S01E26: When we wish we had

In this week’s episode Matilda and Samantha play a little game of 'shoulda, woulda, coulda'. What would they change, or not change, about their publishing journeys so far?

Next week Sam and Matilda will break down their Q2 progress. Did they cross everything off their lists? Tune in to find out!

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:

Nothing this week - check back next week (or check out previous episodes) for some handy links to helpful resources!

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, Samantha 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 a 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.

This week's topic is going to be if I was starting now.

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

Sam, what are yours?

Is that I took Friday off from work and decided that I needed a day just to completely focus on editing because my deadline, my self-imposed deadline is slowly approaching.

And yeah, I took the day off work and went and sat in a cafe all day and worked with no distraction other than a constant source of coffee, which is obviously all I ever want in life.

How about you?

I have got a lot going on this week.

So like lots and lots of things that I feel like I want to process before I talk about them.

So might come up next, next winner winch.

So I'm gonna have a little one now that I had while sitting in a park in the sunshine, eating ice cream, just a little inspiration, the beginning of the book came to me.

Like I love when that happens, when you just feel like, okay, I've been thinking about this for a long time, mulling over, I even drafted most of this book, and I feel like I need to restart it.

But I don't really like to jump in before the beginning has come to me.

When it really did, and I've got a sense of kind of how it's gonna start.

So it was such a bright sunny day that I could not sleep my phone to type.

So I've looked back at it since then and seen that the actual spelling grammar is awful, but it's absolutely fine now.

But it's a good sign that the words are pushing their way out and makes me feel very, very positive.

Amazing.

I love when you're just inspired in a moment for a scene, or the start of a book in particular is always the best thing to come to you.

So well done.

I'm very happy for you.

I suppose we should just jump into the topic of the week because I feel like we're gonna have a lot to say about this.

So this week's topic is what would you do if you were starting your self-publishing journey now?

And how is it different from what you actually did?

So I'm gonna have you start on this one.

I think what's interesting is we didn't really clarify what we meant by this question.

So do we mean now, like 2024 now, versus when we actually started?

Or do we mean now with all the knowledge that we have?

Or just if we were gonna restart what we did without making some mistakes?

So I think that's quite interesting to kind of look at those different areas.

My mind initially had gone to what I wish I had done, like how I wish I had done things.

But like we talked a lot about in the last podcast, a lot of self-publishing is learning.

And there's nothing that I did that I could have done differently.

But if I had, you're wearing a Back to the Future T-shirt, as we just discussed off microphone.

If I had a magical time-tabbing DeLorean, I could go back and tell myself something.

I'm not sure it would be that impactful because I'm a learn by doing person.

So this is definitely a thought exercise rather than necessary instructions for everyone.

I think that is really helpful to, hopefully some people to hear, just to say this isn't what you should be doing if you're starting out now because you should be making mistakes and figuring out what works for you by doing it.

So I'm definitely thinking of it as if I had the DeLorean and I could travel back in time and change things for myself without having to learn by mistakes.

Is that the way you're picturing it?

Yes, I think that's it.

I mean, I'm the same as you.

I feel like where I am now, I wouldn't be if I hadn't made all the mistakes I made.

Like I love the journey and the process that I've been on to learn.

I learn from doing and I also learn just from, like I like to be in things for a long time.

I don't think I like the idea of immediate success or overnight success.

I feel like that's a pressure I don't think I'd deal well with.

So yeah, I think if I could go back in time and maybe just guide, that's kind of how I've thought about it is like, what do I wish maybe I could just have like, Shemead into place a little bit better, but with still living with room to grow and figure things out.

Yes.

Yeah, and I also thought about what did I do well that I would definitely keep.

So maybe that's a place to start with.

What you would really, really keep.

And I would definitely keep writing a prequel before releasing the first book.

I was writing something before we released the first book, doing something to build an audience.

Because I see people posting in forums talking about like, oh, I'm advertising one book or two books, and I've not really got any reviews, and I was really reading it, and I don't really know what to do.

