Author Marketing Should Be Disruptive (or at least not suck)

Everyone knows the worst part about selling books is the selling part. That darned author-marketing! So in this episode, we break down a recent post by popular author-marketing guru, Dan Blank, and discuss the difference between being "intentional" and being *integrative*--replacing the agenda-driven drudgery with some creative fun while generating interest in your books.

You really can find and craft your authentic voice in today's online world!

Also, David has some takeaways from the Independent Booksellers Association conference, and gets a bit personal about my social media posts, as examples of creative marketing that doesn't feel coercive or forced (which was very kind! But I'm not selling books myself yet). 

Dan Blank's post on Substack: 

The Creative Shift by Dan Blank (How One Author Found Her Voice Online)

And you can follow us too while you're at it: Mick Silva Editing and David R. Morris

And even on the Facebooks, if you like: Me and Dr. David

Publishing Disrupted is at PublishingDisrupted.substack.com

Mick Silva is at MickSilvaEditing.substack.com

David Morris is at dvdmorris.substack.com, LakeDriveBooks.com, and Hyponymous.com.

Transcript

Intro

Speaker 01 0:01

Hey, this is Publishing Disrupted. Publishing Disrupted is the name of the podcast that we do.

Speaker 00 0:09

Yeah, you were disrupted, as you started saying that. You disrupted yourself. That's good. We need to disrupt ourselves.

Speaker 01 0:13

Wait a second. What is this podcast? We do! And yeah, we're two former Christian publishing professionals. Still mostly professional, I guess, in this place, but former Christian publishing professionals. Trying to talk about the ups and downs of publishing in general and moving toward the independent book market. That was not the usual intro.

Speaker 00 0:37

No, that's fine. I think you just left out your name for those who haven't listened to the podcast before.

Speaker 01 0:47

I'm Mick Silva, editor Mick Silva.

Speaker 01 0:47 Speaker 00 0:55

I'm David Morris, publisher and literary agent.

Speaker 01 0:55

That's right. So that's who we are. And we come from, as I said, the Christian publishing behemoth industry. Yeah, our old selves. And yeah, we're reinventing. So a lot of people are in this boat with us. We keep finding them all the time. And we just hope to, I don't know, make a space for these people and trying to find, you know, how to reinvent and do it well and do it authentically. Like that's my word for the day, probably authentic. Yeah. We're gonna get into a little bit of from last time we talked about we wanted to move into well, just continue talking about some of the fun changes that have been going on and dig in a little bit more on how to do this authentically. That's kind of where my mind's

IBPA conference takeaways

Speaker 01 1:40

at. But you've been doing some traveling. You were at the indie conference.

Speaker 00 1:44

Yeah . So I founded Lake Drive Books. It's an independent book publishing company, very grassroots, scrappy, trying to appeal to the ex -evangelical post- evangelical audience, self-help as well. I have a psychology background, I want to publish more psychologists. So, I attended the Independent Book Publishers Association meeting. They had their annual publishing university in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago. It's a good book spot. Yeah, it is, actually. Independent books. A bunch of publishers there, believe it or not, and even like a book depository or something, some kind of museum about books is there. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, what struck me was, I mean, it's a... It's a conference that was well attended. I think they have well over 3,000 members. I happen to know the CEO, Andrea Fleck Nisbet of IBPA, and I heard her remark recently that a third of the books that are produced in the US are by IBPA. independent publishers. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Now, granted, a lot of that's vanity, but then again, there's vanity publishing at all levels, believe it or not. People don't know that, but it's true. Absolutely. But there is a fair amount, I think, too, at the indie level, definitely. Yeah. So this is a pretty widely ranging group from... um, authors who want to take matters into their own hands and do DIY publishing. And some get really good at it, especially in the fiction area.

Speaker 01 3:32

Is that right?

