The BookFunnel Podcast

[00:00:00] Try it with that first before you actually dive into writing a book with dictation. It might look for you. It does feel awkward, especially when you're very first doing it. It is a very awkward feeling to be like, I'm just talking really slowly myself. I grabbed a big handle of bookmarks. I told myself, my goal is to give a bookmark a site.

I had signed bookmarks to every person in this school taking cold traffic and converting them to warm traffic. So by the time they. Get to your booth, like you said, you've already got that rapport and they're more likely to be like, we try to trade trinkets or say like we have a sticker and we're like, Hey, you want to trade something for a sticker?

And it becomes not a, Hey, buy my book. It's Hey, engage with me. Hey folks, welcome to the book funnel podcast. My name is Jack. I'm our lead author support specialist here at book funnel. I am joined today as always by my co hosts, Emma Alice and Kelly Tanzi. And our guests today for episode 11, Jason and Leah Bond.

[00:01:00] Welcome, Jason and Leah. Good to have you guys here with us. It's nice to be here. It's good to be here, yeah. Thanks for inviting us. We met, like most of our recent guests, at AuthorNation, uh, in Vegas. Uh, I met with you guys, got to talk about what you guys were doing. I thought it was really interesting. So go ahead, whoever wants to go, just kind of introduce yourselves.

Tell the audience. What do you guys do on the best selling sci fi author of the Hammerhead series been on the top 100 or sci fi on Amazon? I think three times now still working on some more and he and I met seven years ago She's been chasing the dream of being a writer. And so of course we resonated there and then She comes with a vicious, she didn't realize this, marketing background in her soul somehow.

And so we work together to try and make this happen. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. There's, there's a lot of husband and wife teams out there and other, and other couples as well that I've noticed throughout the years. In fact, one of our new team members here at BookFunnel, he [00:02:00] is the husband with tech skills of his wife, who is the self published author.

And so we, we see it a lot in the self publishing industry where one spouse or partner. Is the writer and the other one has some other skill, whether it's marketing or tech related skills that they can, they can put to use to help them out. So that's great. And you guys do a lot of in person direct sales as well, which was.

The big thing kind of sparked my interest in why I wanted to bring you guys on the podcast and we'll get to that here in a little bit after we get through a few other things, but that to me was, it was a really interesting thing because not a whole lot of authors usually consider that as an option for self publishing.

So we'll get into that though, before we go too far along, uh, we'll get to our tips from the trenches here in a little bit. We have to, to take our traditional shot at Kelly. And Kelly, no, I'm okay. How, how have you, how has your, your, uh, [00:03:00] creative process been going? I can't remember because you're working on that project.

It was a, what's. It's something that you're doing with a group of other authors, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it's a collaboration of shared world where there's about 20 authors and we're sharing world and it's a contemporary romance. And it's going pretty well. I didn't get as many words down as I wanted last week, um, even with dictation.

So I've been, I've been, you know, as people, if you listen to the podcast, I've been Uh, trying to do a lot more dictation and, and it really does help me get some words down when I'm, especially when I'm not feeling like, you know, that after, you know, a long day at work. And then I'm like, um, you know, trying to, I know that, no, right.

It was awful. No, I'm just kidding. Um, no, just trying to just get my words in and, you know, in between dinner and, and stuff with the kids and everything. So. Um, yeah, it's been going okay. I would, I would like to have written more and, um, I'm going to be taking a [00:04:00] couple of my next couple of days off. I'm just, that's what I'm going to be doing.

I'm just going to be working on writing because that's one of my energy pennies or the highest is. Awesome. Yeah. Emma, you, you, I know recently, I don't want to spoil cause this might be your tips from the trenches. This might be your tip. But I know you shared recently the spreadsheet. Because Kelly mentioned Energy Pennies.

That is going to be the tip, yeah. Okay, I don't want to spoil it. But you had this spreadsheet that you developed. It was really neat, we'll get to that in a minute. But, I, I, I, how's, how's your writing been going these days? This last week or so? Wait, I'm going to assume you all have watched the Katie Cross episode.

I'll set up An audiobook studio in my closet, and I am now self narrating my first audiobook, and it's going fabulously, so. Super legit. That's what I'm doing. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, that was something that she could do it, I could do it. Yeah. Yeah. That was a really, it wasn't even the, the [00:05:00] reason why we had her on the podcast, uh, and it was like this interesting thing that she brought up.

It's like, oh, that's really neat. Yeah, like a throwaway thing she said, and I'm like, wait a minute. That's when you, that's when you know, right? That, you know, somebody really knows their stuff because they just say something in passing. And you're like, wait, wait, wait a minute. Like that's a whole conversation we could have.

I'm still in the middle of my outlining. I've got a ways to go, but I'm over the halfway point of all the books that I, that I'm outlining. I'm doing a thing where I'm outlining everything that I'm going to write this year. And then I'm going to just write it. And so I'm getting all the outline done. I am a, I am a planner.

I need that outline in order to get the words on the page. So. That's what I've been, I've been doing lately. Jason, what about you? What's your writing schedule like? What have you been working on lately? One of the reasons Leah and I partner is because she has this weird thing I don't have called time. So I am also, I have a varied career.

I actually started in business management. I started with companies [00:06:00] like Hewlett Packard. I got my MBA from the University of Colorado. And then I ended up working in libraries. When I was on the top on every sci fi, I was actually living off my writing. But I got really lonely. So I went to work part time at this library and I just got more hours and more hours and expanded, ended up getting my MLIS.

And now I actually run the largest branch in the system. So it's been an interesting shift into that career and I love it. That's why I stay with it, but it means I don't have a lot of time. So what I do is I'm up at 5 AM every morning. I sit down by six, and I get two hours of writing in, and then I'm off to work.

And so I have a really regimented morning, which means I need to have a really regimented evening. I figured out that if you don't go to bed on time, you can't get up at 5 a. m. too many times in a row without dying. Sorry, that's my fault. Yeah, she's like, let's watch one more episode of Adventure Time.

Come on. I'm watching Adventure Time with my kids. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's good. That's so funny. Yeah. I love it. It's one moment we walked. It's like talking about story. I'm very interested in story and how it impacts people. And I had no interest in Adventure Time and I walked into the room and she and my son [00:07:00] were watching an episode of Fiona and Cake.

And it just looked like nothing and they were both like, Oh my God. And there was like tears and I'm like, okay, I need to know what this is all about. So now I have to go from the beginning to see where that lands. And it's, it's, it's interesting to watch that storytelling develop with them. So yeah, that's, that's my morning.

And I set goals. I work in a Pomodoro method. I work 25 minutes at a time with a five minute break. I have a very, in the morning, the first thing I do is I free write. And then I read a book on how to write. Right now I'm in the middle of Fire and Fiction by Donald Moss. Everything Donald Moss has written is pure gold, in my opinion, as far as writing.

I, so I'll do that, and then the next three pomodoros, I have a specific 500 word goal. When I'm rough drafting, if I'm editing, I just have a time goal. But I realized that if I don't set a word goal for each pomodoro, I can kind of wander around and get lost in that time. And of course, there's days where I have to outline and plan and then, but when I'm rough drafting, that's my goal.

So I really pretty regimented two hours. I try and get a little more on the weekends. So. Sure. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So, we have [00:08:00] come to our first segment for today's podcast, Tips from the Trenches. In this segment, we share some self publishing and writing related tips with you guys. Of course, all of us here at the Book Funnel Team, we happen to be self published authors, as well as being author support specialists.

Uh, so we know some stuff, we, we know a few things, uh, and then of course we bring our guests on because they know a lot more things, right? But we do know a lot about book funnels. So we share some tips with you guys in order to help you guys out. So I don't know who wants to go first today. And we have, since we have two guests, it might be kind of a special episode.

I don't know if Leah, maybe you have a marketing tip for us, maybe, I don't know. Well, I'm trying to think one thing that works really well for me and Jason is for both. I'm ambiverted, but he's definitely extroverted. And so we just talk to people and I have noticed going to a lot of cons, people will just sit there and they'll be on their phones and just kind of scroll and wait, or they'll just kind of look around and, but they're not engaging with people as they pass by.

And I would say the biggest thing is we do not [00:09:00] pressure sales. We pressure conversation. And one of our little, uh, tricks is we, uh, we try to trade trinkets or say, like, we have a sticker and we're like, Hey, do you want to trade something for a sticker? And it becomes not a, Hey, buy my book. It's, Hey, engage with me.

And these are at your, those in person events that we're going to be talking about here. Right. So this is a tip specifically for that. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's just us engaging with people and it's not making it about buy my book. It's talk to me as a human being. And then a lot of the times people will just be like, well, you got me, what's your book about?

And then we make a sale and it's just nice. Yeah, we also meet really cool people doing this. Yeah, that's a really good tip. I've been in settings like that before, not as an author and not for, I have been there for BookFunnel and it's just, but for in other careers as well. So it's something I've done before.

And if you haven't done it before, you need a little bit of practice to get comfortable with it. And that's a good tip. That's a good way to, to kind of smooth your way into, you know, talking to folks, talking to strangers can be [00:10:00] tough. It can. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Emma, go ahead. I, I teased your tip already, so go, you go ahead and then we'll, uh, we'll, we'll keep going from there.

Well, you know, my strategic activator pinged off Jason, so I'm going to save the tip I had for next week and do a new tip. That's how I roll. Okay. Because Jason mentioned sleep. Have you done this before? I have. I, I, I'm very data responsive. I can't help it, but. Bye, basic sleep. So what basic sleep was, it was a thing in the pre industrial eras where humans would naturally have two sleep periods.

So they go to bed at a normal time, then they get up really late, or what you consider early in the morning, and then they would do some study, prayer, some feed the chickens, and then go back to bed. Productivity. Now, I naturally wake up around 2 to 3 a. m. I'm not tired. You know, you could be a little, you know, But I'm not tired [00:11:00] and I can get in an hour, extra hour of work just by taking advantage of that natural sleep cycle where, okay, I get up, I have a glass of water.

I'm not like dragging. So a quick hour, even a minute's dictation. And you're doing, you're doing a book funnel email support for our Australian users, right? Is that what you're doing at the time? I have. And I've occasionally wondered, I wonder if they know I'm logged in right now. Like, what's Emma doing?

I've heard about waking up that early and, uh, I know Jason sometimes wakes up and he's just sitting there lying in bed being like, why can't I sleep? But maybe you should get up and write then. Well, I've heard about that with ancient mines and, uh, especially during the winter time. So, when the night got really long, there'd be that biphasic thing.

That's, that's a great idea. Yeah. Kelly, what do you got for us today? Okay, so mine is business related. A lot of authors, of course, we know this. It's kind of one of our things. We like to be creative, but maybe not business [00:12:00] management side of things. Um, and it's tax season. So here's your reminder, get your tax software in order right now.

Start actually tracking yourself, tracking.

You know, an hour a week or something like that, just plan it into your day. And, um, I use Self Employed, I think it's QuickBooks Self Employed. It's basic, you know, I think it's like 10 bucks a month. And it helps just to keep me, you know, organized, because I'm not that organized when it comes to the finance stuff.

So now I'm going and Looking for my receipts and going back to March of last year and trying to figure out to when did I buy that cover or that sort of thing. So, so keep your, keep your chickens in a row now or ducks in a row now, um, and get your, your software done now so that, uh, you can manage your.

2025 books now. Yeah. If you're, if you're personally attacked by that tip. I know. So I've, I've previously done some other things. I used to [00:13:00] do an eBay store and with eBay, you know, you're buying shipping materials and a lot of other expenses that you have and equipment, things like that. And then you're buying shipping labels and so forth.

And so an app like that was absolutely essential. Absolutely. Sorry. Yes. An app like what I use an app similar to what Kelly described is Keepertax, I think is the app that I've used. I think it probably does something similar. It is able to access your, your bank statements and bank account, and then it categorizes your purchases and you can, it's really simple.

