THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Angela Lauria:
If you would like someone to beg you to publish their book or beg you to buy your artwork, the answer is, be awesome. Just be fucking awesome.
Announcer:
It’s The Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to The Inspiration Place podcast, an art world insider podcast, for artists by an artist, where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the arts. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello, passion maker. This is Miriam Schulman, your curator of inspiration, and you’re listening to episode number 166 of The Inspiration Place podcast. I am so grateful that you’re here. Today we’re talking all things writing a book. In this episode, you’ll discover the difference between hot girl energy and pick me energy, whether you should self-publish or find an agent and get a traditional book deal. And also the biggest mistake first time authors make, believe me, I made this one, and you’ll find out how to avoid them. Today’s guest is the founder of the Author Incubator and creator of the Difference Process for writing a book that matters.
The Author Incubator was ranked 275 on the Inc 500 fastest growing companies, and number 60 on Entrepreneur Magazines, Entrepreneur 360. The Author’s Way was named Coaching Program of the Year, and our guest was named by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top 10 most inspiring entrepreneurs to watch. She’s helped over 1000 authors in transformation, write, publish, and promote their books. Her clients have been responsible for over a 100 million in cumulative revenue. With a BA and MA in Journalism and Media Affairs from George Washington university, and a PhD in communications from the European Graduate School.
She’s also a Wall Street Journal, USA, and Amazon bestselling author of a shit ton of books. I will link to all of them in the show notes. They have great titles like Make ’em Beg to Work for You, Make ’em Beg to be Your Client, Make ’em Beg to Publish Your Book, the Incubated Author, and The Different: 10 Steps to Writing a Book that Matters. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place, Angela Lauria.
Angela Lauria:
Thank you for having me. It’s always so goofy to be introduced, because I just feel like that girl who helps people write books, but you’re not allowed to just have a bio that’s, that girl that helps people write books. But I’m that girl that helps people write books.
Miriam Schulman:
I love it. First of all, Angela, and I are in like this elitist Facebook group.
Angela Lauria:
[crosstalk 00:03:02] elitist Facebook group.
Miriam Schulman:
This elitist Facebook group, where we think we’re like so important. No, she’s been very helpful to me, so there’s that. But also I was on a podcast right after I got my book contract, and to prepare myself for that, I picked you as the interview I would listen to. And I was like, “Oh yeah, she’s cool.” So you were talking about, this kind of goes along with some of your books, Make ’em Beg to Work for You, as going with a hot girl energy. So could you explain what that is?
Angela Lauria:
The hot girl energy, the prize never chase. The book, Make ’em Beg to Publish Your Book, I can summarize in not even a full sentence, but a sentence fragment, if you would like someone to beg you to publish their book or beg you to buy your artwork, the answer is, be awesome. And I feel like everyone looks for all these hacks. Like the way you get people to buy your artwork is like set up a funnel, buy ads, do Society6 t-shirts. Just be fucking awesome, and people will want your shit.
And I feel like that message gets lost in all these other tactic we have now on social… and get 10,000 followers in 30 days and do a five day challenge. And how about you just make really good stuff and that’s really at the heart of it. And part of that, part of making really good stuff and knowing your stuff is good, is spending most of your time and energy on your craft. Not on trying to trick people into buying stuff, but really focus on your craft. And if you think about hot girl energy, I have a very, very, very pretty teenage daughter, and this is the thing, she spends most of her time on, do you know they don’t call them outfits now, they just call them fits.
Miriam Schulman:
No, I did not know that.
Angela Lauria:
Yes. I’m going to teach you a thing. I learned-
Miriam Schulman:
Let’s let’s be clear, I was never the hot girl. I was the-
Angela Lauria:
I was never the hot girl either-
Miriam Schulman:
I was the desperate girl chasing, chasing boys.
Angela Lauria:
Right. And if you were the chaser, which I was, we spent most of our time talking about boys, which boy we could get, how to chase them. Do you sit in the back of the bus? How do you fold your note? How am I going to get them? This is what hot girls think about, being hot, because I have one.
Miriam Schulman:
But it’s also, it’s more than that, Angela. It’s also, what you said about being awesome, it’s also just projecting that energy that you know that you’re awesome.
Angela Lauria:
The lesson I want to start with is, the prize never chases. But I really want to start with, because watching my daughter getting ready for homecoming, I know for me, homecoming would be about like, “Who’s going to ask me? Do I go with like a group of girlfriends? Or am I going to get asked by a boy? Or do I ask a boy, so I’m not waiting?” It would be all about being picked. And she’s always talking about, pick me girl. She’s like, “Oh yeah, she’s a pick me girl.”
Miriam Schulman:
Oh my God. There’s a term for that.
