with Andi Cumbo-Floyd
Andi has been on all sides of the writing business. From being a mystery author to writing non-fiction to editing manuscripts, one thing has staye dthe same: the fact that every writer is running a bsuiness.
Now Andi focuses on her writing and coaching creatives on how to run their creative business in order to scale for whatever they deem as success.
Find Andi at andilit.com. Find her mysters at ACFBookens.com.
Find out more about kat at katcaldwell.com.
Welcome to the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast, a weekly podcast for writers. Grab a cup of coffee.
Kat (00:14)
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 thoughts on writing and her own creative journey. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. 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 should write it down. This is Pencils and Lipstick.
Kat (00:56)
Hello writer, and welcome to episode 130 of the Pencils and Lipstick podcast. This is Kat Caldwell. I’m your hostess today. And later on in the second part of the show, we will be talking to Andi Cumbo-Floyd. She is a non-fiction writer and a fiction writer. She has experience in editing and she runs a sort of creative business coaching group. Business is definitely part of selling books about being a writer. And it’s sort of Andi’s mission to make sure that we understand that as writers and to help those who are ready to really get their business or creative business organized and flowing. So she is in the interview section of the show. Before we get into that, if you guys would like and subscribe the podcast, if you would share it with others, any episode that you enjoy, share it out, tweet it out. If you want to contact me at all because of the show or about the show, you can get me on Twitter @pencilslipstick all spelled out. I’m also on Instagram. The podcast one is @pencilsandlipstick as well, all spelled out. I’m also on there. @katcaldwell.author, you can pretty much get me on both of those Facebook I’m on.
Kat (02:16)
I don’t use as much. But you can also find me at katcaldwell.com. Or you can head over to the podcast website, Pencilsandlipsick.com. And over there at pencilsandlipstick.com you can find the transcripts of almost every show for the last want to say 20 shows. And that’s probably where they will stay. I probably won’t go back in the archives, but now, from now on, from 100 shows on, we are doing transcripts and getting them up there. I have a wonderful helper getting the blogs out there, getting all that work done. You can also listen to it on the website and find out a little bit more about me and about the creative writing community. And you can find your way over to katcaldwell.com if you want to find my writing, the group that I have and my books as well. So if you guys wanted to support the show other than just sharing it with your friends, which is awesome already, if you wanted to share it monetarily, you can go to patreon.com/pencils_lipstick. Any monetary gift helps with the creation of the show. If you are a writer and you become a patron, I will talk about your book on the show.
Kat (03:37)
If you have any suggestions on who you would like to be on the show, you can tweet me @pencilsandlipstick. I am on there a couple of times a week, so I should see it. I’m excited about today’s interview. I think you’re going to be very interested in what Andi says. She’s a very upbeat woman. She’s fun to talk to, fun to listen to. Before we get into that, I wanted to do a few different things first as we get back in our cars a lot, because we’re going back to work. Kids are getting back into all the things that they used to be in. I don’t know about you, but my kids are like spring. Sports are all over the place and they want to do everything because they’ve missed stuff for two years. So we’re in like two different sports and dance. We have piano and guitar and we’re no longer online for a lot of things. We’re in person and of course they have their Spanish classes and all that. So I’m in the car a lot more and it’s fine, except that I also sit a lot for writing and all the other things that I do during the week, the marketing and the blog writing and the newsletter and all that.
Kat (04:50)
It’s a lot of sitting. And so a few weeks ago when I was stretching and my body just said, no, something’s wrong, we’re not doing this. I literally was in so much pain in my sort of lower back left hip area that I was on the floor. Of course, it was a weekend, so I couldn’t get in to see anybody until the next week. And thankfully the physical therapist, chiropractor said that it was just muscular, it was just going to need some time and some exercises. There were a couple small muscles that I had left underdeveloped and some big muscles overdeveloped. And this all depends on the different sports that we do. I’m pretty active, I like exercise, but of course if I leave some small muscles underdeveloped, then it’s going to catch up with me. That doesn’t help that I had very large babies as well, like 9lbs. So everything contributes. Plus the age when you hit 40, it’s like your body goes, no, you’re definitely not going to do what you used to do at 20. So if you’re 20 now and you’re rolling your eyes, let me just forewarn you, whatever you do now will come back to bite you in the literal back.
Kat (06:11)
So I am now standing a lot more, but because I’m standing, I found these really cool. Let me see what they’re called. They’re called Oofos. I think it looks like OOFOS, they’re like recovery on flip flops. So for runners who must run a lot and they need to recover, they’re like flip flops. They’re kind of plasticy, like a soft plasticy, and they have an arch support and it definitely helps with the standing because standing flat footed for like an hour while you write is also not fun. So I have this weird makeshift standing desk area now and I’m actually standing as I record this and just going back and forth between sitting and standing and stretching and doing the PT. Yes, that’s just my PSA on.= hey writer, take care of yourself. It is raining here. But as we hopefully move into spring at some point and definitely will move into summer at some point, just remember to take some walks. It’s good for your creativity to sort of disconnect from the screen. It’s good to even go in silence. You can sort of file away all the things that you’re doing or you’ve learned during research and just be in whatever nature you have near your house.
Kat (07:37)
That varies depending on where you live.
Kat (07:39)
Get some vitamin D, get some fresh air, and then get back. But definitely move around a little bit. We just sit a lot as a society and it’s going to probably bite us. It’s probably going to come back and hurt us. So I’m actually in pain, but if you’re not in pain, still take care of yourself. Maybe a nice bath, maybe some walks, maybe some Pilates or yoga. Anyway, okay, I’ll stop being a mom now. As far as writing goes, the pain hasn’t kept me too much from writing. The nice thing was when the pain was pretty bad, my husband took care of all the house stuff, which actually freed me up to right. You don’t have to worry about cooking or cleaning the house or whatever. It’s just like just try to relax and be comfortable. So I actually ended up writing quite a bit and I’m having a good time writing between Tread, whatever his name will end up being, and Dowser. And it’s funny, that’s what I call my books while I write them. They don’t have titles. I talked to somebody lately who said that they don’t start writing until they have a title for the book.