And so it was like absolutely essential for something like that. And so to me, then looking at like my author business, which is so much, much simpler and granted, you know, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not out here, you know, making tons of money yet from just my writing, right? BookFunnel is my main gig, but even then, it's like.

Man, something like that, it, it saves you a lot of headaches. So that's, that's a good tip. It's a good tip. Jason. Kelly, I'm signing on right now. There's a free trial. Thank you. [00:14:00] Jason, what do you have to share with us today? Tip wise? Oh my gosh. So many, so many thoughts. So keeping it focused with, uh, in person sales and connection with people.

Um, and, and we can dig into a whole bunch of ideas about this, but one of the biggest keys is. When we talk about mirror neurons, we talk about that ability to have the positive interaction with people when they meet you for the first time. If you're in a state of worrying about sales or worrying about how many books I've got to sell at this convention or whatever, if you're just having fun and you're setting your goals, and we can talk maybe a little later about like how to set goals that drive sales, but when you're just having fun, people pick up on that, they start having rapport.

And that's really, really critical because the first step in the sales process is build rapport. And a lot of people miss that. So that's a big tip is to have fun and try and loosen up and just, uh, really enjoy yourself when you're trying to sell, which seems counterintuitive, but. Right, right. No, I I've been there [00:15:00] different, different setting, but nonetheless, when you're trying to sell anything to someone, the worst thing that you can do is to try to sell them something.

Honestly. There's a reason people hate car salesmen. Yes. No. Yeah. Yeah. When you, you've met a good one, you know, because they're not talking to you about buying the car. They're talking to you about other stuff. And that's almost recently. Unfortunately, the car itself was a bit of a lemon. That's another story.

But the salespeople we dealt with, they were nice. I don't think they really knew what was up with the car, but that's. Another story. Anyway, my tip for today, before we, uh, wrap up the segment, very simple around dictation, because I know a lot of folks are thinking about dictation, considering dictation for all the many benefits that dictation can bring.

What I have started doing and has really benefited me as I'm, I'm making a transition from, you know, I'm a. I've been a keyboard, uh, you know, warrior for a [00:16:00] long time. I wrote most of my books previously on my laptop. And then I switched at some point, because I'm psychotic, to writing on my phone while I'm walking on a treadmill.

It worked. Like, on a treadmill, writing on my phone with my thumbs. Uh, still got a pretty decent word count when I did it. People were like, how do you do that? It wasn't actually that bad once you get used to it. But now going, transitioning from that to now trying out dictation and trying to get the majority of my words from dictation, do your outlines with dictation when you're outlining, right, you, you have, you might have kind of a natural, a more natural pace where you'll, you'll have an idea so you can speak it out and then you'll pause for a little bit and then you'll speak the next idea and that might help you create the cadence that you need for when you do ultimately start writing with dictation.

I found that useful. So if you're wanting to try [00:17:00] out dictation, try it out with outlining first. And I got to say, this is also, I'm kind of stealing this from Katie cross because she also mentioned that she does the same thing. That's where I got the idea originally from it works, guys. If you're not sure about dictation, you're on the fence, or you just want to try it without like the commitment of, okay, I have to write up.

book with this brand new technique that I've never really done before. Try outlining or just, you know, putting ideas like world building or character building, something like that, but whatever your process is, try it with that first, before you actually dive into writing a book with dictation. It might work for you.

It's really important to note too that it does feel awkward, especially when you're very first doing it. It is a very awkward feeling to be like, I'm just talking really slowly to myself. It's a very awkward feeling, but that's okay. Yeah, uh, my kids are like, what are you doing? I'm like mumbling [00:18:00] to myself in my office.

So yeah, I mean, it does feel awkward and that's okay. Like embrace that because that's the reason why most people when they, they're like, Nope, I can't do it. My brain just doesn't work that way. And we had a Becca on from Autocrit. She talked about how many words she was getting. She gets like 160, 000 words a month.

Using dictation and she just, she just blows the doors off of it. And she's like, yeah, I'm at my kid's marching band on my, on my device, like talking into my phone. And so that sort of thing, but it does feel really awkward, but once you kind of get into the swing of it, it actually is, it's just wiring your brain to do it.

That's all. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And the type of stuff that Becca is writing too. Yeah. Cause she's, she's writing more of the, the. You know, racy kind of stuff. Steamier stuff, yeah. And she's doing it in public as like, Okay, if she can, if she [00:19:00] can do it. She's really careful though. She did say, I'm pretty careful.

If she can do it, I can do it. You know what I mean? That was part of my thought too. So, um, so yeah. There's, there's my tip that wraps up the tips from the trenches for this episode. Now, let's get to our main topic. The whole reason why we have Jason and Leah here, cause you guys really impressed me. We sat down for a one on one.

I sat down for a one on one with a ton of authors at AuthorNation and a lot of authors who were in a lot of different places in their, in their self publishing career and sat down with you guys and you, you guys were, you're, you were doing things that like. I tell people that you can aspire to do one day and it was, it was great.

The biggest thing, obviously, and we've already mentioned it is in person direct sales. Again, this is something not a lot of authors are either even thinking about that. Maybe it's not even something that, that they've thought of. [00:20:00] And there's a lot of authors who are also like, no, I don't even want to be in front of people.

Like that sounds nauseating, right? And we can maybe address both of those, those aspects of it. But I want to start with like, how you guys got into, into doing this and what, what gave you the idea to, to try this? Were you doing it from the beginning? Give me kind of the, the origin story of how you guys got into doing these, these cons and so forth or what sparked the idea.

Uh, the answer is I forced Jason into it against as well. I love it. I used to do a few in person events before she forced me into the cons. But, uh, yeah, so there's a background. I have a background. Like I say, I have a varied background. There was a point where I was actually a car salesman. I had sales in my training.

And what I learned doing car sales was the idea of how not to be the creepy car salesman. And. Actually have fun with it. And then I took that to, I remember going to my first book signing at a, I think it was a Hastings book seller that's no longer here. And [00:21:00] I remember, yeah, right. Seriously. But the, this, the lady who had invited me to their cheap book buyer, after I was done, I didn't really think about it.

I was just doing what I had been learned how to do. She said, you know, you are my model bookseller. I tell other people to do what you did. And we can get into what I did at that show, but then, then I'll, I'll segue to Leah, how she learned how to do a booth set. Yeah. So, um, I, as a nerdy kid, um, kind of grew up in a Japanese family and, um, I did a lot of origami and I wanted to figure out how to get rid of it.

So I did a lot of craft shows from about 17 to 23 or so. And so that's about five years of learning how to set up a really attractive booth and talking to people about what I'm doing and, and my crafting and. Um, and I, I learned to look at other people's setups and see what resonated with me with do I feel drawn in to go into that space?

Is it clean and organized? Can I understand from a distance what it is? Um, and so when I decided to [00:22:00] force Jason into doing book sales at Cons, I did so much research and looking up any kind of, uh, author book, uh, displays and kind of mimicking or improving on. And so, um, I, I went for the more visualization aspect and I made Jason do the hard work of actually writing the books and bringing them there.

So. Um, but yeah. Yeah, because I imagine at some of the cons you guys are at, it's not just all authors everywhere. No. Yeah. Right? It's a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. And so you want to like very clearly single book author, right? Like, how do you, how do you do that? I mean, I'm just, other than like, my first thought is just make a giant physical version of your book.

That's like 10 feet tall. I make a giant book outfit and he just walks right. No, I'm kidding. No. No. One of the things that really stands out to me that just to make sure people know your books already, I see people get this wrong a lot, and I actually learned this from Leah, so I'm stealing your tip here, Leah, um, is elevation.

So you need your books to have [00:23:00] different levels on your table with maybe a central spot where you can talk to people that's open. With bookshelves so people can see the books when it's all laying flat, it gets it's flat. So elevation is key. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a great, that's a great pre because I'm envisioning it now.

You're absolutely right. Yeah. If you're, if you're walking around. There's going to be a whole bunch of, if you're at a con or something like that, there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff trying to grab your attention and yeah, putting those levels and so forth, just like, I imagine you have, you know, even for authors who only had a few books, if you put it on a pedestal, right, you make it, it's not just, you know, some prop there on the table that you pick up, it becomes right.

Something that people can, can see from afar. That's neat. I don't, we, we, we. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Oh, sorry. Um, yeah, we even, uh, I think our first con, we only had two books and then, uh, we went on to his third. But even with three books, I made it so it looked welcoming and plentiful on the table and it really drew [00:24:00] people in.

So yes. Yeah. So, so I imagine having, having a stack of books is probably, obviously if you have three books, you don't just want to have literally three books there on the table. You want to have. Yeah. Like you said, to make it look plentiful. What does that, what does that look like? What goes into that to make it inviting as well?

Um, well, I went to, I think, Lowe's and I got some, uh, tan crates or something or a gray, uh, crate and, um, I just stacked them facing outward and just lined the books up facing out. So you're looking and I stacked them on top of each other to create that evo evo evolution. I can't words today. Um, uh. Blah.

Blah. Elevation. Elevation, yeah. And, um, people would just walk by and just basically see a bookshelf of the same books and they could just reach in and grab one and look through it and especially when you get the product in the person's hand, um, it, uh, what did Ben Wolf say, it creates that sense of ownership?

I believe he said [00:25:00] that. Yeah. People can touch it and hold it. Yeah. it in their hand. Um, yeah, having a boost babe also helps, that's me. I'm just, I'm kidding. I'm teasing. Not wrong. Not wrong. Well, well, actually, it goes both ways. We talked to another author, uh, at AuthorNation, who was doing in person events too.

And she writes steamy science fiction, I think. And so she has male models come in. I saw that, that was brilliant. And dress up as her character, the male characters. So, yeah, that, that's a, that's a thing, for sure. That's true. You know, it, hey, it gets, gets people's, gets people's, uh, people's attention. It is what it is, you know.

I'm, I'm gonna add one more thing, um, for, uh, uh, setups and displays. Backdrops are really important. Um, I have talked to some people and they don't have anything behind them. And you see the people behind them and people walking through. Having just a simple black backdrop right behind you, um, it's just, it's not that expensive and it really adds a lot of central focus into what you're about, [00:26:00] so.

It frames the space and creates legitimacy, so it's really important to have that. And we, we start off, one of the errors we're correcting now is we had a banner that was horizontal. Which left blackness below it. And we're realizing now we need to do a full dress behind us with full imagery. Yeah. And it sounds like these are the type of things that you kind of just like, have to like cut your teeth and, and learn these things the hard way at first.

But, but obviously you sharing it with us now, maybe, you know, folks at home won't have to struggle as much. That's great. Yeah. If you can save people a little bit of pain, that's great. I'd love to. Exactly. Um, uh, so again, if you go to cons, even if you're just attending a con, um, look around and see what catches your eye and see what inspires you and try to implement that the best you can.

Um, yeah, I'm still going to cons constantly, constantly, and, um, I'm trying to take notes. I take pictures of people's booths and I wonder how can I incorporate that into what we're doing. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. So I had a question [00:27:00] about the product that you're bringing. When you're going to, cause I've done, I've only done like one book signing and I had no idea what to bring and how much to bring.

So like how much are you bringing of say your actual books? Do you only bring book one? Do you bring all the books? And then do you also have merch or swag or anything that you do as little giveaways and how much do you plant, how do you decide what you're going to Giveaway and how much you're going to bring for each con.

Is there like a, a math problem you do or how do you do it? We've been, we've been learning along the way and we just did this today. We're actually going to Emerald city comic con in Seattle here in two weeks. And so we looked at what we did last year. We had a really good convention. So we looked at our sales from last year and just want to go a little above that.