It felt very different to me because I had got, I don't even know how many, a relatively sizable reader list before I published because I had done book funnel promotions on my prequel.

And I started in 2019, so that may be helpful time-wise.

I don't necessarily know how helpful it is for people starting now, but I still hear it promoted as advice, so I think presumably it's still working.

But I had a, I think it's maybe 35,000 words, 30,000 words novella for a prequel for a series of books that are around 65,000 to 70,000 words.

And I wrote it after book one, so I'd written book one.

I don't think it was my idea to write the prequel.

I think it was the idea of a friend of mine who's a sci-fi fantasy author who's full-time, who had suggested it, or I saw it on a forum or something.

But it feels like a lot of work.

I don't know why I decided to give myself that big, that big a task.

I didn't have so confident doing it, but I did.

And it was definitely the right thing to do.

So I put that out in August with the book coming out in October.

And looking back at my sales chart now from the beginning of my self-publishing journey, I almost find it surprising how many sales I managed to have on the first book of someone who had got no name or no other way of marketing myself apart from this mailing list.

So a big, big plus and a promotion of mailing list as soon as something's on the mailing list to start with.

That was my major thing I would 100% keep.

What about you?

Yeah, that's something I wish I'd done.

So when I started, I was very much cloak and dagger, writing in a dark room and not telling anybody that I was doing it.

And I really like that I just kept my writing.

I think this is something that I would do again, and I'm glad that I do do.

I kept my writing to myself and I wrote for myself.

And I think that that's one of the things I love about writing is that it's always a story that I want to tell myself.

And I'm glad that that's how I started.

And I didn't start with this marketing goal to write to market, because I feel like that's like a lesson to learn that's kind of more fun, like writing for yourself first, then maybe trying to mold into like taking marketing into account.

I do wish that I had started a mailing list, but because I was so secretive, I didn't tell anybody until the book was released.

And then I kind of told a few people.

And that's one thing I wish that I hadn't done.

I think I wish I had chosen to do it more out loud.

I wish I had chosen to just be really open and proud of what I had achieved.

And yeah, not hid no way.

But I'm glad that like I wrote something that I wanted to write for myself.

So there's a positive and a negative.

It's tricky though, because obviously, not telling family and friends is a good way to protect your auto books.

So again, because I had a friend who was very knowledgeable, it meant that when I put my book out, I had a separate main list of my friends and family, and I sent them an email saying, don't buy this.

I will tell you when you can buy it.

I want to have a good number of sales from people who are authentic, cozy readers first.

And that I think did me a good, like set me in good stead.

Because like friends and family, I'll send you the book for free, it's fine.

Or also, you probably don't want to read it that much.

You're just maybe buying it to be polite, because it's not a drama that you would necessarily read in.

So I really only want people to buy the book if they are reading the book.

So that was definitely a positive thing for me.

You think one thing that I wish I had done differently, I don't really know why I didn't, was I just wish I had waited a bit longer.

I wish I had built up more books.

But I think that's a really hard one.

That is definitely one that I would need to have the DeLorean to go back and do, because the converse of that is like, you don't want to spend ages writing a series of books that actually is not to market enough or doesn't have an audience.

So you don't want to have banked like five books and it's just going to fall flat.

So I don't know the balance is there.

And similarly, I would say like part of my advice to myself would maybe be read more wide in the genre.

But actually, when I first wrote my first Cozy Mystery, I had written nothing labeled as a Cozy Mystery at all.

And I just started writing, I used to write kind of like bounce around different genres between other books that I finished.

I just write like a first few chapters from this.

And it was only because I brought it to a writing group that my full-time writer friend is in, who said this is a Cozy Mysteries, it's a big genre on Amazon and big in the US.

And Cozy Mystery really isn't big in the UK.

It's definitely getting bigger now, but people don't even really call it Cozy Mysteries, they call it Cozy Crime more often, and police procedure was a much bigger genre here than Cozy and then in the US.

So I didn't really know about it, I didn't know the conventions.

And yet what I wrote very, very clearly and closely followed the exact market expectations of a Cozy Mystery, like looking back at it and going and doing the work more deliberately now.

