Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

I’m back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Jo Casey!

Today, we talk about what it takes to publish a book, both the practical action that needs to be taken, as well as the inner work so we can step out of our comfort zone and actually take that action. We discuss Holly’s upcoming book, and the steps she’s taken to ensure that she gets the book out into the world in a much bigger way than she has with her previous eight books.

About Jo Casey

Jo Casey has over 20 years experience of working as a trainer and consultant in the corporate, public and third sectors. Her flashy clients and workplaces have included Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC), The NHS, BT, Toyota Motors, Peugeot Business School, The Welsh Assembly Government, The Girl Guides UK, Vets4Pets/Companion Care, several Local Government Authorities, and The Department Of Work And Pensions. But she’s also worked with many no less wonderful smaller ventures, micro businesses and SMEs.

She’s a self-confessed nerd and has taught at college and university levels and is a visiting lecturer at the University of Chester. Jo has a Masters Degree in Coaching and Organizational Development and she’s an NLP Master Practitioner, MBTI qualified professional certified Emotional Intelligence EQi 2.0 consultant.

She’s been coaching for over 15 years now – clocking up over 1000 hours of coaching experience. Basically, she carefully treads that line between being passionate and a tiny bit obsessive about what she does (obsession often wins). Jo runs accredited coach training programs and coaches people from all over the world via the power of the internet.

Listen to this episode

What You’ll Learn

What it takes to write a book (both practical action and inner work)
The full process Holly used to write her upcoming book, from concept to publication
How things have changed in independent publishing over the past couple of years
Dos and Don’ts of book cover design, including tips that can make or break your book
A super easy (and affordable) way to crowdsource your book cover design
How to print a paperback without ending up with a garage full of books
How to deal with the inevitable mindset stuff that comes up along the way
Why we need to keep doing the mindset work throughout the project

Other Resources

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into The Woods podcast, episode 298. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another co-hosted episode with the fantastic Jo Casey. Today, we are going to talk about my upcoming book and how you can write and self-publish a book. I know we have talked about this before, but we go kind of more in-depth into not just the practical stuff, but also the inner work that I needed to do, in working on my upcoming book project which will be coming out live on the 22nd of this month, so just two weeks from now, that’s a Monday, Earth Day.

So, I am super, super, excited about this book, I have done so much, I have worked harder on this book than any of my previous books and I have invested more money into it as well. So I am really excited to see how this book does, compared to my previous books: was it worth it to invest this level of money into it? We shall see. I think Jo and I will be doing an updated version of this episode in a couple of months, or maybe three months, once we know the results, because I really want to be honest with you about my journey with this. I know a lot of people who listen to this show and friends of mine want to write their own book, so the more information you have the easier that will be.

So, what does it take to publish your book, both inner stuff and outer stuff? In this episode you will learn, what it takes to write a book. You will learn the full process that I use to write my upcoming book from concept to publication. You will learn how things have changed in independent publishing over the last couple of years since we did our first episode on self-publishing. You will learn the do’s and don’t’s of book cover design, including tips that can make or break your book. You will learn a super-easy and affordable way to crowd-source your book cover design, which is also super-fun. You will learn how to print your paperback without ending up with a garage full of books, because no one wants that. You will learn how to deal with the inevitable mindset stuff that comes up along the way. And finally I will be talking about why I believe we need to keep doing the mindset work throughout the project. I really enjoyed this episode, I think it is super-useful for people who have maybe once thought about writing a book but not taken the action, or who have an idea but maybe believe they are not good enough and that was the key limiting belief that this book triggered for me: I am not good enough. So, I had to do a ton of work on that for this book.

Before, we get into today’s episode, I just wanted to invite you to join me on Patreon. If you get value from this podcast, I would love for you to head over to Patreon and support me there to make sure that this podcast can continue production. This podcast is not really tied into my business, it is kind of loosely related to it, so it is not like I make a ton of money off the back of this podcast. In fact it costs me money because I have to invest in, not just my time but also the person who edits and publishes this for me, so, that is an investment. I would love for you to support me, if you head to http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can join me there. Membership starts at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to content I don’t share anywhere else, including a monthly Q and A and done-for-you mindset work.

So, moving on into the episode, I hope you find this episode interesting and useful, I think it is super-practical, I have updated the PDF download, so you will be getting an updated download if you head over to the show notes for this episode, which is: http://HollyWorton.com/298. Without further ado I would like to pass you over to the episode.

Jo: Hi everybody, this is Jo Casey, welcome to my joint monthly podcast with the amazing Holly Worton, yeah!!

Holly: Hello!

Jo: So, Holly, this is an exciting time for you because you are about to publish your book!

Holly: Yay!

Jo: And so we thought it would be perhaps a good opportunity to talk about the process of writing the book, the process of publishing it, and of course the whole content and subject matter which has been such an emotional, kind of coming out for you. {Holly: yeah} I am really curious to dig into all of that good stuff. When does the book come out?

Holly: It is released 22^nd April which is Earth Day.

