231 A Glimpse into Indie Author Magazine with Chelle Honiker

Pencils&Lipstick podcast · May 20, 2024

Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome to Pencils and Lipstick. This is Kat Caldwell. It is May 20th, even as I record this because I lost the other recording. Anyway, this is episode 231 of

the podcast. And if you guys haven't been listening lately because of graduations and all the things you're not going to want to miss last week's, which was Claire Taylor and she's talking about sustaining your author career. That is, sustaining your author career is her latest book and we talk a lot about the changing publishing industry and what we can do going forward. Today I have with me Shell Honaker. She is the mastermind, well one of the masterminds behind Indie Author Magazine. I'm holding it up if you are on YouTube. I actually have like three, you know copies downstairs but because I like having them where I can just have my coffee and I can pick up the magazine and read it. Of course it comes digitally if you like to have your magazines digitally. I just know that I won't end up actually reading it if it's digital and so I like to get the glossy cover. I just also really like mail so I like to get it in the mail. But we're gonna talk about how she came up with the idea with a couple other people and then what the magazine and this group of people are doing. So, they're doing other things as well. And I will have all the links in the show notes below. The Indie Author Magazine and then Indie Author Training is something that we talked about as well. So, it is May 20th, as I said, and somehow time is just flying by. On a personal note, I got back from Cuba on the 11th. So, you know, whenever you say the numbers, you're like, oh, well, that was a long time ago. And then you look at the calendar and you're like, oh, that was like a week ago. You know, we had a got back just in time for Mother's Day, which was lovely to see my kids and, you to know that nothing had changed, basically, as as they are poking each other in the car, because, you know, they're siblings. And why not? You have to do that. So I got Bended Love

edited and before going to Cuba and then it came back and we just had a couple little things and it's completely done now it's been a week and it's now formatted and I'm just waiting for the book cover designer Mibble Art to send me the full formatted book cover which should happen today I believe and then all of the digital items will be uploaded. I will probably get the, you know, the prototype of the book, you know. So, I... I go back and forth on whether you should order prototypes. I mean, like, good thinking is that you should order prototypes and just make sure you haven't messed anything up. And to be fair, when I got the first prototype of Bended, Loyalty at the very back, like the last page, it had like the, you know, the page where you say what's next. It has the cover of Bended Love on there and it had the title like printed twice. And to be honest when I showed it to people, they didn't see it right away until I pointed it out. It's like a very minor mistake, not a big deal. Except that once you see it, you fix it, right? And so had I ordered the entire box of them, I would have groaned and moaned about it. But since I had only ordered the prototype, I was able to fix it and then order a box of books that, as far as I can tell, is as close to perfect as you can possibly get. Yay! My Achiever really likes that. So, now I just have to do that with Bended Love and we are on time to get it out in June. That is kind of, like, because my responsibility is so high and my strengths, that's, like, if I set a deadline, I really want to hit that deadline, right? Now my biggest problem is, as an author, is to still focus on the book launch, the wide book launch of these books in September and not like believe that it's over. So as much as I like the Kickstarter for giving me that sort of boost, I mean, I have a lot of the social media that I need. I a lot of the knowledge and the emails and the things like that that I can just reuse in

September but it's the emotional side and the mental side where you're like oh but I already did that and then you have to remind your brain you only did that for the Kickstarter you have to now do it for the wide campaign if you know you know right like if you've come out with a book before maybe you're on your second or third it's like that that shift of like you're not done yet you have to keep going and maybe you know depending on your personality or enneagram type your strengths you might be able to sort of compartmentalize those better so because I'm also an achiever and I've been talking about the historical romance a long time I am really determined to finish those and I think I told you guys I plotted out the third one before it's the first book that I have completely plotted so that is exciting but I wasn't able to finish the second one before Cuba because of time, honestly. And so I'm trying to finish that by the end of May. That's the goal as I look at my calendar. And then, you know, send out Kickstarter and then start the third book. And it just, you know, when you say it out loud, you're like, that's insane. But it's what I do. I don't know. And this is probably why I'm always infrustrated that I'm not getting enough done in air quotes because I pushed

myself to make a list that's almost impossible. So Cuba is a beautiful place, has beautiful people. My personal opinion is don't go there unless you can help them. It was a really interesting experience. I will be going again. It makes you very grateful for where you were born wherever you were born. If you weren't born in North Korea or Cuba or a couple other places in the world, man, you just already are able to do so much more. I found a woman there who does in translates books for fun for herself. And we were talking really lovely woman and I would love to be able to pay her to translate my books, but there is no way to pay because of the embargo, but not only because of the embargo, but also because they are not able to set up a digital bank account through, because their bank is nationalized. It's, it's, it's quite the mess. Right. And so it did give me a different perspective on book pirating. She was looking for books and she was trying to figure out a way to buy this book and she was saying, you know, a lot of times we end up pirating the books because they literally have no way digitally to pay for a download. Now, I've never been one to really scour the internet for my book. I'm sure it's out there. I'm sure it's pirated. You know, it just is what it is because people do what they do. And I've never bothered because I'm not in KU. KU is not going to shut me

down. I'm already wide. And honestly, way in the beginning, that was one of the reasons why I went wide because I didn't want to spend energy finding it. I figure if you're able to pay for it and you pirate it anyway, you're the type of person that I wouldn't be able convinced to buy my book anyway. So I technically am not losing your money. If you're unable to buy my book but you want to read it, I would rather you read it. And so I told her that. I said, you know, some authors are going to have a different opinion than I do. But I made it easy for her. I sent her my links. She got to download it. So I do know certain places that people can download the book from. So, but they just can't pay for it. It's very, very strange, right? So it does just give you a different, an eye -opening into situations, right? And so each one of us has to make that decision for ourselves. If we're going to spend the energy going to these pirate, you know, book sites and taking our book down. Is it fair? No, it's not. It is your work. People should pay for your work. Absolutely. I agree. I understand all that. So, you know, don't get mad at me. I'm just saying it made me think of things a little bit differently, even though I was already on the side of I'm not spending my energy going to find that person and Pulling down the website, right? So I Don't know. It's something to think about But as I come back there is that issue of you know, getting back into the rhythm of things Cleaning up email figuring some stuff out So I want to take a time in June. I will be doing an episode just on like how to

figure out that sort of before vacation after vacation because there's got to be a way to not feel that overwhelm as much, let's say. I'm sure we can't get it down to zero, but we could probably bring it down. And I think as writers, a lot of it is just self -expectation on, you know, oh, I had vacation, now I should be fine and I should jump straight into my work. And I had planned to take two days off, but that was not possible because the finalized editing needed to be done and all that. But again, that was kind of me. Even if I had taken those two days off, like the 13th and 14th, and then just worked the 15th, 16th, and 17th, there would still be things I hadn't gotten done, right? But I'm sure I would have gotten the Formatting done, but then I would have taken the days off But then it's that struggle of like do I deserve to take the days off when I was just gone So we're gonna talk about that Today though as I as I still struggle through that sort of episode when we're not going to do that