Cause we actually ran out of books on Sunday, which is a great problem to have and also a horrible problem to have because you have people walking by you could sell to, so we wanted to expand a little bit. So we look at previous sales numbers and we just kind of. Played with the numbers we definitely bring all the books because I've [00:28:00] been surprised how often people will buy the entire series What we'll do is we'll offer a price point, say $20 for a soft back buck, a trade size, um, a galley sized paperback.

But if they buy the entire book, we'll give like a $5 discount on each one so they get a deal and we get more profit margin. So the idea is just look at how much does each book cost you versus how much you're selling for. One of the biggest piece of advice we got was we weren't selling at a too low a price point.

Yeah. So we were told, Hey, increase it. No one will even care. No one cares. We didn't. Yeah. Yeah. We kept selling so. And that's part of the, when, when folks are at conventions like that, part of what they're doing there is they're there to spend money in some cases as well. And so you have them in a, in a different state than when they're like, you know, in the bookstore, maybe.

Yeah. That makes sense. So, so yeah, having a higher, I mean, you're going to all this effort. And if you do see the value in your own creative work, yeah, you need to be able to demand the price that [00:29:00] it deserves. So that's a, that's a very good point. When you're in author alley too, if you happen to be in an author alley, even if you're in the regular part of the show, but specifically an author alley, the people walking by you are looking to connect personally with authors.

They want to be there to talk to you. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'm going to keep jumping in because I will never stop talking unless you ask. You're good. Um, set up the display at home, do a test run before you get to the show, make sure you have everything. One thing I have learned as a crafter is always have tools in your kit, most likely, uh, pliers and wire.

You do not understand how many times you need that when you just don't think it's something, um, something cares. Um, a little tiny extra sewing kit in case you get a rip in the tablecloth. Um, Velcro, um, tab tie thingies, um, just think of little tools, scissors, calculator, um, we have a whole bunch of sharpies we bring for signing.

Um, and on the note of extra little things to sell, we have not done that yet. Uh, we do stickers, but we hand them out as a trade and, um, we're working [00:30:00] on getting little tags to sell or as a free giveaway for audiobooks, which we're just about to get done. Hopefully just in time for Emerald City. Yeah, we're actually really, this is a good plug for BookFunnel.

We're really excited. I finally got an audiobook narrated. It's, I was literally just talking to the narrator an hour ago. Um, and we're going to be offering it for sale through the BookFunnel app and those individual codes at, uh, Emerald City. So super excited. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's, it's. And I imagine that's probably the best way to do it in terms of your, your price point and profitability, because obviously the physical book I think is the big draw initially.

But then if you can kind of upsell them and be like, well, if you, if you, you know, you can just get the paperbacks or you can get the whole, get them in paper and audio and you can listen to it while you're reading along. And maybe even some folks would want to do ebook and audio and paperback and bundle that all together.

So that's [00:31:00] awesome that you guys are doing that. Thank you for the plug. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've been really happy with it. I'm excited. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad it's I'm glad it's working out for you. And that's kind of the whole reason why we expanded into audiobooks But I don't want to I don't want to talk to too much about book funnel.

I want to keep keep on on you guys Yes, I'm gonna ask a question for all the authors suffering from imposter syndrome. So When do you pull the trigger on your first con and then do you have any advice about how big it should be? especially if you are like introverted Um, I would say smaller the better.

Um, me and Jason actually met at my little rinky dink local con that's just in a hotel room and I mean the panels are literally in the rooms in the con. Um, and uh, uh, I mean it's just small and it's more intimate and it builds up that courage. Um, Emerald City can be very intimidating. Uh, we went to San Diego Comic Con for funsies.

Um, and that was extremely [00:32:00] overwhelming. There's so many people, it's so crowded. Start small, work your way up, um, talk to other people about what their experiences are. Yeah, and definitely that imposter syndrome is, I always tell people imposter syndrome is a good thing because it's letting you know to keep working forward.

It's like if you just think you're great, you're probably not going to get to be as good as you could. But as you start doing this, understand that it's a learning process, and some shows are going to be amazing, some shows aren't going to go that well, and you're learning and you're going to get better too.

We went to, uh, Rose City, what's it, Rose City? Yeah, it was Rose City last year in Portland, and the energy of the show was just not great, and we didn't really have very good sales, but we just have to throw that off our shoulders and keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And on that note, I imagine it's interesting, like it might vary from city to city.

It might vary from like type of event. I imagine if you're going to do something small, maybe something local, there's a variety of different events, local events that you might be able to get into. What different types of, so [00:33:00] you guys, I know you guys do a lot of cons, like so comic cons and other things like that.

What events have you found were like, consistently pretty good? They have good energy and obviously the numbers to back that up in terms of sales, but then What type of event if there is a type of event that's just maybe not really conducive to it to give us some of your Experience the different type of events that you guys have done Well, we've mostly just done either local cons or comic cons Uh, Jason at this moment in time has only really written, uh, military sci fi and outside of, uh, sci fi fantasy or comic book conventions, there's not really a niche for that.

I have talked to authors who do, um, fantasy, for example, and they'll go to Ren Fairs. And they'll, sometimes that's their best show, is uh, Ren Faire, so try to see what you're writing and where it might sit in. Um. We have a friend who does very well in strip malls, well not strip malls, but like regular malls.

Yeah. He'll pay for a booth just in a mall, and usually the [00:34:00] price point's pretty low. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And he'll do really well. Yeah. Um, talking about the show, so we go within driving distance. That's one thing that Oh, I was gonna ask that. Yeah. Cause I was wondering, like, how do you get your, you know, cause when I, when I did it, it was carry on with my luggage and I, you know, like, it was like paying, do I want to pay to like ship it there and a lot of hotels will take things on, but it's expensive.

Yeah, yeah. A lot of the cons will have a shipping or receiving process as well for a fee. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It was interesting to note, so we have the military sci fi. I actually have a, um, and I wrote it a long time ago. It was a modern day paranormal thriller and we brought a couple copies for the first time to a show.

We thought, Oh, okay, let's just bring a couple of copies. And they sold out in like 15 minutes. Yeah, 10, 15 minutes. We're bringing a lot more with us this time. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. So you think that it wasn't something that actually was a part of your like niche, like you thought it [00:35:00] was not going to sell because it wasn't military sci fi, but then it, it went.

It's off brand. Yeah. And, but people, and I, I think that I've got the cover really, really good on that one. I think that's one of the reasons it did well is it's a really solid cover and I've got the, the elevator pitch for it. Solid. But yeah, it's um, you're, sometimes you're surprised, sometimes it's frustrating, and sometimes you're surprised how easily things will go.

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Now, you had, you had mentioned about setting goals. That help you drive sales. And you talked about one of, one of your recent events where you, you guys sold out, which is the dream. Right? I think most folks who are considering this, like, I don't want to like go to a convention, drag all these books with me and then not sell either anything or, you know, selling out is, is what everybody wants to do.

Right? Everybody, everybody wants to be a sellout. It's a level. Yeah. It's a level. So talk me through that. Like, what's that process of how do you [00:36:00] guys do that with setting goals? Does it have to do with the venue to some extent, the size of the venue? Just let me pick your brain on it, I guess. So this goes back to my car sales days and what had happened was I was not doing a very good job of it.

My sales manager came up to me and he said, your test drive ratio is bad. And I'm like, Oh, is that important? And he's like, yeah, nobody's going to buy a car if they don't test drive it. He said, don't worry about selling the car. Get them in the car and make them drive it. And I was like, Oh, that's easy. I can do that.

I love riding around in cars and my, my test drive ratio. I wasn't pushing for that. So I used to tell people, it's like, Hey, let's take it for a drive. Let's take it for a drive. And I got a real lighthearted attitude about it because I wasn't really worrying about what, Oh man, do I have to close the sale or not?

I just wanted to go have fun driving around in cars with people. And, um, my test drive ratio went to the highest in the store and my sales went way, way up. Um, I wasn't a very high pressure salesman, so I didn't have like the highest ratio because some of the guys could really shove people around, but I didn't do that, but I still got really good results.

So when I did my first book signing at Hastings, I was sitting at a [00:37:00] table and there was a bookshelf in front of me and the main traffic of the store was actually on the other side of this bookshelf. So I wasn't talking to anybody. And then, uh, Sally, the book sales manager, she came by and she's like, you know, you don't have to just stay at your table.

And I remember my car sales days and I'm like, Oh, you don't have to tell me twice. So I grabbed a big handle of bookmarks. And I told myself, my goal is to give a bookmark a site. I had signed bookmarks to every person in this store. So I walked around and people, I said, Hey, I'm doing a book signing. Would you like a signed bookmark?

And I think only one person turned me down. It was hilarious because he's like, no. And then I went and sat back down again and he came over and he's like, Hey, I'm really sorry. I didn't know who you were. I'll buy a book. He actually bought a book from me after turning me down for a bookmark. When we set goals, when we're dealing with the sales process, the goal is something you can control and you cannot control how many people will actually spend money with you, but you can actually control trying to give out a bookmark to as many people as possible or by giving out all of your giveaways.

And what we've figured out how to do in building rapport with people, like that whole idea of how people walk past you, we [00:38:00] can get into that as well, but that's what it's really, um. I don't know. It's, uh, that's one of the keys of the, the in person cells. Yeah. Yeah. So I imagine it's that, that in person like connection with you to some degree.

Yeah. What's, what's the secret sauce on that bookmark though, that you're handing out? Or the sticker, right? This is an important thing. I imagine there's something there too that's important. Yeah. Critically important. And I remember I told Aaliyah about this and she's like, that doesn't, I'm going to sell you out a little bit.

She's like, that doesn't matter right now. She's like, you were right. So I get to call the husband. So I like, I was right for once, um, but I knew it from previous experience. What? You're mostly right all the time. Mostly right. Well, mostly right some of the time. Um, So, uh, what happens is you think about getting handed something, getting handed something, especially at a con, it doesn't matter.

It, it has low value. And one of the things we have to do is increase the value of the interaction. So what we figured out to do, it was an idea I had and we, we applied it and it became the most fun thing in the world. And it [00:39:00] generates so much rapport and conversation is people will walk by and we'll say, we'll hold up, I have, we have a little business card that's actually a summary of the book that's folded in half.

So it looks like a little book. And we'll say like, hey, will you trade me for something for this little book? And they're like, what do you mean? So we're not giving it to them. We're like, hey, you have to give me something. And then we'll literally trade anything. We tell them it's a game we're playing at conventions to entertain ourselves.

We have a basket and we'll show them the basket of all the stuff we've traded for these books. And they'll immediately start digging through their pockets. We've had people actually give us like a dollar for a business card. Yeah. We've got, Leah got offered a cigarette twice, like I think she said two or three cigarettes offered to her.

Nicotine patches, edibles. I literally got weed at con. We will tell people, we'll tell people, we'll take pocket lint, like literally anything because all we're doing is establishing up for, and when we trade with them, it has a higher value and people will take it and you watch them inspect it more carefully.

And then if they don't have anything, they trade, they're like, well, I don't have anything. We'll say, well, we, we, you suffer a terrible joke for it. And then we have a whole [00:40:00] list of dad jokes. We tell that grown people pretty hard, but we've literally seen people walking behind the person we're talking to.

And when we mentioned trading for a joke, their breaks will come on and they'll wrap around. So that's our entire connection point in building rapport is we just have fun with that moment of trading, talking to people. We want to hear their stories. We want to joke with them. They'll trade us jokes. And it's great because the person who doesn't want to hear a joke, They're probably not going to buy a book anyway, but we've had so many people have a rapport with us and then they leave, we'll tell them about the book, they'll leave.

And then the next day they'll come back and buy a book. Do I have to do this sober? No, no, you don't. No, you don't. So it doesn't necessarily have to be telling jokes or trading, just something to engage and talking to people that's low pressure. So it's not about the sales, it's about getting a person to talk to you, ask them about their day, or something.