I did it by accident, and that's because I hadn't read a lot of crazy mysteries, but I watched a lot of crime, but not frilly crime.

I watched a lot of kind of amateur detective crime or things that kind of fit in that.

I hadn't noticed how much kind of cosy type of crime I was absorbing, so I sort of once had myself like go and read more of the genre, but also maybe that would have ruined it.

And that's definitely what I found hard in this new series is somewhat overthinking the way to meet certain expectations of a part of genre I want to dig a bit more deep into.

We talked about niching down that has, you know, felt like it's got in the way of me writing a bit more casually and fluidly and feeling a little comfortable in writing.

So I'm not sure I want myself to go and do that again.

That's like a learn by doing thing.

So it's hard to say I should have learned it that way.

Yeah, it's funny that you say that you wish you'd written more.

I think I wish I'd written less.

I have, I know.

So I only started publishing after I'd already written like five or six books.

And I, the reason that I wasn't kind of publishing those books was just for fear of like just doing something.

And now I have such a backlog of books and of books and stories that I still love and I just, and I want to publish.

But I know that the work that's going to get them published is going to be so much.

I wish that I had written, edited and published as I went.

Because I just...

Do you think, given those books though, there's a way to just leave them?

I mean, I don't know about you, but I have got five or six books that I wrote and didn't publish and I'm sort of fine just leaving them in the drawer.

I have...

Oh, yeah.

I mean, at this point, the backlog is more than five.

The backlog is like 15.

Most of them will never see the light of day.

And that's fine because they were just trying out different genres or just trying out slightly different ways of writing and different kinds of characters.

Like I wrote a sci-fi...

Well, I tried to write a couple of sci-fis and I just...

As much as I'm a sci-fi nerd, loves...

I mean, back to the future t-shirt, I love sci-fi ridiculously, but I can't write it.

And I'm glad that I figured that out.

But I do have some books that are definitely going to be published and they are still stories that I think will hold up in today's market.

And I wish that I had just finished them rather than getting distracted and starting writing more.

Because that's like my problem.

It's like, I just want to get on to the next book to start writing the next book.

When I'm in the middle of editing one book, like the next book is already kind of calling to me to write.

And that's a bad habit.

I wish I hadn't started that.

But you did talk a few times about, or you took a few times to do a podcast about having multiple incomplete series.

Do you wish or do you have to learn this way?

Do you wish you could have gone back and done fewer series and completed them?

I wish...

I don't wish that I hadn't done them.

I wish that I had just carried on and completed them, but under different pen names, because my two series that are kind of ongoing...

This is another, I guess, another thing is I wish that I had looked at this more of a business or understood the business more before I started.

And I think I went into it thinking that I'd make loads of money, but really treating it like a hobby.

And that those two things don't go hand in hand, that you can't go into this as a hobby and assume to make money.

But I was naive.

I was like, I don't even know how old I was when I started.

But yeah, I kind of wish I'd looked at it more as a business and understood the importance of pen names, and I'm a bit of a chaotic person, I don't know if you can tell, like I'm just chaos walking.

I, yeah, I wish that I had been very clear in my separation between my series and everything that I was doing.

But I'm kind of, I'm happy that I wrote all the different things that I wrote.

Sometimes I do look back and think, oh, I wish I hadn't like jumped genres.

And I did write on my list of, I wish I hadn't jumped like written different genres, but I loved it.

I loved doing that.

I had a really good time doing it and it was a fun way to learn.

And I can't beat myself up for like trying something and failing.

So I'm fine with that.

Yeah, I think there's definitely a problem with self-publishing is there's a lot of stuff there's absolutely no way to know.

There's no way to know how long it takes you to write a book when you get into the swing of it.

So I think all of us have got draw novels where we spent years trying to figure out a book and then maybe go back to it again and again, or beginning something and not finishing it.

And the books that we start publishing are the ones that we feel confident enough that we've got kind of a process in place, at least some sort of process, but you're still learning the process as you try and speed up to having something like a regular publishing schedule.

