Today’s guest is thriller author Nick Thacker. He dipped his toes into the game a decade ago just for some fun, and is now a full-time writer. BUt not just a writer, we talk about all the other side projects he has as part of his mission to help authors in their endeavors.
radiowrite.com Conundrum Publishing
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Transcript Starts here:
Kat (00:14)
Welcome to the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast, a weekly podcast for writers. Grab a cup of coffee.
Perhaps some paper and pen and enjoy an interview with an author, a chat it with a writing tool creator, perhaps a conversation with an editor or other publishing experts, as well as Cat’s thoughts on writing and her own creative journey. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry.
Kat (00:38)
Well, hopefully not actually cry.But you will probably learn something.
And I hope you’ll be inspired to write because as I always say. You have a story. You should write it down. This is Pencils and Lipstick.
Kat (00:56)
Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 127 of the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast. I’m Kat Caldwell. I’m your hostess and today is April 17, I believe, as I record this. Happy Easter weekend, everybody. Happy Passover. I hope that you’re having a wonderful time chasing down a Bunny or two, stealing those chocolate eggs from your children so that you can stay awake. Hope you had a wonderful brunch this past weekend. Or maybe you wrote, or maybe you just hung out with family. It is really clear outside here at DC, but the pollen once again is horrendous but didn’t keep us from hanging out outside. It’s just too beautiful. It’s perfect weather, and I actually even got to do a little riding outside, which is my favorite thing to do. I hope that you have a wonderful weekend today. We have a wonderful guest with us. His name is Nick Thacker. He’s really fun to talk to. We probably could have doubled this podcast just because he has so much information to give. He’s an interesting guy, whereas he’s invented all these things for writers, which half of them I didn’t know about. You’ll find out more about that in the show and I’ll have the links in the show notes, of course, as always.
Kat (02:19)
Yeah, we talk a little bit about newsletters in the show and that is something we are going to get into today. And a couple of other announcements. The creative writing community is opening again in May, and I’m going to tell you all about who’s going to come in there. But first, if you love this show, as I know you do, will you please subscribe on whatever app it is that you are listening to? Would you rate it? Would you share it with your friends? There’s a couple new writing podcasts coming out and sadly, there are some writing podcasts that are ending their run. So I think that Pencils and Lipstick maybe has a lesser name because I am not as famous as some other people, but we’ve had some really wonderful guests. I think you can learn a lot from every single person. Their different journey, what they’ve done to sell their book or their products in which help other writers. So today is Nick Thacker. He’s a thriller writer. He’s been in the business since 2011. So we talk about kind of the differences there. Last week we had Emily Myers, and she is a newer author just coming out with her second book.
Kat (03:32)
And we just have some wonderful people coming up. We are talking with Becca Puglisi.
Kat (03:41)
Next week.
Kat (03:42)
She and Angela Ackerman write the thesaurus that so many of us adore. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re going to need to listen. She also talks about some tools that they have that I didn’t know about, and I’m really excited to have Rhonda. Douglas coming up in May. Andy Campbell. I have a new memoir writer named Kirsten Mickelweight. We have Janice from Fiction University, and we’re having Alka Joshi. I’m pretty sure that’s how you pronounce her last name who wrote The Hana Artist. So we have a ton of different genres coming up and different things that they are going to tell us all about. And I’m very excited for that. So share the podcast with your friends, especially your writer friends, but of course, your reader friends, if they like to know what’s going on in the writing world, I guess. So now that we have that out of the way, I am still sponsoring this show with the Story Clarity Workshop. It is happening April 30 at 01:00 p.m.. Eastern. Now we have about two thirds of the spots filled. I’m purposely keeping it very small because it’s a workshop.
Kat (04:57)
It is a time in which you get to come in with your story idea, whether it’s written partially already, whether it’s fully written, or whether it’s just a seedling in your mind. And you get to sort of work with people presenting the idea, the characters, and just listening to our questions about it. And sometimes the questions will be like, yeah, that’s totally talked about in chapter five. No problem. My character is this. I know the answer, and some of the questions might surprise you. We’re going to act like readers as we go around and talk about our books, our stories make sure that the storyline is exactly what we want it to be. Because I really think that as writers, we have a full idea in our head. But writing a book takes time and we have lives around it. And sometimes the ideas that we have don’t always make it into the book. And because we’re thinking about it all the time, we think that they are in the book or we have this character that’s super developed in her head, and so we don’t always remember to develop them fully on the page.
Kat (06:08)
And so it’s always good to have these questions of making sure that the reader is seeing the story and the characters, how you want them to see it, right? So we are going to go through your character’s origin story, their misbelief or belief about the world, what you want to say with your story. We are going to dig into what external changes does your character need to go through through the plot and what do they want? What do they want at the beginning and what do they want at the end? Sometimes it changes. And even if your character doesn’t know what they want, you should know what they want as the writer just because it helps you. And we’re not talking about plotting. I don’t plot. I know a lot of authors that do plot and they do a really good job, and that’s great. We’re just really talking about knowing your characters and making sure that they come across to the reader exactly the way you want them to come across. So that is the workshop. You can head over to Catcalledwell.com to get signed up for it. Now, this is not a free workshop.
Kat (07:14)
I want to be clear about that. And some people have asked me why. So there are two different reasons. One, to keep it small, to keep it a very small group of people who are serious about getting some ideas and some feedback on their story. And in order to have the time to work with everyone, we have to keep it small. Right? And so when you charge a small fee, that definitely keeps some people from joining us. Now, it’s not a big fee. Up until this weekend, it was $30. Now it is $67. If you are a patron of the show, at any rate, you get 50% off. So if you want to head over to Patreon.com pencils underscore lipstick, you get that code to get off any of the workshops that I run. But also, if you don’t want to become a patron, that money can go to you joining the creative writing community if you so wish, or if you just want the workshop, that is totally fine as well. Now, workshops are usually paid and they are pretty intensive. So, yes, it is not really, really expensive, but it is also not free.
Kat (08:31)
So you have a couple of different choices there on what you want to do. If you want to check out the creative writing community, whatever you pay for the workshop transfers over to the creative community. Because when you are in the creative community, joining the workshop is free. That is one of the perks of being in the creative writing community. So the CWC, as we like to call it, the creative writing community is opening again in May. And I have worked through a few things, and I’m going to start opening it about every six months. The months are sort of going to overlap so that you get your two weeks for free and you can sort of see what they’re you know, what we do and how what the vibe is, which personally I think is perfect and you won’t have any complaints. But if you decide that it’s not for you in the first two weeks, you can always say goodbye. This wasn’t for me and no worries there. Otherwise, it is a six month membership. And the reason for that is so that we can get to know each other. We can really help each other out like this.
Kat (09:43)
Last Friday, we kind of ended up doing a hot seat situation for one of our members because a lot of things are happening in her life. And she also has a lot of books that she is trying to coordinate launches for. And so we put her in the hot seat.
Kat (09:57)
Okay, what do you need for this?
