June 25, 2025 • 46 mins
Click Here to ask your book writing and publishing questions!
Author Lori Gold is pulling back the curtain on publishing, in both this interview and her newest novel, Romantic Friction.
INSIDE THE EPISODE
• Yet another reason bestseller lists aren’t what you think (I didn't know this until I read her book!)
• A great tip for handing reviews without spiraling (or swearing off Goodreads forever)
• What AI is doing to authors' voices, and why it should concern all of us
• How writing happens even when you're not writing
• How Lori studies the bones of books she loves to make her own writing even stronger
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi everybody and welcome back.
I told Lori that this is myfirst time back on this platform
in quite some time, so we mayhave some hiccups, I don't know.
We're just going to go with it.
But I'm delighted to be heretoday with Lori Gold, whose
author, romantic Friction cameout in May yes, may 6th.
(00:27):
Okay, so you saw my.
Did you see my story thismorning?
I did, thank you, I'm in love,so I have a lot of.
You know, we don't typicallytalk about the book itself,
because I love to ask questions.
People can read the book andthey should read the book.
I think I'm at the point whereI'm not giving anything away.
They're at the.
(00:47):
Sophie and her three or foursort of author friends are at
this panel event, and HartleyWest, who I heard read last
night, is based on one of yourgood friends who said I've never
been in one of your books andso you said you're going to be
in it and you're going to be thevillain, exactly.
(01:08):
Wow, she's kind of like thisvillain that you feel kind of
bad for, but now I'm at thispoint where I think I don't know
if I want to feel bad, for Ithink she may be smarter than
she's with her little cardigan,anyway.
So they're at this event whereHartley has just stood up and
dropped this enormous bombshelland no one's really sure how to
(01:29):
handle it, and I love it becauseI can totally see it playing
out.
So if people want to read itand they should they can read it
.
But I like to talk about thingsthat they can't get from
reading the book.
Your previous books you wroteunder Lori Goldstein, right, all
right, well, that's your givenname.
Yes, okay my married name but,yes, your married name which, by
(01:52):
the way, my maiden name isgoldstone yeah, and you grew up
on the south, south jersey,right, yeah, yeah and I grew up
in delaware, so I spent many asummer at the Jersey Shore.
But what?
Why did you change it fromGoldstein to gold when you wrote
this one?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So really a couple of more business oriented
decisions.
My first four novels were youngadult novels and they were
under Laurie Goldstein.
And then I wrote an adulthistorical called Love Theodosia
, about the daughter of AaronBurr whose name is Theodosia
Burr, and in that one she was 19, true to the age of she was
when the book is set in 1800.
And we wanted to make sure itwas distinguished as an adult
(02:34):
book and not another young adultbook, obviously because the age
was younger, you know.
We wanted to make that clear.
So I added my middle name tothat one and it's Laurie Ann
Goldstein, which I should grabit because it's a lot of letters
on the cover of a book.
Laurie Ann Goldstein takes up alot of room and so
aesthetically when I looked atit I said that's just a lot of,
(02:54):
it's a mouthful and it's a lotof letters and you want your
name to get bigger and bigger ona book cover, not smaller and
smaller.
So when I had a couple of yearsbetween that one and Romantic
Friction coming out and RomanticFriction is book club fiction,
it's kind of contemporaryfiction and that's where I see
my career going so I just talkedabout it with my agent.
Should I go back to LaurieGoldstein, Because it's been a
little bit since I did the youngadult novels.
(03:16):
This one shouldn't be thoughtof as a young adult novel.
And then we said you know what?
Let's just kind of do a rebrand, reboot, boot like you're going
to be a book club fictionauthor.
Let's make it distinct fromwhat you've done before.
So it was just a truncation ofGoldstein.
You know, all my social mediais still Goldstein.
My website is still Goldstein.
Like I'm not changing any ofthat.
But for the purposes of, youknow, writing this book and
(03:38):
promoting it, it's more gold.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
It just made sense to do it that way.
Yeah, no, I love it.
You do something in this, soI'm glad to hear personally as a
reader, I'm glad to hear thatyou, this is the genre you see
yourself in.
This is the thing I could feel.
How much fun I'm assuming youhad writing this while I'm
reading it and you do somethingthat I think is so fun.
(03:59):
And I'm going to say what it is.
I think for a long time Ithought this was like not
allowed, and I've seen not manyat all, but a few other women
authors specifically do this,and I got excited because it
almost, I feel like it gave mepermission.
You kind of broke this fourthwall thing where right, where
(04:20):
some you're you're, and you doit with a lot of parentheses,
which I also want to thank youfor.
I have a friend who I won'tactually I will name him.
It's my dear friend, drewLinsalata.
So, drew, if you're watching orlistening, I'm calling you out.
When Drew read my most recentbook, he was one of my beta
(04:41):
readers.
It's not fiction, it'snonfiction.
He was like you use so manyparentheses, I think is that
like an ADHD, like you're trying?
He did.
He's a therapist, so he wentand did some research, okay, and
he was like I think it's like athing where you and I'm
paraphrasing, I'm not going toquote him on this, but it's like
(05:03):
the thoughts in your head youput in parentheses and I said,
yeah, like doesn't that makesense?
I want the reader to know thisis sort of like an aside, but
you, it's great.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Although I will.
I appreciate you saying thatbecause there was like a couple
of early reviews on NetGalleythat were like I don't like the
parentheses, so I'm glad youlike them.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, what do you do with those?
While we're on that topic, like, when you get those early, does
that make you?
How do you handle those?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
You know.
So it's taken a while.
This is my sixth published bookand in the beginning reviews
are so hard to take whetherthey're reader reviews or
industry and you're so nervousand I've gotten to a place where
I don't read that many reviews,but I do read some of the early
ones, because I feel like theearly ones are people who have
sought it out, like on NetGalley.
They're booksellers, they'relibrarians, they're really big
(05:54):
bookstagrammers, they're peoplewho love books and I feel like I
can glean some things from themwhat they love and what they
don't love.
And sometimes, you know,sometimes you see something
you're like, oh, okay, that'snot resonating, that I'm doing.
Maybe I can think about thatfor the next one.
But I have a cutoff point whereI'm like, okay, I don't look
anymore, because then it's outin the world and there's so many
readers and I've gotten enoughfeedback that I'm like, okay,
(06:16):
that worked and that didn't.
And some of it I might agreewith and some of it I might not.
But I just feel like it's partof my education as a writer to
expose myself to it to a certaindegree and then kind of let it
go, be its own thing.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Is that something that you feel like you've gotten
more adept at as you've gone onas an author is kind of
learning.
Okay, what works for me, whatworks for Lori, when I'm reading
reviews?
Because when you're firstgetting started, I think which
is the vast majority of myaudience, not all of it, but
it's like is this normal?
Am I doing this?
(06:48):
See the air quotes, right,right.
And what I continue to feelmore strongly is you're figuring
out how you navigate it.
What's changing the most foryou?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
You know, I think just kind of confidence and
trusting myself, like in thatexample I just gave, just saying
like I don't need to read themall, like I don't need to either
put myself through that or Ihave enough and I can distance
myself from those reviews.
But it's that trust andconfidence across the board.
I teach writing as well.
I teach creative writing and Ilead some writing retreats and I
(07:22):
work with a lot of students whoare working on their first
novel and I say exactly what youjust said you are figuring out
how to do this and you shouldget advice from other people,
because what I do isn't the sameas what you do and what someone
else might do.
Expose yourself to thedifferent ways to write, the
different ways to approach allaspects of writing, and then you
have to try them out.
(07:43):
It's the only way to know whatworks for you and what doesn't,
because you just don't know.
And students will ask me thatlike how do I make a decision,
say plot wise, that this is theright direction?
And I say I think about it, Ibrainstorm all of the possible
solutions or possible ways thestory could go and I pick the
one that feels right.
And they say but how do youknow it's right?
And I said I don't.
But that's the decision I'vemade and I trust myself, based
(08:06):
on the other novels that I'vewritten, that I know what I'm
doing enough that I can kind offollow where my instincts go.
But I've had six published booksand I think and a seventh will
come out next year fromHarperCollins, and I have four
others that I've written thathaven't sold.
So that's 12 novels.
That's a lot of experience tosay like now I can trust myself
(08:26):
with the decisions I makesurrounding my writing.
But it's 12 novels to kind ofdo that.
And you know it's hard as newwriters to feel like I've
finished this one and then writeanother and then figure some
things out.
But that's the only way itreally is.
The only way is to keep writingand developing that confidence
that you need as a writer.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
With the four that didn't sell?
Were they successive, like oneafter the other, or were they
interspersed amidst the sixInterspersed?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Okay, a couple on early on, and then a couple
actually two in the middle oftwo of my first two, then the
next two didn't sell, and then Ihad two that sold and then
another that hasn't sold, sokind of like sporadically in
there.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
So how do you feel?
I was talking last week withJane Hamilton from the Book of
Ruth and she, I want to say,admitted, but it's not like it
was a big secret.
I was just so.
I'm so grateful when people arewilling to say, look, I've had
these things have gone nowhere.
I mean I, elizabeth, have 2000copies of my third book under my
steps, like I would not havethought that would have happened
(09:31):
after the first two did as wellas they did, which is also
subjective, but becauseeverything that I've done so far
is self-published.
When I talked to Jane, she saidI have so many drafts in boxes
that never saw the light of day.
And a question I had for herthat I want to ask you as well
(09:52):
is how do you decide when to saythis is like I'm going to put
this to bed, like I'm not, we'regoing to move?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
on now.
Well, I think like the mostpractical answer because I have
an agent.
I'm not self-publishing, I havean agent so I tried to.
We tried to sell them.
She tried to sell them on mybehalf and couldn't.
So you run out of editors atsome point.
What houses do I want to bewith?
Have we kind of gone throughthe people I feel like would be
a good mix for this?
