Lara Schmoisman (00:11)

Hi everyone, welcome back to coffee number five. My coffee is ready and warm for a change. And I mean, who ever or who never ever dreamed of writing a book? I’m a book avid reader. I love books. I mean, if you told me if I had a day and I can do nothing, what would you do? I will read books. I’m walking with a dog and I listen to audio books.

 

I started really early on, my kids even earlier, but I think it’s so special to be able to read a book. like I always say, the book is always better than the movie because your imagination, you make things in the context that is meaningful to you and that appeals to you. mean, you make all the set design, you make all the characters, however your imagination wants to make them.

 

That makes it really special. But I was eager for a long time to talk to someone in the book industry. And finally, we found someone that we thought it would be worth your time and this time that you’re taking to listen to this broadcast. So welcome Megan Stevenson. Thank you so much for joining us today.

 

Meghan Stevenson (01:24)

Thank you for having me, Laura. It’s a delight.

 

Lara Schmoisman (01:26)

So Megan, were you a love, a book lover when you were a child? How did you start it?

 

Meghan Stevenson (01:32)

I definitely was a book lover. So I was the kid that maxed out her library card and then convinced her mom to like get more books for me because I’m a very fast reader and something that’s funny, but it makes sense ⁓ in retrospect is that I had terrible reader comprehension. So I would rip through, you know, 13 books in a week. But if you asked me the plot of any of those books, I would not remember it. ⁓

 

And still to this day, I’ll miss details and be like, I skipped ahead. I wanted to know the ending, you know? ⁓ My grandmother actually read that way as well. So it’s something.

 

Lara Schmoisman (02:01)

Yeah.

 

I was,

 

I’m the same way. I just read really, really fast and somehow I learned how to scan. And so I can purposely scan some parts.

 

Meghan Stevenson (02:13)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, definitely. like as someone who writes books now, I can tell you that sometimes there’s filler, you know, or that we’re slowing things down just like a teacher would because everyone’s kind of rate of information gathering is different.

 

Lara Schmoisman (02:22)

Yeah.

 

So you were at Penguin for a long time.

 

Meghan Stevenson (02:31)

Yes, I was at Penguin for four years and at Simon & Schuster for four years.

 

Lara Schmoisman (02:35)

Yes. And then you decided to go on your own. What did you think that you could do different or what niche you thought you can serve different than these big ⁓ book companies or publishers?

 

Meghan Stevenson (02:38)

Yes.

 

So it’s funny, I actually ⁓ work with the big book publishers in tandem. I’m not trying to replace them at all. What I realized was that as an editor, I had limited ability to advocate for my authors because I worked for the publishing house. That was my employer. And just like any employer that you work for, you…

 

working for them, right? You’re not really working for the author. And so I wanted to work for the author. And my parents are entrepreneurs. They’ve been entrepreneurs since I was very little. ⁓ They just sold their company a couple years ago. But like, I just, I knew that other people did this. And so it wasn’t this big, scary, hairy thing for me. It was just like, yeah, my dad and my mom do this. So it must be pretty easy. It’s kind what I thought naively. Yes and no. So actually, it’s so funny. I, this morning I had a conversation.

 

Lara Schmoisman (03:32)

and we’ll see you there.

 

Meghan Stevenson (03:38)

I volunteer with an organization that helps people get back on their feet after homelessness. And often people are in recovery and they have criminal records and all things like that. And I was talking about how entrepreneurship is so interesting in that you can bootstrap it and you can kind of be half in a job, quote unquote, and then also be creating a business. And that’s really what I did. I had a part-time job at Penguin because I wasn’t making enough money as an editor. ⁓

 

part-time retail job after that. And so I worked at the container store nights and I kept doing that as I was creating my business because I needed to pay rent and do things, you ⁓ And so that was the way I sort of eased my way into it. And then I had a lot of connections and so I was able to get booked like almost immediately. So.

 

Lara Schmoisman (04:27)

So I have a question for you because I’m talking to people and I want you to help me to clarify this because today there are different routes of going and doing a book. You can do a book of self-publish. You can have a literary agent. You can have a publishing house. Can you help us break it down and explain to us

 

all the different ways of writing a book that are available and let’s please not count cheap it’s a chat chippy tea to write the book for you.

