S02E01: What A Real Life Act Two Means

Sam and Matilda welcome you to act two of the podcast with this in-person recording! Let's chat 2025! 

Tune in next week where we will be chatting to a guest about money, and financial plans!  

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:

JOIN THE PEN TO PAYCHECK DISCORD: https://discord.gg/w7BjxmeXfF

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

Indie Authors Club money episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyyDAsmuErQ

EB White reading Charlotte’s Web: https://soundcloud.com/penguin-audio/charlottes-web-by-e-b-white 

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the self-publishing mountain.

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

And I'm Samattha 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 our 2025 goals and Act Two.

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

It's enjoyable to say.

I do not like it.

I have a couple of wins.

My first win is sitting here with you in person.

I would say it's actually my win.

I'm going to spoiler alert here.

It's my win because it's actually impossible to talk.

I think it's going to have too much laughter this episode.

It's distracting and I'm also going to talk to you through a screen while you're sat right next to me.

Yeah, it is strange, but it's a win because it's just a fun thing to experience.

So exciting.

My other win, I think my wins are just like podcast related.

I, we have had our Mastermind Day.

Yeah.

And that has felt like a big win, but also a big headache.

Okay.

I mean, in a good way, just because I've used my brain too much.

And then I've also had a big win because last week, I finally recorded my episode of which I had known then, which got pushed from last year to this year.

And yeah, it finally happened and it was so exciting.

And I can't wait for the episode to come out and for everybody to hear it.

So more on that soon.

And my whinge is just the weather because it's still, where I live, incredibly icy and a death trap everywhere you go.

And I hate it.

And I want the sun to come back and the ice to go away.

And that's me.

I think you'll be complaining when it's hot.

That was never, ever.

Not from me.

My whinge is maybe the lovely snow, but not the cold weather.

It's very nice.

No, my actual win this week, we said this earlier before we were doing our Mastermind Day.

It just feels like this week has been like a million years long, but in a somewhat good way.

Like I feel like I've done loads this week.

So this week I joined a TikTok Accountability Challenge.

It's one that Adam Beswick's running.

He's got a Facebook group and a Discord group.

There's a lot of reasons that I have enjoyed it.

I may talk about that in a little bit, but it's just been nice to have that starting year energy.

I feel like I've done lots of things like that, like lots of making strides, taking steps, which feels really good.

My winch, partly, is that it's weird to do this podcast side by side with you.

I thought it'd be like a really different, exciting, interesting thing, but it feels like I am, it feels like we're in some sort of like chaste marriage where we are not allowed to look at each other directly.

Don't look.

We have to look at the screen.

Don't touch me.

Yeah.

I also feel like it's going to make us talk over each other more, because normally when we record, we have to allow for a little bit of a lag, and so we're much more polite.

Today, I think we're just going to be maybe a bit more like typical hot meself, and you'll get an insight into that.

Yeah.

What it's actually like when we do each other's faces.

Yeah.

But I'm going to have one extra win, which I think we'll talk about in a little bit.

But the win is the things that we are doing together, that we are making amazing next, so I'm so excited.

You'll hear soon.

Yes.

It brings us on to our topic of the week, because we are looking ahead to 2025 and our Act 2.

What does Act 2 mean in this context?

I'm so glad you asked.

I'm so glad that I am, unfortunately, the person that has to answer this this week, because it's a big answer, so I'm going to try and be brief.

I think we started thinking about this a few months back, when we were trying to look at how we would frame the podcast long-term and in our first year, I think the great thing about this podcast is that we've gotten in with very few expectations, and it's really nice to do something that's different from writing in that way, in that writing, there's a very clear framework.

You have to make books, you want to make them in a series, you have to run into market, you release them in a certain schedule, you have to have a sort of certain length.

There's quite a lot of things at which if you want to do it successfully, you have to do it a certain way, and we're both very conscious of that.

Or is it podcasting?

I think because we are, to a large extent, doing it to benefit ourselves, like just meeting up, even if nobody ever listened, it would still be worthwhile for us, like having this weekly chat and accountability is worthwhile.

So we had so few expectations ourselves.

It was really nice just to start with, you know, no requirements.

But then obviously we've kept going and it has been really useful and we know there are listeners out there who find it, you know, really beneficial to listen along and to think about what we're talking about and to come on and guest with us.

So we know we want to keep it going long term.

But we then thought, let's think about this a bit, rather than just kind of keep just throwing spaghetti at the wall and just chatting about what we find interesting.

We got into the idea of, obviously, because we're fiction writers, thinking consciously and like deliberately making this fit to or base around the idea of a novel's five act structure.

So we've just finished our first year, which is our act one, which was, you know, the normal life.

Like our normal life as we were doing, we were just trying to improve things bit by bit, maybe throwing whatever we could think of at the wall that week and just trying our best, but not necessarily having any sort of plan or even knowing where to go for answers or feeling secure or feeling really happy with what we were doing.

And that was capturing in our first year, that's what we did, and that's what our lives were like as at the norm.

And then now we're going into act two of our novels slash lives slash podcasts.

And we're up into the rising action and we're gonna have quite a different energy this year.

And kind of, to make it sound really artificial, right?

Like it sounds like we are arbitrarily saying this is year two act two, but it does seem to line up, it's kind of how we felt as we were coming towards the end of year one.

It felt like we had quite a different energy.

And we wanted to use this framework as a way to really anticipate what the downfalls might be.

So if we were physically writing this, if we had, you know, were the gods of our universe, and then we were writing the story of what we're doing, in act two, there are specific things that the character will think that they know they're doing things correctly.

They'll think I'm working towards my goal, I am on my way to success.

And we know that they're going to be officials in their way.

And in fact, we know there's going to be a big climax in, you know, later on, and it's going to turn out that what they think they want is not what they really need.

And so we wanted to bring that energy consciously to this year and think, what is likely to happen to us, since we feel like we're in act two of our, both careers and podcasts, what are things that are likely to happen in act two that we can kind of be a bit prepared for?

