Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This episode is brought to you by Atmosphere Press, a hybrid publisher helping authors publish books their readers will love. As this is the hybrid author podcast. I'm absolutely thrilled to have a hybrid publisher as a sponsor and atmosphere Press are a wonderful bunch of people made up of an international team of book professionals bringing books from raw manuscripts all the way through editorial proofreading, interior design, cover design, publication, global distribution, and publicity. In true hybrid style, atmosphere Press authors keep all their book rights and are involved every step of the way. They have free book giveaways and free author publicity opportunities available right now, so head on over to atmospherepress.com links in the show notes they're especially eager to publish new work from australian authors, so make sure you reach out to them for a manuscript review. And don't forget to mention the hybrid author podcast in your query or cover letter, which will get you a special expedited review. Hello authors. I'm Joanne Morell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for authors. Thanks for joining me for the Hybrid author podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author, both independently and traditionally publishing your books. You can get the show notes for each episode and sign up for your free author pass over at the hybrid author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www.hybridauthor.com dot au let's crack on with the episode hello authors. I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to. The podcast in today's interview is an almost mid year mash up of some of the guests in 2024, and this includes episode 108 atmosphere press taking charge of your destiny as a creator. Ignore the haters or lower your standards with Doctor Nick Cartwright episode 109 making money with emotion with award winning author of speculative and contemporary fiction Xena Shaptur. Episode 110 Mel Torrafranca on what motivates young authors to write episode 111 will you or won't you? AI with me Joanne Morell episode 112 the seven figure marketing mindset for novelists with Jody J. Sperling episode 113 writing graphic novels for kids with Joel Maccero episode 114 the author launch pad, helping authors of nonfiction earn an income from their books with Chris Trammell Episode 115 share a panel with children's author and award winning short story writer Nadia L. King Episode 117 balancing energy and focus to write a full manuscript while raising a family with children's author Callum Greenall Episode 118 creative freedom, the ability to create without barriers, the fear of judgment, or any preconceived ideas about the creative process and artistic rules. With, again, me, Joanne Morell. Episode 119 collaging a hybrid memoir through unearthing stories within your family with award winning author and I exact Rogal.
So my author adventure this week, I have. If you've been watching me on social media, I have been busy visiting local printers. I've been going, I've already queried them all by email and got some quotes for publishing my women's fiction book. And so I went in store just to see the quality that they have, the sizes, the paper, all of. And I was super impressed about the printing, the local printers that we've got here in Perth, and I have to say, I didn't really find them all that different in pricing. But yeah, unfortunately, it's come down to cream paper, creme paper, cream paper, whatever you call it, being a fiction book. I don't want to publish especially women's fiction as well. I don't want to publish in white paper. It's got to be that sort of off white, creme looking paper. And one of the printers that I was very impressed with, unfortunately, the cost for them to do that creme paper was astronomical, whereas it didn't change so much at one of the other printers. I love how local they are. They're only literally, you know, 1015 minutes, some of them up the road, some in town, but it's been really eye opening to go there and see what they can do and strike up a working relationship with them. So, yes, I have decided on one. And I'm at the point of just sending through my word document, my manuscript, and I'm also having them, I'm going to pay extra to get them to typeset the book. So that's, you know, sort of laying it out for print and format. And I do have formatting tools myself, but I just. I've been having issues with the word document. I don't know what has happened for me, kind of exporting it out of scrivener into word, it's just gone funny in places. So I just don't feel confident to run it through my formatting software. And for there to be no problems, I feel like I need to, to pay extra to just weed out any doubt there. Formatting has, in the past, has not been my forte, with or without having the program. And it's something that I have thought about lately, thinking, well, if I don't feel comfortable in certain areas, mostly with sizing and numbers and all that sort of stuff. Do I really want to spend a lot of time learning this stuff? Yeah, I do. Given time, I do want to, probably. And I think going forward, the more I publish, the more work I put out, the more I do things like this, then, yes, I'm going to get more a better understanding of sizing, measurements, formatting, all that sort of stuff. But right now for this project, I'm not interested. I am interested in it being the best it can be and that it's going to be hiring printers