 

Meghan Stevenson (04:57)

Yes, let’s not count that. AI is a useful tool. We use AI.

 

Lara Schmoisman (04:59)

It is, it’s

 

very useful, but it’s a tool. It doesn’t replace you.

 

Meghan Stevenson (05:03)

We use AIA. ⁓

 

We use AI to do research a lot of the times. Like my author will be like, there’s a study about, I’m writing a book about men’s sexual health, right? So there was a study hilariously about the size of dildo that a woman would choose. And they did this legitimate scientific study and my client was like, yeah, that study about the dildos. And I was like, well, now I to go find this.

 

And where it used to be really hard to go find that I have to go to Google scholar. I’d get a really weird search history. Now I just put that into my AI tool and it kicks me back. Oh, here’s the study. And I was like, great. Now I have my citation.

 

Lara Schmoisman (05:32)

Hahaha!

 

Yes, no, no, it

 

really expedite things, that’s for sure.

 

Meghan Stevenson (05:42)

So it’s really helpful, like, okay, so there are three, the way I teach things, there are three primary ways to publish a book. There’s self-publishing, which is exactly what it sounds like, right? You as the author are the publisher and often people will use things like KDP, which is Kindle Direct Publishing. They’ll go through Amazon, they’ll go through different self-publishing companies to publish their book, but they ultimately are project managing the whole thing, right? They have, you know, they…

 

The best self-published authors freelance everything. So they’ll freelance out a cover designer, they’ll freelance out a copy editor, they’ll freelance out a developmental editor. At every stage, they’ll have a professional in as a freelancer helping them. The worst people just throw up a word document that’s full of typos and a terrible cover and call it a day, right? So there’s all your…

 

Lara Schmoisman (06:30)

And that’s painful

 

and that’s so painful that someone comes from the marketing side.

 

Meghan Stevenson (06:35)

Yeah, it’s not very well thought out, you know, and a lot of self publishing. That’s where the, that’s where the kind of the authors get frustrated is in that marketing piece because they don’t expect to have to market. There’s a lot of magical thinking around how people buy and find books. And so that’s really important to acknowledge.

 

Lara Schmoisman (06:51)

Okay. I have a question for you. Can you be

 

successful doing self publishing?

 

Meghan Stevenson (06:57)

Yes, but there’s a lot of work involved and it’s a lot of people see it as a shortcut. And so they’re not putting all the product development in that you would in the other pass. Like people aren’t slowing their role to do the product development. Does that make sense?

 

Lara Schmoisman (07:10)

Okay.

 

Okay.

 

Yes. Also there are, mean, we have this internet world and we have platforms like LinkedIn that a lot of people that I’ve been asked so many times for connections say, Hey, can we help you to write the book? We guarantee you this and that comes with the price tag. Do the guarantees exist? A, to be in a book seller list, best sellers list or

 

Can they guarantee that?

 

Meghan Stevenson (07:42)

No.

 

So, okay, so this is a great question and let’s stay on the three methods and I’ll get to bestseller list because I think it’s really important.

 

Lara Schmoisman (07:49)

Okay, yes, yes, yes. I’m

 

rushing this. have so many questions, Megan.

 

Meghan Stevenson (07:53)

It’s okay.

 

It’s okay. It’s okay. ⁓ and if you really wanted to work out about bestseller lists, I have a whole episode of my podcast, kind of a big book deal on bestseller lists, where I go off on all these different things, including like the things that a lot of entrepreneurs get promising them big deals and bestseller lists and all that. So I could do an entire episode on scams and I probably will. so

 

Lara Schmoisman (08:02)

Okay.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Meghan Stevenson (08:15)

Self-publishing, right? The pros of that are that you have entire creative freedom as an entrepreneur, as the author. The con is that it’s a wild, wild west. know, who you hire might vary, your outcomes might vary. ⁓ There’s a lot of shady self-publishing companies out there. You really have to do your homework on that. There’s a site called Author Beware that’s great for scams, ⁓ spotting scams in that world.

 

Lara Schmoisman (08:22)

Yes.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Meghan Stevenson (08:42)

And I

 

Lara Schmoisman (08:42)

And also, I’m going to give it my two cents here. That doesn’t mean, I mean, it’s a lot of work for you, but then you’re also going to have to put a lot of work afterwards in your marketing to put your book out there and it’s going to cost you money. doesn’t, it’s not for free. Marketing costs money guys. And also you’re going to have to put yourself out there as an author. You cannot write a book and be an author and not putting yourself out there.

