In publishing you have traditional publishing, indie publishing and hybrid publishing. Mountain Ash Press combines the expertise of two female writers, Caroline Topperman and Andi Cumbo, to create a boutique hybrid press that helps writers from the beginning concept of a book all the way to the end. Today I have them on the show to talk about everything their press does for authors, how they came up with the idea and a fun retreat they’ll be hosting in the fall of 2023.Visit Mountain Ash Press on their website here: https://mountainash.press/
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TRANSCRIPT STARTS HERE:
Kat
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Pencils in Lipstick. I’m excited to have you have two guests with me today, Caroline Topperman and Andi Combo. Andi has been with me before, but this time they are together because they have endeavored on Mountain Ash Press, and we are going to talk about how they can help authors like you become published. So welcome. How are you doing?
Andi
Good. Thank you.
Caroline
Good. Happy to be here.
Kat
Well, thanks for coming on. I think we’ll go first with Andi. You’ve been on the podcast before, but just as a writer. So introduce yourself a little bit, Andi, and then we’ll go to Caroline on just who you are as people.
Andi
Sure. So I’m Andi Combo. I live in Virginia and I write cozy mysteries and soon hopefully romantic comedies. And I have been an indie published author, but I just recently got an agent, so now we’re shopping my books out to traditional publishers.
Kat
Oh, very cool. And Caroline is your partner in crime here for the press. Hi, Caroline.
Caroline
Hi. I’m Caroline, and I’m right now in Toronto, Canada, so across the border from everyone. I actually come from a screen writing background, but I’ve recently written a memoir that I am currently shopping around to agents, and I’ve also been indie published.
Kat
Wow, very cool. So you guys have quite the background on both writing and different ways of publishing between the two of you.
Caroline
Yes. And that’s why we joined forces. That’s the exact reason why we decided to work together.
Kat
So there’s quite a few, and you live near me. There’s a lot of distance between the two of you. So how first did you guys meet?
Caroline
I think I found Andi and I followed one of her newsletters. I signed up to one of her newsletters. And then Andi was… Oh, I know. Andi was actually hosting, she was doing coaching for creatives who were trying to bring their writing life and whatever other creative endeavors they do. And she was trying to help them bring that together. And that’s exactly where I was at the point in my life where I had all these things and I didn’t know how to bring them into one cohesive poll. So I worked with Andi for a few months. Clearly, it went well. And then we just decided this idea of a press came to mind. I asked Andi if she’d like to join forces. And the rest is history.
Kat
And here you are. That’s so awesome. So tell me a little bit about Mountain Ash Press. Is it a go now? Are you guys taking manuscripts?
Andi
We are. Yeah, we have a few clients already and a few in the works, so it’s pretty exciting. And yeah, so what we do is we work with writers who have anything from an idea to a finished book, and we help them get that book into print whatever way they want to. We really don’t prioritize indie over traditional publishing. We think they’re both great avenues for different reasons. And so we do everything from book coaching to loading it to Amazon.
Kat
Wow. Okay. That sounds like a lot of work. I’m already glad you two are doing it. So why did you want to keep, I guess we call it somewhat a hybrid, although I think you guys are a bit unique in offering book coaching from idea to final product. I personally haven’t heard of that. I don’t know if other people are doing that. So how did you come to this decision of bringing an author along on the full journey?
Caroline
I think there’s just a demand for it. What happened is that I was doing some book coaching, and I actually worked with a client for close to two years, and she needed help with that final last bit. So I sent her to Andi. Somehow I was still involved in the project. And so it evolved from that, really. And there really is that need. I see that quite often that people work with an editor, then they have this manuscript, and then they’re like, now what? What do I do with this? And we decided if we could be a full service house, that would be great. And what we’d like to do, I just want to add later on too, is to have a contest where people can submit, and then we will traditionally publish their book as well. So that’s where we fit into that hybrid mode right now for now. But there’s just this, you said it, it’s really hard to finally get your book out there. And there are so many components. There’s the marketing. Sometimes it’s even just figuring out a good cover page for a book. And because we have experience with that and we have our strengths in different spots, they don’t have to look to a 1,000 different people to help them. We have somebody that we will potentially be working with, and she was very open. She’s like, look, I’m going to write one book. This is it. And I don’t want to worry about all the other stuff. And then the other bonus, because you do get this with some of the hybrid presses, is that then they’ll take a cut of your income from your book, and we don’t do that. So you pay for our services upfront, you get the work, we help you put it out in the world, the book is yours.
