A Better Publishing Model? Why Higher Royalties Matter More Than Advances

Publishing has been disrupted. There’s now a better way for the vast majority of authors. In this episode, David and I get into the biggest problems with traditional publishing: consolidatation, huge overhead, low royalties, and unearned advances. Much recent evidence bears out the fact that for the vast majority of newer and mid-level authors, big publishing is simply no longer built to serve them. 

Meanwhile, there's a better hybrid model that partners with authors' upfront investment to create organic, sustainable, and long-term sales, book after book. Listen in as I ask David about the significant benefits and strategic differences at Lake Drive Books.

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

Mick 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to Publishing Disrupted, uh, where we explore the ways in which book publishing is changing and how writers can best meet the challenge. I'm editor Mick Silva.

David 0:12

And I'm David Morris, uh and literary agent and publisher. Forgot who I am, which is actually feels really good to forget who I am sometimes.

Mick 0:21

This is necessary in life. Yes. Uh we're two former Christian publishing industry experts learning to navigate the massive independent book market. Yeah, former experts. I still like that. I think that's kind of fun. Yeah. I don't know what the heck I'm doing anymore. So, you know, yeah. It's kind of fun to remember that.

David 0:45

When I first exited um big publishing, I thought I could be a consultant and people would just like beat down doors to well and you did.

Mick 0:54

I mean, you consulted me. There were a lot of people that you were still..

David 0:58

I consulted you, but I officially I didn't consult for you. I didn't help you. Right. Yeah. But but they didn't beat down the doors, and I was just like, oh, okay. Yeah, you know, right. What what what's wrong with, what's wrong? I thought I was as an expert.

Mick 1:12

Oh, totally. I was so myopic with like, oh, I know so much about books and publishing. And I mean, yeah, i n one very small pond we did. But yeah, it's a very big world out there. So yeah, a lot of recent changes have have shown us uh, you know, that we don't know as much as we thought, and the disruption continues. So um yeah, it is nice to forget who you are. And I mean, that's one of the benefits of reading. I love, I love, you know, just right escaping. Yeah, yeah, that's perfect. What have you been reading recently?

David 1:46

Um, I I've been reading a number of things. Um it it I'm definitely in a moment where I've got a bunch of bunch of books going on. Yeah. Um, yeah, I I'll say Is that generally true? I would imagine. Um I I usually am like a one to two book person, but now I'm like a four or five going on at the same time. Yeah. I think uh I think I've just gotten a little better with libraries lately. Yeah, just checking out what's going on there, discovering some things. Um and uh yeah, just just uh it's just been a little bit easier. I guess my schedule's been a little more forgiving, and I've been able to do what's good reading, which is great. But the one thing I've been reading, I only just started really, is um a book that was recommended to me by uh another author who I ended up not working with, unfortunately, but it was it was great to meet this person, and we may, you know, we we'll probably stay connected. Yeah. Um, but but he recommended uh Jason DeLeon's Soldiers and Kings, Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling. Um, this is a book that actually won a national book award, which is to me, that's like the Academy Awards of Book Publishing. Yes, yes. Um I actually had the fortune to be at one of their ceremonies once, way back in the 90s or early 2000s, um, when Cold Mountain won. Oh, right. I saw the author accept his award for Cold Mountain. Um, it was it was one of those things where I was a junior level employee and and a boss had access and bought a table to for the event, and I got to sit at the table. It was quite something. Um, and to see uh it's just I so I I really do think I have a lot of respect for National Book Awards as we all do. It was also in New York Times uh 100 notable books of 2024. Wow. Again, it's called Soldiers and Kings by Jason DeLeon. It it is, he's an anthropologist and he does an ethnography. He goes and hangs out with people who are smuggling individuals from Central America through Mexico into the United States.

Mick 3:51

Wow.

David 3:52

So this is this is like this is what's really I mean, you hear all the you know, there's all the media about immigration, but does anyone have the first clue about why people are coming, who they are, what their experience is? Right. And this guy's got the goods right here in this book. Um, it will completely humanize. In fact, it's funny, what's one of the things he talks about is excuse me, that he he knows people are going to accuse him of trying to humanize these people and so on. Well, first of all, what's wrong with that? Right. Yeah. But he says, no, they're humans. Yeah. I'm going to show them as humans. Right. Um, and uh that that it's just it's first off, I love a good ethnography. I love it when a social scientist goes into the field and just hangs out with people and takes pictures and takes notes. And he actually rev you know, records and prints in the book actual conversations with uh drug, you know, not uh human smugglers, and yeah, he stays away from this really, really scary parts, but he does put himself at no small risk and and his own family under some kinds of stress because these are long-term studies. Yeah, yeah. These are not easy, right? Um, so it's it's very meaty.

Mick 5:08

Wow. Yeah. Sounds great. I'll stop there. Is it long? I would imagine it's gotta be pretty big.

David 5:14

Yeah, it doesn't look too bad though. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it goes pretty quick. It's well written.

Mick 5:18

Yeah. Well, and I I love those those types of books too. Uh, you know, Nicholas Kristoff, Tight rope. I always go back to that one. It's kind of like a investigative journalist approach, right? And there's something to that that's like it's the authority that they're speaking with because they've been embedded in that for so long and they've been studying it and researching it. And you know, it's hard to refute. You know, when you see what what all they've pulled together. Yep. And then especially if it's written well, uh, with stories and and actual um eyewitness accounts and things. That's great. Very cool. Um any fiction?

David 6:02

No. Yeah, not right now. Yeah, no, I probably should be. I still am reading very, very slowly the Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes, which is kind of like fiction.

Mick 6:07

Yeah, yeah.

David 6:08

Yeah.

Mick 6:09

Michigan writing.

David 6:09

Yeah, how about you?

Mick 6:10

Uh well, so of course fiction. Um, actually dipped back into Virgil Wander. I I brought it because it's it's just so good. I mean, you can kind of pick it up anywhere. And his writing is so pastoral that it just it calms me right down. Say it again. It's Virgil. It's called Virgil Wander, uh, Leif Enger. And I mean, he's he's a New York Times bestseller author, but um Peace Like a River is the one that most people know. Right, I read that. Um, but I mean it's a it's a very like like I said, pastoral, but but um you're you're very much embedded in that character's point of view. And you start to think and feel like you know.

David 6:49

When you say pastoral, what do you mean?

