S01E48: When We Spy Other Authors

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda talk about connecting with other authors.

Next week, Sam and Matilda are going to learn how to hype themselves up!!

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/3QHym3m

Most recent book: Heart of the Wolf (Moons & Magic Book 2) https://amzn.eu/d/4HecH3a

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:

Publishing Rodeo episode with Chuck Tingle: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e44-more-than-the-text-of-our-book-ft-greatest/id1670458274?i=1000678556726

How to Launch a Successful Series by Helen B Scheuerer: https://www.amazon.com/How-Launch-Successful-Survival-Authors-ebook/dp/B0CJX1S4JS/

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 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 Other Authors.

Before that, what are your wins and winges of the week?

Well, I have no winges of the week because I have decided to only be positive.

So my wins instead are, I have three.

One of them is a bit boring.

So the first one is a boring one.

I ordered my plum paper planner.

It's not boring.

I got it this week.

That's a big win for me.

I'm so excited.

It's a big win.

I'm very excited about it.

I took the time during work hours on my lunch break to do my whole planner.

And then I didn't tell you so I could tell you here.

I'm so excited.

I kept it a secret.

Have we got the same layout now?

We've got the same goals focussed one?

Probably not.

I just went on a win.

No, potentially we have very similar ones.

But yeah, I'm excited.

I've basically already forgotten what I ordered.

So when I get it and eat it on many weeks, it'll be a surprise.

So that's one of my wins.

My other win is that I finished my Nano No Rhymo.

My November project.

I finished, came in on Saturday, which was the last day of the month.

I've already forgotten what day it is.

And I'd done such a good job catching up that on Saturday, I only had 900 words to write in order to finish.

So it was very exciting.

But I have only just hit the middle of the story.

So oops.

But still, a great win, very proud of myself.

And my last win of this week is I'm on holiday, which is why I sound so echoey.

I'm not in my usual office.

On the video, it looks like I'm just in some sort of gray void because I'm in the corner of a kitchen.

It looks like you're in a murder room, yeah.

I'm kind of in a murder room.

Which is very murdery.

Yeah, very like just going full murder.

Yeah, so I'm on holiday.

I'm in Harrogate in North Yorkshire, and I have spent the day today in York, doing all York things, which like just walking around the old town, having mulled wine on the street, ate a giant doughnut, and bought myself loads of things despite the fact that I was supposed to be getting people Christmas presents.

So you know, perfect, perfect day.

What are your whims and whinges?

Well, I've got a mix this week.

I feel like I feel full of whims because I have got mulled wine right now, which if anyone's listening from America, they don't have mulled wine as far as I believe.

That's why they know, which is very sad.

And it sounds stupid, right?

It's a hot wine.

It's hot, spiced wine.

It's delicious.

It's the best thing.

I've listened to myself now.

I sound like I've drunk quite a lot of mulled wine.

I've drunk a medium amount of mulled wine this evening.

It's so good.

And I have mulled wine because it was my Christmas kickoff party yesterday, which is in its third year.

And I feel now like I have like established a tradition.

And I just started it one year.

I was like, when and when we have the Christmas markets on here in my town, I have this drop in open house thing where anyone could come in.

And so friends and family come in from out of town.

They come in, get some mulled wine, eat some snacks, and then they go out to the Christmas shopping locally, bring money into local businesses, and then come back and have some more snacks and drinks.

And also my neighbors can come in and get to know them better, which was so nice.

Different neighbors come each time, or like stop in for different parts and talk a bit longer or a bit shorter.

And just like all my neighbors are so creative.

Like one is a radio drama producer and director.

One is, in fact, two people I talked to in music therapy, but one used to be an actress in a big soap that people have seen.

People are like playwrights and other sorts of writers.

It just felt like hosting a salon.

But Christmasing felt fantastic.

And also I spent all weekend baking Christmas food.

So I made like mince pies and Fephanous and some cookies and yeah, like little Christmas chocolate trees.

In your element.

So lovely.

So that was like full wins.

And it felt so like be like live my best life and being who you want to be, which is really nice.

And like in community and creative and baking and festive.

So that was really lovely.

Exhausting.

And I have really done my back in from just too much hard labour.

So I fused my oven.

That's how much baking I did.

I tripped the fuse, I had to go down to the basement and reset the fuse of my oven.

Oh my god.

I know.

That's an achievement.

That is an achievement.

It is.

So yeah, I've done it all this weekend.

And I also did plenty of writing.

So I'm planning my next novel this week.

I normally try to do 10,000 words a week.

This week I did a bit less.

I did seven and a half thousand.

But also I was getting into the start of a new book.

So that feels fine.

I've got spare time built in.

And I'm about two thirds of the way through planning my next book.

And I still don't really know who the murderer is.

And I feel like I need to add another character because I don't have any surprise suspects.

There's a couple people that could be but both would be too obvious.

So I'm going to go back and have another look at how I can make it a bit more sneaky.

But that's been really fun this week.

