S02E05: What Opportunities Money Brings

Sam and Matilda dream big and reveal what they'd spend their money on, if they had bigger budgets!

Next week, tune as they chat about post book launch marketing.

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: www.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

Nicholas Erik’s free Facebook group: https://nicholaserik.com/facebook-ads-crash-course-books/

Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op:https://victoryediting.com/services/netgalley-co-op/

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 self-publishing with money to spend.

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

Oh, I'm glad you asked.

My win, I get to say this first, is that we had a mastermind day today.

And I feel like I say this so often, like the month goes so fast.

So we have mastermind meeting once a month, and it's always just my favourite thing of the month.

I love it, and I'm so tired because we do so much thinking, but it's the best thinking, like the big thinking, like really dreaming big, and also making goals to get those dreams to become reality.

So it always feels really good.

So I'm like riding on that high at the moment.

I also this week figured out time, and can't explain it in any way that makes sense to anybody else but me.

But effectively, I don't see time great.

And this week, I saw it better than I've ever seen it before.

So that just doesn't mean anything to anyone but me.

I'm happy with that.

I figured out time.

I am a time scientist.

I also, this could be a winch, but I'm gonna say this is a win, is I had a problem, like an act to stumble in the road.

And I feel like I'm handling it well.

So yeah, I had something happen, which initially my reaction was, oh no, everything's gone wrong.

And then I chilled out and realised it's just an opportunity to learn, and I feel like I'm learning a good lesson.

So I'm not gonna say any winches because I'm having a positive spin on something I wasn't expecting.

It's because I had the same experience this week of like, I tried something and I felt like it went really wrong.

And actually what made it feel more positive was just being able to talk to you about it.

So being able to know that I was gonna see you today, and not have to make the decision by myself.

And I think this isn't true for everybody, but it's maybe true for people who are coming from a day job background.

You get used to working as part of a team, and even when you're very decisive, it is really helpful to talk through things with somebody else and just say, I just want to get this out of my head and talk through it out loud.

And so my thing, I'll talk in a bit of detail, I'm trying various different things to learn more about Facebook ads.

And I had finally got a big, big trial going, and then nothing happened.

And I was like, Oh, I thought I was like on my way, that was improving, I thought I was learning things.

And absolutely nothing happened.

And I was like, just spending money and getting no sales.

And I was like, have I?

I can't, what?

That's how I felt.

I was not really stuck in my initial reaction of like feeling really frustrated that I'd worked really hard to improve in something.

And I felt like I was back square one.

But just being able to just to know that I was talking to you about talking to you today, and to have like put my thoughts in order, and then make a plan and show you what the issue was, and then say, this is what I think I should do.

And you're like, yes, do that.

Great.

And actually, almost immediately, the situation just resolved itself.

And it just required that like little bit of confidence that it's not something disastrous I've done or misunderstood.

Like being able to just kind of get a little bit of outside perspective on something.

In the same way, like last week at work on my day job, somebody made quite a significant mistake.

And like a mistake that absolutely anybody could have made, but quite a significant mistake and a potentially very expensive mistake.

And she was clearly incredibly panicked to tell me.

And it's a project that the big boss of the company is involved in.

So she was like, I can't, I don't know what to do.

I feel really, absolutely so stressed.

And I was like, there's nothing.

Like it's very understandable.

We will figure out a way to fix it.

And it felt so nice to be the other person on the outside, being able to say, I know exactly how we're going to fix this.

And it was just a good way to kind of to have that experience in my day job and to have this experience with you today, was just a good reminder of like, you know, we want to leave day jobs behind.

It feels like it's not the best use of my time, which I could be spending on my writing business.

But I have spent decades of my life building up, like the processes and the way that I think through things and improve things there, that I need to make sure that I'm not just dropping.

And outside of my working life, I'm not just saying, oh, I'll just sit and panic by myself and feel bad.

No, I know I need to have like a little mini catch up in a meeting with somebody and a colleague that I can just go to and say, I think I've totally messed up.

I don't know what I've done, but I've done something wrong.

And to have them say, no, it's this, let's have a look at it together.

I'm like, oh, okay, yes.

