The Creativity, Education, and Leadership Podcast with Ben Guest

Trusting the process is a really important way to free yourself, and the film, to discover what it is.Viridiana Lieberman is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. She recently edited the Netflix sensation The Perfect Neighbor.In this interview we talk:* Viri's love of the film Contact* Immersion as the core goal in her filmmaking* Her editing tools and workflow* Film school reflections* The philosophy and process behind The Perfect Neighbor — crafting a fully immersive, evidence-only narrative and syncing all audio to its original image.* Her thoughts on notes and collaboration* Techniques for seeing a cut with fresh eyesYou can see all of Viri's credits on her IMD page here.Thanks for reading The Creativity, Education, and Leadership Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Here is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation. Don't come for me.BEN: Viri, thank you so much for joining us today.VIRI: Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.BEN: And I always like to start with a fun question. So senior year of high school, what music were you listening to?VIRI: Oh my goodness. Well, I'm class of 2000, so I mean. I don't even know how to answer this question because I listen to everything.I'm like one of those people I was raving, so I had techno in my system. I have a lot of like, um. The, like, everything from Baby Ann to Tsta. Like, there was like, there was a lot, um, Oak and like Paul Oak and Full, there was like techno. Okay. Then there was folk music because I loved, so Ani DeFranco was the soundtrack of my life, you know, and I was listening to Tori Amos and all that.Okay. And then there's like weird things that slip in, like fuel, you know, like whatever. Who was staying? I don't remember when they came out. But the point is there was like all these intersections, whether I was raving or I was at Warp Tour or I was like at Lili Fair, all of those things were happening in my music taste and whenever I get to hear those songs and like that, that back late nineties, um, rolling into the Ox.Yeah.BEN: I love the Venn diagram of techno and folk music.VIRI: Yeah.BEN: Yeah. What, are you a fan of the film inside Lou and Davis?VIRI: Uh, yes. Yes. I need to watch it again. I watched it once and now you're saying it, and I'm like writing it on my to-dos,BEN: but yes, it, it, the first time I saw it. I saw in the East Village, actually in the theater, and I just, I'm a Cohen Brothers fan, but I didn't love it.Mm-hmm. But it, it stayed on my mind and yeah. Now I probably rewatch it once a year. It might, yeah. In my, in my, on my list, it might be their best film. It's so good. Oh,VIRI: now I'm gonna, I'm putting it on my, I'm literally writing it on my, um, post-it to watch it.BEN: I'mVIRI: always looking for things to watch in the evening.BEN: What, what are some of the docs that kind of lit your flame, that really turned you on?VIRI: Uh, this is one of those questions that I, full transparency, get very embarrassed about because I actually did not have a path of documentary set for me from my film Loving Passion. I mean, when I graduated film school, the one thing I knew I didn't wanna do was documentary, which is hilarious now.Hilarious. My parents laugh about it regularly. Um. Because I had not had a good documentary education. I mean, no one had shown me docs that felt immersive and cinematic. I mean, I had seen docs that were smart, you know, that, but, but they felt, for me, they didn't feel as emotional. They felt sterile. Like there were just, I had seen the most cliched, basic, ignorant read of doc.And so I, you know, I dreamed of making space epics and giant studio films. Contact was my favorite movie. I so like there was everything that about, you know, when I was in film school, you know, I was going to see those movies and I was just chasing that high, that sensory high, that cinematic experience.And I didn't realize that documentaries could be. So it's not, you know, ever since then have I seen docs that I think are incredible. Sure. But when I think about my origin tale, I think I was always chasing a pretty. Not classic, but you know, familiar cinematic lens of the time that I was raised in. But it was fiction.It was fiction movies. And I think when I found Docs, you know, when I was, the very long story short of that is I was looking for a job and had a friend who made docs and I was like, put me in coach, you know, as an editor. And she was like, you've never cut a documentary before. I love you. Uh, but not today.But no, she hired me as an archival producer and then I worked my way up and I said, no, okay, blah, blah, blah. So that path showed me, like I started working on documentaries, seeing more documentaries, and then I was always chasing that cinema high, which by the way, documentaries do incredibly, you know, and have for many decades.But I hadn't met them yet. And I think that really informs. What I love to do in Docs, you know, I mean, I think like I, there's a lot that I like to, but one thing that is very important to me is creating that journey, creating this, you know, following the emotion, creating big moments, you know, that can really consume us.And it's not just about, I mean, not that there are films that are important to me, just about arguments and unpacking and education. At the same time, we have the opportunity to do so much more as storytellers and docs and we are doing it anyway. So that's, that's, you know, when, it's funny, when light my fire, I immediately think of all the fiction films I love and not docs, which I feel ashamed about.‘cause now I know, you know, I know so many incredible documentary filmmakers that light my fire. Um, but my, my impulse is still in the fiction world.BEN: Used a word that it's such an important word, which is immersion. And I, I first saw you speak, um, a week or two ago at the doc NYC Pro panel for editors, documentary editors about the perfect neighbor, which I wanna talk about in a bit because talk about a completely immersive experience.But thank you first, uh, contact, what, what is it about contact that you responded to?VIRI: Oh my goodness. I, well, I watched it growing up. I mean, with my dad, we're both sci-fi people. Like he got me into that. I mean, we're both, I mean he, you know, I was raised by him so clearly it stuck around contact for me. I think even to this day is still my favorite movie.And it, even though I'm kind of a style nut now, and it's, and it feels classic in its approach, but. There's something about all the layers at play in that film. Like there is this crazy big journey, but it's also engaging in a really smart conversation, right? Between science and faith and some of the greatest lines from that film.Are lines that you can say to yourself on the daily basis to remind yourself of like, where we are, what we're doing, why we're doing it, even down to the most basic, you know, funny, I thought the world was what we make it, you know, it's like all of these lines from contact that stick with me when he says, you know, um, did you love your father?Prove it. You know, it's like, what? What is proof? You know? So there were so many. Moments in that film. And for me, you know, climbing into that vessel and traveling through space and when she's floating and she sees the galaxy and she says they should have sent a poet, you know, and you're thinking about like the layers of this experience and how the aliens spoilers, um, you know, show up and talk to her in that conversation herself.Anyways, it's one of those. For me, kind of love letters to the human race and earth and what makes us tick and the complexity of identity all in this incredible journey that feels so. Big yet is boiled down to Jody Foster's very personal narrative, right? Like, it's like all, it just checks so many boxes and still feels like a spectacle.And so the balance, uh, you know, I, I do feel my instincts normally are to zoom in and feel incredibly personal. And I love kind of small stories that represent so much and that film in so many ways does that, and all the other things too. So I'm like, how did we get there? But I really, I can't, I don't know what it is.I can't shake that film. It's not, you know, there's a lot of films that have informed, you know, things I love and take me out to the fringe and take me to the mainstream and, you know, on my candy and, you know, all those things. And yet that, that film checks all the boxes for me.BEN: I remember seeing it in the theaters and you know everything you said.Plus you have a master filmmaker at the absolute top Oh god. Of his class. Oh my,VIRI: yes,BEN: yes. I mean, that mirror shot. Know, know, I mean, my jaw was on the ground because this is like, right, right. As CGI is started. Yes. So, I mean, I'm sure you've seen the behind the scenes of how theyVIRI: Yeah.BEN: Incredible.VIRI: Years.Years. We would be sitting around talking about how no one could figure out how he did it for years. Anybody I met who saw contact would be like, but how did they do the mirror shot? Like I nobody had kind of, yeah. Anyways, it was incredible. And you know, it's, and I,BEN: I saw, I saw it just with some civilians, right?Like the mirror shot. They're like, what are you talking about? The what? Huh?VIRI: Oh, it's so funny you bring that up because right now, you know, I went a friend, I have a friend who's a super fan of Wicked. We went for Wicked for Good, and there is a sequence in that film where they do the mirror jot over and over and over.It's like the, it's like the. Special device of that. It feels that way. That it's like the special scene with Glenda and her song. And someone next to me was sitting there and I heard him under his breath go,wow.Like he was really having a cinematic. And I wanted to lean over and be like, watch contact, like, like the first time.I saw it was there and now it's like people have, you know, unlocked it and are utilizing it. But it was, so, I mean, also, let's talk about the opening sequence of contact for a second. Phenomenal. Because I, I don't think I design, I've ever seen anything in cinema in my life like that. I if for anybody who's listening to this, even if you don't wanna watch the entire movie, which of course I'm obviously pitching you to do.Watch the opening. Like it, it's an incredible experience and it holds up and it's like when, yeah. Talk about attention to detail and the love of sound design and the visuals, but the patience. You wanna talk about trusting an audience, sitting in a theater and that silence Ah, yeah. Heaven film heaven.BEN: I mean, that's.That's one of the beautiful things that cinema does in, in the theater. Right. It just, you're in, you're immersed in this case, you know, pulling away from earth through outer space at however many, you know, hundreds of millions of miles an hour. You can't get that anywhere else. Yeah. That feeling,VIRI: that film is like all the greatest hits reel of.Storytelling gems. It's like the adventure, the love, the, you know, the, the complicated kind of smart dialogue that we can all understand what it's saying, but it's, but it's doing it through the experience of the story, you know, and then someone kind of knocks it outta the park without one quote where you gasp and it's really a phenomenal.Thing. Yeah. I, I've never, I haven't talked about contact as much in ages. Thank you for this.BEN: It's a great movie. It's there, and there were, there were two other moments in that movie, again when I saw it, where it's just like, this is a, a master storyteller. One is, yeah. When they're first like trying to decode the image.Mm-hmm. And you see a swastika.VIRI: Yeah. Oh yeah. And you're like,BEN: what the, what the f**k? That was like a total left turn. Right. But it's, it's, and I think it's, it's from the book, but it's like the movie is, it's, it's, you know, it's asking these questions and then you're like totally locked in, not expecting.You know, anything from World War II to be a part of this. And of course in the movie the, go ahead.VIRI: Yeah, no, I was gonna say, but the seed of thatBEN: is in the first shot,VIRI: scientifically educating. Oh yes. Well, the sensory experience, I mean, you're like, your heart stops and you get full Bo chills and then you're scared and you know, you're thinking a lot of things.And then when you realize the science of it, like the first thing that was broadcast, like that type of understanding the stakes of our history in a space narrative. And, you know, it, it just, there's so much. You know, unfurling in your mind. Yeah. In that moment that is both baked in from your lived experiences and what you know about the world, and also unlocking, so what's possible and what stakes have already been outside of this fiction, right?Mm-hmm. Outside of the book, outside of the telling of this, the reality of what has already happened in the facts of it. Yeah. It's really amazing.BEN: And the other moment we're just, and now, you know, being a filmmaker, you look back and I'm sure this is, it falls neatly and at the end of the second act. But when Tom scars, you know, getting ready to go up on the thing and then there's that terrorist incident or whatever, and the whole thing just collapses, the whole, um, sphere collapses and you just like, wait, what?Is that what's gonna happen now?VIRI: Yeah, like a hundred million dollars in it. It does too. It just like clink pun. Yeah. Everything.BEN: Yeah.VIRI: Think they'll never build it again. I mean, you just can't see what's coming after that and how it went down, who it happened to. I mean, that's the magic of that film, like in the best films.Are the ones where every scene, every character, it has so much going into it. Like if somebody paused the film there and said, wait, what's happening? And you had to explain it to them, it would take the entire movie to do it, you know, which you're like, that's, we're in it. Yeah. Anyway, so that's a great moment too, where I didn't, and I remember when they reveal spoilers again, uh, that there's another one, but when he is zooming in, you know, and you're like, oh, you know, it just, it's, yeah.Love it. It's wonderful. Now, I'm gonna watch that tonight too. IBEN: know, I, I haven't probably, I probably haven't watched that movie in 10 years, but now I gotta watch it again.VIRI: Yeah.BEN: Um, okay, so let's talk doc editing. Yes. What, um, I always like to, I heard a quote once that something about when, when critics get together, they talk meaning, and when artists get together, they talk paint.So let's talk paint for a second. What do you edit on?VIRI: I cut mainly on Avid and Premier. I, I do think of myself as more of an avid lady, but there's been a lot of probably the films that have done the most. I cut on Premier, and by that I mean like, it's interesting that I always assume Avid is my standard yet that most of the things that I love most, I cut on Premiere right now.I, I toggle between them both multiple projects on both, on both, um, programs and they're great. I love them equal for different reasons. I'm aBEN: big fan of Avid. I think it gets kind of a, a bad rap. Um, what, what are the benefits of AVID versus pr? I've never used Premier, but I was a big final cut seven person.So everybody has said that. Premier kind of emulates Final cut. Seven.VIRI: I never made a past seven. It's funny, I recently heard people are cutting on Final Cut Pro again, which A adds off. But I really, because I thought that ship had sailed when they went away from seven. So with, I will say like the top line things for me, you know, AVID forces you to control every single thing you're doing, which I actually think it can feel hindering and intimidating to some folks, but actually is highly liberating once you learn how to use it, which is great.It's also wonderful for. Networks. I mean, you can send a bin as a couple kilobyte. Like the idea that the shared workflow, when I've been on series or features with folks, it's unbeatable. Uh, you know, it can be cumbersome in like getting everything in there and stuff like that and all, and, but, but it kind of forces you to set up yourself for success, for online, for getting everything out.So, and there's a lot of good things. So then on conversely Premier. It's amazing ‘cause you can hit the ground running. You just drag everything in and you go. The challenge of course is like getting it out. Sometimes that's when you kind of hit the snaps. But I am impressed when I'm working with multiple frame rates, frame sizes, archival for many decades that I can just bring it into Premier and go and just start cutting.And you know, also it has a lot of intuitive nature with other Adobe Pro, you know, uh, applications and all of this, which is great. There's a lot of shortcuts. I mean, they're getting real. Slick with a lot of their new features, which I have barely met. I'm like an archival, I'm like a ancient picture editor lady from the past, like people always teach me things.They're just like, you know, you could just, and I'm like, what? But I, so I guess I, you know, I don't have all the tech guru inside talk on that, but I think that when I'm doing short form, it does feel like it's always premier long form. Always seems to avid. Team stuff feels avid, you know, feature, low budge features where they're just trying to like make ends meet.Feel Premier, and I think there's an enormous accessibility with Premier in that regard. But I still feel like Avid is a studios, I mean, a, a studio, well, who knows? I'm cut in the studios. But an industry standard in a lot of ways it still feels that way.BEN: Yeah, for sure. How did you get into editing?VIRI: I went to film school and while I was there, I really like, we did everything.You know, we learned how to shoot, we learned everything. Something about editing was really thrilling to me. I, I loved the puzzle of it, you know, I loved putting pieces together. We did these little funny exercises where we would take a movie and cut our own trailer and, you know, or they'd give us all the same footage and we cut our scene from it and.Itwas really incredible to see how different all those scenes were, and I loved finding ways to multipurpose footage, make an entire tone feel differently. You know, like if we're cutting a scene about a bank robbery, like how do you all of a sudden make it feel, you know, like romantic, you know, or whatever.It's like how do we kind of play with genre and tone and how much you can reinvent stuff, but it was really structure and shifting things anyways, it really, I was drawn to it and I had fun editing my things and helping other people edit it. I did always dream of directing, which I am doing now and I'm excited about, but I realized that my way in with editing was like learning how to do a story in that way, and it will always be my language.I think even as I direct or write or anything, I'm really imagining it as if I'm cutting it, and that could change every day, but like when I'm out shooting. I always feel like it's my superpower because when I'm filming it's like I know what I have and how I'll use it and I can change that every hour.But the idea of kind of knowing when you've got it or what it could be and having that reinvented is really incredible. So got into edit. So left film school. And then thought and loved editing, but wasn't like, I'm gonna be an editor. I was still very much on a very over, you know what? I guess I would say like, oh, I was gonna say Overhead, broad bird's eye.I was like, no, I'm gonna go make movies and then I'll direct ‘em and onward, but work, you know, worked in post houses, overnights, all that stuff and PA and try made my own crappy movies and you know, did a lot of that stuff and. It kept coming back to edit. I mean, I kept coming back to like assistant jobs and cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, and it just felt like something that I had a skill for, but I didn't know what my voice was in that.Like I didn't, it took me a long time to realize I could have a voice as an editor, which was so dumb, and I think I wasted so much time thinking that like I was only search, you know, like that. I didn't have that to bring. That editing was just about. Taking someone else's vision. You know, I'm not a set of hands like I'm an artist as well.I think we all are as editors and I was very grateful that not, not too long into, you know, when I found the doc path and I went, okay, I think this is where I, I can rock this and I'm pretty excited about it. I ended up working with a small collection of directors who all. Respected that collaboration.Like they were excited for what I do and what I bring to it and felt, it made me feel like we were peers working together, which was my fantasy with how film works. And I feel like isn't always the constant, but I've been spoiled and now it's what I expect and what I want to create for others. And you know, I hope there's more of us out there.So it's interesting because my path to editing. Was like such a, a practical one and an emotional one, and an ego one, and a, you know, it's like, it's like all these things that have led me to where I am and the perfect neighbor is such a culmination of all of that. For sure.BEN: Yeah. And, and I want to get into it, uh, first the eternal question.Yeah. Film school worth it or not worth it?VIRI: I mean, listen, I. We'll share this. I think I've shared this before, but relevant to the fact I'll share it because I think we can all learn from each other's stories. I did not want to go to college. Okay? I wanted to go straight to la. I was like, I'm going to Hollywood.I wanted to make movies ever since I was a kid. This is what I'm gonna do, period. I come from a family of teachers. All of my parents are teachers. My parents divorced. I have my stepparent is teacher, like everybody's a teacher. And they were like, no. And not just a teacher. My mom and my dad are college professors, so they were like college, college, college.I sabotaged my SATs. I did not take them. I did not want to go to college. I was like, I am going to Los Angeles. Anyways, uh, my parents applied for me. To an accredited arts college that, and they were like, it's a three year try semester. You'll shoot on film, you can do your, you know, and they submitted my work from high school when I was in TV production or whatever.Anyways, they got me into this little college, and when I look back, I know that that experience was really incredible. I mean, while I was there, I was counting the days to leave, but I know that it gave me not only the foundation of. You know, learning, like, I mean, we were learning film at the time. I don't know what it's like now, but like we, you know, I learned all the different mediums, which was great on a vocational level, you know, but on top of that, they're just throwing cans of film at us and we're making all the mistakes we need to make to get where we need to get.And the other thing that's happening is there's also like the liberal arts, this is really, sounds like a teacher's kid, what I'm about to say. But like, there's also just the level of education To be smarter and learn more about the world, to inform your work doesn't mean that you can't. You can't skip college and just go out there and find your, and learn what you wanna learn in the stories that you journey out to tell.So I feel really torn on this answer because half of me is like. No, you don't need college. Like just go out and make stuff and learn what you wanna learn. And then the other half of me have to acknowledge that, like, I think there was a foundation built in that experience, in that transitional time of like semi-structure, semi independence, you know, like all the things that come with college.It's worth it, but it's expensive as heck. And I certainly, by the time I graduated, film wasn't even a thing and I had to learn digital out in the world. And. I think you can work on a film set and learn a hell of a lot more than you'll ever learn in a classroom. And at the same time, I really love learning.So, you know, my, I think I, my parents were right, they know it ‘cause I went back to grad school, so that was a shock for them. But I think, but yeah, so I, I get, what I would say is, it really is case, this is such a cop out of an answer, case by case basis. Ask yourself, you know, if you need that time and if you, if you aren't gonna go.You need to put in the work. You have to really like go out, go on those sets, work your tail off, seek out the books, read the stuff, you know, and no one's gonna hand you anything. And my stories are a hell of a lot, I think smarter and eloquent because of the education I had. Yeah.BEN: So you shuttle on, what was the school, by the way?VIRI: Well, it was called the, it was called the International Fine Arts College. It no longer exists because Art Institute bought it. It's now called the Miami International University of Art and Design, and they bought it the year I graduated. So I went to this tiny little arts college, uh, but graduated from this AI university, which my parents were like, okay.Um, but we were, it was a tiny little college owned by this man who would invite all of us over to his mansion for brunch every year. I mean, it was very strange, but cool. And it was mainly known for, I think fashion design and interior design. So the film kids, we all kind of had, it was an urban campus in Miami and we were all like kind of in a wado building on the side, and it was just kind of a really funky, misfit feeling thing that I thought was, now when I look back, I think was like super cool.I mean, they threw cans of film at us from the very first semester. There was no like, okay, be here for two years and earn your opportunity. We were making stuff right away and all of our teachers. All of our professors were people who were working in the field, like they were ones who were, you know, writing.They had written films and fun fact of the day, my, my cinematography professor was Sam Beam from Iron and Wine. If anybody knows Iron and Wine, like there's like, there's like we, we had crazy teachers that we now realize were people who were just probably trying to pay their bills while they were on their journey, and then they broke out and did their thing after we were done.BEN: Okay, so shooting on film. Yeah. What, um, was it 16 or 35? 16. And then how are you doing sound? No, notVIRI: 35, 16. Yeah. I mean, we had sound on Dax, you know, like we were recording all the mm-hmm. Oh, when we did the film. Yeah, yeah. Separate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did the Yeah. Syncs soundBEN: into a We did a,VIRI: yeah, we did, we did one.We shot on a Bolex, I think, if I remember it right. It did like a tiny, that probably was eight, you know? But the point is we did that on. The flatbed. After that, we would digitize and we would cut on media 100, which was like this. It was, I think it was called the, I'm pretty sure it was called Media 100.It was like this before avid, you know. A more archaic editing digital program that, so we did the one, the one cut and splice version of our, our tiny little films. And then we weren't on kind of beautiful steam backs or anything. It was like, you know, it was much, yeah, smaller. But we had, but you know, we raced in the changing tents and we did, you know, we did a lot of film, love and fun.And I will tell you for your own amusement that we were on set once with somebody making their short. The girl at the AC just grabbed, grabbed the film, what's, oh my God, I can't even believe I'm forgetting the name of it. But, um, whatever the top of the camera grabbed it and thought she had unlocked it, like unhinged it and just pulled it out after all the film just come spooling out on set.And we were like, everybody just froze and we were just standing there. It was like a bad sketch comedy, like we're all just standing there in silence with like, just like rolling out of the camera. I, I'll never forget it.BEN: Nightmare. Nightmare. I, you know, you said something earlier about when you're shooting your own stuff.Being an editor is a little bit of a superpower because you know, oh, I'm gonna need this, I'm gonna need that. And, and for me it's similar. It's especially similar. Like, oh, we didn't get this. I need to get an insert of this ‘cause I know I'm probably gonna want that. I also feel like, you know, I came up, um, to instill photography, 35 millimeter photography, and then when I got into filmmaking it was, um, digital, uh, mini DV tape.So, but I feel like the, um, the structure of having this, you know, you only have 36 shots in a still camera, so you've gotta be sure that that carried over even to my shooting on digital, of being meticulous about setting up the shot, knowing what I need. Whereas, you know, younger people who have just been shooting digital their whole lives that just shoot everything and we'll figure it out later.Yeah. Do do you, do you feel you had that Advant an advantage? Yes. Or sitting on film gave you some advantages?VIRI: I totally, yes. I also am a firm believer and lover of intention. Like I don't this whole, like we could just snap a shot and then punch in and we'll, whatever. Like it was my worst nightmare when people started talking about.We'll shoot scenes and something, it was like eight K, so we can navigate the frame. And I was like, wait, you're not gonna move the camera again. Like, it just, it was terrifying. So, and we passed that, but now the AI stuff is getting dicey, but the, I think that you. I, I am pretty romantic about the hands-on, I like books with paper, you know, like, I like the can, the cinematographer to capture, even if it's digital.And those benefits of the digital for me is like, yes, letting it roll, but it's not about cheating frames, you know, like it's about, it's about the accessibility of being able to capture things longer, or the technology to move smoother. These are good things. But it's not about, you know, simplifying the frame in something that we need to, that is still an art form.Like that's a craft. That's a craft. And you could argue that what we choose, you know, photographers, the choice they make in Photoshop is the new version of that is very different. Like my friends who are dps, you know, there's always like glasses the game, right? The lenses are the game. It's like, it's not about filters In posts, that was always our nightmare, right?The old fix it and post everybody's got their version of their comic strip that says Fix it and post with everything exploding. It's like, no, that's not what this is about. And so, I mean, I, I think I'll always be. Trying to, in my brain fight the good fight for the craftiness of it all because I'm so in love with everything.I miss film. I'm sad. I miss that time. I mean, I think I, it still exists and hopefully someday I'll have the opportunity that somebody will fund something that I'm a part of that is film. And at the same time there's somewhere in between that still feels like it's honoring that freshness. And, and then now there's like the, yeah, the new generation.It's, you know, my kids don't understand that I have like. Hand them a disposable camera. We'll get them sometimes for fun and they will also like click away. I mean, the good thing you have to wind it so they can't, they can't ruin it right away, but they'll kind of can't fathom that idea. And um, and I love that, where you're like, we only get 24 shots.Yeah, it's veryBEN: cool. So you said you felt the perfect neighbor, kind of, that was the culmination of all your different skills in the craft of editing. Can you talk a little bit about that?VIRI: Yes. I think that I spent, I think all the films, it's like every film that I've had the privilege of being a part of, I have taken something like, there's like some tool that was added to the tool belt.Maybe it had to do with like structure or style or a specific build to a quote or, or a device or a mechanism in the film, whatever it is. It was the why of why that felt right. That would kind of be the tool in the tool belt. It wouldn't just be like, oh, I learned how to use this new toy. It was like, no, no.There's some kind of storytelling, experience, technique, emotion that I felt that Now I'm like, okay, how do I add that in to everything I do? And I want every film to feel specific and serve what it's doing. But I think a lot of that sent me in a direction of really always approaching a project. Trying to meet it for like the, the work that only it can do.You know, it's like, it's not about comps. It's not about saying like, oh, we're making a film that's like, fill in the blank. I'm like, how do we plug and play the elements we have into that? It's like, no, what are the elements we have and how do we work with them? And that's something I fought for a lot on all the films I've been a part of.Um, and by that I mean fight for it. I just mean reminding everybody always in the room that we can trust the audience, you know, that we can. That, that we should follow the materials what, and work with what we have first, and then figure out what could be missing and not kind of IME immediately project what we think it needs to be, or it should be.It's like, no, let's discover what it is and then that way we will we'll appreciate. Not only what we're doing in the process, but ultimately we don't even realize what it can do for what it is if we've never seen it before, which is thrilling. And a lot of those have been a part of, there have been pockets of being able to do that.And then usually near the end there's a little bit of math thing that happens. You know, folks come in the room and they're trying to, you know, but what if, and then, but other people did. Okay, so all you get these notes and you kind of reel it in a little bit and you find a delicate balance with the perfect neighbor.When Gita came to me and we realized, you know, we made that in a vacuum like that was we, we made that film independently. Very little money, like tiny, tiny little family of the crew. It was just me and her, you know, like when we were kind of cutting it together and then, and then there's obviously producers to kind of help and build that platform and, and give great feedback along the way.But it allowed us to take huge creative risks in a really exciting way. And I hate that I even have to use the word risks because it sounds like, but, but I do, because I think that the industry is pushing against, you know, sometimes the spec specificity of things, uh, in fear of. Not knowing how it will be received.And I fantasize about all of us being able to just watch something and seeing how we feel about it and not kind of needing to know what it is before we see it. So, okay, here comes the perfect neighbor. GTA says to me early on, like, I think. I think it can be told through all these materials, and I was like, it will be told through like I was determined and I held us very strict to it.I mean, as we kind of developed the story and hit some challenges, it was like, this is the fun. Let's problem solve this. Let's figure out what it means. But that also came within the container of all this to kind of trust the audience stuff that I've been trying to repeat to myself as a mantra so I don't fall into the trappings that I'm watching so much work do.With this one, we knew it was gonna be this raw approach and by composing it completely of the evidence, it would ideally be this kind of undeniable way to tell the story, which I realized was only possible because of the wealth of material we had for this tracked so much time that, you know, took the journey.It did, but at the same time, honoring that that's all we needed to make it happen. So all those tools, I think it was like. A mixed bag of things that I found that were effective, things that I've been frustrated by in my process. Things that I felt radical about with, you know, that I've been like trying to scream in, into the void and nobody's listening.You know, it's like all of that because I, you know, I think I've said this many times. The perfect neighbor was not my full-time job. I was on another film that couldn't have been more different. So I think in a, in a real deep seated, subconscious way, it was in conversation with that. Me trying to go as far away from that as possible and in understanding what could be possible, um, with this film.So yeah, it's, it's interesting. It's like all the tools from the films, but it was also like where I was in my life, what had happened to me, you know, and all of those. And by that I mean in a process level, you know, working in film, uh, and that and yes, and the values and ethics that I honor and wanna stick to and protect in the.Personal lens and all of that. So I think, I think it, it, it was a culmination of many things, but in that approach that people feel that has resonated that I'm most proud of, you know, and what I brought to the film, I think that that is definitely, like, I don't think I could have cut this film the way I did at any other time before, you know, I think I needed all of those experiences to get here.BEN: Oh, there's so much there and, and there's something kind of the. The first part of what you were saying, I've had this experience, I'm curious if you've had this experience. I sort of try to prepare filmmakers to be open to this, that when you're working with something, especially Doc, I think Yeah. More so Doc, at a certain point the project is gonna start telling you what it wants to be if you, if you're open to it.Yes. Um, but it's such a. Sometimes I call it the spooky process. Like it's such a ephemeral thing to say, right? Like, ‘cause you know, the other half of editing is just very technical. Um, but this is like, there's, there's this thing that's gonna happen where it's gonna start talking to you. Do you have that experience?VIRI: Yes. Oh, yes. I've also been a part of films that, you know, they set it out to make it about one person. And once we watched all the footage, it is about somebody else. I mean, there's, you know, those things where you kind of have to meet the spooky part, you know, in, in kind of honoring that concept that you're bringing up is really that when a film is done, I can't remember cutting it.Like, I don't, I mean, I remember it and I remember if you ask me why I did something, I'll tell you. I mean, I'm very, I am super. Precious to a fault about an obsessive. So like you could pause any film I've been a part of and I'll tell you exactly why I used that shot and what, you know, I can do that. But the instinct to like just grab and go when I'm just cutting and I'm flowing.Yeah, that's from something else. I don't know what that is. I mean, I don't. People tell me that I'm very fast, which is, I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but I think it really comes from knowing that the job is to make choices and you can always go back and try different things, but this choose your own adventure novel is like just going, and I kind of always laugh about when I look back and I'm like, whoa, have that happen.Like, you know, like I don't even. And I have my own versions of imposter syndrome where I refill mens and I'm like, oh, got away with that one. Um, or every time a new project begins, I'm like, do I have any magic left in the tank? Um, but, but trusting the process, you know, to what you're socking about is a really important way to free yourself and the film to.Discover what it is. I think nowadays because of the algorithm and the, you know, I mean, it's changing right now, so we'll see where, how it recalibrates. But for a, for a while, over these past years, the expectations have, it's like shifted where they come before the film is like, it's like you create your decks and your sizzles and you write out your movie and you, and there is no time for discovery.And when it happens. It's like undeniable that you needed to break it because it's like you keep hitting the same impasse and you can't solve it and then you're like, oh, that's because we have to step outta the map. But I fear that many works have suffered, you know, that they have like followed the map and missed an opportunity.And so, you know, and for me as an editor, it's always kinda a red flag when someone's like, and here's the written edit. I'm like, what? Now let's watch the footage. I wanna know where There's always intention when you set up, but as people always say, the edit is kind of the last. The last step of the storytelling process.‘cause so much can change there. So there is, you know, there it will reveal itself. I do get nerdy about that. I think a film knows what it is. I remember when I was shooting my first film called Born to Play, that film, we were. At the championship, you know, the team was not, thought that they were gonna win the whole thing.We're at the championship and someone leaned over to me and they said, you know, it's funny when a story knows it's being filmed. And I was like, ah. I think about that all the time because now I think about that in the edit bay. I'm like, okay, you tell me, you know, what do you wanna do? And then you kind of like, you match frame back to something and all of a sudden you've opened a portal and you're in like a whole new theme.It's very cool. You put, you know, you put down a different. A different music temp, music track, and all of a sudden you're making a new movie. I mean, it's incredible. It's like, it really is real world magic. It's so much fun. Yeah,BEN: it is. It's a blast. The, so, uh, I saw you at the panel at Doc NYC and then I went that night or the next night and watched Perfect Neighbor blew me away, and you said something on the panel that then blew me away again when I thought about it, which is.I think, correct me if I'm wrong, all of the audio is syncedVIRI: Yeah. To the footage.BEN: That, to me is the big, huge, courageous decision you made.VIRI: I feel like I haven't said that enough. I don't know if folks understand, and it's mainly for the edit of that night, like the, I mean, it's all, it's, it's all that, but it was important.That the, that the sound would be synced to the shock that you're seeing. So when you're hearing a cop, you know, a police officer say, medics, we need medics. If we're in a dashboard cam, that's when it was, you know, echoing from the dashboard. Like that's what, so anything you're hearing is synced. When you hear something coming off from the per when they're walking by and you hear someone yelling something, you know, it's like all of that.I mean, that was me getting really strict about the idea that we were presenting this footage for what it was, you know, that it was the evidence that you are watching, as you know, for lack of a better term, unbiased, objectively as possible. You know, we're presenting this for what it is. I, of course, I have to cut down these calls.I am making choices like that. That is happening. We are, we are. Composing a narrative, you know, there, uh, that stuff is happening. But to create, but to know that what you're hearing, I'm not applying a different value to the frame on, on a very practical syn sound way. You know, it's like I'm not gonna reappropriate frames.Of course, in the grand scheme of the narrative flow with the emotions, you know, the genre play of this horror type film, and there's a lot happening, but anything you were hearing, you know, came from that frame. Yeah.BEN: That's amazing. How did you organize the footage and the files initially?VIRI: Well, Gita always likes to laugh ‘cause she is, she calls herself my first ae, which is true.I had no a, you know, I had, she was, she had gotten all that material, you know, she didn't get that material to make a film. They had originally, this is a family friend who died and when this all happened, they went down and gathered this material to make a case, to make sure that Susan didn't get out. To make sure this was not forgotten.You know, to be able to utilize. Protect the family. And so there was, at first it was kind of just gathering that. And then once she got it, she realized that it spanned two years, you know, I mean, she, she popped, she was an editor for many, many years, an incredible editor. She popped it into a system, strung it all out, sunk up a lot of it to see what was there, and realized like, there's something here.And that's when she called me. So she had organized it, you know, by date, you know, and that, that originally. Strung out a lot of it. And then, so when I came in, it was just kind of like this giant collection of stuff, like folders with the nine one calls. How long was the strung out? Well, I didn't know this.Well, I mean, we have about 30 hours of content. It wasn't one string out, you know, it was like there were the call, all the calls, and then the 9 1 1 calls, the dash cams. The ring cams. Okay. Excuse me. The canvassing interviews, audio only content. So many, many. Was about 30 hours of content, which honestly, as most of us editors know, is not actually a lot I've cut.You know, it's usually, we have tons more than that. I mean, I, I've cut decades worth of material and thousands of hours, you know, but 30 hours of this type of material is very specific, you know, that's a, that's its own challenge. So, so yeah. So the first, so it was organized. It was just organized by call.Interview, you know, some naming conventions in there. Some things we had to sync up. You know, the 9 1 1 calls would overlap. You could hear it in the nine one one call center. You would hear someone, one person who called in, and then you'd hear in the background, like the conversation of another call. It's in the film.There's one moment where you can hear they're going as fast as they can, like from over, from a different. So there was so much overlap. So there was some syncing that we kind of had to do by ear, by signals, by, you know, and there's some time coding on the, on the cameras, but that would go off, which was strange.They weren't always perfect. So, but that, that challenge unto itself would help us kind of really screen the footage to a finite detail, right. To like, have, to really understand where everybody is and what they're doing when,BEN: yeah. You talked about kind of at the end, you know, different people come in, there's, you know, maybe you need to reach a certain length or so on and so forth.How do you, um, handle notes? What's your advice to young filmmakers as far as navigating that process? Great question.VIRI: I am someone who, when I was a kid, I had trouble with authority. I wasn't like a total rebel. I think I was like a really goody goody too. She was borderline. I mean, I had my moments, but growing up in, in a journey, an artistic journey that requires you to kind of fall in love with getting critiques and honing things and working in teams.And I had some growing pains for a long time with notes. I mean, my impulse was always, no. A note would come and I'd go, no, excuse me. Go to bed, wake up. And then I would find my way in and that would be great. That bed marinating time has now gone away, thank goodness. And I have realized that. Not all notes, but some notes have really changed the trajectory of a project in the most powerful waves.And it doesn't always the, to me, what I always like to tell folks is it's, the notes aren't really the issues. It's what? It's the solutions people offer. You know? It's like you can bring up what you're having an issue with. It's when people kind of are like, you know what I would do? Or you know what you think you should do, or you could do this.You're like, you don't have to listen to that stuff. I mean, you can. You can if you have the power to filter it. Some of us do, some of us don't. I've worked with people who. Take all the notes. Notes and I have to, we have to, I kind of have to help filter and then I've worked with people who can very quickly go need that, don't need that need, that, don't need that.Hear that, don't know how to deal with that yet. You know, like if, like, we can kind of go through it. So one piece of advice I would say is number one, you don't have to take all the notes and that's, that's, that's an honoring my little veary. Wants to stand by the vision, you know, and and fight for instincts.Okay. But the second thing is the old classic. It's the note behind the note. It's really trying to understand where that note's coming from. Who gave it what they're looking for? You know, like is that, is it a preference note or is it a fact? You know, like is it something that's really structurally a problem?Is it something that's really about that moment in the film? Or is it because of all the events that led to that moment that it's not doing the work you think it should? You know, the, the value is a complete piece. So what I really love about notes now is I get excited for the feedback and then I get really excited about trying to decipher.What they mean, not just taking them as like my to-do list. That's not, you know, that's not the best way to approach it. It's really to get excited about getting to actually hear feedback from an audience member. Now, don't get me wrong, an audience member is usually. A producer in the beginning, and they have, they may have their own agenda, and that's something to know too.And maybe their agenda can influence the film in an important direction for the work that they and we all wanted to do. Or it can help at least discern where their notes are coming from. And then we can find our own emotional or higher level way to get into solving that note. But, you know, there's still, I still get notes that make me mad.I still get notes where I get sad that I don't think anybody was really. Watching it or understanding it, you know, there's always a thought, you know, that happens too. And to be able to read those notes and still find that like one kernel in there, or be able to read them and say, no kernels. But, but, but by doing that, you're now creating the conviction of what you're doing, right?Like what to do and what not to do. Carrie, equal value, you know, so you can read all these notes and go, oh, okay, so I am doing this niche thing, but I believe in it and. And I'm gonna stand by it. Or like, this one person got it and these five didn't. And I know that the rules should be like majority rules, but that one person, I wanna figure out why they got it so that I can try to get these, you know, you get what I'm saying?So I, I've grown, it took a long time for me to get where I am and I still have moments where I'm bracing, you know, where I like to scroll to see how many notes there are before I even read them. You know, like dumb things that I feel like such a kid about. But we're human. You know, we're so vulnerable.Doing this work is you're so naked and you're trying and you get so excited. And I fall in love with everything. I edit so furiously and at every stage of the process, like my first cut, I'm like, this is the movie. Like I love this so much. And then, you know, by the 10th root polling experience. I'm like, this is the movie.I love it so much. You know, so it's, it's painful, but at the same time it's like highly liberating and I've gotten a lot more flowy with it, which was needed. I would, I would encourage everybody to learn how to really enjoy being malleable with it, because that's when you find the sweet spot. It's actually not like knowing everything right away, exactly what it's supposed to be.It's like being able to know what the heart of it is. And then get really excited about how collaborative what we do is. And, and then you do things you would've never imagined. You would've never imagined, um, or you couldn't have done alone, you know, which is really cool. ‘cause then you get to learn a lot more about yourself.BEN: Yeah. And I think what you said of sort of being able to separate the idea of, okay, something maybe isn't clicking there, versus whatever solution this person's offering. Nine times outta 10 is not gonna be helpful, but, but the first part is very helpful that maybe I'm missing something or maybe what I want to connect is not connecting.VIRI: And don't take it personally. Yeah. Don't ever take it personally. I, I think that's something that like, we're all here to try to make the best movie we can.BEN: Exactly.VIRI: You know? Yeah. And I'm not gonna pretend there aren't a couple sticklers out there, like there's a couple little wrenches in the engine, but, but we will, we all know who they are when we're on the project, and we will bind together to protect from that.But at the same time, yeah, it's, yeah. You get it, you get it. Yeah. But it's really, it's an important part of our process and I, it took me a while to learn that.BEN: Last question. So you talked about kind of getting to this cut and this cut and this cut. One of the most important parts of editing, I think is especially when, when you've been working on a project for a long time, is being able to try and see it with fresh eyes.And of course the, one of the ways to do that is to just leave it alone for three weeks or a month or however long and then come back to it. But sometimes we don't have that luxury. I remember Walter Merch reading in his book that sometimes he would run the film upside down just to, mm-hmm. You know, re re redo it the way his brain is watching it.Do you have any tips and tricks for seeing a cut with fresh eyes? OhVIRI: yeah. I mean, I mean, other than stepping away from it, of course we all, you know, with this film in particular, I was able to do that because I was doing other films too. But I, one good one I always love is take all the music out. Just watch the film without music.It's really a fascinating thing. I also really like quiet films, so like I tend to all of a sudden realize like, what is absolutely necessary with the music, but, but it, it really, people get reliant on it, um, to do the work. And you'd be pleasantly surprised that it can inform and reinvent a scene to kind of watch it without, and you can, it's not about taking it out forever, it's just the exercise of watching what the film is actually doing in its raw form, which is great.Switching that out. I mean, I can, you know, there's other, washing it upside down, I feel like. Yeah, I mean like there's a lot of tricks we can trick our trick, our brain. You can do, you could also, I. I think, I mean, I've had times where I've watched things out of order, I guess. Like where I kind of like go and I watch the end and then I click to the middle and then I go back to the top, you know?And I'm seeing, like, I'm trying to see if they're all connecting, like, because I'm really obsessed with how things begin and how they end. I think the middle is highly important, but it really, s**t tells you, what are we doing here? Like what are we set up and where are we ending? And then like, what is the most effective.Journey to get there. And so there is a way of also kind of trying to pinpoint the pillars of the film and just watching those moments and not kind, and then kind of reverse engineering the whole piece back out. Yeah, those are a couple of tricks, but more than anything, it's sometimes just to go watch something else.If you can't step away from the project for a couple of weeks, maybe watch something, you could, I mean, you can watch something comparable in a way. That tonally or thematically feels in conversation with it to just kind of then come back and feel like there's a conversation happening between your piece and that piece.The other thing you could do is watch something so. Far different, right? Like, even if you like, don't like, I don't know what I'm suggesting, you'd have to, it would bend on the project, but there's another world where like you're like, all right, I'm gonna go off and watch some kind of crazy thrill ride and then come back to my slow burn portrait, you know, and, and just, just to fresh the pal a little bit, you know?I was like that. It's like fueling the tanks. We should be watching a lot of stuff anyways, but. That can happen too, so you don't, you also get to click off for a second because I think we can get, sometimes it's really good to stay in it at all times, but sometimes you can lose the force for the, you can't see it anymore.You're in the weeds. You're too close to it. So how do we kind of shake it loose? Feedback sessions, by the way, are a part, is a part of that because I think that when you sit in the back of the room and you watch other people watch the film, you're forced to watch it as another person. It's like the whole thing.So, and I, I tend to watch people's body language more than, I'm not watching the film. I'm like watching for when people shift. Yeah, yeah. I'm watching when people are like coughing or, you know, or when they, yeah. Whatever. You get it. Yeah. Yeah. That, that, soBEN: that is the most helpful part for me is at a certain point I'll bring in a couple friends and I'll just say, just want you to watch this, and I'm gonna ask you a couple questions afterwards.But 95% of what I need is just sitting there. Watching them and you said exactly. Watching their body language.VIRI: Yeah. Oh man. I mean, this was shoulder, shoulder shooks. There's, and you can tell the difference, you can tell the difference between someone's in an uncomfortable chair and someone's like, it's like whenever you can sense it if you're ever in a theater and you can start to sense, like when they, when they reset the day, like whenever we can all, we all kind of as a community are like, oh, this is my moment.To like get comfortable and go get a bite of popcorn. It's like there's tells, so some of those are intentional and then some are not. Right? I mean, if this is, it goes deeper than the, will they laugh at this or will they be scared at this moment? It really is about captivating them and feeling like when you've, when you've lost it,BEN: for sure.Yeah. Very. This has been fantastic. Oh my God, how fun.VIRI: I talked about things here with you that I've haven't talked, I mean, contact so deeply, but even film school, I feel like I don't know if that's out there anywhere. So that was fun. Thank you.BEN: Love it. Love it. That, that that's, you know, that's what I hope for these interviews that we get to things that, that haven't been talked about in other places.And I always love to just go in, you know, wherever the trail leads in this case. Yeah. With, uh, with Jody Foster and Math McConaughey and, uh, I mean, go see it. Everybody met this. Yeah. Uh, and for people who are interested in your work, where can they find you?VIRI: I mean, I don't update my website enough. I just go to IMDB.Look me up on IMDB. All my work is there. I think, you know, in a list, I've worked on a lot of films that are on HBO and I've worked on a lot of films and now, you know, obviously the perfect neighbor's on Netflix right now, it's having an incredible moment where I think the world is engaging with it. In powerful ways beyond our dreams.So if you watch it now, I bet everybody can kind of have really fascinating conversations, but my work is all out, you know, the sports stuff born to play. I think it's on peacock right now. I mean, I feel like, yeah, I love the scope that I've had the privilege of working on, and I hope it keeps growing. Who knows.Maybe I'll make my space movie someday. We'll see. But in the meantime, yeah, head over and see this, the list of credits and anything that anybody watches, I love to engage about. So they're all, I feel that they're all doing veryBEN: different work. I love it. Thank you so much.VIRI: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