Kat (09:59)
What do you need for that or what date do you want to do it by? Ok, send us your cover. Let’s make up some book brush mockups really quickly. So we did that. And then we went through her idea of things, and then people had different suggestions. And then she said, okay, but one thing that’s really bugging me is that just need to read over the book one more time. Two of the books, I think, just to make sure that they’re fine. And she was getting kind of stressed because she just doesn’t have the time for it. And so lots of hands started going up and saying, I can read it first, and I’ll send it to so and so. Then I’ll send it to so and so. And we’ll make sure all the T’s are crossed and all the I’s are dotted and help you out. Basically, that’s what we do in the creative writing community. It is a community of writers who are really serious not only about their work, but about each other’s work. Now, that’s not all we do on Fridays. We have marketing. And so yesterday we were talking about time blocking management business.
Kat (11:01)
Sort of marketing goes in there. We call it marketing, but that’s kind of what we do. And so we have the hot seat session. We also have access to the Sprinting membership, which is now 20 hours a week. There is an evening one as well. There is also a Sunday Sprint. So we have tried to accommodate anybody. Wherever you live. There are a couple of Sprints a week for you. Now there are 20 hours of that. Then we have experts coming in. And so we’re going to have in the next year. Let’s see, we are going to have Lauren Davis, who is a brand and social media manager and creative idea, let’s say, put her out there. She’s going to talk to us about how to use our social media, how to continue our brand, and really look at our books in our writing and our authorship as a brand. We have Jay Thorn coming in. He’s going to do a workshop with us. Emma Desi is coming in to do a workshop with us. Nick Saker, who you’re going to hear today, is going to talk to us about newsletters and emails. And as authors, we want to get people onto our newsletter because we want those people to kind of be our super fans and people who are excited to hear when we have a new book out.
Kat (12:17)
We also have a couple of other people that I’m still working on, so I can’t denounce them yet. But we’re going to work on mindset and we’re going to work on business, and we’re going to work on writing all the things. We have so many things to work on as writers and especially as indie writers. But you know what? Even you traditionally published writers have to deal with this as well, right? So the six months covers your Sprinting membership. It covers all of the expert chats. I will be redoing this workshop, probably tweaking it a bit as I learn what people are finding more valuable. That will come again at the end of May or beginning of June. We’ll have another one in August or September. But inside the community as well. Closed off, not offered outside of it will also be we’re doing a brainstorm every month about come with your new ideas or what’s going on with your story and what do we need to work through. And we’re doing some interactive editing sessions. So bring a short story, bring a chapter. Let’s see how the story is going, the scene and all that.
Kat (13:30)
So we’re really working together to make sure that things are where they should be in our stories. Then we are going to be working a lot more on book launches. And that is what I’m going to have some people come in and do that as well, because I think the industry might be shifting a little, possibly with all the changes in the world. And we just want to be current and up with everyone else. And sometimes it’s hard to do that, keep up with everybody when all we really want to do is write. Right?
Kat (14:03)
So the creative writing community is opening in May. So if you want to get on the waiting list, that link will be in the show notes. You can get more information about it. If you want to talk to me personally with any questions that you have, you can find me on Instagram. You can sign up for my newsletter and reply to any email that comes to you. It goes straight to my email. You can find me Instagram at KatCaldwell.author. You can also find me on my website, Katcaldwell.com. So I hope to see you there. I think it’s going to be a really fast paced, jam packed six months in the creative writing community. We’re going to get a lot done, and it’s wonderful to have like the NanoWrimos during the year that really motivate us. And there’s been a lot during the pandemic of a lot of people trying to motivate each other to get writing. But I really do think it’s also important right now as you go back to work or as your spouse or your partner goes back to work, as the kids go back to school. And we deserve some downtime, that’s for sure.
Kat (15:17)
But it’s also easy to let life overtake our desire to also finish our writing or continue our writing, finish the book that you have or go on to the next one. And writing takes time. It takes effort, so it takes intentionality. And I think having a community really helps with that intentionality to make sure that you’re showing up. If you can show up on the Sunday and Wednesday Sprint, those are the days that at least you’re going to write for one to 2 hours and you’re going to get some words down. And you know what? There are lots of authors that write novel after novel and just 500 word sprints. But within a Sprint, if you set aside 2 hours on Sunday or 2 hours on Tuesday or 1 hour a couple of times a week in the Sprinting membership, you can get a couple of thousand done every week. And it would be amazing to see that book come together, right? And to just have that habit, have that space. Sometimes it’s easier when you have a place to go and show up for other people to tell those around you your loved ones.
Kat (16:33)
Now I have to show up to Sprint. Now it’s time for me to go. And it’s just easier for people to comprehend that sometimes. And it’s easier. You know, I would love it if we could really show up for ourselves all the time. But I think as humans, we do show up for other people more often. And so anything that you can do to sort of trick your psychology into doing what you want, but, you know, telling your brain, well, you know, we’re really doing this for other people. And then your brain is like, oh, my gosh, then let’s go. We better be on time anyway. That’s just me. So you can find out more about the Creative Writing Sessions membership as well. I think I’m changing it to Cowriting sessions membership. So many people have opinions, let’s say, on whether I should call them Sprints. That’s what we do. We get together, we say hello, we’re all virtual, and then we just start writing and we’re there. Whether we keep our camera on or off, we’re all muted. We’re writing. And you know what? Somehow it just helps the focus. It’s amazing how many books have gotten finished in the past year.
Kat (17:47)
I’m so excited. There’s 1234, probably five, and like three others are about to be finished.
Kat (17:55)
That’s pretty amazing.
Kat (17:57)
So you can find out more about all those things@catcalls.com. So before I introduce my guest, be sure to head on over to Patreon.Com/pencils_ lipstick. If you want to become a patron of the show, I am going to be adding a lot more to that over there. If you don’t want to become part of the creative writing community, but you still want to be part of the podcasting community, get access to some special workshops that I’ll have, get some special discounts on my books and my journals and all that. You can become a patron over atpatreon.com and I really appreciate it. It keeps us going. This podcast is in its third year and I’m still having so much fun doing it. I see the numbers rising and I find it very exciting. So hello to all of you guys out there who are listening weekly. I really appreciate you. I appreciate you subscribing and telling your friends about the show. It’s really, really lovely to see more and more people every week. Joining us. So our guest is coming up. I hope that you have a wonderful time listening to Nick Becker. Today’s guest is thriller author Nick Backer.
Kat (19:27)
He is a USA Today bestselling author who pretty much specializes in thrillers as the Harvey Bennett series is huge. He also has a couple of standalones and the Mason Dixon thrillers. Nick is interesting because he’s been in the business for about ten years, which seems to be a bit of a theme these days in some authors that I’m talking to, but he just can’t seem to sit still. Honestly, I did not know how many different little things he has done on the site to benefit. Also. Now all of these links are going to be in the show notes. You can find Nick Thacker plus three free books that he gives away nickthacker.com. But here’s a list of other things he has. He has authoremail.com, radiowrites.com Conundrum publishing (at https://www.conundrumpub.com).