I love the planning stage when anything could happen.

And I kind of do what Sophie Hanna calls a knocky draft where you're roughly writing while planning, which also just feels very creative and free.

It's like writing without having to really be any good.

So yeah, nice and fun and expressive.

So yeah, all wins.

And then maybe a slight whinge was that I had to have a trip to the dentist and now I need to get a night guard because apparently I grind my teeth at night, which I can't control.

And I've got a very painful tooth because I've been grinding and just catching this one corner of my tooth.

And I feel very sorry for myself over that.

And also the horrible expense of having to buy a night guard, which just like is going to be uncomfortable and hideous and expensive, which is like the worst of all things.

So expensive for something so dumb.

It's the worst expense.

I've paid something I don't want.

I won't enjoy having.

Great.

Yeah.

But yes, it's not that expensive in like in global health care terms.

It is very reasonable for what it is.

And hopefully it will help my problem.

But just feel like I want to have a whinge about it.

And also, I'm really glad.

So I think originally, I said I want to quit my job by 40.

I turned 14 October.

And it's actually been really nice to try and live within a specific budget this year.

And I budgeted for things like dental expenses and Christmas and holidays.

And it's really nice just to see how that budget goes in reality while I have additional income to buffer it.

And I think I didn't have enough of a rainy day fund because I budgeted for a specific amount.

I kind of averaged out a few things, a budget specific amount for the big expense things like my insurances, like the dentist, like Christmas, and like book cover and stuff like that.

So I gave them all a sort of roughly even fee when I added things up.

And over several years, I think it would even up.

So this year, I think my dental fee is slightly higher because I worked by this night guard.

Last year, it was lower because I just had, I think, like a regular checkup.

So it's been really useful to see how budgets, maybe on a year to year basis, need a bit more rainy day fund in there, which has been a win.

But just to feel like when a grown up win.

Yeah.

It's a universe life lesson that you kind of don't like, but you feel like you've taken something from it.

Yeah.

That's a good way to look at it.

So let's segue with no way, shape or form into our topic of the week.

Yeah, I have nothing to make that smoother.

Topic of the week, we are talking about other authors.

Are we just gossiping, or do we have something useful to say about them?

I do feel a bit gossipy at the moment.

In that, not even specifically gossipy, but I think we have, over this past year, spent so much time really looking at specific authors.

And quite often when we each find an author that we think is doing something interesting, we'll share it in our weekly or like one-monthly catch-ups.

So we're not gossiping about them, we're literally just talking about how they're doing their careers.

But I would say that's kind of emblematic of how I've changed over this past year my relationship to other authors.

Previously, I felt just so disconnected from other indie authors in the indie author world.

Even though we've talked about it before, as a cozy author, I know other cozy authors, and I've been to SPS live a couple of times, I've been to self-publishing show live, and I've met other people.

But I just felt so much like the world's smallest fish in the world's biggest pond, but I didn't I didn't have a clear like an understanding how to make connection to people.

And also, I think what's up is for like, I'm someone who really feels like have to be doing things well to do it.

And I definitely felt like, or until I have enough to contribute myself in terms of knowledge or expertise or skills in a certain area, I don't feel confident I've got enough to bring to a conversation that I can connect with people.

Which hasn't served me well, but I understand it, it's fine.

But it has definitely felt like this year has that has changed wildly.

Like, partly it's doing this podcast, right?

And partly it's that just the process of having to talk about a specific thing every week and talk about it in a professional, like this is, you know, effectively a business meeting way, we bring a topic to the table, we have an agenda.

Makes me feel like often I have looked into things other people haven't looked into.

So I was talking before off mic about Amazon affiliates.

And I can't even remember what made me start doing it.

Why did I start doing Amazon affiliates?

I'm sure somebody had mentioned it in like a podcast or something about how you could now link from your email.

Was it something like that?

But yes, I forget.

Yeah.

So yeah, I'd started this year when I went to monthly, I went to weekly pod newsletters, sorry.

And I was including a book link every week to Amazon.

And quite quick, and I had a specific motivation to do that.

But quite quickly, I was really like, Oh, I'm sending, you know, at a minimum of 100 people a week to Amazon on this click.

And maybe around that time, just by coincidence, I heard something about you can use affiliate links.

But I feel like people have been very quiet on it.

So I don't know where I would have heard that anyway.

So you can now use affiliate links in your emails, in your newsletters.

It's a bit complicated how to go about it.

It's not quite clear how you evidence that.

And it's been a back and forth with the team at the affiliates side of things.

But anyway, that's ongoing.

And I mentioned that to someone in as you know, offhand to someone in this Cozy Clubhouse that I joined.

We were just chatting about what what you've done this year that's helped your career.

And I mentioned the affiliate link.

And now several people are doing and I feel like I would not have done that sort of thing had it not been that we are kind of in this active trying mode, like really trying to do new things all the time.

I had felt very much like I sort of treading water for a long time, feeling a bit powerless to change things.