There is that element of reciprocity though, to some degree. You're, like you said, to trade something [00:41:00] that implies that it has some value to it. Yeah. And then, uh, and then them suffering through the joke. And if the joke is funny, or even makes them laugh a little bit, like, well You made me laugh, so I owe you at least my time.

I use the word suffer very intentionally. Like, I won't know what this joke is. I will get people just like, uhhhh. It's just great. So you're basically taking cold traffic and converting them to warm traffic, so by the time they get to your booth, like you said, you've already got that rapport, and they're more likely to be like, How you doing?

And they'll come on. Come on by. Absolutely, that's exactly it. That idea of taking cold traffic and turning it into warm traffic is critical at conventions because people are walking by a thousand booths. Yep. They're getting talked to by a bunch of people. And so here's the biggest secret to what I've learned about it, when I actually learned it when I was selling cars, was you don't necessarily have to push your product, you push your rapport, you push your interaction.

Just have fun talking to people. Because people are there, they like it meeting creators, they're there to spend money. And when you [00:42:00] give them a personal connection, the odds of them spending their money with you go, they skyrocket. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I actually, we, we've made a lot of friends at cons, and when we go back, they, they're like, you have to be there.

I want to see you. I want to catch up. How are you doing? Um, but I've had a lady, um, and we just vibed the whole con and I'm like, yeah, I really want this poster at this other booth I saw, but it's 40 and I can't afford it. And she's like, well, how much are your books? I'm like this much. And she's like, I'm going to buy a set of books just so you can buy that poster.

And now it's hanging up in my bathroom. So.

That's good. And she just did it because we got very chummy over the whole weekend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not something you can really do, selling your books just on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. When this is the most important thing, this is the core of it for independent writers. And the core is, and being a librarian, I'm aware of this, when we do reader's advisory, someone comes in and says, I need a new book to read.

And it's like, oh, cool. What do you like? You know, so we have this whole process as librarians on reader's advisory, how we learn what people like, and then we recommend new books [00:43:00] for them. And the most, most people buy books for two reasons. They either know the author already, or someone they trust has recommended the author.

That's part of the librarian's role in reader's advisory. Those two key points are really, really important for the independent writer, because they're not going to know you. But if they can get to know you, You're the one that's trusted in recommending the book and people love having that personal connection with an author.

So the more we have that, that rapport, the more you're driving into that, I already know the author and I'm being recommended by someone I trust. You're getting both sides of it. It's a really great system. Yeah. Can I bump off of that, Jay? No, you're not allowed. Go ahead. So, um, one thing we'll do is when we go to these cons, uh, we will, um, talk with other authors and we'll kind of get to know them and we run into people all over the place.

Um, and so when we, when we have people come and they're like, Nah, I'm not really into sci fi. I'm not really into military. I'm like, Oh, well, if you like fantasy, you need to go talk to these people down the way. We were talking to them. Their book sounds great. Um, if they're not your audience, [00:44:00] help your other authors.

And then guess what? Your other authors are going to send people your way when they run into people who like what you write. Um, it's all about the connection. That answered the next question I was going to ask. Do you ever putty up with other authors to be like, Okay, after I sell my book, I'm going to send them to you and vice versa.

Yeah, we trade, um, very often. Um, we have one of Matt Deniman's, what, first books before he really, really blew up? He was, he was starting to get big. It was two years ago we met Matt and we traded him for one of his books. My question actually had to do with the elevator pitch, because you said not just, you know, the jokes, and then now that you've warmed them up, like, what do you, what is your, how do you just, like, come up with what you describe your book, or how you get them, now that they're warm, what do you say to them next?

But this is critical and it's the power of yes, and this is actually, again, something I learned in the sales, in my sales background, I remember the very first time I saw it was really strange and it was one of the finance managers was a finance manager or sales manager. One of the guys, he's like, Hey, I need you to understand this.

When [00:45:00] you can get somebody to say yes, the odds of them saying yes, again, go up. And it's kind of the power of consent when you're dealing with relationships. It's like, Hey, can I sell you more? Can I talk to you more? If you don't get the yes, you're not really in a space where they're truly hearing you.

And there was a guy who came in to buy a car, and he's like, That car's too pricey, I'm not gonna buy it. It was a used car, so the price was flexible. And he's like, There's no way I'm buying a car today. And then, the guy said to me, and he'd already told me, He took me away, that's right, he took me away and he said, Hey, I wanna show you this.

And he brought me back and he said, Hey, would you buy the car for a dollar? And the guy's like, yeah, of course I would, I would absolutely buy the car for a dollar. He's like, okay, so you have a price, what, can we get to the price? And he actually negotiated him to a, it was actually a really good price on the car.

The guy was really happy, he bought the car, but he had told us he wasn't buying a car today. And all he did was get him to say yes about something. So we don't have to be too toxic about that, we can be very positive about that. When someone says, hey, do you like science fiction? That should be the next thing is, hey, it was, that was really a fun joke.

Everything is good, good, uh, conversation. Do you like sci fi? No, I'm not really into sci fi. Oh, do you like fantasy? Yeah, [00:46:00] absolutely. Right down there, two books, two, two books down is a fantasy author that's really good. And when you send someone away to someone else, the pressure comes off so much, we've actually sold books to those people because they feel great about the lack of pressure.

Yeah. But when they say yes, then it's like, can I tell you about my books? I always ask for the consent. I always ask, have them tell me yes. And because if they're like, I'm busy, cool, that person wasn't going to buy a book anyway. I want to get that. Yes. But it's also very important psychology of them saying yes, because they're opening the door to you and they're wildly more open to what you're about to tell them.

It's really important. I'm going to add on that short and swactual, like talking about the book. Um, I've gone to cons where I'm passing by, I'm doing my research and a guy pulls me over and sometimes I'll actually like stop and talk to other authors to me about his book. And talks to me about his book and keeps talking to me about his book and all the details to opening the book showing me stuff and I'm just like, like, I gotta go.

I gotta go. It was like a five minute conversation about. Trying to make one sale and so what our pitch is 30, you have, you have to have the [00:47:00] pitch totally down to one elevator ride and it has to have a hook in it that's just like a first page hook that gets people, well now I have to know and I've had many people when I hit my elevator switch and I can give it to you if you want, but it's like you hit that point where you're like, man, I have to know, you want to hear the elevator pitch?

Wait, hold up your book while you're doing it. I was going to say, we need you to do it to demonstrate here. Oh, wait, I got to start off. Um, because, because we got to do the pun because that's the whole point. Um, what kind of pants does a psychic wear? A paranormal pants. There you go. That's the level of jokes we're telling.

That's the level of jokes we're telling. A lot of positive things. So then we'll say, it's like, Hey, do you like sci-fi? Yeah, I like sci-fi. And it's like, can I tell you about my book? And they're like, they're like, sure, absolutely. And I'll, and I'll say, well, I've got the, the Hammerhead series. This is the first book.

And I'll hand the book to them so that they can hold it while I talk to them. 'cause I want them to start kind of psychologically taking ownership of it. And I'll say, well, imagine freighters in space. They're owned by corporations, and once they're [00:48:00] used up and they're old, the, the companies don't want to spend money on fuel to get them out of orbit, but they have to clear orbit, so they autopilot them down and crash land them in the Nevada desert.

Then there's an old guy, he's, his job is to recycle these freighters, so he goes on a big mechanized suit called the Gorilla, and he tears them apart and recycles them. Well, one of these freighters crashes, and he goes out, rips open the bridge, and these are autopiloted. And he finds bodies on board, so he gets out of his gorilla, goes on the bridge to try and figure out what's going on with these bodies, and one of the bodies grabs his ankle, because she's not dead.

That's the whole pitch, so it's like, yeah. Oh, you ended on a cliffhanger! That's it. There you go, that's it, that's it. No, that's very, that's very effective, and it, and it's a, it's a slightly different, like you're delivering it more conversationally, and I don't know if that's necessarily intentional, because if you're writing a blurb for a book, or something like that, which could be compared Something like this.

You might make different choices of your verbiage. This is, I'm going to plug actually our Book [00:49:00] Funnel Blurb Reviews here on the YouTube channel. Everybody go watch those after you're done watching the podcast. But it's a more conversate, like, imagine this and then, and you're going from one step to the next and in a very casual conversational way.

I think that seems very effective. I think that's actually what's It wouldn't be too rigid otherwise. Yeah. Well, I think that's what's on the actual back of your book. It's actually smaller, but it's basically that story of what you just told. Yeah. Yeah. But the words are different. Yeah, it's much more dramatic.

It's like, in a world. Yes, it's a movie trailer with a deep gravelly voice. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. Whereas if you try to do that in person with somebody, it would come off as, or to do a more Stereotypical, maybe, let's say, elevator pitch. Like, you know, I got a pitch for you here, but, you know, that would come off as gimmicky.

Do you ever customize it? Absolutely. I mean, there's not much. For the person you're talking to? I mean, cause an older guy [00:50:00] versus a younger guy, or that sort of thing. Absolutely. So, uh, there's a lot of things. If someone has a military insignia, I will let them know that veterans are one of the reasons that I became a bestseller is veterans were recommending it because, um, military sci fi often has this puff chest bravado and vets email me all the time saying I really got the attitudes they feel about war correct about the exhaustion and sense of duty.

They don't want to, but they will. And that's, that's what will ignite with that, if it's a woman I'm talking to, I'll let them know that my mother used to be a professional pilot, so the flight scenes are informed by all the time I spend in small planes. And that I write really strong female characters, I get complimented all the time by women on the female heroines I've written, so.

I'll do those little adjustments. Usually it'll come after, like that'll be kind of an add on. I'll do the regular pitch and then I'll just immediately add that on for them. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any you found are more, uh, convert more than others or is it just all over the place? I think that the vets often will, will convert [00:51:00] pretty readily if they're a sci fi fan, they like military sci fi, I can almost always sell them a book based on those things.

If, if women are sci fi fans and I let them know about how I've written female characters, and I think Leah legitimizes me because I'm not just dudes, a dude claiming that. Um, that'll lock in a lot of times too, because a lot of times when we read stuff, like vets will read stuff that's not accurate.

Women will read stuff that doesn't reflect the complexity of women's. Yeah. Experience. And so it's, yeah, people want that. I, um, I will tell people if they're like, nah, I'm not really into sci fi. I always tell them, and sincerely, I do not really care for sci fi. I am epic fantasy all the way. I'm all about magic systems and world building.

I had to edit the first two. Sorry, I had to read the first two to edit the third one. And, um, I actually really like it. Like, the way he wrote it got me to love it. And it's the only sci fi story I really like. I will actually bring that to the surface. Well, let's talk about it. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, you mentioned the Nevada desert.

So it's sci fi, but it's [00:52:00] still grounded in the real world. Whereas, you know, some people might think sci fi, and you're like, okay, you're talking about aliens and a whole bunch of other words that I don't even know. So you might even get some of the people who like sci fi, maybe isn't their usual cup of tea.

Absolutely. But you've got the military angle there. Um, a number of different things that I think you could still get people to relate to, even though the story is sci fi at its core. It's there. So, so real quickly, um, let's talk about the sales process. So the sales process, when you're talking about sales in general is establish rapport.

So you go up to somebody and say, hi, I'm Jason. You are cool. What do you like? Oh, you like football. Let's talk a little about football, whatever it is you're talking about. It's like, I'm not a football fan, so I'd be lost. It's like, can we talk hockey instead? Um, but you establish rapport. And then you establish need.

So the idea is this person standing in front of you, if they're stopped and talked, do they like sci fi? So that's actually very intentional. The next question is, do you like sci fi? Because it's kind of like if I'm only selling minivans and someone comes up to me and says, Hey, let's talk. I've established [00:53:00] rapport.