Kat (20:22)
He has so many things in bookscareerinheart.com.
Kat (20:27)
He also has this little thing called Kevintonick.com, but I’m not sure that he expected me to say that. But if you check it out.
Kat (20:34)
Maybe we’ll see what kind of power you guys have.
Kat (20:38)
I hope that you have a good time listening to Nick. He has so much information, I think I’m going to have to have him come back on the show. So if you guys have any questions, let me know. You can find me over at all the author on Instagram. Let me know what you think about next interview. We’ll bring him back on. I think he’s a pretty interesting, funny guy to talk to. He’s going to actually be speaking at InkersCon. So if you guys listen to Alessandro Torrey’s interview last week, you will know already all about InkersCon. If you don’t know what InkersCon is, go to Inkerscon.com. It is a writing and publishing conference in Dallas, Texas in 2022. It’s going to take place in June, so you still have time to get your tickets if you are looking to mingle with some other authors and to learn some other things in person. Or there’s also the digital format as well. So without further Ado, Here’s Nick.
Kat (21:39)
Okay, everyone, welcome to another episode of Pencils and Lipstick. Today I have with me thriller author Nick Backer. Hello, Nick. How are you doing?
Nick (21:48)
Hello. I’m doing well. How are you?
Kat (21:49)
Good.
Kat (21:50)
I’m happy to have you on. You’ve already made me laugh. Introduce you.
Nick (21:56)
I can’t help it’s the way I look. Okay. I can’t help it.
Kat (21:59)
Well, we have several things in common with lots of daughters and dogs running around. And happy birthday, by the way, as we speak. Before we get into it, why don’t you introduce people? Introduce yourself to people. That’s how it goes.
Nick (22:15)
People always say, introduce yourself to people. I’m like, well, you’re the only one here. Imagine. All right. Well, no, I am a thriller author. I have slowed down a little bit in the recent years with things that we’ll talk about, I’m sure, as we go on. But I got started writing thrillers on accident. I hated writing in school and said, I will never write anything long form ever again. That’s what AP English does to people, right?
Kat (22:40)
Yes.
Nick (22:42)
But my granddad passed away one year and I thought, well, I’m just going to write a book that’s like the same books that we all used to read together, his dad and me, because how hard can it be, right? I was very naive. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I did. I jumped off the deep end, started writing, got to the muddy middle, took a prompt break for about three months and read and tried to study. Honestly, it’s so funny. I remember looking at my wife and saying, I wonder if anyone’s written a book about how to do this, about how to write fish. That’s how naive. I have no idea.
Kat (23:15)
Me too.
Nick (23:16)
Whole new world. And as everyone listening obviously knows, there are plenty of books about it. I found a few that I really liked, and I got through that first book. The idea was I would put all my quote unquote good ideas into this book because I was never going to write anything ever again. It would be English, right? And so I got to the end of that book and realized that I couldn’t fit all the ideas in this book, which is bubbling over with terrible ideas that didn’t make any sense, but I just crammed it anyway. Basically, it’s what it could have been. Yeah. There’s so many, like, cockamamie ideas. And it was like Sci-Fi meets action adventure thriller. And I have a talk I give where I’m explaining someone like Chris Fox’s methodology. I know he’s been on your show as well about the right to market and not knowing the market. And so I was like, this is thriller. This is military modern style with technology. We know. And then I have these AK 47 looking guns that when you pull the trigger, you can levitate the person on the other end of it and shake them around.
Nick (24:16)
Absolutely absurd, totally wild. It was a lot of fun. The story, believe it or not, was actually decent. And I had a friend used to work together. To this day, he edited book. And honestly, I should have just put his name on it. He just totally fixed it up yeah. But that’s the story of the first book. And as you probably guess, the rest of those ideas that didn’t fit became the next book. And the next book initially along the way, one of them started paying, like, a cell phone bill and then like, an electric bill just from there. And here we are.
Kat (24:46)
Yeah. What year was that?
Nick (24:49)
I think that dropped in 2012. So I probably started it in 2010, most of 2011, and then released it in 2012.
Kat (24:57)
And then did you go straight into Ku? That was kind of the year that it’s there?
Nick (25:02)
Yeah, that was yeah, I think I don’t know the official year it starts, maybe 2011 around there. That was when it started really blowing up, right. It was the John Locke, Amanda Hawking years. Right. And so I didn’t know anything about it. I just thought, well, let me just see if there’s I guess I’ll query agents or whatever. This giant book that I bought that told me what to do, I’ll do that. And then Meanwhile, maybe I can release it digitally. I was blogging at the time. I was familiar with how the Internet stuff worked and had no problem with the self promotion side. So I was like, let me just do this through my own channels and see what happens. And one of those was Ku. And I was like, I’ll put it in here and see what happens. It didn’t take off by any stretch. It sold like three or four copies with my mom’s, four different Amazon accounts. She’ll never admit it, but I know it was her. It was a slow growth thing. It’s actually the same launch style that I like today because I don’t stress myself out trying to do everything on day one.
Kat (25:59)
Right.
Nick (26:00)
Amazon. I think their algorithm is really moving toward appreciating long, slow, steady growth over the book club. The Pops future deal, which I think is still good. But you need to have something else, right. You need to have the newsletter that you’re dropping a little bit each day, each week, each month, anyway. So, yeah, that’s kind of what I did and inadvertently ended up in a career doing it.
Kat (26:23)
So you did enjoy it. But I mean, you weren’t like, it’s not making any money at first. So you were still working or doing something else?
Nick (26:30)
I was, yeah. So at the time I was working at a marketing company. We were really good at ripping people off. They was a Christian company, right? It’s not. But we sold websites to churches, and this was in the day where WordPress was absolutely a thing and it was super popular. We were not doing that. We were charging $75 a page. Oh, Pastor, you want that linked to your menu? That’s going to be another $25. Oh, Geez. It was totally just that kind of deal, right. And I did that. I hated it. The company was poorly run, terrible asshole manager and all that. Sorry. Got your explicit content badge. You’re welcome. I knew I wanted to leave. I knew it wasn’t going to be the thing I did forever, but I didn’t have anything to fall back on. But I was also working in churches at the time. I was a music guy, a tech guy, and we moved to Colorado from Texas around the same time I was writing another book, all that. So it all kind of happened at once. But I got a job at a Church that actually really loved, and that was my whole network in Colorado when we first moved there.
Nick (27:27)
So I kept writing. And eventually all my buddies at Church where they would give me, no, you wrote a book. Well, that’s cute. And then pretty soon they were like, you’re actually selling a lot of these books.
Kat (27:37)
Actually, that’s pretty cool.
Nick (27:39)
Yeah. It’s actually kind of neat. And pretty soon, I had to admit I was like, yeah, I’m stealing time from both if I’m trying to do both of these things.
(27:46)
Okay.