Kat (08:49)
And that really caught my attention because I thought I don’t think I could do that because I don’t ever come up with the title until sometimes the end. I think Coffee Stains was like the anomaly. I had that title pretty quickly, but yeah, otherwise I never have a title. Sometimes it’s like different things in my computer. Sometimes it’s things I shouldn’t say out loud. So depending on my frustration level. So yeah, Tread and Dowser are getting written. My main character for Dowser, which is a historical fiction romance. My female character’s name is Carmen and she’s actually living in Spain. So she’s from Spain and I made her from the area Castilla y Leon, where my husband is from. And so that’s been really fun to sort of read about that area in the 1930s, read about wine in the 1930s, having to adjust a little bit the dates, which is kind of a bummer, but it’s not any hardcore history book historical fiction. So I’m trying to stick as much as I can to it. But it’s interesting because Spanish wine is a very robust, very full bodied wine. We enjoy it very much. And there are two kinds, Rioja and Rivera.
Kat (10:14)
And those are kind of the most famous. It’s not just two kinds, but those are kind of the most famous red wines, right. If anyone’s Spanish out there, they’re probably rolling their eyes. There’s like a million wines from saying yes, but from my husband’s region, the red wines are Rioja and Rivera, and that’s pretty much what you’ll find in America. I’m sure I’m just digging myself a hole, aren’t I, in case anyone’s from Spain or if my husband actually listens to this. So anyway, I was looking into the history of these wines, and it’s interesting because they kind of stumbled across storing them in these Oak barrels by accident because somebody wanted to export them to America. So he, as the winemaker, put them into these Oak barrels that he got from Bordeaux. And when it arrived in America, what the people wrote back about what it tasted like really interested him. It was a very full body wine. It was a really wonderful wine, and everyone liked it so much. So that sort of started this revolution of how they stored the wine and how they sort of cured it. And it became this very full, robust wine.
Kat (11:29)
It sort of got their signature that way. And unfortunately, in Spain, a sort of fungus came and devastated the crops for years. And so Rioja, it looks like, according to my research, didn’t really come into prominence again until the 1970s.
Kat (11:47)
So anyway, if you are a wine drinker, I suggest you find a good Rioja Rivera. Rivera is actually the one that is closest to my husband’s region. So she is Carmen. My character lives in Samora, which is a very cute town. I’m excited to go back there. I am revamping my Pinterest, and I will be having pictures there as well of the region. And I don’t know, it’s just exciting to add Spain, my second home to my books. I’m excited to do that, and I hope that it will happen sometime again in the future. So I mentioned Pinterest in the creative writing community. We are really focusing this month on social media, using it for marketing, using it for branding, using it for our books. And we are diving into Pinterest because a lot of us find Pinterest a bit elusive. I think we’re revamping that. If you don’t know, we do marketing, sprints and brainstorming every Friday. So today is Friday as I record this. And we are going to delve into Pinterest, sort of organize our boards, take some out that don’t need to be there, brainstorm with each other, what kind of boards we should have.
Kat (13:03)
And that’s a small part of what we do in the creative writing community. We’re also going to have our very own Ashley K, who’s a romance author, but she’s also a social media and branding expert. That’s what her daytime job is. She’s going to come in and do a workshop with us on our social media, all the new things that are happening there. What she’s seeing working with some multi million dollar figure in sales, at least people in a different industry. But, you know, seeing what they’re doing there and being able to apply it to us as authors. And we’re definitely not multi million dollar sales.
Kat (13:47)
That be great.
Kat (13:48)
But, you know, it’s social media and we can figure out what other people are doing and see if we want to do it and apply it and see what happens. So we are focusing on that in May and June, we’re going back to the basics of newsletters and book blurbs because we always need to go back to those. So Nick Thacker is going to come in and then to talk to us about newsletters. And then Madison Michaels is going to do a book blurb workshop, so that’s for the next two months, we actually have the next six months all the way set up. If you want to know more, you should go over to katcaldwell.com and click on the Creative Writing community. You can also click on a link in the Show Notes to get more information about it. If you’re looking for a writing community, we co write together. That doesn’t mean that we write books together. It means we come on Zoom and we write together. It’s a great way to be accountable to writing daily. A couple of people finished their books already. I think we have five books already finished this year and a couple more coming.
Kat (15:00)
And I have to tell you, I would not be this far in my book writing, especially because I started over in February or something. Yeah, right after London, I started over. So I would not be this far if I didn’t have these co-writing sprints. I run some of them. A couple of other people run some of them. I’m usually at almost every single one of them. And we just write take the time to write. So we also do like an accountability. At the very beginning of the week, we have experts coming in. As I said, we have workshops. We have a private Slack. We do not use Facebook. We use a private Slack channel to connect and to ask questions and to encourage and to be there for each other and to talk about our writing and our reading and all of that. So if you’re interested in a community in which it’s a little more smaller than Twitter or Facebook and a little more intimate and ready to get some writing done, should go over to katcaldwell.com and check out more all about that. Or go to the Show Notes and click on the link.
Kat (16:03)
So now I am not going to take up any more of your time. I am going to let you hear my interview with Andi Cumbo-Floyd. If you want to know more about Andi, listen to the intro and check out the show notes. Andi Cumbo-Floyd is a non-fiction writer and writes fiction as ACF Bookens, Cozy Mysteries. She is a former editor and now spent her time running after a little boy writing her books and coaching creatives on their business. You can find Andi Cumbo at andilit.com. That’s A-N-D-I-L-I-T as well. You can find her Mystery at acfbookens.com Hello, everybody.
Kat (17:05)
Today I have with me on the Pencils and Lipstick podcast, Andi Cumbo Floyd, you can tell that I almost got it wrong.
Kat (17:21)
That’s right.
Kat (17:22)
We’ll call you Andi. Hi, Andi. How are you doing?