Kat
That’s nice. I can imagine this working together is very comforting to people just because that’s how it used to be. And the whole creative process, I can write a book and I’m in the middle of finding a book cover and I’m going insane because what I like personally might not be actually for the genre and being able to talk with somebody who has a more critical eye and isn’t so personally involved in the book just sounds like a very nice process.
Andi
Yeah. And because we’ve done it all ourselves, as writers, we know how to talk about that, which is to remember that books are precious to their creators, but also they’re pieces of their product that has to be sold. And so hopefully we’re compassionate towards everybody who wants, I don’t know, flowers on their cover and market it to men so we can say, well, men don’t usually buy books with flowers. All their flowers are really pretty. We can hold that middle ground for people. Which is I think one of the things that’s sometimes harder with traditional publishers is that they don’t have to be don’t usually have the experience with the writing part. And so this way we carry that compassion in, but also the expertise to help people get things to print.
Kat
Yeah, absolutely. When did you guys open house?
Andi
The beginning of May 2023. We’re open a few weeks now, and we did it on a spur of a moment and then discovered that because we’re in two different countries, we have to figure out a whole lot of the back end business stuff, but we’re getting it all together. And we got some good clients. We’ve got a poetry collection coming out later this year and then a memoir and a recipe art book. It’s beautiful. And that’s another thing that we do is we can work with people whose books don’t really fit the niches of genre. So we can help people put books out that would not find a traditional publisher, maybe because they’re too unique. But there are people that can market them. This client has a very big platform. She has people that follow her that are interested in what she’s doing. So she can sell the book, but she was not going to find a traditional publisher for it.
Kat
Yeah, that is one of the problems, right. As much as they claim there are no more gatekeepers, there are definitely. They are definitely gatekeeping some. I mean, they have to make a profit. And if you guys watched at all that debacle that they had over here in DC of testimonies and all that, it was like, you guys literally have no idea what you’re doing. That’s what I came away with. So I would feel more comfortable going with you two, where you have actually done it yourself. Like you said, you’re writers. You’ve been part of that opposite end, right?
Caroline
Exactly. And that’s part of it is that even though, yes, the press is technically new, our experience is not.
Caroline
There’s years and years of accumulated experience in the industry, in different facets of the industry. Each of us has a network of people that we know that we can draw upon. So none of that is new. It’s just the actual partnership and the name is new.
Kat
Right. So when you guys talk about book coaching and bringing people through, if they come with you, do they find editors and everything? Is that all included or are there some things that people might have to find outside of Mountain Ash Press?
Caroline
No, it’s all inclusive if they want it that way. So they have the choice. One of our clients, she had an artist friend who actually did all the illustrations for, it’s like a beauty recipe book that the art book Andi was mentioning. And so she had an artist friend who did all the illustrations for her, and she had somebody also do the cover. And it’s beautiful. Absolutely, she brought that in herself. And that’s reflected with how we’ve worked with her. And so, yeah, they can if they want to. But if they don’t, if they just want to hand us words on a page, we can help with the rest of it. Yeah. So we don’t require them to do anything if they don’t want to.
Kat
That’s amazing. Very cool. So you guys have your… I take it you’re not going to niche to a specific genre because both of you write in different genres anyway. So is there any genre is open to submitting to Mountain Ash Press?