So what sorts of things have we discussed as being like act two sort of energies and things that might happen to us and things we want to watch out for?

Yeah, I think act two has made us think that we need to be more explorative in our attempts.

Act two tends to be like the time where the protagonist tries different things or thinks that they know what's going on, has to kind of work out where they need to get to.

At the start of this year, I felt like I was, I'd already passed that stage.

I came into the New Year thinking, I'm definitely, you know, moving into act three.

But I know that that's just like really stupid, stupid thinking.

And that is act two thinking, is thinking, I know what I'm doing.

Yeah, act two thinking.

I've completely walked into the trap that I set myself.

And this is by the way act two or five act structure.

So we're not thinking direct structure.

We're in act two here.

We are just getting out of normal life, starting to make some changes.

So it kind of felt like I was easily walking into the rest of my life, thinking that I understand everything and everything seems to be like gelling really well.

But then when we started talking about what we were expecting this year to be like, or what we expect to be like at the end of the year, I don't know, I don't actually know the steps to get there.

I don't know as much as I thought I did.

The one thing I do know is I feel like right now, I'm sure of myself, which I think will get tested this year as I take on challenges that I've never faced before, which is like, it does sound like we're like, it sounds like we're forcing ourselves to live this life that we have decided to make.

Yeah, but this is honestly like how it's all working out.

Yeah, I feel like I'm going to be doing things this year that I've never done before.

And I'm going to be learning loads.

And it makes me kind of excited because last year, I felt like I learned a lot of stuff about just like how the business works or how my business works and professionalized stuff and figured out what my day to day life was like.

And I feel like I'm like, and I did that really well, figured out my day to day life and I'm really happy with it.

This year is for me, and Act 2 is all about challenging that status quo and seeing what I can add on to that.

Yeah, because that is Act 1, right?

It's a status quo where you're in normal life.

And I think one place where it's really helping us to think of like our writing career and our podcasts and kind of a lot of things around that, but especially our writing career in Act is that, if you'd have asked me at the start of last year, really a lot of you last year, what Act we were in, I would not have said Act 1 because I thought I've got books out, I know what I'm doing, I tried all the things, I've got experience with all the things, I would have thought I were in Act 2, Act 3, like I was ready to make very significant changes in my life.

And then as we got towards the end of the year, I think that was really a time for us to say, even though previously we had said, and my goal is to become a full-time author, we had said it with the naivety of a child, of like, I want to be a ballerina when I grow up, with no sense of how you get there, aside from make more money.

And all the stuff that we did last year has really felt like sort of priming the pump, getting a sense of what actually does it mean to be a full-time writer, and how do you need to take steps towards that.

And then this year, it was useful to kind of come at the end of the year, we had those, which I had known in an episode, so I had one, you had one.

They both felt like a real crystallizing, and they felt almost like an answering the call to adventure.

Like, we were being asked, are you people who are in this space, people who are in the full-time author space?

Well, not even necessarily full-time, but professional author space.

It felt scary to go on, which is, it sounds silly, I think to a lot of people it sounds really silly, because it sounds just like, oh, you have a podcast every week, and all you have to do is be on the master's podcast.

But it was like being able to stand next to people who are doing something you want to do and say, we are in conversation together, both literal and metaphorical conversation, you know, like a torture metaphor.

So yeah, I think it felt like at the end of last year, and there's various other things that both of us are doing and have done around that same time, around the end of the year, that kind of puts in that position where we were, both the world was forcing us and we were forcing ourselves to really answer that call to adventure to say, okay, I am definitely on the path now to being a professional author in a way that before I was just trying and wondering.

Yeah.

Yes.

Big questions last year.

I felt like everything I did had a big question mark over it.

How do you do this?

What does this mean?

Where will this take me?

Everything felt like a test.

And I feel like I passed every test because everything that we did last year we kind of set ourselves study goals, didn't we?

We set each other challenges and had to rise to those challenges every week.

And it really that felt like it was like doing a foundation course before starting university.

Yeah, it was like an access course.

Yes, some sort of like beginners class before you actually go and take the real class.

And that's how last year felt.

But last year, I would have told you that I thought that we were already like we were both friends.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, like everything was going great.

But looking back, even though it wasn't that long ago, obviously, like last year was last week.

But even last week, I feel like I thought that what we were doing coming into Act 2 was a lot further along.

But I know that that's yeah, that that's not true.

We're still babies.

Yeah.

I think what's been really interesting is like how so much of the Act 1 in year one was just mindset.

They, oh yeah, everything that we did was sort of irrelevant.

Like what we actually did, did whether we did ads or social media, or we're looking at branding.

It wasn't the thing, right?

The thing was changing our mindsets to be professional.

And that is where year one took us.

Yeah.

I'm really glad that we started this at the end of a calendar year.

So that literally just line up with years.

That feels really nice.

But I think to add on our own sense of act in this feels helpful.

You know, it does also mean that we could say some acts are uneven links.

There's no obligation to say that we're in a certain year at a certain time.

So it's really something for us to try and mark.

We fill up at a different stage.

We're going to be, and even externally want to look at where we're at at a different stage, right?

But it's just like we fill up, we pass a certain mindset goal to say, this is where we're at.

And, you know, it won't really have much impact in the podcast in terms of what we talk about.

But I think it is useful to talk about the way that we've reflected on it and kind of give everyone listening a chance to think about where do you think you're at and in what way might you want to review that at different stages and different times.

It's also given us a chance to think about what we want for the podcast.

And we have got some exciting, not really changes coming up, but like some exciting additions coming up.

Are we ready to talk about that now?

Do we leave it to the end and do our 2025 plans first?

Let's do our 2025 plans first and then we will swing back around to podcast excitement.

Yeah.

The future of the podcast.

Okay.

Are you happy to start with some 2025 ideas?

Yes, I suppose so.

My 2025 goals right now are not huge.

Last year, I had loads of goals and I set myself like 100 things to do every month.