 

Meghan Stevenson (08:45)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yes.

 

Agreed. Yes. 100%. Every in every.

 

Lara Schmoisman (09:09)

And you’re going to have to do

 

lunch parties. You’re to have to do PR. There is a lot involved in launching a book.

 

Meghan Stevenson (09:15)

Yes, exactly. And that is true for any avenue of publishing you take. So there’s this idea of that, if I traditional publish, they’ll do everything for me. That is not true at all. So going back to the three methods, we have self publishing, we have hybrid publishing, which is basically self publishing, but a pay to play model. ⁓ There are several hybrid publishers that are super reputable. So Forbes has a hybrid publishing arm.

 

Lara Schmoisman (09:19)

Mm-hmm.

 

Well, that’s

 

I heard about those, but those also, they’re having a nice price tag.

 

Meghan Stevenson (09:46)

Yes, they are usually anywhere from $25,000 up. I’ve heard anything from 25 K to 100 K on those. And it really depends. But what you’re getting there is professional project management. So you’re getting a professional quality book, you’re getting a real editor, you’re getting a real copy editor, you’re getting a real book designer, you’re real cover. ⁓

 

Lara Schmoisman (10:05)

But

 

working with freelancers, can you get the same quality work as…

 

Meghan Stevenson (10:09)

Yes, but you have to project manage the whole thing. And so that’s the pain in the ass. A of people don’t want to do that.

 

Lara Schmoisman (10:12)

Okay.

 

I don’t know, I

 

live for that. That’s a producer, me, the project manager in this. It’s very hard for me to let other people do it. So I think that depends of your type A like me.

 

Meghan Stevenson (10:25)

It depends on

 

how much creative control you really want. mean, people that really, really want 100 % of the creative control are going to go self publishing because they can’t imagine like allowing anybody to do anything. Then we have, so hybrid publishing is the pro on that is the quality. ⁓ Most hybrid books to the average person would not look any different than a traditional publishing book. They might even look better. The con obviously is the cost and

 

I didn’t talk about distribution when I talked about self publishing, but it’s important in that self and hybrid publishing books don’t usually end up on the New York Times bestseller list. They don’t usually end up in bookstores that are independent and not the chains. They don’t usually end up, you know, at airports unless you’re like massive, like Colleen Hoover level bestsellers. They just don’t. And it’s because traditional publishing owns the distribution. So traditional publishing is what we call the big five.

 

There are smaller publishers, but the big five as it stands right now are Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Leveray, and Macmillan. And so those are the five big publishers. ⁓ And then there’s some smaller ones, Wiley, Ben Bella, Barrett Kohler.

 

Lara Schmoisman (11:41)

Hold on.

 

I’m where a literary agent comes in here. Do you need an agent?

 

Meghan Stevenson (11:48)

Yes. Yeah. Traditional publishers do not accept what we call unsolicited submissions, which means like no one’s asked you to send your book idea to an editor. They don’t like that ⁓ because they get a ton. As you might expect, there’s so many people interested in writing a book.

 

Lara Schmoisman (12:01)

All right, but so if you’re a self-published,

 

self-published or hybrid published, you don’t need an agent. All you want to do, you need an agent if you want to go into ⁓ the publishers.

 

Meghan Stevenson (12:09)

No.

 

Yes, you need a literary agent if you want to go to traditional publishers. That’s just how book deals are made. ⁓ My team and I work with literary agents all the time, right? Because half of our clients are agented, meaning that they have literary agents already and the agents are coming to us to help develop their book proposals, which is how nonfiction, how to book sell in traditional publishing. And then, ⁓ you know, half of our clients are unagented.

 

and we’re gonna help them find literary agents as part of the job we do. It’s a professional courtesy we offer.

 

Lara Schmoisman (12:49)

⁓ Very nice. And so where you come in, in which one of these three models you come in.