Andi
Yeah, we’re happy to consider anything. I think we’re not as likely to publish business books because that’s just not our market. But particularly anything on the creative nonfiction, fiction side of things. But then also we’ve done a lot of books ourselves and with other people that are heritage books. I want to keep this for my family. So that’s the poetry collection we’re doing is a man’s mother wrote a bunch of poetry and did some drawings, and so we’re producing that. Those kinds of things we’re happy to do. And then for the traditional, if somebody wants to publish traditionally, then our considerations for taking it on will just simply be like, do we think we can help you find an agent and a publisher? And if not, we can coach you on how to maybe make your book fit that. And if not, then we’ll just tell you, we’re not a good fit for you because we don’t know how to pitch your book. Although I haven’t met a book that we haven’t figured out how to pitch.
Kat
You have to have that caveat in case something really strange comes up. Out of the box, we will say. When you say heritage, somebody, like you had mentioned before, I think it’s a one book they don’t really want to… It’s not so much, I guess, for sale. And I guess for you, because you’re not taking royalties, that doesn’t matter as much to you then.
Caroline
No. Because we respect it. So one of the books is a memoir, and I believe this person will want to put it up on all the platforms and we’ll help them with that, and that will be fine. But it’s a family memoir that will be for sale. And we also will sell it on our website because more places for it to be seen. So we will publicize it as well. And then the book of poetry, for example, that book will be… I’m not sure we’ve just started discussing it with this individual. If they want to put it on the website or not, we can as well, if anybody else wants it. It does have, in my opinion, the book does have some value, heritage value, which I think it would be great if they agreed to it. But that will be more for their family. Okay. So the first run will be for their family.
Kat
I think that’s really interesting that you’re going to sell it from your website because I’ve heard, I think it’s Joanna Penn has always said, she doesn’t understand why traditional publishers don’t have a bookstore, at least their own online. If you love Simon & Schuster, go there and you can find the books. So you guys have decided to do that yourselves.
Andi
Yeah. I run for my books. I sell them through my website. And so we just use those mechanism. If it’s traditionally published book, then we just get permission from the publisher to link to where they are selling it. But if it’s something that we publish for someone, it can be on our site if they want it there. And then it’ll just work just like if you buy it from any other retailer. You’ll pay and it’ll get shipped to you and it’ll be… It’s actually a very simple process. So I don’t really understand, again, Joanna Penn and I are on the same page, why the publishers are doing that. But yeah, we will make that happen if people want it on our site.
Kat
Yeah. I think that it’s just like you said, Caroline, it’s another place to buy your book, to have it out there. It helps your Google and everything. You have to find it there. That’s interesting, I know. Sometimes I really don’t understand the traditional press sometimes. But with the traditional press, I read a story just the other day of how you have to come with an audience. These days you can’t just have a spectacular book. You have to come with an Instagram audience or something like that. So what is Mountain Ash Press’s stance on that? What do people need when they come? Do they need 5,000 followers?
Caroline
4,999, at least. No, kidding. Big bird people get heart palpitations. No, I mean, again, because… So it depends. That’s true for nonfiction and genres like memoir. It’s not so much the truth for fiction books in the bigger, wider world of publishing. We will coach people. We have a package, part of our package, too, includes coaching people on how to increase their platforms, but it’s also to help teach people how to use them. So, for example, I’ve been working with this woman who is a singer, on Instagram, we’ll use that one, she has a couple of hundred followers. It’s nothing. And honestly, until you get into the tens of thousands, it’s nothing. We will not help you. I hope we can, but chances are we will not make a post go viral. You will not suddenly wake up the next day and be like, Oh, I have 100 million followers. This lady, for example, she does have just a good number, several thousand on Facebook, but she’s a singer and she has other connections and she has connections to some big names. And it’s more about helping people flip the switch of, oh, wait, it doesn’t have to be social media. That’s not just platform. There’s so much more to it because her audience is huge, actually. She does singing retreats and meditation retreats, and she does all these things. And I’m like, those are your people. It’s about teaching them that part of it as well. It’s more of in a mentoring, coaching capacity that we do that because those are their people. But that’s how we will focus on helping them sell their books.
Kat
Okay. You have experience with this, right? The last time we spoke, you were doing exactly that, like mentoring creatives on business.