Mick 6:49

Uh yeah, that's that's good. Let's unpack that. What is it? A pastoral novel to me is like it's it's not plot driven, it's more character-driven, it's it's much more atmospheric. Your uh excitement is coming from the descriptions of things and and of of the land and the culture and the family and the connections between people rather than the car chases and the explosions and ooh, what happened when they went back in time and found their lost love or whatever. Yeah, that's a that's a speculative, and I love those books. Obviously, I've talked a lot about those. But pastoral is much more like regular life to me. Uh he's he talks about riding horses a lot, he talks about like you know, working on his house. You know, it it can sound boring, right? But uh it it's far from it.

David 7:43

So interesting. Uh yeah, because that word is often either it's associated to me more with um like farm country. Yep. Um there a little bit, but you described it more in terms of literary um qualities and features, right? Um, or pastoral in our in our own religious publishing background means pastor oh sure, yeah. You know, helping their congregants. Yes. Pastoral, yeah, I suppose, yeah. Different from ministry, yeah. Pastoral theology. I think of it. Pastoral psychology. Those are those are phrases in my background.

Mick 8:20

Yeah, I I think of sheep in a field when I think of a pastoral novel.

David 8:24

But again, you you are using that word in a way that connects to um the uh a literary sensibility, a literary technique, yeah, and voice.

Mick 8:35

Characteristics that make you kind of slow down, pay attention, yeah, relax, listen to the stream rather than try and splash through it real fast, you know?

David 8:44

Oh man, keep talking like that.

Mick 8:46

Like things, things that like remind you why you live, you know. There's there's a lot in our lives that we we have to do because we it, you know, and that's the what. And and even often when we introduce ourselves, we're talking about the who, right? And and I think if we could just get back to some of these uh novels that are are more about the why. And and you know, there's it's not that there's an answer, it's it's more that you know, when you talk about, well, what's your purpose in life? Well, it's it's really just following your curiosity and wherever that takes you, and then exploring it for a while. Amen. I just read I love those kinds of books. Seriously.

David 9:26

I'm so exhausted by the books they're telling you how to live your life right now. There's so many of them. So many. And some of them are doing really self-help. It does. Yeah. But it just I learned from them. Being in the publishing business and being attuned to it, you just you get worn out. Yeah. Yeah. Uh by oh, here's another person saying something somebody said 20 years ago, but in a new way.

Mick 9:47

In a new way, yeah. Um or in in a poetic way, or in a way that that you hadn't heard it said before. Yeah.

David 9:53

But it still gets to some bigger themes in American psychological maturity, spiritual maturity with like performance and accomplishment, right, and domination. And you still see those themes hiding in there. Oh, for sure. And um it's so losing yourself in a pastoral a novel that is pastoral. Ooh. Yeah. Right. Okay. I'm signed, I'm signed up for that one. I'm gonna go read that next.

Mick 10:21

There's a long tradition of this. Uh Jaber Crow is a book I hear about a lot from uh Wendell Berry. That's that's very uh pastoral.

David 10:31

I'm glad you said it, because I would not have known how to pronounce it. That's a classic.

Mick 10:38

You're absolutely and he's talking about, you know, kind of deep south uh personalities. Well, if you never hear something uh said out loud, yeah, yeah. I don't hang out with the right people.

David 10:51

Yeah.

Mick 10:52

Well, and then the other one, the nonfiction I wanted to mention, because I brought it a thousand tiny paper cuts, which uh that's a Lake Drive book. Catherine Spearing, and she's doing an excellent job in my estimation, about halfway through the subtle insidious nature of spiritual abuse and life on the other side. I think you mentioned that in our last uh podcast. But I've been I've been reading it since the Wild Goose when we had the one copy on the table that you couldn't sell.

David 11:15

Oh, okay, yeah.

Mick 11:15

Because it wasn't out yet. Yeah, we couldn't sell it because people won't actually wanted it.

David 11:20

People did, yeah. But a few people wanted to buy it. It was a it was the only copy. Yeah. And we couldn't.

Mick 11:25

So we we couldn't let go of it. But now it is out. And uh yeah, she's she's doing a great job. I was saying, yeah, she doesn't feel beholden to kind of go sequential or linear. She kind of um just shares a lot of different uh bits and pieces that are relevant to the topic that she's kind of covering at the time. And it's it's just a well-written, written uh read. In in my view, like there's so many of these books now, it feels like broadleaf, and I'm thinking of yeah, Convergent has a few, uh, even like bigger houses that that are kind of getting into the expangelical space. Very few, uh, in in what I've read so far are really taking on, I guess, the the topic, the concept of spiritual abuse, and really uh digging into that what it is, and then showing you. Yeah, exactly.

David 12:17

Showing you, not telling you.

Mick 12:18

Right, right. Feeling like you're you're almost experiencing it with her. Um, and not in a memoir sense. I mean, there's a there's memoir, right? There's true memoir, it's a lot, which is a story. It's a lot of personal stories, and that's immersive and experiential, but this is much more uh descriptive, I think. And and in terms of serving exactly, like just defining what it is and why it's so difficult. I was saying to you, like like to even describe what spiritual abuse is to people is a difficult thing, because they don't assume that like, oh, I've never heard that term before, right? You know, and oh that that can't be trauma, can it? Well, sure, yeah, of course it can be. Yeah, uh anything can be a traumatic experience, but especially when it's spiritual, when it's saying God is the one that's sort of punishing you, right? And you deserve it.

David 13:06

Connecting power and equality to justifying power and equality through religious means is one way to all about that power difference.

Mick 13:16

And and so few people, it seems, in the religious context want to admit that or want to accept that because oh, how dare us, who do we think we are to go up against God? And and even church, even the traditions that we have have been established for so long, it can feel wrong to even mention it.

David 13:35

It's a big commentary on what is perfectly acceptable behavior. I love what she says. I don't know if she says it clearly in this book, but she says there's all this behavior and and um that that goes on and people accept it because that's what's being that's what that's what's Christian. So normalized. Yeah. That's Christian. Exactly.

Mick 13:55

She puts it as very I mean, I you know, you could argue what Christianity really is, but but but to a lot of people it is is a very push it into people's face and make sure they get saved. And it's it's not about what they want, it's about what God wants.

David 14:10

And like the religious tract that I saw being passed around at Halloween. One of the kids dropped on the street right in front of my house.

Mick 14:17

Yeah.