What do you need? It's like, I need a Porsche. I need a two seat Porsche that I can rip around corners. It's like, I can't help you. You need to go down to the Porsche dealership. So we want to establish need. And then once you've established need, you've got rapport. You've got need. Then you display the product and then you close the sale.

Those are the four steps of sales. So when we're asking you like sci fi, and then like you talked about, uh, Emma, you were talking about modifying the message to meet their needs. And the biggest thing, the biggest thing I want people to get in their heads when they're trying to do sales, even if they're online or if they're talking to someone or in there in person is.

Take heart. People need good story. They need it. They don't just, they don't just want it. The human psyche needs great story and you are offering them something that they need. Yeah. And I think that's something that's hard for authors to put into words. This is actually something that I've talked about, which is the needs of readers and what readers need, like what their pain points are.

Like pain points is kind of a marketing term for like, what is the product? [00:54:00] What is the problem that the product is solving? And it's really easy when the product is like, you know, dish detergent. Or gas for your car, or, you know, food, you're hungry, right? But there's something that's maybe a little less tangible for fiction in particular.

Nonfiction doesn't have this problem as much because usually nonfiction is to solve a problem. But fiction tends to have this problem a little bit more, which is how do I communicate The need that's being satisfied and I, I think that, and maybe we can re, you can relate this to, to some of your characters, I think it's, it's usually the characters and it's, it's getting them to connect with the character, getting them to, and that character usually has to go through some stuff.

Right to become a sympathetic likable character and what that really means is that there's something about the character that the reader is Connecting to and there's some some kind of healing [00:55:00] going on there or at the very least like Internal like introspection, right? Is my thought I don't know what what your thoughts are on that but to me that's where it is When you look at the elements of the elevator pitch I have, it's got those elements of a guy who's gonna save someone.

It's like, and that's the hero. And then there's questions raised. It's like, well, why, why is that person there? What is gonna happen with them? But you have that little hint that there's a heroic moment because a true hero acts selfishly, selflessly, sorry, super selfish, no, yeah, they, um, they act selflessly, so you have that little hint that there might be some selfless action there in some danger that's going to happen.

It's really important for people to feel that because we all want to feel like maybe we've got a little selfless hero in ourselves. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know another thing that's come up with multiple conversations that we've had part of little, little, little breaking of the fourth wall here for a moment with I've found we do, we do the, this, these podcasts and I've learned [00:56:00] so much from all the guests that we've had, it feels like I'm getting this like.

Crash course from all these, all these different authors. And it's funny how you can connect so many things together. We had Kate Hall on one of our earlier episodes on the podcast, talking about TikTok for authors. Big thing was on TikTok, you're posting hooks. You have to hook people with your book and you hook them with some, something, some emotional scene that usually communicates this idea of loneliness.

We've had Mal Cooper on, and I think the topic came up with like. You want readers to be, you know, uh, I can't remember the, the exact verbiage, but like offended on behalf, the character, the main character at what they've been put through about what they've been forced to endure. So they rip because everybody kind of sees themselves as the main character a little bit.

And to connect that back to this is that's the job that you have to do. Hopefully you do it from the very beginning. Right? And you've written all that stuff in there. You're part of learning how to tell a good story. But sometimes it's [00:57:00] hard to know if you've written something to, to go in and, and pluck those things out.

I imagine you made those decisions intentionally and you knew what those emotional hooks were gonna be when you wrote those books. Well, this is a good point. Or was that something you kind of discovered, you maybe reverse engineered a little bit? It was, so, uh, the Hammerhead, the original Hammerhead came out a long time ago, uh, 2011.

I think I pushed out the first book, and then there was a lot of things. It was a process of telling people about the book and realizing that they were just had this flat look in their eyes, and then I told them something else, I tried something else, I talked, and there were people I knew, it's like, oh, tell me about your book, and I tell them, and I tell them, and then one time I told them the way I just told you, and they were just like, oh my god, I have to read that book now, and it's like, oh, oh, so it was a little trial and error, and I think you have to do that, and I think it's a great idea when you're talking about your book, To go get several friends and say, okay, I'm going to tell you about this book and then have them honestly tear you apart.

I mean, be nice about it, but be like, [00:58:00] does that seem exciting or boring? I really need to know. It's like, well, it's a little boring or whatever, and then try a different way and try a different way. Because people will tell you when you hit that place where it's like, oh, I really need to know. Yeah, well, and even if you don't do in person events like this, somebody eventually is going to ask you what your book's about, and you, you need to be able to have an answer for that, but what, you know, uh, that, you know, folks who are skeptical about it, I understand they're skeptical about doing in person events, but what would you say, like, what There's, there's going to be some objections, right?

One of those objections is I'm an introvert. I can't do in person events. Another is probably going to be, there's a cost associated with it. And I want to want to be, I want it to be profitable. I want to make sure that I recoup, you know, my, my investment essentially. And then, uh, I think those were probably the main two.

And then the third one is time. So to each of those objections, right? I'm an introvert. I can't talk to people. [00:59:00] It's all about the money, and I'm not going to sell the books, this, that, and the other, and then the time aspect of it. What would you tell somebody who's giving either of those objections? Maybe it's the one thing that's keeping them from giving it a shot.

What would you say to them? I laid out a lot there on the plates. I was, I will jokingly say to the introverts, get your designated extrovert and bring him with you, because all the introverts have a designated extrovert. Um, but realistically, I don't know, because, because I thrive off of talking to people.

I know a lot of people who do go are very introverted and they're very quiet and shut down. Um, I don't know. What do you think, Jason? It's, it gets really difficult sometimes to step into those spaces because one of the things that we're worried about is we don't want to be creepy, we don't want to pressure people, we don't want to bother people the way we've been bothered in the past, and we also don't want to be rejected.

Nobody wants to be rejected because it hurts to be rejected. And one of the things that we have to really have in our head is We are there to talk to [01:00:00] the people that want to talk to us. And as people walk by and you say, hi, how are you doing today? Hi, how are you doing? Do whatever process is yours.

Cause not everybody's going to use our process. Obviously you're going to find your own process and it has to be yours. Otherwise it's going to feel wooden, but you're going to get rejected. You're going to get rejected. But then when you meet that one person who's really excited about your book, it can really fill the tank.

Having that person talking to you straight across the way. And when you turn it into more of a, if I were to say to you, hey, go in that room and have a conversation with somebody about what they like to read. You could do that. Yeah. That's easy. Mm-hmm. I mean, maybe it's not easy to to have the initial conversation, but that's really all you're doing is like, what do you like to read?

And then sincerely being interested in what they say and what they have to do. And then as then, if they ask about your books, you don't even have to ask for the sale. You don't even have to ask the pressure. You can just have a conversation with them about what they love about reading and tell 'em, you really want to know like, what do, what do you really love about reading?

You find your own way into this space. And you will have shows you go to that you lose money. You will have shows where you come [01:01:00] away with some money. So the, the less expensive the show, sometimes you can get invited at a space where it doesn't cost you anything to shop. And then every book you sell is, you know, profit.

You have to drive, you have to do these things. Right. Fundamentally, it is a way to talk to people that you never would have met. And every person that you don't talk to who walks by your booth is a potential It's a potential threat. It's a potential someone you could have had a big impact on their life.

I'm going to chime in and say, um, it took bravery to write a book because writing a book is really hard. That's a good point. It takes bravery to go to a show and to talk to people and, um, Jason's helped me with this a bit because I can be very introverted at times. Um, ask people about themselves, ask questions.

If you don't know what to say, ask something. Um, but yeah, it's, and, uh, we don't always make a profit when we go to cons, um, with the hotel and the, the cost to go and buying the books and everything. Um, most of the time we actually go away, uh, not making enough money to work being there, but it's all about the connection with the people.

[01:02:00] And, and that's, that's why you're there is to find people who want to read what you wrote. And, if you wrote a book, it means you're meant to, and someone out there is going to love it because otherwise And if you let the people who are going to hate it stop you, you'll never find the people who love it.

So really quick jump off. I'm actually listening to a book. By Jim Murphy called inner excellence. I found, and I've been listening to it. It's excellent. Inner excellence. It's excellent. But he, he was a, uh, a baseball player for the Chicago Cubs. And he talks about how he was kind of going the wrong direction with his success until he realized that his whole purpose for success that would lead to real fulfillment.

Was it become the best version of himself that he could possibly become? It wasn't about money. It wasn't about beating other people. It wasn't about winning a pennant. It was all about challenging himself and becoming the biggest version of himself. So, and this is the critical part. So that in that stronger version of himself, he could help other people become their strongest version.

So if you're a really, really big introvert and you want to take on this challenge, you're thinking about doing in person sales, [01:03:00] there's part of you. That's wanting to take on this personal challenge. You step into this space, you will learn, you will grow, you'll become a bigger, stronger version of yourself.

And then maybe years from now, you'll run into an introvert that you can help take that path to. And when we have that version of success, it really helps energize us. Mm hmm. Yeah. No, that's, that's a good outlook, I think, to have with anything, but your author career in general. The time aspect of the whole thing, because it's a commitment.

Yeah, yes it is. Well, speak to that for me here. What's the, what's the lifestyle like? It's a lot of weekends. Yes. I imagine. Um, I love it. I thrive off of it. Uh, we have done shows where we're there for eight hours straight. And I'm talking to people for eight hours straight. And then they're like, Hey, we're closing.

And I'm like, wait, wait, we're closing. I don't want to be closed. I don't want to be done. I love this. Um, he will literally have to grab me by my shoulders and sit me down to eat food and drink water because I am just so energized because it's so much [01:04:00] fun with the cosplays and the people and the talking and the jokes and, um, I make time for it to the point where Jason's like, we need to slow down.

I'm like, So, yeah, yeah, I think one thing is to try not to let it, uh, if you're going to try it out, it will interrupt your writing process. So you have to balance that out is if you were to do a show every weekend, you know, you could meet tons of writer, you could meet tons of readers, all these other things.

It's gonna be a really hard to maintain a good, solid writing practice. Mm-hmm . So you really have to balance it out and, you know, try it out, see if it's for you. Yeah. And do it a little bit, maybe two, one year. I think we kind of built into it. We did nine last year more. Mm-hmm . It was, it was like once a month we were going to a show.

Yeah. And, uh, we built up to that. There was like two shows one year, then three. Mm-hmm . Then. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Um, and, uh, again, I, I forced Jason, I'm like, I signed you up for this con, this con, this con and this con. He's like, what? And I'm like, sorry, you gotta take the time off now. Here we go. Right. So yeah, so once a [01:05:00] month for, obviously that's something that you built up to, but that's not, it's not this grueling, like every weekend, you know, you work five days out of the week and then you're spending every weekend selling books at some convention.

You get some breathers, you get the chance to, to step back from it. It, it is still a commitment, but it sounds like it's, it's energizing at the same time. Jason, I want to connect what you said there back to something you said earlier about your routine and your, your routine of, you said you get up at 5 a.

m. You've got about two hours that you spend writing. Yeah, like you said, cons are going to, and going to events and things like that are going to disrupt your writing process. What are some of the things that you, for the authors who are wanting to develop maybe a more regimented routine, like what you're talking about?

We're changing topics here a little bit. What would you say? What tips do you have for them? Or some advice from your own experience of developing your routine? Well, and this is the thing is, is a lot of what becomes becoming a [01:06:00] professional writer, and if we're independent, we're still becoming professional writers.

One of the things that's about becoming a professional writer is just learning how you write and how you write each novel. And one of the ways I've discovered I write is I need to have a goal every day because then I feel once I've met that goal, I get my dopamine, you know, I get my, I get my positive feels off that.

So when I have got my two hours in. I feel good. I've noticed even when I go to work and I have to have somebody who's got a drug problem leave the library and it's a stressful day, nothing can really bother me that day because I got my writing in. But the other side of that is as you're developing your process and I miss my goal.