 

Meghan Stevenson (12:56)

I only work in traditional publishing now. So that changed, I narrowed my focus in 2020. I have worked in the past with self-publishing authors and I have worked in the past with hybrid publishers. Out of those three different avenues, I still think traditional publishing is the best for the entrepreneurs and experts that I work with because the entrepreneurs and experts I work with are…

 

At the top of their game, they have hundreds of thousands, not millions of followers. have six, seven, eight figure businesses. They don’t play small on anything they do. And so that’s the level that, you know, traditional publishers are very interested. And that’s the level where they want and can afford someone like me, a collaborator, a ghost writer that can come in and like take that off of their plate. And in a lot of ways, it’s a VIP experience we’re offering, you know, people.

 

Lara Schmoisman (13:32)

Mm-hmm.

 

Meghan Stevenson (13:48)

Our clients, you know, get to talk to me and my fellow collaborators once a week. We’re interviewing them and it’s really easy.

 

Lara Schmoisman (13:55)

Okay, so hold on.

 

Let’s do a step by step. I come and say, Megan, I want to write the book. Would you accept anyone to work with? All right. Well, let’s start with that. Who is the client that you will accept to work with?

 

Meghan Stevenson (14:01)

Yep. No.

 

So we have a quiz on our website and I invite you to take it. So what it does first, I’m going to just tell you the behind the scenes of the quiz and the quiz design. The first thing it does is ask you about the kind of book you’re writing because that really matters. Like I would say the two biggest decisions that you get to make as an author are what kind of book am I writing and what kind, how do I want it to be published? Okay. So what kind of book am I writing?

 

You would not believe the amount of people that don’t know the difference between fiction and nonfiction. And just to clarify for everyone listening, fiction is made up, nonfiction is not. Pretty simple. Apparently a lot of people miss that part in school. So we’re just level setting. ⁓ So I only work on nonfiction and then to go even further, I only work on what we call prescriptive nonfiction, which means how to and self-help. So that’s the only thing I work on.

 

Lara Schmoisman (14:45)

Very simple.

 

huh.

 

Meghan Stevenson (15:03)

so we work, that’s a lot of different categories, lots of different types of books, but primarily it falls into business, money, sex, health, wellness, psychology, general life, improvement, personal growth, business growth, all those kinds of things. And then every category in there, right? So we could have a business book that’s for corporate leaders. So we could have a business book that’s for entrepreneurs. We could have a business book about business finance. We could have a business book about.

 

You know, product based businesses, there’s a bunch of different kinds.

 

Lara Schmoisman (15:30)

But how

 

do you differentiate? There are so many books already out there and there are so many that they are in the same subjects. how, if working with traditional publishers, I mean, then you need to get this agent to pitch the book. So where you guys get to work with the agent too and to help an agent and then the agent say, well, this, I can pitch this, I cannot pitch that.

 

Meghan Stevenson (15:37)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah. So essentially when we write a proposal with an unagent and client, and this is happening right now where my team went out and we do spearfishing. We go looking for authors. Sometimes we don’t get all our clients that way, but we do, you know, it’s good marketing, good sales technique to go spearfishing. You go out in the internet and you try to find good clients. And we did this and we found this amazing medium that we both, all of us loved.

 

Lara Schmoisman (16:14)

You know?

 

Meghan Stevenson (16:21)

And we’ve been working with her on a proposal for probably four to five months. We finished that book proposal with her. And as a courtesy, we sent it to, I think six agents and she got four literary agent meetings. Now these agents think they can sell this book because agents work on commission. So they’re never going to sign up a client that they don’t think they can sell. That’s like their worst nightmare. That’s their worst outcome. That’d be like a publicist who has a PR client and doesn’t get a single placement.

 

It’s just, it’s a bad outcome. ⁓ what they, you know, are looking for our clients that they know they can sell the book to a traditional publisher and that that book will be commercially successful because agents get paid on commissions. They get paid 15 % of what an author earns over the lifetime of the book. And you can see how that would be amazing if you were like, you know,

 

Rachel Rogers is agent or, you know, Glennon Doyle’s agent or for a Brown’s agent, certainly, right. But like, if you’re selling a bunch of, if you as an agent represent a bunch of books that don’t sell, you’re making zero dollars. And oftentimes you would actually be losing money. And so they have to make really calculated decisions about who to represent.

 

Lara Schmoisman (17:33)

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So you start working with an agent and you work with… So how you start working with… ⁓ Because you just mentioned something really important, people, don’t know what they want to write about. But then it’s also… My background is in screenwriting, so I know the structure of screenwriting, but writing a book is a completely different structure.