Speaker 00 3:32

Yeah. Fiction. Yeah. Cause fiction is much more like it's a, it's appealing to power readers who consume a lot. And right. Right. You know, there's a lot of tactics that are going on these days, like publishing series of books is a, is a great marketing tactic in and of itself. Um, to, uh, people who are just publishing because of interests that they're really, you know, they're really zeroed in on whether it's children's books or books about animals, history books, what have you, something that's a passion for them. They may be writers within their publishing enterprise or they may be publishing plenty of other people. I'm one of those in a way because my passion is for reaching those who have struggled with institutional religion and they're trying to find their way forward in terms of identity, in terms of what they define as spirituality.

Speaker 01 4:21

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 00 4:22

What really surprised me about it is just how vibrant it was. Some of the people there were indie publishers who've been in it for a while and they're quite successful and they're probably $10 million annual revenue companies or higher. Wow, that's great. But there's a lot of independent startup types there. People with a very wide range of publishing knowledge, some who didn't even know what BISAC codes are, which are those codes that... You know, you may not know what they are as an everyday person, but you might see them sometimes on the back of a book where there's like categories with slashes.

Speaker 01 5:01

Which booksellers used to then basically shelve the books. Right. Where they go.

Speaker 00 5:06

Right. But yeah. And there's a whole discussion about that kind of thing too. But I was just surprised with, you know, I saw... Just a lot of vibrancy, a lot of talk about artificial intelligence and how do we make sense of what's going on with that. It's definitely being used widely in the publishing industry. I was really surprised at how many colleagues I ran into. I saw people there I didn't know would be there. I ran into someone who's in sales and we started talking and we may actually... going to try to figure out if we can work together yeah that's great i was really really pleasantly surprised about that um you know for me it's more of a place to go and just let new ideas germinate you know how to do the business had a great great conversation about audiobooks nice um that's big yeah yeah um i mean they're they're a much more active category and The technology is there. It's a lot easier to make audio books than it used to be. Typically, they're very expensive to produce up front. Right. It's gotten a lot easier. And there's a pretty good skill set that goes along with that, too, that's separate from usual publishing skill sets. Voice talent and recording. Yeah. Engineering the files. Yeah. So that was super helpful for me. But just being around other people and sharing stories and how are you doing things.

Speaker 01 6:36

Yeah.

Speaker 00 6:36

I think that's one of the things I've enjoyed the most about being in the publishing industry is being able to be with other people in publishing. Because it's It's such a mysterious profession. It is. There's so many facets. There's so many contexts. There's so much change that has gone on. So, um, I just, that, that part was just very, you know, nourishing.

Speaker 01 6:59

That's good. I like the word vibrant. I'm, I'm seeing that more and more too. And, you know, I was just on vacation in Portland, Oregon and, uh, seeing family and stuff. Of course we go to, you know, Powell's and we stop into the, the indie bookstores and it's just great to see how much is available now. I mean, in what you say, like drilling down on specific topics, it's almost like endless how specific you can get on particular just niche interests. And I've always loved that about publishing, but to be able to see that that's still happening in a world dominated by the big five and Amazon.

Can author marketing be more authentic?

Speaker 01 7:39

Yeah. Anyway, I mean, we could probably go on a while, but you also saw a really cool article, I think, on Substack, Dan Blank. I don't know if you want to share some of your takeaways on that, but like When you sent it to me, of course, I've read damn blank a while and always gotten good stuff out of it, as I know you have. But trying to make this shift, you need some of these people who are a little bit of an independent vessel who help to interpret some of the more, I guess... monolithic That can seem like a monolithic culture when you're getting into publishing and and that's been my experience But now as I as I age and get and get older in this I recognize you can be pretty authentic in how you approach and go after what it is that interests you, how you approach publishing.

Speaker 00 8:31

And getting yourself out there.

Speaker 01 8:34

Exactly. And still make money, still be able to do this profitably. Maybe not, you know, to the levels that you would dream and love to have, but maybe also, I think there's no limit to what you could be able to do depending on, you know, your particular skill sets and interests. So, Dan Blank was helping someone, and he's basically a marketer, a coach, right?

Speaker 00 8:59

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 01 9:00

Helps people.

Speaker 00 9:01

He is one of those people out there who is helping authors with their marketing work, with their platforming work.

Speaker 01 9:08

They're just kind of figuring this out. How do I get a book in front of people, and how do I get them to see me?