 They put in their cover letter, “Honestly, we're just gonna go up to Yellowstone around that time and we would love to swing by and show the movie.”Rudi Womack is the Director of the Wyoming International Film Festival and the creator of the YouTube channel The Film Festival Guide.In this conversation, Rudi talks about:* What watching thousands of film festival submissions has taught him about good storytelling* The biggest mistake filmmakers make when they submit to festivals* Why transparency matters and why he published all of the submission and acceptance stats for the Wyoming International Film Festival * The importance of a compelling poster and thumbnail* How to write a good description of your movie* The most important questions filmmakers must askHere is a link to Hiike, the new film festival submission platform that Rudi mentioned.If you enjoyed this episode please forward to a friend.Here is an AI-generated transcript of my interview with Rudi. Don't come for me.79. Film Festival Director Rudi WomackBEN: Hi everyone. This is Ben Guest and this is The Creativity Education and Leadership Podcast. My guest today is Rudy Womack, who is the director of the Wyoming International Film Festival, and also Rudy has a fantastic YouTube page called The Film Festival Guide. So for all my filmmakers out there who are interested in submitting to festivals in this interview and on Rudy's YouTube page, he breaks it down. Enjoy.Rudi, thank you so much for joining us.RUDI: Hey, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.BEN: So I always start off with a fun question, and we're entering the holiday season, so very important holiday question. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?RUDI: Absolutely. A hundred percent. Come on.BEN: I love it. So I, I told you this off Air, I found you through the Rate YouTube channel.You have the Film Festival Guide. Is that the right name? I wanna make sure I get the name right. Yeah. The filmRUDI: festival guide. Yep.BEN: On YouTube Film Festival Guide on YouTube. Please. Any filmmakers out there go and subscribe. The information is so helpful. What, why did you start the this YouTube page?RUDI: I, as a filmmaker have gone through the festival circuit several times and I made a lot of amateur mistakes. I didn't know what I was doing. Definitely fell on my face a couple of times, but I also had some successes. And as I did more film festivals, I started learning more about the circuit.I got invited by a film festival to become a programmer, and so I started reviewing a lot of films and seeing a lot of the submissions. And I think instantly that made me a better filmmaker just because I saw what was working, what wasn't working, and how other filmmakers really brought to, brought their stories to life on the screen.And it, it was truly inspirational. Very long story short, the Wyoming International Film Festival was started by a gentleman named Alan Oi, and he's a, he's a documentarian out of Wyoming, which is where I'm from. I'm from Wyoming. So Alan had the film festival and he had run it for some years and it was going great and everything.But then Alan retired and now he's retiring. He wants to move outta Wyoming and he doesn't wanna run a live event. ‘cause it is a lot of work in his words. And I quote, it's a young man's game. And at the same time, COVID hit and he didn't wanna do the whole online thing and it was just a big mess.So Alan was like, I'm done with the festival, it's done. I'm just gonna let it die. And I was begging him, no, Alan, you can't do it. It's so important for indie filmmakers. And at the time I'm just finding my feet in the festival circuit as well as both a filmmaker and now I'm a programmer.I'm begging him like don't let it die. It's important, maybe I can help out. And he was like, why don't you run it? And I was like, absolutely not, man. What are you talking about? That's crazy. No way. No way. And I was like, I'm going to be your director of programming. That's what I'm going to do.I'm gonna help you get films in so you don't have to do that work. Very long story short, I ended up running it. I ended up taking over the festival from Alan. I did so reluctantly. But when I started working with the festival, working with the community, working with my hometown filmmakers and my home state filmmakers, and just seeing how important a film festival can be for a local community to uplift indie filmmakers to help them along the way I fell in love with it and here I am now, I run the film festival.And your question was, how did I start the YouTube channel? Sorry, I'm getting there. But I got a lot of questions from filmmakers about festivals, like how to navigate ‘em. And there's just so much mystery behind film festivals ‘cause it's so opaque. There's not a lot of transparency from film festivals.Film festivals are sketchy about which films they do select and which they don't. And frankly, there's a lot of misinformation out there about festivals. So I started answering a lot of questions and I started repeatedly answering the same question again and again and again. And I had some friends who told me, you should write a book.But I was like, yeah, but books, there are books, like people have already written books, bluntly, frankly, people far more experienced and knowledgeable than myself have written books. And so if you're not reading those books, then you're probably not gonna read my book. So that's when I decided, you know what, the YouTube channel is a great way to just do very easy outreach.Take one single topic, break it down for 10 minutes, and hopefully help filmmakers along on their film festival journey.BEN: I love it. And you said something for all the filmmakers who are listening. I'm gonna come back to it. Don't worry. You said something about once you started programming and watching so many films, you got a good sense of what works and what doesn't.So I definitely wanna come back to that. I know the filmmakers listening want to hear that. But before that you mentioned 10 minute videos. You strike me as somebody who, does research and takes time to Yes. Before they do something. What did you discover about running a YouTube page?What things work, what things don't work?RUDI: I'm still very early on in my own YouTube development. I'm still trying to learn what does and doesn't work. So I'm probably the worst person on earth to give advice. Definitely that first 32nd hook is so important on YouTube, just like it is on a film that, that intro, how we come into the story, whatever, on YouTube, you can see a massive drop off and apparently it's that way on every channel.Again, I'm not a YouTube guru, so I don't give advice, but that first 32nd hook is a big deal, but also just my presence on camera. I come from the post world. I'm an editor, so I'm not just behind camera. I'm behind, behind the camera. So I'm very much not used to an on-camera presence, so I'm developing that and learning it as well.What kind of energy I can bring. How to make it engaging. But also I don't wanna be zany and too quirky or anything because I am trying to give good guidance to filmmakers, but I also don't want to lecture them and bore them to death. So it's finding that balance of information that's valuable, but also entertaining enough that people don't wanna click off.And it's actually quite a complex thing that I'm still unraveling one video at a time. But the best advice that I saw was some YouTube guru who is just focus on getting 1% better on every single video. So is that little bit better graphics or better delivery, or better audio, or better editing or whatever it is.And after a hundred videos, you're now a hundred percent better. So that's what I've been focusing on. Just very small baby steps.BEN: Yeah, that's such a great way to break it down, right? It just makes it bite-sized, get 1% better.RUDI: I think you can apply that to life in general. There's a lot of things in life just today be 1% better.That's it,BEN: so you mentioned once you start a programming scene, get enough feel for what works, what doesn't, especially with short films, both narrative and docs. What are you seeing that works and doesn't work?RUDI: In the shorts world I'm seeing a couple of things. One, a self-contained story, and this is something that I had a problem with because oftentimes I would go for more of a quote unquote scene instead of a full beginning, middle and in, in a story.So a self-contained story typically is gonna make your short film much more successful. This can be hard for some filmmakers because they're trying to make a proof of concept short film that they're gonna go and get financing for their future. So one of the things that they often do is they just take a scene outta their feature and then just shoot that, which has mixed results.And the problem is the films that have gotten financed and been made from shorts that have done that are the ones that you see. So it's actually a survivor bias, where it's like it, it works for those particular films and therefore everybody thinks it's gonna work for their film. But obviously the films that it doesn't work for, you're never going to see.So you don't understand, actually for the majority of films, it doesn't work. So if you have a proof of concept, I actually say, don't pull a scene outta your feature. I say write its own scene, or sorry, your own short film. That exists in the same world and universe with the same characters as what your feature film is.And I think that's gonna have much more success on the film festival circuit. And that will lean you or lead you to whatever your goal is, financing or distribution or whatever. So that's a big thing with short films that makes ‘em successful is make sure it is actually a self-contained story and it doesn't have any loose ends, so to speak.What doesn't work is something that I myself struggle with, ironically as an editor. And that's things being too long and you need to parse them down. Now a lot of people will say, shorter, the better, which is true, but I actually think that's a result of actually getting to the core of the problem.And that's make your film as concise as possible. Get the idea. The emotion, the story out as concise as you can. And what that does by happenstance is it makes your film shorter. So it's not that shorter is better. I know there's it almost sounds like I'm just splitting hairs here, but I've seen plenty of five minute films that didn't work.I've seen plenty of 10 minute films that board me to death. So shorter isn't necessarily better. It's more concise of your story is better. And sometimes that still manifests as a 20, 30, 40 minute film. But if it's a very interesting 20, 30, 40 minutes, that's not gonna matter.BEN: It's such a great point. And for me, when I get to a certain point in the edit, I like to just bring in a couple friends and have them watch it. And then I just sit there and watch them watch it and whatever feedback they're gonna provide afterwards. 95% of what I need, I can just tell from Body Language as they're watching the film.RUDI: Yep.BEN: You come fromRUDI: theBEN: Go ahead.RUDI: Oh I was just gonna piggyback off that and just say, audience feedback is worth its weight and goal.BEN: Yeah.RUDI: And every filmmaker when you hit that fine cut stage, like you said, get your friends and family together, buy everybody some burgers and fries or whatever.Get ‘em all together. Gather ‘em up in a room, watch them, watch your film. That's gonna tell you more than anything else. We'll be able to about the success of your film and where it's strong, where it's weak, where you can still fix things. And I always suggest do it in your fine cut stage because nothing's locked in and you can still move things around and adjust, or whatever it is you need.BEN: Love it. And I think earlier what you are really getting at is telling a good story. Yes. And I'm amazed at, not amazed, but maybe a little disappointed, especially in today's world, the technical side of filmmaking. Even for an amateur, even for an indie filmmaker that you can, things can be d done so well technically, but there's no story.RUDI: Yes. All the time. So when I get onto Reddit, ‘cause you mentioned Reddit earlier if I go onto our filmmakers, right? Yeah. I don't have to look far to see people just geeking out over the newest Camerons. It's, and it's always cameras. Everybody always talks about. This camera is so fancy and it has so many stops above and this lens can do this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.It has this big bit rate, whatever. Everybody gets so excited about cameras and I always say to myself, man, if they got this excited about audio, I wouldn't have to reject half the films that we have to reject because the audio is just blah. So if we're gonna talk tech, if we're gonna talk about the quote unquote quality of the filmmaking, I think what filmmakers need to understand is there are so many films out there we're that is just the foundation.It is the base level, it is the bare minimum that the film looks good. It sounds good. It feels good. So for us, festival guys, we see so many of these films. You're super gorgeous cinematography, you're really fancy, VFX, whatever it is that you think really separates your film from the pack. I don't wanna discourage you, I don't wanna sound jaded or anything, but it's not as impressive to us as you might believe it is, simply because we see hundreds and sometimes thousands of films like that.So for us it constantly falls back to originality and the story. Is the story well done? Is it well told? Is it a new and interesting story that we've never seen before? Is it a story that we've seen before but told in a very unique way, from a specific point of view, that is what is going to move us as festival people.‘cause when I put it into the theater and my audience walks in and they pay a ticket. My audience is used to going down to the theater and seeing a hundred million dollar movies. So for them, quality is just a given. It's just assumed they're not going to be thinking about it for them. They go and watch a movie ‘cause they're interested in, and I think if more filmmakers really dialed in on their story, they're going to find more success.BEN: So many great points there and a hundred percent agree with what you were saying about people get excited about the camera. And so I did my MFA at USC and there were three different times where I was on a set that, that I felt was unsafe. Not that I felt it was unsafe, what they were doing. Geez. And I walked off and it was always to get the cool shot.Like no one's ever hanging off a balcony to get room tone. You know what I mean? It's just, it's always to get the cool shot that, again, if you're not telling a good story, it doesn't matter. And to your point, I've always felt good audio is more important than good video.RUDI: Good image.BEN: Yeah.RUDI: Look at the documentary. Look at the nonfiction world. We see verite stuff all the time. We see stuff people recorded on their phone or, security camera footage or whatever, like at the end of the day in the nonfiction world is a great example of the quality of the shot doesn't necessarily matter so much as the quality of the story and how it's being told and how it's being revealed to us.And the audio is always gonna be very clean, very top notch, even if it's quote unquote found footage or. Veritate footage or whatever, the audio is always peak. I saw that Netflix doc recently, it was super heartbreaking. The perfect neighbor. And most of it is police body cam footage, but the audio is clean so we're able to follow the story so no one sits back and thinks of themselves this isn't a good shot.Of course it's not, it's police potty cam footage. Like it doesn't look good and it's not meant to,BEN: but it sounds good. And so you can follow it.RUDI: Yes.BEN: What what are some tropes that you think you've gotten tired of seeing in, especially in short films?RUDI: So every year it's a little bit different.You would be surprised what things pop up and what don't. The one trope that kind of rubs me the wrong way, I, I don't know how to describe it any other way than filmmaker self therapy. Like they, they're definitely going through something at the moment and they're not focused on creating a good story.They're more focused on using their art form to emotionally process whatever it is they're going through, which fine, you are an artist that makes sense to do, but also I can't sell my audience on that. So while I don't wanna discourage someone from making a film that is very near and dear and personal to them, at the end of the day, it might not be a good fit for film festivals.And so I, I would really think twice about whether or not that is a story that an audience, frankly, needs to see. Filmmaker cell therapy is one that when I get it, I'm always eh I don't know what to do with it. I just, I don't know what to do. Some other tropes that we see very commonly are like.Obviously right now, tech and AI and stuff like that gives a lot of people anxiety. So there's a lot of like evil robot takes over or the big reveal at the end of the movie, they were a robot the whole time, or the whole thing was a simulation or whatever. That's being very well tread right now.For me, I'm I am not a political person and anytime some big thing is in the news, we see tons of films on it. So I understand politics do affect people's day to day and their lives, so I understand that manifest. But man, I probably have a hundred immigration films right now and that's a lot. And I'm not gonna screen that many, so I'm only gonna pick like one, maybe two, so that's a tough one to do.Anything that's like a hot button political issue. We always see a big wave of those come in. And then honestly, romance dramas get tough. It isn't evergreen. We do have an audience for it. We usually do have some kind of a selection of them. Romance dramas have existed since the beginning of time.It's always been a thing. But filmmaker broke up with his girlfriend, so now he has a character who breaks up with his girlfriend. It gets it, it doesn't get very original. I, it just it gets exhausted. So those are some of the kind of general tropes I would avoid. I have heard other festival directors talk about like cancer films and Alzheimer's films and stuff like that.This year I'm not seeing so much of those, but I have seen those in the past. So tho those are some other. Tread stories we'll see.BEN: One of the things that I appreciate about. Your series of videos is your transparency, and you have one video where you literally break down. Here are all the films the number of films, Wyoming International Film Festivals received. Here's how it breaks down, here's how many we, we accepted, et cetera, et cetera.You have another one where you literally show the viewer, this is what we see as a programmer on our film freeway portal. Here's the scoring sheet. I think it's a little bit different from the one you guys use internally, but basically here's what the scoring sheet on film freeway looks like. Why is transparency so important to you?RUDI: Because I'm a filmmaker, because I've been to so many festivals where I have no idea what the hell's going on. I've been to festivals where I think my film is gonna be a good fit. I think based on what I've been able to investigate on my own, digging through their website, digging through their archive.Seen what they've programmed before. I think I'm a good fit, but I don't actually know. And I've submitted to festivals where later on, I see what they programmed or I got rejected or even accepted and then gone to the festival itself and have been a little disappointed when was like I this festival didn't fit my goals the way that I thought it would, or, this festival wasn't going to do the things for me.Or this festival, like really promoted themselves very heavily as this big event. And then you get there and then it's not, and that's a little bothersome. So when I stepped into my role at the Wyoming International Film Festival, I made a whole bunch of changes. But one of the changes that I made was, we are going to be transparent.I don't ever want a filmmaker to submit to our festival, get in, get accepted to the festival, drive all the way out to Wyoming and be disappointed. I don't want them to do that. That's not good for them. It's not good for us. It's not good for the community. It's not good for indie film at large.What's better is if we just be what we are in Wyoming, we're straight shooters. We just say it as it is. So I'm going to tell you exactly how many films were submitted, which films we accepted, what the percentage rates are, how many shorts versus features, how many docs versus narratives, how many music videos, all of this stuff.And we've been releasing the data for the past couple of years. This year, like we went all out with the data it was much more thorough than what we've done in years past. And even me, the director of the festival, I sit back, I look at the data and I can see some weak spots in it. I can see where we need to improve as a festival, where we need to start, bringing in a certain type of film or where other films might be overrepresented or how we can give more of an experience to our filmmakers.Just by boiling it down to numbers and looking at it. I can start seeing some of our weak spots and I want to improve on that ‘cause I want to have a good festival. And I think if more festivals were to do that, I think the filmmaking community at large would be much more appreciative. And I think film festivals need to understand.That if you have fewer submissions, that's not a bad thing because the submissions that you are going to get are filmmakers that really want to be in your festival and that's good for the health of your festival, the community, the filmmakers, everything. So I, I think the only way we get there is by being transparent.And thankfully there are other festivals that are publishing their data, which is great. And that makes me very happy to see. And I hope that trend continues and I hope even more festivals start publishing more of their data and showing how they review films, what their scorecards look like, what they're looking for.‘cause ultimately I genuinely believe that just serves the filmmakers better and ultimately makes everybody have a better experience on the film festival circuit, including the festivals themselves.BEN: When you took over as directorWhat were the biggest challenges?RUDI: So our biggest challenge to this day is our venue.So there's only one movie theater in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It is owned by a company outta Casper, Wyoming. They own pretty much a monopoly of movie theaters across the state, like most of them. And they don't allow anybody into their theaters at all. They don't allow her private screenings or corporate events or, in individuals who wanna screen their film or film festivals.I'm not the only film festival in Wyoming. I talk with other festival directors. They can't get in either. It's funny, the film commissioner of the state can't even get in. You would think the movie theater would at least want to partner with the state film Commission, but no. So for us, the challenge has been a venue and luckily our partners over at Laramie County Community College.Have graciously allowed us to use their facilities for the last couple years. They have a beautiful auditorium that we do some of our screenings in, but we also have screening rooms in a black box theater that they have as well as a conference room. And when I say conference room, most filmmakers like their heart drops a little bit.They're like, oh man, I'm just, I'm going into a conference room. It's not a proper movie theater. And that's fine. We publish that data on our film freeway page on hike. We are transparent about that. So when you submit, you might be in the conference room. But ironically, I think it has some of the best audio and it has some of the best projection.So even though it's the quote unquote least movie theater, like I actually think it has some of the best projection, best color. But venue is probably one of our biggest challenges and we continue to develop that. We continue to. Trying to innovate. We're trying to build our own screening room there on the campus.Like we're trying to use one of their big classrooms for it. And what we wanna do is we wanna turn it into a lounge. We wanna bring in like couches and sofas and comfy chairs where it's like much more of a chill environment in there. And that's the type of film we wanna screen in. There's some you can literally sit back, settle in and relax.So there's things that we're doing to create a better environment for our filmmakers and of course our audience, our guests at the festival.BEN: I love it. What's been the biggest reward?RUDI: The, I get to meet you. That's what the biggest reward is. I get to meet so many filmmakers. I get to hear their stories.I get to be inspired. I get to learn stuff. I was talking with a festival director a couple of days ago. Who asked me about how we do our audience award scores and how we process that and what they do. And I just like I lit up, I'm like, oh my God. It's such a better way, it's more efficient, it's easier on the staff.It's more representative of how the audience actually feels about the film, the way the scores are aggregated and counted. It's so great. I get to meet so many people in this world of film and every single day it's like a new, whole new world is opened up to me and I get to hear so many fantastic points of view.I get to see so many awesome films, like just how many great movies are out there is a cinephile. It's like the most rewarding thing in the world. I'm an addict. I'm totally addicted to it. It's so great.BEN: I love it. I remember I used to coach basketball in my first year as a head coach. I was like, yeah, everybody's gonna be pretty competitive, other coaches and so forth.And they were, and I was. But at the same time, when coaches would get together, it was just so supportive. And people are sharing, this is what I'm doing in practice. I'm looking at this offense, this defense. And I imagine it's the same with other film festival directors and programmers. Oh, yeah. Just a supportive environment comparing notes.RUDI: It is. And the more that I meet, the more I truly do understand. 99% of festival directors out there are programmers, people who work in it. They have some tie to cinema. Most of them are filmmakers. Those who aren't, have a deep passion and love for cinema and for storytelling, and.Everybody's a volunteer. Everybody has a day job. Nobody makes money on this. They do it from the love of their heart. They truly do. And the way that they serve their communities, the way that they serve their filmmakers, some of the cool ideas they come up with there's some really neat festivals out there with like very interesting hooks or events or whatever.And I think it is such an incredible ecosystem and I think I'm truly privileged to be part of it.BEN: What are some lesser known or maybe mid-tier festivals or local festivals that you love to attend?RUDI: Okay, so one of my favorite festivals I guess you said lesser known. This one is not lesser known, but Film Quest over in Provo, Utah, damn man, pe like festival people talk about building community. They're on a different level. They've built a family. Like everybody who goes to that festival is just so tight knit there. There's no other festival like Provo or sorry, film Quest in Provo. It is just, it's on another level. And how well they treat their filmmakers is fantastic.Some years ago I was invited to be a jury member at the Fair Film Festival, which is in Ferazi Kosovo. So that is in southeastern Europe. It's a landlocked country, just a little bit above Greece, a little bit north of Greece and north of Macedonia. And Fari is a small town. And I went to that festival and first off, wow.What a great festival. I strongly suggest you submit your film to fair film. It's so good. But the cool part of being in this European festival, and frankly a small European country, most of the films are international, obviously. And so there's filmmakers coming in from like Jordan and Spain and Germany and Slovakia and Slovenia and like all over the place, Greece, Turkey, you name it.And how interesting it is to have this incredible cross section of languages and cultures and peoples, but we're all united by this one singular thing. And that's our love for storytelling and our love for movies. It had to be one of the most incredible experiences of my life. And the next movie I make, taking it back to cosBEN: Fantastic.Just had a question. What was it? Oh okay. So with the huge caveat of besides making. A good film, a film that tells a story. Besides that, are there any tips or tricks, things on the margins that filmmakers can do when they're applying to festivals to be aware of? Sometimes festivals. Ask for a cover letter orRUDI: Yes.BEN: Press kit, things like that. Okay.RUDI: So with, sorry, my phone is loud. I should turn that down. So obviously with a huge caveat of make a good film or whatever, what's the easiest way to get it? All of the stuff on film Freeway, and I do have a video on this, on my YouTube page if you wanna check it out, where I give you a tour of film, freeway from the festival side of things like what the festival can see and how we see it and how we navigate it.On the festival end of things. We can see your cover letter, your screenings and awards your. Cast and crew information, your director's bio, your director's statement, your photographs, your EPK, that's your electronic press kit your trailer, all of that. All of that. As much of that as you can possibly make, you should make it.It's very important. And you never know which piece is gonna be more important to a particular film festival. For instance, here's something crazy. I was meeting with some of my programmers last night. They had a whole bunch of films that they wanted to recommend to go to the next level programming.And we require films. Tell us where in the world or where in the United States the film was made. And every single one of ‘em was California. California. California. California. California. Which fine, whatever. California has a big film industry. That's, it's a very big state, population wise. Makes sense, right?But I am sitting back thinking, okay. I don't want it just to be a bunch of California movies. We have a big country here. I would like to see something else. And something caught my attention. One of the filmmakers, their address was in Birmingham, Alabama, but the film was shot in California, so I am suspicious.I haven't dug into it myself. I'm suspicious either that filmmaker's from Alabama and they have moved to California, or that filmmaker lives in Alabama and they shot their film in California. So they're answering where it was shot correctly. But for me, I'm like, there you go. When everybody's from California.I want that unique perspective. I wanna see someone's from Alabama and what their perspective is now. I haven't watched the film yet. I don't know if it's what we're looking for. Obviously it's a good film if my programming team has recommended it, there's no doubt in my mind it's good film. Now there's other considerations we're gonna have, but.That alone was something, even my, like I myself did not know that I would be looking for. So filling out all of that data on film, freeway, all of your information that you possibly can, your cover letters your screenings, your awards, whatever it is, the more information you give us as a festival, the more we have to make our selections.And it only benefits you. It only helps you out. So filmmakers don't get lazy. Fill out all of that information. We need it. We use it. It's important. Just do it.BEN: You mentioned a meeting with your programmers last night. Take us inside that conversation. What does that look like? What do you discuss, et cetera.RUDI: So there's. There's a big programming team and it's divided up into two different groups. There's our kind of first round screeners and then there's our senior programmers and the senior programmers pretty much review the films that have gone through that first round of screening that are getting recommended to go onto the next one.So typically when I'm talking with my screeners and everything, it's a very different conversation on the bottom end of it where they're just sorting through all of the submissions versus a different conversation I have with the senior programmers who are on the top end of it. We're now trying to decide how to block films together, how we're gonna organize it, what's the schedule maybe look like, what's the overall tone and vibe of the festival going to be, okay.If we wanna have a sci-fi block, do we even have enough sci-fi films? If we don't. Where else can we find homes for ‘em? Stuff like that. So those conversations are a little bit more high end, if you will. And it tends to be less about the story of the film itself and more about how that film is going to fit into the festival.Whereas when I'm talking with the screeners, it's much more on the story end. Like what about the story did you like or you didn't like? Or what was the unique point of view? Or whatever. So depending on which group I'm talking to it, it's gonna be different. And then of course that divides out further on features and shorts and documentaries and narratives and music videos.So like obviously my conversation with the music video people are gonna be much different than my like short documentary people.BEN: Shout out to short documentary people as a documentarian primarily makes shorts I'll ask a question for us folks. In one of the videos, as I mentioned, you literally show here's what the scoring sheet looks like.Yes. And that was for narrative with, I think one of the categories was acting and so forth. So for a documentary or documentary shorts, what does that scoring sheet look like? What do those discussions entail?RUDI: Film freeway does not allow us to have more than one scoring sheet.So unfortunately, there's just this one scoring sheet that's for everything. What I tell my screening team, and we definitely double check everything, like there's multiple people who look at something. So it's not just one person's opinion. You have at least two, oftentimes three, pretty often four.So for something like documentary they skip over that. That's what they do. So if there's no acting in the film, they skip over that. They don't rate acting if there is no acting. But you'd be surprised. There are documentaries that have acting in ‘em. There are like docudramas or documentaries with recreation In the recreation is like actual scenes and performances and stuff like that.So in those cases, even though it's a nonfiction and a documentary, yeah, we'll still judge it for the acting ‘cause that's what it has. I get the question. I'm gonna hijack your question for a second, but it is applicable. I get the question, do we accept AI in our film festival, we do not have any official policy for or against ai, which scares some filmmakers.But we do rate AI on the same standards as we would anybody else. So when it comes to creativity and originality, guess what, you're getting a nothing. ‘cause AI didn't create it. AI is not original. AI just mashes together a bunch of information from other people. So that's no creativity and originality.Same thing for something like, I don't know, art design. If you have a AI character walking through a scene or whatever you're getting zero on your art design. Nobody built those sets. Nobody costumed that actor. Nobody was the makeup artist or the hair or whatever other art deck or, PD or anything on the set.So we will accept ai. We have accepted one single AI film so far because despite all of its quote unquote handicaps, and it was a music video. It still was successful in other categories that had a good enough score. We as a team sat down, said Yes, that it still is a good film. The audience is still gonna enjoy it.The filmmaker definitely had a vision with it. They wrote out a whole thing on like why they chose to use ai. ‘cause they're also an experimental filmmaker, so it made sense for them and everything. So we were like, you know what? That's legit. Let's put it in. But other AI submissions, like I got an AI children's animation the other day and I'm like they didn't animate it themselves.They didn't voice act it themselves. It's not getting good scores on any of these. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see if it gets through or not, but already you're shooting yourself in the foot. So don't do ai.BEN: Okay. Couple little. I don't know, around the edges or micro questions. One of the things that you talked about in one of your recent videos was having a good poster and you talked about designing your poster for your film prudence.RUDI: Yeah.BEN: Talk, talk to me about,RUDI: I specifically gave my posters an example, not a great poster,BEN: But talk to me about that.For the no budget or low budget filmmaker that can't afford to hire a a designer to make a poster. Talk to me about poster design and how that impacts the presentation of the film for festivals.RUDI: So I strongly believe that a big part of filmmaking and marketing and packaging your film together, all of that is psychology.And as much as we want to sit back and say, Hey, don't judge a book by its, cover it, that literally goes against human psychology. People are not hardwired to do that. It, it is. In our DNA, it's not just a bad habit, it is literally a survival mechanism. So if you want to stand out, you do need to have everything put together.Your cover letter, your synopsis, your photographs, all of that, and of course all of your key art. That's your poster. That's any banners that you have, that's how you're going to be promoting the film. And you have to understand it's not just about making your film look pretty to get filmmakers to go, or sorry your programmers go, Ooh, and ah, it's a pretty film.We are looking at that as a mechanism for us to advertise the festival. You gotta understand if I have 150 films in the festival, I have to get an audience for those films. And the easiest way for me to do that is through your marketing materials. We don't have the capacity. To design marketing materials for 150 different films.We are relying on the filmmakers to do that so we can go out and promote the festival. So people show up to your screening, which I would presume is what you want if you're going to a film festival. So anything you're trailer, any photographs that you can provide, which some filmmakers only provide BTS photographs, BTS is fine.It's great. Give me some good key art I can also use, please. That's what newspapers, that's what the local news that's what podcasters, whatever, that's what they want to see. So that's what I can provide. And of course, your poster. Now, there are a lot of online tools to help in poster design, frankly, I don't have an excuse for making a bad poster like I did, which is one of the reasons I use it as an example is I am shaming myself being like, this could be better and it should be. But there's a lot of online resources that can help with poster design. And also for filmmakers who are a little bit strapped for cash, you would be surprised what people will do for in kind, service for service.So if you have a friend or if there's someone that you can find that's Hey, they'll design your poster if you can design whatever their website or whatever it is that your skills might be there, there's a lot of exchange that you can do on that part. So yeah your marketing, your packaging, all of that together is actually quite important.BEN: Such a great point. And I've written and published a memoir and through that, I've worked with other authors on, on. Both writing and marketing their books, editing and marketing their books. And I tell people the exact same thing. People judge a book by its cover all the time. And in this day and age, they judge it for listeners, I'm holding my thumb and forefinger part as a thumbnail on a computer screen.Yeah, that's the size. So even for a programmer or a festival director watching it on film freeway through their platform, they're not gonna see the poster like we see it in the movie theater. They're gonna see it as a thumbnail image. Yeah. So it has to work as a thumbnail image. And if you can't read the title as a thumbnail or can't make out what's on the image, what's on the poster as a thumbnail, then you've failed that part of the process.RUDI: One, one of the things that like really clued me into how important a poster is, I went to a film festival, I believe it was Kansas City Film Festival. Some years ago, and they had a bunch of posters of films out, but there was one that was like bright pink. It was like super bright pink and had like very eye popping design and everything on it.And it was like in a whole field of like dark drama posters that are all like gritty and everything. And I'm like that stands out. That really drew my eye to it. And I think that was like my big light bulb moment of like how important this stuff actually is. And one of the things that I've been saying for some years, I've said it on the channel, I think, I don't know, some, sometimes I record things and edit out.So I don't know what I've said on the channel sometimes but one of the things that I say is making a film is half of film making. The other half is marketing, the other half is getting butts in the seats. The other half is getting eyeballs on your movie. The other half is selling your film to an audience or a film festival or a distributor or a programmer or whatever you're trying to do with it.It's getting it out there. So making a film is half a filmmaking. The other half marketing, that's what it is.BEN: I'm just nodding along with everything you're saying and I've always felt both with films and with books, with art in general, you're trying to make an emotional connection from what's in your head and your heart to the audience.And if you don't do your job, getting your film out there and helping an audience come and see your film. Then you're not helping that connection. You're missing sort of the point of making this, unless it's just for yourself. It's for, it's to connect with other people and for other people to connect with your work.And that is marketing.RUDI: It's valid. If you're just making a film for yourself, that's absolutely valid. It's in art form. You can make a film for yourself, but if you're sending it to me at a film festival, you're not you're literally trying to find an audience. So these are the things you need to consider.BEN: I love it. I got two more just in the weeds detail questions.RUDI: Alright, let's do it.BEN: Let's talk description. And what I've seen ‘cause I'm in the middle of applying to festivals. And by the way just for. Listeners, this might interest you. So I discovered Rudi's YouTube page and I was like, this is so helpful.And then I went to the Wyoming International Film Festival page and all the transparency and statistics that, that Rudi puts out, that the festival puts out. And I realized, okay, so the short documentary I have is not a good fit for this festival. Exactly what Rudi's saying. So just for anybody listening, thank you for doing research.RUDI: Thank you. That's good. That's not a bad thing, right? That means it saves you time, it saves you money, it saves you heartbreak. It's so good. Do research before you submit. I'm sorry, but I, it's in, in almost every single one of my videos, I tell filmmakers, do your research before you submit. Find the festivals that gel with your film.And if it, if they don't screen the type of movie that you have, don't submit to ‘em. You're wasting your time, you're wasting your money. And the festival, like the programmer behind the screen, might love your film. They truly might love your film, but they're programming for a very specific audience and they know what that audience's taste is.So that's why they're driving specific films to that audience. So even if they love it, they might not include it, which is why you should always do your homework and do your research before you submit. I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's so importantBEN: And yes. And the flip side of that coin is now I also know what the Wyoming International Film Festival looks for.So in the future, if I have a doc or a film, I'm like, oh, this would be a great fit for this festival.RUDI: Yes.BEN: It helps both ways.RUDI: It does. And it helps you dial in. Which festivals you should target, which festivals are gonna help you with your specific goals. Whatever your goals are with the film it's gonna help you with your budgeting and your travel plans and your own personal calendar.It's gonna help with your mental health. It just, it helps on so many different aspects. And on the film festival side of things, I appreciate it when I hear from filmmakers say, Hey man, I looked into your festival looks good, but you don't have the kind of film that I have. And I'm like, not a problem man.Maybe I can point you in the right direction. Maybe I know some film festival programmers, I can make a recommendation, on your behalf too, that's not a bad thing. We love movies and we want to see them successful, but not every single fest or film and story is going to be successful in every single market.So it's very important to find your audience. And believe me, we are going to be cheering you the whole way.BEN: I want get back to my kind of in the weeds questions, but you've mentioned something that is big picture, that's so important. I feel like I've buried the lead here. And you mentioned this you've mentioned this multiple times in your videos.Is that a Phil, it's key. Maybe the most important part of this process is of the film festival submission process is a filmmaker needs to understand what are their goals in applying to a festival. Yes. So can you just talk a little bit about that?RUDI: So film festivals are a tool. And they can be a tool for many different things, but they are a tool.And just every single tool is not right for every single job, every film festival is not gonna be right for every film and vice versa. So before you go out to film festivals, you just need to ask yourself why? Why am I going out to film festivals? Why am I spending the money, the time, the energy, the effort?What do I want out of film festivals? And that's where you need to identify your goal. And the more specific you can be with the goal, the better it's going to be you going on your film festival journey. So for many filmmakers, a common reason they go out to film festivals is networking. So I'm gonna use that as an example.So let's say your goal is I want to network, I want to meet other. Filmmakers, I wanna meet, directors of photography and producers and other people that I can hire for my projects, or they're gonna hire me for their projects, and I want to build that network and I want to meet more filmmakers.Fantastic. Great. That's your goal. So the first thing that you need to do is you need to be looking at festivals that have networking events. And in this particular instance, you need to ask yourself two things. One, does it have networking? Is there in-person networking parties or networking events?And two, do the types of people that I want to meet actually attend those networking events. So us at the Wyoming International Film Festival, we have a pretty broad spectrum. We have filmmakers that are just beginning their journey. They're totally new, wet behind the ears. They're green they're just starting their journey.That's great. All the way up to every year we have multi Emmy award-winning filmmakers. Like people who do this professionally they're in unions or professional organizations, or they're a member of the academy, motion picture Arts and sciences or the TV Academy or sometimes like the Grammys and stuff like that.I, myself, I'm a professional editor, so there's people like me who professionally work, but they're like below the line. They're cinematographers editors, gaffers, what have you. So if your goal is to meet some like high-end producer that's gonna throw, a million dollars at your movie our festival is not the festival that's gonna help you with your goal.So you should skip over us because we don't have that kind of person in attendance. But if your goal is to meet other filmmakers at your level that you can collaborate with or get hired by or whatever. We're a great festival. We have tons of networking, and we bring in a ton of those filmmakers.We're a great event for you. So when you identify what your goal is and you're very specific about it, it's easier to identify which festivals you should start targeting. I take that one step further, and then once you've narrowed down which festivals are gonna help you with your goal, then you look into their history and see which of them have screened movies like yours in the past.So if you have a, you know I use the example, if you have a seven minute comedy coming of the age film, now you know which festivals have good networking, which festivals have the kinds of people you want to network with. Now you look at which ones have screened short coming of age comedy films in the past, and have a history of doing that.So that's gonna help you filter it even further. And by doing that, you're gonna really start to develop your film festival strategy. Now I do have some exciting news. There is something coming now, it's called Hike, H-I-I-K-E. It's hike with two I. And what Hy is doing, it's a submission platform similar to film Freeway, but among many of the tools that they're giving filmmakers, they're giving filmmakers customized festival strategies and they're scraping all of that data from film festivals, what they've programmed in the past.And when you as a filmmaker, join Hike, you take a little quiz, you tell them what your goals are, what your film is, you know how long it is, what the genre is, tell them about yourself. And they literally have. Data scientist who's built this like machine learning algorithm that pairs the data from the film festival to what the filmmaker provides.That literally gives you a compatibility score. So it's, it comes out and tells you, if you want to network with, professional filmmakers but not mega producers and you have a short comedy coming of age film Wyoming International Film Festival has that crowd screens those types of films and you would have a 90% compatibility.So it actually helps you develop your festival strategy for you.BEN: It's so needed. And Rudi has a great video on how to spot scam film festivals. Yes. That's something that is just prevalent these days. So for filmmakers who are getting ready to submit, I encourage you to watch that video. I'll link to it in the show.I'll link to everything that we're discussing in the show notes. The. So Rudi talked about one goal a filmmaker can have is to network other goals at various points in my, film festival my limited film festival career I've applied to festivals ‘cause I wanted to go to that city, new Orleans Fest, new Orleans Film Festival.TravelingRUDI: is totally legitimate reason to go.BEN: People apply because they want distribute, they wanna meet distributors or financiers for the next film. Although, that's what everybody wants. SoRUDI: you, you would be surprised. So in, in 2018, I had a feature film and my, my goal like most feature films was to land a distribution deal.But I was like, that's not specific enough. There are many steps to land a distribution deal. So what I need is I need good press on my film. So that was a goal. So I wanted to target festivals that had press. I wanted laurels. I wanted to win some awards with it, but I also knew my film was. Small and kind of small scale.So it wasn't gonna win laurels at big festivals. So I was like, okay, I need festivals with press. I need festivals that are legitimate and above board, but also small enough where I'm gonna be competitive. And then I wanted to actually meet distributors. And I know they only go to big festivals, so I actually had to target three different kinds of festivals.‘cause I had three, let's call ‘em conflicting goals with my own film. So that's what I did. I did a split strategy. I targeted festivals where I was gonna be this tiny little fish in a very big pond. And no one's really gonna notice me, but I'm just happy to be there. I targeted festivals where I know that I was going to get very good press and very good reviews on the film.And I targeted festivals that were small, still legitimate, but I was gonna be competitive and maybe bring home some trophies. And so that was my strategy and it worked, and I landed a distribution deal.BEN: That's so great. I, I'd love to do a part two at some point we can talk distribution deals and all of the, yeah.Things like that. But I think for people listening, the big takeaway is even with this multi-pronged goal, three different goals connected to each other. Once you identify what your goals are, then you work backwards and you create your strategy to Yes, to achieve those. Okay. Back to the two in the weeds.Two more in the weeds questions. Yeah. So description, and as I'm looking at other film descriptions, and I saw this at USC all the time as well, and we talked about earlier, filmmakers wanting to sit in emotion or sit in something traumatic and have the audience experience that I notice a lot of times in descriptions of short films.Can so and so come to terms with this? Can, and just as someone who has a little bit of experience marketing stories, where's the action? What's the active what's this person actively trying to accomplish, rather than can they just come to terms with something? Can you talk a little bit about film description, just three or four lines.What pops?RUDI: So just like your poster, just like your marketing and everything, a film description is your way to reach through the screen, grab the audience, grab the programmer, and pull them into your movie. Keep in mind, your whole entire goal is to get people to watch your film, get them excited about your film.And so if you just have a very drab, like description that's just yeah, has to face consequences for a decision they made or come to terms with something when I, that's a good V one, that's a good place to start, but that's not going to get an audience excited about your film.I saw film, I don't know if it was at my festival. It wasn't at my festival. We didn't screen it, but I'm saying, I don't know if it was submitted to my festival or if I saw it at another festival, but I remember one of the descriptions it was great. It was whatever the two character names were, John and Jane, I forget what the characters are, but like John and Jane are on a date, there's a bomb in the other room.I I hope the date goes well, or something like that. Let's hope the date goes well. And I'm like, what is this movie? That gets you really excited for it. You're. It, it creates so much mystery. And also just the cavalier way that it was written immediately tells me this is gonna be a comedy, or it's not taking itself too seriously.It's not some like gritty, dive into the underworld or whatever. Like just how blunt it was about the dis of the film and just that like small little description. I know I'm paraphrasing what it was, but it stuck with me for years at this point. ‘cause I'm like, that is how you write a description for a film.That is how you get someone excited to see what is this movie about? Let's jump in. Piggybacking off a description. Titles are another great way to do that. In, in my own repertoire of films I've had film called Prudence. Okay, fine, whatever. Prudence doesn't really tell you much about that film.I had a film that I'm very proud of. It's artsy, it's a little bit magical realism and it's called in this gray place, and it has that artsy mystique around it in this gray place. And I love that title. I did it, I did a film back in film school. It's terrible, but the title's great.It's called Back to Fort Russell. It was a Western and I, to this day, it's one of my favorite titles that I've ever had. But it tells you something. It clues you into what this film is going to be, what the journey of this movie is going to be. And some films do that better than others. And some films, yeah, it's not necessary.But I, I get more excited when I hear something like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre than I do something that's just like love. Or mom or something.BEN: I think this is the last question. So again, with all these little details, cover letter, talk to me about cover letters.RUDI: It's so interesting you asked me that question ‘cause hearing about four or five days, I'm posting a video on the YouTube channel about cover letters. It's short, it's only four or five minutes long, but cover letters are so important.Should absolutely write a cover letter. And a couple of days ago I was talking with programmers at dances with films, and if you don't know dances with films, look ‘em up. They are an incredible film festival. They are in the big leagues for sure. And I was talking with a couple of programmers and I asked them about covert letters and they said, it's so important it.How the filmmaker is going to put an audience in the theater is very important for their festival. How they're going to get people to attend is very important for them and they're like, a good indication in a cover letter is when they, the filmmaker indicates how they're going to market their film and they use the example of football.Let's say it's a movie about football. They're like, if it's a movie about football and you tell me in the cover letter that you're part of several like football organizations, or you're gonna be reaching out to sports organizations or youth organizations for sports or something like that, to attend the film.That's a very good indication for them in the cover letter. For me, I think a cover letter is very important in that it shows. You're going the extra mile to show the festival you care. You're not just submit and quit. We're not just one festival on a list of 50 that you're submitting to. There is a reason you want to screen with us, and that's a specific reason.Either you feel that your film is good fit for our audience, or there's something that you want to connect with. In Wyoming, I had one cover letter and we did accept this film and it was really funny. They put in their cover letter like their film was a comedy, so their cover letter was also very comedic, but they're like, honestly, we're just gonna go up to Yellowstone around that time and we would love to swing by and show the movie.And I laughed. I laughed so hard at that and I'm like. But that shows me they care. Like they want to be there. And the film was good and it was funny and we screamed it and they were there. So it's a way to show a film festival enthusiasm and it's way to inform the festival about yourself, about your film, and how that's gonna gel with their particular event and their audience.BEN: I love it. And that reminds me, I got one more, I got a bonus question. Yeah. Can you talk about applying early?RUDI: Yes. Statistically, when I look at our own data, statistically, it does seem to be that the earlier you apply, the better chance that you have. And so I don't want to give the impression that if you applied late.You have no chance. I think in the video where I literally broke down the data and the statistics, I think at our festival we had a one in five chance of getting in on the late deadline, which is about a 20% acceptance rate. But it was much higher the earlier it came in. So just with the raw data taking out my opinions, my emotions on it, whatever, just the data itself shows earlier is better.Now, here's where my opinions and my feelings towards it come from. I think it's a couple of things. One, when you get in early, you set the pace for the rest of the festival, you're telling us, okay, it's a drama. We're gonna compare your film against others. Like you have now become the benchmark that we're gonna compare other films to when it comes to like dramas or whatever.What it also does. It's something I'm going to discuss in my video and cover letters, but it also engages something, what's called mere exposure effect in psychology, which is essentially the more that you are exposed to something, the more preference you have towards it. Which means if you get in early, you are exposing yourself, your film, and your story to the programmers more often and more readily than late submissions are.So it's more likely that the programmers form some attachment to your film, and that's just human nature, that's just psychology. There's some practical reasons for it as well. Obviously, earlier submissions, earlier deadlines are cheaper, so it's better to get in. It's just gonna cost you less money to do and then lastly, there are many festivals that are developing their program as they go. So as films are coming in, they're shaping. We got a ton of dramas. Maybe we need two drama blocks, or, we, we don't have enough sci-fi for a sci-fi blocks, we gotta spread it out or whatever. So if you come in late, you're now trying to elbow some other film out of the way in order to find your screening slot.Which don't get me wrong, there are plenty of programmers that are absolutely gonna go to bat for you. They're gonna fight hard to get you in. Doesn't matter if you come in early or late or whatever, but the chances are just better. And the data shows that if you get in early. All that said, a couple of years ago, the very last film that came in with only two hours left in our deadline, we ended up programming it.So it, it is possible.BEN: Rudi, I cannot thank you enough. I can't tell you how helpful this has been. There's so much great information for filmmakers. Filmmakers submitted to festivals, people just interested in going to festivals. So thank you so much for taking the time.RUDI: Hey it's always a pleasure.I always love talking film festivals and for any filmmakers out there, head on over to YouTube hit up the Film Festival Guide. That's my YouTube page. I'm coming out with videos every two or three weeks. That's about what I put ‘em out there for. So if you need any guidance or any, I don't know, insight for film festivals that's where I am.BEN: Film Festival Guide. I'm a subscriber. I can't recommend it enough. Any other social media where people can find you?RUDI: Oh no, I'm terrible on social media. YouTube's enough for me right now.BEN: So Film Fest.RUDI: I will probably expand in the future and I'll probably make some announcement on the YouTube channel.Got it. But for right now, I'm just trying to get good information out there to as many filmmakers as possible.BEN: Thank you so much for doing that. It's such a huge benefit for film.RUDI: Thank you very much for the support and thank you very much for having me on. I enjoyed this. This was a lot of fun.BEN: Me too. This was great. Thank you. And that was my interview with Rudy Womack, director of the Wyoming International Film Festival and creator of the great YouTube page, the Film Festival Guide. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please forward it to one person. Thank you and have a great day. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