David 14:17

Yeah, no, that's gonna happen around here at Grand Rapids. You don't yeah, it was about the treat that of God's saving grace, right? Oh, sure. The candy that could yeah.

Mick 14:27

I I love the different approaches, you know.

David 14:30

Sneaky. So do it.

Mick 14:33

Like, why do we have to do that?

David 14:34

Yeah, with mazes and word finds on the front and um sinner's message on the back.

Mick 14:39

Yeah, supposed to attract them and then uh you're a sinner, you little seven-year-old.

David 14:44

It's like they spring the trap and now you're saved.

Mick 14:48

Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, we're going off. Obviously. We have some spiritual trauma.

David 14:54

Exploitative. I mean, that's just that that's a form of spiritual abuse right there. I mean, it's developmentally inappropriate to be trying to uh tell little children that they're sinners. Make make kids feel grass. It's an adult ideology. At some point we should really get into something. Yes, like like some of the stuff that we experienced.

Mick 15:17

Yeah. Um but anyway, check out that book if you're relating to that at all. Um don't be scared. Yeah. It's actually very it's very comforting. Um triggering, maybe. Yeah, but but not to feel like you're not alone. I think that's the main thing that it's doing for me. It's feeling like she's got a lot of permission, like internalized shame, yes, that she's working out of, but to combat that, you have to like take in just heaping gobs of permission to allow yourself to be truthful and vulnerable. And I mean, honestly, to to even take on some of the slings and arrows, you know, of religious culture that's gonna come up against you when you you come out speaking like this.

David 16:01

She's probably experiencing some of that right now. For sure. We should have her on.

Mick 16:05

We could talk about some of it, work out some of our own stuff, probably. Um, but yeah, anyway, I I want to talk about like so Catherine came to you or did you find her? Uh, because Lake Drive is publishing this.

David 16:18

She was recommended to me okay by by some by someone we both know. Okay, yeah, okay. That's great. It was just a good great recommendation, great connection.

Mick 16:27

And so you guys kind of did your dance and then figured out, oh, this could work for Lake Drive. Let's do that. We could work together, yeah. So I I kind of wanted to ask, like, how walk me through that? Because I'm I'm in the industry and I'm an editor and I live near you, and we talk a lot, but I still I'm I'm a little bit like, how does that work? How do you figure out? Because I mean you're an agent as well. How do you figure out this is for Lake Drive or or not?

David 16:53

Yeah, well, um I I think actually a lot of it could be for Lake Drive because of the model that it it provides. Just kind of depends on whether the author wants that. Yeah. I mean, if it's an author with a giant following, yeah, um, it's probably more of an agenting thing for me. Right. Um, if it's a smaller following, we're ready to bootstrap things, get scrappy, make some waves, um, that's probably more like drive books. Okay. It does require financing. Yeah. Uh we can get pretty agile about that and creative about it, but but there are some real costs involved that's seeing Kickstarters and stuff that people have done.

Mick 17:30

And that's cool.

David 17:31

Yeah. Don't have the money that a publisher that has been around for a long time has from their backlist. That's basically how book publishing works financially. Right. Publishers out there speculating every year paying advances on new books with money that they earned from books that have been in publication for years, if not decades. Right. And uh most of those books don't work very well. The new ones. Yep. Yep. Yep. Um anyway, we can get into that. Yeah, yeah.

Mick 17:59

But yeah, so that's how I that's so you kind of pitch your model basically. I mean, is that something you could do here? Like say what it is that uh compared to maybe traditional publishing or even like a common hybrid price.

David 18:14

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm an introvert, so pitching a model is not something I No, I know. I shouldn't have I shouldn't have. Oh no, no, I'm totally ready. I do it all the time. I'm just trying to say, yeah, I've just I've been working on it, you know, I'm pretty good at it, but it still needs work. It's still really hard to overcome the uh perceptions. Oh, for sure. Uh the assumptions that people hear hybrid publisher and they get nervous. I know, yeah. Yeah. Um, and there really are a lot of perceptions and and and assumptions in a business that's changed so much. This is why we do this podcast because it's being disrupted. Yeah. Um and we we don't, yeah, it's it's hard for authors to see what I've seen on the inside of being an executive at a major publishing house. Um, what's going on with the money, who's getting paid, right? You know, what's really happening, you know, I with the with the author's content. Um are they being paid fairly? That kind of stuff. Um, I've looked at that from both sides very carefully. Um that's that's my background. I've got 30 years of publishing experience. I I'd say that, you know, I'll give you more of the longer version than what I would give to an author. And I think that really starts with um understanding that publishing today, um, I mean, I want to say this in a nuanced way, but there's a lot of there's a lot about it that's not working very well. And it's not working in the favor of authors. Right. And and sometimes even authors are perpetuating that not working part on unwittingly um by by playing along because they don't know what else there is. And that's why I'm trying to provide it with Lake Drive Books. Um and other and other publishers using a hybrid financial model. Yeah. Um, hopefully a hybrid publishing, uh hopefully a more traditional publishing model, but hybrid financial model. Okay. Um so so yeah, I mean, what's what's broken about publishing right now is is just that it is um basically it's it's it's in the midst of a corporate takeover. That's basically what's going on. You've got five big publishers. There was almost going to be just four. That's right. But the Department of Justice stepped in and did not allow Simon Schuster to be acquired by Random House, which is bigger than all the other publishers almost combined. Already. Yep. Um talk about mega mega corporation. Right. Um and um Which is owned by a German conglomerate, by the way.

Mick 20:45

Right. I used to work for PRH. That's exactly right.

David 20:49

Um it's just constantly um kind of folding in on itself, uh, creating economies of scale, enriching investors, yeah. Which, you know, probably all of us have you know 401k funds that are investing in some of these media companies. Sure. Um and paying CEOs, what CEOs get paid in our world. That's right. Uh which which for me was always a lot of dissonance because um Yeah, I remember you talking about that. Then I would see how much people reporting to me got paid who are really doing the hard work of publishing, and then what the CEOs who sometimes really did not, or the the executives who knew some things, but they didn't have they were very disconnected, especially in in evangelical publishing, I might very disconnected to the content and the audience. Um you know, they could say all the right things, but on an innate level, do they know, you know, or is it an audience that's that's playing into bigger forces that they shouldn't be playing into? Speaking of evangelicalism. Um so yeah, so I mean it's I I think uh that's that's part of it. I mean, real life examples would be just this week in Publishers Weekly, uh, we heard that uh Sounds True, a Body Mind Spirit publisher that publishes major authors like D Pak Chopra, more of like a you know, self-help using the older term new age type publisher got bought by McMillan, one of the big five.