So there's just no way to know, apart from by doing it, how long it's going to take you.

It's just so individual.

I wish I had got some process in place sooner.

I think that would have been helpful to me.

We talked about this last episode about kind of disruptions that we went through.

And I almost as soon as I started publishing, there was a pandemic, like I had to move countries and then move house a lot, and I had just gone through the description where I lived from protests in Hong Kong.

So I found it really, really hard to get any sort of regular routine and process in place with my publishing.

And it just felt like a battle all the time.

If I were able to go back, I would make there be no pandemic.

I would tell people about that in advance, like really spread the word.

Thank you, that would be nice.

No, I would...

Maybe that's also part of why I would like to have banked more books, just to give myself a bit more breathing space to work out the kind of space between getting a cover, editing, marketing, things like that.

I wish I'd taken marketing more seriously in the beginning as well.

I didn't...

Though I don't know how I would have.

In fact, not in the beginning.

I think this is it, right?

It's not necessarily about the very start.

I think things that I waited too long on, like partly for the pandemic, is marketing and advertising.

And I said when I first started, like, oh, I don't need to start advertising until I'm like three books in.

That's what everyone says.

You don't want to start doing this.

You've got enough of me just to make it worth it.

And then I reached three books.

And that was one of the books I wrote during the pandemic.

I really had to rewrite and I was absolutely up against the wire with the release of that.

And then book four was a weird one.

The fourth book I released was a weird one.

It was a book of short stories that I just collected together.

And that didn't mean again, didn't quite fall into the normal pattern.

So I didn't really have to kind of think about that.

And then book five, I don't know what my excuse is.

But it's like five and then six.

And then I got a new series.

And all this time I'm still doing no advertising.

And that's, I'm aware that's incorrect.

Like that is objectively incorrect.

But I didn't have enough bandwidth to do both.

I didn't have enough bandwidth to try and get back on the process of publishing and do the advertising and do the 10 other things you have to do.

So I wish I had faced it a bit sooner.

Like I'm doing Amazon Adverts now.

I'm still not quite facing it enough, really.

I've got like a very, very basic, low level spend going on.

And I'm not professional enough about it at the moment.

And I want to be and I will be.

I'm reading books about it, I'm making notes.

I'm going to go in and do things, but I'm just too busy.

But I will shortly because I'm not going to turn my advert off on Amazon.

So I'm forcing myself to make it work because if I don't, I'm just pouring money down the drain by not making it a better system, by spending money on it every day that I haven't tweaked.

Yeah, I think with marketing, I don't know whether I would...

I guess the difference is paid marketing and organic marketing.

So I think with paid marketing, I'm okay with the fact that I didn't really start that properly until this year because, like money-wise and stuff, I don't know.

I just feel like I'm just...

I feel like I'm more secure in spending money and spending on myself now than I was then.

I would have been...

It would have been some sort of waste.

I feel like it would have been a waste if I was spending money then, especially because I didn't know what I was writing and it took me so long to find my feet.

I wish that I'd started on social media a lot sooner, because I used to be a blogger of some sort.

Not like a huge blogger.

I had a good-ish following.

And first, it was just a blog about me and my life and just random thoughts and stuff.

And that was kind of a fun thing that I did.

And then I started a vegan health...

Not health blog, but just a vegan blog about all sorts of vegan things, like recipes and different things, like slow fashion and all sorts of things.

So my social media presence was really just like all over the place.

The account that I'm using now is still the account that I had, even though I've changed names.

My account is still the account that I had when I was doing blogging stuff.

So if you scroll far enough back on my account, you'll find...

Because I should have archived it, but it seems like a lot of time to go and scroll through my own stuff, so I've never done it.

But you'll still find all that stuff there.

And I still probably have followers that follow me just because they followed me when I was blogging.

And I wish I'd set up a separate account and just taken that...

I just wish that I had been writer Sam as a different thing to blogging Sam.

Because it's kind of...

I guess at that time, no one really understood analytics that well, or the algorithm.

So I didn't think there's anything wrong with just using the same account.