We moved away from traditional staff meetings. Instead of everyone sharing updates, we play dodgeball or cook together or learn from each other's departments. Building trust and connection is more important than sharing information.Nelima Lassen is the Principal of The International People's College in Helsingør, Denmark.In this conversation Nelima and I talk:* What a Danish Folk School is* Tracy Chapman fandom* Core leadership values* Rethinking staff meetings* Approach to AI in 2025* The amount of empathy students show each other* Bonus: Tracy Chapman performing Fast Car at Wembley Stadium.If you enjoyed this conversation please forward it to a friend. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

 I had friends of mine who have said, “This is an important archive. Get everybody.” So that's my mission. It's a big one and it's going to take years. - Matt CollinsMatt Collins is a graduate of Amherst College, Class of 1994. He is the creator and host of The Pre-Made Podcast where, every week, he interviews one member from his class.In this conversation Matt and I talk:* Significant pivot points in his life.* How he started The Pre-Made Podcast.* How he produces the podcast, including initial outreach to potential guests, the equipment he uses, and thoughts about editing.* How podcasting is different from what he thought podcasting was going to be.* Things he's learned from doing the podcast.* Tips for being a good editor.If you enjoyed this interview please forward it to one friend. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

 The belief system is democracy. - Gordon QuinnGordon Quinn is an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and co-founder of Kartemquin Films, a collective that works towards creating “stories that foster a more engaged and just society.” Among their many works are Hoop Dreams and Home For Life.This interview is also a companion piece to the recent interview I did with Professor Patricia Aufderheide, who wrote the book Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy. You can listen to my interview with Professor Aufderheide, Episode 74, here.In this conversation I ask Gordon:* How has the advent of digital filmmaking changed films?* What types of experimentation would you like to see with the form of documentary?* Your work has not just documented people's lives, but also the power structures in which all of us exist. Can you speak to the importance of that?* What would John Dewey make of our country today?* When we talk about democracy today, and the challenges we face, what are some of the lessons you take from the sixties?* What is a fun memory of Roger Ebert?The book Gordon mentioned is Original Sins: The (Mis)Education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing.If you enjoyed this podcast please forward it to a friend. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Often we end up helping people find turning points that were not readily apparent to them… - Luke PalderLuke Palder is the founder and CEO of MemoirGhostwriting.comIn this conversation Luke and I talk:* Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh.* What makes a good memoir?* The therapeutic aspect of telling your story.* The importance of outlining.* Self-Publishing or Traditional Publishing?* Biking across America.* What is the best pizza in New Haven?You can find Luke at MemoirGhostwriting.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

 I was not actually as interested in the film, per se, as I was in the prospect of having a voice of independence, dissidence and critique of authority. - Patricia AufderheideDr. Patricia Aufderheide is a Professor in the School of Communication at American University. Her most recent book is Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy.Aufderheide is a Guggenheim fellow (1994) and has served as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival. She has received numerous journalism and scholarly awards, including the George Stoney award for service to documentary from the University Film and Video Association.In this conversation Professor Aufderheide and I talk:* Her favorite member of The Beatles.* Writing film criticism at the University of Minnesota.* Being an acolyte of Pauline Kael.* Filmmaking as narrative transportation.* Gordon Quinn and Kartemquin Films.* How documentary can help people be more active in demanding democracy.* Cultural Marxism, Antonio Gramsci, and Thomas Dewey.* Barbara Kopple's documentary Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing.* Steve James' film The Interrupters and his series America to Me.* How Kartemquin Films has a fundamental goal of showing how human agency functions in society.* How contemporary documentary reduces the role of society and highlights individual exceptionalism.* Her book Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy.* “ Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”* Demand democracy.* Jacqueline Olive's documentary Always in Season.Please forward this newsletter to folks you think will be interested. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

The script super is going to save your life. - Redd ColtraneChirsten Vanderbilt, Redd Coltrane, and Anthony Roberson and I talk our second semester of film school at USC.You can listen to our first semester conversation here: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

First of all, I think your superpower is just making things really easy. You already know the blueprint, the strategy, you've got everything there and you just fed that to me in a way that I was easily able to make my book a success.Doone Roisin is the creator and host of Female Startup Club, a Top Ten Entrepreneurship Podcast and the bestselling author of Your Hype Girl: 51 Female Founders Share Their Most Impactful Learnings, Tactics & Strategies In Business.I advised Doone in the lead-up to her book launch in March of this year and she has since connected me with several clients. As a result of these experiences I have started a book consulting business: Ben Guest Book Consulting. On my website are the services I offer, my rates, and testimonials, including this from Doone:I worked with Ben ahead of self-publishing my debut book. He helped me with publishing, marketing and promotion. My book, Your Hype Girl, hit #1 in multiple categories on Amazon including "Women & Business", "Ecommerce and Small Business", as well as hitting the top 100 of all paperback books in my home country of Australia (#55). I did everything Ben taught me and the results were so much more than I had anticipated. We smashed every goal that was set and more. I can't recommend Ben enough!Everyone has a story to tell. When you're ready to tell your story please reach out.In 2022, Doone was named Australian Young Achiever of the Year in the UK and, as a result, met Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. In this conversation, Doone and I talk:The ancillary benefits of publishing a bookHolding a physical copy of your book for the first timeTrends Group on FacebookUsing TikTok to promote your bookThe power of organic word-of-mouthWhy having a checklist is keyIdentifying your “comparable” author and bookBen Guest Book Consultant. Rates here.Meeting Prince CharlesVIDEOTRANSCRIPTBen Guest (00:02):Hi, everyone. This is Ben Guest, and today's conversation is with Doone Roisin. Doone is the creator and host of the podcast Female Startup Club, which is a top 10 podcast in the entrepreneurship category. And I helped Doone with the final stages of publishing and then marketing and promoting her book, Your Hype Girl, which she released in March, and hit number one in a bunch of categories, was the number 55 overall bestselling paperback book in Australia. Doone is Australian, but currently lives in England, and ended up with her being invited to Buckingham Palace to meet Prince Charles.Ben Guest (00:46):So in this interview, we talk about all the steps we took to promote her book and the actionable items to make it a number one best seller in multiple categories. And also, kind of as an outgrowth of that project, a few other people have contacted me about helping them with their book launch or even other aspects of writing and editing their book. And so, I'm now launching a book consulting business, and you can find that at benguest.net, where I have all the services I offer, testimonials, my rates, et cetera. And essentially, Doone was my first client. So enjoy our conversation.Ben Guest (01:29):Doone, great to see you.Doone Roisin (01:31):It's good to see you too, Ben.Ben Guest (01:33):So, Your Hype Girl has been out in the world. How successful was your launch?Doone Roisin (01:39):Oh my gosh. It has been out in the world since, when did we launch it? March? It's been a while. March, April, May, June, July, August, five months. Wow, that's crazy. So how did it go? I would say it was pretty damn successful. For me personally, I wanted that offline experience to give to my audience, give to my community, and have that kind of thing that's out there physical that I could ship to people and hold. And so, for me success was literally just number one, getting that out in the world and having that there, so obviously, tick.Doone Roisin (02:15):I also was thinking about what success was to me, in terms of I wanted to hit the best seller list on Amazon for the categories that I really cared about. And the categories that I really cared about were women in business, eCommerce, maybe small business or something like that. They were the ones that I cared about, but I was also like, "We'll see," because I obviously had no benchmark against what I had done before because it was totally new to me.Doone Roisin (02:48):Yeah. It went better than expected. I hit all the bestseller categories that I wanted to and so many others. I hit them, I think, day of for some of them. I hit women in business day of, and I had estimated based on our talking, that could take three months maybe, chipping away, so I was really stoked with that.Doone Roisin (03:08):And I think the things that I didn't expect to come from it were the success in terms of speaking opportunities and the opportunities that came out of having the book out in the world. So last week I spoke to the women at JP Morgan about my journey and the book and entrepreneurship in general. I landed a gig sitting on an investment committee to be part of this new fund that's launching in Australia, which is going to be funding women-founded tech companies that are in impact and purpose-driven sectors. And so, that has just been so wild.Doone Roisin (03:47):It also led to, I won Young Australian Achiever of the Year from the High Commissioner of Australia, which led to me going to Buckingham Palace and meeting the future king of England. All these things rattled off the back end of the book which I hadn't put in my goals to begin with, but it really was like, "Whoa." When I take a step back now and I look at that, I'm like, "Damn that's cool."Ben Guest (04:13):It's amazing.Doone Roisin (04:14):Yeah. Yeah. It's been really cool. And I think the other thing that I probably expected to happen but didn't realize how amazing it is, which I should know because I already get a thrill from getting DMs from my community in general, but still seeing the power of the book out in the world. So people sending me a message of how it's impacted them, why they're loving it, sharing about it on social media, that feeling is just priceless. It's so cool. So yeah, those are the kind of goals that I had. I wasn't looking at it as a revenue driver for me, which I think is a really hard goal to have if you are going to be an author, especially first time. But yeah, that wasn't a goal for me.Ben Guest (04:59):So much of what we do is in the digital world, podcasts and Zoom meetings and social media and so forth. But one of the first things you mentioned was having the physical book in your hand. Can you talk about the first time you held it, leafing through it, what the difference between something you're working on digitally and having a physical copy in your hands?Doone Roisin (05:20):Oh my gosh. I recorded the moment that I opened the final copy. And I have my dog on my lap, and it's this video where I'm just so happy and bubbling over with emotion because I was like, "Wow, I actually did this. I made this book. And this book is now out in the world, impacting thousands of other women, thousands of other business owners, future business owners. How cool is that?"Ben Guest (05:46):So we connected through the Trends group on Facebook. And I think you had pretty much had the manuscript finished. I had just published my book, and I had written up sort of a list of, "Okay, here's what worked well for me in terms of publishing and marketing." And then we connected, and so I helped guide you through that, the marketing and promotion phase, publishing, marketing, promotion. And then, of course, that led to a whole bunch of more opportunities. And now I'm launching my book consulting business, but it all started from you and I connecting on Trends group. And you mentioned-Doone Roisin (06:24):Shout out to Trends.Ben Guest (06:25):Shout out the Trends.Doone Roisin (06:25):I love Trends.Ben Guest (06:27):So many great opportunities and people on that group. And you mentioned that your book hit multiple best seller categories on Amazon, but let's not undersell it. You hit number one. And the number one category that we talked about, I think the first time we talked, was women in business. That was the category. That was the goal. Okay, this is a big category. It's tied directly to what your book is about and what your life is about. And not only did you hit the bestseller list, you hit number one.Doone Roisin (06:57):Yeah, it was pretty cool. We also hit, maybe a week later or maybe a few days later, we hit top 55 of all paperback books in Australia. And I was like, "What? This is wild." But yeah, it's crazy. And I think for me, we started the marketing plan two months out or maybe three months out, and would say that was a fine amount of time. Maybe three months is the optimal and two months is the absolute minimum. Somewhere in there is the sweet spot in terms of putting a lot of your energy and effort into drumming up the interest, drumming up Your Hype Girls who are going to support you and cheerlead and shout for you. Yeah. Amazing. I can't believe that I hit number one in all those categories, so wild.Ben Guest (07:49):So let's break it down. In terms of marketing, what were the best strategies that you implemented?Doone Roisin (07:55):I would say there's three things that I did really well. One is harder for the everyday person to achieve, and that's obviously because I have an inbuilt community, so I have a podcast, I have social channels, things like that. And I was pumping that message there. My audience was aware of the book coming out for so long. And then, in the lead up, it was every single episode, dropping it in wherever I could. And so, I already knew that people were really excited from my audience.Doone Roisin (08:25):But besides that kind of piece of the puzzle, the two other main things that really made a difference and shifted the needle was TikTok and hand-to-hand combat, and I'll break down both of those. When it came to TikTok, my approach was for the three months leading up, I doubled down on content creation organically. So I was posting three times a day. I was talking about the book. I was talking about Female Startup Club. I was just pushing out that content. And it's a lot, even three videos is a lot per day, and we grew a lot in that time as well. So when the book came out, there was again, more of an audience who were ready to buy and ready to be excited and ready to get involved.Doone Roisin (09:13):And again, it's one of those things. I think people often lean straight towards paid marketing or kind of this magic pill that actually, it's not the money you need to invest, it's the time you need to invest to create valuable content that's exciting and gets people excited authentically about what you're doing. And so, TikTok for me on the organic side was really important. I was creating a lot of content and then I also partnered with a lot of TikTok, or not even a lot, I think it was like 10 influencers ranging from micro-influencers, 1,000, 2,000, 3000 followers, then some medium to large size, a few hundred thousand followers, right up to one TikTok person who had about 3 million followers.Doone Roisin (09:58):And so, that all came out on launch day along with everyone that we were rallying on TikTok and all of our content as well. And I think it just created a really happy buzz on TikTok. And looking back, I tried a number of different things. I tried PR that didn't work for me. I wasted a lot of time pedaling. It didn't come to fruition. I got a few good things. I got a feature in Refinery, which was absolutely amazing, but I pedaled a lot to get not a lot of return.Doone Roisin (10:30):And TikTok was one of those things where looking back, it's hard to see, obviously with Amazon, you're not able to own your customer data. You're not able to see the traffic, where it's coming from, all that kind of stuff. But anecdotally, I could see people in the comments on the videos of the influencers that were posting, being like, "Just ordered my copy." So I was able to see that real time feedback from people who were supporters.Doone Roisin (10:56):And then the second thing that worked really well for me again, which was a time investment versus a money investment, was just hand-to-hand combat. And so, what I did was I went through absolutely every single thing that I could to make a list. I made this huge spreadsheet of everything. I went through my entire emails, and went through and found every single person I knew that had a newsletter who could be a potential newsletter to spread the word. Any kind of email-focused community, I wrote that on a list.Doone Roisin (11:31):I went through everyone in my Facebook friends. Who do I know and hear that could either shout about it, could introduce me to someone who has a community of their own on Facebook, put that on the list. I also did this for Facebook groups. What Facebook groups am I a part of? Can I reach out to the admin owner? Can I ask them if I can provide some value, give a talk, provide some resources in return for promotion about the book? I went through every single WhatsApp conversation and I listed out all of my friends who were going to be happy to shout about me on social media, all my friends of friends. I asked them if they would tell their friends. I think on the day I had a group of my core best friends in a WhatsApp group, and I asked them to send it to five people that they thought would love the book. And so, everyone was becoming my hype girl.Doone Roisin (12:18):I also made lists of podcasters that I knew. I tried to think about, "Who do I know, even if it's really far disconnected and not my direct community, who has a community that I could call in that favor?" And this is why networking and relationship building is so important, because the day that you have something that you need to have people rallying for you, you're able to knock on that door and be like, "Hey, today's the day. I need some help. Can you help me?" And yeah, I just went through everything, LinkedIn, Instagram. I just made tons of lists, and then I just had a column where it was their name, how I'm going to reach out to them and on what channel, and have I reached out to them, and then the follow up.Doone Roisin (13:01):And I just started sending messages, obviously super personalized, literally one-to-one, "Here's what I'm doing. Here's how I'd love to see if you could help me." Whether it was through a paid shout out or whether it was through just organic, whatever it might be, but figuring out, depending on the relationship, what made sense. And that seriously was what I attribute a lot of the success to, because I just did one by one. I was not going for a mass approach with things like paid ads where you're just spraying money at a wall and seeing what sticks and trying to find that audience. I was going to directly audiences that I already knew and just telling them what I was up to and seeing if there was something that we could do together.Ben Guest (13:48):One of the things that both you and I didn't do was paid advertising on Amazon ads, Facebook ads, et cetera. You and I, we focused on organic, authentic word of mouth. That's the best kind of marketing promotion you can have. And it's so fun talking to you now. So obviously, I know us working together from my side, and I remember sending you after I think our first conversation, I put together a checklist, a spreadsheet checklist that I shared with you on Google Docs.Ben Guest (14:20):And then, just for the listeners, every couple of weeks, I'd check in and see where Doone was on the checklist and what she checked off. And the tabs kept growing, and everything that you're just describing, you had it all laid out on that checklist and you kept adding more tabs. "Okay. These groups I'm going to reach out to. This community, I'm going to reach out to. These people, I'm going to reach out to, these podcasts." And you just had it all laid out on the checklist.Doone Roisin (14:46):When you sent me the checklist, I was like, "Great. This is the beginning of the master checklist and the master kind of plan," because you house everything in one document, and it just becomes your, "Here is what you need to do every single day, chipping away." And I had all of your things to do on that first tab that I was just able to go through and follow and slowly chip away at over the three months or two months or whatever.Doone Roisin (15:11):And then, I had all of the launch party plans, communities, pricing, what I'd spent, everything else, just everything related to the book lived in that one document. And I even did my recap in there as well, where I afterwards went through and put in all the press that we'd received, not that it was a lot, but we received the Refinery article, a few smaller pieces of press and all the TikTok videos and things like that recapped. So I'm always able to just go back and immediately be like, "Oh yeah, that's right. That's exactly what happened."Doone Roisin (15:44):And it's also good for when you are doing your wrap up, not that I did a report for myself, because I absolutely didn't. But when you look back at all the different initiatives you did, unless you have everything clearly mapped out and in one place, it's pretty easy to forget what you did. And even before this call, I just opened up the document to be like, "Yeah, what did I do? That was five months ago. I forget." So yeah, that checklist was... I love the checklist. It makes life very easy when you have a great checklist that's created from an expert.Ben Guest (16:12):And the cool thing about it is, now that you have that checklist, now you have a plan for the next book.Doone Roisin (16:17):Oh, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And exactly, you're right. I added notes to it. I would know next time things that I added in along the way. Yeah, it's mandatory, I would say.Ben Guest (16:29):TikTok is the new thing for selling books, so let's dive into that a little bit.Doone Roisin (16:34):The reality of TikTok is the more time you put into it, the more you get out of it, a hundred percent. So when I was posting three times a day, I was growing really quickly because, of course, I'm on there three times a day, pushing new styles of content, trying new different things, really being there when people open their app all the time, basically, whereas now I only post once a day and I can see that's slowed my growth down.Doone Roisin (16:57):But TikTok has been really instrumental actually, in being a discovery channel for my podcast. So I always ask, if someone leaves a kind message in my Instagram DMs or on email or LinkedIn or in TikTok and says, "Oh my God, I love your show" or "I love your podcast," I always reply, and somewhere in that reply, "How did you find the show?" And actually, a lot of the time it's through organic SEO or podcast recommendations in the apps, but the other way that people often say is TikTok.Ben Guest (17:33):What are your tips for authors using TikTok to raise awareness for their books?Doone Roisin (17:40):What are my tips? So if you're new to TikTok and you haven't got any experience on the platform, and you might be someone who is a little insecure about putting your face on the camera and this new style of creating content and things like that, I totally get it. I definitely felt like that in the beginning. It took me a while to get used to it. So first of all, my tip would be just to consume a lot of content that is around your niche.Doone Roisin (18:07):So if you are writing chick lit, and you have a lot of authors that you look up to, go and see if those authors are on TikTok. Or even if it's not linked to your niche, but go and find people who are authors just in general and look up what they're doing. And you can do that by searching the hashtags. There's lots of book talk, book recs, book recommendation. Often there are lots of trends around different books that are going around at the moment or the way that people display their books on TikTok. So I would do a lot of research.Doone Roisin (18:43):I would then spend some time just creating 30 to 50 drafts and not even putting pressure on yourself to post them, but just to get comfortable, get familiar, and get into the groove of how you feel and look and sound on video. And then, there are so many small little tips that you can do with TikTok. For example, one that I heard recently, and I'm sure this stuff changes all the time, but one that I heard recently is if you're going to start a TikTok account, you should immediately start posting explosively the day that you start your account, not tomorrow, not 10 weeks from now.Doone Roisin (19:27):So for example, when I tell you to do 50 drafts, do that on the dummy account, don't use that as your main account. And then, the day that you're ready to start your account, that's the day that you start posting minimum three times a day and you give yourself a 30-day challenge, and you just go all out. And you've already got your list of content that you have found online.Doone Roisin (19:47):What you can also do is look for viral videos that have already got a proven kind of method to how they look, and try and recreate that video. Take inspiration from it, make it your own, but you can see why things have gone viral and take those kind of learnings from that video when you are consuming and researching.Doone Roisin (20:06):And then I would also say, what you can do on TikTok is you go to the search bar, and if you were to search something really specific, not even something specific, let's say book talk, all the top performing videos will come up at the top. And you can even filter it so that you filter it by most liked in the last three months, and then you'll get the most viral videos related to that.Doone Roisin (20:34):And then you can build a bit of an idea around, "Oh, yeah. I can actually create that kind of content. That would work for me and my style and what I like." Or, "Oh, I can see why that worked. I could take elements of that." And build a bit of a content strategy so that when you are gearing up to launch and you're like, "Yep, I have got the time carved out every single day," or "I'm going to batch record every weekend so that I have my 15 videos or however many it is for the week." And then, just the day that you're ready to start that day, get it all out for 30 days or three months.Ben Guest (21:08):And you mentioned something there that it's so key, not for TikTok, but for any type of marketing and promotion you're doing for a book. And this is something that we talked about the very first time that we had a conversation, which is finding your pilot author, finding your comparable author and your comparable book, and seeing what they're doing, what podcasts they're doing interviews on, what they're doing on their social media, what their cover of their book looks like, so on and so forth.Ben Guest (21:39):And the first time that we talked and I said, "Okay, what is a comparable book? Who is a comparable author to your book, which is Your Hype Girl?" And you referenced the book, How to Build a Goddamn Empire by Ali Kriegsman. And just getting ready for the podcast this morning, I clicked over to Amazon and checked out Your Hype Girl on Amazon. And sure enough, it says "frequently bought together," Your Hype Girl.Doone Roisin (22:06):No way.Ben Guest (22:07):And How to Build a Goddamn Empire by Ali Kriegsman. So you nailed the pilot author comparable of, "I want the same audience as this book and this author." And now Amazon has picked that up, and the algorithm has picked that up, and they're matching the two of your books together.Doone Roisin (22:24):Oh, my God, that's so cool. And why that's cool is I really loved watching Ali bring out her book. And we had her on the show when she launched the book. And so, it's so funny that you say that now, knowing those books have still been managed to be linked somehow. I love that for me. It's cool.Ben Guest (22:44):And it's totally organic.Doone Roisin (22:45):Yep. That's so great.Ben Guest (22:46):That's the thing that we're talking about. And for people listening to this podcast who are in whatever phase of writing, editing, publishing their book, the number one takeaway that I want or we want you to have is, you do not have to do this alone. You're not on your own. People have gone before you and done this, so all you have to do... The number one takeaway is find that comparable author and that comparable book, see what they've done, and you just fit in behind what they're doing. Now, I want to be clear-Doone Roisin (23:20):Yes. Reverse engineer it.Ben Guest (23:21):Yes, exactly.Doone Roisin (23:21):Reverse engineer what are the levers that they have pulled that get them in front of audiences that are relevant to that book and how can you repeat it.Ben Guest (23:33):Exactly. And so, I want to be clear, let's say you're writing a book in the horror genre. You don't say, "Okay, my comparable author is Steven King." Right? You don't pick the number one best selling author in your genre. You pick someone that's more closely comparable.Ben Guest (23:46):So the example I always use is right now, I'm finishing up a book project with a retired NBA player, Scott Williams. He played on the Chicago Bulls of the nineties, won three championships, so on and so forth. And he played the position of power forward. So when we're looking at comparable authors, there's another power forward from the nineties, a guy named Charles Oakley, who just published a book last year. So now it's just tracking, "Okay, what are the interviews? What are the media hits? What are the tactics that Charles Oakley used in publishing his book?" We don't go and look at, "Okay. When Michael Jordan published his book or Kobe Bryant published his book." You look at someone that's a very nice comparable in terms of who the person is, in terms of what the book is.Doone Roisin (24:33):Absolutely.Ben Guest (24:34):Speaking of not having to do this on your own, so when this podcast interview drops, I'm also officially putting my shingle out there, Ben Guest Book Consulting.Doone Roisin (24:49):Ready for hire.Ben Guest (24:51):Ready for hire. And Doone has been great. You've already connected me with several people. And again, it's just all organic, it's all just word of mouth, and that's led to a couple of great projects that I'm currently working on. I hate doing this, but if we could do a little bit of promotion, what was it like working with me?Doone Roisin (25:06):Oh, my gosh. First of all, I think your superpower is just making things really easy. You already know the blueprint, the strategy. You've got everything there. And you just fed that to me in a way that I was easily able to be, "Great. I'm busy. I don't have time for lots of different things." You just gave me the list and I was able to work my way through it.Doone Roisin (25:33):And I would say the number one thing was, it was just so easy working with you, which was such joy, such joy in my life. And then I would also say you are a great accountability buddy. You were a cheerleader for me the whole way through. You made me feel really supported. You made me feel really good about myself, and made me feel like I could totally achieve the things that I wanted to achieve, so accountability was second.Doone Roisin (25:58):And then I think also, what was really important was if I just had a quick question, I would just come to you and you would have the answer. It was just so easy having that person that you can... Instead of having to spend time researching and then you don't know if that's really the answer and then you'd ask five people their opinions, I could just be like, "Ben, hey, what do I need to do here?" Yeah. I think working with you was just absolutely amazing and I can't recommend you highly enough. I really loved the process and you made my life easy. You were my accountability buddy, and you were just there when I needed support. You were my support line. But yeah, I had the best time working with you. It was super fun.Ben Guest (26:41):Thank you so much. And it was the same. It was just a joy working with you. And I can't tell people how enjoyable it is to work with someone, and you have your plan and you follow your plan, you execute your plan, and then it succeeds, and it's more successful than you even hoped and envisioned for. But it's all about just going back to those actionable items. I really think that's the key. It's not, "Okay. Here's the plan, and it's just reach out to some podcasts." Right? It's, "Okay. Have your comparable author. Find five podcast interviews they did. What were the podcasts? What's the contact information? Contact these five people." Actionable item that takes all the mystery out of it. You know exactly what you need to do.Doone Roisin (27:31):A hundred percent. Absolutely. And I think the other thing is that you can often feel like, "Oh my God. How am I going to get up to the top of that mountain? That mountain is so high." That just feels not attainable. But then when you've broken it down into all those tiny little steps, it's just the 1% every day that you need to aim for. You just need to tick off one tiny thing or two tiny things, or if you're in a power mode, tick off 10 things. Great, amazing. But that's why you give yourself that three month window where you're just going to chip away every single day. And then when you look back in hindsight, you're going to be like, "Wow. That really compounded because I did all the steps from three months out, and then I'm at the top of the mountain and I don't even know how I got here." It's really that 1%, 1% every day.Ben Guest (28:20):You mentioned being invited to Buckingham Palace and meeting the future king of England. And it was so cool seeing that on your social media. Do you tie that directly to the success of your book?Doone Roisin (28:34):Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. It's just such a wild story.Ben Guest (28:39):Because that was not on our list.Doone Roisin (28:41):Definitely not on the list of goals, going to Buckingham Palace. Yeah, that was so wild. Basically, the book came out, I had a feature go up on Sohohouse.com, which was talking about the book, talking about entrepreneurship. And someone saw that and nominated me for the Young Australian Achiever of the Year Award in the UK. And when I received the email, I didn't know I was nominated or anything like that. But I received an email to say, I'd won this thing. And I was like, "Oh, that's not true. This is a lie. This is spam or whatever." And then I LinkedIn stalked a few people and I was like, "Oh, maybe this is legit." And my family was out here being like, "I don't think this is legit. You need to be careful. If it's Australia House, they'll be contacting you by mail." And I was like, "I don't know." Anyway, it was all a bit weird.Doone Roisin (29:36):And even when we were going, they hosted this huge gala event and I had to get up and give a speech. And there was hundreds of people there. And the person who won Australian of the Year was this amazing woman who was the Lead Statistician who worked on Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. And even on our way there, I was like, "Maybe this is part of some big scam" or "Oy, is this really real?" And then when we got there, I was like, "Oh, it actually is really real."Doone Roisin (30:06):And then the next thing that happened was after that, not too long after that, I got another email from the Embassy, because Australia House is the Embassy of Australia in London. I got another email from the assistant to the High Commissioner asking if I would be happy for my name to be put forward. But they were very vague and it was something to do with the royals. And I was, again, just shrugged it off, was like, "Oh, whatever."Doone Roisin (30:35):And then, it was so weird. It was such a weird coincidence, because on the Saturday morning at 6:00 AM, my husband and I were going to fly to New York for some work stuff. And on the Friday afternoon, when we walked back into the apartment, we never check our mail, because we have concierge where we receive packages and stuff. We never check our actual letter box. And I was like, "Oh, we haven't checked the letter box in a while. We should just check it." When I opened it up and it's packed to the brim, and on the very top sitting there is a letter from Buckingham Palace. And I was like, "Oh, s**t," because it had been Jubilee Weekend. And I was like, "Oh I bet I've missed the event. I reckon I was invited to just party at the palace or something and it's already gone."Doone Roisin (31:22):And then I opened it, and it was an invitation basically around celebrating people who have contributed to culture and community within the UK and as a result of what I've been building with Female Startup Club and being recognized as the Australian Young Achiever of the Year. And I was like, "Whoa, this is crazy." And it was for that week. And so, I was about to fly the next morning. I would have missed it if I didn't check the letter box, because the event was then on Thursday. So I had to change my flight, went to Buckingham Palace, and I went with Merryn, who is the Lead Statistician who won Australian of the Year.Doone Roisin (31:59):And we just had the best time. It was so cool. I had a few moments with Prince Charles and we were talking about what I was doing with Female Startup Club. And he was making some jokes about the Prince's Trust, because he supports young entrepreneurs and ambitious young people through his organization. And it was just one of those moments that was so weird and so bizarre, so amazing. It was just such a thrill, and yeah, had the best day and then flew to New York and we got to celebrate on a high in New York as well.Ben Guest (32:36):What's Prince Charles like? What's one of the jokes he made?Doone Roisin (32:39):Oh, my God. I can't even remember because I froze. I can't remember the specific things that he said, but he was so charming. Of course, royals, you expect them to be charming and you expect them to be lovely. But when I met him, I was like, "Wow." He deeply looks into your eyes and really gives you the moment to have a little chat and have a little joke. He's so charming and so warm and absolutely lovely. And Camilla was also just wonderful. She was so lovely and kind and very gracious. So yeah, it was really special. I couldn't have ever imagined that Female Startup Club would lead me to Buckingham Palace.Ben Guest (33:24):That's so cool. We started at the top of the interview talking about the ancillary benefits of publishing a book, and it leads to things like speaking gigs and it's really an accelerator, an accelerant for everything else that you're doing. And in this case, it led to being invited to Buckingham Palace. Now I can't promise you if you engage me, if you engage Ben Guest Book Consulting, that you're going to get invited to Buckingham Palace, but I can promise you that you will have a successful book launch.Doone Roisin (33:55):Yes. Everyone should hit you up immediately so they can get their own version of Buckingham Palace on the way.Ben Guest (34:02):I love it. So you can find me at, again, the day this interview drops, my website goes live. It's benguest.net. That has all the services I offer, my rates, testimonials, including a wonderful testimonial from you, Doone. Doone, it's been absolutely a pleasure becoming friends over this past year, getting to know you and working with you on this project. And as I said, it's the reward that I get from seeing how successful this was. It can't be put into words, but it's just been an absolute pleasure working with you.Doone Roisin (34:35):Aww, thanks Ben. You are just absolute joy. It's been such a pleasure working with you, too. And I'm so stoked for this new phase for you and all that you're doing as well. It's so exciting. I'm going to be cheering for you. I'll be your hype girl.Ben Guest (34:52):Love it. Love it. Love it. Please tell everybody the name of the book and where they can find you.Doone Roisin (34:58):Yes. The book is called Your Hype Girl. You can find it on Amazon or buy at my website, femalestartupclub.com. And you can find me at Doone Roisin, which is D-O-O-N-E, R-O-I-S-I-N in all the places. I'm on TikTok. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. I'm all over the shop, so check in with me wherever you want. Always happy to give advice, always happy to answer any follow-up questions, always happy to just chat about what you're up to, would love to.Ben Guest (35:32):Fantastic. Doone, much continued success, and thank you so much.Doone Roisin (35:38):Thanks, Ben.Ben Guest (35:39):So that was my conversation with Doone Roisin. I'm Ben Guest. You can find all of my work at benbo.substack.com. That's benbo.substackcom. Benbo is a family nickname, B-E-N-B-O. And as I mentioned in this interview, I've started a book consulting business. You can find my services and rates at benguest.net. That's benguest.net. I also have some of the books I'm currently working on, testimonials, et cetera. So I think everybody has a book in them, a story to tell, and if you're interested in telling yours, please reach out. You can find me a benguest.net. Have a great day. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Auditions show you a different version of your story…Katherine Vondy is a Los Angeles-based writer and director working in film, theater, and literature.She is the recipient of the Davey Foundation Theatre Grant for her play The Fermi Paradox, and The Broken Heart of Gnocchi Bolognese, her award-winning short film, has screened at festivals worldwide.Her plays have been developed with the Salt Lake Acting Company, The Athena Project, The Blank, Paper Wing Theatre Company, Campfire Theatre Festival, and The Vagrancy (where she currently serves as playwriting group moderator).Her prose and poetry appears widely in literary journals and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Queen's Ferry Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net.Kat received her BA in English and Music from Amherst College and her MFA in Film and Television Production from USC. Read about her creative adventures on her website and follow her on Twitter here.In this conversation Kat and I talk:Shooting on a Sony PD150 in her first year at USC.The value of limitations in filmmaking.Thinking through shots.Were classmates at USC more collaborative or more competitive?The most helpful class at USC…Why directors should take an acting class.The job of a director is to capture “authentic human performance.”Auditions show you a different version of your story…The essential components to adapting a story to film.The worst thing to do in storytelling is bore the audience.The impact of surprise on storytelling.The “popcorn scares” in Spielberg's Jaws.Richard Linklater's Boyhood“The taking away of a payoff can also be a payoff.”Starting not with story or plot but a moment.The value of our unconscious mind.Juxtaposing sadness and humor.Traumedy.Is USC worth the price? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Andrés Alvarez, of Box Score Geeks and Nerd Numbers, and I break down Game 3 of the NBA Finals.We talk:-The productivity of Rob Williams III, Kevon Looney, and Gary Payton II-What's wrong with Draymond Green-Is Steve Kerr a good coach?Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Game 7 of the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals.Twenty-three seconds left and the Miami Heat trail the Boston Celtics by only two points.Jimmy Butler, Miami's star player, gets the rebound and dribbles down court.Al Horford of the Celtics is backpedaling.With sixteen seconds left Butler pulls up for the three.He misses.Was it the right play?Dre Alvarez, of Box Score Geeks, and I do a deep dive into the shot that wasn't.For more, see Dre's breakdown of why Butler deserved the inaugural Larry Bird Conference Finals MVP here: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