We are gonna go into the interview with shell Hanukkah. I think that you guys will love her story and love her insight into the publishing industry and I cannot stress enough how much I like this magazine. It has a lot of interesting items in it that you don't have to really go scourging the internet for and it's so lovely to sit down with a cup of tea and actually read a magazine. And this one is like, I think I got this one, it's already two months old, but you know 10 tips for revitalizing your backlist, launch strategies, everything you need to know about running a virtual launch party. It's these things that you can inform yourself about on your porch, even with a glass of wine. You know, you don't have to be on your computer, which is a nice rest for your eyes. And if you prefer it in digital, you can take your iPad out to your porch.

So I always love that. So instead of me gushing over Shell, let's just get straight into the interview. you. We're recording now. All right. Welcome back, everyone. We at episode 231, and I am with Shel Honaker. I met her in New Orleans a few weeks ago. So, hi, Shel. How are you doing? I'm fantastic. I think we're already talking and chatting, so we're going to go ahead and record this conversation. But one of the most fascinating things about you, I think, so far, because I don't know you that well yet, is that you created a magazine. magazine, which I think is like every girl from the 70s and 80s dream come true. Yeah. I agree. We know magazines in the mail. So I want to talk about that and a couple of other things that you're doing. But before we get into that, can you tell us a little bit about Shell?

Who are you? Where are you from? And we'll go from there. Yeah. So I was born in California and I married a Texan in the early 90s and they drag you back to the mother state. And then I had two daughters who are now adults and a granddaughter. So I am sort of Texas, but I do travel. I am a digital nomad, so I do travel quite a bit, which is fantastic. And that's actually, that's actually the Genesis of the magazine was I had gone to the 20 books

conference in Edinburgh and I'd met my now business partner, Alice Briggs. She came all the way from, we both lived in Texas. She was near Amarillo and I was in near Austin and we went all the way to Scotland to meet. To meet. Well, because Texas is like a shot. Oh, Texas is big. Yeah. You can fit three UKs in Texas. It's huge. So So we live, we live nine hours away from one another. Imagine that.

So yeah. So we didn't know each other, but we were all chatting in the group. We got to the 20 books conference and I've written about this and you can only describe it as magic and alchemy. There was magic that got us all there because it was not just Alice, but I met every person that I talked to and spent time with and started the magazine with and do business with and are my best friends in day in and day out. for the most part was at that conference in Edinburgh. And we had four days before the actual conference where we were in writing rooms and they were broken up by romance and sci -fi. And landed, well, let me start. I started in the romance room and those were hardcore sprinters. And I was deeply intimidated by Nora Phoenix and her timing and making sure that that room ran like a Swiss watch. I should imagine, a Dutch watch. A Dutch watch.

I'm a little, little, little, little, little, little. And she's like, so I said, I'm going to go to the nonfiction room, because that's really what I wrote. I was an aspiring fiction writer, but I had been writing nonfiction for a long time. I'd written travel textbooks because my background is in the travel industry. So I'd written travel textbooks and then I'd gone to a couple of conferences in Austin and said, you know, I think I can do this. I this is really cool. And the people are pretty fun. So went to Edinburgh, met all my friends, came to the 20 Books Las Vegas conference that first year, met even more of my friends. And then in March of 2020, I bet you can see where this is going. I went to London to the self -publishing show and my plan was to spend time in London, go over to Northern Ireland, spend some time with a friend there, come back to Scotland about four weeks later, and then come back to America.

That have been amazing. So fantastic, right? You know, it was such a great idea. It's such a great time to be a writer. This is so wonderful. My plan legitimately was I was going to find a bed and breakfast in Scotland and I was planning on buying it and then Having like a writer's retreat someplace where writers could come and hang out and write and finish their books So exciting that put it I've put a pin in that that is Back on the table. Yay back on the table

But of course got to London the whole world started to collapse Uh, and so I sort of put up a bat signal and said, Hey, I'm sort of stranded here. I, I, my, my airline went bankrupt. Uh, it was just a comedy of errors. Long story short, I landed in a little cottage on the Irish coastline in the town of Karnlock. And there was a young guy there who his grandmother had passed away a few years ago, and he had decided he was going to Airbnb his grandmother's cottage. So he had spent time and effort and energy getting ready to have the whole world shut down and he was afraid he was going to lose his granny's cottage. So I was in a, I was in a Facebook group for Airbnb because I lived in Austin and I used to Airbnb my space during festivals and things.

And I said, Hey, anybody want to help a stranded American? And he said, yes. His family took me in, welcomed me, loved me. They were so amazing. So I had this little three -bedroom cottage literally on the sea. I would walk outside in the yard and yell hello to Scotland every morning. It was phenomenal. And I had a good friend whose family was there, and they, you know, took me to Aldi and brought me food, and we toured around very safely. And I was there for four months. Oh, wow! Right, stranded. Whenever I say I was stranded in Ireland, I have to say it in air quotes. I get in trouble if I don't.

But thankfully, you didn't feel stranded, because some of you were far. I didn't. I felt safe. Your kids were grown. You have to get home. I didn't have to get home. I mean, if I had to, I could have, right? I could have. You could have started swimming. Well, I could have, except as time went on. Yeah, it got worse and worse. The embassies were closed. You couldn't find resources.