So yeah, that I definitely feel now like I bring more to a table when I'm having a conversation.

And I've had a writer friend recently, a couple of writer friends recently, in fact, read my first book in series and give really detailed like taking a long time out of their lives feedback on it.

And and that was following me having done something similar for one of them and me having had a conversation with other ones about where I'm at in my career.

And it's just felt much more possible and much more like I understand the landscape better.

I know where I am in it.

And I know what I can bring to the table and also that you don't always have to bring some to the table that people can just you can make a connection because people are nice.

Yeah, that has also been hard for me to receive.

It's not natural for me to receive.

But I think having worked through that to an extent has been really helpful.

So, yeah, I think on a surface level, I just like, or not on a surface level, on a most basic level, I just feel much more able to make connections with other authors in a way that is endlessly useful has been great.

How about you?

I think it's interesting that you say that you had to be like perfect before you could share with anybody, like what you were doing.

I have often felt like that in my life.

But since we've been doing this together, I have been like you, like I just feel so much more at ease talking to people about everything.

And I think that that's like just come from like opening a door, like before we were just like sat in our offices writing and like just like, just closed door, like the metaphor is just as easy as that.

We were in a, we were just like had the door closed.

And since doing this together, we've opened the door and then seen that there were so many other people with their doors open as well.

Nobody really expects anybody to give them anything.

And so you don't have to feel like you have to give anything.

Because I don't expect anything from anybody.

I don't expect it from talking to other authors, which I have been like, like you have this year, like so much more.

I don't expect anybody to give me anything.

Like I'm not expectant.

So then I guess I figured that then they're probably not expectant of me either.

And it's like a benefit of the doubt kind of scenario.

So I think that's, it's definitely, and I know we always harp on about this, it's helped because we've been doing this together.

And without doing this together, we wouldn't have got to this point, which is...

Yeah, no.

It's weird.

If I just start a podcast by myself, I feel like nothing would have really changed.

It would just be me talking into a void about things I'm unsure about.

Whereas even having someone else say, I'm also unsure about that, feels helpful.

And yeah, and I have just done so many different things this year.

Like I am in two weeks time, going to an office Christmas party with other Cozy Authors, where we're going to York, in fact, where you were today.

And we are going to stay at a hotel there, we're going out for a nice meal.

And that came from people that I know in the genre, like some of them were organizing a retreat, a writing retreat, which I don't know that I would have gone on before, just from not feeling like I'd be my whole self there.

I think that's it.

It's not that I wouldn't have felt confident, but I think I would have felt like I wouldn't have made the most out of it.

And actually, when we went on the retreat in September, I felt like I really made the most out of it.

I both learned and shared.

And now it means that I'm going on this really nice night out that I'm really looking forward to.

And from that, you know, other things will come to someone in that group, or someone who gave me great feedback on my first book in many series.

And I think just more and more things come out of those interactions that you can't necessarily predict.

I think loads of opportunities have come my way this year that I could never have had apart from just from being more in community with the writers.

Which feels really...

I know.

And I'm not talking like you can't do it in a certain way, but you'd have to be more and more out there and things come.

Yeah, you do have to.

It's funny because I've just remembered I saw a post on threads today.

And I'm going to find it.

Sorry, I should have really done this before.

But it was, it's a traditionally published author, Victoria Avyard, and she writes big fantasy books.

But she did a threads thing today, and it was about building community and having group chats.

And she said even in traditional publishing, what was her takeaway?

Like community building needs to be built.

It's not immediate or automatic.

So you have to put as much as you can into it.

But she really believes that you can't do this without it.

You can't do this whole gig without building a community that you...

Like, depending on how much you want to give of yourself, whether you want to become best friends with people or whether you want to just have working relationships with people, like, you have to.

Because otherwise, you don't learn anything.

Like, it's such a learning career, and you can't just learn just by doing.

I mean, you do, but...

I think it's harder for...

Yeah, it's harder for trad authors, right?

And I was listening to this new episode out of...

Publishing Room, is that what it's called?

Yeah.

Which I really like, but in that, it's two authors who are really trying to be as open as in new authors really.

And this week's episode has Chuck Tingle on, which, you know, phenomenal.

It's really an interesting episode.

And I think what's interesting is that they're all they're coming from really, really different positions, all the people in the podcast, but all kind of valuing connection and being open about things.

And so much of publishing, tried publishing really relies on people being separated and not knowing how much money you should have or not knowing what you can ask for and feeling grateful, like feeling grateful to be picked out of a slash pile.

Whereas in these, I think we have that bit much more control and you actually can benefit.

You can have as much power as you can take, basically.

So you should be out there talking to people and finding out what more you can be doing, what more you can be learning, how you can be trying new things and find the people that work for you, how you want to be interesting people.

There's so many opportunities.

I'll put a link into that episode because it was interesting to listen to the track Tingle publishing rodeo on.

Perfect.

And I generally think that's such a good podcast overall, because I think it's, there's not many like it in Trap Publishing.