Mick 22:18

Yeah, yeah.

David 22:19

Um simultaneous to that, um Mango, a me uh mid or small, more independent publisher, meaning you know, mid-sized publishers are a hundred million dollar annual revenue company. Wow. I don't know that Mango was that big, but it was big enough. It's shutting down. Yeah, just closing. Yep. Um you there have been on the on the distribution side in book publishing, Baker and Taylor, we just got the news a few weeks ago. Right. May the the the biggest distributor to libraries shutting down. Right. Um there were some smaller uh publishing groups, meaning uh distribution groups, that is, who have both the means to uh like a sales team that you can hire and maybe even fulfillment uh facilit facilities uh and logistics um where you can hire them to get books into bookstores for you. Right. But some of those have shut down. Maybe the biggest one is independent publishers group IPG, which I believe has had a lot of layoffs lately. Still I mean the the publishing, and there's a lot of reasons for this. I don't want to say it's just any one thing, but but without question, it's I mean you have to say it's it's hard for these independent companies to survive. Right. So why is that? We have to ask ourselves. I mean, that's a question. I'm not gonna answer it right now. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna have the final answer, but that's a question we have to keep asking ourselves. What's wrong with the publishing model that these independent-minded companies with their own cultures, their own localities, why can't they um why can't they survive? Yeah. Um and there was there, you know, you can look back a couple years in PW, there's a big article about how there's not very many mid-sized publishers left. Yeah, so so you know, just looking at some very real life things, it's like, okay, there's you know, there's there's a lot of money involved, and it's and it does have a way of making everything more generic, less flavorful, less textured.

Mick 24:20

Um the conglomeration and without a doubt. Homogerniz.

David 24:25

Without a doubt. Um so that's I mean, I think I'm trying to solve that problem.

Mick 24:29

Yeah.

David 24:30

You know, how can you run the business in a way that it's you're not having to deal with or you're not having to pay for some CEO's big paycheck. Right. Um and I think once you stop doing that, it starts to open up possibilities. Yeah. Um if you once you start restructuring how the business works, how the overhead is on your business. You only need so much. You start finding you have options. Yeah, you don't have to be locked into this thing. Um I think um one of the things to talk more specifically about it too is um advances. Um I uh I do agenting and I I see authors quantifying their value as an author based on the size of the advance that they get. Sure. And it always feels upside down to me. I get it. I get I don't know how an author can even think about it in any other way. It's yeah, it's pretty natural. I kind of get that, yeah. Yeah. Uh, but it feels as a business person upside down to me. Um what a lot of publishers do is they overpay on advances to compete with other publishers and they get some of the marquee authors. Yeah. Uh, but even on a mid-level or on a smaller level, they're still speculating quite a bit. Right. And they're not creating a model that's manageable. You know, when we were when we were at Zonerman, there we went two years without a breakout title and we still almost made our budget, which meant we were managing things well and we were executing well.

Mick 25:55

Yeah.

David 25:55

It is possible to run a publishing business without breakout titles, without home run titles. Yeah. But that's the given wisdom about publishing is that you they live on the backlist of breakout titles from the backlist.

Mick 26:09

Yep. Sub rights, things like this, restructuring the backlist. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. We we would put out uh so an existing book we might repackage or recover. Try to keep it alive. Yeah, yeah. Come up with a a new format that becomes giftable or packs in the I did that very thing myself. Yeah, the study guide in the back, and then that becomes like a good uh paperback seller. Yeah. So those types of things can often be the difference between being profitable that year or not.

David 26:42

Yeah, that can help a lot too. But it's just evidence too of how powerful a backlist is. And honestly, it's even more powerful than ever because on Amazon you have online retail, you have multiple choices, and you keep you can keep books in print a lot longer.

Mick 26:56

Yeah.

David 26:57

Um, and it, you know, it's not like a bookstore where you have limited shelf space and you gotta always be showing the front list.

Mick 27:02

So let me say something that I I remember being kind of an eye-opener for me. When I was an acquisitions editor and I realized it was more of a sales role, I was definitely managing rights. And and this was a process that began, I mean, way back even before I started in uh like what 2000, somewhere there. But it became about rights management because all of the different types of rights that ultimately an agent is selling to the house, you know, they'll say world rights on these types of formats in these um territories, or and well then that would be less than world, but usually it's North America. Right. Uh, and then sub rights is a separate right, and then audio and uh ebook is separate rights, and then even like um dramatic uh rights like like film or or stage play or and then they would have uh on the larger um contracts, they would even have um products, ancillary products, merchandise, merchandise of some type that that can be a bargaining chip as well. So rights management, you would have to go into the system at the publishing house and figure out what rights do we own for this true product. And and most authors are just thinking, well, it's just a book. Well, yes, and all of that other stuff that's on there called subrights, subsidiary, uh is is either owned by the house or not owned. And so it can be exploited. It can be exploited in the game can be resold in a different way to a different publisher who wants to publish it in France or whatever you you got. So you have to start thinking in this way of like the the intellectual property of the book is also rights that have to be managed or or either sold or continue to be owned by you. In the hybrid model, my understanding is generally you're allowing the author to still own their rights.

David 28:57

Yeah, this this is a little bit different. This is a little bit um to me, it's not the is the most key issue. Sure. For most authors, especially entry-level authors. Yeah. Um, but I but definitely, no, I don't do that actually. I act like a normal at Lake Drive, we act like a regular conventional publisher, which is sort of kind of what you want.

Mick 29:15

Right.

David 29:15

You want a publisher who can uh can can exploit in the very good sense of the word all the rights of the book. Help you sell yeah. I mean, authors don't have more rights. The first thing about taking a book to Frankfurt, not that most of my authors' books would get to Frankfurt for to in to shop international. Sure. Yeah. Um, but but we do have that capability. Um and uh yeah, it's a it's a grant of rights. I mean, the author still owns the copyright, but it's a grant of distribution rights, all world publishing rights to the publisher. So, you know, if I have an author who I had an author the other day who had um someone in Korea very interested in creating a Korean translation, I know how to navigate that for them.