Nick (27:47)
And so something had to give. And my wife basically gave me the ultimatum. She’s like, look, get through the I call it Church season, Christmas to Easter. Right. It’s like kind of our schedule. Get through Easter and then decide if you want to be there another year or if you want to go write books. Driving me crazy. We were having kids, and she was working as well. There was just not enough time for me to have two full time jobs.
(28:11)
Right.
Nick (28:12)
And there was plenty of money at the time because she was working, I was working, and the book income was double. About double my Church job, of course, with taxes and self employment. I wanted it to be a little bit more.
Kat (28:22)
Right. Okay.
Nick (28:24)
But that was the ultimatum. So I quit. And I don’t know how much time we have, but yeah, gosh, that summer was my July 1, I think it was my first day full time as a writer. And it was glorious until I realized I actually don’t like to write more than an hour or two a day. I’m just done after that.
Kat (28:43)
Actually, a lot of people have that idea. When I was starting out, I was like, I just need 8 hours to sit in my office so that you get in your office.
Nick (28:52)
You’Re like, this is boring people around. I was hanging out with my friends about the lunch every day.
Kat (28:57)
Did I get any writing that? Yeah. When you actually have structure, like a job, you’re at your job. Like, I wish I could be riding.
Nick (29:04)
That’s exactly what it is. And because I don’t have 8 hours, I would go to Starbucks or whatever and write, and it would be the best writing. All I got is 2 hours. When I went full time, I was in my basement and there was nobody around. I’m very social, and I didn’t realize how social. I actually started having panic attacks and anxiety, and all this stuff was just sort of coming to a head where I was like, I made a huge mistake.
(29:28)
Yeah.
Nick (29:28)
About that same time, because my wife loves me, she decided to quit her job as well. Super helpful. Hey, look, I’m sorry you’re dealing with all this financial stuff, but I’m going to quit. But no, there was a good reason for it and all that, but that was literally that was our health insurance.
Kat (29:43)
That was our benefit.
Nick (29:44)
That was not to mention the income. And so that was gone, and it all just sort of came to a head. I was getting audited. I got hit with an IRS letter, which had never happened before. Now if that happens, I just laugh and write them a letter back, and it’s going to be five years before we get resolved. Like, I know that now, but at the time, I was freaking out. They wanted, like, $8,000 or something. It was a nightmare, honestly. It was hard. It was very difficult. And what helped was just, I guess, the steadiness of the unsteadiness.
(30:14)
Okay.
Nick (30:15)
Knowing that you’re on the roller coaster before it’s like, you see it. It’s like a roller coaster. It goes up and down financially, whatever. But until you get on that roller coaster and lock in and be like, all right, I’m here until the end of the ride, stays on the tracks. That has helped me. It’s not that anything’s, really. Yes, things have gotten better, and we’re making more money now. All that stuff is true, but there’s still the fear of, I don’t know what’s going to happen next month if I don’t do the work now. It’s not coming in.
Kat (30:40)
Right. It kind of really makes you see it, I guess, less as a hobby. And really, this is a business more than anything.
Nick (30:49)
Yes, I was a music major in school, but I did some business classes, and in Bschool, they would basically harp on us. Like, entrepreneurship is all about risk. It’s all about just taking risks. And it’s so easy to sit there in the class and be like, I’m a risk taker. I’m going to take all those risks. Just let me out. Like, I’m going to take all those super risks, and then you do it, and you take a risk. Like, hey, there’s a kid and another kid that I have to feed, and I’m the only one making money, and I don’t know how to grow tomatoes, so we have to go by the food, and if there’s not money, and then you build up the worst case scenario stuff in your brain which isn’t healthy or helpful. But it’s absolutely true.
Kat (31:24)
Yeah, absolutely. There how many books did you have at that point?
Nick (31:28)
When I went full time, it was 2017. I would have probably been about seven or eight books into it.
Kat (31:35)
Okay.
Nick (31:36)
I’d say seven or eight full length thriller books. There were a couple of Sci-Fi things here and there, but the income stream was my Harvey Bennett series, and that was probably four books long.
(31:45)
Okay.
Nick (31:45)
And there were a couple of standalone that were selling pretty well.
Kat (31:47)
Okay. I can see how it’s probably the thought of most of us like, okay, I’m making money. I’m going for it. This is what I’m doing. And as a business, that’s an art kind of base. You have to keep producing. You can always make money on your backlist, but you obviously had a backlist, which is kind of key for this industry. But you still felt that pressure to write another book.
Nick (32:13)
I did because I knew I could see the numbers that my back was sold, but it sold when I would release a new book.
(32:20)
Okay.
Kat (32:20)
Right.
Nick (32:21)
Like you’d have the spike of a new release, but then your baseline would go up a little bit, at least for me. That was true. I could see that again, it’s a roller coaster. But there were some pretty obvious signs that the more I write, the more money I’m going to make. Now, at the time, I really did buy into this idea that there was a limit. Like there was a ceiling on how much I was going to ever be able to make. And that’s just because of, I don’t know, childhood trauma, I don’t know, like some kind of history with money or something where I’m like, I’m supposed to be middle class. It’s all just this mindset, right?
(32:56)
Okay.
Nick (32:56)
Mindset I had that I don’t deserve to make more than $3,000 or 4000 or 5000, whatever the number is, it always kept going up. I don’t deserve more than that. So I made up this story that there was not enough customers for me, not enough readers in that market to make more. And it’s so true. It’s just so incredible to me now to realize how much money there is in the world.
Kat (33:17)
Yes.
Nick (33:18)
How many people there are that are clamoring for this kind of stuff.
Kat (33:21)
I don’t think that’s uncommon because for some reason, I think we see the world as this kind of tiny circle. It’s easy to say things and not so easy to do things. Or I’ll tell the people in my group, you have to put things out there quite often, because just because you put up one social media or one marketing campaign doesn’t mean that you hit the right people or all the people. And it’s okay if your book isn’t for everyone.
Nick (33:50)
But there’s almost 8 billion people in the world and we’re making more and we’re making more people. I’ve realized that, too. And I’m like, not only have I not even scratched the surface of current Thriller readers and fans, but there are new ones every day. People like me who read the DaVinci Code and was like, oh my gosh, this is a whole genre. I didn’t know there were other books like this and then just discovered this world that I loved that’s happening every single day.
(34:17)
Yes.
Nick (34:17)
A reader will grow up and all of a sudden be allowed to get on the Internet or whatever and give a credit card like this 18 year old, whatever it is, and then all of a sudden this whole world opens to them where they’re like $10 a month. I can go to Kindle and fill up my reader. This is great.
Kat (34:31)
Yeah, absolutely. And some people are readers from the beginning. Some people are late bloomers in the reading, still trying to get my husband to write novels.
Nick (34:41)
My wife loves novels. I’m just trying to get her to read lots. Yeah.
Kat (34:46)
Well, let’s talk a little bit about thrillers, because I’ve had quite a few romance writers on. I am this reader who will pretty much read whatever somebody recommends to me. So I didn’t even know that there was a genre of thriller for a while. I sort of live in my own world. I walk along in my own world like, oh, I like this book. Oh, that’s a thriller. So what is it that makes a thriller? Like, what are your guys’tropes? What makes it different from I guess you said you can’t have guns that make people go up, although that sounds really good.