Jo: And it is a non-negotiable deadline?

Holly: It is a non-negotiable deadline, as we were discussing before we started recording this. {laughing}

Jo: {laughing} I see the fact that it is Earth Day, I didn’t realise it was Earth Day. Can you not be flexible with the deadline, deadlines can be flexible if they are self-imposed. I get you I get why you were very much: no, it is non-negotiable. {Both: laughing}

So would you mind telling people who maybe don’t know about the book, what it is about?

Holly: Yes, so I was out last January — of 2018 — on a forest bathing meet up, and I had always wanted to try it and so when I saw that there was a forest bathing meet-up group in my area, I immediately jumped to sign up. So, what forest bathing is, it is a Japanese concept of healing through the trees, so it is something that is actually prescribed by the Japanese version of the NHS for people who are suffering from stress, anxiety, and it involves going out into the forest, going out into the woods, and bathing in the energy of the trees.

So, I was out on this meet-up group and towards the end of it they led us all into a grove of ancient yew trees and they said find a tree and connect with it. So, I instantly knew which yew tree I wanted to connect with and I walked over to it and I wrapped my arms around it and it started talking to me and it said: You know, the book which you are working on right now (which was a novel) you are having problems with it, and, I have a new idea for a book for you, because we trees have stories. We all have stories to tell and we would like you to go out into the trees, collect the stories of trees, put them into a book and get that out there to the widest audience possible. Because the more that people hear our stories and the more that people connect with nature, the more that we can reestablish, reconnect, a healthy relationship between nature and humanity and we can rekindle the healthy, balanced, relationship that nature and humanity once had. So, that was how I got the idea.

Jo: So, just to be clear, it was in this conversation you had with this tree who basically said: look, this is the way you should be going, and kind of said we are going to share our stories with you if you are willing to listen?

Holly: Yes, they kind of gave them to me as a task though, he was offering it to me, but I also kind of felt that this was my job. {laughing}

Jo: Well, don’t mess with an ancient tree!! {laughing} those guys have seen shit. I know we have had this conversation before, and there is a previous episode we did around this initial connection you had with the trees, I will link to that in the show notes, but if I am remembering it correctly the trees that you were talking to initially were men trees?

Holly: Yeah, so when I first started talking to trees, I often heard a male voice in my head, and I talk about this in the book, because the vast majority of trees in the book, I have also heard with a male voice with the exception of some very notable exceptions. So, I had a group of trees called the grandmothers, I had the three witches, these are trees from the book, and they all have very distinctive voices. But, by and large, when I talk to trees, I hear a male voice in my head, so, yeah, it is interesting.

Jo: I find it really interesting because when I — listeners to the podcast will know bits of this story already — but just over a year ago, I got really quite sick with my kind of recurring depression and anxiety. And one of the things that I found myself craving doing everyday, and I think was one of the things that salvaged my sanity, was going out and actually touching the trees. I am really lucky, I live in a city, but I am literally a five-minute-walk from a wooded area, we have got some quite kind of old, well-established trees and a river and I manage to get out in nature every day and really experience the nature, rather than with my headphones in and listening to a podcast or something like that. Just walking with the dog in nature just became this urge, I had to do it, it was almost like my spirit was saying: you need to have that connection, this is part of the healing that you need to do. And one of the things that I found myself doing, was, I had this urge to touch the turns of the trees. And at first it was almost like feeling in an electrical current or something, just a really mild one, just a really nice one, when I touched the trees. Then, after a while, the trees, it seemed like they were whispering words of encouragement and tales of resilience to me which I really didn’t, I just thought: this is weird, and you are ill right now and…

Holly: {laughing} Obviously that is why this is happening!

Jo: But the thing is, even at the time I kind of thought: this isn’t about you being ill, this is not something for you to overthink, so I just made this conscious decision: okay, I am just going to accept the fact. I didn’t go down the route of: okay, now I am hearing voices talking to me, of course I did not tell people this at the time, well I did, I told a few people at the time. But the voices were always female to me and they still are — I still kind of go out and I will say good morning to the trees — and they were always female, but perhaps that was because that was the energy that I kind of needed, I needed those kind of voices of encouragement and resilience and just that very kind of female, nurturing, messaging.

Holly: Yeah, I have wondered that too, I wondered if my reconnection to nature and hearing the male voices of trees, has to do with me healing relationships with men, in general. So, I have actually wondered that as well, if that is just what I needed to hear.

Jo: I think that we are very good at putting our own kind of little human spin on things that are so much bigger than us, but I don’t think they mind.

Holly: I don’t think so either and I discuss this in the book, too, in the introduction as I am explaining this, and I say: I don’t think it is important whether I am hearing male or female voices, because, also, the vast majority of the trees and the plants are botanically speaking something that is known as monoecious, which means they have both male and female flowers on each tree, so most trees and plants are both male and female.

Jo: Ah, well that’s just lovely!!

Holly: Some trees and plants aren’t, like Holly’s, you will either have a female Holly, or a male Holly but the vast majority of trees and plants are both male and female, so they have got both energies, and both flowers.