Speaker 00 9:13

Maybe it's better to say their audience development. It's not just marketing. The word marketing can feel pretty... you know, loaded and sure. Um, it, but it's, it's much more, it's much more than that. Um, how, how do you, how do you establish an audience? How do you become known? How do you, how do you build on once you're known? How do you build on that? Right. Right. He's one of those folks that, that, I think he's actually one of the more thoughtful ones who brings us deeper, wider sense of framework around what is it that you're actually doing. That whole idea of creative shift is his title. And I don't know where he came up with that, but we were talking before we started recording here that I think a lot of the creative shift is about how do you think about these other mediums? And I think that's what he's helping authors do. The digital mediums are a new medium. Like this, a podcast. Yeah. They're a medium in their own right. Being on social media or having an email list, that's not... If you think of that as just marketing, you're missing the point. Right. Those places are opportunities to make an impact. They're different places. But they have caused us, I think, to reevaluate what is the medium of a book. I think books are still valuable. People don't realize it, but people still buy print books more than they do e-book and audio, by far, depending on the category. Fiction is higher with digital editions. But the way we value the medium of books... is to needs to be reevaluated, and to be simply cynical about social media. And there's a lot of reasons to be cynical about social media. People use it, they abuse it, however, whatever you want to call it. But I think what Dan tries to do is help people see that's a place where you can show up as yourself. It's just different. Right. Yeah. And so how do you value that? How do you understand that? I mean, how long have we had social media? You know, 15 years in a serious way, maybe? Sure. Yeah. I think we're still kind of rewiring ourselves about how to work with it. And it certainly has changed a lot as a landscape. Well, right. Yeah.

Speaker 01 11:53

Different platforms have different, you know, characteristics and qualities.

Unknown 12:00

Yeah.

Speaker 01 12:01

Yeah, no, I think, well, and, and for Dan, I think I say marketing just cause that that's the big overall, you know, awning over what he does, but, but yeah, it's, it's publicity training. It's, it's a lot of like figuring out, um, and authentic's the word. So I'm just going to go back to it, but like figuring out who you authentically are as a writer, as an artist, as a creator person, and then, uh, honing that or fitting it to the particular, uh, outlets and, and platforms. And I think there's just a lot of work involved there, like to figure that out, first of all. So we start typically with a vision form, at least I do. And I know you have this on the publishing side too, a vision form that helps to, and whatever you call it, maybe it's a publishing document, but it helps to kind of identify why are you doing this? What is it that's in your... you know, wheelhouse to then put out in terms of helping people get to know you. And then we'll, we'll fit that to the platform, whether that's a podcast or, I mean, typically I think you're going to need to have a sub stack or something that gets your words out there. Even if you're just doing excerpts from the print material, that's fine. But, um, you know, for some people, they're going to be very personable. Others are going to be, uh, erudite and, and, you know, teach as a professor. Um, his example in here is a professor at graduate level, but wants to bring her message down to earth and make it more accessible to people. So she's... teaching grammar from a bathtub and taking a video of that just because it's interesting and fun. And so you can build an audience based off of this because that's a fun juxtaposition. It takes a little while to come up with that format. But once you do, you can put those videos on TikTok or on Instagram or whatever and figure out how to do that. It's a little bit of work, but it is ultimately way more fun. What I came away with from this post, and we should probably put it in the notes for the show, but I came away with understanding that what you're authentically into and what your book is about can be a launching pad for this, basically building a wider audience through these mediums, whether that's a podcast or Substack or Facebook. And it doesn't have to just be a marketing device to sell your book. That's, that's, Obviously what it is. Mm-hmm, but it's it's another way to get your message out there rather than feeling like it's an Exploitative thing and stealing your time at the end of the day and exhausting

Speaker 00 14:34

and exhaust draining and

Speaker 01 14:35

you're like that Well, I didn't make any money off of that because I didn't sell any books Well, but you're building an audience and you're getting your message out there, which is what you hoped the book would do Yeah, in some some cases it's even bigger than what the book will do. Yeah, so But yeah, I do think we need to think differently about how we approach this.