Just change the name and just start changing what I'm talking about.

But I feel like I probably do have a lot of drag back from the fact that that account is still linked to accounts that don't interact with me in any way about writing stuff.

So that's...

I mean, on that theme, I am very glad that I chose a pen name to start with.

That really helped me keep everything separate and treat it like a separate entity.

I could have published under my real name, but there's nothing wrong with my real name.

It's not a weird name, and it actually sounds very much like Cozy Mystery Writer's name, but it is a very unusual name.

So it felt uncomfortable because it would be very, very traceable to me.

And I think you could find my name if you really, really want to.

But it feels better to me.

We've had an episode about this.

It feels better to me to have that separation.

And that was a big part of me taking at least some step towards treating this professionally.

Not enough, right?

But I think that definitely helped and having separate accounts for everything.

So I definitely would do that if I were starting over.

One thing that I would do that I realize we haven't talked about that we should have done is like, I would have started this earlier.

Maybe not from the beginning, but that would be good from the beginning.

I have had always a lot of writing friends, but I have not had a lot of self-publishing friends in real life.

It's hard to find obviously, but I think I am just not...

I find it hard to be real friends with people I've met online.

So I now have quite a few Cozy Mysteries author friends, but they're people I have physically met at the SBS conference.

Those are people that I feel closest to.

Yeah, obviously a lot of Cozy Mysteries writers are actually based in the US, so it is hard to be kind of connected to them.

Some Cozy Mystery writers are also writing under pen names, so there's a separation there, so it's hard to find them, make a connection.

Also, I don't know, it doesn't feel natural to me to reach out to someone that I don't know and just say, do you want to hop on a chat and share private information?

So we have a background connection, a mutual friend, so we have known each other for a very long time, and then had Zoom calls during the pandemic about writing, and then sort of started this mastermind group.

But we could have done this ages ago, and we should have done it.

But then we weren't really in the position to do it.

We weren't in a position to both be like, I'm going to make the next step.

It feels like a step rather than something I would have got as much out of a long time ago.

I do think that that's, I'm going to be a silver lining person of the pandemic and say, if the pandemic had never happened, I would have never gotten a Zoom call because I hate talking to people on Zoom, on computers and stuff.

It's just something that I just feel really weird about it.

I mean, I don't anymore, but then I did.

Like before the pandemic, it was just like a video call.

Absolutely not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I had never, like I just, and I avoided it at work if I had to have like some sort of online meeting.

I was like, oh no, I don't want to be in that.

But now I'm like, I'll just go on a Zoom call or whatever with anyone.

But yeah, I would have loved to have started this sooner.

I have, I'm an extroverted introvert.

So when I'm with people in real life, I am fine.

But I also like, if I don't talk to people, I won't talk to people for a long time.

So it's, I wish that I'd found more writing friends, but I also know that that would never have happened.

And I'm great at being online friends with people because I love the, like you just send someone an email or something and then the ball's in their court and I don't have to do anything till they reply.

That's like, that's my friendship style.

And it doesn't work very well with real life friends.

I don't know.

Yeah, I don't think that, I don't think I would have, even if I had have gone back in time and said to myself, you should make more writing friends in real life.

I don't think, before the pandemic, I don't think I would have.

So I'm gonna have to say that the pandemic really helped me out.

Do you think you would have benefited from having a mastermind partner earlier?

Oh, I would have definitely benefited from it.

I think that this do mastermind and talking to you about writing has, has, I think, shaved years off.

Like, I think I would have gone years and years without, and I would never have got this far.

So, yeah.

I do think it would be, it's tough to have them at the same level as you very early on.

I think it has been helpful that we've kind of gone away and been separate and learned different things and then come together and may have sort of different things.

So I do feel like I wouldn't have made as much use of it.

And I maybe would not have pushed myself to develop as much had I had that from the beginning.

I know like there's professional mastermind groups, right, so like Romance Author Mastermind, and there's masterminds you can pay to be in.

I do think there's, people should be wary of Joy Nose very early on, because then it's not really a mastermind.