This year, because I've already done loads of like the prep stuff, like sign up to things and do courses and all of that stuff that just took a long time.

I had things like rebrands last year and stuff.

This year, it's just to figure out my publishing schedule.

So I've got two books planned to be released this year.

And that's just the two things that I want to focus on, is making sure that my schedule and my writing and editing schedule and how I hand work off to other people, and get social media involved in that.

I want this year to be the year that I figure that out without really thinking about anything else.

Like I don't want to add another book to my list, even though I might be able to, but I'd rather not.

I'd rather just really settle into what my scheduling will look like.

And then like next year, maybe add to that.

So it's like, it's very limited.

I feel like it doesn't sound very exciting.

And I don't think it will stay this way.

I know that the year always throws things just like into chaos.

So it's not the activity thing, right?

So like, throwing things into chaos is a thing that we want to anticipate for Act 2 and maybe not overshadow ourselves.

Yeah.

I think this is what I want to do now, but I am 100% prepared for things to be chaotic.

Yeah.

I'm prepared for total chaos, which is I think why I'm setting myself just two goals, which is just publish these two books and see what happens around them.

Because they're two very separate and new experiences.

So my first book that's coming out this year is going to be the end of a series, which I've never done.

I've never finished a series.

And so that's like a whole new thing.

I don't know how that's all going to work when it comes to social media and like marketing and everything like that.

I have no idea.

So I'm excited for that to go absolutely bonkers and just completely wrong probably.

And then I'm also this year launching a new pen name and like the whole new book that is just my most exciting thing yet.

It's very exciting.

It's started to be teased on social media.

Yeah, I've started posting reds already.

And that is going to be a whole new experience for me because I'm going to try and really professionalize the whole process from like doing all of the pre excitement posts and trying to generate the buzz beforehand and also like professionalize arcs.

So it sounds like it's not a lot, but in my mind that those two things are like two big major life things.

Are you trying to do these projects as if you are already like a professional full-time author?

So you're trying to throw everything out that you would do in future?

Yes, in a way.

Well, definitely the like my second book, like my new pen name is going to be as though like I'm already where I'm supposed to be and I'm going to try and hit all the things that everybody else does.

Are you going to do it like as if you're Helen Scheuerer?

Yes.

Yeah, like, yeah, I'm going to tease the hell out of it.

Yeah, but that I think is such a big launch.

So she started doing like one book a year, then went up to two books a year.

And she puts so much work into her launch.

And I think that is one big strategy that I think, you know, people talk a lot about referees, but they don't talk about how to do a big impact launch, especially when you're newer, which is what Helen Scheuerer did.

So, you know, that's the How to Launch a Series, isn't that book?

Which is really good and so in depth and you can follow that.

And I think it is well worth saying like, that is your on purpose strategy this year.

It's not that you're saying, I've only got time for two books, that you're saying I'm going to do so much work on each book that I'm going to only have time for two books to do them properly.

Yes.

Yeah, that's definitely where I feel I'm at right now.

And yeah, I'm excited about that.

I don't know what to expect.

I know what the plans that I have are and so I assume that something's going to go crazy and maybe wrong, but also maybe amazingly right.

I'm up for the adventure.

I've answered the call.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think both of those things, they are full time author things.

They're not starting a new series and not knowing where it's going to go, just doing another brand new book, a new series.

It's like very deliberately, I'm ending one and I'm starting this next series.

Have you got the next releases for the new series planned out?

No, this one is actually the next one is a standalone.

Any tie into other things or just full on standalone?

Just full on standalone, which is crazy.

It's just how the book came out as a standalone.

Does it have series potential?

No, not really.

But the way that I'm using it is a launching pad for the books that are going to come out afterwards.

Because it's so genre specific and it's such a big, loud story in terms of like, it's just like the vibes are so perfectly there.

And that's, I hate talking about vibes because it's just like so, sounds so silly.

But it's just a very branded book for me.

And will hopefully then mean that people will know what other books to expect going forward because after this book, everything is going in that direction of this kind of-

Are they going to be in the same universe?

All of my books are in the same universe.

But it's an unspoken rule yet.

All of my books are in the same universe.

Could it be a spoken rule?

Like could it be a thing?

Could be, yeah.

It could be something that I work into it because I do, the world that I write about are, yeah, it's basically all the same place.

And I do sometimes think in the future that maybe cross-overs will happen.

I like the idea of it, but that's future Sam's problem.

That's not a 2025 thing to think about.

Okay.

Yeah.

Just thinking in terms of like long-term marketing plans and helping to catch stand-alones is kind of one way of thinking about something that's quite different to just a stand-alone stand-alone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you got models in place already for like stand-alone launches?

Like people that you know that have launched stand-alone well?

No, not really.

That's again, that's something for...

What do you think is 2025 stand-alone?

We're in 2025.

I know, but that's like maybe a month or two.

That's a Q2 Sam's problem.

Yeah, it's definitely a Q2.

It's not a Q1.

Okay.

Okay, that is, yeah.

This is, I mean, it's why we're in Act 2 of our lives now.

We're not pretending we're in Act 3 or 4.

We are still, you know, trying to gather everything that we need.

Yeah, I'm still terrible at planning stuff.

Maybe, maybe we will be.

Right, maybe that's, but that's fine.

Like I think you can...

I am very good at quick reaction and that doesn't panic me.

What panics me more is having set plans for long term.

Okay, you heard it here first.

Mindset, I know about myself, but it also means that I know that my, my strength is being able to act quickly.

Yeah, I think in a really positive way.

Like I think you get a lot of benefits from that that I miss out on because I'm like, oh, I'll wait and see how that works out.

Yes.

So that's interesting.

I think it is interesting as well having framed it as we're in act two.

It's so useful because I, it feels like we're going towards something.

I think you could have easily felt like, oh, I'm supposed to be getting to four books a year.

That's what everyone does.

And I've only got two next year, so I can't be ready yet.