Jo: Of course you know a lot of this from studying around plant spirits and things like that at the moment?

Holly: Yeah actually, it goes way back, even further, when I was 15 years old and I got my first job, I worked at a place called Mounthill Garden Centre. I worked there for seven summers all throughout high school and university and into grad school and that’s where I started to learn about the practicalities of plants. When I went to University, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study and I started out studying ornamental horticulture before I changed to English, so I had to take a lot of botany courses, and plant-based-science stuff, and that’s where I learned a lot of the technical, botanical, plant stuff.

Jo: That is really cool. There’s me trying to make it all spiritual and it is: no, no, it is actual science. So, I wanted to kind of ask you a little bit about the process then of turning this into a book, because we did a podcast a few months ago, when you were mid-process with the writing, you have now finished the writing and you are now weeks away from publishing it. What’s that process been like for you, on an emotional level, and then I would love to dive into some of the practicalities of folks who are not necessarily wanting to publish their books, tree stories, but publishing generally.

Holly: Yeah, absolutely.

Jo: Emotionally, what has it been like? Has it been super-easy for you, she says… {laughing}

Mindset

Holly: {laughing} Piece of cake, a walk in the park. No, it hasn’t. I have had to do a lot of mindset work to make this book happen, and I think if I hadn’t done the mindset work, I wouldn’t have got where I am today. Because I was given the idea for this book in January and, from there, whenever I went out on my walks, certain trees would reach out to me and say: I am in your book or I am not in your book. And, so, I kind of made a mental note of which trees were in my book and it was winter, so I really didn’t want to sit and connect with the tree for twenty minutes and channel a story. So, I actually waited until the Spring equinox of last year to get the story for my first tree. So, that was ground zero on the book, I had been given the idea a couple of months prior, but I started work on the Spring Equinox of 2018. And, I had so much resistance. I mean I have been channeling for a few years now, a handful of years, but it triggered all of my insecurities. I thought: am I good enough to receive these tree stories, because the yew said they were super important, and it is my job to get them out into the world. What if I am not channeling the full story, but just a superficial level of it? Maybe there is more deeper that I can’t get to, because I am not good enough… basically, I am not good enough. {laughing} That was the limiting belief that kept getting triggered over and over. So, that was when I started. I received in early Spring, a handful of stories, and then kind of went through summer, which is the best time of the year to be sitting in stillness in nature and I didn’t do anything. And then when I was starting to get to Autumn that was when I kind of kicked myself in the butt and started going out there and connecting with the trees that had said they were in my book. And then from there it kind of snowballed and more and more trees were stepping up and I had some amazing days where I was just getting fantastic connections with the trees and then I wrapped up receiving the final story on the winter solstice of last year. So it was kind of Spring Equinox to Winter Solstice I received the stories, and, in that time, so many roller-coasters of ups and downs of: Am I good enough? Can I do this?

Jo: That’s really interesting, because that whole idea of: am I good enough, is such a recurring theme for most humans who have any element of kind of self-reflection and self-awareness. I know it is not an easy straight-line process, but what are some of the things that you did to do some healing around that?

Holly: So, lots of heart-centred energy work, lots of PSYCH-K®, creating specific belief statements about: I can do this, I am a good channel, I am a clear channel, I receive the full stories of trees, I can make this book a reality. I would have to go through my journals to see the specific belief statements that I used, but it was a lot of that kind of stuff, it was basically: I can do this, and I can do it well, so, lots of mindset work.

Jo: Yeah. {laughing} There was part of me going: yeah, okay, just give us the easy bit. There is still a pat of my brain, or a part of my psyche, that is still like: where is the shortcut? There just isn’t one, that’s the thing, there just isn’t one. I know that, and Psych-K is something you trained in quite a number of years ago, I know that is a short intervention therapy, a bit like some of the NLP work that I do, but even using tools like that, it is still not a switch to: I am totally healed now, I have no self-doubt.

Holly: No, because the way I experience it is that I do the mindset work, it kind of helps lift me up to another level, where I can step out of my comfort zone and take new actions, but then, once I have taken those new actions, it triggers my other shit, so then I have to do more mindset work to grow even more. So, it is like, I am growing, doing the work, growing, doing the work, growing, doing the work; but I have to keep doing the work, otherwise I keep hitting another ceiling. So, for me, it is absolute, I could go through cycles and cycles and cycles of doing the work and taking the action and doing the work and taking the action and I have to keep doing it otherwise I will get stuck again.

Jo: But that’s the thing, right? I see a lot of the spiritual bypassing, or the easy: just add water and your vibe is elevated type-stuff in the online space, especially in the online personal development and business space which is where I spend too much of my time. This idea that: you have the tools and you think the thoughts, and then that’s it, you are kind of healed, but no, you have to do the work. You can’t just do the mantras and do the healing, again, that’s it now we can’t avoid doing the work, kind of getting down in the metaphorical mud and I imagine the literal mud for you at times {laughing} because you are out there with trees?