I was like, I don't know. think we forget. It was supposed to be two weeks. I was I can do this for two weeks. Exactly. And in fact, that's what my airline said. Like, it's going to pass. Just wait. We'll get you back. Don't worry about it. It'll be fine. And then I was calling my airline. I'm like, I'm sorry. We're bankrupt. I was like, OK, that's sure. OK. So you just that ticket. I eventually got it back.

But at that point, they were not flying anymore. There were no seats to be found. So I sort of threw up this bat signal and said, hey, does anybody want to write with me? I'm by myself, I'm kind of bored. So we started sprinting twice a day. And there were friends in England, Scotland, Kuwait, Germany, Albania, Cyprus, the States. I mean, all over the world.

We - Are these people that you had met in at the 20 books convention and you just sort of kept yeah, you're a good connector right you're like have you love you're a bit of a relationship person. Well, I feel like I am I feel like I just I feel like it's all been kismet right place right time. I that's that's the magic was getting us all in the room together and the alchemy is what we did with it. once we got into the room, we were all at that point. I mean, it's a joke about it. We were kind of trauma bonding. Because none of us had any idea what the future was going to hold. And it was scary. So we were talking for like four to six hours a day about our businesses and writing and sharing stories, but also sharing life about what was going on outside our window. So So, you know, our friends in Germany were saying, yeah, they've got drones shooing us back into our houses. We're not allowed to leave. We had folks that were saying, yeah, I need a pass to be able to go. And if I leave this block, they're going to arrest me. I mean, they, it was legitimately seeing how each of the different countries responded to things and, and sort of, you know, using resources for different things to, to talk and share.

It's nice. Yeah, it's nice to have that counseling because I think we also forget how stressful and traumatizing. I mean, I lived in Europe for 10 years, so I know when I found myself in Texas and I was like, thank God I'm not in Europe. Because all my friends were in giant high -rise apartments And regardless of how you feel about whatever, what, and any, like, you're still stuck with kids usually, or your partner, or alone, and dog, and your job, and, and, and in this little tiny space. So it doesn't, you know, it's still traumatizing, like, also, it was the uncertainty of everything that was happening. And so for the worst, right. And so there were those of us that are, you know, kind of the sandwich generation. We older parents and we were like freaking out about parents and our grandparents. And then my daughter was at St. Edward's university and graduated in the middle of the pandemic. They closed her dorm down. She had nowhere to live and I was gone in Ireland. So she went back to my condo. She packed everything up, put all of my stuff into a pod. And then she came and lived with her sister for, you and, you know, Madeline all but at least she could travel because there are some countries that you couldn't you couldn't really wasn't supposed to. She couldn't get movers like she had to move she and her boyfriend sort of stealthily moved everything into a pod. And yeah, like sneaking out in the middle of the night, you know, it was crazy. So I gave up my condo in Austin. And when I came back, I moved closer to both of my daughters a little bit South. I'm in the Hill country.

And then my daughter, my older daughter just gotten married in 2019 and was going to go have her honeymoon was like, all right, no honeymoon. I guess I'll have a baby instead. So they just, you know. I'm surprised there aren't more COVID babies. honestly. I thought there would have been a baby boo. I mean, yeah, what else are you gonna do? I don't know. I'm surprised not more babies named Covidia. Or Anita, you know, a little homage to the to the name. Yeah, I we're gonna see an influx of weirdness. I'm sure there's actually a guy on fashion runway. My daughter was into it the year before COVID. So the season before COVID, who's from somewhere in the East and his name is COVID but with a K it's so weird after COVID to listen to Fashion Runner it's like traumatizing yeah I bet they say COVID you're like stop you're like jumping like everyone hates his name now sure okay like you know you have to change your name at this point I would think so like naming your baby Hitler now it's like you know you can't do that

Super, super awful. Poor guy. So what made you go to 20 books? I think now that we're kind of, I mean, it's 2024. I think we're pretty much out, right? Of the pandemic. Yeah. I think we're all getting back to life as usual. And don't know about you, but the future of publishing was the first one I had. No, I had been to last year's self -publishing show. So that was my first one. So this was my second one. I mean, it's so nice to get out,

but what made you start going to, to book conferences? So the first one that I went to was one that, um, Johnny Truant and Sean Platt did in Austin called the smarter artists summit. And that was the first time that I had been around people that were defining success on their own terms and had sort of captured. So I published my first book in 2006 through Lulu, by the way, which I thought was hilarious. And so I had sort of dabbled both with trad and with Indy and had seen, you know, Facebook groups and kaleidoscopes and keyboards and things. And so I, I always had a, I always had fiction as a kind of a backup plan, I always thought I will, I would really like to write fiction. And I done NaNoWriMo several years and one only because at the end of NaNoWriMo on day like 28, I turn them all into vampires and finish the story and then throw it in a drawer. Terrible, terrible, terrible stories.

But I thought, you know, at some point that would be a cool third career, right? I'd done the first career where I did Hustle Life and I was the director of IT and training for large travel agencies. And then I did my second career which is I started my own business. And I thought a third career would be, I'm a digital nomad, I get to write books and I get to make decent money and I'm seeing other people that are making decent money doing it. I don't, I don't need a million dollars. I just want enough to be free and to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it.

And so I went to the Smarter Artist Conference and the benefit of being at that conference wasn't the education. It was the people in the room. It was the wisdom in the room. It was meeting Michael Anderle and meeting Craig Martel and meeting Honoré Porter and meeting Jamie Albright and Mary Mayweather and like I can name 30 other people who are now sort of titans in the industry that have gone on to have longevity in their careers but also we were all just sort of figuring it out together and so that was the benefit of it is yes the programming was great although I have to say I knew most of it because I'd come from the marketing side of things or I'd come from other, I think we all bring a certain skill set from other industries in our life experience into something. So sometimes we're great with craft but not great with marketing. In this case, I'm great with marketing and not great with craft.