As we learn to become collaborators, as we learn to work with each other, it's wise to be vulnerable and share what you're feeling about each project that you're making. This can't be done alone. - Redd ColtraneSo I've just finished my first semester of film school at USC.I was always interested in filmmaking, and made a few documentaries on the side, but I've never made filmmaking my primary focus.Then, when the pandemic happened, like many of us, I reassessed what I was doing and what I wanted to do.And so, here I am doing my MFA in Film Production at USC :-)Finishing the first semester I've had several conversations with classmates around lessons we learned. There was so much information that would potentially be helpful for future film school students, and people interested in filmmaking. I asked three classmates to join me on the pod and share their wisdom.My three guests are Chirsten Vanderbilt, Redd Coltrane, and Ant Roberson. We've all completed our first semester in Film Production at USC and here is what we have learned along the way.In this conversation we touch on:-Trusting your instincts-How preparation frees you up on set-Keys to good communication with your crew and classmates-Setting good habits versus cutting corners-Addressing potential cultural barriers-“Now keep in mind I'm an artist and I'm sensitive about my s**t.” - Erykah Badu-When shooting, check your footage before each new setup-The power of checklists-Self-care and setting time limits when editing-Your subconscious is a super-power-Storytelling has to come from a real place-Writing a script while tipsy-Great art comes from iteration-Keys to being successful at USC-How to engage with professors This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

[My publisher] was like, "We always publish our essay collections in this size and people like it, because they can throw it in their bag." And as much as that frustrated me, they were right and they are right. And there are all those types of signifiers that let you know whether a book will be literary or practical or nonfiction or fiction. And those things as consumers, we code them and register them.Jen Winston (she/they) is a writer and bisexual whose work focuses on dating, queerness, and the millennial condition. They are the author of the critically-acclaimed book, GREEDY: NOTES FROM A BISEXUAL WHO WANTS TOO MUCH, which was just named a finalist for the 2022 Lammy Awards from Lambda Literary. Paper Mag wrote that GREEDY is “at once relatable, laugh-out-loud funny, and refreshingly illuminating,” and BuzzFeed named it a Best LGBTQ+ book of 2021, calling it “more insightful about identity than any book this year.”Jen currently lives in Brooklyn with their partner, dogs, and iPhone. You can follow Jen on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok at @jenerous.In this conversation Jen and I discuss book marketing, including:-Working with a cover designer-Hiring a publicist-Designing a custom Instagram filter-Creating influencer packages-The differences Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok for marketing books-Reaching out to your niche audienceTRANSCRIPTBen Guest:Jen, thank you so much for coming on.Jen Winston:Yay. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.Ben Guest:So the big overview question, what are the fundamentals of good marketing for a book?Jen Winston:Ooh, I'm glad you asked that. Well, I'm going to tell you what my day job is, because this is a very unique time when I'm not going to get in trouble for it, because I have given my two weeks and I'm between jobs. So currently I work at Meta during the day as a creative director, an associate creative director, focusing on things related to the meta. I just gave my two weeks, and in May, I will be joining Lyft as their creative director of social media. So I've been focused in the creative and marketing world for quite some time.Jen Winston:I'm normally not allowed to talk about that when I'm also like technically "Promoting my book," but what are they going to do? Fire me? They can't, because I'm leaving. So it's a very exciting time to be able to say that on a podcast, but I think what makes good book marketing and what makes good marketing in general is marketing that takes on the position of the person who's seeing the marketing and asks, what could this mean to people. And with book marketing, you want to make that you don't assume people already know everything about your book or anything about your book for that matter.Jen Winston:I think it's really important to have the premise of your book distill down into a very succinct sense or two, and marketing can also shape the core idea of your book. And in my case, that's really what happened. I thought about bisexuality. I had recently come out and I was still ashamed of it. I felt like it was this binary identity that I didn't really support. Like I was starting to learn more about gender and I was like, "There are lots of genders." This feels like an identity that supports men and women, and I don't really like that, but I've always identified with this word. And then I started reading about bi-theory, bisexual, and I learned that bisexuality actually challenges all these types of binaries, including gender. It just requires a bit of a reframing of the way we think about it.Jen Winston:And so I wanted to make sure that I was like, "That's what I want to write a book about now that I really believe in bisexuality," because it's been something that's been true for me for so long that I've been ashamed of essentially. And I was able to suss that out with the target audience and be like, "If I'm a bisexual who has never seen a piece of content like this, there are probably other bisexuals who have never seen a piece of content like this." And I looked on TikTok and there were 10 million uses of the hashtag bisexual. And so I was like, "Okay, that's an audience that I should speak to." Like, those people need to be seen and they need art created for them. And that's why I wanted to make sure I put the word bisexual in the title.Jen Winston:And I talked a lot throughout the process about how are we going to reach that audience. And it was always confusing because we were like, "Do we want to put it in this books for in section?" Which is like a lot of times books for straight white women typically. And then we could also put in the LGBTQ section where people might not see it. And I was really torn on that because I really think it speaks to a lot of the challenges the bisexual community faces. It's like, "Are we gay? Or are we straight?" And the reality is that like we are bisexual. We are none of the above at all of the above at the same time. And so it was really challenging to create something that spoke to that audience and found them where they were.Jen Winston:One thing that I also learned throughout the process is that the cover has so much to do with how the book finds its audience, because whether we realize it or not, books are brands. It signals to us based on design and in the literary world, there are certain books that we can see are going to be like, whether it will be a self help book, we can see whether something will likely be a memoir. That's why my publisher wanted my book to be a paperback book because if it were a hard cover, it would be less clear that it was a memoir. They're-Ben Guest:It's interesting.Jen Winston:Yeah. They were like, "We always publish our essay collections in this size and people like it, because they can throw it in their bag." And as much as that frustrated me, they were right and they are right.Jen Winston:And there are all those types of signifiers that let you know whether a book will be literary or practical or nonfiction or fiction. And those things as consumers, we code them and register them. And I knew that my publisher wasn't going to market my book as a literary book. And I know that it's a long pretentious cycle to get marketed as a literary book. You have to have an MFA and you have to have a... No offense to people getting their MFAs, Ben. And you have to have... Yeah, you have to have a lot of degrees and you have to have published in the New Yorker and the New York Times and you got to have all the bylines and I didn't have any of that because I've had to work a full time job and I could never afford to pay for an MFA program.Jen Winston:And I still wanted people to recognize that my book was quality writing and that it contained valuable information. And also that it experimented with form a little bit, because a lot of the essays in my book do experiment with form. Like one is written as a doctor's diagnosis or like a clinical study, another's written as a screenplay. Another is an email exchange. And then the whole thing is a blend of social theory and memoir. And I was really striving for that and I wanted to give it this high brow approach. And so my publisher had designed some covers that, when they sent me the covers, it firmly positioned it in the realm of chicklet. And I was like, "Oh, this answers the question of where we're going to position the book." Oops, sorry, hit the mic. "This answers the question of where they want to position the book. They want to position it toward straight women at target. That's what they want." And yeah, there was one cover with cherries wearing panties or something. It was like-Ben Guest:I still remember that from our first conversation.Jen Winston:Oh yeah.Ben Guest:It's so f*****g stupid.Jen Winston:Well, I will hand it to the designer because it's a really challenging design brief to all the earlier things I was saying. I didn't want a bisexual flag, but there's also not a lot you can do [inaudible 00:06:59] signal to this community. And so it was huge challenge. And I knew I needed to bring in like big guns essentially to solve that challenge and also to help position the book is a bit more literary. And so I found a designer who I love, whose work I loved on Instagram, his name's Rodrigo Corral. He just put together like a montage of all the covers he's designed. And I was like, "Oh my God," he designs like so many Chuck [Palahniuk 00:07:25] covers, just so many bestsellers, This Is How You Lose Her. So many iconic covers have come from his mind.Jen Winston:And I DM him totally unsure of what would happen. And he said he would, I had to pay him, but that was the best money that I spent because it helped my book. It helped people be proud to hold my book up on Instagram and for a physical copy of a book that is so, so important. And it's honestly important for an ebook too. I think, where I doing it over again, I would want to think more about how the cover plays in an e-book environment, especially for readers that don't have that view in black and white. That's how important the cover is. You want to think of it at every single phase. I also didn't like love how my cover collapsed to an audio book style. It was so built for the paper that it just didn't really play as well everywhere else.Jen Winston:And even when we tried to put a quote on the cover, we couldn't figure it out. So we ended up putting it on the back. But I think, yeah, the cover was such a huge part of the marketing. And then I let it inform this overarching approach and campaign and fun that we were going to have with the style. And so I worked with a friend, even though I'm a creative director, by trade. I hired a friend of mine, who's a designer to be my creative director and also emotional support during the launch. And she created social media templates for me so that I could just write down if I got press. I could put it into a social media graphic and share it. It made it much easier for me to go from zero to a hundred. She also designed my website, which is greedy-bisexual.com, which anyone can go to and buy the book if you want.Jen Winston:And like Angelfire website, it feels like it's from the late nineties.Ben Guest:Yep.Jen Winston:And I'm really proud of the website. She, my friend did such an amazing job and there's so much nostalgia for that time period in the book that it just feels very cohesive and yeah. So that was really important. And-Ben Guest:So there are-Jen Winston:Yeah go ahead-Ben Guest:There are a couple of things-Jen Winston:[crosstalk 00:09:43] time.Ben Guest:No, it's all great. There are a couple things I want to headline for the audience. So first is, one of the first steps you took was figuring out is there an audience for this content? And like you said, there was something like 10 million posts with the hashtag bisexuals, so okay, there is an audience that wants this content. Then second, you made such a great point about what is the physical touch and feel and look of the book, communicate subconsciously to someone walking in the store and seeing it or someone just seeing it on the digital bookshelf of Amazon or Apple books. And I think you use the word code, like we subconsciously code "Okay. Oh, that book falls in this category, that book falls in this category." So having your fit that type of category, memoir in this case, is important. Even though it's something as a reader or an audience, we might not even be aware that we're doing.Ben Guest:And then three the cover. And that's one of the first conversations we had as well. Your cover is kick ass. I'll post a photo of it in the show notes. And I always tell people the three things you want to spend money on, whether you're self-publishing, traditional publishing, whatever it is, good editor, good copy edit, and a great cover. Those things are worth their weight in gold.Jen Winston:And you know what else I have come around? I don't know if I felt this way at the time, but I also invested in a publicist. And that was the biggest line item I've ever paid for anything. I don't own a house, that was like a down payment on a house. It was 25 grand, 25,000 on my publicist, which I used my advanced for. And I had a $55,000 advance, which I recognize feels like a lot. Now that I was literally doing my taxes before this, it feels like I wish it had been far less than that. Obviously I could write off the publicist and stuff and the coverage designer, but I basically put all that money back into marketing and promoting the book and I'm glad I had that money to do it with, I don't know how people write books for a living. Like it's impossible.Jen Winston:And I really think that is important to acknowledge, is the ridiculous privilege that it takes to be able to do this. Even in terms of privilege of time. Like I had the time to work a full-time job that allowed me breaks on nights and weekends where I was able to write this book. But still was like running over into my personal life so significantly and that's a privilege. And I was able to spend my whole advance because I work a full-time job, but there are many people, obviously who don't. And then when you self-publish, you have to use your own money for this. So being very conscious of that. But I think probably when we talked last July, I was not super hype about the idea of my publicist, because I was like, "I don't know what she's doing, et cetera, et cetera."Jen Winston:But I am so happy that I worked with her in the end. My book got a ton of great press and I definitely credit her with that. I think when you're self-publishing, it's easier to realize that if you don't pay for something, it won't happen. Or if you don't pay for something or do it yourself, it won't happen. I thought that my publisher would take care of a lot of the publicity. And I've learned from talking to friends that it's very rare that a publisher will go to bat for you as if the book is their own child. Because when you write a book, it's like the most important thing to you. No one cares about it as much as you, period.Jen Winston:And in many ways, I feel like even though I was working with a publisher and I had some financial and infrastructure support from them, obviously I had distribution support from them, which was something I could never have handled by myself, I was totally unprepared for that. I do think I tackled this in a way that was similar to self-publishing challenge, because I was like, "I want the launch to look like this." And part of that was that I felt beholden to my marketing colleagues and I wanted to show off that I could market well for myself. I also did like a custom Instagram filter and that was also a great use of money. But you have to be very-Ben Guest:Talk about the custom Instagram filter.Jen Winston:Yeah. So those Instagram based filters that you can do, the ones that will circle over your head with "What kind of fast food are you?" So I did one that was called, "What bisexual are you?" Or "What kind of bisexual are you?" And I worked with this amazing creator, amazing non-binary creator named... It was important to me to work with Queer creators as much as possible. And I'm really glad I was able to do that for the most part. And the creator made this filter so visually, it tied really well to my book cover.Jen Winston:It had the same font and the same colors. And then the little logo at the bottom was the book cover itself. And so it says "Greedy" in the lens title. But the actual filter says, "What bisexual are you?" And that was honestly some of my mobile marketing savvy that I was able to bring in. Because I was like, "If this just says the name of my book, no one's going to want to use it. But if it says, 'What bisexual are you?' People are going to want to use it. And then they'll also this subliminal marketing about my book." And that was like 600 bucks.Ben Guest:That, just before you even said the price point, that just seems like such a genius idea because people are plugging into actively doing something. And then of course it's also marketing your book. I'm actually co-writing right now a memoir of a retired NBA player and he played on a couple different teams. And so I'm already envisioning we could do like, "Which team are you?" and then you could pick, and then it's the same thing, but at $600, that's-Jen Winston:Well that person should raise their rates, because they're amazing. Their work is so amazing. I highly recommend following them. And-Ben Guest:What's their name again?Jen Winston:Their handle is Non Finery. Yeah. And they have great filter on their profile as well. I think with that idea of the, "Which team are..." You'd want to make sure that there's some clear callback to the facts that it is a book, that's the challenge with a filter. Because you have to make people want to do it, but then you also have to make people know that it's a book. So in my case, my cover is a bit hard to read. The letters are kind of all over the place, which is what I love about it, because bisexual confusion. It plays off of that. But I was relying on the fact that people would hopefully see it again or have seen it already on Instagram, because so much of my marketing was on Instagram. So I didn't expect anyone to convert to buy my book, write off of that. It was just like another thing in the ecosystem.Jen Winston:And then the other thing I did that was probably... I don't know if it was helpful. It was so much work. So it's really hard for me to say if the work paid off, but I sent influencer packages to almost 200 people. And in each of those packages, there was a book, a card that I hand wrote to each of them, a custom message. I hand wrote it about something we shared via... And most of these people I hadn't met, it was just people I knew through... There was a penis lollipop that I got from a gourmet place called Cocksicles and my publisher did pay for those somehow. And then there was a vibrator in most of them that was donated by a vibrator company that I worked with in the past. And they donated a bunch and later I realized it was actually a great deal for them because they basically sent me $2,000 worth of inventory and got like so many more impressions based on it.Jen Winston:And I did all the work. So I was like, "Okay, I guess that makes sense." I basically ran a full influencer marketing campaign for them for free. And then the packages also had... And this was the worst part, but also the most impactful. I handmade beaded bracelets. I handmade 200 beaded bracelets that said "Greedy" or said "Bisexual" or said "Greedy bisexual," some people got too. I literally sat and watched TV for three months and hand made 200 bracelets. It was absolutely ridiculous, but it was also the thing that most shared because it was like the thing most people posted about, because it was what made them realize that I actually had made this bespoke for them. And honestly I think some of them might have even thought that I bought them because by the end I got like really good at making them.Jen Winston:So the earlier ones, they knew that I'd made them by hand, but it was so much work and I would say about 70% of the people I sent them to, probably shared it. And I'm not sure that really converted to people reading it, because I think on Instagram, people think that it's just an influencer book and it's being marketed by influencers. It's probably full of influencer... Like that big content. So I would do that a bit differently in the future, but I also gave-Ben Guest:What would you do differently?Jen Winston:Just not exhaust myself throughout the whole process. That's the number one thing I would do differently. Is like prioritize my mental health. I was on a deadline because of my publisher and because it was coming out. And I wrote and published the book in under a year. So I wrote the book and then I dove into this marketing campaign and it was without a doubt, the hardest year of my life. I'm still recovering, my body is still recovering. I'm burnt out to a point that's going to take years to recover. And hopefully I get a little bit of time off between jobs and I'm hoping that helps. But it just was incredibly exhausting. But it was-Ben Guest:So that's a brutal schedule for a traditionally published.Jen Winston:Yeah. I don't know why.Ben Guest:Let's go back to the publicist. What were some pieces of advice that your publicist gave you?Jen Winston:So I don't know that my publicist actually gave me that much advice because I knew a lot because I've also worked in PR. So I was like, "This person works for me. I'm paying them this much money, they will do what I say." So I sent them a list of places I want it to be, I sent them a list of every journalist.Ben Guest:And, do you mean like reviews or interviews or something else? What do you mean?Jen Winston:I sent a [crosstalk 00:20:42]. Yeah, I wanted it to be in the New York Times. I wanted it to be... I put Vogue, I put Buzzfeed, I put Cosmo. I didn't put Rolling Stone, but I probably should have.Ben Guest:Let's call back.Jen Winston:I should have. And I also tried to think through things like that. Like what are places I mentioned in the book that might be interested and yeah.Ben Guest:Okay. Wait, so let me ask a question about that. So let's say you have your top 20 places you want the book to appear and you hire a publicist. What was the hit rate? What percent of those top 20 did the book end up appearing?Jen Winston:That's a good question. And if I were tracking that I'd probably be better situated for that. I had two goals for the book. Well I had three. One was to be on the New York Times bestseller list, which did not happen. And that was a very hard goal. And I had no idea if that was going to be possible and it's like not possible. The second one was to get the cover recognized by the New York Times which happened. It was named one of the best covers of 2021, which was an amazing thing. I don't think most of my fellow authors would care as much about that accolade because they normally left it up to the designer, but I was really involved in that creative process. And so that was meaningful to me.Jen Winston:And I actually was able to share the briefing process and all the explorations we did. Once that news was announced, I shared all that stuff on my Instagram and people were like, "This is so cool to see inside this process." And I think everyone was shocked that I was so involved. So that was really a fun thing. And then the third one was to get it nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, which it was. And I don't have... Yeah, as an author, you don't have that much control over that, but you do have control over whether it's submitted. Yeah. I would say that was the biggest asset of the publicist.Jen Winston:So I thought my friend... Aaron Williams, who wrote the book commute, which is an incredible graphic novel, like amazing, highly recommend it. I had asked if Erin had used a publicist and she said, "No," but she wished she had because then maybe it would've been nominated for more awards. And I was like, "Oh, crap. I should get a publicist." I talked to several authors who had not had publicist and they were like, "I should have gotten one" and I didn't want to have any regrets. And so I was like, "Whatever, take my money."Ben Guest:How did you choose your publicist?Jen Winston:I spoke to three on the phone and this was the first... Beth Parker is who I worked with and she was awesome. And she was the first one who asked me to read my manuscript and I was like, "Cool. She cares about..." And she did that before she accepted. I think I was like, "Oh, that means people are going to know what kind of thing is coming from you." And that meant a lot to me, to be able to work with somebody who understood what they were selling. And I think that if somebody's like, "Yeah, I'll do it." Like, "Yeah, we could do that." If they're going to take time to look at your manuscript and understand... Honestly, even if she didn't read it was a smart move and she waited a week. I was like, "If she just didn't read it..." But I can't imagine if she had asked to read it and then was like, "You know what? Actually, I don't want to work together."Jen Winston:That would've been awful. But I was anxious. I was like, "I hope she likes it." And that is kind of where you want to be. I think I wanted someone who recommendations when editors at magazines saw her name in their email inbox, I wanted them to be like, "This person has credibility" and I didn't even realize this, but it turns out she has become marketer for all these Queer books. She's doing so many Queer books. And also, that's another reason I gravitated to her. She had an example in her portfolio of a book a Tomboyland, by Melissa Faliveno, that book I had seen everywhere. And even though I mention it to people, I don't know if you've seen it. Probably not, but you're not the target. And so I was like, "Oh, this book reached its audience, because I'm the target for that book." And so I was really impressed by that book's marketing and PR and I had that thought and I was like, "You're the perfect person."Ben Guest:So the three big benefits of having a publicist, which of course traditional published authors and self-publish authors can engage is the credibility of, "Okay, if she's emailing Vogue, they're going to open the email," the saving time aspect of doing all this work. And then also some halo effect of submitting for literary award awards. Is that correct?Jen Winston:Well, so I thought that would come through her. It ended up coming through my [inaudible 00:25:39].Ben Guest:Oh interesting.Jen Winston:But I do think the press didn't hurt in terms of getting that to happen, getting the award to happen. I think it helps reinforce it for reviewers. Yeah, in my case it was really saving time, but I think there's this sense that it's not happening if no one's working on it. And I even felt like it was not happening, like press wasn't happening when there was someone who I was paying a lot of money to work on it. And just honestly, a good chunk of it was peace of mind and it was worth it to me, because this book was so, so important to me. And I had the means to be able to do it, which is like such a huge privilege, but...Ben Guest:Okay. So you mention Instagram earlier. So let's talk Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. What are your thoughts on each of those for book marketing and lessons learned, advice for the audience, et cetera.Jen Winston:Journalists live on Twitter. That is a lesson that I've learned over the past few years for better or for worse. Journalists live on Twitter. So if you want a journalist to see your content, or if you think there's something newsworthy, it's a great place to connect with them, is through Twitter. It's also a great place to double down on hot takes from your book. You see a lot of people writing threads on Twitter, responding to current events. You can basically write a think piece on Twitter that you've already written in your book, and just keep repeating the information so that people notice you and recognize you as someone who is telling that story and doing that work. That's something that I always tell people to do on social media, but I have a really hard time with. Is if you've said something, you don't have to only say it once. You can say it over and over again, and get your money's worth out of that thought that you had, because you're a writer and that's our intellectual a property.Jen Winston:And to be able to like bring... I could write a much better op-ed about bisexuality now that I've written a book on it, for example. And so I am hoping to do that this year for bi-visibility day to drive attention to my book again. And I can also respond if something biphobic happens in the media, I can take a stance and explain the nuances of it on Twitter or I can make memes about being bisexual all year round and people will follow the content. I would say, the most important thing about TikTok is for books, is book talk. And I do think there's something very physical about book talk. Actually I want to take that back. You can keep it, you can keep it in, but I want to take that back.Jen Winston:Because the most important thing on TikTok is book talk. Is actually like only part of the story, because every book is also about something, it's not just like about books. And so you can also speak to the people who are already talking about whatever subject you are writing about. So I think a big thing is making sure that content finds its audience and that you are engaging with the people who are influencing the communities that your content speaks to. So if it's an ebook, for example, about basketball, I'm sure there are people... I'm very far away from this realm of TikTok personally, but I'm sure there's like retired NBA player niche of TikTok.Jen Winston:That's the best thing about TikTok. So you can find the exact right person and engage with their content, see what kind of content they post and try to figure out how your point of view could fit in or see if they ever do book recommendations or if they ever share thoughts from people and credit the books that they get their information from. An interesting example is while I was looking for this around bisexuality, for one, I found a bisexual book talker who lived in London, so we sent her my book.Jen Winston:And then I also found this very small TikTok called the Bi Pan Library. And it's just all about books that are bisexual and pansexual. And I was like, "Yeah, I'd love to send you my book." And I asked them and they were like, "Yeah, we'd love to receive it. Great." And now we're like loosely internet friends. But it barely had like a thousand followers, but it was like absolutely worth my time to get it in front of a thousand people or even like those 10 who are actively following the page. It's just very important to engage with those communities that are already interested in what you're talking about.Ben Guest:Yeah. So I have a question about that in terms of like, what did that outreach look like? But before we do that, so you mentioned Twitter, TikTok. What about Instagram?Jen Winston:Oh, Instagram is the one I thought I had already talked about it a lot. I guess on Instagram, it's a lot about seeing and being seen. Surprisingly the thing that I found that performed best for sales on Instagram was sharing a photo of my book, a chapter. And I have a chapter called True Life: I Masturbate Wrong. I shared a photo of that chapter, which has like a pretty shareable title. And my that's like the highest my sales have ever been, was the day I shared that. Because that post was being shared and I also included DMs I had gotten from people who were like, "We masturbate the same way. Thank God." And like "Your book's so relatable, especially this chapter." It was like a funny post, but it really made its rounds.Jen Winston:Actually, I think also people were like, "Oh, this is what the content of this book looks like." They'd only seen the cover and then just see like that's what it looks like inside. I've been meaning to share the table of contents, because I think people are like, "Oh that looks cool. Share the best quote in your book, share the best paragraph, highlight it. Put it on a quote card." But also don't be afraid of sharing it in its context. Like with other words around it and the actual thing you want people to read underlined or something. Because people love to know what they're buying, and if you can show them something like a piece that they like, they will potentially want the whole thing.Ben Guest:That's such a great quote. "People love to know what they're buying."Jen Winston:Yeah. It's very self explanatory, but also you wouldn't expect it. People often think that you have to tease, but... There's a quote from David Ogilvy, who's founded an ad agency. I love this quote. He says "Advertising can sell a bad product once." And the idea is that if people find out the product is bad, they're not buying it again. And the same goes for art or books, because if it's not good, people aren't going to recommend it. And recommendation engines, they say, "Humans talking to one another, serving is recommendation engines for your book." Is like the most powerful force that your book could-Ben Guest:Yeah. Positive word of mouth. Okay. Two quick questions. One, when you said you shared the book chapter on Instagram, does that mean you shared a photo of the first page of the chapter or you shared like the whole-Jen Winston:Yeah, I shared the first page and it has the title and the title is obviously what it is. It was a carousel, an Instagram carousel post with that as the first photo and then a few DMs. And then the chapter compares my masturbation style to an undulating monk seal. And so it references a YouTube video. And so I included the snippet of the YouTube video and people really liked that.Ben Guest:You mentioned reaching out to the TikTok person, Bi Pan TikTok, I think. It's such a great advice that you have to find that niche audience that is like 100% your audience and that's who you want to reach out to. Because that's who's going to generate positive word of mouth. So what did that reach out look like from you to that TikTok person?Jen Winston:Yeah. It started a few months before and I did that with so many people. I would did this exact thing with so many people who I was like, "They should read my book" or "I want them to read my book." I followed them and then I started engaging with their content a lot. And then I started commenting on their posts and stuff and making my comments as witty as I could. Or if not, if I couldn't make them witty, I was at least like, "Love this." And I would share their stuff. On Instagram sharing is especially important because it opens your DMs with someone potentially or it puts it to a direct message. So that's an especially important way to start a connection. And it also just shows that you support someone's work.Jen Winston:Yeah. In the few months prior when I was doing reach outs to influencers, I reached out to them and I said, "Hi, I love your content so much and love all your recommendations. Would it be okay if I sent you a copy of my book? If so..." I have the message like almost memorized. I typed it like 300 times, "if so, please let me know the best address. It'll likely ship around this time." I tried to give them as much information as I could and with people who I didn't know as well, which I forget if I did this with the BI Pan Library, I said a few things that it was about. I was like, "It's about bisexuality and contains lots of weird sex stories" or I would give them a bit of context.Jen Winston:And then with people who were more design minded, I sent a photo of the cover. I was like, "Would love if I could send you a copy of my book." And I sent the book so they could see like, "Oh, this looks cool." And I really tailored each of those approaches. And I think just a lot of it is just about putting yourself in the other person's shoes, whether that's all the people you're marketing to, or trying to speak to, or just the one person who you're trying to get help amplify your book and its content.Ben Guest:Right. And was it, "Can I send you a free copy of my..." Or was it, "Can I send you a copy of my book? And if you want to, please share it on social?"Jen Winston:Fortunately, because I run in this influencer community, I think that was implied. I think typically when you DM someone on the internet actually, and ask if you can send them something for free, it's implied that there's a bit of a tax that they have to share it. But I also, you just reminded me I said, "Would it be okay if I sent you my book along with..." Which I think got people even more excited, like "What are the treats?" And then the treats were amazing. It was a vibrator, a bookmark, oh, I forgot-Ben Guest:A cocksicle.Jen Winston:Yeah, a cocksicle, it was just like a fantastic gift package. And that's how I wanted to downplay it and then have it be like, "Whoa, this is great." Unfortunately, because it was in like shiny packaging, I think a bunch of them got stolen and didn't actually make it to their rightful owners. But I hope those thieves are enjoying a cocksicle somewhere and... Yeah. But I do think it was a lot of fun and it helped me feel a lot more connected to my online community and it helped me build a lot of lasting relationships, those that outreach as difficult as it was.Ben Guest:Fantastic. Jen, this has all been so incredibly helpful. Thank you for taking the time and please tell everybody where they can find you and the name of your book.Jen Winston:Yes. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok @jenerous, with a J. And the name of my book is Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much, and you can buy it, hopefully wherever books are sold. But you can also find all the links at greedy-bisexual.com. And you can also subscribe to my sub stack and newsletter, The Bimonthly, there's a link on that greedy bisexual.Ben Guest:And at the top, Jen mentioned the website and how it's this retro design. So I was clicking around on it earlier, encouraging everybody to do so. And Jen, thank you so much. Oh, there was one other thing I wanted to say, which is Greedy is nominated for Lambda Literary Award and was named one of 2021's best LBGTQ plus books by Buzzfeed. So congrats on both of those things.Jen Winston:Yes. Thank you. Very exciting. [inaudible 00:38:48].Ben Guest:And Jen, thank you so much.Jen Winston:Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