to make it so, hiring book formatters, typesetters to make it. So I've also had the the front cover is rolling ahead. Absolutely no problems there. I have commissioned local artist Peter Ryan for the front cover and he is absolutely, so far is incredible. Anybody who's a member of Squibbie knows Pete. And also, if you ever come to Perth, you will, especially the northern suburbs. You'll see his murals everywhere. He is the faceless artist and I can't wait to share the COVID with you. So he's just blowing me out the water with every sort of draft of this cover. So that's all coming together. I am going to run a Kickstarter campaign for this book, but I'm very busy with putting that together and the certain tiers that I'm going to offer. So for. I've been doing my research through Kickstarter to see what people offer in their tiers. So if you haven't heard of Kickstarter, it's a crowdfunding project, crowdfunding platform to get your project off the ground, to crowdfund finances, to meet goals. And for me, it's about wanting to offer an experience to the reader more so than just a book or cover costs for certain things there. And there's going to be more to come on this. I want to finalize these ideas first before I discuss them and share them with you. And hopefully you'll get behind the project as well. And so my aim is, as it's my first Kickstarter. Kickstarter is actually doing a call out for romance novels and romance Kickstarter campaigns and publishing, launching in July, and they'll give it a special love. And I thought, well, why not? My book is women's fiction, but it is heavily romantic elements in it. And yeah, so I'm going to launch in July and I'm already knee deep and bringing everything together and so hopefully everything will be ready to go come then. I'm pretty sure it will. The other thing that is fast approaching is the rottnest, righteous retreat that I'm going to via Squibbie. Things are starting to get fired at me fast. Being the newsletter editor, the social media coordinator for the group for the chapter Squibbie, Australia west, we've had our cottage lists come out. We've had the program come out, and I just want to make sure that I have everything done for my women's fiction for the Kickstarter. Well, as much as I can, that that is not hanging over my head, because my young adult fiction book is the focus for the writer's retreat. I have a critique with the publisher there. I'm going to be having it looked at by my peers. I'm going to be standing up and reading it in the chapel. All these experiences, which I'll share on the podcast and you'll get to hear. I'm actually thinking I might do some sort of live pod special podcast put together of the whole weekend, like record bits as I go. I don't know. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. It'll be quite cool just for something different. And so, yeah, I want my focus to be on the. What? Young adult fiction for that weekend. I don't want to be fiddling around with women's fiction. So it's all go, go, go. It's been a very busy week, and I'm constant, but I love it, and I love the big ideas I'm having, and I hope I can execute them, and I hope that everybody will benefit and enjoy my work and, yeah, really exciting things to come.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: And this is something that, even when I was a creative writing professor, that I always would try to instill in my students is that everybody's just got to be the writer that they are. Right. You're not going to make everybody happy, right? There's no way. So if you're out there, like, looking for approval, you might just be looking in the wrong places. Because what I found again and again and again is that it really doesn't matter what you're writing. You're going to. To have your readers, you're going to have people who are sort of, in a sense, buying what you're selling, even if you're giving it away. Right. So there's always out there the opportunity to find approval. I think the thing that's important is to sort of stop looking for it, right. They always say, like, people will find their love when they give up on it, when they stop wanting it so bad, when that sort of stink of desperation sort of washes off. That's when the magic happens. And I think kind of the same way as a writer. When you just forge ahead and you make yourself your audience, then you'll realize that you're not alone. Because whatever appeals to you as a reader when you're writing is also going to appeal to somebody else when they're reading.
[00:10:40] Speaker C: It starts with, as I said, you know, pushing yourself emotionally with your writing. And, you know, when. If you start. I started quite young, so that writing was a catharsis for me, and that led to a writing process that was incredibly honest about pain. And then when I started winning awards, my most successful stories were those that touched readers emotionally. And I realized that. So I realized it was offering them a chance to explore their own pain affecting change in their lives. So being honest about pain kind of formed the basis of my personal writing process. And if I can write a story and I can cry at the end of it. Connection that you were talking about before, that's what I look for in others in other writing. And it's not necessarily techniques, it's just honesty. And so I look for that in others writing as well as my.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: What motivates young kids to want to write and publish books these days?