So yeah, so that was the benefit to me was that. So did you just like see that benefit and then one more? I saw that benefit tremendously And then I got connected with Craig and was talking to him about he wanted to do a conference in Las Vegas and my travel background. This before he started? Yeah, I saw the light bulb go on in the back of the room. It went over his head because we were all jammed into this. And this is no slam to Johnny or Sean because they've talked about how terrible that conference in particular was. We were in theater -style seating, 10 with the aisle and then 10. there were like 200 of us in a, in a not even a ballroom, like a meeting room at the Hyatt or Hilton, one of the, you know, like a hotel. And we were crammed in there like sardines. And so it was terrible. It was a terrible experience for all of us. And Craig was in the back going,

I can do this, you know, and so that was, he launched 20 books after that. And then, and then London and then Bali and thing. Couldn't it? I know. Right. Yeah. I know. He's really the person that I think is synthesized so much of what we've learned and has furthered the industry so much with his generosity of spirit and just having, you know, this brain trust of people that he surrounded himself with. And now of course, you know, Joe Solari is taken over and the contracts will continue under AuthorNation. So he bought the contracts from Craig. So, and Joe asked me to be the Director of Programming. So I'm thrilled to be the Director of Programming for AuthorNation. And - So your fifth career for, yeah, what did we count? No, this is my fifth career. I'm literally not allowed to buy any more domain names or start any more businesses. Alice will kill me dead if I - You're saying worse.

So you go to these conferences and you see the benefit of meeting people, but I'm sure when you went to Edinburgh, you didn't say like, I'm going to meet people and I'm going to start a magazine in the middle of COVID. No, no. So what happened was we were, we were writing together and we're still writing together to five years, like five years later, we still write together every single day. There's groups of us that all, you know, write together, hang out together. Hysterically enough, we just this week planned a little mini reunion, a little mini break back in Scotland where we all, most of us sort of met. We're doing an adult summer camp for all of us.

Yeah. That's wonderful. Seriously. Archery, axe throwing, like the whole nine. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. You guys sound like a fun group. Just, you know. We kind of fun. We out of each other's way when there's axes. So that's, I mean, that's literally what happened was, so Marian Hermanson gave us the nickname The Koronitas. Nice. I it's tongue in cheek, but with stuff.

So you know, there's some of us that have tattoos on our shoulder of The Koronitas. We made a logo because Alice Briggs is our creative director, so she did a logo for The Koronitas. So we have tattoos on our shoulder because The Koronitas always have our back. Nice. Yeah, so now we're all in each other's lives forever. We want to buy a castle together. We've talked about our retirement plan. I like this plan too. We're going to be golden girls, you know, figure it out. But that's how it started was we were all sharing tools and tips and tricks and courses and resources and things. So we started a spreadsheet and when that spreadsheet hit 200 lines, we're like, alright, my background is tech. I said, I'll build a website. So we built IndieAuthorTools .com, which is sort of like, I don't know, our love letter to the industry where people can go and just find whatever. We have a list of resources there. It's crowdsourced. And so anybody can submit it and it's there. And then Alice, who has a background in design and creative design, and my background is marketing and travel,

and I had run a travel magazine before. Each of us independently were having this idea of starting a magazine to have more context around the conversations. And the other thing is in some of the Facebook groups, like the 20 Books Facebook group, you weren't allowed to talk craft. And I mean, mad respect, like it's your playground, your rules, right? We'll respect whatever.

But we said, well, we wanna talk about craft. How can we talk about craft? So we just built our own little playground. And that's what happened is the first 22 of us got together and decided we were going to put together a magazine so that we could share resources and talk about the things and research the things. And so that 22 went to 44, went to 88 writers. There's 88 writers. 88 writers that write for Indie Author Magazine. It is all, you know, organic.

It's a side hustle for everybody. We have a fantastic editor in chief, Nicole Schroeder, who edits things with precision and brilliance. those people. Yeah, we do. She's I mean, she's a journalism major. So she takes my hyperbole and she wrangles it. So when I say this is the best thing ever, she'll go No, it is a thing. Thing. And now let's describe the things that we're talking about. And when you when you say 88 writers, like what, what kind of writers? So I think when people think indie writer, they think like novelist, but what kind of writers bring, oh, let me show everyone who's on YouTube. So this is, it's such a good, I mean, it's a glossy magazine. It is, it's beautiful.

I have several questions, but how about the writers, first of all, when you say writers, cause you know, your editor is a journalist, journalism degree, what other kinds of things do people bring to the table? So, most of them are novelists, right? And so, but we give them a creative brief so that they're writing to an editorial standard of a magazine. So, they're not blog posts, they're actual magazine articles. And have always said that we would rather have the perspective and the voice of people rather than the skill set. We can teach people a skill set to write a magazine article, but we can't teach creativity, We can't teach enthusiasm. We teach passion. We teach perspective from the

inside. So the inside perspective is what we care about. People, everybody that writes for us really is in the inside of the industry. So they're all working in the authors. Now some are nonfiction, some are fiction, some are lit RPG, some are, you know, I don't know. I don't know what people write sometimes. I don't want to know what people write. I guess they have different pen names, right? So we might not ever know, but yeah, some of them have secret pen names and I, yeah, that's just not a rabbit hole. I want to go down. I'm, I'm, I'm perfectly fine not knowing. I probably read their weird stuff, but I don't want to know that they wrote it. Hence secret pen name, right? So, uh, what we do is we put out calls for writers twice a year and then people just kind of show up and we have folks that have written for specific issues. So for example last year we did an AI issue dedicated to AI and we invited Kevin McLaughlin to come and be a contributing editor to be sure that we were editing it to a standard and he could you know fact check and vet things and help us with resources. is we did the future publishing issue and we had Russell Nolte and Monica Lionel that came in and were contributing editors for that and contributed their archetype perspectives and all of their wisdom. So we really look for trends that are happening in the industry and then we try and expand on them and start to have conversations about them. And so you know that's the magazine we publish the exact same way indie authors publish every month with a couple of exceptions. So we publish, our print is printed on demand through Lulu, our eBooks are done through KDP and through Draft2Digital. So we're wide. We also publish on two apps. We have an app in the iOS store and an app in Google Play. So you can download, yeah. And then we have full color versions of the magazine in our apps. And then we also have audio versions of every one of our articles. And we have a podcast compilation of all the articles. So you guys have super ambitious. Yeah. And it's how old?