The beauty of the Amazon Adwords is everybody who's searching on Amazon Books is a book buyer. You don't have to convince them to buy a book. You only have to convince them to buy YOUR book.This is a bonus episode of my miniseries on how to PLAN, WRITE, EDIT, and PUBLISH your book. This episode is how to MARKET your book.My co-host for the series is Greg Larson. Greg has written and edited more than 80 books.In Part 1 we reviewed how to PLAN your book.In Part 2 we reviewed how to WRITE your book.In Part 3 we reviewed how to EDIT your book.In Part 4 we reviewed how to PUBLISH your book.Today Greg and I and special guest Mark Paul review how to MARKET your book.Mark's self-published book The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told: A True Tale of Three Gamblers, The Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel, has sold more than 40,000 copies which puts it in the 99.99th percentile of books sold. The Los Angeles Times says, “It's light, it moves quickly, it's fun.”Greg's book, Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir, has sold more than 4,000 copies which puts it in the 98th percentile of books sold. The Los Angeles Daily News says, “If Clubbie isn't the best piece of baseball literature since Ball Four, it's the leader in the clubhouse.”My book, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey, has sold more than 400 copies which puts it in the 60th percentile of books sold. The New York Daily News says, “I was hooked from the start. A terrific read of the can't-put-it-down variety!”In this episode I first interview Mark and we talk best book marketing practices and what he learned moving 40,000 books. Then I take the best marketing advice from a previous interview I did with Mark and present that advice. Finally, I take the best marketing excerpts from Greg from our first conversation and present those. Enjoy!TRANSCRIPTBen Guest:Hi everyone. This is Ben Guest, and I've just finished a four part mini series with Greg Larson on how to plan, write, edit, and publish your book. So this is a bonus or companion episode on an important part of publishing your book which is, after you publish it, you have to market it. What good is a book that no one reads, right?So this is a special episode where I've taken three different interviews and taken the best parts of those interviews about marketing and combined them. The first is a brand new interview with the author, Mark Paul, who I've had on previously. Mark self-published his book called The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told, and at this date, he's sold more than 40000 copies, which is amazing. If you sell more than 4000 copies, you're in the top 2% of books sold in one calendar year, to sell 40000 is in the 99.9999 percentile.It's an astounding number of books, especially self-publishing, the other distribution and marketing muscle of a traditional publishing house. So Mark knows his stuff. In the first interview, which leads off this episode with Mark, we talk two things. We talk genre choice at the beginning, before you even start planning your book, thinking about genre choice and using a great tool called Publisher Rocket, which is available on kindlepreneur.com.I'll link to that in the show notes. And then we talk about Amazon Ads and kind of the back end after you've published, how to market your book. After that is the first interview I did with Mark several months ago, and that was Episode 34. I've taken the best parts of that episode that apply just to marketing and chopped that up and included that. And then the third part of the episode is the very first interview I did with Greg Larson also several months ago, and I've taken the best parts of that interview that applies solely to marketing and chopped that up.So you're getting a brand new interview with Mark Paul, the excerpts of the best bits of marketing advice from Mark Paul from a previous interview and the best marketing advice from Greg Larson from a previous interview. So this should be a helpful introduction to book marketing. If you enjoy this episode, please recommend it to others. Please like the podcast on the platform of your choice and subscribe to my weekly newsletter at benbo.substack.com, B-E-N-B-O, .substack.com. Benbo is my family nickname. So, benbo.substack.com. I put all of this content out here for free. So if you enjoy it and you find useful advice or information in it, please take a minute to like and subscribe. Thank you and enjoy the episode.Ben Guest:Mark, thank you so much for coming on.Mark Paul:Glad to be here again.Ben Guest:You are the man when it comes to moving books, you've sold over 40,000 books of your self-published fantastic book, The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told.Mark Paul:Thank you. I love mark getting my book. I never stop. If you're around me, you're going to hear about my damn book, I guarantee it.Ben Guest:So somebody comes to you, they have an idea, they want to write a book. How would you advise them to think about the process of marketing before they even start writing their book?Mark Paul:The number one thing I learned that I didn't know until after published my book and started marketing my book is, unfortunately, you're not going to sell many books unless you're in a genre that people buy a lot of books. You can sell a lot of books with an average book in a high demand genre, as opposed to having a magnificent book in genre that nobody cares about, nobody buys books.Mark Paul:But I mentioned to you that I wrote a book that in its premise is about a female, a filly trying to win the Kentucky Derby against the male colts, something that had only occurred twice in 150 years. And that's a great story, but there's not a lot of people out there looking to buy books in the horse racing genre. So I would've really probably not sold a lot of books, but I got lucky because my book had a big component to it, is that the guys that bet on this filly to win the Kentucky Derby made the bet at a little rinky-dinky racetrack in Tijuana, that they found out late was owned by the Mexican cartel.Mark Paul:So now they were faced with this dilemma, which kind of a cool thing where could a filly, a female beat the colts in the Derby. And of course now you've got, women are interested, you've got women engaged, sports fans, horse racing people, but now I have a genre of true crime and I'd probably have sold 10 books in true crime genre for every book I sold on horse racing, even though you could say my book is about ...Ben Guest:And you've mentioned that either on the first episode we did or off air, that when your book broke into the top 10 on Amazon of true crime, then I think you saw a bump in sales. Is that correct?Mark Paul:Absolutely. One thing I learned is you have to always be afraid. I lived in fear of falling into the well, and once you get into the Amazon algorithm well of not selling books and not being something that they think their audience wants, I don't know how you ever crawl back out of the well. One thing that I did is I really studied Amazon ad words and I realized quickly in marketing that Amazon is magnificent in one way.Mark Paul:And that normally when you run an ad, if you were going to run a Google ad words about your book, the problem is, is that most people, 99% of the people that are seeing it, aren't there to buy a book. So, you're up against it and you're wasting your money. The beauty of the Amazon ad words for books is everybody who's searching on Amazon books for a book is a book buyer.Mark Paul:So you don't have to convince them to buy a book. You only have to convince them to buy your book. So you already, you've got a real buyer on your hands there. So now you need to get into that algorithm and its success to get success. One thing that I did, I was not out afraid, especially in the beginning to spend money on buying ad words and having a budget for my book.Mark Paul:And they always tell you, well, if you're on Amazon basically, and you're self-published, you can get about 70% of every dollar of sales. So they say as long as you're spending money and you're not spending more than 70 cents per dollar received, you're at least breaking even, which was kind of my immediate goal. But I actually thought about it after a while. I was saying, well, I'm selling books, but I'm not making any money because I'm spending 70 cents every book that I sell.Mark Paul:But then I realized something, this might seem self evident, but it wasn't, it dawned in me, I said, well, hold on, I'm getting 70 cents for every dollar I spend, but that's only for my Kindle books, for my eBooks, but for every ebook I was selling, now I was shocked at this, for every ebook book that I sold I'd sold two paperbacks, and I wasn't paying anything for my paperback.Mark Paul:So although I was spending all this money to sell my eBooks, I wasn't realizing that I was selling twice as many of this on my paperback books. So don't be afraid to spend money on your ad words, especially out of the gate, and especially, obviously find a category or two that you can dominate. Find a little niche category that you can be the number one author in. And that'll give you that cool little Amazon orange banner, that you're a number one author and when you die on your gravestone, you can write that I was a number one author. It might have been in the category where I was joke is, gay dinosaurs. It's a very small category, but by God, I'm number one.Ben Guest:Here lies John Smith, beloved father, son, and best selling author in.Mark Paul:They can never take it away from you.Ben Guest:They could immediately leave off the category. Love it. So let's talk Amazon ads. Can you kind of break down for the listener how Amazon on ads work? I think there's a bidding process.Mark Paul:Yeah, the best thing that I found, and I don't get any money for this, or what is it? Rocket-Ben Guest:To Rocket ...Mark Paul:Fantastic. They're really cheap. It's $35 a year or something to join. And when you go on Publisher Rocket, you finally understand there's all of these categories. Well, first of all, when you go on Amazon, they tell you, you get three categories, but you really don't. You really get 10 categories. All you have to do is email them and tell them the 10 categories you want your book in. So, that's really important. So if you go and you study all these categories and you know similar books to yours, what categories they're in, then I would try to pick five of them that are big selling categories, like true crime.Mark Paul:And then I would try to pick a few of those that are really minuscule little small genres that perhaps you can be number one or at least top three in for that. And one thing about that website is they'll actually tell you all of the keywords that those books are using in their ads. So you need to know all the ad words. And then what I did too, I created these lists and listenings of any book that was like my book, any categories, words that were like my book.Mark Paul:And also then I would actually advertise all the competing books and all the competing authors. And I would bid on all of those keywords as well. The best course racing book ever written was Laura Hillenbrand, Sea Biscuit. And so, I would bid on Laura Hillenbrand, her name. I would bid on Sea Biscuit and I would want anybody who's looking for Sea Biscuit, I would hopefully have my I book come up before Sea Biscuit because I was paying good money for it, because I wanted to dominate the horse raising genre.Ben Guest:And that advice is so key, and that's exactly the advice that you gave me before I published my book and I followed it to a T. So you identify some categories that are big categories and then you identify a couple of categories that are super small and niche. Just to give the listener an example, a funny example. So I downloaded on my phone the other day, Twitter and Facebook. So I go to the Apple app store and I search for Facebook. And the first thing that comes up is Facebook, right?Ben Guest:So I download it. Then I search for Twitter. The first thing that comes up is Facebook, meaning Facebook has bid well in that ad space, right? So Twitter comes up second under their own search. So it's the same thing, whatever book you're writing, you want to find, my friend, Greg Larson calls it, your pilot author.Ben Guest:Somebody that the author in the book is comparable to yours, and then you can see like Mark is saying, on Amazon ads, you can say, Stephen King, when people search for Stephen King Misery, my book comes up first. Now something like that, a huge book, a huge author, you're going to bid really high. But then I identify more niche authors in niche books because again, to your point, someone going on the Amazon bookstore is going to leave with a book, it's going to be someone else's book or it's going to be your book.Mark Paul:Exactly. And you wouldn't want to bid on Stephen King because it'd be too expensive. And you don't want bid on things that aren't related to your book because people aren't going to buy your book. So you have to make sure that if you wrote a book on basketball coaching, I'd be bidding on Phil Jackson and Showtime and Coach K and all that stuff. That's what I'd be bidding on, not Stephen.Ben Guest:100% and so jet us to break this down for the listener. So I wrote a book about the power of meditation and the impact that it had on coaching basketball. Obviously Phil Jackson is a number one for that. And so when I did my Amazon categories, which Mark mentioned, not category, sorry, keywords, when I did my Amazon keywords for my book, one of the keywords I put in was Phil Jackson and basketball.Ben Guest:And then Phil Jackson has several books and I included the titles of all his books. So that means when it's a keyword, that means when someone searches for that keyword, your book is going to show up in that search. Now that's totally free. Then separate the Amazon ads that you bid on, I would bid on Phil Jackson, I would bid on More Than A Game, which is the title of one of his books, Sacred Hoops, another title, things like that.Ben Guest:So there's keywords, which are free, there are categories which we've talked about. So again, my book would fall under basketball, coaching, sports, things like that, memoir, travel writing. Those are free when you register your book and upload your manuscript to Amazon, and then you pay for the Amazon ads, but it's the same principle. The same principle applies across all these things.Mark Paul:So I would say that was the number one thing that I did was spend money. And then what's great is that if you start doing well, then as you have more revenue and more sale, you can spend more money. And as you spend more money, you climb up these charts. And so I'm sorry, I just, it's a vicious capitalistic system, but if you can either accept it or fail, it's your two choices.Ben Guest:Yes. And so we've talked about the back-back end, right after you've published your book, after you've done all of that work, but you mentioned at the top, something you should think about even before you begin writing, even before you begin outlining, which is genre choice. And again, Publisher Rocket is very helpful in that. Mark, can you talk about genre choice? And if you were advising someone who wants to write a book, what they should think about when it comes to genre choice?Mark Paul:Well, you'll quickly realize that there's, I don't know me, maybe 15 genres that are big sellers and that's a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that if you can get into those genres, you could sell a hell of a lot of books. The bad thing is that the bigger the genre is, the better selling it is, now you've got to compete with all of the romance novels and all the things that are selling, but you need to be aware of it up front and realize that if you're writing a book that's in a genre that people don't sell books in, nobody is searching for your book and you could have a magnificent book.Mark Paul:And I still would tell you to write it if it's a story that you want to tell in your heart, it's important to you and you write a great book, that's a goal unto itself, and there's nothing wrong with that at all, but then don't be disappointed when it doesn't sell, because nobody in the history of mankind has ever sold a lot of books in that genre.Mark Paul:But the good news is that these genres are diced up in a lot of different areas. I mentioned true crime. I learned right away, I could not ... Even now, actually one thing nobody really talks about is paperback versus ebook sales. And that's an interesting thing as I said a moment ago that I sold twice as many paperbacks, I sold two paperbacks for every ebook that I sold, which surprised me, but that's kind of a standard thing in the industry.Mark Paul:But I also learned that I cannot compete, I could not compete as a self published author in hard copy crime segments because I was just dealing with all of the true crime books in paperback that are sold at the airports, that are sold at Barnes And Noble, that are sold by the big publishers.Mark Paul:I didn't have that behind me. And there's an area that I couldn't compete in, but I could sure as hell compete in the ebook categories of that. So even now I have bookmarked on my computer and my book has been out now for almost two and a half years, I've bookmarked horse racing, Kindle horse racing books, best sellers.Mark Paul:And I'll click on a couple times a week and see how my book's doing. I don't even bother to click on any true crime category for hard copy or for paperback, because I know that I'm not going to do well in that area. Because I don't have the infrastructure, the physical distribution channel that the big publishers have. You're not going to compete there, doesn't mean you're not going to sell paperback, I'm not telling you. I would absolutely tell you to do it, ebook and definitely a paperback.Mark Paul:And you can do a hard cover if you want to or not. It's not that important, but I definitely would tell you to do a paperback because you'll sell more paperbacks than you do eBooks, but just basically market your ebook because that's the only area that you can really be competitive. And then realize too, when you check your sales, you can check your sales specifically, oh, how am I doing in best selling basketball books in eBooks and how am I doing in best selling basketball print books?Mark Paul:And I guarantee you, then you're probably getting your ass kicked in paperback basketball books because you're not in the airports, you don't have that distribution, but you actually can compete in the ebook category.Ben Guest:Mistake I made was, so Amazon now offers paperback, hard cover and I published in all three at the same time, but the sales report is broken up into ebook and print, meaning combination, paperback and hard cover. So especially the first couple of weeks say coaching basketball, I was number one in ebook and then I was number five in paperback and number 12 in hard cover.Ben Guest:So my hard cover and paperback sales cannibalized each other. So one way I encourage authors to think about publishing, one of the few things that the traditional model has correct, I think is you publish your hard cover first, hard cover and ebook together, then paperback later because on Amazon, your paperback and hard cover sales are going to cannibalize each other. Mark, last thing for you-Mark Paul:I wouldn't agree. I always-Ben Guest:No, go ahead.Mark Paul:When you have people with differing opinions, I wouldn't do that because if I'm taking the time out of the gate to sell books, you are always going to sell more books early than you are late. My wife has to put up with me all the time now. I will come in and I will say to her, "How are you doing?" And she'll say, "How are you doing?" And I go, "Oh, I'm really depressed. My book isn't selling well anymore."Mark Paul:And it's like, what do I expect? I expect two and a half years later, I'm going to sell just like I did in day one. You think, well maybe you should, you have a best selling, you have a lot of great reader comments, I have over 1700 reviews, why wouldn't I sell more books now? And I think the reason is, is that people that are going to buy basketball books, you've saturated after a few months. People that are going to read books about the cartel like my book, horse racing like my book, sports like my book, after a while you run through your core audience.Mark Paul:But if you're going to launch early because for every paperback, for every ebook you're going to sell, you're going to sell more paperback. So I'm not sure. I would probably do them both at the same time. Points well taken.Ben Guest:No, I always love disagreement because then there's learning there. So my take on this is, so right now Amazon's always changing a little bit, with eBooks, you take home 70% of the sales and with paperback and hardcover, you take home 60%. So for example, my paperback is priced at 7.99. My hard cover at, I think 14.99. So obviously you make more money on the hard cover.Ben Guest:So my thinking, but Mark, tell me if you disagree or you have a different approach or you would advise someone differently is, next time publish ebook and hard cover because I'm going to generate more profit from the hard cover and more sales on launch week and launch month, publication week and publication month. Therefore, if people don't have the option for paperback, whether they're going to take home 70% of ebook sales or 60% of the more expensive hard cover.Mark Paul:It would depend on how expensive your hard cover because my ebook was 7.99, my paperback was 14.99 and my hard cover was 24.99, you're just not going to sell a lot of stuff at 24.99. So I'm not sure I would agree with that.Ben Guest:That makes perfect sense. You'd have to weigh sort of how many sales are you losing by not having to paperback because like you, the vast majority of my sales have been paperback. Go ahead.Mark Paul:Stay at the top with that algorithm, you have to fight and kick and you've at least got to get into that bloodstream somehow, at least. Again, in your little genre and your little niche, you have to be at the top of that or you just, you're not going to get the rankings you want.Ben Guest:And we've talked about this and you mentioned this on the first episode we did, one of the best ways to stay on top of the algorithm, and this isn't something you or I have done, is to have a series. If you're dropping a new book every three months or six months of, the virtuous cycle of that, virtuous circle of that is your third book is going to generate sales for your second and first, your fourth book, so on and so forth.Mark Paul:I couldn't agree. If you said to me, what did you learn in your five year saga of writing a book and publishing it and marketing it, and you said, Mark, you have to feed your family by being an author, what would you do? First of all, I would be scared to death because do not do this for money, by God do not do this for money.Mark Paul:It's difficult. I sold 40000 books and I'm telling you don't do it for money, but I've definitely, I would do a fictional series. And that gives you a lot of things you can do. And you can give away the first book in your series and get people to like your characters or you can sell it in 99 cents and you could do a lot of promotions. And I also, this is probably completely wrong, but first of all, I'm no expert, I've written one book in my entire life, one nonfiction book.Ben Guest:You're no expert, you've only sold more books than 99.999% of authors.Mark Paul:I've only done one. And I can tell you that, I think that writing a non-fiction book is so much harder than writing a fictional book because first of all, you're going to wind up spending six months or two years just doing the research to be accurate in your book, even if it's about your own life.Mark Paul:So that's going to take a lot of time and then you can't just make stuff up. You can't just get creative and start banging out 10 pages a day freelancing. It's got to follow very narrow script and times. But in writing fiction, if you're just creating, then I think you could bang out a lot more pages and you could do a lot books. And I definitely think the only way to make money, only way to make money as an author would be to have a series of books that you're always promoting. No question.Ben Guest:100% and then that back list just generates steady income. Last question, back to genre choice, and again, Publisher Rocket is a great tool to help select which genres, which categories to be in. So let's say someone's writing travel memoir about Namibia, very small interest built in audience for that. Would you recommend trying to identify a more popular genre that you could in a truthful way, in an accurate way link your book to, or would you say just don't write it?Mark Paul:If you told me, oh, I would tell you, well, you have to ask yourself why you're writing it. Are you writing it to sell books? Are you writing it to get it shared or you're writing it for, do you want to share it with your children and your two neighbor? I would market that book. I would never talk about Namibia. I would talk about Africa, but more importantly, I would talk about overseas travel in that I would try to somehow tie in Anthony Bourdain or some famous guy who has a well known genre. And I'd say, I want anybody who's thinking of buying an Anthony Bourdain travel book to look at my book.Mark Paul:I would say and I would go, how does he do it? Where do they advertise? What are their keywords? What's the imagery that they want? That's what I'd want to capture. If you get too narrow, you have no chance to sell. But travel, that's a really good comparison, Ben. And if you had a travel book about a small place, don't make it about the small place, make it about the grand experience of travel to far away, dangerous, unique places.Ben Guest:And for the audience, Mark has a fantastic website with an unbelievably kick ass book trailer for his book, which in the first episode we did, he strongly recommended doing a book trailer. I took that advice. So I can't encourage you strongly enough to go to Mark's website, which is markpaulauthor.com.Ben Guest:And he also has a couple blog entries that he's put together, talking more in depth about all these topics.Mark Paul:And all our podcasts, my podcasts are there, including all the ones that are done with you and you do a great job, Ben. And by the way, what a great book, I really enjoyed your book a lot.Ben Guest:Thank you very much. Oh, and so you mentioned your book at the top. For the audience out there, you place this incredible bet with what ended up being a cartel in Tijuana. Did you collect them?Mark Paul:Well, everybody thinks that my book, because it's about a filly trying to, a true story, it's a true story about a filly trying to win the Kentucky Derby, they think that in ... I will tell you part of the ending is that she actually is successful and she actually wins the Kentucky Derby, but that's not when the book ends. In many ways, that's when the book starts because now these guys are faced with, can they get into Tijuana and can they collect their prize without getting killed? And no, I'm not going to tell you that, you have to read a book.Ben Guest:I love it. And that was the advice off air Mark gave to me about, don't tell people the ending, right?Mark Paul:They've got to buy the book, so don't give away my ending.Ben Guest:You worked hard on it. I worked hard on mine so people can buy it. And Mark's book, we were talking off air and came up with this sort of description of it. It's sort of a combination, heist story, right? So now you've got all this money in Tijuana, how do you get it out? And it's a buddy ...Mark Paul:It's a buddy cop movie combined with Ocean's 11. We've thrown a little bit of the Me Too movement in with the girls kicking ass on the boys.Ben Guest:And as listeners may know, I'm now out in Los Angeles and Mark lives in Beverly Hills. So Mark, I will see you Thursday for dinner. Thank you so much for coming on.Mark Paul:Great. Great talking.Ben Guest:Thank you. So, that was my interview with author Mark Paul. Now here are clips from my first interview with Mark that I did last year. Here, we talk about the importance of an author website, making a trailer for your book, like a movie trailer, but it's a book trailer. And we do a deep dive into using Amazon ad words.Mark Paul:It doesn't matter how well edited it is or how great the cover is, if it's a boring topic that people don't care about, you're in trouble. One of the things I've been fortunate with my book on is that my book was actually number one in 10 Amazon categories. And one thing I learned about categories of books that's hugely important, in other words, I'm number one in horse racing, almost always [inaudible 00:30:48], number one in sports gambling, number one in gambling, those are great and I'm very proudly be number one in there.Mark Paul:But typically, I just checked the day, I always check this, [inaudible 00:30:58], I just checked today after two years, I just checked today, I'm number two or number three in biographies of true crime, white collar crime and organized. And the funny thing is that, if I was number 10 in organized crime, I would sell five times more books than I would be number one in horse racing, number one in sports gambling and number one in gambling because not a lot of gamblers and horse racing people buy books, but people are searching for true crime books all day long.Mark Paul:So one of the things that we'll talk about with ad words and the like is, what really helped my book, why did I sell so many books? I sold 10000 books in the first 90 days and right now, I've sold about 35000, the reason which is not like James Patterson or something, a big author, but for self-published authors they're good, is that I'm like a country music song who crosses over onto the pop charts. And you could sell a lot more songs on the pop charts than just the country charts along.Mark Paul:So that's a really big thing is if you write a book, try to figure out how not to market it to just one genre, try to market it in many genres, but specifically, gosh, darn it, figure out how to sell it in categories that people are looking for, because you could have the greatest book in the world but if it's about some obscure topic, it doesn't matter. Nobody's going to find you because nobody's looking for you.Ben Guest:I think that's so key. And maybe we can talk about keyword selection, Amazon keyword selection in a second. And one of the benefits of all of what you just described happening is that of course, as you know the Amazon algorithm kicks in and starts recommending the book to like buyers. You said young authors, when you're talking to them and you give advice, what are some of the pieces of advice you find yourself telling multiple people?Mark Paul:Definitely hirer a professional, having a great cover is super important. Having a great title is important. I had a title that I liked much more than the title that I used. I like in horse racing, the Kentucky Derby's referred to as the greatest two minutes. And initially my book was titled the greatest two minutes. I love that title, but it doesn't do anything.Mark Paul:Now, my title's almost confrontational in face. The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told, all the gamblers go, no, it's not. I know a better story. My cousin Jimmy, well, now they know about it and they're talking about it, right? So, title's important, cover's important. And then really I would say looking at lots of different categories and you mentioned Amazon, which is the dominant place. I probably sold 92% of all my books solely on Amazon. Even though I published wide, I'm on Barnes And Noble and I'm on Apple Books.Mark Paul:The thing is on Amazon., you can spend money and you can market and you could affect your sale. I don't know how to affect and change my sale on Amazon or Barnes And Noble, I'm kind of at their mercy. And Amazon, you can spend money and get results. So one thing I learned at Amazon early is that when we self-publish your book, they tell you can be in three categories.Mark Paul:So you could be in history. You could be in American history and history of civil war. But what they don't tell you is that you actually can be in 10 categories. All you have to do is ask. And if you email them, you go to the chat rooms, just so you need to go research really carefully, all those specific categories. And one of the things that I learned right away, I would try with those 10 categories is try to pick two or three categories that you can hopefully dominate or be number one in, and then try to choose other categories that are maybe much more competitive, like true crime.Mark Paul:And true crime or I have to compete with Bill O'Reilly that. I have to compete with these really big, well known authors, but by being next to Bill O'Reilly I sell a lot more books. So I would say pick an easy category. To me, there's a category called track betting, well, there's probably, two books published every 10 years in track betting.Mark Paul:So how can I not be number one in track betting when I go to do my ad words and pay for ad words, I make sure I just outbid everybody because you know what happens, by being number one in this dinky little category I get to have that really cool number one orange banner on Amazon, it says, number one best seller. It is. And maybe you're in a category of gay dinosaurs or something. It's not a lot of competition, but figure it out, and then find some categories or a lot of books that are selling.Mark Paul:I tell you, I don't get any money for [inaudible 00:36:13] I'm associated with. Going to Publishers Rocket is a really great tool to be on. For next to nothing you can go on in, they'll give you all the categories. And when you click on it, they'll give you the categories and the keywords and they'll tell you how many, each of those books that are in the top categories, how many they're selling, how many books they're selling, how many published paperback books and hardcover books they're selling, and really look at those categories. That's huge.Ben Guest:100%. I use that tool all the time because it helps you know your competition.Mark Paul:Exactly. Also, make sure that you also do your book in hardcover, in paperback, not just in ebook. One of the things that I learned earlier is, when I first started advertising on Amazon keywords, they're going to tell you, you're getting about a 70% commission split, so if you sell a book for $10, you're going to keep about seven and Amazon is going to get about three.Mark Paul:That's true, but that's also minus your ad cost. So they tell you really, they call it ACOS, average cost of sale, how much you're paying for your ads versus how many sales you're getting, that number and you shouldn't be spending more than 70% of your ACOS, your average cost of sale, where you're advertising, you're selling books [inaudible 00:37:40] money.Mark Paul:Well, first of all, like I told you, I don't mind in the little categories, I don't mind this money because by God, we work so hard, at least come out with a couple of these cute little Amazon batters, you can cut and paste, do a paint version, and save that image and you'll have it for all the time and put it up in your wall and you can say I was an Amazon.Mark Paul:So definitely, don't be afraid to dominate in the little categories. But one thing that I learned is I would say, sometimes I would go oh, my ACOS with 83 cents. I would go, oh, that's shitty. I'm getting my ass kicked here. I'm spending more money than I'm receiving in my commissions. But then about four months later, I got my first commission for my paperback sale.Mark Paul:And then it dawned at me because one thing that was really shocking to me in this world of wifi and internet and online and Kindle readers and everything, I still sell about two thirds of my book are prints. People go ahead and buy my book for $15 instead of $8, because the paperback's $15 and the ebook is $8, but I still sold two times as many paperbacks.Mark Paul:So what I'm saying is that if I wound up spending 83 cents to get a 70 cents sale, I wasn't doing any ... I was also getting my paperback sales out of that number. I started realizing that maybe I could actually be spending a hundred cents. I could be losing by my ebooks, as long as I'm selling a ton of print books, I'm making money. So, that's okay. I also did an audio book.Ben Guest:Talk to us about that.Mark Paul:I really enjoyed doing my audio book. First of all, I would not recommend being your own narrator unless you're exceptional. I'm pretty comfortable with public speaking. I never showed up, I'm always talking, but it doesn't mean I'm a good narrator. The narrator that I had [inaudible 00:39:47] is really fantastic. So I would do that. It's really enjoyable. I don't know, I've made money at it, but I probably three, four, 5% of my books sales have been audio books, but it was really enjoyable.Mark Paul:I'll tell you what, one thing that I would really encourage everybody to do, when I die and go to my maker and I go, what are your five proudest moments? I'll tell them that marrying my great wife and having my two sons but in the top five will be the book trailer that I did. I did my own book trailer. It's on my website, makrpaulauthor.com. That book trailer is 58 seconds long and it's had 38, excuse me, over 310000 downloads, if you could imagine.Mark Paul:300000 downloads. And that was a really good way for me to sell my book. And I really enjoyed doing that. What I did is I don't have any video on it. I used all still photos, photos that I purchased combined with some stock video footage, a little bit of stock video footage that I was able to purchase from Shutter Stock for one of those places.Mark Paul:And then I did do my own narration and I went to a sound studio and I paid, it wasn't that expensive, I think I paid about $180 for the hour in the sound. And they recorded that and spliced it together for me. But I really think having a book trailer in today's visual world, particularly for young people is really valuable. I was out at a cocktail party getting, I ran into a big movie person, right?Mark Paul:I was telling them about my book. And they were fading in interest and I said, "Hey, do you have 57 seconds?" And I just took out my cell phone and I put on my download by ... I showed them my book trailer and within a minute they were like, oh, you've got to see this, bringing other people over. And I emailed them my ebook and they're reading it right now, people that are not interested, visually they can see that link, I will definitely do a book trailer.Ben Guest:Ah, that's such great advice. I mean, I'm just making a list here, Mark, of the gems that you're dropping. So just keeping track, book trailer-Mark Paul:Author website, you've got to have a good author website. It has to be there, it has to be something of interest.Ben Guest:Talk to me about that please.Mark Paul:Oh, I just, again, I hired a company that does ... I used Author Bites. I did promotion with them. I was very happy with them. I like going to one of these companies that's already done 800 off their websites. So, they know what they're doing and then you can go on and steal all the best ... There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. Just go look at the five author websites that you think fit your book the best and go copy what they're doing. I probably spent, I don't know, $1000 on my website. It wasn't importantly expensive, maybe a little bit more.Ben Guest:Imagery is really important, having some good pictures and visuals that you can market with are important.Mark Paul:So, my book has a lot of different genres in them. I think that's one of the reasons it was successful. Yes, it's about sports. Yes, it's about a race horse, and a female race horse. And that helped me because women buy two thirds of all books and women don't buy books typically about sports gambling but they do buy books about horses. So I found places, there's horse lover websites, and I would publish my book and promote it and pay to be on the horse lover's websites. So, everybody else has got a romance novel about a woman being swept off her feet by a handsome young rodeo star.Mark Paul:And there's my book next to it, but it's there, I sell books there. And then I sell books in gambling. But I sell more books in true crime because the gamblers had to try to [inaudible 00:43:50] the cartel. So again, every book was different, but if you can get knowledge and spread it out and try to be a crossover hit, you'd have a lot better chance of selling than just being, just one book in one narrow genre.Ben Guest:Of all the different things you've done to market your book, what's had the greatest ROI?Mark Paul:Amazon as words, that's by far, that was the game changer for me. Authors are very analytic and we're the kind of people that when we buy a car we'll actually read the owner's manual before we drive the car. When I was already to launch my book, I probably spent 30 hours every week for the first month looking at Amazon ad words, really studying it, trying to understand it. There's another, you probably know it, there's other service called-Ben Guest:Kindlepreneur.Mark Paul:That's it. Thank you. Kindlepreneur is phenomenal. And one of the things that I realized when I would look at the book descriptions, book descriptions are really important and you have five seconds to grab people, so when you're going to write your book description, and you're going to get your book reviews up there, a couple of really important pieces of advice, one, it's more important who gives you the review then what the review is.Mark Paul:Because I know me, when I'm reading a review, I don't really care whether it's a glowing review that was written by the guy's mother, right? But if I can see the review that is written by some name, maybe written by somebody from the LA Times or, even something that has some credibility with me, that's really important.Mark Paul:So I'm an [inaudible 00:45:40] author. I didn't know anybody. I didn't have any reviews, critical reviews. I didn't have Laura Hillenbrand who wrote Sea Biscuit giving me a review. So I said, what the hell can I do to get names up there? Well, I live in Beverly Hills, there's a lot of movie people here and I got all my movie friends, some of my friends had been involved with maybe they were the cinematographer for a big movie, maybe they were a publisher.Mark Paul:So I could write, cinematographer for Lone Survivor, and then I would put Lone Survivor in bold, but now people go, oh look at this. The guy that was involved in Lone Survivor like this. And then over time I would get, eventually I started getting more reviews. I did get an LA Times and of course that featured among LA Times. So the other thing with Kindlepreneur is that when you go online and you look at book descriptions, or look at books that don't sell and look at with James Patterson or these top selling authors, I noticed something, drop off over here, the bigger selling authors, their copy has a lot of white space, but it also has bold. It has italics, it has quotation marks.Mark Paul:It isn't just a bunch of uniform, two paragraphs of tightly spaced information that nobody's going to take the time to read. And the way that you have to do that is just free in Kindlepreneur, you write what you want it to write, and it has to convert it to this unique code that Amazon uses. And it just, you print what you want and you drop it into this online tool at Kindlepreneur, and then it publishes it the way you want it to be.Mark Paul:It's really important. If you look at my copy in The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told, it lays out in full, it shows that I have the LA Times as a review and I have people that they might recognize it that wrote reviews because people are scanning, they're probably having a glass of wine and they're on their iPad. They're not reading every detail word, they're making a decision, do I want to spend $7 on this book, and make it really attractive. That's super important.Mark Paul:And your copy needs to grab them. Don't tell them about some esoteric thing. Tell them about why this is exciting and why they're going to want read it. One of the tag lines that I use a lot is, would you bet your life on a 50 to one shot? [inaudible 00:48:27] something that's a book, something that grabs them. And the other thing is you can see, always be marketing. I'd swear to you when I go out, I sell books when I'm in an elevator.Mark Paul:I love my book. I found out how to make it really exciting where people want to buy it and I'm always selling books. I can books at a picnic. And one of the things that I do on my website, I do get people to contact me. I go back to anybody who talks to me, and I have kind of an epilogue that I have in there, but in my epilogue and the only thing that I have highlighted in yellow is please leave a review. And I have the link because they don't know how to leave it, they don't know what to do.Mark Paul:And you just give them a link. And my friends that I wanted to post a review, I send them a link and I email them, please give me a review. Do not publish your book until you have at least 10 reviews.Ben Guest:I've seen that advice over and over again, even to the extent that some people say, if you're writing a fiction series and you think you have something, write the first two or three books before you publish the first one, just so that they're lined up, ready to go. You mentioned Amazon ad words and I've heard advice about that, but I haven't yet started with Amazon ad words. Could you talk to me about that process and what you've learned and KDP, it's called KDP select or whatever it is?Mark Paul:You just go to KDP and you can upload your book. Although I really would encourage you to hire a publisher, a paid publisher who will do all the things that you need to do, put it in the right formats and all published properly. They do all of that for you, although you certainly can do it yourself. If you're on a limited budget, I would not publish my book because I couldn't afford to pay somebody to do these services.Mark Paul:I fortunately could pay somebody to make sure all the wording was done and formatted properly. I elected to publish wide. In retrospect, I don't think I'd bother. I think I'd just go to Amazon. You can't fight them, they're just too big and powerful and you're going to sell majority of your books there anyway. And then they have, how you can do campaigns and they break down the ... I haven't been doing this as avidly as I was two years ago, they have different ...Mark Paul:You can. I did multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple campaigns. And I came up with about 600 ad words that I could market my books and that might seem crazy. But again, that Publisher Rocket really helped me because what I would do is I would look at okay, in the 10 categories that I'm competing, what are the 10 books that are in those categories?Mark Paul:And then I would see, I would put in their books in Publisher Pocket and it would tell me what the most popular keywords are in those categories. So I would go, I sell books in true crime. What are the most popular keywords for true crime? I would put together a list of all of them. And then I would go, all right, I sell books in the horse race. What are the keywords in the horse race? All these different categories.Mark Paul:And then I would do separate campaigns. I would start a campaign just for horse racing. I would start a campaign just for gambling. You know where else I sell books? I sell books in the history of sports and there's some big books in there. There's a book called Boys In The Boat, which is a really good book. But [inaudible 00:52:09] and I would study that book and I would see what the keywords that they used in order to sell books.Mark Paul:So I'd come up with this really broad ... The other thing that they do, that's really good again, Publisher Rocket is they'll print this out for you. And it's $50 a year. [inaudible 00:52:31], they'll tell you all of the books that are the top sellers and those books, and those book's authors become keywords.Mark Paul:So in other words I said, all right, my book, the number one book of all time, maybe in horse racing is Sea Biscuit. So I advertised Sea Biscuit and all my ad words, I advertised Laura Hillenbrand, the author. If somebody's searching for Laura Hillenbrand, they're going to see my book come up. If somebody's searching Boys In The Boat, they're going see my book come up.Mark Paul:And so, I really did a lot of keywords, a lot of advertising. And there's a saying, it's not my quote, [inaudible 00:53:14] but he says, when I was first starting to market and advertise, there's this saying that says, I didn't think, I experimented. And that's kind of what I did. I didn't know what would work. So I just did it all, but I wasn't afraid to spend money either. And I know that I had an advantage there that I could spend money.Mark Paul:And if I lost five grand, that was okay. Turns out I didn't, I made money, but that's because I was willing to spend money. The other things that they do is they have these campaigns that are basically auto fill campaigns, where Amazon will go out and choose the keyword for you. I'm not online right now, I don't know exactly what they're called, but you can't miss them.Mark Paul:And I can tell you that those Amazon auto campaigns that they do, where Amazon chooses the words are far better than anything you could do on your own. So if you said, I'm not techy, I don't want to come up with 600 ad words, I don't want to spend 30 hours a week, fine. Then just go with their auto campaigns, but you need to monitor them every single day. I don't need to monitor them every day now after two years.Mark Paul:But when you first start, I would monitor them twice a day because I would see a campaign that's selling, maybe I'm spending money, I'm spending $200 a day on that campaign. But if I'm bringing in, especially if I was spending $200 day in that campaign, I was bringing in $150 of revenue, I was okay with that in the first month. I didn't care if I lost money, I wanted to see what worked.Mark Paul:I figured out how to fine tune it. And I've done that. So now after a month or two, I can pair it down to what doesn't work and spend more of my money on what does work. As an author, you cannot sit in your room and wait for the world to find you, the world doesn't work that way. You have to put yourself out there and unfortunately you have to spend money, right? I really believe you really do have to spend money in order to let people know that you're there.Ben Guest:I mean, there are eight million ebooks on Amazon Kindle, on the Kindle store.Mark Paul:And when I was at the top, when I was selling the most books, some months, let's say I was selling 5000 books a month, I was probably the 5000th best seller on Amazon means, that means that I never got to be in the top 100 on Amazon, even top 1000 on Amazon. But I was still selling 5000 books [inaudible 00:56:02]. So, it's a big world.Ben Guest:If you extrapolate from eight million books on the Amazon Kindle store, you're in the 1% of sales.Mark Paul:What's great about Amazon ad words, I will say this is that if people are on Amazon Kindle and they're searching for books, they're going to buy a book. If you go and do an ad on YouTube, the chances of the person on YouTube that actually reads books is maybe one in 100, right? But if they're on Amazon Kindle searching for books, they're going to buy a damn book. All you have to do is convince them to buy your book. That's a lot easier to sell.Ben Guest:Let's end with a question. Oh, do you think it's a better use of time and money to do the auto Amazon ad word campaign or to fine tune your own keywords?Mark Paul:If you can only do one, the auto's absolutely. I don't know how they do it. They are better at it. I can say now I do, I spend a lot more time with the auto campaigns than I did before because I learned how good they are. But I also think that I can't give you the analytical backup for this, but I think that the fact that I was out there and I was doing lots of campaigns, I think also helped Auto campaigns.Mark Paul:I think that the computer algorithm saw, this guy is spending money, people are clicking his links, they're buying books and you need to go up into that food chain where they think they have something to sell. Also, I did something now. I just went on to Kindle Unlimited. I resisted it 18 months, but now after 18 months or so of my book being on the charts, I've noticed that my sales, they're still good.Mark Paul:I was selling, when things were really going good, I was selling 5000 books a month. Now I'm selling about 700 and I don't like that. I go, what do I got to do? So I started doing, I noticed a lot of the top selling books are Kindle Unlimited. So I did that and I've only been doing that for four days.Mark Paul:So I don't know what I'm doing there either. There's a certain joy of that. I clicked on it this morning and I saw that I'd already had, I forget-Ben Guest:The page reads?Mark Paul:Yeah, 2000 page reads today. I thought, well, my book is 200 pages long, 10 people have read my book. And as an author, isn't that really what it's about? I mean, if I could have done all of this and lost money, a little bit of money, it still would've been one of the greatest joys of anything I've ever done in my life. It's fine.Mark Paul:And so going on this morning seeing, wow, 10 people, because I could see the page reads have read my book, that was good and it made my day. That's cool. I think that if you do things, not for money, but for passion, you'll probably make money that'll come through.Ben Guest:And now last but not least, here are excerpts from the very first interview I did with Greg Larson way back in August of last year and the best marketing advice that he had. We talk about creating an ecosystem around your book, creating a website, a YouTube page, et cetera.Ben Guest:Greg goes into detail with all of that. We also talk about finding your pilot author and following the same path that your pilot author followed. Tons of great advice in this. Enjoy. Greg, thanks so much for coming on. Let's start with book promotion, and maybe we can start with your website. The website is fantastic. Let me make sure I have the right address to send everybody to. It's clubbiebook.com. So that's C-L-U-B-B-I-E, book.com.Greg Larson:Yes, sir.Ben Guest:Can you talk about putting the site together and your thoughts with book promotion.Greg Larson:Yeah. As far as putting the sites, I'd actually asked a lot of authors about their advice on creating a website. A lot of people say, oh, it's not necessary, hire somebody else to do that. I have just enough experience with say web design or SEO marketing, all that kind of stuff to be dangerous enough. As far as book promotions go and creating the website, my only thought process with creating the website was for people who add a good time reading the book, I want to give them extra content to enjoy for free as much as possible.Greg Larson:So, that's the way it's designed. It's for you read the book and you show up and there's a bunch of behind the scenes pictures and old videos from the years of being a clubhouse attendant in 2012, 2013, and as far as promos in general go, I mean, I take every single opportunity that comes my way. I created my own podcast, I chop up into clip up on my YouTube channel.Greg Larson:My thought was I need to create as much content as I possibly can around this book. And that's the only way people are going to find it. Otherwise, a lot of people just put a book out and they expect the world to just find it and make it great. Sorry, art is not a pure meritocracy. It is meritocracy plus marketing.Ben Guest:100%. One of the best nonfiction books written in the past 30 years or so is Freakonomics. And I was listening to an interview with one of the co-authors, Steven Levit. And he was saying, because of Freakonomics, he gets sent books all the time to blurb and he thought at first there was going to be a lot of mediocre books and not well written books. And he is like, there are so many great books out there and they're just undiscovered because there's so much material in the market.Greg Larson:Oh yeah. I don't know. I mean, there are millions of books self-published on Amazon every single year. And what is it that separates a book that's never discovered, that nobody reads and a book that a bunch of people read that enters the cannon or the zeitgeist? A lot of it is marketing and quality. I don't know. Nobody wants to hear that. When I was in school, I would've preferred not to hear that. My professors would've told me that, that's not true. But here we are.Greg Larson:What's the lowest level media outlet that I can get attention from? And maybe it's a local news station. Boom. I take that local KUT Austin, Austin's NPR station gives me some attention. And then I use that to leverage into a pitch to CBS Sports radio. And I use that to leverage into a pitch to the LA Times.Greg Larson:And then it's just like, boom, boom, boom, climbing up the ladder. And to be perfectly frank, not all of them directly correlate to book sales. I can usually see a jump whenever something new comes out. But what it does create is this perception of being everywhere. You know what I mean? I have to think about it as a branding effort. It was a piece of art that I created my book Clubbie, but once it became published, it went from being an artistic endeavor to a business. And that's how I had to think about it. So now I'm thinking about what's my brand strategy and my brand strategy is make sure every person who enjoys baseball books finds out about my book.Ben Guest:So here's the million dollar question based on what you just said. What does correlate?Greg Larson:What I've found especially in the last year has been doing podcasts has, the most concentrated book sales I've seen have been doing podcasts and oddly enough radio shows, which I never would've expected. It's one of those people expect that to be a dying medium and maybe in some ways it is, but a lot of people still listen to the radio in their car.Greg Larson:So for example, I was on The Fan in Baltimore. My book takes place in Baltimore. After I did that show, it's a 15 minute spot, the next day I saw my sales jump up. I don't know exact numbers. I can just see the Amazon sales rank, but it jumped up tens of thousands of spots on the Amazon sales rank, which shocked me because everybody says radio is dead.Greg Larson:As far as book promotions go, I don't think that's accurate. Podcasts are actually better because once this goes up on your website, it stays there. Radio is one and done unless I capture it somehow, which I try to do as well. That's another one. I try to record as many radio interviews as I possibly can and then put it on my YouTube channel.Ben Guest:This is all great stuff. What is it about radio shows that bump up sales, do you think?Greg Larson:Part of it, there's still this perception that, because there's a higher barrier of entry, there's still this perception that radio is, I don't know, a more classic medium that has more prestige as opposed to podcasts, there's still this perception of anybody can do it, therefore being on a podcast, doesn't hold the same social status. That's going to change and that is changing, but there is something about it.Greg Larson:It's analogous to traditional publishing versus self-publishing. Self-publishing is going to dominate traditional publishing. But those old morays are hard to fight again, TV versus YouTube, it's all the same exact sort of change there. A lot of my readers are still stuck in some of the old morays of the past, as far as media goes.Greg Larson:And I'm going to use that to my advantage and get on the radio. And I don't know, it's not only old people. When I tell people that I was on CBS Sports radio or ESPN radio or something like that, it's still, there's a little ding that says oh, that's official, right?Ben Guest:So how do you get on radio programs?Greg Larson:I send out pitch emails, I try to send them out every single day. Today I sent out two pitch emails, every weekday at the very least. So what I started with is I start with local stations and try to work my way up from there, like I said, but what I'll start with is I try to frame my book as part of a larger discussion. I don't say, I'm an author and you should promote my book. I say, here's, what's going on in minor league baseball right now.Greg Larson:There's a bunch of in income inequality issues in minor league baseball, there's contraction going on. And not only are those issues a microcosm of what's going on at the US at large, but I'm the perfect person to talk about it because I wrote a book about minor league baseball that came out this summer. And I word that in a way that's, I don't know, more nimble than that, but then I include a couple of status markers, like for reference here's my interview that I did on MLB Network, that kind of thing.Greg Larson:And my success rate is, if I get a 12% success rate in a week, that's good for me. So sending out media pitch emails, I expect a huge rate of failure. And I think that's what keeps a lot of authors from doing it.Ben Guest:And I think that's also helpful because we talked earlier about how marketing is an important component of the process. And I also think sometimes, we mention this off air as well, authors, we can be so internal that we don't pay attention to that. And it's such a closed world that being able to share this information is just so helpful.Greg Larson:Oh yeah, where I didn't even know who to pitch in the first place. And most people don't. What I did was, it seemed so obvious after I thought of it, but it was such a revelation to me, I found an author who had published a book similar to me the year before. And I just pitched every single media outlet that had covered his book.Greg Larson:And then not only do I know who's interested in my work, but then I can actually use him as a launching point of saying, hey, I noticed that you covered Brad Balukjian last year. My book is very similar from the same publisher. Here's what it's about. That has been a godsend to me, because a lot of authors don't even know who to reach out to.Ben Guest:Greg, that is so smart. So the pitch email, the structure is something along the lines of, here's some things that are happening in baseball. Here's how my book is connected to that. Here are some other interviews or media hits that I've done. Is that right?Greg Larson:You want me to read you a pitch word for word? Would that be helpful for anybody?Ben Guest:That would be fantastic.Greg Larson:Here's a pitch that I just gave to NPR using my local NPR as a launching point, I say, hi person, I'm Greg Larson. And I recently published a book with university of Nebraska Press that helped bring light to income inequality issues in minor league baseball. Some baseball fans know the facts and figures around these problems. And then I give a couple of facts about minor league baseball, but most people don't know what that world looks like on the inside and how it is a perfect microcosm of economic issues in America.Greg Larson:With the changes taking place this summer and rampant income inequality across the country, I believe this story helps highlight issues that plague the US at large and would be a perfect fit for NPR programming. What do you think? And then I give them my cell phone number and then I send them a link to a media kit where it's just a Google drive that has pictures and has blurb images that I created and a full PDF of the book.Greg Larson:And then I say also for reference, here's my recent interview in Austin's NPR station, KUT, best Greg Larson. That gives me a 10 to 15% success rate. So I think about it in terms of opening with personalization. Why am I contacting you? What have I seen of yours, liked recently, why is this issue important? How does my book fit into the conversation? Let's schedule a time.Ben Guest:So, let's go back to the website for a minute.Greg Larson:Sure.Ben Guest:What were the fundamentals of the website design for you?Greg Larson:So I chose Square Space, which is a software that I'm somewhat familiar with. It's just plug and play. And I was just, as far as design goes, I created a logo with somebody on Fiverr, I think, and that cost me a couple bucks, maybe 15 bucks. And then I used that cheap logo to take it to a more expensive designer, then I paid 300 bucks to have them make a more professional looking one.Greg Larson:And so have I seen a direct ROI on say, that logo design that's all over the website? Probably not, but again, it just creates this whole aesthetic. I can put that logo on my newsletter. I can put that logo on every piece of media that