Speaker 00 14:52

Yeah. I will say, I think it's sort of like that funnel analogy that they use in marketing a lot. There's the top of the funnel, which is really wide. Right. And that's where things like social media live in terms of their impact. But it's also a place where you get really wide and broad and you try to scale things. You try to make it big. That's right. And that can have an effect. I used to work in direct marketing and... That was all about scale and promoting. And you only wanted a 2% response. And you had a business model that worked on a 2% to 3% response rate. That's so crazy. Which I happen to remember. If you sent out a million mailing pieces, a 2% response is 20,000 books. That's pretty good. Which, sure. Yeah. So how do you find that model? Social media is kind of like a similar model. Email would be actually more comparable. But that's a little further down the funnel, where the funnel's a little narrower.

Speaker 01 15:54

the people who are subscribed to your email list.

Speaker 00 15:57

Right. And then you might say speaking is even further down the funnel where you're making fewer points of contact because you can only do so much of that and there's only so much demand for it. But the connection with the reader is even higher. The engagement with the reader is higher. And that's where... you get the higher percentage of conversions to sales to use business language. Sure. More

Speaker 01 16:28

like 10% to 15%, maybe.

Speaker 00 16:30

Yeah, yeah. But they can all be moments, or at all levels of that funnel can be opportunities for authentic communication. Yes,

Speaker 02 16:40

yes.

Speaker 00 16:41

It's not necessarily marketing. It is marketing, but it's also authentic communication. communication. You know, there's some authors like Mel Robbins is one. She's got a bestseller right now. There's one my wife follows called, oh, I'm forgetting now, The Holistic Psychologist. Oh, okay. And her posts are really strong with like directive things to understand and know about self-understanding, the way our minds work, the way we were brought up. And it's just, you know, after a while of keeping on some of those topics and on what she's an expert in and what she enjoys writing about, the holistic psychologist, you learn things. Now, it's not the same as an immersive book reading experience, but it still has value. Yeah, the book's

Speaker 01 17:33

where you go for more. Yeah. If you're into it. Yeah, that's really good.

Speaker 00 17:37

And this author that Dan's talking about, Sarah Levine, she's a novelist. Okay. But also a, I think an English professor. Yeah, yeah, teaches

Speaker 01 17:45

grammar, I think.

Speaker 00 17:46

Right, right, right. Yeah, word nerd. Yeah, our kind of people. She found... She found something that she enjoyed doing, which was making videos. And I can't remember which social media platform. Oh, it was actually for Substack. Was it? Okay. She's posting her videos on, or they haven't figured that part out yet. They're just, you know, she's working on the videos.

Speaker 01 18:05

What's the correct platform for the release?

Speaker 00 18:07

But she enjoyed sharing tips about grammar. Yeah. And she started in the bathtub. Yeah. But then it was like, well. Where do we go from here? Now, does every one of her posts need to be from the bathtub? That's a lot of. That'd be a lot of baths. A lot of baths, a lot of prune-like skin. But

Speaker 01 18:25

then Dan helped her to kind of think outside the box there and go, okay, let's just do strange, like maybe on the bus or on a train.

Speaker 00 18:34

Which is also capturing her in everyday moments. Exactly. Which is getting back to that word authenticity.

Speaker 01 18:39

Which is a fun idea to say a grammar teacher is going to be giving you a little takeaway from a rooftop bar or something. Yeah, I

Consider what's most accessible

Speaker 01 18:49

think that's very cool because is doing what she wanted to do which is bring her message to the masses and most people I think that's what I'm trying to be an interpreter as an editor typically to an expert in a particular topic and helping them make it more accessible to as many readers as possible and there's some give and take on that obviously in terms of like how you define your message and what types of readers you want to get if you're a teacher or someone you're not necessarily going after you know the children you're going after the adults and how do you teach this um but yeah um even aside from parsing that that too much i think you can get really granular about it and then lose the authentic voice and i've seen that happen over and over and i was saying before we started uh recording here it feels as though that was happening in um what were we calling it, the conventional publishing world, much more often than what I've found working after being in a big house situation with individual authors and trying to coach them in ways to be more authentically public. accessible in their delivery of this information bringing it down to grassroots level I think that's what I'm enjoying so much about my life now as an independent book coach and editor I don't have to ascribe to the typical conventional way of doing things I can help them I mean, find new audiences, yes, but dig down more deeply into that audience. And I find that the more specific you get, often the more relevant it becomes, the more universal it can feel to that audience because you're being more yourself.

