for a month and see what happened.

And I gained a thousand followers within the first month or six weeks, because I was just constantly on it, talking to people, posting things, getting involved in conversation.

And then I stopped because I thought, well, it's like that was a lot of effort.

And I went back to Instagram, where I get no traction whatsoever, and then felt bad that I'd given up on TikTok.

So I'm going to once again try and just be more consistent on TikTok, because that is where we know the readers are.

That is a huge reading community over there.

And I mean, if you even look on Amazon, looking for books and things, one of the things that you'll see at the moment on book titles is TikTok sensation or TikTok made me buy it.

And that never came out of Instagram.

Nothing like that came from Instagram.

It's only TikTok that I see that TikTok made me buy it.

And so I want to really, if one table of water tones now, TikTok may buy it.

At first, when that first started happening, I was really hesitant to like it because I wanted to be protective of the integrity of book selling and book buying and reading.

It was so stupid.

And now when I see that, I am kind of just excited that there are so many readers.

TikTok is such a readers community.

And when I was younger, that would have made my day to have found people who like reading the same books that I read.

But I didn't have that when I was growing up.

And so I am trying to look at it with this excitement that they use it, like the way they use TikTok and so excited to talk about books.

I really want to try and get myself involved in that and see if I can build a continuous thing.

I think it's like a capricious social media that can feel a little bit dangerous, but a little bit uncertain.

So it's hard to kind of feel like, again, it's hard to feel that you can build the strategy around it because there's a sense that it might just disappear tomorrow or you might go viral in a bad way.

So I think it can feel like it's again, it's tough to build an equation around it or process around it.

But like, why not?

I think if you're at this stage of career, I'm definitely trying to think if my books are not my livelihood, I want to make decisions based around that freedom, which I couldn't do if I had to be more organized for my books.

I could not say, I'm going to just chant on TikTok for a while and like really push it, or I'm going to take my bonus this month and put it into ads that might never make money back.

But you get to be a bit more of a chancer, and through that you'll learn things that you will use later when you need to be more consistent, but you don't need to be consistent now.

So why not?

Enjoy that.

Yeah, I do think that there is a lot of freedom in the fact that I have got a full time job.

And I know that the goal is to quit the full time job and write for a living, but until then, it's nice to have the fallback and know that what I'm doing is, there's no stress of having to pay my mortgage from my books.

I'm going to use that feeling for as long as possible.

I don't know how Americans ever become full time authors, because I can't imagine not having free healthcare.

Having to pay to stay alive, I would never write for that.

I take medication that's incredibly expensive.

If I had to write to earn that, I would feel petrified all the time.

And I just get it for free.

They literally deliver it to my house for free.

Here's the medicine that allows your hands to move, so you can write.

But it's free, no strings.

And I think again, that's a freedom that we get in the UK, that you can say, my overheads are pretty low, I could quit my job, and not need much money, and again, take a chance.

And part of it is like, I don't have any kids.

Again, I think I'm not taking advantage of, or much advantage of, I could do with the freedoms that I do have.

So maybe at the moment, I kind of want to deliberately not fix my equation, and just test out different parts of it, and how they interact.

And I think I've spent that stage where I want to see what happens if you follow a book up on an old book, with Amazon ads to try and revive it.

Because actually, I think Amazon ads are quite hard to use to revive an old series, if you're coming with no data.

Because Amazon knows, this book hasn't been selling, I'm not going to push this.

Whereas if you're coming with then over a month of positive sales data, does that move the needle more?

And I want to see that.

So I want to see how those two pieces interact.

I think I do need to start building up more elements of the equation deliberately.

I think we were talking about this yesterday, actually.

I think part of not having those kind of stresses on your livelihood can make you feel a bit too comfortable.

Like I don't need a lot of money.

I don't like I have a job, so I don't need to make my income from writing.

So sort of the converse of what we were saying earlier is, I'm not pushing myself, nothing is pushing me.

And anyway, that's very nice.

It feels stressful if you had to lose your job and you had to make money from writing, but also that is effective.

So I think I, I don't know, I want my cake and I want to eat it at the same time.

I would like to both have a very comfortable, happy existence, but act as if I don't.

Or at least take lessons from those who don't.

Yeah, I think that's a crazy mindset thing, isn't it?

Because you always hear so many stories about people who overcome hardships, like they lost their job and they didn't have any other option but to make money doing this.

And I would hate to be in that situation, but that they had a fire under them that I can't replicate.

And as much as I want it and as desperately as it is my dream to write for a living, the only driving force is me, and I am flawed and easily distracted.

And yeah, like I have to light my own fire.