Nick (35:19)
You can, but that would be science fiction thriller. I think you’re on to something, though, when you say that you didn’t realize it was a thriller. I really think we’re doing a disservice to readers into the genre itself by calling it a genre.
Kat (35:30)
Okay.
Nick (35:30)
Because it’s really more of a style.
Kat (35:32)
Okay.
Nick (35:32)
This is all my opinion, by the way. I’m probably wrong. I’ve been wrong once or twice. But I think of a thriller as a style. It’s a pacing and a tone. Right. There are certain tropes which I think do make it a definable genre. And that’s why you can dig into the thriller subgenres on Amazon, for example. But really, there’s no reason you can’t write a romance novel happily ever after, whatever it is, that is also a thriller. Okay. Because I think the key rule for thriller. I run a publishing company. We only publish thrillers. I get this question a lot. And people are like, well, I wrote this book. It’s got some romance elements I don’t really know. And I’m like, look, if you know who the bad guy is up front, and that is the person trying to cause death. And I mean death, the three P’s, psychological, professional or personal, like physical death, literal death. If that bad guy is trying to cause death to the protagonist and the protagonist fights against that until the very end, that is thrilling. That’s one of the main tropes.
Kat (36:31)
Okay.
Nick (36:31)
The way to explain it is also by using it as an analogy against mystery, where you don’t know who the bad guy is or you don’t know who did it. Right.
Kat (36:39)
Okay.
Nick (36:39)
It’s just that if you have a protagonist, they find a dead body. Oh, my gosh, who did that? And the whole time they’re uncovering the mystery. That’s a mystery. If they find a dead body and they realize, Wait, oh, this person is coming from me next, and we can see who it is. At least the reader can see who it is. Okay, that’s a thriller, right? Even within that, there’s some crossover and all that. That’s always going to be true. But that’s how I define it. Generally speaking, structurally, we want to know. We the reader wants to know who the bad guy is, what they’re doing. It can be organization, it can be a person. Doesn’t really matter. We need to know who they are and what they’re trying to do. And usually the death of the protagonist is the least of their concern. There’s like, the action adventure genre that I like to write in, which is a subgenre of thriller.
Kat (37:25)
Okay.
Nick (37:25)
Usually the world is at stake, right? The bad guys building some giant death star or something that’s going to blow us all up. So sure, the protagonist doesn’t want to die, but they really want to save the world. And so that’s where you get some of those largerthanlife action Hollywood type thriller genre. Okay, there are some other things I mentioned. The pacing is important. That’s really hard to define, of course. But generally speaking, you can say a thriller would be fast paced, where a mystery might be slower. Okay. Because there’s nothing wrong with the pace of the novel if people want to read a cozy mystery. And the snappiness of the prose may not have anything to do with the pacing of the book either. So I should say that, too. You can write a cozy mystery that reads very quickly. Grisham. I don’t think. I wouldn’t call him cozy mystery, but he writes the most boring plots I’ve ever read in my life. It’s like nothing’s happening here. Who cares about this one person who died in some weird town? But then all of a sudden I’m on the last page. I’m like, Damn, I read the whole book because of the way he writes.
Nick (38:24)
But the pacing of those is very slow, I would say.
Kat (38:27)
Yeah, right.
Nick (38:28)
So the writing style can be fast, the pacing can be slow, vice versa. The thing that makes a thriller a thriller, to me, is that the pacing of the book is fast. They’re literally breakneck pace, especially the climax. But even then, the books that don’t work very well from here, the ones where the main character never sleeps, because it’s constantly just fast paced. You have to have those breaks in there.
Kat (38:51)
Okay, so there has to be some airplanes, realistic things.
Nick (38:54)
Yeah. I’m super lazy about my writing, and I never learned anything, so I just throw them on an airplane and be like, okay, they got to go to Crete or something. And then they slept the whole time. So there you go. They slept. They’re freaking out, and they start shooting everybody in the neck again when they get off the plane.
Kat (39:07)
So it’s like Jason Bourne, he doesn’t need his leg, okay.
Nick (39:14)
The bad guys doing things over here and laughing maniacally. That’s when Jason born sleeping.
Kat (39:19)
He’s like, I just need five minutes. Well, that’s interesting. Okay. So like the fast paced and like you said, I guess I was thinking that you don’t really go into the personal life of the person. But that’s not necessarily true if you have.
Nick (39:36)
I always tell people this again. Nobody would ever hire me to do a craft workshop. But if they did, what I would tell people is I think the reason people pick up a thriller specifically is for the plot. And then what keeps them, like what hooks them is the plot. And what keeps them there is the characters. So you do want to have that. You do want to get to know the people. But that’s not why I’m picking up the book. I don’t care who Jason Bourne is as a person. I want them to kill people, to be a good guy. Yeah, right. I mean, that’s just oversimplifying. But that is very true with the thriller genre and other genres as well. Sci-fi comes to mind. The Expanse is a great series. Leviathan Wakes, where you get very good character development. But gosh, the reason I picked it up was because I was like, is this thing an alien compound that they found or what’s going on?
Kat (40:20)
Right.
Nick (40:21)
So I think that’s true with thrillers very much. I mean, you pick it up because the plot sounds cool. Yes. My book, The Enigma Train, it’s about the super volcano under Yellowstone National Park, erupting. Well, that’s cool. That seems like a big deal for America. Let’s figure that out. But then what I hoped to do and that was have characters that you fall in love with.
Kat (40:41)
Right.
Nick (40:41)
And I’m twelve books into that series. So for some readers, that’s working.
Kat (40:45)
Yeah, that’s probably what is that Keanu Reeves movie where he only did this kind of dog?
Nick (40:51)
Yeah. John wicked.
Kat (40:53)
But you really want to see what he does?
Nick (40:56)
Kill a dog. I mean, you’re going to die. That’s just the way it goes. Absolutely.
Kat (41:02)
But yeah, that’s how they got you hooked. Like the character, the other characters.
Nick (41:07)
Right. That’s very true. Yeah. You’re like, okay, cool. There’s enough. And to be fair, there are books just like there are movies. And I would say John Wick The equalizer. It doesn’t really matter. The character is because the guys that are doing this for a Bachelor party like the Alamo Drafthouse, they’re not really there for the character development, let’s be honest. Right. But I think to make a lasting series, which is what most of us in the book world want to do, good money, I think we have to have the character development because that carries you through to the next book, right?
Kat (41:37)
Yeah, you wouldn’t necessarily. I think Keanu Reeves also sells it. But yes, when you’re writing a book, you want the Reader’s imagination to continue on, to care about the next character. So how long are your series? How many series do you have and how long do you have these multi 20 book series out there?
Nick (41:58)
Gosh, I wish I did. No, I’ve got a twelve book series. It’s my longest one.
Kat (42:02)
Oh, my gosh, that’s pretty good.
Nick (42:03)
That’s the Harvey Bennett series.