Andi
On business stuff, yes. So we’re trying to help people understand that they don’t have to be overwhelmed by building a platform. You don’t have to be on every platform posting 25 times a day. You can link things, you can post the same things you can be where you’re comfortable being. I tried TikTok because Caroline made me, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. It’s just too much for me. That where I am personally in my life. I have a little kid. I just don’t have the mental space to create a video all the time. But I can do Instagram photos and I can be on Facebook pretty regularly. So we just help people understand who they are and what they want to do. I have a friend who’s writing a memoir about Vietnam, and he knows every veteran’s group here in the US and could sell 100,000 copies probably just by telling those people about it. So just give them a sense of platform that’s broader than what your Snapchat numbers are but there we are.
Kat
No, I think that’s an important point to make to authors, whether they’re memoir writers or fiction writers, is the people who follow you on Facebook, because we’ve all been around for a couple of decades, since I’ve been alive and adult before Facebook was around. So the people who follow me might not necessarily want my book. The writer who’s writing about Vietnam, that might not be the audience that he has following him on Facebook, but he has another way to find this specific audience for that book, right?
Caroline
Absolutely. I honestly think none of my family has ever bought my book.
Kat
Oh, no. Everyone should get rid of that idea right away. Sometimes you don’t want them to. I have an author friend that wrote it in the book. If you are a family member, put this book down now, or don’t talk to me about it after.
Andi
That’s a really good epigraph. I like that. Well, and also just this idea of helping people understand that because your friends and family don’t buy your books doesn’t mean they don’t support you. Their job isn’t to be your customer. Their job is to be your friends and your family. That’s also part of what we try to tell writers, because it can be really discouraging if you think, I love my brother. He’s amazing. I’m pretty sure he’s never read anything I’ve written, but he’s a composer. And honestly, I haven’t listened to his music either, although I’m all the way behind him, but his music is just weird to me. It’s not my thing. So don’t tell him I said that. But we got to help people understand how marketing works. And it’s about finding the right audience for your books. It’s not about no book is for everybody, despite what some of our clients may think sometimes. Every book has an audience. So we want to help them think about who that is. And then how do you reach those people? And that could be social media. It could be speaking at the VFW. It could be a church, it could be anything.
Kat
Yeah. And it might change per book that you write, depending on what genre you’re writing.
Caroline
Yeah. And it’s also about… So one of the things that we’ve coached people on to is to start your publicity early, before your book comes out. Start talking to outlets, start writing if you can, depending on the book, of course, but you can write articles for different places, and then they will post your book when it comes out, they’ll post it to their people. And it’s just about understanding that your job isn’t done after that last word comes on the page. Unfortunately, we’re sorry, there’s still a lot more work to do. It doesn’t end.
Kat
But it would be nice to have you two next to the writer being like, okay, what do I do now? Because it’s true, you might want to write a book, but gosh, what do you do afterwards? I think every indie author, at least, and possibly traditionally published, the first time they wrote was probably like, oh, I’m not done yet. I can’t just go and write the next one.
Caroline
But here’s the thing. So let’s think just traditional for a second. The world has changed. It’s not like I find my agent and my agent sells my book and it gets published by one of the top five and I get to sit back and watch the money roll in through my door. That’s not going to happen. You are actually expected to use your advance to market your book. So unless you will have pre-sold three million copies and then you’re in a different league and you don’t meet us anyway. Although we’d be happy to help you if you’re out there. More than happy to help you. But the idea is that, let’s say we get a client who comes in and says, I need help, for instance, cleaning up my book, we’ll do the developmental edit, we’ll go through the line editing, we’ll do all the proofreading. Then they’re like, well, but maybe I’d like to do traditional. That’s fantastic. But now is actually the time where you need to start getting your name out there and you need to start talking about it. Because guess what happens when an agent or even one of the mid range presses that you have to submit to, even one of those presses, they’re going to Google you. They’re going to look you up. We will at that point, also help them with their pre-marketing marketing and getting their name out there. And if there’s a place that you can write an article for, if there’s a podcast you can get on, if there is any interview you can do, you should be doing it because you’re already building buzz around your book. And that’s what the super traditional, that’s what they’re looking for.