Angela Lauria:
There’s a whole term for it. But Sophia is focused on dressing cool, doing her hair cool, doing her makeup cool. And there are like 30 guys all trying to get her to go to homecoming. And she’s like, “Mah, I don’t know, maybe.” She kind of says, “Yes” and then she says, “No.” And she’s like half in, until the guy she really wants asks her, which did happen. It’s all very exciting. So she won’t commit to anyone. She’s just not that in. But if you’re a pick me artist, or you’re a pick me business owner of any kind, you’re chasing. You’re not focused on your art. You’re not, in my case, it’s helping people write books that generate a quarter of a million dollars in sales. So you’re not focused on that. You’re focused on how do I get people?
And that energy comes across as being a pick me girl, that energy comes across as grabby. And grabby energy, it turns out, is not attractive. So you can look at it from your energy, and this is why I say, “The prize never chases.” I have been to Africa, never once, when I was like driving through the safari parks, did the antelopes turn around and start chasing the hyenas. They weren’t like, “Hey, why don’t we get the hyena? You guys, there’s lots of us.” Yeah. The hyenas are always chasing the antelope. That’s how it goes.
So if you want to be pursued, and this is where feminine energy, and we talk about the feminine rising, not male or female identifying people, but we are having a rise in feminine energy, and that is attraction marketing. People are going to come to you. And the way people come to you is going to be based on your energy, and you can’t be grabby and trying to get clients, or trying to get collectors to see you, or trying to get buyers to pick you, and be pursued. You can’t be the pursuer and the pursued.
So picking the energy you will show up with, like every day is hot girl summer for me. How can I make it hot girl summer? And what I always say, which is actually true, I say this to my clients, to my authors is, “You are always sold out. You have always sold the exact right amount of art for the energy that you are at right now.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s perfect.
Angela Lauria:
It’s just a reflection. It’s just a reflection. So if you want the reflection to be different, your energy has to change first.”
Miriam Schulman:
And what are some ways that you suggest they start with that? I mean, we already talked about focusing on your craft, but are there other methods you talk with your clients about?
Angela Lauria:
I mean, I think the first thing is, look at everywhere you are chasing. It doesn’t mean, by the way, that you… Sophia goes on dates. Sophia likes boys and girls. Sophia likes people. It’s not that you don’t ever like people, she has an Instagram page. It’s not that you don’t put stuff up on Instagram, but look at all of your outgoing activities, and the energy that goes into them is the energy that comes out. So one of the things I noticed she does on her Instagram, now I’m not saying to do this, she’s a 15-year-old girl, I’m not saying to do this, but I was like, “Oh, that’s what you do.” She has some stories up there that are saved, but she takes one photo or a series of photos, and she deletes all the other Instagram posts. So there’s only one post that’s live. She doesn’t have a whole history.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, that’s so interesting.
Angela Lauria:
Which is so fascinating, right? Now, I’m not saying to do this. The techniques, anything you’re learning, if you take anyone’s course, including Miriam’s, and you’re trying to learn and copy exactly what she’s doing, like, “I just want to be just like her, and learn and do it just like she did.” That energy is the problem. If you can be chill and be like, “Oh, that’s… Oh, I wonder why she did that?” And then see what vibrationally aligned with you.
So when I saw Sophia do that, I was like, “Oh, because she doesn’t need to prove what I need to prove.” When I look at my Instagram, it’s like, “Look, I hung out with Richard Branson. Look, I did this cool thing. Look, I have 20 clients they all smiled in a picture of me. Look…” I could feel my pick me girl energy in my history. Now, look, I didn’t go delete all my pictures. I’m not saying you have to rush to do that, but do an audit of all the places you want to be chosen. Because people hear you on the level that you’re coming from, it doesn’t matter what the words are. Follow anything, I say, anything Miriam says, anything Jesus says, but if you’re doing it with a different energy, it doesn’t matter if you follow the letter of the teaching, if the energy is different.
Miriam Schulman:
There’s that too, but then, also, there’s some tactics that really lend itself to pick me energy. So, for example, I like to call it the perfume lady in the department store. None of us wants to be, in marketing, the perfume… we all hate that perfume lady. That’s, you walk in and she’s coming at-
Angela Lauria:
Free sample.
Miriam Schulman:
… you.
Angela Lauria:
Free sample.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. And I see [crosstalk 00:11:50] that marketing a lot, the people who will send you a three paragraph DM, we’ve all gotten them, you know like on Facebook. And it’s not-
Angela Lauria:
Or just-
Miriam Schulman:
… even from the person, it’s from their VA. It’s like three paragraphs long about all the things that they can do for you, and here’s their webinar. And here’s their this and here’s their that. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I have so much perfume on me right now. Get away.”