And then talking about like all of this and being open and honest and building community, I want to toot my own horn because at the end of last episode, I said that I was going to basically put myself out there and try and find a group of young adult indie authors, like young adult fantasy, because there's just, as far as I'm aware, there's no place to hang out with other YA fantasy authors.

It's just social media.

And I find social media is like, it's great for kind of a casual interaction, but I have a terrible memory for usernames and remembering, like this is just like a thing that I've always had.

Like I forget what level of friendship I have with people, like how well I like, I know people.

This is like a my brain thing.

And social media makes it even harder to kind of, to remember like, how friendly am I supposed to be towards this person?

Cause it's social media.

Like have we always had this relationship?

It's like a weird thing.

So I was a good girl and I reached out on threads and I asked the question, like where's everyone hanging out?

Is there like a water cooler that we can all like chill out by and chat?

And nobody said that there was a specific place.

So I made one and I made a private discord that is just specifically for young adult fantasy authors and asked people to tell me if they wanted to be added to it.

And I think I probably sent out about 10 to 15 invites and people have been trickling in and like introducing themselves.

And we've been talking about like what sections we want to have in the discord that would really help.

Already people have been asking about like podcasts to listen to.

Of course, I dropped out.

I was like, here's a great list, but also, you know, I have a podcast.

And...

Did you just on that topic, did you listen to ever listen to the sci-fi fantasy podcast, which had Lindsay Broca on it?

And other people that are not familiar with it?

Yeah, I'm subscribed.

Yeah, I haven't probably haven't listened to an episode in a while, but yeah, I subscribed to them.

Yeah, and it's just been...

I'm kind of scared because I didn't really think I was going to be the leader of the group.

I was looking for somebody else to already have a group that I could just slip into, because there are places for indie authors, and I am part of a couple of discords for just the indie authors.

And obviously, there were other podcasts you can listen to and things, but genre-specific is so important.

You can learn loads just in general from an indie authors group, because you can learn about generic stuff, ads and all of the fun, businessy stuff.

But I need more than that.

I need to talk to people.

Well, that is like number one.

Like that is such basic stuff.

And I think that's definitely what I've learned a lot this year is like so much of self-publishing is about genre specific.

You know, I think a huge amount of what you hear and read about is about romance, and it really, really applies to romance.

And you can extrapolate from that to other genres, but some things just don't extrapolate.

And maybe that's just the way my brain works, is it doesn't make those connections of this works in romance, how could it work in my genre?

So it definitely helps me to talk to other authors that are doing some of the things.

And it's interesting in the cozy spaces I'm in, people do often ask what sounds like really basic questions.

And these are people that I know are doing well, but I think they often, people have been like, maybe I'm doing well, but I could be doing better.

Am I missing something?

How's the genre changing in terms of length, in terms of covers, you know, in terms of, in lots of different things that you just can't research yourself without being a full time job, just keeping up with trends in genre.

So it is like having a high mind.

And I think it's interesting, I'm sure there will be other spaces that already exist for YA fantasy authors, but like I'm in a number of cozy spaces, many of which just don't do anything.

Like they're just, people don't really turn on there.

People do never quite found the right connection, or they weren't posting regularly enough, or they just didn't have enough trust between each other.

And yeah, it's hard to get like a vibe going.

I think that's what you really need.

Whereas I mentioned as often the Cozy Mystery Club host that I'm in, which is just fantastic, because it's a regular weekly slot, and I often can't talk in it because it's like during my work hours, or sometimes I'm at the gym at that time.

And it's at the end of my like work day job.

And I just don't often feel like I'm in an out loud mood.

But I can absorb stuff there.

And I often will think about it later and then you know, process it and maybe put some comments in the Facebook group.

But some people are in a chatty mood at that time and sometimes I am.

And it just means like it's a weekly slot to do things in.

And I think it might be that there's tons of other spaces, but you've never found them for a reason because they're not vibing the way you would.

And so you've got Discord going and all we need to do is just keep letting people do it.

I am the leader of the route, which is yeah, I just wasn't thinking that that was how this is going to go.

But I am, I do love the idea of leading people.

That sounds weird.

But like we've talked about this in the past, and we'll talk about it in the future about like running retreats and things.

And I've always thought of myself as somebody who would do that, because I love it.

I think facilitating is different to leading, right?

I think I really like facilitating things.

And I think almost this podcast is a facilitation, because I imagine people are listening to us, like, almost going on at the same pace, like doing maybe the same thoughts, process we're having each week, and we're having conversation.

But in a way, there's a wider community around us.

And I think facilitating is very much in your, in your skillset.

And I think having a discourse that feels like it's, it's something that I, I'm surprised you don't already have.

Yes, this is very true.

And so far, like there's been, like I said, like I sent out quite a few invites, and there's been a few people who have trickled in, they've said who they are, where they're living, what kind of books they're writing.

And it's been fun to see the levels of people, because not everybody obviously at the same levels, that's always difficult to find.

From the get go, it's very difficult to find everybody who's at the same stage in the business.