So suppose I slept in, I forgot to set my alarm or I only get 30 minutes in because something interrupted me. Like I got a sick call, now I've got to try and find a substitute. Whatever comes up, the thing that we don't do well often, especially as writers, because we can be internally critical, is we don't give ourselves the kindness of saying, Okay, cool, today didn't work out.

Tomorrow is the next day. Let's just let it go. And we'll just try again tomorrow and try again tomorrow. And so when just this weekend, we went to our local convention, [01:07:00] it tore up my writing time. I got 30 minutes in one day. I didn't get any the next day. Cause it was, it was a late night and then an early morning.

And I just told myself, and actually this is an area I'm actually directly working on right now is the kindness of like, okay, that's totally fine. Today, we're going to get back into our two hours. We'll get back up on time and we'll roll back in. And the more kindness you have, the more to yourself. The more you're gonna be able to roll back in quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I can, I can relate to that. think we all can shockingly well. Right? So, so are you writing, are you, do you have in new routine, in your schedule to write all seven days a week? Do you write every day? Do you have planned time where you aren't writing? What's that look like? Uh, she always wants me to take a day off or take plan time down.

I do need to figure that out. Oh, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna interrupt you. You need to plan time to relax because if not you will get the burnout. And this one, I don't know if he's that way with you guys, um, he does not relax and then he [01:08:00] gets a burnout and then he's like, I never get days off and I'm so stressed out.

And I'm like, dude, sit down for like three hours on like a Sunday and just do nothing. And Jason, how does that, how does that make you feel? No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I need to do that better. I feel like I'm a therapist in the room here. I'm teasing, but go ahead. When I grew up, no, yeah, yeah. It's important to have downtime and it doesn't have to be a whole day.

It can be one hour where you're going to sit down and play a video game or go for a walk and you're just going to stop for a minute. No, I, I remember, gosh. It would have been, I was in my late 20s and the feeling of sitting down to play a video game, something that, you know, even a few years before then, it really was before I, I had kids, right?

Before I had kids, sitting down to play a video game, wasting an entire afternoon. It's like, Oh yeah, no, no problem. Then I had kids and I was like, Oh, but if I sit down to play the video game, then that's time that I'm [01:09:00] spending doing that. And like, you have to wind up scheduling it. It's the most bizarre thing.

I told myself, you know, in my early twenties that, yeah, you're going to schedule, you know, time to play video games. What are you talking about? That's just ridiculous, but no, it's true. You, you get, you have a change in mindsets for different people for different reasons. Maybe it's your career. Maybe it is.

You have kids, family, whatever it happens to be. For me, it was kids. And, uh, it changes your, your mindset and you have to have to put on your own mask first. Yes, absolutely. I love that. It's a good analogy. I say that thing all the time. Yeah. Yeah. That very thing. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Emma, I think you did have a question though about like startup costs.

Go ahead. Yeah. Cause you, I, you kind of mentioned a few things like strategic wants to know numbers, like the banner, the tablecloth, your little toolkit. If you're on a budget and you're just starting out, like, what [01:10:00] are the, what are the start up costs, the things you must have versus nice to haves? One of the things that we started with were these, and it's just foam core, and we got this printed at, uh, where did you get these printed, Leah?

Kiko's, FedEx, whatever it's called nowadays. Yeah, so we got this printed, we used, um, spray adhesive to put these on, we cut them out, and then it just becomes kind of a more visual thing. You can literally make some signage like this for a very low price point, and as long as you've got something that's big and dynamic like this, you could set this up on a tabletop, and even if you didn't have a background, at least this is going to be a big thing that'll pull people in and then have a small stock of books.

Yeah, you can sell so and start from there and then like add a piece and add a piece. We've kind of done that ourselves as we've added a piece here and there. Um, yeah, actually those foam core, um, signs, uh, they're, they're wonderful, but after about one or two cons, if I drop them wrong, or if just they get something dropped on them, they, they bend and break.

And so we're going to upgrade now that we can afford to, um, but yeah, it was just, it started off as just. A single banner with no backdrop and, [01:11:00] um, a couple of the, the things here and there and, uh, just kind of establish what is the most important, um, and what can you, what can you leave out for the next time?

Um, so obviously books are the most important thing, um, a banner that says your name and what you're selling is important, a tablecloth, because sometimes they don't provide those for you, um, so yeah, just kind of piece together what you can. You can get into one of those stretch banners that's like six feet tall by about three feet wide for 150 or something, and that would be a good next point is to say, okay, I've got my little signs.

Um, I would say at a starting point, the things that are critical are a nice tablecloth because you never know if they're going to have it or not, and you don't want a plastic table. So if you have a black tablecloth. And then you have something to elevate your books, even if it's a cardboard box, so you can put a piece of fabric over.

Yeah. So it shouldn't cost you anything but the piece of fabric and a cardboard box to put things on top of. And those signs, like something that shows your book at a larger scale, those three things are the great starting point. Then maybe the next thing would be one of [01:12:00] those pull up banners to stand behind you.

Yeah. It's just another starting point, and you can just roll in. If you have a local bookstore that will allow you to do a book signing, that's a great place to come in. Sometimes they'll They'll take a cut of every book you sell, which can really cut into your profits, but you're not paying for a booth.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'm going to throw in thrift stores, thrift stores, thrift stores, um, because you can buy interesting things pretty cheaply, stuff that you can modify, um, or just redesign or create. I also just love thrift shopping and people need to do it more often. Um, but yeah, uh, as a crafter, when I was doing my craft shows, I would go to thrift stores and I would get the weirdest stuff and then I would figure out how to put it in my, in my booth, in my display and it worked wonders.

So I had a question about, um, the follow up that you have now that you've created those relationships with people, do you have like a way of getting them onto a mailing list? Do you have a special mailing list specifically for people you've met at cons? Um, and then how do you follow up? Do you or do you continue to follow [01:13:00] up with them afterwards?

This is actually an area where we can, and it's really a new priority of mine is to have a signup space where you say, Hey, you can sign up for my stuff because like this old direct sales model, if you capture somebody, the whole point of going in person, especially if it's hard for you is to gather people that will be your customers later, because the idea is, so I often talk about being an independent writer is owning Jason's hamburger stand.

So the idea is if I have a million dollars, I can buy into a franchise and I'm going to make money right away because people will drive by, they'll see the franchise, they'll know that franchise, like we talk about, they know the author or they know someone's recommended it, and they will, they'll come in and buy a hamburger for me.

But if I don't want to pay that fee up front or I don't have it, I can open Jason's Hamburger Stand, but I really need to have extremely good hamburgers, i. e. stories. And I need to have repeat customers. So I need to have that person eats that really good hamburger. They go out and tell their friend and then I get two customers the next day and then three customers the next day.

So capturing those people's information and then interacting with them, which is a whole nother deep dive on how to handle that [01:14:00] emailing list, but capturing that information, it shows us something we're not doing effectively and we need to do so if you're starting out, jump on that right away, ask people to sign up.

And also always, always, always. And this is definitely the last part in the, in the sales process. Always ask for the referral. Tell them, it's like, hey, I'm an independent writer, if you really like my books, please, please, please tell other people about it. It's really critical. Word of mouth is critical for me.

People will do it. They become your salespeople. Um, I'm going to add in on to that, um, email lists and, uh, keeping in touch with people and even posting on social media have been, um, my, I'm going to take ownership, my weakest points. Um, And I, I need to get better about that. I need to, uh, I'm also learning from scratch.

So I'm trying to figure out who's the best email lead person, how to write emails. Do I write it in my voice or Jason's voice? Um, I, I'm remembering to take photos at events and then posting them. That's one of my, my biggest problems. Um, I will listen to a podcast called the self publishing podcast. And it's more about like nonfiction [01:15:00] books to like do, um, like speaking events.

Um, but the thing I've pulled away from that the most is email lists are top dog compared to any other means of staying in touch with people because like, I mean, TikTok almost got banned. Um, Instagram could not be reliable. Facebook, people might just not go on there anymore for whatever reason. Or you could get de platformed yourself.

Or you could get de platformed. Yes. Um, email lists are king when it comes to gathering your people to you. Yeah. From the book funnel side of things, just so everybody watching knows, like if you are doing something like this in person, book funnel has some tools for you. There's book funnel print codes.

In this case, to build a newsletter, you would use these for a free book that you're giving away. It's an optional signup. People can get your reader magnet, for example, right? So if you're handing away your little mini books and has a code inside and they can get the free reader magnet. Uh, that's an optional way to do it, or you can just use a book funnel email collection page.

And I don't know, maybe that, maybe that's a [01:16:00] good fit for you guys. Cause you, you were talking about the value that you're providing them. It's a, it's a good way to be like, Hey, here's this free book. You just got to sign up for my mailing list. You're giving them something in exchange for it. There's that, that value proposition there.

This is, this is a really important thing. I'm glad you brought up. It was a lesson learned. Luckily, we learned it really fast and we were using the, the codes from BookFunnel. And the idea was we were trying to develop the report. So we went through a report process and then we'd say, Oh, and here I have a reader magnet.

It's a free ebook through BookFunnel. I'll explain what BookFunnel was and I'll hand it to them. And they'd be like, cool, thanks. And they'd leave. And it was like, Oh, our sales, it was like one day. Couple hours the sale just tanked. We're like, oh wait, we're developing a transaction and by giving that to them right away We're killing the transaction because they've received the transaction So what we started to do is we started to use that once we realized they I would always give it to them If they purchase be like, oh, by the way, here's a bonus and people like that exactly They were gonna walk away.

Yeah, I like sci fi. I don't really want to buy right now. Cool. Here's a [01:17:00] here's a Here's a sample for you to try. We would use it as kind of a elastish effort to hook them and it was, it worked. So, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Awesome. So we are going to transition now to our final segment. As much as I would like to continue on this topic, since it's been great, we'll just have to have you guys on again in the near future and talk about it again.

It'll be great. But we're now to our story behind the story. Segment where we talk about our guests, their creative endeavors, what they're currently working on. Jason, you write military sci fi. You're, you're, you're speaking my language. As you can see, I have some artwork from some of my book covers here behind me in case you can't see that.

Oh, very nice. Yeah, absolutely. So we're, we're in the, the same, the same sort of genre. What inspired you to write the Hammerhead series? What's the, what's the inspiration behind it? Absolutely. So I've been, I've been a sci fi fan since I started reading, you know, I just remember like all the, I remember going to Powell's bookstore in Portland, [01:18:00] buying every, I've saved up my money and I bought every Arthur C.

Clarke book I could get. I just love the old school sci fi and I, I actually didn't know military sci fi. I didn't really identify that what I was writing was military sci fi. What I had done when I wrote my first book was I took a short story and I flipped the ending of it. So in the end of that whole setup.

He actually turns the girl over, the woman over, excuse me, to the people that come hunting for her. And then he goes home to his wife and is like, yeah, I think I made a mistake today. And it was kind of this, kind of a tragic short story. And when I thought, I really want to dig into my first book for real, I want to jump in on this, I'm like, hey, let's take that short story and flip the ending and see what happens because I wanted a short time span with a small cast, that was super high action, just so it was less for me to mess up, and it happened to have that militarized background, and then people started emailing like, oh, what happens next, what's the sequel going to be, because it hit the best, so I started getting emails from people, And I was like, I never planned a [01:19:00] sequel.

So I started writing a sequel to it. And that one fortunately has done well as, as, as the third. Um, so I'm not necessarily a military sci fi reader, but the reason it did well for me was because I was steeped in. Reality. And I think that's really important. Whatever genre you're going to be reading, writing, and you should be reading that genre, but you should also be reading real accounts of people who've lived that life.