Angela Lauria:
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s totally true. What I would say to look at is, when you see a technique like that used on you, notice how you don’t like it. Because I think a lot of people don’t notice it, then they’ll go do it.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I had a business coach telling me to do it, and I was like, “How’s this working out for you?” And he’s like, “Oh, well you have a bigger audience than me.” I was like, “So I’m going to repel more people than you. I mean, obviously it’s not working so well for you. Just because I have more people doesn’t mean it’s going to work better. It’s going to work worse.” It just there’s more people to blow perfume on.
Angela Lauria:
So I would argue this. I argue that all marketing works all of the time.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, that’s so interesting.
Angela Lauria:
Marketing is reflecting back to you where you’re at. You’re always getting a lesson from… The purpose of marketing isn’t just to get clients, the purpose of marketing is to learn where you’re at. And sometimes it’s like where you want to be. I remember going through this early on in my career, I didn’t even know they were sales calls. I just thought I’d talk to people who wanted to do a book. So I would talk to people who wanted to do a book, and at the beginning, I would sell them and I’d be super excited. And then it would be like hard, and they would be like difficult clients. And then I would start getting on sales calls, and I would sort of sabotage the sales call, because I knew if the person bought, I was going to have to do something to serve them.
I would’ve told you I wanted the sale. My words would’ve said, “I really need money. I really need this client.” But really, I was like, “When do I do another client, 2:00 AM to 3:00 AM?” I’m making a $1,000 a week, working 80 hours a week, so if I need $2,000 a week, I have to work 160 hours, and, oops, I don’t have enough hours. Sometimes what your marketing is telling you is you don’t have a really good system. You are right, you’re going to burn out. Your subconscious knows, don’t sell this. So I think you’re always getting a message from your marketing. And the question is to listen to that, what is the message giving it?
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I mean, I do hear that sometimes from clients, they fear success, because they don’t know how they’re going to keep up. And I was like, “Well, maybe it’s time to raise your prices.” There’s usually obvious-
Angela Lauria:
Exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
… answer for how to fix it. You got to slow it down and you don’t have to… Sometimes they worry, “Well, my sales will plateau.” It’s like, “That’s a story you’re telling yourself.”
Angela Lauria:
Well, A, that’s a story, and, B, they’re plateauing anyway.
Miriam Schulman:
Right, because they can’t handle more, exactly.
Angela Lauria:
So you can have three clients at their $300 or you could probably have one client at a $1,000, even if you have fewer clients, you’ll have more sanity. It’s like a lot of times the stories don’t… We don’t take the time to add the story up. Raising your prices is a big part of the price never chases, so that is, you ask for some technique. When you know you’re awesome, let’s think about Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, he was like, “This is going to take me a long time. It’s going to be a lot of money. You probably can’t afford it. I’m going to get a really good client who’s going to pay me a lot of money for a really big project. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to charge a lot.” When you know you’re awesome, you price things accordingly.
When we go through this imposter syndrome BS that a lot of us are prone to go through, we end up under pricing, but then we don’t really do a great job of delivering. So we’ve got like a half painted Sistine Chapel and then they have to bring someone else in, and we really didn’t do a good job. Especially now, with inflation and stuff, but things are more expensive than we’re often pricing for. What I notice a lot is people price as if they’re an employee. So they’re like, “As an employee, I would make, let’s just say $25 an hour,” but you’re not pricing for all of your education. You’re not pricing for all of the other jobs, so the overhead, the accounting, the marketing, the sales, you’re just pricing for, let’s say, the art or the book coaching services. You need to price for all those other jobs.
And you’re not pricing for it, because you’re afraid you won’t get the business. But here’s the thing, you shouldn’t get the business at that price. You’re under pricing, so you’re going to do a shitty job.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s such a good point.
Angela Lauria:
I have a minimum required price for my authors. When someone does a book with me, if you want consulting from one of our… Now, if you want the book, it’s whatever, 10, 20 bucks, hardcover, paperback, whatever ebook, audiobook, ebook you’re going to spend not more than 20 bucks, I think, to get, in any format, the book, which has a ton of wisdom. But if you want consulting, what I tell our authors is to just get started with anyone, to turn on your computer, to answer their phone call, it’s $2,000. That’s the minimum. And I would say the same thing for a piece of art. Like just to turn on your computer, that number is so much higher than you think it is, because you’re not really running the numbers of your business.
Miriam Schulman:
Just to reiterate some of the things you said that I see with my clients is, they’ll say to me, “Oh, so if it’s free shipping online, do I give them a discount, if they pick the art up in person?” I was like, “No, in fact, that should be more expensive, because that’s your time. They’re not going to talk to you when they come to pick it up.” And so people, they don’t think about all that work that goes into the customer care, like you said. And it doesn’t matter whether your customer is buying a five dollar greeting card or a $5,000 painting, they will ask you just as many questions before they make that decision.