So there are some people who are working on their debuts at the moment, or people who have just released, and then there are other people who have released like multiple like I have, and dipped into different genres, whether it be on purpose or a mistake.

And I can already kind of see what interactions are gonna happen, and what questions are gonna come up, and what conversations are gonna happen based on all of that already just off the get-go.

And I'm really excited because it's just the things, it's just like, it's just the chit chat that you would have if you were in a room, if you went to a meet up or something.

That's just the conversation you would have like, what books have you written?

Was that a mistake?

What are you doing in the future?

What's like, one of my questions is, help me title my next book because I'm having just like mental fog over titles at the moment.

And to be able to ask people who know the genre and whether they think it's a good idea to lean into trends or not, I just am happy to have those conversations.

And also because of how far I feel like I've come this year alone, during the podcast, I actually for the first time feel like I have a lot to give other people as well in some way.

So it's just been a really nice, exciting weekend because I only launched it on, wait, what day are we?

The second.

I launched it yesterday.

Well, so I follow you some threads I saw, you know, all that happened is I saw you put out like a sort of idle, you know, query, like, where are we all hanging out?

And then a bunch of people replied instantly, but like, we don't hang out anywhere, where can we hang out?

And then you're like, I'm going to get a discourse over together.

And then within days, you've just done it.

That feels like, you know, having watched in real time, you manifest something, you know, not manifest, but like, I think it felt very deliberate.

And, and yeah, and like you're in control of your author career, I'm really confident.

And I think that does feel like something that I think both of us again this year, that feeling of we, if you don't know that if like, if this space doesn't exist for you, it's because it doesn't exist.

It's not because you don't know where to find it.

It's because like, yeah, I'm an authority in this field enough that I know that if I haven't come across a space, it needs making.

Yeah.

Which is really great to see.

And feels very exciting.

Yeah, I have definitely been feeling like, I really like Discord.

So I think we both have joined the Indie Authors ascending Discord server.

Limit it a fair bit.

And there is, there's a Cozy channel in there.

Slightly annoyingly, it's used a lot by Cozy Fantasy people, which like, it's not annoying annoying, but as in when I think of Cozy, I think of Cozy Mystery, and then I keep forgetting and I'll see a post and I'm like, Oh, no, it's not Cozy Fantasy.

And then now there's a little spinoff, like a little thread in there about Cozy Mystery specifically, but it is like the same three people chatting in there.

And I feel like I would love to have a slightly bigger group of just crazy people like chatting all the time, because I do find I don't really love Facebook for professional talking.

Like you just miss a lot of posts or you don't see the updates used to the you see the stuff you don't want to see and you don't see the video you want to see.

Whereas Discord feels really useful.

So I'm hoping that the Cozy group grows edge because it is a bigger genre.

Yeah, maybe for me it's Discord.

Yeah.

But yeah, I think it will be.

Yes, it will be the hub of Discord.

We will be thriving.

And I, you know, and it was, I hadn't really thought about the fact that you'd see me posting about it and hadn't thought about the fact that I made the decision and just did it there and then.

That is a very me thing.

It's a very me thing.

I mean, that's how I started my bookshop, that I started a few years ago.

I just thought, I've got so many books and I want to sell them.

I'm going to start a bookshop.

And I designed a website and started a bookshop in one weekend.

Whilst I had the flu, like I was, I was actually delusional.

I was like, had a fever and everything.

And I was like, oh, yeah.

So it was very like on track for me to set that up.

And I even designed a logo, just like, oh, I need a logo, design a logo.

It's strange to think that that's, I just take that talent for granted.

Cause it is a talent.

I do think I can toot my own horn and say that is a talent to be able to just be so like reacted to my own ideas, I think is a talent that I will happily like talk about.

I am very excited to see where it goes, and I will definitely keep talking about it on here, because I'm sure.

If people want to join, if we do have any other YA fancy people, Yes, if anybody who is writing YA fantasies, listen to this, just DM me on Instagram and say, can I join the discord?

Because it is closed, so I'll have to invite you personally.

There's no limitation on who can join, as long as it's YA fantasy.

I'm happy for people to be in there, because I've been in groups before, and the indie author, Ascending One, does have tears for where you are in your career, and I think that's great for such a big group.

But let's be real, I don't think this is going to be, well, I don't know, maybe it will be huge.

For now, it's fine.

Everyone can just mill around the same water cooler.

There's no problem.

We're not going to run out.

Yeah, no, I think it's, I think your Instagram link is in our comments already.

And also Sam does manage our Pen to Paycheck Authors Instagram.

So, message or neither, they both go straight to her.

I don't even know how to see how to view our messages on Instagram for the podcast.

So they all go to Sam and she can recruit you there.

And feel free to pass along that information to your friends as well.

I think that we could to have that pass far and wide.

Or if we know other places where Sam should be promoting the Discord.

Yes, please do.

Yes, I 100% think so.

And I also hadn't even thought about saying it anywhere.