Kat (42:05)
Okay.
Nick (42:05)
Now all of these books, we’re kind of making some comparisons to other genres. So there are quite a few genres where the expectation is at least 50 or 60,000 words. In thriller, I would say that’s higher. Most of the stuff that I’m seeing that sells well is 70, 80, 90,000 at least.
Kat (42:24)
Yeah. You got to develop that, right?
Nick (42:26)
Yeah. It typically ends up being I mean, I’ve tried writing shorter, and I’m sure there are people who do it, and if they get away with it, it’s totally fine. Like I said, everything I say, there’s an exception that seems to prove the rule. But for me, when I publish a thriller, I’m asking for 80,000 words, give or take. Right now, it’s not epic fantasy. If you go 150, we need to split it into two books and lengthen one. But typically that is longer my series. What I’m saying is twelve books. Those are 78,090 thousand word novels. Some of them, I think, are even 100. So I don’t for whatever reason, they’re possibly not as long as another genre might have 20 books, the same amount of words.
Kat (43:07)
Yes, that is true. That is, I think, a difference in a lot of sub romance genres. I heard somebody say 50,000 words. I’m like, I can’t.
Nick (43:20)
It’s way too short.
Kat (43:23)
I got to develop this whole character here.
Nick (43:26)
Sure. I think what’s really incredible about the romance genre specifically is because it’s so big, there’s so much money being tossed around. It’s very active. I think we’re seeing new genres being defined by those.
Kat (43:37)
Okay.
Nick (43:37)
Right. Where I think it used to be like the Harlequin romance. I don’t even know how long they were, but let’s call it 70,000 words or something. Maybe it was shorter, but I feel like because of traditional publishing, they had their page counts and everything was on margin. Right. They had to know how long it was and you really had to fit within that or they weren’t going to publish it. Well, that doesn’t matter now.
(43:55)
Right.
Nick (43:56)
And if there are readers who are going to read it just from a business sense, if I can write 50,000 words, I’d much rather do that than 80.
Kat (44:02)
Yeah.
Nick (44:03)
It’s just that the expectation in the thriller genre is still a little bit longer. I think we’re seeing the birth of some new expectations coming out, and romance is really carrying the torch on that I think Sci-fi is doing that as well, where they’re having epic long space opera length stuff, but they’re also having shorter. It’s not quite short story, but it’s in that 40, 50,000, 60,000 words where readers are loving it. And pretty soon we’re going to have those as the expectation of the genre.
Kat (44:32)
I didn’t know that they were doing the shorter ones here. That seems difficult in Sci-fi, but I’m not a Sci-Fi writer.
Nick (44:39)
Some of them are. I mean, like I said, I think generally speaking, they’re going to be longer now, but I think it is changing because readers are going well. Yeah. Wait, I like your stuff. No matter what author, if you can write something shorter and get them to me quicker, I’m a fan of that. And there’s definitely a skill in the Church world. We used to say that the pastor was like, look, it’s harder to write a 25 minutes sermon than it is to write a 45 minutes sermon. And I’ve done it. And that’s true. That’s absolutely true.
(45:03)
Yeah.
Kat (45:04)
Your pacing definitely has to. And things still have to make sense because the readers know what should be happening, even if they couldn’t define it. They’re like, oh, wait a minute. Something’s wrong with this book. If you’ve missed a step there doing it in, that’s quite the talent, in my opinion.
Nick (45:22)
I think so, too. When I get a thriller, that’s 50,000 words almost without exception. I know that it’s too short. I know that it’s going to feel like something’s missing. Now, that’s probably a bias that I’m confirming, but often I’m like, hey, I realize there’s a couple of chapters in here where you really should show us the bad guys layer or what they’re up to. We love that if you’re writing a third person, it’s super easy. So they go back and they beef it up 20,000 words, and all of a sudden now we’re in business.
Kat (45:51)
Right, right. Okay.
Nick (45:52)
I think readers like that.
Kat (45:53)
So what made you start businesses that would help authors? Is it just sort of because you are bored or you don’t want to write more than 2 hours a day or that you just have this information and you kind of saw thriller writers or new writers maybe needing some more guidance?
Nick (46:12)
That’s a good question. Honestly, it’s a mix of all of them. I would get bored. I can’t write more than an hour to a day anyway. And I’m just barely good enough at some other things, like graphic design, that I could do other stuff. Right. So at one point, I had a cover design company. It was all pre made book covers. And because I knew just barely enough about web design, I was like, I’m going to automate this. So it’s really just a marketplace.
(46:34)
Okay.
Nick (46:34)
So it’s not just my book covers. The other cover artists can come on and upload theirs, and we split the world. All that. And it was a whole thing. And I built it. And then I was like, I didn’t actually prove the market before I built it. I just built it so nobody actually cared. And I was like, all right, cool. I’ll just shut back down and do the next. So I’m absolutely like the spaghetti against the wall, see what sticks kind of guy when it comes to business stuff, because I know just enough where I’m like, okay, I can put this website up. Like, for example, I thought it would be really cool to have, like, a 24/7 Internet radio that’s all writing advice, like podcasts, but then also music that doesn’t have lyrics because that’s what most writers want to write to.
(47:10)
Right?
Nick (47:11)
So I have that that’s going right now. It’s called Radio Wright.com. And I don’t know, you’re going to go typing in. It’s literally going to play, like, whatever I’ve got queued up. It might be a podcast in the morning. It could be like, synth wave like, style music Ed. I’ve even got some chill, whatever. The point is, I’m an idiot because I’m like, okay, well, I like music, and I could do this, build a website, and then I just waste all this time building crap that nobody ever knows about. I think I’ve literally had, like, 30 different views over the year that I’ve had it.
Kat (47:41)
If you put Storms in there, Joanna Penn will listen, and then she’ll talk about and then you’ll have a lot of views. That’s all she listens to, apparently, storms.
Nick (47:49)
I know. I talked to her about that before, and she’s like, Why don’t listen to music? I’m like, weirdo, like, whatever. But it’s very true. She doesn’t like music. Such a little background noise.
Kat (47:58)
Yeah, it’s just the noise. I’ll have to check it out, though, because we don’t talk about Bruno out of my head.
Nick (48:08)
To answer your question more fully, yes. I have a little bit of business background in music school. I was actually more into the business side of music than I was the music side.
Kat (48:17)
Okay.
Nick (48:18)
And I’ve just kind of had that, I guess, knack for it with the entrepreneurship stuff. And so I’ll look at something, and like you mentioned before, there’s something that would exist for the larger industry or another industry altogether. And I’m like, well, we should have that for authors as well. That should be a thing that doesn’t cost, like, MailChimp. That’s cool. It shouldn’t cost $350 a month. I don’t need the CRM tool. Well, I’m not doing any of that stuff. I just want to send email. And so that’s literally what happened when I built off their email with a buddy of mine. And so that’s very much what I do.
Kat (48:47)
Okay.
Nick (48:48)
I wouldn’t say I like doing that because it takes me away from the stuff that actually makes money.