It's three, it'll be three in May. And, and I really want to slap the person that decided to do this monthly. It's me. Hi, I'm the problem. Yeah. But now, you know, it was a startup. So we were building a business and we were building a publication at the same time. And I really have to give credit to our first first two contributing editors that really launched us was Robin Sardi and Erica Everest. And they came in and tag teamed and they took care of all of the content for us in those first, you know, five or six months until we kind of got off the ground so that Alice could work on the creative part and I could work on the business part. And then they both cycled off to go write books, which is really how we want it to work. We want everybody to keep writing their books. Like I don't ever want anybody to work full -time

for the magazine ever, ever. I want everybody to be writing their books. And so, so they cycled off to go do their stuff. And, you know, Robin's working with Nick Thacker and Erica's writing books on MailerLite and tons of stuff and she's teaching and she has a conference in Ireland that she's running. So, you know, we are all springboarding into different things and different avenues, which is fantastic for us. we love to see that. Right, which also helps you guys stay like in the know. Yeah, because this is an industry that changes constantly. It does. It does. And we've been really, really excited to have, you know, really strong partnerships like with Ally and Orna and her team. They contribute an article to our magazine every month, we contribute articles to them. So we are able to, you know, exchange information and have that strong relationship. We have a great relationship, obviously with AuthorNation. We talk a lot about them. We have a great relationship with self -publishing formula and, you know, they were, they were our first advertiser for quite a while. They were right there, you know, helping us build the business. So we've been there. Yeah. I mean, this is probably one of the most generous industries you can, you can imagine. We're, We're just, yeah, we're blessed for that. And course, Nink and it's just, it's a fantastic collaboration between all of us. I mean, we're so young, it's such a young industry that it's kind of cool that we're all supporting one another, even though technically some of us are competitors, but really it's more like co -opetition rather than competition. Yeah, that's true. I don't think many other artistic endeavor and like and you know much less like other other industries are as collaborative or want to see the success of others as much as our industry. I we really do believe like the more books there are the more people are going to read the more books they're going to want like I think that sort of like follows us. I've never been to a conference where like someone thinks they're better than someone else, you know what I mean? Even though like, I will be like, Oh, you're just like so far ahead of me. That's not how they act at all.

And it's, it's really inspiring. I think what also people that get it early on that you're not competing to sell a widget you're competing with really a marketplace you're competing with others attention. And so if you think of your product as a satisfied customer, customer, and you can recommend other people that will help you keep that satisfied customer. So for example, if I write urban fantasy, it's not one sale, right? I'm not competing to sell that one book, that one person, that one satisfied reader is going to read multiple urban fantasies. And so if I can collaborate with other people, then we can keep that satisfied customer in in our ecosystem and sell to them over and over again, which is completely different than other sales engines, right? So other sales engines look at things like a funnel and you have a top of funnel and at the very end you have a sale and you have to move people through this. But our industry, you are working more with the flywheel.

And so you have a contact point and then a sale and then a contact point and then a sale and then a contact point and then a sale. And those contact points might not be you necessarily touching it might be other authors, but you keep that customer in that cycle of sales and satisfaction rather than trying to get them to the zero sum game of, of a book of selling a widget widget. We sell it. You that. Yeah. Yeah. We don't, we don't sell widgets, right? We don't sell buttons or, or you know, widgets. We sell experiences. We sell dreams. Yeah, things that people are going to want over and over again. Over and over again. Over and over again. And it's limitless. And that's also why I'm not threatened by generative AI. I think the humanity of generative AI cannot, I mean, humanity cannot be replicated. And your connection with the customer cannot be replicated. Right. So, you know, it takes a little more work on our part to be sure that we have that connection with our customer because we can't just leave it to retailers and we can't just leave it to the single sales transaction. You do have to have a connection with.

You but that's kind of fun too, right? Like it can be a lot of hard work, especially if you don't know it, but like doing things like getting, I mean, just this, this copy alone, I've looked at like several times because, because people are sharing constantly, right? If I'm not a huge marketing expert, or I don't know, you know, graphics or book launching or whatever, I can constantly go out and find that information, right? Just that in this industry, people are willing to share and they are. And and and I think to one of the great things about it is and this is sort of why we started the magazine was because you can have competing theories and competing thoughts of things. And so, for example, uh, we've always featured people that talk about, um, ads, uh, and, and we have, you know, Mal Cooper who talks about Facebook ads, but then we also have other people that talk about Facebook ads. Right. And so there's no one way to get there and no one thing that fits, it's not going to fit your genre. Some things aren't going to fit your budget. Some things aren't going to fit your tech stack or your skill set, or there's all kinds of factors that go into that. And so we wanted to create an agnostic publication. And now we've created agnostic, an agnostic training platform, all of those live side by side, and they they're side by side so

that people can pick and choose what works for them and discuss what works for them and think about what works for them and try things and fail fast. Yeah, there's all there's all kinds of ways to do that. So So I really love that idea because I think that it's always difficult to in a lot of industries. So like in 2018, I decided to read two business books a month because I realized I had published my books and I hadn't a clue what I was doing. It was really difficult for me at the time with little kids to find the business in the creative sense. So I went looking and that's partly why I started the podcast because I wanted people to tell me what are you doing in a creative business, right? Actually, I forgot where I'm going to go with this. I have that effect on you, totally sucks the oxygen out of the room. Okay. Being agnostic, agnostic. Because what I have found is, you know, everything, like you said, everything like is a stepping stone towards something else. And I found is like, yes, people have some very strong ideas about what worked for them. But so many times, it's not what's going to work for, let's say, 80 to 90 % of the people out there. So you have to keep this sort of open mind to it's not that you're bad at marketing, it's that you haven't found the way that works for you, you know, and I got to go find someone else. And there's not just one way to do it. And there's not just one software. And, and

we kind of have to accept that. So I love that you guys are like that, where it's like, well, we think it's great what males doing, and we think it's great what other people are doing. But they're not, they're not like the one person in the world. Right? And to have a weight to carry. And, and I, and I love the fact that that she's humble about that. And now will be the first person to say, look, I'm going to give you the best information that I've got, but I don't know your circumstances or what you're doing. And so, you know, you can trust what I'm saying factually, but that doesn't mean an application that that's going to be the best solution for you. And I love that, you know, again, in this industry, we're generous, but a lot of people are really humble about it. Let's