Yeah.

So yes, absolute.

Win today in terms of being able to do that with somebody, even though the actual situation itself was not, you know, not what I wanted, but it's fine.

It was of itself.

So yeah, and I would say our master round today is also my big win.

We were talking really big long term things, and making big plans and big goals in a way that felt realistic and achievable and exciting.

And I've also been doing that in my own writing.

So I've been, we've both been, in fact, doing our scheduling this week.

We both have the same gigantic wall planner that we, by coincidence, got out on the same day and sent each other a picture.

So I'm like, oh, I'm also going to do that today.

And I have made my schedule for the rest of the year.

It's in pencil after the next couple of months because it sort of relies on some projects that I can't control how long they take, or I don't know yet enough about them to know how long they're going to take.

So I've put some things in pencil, and I'm trying to do something a little bit different with my scheduling and just an experiment, see if it's going to work.

And that felt so exciting.

That feels like, you know, I'm anticipating problems and I want to encounter problems so I know how to deal with them.

So yes, lots of wins this week.

And it's interesting, like they're wins, but they're not, you know, sunshine and like bunnies wins.

They're like, oh, wins from becoming better at my business, which is going to involve some like difficulties, but great.

Yeah, exactly, the win is the mental win that you didn't let something destroy you.

Like you didn't let something like completely knock you to one side, which a year ago would have felt so much worth, so much of a bigger problem.

Yeah, I'm proud of both of us this week.

We did so good.

So we are on the topic of the week.

And last week we talked about how to self-publish when you're on a tight budget.

This week, we're flipping the script.

We're talking about the absolute opposite where we get to spend money.

So what would our dream purchases be if we actually had the funds?

So this is, I think, topic that it sort of sounds counterintuitive.

Like, oh, if you had money, like, of course I would be able to spend it on my publishing business.

But I do have money, I have savings.

And I have savings that I'm kind of putting towards a future plan to support myself, you know, in my first year of kind of becoming a full time author, all cutting down my work.

But I could spend it.

And I do need to spend it on building up my business so I can do that.

And it just feels like I can't spend it because it's my savings and when I spend it, it's gone.

So I'm sort of stuck in not feeling confident enough in my like, purchase decisions to just spend money in a deliberate way.

So I will spend money kind of and we've talked this before in that like I have a salary.

That means that I can kind of buy a cover as it comes up as a need comes up without having to think I'm budgeting a few months ahead to get that I will I have to have the savings that I can buy a cover.

You know, I bought a cover this month and put some money into editing without necessarily having to really plan a long time ahead for that.

So it just sort of means that I'm I'm not used to making deliberate decisions about my business and deciding to put a lot of money to ads is a deliberate decision or it should be a deliberate decision.

And definitely past it hasn't been it has been like, I won't look, I just won't think about it.

And I'll turn on some ads.

And then I will when I feel scared about the money, I'll turn them off and I'll run away.

So yes, I want to think today about kind of can we get a bit more confident with with purposeful decision making.

And we said last week we wanted to think about if we were going to spend five grand, which is like, or, you know, in a sort of book launch phase, but also in terms of other things as well around that, which is, it feels like an amount of money that feels uncomfortable to just decide to spend.

But it also feels like not a crazy amount of money.

And, you know, to many authors who are doing big numbers will feel like, well, that's my budget for a week or, or less time.

I don't want to think about that.

Yeah, so I think it's a good amount of money.

I think when I was thinking about this, what was interesting was we talked last week about what we think are the essentials.

So in terms of the budget for covers and editing, I don't think I would spend any more on those things.

But that's from me.

So I feel really comfortable, like we talked about last week, I feel comfortable with my editing skills.

I purchase the editing, I need to support that.

I'm not making any economic decision on editing.

I'm not deciding to choose a cheap one or expensive one.

I chose the editing that I needed.

And the thing that I like actually most about the company that I use is their scheduling, like their scheduling works for me, and their style works for me in terms of, it's a small agency and you have some consistency, but you don't have to, you know, communicate too much with one-on-one person who's doing the editing.

So I chose them on that basis.

And the same for my covers.