But it's like, I can be ready and know myself and know I'm a person that's going to do two books a year and know a person that's going to not be planning 10 books ahead and how to make that work.

Yeah, that, I mean, that is what I'm working on this year, is more than like knowing myself and having a strategy.

So I have not planned, and I want to be responsive to how books go.

So I have not planned out my year meticulously in terms of releases.

I'm fortunate because I've had a year, like off really publishing or releasing.

So I've got three books banked already, and I'm just finishing up the last draft of the third one, and the first releases in a month.

So I'm ahead of schedule, I have everything ready to send to my editors.

The first book is back already, it's even uploaded to Amazon already.

I feel so accomplished on the front.

That's terrible because it's going out, it's going, in fact, I've already submitted as well to Netgalley.

So it's going out for ARC there.

I'm sending it out to my own ARC team tomorrow.

It's meant to be today, but it's not gonna happen because it's been so long and I lost my mind.

But yeah, ace up basically.

We'll be going out to my ARC team.

And I, yeah, so I need to have all this stuff ready a month in advance.

And then book two, I'm ready to start editing that now, basically, and then book three, the first draft's done.

And I wanted to be ahead so that I can be more responsive.

That was my original plan, in fact, when I very first started publishing, was to be ahead and do a rapid release, and then a pandemic hit.

So I was like, well, never mind.

It's not, I can't control the universe.

But I'm doing it now.

But yes, so I had books, I've got books one, two, and three ready.

I want to, my nature would be to say, I'll plan when book four is and when book five is, and you know, on and on and on.

But I want to really make sure I'm being more professional and be responsive so that I don't write book four if the series is a flop.

Like if I put everything into the series and it's just like, why have you done this?

No one wants to read this book.

Fine, I'll write something else.

I can spend time doing something else.

Or I can know it's worth putting everything time-wise behind it and keep on releasing.

Or I can say, okay, it's not picking up speed.

Maybe I want to see how it would go if I did a slow release or more advertising between episodes, between books.

So I want to be responsive and only have books one, two, and three planned.

Also because I've got secret, yet to be finalized plans in the works to do another stream of income, something writing related, that I am not necessarily in charge of the schedule.

Or it's not finalized yet, so I need to work my books around it.

It's got to have a few people working together.

So, I can't run the rest of my year around, yeah, anyway, I have to get everything in place.

And also, because I benefited so much from last year's time on Mindset, I want to make sure that actually a big focus of this year coming is still working on that, like still making sure that I am consciously moving towards a better mindset all the time, and like you're saying, like becoming fresh and all.

The one book that I'm reading at the moment is one of many books I'm halfway in the middle of and dipping in out of is Nicholas Erick's The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing, which I'll put link to in the show notes.

It's enormous and it really is like the ultimate guide.

And I think the benefit of it is, I think I've read the sample of it before and thought, oh, this feels really like just like basic steps.

I don't get it.

And now I'm at a stage where I'm reading, I'm like, oh, I see now, I see what he's saying.

And it's about having, a cohesive strategy and choosing tactics to go along with that.

So he has this idea of, or not an idea, he's just very good at elucidating the concept of like principles, strategies, tactics, and how they interrelate.

And so principles are like, you know, truths of the universe, but also truths of marketing.

So things like 20% of your effort and your books leads to 80% of your income.

And then strategies are things like, if I'm a person who's very analytical, I should be doing things like ads and bookbub, things where you have to do a lot of tracking metrics.

But if I'm very interpersonal, I should be doing things like social media.

And so understanding what you are like as a way to choose your strategy and then delving deep into the tactics within that.

So for example, if you're doing the analytical strategy, you are doing things like iterating lots of different ads and you are, you know, keeping metrics on everything very tightly.

And I think my goal by the end of 22.5 is to have my strategy nailed down.

I think last year, so in Act 1, I was definitely working on, I wanted to have tried everything.

I wanted to have tried all different things.

And I think I have and I think I am getting closer to a sense of what I want to work on.

But I don't want to narrow down yet.

I don't think I'm ready to narrow down.

I think I know enough about my skills.

And my, where my skills could be with more practice.

And what's interesting is like when you look at other authors who get big very quickly is, I think they are just people who, often they're older.

Like you see a lot of people who are, and it's not always, I'm not saying there's a whole bunch of old people.

I'm saying often the people who have more life experience and more self-knowledge.

And that that's what I realized when I look at them and see why they success so quickly is because they know I'm a person who is good at analysis and I will do well with that.

And they don't spend time looking at all the different things.

And I think my life experience and work experience has not given me enough an understanding of my skills to know which part of the self-publishing sphere I will excel in.

And I feel like I haven't found it yet.

And so I don't want to start narrowing down and saying, you know what, because everyone's on TikTok.

This is a very outdated reference because TikTok is about to get banned in the year.

But like, oh, everyone's on TikTok.

So I'm going to jump into that and throw my all into it.

Because even if I decided that like three years ago and threw my all into TikTok, it's not me, right?

I don't think it's me to be like all in on TikTok.

I'm not generally that...

I'm not good at consistency in that way, actually, was one of the things I would say about myself.

I think I could be if I saw enough things in it that would work.

But anyway, so I could evaluate myself and say, I don't think I'm that person.

But then I've been taking part in a TikTok challenge, as I mentioned recently, and actually, I've been surprised by the things I have liked about TikTok.

And one of the things that I'm doing it for is not necessarily because I think I'm gonna make a moment of TikTok, it's because I find TikTok useful to try and having to elucidate my hooks, which I'm not good at, right?

And that's a thing where again, I could say, am I not good at ads because I'm not good at ads?

Like what intrinsic thing about it could possibly be?

I don't know.

I think it's just that I'm not good at analyzing what is making ads work.

And being on TikTok is like a hyper training in that because you have to look at everything, tiny iterations, understand you get to see like a billion ads across your feed.

You know, all you're looking at is what makes it for pay attention.