Angela Lauria:
Yep. If not more.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh yeah. Right, because the bottom feeders are the ones-
Angela Lauria:
Yeah, exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
… who are going to be holding on so tightly to all those things.
By the way, I wanted to make sure you knew about my free training, how to sell more art without being Insta famous. During this free training, you’ll learn why your success is not measured by your social media following. And what’s really going to move the needle, when it comes to sales. We’ll dig deep to go beyond the starving artist’s mindset to uncover what’s really sabotaging your success. And you’ll discover the five Ps of profiting from your art. These are the five things you need, so pay close attention. Plus you’ll hear inspiring stories of artists who have built a sustainable income selling their art. You’ll want to see how they did it, and so much more. To choose your showtime, go to schulmanart.com/sellmoreart. Now back to the show.
Okay. So I’m super excited to talk to you about this whole book publishing. I actually have a traditional book publishing contract. It’s mostly because I didn’t know that that was hard to get. Which is a good thing I didn’t know, because now I’ve been reading the statistics, it’s like, it’s a good thing I didn’t know that, because I probably never would’ve done it. What are the statistics of people getting books published these days? I mean, I know that there is a huge reason now to self-publish, it’s so hard to get a book traditionally published.
Angela Lauria:
And I don’t think the reason is that it’s hard. I think the main reason is-
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, okay. So what do you think the reason is?
Angela Lauria:
… that they’re stealing your money. It’s the same reason why, if I was in the music industry, I wouldn’t go with Warner Brothers Music or a music publishing company. So-
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, interesting.
Angela Lauria:
… what a lot of people don’t understand about publishing, you get in advance. If you go with a traditional publisher, you get in advance. Let’s just say it’s $10,000, it’s a $100,000, it’s a million dollars, doesn’t matter, it’s in advance of your money. They’re giving you your money in advance. And it works just like a payday loan. Only the terms are worse than if you went to a payday loan company.
So here’s what they said, “You were going to earn a million dollars on your own, but because we’re going to give you the money in advance, we’ll give you a 100,000, we’ll keep 900,000 as the… Just like our fee. But you keep the 100,000, it’s all good. That’s your advance.” So if you sell it online yourself, without them, you make a million dollars. But if you get an advance from them, pretend it was easy to get the advance, you get a 100,000, they get 900,000.
Now, the reason for this loan sharkery used to make perfect sense. Let me tell you the reason. Almost all sales happened in bookstores, and you, Miriam, could not call up every Barnes & Noble and say, “Put my book there.” So you were trading 90 cents on every dollar, in exchange for a whole building full of white dudes that were calling Barnes & Noble saying, “Will you put Miriam’s book on the shelf?” And there were trucks involved, and crates and printers and shipping containers and truck drivers and unions and a whole bunch of things called logistics that had to happen to get your book printed, shipped, ordered, and in bookstores.
Miriam Schulman:
Which by the way, all those things, which they still have take a effing long time, I was shocked when I was given my contract, and they said… So I signed the contract, I ended up signing it in June, but when we were negotiating it, they had the original sale date as 2023, which was like two years later. I was like-
Angela Lauria:
Two years.
Miriam Schulman:
… “Are you kidding? I may not even be alive in two years. Do you know what the state-
Angela Lauria:
Two years.
Miriam Schulman:
… of the world is?” We moved it up. It’s going to be published the end of 2022. But it’s like, I could have had a self-published book by January if I was doing it myself-
Angela Lauria:
We do-
Miriam Schulman:
… because that’s when my book is going to be written.
Angela Lauria:
We do our books in three months for our authors.
Miriam Schulman:
You’re kidding me.
Angela Lauria:
And they can start making money in three months.
Miriam Schulman:
So what does that process look like?
Angela Lauria:
So let me just explain this thing, all those logistics that used to be valuable, over time between 2000, 1998 and 2020, they were less and less valuable. The value of having a publishing contract was slowly going down. COVID hit, and the value of a contract went to your fucking idiot if you sign a book contract. Book sales went from, when I started in publishing, 1994, a 100% in bookstores, right before COVID it was 50/50 online versus bookstores. It is now 15% in bookstores, 85% online.
Miriam Schulman:
Wow.
Angela Lauria:
And the book sales online are no different with or without a publisher. In fact, a publisher just slows you down and fucks shit up, because they have requirements and minimums, because of other trade deals that they have with Amazon, court settlements, other things. So you will sell more books online if you are independently published.