see what works. Let's see how that works for you and keep going. The other part that's so, you know, that's kind of the fly in the ointment in a lot of ways is what worked two years ago doesn't work today in a lot of ways. And what worked six years ago when we were in the, you know, the gold rush, we talk about the gold rush days a lot where you could just throw a book in there and, you know, people snap it up. That's gone. That's gone too. And that, and I think there is some level of generative AI that's going to impact that for a period of time. I don't think that that's going to stay. We've had things that have, you know, pendulums have swung back and forth. I think people are drawn to good work and without, you know, without human intervention, just a spit out book is not good work. We've always had that. we've always had people that have done book farms and ghost writing farms and those kinds of things. And the market quickly corrects itself. And those things, you know, go away. Yeah, I always tell people like, well, good luck to them selling it. Because in the end, sure, throw a book together with GPT, do it. Now go try to make some money out of it. I mean, make money, people care about it, try and make I mean, it's not going to change people's hearts or minds or give them new ideas or make them feel something like it might be. I mean, I have seen generative AI works with human intervention that are quite good. But but it takes the human part to prompt it and finesse it and edit it into shape. It is hard work. And

so yes, you can spit out a book, but it's not going to be a great book. And yes, it might, you know, game the system for a And always had things that game the system, those things are going to, and those things are quickly caught and we move on. So something new will come. So as well, I'm not worried about it. I think you got to do what you can do with let, let me say, I think wasting your time being very upset about something that's already a thing seems to be like a waste of time. Like it's just a waste of energy. Yeah, I agree with you. There's a very vocal minority out there that's really, really upset about it. And believe me, I do have concerns about some ethics and I do have concerns about the way things were handled. But at this point, it's all over but the shouting, right? You gotta, it's gonna go through the court system and until the courts decide some of this stuff, there's nothing we can do about it. There's, you can sign petitions and protest all you want and you should, right? Follow your conscience and do the thing that you feel is your call to do. But at this point, you know, calling people a thief because they're using it or telling people that they're unethical or, I I've seen the most hyperbolic statements like you're going to burn in hell. I'm like, oh, okay. That, whoa. Somebody crowned you God. Okay. Well, when we did the AI issue, I told Alice, I said, listen, I said, we're going to do it with factual evidence. We're doing it again from the agnostic journalistic perspective. We are putting the information out there. We are neither saying use it or don't use it.

We're just gonna give you the information. And I told Alice, I said, look, we might have to fake our deaths and go work at Waffle House in Florida. Like that might be the thing. We might be drum, you know, run out of town for this issue. Had nine people canceled their subscriptions very vocally. We had 300 new subscriptions. So that tells me, that's, I mean, that's, that's science. That's why, that's why I'm saying this is, this, this reminds me of several things. Like you told the story about, you know, Y2K, people really freaked out. Like you've sort of lived through different, like, because you're in tech, you know, different tech things. Right. But on the writer's point of view, a friend of mine, Emma Dusty said, you know what? I was a snob about Kindle because everyone around me, what I was seeing was telling me Kindle's not a thing. That's not a real publishing that's not she goes. I am not going to take a stance I'm not gonna say yes or no. I'm gonna use it how I need to use it And I'm not gonna miss the boat this time

Like that's just not what I'm gonna do and I think like like it's a bit for anyone so agitated by AI It really it like I don't know. I think you're becoming the minority. Yes There are there are ethics or ethics about everything like quite frankly somebody could be taking your book translating it into a different language that you don't, that you don't speak or read and selling it. I mean, that could be happening. There's no way you're going to stop that. There's book farms in other countries. There's pirating. There's like, there's so many things I agree with. There's so many things. I think at the end of the day, you need to follow whatever conscience you have and whatever guidance and whatever guardrails you have for you and your business. and not worry about what somebody else is doing in their business, right? If someone else is choosing to do it, then just like you wouldn't want someone to judge you for the way that you run your business, don't judge other people. You can make choices, like you can choose. I don't want AI artwork. I don't want AI in my editing process. Sure, that is your personal choice. Follow your bliss. I support that 100%.

But if someone's going to, you know, go on another Facebook post and have a little temper tantrum and stamp their little online feet to be mad about it. To someone else feel bad because I told someone else to like, listen, translations are very expensive. I've worked as a translator before. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of brainpower. And it's slow going because of that. And then there are also people like audiobooks are very expensive. And when you're first starting out, or you might be in a niche that doesn't make that much money and writing is more of a passion for you to, to stamp my foot and say, I don't want to do an AI audio book. I'm basically telling anyone visually impaired, well, too bad for you. Yeah. Like, so I don't want to do that. And I, and I say, do you think translators aren't using AI? because they definitely are because of course they're not going to hand it back to you only AI but it takes a takes like a lot of the grunt work away because it's not fun it's like it's not a super fun job I will say that from experience but if you know if you can take

away the grunt work and then just go back and really you know finesse it and and do what you need to do as that human element, you're going to get more books translated and prices are going to go down because they can do more work faster. People aren't going to burn out. And visually impaired people also can get their audiobooks. There is a lot of up to it that we tend to not talk about. Well, I think there's also, again, coming back to market corrections,

there's also a segment of people I listen to at least four hours of audio books every single day. It's just baked into my DNA. I absolutely love audio books. If I'm listening to a fiction, I will listen to an AI generated because I don't I'm not listening to it for enjoyment. I'm listening to it for consumption and listening to it absorb the information and so I don't care. I don't care. But if I'm listening to something for enjoyment, I want the full performance level. And, and I'm grateful that there's an avenue for people to to continue to have that and to have that performance level and to use humans to do that. What I also

think is when we first came out with a magazine, one of our core values was accessibility. And so we built our website so that our neuro spicy friends, neuro divergent friends could read it or consume it or listen to it, however they wanted to. And they were, all of them, we have AI generated audio at the top of every article. We've had it on there for three years. We didn't set out to put anybody out of business. No one was ever going to have that job. It's not something we could afford. It's never been something we could afford. It's never something we could afford now, right?