I had actually put a post on Instagram on my personal account, but I have not said anything on any Facebook groups yet because Facebook's weird.

Facebook's a weird place.

It's a bizarre place to find people.

And as much as I'm part of a lot of groups, I think it's probably a good idea to talk about this in this particular episode.

Authors on Facebook are wildly different, wildly different.

And you can see people talking about things and you think, yeah, that's a real author, they're making sense.

And then in the same group, there are people who you kind of feel like are some sort of scams somehow, like some sort of bot or trying to trick you into something.

It's a very weird, weird place to be as an author.

So I may avoid putting links on there just in case like weird people trickle through.

But yeah, Facebookers.

It's interesting.

I was actually, I was on Kboards recently.

So Kboards used to be really, really big forum for independent authors.

And then it got bought out by somebody and they put a lot of ads on it, people got re-described to the left and someone tried to spin off their own forum and people just didn't join it and it kind of disappeared.

But everything is still archived up there.

And in fact, you can still post on Kboards, but it's not roaming people.

It's a bit like the Reddit, like the self-publishing Reddit, which just like people who don't know that there's got places to be.

But anyway, but all the stuff is archived up on that.

And I was looking at another author who's very, very big now, but who I know was on Kboards a lot in the olden days.

And I got to read through her old posts from when she was deciding whether to quit her job.

And she had posted a sequence of posts about, I'm not sure if she quit, it feels like a bit of a risk.

And then there was a part where she's like, I'm going to hand my notes in, here's what I'm thinking about.

And then there was the next post of handing my notes in, here's how I feel.

Then there was, I've been working from home and like by myself, and I don't have to have a boss and I'm making my own hours.

And that was really nice to go back and see.

So I think those sorts of spaces where, yeah, like a forum, but you know, like Discord is really just like a better way for us to have not only like sharing information, but also sharing it in a way that's very accountable and you can trust the person in a much better way than you can on Facebook where there is just this sense of like, this is the bruness.

Nothing feels permanent or traceable because you can disappear and have fake profiles and it just it feels like it's a bit wild westy.

It is very wild westy.

I always feel like I'm in the middle of being scammed when I start reading a post and I think like, in some way, this person is going to steal my identity.

I need to scroll away quickly.

Yeah, it does not feel like a great base.

So hopefully this will work out better.

Are there any other things that we want to talk about?

So we're kind of on topic of broadly our series is about believing in yourself.

So we have talked about that, interestingly, kind of in believing ourselves in relation to being able to make more use out of other authors as a way to keep growing, right?

So like, we feel like we're now more in connection to them.

But are there any other way that we want to talk about other authors in terms of believing ourselves?

In my notes for this episode, we had like other authors as models.

Yeah.

It's much like comp authors, I guess, is I think it's very important to know the names or recognize other people in your genre and in your workplace.

How I like to think of other authors is that we're all doing the same thing, we're all working on the same job.

I try my hardest to make sure I'm following people who are my comp authors.

I do both traditional and indie, just because I like to see the differences.

Because it's just interesting to see how everyone's doing stuff, and you don't have to make friends with them either.

I like the idea of making friends and doing this group and everything, but you don't have to make friends with everyone.

Sometimes it's better just to stand back and look at things from, and look at what people are doing from an outside perspective.

Just to give you, I think it's just nice to see things for inspiration and maybe like make mental notes of what you don't want to do and make lists of things that you do want to try, and just keep your mind open for like, for all sorts of stuff that you maybe wouldn't have thought about before.

And just to keep your ear to the ground and see what's going on out in the wider world.

How about you?

Yeah, I think the believing in yourself part of it kind of comes from really seeing a comp as somebody that you can be, rather than saying like, these are my comps, they are kind of wildly distant people who I think I would like to try and steal some of their readers if I can, or like latch on to them in some way.

I think in the past, I've thought of comps as just like, they are similar writers to me, or they're writing similar types of books, I think we might share some readers.

But now I'm definitely trying to think of them as like, I could have this career.

And that definitely has come from believing in myself more as like, this is not just someone who writes like me or writes in the same sub genre as me, like, this is somebody who they're a comp in terms of I can, I could release that regularly, I could have that that type of emotional push, I could be that big.

And it's not that they are some sort of distant, like gigantic star that I'm just seeing the light of, they are like a car just slightly down the road.

Oh, 100%.

And I think that this will tie in nicely with our episode next week about, my brain's just gone blank.

Hyping yourself up, thank you.

I had it before, then it just went away.

I know, I know.

Is seeing what other people are doing and believing that you could do that.

And I know that we've talked about this before, and we'll talk about this next week, is the, I hate to say this, but the cringe factor.

I hate saying cringe.

Saying cringe is like a cringe to me.

So the cringe factor of hyping your own books up.

But when you see other people do it, I never think it's cringey.

I never think, oh my God, like she loves her books so much.

I always think, like, why don't I talk about my books like that?

And that's definitely where I'm heading.