Andi (17:25)
I’m fine, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. And you got it exactly right. So way to go.
Kat (17:30)
Well, your little advice to me in the beginning, my husband’s Spanish, so I always for some reason want to elongate vowels. I grew up speaking English, so I don’t know why, but my brain goes crossfired. So could you tell us a little bit about where you are at? I don’t know if you’re from the same place that you’re at, but tell us a little bit about yourself.
Andi (17:55)
I just work in Charlottesville, Virginia, so I live on two acres surrounded by railroad tracks in a stream, so I have no neighbors, which is I do. I love it. I love seeing nature outside. And I’m from near here, just the other side of Charlottesville, but grew up kind of all over. And I’ve lived all over San Francisco, England, Ohio, all over the US and then a little in Europe. But I came back here ten years ago and I’m content to be here. I love it.
Kat (18:26)
Yes.
Kat (18:27)
So is it ideal to have a farm as a writer?
Kat (18:29)
That sounds like a lot of work.
Andi (18:32)
I think it depends on what kind of schedule, how disciplined you are and kind of schedule you like. So I like to be at home. And so I don’t mind like right now, I don’t have farm animals.
Kat (18:48)
But I have had chickens.
Andi (18:49)
So I don’t mind the schedule of having to get up at a certain time to take care of them and take care of them every night. It’s also great if you’re introverted like me and need to get out of a social gathering. You can say, I got to get home to the chicken. I got to go see the tickets so I can get out. But if you’re somebody who likes to travel a lot or if your riding is influenced by travel, it’s tricky to have a lot of animals. I right now just have to have dogs. And even that means, like yesterday I was going on a research trip and I had to have my dad come and take care of the dogs for the day.
Kat (19:18)
So we got to eat, right?
Andi (19:22)
Please. We don’t want them in the house all day for their bathroom needs. It’s just too much.
Kat (19:26)
No, but it must be nice to sort of have your land to go up and walk and sort of step out into nature. Right. That might be ideal for a writer.
Andi (19:38)
It is for me to not feel that presence. The energy of other people gives me a lot more space creatively to kind of really engage and be in that space. And yeah, people are always like, let’s go for a hike. I’m like, what if we just go out my back door and take a walk? You don’t have to drive somewhere to do something. We can just be at my house. And I really like that because it does make me connected to the next without feeling like it has to be an expedition to get to it.
Kat (20:07)
Yeah. I think the sad thing about America.
Kat (20:10)
As we were talking about before.
Kat (20:11)
The big cities are eating everything up. So when you want to go do something, you drive to get there. It just seems like counter-intuitive. And then as a writer, especially if you have other maybe kids or another job you’re like, I don’t have 3 hours to hike for one, to get all the way out there.
Andi (20:29)
That’s right. I live close to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Shenandoah National Park, but I still don’t go. I mean, it’s only 25 minutes from here. That’s still an hour that I’d be giving to just getting back and forth, whereas I can put on shoes and go outside. And I like that a lot.
Kat (20:48)
I like that a lot, too. That sounds wonderful. And most writing retreats are actually out in the country writing, right. That’s what most of us need. Well, how did you get into writing? What is your story on writing?
Andi (21:01)
Yeah, I think I’ve always kind of been a writer. I’m a definite reader. And seriously, if someone could pay me for the rest of my life to read books, I probably would give up writing and just do that forever. But so far, no one has offered to be a patron of my reading habits. So I went to school for English in history and thought I would end up teaching. And I did. I did teaching last while about the time it came around for me to decide if I was going to go on for a PhD. So I have a Masters in literature. A teacher in tech said to me, do you really want to spend five years setting some obscure element of English literature, or are you a writer? Because I feel like maybe you’re a writer. Maybe you should get an MFA and stuff. And I was like, two years sounds a lot better. And I think I am more naturally inclined to the kind of analysis that comes with the writing life more than I am, like a literature.
Kat (21:57)
Okay.
Andi (21:57)
So I understand the world and stories, but I’m not as interested in doing things like pulling apart the symbols in a book or studying how the point of view, except for how it helps the story get told. So then I did. I worked at an MFA in creative non-fiction, actually.
Kat (22:13)
Okay.
Andi (22:13)
And then I actually taught all the things most English teachers teach, composition. And then I ended up teaching a little bit of creative writing. And then my mom got sick and I needed to step out of teaching for a while. I came and lived with my dad here in Virginia while she was sick and then stayed on with him to kind of help both of us transition after that. And he said, what do you need to do to teach it up for your school? I was teaching community College, and I said, I need to have a book out. My dad said, okay, I’ll pay your bills for a whole year. You can live with me and you can write your book. And so I did. And then I was like, I’m never going back. Thank you for that, dad. And I’m not going to use that gift for the way you gave it to me. And then I just ended up saying I did editing for a number, about a decade while I built my writing business. And now I primarily make my living selling books, which is pretty great. That’s awesome.
Kat (23:09)
Yeah. I honestly think is the dream, because then you can read and then you can write and you can sell your books.
Andi (23:18)
It’s a perfect life. And I have a little boy, so this life gives me a lot of time to be with him and a lot of flexibility.
Kat (23:26)
Awesome. So as far as editing those, do you think it’s helpful to have like, I mean, I know not everyone has the time or maybe even the interest to do College style, but I’ve been sort of talking to different writers and thinking on my own, I’ll say talking to the voices in my head, getting that experience, I guess. Do you think it helps writers to get any sort of editing experience? Maybe not professionally, but do Editors see things in a different way than maybe writers do who haven’t edited?
Andi (24:04)
Yeah, I think so. There’s one danger, I guess, and that is a person who is inclined towards perfectionism in this way, which I am not. There are levels at which I’m a perfectionist, but this is not editing can be really infuriating because it’s not something that you ever book is never perfect. It might be dramatically perfect or have no typos, but the content is just there is no measure for perfect in a book. So that should be really trying for some people. But if you’re somebody who takes pleasure in understanding how a story is put together and what makes it more effective, if you’re somebody who loves to read and can understand why you like what you like when you read it or what you don’t like. Editing can be great for giving you the language or how to talk about that. When I’m teaching writers how to give feedback on writing, sometimes I’ll say, like, it’s very reasonable to just say, I’m confused here or I’m bored.