I think my covers are incredibly good value for what they are.

I would pay more for them.

So if my cover designer decided, you know, they were going to increase their prices, I would pay more for them, but I don't have to right now.

It makes me more confident to purchase covers.

So I've bought a cover, for example, for the prequel for my book series.

And I've also got books one through four covers purchased already and made, even though I'm about to release book one in a few days.

So that is a positive thing.

So that I definitely think is maybe something for me that I can, if I have more money, I will buy a series of covers to partly like to put some pre-order and to have them be able to advertise them and put them out there.

So that is maybe a purchase I would spend more on.

But it doesn't feel like an extravagant purchase because I will need to buy them anyway.

So that sort of doesn't feel like a big decision.

You were nodding your head.

Would you say the same about editing and covers?

Yes, I like how much I spend on my covers.

I would pay more if like if she needed more money and we were going a little bit more.

Well, yeah, I would pay more because I do love the covers I've been getting.

I do love the idea of getting a really expensive cover.

When you see people doing like, you know, really amazing designs with a hand drawing illustrations, and especially for fantasy books, very intricate covers that are out there.

And I do love the idea of one day having an amazingly intricate cover, but I wouldn't, it just feels like I don't want, I wouldn't want to get into the habit of doing that and then have people expect that every time.

So what I would like to do if I had the money is I would love to do like special edition covers or special edition box sets where I did like whole hog new covers, box set designs, sprayed edges, book box things, you know, packaged up in a particular way, that's definitely...

You'd do that for a new release or would you do that for like, you know, completed series, you do a big box, you know, special edition?

Like a completed series.

Yeah.

And that's something I have been thinking about when I've been thinking about time and winning time and understanding how the world works is that I think, I think that me at some point in the future, and like not too far future, but at some point in the near future, doing completed series box sets is definitely on the horizon.

And if I had the money right now, if I had like five grand to spend, that would be probably one of the first things that I chose to do with that money, would be to reward myself with this amazing product built from...

It's not yourself, like it's also, it's in your genre, something that can earn money.

So like, in Cozy Mysteries, does anybody do special editions?

Not that I can really think of, which is interesting, because like Cozy Fantasy books have, oh, those sprayed spines with like, the sprayed edges with like, cute little tea cups and like little dragons and things I think.

I love sprayed edges.

I'm such a sucker for it.

Yes, love.

How do you feel about the word sprench?

No, no.

No, me either.

Take that away, never say that again.

Delete that from the podcast.

I don't think I would, it would be so hard on my list in terms of like, I don't think I would, you would have to do so much more in terms of marketing for, I think, because it's not a big expectation of the genre.

There's not an existing like hungry market for it.

Yeah, it's definitely something that I would do for fantasy.

Yeah, and I think that just seems like such an exciting thing to do.

And if I had the money, I would be doing, I'd be planning that right now if I had the money.

So that's on my list.

I also would, if I had five grand, hire a PA.

Yeah, I actually think I would spend some of the money the same way.

Just in terms of things like, it gives you a chance to kind of expand on things that are very time consuming.

So I might hire someone to do a period of socials for me or to prep some newsletter, like just even setting up campaigns and like putting in some basic templates and stuff for a while in the future.

Yeah, things like that.

I think that would pay be worth it for me where I am now.

Yeah, I would love that.

I'd just like to have somebody else to take a little bit of the load off my shoulders and make me feel like I wasn't literally working two full time jobs at once.

Yeah, I'm so excited.

That's the reality.

Yeah, that would be so nice.

I constantly telling my boyfriend that when I'm making enough money to pay him, he will become my PA.

That's his future.

That's what he's got to look forward to.

And I think he can't wait.

I just don't know how much value an imaginary PA is going to be.

If it helps me feel better, it's fine.

He's not imaginary.

He's real.

I promise.

OK.

I mean, I believe you.

Millions wouldn't, but.

Yeah, he exists somewhere.

If I can imagine things, I think that it means they exist somewhere in one of the many worlds.

He's real.

I would love things like, I said character art, one of my huge, huge dreams, and this is like a real money.

Not, I was going to say money drain.

That's a terrible way to put it.