When I look at other people, there's definitely a few authors that I follow, and I'm very, very tuned in to what they're posting.

And making a lot of mental notes, and like I have saved lists in Instagram, because I have to make lists everywhere I go.

I've got a whole folder of like what I call authoring, so I've got an authoring folder that is all the things that I look at other authors' posts, and I think I should do that.

Like I could do that, and I will do that.

And that helps me feel like I'm getting a lot of inspiration, and it's making me feel like that is part of my future.

Like that is, I'm gonna use that to move myself forward.

And yeah, I love it.

I love like the, a lot of people use like Instagram and like Pinterest and stuff for inspo for like how you want your house to be, and like lifestyle stuff, but mine's definitely like career goal inspo.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, or even just like career mechanics.

Like here's how you do this.

Yeah, I definitely feel the same way of thinking like, I haven't previously felt almost like entitled to hype up my own work.

But seeing other people do it, I'm like, yeah, I in the past, it's felt very untouchable for me, like not not something that's even an option for me.

Whereas now I see it and I'm like, yeah, I mean, they're hyping their book up.

Why can't I have my book up?

That seems crazy.

The book that I'm reading at the moment, absolutely.

It's just got such a good example of how I totally changed the way I look at things.

And I just read this part recently over the weekend.

So it's one of Helen Shor's books, Think What I Talk About Before, How to Launch a Successful Series.

And in it, she talks about her street team.

And just the way that she runs a street team.

It's unbelievable, like so impressive.

And I think in the past, I have not really felt by the mechanics of things like that.

Or I think I might even read this book before, and just like not be able to take in what I was reading enough.

Whereas now I feel like I'm in a different position that I can understand it more.

So her street team, she talks about how in her very first time she ran it, she had like a five week campaign.

She made, I think I might even have been a Discord server for this particular series.

She ran competitions for them every week where they had to do a challenge, and they could pick one of like three challenges a week, which could be repost your review on your socials, tell, like update your Goodreads with it, with the book that you've read, come up with a new idea of how to promote this series.

Like every single week for five weeks, three pre-launch, one of the launch and one post-launch, she had a challenge like this for the whole group.

And there were, I don't know, maybe even there, let's say 50.

But all these people were doing posts every week, and they got prizes, quote unquote prizes, like the whole series of books in ebook, or a series of other books of their choice in ebook.

And like that is a level of faith.

I could not, I still could not believe I could do that now.

I can see in the future, I could, right?

It just be like people would do free labour for the prize of more books from me.

I think partly because I wouldn't do this myself, right?

Like I absolutely, I don't, I don't do free labour for people like that.

I don't even like when YouTube like asks you to say like which things you've heard of before.

I was like, no, that's a job you've been paid for before.

Skip a video.

Sorry, and my dad's a big fan of like, you know, he posts things like Google Maps and like post Google reviews, and you get paid for it.

Google money that you can spend on movies.

But I was like, no, you should pay someone for that job.

That's, that is my research.

Um, anyway, and so just seeing her do that, like in the past, what I might have seen is like from the outside, Helen Jorah's fans being obsessed about her books, announcing it from the inside and like, oh, that's the thing that she has, to some extent, manufactured.

And it's not saying it's fake, because people have to really like your books, and have to do that work, but she has orchestrated it, right?

She has made it work in the most organized and effective way, done things that like her fans would have loved to do it, and she's just organized and doing it in a way that requires so much self-belief.

And reading about Helen Jorah being incredibly open about that and literally listing every single thing she did for every week was so eye-opening.

It's made me think, okay, it's not that I'm rubbish, that people aren't doing this for me, it's because I've not organized this like street team and a discord and competition and giveaways.

I just need to get to that level.

That's when I would, and that level of organization, but also that level of self-belief.

She's treating herself like a celebrity.

And I think that that is the thing that I strive to do.

I want to believe it.

And I do, to a certain extent, I think of myself as a celebrity.

I walk around assuming that everybody around me is just trying to get the five minutes of fame on the Sam show, like 100 percent.

Like I go everywhere I went yesterday, I would walk into somewhere and it would be empty.

And then all of a sudden people would follow me.

I'm like, like turn to my boyfriend, like these people are following me.

A hundred percent.

Like this is embarrassing.

So in my own life, I already like pretend like I'm on the Truman show and everyone's like, I'm the star.

So I want to have that level of belief in my, like my writing world as well.

She also did, I don't know if it was on Rebel Author or Spa Girls.

It might have been Rebel Author when Helen went on and talked about that whole thing with her street team and stuff.

And I'm just trying to think.

I have heard that episode, but I can't remember the name of it.

But I would say look up any podcast with Helen Joyer on it because she's so open and interesting about these things and talked really...

Oh yeah, I made loads and loads of notes about it and about all the things that she was doing.

And it sounded so unachievable for me, but it was like...

Even now, even months and months later from after hearing that, it's always in the forefront of my mind, not even the back of my mind.

I feel like I'm working towards that thing.