Holly: Yes, absolutely. {laughing} You have got to do the work and take the action. Otherwise, stuff is not going to magically, this book would never have magically appeared on my computer as a file. {laughing} I had to go out there and I had to do the work.

Jo: Yeah, I think that that is a definitely recurring theme, for me and work, it is kind of reminding us that we don’t get to bypass the doing the work bit, as much as we would like to. You are somebody who is really kind of spiritually connected and switched on and yet your philosophy is very much: no, you use these tools so that you can kind of do the work, and then you have to do some more healing, and bring up all the stuff. It is this cycle that we need to go through.

Holly: Yeah, so I don’t believe in hustle, I don’t believe in: feel the fear and do it anyway. I don’t believe in pushing, pushing, pushing, that does not work for me, that is why I do so much mindset work, because I want to make it easier for me to take the actions that scare the shit out of me and make it easier for me to take the actions that are outside of my comfort zone. So that is part of the reason that I am constantly doing mindset work. I don’t mean constantly, it is not like I am doing it everyday, but whenever I feel like I am scared to do something, or I am hesitating to do something or procrastinating on doing something, that’s when I stop and say: let’s make this easier.

Practical Steps

Jo: Do you mind if we talk a little bit about the practical steps then, what you do. So, you gather these stories, then how does it go then from: I have gathered these stories, to: I now have a book coming out in the middle of April {laughing}.

Holly: Okay, so it wasn’t just I collected the stories and then I started on the book. I was working on the book throughout the entire year. So the way it worked was, I was verbally channeling the stories of the trees, so I had my phone, I spoke the stories into my phone, had my fabulous transcriber, who also does the transcripts for the podcast, listen to them, transcribe them, she does an excellent job of transcribing. She would send them back to me, I would pop them back into Scrivener, which is the software I use for writing books, and I would kind of edit through them and add the meat around the story. So, I would talk about my experience as I approached the tree to receive its story: what does the setting look like? What does the tree look like? What was the day like? What was the weather like? And then, afterwards, I would add my reflections on what that story mean to me, or what it gave to me, and I would ask questions to the reader: how do you feel about this? What do you think about this? It was kind of adding the meat to each chapter, that went around the story. And then I was writing the introduction and writing all of the other chapters that kind of go before and after the stories.

So, throughout all of last year I was working on this, and I was doing my Workcation weekends, to kind of really intensely work on the book and then after the winter solstice of last year, that was when I received the last story, and I really geared up towards finishing the manuscript, so that I could send it to an editor. I got it back from the editor and then, I know you are not supposed to do this, but continued editing stuff myself and I keep retouching it. Theoretically, the book was done on Monday of this week and I had the print formatted and the eBook formatted, and I still keep touching it, I keep fiddling with it every day, because I keep seeing little things that I think: I must change that one word. So, yes, I don’t believe in perfection, but I do believe in making it the best possible book I can. And the beauty of self-publishing, because I am an independent publisher and I publish my own books, is that if two weeks from now I discover there is another typo, I can just update the files and upload them online, because I do print on demand, and it is all instant. So I can make changes whenever I want. But I want the first version of this book that goes out there to be as clean as possible.

Jo: Could we dive into that a little bit more in terms of the practical things, because I know there are people listening to this now going: oh I know I would love to write a book, but as soon as you Google: how to write a book? There are 70 billion webpages about this, and I know this is something that you have real expertise in, how many books have you written now?

Holly: This is my ninth.

Jo: Your ninth book, okay.

Holly: Yes.

Self-publishing

Jo: So, was there a particular reason that you decided to self-publish, as opposed to going down a traditional publishing route?

Holly: Yes, absolutely. So, I self-published my first book in 2016, three years ago, however, I first started thinking that I wanted to write a book in 2011, and I spent that kind of chunk of time fiddling around with the idea but not really doing anything about it. But from that first practical declaration of: I am going to write a book, I knew, I always knew that I did not want to be traditionally published, I wanted to be an independent publisher. Because, I think, I have been self-employed since 1999, I like doing things how I want, when I want, where I want, on my own terms. I want to hire the cover designer I want to work with, I want to hire the editor I want to work with, I want to hire the audio-book editor that I want to work with. I have a team of people who have worked with me on my previous books and I have worked with on on other author’s project, because I used to help with project managers with authors. I have these people that I know, I like, I trust, I want to work with them, and I don’t want to work with a publisher who is going to tell me: this is your cover, we decided this for you; this is your editor, because that’s who has time in their schedule. I want to be able to pick my team and I want to be able to use the technologies that I believe in. So, print on demand, I don’t believe in printing 1000, 2000, copies of a book, I want to do print on demand because a) it makes sense not to print a ton of books that are just going to sit in a warehouse while they little-by-little are purchased. But, also, because it allows me to make those changes, so if I find a typo two weeks from now, I can just change that in the file, upload the new file and boom the next book that is printed has that fixed. So, being an independent publisher allows me to do exactly what I want, manage the project exactly how I want, and I am my own boss. Whereas if I were to go through a traditional publisher that publisher would essentially be my boss, I don’t like that, I want my book to be exactly what I want it to be.