 

Meghan Stevenson (17:55)

Mm Yeah.

 

Lara Schmoisman (17:56)

So it’s

 

something that you see as often that people say, I want to write a book, but they don’t know where to start. When do you decide, do always use a ghostwriter or use something you recommend or you don’t recommend?

 

Meghan Stevenson (18:10)

It’s really variable. once we get sort of, I’m going to go back to the quiz because I realized I didn’t finish my thought there. But once we understand, okay, the category is right, right? We’re working with entrepreneurs, experts who want to write a how-to book, right? We’re in that niche. The next conversation we get to have, it’s about platform, meaning the audience. Because if you don’t have a big audience, the traditional publisher is not going to be interested either.

 

Lara Schmoisman (18:22)

Mm-hmm.

 

Meghan Stevenson (18:35)

Because financially they are looking at your book like a product. And in a lot of ways they’re looking at your book, like a VC would look at a company, like the sharks would look at it and shark tank. They’re looking to 10 X their money, right? They’re looking to invest six figures in you. Most of the time, most of my clients get six figure advances. like we’re now

 

Lara Schmoisman (18:48)

course.

 

you

 

just say that, but that was my next question about the advance. What an advance means that means it doesn’t mean that you’re getting paid. It’s means that you’re going to, they’re going to have to recap that money. Right.

 

Meghan Stevenson (18:59)

Yeah.

 

A little bit. Okay. So let’s go into advances because this is, this is good. So this gets us, this gets us into platform. You can see how this is all interlocking. Like it’s a big puzzle. Like you asked one question and now I’m, wrangling a huge ball of yarn. So like, yeah. So advances. Great question. It’s called an advance because it’s an advance on earnings. That’s actually the technical term for it. So when a publisher offers you a book deal, it’s more of a license from a business perspective. Like the contract is a license of your copyrighted work, which is the book. So.

 

Lara Schmoisman (19:11)

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Meghan Stevenson (19:36)

How it works, let’s say that Penguin Random House offered you $150,000 advance. Their cost to produce the book, that’s like to keep the lights on, to pay your editor, to print the book, to make the cover, all these things is also 150K. That’s just a guesstimate. So now they’re in the red on their P &L for your book at 300K, right? So if your book sells for $30, just to make the math easy,

 

They need to sell 10,001 copies of that book before they make a dime of profit. And they want to make way more profit than that. So they want to sell 20, 30,000 copies of a book, but that is directly then related to your audience. So like if we say, I did estimate one time, I’ll have to do some more estimates as more books come out. But I did an estimate on one of my more prolific clients who is an online entrepreneur. When her book came out in the first year, 5 % of her audience bought it.

 

So that can work if your audience is then 20 times the size of that publishing ask. So if the publisher expects to sell, let’s just say 30,000 copies, you have to have an audience as at least 600,000 people. If only 5 % of your audience is going to buy it.

 

Lara Schmoisman (20:46)

Okay. I keep having questions here. So when you’re talking about your audience, it’s the audience that you already own or the audience that is a perspective target audience.

 

Meghan Stevenson (20:49)

Yes.

 

It is the audience you already are directly speaking to, just kind of a combination. So what publishers are looking for, and this gets into the quiz, because the quiz asks these questions as well. How many followers do you have? Because what we want to know, and that’s not exactly, because there’s always people outside of that, the corporate consultants, right? We have corporate consultant clients who just got a mid six figure advance and they have 5,000 combined, it’s two gentlemen.

 

Lara Schmoisman (21:25)

Well,

 

I just see the quiz by the way, and they told me congratulations. You’re ready to write the book.

 

Meghan Stevenson (21:30)

Oh,

 

okay. Well, that’s awesome. But yeah, the, um, 5,000 followers, you know, on LinkedIn, that’s not the whole story about their platform, right? They have big contracts. They’re willing to buy like 20,000 books. That’s a huge offer. So that follower count though does give us an idea of, Hey, how many people can this person really reach? Um, so when

 

agents or editors are looking at a proposal. The first thing they’re going to do is Google you. And they’re going to be looking for those public facing numbers, whether that’s Instagram followers, LinkedIn followers, TikTok followers, uh, that you do a lot of speaking that you’ve got a really great speaking real that you’ve got. Like if you are a corporate consultant that you’ve got like kind of household name clients, um, things like that, they’re, they’re going to be looking at that because they, if they’re going to offer you, you know, 150 K as an advance and they’re going to invest that amount of money.