That she is treating herself like a celebrity.

She is talking to her readers as though they are so excited to be part of that journey.

And because she's doing that and she's making it exciting, and she's like giving back as well, she's made that come true.

And although right now, I don't think that I have...

I'd like to stand on, I don't think anybody would show up for me in that way.

The fact that that's working for her, that means it could work for us.

It's an opportunity that we could have.

And there was a time in her life when that wasn't possible for her, right?

I think there's so much...

You know, it's part of why we have this podcast, right?

There's so much of when you see authors talking about their process, they're talking from the stage where it has already worked.

They have reached that stage.

And they can say, Oh, in the past, you know, I didn't have the option of having a street team like this, but it's not real.

It doesn't feel real as real as...

Because then you as a small not successful author are looking at me like, yeah, but you know, there's a survival bias, right?

I think this is what Chuck Tingle was talking about today on the publishing rodeo that I was listening to.

It was like, it's all very well for Taylor Swift to say, you know, all you have to do is like write your own songs and sing them.

And it's like, there's probably hundreds and hundreds of people who've done that and not been successful.

You can say it because it works for you.

And so there's that for me, there's that level of disbelief when I see someone like Helen Shaw writing, like, all I did was these things and it worked.

It's like, there's some people that did that and didn't work.

And I can talk myself out a bit.

And definitely that's what I would have done much more in the past.

And now it feels more possible of like, okay, I can see that I can be there.

I know steps that I have to take to get there.

And I also know how much of it is just hard graft.

Like, it isn't some sort of magic fairy that waves on and says like, you.

No, no, it's a lot of hard work.

And when she talks about the things that she does, the giveaways, and she even, I think, creates templates for people to be able to use to post onto their social media.

She's like, quote, quotes.

Yes, so she's doing so much work behind the scenes before that, and I know she has assistants and stuff who help.

But even still, that means that that is a working business of just doing that, of creating that whole business.

I mean, that is a side business, isn't it?

That is like a side business within your own business.

It's inspirational.

Yeah, I mean, it's a marketing team.

It's crazy.

And one day we shall have marketing teams.

And I think definitely in the past, yeah, I think though in the past, I would have resisted that idea and thought like, if you have to do that much work to get people to look at your books, like maybe your books aren't that good.

And the same with advertising, right?

And it there's a way to excuse yourself for not doing it.

But like, oh, that feels forced.

That feels like fake.

But it's not true.

And I think part of talking to yourself that way is a way to resist putting that idea for yourself.

And so I think for me, being able to look at other authors as models for achievable goals is a really good sign of how I have changed over the past year in my belief in myself.

And I'm not sure there's necessarily an action point for other people to like take away and say, oh, just do X and then you'll have Y.

I think this is maybe just a good example of an episode where we're talking about how our thought process have changed as a natural output for our outcome of having talked about things and thought about things in a certain way for a certain period of time.

Oh yeah, definitely.

We've been letting ourselves like dream.

Is that the right thing?

Letting ourselves dream and thinking big.

We do think big.

And I think that we think much bigger together than we do on our own.

It always feels like maybe it feels too much like a dream when you're on your own.

And when you're with somebody else, it feels like a plan.

Yeah, I know.

Okay, funny.

Absolute epiphany.

Yeah.

God, I'm smart.

The Prosecco did help, you see?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

You should drink every episode.

Though it does feel like I've really shrugged off my words more than normal, though drinking a pint of mug of mulled wine is a reasonable amount of prosecco.

I mean, it's not my first, but yes.

Okay, do you have anything else on the topic or other authors?

No, I think I have said all I can say.

Fantastic.

Okay, so for next week's topic, we're continuing our series on how to believe in yourself.

And as we've mentioned, the next episode is all about hyping yourself.

Do you have any initial thoughts?

I'm so excited to do this episode.

And next week is our mastermind date, so we are going to be meeting up face to face, and we are going to help hype each other up.

Because if there's one thing that we all know, it's so difficult to come up with your own hype, because you feel like you just can't see yourself or see your own work clearly.

So we're going to try and come up with hype tactics and things for each other.

And I'm really looking forward to it, because I think it'll just be a really fun, exciting thing to do.

Me too.

I think we should drink it.

I think I'll probably be drinking it.

Yeah, I, yes, I think it especially feels hard to hype yourself.

I think it's illegal for English people to hype themselves up.

I think some like queens guards in large, tall hats come and find you and they'll be like, no, this is not for us.

So it does feel like a thing that is so instilled in you that is not appropriate to do.

But there's everyone else out there on social media and other places hyping themselves up, so we have to get able to do it.

And I think we can.

I think we're great.

Again, Muldwain talking.

And there will be more Muldwain next week.

Yes.

Amazing.

Okay.

Well, I think that's everything from us today.

Hopefully, it has been an illuminating episode for everybody.

And we look forward to hearing more about us believing in ourselves.

As always, please do share the podcast with everybody you know, or just me in passing maybe.

And we will see you next week.

Goodbye.