You should be at the same level as somebody and you should have information to share.

If you are both just struggling, you're always like, I also don't know what I'm doing.

I think that's a bit unhelpful.

You want to be at least at different levels in different aspects of what you're doing.

It was very, very helpful to me to have a friend who was felt on the journey when I first started.

I think I would not be anywhere near where I am now without having had a friend who was successful at self-publishing to begin with.

I think it is incredibly tough to evaluate things by yourself and understand everything, all the different, different moving parts.

You know, you see this when you look at the Facebook groups.

People who are not brand new are asking incredibly basic questions that I can imagine I would have asked had I not been able to have a friend that I could just, unless I really talk to, but both talk to and observe.

There's a big benefit to that.

So I think having some sort of connection, whatever it is, ideally in person, but in some way that's going to keep you quite close and that you can ask stupid questions of and they will be able to point out and say, don't do that, just watch out for this.

Or have you considered this other thing?

It's just helpful.

It is helpful.

I can't even imagine.

I don't even have any recollection of how I learned how to self-publish.

I don't know.

I have no memory of it.

I really like, because I did it on my own, I can only imagine I just Googled it.

No, I didn't have anybody telling me what size the cover should be, or how to format it.

I just somehow did it.

Good job on me.

Were you active in the days when k-boards was a thing?

I was just on my own.

I just was like a maverick.

I didn't speak to anybody about it.

I honestly can't even imagine what I was thinking.

Good for me, but it was that girl.

It definitely doesn't feel right.

Even nowadays, self-wobbishing is still...

I think when you're in the ecosystem, it feels like this is the default, it's what everyone's doing.

But during a new writing group, a bit more than a year ago, and it's not a critique group, I think it's a group of people just sitting and writing together.

Absolutely nobody in there.

Not nobody, but really, there is a big recoil from self-publishing from some people.

I've just like, oh no, I just want to have one book in Waterstones, take the equivalent of Barnes and Noble, and that's what I want.

I wouldn't self-publish, absolutely never.

That's a very 2010 opinion.

And I'm not thinking I haven't had that opinion myself before, when it was newer, so I can see it's just a changing, it's a process to get there.

But it does feel like, I still find it surprising that there are people who are in such a different place.

And this group, nobody else in this group had heard of NaNoWriMo.

And again, that's one of those things where I feel like everyone knows about this.

I've never NaNoed and everyone I know knows about NaNoWriMo, except for like there are plenty of people out there who are not in the ecosystem.

So I would definitely say I have learned so much from podcasts for starters.

Like that's why I want to do podcasts is it's a big source of information for me.

Podcasts, Facebook groups, other forums, like clubhouse groups now.

It is very, I don't know how much of this is just because I don't make it from strength.

I'm very high learner.

I actively enjoy the process of learning.

And I don't know if there's definitely other ways, other ways at the mountain, other sort of like wing it and see.

But there is just a lot to know.

There was like a lot to figure out.

I was like, what size are covers?

Do you want the Mac cover?

Do you want Korean pages?

And I had to Google that every time myself because I can't remember, look at my old books.

I'm like, I don't know.

I don't know what's going on in my head.

Yeah, like, oh, I know all sorts of things like crop marks and bleed marks.

And oh, yeah, there's so much terminology that just benefits being involved in some sort of group or having somebody to ask.

Like I say, I have no idea how I did it.

But how would you find a cover designer?

Like I had a cover designer recommended to me by somebody.

Otherwise, how would you find someone?

I mean, I used to make my own covers, but yeah, you just Google it.

Just Google as a writer's best friend.

The best cover designer might not have the best SEO.

No, exactly.

But yeah, that's just how people get on, I guess.

I think if I could go back and make better decisions, I would have decided to stick to some sort of publishing schedule sooner.

And that's something that rather than just like faffing.

I mean, the pandemic was obviously like chaotic nonsense.

But yeah, I didn't have a plan.

It's funny actually, because I had forgotten, I hadn't even written this down, and I've actually completely forgotten about this part of my life, but I was so sure that I was going to get an agent and that I was going to be in Waterstones.