Kat (48:52)
But isn’t it funny? Like, when you’re doing one thing, you feel like you should go back to writing.
Nick (48:56)
And then when you write everything.
Kat (48:57)
Like, I should go check this. You have author email. I just checked it out yesterday. I’m excited to learn more about it because it’s true. We use all these things that other entrepreneurs use, and I feel half the time like I’m paying for stuff that I’m not using or that it doesn’t apply to me. But, hey, we still have to send out our emails, and we’re not going to do it one by one.
Nick (49:20)
Exactly. You can’t. Your ISP will shut it down if you try to do that.
Kat (49:24)
Yes. So I’ve definitely been checking into that because I think you were talking about it with self publishing formula. What it’s called?
Nick (49:33)
Yes.
Kat (49:35)
And just like, since you don’t have the other entrepreneurs, you might not get into the spam box as much, which would be great to not be sent over to that marketing box of hell.
Nick (49:48)
Yeah. It happened a few years ago with Mail and Light. They’re a great company otherwise. But what they’re doing is they’re offering service to anyone who will pay them, and there is scrutiny. It’s not like they’re just we invite Russian bots to come to our service not doing that. But inevitably, some people will get through the cracks and they’ll send something unscrupulous, and they’ll shut down a whole server, which is 1000 authors or whatever, or users with author email. From day one, we were like, first of all, we don’t want a closet full of servers because that’s expensive. And I don’t want to be the long, ponytail guy named John who is an It guy for the rest of his life. I don’t want to turn into that. And I know I couldn’t get Kevin to do that. You think I have tinnitus all day? Yeah. And so I wasn’t going to do that. And it was the same time Amazon Web service type companies were popping up offering cloud hosting. This is perfect. We can pay for exactly what we need. No more, no less. Scale indefinitely. Pretty much. And they get to handle keeping the servers running.
Nick (50:47)
All we have to do is provide the reputation and make sure that that’s good, and then the deliverability will be just as good, if not way better than these other services. And if somebody does come out of the system that isn’t an author and wants to send Internet marketing stuff and we miss it and they send something out, they’re not going to shut down a whole server because they’re not on one server. It’s all cloud display. Right.
Kat (51:06)
Okay.
Nick (51:07)
There’s some technological reasons we did it, but it really came down to it was just more affordable that way for us getting it started. I wanted to send an email and not pay more than $10 a month.
Kat (51:15)
Yeah.
Kat (51:15)
Oh, that’s nice.
Nick (51:16)
That’s what author email became, and that’s what it is today.
Kat (51:19)
I like that price.
Nick (51:21)
It’s a good price.
Kat (51:22)
There are so many things that we all just did our taxes in my writing group.
Kat (51:27)
And we’re all like, oh, my gosh.
Nick (51:29)
And then you got to pay for a tax person. Yes.
Kat (51:32)
And just all the little things that you have to pay for it, you think, okay, 1030 this. And it all adds up quite a bit. So we’ll definitely have links to author email, but you also have author book career in a year.
Nick (51:47)
So that was funny. Again, like I typically do, I procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate, and then I freak out and have to build something. So I was speaking at 20 books last year in Vegas, and this is November. I’m literally in the airport preparing. I had actually prepared my speeches and talks and stuff ahead of time. There were a lot of them, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t completely to get up there. And so I had all this stuff prepared, and I was like getting stuck at the end because there was just too much that I wanted to tell these authors. There’s too much about advertising and email and how to do it well. And I was like, you know what we need like a one repository, one stop place where you can sign up for more. It wouldn’t be an upsell. It’s not a core. I’m not trying to sell anything. It’s just literally like, hey, no one wants to hear me talk for 40 hours, but that’s how much it’s going to take for me to say all the things that I think are important for, right or wrong. And so I was in the airport in Colorado Springs, and I was like, I need to just build another website and just load all the stuff there.
Nick (52:44)
And then it’ll be like three different for now, three different email courses that are totally free and like 20 weeks long. And I’ll totally just write them as I go. But that will be kind of the addendum for the talks. So every talk I gave was, hey, go to bookkeeper in a year.com, and I’m not selling anything. Just sign up and you can get more of the kind of call to action stuff that I would have tried to cram in at the end of this talk. That’s what bookrier in a year is. To be fair, I haven’t really done much with it since. But I did write most of the email.
Kat (53:12)
I have all the emails. That’s what we need.
Nick (53:14)
And then I stopped. I had to finish it, but I do intend to keep it going and finish those out. I just got really busy with personal stuff.
Kat (53:21)
I mean, there’s so much to do as a writer, and you’ve been in the business for about ten years now, and you learn so much stuff. And if you can help people avoid some of those mistakes, it’s nice of you.
Nick (53:37)
That’s absolutely what it is. I started a publishing company for Thrillers because I was already doing all this stuff. Nothing really changed. It was just the things that I was doing was working. So everyone was like, well, just advertise my books. It’s working for you. And I was like, no, I can tell you what I did that didn’t work. That’s all I’m doing. I’m just looking at the ads every week and going, well, that sucks. Let’s not do that.
Kat (53:58)
Don’t do that one.
Nick (53:59)
And you just doing that after $100,000 of ad spend and pretty soon your ads are going to work. Unfortunately, that’s not very good advice. People don’t want to hear that, but that’s all I’m doing. I’ve made the mistake, so hopefully you don’t have to. And that’s kind of what book rear in a year became was, okay, let’s talk about email. Don’t just send emails one at a time through your Outlook account or something because they’re not going to get where you need them to go.
Kat (54:20)
Yeah. And what is your Thriller publishing house? Do people submit it?
Nick (54:26)
Yeah. Okay, that’s interesting. So this is called Conundrum Publishing. And because of Conundrum Hot Springs, my wife and I went up there and almost got a divorce because I drank all the water because it was heavy. Water is heavy. And she was mad. But anyway, so I was like, why not call a company after this very real moment in our lives anyway? No, it was based on an idea. She urged me to do it finally because I had been working with co writers. I’ve been doing this with my own books. I’ve been talking to people in a slot group of thriller authors that we all talk and share ideas. And so this is sort of a culmination of all that. Essentially, the bottom line is I think traditional publishing is broken and Conundrum Publishing is trying to fix it. So it is traditional. It’s not hybrid. No author will pay anything upfront or even down the road like we’re splitting royalties, but we pay for everything upfront the production of the book. So it’s traditional in that way. It’s very untraditional in how we do things. We don’t offer advances, but we have an AI editing suite that’s human run, but it’s basically a tool we call the Gauntlet.
Nick (55:29)
We’ve got the round table where we take an outline from an author. We have at least five thriller experts who will go through the outline with them, get those things in place that I was talking about, like the structure, the pace, the tone, all that not because developmental Editors are bad and they don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re expensive. And typically they will make your story better, but they don’t know what markets and sells thrillers. Right. That’s not their job. And so that’s what the Roundtable does. It’s there to say we can make this really good story sell well if you change some of these structural things because people will, it’ll be an easier read for them.