Jo: Okay, you get all of that control which for the control freaks of us out there sounds great. Are there any downsides to self-publishing? Any reasons why you could see that somebody would want to go to a traditional publishing house?

Holly: Yes, absolutely, if you don’t want to project manage, or hire someone to do it for you, then there are a lot of elements to it. So you have got to write the book, you have got to send it to an editor, you have got to get it back from the editor, you have got to decide which of their suggestions you want to take and which ones you are not. You have got to get the eBook formatted, you have got to get the print typeset, you have got to get the cover designed, if you are going to record your own audio book, record it yourself and then get someone to edit it or hire a voice actor to do it for you. There are so many different elements to this. You have got to buy your IBSN numbers, there is so much stuff that you have to do, which if you know how to do, it is not hard. But I recognise that some people don’t want to manage their own project, so you could either go with a traditional publisher for that, or there are some kind of hybrid publishing models. Publishing houses that aren’t really publishing houses, that just kind of manage the project for you. Now, that can be a good solution, but it can also be a very expensive solution. It is much less expensive to do it on your own because you can choose, again, who you work with. Are you going to pay $500 for a cover or are you going to pay $5000 for a cover? There are a huge range of options. So, publishing yourself also allows you to decide what your budget is and how you are going to allocate that budget.

So, why would you want to go with a traditional publisher? You would also want to go to a traditional publisher if you want to make it easier for your book to get into bookshops, however, that is also not guaranteed because publishers don’t do a lot of marketing for you these days. This is not like the old days when you would get a big advance, advances are really small, you would get a big advance, they would do tons of marketing for you, that is not happening these days. Publishers are really strapped for money and they are only going to invest money in you, if they think they are going to get back that return on investment. So, I don’t know, prestige, a lot of people still have that kind of, which I think is a false belief, that being traditionally published gives you kind of a certain level of prestige because you have been chosen by the authority in publishing, which means nothing to me.

Jo: I have also head from friends who have been published by traditional publishing houses that they, first of all, are required to have a certain kind of platform size. So, already, you have to be able to prove you are bringing a certain audience size. And, then, I certainly know of two friends who did it, and were quite surprised, that they got almost like zero, marketing support and they still had to do all of that marketing themselves.

Holly: Yep, absolutely.

Jo: Like the book tour and arrange the travel, and everything.

Holly: Publishers, unless you are a big name author, obviously then you are taken care of because the publisher knows that you are a cash cow, and you are going to be bringing in money for them. But if this is your first book and no one knows who you are, they are not going to do much, which is why they want you to have a platform to start with because they want to make it easier for them to sell books, they don’t want to do a lot of work.

Editing

Jo: So, how, do you go about finding people like an editor? Do you have people that are recommended to you? I mean, I would think: how would I go about finding someone?

Holly: Yes, absolutely, talk to people who have some published, ask if they like the editor. I am very fortunate that I have been doing some work for a non-profit for the last few years, my husband does the book, managing the projects, and so he has got a whole team of proofreaders, editors, people he has worked with and I have been in touch with them as well to work with different aspects of my projects over the years. So, people that you know. Ask me, I am happy to refer people to people, because it is hard to find good people who work within your budget and do good work. So, absolutely, and editors can be very expensive. Obviously, if you want quality, you are going to have to invest some money, but I think sometimes it can be really, really, outside of a lot of people’s budgets. So you need to shop around and see that balance for quality and what you can afford.

Jo: And so if you find an editor would you recommend editing yourself?

Holly: Oh, absolutely, before you send it to the editor, you absolutely have to edit yourself. I did not send my first draft to the editor, I sent my I don’t know, eleventh draft, to the editor.

Jo: I also meant would you recommend not hiring an editor?

Holly: You can absolutely do that, if you ask anyone who is an expert in self-publishing, they are going to say: no, absolutely not, you must always have an editor. Obviously, an editor is going to help tighten up your writing and make it better. So, I am going to tell you a secret, and that is this is the first book I have used an editor for. All of my previous books I did have someone look through it, but not like real editing. I did not have my first eBooks professionally edited because I had been writing for years, I think I am good at editing my work, I think I write clear sentences and I felt comfortable doing that. This book, however, because I am so insecure about it, in so many ways, I just wanted to make it the best book possible.

Jo: So, you get it back from the editor. Then, what about things like type-facing, and I mean I know it is meant to be, I am saying this as somebody who has really no clue about how any of this works in practical terms, I have friends who have self-published and things like that, so, do the documents have to be in a certain format to go on things like Amazon and Kindle and print-on-demand and things?