You kind of run out at somepoint with the places you want
(10:22):
to be, and so you know Iwouldn't turn to self-publishing
.
Those Two of them were youngadult books.
Young adult is not a greatmarket for self-publishing, you
know.
It's just it's not where thatage group finds their books.
So it wasn't really an optionto do that with those.
And one of them that didn'tsell is a middle grade, so kind
of the same area is not reallyone that lends itself to
self-publishing.
So if I had a adult book thatdidn't sell, would I consider it
.
I don't know, I'd have to see,like where I was in the
(10:43):
landscape, what other ideas Ihad.
But I guess you know thepractical answer is if you run
out of places to go to for aneditor, you put it aside.
But you know.
That's not to say that Ithere's one of them, I think
about that.
I feel like, with some tweaking, could become an adult novel
and some of the same conceptswould be there, kind of the same
foundation of the plot.
But there are things I would dothat I could now see doing it
(11:06):
as an adult book and it's on mylist to do so.
You know, is something alwaysdead?
When do you know it's dead?
I guess if you're trying topush the same book without any
significant changes and you'rejust forcing it and the market
isn't receptive to it, you haveto let it go.
But if you, years later this ismany years later I'm thinking
(11:26):
about this book that I was likewell, I feel like I can approach
it in a new way Then I thinkit's worth giving a try.
I mean, it's already yourmaterial, you've already put in
the time.
You know there's a fine linebetween like, just like it's
time to move on to somethingelse and don't keep hanging on.
But I think if you have thatcreative spark and you can see a
significant way to kind ofretool it and perhaps there is a
(11:47):
market for it now because,frankly, things change, you know
, like all of a sudden, vampirebooks are big again.
Well, what?
What if somebody didn't buy itfive years ago?
But maybe they would now likeyeah.
But I would always say towriters if they have books in
those categories that have beenput aside and they're rethinking
, you know doing something elsewith it.
Take a pass or two, or 10through it, because you become a
(12:08):
better writer as years go on.
It's not like you want to takethat exact same book that you
wrote five years ago and justthrow it out and try to sell it
again.
Go through it, make it better,use all the skills you've
learned as a writer, and thenyou know, see if we see what can
happen with it.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So I think, if I wanted to start a controversy as
as insane as the one thatHartley and Sophie are about to
be embroiled in, I think, in thenext chapter of Romantic
Friction, I would ask a largeroom full of people, which is
the best approach?
A large room full of people,which is the best approach,
(12:44):
traditional or self, orsomewhere in between, a hybrid?
Yeah, it's a dangerous,dangerous question and I'm
completely agnostic as a, as anauthor, as a book coach, as in
everything.
I'm completely.
It's whatever works for you.
For you, what I'm hearing isthat you prefer the traditional
approach whenever possible.
And so what is it about that?
That you that pulls you in thatdirection each time?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
So right now I feel like the self-published market
is so competitive and you haveto know so much about how to do
it and do it well.
That's not to say that I, as aI market myself for my books
right now.
Yes, the Harper Collins doessome, but it still falls on most
of us authors, whether we'retraditionally published or
self-published, to do a lot ofthat behind the scenes of
(13:27):
marketing your book and gettingit out there yourself.
But there's even a strongerdegree that I think you have to
know and understand themarketplace for self-publishing
and I think a lot of people sayI'm just going to dive into it
without doing that homework andreally educating yourself on it,
and they don't wind up havingsuccess in it because you have
to understand how to do it.
You have to understand whatgenres work well.
(13:48):
You have to know how do Irelease books, how quickly do I
release them in succession, howdo I price them.
There's so much of an educationaround self-publishing and
because I've come from thetraditional publishing world, I
feel confident in what I knowand the other is so much that
I'd have to learn.
I'm open to it at some point,but at this point, while I'm
still in the traditionalpublishing world.
I'm taking advantage of thethings I've learned so far
(14:10):
before I shift gears and I thinkfor the right book, I could
very easily see doing it.
But it has to be the right bookand the right genre and all of
that.
And it's a multifaceteddecision.
It's not just like, oh,self-published or traditionally
published.
You have to understand thebehind the scenes of both of
them to figure out what's bestand what's best for this
particular book.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
And I love that you said that what's best for this
particular book, because we'reseeing more and more hybrid
authors, which is different froma hybrid publisher, where the
author is published in differentmodalities and via different
publishing models.
Okay, switching gears a littlebit, you did something and I'm
curious if you did this onpurpose.
And if you did, it's brilliant,and if you didn't, it's
brilliant.
(14:49):
So when I saw the cover forRomantic Friction, I thought
this looks a lot like romanticfiction by Romantic comedy.
Thank you, I knew I was gettingthat right.
I knew it.
I've Curtis Sittenfeld, which Ihad just read a few months ago
and devoured it and loved it.
(15:11):
And so then I thought to myselfokay, given the plot of
romantic friction and I wonderif that was intentional, in the
same way that Seth Godin's book,the, I wrote it down, so I
wouldn't.
This is marketing.
His book is titled this isMarketing.
(15:32):
Like, really, the cover took onthe subtle art of not giving a
fuck by Mark Manson.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Was that in your head ?
It wasn't an intentional, Imean it was.
We knew about it, right.
So they came up with the cover.
This was there are two versions.
We knew it was going to beblocky text.
We wanted to, you know, make itbe, you know, not an image or
anything, as as romantic comedyis as well.
That was one of the comps welooked at.
There's another book called.
I Hope this Finds you Well.
(16:01):
Those were the things we wereplaying with and when they came
up with the two different blockycovers blocky text covers sorry
, I should say everybody kind ofpreferred this one.
I was fine with either.
So you kind of go with what theteam likes.
So they liked this version ofthe cover.
We had a list of like 50 titles,because this wasn't the
original title.
This is the one they chose.
And so when they first gave thefirst cover, it was these
(16:22):
colors the pink and the yellow.
And they said what do you think?
And I said I really like it.
And they said well, we reallylike it too, but it looks so
much like romantic comedy.
So I think we want to dosomething else.
And I said fine, you knowwhatever you want.
I understand.
You know it's a few years inbetween.
You know it's not the worstthing to lean into it, as you're
saying, but we also don't wantto feel like we're copying it,
right?
So we went through about threeand a half months of every color
(16:44):
combination you could think of.
At one point it was like red,blue and yellow, and I was like
now it's Superman, where are wegoing with this?
And so eventually, of course,after all these months, the team
comes back and says you knowwhat?
I think we're going to go withthe original colors.
So we wound back to the pink.
I think it's so great.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
And I just want to be so clear, like I think it's so
great and, given the topic ofthe book how it's an author who
was intentionally but notintentionally but I haven't
gotten far enough yet to reallyknow put the bow on how
intentional it was it makessense, like from a marketing
angle, I loved it.
And the other thing you did Iwant to ask you about so often
(17:26):
in fiction, chapters are numbersthey don't have, they're not
words, and yours are words.
And so this crazy thinghappened.
When I read chapter one whichis titled about the author.
Am I the only one?
I feel like you know exactlywhat I'm going to say.
So I was like, okay, I'm goingto learn about Lori.
So I'm reading through and I'mreading and I'm like, damn, this
(17:48):
is a really long about theauthor section.
This is really long.
And then I started highlightingthings for this, for our
conversation Cause.
I was thinking man, Lori and Iare so the same.
I mean, I can even pull them upLike she likes this and she
doesn't like this, and the morethe further along I went.
(18:09):
I thought, wait, this isn'tthis.
First of all, why would it beat the beginning?
I mean, I'm not we can all dodifferent things with our books
but like, why would she put thisat the beginning?
And then I came to understandwhat was going on, which was
that's just the title of thechapter.
Yeah, replicating the narrativearc of a book by, not not in
(18:41):
full Right, but like the onlychapter title you didn't have
that was on my mind, was pet thedog, whatever, but you have
something about like wagging thetail or something so like at
what point did that brilliancestrike?
Speaker 2 (18:57):
That wasn't original.
Well, I love chapter titles.
I've done it in previous books.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Really Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
So I particularly I gravitate towards that.
I like that.
This book is supposed to be afunny book.
It's a satire and I reallywanted to lean into it.
So we were actually in revisionmaybe the second revision with
my editor and I said I'm puttingin chapter titles.
What do you think of that?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
And my editor said I love it.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I love chapter titles , so I went through and I did it
and it was because it's so muchabout writing, it's about being
a romance author and so leaninginto either there, you know,
there's a chapter at the endcalled surprising but inevitable
like you know all of these kindof like tropes about writing
and it's final climax yeah, yeah, what an opportunity to kind of
(19:40):
just like be even a little bitmore meta with the book, and so
that's where they came from, butI love them and I'm hearing
that people love them.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I felt like it was really unique and really well
done.
When I'm editing sometimes andI'm working with nonfiction,
it's air quote easy.
It's not easy to come up withthe best title for a chapter,
but it's easier because it'slike what's the chapter about?
When I'm working with authorswho have written fiction or even
memoir and they want to come up, they have chapter titles.
(20:09):
That's actually where I feellike we get off course, cause
they want the chapter to beabout what the chapter title is,
but then you read the chapterand you're like wait, this
doesn't match up.
So I often encourage,especially first-time authors,
to use numbers, not words.
But I'm I.
(20:29):
When P.
If people are watching this andthey're like why does Liz look
so incredibly distracted?
It's because I'm pulling up thebook because which means I did
mine after I wrote it.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
It wasn't the as you said, it wasn't like the chapter
title didn't lead the chapter.
It was like this was thechapter and then I had to come
up with a phrase that summarizedthe chapter versus the other
(21:02):
way around.
So I made sure that theymatched and that might be a good
way to do.
It is like write it without itand then come in and find the
clever or interesting, you knowkind of words to summarize what
the chapter is about.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Well, and one thing, as I've said, people are so sick
of me saying this, but I'mworking on my first novel.