Speaker 00 20:37

Yeah. You know? There's something to that. In the case of Sarah Levine, it's interesting because she's a novelist. thinking about how she's going to promote her books and sell more books. But what she decides to do for posting is post about grammar. Right. Yeah, that's interesting. Because she's a teacher. Right. So that fit her. And that's what she knows. That's what she geeks out about. Yeah. And the novels themselves are more of an outgrowth of that.

Speaker 01 21:06

Yeah. Would it be better, I mean, just hypothetically, would it be better for her to have a nonfiction book that's about teaching grammar? Like, say it was called Word Nerd and how to use grammar in your everyday life or something like this. Do you think that would be a stronger sell? I mean, just given what you've...

Speaker 00 21:23

Yeah,

Speaker 01 21:23

of course. We're nonfiction people, so it's probably we're biased, but...

Speaker 00 21:27

But then it's not fiction and it's not stories. And I think that's where we kind of... tend to break down is that we don't see like that's like her writing fiction and wanting to promote it and then her talking about grammar seems like two different seems disjointed right but maybe it's not maybe it's not because that's what brings her passion that's what brings her personality out and that's what people respond to in videos posted on social media yeah so that makes her interesting that makes her fun and different and different she probably has her own style and she probably uses examples from her fiction writing sure or from other fiction writing there you go that helps so yeah and then I think perhaps there's something endemic to readers of fiction where they care about things like grammar and language. That's

Speaker 01 22:21

true. It's literary fiction, too. I'm remembering. Is it? Okay. So that does make more sense. It's still something of a side door into talking about literary fiction, right? Right. So I think there's something to that as well in that Dan understands. You don't want to just go straight forward and talk about your novel and the characters in it. That's... not as interesting. Right. Talking about grammar in the bathtub.

Speaker 00 22:45

But how do you apply that to other contexts? Like, let's say you're a spiritual nonfiction writer. You know, What do you talk about on social media? What interests you? I often bring up Barbara Brown Taylor, and I'm not even that connected to her stuff right now. I'm not reading her stuff, but I do see her Substack posts. But she's a good example. And she writes a lot about her farm life. And maybe she's outright writing about that in her most recent book. I'm not sure. But I think what makes it interesting is she's writing about maybe the peace and the connection to nature. Nature, definitely. That she's finding in her farm life. And that makes her interesting. Yes. And that makes people more interested in her as a thinker, as an evaluator, as someone who can express spiritual meaning in the world that we live in today. We see that a lot. And then, oh, there's her bio that mentions her book that maybe the book talks about something completely different. Maybe it's about a trip she took to, you know, Iceland or something. Learned a lot of things. So those things, farm life in Iceland might be disconnected, but I think people can still see the whole pattern there without having to think about it outright. Yeah.

Speaker 01 24:11

You know, that's almost an underlying literary metaphor that's gone... I mean, I was saying we see that in our side of the industry a lot. Talking about spiritual matters... is uncomfortable when you're coming out of what used to be kind of a fundamentalist or just high control. I've liked that term recently, high control religious environment. You don't want to talk about it. You don't want to talk because that's all you do in those environments is talk about your faith and talk about your faith walk and all of that. So nature and I've heard the word rootedness, like getting back to our roots, right? And original ideas, even authentic as a word is very useful. It's just, it's rich. And we're trying to bring back some richness to a spiritual pursuit and extract some of the less authentic, more commodified, and sort of Americanized version of spiritual practice. So I think, yeah, nature

For example, my own Facebook posts...

Speaker 01 25:11

and...

Speaker 00 25:12

Just look at an example of yourself, if you don't mind me shifting that, pointing it back toward you. You know, you're working on and almost have completed... Yeah, I know. A work of fiction. Right. Right? Right. And I won't say anything about it. Well, who knows what it is. I'll let you say what you want to say there. But then you also post things, particularly you do long posts on Facebook.