Kat
Right. They are looking for you to be more involved than what we maybe idealize in our heads as writers, like what they used to do in Stephen King in the 80s and 70s, like everyone. But it’s a hard mindset shift because we just grew up with that. And wouldn’t it be nice if you could just pass it off and not have to do anything else?
Caroline
I would love that. I would love it. But there’s reality.
Andi
That’s right. And we do everything too. If we get somebody that’s just at the beginning of their career and they want to have a big presence, then we’ll help them. We have people we can hire out to help them work the website, build a basic website. These things all cost a lot of money and they take a lot of time and energy. So it’s nice if you can have us manage that communication and the back and forth on things so that you don’t have to do that. But yeah, I mean, the average time span that a publisher will spend on your books is two weeks once they’re out, you get two weeks of marketing time from them. And then because they have other clients and they have to continue to make money, they move on to the next book. So yeah, they might do you a national press tour, but it’ll be done and their attention to you will be done in two weeks. We can teach you how to keep the attention on you for a longer period of time without killing yourself.
Kat
That’s a good point to make, without killing yourself, without starting to hate everything about your book. No, I do think it’s a big mindset shift. I’ve been spending more time in learning marketing for all the things I want to do. And I’m sure you guys have learned it both for your books and for getting Mountain Ash Press out to the world. And it’s just another beast. And it’s something that you have to learn and learn how to not kill yourself while doing it.
Andi
Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people think that marketing piece isn’t creative. It is. This is differently creative. I love marketing. I actually find it really fun. I love having conversations like this and talking with people. I love figuring out how to get my kid’s favorite YouTubers to comment on him, which I did last night. He was so excited this morning. That creativity, it’s just different than the creativity that goes into writing. And they can feed each other. They don’t have to drain one another. They can actually be empowering in both senses.
Kat
Yeah. And I can see how if you have already seen the fun in that, you can help mentor someone who might be dreading it to find that fun. That’s probably your mystery writer figuring out the puzzle. But we do better together. Having some community around you and showing you like, no, but let’s make this fun and how you can do that. That sounds way more exciting than sitting in my office trying to figure out another reel for the next week.
Caroline
That’s the magic. You need the community. There’s no way, maybe there’s like one person out of every million people who will actually like doing this by themselves. But there’s so many new things happening, so many new places, so many resources that it’s hard to navigate through all of them. What we want to be is we want to be your partner in all of that. That’s how we approach it in that way, that we’re there. If you have questions, we’ll help answer those questions. I agree, marketing, it’s a lot of fun. And it’s not all that different than writing. The writing is more solitary, and then it has to stop being solitary at some point. I mean, if you want someone to read your book.
Kat
Yes. No, it’s true, though. Editors used to be that book coach, really, that person that would walk alongside them. And like Fitzgerald, I was reading the Artful Edit, right? And it goes with his editor, and it’s like, this is a book coach. He’s reading as he’s writing. He’s giving feedback, he’s helping him along. He’s pointing things out, inconsistencies, adding, what if you do this? What if you do that? And it’s like, oh, my gosh. It’s like a light bulb. And I was like, yes. I don’t think writing has ever been this really actually solitary endeavor in the sense of they never let anyone see the book until it came to the bookstore. And then all of a sudden it was a sensation. Writers have always had mentors, just like every other artist. I don’t know where we came up with this idea that we have to do it by ourselves.
Andi
And this idea, too, I think that illusion creates this preciousness. About the books we write, which means then we get really defensive and protective over our work when really, often people are just trying to help. And if you’re going to put your book in the world, you got to be ready for people to not love every single phrase you put on the page. I mean, it’s painful to me every time I get a note or somebody doesn’t like something. But if you can do that with people beside you who can say, okay, just put that email away for 24 hours, just set it aside for a minute, take a deep breath, do something you love, remind yourself people love you, and then come back, we can help you put that in perspective. But if you try to do this in a solitary manner, you don’t have anybody to give you perspective on. And then you’re just going to always be defensive about your work because you poured yourself into it. Of course you did.