Kat (56:00)
Okay, nice.
Nick (56:01)
So that’s kind of the high level overview, but it’s been working really well. I mean, we haven’t even ever really talked about. We haven’t launched it. We never said I’m running a publisher. I just asked for some outlines and we got bombarded by thriller authors who were like, we could publish a book.
Kat (56:19)
Okay, there’s market for this one.
Nick (56:22)
Yeah, the spaghetti has stuck. I guess we’re doing this one.
Kat (56:25)
You guys don’t want the radio?
Kat (56:26)
Really?
Nick (56:28)
The radio. But it’s really cool.
Kat (56:29)
In the meantime.
Nick (56:32)
All day long. Yeah, the radio one’s really cool. I wish that one.
Kat (56:35)
I do want to ask you one last question. What is something that you see that authors are doing wrong? Something that first time authors kind of do wrong, and something that you see that we kind of continue to do wrong because we’re humans. And once we get into a box, whether it’s good or not, we tend to do the same thing.
Nick (56:56)
Oh, gosh, I’ve got so many. I have a whole book about how authors are wrong. No, I’m just kidding. Go by mine. Why you’re wrong. But great. So I do see, I’m going to go back to email and I’m going to shamelessly self promote author email because it is the best and it’s the only one that’s for authors, it’s super good, but check it out. But the biggest mistakes I see in the email world are that we as authors, we’re very careful, we’re very cautious, I should say. We don’t want to piss people off. We don’t want to make people mad. We don’t want to get unsubscribes. The truth of the matter is you will and it has nothing to do with you. It’s just the nature of email. I honestly think it’s, like, harder to try to get subscribes to unsubscribes. Right. It’s difficult. Like if you ask everybody on your list to unsubscribe, they wouldn’t do it. They won’t do anything you ask you to. Maybe that’s the strategy. Still ask everybody to unsubscribe. Probably grow overnight. No, I won’t refuse. Give me a free book. That’s usually the response. What I’m getting at is I’ve said this, too in some talks.
Nick (57:59)
I’m going to talk about this. Inquiries Con as well in a month or two. But I have the numbers to prove this out. It’s statistically less likely for people to unsubscribe from your emails when you send more often than less often.
Kat (58:11)
Interesting.
Nick (58:12)
Now what that means is and what I’m getting at is this myth that authors are like, we can’t send email every day. That’s just too much. Like there’s this magical invisible line that we cross after we send more than once a week that doesn’t exist. How many of us accidentally signed up for bed bath and being on a coupon because we wanted to get that sweet bath Caddy that was the only one in town that would fit totally speaking from experience, and then ended up on a freaking email chain that was like 30% off 40% off, whatever. And so we literally get an email. What we do as an email person, as somebody who receives emails, I’m not going to unsubscribe from that list. If I may get a coupon in the future. I’m looking at you, Cole’s, that I might want. But if I don’t want that email, if I unsubscribe, I won’t get that one in the future. So I’ll just delete it or archive the email. We do that all the time. And with authors who aren’t just sending coupons every day, why in the world would I unsubscribe from your email, cat if I want to hear from you in a month?
Nick (59:12)
But I’m busy redoing the floor in my bathroom today. Yeah, I can’t look at that email today. I’m not going to buy that book today. I’m just going to delete your email. But I want to hear from you again in the future. Right. So the problem is authors are so scared that we’re going to get an unsubscribed because of something we said. We’re not spamming people, guys. They’re not going to unsubscribe from what we send them. They know we’re selling books. That’s not a secret. They’re not going to get mad that we’re selling a book.
Kat (59:32)
Right.
Nick (59:33)
And if they do, screw them. You don’t want the person on your list anyway, right? What’s going to happen is they’re going to forget who you are if you don’t send enough. Right. If you wait three months to send a book, I mean to send an email, they’re going to go, who the hell is this guy? I don’t know. You unsubscribe unsubscribe. But if you’re in their inbox at least every week or even twice a week or more or less or whatever you feel comfortable with, they’re going to know who you are. They’re going to recognize you, your voice or whatever, your email and about. And every now and then when they’re prepared to buy a book, they’re going to buy your book because they know who you are.
Kat (01:00:02)
I like that.
Nick (01:00:03)
It’s a long winded way of saying it’s statistically less likely for people to unsubscribe if you’re sending more often than less often.
Kat (01:00:10)
Yeah. And that’s another kind of mindset thing that we have to figure out, as always, the better sellers. Well, I think people can find. I’ll have the links in the show Notes. As usual, it’s Nicksacker.com. And then there’s the radio.
Nick (01:00:23)
Go to the radio.
Kat (01:00:26)
Come on, get his house up there, guys.
Nick (01:00:29)
It works on your phone, too. It’s amazing. Just put your headphones in and out all day.
Kat (01:00:32)
Just do it at my podcast.
Nick (01:00:34)
And then people their phone dies because I don’t know how to do battery life stuff.
Kat (01:00:38)
Yes, sorry. So we have in the show Notes all of your links, but career in a year, authoremail.com radiograph.com. I’m going to put it in there and we’ll see what we’ll see.
Nick (01:00:51)
I want to get more than 30 this year.
Kat (01:00:53)
There you go. And nickbacker.com, so good to hear from you. You have some great advice, but I think we’re going to have to have you on again because it sounds like you have a lot more to tell us, but good.
Nick (01:01:03)
I can talk all day about why since wave and EDM is the best backing music for writing.
Kat (01:01:09)
Yes. So we’ll do that.
Nick (01:01:14)
I don’t know. Who knows by that time, can I be like, well, I don’t know. Nobody was listening. Yes. I literally built a website that allowed an author to put their chapter up and then have a beta team come and actively edit and make notes and stuff on it that the author could accept her. It was super cool and I was like, this is just Google docs. I just created a version of Google docs. It’s not helpful to anybody, but I spent, like, I don’t know, 60 hours building it at nights and weekends and I just shut it down. I was like, that was fun.
Kat (01:01:49)
You’re an active guy. It’s just another skill set that you need for the next book.
Nick (01:01:54)
It’s a curse is what it is. Yeah. I need to write that.
Kat (01:01:57)
Thank you so much for coming on, Nick.
Nick (01:02:00)
Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun. I definitely want to do it again.
Kat (01:02:16)
Hey, you’re still listening? Since you are could you do me a favor and head over to the app that you’re listening to this episode on and hit the subscribe button and then rate and review the show. It would really help the pencils Olympic podcast get out into the world and if you’re enjoying the podcast, well, then there might be more people out there who would enjoy it as well. If you want to find out more about me, you can head over to catcallwell.com. I have my story over there, my books, my interactive journals, my one on one coaching information and information on my creative writing community membership group. If you’re looking to write a book or you are a writer and you just want to find out more about how to write, how to publish, how to format, how to market and all the things that go into being an author these days. Check out the membership grew. There is a 14 free day trial that you can try it out, get into the masterminds, find out all the goodies that we are talking about in the group. I would love to see you there.