[00:11:29] Speaker D: I think one thing that's been really helpful is book talk. I actually haven't been on TikTok myself, but I've seen the influence that it has had on the reading community, which has affected the writing community as well. I think that writing is a form of leisure, and reading as well, that is not as common, just because other things are so much easier. It's much easier to stream a show on Netflix or to scroll through Instagram, or even make Instagram content about what you're eating or doing. But I feel like what's happening is because reading and writing has become more of a rare thing. It's started to be seen in a trendy light, where it's almost cool to do something different. And I think that's why we're seeing a rise in reading and writing today in young people, is due to the fact that it kind of has a cool or intellectual vibe associated with it and people are exploring it who otherwise wouldn't. And I think we can really attribute that to social media and kind of making reading and writing cool again.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: The ASA position is that the laws and policies regulating AI should ensure authorisation, fair compensation and transparency 100%. The ASA welcomes the australian government's recognition that AI must be regulated to ensure its safe and responsible development and use and believes that industry must act transparently and be guided by ethical and human centered principles. So it talks about authorization and compensation. AI developers must be required to seek authorization from writers and illustrators to use their works, to train generative AI, and to fairly compensate the creators who grant such authorization to write. Again, it's about use of your work. If someone wants to use it, then they need to pay you for it. It's your work. Copyright owners earn a living from licensing their work and must share in the financial rewards derived from using their intellectual property. It is exomatic. I don't know if I'm saying that right, that any business relying on a third party's intellectual property to develop a new product or service must seek a license from the owner of that intellectual property. To ignore this is to ignore the cost of creating cultural material, treat author's intellectual work as a free public commodity, disregard copyright laws, and undercut the living wage of professional writers and artists. Market based solutions such as direct or collective licensing remain an effective mechanism to support, support new forms of exploitation. Licensing owners and authors right to exploit their works or refuse to do so, and ensures that authors are properly remunerated. The ASA has our best interests at heart. They fight for authors rights and they're just basically saying, not that these tools are bad, but that they need to be used correctly.
[00:14:07] Speaker E: In my life, marketing, I have made seven figures, and that that encompasses different business adventures that I've been on and bringing that mindset to the writing world. I have not made seven figures on my writing and I'm fairly far away from that at this point. So it's about the mindset, and to borrow from what a lot of other people have said before, uh, if you don't quit, you can't lose. And so that's really the cornerstone of my mindset is, you know, keep that tenacity, keep trying, keep pushing, keep pressing. When something doesn't work, don't give up immediately, but, you know, learn how to pivot quickly when something is not a fit for you. And the longer that you endure and persist, the better you'll get at this. So that is why I think marketing mindset is so important, is people do not get to the level of success that they dream of for themselves unless they're willing to endure a lot of failure. Like feelings. You haven't failed, you haven't lost, but it feels like it until you're an overnight success ten years in the making.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: The only way with all the stuff that I write, the only way that it actually comes to be is when I sit down and force myself to, and I have, there's the initial romantic honeymoon time that we have with an idea and you get those first things out, whether it's a first scene or whether you plot it out and you've got the idea in your head. But truly the difference that I've seen between those who actually bring something out into the world and those who don't is simply that those who do, they sit there and they push through. When the honeymoon phase ends and they show up and they write, they do the hard work. They allow them. And in doing the hard work, they allow themselves the grace of just writing a really crappy first draft, allowing it to be what it is, and then being able to work on it. All the kind of stuff that you would hear from any author. I think if you can give yourself the grace of writing whatever wants to come out, but then give yourself the discipline and the kick up the butt to actually do the work, they're the two magical things, I think, that brings something together.