Kat (25:08)
Right.
Andi (25:09)
But as an author, you have to figure out why you’re confused or why you’re bored. And then that’s invaluable writer. So I have pretty much now an innate sense of pace for different genres because I’ve read so many and studied for what’s working or not working. So I don’t really have to think actively about my pacing in my books anymore. I mean, it’s tough to think about things like characterization and dialogue just makes me crazy. And no one likes writing the middle of a book. And that doesn’t matter if you guys know. I know what is with that.
Kat (25:44)
I just need them to get to this point.
Andi (25:47)
That’s right. Can we just get this ten years later and then we’re there. But if you like, if it helps you to sit in that analytical space, and I think it’s really powerful because it just does train you to see what works and what doesn’t. And then how fix it? Because you can’t just tell somebody that doesn’t work. You have to kind of hopefully make some suggestions about how they might make it better.
Kat (26:10)
Yeah, there’s nothing worse than having an editor. And I’ve had a couple of different ones. They’re like, no, I don’t know about this part. You’re like, what about that? We do it like what right. And I think one of the dangers these days with Indie publishing is you also kind of have Indie Editors. So people who might not have been trained properly, but maybe you can afford them and they might be able to do the grammar, but they might not be able to do what you said in pacing. And I can deal with typos. But, you know, as a reader, like you said, even if you can’t articulate it, if something’s off in the story. And that’s when you stop reading. Right.
Andi (26:51)
Honestly, that’s when you realize you’re reading a story and then nobody wants to realize that they want to stay in that story. Right. That’s the hardest part. And that’s the thing about good Editors. We can have a whole conversation about what qualifies as good Editors and why we have to pay for good Editors. Good Editors can tell you when that’s happening and why. And most of the time, in my experience, it’s not because the book needs a total rewrite. I mean, I probably told in my entire decade of editing five people that their book needed like a total overhaul. And sometimes it’s because they had things like twelve points of view. You’re like, no, no one can keep up with that. It’s just like some fundamental writing things they hadn’t learned. Most of the time it’s in here. You’re giving too much description. It’s slowing the pace down at a time when you pick it up or here, the pace is too slow because there’s no dialogue. Can you insert some dialogue or my favorite, do these people move when they talk to each other or they just sit? How did they get from the kitchen to the bedroom here?
Andi (27:59)
These people have no appendages and they just sit still, that kind of stuff. But that’s once you start seeing it in somebody else’s running, you see it really easily on your own, too.
Kat (28:09)
Interesting. Okay, so you don’t do editing anymore, but how did you transition? I guess then from editing to coaching? It sounds pretty related.
Andi (28:18)
But it’s very related. So now I coach writers mostly on the business side of things. Okay. It takes different but similar energy to edit that it does to write. And I really want to save that energy for my writing. I do have this boy and he’s three. He doesn’t take care of himself.
Kat (28:43)
He needs to be fed and put to bed.
Andi (28:46)
Exactly. I wish you would just he thinks he can do everything himself, but not quite yet. So I have to marshal my energy. Well, for my creativity. And so I do coaching for business now as sort of a natural progression from the editing stuff. I would edit someone’s book and then our follow up conversation would often be, well, now what do I do with it? How do I publish it? How do I market it? And if somebody’s trying to Indie publish, there’s like 5 million questions that go with how do I find a cover designer? How do I find blog? So it’s just kind of a natural progression. So that’s what I do now is mostly work with women and non-binary writers and help them figure out how they’re going to grow their business. So it could be because they’re writing books and they want to know how to sell more books. It could be because they are editing and they want to know how to get clients or they’re making them the same mistakes I made. They don’t have contracts, they undercharge, overbook. They can’t anticipate how much time something is going to take.
Andi (29:52)
So I offer all kinds of just coaching cohorts where they can meet with other writers but then also meet with me and we talk through the specifics of their goals and how they get there. And I can give them all the practical advice with the kind of support and accountability that comes with the coach with a lot of this out there. But sometimes they’re kind of impersonal and it’s nice to have sometimes.
Kat (30:19)
It is nice. It’s like anything. You can find a book, you can find the Google rabbit hole, you can find a lot of stuff. The information is out there. But honestly, you can either waste your time, I mean, not waste but that takes a lot of time. Or you can find a group of people who are willing to really help you out and answer questions that would be great to ask a question and be answered not five days later.
Andi (30:45)
Right. And not in a general. Well, if you’re going to do this, I know my client only takes clients at a time, and so I know what they’re doing. I just had a client launch her first book on Tuesday. And when she had a particular issue with ISBN I mean, that’s like a very specific and it’s not a hard thing to answer, but you’re probably not going to be able to Google that. And if you try to ask Doctor, they’re going to be like, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Kat (31:16)
Yes, I won’t get into it, but I’m in a fight with some of people where they just fundamentally don’t understand the issue. My book is in limbo because you can’t understand something that I can’t fix because it’s your system.
Andi (31:32)
Right.
Kat (31:32)
I don’t know what to tell you.
Andi (31:37)
Just called pull, then if there’s no way to fix it, to have somebody say, oh, yes, they do that to everybody. I’m so sorry. Hold tight. Keep asking. And it helps resolve itself. But if you don’t have those people, it can feel like I just got a response from someone that said, I need to prove my Copyright. I was like, I don’t file formal copyrights. I just never have because I don’t really nobody ever knows. No. And I was like, I don’t know how to prove this to you. Unfortunately, I have rather than friends and was able and they were just like, send them a draft, send them an email conversation with your audiobook producer. And it was fine. It was resolved in like ten minutes. But if I didn’t know who to ask that question, I would have been like, I don’t know what to do. What do I do now? They’re going to say, I didn’t write this.