So if you're not reading nonfiction accounts of naval battles, if you're writing military sci fi, you really need to do that because there's an authenticity. That pervades your work. Once you've taken in some of that information, um, that's really, really critical. Yeah, I know myself, uh, haven't served in the armed forces, great respect, I have many family members who have served, uh, both in my extended family and so forth, however, what I have found really useful are interviews with veterans on YouTube, getting to see firsthand, and, and there's, depending on which generation, like which war [01:20:00] they fought in, as well, You get a totally different story and a totally different outlook in terms of like their, you know, their response to it and so forth.

I found that helpful, but yeah, maybe if you have somebody you can talk to at the very least, you know, watching documentaries, I, I agree if you're in that genre. And that's not part of your background, that's something that you need to do, because those, those veterans who read your stuff, they'll, they'll call you on it.

They'll be like, uh, you know, yeah, like, well, you know, a veteran and he, he's not, there's like, you know, like a lot of times the, you know, if he's walking in uniform and somebody thanks him for his service, he actually gets really uncomfortable. He doesn't, it's one of those things, he doesn't And it's one of those things that like, you, you don't know that if you don't, if you aren't that in that life, you think, you know, that that's something that they, you know, enjoy, but I think it's more of [01:21:00] like, he feels called out or like it makes him a little uncomfortable.

So, yeah, it's my, he's still in, he's still in the military and yeah, it's, it's kind of a interesting. Right. Right. Um, well, and with sci fi you can maybe fudge it a little bit. Because, like, different setting, in my case, totally imagined worlds and factions as well. I'm not dealing with the real world setting as a backdrop, so you can fudge some things here and there, you know, as far as those, those things are concerned.

But, but overall, the experience of, of being in the military is something that is sometimes hard to capture. I think, don't know what your thoughts are on that, but. Well, I think it's really interesting what you mentioned is whatever we're dealing with is if you're writing a story from perspective of somebody who's in a Royal Court, like they're at the top of the echelon socially, or you're doing a thing like the Firefly stuff where you're on the edges and the fringes of society, [01:22:00] perspectives are going to be very different, attitudes are going to II scenario, where the combatants have horrible experiences, but they perceive their actions as.

Salvation like they did something really important or you go to a situation where a lot of vets in Vietnam felt that everything they did was futile and when they came home, they were often derided. The whole experience is going to be a completely different thing. So it's really important to see those things and then think to yourself, Okay, well, what is it I'm doing here and how are people really going to act?

Well, I read that one story about the Korean War that was really informative about that. Or I read that story about courts in England. And now I know, okay, and you can see that when you go to the White Tower. I swear, I don't know if it's true, but I was in the White Tower in England looking at all the historical documents.

And there's this piece of armor that's like the smallest piece of armor and it was a small person. And then there's the like the biggest dude and I was looking at I'm like that looks like Terry Lannister and the mountain that rides and I wondered if George R. R. Martin stood in that same space and came up with those characters then through true historical connection.[01:23:00]

I know that he had a lot of stuff he did like that. So, steeping yourself in reality is great. Yeah, you know, a lot of, uh, Oh, sorry. I was just thinking a lot of it about, uh, the Game of Thrones is a lot about the, the War of the Roses, actually from that time. Yeah. Sorry, but go ahead. Oh, no, you're making me think about the book I'm releasing at the end of the month because I write high fantasy romantic subplot.

My heroine, she's 400 years old and she's a general and she's at the point My dad was a Vietnam vet, um, but she's at the point where she just wants to, she doesn't see any other way out. So it's making me think I should do one more pass. Visual resources, cause as Jack mentioned, documentaries and things like that for like the more, and we're talking military sci fi action adventure, are there like movies or audio visuals or anything?

Like if you need to see something, if you're not really a word person, you need to have like audio visual. Oh, yeah, this is huge. Documentaries of any kind that have [01:24:00] reality to them are really important, and the one thing I can think of is really, it was really, really heartbreaking, and it shows how people really feel about war, and you can do this with just about any genre you're writing in, is the movie Restrepo.

Restrepo is about the Kandahar Valley in Afghanistan, which was the most dangerous place in the world during the time this documentary was made. The filmmaker who made it, and I regret that I don't remember his name, but when you look it up, he actually died in a combat zone a few years later because he was in such dangerous areas making films.

There's this scene where the, the, the soldiers get ambushed, and they get pinned down, and they end up losing several soldiers, and you're right there, you see the, like, you're, there's video footage of these people getting shot and killed, so it's not for the light of heart to watch this, but there's this moment.

With the coffins, when they're talking about the people that had died, you know, all the servicemen are there, they're back at base, they've recovered the bodies, and the commander, and this dude is just huge, and he's like that classic puff chest, puff chest hero, like he is the epitome of this commander, and this is the thing that a lot of [01:25:00] military sci fi misses, is they don't see this other side of it, where everyone leaves, and he's only there with his sergeant, and he breaks down sobbing, and it's real, this actually happens.

And so that's the thing that those are those little subtle touches that you need to take in to understand, like, where is the pain? Where's the humanity? Where's the hurt? Yeah. Yeah. The emotional hook. This is a really good point. I got, I got criticized by somebody and you're going to get criticized. Like somebody's not going to like it, but I got criticized by someone.

For the romance that was in my military sci fi, because clearly they just didn't want to see that. But then I thought to myself, and I often get a lot more positive comments because of that. But it's like, what do you think kept these guys going in Vietnam? They had a picture of their girlfriend, they had a picture of their wife, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think there's Like, I have romantic subplots in my military sci fi. It doesn't, it's not romance because it doesn't abide by romance tropes. [01:26:00] And so there's a difference there. But some folks, yeah, some folks just don't like it. But if that's, if that's a part of what you're doing, you know, I think you just got to kind of own it.

And absolutely, there's a certain element of realism to that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Are there any cliches or tropes you would steer clear of? Like, My heroine, she's an alcoholic, but my dad was, so, but I worry that that's kind of cliche, but like, it's my experience, I mean. It seems like that's an authentic, uh, authentic thing, is cause when you talk about, uh, addiction of any kind, you're talking about covering pain.

So I think the most thing is, when you're going to have a, a trope, like somebody's an alcoholic, you need to justify the pain that's underneath that. So when you talk about that, people will say like, yeah, I have that pain too, and I end up watching cat videos online because I'm like so depressed about the world.

You know, they'll be able to relate and connect, and it's the pain underneath that people will connect to. And I think a lot of times when we talk about a trope, it's because it's thinly layered. It's just like, yep, he's an alcoholic and look at how trashed he is, but they never really justify why. [01:27:00] Right, right.

For example, my main character, boy, I don't want to talk too much about my own stuff here, but basically, um, he is unfaithful to his wife. And the way I had originally written the story, you're supposed to find out later that like, she was being unfaithful too, and she was kind of abusive, but you didn't get to see it until much later.

And I've realized I actually needed to show that pain first because everybody just hated my main character because they didn't understand that he was all the pain that sent him down that path and not that that's even necessarily the greatest example, but if you have a character who has something like that, which is a personality flaw.

Or something about them that is unlikable, like I think of House, MD, the show, right? Everybody's like, everybody's like, Oh, well, he's kind of, he's a likable character, but he's an asshole. But, and, and you kind of get introduced to his backstory over time, but you come to realize this is [01:28:00] his pain. That's why he, his physical, actual pain is why he's an asshole.

That's where A lot of that comes from, and he's, he's jaded for all these reasons. And it makes you like his character because you see how that could be you as well. And if you don't do that work of showing the reader that they're just going to think like your character is just an alcoholic because They're an alcoholic.

There's no explanation. It doesn't have meaning behind it. I have, I just have, I just had this experience last week. I'm working on my current project, is a sci fi stand alone that actually has some really dark themes. It involves human trafficking and sex work and a bunch of, like, really, really dark things.

It's so that the villains in that story Are horrible people and I, I found it really difficult to write these scenes and Lee and I talked a little bit. I was like, Hey, I need to watch my state of mind while I write these guys. But then I worked on the backstory this moment of exposition where you find out why this guy is so horrible.

And the [01:29:00] darkness of it just got deeper and deeper because I realized it's like, why do I feel so much darkness is because I'm connecting with this guy because we can all see it's like when we've been wounded hard enough sometimes we'll do some. And so when you can connect to a villain, God, that villain just gets really authentic and good.

Yeah. Absolutely. So, so Leah, you were wanting to talk about panels at conventions. And I think you mentioned this is maybe how you and Jason had originally met. So tell us, tell us here. Yeah. Uh, well, Jason, uh, is, he holds official rank, but he's trained in 10 martial arts, if I'm right, Jay? And I hold official rank at eight.

And we have something in common. Very cool. Yeah, just a couple of different things in common here with the military. So yeah, we can, we can get into that. Go ahead, Leah. Well, Jason loves to hate bad, uh, fight scenes, um, both in, uh, fiction and television and movies. And so he presents this panel called fighting and fiction, writing a [01:30:00] knockout scene.

Um, and I've been going to writing panels cause I also want to be a writer. Um, and I, I just go to learn whatever I can. And I met Jason there, and now we're married. Joke's on you. Um, but, um, panels is a really great way to connect with people. It's a really great way to legitimize why you're an author. Um, Jason can talk about fighting.

He can talk about story, like the hero's journey. He could talk about mindset and success. Um, and we've actually went to, I think, our first Rose City. We did a panel on Sunday. It was the last panel of the last day. And we did our fighting and fiction, and then we had, uh, he talked briefly about the book. Um, but the people, uh, I had to race them to get to our booth before the whole show closed down.

And we did about five, uh, extra sales at the end of the day, just from the panel. Yeah, five or six. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, so it's just, yeah. When we talk about stealing ourselves and becoming the best version of ourselves, doing panels is a great way [01:31:00] to step into that imposter syndrome full force and, and face that part of yourself and that shadow self as Jung talked about and really realize that you probably do have some important things to share.

Yeah. I'm finally getting to the point where I feel confident to go on panels, even though I'm not published and I haven't been writing, but I know enough about like mindset and success and, and a little bit about, uh, story writing because we, me and Jason talk all the time. Um, but it's terrifying, but it's also fun, but it's just meeting the people, too.

That's, that's why we do it. Yeah. Now, have you thought about recording yourself talking about this? Because BookFunnel has short audio, and you can upload it as a short audio, and of course we would get it. Yeah, we've been talking about doing a small fight against fiction, uh, series, like on TikTok or YouTube.

People have asked for it, and time is the biggest problem. Um, mostly, but I finally got all the equipment. I got a, um, one of those ring lights, uh, that holds like my iPad so we can see what we're doing. We need to get some microphones, um, and do that, but [01:32:00] we've been talking about it for a long while now. So yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So Jason. Yes. Martial arts background. How'd you get into that? What martial arts have you trained in? Really? Cause I, I'm, I'm a, I'm a mat rat. My parents own a martial arts school. I grew up in and around it. That's awesome. Love that. Yeah, so I actually started, um, I didn't do anything. I had moved, by the time I was 27 years old, I'd moved 27 times.

I had always been moving around. That's different houses sometimes in the same town, but a lot of times new towns every two years or so, new kid in school. Um, a lot of neuroses for that, probably one of the reasons I'm a writer is so I could sit off to the side and kind of try and connect with people without actually talking to them.

Um, but when I was 18 years old, I was down at the University of Oregon going to get my English degree and this big dude just walked right through me on the sidewalk. I had to jump off the sidewalk and he just gave me this, this dark look and walked through me and I thought, you know, I'm sick and tired of being [01:33:00] afraid of people.

So I went down and I started doing some Taekwondo and somebody punched me in the face and I was like, Oh God, I'm not ready for that. It was horrible. So I ended up in Aikido, which was a great place for me to introduce myself. So I went through Aikido for several years and then the guy showed up, uh, and I had moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado.

And a guy showed up and he's like doing all this really weird stuff off the side of class. And I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, Oh, this is Jeet Kune Do. It's Bruce Lee's martial art. And I said to him, I'm like, well, it's too bad. There's no place to train here. And he's like, are you kidding me?