[00:16:04] Speaker F: What is your marketing going to be like? Because I don't want people to be the best kept secret. And that's often what the little voice says to ourselves, oh, no one wants my book. No one wants to hear what I have to say. No, it's usually that your marketing is anemic or your marketing is, I sold it to my friends, I sold it to my family, and I put it on my Facebook page and it's not doing anything that's not marketing. In this day and age, we are so globally connected. So the first thing that, you know, we got to look at what is your marketing like? But more importantly, actually, they're twins. They're happening simultaneously. Is what are we monetizing? What is the main single tip of the arrow message that we're going to bring forward first? That we're able to then put the marketing behind. So it's monetization and marketing. Those are your million dollar M and Ms. You got to know what you're going to monetize and how you're going to market. And those alone. If you just answer that and do that over and over and over and over and over and over for the next six months, I promise you, naturally done correctly, you'll get to six figures. But most of us don't give it the deliberate attention, attention that that needs. We don't organize ourselves. We don't discipline ourselves to stay behind one monetized message and market the heck out of it.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: One of my tips for anyone that wants to facilitate is really make the most of your time in the green room before the event, because then you'll get to know the panel members and it's only the people that are going, oh, well, it's perform as an artist in there, so it's not like they're going to be distracted by anybody else. So you can really get to know the panel members for just that short time before you go on stage. Yeah, you can ask them things like, how would you like me to pronounce your name? You know, especially if they have, like, a complicated, you know, name that you're not familiar with. And you can check if there's anything that's off limits for any of the panel members. Oh, yeah. Yep. And that's another reason why you need lots of questions, because you just don't want to be left short. So do you recommend even going one further than that, than just sort of seeing them before the event, but actually contacting the people before the event to ask these sort of questions rather than on the actual day? So I have, for some people, for a lot of these people, if they're really quite high profile, you won't have access to them. You might have access to their agent or to their publisher, and you can provide a list of your questions if you like. And I have done that for some people. But yeah, usually even in the green room, if I've got, like, a list of the questions, I'm happy in the green room to say, look, because I have my clipboard right there with me, you know, can I check your name? Pranayama pronunciation, you know, and can you just. Would you mind running your eyes over these questions and just marking any that you really uncomfortable with? It's just consideration, really. I think it's just being considerate of the people that you're working with.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Just going back to that cookbook, one of the concerns for me on behalf of indie authors, and I don't have many concerns because it's really exciting to publish your own book independently. But I am aware that it costs a bit. So let's say you were publishing, wanted to publish your own cookbook, but you could not afford the good photography, the food preparation, the food styling. Then think, okay, rather than do a bad job, I'm going to have a different approach. I'm going to, maybe instead of photographs, I'll write a one paragraph story about when I first tried that dish or something. So work within the constraints that you have and make them into a feature.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: That's really, really good advice there. So it sounds like you like to be a bit silly and a bit playful and things like that. Because I was just thinking, you've got your job, which can probably be a bit emotionally draining some days, and then children as well, and I have some. So I know that sometimes your energy can be a bit low with obviously juggling all that. So is that how you find creative writing? Balances out that sort of low energy to give you energy? You just kind of playfully approach it that way, you be silly rather than you were saying, like trying to tackle a bigger length manuscript kind of pecks your head a bit?
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I love my job. I really do. But it is draining helping people.
They're at the worst points of their lives. It just takes thought to have something that you can move through that is token, especially if you need future book or so immature and so absurd. It's a brilliant release. And I get really dolphin, something that's not the right word, you know, like a tunnel vision when I'm writing these kind of things. So it really kind of takes all my attention away, which is good. But yeah, I think it took a while to kind of figure that out. There were definitely things that went through after my first self published book.