Kat (32:21)
You know what that makes me remember a long time ago before Indie publishing was even accepted. I think like 2000, I was told by somebody to mail myself a copy of my draft because the stamp from the official post office, if ever I needed it, would hold up in court.
Andi (32:41)
Yes, it probably would. I mean, all I did was send them, like the Vellum file. I use Vellum to format. And I couldn’t have put this into Vellum if I didn’t have the original file. You want all my original files? There’s twelve of them. Would you like all twelve of them? Or how about the three characters I’ve tried? You want to try those two?
Kat (33:07)
Deleted scenes maybe?
Andi (33:08)
Exactly.
Kat (33:09)
I get this.
Andi (33:09)
How about all my characters? I can send you a lot if you really wanted it.
Kat (33:15)
And my Journal is going, why the heck can’t I get this book, right?
Andi (33:18)
That’s right. Exactly.
Kat (33:20)
So did you start out in Indie publishing? Was that book, that first book that your dad pushed you into writing? Was that Indie published?
Andi (33:26)
Yeah, it’s creative non-fiction. And so it’s this sort of genre bendy history and all the slaves have names and creative non, like essay and so. Okay, I have a lot of interest. I tried traditional publishing first, and agents were like, this is really interesting. I don’t know how to sell it. Oh, this is really interesting. I don’t know who would buy it. There was a lot of that. And I’m just impatient. And I was like, and this was 2013. And I was like, no, I’m done. I’m just going to figure out how to do this myself. And so I fortunately had a friend named Sean Smucker who had self published. And so he was willing to kind of help me walk through the process. And the man I was married to at the time did the cover. He was great. It was a good effort. It was a terrible cover. I’ve since recovered them. It looks much better now, but I just wanted to put it out there. And since then, I have traditionally published I co wrote a book with two men that got traditionally published by a press called Herald Press. And it’s great.
Andi (34:28)
But like, as I said, somebody the other day, I got my royalty statement for last year, and I made more that morning that I got to check. Then I made the entire last year self publishing. So I was like, well, I don’t think we’re going back that route. I go that route. That’s lovely. I mean, that’s awesome. There’s all kinds of reasons. That’s a valid, wonderful route. But for me, who has a grocery she buys, it’s just not the route I’m going to go anywhere.
Kat (34:57)
Right. So I’ve heard that quite a few times I gave up on traditionally published. And again, anyone can do whatever they want. And when a publisher loves your book and they’re willing to push it out, there, obviously you can make quite a bit of money all the most. Well known, names are traditionally published. Right.
Andi (35:16)
Okay.
Kat (35:18)
But I am also impatient.
Andi (35:21)
What are you going to do?
Kat (35:22)
And you know what? In 2013, there was not as many cover, book software things that you could probably make a really great cover with without spending hundreds of dollars.
Andi (35:34)
And he did a great job on. I think he did it in PowerPoint. Like what Canva and Book Rest do now? Like doing that. And it looked great, except we just didn’t have the JPEG quality and stuff. It’s kind of a cool, vintage looking cover now. And for the time, it’s sold fine because it was 2013. People want.
Kat (35:55)
Nobody cared. Right.
Andi (35:56)
But now it needed a new cover.
Kat (35:59)
Yeah.
Kat (36:00)
Isn’t it funny how the trends it’s that one person or those two people had to make these beautiful covers that were just like, you know, some Adobe made covers and they ruined it for all the rest.
Andi (36:15)
How you use InDesign. It’s not fair.
Kat (36:19)
Yeah, I tried that program. No, not for me.
Andi (36:22)
Not for me at all at this point. Yeah, exactly.
Kat (36:27)
So did you continue in non-fiction writing for a while? I did at that point.
Andi (36:34)
Yeah. I never actually thought I would write fiction. I have this degree in history. I am very interested in what’s happening in the actual world, but I just never thought to do it. I have five, six, seven. So five writing books out that are sort of essays about writing. And then this traditionally published book, and then the first book that I did, and I love them all. It’s just harder for me to sell. So now that I write, I’ve got the handle on the marketing of that down a little bit better than I do the non-fiction marketing. Maybe I’ll get there and get that dialed in, too. But I love those books. They’re really fun. And one of them is two of them are called Love Letters to Writers, which are books I wrote to a writing community I coordinated for a few years, and each week I would write them a letter, and sometimes it was spawned by something they said question they had about the writing life. Like, does every writer get up at 05:00 A.m. To write? No, we don’t all do that. Or do we do that? There are people that do.
Andi (37:43)
I do not do that or something. Like, what’s the difference between traditional publishing and Indie publishing? Why would you pick one or the other? Or just very personal things? Like, what do you do when you’re really discouraged or you feel like you can’t this isn’t going to ever be something you can do long term? Or what if you just want to do it for a hobby? What does that mean? So I tried to insert in really personal letters, and that’s what those two books are. It’s a letter a week.
Kat (38:08)
That sounds really cool.
Andi (38:09)
Yeah, they’re fun. I really appreciated them. And that time in learning how to articulate, what I had learned about writing really helped me as a writer, but also as a coach. So they’re valuable.
Kat (38:21)
Okay, so you wrote those before you were coaching?
Andi (38:24)
I did.
Kat (38:26)
I guess you’re editing, which is kind of like coaching.
Andi (38:28)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They’ve been out a while now, and they’re pretty fun. I like them.
Kat (38:35)
I think it’s interesting that a lot of writers I mean, it’s like anything in this modern age when we see YouTubers make millions and some Indie authors make millions and we get, like, an influx, which is great. I think everyone should write. If you have a story within you, you should write it. We just shouldn’t be deceived by the kind of work it might take to get where you think you think you should be. Maybe it surprises me how very few non-fiction books writers read about the craft or just giving any space to that to read about writing or writers.