For us, it is purely a way for us to address and to be sure that a segment of our fandom, our readership, is served. Period. It's not a question between human or AI, it's a question between AI or nothing. Or nothing, because as a mother of a dyslexic daughter, all the AI generated audio is a blessing. Yeah. And again, no one's going to go and take the job for the textbook reading, because all of the awesome audiobook readers don't want that job. So, I guess, do with that what you will, listeners. I guess you guys know what we think about it. We just got on a soapbox. 50 down now. Better than like being mad at each other. No, that's not how it's... Anyway, I'm over being mad about people's opinions. I'm just, whatever. It is whatever. I want people to have good information. I just want people to have great information. That's what I care about because I feel like a lot of it is fear -based and fear can only be combated with great information. So that's my mission. I do think though, like using ChatGPT is something great for all of the work that I don't want to do, the sales pages. And you did a presentation on how you use it. And you guys started something called Indie Author Training, which I'm very excited about because it's all this tech stuff that I grew up in the age of computers coming up, but I don't have that tech background like you do. I'm glad that somebody is willing to train a middle -aged woman how to use all this stuff. Um, you know, some of the stuff I have figured out, but let's be honest, like some people start writing when they're retired and you go, Oh, I have to learn how to do a mailing list server. And have to learn a website and all this.

And it's used to be that you had to Google it and then be like, well, I don't know, whatever is sponsored, I guess. I know. So you've kind of put this other, you know, thing together. So talk to us a little bit about what that is, because it's in its baby stages, but it's already growing. It's in it, isn't it? It is in its baby stage. So one of the things, of course, because I'm a conference junkie and an education, you know, zealot. A couple years ago, we did a author tech summit. And because we saw so many people were talking about craft or how to write or how to format, but we weren't talking about the tech specifically about the tech. And so I was like, Okay, let's talk about the tech. I was the girl that knew how to fix the printer. So that's kind of how I fell into being a tech guru or whatever. And so just hitting it, right? Yeah, you just like, Oh, just tap it. It's fine. Yeah, I mean, I was the remote for my parents growing up. Remember when we had to walk up and change the channel for our parents? I'm Gen X, man. I remember that. Worse, where is the remote? It's not working. Go change. Or you had rabbit ears or you had to bang on the side of it to

get the signal. You know, this generation doesn't know what they're missing. They don't know. You guys don't know. The struggle. You don't know how we had to drink out of the faucet outside. Come on. But so, so we had the magazine, we ran the tech summit, we thought, you know, let's run it and if we get like 100 people, great, like that was great. And it ran over three days and we had 21 sessions. we had 700 people sign up overnight. It just, it me, honestly. Hey, here's a problem that doesn't have a solution yet. So we kind of stood on it for a while because we really wanted to do it right. And my, you know, most immediate background was as a learning management administrator and an instructional designer for some biotech companies. And so we built a learning management system so it delivers courses, but we also again wanted to come back to the community aspect of it. Like, how do we give context to this? You can have a class, but if you can't ask somebody, all right, I understand now how to do my DKIM record for MailerLite. But can somebody walk me through the step because this screen doesn't look like I expect it to.

So we created the courses, but then we also created a community where you can come and ask those questions that, you know, are dumb questions again and finger quotes. Facebook will like slam you. Yeah, for sure. And also, my personal opinion is you don't build on rented land, right? I say this all the time. And what I mean by that is, I don't want to build group in meta in Facebook or somewhere else that is subject to the whim of somebody else to shut it down or limit it or have to advertise to it or now turn around and I have to pay for it. But have some folks that are in the UK and the EU, they have to pay to have their information kept private. It's just a new reality that everything is. Oh my I didn't realize that. Yeah. So we've got, we have a ton of, we have a ton of people in Germany that have said, I'm not paying $10 a month to not have my information sold. Yeah. I don't blame them. I pay that either.

So they've left. Right. And so again, you know, and we see this trend happening more and more. We've seen Wide for the Win, the group, they've moved to Circles. We've seen AuthorNation that has moved to their own group. And we've seen Ally move to their own group. So there's a lot of us that are saying we have communities. We don't want those communities to be beholden to an algorithm or to somebody else. We're going to own our own community and our own tech stack. And so that was that was the big kind of impetus for us was to have a space where we could have conversations and not worry about people not seeing those conversations and having a terrible search feature to find those conversations. And, you know, going on Facebook and going, all right, I'm a member of 27 groups, which one was talking about this? Yes, I'm so excited for the forum. Like, I mean, you and I remember forums, Oh man, I spent like all my days in it. We built a forum. There are forums there. I mean, it's forums plus, plus, plus emojis. Hey, I like the best of all of it. It looks like Facebook. I mean, it looks like a Facebook interface, so it's comfortable and people can use it, but it's also functional. And it's also, it's not designed to be one more thing. It is designed to be there when you need it, right?

So, but, you know, we talk a lot about wellness and we talk about getting up from your desk and we talk about checking in and we talk about community and how you can stay connected and find your tribe. We also talk a lot about this concept that I, that I will be doing a bunch of webinars on called shine theory, which is when one of us shines, we all shine. There's a fantastic book that two amazing women wrote and has been fundamental in us kind of synthesizing our groups and really helping one another kind of get farther. If you want to go far, go alone. If you want to go, I mean, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And so, so those are the kinds of conversations that we're going to have over on IndieAuthorTraining .com and we have webinars. And then here's the other part. These are not courses that I'm teaching, although I love to teach. You can't shut me up for the most part. I mean, that's my background. But we created it to be a marketplace, an Etsy -like marketplace, where all kinds of people could teach. So Johnson is coming over, and she's bringing her courses on romance tropes, and she's bringing courses on, yeah, she's bringing courses on marketing and, you know, how to create things. And then David Vergoots is teaching horror writing. It's like, oh, cool, that's amazing. You know, we've talked to tons and tons and tons of course creators and said, just put stuff in there. Ricardo Fayette from Readsy is putting a course in there and Stu Grant is putting a course in on how to build a website with Wix. Like, I don't know Wix, but sure. So again, it's a collective, right? We're building a marketplace where everybody can have their courses in there. Some will be free, some will be paid, but they'll all be - So if like, Janet Margo is going to do a course on Amazon ads. And so if someone else wants to do a course on Amazon ads, great. And then we'll have the conversations in the groups so people can say, you know, which one do you think is going to work for me because of these factors?