So you are giving up 90% for less access to an audience. That’s the problem with traditional publishing. And they are trying to fix it. Contracts are changing. Brendon Burchard, who I don’t love his coaching, but what he has done for the publishing industry is transformative. People don’t know this, because it’s so out of his, whatever, sweet spot, but he figured all this out and he has changed contracts. And the people who have come before him, Russell Brunson has done some stuff to change contracts as well. The publishing industry just can’t move fast enough. It’s 40,000 people that have been in jobs for 20 years. They’re not smart enough. They keep hiring 20 year olds, but the 20 year olds don’t get it, because they’ve never not had it this way.
Miriam Schulman:
They’re not innovating.
Angela Lauria:
Yeah. It’s really a hot mess of an industry. We’re not the only ones this with this solution, but we have the solution. But when we’ve met with publishing executives, they’re like, “That’s brilliant.” It’s so hard to move the ship. We have people with contracts that are two years away. How do we do it? There’s like no way to do it, so it’s just dying. COVID has just killed publishing. And the only people signing contracts are people who can’t do math. They just haven’t realized, oh-
Miriam Schulman:
So you’re calling me stupid.
Angela Lauria:
I’m calling everyone… I’m like, “Do math. Let me do math with you.” I feel like Andrew Yang, I want to have that says math.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, yeah.
Angela Lauria:
It used to make, when I started, I was the biggest advocate, but it all fell apart during COVID, and it’s just… Everything’s happened so fast. When you were signing that contract, we were probably all thinking, when COVID’s over.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, I was thinking when COVID’s over, in March of 2020. I was one of those naive people who thought. Yeah-
Angela Lauria:
Oh, my God me too.
Miriam Schulman:
… three months. Flu season doesn’t last in the summer, we’ll be back on the beach in the summer. It’s like, no-
Angela Lauria:
Same thing [crosstalk 00:26:39]-
Miriam Schulman:
… two years later, it’s like, what the hell?
Angela Lauria:
Yeah. And people’s buying behaviors have changed, searching behaviors have changed, so much has changed that now publishing’s like… And they’re all doing the same thing. They write a quarterly plan, and two weeks into the quarter so much has changed, none of us know what’s going on anymore.
Miriam Schulman:
No.
Angela Lauria:
It’s just moving so fast.
Miriam Schulman:
Things are so different. I don’t know about you, I have trouble leaving my house. I’ve become agoraphobic, I was like… My friends have to drag me out. I was like-
Angela Lauria:
100%.
Miriam Schulman:
… “We have coffee in person, that’s the thing again.” I was like, “I haven’t caught up.”
Angela Lauria:
Yeah. I know. I’m exactly the same. I went to see my sister and she was like, “You should fly. It’s only a one hour flight.” And I was like, “I should,” and then I was like driving.
Miriam Schulman:
So I live right outside New York City. I won’t take the train anymore. I’m spending so much money on Uber. It was like-
Angela Lauria:
Uber.
Miriam Schulman:
… “I have to be in my bubble,” meanwhile, it’s like, that’s probably just as germy as everything else, but I’m not used to being around so many people. It’s not that the germs, I’m just not used to like the crowds.
Angela Lauria:
My editor-in-chief went to Hamilton last weekend, and I was like, “How was it?” And she was like, “I went, on intermission, to the bathroom, and the crowds standing…” And she’s like, “I was so freaked out about the number of people waiting in line to go to the bathroom. I think it’s the same number that we’re always there, we just haven’t stood in line to go to the bathroom in two years.”
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right. That’s right. I’m like, “We have to wait?”
Angela Lauria:
That was her reflections on Hamilton.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right. That was her big takeaway.
Angela Lauria:
There were a lot of people.
Miriam Schulman:
Her big takeaway was the line for the bathroom. Okay. So I’m going to ask the next question on here, and I just want you to know, this is your question, so if I say it with the wrong intonation… How can you write a book quickly and guarantee the book actually good?
Angela Lauria:
This is such a perfect segue. And I’m so glad you jumped in with this now, because we’re talking about how fast things are changing. One of the things that’s changed is, if you think about Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, if you think about the Bible, if you think about War and Peace, writing a book was so rare, and it was so important. You’re writing Anna Karenina, let’s pour over each word. And there was a quality standard at that time that, often, we now, post-COVID in Washington, DC and New York City, running online businesses that are changing every two weeks, hold ourselves to. Things were changing a lot slower when Tolstoy was writing. And so good needs to be reevaluated. Are you holding yourself to some sort of, I call it, the English teacher in the sky standard. Do you have in your mind, like, if I’m going to write this book, it better be good.