Mick 29:58

Yeah.

David 29:58

Um and and also. So to some extent when a publisher invests a lot of work and money in a book, as as has the author, part of that means that you know they they're you know they're financing their business by making some of these other things happen. Exactly.

Mick 30:17

That's why it matters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So your uh Lake Drive mostly is uh buying rights or or you know uh assuming rights for uh traditional uh print books, on-demand print, yes, mostly and then uh so that'd be like paperback generally. Yeah, you can do hardcover, but it doesn't work as well, usually for a couple of years. Well, yeah, the margins are crazy. Yeah, but then the ebook and prices are crazy too for the consumer.

David 30:48

Yeah, ebook and audio. Yep. Really good. You know, we're really good with audio. We do a better job of making sure a book an audiobook happens for an author more consistently across our titles than than you might see from a conventional publisher where that's great. Many of them still seek an audio publisher to do, which means there's separate there's more parties involved in terms of the revenue. Yes, exactly. And they make less for sale. Uh just like control, and even less control, right?

Mick 31:17

Less input. So so if you want more control and you want uh you know more uh I guess rights and and fulfillment basically, like on the the subsidiary stuff, like that then that's making sense to me. Uh up front, I mean what so you've got the problem of big publishing. Up front, though, like with the lake drive, how you're you're solving that basically by offering um authors this alternative. Yeah. Like the highlights that you mentioned to them, I mean, they probably go down the list, right? Yeah.

David 31:50

From upfront to release to asking authors to do is is sort of partner you know, in the whole process, financial, editorial, all the you know, have much more high touch, much more communication, much more explaining. It wears me out sometimes, but I think that's what publishers should be doing. It's true. They certainly I might not have the resources, but publishers certainly have the resources to hire people to do those things. You know, what they could hire 20 people based on one executive's paycheck to to do some of these things.

Mick 32:25

Yeah. Well head count, I don't know, a lot of time in a company. I know we'd get calls from authors and there'd just be like questions. Yeah, they all understand.

David 32:33

Yeah, yeah. And you spend half your time explaining things. Yeah. Uh so a lot more education goes on at Lake Drive Books with our authors. Um, I think it's still very mysterious. I'm sure I think authors still feel very much in the dark, even in that model.

Mick 32:46

Well, it's a moving target. It's really difficult to define.

David 32:50

Yeah. So I mean, I think that's that's part of the pitch. You know, I've definitely um uh, you know, we focus right up front, like financially speaking, on a much high I want to make sure authors getting a much higher royalty rate. Um to you know, book book publishers r rely on an author's platform and the author's ability to promote their book now more than they ever did, but they don't admit it and they still pay the same royalties that they have all along. Exactly. That's why I get to this issue with like authors see too much value in the advanced part of it. And if they really want to seek justice, they want to really tip the scales toward where you know toward what an author deserves. They should be demanding higher royalties without question.

Mick 33:33

Which which is basically off the list price of the book, say 1895.

David 33:38

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. How much money they're making per sale. Right, right. New York houses are still 10%, 12.5%, and 15% on the hardcover at breaks of five thousand. Right. And on that's on the retail price. That's on the and paperbacks are seven and a half percent. Which which is robbery. It is. Thank you. Yeah. You have to sell so many books. Right. Whereas there are a lot of other publishers that go on more of a net revenue model, yeah. Which argues arguably is a little bit more fair. That was what we were yeah in religious public is that model. So they don't out of any intent to be fair.

Mick 34:19

Which is their take after the the retail discount. Yes, it's their take after what you're discounting it, so the retailers will carry the books.

David 34:27

Yeah, yeah.

Mick 34:27

So so which is like 40% or something.

David 34:30

Right, right. And um yeah, if they you know, so so getting that bigger royalty is really what matters. And and I think that there, you know, even in a conventional publishing house, I would argue that's really where the focus should be, not on the advance, a deal from a conventional house. Absolutely. Because, you know, honestly, if if when you know when when I did a book deal, like a major six-figure book deal, right, sometimes even seven-figure book deals, with those with some of those authors, we would be way upside down financially. And that meant people for a good year. People like you and me didn't get a didn't get a bonus that year. Right. Because our profit wasn't where it was supposed to be.

Mick 35:07

Yeah.

David 35:07

And why, you know, what you know, okay, well, that's the publisher's fault. Well, no, there's real people behind the publishing. Some of whom aren't making those big CEO paychecks.

Mick 35:15

And they didn't decide to do it that way.

David 35:18

Right. And it just seems even and it would always kind of annoy me because in Christian publishing where we're supposed to treat each other as we would want to be treated, why would you ask a publisher to put so much risk? Why would you ask the publisher to pay you in advance that is more than your book warrants within a year without a, you know, and and why would you ask them to make unreasonable or highly risky decisions about acquiring you in that way? Yep. And why not instead work with that publisher, get inside their head, help them get inside your head, partner with them, get down in the trenches, and manage this book launch well instead of in an adversarial way with a scarcity mindset. You know, that's that's well said.

Mick 36:02

Yeah. I'd love to know the answer to that.

David 36:04

Yeah, I might be an introvert, but I work on these things fine.

Mick 36:07

I'd like to know the answer to that. I mean, my quick answer would be because of the perception. The perception of the author and the agent and everyone in the industry who says, wow, that publisher really wants that book. Yeah. That's what an advanced shows. Yeah. But but that's that's the that's the old world mindset. And the royalty clout.

David 36:25

The royalty could show that. But I don't really uh I don't know very many agents or authors who say, well, that that's a really high royalty rate. That that publisher really wants me. Yeah, exactly. You know, but that's exactly how it should be. But not but not like they do with the advance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really where it matters. I mean, you you you should only be paid what your book earns. You shouldn't be paid something that's above that.

Mick 36:48

And that's, you know, I and no one's gonna convince me otherwise. Yeah, but the corollary with that is that it only requires you to sell so many books if you're making more per sale. Yeah, and you don't have to sell as many.

David 37:01

And that's just it with the lake drive model with a higher royalty rate. You know, the more books you sell, the more money you're gonna you're gonna end up making.

Mick 37:06

And the chart that you showed me, it basically the authors are making about around 50%, yeah, given all the different uh parameters. Yeah. 50% more than 50% from a traditional house.