So yeah, so I'm still feeling like I'm in a phase where I'm trying to narrow down what's gonna be the best tactics for me and then pull that into a strategy.

And I think reading that Nicholas Eric book, maybe going back to some other marketing books that I've read in the past and thought, I'm not sure what he's trying to say.

I think it's not for me.

Going back for an hour with kind of fresh eyes and seeing what's gonna work with that will be useful.

So by the end of the year, my overall goal is to have a strategy that works for me.

And that sounds like for some people, they'd be like, oh, you know, it's just a month's worth of work.

You know, like us last year would have said, I'll see you next week.

Yeah, this month.

Oh, yeah, this week, I'm gonna look at an ad strategy.

We did it when we said that to each other.

And I mean, we did it like when I was saying I wanted to rebrand and we're like, okay, well, this week, we'll look at rebranding or we'll look at our branding.

Yeah, take that off.

And it took me a whole year to mentally and emotionally phase into that.

Like it takes time, it takes time to absorb the information, and then to translate that into like physical life.

So I think that that's, it sounds so small, but it's such a big job.

And it's like a lot of testing and a lot of putting yourself out there and not being put off by things like things that fail.

Because that's definitely your biggest hurdle.

It's like retreating on something that you think has failed.

You think, well, okay.

I like to retreat just like really like throwing my toys at the branch.

I don't want to do it.

It's a waste of my time.

Yeah, that is it.

It's just like, it feels like someone's cheated.

Like this is definitely a frustration with TikTok.

This is why I think I would not be good on like putting my money on TikTok.

It's because it is, you know, whimsical, and I do not enjoy that sort of whimsy.

I like whimsy in my spare time, but not in professional things.

I don't want to have all my eggs in that basket where suddenly the algorithm changes and you're like, but this worked last week and this is what you were promoting everyone to do and now it's not working.

No.

And yes, I think that it's funny because I, although I haven't done it, I've been, took my foot off the gas with TikTok.

I do think now that we've been talking about this, that my ability and my like, how much I like to just react to things is really beneficial on TikTok and I really should be leading a test.

Yeah, I feel like it's made for you.

Epiphany.

Epiphany.

Yeah, I think it feels useful.

I think we've said it before as well.

It's like we're often starting it back around the same topics.

I do sometimes find it frustrating.

I really wish that there were like an easier way to see what people are seeing.

So, you know, some people are like, just go straight into ads, just do ads.

And it's like, I think it seems obvious to you because you can see something in ads that I can't see.

Yeah.

And like, I don't know what you're seeing that makes it feel like ads is a really easy strategy because to me, it's just like, spend, it feels like it's going to be, spend hours and days of life understanding something that is fundamentally not understandable and may, like, it can, it can fail for too many reasons to make me feel like comfortable with it.

So it could fail because the book isn't good, the blurb isn't good, the cover isn't good, the ad isn't good, the image isn't good, it's the wrong time of day, it's an election.

And there's just, for me, it feels uncomfortable, right?

Having all those variables.

I can't, I can't know enough to feel confident.

But I think the more that we do, and the more we psychoblick around these things, the more I can figure out like, oh, actually, who should I listen to on this?

Or what should I pay attention to?

I don't know.

And I really do wish that there were more people making podcasts like this, so that you could hear them talk about, like, how I decided to run ads.

And what I look at when I look, when I run ads.

And because I think there's things where, when people have got something working already, so they make ads work, they'll say to you, do ads.

And it's like, I wanted to hear you along the journey and to figure out what your thought process was that I can see, oh, I'm never going to think like that.

Yeah.

Or, oh, can I spend some time figuring out how to think like that?

Even if it's a thought that's just, okay, I know for a fact that I can master this, and I'm going to spend a thousand pounds mastering it, and by the end of it, I will do that.

And if I could hear someone say that, and I would come away and think, you know, I can also feel that confident.

If that's what it takes, I can feel that confident.

But if I heard someone saying, you know, oh, I had to really lean into the uncertainty of it, and I'm like, maybe that's right, it's not for me, because I'm not a lean into the uncertainty person.

Yeah.

It's also, like you say, when you get to the end of something and you've suddenly won, you happily forget the struggles and like the day where you showed up and looked at the results and thought, I'm going to turn this ad off.

Yeah.

You forget that part.

You don't tell anybody.

Yeah, like I've just turned everything off and I've walked away for a month.

Yeah.

They're the bits that I want to know.

Yeah.

That's like, I want a diary, a diary of an ads manager.

That is what's really good about the Helen Scheuerer book, the How to Launch a Successful Series, is it's got little snippets from her diary at the beginning of the chapters.

And you see, and it's so refreshing because you see someone who's writing this book reflecting back on things that worked.

And because she kept the diary, she has put in her experience of how they felt at the time.

But she's also got little quotes from her diary of just like, I'm rubbish.

I can't do this.

This is not good.

And I will never be successful.

She's not that pessimistic, but she says things like that, where she's really saying things that are in deep contrast to how she feels today.

Yeah.

So I think hopefully again, like, this podcast gives people that insight into, you know, you might be sat around the family wireless, shouting like, you've had this epiphany 10,000 times.

Why do you keep thinking that it's new to, you know, retap your mindset?

And if you're frustrated at that, like, that is, you recognizing something in our process, our processes that we have to go over and over and over things.

Oh, I have to go over things so many times to understand it.

I'm definitely learned by doing and even if I read a book on ads, like if I read another book on ads and I try to follow the process, it wouldn't make any sense until I was doing it myself.

I have to do stuff myself and then I have to do it again.

And then like the 10th time where I feel like I've got it, I'll be like, oh, oh, there was an easier way to do that.

And it's like we're talking today about Canva and love it so much.

And this is the thing, and this is like, I've been using Canva a particular way, and then I showed Matilda an easier way, but that she didn't even know was available.

Yeah, that existed.

And why would you?

Because you just poke around a lot, right?

And you are a poker.

And I think that that is in itself the publishing industry, or like the writing process, is that you do all these things and you think you've got this thing set up and you know how it works.