Like that was my whole plan.

And self-publishing was just something I was doing on the side, just to keep, just to kind of like get myself used to putting things out there and having people see it.

So it was kind of like a, just like a little test run.

And I spent a few years trying to get books published or get books picked up by agents.

And I was like, I was so sure that I was going to get an agent.

So many things happened that seemed like they were signs that I should be agented.

And I don't want to go through like loads of them, but in one of my, in my old job, I used to set up people's pensions and a huge agent, like one of the biggest agents.

I, her application form landed on my desk the week that I was ready to start sending like things out to agents.

And I was like, the person's name was like insanely like iconic and unusual.

And I was like, this can only be that person.

And I looked to see like what their job was all this stuff.

And I was like, this is them.

This is the biggest sign that I should send my manuscript to this person.

And it didn't work out, but I was just so sure that was what my life was supposed to be.

And I always felt like self-publishing was like just a fallback.

And it was only really like over the like maybe over the pandemic when everything slowed down, I was just like, I don't know what I'm doing.

And I thought to myself, you do know what you're doing, you're self-publishing and you love it.

And that's okay.

Like you can stop trying to get an agent's attention.

You are the agent.

You're the person who could get to decide about your own career.

And that was really empowering.

And I wish I had had that epiphany a lot sooner.

Because as somebody who just loves the whole process and loves being involved and loves deciding things and hates the idea of somebody else telling me what to do, I don't know why.

I thought that that would be a fun process for me to go through, especially when my tried published authors go to like book signings and they go on the road on tours and stuff.

And to me, that was like the worst thing.

I like would have panic feelings when I thought about, if I get an agent, I'm going to have to go on the road and I might have to go and do signings and book tours.

And I don't want to do that.

That sounds terrifying.

Like that was really a sign.

If you don't want to do that, if that's not part of the process that you want to be involved in, you shouldn't be doing that.

I really wish I'd figured that out years ago.

Yeah, that is interesting.

And it is annoying how so much of it is just like, you have to figure it out.

There is nothing you can go back and tell yourself that you would believe.

You'd be like, no, no.

Imagine telling yourself from five years ago, like you don't want an agent.

You'd be like, no, absolutely do.

I can see myself on the shelf in Woodstones.

I know where my name is going to go.

There's no way to tell yourself these things.

No, I know.

It's just a lesson I had to learn.

I do feel like I'm a completely different person.

I feel like I've grown up a lot over the last, even just like the last two years, I feel like I've changed completely from who I used to be.

So it's just like, some things are just lessons you learn and they are just remnants of a past version of yourself that you no longer recognize.

Yeah, and they should be, right?

I think you shouldn't be trying to strive same place.

At least not, I think a lot of people, but I think it wouldn't work my way of thinking.

I would find that very frustrating.

I like to always be learning something new.

So yeah, that is why it's so obvious in greedy suits.

And I definitely think people who promote it and do well at enjoy it, for people who like actively learning things and being control of things.

I think I wish I had just been more embracing off the difficulty of it, like embracing it as a process rather than thinking I could like learn it and do it.

So I think from the beginning, I would rather have had a better mindset, but that is really a mindset issue as everything is, as we keep talking about everything, it's kind of mindset.

Obviously I needed to come to it now, but I think I've read so many useful books about mindset recently, that I can feel myself changing, and like feel the way I'm changing my reaction to things, that I just think, oh, I wish I'd done this 10 years ago.

And, I don't know, it's like life is full of seasons.

You come to things when you get them, when it's the right time for it.

But yeah, I would maybe say that's actually a big thing, that I wish I could have gently eased in a bit more, is more mindset things, more work on my mindset, rather than trying to fit self-publishing into my existing mindset.

I wish I had developed a mindset that would work around self-publishing.

And there's a lot of talk about that in self-pub, so I think there's a lot of resources out there.

And I think that would be the big thing I would encourage people if they're starting today, is work on your mindset, things like your money mindset, your success mindset, your attitudes towards failure, your self-worth, like all those things that you think are not about the writing, but they're gonna affect everything about what you do.