 

They want to make sure their investment pays off.

 

Lara Schmoisman (22:24)

⁓

 

All right, and that 150k, what is to be used for? Or the advance to make the book? What that includes?

 

Meghan Stevenson (22:29)

to write the Yeah.

 

It varies author by author, it traditionally it has been to allow the author time away from like their nine to five. That has become less of a thing for the entrepreneurs and experts I work with. They usually leverage it to pay me and recoup their costs of proposal. so that’s like strategically how you would use it is that you outlay. Of course. Yes. Yeah. There’s no limit. I mean, you could go spend it on.

 

Lara Schmoisman (22:54)

Can you use it for marketing? Can you use it for promotion? Can you use it for PR?

 

Meghan Stevenson (23:01)

Vegas if you want to, people probably won’t be happy with you, but you can do it. They don’t have any restrictions on what you’d use it for. Now, if you don’t deliver a manuscript that’s acceptable to them, now they can sue you for it. But that’s so rare that it doesn’t happen very often. Most of the time authors are way more prudent than that. But yeah, so that’s in general, it’s supposed to be infested for the book. Most often that means

 

Lara Schmoisman (23:22)

Yeah.

 

Meghan Stevenson (23:29)

paying for help, whether that’s a copy editor, an extra light coach in your business, ⁓ a marketing person or a PR person or ads or whatever that is, it’s an injection of capital into your business that in theory should go right back out to promote this new product that you have coming up.

 

Lara Schmoisman (23:47)

Okay, so I interrupted you before. explaining us something about how working with the publisher works.

 

Meghan Stevenson (23:52)

That’s okay.

 

Yes. So the publisher is going to look at your platform, right? I have what I call my 3P framework and its potential, which means a book idea that can actually work as a book platform, which is the size of your audience. And that’s just, that’s an easy calculation. It seems really harsh to be like, it’s just the numbers, but it is a lot of the times the numbers, because again, capitalist society, capitalist organizations, corporations, like they’re going to look at the numbers. And so the numbers are super important. So platform is huge.

 

And that’s what most people lack. Most people don’t lack the ability to write the book or the ability to write a proposal or the idea. Most people lack the audience ⁓ and the proof of concept that comes with building such a large audience.

 

Lara Schmoisman (24:42)

So you were saying that you don’t work with everyone. So who is someone that you would never work with and who is someone that you said I will work with because I can help them do this, this and this.

 

Meghan Stevenson (24:46)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yep. So I won’t ever work with someone who’s self published before, unless they have substantial amounts of sales because traditional publishers don’t, there’s this weird rumor in the, and it’s gone away less than the last couple of years. Cause I think it’s just not true anymore, but there’s this weird idea that publishers would swoop in and like save a self published book that hadn’t sold well. And it’s just not true. So I don’t work with self published authors. don’t work with.

 

Lara Schmoisman (25:00)

Okay.

 

Meghan Stevenson (25:23)

Memoirists we get a lot of people who want to write memoirs. I don’t do that. I don’t do any fiction I don’t do any children’s I don’t do any YA I don’t do any fantasy. I don’t do any thrillers. I don’t do any mysteries. I don’t do any what we call Hard non-fiction so that’s like more narrative history military history true crime I don’t do any of that. So I only work with how-to people and then I only work with people who have substantial platforms because otherwise

 

You’re paying me thousands of dollars to make you a very expensive Google document. And that’s never going to get an agent and never going to sell. And that’s the worst outcome we could have for our clients.

 

Lara Schmoisman (26:01)

Do you give any guarantees

 

that they’re going to get an agent?

 

Meghan Stevenson (26:04)

No,

 

I can’t control that. It’s someone else. I could do it’s in my best interest to get everyone an agent. I don’t like to have unhappy clients, but like a lot of times, like the reason that our clients don’t get agents or don’t get deals is because of decisions the client makes. ⁓ you know, we had a client who had an amazing author platform. was the CEO of a major nonprofit, like something everybody listening to this podcast would know. And he asked me, he’s like, Hey,

 

I want to leave this job. Should I do it now or should I do it after the book is acquired and out? I said, we’ll certainly do it after the book’s acquired and out because otherwise you don’t have a platform. And lo and behold, he went and quit. And then he was like, what are you going to do about my book? And I was like, nothing, because you don’t have a platform now. And every reference in this proposal is back to that organization, which now you burn that bridge. So we can do literally nothing with this and apologize to your wife for me is literally what I said.