Andi (39:20)
Yes, I totally agree. I find it either they don’t read any or they never write because they only read writing books. There’s a sense of all and then never quite getting there, which I relate to in many ways. But, yeah, it’s a job, right? You can do it as a hobby. My stepmom is a great hobby writer. She loves it. She just enjoys doing it. And that’s great. She writes when she wants. She writes what she wants. She has no expectation of making a living or having a contract or winning an award or any of those things. Great. But if you want this to be some sort of business for you, you have to think like a business, which means you have to learn, you have to read craft book, you have to study, and you have to practice that stuff. And you do have to kind of operate out of two minds. It’s a very different mindset. Right now. I’m just in a phase where I love the marketing part, and I’m like, oh, please, why do I have to do my work? But I have to do my work? Like, I have books on deadline and I have to get them out.
Andi (40:23)
And I just had to delay a pre-order, and I got an email. I am not a happy camper. I have to wait seven more days, which is, like, really gratifying to me. But also, that’s a lot of pressure.
Kat (40:35)
Yeah. It is like somebody’s waiting for it. That’s awesome.
Andi (40:40)
Yes.
Kat (40:42)
I think you’re the first writer I’ve heard say you like the marketing part.
Andi (40:48)
I know the only other person I know is Kermalofan, who writes as Emma Sinclair. She loves it, too. But it’s because I think of marketing as a chance to connect to readers. And so I get to talk to people. And because I work from home and live on this little isolated piece of wonder, I don’t talk to people a lot. So it’s really wonderful to get out there and meet readers and gosh there’s. Nothing more gratifying. I mean, I had a man. I write cozy mysteries for the most part. Now I had a man write me and tell me he likes my books. I was like, I have arrived. There is a dude out there that likes my books. This is amazing. But I do enjoy the marketing. And partially I enjoy it because it’s so different than the creative part. Like, there are parameters and there are things I can work within. When I write a book, it’s just all out of my head. Yes, but I am a rare.
Kat (41:41)
Okay, so I have two different lanes I want to go on, but let’s take for marketing for a minute. You have an MFA, you studied history, you studied English. So you didn’t study marketing. Where did this come from? Did this just surprise you? That you like marketing and that you wanted to learn more about it, or did it come from somewhere else?
Andi (42:02)
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it’s two things. One is I was a professional fundraiser before I was a professor.
Kat (42:08)
Oh, that helped.
Andi (42:09)
And so I’m pretty hard, but I was good at it, and it’s because I only was a fundraiser for non-profits. So there were organizations I believed in. There were things that I was really invested in. And so I learned how to sell, I guess a little bit that way. And I also just learned to treat adults like adults, and they can say no if they don’t want something or don’t want to do something. So I can not feel guilty about putting my book on Facebook a bunch or Twitter a bunch, because nobody has to pay attention to me if they don’t want to. I kind of got my ego out of that. So that’s one thing. I think the other part is that because I got into self publishing kind of early, not as early as some people, but pretty early. I got up while people like Mark Dawson and Joanna Penn and Nick Stevenson were starting. And so I was able to kind of learn from them. Like they’re always ahead of me, but they’re not 20,000 years ahead of me. They’re like a year ahead of me. And so I can kind of just follow along.
Andi (43:20)
And because it was a smaller world then, I was an affiliate for all of them. So I got to take all their classes for free and sell their stuff. So I’ve taken every class there is that I could learn. And I’m pretty selective now about who I recommend and who I’m there for learning, but I just learned a lot from them. And now I’m at a place because I feel very fortunate that I can hire people to help me with stuff. So now have someone do my Facebook ads for me because, again, it takes energy for me to do that. I know how to do Facebook ads, but I don’t know the nuances of them, and that’s a lot of time and energy would take for me to learn it. So I just got a recommendation and hired a really good company, and they’re doing great for me. So I’ve also learned that, too. I think that I hire out for what I can’t learn myself.
Kat (44:10)
Yeah. Would you recommend that people learn that part, especially in the beginning? I’m not sure. Probably in the beginning when you’re not really selling books, you do have to learn something.
Andi (44:21)
Yes. I’m pretty big on learning all the fundamentals about things.
Kat (44:26)
Okay.
Andi (44:26)
Partially because, yes, you can’t afford it at the beginning. There are things that I usually recommend people do, like if you can afford to hire a cover designer, unless you are a graphic designer, I usually recommend people do it, but you can get a pre made cover for a pretty reasonable price and do it. Or if you have some graphic design skills, knock yourself out in Canva make yourself a cover.
Kat (44:47)
Yeah.
Andi (44:48)
And I usually say people, you can always change it and people should get an editor just because we can’t. It’s very hard to edit and work well. But beyond that, that’s already a financial investment. So a lot of people need to learn how to do stuff. So having the sort of fundamentals of how to run Facebook ads, Amazon ads if you want to. I love book ads. How to do book ads if you’re going to do those, how to set up a newsletter list, like what kinds of things you want to talk about in your newsletter. That kind of just sort of nitty gritty, basic stuff I think can be really helpful. As I said, I just put up an audiobook this week and the producer I used said she would put it up for me. And I was like, actually let me do this one because I just want to know how to do it so that I understand. And I’ll certainly let you know if I have any trouble. And it turned out to be not hard at all. But now I understand how their process works. And so I can replicate that if I need to.
Andi (45:46)
Like if I need to not hire people, I’ll be able to still do all this stuff for myself. Yes.
Kat (45:52)
That also makes me think. I interviewed Victoria Strauss from Ryder Beware. And if you know the fundamentals, you’re less likely to be scammed or overpay for things. So I think that’s pretty good advice. We can’t write 8 hours a day. You do have to learn the fundamentals of a business, and this is a business. Right. Especially if you’re in the author. It’s your product and you got to sell it.
Andi (46:16)
Yeah. And you need to know some basic financials. I mean, I’m terrible with numbers. Like I’m a word girl all the way. But I know what an ROI is and I know how much I spend on a book and I know how much I have to make back to make my investment back. So understanding those kind of just baseline numbers is really important. And yeah, it is really important to not get scammed. You have to learn what kind of promises are reasonable for someone or something to make and what’s it reasonable to pay for and what it’s not. And that’s hard. Yeah. Some of that’s just trial and error. I don’t know anybody that hasn’t laid out some cash for something that they wish they had for sure.