I don't know what makes methink I could do this, but I'm
using chapter titles, notbecause I think they'll stay,
but because they help remind meof what the hell is happening in
this chapter.
Sure, like.
This is the chapter where it'slike the friends episodes.
(21:34):
This is the one where these arethe.
This is the chapter where thishappens.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Okay, can I.
Do you have anything else tosay about that, or can I?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
No, no, go for it.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Okay, I always feel bad if someone's like I hit that
point.
You can always interrupt me,lori.
So this in the chapter titled ACrime of Passion, can I read a
line?
Is that OK?
Sure, yeah.
So you have this kind of like alittle paragraph, but three
hours and one time change.
Later I've abandoned.
Pick me my animal shelter, meetcute, where a funny, loving man
(22:06):
boy stand up comedian and adisciplined Boston ballet dancer
clash over the Labrador poodle,german shepherd mutt.
They both want to adopt andreturn to my safe space.
So this for context.
I think you're on a plane andit's like this is where you kind
of spend your time, or this iswhere the character spends her
time, cause she's an authordreaming up her next, and then
(22:26):
she moves on to somethingcompletely different which is
like otherworldly and whatever.
Is that how you do?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
it.
I think you know.
So.
I had a friend very early on inthe writing world who said one
of her quotes when people gaveadvice.
When people asked her foradvice for writing, she said she
writes while standing up andshe types while sitting down.
And I loved it because I thinkwriters, especially newer
writers, don't give as much,don't pay as much attention,
don't see how valid it is tojust think.
(22:57):
You have to think Half ofwriting is being in your head,
thinking about what you want todo, letting your mind go
everywhere, that a story couldgo, everywhere that a character
could go, and that time that youput in before you start writing
anything down, before you startwriting typing.
Certainly typing scenes is soimportant and we don't give
enough credit to how importantthat is as part of writing.
(23:20):
And so I'll do it.
You know I'll.
Sometimes I'll just sit at mydesk and do it, but you know
I'll go for walks or if I'm on aplane or a train ride, like
that is my time to just be in myhead, to be thinking about.
This is a story I want to beworking on.
Or I'll say this is where Ijust left off writing the last
scene for what I'm working onright now.
What am I doing?
The next couple scenes, and Ijust think without kind of that
(23:41):
computer in front of me so justletting me and that's part of
writing.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah, I don't think people see that, as a lot of
times, especially first-timeauthors, think I'm only writing
when my butt's in the chair andI'm typing and I think, I think,
like I don't know whatpercentage it would be, but it's
definitely more than 50% of thewriting is done when you're not
actually writing, right?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Exactly, yeah, yeah, and you know, I think like that
is one of the things I reallyjust try to drill into my
students as much as possibleLike think before you act, like
think before you write it down.
Also, because I think people,once you spend the time and
you've written it and it's inword form and you're maybe
wordsmithing it and you'retrying to get the words to be
the way you want them, you'remore reluctant to make changes.
(24:27):
Once it's actually in a wordfile or a scrivener, there's
something about it being therethat you're like well, it has to
be there because I wrote it andit's hard to cut and it's hard
to change and it's hard to kindof scrap things.
So do some of that like revisionin your head before you
actually start writing.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
That's a really good point, because one thing that I
hear, and you probably do too,is but that's 10,000 words.
You is, but I, that's 10,000words.
You're telling me I have to cutthat and being able to see that
as a win, like removing isadding, it's kind of this weird
trick we have to play onourselves.
That, you know, is um what?
Just out of curiosity, where doyou write in in what software?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
I just make stuff word.
I'm, you know, don't doanything else fancy.
I do all of this pre-thinkingin a notebook, so I always do it
by hand.
I have a notebook yeah, I havea notebook here that I'm using
for revising but I just picksomething and I just kind of
start randomly writing thingsabout you know, my characters
and about the book.
I always start with a notebook.
I have a notebook for everybook I've written and that's
(25:32):
where I do most of my characterdevelopment, most of my plotting
, and I just write like what if?
Questions, what if they didthis?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
It's like the best way into a story, so that's
always how I start.
Yes, that has become somethingthat I'm so fond of doing is
asking the what if?
And it's I'm like well, what if?
She because I don't know why,lori, and tell me what it does
for you, it makes me feel likeit's just a well, what if?
Okay, you know what it remindsme of?
(26:03):
I'm a big doomsday person.
So if I go to the grocery store, it's like well, what if they
don't have a Haagen-Dazs on sale?
Well, what if there's noparking and it's 125 degrees out
, what if?
And so someone many years ago Idon't remember who I should,
cause I should give this persona lot of credit taught me to say
what if Haagen-Dazs is only 50cents?
(26:25):
What if there's no one in theparking lot?
What?
if, switching the what if tosomething good, flipping it to
more positive, like yes yes, andso I thought I do that with the
writing because it doesn't makeme.
It makes me feel like I'm beingcurious, not like a
perfectionist, which I can be.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah, yeah.
And I think part of that whatif that I do, and I also
encourage especially new writersto do is think of a book, movie
, tv show you know well and youreally like and you admire,
because sometimes I'll say, okay, where do I start with these
characters?
You need a starting place.
So I'll go to Game of Thrones,which is one of my favorite
television shows, and books andI'll say, like I diverge, I just
(27:09):
can't, I can't.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I feel like I've got to get into it, but continue.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So well, I think it has tremendous character arcs.
Like the where they start andthe growth that they have is
some of the best character arcsthat I've seen in entertainment.
I truly do believe that the waythese characters change is
something that writers canreally really learn from.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
All right.
So I think it's very importantfor that to me.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
But I'll say, okay, so this character is a Jon Snow
type.
What does that mean?
He's like a savior, he wants tolike he cares about other
people, puts other people beforehimself, will make the hard
decisions in order for otherpeople, versus somebody who's
like you know, I only care aboutme and myself and my ambition.
And so, you know, I pull fromthese characters from these
other existing shows where Iknow the archetypes really well,
(27:55):
and say, okay, this person isgoing to start out as a Jon
Snow-ish character, but ofcourse they're going to change
and they're going to evolve.
But it's like a starting point.
It's somewhere in this wholeworld where you could pick
character traits out of anything.
You have a million things tochoose from.
How do I narrow it down?
So I often will start with thosewhat if?
What if they have this kind oftrait from this character?
What if they have this kind oftrait from that character?
(28:16):
And it's like the merging of itall and kind of going over and
over and again and you finallycome up with your own unique
character.
But it's at least a startingplace, right?
And that's what I think issuper helpful about those what
if?
Questions.
So what if they had this kindof backstory, like this
character, but different.
What if I merged this kind ofbackstory?
What if I merged this piecethat's from my own backstory?
And all of a sudden you'reasking many more, because some
(28:38):
people say I don't even know thewhat if?
Questions to ask.
So I try to give them examplesof how do you pull them.
Where are you pulling it from?
Pulling it from something youknow from your personal life
another show, another book andjust then start riffing on it?
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Okay.
So, following that thread, thepremise, which is not giving
anything away of romanticfriction, is that this new
author, hartley West, hasessentially and this is a
massive topic in the space rightnow essentially used AI to
write her book based on.
So, for anybody who's usedChatGPT or any other AI, we know
(29:11):
that you can say write this inthe voice of so-and-so Do you
ever use or how do you feelabout, what's your opinion?
There's no right or wronganswer here.
Using AI to help you with thosewhat-if questions, to help
drive your curiosity, certainlynot to write anything but or to
write something Like what's yourfeeling on that?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
write anything but, or to write something like
what's your feeling on that?
So I, you know the the writesomething is easier question
because, you know, I don't knowhow many people know the depth
of it, but these AI, largelanguage models, are only able
to write in the style of.
You know, hartley West iswriting in the style of Sophie
Wilde, who's a bestsellingromanticist author.
So you're she's only able to dothat in these programs because
these programs used existingreal books without permission,
(29:54):
without compensation Whetherit's copyright infringement is
currently in the basis of manylawsuits that are going on right
now.
But the bottom line is they'reonly able to even approach
writing the way a human canbecause they're basing it off of
all of us humans.
My books have all been part ofthe ones that were trained to
that AI was trained upon.
My books have all been part ofthe ones that were trained to
(30:14):
that AI was trained upon.
So it's just hard to likeadvocate for anybody using it
when you feel like if I didn'tdo all the work I put in and all
these thousands and thousandsof other authors put in, you
couldn't write this, yeah.
So I think many people don'tunderstand that that's kind of
what, why, what's going onbehind the scenes and why a lot
of creative people are upsetabout it.
On top of the idea of like noone wants to lose their job,
(30:37):
right, like no one wants to bereplaced, you know whether
you're working at a factory oryou're doing creative work, but
when you get to the creativework and people using it just to
write.
It's hard for me to kind offeel like that's quote, unquote,
okay, at least right now.
You know it's not what ourindustry is doing, it's not what
readers seem to want yet.
But, as I always say when Italk about this, it will be the
marketplace that will eventuallydecide if that's quote, unquote
(30:58):
, okay or not, twists or what ifquestions or those kinds of
things.
It's tricky because you stillwant the core of what you're
doing to come from humanintention, but say you don't
have a critique partner, youcan't afford to take a class
(31:19):
Like does it serve some purpose?
I don't know how I feel aboutit yet.
I'm still kind of on the fenceto be on.
To be completely honest, my gut, my knee jerk reaction is say
don't use it for anything.
I'm trying to be a little bitpractical for the people who
don't have access to, you know,a critique partner or a writer
or someone that they they canbrainstorm with.
I just still worry that it'sgoing to, you know, is all of
(31:43):
our work going to become oneamalgamation of the same thing?
You know, and I know peoplealready say like there's only
seven stories in the world orwhatever.
But you know, do you lose?
If you rely on it too much andit replaces your own sense of
originality, are you getting thebest product you as an
individual could create?
(32:03):
And if you rely on it too much,if does it become a slippery
slope?