 

I was like, I told you not to do it. And then you went and not did it anyway.

 

Lara Schmoisman (27:02)

Yeah. So what percentage of the people that you work with, they get published?

 

Meghan Stevenson (27:08)

So great question. Last year, 90 % of our clients got book deals. There was one author who did not, and 100 % of them got agents. So even that author that didn’t get a deal, he had offers of representation from two different agencies. So I see it. Great question. They have to be passionate and interested in the book. That should be like the obvious. They won’t even take a meeting most of the time if they’re not interested.

 

Lara Schmoisman (27:23)

How do you choose an agent?

 

Yes.

 

Meghan Stevenson (27:32)

And then the next thing is that you want to be able, this person’s going to act on your legal and financial behalf. So they’re almost like a power of attorney in that way. And then you also want to be able to talk to them about problems and like hurdles and like mindset things like, you know, imposter syndrome, things like that. So they, kind of have to have trust in them that they can handle your legal and financial matters while also wanting to have a drink with them.

 

kind of like hiring a good litigator or a good contracts attorney. It’s like, yeah.

 

Lara Schmoisman (28:00)

Yeah. You need to get that gut feeling.

 

We hear in movies, in books about that, we got the multiple book deal. What are those? Do exist?

 

Meghan Stevenson (28:09)

Right?

 

they do exist. They are not very common in prescriptive non-fictions. They’re not very common in how to books, mostly because like a lot of books in that space, the authors only really have one book in them. They don’t really have multiple books. Like a lot of people come to me and they’re like, I have this one book idea and it’s going to be a series like Chicken Soup for the Soul or you know, these are their books. And I’m always like, you’re basically showing up on someone’s doorstep in that situation.

 

on a first date asking to have six kids. No one’s interested in that. Everyone’s gonna be like, slow the roll, right? So it’s really important to make the first book as good as you can get. And then the multiple book deals do happen in fiction a ton. They happen very often in fiction. They do not happen that often in nonfiction. And it’s because of this idea of like the majority of business author, self-help authors, they have like one primary book and then…

 

Any book after that sells less and less and less. There’s exceptions to that. But like in general, most people have like one solid book and we want your focus to be on that one solid book because a lot of times

 

Lara Schmoisman (29:14)

Yeah, you want to have

 

one success and then you’ll see what you do.

 

Meghan Stevenson (29:17)

Yeah, it’s like, it’s like the new brand new entrepreneur who launches like six things. Like it’s, it’s not the best strategy.

 

Lara Schmoisman (29:21)

I

 

Yeah, I always say when ⁓ marketing wise, say you don’t have then a brand that you have a collection of products.

 

Meghan Stevenson (29:29)

Yes. Yep.

 

Lara Schmoisman (29:29)

which

 

is very different. Okay, before we go, I have like that question. What is a no-no for someone who’s trying to be an author for first time?

 

Meghan Stevenson (29:40)

I can absolutely don’t do this.

 

Lara Schmoisman (29:42)

Yes, or many, many

 

things. What are the things that you will say, never do this? Or these are the worst things that I’ve seen of people making these choices.

 

Meghan Stevenson (29:51)

The number one thing I see is people rushing to publish. you know, on our quiz, we have an, and when I used to do sales calls, I used to have a membership that helped people grow their audience. What I would see over and over again, it’s people trying to write a book at the beginning of their entrepreneurship career, or before they had really proven out their methodology. A lot of times people use a book and expect the book to do everything for them in terms of sales and marketing and content creation. And that’s just not going to happen.

 

The investment that people take to read a book, find, read, and buy a book. Find, buy, and read a book. That’s really the use case there, right? Find, buy, read.

 

Lara Schmoisman (30:31)

Yeah, and you

 

want a book that other people will recommend. And I said, you have to read this book.