And then somebody else points and says, or like me, you click something and you find something that helps, like even more, and then you're like, oh, that would have helped me so much last year.

Also like, yeah, I've got something that was like, it's just inside my head.

I know it.

And there's no way to, it's not a revelation because I think maybe half people would know this, but half people don't.

The thing that we found that I found today on Canva, I was shown, like an old lady, was how you can find who made an image, right?

So you can find who made an image to find more images like that.

Cause I always find the struggle in Canva is like, it's stock library is not very searchable.

So we both have Canva Pro and we're both using it to do various things.

But the problem is the images that come up for photos, they're not great.

They look very, very like 1990 stock.

And so Sam was showing me a thing where you can click on it and find who made it and then find more by them, which is like, absolutely.

I gasped.

We were out in a cafe and I was like, who can tell about this?

Does the cafe want to know?

No.

And this is the problem.

Now that knowledge is in both of our heads.

Yeah.

And now it's in all of yours.

But if you wanted to know this, you don't know what you don't know.

You don't know what you don't know.

And yeah, even if it's like the same topic, there's still things to discover when you go back over it.

It's like editing.

You think you've written a story, you go back to the start, you realize you just wrote a lot of crap.

Yeah.

And then the story appears again and you're like, oh, that's the story.

Every time I edit a book, I'm like, I've made the same mistake.

I made the same mistake.

And if my mistake is putting the wrong call to action in, I put the call to action in at like the point in which someone discovers a dead body.

It's like, that's not the call to action, because every normal person calls the police.

Call the police and go home.

The call to action is like when it directly impacts a person's life.

And it must have taken me at least half a dozen books to stop doing that every single time.

Even though every time I did it, I'd be like, oh, Epiphany?

I realize this.

No, I've had that Epiphany so many times.

It's interesting, because I, you know, the strengths for authors, the Becker-Sime thing, different strengths, which you have still yet to do.

It's on my Q1 list.

Oh, exactly.

It is on my list of things to do in Q1.

In that anyway, I think quite one of the things most authors are of the learner type.

And I think it is because there's no other way to, like a lot of people who would be good writers who are just not learners and will not stick out the process.

Because the process is just nothing but learning.

And that's not just about Canva images.

That's about like, how do you make a good sentence?

How do you put together a plot?

Like, how do you organize your ideas?

All of that is like, it's something you can only get by learning it.

You can't really be taught it, you know, because if you're taught it, you sound like AI.

Like, that's how you get those sorts of stories.

It's so much learning.

So maybe that's also on my goal list for 2025.

It's like, become more positive about the fact that it's a learning process, because I love learning.

It's my favorite thing to do.

Like, this is also, if I won a lottery and I'm a multi-millionaire, I would spend my life at university.

I would just do different courses.

Oh, 100%, 100% I would.

Every day.

And I'd be like a surly, I imagine I'm in community, right, the TV show.

I'd be like, surly, back of the class, like, oh, you guys are just discovering Kant, I see.

Ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha.

Yeah, I'd love it.

I'd be slightly interrupted all the time, but I'd just love learning.

Obviously.

But so, but I don't know why I get, I'm always, and I said this on my Wish or Know episode, that I'm really trying to get better at this, not focusing on the end-to-end goal.

And in fact, there was, what was it this week?

I've listened to so many, like, 2025, you know, kickoffs and 2024 recap episodes.

There was something, and I want to say maybe it's the, what's it called, the new James Blatch Caraclare thing.

What's that podcast called?

Oh, don't ask me about podcasts.

It's one of the Indie Authors.

There's something, something.

I'll put it in the show notes.

Anyway, in there, I think they were talking about, you know, you're never really, you're people not spending enough time, like, understanding or valuing where they're at.

You're always looking for next goal.

If you're a five-figure author, you think I've got to be a six-figure author, and then you think I'm going to be a seven-figure author.

And there's just, like, not enough appreciation of where you're at.

Yeah.

And I think I want to get better at not always trying to look for the big, big goal.

And again, that's a lesson I've learned 10,000 times.

Yeah.

But I'm going to make a note to link that podcast.

Yeah, so that's a goal.

That's just something that everybody has got conditioned into them.

That's just a life thing.

Is always thinking, is keeping up with the Joneses, always thinking that you need more, that you need to have what your neighbor's got.

You need more money.

When you get more money, you want a bigger house.

When you want a bigger house, you need more clothes.

When you, you know, it's constant.

Yeah, you need bigger furniture, you need a bigger house, you need furniture, you need a pool, you need 10 dogs.

You know, it's just, the list grows and grows.

And yeah, it's very important to appreciate the now and how, and this is like complete mindset stuff.

And yeah, I appreciate the now and like everything you've got and enjoy this part of the process because one day we'll be past this and we'll look back and we'll think, oh, those were the days.

Wasn't it fun to learn these things the first time?

Yeah, we had no stress.

So we didn't have to like worry about paying employees and yeah, because at some point we're going to be doing that.

But even if like, even if we're not a different, I think that's one thing, right?

And then the other thing is like, we should just enjoy this process.

Like it's a thing that we have chosen to do, we want to do and we enjoy doing it.

Yeah.

I often think that's what I'm like, trying to organize my days when I'm writing.

It's like, I spend so much time running around and doing all the different things and I get distracted and I find it hard to sit at my desk and like sit down and do the writing.

It's like, why am I always putting off the thing that is the thing I'm going to do?

This is the thing that I love and I do love writing, but it's also, it's really hard.

So it's hard and I sometimes often feel not good at it, but I'm just in it.

So I think I'll put that off and do something I feel a bit better at.

Like I can send an email, I'm so good at sending emails.

I can organize things, I'm so good at that.

I can put a TikTok together.

The first thing I procrastinate is writing and editing, which is so dumb because I would rather procrastinate going on social media or doing the dishes.

I never procrastinate doing the dishes.

I do.

That's always like my, oh, I need to write.