A fifteen hundred advance and I get ten percent of net proceeds…This is Part 4 of a Four-Part Miniseries on how to PLAN, WRITE, EDIT, and PUBLISH your creative work.My co-host for the series is Greg Larson. Greg has written and edited more than 80 books.In Part 1 we reviewed how to PLAN your book.In Part 2 we reviewed how to WRITE your book.In Part 3 we reviewed how to EDIT your book.Today we're going to review how to PUBLISH your book.Specifically, Greg and I go into the differences, and benefits, of self-publishing versus traditional publishing.TRANSCRIPTGreg Larson:The perception hasn't yet caught up with the reality, that's it? In the general public and in the traditional publishing.Ben Guest:Hi everyone. This is Ben Guest, and welcome to part four of my four part mini series on how to plan, write, edit, and publish your book. Today is episode four, publishing your book. And my co-host for this series is Greg Larson. Greg is the author and editor of more than 80 books. In this episode, we talk primarily the differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing. There's a lot more information I have to share on self-publishing, having self-published my own memoir, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball, and Greg traditionally published through the University of Nebraska Press, his memoir, Clubbie. We talk about both books in this interview. If you are interested in self-publishing, I can't recommend episode 34 enough, that self-publishing marketing and promoting your book with author Mark Paul, who has moved more than 40,000 of copies of his self-published book. So there's a ton of information in that episode. And in this episode, Greg and I break down the differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing. Enjoy.Greg Larson:Traditional publishing is just... Unless they transform their model to increase royalties and control to the individuals, it's just a model that's not going to work much longer. The problem at the core of all of this, is that from a readership standpoint, there is still this perception, maybe rightfully so, that a traditionally published book is going to be a better book than a self-pub. And that might be true by and large right now. But if you self-publish on Amazon, for example, you could get 75% of royalties, I think. And then Amazon's printing services just print on demand and just take 25% of the royalties for their part of it and you get 75%.Ben Guest:And you own your book.Greg Larson:And you own. Another problem is distribution. That self-publishing is... Those relationships are very real. So my publisher for Clubbie, University of Nebraska Press has relationships with Barnes & Noble or smaller publisher or smaller bookstores across the country. So that automatically, boom, before my book was even out, I had a thousand copies sold to these distribution outlets that are solely based on those relationships that the publisher has built. Now, would it be possible for an individual author to build similar relationships with distribution? Yeah, maybe, but then that's a lot of non-writing, non-promotion time. If you want to do all of the things that a traditional publishing house does, you're eventually going to have to become your own publisher. And in some ways that's the case, like building a relationship with your own copy editor, building a relationship with your own cover designer and person who does interior layout.Greg Larson:Ideally, that would be the same person. But I look at my rights and my contract, it's a $1,500 advance on the cloth bound, the hard cover, which is the only one that exists right now in physical form. I get 10% of net proceeds from sales on the first 3000 copies sold, and we sold 1500. And then I get 12 and a half percent on the net proceed for the next 2015, so I would max out at 15% royalties, net royalties. So my first royalty check came in. This is based off of a sales period where I had about 1500 sales. Right. $818 for 1500 copies sold. Now that's less the $1,500 signing advance. So approximately $2,300, it's a dollar and 50 cents per copy, something like that, is what I get paid.Ben Guest:There has been a ton of great promotion around Clubbie. Every single piece of promotion I've seen, you did yourself.Greg Larson:Yes, it's truly shocking. I was busting my ass all summer. I didn't expect any help from my publisher, and they lived up to that expectation, marketing-wise, if I said, "Hey, this person wants a review copy sent, could you send it to them?" They were quick on that turnaround time, but I got no indication that they cared one way or the other. And I was expecting that going into it. But yeah, dude, I was busting my ass getting into Forbes, LA Times, all these really big publications and got pretty unbelievable blurbs that did move the needle for me, but it was all me.Ben Guest:Right. And if we just do the math, so 1500 copies, that worked out, basically, between the advance and the royalties, let's say, 2300, 2400, somewhere around there.Greg Larson:Yep.Ben Guest:Okay. Let's say you sell 800 copies self-published on Amazon and you sell it for $7, right? You're going to take, I think it's 70%. You keep 70% of the royalties, seven times 800 times 0.7.Greg Larson:So that would be closer to $4,000.Ben Guest:So if you sold 800 books yourself, which you've done all the promotion, you wouldn't pocketed $4,000. Now there is a press has chosen you. Right. University of Nebraska Press can publish any fucken book. There's a million books out there. They've chosen you, so in the future, you are a published author that a publishing house has selected. At the same time, I was talking to my dad about this because my dad is in his early eighties. And so to people of his generation and the generation after him, how Mifflin publishing your book or whoever, Simon & Schuster publishing your book, that means something. But I said, "Dad, when's the last time you opened a book and looked at who published it?" No one even knows who's publishing books anymore.Greg Larson:Okay. I agree for the most part, but there are two things I would content. Those getting a contract from a big five or big six publisher is a far cry from getting a contract from a small press or a university press. That difference is true and real as far as design goes and as far as all of that goes. I would take a contract from a big five publisher. And then two, you're right, nobody looks at who the publisher is and says, "Oh, I'm not going to read that because it's some made up thing." But it's very likely that you would never have the opportunity to dismiss a self-published book, because it would never be in front of your face to be able to dismiss in the first place. Whereas, if I pull a book off the bookshelf at the bookstore, like I got to assume an older person would, they're not going to have a self-published book on the bookshelf in the first place.Ben Guest:Yeah. Hundred percent. And also to finish doing the math, we said the two non-negotiables in the editing episode, the two non-negotiables are a good copy edit, good cover design that might end up being around $5,000. So if you got to pay for that out of pocket, self-publishing, that $8,000 you just earned is now down to 3000 versus the 2300, we just kind of spitball.Greg Larson:Yeah. That's a benefit of the self-publishing process, is that you would have complete control over that. And you could pick whoever you want who has availability. You have to put the costs up front, but to me that would be worth it. Odds are, I'm going to self-publish my next book. I'm glad I went the traditional publishing route my first book and now shift. And now it's like, "Okay, I've been knighted by the traditional publishing world to a certain extent." I don't think I would've gotten that media attention if I were Greg Larson Press or whatever imprint I would make up. I don't think I would've gotten those media pieces. And now I have to ask myself, "Okay, the equation of, oh, getting in the LA Times, sold me 30 copies." I have no idea. I take that away if I'm self-published. But what I'm really taking away is proceeds of $45 for better royalties and less media attention.Ben Guest:With the media attention, I'm definitely going to give you a call when I'm a couple weeks out from self-publishing my coaching memoir. And just kind of put together the Greg Larson playbook. And then we can kind of see, okay, if you're self-publishing and doing some facts, similarly of the things that Greg did on his own, how much attention can you garner without a press behind you?Greg Larson:Yes. I think you'd be able to get my hypothesis that you could get decent amount of local media, like your hometown, that kind of stuff, like local newspapers, but the national media, I still haven't been able to test that hypothesis yet. But will gladly walk through. I've got a course for it, media pitch mastery course with Self-Publishing Sherpa, will gladly walk you through that process that I'm going to walk Ben through when the time comes.Ben Guest:Nice. Now I hope I don't die on Everest. Did you with Clubbie... I think I know the answer to this, but did you write the book and then shop it around or did you do a proposal and a query letter and all that stuff?Greg Larson:I did both. I was shopping it around when I was writing it, but I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I was sending query letters and I start off by sending query letters and then people would ask me for a proposal and I was just like, "Oh, I don't have a proposal. I've barely even written it." And then I finished the manuscript and I was sending query letters just because it was a memoir and I was chopping it like a novel and that didn't hit. And then I wrote a proposal, but the work of the proposal, like the sample chapters and the proposal were already done and a lot of that [crosstalk 00:09:23].Ben Guest:Right. And that's how you then ultimately connected with University of Nebraska with the proposal?Greg Larson:Yeah. There were a couple of university presses that were interested and I went with Nebraska just because I liked their baseball catalog.Ben Guest:Nice. And what is the world of university presses?Greg Larson:It's basically like a small press. It feels like it's halfway between a small press publisher, like Graywolf or... I don't know, any other small presses, Solaris. Who the f**k knows what any of their names are? But these small presses with the small catalog and a small team, it's halfway between that and a bigger publishing house, like a university... I don't know how to describe it, man. They seem like they have more history. They have a catalog that goes back farther than a newer press.Ben Guest:Was it just a cold email or cold call that you gave University of Nebraska or what?Greg Larson:Yeah. I sent them an email. The sports editor, I had queried him before I'd even written the book. And he said, "How is this any different than other sports books? Like Pat Jordan's baseball memoir was." He's like, "How is this any different?" And I was like, "Well, it's different because of this." He never responded. I queried him again, never responded. Then, I think, the third time I queried him, I had a proposal and he called me up and was like, "Yeah, I'm very interested. I'm going to bring it to the editorial board. But I think they'll be very interested." I had that phone call with him in September, of 2019. And then my book published April, of 2021.Ben Guest:Right. That's the other thing, right?Greg Larson:Yes. Now granted part of that was because we are the lining up with baseball season. He's like, "Look, I'd like to publish it in 2020 spring season, but it's a little too late for that. So we'll do 2021." Thank God, because it just happened to coincide with a lot of changes in the minor league system that happened to be going on this summer as my book came out. So the timing was serendipitous.Ben Guest:Last question. So if I put myself on the couch here, I'm working with this retired MBA player on this autobiography, an established author who says traditional publishing's the way to go, stop writing, do a proposal, shop that proposal. What's your advice?Greg Larson:Proposal doesn't hurt.Ben Guest:And my recommendation was, we self-publish it. Now having talked to this established author, he's like, "Don't self-publish, traditionally publish it, shop it around."Greg Larson:And you would get paid to write the proposal?Ben Guest:Yeah. If we're going to do that, for sure. I'm not going to write it for free.Greg Larson:Right, right, right. My advice would be to both of you. Right. To you I would say, tell him that the odds are very good, that he's going to waste money hiring you. Set that expectation that, [crosstalk 00:12:00] I will write the proposal for you. The odds are very good that you're going to waste money doing that, but I will gladly do. But with him, it's like, if you really think that it's a worthwhile thing to do, let's go all in. Why not? Because maybe we're wrong. And maybe you find out that there is a really good contract for him. Now, granted getting in a large advance, for example, isn't always a good thing because if you don't earn out your advance, it's really hard to get the next book deal. Maybe he doesn't want to do another book deal. Who knows? But if he's even thinking about doing a traditional, it's his book, let him go that route. You've guided him.Ben Guest:Right. Right. But my advice to him is going to be, nah, if you do that, they're going to own the book. It's not going to be published for two years. And, let's say, on our own we sell what? 3000 copies at whatever, $10 a copy, you're going to take home 24,000.Greg Larson:Right.Ben Guest:Is an advance going to generate that much money? Probably not.Greg Larson:No.Ben Guest:Publish it on our own and then you own it and you collect 70% of the royalties. That's the end of my four part mini series on how to plan, write, edit, and publish your book. There's still much more to say, especially about self-publishing and marketing, which is the key, once you publish your book. So future episodes and future issues of my email newsletter will go into more depth on both of those aspects, self-publishing and marketing. You can subscribe to my newsletter at benbo.substack.com. That's benbo.substack.com. Benbo is a family nickname, B-E-N-B-O .subt.com. There, I have weekly podcast interviews just like this one. And I occasionally send out a newsletter post where I go into more detail about writing and self-publishing. So again, you can subscribe totally free at benbo.substack.com. Have a great day. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

There is an alchemy to editing.This is Part 3 of a Four-Part Miniseries on how to PLAN, WRITE, EDIT, and PUBLISH your creative work.My co-host for the series is Greg Larson. Greg has written and edited more than 80 books.In Part 1 we reviewed how to PLAN your book.In Part 2 we reviewed how to WRITE your book.Today we're going to review how to EDIT your book.TRANSCRIPTGreg Larson:Editing is everything that comes afterwards; with writing, that, I think, it's weightlifting. It's just showing up, putting in the reps, and pounding something out. That can be done by anyone who can hit a keyboard or who can write; but editing, I don't know, man; it's a certain alchemy to it, and I have no idea.Ben Guest:Hi, everyone. This is Ben Guest, and today is Part 3 of my Four-Part Miniseries on How to Plan, Write, Edit, and Publish Your Book. Today, Greg Larson and I are talking editing, and specifically, strategies to look at your book with fresh eyes. That's the key in the editing process, to be able to see your book new, and make changes based on seeing it "for the first time."Ben Guest:Greg is the author and editor of more than 80 books, and we discuss his memoir, Clubbie, in this podcast. And we also talk a little bit about my memoir, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball. Enjoy the episode.Ben Guest:I guess there are two main components to editing. One is self-editing, and the other is working with an editor, either a trusted reader, group of readers, professional editor, et cetera. Let me start with a couple tips and tricks that I use.Greg Larson:Please.Ben Guest:And I got this from a guy named Glen Stout, who has written a number of excellent books, and was the series editor for The Best American Sports Writing, which I read growing up. It was really a seminal introduction to good writing for me. And so anyway, Glen told me, "When you get to a certain point, re-do the entire manuscript in a different font, preferably a font you don't like; and then print it out, and read it in the new font." Because there reaches a point, I think for all of us as writers, where we need to trick ourselves into being able to see the work in a fresh light, as new as we can. So tip or trick number one is, print it out in a different font, different size, et cetera. Yeah.Greg Larson:I love that, because that's... It's so true, man. Those little tricks, you're like, "What the... That's not going to do anything." That kind of s**t really does work. You're going to look at it like it's a completely book, and you're going to see nooks and crannies that you didn't before. I'm stealing the hell out of that times. F**k Times New Roman dude, I'm going Wing Dings on this next draft.Ben Guest:Comic Sans, in 14.Greg Larson:Particularly a font that you don't like, that you don't like. That, I think, is really key. I really like that.Ben Guest:It's great, isn't it?Greg Larson:Yeah.Ben Guest:And the other two, the second one is one that everybody will tell you from the beginning of time, which is to read it out loud. And reading it out loud, you can hear right away if a sentence isn't working.Ben Guest:And then the third one is, and I haven't tried this yet, but, and again, this was Glen recommended this; bought an older Kindle, and these ones you can put a PDF on here, and then do the read aloud function, where it reads it in that computer voice. So it's not an audio book; it's just that kind of funky computer voice that doesn't even know the correct pronunciation or grammar or anything. But by listening to it, say it's similar to printing it out in a funky font; by listening to it like that, and I haven't done this yet, but I'm going to with the memoir that I'm just finishing. Listening to it like that; again, you're hearing it in a new way.Greg Larson:When you said, real quick, the memoir that you're finishing; you're talking about the one you're working with, the basketball?Ben Guest:Oh no, sorry. I should have been clearer. So, I got... That project is, we're right in the middle of just interview, transcription, writing. The memoir is about meditation and coaching basketball. And that one is 95% done. Probably by the time, hopefully, that these podcast episodes come out, it'll be right around the time on publishing that book. So that one's just about done.Greg Larson:Wow.Ben Guest:It just needs a few more things here, and then a copy edit, and then it's good to go.Greg Larson:Dang, I didn't know that you were that close.Ben Guest:I have this phrase, "Are you 90% finished, or are you only 50% finished?" And again, it comes from my filmmaking background of doing documentary, where you just get so lost in the weeds, and you can't tell, "Am I... Is this almost?" And I'm just thinking about every last little bit or, "Eh, it's just not working. I got something, but it just needs, it's going to need a lot more."Ben Guest:And so, for a long time, I was in that, "I think I'm 90% done, but I'm not sure if I'm 50% done." And actually, going back to our episode, writing, what really cracked it open for me was going back and looking at some of the journals I'd kept as a Peace Corps volunteer in Namibia, and having some I actual dialogue that I had quoted in my journal, that I could pull out and let the dialogue do the lifting, as we talked about in the writing episode. Because I was telling and not showing.Greg Larson:Yeah.Ben Guest:I was giving a laundry list of experiences that I had had, that sort of led to this epiphany of letting go of control, releasing control of trying to coach a team, and so on and so forth.Ben Guest:So anyway, long story short, it was by finding real-time dialogue that I had in my journal from years ago, that I could plug in that it really, "Okay. Now I'm more than 90% finished, and I just need to polish up a few things."Greg Larson:Yeah. So the previous version was probably a lot of summary, and not as much scene building.Ben Guest:Exactly. It was way too much. I've been working with Glen on this, and it was way too much... And he made the point of, "Okay, you have this background. How did you reach this point where you're letting go of the team, you're into meditation and so forth. How did you get there?" So then I wrote a chapter explaining how I got there. But it's the same thing we talked about last time, if you've got to explain that, you've already fucked up. Explaining it just made it boring. In some cases, I'm talking about being in the Peace Corps 20 years ago in Namibia; how do I make that come alive? And then fortunately, I kept some journals, and I found one of the journals, and bang, I had some dialogue in there that was perfect for what I'm trying to convey.Greg Larson:Backstory as exposition, was something that one of my professors in grad school really hammered in us: sprinkle in where it's necessary, but front-loading it all at the beginning, snoozefest, dude. Nonfiction memoirs in particular, I think make that mistake a lot; way too much background. "I was born in 1924." So nobody gives a s**t, dude, unless you're Teddy Roosevelt or whatever.Ben Guest:And I'm sure we'll get into this more in future episodes, where we talk the business side of it in marketing and promoting. But you have to think about who is the audience and who is the reader?Greg Larson:Yeah.Ben Guest:And I think a lot of times, especially for first-time authors, or for people that have an interesting story to tell, they want to tell their whole life, rather than, and we talked about this before, in the planning stage, there's a point to this writing. There's something you want to communicate. And if it's not related to that, it doesn't need to be in there.Greg Larson:Yes. Writing is entertainment. Even if it's art, it's entertainment. And if it's not entertaining and it's not informing, then what are you doing? It's just a journal.Ben Guest:And why am I reading your book? So going back to the editing process, for me, that's where we're making a reduction. Right? What does that look like for you?Greg Larson:For the handwritten novel that I'm doing, when I finish writing it handwritten, I'm going to have to go to a computer, and I'm going to have to transcribe it. That's like a free edit, because I get to think about it as not being an edit. I'm like, "Oh, I'm just transcribing it." But inevitably, who knows? That might be one of the times where I'm most in the weeds in the book ever, where I have it here on the page, and then I'm typing it on the computer. I've not thought about this out loud, explicitly, but was like, "Oh, will I make obvious changes while I'm doing the transcription?" I think, no. I'm going to honor exactly what's on the page, and I'm just going to write comments on the side for, "Oh, this has to change, because X happens in notebook 10, that kind of thing."Greg Larson:And then, I'm going to let it sit for six weeks. And in that process, I'm going to write something else, something completely different, probably something comedy, funny, silly stuff. And then after six weeks, I will go back through and read it. And I don't know if I'll have a pen in my hand or not, but I'm going to print it out. Not in a funny font yet; not in Wing Dings yet. I'll do that later, but I'm going to print it out and just read it like I'm a reader, and just see what the hell I have. And then, I will go back through, and then it's slash and burn time. I will print it out, and I will cut up different sections, like on a chapter-by-chapter level; I will cut up different sections and pieces of dialogue, and move it around physically, like on the ground. That has been actually really helpful.Ben Guest:What does your file management look like on your computer?Greg Larson:I have a Google Drive with a Notes document. That's just s**t I think of, that is in no order whatsoever. And that's just an ever-growing document. And then, I have a document of the actual prose; and then I have a bunch of articles, all that stuff. They're all in the same folder on Google Drive.Ben Guest:How often are you saving a new version of your draft?Greg Larson:I was just looking this up. I started writing prose in the middle of May, 2016, and I finished writing that first draft on September 1st, I believe. And so, I had a rough draft that included stuff that just said, notes, if you need seen here of what you look like. I left that alone in that document, copied it and pasted it to a new document.Greg Larson:So it is basically, I will start a new document once I've made one pass at the full manuscript; and then I'll just move on from there. I think for Clubbie, I did four heavy duty edits, and then the tweaking proofreading stuff, that who knows how to quantify that. I have no idea.Ben Guest:Yeah. I feel like I don't save enough new drafts. Now I know that I can always go back and find something, but I feel like I probably make a new draft once a week as I'm going through it. But probably need to do it more, just because you have a nice turn of phrase, and then you change it a little bit and then, "Ah, damn. What was that again? I can't remember it exactly."Greg Larson:Yeah. And doing it by a timeline like that, you're... It's arbitrary.Ben Guest:Yeah. Okay. So you said something earlier, that is the most important part of the editing process, which is, with the new book, you're going to put it in a drawer for six weeks, and then pick it up again. And so, those three tips and tricks about seeing the book in a new way that I gave at the beginning, basically, they're all variations of the process of letting it alone until you can see it with new eyes, with fresh eyes again. The author, Peter Olson, I interviewed him a couple months ago, and I asked him, I said, "How long do you like to let a draft sit?" And he said, "However long I let it sit, it's never long enough." And I thought that was the exact right answer. You want to just forget it. You want to forget what you wrote, so you can see it new again.Greg Larson:Yes. I look forward to that a lot, that feeling of... just that feeling of having those notebooks written, and letting it sit in a drawer, and just know that it's complete; the hard part is complete. There's other hard parts, but wow. It exists. Now, it's just a matter of polishing it up, and I'm not going to look at it. It's like waiting for Christmas. The way Stephen King described it, "You're reading something that was written by a soul twin. It feels that you can barely remember it, but it's like somebody who is you, but not you wrote it."Greg Larson:I've been doing yoga a lot lately, and at the end of you have the Shavasana, where you're in the corpse pose, and you're basically unwinding after all of the work of the last hour. I don't know what exactly, but there's something analogous there of, the work is complete; at least this phase, the work is complete. And I get to look back and see what the hell it is that I just created. It's kind of scary.Ben Guest:It's leaving $20 for yourself in your winter coat. And you're going to find it again six months from now. For me, the hardest part, although still fun, is the writing. Once it gets to the editing phase, the absolute hardest part is done. So, in addition to forgetting and then looking forward to what it is you wrote, it's also, this is the easier phase for me. So I can't wait to forget it, so I can rediscover it, and almost pat myself on the back a little bit for doing this well or doing that well. Even though I'm going to be critical about things, it is very much, you look forward to rediscovering your soul twin's work.Greg Larson:Yeah. You can surprise yourself; even us doing the breakdown in the last episode of the revision process for that piece I wrote for Clubbie; even there, I feel a pleasant surprise of, "Oh. I didn't even realize that I did that. That's pretty good." Because I can get really hard on myself, I think, like most authors. Just, "God, I have no idea what I'm doing." And then have to remember, "Nope. Not knowing what you're doing is the most important part of the process."Ben Guest:So, for the self-editing phase, the things we've talked about so far are, putting it in a drawer and letting it sit.Greg Larson:Yeah.Ben Guest:Print it in a different font, read it out loud, let your computer read it out to you. And for me, generally, in the self-editing phase, in addition into just reducing as much as possible, trying to get into the scene as quickly as possible, get out of the scene into the chapter, out of the chapter as quickly as possible. It's also going back to what we were saying earlier, of show, don't tell. Maybe it was the last episode; show, don't tell. I want to be mindful of, "Am I explaining to the audience what it is they should be feeling?" And any time I'm doing that, or nine times out of 10, if I'm doing that, I need to cut it.Greg Larson:Yeah. I talked about what I'm going to do with this handwritten draft; but I just realized going back through these old versions of Clubbie, that when I was banging out a first draft on Google Docs, what I would do immediately when I finished the first draft, once I let it sit for a bit and I went through it, I did the spell check tool. Yes. Spelling and grammar, spelling and grammar check. And I just accepted everything it told me. So then, all of a sudden I have this garbled mess. And when I accept everything it tells me, boom, all of a sudden it's like a new draft. And then I formatted it, and it's boom, it's like a new draft. And without doing any cognitive work whatsoever, I just gave myself a revision; and it felt like a free step-up. That was all... I had forgotten that I did that until I looked back.Greg Larson:But that was a really cheap way of getting a pat on the back for, "Oh, I already did a revision." And then I try to keep it to global stuff. If I get, even in the first revision, if I get too in the weeds of... If I get too into polishing weeds of every single word in the sentence, I will get lost. So I try to keep it global content edits first, of, "Oh s**t, I have a placeholder for content here. Let me just bang something out real quick." I try to do that, and then I try to do a full pass of content restructuring, organizing. And then when I go back through, then it's, "Okay. Now we're deep into polishing by sentence and word." And that takes who knows how many passes; a half dozen passes, maybe more sometimes.Ben Guest:Hi, everyone. Ben here with a quick commercial break, which is for Greg's company.Greg Larson:This episode is brought to you by Self-Publishing Sherpa. If you're a busy entrepreneur, coach or consultant, and you'd like to grow your business with a book, let's talk. Yes, this is Greg Larson, the guest of this episode, and here's the deal. Writing a good book is easy; but good books don't grow your business. Writing a great book that attracts new clients is hard, really hard. Editing is even harder. Add in cover design, interior layout, publishing and marketing, and it's enough to keep you from writing a single word at all.Greg Larson:Whether you already have your manuscript finished, or you haven't written since high school, let our team of experts handle everything for you in six months. Yes, just six months, you'll go from book idea to holding your book in your hands, ready to make you money. To learn more, visit self-publishingsherpa.com, where you can schedule a free no sales, extra nonsense BS call, a free outlining call to get started. That's self-publishingsherpa.com.Ben Guest:So that polishing phase, that refining every sentence, shaving syllables. What does that look like for you?Greg Larson:That's the point at which I start reading out loud. I don't read out loud until then. That's when I start reading out loud, and I just try to listen for things that get stuck in my throat; just for things that on a gut level, if I find myself trying to read past it too quickly, that's indicative of me trying to shoo something away from work. That's the only thing I know, dude. It's hard.Ben Guest:Mm-hmm (affirmative). I can spend two minutes on, "Da, da, da, said Greg."Greg Larson:Right.Ben Guest:Versus, "Da, da, da, Greg said."Greg Larson:Yes.Ben Guest:And so, for me, it's just... And actually, this probably goes back to being an English teacher. I don't want to repeat words, especially in a paragraph. I want to have a nice rhythm. And then the icing on the cake, is if I can have a little bit of alliteration or assonance in there, I'm going to sprinkle that in there. But it's that spooky process of, you're 1/3 aware of what you're doing, and 2/3 unaware.Greg Larson:This is the spookiest part of the process, the most unexplainable part of what exactly are you doing when you're doing those final polishes?Ben Guest:Yep. And so, another thing that I do, and I'm just going to open it on my computer so I can tell everybody. So I... Your computer has a dictionary. And I did this years ago. I uploaded Webster's dictionary from like 1910. So you can find the file, and upload it to your computer dictionary.Greg Larson:Huh.Ben Guest:You can upload any dictionary that's out there. And so, it's this great old-time dictionary, that if I get stuck, if I need a synonym, I'll punch a word into the dictionary, and see what comes up. So for example, in this autobiography that I'm working on with a retired NBA player, he played college at the University of North Carolina. And Dean Smith, his college coach, is sort of the hero of the book. And so, I'm working on the chapter about freshman year, University of North Carolina, and I'm going online and looking at photos of Chapel Hill, and trying to figure out how to describe it.Ben Guest:It's got Georgian architecture. And so, I just put Georgian in the dictionary, and stately comes up. And so now, stately, "Oh, that's a great word. I never would've thought of that." Now I put stately in there, and it's majestic. And then, in this Webster's dictionary, it gives you a famous quote. So it's a Shakespeare quote. "Here is a stately style, indeed." Shakespeare was always using alliteration.Ben Guest:So now, the stately campus of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, majestic and grand. I got it all from... It started with Georgian architecture, punched it into the old-timey dictionary, came up with stately, and then definition of stately included majestic and grand. Now I have my words that are a little bit different than I would have used if I'm just trying to come up with it on my own.Greg Larson:You're using the Mac, the home dictionary, the utilities dictionary that comes with the operating system?Ben Guest:Yeah. The way that I heard about this, is the famous author and writing teacher, John McPhee had a dictionary that he used. And actually, John McPhee published a book about three or four years ago called Draft No. Four, where he goes into this whole process. And it was in one of those articles that he mentioned this dictionary. So, let me see... So, the dictionary that comes with your computer, if you're on a Mac, is the New Oxford American Dictionary. Right? So this is my screen, and this is the New... If I click on dictionary, this is the New Oxford Dictionary.Greg Larson:Yeah.Ben Guest:But I added Webster's, and I got it from John McPhee, Webster's Revised, Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.Greg Larson:I like to use Desk Dictionary.Ben Guest:What's that? Tell me about that.Greg Larson:Webster's II New Riverside Desk Dictionary. Honestly, I like it just because the content is pretty thin; each entry is pretty short. But what I like about it is the size and the weight are perfect. I can... It's easy to carry. It's easy right here. And it's packed with enough words that it's very useful.Ben Guest:Yeah. So much of art is about making connections. And so, when we're talking about writing and editing and sentence construction, and really drilling down on what's the right word and the right sentence, I need to make a connection to a word that I'm not normally going to think of.Greg Larson:Yes.Ben Guest:So having a dictionary that has a bunch of words in it that are slightly out of time, so 1913, Webster's 1913 Dictionary, it's going to find words that I wouldn't normally associate with this other word that I'm trying to figure out, what's a synonym to use.Greg Larson:Yes. Yeah. The thesaurus work is done for you, just in the definitions.Ben Guest:Okay. So that's the self-editing process. Now, working with an editor; and you've done both. You've been an editor and a book coach, and you've worked with an editor. What are your thoughts about that?Greg Larson:As an author, I won't go to an editor until I'm at the copy, edit, and proofreading stage. When I say, "All right, I've polished it to the point where it's as good as I could possibly make it right now, in this stage of my career." If I... Okay. So my copy editor for Clubbie, she was amazing, Amanda Jackson. She gave me a lot of really good sentence-by-sentence, just grammatical stuff that needed to be changed; that was necessary and good.Greg Larson:But what she also did was she pointed out two really important narrative discrepancies, where she said, "Hold on a minute. This scene that happens on page 125, makes it seem like you are the messy roommate with your girlfriend. But the corresponding scene on page 74 makes it seem like it's the other way around. It's okay if there's a discrepancy there, but as a reader, it's confusing without at least a little bit of explanation."Greg Larson:And I was like, "Oh, s**t. Me just putting the facts forward, or putting the scene forward wasn't enough. I actually needed... We were talking about nine times out of 10, you don't need it. That was one of the one times out of 10 that I actually did need to explain a little bit more. And she pointed that out. And then she also pointed out that my ending was confusing. It still might be confusing; that the ending made it seem like I was going forward in time, instead of a flashback in time. And I was like, "Oh God. I didn't know that." Those two insights alone, even if I took away all the commas and all that kind of s**t, were well worth the entire... Those two insights were worth everything that she did for me.Ben Guest:Yeah. I think the two non-negotiables in writing and publishing your book are a thorough copy edit, and a good cover design.Greg Larson:Yeah.Ben Guest:Those are the things that you pretty much have to spend money on. It doesn't have to be a lot of money, but you need to allocate resources, in terms of money, for those two things.Greg Larson:Yes. If I'm thinking about self-publishing, if you have a publisher and a contract with them, royalties, all that kind of stuff, they'll take care of it. But if I'm talking about self-publishing, I'm thinking if you want to do it right, you have to be allotting $5,000 to those parts of the process, combined. Copy edits, that might be $500 to $1,000. Cover design might be $4k to $5k, something like that. $5k is minimum to get a high quality design like that.Ben Guest:So for me, in the editing process, working with an outside editor, I love... And this goes back to being in the film world. I love to work with an editor when I have final... I hate to work with an editor when they have final cut. So, in filmmaking, that means somebody's writing the check, then they're going to have... If a company or an organization has hired you to make a film about what they do, they have final say over the product. And that for me, I don't like not being able to control the final output. But when someone is giving you feedback, and then you can decide, or I can decide, "Okay. I am going to incorporate this feedback." Or, "I understand what they're saying, but I'm still going to make this choice, a different choice." That's when I feel really comfortable, and it's like having a great dance partner, when you're working with a good editor.Greg Larson:Yeah. Dude, I couldn't agree more; if I couldn't have final say. There was one thing that actually came up. Okay. Yeah. When I was doing the copy editing process, my copy editor changed a lot of my... She put in a lot of semicolons that were necessary. It's okay, two independent, but related clauses. Yes. Technically, that's supposed to be a semicolon. But every... I was like, "There are no semicolons in a minor league baseball clubhouse. This does not fit the ethos of this world."Greg Larson:So, by the book, technically you have it. But for the world that we've created, it's wrong. And luckily, my publisher and my editor were on board with that, and understood my explanation. I just cannot imagine these pieces of dialogue with semicolons instead of m-dashes; because that was my go-to; anywhere there would be a semicolon, it would be an m-dash. It just keeps the things, keeps stuff moving. But that's the kind of thing that you have to look out for in an editor; because their job is to be buttoned up and more binary. And you have to be on their ass; sometimes, it's not binary.Ben Guest:Yeah. If I'm editing, I want to point out you're making a choice here.Greg Larson:Yes.Ben Guest:Okay, great. You're a choice to use an m-dash instead of a semicolon. A good editor is helping you realize, "Did you realize that you're making a choice here?" And then, if you realized it, you're good with it. Half the time, it's, "Oh, s**t. I didn't realize I was making that choice. And that's actually not what I want." So to me, a good editor is pointing out, "Okay. Just want to make sure you were consciously intending to do this, or you're consciously making a choice to do this."Greg Larson:Yeah. That's where I was a professional editor only. There's a reason why I do book coaching instead and some ghost writing, although not as much. I'm just not, how to put it; I'm just not good at it. I can see through so much of proofreading. It gets in the way of the flow. Proofreading is necessary for the layout, but in copy editing, so much of proper copy editing gets in the way of the narrative flow. It's like stuff... I don't know, man. I think it should be sloppier than that, at least for my stuff. Again, the New Yorker, they're all buttoned up, all that; but you've seen the stuff I write. I like to chunk things together, and there's fragments all over the place. And I like that because it's, that's the flow.Ben Guest:One of the things that we keep coming back to, is the idea of juxtaposition, counterpoint. And so again, my training initially is in filmmaking; and the best book on film editing is called In the Blink of an Eye. You have a hierarchy of when to make a cut. The second level is to match Sam Jackson's holding a coffee cup in his left hand in scene A, and we cut to the over-the-shoulder shot. He needs to be holding the coffee cup in his left hand in scene B. But more important than matching continuity, is cutting for emotion. So if this cut, even if something is wrong in terms of continuity, but fits the emotion, then you cut for emotion. And what you're talking about is ultimately our job as writers, is to engage the reader. We're writing to create hopefully, an emotion in the reader. And that has to come necessarily before, "Is the semicolon here correct?"Greg Larson:Yes. And we have an advantage over a filmmaker, that we can change the scene if we want to.Ben Guest:Yes.Greg Larson:So we-Ben Guest:We can change the content.Greg Larson:We can put the cup in the metaphorical correct hand, and we can get the emotion right.Ben Guest:Exactly. Okay. Those are my thoughts on editing. Any more tips and tricks, any other thoughts on editing?Greg Larson:Here's the framework that I give my clients for self-editing; and it's just really, I call it the GLOW framework. You start four rounds, global edits, line-by-line edits, out loud edits, work with a professional.Ben Guest:I love that framework.Greg Larson:And then you have framework that glows.Ben Guest:I love that framework. Okay. I think that's the all I've got on editing.Greg Larson:Yeah. If I said anything else about editing, I'd be talking out of my ass even more. It's pure alchemy.Ben Guest:That's Part Three, The Editing Process. Next week, Part Four, Publishing Your Book. If you enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my weekly newsletter and podcast, at benbo.subststack.com. That's benbo.substack.com. B-E-N-B-O.substack.com. Have a great day This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