Kat (47:04)
Let’s not talk about it. I always give the excuse of like, yes, but if I hadn’t done that, then I wouldn’t know this. It’s like a stepping stone. A very expensive so as your coaching writers are, they mostly Indie writer.
Andi (47:22)
Is there anything else? Right.
Kat (47:24)
I mean, even traditionally published these days, probably have to do a lot themselves. I mean, you’re still getting royalty checks, right? You’re still wanting to tell people about your book, you still want to sell it. So is there anything that you see, like mindset wise or just maybe not mistakes? The things that writers do or don’t do that sort of always seems to come up.
Andi (47:48)
Yeah.
Kat (47:49)
That’s not good for their business.
Andi (47:50)
I think that’s my you have to think of this as a business. It’s sort of just a fundamental. And again, it can be whatever level of business you want it to be. I want to make my living selling books. So that means there’s a certain investment of time and resources I have to put in to do that. But if you’re somebody that basically wants to make back what you spend on your book. Right. And if anything more than that comes in, you’re like, great, I can pay ahead for my kids, College fund, whatever you want to do with it. But you need to kind of know how you measure success for yourself as a business person if you’re doing a business at all. And then I think the other thing is really recognizing that Tim Brown says this, and this was really life changing for me. Your book is a gift. You’re giving people. They’re doing you a favor to buy it. You are giving that thing. And if you can get your mindset set to that, then you can sell because you believe in what you’ve done as opposed to feeling like you’re bothering everybody every time you ask somebody to buy your book.
Kat (49:06)
Yeah, I do like that. And it’s weird how often think they’re bothering people all the time. It’s a weird mindset that we have.
Andi (49:17)
Yeah. I think of it as like, I get junk mail, right? I mean, do people anywhere in the world not get junk mail? Is it annoying sometimes?
Kat (49:27)
Sure.
Andi (49:28)
Do I need 500 pizza coupons? Probably not. But is it a hardship on me to put them in recycling? It is not. And I think of that the same way as marketing for anything. Somebody can just scan right by if they’re not interested. They don’t have to devote a ton of time to telling me they don’t want to see my ads, although it seems we do that sometimes on Facebook. But why? I don’t know. That’s their issue, not mine. And so I’m writing stories that I believe in and I think are good and they’re gifts. And so if you want them, buy them. And if you don’t, it really doesn’t bother me. That’s not about me.
Kat (50:07)
I like this. I do think that that is probably the biggest mindset that authors have to, especially Indie authors. If you don’t have to buy my book.
Kat (50:17)
You don’t have to even finish it.
Kat (50:19)
If you pick it up and it’s not for you, just please don’t disparage me on Twitter.
Andi (50:25)
Please don’t do that. Maybe akin to that is I think a lot of people expect their friends and family to buy their books or to be and I mean, great, if my dad buys his book and have them, that’s wonderful. But that’s not my dad’s job. It’s not my best friend’s job to be my reader. Their job is to be my friend or my dad or whatever. So to let go of that, evaluate their purchase us as telling you something about your value as a writer. Because it’s not. It’s just telling you they’re not spending their money on your books, but they still love you. And if they don’t love you, they don’t need you in your life anyway.
Kat (51:06)
That’s a whole other conversation. But you also can’t make a living off of just your friends and family. And honestly, in my writing group, I tell everyone, like, don’t expect them to buy it. I know my family loves me, but they haven’t bought or read my book. My husband still is reading the first book.
Andi (51:26)
At least he’s trying, right? Like, there you are. Yeah, he’s trying.
Kat (51:30)
He’s just not a fiction reader. And so he’s making quite the effort for me, which sounds great. Three years later, he also doesn’t listen to the podcast.
Andi (51:44)
So I can do it.
Kat (51:48)
Let’s go back a little bit, because you said something about pacing and as writers. And I’ve been talking quite a bit on the podcast and then to my writing group, there is something to learn about writing. And I have to say, when I first started writing, I just had stories to tell, and I just wanted to tell stories. And I didn’t actually really get into really studying storytelling until probably a year ago or so. I’ve really like what makes the difference between a story and, like, kind of a funny anecdote? What is the difference?
Andi (52:28)
What is this arc thing?
Kat (52:30)
Because you have a sense, like you said, but you can’t always articulate it. And I think articulating it is actually pretty important to writers because when you get stuck in the middle, you can then know why you’re stuck in the middle. So do you see this as sort of an issue with authors? Did you ever struggle with this at all? Did you see it in your editing days?
Andi (52:53)
Yeah. And sometimes it’s really fundamental. It’s like people don’t realize the choice need to have beginnings, middles and ends. I find a lot of new writers want that ending to be a cliffhanger or to be like some twist. And I’m like, but that’s not actually what an ending does. An ending actually holds things together and brings them together. It doesn’t have to tie them all up in a neat little bow, but it needs to come to some level of resolution. And that sometimes is fundamentally, really hard for people to get because they don’t understand stories. So when they see, like, Dan Brown writes A DA Vinci Code and every chapter ends on a kind of uptick of action. They assume that’s how books work, but that’s not how books work. Chapters maybe can work that way. Although I feel like Dan Brown, he might need to find another trick at some point, but he’s doing fine for himself. So I’m not going to really criticize him too much. But you can’t end the book on that kind of uptick of action. It’s unsatisfying to a reader.
Kat (54:06)
Would you say that even for series writers? I don’t really write series.
Andi (54:10)
Yeah, I do. Okay. Unless you’re V. E. Schwab. She can do whatever she wants. She can write anyway she wants. There has to be some level of resolution in each episode, each book in each series, otherwise readers feel robbed.
Andi (54:35)
I feel like it feels like that anybody that was alive in the 80s and watched television, that could be continued, that just came right at the climax of the action.