 

Meghan Stevenson (30:36)

Well, it’s just such

 

a big investment of the consumer. so what I think is like, know, a lot of times I see people who want to write a book instead of writing a marketing email. And I’m like, write that marketing email, right there, social media post, because that’s going to help you like really figure out what your audience needs. Because a lot of people, when they come find someone like me are like me, me, me, I want this book. It’s really important to me. And I don’t hear anything.

 

about the reader or their audience. And the more successful people I have, they’re all about their audience. Yes, what they like to, you know, achieve a childhood dream. Heck yeah. Everybody does. Right. But like, are they really there? Are they really putting the work in day after day, whether it’s the book, whether it’s a course, whether it’s when I’m coaching, whether it’s whatever, because they want to serve their audience a hundred percent. And that is the difference between a successful author and a not so successful one.

 

Lara Schmoisman (31:29)

Okay,

 

I knew that I told you that this will be the last question, but I have one more. What is a time frame realistic of taking you from doing your research, writing a book, publish it? What is realistic?

 

Meghan Stevenson (31:33)

Yeah.

 

Within the traditional model, it’s usually three years. And I would add an extra five to seven years on to that if you need to grow your audience. And the reason I say that is because I’ve had clients that are very, very successful that meet me in year three, in year five, in year 10, in year 15. And so it really just depends on how much iteration you need in that like baby entrepreneur stage. I spent a long time in baby entrepreneur stage. You know, I had a business from

 

2012 to 2020 with zero marketing, right? I was like hiding baby entrepreneur, right? And then I was like, I’ll let me put my big girl pants on and do some marketing and do some advertising and you know, up my business. And that was awesome. But like, I think a lot of people spend time in that baby entrepreneur space. And I don’t say a baby in a bad way. I think it’s a great space to be in until you figure out what you feel.

 

Lara Schmoisman (32:17)

Yep.

 

Meghan Stevenson (32:37)

comfortable with stepping up and stepping out with and that like incubation period gives you so much information about your audience and who you want to serve and how you want to serve them. That’s instrumental when you get kind of into the grownup leagues of like book deals and stuff. Because that way you’re really centered on who you are and who you’re not. And that becomes really important when you get into like the publishing arenas.

 

Lara Schmoisman (32:54)

Thank

 

Yeah. Well, in Spanish, we have a saying that says that everyone in life should plant a tree, have a baby and write a book. But after talking to you, for you, my dear listeners, know that writing a book, will take a lot longer than having a kid or even to ⁓ plant a tree.

 

Meghan Stevenson (33:10)

I love that.

 

It’s true. Yeah. But it’ll take, mean, I think it’s so interesting. Like, but I do as a gardener, I’m not a parent, but as a gardener and as a person who works on books all the time, I don’t see that time as a bad thing. It’s almost, it’s cool. It’s almost stretches out time longer. ⁓ and kind of like my friends who have had babies say, it’s like, by the time a book comes out, I’ve completely forgotten all the, the nightmares that came with that book. ⁓

 

Lara Schmoisman (33:52)

Absolutely. And that’s the

 

only way I believe that you do it again, or you want to do it again. ⁓

 

Meghan Stevenson (33:56)

Yes, a hundred percent,

 

a hundred percent. that’s exactly like, that’s kind of the thing too. And I encourage people to just like relax and like, it’s almost one of those, I don’t know if you’re a believer in this, but I’m a big believer in divine timing. And so like the things that are meant to happen are going to happen for you in their own timing. And so you can’t force them and you certainly can’t force this big, slow behemoth that is traditional publishing because they, they’ll just move on without you. You know, that’s just kind of how they do it.

 

Lara Schmoisman (34:24)

Absolutely. Well, Megan, thank you so much. This was very enlightening. Oh my God, my English today is terrible. Thank you for having coffee with me and for sharing all this information. And to you out there, if you’re ready to write a book, you know where to find Megan. And I will put more notes of her information and the quiz in the chapter notes.

 

and you can contact her directly.

 

Meghan Stevenson (34:53)

Awesome. Yeah. And also like if you’re not a good fit, the quiz is worth a take anyway, because I have a referral list. We try to be helpful to all the authors that are reaching out to us. So there’s always QR of writing fiction or memoir or these other categories that I don’t personally work on. There are recommended resources at the quiz when you like quote unquote fail out of it.

 

Lara Schmoisman (35:13)

And well, and to you guys, I will see you next week with more Coffee Number 5.