It's not that one course is better than another course. It's which course is the right fit. Great. Particular. And so you'll have a whole marketplace that you can come and talk about it before you buy a course and then go to that course with people and with the instructor and you know we're there to support as the magazine to give context and point back to some articles that we have and more information so it's a full ecosystem as opposed to just like teachable or thinkific which are great they're great products but they're not so separate like you have to know so how do people become part of this so they can go to indie author training calm and just click on the little button that says, sign up, it's free to sign up. And you can come and hang out and talk about the talk about everything that's going on in the groups. And then you'll see more courses and more webinars. We've already done webinars on direct sales. And we've done webinars on AI ethical AI is coming up. We've we've got all kinds of different webinars that are coming. Yeah, you guys have one on like, mindset and just physical. I forget what you guys called it. But that was nice, too. Because it's it. We got to be reminded of that, right? Like, you have to stand you have to be like, there's a lot of burnout in the indie author world. But I think mostly because we forget that we are human body as well. We get so into our stories that we're like, we created, we created wellness, health and wellness has been a section in the magazine from the jump from day

one, because we felt like, in order to have a sustainable career, even if you write one book, right, you still have to take care of your body and you still have to take care of your mind. A lot of writing is solo endeavors, and it's very lonely. So how do you get connected? How can you use tech to remind yourself to get up from your desk? How do you stand up? So we did time management. We did thinking outside the box. We're very passionate about being a collective of ideas. These are not ideas that I come up with. These are ideas that we have conversations about, so everybody can participate. We want to hear the wisdom of the room. Yes. Yes. I love that. I've always, I think I found you guys a little bit, I think, I feel like it was in the beginning because I think I've been reading for a while. When Tammy Labreck, I was like the third up, the third one that I had, I was so excited. Yeah. Tammy Labreck was one of the people that I met at that Smarter Artists Conference in 2017 or 2018.

Yeah, and like you look around you go, oh, there's there's there's there. I mean, it's just well and how fun to see people Continuing like people that you've met they've continued. They've made it through the pandemic there, you know finding their success in there They're maybe they're not exactly where they were in 2018, but they're like finding their niche, right? And then that's got to be exciting. It is exciting. It's exciting to see where everybody's going and it's also exciting to know that the options are limitless. It's just phenomenal where we're going. And changing gears for a second to AuthorNation, I've gotten 400 submissions for people to speak at AuthorNation. So we really do, and we only have a hundred spots. So I'm going to break a lot of hearts. My committee and I are going to break a lot of hearts, but I'm really excited to see such out of the box thinking for some folks. it's not the same stuff over and over again, like Facebook ads, like those are important, but we've talked about that for five years. So at this point, we need to be having different conversations or more conversations, and we need to be inclusive of different communities that haven't been represented before. There's, there's just such a great opportunity. And, and I'm so excited that Joe Solari has seen this and said, yeah, do it like, yeah, let's do whatever we can do he's got such out -of -the -box thinking from the jump and it's it's exciting to me to to like his job to this he says his job is to say yes so if I come to him I go hey what's your stance on fire like can we like I'll just go okay yes but uh let's talk about the insurance that has to come with that well I love um your your stance also like Jonathan and Yen is like, people aren't just romance writers or thriller writers. And I've actually talked to a couple, I won't say them, a couple organizations. I'm not gonna say that name out loud. Whereas like, hey, there are other genres. Like when are you guys gonna kind of break out

of just these six genres? And only be talking about novelists as writers is not really inclusive at all of what's going on in the world. Like and lit RPG and gaming and I mean... Descriptions, newsletters, Patreon, like there's Kickstarters. Like there's so many ways. I almost wish that we hadn't named it Indie Author Magazine. I almost wish we had figured out how to name it Indie Storyteller Magazine because at the heart of what we do, we're all storytellers. And we did, and we have tried to reinforce this, that indie is not self -published. Indie is a spirit of taking charge of your career. That has been from the jump. Like that's been, you could be trad or hybrid

or self -published, I don't care. You could be a novelist or produce audio books or fire aerialists, but telling a story. Like there are so many ways to entertain with the storytelling method. You could be doing like Jonathan does in producing film, like amazing, amazing high quality stuff. He and his wife are just the most humble and sweet and they deserve all the success in the world. And I was so excited to put him on the cover, especially because I love to tell the stories of people that inspire other people. And that's the only criteria for being on the cover is I want you to have a story where someone can see themselves in you. So we've had people that are not even authors. We've had editors, we've had a lit RPG. We've had couples because they do things together. Danielle and Dakota Kraut, they do it together. So they're on the cover together. Mal and Jill Cooper are a package deal. They were on the cover together. So so there's no success definition or sales threshold. That's absolutely the antithesis of what we are looking for. we want to see inspiring stories of people that have defined success on their own terms. Yes, yes. And I love it too, where like, you might be a storyteller, but maybe it's not novels, just like maybe it is movies, maybe it is screenplays, maybe it is whatever. So I just, I love how, how broad really you guys go, you know, like agnostic again, I think that's just a really great term. Yeah, it's it's a drinking game around here. We're usually drunk if we start to say it that much. So if they want to join your, your

trainings and all that, they're going to go to indie author training .com. And I'll have the links in the show notes. And then it's really easy to get the magazine. It's in the author magazine .com. It is. Yeah. And if you go, you can get the first issue for free. So we would love for you to read it. It's we it comes in an EPUB, which is the article so you can sideload it onto your e -reader you can highlight it like we have people that are in it for the articles like read it for the articles and then we have the beautiful full color pdf and you can read it with all the color that alice intended for it to be seen i'm not really like my paper one i used to be you know like when i was a kid i was like i want mademoiselle and all that and my mom was like no those will make you not like your body so i never got the magazine so now i'm like this is mine We deserve it. We deserve this magazine. We deserve it. We're a legitimate, we're a legitimate force in publishing. And so again, Indy is a spirit. It doesn't mean that we're vanity press or relegated to the, nobody puts baby in a corner anymore. Thank you, Shel, so much for coming on. I feel like we could probably talk forever, but I'm just going to tell people to go get the magazine, go get on Indy Author Training and become part of the community and just, I don't know, get to know people. You might find friends like Sheldon and, you know, start your own thing together. Start a magazine. I mean, sure. We're fine. Yeah, I'll get it. I'm fine with that. The more information that's out there, the better. That's fantastic. Exactly. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks, Kat.