Speaker 01 25:36

I do, yeah.

Speaker 00 25:37

But they're not the same thing. You're not posting the stories from the novel on Facebook.

Speaker 01 25:43

No. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's the ideas that drive some of the characterizations that I'm using. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And sometimes you see things culturally, too, that that are relevant to what you're writing about. And then you just comment on that, you know, because there's maybe an underlying pain point or attention or there's I mean, there's so much ideology out there now that I just I like to point at it and say, you know, this is this is not. ostensibly what Christianity was meant to be about. This is more American. There's just a difference there in terms of the cultural understanding of what is Christian and what is American. We're having a real debate about that ideologically in America

Speaker 00 26:21

right now. What are we deconstructing? Is it Christianity or is it frickin' America, everybody? Or is it American?

Speaker 01 26:25

Yeah, exactly. It's the

Speaker 00 26:27

cultural stuff around America.

Speaker 01 26:29

Right. If you were a Christian in any other time, in any other place in the world, it wouldn't look like this. Let's just talk about that. That's what I'd like to post about The novel, I mean, it grows out of that because it's about my early experience, fictionalized, and a character trying to figure out, like, which is the real Christianity? Like, what does that mean? And of course you can't unpack it because it's, it's so particular. It's so different. And, and ultimately, you know, I mean, don't give away the end of the novel. Basically it just decides that, you know, you've got to live your life and enjoy it. And I think that's where a lot of people come to. I mean, it's not, that is a big theme right now. Deeper than that. Yeah. It's like the, the Thomas Merton approach to being a monk, like just, you know, or brother Lawrence, like peel potatoes and wash dishes and love God in the midst of that. Right. It doesn't have, it doesn't have to be like, it's, complicated as we make it. But to your example about Barbara Brown Taylor, I think talking about nature and getting back into the roots of where we come from, just in terms of being skin sacks, we

Speaker 00 27:40

are mortal. And we're all mortals. That definitely reduces us to just basically, that is what we are. We're skin sacks. You're going to be warm food. The world is 4.3 billion years old, everybody. We are just skin sacks. Come on. Exactly. Get over yourself.

Speaker 01 27:54

Yeah, you don't have to make it so... High and mighty, I guess. Yeah. It's very Buddhist. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate her Buddhism. But yeah, we could list a ton of authors who go into that space and just approach their, I guess, publicity or their more public-facing self.

Speaker 00 28:11

But I think just let's take the example of you for a minute. Like your posts, particularly on Facebook, they establish you as... a thinker, a cultural critic, maybe within a very specific arena. Not someone who's writing op-eds for the New York Times. You can be thoughtful about the world that we live in, a noticer. There's a very big space that can be occupied between being a learned, seminary-trained pastor trying to talk about spiritual themes and the everyday person, and sometimes that relationship is very fraught with big issues, especially in American Christianity, of hierarchy and power, and a, what's the right word, disempowerment of the everyday person. And I'm not just talking about Luther and priesthood of all believers and so on, but because sometimes everyday people will in this literalism movement that we have in American religion will take priesthood of all believers to mean, oh, I'm an expert on the Bible just like anybody else. And that's a whole other thing. But being able to sort of be a whole person and think about your relational ethics, think about how things affect you, you're doing that and establishing an authority there that is needed but also I think points people in the direction of what else does he have to say? He's got a book. That talks about these things from a fiction point of view. You're not just a storyteller and a novelist. You're a thinker. And that's how you're showing up authentically on social media. And you enjoy doing those posts. So that should tell you something. And people are picking up on that. And that's how you're going to sell books eventually. I

Speaker 01 30:18

hope so. And hopefully not just exclusively to... I'm

"Unconscious" is the best way

Speaker 01 30:23

not even sure. It wasn't even conscious. Why Facebook? Because honestly, I've wanted to leave that so often.

Speaker 00 30:29

And that's the best way. If it's not conscious, if you can figure that out. I was talking to an author yesterday about that. I was saying to her that you do posts almost like it looks like you're doing it on an unconscious level.