Kat
Yes. I do also think you’re mentoring on marketing. If you’re marketing to the right person, the right group, you’ll still get the emails, but maybe fewer than if you’re trying to market a clean romance to all romance readers. Just understanding the differences. You’ve been in that indie industry, so cozy mystery is different than a gritty mystery, right?
Andi
Oh, yes. I can’t put, I said a swear word, a very mild swear word in one of my books. Oh, my word. The women were upset. I got a lot of emails about it because I crossed the line in the genre and I did it intentionally. I knew what I was doing. But if I didn’t know what I was doing, that would be really devastating to get all these people scandalized by the fact that I wore in the book. But I knew I was pushing it on purpose. You have to know that stuff. And it’s not stuff that you can just know intuitively. You have to learn it. Carolina and I have been in this business a long time. So we’ve just done things we know, and we can tell you like, oh, yeah, somebody’s going to be upset about something and you just can’t take it personally. It’s going to hurt, but you can’t take it personally.
Kat
Yeah, absolutely. I can just see how this would be nice. And of course, there is a payment to have your services, right? But I will just tell everyone listening, the amount of money you might spend on all the little courses and all the little formatting things and setting up your website and all the time you spend not understanding WordPress and then finally dishing out, I might be talking about somebody I know myself. And it’s great that there’s a lot of services out there that people want to help with, like make 30 reels in 30 minutes or whatever. You could do that, or you could just come to people like you in Mountain Ash Press and just get it all together. Maybe not feel so chaotic.
Caroline
Well, that’s the other thing, too. And then the cost that we’re forgetting about, if you’re going in little pieces, and it’s fair, some people prefer to do that. They have their own system. That’s fantastic. But the time that you forget about, too, is how much your time costs to have to follow up with people and organize it. I’ve seen this recently on one of our clients, and it’s pretty funny is that the client sends one bit of information, and then there’s about 30 emails in the background happening between us and the person that we’re working with to make it happen that the client never sees. And there’s all these back end emails to make sure that it gets… So for example, a cover page or layout, just to make sure that everything is exactly the way the client wants it, we’re managing all of that. So instead of the client having to figure it out and be like, I don’t understand the terminology, I don’t get it. I don’t know. The client lives their life. We do all the back end work and then we come to the client with the finished product.
Kat
Nice. That sounds very nice. Instead of being like, no, it’s still a millimeter wrong. Whenever your spine is like, I will never do a different color spine again, ever. Please remind me next time. But knowing that stuff, it’s my first book. So it’s like knowing that little thing and how much time I spent on that issue. And you’re waiting for them to answer. And you’re no one. You’re like that, peon author that’s having a problem. It’s just nice to have somebody else advocate. And again, the emotions might be a little lower, right?
Andi
We won’t tell the story of how much time I tried to do proper headers in my first book. Lord in heaven, I lived alone and had chickens, but those chickens heard some choice language for me as I tried to get those headers, right?
Kat
Well, especially before all the formatting software. I remember trying to get Adobe, whatever that was design or something. It’s like it keeps moving. And I’ve worked with clients that will send me a Word doc and then change it to PDF. And I’m like, no, I’ve tried that before. This is not going to work. It’s all the little things that you guys can save people from these frustrations.
Andi
That’s right. Yeah, one of our clients just said he went on to try to figure out how to load things to the retailers and got into there and went, no, I’m not doing this. I’m just going to call Andi. We’re going to get it done.
Kat
Yeah, it’s gotten more and more complicated as I’m trying to learn Facebook ads and I just can’t. What is this word? What are you guys talking about? So how do people… This sounds nice to have two people, two women coming alongside them and helping them from concept to book and beyond. How do they approach Mountain Ash Press? What do they need before they contact you guys?
Andi
A sense of where they are. That’s really all that they need. Do they have an idea of a book and they just want to figure out if this is feasible? What’s the process from there? That’s one place they can come in. They have a finished draft and they want to find an agent. We can help them with that. If they have a finished draft and they just want to have us load it to retailers for them, we have a client we’re doing that for right now, we’re happy to do that. Like anything, wherever they are, they just need to have enough sense of where they are to be able to tell us where they are, and then we can tell them where to go from there.