David 37:22

Right. Yeah, I so I kind of scale it down for like real world. Um, and and if if an author is gonna sell, let's say, 2,000 books, which would be pretty good. Which would be pretty good. Uh you can you'll go Google it. The world will tell you that that's about average for a book. Yeah. Um, it can be a lot, you know, and that's and that's too that's two thousand and five years, I think maybe five years. Yeah, that that's the model I I build my charts on. I also have lock that in your minds, listeners. Well, I also have a model that's like 4,000, 6,000 and and and higher. Um books can do that, of course. Yeah, we all know that. Even at this level, even at grassroots publishing level, they can they can get higher. Um, but if you but if you were to say with a with some of the small publishers that we work with in the business that we're embedded in, you know, they're offering advances of three, four, five thousand dollars. Some are higher, but but I would say that about five thousand is where a lot of book deals are averaging out right now. Yeah. Um when they when they can see, you know, maybe two thousand or twenty five hundred dollars, twenty twenty five hundred units over sales, yeah. Over maybe a year in their case. Yeah. Um to earn that back. So they're getting about that kind of an advance, but if you're but they're also paying royalties that are pretty low royalties. I won't I won't mention them, but some are in the single digits on net. Um I won't say who or what those single digits are. Um, but but I find that I I just I just feel like okay, that's just not acknowledging the way our marketplace is today with the digital marketplace and how much you really rely on the author to drive those sales.

Mick 39:00

That's right. And if they're doing the work, they should get paid for it.

David 39:04

Yeah, so so the the deal is you can get a $5,000 advance and that you get all that money up front. Great. Hey, supposedly it pays for your, you know, the time that you have to take off to write a book. Well, actually, it doesn't. How much does $5,000 stretch when it's when it's split up amongst the city? In one way it's a lot of money. And then then there's taxes, and maybe there's an agent fee involved. Right. It's not that much money. But it's not nobody can pay very many mortgage payments on that. Yep. Um so uh so you can get a $5,000 advance, get their royalty rates, and after five years, you haven't even broken even yet. Exactly. If you've only sold 2,000 units. Yeah, you haven't paid back the publisher the advance that you've got. Given the numbers that are the money they loaned you up front. You have not paid it back. Right.

Mick 39:52

Um so that means you have made no royalties.

David 39:55

Right. Well, you have made but you just haven't gotten to 5,000 yet.

Mick 39:59

But you will be given no money.

David 40:01

Right. You will get no you will get no royalty checks. Right. No royalty checks, right. And that and that's true for a lot of books. Right. A lot of books. And some authors are like, well, that's uh some agents even uh have told me we're not interested in that, you know. That's right. Some agents have told me that's what we care about the most, but then their behavior says something.

Mick 40:20

In fact, they still need to make money.

David 40:22

Yeah. Um, but but with the Lake Drive uh hybrid model, if you spend $5,000 to help produce the book up front, you'll actually have more money than you would after five years. How does that work? That's amazing. Because of that higher royalty rate, that's where it comes in.

Mick 40:37

Yeah. So so given, let's say uh generally, and I'm I'm just going off rough numbers from what you showed me uh on your chart, but say uh given a traditional or even regular hybrid press is giving you uh like let's say a dollar fifty something per sale on a $18.95. We're talking print, right? Book, uh, you're basically uh at royalties of around $350, was it? Three sixty depends on it depends on the structure there. But the percentage of the royalties get you're giving an author is way higher than anything they could get from a traditional house.

David 41:18

If it's a smaller if if it's agreed upon to be a smaller investment up front, um, which is oh we can only do so much of that, um but uh um you know you get you get a you get a smaller royalty. Yeah. And so but it's still close, that's still close to 50% better than what you would get with a conventional deal. Okay. Um if you pay for more of the upfront expenses up front, you get an even better royalty. Okay. And then you get to you get into those that that number of you know 350 and it can escalate about $3 per rocket. Yeah. Yeah, it goes. Oh, it can, it can, yeah. And what's really amazing, so that that's that's the hybrid model is to pay money up front, get a better royalty rate and you make out better, hopefully. Um but if you can if you can find financing where you're not actually paying for that money up front, right? If you can do a Kickstarter, for example, um, Angel Investor or what have you, you start getting royalty checks from from the very first royalty period in which your book existed. And and you usually get a higher if you can pay for the full editorial costs in a hybrid model like this in the lake drive. Which is roughly 5,000 or so. Well, it's more actually. Okay. Yeah. And it depends the 75. It depends on how much I have to work to get it done. Because you want the book to be good. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, if there's a lot of if, you know, it I mean it's a it's a small operation, so I have to put more work in when I don't have when I can't hire people to do it for me. Yeah. Um so uh if if there's if there's uh you know, if you get if you get if you've invested more, more like it's more like 7,500. If you invest at 7,500, you get an even higher royalty rate. And if you haven't, and if you haven't had to pay that upfront money because you ran a Kickstarter, you get that higher higher royalty rate from day one. Right. Like we're talking a pretty solid number. And if you can sell 2,500 books or maybe even 5,000 books, I mean it's not it still, it's not enough money to go buy a brand new car because that's how publishing is. No, but that's your first book. But it is a much better financial deal for most authors who are trying to seek conventional publishing deals.

Mick 43:34

And so ultimately you're making, let's say, in in that case, you just said it would be around uh 15,000. Yeah, maybe. That was one of the number in there. The first year of sales. Right. Um, and and the sales do trickle off after the first three months or so because people are less excited about it, and you just start doing fewer podcasts and whatever as the author, right? Right. The publicity isn't as hot as the first three months of a book launch, but it continues to sell because it's a good book, because it had some good uh editing and some production and it looks good, it's still out there.

David 44:09

And mostly because the author is still out there. Yeah, yeah, still taking interviews. That's what I'm talking about, the managing aspect of publishing. We'll, you know, one of the things we do is we'll um when an author signs a contract, they get two online platforming coaching sessions with me. That's great. Um, and and that starts a whole conversation for that that's part that becomes part of the relationship going on going onward after that.

Mick 44:34

Yeah.