And if you can really become comfortable with that, you'll be able to make a lot of the bigger changes that you need to do.

Yeah, seeing how understanding what you want from your life and then figuring out how writing will get that for you, I think is better than trying to have this ridiculous dream of what writing should be and trying to strive for that.

Like writing should be, like it should work for you and you should work for it.

It shouldn't be some like crazy, high-reaching thing that you really have to strive for and you feel like it's a struggle.

Like if you feel like you're struggling to reach this, like write a lifestyle that you think you should have, that will kick you in the butt.

You'll always feel like you're failing and it just won't feel good.

Yeah, very much so.

I think that is a good place for us to leave this week's topic on the sort of kick you in the butt place.

So just like get positive as soon as you can.

Yeah, so next week's topic is related, is in fact related to find the positive in where you're at now rather than finding some ideal aspirational point of self-publishing, like really trying to get yourself set now.

So for next week's topic, we're returning to our series on real life versus writing.

And we've got an episode on day job skills that help self-publishing.

So not thinking yourself to the place where you're a full-time writer, being like, here's where I am right now, what do I appreciate, and maybe even what could I learn more about in my day job and have somebody pay me to learn about.

Do you have any thoughts on that already?

Yes, I have got a lot of transferable skills, I think, from my day job to my writing life that I don't really take advantage of.

I work in, I'm going to say, my official title is Digital Marketing Manager, but I don't really do that.

But I do have a lot of access to digital marketing knowledge, a lot of access to people who understand brand and working on brand recognition and building a brand and all of that stuff.

And yeah, I probably could utilize it more.

So I'm looking forward to kind of delving into that and how I should just be really being a bit more savvy with that.

I should be bringing more work home really well than just finishing work and being like, that world doesn't exist anymore.

There should be, I think, particularly for me, an open door when it comes to my working life, my writing life whilst I have it.

Yeah, I think I mentioned last week, I had a really good experience where I helped somebody edit an article they were writing and it really helped me see in a positive way that I have a skill that not everybody has.

And that's something that I have learned partly through this writing, like through fiction writing, but also part of my day job for years and years on end, I had to edit articles that were written by every single member of staff.

So every single member of staff had to write an article.

They took it in turns to write a couple of years, and we ended up with an article every week from someone on the team.

And people were very variable in quality, and we said to everyone, absolutely fine, don't feel like you have to be a good writer.

You can submit anything you want, and it will be polished by me.

And that was...

I mean, that was invaluable in terms of helping to clarify ideas and figure out what somebody means and how to say that in a better way.

And that was just, imagine having a 30-minute practice session every single week on a very particular writing skill that will come in useful everywhere.

I use it in my newsletter when I'm trying to express things.

I also do a lot of work on all sorts of other types of writing at work that really I use constantly.

I think I did a lot of things over the last couple of, not over the last couple of years, before that, so a couple of years before that, I did a lot of things that were very clearly applicable to my writing.

And I felt really positive when I was at work thinking, oh, it's fantastic, it's basically like being paid to learn stuff that I will use constantly into publishing or in writing.

And that has, I don't know whether that has changed or my enthusiasm for it has changed, but I feel less excited about it.

And I think maybe I want to spend a bit of time recognising what I have got and where I can be focusing my attention.

What kind of work is very flexible?

And I could change what I am working on in order to target projects that would give me different skills.

So this seems like a good time to have this conversation to both appreciate what I have and also to think about how to change my job to make sure that it serves me the best I can.

And it goes both ways, right?

Like I have, my company didn't do Facebook ads really, we did like boosted posts, but because I have learned about Facebook ads, I could do it and help somebody go through the very ludicrously complex process.

So it goes both ways.

And that feels great.

And I think I want to just spend a bit of time thinking more about it.

So I will look forward to that next week.

And I will look forward to speaking to you then.

Yes.

Same.

Thank you very much for listening everybody.

And don't forget to like and subscribe and all that jazz and yeah, leave us a review.

Thank you very much.

Goodbye.

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