Kat
Okay. So they just go to MountainAsh.Press, and is there a form that they fill out?
Caroline
Yeah. So they can email us directly, but there is a form as well that we will probably send them. If it’s just an idea, then of course not, because we need to jump on a call with them. But yeah, if they already have a manuscript, then we do have a form for them to fill out just so we can get as much information as possible so that we can then… It gives us a better idea of how to steer them. We’ll usually jump on a call with them, about 15, 20 minute call, but this might give us a better idea. So, for example, we have a potential client and they sent us some of the artwork for their book. They sent us some bits and pieces, which was great because then what we could do is send them back about 20 things we need to know before we could give them a proper quote. And it made sense for this client. I know that might sound overwhelming for someone, but that’s that idea is just what they need. Then we get together, we figure it out in the background, and then we send them a step-by-step list, item list of what we can do, what we can provide with costs so that they can make a decision.
Kat
Okay. So basically your packages are personalized?
Andi
Yeah. We also set packages that they can get a sense of if you’re coming at this point, this is the price you’re looking at. If you’re coming at this point. But we do them bespoke, I feel fancy saying that, for each client based on what we’re going to have to contribute. So if a client has a cover done, and then but they want their book pre-read. We have a stable, it’s also a fancy word, of people we hired out and we just do our cost based on our prices based on what those costs are going to be. It’s not about just spitballing a number. We do math, which is very hard for us, but we work at it very hard. We do figure it out eventually. We’re word people, but we do numbers. And we also have an assistant who is better at numbers than we are. So check it.
Caroline
We try to be very transparent, too. We’re not hiding anything. This is my time to do X, Y, Z for you, and this is what it’s going to cost, and this is it. We really don’t want the hidden fees. One client we quoted for recently, for example, she was just hollering and humming about something, so we said, Okay, well, this will be the base. And if you want this, it’s going to be this. This is this. This is this. That’s it.
Kat
Right. Just have it out in the open. I haven’t looked at it for a while, but once you’re known as the writer, sometimes they’ll come to you for advice. So I’ve looked at different contracts for other hybrid presses, and it’s been about six years since I’ve looked at them. And usually they are like one size fits all. This is what you’re going to get. You’re going to get a poster, you’re going to get this. And I have made phone calls of like, what if they don’t want it? And they’re like, well, too bad, take it or leave it, put it in the trash. This is what we give you. So this sounds much nicer of like, okay, if somebody can bring their own artwork, why would they pay a package that includes artwork? So that just to give people who are listening an idea of the difference that you guys are bringing to the market, really, in this industry.
Andi
Neither of us wants to own a conglomerate, where we aren’t actually hands on in touch with what’s happening. We’re very personally involved. We’re not graphic designers, so we’re going to hire a graphic designer, but we’re going to be the people talking to that graphic designer. We have proofreaders that work with us, and we’re going to be the people talking to them. We want to be involved in that. We’re not doing this to try to fleece writers, which some presses are, honestly. We’re just trying to help. We really want to help. We have done all of this ourselves. I mean, I’ve been in this business for more than 10 years, and I would have killed to have somebody walk me through this when I was starting. It was so hard to learn how to do it. I was already trying to figure out how to write a book, much less learn all this other stuff. That’s what we want is the relationships with people.
Kat
And there’s more stuff now. There’s more stuff to decide. Do you want to go why? Do you not want to go why? What does that even mean? Should I get an audiobook? I don’t know. Just to be able to ask those questions instead of going to every free webinar available in 2014, that was my life.
Andi
Yes. And those are great. I mean, I love Mark Dawson’s ads course. It’s great for somebody who just wants to piecemeal a process together for doing ads or something. But if you don’t want to have to learn it piecemeal, we can do it, but we can also teach you how to do it. I think that’s the balance is you can hand it to us and we’ll just take care of it. Or you can be back and forth with us and we’ll help you learn how to do it.