Good, according to whom, Tolstoy? Gutenberg? Good, according to whom? So we must start our process, everyone listening, we must start our process by defining good. Because good has changed my friends, there are lots of goods. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t write the great American novel, if that’s what we’re going for. That’s a different process, and please don’t spend three months on your book if you’re writing the great American novel. But for many of us, we’re writing a book because we want to build a collective or a community. We’re writing a book because we want to attract collectors. We’re writing a book because we want to have a giveaway, a bonus, maybe a lead magnet. And those do not need to be held to the Tolstoy standard.
If you know what you’re doing with your book first, and we can call it, what’s your book results? This is the first thing I do with my clients is we identify your results. I think Simon Sinek would say, start with why. But when Simon Sinek is starting with why, he’s talking about like your big why, to change the world, to make the world a better place, whatever. I’m talking about, like, what’s your little why for this book project? What’s the goal? Is the goal to make $250,000? Is the goal to add 10,000 people to your list? Is the goal to find five key collectors that, over the next 10 years are going to invest between 10 and $50,000 each? What’s the goal for the book? Let’s get really specific and write a book that accomplishes that goal. Once we get clear on that, most of my authors spend between 24 and 48 hours actually writing the book.
Miriam Schulman:
Wait, what?
Angela Lauria:
Here’s how it works. I’m going to give you all my secrets here.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s taking me a little bit longer than 24 hours, just so everyone knows. And my mantra, to put anything on the computer, I just say, “Ass in chair, ugly words.” That’s been my mantra this whole time, “Ass in chair, ugly word. Ass in Chair, ugly words.”
Angela Lauria:
That’s good. And you know, Bird By Bird Anne Lamott, shitty first draft.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, but I had to be willing to write shitty first book.
Angela Lauria:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
I got really stuck, I understood shitty first draft, but once I understood no, no, it could be shitty first book too, that it like unlocked things for me.
Angela Lauria:
Okay. I got you.
Miriam Schulman:
Like Brene Brown’s books, her first book is not whatever her fourth book, I don’t know what book she’s on, fourth book.
Angela Lauria:
Oh, you mean, people get better over time?
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly.
Angela Lauria:
Okay. This is the example I use, because do you like, or at least pre-COVID, do you like getting a massage?
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was the first one back once they lifted that in my-
Angela Lauria:
Okay. Me too.
Miriam Schulman:
… neighborhood.
Angela Lauria:
I love a massage. Can imagine any you’ve that person’s first massage? For sure, the massage you got was better than their first massage. Of course their massages get better. They don’t know how to hold the sheet. They don’t know how to leave the room. They’re gone for too long. They come back, they knock, you’re half naked. It’s like awkward. You don’t know how to roll over. They’re like tripping. They get the music too loud. The music’s too quiet. They talk too much. You always know when it’s somebody’s first… when they’re young, because they talk too much. They don’t know when to stop talking.
Miriam Schulman:
I just ask for Peter.
Angela Lauria:
See, Peter’s been around the block. But Peter was-
Miriam Schulman:
I’m not going for the new girl.
Angela Lauria:
Peter was not amazing on his very first massage. And we often have expectations of ourselves as writers. Like we’re supposed to be at our hundredth massage when it’s our first massage, be where you are. You can only get to your hundredth massage by doing your first. You can’t like skip ahead by sitting on your couch, you can’t read about massage appointments or watch videos of massage appointments and get better. You just got to do it.
So here’s how you write your book in 24 to 48 hours. Super easy, works every time, we’ve never had anyone fail at this. The first thing you have to do, this is the hardest thing, and this works best with a coach or an editor, is, you identify your why. And then you come up with an outline for your book. And I teach this in my book, The Difference: 10 Steps to Writing a Book that Matters. I do this with my clients. You got to have an outline. We call it chapter summaries. Once you have them, each chapter, our books are usually around 12 to 24 chapters. Each chapter has already been outlined, so we know what’s going in it. And we set a timer for two hours, and it’s like a Project Runway episode. You have two hours to write the shittiest word vomit you can get on a page.
It is a timed test. You think of it like your essay for AP English, senior year in high school, you’ve got two hours to say whatever you can think of. If you are lost or confused, you just go to the outline, and you write whatever is there. If you need to do research, you write a note to your editor. I need to interview three journalists about this thing, whatever you need to do, but you just keep writing for two hours. The best thing you could possibly write in two hours.
So we have our authors get schedule, once their outline is done, they schedule 12 to 24 writing appointments. Each for two hours, the editor sits on the phone with them. They can talk the chapter, if they’re better at talking. It’s usually 15 to 30 minutes, if you talk a chapter, or if you’re better writing up to two hours writing. And you just write something and that’s where you start and you iterate from that, and you make it better each time. So we have three rounds of editing, and you do up to two hours per chapter. So two hours to write it, up to two hours per chapter, three rounds, that’s all you need.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m so jealous [crosstalk 00:35:46] I didn’t do that, by the way.