But a big project that would cost a lot of money.

I'd love to do a graphic novel with someone.

And that would be an expensive project.

And I would put that kind of money towards that.

Yeah, I saw Maggie Steeve also doing one at the moment.

And that does just look so, so fun.

Like just reimagining work in a different way.

And she had a post that was about like her notes to the to the artist.

Like it was just so interesting ways to like look at your work and re-evaluate how you want to present it.

Yeah, I think that should be on the list.

That is, that has always been on my list because one of my previous series, I always wanted it to be a graphic novel.

And then I just wrote the kind of like novellas instead, some of the novellas, but it is actually on my list to rework into a full series and then hopefully a graphic novel.

I mean, we were just looking before this podcast at your like weirdly incredible character, I think.

Can you not make your own graphic novel?

I think that I could, but if I had five grand, I'd rather pay someone else to do it.

I just want, because I like working with other people.

Like it's such a particular style of writing, right?

It's not the same as just like pictures with a book.

Yeah, it's not the same.

It'd be so much easier to have somebody else who had experience with it rather than me just trying to make one and having to learn a new skill.

I would like to rely on somebody who already understood like the whole process.

Because as much as I read graphic novels, when I see, and a lot of that, this is such a tangent, in a lot of graphic novels that I buy, there's always pages in the back which show you like the script and then the development of the script.

And it's really interesting.

And I love reading them and seeing how they turn the story into the panels.

But it's like, my brain is like, this is magic.

This is magic that I don't understand.

And I look at it, I'm like, oh yeah, but it's like looking at something in a different language.

Like, yeah, it seems great.

But I can't fathom that.

So somebody else could do it.

But I would love that.

That's a five grand spend for me.

This is your five grand is going very far.

I know this isn't all like all of it at the same time.

This is like specific, like I would do this with five grand or if I didn't do that, I'd do this with five grand.

So I didn't really break it down into a full on five grand spend.

It was just more pie in the sky.

You thought of course you've got five grand to spend.

Yeah, this is the sort of things you spend money on.

Yeah.

Yes.

Did you have other things on your list?

That's basically it.

But yeah, I think it's interesting, like that's like all things that are very fantasy specific, that really, you know, tie into furthering the business in your genre.

And I have got none of those things on my list.

No, I knew that we would have completely different lists.

So I thought I'd just go full on YA fantasy.

I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of actual publishing.

It's just like dream projects.

So yeah, I think I've also I would have some form of PA help.

If I were more flush and wanting to like invest money, I guess not even invest money in my business.

I wanted to literally spend money on my business to like grow it faster, because it's not it's not the same sort of investment as like I'm putting money directly into ads.

It's putting money into the business to free me my time and spend more time.

So it's a very long term investment, I guess.

But I think I am I would like to learn that skill as well.

I think I'm not wildly good at delegating.

And I, in my day job, I've been very used to working with people, the same people for a long time.

I've been in the same company for a long time.

So the idea of having to train somebody up, I've had people that I've had to train up, and I, I don't really like the frustration of that potentially not being easy or good.

And it would also be that I would have to like get a lot of my processes really, really smoothed out and like articulated very well in order to pass them on.

And I, which is the worst thing to say is that I'm too busy to do that right now, which is like-

I'm really good at that.

One of my best qualities at work is training notes.

I'm so good at writing training notes.

And I love telling other people how to do things.

I'm like, I'm not going to do this, but I'll write you a step by step guide on how to do it.

And you never darken my doorstep again.

Yeah, I mean, I like a screen share, like a video for training notes.

And then I guess you could get that transcribed by AI and put it into notes.

Yes, you could do it quite easily.

And yeah, interestingly, I was chatting to a very, very old university friend who now works in venture capital.

It makes me sound a lot more excited than I really am, but she does sort of a tangential job in a venture capital company.

It's not her true background.

And she and I was saying, what's the biggest obstacle that companies make them fall apart when they're like new, but could be successful companies?

And she was, she said, like always, it's hiring help too late.

So you should hire help before you think you need it.

And really that process of like having to handle small tasks, you don't want to when you're, you know, pushing towards six bigger business, you don't want to still be like resizing photos for your newsletter.