Formatting

Holly: Yes, so when you finish the book and you have it formatted, you have got two kinds of formatting. You have got eBook formatting, which you will be producing two files, a mobi file, which is for Kindle, and ePub, for every other e-reader. On the other hand, for print, you have got basically a PDF, but it is not just a word document that you have converted to PDF, it needs to be formatted for the size of the book, you know with margins and everything, so it looks like a book, so it doesn’t look like a word document. So you need to have, either a professional do this for you, and I always, for years, for my first eight books, I had a professional eBook formatter do my eBooks and I had a professional typesetter do my typesetting. And, then, last year, I bought this software called Vellum and I will link to this in the show notes. Vellum is fantastic, for the cost of what it cost to have one eBook formatted professionally I can do it myself. I can do as many books as I like because I bought the software. So, Vellum will help you format your eBooks, and your print books. So, this is the first book that I am doing that way, because, again, I really like the idea of being able to tweak little details in the book and have the file to myself and have the control over the files to make the changes myself, rather than having to contact my typesetter and say: hey, can you change this word? So, this is kind of an experiment for me but I really, really, like the software, it produces really beautiful eBooks and print books and I am loving it so far.

Jo: That sounds absolutely great and I am actually pulling up, do you remember we did a pod cast back in 2016 and it was all about self-publishing?

Holly: Yes, yes, yes.

Jo: So, I have just found, you produced this amazing PDF document all about all the different kind of stages, and tools, and what to do at different stages and things like that. I am wondering if we could do a little bit of an updated version of that and put it out with this podcast?

Holly: Because things have changed since then, Vellum wasn’t around in 2016, this is new, and it is awesome, and it is affordable. I think it was $299, or $249, it is totally affordable and then you could do as many eBooks and print books as you like with it because you own the software.

Jo: How does that compare to say hiring a typesetter? That would be cheaper than you would pay somebody?

Holly: Well absolutely, I used to pay my eBook formatter, I think I used to pay him $299 per eBook, so that is kind of pricey. And then my typesetter, I worked with a guy in India and he charged me $100 per typeset book. So, you know, that’s $400 per book. Whereas this is now free because I have invested in software.

Jo: That sounds great. Do you find things like the software is improving as the industry moves more over into self-publishing?

Holly: Absolutely, yes, yes. And more and more people are self-publishing, more and more people are wanting the control over the process, and so companies are creating software that allows authors to do this on their own. And do it in a way that looks professional and beautiful. Vellum creates really lovely books and it has several different templates so you can choose which template you want to use, for print and for eBooks. It is really, really, lovely and it looks very professional and it is very easy to use. I watched a half-an-hour, or 20-minute video, that Joanna Penn had done on how to use Vellum and that was it, I knew enough to get started.

Jo: That sounds ace, because, again, my only knowledge comes from friends doing it, but my friend Lara just had real headaches with using the Amazon Kindle uploader and getting it into the right format and things like that.

Holly: Let me say that, I have never used, there are lots of online services like Amazon and where you can upload your word doc and it will “format” the eBook for you. And, yes, technically it does, but it is going to look like shit. So, either pay someone to do it for you or get Vellum to do it yourself, but do not take a word doc and just upload it and trust that it is going to be fine, because, technically, it will work but it is not going to look great, it is not going to look professional, and it is going to be a headache. So, do yourself a favour and do it right.

Jo: So, I know that you are not the kind of person who will say: yeah, willy nilly spend all of this money if it is not necessary, so if you are saying it is worth $250 for you to do this, then I am putting that on my list of things to check out if I ever write a book.

Holly: Absolutely, for people listening to this, only invest in the software if you think you are savvy enough to do this on your own. I hired people for the first eight books, and I am good at learning new software, so it was really easy for me to pick up, but if you know that you are not very tech savvy then just pay someone to do it for you.

Book Cover

Jo: So you typeset it, and then I know that recently you have been crowd-sourcing information about your book cover, so how do you go about…I remember you saying this to me as well, that, actually, designing a book cover is a really specific skill, you don’t get just your standard graphic designer, you really should be getting somebody who specialises in book covers.

Holly: Absolutely, because the book cover, to someone who doesn’t know you, who has just come across your book for the first time on Amazon, that is the most important part of the book, because that’s all they can see, that’s their first experience with the book, it is love at first sight or hate at first sight. It is going to help them decide whether they are going to click to learn more, and possibly buy the book, or click away onto something else. So it absolutely needs to be super-professional, done by a graphic designer who specialises in book cover design, because there is kind of like a graphic language for book covers that I think general graphic designers don’t necessarily speak.