And so you know, that's kind ofmy most honest answer right now
.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
And I I support it.
You know, what I'm about to sayis kind of like a thought
that's developing as I'm sayingit.
So I'm going to have to ask forforgiveness later if I totally
botch this.
But there are two thoughts thatI have.
One is that we often suggestcertainly people who have been
writing a long time will oftensay that one of their they read
(32:31):
that's like getting their MFA toa degree.
I mean, I'm, that's loose.
You know, they read constantlyto get new ideas about how to do
things.
And they read their favoriteauthors and not to copy or even
mimic them, but to get ideas andto understand.
Not to get ideas to understandthings like character arc and
such.
And perhaps one of thedifferences is that those people
(32:52):
are out buying those books inorder to do that.
So the author is beingcompensated.
The publishing house, if thereis one, is being compensated.
One thing that I have discoveredbecause I have, admittedly not
for my books, but for socialmedia content to get ideas for
things.
I've used it because my brainis just exhausted and then I
(33:13):
make everything, to the best ofmy ability, sound like me.
I rewrite everything.
There are certain words andphrases I would never use.
What's interesting is that, asan editor now, I more than once
have had a manuscript come to methat I have very kindly said to
the author send this back to mewhen you didn't just write it
(33:35):
with AI, because I can tellInteresting the more we can see,
you know, like tells, lines orways.
Series of three.
Everything's a series of three.
The em dash is everywhere.
(33:55):
You know those are markers ofAI generated content and the
more you use AI and I've noticedthis even in coming up with
ideas for social media contentthe more it spits back the same
exact stuff Because, to yourpoint, which is accurate, it's
only using what's available toit, what it's been trained on.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, yeah, and I think you know and I think why
do you want to be a writer aswell?
I think that's part of it.
Do you want to be a writer?
Because you want your uniquetake on this type of story, this
type of character.
You know you want your ownthoughts out there, and so if
you're using AI for it, it's nolonger your thoughts, it's like
emerging of lots of otherpeople's thoughts.
So, you know, to me it gets tothe core of like, why bother
(34:37):
writing a book?
You know, what are you hopingto achieve?
What's your goal?
What's what's fueling you to dothis?
Um, and and those are justindividual questions that for
you know all of us to be askingWhich- is a whole separate
conversation, right Like it'sand it's different.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
I think I'm what I'm learning and I have I have been
learning and noticing is thatit's very different in the
fiction space versus thenonfiction space.
Sure, yeah, which again, maybewe'll do another one on on that,
because you help authors write,like we'll dive deeper into
that.
So two more questions.
The first one is one thing Iwas thinking as I was reading up
(35:10):
to where I am now and I'mwondering if you realize this or
now realize it is that thisbook is actually a great read.
Well, for all the obviousreasons, but also because if
you're new to the author spaceand you want to see how it it's
not all this caddy, of courseI've met some incredible people
(35:32):
who have become my friends and Ifind that it's a very
supportive community and likeit's kind of an education this
book in what this is like, fromthe definitions of plotting and
pantsing, I was like she nailedit.
That's it for me.
All the way to how people, howthe agents and the editors and
(35:56):
everybody handles like, oh myGod, we have a media crisis.
This is not good.
Did you realize that when youwere writing it?
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, that was part of the inspiration.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Really.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
The book is about a bestselling author who discovers
another author has used AI towrite in her style and she bands
together with her fellowauthors, as you said, to take
her down any way they can, whichwill include committing a
felony.
So if I'm going to, you haven'tgotten there yet.
So if I'm going to show theeffect of AI on the job of being
an author on the world ofpublishing, you have to
(36:28):
understand what that is, becausethere's no way to kind of tell
that story of how an AI authorwould change things and upend
things and the risks to anauthor without understanding how
publishing works.
My inspiration for this wastwofold.
I've been writing fiction for10 years.
My first book came out in 2015.
(36:51):
I know a lot about how thepublishing world works and all
of this stuff that you know isrolling around in my head of
things like well, how doessomething become a New York
Times bestseller One?
Yeah, you have a well-writtenbook, sure, but there's a lot of
marketing stuff that's behindthe scenes.
Publishers pick books thatthey're going to support and
they're going to put ad dollarsbehind and they're going to push
to get reviews and it's goingto be in the billboard in Times
Square.
We all don't get that.
Those are the things that arebasically, as I say, in the book
(37:13):
, preordained upon acquisition.
You know where you're slotted.
Most authors don't understandthat.
They don't realize that, andthere's a lot of disappointment
that comes when you have all ofthese hopes and all of these
dreams and you're very upendedby not understanding that there
really was nothing you couldhave done and you feel like it's
your fault if your book doesn'tdo well and you don't
understand that there's thismachine that's either behind you
(37:35):
or not really behind you andthere's very little you can do
as an individual author to matchwhat a publisher could do when
they decide these are the booksthat are going to be successful,
and I talk to my students aboutthis.
I'm a transparent person.
I'm a transparent instructor.
I think knowledge is power andthe more you know, then you know
the areas where you can ask forthings and where you have an
(37:55):
expectation that this couldhappen, and the more you
understand how it works, themore you can figure out how do I
have a successful career?
So part of me was absolutelythis could have been a
nonfiction book about.
This is what goes on behind thescenes of publishing.
But, I wanted to tackle it inthis way that if you love books
and you kind of love thesebehind the scenes inside
baseball kind of stuff, you'regoing to get such a kick out of
(38:17):
it.
Everything is true.
There's not a made up anecdotein it.
It either happened to me orsomebody I know.
But once I figured out the AIpart of the premise, it made the
rest of it work, because if itwas just an inside publishing
book without that, then what isit?
Is it gossip, is it complaining, you know?
And so I wanted, I needed apremise that would allow for
(38:38):
that to make sense together, andthat's the AI component gave me
that, so I was able to mergethese two things and come up
with the premise for the story.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Well, you know what I learned, but it was purposeful
going in.
And I love it.
You know what I learned?
That I didn't know abouttraditional publishing, Because
you know, but I didn't even knowthis from my friends who are
traditionally published and theyprobably know it's just never
come up in conversation.
You can't hit the New YorkTimes bestseller list if enough
books haven't been printed.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Like you have.
There's this line in the book.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
even if Oprah and Ellen and all these other people
Taylor Swift, yes talk about itand everyone goes and buy it,
you still can't hit the listbecause not enough books were
printed to be able to sell inthat week to hit.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I never.
It makes perfect sense.
I think many people don't knowthat.
I think that was something Ifound out along the way, and
most people don't even know that.
They think like if I do wellenough, it'll hit the New York
Times bestseller list, forprobably none.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
So is that why pre-orders?
Is that another reason whypre-orders are so big?
Because they help drive the run.
They can be helpful, but it canbe so huge to make that bump.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
But yes, pre-orders are helpful in that way because
if the publisher sees you know,so it takes, you know, usually a
minimum of 10,000 books sold ina single week to hit the New
York Times bestseller list, apart of the list, depending on
lots of factors.
But if you got pre-orders for2,000 and the book has yet to go
through its printing yet theyknow okay, well, we've got 2,000
(40:06):
pre-orders, we better printenough and it's a sign that
maybe with some support it couldget somewhere.
But, if you have 10 pre-orders,it's not going to change their
print run, but yes, that is whypre-orders can be helpful,
because it makes the publisherliterally just print more copies
of the book to put out in theworld.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I really love learning.
When I'm just reading for fun,I really love learning.
So last question I always askis what are you reading now or
what have you read recently thatyou really love?
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So I just finished Onyx Storm, the third in the
Rebecca Yarns series.
Okay, I really try to readwidely.
I try to read in my genre,outside my genre.
I try to keep up on what'spopular and what's doing really
well because I feel like Ilearned from that and I learned
what marketing people arelooking for, why they got behind
(40:54):
this book versus another book.
So I really try to read bothbigger books and smaller books.
My next book I'm saving forvacation the Taylor Jenkins read
Atmospheres because I love herbut, I'm saving it because I
don't want to like.
I want to read it in like atwo-day burst.
I don't want to like read itthree minutes at night as I'm
falling asleep, so uh, butthat's, it, just came out right
(41:16):
came out, yeah, like a week agoor so, like a week ago or
something.
Okay, yeah, that one's beingreally talked about yeah, but I
love her, you know, and I think,like finding the authors you
love, that you want to read,like, like exactly you said, if,
like you read, I read and I die.
I read it for fun and then I'llread it again to dissect it.
But I love her stuff and LeonMoriarty and like that's, those
are my kind of go-to of likewhat do I want to write, like in
(41:38):
this book club fiction space,and I'll read and reread those
books and say like, okay, whatare her plot points, what did
she do to support them, what arethe character arcs?
And I'll go through and I'll,you know, write notes in the
margins because I think that youI feel like you're people are
so worried about copying, you'renever going to copy it, Like
it's just, it's not going to,it's not copying, it's learning,
it's like a textbook.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
You're using.
I love that.
You're what I call.
My friend, julie Granger,posted something with all these
notes written in the margin of abook and she's like, are you
also a book desecrator?
And I'm like, oh my God, thisis a thing now we're a book
desecrator, because I amabsolutely a book desecrator, so
I love that you are too.
I think it's fun when you buyused books and the person who
had it before you can see alltheir notes in the margin.
But that's fun that you go backand so you read it for fun and
(42:26):
then you go back and you make ita study, right, exactly.
What a great idea.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Yeah, no, it is great because and people, you know
whether you're a new writer andyou don't believe me when I
teach it.
I say like go to the bookyou're reading right now, put a
sticky at what's 25%, 50%, 75%,guarantee.
Within a couple of pages ofthat marker like plot points
have happened and people likethink I'm crazy when I say at
10% of the books, this shouldhappen, and they think I'm nuts.
(42:52):
And then they go back and do itwith every book they're reading
and they see it and they'relike, okay, you're right.
I was like yes, books arewritten to a formula.