David 44:35

And um, you know, a lot of publishing today, because we live in a digitally a digital marketplace, very segmented marketplace, they actualize a lot of sales at the launch phase because of their built-in audience. Sure. But then, you know, publicity only counts so much these days, it doesn't count as much as it used to. Ads don't count as much as they used to, although if you can do them effectively, there's some interesting things you can do. Right. Um it's really more how are you continuing to get in front of people. Right. And how long how are you um how are you growing your online platform at the same time? It doesn't have to be you know rapid growth, it can just be good, steady, authentic growth. And that's gonna bring new readers to your books and you're going to see continued sales. Yes. Um for a lot of my authors that's tough. You know, it's tough to scale all this. Yeah. Um but but some authors are are seeing it work for them. Um and there's you know, every book is different. Yeah. And and you gotta be careful about what things you say are matter the most about this book or that book, because every book is a little bit different.

Mick 45:43

Right. Um to a different audience, yeah, it might sound different.

David 45:46

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, or or just the marketing mechanism, the engine, the thing that drives awareness for that book is different from from throughout different genres, different audiences. Right.

Mick 45:58

We talked about that last time with fiction versus nonfiction. Yeah. Yeah. What you're doing to sell those books is very different.

David 46:04

But the Lake Drive model is it's a lower overhead model. I mean, even if even if there was a lot of money involved, like like if I found some financing, I I'm a little suspicious of doing that, to be honest with you, because um I don't want to just start doing things the conventional way. I want it to be self-sustaining. Right. And there's there's other issues involved there too, like, you know, fighting against culture by trying to publish marginalized voices doesn't mean it's going to be it's gonna be as easy pro in profit-wise. Right. Right.

Mick 46:35

Um fewer people interested in that overall. Yeah. We find that in pr uh progressive Christian publishing uh anyway. Yeah. I mean, that's just that's part of the the deal here. Uh we're trying to disrupt things in that way, right? Yeah. We're trying to say, kind of like with spiritual abuse, this exists. Right. You need to pay attention to it. Right. And that's always a hard sell. Because people want what they want. Yeah. It doesn't taste good, it sounds negative. Right.

David 47:03

And there are other things too, like if you get if you've got the right keyword, if your book really hits a keyword that people are searching on Amazon, like our grief book, yeah, you're gonna experience sales just by virtue of and I still think that's amazing that's a good thing. And we have another grief book because it's exactly work, and it's good for a grief book, people, and that's your you're one of your top sellers. People aren't searching some other terms that are a little bit I mean, you'd be surprised. Like faith deconstruction is now a category on Amazon, which is amazing. It is fascinating. It tells you a lot about what's going on, yeah. And this is a real movie. It's about time. Yeah. But the funny thing is, as I've d as I've experienced when I try to um test keywords in the Amazon ads platform, just the word deconstruction works better than faith deconstruction. Interesting. Yeah. No, I can see that. It all boils down more than you think it does. Yeah. So and you in not a lot of words, there's very there's only so many words that scale, and yet they're the competitive words. Well, you can go for the more minor words, but it drops off.

Mick 48:02

They're not as big, it drops off very fast. Yeah, yeah. It still hasn't been exploited that territory enough yet to really be defined and to have its different segments, probably.

David 48:14

Yeah.

Mick 48:14

Yeah, because uh because uh here's the thing, this goes back all the way to your dissertation that I read when I was at Zondervan because it was so good. It was on grief and losing faith and how that grief process can help you orient yourself, reorient yourself to uh I mean, basically that your lost faith. The the fact that you are now uh grieving uh something that I mean it's it's even it's so hard to do. Yeah, but but the losing faith experience is not a small audience. That that experience that people understand, there's a lot of people out there. A lot of different and maybe they've come back, maybe they've reconstructed. Great. Some haven't, some won't ever.

David 48:54

It's a it's a deep psychosocial um experience. I would I would argue almost everyone. It's not just about philosophy and theology, it's about right, it's about memory, you know.

Mick 49:05

Yeah. If if you're in it at in at any length of time, it being religion in America, yeah, you're going to end up with some sort of deconstruction uh need. Yeah. And and whether you identify that or not, yeah, right, it's gonna be there.

David 49:21

How quickly we got away from like the business stuff. No, I know.

Mick 49:24

I just I want to say because your your biggest book on grief just dovetails so nicely with what you, I think, as a publisher at Lake Drive Books are trying to do is to get people to understand that if you would just pay attention a little bit to that uh quote unquote negative thing that's happening inside you, and you feel a little bit of unrest when you go to church or you know, these ideas that you had as a kid have changed a little bit now that you've gotten older and you kind of start investigating stuff. Like, don't be afraid of that. Actually, explore it. Yeah. And this is what you've always been doing. And I think there's just a a really honest and cohesive um uh what would you say, your your sign out to people that you're showing people would be like it's it's just very uh trustworthy to me because you've been doing it for so long.

David 50:18

And I think it's it is about uh audience, you know, trying to connect to the audience, which is really tough. Um I actually was invited to um a small group, a church small group where I spoke uh or I just you know we just chatted um a little while back. Um I'll try to keep the details obscure, but it's a group that started meeting about a topic that their church doesn't want to address. And um the interesting thing to me was the average age in that room was far older than you know these these young deconstructing whippersnappers. Right. And they simply said, there's new information now. And and yet we're still embedded in this community. This is where we grew up. All of us grew up. How do we leave it at this age? Right. They weren't saying that out loud, but that's what I saw in their faces.

Mick 51:12

Yeah, yeah. Even if they're not thinking about leaving it, they're thinking, like, why can't we integrate this?

David 51:17

They're and they're more fr and they're frustrated that there can't be more change. And they're actually, you can see it on their faces, they're they're they're um stumped. Yeah. And they don't they don't know what to do. Right. And they're trying to figure it out. These are people who are way way along in the developmental life cycle, the developmental life cycle.

Mick 51:36

Yeah, yeah. Well, and and even not just uh age-wise, but spiritually, yeah. You know, if you look at Fowler's stages of faith, like you they could be in stage four or five, pretty far along, like almost to the mystical stage, and still have this deconstruction that is uh it's it's basically a rested development of your spiritual life. Yeah. And this is what a lot of people are experiencing. Like, why do I feel this way?

David 52:01

And I I and that's so the Lake Drive model is really, I mean, it's about editorial innovation too, trying to trying to find the content to resource these people and ask these questions. Um, the challenge is is is how to find them. And I I think it is there. I do think that that you know, as much as we're people are we all are cynical about social media, it it can really reach even people of different, you know, of older ages. Yeah. More on Facebook probably. But um uh it's still it's still like it's still challenging, you know. We're still not connecting face to face enough on these issues. You know, I I s whether it's uh COVID hangover or just the fact that you know the way the way we're all kind of huddled, you know, in our digital marketplace now in our homes, working from home and so on. I have like stranger anxiety now when I go out and publish. So but how do we forget how to talk? Connect and talk to each other, yeah. Right. Yeah, we forget how to talk. Yeah. And um I think I think that's really important in publishing is to learn how to talk. That's true. And to get yourself out there, yeah, both as a publisher and uh and as an author.