Kat (54:44)
I was just going to say.
Andi (54:46)
Like, at the end of the season to make sure that you spent your summer in activity and you’re like, nobody that in millennial knows that because they all just watch on Netflix.
Kat (54:57)
Right.
Andi (54:57)
But she just knows what it was like to be like MacGyver was like hanging from a helicopter. What is going to happen? I know. Yeah. X-Files, they get, like, taken up and we don’t know where David is. What happened. It can work to drive readers to the next book. It can also drive readers completely away. Whereas if you just offer a little resolution, like one plot line that kind of gets wrapped can feel like, oh, my gosh, okay, I still want to know what’s happening to these characters in the next book, but I feel like I got this couple got together and it’s a romance, and that feels great to me. So I write series. My series are tells you mystery series that have a larger arc, usually like a romantic art, but each murder is finished in each book, so you don’t have to read them in order. You miss a little the larger art, but you get the satisfaction of some sort of resolution. That each one. And I really think not because I do it, but because I think that’s tried and true. People just really appreciate that and then juicy enough that people will read them and not just skip them.
Andi (56:19)
You can think about it like the middle book of a trilogy. Like, we all love Tolkien, but seriously, The Two Towers, it’s like if it wasn’t for Frodo, we would all give up. Right. Keeps going, right. And it’s Tolkien, right. And it’s epic fantasy and there are genre rules for all these things. Right. But your book has to be worth that slog through the middle. And that slog through the middle has to be paced. So it’s not so sloggy that people get their boots stuck and never can get out. And then the beginning has to be exciting enough to make people want to read but also fill in all that backstory. And those things all change. The length of those things change. All these things change depending on your genre. So I just tell people, read 40 books in the genre you want to write so that you know the rules. Like, you just learn them innately and then try to learn how to articulate them for yourself.
Kat (57:17)
Okay. And you said something about doing sort of, like, character studies or something in the beginning. Do you plot?
Andi (57:25)
What is your sort of plan so far on the side? Like, I don’t have pants on, like, that’s. How far over there? Because of my publication process, I have to have the back cover copy written, usually months before the book is ever written, so I know the shift who died, where they died, maybe like, one other plot element.
Kat (57:52)
So you write the book before you write the book?
Andi (57:55)
I do.
Kat (57:56)
Interesting. Okay.
Andi (57:58)
Yeah, it’s crazy. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that for other people, but it works for me because I am such a Panther, because I don’t value for me outliers are very excellent for the people. They work great and what works for them. But when I sit down to start a new series, I do a character sketch for the main character, and then usually there’s a couple because mysteries are a couple of friends, and that is me making sure I’m catching the vibe of the place I’m writing in. For the most part, I’m really place oriented in my whole life. So do the characters fit that place? How old are they? What do they do for a living? What kind of trauma do they carry? If they carry some trauma? Who are they in relationship with that kind of backstory, and it’s just usually notes for me, but then I keep them so that I have that consistency throughout my series.
Kat (58:58)
Okay.
Kat (58:59)
And they don’t necessarily always fix, like, their misbelief or thing, but that’s, like, happening throughout the series. That’s not really the plot of each book. The book is them figuring out the mystery.
Andi (59:11)
Exactly. One of my characters is nosy, like, super, really annoyingly nosy. And as the series goes along, she’s getting less nosy. Like, she’s starting to kind of realize not only does that kind of get her in trouble and put her in danger, but it’s not the greatest character trait, but that’s not the biggest part of the book. The biggest part is who killed the banker.
Kat (59:36)
There’s a body. And we kind of need to figure out why.
Andi (59:39)
Exactly.
Kat (59:40)
So for your Cozy Mystery series, you write as ACF Bookens, which again, I think is a great pen name, you can find that at acfbookens.com. And then if anybody is interested in your coaching, which is, as you said, it’s mostly for the business side. So really, anybody who’s doing writing, editing, and things like that, is there a place that they get on, like a list. Do you open that up at a certain time, or is that on?
Andi (01:00:10)
Yeah, open up again in May. So the first week of May, and they can just get in touch with me through the contact form on andilit.com, which is my non-fiction site. And then my assistant Alyssa, and I will get back and talk about schedules and stuff. And because I only take six people, I have the ability to be really flexible about when we talk and how we talk. And that involves talking with me every other week, talking with a group a few times, getting weekly emails from me about stuff, having access to me via email for questions as they come up. So it’s a pretty robust connection. And I love it. Like I said, just have their first lookout. One of the clients is traditionally publishing this person. Self published one is just in the process of starting to write books for the market. Let’s see, the others are one is she’s just trying to get a sense of, like, how to do a serial novel for fantasy? She’s like, I don’t know if I want to do Kindle Bella. I don’t know if I want to do something out. So that’s one of the things I enjoy about it is I get to figure out we looked at a lot of software.
Andi (01:01:16)
And by the way, if anybody wants to create software that’ll serialize things, there’s a market because it does not exist. Because it all sucks, basically. Yeah. I’ve heard.
Kat (01:01:27)
I was like, I’m going to stay away from that for a minute.
Andi (01:01:30)
Exactly.
Kat (01:01:32)
That’s very cool. It’s instead of spending a lot of time trying to figure it all out yourself, working with somebody, having some parameters and knowing that you’re not just alone in the void.
Andi (01:01:43)
That’s right. The program lasts for six months, so it’s enough on how fast you write, maybe draft something if you want to draft something or get the infrastructure of your business set up. Yeah, it’s pretty fun. I love it.
Kat (01:01:58)
Awesome. All right. So I will definitely have the links in the show notes, andilit.com, and acfbookens.com, and then I’ll have links to your social media as well. Thank you so much, Andi, for coming and talking to us today.
Andi (01:02:13)
Thank you so much for having me on Kat. I appreciate it.
Kat (01:02:29)
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 and lipstick 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 katcaldwell.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 group. There is a 14-day free 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.