It's like, that sounds so ridiculous.

It's the worst thing.

I email with MailerLite and they have like a two megabyte limit.

So every time I get my photographs in the folder, I go on to like compress JPEG, you know, resize them all, download them one by one, put them in another folder, upload them to MailerLite.

I was like, that is a joke that I spent time doing that.

And if I were, yeah, even slightly further along with business, I don't want to still be doing that.

So I think that is, I'm gonna put that on my list for this year, actually.

This year, I want to try and hand a thing off to someone else.

And it can be a tiny thing such as just, like I also have another really small but incredibly tedious task, which is I recommend a book in every newsletter of the weekly ones I send out.

And to do that, I have to do like a really convoluted process of like getting the image, putting the links in my newsletter, putting the links into my website so they redirect for the affiliate codes.

It's like it's not a lot of work, but it's the same work over and over again.

And it's just pointless.

Or like managing my art team, things like that.

So these are all things that I think you could easily train someone to do.

A lot of the kind of hesitation around that is obviously you also have to give people access to all of your accounts.

So it has to be, it can't be just like someone that you hire that you don't know.

So it just feels like it's a big emotional and logistical decision to do.

But if I don't make a step in that direction, I am going to regret it later on.

So yes, that is what I will do this year in some capacity.

That feels very...

Do you think you'd go virtual PA, or do you think you'd go for somebody local or like somebody that you would be able to meet up with and physically hand over work and have meetings with?

What would you prefer?

Yeah, my dream is to have a housekeeper.

Yes.

Which like for anyone who hasn't ever been to my house, it's a ludicrous...

I live by myself and I have like three rooms in my house, genuinely.

My house is a three story house, one room on each floor.

So if I had a housekeeper, we'd be under each other's feet all the time.

But in the ideal world, I would buy the house next door and the housekeeper would live there and they would come over and just do all of my cooking and cleaning and like take all my parts of the post office and just be helpful.

And I can see you laughing.

I just don't want to deal with those things.

They believe me and I don't enjoy them.

Why does he have to live next door?

I don't want to have to...

Yeah, next door.

I can be like, okay, I would like to be alone right now.

Leave.

Yeah.

But they're close enough that if I had an emergency, I could call them in, they'd sort it out for me.

I want like Mrs.

Lemon, right?

Mrs.

Lemon in Sherlock, she lives just in nearby.

Yeah, but not in the house.

So that's my ideal.

Anyway, so because I don't, because I've been by myself, and there's only me and my cats, I don't have to have the most much whatever housekeeper to do.

So the ideal housekeeper would also be my PA.

So that's the dream future.

Okay.

But I'm not near that yet.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

I think most people have a VA, right?

Of some sort.

People I think you have, PAs tend to be a friend or like some sort of very, you know, relative who does something for them part time basis.

I live in a very artistic community.

So I live somewhere where lots of people are writers, or they are kind of cobbling various different jobs around an artist career.

So I probably could find somebody locally who would be the right sort of person to bring on to that.

So possibly, but then I'm not sure what I would benefit from them being physically close apart from them in the future being my housekeeper.

Yeah, like say, telling them that at some point, like when the house next door comes on the market, I'll send you the link and they'd be like, oh, okay.

I would buy it.

I would buy it for my housekeeper, I'm not a monster.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

So when the house comes down on the market next door, I'll pack you back.

So that would also kill two murderers on stone.

My nemesis owns the house next door to me and the house underneath me.

So at some point in the future, I would like to own both of those.

Okay.

It sounds like a recipe for a murder.

That's how I like to make my life work.

I like all things have potential murder mysteries in them.

Otherwise, what's the point?

Yes, that's true.

But if my nemesis ever goes missing, don't say a word, it wasn't me.

Okay, okay.

Yes.

Anyway, we've got sidetracked.

So that was just one as I think I would like to have.

And I hadn't really thought about that.

I hadn't let myself or forced myself to think about that until now.

But I definitely would like it.

And it might even be that it's not necessarily someone to do like a traditional VA.