Mick 53:07

Well, and I always remember that as uncomfortable as it might be, once you do it, it's kind of like you you go to the party and you actually have a good time. Like you start doing it again and you remember, oh yeah, people are all weird in their own weird ways, and I'm a person and I get to be weird too, as long as I have that permission, like that gobs of permission that I feel like Catherine is trying to ingest.

David 53:28

I think too uh to try try try it back into this um this business model discussion about hybrid publishing is if you're publishing in a more honest way, you're not caught up on advances, you're getting a better royalty rate, you're working more hands-on in partnership with your publisher across various components of the process. Um it's it's uh uh it's much more honest and it's smaller scale, and you're learning how to make things work on a smaller scale. Sure. You're not so caught up in it, um, it's not so do or die. Good. And um, you know, it that's about building. That's about forming new tiny microcommunities. Yeah, um, it's a viable model on a small scale, and and you're not trying to make this book discoverable all across the country. No, it might be fine to just go hang out at um, you know, church groups and homes and talk about this topic.

Mick 54:29

Yeah, that's great.

David 54:30

Yeah, yeah.

Mick 54:33

It feels it feels more doable, it feels less off-putting. I think the the term I've heard used is organic. It feels like it's growing at a a normal pace. Right. Maybe your audience, your reach, your understanding of the publishing process is grow, it's allowed to grow at its own pace. You don't have to push it artificially or try to game the system or do something that's like, you know, crazy, so you can sell a bunch of books. Because I'll tell you, I think the the model, the traditional model was a major reason. I never felt comfortable as an acquisitions editor. It just it felt like you're asking the author too much, even the ones who had published before. Putting a lot of pressure on you're asking them now, like you may gave them a lot of money, and you're asking them to basically like shoulder the burden of making sure they can go out and sell sometimes upwards of 40,000 books.

David 55:31

Yeah.

Mick 55:31

And you're going, like, how who who the heck do I know who could do that? And then, of course, as the acquisitions editor, I got to go find those authors who can do that.

David 55:39

It had this effect of either turning the author into a megalomaniac, yes, or freaking out and never meeting their deadline to turn the book.

Mick 55:47

Freaking out and running for the hills. And they weren't, you would be like, What happened to this author? Well, what happened is they got freaked out, man. Of course they did. They were trying to shoulder the expectations of this like huge industry, basically. Yep. And it's a model that's what they're trying to shoulder ultimately. It's this model that is foisted on them through a contract, and now they have to get out there and sell it.

David 56:12

Very elaborate machinery you're plugging into that isn't always because it's not about you anymore.

Mick 56:16

It's not about your book, it's about the publisher, it's about the expectations, about all the people who helped you get there. Now you feel responsible for them, and you don't realize this as a young author. Yeah.

David 56:26

I have I shared uh I and one of the things I do at Lake Drive is uh I'll share uh for the first 12 months of a book's life with Lake Drive, you get um a monthly sales report. You know, a lot of authors they don't get sales reports, they don't know how their book is selling. Right. Um Random House has a way for uh has an author portal, which is great. So that that actually I think is pretty solid, but it's still just a basic number. Right. Um I'll I will send notes, emails to authors when hey, you know, that thing you just did, look what happened to the sales just this week. It actually worked. Um and so they can kind of track that based on what you they have a much stronger sense. And I and so but I shared I shared sales of an author for this for a a recent month, and the the they were the sales weren't that many. They weren't that it wasn't a big number. Um and and this person got back to me and said, you know, any month that the sales are over zero is a great month for me. Sure. I was like, yeah, oh yeah, I mean it means people are still reading it. That doesn't sound like a a growth mindset, but man, that sounds like a healthy mindset.

Mick 57:35

Right. Well, and and it it encourages you to get that next book out there. I tell people, you know, your best uh marketing is another book. Yeah, that is a form of marketing, yeah. It honestly is because people go, oh wow, uh, that's a great book. I want to go see what else they have. Yep, and then bingo, you just made two sales instead.

David 57:53

Yep.

Mick 57:53

That to me is like an author needs to realize like this is a long-term strategy, right? You're looking for long-term sales and working with uh the first three months.

David 58:03

Like Lake Drive, we're always thinking about those kinds of things. I have another author who um had a book published by an operation that was closing down and they were returning the rights to this author. And, you know, this author could have kept it in publication on their own. Um, but but I said, let me come alongside you and be your advocate for that book. Let me have the rights to it. I'll give you an extremely good royalty rate. And we did, like way better because I didn't have to, we didn't have to do anything except transfer the book over. That there was some there was some details and some bumps along the way, but we worked it out. We troubleshoot it, we got done. Um, and and so now if that book sells, you know, that book helps, we see that as an opportunity to help establish the author's platform. That's right. And we can be a better partner because we now have that book. Yeah, and we'll market both books, they can market both books, we'll benefit from it when the new book comes out. Um, it it won't be orphaned, it will be an integral part of that author's publishing period and audience. Yeah.

Mick 59:04

Yeah. No, that's very appealing to an author who has a little bit of wherewithal about the industry, and at least have they listened to this, they will know that there are alternatives out there, and there are people who care about the quality of the book, but also the quality of the model. Yeah. The thing that you are not seeing that's behind the scenes and has gone uh that there's a lot of work that's gone into it.

David 59:28

Thank you for letting me talk about the make lake drive model. Thank you, audience, for listening. Yeah, no, this is really important. If you've made it this far, I wanted to do this note. Yeah. Um, I've got some I got audio books I can give out, and uh I even have links to 50% off some of our books for for people who sign up for our newsletter uh at lake drivebooks.com.

Mick 59:47

Let's do that. Let uh anybody who is listening and uh you know does want to like explore Lake Drive, either as just a publisher uh of books that you enjoy or as a writer. someone who uh may want to join the the cadre of authors that are uh lake drive authors. Um yeah, let us know because we'd love to to send you some books. Sounds good. Yeah. Thanks for being here and we'll talk to you next time.