It's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
You just need to learn the formula.
Isn't that helpful?
Yep, exactly.
Well, thank you so so much forjoining in.
I can't wait to finish thisthing.
I will put all of your links inthe episode notes, and let's do
another one sometime.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Absolutely Thanks for having me.
This is fantastic.
Hi everybody and welcome back.
I told Lori that this is myfirst time back on this platform
in quite some time, so we mayhave some hiccups, I don't know.
We're just going to go with it.
But I'm delighted to be heretoday with Lori Gold, whose
author, romantic Friction cameout in May yes, may 6th.
(00:27):
Okay, so you saw my.
Did you see my story thismorning?
I did, thank you, I'm in love,so I have a lot of.
You know, we don't typicallytalk about the book itself,
because I love to ask questions.
People can read the book andthey should read the book.
I think I'm at the point whereI'm not giving anything away.
They're at the.
(00:47):
Sophie and her three or foursort of author friends are at
this panel event, and HartleyWest, who I heard read last
night, is based on one of yourgood friends who said I've never
been in one of your books andso you said you're going to be
in it and you're going to be thevillain, exactly.
(01:08):
Wow, she's kind of like thisvillain that you feel kind of
bad for, but now I'm at thispoint where I think I don't know
if I want to feel bad, for Ithink she may be smarter than
she's with her little cardigan,anyway.
So they're at this event whereHartley has just stood up and
dropped this enormous bombshelland no one's really sure how to
(01:29):
handle it, and I love it becauseI can totally see it playing
out.
So if people want to read itand they should they can read it
.
But I like to talk about thingsthat they can't get from
reading the book.
Your previous books you wroteunder Lori Goldstein, right, all
right, well, that's your givenname.
Yes, okay my married name but,yes, your married name which, by
(01:52):
the way, my maiden name isgoldstone yeah, and you grew up
on the south, south jersey,right, yeah, yeah and I grew up
in delaware, so I spent many asummer at the Jersey Shore.
But what?
Why did you change it fromGoldstein to gold when you wrote
this one?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So really a couple of more business oriented
decisions.
My first four novels were youngadult novels and they were
under Laurie Goldstein.
And then I wrote an adulthistorical called Love Theodosia
, about the daughter of AaronBurr whose name is Theodosia
Burr, and in that one she was 19, true to the age of she was
when the book is set in 1800.
And we wanted to make sure itwas distinguished as an adult
(02:34):
book and not another young adultbook, obviously because the age
was younger, you know.
We wanted to make that clear.
So I added my middle name tothat one and it's Laurie Ann
Goldstein, which I should grabit because it's a lot of letters
on the cover of a book.
Laurie Ann Goldstein takes up alot of room and so
aesthetically when I looked atit I said that's just a lot of,
(02:54):
it's a mouthful and it's a lotof letters and you want your
name to get bigger and bigger ona book cover, not smaller and
smaller.
So when I had a couple of yearsbetween that one and Romantic
Friction coming out and RomanticFriction is book club fiction,
it's kind of contemporaryfiction and that's where I see
my career going so I just talkedabout it with my agent.
Should I go back to LaurieGoldstein, Because it's been a
little bit since I did the youngadult novels.
(03:16):
This one shouldn't be thoughtof as a young adult novel.
And then we said you know what?
Let's just kind of do a rebrand, reboot, boot like you're going
to be a book club fictionauthor.
Let's make it distinct fromwhat you've done before.
So it was just a truncation ofGoldstein.
You know, all my social mediais still Goldstein.
My website is still Goldstein.
Like I'm not changing any ofthat.
But for the purposes of, youknow, writing this book and
(03:38):
promoting it, it's more gold.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
It just made sense to do it that way.
Yeah, no, I love it.
You do something in this, soI'm glad to hear personally as a
reader, I'm glad to hear thatyou, this is the genre you see
yourself in.
This is the thing I could feel.
How much fun I'm assuming youhad writing this while I'm
reading it and you do somethingthat I think is so fun.
(03:59):
And I'm going to say what it is.
I think for a long time Ithought this was like not
allowed, and I've seen not manyat all, but a few other women
authors specifically do this,and I got excited because it
almost, I feel like it gave mepermission.
You kind of broke this fourthwall thing where right, where
(04:20):
some you're you're, and you doit with a lot of parentheses,
which I also want to thank youfor.
I have a friend who I won'tactually I will name him.
It's my dear friend, drewLinsalata.
So, drew, if you're watching orlistening, I'm calling you out.
When Drew read my most recentbook, he was one of my beta
(04:41):
readers.
It's not fiction, it'snonfiction.
He was like you use so manyparentheses, I think is that
like an ADHD, like you're trying?
He did.
He's a therapist, so he wentand did some research, okay, and
he was like I think it's like athing where you and I'm
paraphrasing, I'm not going toquote him on this, but it's like
(05:03):
the thoughts in your head youput in parentheses and I said,
yeah, like doesn't that makesense?
I want the reader to know thisis sort of like an aside, but
you, it's great.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Although I will.
I appreciate you saying thatbecause there was like a couple
of early reviews on NetGalleythat were like I don't like the
parentheses, so I'm glad youlike them.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, what do you do with those?
While we're on that topic, like, when you get those early, does
that make you?
How do you handle those?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
You know.
So it's taken a while.
This is my sixth published bookand in the beginning reviews
are so hard to take whetherthey're reader reviews or
industry and you're so nervousand I've gotten to a place where
I don't read that many reviews,but I do read some of the early
ones, because I feel like theearly ones are people who have
sought it out, like on NetGalley.
They're booksellers, they'relibrarians, they're really big
(05:54):
bookstagrammers, they're peoplewho love books and I feel like I
can glean some things from themwhat they love and what they
don't love.
And sometimes, you know,sometimes you see something
you're like, oh, okay, that'snot resonating, that I'm doing.
Maybe I can think about thatfor the next one.
But I have a cutoff point whereI'm like, okay, I don't look
anymore, because then it's outin the world and there's so many
readers and I've gotten enoughfeedback that I'm like, okay,
(06:16):
that worked and that didn't.
And some of it I might agreewith and some of it I might not.
But I just feel like it's partof my education as a writer to
expose myself to it to a certaindegree and then kind of let it
go, be its own thing.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Is that something that you feel like you've gotten
more adept at as you've gone onas an author is kind of
learning.
Okay, what works for me, whatworks for Lori, when I'm reading
reviews?
Because when you're firstgetting started, I think which
is the vast majority of myaudience, not all of it, but
it's like is this normal?
Am I doing this?
(06:48):
See the air quotes, right,right.
And what I continue to feelmore strongly is you're figuring
out how you navigate it.
What's changing the most foryou?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
You know, I think just kind of confidence and
trusting myself, like in thatexample I just gave, just saying
like I don't need to read themall, like I don't need to either
put myself through that or Ihave enough and I can distance
myself from those reviews.
But it's that trust andconfidence across the board.
I teach writing as well.
I teach creative writing and Ilead some writing retreats and I
(07:22):
work with a lot of students whoare working on their first
novel and I say exactly what youjust said you are figuring out
how to do this and you shouldget advice from other people,
because what I do isn't the sameas what you do and what someone
else might do.
Expose yourself to thedifferent ways to write, the
different ways to approach allaspects of writing, and then you
have to try them out.
(07:43):
It's the only way to know whatworks for you and what doesn't,
because you just don't know.
And students will ask me thatlike how do I make a decision,
say plot wise, that this is theright direction?
And I say I think about it, Ibrainstorm all of the possible
solutions or possible ways thestory could go and I pick the
one that feels right.
And they say but how do youknow it's right?
And I said I don't.
But that's the decision I'vemade and I trust myself, based
(08:06):
on the other novels that I'vewritten, that I know what I'm
doing enough that I can kind offollow where my instincts go.
But I've had six published booksand I think and a seventh will
come out next year fromHarperCollins, and I have four
others that I've written thathaven't sold.
So that's 12 novels.
That's a lot of experience tosay like now I can trust myself
(08:26):
with the decisions I makesurrounding my writing.
But it's 12 novels to kind ofdo that.
And you know it's hard as newwriters to feel like I've
finished this one and then writeanother and then figure some
things out.
But that's the only way itreally is.
The only way is to keep writingand developing that confidence
that you need as a writer.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
With the four that didn't sell?
Were they successive, like oneafter the other, or were they
interspersed amidst the sixInterspersed?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Okay, a couple on early on, and then a couple
actually two in the middle oftwo of my first two, then the
next two didn't sell, and then Ihad two that sold and then
another that hasn't sold, sokind of like sporadically in
there.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
So how do you feel?
I was talking last week withJane Hamilton from the Book of
Ruth and she, I want to say,admitted, but it's not like it
was a big secret.
I was just so.
I'm so grateful when people arewilling to say, look, I've had
these things have gone nowhere.
I mean I, elizabeth, have 2000copies of my third book under my
steps, like I would not havethought that would have happened
(09:31):
after the first two did as wellas they did, which is also
subjective, but becauseeverything that I've done so far
is self-published.
When I talked to Jane, she saidI have so many drafts in boxes
that never saw the light of day.
And a question I had for herthat I want to ask you as well
(09:52):
is how do you decide when to saythis is like I'm going to put
this to bed, like I'm not, we'regoing to move?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
on now.
Well, I think like the mostpractical answer because I have
an agent.
I'm not self-publishing, I havean agent so I tried to.
We tried to sell them.
She tried to sell them on mybehalf and couldn't.
So you run out of editors atsome point.
What houses do I want to bewith?
Have we kind of gone throughthe people I feel like would be
a good mix for this?
You kind of run out at somepoint with the places you want
(10:22):
to be, and so you know Iwouldn't turn to self-publishing
.
Those Two of them were youngadult books.
Young adult is not a greatmarket for self-publishing, you
know.
It's just it's not where thatage group finds their books.
So it wasn't really an optionto do that with those.