There's this guy named Mike Brewer. Who is an Innosanto certified instructor. So this guy had learned Jeet Kune Do from Danny Innosanto, which means that he was one person away from Bruce Lee. So I got to learn Jeet Kune Do, two people from Bruce Lee. Um, actually I've been to a couple seminars with Innosanto, so I was able to learn directly from the head of the system.

And then his school closed down. So I ended up going and I wasn't that interested in going back to Taekwondo, but I discovered that as it was Colorado Springs where the Olympic training center is, the former head coach of the U S Olympic team had a [01:34:00] school there. So I went and trained with Sang Lee for a couple of years, which was pretty cool.

Moved around, moved around, went through traditional karate, went through a, something called Goshen Jutsu is kind of like what samurai learned when they weren't being honorable. Like if you jumped in from behind, they're just going to like get after you. And then came around to Muay Thai and then like everybody and their dog right now, which is fine.

It's a fun sport. I do jiu jitsu. So I came back around to jiu jitsu. Um, cause we get to listen to rock music while we warm up. But, uh, Yeah, yeah, that's true. Kind of my path. And the thing that I realized was it's not so much whether I can defend myself or not. I've learned, I've also learned a lot I can use with my writing.

But I developed a lot of physical fitness, which is important, and I also developed the closest friendships I'll probably have with those people, because you put yourself in very vulnerable situations with people. Absolutely. Absolutely. I have another request, and maybe Leah can help with this, but there's one niche in how to write fight scenes that I don't see done.

How to write it realistically. If your main character is a woman, even if she's a trained warrior, because I always feel like [01:35:00] there's a line between badass and just super unrealistic. Yep. Absolutely. We see this all the time. We see this all the time where people get into boxing brawls, a big dude and a smaller person will just start trading blows.

And anytime you do that, the larger, stronger person's going to win unless the smaller person. Has speed position and some destructive ability, like focusing on the most sensitive areas, destructions, things that Bruce Lee, because Bruce Lee was very small and yet he was extremely effective because he moved really fast and he targeted really well.

And so somebody who's smaller needs speed and targeting and they, they have that as a thing is if somebody is really small, they've developed themselves physically. One of the things I encourage people a lot when they're writing fight scenes is to remember you can't just teach someone a technique and they'll be effective, they have to build up their muscle structure to develop, if they're going to be really fast they have to develop fast twitch muscle over several years, they have to develop and myelinate the parts of their brain that deal with reaction time.

[01:36:00] And so it's not what I call, I actually call it the last samurai syndrome where you show up train for a winter in some system and then go take out people that have been doing it for 20 years. Yeah. I actually said that to Jonathan Mayberry at 20 books to 50k and I said, Hey, what do you think about this thing?

I call the last samurai syndrome and he's got a ninth degree black belt. And he looked at me, he had turned to me and he was somewhat jokingly because he's a really nice dude, but he looked at me and kind of scowled and said, no. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of considerations. Yeah. Yeah. I've, so my background, obviously, like I said, I grew up in martial arts.

My parents met through martial arts, uh, Iowa State University. So I grew up with it to Taekwondo, Hapkido, which is kind of the Korean, Korean cousin of Aikido and then trained in some, some Korean weapons randomly here and there. And then Sistema, uh, Russian martial art. Oh yeah. Taekwondo. Which actually has some, there's kind of some [01:37:00] folks in the Jeet Kune Do world that also do Sistema, but more so in Kenpo.

Kenpo has a lot of, a lot of folks who come from Kenpo and go into Sistema and, um, you know, you said you're like one degree separated from Bruce Lee. I am one degree of separation from Richard Gere, who is not a martial arts master, but I trained with somebody who trained him for fight scenes in a movie.

Very cool, yeah. So there's my kind of, the places martial arts will take you, but on that note, Emma, about, uh, women in, in fights, it's an awkward way to, to introduce it, but I've taught self defense classes. I, in fact, I, I've taught martial arts most of my career prior to book funnel was teaching martial arts, mainly to kids, but also to adults.

And there's a lot of, a lot of it comes down to confidence and exposure. It's confidence and exposure. [01:38:00] You have to have one. You have to have the exposure first to those scenarios to have the confidence. And then you also have to, just like writing, you have to learn to do it your own way. So when I was teaching self defense to women, I'm a big six foot three, you know, bearded guy.

So for me, it's totally different. I'm the perfect attacker for them to train with, right? Because I'm the big imposing dude. And they realize, like, well, I can do, I can strike here, and even though you're bigger than me, that doesn't matter, right? The solar plexus is, is the big key. That's the, one of the first things a lot of people learn in self defense.

I go after the eyeballs. Because, yes, right? Eyeballs. Like all of those, and then, honestly, this is what an instructor told me once, and I, I think it, it, it's something that's resonated into my writing as well. The biggest factor that determines your ability to fight. Is your willingness to fight. [01:39:00] Absolutely.

And so, if you have the willingness to fight, it doesn't matter man, woman, young, old, right? You can do something. Right? The statistics on assault, when you talk about a woman being assaulted, if she just screams, scratches, and claws and fights back, the stats on it ending are very high. Just from fighting back, even with no training.

And if you're talking like in the context of, of war, because Emma, you've got some, you've got a fantasy general. I'm imagine I'm imagining like Lord of the Rings, right? Am I It's, she's, yes. She's been training for 300 years, so we got the training down. Yes, yes, yes. The training and the exposure and, and, and all of that I, I think is important.

'cause you need to know what fighting feels like. Mm-hmm . Like the first time that you ever spar somebody, and Jason, I'm sure you know this, like, it was awful. You're freaking out, you're like, it's awful. It's, it's an experience, like you're getting kicked and you have [01:40:00] bruises and like. And then after you've done it for a while, like, or like you get weird numbness and tingling in random places because your body goes into, you know, fight or flight and there's, and you're not prepared for it.

And then after you've done it for a while and you've been punched by a few Russian dudes, you're like, Oh, yeah, Tuesday. But how important is skill? Because like, if you have. A female warrior who's been training for 300 years, but she's like 5'2 and 110 pounds. Then you have a big ass dude who either has no training or has been training for 5 years.

And it's like hand to hand combat. He corners her. I've always wondered, is it realistic she's going to win? Especially if she doesn't have any weapons. Yeah. Skills. So you should Yeah. You shush. So, um, yes, you shush. Um, so some of the most dangerous people are small women. I'm five foot three. I haven't trained that much.

Um, I've been wanting to train since I was really little. But I keep hearing that small women, if they're well trained, sometimes, um, like Aikido and Jeet Kune Do are ideal for people [01:41:00] who are small because we are quicker and harder to grab. And, uh, especially closer range, um, we're more able to get the, the center of the body.

Um, like, uh, Jason's better at range, uh, I'm better at being close up. So it's totally realistic. It just depends on what kind of fighting system. And how much training. Okay. Fundamentally, the size of someone is every, no matter how big a dude, they're still going to have squishy eyeballs and a gentle throat.

Now to address your question, this is really, this actually happened last night, is we had a guest instructor last night in jiu jitsu, who is the guy who runs the local judo club. And he is like, if you grab a hold of his gi, you are going on your butt. He will throw you down. Well, at the end of class, we're just going to do free sparring, right?

So we walk out on the mat. I walk out near him and all the other students move away from him. And I'm standing there beside him. And I'm like looking at the other guys like, thanks guys. Appreciate you. And this guy is Jack. He's probably 5'8 But he's got the whole shoulder, shoulder thing. And he's just really big.

So we get down in a position because we're doing [01:42:00] a situation where you start in a specific position. He was pretty helpless to deal with me. He was a lot stronger than me, but he didn't have jiu jitsu technique. And so I submitted him several times, even though he was stronger than me. But if we were standing up, there would be nothing I could do to stay standing again.

So it all depends on going to my strength and everything. So obviously a guy like that, I'm gonna want to get to the ground with him as fast as possible. Where am I strong? Like, what am I good at? What is he good at? Right. Right. And you need to have a strategy around that. So obviously if your character has been, uh, in war for 300 years, They will have developed these strategies to deal with different scenarios, whether it's somebody bigger than them, multiple people, whatever it happens to be, again, it comes down to exposure.

Uh, and, and so that, that, that's where training is important. And so if you're talking about world building, that training aspect, it, it becomes really important. It's not just like a, a montage, like an Iraqi movie, right? It's like, it has to be intentional and you have to [01:43:00] identify like, okay. What are the conditions that these soldiers or this character are going to have to face and assuming I'm presenting them as being competent, what is the training that they should have therefore received and why?

And so there's some, there's some, you know, reverse engineering you can kind of do there, but, um, but no, I absolutely, when you, when you, we brought up judo, that there was a judo and I did judo as a kid too, um, and I've rolled with some BJJ guys as well. And yeah, if you're on your feet with a judo guy, you won't be, yeah, yeah, you won't be for long.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Uh, no, in fact, it's funny. Uh, there was a, a, um, uh, video kind of a predated really memes, but, uh, it was for, uh, Uh, martial arts, uh, gathering, and this is at the Iowa State University, whole bunch of, of different people who have studied under Master Yong Chin [01:44:00] Pak at the time, who was the head instructor there.

And he taught Judo Taekwondo. And there was this video that some of the students had created and it was, uh, it was Taekwondo versus Hapkido, I think. And it was like, who will win? And so they had the Taekwondo guy in his gear and he's like kicking and the Hapkido guy is trying to wrist lock him. And there's a referee.

And I know this guy, I've trained with him, and I know, I'm seeing this, he's a judo player. And so he's the referee, in his judogi, and the taekwondo guy and the hakido guy are going back and forth. And I think the taekwondo guy kicks the hakido guy in the head or something. And then the referee steps up and throws him over his hip, and judo wins, was the answer at the end.

A random joke that only martial arts people will get and find funny, but anyway. Love it. Yes. Well. Jason, Leah, it was a blast having you guys on. We tell everybody we need to have you back, but we have great guests, of course. So we do. I think there's a lot that we could talk about in further [01:45:00] conversations.

Really, I think the information you provided us on in person sales. Just go into cons and being in front of people. I think it's valuable for a lot of folks. I think there's some folks who may not have even considered this or written it off. And so I hope this conversation maybe helps some people think about it in a different light.

Go ahead. I'll give you guys a moment here to shout out anything, your books, whatever you guys have going on here before we wrap things up. Well, I haven't written anything yet. Okay. Yeah. I'm always like, write prose, write prose, write prose. I need to. So I'm currently working on a project that is really cool.

When I had my emailing list, I had a big interruption in my writing life, but when I had been really hitting some steam, I had several hundred people on an emailing list, and I started writing a chapter with a question at the end, like, does the border agent let that guy through or not? Then I'd send it to my emailing group, and they voted what happens next.

And it was cool because, yeah, it was really interesting because I didn't just get a yes or no vote, I actually got other thoughts like, Oh, the old Russian woman. I thought that was super interesting. What's going to happen to her? And it's like, she's supposed to be a throwaway character. [01:46:00] And then I, I developed about half of that book and then things kind of fell apart.

So that went and sat, so I'm actually working on finishing that traditionally, just writing it out. And I'm really excited about, like I said, it's super dark, but I'm, that's what I'm working on right now. And I'm really close to getting that done. So I'm really excited to have that standalone book out there.

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. And I imagine folks can find you if they, if they can't come to one of the conventions that you guys happen to be at, uh, they can find you on Amazon, uh, and find you, find your books there as well. So Jason dash bond. com, don't forget that if you can see that dash bond. com I'll make sure to include it in the show notes as well.

All right. Well. Thank you again, Jason and Leah, for joining us today. It was a blast. Uh, thank you as always to my co hosts, Emma and Kelly. And thank you guys all for watching. We will see you all in the next one. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thank you for watching. Check out these other videos from BookFunnel and don't [01:47:00] forget to subscribe to the channel.