Speaker 01 30:41

Yeah. And I think that's brilliant. Well, thank you. I'm not trying to do it.

Speaker 00 30:47

Well, I've seen that to her, not you, but that applies to you. No,

Speaker 01 30:50

yeah, exactly. I think it is something that ultimately that's what I'm trying to get to is that authentic space of like I didn't even consciously think about writing this. It just came out. This is something that I talk about

Speaker 00 31:05

with my office a lot. But not impulsively. Not impulsively. No, no, no. That's very different. Not

Speaker 01 31:09

in a... It depends where it comes from, right? So the motive that I'm starting with is themes. I see a connection with a particular event that just happened that's a newsworthy item to talk about, and it connects to a theme that I think we need to explore.

Speaker 00 31:28

Not an inflammatory theme. Not

Speaker 01 31:29

an inflammatory way, and typically I'm not trying to go from one side or the other. I'm honestly trying to be a moderate, or at least be a mediator or a bridge. I think of that very often. How can I bridge the gap here between what it seems like some people are missing each other talking about? How can we talk about the real issue here, which is that we all have problems, or that we're all not sure what's going on, and we want to be so certain. We want to have an idea of, will we have the right answer, and we're going to go forward with it. We all want to be right. And I often want to say, well, is it more important to be right, or is it more important to be kind? And how do we be kind first? And if we can do that, then we're doing at least no harm as we go forward, like the Mr. Rogers approach to life that I try to take. But then let's also talk about something. Let's also be... Like what Barbara Brown Taylor would talk about, like learning in the dark. I love her approach to things because it's like we all have some darkness. We all have experienced some darkness, some grief, some of the things that make it really difficult to connect with other people about. But if you don't fear it, if you will go forward with it open-handedly and talk about it honestly, then you can make a connection with someone rather than feeling like you're superior to them. Like that's such a cheap way to feel good.

Speaker 00 32:48

Like you've

Speaker 01 32:48

mastered your darkness. Yeah, like give me a break. No one has. And anyone who's telling you they have is lying to

Speaker 00 32:54

you. In

Speaker 01 32:54

fact, your darkness is where you can find some creativity. Some of the light. Exactly right. Yeah. And that's where it shows the brightest quite often. So if we can do that as a community, at least in a small community, I mean, the people who read my Facebook posts, there's not a lot of them, but the people who... More than me. You have more than me. Yeah. The people who comment on it, you know, they're wonderful thinkers because they actually are willing to engage with something that's a little deeper. than your typical Facebook post, right? And hopefully is at least an off-ramp from the typical cultural freeway or superhighway of just get mad at the people across the table from you.

Speaker 00 33:34

That's a great word, off-ramp. You're causing people to stop, pause, go off of the mainstream superhighway. That's what we're all trying to do. And I think that signals to them that maybe I want to read 60 75,000 word manuscript a longer

Speaker 01 33:53

form

Speaker 00 33:53

because I can live for two weeks of book reading where I'm in an off-ramp That's teaching me something about myself sure or helping me think through some

Speaker 01 34:01

and if you're that kind of person who's already doing that and already enjoying it Well, then that that's like a signal to you. Mm-hmm to go. Oh, this is this is someone

Going deeper is actually more fun!

Speaker 01 34:09

who has more to say

Speaker 00 34:10

So we're talking about something that's very different than Here's a cover. Here's my book cover. Right.

Speaker 01 34:15

Right.

Speaker 00 34:16

Here's what my story is about. Here's a cover

Speaker 01 34:18

copy or

Speaker 00 34:19

yeah. We're talking about some in terms of how you apply yourself at that top of the funnel, social media level, if not further, a little further down an email level and sure. And so on.