I need to get published. I need to get published. And it was just this goal I had, but I just kept. It was, yeah, it wasn't a good way to write. Discount to remind yourself that I write because I enjoy writing and that should be the thing. If you do that, then everything else will hopefully fall.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it. I think a lot of people can forget that as well because when you get crunched into the publishing mill and you get crunched out with lots of rejections and stuff, you can start to get really disheartened and, you know, it is a tough game as well. That's why I love that we have so many options to be able to put our work out there and that in traditional path is just one of them. Even though that, you know, a lot of people strive for that because of various reasons, but being able to do it yourself, there's an absolute joy in that as well. Because at the end of the day, like you said, you've got something physical to hold in your hand and you're able to share with your friends and family and you get that positive reinforcement and feedback with putting your own work out there. And then, you know, like you said, yeah, keep going. And no one's gonna achieve a traditional deal if they don't keep going. Remove that. Let the creative freedom flow to just have fun and play and create. Let your imagination run wild. I'm having such a ball doing the world building for this young adult novel that I'm writing because I'm doing what I love to do, which is dream and make up and make believe and use my imagination. Although obviously, I just said that I have been to the town that I'm loosely basing it on. I'm making the people up, and I'm making things up, and I just love it. I just. I love to do the backstory and how these characters are all connecting together. What is their story. It's just fun. It's real fun. That, to me, feels like I'm creating without fear or judgment of what people think about it. I'm just enjoying the process. I don't know. I've got a rough idea of what is gonna happen and how, but I don't know how it's all gonna come together by doing this. This world building and character building and dreaming and imagining and just having fun with the work. The creative freedom in the work to play and just enjoy. I am loving where it's going, and I'm not thinking about, you know, if it is a young adult audience, the characters in it, to be honest, are around about 17 age. So what some people might call new adult, which is like more of an adult readership than, say, a teenage readership. But I'm the demographic. I would read something like this. And I think that you do need to write for yourself as well sometimes because, yeah, creative freedom, if you're not thinking about your target audience at the end, then it is for you. Your writing should be for you first and foremost, I think. Because a lot of people say if you're not enjoying it, you're not enjoying what you're doing, then who else is gonna enjoy it with the work? Create what you want to create, and then you can go back and assess and pick at it or leave it or have other people look at it and things like that. So creative freedom in writing is removing the barriers that you put there throughout the story that you're thinking about publication and stuff like that. I think you need to just do the work, and then once you feel it's finished or even a draft or whatever, then you can start either bringing it back in. Break rules to writing. Like, what I found really funny about this career is I actually, I did a writing degree, many of you might know, and I actually found that. That it made me a better writer, but it also riddled me with rules the rules and regulations of writing and grammar and all that sort of stuff, and how you're supposed to do certain things. And it actually, that became a barrier for me, that became a roadblock to creating, to just feeling like I could creatively be free to create whatever I wanted and however I wanted, because, you know, you've got these little literary ties that you can techniques and things you can do. But I think especially with the term the hybrid author, so hybrid, it's not one way of doing things. It's about incorporating all sorts of different things.
And what I mean by hybrid memoir is that my dad was also a writer, and so the book is a collage of different materials, from actual stories that he wrote, to conversations that I made up that involved my dad, to articles that appeared in the newspaper. There are many different elements that I quilted together to create this, the actual review and so on. So I had to collage together all these different things, including things that I just made up, like that scene I just read in order to create a more rooted picture. I think that's amazing. And I love that this podcast as well, this term hybrid just goes off, being coined in so many directions. So this is a first for me to think of a work hybrid with different sort of formats and things included in it. But I think it's a really. I think it's really excellent. Can I tell you a secret about where I got the idea for this hybrid? I'd love to know. Yeah, but you can't tell your listener. No, we're listening. So I don't know if you've ever read the argentine novelist Manuel Puig, who wrote Kiss of the Spider Woman. No. And a number of really good books. So I stole this idea from Manuel Puig, except he used it in fiction and I'm using it in memoir. But Manuel Puig does this really genius thing where he takes newspaper articles, summaries of movies, conversations, police reports, and he collages them all together, and he creates a story and an arc using all these different materials. And when I saw how he could do that in fiction, I thought, hmm, I could do that in a memoir.
So there you have it, folks. I hope you enjoyed that almost mid year mashup of the guests, some of the guests from the start of 2024, and yeah, some. Some great interviews that we've had kicking off 2024. And there's so many more to come. Next time on the hybrid author podcast, we have fantasy author Renee Hayes, and she's chatting to us on TikTok for authors. I wish you well on your author adventure this next week. That's it for me. It's bye for now. That's the end for now. Authors. I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening, and I hope you'll listen next time. Remember to head on over to the hybrid author website at www.hybridauthor.com dot au to get your free author pass. It's bye for now.