And one of them that didn'tsell is a middle grade, so kind
of the same area is not reallyone that lends itself to
self-publishing.
So if I had a adult book thatdidn't sell, would I consider it
.
I don't know, I'd have to see,like where I was in the
(10:43):
landscape, what other ideas Ihad.
But I guess you know thepractical answer is if you run
out of places to go to for aneditor, you put it aside.
But you know.
That's not to say that Ithere's one of them, I think
about that.
I feel like, with some tweaking, could become an adult novel
and some of the same conceptswould be there, kind of the same
foundation of the plot.
But there are things I would dothat I could now see doing it
(11:06):
as an adult book and it's on mylist to do so.
You know, is something alwaysdead?
When do you know it's dead?
I guess if you're trying topush the same book without any
significant changes and you'rejust forcing it and the market
isn't receptive to it, you haveto let it go.
But if you, years later this ismany years later I'm thinking
(11:26):
about this book that I was likewell, I feel like I can approach
it in a new way Then I thinkit's worth giving a try.
I mean, it's already yourmaterial, you've already put in
the time.
You know there's a fine linebetween like, just like it's
time to move on to somethingelse and don't keep hanging on.
But I think if you have thatcreative spark and you can see a
significant way to kind ofretool it and perhaps there is a
(11:47):
market for it now because,frankly, things change, you know
, like all of a sudden, vampirebooks are big again.
Well, what?
What if somebody didn't buy itfive years ago?
But maybe they would now likeyeah.
But I would always say towriters if they have books in
those categories that have beenput aside and they're rethinking
, you know doing something elsewith it.
Take a pass or two, or 10through it, because you become a
(12:08):
better writer as years go on.
It's not like you want to takethat exact same book that you
wrote five years ago and justthrow it out and try to sell it
again.
Go through it, make it better,use all the skills you've
learned as a writer, and thenyou know, see if we see what can
happen with it.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So I think, if I wanted to start a controversy as
as insane as the one thatHartley and Sophie are about to
be embroiled in, I think, in thenext chapter of Romantic
Friction, I would ask a largeroom full of people, which is
the best approach?
A large room full of people,which is the best approach,
(12:44):
traditional or self, orsomewhere in between, a hybrid?
Yeah, it's a dangerous,dangerous question and I'm
completely agnostic as a, as anauthor, as a book coach, as in
everything.
I'm completely.
It's whatever works for you.
For you, what I'm hearing isthat you prefer the traditional
approach whenever possible.
And so what is it about that?
That you that pulls you in thatdirection each time?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
So right now I feel like the self-published market
is so competitive and you haveto know so much about how to do
it and do it well.
That's not to say that I, as aI market myself for my books
right now.
Yes, the Harper Collins doessome, but it still falls on most
of us authors, whether we'retraditionally published or
self-published, to do a lot ofthat behind the scenes of
(13:27):
marketing your book and gettingit out there yourself.
But there's even a strongerdegree that I think you have to
know and understand themarketplace for self-publishing
and I think a lot of people sayI'm just going to dive into it
without doing that homework andreally educating yourself on it,
and they don't wind up havingsuccess in it because you have
to understand how to do it.
You have to understand whatgenres work well.
(13:48):
You have to know how do Irelease books, how quickly do I
release them in succession, howdo I price them.
There's so much of an educationaround self-publishing and
because I've come from thetraditional publishing world, I
feel confident in what I knowand the other is so much that
I'd have to learn.
I'm open to it at some point,but at this point, while I'm
still in the traditionalpublishing world.
I'm taking advantage of thethings I've learned so far
(14:10):
before I shift gears and I thinkfor the right book, I could
very easily see doing it.
But it has to be the right bookand the right genre and all of
that.
And it's a multifaceteddecision.
It's not just like, oh,self-published or traditionally
published.
You have to understand thebehind the scenes of both of
them to figure out what's bestand what's best for this
particular book.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
And I love that you said that what's best for this
particular book, because we'reseeing more and more hybrid
authors, which is different froma hybrid publisher, where the
author is published in differentmodalities and via different
publishing models.
Okay, switching gears a littlebit, you did something and I'm
curious if you did this onpurpose.
And if you did, it's brilliant,and if you didn't, it's
brilliant.
(14:49):
So when I saw the cover forRomantic Friction, I thought
this looks a lot like romanticfiction by Romantic comedy.
Thank you, I knew I was gettingthat right.
I knew it.
I've Curtis Sittenfeld, which Ihad just read a few months ago
and devoured it and loved it.
(15:11):
And so then I thought to myselfokay, given the plot of
romantic friction and I wonderif that was intentional, in the
same way that Seth Godin's book,the, I wrote it down, so I
wouldn't.
This is marketing.
His book is titled this isMarketing.
(15:32):
Like, really, the cover took onthe subtle art of not giving a
fuck by Mark Manson.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Was that in your head ?
It wasn't an intentional, Imean it was.
We knew about it, right.
So they came up with the cover.
This was there are two versions.
We knew it was going to beblocky text.
We wanted to, you know, make itbe, you know, not an image or
anything, as as romantic comedyis as well.
That was one of the comps welooked at.
There's another book called.
I Hope this Finds you Well.
(16:01):
Those were the things we wereplaying with and when they came
up with the two different blockycovers blocky text covers sorry
, I should say everybody kind ofpreferred this one.
I was fine with either.
So you kind of go with what theteam likes.
So they liked this version ofthe cover.
We had a list of like 50 titles,because this wasn't the
original title.
This is the one they chose.
And so when they first gave thefirst cover, it was these
(16:22):
colors the pink and the yellow.
And they said what do you think?
And I said I really like it.
And they said well, we reallylike it too, but it looks so
much like romantic comedy.
So I think we want to dosomething else.
And I said fine, you knowwhatever you want.
I understand.
You know it's a few years inbetween.
You know it's not the worstthing to lean into it, as you're
saying, but we also don't wantto feel like we're copying it,
right?
So we went through about threeand a half months of every color
(16:44):
combination you could think of.
At one point it was like red,blue and yellow, and I was like
now it's Superman, where are wegoing with this?
And so eventually, of course,after all these months, the team
comes back and says you knowwhat?
I think we're going to go withthe original colors.
So we wound back to the pink.
I think it's so great.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
And I just want to be so clear, like I think it's so
great and, given the topic ofthe book how it's an author who
was intentionally but notintentionally but I haven't
gotten far enough yet to reallyknow put the bow on how
intentional it was it makessense, like from a marketing
angle, I loved it.
And the other thing you did Iwant to ask you about so often
(17:26):
in fiction, chapters are numbersthey don't have, they're not
words, and yours are words.
And so this crazy thinghappened.
When I read chapter one whichis titled about the author.
Am I the only one?
I feel like you know exactlywhat I'm going to say.
So I was like, okay, I'm goingto learn about Lori.
So I'm reading through and I'mreading and I'm like, damn, this
(17:48):
is a really long about theauthor section.
This is really long.
And then I started highlightingthings for this, for our
conversation Cause.
I was thinking man, Lori and Iare so the same.
I mean, I can even pull them upLike she likes this and she
doesn't like this, and the morethe further along I went.
(18:09):
I thought, wait, this isn'tthis.
First of all, why would it beat the beginning?
I mean, I'm not we can all dodifferent things with our books
but like, why would she put thisat the beginning?
And then I came to understandwhat was going on, which was
that's just the title of thechapter.
Yeah, replicating the narrativearc of a book by, not not in
(18:41):
full Right, but like the onlychapter title you didn't have
that was on my mind, was pet thedog, whatever, but you have
something about like wagging thetail or something so like at
what point did that brilliancestrike?
Speaker 2 (18:57):
That wasn't original.
Well, I love chapter titles.
I've done it in previous books.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Really Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
So I particularly I gravitate towards that.
I like that.
This book is supposed to be afunny book.
It's a satire and I reallywanted to lean into it.
So we were actually in revisionmaybe the second revision with
my editor and I said I'm puttingin chapter titles.
What do you think of that?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
And my editor said I love it.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I love chapter titles , so I went through and I did it
and it was because it's so muchabout writing, it's about being
a romance author and so leaninginto either there, you know,
there's a chapter at the endcalled surprising but inevitable
like you know all of these kindof like tropes about writing
and it's final climax yeah, yeah, what an opportunity to kind of
(19:40):
just like be even a little bitmore meta with the book, and so
that's where they came from, butI love them and I'm hearing
that people love them.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I felt like it was really unique and really well
done.
When I'm editing sometimes andI'm working with nonfiction,
it's air quote easy.
It's not easy to come up withthe best title for a chapter,
but it's easier because it'slike what's the chapter about?
When I'm working with authorswho have written fiction or even
memoir and they want to come up, they have chapter titles.
(20:09):
That's actually where I feellike we get off course, cause
they want the chapter to beabout what the chapter title is,
but then you read the chapterand you're like wait, this
doesn't match up.
So I often encourage,especially first-time authors,
to use numbers, not words.
But I'm I.
(20:29):
When P.
If people are watching this andthey're like why does Liz look
so incredibly distracted?
It's because I'm pulling up thebook because which means I did
mine after I wrote it.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
It wasn't the as you said, it wasn't like the chapter
title didn't lead the chapter.
It was like this was thechapter and then I had to come
up with a phrase that summarizedthe chapter versus the other
(21:02):
way around.
So I made sure that theymatched and that might be a good
way to do.
It is like write it without itand then come in and find the
clever or interesting, you knowkind of words to summarize what
the chapter is about.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Well, and one thing, as I've said, people are so sick
of me saying this, but I'mworking on my first novel.
I don't know what makes methink I could do this, but I'm
using chapter titles, notbecause I think they'll stay,
but because they help remind meof what the hell is happening in
this chapter.
Sure, like.
This is the chapter where it'slike the friends episodes.
(21:34):
This is the one where these arethe.
This is the chapter where thishappens.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Okay, can I.