Angela Lauria:
And we-
Miriam Schulman:
It sounds a lot better than what I’ve been doing.
Angela Lauria:
And we bang them out. They’re good, and I know they’re good, because they meet the objective we set, when we defined good at the beginning. So we might define good as a 1,000 beta testers for my new investing platform. And then, if we get those 1,000 beta testers from our first 10,000 readers, we know the book was good. We’re not depending on the English teacher in the sky or the Tolstoy standard. We’re depending on a specific goal that is reachable and measurable. Within a year, we want to make sure we hit that goal within a year.
Miriam Schulman:
So from start to publication, you suggest a full year with your process, is that right?
Angela Lauria:
13 weeks.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, wow.
Angela Lauria:
13 weeks to published, and then it’s a full year to recoup your, not to recoup your investment, but to get a return on your investment.
Miriam Schulman:
Got it.
Angela Lauria:
And then you go to the next book, and that’s the other thing that changes, to answer that question that you asked, which is how do I know it’s a good book? You’re going to write another one in a year anyway, don’t be so fucking precious. Fine, you’re not writing War and Peace. We’re going to write plenty of books. It’s just a technique that we’re using to reach a goal. It’s the lowest lead gen cost available.
And there’s a very specific reason why, which is books have inherent value. People have a value associated with books. So if you’re trying to get collectors and you have a mission behind what you do, you can build a collective of people who buy into your mission. And let’s say we get a 1,000 people to get that book that really has your core mission statement, 10 of those people are going to become key collectors.
Miriam Schulman:
And then for a lot of artists, and I’m talking visual artists or creative artists, it would be even, there’s a lot of art technique books. So a lot of artists use art technique books to build their business and their brand, to become an expert, if they want to sell their online classes. I know many artists, Flora Bowley is one of them, Lilla Rogers is another, who have used these books as the foundation for their business. What is the biggest mistake the first time authors make, while trying to get a book done?
Angela Lauria:
They worry about getting a book contract. And in order to get a book contract, and this is really hard to understand you guys, especially if you’re over 40, and I’m over 40, I’m 48, so I get this. So we grew up at Waldenbooks. We grew up in our heads at bookstores, and bookstores have limited shelf space, so the goal was to make the idea for the book as big as possible. Ideas that are as big as possible can sell the most books. They don’t really anymore, but they can, in theory. And they definitely did when we were coming of age and buying books in our 20s, and pre-internet. Now, the books that make the most money. Serve the smallest audience. So writing the book for a teeny tiny niche, and the example I always use is, in the past, the Big Book of Back Pain would’ve gotten bought by every Waldenbooks, Chapter Books, Barnes & Noble. I think Barnes & Noble like came up in my 30s, and Borders, whatever.
All those early bookstores, they wanted the Big Book of Back Pain, because they only had so many… how many back pain books were they going to have in their store? They didn’t have that many books. Now, online, we want postpartum back pain. We want early labor back pain. We want back pain for women over 50 that are 20 pounds overweight. We want it as niche down and specific as possible, because we’re like, why do I care about back pain for men in their 20s that throw shot put? That advice isn’t going to relate to me. So smaller books sell better. Right now, we see the sweet spot around 150 pages. It used to be like 500 pages, because people wanted to get their monies worth, and they wanted their shelves to have value. So smaller books, smaller ideas, getting really specific about your audience is going to maximize your book sales. And most people think, getting really general, is going to maximize their book sales.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. I’m seeing all the places I’ve… Yeah. Oh, geez, Angela. Okay. So if somebody wants to do not what I did and do what you do, how do they find out about The Author Incubator? We have a ton of URLs here, which one should we send them to?
Angela Lauria:
Here’s the thing I think, is, I have a really great workshop. So you can go to theauthorincubator.com, and you can read things and see things, and there’s a blog and all that. But if you want to take a workshop, I think when I did this, I charged like 127 bucks for it, but it’s up for free right now. So if you go to theauthorincubator.com/workshop, that’s a three hour workshop that deep dives into each of these issues. I believe in giving away my best stuff. So this has, literally, every single thing I teach. The only difference with being a paid client in this workshop is, we will sit there on the Zoom call with you and watch you do it. Because, otherwise, sometimes there are squirrels you may be aware of.
Miriam Schulman:
You wouldn’t believe the feedback I got after I had Tracy Otsuka, who’s an ADD expert, everyone’s like, “Oh yeah, that’s me. I guess I have it.” And then, there’s people who know they have it, the people who think they have it, the people who like, “It sounds like I have it.” I was like, well, if it walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
Angela Lauria:
Yeah. It’s probably what makes you amazing at your artistry.