It might be that I want to get someone to spend a bit of time handling my ads so I can kind of figure out some things with that.

Yeah, I think something I want to try and hand over something this year to make sure that I am moving towards doing that long term, at least making decisions around that.

And then, yeah, I think other places I would spend my money would be, well, that would be my big spend.

And that relies on having a series that responds well to advertising.

So already being quite far into your at least understanding of self-publishing, that might be your first series.

It's unlikely to be your first series.

I think I have tried advertising other series in the past and just really...

Some of it is like my lack of understanding of like how the ad platforms work.

Some of it was like my lack of understanding of quite how to present the book.

So things like when people would say like, you're gonna have a good cover and a good blurb.

I'd be like, well, I think they are.

So I don't know what to do now.

And now I think now I've got ads that do cover on a book.

And I can see something different about like the cover and the blurb and the packaging in general.

So a part of it is just like getting more experience and further along in your career.

And it's, you know, and now it feels worth understanding advertising to make that worthwhile.

Yeah, and I think there is, especially if you're in a kind of busier genre or more popular genre, so Cozy is a big, very competitive genre to be at the top of.

And you don't have to be at the top of it to be making money because it's such a popular genre.

So you don't have to be number one in Cozy to be making lots of money.

But if you are consistently in the top, you are making good money.

So that's kind of a good way to think about your aims.

I think if I had, I may say if I had, I have money and I have a specific part of money that I have acquired this year, there is extra money that I am deciding is like, that is my investment in self-publishing.

Yeah.

I am going to invest that in ads, A, to learn about the ads platform.

So to do that thing that they say you should do, we actually learn about it.

And you're not just thinking, yes, but how?

I actually felt like I am learning about it now.

I'm following Nick as Eric, which I'll put a link in the show notes about the course I'm doing.

He's got such good free content, but it wouldn't have been the right thing for me before now, just because it requires you to feel confident enough to try lots of complicated things at once and to know how to do that.

Even so, I didn't go straight in with the full complicated all bells and whistles experiment.

I pulled out parts of the experiment I felt less confident with, not the experiment, his method.

I pulled out parts of it I felt less confident with and just trialed those so I could understand how they work.

And then I put them all together to run the first proper test.

And I wouldn't have really been able to do that before now.

I didn't have enough understanding of how things worked.

I didn't understand what was going wrong when things were going wrong.

And I think now I feel more confident that I can at least have a good guess at what it is.

I don't feel like I know everything at all, but I now have a better idea of what I don't know.

So I feel pretty good at doing that.

If you're looking at results in things and you are completely at a loss, you couldn't even fathom what could have gone wrong, then that's an awful stage to be at.

But if you can look at results and at least come up with a couple of theories, and then test those theories, then that is a fantastic place to be.

And today when you were talking about the ads that you're running and having questions about them, all you needed to do was say all of your thoughts out loud for you to realize that actually you did know.

You did have theories and you could, because you said like, I don't know, if this doesn't work, then I just, I just don't know.

But then actually like five seconds later, you did know.

I think it used to be in that position of just like, I just don't know, and that as soon as something wobbles away from my expected result, I think, oh, I just want to throw my hands up in the air and be like, well, I guess I didn't understand it at all.

But that's not true with this.

Or at least I know there are things I can test to see if I know what I have done, or what I can do differently.

So that feels, so now it feels like it's worth investing money in the ads, in a way that I don't, if I've got a part of money to invest at my stage of my career right now, and this is a part of money that is like, I'm counting it as in my head sort of free money, right?

It's money that I, is separate from my regular savings.

I am earning it, but it is not from my regular job.

So that sounds very cryptic.

I'm not, I'm not a Hitman.

We'll talk about this soon.

This is like my first live project.

I wasn't going with Hitman.

I know, but my mind was going to murder.

But you know, I've been very evasive about where my mind is coming from.

We've talked about it earlier as well.

I have not, there's nothing illegal going on.

So I've got a lot of money that doesn't feel the same as my regular salary, which like I feel like I, you know, I can feel every like minute I've spent in long meetings, I can feel every email that I have replied to with like see previous email.