Do you have anything else tosay about that, or can I?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
No, no, go for it.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Okay, I always feel bad if someone's like I hit that
point.
You can always interrupt me,lori.
So this in the chapter titled ACrime of Passion, can I read a
line?
Is that OK?
Sure, yeah.
So you have this kind of like alittle paragraph, but three
hours and one time change.
Later I've abandoned.
Pick me my animal shelter, meetcute, where a funny, loving man
(22:06):
boy stand up comedian and adisciplined Boston ballet dancer
clash over the Labrador poodle,german shepherd mutt.
They both want to adopt andreturn to my safe space.
So this for context.
I think you're on a plane andit's like this is where you kind
of spend your time, or this iswhere the character spends her
time, cause she's an authordreaming up her next, and then
(22:26):
she moves on to somethingcompletely different which is
like otherworldly and whatever.
Is that how you do?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
it.
I think you know.
So.
I had a friend very early on inthe writing world who said one
of her quotes when people gaveadvice.
When people asked her foradvice for writing, she said she
writes while standing up andshe types while sitting down.
And I loved it because I thinkwriters, especially newer
writers, don't give as much,don't pay as much attention,
don't see how valid it is tojust think.
(22:57):
You have to think Half ofwriting is being in your head,
thinking about what you want todo, letting your mind go
everywhere, that a story couldgo, everywhere that a character
could go, and that time that youput in before you start writing
anything down, before you startwriting typing.
Certainly typing scenes is soimportant and we don't give
enough credit to how importantthat is as part of writing.
(23:20):
And so I'll do it.
You know I'll.
Sometimes I'll just sit at mydesk and do it, but you know
I'll go for walks or if I'm on aplane or a train ride, like
that is my time to just be in myhead, to be thinking about.
This is a story I want to beworking on.
Or I'll say this is where Ijust left off writing the last
scene for what I'm working onright now.
What am I doing?
The next couple scenes, and Ijust think without kind of that
(23:41):
computer in front of me so justletting me and that's part of
writing.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah, I don't think people see that, as a lot of
times, especially first-timeauthors, think I'm only writing
when my butt's in the chair andI'm typing and I think, I think,
like I don't know whatpercentage it would be, but it's
definitely more than 50% of thewriting is done when you're not
actually writing, right?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Exactly, yeah, yeah, and you know, I think like that
is one of the things I reallyjust try to drill into my
students as much as possibleLike think before you act, like
think before you write it down.
Also, because I think people,once you spend the time and
you've written it and it's inword form and you're maybe
wordsmithing it and you'retrying to get the words to be
the way you want them, you'remore reluctant to make changes.
(24:27):
Once it's actually in a wordfile or a scrivener, there's
something about it being therethat you're like well, it has to
be there because I wrote it andit's hard to cut and it's hard
to change and it's hard to kindof scrap things.
So do some of that like revisionin your head before you
actually start writing.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
That's a really good point, because one thing that I
hear, and you probably do too,is but that's 10,000 words.
You is, but I, that's 10,000words.
You're telling me I have to cutthat and being able to see that
as a win, like removing isadding, it's kind of this weird
trick we have to play onourselves.
That, you know, is um what?
Just out of curiosity, where doyou write in in what software?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
I just make stuff word.
I'm, you know, don't doanything else fancy.
I do all of this pre-thinkingin a notebook, so I always do it
by hand.
I have a notebook yeah, I havea notebook here that I'm using
for revising but I just picksomething and I just kind of
start randomly writing thingsabout you know, my characters
and about the book.
I always start with a notebook.
I have a notebook for everybook I've written and that's
(25:32):
where I do most of my characterdevelopment, most of my plotting
, and I just write like what if?
Questions, what if they didthis?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
It's like the best way into a story, so that's
always how I start.
Yes, that has become somethingthat I'm so fond of doing is
asking the what if?
And it's I'm like well, what if?
She because I don't know why,lori, and tell me what it does
for you, it makes me feel likeit's just a well, what if?
Okay, you know what it remindsme of?
(26:03):
I'm a big doomsday person.
So if I go to the grocery store, it's like well, what if they
don't have a Haagen-Dazs on sale?
Well, what if there's noparking and it's 125 degrees out
, what if?
And so someone many years ago Idon't remember who I should,
cause I should give this persona lot of credit taught me to say
what if Haagen-Dazs is only 50cents?
(26:25):
What if there's no one in theparking lot?
What?
if, switching the what if tosomething good, flipping it to
more positive, like yes yes, andso I thought I do that with the
writing because it doesn't makeme.
It makes me feel like I'm beingcurious, not like a
perfectionist, which I can be.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah, yeah.
And I think part of that whatif that I do, and I also
encourage especially new writersto do is think of a book, movie
, tv show you know well and youreally like and you admire,
because sometimes I'll say, okay, where do I start with these
characters?
You need a starting place.
So I'll go to Game of Thrones,which is one of my favorite
television shows, and books andI'll say, like I diverge, I just
(27:09):
can't, I can't.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I feel like I've got to get into it, but continue.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So well, I think it has tremendous character arcs.
Like the where they start andthe growth that they have is
some of the best character arcsthat I've seen in entertainment.
I truly do believe that the waythese characters change is
something that writers canreally really learn from.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
All right.
So I think it's very importantfor that to me.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
But I'll say, okay, so this character is a Jon Snow
type.
What does that mean?
He's like a savior, he wants tolike he cares about other
people, puts other people beforehimself, will make the hard
decisions in order for otherpeople, versus somebody who's
like you know, I only care aboutme and myself and my ambition.
And so, you know, I pull fromthese characters from these
other existing shows where Iknow the archetypes really well,
(27:55):
and say, okay, this person isgoing to start out as a Jon
Snow-ish character, but ofcourse they're going to change
and they're going to evolve.
But it's like a starting point.
It's somewhere in this wholeworld where you could pick
character traits out of anything.
You have a million things tochoose from.
How do I narrow it down?
So I often will start with thosewhat if?
What if they have this kind oftrait from this character?
What if they have this kind oftrait from that character?
(28:16):
And it's like the merging of itall and kind of going over and
over and again and you finallycome up with your own unique
character.
But it's at least a startingplace, right?
And that's what I think issuper helpful about those what
if?
Questions.
So what if they had this kindof backstory, like this
character, but different.
What if I merged this kind ofbackstory?
What if I merged this piecethat's from my own backstory?
And all of a sudden you'reasking many more, because some
(28:38):
people say I don't even know thewhat if?
Questions to ask.
So I try to give them examplesof how do you pull them.
Where are you pulling it from?
Pulling it from something youknow from your personal life
another show, another book andjust then start riffing on it?
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Okay.
So, following that thread, thepremise, which is not giving
anything away of romanticfriction, is that this new
author, hartley West, hasessentially and this is a
massive topic in the space rightnow essentially used AI to
write her book based on.
So, for anybody who's usedChatGPT or any other AI, we know
(29:11):
that you can say write this inthe voice of so-and-so Do you
ever use or how do you feelabout, what's your opinion?
There's no right or wronganswer here.
Using AI to help you with thosewhat-if questions, to help
drive your curiosity, certainlynot to write anything but or to
write something Like what's yourfeeling on that?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
write anything but, or to write something like
what's your feeling on that?
So I, you know the the writesomething is easier question
because, you know, I don't knowhow many people know the depth
of it, but these AI, largelanguage models, are only able
to write in the style of.
You know, hartley West iswriting in the style of Sophie
Wilde, who's a bestsellingromanticist author.
So you're she's only able to dothat in these programs because
these programs used existingreal books without permission,
(29:54):
without compensation Whetherit's copyright infringement is
currently in the basis of manylawsuits that are going on right
now.
But the bottom line is they'reonly able to even approach
writing the way a human canbecause they're basing it off of
all of us humans.
My books have all been part ofthe ones that were trained to
that AI was trained upon.
My books have all been part ofthe ones that were trained to
(30:14):
that AI was trained upon.
So it's just hard to likeadvocate for anybody using it
when you feel like if I didn'tdo all the work I put in and all
these thousands and thousandsof other authors put in, you
couldn't write this, yeah.
So I think many people don'tunderstand that that's kind of
what, why, what's going onbehind the scenes and why a lot
of creative people are upsetabout it.
On top of the idea of like noone wants to lose their job,
(30:37):
right, like no one wants to bereplaced, you know whether
you're working at a factory oryou're doing creative work, but
when you get to the creativework and people using it just to
write.
It's hard for me to kind offeel like that's quote, unquote,
okay, at least right now.
You know it's not what ourindustry is doing, it's not what
readers seem to want yet.
But, as I always say when Italk about this, it will be the
marketplace that will eventuallydecide if that's quote, unquote
(30:58):
, okay or not, twists or what ifquestions or those kinds of
things.
It's tricky because you stillwant the core of what you're
doing to come from humanintention, but say you don't
have a critique partner, youcan't afford to take a class
(31:19):
Like does it serve some purpose?
I don't know how I feel aboutit yet.
I'm still kind of on the fenceto be on.
To be completely honest, my gut, my knee jerk reaction is say
don't use it for anything.
I'm trying to be a little bitpractical for the people who
don't have access to, you know,a critique partner or a writer
or someone that they they canbrainstorm with.
I just still worry that it'sgoing to, you know, is all of
(31:43):
our work going to become oneamalgamation of the same thing?
You know, and I know peoplealready say like there's only
seven stories in the world orwhatever.
But you know, do you lose?
If you rely on it too much andit replaces your own sense of
originality, are you getting thebest product you as an
individual could create?
(32:03):
And if you rely on it too much,if does it become a slippery
slope?
And so you know, that's kind ofmy most honest answer right now
.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
And I I support it.
You know, what I'm about to sayis kind of like a thought
that's developing as I'm sayingit.
So I'm going to have to ask forforgiveness later if I totally
botch this.
But there are two thoughts thatI have.