Well, I'll go in the kitchen and clean the kitchen.

I do not have that, but I do have the like, should be looking at my long long to do list and take some things off from that.

So yeah, I'm going to try and enjoy this process more.

Yeah.

And part of that, we're ready to get into our big reveal.

Part of that is making more connections with other people at the same stage of the process.

So this year, Sam and I spent a year together talking every single week about things that are worrying us, big celebrations of wins, asking stupid questions.

And it has been life-changing.

Yeah.

I feel so different, just in the way I feel day to day.

It's so nice to be able to just message someone who gets it.

Because we were saying earlier like, you know, sometimes we are struggling to feel like we're chatting to our friends the same way.

Because so much of our lives focus on self-publishing and your friends don't want to know, oh, I just joined a NetGalley co-op, which I did today and I was really excited about.

And I couldn't tell anyone except for Sam and other writing friends, because they would be like, I don't know any of those words.

I don't know what you're doing.

And they ask you questions, the question would be frustrating.

They'd be like, what's a NetGalley, what's a co-op?

They just can't get it.

I don't want to talk about this.

So it has been a huge, huge like, help both to our writing careers and just to our enjoyment of life to have this.

So we want to expand.

Yes.

Very excitingly.

Do you want to tell us a bit more?

We are going to be opening a Discord.

I mean, you know, Discord is the future.

Everyone's been using it for years.

Really?

Yes, we decided that we wanted a place where we could host our community, where we could share things, but also encourage you guys to share with us.

And yeah, just foster a back and forth relationship rather than us just chatting to you through the radio waves, as this technically is not happening.

Yeah, so we're very excited about that.

We've been working hard on that today.

It's very fun and difficult trying to set up a Discord.

But we are both in a number of Discord, and we've joined another part of this year, in fact, has been joined up Discords to do with various things.

So that TikTok challenge, I mean, I told you, I had the Discord for that.

And it's just, it's a really good way to organize messaging, like asynchronous messaging.

It feels a bit like you're in a WhatsApp, but it's very organized and you don't have to apply in any sort of way that doesn't suit you.

Yes.

And you can find sort of slow topics and fast topics and have a conversation.

And we really want to be able to invite more of you in.

And, you know, a lot of people have done that in the past, through things like Facebook groups, but they have terrible reach.

And also, who wants to go on Facebook?

No.

Any woman they have to.

So this feels like you can have an app on your phone.

If you don't use Discord already, it's incredibly user friendly.

Like it's got a little bit of a hurdle in that it sort of feels old fashioned.

Like you'll be thinking, oh, is there more to it?

No, there's not more to it.

There's just a few channels of conversation and that's it.

It feels a bit like a 1990s forum.

So user friendly because there's virtually nothing to do.

There is just click on a topic, see what people said about it, add your own comment.

If you are a child of the 90s or 80s and 90s and you grew up on the internet when it first came about, it's like the old forums that you used to go into to talk about TV shows before that just became something people talked about in general, I think.

But yeah, so it's like a very specific place to go.

And yeah, I'm very excited to get people in there and start talking to others about everything that we're talking about, all the topics that we cover.

We want to open up the conversation to everyone else as well.

And we've set up channels already.

So we've set up things and we try to pick topics where we talk about them very often.

And when we chat to people we've had, for example, as guests or to other friends of ours, things that they specifically want to have follow-up conversations about.

So we've got channels in there for things like resources.

Like we always talk about the podcasts we've listened to, we talk about the books we're reading.

You know, we'll have a space where we can all share.

So you and us can share what we've got in there.

We have got channels that are about things like we're going to ask a question of the week.

So for example, this week we've talked about the topic of our 2025 plans and our goals.

And we're going to have a thread where we interview about that and we want you to share it.

And what we're really hoping is that it's all people who are, you know, if you're the audience for this, you're the right audience as well.

People at a similar stage.

So I think we've said before, it's like people who've got a few books under their belt, but not a lot of money in their pocket, people who are really looking like us to kind of share their mastery through a mis-text journey and share the stupid things like I didn't know you could look on Canva that way and I cannot believe how much time I'm going to save by being able to search on Canva that way.

Like share your little wins, share the things that you found, share the things that like your friends or family wouldn't understand.

But it's not a time suck like Facebook groups can be and you can't lose information there, it's really well organized.

So it should just be like you can share and get information from there.

We've even got a space of wins and winches.

So please feel free to share them.

You don't have to pronounce it with wins and winches but-

But it would be helpful if you did.

Yeah, think of it that way.

The only way that I will answer to anything is as long as it's got a win or a winch.

My favorite section that I'm looking forward to is Epiphanies.

Yes, the Epiphanies section.

It's so nice to recognize the thing that you, it seems obvious when you think about it, like, oh, I should never do social media again because I actually hate talking to people.

Epiphanies.

Whatever it is, it's a place to share that and with people who will get it.

Yeah, yeah, it's just a place where you can talk about everything that you're doing and like, we'll get it because not everyone in your life gets it.

I can go days without talking to anybody about what I'm doing because nobody wants to ask me questions because they don't understand.

Yeah, nobody wants to hear about your NetGallico app.

No, but we do.

We do.

We sell as we are.

So I learned about the NetGallico app that I'm using from like a Facebook group that I'm in.

It is active because it's based around a good clubhouse group.

So it's like a very cohesive group that we talk weekly, but even that, we can lose information.

But that came from like a weekly conversation we have and that has really been useful this year.

So even if you're on Discord for nothing else, right?

You don't have to be regularly on it.

There's just, you can just join one server.

You can just join our group and it just allows you access to a few conversation channels, if you like, little mini forums and you can hop in there.

The app, I think, is very quick and easy.

I would have that.

I have it on my desktop on my app.

I use both regularly, but you can have it set up.

You can turn off notifications.

You can just go when you want.

You can be silent for a while and then hop back in again.

I think we want to have it be something that works for you and it's going to feel like a safe space for indie authors at our level.