This is Part 2 of my Four-Part Miniseries on how to PLAN, WRITE, EDIT, and PUBLISH your creative work.My co-host for the series is Greg Larson. Greg has written and edited more than 80 books.In Part 1 we reviewed how to PLAN your book.Today we're going to review how to WRITE your book.Episode TranscriptBen Guest:Hi everyone, this is Ben Guest and welcome to part two of my four part mini-series on how to plan, write, edit, and publish your book. My co-host for this mini series is Greg Larson. Greg wrote a fantastic memoir called Clubbie. He's ghost written and edited over 80 books. In this episode, we talk the writing process and start with how writing is similar to standup comedy.Greg Larson:There's nothing more brutal than in the moment feedback of a standup comedy audience. That's a really great gift, because as an author, we don't have that. We're just inside our own head. I think that's why a lot of writing can turn masturbatory, where you're not thinking about what's the audience want? What's going to keep them reading the next sentence? As a standup comic, that's right there in your face, in a very painful way. It's an immediate stimulus response condition.Ben Guest:You know if it's working, immediately?Greg Larson:Yes. With writing, you don't really know, you just have to... I don't know what... You have to trust it. At least in the first draft.Ben Guest:I do this thing, sometimes. If I can, where if I'm in the same physical space with a good friend, family member, a trusted reader, I'll print out a chapter, a section, a scene. And I'll say, "Can you read this and give me feedback?" My parents were in town the other day. I did this with my dad and he said, "Sure." It's just maybe four pages. He said, "Sure." He left to go to the dining room table, sit there, and mark it up. And I said, "No. Can you sit right here and read it?" I kind of want to watch you in my periphery while you read it. It's as close as you can come to something like film making, when you watch it with an audience or stand up in front of a crowd, where you can just tell from the body language, "This is working. This is not working".Greg Larson:Yeah. What was his response?Ben Guest:His response to that was just like, "Okay", at this point with enough creative projects, he's like, "I'm not going to question the process." It was fine. It's better with my mom because my mom will kind of make... She'll laugh or she'll smile or she'll frown and I can see, "Okay, wait. What sentence are you on? Why did you frown right there?" You don't really get to do that as a writer. If you do, you can't do it too often because people just get sick of you.Greg Larson:Yeah. I mean, you could be the best writer in the world and with that kind of microscope on your reading process, it eventually becomes like, "Whoa, there's a lot of pressure to read".Ben Guest:Right. Also, I think you touched on something earlier, which is... So I used to be a high school, English teacher. I used to tell people, "Standup", I never did stand up, "But standup and teaching are similar in that you know right away if it's working. That you can't fake laughter and you can't fake an engaged group of students." There is that component. There's also the component when we write of... sometimes we want the reader to have to figure some stuff out. Sometimes we don't want there necessarily to be clarity. That goes back to your point of your compatriot, who's writing something and then sort of explaining exactly what that piece of dialogue meant. Whereas if we're really doing our job, we should be laying the bricks down where the audience can make the next step.Greg Larson:Yeah. There are times where you do need to interject. That's a hard one, man. I don't know... I don't know how you know... It's a gut feeling thing, I think. How many times do I interject and tell them what the meaning is and how do I do it? I know what I do is in the first draft I will over explain so that I can shave back from there. I know that I do that, but to know where and when to shave, is a gut thing.Ben Guest:Yeah. It's so hard. I think, in general, my measuring ratio is nine times out of 10... you don't need to explain it. One time out of 10, you need to. It's tough to know.Greg Larson:Yeah. I like that though. That sounds right to-Ben Guest:It's so easy to over explain. That's the number one thing, when I go back and edit my own work, the first thing that goes is like, "Why are you explaining what this means for show, don't tell"?Greg Larson:One of my old professors, John McManus, he had this rule that he would tell us. He'd say, "With the scene direction specifically", he's like, "Only leave it in there if it does two jobs. If the one job is to be a visual stimulation of some kind, and that's it, then delete it. But if the job is to be okay, show us a visual, but that visual also tells us something about the character. "Oh", he said, as he crossed his shoes, which were mismatched. It's like, "Okay, that says something about that character. That they're a little bit haphazard. They're not thinking things through, that kind of thing." That is a rule that I try to keep in my mind.Ben Guest:I love that. I think that leads us right into where I want to go next, which is... So you shared three different versions... three different drafts of just a couple paragraphs from Clubbie. I kind of marked it up. I have a couple thoughts that I kind of want to dive into which is... What I'll do actually, is I'll read part of each version because this is a little bit different, not different, bad or different, good, but just different than the process that we're describing. What I'm seeing here is the first version is just very much the skeleton, the bare bones, the framework. I'm doing this. I need to do this, this and this. Then the second version is really adding lots of description and detail. Then the third version is pairing it back just a little bit. Adding just the correct dialogue. Adding some humor and kind of turning that literary dial just a little bit. Does that make sense?Greg Larson:I think that's exactly right.Ben Guest:Let me read one paragraph from each of the three versions. This is just to kind of set the scene. This is when you're first getting to Aberdeen, is that correct?Greg Larson:Yep. That's right. I'm basically, I'm walking into the equipment closet with my new boss. I am being shown a world that is going to be my new home for the next two years. I have no idea what I'm getting myself into.Ben Guest:Right. Of course, you're now showing us, the reader, this new world. You want to convey, "I have no idea what I'm getting into." Going back to show, don't tell... The last thing in the world you want to do is say, "I have no idea what I'm getting into." You want to convey that feeling just through this scene?Greg Larson:Yep. That it's exactly right.Ben Guest:So version one…Jason throws the Aberdeen hat on your head. Just one of the caps left over from the year before. Blue, BP cap with cursive, A. Nice cap. Stretch fit. Okay, that's version one. Then version two of that exact same scene. He pulled out a blue stretch, fit cap with orange trim on the bill and an orange cursive capital A, for Aberdeen, on the crown, rather than the IronBird's logo. He slapped it onto my head so that the bill was halfway over my eyes and I could only see his feet. I left it like that.Okay. Right there, I think it's already miles ahead of version one, right?Greg Larson:Yeah. Version one, I was just trying to get the idea... I wasn't even writing. I was just saying what was going to happen.Ben Guest:It's sort of somewhere between writing an outline... Is that fair?Greg Larson:A hundred percent.Ben Guest:Before we get to version three, when you're doing version one, just that sort of all half outline, half writing, how long does that take you? Or is it just head down? There are a bunch of typos and so forth. Is it just head down writing sprint? What does that look like for you?Greg Larson:For this book, that's what that looked like. It was 2000 words a day and I was just banging it out. If a piece of dialogue or a specific visual came to me, I would put it in. Literally, the first paragraph of the section I sent you said, "We need to know what you look like early on here so we can compare it to what you look like mid-season?" That's just a note to myself. I don't write like that anymore, usually. That is just me cranking s**t out as fast as I can to get to the stuff that's actually prose.Ben Guest:Why don't you write like that anymore?Greg Larson:It was fast. It's okay for a first draft to be sloppy, but it was so sloppy that some of the ghosts from the early skeleton would get stuck in the later versions. That problem is the reason why I'm writing my new book, by hand. I can't just bang that s**t out. Every choice is more costly... physiologically.Ben Guest:That's so interesting. You're writing the new novel, by hand... Is that translating into a more finished piece of prose in the rough draft?Greg Larson:Yeah. I'm writing prose two pages a day. It might be 500 words a day. I don't know. This is the most recently filled notebook for my current novel that I'm writing. This is all prose. This is all prose. I know that I can go into the back final pages... On the last page I have a header that says, "Notes." This is just where I have ideas for things. What does Dana in my summer look like? Use my ex-girlfriend's relationship as a model. First, new and real love, so it feels permanent. Those kinds of notes. That's not prose. Those are just notes to myself. Before, I would've put them all together like I did with Clubbie. Here, they're sectioned off to the back so that I can refer back to it and say, "Oh yeah, I still have that here. I'm going to use it as a reference point for writing the actual prose".Ben Guest:Yeah. That a hundred percent makes sense. Like you said, now, the price to write those sentences is a little bit more just by virtue of doing in it with pen to paper. Now, are you noticing your thinking is changing as you're writing the sentences? You're thinking in more complete sentences?Greg Larson:Interesting. I think so. I find it's definitely the cleanest first draft I've ever written. It's still sloppy enough. The sloppiness is in the organization and the structure, as opposed to sentences and the structure and the organization. What I find is that I am sitting with the notepad open more often, looking around and thinking before writing and then going into a flow. Whereas before it was just 2000 words, let's crank this s**t out. Then, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. It's definitely sharpened things. I don't know for sure. I never go back and read. If I go back and read, it's dead. Any book that I go back and read in the middle of it dies.Ben Guest:Interesting. You don't go back and read a few pages before you start writing the next step?Greg Larson:Absolutely. After as many people as I've coached for book writing and all that stuff, that is the easiest and most surefire book killer that most people make. I don't care if they're professionals. I don't care who you are. That's the best way to kill your book.Ben Guest:Tell us why?Greg Larson:Because you go back and you're faced to face with the fact that you don't know what you're doing. The whole point of a first draft is to not know what the next step is. You're not going to know what the next step is until you finish the first draft. If you go back too early, you're going to see how much you suck. Even if it's fantastic writing, you're going to get in your head about it. You're going to get stuck trying to perfect chapter one instead of actually writing chapter two, and going forward. There's just too many pitfalls, man. I see people fall into it all the time.Ben Guest:Another pitfall, I think, is so when it comes to creative projects, it's been my experience and I've done film, I've done writing projects... It's my experience that... I may have mentioned this. There are two types of people, those who talk about their project, those who finish their project. Those who finish is a much smaller number than those who talk about it. Where people can get caught up... This ties into what you're saying, is doing work around the creative project, but not doing the actual work. If I go back and I start with chapter two, before I start reading chapter four... I read all of chapter two and I start fixing stuff. I can sort of tell myself, "Okay, I'm working on my book today." But I ain't really working on my book today-Greg Larson:That's exactly it. With the novel project I was doing that exact same thing. I was like, "I need to learn the perfect three act structure before I can start writing this book. I need to read Joseph Campbell. I need to read McKee and I need to go through all these different craft things before I can write this." I was researching and I was studying, but it wasn't me putting pen to paper.Ben Guest:Lately, I've been on a Twitter kick in terms of trying to increase the number of followers and post more helpful content. What I've been doing is, is doing threads. Threads about self-publishing. Threads about podcasting. Threads about meditation. Maybe, two or three threads, a week. It's fun. There's sort of a video game aspect of leveling up whether it's marketing or your followers or your engagements and so forth. I'll always save it for the afternoon. I think you told me this, you do all your promo stuff in the afternoon because it's not the work. It's around the work, but it's not the work. It's really easy to get sucked into that stuff, because it doesn't require you at your peak creative powers, which for me is first thing in the morning.Greg Larson:Same. To the point where, since we talked the first time, I've done zero. I'm just completely focused on this novel.Ben Guest:I think with most creative projects, but especially with writing, it's this weird thing of... It's important, I think, that we go out and live in the world and experience the world. We're going to take that experience... We talked about your book last time... the book you're writing now and that sort of stems from a very intense experience with you and your ex-girlfriend or the person you were seeing. We have to go out and live in the world... the sort of build up some experiences that we can then isolate and be it our solitude of process and write. It's this weird thing of, I think if we... if we stay in our room too much, that can be... and that can be just as seductive as social media. To stay and just write and refine and write and refine. But we have to go out and experience the world because that's going to be the basis of the next project.Greg Larson:Totally agree, dude. Some author said that he's either writing or doing something worth writing about. I get what he is getting at.Ben Guest:Yeah. I do something a little bit different than what you were saying as far as never going back and checking. Usually, what I do... So the big project I'm working on, right now, is co-writing a retired NBA, player's autobiography. It's been a great process, so far. He played 15 years in the league and won three championships with the Bulls, in the nineties. He is not a household name. The book is really about the trauma of a terribly abusive childhood and overcoming that. I think a book you're probably familiar with, David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me. It's sort of in the vain of that.Ben Guest:What I do, before I start writing, I might go back and there's a couple different books. There's the Goggins book. There's Open, by Andre Agassi which is for most people's money, the best sports memoir that's been written. Maybe, one or two other things that are around the voice and around the style of what we're trying to do. I'll do that. Then, I'll go back to the previous chapter... the previous few pages, just to get myself back in that flow, that voice before I start writing the new thing. Does that make sense?Greg Larson:It does. Like you're preparing yourself for the new day of writing?Ben Guest:Yes. Yeah.Greg Larson:Interesting. But you don't actually go back and edit.Ben Guest:It sounds kind of like what you're doing is... Each morning I'm getting up and I'm jumping in the deep end of the pool. I'm kind of wading in, from the shallow end, to reacquaint myself to the authorial voice so that it's consistent.Greg Larson:That makes a lot of sense. I've actually been thinking about that lately. How much the specific day influences the content that I'm writing. I'm like, "Wow, if I had written the same scene a different day, would it be different just because I'm coming to it with whatever random energy I'm bringing to that day of the desk?" I'm curious to see without that sort of consistency, how inconsistent the tone is and whether or not that's interesting or confusing for the reader. That first reader's going to be me, inevitably.Ben Guest:Right. The other thing I have to be really careful about is what I'm reading. You can almost unconsciously start to imitate that style.Greg Larson:Right now, I'm reading some Nietzsche. I think that's far enough for me that I think it won't influence anything.Ben Guest:I love it. Little, Nietzsche. Little, Danielle Steel.Greg Larson:Right.Ben Guest:The other thing is... because you're writing by hand... Are you working on any other writing projects?Greg Larson:No, I'm doing some book coaching, but that's just emotional coaching.Ben Guest:Right. I imagine given that you're not trying to write in someone else's voice. That you're writing every day. You probably are being consistent in terms of tone and voice.Greg Larson:That's true. I'm pretty deep into my own... into my own voice, right now. More than I have been in a long time, I'd say. Maybe ever, but definitely in a long time.Ben Guest:Okay. Let's go back to these three versions. I read version two. I'm going to read version two again, before I read the final version. For the listeners, as much as possible, try to pay attention so that you can see how just a few things have changed between version two and the final version, but how it makes all the difference. Okay. This is version two.He pulled out a blue stretch, fit cap with orange trim on the bill and an orange cursive capital A, for Aberdeen, on the crown, rather than the IronBird's logo. He slapped it onto my head so that the bill was halfway over my eyes and I could only see his feet. I left it like that.Again, what we're talking about at the top is trying to let dialogue do some of the lifting. The whole point is to communicate a feeling to the reader.Ben Guest:Here's the final version, keeping that in mind. Final version.He pulled out a blue stretch, fit cap with orange trim on the bill and an orange cursive capital A, for Aberdeen on the crown... on the crown. He slapped it onto my head, the bill sagged halfway over my eyes and I could see only his feet. "There", he said, "Now you look like a clubbie."Okay. That it's the difference. I forget who said it... Mark Twain, maybe. The difference between the lightning bug and lightning, right? It's almost the same paragraph. Just a few slight changes in that bit of dialogue at the end. "There", he said, "Now you look like a Clubbie." That conveys so much feeling.Greg Larson:Yeah. It's the initiation process. That's the period at the end of the sentence of, here's the new world. Here's where you'll be sleeping. Here's the toothbrushes. Here's the equipment. Now you're in the s**t and you have no way out. I'm glad that you gave me the assignment because I went back through and there's this sentence... It's a super long, run-on sentence. He pulled out a blue stretch, fit cap with orange trim on the bill and an orange cursive capital A, for Aberdeen, on the crown, rather than the IronBirds logo. That has the right information but I was like, "That's just way too much in your mouth. That's way too much to read." I just chunked it together. When we think about sentence construction, he pulled out a blue stretch fit cap that... Well, here's the final version you read. He pulled out a blue stretch, fit cap with orange trim on the bill and an orange... Comma, helps to break up the sentence, but it's a necessary comma. Cursive capital A, for Aberdeen on the crown. Period. He slapped it onto in my head.Greg Larson:It's... instead of one long run-on sentence, it's a pretty long sentence followed by a really quick, he slapped it onto my head, which sort of prepares us for the ending... the ending quickness, as well. There's a parallel quickness, I think.Ben Guest:A hundred percent. Just the taking out, rather the IronBird's logo...Greg Larson:Yes, which is grammatically confusing.Ben Guest:Right. Grammatically confusing. Doesn't add anything because you've already described the hat. Just that little change, as an English teacher, was always clarity in all things. That's why you want to write, well... clarity. Writing prose, you don't necessarily want clarity at all times. James Joyce is legendary for not having clarity. The sentence works so much better just with that little edit.Greg Larson:Yeah, I think so. I never had any idea that that's what I did.Ben Guest:The dialogue... just that one line of dialogue varies said, "Now you look like a clubbie." It's the counterpoint to, the hat may be the wrong size. It's not properly balanced on your head. It's this new world. It's the counterpoint to, "You may look like a clubbie, but what the f**k is going on?" Adding that piece of dialogue? What do you remember about doing that?Greg Larson:The thing with nonfiction, I'm never inventing things. That conversation is in there, in my memory. I was tweaking little pieces of dialogue to make it... If I write exactly how people talk, it's just garbled up. In my memory, there's just this fragment of him saying that I look like a clubbie after you slap the cap onto my head. I didn't even think about it as being significant. I just threw it in there because it's something that I remembered. Putting it at the end seemed right at the time. It was one of those instinct choices where I was thinking, "I didn't know all of this stuff that we just talked about. I didn't know what it symbolized or anything like that. It just felt right." That's so much of what I did. Even in the later drafts of this book and probably in the later drafts of every book, it's just following that gut instinct.Ben Guest:Yeah. I think one of the key techniques to conveying a feeling... to conveying an emotion is juxtaposition, right? Is that counterpoint. A lot of times when it comes to literary nonfiction, to memoir, I think, one, it's so helpful that if you have a journal you can refer to or you mentioned having videos and photos... All that stuff is so helpful. Then the job, once you get the scenes out, is rearranging one scene to juxtapose with the next scene. Or a piece of dialogue to juxtapose with what's happening. Or a lot of times what I'll find myself doing is going back and figuring out, "Okay, this was June of 2015. What were the pop songs? Is there a snippet of this song that I was listening to at the time or that was popular at the time, that can be a nice counterpoint to what's happening in the scene?" Just like in film, the sort of the core skill of filmmaking is the edit where you're literally juxtaposing one image to the next. I think that's a great technique that you used a good effect here of, juxtaposing what's happening with... a line of dialogue.Greg Larson:Yeah. I had never even thought about it that concretely, but you're right. I was trying to... especially in this book, I might have even gone too far with that as far as... Yeah, the juxtaposition between what I expected that world to be like and what it was actually like, it got to the point where it might have been a little bit too melancholy because the what I expected to be like was this beautiful, pristine world of baseball and then was something much seedier than that. I think I went too far with that.Ben Guest:Why do you think you went too far?Greg Larson:Some of it is from reader feedback. More than anything, when I go back and read it, I'm like, "Okay, I get what I was trying to do." I was trying to be too consistent as in, I was trying to not get off of message. I was like, "Okay, the message is disillusionment. If I want to get the message of disillusionment across, I need to constantly have that juxtaposition between what I dreamt of as a kid and what I actually got as an adult." I just did it way too much. I don't think that's honest to what life is like. It's too much gray to be that one dimensional.Ben Guest:I think that's such a great point. I remember my favorite high school English teacher. After I became a teacher, I went back and took him out to dinner and we just talked teaching. He said something to the effect of, "After about five years, you're going to look up and be like, 'Holy s**t, there are kids out there.' For the first five years of teaching, you're just so locked into what? What I'm doing? What I'm saying? What's on the board?" Right? It was great because he broke it down. He was like, "Then five years after that, you're going to do this. Then five years after that, you're going to do this. You're just sort of breaking down in five year stages. The progress you make as a teacher." I think, when we're relatively early on our writing journey... and you kind of referenced some of the storytelling, gurus and books, we become so focused on linear progress of characters. If we're writing memoir, usually the main character is ourselves.Ben Guest:There needs to be kind of a clear A to B, B to C, C to D character arc. Of course, real life is really f*****g messy. People act in contradictory ways all the time. They progress and they regress and so on and so forth. It's not really true to life, to have one sort of tone to your character arc. We should celebrate the messiness. A good storyteller, a good writer can make that whole messiness cohere.Greg Larson:Dude. Totally agree. To make that messiness coherent, in some way, is hard because there has to be a reason. When my book, that I'm writing right now, I'm like, "Oh, this character is the bad guy", therefore... What? I can't empathize them with at any point? This mother character, this kind of the bad guy. My goal is to make her as empathetic as possible. I want the reader to identify with her maybe more than they identify with the protagonist. It's really f*****g hard. I don't know if there's a formula for it, but I'm just trying my best.Ben Guest:When it comes to protagonist and antagonist, I think, the best stories are when you're almost equally invested and rooting for both characters.Greg Larson:Yeah. I mean, it sounds cheesy, but Thanos and the Avengers, I mean, you look at him, you're like, "Yeah, he makes some good points. I kind of like him".Ben Guest:The fourth Avengers was Endgame... So the third one, Infinity War. He's... and I remember reading an interview with the... with the writers, Markus and Mcfeely. They're saying at a certain point, as we're breaking the story, we realize Thanos is the protagonist of Infinity War. The Avengers are the agonists. They're trying to stop this character who has an active goal.Greg Larson:That makes sense.Ben Guest:Trying to think of another example. The movie, Heat, with Al Pacino and Robert de Niro. Both characters are fully fleshed out to the extent that even though they're on a collision course, when you're with Al Pacino's character, you want him to win and Robert de Niro's character, you want him to win. Then of course, ultimately, they're going to collide. Another great one is Hans Gruber, in Die Hard. That's another example of... He's the protagonist. He's the one actively pursuing a goal. Bruce Willis is mucking things up. Bruce Willis is the antagonist of that movie, although he is the hero, of course.Greg Larson:Yeah. With the actual writing of the first draft, it's weightlifting. It's just showing up, putting in the reps and just pounding something out. I don't care if it's really smooth or it's what I do with the skeleton first drafts. That can be done by anyone who can hit a keyboard or who can write. A finished book is better than 99.9% of every book that's ever been conceived, right? That can be done by anyone. But editing... I don't know, man, it's a certain alchemy to it and I have no idea. We're going to shift into the editing part of the process. I have no idea if I'm going to have any sort of insightful wisdom to share with you, but I am here for it.Ben Guest:Well, let's just talk process. One of my favorite quotes is... I think it was Picasso, who said, "When critics get together, they talk meaning, when painters get together, they talk brushes".Ben Guest:That's the end of part two. Next week is editing. If you found this helpful, please subscribe to my Substack. Totally free, weekly podcasts and newsletter posts with content just like this one. It's at benbo.substack.com. B-E-N-B-O.substack.com. Benbo is my family nickname. Benbo.substack.com. Thank you, so much. Have a great day. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

The only thing that matters is how a character transforms over time.This is Part 1 of my Four-Part Miniseries on how to PLAN, WRITE, EDIT, and PUBLISH your creative work.This episode is a deep-dive into the fundamentals of storytelling, fundamentals that apply to any genre and any medium.My co-host for the series is Greg Larson, who first came on the pod in August with great advice on how to market your book.Greg, author of Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir, was a fantastic resource as I finished and published my memoir Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball.In this episode, Greg and I dive into the questions and process you should have in place before you start writing.We discuss many genres of story, from sci-fi to memoir to zombie apocalypse, and many types of story, from prose to screenplay to film.We touch on the Iceberg Theory by that old hack Ernest Hemingway.And The Hero's Journey, based on the work of Joseph Campbell.We talk how to find your theme, create character backstory, and outline.At the end of Part 1 Greg shares his process for ensuring he finishes his book.It's genius.And involves BBQ.Part 2 will focus on Writing, Part 3 on Editing, and Part 4 on Publishing.It is our hope that these four episodes will provide a guide for you to publish your work.Please share with the storytellers in your life and, more importantly, the people who have a story to tell.Speaking of telling a story, this mini-series is sponsored by Greg's company, Self-Publishing Sherpa. If you like our conversation and wish to engage Greg and his group, please schedule a free strategy call.Last but not least, I'm adding two new features to the podcast with this episode (at least for this mini-series): Transcripts and YouTube video :-)Episode TranscriptBen Guest:Planning obviously is the beginning of the creative process. Greg, what are your thoughts about planning?Greg Larson:In general, I think a lot of authors get stuck in the planning stage. What I find is people try to make a perfect outline. For example, when I advise people in non-fiction, my entire thought process is, just create an outline that will remind you what you need to write in two months. That's it. Don't write your book in the outline, none of that kind of stuff. But even before you get into the outline, figuring out who your audience is, figuring out who your ideal reader is in that audience, figuring out what your goals with the book are, and figuring out how you want your reader to change. This is more strictly nonfiction, but figuring out how you want your reader to change, those are incredibly important aspects of the planning process that I think a lot of people overlook.Ben Guest:Let's start there and let's start with nonfiction and we'll probably jump over to fiction as well at some point, but we'll try to signpost that. So in nonfiction, I think the key question to ask yourself at the beginning is what you just said, "Who is this written for?" And I think the mistake a lot of people make is, I had an interesting experience or I've had an interesting life, or I had an interesting business, or I met this person or whatever. It's great that it's interesting to you. If you want to write that down for your kids, for your family, for your best friend, great, do that. But in terms of connecting to someone who doesn't know you and has no connection to you, you have to ask, "Who is this for?" Tied to that, "What do I want them to get out of it?"Greg Larson:A book with no audience is a diary, which is purposely fine and valid, but it doesn't need to be published as a book necessarily. The way I think about it, especially with memoir, a lot of people think that a memoir is a series of things that happened. Do you ever hear somebody tell you a story and they just go through every single detail, they're like, "Well, what was the cashier's name? I forget what they... or the week it was." None of details matter. They're not relevant. The only thing that matters is how a character transforms over time and the story that gets them to transform. So when you look back through your life and you're interested in writing a memoir about it, you have to think, "What is the shortest period of time in which I had the greatest transformation?" That is how you answer that so-what question for the reader, I think. Once you're able to put a timeframe on it, even if you're not writing a memoir, any kind of nonfiction where you have personal stories inside of it, once you have a tight timeframe around it of, "I started out as a new clubhouse attendant in a minor league baseball team and I ended as a grizzled veteran." Boom, I have a constrained timeframe that I can work with.Ben Guest:So we're talking about both a compressed time frame, and as importantly, the greatest amount of change that happened in that compressed timeframe?Greg Larson:That is what makes the most compelling stories, I believe.Ben Guest:We talk about storytelling traditions, and if we go back to Aristotle and Poetics, it's unity of time, place and action, everything should happen over three days and two nights. I'm a big fan of the film director, Michael Mann, who did Heat and Miami Vice and Last of the Mohicans. And he's like, basically you want your story to be the most important few days, few weeks, few months, whatever it is, of your hero's life. It is the key moment of their adult life or even their childhood, what happened in those moments that changed them. And in that specific detail, it'll become relatable.Greg Larson:Yes. Yeah, exactly. A lot of authors, they'll try to become universal by being vague or not trying to exclude anybody with too many details. It's like, no, the universality is found in specifics.Ben Guest:Right. And so just to highlight this for the listener, we just said earlier, remember how you hear a boring story and the person tells you every little detail? So that's a story with too much information. The flip side of that is once you've nailed down the timeframe, and once you've nailed down the experience, now you want as much specific detail as possible and not to go, “Well, it needs to be more general so people can relate.” For some reason, the way we're wired to connect and empathize with somebody, the more specific detail the person gives, the more we relate to it.Greg Larson:The right details, for sure. I see this as a problem in a lot of literary fiction and literary nonfiction, it's like this self-congratulating scene building. The reader doesn't always need to see everything. If a couple of characters are in, say an arcade or something, a person generally knows what an arcade looks like, but if you're zeroing the focus into a specific detail, make it for a reason. Otherwise, it's just showing off, it's just literary gymnastics, but that's more into the craft of writing, not the preparation as much.Ben Guest:Right. I agree 100% with that. The keys in the early stages and the beginning stage is what's the experience, compressed timeframe, greatest change. And who's the audience. And within that audience, who's my ideal reader, and what's the impact I want this to have on my ideal reader?Greg Larson:What's the impact to, I want this to have on my life too? That's an important part that I think a lot of people miss. You should be selfish in this part of the planning process. Again, we're focused on non-fiction. Yeah, you might be writing a non-fiction book to teach people something specific, maybe it's prescriptive nonfiction, whatever it may be, but you need to have a selfish goal for yourself. If it is getting speaking events, if it is having more newsletter subscribers, having a larger following on social media, whatever it is, that's an important aspect to this process because you need to have an incentive to keep going that is somewhat selfish.Ben Guest:With Clubbie, what was your side of that? And what was the audience side of that?Greg Larson:For the most part, I was blind writing Clubbie. I learned through air, I didn't know how to do a lot of this stuff yet, but as far as audience goes, I had a specific idea in my mind of the audience, I was like, "My audience member... " Because with baseball, I could've gone so deep into statistics that it would've alienated certain people. But then if I would've assumed too much ignorance on the part of my reader, it would've alienated even more people. So it was like my ideal reader knows what an earned run average is and what a batting average is, but they don't know the significance of say a wins above replacement or the more obscure metrics. That was the knowledge level that I was working with. It's a baseball fan who knows earned run average and batting average, and that's the way I wrote it. But as far as like my specific goals, I was not articulating those to myself just yet. I don't think I was as nuanced in my planning process at that point.Ben Guest:When you started your outline for Clubbie, did you have a theme in mind in the way that in a piece of fiction writing generally we'll create a theme?Greg Larson:Yeah. The theme was Minor League Baseball players are taking advantage of and look at what that world is like. And I wrote, and I outlined, "Oh, this is what their love life is like," that's one chapter. "This is how the Dominicans are treated. And then this is how they handle the off season," that kind of stuff. And I wrote a rough draft in that way, and it was just boring, it was impersonal, it just didn't work. But then when I started writing it more as narrative nonfiction, as a memoir, I did this weird thing where I had two Google Documents, a Google Document on the right with just chaos notes. I chopped up some of the old boring pieces that I thought might be useful, threw it into this note document. I had little fragments of little notes that I would scribble in class and I would type it up in there. And then on the other Word document, I had, it wasn't even a draft, I was just starting to write what was happening in the story. I wasn't writing prose, I was basically just writing a summary like, "I drive down to Florida, I meet with the team, I meet X, Y, and Z here." And I kept doing that. And then what happened was, it naturally just turned into prose, and I didn't try to, but as I went on more and more, I was like, "Oh, I know what the dialogue is here because I have the notes on this side of the screen and I know what's happening." And then eventually, by the end of it, I was just writing a full draft. By the time I got finished with that full draft, I could go back to the beginning and then say, "Oh, I know what this prose is supposed to be." So it was almost like writing half of a draft and then going back and writing the first half of the draft, and that seemed to work.Ben Guest:Yeah, there's a phrase I heard once, I think it was something like jumping out of an airplane and sewing the parachute together as you're in the air. And that's what you did, just jumping in, putting it together. And by the time you get to the end, now I can go back and finish the beginning.Greg Larson:Yeah. Dude, I hadn't thought of this, I love that metaphor as well, but I hadn't thought this metaphor or this analogy before until like the last week. We were talking about therapy before we started recording. In the first draft, when I'm in a therapy session, I'm just saying whatever comes to my mind and I'm making connections that my unconscious mind is making that I don't recognize. Then it's my therapist who says, "Here's what's happening here." In the first draft, I'm the crazy person in the chair just making connections, just trying to trust my gut intuition, free association as much as possible. And then in the second draft and the third draft, I'm like the therapist where because now I'm outside of it, I can see what I was trying to do much better. It's that realization helped me recognize or more easily trust my instincts in the first draft.Ben Guest:That is so great, because one of the things that the therapist is doing, the professional is doing ,is finding patterns and helping you see patterns, right?Greg Larson:Yes.Ben Guest:So now, the patient side of it is we're just throwing stuff out there, so go back to writing, we're throwing stuff on the page, thoughts, ideas, quotes, fragments, and then therapist side of it is, we're finding the through line. And sorry, as I've mentioned on previous podcasts, there's some construction going above my apartment, so you may hear random little banging sounds and so forth. Let's jump over to the fiction side. One of the things I did over the pandemic was I wrote a screenplay, and it's a zombie movie, because in some ways, COVID, the pandemic, it was like living in a zombie apocalypse where this thing is spreading and coming and so forth. And the theme that I came up with was the idea that “Everything changes.” True in normal times, and obviously even more so when you're living through a pandemic. Everything changes. You had a normal life and now everything has changed. The reason I'm mentioning that in the outlining process is I have that phrase, everything changes. That's my theme for this screenplay that I'm going to write. And now I have that at the top of my outline, because I want that either consciously or subconsciously, to just be working as I'm doing my planning, because that's the heart of the piece and everything needs to be in service of reaching that. And it may never be explicitly stated in the screenplay, it may never be explicitly stated in theoretical movie, it should all be residing there in the intent of the writer.Greg Larson:Yeah. I like that idea. I've heard a guy I really look up to, he did the same thing where he would write, his word was “Vulnerability”. He just wrote “Vulnerability” on a Post-It and he always had it on his computer so that everything you write, if it wasn't in service of that word, he would cut it out no matter how good it was, and he had a lot of success in his book.Ben Guest:And the book was eight pages long.Greg Larson:“I'm not telling you guys anything about myself.” My version of that is I have a question that I'm trying to answer. Like the novel that I'm working on right now, my question that I'm trying to answer is, how do our relationships with our parents impact our romantic relationships? Because sometimes I hesitate to start with an explicit theme, because then it's almost like I'm starting with an answer before I even ask a question. I want to just explore the question and see and surprise myself in a certain way too. It's scary because I don't always know where the book is going and it surprises me, but it also makes it more exciting.Ben Guest:I love that. One thing that I want to be clear about is, there are many different paths up the mountain. As many authors as there are, that's as many paths up the mountain to completing your work that there are. And so I like this idea of just comparing our different processes. And again, in the detail, people will find things that they can relate to. So I love the idea of start with a question and then you're going to start working towards answering that question. I need to have the structure of knowing where this is going, and it sounds like for you, you don't need to have that.Greg Larson:Oh, I'm at least trying not to. The novel that I'm writing, I think I've technically tried it. This is the third time and I didn't really know that this is really the third time. But looking back in the past, I can see, "Oh, I tried to tell this in some way." The first time I tried it was four years ago and I legit had no plan whatsoever. I was just writing words and then what came out were just fragments of chaos and it wasn't a book, it was just like a series of thoughts. The difference now is that I have a rough idea of the ending and I have a rough idea of this question that I'm trying to answer. But what I'm allowing myself to have is to discover new characters along the way. That's been a biggest one where these two characters are in a summer camp and I think it's all about this love story of these two characters in the summer camp falling in love for the first time. But then lo and behold, that the man of this camp actually becomes a really prominent figure, even though I didn't realize this was going to happen, and so now I'm not going to say, "Well, it wasn't in the outline, so I'm not going to have this character." It's like, "No, I discovered this guy and he needs to be a fully developed character as well." That's been the biggest difference in this iteration of this novel."Ben Guest:That's fantastic because that's also part of the magic, that's the spooky side of it. Right? So if we're talking actionable items, I guess for the listeners, for people that are interested in writing a piece of nonfiction memoir, a biography, what have you, think of the most transformative time in your life and the lesson or lessons you learned in that time. From there, think about, how would you like if you were to write this experience down, if you were to create a piece of art around this experience, how would you like that to impact someone else, someone you don't even know, someone reading this story? What's the takeaway you want them to have? And then from there, think about, what are your goals for writing this book? And who's your ideal reader? Who are you writing for day to day? Does that cover it?Greg Larson:I think those are the most important questions to ask. I would call that the positioning part of the process. The questions you need to answer, ask yourself and to answer before you go into the outline process. Yeah, I think that covers it.Ben Guest:And then on the fiction side, and again, many different paths up the mountain, I think two ways to do it. One is to think of, "What is a theme like ‘Everything changes' that I want to explore, that I want to process, that I want to think about? What is a question I have? How do our parents impact relationships with our romantic relationships? So what's a question I have? Now, how do I want to explore that?" One way would be to start with a theme, another way would be to start with a question outlining. How do you outline?Greg Larson:So for nonfiction, I'd say this applies to both prescriptive nonfiction and narrative nonfiction, but I start with brainstorming a table of contents, not even thinking about it as a table of contents, but just brainstorming the main stories and brainstorming the main lessons that I want to evoke in the book. I try to come up with a minimum of 20, and then inevitably, it's going to get condensed down and you're going to add more. But starting with 20 I think is a really good starting point. And then once you have those 20 brainstormed chapter topics, not even think about them as like chapter titles. People get obsessed with chapter titles way too early and it gets them stuck. But once you have those chapter topics, again, don't even worry about order and structure yet. I use a table in Google Docs where I have chapter topic and then I have either a thesis or a question that I'm trying to answer in the chapter, as in like, "What overall point am I trying to make in this chapter/what question am I trying to answer in this chapter?" And then I come up with a hook. Your mileage may vary, but I've never seen anybody successfully write a nonfiction book after coaching 100 plus people who has basically written their book in the outline. I haven't seen anyone do it successfully yet. I'm sure somebody does, but just like sentence fragments in the outline. What's the hook? Story of getting fired from a FinTech company. Boom, that's the hook. I'll remember that when I go to write it. And then I do, "What are the stories or anecdotes or examples in the chapter that I want to tell? What are the points I want to make? What are the actions I want the reader to take based on those points that I'm making?" Those are the biggest ones. Most people just tell stories and they don't have any takeaways. An even smaller percentage of people have stories and then have the takeaways. An even tiny percentage stories, takeaways, and actions to take. That's the key to writing excellent nonfiction, I think.Ben Guest:And can you say a little bit more about the actions to take that focus-Greg Larson:Yeah, for sure. That's exactly what we're doing in this podcast, it's a perfect example of it. We're talking abstractly, but then you're saying, "Okay, based on what we said, here's the action you should take." An example, I helped my friend edit his book that's written for young men in their 20s who are trying to find their way in life after college. And he had a story about him moving to Austin and not knowing how to make friends, and that's an interesting story. But then he said, the takeaway is that you need to treat everybody as though they're a friend until they prove otherwise. Boom, there's a takeaway. There's an aphorism that they can use. And then he had an action for them to take, he's like, "Create a customer management system for friends, and here's how I do it, here's how you can do it." So he had a story, a takeaway, and an action, a specific action for them to take. And what I've found is that people who write nonfiction, more often than not, they think that the things that they know are way more useless than they are. It's like if you're an expert in something, even if you're expertise is in your own life, you're more often going to dismiss what you know just because you are an expert. It seems obvious and easy to you because you're the expert, but to a reader or a listener, you have to lay it out explicitly and that's valuable.Ben Guest:I love it. And when you're doing this kind of outline, you personally, pen-paper, computer, note cards, what?Greg Larson:I do it on a Google Drive document, and I have a template that I use that I can just repeat. I can copy and paste these 10 tables so that all of the segmenting off is already filled in. It's like, "Oh, there's a box for stories and there's a box for points." That kind of thing. That's how I use it. And then I write the draft. I'm writing my current novel on Legal Pad, but I would never write nonfiction on Legal Pad, I think, I don't know why exactly, but a narrative story I'd write on the-Ben Guest:Nice. So just to recap. One of the advantages actually with non-fiction is, basically, you know the ending. If you've selected this transformative moment in your life or you and I have both done ghost writing and co-authoring someone else's life, the transformative event or events. But generally, you want to keep it as tight as possible, the lesson they learned from that or the life lesson, I guess. If you know that, you know how it ends, you know what you want to communicate, that's then going to help you when you come up with the chapter topics. Because something that takes a detour off that main road probably doesn't need to go any further.Greg Larson:Probably so, but I want to make an important distinction here. The difference between a memoir and prescriptive nonfiction, a memoir is explicitly a narrative, it's nonfiction written with all the tenets of good fiction, character, scene, plot, all that stuff. That's a different beast in a certain way. And that should be constrained in a timeframe. Whereas prescriptive nonfiction, which is the type of... like how-to books, self-help books, business books, that kind of thing, they're going to have memoir elements of stories and stuff, but it doesn't need to be as constrained, it just needs to be constrained by the topic. So those stories can be plucked from all different aspects of your life, they both serve different purposes.Ben Guest:The prescriptive writing, like you're saying, there's lots of room for lots of different types of topics and lots of different stories and lots of different examples, and the overall theme can be as narrow or as wide as you want to make it.Greg Larson:Yes, exactly.Ben Guest:Okay. If we jump over to fiction, so if I go back to my zombie apocalypse screenplay, so now I have my theme, “Everything changes.” So now what I do is, I'm going to come up with the characters, and I'm going to come up with their backstory, the kind of music they like, are they an introvert or an extrovert? Do they have a lot of friends or just a few friends? What's their favorite movie? Just some information. When I then do act one, act two, act three, I have something to generate why this person is doing this thing in this moment.Greg Larson:Do you use character diamonds?Ben Guest:No. Talk to me about that.Greg Larson:It's a screenwriting tool that I've been trying to use for fiction. I'm not super familiar with it, but in general, a character diamond, it's like a four-pointed diamond, the same kind of diamond you'd see on a ski hill, like double diamond. A character diamond, so you have at the very top of a diamond like the point of a four points diamond you might see on a ski hill. At the very top is the primary trait of the character or their North Star, what they want more than anything else in the world. And then opposing it is their mask, the version of themselves that they show the world that they would probably never admit to themselves. And then on the other side, on the horizontal points, on one end is their non-negotiable, the hill that they're willing to die on, and then on the other end is their fatal flaw. And theory behind it that I've learned or that I'm trying to understand more completely is that, the more opposed each of those points in the diamond are, the more strong that character will be. An example, like Han Solo, I guess. Han Solo's primary trait, he's he's a maverick cowboy space bounty hunter. That's his primary trait. And then his shadow or his mask is that he's an emotionless swashbuckler. His fatal flaw, I think that he is money hungry and that he would do anything for money. But the hill he's willing to die on is his friends. So it's like these things are somewhat opposed. I'm sure I'm f*****g up the vertical diamond's points, but we're learning as we go here. But the more opposed these things are, the stronger the character. I'm trying to understand that relative to fiction writing.Ben Guest:Right. That is a great framework because storytelling almost always involves conflict, internal conflict and external conflict. So that's a great way to figure out both the character's internal conflict and then find things that are going to spark external conflict. I think the most important is deciding what your character really wants, because that's usually going to drive the actions they take, and that will eventually drive the conflict. David Mamet says each scene should be, what does the hero want? Why doesn't she get it? What happens next? That until the character gets what they want, which doesn't happen until the very end of the story, you're always going to have forward plot momentum.Ben Guest:So to use our Star Wars idea, Luke Skywalker, in the first Star Wars, Luke Skywalker wants to leave home and go on an adventure. He gets that, not necessarily in the way that he was initially thinking, but that's eventually what he gets by the end of the film.Greg Larson:The details for these characters, their backgrounds and stuff, sometimes you just have to know that as the author, but your reader doesn't have to know that. How do you discern which goes in and which is just is for you?Ben Guest:I saw an interview with Tarantino about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And in that film, Leonardo DiCaprio's character is on a '50s Western TV show called Bounty Law. It's not really important in terms of when you're watching the film, they just cut to it a few times. Tarantino said he wrote six episodes of Bounty Law just so he would know exactly what this show is that this character had been the lead actor on that the movie is not even about. It's not about the lead actor. It's not about Leonardo being in Bounty Law, it's about 10 years later when Leonardo is losing his career. And I'm sure there are other authors that just have a really light sketch.So for me, I like to be somewhere in the middle. I don't want to spend all this time thinking about, what did they major in college? And there are certain things like music or your favorite movie that if you know that, that's what you need to know to sketch the character out. So for me, I have like an iceberg that has a third underneath, one third above and two thirds underneath, something like that at maybe.Greg Larson:Got you. But you keep those things to yourself for the most part.Ben Guest:Yeah. I would say the ratio of what you know versus what you reveal is... Again, sorry for the hammering, I don't know, one to six probably. So, I know this character's favorite movie is Aladdin, there's a one in six chance that at some point that's going to be mentioned somewhere or referenced somewhere in the story. What about character in terms of nonfiction or in terms of memoir?Greg Larson:For my most recent memoir, I did a lot of interviews with the guys that were going to be characterized in the book. It's an interesting balance to play. The characters are real people and so in the first draft, I had to think about it in sociopathic terms, like, I'm not going to think about the ramifications of telling these stories on the real people, I'll think about that in the edit. And so the first draft, or I should say the first draft of my memoir as an actual narrative memoir, I had stuff in there about people that I eventually cut out because I was like, "This is wildly inappropriate." Inside Clubhouse stuff, even beyond inside baseball, it was just like, it might have ruined marriages kind of stuff. And I was like, "This is just not worth it." But at the same to time, I was looking at it through the lens of, what did I see? Anything that I see or hear is mine to own from then on, and anything that I could discover online, I would try to figure out as much as possible. I don't know, man, it's a hard question to answer because you're confined by who somebody really is and who somebody was as you saw of them at that time. I didn't do it real consciously.Ben Guest:Right. And that's one of the things you always have to think about with real people is, "This is my perception of one side of them or one side of their mask even, and this thing I'm creating is going to live "forever" I'm putting that in quotation marks, "in the world." So I think that tactic that you mentioned is exactly right. In the planning stages when it's just you and you, 100% honesty and openness about everything. Right now, it's just stuff you're throwing on the metaphorical page and it doesn't ever need to go further than that. But early on, I think it actually until you get to the editing phase, honesty is the best pilot, and the more open and the more honest, the better.Greg Larson:Yes. You're going to be honest throughout the entire process, but it's just a matter of how much you reveal.Ben Guest:Yeah. That's a better way to put it, 100%. Now we've got our char, we've got our theme, we have our question, we have our audience, we have our goals, we have our characters.Greg Larson:I was curious, actually you mentioned the three act structure in screenwriting, and that's another one of those things I'm like, "Man, how much does that apply to novel writing?" Where did you learn the three act structure and how did you start implementing it?Ben Guest:Sure. The most famous, I guess in interpretation is Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey. So act one would be leaving home, Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle are killed and he flies off to the stars. And then act two is discovering the new world and ends with the lowest point. So in Star Wars, it's when Obi-Wan is killed. And then act three is triumph. Usually you get what you wanted, but not in the way you wanted, you changed as a person and you bring peace back to the land or whatever it is. The Matrix fits that perfectly where Neo, at the end of act one is when Neo leaves the Matrix, is pulled out of the Matrix.Ben Guest:Then act two is learning this new world, and the end of act two is when Morpheus is captured, it's the low point. And then act three is the triumph. But I like to make it even simpler and so I go back to David Mamet, who said, "Act one is you get your character up a tree, act two is you light the tree on fire. And so it's just each scene should lead into the next scene. And generally, the scene should lead into the next scene because the character isn't getting something. So if we go back to Mamet's idea of up a tree, tree on fire, then the character is going to reach a stumbling block and then a character's going to reach a much bigger stumbling block. Those are your ends of act one and act two. So let me ask you, does that translate into fiction writing and memoir writing? I'm trying to think in my own mind now?Greg Larson:If I'm doing it well. That's the thing, is I think, well, two things, did you learn that from what's called The Hero with a Thousand Faces? I don't know.Ben Guest:Yeah. That's the Joseph Campbell book. I haven't read that book, but there's plenty of work that's been done off of it. Yeah, 100%.Greg Larson:But did you find that framework somewhere else?Ben Guest:Yeah. Just online, there's a bunch of stuff on the Hero's Journey and there's a circle diagram that you just follow the circle in terms of the events that can happen in that type of story.Greg Larson:As far as memoir, does that framework hold up for memoir? Here's some mistakes that I made when writing both my memoirs is that I wasn't thinking about it in terms of those really tightly defined storytelling elements. I was just trying to write a story interestingly, but I didn't even... A fatal flaw with literary fiction and literary nonfiction is that they focus more on character than story, which they're not mutually exclusive, but I was focusing more on the internal transformations of the characters, which is interesting, but it didn't always have... When you read upmarket fiction, you can tell that each chapter is like the cliff hanger at the end of an episode of a really great TV show and it keeps you going more, and more and that's not an accident. And it's a formula that I'm trying to learn, but I don't even know how to learn it exactly yet. I'm just trying to write this novel that I'm writing, I'm just trying to write each scene in a way that somebody transforms in some little way at the end of it, and that we get a little bit closer to what I think the ending is without wasting the reader's time and trying to do it as beautifully as possible.Ben Guest:So to that idea then the impetus to keep going is every scene I read in Greg's book, I'm learning a little something because there's a little nugget of truth of a life lesson in there.Greg Larson:Well, that would be more for prescriptive nonfiction, but if I'm thinking of a narrative of a memoir or a novel, I don't know that there even needs to be a life lesson, it's just the character develops or the plot advances a little bit farther. But with prescriptive nonfiction, ideally it would be some kind of life lesson, because a reader isn't reading a self-help book or a how-to book to watch a character develop. They're reading it so that their own characters can develop oddly enough. And so in order to do that, you have to help them transform at the end of the chapter. I'd never made that connection before, but a prescriptive nonfiction book is a book in which the hero is the reader.Ben Guest:Oh, that's deep. That's fantastic. And the hero's going on a journey, the reader's going on a journey hopefully, or they're going to take steps to go on a journey. Oh, I like that. I'm working on a memoir right now about coaching basketball, coaching high school in the states and then professionally "overseas" in Namibia, in Southern Africa. So what I try to do there is each scene, each chapter should have enough forward plot momentum that it makes you want to read the next chapter, very, very light cliff hangers. That's how I think about it in memoir writing that there needs to be, why is the reader going to turn a page? What are your thoughts about it with memoir?Greg Larson:I look back at my old work and I cringe because I would do it so differently now, but what I tried to do with my most recent memoir was end each chapter in a way that... It was like I would be in scene for most of the chapters. We're in the clubhouse, we're on the field and I'm describing details in a way that you can actually put yourself there. And at the end of each chapter, I would try to zoom out a little bit and not say, "This is what it meant." And when I was there, I would do something more like, I can find an example here.Ben Guest:I love it. Available at fine independent bookstores near you.Greg Larson:That's exactly right.Ben Guest:Or even better, signed by the author online.Greg Larson:That's right. At clubbiebook.com. So this is the end of chapter 11, where I am in the middle of two seasons. It's the off season and we spend a lot of time in my off season home in South Carolina with my girlfriend and our relationship troubles and it's like, "Am I going to go back to baseball or am I going to stay in South Carolina?" Well, there's another half of the book, so we know what's going to happen. So we're in scene in the house for most of the chapter. And then at the very end, I decided that I'm going to go back and there's these final couple of paragraphs where I zoom out and I'll read a few sentences.Greg Larson:And just like that, I packed my things into the caddy for the drive north, Nicole and I renewed our lease so I was coming right back there once the season finished. We said goodbye to each other just like we had so many times before. Aberdeen had been just a memory.So now I'm zooming back a little bit.I never thought I'd actually return there anymore than I'd returned to my youth, but I looked forward to the season in a certain way, like when you do the same things over and over again expecting something to be fundamentally different, because it's always the next meal, the next f**k, the next Christmas that will finally make you happy, the next baseball season, because this is all you know how to do. You don't ask the sun, why you orbit, you just orbit. You let the gravitational waves of the baseball season pull you in and you surrender yourself happily. You slap on your faded, blue stretch, fit BP cap with the orange cursive “A”on the crown and you drive your Cadillac from one single story, brick rambler to another somewhere just off the I-95 corridor in Maryland.And so there's this zooming out that I think I wasn't consciously doing that, but that was how I would give the reader a cliffhanger. It was like, scene, scene, scene, zoom out for a little bit of, "Oh, here's the meaning of what happened," without saying like, "Here's the meaning of what happened." And I think that kept some momentum going, even though I didn't realize that's what I was doing.Ben Guest:That's such a great framework, Greg. So to my mind, the best storytellers out there are the folks at This American Life, the radio program, their framework is exactly that, scene, scene, scene, what's the bigger meaning behind this? Scene, scene scene, what's the bigger... And that's exactly what it is. So that I think is a beautiful way to end the chapter and to plug's into people's naturally wanting to make connections, hear a story and understand what the greater connection is, the greater meaning.Greg Larson:Yes. And I found that readers were actually upset or at least inquisitive about the parts where I didn't zoom out and provide the greater meaning. And I wanted to be like, "Well, just look at the action and discern for yourself." But they wanted my guidance as the author, which totally makes sense. Again, I can look back and see places that I would've done it differently.Ben Guest:What chapter was that the end of?Greg Larson:Chapter 11.Ben Guest:So in your outline, what do the chapter 11 outline look like?Greg Larson:If I recall correctly, I did not have anything like, "Oh, expand out at the very end of the chapters." No. I think it was just literally, I said off season, and then I wrote a bunch of fragmented details of come back to South Carolina, find mess, Nicole and I argue, like that kind of stuff. It was chaos us in a certain way, but that's how I think about it. It's like writing a book is taking like the chaos of my ideas into the order of-Ben Guest:Right. Back to our therapy analogy, randomness of this, this and this, okay, where's the pattern in it? The next thing that I do, if I go back to my screenplay and my act. So act one, if we do the zombie movie, act one is when the zombies start taking over the world and this father and his two teenage kids have to find shelter. That's the end of act one. And then the end of act two is the father has a medical condition, I gave him meningitis, and he needs to have a shot of penicillin to save him. So now the kids are going to have to leave the shelter that they sought out. So just act one, act two. And then in act three, the father dies, but the daughter who is the main character comes to accept that everything changes. And then what I'm going to do is plot out scene by scene. Scene one is going to start in the chemistry lab at the high school, scene two is going to be the hallway in the locker room, scene three is going to be the wrestling mat. And then I have the characters who are in that scene and the point of that scene. And now to your point about the diagram, the character diamond, on the left hand side of the outline for each scene, vertically I write each of the characters in that scene once. And then vertically on the right side, and I think this is the key, and this is going back to something you said really early on in this conversation, on the right side, I write down what is the emotion I want the audience to be feeling in this scene. Do I want them laughing, scared, nervous, whatever? All of that translates to any kind of storytelling, I think, except maybe prescriptive in terms of what is the emotional feeling, what is the emotion I want the audience to have at this moment?Greg Larson:Do you know how many scenes you're going to have in each act? Do you set that aside beforehand or know an ideal?Ben Guest:No. Generally, for me, it's like 10, 10 and 10. It's like a third, a third, a third, but depending on again, many pass, many stories. The other thing especially with fiction writing, so not screenplay writing, but fiction writing and memoir, it's also like the story's going to tell you how to tell it, because we haven't even into non-linear storytelling, but In some ways as you're working through the story, it will also reveal to you the way in which you should tell that story, right?Greg Larson:I like that. I like the screenwriting tenets because screenwriting has to be way more succinct than these other forms of writing, you have to be totally dialed in. That dialed-in process, I don't even start that until the editing phase. In the drafting phase, I'm just like, have a rough idea and f*****g bang it out, but I want to use that in my editing process because I can be too slip shot with like, "Oh, what exact points or emotion are we trying to evoke?"Ben Guest:I'm just trying to think of this, the memoir I'm working on now how I outline that. So it's 21 chapters, and you said Clubbie was 20 chapters, right?Greg Larson:Yep.Ben Guest:So similar number of chapters. And then I know the events that are happening in chronological order, first game of the playoffs is a chapter. And then maybe just the two or three key moments I want to hit in that chapter. And that's it.Greg Larson:Are you going off of like a journal or anything like that? Yeah, that's invaluable. I honestly, I don't know how people would write a memoir without having something like that.Ben Guest:What's really funny Greg is, the book covers two basketball seasons, and I kept a journal the second season. And the second season, everybody, all my early readers, they're all like, "Man, the second half of the book just moves in a good way." And I'm like, "Yeah, it's because I had so much of that iceberg to work from. And the first half I'm trying to remember conversations from five years ago."Greg Larson:Did you have a lot of summary in the first half of the book or were you still able to build-Ben Guest:The biggest thing, actually I was working on this morning, is just going back, and this goes back to screenplay writing of the idea of show don't tell. I was just doing a lot of telling and now basically I'm just going back and recreating dialogue to make it more in the moment.Greg Larson:Show versus tell is an important comparison. This thing that I learned in school that was really helpful distinction on that was scene versus summary of scene building of a story with dialogue and summary of here's what happened, "I went to the store that day and I bought apple juice," that kind of stuff. And another one, this is getting more into the craft of actually storytelling, but action is character is one of the biggest ones that I've stuck with, that one of my teachers taught me from F. Scott Fitzgerald. That's been a big one, don't tell the reader who somebody else is, just show it to them.Ben Guest:If you have to tell the reader, you're a shitty storyteller. You should be able to show the character by the action.Greg Larson:I want to talk about one part of the planning process that I haven't mentioned yet that is so important that a lot of people screw up. I teach people how to do this and I still screw it up. You can have all this stuff right and you still... Forget about writing a great book, but not even finishing your first draft ever. You can do all of this right and just not write your words because of anxiety is getting in the way and because of all kinds of stuff. The way I think about it, you need a writing plan, accountability and a reward system in order to get your book regardless of what genre you're working in.Greg Larson:The way I think about it is this, a writing plan, how many words per day are you going to write? And are you going to be writing on only weekdays? Are you going to be writing only on weekends? Are you going to do seven days a week? That's your writing plan? Where are you going to write? What time of day are you going to write? And actually put in it in your Google or Outlook calendar, whatever it be. And so you have a specific word count that you have to reach every single week, for example. For me, it's two pages per weekday, so 10 pages per week.Greg Larson:My goal is two pages a day that turns into 10 written pages per week. That's my writing plan. And then the accountability, this is where a lot of people mess up, you have to have accountability in order to finish your book, I think. My accountability is that I send a video of the 10 pages I've written to my friend, my business partner, Alex, every Friday at 6:30 PM to prove that I've actually written a book. And those little details matter a lot because then all of a sudden, I have somebody that's like, I don't know if he even cares or would be disappointed, but I would be disappointed if I didn't have it to send to him.Greg Larson:And then the rewards and punishment, if I do that every week, I reward myself. For me, I go get barbecue or I go to a buffet or something. And then the punishment is I send him $100 if I don't do it. I think a lot of authors mess that up because those are the workday technicalities of actually getting your words down on the page. I don't know if it's going to turn into an amazing book, but I know that it's going to get me a finished book, and that's way better than an unfinished book. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Through the lens of narrative therapy we're looking at people being defined, and their identities being authored, within larger systems and communities.Travis Heath is an associate professor at University of Denver, specializing in narrative therapy. He earned his PhD in Psychology from the University of Northern Colorado, his MA from Pepperdine University, and his BA from Metropolitan State University-Denver. Travis is a former team consultant for the NBA and a psychologist in private practice.I was first introduced to Travis through our mutual friend Andrés Alvarez, who sent me Travis' Ted Talk, which starts with Travis recounting a patient telling him, “I will shoot them all.”It's a must-watch, and a great primer for our conversation.In this discussion, Travis and I talk:My book Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball (available here).What is Narrative Therapy?“Be careful of the stories you tell about yourself and the stories you allow others to tell about you.”How Travis' work is centered in the dignity of the individual.“Oftentimes we come to be defined by single stories.”“You can't change the past but you can story that event differently.”Travis' work in the NBA: “Everyone wanted to talk to Melo or AI. I was more interested in talking to Johan Petro.”“People are endlessly fascinating.”Mass shootings and gun sales.“Your care is bound up in mine, and mine in yours.”Is the NCAA a disordered system?The good side of Twitter.At the end of the episode we talk about Travis' upcoming book which you can pre-order here.Please take a minute to share this post and podcast with anyone who might be interested in Travis' work.This episode pairs nicely with my conversation with mindfulness coach Greg Graber.Podcast Links: Apple/Spotify This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