And in a way that is a negative, it's a positive because I'm so grateful to be where I am, but it's a negative in that I'm not desperately needing to make money from this.

But that might be a conversation for another day.

I mean, I think it's a conversation for like, it's the underpinning to all the conversations we're having is like, how do we both push ourselves but not kill ourselves unnecessarily?

And what's the right balance to that?

And I think just reminding ourselves of where we could be pushing ourselves a bit more.

So I think we could push ourselves a bit more in terms of continuous marketing and like marketing in a traditional way, rather than be like, I'm just going to try this thing.

And then a few months later, be like, oh, I forgot about that thing I tried.

Should I try maybe this?

Yeah, I think just taking more professional sense to it and trying to get ourselves set up so that, imagine if your job did fire you tomorrow, would you have enough things in place to know?

Like, okay, you know what?

I don't have to find a job.

I'm going to give my writing a go for a year.

I'm going to try this, rather than saying I'm going to have to find a job straight away.

So I think, because if you're going to be fired, not that you have been fired, and try and make that work.

Yeah, I've definitely, there's things that I want to work harder at.

There's things that I want to not keep letting myself push and push and push.

And I think I need to, I think that will come up.

We've got our Q2 review coming soon.

And I think that will be a good chance for me to like take a long, hard look in the mirror and say, you've mentioned this many times.

Are you going to do it?

Have you actually done it?

No.

Why not?

Then get on it.

Yeah, I just looked at my Q2 list of things to do.

And yeah, I've got, I've got some shortfalls here.

I mean, you've got, you know, a month left.

That's fine.

Yes, that's true.

Yeah, I think, I think, I think most of my Q2 list is wildly ambitious.

Mine, I think, contained something like 10 quite large things to do.

And I think I made mine halfway through Q2 as well.

And I've done very few of them.

So it's like I've done very few.

I've definitely started on most of them.

I just haven't seen them through because again, it's not my livelihood.

So if I'm really busy, like it's a piece of time for me at work right now, I'm going to be working after this.

I've been working all day.

We recorded podcasts and now I'm going to go back to work after this.

I'm not then going to finish the Amazon's book.

I'm going to go to sleep because I will be tired.

So it's like it is, I don't know, yeah, mind that stuff.

Trying to be generous to yourself, but also push yourself in the right measure.

But I think you two would be a good chance to say like...

I was just going to say, I actually feel like when you referenced or like likened it to if there was a self-publishing university, if there was a degree, I often think to myself, if I was doing this as a project, as a degree, with set goals that were set by somebody else, I would work differently.

Yeah, I would too.

I'm like a real straight A student.

I'm not doing the work before it needs to be done, but I am always getting it done to the grade you need to get to get an A.

But I don't do that in my self-publishing.

Maybe we need to think about that and think about because I think we do often also think very short-term rather than saying, these are the modules we're going to do this year for the degree, the imaginary degree we're doing, and these are the pieces of work you need to turn in.

I think that would help me actually.

Maybe in the QT review, we could think about some long-term goals because it is really hard to set yourself lots of different short-term projects that you can't really see how you're going to find time for.

Or you don't have to think about it reasonably in terms of time and space, capacity.

Yeah, I think I'm ready for it.

And that would be a great chat press to have.

Yeah, me too.

I'm looking forward to that.

So let's wrap this up.

For next week's topic, we are taking an episode out between series to do a standalone on our writing processes.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

Yeah, I think we picked this episode because it comes up a lot.

We reference it a lot.

And I think we both had kind of process changes and thought about processes and how we do them, how we do our writing has developed over the years.

And I think it's always helpful to hear that about someone else and to enable you to reflect on how you're doing things and maybe places where you could tweak your own writing processes.

So I'm really interested just to A, articulate mine, because I think it is good to pick yourself up on places where you might have started to slack, which I already know thinking about straight away, I know what it is.

And B, to hear yours, because I'm also very nosy about writing processes.

And then C, I hope it is really useful to other people to hear, to kind of tickle their brains of like new ideas.

How about you?

Yes.

Yeah, same.

I'm really nosy.

I love hearing how other people do it.

I also just kind of want to look at my own, like be self-reflective because I definitely don't think of my processes when I'm doing them.

And it's only like when I stop and think back, like how I used to do things and how I want to do things that I see the jumble that is my life.

So I'm really looking forward to talking about it and hopefully straightening myself out.

Fantastic.

All right, I have got a cat trying to get into my lap, so this is a good time for us to end it.

I will look forward to speaking about that and I will say goodbye for now.

Goodbye!

You've been listening to Pen to Paycheck Authors.

Stay tuned for our next episode, and don't forget to subscribe to learn how to write your way to financial success.