Miriam Schulman:
100%, because you need to have good ideas, and our ability to be distracted is what gives us our best ideas. But it also means for stuff like this, someone needs to sit on us.
Angela Lauria:
Yes. So we’re basically book babysitters, maybe I’ll change our company name. We’ll just sit next to you while you write your book, so that it’s as painless as possible and as productive as possible. So if you’re going to do it, you’re going to make a fuck ton of money, and it’s going to take as little time as possible. That’s kind of our philosophy.
Miriam Schulman:
We’ve included links to all those places in the show notes, which you can find at schulmanart.com/166. And don’t forget to check out my free training, how to sell more art so you can escape the social media grind. To sign up for that, go to schulmanart.com/sellmoreart.
All right, Angela, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Angela Lauria:
Yes. My biggest advice, this is the hardest thing that I have to teach my authors over and over, and it’s my biggest wish for you, which is, to do less better. My philosophy, and this is where I see our authors have the most success, is our authors come to me and they’re doing workshops and one-on-one coaching and group coaching, and they’re running a Kickstarter, and they’re writing a book, and they’re starting a podcast, and they’re doing so many more things than any one human being can realistically do well, that they’re doing everything kind of crappy. And the result of that is they feel crappy all of the time.
Actually, we started talking about the prize never chases. One of the things that makes you the prize is being awesome and feeling awesome. And if you are going to be magnetizing people towards you, you can’t feel like crap about all your half done projects. My website’s not done. I bought ClickFunnels, but I’m not using it. I bought this class, but I’m not taking it. I’m not doing this. I’m not doing that. All that stuff builds up, and I think it creates a shield around you that I think of as like an invisibility cloak. People just can’t see you, because you’re cloaked in shame of all the things you’re not doing.
Miriam Schulman:
And my audience, by the way, that shows up by like, they think they need Etsy, Society6, Redbubble, their own website, Fine Art… they have all these kind of half baked things, like you said, there’s just too many things.
Angela Lauria:
And you really should do the craft fairs too. I mean, you got to get out there. People have to see you, and you should also have a better email list, really, if you think about it. And, also, a lot of people have podcast now, and you should-
Miriam Schulman:
So they’re shoulding all over themselves.
Angela Lauria:
Shoulding all over ourselves all day long. So my biggest advice is, one project a quarter, one marketing project a quarter. No more than one, but do it well and drop everything else. But most importantly, drop the shame around not doing it. So do less, better.
Miriam Schulman:
And also drop the shame about asking for help.
Angela Lauria:
Oh, God. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
There’s no badge of honor here. It’s taking me so long and so many tears, and there’s so many days, Angela, where I’ve said to my husband, “I made a huge mistake. I should just give back all the money.” I mean, now I’m like so far into it. It’s like I’m swimming across the English Channel. I can see the shore, I’m not stopping now. I’ll drown. But there were so many times I was like, “Oh my God, what the hell was I thinking?”
Angela Lauria:
I feel like I want to start a podcast so I can have you tell that story. Because people don’t know, it seems like it’s the answer, like, once I get chosen-
Miriam Schulman:
No, once I got chosen, then the imposter syndrome kicked in. I was like, “Well, they’re going to discover they made a huge mistake.” And then like, “Don’t they know I have learning disability. And why didn’t I remind myself that I spent all those hours in the learning center in college. I wasn’t good at writing papers. Why did I think I could write a book? And now I’m like writing a book.” When you get help, it doesn’t have to be so hard. You don’t have to make it so hard for yourself. So if you’re thinking about writing a book, Angela, is the bomb. She’s helped so many people write best selling books that I didn’t make that up, right? That’s true, actually.
Angela Lauria:
You did not. I think it’s about 1500 now. I stopped counting pre-COVID. I stopped counting when we hit 1111, June 11th, 2019, was our 1111th best seller. And so then I just decided I had permission to stop counting. So I think it’s like 1500, something like that.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s amazing. All right, so thank you so much for being with me here today.
Angela Lauria:
Thanks for having me. And you guys just keep doing what you’re doing. And I think for everybody, the struggle is real, but more than ever, art makes a difference, and you just can’t stop. If that message in your heart, you got to put it out there.
Miriam Schulman:
We have another great episode coming for you next week. Make sure you don’t miss it. Go to your podcast app, hit that plus sign, or it’s the follow button, and if you’re feeling extra generous, please leave me a review on Apple Podcast, because it helps other artists find the show. All right my friend, thank you so much for being with me here today. I’ll see you the same time, same place next week. Stay inspired.
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place Podcast. Connect with us on Facebook, at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @SchulmanArt, and of course on schulmanart.com.
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