When I think about the money I've earned from my day job, and it doesn't feel like I want to like spend that in place where I might not get it back.

Whereas this other part of money that I'm getting this year from some other work.

A little fun bonus.

Yes, it feels like I have been given this specifically to invest in a way that I want to, and I'm going to invest it in ads, with the goal not necessarily of making the money back straight away.

Because I don't have to because it is, it is like a bonus money.

So I want to spend it on kind of two things.

One is learning how the ads platform work.

Because there is no point just like dipping my toe in constantly, and then taking some results, and then be like, well, my toe is a bit wet, I'll just go and dry off, and then I'll wait till it's a bit warmer and I'll come back.

So I want to really spend the money on understanding it.

And then B, I want to invest the money in building leadership and building like a future for the book series.

So that even if I don't make any profit on my ads right now, that's absolutely fine for me, because I know I've already got this series planned out for the next few books anyway.

And I want to make an attempt at making a profit long term on the series, which isn't a position that everyone is in at all, and isn't necessarily a position I would take on my next series.

This is just, I want to try this with this series, and I have no reason to not spend this money.

The only reason not to spend it is because I'm scared, and I'm not scared.

No, you're not scared.

Yes, you are brave.

Because when I was thinking about this topic, and I said this earlier in Mastermind meeting, my initial thought was, if somebody gave me five grand to spend, I would try and save as much of it as possible.

I'd be like, I'd spend some of it, but then I always think, I could hold like two, 300 pounds back, and then I'd have like this little bit of extra money just in case, because I don't like the idea of just spending something and it's gone.

But at the same time, if you're given free money in this imaginary world that I'm living in, if somebody gave me five grand, why would I not spend every single penny of it?

Because it was never mind to begin with.

And it would potentially turn into more money.

It's the whole like five pounds turning into ten pounds.

It could potentially grow into something else.

At some point along the way.

So it's just silly to be like, oh, I'll hold some back just in case.

Like, no, just spend it.

That's like, I'm still in that hesitation.

That's the word.

I'm still in that hesitation mode when it comes to spending.

And I've come a long way, but I definitely am still like, I think there's a benefit to hesitating, right?

Like there, I know there's like the concept like money blocks and we don't want to, you know, more money does come.

Like I've always experienced this, more money comes.

But that's coming from a position of enormous privilege of like, I have a very well paid day job, I have family that if I needed the money for some reason, I would be able to ask them for help.

There is no situation where I would be threatened or in danger of not having things I need.

And that but but like, I should be using that as a strength.

Like I had everyone has different strengths.

Some people have really, you know, partners who are marketing gurus.

Some people have the backgrounds in, you know, all sorts of different skills, like project management that you might need for this business.

My personal privilege is that I do not need to be scared of like running out of money.

And so why not use that?

I'm hiding from that, like that benefit I have when no one wins like that, no one wins and I don't win.

So why not just say, I am going to spend it.

But I mean, but I say this, like I've had savings for several years that I've not spent, because it felt like I didn't, I didn't feel confident that I was going to spend it well.

And A, now I do, I feel like right now I'm in a very different position to where I've been previously.

And B, it actually feels very different to be spending this kind of like extra bonus money that is not my savings, that is not my salary that I have to earn from, you know, meetings, meetings and emails, which is most of my job, which are not terrible, right?

They're not awful things.

But like, I feel every hour I've earned them.

Whereas with money that comes from other sources, it's like, oh, I, that's mine.

That's just for me to spend how I want.

And I'm going to spend it on my business.

Yeah.

Which is exciting.

Yeah, because-

Just in terms of what I would spend on, so I did say ads, 100% I would spend the money I spent again on NetGalley.

So I use the Victory Co-op, Victory Editing Co-op, which I'll put in the show notes as well.

That is on my list, ARCs on all platforms.

Yeah.

And yeah, I think it's so beneficial and so such good value.

I even sort of I don't know if I should use it again for my books, two and three.

I hadn't really thought about that.

I kind of hadn't very book one focused.

So we I think are having an episode coming up where we'll kind of think about things like that.

So I will ponder it before them because it's not expensive.

And it has worked well.

So yes, potentially I should be doing that.