So, you have got to look at other books in your genre, what do you like, what do you dislike, have some examples, hopefully, four or five examples of what you do like and be able too explain why. And then send them to your designer and say: hey, this is what I like, this is what I want, I have always worked with, so for my previous eight books I have worked with Kim Killion who is a really good cover designer, she does fiction and non-fiction and specialises in romance covers, she is so good at those. She has also done non-fiction covers, including designing covers for Deepak Chopra and other traditionally published authors. So, I had worked with her for the past eight books, but for this book I wanted to do something different. So I used a service called 99 Designs, where you upload your design brief and dozens, hundreds, of designers from all over the world create designs and kind of compete against each other, to create your eBook cover, or your book cover. So, that’s why I was crowd-funding it because I had sifted through 150 different eBook covers and I had asked them to tweak this, tweak that, make this little change. So they were constantly updating and I paid extra to do a three-day project, rather than seven days, and you have to be constantly be checking throughout the day, seeing the new ones, giving people feedback, you reject the ones that straight-out you don’t want, and then you get to the end where you can create a poll with your top 8 favourite books and ask people to vote on them. I absolutely loved 99 designs and I will be using them in the future for book covers, because it is amazing. You get access to, I probably had at least 40 or 50 different graphic designers creating covers for my book. You don’t get that normally, you would have to pay someone, whereas 99 Designs you only pay if you select a design. If all the designs, by some stroke of terrible luck, were terrible, and you didn’t like any of them, then you would not chose any of them and they will refund your money.

Jo: So these people are kind of like doing work on spec, hoping to get paid?

Holly: Yes.

Jo: Wow!

Holly: Yes, exactly.

Jo: Wow!

Holly: It is crazy, I can’t believe people do this, but I guess they have time, I don’t know? A lot of people spent time making lots of little updates, I asked: can you make my name in a different font? Could you make my title bigger? Could you change this? So people were constantly tweaking things and in the end, I could only choose one, so lots of people did lots of work and didn’t get selected but I guess that is what they know, they know that’s an option.

Jo: I’m feeling like empathic overwhelm just at the thought of getting 40 designs! {laughing}

Holly: No, it was 40 designers, probably, I had about 160 designs total.

Jo: Woah!

Holly: Yeah, over the course of three days. Every couple of hours I was checking back in and rejecting and asking for updates you know. It was really fun and then my husband and I would look at them together, and we would like do the apple sync thing to the TV and we would put the covers up on the TV, so we could see them more. {laughing} It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it, and I am really happy with the cover that I got.

Distribution

Jo: Fantastic! And so then presumably it is a question of distributing it to the various outlets and print-on-demand and things?

Holly: Yes, so from there you upload it to KDP which is the for Kindle, I used the same company I used for eBook formatting I would use them for extended distribution. I won’t be using them for this book, I will be uploading it to a new, well it is not new, but it is new to me, a company called Draft2Digital, they do extended distribution for you. So upload your files there, same thing for your print book, upload it to KDP print. And then I am going to be using again for the first time I want to say Lightening Source, but it is the other company, Ingram Spark. Ingram and Lightening Source are the same company, but Lightening Source is for publishers and Ingram Spark is for independent publishers or authors for extended distribution for the print. So, technically, book stores will be able to order my book and get it in, so if someone was to walk into a bookstore and ask for it the bookstore could order it through Ingram Spark.

Jo: I am trying to think through all of the pieces, so once it is uploaded that’s kind of it, people can get it in all the different formats.

Marketing

Holly: Exactly and then you have to market the shit out of it. And Amazon ads, are an increasingly bigger thing, so invest in some Amazon advertising so that your book is seen. I am, for the first time, working with a book launch, I keep calling her my book launch coach, but really, she is my book launch manger, who has a very specific system to help get your book to number 1 in a category in Amazon. And, I have read her book on how to do it, I did not want to do it myself, which is why I hired her to do it for me, but, basically, once you get to number 1 in a category, Amazon will realise that the book is important and it will take out advertising on your behalf, including even Google ads, that kind of thing, to drive traffic to the book because they can see that it is a seller. So, again, it is the first time I have used this strategy, the first time I have worked with this person, but she knows what she is doing, I have been in touch with her for the last few months and I am really looking forward to seeing how that will change how my book gets out to the world in a bigger way.

Jo: Ooh, that’s really cool, maybe we should do a follow up episode on the marketing process. What’s her name, can we link to her book in the show notes?

Holly: Absolutely, her name is Michelle Kulp, so I will link to the book in the show notes and also to her website. She does, usually what she does, is she has this big package for new authors where she not only helps you launch your book, but she also helps you build a business around your book. So, it is kind of for new entrepreneurs, new authors, where she just creates your whole world around your book. I didn’t need that, because I have been doing online stuff for ages, so I have just hired her for launching the book.

Jo: Wow! This is a whole other world that I didn’t know existed. One of the things that we hear a lot, certainly in my business, I know a lot of friends who have either written books, or want to write books, it is one of those things that has been on my list of things that I really want to do for a long time. But, then, there seems to be so many moving parts and so many decision points, it is almost like writing the book is one thing that’s a huge thing in itself but then there is the whole thing of how do you get it out there and how do you get it in front of people? And one of the many things I love about you Holly is the fact that you are so good at laying it out step-by-step, and then you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this, it is glorious. Is there anything that I have forgotten, anything that we have not talked about?

Publicity

Holly: Yeah, publicity. So marketing I am going to be doing myself, doing a lot of social media posting and that kind of thing. But, also, I have hired, for the first time, a publicist, too, because I know I have so much stuff around this book, and while I have done the mindset book to get to the point where I am, like I said I want to get it out there in a bigger way then I have with my other books and I know I don’t trust myself to push (oh dear!) myself.