One is that we often suggestcertainly people who have been
writing a long time will oftensay that one of their they read
(32:31):
that's like getting their MFA toa degree.
I mean, I'm, that's loose.
You know, they read constantlyto get new ideas about how to do
things.
And they read their favoriteauthors and not to copy or even
mimic them, but to get ideas andto understand.
Not to get ideas to understandthings like character arc and
such.
And perhaps one of thedifferences is that those people
(32:52):
are out buying those books inorder to do that.
So the author is beingcompensated.
The publishing house, if thereis one, is being compensated.
One thing that I have discoveredbecause I have, admittedly not
for my books, but for socialmedia content to get ideas for
things.
I've used it because my brainis just exhausted and then I
(33:13):
make everything, to the best ofmy ability, sound like me.
I rewrite everything.
There are certain words andphrases I would never use.
What's interesting is that, asan editor now, I more than once
have had a manuscript come to methat I have very kindly said to
the author send this back to mewhen you didn't just write it
(33:35):
with AI, because I can tellInteresting the more we can see,
you know, like tells, lines orways.
Series of three.
Everything's a series of three.
The em dash is everywhere.
(33:55):
You know those are markers ofAI generated content and the
more you use AI and I've noticedthis even in coming up with
ideas for social media contentthe more it spits back the same
exact stuff Because, to yourpoint, which is accurate, it's
only using what's available toit, what it's been trained on.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, yeah, and I think you know and I think why
do you want to be a writer aswell?
I think that's part of it.
Do you want to be a writer?
Because you want your uniquetake on this type of story, this
type of character.
You know you want your ownthoughts out there, and so if
you're using AI for it, it's nolonger your thoughts, it's like
emerging of lots of otherpeople's thoughts.
So, you know, to me it gets tothe core of like, why bother
(34:37):
writing a book?
You know, what are you hopingto achieve?
What's your goal?
What's what's fueling you to dothis?
Um, and and those are justindividual questions that for
you know all of us to be askingWhich- is a whole separate
conversation, right Like it'sand it's different.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
I think I'm what I'm learning and I have I have been
learning and noticing is thatit's very different in the
fiction space versus thenonfiction space.
Sure, yeah, which again, maybewe'll do another one on on that,
because you help authors write,like we'll dive deeper into
that.
So two more questions.
The first one is one thing Iwas thinking as I was reading up
(35:10):
to where I am now and I'mwondering if you realize this or
now realize it is that thisbook is actually a great read.
Well, for all the obviousreasons, but also because if
you're new to the author spaceand you want to see how it it's
not all this caddy, of courseI've met some incredible people
(35:32):
who have become my friends and Ifind that it's a very
supportive community and likeit's kind of an education this
book in what this is like, fromthe definitions of plotting and
pantsing, I was like she nailedit.
That's it for me.
All the way to how people, howthe agents and the editors and
(35:56):
everybody handles like, oh myGod, we have a media crisis.
This is not good.
Did you realize that when youwere writing it?
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, that was part of the inspiration.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Really.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
The book is about a bestselling author who discovers
another author has used AI towrite in her style and she bands
together with her fellowauthors, as you said, to take
her down any way they can, whichwill include committing a
felony.
So if I'm going to, you haven'tgotten there yet.
So if I'm going to show theeffect of AI on the job of being
an author on the world ofpublishing, you have to
(36:28):
understand what that is, becausethere's no way to kind of tell
that story of how an AI authorwould change things and upend
things and the risks to anauthor without understanding how
publishing works.
My inspiration for this wastwofold.
I've been writing fiction for10 years.
My first book came out in 2015.
(36:51):
I know a lot about how thepublishing world works and all
of this stuff that you know isrolling around in my head of
things like well, how doessomething become a New York
Times bestseller One?
Yeah, you have a well-writtenbook, sure, but there's a lot of
marketing stuff that's behindthe scenes.
Publishers pick books thatthey're going to support and
they're going to put ad dollarsbehind and they're going to push
to get reviews and it's goingto be in the billboard in Times
Square.
We all don't get that.
Those are the things that arebasically, as I say, in the book
(37:13):
, preordained upon acquisition.
You know where you're slotted.
Most authors don't understandthat.
They don't realize that, andthere's a lot of disappointment
that comes when you have all ofthese hopes and all of these
dreams and you're very upendedby not understanding that there
really was nothing you couldhave done and you feel like it's
your fault if your book doesn'tdo well and you don't
understand that there's thismachine that's either behind you
(37:35):
or not really behind you andthere's very little you can do
as an individual author to matchwhat a publisher could do when
they decide these are the booksthat are going to be successful,
and I talk to my students aboutthis.
I'm a transparent person.
I'm a transparent instructor.
I think knowledge is power andthe more you know, then you know
the areas where you can ask forthings and where you have an
(37:55):
expectation that this couldhappen, and the more you
understand how it works, themore you can figure out how do I
have a successful career?
So part of me was absolutelythis could have been a
nonfiction book about.
This is what goes on behind thescenes of publishing.
But, I wanted to tackle it inthis way that if you love books
and you kind of love thesebehind the scenes inside
baseball kind of stuff, you'regoing to get such a kick out of
(38:17):
it.
Everything is true.
There's not a made up anecdotein it.
It either happened to me orsomebody I know.
But once I figured out the AIpart of the premise, it made the
rest of it work, because if itwas just an inside publishing
book without that, then what isit?
Is it gossip, is it complaining, you know?
And so I wanted, I needed apremise that would allow for
(38:38):
that to make sense together, andthat's the AI component gave me
that, so I was able to mergethese two things and come up
with the premise for the story.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Well, you know what I learned, but it was purposeful
going in.
And I love it.
You know what I learned?
That I didn't know abouttraditional publishing, Because
you know, but I didn't even knowthis from my friends who are
traditionally published and theyprobably know it's just never
come up in conversation.
You can't hit the New YorkTimes bestseller list if enough
books haven't been printed.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Like you have.
There's this line in the book.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
even if Oprah and Ellen and all these other people
Taylor Swift, yes talk about itand everyone goes and buy it,
you still can't hit the listbecause not enough books were
printed to be able to sell inthat week to hit.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I never.
It makes perfect sense.
I think many people don't knowthat.
I think that was something Ifound out along the way, and
most people don't even know that.
They think like if I do wellenough, it'll hit the New York
Times bestseller list, forprobably none.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
So is that why pre-orders?
Is that another reason whypre-orders are so big?
Because they help drive the run.
They can be helpful, but it canbe so huge to make that bump.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
But yes, pre-orders are helpful in that way because
if the publisher sees you know,so it takes, you know, usually a
minimum of 10,000 books sold ina single week to hit the New
York Times bestseller list, apart of the list, depending on
lots of factors.
But if you got pre-orders for2,000 and the book has yet to go
through its printing yet theyknow okay, well, we've got 2,000
(40:06):
pre-orders, we better printenough and it's a sign that
maybe with some support it couldget somewhere.
But, if you have 10 pre-orders,it's not going to change their
print run, but yes, that is whypre-orders can be helpful,
because it makes the publisherliterally just print more copies
of the book to put out in theworld.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I really love learning.
When I'm just reading for fun,I really love learning.
So last question I always askis what are you reading now or
what have you read recently thatyou really love?
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So I just finished Onyx Storm, the third in the
Rebecca Yarns series.
Okay, I really try to readwidely.
I try to read in my genre,outside my genre.
I try to keep up on what'spopular and what's doing really
well because I feel like Ilearned from that and I learned
what marketing people arelooking for, why they got behind
(40:54):
this book versus another book.
So I really try to read bothbigger books and smaller books.
My next book I'm saving forvacation the Taylor Jenkins read
Atmospheres because I love herbut, I'm saving it because I
don't want to like.
I want to read it in like atwo-day burst.
I don't want to like read itthree minutes at night as I'm
falling asleep, so uh, butthat's, it, just came out right
(41:16):
came out, yeah, like a week agoor so, like a week ago or
something.
Okay, yeah, that one's beingreally talked about yeah, but I
love her, you know, and I think,like finding the authors you
love, that you want to read,like, like exactly you said, if,
like you read, I read and I die.
I read it for fun and then I'llread it again to dissect it.
But I love her stuff and LeonMoriarty and like that's, those
are my kind of go-to of likewhat do I want to write, like in
(41:38):
this book club fiction space,and I'll read and reread those
books and say like, okay, whatare her plot points, what did
she do to support them, what arethe character arcs?
And I'll go through and I'll,you know, write notes in the
margins because I think that youI feel like you're people are
so worried about copying, you'renever going to copy it, Like
it's just, it's not going to,it's not copying, it's learning,
it's like a textbook.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
You're using.
I love that.
You're what I call.
My friend, julie Granger,posted something with all these
notes written in the margin of abook and she's like, are you
also a book desecrator?
And I'm like, oh my God, thisis a thing now we're a book
desecrator, because I amabsolutely a book desecrator, so
I love that you are too.
I think it's fun when you buyused books and the person who
had it before you can see alltheir notes in the margin.
But that's fun that you go backand so you read it for fun and
(42:26):
then you go back and you make ita study, right, exactly.
What a great idea.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Yeah, no, it is great because and people, you know
whether you're a new writer andyou don't believe me when I
teach it.
I say like go to the bookyou're reading right now, put a
sticky at what's 25%, 50%, 75%,guarantee.
Within a couple of pages ofthat marker like plot points
have happened and people likethink I'm crazy when I say at
10% of the books, this shouldhappen, and they think I'm nuts.
(42:52):
And then they go back and do itwith every book they're reading
and they see it and they'relike, okay, you're right.
I was like yes, books arewritten to a formula.
It's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
You just need to learn the formula.
Isn't that helpful?
Yep, exactly.
Well, thank you so so much forjoining in.
I can't wait to finish thisthing.
I will put all of your links inthe episode notes, and let's do
another one sometime.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Absolutely Thanks for having me.
This is fantastic.
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