So we'll definitely do that again.

I also one thing I've invested in for this launch is a Goodreads giveaway, which I've got no idea if it's ever gonna like it has any impact at all.

I think it's not cheap, but it's also not expensive.

It's untrackable.

So there's no way to know what the benefit of it is.

The way it works though, in the way that you might hope it's useful is that when people enter the giveaway, they have to put their travel book on their like to read list.

And then the announcement when it launches, and the announcement goes up to their feed of like whoever's in there, who are for some good read.

And then you're also giving away copies of people who will hopefully read it and love it and review it.

But there are people who might not read your journal, they might actually never read it, they might just want free books.

So you know, but you have to pay for those books, you're not losing anything.

I think it's, if I've got five grand, that it's a relatively small portion of that.

So worth trying to move a lever in some way.

Yeah.

I think I might also pay one thing that I've been not thinking about doing, but I've heard good things about recently is like getting people to pull out your hooks for TikToks.

So I might do something like that as well.

But it's not top of mind right now, just because I'm not a big priority for me.

But I think I would spend money on something like that.

Where again, it's like a small enough money that is sort of an experiment for you and you're not, but you can't trace it necessarily.

But it's something like adding a bit of diversity to your plans.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's like a good list of some really like high concept stuff.

And some also some very like basic businessy things that we would all love to spend more money on.

Yeah.

I think that like the whole, like somebody pulling quotes from your book is like, and absolutely I would love to spend money on that.

Somebody else do it.

I mean, I used Notebook 11 to pull some like quotes out, just for quotes.

And that was really useful.

It was quite useful.

I found it, I got more useful quotes though, when I was just going to get myself and editing and like being more conscious of the book, the quotes I needed.

But it was a good place to start.

Yeah, but yeah, apparently, you can find services that will like, read your book and find hooks in it more than quotes, which just feels like a skill I don't have.

So or a skill I could hone, but it's not like top of my list right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Understandable.

Okay.

Do you have anything else you would like to say on this?

Or do you think we are done?

No.

I think that it was useful to talk from kind of brought up a few things that I was putting off thinking about.

Yes.

Next week, we're talking about the thing that I've also put off thinking about.

So it will be very useful.

I have got a launch on Wednesday, and it is very easy when you have a launch.

Okay, tick, the book's done.

Next one, especially because I am rapidly releasing, I'm doing three books in three months.

So next week, we're talking about post-launch marketing.

Do you have initial thoughts on what that is and how to do it?

I have, I'm always thinking about post-launch marketing, and but like, but not doing anything.

Yeah, like, but, but, but not in a good way.

Just thinking, like, how, how do I, yeah, like, how do I do this better?

I know that there are definitely things that I'm missing out on.

I, I also know that I have done a few post-launch things that really helped me out.

So I'm excited to bring that to the table next week.

I think one way we should think about this is, because we write in different genres, you write in a genre where you're aiming towards a complete series.

And in, and I write in a genre where essentially you just have open-ended series and just keep going.

And I think there's probably two, there's probably different aspects of post-launch marketing for those and how to plan for them.

Not overall, but I think there's some aspects that are different.

So I think we should make sure we're highlighting those as well.

Yeah.

But yeah, I can't really think of anything off the top of my head that I could talk about right now, but I'm looking forward to thinking about it all this weekend, trying to figure out how to articulate the panic of post-launch marketing.

Yes.

We will be hopping in the Discord as well.

So once this is out, we will have our question of the week, which should be, it's going to be around this topic we took all day, which will be about how you would, if you had a good chunk of money, how you would spend it in your publishing business, how you would invest in your publishing business.

Yes.

Discord is still going fantastically.

The link is in the show notes, our Pen to Paycheck Discord.

It is a great little community of people who are asking and answering each other's questions, giving a bit of support and advice.

We were talking today about new things we're going to be doing with the Discord to make sure it is giving everyone lots of support.

So do hop in there and come and introduce yourselves and ask any questions you want to in there.

We look forward to seeing you and we also look forward to you listening more in future and hopefully hearing from you then.

We will speak next week.

Goodbye.

Yes.

Goodbye.

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