I guess even people who are at slightly different levels, that could be fine.

But I think you're going to find it most useful if you've got a few books, you're not asking basic questions or maybe you are asking basic questions that you should have found out the answer to already that you think it's too late for me to ask this.

No, let's go.

Yes, we have a specific channel which is called No Stupid Questions and you can ask anything in there and people will answer without judgment.

That is our main thing is there should be no judgment because we've all been dumb multiple times.

And like there's so much to know these days that you cannot know everything.

Like maybe you don't know what NetGalley is and you're too afraid to ask, you think it's too late to ask and you Google it and you think, I still don't really know what it is because actually, the NetGalley website is not very helpful.

Yeah.

And you think, what's a co-op?

Yeah.

Don't know.

What's that?

You can dip in and ask us that as soon as you want because we will be putting the link in the show notes.

Yeah.

The link to our Discord.

It is live from right now.

Yeah.

Obviously, we record this days before we release the episode.

So it will be fully seamless.

We'll have tested everything.

It will be up and running.

We will drop in all sorts of things.

So every week in our show notes, we put these resources that we have listened to this week.

But I listen to a lot of podcasts and there's only so many that Sam wants to hear about.

Just saying what just hurt.

So I will be sharing my best podcast of the week.

I'll share all the books I've read, the articles that we come across.

It is, yeah, I think it's going to be a great resource.

We want to hear from you as well.

Yeah.

So as you said, the question this week is, what are your 2025 goals and plans?

And it can be as big or small as you want.

And we both had quite philosophical goals.

We both have got literal publishing goals.

So I'm going to publish three books and then et cetera.

Let's see what happens.

But base my plans on what happens.

And then also by the end of the year, I'm going to have a concrete strategy and the techniques I'm going to support that.

And Sam is going to put out two books and be prepared for change and publish those as a professional.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like the first time I feel like I am publishing as a professional and not a random creature that's just swum up from the depths of the ocean who's pretending to be a human being.

A bit like, you know, in Charlotte's Web, like Templeton, how he goes to the dump and he brings back little like words for Charlotte to show into her web.

Yeah.

That's what I think sometimes like as beginning self-publishers, it's just like, found a word.

Is this the right word?

Yeah.

Humble.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's definitely how I watch Charlotte's Web too many times.

If you ever get a go on YouTube, in fact, the Charlotte's Web read by Evie White is often on there.

It's delightful.

This is a story about the barn.

Oh, so good.

Okay.

Put it in the resources.

Put the show notes.

Yes.

This is what you're going to get, guys.

Gold.

Lovely.

I will listen.

I am going to put a link on that because it is often on there.

I have it obviously.

I have in fact two CDs of it because I love it that much.

But I would recommend it.

It's my go-to.

Have a good night's sleep if I'm struggling.

But okay.

So I think we've covered everything.

I think in terms of podcast changing, nothing really is going to change on our side.

We're going to keep doing a different topic every week.

It might look less concrete, but also I'm not sure.

We've said this year we might want to have more topics that are focused on one person rather than anything we're both working on, so we can drill down in some smaller topics.

But we're going to take it as it goes.

The episode art, we said we'd talk about that today.

Actually, we have not.

We'll do that at the end after this.

We're going to change the episode art very slightly.

We're going to call it Series 2, and we're going to slightly change the titling format.

So you will see all these subtle changes that tell you that the new year knew us.

And then also, what else was I going to say?

Yeah, the Discord is coming.

I had one more thing that I was going to say in terms of podcast changing.

I forgot what it was, so you're going to find out next week.

Can't be that important, is what I would say.

But yes, so nothing is ever going to be changing.

We are carrying on with weeklies.

This is our face-to-face live format, but usually it will be asynchronous.

And we really look forward to being more engaged this year and being able to talk to you post-episode and see what you like.

There is also a section for feedback questions if you want to suggest a topic, if you want to ask us about anything we said that wasn't clear.

Perhaps I talked a fraction too quickly and you missed what I said.

That's a possibility, a rare one, obviously, but you might come across that.

But yes, so next week we are in fact going to kick off our new year, new episode types with a guest.

And this guest is someone who is a Cozy Mystery Author, unsurprisingly, that's the one I know.

But she is also someone who has a background in finance, that was her career before becoming a full-time author.

And she took a leap in a slightly different way.

So she's not full-time in terms of, she quit her job when she became full-time, she quit her job and took a big financial planned leap.

And she'll talk about that next week.

So she's got a really different route than Sam and I, which will be great to talk about.

But she's also because she's so financially savvy.

We are hoping to pick her brains about all things that we should have done before Act 1.

We should have done the financial plan rather than just throw some money around randomly and see what happens.

So I'm excited.

Do you have any thoughts on that topic already?

No, other than that, I hope that she can fix my life.

No, I'm just excited to hear from somebody else about money.

Because we talk about money a lot between us.

But we're both obviously come from a similar background.

We do have different thoughts on money.

But in general, we're within the same ballpark.

We have salaries that support our lives.

Yes.

And there's no great drains on them.

Yeah, we've come in some background.

Yes.

So it would be fun to hear from somebody who is like completely different.

Just comes from a different world.

She's not a millionaire, by the way, just different.

We're not secretly friends.

Just like her knowledge of how money works.

Knowledge of money.

Wouldn't that be fantastic?

Yes, that is the other world.

She's someone who knows how money works.

And before she started writing anything, made a financial plan.

I mean, that is a different world to me.

It sounds like an idea, but it's not something that I personally did.

Five-year plan she's made.

So we're going to hear about that next week.

Yeah, I'm very excited.

I'm so excited too.

So yes, look forward to that next week.

We look forward to hearing from you all in the Discord.

It is called Pen to Paycheck Authors.

We will look forward to you being a Pen to Paycheck Author too.

We will put the link here and we will also be sharing around on social media everywhere we can find.

Please do join us and join us again next week.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

You've been listening to Pen to Paycheck Authors.

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