Speaker 01 34:30

Yeah. Yeah. First steps I think is identifying what makes you want to do this. Cause that's where I start with motive. And, and I think I said like part of the issue for me is, is figuring out, uh, is this, is this a pure motive for me to want to write a post about, or is this coming from me? Coming from me in the sense of like, like what I've just experienced. And, and, you know, typically you're trying to, to merge those, those things. But, but I said the word, yeah, Not intentional. I hate the word intentional, by the way. I much prefer like integrated. And if you're being integrative with what you're experiencing now to what you're like, I'm looking at it as in terms of a theme. Is this an interesting theme that I want to explore? Is this something that's bringing up something from my past that I could share that might be relevant to people now? Those types of thoughts are where I start in terms of the funnel. And then from there, hopefully, I mean, as conversation gets started, as other people connect with it, they're like, oh, yeah, me too. I felt that way. Then I can start to refine that idea. And hopefully that, you know, makes its way into, you know, an email or a sub stack or something a little more pointed and direct.

Speaker 00 35:40

That's really good. Like not liking the word intentional, which sounds like. you've got something to sell. You've got a program you want to give people. It's like an agenda. And that's not what's working on social media. That might be appropriate for... People see it a mile away. You don't want to do that. Other spaces, right. Yeah. Where they're paying for a workshop or something like that. Sure. You want that.

Speaker 01 36:02

If they've already opted in, give them what they paid for. Right. But not at the top of the funnel.

Speaker 00 36:07

But integrative is more about where are we now in this present moment on this little tiny device device on this tiny little social media post that will live in memory for about 20 seconds.

Speaker 01 36:21

As soon as they scroll past it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's going to grab someone and say, this is different. Right. Yeah. I think that's, that's often what we're starting with at the top of the funnel.

Speaker 00 36:32

And being integrative is, is about being in the present moment. Um, being honest. Right. Not, not trying to, you know, just, just having a, being more like a conversation, um, Which is kind of like what we're doing in this podcast, too, by the way. I've been thinking about that. Exactly. Because we're not coming... We're not trying to sell something. Yeah, I mean, we didn't come here with a big plan of what we were going to talk about. Right. But we know that when we talk, things come out. Things are generated. Yeah, because we've been doing this privately to just sort of like support each other. Right. And we felt, oh, well, maybe we could take this into a medium as well.

They want to buy "you"

Speaker 01 37:07

And that gets to something I always tell the authors, that they're not buying the book. They're not buying the topic. They're buying... you the person they want to know who you are what makes you tick and and why are they doing that well it's because they saw something that was authentic there that they're going how do i define my life how do i live now that person's found a way to live i really like the way they live i want to learn more about that right that's why they're coming to the book and that's that's a very different place to be than if you're like looking how to sell more more books So anyway, um, yeah, we always get to a really good spot and then we need to stop. Yeah.

Speaker 00 37:45

Well, this is, this is very, actually, I've really enjoyed this. Um, but if you're, if you're an author figuring out that what authenticity means to be in online platforms, it's there, seek it, but you better be doing it two or three times a week and you better be doing it on three, four platforms and you better be the publisher. Yeah, that's right. Well, you can also be, um, systematic about it. Yeah. Yeah. Tuesdays

Speaker 01 38:09

and Thursdays or whatever.

Speaker 00 38:10

There is a, there's a psychologist, Eric Erickson from the, from the mid 20th century. He wrote child in society, very popular, but he had this phrase called discipline subjectivity. Um, and that was, it was like the Margaret Mead concept. I don't know if she invented it of participant observation.

Speaker 01 38:26

No, that's great. Yeah.

Speaker 00 38:26

But I think in social media it's, it's how do you be disciplined and, and unconscious about it at the same time. Both of those things. Yeah. That's right. Playful. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 01 38:37

Yeah. Yeah. That, that isn't easy. It's not easy for anyone, but I would argue that the best authors, the authors that I enjoy the most are doing that.

Speaker 00 38:46

If you set a goal for it, but you're, you can hold it loosely. Yeah. it at least prompts you to get started and then the playfulness can kick in. Yeah. But sometimes if you just wait for the playfulness to come, it won't come.

Speaker 01 39:00

No, I think that's true. Yeah. It starts with kind of taking that first step and maybe that's uncomfortable for a lot of people. I mean, that's in the Dan Blank article too. So yeah. Yeah. Do check that out. I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah. And yeah, look forward to talking next time and keep on the journey, my friends.

Speaker 00 39:16

Thank you. All right. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Mick. All right. Thanks, David. Thanks for letting me ask you questions. All right. See you later. Bye.