Jo: {laughing} Ooh! We can have a chat about that after the recording.

Holly: That’s a whole other conversation! So, I don’t trust myself to get the book out there in a big way on my own. So I have hired this publicist, three women, one of them is a publicist, one of them is a graphic designer, one of them is an editor. Then, between the three of them, they will work on different people based on what they need. She will be organising a blog tour for me, not just to people who will review the book on their blog, but also people who will invite me to guest post on their blog. Also, she will be getting in touch with mainstream media to talk about my book, so that scares the crap out of me.

Jo: That’s so exciting!

Holly: {laughing} Yes, so there we are. So that’s another big thing, which I have not invested in before, but I think it is really important for me to to do that for this book, and probably for subsequent books.

Jo: And how can we, your beloved friends and listeners, how can we help you get this book out into the world?

Holly: You can buy it, you can read it, you could ask me for a review copy, you could recommend it to people.

Jo: Don’t give it away, make people buy it, don’t give it away! {laughing}

Holly: Well, the reality is, people do give away free copies of books to book bloggers who will get it out there, that is standard process whether you are traditionally published or independently published. So review copies do exist, so I will have limited copies, review copies available for people if they are interested. But, yes, buy it, review it on Amazon, that is really, really, important. Review it on Goodreads, mention it online, you know, whatever, just mentioning it and getting it out there is a huge, huge, help, because that means it gets in front of more eyes.

Follow-up

Jo: Okay, we will be on it. So, can we have a follow-up episode about the whole kind of process, the publicity, and also, I am fascinated to dive in a little bit about this whole kind of growth edge that you are leaning into. To me, you are somebody you have written, this is your ninth book, and yet I know this is one that it is the tenderest, it is almost like your child going out into the world and out to college. I am sure that you love all of your books in exactly the same way, but there is something just really lovely in your transparency around the tenderness about this and it is a real example that we do the hard things, that is how we get the growth and I love that you are being so open about this and I want to do whatever I can to support you in this!!

Holly: Thank you!

Jo: Get it out there. And I just want to say you are amazing and the book will be amazing because all your other books have been amazing, and I know how much work and energy you have put into this as well.

Holly: And this is the best book yet, my husband said to me, as well, because he went through it at one point and he said: this is definitely your best book yet. And I know it is, because the more books I write the better I become as a writer and the better I get at putting this whole thing together. So definitely, even though it scares the crap out of me, I am definitely confident that this is my best book yet, so, yeah.

Jo: Well, Holly, thank you so much. We have got so much stuff that we can put in the show notes for practical things, but I just want to say thank you so much for just being so damn honest about the whole thing. It is one of the things I admire about you, you just kind of tell it like it is and the reality of it, you don’t kind of pretty it up when it doesn’t need prettying up and at the same time you don’t kind of go: ugh, oh, it is really hard. You know? You are just very truthful and very honest and filled with integrity so thank you, I cannot wait for the book. I cannot wait to read the book. {laughing}

Holly: I am so excited to get it out, it is like now that I am in the final stages of this project, and it is almost there, I am really feeling simultaneously terrified and excited but really excited about getting this out there, because I have been talking about it so long, unlike my other books, that I have lots of friends saying: I can’t wait for it to come out. Because I have been talking about it, finally. Whereas with my other books, I would quietly write a book and quietly put it into the world and there it was.

Jo: Yeah it would be like: oh, I have another book coming out next week, and it would be like: What? You do? When did that happen? {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} I know! And I was talking with a friend that I hadn’t caught up with in a while and we happened to be talking about books and she said: oh you wrote a book, and I said: I have written eight books. And she said: oh eight books in eight years? And I said eight books in two/three years. {laughing}

Jo: Not quote three years no! You are a marvel.

Holly: Thank you.

Jo: Thank you so much this has been a great conversation, if you have questions or if you want to go and gobble up a copy of Holly’s book, which comes out on April 22nd?

Holly: Yes, Earth Day.

Jo: April 22nd, Earth Day, we will have the links in the show notes, or you could just go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble online, or your local independent online book retailer, and type in Holly Worton, what’s the name of the book?

Holly: If Trees Could Talk: Life Lessons from the Wisdom of the Woods.

Jo: There you go, Holly, thank you all so much and thank you all for listening.

Holly: Thank you very much for listening, I hope you found this interesting and useful. Please drop me a line and let me know if you have any questions or thoughts, you can email at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there. Thank you again for listening, if you have not yet subscribed I would love to have you subscribe to my podcast that way you can get updates every time a new episode goes live which is every Monday.

Next week’s episode is a solo show and I don’t know what I will be talking about yet, tune in next week and I will probably be talking a little bit about the book, and perhaps my process, but we shall see. The book has been overwhelming my thoughts and projects lately, so. So tune in next week and I look forward to speaking to you.

298 Jo Casey + Holly ~ What it Takes to Publish Your Book (Both Inner & Outer Work)