You help somebody, you help yourself.Brian Sullivan is a former Division 1 basketball player at Davidson College where he is second-place on several of the schools three-point records behind Steph Curry, the greatest shooter of all-time. Brian played professionally overseas and then served as Director of Student Athlete Development at Davidson for three years, working with his college coach, the legendary Bob McKillop.Brian is now a graduate student at the University of Denver, earning his Master's in Psychology with a focus on sport and performance psychology. He has a great Substack, 3 Points, where he shares what he is learning about peak performance.In this conversation Brian and I talk:-What conditions need to be in place to perform at your best?-Tools to center attention.-Judson Brewer's mental push-up-“Don't think a thought for as long as you can… After seven seconds everyone's hand was up.”-The great athlete myth.-“Can you be aware of what you are thinking?”-The role of emotion in performance.-Coach Bob McKillop and his “McKillopisms.”-The continuing impact of coaches.-Life is about relationships.-“Every year Coach McKillop will go to four or five weddings.”-A model for flow state.This episode is a companion piece to my four part mini-series on positive coaching.And I explore many of these topics in greater detail in my book Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball.Podcast Links: Apple/Spotify This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Not everything you do has to be perfect.Logan Floyd and I met at an improv class through The Squirrel Comedy Theater in New York City (@TheSquirrelNYC). Logan most recently performed the lead role of Velma Kelly in the national tour of Chicago: The Musical (@ChicagoMusical).In this conversation, Logan and I talk:-How Logan's favorite band senior year of high school was Paramore (“High school was a lot of good material for an A24 film.”):-Studying Musical Theater with Kaitlin Hopkins at Texas State University and Kaitlin's note to slow down and enjoy the process.-The beauty of imperfection in improv.-Logan's key to understanding Velma Kelly was the insight, “She is scared to death.”-“I inhabit a character most when I can find their spirit of playfulness and that spirit of playfulness connects to my younger self.”-“In improv the first thing I think is, ‘How can I be helpful?'”-I reference the incredible musical improv of Improguise, based in Cape Town, South Africa (@ImproGuiseSA).-Logan and I improv two scenes from the suggestion “old soul.”

As a coach, you may want players in perfect lines. The reality is when the drills get messy they learn a lot better.Nick Hauselman (@bballbreakdown) has one of the most popular basketball YouTube channels out there. Previously, I was a guest on Nick's podcast here.In this episode, Coach Nick and I talk: -How to build trust-Steph Curry and Flow State-How positive language creates a positive result-Art Rondeau, Tony Robbins, and NLP-The Sloan Conference-Phil Jackson and Sacred Hoops-New Books-Mindfulness and Spirituality-Tom Izzo and “Trauma Coaching”-“What's your goal as a coach during the game?”This is the final episode of my four-part positive coaching mini-series.Episode 1 is with mindfulness coach Greg Graber.Episode 2 is with Dr. Greg Sullivan, Director of the Positive Coaching and Leadership Program at the University of Missouri.Episode 3 is with Chris Sullivan, Head Coach of the Men's Basketball Program at Denison University.Podcast Links: Apple/Spotify This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Omicron came from arithmetic.Cases of the Omicron variant are surging in New York City with 31,024 new cases reported Saturday and the daily average approaching 20,000.I asked retired epidemiologist Jim Setzer to come on the pod and go over some basics:-Where did Omicron come from?-Best practices to stop transmission.-Where to buy N95 and KN95 masks. The New York Times recommends using WellBefore.-Where we are headed.-The best way to use home rapid tests.-The infection window of Omicron.Podcast Links: Apple/Spotify This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

We're not going to practice, we're going to play…Chris Sullivan (@CoachSullyDU) is the head coach of men's basketball at Denison University (@DenisonHoops). Chris played at Wittenberg University (@WittAthletics) and was named a D3hoops (@d3hoops) All-American in 2011.In this conversation Chris and I talk:-How Chris became an assistant coach while in his senior year of college-How Chris starts practice (“We stole this from Bob Mckillop at Davidson (@DavidsonMBB)”)-The details he emphasizes inbounding the ball-How you land indicates if your shot was on-balance-Letting the players come up with the team's core values-How coaching is like being in the crow's nest of a battleship-The process of hiring an assistant coach-How they film and stat EVERYTHING-Feedback should center relationships first-How traditional coaching is centered in obedience-How his college coach never stood during games-I try to be cognizant of how often I'm stopping practice… Find your voice and find the right amount of it.-Sending all five guys to the offensive glass!-How the globalization of basketball speeds innovation-Talking to players about playing timePodcast Links: Apple/Spotify This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Coaches mistake motivation for control.Greg Sullivan (@GSSphd) is the Director of the Mizzou Positive Coaching and Athletic Leadership Program (@CoachingMizzou). In today's conversation we talk:-Coaches are more caught than taught.-How do we bridge the gap between theory and practice?-Athletes (and everyone) need three things in place to have their psychological needs met:AutonomyImprovementBelonging-Love is a verb.-Coaches should write their own eulogies: What do you want your players to say about you?-The way you practice is the way you play and the way you play is the way you live…-There are certain things you can control and certain things you can't. Coach during practice and then trust your players.Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyIf you are interested in these topics you will likely enjoy my book Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyGreg Graber (@GregGraber) is a mindfulness coach who has worked with a number of world-class athletes, coaches, and teams, including Josh Pastner (@GTJoshPastner) and the men's basketball team at Georgia Tech (@GTMBB) and Shaka Smart (@CoachShakaSmart) and the men's basketball team at Marquette University (@MarquetteMBB).Greg is the author of Slow Your Roll: Mindfulness for Fast Times.In this conversation, Greg and I talk:-The first question coaches ask about mindfulness: Is it going to improve the team's free throw performance?-How not allowing kids to be bored kills creativity.-“Coaches bring me in to work with players. Inevitably, I end up working with them.”-A deep-dive into our love for the show Ted Lasso (with a s/o to @nerdnumbers). -“All of us have been Nate.”-Tips for being mindful on social media.-“Don't worry if most people can't stand you, most people can't stand themselves.”-“Meditation is the ultimate portable device.”-“I'm going to teach you to be the observer of your thoughts.”-The great quote from Viktor Frankl: Between stimulus and response there is space. That space is where freedom lies.-“Young people are more receptive to tools like mindfulness.”-How will Ted Lasso end? Where is Coach Beard's relationship with Jane going?-Greg's process when meeting with a team.-“NBA scouts are looking for the athletic role-player.”-“We have collective trauma from the pandemic.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyThe more real it is to you, the more real it will be to other people…Alyssa McGillvery is an actor and stand-up comedian. We met in an improv class through Squirrel Comedy Theater (@TheSquirrelNYC).In this conversation, Alyssa and I talk all things improv, including: -How character starts with breath and then feeling and then posture.-Object work (What color is the tablecloth?)-How working with a scene partner is like playing hot potato.-The cult of UCB and how Squirrel rose from the ashes of UCB. BTW, Squirrel just celebrated their one-year anniversary. If you're in NYC and interested in improv, Squirrel is a great place to take classes. -And then Alyssa and I improv two scenes :-)-Shoutout to the Jedi-level improv group Raaaatscraps (@RAAAATSCRAPS), who currently perform every Sunday evening at Caveat (@caveatnyc), led by Shannon O'Neil (@spotastic), who shares unintentionally hilarious texts from her mother after each show and Connor Ratliff (@connorratliff), whose support work in improv scenes Alyssa and I touch on and is an inspiration. And check out Season Three of Connor's fantastic podcast, Dead Eyes (@DeadEyespodcast) where Connor “sets out to solve the mystery of why Tom Hanks fired him from a small speaking role in Band Of Brothers.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyFor today's podcast I have three short-ish conversations.The first is with Pam Borton (@borton_pam). Pam was the head coach for the women's basketball team at the University of Minnesota, where, in 2004, she led the team to the Final Four. Pam now leads the On Point Next Level Leadership Group and is the author of two books, On Point: A Coach's Game Plan for Life, Leadership, and Performing with Grace Under Fire and The Crooked Rim: Master Your Mindset to Strengthen Your Resilience for Limitless Personal and Professional Excellence. In our conversation Pam and I talk leadership, coaching, and writing.The second conversation is with Brian Mackay (@bmac1435). Brian is the Emmy nominated producer of the Nothing But Net podcast (@NBNwithDA) with Debbie Antonelli (@debbieantonelli). Brian and I talk Mississippi basketball, coaching, and best practices for a successful podcast.The third conversation is with Linda Dunn (@dunn4authors). Linda helps authors with their social media presence and we do a deep-dive into using Twitter. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyWe're all so quick to try to get the heart of something. Just listen…Michael Arkush is the co-writer of Scottie Pippen's autobiography Unguarded.In this conversation we talk process and then Pippen's amazing story of perseverance.Process:-Keys to establishing rapport.-I often catch much more in the transcription than in the interview.-Working with an editor.-Identifying theme in non-fiction book.-Working with a proof copy.-Every paragraph has a purpose.Pippen:-Perseverance-One decision.-Teamwork. Pippen is the youngest of twelve and a basketball team is twelve people. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyI wrote this book four times… This is my shot.Kent Babb has written what I think is the best book of the year, Across the River: Life, Death, and Football in an American City. It sounds like vegetables, and the book examines the weightiest issues in America, but reading it is all dessert as Kent is a master storyteller.In this conversation, Kent and I discuss:-“You have to find your Alfred.”-“If you're going to tell this story, you have to tell it straight up.”-“I owed them an honest accounting.”-“You look like the people who locked me up.”-First draft is a s**t draft. Second draft is the biggest leap. Third draft is micro-surgery.-Word choice, or what Kent calls, “Writing Nerd Prom.”-The difference between accuracy and precision. Accuracy is hitting the target. Precision is hitting the bullseye.-Finding ways to read your manuscript fresh.-Writing process and honesty.-“There are so many Joe Thomas' and so few Bryce Browns.”-Coaching, trust, communication and investment in helping young people.-Trent Dilfer and the “obedience model” of coaching.-Book promotion is necessary but difficult.-”It's a social justice book that has some football s**t in it.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyCan I react in the moment, just as it is?My book, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey, is officially out in the world. You can buy it here.Today's interview is a reversal of roles. Andrés Alvarez (@nerdnumbers) is interviewing me for his podcast, Box Score Geeks, and I'm cross-posting the interview.In this conversation, Dre and I talk:Phil Jackson and a different way of coaching.Why I stopped coaching.The University of Missouri and their Master's Program in Positive Coaching (@CoachingMizzou).Michael Jordan: Why would I think about a shot that I've already taken?Chris Fox (@ScholarlyFox) and his idea of a writing sprint.All-in, the cost to publish my book was $1,500.Thoughts on self-publishing and how many books I need to sell to break even.Shoutouts from Ben: Positive Coaching Alliance (@PositiveCoachUS), Mizzou (@GSSphd), Greg Graber (@GregGraber), and the Blue Devils.Shoutouts from Dre: Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) and Agony of Defeat (@defeat_of and @jonweile). Dre and I end by talking about our two previous Ted Lasso podcast episodes which you can listen to here and here.You can buy my book, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey, here. The hardcover makes for a great gift :-) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyThat was the culmination of my coaching career, just sitting and watching and letting what was going to happen, happen.My book, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey, is officially out in the world. You can buy it here.Today's interview is a reversal of roles. Andrés Alvarez (@nerdnumbers) is interviewing me for his podcast, Box Score Geeks, and I'm cross-posting the interview here.Part 2 will drop on Thursday.In this conversation, Dre and I talk:How the thesis of my book is the way we think about coaching is wrong.How our traditional model of coaching is based on obedience.Dre likens the story to a modern day Hoosiers.Simmons High School, the Mississippi Delta, and the best player I ever coached, Jasper Johnson.Bob Knight and Coach K.A documentary I made in 2012 titled SHOWTIME.The phrase “Crack the whip.”The Brian Scalabrine Challenge: I'm closer to LeBron James than you are to me.Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech: You only connect the dots after.Part 2 will come out Thursday. Dre and I talk Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Ted Lasso.In the meantime, please consider buying, or gifting, my book, available here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyThis story (Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball) is unlike any I've ever read.Glenn Stout (@GlennStout), series editor for The Best American Sports Writing, edited my new book, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball, which comes out November 1st (you can read the first three chapters here).On Monday I wrote about the lessons I learned working with Glenn. Today's podcast is a companion to that piece.In this conversation, Glenn and I cover:-How Glenn approaches the editing process.-“I edit the way I wish it had been done for me.”-“You don't want the reader to stop reading.”-“We will solve more problems talking than in two days of email.”-“The text is trying to tell you something.”-“The really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.”-Character Introductions: Give the reader a hanger.-Why did Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) never make The Best American Sports Writing?-Calling Florence Shinkle, of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, to tell her '“Fly Away Home” was selected for the inaugural edition of BASW. Glenn goes into more detail here.-In the new iteration of BASW, The Year's Best Sports Writing, Glenn and I talk Kim Cross's (@KimhCross) story What Happens When Two Strangers Trust the Rides of Their Lives to the Magic of the Universe which is told in the structure of a palindrome.-Glenn shouts out The Year's Best Sports Writing Advisory Board: Ben Baby (@Ben_Baby), Alex Belth (@AlexBelth), Howard Bryant (@hbryant42), Kim Cross (@KimhCross), Roberto José Andrade Franco, Latria Graham (@LatriaGraham), Michael Mooney (@MooneyMichaelJ), and Linda Robertson (@lrobertsonmiami).-We end talking Glenn's latest book, Tiger Girl and The Candy Kid.If you are interested in my book that Glenn edited, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey, it drops November 1st, as both print and e-book, on Amazon.The “big idea” is the way we think about coaching sports is all wrong, coaching doesn't have to be rooted in anger and intimidation and fear, and tools like meditation can super-charge learning and performance.Here's a photo of me coaching the team by not coaching the team.You can read the first three chapters of Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball here.If you haven't yet, please hit the “Subscribe now” button to stay up-to-date. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyFor Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, being compassionate (to their teammates) was measured in teaspoons.How did Jordan and Bryant go from individual scorers to NBA champions? The answer lies, partially, in a man named George Mumford (@gtmumford), a key figure in two of the NBA's greatest dynasty's, the Bulls of the '90's and the Lakers of the 2000's.In this conversation, author and journalist Roland Lazenby (@lazenby) and I discuss how Mumford's mindfulness training served as a catalyst for peak performance.Shaquille O'Neal (@SHAQ) said, “He's our secret weapon.” Scottie Pippen (@ScottiePippen) said, “We've been ‘Mumified.'” Phil Jackson (@PhilJackson11) said he “saved” the Bulls' season.This conversation offers insight into what being “Mumified” means.Roland Lazenby is a dean of NBA reporting. His book Michael Jordan: The Life served as one of the key texts for The Last Dance (@LastDanceBulls).In this episode Roland and I discuss the following:-George Mumford's work with Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant.-How Mumford helped Jordan and Bryant be more compassionate to their teammates.-Phil Jackson on Michael Jordan: It's those days between games that he's really hard to live with.-Phil Jackson versus Jerry Krause: He and Krause were in a war.-Phil Jackson versus Jerry West: West said, “F**k Phil Jackson!”-“There was a deep undercurrent of hatred of the Triangle.”-Mike D'Antoni: They don't teach the post anymore.-Jordan: Man, I wish I'd met you a long time ago.-The research and scholarship Roland has done on Black Americans in the South as a key component of his books about Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson.-The state of the publishing industry.-The story of Magic Johnson as a story of Black Power.-Where would Kobe have gone to school?-Tex Winter: The great difference between Michael and Kobe? UNC.You can buy Roland's books at all the usual places. In particular, I recommend Michael Jordan: The Life, which the New York Times called, “thoughtful, (and) extraordinarily well-­researched.”If you are interested in the intersection of mindfulness and basketball, my book, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey, drops November 1st, as both print and e-book, exclusively on Amazon.The “big idea” is the way we think about coaching sports is all wrong, coaching doesn't have to be rooted in anger and intimidation and fear, and tools like meditation can super-charge learning and performance.Here's a photo of me coaching the team by not coaching the team.Here are two “blurbs”:You can read the first chapter of Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball here.If you haven't yet, please hit the “Subscribe now” button to stay up-to-date.And please share this email/post with the coaches, players, and parents of middle-school and high-school athletes in your life. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Podcast Links: Apple/SpotifyIt almost becomes innate how you tell a story.Pete Croatto is a freelance writer and “idea vendor” (a term he borrowed from author Taffy Brodesser-Akner), based in Ithaca, New York.His first book, From Hang Time to Prime Time, was published by Atria Books in 2020.The New York Times writes that Mr. Croatto documents the broader cultures and social tensions of the modern NBA well.In this episode Pete and I discuss the following:Why finding an agent and publishing a book is like falling in love.The benefits of joining the American Society of Journalists and Authors (@ASJAhq).“The dirty little secret (of marketing) is that you're doing a lot of the work when the book comes out.”How he made his local, independent bookstore, Odyssey Books, his home base.The process of cold emailing media and podcasters. His “hit rate” from cold emails was 30%.How Larry O'Brien taking the job as NBA Commissioner in 1975 would be like Elizabeth Warren taking over the National Lacrosse League today.How O'Brien handled NBA owners by delegating and how David Stern served as O'Brien's lead blocker.Our mutual appreciation of Robert Caro.How telling a story is like coiling a garden hose.How Leon Huff, of the legendary “Philadelphia Soul” musical production team Gamble and Huff, gave Pete a great metaphor for writing a good scene. Huff said, in song production, “that ding (of a bell) can be the difference between a good song and a great song.” It's the same with the little details in your scene. Was O'Brien smoking Winstons or Camels? Did David Stern have eggs or oatmeal? The little details immerse the reader.You can find Pete on Twitter (@PeteCroatto).If you order directly from Odyssey Bookstore you can buy a signed copy of Pete's book, From Hang Time to Prime Time.Pete goes into detail about the process of finding an agent and getting a book deal. Here are the steps Pete took to publish his first book:Was a freelance journalist who wrote articles for various outlets, including a piece on Marvin Gaye singing the National Anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game.In his reporting for the article Pete started unearthing a bigger story about how the NBA went from a “rinky-dink” league to a global brand, primarily due to Larry O'Brien, Commissioner of the NBA, from 1975 to 1984.Pete's editor at Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly), Mark Rotella (@MarkRotella), suggested Pete put together a proposal and Mark would send it to his agent.Spent a year on the proposal, which included an outline of each of the ten chapters, two completed sample chapters, and comparable books like Jeff Pearlman's (@jeffpearlman) Showtime and Jonathan Abrams (@Jpdabrams) Boys Among Men.Agent never replied.Pete joined the American Society of Journalists and Authors (@ASJAhq).Attended an in-person 2017 ASJA event and pitched his book to a roundtable of agentsOne agent, John Bowers (@John_W_Bowers) at The Bent Agency (http://www.thebentagency.com/), was interested and agreed to represent Pete.A month later John left the agency BUT passed Pete on to a more experienced agent, Louise Fury.Louise shopped the book and it was acquired by Atria Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.From proposal to book deal was five years.Here's the cover of Pete's book:Speaking of sports writing, my new book, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey, drops November 1st, as both print and e-book, exclusively on Amazon (it's not available for pre-order as I want to maximize first day sales).Pressure plays, buzzer-beaters, and mindfulness meditation: A team of teenagers goes for the championship in Namibia's professional basketball league....Here's a photo of our team captain, Sepo Libana, 19 years old.The “big idea” of the book is that he way we think about coaching sports is all wrong, that it doesn't have to be rooted in anger and intimidation and fear.Here's the cover:If you haven't yet, please hit the “Subscribe now” button to stay up-to-date.And please share this email/post with the coaches, players, and parents of middle-school and high-school athletes in your life. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Apple/SpotifyEvery choice is a chance. Subscribe for weekly interviews.The emotion is real. The logic is not.In this bonus episode Andrés “Dre” Alvarez and I discuss the Season 2 Finale of Ted Lasso (and reference Ted Lasso fans Chris Yeh and Marshall Ramsey).Dre and I talk:-How justified is Nate? Has Ted actually neglected him?-Keeley and Roy-Sam and Rebecca (ugh)-What can I learn here?-Every choice is a chance.-Cry because they existed. Cry because they're gone.And now, the interminable wait for Season 3

Links: Apple/SpotifyThe biggest lie we've been told is that playing from a place of anger improves performance.Today's episode is a conversation with Andrés Alvarez. Dre first came on the show way back in Episode 11 where we discussed meta-cognition, group think, poker, chess, and basketball.Today's conversation with Dre started when I posted an article about Ted Lasso. Dre suggested we do an episode where we discuss what makes a good coach and/or teacher, to which I readily agreed.Like all of my conversations with Dre, on and off-air, this one took us to some fascinating places. We discuss:-Why do coaches punish players by having them run laps, sprints, etc.?-If the coach calls a play, and the players don't execute the play, is it the fault of the coach or the players?-The teaching philosophy of Dave Berri: Your job is to explain things.-Chris Yeh's thoughts on Ted as a knowledgeable soccer coach: Ted Lasso is unprepared to coach football.Here are some of my favorite quotes from Dre:-Being stoic when things are going wrong is really good at pissing people off.-If you're going to be doing something highly emotional, highly volatile, lots of moving parts, you have to keep yourself calm.-It's really hard to grade someone on a task without knowing how difficult that thing is to do.Dre has a Substack to which I encourage you to subscribe:If you liked this episode Dre and I are going to record a Ted Lasso Season 2 recap that will drop Monday, October 11, 2021.Please forward this to the Ted Lasso fans in your life and/or share on social media as that helps bring in subscribers to this newsletter.Speaking of coaching, my book Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey launches on November 1st.A team of teenagers competes for the championship in Namibia's professional basketball league... And a basketball coach discovers the power of meditation.It will be up on Amazon on November 1st. If you've enjoyed the content here I hope you will support my work by buying a copy :-)Podcast Links: Apple/Spotify This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

I was a zero in the literary universe.Rwandan-born, Namibian-based author Rémy Ngamije (https://twitter.com/remythequill) shares his journey from “zero” to acquiring a literary agent and a worldwide book deal with Scout Press.Rémy's debut novel, The Eternal Audience of One, was published in August of 2021.Here's are the steps Rémy took to go from zero to published author:Wrote a novel.Googled literary agents AND Africa literature. Didn't find anyone.Googled agents AND world literature.Submitted query letters.Rejected by everyone.Reached out to a South African author on Twitter. The author put Rémy in touch with a local South African Press, Blackbird.Blackbird agreed to publish Rémy's. No advance.Blackbird encouraged Rémy to publish short stories in literary journals to get his name out there.Wrote several stories and submitted to various journals.Stories started getting picked up.“If you create an audience for some of your work you'll find an audience for all of your work.”In his bio for the literary journals Rémy mentioned that he had a completed novel.Two years after having his query letters rejected Cecile Barendsma of Cecile B Literary Agency read one of Rémy's stories and contacted him on social media about his novel.Cecile became Rémy's agent and shopped his novel to US publishers.Because of his publishing history in various literary journals, Scout Press had the confidence to buy and publish Rémy's debut novel from Blackbird Press.Rémy signed a book deal with an advance from Scout Press.Scout Press published The Eternal Audience of One, Rémy's debut novel, in August of 2021.Rémy is also the editor of the southern African literary magazine, Doek!, for African writers and those of African descent.Podcast LinksApple here.Spotify here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Jasper “Julio” Johnson died on July 27, 2021, far too young at the age of 38. He left behind three children and one grandson. I first met Jasper when he was a senior at Simmons High School in Hollandale, Mississippi. I was an English teacher and the assistant basketball coach under legendary George Willis.We won a state championship that year and Jasper was a Dandy Dozen. He would go on to play at the University of Southern Mississippi, Delta State University, and have a long professional career overseas, most notably in South Korea.As great a basketball player as Jasper was, he was a far better person.To help process his passing, several of his teammates from that championship year and I got together via Zoom. My idea was that we could share memories of Jasper that his family, especially his three children, would appreciate. From there we started reminiscing about that championship season and Mr. Willis, who passed away in 2018.My guests for the conversation were Larry “LB” Brown, Ricky Johnson, Pat White, and Jeremy “Me-Me” Smith.Podcast LinksApple here.Spotfity here.YouTube here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

This generation is more diverse and less tolerant of intolerance than any generation in the history of the United States.Author Dave Zirin's new book The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World is out this week.In this conversation we talk:Did Jay-Z sell out when he partnered with the NFLThe role of WNBA players in progressive movementsThe NBA response to the shooting of Jacob BlakeBarack Obama squashing the NBA players strikeSteve Kerr's advice to let the youth leadMegan Rapinoe on the role of white people in activism: If someone is getting arrested, you should too.Eric Reid asking himself, “Am I living how Christ would want me to live?”Meeting PrinceApple/Spotify This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

LeBron had a thirst for knowledge.This is Part 2 of my interview with Scott Williams. Part 1 is here.Scott played four years under Coach Dean Smith at The University of North Carolina. He played 15 seasons in the NBA, winning three championships with the Chicago Bulls.  In this Part 2 of our conversation we discuss:Why Allen Iverson is his least-favorite teammate of all-timeThe differing approaches LeBron James and Allen Iverson took as young playersThe questions LeBron James asked Scott about Michael JordanGrant Hill and the playdates their daughters would have at Chucky CheeseShaq offering to teach high-schoolers the art of free throw shootingScott's current job at Grand Canyon State UniversityPodcast LinksApple here.Spotfity here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

My life would have gone in a different direction had it not been for Dean Smith.Scott Williams played four years under Coach Dean Smith at The University of North Carolina. He played for 15 seasons in the NBA, winning three championships with the Chicago Bulls.  In this conversation we discuss:Who is the GOAT, Michael Jordan or LeBron James?Is Phil Jackson racist?Scottie Pippen's dunk over Patrick EwingNew UNC Head Coach Hubert DavisAfter a big UNC win, Scott's favorite places to celebrate on Franklin StreetThe incomparable Dean SmithPodcast LinksApple here.Spotfity here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Children are being sorted into their place in the economy by the schools they are able to attend.Buck Cooper is an 8th Grade math teacher. In this conversation we discuss:The behind the scenes work of teachingHow leading a class conversation is like TetrisSeeing kids as the best version of themselvesThe Wire Season 4Our shared love of whiteboardsPodcast LinksApple here.Spotfity here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

I need to create as much content around this book. That's the only way people are going to find it.Today's interview is with author Greg Larson. Greg recently published Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir. The Los Angeles Times calls Clubbie “An emotional backstage look at… life in the minor leagues.”In this interview Greg gives us a masterclass in book promotion. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

A conversation with Adam Hutchinson, Director of Athletics at Earlham College. We talk being a Black man in America, raising two young Black men in America, and what the past five years have shown us about America. From there we transition into a conversation about coaching, leadership, and the best songs of 1989. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

In this conversation with a former player of mine, Larry Brown, we do a deep dive into Simmons High School basketball and leadership lessons learned from coaching. After recording the episode we learned that Jasper “Julio” Johnson, Larry's teammate, died suddenly. Larry and I recorded an addendum talking about Julio and what he meant to us.Podcast LinksApple here.Spotfity here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Chris Hladczuk is a senior at Yale University. He had done a deep dive into effective use of Twitter and recently completed and apprenticeship with Shaan Puri. In this episode Chris talks about his checklist for Twitter and the lessons he learned working for Shaan.You can follow Chris on Twitter here.Listen on Apple Podcasts here.Listen on Spotify here.Archive of previous podcasts here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

In this interview with author Mark Paul we do a deep dive into self-publishing, marketing, and promoting your book.Mark is the author of The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told and has a great author website here.Here is the trailer for the book:Listen on Apple Podcasts here.Listen on Spotify here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

Interviews with two former students from Hollandale, Mississippi. Tre Johnson is a elementary school music teacher and Jasmine Steverson is a reporter for the Delta Democrat Times. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

“…the system of oppression that is the criminal legal system. I don't call it the criminal justice system because it's not just.” - Asia MilletteIn this conversation with public defender Asia Millette we dive deep into the injustice of the criminal legal system.Listen on Apple Podcasts here.Listen on Spotify here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com