Caroline
And I want to just add to that, we don’t disappear because I found sometimes too, when I’ve worked with editors or people, they go, okay, thanks. And then I don’t hear from them for two months. And I know how I am. That would make me really nervous because I’d be like, while they’re not talking to me, they must hate it. This must be the worst thing I’ve ever done. And you get emotional about it, even if you don’t want to. So we don’t disappear. We’re still there. We will check in. You can check in. We might tell you that, look, we’re going to disappear for two weeks because we need to work on this. But sometime in that two weeks, we will let you know we’re still working on it. Everything is good. This is what’s happening. So you’re never left hanging because I think that’s the worst feeling.
Kat
It really is, especially if you’re new at it. Well, I’m not sure it will ever get better when you’re at it. Are you done yet? Is it terrible? I don’t know.
Kat
And the other problem on the other end that listeners might not know is when the editor is actually done, they’re actually done. So if you are editing your book again and a new idea comes to you, you have to approach the editor again and resubmit it. Unless you have a really great relationship with them. But we’re talking about just those of us who have a couple of books or maybe our first book. That’s a real eye opening experience as well that you guys wouldn’t have that problem if a writer came to you.
Andi
Right. Because we make ourselves available. If you rewrite your whole book, yes, we’re going to have to re-edit it for you, and that’s fine. But we’re still going to be willing to do that. We’re here and we have a calendar, we’re people, so we have limits to our time and energy. But our whole goal is to be in relationship with our clients long-term. So we hope that they keep coming back to us every time they need something. Right, Caroline? Is that what you hope?
Caroline
Yes.
Kat
So the other thing that you guys are doing is hosting a retreat as if you guys weren’t busy enough. So tell me about this retreat.
Caroline
Yeah, I don’t know what we were thinking.
Kat
You can’t back out now.
Caroline
Now we’ve said it. I’m actually super excited about it. I know Andi’s hosted retreats before. I’ve never hosted one, so I’m really excited to do this. And it will be in Canada, but that’s actually a bonus for all the American listeners because we have funny money up here.
Kat
The dollars are going to be further a little bit.
Caroline
A lot. Right now, a lot. It might be a great time to get away. It’s going to be from November 9th to the 13th. It will be in Niagara on the Lake, which is just near Niagara Falls, actually. It’s just north of Buffalo. It’s not that hard. It’s easy to get to. We are one of our guests will be Susan Scott. She was an editor for the New Quarterly, which is a big magazine here. Then both Andi and I will be hosting workshops as well. There will be free time to write. There will be time to go into town, which is its wine country. That’s just always a fun place to be.
Kat
It’ll help your writing.
Caroline
It will help with the creativity, or you could drown your sorrows. But the other bonus is that we’re finalizing detail still. However, the inn has already said that it’ll be three nights, four days, but the inn will be throwing in an extra night before or after so people can just come and stay and enjoy the region.
Caroline
They’ve been very generous with that.
Kat
Wow. There are going to be workshops and writing time.
Andi
Workshops, writing time, potentially a writing workshop as a group so you can get some feedback on your work. We’re talking about doing a group dinner one night so we can all connect because that’s another thing we would like is everybody to really get to know one another and us. And the place we’re looking at is gorgeous. So it’ll be like, hopefully a respite as well as a place to build your craft and build your network.
Kat
Okay. And you don’t have to be don’t have to be a client of Mountain Ash Press to go?
Andi
No.
Kat
Okay. All right. That sounds amazing.
Andi
All the information will be on our website so you can pull it up and make your deposit and reserve your space.
Kat
Awesome. Okay. So MountainAsh.Press, we will have the website in the show notes, of course. And I encourage you guys to just check it out. And if this is something that you want to do, if you are feeling like you need a little bit of help, no matter what it is, from idea to formatting, to getting your book out and marketing, I encourage you guys to just click on the website and check it out. I have talked to Andi a couple of times. She is lovely to talk to. And Caroline and I have talked now a few times, and she is fun as well. So definitely go to MountainAsh.Press and see all the expertise that you guys can get in one place. But thank you so much, Caroline and Andi. Thank you for coming on the show.
Andi
Thanks for having us.
Caroline
Thank you.